Re: Why is this machine not an MR Organism?

[Judith Rosen <***>]

 

 

"Closed to efficient cause", as my father used that phrase, refers to an organization where everything about the system is entailed by something else within the system. Ecosystems do not have this organization, although they do have the fact that they are made up of systems which run the gamut from simple to complex/living. Not all complex systems are alive, in the sense that an organism is alive, and this is where Dan and my father saw things radically differently. What Dan refers to as the "life" in an ecosystem is, according to Rosennean Complexity Theory, the life of the living components. It is very much like the complexity of human beings spilling over to human-created machines such as computers. Such situations muddy the waters. However, if we follow the logic in Dan's theory all the way to the foundations of what causes life in that scenario, it will become clear that the logic doesn't hold.

 

Judith

> Dan Fiscus wrote:
> Nice example and good 
questions. I can't help with
> the answer it seems you want, to say why or 
why not
> the machine is not an organism or MR system. Instead,
> I 
think what you have outlined is an example that helps
> to support what I 
have said on this list many times, that
> organisms are not closed to 
efficient cause or complex
> and alive in the most important way that I 
think Rosen
> meant to elucidate (even though he himself used the
> 
term organism and almost all life science assumes and
> asserts that the 
fundamental and original unit of life is
> the cell or organism). Instead, 
for me, the better closure
> and more complex and life-capable system to 
identify
> is a community or ecosystem that includes two
> 
functional components in couple complementary
> interdependence - 1) an 
autotroph or plant-like
> functional type able to "eat" abiotic, inorganic 
nutrients
> like sunlight, NO3, CO2 and 2) a heterotroph or
> 
animal-like functional type able to "eat" organic matter
> from plants and 
via life process return them to the
> elementary inorganic forms needed by 
the type 1,
> autotroph sub-system thus completing a *life cycle*.
> 
These two in concert, coupled, unfractionable, forever
> in co-operation 
and co-self-organization is the living
> system in my view. From this 
starting cycle of coupled
> complementary process could arise both 
metabolism
> and genetic higher order functions, each of these a
> 
variation on the fundamental theme of molecular
> compound 
composition-combined-with-decomposition.
> And also from this basic cycle 
of building and breaking
> down, metabolism and repair, could come cells 
and
> organisms - these being non-free-standing and
> dependent 
subsets of life that require inputs from
> other life, much as you suggest 
is required for the
> machine and human body in your example. Thus 
I
> would say neither the machine nor a cell/organism is
> full 
self-entailed for efficient cause, whereas an
> ecological community or 
ecosystem with both autotroph
> and heterotroph able of coordination is 
truly and
> more fully self-entailed. Even this though does need
> 
certain inputs from abiotic environment, but these are
> general enough 
that I think they can be considered as
> generally available in many 
environments (solar or stellar
> energy or chemical energy, electron 
donors/receivers,
> etc.) whereas the human body's needed amino acid 
or
> machine's starting system design and purpose are
> special case 
and not reasonably considered generally
> available in the 
environment.
> 
> Some comments...
> 
> Dan 
Fiscus