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===6.20. Three Views of Systems===
===6.20. Three Views of Systems===
<pre>
In this work I am using the word "system" in three different ways, in senses that refer to an "object system" (OS), a "temporal system" (TS), or a "formal system" (FS), respectively. This section describes these three ways of looking at a system, at first, in abstract isolation from each other, as though they reflected wholly separate species of systems, but then, in concrete connection with each other, as the wholly apparent aspects of a single, underlying, systematic integrity. Finally, I close out the purely speculative parts of these considerations by showing how they come to bear on the present example, a collection of potentially meaningful actions pressed into the form of dialogue between A and B.
1. An "object system" (OS) is an arbitrary collection of elements that present themselves to be of interest in a particular situation of inquiry. Formally, an OS is little more than a set. It represents a first attempt to unify a manifold of phenomena under a common concept, to aggregate the objects of "discussion and thought" (DAT) that are relevant to the situation, and to include them in a general class. Typically, an OS begins as nothing more than a gathering together of actual or proposed objects. To serve its purpose, it need afford no more than an initial point of departure for staking out a tentative course of inquiry, and it can continue to be useful throughout inquiry, if only as a peg to hang new observations and contemplations on as the investigation proceeds.
2. A "temporal system" (TS) has states of being and the ability to move through sequences of states. Thus, it exists at a point in a space of states, undergoes transitions from state to state, and has the power, potential, or possibility of moving through various sequences of states. In doing this, the moment to moment existence of the typical TS sweeps out a characteristic succession of points in a space of states. When there is a definite constraint on the sequence of states that can occur, then one can begin to speak of a "determinate", though not necessarily "deterministic", dynamic process. In the sequel, the concept of a TS is used in an informal way, to refer to the most general kind of dynamic system conceivable, that is, an OS in which there is at least the barest notion of change or process that can serve to initiate discussion and that can continue to form the subject of further analysis.
3. A "formal system" (FS) contains the signs, expressions, and forms of argumentation that embody a particular way of talking and thinking about the objects in a designated OS. For the agent that uses a given FS, its design determines the way that these objects are perceived, described, and reasoned about, and the details of its constitution have consequences for all the processes of observation, contemplation, logical expression, articulate communication, and controlled action that it helps to mediate. Thus, the FS serves two main types of purposes: (a) As a formal language, it permits the articulation of an agent's observations with respect to the actual and proposed properties of an object system. (b) In addition, it embodies a "system of practices" (SOP), including techniques of argumentation, that are useful in representing reasoning about the properties and activities of the object system and that give the FS meaning and bearing with respect to the objective world.
There is a standard form of disclaimer that needs to be attached to this scheme of categories, qualifying any claim that it might be interpreted as making about the ontological status of the proposed distinctions. As often as not, the three categories of systems identified above do not correspond to materially different types of underlying entities so much as different stages in their development, or only in the development of discussions about them. As always, these distinctions do not reveal the essential categories and the substantial divergences of real systems so much as they reflect different ways of viewing them.
The need for a note of caution at this point is due to a persistent but unfortunate tendency of the symbol using mentality, one that forms a potentially deleterious side effect to the necessary analytic capacity. Namely, having once discovered the many splendored facets of each real object worth looking into, the mind never ceases from trying to force its imagined "categories of descriptive expressions" (CODE's) down into the original "categories of real entities" (CORE's). In spite of every contrary impression, the deeper lying substrate of existence is solely responsible for funding the phenomenal appearances of the world.
Out of this tendency of the symbol using mentality arises a constant difficulty with every theory of every reality. Namely, every use of a "theoretical framework" (TF) to view an "underlying reality" (UR) leads the user to forget, temporarily, that the reality is "anything but" (AB) its appearance, image, or representation in that framework. Logically speaking, there is an inalienable spectre of negation involved in every form of apparition, imagination, or representation. This AB negation would be complete if it were not for the possibility held out that some UR's may nevertheless be capable of representing themselves over time.
The relationship of objects in an UR to their images in a TF is a topic that this discussion will return to repeatedly as the work progresses. In sum, for now, all of the following statements are approximations to the truth. At any given moment, the image is usually not the object. At times, it can almost be anything but the object. It is even entirely possible, oddly enough, that the image is nothing but the negation of the object, but as often as not it enjoys a more complex relationship than that of sheer opposition. Over time, in some instances, the image can become nearly indistinguishable from its object, but whether this is a good thing or not, in the long run, I cannot tell. The sense of the resulting identification, the bearing of the image on its object, depends on "exactly how" and "how exactly" this final coincidence comes about.
