Re: Function and functional organization

["John Kineman" <***>]

Tim et al;

I did not succeed in escaping the discussion, but will need to do so soon
or lose my job.

A prefacing remark: Let's agree to own our opinions personally, as this will
defuse any bad feelings resulting from either of us pretending to have the
absolute truth on these subjects. I greatly appreciate your comments and
they have added already to my understanding. Yet each of us will feel assured
of our prior views until seeing a different one - it is the nature of thinking.
Neither of us should feel that we need to have "been right all along." That
may in fact be more a sign of failure than success because it means we didn't
discover anything. There are aspects of my interpretation of Rosen that I
am fairly confident about, and the exercise I am engaged in is to construct
and test a certain interpretation. But in doing so, I am looking for precisely
the kind of introspective criticism you provide. It can have two effects.
It can help sharpen the interpretation and resolve ambiguities and poor or
different use of language;  and it can result in abandoning the interpretation
altogether on discovery of some critical failure. Obviously I am interested
in finding that if it exists. However, nothing in this discussion has yet
indicated the latter (to me), so I feel encouraged; yet I am very concerned
about remaining consistent with other views and working with the very difficult
problem of semantic use of various terms. As we know, this is the root of
most misunderstandings, not necessarily one's general view. I hope you respect
this, as I respect your view. 

Having said that, please take my comments in the same way - they are not
meant to challenge your interpretation of Rosen, but to quibble on the details
of it and perhaps help both of us understand the language better and sharpen
our perspectives. There do seem to be some major points of departure in the
views, which we should continue to discuss in case either view might change
or be sufficiently corrected to remove the conflict, but failing that we
should then identify alternative interpretations as existing, not so much
as "mine" and "yours." We are each only spokespersons for ideas that many
others share, and we are trying to raise the definitive questions and make
the definitive points on behalf of many.

• 
  

'Function' and 'functional organization' are no less physical than their structural counterparts. 

Yes, in the proposed new paradigm. The old one would say it is non-physical. 
I think this is primarily a matter of definition of "physical," which Rosen
argued to expand beyond Newtonian physical concepts.

They are not "non-material", nor are functions "formal models" or "internal models" or otherwise "comprise the formal system" or modeling relationships.  Below are some quotes and comments in this regard.

 

I don't think there is a logical basis for these assertions in Rosen's construction.
In fact I'm quite convinced he said the opposite, given some semantic necessities
in the use of terms (which appear even when Rosen changes contexts). I'll
try to demonstrate in the quotes below:

From Life Itself p. 116:

"...we are comparing two different situations: an unoriginal unperturbed one, and a second one, arising as a perturbation [the perturbation being the the removal of some portion of the system] of the first. The discrepancy between the two systems defines the concept of component; the discrepancy between the behaviors defines the function of the component. ...

This relates behavioral "discrepancy" with "function." The function of the
stomach is thus determined by what is different in behavior of the system
without the stomach. What is not stated, because it is presumed to be discussing
organisms, is that this definition is fully dependent on the context (in
this case the organism). If we were analyzing an ecosystem, the function
of the stomach in that context is defined by what ecosystem behaviors are
different without the stomach of organisms. Many predators eat the stomach
contents of their prey first, so it has significant functions trophically.
In a living organism, the stomach processes its contents and contributes
the results as nutrients. You get the idea. 

Even within an organism a "component" may have multiple functions. The function
of the throat, defined as the difference Rosen states, might be considered
in the context of swallowing or vocalizing. So these are different functions
even within an organism. The set if very large and possibly unbounded.

Now consider what we are actually labeling as "function" - vocalizing, swallowing,
decomposing, etc. These are linguistically refering to an abstract process,
not a "thing." Vocalizing, as a function, has no specified material component,
although we can say some material component is require for it to emerge.
Like my spoon analogy earlier, there may be many functions of a material
structure, and many material structures that can realize a function. The
function exists outside the material domain, but is in a complementarity
relationship with it.

These arguments should be sufficient to show the logical consistency of both
what I'm saying and its agreement with Rosen's definition. I am NOT saying
functions occur in nature independently of material structures - that is
the Platonic view. My interpretation is that it is a complementarity, roughly
equivalent to a modeling relation (with the caveat that the specific construction
of the MR may require some semantic translations as we've discussed earlier).

The characteristic relationships between such constituent components, and between the components and the system as a whole, comprise a new and different approach to science itself, which we may call the relational theory of systems."

 

Amen.

From LI p. 120:

"The component may be thought of as a particle of function; it plays the same role in relational modeling that particles play in reductionistic or Newtonian modeling. Just as in the case of particles, components for us will be the basic analytical units into which natural systems are resolved. ...

This establishes a new theoretical basis for symbolizing reality. He opens
the door beyond purely mechanical "particles" (the Newtonian view) and says
we can construct a theory that deals also with functional units, which are
particles plus functions (somewhat analogously to wave-particle combination)
So the basic analytical units (components) referred to here are function-thing
contingencies, which is a relational unit.

"...the notion of component is tied to that of function, and this is in turn dependant upon the larger system of which the component is a part.

That's a reference to the context I mentioned above... so far we are in full
agreement.

If we isolate the component, and consider it as a thing in itself,

i.e., look only at its material, Newtonian part - a traditional "thing" or
material object

it loses its function.

