Re: causing trouble

[John Kineman <***>]

Howard,

The ontology in your example would recognize you, the scientist,
abstracting numbers. That whole relationship defines the ontology. A
similar ontology (in kind, not content) can be said to exist for any
natural system. An organism thus is seen most basically as a
relationship between functions and the material realization of those
functions. Likewise your planets are material realizations of your
abstraction of them, but the relationship is less interesting because it
commutes. So, there is a big difference in these two systems, the first
exhibits surprising complex behaviors, the second commutes fairly well.
The point is to find a common ontology that can deal well with the
complex example, since it cannot be adequately handled by a simpler
ontology that one might presume looking only at physical examples (i.e.,
the traditional view). The operative question becomes why is one a
simple relationship and the other a complex one? A possible clue, in
this view, might be that in the physical example the numbers you
abstract about the system don't feedback any causal relationships. If
they did, then the system would be complex. In other words if you always
ensured that the number of planets fit some model of yours, and
destroyed or created planets to make that true, and if the model changed
depending on the number of planets, then the planet-scientist system
would be behaving in a complex and unpredictable manner, like organisms do.

JJK


Howard Pattee wrote:

> John,
>
> Could you explain again what you mean by “the modeling relationship taken ontologically”?
> Can all cases of a modeling relation be taken ontologically? An example would help. Take 
> a very simple case of measurement, say counting. On the natural (left) side I have the 
> planets. On the right side I have the integers. By some protocol I find a one-to-one 
> matching and I end up with a symbol (an integer) that corresponds to these objects in 
> nature.
>
> I can then say that I know (epistemologically) the number of planets in the solar system.
>
> How do you want me to view this ontologically?
>
> Howard

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© 2004 John J. Kineman
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