Re: Entailment in the Ambience: Causality

[Judith Rosen <***>]

Tim,

This was a brilliant post, in my opinion. You nailed it.

I'd like to elaborate on this statement:

> Tim G  wrote: one of the hallmarks of complex natural
> systems he [RR] found is that the causal categories do not remain
distinct - > they become intertwined in an Aristotelian analysis of such
systems.


Tim has hit on one of the main reasons Aristotelian analysis suited my
father so well in analyzing biological systems: The generality. The aspect
of complex organization, particularly in biological systems, which makes
such systems so inappropriate for reductionist analysis is that the "parts"
don't just serve one function, and there's no way to know whether there's
even a finite set of functions-- and they do it all simultaneously. As such,
the different categories of cause would also continuously apply to the same
"parts" in different ways, ways which are also constantly shifting. You have
"parts" (be they cells, organs, subsystems, whatever) relating to one
another and those relationships are also relating to one another, creating
other relationships-- which all have to be considered "components" of the
system organization... and the whole thing is constantly interacting in a
balanced way that maintains system stability in a fluctuating environment.

This is one of the things that drives evolution. I remember a discussion
with my father about his explanation for the development of lungs: He said
it likely began as a "swim bladder". In many aquatic creatures, this organ
serves to help with bouyancy and balance. Obviously, it's got its own blood
supply, so there would be an exchange of oxygen occurring. Those with more
blood supply would have more oxygenation taking place. This likely preserved
life in an organism that otherwise would have died in low water conditions,
so the trait got passed on. Ultimately, the swim bladder is now a different
organ altogether --a lung-- with a different set of functions-- and would be
useless to us as a swim bladder. Some may describe that process as a "happy
accident" but my father viewed it as causally based. So, evolution, in his
view, was not just a history of happy accidents. The more we learn about
complex organization, the more we will be able to understand the kinds of
entailment involved.

Judith
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Gwinn" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2004 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Entailment in the Ambience: Causality


> Rosen was quite careful in his discussion of 'causality'. He states quite
> clearly that, in his view, the very idea of causality - entailment in the
> external world - is something that cannot itself be entailed. The notion
of
> such causal entailment relations rests on a double imputation: "the first
> from sensation to phenomena, the second from phenomena to relations
between
> them. Thus, if our knowledge of phenomena is already once removed from the
> ambience, any talk of of entailment, or any other kind of relation between
> phenomena, is twice removed. On top of all this is a further problem, that
> what we do perceive is only a sample of what we could perceive and the
> problems of induction arising therefrom..."[LI p. 56] Instead, on the
basis
> of our subjective evidence, "we will suppose that relations of entailment
do
> indeed exist between phenomena; the question then becomes not whether, but
> when, such relations hold."[LI p. 56]
>
> He imposed no a priori conditions upon the nature of those causal
entailment
> relations, other than 1) that they exist, and 2) that they are at least
> somewhat recognizable and cognizable. He does not specify that the
relations
> are deterministic or indeterministic, temporally unidirectional or not,
> hierarchical or not, linear or not, networks or not, and so on. His
> assertions of Natural Law leave the specific manner of these relations
quite
> open:
> "1. The succession of events or phenomena that we perceive in the ambience
> is not entirely arbitrary or whimsical; there are relations (e.g., causal
> relations) manifest in the world of phenomena.
> 2. The relations between phenomena that we have just posited are, at least
> in part, capable of being perceived and grasped by the human mind, i.e.,
by
> the cognitive self." [LI p. 58]
>
> So, to say that "the idea of cause is conceptually a local, linear,
> antisymmetric, transitive relation:  A causes B causes C, etc." may
> characterize someone's view of causality, but it does not characterize
> Rosen's. Likewise, the notion of causal loops is not problematic for Rosen
> precisely because Rosen's characterization of causality does not a priori
> preclude such notions. He avoided accepting or asserting the kinds of
> preconceptions that led to artefactual limitations in such things as the
> Newtonian paradigm.
>
> It is also important to note that the Aristotelian analysis of entailment
in
> formal or natural systems is just that: an analysis. It was his assertion
> that formal or causal system entailment relations were amenable to this
kind
> of analysis; but, I do not see any indication that he asserted that it the
> only kind of analysis possible, or that it was ultimately exhaustive. In
its
> most general form, as "why?" questions with "because" answers, it does
> provide a very general framework, which is applicable to entailment
> relations in both formal and natural systems. But I think it would be a
> mistake to say that Rosen therefore thought that causality was a matter
> fully and forever characterized by the four Aristotelian categories - that
> he made this kind of ontological imputation to the material world. He
wrote
> no such thing, and it would have been one of those artefactual
preconditions
> that he took pains to avoid; indeed, one of the hallmarks of complex
natural
> systems he found is that the causal categories do not remain distinct -
they
> become intertwined in an Aristotelian analysis of such systems.
>
> Regards,
> Tim