Re: Comparing Rosennean Complexity

[Judith Rosen <***>]

I have some comments on John K.'s post, which I have inserted where
necessary (hopefully people aren't having too much trouble navigating
through discussions this way?)(Suggestions for improvements???):

> John Kineman wrote:
> what I concluded agrees fully with what you say here, and it is a
> subtle matter of definition. A dead cat is a simple dead cat. The reason >
is that the word "cat" refers to a whole organism with certain functions
> involved, like its origin, metabolism, and repair functions; and that
> organism has now been degenerated irretrievably where those            >
functions are lost.

In other words; the organization has collapsed. Therefore, all the
interactions, the relationships, the stability and cohesion that those
aspects provide via the organization are also gone. All that is left are the
material parts. Obviously, something about the dynamic interaction that
exists within the organization of a living organism is not
"part-location-driven". Parts and location are two very useful concepts.
What else is part of a living organism's organization? Where does the
element of TIME fit in? This is one area that Rosennean Complexity begs
further development and it's just waiting for one of you to pick it up and
run with it.

John Kineman wrote:
> However, the philosophical issue would then
> arise of whether there is any such thing as a dead cat, i.e., at that
point
> the "cat" no longer exists in the present; its a cat that used to be a
true
> cat. If we look at a car, we might think of it as a dead car because it is
> a machine, i.e., it does not contain those functions mentioned above in
> its own system, but it is still a car. Here, however, I have to look at
>what "cat" means ontologically. That is because when we said "alive
 > cat," the aliveness was an ontological matter and so that's where we
> look for aliveness, at the ontologies of origin, metabolism, and repair.

Ah, but IS is??? Ontology is a tricky word, particularly in biology. Origin
of life is not the same area as definition of life or "causal epistemology"
of life. I need you to define your terms and then I have questions, like;
How is "aliveness" an ontological matter? Why did "ontologies of origin" get
included with metabolism and repair in the "hunt for the aliveness" of the
organism? Will looking at "the ontologies of origin" of life (or of species
called "cat") (or of how cats reproduce) tell you whether you have a living
system and why or (why not). Is it "cat" you want to know about or is it
"life"?

My father's position was: How and why the cat came to be a cat is not
something it is possible to learn by studying the dead cat. Nor can you
learn about why living cats are ALIVE that way. That's because the questions
to ask are not about the "cat" at all, but rather about the "life". And he
also felt that if we want to understand what "life" is, the questions to ask
are not about how life arose in the distant past of our planet (can we ever
know that from studying a fossil record, from studying the elements and the
forces here now? etc.) but rather what is it about a living organism that
makes it "living"? It's equally fruitful to ask; "What ISN'T it about a
living organism that makes it living?" That main curiosity was my father's
main focus, main interest, and accounts for why he did what he did-- as well
as why he approached things the way he did. It was his approach, as much as
his abilities, that allowed him to develop the ideas that gave him his
answers.

Therefore, I hope it's clear that the following group of ideas are also not
part of the same set of ideas:

>  The ontological context for a car, is its manufacture, use of energy and
> materials, and maintenance. This gets confusing merely because those
things
> are a distributed system, not self-contained as in an organism; but that
> doesn't matter to the definition.

You are getting lost in aspects of the car that are not related to the
matter at hand-- the organization of the system. This is where Don M. went
wrong too. The ontology of the "car" system is not relavent to the
assessment of it's organization. Furthermore, studying the ontology of a car
will lead you directly to human consciousness and volition, which would make
the car a chimerical addition to "the human" system. As such, human
complexity swallows all. Similarly, to say that a car is complex by virtue
of being made up of atoms, which are complex is also not correct. This is,
in effect, a reductionist mind-set: Breaking up the car into parts, and
breaking up the parts into components... studying the components and
assuming that the organization of the "car" system is entirely determined by
what its smallest components' properties are when fractionated away from the
system.

 > John Kineman wrote:
> The critical functions defining
> complexity and aliveness involve a human-based ontology -- idea, design,
> manufacture, sales, metabolism and repair. It is alive as a broader system
> because of its human components.

