John J. Kineman wrote:
> John Kineman comments on Alexei and Don's discussion:
>
> I believe I understand these arguments, but it seems to me that we are
> missing deeper assumptions. Let me try to explain.
>
> I understand that we can SAY (i.e., it is a philosophical option) that all
> "real" systems are ULTIMATELY complex.
If you are implying that that's where we are coming from, you've missed it
completely. Hogan claims over 31 DIFFERENT definitions of complexity. Thus
the word has lost its meaning. I offer that it has in MOST of this
discussion. What I have tried to do is alert you to the one definition which
seems to do something. Yes, you have a choice here, but please define how YOU
are using the word, among these other 30 or so definitions.
> This is a particular worldview.
No, it is merely good discourse. We have a well defined term which we use
consistently. I do not know how else one discusses?
> Saying this ignores the concept of "levels" which I tried unsuccessfully to
> introduce earlier.
Been there...NEVER did that. I merely reminded you that the levels exist in
the formal systems we use to try to capture the essence of the natural system.
Now your levels are best attached to the number and kind of formal system we
need to have a satisfactory description of a real system. This is going to be
contingent on our purpose I would say.
> I take from the lack of comment on that topic, that it
> is difficult to reconcile with the discussion, because they are
> incommensurate views (which may both be valid). So it is this I want to dig
> into a bit if you will indulge me.
On the contrary, what you said is perfectly in line with what I said just
above....so much so that it did not draw comment.
>
>
> What are "levels" as I am employing the concept? I suggested that it is
> analogous or related to "scale" -- that these are similar concepts. Are
> levels "real?" No, in Rosen's (theoretically ultimate) sense, but yes for
> practical purposes (which I will try to define).
>
> Hence, the question is, are we discussing a theoretical "reality" that
> cannot be accessed by practical means, or are we discussing a practical
> "reality" that can be? If the former, there are probably NO concepts that
> can be accurately and definitively attached to it, not even complexity.
> Because all such concepts are born from our perceptual basis, and must use
> models for conceptualizing.
>
Right...so now on to dealing with those models.
> The present discussion assumes that models are different from "reality."
A model is a comprimise between simplicity and reality (Leon Chua). The
trivial model is the thing itself...it has all the detail and is totally
impractical.
> Hence the inequality between model and reality means that we cannot define
> or model ultimate reality in any terms at all (this is a philosophical
> singularity, because if we could model it, by our assumption it would not
> be the "ultimate" reality we are modeling).
Again it depends upon our purpose, my carrer has been making models of
complicated biological systems from molecular to ecosystems, and often they
have been VERY useful even though they never were reality.
>
>
> It is then a philosophical matter to assume there is "something" "out
> there" that is "real" but cannot be observed or modeled or defined.
Here we part....I'd restrict your last statement to append (...using the
mechanistic/reductionist paradigm).
> This
> philosophy of an inaccessible ultimate reality has prooven to be
> inescapable in science because of it's practical orientation.
You speak of just one version of science. That which gave us positivism and
reductionism.
> The problem
> of separation between model and ultimate reality goes away only if we do
> not require descriptive, predictive or observatioinal practicality - as in
> a supposedly pure experience of ultimate reality. The realities we wish to
> observe or define (thus "practical realities") necessarily involve models
> as the means of considering them in any way whatsoever.
Here you seem to almost quote Goethe:Bortoft, Henri
The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe's Way Toward a Science of Conscious
Participation in Nature, Lindisfarne Press, Hudson, NY, 1996. ISBN
0-940262-79-7.
>
>
> Our reference to something "real" in a practical sense, by this reasoning
> MUST involve some kind of model, and therefore MUST involve the concept of
> level or scale, which is inherent in our definition of "things" or
> "entities." Hence, in Don's TV example (or making the same arguments for an
> automobile, which may be clearer) we can claim that the ultimately "real"
> thing is complex, but we can't even reference that reality and retain the
> discussion of the thing we started talking about; whereas the practically
> "real" TV or car, the thing we can talk about, is simple for any
> interaction within which a TV or car exists at all.
As it must be for us to build it.
