Lots of replies since Glen's first message, but I'd like to go back to that and ask for clarification. Glen wrote:
Questions about physical systems are formulated at nearly the same level and in nearly the same language as is used to formulate the purported mechanisms for those systems. The degree of formalization is high because we've reduced the language of mechanisms and questions down to continuous (or discretized continuous) spacetime, fields, particles and their properties, etc. I don't think that's true about biology, meteorology, geology, etc. Am I misunderstanding you? In contrast, in SoPS, it is too difficult to use that same language to express the questions and system mechanisms. The logical depth is too great to formulate, say, "anger" in terms of, say, quarks. So, we hunt around for languages with which to express SoPS, born of partially-baked "ontologies" from Freud, Jung, Hobbes, Locke, Keynes, Maslow, etc. As in biology, meteorology, geology, etc. No? Clarification would be appreciated. But the apparent complexity is not just (or at all, in my opinion) a consequence of the not-fully-formal languages. It's a consequence of using different languages for the questions/measures from that used for the mechanisms. The degree of mismatch between the language in which the operator is formulated and the language in which the hypothetical mechanisms are formulated is what leads to the apparent complexity. Do you have an example? I'm not following you. Didn't Freud, for example, use the same language for both the questions and the claimed mechanisms? I'm not defending Freud, but I'm not clear why you are saying he didn't do what you want. I say _apparent_ because it's easy to confuse complication with complexity. Complexity, in my view, requires intra-system operators formulated with intra-system languages that are incommensurate with the language of the most fundamental mechanisms, where the result of applying these operators is part of the mechanism. So, complexity is the result of intra-system operators formulated in a language that doesn't match the language expressing the mechanism, producing a part of the mechanism, i.e. a causative cycle with lexical mismatch between some parts of the cycle.*+ Again, I'm confused. Is that complexity or just bad science? I thought you said it was the latter. So, even once we get all SoPS languages formalized (to the extent we have non-well-founded set theory formalized), as long as we don't reduce it all to a kind of "bottom turtle" language (which may not even be possible), they'll exhibit complexity. What would a collection of formalized SoPS languages look like? What would even one look like? Can you explain with something like an example? I realize that you are saying it hasn't happened yet, but I don't understand what it would look like if it did happen. An example would help. Are you saying that you want everything in an SoPS expressed in terms of quarks? If not, then what? I'm just not following you. -- RussA On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Nicholas Thompson < [email protected]> wrote: > One standard explanation for the "failure to thrive" of sociological and > psychological explanations is their intentionality. Here, intentionality > takes on a slightly different meaning than it usually does on this list. > An utterance is "intentional" in this new sense if it contains a > proposition as the object of a verb of mentation. Intentional explanations > are of the form, "Jones avoided center al park because he thought there > were bears in it." Notice that the truth of the nested proposition has no > bearing on the truth of the explanation. Nothing about the state of > central park or its wildlife has any bearing (sorry). This feature of > intentional explanations blocks a familiar kind of scientific progress in > which an explanation is made richer by empirical elaboration. Take for > instance, "the London epidemic of 18-- was caused by cholera. We now > learn that cholera is a water-born disease. We can now say, given the > truth of the cholera assertion, that "the London epidemic was caused by a > waterborne disease. This move, called "substitutio salve veritate", > (substitution preserving truth), cannot be done with intentional > explanations. It does us no good, for instance, to do research on bears > and learn that they are large omnivorous mammals. We cannot infer that > Jones avoided central park because he thought there were large omnivorous > mammals in it because the truth of that assertion depends solely on Jones > beliefs, not on the truth of the matter. > > The idea is that such intentionality in sociological and psychological > explanations forever blocks their linkage to the more fundamental and > general explanations of biology, chemistry, and physics. > > Nick > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, > Clark University ([email protected]) > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/> > > > > > > [Original Message] > > From: russell standish <[email protected]> > > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > [email protected]> > > Date: 9/22/2009 2:20:08 PM > > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ABMs and Psychology > > > > On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 04:10:20PM -0700, glen e. p. ropella wrote: > > > Thus spake russell standish circa 09-09-21 04:02 PM: > > > > Bedau's weak emergence. So what you're proposing sounds to me just > > > > like a stronger notion, possibly even akin to Bedau's strong > > > > emergence. I give an example of a loopy structure in my book (page > > > > 162) which I think is an example of strong emergence. > > > > > > Except I'm not defining "emergence", here. I'm defining "complexity". > > > As I've said, "emergence" seems like a useless concept to me. > > > > > > > I would say the two terms in essence mean the same thing. I would say > > a "complex system" is one that exhibits "emergence". > > > > BTW, I technically use the term complexity to refer to a measure - it > > is a numerical quantity, usually closely related to information. But I > > do recognise that it could be used to describe a quality - ie that which > > makes a complex system complex. If the first sentence is true, then > > complexity would be the quality of exhibiting emergence :). > > > > I think the difference between our approaches is you would prefer to > > give up emergence to the the obfuscating mysterians, and invent a new > > term "complexity" for the concept, or similarly related, whereas I > > would prefer to reclaim the term for a perfectly well-defined > > technical meaning. Your approach is not wrong, per se. For instance > > I've given up attempting to assign a meaning to the term "realism" > > (from our other thread :). > > > > -- > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > > Mathematics > > UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [email protected] > > Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
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