Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

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Phil Henshaw on 01/08/2008 11:14 AM:
> I thought the implication was that the organization of life is an
> inherently ill-posed question from an observer's perspective.  To me
> that either means you accept 'bad answers' or 'better and better
> answers', and the difference is methodological.

Sure, if by "ill-posed" you mean "our formalisms can't handle the
truth".  If you must use a binary categorization of accepting bad
answers or better and better answers, then RR's work would fall into the
latter category.

And he was trying to help us rigorously determine if and how our
formalisms are inadequate i.e. if we get to the point where we can't
accept the poor expressiveness of our formalisms, then what do we do?
Well, develop a more powerful formalism ... hence all that hoo-ha about
category theory in "Life Itself".

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is
always a vice. -- Thomas Paine

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

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Marcus G. Daniels on 01/08/2008 10:44 AM:
> Perception, locomotion, and signaling are capabilities that animals
> have evolved for millions of years.   It's not fair to compare a
> learning algorithm to the learning capabilities of a living system
> without factoring in the fact that robots aren't disposable for the
> sake of realizing evolutionary selection and search.

Well, first off, you're not arguing with me.  [grin]  I'm doing my best
to explain what I understand of RR's ideas.  That's all.  Feel free to
go over to one of the rosen mailing lists to see how they mostly dislike
me because I disagree with them (... or in their opinion because I'm a
stubborn jerk who doesn't listen to them or because I'm just too lazy to
dig really deep into RR's ideas ... or whatever ;-).

> Anything that requires significant short
> term memory and integration of broad but scare evidence is probably
> something a computer will be better at than a human.

That's just plain silly in terms of RR's ideas because _humans_ program
the computer.  Until/unless we come up with a computer that programs
itself, or a computer that programs another computer, or something of
that sort, computers will _never_ be better at any task than humans.

I.e. in RR terms, humans are THE canalizing "efficient cause" for any
computer system.

> My assertion remains that the things computers do are primarily
> limited by the desire of humans to 1) understand what was learned,
> and then 2) use it.   If those two conditions are removed, then we
> are talking about a very different scenario.  There's little
> incentive to develop control systems for robots to keep them
> stumbling around as long as possible, with no limits on the actions
> they can take.

Computers don't _do_ anything.  Humans _do_ things using computers as tools.

I believe that will change.  But for the time being, it's the case.
Anything else is speculation.  RR speculates (albeit with significant
rhetoric and build-up) that computers, as we now know them, are
incapable of doing everything living systems do.  I would speculate that
computers, as we now know them (but with manymanymanymany more of them
and radically different software), can do everything living systems do.
 But, just because my opinion differs from RR's doesn't mean both
opinions are anything more than speculation.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
The Government of the United States is in no sense founded on the
Christian religion. -- John Adams

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Phil Henshaw]

I thought the implication was that the organization of life is an
inherently ill-posed question from an observer's perspective.  To me
that either means you accept 'bad answers' or 'better and better
answers', and the difference is methodological.



Phil Henshaw   .·´ ¯ `·.
~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave 
NY NY 10040   
tel: 212-795-4844 
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-- "it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding what's
interesting in what they say" --


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Glen E. P. Ropella
> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 12:24 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen
> 
> 
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> 
> Marcus G. Daniels on 01/08/2008 08:49 AM:
> > As far as detecting (supposedly) ill-posed questions goes, 
> if you are
> > willing to put aside the complex matter of natural language 
> processing, 
> > it seems to me it's a matter of similarity search against a set 
> > propositions, and then engaging in a dialog of generalization and 
> > precisification with the user to identify an unambiguous 
> and agreeable 
> > form for the question that has appropriate answers.  
> 
> But the issue isn't about handling ill-posed questions on a 
> case-by-case basis.  In fact, the hypothesis is that ill- 
> versus well- posed questions is an unrealistic dichotomy.  
> It's just another form of the "excluded middle".
> 
> A primary point made by RR is that living systems can handle 
> ambiguity where "machines" cannot.
> 
> Of course, it's true that if a programmer pre-scribed a 
> method for detecting and handling some particular ambiguity, 
> then the machine will _seem_ like it handles that ambiguity.  
> But, programmers haven't yet found a way to handle all 
> ambiguity a computer program may or may not come across in 
> the far-flung future.  That's in contrast to a living system, 
> which we _presume_ can handle any ambiguity presented to it 
> (or, in a softer sense, many many more ambiguities than a 
> computer program can handle).
> 
> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com 
> Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane. 
> -- H. P. Lovecraft
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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:
> But, programmers haven't yet
> found a way to handle all ambiguity a computer program may or may not
> come across in the far-flung future.  That's in contrast to a living
> system, which we _presume_ can handle any ambiguity presented to it (or,
> in a softer sense, many many more ambiguities than a computer program
> can handle).
>   
Perception, locomotion, and signaling are capabilities that animals have 
evolved for millions of years.   It's not fair to compare a learning 
algorithm to the learning capabilities of a living system without 
factoring in the fact that robots aren't disposable for the sake of 
realizing evolutionary selection and search.  And even if they weren't, 
do you want drive over robots on the highway to make it so?   Anything 
that requires significant short term memory and integration of broad but 
scare evidence is probably something a computer will be better at than a 
human.  It may be that a `programmer' implements a self-organized neural 
net, or an kernel eigensystem solver but that only concerns the large 
classes of signals that can be extracted.   It's not like some giant 
if/then statement for all possible cases that a programmer would keep 
tweaking.

My assertion remains that the things computers do are primarily limited 
by the desire of humans to 1) understand what was learned, and then 2) 
use it.   If those two conditions are removed, then we are talking about 
a very different scenario.  There's little incentive to develop control 
systems for robots to keep them stumbling around as long as possible, 
with no limits on the actions they can take.

Marcus


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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

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Marcus G. Daniels on 01/08/2008 08:49 AM:
> As far as detecting (supposedly) ill-posed questions goes, if you are 
> willing to put aside the complex matter of natural language processing, 
> it seems to me it's a matter of similarity search against a set 
> propositions, and then engaging in a dialog of generalization and 
> precisification with the user to identify an unambiguous and agreeable 
> form for the question that has appropriate answers.  

But the issue isn't about handling ill-posed questions on a case-by-case
basis.  In fact, the hypothesis is that ill- versus well- posed
questions is an unrealistic dichotomy.  It's just another form of the
"excluded middle".

A primary point made by RR is that living systems can handle ambiguity
where "machines" cannot.

Of course, it's true that if a programmer pre-scribed a method for
detecting and handling some particular ambiguity, then the machine will
_seem_ like it handles that ambiguity.  But, programmers haven't yet
found a way to handle all ambiguity a computer program may or may not
come across in the far-flung future.  That's in contrast to a living
system, which we _presume_ can handle any ambiguity presented to it (or,
in a softer sense, many many more ambiguities than a computer program
can handle).

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane. -- H. P.
Lovecraft

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen wrote:
> And if you tell it that
> there are only, say, 10 possible answers, it will _merely_ produce one
> of those prescribed 10 possible answers.  
>   
You could say that about an employee, too, but that doesn't give much 
insight into what that person might actually be able to do.
> (I live for the day when I ask
> a computer:  "Is this true or false?"  And it answers:  "Neither, it's
> _blue_!"  ;-)
Computers typically don't do that, except in paraphrasing/concept 
extraction expert systems (e.g. Cyc), because people don't typically 
want them to do that.  For example, it's clear when this Java program is 
compiled that the compiler knows what `color' really is.  

enum Color { Blue, Red }

public class Test {

  static void main (String args[] ) {

Color color = Color.Blue;

if (color == true) {
  System.out.println ("true!");
}
  }
}

One easy way to let that go is to switch to a dynamically typed 
language, where logical inconsistencies are dealt with in a case by case 
basis by the programmer.  (Presumably until the programmer can `see' how 
things should fit together.)

As far as detecting (supposedly) ill-posed questions goes, if you are 
willing to put aside the complex matter of natural language processing, 
it seems to me it's a matter of similarity search against a set 
propositions, and then engaging in a dialog of generalization and 
precisification with the user to identify an unambiguous and agreeable 
form for the question that has appropriate answers.  

Marcus



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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

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Günther Greindl on 01/07/2008 12:57 PM:
> thanks for taking the time to write such a long response, here some
> comments:

And thank you for pursuing it.  Since I'm only slightly versed in RR, I
enjoy the opportunity to talk about it.  It helps me think clearly.

>>> complexity (=uncomputability in the Rosen sense)
>>> For my problems with his "uncomputability" see below.
>> Living systems are just the particular example set of the (possibly very
>> large) category of complex_rr* systems.  It doesn't _start_ with life.
>> Life just happens to be what RR (Robert Rosen) was interested in.
> 
> Ok - but are all Rosenites sure about this?
> complex_rr is a thesis which I find scientifically ok because it does 
> not introduce an arbitrary distinction between matter in different 
> organizational forms (animate vs inanimate), although I disagree (with 
> complex_rr) ;-)

Hmmm.  I guess that depends on what you mean by "Rosenite". [grin]  But
off the top of my head, I'd say "no".  Most Rosenites I've talked to
seem to hang the distinction clearly between living and non-living
systems.  In many cases, I just didn't have the chance to dig deep
enough to find out whether they, too, believe that living systems are
just a sub-set of complex_rr systems.  In the end, I don't know the
distribution of Rosenites who think life and complexity_rr are tightly
correlated.

