Re: The notion of semantics in Rosen's writings

[John M <***>]

Judith and Tim:

I always satisfied myself with Judith's opinion that
my English is insufficient (true!) and this is the
origin of my misunderstanding the terms. Carlos seems
to be from Argentina, - same problem. Then why are you
two, born Anglos disagreeing in how to represent some
terms?

Judith in the 1st par below illustrates perfectly the
reductionist ways of thinking: in the model (she?)
drew up about her grandparents, she recognized ONE
in-model reason for 'fears' and concluded that the
fears are baseless. In my wholistic (no-definite
one-causality) view I allow countless other
originating potentials for thegrandparents' attitude
and even if I find "that" one fear baseless, the
position they exposed may be valid. RR might have had
better reasons for disobeying. My father had similar
attitude about 'allowable' activity: he said, if in
doubt whether (authorities) will agree, ASSUME that
they will and DO what you wanted - IN GOOD FAITH. If
you were wrong? prove a pardonable error. (That was
against nazi - later commi authorities in business). 
* 
Tim's en/decoding into/from formal systems is hard to
follow: in any direction it is a reductionist model
activity: a map is a model, a territory a wider model.

About a cat or car as 'natural system'? (for that
matter: a computer?) (In my multilingual understanding
ONLY) the may turn into natural systems if we
transcend all limitations that may make it a cat, a
car, or a computer, combining  them into the unlimited
(natural) interconnections. Any formalization
(=limiting into boundaries) modelifies them into
topical limitations.
Maximum model? that is a joke. Schrodinger tried an
impredicative cat- maybe - but an impredicative car? 

To Carlos: you just formalized nicely the questions (I
believe) many of us may have in spite of having gotten
used to a vernacular which still remained "not too
clear". This is one reason why I keep urging a
"glossarizing" of the RR terms. (If it is humanly
possible?).

John Mikes

--- Judith Rosen <***> wrote:

> Yay, Tim!
> 
> In your comment: "One of the common themes in
> Rosen's thinking is to 
> remove unjustified a priori restrictions wherever
> they occur," you 
> really nailed down clearly one of the most salient
> aspects of his 
> approach to science (and everything else, really).
> In fact, I think 
> this was just a part of his nature from very early
> childhood. Perhaps 
> this is what comes from being a child prodigy who
> also happens to be 
> the only child of two very ordinary immigrant
> parents-- who both had 
> large immigrant families that each came to the US as
> a unit-- and who 
> were both trying to assimilate. They really didn't
> know what to make 
> of him. I'm sure they tried to cope with his active
> mind by trying to 
> curb him and no doubt they issued warnings and
> edicts based on them... 
> which he (no doubt) tested and found the warnings
> were groundless. If 
> "P, then Q" works in the negative, too! "If not P,
> then not Q" can be 
> turned into a new encoding: "If the warnings are
> groundless, then the 
> parental edicts are baseless."
> 
> He said he figured out very young that it was better
> not to ask 
> permission to do something he wanted to do; it was
> better to just do 
> it. If you ask for permission, and it is withheld
> based on 
> inapplicable fears (which they would never
> concede)... then you have 
> two choices: you can either accept their decision,
> which doesn't seem 
> fair... or you can do what you wanted to do anyway.
> But once you have 
> asked permission, if you go against a parental
> edict, you have 
> committed a much more serious sin! You are
> insubordinate! Off with 
> your head! If you just do it, without asking
> permission, they may get 
> mad after the fact, but then you just apologize and
> that tends to 
> settle everyone down.
> 
> In using this approach with science, though, he
> didn't apologize. 
> Probably because he considered everybody in that
> milieu as equals and 
> therefore he owed no fealty or familial respect to
> people who were 
> trying to rein him in based on their own fears. I
> would say that the 
> only person he paid a great deal of familial respect
> to was Rashevsky 
> (his PhD advisor/mentor). In many ways, Rashevsky
> was the father he 
> never really had.
> 
> Judith
> PS: Incidentally, I confess that  I have often been
> irked by the 
> numerous times, in my father's published work, where
> he gave far more 
> credit to Rashevsky than was actually warranted. I
> questioned him 
> about this, once, and he said that since Rashevsky
> had arrived at a 
> similar conclusion (that whatever scientific law was
> not applicable), 
> prior to Dad being in Chicago, so he felt that
> Rashevsky deserved the 
> credit for the insight. My argument was; "Yeah, but
> Dad... YOU not 
> only arrived at the insight on your own, but you
> developed it. Why are 
> you giving HIM all the credit for it?" He just
> shrugged and couldn't 
> really give me an answer that made sense to me
> beyond that it was his 
> own sense of duty and ethics (and sentimentality, in
> my view). Dad 
> actually loved "the old man" as he called Rashevsky.
> And Rashevsky was 
> shafted, big time, when Lewontin came to Chicago,
> etc. I think my 
> father always felt he had kind of left Rashevsky
> unprotected, by 
> moving on to Buffalo to pursue his own career.
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Tim Gwinn
>   To: ***
>   Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2005 8:54 AM
>   Subject: Re: [ROSEN] The notion of semantics in
> Rosen's writings
> 
> 
>   Carlos,
> 
>   I know Judith has already replied, but sometimes
> multiple replies 
> are
>   helpful. :)
> 
>   > The first problem I have is with the definition
> of
>   > 'encoding' and 'decoding'. Rosen defines in the
> book
>   > Life Itself encoding and decoding as the
> 'translation'
>   > between 'formalisms'. I understand this as the
> idea of
>   > translating well-formed formulas given in a
> formal
>   > language to well-formed formulas of another
> formal
>   > language. But, what is 'encoding' and 'decoding'
>   > between a formal language and a 'natural
> system'?
> 
> 
>   TG: Encoding is the mapping of a phenomenon (i.e.,
> an observable) in 
> the
>   natural system to a counterpart in the formal
> system.This is 
> associated with
>   the notion of measurement, where measuring some
> physical observable 
> results
>   (typically) in a number, a formal thing.
>   Decoding is the inverse operation, mapping a
> formal entity to an 
> observable
>   in the natural system. This is associated with the
> notion of 
> prediction,
>   whereby we use results from a formal model to
> predict what some 
> value of
>   some observable would be if we were to measure it.
> 
>   So, for example, if we measure the current in a
> physical electrical 
> circuit,
>   we are encoding that observable into a number,
> such as "10 amps". If 
> we then
>   use our model of electrical circuits, we can say
> that "if we double 
> the
>   resistance in the circuit, the current should be
> cut in half to 5 
> amps,
>   according to our model". This is decoding the
> formal results back to 
> the
>   physical system - making a prediction about it
> based upon our model.
> 
>   There are much more extensive descriptions of the
> modelling relation 
> in the
>   earlier books "Anticipatory Systems" and
> "Fundamentals of 
> Measurement".
> 
> 
> 
>   > Also, is not very clear to me what qualifies as
> a
>   > 'natural system', since Rosen defines them as
> systems
>   > "in the ambience or external world".
> 
> 
>   TG:  A natural system is simply a collection of
> observables from the 
> world
>   outside of us. A 'car' or a 'cat' or a 'proton' is
> a natural system,
>   comprised of the observables we have chosen to
> consider as belonging 
> to that
>   system. Again, the books AS and FM go into much
> more detail.
> 
> 
>   >  I can't
>   > understand Rosen's point very well, so I'd
> pleased to
>   > know in what exact sense" the entailment
> structure 
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