In this case, the car is not alive. You have added the organization that is
"car" system to another system. Car is now a component of a living human
system; a chimera (as my father called it). Just as a hermit crab picks up
an empty shell and uses it as a means of shelter and protection... it is
still the same organism, but has added something to itself to improve its
chances for survival, etc. Those additions are not the organism, they are
not a part of the genotype, they do not form in the embryo of the next
generation, etc. Therefore, studying the additions (shell) in the new
chimerical "Crab and shell" system will never teach us useful things about
the genotype or about the crab's evolution or about why crabs are alive...
Do you see? Furthermore, studying the different manifestations of evolution
doesn't teach us why living things are alive or how life arose. My father
felt that there's not much point in studying any of the manifestations of
evolutionary processes IF what you want to know is "Why are living things
alive?" Similarly, there's not much point in pondering on how life arose
without even knowing what life IS. However, if you can figure out the answer
to the foundational question "Why are living things alive?", you may finally
be on the correct path to figure out answers to these other questions.

Thus, the following is not about the organization of the system, "car", at
all. The aspect of the human/car chimerical system that is alive is all
about the human system. The car is never "alive" nor is it ever "dead". It's
a simple system based solely on the assessment of its own organization and
when it is cast off by a human, it stops being a component of a chimerical
living organism and merely continues to be a simple system. The shell of a
hermit crab is still a shell regardless of what a crab uses it for, but the
crab's creating a context out of function in which the shell can be said to
have "become" a house, a set of body armor, and a form of camoflage, etc.
Those things are imputed by the crab, not by the shell.

> John Kineman wrote:
> That living system dies when the
> manufactur stops and there is no longer a metabolism (use of materials &
> energy) or repair function. So the Edsel is a dead car. In truth there are
> no longer any living Edsels (maybe some being kept alive as collector's
> items). While it is alive in this sense, it is a complex system by virtue
> of its human components. If we look only at the car itself, without those
> production, metabolism and repair components, we are essentially looking
at
> a limited model of the living system and thus seeing a simple one, so in
> that sense one could say that simple system of a currently maintained car
> is actually identified by a model, not the true system that produced and
> maintains it. But since it is also a distributed system, one can say that
> this non-living simple component of the system does indeed "exist."


The above is therefore all based on false assumptions that Don M. made and
the following is incorrect:

>
> So, as in most philosophy, there is a way to justify both points of view.
> It is a shame it came to blows, but I can imagine that Don was not
> particularly flexible in his philosophy about this. He seemed to take it
in
> another direction, claiming that the car was complex without all those
> human components because we could relate to it in many different ways (the
> epistemological test).

Again, this speaks to the complexity of the human organism as a system, not
the assessment of the car's organization as a system.The aspect of "number
of different ways of relating" that you bring up here is supposed to be
asked about the car: How many ways can a car, based on its organization
alone and the properties that its organization confers upon it, relate to
other things? Cars have no functional needs, because they are not alive.
Therefore, the number of ways a car can relate to other things is zero.

 > John Kineman wrote: There was a big and useless (in my opinion)
> discussion about a rock in the same vein.  I disagreed with that
> interpretation because our ability to relate to it in many different ways
> is a function of our complexity,

Exactly right, but you didn't see that the car is the very same situation in
this particular perspective.


> John Kineman wrote:  whereas in the case of the
> manufacture and repair functions, the very existence of the car depends on
> that. The dead car or rock will exist as a material object whether we
> relate to it or not.

Again, "dead" is not the correct term because our definition of dead in this
usage is one that connotes "once living".

> John Kineman wrote:
> So, I called that subjective complexity, where the
> observer provides the variability of views and they do not affect any of
> the ontologies of the object, as opposed to objective complexity where the
> complex elements are embedded in the system as defined and being studied.

