Q6. Meaning, constraint and formalization.

Dear Pedro and FISers

Pedro wrote on July the 5th relatively to John's Q6
(Is this characterization of meaning formalizable,
and in particular is the notion of the constraint of
the system formalizable? ):

>As I had replied to Cristophe in a previous message I am very intrigued
>with 'the constraint' notion as an interlevel ascending tool (by the way,
>perhaps using 'constraints' would be better). They appear to me as
>computational surrogates to climb, or to descend, the commands from an
>adjacent level of complexity description. Usually, our sciences establish
>new 'principles' and ad hoc disciplines in order to contemplate the
>emerging existentialities at higher or lower levels. If so, the
>'principles' or 'constraints' or 'reglaments' or 'constitutions' matter
>quite a lot for our understanding of the emerging info entities...

It is true that the notion of constraint is not the easiest thing to
formalize when we stay in the systemic field. It can have there many
understandings, depending on the system.
So, as Pedro says, it may appear overall as a "computational
surrogate to climb or descend the commands from an adjacent level of
complexity description". The problem with these "adjacent levels of
complexity" is that they are better understood today as adjacent and
ordered than they are in their nature or chaining. We can say that, via
evolution, matter came before life, and life came before human. But we
do not know how to explain level n+1 from level n. How did matter
produce life ? how did life product human ? These question are still
looking for answers.
If answers were available, it would be rather easy to find a common
definition for the "constraint" of the Meaning Generator System,
clearly applicable to all the different levels of complexity.
And we could perhaps think about some generic formalization. But today
these different levels of complexity remain distincts.
So I feel that we cannot do more than find a loose general definition
for "constraint", without being too much demanding on its strict
applicability at each level of complexity. Next step being to see
how this definition can be tuned for each level and how the constraint
can be more precisely defined and formalized at each level.
(Pedro, perhaps were you anticipating this point when saying
that "using 'constraints' would be better" ?)
An easy general (and rather loose) definition for "constraint" in the
systemic background could be: "the ensemble of automatisms, rules,
laws and finalities that the system must respect to satisfy its nature".
Application for life is quite easy as the nature of life is rather well
understood: the constraints of a living system are to survive and to
reproduce (vital constraints). If the living system is not able to
survive, it will die and loose its nature of living element. If the
living element is not capable of reproducing itself, its nature as a
species will disappear.
Application of the definition to human is more difficult, as we do not
know the nature of human (and more precisely the nature of mind). So
we are not currently in a position to list the constraints of human
(that would come in addition to the constraints of life).
But this is not a stopper. I feel we just need to investigate more,
keeping the same approach. These problems are rather stimulating.
One could even say that trying to understand the chaining of different
levels of complexity through their corresponding constraints could make
available some new tools to look at the nature of these levels (this
introduces the topic of "evolution of the constraints").

I hope the above has provided some clarification on the usage made of
the word 'constraint' and about possible formalizations.

Regards

Christophe Menant
Received on Tue Jul 9 00:04:47 2002