Re: Operational Closure

[Steve Johnson <***>]

Sorry I hit send too fast by mistake. I meant to
write:

One potentially interesting footnote is that Varela's
approach to the world bootstrapping itself and other
self reference matters has parallels in George Spencer
Brown's book Laws of Form on the calculus of
indications.





> "In order to deal with the circular nature of the
> autopoiesis idea, I developed some bits of
> mathematics of self-reference, in an attempt to make
> sense out of the bootstrap ? the entity that
> produces its own boundary. The mathematics of
> self-reference involves creating formalisms to
> reflect the strange situation in which something
> produces A, which produces B, which produces A. That
> was 1974. Today, many colleagues call such ideas
> part of complexity theory."


--- Steve Johnson <***> wrote:

> One 
> 
> 
> --- Howard Pattee <***> wrote:
> 
> > Steve, Tim, and Judith,
> > 
> > In my opinion, Rosen?s ?closed to
> > efficient causation? and Varela?s
> > ?operational closure? refer to different
> > models of life. As I have pointed before,
> > Rosen?s relational view of life was
> > essentially timeless or synchronic. Relational
> > biology models focus on abstract forms, not
> > molecular structures. In this sense, Rosen was
> more
> > of a Platonist than a Materialist. That is why at
> a
> > basic conceptual level he did not see physics as
> the
> > best language to talk about life. That is also why
> > Rosen?s models did not address the problem of
> > individuation or how populations of individual
> > organisms behave, as Tim pointed out. Relational
> > models do not view creative evolution as central
> to
> > life, because evolution depends on the statistics
> of
> > populations, and neither statistics nor
> populations
> > are addressed in relational models. 
> >  
> > Varela was a combination of somewhat mystical
> > philosopher and experimental neurophysiologist.
> The
> > following passages give a rough idea of his basic
> > motivation.
> > 
> > Francisco Varela: "I guess I've had only one
> > question all my life. Why do emergent selves,
> > virtual identities, pop up all over the place
> > creating worlds, whether at the mind/body level,
> the
> > cellular level, or the transorganism level? This
> > phenomenon is something so productive that it
> > doesn't cease creating entirely new realms: life,
> > mind, and societies. Yet these emergent selves are
> > based on processes so shifty, so ungrounded, that
> we
> > have an apparent paradox between the solidity of
> > what appears to show up and its groundlessness.
> > That, to me, is a key and eternal question."
> >  
> > "The idea arose, also at that time, that the local
> > rules of autopoiesis might be simulated with
> > cellular automata. At that time, few people had
> ever
> > heard of cellular automata, an esoteric idea I
> > picked up from John von Neumann ? one that
> > would be made popular by the artificial-life
> > people."
> > 
> > "In order to deal with the circular nature of the
> > autopoiesis idea, I developed some bits of
> > mathematics of self-reference, in an attempt to
> make
> > sense out of the bootstrap ? the entity that
> > produces its own boundary. The mathematics of
> > self-reference involves creating formalisms to
> > reflect the strange situation in which something
> > produces A, which produces B, which produces A.
> That
> > was 1974. Today, many colleagues call such ideas
> > part of complexity theory."
> >  
> > Howard
> > 
> > 
> >                    
> >        
> > 
> 
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
> protection around 
> http://mail.yahoo.com 
> 



        
                
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. 
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail