Open systems???

[JC Wandemberg]

Hello there:

I have been following the discussion on Alife with some interest since my 
research in based on ecological learning, open system theory and the
model of directive correlations by Sommerhoff. However, I feel somewhat
unconfortable with the definitions of "open systems" I have come across.
As someone (whose name escapes me right now) said it, "a system is open if
its environment is NOT empty" i.e., there is NO such thing as a closed
system to begin with unless we want to view one as such for illustration
purposes. In any case, the way I see it (based mostly on Pepper's
contextualism and the Emerys work on design principles) the only
"boundary" a system has is determined by the *relationship* of its
component elements with the environment of their system.

Cheers,
JC

On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, glen e. p. ropella wrote:

> Barry McMullin writes:
>  > The systems I am talking about might be open and/or dissipative -
>  > though that's a little prejudicial because it implies that the universe
>  > in one in which something like normal thermodynamics holds, which
>  > isn't essential.
>  >
>  > Regardless of that, I will claim that they are not "just"
>  > dissipative, or open...
> 
> OK.  I typically think of "open" systems as those systems having
> the property you're referring to, namely, they have at least a
> semi-permeable membrane.  So, the systems you're talking about
> will certainly be open.
> 
> But, again, just because a system has this property (of dynamic
> formation and change of constituents) doesn't mean that it's
> not iterative.  In fact, most Alife systems implemented on
> computers will be iterated through time.  The Game of Life is
> a perfect example of an iterated system.  (Of course, iteration
> through time is almost always a proxy for the successive application
> of some other operator, like CA rules.  So, it's not *really*
> the iteration through time that is important; rather, it's the
> application of the rules on the output of the last iteration.)
> 
>  > That's precisely why I equated your "bag of stuff" to a *universe*,
>  > to distinguish from the *embedded* systems I wanted to point it - the
>  > latter *not* being bags of stuff. And this is not saying anything
>  > about the nature of this stuff - material, particulate, whatever.
> 
> OK.  Now, I think I understand.  By using the term Universe, you
> intend to imply systems with a certain "boundedness," where that
> boundary is not permeable... or, at least, the organization of
> the goo inside is not dependent on the goo outside the boundary.
> 
> I usually refer to systems like that as "closed."
> 
>  > Rather, I'm taking the informal notion of universe as "bag of stuff"
>  > as implying *some* decomposition of the universe into "component"
>  > "pieces", such that that decomposition holds for all time.  Under the
>  > dynamics of the universe these pieces may "aggregate" and "separate"
>  > or otherwise change their individual realationships, but the pieces
>  > all still exist, and the "universe" is always identical with the collection
>  > of all the pieces (however arranged).  I admit that the easiest way of
>  > visualising this is by thinking of the decomposition as, in some sense,
>  > "spatial", so that the pieces are "particles", but I don't insist
>  > on that.  All I insist on is that the decomposition is invariant.
>  > If you want a formal notion for it, I'm envisaging the "universe"
>  > as a dynamical system - something with varying state within an
>  > invariant state space.
>  >
>  > Now, having clarified (for myself, if nobody else (;-) what the
>  > heck I was reading into "bag of stuff", it may be that this is not
>  > at all what *you* meant to imply by the phrase.  In which case,
>  > I'll withdraw with as much dignity as I can muster, since it would
>  > probably indicate just that I should have read all the previous
>  > messages before jumping in with the old size 13's...
> 
> Well, I really didn't intend to isolate the stuff inside the
> bag from the stuff outside.  And I purposefully refrained from
> saying "bag of things" to avoid the inference you made, namely
> that the *goo* inside the bag had a fixed organization.  So, I
> would rephrase it now from "bag of stuff" to "bag of goo".
> [grin -- just shoot me]
> 
>  > My paradigmatic example for this case is that of a glider in
>  > Conway's game of life.  In the game of life system, a "sub" system
>  > would mean (to me) some specific subset of the cells making up
>  > the whole universe.  A glider does *not* map onto any such subset.
>  > Therefore it is embedded in, is "of", the whole system, but is not
>  > a "sub-system".  Now again, I don't want to argue about what words to
