Perhaps I was misunderstood: I was referring to observers' choices about what
to
distinguish as what sort of system and observers' preferences about what
labels
to use for the distinctions made and the systems thus distinguished. I'm
personally happy to have 'self-production' as a necessary condition for
characterising 'the living'; I prefer for it not to be a sufficient condition.
With respect to the 'biological', I was noting the choices there are about
where, as observers, we put boundaries around systems and consider them to be
unitary entities: "Joe Bloggs" or the "Bloggs Clan"? The human gene-pool or
the
whole biosphere? And so on... choices...choices..
Bernard Scott
ยทยทยท
______________________________________________________________________________
From: autopoiesis@think.net on Tue, Dec 5, 1995 17:58
Subject: no more second hand god
To: Multiple recipients of list AUTOPOIESIS
...seem to be making things unecessarily difficult... whilst the entity in
question is undergoing the process of self production ie. its components
are involved in the set of processes of which they are the products etc. etc.
the thing is autopoietic and thus alive according to M&V. It matters not
where the thing came from and how it came to be in that state. Same can
be said of its children... it doesn't matter whether their parent is AP
or not, only their current state decides whether or not they are alive.It doesn't matter who or what assembled the AP entity.
Alan Dorin.
But there is more to life than autopoesis. More even than M&V dare I say
it. Don't you care about how or if the creature is embedded? Don't you care
about self organisation more than almost anything else? I do and hence I do
not find the study of God in the machine to be very interesting. So I will
agree with Dr. Scott here, I think.
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Simon Shurville
Computer supported collabroative design group
Information Technology Research Institute
University of Brighton, Mithras House Annex
Lewes Road, Brighton
(01273) 642910
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Subject: no more second hand god
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