Kontopoulos, K., 1993. The Logics of Social Structure, Cambridge University Press.
Ch. 1: Epistemic Strategies in Contemporary Science
The author identifies five distinct epistemic strategies:
“(1) We may define the strategy of reduction…as adhering to a strict microdeterminsim; that is, wholes are nothing more than their parts suitably combined to form a certain level of complexity and, thus, that higher levels of organization are determined and explained by their lower levels of organization, down to the most elementary level of quantum physics (2) In contrast, the strategy of construction or composition is rooted in a partial microdeterminsim, but also pays significant attention to relational-interactional and contextual-ecological variables. That is, this strategy considers the higher levels of organization as products not merely of the aggregation or integration of lower level parts, but of the interaction of these parts with the contextual-ecological ‘exigencies.’ The result is a constructionist, weak emergence of novel forms and properties practically irreducible to their constituent parts. (3) The strategy of heterarchy (moderate emergence), the newest and, admittedly, least developed, strategy, is defined as underdetermination of the macrostructure(s) by the given microparts and as semiautonomous emergence of higher-level phenomena out of lower level phenomena. Therefore it is a strate4gy that supports a nonreductivematerialist position, explaining the emergence of novelty and higher-level properties and laws without falling into untenable dualist or idealist traps. (4) Hierarchy (strong emergency), is a full-fledged hierarchical emergence of more robust macroentities and partial overdetermination of the microparts by the dominant, organizing principles of the new higher entities. Hierarchy is a modified, and clearly more defensible, substitute for holism. (5) Finally, the strategy of systemic transcendence (systemic functionalism, vitalism, holism) is defined as a downward, strong determination of the microparts by the macrosystem; the latter seen as an autonomous, higher entity superimposed on the lower systemic parts in a control-hierarchical manner that clearly supports the claims of a dualist metaphysics” (12-3).
Kontopoulos then goes on to highlight these different epistemic approaches.
“As a caveat, we must begin with the recognition that the concept of emergence is one of the most elusive, pluri-semantic, patently charged concepts in the current vocabulary of science and philosophy; the analytical eludication of the term is still in progress and the task now looks to be richer yet harder and more controversial than origicanlly thought” (20).
Kontopoulos lists different concepts of emergence:
“Level 0: the Democritean…notion of integration, subject to reduction
Level 1: two notions of weak emergence:
1.1: an ecological-contextual notion of emergence at the prebiotic levels
1.2: an evolutionist-selectionist…notion of emergence in the neo-Darwinian and post-=Darwinian sense
Level 2: a moderate notion of emergence of semi-autonomous macrostructures heterarchically related to the microparts and underdetermined by them
Level 3: the strong notion of emergence as a hierarchy based on applied constraints and a peculiar downward control
Level 4: a transcending notion—if the hypothesis of group and species selection…find strong support—emphasizing holism, strong macrodetermination of microparts, vitalism, and mentalism. The notion of dualist control also belongs here” (21).
What does emergence look like at the higher levels as defined above?: “Generally speaking, most of the significant contributors opt to explain emergence in terms of some particular notion of constraints superimposed on entities in a cumulative, successive mode…For the time being it suffices to point out that the talk of ‘constraints’ refers descriptively to the process of the restriction of a system’s ‘degrees of freedom’; the existence of such constraints appears as, at least, the necessary, if not sufficient, condition for robust emergence to occur” (22).
Showing posts with label Emergence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emergence. Show all posts
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Jervis: System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life
Jervis, R., 1997. System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life, Princeton University Press.
“We are dealing with a system when (a) a set of units or elements is interconnected so that changes in some elements or their relations produce changes in other parts of the system, and (b) the entire system exhibits properties and behaviors that are different from those of the parts” (6).
Jervis begins the book with a quote about double hulled ships, and a claim that this will surely decrease oil spills. He makes a general point that the results of double-hulling a ship are to some degree unknown (unknowable?). His point carries over to WWI and deals with causation: the reason countries engaged in war was not singly faceted but complex. “As these cases show, it is difficult to know what will happen in a system, but at minimum we can say that a change at one point will have wide ranging effects” (9).
“The phrase ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; can call up images of metaphysical ‘holism’ and organic metaphors. That is not what I have in mind. If we are dealing with a system, the whole is different from, not greater than, the sum of the parts. Reductionism—seeking to understand the system by looking only at the units and their relations with one another—is not appropriate. Many academic disciplines have come to this conclusion, although often using different terminologies. Economics rests in part on an understanding of the ‘fallacy of composition.’ Biologists who study entire organisms see the world differently than their colleagues who work on the level of cells of molecules. Interactional psychology rests on the parallel sense that what seem to be immutable personality traits are in fact formed by the interaction between the individual and her surroundings, including, if she is in therapy, the behavior of the therapist, which in turn, is influenced by her” (13-4).
However, Jervis does not see emergence as representing the core of his analysis, but rather interconnection. Interconnection represents the overdetermined nature of the relationships between various variables at different levels of analysis. The interconnected nature of all variables in an open system makes it neigh impossible to forecast future events and the results of future interaction.
While this chapter read almost nihilistic/relativist in its approach to understanding the outcomes from these systems, this is clearly not the scope of the remainder of the book. The second chapter deals with system effects, something that I greatly need to read about, but not at this moment.
“We are dealing with a system when (a) a set of units or elements is interconnected so that changes in some elements or their relations produce changes in other parts of the system, and (b) the entire system exhibits properties and behaviors that are different from those of the parts” (6).
Jervis begins the book with a quote about double hulled ships, and a claim that this will surely decrease oil spills. He makes a general point that the results of double-hulling a ship are to some degree unknown (unknowable?). His point carries over to WWI and deals with causation: the reason countries engaged in war was not singly faceted but complex. “As these cases show, it is difficult to know what will happen in a system, but at minimum we can say that a change at one point will have wide ranging effects” (9).
“The phrase ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; can call up images of metaphysical ‘holism’ and organic metaphors. That is not what I have in mind. If we are dealing with a system, the whole is different from, not greater than, the sum of the parts. Reductionism—seeking to understand the system by looking only at the units and their relations with one another—is not appropriate. Many academic disciplines have come to this conclusion, although often using different terminologies. Economics rests in part on an understanding of the ‘fallacy of composition.’ Biologists who study entire organisms see the world differently than their colleagues who work on the level of cells of molecules. Interactional psychology rests on the parallel sense that what seem to be immutable personality traits are in fact formed by the interaction between the individual and her surroundings, including, if she is in therapy, the behavior of the therapist, which in turn, is influenced by her” (13-4).
However, Jervis does not see emergence as representing the core of his analysis, but rather interconnection. Interconnection represents the overdetermined nature of the relationships between various variables at different levels of analysis. The interconnected nature of all variables in an open system makes it neigh impossible to forecast future events and the results of future interaction.
While this chapter read almost nihilistic/relativist in its approach to understanding the outcomes from these systems, this is clearly not the scope of the remainder of the book. The second chapter deals with system effects, something that I greatly need to read about, but not at this moment.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Wendt: The State as Person in International Theory
Wendt, A., 2004. The state as person in international theory. Review of International Studies, 30(02), 289-316.
“To say that states are ‘actors’ or ‘persons’ is to attribute to them properties we associate first with human beings—rationality, identities, interests, beliefs, and so on. Such attributions pervade social science and International Relations (IR) scholarship in particular…all this discussion assumes that the idea of state personhood is meaningful and at some fundamental level makes sense. In a field in which almost everything is contested, this seems to be one thing on which almost all of us agree” (289).
“My objectives are threefold…the first is simply to distinguish several questions one might ask about it and to identify some scholarship that bears on them…My second purpose is to expand on my earlier realist argument that ‘states are people too’…Finally, I explore how far a realist view of state persons might be pushed, even if this means leaving physicalims behind” (291).
One way of exploring this question is by looking at what constitutes a person. A person can be seen as being constituted both from the inside and the outside. There were times when people were internally people but not recognized externally (slavery, etc.). There were also times where animals were internally not persons but were externally recognized as such (Wendt cites an article about animal trials in the middle ages, really an interesting read in footnote 16).
States as well have the internal recognition and the external recognition issues to deal with. Internally, states have legitimate right to the use of force. Externally, they are recognized as being sovereign. This, however, is not the case as Wendt highlights Taiwan as being internally but not externally a state and Somalia as being externally but not internally a state.
Wendt then goes on to claim that we need to highlight different kinds of “state”. These are psychological persons, legal persons and moral persons. “In modern societies infants are legal persons but not psychological or moral ones; women are psychological persons, but historically often not legal or moral ones; corporations can be morel persons even if they are not psychological ones; and so on” (294).
“In sum, how we address whether states are people too will depend on two choices—whether to focus on their legal, moral, or psychological personhood, and on their inside or outside constitution. For the first…here I shall deal with states only as psychological persons, since this is how they are treated in most IR scholarship…For the second, I shall explore only the inside constitution of state persons, since this is the hard case of the realist view” (295).
Wendt then points out the rationalist perspective on persons: there are four properties. First, identity is static. Second, persons have opinions about their surroundings. Thirdly, they are motivated by “transitive” desires. Finally, they act rationally, defined as utility maximization. The rationalists get it right when they talk about intentionality, but they miss out on the requirements of a person being both an organism and having consciousness.
Reductionism, supervenience and emergence are discussed.
Then there is a discussion that “deepens” the understanding of state as organism or superorganism.
“To say that states are ‘actors’ or ‘persons’ is to attribute to them properties we associate first with human beings—rationality, identities, interests, beliefs, and so on. Such attributions pervade social science and International Relations (IR) scholarship in particular…all this discussion assumes that the idea of state personhood is meaningful and at some fundamental level makes sense. In a field in which almost everything is contested, this seems to be one thing on which almost all of us agree” (289).
“My objectives are threefold…the first is simply to distinguish several questions one might ask about it and to identify some scholarship that bears on them…My second purpose is to expand on my earlier realist argument that ‘states are people too’…Finally, I explore how far a realist view of state persons might be pushed, even if this means leaving physicalims behind” (291).
One way of exploring this question is by looking at what constitutes a person. A person can be seen as being constituted both from the inside and the outside. There were times when people were internally people but not recognized externally (slavery, etc.). There were also times where animals were internally not persons but were externally recognized as such (Wendt cites an article about animal trials in the middle ages, really an interesting read in footnote 16).
States as well have the internal recognition and the external recognition issues to deal with. Internally, states have legitimate right to the use of force. Externally, they are recognized as being sovereign. This, however, is not the case as Wendt highlights Taiwan as being internally but not externally a state and Somalia as being externally but not internally a state.
Wendt then goes on to claim that we need to highlight different kinds of “state”. These are psychological persons, legal persons and moral persons. “In modern societies infants are legal persons but not psychological or moral ones; women are psychological persons, but historically often not legal or moral ones; corporations can be morel persons even if they are not psychological ones; and so on” (294).
