Re: Could you give me your analysis of this?

[Howard Pattee <***>]

Tim,

I re-read the references you gave to evolution in Rosen?s work. Adaptation is certainly a 
consequence of evolution, but I think Rosen is trying to fit the process of evolution 
into his concept of anticipatory system, which it is not. He says that, ?a behavior or 
phenotype which is adaptive necessarily is of an anticipatory character.? Darwinian 
evolution is a model-free process, hence no anticipatory action can exist. Also, Rosen?s 
description of evolution sounds like it works on individual dynamics. Darwinian theory is 
about statistical biases only on population distributions.

Tim: as been several comments by listmembers that Don Mikulecky and others had presented 
examples of such systems which are closed to efficient causation but which are not alive, 
although I cannot find such examples at the moment (anyone have any links or examples 
from those days?).

HP: I have always understood Rosen?s phrase ?closed to efficient causation? as a formal 
condition, a closed topological loop in a diagram of relations including abstract genetic 
and metabolic components of an (M,R) system. A less abstract, more material view of this 
same condition I have called ?semantic closure,? or more recently ?semiotic closure,? to 
reflect the essential non-dynamic symbolic descriptive nature of the gene as contrasted 
with the material dynamics of metabolism. (Rosen abstracts away this distinction in his 
(M,R) systems.) I must note, meo periculo, that this is essentially an elaboration of von 
Neumann?s requirement for evolution, i.e., the distinction between description and 
construction, or (his analogy) of software and hardware. This is clearly only a necessary 
condition and not a sufficient condition for evolution since viable descriptions are rare 
in the space of all descriptions. Whether a daughter cell with an immediately lethal gene 
is alive is just a matter of definition, like how long must it last, or how many faulty 
proteins must it synthesize to be called alive. For a discussion of semantic closure see:

http://www.ws.binghamton.edu/pattee/sem_clos.html

Tim: 2) I have always been puzzled by - what I consider to be - a deep conflict between 
Rosen's proposing of sufficient condition in Q1 and the "Godelian suggestions" (as 
Aloisius puts it) evident in Q2 that "Sufficient conditions are harder; indeed, perhaps 
there are none".

HP: In my view, this is not a real conflict but a result of Rosen?s non-evolutionary, or 
what I call ?synchronic,? view of life. It is in the nature of relational models that 
time is abstracted away. Rosen views life as a kind of timeless order. As he says in LI, 
he can easily picture life without evolution. It is also clear that a Darwin-like 
evolutionary process is not computable in any Turing sense, first, because it depends on 
mutations or errors in the description, and no formal system can tolerate even one bit of 
error. Second, evolution never halts. Of course, many aspects of evolution can be 
simulated but not in all details.

Also I find that Rosen?s concept of error is not the same as the concept of evolutionary 
mutation. Rosen?s concept of error is limited to a discrepancy between a system and its 
model and is therefore entirely an epistemic problem (See AS Chap. 5.6, p. 307). A 
mutation changes the real system itself by constructing a new system. Mutations are not 
errors in Rosen?s sense but changes in ontological reality. Rosen sees organisms as only 
?inequivalent observers? (AL p. 319) instead of ?inequivalent constructors.? Again the 
description/construction distinction and their coded relation is the crucial condition 
for evolvable life.

Howard




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