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Oops, I meant to comment on this bit as well:
> John M. wrote: 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." That depends on the system, I suppose! (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) But, getting serious now, I agree that a single celled phytoplankton does not "decide". Instead, it "behaves"-- meaning it acts and reacts. Some of its behaviors are a direct result of interaction between the system and its "ambience" (as my father referred to the world outside any given system). But some of the behaviors of the phytoplankton will be generated purely from within. Are they triggered? Yes. But from within the organization itself. What the statement about "closed to efficient cause" means is that the entailment structure having to do with aspects of "efficient cause" is a closed loop, contained within the organization of the system. Remember that there are four categories of causality that my father
talked about, based on Aristotle's work. Each category addresses different
aspects entirely-- (different categories of answers to "why?" questions).
Therefore, each mode of analysis is going to generate different kinds of
information (categories of "because..." answers). Therefore, the statement
"closed to efficient cause" only refers to the one category, without
specifying anything about the others.
It's also worth pointing out that aspects of the ambience (be they
weather-related or the predation of other organisms, etc) can and do
interfere with the behaviors and organization of organisms-- it's not that that
this organization is impervious to interference or interaction. Clearly, the
quality of metabolism, for example, is going to be impacted in a famine of that
particular organism's food source/s. So even though the quality of metabilism is
"closed to efficient cause", the ambience exerts influences that have
consequences. This doesn't change the fact that metabolism is something that is
entailed from within the organism. It also is clear that the organism doesn't
"decide" to metabolize.
Judith
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