“In sum, how we address whether states are people too will depend on two choices—whether to focus on their legal, moral, or psychological personhood, and on their inside or outside constitution. For the first…here I shall deal with states only as psychological persons, since this is how they are treated in most IR scholarship…For the second, I shall explore only the inside constitution of state persons, since this is the hard case of the realist view” (295).
Wendt then points out the rationalist perspective on persons: there are four properties. First, identity is static. Second, persons have opinions about their surroundings. Thirdly, they are motivated by “transitive” desires. Finally, they act rationally, defined as utility maximization. The rationalists get it right when they talk about intentionality, but they miss out on the requirements of a person being both an organism and having consciousness.
Reductionism, supervenience and emergence are discussed.
Then there is a discussion that “deepens” the understanding of state as organism or superorganism.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Archer: For Structure
Archer, M., 2000. For structure: its reality, properties and powers: A reply to Anthony King. The Sociological Review, 48(3), 464-472.
“As Bhaskar wrote, ‘the real problem appears to be not so much that of how one could give an individualistic explanation of social behaviour, but that of how one could ever give a non-social (ie, strictly individualistic) explanation of individual, at least characteristically human behaviour! For the predicates designating properties special to persons all pre-suppose a social context for other employment. A tribesman implies a tribe, the cashing of a cheque a banking system. Explanation, whether by subsummption under general laws, advertion to motives and rules, or redescription…alw3ays involves irreducibly social predicates’” (464).
Realist social theory uses analytical dualism and not philosophical dualism, as stated by King. It is analytical for very instrumental reasons. The interaction: Structural Conditioning -> Social Interaction -> Structural Elaboration never allow for structure and agency to interact simultaneously, but they do provide for analytical tools for exploring the behavior of the micro/macro.
Archer re-presents the three kinds of emergence: numerical emergence, relational emergence and bureaucratic emergence.
Numerical Emergence: It is not simply that individuals can change things if they want to and if they possess enough information, as stated by Watkins. It is also the result of the social structure surrounding them. For example, if a small part of a population is literate and tries to improve the literacy rates for others, it will take longer than if a larger part of the population was in their shoes.
Relational Emergence: uses the example of the division of labor and how collective productive activity was on aggregate more than individual action. First order emergence, more efficient pin making, leads to second order emergence, wealthier nations, leads to third order emergence, current advantages in education, for example.
Bureaucratic Emergence: the emergent nature of roles.
UPDATE: Distinguishing emergence from aggregation: "has the generative capacity to modify the powers of its constituents in fundamental ways and to exercise causal influences sui generis. This is the litmus test which differentiates between emergence on the one hand and aggregation and combination on the other" (466)
“As Bhaskar wrote, ‘the real problem appears to be not so much that of how one could give an individualistic explanation of social behaviour, but that of how one could ever give a non-social (ie, strictly individualistic) explanation of individual, at least characteristically human behaviour! For the predicates designating properties special to persons all pre-suppose a social context for other employment. A tribesman implies a tribe, the cashing of a cheque a banking system. Explanation, whether by subsummption under general laws, advertion to motives and rules, or redescription…alw3ays involves irreducibly social predicates’” (464).
Realist social theory uses analytical dualism and not philosophical dualism, as stated by King. It is analytical for very instrumental reasons. The interaction: Structural Conditioning -> Social Interaction -> Structural Elaboration never allow for structure and agency to interact simultaneously, but they do provide for analytical tools for exploring the behavior of the micro/macro.
Archer re-presents the three kinds of emergence: numerical emergence, relational emergence and bureaucratic emergence.
Numerical Emergence: It is not simply that individuals can change things if they want to and if they possess enough information, as stated by Watkins. It is also the result of the social structure surrounding them. For example, if a small part of a population is literate and tries to improve the literacy rates for others, it will take longer than if a larger part of the population was in their shoes.
Relational Emergence: uses the example of the division of labor and how collective productive activity was on aggregate more than individual action. First order emergence, more efficient pin making, leads to second order emergence, wealthier nations, leads to third order emergence, current advantages in education, for example.
Bureaucratic Emergence: the emergent nature of roles.
UPDATE: Distinguishing emergence from aggregation: "has the generative capacity to modify the powers of its constituents in fundamental ways and to exercise causal influences sui generis. This is the litmus test which differentiates between emergence on the one hand and aggregation and combination on the other" (466)
King: Against Structure
King, A., 1999. Against Structure: A Critique of Morphogenetic Social Theory. The Sociological Review, 47(2), 199-227.
This represents a criticism of Archer’s morphogenetic social theory because of its “autonomous social structure” (199). This, King finds contradictory. King tries to, “re-habilitate the interpretive tradition which Archer dismisses…” (199).
“The central claim of Archer’s morphogenetic social theory is to maintain a stratified social ontology. Society must be understood and analyzed as the interaction over time of objective structure and individual, subjective agency or of the macro and the micro” (199).
Archer argues for the ontological separation of society from individuals. “As a consequence of her insistence upon the dual nature of social reality, Archer is vehement in her rejection of any social theory which seems to threaten to collapse social reality into either the structural and objective or individual and subjective dimensions because these approaches will necessarily involve either the exaggeration or elimination of human freedom and the misrepresentation of the Janus-faced nature of society” (202).
Archer uses structural, agential and cultural emergence to tread the fine line between a theory of structure that is not reducible to individualist interpretations. King takes issue with this and explores the claims of structural emergence claiming that these can all be traced back to actions taken by individuals at one moment in time. Discusses three types of structural emergence: numerical, relational and bureaucratic.
Argues against these structurally emergent properties. Argues against relational emergence by saying that the interpretive tradition does not reduce all effects to an individual, but to individuals, and that all emergent properties can be reduced to individuals.
Archer also explores numerical emergence through literacy in Cuba.
Archer explores bureaucratic emergence through the concept of roles.
“This article has tried to demonstrate the interpretive tradition’s rejection of the concept of structure on the grounds that structure is not autonomous, pre-existent or causal” (222).
This represents a criticism of Archer’s morphogenetic social theory because of its “autonomous social structure” (199). This, King finds contradictory. King tries to, “re-habilitate the interpretive tradition which Archer dismisses…” (199).
“The central claim of Archer’s morphogenetic social theory is to maintain a stratified social ontology. Society must be understood and analyzed as the interaction over time of objective structure and individual, subjective agency or of the macro and the micro” (199).
Archer argues for the ontological separation of society from individuals. “As a consequence of her insistence upon the dual nature of social reality, Archer is vehement in her rejection of any social theory which seems to threaten to collapse social reality into either the structural and objective or individual and subjective dimensions because these approaches will necessarily involve either the exaggeration or elimination of human freedom and the misrepresentation of the Janus-faced nature of society” (202).
Archer uses structural, agential and cultural emergence to tread the fine line between a theory of structure that is not reducible to individualist interpretations. King takes issue with this and explores the claims of structural emergence claiming that these can all be traced back to actions taken by individuals at one moment in time. Discusses three types of structural emergence: numerical, relational and bureaucratic.
Argues against these structurally emergent properties. Argues against relational emergence by saying that the interpretive tradition does not reduce all effects to an individual, but to individuals, and that all emergent properties can be reduced to individuals.
Archer also explores numerical emergence through literacy in Cuba.
Archer explores bureaucratic emergence through the concept of roles.
“This article has tried to demonstrate the interpretive tradition’s rejection of the concept of structure on the grounds that structure is not autonomous, pre-existent or causal” (222).
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Hayek: The Use of Knowledge in Society
Hayek, F. A. (1945). "The Use of Knowledge in Society". American Economic Review, 35(4), 519-530.
”What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order?” (521). Hayek begins by wondering how it is necessarily possible for people to structure an economic order. If there is full transparency and information, then there really isn’t a problem. However, as Hayek rightly notes, there is not full transparency or information: it is impossible to know fully the desires of their neighbor. The problem is thus, “…the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality” (520).
All economic activity, whether centralized or decentralized, according to Hayek, involves planning. “Which of these systems is likely to be more efficient depends mainly on the question under which of them we can expect that fuller use will be made of the existing knowledge” (521). If we are looking for experts to use this knowledge, it then becomes a complicated problem of choosing the expert. “What I wish to point out is that, even assuming that this problem can be readily solved, it is only a small part of the wider problem” (521).
Scientific knowledge, or the knowledge of experts, will never be the full extent of knowledge. There are other kinds of knowledge that each person possesses that goes above and beyond this professional, elitist knowledge. This is the knowledge of a particular time and space, in the words of Hayek (522). This is a knowledge of needs, desires and goals that can never be fully understood by scientific knowledge.
Additionally, the need for economic planning tends to take place when issues of change arise. This presents a situation in that the scientist must explore her own knowledge and eventually determine a course of action. However, Hayek claims that the type of knowledge that is accessed by these scientists is not necessarily the correct type of knowledge for the situation at hand. In reality, the type of knowledge that must be accessed in order to make economic policy decisions is of a particular time and place, it is owned by a particular individual. This type of knowledge can not be evaluated in the realm of statistics.
There then remains the problem of how you provide the necessary information about the current situation to the person with the knowledge of a particular time and space. Hayek wonders how much information this person requires and eventually concludes that they do not need more information than that is provided them by their immediate surroundings. They only need to know the cost of producing something, that there is more or less of a factor in supply and that the price of various goods has changed and to what level they have changed. These prices eventually act as a tool for coordinating the actions of the many people in a market place; they are the catalyst for bringing the many individuals with particular information of a time and space together to make informed collective decisions.
At the end of the piece, he takes issue with Professor Schumpeter’s formulation of market interaction, where people are taking into consideration very large amounts of knowledge that border on full knowledge. First of all, it is crucial for Hayek to assume that the fullness of knowledge is unattainable. Secondly, he uses this assumption to make the claim that large groups of people with limited knowledge must come together to make decisions. Thirdly, he determines that prices are the mechanism whereby these individuals are able to come together to achieve socially optimum levels of production and consumption, or, rather, economic equilibrium that is, by definition, particular to a time and a space.
”What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order?” (521). Hayek begins by wondering how it is necessarily possible for people to structure an economic order. If there is full transparency and information, then there really isn’t a problem. However, as Hayek rightly notes, there is not full transparency or information: it is impossible to know fully the desires of their neighbor. The problem is thus, “…the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality” (520).
All economic activity, whether centralized or decentralized, according to Hayek, involves planning. “Which of these systems is likely to be more efficient depends mainly on the question under which of them we can expect that fuller use will be made of the existing knowledge” (521). If we are looking for experts to use this knowledge, it then becomes a complicated problem of choosing the expert. “What I wish to point out is that, even assuming that this problem can be readily solved, it is only a small part of the wider problem” (521).
Scientific knowledge, or the knowledge of experts, will never be the full extent of knowledge. There are other kinds of knowledge that each person possesses that goes above and beyond this professional, elitist knowledge. This is the knowledge of a particular time and space, in the words of Hayek (522). This is a knowledge of needs, desires and goals that can never be fully understood by scientific knowledge.
