Spotlight on Lablet Research #27 - Formal Approaches to the Ontology and Epistemology of Resilience
Spotlight on Lablet Research #27 -
Formal Approaches to the Ontology and Epistemology of Resilience
Lablet: University of Kansas
Successful completion of this research effort will result in principled and formally tractable ways to think about the differences between:
- Conditions for the individuation of systems
- Conditions for the identification of systems
- Properties that contribute to the persistence of systems
- Properties that contribute to the functional reliability of systems
Security Science requires reflection on its foundational concepts. The research team, led by Principal Investigator (PI) John Symons, contends that in order to make informed decisions about trade-offs with respect to resilient properties of systems, they must first precisely characterize the differences between the mechanisms underlying valuable functions, those functions themselves, and the conditions underlying the persistence of the systems in question.
When one says that a system persists, it can mean a variety of things. If one considers an electrical power system or a communications network, for example, the initial evaluation of persistence might involve deciding whether or not the system continues to function: Is the grid continuing to deliver power where it is needed? Is it still possible to send and receive messages reliably through the communications network? This is a functional account of the individuation of systems. The functional account is foundational to contemporary thinking in the Science of Security. While it is an intuitively sensible and pragmatically grounded way of thinking about systems, it does not shed light on the question of resilience. Functions are also difficult to capture in a purely network theoretic strategy for reasons that this research group will explore and explain. In order to understand why some systems are resilient and others are not, the research team proposes to apply existing work in philosophy of science and metaphysics.
Security Science has focused on network-based measures of resilience. While a valuable formal approach, its range of application is narrower than the general problem requires. In order to make progress on these questions, a broader theoretical approach is required, including a range of other formal and informal methods.
Background on this project can be found here.