Re: [life] MR as ontological; semantic/meaning

["Dan Fiscus" <***>]

John,

Again, some great thoughts, comments, process. Thanks. I agree
on your proposal of working diligently to clarify, extend, apply
Rosen's work in open and collaborative spirit. And your views/posts
and dialog with Tim have helped my thinking a lot. Listening in has
added more "meaning" to these topics for me...

Speaking of this, a quick reply re:

John Kineman wrote:

> Formality includes more than just computability, which was argued
> effectively with regard to Goedel's incompleteness, etc. If we then look
> at the reason for this difference, it seems to be attributed to the need
> for semantic input to the mathematics, i.e., the role of the
> mathematician in establishing meanings. If that is the basic difference
> between computable and complex, then it correlates with the picture I
> have been presenting - that the "something else" in this case is a
> semantic element, which must inhabit the formal system domain. Thus the
> nested arrangement I diagrammed captures this difference. However, I
> need to look more deeply into what constitutes this difference, if there
> is anything at all of the mechanical domain that can be involved. That
> would seem to be logically excluded, for the very reason that we are
> discussing something more than what is precisely mechanical and thus
> computable.

I think the semantic and meaning input comes not from either
formal or physical/material, but from the interdependence of the
two. It is like meaning arising, growing, evolving in dialog
between two participants. Ulanowicz has a paper in press about
the dialog between the quick (living) and the dead (non-living
physical). Rashevsky talked about the distinction being between
topological (or relational in his words) and physical aspects. He
and Rosen both seem to have tried to make a total separation,
perhaps only a distinction, and to elevate the relational aspect as
key, or at least sorely ignored by mechanistic science. But if formal
(non-physical) and physical/material are entangled, always
mutually causal and co-evolving, there can be no clean line drawn,
neither exists alone. Everything has a bit of both aspects. This
would fit with various views of complementarity, too, I think.

2 cents,

Dan