Re: Operational Closure

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

Howard,

I don't think of Rosen as "more of a Platonist" because he focused on system
organization. I think his argument was quite the opposite: that organization
was as physical as anything else, and therefore models of organization were
valid models, and belonged to an expanded view of physics.

I agree that Rosen's relational models of organisms (e.g., the (M,R)-system
models), which represent but one possible application of relational
modeling,  do not address individuation, populations, or evolution. That is
not the intent of those specific models. They are intended to answer a
primarily taxonomic question: why is one system X alive (i.e., a living
organism) while another system Y is non-living? Things like evolution,
individuation, populations all presuppose the life/non-life distinction has
already been made and are therefore not answers to that question.

Regards,
Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Howard
> Pattee
> Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 9:11 PM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Operational Closure
>
>
> 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.
>
--snip--
>
> Howard
>
>
>
>