Re: models - branch fromf GM discussion

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum []On Behalf Of Howard
> Pattee
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 9:13 PM
> Subject: Re: models - branch fromf GM discussion
>
>
> John K wrote:
> [snip]
> My personal belief is that even new physics can't do it
> [encompass biology] without ceasing to be physics, and I think at
> the core that was Rosen's belief too, but talking about new
> physics is a way of getting the physicists to be a little more
> humble about the scope of their discipline and to really be
> saying that some "new science" is needed.. The new science in the
> Rosennean sense is Rosennean biology.
>
> HP:
> I know that Bob was irritated by some physicists, and for good
> reason, but that is a personal, not a scientific issue. The issue
> is what specifically does a "new science" mean? This is the issue
> that I think must be clarified if Rosennean models are to be of
> more use to biologists. I have never been clear what else,
> besides irritation, Rosen had in mind by calling physics
> "impoverished" beyond the view that physical laws are simply
> inadequate or incomplete for describing the essential character
> of life (or even the function of measurement), a view that many
> physicists have argued for many years.

 

 

Contemporary physics was/is impoverished due to artefactual limitations of the Newtonian paradigm within which that physics is constructed. It is one of the major themes of Life Itself to show that those artefactual limits restrict physics models of material reality to be entirely mechanistic ones. And to argue that beyond those artefactual limits there are additional valid kinds of models of material reality, such as impredicative relational models.

 

> Rosen agrees with physics in the basic Hertzian epistemological
> conditions for an "objective" model, i.e., the commutation or
> congruence of physical and inferential entailments. Rosen says,
> "In fact, the congruences (modeling relations) which can be
> established between them are, I would argue, the essential stuff
> of science."
>
> Rosen also agrees that a clear boundary must be chosen between
> the model and the system being modeled (the epistemic cut). Rosen
> says, "Obliterating the boundary would leave us with the entire
> universe; either all environment and no system, or all system and
> no environment. And we recall that, as von Neumann argued, such a
> boundary must be placed somewhere, 'if the method is not to
> proceed vacuously.'"
>
> Rosen also agrees with physics that a problem arises when we try
> to construct a model of a system that contains both physical and
> inferential entailments, measurement being the paradigm example
> in physics. In other words, when we want to "objectify" the
> observer or the measurement by moving the epistemic cut to the
> right we have problems. Again, I quote Rosen:
>
> "From what has been said above, the 'objectivizing' of the
> observer (i.e., pulling him entirely into the public, external
> world) amounts to replacing the boundary between subjective and
> objective by an ordinary boundary between a system and its
> environment, both now in the external world (on the left).
> Moreover, this must be done in such a way that what, formerly,
> was (subjective) inferential entailment in the observer now
> coincides with causal entailment in the 'objective' system that
> has replaced him. At the very least, there must be no less causal
> entailment in the system than there was inferential entailment in
> the subjective observer."
>
> This is the condition that physical law description alone cannot
> satisfy because inferential systems are symbol systems governed
> by local syntax over which universal physical laws have no
> necessary effects. It is generally recognized that physical laws
> cannot generate or cause symbolic language structures including
> mathematics. Nor can symbols generate or cause physical laws. It
> is just this disjoint character of laws and symbols that
> stimulates the field of biosemiotics as an essential complement
> to biochemistry.

 

I disagree with this interpretation, or perhaps I misunderstand you. It is the case that these inferential entailments are part of the material world (unless we are Cartesian dualists), and that therefore inferential entailments are rooted in causal entailments. So it is that "there must be no less causal entailment in the system than there was inferential entailment in the subjective observer." His argument is that inferential entailments are not excepted from physical law.

 

> Obviously Rosen also agrees with physicists that physical laws
> cannot satisfy this condition. He expresses it in his own terms,
> namely, that this condition is "inconsistent with the tenets of
> mechanism" as Rosen defines mechanism. (All quotes above from
> Chapt. 5, Essays on LI)

 

To provide the full quote (continuing after the prior paragraph quote):

    "These requirements are inconsistent with the tenets of mechanism, tenets which, as we have seen, have been presumed synonymous with objectivity itself.

    For instance, mind requires unformalizability to be part of it. That means, precisely, the accomodation of closed loops of inferential entailment. But as we have seen, the identification of mechanism with objectivity forbids closed causal loops. And yet the presumed "objectivization" of the observer must faithfully represent his inferential entailments in terms of objective causal ones." [EL p. 93, bold added]

It is not that mind or inferential entailment lay outside the purview of physical law, but rather that they lay outside of a contemporary physics which is artefactually restricted to a capacity to describe ony mechanisms.

 

> So far I do not see a significant difference of opinion. The only
> unresolved Rosen issue, then, is what aspects of physics does he
> think require change? Rosen's primary assumption is that because
> physical laws are inadequate to model life there must be
> something fundamentally wrong with physics.

 

 

His argument is not that there is something fundamentally wrong with physics; but rather, that contemporary physics unnecessarily and unwittingly artefactually restricts itself to modes of description that are limited to mechanistic descriptions.

 

 

>Rosen says, "For then
> the muteness of physics arises from its fundamental
> inapplicability to biology and betokens the most profound changes
> in physics itself." (LI, p. 13)
>
> What is Rosen's basis for this assumption?

 

 

The arguments are fully laid out step-by-step in Life Itself, and then reiterated in Essays on Life Itself in various ways.

 

 

> Why would we want to
> change successful physical models because they do not describe
> complex systems they were never designed to model?

 

 

Where does he say we should change sucessful physical models?? That is not his argument at all. He is saying that that physics needs to be enlarged: to enlarge the universe of available model types to include those outside the artefactual limits of the Newtonian paradigm.

 

 

Regards,

Tim