Additionally, the need for economic planning tends to take place when issues of change arise. This presents a situation in that the scientist must explore her own knowledge and eventually determine a course of action. However, Hayek claims that the type of knowledge that is accessed by these scientists is not necessarily the correct type of knowledge for the situation at hand. In reality, the type of knowledge that must be accessed in order to make economic policy decisions is of a particular time and place, it is owned by a particular individual. This type of knowledge can not be evaluated in the realm of statistics.
There then remains the problem of how you provide the necessary information about the current situation to the person with the knowledge of a particular time and space. Hayek wonders how much information this person requires and eventually concludes that they do not need more information than that is provided them by their immediate surroundings. They only need to know the cost of producing something, that there is more or less of a factor in supply and that the price of various goods has changed and to what level they have changed. These prices eventually act as a tool for coordinating the actions of the many people in a market place; they are the catalyst for bringing the many individuals with particular information of a time and space together to make informed collective decisions.
At the end of the piece, he takes issue with Professor Schumpeter’s formulation of market interaction, where people are taking into consideration very large amounts of knowledge that border on full knowledge. First of all, it is crucial for Hayek to assume that the fullness of knowledge is unattainable. Secondly, he uses this assumption to make the claim that large groups of people with limited knowledge must come together to make decisions. Thirdly, he determines that prices are the mechanism whereby these individuals are able to come together to achieve socially optimum levels of production and consumption, or, rather, economic equilibrium that is, by definition, particular to a time and a space.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Luhmann: Social Systems
Luhmann, Niklas. (1995). Social systems. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
"What distinguishes autopoietic systems from machines and the closed systems of classical equilibrium thermodynamics is the recursivity of their operations: they ‘not only produce and change their own structures’ but ‘everything that is used as a unit by the system is produced as a unit by the system itself’” (xx).
“The theory of self-referential systems maintains that systems can differentiate only by self-reference, which is to say, only insofar as systems refer to themselves…in constituting their elements and their elemental operations” (9). “The…distinction between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ systems is replaced by the question of how self-referential closure can create openness” (9).
“Our thesis, namely, that there are systems, can now be narrowed down to: there are self-referential systems…there are systems that have the ability to establish relations with themselves and to differentiate these relations from relations with their environment” (13).
“There is agreement within the discipline today that the point of departure for all systems-theoretical analysis must be the difference between system and environment” (16). “The environment receives its unity through the system and only in relation to the system…Accordingly, the environment has no self-reflection or capacity to act” (17).
“As a paradigm, the difference between system and environment forces systems theory to replace the difference between the whole and its parts with a theory of system differentiation. System differentiation is nothing more than the repetition of system formation within systems” (18) “…the entire system multiplies itself as a multiplicity of system/environment differences” (18).
“The difference between system and environment must be distinguished from a second, equally constitutive difference: namely, the difference between element and relation” (20).
“Just as there are no systems without environments or environments without systems, there are no elements without relational connections or relations without elements” (20).
“Whether the unity of an element should be 0065lained as emergence ‘from below’ or as constitution ‘from above’ seems to be a matter of theoretical dispute. We opt decisively for the latter. Elements are elements only for the system that employs them as units and they are such only through this system. This is formulated in the concept of autopoiesis. One of the most important consequences is that systems of a higher (emergent) order can possess less complexity than systems of a lower order because they determine the unity and number of the elements that compose them’ thus in their own complexity they are independent of their material substratum…Thus emergence is not simply an accumulation of complexity, but rather an interruption and new beginning in the constitution of complexity” (22-3).
“We will call an interconnected collection of elements ‘complex’ when, because of immanent constraints in the elements’ connective capacity, it is no longer possible at any moment to connect every element with every other element” (24).
Autopoiesis: Self referent systems are systems ‘for themselves’, that are, “…independent of the cut of observation by others” (33). “ON the level of this self-referential organization, self-referential systems are closed systems, for they allow no other forms of processing in their self-determination. Thus. Social systems have no use for consciousness, and personal systems no use for frequency changes in the neuronal system” (34).
“The living system is inaccessible to the psychic system; it must itch, hurt, or in some other way attract attention in order to stir another level of system formation—the consciousness of the psychic system into operation” (40).
Chapter 2: Meaning
This chapter only concerns psychic and social systems.
“Psychic and social systems have evolved together. At any time the one kind of system is the necessary environment of the other…Persons cannot emerge and continue to exist without social systems, nor can social systems without persons…Both kinds of systems are ordered according to it [a common achievement, namely, meaning], and for both it si binding as the indispensable, undeniable form of their complexity and self-reference. We call this evolutionary achievement ‘meaning’” (59). Meaning forces a narrowing down of options and leads directly to selection. Anything of importance is perceived vis-à-vis meaning.
Meaning exists on the plane between what should be and what is. “…meaning processing constantly shapes anew the meaning-constitutive difference between actuality and potentiality. Meaning is the continual actualization of potentialities” (65).
Information is the key to allowing meaning to be understood as beyond a mere tautology. Meaning is a tautology because it defines itself by the system in that it exists. Meaning is, “…processing of itself by itself” (67). Information is, “…an event that selects system states” (67).
Information is, by definition, something that informs. Thus, once it has been digested by a system, is ceases to be information and essentially dies. Information selects system states, that is, new data that enters the system allows the system to reiterate itself.
“Thus no meaning-constituting system can escape the meaningfulness of all its own processes. But meaning refers to further meaning. The circular closure of these references appears in its unity as the ultimate horizon of all meaning: as the world” (69). The world takes on a character that is transcendent, god-like: “The historical semantics of different concepts of ‘world’ has reflected in many ways this double status of the world as simultaneously containing and transcending itself as description: …the relationship to a God who can be experienced everywhere as the center of the world, but nowhere as its boundary” (69).
Chapter 3: Double Contingency
“…action cannot take place if alter makes his action dependent on how ego acts, and ego wants to connect his action to alter’s. A pure circle of self-referential determination, lacking any further elaboration, leaves action indeterminate, makes it indeterminable. This is not a matter of mere behavioral agreement, nor of coordinating the interests of intentions of different actors. Instead, it concerns a basic condition of possibility for social actions as such. No action can occur without first solving this problem of double contingency…” (103).
The basic situation of double contingency is then simple: two black boxes, by whatever accident, come to have dealing with one another” (109). This situation is very reminiscent of Sartre’s construction of the self’s relation to the other.
Chapter 4: Communication and Action
Are social systems made up of actions, or communications? What is the relationship between the two? “…the basal process of social systems, which produces their elements, can only be communication” (138).
Action is necessary for interpreting communication; communication does not imply action. “The difference between constitution and observation can and must e built back into the theory. In this chapter, the concepts of communication and action accomplished that. Communication is the elemental unit of self-constitution; action is the elemental unit of social systems; self-observation and self-description…Therefore the question of which individuals, atoms, and elements compose social systems cannot be answered more simply. Any simplification at this point would mean a loss in the wealth of references, which a general theory of social systems can hardly afford” (175).
Chapter 5: System and Environment
“Everything that happens belongs to a system (or to many systems) and always at the same time to the environment of other systems...every increase in complexity in one place increases the complexity of the environment for all other systems (177).
Chapter 6: Interpenetration
“This chapter deals with a specific environment of social systems: human beings and their relations to social systems” (210). Relations of interpenetration and binding are a core feature of the relationship between human beings and social systems, as well as human beings and other human beings.
“The foregoing theoretical preparations allow us to formulate a question. We distinguished social interpenetration from interhuman interpenetration. Moreover, by examining problems of complexity and relationships of interpenetration, we explained the advantages of binary schematisms. Our question now is: is there a binary schematism that can serve both kinds of interpenetration at once, that works in a way functionally diffuse enough to reduce the complexity of both social interpenetration and interhuman interpenetration? The answer is yes. This is the special function of morality” (234). “Morality is a symbolic generalization that reduces the full reflexive complexity of doublely contingent ego/alter relations to expressions of esteem and by this generalization open up (1) room for the freeplay of conditionings and (2) the possibility of reconstructing complexity through the binary schematism esteem/distain [seen as the effect of morality on subjects’ view of other, or ego’s view of alter]” (236).
“To be sure, legs remain leg and ears remain ears, despite all sociocultural evolution. As environment, the body is given in advance to society…But as a highly complex agglomeration of systems, one that can therefore be conditioned, the body has a meaning that allows complexity in social systems to appear as available: one immediately sees, takes into account, and anticipates that one can behave in one way or another. But this unity of complexity, as well as this immediacy in orienting to it, are not the body itself; they become a unity and an immediacy only in the difference schemata produced by interpenetration” (251).
Chapter 7: The Individuality of Psychic Systems
Social systems represent the environment for psychic systems. While individualists believe that the psychic system can be observed sans the social system, this account clearly claims that this is not possible. “Every versions of individualist reductionism has encountered the objection that, as reductionism, it cannot be fair to the ‘emergent’ properties of social systems” (256).
“The contention that social systems are not composed of individuals and cannot be created out of bodily or psychic processes does not mean, of course, that there are not individuals in the world of social systems. On the contrary, a theory of self-referential autopoietic social systems provokes the question of psychic systems’ self-referential autopoiesis and with it the question of how psychic systems can establish their self-reproduction, the ‘stream’ of their ‘conscious life,’ from one moment to the next so that its closure is compatible with an environment of social systems” (257).
Chapter 8: Structure and Time
Structure is not a sensible way for a theory of autopoietic systems to develop. Self-referential theories to not fall into the structuralist or structuralist functionalist realm of sociological theories. That structure is being discussed in chapter 8 of this book indicates its relative importance to the theory.
Chapter 9: Contradiction and Conflict
Chapter 10: Society and Interaction
Chapter 11: Self-Reference and Rationality
Chapter 12: Consequences for Epistemology
"What distinguishes autopoietic systems from machines and the closed systems of classical equilibrium thermodynamics is the recursivity of their operations: they ‘not only produce and change their own structures’ but ‘everything that is used as a unit by the system is produced as a unit by the system itself’” (xx).
“The theory of self-referential systems maintains that systems can differentiate only by self-reference, which is to say, only insofar as systems refer to themselves…in constituting their elements and their elemental operations” (9). “The…distinction between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ systems is replaced by the question of how self-referential closure can create openness” (9).
“Our thesis, namely, that there are systems, can now be narrowed down to: there are self-referential systems…there are systems that have the ability to establish relations with themselves and to differentiate these relations from relations with their environment” (13).
“There is agreement within the discipline today that the point of departure for all systems-theoretical analysis must be the difference between system and environment” (16). “The environment receives its unity through the system and only in relation to the system…Accordingly, the environment has no self-reflection or capacity to act” (17).
“As a paradigm, the difference between system and environment forces systems theory to replace the difference between the whole and its parts with a theory of system differentiation. System differentiation is nothing more than the repetition of system formation within systems” (18) “…the entire system multiplies itself as a multiplicity of system/environment differences” (18).
“The difference between system and environment must be distinguished from a second, equally constitutive difference: namely, the difference between element and relation” (20).
“Just as there are no systems without environments or environments without systems, there are no elements without relational connections or relations without elements” (20).
