-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Günther Greindl wrote: > Of course, you have to be careful when criticising Rosen, as most > critics are then countered by "that is not how RR uses that and that word".
Yes, I know. [grin] I've been arguing with Rosenites for years and that is, by far, their most frequent and most relied upon defense. C'est la vie. Other cliques do the same thing, from physicists to theologians to mathematicians. I call these people "hermeneuts" ... or, when I'm feeling punchy, "priests". > they talk about a Universal Turing Machine (or a > TM and it's equivalents, whatever you like). > > So, when I speak of machine/mechanism I mean the general, computer > science meaning; also, recursive functions are well defined, no problems > in this area. > > More problematic of course is life: I guess there is no single accepted > definition of life, people will not even agree on what is alive (virus? etc) > > So, maybe Rosen has a personal definition of life, but what I targeted > was the (M,R)-systems, which he posits as a model of organism which are > opposed to mechanisms. > > And I can't see anything in (M,R)-system (metabolism, repair) which is > not amenable to a mechanistic solution, the only real difficult part > being the coding of the replication of the system from within itself - > and that is where the recursion theorem comes in. > > So my argument runs as this: the models Rosen proposes as models of life > can be modeled by well known mechanistic models. Hence Rosen's claim > that life is not a mechanism is refuted. OK. So RR makes a prohibitive claim ... something like "living systems cannot be accurately modeled with a UTM because MR systems cannot be realized". And you are refuting that claim by a counter-claim that MR systems _can_ be realized, emphasizing that the recursion theorem is crucial to such a realization. Do I have it right? - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com If a man can't piss in his own front yard, he's living too close to town. -- Tom Russell -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFID6W5pVJZMHoGoM8RAkphAJ4qJRn7AMpbyCFCjTiwQTxTaDYhvwCgkwzT 01oYZbxBzxUVkQHfLcHxDMw= =fGMH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ 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