> (see the excellent book by Torkel Franzen: Gödel's Theorem: An
> Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse
> http://www.amazon.com/Godels-Theorem-Incomplete-Guide-Abuse/dp/1568812388/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199723625&sr=8-1)

I second that recommendation.  It's a very cool (and small!) book.

>> A better exposition comes in Penrose's work, in which tries to argue
>> that math (as done by humans) regularly involves hopping outside of any
>> given formal system in order to catch a glimpse of a solution, then
>> hopping back inside the formal system in order to develop a formal
>> proof.  And in this regard, RR's rhetoric is not inconsistent.
> 
> The Penrose/Lucas argument has been debunked many times. In the Torkel
> Franzen book above, in Rudy Rucker's "Ininity and the mind" (another
> excellent book, recommended reading, good fun and educational) and in a
> number of philosophy papers. But it still sticks around :-))

The argument sticks around because the "debunking" (at least what I've
seen) _merely_ targets the validity of the argument, not the truth or
falsity of the conclusion.  So, it's true that the argument is INVALID;
but that doesn't mean the conclusion is false.

In any case, my point was that RR's argument is _like_ Penrose's
argument.  And, to the best of my knowledge, RR's argument hasn't been
formalized to the point where we could show it to be invalid.  (Kudos
should go to anyone who makes their statements clear enough so that
their rhetoric can be shown invalid!)

> I like the holarchy idea, I think this is important, but I don't see why
>   this should not be capturable via computation. We can model formal 
> systems in other formals systems (indeed is being done in foundations of 
> math, as ZFC is currently seen as basis for math together with classical 
> logic, but that is another discussion entirely).

I agree completely.  In fact, to the best of my knowledge, no Rosenite
put that idea into my head.  I think it came to me after listening to a
presentation by Terry Bristol (entitled "Carnot's Epiphany") wherein
Bristol tried to make the case that the universe is an engine composed
of sub-engines.  His talk of symmetry and of energy being an asymmetry
had already reminded me of RR because of the central role symmetry plays
in RR's work.  Then when I asked Terry what happens at the very top of
the engine of sub-engines, he said something about it folding back down
to the tiniest sub-engines (and vice versa).

At that point, I began thinking of RR's efficient causation band-aides
as a holarchy.  The important point being that if you try to talk to a
Rosenite about this "holarchy of formal systems", they may not know what
you're talking about since it might merely be my extrapolation. [grin]
Sorry for my lack of scholarship.

> Either one is strictly materialist like Dawkins, then natural selection 
> is indeed enough of an explanation.
> (that what can stay will stay, because if it couldn't it wouldn't) :-))
> 
> Or you assume a purpose to the universe, maybe something like Teilhard
> de Chardin's Omega point (which "draws" evolution toward it).
> 
> Maybe Rosen is somewhere in between?

Hmmm.  I reject the false dichotomy of "materialist or not".  There is
no "either-or", here.  I can't defend my opinion; but, when people start
extrapolating from the very tiny amount we know for sure out into the
huge universe of which we're mostly ignorant, my warning bells go off
too loud for me to think.

So, if anyone (including Dawkins) claims he knows how the universe works
well enough to b

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Günther Greindl]

Dear Glen,

thanks for taking the time to write such a long response, here some
comments:

>> complexity (=uncomputability in the Rosen sense)
>> For my problems with his "uncomputability" see below.
> 
> Living systems are just the particular example set of the (possibly very
> large) category of complex_rr* systems.  It doesn't _start_ with life.
> Life just happens to be what RR (Robert Rosen) was interested in.

Ok - but are all Rosenites sure about this?
complex_rr is a thesis which I find scientifically ok because it does 
not introduce an arbitrary distinction between matter in different 
organizational forms (animate vs inanimate), although I disagree (with 
complex_rr) ;-)

> He does, however, seem to avoid being explicit about the influence of
> Goedel's theorems on his own ideas.  As far as I can tell, he never even
> approaches a technical explanation that extrapolates from Goedel to his
> work.  His exposition is purely philosophical and others claim to be
> able to map what he said directly to Goedel's results.

Yes I did also not find any explicit mapping; but if one is not given, I
am always very skeptical, because Gödel is abused for all kinds of
things.
(see the excellent book by Torkel Franzen: Gödel's Theorem: An
Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse
http://www.amazon.com/Godels-Theorem-Incomplete-Guide-Abuse/dp/1568812388/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199723625&sr=8-1)

> A better exposition comes in Penrose's work, in which tries to argue
> that math (as done by humans) regularly involves hopping outside of any
> given formal system in order to catch a glimpse of a solution, then
> hopping back inside the formal system in order to develop a formal
> proof.  And in this regard, RR's rhetoric is not inconsistent.

The Penrose/Lucas argument has been debunked many times. In the Torkel
Franzen book above, in Rudy Rucker's "Ininity and the mind" (another
excellent book, recommended reading, good fun and educational) and in a
number of philosophy papers. But it still sticks around :-))

> RR's basic claim would be that math is _more_ than computation
> (automated inference... formal systems... whatever you want to call it).
>  Namely, it involves jumping levels of discourse to provide entailment
> when none such can be provided inside the formal system.  If you take
> that to its logical conclusion, you can imagine a _holarchy_ of formal
> systems that each patch up the entailments for other formal systems in
> the holarchy.  In order to avoid an infinite regress or an infinite
> progression, however, the level hopping _must_ loop back in on itself.

I like the holarchy idea, I think this is important, but I don't see why
  this should not be capturable via computation. We can model formal 
systems in other formals systems (indeed is being done in foundations of 
math, as ZFC is currently seen as basis for math together with classical 
logic, but that is another discussion entirely).

> The part that RR seems to think is not covered is the force or influence
> that "guides" a living system in its behaviors.  In many contexts,
> people tend to make vague claims that "natural selection" or the
> "environment" provide such pressure in the form of limited resources or
> optimization or even co-evolution.  But, those sorts of answers to _why_
> a living system assembles and maintains itself are really just question
> begging... they put off the question without answering it.

Either one is strictly materialist like Dawkins, then natural selection 
is indeed enough of an explanation.
(that what can stay will stay, because if it couldn't it wouldn't) :-))

Or you assume a purpose to the universe, maybe something like Teilhard
de Chardin's Omega point (which "draws" evolution toward it).

Maybe Rosen is somewhere in between?

> It's this "why" that leads him to consider "final cause".  He takes the
> most prevalent answer to the why question seriously: living systems do
> what they do in order to benefit _themselves_.  But how can an organism
> at time t_0 know what actions will benefit that organism at time t_100?

It does not know. It it chooses wrongly, it will not be here to complain.

> The question he asks specifically is:  "How can we have organization
> without finality?"  I.e. How can we say that an activity of an organism
> is purposeful without some external _agent_ declaring the purpose of the
> organism?  In the end, he comes to the idea that effects cause their
> causes, which is obviously cyclic.

So he not also challenges the "mechanist/computationalist" thesis but
also standard neo-darwinism?

> makes perfect".  These positive feedback loops where the effect of a
> process is to reinforce the process are the heart of RR's idea.

Sounds a bit like converging toward an attractor - that is a nice idea
(and would also fit nicely with the Omega point) - but one does not need
any final causation for that - rather it is normal causality which
inevitably produces a result. Like a st

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>
> What's your point?  Oh let me guess.  The rest of us are all idiots and
> this has all been solved already?
>   
I was trying to augment the idea below with an example.   Boundaries 
implied by terms like `organism' or `cell' could easily become too 
rigid..  much as the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology became too rigid 
given reverse transcriptase. 
> The trouble is that they are not _simply_ self-reinforcing.  Each
> iteration through the cycle _changes_ the system.  So, you cannot
> _finitely_ list all cycles up until some point UNLESS you actually do
> it.  I.e. the end result of the 4 billion years of iteration is not
> analytically predictable from the very first set of axioms we started
> with 4 billion years ago.  It's incompressible because each iteration
> changes the building blocks.  
When I was a kid I used to play Core Wars, where we'd write little 
programs that fought for memory and processor resources.  Even these 
little programs would show unexpected dynamics when they interacted, 
sometimes even merging into a sort of superspecies.   
--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not 
tried it.''
Donald Knuth, 1977


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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen
> 
> Phil Henshaw on 01/02/2008 09:25 PM:
> > Yes, sure, that's an option of interpretation, but does it fit with
> > the rest of what I was saying?   I think there's an interpretation
> > that fits the data of nature better than any other, so it's reached
> > as a 'conclusion' not as an 'assumption'.   For example, can you
> > offer any example of physical growth (accumulative change) 
> without a 
> > beginning and end?
> 
> Hmmm.  I suppose that depends on the way "beginning" and 
> "ending" are measured.  It seems to me that _nothing_ real 
> has a beginning or end. Our models of things begin and end; 
> but, the things themselves don't seem to.

There are several ways, but since they involve physical things rather
than definable things the reasoning is different.  With physical things
there are recognizable ridges and valleys.  An inflection point on a
curve is a ridge or valley in the derivative.  Like with ( ¸¸.o´ ¯  and
¯ `o.¸¸ ) the o's of the beginning and ending developmental phases can
be considered the definable beginning and end and.  Then the indefinable
part attached includes all you can find connected to them.   That
provides an efficiently reconstructable natural definition of beginning
and end.  The more useful part may come later, when you realize that
once you have (¸¸.o) there's simply no avoiding ( o´ ¯ `o.¸¸)coming
right along.   Once you see growth you can expect to see the other three
phases of a whole system life-cycle.
 