“Whether the unity of an element should be 0065lained as emergence ‘from below’ or as constitution ‘from above’ seems to be a matter of theoretical dispute. We opt decisively for the latter. Elements are elements only for the system that employs them as units and they are such only through this system. This is formulated in the concept of autopoiesis. One of the most important consequences is that systems of a higher (emergent) order can possess less complexity than systems of a lower order because they determine the unity and number of the elements that compose them’ thus in their own complexity they are independent of their material substratum…Thus emergence is not simply an accumulation of complexity, but rather an interruption and new beginning in the constitution of complexity” (22-3).
“We will call an interconnected collection of elements ‘complex’ when, because of immanent constraints in the elements’ connective capacity, it is no longer possible at any moment to connect every element with every other element” (24).
Autopoiesis: Self referent systems are systems ‘for themselves’, that are, “…independent of the cut of observation by others” (33). “ON the level of this self-referential organization, self-referential systems are closed systems, for they allow no other forms of processing in their self-determination. Thus. Social systems have no use for consciousness, and personal systems no use for frequency changes in the neuronal system” (34).
“The living system is inaccessible to the psychic system; it must itch, hurt, or in some other way attract attention in order to stir another level of system formation—the consciousness of the psychic system into operation” (40).
Chapter 2: Meaning
This chapter only concerns psychic and social systems.
“Psychic and social systems have evolved together. At any time the one kind of system is the necessary environment of the other…Persons cannot emerge and continue to exist without social systems, nor can social systems without persons…Both kinds of systems are ordered according to it [a common achievement, namely, meaning], and for both it si binding as the indispensable, undeniable form of their complexity and self-reference. We call this evolutionary achievement ‘meaning’” (59). Meaning forces a narrowing down of options and leads directly to selection. Anything of importance is perceived vis-à-vis meaning.
Meaning exists on the plane between what should be and what is. “…meaning processing constantly shapes anew the meaning-constitutive difference between actuality and potentiality. Meaning is the continual actualization of potentialities” (65).
Information is the key to allowing meaning to be understood as beyond a mere tautology. Meaning is a tautology because it defines itself by the system in that it exists. Meaning is, “…processing of itself by itself” (67). Information is, “…an event that selects system states” (67).
Information is, by definition, something that informs. Thus, once it has been digested by a system, is ceases to be information and essentially dies. Information selects system states, that is, new data that enters the system allows the system to reiterate itself.
“Thus no meaning-constituting system can escape the meaningfulness of all its own processes. But meaning refers to further meaning. The circular closure of these references appears in its unity as the ultimate horizon of all meaning: as the world” (69). The world takes on a character that is transcendent, god-like: “The historical semantics of different concepts of ‘world’ has reflected in many ways this double status of the world as simultaneously containing and transcending itself as description: …the relationship to a God who can be experienced everywhere as the center of the world, but nowhere as its boundary” (69).
Chapter 3: Double Contingency
“…action cannot take place if alter makes his action dependent on how ego acts, and ego wants to connect his action to alter’s. A pure circle of self-referential determination, lacking any further elaboration, leaves action indeterminate, makes it indeterminable. This is not a matter of mere behavioral agreement, nor of coordinating the interests of intentions of different actors. Instead, it concerns a basic condition of possibility for social actions as such. No action can occur without first solving this problem of double contingency…” (103).
The basic situation of double contingency is then simple: two black boxes, by whatever accident, come to have dealing with one another” (109). This situation is very reminiscent of Sartre’s construction of the self’s relation to the other.
Chapter 4: Communication and Action
Are social systems made up of actions, or communications? What is the relationship between the two? “…the basal process of social systems, which produces their elements, can only be communication” (138).
Action is necessary for interpreting communication; communication does not imply action. “The difference between constitution and observation can and must e built back into the theory. In this chapter, the concepts of communication and action accomplished that. Communication is the elemental unit of self-constitution; action is the elemental unit of social systems; self-observation and self-description…Therefore the question of which individuals, atoms, and elements compose social systems cannot be answered more simply. Any simplification at this point would mean a loss in the wealth of references, which a general theory of social systems can hardly afford” (175).
Chapter 5: System and Environment
“Everything that happens belongs to a system (or to many systems) and always at the same time to the environment of other systems...every increase in complexity in one place increases the complexity of the environment for all other systems (177).
Chapter 6: Interpenetration
“This chapter deals with a specific environment of social systems: human beings and their relations to social systems” (210). Relations of interpenetration and binding are a core feature of the relationship between human beings and social systems, as well as human beings and other human beings.
“The foregoing theoretical preparations allow us to formulate a question. We distinguished social interpenetration from interhuman interpenetration. Moreover, by examining problems of complexity and relationships of interpenetration, we explained the advantages of binary schematisms. Our question now is: is there a binary schematism that can serve both kinds of interpenetration at once, that works in a way functionally diffuse enough to reduce the complexity of both social interpenetration and interhuman interpenetration? The answer is yes. This is the special function of morality” (234). “Morality is a symbolic generalization that reduces the full reflexive complexity of doublely contingent ego/alter relations to expressions of esteem and by this generalization open up (1) room for the freeplay of conditionings and (2) the possibility of reconstructing complexity through the binary schematism esteem/distain [seen as the effect of morality on subjects’ view of other, or ego’s view of alter]” (236).
“To be sure, legs remain leg and ears remain ears, despite all sociocultural evolution. As environment, the body is given in advance to society…But as a highly complex agglomeration of systems, one that can therefore be conditioned, the body has a meaning that allows complexity in social systems to appear as available: one immediately sees, takes into account, and anticipates that one can behave in one way or another. But this unity of complexity, as well as this immediacy in orienting to it, are not the body itself; they become a unity and an immediacy only in the difference schemata produced by interpenetration” (251).
Chapter 7: The Individuality of Psychic Systems
Social systems represent the environment for psychic systems. While individualists believe that the psychic system can be observed sans the social system, this account clearly claims that this is not possible. “Every versions of individualist reductionism has encountered the objection that, as reductionism, it cannot be fair to the ‘emergent’ properties of social systems” (256).
“The contention that social systems are not composed of individuals and cannot be created out of bodily or psychic processes does not mean, of course, that there are not individuals in the world of social systems. On the contrary, a theory of self-referential autopoietic social systems provokes the question of psychic systems’ self-referential autopoiesis and with it the question of how psychic systems can establish their self-reproduction, the ‘stream’ of their ‘conscious life,’ from one moment to the next so that its closure is compatible with an environment of social systems” (257).
Chapter 8: Structure and Time
Structure is not a sensible way for a theory of autopoietic systems to develop. Self-referential theories to not fall into the structuralist or structuralist functionalist realm of sociological theories. That structure is being discussed in chapter 8 of this book indicates its relative importance to the theory.
Chapter 9: Contradiction and Conflict
Chapter 10: Society and Interaction
Chapter 11: Self-Reference and Rationality
Chapter 12: Consequences for Epistemology
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sawyer: Social Emergence
Sawyer, R. Keith. (2005). Social emergence : societies as complex systems. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
This account examines the history of sociological thought relating to micro-macro issues and presents the concept of emergence as the third-wave of sociology. Additionally, this account attempts to map out the place that emergence plays in both psychology and sociology. Also, there is an examination of the ability to model emergent behavior using agent-based models.
The first distinction that is made examines the descriptions of societies that have existed throughout history. For example, early in the study of sociology, there was what Sawyer terms a mechanistic interpretation of history. Later on, there developed an organic view of social interaction that, “…compared the various institutions of society to the organs of the human body” (1). Later, there appeared a structural-functional approach which was based on studies of cybernetics and that was promoted by Talcott Parsons. “Common to all of these approaches is the basic insight that societies are complex configurations of many people engaged in overlapping and interlocking patterns of relationships with one another” (1).
Sawyer argues that there is a third-wave of sociological approaches that goes a long way to resolve long-standing debates in the field. For example, this new approach takes an agent based computer simulation to create artificial societies. These can be used to explore emergent phenomena. Later in the book, he refers to this third-wave as providing a synthesis of the first two waves.
The concept of emergence is contentious for Sawyer. He explores how it has been used in sociology and psychology and finds usages to be contradictory. He attempts to correct this problem in the later chapters of his book by exploring a concept of social emergence. Emergence is typically understood as being phenomena that exist as “higher level properties” (2) that emerge from lower level properties. Emergence also refers to “complex phenomena are those that reside between simplicity and randomness” (3). Some theorists (Kauffman 1993) refer to this as being at the “edge of randomness (3). “In complex systems so conceived, relatively simple higher-level order ‘emerges’ from relatively complex lower-level processes” (3).
Emergent phenomena are seen by many as necessarily being unpredictable, irreducible to regular laws and novel (4). Typically, this paradigm is associated with complexity theory. Complexity theory is seen as being the opposite of reductionist theories. In terms of the relative preponderance of emergent phenomena, the nature of the system is important. Four characteristics have been identified that make emergent phenomena more likely: many components in density, global functions are distributed not to individuals but broadly, global system is impossible to fully decompose into smaller systems, and that communication plays a crucial role (4-5).
There has been a traditional divide between atomism and holism. Emergentism bridges this divide. It, “…is a form of nonreductionism that accepts the ontological position of materialism…[it] accepts that nothing exists except the component parts and their interactions, and thus avoids the ontological problem of holism [how can holist features have an ontology if they are merely the sum of lower-level interactions?]. However, the emergentist also rejects atomism and argues that reductionism, physicalism, mechanism, and epiphenomenalism are not necessary consequences of materialism. Some complex natural phenomena cannot be studied with reductionism methods; these phenomena are complex systems in which more comple4x and differentiated ‘higher-level’ structures emerge from the organization and interaction of simpler, ‘lower-level’ component parts” (29).
Sawyer also touches on the study of economics and argues that it holds the position as the core of social science approaches because it deals with emergent phenomena. He briefly mentions Hayek, Arrow and Menger. They all explain emergent phenomena and believe that, while it can not be reduced to the agency of individual actors, it can be explained by looking at individual action. Sawyer would like sociology to take the place as the zenith discipline in the social sciences. By deploying a theory of social emergence, Sawyer believes that this will become possible.
In the 10th chapter, our author becomes very explicit about his long-term goals for the study of emergence in the social sciences. “Social emergence is the central phenomenon of the social sciences” (189). “In th4e second half of the twentieth century, economics has made the best case for being the foundational social science, by making social emergence central to its theory and practice” (189). Sociology can play this role, if it develops the emergence paradigm.
He explores the three waves of sociology, once again, and finds that the first wave was too rigid and simple, the second wave built on the first wave by highlighting the interaction between structure and agent (and Sawyer considers Luhmann to be a second-wave sociological theorist). Sawyer has three problems with second-wave theories: they do not theorize between social structure and interaction, between individual and interaction and they have not conceptualization of social emergence (206-7).
The emergence paradigm is then launched. It involves five stages of development between the micro and macro levels. The stages proceed in the following order: individual (agency, etc.), interaction (communication, etc.), ephemeral emergents (things that emerge from agent and communication that are unlikely to remain), stable emergents (subcultures, slang, social practices, etc.) and then social structure (laws, infrastructure, etc.).
