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Tim,
We seem to be going around and around. For example, your
comment:
Tim Gwinn wrote: 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.
What does "indicate" mean, if not to give "hints, clues, and
suggestions"? The only time behaviors are not reliable indicators of
underlying causes is in the case of artificially contrived systems such as
simulacra. That is my whole point: It seemed to me that you were representing my
father as saying something was a general truth when he was only saying it
was true in analysis of bio-mimetic simulations.
In dealing with natural systems, analysis of system behaviors to
try to learn about the causal basis for those behaviors is the essence of
science as he viewed it. But, once again: We are not just interested in the
direct "causes" of these particular "effects" as we observed them at
that moment, we are interested in learning about the underlying causal
entailment relations which both allowed and generated this system's
ability to behave that way. If a dog barks, that's a little piece of causality
in the universe. We can look at causes, which can take a variety of guises. For
instance; the dog barked because it heard noises that triggered an instinctive
response. Or; the dog barked because of the interaction of it's breathing with
its vocal cords. Or; the dog barked because of the physical forces of vocal cord
vibration creating sound waves of a certain frequency that human ears are
capable of perceiving, and blah, blah, blah.........
But why do dogs bark? What are the entailments? This is a more
general question which is not connected to the particular situation, as
causality is. Causes and effects are bound in time and are particular to a
specific system and environment. That's the only way to really approach them;
reductionistically. Frozen moments, frozen observations, fractured pieces
of activity in the universe. Thus, causality piques our
curiosity, generates our questions, becomes a tool
for investigation of these mysteries, and a means by which to
check our theoretical answers. But it doesn't give us a very comprehensive
understanding of how the universe works and why it is the way it is. We need to
know the causes of the causes. Ultimately, that means we need to know the
underlying entailments.
Perhaps some additional examples might be helpful. Let's
say we want to learn about why a cuttlefish is able to change its
external color at will and mimic the hue and pattern of its surroundings as
it travels around its natural habitat... The direct causes of this behavior
(chromatophores in the skin, which create and/or accumulate different
pigments stored in separate pigment sacs, which can expand and contract via
voluntary muscular contraction of these pigment sacs, etc, etc) will give
us some idea of why this organism is able to achieve this feat. But that
kind of information is very limited in comparison with the entailments
which underlie it. Entailments are far more comprehensive than
"causes".
If we want to understand why human bodies have the organ called an
appendix, when it seemingly serves no functional purpose, what shall we do?
The direct causes, and even the indirect causes (genetics, embryonic
development, cell differentiation, formation of the digestive system, including
this organ we call an appendix) don't answer our question. What we need are the
original entailments for that organ. It wouldn't be there if it wasn't entailed.
If we analyze the human appendix via Aristotle's system, what does the
analysis tell us?
In fact, this kind of exercise can be very useful because it sheds
light on what kind of contextual information is encoded into living system
organization, how it's encoded, what happens when the original contextual
influences (which entailed the encoding of that information) have changed,
etc.
I think it's also instructive to pin down
how Aristotle's four categories of "causation", which Robert
Rosen said are actually categories of entailment, differ from analysis
of direct cause-and-effect types of analysis. There's a gray area in there,
somewhere, it seems to me, where the two diverge, but they do diverge.
Experimental science deals mainly with causes and effects, for example.
That's the province of empirics. There is so much more going on than just what
we see/observe. Indeed, that's precisely where "causality" is
limited.
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005 4:10
PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Theory vs
Experiment
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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