[FRIAM] IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem WAS: Any non-biological complex systems?

Thu Jun 8 09:18:08 EDT 2017

Clarification: the book is 45 years old and is available online as a PDF
file.  It's hard to read without a lot of background in the field.
Psychiatric residents who used to read it often felt they had the disorder
even if they didn't.  I apologize for the snarky suggestion that you read
it.

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918

On Jun 7, 2017 10:06 PM, "Frank Wimberly" <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Glen,
>
> If you want to see how NPD is amenable to type 2 treatment see "Analysis
> of the Self" by Kohut. I dare you.
>
> Frank
>
>
>
>
> Frank Wimberly
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
> On Jun 7, 2017 9:51 PM, "Nick Thompson" <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>>
>>
>> Here is Glen's thoughtful post of January 20, reborn. To be honest, I
>> don’t understand it.  Not a bit.  I am hoping that perhaps one or more of
>> the rest of you can help me get it.  Let’s start with one baby step.  What
>> is meant by LAYER in this text? The possible meanings open to me are, (1) a
>> kind of hen; (2) a stratum in a substance; or (3) a level in a hierarchical
>> descriptive scheme.  So, “genus” is a level as is “battalion”. Are any of
>> these meanings relevant to Glen’s post?
>>
>>
>>
>> Please help me out here.  Intuition tells me that there is gold, here,
>> but I just don’t have the tools to mine it out.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Excellent!  Thanks, Eric (and everyone -- I'm enjoying this).  So, here's
>> my, in class, answer to Nick's quiz:
>>
>>
>>
>> nick> What is the difference between a circular explanation and a
>> recursive one.  What is the key dimension that determines whether an
>> explanation is viciously circular?   Is the virtuus dormitiva viciously
>> circular? Why?  Why not?
>>
>>
>>
>> *Recursive explanations contain layers of reasoning (e.g. mechanism vs
>> phenomenon) whereas circular ones are flat.* [bolding by NST]  Vicious
>> circularity simply means "has only 1 layer".  (I disagree with this
>> idea.[*])  The virtus dormitiva has multiple (abstraction of language)
>> layers and, by the single-layer defn of "vicious" is not vicious.
>>
>>
>>
>> Now, on to N[arcissitic]P[ersonality]D[isorder], I think we have 2 types
>> of recursion: 1) communicative, as Frank (probably) tried to point out to
>> me before, and 2) phenomenological.  When we land in an attractor like
>> "something is wrong with Trump", we're still within a single layer of
>> reasoning (intuition, emotion, systemic gestalt, whatever).  If we have a
>> tacit feeling for NPD, we can stay within that single layer and simply
>> assign a token to it: NPD.  But if we're at all reductionist, we'll look
>> for ways to break that layer into parts.  Parts don't necessarily imply
>> crossing layers.  E.g. a meaningful picture can be cut into curvy pieces
>> without claiming the images on the pieces also have meaning.  So 1) we can
>> simply name various (same layer) phenomena that hook together like jigsaw
>> pieces to comprise NPD. Or 2) we can assert that personality traits are
>> layered so that the lower/inner turtles _construct_ the higher/outer
>> turtles.
>>
>>
>>
>> What Frank says below is of type (1).  What Jochen (and others) have
>> talked about before (childhood experiences, etc.) is more like type (2).
>> The question arises of whether the layering of symbolic compression
>> (renaming sets of same-layer attributes) is merely type (1) or does it
>> become type (2).  To me, mere _renaming_ doesn't cut it.  There must be a
>> somewhat objectively defined difference, a name-independent difference.
>> So, if we changed all the words we use (don't use "narcissism",
>> "personality", "disorder", "emptiness", etc. ... use booga1, booga2,
>> booga3, etc.), would we _still_ see a cross-trophic effect?  Note that
>> mathematics has elicited lots of such demonstrations of irreducible
>> layering ... e.g. various no-go theorems.  But those are syntactic
>> _demonstrations_ ... without the vagaries introduced by natural language
>> and scientific grounding.  To assert that problems like natural selection
>> vs. adaptation or the diagnosis of NPD also demonstrate such cross-trophic
>> properties would _require_ complete formalization into math.  Wolpert did
>> this (I think) to some extent.  But I doubt it's been done in evolutionary
>> theory and I'm fairly confident it hasn't been done in psychiatry.  (I
>> admit my ignorance, of course... doubt is a good mistress but a bad master.)
>>
>>
>>
>> More importantly, though, I personally don't believe a recursive cycle is
>> _any_ different from a flat cycle.  Who was it that said all deductive
>> inference is tautology?  I have it in a book somewhere, cited by John
>> Woods.  Unless there is some significantly different chunk of reasoning
>> somewhere in one of the layers, all the layers perfectly _reduce_ to a
>> single layer.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hence, my answer to Nick's quiz (at the pub after class) is that _all_
>> cycles are "vicious" (if vicious means single layer), but if we take my
>> concept of "vicious", then only those cycles that _hide_ behind (false)
>> layers are vicious.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [*] I think a cycle is vicious iff it causes problems.  Tautologies don't
>> cause problems.  They don't solve them.  But they don't cause them either.
>> So a vicious cycle must have more than 1 layer.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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 4:57 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com
>> >
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem WAS:
>> Any non-biological complex systems?
>>
>>
>>
>> +1
>>
>>
>>
>> Having been called a "troll" for most of my adult life, I'd love to hear
>> why Owen lobs the insult.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 06/07/2017 01:54 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>
>> > Owen,
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> > I don’t understand this comment.  Who’s a troll?  Are you trolling,
>> here?  Is this irony?  I don’t follow.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > [...]
>>
>> >
>>
>> > From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com
>> <friam-bounces at redfish.com>] On Behalf Of Owen
>>
>> > Densmore
>>
>> > Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2017 4:40 PM
>>
>> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>>
>> > <friam at redfish.com>
>>
>> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem
>> WAS: Any non-biological complex systems?
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Troll
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> ☣ glen
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>>
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>>
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>
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