Sociology should be considered with the “circle of emergence” (220). This circle cuts through all five levels of the emergence paradigm, but does not dive as deeply down into the first level or as high into the fifth level. The implication is that sociology can be the theory that links together all of the social sciences: it does not do psychology (bottom of the first level) nor does it do law (top of the fifth level). However, it does link these schools together by providing a framework for understanding how phenomena move between the bottom and top levels. It is, in essence, the tool that mitigates the levels of analysis problem.
This account examines the history of sociological thought relating to micro-macro issues and presents the concept of emergence as the third-wave of sociology. Additionally, this account attempts to map out the place that emergence plays in both psychology and sociology. Also, there is an examination of the ability to model emergent behavior using agent-based models.
The first distinction that is made examines the descriptions of societies that have existed throughout history. For example, early in the study of sociology, there was what Sawyer terms a mechanistic interpretation of history. Later on, there developed an organic view of social interaction that, “…compared the various institutions of society to the organs of the human body” (1). Later, there appeared a structural-functional approach which was based on studies of cybernetics and that was promoted by Talcott Parsons. “Common to all of these approaches is the basic insight that societies are complex configurations of many people engaged in overlapping and interlocking patterns of relationships with one another” (1).
Sawyer argues that there is a third-wave of sociological approaches that goes a long way to resolve long-standing debates in the field. For example, this new approach takes an agent based computer simulation to create artificial societies. These can be used to explore emergent phenomena. Later in the book, he refers to this third-wave as providing a synthesis of the first two waves.
The concept of emergence is contentious for Sawyer. He explores how it has been used in sociology and psychology and finds usages to be contradictory. He attempts to correct this problem in the later chapters of his book by exploring a concept of social emergence. Emergence is typically understood as being phenomena that exist as “higher level properties” (2) that emerge from lower level properties. Emergence also refers to “complex phenomena are those that reside between simplicity and randomness” (3). Some theorists (Kauffman 1993) refer to this as being at the “edge of randomness (3). “In complex systems so conceived, relatively simple higher-level order ‘emerges’ from relatively complex lower-level processes” (3).
Emergent phenomena are seen by many as necessarily being unpredictable, irreducible to regular laws and novel (4). Typically, this paradigm is associated with complexity theory. Complexity theory is seen as being the opposite of reductionist theories. In terms of the relative preponderance of emergent phenomena, the nature of the system is important. Four characteristics have been identified that make emergent phenomena more likely: many components in density, global functions are distributed not to individuals but broadly, global system is impossible to fully decompose into smaller systems, and that communication plays a crucial role (4-5).
There has been a traditional divide between atomism and holism. Emergentism bridges this divide. It, “…is a form of nonreductionism that accepts the ontological position of materialism…[it] accepts that nothing exists except the component parts and their interactions, and thus avoids the ontological problem of holism [how can holist features have an ontology if they are merely the sum of lower-level interactions?]. However, the emergentist also rejects atomism and argues that reductionism, physicalism, mechanism, and epiphenomenalism are not necessary consequences of materialism. Some complex natural phenomena cannot be studied with reductionism methods; these phenomena are complex systems in which more comple4x and differentiated ‘higher-level’ structures emerge from the organization and interaction of simpler, ‘lower-level’ component parts” (29).
Sawyer also touches on the study of economics and argues that it holds the position as the core of social science approaches because it deals with emergent phenomena. He briefly mentions Hayek, Arrow and Menger. They all explain emergent phenomena and believe that, while it can not be reduced to the agency of individual actors, it can be explained by looking at individual action. Sawyer would like sociology to take the place as the zenith discipline in the social sciences. By deploying a theory of social emergence, Sawyer believes that this will become possible.
In the 10th chapter, our author becomes very explicit about his long-term goals for the study of emergence in the social sciences. “Social emergence is the central phenomenon of the social sciences” (189). “In th4e second half of the twentieth century, economics has made the best case for being the foundational social science, by making social emergence central to its theory and practice” (189). Sociology can play this role, if it develops the emergence paradigm.
He explores the three waves of sociology, once again, and finds that the first wave was too rigid and simple, the second wave built on the first wave by highlighting the interaction between structure and agent (and Sawyer considers Luhmann to be a second-wave sociological theorist). Sawyer has three problems with second-wave theories: they do not theorize between social structure and interaction, between individual and interaction and they have not conceptualization of social emergence (206-7).
The emergence paradigm is then launched. It involves five stages of development between the micro and macro levels. The stages proceed in the following order: individual (agency, etc.), interaction (communication, etc.), ephemeral emergents (things that emerge from agent and communication that are unlikely to remain), stable emergents (subcultures, slang, social practices, etc.) and then social structure (laws, infrastructure, etc.).
Sociology should be considered with the “circle of emergence” (220). This circle cuts through all five levels of the emergence paradigm, but does not dive as deeply down into the first level or as high into the fifth level. The implication is that sociology can be the theory that links together all of the social sciences: it does not do psychology (bottom of the first level) nor does it do law (top of the fifth level). However, it does link these schools together by providing a framework for understanding how phenomena move between the bottom and top levels. It is, in essence, the tool that mitigates the levels of analysis problem.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Hayek: Law, Legislation and Liberty: Chapter 2: Cosmos and Taxis
Hayek, Friedrich A. Von. (1982). Law, legislation, and liberty : a new statement of the liberal principles of justice and political economy (New pbk. ed.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Chapter 2: Cosmos and Taxis
Hayek spends this chapter distinguishing between two types of orders: those that are made and those that are grown. “By ‘order’ we shall throughout describe a state of affairs in which a multiplicity of elements of various kinds are so related to each other that we may learn from our acquaintance with some spatial or temporal part of the whole to form correct expectations concerning the rest, or at least expectations which have a good chance of proving correct” (36). He claims that the concept of order has been hijacked by those who favor authoritarianism, as they see it relating to command and obedience. “A spontaneous order…has in many respects properties different from those of a made order” (36).
Spontaneous orders have been studied for a long time in the field of economics and biology, claims Hayek. These orders focus on self-organization and self-generation. These orders are endogenous to a system. On the other hand, made orders are exogenously controlled; these are constructions and can be called organizations.
The title of this chapter derives from Greek words that separate made orders from spontaneous orders. “Taxis” is an order that is constructed, much like, “an order of battle”. “Kosmos”, on the other hand, is a grown order, or a spontaneous order.
“One of our main contentions will be that very complex orders, comprising more particular facts than any brain could ascertain or manipulate, can be brought about only through forces inducing the formation of spontaneous orders” (38). These systems have drivers that abstractly relate to one another. To preserve these orders, all one needs, “…is that a certain structure of relationships be maintained…” (39). These orders have no overarching purpose, or telos (not his words), though they can prove very handy for individuals and groups of people. These orders involve the regular interaction of small units that are relatively consistent. “The important point is that the regularity of the conduct of the elements will determine the general character of the resulting order but not all the detail of its particular manifestation” (40). And, to prediction: “…we shall be able to predict only the general character of the order that will form itself, and not the particular position which any particular element will occupy relatively to any other element” (40).
Spontaneous orders arise because all of the elements that are compromise these orders obey simple sets of rules in their, “…responses to their immediate environment” (43). Some of these rules, for example, can be seen in human interaction in the market place. “In a modern society based on exchange, one of the chief regularities in individual behavior will result from the similarity of situations in which most individuals find themselves in working to earn an income; which means that they will normally prefer a larger return from their efforts to a smaller one, and often that they will increase their efforts in a particular direction if the prospects of return improve. This is a rule that will be followed at least with sufficient frequency to impress u8pon such a society an order of a certain kind” (45).
While society has the features of a spontaneous order, a government, or made order, also exists. These two orders co-exist. The example of a cell and a cell’s nucleus is used to explain this relationship. The government is meant to fill the role of a, “maintenance squad of a factory” (47), or the group that keeps everything free to operate smoothly on its own.
Organizations, just like spontaneous orders, also rely on rules. This is so that the corporate knowledge can exceed that of any individual. This knowledge is far and above what any one individual can possess, and thus it is impossible to constrain through made orders. A spontaneous order, “…arises from each element balancing all the various factors operating on it and by adjusting all its various actions to each other, a balance which will be destroyed if some of the actions are determined by another agency on the basis of different knowledge and in the service of different ends. What the general argument against ‘interference’ thus amounts to is that, although we can endeavor to improve a spontaneous order by revising the general rules on which it rests, and can supplement its results by the efforts of various organizations, we cannot improve the results by specific commands that deprive its members of the possibility of using their knowledge for their purposes” (51).
Humans can not know the effects of their policy interventions. Thus, “…the only possibility of transcending the capacity of individual minds is to rely on those super-personal ‘self-organizing’ forces which create spontaneous orders” (54).
Chapter 2: Cosmos and Taxis
Hayek spends this chapter distinguishing between two types of orders: those that are made and those that are grown. “By ‘order’ we shall throughout describe a state of affairs in which a multiplicity of elements of various kinds are so related to each other that we may learn from our acquaintance with some spatial or temporal part of the whole to form correct expectations concerning the rest, or at least expectations which have a good chance of proving correct” (36). He claims that the concept of order has been hijacked by those who favor authoritarianism, as they see it relating to command and obedience. “A spontaneous order…has in many respects properties different from those of a made order” (36).
Spontaneous orders have been studied for a long time in the field of economics and biology, claims Hayek. These orders focus on self-organization and self-generation. These orders are endogenous to a system. On the other hand, made orders are exogenously controlled; these are constructions and can be called organizations.
The title of this chapter derives from Greek words that separate made orders from spontaneous orders. “Taxis” is an order that is constructed, much like, “an order of battle”. “Kosmos”, on the other hand, is a grown order, or a spontaneous order.
“One of our main contentions will be that very complex orders, comprising more particular facts than any brain could ascertain or manipulate, can be brought about only through forces inducing the formation of spontaneous orders” (38). These systems have drivers that abstractly relate to one another. To preserve these orders, all one needs, “…is that a certain structure of relationships be maintained…” (39). These orders have no overarching purpose, or telos (not his words), though they can prove very handy for individuals and groups of people. These orders involve the regular interaction of small units that are relatively consistent. “The important point is that the regularity of the conduct of the elements will determine the general character of the resulting order but not all the detail of its particular manifestation” (40). And, to prediction: “…we shall be able to predict only the general character of the order that will form itself, and not the particular position which any particular element will occupy relatively to any other element” (40).
Spontaneous orders arise because all of the elements that are compromise these orders obey simple sets of rules in their, “…responses to their immediate environment” (43). Some of these rules, for example, can be seen in human interaction in the market place. “In a modern society based on exchange, one of the chief regularities in individual behavior will result from the similarity of situations in which most individuals find themselves in working to earn an income; which means that they will normally prefer a larger return from their efforts to a smaller one, and often that they will increase their efforts in a particular direction if the prospects of return improve. This is a rule that will be followed at least with sufficient frequency to impress u8pon such a society an order of a certain kind” (45).
