No, I didn't dwell on them so much in my review. Instead, I compiled
approximately two pages of errors I noted, many simply typographical,
others more substantive, and sent them to Rosen. In my review I said
that they didn't necessarily affect the force of the argument, no, but
they do make the book extremely difficult to follow, and undermine the
convincingness of his legimitately difficult and complex argument. I
spent months with the book, off and on.
> O.K. That's fair. However, category theory is only essential for the
> proof to be followed, not to get the gist of the argument.
My strong impressions was that Rosen relied on category theory EXACTLY
to close off the regress in a non-Newtonian way, as you noted in
your previous post. Thus, the nature of my question.
> > *) We had a horrible argument before you read my review, which was
> > never sastifactorally completed. In particular, I leave you with this
> > question:
> Discourse and disagreement don't amount to "a horrivble argument" in
> my mind.
No, certaintly not. I love to argue on the net probably more than
most. Why I called it "horrible" was because of your particular style,
which, at times, I find horrible. You resort, at times, to strong,
unsupported statements, resort to misleading, bombastic rhetoric,
question the motives of your antagonist, and then fail to follow up. I
found that discourse one of the worst among many many many I've had
and continue to have on the net. It's made me leary of continuing to
argue w/you at all.
> Quoting a flip remark by someone named Val Turchin or
> something like that was hardly a substantial way to discuss the issue and
> that's where you seemed to think it was so horrible after I criticised
> that practice.
No "flip comment". Turchin's an expert computer scientist, where I am
a "mere" systems scientist. We spent a few hours going over Rosen's
argument, complete with diagrams, equations, etc., as best as I was
able to present it to him (which may not have been very well). He
claimed that, from his persepctive as a mathematical computer
scientist, Rosen's critical diagram of the organism, WHEN CAST IN
TERMS OF RECURSIVE EQUATIONS, is not interesting.
Turchin may be right or wrong. I do indeed stand on his authority,
because I believe he has some here. He was certainly able to convince
me, and I am not ENTIRELY ignorant in such things. The KEY point is
whether anything is at stake in this RECASTING of a category
theoretical system into a recursive equation system. This is the
leading edge of my ignorance, and the thrust of my question. I still
don't know the answer. And I do, indeed, trust Rosen that it is likely
true. If so, it says a great deal about Rosen, and about category
theory. To this day, I cite Rosen heavily in my own advocacy for
graphical languages and category theory in particular as a universal
modeling language for systems science.
> As I said before, it misses the point completely. The point is that
he
> . . .
> THE RECURSION CAN BE CLOSED IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND ORGANISMS. This always
No, it hits the point squarely, as I remarked at first. Rosen's
argument rests on the claim that he can break the infinite regress at
two levels. HOW he does this is, really, not at all clear to me at
this point. In writing the review I PRESUMED that the category theory
was sufficient to do this. You claim here that it is not necessary.
So, could you please explain, in your own words, in a few sentences,
with or without category theory, how Rosen breaks the regression of
higher and higher levels of relational spaces (mappings of mappings)?
At least with me, I don't think it is necessary any further to dwell
on the introductory points about causal categories, etc. Just state it
plainly.
> Once he does that, I think it will become clear to you where you
> have missed the point and why I am so unhappy with the irresponsible way
> you keep trying to convince everyone that they need not spend the
> time and effort to master this important contribution.
Don, this is why I (sometimes? frequently? usually?) dislike arguing
w/you. Do you have any idea how innacurate this statement is? Could
you POSSIBLY support it? Will you even answer this query?
O----------------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, NRC Research Associate, Cybernetician at Large, (301) 286-7816
| Code 522.3, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt MD 20771 USA
| joslyn@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov http://groucho.gsfc.nasa.gov/joslyn/joslyn.html
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .