Posted by
Nick Thompson on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Robert-Rosen-tp525527.html
Glen,
thanks for your fascinating answer.
It answers all my questions for the moment. Here is the present state of my thinking of the Praeludium, which I have now read four times and with which my concern is approaching obsession.
For what it is worth, I agree with Rosen (Praeludium, Life Itself) that formal systems are examples of models or, more precisely, that the relation of the formal system and the thing it represents is a modeling relation. But the modeling relation is much more ubiquitous than that. Natural selection is an example in good standing of a model but, as Owen Densmore keeps reminding me, is not a formalism. I think it is a general property of models that they are intentional. An intentional relation is one in which the truth or falsity of an assertion depends on the point of view from which he world is seen. The classic philosophical example has to do with Lady Astor* and the Titanic. As an "extensional" utterance, the statement that Lady Astor booked passage on the Titanic is plainly true. Whatever else one might say about the Titanic does not change the truth value of the utterance. That was the boat she booked herself on and she was on it when it hit the iceberg. However, as an intentional utterance, its truth value is utterly dependant on the point of view from which the titanic is seen. She probably did book passage on the Largest Ship in the White Star Line, and she did book passage on the ship whose maiden voyage was a society event on both sides of the Atlantic. We can have some confidence in these assertions, because behaviors directed toward status are part of what we know about Lady Astor's behavior repertoire.* She did not, in this sense, book passage on the ship that hit an iceberg and sank in the north Atlantic: not, I would assert, that because that idea was not in a mythic place called her mind, or even lodged in her brain, but because nothing in the design of Lady Astor's behavior is congruent with that intent. She was not into risky behavior. Thus, the formalism, "Lady Astor Booked Passage On the Titanic" is too impoverished in entailments to capture the essential quality of her act. Or to put it round the other way, "an infinite number of distinct formalizations ... [would be required ] ... to capture all the qualities ... [of her act.]
What Rosen seems to be saying in the Prelude of LI is that formalisms are like other models is this respect. They are intentional in that their truth value depends to some degree on the uses to which the formalism is going to be put, where the formalizer is headed when the formalization is applied. With out that "reference" any formalism is incomplete. thus, to be a good formalism, a formalism has to be in some sense informal, right?
Nick
* My deep apologies to Lady Astor and her ancestors. In point of fact, I know nothing of lady Astor ... full stop. With full some prejudice based solely on her Name, I grant her whatever qualities are necessary for my exposition. She is a model, and like every unfortunate thing that has ever been used as a model, she has been abused. For all I know, she may have been a London street urchin whose first name was Lady and who climbed into a trunk on the pier and never knew upon what ship she booked passage.
Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthompson at clarku.edu)
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