Céspedes, Esteban and Fuentes, Miguel (2019) Effective complexity: In which sense is it informative? [Preprint]
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Abstract
This work responds to a criticism of effective complexity made by James McAllister, according to which such a notion is not an appropriate measure for information content. Roughly, effective complexity is focused on the regularities of the data rather than on the whole data, as opposed to algorithmic complexity. McAllister’s argument shows that, because the set of relevant regularities for a given object is not unique, one cannot assign unique values of effective complexity to considered expressions and, therefore, that algorithmic complexity better serves as a measure of information than effective complexity. We accept that problem regarding uniqueness as McAllister presents it, but would not deny that if contexts could be defined appropriately, one could in principle find unique values of effective complexity. Considering this, effective complexity is informative not only regarding the entity being investigated but also regarding the context of investigation itself. Furthermore, we argue that effective complexity is an interesting epistemological concept that may be applied to better understand crucial issues related to context dependence such as theory choice and emergence. These applications are not available merely on the basis of algorithmic complexity.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
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| Additional Information: | Forthcoming in the Journal for General Philosophy of Science | |||||||||
| Keywords: | effective complexity, algorithmic complexity, epistemic context, emergence, physical theory | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Data Specific Sciences > Complex Systems General Issues > Laws of Nature General Issues > Structure of Theories General Issues > Theory Change |
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| Depositing User: | Mr. Esteban Céspedes | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 15 Oct 2019 12:12 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 15 Oct 2019 12:12 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 16520 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Data Specific Sciences > Complex Systems General Issues > Laws of Nature General Issues > Structure of Theories General Issues > Theory Change |
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| Date: | 2019 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/16520 |
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