Yes, but I'm sure it's actually more complex than that.
I picked the wrong example: with machines, there's pleny of room for
equivocation about the role of the designer as a conscious entity. But what
about the relational properties of organisms? Or, better yet, the
relational properties of physical systems, like dissipative systems?
Take that old chestnut, the transition from conductive to convective flow
resulting in the emergence of convection (Benard) cells. Just after the
transition, the molecules have similar velocities to what they did before,
but now they exist in a coherent relation, entrained by their being
embedded in the new, hierarchically distinct, emergent entities. This is
similar to the car parts.
> For these relations 'are' not there; we
>impose them; and for good reasons at that! But, good reasons or not, the
>relations are our own constructs. This holds for cars as well as for
>mathematical relations, and also for symbolic operations.
Yes, the relational order of convection cells is something we, as
observers, perceive and describe. Without our role as conscious agents,
they would have no meaning. But that's true of ALL the properties of the
fluid, not just the rotation of the cells. I think it would be stretching
credulity to claim that this relational property ONLY exists in virtue of
our cognition. Certainly objective, physical measurement procedures are
available, in the form of instruments which extend our senses, if not
replace them (this is "weak objectivity" in the sense of consensual theory
construction).
O---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, NRC Research Associate, Cybernetician at Large
| Mail Code 522.3, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
| joslyn@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/joslyn 301-286-5773
V All the world is biscuit-shaped. . .