> Jeff and I had reached a point where we were pulling apart some of the
> basic diagrams in Rosen's Life Itself in order to more fully examine
> the question "what's at stake in Rosen's use of category theory?" We
> were hampered by a lack of diagramming in ASCII, among other
> things. It is still very much on my mind, although I find it difficult
> to justify time for it out of my schedule.
> Patience, I suppose, is called for!
This is going to be an important philosophical subject for some time...
so time on our side!
Bruce, in responding to Onars description of hyper-set theory pointed
out that hypersets may not be fully self-producing. I also think
that this is a VERY important issue. Possibly the most important
question in all of this is wheather anything is truely self-producing
including life, the universe, etc... I'm sure there are a whole
spectrum of opinions on this matter. The mainstream view in biology
(as you can read in any molecular biology textbook) is that life is
not self-producing (although they don't use these words) in the
strict sence...the story goes that life was established by the
happenstance formation (and combination) of molecules that had the
capability to replicate themselves. Implicit in this idea is that
there was some external (environmental conditions) agent that caused
(or bootstrapped) the self-replicating system ("machine") into
existence. (something that grounded the system). After this point,
the external agent was no longer needed.
Unless I'm confusing terms, then a fully self-producing system is
some kind of primitive that can't be reduced to some kind of
grounding and stochastic computing (evolution).
Would it be correct to say that self-replicating and self-producing
are two different issues?
Please jump in and clearify or elaborate on these issues!!!!
Jeff Prideaux