Replying to Igor (and footnotes to John H and John C)
I will attempt to reply to Igor's interesting posting, where he
distinguishes strongly between self-organization, SOC, and autocatalytic
systems, all of which, it seems to me could nevertheless be aspects of any
natural system. So, my view is not to suggest that these different ideas
are related, but that they may all be modeling different aspects of some
complex dynamic material system, which, in addition, would necessarily --
if located somewhere -- be regulated by environmental conditions.
Any natural dynamical system self-organizes, but only under the tutelage of
current boundary conditions (some of which may be recursive upon the
actions of the system). And some of these would be like the externalties of
classical economics. As well, some of these, it seems to me, would be
formally like the 'tunings' of economic systems, even though the latter
have been influenced by human projects and would emerge from within a
system. As for being "externally driven", such systems often/?always would
come into being as a result of environmental forcings.
Self-organizing natural systems would undergo development, and would not
become "steady state" until they reached that stage (I call it maturity) in
their development. SOC is observed when systems designed to show it reach
(if they do) steady state, ignoring the development of the system up until
that time (which is often very rapid in the simple systems usually
examined). In some natural cases that development could have autocatalytic
properties, which would be more likely to become salient in more
complicated systems.
So, I guess my point is that all of these ideas could be applied to a
single system. As in SOC, the system could be initited by some external
forcing (efficient cause). After being initiated, it might self-organize
(based on material causes), and, if it has some duration and complication,
autocatalysis (a formal cause) could feature in its development, as well as
some kind of process of internal tuning via feedbacks on recursive
constraints if the system is complicated enough. Is a syncretic picture
like this not reasonable?
________________
Re John H's:
>Stanley, Pedro
>I like the 'ingredience' metaphor -
>
><What accumulated around this nail was variety of ingredients --
><indeed, the soup's informational entropy increased! This could be
><holistically assessed by taste, which would vary with the amounts of
the
><various ingredients. The infrastructure here is the boiling pot, of
><course, and the infostructure the ingredients, which blended ever more
upon
><cooking, become ever more dispersed among the others, achieving
eventually
><a fine symmetry of structure.
>
>An informational experience which binds the (primordial) soup and gives it
>body, flavour and taste is like the herbs and spices which enhance the raw
>
>(structural/hierarchical) ingredients as listed in the recipe. If we focus
>on the boiling pot (systemic infrastructure) cookbook (systemic
infostructure)
>
>or the hierarchical levels (recipe instructions) we may never become
experts
>in the phenomenology of making and drinking soup - which often turns out
to
>be neither an elegant nor a symmetrical 'solution'.
SS: Indeed, each discipline in itself is merely a partial/particular
view, even if each is in itself totalizing, ignoring the others.
_______________________
John C wrote:
>Another fairly recent approach to economics is so-called neuroeconomics.
>The idea is to see what is going on inside the head during problems like
>gambling decisions, and in general to understand the neural basis of
>decision making. Three of my colleagues of a grant to do fMRI studies on
>gambling cases. So far the field is just getting off the ground, but my
>feeling is that so far it is quite reductionist, and it pays little
>attention to information flow or processing (I hope to correct that).
>Secondly, the current assumptions tend to lead to looking for reward
>increases and decreases rather than reorganization and emergence of new
>patterns. I suppose that is OK for a new field. In any case, the
>neuroeconomists think they might eventually have something to say to
>economists about the nature of economic decision making.
SS: One can guess from the "reward" trope that the
orientation is
Skinnerian-Darwinian ("selection by consequences"). Not surprising, since
that simplistic -- empty -- mechanism has invaded many fields.
STAN
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Received on Thu Jun 2 22:31:20 2005
