Re: Could you give me your analysis of this?

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

JohnK,
See interposed.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of John
> Kineman
> Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 1:37 AM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Could you give me your analysis of this?
>
>
> On the sufficient or necessary question regarding efficient causation, I
> personally think too much has been made of it. Politicians are more
> interested in whether someone has altered a view than scientists
> should be.


Whether he altered his view or not does have some interest for me from a
historical/biographical point of view, in terms of trying to understand his
processes and sequences of thinking. I don't consider it being
fault-finding, but rather trying to journey through the mind of great
thinker. More importantly, though, is that the sufficiency/necessity
conditions have fundamental scientific ramifications for taxonomy, modeling
and, as Judith pointed out, for realization. So I do see the topic of
sufficiency/necessity conditions as being of great scientific consequence.


> Indeed it would be suspect as science if there were no evolution of ideas.
> Also, "closed" should be interpreted scientifically too. As such
> it must be
> interpreted as meaning "relatively closed." If a biologist says organisms
> can be distinguished from their environments, the statement does not
> necessarily mean they are absolutely distinct.


Rosen never said that organisms are "closed" or "closed systems"; he said
they were "closed to efficient cause". Those are two grossly different
qualities."Closed to efficient cause" does not mean or imply that an
organism is "absolutely distinct" from its environment. "Closed to efficient
cause" only means that an organism possesses certain loops of causal
organization of internal functions, which are modeled as impredicative loops
of entailment in relational models.

"Absolutely distinct" or "absolutely closed system" would be an assertion of
"fractionability", which is patently not what Rosen suggested.There is no
reference that I am aware of where Rosen suggests in any way that organisms
are necessarily fractionable from their environments.He instead stressed
context-dependence, the chimerical nature of ecosystems, and the dangers of
assumptions of surrogacy, among other things.


>Measurable differences are
> just that, measurable differences, not absolutes. So, organisms have
> efficient closure as one of their defining characteristics, and that is a
> requirement for being an organism (the meaning of if and only if). I
> disagree that "only if" means sufficiency, i.e., nothing else required. I
> believe the phrase "if and only if" only establishes necessity. It says
> that the condition implies organism and not the condition implies not the
> organism. That is necessity, not sufficiency. Nevertheless, the fact that
> this was not clarified until later indicates an evolution of the ideas, to
> me.


"if and only if" is a standard phrase in logic and math. As Aloisius pointed
out, the "only if" portion refers to necessary conditions, the "if" portion
refers to sufficient conditions. I seriously doubt Rosen would have used "if
and only if" phrasing unless he specifically intended to specify both
sufficient and necessary conditions. In this case, I agree with Aloisius
that in Life Itself Rosen was proposing a definition, one characterized by
both sufficient and necessary conditions, and wrote it using "if and only
if" as would any mathematician setting forth such a definition in precise
terms.

After thinking about it some more last night, I speculate that the evolution
of his thinking resulted perhaps in an intimate relationship between
sufficient conditions and immanent causation.


> Beyond that, however, "closure" itself cannot be taken as an absolute.

What kind of "closure"?

> There are no absolutely closed systems in nature or else Rosen's entire
> thesis would be falsified.

Rosen never said or implied there were "absolutely closed systems in
nature".

Regards,
Tim