Re: MR as ontological, Fechner

["John Kineman" <***>]

Below -

Tim Gwinn wrote:

Hi John,

 

A couple of things:

1) You seem to be equating the successful commutation of an MR with instances of 'mechanism', and failure to commute with complexity. This is not necessarily the case - the MR is more general than that. If the model involved in the MR is itself adequately complex, it may successfully commute with the specified complex object system.

It is far more typical that we deal only with simple (computable) models, and hence, they commute fully only in cases of mechanism, but the totality of simple models are only a subset of all possible models.

 

I am indeed under the impression that Rosen's definition of a mechanism is
a system that can be fully described by a model, i.e., commutes with a simple
description of it, therefore, a "largest system model." Fairly sure about
that, but the case you refer to may be the case where two natural systems
model each other. In that case they can both be complex. It seems like an
ambiguity in the theory, but I think it can be resolved by distinguishing
natural system from model, as Rosen does. How I think it works is that a
purely formal representation is simple, by virtue of being formal. The purely
structural/material part of a natural system is also simple. It is only their
combination that is complex. This criterion can then be applied hierarchically
and laterally between many systems.

3) I cannot follow the gist of several of your statements; but are you, in effect, arguing that all aspects of physical reality exhibits model-based (anticipatory) behavior? Or something more/different than that?

 

Yes in the ultimate, ontological sense, no as a practical matter (i.e., classical
states). There are mechanisms we can obviously observe. Also, the comments
about ecosystems shared with Judith suggest that living and simple systems
can mix. All these indicate systems that are at least partially not complex
and thus describable as mechanisms. However, when attempting to explain where
they come from there are two basic choices: a) reductionism - they devolve
onto states; or b) a modeling relation which commutes (with a formal model
or "largest system description"). In the later case, the model adds nothing
to the behavior, but this is a matter of scale - it becomes important at
extreme scales so I would retain that description of mechanisms (as Rosen
does) to get a general theory.

Regards,

Tim

 

 

John Kineman