I'll present some brief ideas on entropy, networks and the present
thread, which is far from being mature, but perhaps it can be
chiseled into a better form. This way, we'll see the connection between
the seemingly far-fetched philosophical discussion and the topic of the
present thread.
1. ENTROPY FOR HIERARCHIES
Let's focus on the level of a (possibly compound) system, composed of
components, which are themselves composed from molecules. The energy
posessed by the components is X, and the energy posessed by the
molecules is Y. The total energy is X+Y, and this is interpreted as
fixed in most contexts of thermodynamics, but we interpret Y as entropy.
The second law of thermodynamics can be interpreted as saying that
whatever you do, molecules never take less than the components.
Let's take this to economics: the funds of a corporation are X, the
funds of its employees are Y. In a zero-sum game, closed system,
X+Y=constant. Whatever goes on, employees won't give their money to the
corporation, but will happily take money from the corporation. This way,
we can predict the dispersal of the corporation. HENCE, the corporation
can only exist when there is an inflow of funds from outside. This
doesn't mean that everyone in a corporation will happily disperse: there
can be sub-corporate entities that cut in the intermediate space between
the corporation as a whole and an individual employee.
The message is that when you have an emergent system, such as the body
or a corporation, it is built on simpler systems that are only involved
in cooperative behavior so that their own energy is maintained or increased.
The other message is that unless you take take entropy as a metaphor,
it's easy to dismiss as "reductionist".
2. EMOTION, HOPE, SUSTAINABILITY, SURVIVAL
I'm going to be quite un-romantically neo-Darwinian now, to everyone's
chagrin, I guess...
Emotion can be seen as an evolved mechanism to keep human beings
cooperating (attachment, friendship), surviving (fear, disgust),
reproducing (love), and taking care of their offspring (parental love,
generosity) in their pursuit of happiness. The quiet integrating inertia
of emotion protects against the brittle differentiating chaotic nature
of reason.
Maximizing the sheer number of humans *counters* with their ability to
survive in the long run: this leads to the degradation of the
environment, to an increased risk of quickly transmitted diseases. No,
this is not the goal. The goal is balancing on the Quality(cultural,
sexual and Darwinian selection)~Quantity(cultural and sexual
reproduction, cellular division).
So evolution takes place at many levels. The key realization is that one
level sits on top of other levels. You cannot survive under an x-ray
machine because your cells are dependent on stable molecules and atoms.
A culture that consumes its people in wars, or expends its best people
without letting them reproduce (e.g., through an overextended education
that interferes with reproduction), is a dying one. See the failure of
communism/socialism, see the failure of nazism, see the failure of
industrial age capitalism, and perhaps the impeding failure of systems
that currently exist: these were the cultures that didn't pay attention
to the level they were built upon (the productive culture-building
people in contrast to the unproductive and selfish). That's one aspect
of what sustainability is about, the other is the environment. Or
perhaps I should call it survivability, not sustainability.
Now my version of Pascal wager. I don't know what's the case:
a) there is a sustainable way, there is a meaning
b) there is none.
I do know what are my options:
1) learn, work hard and hope
2) give up
The outcomes
a)&1) = win
a)&2) = lose
b)&1) = lose
b)&2) = lose
Therefore, learn what there is, pick something that's worth believing
into, and then hope for the best, working hard. I won't sacrifice myself
for a culture that I don't believe is sustainable, though.
Some replies:
Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
> This is a social-darwinistic model of society and therefore not
attractive
> to Soren and me. In addition to being "in the system," we are
also
> reflexive.
My comment to Soren was not about sociobiology, though, and my reference
to "your philosophy" did not refer to Soren's philsophy (that would be
very offensive).
I was merely trying to concoct a physicalist theory of meaning in terms
of Stan's hierarchies: the higher level is the 'meaning' of the lower
level, and the lower level is the 'fact' to a higher level. This way one
avoids the recursive self-referential loop (What is A to A? What is the
feeling of feeling cold? What is the meaning of meaning?), also see
general semantics [http://www.esgs.org/uk/goal.htm]
We are able to think about societies, their purpose and meaning, so we
are indeed able to think of things that are greater than we are. Even
our own thinking about our own purpose and meaning is an example of
this. Of course, the thinking is not complete and perfect, but if one
accepts that thinking is essentially a web of constructs, we can discuss
different theories of meaning: all of them are oversimplified, but some
we might like better than the others.
> The social system has developed, for example, a juridical system
> which tries to prevent people from perishing when they are weak. The
> dynamics of philosophies ("your philosophy will perish") are in
important
> ways different from the dynamics at the level of species. These
> in the dynamics provide us with room for generating a knowledge-based
> economy. Scientific knowledge is often based on counter-factuals and
> counter-intuitive by nature.
I agree that the dynamics is different, but still I find it similar
enough so that the same explanatory metaphors can be used. I have seen
my share of technologies and methodologies that have perished, a great
many of dead ends. And there too are means of protecting and saving the
weak, like the web archive [http://www.archive.org],
and various
sanctuaries for old software
[http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32_freeware.html]
and old computer games
[http://www.the-underdogs.org/]. Nevertheless,
a lot unnamed things have
perished, and I'm sure this is the case of philosophy as well. Beware
the trap: if you can remember it, it hasn't perished yet.
> Thus, the natural ("biological") order of things is a dangerous
> argument at the level of society because one risks to
> throw away the child with the bathing water (i.e., culture).
> The differences between "biological" evolution and cultural
evolution are to
> be celebrated if we wish to understand how a knowledge-based subdynamics
can
> counteract upon the "natural" order of things. I write
"biological"
> deliberately between quotation marks because the biological sciences are
> part and parcel of this culture.
Agreed. But naturalistic approaches do speak of co-evolution between
culture and population, so the workers in the area are well aware of the
problem. The devices, however, are at a lower level, see culture as an
emergent phenomenon, but do not model it (with some exceptions, see
"memes"). It's the same as the interface between chemistry and biology,
or between psychology and sociology.
While chemistry and biology, psychology and sociology peacefully
coexist, humanists and naturalists keep throwing insults at one another.
Most naturalists don't take the time to understand philosophy and just
ridicule it and dismiss it in their naive overconfidence; most humanists
fear the one-sided uninformed brashness of naturalists, and then employ
scare tactics. I guess the problem is in the competition between
psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and between sociology and
evolutionary psychology. With the escalated temper at both sides, there
is rarely an opportunity to exchange ideas.
Aleks
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Received on Wed May 11 11:43:43 2005
