Deconstructing the Subjective Conception of Complexity

Questions such as what is complexity and what contributes to the complexity of something are of interest to philosophers in general and to epistemologists in particular. I came across a fascinating array of answers to questions about the nature and function of complexity at a recent meeting of my philosophy discussion group. The subject was approached from several different angles and many of the propositions shared during the collaborative inquiry can be reconciled and synthesized. Also shared were a number of fascinating propositions that despite being germane and, to a lesser or greater degree, meritorious cannot be reconciled with those that were the most relevant to the topic because they were based on sufficiently different premises. Specifically, the irreconcilable propositions concerned themselves primarily with either the relativity, or the subjective perceptions, of complexity. 

Again, though I’m not particularly amendable to this position for reasons I will touch upon later, it should be noted that the arguments in favor of the idea that complexity is an emergent property of subjective interpretation is not completely without merit. It seems rational that depending on one’s personal level of skill, knowledge, or sophistication, one could regard something as either simple or complex. Separate and apart from such differing levels of skill, knowledge, and sophistication, there is also the matter of differing personal modalities of comprehension. To wit, two people with approximate levels of skill, knowledge, and sophistication could have vastly different ways of comprehending something. I don’t think it’s disputable that some people have an innate exigency to overthink matters whereas others have a tendency to view matters very simplistically. It seems perfectly reasonable that those falling into the former category would be more likely to regard something they are considering as complex when compared to those in the latter.

Then, along this vein, I also distinctly recall at least one proposition correctly mentioning the existence of instances of contrived obscurity or esotericism. While there’s no doubt that in areas of specialized knowledge jargon often develops organically and serves important purposes, a considerable amount of jargon is also almost certainly a form of community language, the purpose of which is to exclude those outside of such community. While the conditions of obscurity and esotericism are not coterminous with complexity, I have no misapprehensions that I would have limited success arguing that something shrouded in unfamiliar jargon would not appear complex to those outside the inner circle. 

This is, of course, not an all-inclusive list but it should suffice to convey that the phenomenology of complexity allows for the accommodation of its subjective conception. The problem, however, as I see it, with the subjective conception of complexity, when attempting to answer the question at-hand, is that it can be criticized in ways in which the objective conception of complexity (the topic of the following blog) cannot be. For one thing, the subjective conception of complexity slyly, however unwittingly, sidesteps the question at-hand (i.e., what is complexity) and instead proceeds to answer a different, albeit closely related, question (i.e., what are the conditions that make something appear complex—even if such a thing is not actually complex). As such, discussions regarding the subjective conception of complexity are not finely relevant to the question. This basic flaw aside, it fails to reliably appraise complexity.

Consider that it is routine for those sufficiently lacking in skill, knowledge, or sophistication to regard even something quite basic as wondrously complex. For example, while someone utterly illiterate may, upon introduction, regard basic mathematical addition as complex, it does not seem reasonable for the masses to accept basic addition, on the basis of the subjective sentiments of an illiterate person, as complex. I am aware that this is an opening for contrarians to assert that basic mathematical addition, irrespective of how we as a society have come to view it as, is indeed complex. That may perhaps be the case but I find this argument difficult to accept in its entirety. So in an attempt to better drive home this point, I will ask you to consider that someone with impaired cognitive ability could even regard something such as the alphabet to the English language as being just as complex as subpart F of the Internal Revenue Code (an area of U.S. international tax law wherein the details are serpentine). Given such a scenario, would it be reasonable for the stubbornly contrarian to argue that it should be accepted by the masses, as a general proposition, on the basis of the subjective sentiments of a cognitively damaged person, that the alphabet to the English language is just as complex as subpart F of the Internal Revenue Code? This does not appear sensible.

At this point, another opening for an alternative contrarian position could be that judgments regarding complexity are individually relativistic (i.e., the same thing can be both complex and simple depending on the person encountering such thing). Individual relativism, however, is recognized as erroneous in philosophy for a very simple reason: a belief is true if it is consistent with the way the world is but if two people disagree about how the world is, it is impossible that both opposing beliefs are consistent with the way the world is. It cannot be that what each believes dictates how reality is to be shaped. There would clearly have to exist flaws in either one or both of the opposing subjective opinions.

In this same vein, while jargon may render something inscrutable, it may be the case that the structure of the concept shrouded in coded or esoteric language may turn out to be very straightforward once the jargon is stripped away or sufficiently disambiguated. The point to absorb is that what is complex and what one regards as complex are not only not coextensive but they are altogether different topics, the former of which is appropriately answered by an examination of the objective conception of complexity while the latter of which is appropriately answered by an examination of the subjective conception of complexity.