Re: Causality vs Entailment

[Judith Rosen <***>]

Tim, re-read the bottom of page ten; the "summary" of the Praeludium, in Life, Itself. Causal entailment is what you're after, not causality. Causality is how we learn about entailment. That's our only avenue into the underlying entailment patterns, which ultimately (it is hoped) can teach us about Natural Law. There are many explanations which can seem to account for the behavior of systems in the universe and, in fact, this is precisely how science has arrived at the point it currently is at: both good and bad. Finding an explanation for causality that seems to commute in one kind of system but not another.... That's where we are "at" right now. Robert Rosen's assessment of this situation was that we don't have the entailments right.

 

Judith

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Tim Gwinn

To: ***

Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 10:08 PM

Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Causality vs Entailment

 

JR:Yes: All entailments in the external world ARE "causal" entailments--All entailments which exist in formalisms are "inferential" entailments.

 

TG: Ok, we are in agreement here.

 

JR:"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.

 

TG: This is where we disagree, and maybe it is a linguistic difference. In my view, the term 'causality' encompasses all causal entailments, not some partial _expression_ of them. Indeed, the "underlying entailment relations" are still causal entailments and thus are part of 'causality'. I read RR's work as using the term 'causality' that way. 

 

Regards,

Tim

 

-----Original Message-----
From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:***On Behalf Of Judith Rosen
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 3:08 PM
To: ***
Subject: Re: Causality vs Entailment

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