SUO: Ontology of systems
Leonid --
Thanks for this reference. At some point I wanted to open a thread for the
ontology of systems, including complex adaptive systems, dissipative
structures, autopoietic systems, et al. Your note has provided a starting
point for that thread.
Doug McDavid
Certified Executive Consultant
Business Innovation Services - IBM, US
Member of IBM Academy of Technology
mcdavid@us.ibm.com -- 916-549-4600
Leonid Ototsky <leo@mmk.ru>@ieee.org on 01/11/2001 10:04:11 PM
Please respond to Leonid Ototsky <leo@mmk.ru>
Sent by: owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
To: "West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK" <Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com>
cc: "Horn, Graham" <graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>, "'pat hayes'"
<phayes@ai.uwf.edu>, standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
Subject: Re[4]: SUO: RE: Re: More KIF-ified Ontology Content
Dear Matthew,
Thursday, January 11, 2001, 11:02:26 PM, you wrote:
WMMSGU> This can be a useful way to think about it, i.e. as classes and
relations
WMMSGU> existing for all time, rather than being timeless. However,
strictly with a
WMMSGU> 4D viewpoint you are standing outside time and looking at what is
going on
WMMSGU> as if it were just another linear dimension, a bit mind stretching.
May be the problem is more complex and there is a need in more
systemic point of view . See for example the qoutes from the Stafford
Beer's
preface to the "Autopoiesis and Cognition" by Maturana & Varela book.
<<
The authors first of all say that an autopoietic system is a homeostat. We
already know what
that is: a device for holding a critical systemic variable within
physiological limits.
They go on to the definitive point: in the case of autopoietic homeostasis,
the critical
variable is the system's own organization. It does not matter, it seems,
whether every
measurable property of that organizational structure changes utterly in the
system's process
of continuing adaptation. It survives.
This is a very exciting idea to me for two reasons. In the first place it
solves the
problem of identity which two thousand years of philosophy have succeeded
only in further
confounding. The search for the `it' has led farther and farther away from
anything that
common sense could call reality. The `it' of scholasticism is a
mythological substance in
which anything attested by the senses or testable by science inheres as a
mere accident - its
existence is a matter of faith. The `it' of rationalism is unrealistically
schizophrenic,
because it is uncompromising in its duality - extended substance and
thinking substance.
The `it' of empiricism is unrealistically insubstantial and ephemeral at
the same time -
esse est percipi is by no means the verdict of any experiencing human
being.
The `it' of Kant is the transcendental `thing-in-tself' - an untestable
inference, an
intellectual gewgaw. As to the `it' of science and technology in the
twentieth century world
Their `it' is notified precisely by its survival in a real world. You
cannot find it by
analysis, because its categories may all have changed since you last
looked. There is no need
to postulate a mystical something which ensures the preservation of
identity despite
appearances. The very continuation is `it'. At least, that is my
understanding of the authors'
thesis - and I note with some glee that this means that Bishop Berkeley got
the precisely right
argument precisely wrong. He contended that something not being observed
goes out of existence.
Autopoiesis says that something that exists may turn out to be
unrecognizable when you next
observe it. This brings us back to reality, for that is surely true.
Leonid