Call me old-fashioned.   I don't think it means anything to claim understanding 
of a system unless one can take it apart and put it back together; it is what 
design requires.  There are a lot of systems one can’t understand at that 
level, either because they don’t yield to reduction or because one is either 
not allowed or equipped to take a wrench to them.   With those systems, one can 
only play prediction games and ideas about function are just stories people 
tell themselves to keep from going mad!



On 10/26/18, 1:03 PM, "Friam on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣" <friam-boun...@redfish.com 
on behalf of geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:



    Well, to be fair, Nick launched the thread with the meaning of "function" 
that includes teleology. And Rosen's whole shtick is an attempt to address what 
it means to leave purpose out of science.  But Rosen's formulation of 
anticipation does identify the temporal part of construction.  And he does it 
in a cool way by talking about how a system can "model" it's goal state ... so 
that vision of the goal state kindasorta simulates reverse causation where the 
(expectation of the) future guides the past.



    I don't think that scaffolding relates to anticipation if it's created and 
maintained by *others*.  Anticipation is a kind of self-scaffolding, maybe.



    On 10/26/18 11:27 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

    > It seems like teleology has been introduced by the word /scaffolding/.  
I'm not sure how that is useful unless it is just an observation that there are 
components that tend to be introduced earlier in the development of an organism.





    --

    ☣ uǝlƃ



    ============================================================

    FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

    Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

    to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

    FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Reply via email to