Function is therefore more than the Newtonian, material thing, and thus it
msut be non-material.

In other words, a functional description is contingent and not absolute;

another precise way to say "complementarity." Also by referring to "functional
description" we can now ask what descriptions look like, and they look like
modeing relations. So the contingency implies,  more precisely, encoding
and decoding relations.

to describe a functional unit necessarily involves aspects outside the unit itself.

i.e., to draw a diagram of its relationship, which we could think of in terms
of an MR. That kind of complementarity relationship, which we figured out
in the earlier conversation involves three domains; formal, realized/observable,
and abstract. This third domain is not part of the "unit" itself, as we agreed
earlier. So  here we get the proper terminology for the entailments, they
are apparently "contingencies." These are the encodings and decodings in
an abstract domain which is even less material than functions but relates
them to structures. Roughly, these domains might now be described as 1. observable
things (the Newtonian view), 2. functions (what the things do), and 3. abstractions
(encodings or contingencies between the first two).

This implies that everything is describable in terms of three systems - which
reminds me of an email from Dan Fiscus --- Dan??

"This is already an important departure from familiar ideas, which I may restate as follows: a particle, or any unit of structural analysis, does not (indeed, cannot) acquire new properties by being associated with a larger family of such units;

A clear statement that the "new properties" are not in and cannot come from
the material domain.

on the contrary, the larger family is itself endowed with precisely those attributes that are contributed individually by its members. Thus, a thoroughgoing reductionistic, structural approach to the natural world must deny reality to such concepts as novelty or emergence at any fundamental level. ...

couldn't be stated more clearly that "novelty" "emergence" implicates the
non-material domains of functions and their contingencies with what can be
identified as material structures (the caveat to emphasize that material
structures can thus no longer be taken to be whole natural systems)..

"The situation is quite different with a functional unit or component. As we have seen, such a unit can by its very nature have no completely inherent, invariant description that entails its function;

meaning it cannot have a precise description that commutes with it, as can
material things. This invokes our earlier conversation about the criteria
of commutation wrt the definition of mechanical. Commutation can be used
as the criteria here because he is in this instance referring to an inherent
"description," not a separate system. This is the case we discussed where
a formal system is taken to be a formal description, and thus cannot itself
be complex.

on the contrary, its description changes as the system to which it belongs changes.It can thus acquire new properties from the larger systems with which it is associated.

the context, as in my examples.

So, for example, the function "metabolism" is a perfectly legitimate functional description of something that occurs physically in an organism.

clearly identifying it as a description.

However, one cannot go into an organism with a scalpel and excise just the function 'metabolism' by cutting out some specific organ or other structural piece(s).

this clarifies the difference between the material structure (which can be
excised) and the various possible context-dependent functions; which are
logically and by the criteria of excisability, non-material.

Metabolism, as a function, is entirely physical, but, in structural terms, 'metabolism' permeates, and is enmeshed with, structures across the organism to various degrees.

This is probably what you are referring to. Yes it is "physical" in the sense
of improving physical science's concept over the Newtonian one, but it is
thus not material. In fact, speaking of functions in this way does not violate
Newtonian mechanics, but considering the effect of the larger contextual
system on the dynamics of a sub-system system does step outside Newtonian
mechanics, as in the n-body problem. That feedback (which can thus be used
to inform feed-forward  models, where they exist) is an extension of the
usual concept of physicality, but nevertheless, and this seems to be Rosen's
point here, no less tied to physics.

In common speecy I sometimes use the word physical to mean physical structure,
and as I read Rosen that is something he tries very hard to avoid doing,
wanting all these very intangible elements of the theory to be consisered
a potential improvement of physics itself. I agree, but the attempt can easily
backfire, as physics refuse to change their mode of thinking and then attempt
to reduce the idea back to the traditional physical view. But this is a subtlety
of the semantic use of the word "physical." I had a big discussion about
this on the VCU list, promising to provide definitions for "physical" - which
is not a precise task. My approach was to cite college physics textbooks,
which universally gave descriptions that were Newtonian in concept. But again,
the physicists what to lay claim on all of reality, so no matter what successful
theory of nature is invented, physics will then change to include it and
thereby call it physical. Its mostly a social problem and does not affect
this discussion.

Indeed, as the quote above indicates, a functional unit cannot equate with a structural unit:

Isn't that what I've been saying?

 a functional unit will necessarily have a contingent property (namely, its "function")

I think this is mixing up the language. A "functional unit" is a unit of
function, not a material thing as might be inferred if you state it as above.
The contingency is between an otherwise material thing and its function.
Look back at where the word "contingent" was used in the quote. It clearly
refers to "description" as contingent to the realized system component.

while a structural unit cannot have any such contingent properties.

Ahh! Here's the point we are getting hung up on, I think. The quotes state
that a structural unit that is defined only materially, i.e., in the Newtonian
view, cannot have functions. But it is not Rosen's proposal to define it
that way. In his view, material structures are always in relationship with
functions that are contextually defined and multiple; and hence the true
and valid unit of analysis is not the material component alone, as done in
Newtonian mechanics, but the material- functional system as a relational
whole, which he has also described as a modeling relation, and as identified
above, precisely a complementarity (contingent but not absolute relationship).

All the best

John Kineman