Re: complexity ontological or epistemological

["John Kineman" <***>]

Hi Judith & all,

This are some very interesting quotes. I know from my own notes that I
often toy with many ideas, later to determine that some were exactly not
what I meant. Also, I quite often will write on a piece of paper a
statement that is the opposite of what I think is true, so that I can
then think about how to disprove it, or how my own ideas meet the
challenge. In accessing these notes, is there any way to determine these
different possible contexts? Some of what you quote here seems to me at
odds with the published work. That really makes this fascinating but
potentially confusing. I'll insert some impressions below:

Judith Rosen wrote:

>Hi Everybody,
>
>Sorry I'm coming into this discussion so late.
>
>Regarding Descartes quote "I think...."; My Dad used to joke that it oughta
>be "I think I think, therefore I think I am."
>
He must have realized (hence understanging the paradox in the joke) that
no matter how many times you nest it, it still begins with "I think..."

>
>I have been immersed in the two "partial" manuscripts of my father's that
>are being published (done, they promise me, by 3:00 this afternoon!!!). One
>of them, "Rosennean Complexity", has a bunch of handwritten notes of my
>Dad's and on one of the pages, he was musing, "I think, therefore... I am
>complex." I can almost "hear" his grin as he wrote that.
>
This fits with my interpretation very strongly. I understand it to mean
that the epistemological ("I think") is to be considered ontological and
at the root of complexity ("I am complex"). I am quite sure from other
statements that he was in many instances considering the formal
relationship to be a causal and generative one (i.e., ontological in the
way we are using the term as meaning pertaining to origins and causes,
i.e., not in a religious sense).

>
>On observers/observations/surrogacies: He wrote; "Not all observers are
>models of each other."
>
I don't know what this means. What is the criteria for observers that
are models of each other? One speculative interpretation, might be that
in order to establish a modeling relationship, or I should say when
establishing a modeling relationship, one necessarily establishes a
"larger system." There implies a hierarchy (although not a unique one)
where a larger system can contain a model of a smaller one. We may then
ask how a smaller system's internal model can model larger systems. This
could be the purpose for his statement - a question in this regard.

It seems clear from other aspects of the view/theory that all these
systems are connected in some way. A big theme of Rosen's was how larger
systems DO causally affect the ontology of smaller ones, violating the
usual taboo on this in traditional science. In other words the existence
of parts may partially be owed to factors in the whole. This was the
case with protein folding examples. The explanation here seems to be
that larger-smaller hierarchies exist naturally (aside from any
scientific model), and that the smaller system models, say those
employed by an animal, are not formally restricted just to the encodings
contained in the animal itself but also extend up and down the
hierarchy. As an example, my model of the world might include real-time
influences from the environment that exists independently of me, i.e.,
the encodings embedded in the environment rather than an internal memory
storage system. In that case, the entailments exist up and down the
hierarchy.

In other words, this way of seeing nature in terms of modeling
relationships, eliminates the physical reductionist hierarchy, but then
spreads any system through an infinite hierarchy of modeling relations.
This implied connectedness is very ecological, and thus appealing in
that regard (everything is connected to everything else), but it means
that sub-systems would at least partially entail their larger systems.
So again, which obsrvers are not models of each other?

All I can think of is the case of an observation model that has no
decoding entailment loop - like a thought that is never tested or acted
upon. One can argue that this is ultimately an impossibility, so I would
question the statement. Could his intention have been to consider the
proof of this impossibility????

Another possibility is that he was focusing on the "each other" part.
Perhaps all observers are models of what they observe, but there is the
case where this is not mutual - that the observed may not be observing
back. That would seem defensible. So, if I observe animals from behind a
blind, they may not be aware of my presence. That would seem like an
obvious case, but a relative one. In an absolute sense, even my blind
observation does feed back to the subject through future changes in my
behavior and alterations in the environment, management schemes, etc. So
ultimately even this case is entailed.

>
>On causes and effects, and human existence, he mused, "We (humans) are only
>effects, not causes. Our minds are not answers. The external world is a
>cause, NOT effect. Certainly not of perception.
>

This is very confusing to me and it seems to directly contradict his
main theory. The decoding loop itself in a modeling relation is an
explicit representation of cause (not just inconsequential model
testing). Clearly if humans are not causes of anything, then all of
human thought, planning, and intention is smeaningless. One can always
find a level of reality where such is true (Eastern fatalism, etc), but
at our working scientific level, this cannot be assumed without
invalidating the enterprise itself. These statements have to be part of
a much larger context that reverses their meaning, in my opinion;
perhaps an almost spiritual context.

>But... understanding it
>seeks to entail it?!
>
Now we see the fall from the Garden of Eden - knowledge of good and evil
- seeking to understand is what introduces ego perspective and
separation from the whole.

>Understanding e.g. Euclidean geometry seeks to entail
>it. Make it effect or output of something.
>
Human arrogance enters the picture and we now begin to interpret reality
according to our model. Thinking that our arrogant little description of
it, Euclidean geometry, captures it and hence is the "cause" of it
rather than just an arbitrary and limited description (his general theory).

> "Something" = context.
>
Now, in this fall from grace to arrogance, Man imagines the universe to
be the product of Euclidean geometry (as an example), and thus
establishes a world view that is the context for the existence of the
external world. Now we explain everything in terms of mechanism. - the
error Rosen so consistently rails against.

>Relate two
>things to each other by relating them to context."
>
>
This is the most interesting part. He is now identifying the most basic
aspect of perception, using the "simplest system" as I mentioned in an
earlier email. The simplest system is two things in relationship. He
realizes in this statement that necessarily generates a context for
those two things. In the lead-in sentences he got here thinking about
man and environment (external nature) - two things. Their relationship
produced a model (Euclidean geometry), which was then imputed as the
context. This is identical to the statement Jim and I mused over
earlier, that perception creates space-time (context). Space-time itself
is just a geometry, nothing substantial. It can be modeled as Euclidean
or non-Euclidean with various uses for the result. All such models are
arrogant if we presume them to be the "real" context (his leading
musing), but also this is the nature of perception and scientific
enterprise, so it is a theory of what we do and where our space-time
context came from.

At this point, my interpretation completely reverses the statement that
the external world is NOT the effect of perception. While we can begin
there imagining a "reality" that is the external world independent of
us, we arrive at the exact opposite conclusion regarding the external
world as conceived. This is a well-established principle in metaphysics.
It has no known solution other than accepting it as a fundamental
paradox between reality and perception (e.g., the Anthropic principle).

>He also brought up the "chicken/egg paradox", asked "Is "FIRST" entailed? An
>effect?"
>
>
I had not read ahead when writing the above interpretations, so this
suggests indeed a similar line of thought (if this though followed the
others in his notes ???). I really think he was musing about mutual
causation paradoxes, leading to the result that there must be a closed
causal loop between reality and perception - although he may not have
reasoned it to that conclusion yet.

>Bear in mind that he was thinking of these things in a certain light, not in
>absolutes, and was just prodding his mind along and noting it down so that
>he could use it again later. These notes were never meant to be seen and
>should not be taken as Rosennean theory or put on the same level as his
>polished work. But I think the process he always went through in sorting out
>his thoughts may be of value to others, especially those who have read some
>of his previously published work.
>
Understood in this light, as in my initial comments on note making
above, we certainly have to treat any interpretation as speculation and
imagine the process of challenging and probing one's own thoughts..

All the best,

-jjk