While society has the features of a spontaneous order, a government, or made order, also exists. These two orders co-exist. The example of a cell and a cell’s nucleus is used to explain this relationship. The government is meant to fill the role of a, “maintenance squad of a factory” (47), or the group that keeps everything free to operate smoothly on its own.
Organizations, just like spontaneous orders, also rely on rules. This is so that the corporate knowledge can exceed that of any individual. This knowledge is far and above what any one individual can possess, and thus it is impossible to constrain through made orders. A spontaneous order, “…arises from each element balancing all the various factors operating on it and by adjusting all its various actions to each other, a balance which will be destroyed if some of the actions are determined by another agency on the basis of different knowledge and in the service of different ends. What the general argument against ‘interference’ thus amounts to is that, although we can endeavor to improve a spontaneous order by revising the general rules on which it rests, and can supplement its results by the efforts of various organizations, we cannot improve the results by specific commands that deprive its members of the possibility of using their knowledge for their purposes” (51).
Humans can not know the effects of their policy interventions. Thus, “…the only possibility of transcending the capacity of individual minds is to rely on those super-personal ‘self-organizing’ forces which create spontaneous orders” (54).
Luisi: The Emergence of Life: Autopoiesis: The Logic of Cellular Life
Luisi, P. L. (2006). The emergence of life : from chemical origins to synthetic biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 8: Autopoiesis: The Logic of Cellular Life
Autopoiesis was coined by Varela and Maturana in the early 1970’s . It did not initially receive much attention, but slowly began to creep into scientific discourse. Probably most notably, it would used by Luhmann (1984) to describe social systems.
Initially, it was used as an analysis of cellular life. Cells are one of the basic building blocks of life on earth, and the simplest cells can be incredibly complex. On the outside of the cell lies the membrane, which is semi-permeable. “The notion of boundary is, in fact, one central concept in the theory of autopoiesis. Inside the boundary of a cell, many reactions and correspondingly many chemical transformations occur. However, despite all these chemical processes, the cell always maintains its own identity during its homeostasis period. This is because the cell…regenerates within its own boundary all those chemicals that are being destroyed or transformed…” (158). “The chain of processes occurring inside the boundary essentially serves the purpose of self-sustenance, or auto-maintenance. Of course, this takes pace at the expense of nutrients and energy coming from the medium. …the cell is a dissipative, open system” (158).
“An autopoietic unit is a system that is capable of sustaining itself due to an inner network of reaction that regenerate the system’s components” (158). A definition by Maturana: “When you regard a living system you always find a network of processes or molecules that interact in such a way as to produce the very network that produced them and that determine its boundary. Such a network I call autopoietic. Whenever you encounter a network whose operations eventually produce itself as a result, you are facing an autopoietic system. It produces itself. The system is open to the input of matter but closed with regard to the dynamics of the relations that generate it” (158).
Varela identifies three criterion for autopoietic systems: it must have a semi-permeable boundary, the boundary must have been produced by the system and that this boundary must encompass reactions, “that regenerate the components of the system” (159). This excludes viruses, for example, as being able to be defined as autopoietic, nor is a crystal.
There is then a discussion of autopoiesis and cognition/consciousness.
Social autopoiesis is then explored. “Consider, for example, a political party, or a family, whereby the rules that define a party o a family can be seen as a kind of boundary given by the social structure itself. The whole system enjoys a dynamic equilibrium, as certain members leave the structure, and new people come in, and are transformed into steady members by the binding rules of the party or of the family. There is a regeneration from within, there is the defense of the self-identity; the metaphor of the living cell applies. Also, in all these systems, certain characteristic features of biology can be recognized, such as the notion of emergence—the family being an emergent property arising from the organization of single individuals, etc” (175-6).
Chapter 8: Autopoiesis: The Logic of Cellular Life
Autopoiesis was coined by Varela and Maturana in the early 1970’s . It did not initially receive much attention, but slowly began to creep into scientific discourse. Probably most notably, it would used by Luhmann (1984) to describe social systems.
Initially, it was used as an analysis of cellular life. Cells are one of the basic building blocks of life on earth, and the simplest cells can be incredibly complex. On the outside of the cell lies the membrane, which is semi-permeable. “The notion of boundary is, in fact, one central concept in the theory of autopoiesis. Inside the boundary of a cell, many reactions and correspondingly many chemical transformations occur. However, despite all these chemical processes, the cell always maintains its own identity during its homeostasis period. This is because the cell…regenerates within its own boundary all those chemicals that are being destroyed or transformed…” (158). “The chain of processes occurring inside the boundary essentially serves the purpose of self-sustenance, or auto-maintenance. Of course, this takes pace at the expense of nutrients and energy coming from the medium. …the cell is a dissipative, open system” (158).
“An autopoietic unit is a system that is capable of sustaining itself due to an inner network of reaction that regenerate the system’s components” (158). A definition by Maturana: “When you regard a living system you always find a network of processes or molecules that interact in such a way as to produce the very network that produced them and that determine its boundary. Such a network I call autopoietic. Whenever you encounter a network whose operations eventually produce itself as a result, you are facing an autopoietic system. It produces itself. The system is open to the input of matter but closed with regard to the dynamics of the relations that generate it” (158).
Varela identifies three criterion for autopoietic systems: it must have a semi-permeable boundary, the boundary must have been produced by the system and that this boundary must encompass reactions, “that regenerate the components of the system” (159). This excludes viruses, for example, as being able to be defined as autopoietic, nor is a crystal.
There is then a discussion of autopoiesis and cognition/consciousness.
Social autopoiesis is then explored. “Consider, for example, a political party, or a family, whereby the rules that define a party o a family can be seen as a kind of boundary given by the social structure itself. The whole system enjoys a dynamic equilibrium, as certain members leave the structure, and new people come in, and are transformed into steady members by the binding rules of the party or of the family. There is a regeneration from within, there is the defense of the self-identity; the metaphor of the living cell applies. Also, in all these systems, certain characteristic features of biology can be recognized, such as the notion of emergence—the family being an emergent property arising from the organization of single individuals, etc” (175-6).
Luisi: The Emergence of Life: Chapter 6: The Notion of Emergence
Luisi, P. L. (2006). The emergence of life : from chemical origins to synthetic biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 6: The Notion of Emergence
This book attempts to make a bridge from chemistry to biology, and deploys the concept of emergence and self-organizing systems in that process.
“The term ‘emergence’ describes the onset of novel properties that arise when a higher level of complexity is formed from components of lower complexity, where those properties are not present. This is often summarized in the popular assertion that the ‘whole is more than the sum of the parts’, and/or with the vague term ‘holism’” (112).
Luisi then distinguishes between two forms of discussions relating to emergence: the ontic and the epistemological (113). He claims that his argument will deal with the epistemological argument, as it is more practical and applicable.
Luisi also approaches the concept of complexity theory. He also claims that he will not pursue this in much depth but does provide a simple definition: “…a complex system is seen as a hierarchic system, i.e., a system composed of subsystems, which in turn have their own subsystems, and so on” (113).
He then looks at the relationship between emergence and reductionism. Typically, “reductionism and emergence are presented as two opposite fronts: whereas emergence deals with the onset of novel properties, which are not present in the basic components, and as such has an upwards direction, reductionism generally looks down from a certain level of complexity claiming to explain each level on the basis of the lower ones” (116). “…the main point of opposition between emergence and reductionism concerns the problem of properties. There is nothing wrong, in principle, with reductionism when it stops at the level of structure: we can all agree that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. The problem with reductionism is with the claim that the properties of water can be reduced to the properties of hydrogen and oxygen, and those to the properties of more elementary particles” (117).
Luisi then moves onto prediction: is it possible to foresee the emergence of water from hydrogen and oxygen either a priori or a posteriori? Some see the relationship between emergent properties and original properties as being unexplainable. This, Luisi calls either strong emergence or radical emergence (118). Weak emergence, on the other hand, “…the relationship between the whole and the parts may not be established because of technical difficulties, such as the lack of computational power or insufficient progress of our skills” (118). Some are critical of strong emergence because it seems to associate “magical” powers in the realm of causation between lower and upper levels of organization. Luisi chimes in: “Personally, I believe that the discrimination between a matter of principle (strong emergence), and a matter of practical difficulty (weak emergence), is not always possible—and perhaps it does not always make sense” (118). “…weak emergence si not distinguishable from strong emergence” (118-9). We can accept the premise of strong emergence and avoid the necessary reference to mysterious causality, if we address it in terms of our limited capabilities.
The discussion then moves to downward causation, which is seen as being the counterpart of emergence. “It is generally accepted that the development of emergent properties, which is an upward (or bottom-up) causality, is attended by a downward—or top-down—causality stream” (119). Some associate this with cyclical causality.
Non-linear systems of development are explored. Prigogine is said to present a system of development referred to as dissipative structures. These structures are understood as, “…an open system that is in itself far from equilibrium, maintaining, however, a form of stability…In more complex systems, depending on the initial conditions and fluctuations of the energy flow, the system in its dynamic behavior may encounter a point of instability—the bifurcation point—at which it can branch off with the emergence of new forms of structure and properties” (120).
In conclusion: “The reason why this [non-predictability] is important lies win the fact that novel, unpredicted properties can arise from the constitution of complexity. In other words, the fact that we cannot foresee novel emergent properties also means…that there might be a vast arsenal of unforeseeable properties that may arise from the intelligent or serendipitous assemblage of components” (125).
“We have looked previously at a rose, and claimed that one would learn nothing about a rose by saying that it is composed solely of atoms and molecules. A better approach to the essence of the rose, would be to describe at least the various levels of hierarchic structural complexity and the corresponding emergent properties—up to the various cells and cell organelles, up to the different tissues; and then add possibility the history of biological evolution. This is certainly a more complete view of a rose. It is a departure from the simplistic reductionistic approach to see all in terms of atoms—but is it enough to catch the essence of a rose? (126).
“Most of the cognitive scientists mentioned above would add that what is still missing is the ‘ovswerver0—the one who really gives meaning to the rose in terms of history, literature, poetry, …Obviously the notion of a rose is different depending on whether the observer is a Western educated in romantic literature or a Eskimo who has never seen a rose. Here is where the notion of emergence may become co-emergence between the object and the observer throughout his/her consciousness” (127).
Chapter 6: The Notion of Emergence
This book attempts to make a bridge from chemistry to biology, and deploys the concept of emergence and self-organizing systems in that process.
“The term ‘emergence’ describes the onset of novel properties that arise when a higher level of complexity is formed from components of lower complexity, where those properties are not present. This is often summarized in the popular assertion that the ‘whole is more than the sum of the parts’, and/or with the vague term ‘holism’” (112).
Luisi then distinguishes between two forms of discussions relating to emergence: the ontic and the epistemological (113). He claims that his argument will deal with the epistemological argument, as it is more practical and applicable.
Luisi also approaches the concept of complexity theory. He also claims that he will not pursue this in much depth but does provide a simple definition: “…a complex system is seen as a hierarchic system, i.e., a system composed of subsystems, which in turn have their own subsystems, and so on” (113).
