Dear Judith, be careful how to screen your fathers 'pencilled-in' notes! A man of his cultural diversity, mental connectivity - humor(!) can scribble all kinds of remarks that 'came to mind' - seriously or not. I appreciate his longer metaversion of Descartes' thinking', althogh for the shorter one I could imagine (plagiarize) a reversed sentence: ---"I am complex, therefore I think"--- (Just to loosen up: the waiter in the beer-pub asks Descartes: "another beer, Dr. Descartes?" He responded: "I don't think" and disappeared.) Best regards John M ----- Original Message ----- From: "Judith Rosen" <***> To: <***> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 7:48 AM Subject: Re: complexity ontological or epistemologicalHi Everybody, Sorry I'm coming into this discussion so late. Regarding Descartes quote "I think...."; My Dad used to joke that itoughtabe "I think I think, therefore I think I am." 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!!!).Oneof 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. On observers/observations/surrogacies: He wrote; "Not all observers are models of each other." On causes and effects, and human existence, he mused, "We (humans) areonlyeffects, not causes. Our minds are not answers. The external world is a cause, NOT effect. Certainly not of perception. But... understanding it seeks to entail it?! Understanding e.g. Euclidean geometry seeks to entail it. Make it effect or output of something. "Something" = context. Relatetwothings to each other by relating them to context." He also brought up the "chicken/egg paradox", asked "Is "FIRST" entailed?Aneffect?" Bear in mind that he was thinking of these things in a certain light, notinabsolutes, 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 sortingouthis thoughts may be of value to others, especially those who have readsomeof his previously published work. Cheer, Judith ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Fiscus" <***> To: <***> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 9:31 AM Subject: Re: [ROSEN] complexity ontological or epistemologicalJeff, I agree that your approach to differing perspectives is a fruitful one. But, I am not sure that question, phrased as an either/or, true/false, predicative logic question, can be answered or discussed in ways that can get at the deep core issues of life and complexity. I think it is precisely the inseparability of these two issues that is part of the central issue of life and complexity, i.e. that ontology and epistemology are entangled, mutually causal and not easily separable. I sometimes wonder what history would have been like if Descartes had thought, said, written, if he could have: "I think... only by virtue of continued connection to a stream of physical nutrients like fresh air, clean water and good food that come from my environment; and these nutrients are usually provided outright or greatly aided in quality or quantity by plant life; and I in turn supply needed nutrients back to those plants in the forms of my spent air, used water, and processed organic wastes; therfore I am... essentially an ecological being that exists only in relation to the context of other life forms; and I am also a conscious being whose processes of thinking and observing and knowing all involves self-knowing and self-reference, as my life - the biophysical basis of my consciousness - exists as a stream within an inseparable cycle of flows, and is therefore spread over, distributed in or also existing in part in the other beings and processes in my ecological and physical environmental context." If he had said this, I don't think we'd still be debating whether the cartesian split or epistemic cut between knower and known is a necessity or even a good starting assumption. What happens when we drop this is where it gets interesting, to me. Just my angle on it... Dan Jeff Pridaux wrote:Is complexity ontological or just epistemological? This has been on my mind since the mid-90s. Consider the following.... 1. Certainly, different people can look at the same thing (Naturalsystem)and see different things (formal system). Just think of politics. For instance, liberals and conservatives can look at the same issue andcomeupwith completely different models of reality and push for differentcoursesof action (when in many cases they both want the same end-result). 2. Certainly just because we (scientists) may interact with an entity (like a sub-cellular organelle) with one set of observables (like concentrations of molecules), doesn't mean those observables (concentrations) are what something else (like other subcellular organelles) "sees" with its interactions with the entity. The concentrations may be there but the concentrations may not really betheobservable used between the organelles. 3. It could follow that organelle B could use one set of observableswheninteracting with organelle A and organelle C could use a completely different set of observables when it interacts with organelle A. The subcellular system could (in its own right) have complex modeling relationships going on independent of any human observer. The systemhasits own interior complex modeling relationships inside it. And assuch,the complexity of this subcellular system could be thought of as having ontological existence.