Glen,
thanks for your fascinating answer.
It answers all my questions for the moment. Here is the present state of my
thinking of the Praeludium, which I have now read four times and with which my
concern is approaching obsession.
For what it is worth, I agree with Rosen (Praeludium, Life Itself) that formal
systems are examples of models or, more precisely, that the relation of the
formal system and the thing it represents is a modeling relation. But the
modeling relation is much more ubiquitous than that. Natural selection is an
example in good standing of a model but, as Owen Densmore keeps reminding me,
is not a formalism. I think it is a general property of models that they are
intentional. An intentional relation is one in which the truth or falsity of
an assertion depends on the point of view from which he world is seen. The
classic philosophical example has to do with Lady Astor* and the Titanic. As
an "extensional" utterance, the statement that Lady Astor booked passage on the
Titanic is plainly true. Whatever else one might say about the Titanic does
not change the truth value of the utterance. That was the boat she booked
herself on and she was on it when it hit the iceberg. However, as an
intentional utterance, its truth value is utterly dependant on the point of
view from which the titanic is seen. She probably did book passage on the
Largest Ship in the White Star Line, and she did book passage on the ship whose
maiden voyage was a society event on both sides of the Atlantic. We can have
some confidence in these assertions, because behaviors directed toward status
are part of what we know about Lady Astor's behavior repertoire.* She did not,
in this sense, book passage on the ship that hit an iceberg and sank in the
north Atlantic: not, I would assert, that because that idea was not in a
mythic place called her mind, or even lodged in her brain, but because nothing
in the design of Lady Astor's behavior is congruent with that intent. She was
not into risky behavior. Thus, the formalism, "Lady Astor Booked Passage On
the Titanic" is too impoverished in entailments to capture the essential
quality of her act. Or to put it round the other way, "an infinite number of
distinct formalizations ... [would be required ] ... to capture all the
qualities ... [of her act.]
What Rosen seems to be saying in the Prelude of LI is that formalisms are like
other models is this respect. They are intentional in that their truth value
depends to some degree on the uses to which the formalism is going to be put,
where the formalizer is headed when the formalization is applied. With out
that "reference" any formalism is incomplete. thus, to be a good formalism, a
formalism has to be in some sense informal, right?
Nick
* My deep apologies to Lady Astor and her ancestors. In point of fact, I know
nothing of lady Astor ... full stop. With full some prejudice based solely on
her Name, I grant her whatever qualities are necessary for my exposition. She
is a model, and like every unfortunate thing that has ever been used as a
model, she has been abused. For all I know, she may have been a London street
urchin whose first name was Lady and who climbed into a trunk on the pier and
never knew upon what ship she booked passage.
Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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