He then looks at the relationship between emergence and reductionism. Typically, “reductionism and emergence are presented as two opposite fronts: whereas emergence deals with the onset of novel properties, which are not present in the basic components, and as such has an upwards direction, reductionism generally looks down from a certain level of complexity claiming to explain each level on the basis of the lower ones” (116). “…the main point of opposition between emergence and reductionism concerns the problem of properties. There is nothing wrong, in principle, with reductionism when it stops at the level of structure: we can all agree that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. The problem with reductionism is with the claim that the properties of water can be reduced to the properties of hydrogen and oxygen, and those to the properties of more elementary particles” (117).
Luisi then moves onto prediction: is it possible to foresee the emergence of water from hydrogen and oxygen either a priori or a posteriori? Some see the relationship between emergent properties and original properties as being unexplainable. This, Luisi calls either strong emergence or radical emergence (118). Weak emergence, on the other hand, “…the relationship between the whole and the parts may not be established because of technical difficulties, such as the lack of computational power or insufficient progress of our skills” (118). Some are critical of strong emergence because it seems to associate “magical” powers in the realm of causation between lower and upper levels of organization. Luisi chimes in: “Personally, I believe that the discrimination between a matter of principle (strong emergence), and a matter of practical difficulty (weak emergence), is not always possible—and perhaps it does not always make sense” (118). “…weak emergence si not distinguishable from strong emergence” (118-9). We can accept the premise of strong emergence and avoid the necessary reference to mysterious causality, if we address it in terms of our limited capabilities.
The discussion then moves to downward causation, which is seen as being the counterpart of emergence. “It is generally accepted that the development of emergent properties, which is an upward (or bottom-up) causality, is attended by a downward—or top-down—causality stream” (119). Some associate this with cyclical causality.
Non-linear systems of development are explored. Prigogine is said to present a system of development referred to as dissipative structures. These structures are understood as, “…an open system that is in itself far from equilibrium, maintaining, however, a form of stability…In more complex systems, depending on the initial conditions and fluctuations of the energy flow, the system in its dynamic behavior may encounter a point of instability—the bifurcation point—at which it can branch off with the emergence of new forms of structure and properties” (120).
In conclusion: “The reason why this [non-predictability] is important lies win the fact that novel, unpredicted properties can arise from the constitution of complexity. In other words, the fact that we cannot foresee novel emergent properties also means…that there might be a vast arsenal of unforeseeable properties that may arise from the intelligent or serendipitous assemblage of components” (125).
“We have looked previously at a rose, and claimed that one would learn nothing about a rose by saying that it is composed solely of atoms and molecules. A better approach to the essence of the rose, would be to describe at least the various levels of hierarchic structural complexity and the corresponding emergent properties—up to the various cells and cell organelles, up to the different tissues; and then add possibility the history of biological evolution. This is certainly a more complete view of a rose. It is a departure from the simplistic reductionistic approach to see all in terms of atoms—but is it enough to catch the essence of a rose? (126).
“Most of the cognitive scientists mentioned above would add that what is still missing is the ‘ovswerver0—the one who really gives meaning to the rose in terms of history, literature, poetry, …Obviously the notion of a rose is different depending on whether the observer is a Western educated in romantic literature or a Eskimo who has never seen a rose. Here is where the notion of emergence may become co-emergence between the object and the observer throughout his/her consciousness” (127).
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Clark: Coupling, Emergence, and Explanation
Clark, Andy. (2007). "Coupling, Emergence, and Explanation". In M. K. D. Schouten & H. Looren de Jong (Eds.), The matter of the mind : philosophical essays on psychology, neuroscience, and reduction (pp. x, 330 p.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
This compilation of articles is aimed at the science of cognition. In this selection, Clark presents emergence as a new tool for understanding issues surrounding cognition. “I shall argue that emergent phenomena do require new modes of explanation and understanding. But these modes do not displace more familiar project such as homuncular decomposition and representational/computational description. Instead, we must use a variety of tools to understand the multiple aspects of real-time, embodied, embedded cognition” (228).
The homuncular explanation is the first to be explored. Clark claims that it is a fully reductionist account of cognitive functioning. Some have posited that the concept of emergence is also reductionist. “...to contrast emergent explanation with reductionist explanation would be to invite a common misunderstanding of the notion of emergence, that is to suggest that emergentist accounts do not explain how higher level properties arise as a result of more basic structures and interactions…emergentist hypotheses are by no means silent on such matters. Rather, the contrast lies in the ways in which the lower-level properties and features combine to yield the target phenomena. This kind of emergentist explanation is really a special case of reductionist explanation, at least as intuitively construed, since the explanations aim to render the presence of the higher-level properties unmysterious by reference to a multitude of lower-level organization” (229).
The next target is interactive explanation. “…interactive explanation takes very seriously the role of the environment in promoting successful problem-solving activity. It seeks to display the ways in which crucial problem-solving moves may actively exploit the opportunities which the real world presents to embodied, mobile agents” (230).
“Emergent explanation is at once the most radical and most elusive member of our trinity” (232). Some people understand emergent behavior to be properties that are unexpected outcomes from the perspective of the observer. However, this produces a set of emergent properties that are objective-relative. Others have attempt to see emergence as being a property associated with successful evolution of a subject with their enviornemnt, “…and in which the patterns of results which this interaction yields require description in a vocabulary which differs from the one we use to characterize the powers and properties of the inner components themselves” (232).
Clark then provides examples from the field of artificial intelligence, one dealing with termites, the other robots. Throughout these examples, the theme of a distinction between controlled and uncontrolled variables rings out. However, according to Clark, these are not the instances of emergence that are most interesting: the most interesting cases are, “…cases in which the uncontrolled variable tracks some process…involving ‘continuous reciprocal causation’” (234).
Continuous reciprocal causation is, “causation that involves multiple simultaneous interactions and complex dynamic feedback loops, such that (a) the causal contribution of each component in the system of interest is determined by, and helps to determine, the causal contributions of…other components, and (b) those contributions may, as a result, change quite radically as the process evolves” (234).
Clark then claims that it is not the continuity of a system that allows it to be prone for emergent behavior, but rather the complexity of the system.
This compilation of articles is aimed at the science of cognition. In this selection, Clark presents emergence as a new tool for understanding issues surrounding cognition. “I shall argue that emergent phenomena do require new modes of explanation and understanding. But these modes do not displace more familiar project such as homuncular decomposition and representational/computational description. Instead, we must use a variety of tools to understand the multiple aspects of real-time, embodied, embedded cognition” (228).
The homuncular explanation is the first to be explored. Clark claims that it is a fully reductionist account of cognitive functioning. Some have posited that the concept of emergence is also reductionist. “...to contrast emergent explanation with reductionist explanation would be to invite a common misunderstanding of the notion of emergence, that is to suggest that emergentist accounts do not explain how higher level properties arise as a result of more basic structures and interactions…emergentist hypotheses are by no means silent on such matters. Rather, the contrast lies in the ways in which the lower-level properties and features combine to yield the target phenomena. This kind of emergentist explanation is really a special case of reductionist explanation, at least as intuitively construed, since the explanations aim to render the presence of the higher-level properties unmysterious by reference to a multitude of lower-level organization” (229).
The next target is interactive explanation. “…interactive explanation takes very seriously the role of the environment in promoting successful problem-solving activity. It seeks to display the ways in which crucial problem-solving moves may actively exploit the opportunities which the real world presents to embodied, mobile agents” (230).
“Emergent explanation is at once the most radical and most elusive member of our trinity” (232). Some people understand emergent behavior to be properties that are unexpected outcomes from the perspective of the observer. However, this produces a set of emergent properties that are objective-relative. Others have attempt to see emergence as being a property associated with successful evolution of a subject with their enviornemnt, “…and in which the patterns of results which this interaction yields require description in a vocabulary which differs from the one we use to characterize the powers and properties of the inner components themselves” (232).
Clark then provides examples from the field of artificial intelligence, one dealing with termites, the other robots. Throughout these examples, the theme of a distinction between controlled and uncontrolled variables rings out. However, according to Clark, these are not the instances of emergence that are most interesting: the most interesting cases are, “…cases in which the uncontrolled variable tracks some process…involving ‘continuous reciprocal causation’” (234).
Continuous reciprocal causation is, “causation that involves multiple simultaneous interactions and complex dynamic feedback loops, such that (a) the causal contribution of each component in the system of interest is determined by, and helps to determine, the causal contributions of…other components, and (b) those contributions may, as a result, change quite radically as the process evolves” (234).
Clark then claims that it is not the continuity of a system that allows it to be prone for emergent behavior, but rather the complexity of the system.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wight: Agents, Structures and International Relations
Wight, Colin. (2006). Agents, structures and international relations : politics as ontology. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
The agent-structure problem is the medium whereby Wight attempts to “unpack” his argument. He chooses this for three reasons: firstly, this problem is essentially ontological; secondly, every theoretical approach posits a solution to the agent-structure problem whether explicitly or tacitly; and thirdly, is the intersection of politics and ontology whereby the assumption is that the agent-structure problem is a part of social ontology. From later in the book, “If ever the agent-structure problem were solved, in the sense of requiring no further discussion, then social theoretic activity would come to an end, and along with it political, economic, cultural and ethical dispute. In this sense, the agent-structure problem is political” (63).
Wight also rejects the possibility that a general theory of IR is even achievable. “The attempt to construct a parsimonious theory of IR is not only flawed and doomed to failure, but also politically and ethically dangerous” (8).
In the second chapter, Wight situates his own political position vis-à-vis that of positivism. He claims that the current IR theoretical mess requires one to orient themselves with this hegemonic approach. “According to the positivist model of science, there is a general set of rules, procedures and axioms, which when taken together constitutes the ‘scientific method’” (19).
Wight rejects this positivism and instead embraces a scientific realism: “But it is not just the ‘covering law model’ which scientific realism rejects; it is the very attempt to demarcate a ‘scientific method’. For scientific realists there can be no single ‘scientific method’. Understood as the attempt to provide depth explanations of phenomena, it must be the case that differing phenomena will require differing modes of investigation and perhaps different models of explanation. Contra positivism, then, for scientific realists, the content of science is not the method” (19). “For scientific realists the productions of science are always open to revision and reformulation. The dialectic of science is never ending and no scientific discovery, or claim, is ever beyond critique” (24).
There is an account of the Kantian epistemological turn that arose from the catalyst that was David Hume. The scientific realists must always question epistemological claims and must revert back to ontology, though ontology will always require epistemology for further exploration.
He ontologically establishes three points about society: “First, societies are irreducible to people; social forms are a necessary condition for any intentional social act. Second, their pre-existence establishes their autonomy as possible objects of study. Third, their causal power establishes their reality” (46).
Wight then deploys the Bourdieu concept of habitus. He defines this as, “a mediating link between individuals’ subjective worlds and the socio-cultural world into which they are born and which they share with others. The power of the habitus derives from the thoughtlessness of habit and habituation, rather than consciously learned rules” (49). Society and the individual interact thought the medium of the habitus.