> For example, I can say that "my dad" was born.  Then many 
> years later, he died.  But when did "my dad" begin?  Was he 
> "my dad" when he was a zygote?  A fetus?  A gleam in my grand 
> dad's eye?  Same questions apply about when he ended.  In 
> fact, the difference between an embryo and a fetus presents 
> just such an example of physical growth without a beginning 
> or an end.  We don't know when the fetus "began" and our 
> cut-off point for "fetus" is artificially designed to 
> coincide with birth.

Well, you can choose.  Do you want to apply the rule to your dad as a
whole or to some part?   One of the unobservable but theoretically real
thresholds I like for the beginning of an organism is the time when the
egg opens its cell wall for just one sperm.  I don't know how many
organisms that actually works for, but I think it works for humans.

> 
> The same is true of any unit you can think of.  Sure, by 
> measuring the thing according to some model, you can point to 
> a beginning and end... according to your _model_.  But, is 
> the thing being measured actually beginning and ending?  Or 
> is it just the way you measure it that results in the measurements?

What you're talking about is the maturation of your concept of beginning
and ending and hoping that it settles down with something reliable and
definite and not just some arbitrary opinion measure or something.  For
the many things that begin with growth it's fairly easy to be clear
about it.  That then provides a very large set of examples that other
things can be judged by.  I think, though I'm not completely sure, that
everything that begins and ends some other way will turn out to be
trivial, but that needs remain undetermined until it is.

> By that reasoning, I can simply pick a model of the world 
> where nothing ever ends and nothing ever begins... i.e. a 
> model that says the world is everywhere continuous.  Forces 
> in distant galaxies impact me to some non-zero extent (though 
> they may be _negligible_ for any given purpose).  Events in 
> the distant past caused me to, say, get some more coffee... 
> at least to some extent.

What would be wrong with considering the world without beginnings or
ends is that you're establishing fact without evidence.   I choose to
avoid that since it is clearly unproductive.  Otherwise you're just
dwelling on incontrovertible conjectures for which there is no evidence,
and that gets boring.

> So my answer is:  Sure.  Tell me what model you'd like me to 
> use and I can pick a growth process that has neither a 
> beginning nor an end.

Try one, any one.   If all your data shows is the beginning and end of
your recorder being turned on, then you can indeed say that you have not
found the beginning or end of the system in question, just of your
record.  All you can ever associate with anything identifiable is what's
connected to it, and that never proves much about what's not connected.

 
> > Complex systems are always poorly represented by our 
> models, but does  
> > that restrict them, or just us?  :-)
> 
> That's easy:  Both, because we are part of the super-system 
> that includes the sub-system being studied.
> 
> > Well, certainly a term needs to be understood so that when 
> one persons 
> > uses it another person can know what is being referred to. 
> But isn't 
> > that a normal problem with language, not an inherent flaw 
> in language? 
> > In this case I'm using 'feedback loop' in a way I thought would be 
> > understood, from you

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

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What's your point?  Oh let me guess.  The rest of us are all idiots and
this has all been solved already?

Marcus G. Daniels on 01/03/2008 08:40 PM:
> Here's a paper by Ken Thompson where he describes a regular expression 
> implementation based on object code generated on-the-fly for the IBM 
> 7094.  The 7094 was a 60's mainframe had instructions designed for 
> self-modifying code.   (Lisp predates that..)
> 
> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=363347.363387
> 
> Also note that ~8% of human DNA is highly similar to retroviruses -- 
> we're slowly being rewritten from the outside.
> 
>  http://genomebiology.com/2001/2/6/reviews/1017. 
> 
> ...and even by each other..
> 
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T3B-47HPGPW-4&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C50221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=937dc8c7b72003e57bbd2971e7ae71be

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief
that one's work is terribly important. -- Bertrand Russell

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:
> Because he'd bought into the idea that effects cause their causes in
> living systems and he believed computation (as we know it today) cannot
> represent these causal cycles.
>   
> You have to remember that he did much of this work in the 70s and 80s
Here's a paper by Ken Thompson where he describes a regular expression 
implementation based on object code generated on-the-fly for the IBM 
7094.  The 7094 was a 60's mainframe had instructions designed for 
self-modifying code.   (Lisp predates that..)

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=363347.363387

Also note that ~8% of human DNA is highly similar to retroviruses -- 
we're slowly being rewritten from the outside.

 http://genomebiology.com/2001/2/6/reviews/1017. 

...and even by each other..

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T3B-47HPGPW-4&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C50221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=937dc8c7b72003e57bbd2971e7ae71be

Marcus





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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

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Günther Greindl on 01/03/2008 03:29 PM:
> 1) The assertion that the incomputable enters with "life". Rosen seems
> aware that he moves into the range of vitalism here, and tries to defend
> that he says it is not mechanism versus vitalism but simplicity versus
> complexity (=uncomputability in the Rosen sense)
> For my problems with his "uncomputability" see below.

Living systems are just the particular example set of the (possibly very
large) category of complex_rr* systems.  It doesn't _start_ with life.
Life just happens to be what RR (Robert Rosen) was interested in.

There is a tinge of vitalism in there.  And vitalists of all kinds seem
to be attracted to RR's writings.  But, I believe he was not appealing
to any sort of vitalism.  There are other, more insidious, assumptions
he makes, though.

> 2) Rosen repeatedly refers to Gödel's result and talks about how it
> shows how impoverished formalization are in regard to "real"
> mathematics. This of course leads to the question what "real"
> mathematics is. It seems that Rosen is Platonist (how else would he know 
> what "real" mathematics is?), but this is an opinion
> one must not share.
> He also ignores that Gödel's results do not place limits on what one can
> formally model (in general), but only with regard to a formal system
> (finitely given, sufficient strenght etc).
> 
> The question _if_ physics is completely formalizable/computable is
> indeed an interesting one, but why should this stage only start when
> life is concerned? (see below) Either it applies to the universe as a 
> whole or it does not.

RR held that it applied to many systems, not necessarily just living ones.

He does, however, seem to avoid being explicit about the influence of
Goedel's theorems on his own ideas.  As far as I can tell, he never even
approaches a technical explanation that extrapolates from Goedel to his
work.  His exposition is purely philosophical and others claim to be
able to map what he said directly to Goedel's results.  I'm not that
smart, though.

A better exposition comes in Penrose's work, in which tries to argue
that math (as done by humans) regularly involves hopping outside of any
given formal system in order to catch a glimpse of a solution, then
hopping back inside the formal system in order to develop a formal
proof.  And in this regard, RR's rhetoric is not inconsistent.

RR's basic claim would be that math is _more_ than computation
(automated inference... formal systems... whatever you want to call it).
 Namely, it involves jumping levels of discourse to provide entailment
when none such can be provided inside the formal system.  If you take
that to its logical conclusion, you can imagine a _holarchy_ of formal
systems that each patch up the entailments for other formal systems in
the holarchy.  In order to avoid an infinite regress or an infinite
progression, however, the level hopping _must_ loop back in on itself.

So, RR's position is that causal loops (a self-justifying rhetorical
holarchy of formal systems), if formalized, might provide the
mathematical infrastructure necessary to more completely capture (model)
living systems.

> 3) In the Kercel paper, we read:
> :START QUOTE:
> Given this, what does the (M,R)-system imply? In this model, the 
> inferential entailments, the metabolism map f, the repair map F, and the 
> replication map b represent the causal entailments in an organism, i.e., 
> the efficient causes of metabolism, repair, and replication, 
> respectively. If the (M,R)-system is actually in a modeling
> relation with the organism, then the same closed-loop hierarchical
> structure of containment of entailment must apply to the efficient 
> causes. Just as map F contains map f contains in map b contains map F, 
> ad infinitum, the efficient cause of repair contains the efficient cause 
> of metabolism contains the efficient cause of replication contains the 
> efficient cause of repair, ad infinitum.
> 
> This is what it means to say that organisms contain the causal 
> counterpart of impredicative loops. Rosen's expression "closed to 
> efficient cause" now becomes clear.
> 
> A real-world process is "closed to efficient cause" when it contains a
> closed-loop hierarchy of containment of efficient causes. Each efficient 
> cause is contained by all the members of the loop that come before it, 
> and contains all the members of the loop that come after it.
> :END QUOTE:
> 
> What I fail to see that "life" embodies this "infinite" cycle as in his
> (M,R) system: after all, life started around 4 billion years ago - so I
> can _finitely_ list all cycles till some point where we are not
> interested anymore (depending on which theory of origin of life you
> prefer, rna first or metabolism first or whatever).

The part that RR seems to think is not covered is the force or influence
that "guides" a living system in its behaviors.  In many contexts,
people tend to make vague cl

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Günther Greindl wrote:
> The question _if_ physics is completely formalizable/computable is
> indeed an interesting one, but why should this stage only start when
> life is concerned? (see below) Either it applies to the universe as a 
> whole or it does not.
>   
Even in digital systems there are unprovable things, like determining 
whether a program will stop or behavioral non-determinism from 
parallelism -- things about the physical hardware not even in the 
logical programming model.  