One of the goals of this work, indeed, of the whole pragmatic theory of sign relations, is an adequate understanding of the relationship between UR objects and TF images. The purpose and also the criterion of an "adequate understanding" is this: It would prevent an interpretive agent, even while immersed in the context of a pertinent sign relation and deliberately taking part in a share of its conduct, from ever being confused again about the different roles of objects and images.
If one assumes that there is a unique and all inclusive universe, and thus only one kind of system in essence that generates the phenomenon known as the "whole objective world" (WOW), then this integral form of universe is bound to enjoy all three aspects of systems phenomena in full measure. Then the task for a fully system theoretic and reflective inquiry is to see how all of these aspects of systems can be integrated into a single mode of realization.
In many cases the three senses of the word "system" reflect distinctive orders of structure and function in the types of systems indicated, suggesting that there is something essential and substantive about the distinctions between objects, changes, and forms. With regard to the underlying reality, however, these differences can be as artificial as any that conventional language poses between nouns, verbs, and sentences. Of course, when the underlying system is degenerate, or not fully realized in all the relevant aspects, then it is fair to say that it falls under some categories more than others. In the general case, however, the three senses of the word "system" merely embody the spectrum of attitudes and intentions that observing and intepreting agents can take up with respect to the same underlying type of system.
An object system may seem little more than a set, the barest attempt to unify a manifold of interesting phenomena under a common concept, but no object system becomes an object of discussion and thought without invoking the informal precursors of formal systems, in other words, systems of practice, casually taken up, that reflection has the power to formalize in time. And any formal system, put to work in practice, has a temporal and dynamic aspect, especially in the transitions taking place from sign to interpretant sign that fill out its connotative component. Thus, a formal system implicitly involves a temporal system, even if its own object system is not itself temporal in nature but rests in a stable, a static, or an abstract state.
Formal systems and their SOP's are subject to conversion into object systems, becoming the objects of higher order formal systems through the operation of a critical intelectual step usually called "reflection".
Using the pragmatic theory of sign relations, I regard every OS in the context of a particular FS. I take these two as one, for now, because an FS and its OS are defined in relation to each other and are not really separable in practice. Later, I will discuss a form of independence that can exist between the two, but only in the derivative sense that many FS's can be brought to bear on what turn out to be equivalent OS's.
Any physical system, subject to recognizably lawful constraints, can generally be turned to use as a channel of communication, contingent only on the limitations imposed by its inherent informational capacity. Therefore, any OS of sufficient capacity that resides under an agent's interpretive control can used as a medium for language and converted to convey the more specialized FS.
In every situation, the three kinds of system, or views of a system, are naturally related to each other through the concept of a sign relation. Applied in their turn, sign relations contain within themselves the germ of a particular idea, that no system can be called complete until it has the means to reflect on its own nature, at least in some measure. Thus, by integrating the three senses of the word "system" within the notion of a sign relation, I am trying to make it as easy as possible to move around in a space of apparently indispensible perspectives. To wit, regarding sign relations as formal objects in and of themselves, an intelligent agent needs the capacities: (1) to reflect on the objective forms of their phenomenal appearances, and (2) to participate in the active forms of their interpretive conduct. Further, an agent needs the flexibility to take up each of these stances toward sign relations at will, reflecting on them or joining in them as the situation demands.
I close this section by discussing the relationship among the three views of systems that are relevant to the example of A and B.
How do these three perspectives bear on the example of A and B?
In order to show how these three perspectives bear on the present inquiry, I will now discuss the relationship they exhibit in the example of A and B.
In the present example, concerned with the form of communication that takes place between the interpreters A and B, the topic of interest is not the type of dynamics that would change one of the original objects, A or B, into the other. Thus, the object system is nothing more than the object domain O = {A, B} shared between the sign relations A and B. In this case, where the OS reduces to an abstract set, falling under the action of a trivial dynamics, one says that the OS is "stable" or "static". In more developed examples, when the dynamics at the level of the OS becomes more interesting, the "objects" in the OS are usually referred to as "objective configurations" or "object states". Later examples will take on object systems that enjoy significant variations in the sequences of their objective states.
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===6.21. Building Bridges Between Representations===
===6.21. Building Bridges Between Representations===
