Re: inequivalent complmentary models

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum []On Behalf Of Howard
> Pattee
> Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 4:11 PM
> Subject: Re: inequivalent complmentary models
>
>
> Tim,
>
> I am sure our views here depend on what our concepts of the
> keywords are. Words like objective, natural laws,
> state-determined, reduction, etc. even with our best definitions
> still retain connotations that depend on our individual experiences.
>
> Tim wrote:
> A world in which the laws would rest on "the ideal of
> objectivity" such that
> these laws "do not change when the observers change, nor can they
> be changed
> by the observer" is a world in which there must be the physical ability to
> completely and universally fractionate the subjective from the objective.
>
> HP: That is the ideal because it is really a definition of what I
> think most physicists and even normal people mean by objective.
> If you mean something else by objective you will have to tell me
> what you mean. Of course we agree that the ideal is not
> attainable. That is now an empirical fact. But now we are talking
> only about physical laws. Laws are only a very restricted type of
> model aimed at universality and inexorability. We think of laws
> as if they operated before there was life (and observers) and as
> if they will continue to operate after life has been atomized,
> sooner or later, one way or another.
>
> The cost of aiming at universality and inexorability is that
> physical laws can be only models of those aspects of the universe
> over which living systems have no influence or control.
> Obviously, living systems do exercise control over many other
> aspects of the world. Maybe too much. Much of the energy and
> chemistry of the biosphere is under the control of enzymes,
> organisms, and their artifacts. The fact that organisms must also
> obey natural laws does not mean that from the laws we can derive
> a complete or reductionistic model of organisms or what organisms
> control. That is why multiple, inequivalent, complementary models
> are necessary. There are no largest physical models. Reality is
> Rosen-complex, and as he says, we need more than one model. There
> is no single comprehensive model of even the electron.
>
> Physicists have emphasized these limits for at least a century.
> For examples, a Beethoven symphony can be described by chronicles
> of air pressures, but that does not adequately model a Beethoven
> symphony (Einstein?s example), quantum theory does not adequately
> model tea parties (Bohr?s example), and about thought Eddington
> said, ?There is nothing to prevent the assemblage of atoms
> constituting a brain from being of itself a thinking object in
> virtue of that nature which physics leaves undetermined and
> undeterminable.?
>
> TIM: Such a world is the reductionistic world, which is also a
> mechanistic world.
>
> HP: I think that physics is telling us quite the opposite.
> Because of experiments interpreted under these epistemic
> principles physics has discovered that the objective world is
> different from anything that our evolved senses and brains could
> have ever imagined. Reductionistic, deterministic, and
> mechanistic models faded out early in the last century and no
> longer trouble the minds of physicists.
>
> Tim: If it is not actually possible to completely and universally
> fractionate the subjective from the objective,
>
> HP: which we have determined empirically is not possible,
> especially for very small sizes and very high energies,
>
> Tim: then the laws or epistemic principles for such a world must
> forego the aforementioned ideal of objectivity if we expect these
> laws to be comprehensive of physical phenomena in such a world.
>
> HP: For the questions we ask of these models they are incredibly
> accurate, although admittedly not comprehensive. Why would we
> give up such a successful ideal because it doesn?t answer all
> possible questions? Rather we settle for universality at the cost
> of giving up comprehensiveness.


TG:There is no requirement to give them up. They become subsumed in the
broader set of laws.


> Tim: This would results in the creation of a broader set of
> fundamental laws to physics (where current laws become a subset
> of these). This is a primary
> theme and conclusion of Essays ch. 5 "Drawing the Boundary Between Subject
> and Object".
>
> HP: You can?t have it both ways. Complementary models cannot be
> subsets of each other. That is why Rosen used the term
> inequivalent to describe the multiple models necessary to
> describe complex systems.


TG:The set of laws of physics is not at all the same as the set of
inequivalent models of a particular system. Broadening the set of laws is is
a relaxation of some restrictions or preferences, such as
context-independence and predicativity. The set of context-independent and
predicative laws are then a subset of the broader set. [EL p.94]



> If in principle, or by definition,
> physical laws are about only those events in the universe over
> which individual organisms have no control, and if exerting
> controls over metabolism and replication is the way that
> organisms survive and evolve, then it would follow that there can
> be no unified logically consistent ?comprehensive? model of
> universal laws and the local behaviors of organisms.
>
> Rosen agrees that physical laws are inadequate to explain life,
> and we agree for essentially the same reasons. What puzzles me is
> why in LI (not in AS) Rosen charges that theoretical physics has
> ?beguiled itself? and ?shirked its task? when I know of no
> evidence that shows any basic disagreement.


TG:I would say he meant that a preoccupation with seeking physical laws as
being only those that apply universally and inexorably is to avoid a great
deal of physics. And that how successful and useful these limited laws have
been ought not let physics be lured into thinking that only laws of that
type are possible or useful. If the inadequacy of these laws is widely
acknowledged, then it should propel physics (and other sciences) to expand
not merely by adding more of these same type of laws, but by also relaxing
the restrictions as indicated above.

Tim