Again, the ontologies of the object....( where "object" refers to
system?)..... are not relevant to whether the system is complex or simple.
Only the system's organization is relevant to that assessment. Furthermore,
the complex systems "embedded" in any system do not confer complexity upon
the system unless the organization of the two is of a chimerical nature. If
the complex system is acting as a component in the organization of the
larger system, then it is only the role that it has as a component that
impinges on whether the larger system's organization is complex or not. In
other words, the complexity of the component when fractionated away from the
larger system is invisible as far as the organization of the larger system,
intact, is concerned. By the same token, the simplicity of a compnent in a
complex system does not make a complex system's organization "simple".

> John Kineman wrote:  I
> think this works much better. So perhaps I could have saved Don's view
> somewhat, but I think he defended it on the wrong basis. He had the last
> laugh, however, forcing a peer reviewed paper of mine not to be published
> because of this very disagreement.

Hey, let's rewrite that paper and resubmit, OK? You were right before he
messed with your head.

Judith

> > At 10:54 PM 3/23/04 -0500, Judith Rosen wrote:
> >The quarrel between myself and Don M. was over his contention that "Rosen
> >said" there is no such thing as a simple system in the material world;
that
> >all simple systems are formal systems (i.e. models). I told him
> >[paraphrasing here]; that was incorrect and did not accurately reflect my
> >father's theoretical beliefs. That's when it got ugly.
> >
> >But the truth is what it is. The thing people seem to get confused on is;
if
> >complexity is a fundamental tendency in the universe, how can any
material
> >system be simple (non-complex)? My father's answer was that both types of
> >organization co-exist in this universe (it's even possible that there are
> >others) and it is the organization that determines whether the system is
> >complex or non-complex. Don M's argument was that if atoms are complex
and a
> >car engine is made of atoms and made by humans and so on... how can that
be
> >a "simple system". But that's a reductionist approach. The parts are not
> >what determines complexity; ORGANIZATION is what determines complexity. A
> >car engine is a system with non-complex organization. A simple system in
the
> >material world.
> >
> >It's easy to transform a complex system into a simple system: collapse
the
> >complex organization. Kill the organism. We have the technology to build
a
> >dead organism out of other dead parts. That's not so hard,
> >really.Complicated but not complex. The parts can all be modelled too,
and
> >computed. It's the organization of the living organism that's beyond the
> >reductionist approach to model completely because the organization
involves
> >interrelationships that are constantly in motion, constantly in a state
of
> >"flux" or change. Any "snapshot" you try to take of the organism's
complex
> >organization is already out of date, in a sense. Out of time. Therefore,
> >incomplete.
> >
> >Judith
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "John Kineman" <***>
> >To: <***>
> >Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 8:28 PM
> >Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Comparing Rosennean Complexity
> >
> >
> > > Yes, this seems likely, that the problem was in believing that in fact
> > > there is such a threshold. If one presumes that it is possible to (a)
have
> > > a simple system, and (b) transition from a simple system to a complex
one,
> > > then the question of a threshold where this can be said to have
occurred
> > > comes up. However, if (a) there are no truly simple natural systems,
just
> > > conceptual models that are simple and that can make a complex system
act
> > > simple, then (b) one does not in fact transition from simple to
complex,
> > > one degenerates a complex system to a simple one, perhaps in degrees.
At
> > > what threshold would we then say it is no longer complex?? I believe
there
> > > are passages in RR's writings (Tim can probably recall them) where he
says
> > > even though a complex system may behave like a simple one, it always
> > > retains the possibility of changing that behavior, and hence remains
> > > complex. Part of complexity is not being able to predict behavior, so
how
> > > long a simple system will stay simple is part of that
unpredictability,
> > > hence complexity. I think some of this concept was articulated by Don
M.
> > > rather well, and regardless of other matters in his interpretations I
> >think
> > > this is one thing he got right. But Judith can perhaps comment further
on
> >that.
> > >
> > > So, Howard, please don't get the idea that I'm on a campaign here
against
> > > the Von Neumann view, but I think there is a legitimate question as to
> > > whether the assumptions involved in that view are the right ones for
> > > understanding life.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > JJK
> > >