I can see why category theory could be useful to reason about different 
takes on abstract function, but it's not clear to me that's a better way 
to understand what and why cells do the things they do, than, e.g. 
building on solved structures using molecular dynamics simulation, or by 
instrumenting parts of cells with flourescent nanocrystals, e.g.

http://link.aip.org/link/?APPLAB/91/224106/1
> Guillaume A. Lessard 
> ,
>  
> Peter M. Goodwin 
> ,
>  
> and James H. Werner 
> 
> /Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (MPA-CINT), Los Alamos 
> National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA/
> We^ describe an instrument that extends the state of the art^ in a 
> single-molecule tracking technology, allowing extended observations of 
> single^ fluorophores and fluorescently labeled proteins as they 
> undergo directed and^ diffusive transport in three dimensions. We 
> demonstrate three-dimensional tracking of^ individual quantum dots 
> undergoing diffusion for durations of over a^ second at velocities 
> comparable to those of intracellular signaling processes.
Marcus





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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen,
> 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 01/02/2008 05:27 PM:
> > That's nice, describing informality as sneaking in new axioms (or 
> > 'understandings', perhaps) in a series of assertions. Of 
> course it's 
> > all but impossible to not do that,... given the complex way 
> that ideas 
> > arise out of feelings and intents.  What then about the invisible 
> > assumptions that tend to be numerous in any attempt at 
> making formal 
> > statements.  Would the likely presence of hidden 
> assumptions make  all 
> > formal statements presumably informal?
> 
> Well, with the stronger form of the word "formal" and the 
> expansion of the word "informal" to refer to formal systems 
> that allow the introduction of new axioms at will, we'd have 
> to be careful to distinguish ill-formed systems from 
> well-formed but open formal systems.
> 
> Since adding new axioms as you go along might result in an 
> inconsistent formal system (where the new axiom contradicts 
> another axiom or a theorem derived from previous axioms), 
> it's right to _mistrust_ the truth value of any formal 
> statement unless one can demonstrate that:
> 
> 1) no new axioms were added since consistency was demonstrated, or
> 2) if new axioms were added the resulting system is shown to 
> be consistent.

That's about where I get too, that we need to accept that formal systems
are all embedded in informal ones.  Introducing new principles in a
formal argument is then just an error in constructing the argument from
accepted principles.  It that occurs it means you need to 'get to know'
the new principle or go back to the old ones.


> But, such mistrust is not the same as declaring the formal 
> statement (or the system in which it's written) to be 
> informal just not worthy of blind trust.  In the case of 
> (1), we would NOT accuse the statement or system of being 
> "informal" in this new sense.  In case (2), the _statement_ 
> might not be informal but the system in which it's stated 
> would become "informal" (in this new softer sense of the word).

But then going back to the thread, Rosen's theorem seems to be offered
as proof that life requires gaps in efficient causation.  Could those
gaps be regions?   Would it be a corollary to say no formal system can
explain emergent organization of self-referencing causal loops, and so
maybe make ordinary complex systems which develop by growth a typical
case example for Rosen's idea?That would imply a map of the
deterministic plane sort of like Swiss cheese, with all individual
emergent systems defining 'dark matter' islands of self-organization
isolated from efficient causation by the 'white matter' of 'the cheese
itself'...  ..Whew!... ;-) 


> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a 
> question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. 
> -- Bertrand Russell
> 
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> 
> 




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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Günther Greindl]

Hi,

I leafed through some of Rosen's stuff and the Kercel paper, I 
unfortunately do not have the time at the moment to work through it in 
detail, but some things which "disturb" me:

1) The assertion that the incomputable enters with "life". Rosen seems
aware that he moves into the range of vitalism here, and tries to defend
that he says it is not mechanism versus vitalism but simplicity versus
complexity (=uncomputability in the Rosen sense)
For my problems with his "uncomputability" see below.

2) Rosen repeatedly refers to Gödel's result and talks about how it
shows how impoverished formalization are in regard to "real"
mathematics. This of course leads to the question what "real"
mathematics is. It seems that Rosen is Platonist (how else would he know 
what "real" mathematics is?), but this is an opinion
one must not share.
He also ignores that Gödel's results do not place limits on what one can
formally model (in general), but only with regard to a formal system
(finitely given, sufficient strenght etc).

The question _if_ physics is completely formalizable/computable is
indeed an interesting one, but why should this stage only start when
life is concerned? (see below) Either it applies to the universe as a 
whole or it does not.

3) In the Kercel paper, we read:
:START QUOTE:
Given this, what does the (M,R)-system imply? In this model, the 
inferential entailments, the metabolism map f, the repair map F, and the 
replication map b represent the causal entailments in an organism, i.e., 
the efficient causes of metabolism, repair, and replication, 
respectively. If the (M,R)-system is actually in a modeling
relation with the organism, then the same closed-loop hierarchical
structure of containment of entailment must apply to the efficient 
causes. Just as map F contains map f contains in map b contains map F, 
ad infinitum, the efficient cause of repair contains the efficient cause 
of metabolism contains the efficient cause of replication contains the 
efficient cause of repair, ad infinitum.

This is what it means to say that organisms contain the causal 
counterpart of impredicative loops. Rosen's expression "closed to 
efficient cause" now becomes clear.

A real-world process is "closed to efficient cause" when it contains a
closed-loop hierarchy of containment of efficient causes. Each efficient 
cause is contained by all the members of the loop that come before it, 
and contains all the members of the loop that come after it.
:END QUOTE:

What I fail to see that "life" embodies this "infinite" cycle as in his
(M,R) system: after all, life started around 4 billion years ago - so I
can _finitely_ list all cycles till some point where we are not
interested anymore (depending on which theory of origin of life you
prefer, rna first or metabolism first or whatever).

4) An ultrafinitistic view would generally rule out noncomputable models 
anyway (see for instance the nice essay by Doron Zeilberger:
http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/mamarim/mamarimPDF/real.pdf)
Or:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrafinitism

So Rosen's model's also make some mathematical assumptions (which, 
admittedly, are widely shared - but may change, of course)

5) What I also find strange is the opposedness to computation: after
all, with computers we are just beginning to find an "embarassment of
riches"; fine to explore other avenues (Rosen), but I think it is much 
to early to dismiss the computational approach. So why his radical 
assertion that computational approaches to describe life must fail?

6) A point addressed in the Kercel paper: The ambiguity of language and 
the definiteness of computation: this is of import for the AI/Alife 
community, and it is indeed a problem, but is I think addressed if one 
can control the symbol grounding problem(Harnad, 
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/harnad90symbol.html).

If one can let an AI/Alife really learn symbols (instead of programming 
them or assigning meaning to symbols by specification of the prog. 
language; the "learned" symbols would not make sense to us then, of 
course) they would inherently have the same ambiguity as our concepts 
have for us (because they would be learned in an ambiguous world).


Conclusion: I think Rosen's ideas are valuable contributions in that
they sensitivize us to certain problems, especially in modelling life.

But the case against computatability is unconcinving.

I would be very interested in thoughts of other FRIAMers, especially 
Glen who seems to have read a lot of Rosen's work - maybe you can clear 
up some things.

Regards,
Günther




Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Nicholas Thompson on 01/01/2008 10:59 PM:
>> thus, to be a good formalism, a formalism has to be in
>> some sense informal, right?
> 
> This is a difficult question phrased in a misleadingly simple way.
> 
> We now know that mathematics is _more_ than formal systems (thanks to
> Goedel and those that have continued his work

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

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Phil Henshaw on 01/02/2008 09:25 PM:
> Yes, sure, that's an option of interpretation, but does it fit with
> the rest of what I was saying?   I think there's an interpretation
> that fits the data of nature better than any other, so it's reached
> as a 'conclusion' not as an 'assumption'.   For example, can you
> offer any example of physical growth (accumulative change) without a
> beginning and end?

Hmmm.  I suppose that depends on the way "beginning" and "ending" are
measured.  It seems to me that _nothing_ real has a beginning or end.
Our models of things begin and end; but, the things themselves don't
seem to.

For example, I can say that "my dad" was born.  Then many years later,
he died.  But when did "my dad" begin?  Was he "my dad" when he was a
zygote?  A fetus?  A gleam in my grand dad's eye?  Same questions apply
about when he ended.  In fact, the difference between an embryo and a
fetus presents just such an example of physical growth without a
beginning or an end.  We don't know when the fetus "began" and our
cut-off point for "fetus" is artificially designed to coincide with birth.

The same is true of any unit you can think of.  Sure, by measuring the
thing according to some model, you can point to a beginning and end...
according to your _model_.  But, is the thing being measured actually
beginning and ending?  Or is it just the way you measure it that results
in the measurements?

By that reasoning, I can simply pick a model of the world where nothing
ever ends and nothing ever begins... i.e. a model that says the world is
everywhere continuous.  Forces in distant galaxies impact me to some
non-zero extent (though they may be _negligible_ for any given purpose).
 Events in the distant past caused me to, say, get some more coffee...
at least to some extent.

So my answer is:  Sure.  Tell me what model you'd like me to use and I
can pick a growth process that has neither a beginning nor an end.

> Complex systems are always poorly represented by our models, but does
>  that restrict them, or just us?  :-)

That's easy:  Both, because we are part of the super-system that
includes the sub-system being studied.

> Well, certainly a term needs to be understood so that when one
> persons uses it another person can know what is being referred to.
> But isn't that a normal problem with language, not an inherent flaw
> in language? In this case I'm using 'feedback loop' in a way I
> thought would be understood, from your referring to the physical
> model of the 'chicken & egg' cycle.  It wasn't that clear perhaps.

It's not that it's unclear.  It's that the meaning you're using isn't
concrete.  It's abstract.  A "feedback loop" cannot be picked up,
manipulated, eaten, twisted into a pretzel, etc.  Hence, it is not concrete.

As an abstract thing, all that remains is to figure out whether the
thoughts triggered by others by the phrase "feedback loop" are roughly
equivalent to the thoughts triggered in you when you see the phrase
"feedback loop".

