Containing Oneself - 3 approaches

The problem then is that a theory seems to always be about something else. Systems must be extrinsic, you cannot have a system which is intrinsic.

The Existential/Essential Approach
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In essential terms, if we take a materialist point of view, then a system embodies itself already... it "is" itself. To contain itself again would require there to be a copy of the system within it, in which case it would have a "similar" system inside but not the "same" system. A box cannot thus contain itself as to contain something being the "nature" (or essence) of the box requires something else to be contained... at best a copy of the box. Likewise a hand can only grasp for something else as to grasp for itself. You cannot for example shake hands with yourself.

It is the chicken and egg situation. To have a chicken you must have an egg etc. To grasp you must already have a hand, so you cannot then grasp that hand... still unconvinced of the apparent "necessity" of this. Why can't these things be true?

The Referencing Approach
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Anyway when we say that we must grasp, or box, a copy of the hand or box then we are "referencing" a copy to mean the object.

An entity can thus contain a "reference" to itself. This by itself is not very useful. We would need rules to govern how to model this reference and its relationship with references to other entities.

Also we can try to include the system within itself by referencing its own components. So how many components does a system have? It depends how many components are determined. This is a function of the simplicity of emergent properties and the level of detail. We could reference each atom of a car or we could model its engine parts. The rules that govern these references are very different.

I will explore later a very simple Lindenmayer System

variables : A B
constants : none
start : A
rules : (A -> AB), (B -> A)

This system is already a reference system, it will be interesting to see if it can reference itself.

Ofcourse what does that mean? Because at the end there is only input, interations and output. It still requires a user to see the "similarities" but it is a start at self-identity.

Black Box approach
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Finally if we say that two systems that produce the same output from the same input, regardless of their mechanics are identical then we can rephrase the problem as a system which models its own output.

But this is ridiculous! If all the system does is model its own output then it has an undefined output, so what is there to model? How could it be correct or incorrect? If it can't model its own output then it certainly can't model itself.

Now if the system did something useful say model some extrinsic data, and then we ask it to model itself then it would produce the same output and so again cannot succeed.

If we say that it models some extrinsic data, and also reports on its processing, then we are simply adding to the data that it outputs. This is no difference from the first case.

Still however the hand grasping itself says it best. That issue applied to data processing leads to a requirement for all systems to have extrinsic qualities.

If this is true then we cannot have any system which exists independent of its objects, and no system can explain itself.

Now Dave's idea of 2 systems modelling each other. However this closed system is really just one system.

Then we are into Strawson because it seems that the universe is just a single intrinsic system, with no extrinsic source of meaning. That is where people turn to God.

This is a bleak view arising maybe from the replacing of all "things" with references in models. Reality is not a model it is reality, and a model is not reality because it is a model.

However then we begin the very hard work of ontology and epistomology asking how is it that we have referencing at all, and are there really "things" independent of our knowing of them.

The problem is that the idea of "references" suggests that there is things which are linked by a meaning. Crudely this suggests that the link is a new thing and we are in the third man falacy. If it is a new things and we reference it then we have an eternal heirachy of references supporting the last link we made.

References are "implicit" within the process of knowledge, they only exist when we reference and do not exist independent of the things within the reference. They are "meaning" itself, the dialectic between things which are not one another, but at the same time are one another as they are used interchangeably.

If we cannot speak of references without their things, as they themselves are not things, then likewise we cannot speak of things without their references because how would we call them?

The dualism is thus only for teaching purposes. In its organic in-vitro environment there is no problem, they are sides of the same coin... that of Mind.

Still very whooly but getting there...