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Re: models - branch fromf GM discussion

Dan,

Its a good question and certainly does require some further
clarification and perhaps some downright puzzlement.

I realize reading your question that there is a difference between how a
model operates and what it is intended to accomplish. Certainly the
organic components that make up sensory capabilities are evolved from
complex systems and have all sorts of functional entailments, etc. They
are complex systems in Rosen's sense. So, its not a matter of having an
embedded machine, like the Borg on Star Trek.

On the other hand, I think what I was referring to is the phenomenon
referred to by Rosen where a complex system can behave like a simple one
under certain conditions. For example a child can pretend to be a robot.
Adults sometimes take the game more seriously, but that's another
discussion.

The end result of sensory perception is to present to our awareness a
picture of a world of objects in space. It is doubtful (to me) that this
picture we all have just looking around the room or out the window is a
result of Newton convincing us of that view only a few hundred years
ago. Rather i think it was the other way around, where Newton simply had
an keen grasp of the obvious and turned it into a rule. "Objects in
space" is a mechanistic view of nature because it has mechanical
coordinates that are conceptually precise. So, what I'm referring to is
that our sensory apparatus, complex in design and origin, nevertheless
has been selected to confer the advantages of a simple model of nature,
a mechanical one, so we can manipulate and navigate our bodies around
objects. We have other perceptual abilities as well, including what some
call a sixth sense, and that too has been employed throughout human
history in other contexts such as art, religion, life strategy, etc. But
in the context of physical bodies and material existence, which we
obviously participate in, the selective advantage seems to have been for
a set of  simple mechanical views that give us a picture of our material
existence. Then, as culture becomes more sophisticated, i.e., the
context changes, we find the need to understand more deeply than this,
to consider subtle relationships and origins of things that help us
answer deeper questions and perhaps develop other refinements in life
strategy and survival/success.

That's how I was thinking about it, and then I was extending the idea to
the mental concepts (models) we have of people and societies - how in
specific contexts, such as military, certain simplifications seem
attractive and may be highly successful in limited contexts (i.e., one
where war is accepted as a valid way of dividing resources and its rules
are established)  whereas in a broader context (such as civilized
society) more complexity in the model would seem both desirable and
beneficial. (Perhaps a gross understatement of the current geo-politics).

Now I admit it might get a little muddy to talk about what the model
does as being simple vs how it is constructed as being complex. However,
I think this is perhaps always the case. If a modeling capability itself
has some natural realization, the realization of it must be a complex
system. So, even if we take the Borg example, the capability to develop
mechanical components for the Borg has to come from a socially driven
design and manufacturing system, which itself is complex. Computers come
from such systems. But the products can be made to perform like simple
mechanisms if the context favors it.  This would be analogous to eyes,
ears, etc. - complex in nature and origin but employed to present simple
models to the response system and/or psyche.

What do you think?

John K.

Dan Fiscus wrote:

John Kineman wrote:
snip

On your second point, I agree there must be some energy cost. Many of
our evolved models are mechanistic, of course, as can be seen in sensory
perception and by how hard it is to get over the habit, so there must be
a cost advantage to many mechanistic models.


snip

John,

I know many people talk about biological models or examples of
systems or organs or etc. that are mechanistic, but I am still not
clear on this, not sure I agree that it's really true. Maybe just good
old semantics, language problems, but how is a sensory perception
model mechanistic? It would seem to me that these examples and
maybe most others would not really be mechanistic in that I can't
imagine removing any of them from their context or transferring
them into new contexts without loss of function. And I don't see
them as clearly fractionable into components and often the function
of the model or sense is not easily localizable but is instead spread
over, distributed over, a variety of places in an organism. And I
don't see them as self-sufficient or closed or independent or modular
like I think of mechanisms and mechanistic models. Most of them
seem to me to have or imply causal loops, either at present time or
perhaps at some earlier time like their origin or at times along the
evolutionary way.

For example, an visual perception seems complex in this sense
(example of loops between organism and environment vision
evolved, multiple organs and interactions involved, function not
just in the eye or the brain, function entangled with others from
autonomic nervous system to physiology and muscular system, etc.
etc.) Whereas maybe only something like a lens is mechanistic in
the modular, removable, transferable, fractionable sense.

Do you have other examples or can you say more on how/why you
see sense perception or other evolved life functions/models as
mechanistic?

Dan 


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