Now, concrete things have a natural mechanism for correcting errors in
the thoughts of those that manipulate them.  E.g. if you pick up a rock,
roll it around in your hands, toss it up in the air, drop it on your
foot, etc.  Then I pick it up, roll it around, etc.  There's a good
chance that equivalent thoughts pop up when we think about that rock.
And we can use the concreteness of the rock to whittle down any
differences by designing standard methods for handling the rock.

But with abstract things like "feedback loop", it's much more difficult.
 The only methods for ensuring our thoughts are equivalent when the
phrase is uttered is to talk about it for extended periods, probably
with several conversations (possibly including quizzing each other).  We
can also help bring the thoughts closer by indirectly using concrete
artifacts like drawings, computers, etc.  ("Point to the feedback loop!" ;-)

I posit that, in most people, the thoughts evoked by "feedback loop" are
going to be very different, primarily because most people don't work
very closely together with most other people.  Sure, some people work
closely with some other people.  But, by and large, an abstract thing
like a "feedback loop" will mean very different things to different people.

And one of the main differences will be in thinking about the beginning
and the ending of any given feedback loop.

> Can you think of any regular cycle that does not begin and end with
> accumulative processes on scales that make them untraceable?

I don't really understand what you're asking for.  Perhaps if you gave
me an example of a regular cycle that has a clear beginning and a clear
ending?

> I draw the conclusion that natural system feedbacks have no efficient
>  cause since it's 'inefficient' to have causes separated from
> effects. With growth systems there are usually time lags between
> cause and effect, so any 'cause' is instrumentally disconnected fr

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

[EMAIL PROTECTED] on 01/02/2008 05:27 PM:
> That's nice, describing informality as sneaking in new axioms (or
> 'understandings', perhaps) in a series of assertions. Of course it's
> all but impossible to not do that,... given the complex way that
> ideas arise out of feelings and intents.  What then about the
> invisible assumptions that tend to be numerous in any attempt at
> making formal statements.  Would the likely presence of hidden
> assumptions make  all formal statements presumably informal?

Well, with the stronger form of the word "formal" and the expansion of
the word "informal" to refer to formal systems that allow the
introduction of new axioms at will, we'd have to be careful to
distinguish ill-formed systems from well-formed but open formal systems.

Since adding new axioms as you go along might result in an inconsistent
formal system (where the new axiom contradicts another axiom or a
theorem derived from previous axioms), it's right to _mistrust_ the
truth value of any formal statement unless one can demonstrate that:

1) no new axioms were added since consistency was demonstrated, or
2) if new axioms were added the resulting system is shown to be consistent.

But, such mistrust is not the same as declaring the formal statement (or
the system in which it's written) to be informal just not worthy of
blind trust.  In the case of (1), we would NOT accuse the statement or
system of being "informal" in this new sense.  In case (2), the
_statement_ might not be informal but the system in which it's stated
would become "informal" (in this new softer sense of the word).

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark
on the things you have long taken for granted. -- Bertrand Russell

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Phil Henshaw]

Glen,
You write:
> 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 01/02/2008 08:51 AM:
> > Well, feedback loops begin and end too, and that displays an even 
> > greater 'inefficiency' for causation... Just plane old bloody gaps. 
> > The rub is that systems of loops originate for no efficient cause. 
> > That's why I turned the sci method around to warch them since it's 
> > clear we can't explain them.
> 
> I disagree.  First, to say that feedback loops begin and end 
> is an _assumption_ of a discrete ontology.  I.e. feedback 
> loops may not have a beginning or an end, they may merely be bounded.

Yes, sure, that's an option of interpretation, but does it fit with the
rest of what I was saying?   I think there's an interpretation that fits
the data of nature better than any other, so it's reached as a
'conclusion' not as an 'assumption'.   For example, can you offer any
example of physical growth (accumulative change) without a beginning and
end?

> Second, most of what people seem to point at when they use 
> the phrase "feedback loop" is an aggregation of phenomena 
> caused by an aggregate set of mechanisms.  Hence, even if the 
> ontology is discrete or discretizable, we may not be able to 
> discuss them in the same language (attributes, properties, 
> predicates, operators, etc.) we use to discuss the phenomena 
> and mechanisms of which they're composed.  And further, not 
> only may we need a different language, they may not even give 
> rise to the same categorization of actual behaviors.  I.e. 
> the components can be very different from the composition.  
> To conflate the two is to commit the fallacy of composition/division.

Complex systems are always poorly represented by our models, but does
that restrict them, or just us?  :-)  It's completely normal to discover
that in describing one physical thing you often need a combination of
different languages of description.  For example, you might describe
something's chemistry, it's appearance and its various roles in its
environment.  They're all useful, especially together, though each is
highly incomplete and they hardly connect at all in terms of the
formalities of each mode of description.

> 
> And third, we might posit that "feedback loop" is _merely_ an 
> ascription having nothing to do with the ontology and 
> _everything_ to do with our psychology.  I.e. "feedback 
> loops" may not actually exist except as a convenient lexical 
> structure we use to describe the world.

Well, certainly a term needs to be understood so that when one persons
uses it another person can know what is being referred to.  But isn't
that a normal problem with language, not an inherent flaw in language?
In this case I'm using 'feedback loop' in a way I thought would be
understood, from your referring to the physical model of the 'chicken &
egg' cycle.  It wasn't that clear perhaps.  I meant it to refer to the
type of feedbacks we commonly find in nature, not a theoretical
construct.   Like the chicken & egg cycle, all cycles in natural systems
seem to develop and decay by transient accumulative change processes.
The name 'feedback' gets attached since they generally fit the model of
exponential-like accumulative change.  Can you think of any regular
cycle that does not begin and end with accumulative processes on scales
that make them untraceable?

> 
> In the first case, we can't make the logical leap to say that 
> feedback loops have no efficient cause.  In the second case, 
> the cause of the loops is _complex_... and we've had that 
> discussion recently.  And in the third case, feedback loops 
> do have an efficient cause... _us_. [grin]

I draw the conclusion that natural system feedbacks have no efficient
cause since it's 'inefficient' to have causes separated from effects.
With growth systems there are usually time lags between cause and
effect, so any 'cause' is instrumentally disconnected from the process
that follows it.  Growth systems also usually have complex emergent
properties with a complexity not evident in the original environment,
and so outside cause fails to be 'efficient' for requisite variety too.

In the case of a real physical growth system you'd be quite right to say
that any feedback loop we can define has us as its efficient cause.   A
physical system's own feedback loops are indeed complex.  For talking
about them it seems you need words that take their meaning from what
they refer to rather than be defined so they can't.  That's an issue, of
course.

Then I think the best of all evidence is the myriad physical systems
that hide their designs inside themselves.  That's very 'inefficient'
isn't it, to have things designed and operating according to principles
that are universally invisible from outside?  Isn't that typical for
physical systems though?

> 
> I'm not saying that any of these are true; but they are 
> certainly defensible positions... as defensible as the 
> assertion that the loops have no efficient cause.

When you talk about 'defensi

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[sy]

That's nice, describing informality as sneaking in new axioms (or 
'understandings', perhaps) in a series of assertions. Of course it's all but 
impossible to not do that,... given the complex way that ideas arise out of 
feelings and intents.  What then about the invisible assumptions that tend to 
be numerous in any attempt at making formal statements.  Would the likely 
presence of hidden assumptions make  all formal statements presumably informal?

Phil
 
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-Original Message-
From: "Glen E. P. Ropella" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:59:52 
To:The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen


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Nicholas Thompson on 01/01/2008 10:59 PM:
> thus, to be a good formalism, a formalism has to be in
> some sense informal, right?

This is a difficult question phrased in a misleadingly simple way.

We now know that mathematics is _more_ than formal systems (thanks to
Goedel and those that have continued his work).  I.e. we cannot
completely separate semantics from syntax.  The semantic grounding of
any given formalism (regardless of how "obvious" the grounding is)
provides the hooks to the usage of the formalism.  Hence, by the very
nature of math, any formalism can be traced back to the intentions for
the formalism (though the original intentions may be so densely
compressed or that uncompressing them may be hard or impossible).

And in that sense, including your statement above, all formalisms will
then be good formalisms because they all have a semantic grounding.

But just because all formalisms assume a semantic grounding doesn't mean
they're "informal".  The hallmark of a formalism is that it encompasses
all the assumptions in axioms that are well-understood and clearly
stated up front.  I.e. a good formalism won't let new axioms slip in
anytime during inference.  So, that's what it now means to be "formal".
 An informal inferential structure loosens that constraint and will
allow one to introduce new semantics as the inference chugs along.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful. -- Anton LaVey

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

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[EMAIL PROTECTED] on 01/02/2008 08:51 AM:
> Well, feedback loops begin and end too, and that displays an even
> greater 'inefficiency' for causation... Just plane old bloody gaps.
> The rub is that systems of loops originate for no efficient cause.
> That's why I turned the sci method around to warch them since it's
> clear we can't explain them.

I disagree.  First, to say that feedback loops begin and end is an
_assumption_ of a discrete ontology.  I.e. feedback loops may not have a
beginning or an end, they may merely be bounded.

Second, most of what people seem to point at when they use the phrase
"feedback loop" is an aggregation of phenomena caused by an aggregate
set of mechanisms.  Hence, even if the ontology is discrete or
discretizable, we may not be able to discuss them in the same language
(attributes, properties, predicates, operators, etc.) we use to discuss
the phenomena and mechanisms of which they're composed.  And further,
not only may we need a different language, they may not even give rise
to the same categorization of actual behaviors.  I.e. the components can
be very different from the composition.  To conflate the two is to
commit the fallacy of composition/division.

