Re: Which part of the brain (or subject-object system) is conscious?

[Howard Pattee <***>]

At 02:14 PM 12/10/04 -0500, Dan wrote:
> Howard,
>
> This is all well and good for a formal system and for a
> static model. But I think if you try to extend it to into the
> material realm and a continuous and changing modeling
> process, this view itself needs a complement.

HP: This necessity for placing a cut between the model itself and what is 
being modeled has nothing to do with he scope or time frame of what is 
being modeled. Whatever system you are modeling requires that the model is 
not identical with the system itself, but a model of the system. Complex 
systems require more than one model, but the models must still be separate 
from whatever is being modeled .

> Dan:  When we consider that the observer only
> can observe with aid of a continuous stream of energy
> and material from the environment (air, water, food, etc.)
> - including likely interactions with the objectified system
> he/she observes so the object system and observer's life
> support cannot be disentangled - and that also a continual
> stream of energy and materials that have been altered in
> quality, quantity and configuration (waste and other
> products, impacts), it seems to me that the epistemic cut is
> fully bridged, or healed.

HP: In this example you are only moving the cut so as to include more of 
the ecosystem. Your model is now about a much bigger system that will 
require many more measurements (encodings), but the larger model will still 
be separated from the system by these encodings. All you have 'healed" is 
the previous cut made for the simpler system.

> Dan: So not only is the location of the cut arbitrary, but I think
> the cut itself is arbitrary or a choice too when one considers
> that there is an alternative.

HP: I don't see any alternative. The position of the cut is all that is 
arbitrary. You have not shown how the concept of "model" can evade the 
modeling relation as Rosen represents it.

Howard