Re: inequivalent complmentary models

[John Kineman <***>]

Some thoughts stimulated by Howard's replies to Tim, below:

> 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.
JK: I agree fully with this, including the query about RR's meaning in 
suggesting that his modeling relation can be thought of as fully 
objective. My guess is that he was stretching a point here and really 
meant that it should be fully scientific to include the modeling loops 
that make phenomena system-dependent (i.e., subjective).

> HP: 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.
JK: This is the part I think may be unnecessary. It is clearly the 
implication of having started with a physical model of everything, and 
clearly suggested when we trace the history of living organisms on Earth 
to primordial goo, or the like, but what isn't clear is if laws 
pre-exist in some ideal form -- that is what I call the basic Platonic 
assumption of modern science (others use the term Platonic a bit 
differently). the highly intriguing alternative, to me, is that modeling 
may be universal (as responsible for complexity) and hence may be the 
basis for both subjective and objective phenomena, and hence the basis 
for the origin of laws.

> HP: 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. 
JK: And we would have to add to this condition those aspects of the 
universe over which R-complex systems have no influence or control, 
which then means everything. BUT, and this is a big exception, once 
there is a commonly shared reality the classical picture emerges with a 
great deal of consistency and repeatability within whatever common frame 
of reference a system shares. It is not very subjective with respect to 
individuals, but only with respect to the whole system that remains in 
communication regarding its basic coordinates of measure. So, if we 
consider the "universe" as a system, there is indeed a shared coordinate 
system that can be identified. Within those coordinates (space-time 
geometry) we get objective phenomena. Outside them, we do not. Now 
imagine if it were possible to "isolate" a system from the universe. It 
could then have any coordinates at all. It would not have the same 
shared existence as the "classical world." This is a way, reasoning from 
relational complexity (my term for R-complexity) to get both objective 
and subjective phenomena - each is objective within the system and 
subjective outside it. We can see this would apply also to traditional 
subjective psychological phenomena. The Psychologist views a patient's 
thoughts as "subjective" i.e., system dependent (the person being the 
system). But to that person the thoughts are real and repeatable. They 
represent definite events in a definite experiential history.

> HP: 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. 
JK: I am reaching the opinion that what we call life is the combination 
of R-complexity (for me the "R" means Rosen or Relational -- Judith will 
hold out some difference here, but I'm generalizing) and organismic 
processes. The first is a subjective principle, the second is objective. 

The first is pre-realization, the second is post-realization. I think 
the (M,R) system thus combined with the Modeling Relation (another MR) 
is what results in the proliferation of life forms and their essential 
complex qualities. The (M,R) system is itself a realization of 
relational complexity in that by having simultaneous loop 
"impredicativities" represented in temporal processes, it creates an 
objective realization in one system of shared observations while then 
projecting its inherent relational complexity through time, which 
appears as evolution. This requires a specialized structure - the 
organism - that can achieve a degree of autonomy (independence) from the 
shared measuring system of classically realized phenomena.

> HP: 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.
JK: All this is then understandable in terms of context. Within a shared 
context, there is objectivity - a single dominant model. But there can 
be many contexts. With regard to the physical universe, we are defining 
that in the context of celestial observations. We do not, for example, 
include the separate realities inside a black hole in that context. If 
we did, we would indeed require multiple models of objective physical 
reality. This precise situation then exists when we get down to a scale 
where objects and events can be seen in isolation from other contexts - 
i.e., where the context of our observation differs from the context of 
other interactions.

> HP: 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)
JK: This means that the sound - what we can measure externally - is not 
equivalent to the experience, which occurs internally, within each of 
our isolated systems (and those of the performers).

> , quantum theory does not adequately model tea parties (Bohr’s example),
JK: but R-complexity does. An orderly event (as it was considered in 
Bohr's time) created by multiple complex systems, otherwise exiting in 
their own universes but nevertheless finding some common relational 
metric based on a shared model.

> HP: 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.”
JK: Again, the thoughts I wrote above can be directly applied to gain 
some hint at what is happening with thought itself. Is it not in a 
partly isolated domain? Is thought, in essence, modeling? To the extent 
that it associates its results with memory it becomes internally 
objective. To the extent it associates (tries to commute) with sensory 
perception it becomes externally relevant. We have different levels of 
memory from long term to short term to momentary awareness. The long 
term memories are most "real" internally, the momentary awareness of 
sensation most real externally. What is required is the equivalent of 
quantum isolation for that to be a possibility, and regardless of 
various theories for how to get that biologically (Hameroff and Penrose, 
vs their critics), it is fairly well established that biological sensory 
abilities cannot be explained without resort to quantum level phenomena. 
The amplification required is too great for classical amplifiers. Hence, 
we probably know that organisms of all kinds are capable of producing 
systems that are isolated from the common coordinates of classical 
phenomena and thus not explainable by any model employing those 
coordinates and the apparent states they represent.

> 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.
JK: I think this may be an overstatement, or at least it needs some 
clarification. Determinism is alive and well in the physical sciences 
(See Honderich - A theory of determinism). GUTS are also an attempt to 
establish a deterministic explanation for all phenomena. But I agree 
with Howard that physics and physicists have extended their thinking 
beyond these limits in many cases, well aware of the subject-object 
problem and trying hard to resolve it. The explanations I summarized 
above, to my knowledge, are a part of this thinking, but it appears in 
many different forms, each pinning itself to some physically measurable 
aspect. There seems to be some room for just the pure theory, without 
having to specify how it might be realized; i.e., is it microtubules in 
organisms or some other structure??? -- this presumes we are explaining 
something, and it is the "something" we are explaining that the 
relational theory helps clarify. If the wierdness we are trying to 
explain is understood in these relational terms, it becomes much more 
cognizable and multiple approaches and links to other theory can be 
compared. But if it is just "uncertainty" we are trying to explain - 
think about that; it leave every possible explanation open for 
consideration. So, I say Rosennean theory does narrow the target 
considerably.

> HP: 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.
JK: I have an odd experience with this, perhaps because of my dual background. But I see both what Howard is saying and what I think Rosen meant. Physicists do wrestle with these fundamental questions, obviously. But in the end they are attempting to find an algorithmic solution, because only that will be predictive. In so doing, the assumption of pre-established laws is not seriously challenged. If it were, it would mean that the laws that apply in our universe may be quite different from those on "the other side" of a black hole. We have no physical evidence for different universes, by definition. So there is a certain self-defining aspect to physics. That is what I think Rosen was getting at. Also, that to understand living or complex systems, one has to deal with the process of that self-definition itself. So "beguiled" is really the right word. And yet I don't think that in any way this means, or Rosen thought, that physics was, as such, "wrong" in the context of its origin, which is the shared observable universe. And outside that context the term "wrong" itself can only have to do with its assumptions, not its actual observations and theories.

JJK