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Re: MR as ontological, intelligence
- From: "Tim Gwinn" <***>
- Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 13:56:06 -0500
Hi
John,
I think I now see
perhaps the root of some differences in the following (from
below):
------------
This surprises and worries me. Is it not
accepted that Rosen discussed entailment between natural and formal systems?? I
suppose if a strictly epistemological view were taken, that might not be
obvious. But in that case, one would be talking only about the philosophy of
science, not anything we would otherwise associate with nature. Is that your
perspective???
------------
The
encoding/decodings between systems in an MR are not entailments. In Life Itself
(p. 52), he refers to them as "dictionaries", where "encoding" is short for
"encoding dictionary, and "decoding" is short for "decoding
dictionary".
More directly,
from Essays, p. 159 [while describing the pieces of an MR]:
"The crucial
ingredients are the arrows 2 and 4, which I call encoding and
decoding, respectively.....They do not fit entirely inside either the
object system or the model; they do not represent entailments, nor are
they themselves entailed. They manifest what Einstein...once called
"free creations of the mind", on which he believed science depends....The only
condition on them is that they bring the two entailment structures into
congruence - that is, that they satisfy the commutativity condition...." [bold
added]
So, these
dictionaries arise from the mind of the person creating the MR, but are not
entailments of, or entailed within, the MR. So, an MR requires [(object
system) + (formal system) + (modeler-with-mind)]. When you gave the example of
the scientist engaged in an MR with some system, and suggested that
the whole (scientist + object-system) could be considered a natural system, I
agreed that it could. But that new system is now a much bigger chunk of the
world than just the MR that was within the original scenario: it includes the
entire mind of the scientist. Without that mind to impute those "free
creations", there is no MR.
Below, where you
use realizations as examples of entailment between F and N systems, I do not
think these demonstrate entailment beween F and N in the MR itself, but rather
entailments in an application of an MR to a process called
"realization".
Regards,
Tim
Tim,
I may not be using the right
terms re: Rosen - been a while so I need to refresh, but, in plain
language:
====
Well, there
are two types of entailments : 1) causal and 2) inferential.
Separately, there is the notion of functional
organization. Complex systems and machines (but not
mechanisms) are systems which admit relational (functional)
descriptions. Functional units (components) are also context-dependant:
they acquire their properties based on the system to which they
currently belong.
But I am
still not sure what "functional entailment" means.
====
When taken
ontologically, as a description of a natural system itself, the "encoding" and
"decoding" arrows must also be taken as system entailments (causal mappings),
between the natural and formal system. A simple example is an engineer
designing and testing a widget. The encoding and decoding cycle represents an
iterative design cycle. Part of this cycle is Rosen's process of
"realization," i.e., when a a formal system is realized by a natural one.
Since the relationship is also referred to as functional, i.e., functioins
exist in the formal system component, I referred to formal/functioinal
entailment [of the natural system].
====
Again, I am
unsure what "entailment with functions" means. In any case, there is no
reversion to a mechanical view. See further below.
====
Am I
stating it incorrectly??? It means a causal mapping between a function and a
natural system that realizes that function. For example, lets model the
relationship between my own mind and my body using a modeling relation. The
function "eat lunch" maps into realized actions that correspond with eating
lunch. That's a decoding relation. I analyze the experience and change my
concept of it. That's encoding. It is ontological because it is a description
of what goes on causally within the whole natural system. Thus one can draw a
picture of a Rosen MR diagram inside the natural system box of a similar
diagram to represent this situation. In such a diagram, the larger FS box now
represents our conversation where I have described it. So we are modeling the
modeling process.
====
What I
meant, and stated poorly, was that the system which has this
emergent property of consciousness is not mechanistic. It is a complex
system and thus not amenable to reductionism. (see further
below)
====
Agreed.
no problem here.
====
From a
Rosennean perspective, the reductionistic principle is
nullified, and so there is no "all the way
down".
Reduction as a
general process is never nullified except in complete absence of thought. For
example, we are reducing to word-symbols and they to prior experiences.
Physical/material reduction is eliminated, yes. "All the way down" means in
successive MRs of MRs. Rosen indicated this possibility of modeling models. I
understand that we might not want to call that a reduction to avoid confusion
with traditional reduction, but nevertheless it is a reduction when considered
ontologically. If the MR is applied only epistemologically, than it says
nothing about complexity, only how to detect it in the first stage of
reduction (the epistemological model itself).
"Lower"
levels of reality do not universally (or generally) determine or entail
"higher" levels of reality, or vice versa. The
'higher'/'lower'/'up'/'down' terminology is just an artefact of the
Newtonian paradigm.