The remainder of the second chapter is a relatively rushed sketch of different theories and Wight’s classification of their position vis-à-vis the agent-structure problem and the issues surrounding either ontology, epistemology or methodology. He looks at Webber, Wallerstein, Waltz, Wendt, Cox, Carr and many others.
The third chapter’s aim is to, “identify what lies at the heart of the agent-structure problem and disentangle this from the other issues that surfaced during the debate surrounding this issue within IR, but which are not an integral part of it” (90). This debate is problematic because there are so many different theoretical approaches that have been taken and that must be disentangled. There is the standard levels of analysis approach, the micro-macro approach and the two structures approach. All of these are problematic on certain levels for Wight if they do not involve an understanding of full interaction between agents and structure where structure operates at all levels. The third chapter also has relevant, interesting and important things to say about emergence and deserves a more thorough read.
This abstract will stop at this point and should be taken up later with chapter 4-the end.
UPDATE:
Conclusion:
The agent-structure debate has provided the following to IR: it has brought forward the impossibility of focusing only on the international while ignoring the domestic; it has also rejected structural monism; it has also problematized methodological individualism; finally, it brought forward the difficulty of operationalizing this approach.
“The ability to predict outcomes in open systems is beyond all science” (52).“There are simply no epistemological or methodological divides to accept, defend or bridge. …the argument advanced in this book promises nothing less than a comprehensive reassessment and restructuring of the theoretical cleavages that divide the discipline” (1). The theoretical divisions that are currently a very real trend in IR are not, Wight claims, epistemological or methodological, but they are rather ontological. Wight attempts to right this mess by focusing on the ontological arguments that have been overlooked by many in the discipline.
The agent-structure problem is the medium whereby Wight attempts to “unpack” his argument. He chooses this for three reasons: firstly, this problem is essentially ontological; secondly, every theoretical approach posits a solution to the agent-structure problem whether explicitly or tacitly; and thirdly, is the intersection of politics and ontology whereby the assumption is that the agent-structure problem is a part of social ontology. From later in the book, “If ever the agent-structure problem were solved, in the sense of requiring no further discussion, then social theoretic activity would come to an end, and along with it political, economic, cultural and ethical dispute. In this sense, the agent-structure problem is political” (63).
Wight also rejects the possibility that a general theory of IR is even achievable. “The attempt to construct a parsimonious theory of IR is not only flawed and doomed to failure, but also politically and ethically dangerous” (8).
In the second chapter, Wight situates his own political position vis-à-vis that of positivism. He claims that the current IR theoretical mess requires one to orient themselves with this hegemonic approach. “According to the positivist model of science, there is a general set of rules, procedures and axioms, which when taken together constitutes the ‘scientific method’” (19).
“…positivism can be characterized in the following manner. (1) Phenomenalism: the doctrine that holds that we cannot get beyond the way things appear to us and thereby obtain reliable knowledge of reality—in other words, appearances, not realities are the only objects of knowledge. (2) Nominalism: the doctrine that there is no objective meaning to the words we use—words and concepts do not pick out any actual objects or universal aspects of reality, they are simply conventional symbols or names that we happen to use for our own convenience. (3) Cognitivism: the doctrine that holds that no cognitive value can be ascribed to value judgments and normative statements. (4) Naturalism: the belief that there is an essential unity of scientific method such that the social sciences can be studies in the same manner as natural science” (21).Positivists then use covering laws, instrumental treatments of theoretical terms, a Humean account of cause and an embrace of operationalism.
Wight rejects this positivism and instead embraces a scientific realism: “But it is not just the ‘covering law model’ which scientific realism rejects; it is the very attempt to demarcate a ‘scientific method’. For scientific realists there can be no single ‘scientific method’. Understood as the attempt to provide depth explanations of phenomena, it must be the case that differing phenomena will require differing modes of investigation and perhaps different models of explanation. Contra positivism, then, for scientific realists, the content of science is not the method” (19). “For scientific realists the productions of science are always open to revision and reformulation. The dialectic of science is never ending and no scientific discovery, or claim, is ever beyond critique” (24).
There is an account of the Kantian epistemological turn that arose from the catalyst that was David Hume. The scientific realists must always question epistemological claims and must revert back to ontology, though ontology will always require epistemology for further exploration.
“The empirical realist error is the conflation of three domains, or levels of realty, into one—that of the empirical. In contrast to this, scientific realists argue that in order to make sense of the scientific enterprise we need to distinguish between the domains of the empirical (experiences and impressions), the actual (events and states-of-affairs—i.e. the actual objects of potential direct experience) and the real or non-actual (the deep structures, mechanisms and tendencies)” (34-5).There is a continued critique of positivism in its many forms. The hope of Wight is the imposition of a science without positivist “residues”. For him, scientific realism is one way that this can become a reality.
He ontologically establishes three points about society: “First, societies are irreducible to people; social forms are a necessary condition for any intentional social act. Second, their pre-existence establishes their autonomy as possible objects of study. Third, their causal power establishes their reality” (46).
Wight then deploys the Bourdieu concept of habitus. He defines this as, “a mediating link between individuals’ subjective worlds and the socio-cultural world into which they are born and which they share with others. The power of the habitus derives from the thoughtlessness of habit and habituation, rather than consciously learned rules” (49). Society and the individual interact thought the medium of the habitus.
The remainder of the second chapter is a relatively rushed sketch of different theories and Wight’s classification of their position vis-à-vis the agent-structure problem and the issues surrounding either ontology, epistemology or methodology. He looks at Webber, Wallerstein, Waltz, Wendt, Cox, Carr and many others.
The third chapter’s aim is to, “identify what lies at the heart of the agent-structure problem and disentangle this from the other issues that surfaced during the debate surrounding this issue within IR, but which are not an integral part of it” (90). This debate is problematic because there are so many different theoretical approaches that have been taken and that must be disentangled. There is the standard levels of analysis approach, the micro-macro approach and the two structures approach. All of these are problematic on certain levels for Wight if they do not involve an understanding of full interaction between agents and structure where structure operates at all levels. The third chapter also has relevant, interesting and important things to say about emergence and deserves a more thorough read.
This abstract will stop at this point and should be taken up later with chapter 4-the end.
UPDATE:
Conclusion:
The agent-structure debate has provided the following to IR: it has brought forward the impossibility of focusing only on the international while ignoring the domestic; it has also rejected structural monism; it has also problematized methodological individualism; finally, it brought forward the difficulty of operationalizing this approach.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Baylis: The Philosophic Functions of Emergence
Baylis, Charles. A. , & Goldstein, Jeffry. A. (2006). "Classic Paper: The Philosophic Functions of Emergence". Emergence, 8(1), 67-83.
(from Goldstein’s introduction) Baylis offered that emergence could be explained causal mechanisms. He put forth four ways in which this change could occur: integrative emergence , integrative subemergence, disintragrative emergence and disintegrative subemergence. This type of change is characteristic of a+b where the sum is not reducible to either a or b. Baylis also offers that the way that scholars of emergence were looking at the subject was too narrow and that not just any change could be seen as being emergent. “…emergence is not ordinary change in general but is instead consonant with a special kind of change, i.e., one that generates the outcomes which are unpredictable, non-deducible, irreducible, and capable of daunting (not violating) traditional notions of causality and determinism” (69).
Baylis begins by noting the current (1929) importance surrounding the issue of emergence. “The aim of this paper is to point out that, ins spite of the fact that emergence is more widespread than even its most ardent advocates have claimed, for it si indeed ubiquitous, nevertheless it solves none of these problems, supports no one Weltanshauung [worldview] rather than any other, and does not even imply evolution” (71)
Baylis defines emergence: “…are those characters of a complex which are not also characters of a proper part of that complex, and emergence or creative synthesis is that event which occurs when a complex having emergent characters is formed” (72). His example is water, with neither the character of hydrogen or oxygen.
“The attempt to solve some of the traditional problems of philosophy by means of the concept of emergence is no more successful than the attempt to make it imply evolution or value [two things he claims it does not support earlier in the paper]” (78). Emergence gives a name and thus calls attention to a commonly overlooked but nevertheless ubiquitous fact of the universe, the fact, namely, that some of the characters of every complex are different from the characters of any of the elements of that complex” (79). “The concept of emergence, then, has philosophic value in pointing out a fact which no theory may deny and in making possible new and suggestive answers to many of the standard philosophical problems…The concept of emergence is a key which opens new doors to philosophic inquiry, some of which may lead to treasure, but it is not a master key which of itself unlocks the many doors of that seemingly impregnable castle where lie concealed the answers to the various problems of philosophy” (83).
Goldstein: Emergence as a Construct
Goldstein, Jeffrey. (1999). "Emergence as a Construct: History and Issues". Emergence, 1(1), 49-72.
“Emergence…refers to the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns, and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems. Emergent phenomena are conceptualized as occurring on the macro level, in contrast to the micro-level components and processes out of which they arise” (49). Goldstein then goes on to identify properties that are common to emergent phenomena: radical novelty, coherence or correlation, global or macro level, dynamical, ostensive (50).
He then distinguishes emergent phenomena from “whole before its parts” and “gestalts”. “Whole before its parts” is a way of describing events that privilege the whole over the parts as contributing most heavily to the explanation. To this he refers back to Aristotle and Zeno’s conversation regarding distance, parts, wholes and infinity. Aristotle claimed that the whole was first a whole, and then its parts. This differs from emergence, which, “is not pre-given by a dynamical construct arising over time” (52). “Gestalt”, or references to whole systems such as natural systems, is seen as also suffering from the same distinction that “whole before its parts” does, in that it privileges a cordoned off “whole” as standing separate. Emergence, on the other hand, refuses such constraints.
Goldstein then distinguishes between proto and neo-emergence to highlight changes in the understanding of the concept of emergence over time. It was initially coined by G.H. Lewes: “…the emergent…cannot be reduced either to their sum or their differences” (53). These “proto-emergent” scientists led vigorous debates that eventually fizzled in the 1930s. Part of the reason for this disappearance was that proto-emergence scientists viewed the cause of emergence as being a black-box.
Neo-emergence is seen by Goldstein to be the modern iteration of the emergence movement. In that, these systems must have at least the following characteristics: nonlinearity, self-organizing, beyond equilibrium, attractors. These qualities have been studied by different schools of thought: Complex Adaptive Systems Theory, Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Theory,
The article then addresses issues surrounding explanation and emergence and wonders about emergence whether, “it is simply an epistemic recognition of the inadequacy of any current theory for deriving macro-level properties from micro-level determinants” (59). Some believe that the theory will eventually be discarded when other theories that more robustly can describe micro leading to macro-level changes arise.
Different forms of emergence are looked at, and the concept of “spontaneous novelty” is brought up in contrast to “radical novelty”. Not all new, unique or different features of a system that arise from micro-level agents can be termed emergent. We have to be, “careful in our recognition of emergent phenomena and continually ask the question of whether the pattern we see is more in our eye than the pattern we are claiming to see” (64).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
