Re: what exactly are the encoding and decoding arms?
DON MIKULECKY (MIKULECKY%VCUVAX.BITNET@letterbox.rl.ac.uk)
Thu, 28 Sep 1995 13:17:00 -0400
Don Mikulecky, MCV/VCU, Mikulecky@gems.vcu.edu
Reply to Jeff:
It is not a question of your being right or wrong. It is a question
of whether you claim to be consistant with Rosen, Casti, and others or
are proposing a new interpretation of the thing they introduced (the
modeling relation). That is why I reminded you of Rosen's latest
article, which you seemed to agree was a further elaboration of his ideas
beyond life itself. [REF: R. Rosen, "The mind-brain problem ant hte physics of r
reductionism" in Self reference in cognitive and biological systems,
CCAI vol 12, 1995, pp29-43, L. Rocha, ed.] notice that in the passages from
"Life Itself" which you reproduced, the encoding and decoding steps are taken
from a "dictionary". This is a dictionary of mappings. In the passage from
this latest article I refered you to, he clearly states that the diagram itself
is a complex object. He applies that notion to the measurement problem in
physics. Measurement, as an approach to natural systems, involves a special
use of the modeling relation to represent the newly created system,
natural system plus measuring device. This is further elborated in
Patee's writings and Rocha's writings in the above cited volume, but elsewhere
too. Science is almost always involved in relations between the measurements
and other things we have identified as formal systems. Rosen elaborates
this in great detail in Fundamentals of measurement, which is why you
may not see it as clearly in life itself.
I think the statements in the article refered to above, coupled
with the information in Fundamentals of measurement, will answer most, if
not all of the questions you are raising here.
Best regards,
Don Mikulecky