Re: Empirics and Life

[Howard Pattee <***>]

At 01:08 PM 1/28/05 -0500, Judith wrote:
> "Closed to efficient
> causation" is actually easier to verify than "life" is, it
> seems to me.

HP: Not if you are uncertain of the meaning of "Closed to efficient
causation" or if it appears to include non-living systems. The
wording of Rosen's definition is so abstract and general that I suspect
it can include more than I think he intended. I am interested in
clarifying his meaning, not proving it wrong.

Rosen: "The answer we propose is now this: a material system is
an organism if, and only if, it is closed to efficient causation.
That is, if f is any component of such a system, the question
"why f?" has an answer within the system, which
corresponds to the category of efficient cause of f.  . 
.  .We claim that everything else about organisms, everything
studied in biology by biologists, and much else besides, arises from and
devolves upon this property." [p. 244, ital orig.]

> Judith: If Robert Rosen discovered
> it, it's obviously connected to observables. The observables are
> available to everyone. Perhaps the way to "verify it" is to try
> and disprove it. I invite you to try. If it CAN be disproven, then is
> SHOULD be.

HP: Some specific observables Rosen might have had in mind are not
obvious from the phrase "any component of a material system."
Definitions are not subject to proofs or disproofs. The purpose of
definition is to allow clear communication. I am trying to understand
Rosen's idea here. If the definition is too broad we can sharpen the
definition. As I suggested to Tim [04:49, 1/27/05], it appears to me that
Kauffman Boolean nets are closed to efficient causation, but they are
nowhere near "alive".  

Change of subject:

> HP: [snip] Laws are discovered by
> finding the invariant relations among the data from individual subjective
> measurements.

> Judith: So, basically
> "invariant," as it applies here, is a subjective judgement.
> [snip] So they start with admittedly "subjective" data and try
> to subtract that out by adding more subjective input. The result is
> labeled "scientific objectivity" and scientific
> "laws" are based on it. That logic appears to be somewhat
> flawed.

HP: I think your logic appears somewhat flawed. In any case, invariant
relations (Natural laws) are created by the imagination and tested by
experiments, not by logic. It is demonstrably the case that invariant
relations can be discovered and tested by subjective measurements. I
don't think Rosen questioned the existence of such Natural laws. His
point was that the existing laws are too narrow, primarily because they
are limited by their formal Newtonian syntax (i.e., state-determined
dynamics).

Howard