Re: Why four categories of causation?

[John M <***>]

Dear Steve,

thanks for a post (IMO) mostly relevant and excellently articulated.

I may add one (extremely naive???) question to your points, a

quite general one:

 

IRRESPECTIVE (yes, SIC) of RR's books, published texts, words

for readers (who are NOT Rosenneans), argumentative word-

flowers in support of his position and establishing a platform for his

arguments against hypothetical objections -

what was the fundamental idea of RR's OWN thinking?

May I venture with a pattern not rigorously derived, just as my feeling:

that the world (nature, existence, totality, wholeness, you name it) -

is one interlaced unification, beyond any topical, functional, ideational

barriers - undividable into its parts as 'not totally interactive' entities

(models?) .

If you refer to such as RR's "accepted natural law", I happily agree.

He may have an 'introduction' or 'preface' somewhere to that effect, I

missed it and would be happy to read it. I think it is very necessary to

make this point into a well pronounced base-line for ourselves.

*

Aristotle has too much of a reputation in our entire scientific and

philosophical belief systems NOT to start from his ideas. However

he was - at his time rightfully - a materially bound visionary thinker

within the epistemic limitations of his age. (He exceeded them, but

THEM, not jumping ~2½ millenia of mental development ahead).

So: 'causality' it is. What? to pinpoint origination within the model we

have. 'A'. selected his categories ingeniously within this limitation.

RR HAD to start from there. The "house" parable is an example of a

selection within, considering the physical object, not covering the

noumenon it stands for. (Or: vice versa). The "Aris-total" physical

toy of bricks etc. put together by a material design. Connotations

governing its fashion and function, lifeline and mental aspects? We

separate these, because we want rigorous distinctions - scientific

clarity. Even if incomplete. The vagueness of totality is disallowed.

I did not detect a way how the topical 'closeness' of interlaced and

not interlaced, but influencing 'networks' can be 'related' (as in MR).

How relevant the 'out-of-boundary' effects are upon a model? We

tend to quantize such lines and maybe we cannot within our logic

of quantizing science-models. I think RR implied a new logic as well?

I am sure RR was in thinking way ahead of his writings for the crowd

(the profanum vulgus) of tenure-science biologists, physicists, etc.

 

To your Q#3: "efficient" for what aspect? 'A' worked with originations

(causes?) within his model-view, and selected from them those he

found 'efficient' in performing selected changes within the model.

 

Shouldn't we think about formulating a RR-based taxonomy of changes?

 

John Mikes

 

---- Original Message -----

From: Steve Johnson

To: ***

Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 10:56 PM

Subject: Why four categories of causation?

 

Robert Rosen wrote: "What Aristotle was essentially doing in his discussion of the categories of causation was giving names to, and thereby distinguishing between, certain kinds of relations between events. As we noted in Section V, this is precisely the province of causality, one of the twin pillars supporting our belief in natural law".  Theoretical Biology and Complexity p. 188.

 

The have been arguments on this list as to whether causality is a useful concept. The arguments against causality tend to center around the impossibility to pinpoint a single cause of any observable effect. I don't think Rosen ever had this kind of naive view and unfortunately I could not dig up his quotes (I've read several) that emphasise that he is not arguing that there are specific causes of events but merely that there is a partial ordering on events and a certain relationship between the various types of events.

 

Having put this to rest here are my questions:

 

1) In everything I've read Rosen always takes Aristotelian taxonomy of causes as given. I've never seen an argument that would justify this particular choice. Should we consider Aristotelian taxonomy of causes a foundational axiom in the Rosennean view? Does it have the same status as the concept of Natural Law itself?

 

2) Are there other taxonomies of causes?

 

3) Is "Efficient Cause" a rigorously defined concept? Rosen (and others) in describing this concept typically give the Aristotelian example of the "house" with bricks as material cause, construction workers as efficient cause, blueprint as formal cause, and intent to dwell as the final cause. I've never seen any more rigorous definition besides invocation of this admittedly useful metaphor. What is the definition of efficient cause? Can anyone provide a defintion that does not invoke the house metaphor? Efficient cause is key to Rosen's argument in Life Itself so I think it's important to have a consensus on what it means.

 

Thanks!

 

 - Steve