Abstract
The paper presents the most general aspects of scientific modeling and shows that social systems naturally include different belief systems (i.e. different models). Belief systems differ in a variety of respects, most notably in the selection of suitable qualities to encode and the internal structure of the observables. The following results emerge from the analysis: (1) conflict is explained by showing that different models encode different qualities, which implies that they model different realities; (2) explicitly connecting models to the realities that they encode makes it possible to clarify the relations among models; (3) by understanding that social systems are complex one knows that there is no chance of developing a maximal model of the system; (4) the distinction among different levels of depth implicitly includes a strategy for inducing change; (5) identity-preserving models are among the most difficult to modify; (6) since models do not customarily generate internal signals of error, strategies with which to determine when models are out of synch with their situations are especially valuable; (7) changing the form of power from a zero sum game to a positive sum game helps transform the nature of conflicts.
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Notes
A lattice is a partially ordered set. F.i., if ones has three models A, B, C, the lattice of these models includes Ø (the null model, helpful for technical reasons), the three models A, B, C, together with their ‘combinations’ AB (the model including both A and B), BC, AC, and ABC (the most inclusive model, often called the Top of the lattice). A lattice may not have a Top, but it cannot have more than one.
With a slight abuse of notation, the index of the family has been dropped.
Properly speaking, this implies that two different maps are at work here: the map from a natural system to an observing system and the map from the latter to a formal system. Although these two maps are often conflated, they are different. In regard to measurement, real numbers are the only numbers worth considering, since with respect to the reals all the other usually known numbers are of measure zero.
This implies that the usual codification of a dynamics as a vector space tangent to a state space is ambiguous, because a vector space does not distinguish between constitutive and operational parameters.
Technically, these distinctions can be (partially) captured by using fibred spaces instead of vector spaces on state spaces. Since this is an advanced branch of mathematics, we cannot go into details here. For a recent presentation see Eschrig (2011). Technicalities aside, the most interesting issue is the dynamic of identity, in the sense that identity acquires content only within the dynamics of the system. Needless to say, identity is given also statically, but in this case it does not have content. See Poli (2011).
This reading of the lack of Top hides an important ontological issue. In fact, the proposed reading is epistemologically biased. Without denying the possibility of authentic cases of ambiguity, the ontological problem underlying a lattice of models without Top is the stratified nature of S, that is the fact that S shows qualities pertaining to different levels of reality.
Two categories widely used by sociologists and other social scientists appear to be absent from Gurvitch’s series of levels: ‘structure’ and ‘institution’. ‘Structure’ has a role to play in the dimension of the forms of structuration—an aspect of Gurvitch’s theory I shall not address here. The situation is different for the category of ‘institution’, which, according to Gurvitch, has been used in so many different and mutually contradictory ways that it has become useless.
Briefly, ‘primary socialization’ refers to the basic rules of acceptable behaviors provided by the family in which one grows, while ‘secondary socialization’ refers to the rules characterizing the roles one acquires at a later stage.
A further complication should distinguish between a successful primary socialization as opposed to a failed or only partially successful primary socialization. This issue is becoming increasingly relevant especially in contemporary western societies. I shall leave it for another occasion.
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Poli, R. Belief Systems and the Modeling Relation. Found Sci 21, 195–206 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-015-9413-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-015-9413-3