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I'm glad you
brought that up, Judith. I recall there was some confusion on the old list
whether RR applied 'impredicative' to formal models only, or also to
natural systems. And some of the phrasing in Essays adds to the confusion. For
example:
"I claim that, as material systems, organisms are full of
such impredicativities." [EL p. 39]
It makes sense to
me that 'impredicativity' is intended to apply to formal models only. I
imagine that in the above quote he meant that the models of
organisms are full of such impredicativities. And that it appears in the
shorter form because for him all epistemology occurs via the modeling relation
[EL p. 324] -- to understand organisms (or any other natural system)
is to understand them via their models. So 'the models
of' phrase is implicit.
How does that
sound?
Regards,
Tim
One of the areas of confusion I'm seeing in many different
settings, including the ISSS conference I attended in July, is caused by a
difference my father specified in his use of the phrases "Causal loops" and
"Impredicative loops". The ideas are connected because they both describe
chains of entailment, which is why it gets confusing, but "Causal loops" exist
in natural complex systems whereas "Impredicative loops" exist in formalisms
(i.e., models).
There is also a difference between loops of this sort and simple
recursions. Recursive loops are what happen in a room with a furnace and a
thermostat, when it's cold outside.
There are many such boondoggles in his written work because he
was fluent in so many modes of expressing the ideas he was seeing inside his
head. The word "Dynamical" is another one. A "dynamical system" refers to
Newtonian mechanics, whereas "dynamic" might not. So a "dynamical system" is
not a complex system. Yet, the word "dynamic" certainly seems to apply to
complexity. There's a world of difference, though. It's like the difference
between perversity and perversion; they sound alike but they definitely don't
imply each other! Yet I've seen people use the word "perverse" when what they
meant was "perverted". Big difference there.
Judith
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