And third, we might posit that "feedback loop" is _merely_ an ascription
having nothing to do with the ontology and _everything_ to do with our
psychology.  I.e. "feedback loops" may not actually exist except as a
convenient lexical structure we use to describe the world.

In the first case, we can't make the logical leap to say that feedback
loops have no efficient cause.  In the second case, the cause of the
loops is _complex_... and we've had that discussion recently.  And in
the third case, feedback loops do have an efficient cause... _us_. [grin]

I'm not saying that any of these are true; but they are certainly
defensible positions... as defensible as the assertion that the loops
have no efficient cause.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things
to be bought and sold are legislators. -- P.J. O'Rourke

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Nicholas Thompson on 01/01/2008 10:59 PM:
> thus, to be a good formalism, a formalism has to be in
> some sense informal, right?

This is a difficult question phrased in a misleadingly simple way.

We now know that mathematics is _more_ than formal systems (thanks to
Goedel and those that have continued his work).  I.e. we cannot
completely separate semantics from syntax.  The semantic grounding of
any given formalism (regardless of how "obvious" the grounding is)
provides the hooks to the usage of the formalism.  Hence, by the very
nature of math, any formalism can be traced back to the intentions for
the formalism (though the original intentions may be so densely
compressed or that uncompressing them may be hard or impossible).

And in that sense, including your statement above, all formalisms will
then be good formalisms because they all have a semantic grounding.

But just because all formalisms assume a semantic grounding doesn't mean
they're "informal".  The hallmark of a formalism is that it encompasses
all the assumptions in axioms that are well-understood and clearly
stated up front.  I.e. a good formalism won't let new axioms slip in
anytime during inference.  So, that's what it now means to be "formal".
 An informal inferential structure loosens that constraint and will
allow one to introduce new semantics as the inference chugs along.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful. -- Anton LaVey

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[sy]

Well, feedback loops begin and end too, and that displays an even greater 
'inefficiency' for causation... Just plane old bloody gaps.  The rub is that 
systems of loops originate for no efficient cause.  That's why I turned the sci 
method around to warch them since it's clear we can't explain them. 

Phil
  
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-Original Message-
From: Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 08:56:01 
To:[EMAIL PROTECTED],   The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen


On Sun, Dec 30, 2007 at 11:32:33AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> 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!
> 

You probably read about Aristotle's four causes - this is the origin
of the term efficient causation.

"closed to efficient causation" in my mind simply says that something
is its own cause. If we ask why does this chicken exist, the answer is
because of an egg existing. When we ask why did the egg exist, the
answer is because a chook exists (adult chicken). Causation in this
sense is closed.

When you ask any question about the causation of life, you ultimately
come back on youself. The meaning of life is life itself. It exists
because it can.

I hope this explanation makes some kind of sense. I beleive that much
of Rosen's tortured explanation was trying to formalise this fairly
simple and obvious idea. It is worth comparing and contrasting it with
the notion of autopoiesis, which is a little better developed.

Cheers

-- 


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au



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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Nicholas Thompson on 12/28/2007 07:41 PM:
> On the recommendation of somebody on this list, I started reading 
> Rosen's Life Itself.

I don't know who recommended Life Itself; but, you should have started
with "Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural
Systems".  It's a much better book.

> 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.

Well, Rosen only _proposed_ using category theory to capture the
relationships he wanted to capture.  He wasn't fixated on it.  Don't
make the mistake of thinking that category theory is fundamental to his
work.  It's only incidental.

Also, category theory is a perfectly respectable type of mathematics.
So, whoever suggested that it's "somewhat to the left of astrology" is
way off base.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] on 12/30/2007 10:23 AM:
> I missed the implication people are finding in Rosen's idea of 
> "non-computable models". Can someone offer some examples of instances
>  where that matters.  It sounds like it means something other than 
> 'insoluable'.  Could it perhaps include 'internalized' & so therefore
>  not accessible?

Steve Kercel has some interesting comments on that.  But, in a nutshell,
Rosen's position is that living systems are examples of
supra-computation.  I.e. they "compute" the non-computable.  Hence, the
only way we'll ever capture the essence of life itself is to develop
some mathematics that captures a particular type of non-computability.
The essence of the non-computability is, as Russell pointed out, the
causal cycle.  E.g. A causes B causes A.  Kercel whittles this down to
ambiguity, however, which comes closer to Penrose's argument that the
brain doesn't implement an algorithm.  So, if you really want to
understand the non-computability aspect of cyclic inference, then look
to Kercel, not Rosen.  (You might also check out non-well-founded set
theory, too though some people -- not Rosenites by the way -- claim
that I'm off the mark on the relevance of that.)  Kercel's got a recent
article here:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/116833300/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

BTW, Louie does NOT demonstrate that "A Living System Must Have
Noncomputable Models".  That paper merely makes an assertion without
proving anything.  I'd advise you to read it rather than just assuming
it demonstrates the assertion.


Nicholas Thompson on 12/30/2007 10:32 AM:
> 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!

It doesn't stick because it's a philosophical red herring.  It's a
meaningless phrase.  The fact that it doesn't stick means that you're a
clear thinker and aren't bamboozled by aristotelian nonsense.  [grin]

Having said that, efficient cause is the "agency" that brings something
about.  For example, the efficient cause of a house would include the
carpenters, masons, plumbers, and other workers who used these materials
to build the house in accordance with the blueprint for its construction.

Something that was closed to efficient cause would be capable of not
only _assembling_ all the agents that cause the thing to exist but also
maintaining the organization of all those agents.  And such a concept is
clearly silly.  Nothing is closed to efficient cause... except, perhaps,
the universe.

Also, note that closure to efficient cause is distinct from causal
closure in general.

> 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!

Well, you may as well abandon Rosen now!  He used a very perverse
lexicon in a well intentioned attempt to use words appropriately, rather
than using them the way the rest of the world used them.  His text and
his followers are very hermeneutic, which is one of the reasons you'll
find that it turns on lots of very different people with very different
backgrounds his text is open to interpretation which is, of
course, why he was looking for something like category theory to help
him be clear and unambiguous.

I'm not a betting man; but I'd bet that the Rosenites will _never_ come
to any key AGREEMENTS.  And if they do, it'll only be after a complete
overhaul of his work.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful. -- Anton LaVey

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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[phil henshaw]

Nick, what got my interest is the similarity of meaning between 'closed
to efficient causation' and  'have their own behavior', the property of
physical organisms we constantly have to remind ourselves of whenever
dealing with organisms...

Phil Henshaw   .·´ ¯ `·.
~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave 
NY NY 10040   
tel: 212-795-4844 
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
explorations: www.synapse9.com  


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russell Standish
> Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 4:56 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied 
> Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen
> 
> 
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2007 at 11:32:33AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > 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!
> > 
> 
> You probably read about Aristotle's four causes - this is the 
> origin of the term efficient causation.
> 
> "closed to efficient causation" in my mind simply says that 
> something is its own cause. If we ask why does this chicken 
> exist, the answer is because of an egg existing. When we ask 
> why did the egg exist, the answer is because a chook exists 
> (adult chicken). Causation in this sense is closed.
> 
> When you ask any question about the causation of life, you 
> ultimately come back on youself. The meaning of life is life 
> itself. It exists because it can.
> 
> I hope this explanation makes some kind of sense. I beleive 
> that much of Rosen's tortured explanation was trying to 
> formalise this fairly simple and obvious idea. It is worth 
> comparing and contrasting it with the notion of autopoiesis, 
> which is a little better developed.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> -- 
> 
> --
> --
> A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au
> --
> --
> 
> 
> 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
> 
> 




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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[phil henshaw]

Ah well yes, life is undefined because the systems we build and make
proofs about are informational constructs and life is a physical
construct.   But what was Rosen's idea of 'right program' that he was
saying couldn't exist?

The problem with physical systems is that there is so much that has to
remain hidden about them, and it's not useful to simply declare that
everything hidden is irrelevant because that's not true, but we need to
teach information structures to go look for it and don't quite know how.
Just a guess, but an information incompleteness theorem might be used
that way. 

Phil Henshaw   .·´ ¯ `·.
~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave 
NY NY 10040   
tel: 212-795-4844 
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
explorations: www.synapse9.com  


> -Original Message-
> From: Russell Standish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 4:44 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity 
> Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen
> 
> 
> There is a school of thought called "strong ALife", stating 
> that computational systems can be alive, given the right 
> program. It is analogous (but not equivalent to) the better 
> known "strong AI" position, sometimes known as "computationalism".
> 
> Rosen's result essentially says that "strong ALife" is 
> impossible. Hence the interest in it, particularly from 
> ALifers. There is also interest from AI people and more 
> importantly philosphers of the mind, as it is often thought 
> that the parallels between ALife and AI are strong enough to 
> carry results from one field to the other (which personally 
> I'm a bit dubious about).
> 
> Of course, it doesn't help that nobody has a really good 
> definition of life...
> 
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2007 at 06:23:52PM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > I missed the implication people are finding in Rosen's idea of 
> > "non-computable models". Can someone offer some examples of 
> instances where that matters.  It sounds like it means 
> something other than 'insoluable'.  Could it perhaps include 
> 'internalized' & so therefore not accessible?
> > 
> > Phil
> 
> -- 
> 
> --
> --
> A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au
> --
> --
> 
> 




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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Günther Greindl]

Dear Nick,

have you read this?:

http://www.panmere.com/rosen/closed_eff.htm#en01

and this:
http://www.panmere.com/rosen/mhout/msg00412.html

I think this clears it up - the concept is not so mysterious after all ;-)

I think this "organisms are closed to efficient causation" is just a 
descriptive principle - if Rosen says you can't compute it anyway, in 
what sense would it be a formalization?