>
>
> Here I consider two options:
>
> a) It is only simple because we look at it through a simple model. If we
> looked at it as a complex thing, then it is complex;
exactly what I'v tried to say over and over
>
>
> (b) It IS functionally simple because we MUST identify "it" before we can
> contemplate "it," and thus the "it" refers to a specific scale and level of
> practical reality that in every observation/interaction we or anything else
> can make, is predictably and repeatably simple. It is not a matter of more
> precise measurements revealing complexity, because at the level at which
> this would occur (for an inanimate object), the "it" we are referencing no
> longer exists. "It" is a macroscopic "it" defined only in terms of our
> interaction with it at the macroscopic level. At the level where "it" is
> complex, "it" is no longer "it" and we are no longer obtaining knowledge
> about "it."
here again you get lax in differentiating between the natural system and the
formal system...if you use the modeling relation consistently, these problems
go away, they only come from confusing the two.
>
>
> I can argue the truth of both (a) and (b), but on different grounds and
> with different utility. For (a) to be true, we must allow the scale of
> observation to change in order to have the possibility of observing a
> complex behavior, and at the same time allow the entire
> identification/definition of the object we are discussing to change with
> that scale. Indeed, the level at which a car becomes complex is a level
> where the concept of "object" itself no longer applies. The truth of (a)
> then depends on not being able to define what we're talking about, which
> eliminates scientific knowledge about it. I adopt this kind of approach in
> spiritual and experiential matters -- "the ineffable quality of ......"
> which can only be experienced but otherwise defies description.
>
> (b) takes this problem into account and focuses attention instead on
> defined things that behave differently AT THE SAME SCALE, retaining the
> meaning of those definitions. This does not address their ultimate reality,
> but their practical reality. Of course it introduces the problem that our
> definitions are then dependent on our perspective, model, etc., and that we
> must provide these meanings, but this is appropriate to our interests. What
> is an interesting and meaningful question to science is what aims at
> explaining what, however indirectly, WE can perceive or interact with.
>
> A complete system of thought that is not referenced to human perspectives
> (choice (a)) is by definition metaphysical. The view in (b) is prooven
> (epistemologically) by the fact that we correctly constructed the TV and
> automobile and they do indeed work according to the mechanical principles
> we used. To adopt viewpoint (a) is to say that the TV and car are not real,
> which is valid metaphysically, but not epistemologically.
>
> Now, lets come back to the point in (a), that any macroscopic object, which
> we can describe as simple, contains elements that, if viewed at a different
> scale and different definitions, may be seen as complex. Still, there is
> another case, i.e., a very big difference AT THE SAME SCALE if we use an
> organism instead of a TV or car as our example. The organism does not
> behave simply and mechanically as the car or TV does. It is not predictable
> in a mechanical manner. It is fundamentally different AT THE SAME SCALE. We
> do not have to resort to some inaccessible, abstract level where
> definitions change, to get complex behavior from an organism, as we do with
> the TV or automobile. This is the interesting distinction.
>
> Even though, as I agrued in the first case, we cannot construct a perfectly
> adequate model of the macroscopic complex behahvior, without having our
> model select out certain mechanical concepts, we are compelled to try to
> describe its obvious macroscopic yet complex behavior in some manner. This
> is so because mechanical descriptions, in addition to being philosophically
> inaccurate, in this case fail to predict the behavior of the "thing" we are
> discussing (unlike the mechanical models of the TV or car). So far, the
> best anyone has been able to do is use a modified mechanical view, i.e.,
> talk in terms of uncertainties and probabilities. That is, since we
> (generally, disregarding Rosen for the moment) cannot figure out how to
> discuss complexity, we talk about the LIKLIHOOD of mechanical behaviors.
> This is the QM approach, which, as Rosen would probably say, is still from
> a quasi-mechanical perspective.
>
> I am so far unconvinced that Rosen has an adequate non-mechanical
> perspective that can also be practical, in the sense of telling us about
> the macroscopicaly complex objects we perceive, such as organisms.
Question: Have you studied and understood his use of category theorym to
define the organism? If so would you be kind enough to tell us where the flaw
is? You will be the first I assure you!
> I
> totally agree with him that organisms are fundamentally complex and embody
> aspects that are entirely non-mechanical. However, the explanation of this
> by claiming that "everything is complex" evades the important question,
> i.e., the distinction between those things that are observably simple at
> macroscopic scales vs. those things that are not. It seems rather to blur
> this important distinction into a panglossian philosophy that is
> unpredictive (I expect some challenge on this -- I'm putting this out as a
> straw target).
>
> Fundamental to these points is what we choose to call "real." I personally
> believe in an ultimate abstract, perhaps Platonic, reality that IS complex
> in its most basic nature.
You hget too far from the place where we have identified the "onset" of
comlexity and that is where the reductionist insistence on every function
mapping 1:1 onto physical parts is lost.