>  > use: I'm just pointing out that there are at least two different kinds
>  > of things that *can* be embedded in that kind of system, and it's
>  > worth distinguishing between them (I think?).
> 
> pragma GROUNDED (Status => Off);
> I'm glad you brought this up.  It took me awhile to place these
> pieces properly in my head.  I agree that a glider in GoL is
> *not* a sub-system, but not because it's not "sub".  I don't think
> the glider is a "system" at all.  It's certainly an object (and is
> subject to decay).
> pragma GROUNDED (Status => On);
> 
> But, as you say, there's no real sense in arguing what to call
> that type of thing.  Maybe it would be useful to apply Rosen's
> ideas to the GoL.  Anybody interested?
> 
> I'm going to try.  The first question is, what about the GoL is
> underdetermined by formal systems?  My first guess would be that
> the actual CA (the state and the rules by which it iterates) *is*
> completely well-defined by a formal system.  I really have no idea
> if that statement would be accepted by CA theory; but, it is defensible
> in that the definition of a CA *is* the state and the rules by which
> the state changes.  No problem there.
> 
> The problems arise when we try to make statements about the *apparent*
> structure we see as we watch the CA iterate.  For instance, we want to
> classify the types of "objects" we see form and decay and we want to
> be able to talk about the the shapes and pictures we see.  That is
> where the formal system that specifies the behaviour of the CA is not
> adequate.  For instance, before we began experimentally taking data on
> the GoL, we couldn't predict that gliders of type p would form and
> persist for x amount of time.  Now, we can, of course, because people
> have gathered data on the system.
> 
> Since we can't make those kinds of statements, it seems ridiculous
> to ask questions like, "Why did glider g1 emerge at time t1 and
> move to the bottom right of the screen?"  There is no causal relationship
> between the emergence or behavior of glider g1.  This is because there
> is no such thing as glider g1 in the system.
> 
> Now, don't get me wrong, gliders *do* exist.  They just don't exist
> *inside* the GoL.  They are a part of the larger system that consists
> of the CA, the visualization mechanism, the computer, and the person
> who identifies ... or "objectifies" the glider.  So, in order to ask
> causality questions about the behavior of the glider, we have to,
> basically, provide more complete entailment of the CA by "wrapping"
> it in a larger system.  When we do that, we can say things about the
> meta-system.  For example, "The glider is there because the CA has
> these rules, this initial state, this mechanism for affecting the
> computer screen, and because I tried several different combinations
> until I got something that I could identify."
> 
> This "wrapping" is exactly an iteration (or an "upward recursion") of
> causal entailment.  It is exactly what Rosen is referring to when he
> talks of *approaching* finality.  Of course, to achieve what he calls
> "maximal organization," we would have to try a little harder to build
> a system that has more self-entailment in it.
> 
> Here's an attempt at a simplified "block diagram" for this system:
> 
>              +------------------------+
>              v                        |
>          +--------+                 +-----+
>          |Computer|----+ +----------|Human|<-------+ ?
>          +--------+    | |          +-----+
>              |         | |            |
>              | +-------|-|------------+
>              | |       | |
>              v v       v v
>           +------+   +----+
>           |VisMec|   | CA |
>           +------+   +----+
>               |        |
>               |    +---+
>               |    |
>               v    v
>             +--------+
>             | Glider |
>             +--------+
> 
> (I was tempted to put in an arrow from the human directly to the
> glider... but, it's not necessary.  I don't want to argue about 
> whether or not God is in the Quad.)
> 
> With this, it makes sense to ask questions like "Why did the glider
> emerge?"  The *cause* of the glider is not just the VM and the CA.
> It's also because the human was looking for something interesting...
> This is it's final cause.  (Of course, the cause of the human isn't in
> this diagram.)
> 
> Now, obviously, this analysis of this system is of very little use to
> anyone.  But, one can imagine finding somewhat defendable analyses of
> more relevant systems.  The important thing is the idea.
> 
> glen
> -- 
> {glen e. p. ropella <address@hidden> |             Hail Eris!             }
> {http://www.trail.com/~gepr/home.html|                =><=                }
> 
> 
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