A contradiction?

[John Kineman <***>]

Hi list,

I was reading in the limited edition "Rosennean Complexity" at the back
where there is a section titled "Personal Notes." (P 332-333 in the
book, p22-23 in Personal Notes). These notes seem to be recapping a lot
of ideas in a more conversational tone, but there were some statements
that, if taken literally, would contradict my entire understanding of
Rosennean Complexity. In particular, he identifies three kinds of
systems, Natural Systems, Formal Systems, and Volitional Systems, and
writes the following about Formal Systems:

"B. Formal systems, which could not exist without us. This is the
province of natural language and mathematics. Clearly, formal systems of
this type could not exist without human mind...."

The problem occurs if this is taken generally to restrict his definition
of formal system to human epistemology (a discussion we have had before
on the list, noting similar confusion). In that case the following
problem arises:

Given the following well-established statements in Rosennean Complexity:
1. Organisms have internal predictive models
2. The development of predictive models ("modeling") involves acts of
abstraction as represented in a modeling relation.
3. Acts of abstraction are represented as "encoding" and "decoding" maps
to some type of formal system.

Then it follows that:
1. Models implicate formal systems of some natural kind, at least in
their construction (once constructed we may think of them as fully
realized system acting in a formal way with another system).
2. The presumed existence of formal systems cannot then be restricted to
only the human case.

Intuitively we would have to question the restriction of formal systems
to humans alone on empirical grounds as well, as we know the boundary
between humans and other life forms is a fuzzy one and that many other
animals use symbolic formal representation.

One possible interpretation would be that the emphasis on "human" and
"us" was meant metaphorically, but nevertheless meant to indicate
applicability only to some higher form of life (humans being a type
example).

Another possible interpretation would be that these statements were
meant only in the context of human experience and that formal systems of
some other type are indeed implied in the rest of nature. This is
supported by his use of the phrase "formal systems of this type." Hence
the interpretation would be that he is saying we can be directly aware
of formal systems only through our own human experience, which of course
must be true since they are by definition unrealized in our external world.

This possible ambiguity suggests to me perhaps that the terms of
reference (precise, general definitions) for this aspect of the ideas
may not have been fully worked out at the time of his passing, and/or
that there was some tendency to shift contexts (and thus definitions) in
an attempt to be convincing to different audiences.

We also have the problem in these "Personal notes" that they were not
finalized by Rosen himself for publication. Quite often in my own
writing I will state something in a certain limited way because of the
context in which I developed the thought, and then I will  have to alter
the statements for publication as I become aware of equivocation
problems in contexts and general application  - i.e., to clean up the
definitions of terms for publication to remove any apparent
contradictions in a broader context.  However, it seems unlikely that he
would have been thinking in a narrow context at the end of his career,
when attempting to write a summary (The "Personal Notes" are not dated,
but I assume they were written toward the end of his career, which makes
it all the more intriguing and not dismissable).

Certainly my inclination would be to give priority to the final
published statements, which presumably have been scrutinized more; but I
also am reluctant to dismiss these comments as irrelevant - surely he
had some useful distinction in mind when defining these three kinds of
systems.  Yet in my view the entire ediface crumbles if formal systems,
and thus abstractions, and thus models, are allowed to exist only in
higher intellectual forms, or the definitions are such that "models" in
non-human organisms must be said to not involve formal systems, and thus
not involve encoding and decoding, which are clearly processes of
formalization.

I thought Judith might have some further insight on this.

All the best,
John K.