[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

[Nick Thompson]

Hi, glen, 

 

Thanks.  No wonder you're annoyed at me.  See larding below. 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of ?glen?
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2017 10:31 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

 

 

 

On 06/06/2017 09:05 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> [gepr] Although you're repeating what I'd said earlier about relying on a more vernacular sense of "complex", we have to admit something you've yet to acknowledge. 

> 

> [NST==>I missed this, and going back through the thread, I have not 

> found it.  Can you reproduce it for me without too much strain?  

> <==nst]

 

Below is what I wrote in response to Stephen's suggestion that any physical system might qualify as complex.

 

On 05/26/2017 12:40 PM, glen ☣ wrote:

> Yeah, but you're relying on the ambiguity of the concept.  A system that is only complex for very short spans of time, or under very special conditions wouldn't fit with _most_ people's concept of "complex".  To boot, unadulterated oscillation wouldn't satisfy it either.  And, as has been said earlier in the thread, allowing any an all physical systems to be called "complex" when they're placed under special circumstances defeats the purpose of the concept.

[NST==>I am keen to know what is meant by “the purpose of the concept”.  Peirce says the meaning of a concept is the difference in the observations (experiments) that it leads us to make.  What difference does calling something complex make for you.  Forgive me please if this requires you to direct my attention to earlier posts.  <==nst] 

 

>  (I realize that the things I've said in this thread have been mostly ignorable.  So, it's reasonable that they've been missed.)  First, circular reasoning is used all the time in math. 

> 

> [NST==>I am not talking about tautology, here: x is x.  I am talking 

> about circular explanation: x is the cause of x.  Surely you would 

> agree that having defined X as whatever is caused by Y, I have not 

> added much to our store of knowledge concerning what sorts of things Y 

> causes.  But you are correct, not all circular explanations are 

> entirely vicious/vacuous, of course. It depends on the assumptions the 

> discussants bring to the table.  See, 

>  <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281410347_Comparative_psychol> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281410347_Comparative_psychol

> ogy_and_the_recursive_structure_of_filter_explanations 

> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281410347_Comparative_psycho

> logy_and_the_recursive_structure_of_filter_explanations%3c==nst> 

> <==nst]

 

 

We've talked about your recursive filter explanation paper before.  I don't think you responded to what I said about it after EricC's explanation.  Here is my comment:  <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2017-January/075190.html> http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2017-January/075190.html

 

[NST==>For whatever reason, server feckless or my own, I don’t remember ever seeing this before.  It looks like the most through going attempt to confront the ideas in that paper that anybody has ever provided, and deserved (and deserves) to be read carefully and discussed.  Please forgive my failure to do so.  I will get on it.  <==nst] 

 

 

>  So, it is not the bug-a-boo logicians claim it to be.  Again, Maturana & Varela, Rosen, Kaufmann, et al have all used it to valid and sound effect.

> 

> [NST==>I would be grateful for a passage from any of these folks where 

> strictly circular reasoning is used to good effect. <==nst]

 

 

 

I will find some.  But a more fundamental read is this:  <http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/predicativity.pdf> http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/predicativity.pdf

[NST==>Don’t do any more work for me until I have read this.  You are giving me guilt feelings<==nst] 

 

 

 

> Second, your "interact more closely with one another than they do with entities outside the set" is nothing but _closure_.  

> 

> [NST==>Well, if that is how one defines closure, then I am bound to 

> agree.  Then, it’s not clear to me what the function of “nothing but” 

> is, in your sentence.  But reading through your earlier posts (petri 

> dish) suggests that for you closure is absolute; for me, systematicity 

> is a variable and we would have to have some sort of a mutual 

> understanding of where along that dimension we start calling something 

> a system. <==nst]

 

 

Yes, I can see that.  I'm used to thinking in terms of things being closed to one operation and open to others.  I'm also used to using it as a verb, e.g. "closing a set" by, say, adding the limit point to it.  Or more appropriate to this context, closing a region by wrapping a boundary around to itself like you would by tying a string to itself to get a loop.  Further, a region of some "space" can be "partially closed" by being very convex ... like some champagne flutes, bulging in the middle with a small-ish opening at one end ... or maybe think of a pinhole camera or a black body radiation device.

[NST==>But doesn’t this bring us back to the question that I got into a tangle with Steve about: Whether a system can close it self?  Or whether closure has to be be provided “from the outside” (=petri dish).  <==nst] 

 

 

> Or if I can infer from the lack of response to my broaching the term, we could use "coherence" or some other word. 

> 

> [NST==>Yes, but coherence, for me, carries more richness than what I 

> was grasping for.  For you, perhaps not.  I guess “coherence” is ok.  

> <==nst]

 

 

Coherence can be ambiguous, too.  But my main point is that much of what we've been arguing about in this thread is about closure, what it means, and whether it's necessary for something to be called a complex system.  Russ' claim includes some form of closure.  This is much stronger than Stephen's claim.  Yours falls somewhere between.  But we won't be able to get at your middle ground without more formality.

 

 

>  And that means that your working definition is not naive. 

> 

> [NST==>Huh?  You mean I don’t get to be in charge of whether I am 

> naïve, or not?  Are you some kind of behaviorist?  <==nst]

 

 

8^)  Right.  You can't sa[NST==><==nst] by you're being naive and then get all hyper-technical about whatever naive statement you made.

[NST==>Naïve in the sense of standing apart from the technical details.  Would “phenomological” be better?  I am a great believer in the importance of outsiders to the health of science – the Emperor’s New Clothes metaphor. Outsiders can be really annoying and slow things up, but they also have an essential role to play.  Hard to know when one is playing that role, or merely being annoying. <==nst] 

 

 

 

>   But in order for you to know what you're talking about, you have to apply a bit more formality to that concept.

> 

> [NST==>This thread isn’t coherent for me.  Somebody asks if natural 

> systems can be complex.  This is a lot of intricate talk which I 

> frankly didn’t follow but which seemed to suggest that only symbol 

> systems could be complex.  But I could detect no definition of 

> complexity to warrant that restriction.  So I offered a definition of 

> complexity (which may have been the same as yours – forgive me), 

> offered an example of a natural complex system, a hurricane, and came 

> to the conclusion that indeed, some natural systems are complex.  To 

> my knowledge, nobody has addressed that claim.  But I have been 

> traveling, my eye sight sucks, and I may have missed it.  If anybody 

> has addressed this claim, could somebody direct me to a copy of their 

> post.  I would be grateful. <==nst]

 

 

Well, as I said above, we have 2 extremes.  Complex systems are everywhere, as long as you catch them at the precise time and in the precise conditions.  The other side is that complex systems rely on a cumulative hierarchy of some sort (Russ's is less fleshed out than EricS'), which means they might be relatively rare.  The discussion of hurricanes is a good one.  My focus here was to shunt your preamble about circularity and getting lost in technicalities.

 

 

--

␦glen?

 

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