Re: What is Natural Law? Dualism in modelling relation.

[Howard Pattee <***>]

At 08:15 AM 12/31/04 -0500, Judith wrote:
> Incidentally, while my father did
> state that encoding and decoding are not "entailed" by anything
> within the model, that is a very different thing from saying such things
> are transcendental. They are entailed by the modeling relation, which in
> science is a human exercise. In other words, there is a modeling process
> which must occur outside of the model itself, and that is what the
> encoding and decoding arrows of my father's diagram refer to. The
> modeling process involves the human mind.

HP: I agree with your statement, except the process can be considered
transcendental in the neo-Kantian sense where it refers to elements of
our experience that are not derived from sense data, but from the
inherent (or culturally acquired) organizing properties of the mind. The
choice of encodings, observations, or measurements really determines what
we model, and this is truly transcendental in the Kantian sense. Here are
two of Michael Polanyi's fine statements:

"We must now recognize belief once more as the source of all
knowledge. Tacit assent and intellectual passions, the sharing of an
idiom and of a cultural heritage, affiliation to a like-minded community:
such are the impulses which shape our vision of the nature of things on
which we rely for our mastery of things. No intelligence, however
critical or original, can operate outside such a fiduciary
framework." 

"Three things have been established beyond reasonable doubt: the
power of intellectual beauty to reveal truth about nature; the vital
importance of distinguishing this beauty from merely formal
attractiveness; and the delicacy of the test between them, so difficult
that it may baffle the most penetrating scientific minds." (M.
Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, Harper Torchbook, 1964, p. 149.)

Howard