Ricardo Ribeiro Gudwin wrote:
> Marshall Clemens wrote:
>
> > As pointed out by Marvin Minsky amoung others, this is the glaring flaw
> > with 'absolute' holism: once you say something is a whole and cannot be
> > broken down (reduced) into the interaction of simpler components, that
> > is the end of the discussion. To deal with something as a irreducible
> > whole means that you do not understand it at all, except possibly
> > describing its input-output behavior. This may partially be a limit of
> > the human mind, but it is a limit we must live with.
>
> Hmmm ...
> I can imagine, e.g., that a model for a line by an equation y = ax + b
> is a somewhat "holistic" understanding for an infinite set of points, either
>
> without specifying each point by yourself. In this case, I am using a
> holistic concept, either for something that could (in thesis) be reduced
> to a set of components (points). You may say that this is not an "absolute"
> holism, as there are still the parameters (a,b), but I still believe that
> this
> is a good example of an holistic paradigm applied to a simple concept.
> There are some questions here, as e.g., how elementary (holistic) functions
> like
> that (polynomials, exponential functions, logarithmic functions, roots, etc)
>
> were first discovered (designed) by humans, and why them and not others.
> For example, giving a set of points and asking a computer to build models
> for them is very difficult if we do not assume that there is an "a priori"
> knowledge
> of lines, polynomials, exponentials, logarithms, etc. How those holistic
> "guesses" were first discovered ? How do they appeared as human concepts ?
> Maybe holistic systems are alike those functions, that we comprehend in
> their
> entirety, without decomposing them into primitive ones. But this is more
> difficult
> to understand ... I can make only a turve idea of such systems, by analogy.
> Yours,
> Ricardo
Yes, Minsky is using a "straw man" holism is never "absolute" that is an
oxymoron! Absolutism implies an exclusion.
What is important here is that we all know how to lok as reductionist/mechanists
do. And we see what we are supposed to see. We do not know how to look
holisticly and when we try, we more often than not see as reductionists
mechanists do. Even when taught to see holisticly we recoil, because we no
longer see what we are supposed to see.
Robert Rosen has established this over the last 40 years. He writes about the
difficulties as he grows older because he develops an understanding of how firm
a grip the Newtonian paradigm has on all of us. It is not easy to breal that
grip. It is easier to enter into a form of denial, as Minsky apparantly has.
respectfully
Don Mikulecky