Glen,
I missed part of this thread and please feel free to ignore my
questions if I make you repeat things, but there's two things in your
reply I don't get:
- what does 'fragile to ambiguity' mean ?
- what would a 'holarchy of formal systems' look like ? Is't a
holarchy a structure where influence is not only top-down but also
bottom-up ? And how could any such bi-directionality ever exist in
some kind of nesting of formal systems ?
ciao,
Joost.
On Jan 9, 2008, at 2:41 AM, Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:
> And any system where the language is fixed will be fragile to
> ambiguity
> _because_ of Gödel's result.
>
> The only thing remaining is whether (and how much) contact and
> interaction with the environment provides what's needed for forming,
> using, and abandoning languages. If, as may be the case, all
> assemblages of formal systems merely amount to a more complicated
> formal
> system, then even an assemblage won't do what we're after. But if the
> world is somehow "supra-computation", then perhaps sporadic
> interactions
> with the environment can help a computer resolve unexpected exceptions
> gracefully.
>
> - From that perspective the phrase "holarchy of formal systems" may
> well
> be self-contradictory and only reality is capable of forming
> holarchies.
-------------------------------------------
Joost Rekveld
----------- http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld
-------------------------------------------
“This alone I ask you, O reader, that when you peruse the
account of these marvels that you do not set up for yourself
as a standard human intellectual pride, but rather the great
size and vastness of earth and sky; and, comparing with
that Infinity these slender shadows in which miserably and
anxiously we are enveloped, you will easily know that I have
related nothing which is beyond belief.”
(Girolamo Cardano)
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