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Tim, you are still not seeing what I'm trying to show you. This is
so important, I've got to keep trying.
Tim Gwinn wrote:
I see no passages in his writing to indicate that either 1) ?causality? refers
only to ?what happens?, or 2) that there are entailments in the external world
which are not causal entailments.
Yes: All entailments in the external world ARE "causal"
entailments--All entailments which exist in formalisms are "inferential"
entailments.
There is one small caveat: It should not be
inferred that models exist only in the human "formal world" of science.
Anticipatory Systems Theory postulates the natural existence of models as part
of the organization of all living systems; models which are used by the
systems, themselves, for the purposes of system guidance/control through
time. However, even there, the entailment in the models would
be "inferential entailment".
"Causality" refers to the partial _expression_ of entailments in the
external world. As such, all causality is a temporally bound,
limited manifestation of the underlying entailment
relations.
Have you ever heard the _expression_; "You find out what someone is
really like in a crisis."? This is because a crisis will demonstrate more of the
underlying entailments than ordinary circumstances will. The manifestations, or
observables, are "causality". But the entailments were there, all along. They
specify what the causality will be. As such, the entailed potential of a living
system is always greater than the causal _expression_ or manifestation in terms of
observable behavior through time.
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 12:38
PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Causality vs
Entailment
Judith,
I have no idea who your
remarks below are directed toward, but if they are directed toward me, let me
reiterate that I still completely disagree with your characterization of
entailment vs. causality. As far as I am concerned in my reading of his works,
all entailments in the external world are causal entailments; all entailments
in the formal world are inferential entailments. ?Causality? is not ?what
happens?, it refers the entire locus of causal entailments in the external
world.
I see no passages in his
writing to indicate that either 1) ?causality? refers only to ?what happens?,
or 2) that there are entailments in the external world which are not causal
entailments.
Regards,
Tim
From: ROSEN
Forum [mailto:*** On
Behalf Of Judith Rosen
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 12:22
PM
To:
***
Subject: Causality vs
Entailment
It seems to me that there is still some confusion
about what Robert Rosen defined as "causality" and what he defined as
"entailment". So, I'm going to have another go at trying to illustrate the
differences.
I have previously described causality as "what
happens". Observable phenomena and behaviors. Science tends to look at such
phenomena and behaviors as "effects" and try to determine what the
"causes" of those effects are. In this way, whatever effects we are
observing, the causes are in the
past and we
have to try and retrace the turn of events through the timeline and
hypothesize what the causes were. We then conduct experiments whereby we try
to recreate the circumstances and generate the same causality-- which we judge
by the "effects". If we manage to re-create the effects, we assume we have
found the answers to our question.
However, problems with this whole approach abound. One
biggie: There are many different ways to generate the same effects, which
is why a simulacrum confuses people. Mimicry of life is not life, and the
reason it is not life has to do with the underlying entailments.
Secondly, time is involved in all causality. Two identical chemical
reactions can have radically different effects if we change the rates of
reaction, as one example. Various aspects of time have distinct causal impacts
on system behavior and phenomena. Entailment is what specifies what those
causal impacts are going to
be.
When discussing causes and effects, we are looking at
one temporally fractured piece of causality and when we are speaking of
causality, we are speaking of one, temporally specified, set of outcomes which
are only a tiny fraction of potential outcomes that could have been. All
causality is temporally bound, and any cause is only a cause in terms of the
consequent effect. In an unfractured situation, any cause, itself, can also be
seen to be an effect. So what causes the causes of the causes???
It's hard to illustrate this verbally, but the
computer keyboard makes drawing a picture difficult as well.... I'll give it a
whirl, though:
..... cause-->effect ....(which changes labels and
becomes...) cause--> effect..... and so on.
To speak in terms of particular
causes and effects is actually a reductionistic mode of analysis. What we
really want to know about is the underlying entailment pattern which is
responsible for any given series of causes and effects. To speak of
causality in a general way is actually to be referring to
entailments.
All causes and effects are specified by entailments.
What we want to understand are the aspects of Natural Law that are at work in
any series of causes and effects. That's what entailment embodies. This is why
we try to transfer those entailments to our formalisms and models (inferential
entailment to embody the causal entailment). Entailment relations will hold,
which is why models that are accurate in their entailment can commute with the
real system. Living systems make very good use of this with anticipatory
behavior, in fact. Causality follows
entailment.
Does that clarify (I
hope)?
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