On Thursday, February 03, 2000 2:07 AM, Nate Schmolze
[SMTP:schmolze@students.wisc.edu] wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> I read through your paper and this level thing surfaced for me. You of
> course mentioned Rose's neat frog example. You describe in modeling how
> explanation on the bit level has no meaning for someone who is engaged in
> the activity on a knowledge level.
>
> I guess since you used dialectics to look at modeling, I am curious not
so
> much of meaning but appropriateness. Rose touches on this a bit with
> determism in that an explanation on a lower level (bit level in your
> modeling paper) is inappropriate in explaining something on a higher
level
> (not linear).
> [...]
> I guess my question would be not so much along the lines of how the moon
is
> described differently by the poet and astronomer, but when and where
> particular descriptions are appropriate/inappropriate. I hope this is not
> too much off the gist of your paper, I entered via dialectics. Also, for
me,
> you explained the dialectical concepts clearly.
>
> Nate
Nate,
I think this is quite a difficult question and one to which there is no
all-embracing answer.
I'd start by saying that to judge the appropriateness of an abstraction it
is necessary to define two things. Firstly, to understand the phenomenon
under consideration as a totality - which does not mean to know everything
about it, but in Lukacs' terms to see it as "the concrete unity of
interacting contradictions" or in Ollman's "as a logical construct in which
the whole is present through internal relations in each of its parts", one
aspect of which would be to be aware of the different levels at which it
can be seen and the mappings between them. We must also go beyond the
phenomenon seen on its own and understand it as part of broader
conceptualisations.
So looking at Rose's frog, he makes two points which are relevant. The
first is that the different views of the jumping frog are partial: "to
understand completely even the simplest of living processes requires that
we work with all five types simultaneously." Even if we focus on one we
should be aware of the others and their inter-relationships. Secondly, he
makes the point elsewhere in 'Lifelines' that understanding these processes
require us to understand more than the organism itself, but also its
environment and the two way interaction between organism and environment.
Similarly with the example of the different levels of meaning in the
computer. To understand the phenomenon properly, we need to know not just
about all the levels, but also, for example, in defining the knowledge
level to know about the broader human-computer interaction, including the
skills, cultural background and previous knowledge of the user.
Secondly, in defining appropriateness we have to have a purpose (or
question or hypothesis) which will at the least lead us to focus on certain
aspects of the world and also will provide some implicit (and culturally
and historically defined) range of explanations that might be considered
relevant and feasible. The notion of purpose here also implies embodiment
in a form of activity, which will usually enable us to test appropriateness
in practice.
Having this knowledge, can we distinguish appropriateness or what Marx
called "good" and "bad" abstractions? There are two cases which are very
clear-cut examples of inappropriate abstractions. The first is where our
conceptualisation meets our purpose, but simply does not correspond to the
reality of whatever it is describing i.e. it is wrong in other terms. The
second is where it may be true, but does not meet our purpose.
Now things start to get a bit more difficult when we consider the
appropriateness of various partial but valid abstractions. Let us take the
question of 'the level thing'. It might be tempting to propose a one-to-one
relationship between level and purpose e.g. with the computer, physics
level questions should be explained at the materials level; programming
type questions at the symbol level etc. However these levels are themselves
abstractions and in the real world, the levels may overlap and interact.
For example, the epidemiologist and partisan of dialectical thought,
Richard Levins asks the question of why simple medical models exclude
social factors which may have equal explanatory force and greater practical
effect in treating illness in given situations. He argues, convincingly I
think, that neither sufficiency in matching answer to question (there may
be many ways of doing that) or economy (broader explanations may be better
for a given purpose) are adequate grounds, but rather that they have their
roots in the role of social factors in defining typical forms and methods
of abstraction (e.g. boundaries between disciplines, what is considered
scientific good or bad practice, a wish to disguise social causes).
Thus explanations may need to cross / integrate different levels. Clearly
there are limits to this - some explanations just seem to be wrong or
incomplete because they are at the wrong level e.g. explaining social
interactions in terms of quantum physics. Less obviously, Marx argued that
the classical economists were unable to arrive at an adequate understanding
of value because they mistook those elements common to all forms of
economic life with those specific to capitalism. To be able to see which
are appropriate or inappropriate we need to look at the contradictions and
interconnections between the levels in the context of the totality we are
studying i.e. it's a question to which there isn't one answer. (Perhaps a
confirmation of Vygotsky's view that as well as general dialectical
principles, there has to be a specific application for each discipline?)
In some cases, the mapping will be so complex or indirect as to be
non-deterministic. I suspect this will be the case with mapping neuronal
activities onto conceptual ones in the brain. It also makes me suspicious
of genetic explanations for social behaviour which are based on statistical
correlations rather than any causal explanation of how the levels might be
related. (Rose states that that is because none exists and these
explanations are primarily ideological.) In other cases, there will be a
closer and more direct relationship, which might suggest redrawing the
boundaries of our abstractions more broadly if it enables us to meet a
given purpose.
Bruce
=====================================
Bruce Robinson
Information Systems Research Centre
University of Salford
Salford M5 4WT
UK
Phone / fax: 0161 861 7160
Email: bruce.rob@btinternet.com
=====================================
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