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