Re: [Fis] Part ll, of Søren'sMS

Søren, you said:

>Dear Stan
>Thanks for all these good thought and comments. I confess that i have
>tried to read some of you books but did not get very far. I know I am
>not the only one who found your books hard to read.
     SS: Alas, I know it too well! The problem is, I think, that I tried to
do many things simultaneously, using jargon from many fields in any
sentence. I felt it was necessary, but then... well... Perhaps too soon
(- and later will be too late!.)

So please take this
>opportunity to communicate the central points to us and relate
>constructively to what I have suggested so we can move forward.
     SS: Thank you. I will try:

>I would like to see the mentioned paper.
     SS: Do you mean: Salthe, 2002, General Systtems Bulletin 31:13-17.?
I attach a pdf of this paper. I have pasted in below a short text on
finality in science discourse.

>About your remarks on the mechanistic foundation of cybernetics, then I
>use second order cybernetics. But I agree that it does not really escape
>the problem because it does not make a full philosophy. That is why I
>use Peirce's philosophy as the frame for second order cybernetics,
>including Luhmann's theories of communication and society.
    SS: This in itself I think is a good move.

>The question to which degree we can talk of sign making in non living
>systems is a delicate one. It depends on what you think can constitute
>an interpretant.
     SS: Yes, I have tried a bit in Semiotica 120: 389-394 (The Hoffmeyer
book special issue) and in other places in passing. It is a matter of
getting a definite enough picture of the abiotic dissipative structures.

>Anyway it is on a another level than the biological
>sign games. I would prefer to talk about proto-sign or informational
>signals within formal causation and those relation to the whole
>information science work to be placed at this level, but again in a
>Peircian framework relativizing the way many information processing
>people think of the scope and possibilities of the informational
>explanation.
     SS: I think Peirce himself found no barrier to laying his triadism
upon any aspect of nature. He was not restricted to the living.

>Using Peirce - and being a biologist - I of course agree in synergistic
>evolutionary thinking going all the way to the self-conscious linguistic
>level of humans.
     d'accord!

