Of course, I did not mean JJK and JM as "us", it is the process we are part
of, from the old monkey on, as our science developed in its revered
reductionist ways. I would not include "everything" as observer, because the
(living!) universe 'observes' a lot beyond our mindfill and so we plunge
into the vagueness of a "wholeness" -thinking - which is no thinking
indeed.
I think we should refine (and change!) the term "observer".
I tried in another domain (consciousness of all terms) as:
"respondent to information" (in terms of a pan-sensitivity - not the ominous
panpsych...)- including also materials, thoughts, -
which of course called for an adequate definition of information - not
Shannons, not entropy-info, not the bit, but a reasonable one.
I tried: an acknowledged difference, where of course I had to distinguish it
from 'knowledge' (what is it?). And so on.
Anyway, the observer is not the sneak peeping Tom.
Cheers
JohnM
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Kineman" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:42 AM
Subject: Re: models, sensory perception
> 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.