Friday, February 24, 2006
Generative Methodology Glass Bead Games
On the limits of the OWL standard à [184]
Reading material [1]
Reading material [2]
Reading material [3]
Summary of the discussion up to this point à [186]
The issue of n-articulated ontology
“multi-articulated” ontology
Related discussion on ontologyMapping thread à [17]
Hi John K.
Comments interspersed, below:
JK:
I don't know anything about Edelman except that Paul Prueitt pointed me this way on the assumption that Edelman’s view of function was similar to mine. “Function is a real aspect of nature and is involved in conveying information including meanings. Since Edelman is a Nobel laureate and all that, I decided to cite his book "Consciousness, the remembered present" where he attributes the functional emergence of consciousness to a high level of communication in the brain.
Judith Rosen:
Hmmm... that sounds about right. I would say "a high level of organized relational interaction" in the brain, but that sort of describes "communication" doesn't it.
JK:
Regarding degeneracy, my thoughts will be
tangential, from ecology. The case where two dissimilar systems have a similar
or same function, this is generally referred to as convergence, as in
convergent evolution. In restoration ecology we talk about "functional
replacement" meaning replacing the function that say one species performed
with another species that can do the same thing but might be less extinct. Or
in some cases, functional replacement is land swapping, where a company works a
deal to mess up one ecosystem but will restore another to replace the function.
Judith Rosen
I think "convergence" is a far better word for it! [4]
The entailment pattern whereby two dissimilar things can have the same effect under certain contextual circumstances is part of complexity.
This phenomenon explains why cocaine or other substances can generate a feeling of euphoria in the human brain by interacting with the "pleasure center". That region of the brain serves a functional purpose and stimulation of it is reinforced because in the natural course of life, the behaviors that stimulate it are also the ones that benefit health, survival, and/or perpetuate the species.
The fact that octopuses have copper-based blood and humans have iron-based blood is another example of how two different metals can serve the same functional purpose within living organization. I think this particular entailment pattern has a natural opposite, which is what happens when two similar things can have radically different effects under certain contextual circumstances like allotropes of carbon.....
To me, both of these are clearly examples of the power of relational effects within some interactive system-- i.e.; the nature of complexity.
As such, they both shed light on the nature of adaptation in evolution.
I can think of many illustrations of both types of adaptation. On the similarity (convergent?) side would be such things as an organism switching to a new food source when circumstances cause the current food source to disappear from the environment. On the divergent side, I see an explanation for things like "function change"-- whereby some change in environmental conditions renders the functionality of a few of an organism's components less than optimal and various latent aspects of the organism's capability suddenly come into functional use.
Robert Rosen postulated that this kind of “functional change” entailment is one of the drivers of "morphogenesis" and used the swim-bladder of fishes as an example of how rudimentary lungs may have evolved when inland seas began to recede and dry up, etc. The swim bladder is necessarily "vascularized"-- meaning it has its own blood supply to nourish the tissue. There would be a side effect of this vascularization that an exchange of gasses would cross between the air in the swim bladder and the blood. The more vascularized the swim bladder, the more gas exchange would be possible. Ordinarily, this exchange would be incidental because the gills are the organs that play this functional role... But, in the event that the water was drying up, the gills become useless, so the fish with the most vascularization in its swim bladder would be able to survive without the use of its gills and would pass that characteristic on.
Judith
[1] http://dip.semanticweb.org/documents/ECIS2005-A-Methodology-for-Deriving-OWL-Ontologies-from-Products-and-Services-Categorization.pdf
[4] Comment from Paul Prueitt: The problem is that there is both convergence and dispersion at the same time. The convergence is a flow of elements (from the substrate) and the dispersion is evidenced in an altering or re-enforcement of natural categories as experienced in matching the functional needs of the emergent whole. At least this is what stratified theory would suggest.