Reflections on optimality theory (and society)
Folks,
Sorry for rehashing an old issue, but I have had a chance to think about
during recent travels. As you may recall, Pedro and others suggested a
number of cases in which optimality has been proposed for a number of
complex systems for which some version of "information" is
relevant. I raised a number of caveats (that reduce to two) for
optimality theory. As I as thinking more on this issue, several thing
occurred to me that are important for issues of optimality, complexity
and self-organization.
First, there was an interesting session at the Leuven meetings of the
International Society for Histroy, Philsophy and Social Studies of
Biology on optimality versus self-organization as a source of biological
ordering. It was organized by Werner Callebaut. (Brief advertisement:
next meetings of ISHPSSB are in Vienna in July 2003, sponsored by the
Konrad Lorenz Institute: information at www.kli.ac.at). At that meeting
the two approaches were opposed. When I asked the optimality people how
they justified their optimality claims, they answered that it was
justified by selection theory and the truth of natural selection. I
argued that they needed proof of optimality (the hypothesis of
optimality) must be tested in each case -- both the optimality and with
respect to what. This was seen as superfluous by the optimality
theorists, unless there was another competing hypothesis.
I have since wondered if self-organization can also lead to a sort of
optimality. I have written about this in several places, but perhaps the
most significant are two papers with Mark Burch on rhythmic entrainment,
“Symmetry, Levels and Entrainment” John Collier and Mark Burch
Proceedings of the International Society for Systems Sciences,
2000, and “Order From Rhythmic Entrainment and the Origin of Levels
Through Dissipation” John Collier and Mark Burch, Symmetry: Culture
and Science Order / Disorder, Proceedings of the Haifa Congress,
1998 Vol. 9, Nos. 24 (1998): 165-178. There are other things in
“Information originates in symmetry breaking” Symmetry: Culture &
Science 7 (1996): 247256, “Dealing With the Unexpected.
Partial Proceedings of CASYS 2000: Fourth International Conference on
Computing Anticipatory Systems, International Journal of Computing
Anticipatory Systems, 10, pp. 2130, published by CHAOS 2001, and
“Complexly Organised Dynamical Systems”, with C.A. Hooker, Open
Systems and Information Dynamics, 6 (1999): 241-302. The basic
idea is that self-organization minimizes effort required compared to all
other possible ways of organizing. This is an optimality principle of
sorts, but not like the usual ones because it is highly integrative over
all aspects of a dynamical system, not just with respect to one aspect
like selection. I should add that if this perspective is taken, my two
caveats about optimality are defeated.
I had not realized that I might have been taken to be arguing against a
position I have advocated. Given the use of "optimality" inmost
optimality theory. I do not think that the self-organizational type is of
the same sort, since it is not goal oriented, but adjusts goals also to
minimize effort, which is an end in fact (teleomatic), but not in design
(teleonomic or teleological). Since most optimality theory is phrased in
design terms, I would say that it is, in general, off the
track.
Incidentally, Mark Burch and I suggest social applications in our two
papers. My objections to the use of game theory (and its implicit
optimality assumptions) are very similar. In complex systems, designed
optimality will fail.
John
Received on Thu Nov 21 19:58:14 2002
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