Re: Rosen & Ashby

["James N Rose" <***>]

Tim Gwinn wrote:
>
> Hi Jamie,
>
> A few interposed responses.
>
> > 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]

hmmmmmm. 'perilous' indeed.  "effectiveness" can be a
relation appreciated only from the 'outside' of a system,
yet it can also be something that occurs from innate
events, irrespective of any external evaluator.

At this moment in my thinking, I don't see as
how I could side with either view exclusively.
(for now, that is)


> 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.

My phrasing of it looked like this:  "if any anomaly arises
in a paradigm, then the paradigm, no matter how good
'except for that anomaly' has to be scrapped and replaced
with one that accounts for and embraces the phenomenon
so that it is no longer an anomaly."


> 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]

FANTASTIC!.  I have been taking-on Godel since day-one of my writings,
challenging erroneous premises and pre-set limits which invalidate
any attempted generalization of his incompleteness theorems.
There have been several "limits to knowledge" conferences, Sci-Am
articles and books, and general extrapolations of Godel's
theorems, which became the rage of the scientific community.
All balderdash, IMO.   To know that Rosen also saw that
emperor godel wears no clothes is gratifying.


> 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]

In this, I take another path than he did.  I -do- see a "decision
procedure, that finds us the organisms in a presumptively larger
universe of inorganic systems."


> > >[shortened]
> > >
> >
> > > > 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. :)

I never imputed any.  I'm asking about it in consideration
of 'actions enactable' within a domain that is larger than,
equal to, or smaller than, the whole performance domain,
however large they may be individually or relationally.


> 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.

Again, I take a different tack.  I deduce that a small
number of behavior rules -can- generate performances
as we know them, and, can generate 'life' from primordial
aspects that wouldn't qualify as 'life' in and of themselves
alone.

Thanks, Tim/all,

Jamie
11/23/03