Posted by
Günther Greindl on
Apr 27, 2008; 4:36pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Welcome-Jim-tp526087p526133.html
Dear Glen,
> OK. But you must realize that this is not really a _refutation_ or
> disproof. It's just one guy (Rosen) arguing with another guy (G?nther).
> For an actual refutation (proof that Rosen's claim is false), you'd
> have to provide an explicit (effective) construction of a computational
> living system.
It is neither a mathematically rigorous nor an empirically grounded
refutation, I agree, but rather in the sense of Occam's razor/Laplacean
"I do not need this hypothesis".
> And you haven't done that. [grin] Hence, you haven't proven Rosen wrong
> ... yet. ALifers across the planet are working on this constructive
> proof feverishly, of course.
That proof would then be rigorous, agreed.
Have you perchance read
Wells, A. J. In Defense of Mechanism Ecological Psychology, 2006, 18, 39-65
? He takes on Rosen's claims, I have queued the paper for reading, will
probably get there in July (have a lot to do at the moment ;-)); and
would be glad to continue the conversation.
> Or, you could show us specifically where Rosen's claim contradicts the
> recursion theorem. But to my knowledge nobody has formalized Rosen's
> work to the degree of specificity we'd need to show such a
> contradiction. I could easily be wrong about that, of course. So, if
> you'll point to such a rigorous formulation of Rosen's claim and
> precisely how it contradicts the recursion theorem, then we could say
> that one or the other (Rosen's or the recursion theorem) is refuted.
Ack, I also think that the problem is that Rosen's ideas are not
formalized enough to present a contradiction.
Cheers,
G?nther
--
G?nther Greindl
Department of Philosophy of Science
University of Vienna
guenther.greindl at univie.ac.at
http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/Blog:
http://dao.complexitystudies.org/Site:
http://www.complexitystudies.org