Re: Inconsistency, etc.

[Judith Rosen <***>]

> H. Pattee wrote:  Following your suggestion, I will say that it is my opinion that Rosen and von Neumann reached similar, or at the least, consistent conclusions about the inadequacy of Newtonian dynamics for describing life. It is also my opinion that their apparent difference over the very narrow technical issue of self-replication was a misunderstanding.
 I think it is more than my opinion that von Neumann's model is now accepted by many active researchers as a fundamental contribution to theoretical biology.
>

Thank you, Howard. I find that much more tolerable. I also found your post quite interesting (and I mean that sincerely, without sarcasm) and have a few further comments, below:

> H.Pattee wrote: Inconsistency can arise only in formal symbol systems. Nothing in nature can be inconsistent (What would that mean?). It is only in our > formal models that inconsistency can occur.

 

At first glance, my tendency was to agree. Certainly, the kind of inconsistency we are discussing here is of that variety.

 

However, Rosennean Complexity Theory postulates that there are observable behaviors by and within living systems which my father said can only be accounted for if living systems have certain information about their environmental "contexts" coded somehow into their very organization. This information is what my father referred to as "an internal model" (and, among the coded aspects of the organism's context is coded information about TIME, hence the reference "anticipatory" or "predictive" internal model). This internal model is apparently not adaptive at all, or else it is very "slow" to make adaptive changes, because there are definitely situations where environmental conditions change and the organisms that evolved within the original environmental conditions are no longer able to survive there. I would call that a case of naturally occurring "inconsistency"-- between the natural world (reality) and the organism's internal models of it.

 

> H. Pattee wrote: Scientific definitions do not describe "actual properties of reality." They are not right or wrong in any scientifically verifiable sense. Only in the formal sense can they be inconsistent. Two well-defined valid models can describe properties of reality even though the models if combined formally would be inconsistent. For example, the microscopic laws of motion are reversible, that is, formally symmetric in time. A box of gas obeys these laws. The second law of thermodynamics is irreversible, and the same box of gas also obeys this law. You cannot formally combine these two models consistently, but to fully understand a box of gas you need both models.
>
I see a great deal to argue with in the above paragraph (which may or may not surprise the list!), however, since the above is not couched in terms of what Robert Rosen did or did not believe, I see little need to challenge it. I will offer, for the sake of discussion, my own sense that the first two lines are completely counter to what I perceive to be the case. Perhaps it was also my "upbringing". But, what is science FOR, if not to help us understand "actual properties of reality"?

 

Judith