Apart from that, I don't yet see why it shouldn't be computable, but I 
have not yet found the time to read the Chu Ho Paper and the Louie rebuttal.

The only thing off the top of my head which comes to my mind is Kleene's 
Recursion principle - a proof that every formal system can reproduce 
itself, so why not also an (M,R) system?

(But again Caveat: I have not read the above papers yet, maybe I am 
missing the point ;-))

Regards,
Günther


Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> 
> 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'"
>  >
> 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
> <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 <http://www.timestructures.com>
> Save A Tree - please don't print this unless you really need to.
>  
>  
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <mailto: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 <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 i

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Dec 30, 2007 at 11:32:33AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> 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!
> 

You probably read about Aristotle's four causes - this is the origin
of the term efficient causation.

"closed to efficient causation" in my mind simply says that something
is its own cause. If we ask why does this chicken exist, the answer is
because of an egg existing. When we ask why did the egg exist, the
answer is because a chook exists (adult chicken). Causation in this
sense is closed.

When you ask any question about the causation of life, you ultimately
come back on youself. The meaning of life is life itself. It exists
because it can.

I hope this explanation makes some kind of sense. I beleive that much
of Rosen's tortured explanation was trying to formalise this fairly
simple and obvious idea. It is worth comparing and contrasting it with
the notion of autopoiesis, which is a little better developed.

Cheers

-- 


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au



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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Russell Standish]

There is a school of thought called "strong ALife", stating that
computational systems can be alive, given the right program. It is
analogous (but not equivalent to) the better known "strong AI"
position, sometimes known as "computationalism".

Rosen's result essentially says that "strong ALife" is
impossible. Hence the interest in it, particularly from ALifers. There
is also interest from AI people and more importantly philosphers of
the mind, as it is often thought that the parallels between ALife and
AI are strong enough to carry results from one field to the other
(which personally I'm a bit dubious about).

Of course, it doesn't help that nobody has a really good definition of life...

On Sun, Dec 30, 2007 at 06:23:52PM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I missed the implication people are finding in Rosen's idea of 
> "non-computable models". Can someone offer some examples of instances where 
> that matters.  It sounds like it means something other than 'insoluable'.  
> Could it perhaps include 'internalized' & so therefore not accessible?  
> 
> Phil

-- 


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au



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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Nicholas Thompson]

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'"

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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[sy]

I missed the implication people are finding in Rosen's idea of "non-computable 
models". Can someone offer some examples of instances where that matters.  It 
sounds like it means something other than 'insoluable'.  Could it perhaps 
include 'internalized' & so therefore not accessible?  

Phil

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-Original Message-
From: "Gus Koehler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:43:31 
To:"'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'" 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen


 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 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 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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen v. Chu

[Joost Rekveld]

it is because of references like these that I like to lurk on lists  
like this one.

thank you,

Joost.


On Dec 30, 2007, at 1:11 AM, Russell Standish wrote:

> From what I
> understand, things like the SCL artificial chemistry (which is
> definitely a type of machine) is closed to efficient causation in
> Rosen's sense,



---

  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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Russell Standish]

This was Chu and Ho's earlier paper they published last year. I was
somewhat dissatisfied with both that paper, and Louie's rebuttal,
however Chu and Ho's paper that just recently came out is a stronger paper.

Cheers

On Sat, Dec 29, 2007 at 08:43:31AM -0800, Gus Koehler wrote:
>  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, map

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen v. Chu

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Dec 29, 2007 at 10:40:23AM -0500, Phil Henshaw wrote:
> 
> The interesting question is if there might reasonably be no means of
> proving a theorem about things you can't observe as that puts them
> beyond your 'box' of definitions for proof...  I think Rosen's
> conclusion that organisms are "closed with respect to efficient
> causation" is decidedly true, but unprovable because it's true.  It's
> implied by observing inaccessible organizational development, missing
> content on nature 'between our models', but proof rests on things within
> a model.
> 

I don't think that living systems being "closed to efficient
causation" is necessarily being disputed (although I think it is far
from proven). Rather, what is being disputed is Rosen's "result" that
machines cannot be closed to efficient causation. From what I
understand, things like the SCL artificial chemistry (which is
definitely a type of machine) is closed to efficient causation in
Rosen's sense, but again it must be admitted my understanding of such
matters is a little foggy.

Cheers

-- 


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au



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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Gus Koehler]

 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 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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen v. Chu

[Phil Henshaw]

I really like the array of issues raised by Tim Gwynn in quoting
Dominique Chu and Wen Kin Ho's statement about Rosen's central
conclusion:

"Robert Rosen’s central theorem states that organisms are
fundamentally different from machines, mainly because they are ‘‘closed
with respect to efficient causation.” The proof for this theorem rests
on two crucial assumptions. The first is that for a certain class of
systems (‘‘mechanisms”) analytic modeling is the inverse of synthetic
modeling. The second is that aspects of machines can be modeled using
relational models and that these relational models are themselves
refined by at least one analytic model. We show that both assumptions
are unjustified. We conclude that these results cast serious doubts on
the validity of Rosen’s proof." (from http://www.panmere.com/?cat=18)

The interesting question is if there might reasonably be no means of
proving a theorem about things you can't observe as that puts them
beyond your 'box' of definitions for proof...  I think Rosen's
conclusion that organisms are "closed with respect to efficient
causation" is decidedly true, but unprovable because it's true.  It's
implied by observing inaccessible organizational development, missing
content on nature 'between our models', but proof rests on things within
a model.


Phil Henshaw   .·´ ¯ `·.
~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave 
NY NY 10040   
tel: 212-795-4844 
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
explorations: www.synapse9.com
-- "it's not finding what people say interesting, but finding what's
interesting in what they say" --


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joost Rekveld
> Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2007 8:34 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://w

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Joost Rekveld]

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   
and a later article for example .
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
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Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Russell Standish]

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  
> 
> 
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> 
> 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

-- 


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au



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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Stephen Guerin]

I have "Life Itself" and "Essays on Life Itself". I'll bring them Friday...

-Stephen

--- -. .   ..-. .. ...    - .-- ---   ..-. .. ... 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.Redfish.com
624 Agua Fria Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
mobile: (505)577-5828
office: Santa Fe, NM (505)995-0206 / London, UK +44 (0) 20 7993 4769


 

> -Original Message-
> From: Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 4:16 PM
> To: Russell Standish; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity 
> Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen
> 
> Thanks, Russell,
> 
> Does anybody in the Mother Church have a copy s/he could 
> bring to Friday's Meeting
> 
> Nick 
> 
> 
> > [Original Message]
> > From: Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; The Friday Morning Applied 
> > Complexity
> Coffee Group 
> > Date: 11/29/2007 1:10:20 PM
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen
> >
> > Try http://www3.vcu.edu/complex/
> >
> > However, you'll probably find it easier to borrow one of 
> Rosen's books 
> > from the library and read that, rather than to try to 
> understand what 
> > others make of him. It's sort of the reverse of David Bohm...
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 11:46:55AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > > Glen
> > > ,
> > > 
> > > Everybody but me seems to know what Robert Rosen work you are 
> > > referring
> to.
> > > If I apologize for being an ill-educated bounder, could 
> you provide 
> > > me
> with
> > > a netref or two to work with?  
> > > 
> > > I apologize. 
> > > 
> > > Nick
> > > 
> > > (if you give me the reference, will that be an instance of 
> > > causality?)
> > > 
> > > 
> > > > [Original Message]
> > > > From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > To: 
> > > > Date: 11/28/2007 10:04:16 AM
> > > > Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 53, Issue 25
> > > >
> > > > Send Friam mailing list submissions to
> > > > friam@redfish.com
> > > >
> > > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> > > > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > > > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > >
> > > > You can reach the person managing the list at
> > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > >
> > > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more 
> > > > specific than "Re: Contents of Friam digest..."
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Today's Topics:
> > > >
> > > >1. Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> > > >   Causality) (Nicholas Thompson)
> > > >2. [Fwd: New AAAI Conference - ICWSM 2008] (Robert 
> Cordingley)
> > > >3. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> > > >   Causality) (Robert Cordingley)
> > > >4. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> > > >   Causality) (Glen E. P. Ropella)
> > > >5. some thoughts on the educational aspect of 632 
> (Prof David West)
> > > >6. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM
> > > >   andCausality) (Nicholas Thompson)
> > > >7. one laptop per child (Marcus G. Daniels)
> > > >8. Re: one laptop per child (Carl Tollander)
> > > >9. Re: one laptop per child (Alfredo Covaleda)
> > > >   10. My employer in the news (Douglas Roberts)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > 
> --
> > > > 
> > > >
> > > > Message: 1
> > > > Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:22:54 -0700
> > > > From: "Nicholas Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > Subject: [FRIAM] Natural Design as a primitive property 
> (was FRIAM and
> > > > Causality)
> > > > To: friam@redfish.com
> > > > Cc: echarles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> > > >
> > > > All,
> > > >
> > > > I confess I have not followed the ma

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Nicholas Thompson]

Thanks, Russell,

Does anybody in the Mother Church have a copy s/he could bring to Friday's
Meeting

