Re: Could you give me your analysis of this?

[John M <***>]

Judith:

"Closed to efficient causation" means that everything about the system that
involves "efficient cause" is entailed by something else about the system.
It means that there is no one outside the system actively creating the
"effecient cause" aspects of the system-- the system is self-sustaining."

Thanks for the definition, I can see the logical language-link, which was
obscure so far in my feeble English. Problem: it sounds like being cut off
from "outside the system" - which in my views is a nono. I can understand
this as a chosen aspect of a closed (limited) model (=system?) unless the
"system" is boundariless - unlimited.
As you explain it - a "self sustaining system" - means a cut-off view of a
model, extracted from the total interconnectedness (interefficiency).

JR:
"All complex systems manifest closed loops of entailment; this is one of the
definitions of complex organization... "

Conform with your additional defining: this is a necessary, but by far not
sufficent description. ("one of")  - IMO complex systems (any, as everything
else) have open connections with 'the world outside our model', do we
recognize them, or not. We cannot list all sufficient causes, unless we
restrict the topical view to be explained. I still doubt the 'working'
closed loops without (un)closed triggering, maybe indirectly. "A system does
not DECIDE by itself."
As you wrote: " It certainly doesn't mean "closed" in general; quite the
opposite."

Finally - hurting my past chemist-self:
JR:
>  Atoms (which are complex but not alive) are not "closed systems", either.
> Atoms give and take electrons all the time as they interact with one
> another, etc., but still maintain their organizational stability.

When 'atoms' give or take electrons they change their organization from
'atom' to 'ion'. Their stability becomes different (to information they
receive) from the same shown as 'atoms'.
(If I condone the term atom, which washed away lately in my thinking, just
as molecules, giving place to 'limited effects depicted in a way of
mathematically formalizable models of conventional (old?) observation and
its (maybe obsolete) explanation".)
In my reductionist chemistry, however, I can condone a "repair" of an
atom: - from its anion-form, ('plus' electron) by discharging that electron
for certain stability -reconfirmation into the more stable (?) (neutral)
atomic format. In certain cases it goes spontaneously as rearrangement.
(Indeed a stability-induced "closed to efficient causation"). However the
opposite process: to take 'in' an electron from the 'environment' into its
'body' is metabolism at its best.
 Restoration is repair, just as "imbibing" from the environment and building
it into its body is metabolism. Should we call an atom "alive"? I may do it.
Maybe you can paste other 'necessary' conditions into the satate of 'being
alive' to exclude atoms.
It all would go into the "sufficient" to assure YOUR choice of selection
into YOUR theory. (The YOUR does not mean Judith Rosen of course).

John M


----- Original Message -----
From: "Judith Rosen" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: Could you give me your analysis of this?

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