Re: [ROSEN Ways of defining Rosennean Complexity

[John Kineman <***>]

Some quick reactions to Howard's critique: I'm breaking it into several
posts:

JK: I hope my caveats in previous posts stated adequately that I did not
find fault with von Neumann, and in fact wish to learn more of what he
said. No-fault science, however, still involves comparing theories and
determining what is more or less valuable for various purposes and why.
That is what I suggest we do with VN and RR and others. It is certainly
what I hope is done with my own ideas.

HP: In practice both Bob and his disciples sound defensive and
intolerant of all models that do not conform not only to his own ideas
but also to his special vocabulary in which they are expressed. This is
at least ironic, if not hypocritical. What happened to “multiple models”?
JK: I concur about multiple models, but also realize that at some point
one must stop trying to convince skeptics who see the world differently.
The main effort has to be put into one's own work and often that
involves a specialized vocabulary. Still, the way forward is to compare
theories fairly and try to connect them, not to divide them. To do that
one has to actually learn the other theory, and its specialized
vocabulary. Physics has a specialized vocabulary too.

HP: None of you appear to be sensitive to the fact that this is not an
effective way to promote his ideas among skeptics. His ideas are
difficult enough to grasp even among his sympathizers.
JK: I agree that the language of this should be as moderate as we can
make it. Only cheap pseudo-science splahes big headlines about "The
Grand New Synthesis of Why Everything You Currently Believe Is Wrong."
(although physics and cosmology sometmes splash similar headlines in
books and NOVA series -- "A Brief History of Time", and other highly
arrogant titles. Why aren't these programs titled like "A Humble Notion
of How a Retrospective Calculation Can Give Us One Speculation about
Cosmic History (Which Will Likely Be Changed Pretty Soon)." I suppose it
was too long.). The penultimate language we get into regarding Rosen has
to do with its paradigmatical nature. I would take the approach of
relating to these foundations to whatever extent possible, for the
purpose of communicating a new paradigm to those who are trained to
communicate in the old. But we must build from our own foundation.
Regarding the implication of "new" and "old", no matter what we do, RR's
view does contain a suggestion that we look at reality differently -
that can't be ignored.

HP: So how do Rosen disciples respond? ...Bob used even stronger words
like “invalid” and “equivocation.”
JK: These are not strong words! Both are highly technical terms in
philosophy. The "equivocation error" is defined as making the mistake of
shifting definitions in mid argument. Invalid means a fault in logic
from premise to conclusion. I'd have to see the context to know if he
used the terms properly, but these are the standard ways a philosophy
student is taught to critique something. But, without losing his point,
he was being highly polite by being technical. Also, probably most of us
are trusting Bob's evaluation just for efficiency, because we trust his
work. My own evaluation, painstakingly undertaken over 25 years, is
similar, so I believe him especially when he is more precise about it. I
basically derived the paradigm from a paper I did on Strong GAIA in
1991, arguing against the deterministic views of John Kirchner and
others convened at a Chapman Conference on the GAIA hypothesis. The
dimensions they wanted to destroy all conversation about were precisely
the ones I was interested in and that Jim was groping for but unwilling
to go that far. David Abram, a scientist, magician, and accomplished
shaman gave the eloquent defense during the conference and I helped him
wade through the intensive criticism after so that his paper could get
published in Schneider and Boston's conference book. There's no
pretending that these politics are nice. The critics were ugly to the
max and it was only by hard argument that our two papers made it in. But
indeed we should make the discussion as professional and nice as
possible. I am sure of one thing - Rosen has been much more polite than
his critics, and so are the people on this list.

HP: You seem to have inherited Bob’s own intemperate wording like
calling physics “impoverished” and biology a “disaster.”
JK: I took "impoverished" as a technical term, meaning missing something
or as he claimed a subset of a larger reality. Remember that physics
toutes "theories of everything" and has hardly been humble about its
grasp on reality. Regarding biology, I can speak about ecology:
Simberlof wrote an article in the 60's: Simberloff, D. 1981. "The Sick
Science of Ecology." Eidema 1(1). Ecology tried so hard to be like
physics that indeed it made itself sick. See Platt, J.R. 1964. "Strong
Inference". Science 146(3642):347-353. Ecology requires some assumptions
about nature that physics and positivism didn't provide and that the
hard-nosed traditionalists Wouldn't allow. Being untrained in physics,
most ecologists merely assumed they were not rigorous enough, so they
became more physically rigorous and as a result lost more of the
ecology. Simberloff's paper was an exasperation with the whole effort
and he basically said they should give up on theory and just do field
and lab studies. That's where physics got ecology in the 80's. But the
rhetoric from the other side about anyone who attempted to break out of
this mold was far worse then mild terms like "improverishment." There
were terms like crazy, flake, pseudo-scientist, lunatic, vitalist,
pantheist, solipsist, unscientific, anthropomorphic, off the deep end,
non-scientist, anti-scientific, fanciful, hot air, stupid, idiot, etc.
(with the predictable four letter modifiers). Let's not pretend its been
a nice even playing field.

HP: ...Also, your constant dismissal of useful models simply because
they are “reductionistic” without regard to the specific questions they
usefully address turns everyone off.
JK: Yes, I have argued several times on this list, and others have
agreed, that every thought involves a form of reduction. The point is
not, should not be, reduction itself, but what one is reducing to. We
need to be able to develop theories based on reduction to whole systems,
not parts. Is that confusing? Yes, that's why we're talking.

HP: ...Why don’t you focus on constructing what you think are
Rosen-acceptable models?
JK: I agree. On my part I have done some, in ecosystem mapping,
evolution, and cosmology.. Who's interested? These things have to be
discussed in the appropriate communities, as I'm doing (at least with
the ecosystem models -the other stuff is waiting for the right context).

Respectfully,
J Kineman