Re: What is Natural Law?

[Steve Johnson <***>]

John K,

Yes. You're right. Instead of talking about models
representing aspects of "Natural Law" I should have
used the term "Nature" or "Natural System". Upon
re-reading the relevant sections of LI I see that the
way Rosen used the term was in complete agreement with
your usage. According to him (quoting from memory) it
is a belief structure that (1) events in the ambience
are not entirely whimsical, and (2) that human minds
are capable of understanding something about them.

The nagging question that I always have is that the
modelling relation is based on essentially Cartesian
observer-observed dualism and seems to always regard
the observer and encoding/decoding as something
transcendental with respect to the model itself.
Howard remarked on this list many times that this kind
of "epistemic cut" is absolutely ineluctable. 

However, it would be more emotionally satisfying if in
the end you could come up with a story which did away
even with this dualims and had "closure" (whatever
that actually means) in keeping with Rosennean
tradition of   self-causation. I'm fully aware that
this is just incoherent rambling but that's what I
often feel about this matter. Rosen himself in Essay
on LI pointed out that such dualisms are pregnant with
paradoxes. 

It seems that Maturano and Varela tried (not entirely
successfully to my mind) to construct such a
"self-defining" story of existence. A later attempt is
by Hilary Lawson in his book "Closure".

Any thoughts on this matter?

- Steve


--- John Kineman <***> wrote:

> HI all,
> Sorry to regress to this earlier discussion, but
> I've been away from the 
> list and would like to add a point of correction
> (from my perspective) 
> to the implicit meanings here.
> 
> The discussion of "law" between Judith and Steve up
> to this point was 
> congruent with my understanding of the matter as
> well. However, here we 
> begin to depart again into the subtlty I was trying
> to point out earlier.
> 
> If we say that a model does not accurately reflect
> "natural law" we have 
> erected a belief structure called "natural law"
> which is that such a 
> thing exists. Its only existence IS in fact a formal
> system of some 
> kind, i.e., a model (metamodel, etc.).
> 
> In other words, the whole point is that a belief has
> arisn in science 
> that nature is fundamentally "law-like" and thus the
> concept of "natural 
> law" is valid even if we don't know what those laws
> are or can't model 
> them. I would challenge that belief structure. I
> think all formal 
> descriptions of natural behavior, i.e., all laws,
> are constructs of 
> nature itself (which includes minds). As such, they
> may appear to be 
> very consistent indeed, to the extent that they are
> part of a shared 
> reference system, but they have no fundamental mode,
> no original 
> inviolate form - they are constructed from the very
> interaction between 
> form and idea - at all levels, with no fundamental
> foundation in 
> behavior that can ever be fully described as 100%
> law-like. I am saying 
> that nature simply isn't constructed in a manner
> that allows us to 
> separate the origins of any law or model or
> description from the thing 
> it describes, and that kind of closed loop
> arrangement never yields a 
> reality that can thus be described fully by a law,
> other than one that 
> is in constant relationship (possible a relationship
> that keeps it 
> stable, or one that allows it to change).
> 
> Can I proove it? Sorry. Its a general inference from
> all the 
> incompletenesses we are discovering, the origin
> problem, etc. Its a way 
> out of the circularity that is evident in these
> discussions. For me, 
> the  concept I have expressed resolves the question
> without invalidating 
> either of the opposite views (that laws are given
> vs. that laws are 
> created).
> 
> JK
> 



                
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