Re: Rosen & Ashby

["Tim Gwinn" <***>]

Hi Jamie,

A few interposed responses.

Regards,
Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of James N
> Rose
> Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 2:46 PM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Rosen & Ashby
>
>
> Tim,
>
> Interleaving ....
>
>
> Tim Gwinn wrote:
> >
> > Hi Jamie,
> >
> > The two Rosen quotes are of decidely different natures. ...
> >
> > You are correct that they, in effect, say the same thing.
>
> > The "subjective
> > limitation" in the first statement that is codified in the
> second statement
> > is the subjective expectation that all models are "simulable".
> It was one
> > of Rosen's great insights that the belief that all systems should be
> > entirely able to be modeled by algorithmic models was
> incorrect. So it is
> > that complex systems are those that sit on the other side of
> that subjective
> > limitation, by virtue of their possessing nonsimulable models.
>
> Ok.  I see a probable divergence of views between Rosen and
> myself on this particular point.  One I'd rather not get into
> here, because it might be misinterpreted as my discounting
> the rest of what he wrote, which I absolutely would not assert.
>
> Suffice it to say that I have an open and ongoing position
> in my writings and academic debates wherein I dispute
> Godel's incompleteness theorems .. as specifically applied
> in general extension(s) .. that effectively say the same thing
> you just ascribed to Rosen.
>
> That's problematic when there is driven interest to accomplish
> a unified theory of existence.  The universe already behaves and
> functions in a way such that models and nature, closed and open
> systems, specifity and complexity (Rosennean sense) coordinate
> smoothly and well together.  There are natural/normal relations
> between the domains which have 'decidedly different natures'.
> They are inter-involved together, and so if not an 'algorithm'
> then something similar exists that can identify the pandemic
> cross-coordinations that are the reality of Being and performnce
> in the universe.
>
> Does Rosen anywhere address those evident cross-coordinations
> and interactions, or does he just get to the strong statement
> of differential types and leave it at that?


I think maybe this quote will speak to his attitude about this:
“Indeed, we shall take the view that material object-systems, as things in
the external world, and whose behaviors are governed by webs of causal
entailments, constitute the true province of effective processes. That is,
the notion of effectiveness has to get imported into language via modeling
relations arising in material nature, through encodings/decodings from
these. Accordingly, any attempt to characterize effectiveness independent of
these, from within language (e.g., mathematics) alone, and most
particularly, in terms of syntax alone, is perilous. But that is exactly the
substance of propositions such as Church's Thesis - namely, that causal
entailments in the external world must conform to some notion of
effectiveness drawn from inside the language itself. However, it is the
other way around.” [EL 160]

By this account, whether a unified theory of existence is possible or not
will be determined by the nature of the material world, by what it shows us
to be its "effective processes". If those effective processes do not fit a
schema necessary for a unified theory, then it is the theory that must be
altered or replaced, or perhaps the whole program must be scrapped if those
effective processes of the material world are demonstrably incompatible with
any unified theory. The latter would be roughly analogous to the scrapping
of Hilbert's program of formalization for most of mathematics because of the
broad implications of Godel's Incompleteness Theorems.

Another quote perhaps related to your comments:
"I claim that Godelian noncomputability results are a symptom, arising
within mathematics itself, indicating that we are trying to solve problems
in too limited a universe of discourse. The limits in question are imposed
in mathematics by an excess of "rigor", and in science by cognate
limitations of "objectivity" and "context independence". In both cases, our
universes are limited, not by the demands of the problems that need to be
solved but by extraneous standards of rigor [the "subjective limitations" -
TG]. The result, in both cases, is a mind-set of reductionism, of looking
only downward towards subsystems, and never upward or outward." [EL 2]

And also:
"Despite the profound differences between those material systems that are
alive and those that are not, these differences have never been expressible
in the form of a list - an explicit set of conditions that formally
demarcate those material systems that are organisms from those that are
not......I take seriously the possibility that there is no list, no
algorithm, no decision procedure, that finds us the organisms in a
presumptively larger universe of inorganic systems. This possibility is
already a kind of noncomputability assertion, one that asserts that the
world of lists and algorithms is too small to deal with the problem, too
nongeneric." [EL 2-3]



> >[shortened]
> >
> > Similarly, "simulation" refers to a very specific concept for
> Rosen. It took
> > him an entire painstaking chapter in "Life Itself" to explain.
> I'll try to
> > crudely summarize simulation as: the substitution of
> algorithmic entailments
> > in a Turing machine for the entailment structure of the
> original system. The
> > upshot is that 'simulation' both invokes the limits of
> Turing-computability
> > and also uncouples any necessary relationship between the entailment
> > structure in the simulation and the entailment structure in the original
> > system. This makes simulation a very insidious way of superficially
> > appearing to do modeling, when it fact, the two are generally worlds
> > apart. I'd probably have to refer anyone to ch. 7 of LI for any
> more detailed
> > explanations on these concepts.
>
> [Judith ... would you have any copies that I could purchase
> directly from you?  Please let me know, thank you!  Jamie]
>
>
> > > The two quotes of Rosen's you cited "defining"
> > > complexity, is one of them 'wrong'?  And how does
> > > an information set (a mathematical statement)
> > > 'not let itself be exhausted'?  Does the mathematics
> > > have intentional volition of some sort?  Do you
> > > think that's part of what Rosen was trying to convey?
>
> Any comments in reply to these questions, Tim?

My comments in the first and second paragraph of my reply were somewhat
toward these questions. Mainly, to take only the second quote as a precise
definition, and the first one as his personal notes that were not originally
intended for publication in that form. They are both compatible with each
other, with the second being a more rigorous and concise version of the
first.

"Exhausted", in his sense, refers to the dictionary sense of "To treat
completely, to cover thoroughly", as in "to exhaust a topic". So, there is
no vitalism or volition or other funky things being imputed to mathematical
systems or models. :)  He is saying that a complex system cannot be modeled
completely by any finite set of simple models or superposition of those
models. Instead, what is required is either the addition of noncomputable
models, or by regarding a complex system as the limit (in the mathematical
sense) of the set of simple models. [EL 338, LI 247, 280] I do not know of
any place where he elaborates on the latter option, which is too bad, since
it sounds intriguing.


>
> Thanks for all your considered postings!
>
> Jamie
> 11/19/03