> From this ultimate reality, the act of
> self-definition (or observation) has precipitated apparent levels of
> reality within which we live and within which science and mathematics
> exists. But, as an embedded aspect of this practical reality, science
> cannot see except through the dark filter of perception, which is similarly
> embedded and which necessarily involves models.
>
> Hence, practical "reality," that is, anything we are able to study through
> the senses, cannot be separated from models. In this sense, the QM
> observership problem is particularly profound, because it raises the
> question if, in fact, it isn't perception itself that has created the
> "practical reality" that we can study, and that then necessarily reveals
> itself in apparent "levels" or scaling of phenomena, hence leading to some
> usefulness for reductionistic concepts and the inevitability of paradoxes
> in any view we might create. Thus, the entire sense world cannot be
> separated from a perceptual model of it, because it is perception itself
> that it depends on for its existence. The main point, however, is the full
> extent to which this perceptual/practical reality extends to everything we
> might discuss.
>
> To summarize:
>
> 1. The sentence "Every thing is complex" is meaningless if the word "thing"
> does not have meaning.
> 2. Living macroscopic "things" exhibit complexity at the same scale at
> which the "thing" is defined, hence they retain both definition and
> complexity.
> 3. Non-living macroscopic "things" exhibit complexity only at a scale where
> the "thing" is no longer defined (or changes definition). Hence, in these
> cases, the "thing" does not retain both definition and complexity, and
> hence "it" is not complex (even though something else at this level is
> complex).
>
> At 02:38 PM 8/24/98 -0400, you wrote:
> >Don Mikulecky wrote:
> >
> >>what we manufacture is a natural system. all real natural systems are
> complex.
> >>however, we percieve the system through putting a formal system in its
> place.
> >>that formal system need not be complex, it can be a simple mechanism.
> Indeed
> >>when we make TV sets we work hard to make sure their complexity does not
> get in
> >>the way of our design of them as a simple mechanism.
> >
> >I agree with this. When we make a TV we intend to make a mechanism.
> >But instead we end up with manufacturing a complex system which
> >does not always behave as we thought. As I understand, you propose
> >to start building TV sets without having a mechanism in mind. For
> >example, we can make some self-organizing network that under some
> >conditions may develop into a functioning TV-set. In other words, we
> >will let the system to have more freedom. This is all fine.
> >
> >But my point was that even if we intend to make a mechanism, we
> >still allow our product to have some freedom (unintentionally). For
> >example, we do not specify the path for every electron in a circuit.
> >Thus, the difference between bilding mechanisms and building
> >non-mechanisms is more in perception of what we do and less in
> >methods of manufacturing. But I agree that even methods of manufacturing
> >can be improved if people realize that they never can manufacture
> >a mechanism.
> >
> >I suggest the following summary of this discussion:
> >1. All real systems are complex, and there are no mechanisms
> >among real systems
> >2. Models of real systems may be mechanistic (attempt to
> >describe and control every detail) and non-mechanistic (that
> >have some internal freedom, e.g., neural networks,
> >genetic algorithms).
> >3. Modelling strategies can be:
> >a) using mechanistic models and believing that they are true
> > representations of real systems
> >b) using mechanistic models as metaphors keeping in mind that
> > real systems may be quite different
> >c) using non-mechanistic models and believing that they are true
> > representations of real systems
> >d) using non-mechanistic models as metaphors keeping in mind that
> > real systems may be quite different
> >
> >I vote for strategies "b" and "d" and against "a" and "c". Using
> >non-mechanistic models may give substantial advantages in some
> >cases compared to known mechanistic models. But I would not
> >consider non-mechanistic models as a panacea. In many cases
> >mechanistic models give a very accurate (but metaphoric)
> >description.
> >
> >-Alexei
> >-------------------------------------------------
> >Alexei Sharov Research Scientist
> >Dept. of Entomology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061
> >Tel. (540) 231-7316; FAX (540) 231-9131; e-mail sharov@vt.edu
> >Home page: http://www.gypsymoth.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/alexei.html
> >
> >
> -----------------------------------------------
> John J. Kineman, Physical Scientist/Ecologist
> National Geophysical Data Center
> 325 Broadway E/GC1 (3100 Marine St. Rm: A-152)
> Boulder, Colorado 80303 USA
> (303) 497-6900 (phone)
> (303) 497-6513 (fax)
> jjk@ngdc.noaa.gov (email)
respectfully,
Don Mikulecky