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What Robert Rosen is saying in the passages that you
quoted has to do with very specific situations and processes, and is not
intended to be taken as a "general rule". It is not true that, as you
said; "one cannot reliably argue backwards from behaviors to
causes". Under most circumstances, it is indeed reliable to do so. In
fact, the process of doing so comprises the essence of
theoretical science. Where biology is concerned, behaviors constitute the
bulk of the observables of these systems.
When Robert Rosen is referring to something having to do with
physics, he uses the word "physical". When he is referring to a system in
the universe without intending to invoke physics, he uses the word
"natural". He may further qualify it to specify "a material system" or what have
you. But he was extremely sensitive to differentiating between "science" in
general and physics, and between the natural world as it actually IS and
the world as perceived by contemporary physics via their models. In his work,
what this means is that he does not use the word "physical" as
interchangeable with "natural". In the cited passage, he is talking
about science. He is further talking about a specific situation in science,
where attempting to analyze phenomena in a certain way is "widely known to be
unsound"-- widely known in science.
One of the points he was making is that, in such circumstances
(bio-mimesis), science is doing something that they acknowledge to be
unsound ("the attempt to argue from a commonality of some behavior or property
backward to a commonality of causal underpinnings"), without recognizing the
fact that they were doing so. He had a talent for pointing such things out, in
experimental science. It was part of the counter-argument he used when attacked
for engaging in "soft" science, or theory.
He also believed that causes and effects don't tell us everything
we need to know about "causality". We need to know the underlying entailment
relations.
Judith
(The two most seminal passages from this thread are included,
below)
Tim Gwinn wrote: I think one general point about mimesis Rosen makes is
that one cannot
reliably argue backwards from behavior (effects) to causes.[EL p. 123] The former does not entail the latter. And an accretion of behaviors does generically entail a particular accretion of causes. Analytic models are not generically the inverse of synthetic models. Thus to create something which mimics the behavior of some original system does not entail that the mimic therefore has the same underlying causal entailment organization - it's causal basis - as the original system. Robert Rosen in bold, Judith Rosen in brackets: "In the physical
world, [meaning in the world of contemporary physics, with the
current reductionistic approaches] the attempt to argue from a
commonality of some behavior or property backward to a commonality of causal
underpinnings [we are now a few steps removed from the
behaviors manifested by the real systems, themselves, and are talking
about commonalities of behaviors; i.e., the mimicry of real system behavior
manifested by the simulacra] , or more generally from an approximation to what it approximates, is
widely known to be unsound."
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