STAN
>
>
>"Stanley N. Salthe" wrote:
>>
>> X-Sender: marijuan@posta.unizar.es
>> Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 10:13:56 +0100
>> To: "fis-listas.unizar.es" <fis@listas.unizar.es> From: "Pedro C. Marijuán"
>> <marijuan@unizar.es> Mime-Version: 1.0
>>
>> (PART II)
>> For FIS discussion with start 22.Jan. 2004 by Søren Brier, Management,
>> Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, sbr.lpf@cbs.dk
>>
>> I have beeen told that interleaving remarks is not favored in Fis. However,
>> it impossible for me to technically comment on parts of this text without
>> doing so. Only in this way can I make specific points.
>> STAN
>> So, first some general comments:
>> I would point out that, while Nature is not a machine, cybernetics is a
>> mechanistic mode of thinking (although second order cybernetics tries to
>> get away from this), while Peircean semiotic is less so when using its more
>> general categories. As these categories become elaborated, however, they
>> become more precise, and, therefore, more mechanistic as well.
>> The word 'heterarchy', in earlier meanings was meant to convey a
>> messiness of Nature when it was attempted to fit the scale hierarchy model
>> over it. My point is that hierarchy is a model, which fits, to some degree
>> or other, many aspects of Nature, but not necessarilly all.
>>
>> Søren said:
>> >1.Levels emerge through emergent processes when new holons appear through
>> >higher level organization. These principles can be placed into a Peircean
>> >perspective, where potentialities (Firstness) are processes manifested
>> >through constraints and forces (Secondness), into regularities and
>> >patterns (Thirdness). This process is continuing in a recursive manner
>> >from level to level. The new emergent level then acts as a potential for
>> >the development of the next level.
>> SS: The way this is stated, it implies that levels emerge in a pattern
>> of one on top of the next. This is materially impossible. I have argued
>> (Salthe, 1986, Evolving Hierarchical Systems) that new levels always emerge
>> between pre-existing ones.
>>
>> >2. Levels can form and dissolve when their dynamical parameters are near
>> >critical points, like when nucleons form and dissolve in a “quark soup”.
>> >Stabilization requires that the system moves further from the critical
>> >point into organizing patterns, like energy wells.
>> SS: It is my view that stability is anchored to larger scale
>> constraints from higher levels. These foster the emergence, and preserve
>> it as long as they remain in effect.
>>
>> >6. ... Machines lack autopoiesis, reproduction, code-duality, and an inner
>> >organization of membranes, and thus also lack both individually- and
>> >species-based motivation and intentionality and therefore consequently
>> >also the ability to establish a genuine interpretant.
>> SS: Well, if these properties (autopoiesis, code-duality, etc.) can be
>> fully and explicitly stated or modeled, then they would be mechanistic.
>> Membrane organization may not be fully describable, nor motivation and
>> intentionality.
>>
>> >8. Meaning is most manifest in the living systems that fulfill
>> Hoffmeyer’s conditions. But starting from dissipative systems, one can
>> define a heterarchy of pre-living self-organized systems as based on
>> degrees of closure, asymmetry between inside and outside, protocomunication
>> over membranes, digital representation and formation of interfaces.
>> SS: It is important to note that living systems derive from abiotic
>> ones, and so whatever properties they have must have had precursors in the
>> ancestral abiotic systems. We will never understand the origin of life
>> without this consideration. Note that, as evolution proceeded into the
>> sociocultural level, the ability to be more fully explicit increased:
>> {abiotic -> {biotic -> {cultural }}}. This can be viewed as a development
>> of increased definiteness (over, it must be said, a smaller and smaller
>> portion of Nature).
>>
>> >a) A primary chaotic level of continuity, quality, and potentiality, with
>> >the tendency to form habits (Firstness). This would include the quantum
>> >vacuum field as it is conceptualized by modern physics as one aspect only.
>> b) A “causal” level of matter, energy, and causality by natural forces
>> (Secondness and its ‘brute force’). The level of efficient causation much
>> connected with physics.
>> c) An informational cybernetic system level of quasi-semiotic signals that
>> encompass the goal-oriented mechanical systems described by first-order
>> classical cybernetics. Described from a cybersemiotic view, concepts of
>> information as signals of differences make sense only when interpreted as
>> quasi-signs. This is the level of formal causation much connected with
>> chemistry and the level of reflexes in the body. d) The semiotic level
>> belonging to all living systems (biosemiotics) and is much connected with
>> biology. The living systems are the basis of true triadic semiosis --
>> producing signification spheres in sign games. This level encompasses the
>> work of Uexküll (1934) and ethologists such as Lorenz (1970-1971, 1973) and
>> Tinbergen (1973) within a broad semiotic framework. This is the level where
>> unconscious final causation dominates.
>> e) The level of conscious languaging systems (language games, arguments) is
>> so far occupied only by the social realm of humans and their culture. Here
>> final causation is full-blown in self-consciousness.
>> SS: These levels look to me like integrative levels in a specification
>> hierarchy: {physical world {material/chemical world {biological world
>> {sociopolitical world}}}}, not the scalar levels talked about above. I
>> think it is important to keep track of what we are making here. These two
>> hierarchies can both be applied to any system, but it helps clear thinking
>> to distinguish them -- especally since they have different properties (see
>> Salthe, 2002, General Systtems Bulletin 31:13-17.).
>>
>> >Sign-making is thus immanent in nature, but manifest only in full triadic
>> >semiosis within autopoietic living systems.
>> SS: I contest this. It is manifest in abiotic dissipative structures,
>> but in much vaguer, even episodic, form
>>
>> >Brier.pdf>pdf Questions:
>> 1.Can’t we avoid the metaphysics?
>> SS: There is a metaphysic involved in so-called avoiding M.
>>
>> >2.Is a theory of levels really necessary?
>> SS: It depends upon what we wish a theory to show, and how we wish to
>> show it. You could have a network model instead if you like.
>>
>> >3. Aren’t we supposed to keep mind and meaning out of scientific theories?
>> SS: That is science as it has been -- the handmaiden of technology,
>> with entirely pragmatic aims. Complexity science already has escaped
>> instrumental purposes!
>>
>> >6. Is final causation a scientific concept?
>> SS: I have made it out to be (I have a short MS on this for any who
>> would like to see it), but not for science as it HAS been.
>>
>> >7. Is it possible to define science on another basis than the mechanistic?
>> SS: Again, I think so, but this brings in finality, internalism,
>> vagueness, semiotics, etc.
>>
>> >8. If we have given up the belief in a universal mechanistic science
>> >shouldn’t we then avoid grand schemes like the intended her as they are
>> >unscientific in their base.
>> SS: In my view what is to be avoided is full explicitness in modeling.
>>
>> STAN
-------------------------------------------------------------------
November, 2002 - March, 2003
 A Gallery of Final causes:

(1) Classical Aristotelian final cause. The attraction of developments by
their Telos. I see various versions ranging from (a) the mechanistic
biological notion of genetic information (playing the role of a fixed
Telos) entraining ontogeny, to (b) a more open idea that any
self-organizing system gradually constructs (discovers) the self (Telos)
that will be awaiting its development when that process is winding down
after maturity. Logically this process of individuation can be demonstrated
to be finalistic in the sense that, when a unique self finally appears
fully blown, we can see that it implies (material implication, conceptual
subordination) the last stage that led to it, and that that stage implies
the prior stage, and so on.