I certainly
would not argue with anyone who wanted to define it thus for their own
purposes, but as a general statement one is certainly also free to apply these
terms to any view or theory construction. Newtonian views certainly use
hierarchical concepts, but so did Rosen. Rosen discussed "larger" and
"smaller" systems. If the word "larger" is preferred to "higher," that's
equivalent for me, so then no objection. Then "smaller" is "lower." Just
semantics.
====
"Reductionism", in Rosennean terminology, implies
Rosen's definition of 'mechanism': a system is amenable to
reductionism IFF it is a Rosennean mechanism. Complex systems, on the
other hand, are not amenable to reductionism.
====
Yes,
"reductionism" refers to a historical philosophy (the "ism") that was indeed
Newtonian and mechanistic. That does not preclude other forms of reduction on
a different basis, but they are not well-established as "isms" and would have
to claim another terms since this was already used for the Newtonian program.
I admit the double usage is confusing, but it is an English language
problem.
Also, the "smaller
pieces" in this case are not parts, they are wholes themselves - fully
entailed natural systems in Rosen's terms. So it is a very non-mechanical
reduction. Mechanism separates the formal and material entailments.
====
I do not know what you mean by "fully entailed natural
systems". Are you saying they are
complex?
Yes, absolutely.
The entailments make them complex.
I am
not familiar with the terms "formal and material entailments". Are
you referring to Aristotelian formal cause and material cause?
====
I argued elsewhere that
all thinking involves some kind of reduction, it is reduction to what that
is the concern.
Thus, to me, panpsychism (for lack of a better
word) seems to me quite mechanistic, in that it proposes that these
properties of life and consciousness exist not by virtue of being emergent
properties of a complex system organization, but by virtue of being
properties of all the atoms/etc. that make up an organism, which combine to
form a sum total of that property for the organism.
======
Again, I agree it is a reduction, which no theory can escape, but
it is not mechanical because the MR does not commute
====
What is this
MR that you are referring to? What are the two systems in the MR? Why does
it not commute?
====
You were
discussing panpsychism, which presumably refers to there being a psyche
associated with all natural systems. So, any MR would qualify because the NS
box would itself be representable by an MR. Below I show a "larger" system and
the "smaller" system in the larger system NS box.. In this diagram the larger
system commutation properties can indicate that the FS is complex (by
impossibility of commutation, not attributable to error). The smaller system
diagram is an explanation of why that happens, i.e., it is internally entailed
with an FS.
------------------>
----------------------------------------------
----------------------------------
-------->
----------
-------------
NS
FS
FS
----------
-------------
<---------
-----------------------------------------------
------------------------------------
<--------------------
=====
I am not
sure, but I think I have a rough idea of what you are proposing.
Basically, that 1) all reality is complex in the Rosennean sense by virtue
of some kind of ontological
MR
yes
(psyche?)
arbitrary
term along with many others, but yes
that is part
of each piece of fundamental
reality,
any natural system - the
only fundamental reality proposed (which is a theory-relative reality) is the
MR itself.
and
2) any complex systems (including living organisms) admits
reduction to fundamental (perhaps quantum?)
particles.
No. That is physical
reduction to a Newtonian concept, "particles." The existence of particle-wave
dualilty - the strange combination, would be explainable as a Rosen MR, out of
which one (optionally) could view particles if one establishes a mechanistic
FS, i.e., if one measures a state.
If so, this
would seem to fall outside/beyond the Rosennean paradigm of "complex".
Complex systems do not admit reduction. This is an oft repeated theme
of Rosen.
No, I do not propose
that it is outside the Rosen paradigm, or I wouldn't be on this list.
Perhaps you
are reaching toward that next
paradigm......
Perhaps somewhat,
in taking the literal extension of Rosen's ideas to their logical implication.
But I strongly feel that I would be doing Rosen a disservice to not credit him
with this insight as well as the foundation for it. It is well known that even
Einstein did not see the full extension of his theory, and did not accept the
obvious conclusion when it was presented to him. But in this case, I find
ample evidence in Rosen's writings to indicate that he did see this
ontological view, but did not elaborate on it. Otherwise he would not have
made such grave comments about applications of his theories to creating
cybernetic life and the possible misuse by humanity, reminiscient of the
Manhatten project. You don't get that kind of gravity from just a new model of
the scientific process, unless it has ontological implications for the design
of systems. And you don't get that if you can't state what the ontology is all
about so that a cybernetic project can be accomplished.
=
Again, I am not understanding some terminology. What do you mean by "formal
entailments"?
=====
L
This surprises and worries
me. Is it not accepted that Rosen discussed entailment between natural and
formal systems?? I suppose if a strictly epistemological view were taken, that
might not be obvious. But in that case, one would be talking only about the
philosophy of science, not anything we would otherwise associate with nature.
Is that your perspective???
Cheers,
John
Kineman