Nick 


> [Original Message]
> From: Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group 
> Date: 11/29/2007 1:10:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen
>
> Try http://www3.vcu.edu/complex/
>
> However, you'll probably find it easier to borrow one of Rosen's books
> from the library and read that, rather than to try to understand what
> others make of him. It's sort of the reverse of David Bohm...
>
> Cheers
>
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 11:46:55AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > Glen
> > , 
> > 
> > Everybody but me seems to know what Robert Rosen work you are referring
to.
> > If I apologize for being an ill-educated bounder, could you provide me
with
> > a netref or two to work with?  
> > 
> > I apologize. 
> > 
> > Nick 
> > 
> > (if you give me the reference, will that be an instance of causality?)  
> > 
> > 
> > > [Original Message]
> > > From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > To: 
> > > Date: 11/28/2007 10:04:16 AM
> > > Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 53, Issue 25
> > >
> > > Send Friam mailing list submissions to
> > >   friam@redfish.com
> > >
> > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> > >   http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> > >   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > >
> > > You can reach the person managing the list at
> > >   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > >
> > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> > > than "Re: Contents of Friam digest..."
> > >
> > >
> > > Today's Topics:
> > >
> > >1. Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> > >   Causality) (Nicholas Thompson)
> > >2. [Fwd: New AAAI Conference - ICWSM 2008] (Robert Cordingley)
> > >3. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> > >   Causality) (Robert Cordingley)
> > >4. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> > >   Causality) (Glen E. P. Ropella)
> > >5. some thoughts on the educational aspect of 632 (Prof David West)
> > >6. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM
> > >   andCausality) (Nicholas Thompson)
> > >7. one laptop per child (Marcus G. Daniels)
> > >8. Re: one laptop per child (Carl Tollander)
> > >9. Re: one laptop per child (Alfredo Covaleda)
> > >   10. My employer in the news (Douglas Roberts)
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > Message: 1
> > > Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:22:54 -0700
> > > From: "Nicholas Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > Subject: [FRIAM] Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> > >   Causality)
> > > To: friam@redfish.com
> > > Cc: echarles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> > >
> > > All, 
> > >
> > > I confess I have not followed the mathematical side of this discussion
> > into
> > > the blue underlined stuff.  Nor do I claim to understand all of the
plain
> > > text. 
> > >
> > > However, I am tempted by the idea of a mathematical formalization of
> > > "natural design".  Here is the argument:  What EVERYBODY --from the
most
> > > dyed in the wool Natural Theologist to the most flaming Dawkinsian -- 
> > > agrees on is that there is some property of natural objects which we
might
> > > roughly call their designedness.  Tremendous confusion has been sewn
by
> > > biologists by confusing that property -- whatever it might be -- 
with the
> > > CAUSES of that property, variously God or Natural selection, or
> > > what-have-you.   So much of what passes for causal explanation in
biology
> > > is actually description of the "adaptation relation" or what I call,
just
> > > to be a trouble-maker, "natural design".  
> > >
> > > It seems to me that you mathematicians could do a great deal for
biology
> > by
> > > putting your minds to a formalization of "natural 

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Glen E. P. Ropella]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1


For some reason, I didn't receive this message from Nick.  Nor did I
receive Phil's last post.  I wonder what's going on... perhaps my server
was unavailable and the messages are frozen in the redfish.com spool?

Anyway, Russell's right.  I wouldn't recommend Mikulecky's site
until/unless you've read some of Rosen's works directly.  I also would
NOT recommend Rosen's daughter's website:

   http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/.

But, Tim Gwinn's site is pretty good:

   http://www.panmere.com/

Reading Rosen can be problematic.  So, you might want to start with
Tim's site and if anything seems interesting go directly to Rosen's
words, rather than what others say about his work.  That's because (in
my not so humble opinion) most Rosenites wildly misinterpret or
over-extrapolate what Rosen said to fit their own private world view.

If you're like me and you prefer original material, then I recommend his
book:  "Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural
Systems" first and foremost.  Then for a lighter meal, try his "Essays
on Life Itself", second.  And third, I'd recommend "Anticipatory
Systems".  If you get through all that, then you should be well equipped
to partially parse "Life Itself".

When I was in Santa Fe, the SFI library only had "Life Itself".  But
that book is a bit dense in Rosen's private vocabulary, which is why I
think there's so much ambiguity around what Rosen was trying to say.
(There also seems to be many people who _claim_ to understand what Rosen
was saying; but some deep poking often shows them to have only a vague
understanding, unfortunately.  For myself, I only understand a few of
the basic concepts and have over-extrapolated his work to fit my own
world view, which is more akin to non-well-founded set theory. ;-)

To jump to the point, though.  My misrepresentation of his work is that
he was doing 2 things:

1) building an argument that acyclic inference is inadequate for
representing certain systems (e.g. life), and

2) using category theory (or whatever else might work) as the jumping
off point for building a new body of math to handle cyclic inference.

This hypothetical body of new math would allow us to handle cause-effect
cycles (e.g. what Rosen calls "anticipation").  And in such cycles, we
can build systems where the end purpose _causes_ the beginning and
middle effects that then cause the cause, as it were.  That's why I
suggest that your call for a "hierarchy of relations that lead to
attributions of 'designedness'".

Russell Standish on 11/28/2007 02:10 PM:
> Try http://www3.vcu.edu/complex/
> 
> However, you'll probably find it easier to borrow one of Rosen's books
> from the library and read that, rather than to try to understand what
> others make of him. It's sort of the reverse of David Bohm...
> 
> Cheers
> 
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 11:46:55AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>> Glen
>> , 
>>
>> Everybody but me seems to know what Robert Rosen work you are referring to.
>> If I apologize for being an ill-educated bounder, could you provide me with
>> a netref or two to work with?  
>>
>> I apologize. 
>>
>> Nick 
>>
>> (if you give me the reference, will that be an instance of causality?)  

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to
fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer

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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

Re: [FRIAM] Robert Rosen

[Russell Standish]

Try http://www3.vcu.edu/complex/

However, you'll probably find it easier to borrow one of Rosen's books
from the library and read that, rather than to try to understand what
others make of him. It's sort of the reverse of David Bohm...

Cheers

On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 11:46:55AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Glen
> , 
> 
> Everybody but me seems to know what Robert Rosen work you are referring to.
> If I apologize for being an ill-educated bounder, could you provide me with
> a netref or two to work with?  
> 
> I apologize. 
> 
> Nick 
> 
> (if you give me the reference, will that be an instance of causality?)  
> 
> 
> > [Original Message]
> > From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: 
> > Date: 11/28/2007 10:04:16 AM
> > Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 53, Issue 25
> >
> > Send Friam mailing list submissions to
> > friam@redfish.com
> >
> > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > You can reach the person managing the list at
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> > than "Re: Contents of Friam digest..."
> >
> >
> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >1. Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> >   Causality) (Nicholas Thompson)
> >2. [Fwd: New AAAI Conference - ICWSM 2008] (Robert Cordingley)
> >3. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> >   Causality) (Robert Cordingley)
> >4. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> >   Causality) (Glen E. P. Ropella)
> >5. some thoughts on the educational aspect of 632 (Prof David West)
> >6. Re: Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM
> >   andCausality) (Nicholas Thompson)
> >7. one laptop per child (Marcus G. Daniels)
> >8. Re: one laptop per child (Carl Tollander)
> >9. Re: one laptop per child (Alfredo Covaleda)
> >   10. My employer in the news (Douglas Roberts)
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:22:54 -0700
> > From: "Nicholas Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Subject: [FRIAM] Natural Design as a primitive property (was FRIAM and
> > Causality)
> > To: friam@redfish.com
> > Cc: echarles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> >
> > All, 
> >
> > I confess I have not followed the mathematical side of this discussion
> into
> > the blue underlined stuff.  Nor do I claim to understand all of the plain
> > text. 
> >
> > However, I am tempted by the idea of a mathematical formalization of
> > "natural design".  Here is the argument:  What EVERYBODY --from the most
> > dyed in the wool Natural Theologist to the most flaming Dawkinsian -- 
> > agrees on is that there is some property of natural objects which we might
> > roughly call their designedness.  Tremendous confusion has been sewn by
> > biologists by confusing that property -- whatever it might be --  with the
> > CAUSES of that property, variously God or Natural selection, or
> > what-have-you.   So much of what passes for causal explanation in biology
> > is actually description of the "adaptation relation" or what I call, just
> > to be a trouble-maker, "natural design".  
> >
> > It seems to me that you mathematicians could do a great deal for biology
> by
> > putting your minds to a formalization of "natural design".  It would put
> > Darwin's theory -- "natural selection begets natural design" out of the
> > reach of tautology once and for all.  What I am looking for here is a
> > mathematical formalization of the relations --hierarchy of relations, I
> > would suppose -- that leads to attributions of "designedness".  Assuming
> > that one had put a computer on a British Survey Vessel and sent it round
> > the world for five years looking at the creatures and their surroundings,
> > what is the mathematical description of the relation that would have to be
> > obtained before the computer would come home saying that creatures were
> > designed (and rocks weren't).   Then -- and only then -- are we in a
> > position to ask the question, "is natural selection the best explanation
> > for this property.  
> >
> > My supposition is that ALL current theories will not survive such an
> > analysis.  Indeed, we may need a new metaphor altogether.  Many of you
> will
> > be familiar with the notion of fitness landscape.  For intuitive purposes,
> > let me turn the landscape upside down, so its peaks are chasms and its
> > valleys are peaks.  Now, drop a ball at random into the upside down
> > landscape.  Assuming that the landscape is rigid, the ball will roll
> around
> > until it finds a local minimum.  If you put some jitter in the rolling, it
> > might, depending on the size of the jitter