All, Ok, so my questions about Rosen are of a really fundamental nature. You guys are already WAY down the track.
In fact, could somebody clarify, in terms that a former english major would understand, what it means to say, "organisms are closed to efficient causation." I read it and I read it and I READ it and it just doesnt STICK! Would that amount to saying that Rosen believes that nothing is entailed by the fact that you just poked a tiger with a pool cue? Whereas, much is entailed by saying that you have just poked a pool ball with the same cue? If I changed the words above from "entailed by" to "implied by" or "inferable from", does Rosen get off the boat? Would anybody who accepted "organisms are closed" claim be willing to enter a tiger's cage with a pool cue KNOWING THAT the tiger had just been poked with the same pool cue? For the new year, I dream of a world in which no two people are allowed to argue in my electronic presence until the key AGREEMENTS that make their argument possible are made explicit. That is probably amounts to asking you all to be as dumb as I am. Hey! I can ask! Nick OTHER STUFF FROM THIS THREAD > > ------------------------------ Message: 10 Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:43:31 -0800 From: "Gus Koehler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen To: "'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'" <friam@redfish.com> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A Living System Must Have Noncomputable Models A. H. Louie Abstract: Chu and Ho's recent paper in Artificial Life is riddled with errors. In particular, they use a wrong definition of Robert Rosen's mechanism. This renders their "critical assessment" of Rosen's central proof null and void. http://www.panmere.com/rosen/Louie_noncomp_pre_rev.pdf Gus Koehler, Ph.D. President and Principal Time Structures, Inc. 1545 University Ave. Sacramento, CA 95825 916-564-8683, Fax: 916-564-7895 Cell: 916-716-1740 www.timestructures.com Save A Tree - please don't print this unless you really need to. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joost Rekveld Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2007 5:34 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen Hi, apparently these articles have given rise to rebuttals, see http:// www.panmere.com/?cat=18 for a survey of this discussion. I read 'Life Itself' a while ago, found it extremely interesting but not an easy read either. Later I read some of the essays from 'Essays on Life Itself", which helped. The biggest problem with Rosen's writing was for me that it is very concise; for a layman (like me) it would have been good to have a bit more flesh around his central argument, in the form of historical references and examples. Later I discovered the writings of Howard Pattee (an essay in the first Artificial Life proceedings) and Peter Cariani (his thesis from 1989 <http://homepage.mac.com/cariani/CarianiWebsite/Cariani89.pdf> and a later article for example <http://homepage.mac.com/cariani/ CarianiWebsite/Cariani98.pdf>. I found both their writings more digestible. hope this helps, Joost. On Dec 29, 2007, at 5:03 AM, Russell Standish wrote: > By all means have a discussion. Rosen is not an easy read, nor easy to > talk about even. I have some grumbles with Rosen, which I mention in > my paper "On Complexity and Emergence", but these are fairly muted. > There've been some interesting articles recently in Artificial Life by > Chu & Ho that appear to disprove Rosen's central theorem. I suspect > their rather more rigourous approach crystalises some of my grumbles, > but I haven't found the time yet to try out the analysis more formally > myself. > > Cheers > > On Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 08:41:43PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote: >> All, >> >> On the recommendation of somebody on this list, I started reading >> Rosen's Life Itself. It does indeed, as the recommender suggested, >> seem to relate to my peculiar way of looking at such things as >> adaptation, motivation, etc. The book is both intriguing and >> somewhat over my head. Pied Piperish in that regard. So I am >> wondering if there are folks on the list who wold like to talk about >> it. By the way, does the fact that I am attracted to Rosen make me a >> category theorist? I am told that that is somewhat to the left of >> being an astrologer. >> >> Nick >> ------------------------------------------- Joost Rekveld ----------- http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld ------------------------------------------- "This alone I ask you, O reader, that when you peruse the account of these marvels that you do not set up for yourself as a standard human intellectual pride, but rather the great size and vastness of earth and sky; and, comparing with that Infinity these slender shadows in which miserably and anxiously we are enveloped, you will easily know that I have related nothing which is beyond belief." (Girolamo Cardano) ------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Friam mailing list Friam@redfish.com http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com End of Friam Digest, Vol 54, Issue 25 *************************************
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