Re: models, sensory perception

[John Kineman <***>]

Hi John M. I agree with the answers but they raise additional questions.
Below.

JM: I would reply to the 1st part Q: From our reductionist views,
including into our models only that much, (in most cases: what we know,
sometimes: what we select into the model) while disregarding
(discarding, excluding) the "rest of the world" from our consideration.
So our model (system) is 'simple'.
JK: That works, but only if the term "our" is expanded to allow
everything to be an observer doing this. In other words, modeling itself
is natural and general. That is what I was comparing with the idea in
physics called decoherence, which is presently their best guess as to
what is going on too.

JM: To the 2nd part of the Q: in viewving 'living systems' - ourselves -
we coulnot cut off aspects of not yet discovered
explanations/understanding. They are "us". Beyond the 'awe' of the - for
us - unexplainable "complexity" that could not go unobserved, there were
(are) attempts for such an abstraction/simplification in modern science:...
JK: Yes, I quite agree, and again for this answer to work generally the
definition of "us" has to be broadened to include everything as an
observer. It then means there is a natural process, which we know as
modeling, included in nature that provides it with a continuous
knowledge not only of its present simplifications (abstractions) but of
the whole of possibilities. This is a holonomic concept, without which
any change in models would be impossible (because they would know "know"
about other states). It implies a system concept whereby natural systems
retain both particulate and whole knowledge simultaneously, as we
imagine that we do beging "intelligent" beings capable of "thought."
Thought may be little more than an elaborate use of such a natural
ability (modeling) whereby a sense of the whole is retained in any
particular realization. This would explain what it means to say that
states are abstractions that in reality retain more complex aspects. The
retention of other possibilities would be like retaining a "thought" of
other states. I am particularly fascinated with this view because it
puts "knowing" into nature, rather than separating natural knowledge out
to a mathematically Platonic realm where "natural laws" exist in some
pure independent form. The idea is quite opposed, then, to the entire
paradigm of "mechanistic" science in that precise way.