Re: Inconsistency, natural vs formal

[Howard Pattee <***>]

Dan,

You ask:
What about indeterminate or uncertain or ambiguous? Can't a
natural system have/be these? And if so, aren't these in essence
indistinguishable from inconsistentcy?

HP: A natural system in QT is thought be objectively indeterminate, but I would say that 
uncertain and ambiguous more often refer to our models, not what is modeled. This is a 
matter of usage. The dictionary says inconsistent means incompatible, self-contradictory, 
not in agreement. I don?t think indeterminate or ambiguous imply this.

Dan: Is it possible that this unmodelability is both formal and natural?
Does the "problem" we hit with complexity and complementarity
reflect a real aspect of nature?

HP: All we know, all we can know, is whether our models are in conformity in some sense 
with our experience, as in the modeling commutation relation. I believe Hertz: ?For our 
purpose it is not necessary that they [our models] should be in conformity with the 
[real] things in any other respect whatever. As a matter of fact, we do not know, nor 
have we any means of knowing, whether our conception of things [our models] are in 
conformity with them [reality] in any other than this one fundamental respect.?

Could it also be that this natural indeterminacy, ambiguity, wiggle room (if it is real) 
is fundamentally involved in making the hard to model features, like life, what they are?

HP: In physics, especially quantum theory, I think that is the case.

What if these hard to model "things" are precisely that, even on purpose or by design or 
for survival needs - ambiguous, indeterminate, uncertain, unpredictable?

HP: What do you mean ?on purpose?? Whose purpose?

Dan: And maybe the converse is likewise antithetical to life - to be modelable or 
determinate or certain or predictable in an inherently uncertain
environment could be the surest way to fail, the guaranteed way
not to be able to adapt, anticipate, deal with utter surprise and
true novelty and still survive and thrive.

HP: Of course evolution would not work if models were ?certain? if you mean error-free. 
Models are never exact or certain. They are always just approximations to reality and to 
survive we must continually adapt by changing our models.

?In so far as the propositions of mathematics are certain they do not apply to reality; 
and in so far as they apply to reality they are not certain.? [Einstein]

Howard