2) Anticipation by the "hyperincursion" model of Daniel Dubois, via the
"generative entrenchment" concept of William Wimsatt, and other similar
ideas. A system acts in such a way as to narrow its possible actions in the
future. Results of past actions embed themselves in the system memory, and
the results of later actions push these earlier records into a position to
constrain subsequent actions at an even earlier stage in their generation.
The system's activities become increasingly less adventuresome as it
develops, with results more easily predicted in advance. The system goes
>from having a memory to anticipating the future. Finality is already
implicit in memory, and gets established as inertia, routines, maps, etc.
-- as, in short, anticipation.

(3) The Aristotelian idea that final cause is that which a process
(development, construction, evolution) furthers (as part of the four causes
perspective). The generalization: {variational principle { function {
purpose }}} shows the full range of this idea, from human purpose to the
likes of the Second Law of thermodynamics. In scientific discourse, any
maximizing or minimizing tendency comes under this type. For example, in
neoDarwinian evolutionary theory, the fitness of a population is maximized
above various tradeoffs among changes in morphological traits and
behaviors. The theory imposes fitness maximization as a final cause
(without calling it that).

(4) A special application of the last type -- the social construction of
knowledge. An example makes it clear. There is an agricultural pest.
Chemical companies will try to manufacture a pesticide; biotechnology
companies will try to construct a better predator; environmentalists will
design a new agrisystem to minimize damage by the pest. Each group has
constructed a different world (its Umwelt, of Uexküll), with a different
pest, and their preconceptions determine in advance what kind of solution
they will come up with. To some extent this must be true of all material
systems, which will be biased in one way or another due to their material
embodiment, which excludes some possibilities even as it enables others.

(5) The attraction of dynamics by structural attractors. This works both in
the world of simulations and, presumably, in the material world. The
attractors are part of the large scale, global structure of the system
within which the dynamics take place, and so are external to the dynamics
that may access them. Once in place they do not change except very slowly
with respect to the dynamics they constrain, but different degrees of
simultaneous attraction toward several structures at given locales can
result in fairly unique entrainments -- still showing the tell-tale
similarities not directly inherited from ancestral systems.

(6) The response of the dynamics of a small scale system to boundary
conditions imposed by the results of large scale dynamics in the same
supersystem. These boundary conditions impose their constraint prior to
some action by the small scale system, but, because the large scale system
would not change significantly during the activity of a small scale one
(its cogent moment being much larger), these same boundary conditions will
still be in effect when the small scale activity has ended. That is to say,
these boundary conditions will not only inform the initiation of an action,
but will 'call for it' (B. C. Patten) simultaneously from the future (of
the small scale system). In this category we find the entrainment of
faster changing dynamics by slower ones.

(7) From Koichiro Matsuno, the necessity for local activities to occur in
such a way as to further equilibration, as well as to seek internal
consistency among responses to multiple impinging rival pressures and
affordances, as well as the necessity for activities in different locales
to further global equilibration and overall dynamical consistency, as
viewed from outside the system. The latter is necessitated in material
systems by lack of instantaneous communication from one locale to another,
so that each locale is always lagged with respect to all others. Local
perturbations, tradeoffs, and contingencies are continually disrupting
progress of any kind, so that all activities are continually working to
regain lost consistency and to continue deferred equilibration. An example
of this in neoDarwinian evolutionary theory is Van Valen's Red Queen
hypothesis, where any evolutionary improvement in one population in a biome
will force all others to adjust, in an endless evolutionary jockeying among
populations to keep energy shares flowing through them as before.

(Edwina's reaction: [This isn't] too clear to me - i.e. -- the value of the
differences between them. I consider final cause to be located in the
community, the network, i.e., outside the singular unit, and it is
'pulling' the unit within its constraints.)
     SS: Looks OK for 1,a; could work in 2; definitely in 3, OK in some
sense for 7, but not in the others. So, my view is more general than hers.

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