[FRIAM] better simulating actual FriAM

[Jon Zingale]

Nick,

You say: 'Glen originally mentioned a GENerator/ PHENomenon distinction
which
seems to be the broader of the two and does not forbid downward causation.'

I feel comfortable saying gen-phen-like maps. I am in the investigative
modality
at present and have not yet nailed down for myself the precise meanings of
any
chosen lexicon. I am proceeding by allowing the scope of definition, of a
notion,
to vary indirectly over the course of the discussion, to the extent that I
am able.
Our discussion covered a lot of ground with a lot of ideas coming from each
of
us, adopting and integrating the batch comes with no obvious algorithm. In
the
end, I may abandon gen-phen-like in favor of another signifier or it may
come to
mean something significant based on the context of this conversation. Who
knows?

In vFriam discussion, I mostly remember us talking about the function-goal
distinction and thermostats. You conjectured that the two collections are
exclusive, and I spent time thinking about what this could mean. I am
thinking
about the collection of functions being of a different type than the
collection
of goals, and there possibly being construals of goals into the collection
of
functions. Conceptually, this makes room to consider the difference between
a
goal and a goal wrapped in functions clothing. The particular project I am
engaged
in here is to flesh this concept out a bit more. I haven't yet gotten down
into
the sticks weeds and certainly am not yet able to work easily with emergence
in
this framework. More to come, to the extent that this stays interesting to
me.

You say: 'One rule of that game, I think, which I may have violated myself
in
this discussion, is that things cannot cause things. Only events can cause
events.'

Along with Glen, I am not sure I have decided to limit the scope of
definition
around causation. That as Frank points out, "causation is a relation between
events", does not preclude there being other relations between events nor
causation being a relation between other things, does it? If our
conversations
were intended to be type-safe, I could perhaps be persuaded the other way.

You say: 'The reason is that the notion of cause involves temporal order'

What about something being logically prior rather than just temporally
prior?
Perhaps, we would use a different word than cause?



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/