process - semantic difficulty

[Steve Johnson <***>]

JR:

Also, I tend to think he wouldn't have defined life as
a process. He would be more likely to say that life
manifests itself to the observer as a process, in a
living organism.

SJ: Can someone give a definition what "process" means
in this discussion? What does it mean to say that life
"is not a thing but a process"?

I hear this phrase a lot especially with regards to
the subject of consciousness. People really like to
say that "consciousness is a process". What does one
exactly mean by that? The dictionary defintion is "A
series of actions, changes, or functions bringing
about a result." 

If this is the operatinal definition then what does it
mean to say that "life/consciousness is not a thing
but is brought about by a series of changes"?


- Steve

--- Judith Rosen <***> wrote:

> Hi John M.
> 
> I have a few comments and questions:
> 
>  in 1997 the NashuaNH Complexity Symp did not even
> allow Don M's lecture about RR - so he delivered his
> talk at an 
> 'apocriphal'
> dinner-meeting, where I for one heard the RR name
> the first time in my
> life -
> 
> It is quite possible that the reasons for the
> resistance to Don M.'s 
> lecture had less to do with Robert Rosen's work and
> more to do with 
> Don M's reputation. It is also possible that
> Lewontin, et al, were 
> connected to (or part of) the organizing committee,
> in which case my 
> father's name is Mudd, just like Rashevsky's.
> 
> 
> I wonder if I remember right that RR deemed the
> "what is life" the 
> wrongly
> formulated question? he rather identified 'living
> process'?
> 
> Not quite. He said the question "What is life" is
> both incomplete and 
> conveys the impression that life is a "thing". He
> preferred the 
> question "Why are living organisms alive?" because
> it's a more 
> comprehensive question. In fact, he said that most
> "what" questions 
> are actually "why" questions, at the core, or they
> end up becoming 
> "why" questions, eventually. Also, I tend to think
> he wouldn't have 
> defined life as a process. He would be more likely
> to say that life 
> manifests itself to the observer as a process, in a
> living organism... 
> but everything in the universe can be viewed as a
> process to some 
> degree-- space/time plus relational interaction
> equals endless 
> (continuous) change.
> 
> Atoms are complex systems and every bit as
> continuous, equally a 
> constant, unending process within their
> organization, as organisms. So 
> why are atoms not alive but organisms are? That was
> what he wanted to 
> find out. His answer was that life is a collective
> effect of a certain 
> type of complex organization (closed to efficient
> cause... unique, 
> multi-level relation with time... functional
> entailments... 
> model-based behavior which he described as
> "possessing an anticipatory 
> mode of control", etc.)
> 
> As he wrote in the Prolegomena of "Life, Itself"
> (page 11):
> "This book represents a continuation, an
> elaboration, and perhaps a 
> culmination of the circle of ideas I have expounded
> in two previous 
> monographs: "Fundamentals of Measurement and
> Representation of Natural 
> Systems" and "Anticipatory Systems". Both of these,
> and indeed almost 
> all the rest of my published scientific work, have
> been driven by a 
> need to understand what it is about organisms that
> confers upon them 
> their magical characteristics, what it is that sets
> life apart from 
> all other material phenomena in the universe. That
> is indeed the 
> question of questions: What is life? What is it that
> enables living 
> things, apparently so moist, fragile, and
> evanescent, to persist while 
> towering mountains dissolve into dust, and the very
> continents and 
> oceans dance into oblivion and back? To frame this
> question requires 
> an almost infinite audacity; to strive to answer it
> compels an equal 
> humility.
> 
> Ironically, the idea that life requires an
> explanation is a relatively 
> new one. To the ancients, life simply was; it was a
> given; a first 
> principle, in terms of which other things were to be
> explained. Life 
> vanished as an explanatory principle with the rise
> of mechanics, when 
> Newton showed that the mysteries of the stars and
> planets yielded to a 
> few simple rules in which life played no part, when
> Laplace could 
> proudly say "Je n'ai pas besoin de cet hypothese";
> when the successive 
> mysteries of nature seemed to yield to understanding
> based on 
> inanimate nature alone; only then was it clear that
> life itself was 
> something that had to be explained."
> 
> On page 15:
> "As a first step in our assault on the problem What
> is life? it will 
> be well to get some idea of what we are up against.
> Specifically, we 
> will try to understand what it is about the problem
> that has rendered 
> it so refractory to the combined resources of our
> contemporary 
> scientific wisdom. This will provide one way of
> sensing the shape of 
> the void we need to fill and at the same time will
> help set the stage 
> for our further, more technical developments...
> 
> Let us begin by noting the very form of this
> question; we are asking 
> why. We shall find ourselves asking "why" very often
> as we proceed. 
> The answer to such a question (and indeed there are
> in general many 
> ways to answer such a question) is to assert a
> "because." As we shall 
> see abundantly later, to ask why is to enter the
> realm of causality, 
> and to propose an answer is to posit something, to
> make a hypothesis. 
> Although every physicist must believe in causality,
> this attitude 
> towards positing a "because" was set long ago by
> Newton, whose 
> proudest assertion was "hypothesis non fingo".
> Indeed, as we shall 
> see, causality in contemporary physics has evolved
> into a very 
> different kind of thing than that originally
> envisaged by Aristotle, a 
> thing geared essentially to deal with the question
> "what?" and to 
> provide answers of the form "this".
> 
> Ultimately, he concluded that while life is not a
> "first principle" in 
> the universe... complexity definitely IS. So, what
> John Kineman refers 
> to as "life" in that sense, my father referred to as
> "complexity". 
> Life is a consequence of complexity.
> 
> I hope this answers your questions? Provoked some
> new ones?
> 
> Judith 
> 



                
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