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JR: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.
TG: If it were
true that one could reason reliably from behaviors back to causes,
then this would be an argument in favor the study of simulacra in science, since
by such reasoning, same behaviors would reliably indicate same
causes. But this is not the case: simulacra do not reliably have the same
causal underpinnings as the original system, as you yourself said in a
previous post.
I agree that
behaviors are utilized as observables in science - of course they are. However,
they are not reliable indicators of cause; behaviors give hints, clues and
suggestions as to possible causal underpinnings, but they do not reliably
indicate them.
Medical diagnosis,
for example, is the problem of ascertaining from given symptoms what
is the particular underlying cause. Such diagnosis is often difficult
precisely because the behaviors, the symptoms, do not reliably indicate the
particular cause. There may be a myriad of different causes which can manifest
the same symptoms. It becomes a process of ruling in or out candidate causes
based on more direct evidence of such causes. No one would agree
to a quadruple bypass surgery based only on symptoms of chest pain. There are
too many other possible causal bases for that symptom which require ruling
out, as well specifically ruling in the causal basis which
requires a quadruple bypass, because even exclusion of previously known other
causes of such symptoms does not exhaust the possibility of the symptoms
being due to some heretofore unknown cause.
Theoretical
science is no different. It is unsound to use such reasoning except as a way of
providing hints, clues and tentative possibilities. It all still goes back to
the basic unsoundness of attempting to argue from necessary conditions to
sufficient conditions.
From
Rosennean Complexity:
"In general, mimesis provides a basis
for what is often called analogy between one kind of system or system
behavior and another. Analogy, in general, forms a common basis for turning
insights bearing on one kind of system into corresponding insights about other
kinds of systems. As always, analogies rely on subsystems sharing a common
description, thereby creating a surrogacy. A surrogacy between purely symbolic
systems will be seen to provide the basis for what are often called
parables or fables. Such a general and broad way of
relating systems or system behaviors provided some of the earliest and most
pervasive approaches whereby man tried to come to terms with his worlds, and
the history of human thought has shown that such analyses or mimicries
must be handled very carefully. On the other hand, science itself obvioulsy
constitutes a sequence of restricted mimeses (mimeses [I think he
means "models" here, which he turns to in the next paragraph, not
"mimeses" - TG] satisfy more detailed conditions, which we shall
come to in a moment). Treated carefully, mimesis can provide important
insights not otherwise available and can deepen and enrich. The hope has
always been that we can enlarge our understanding while at the same time stay
clear of any possibility of falling into error. Carried to an extreme, we are
asking for a mechanical procedure which will produce only understanding and
never generate mistakres. Not only has such a magic bullet never been
glimpsed; the most powerful procedures for deepening understanding can also be
the most misleading and, hence, the ones most requiring discrimination and
judgement. This paradoxical situation has, in fact, not improved over the
history of human thought and is not likely to in the future." [p.
60-61, bold added]
I think this
clearly states the generally unsound, unreliable nature
of arguing from common behaviors to common causes, and the caution
required in the invocation of such reasoning.
Regards,
Tim
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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