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From: zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Subject: Re: Alife, real life, symbol systems
Message-ID: <1994Aug3.020414.5544@math.ucla.edu>
Sender: news@math.ucla.edu
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal
References: <Pine.3.89.9408011057.A26197-0100000@uk6x25> <1994Aug1.162838.2143@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 02:04:14 GMT
Expires: September 30, 1994
Lines: 46

In article <1994Aug1.162838.2143@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> 
stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens) writes:

>In <Pine.3.89.9408011057.A26197-0100000@uk6x25> 
dpdp19801@ggr.co.uk (Daniel Piponi) writes:

>>I'm posting this for a (fictional - but ontologically no less real) 
>>friend:
>>
>>In the Journal of Applied Literature, Volume 27, number 3, Spring 1994,
>>(that's the bumper Postmodern edition with the cover on the *inside*) 

> [... rest of the wonderfully executed parody deleted for brevity...]

>What I perceive as the critical difference between the argument presented 
>in this article and the argument I presented earlier is that literature,
>that is, particular literary works as instantiated in text, are not
>dynamic systems, and therefore there is no functional interplay between
>parts.  Our reading may be dynamic, but the text is static.  One cannot
>interpret the functional relationship WITHIN the system itself because
>its part do not interact in a dynamic way, but only an individual's
>reading of it.
>
>In contrast, there is movement and interaction in the flow of the
>electricity within the circuits when a computer is running a simulation
>of life, and the particular interactions, though also subject to OUR
>interpretation, are dynamic in their own right.  If their functional
>dynamicism fits the relations necessary to be considered life, then
>it should be considered alive.  But I don't think ANYONE would 
>assert that something purely static could be considered alive.

If this is your only objection, you must withdraw it in considering an
interactive text, like a jazzed-up multimedia virtual reality version
of `adventure'.  By your own lights, given enough textual "functional
dynamicism", there remains no difference between fiction and reality.
The English department must be paying you handsomely for this claptrap.

>Greg Stevens
>
>greg@santafe.edu
>stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@math.ucla.edu
writing from the disneyland of formal philosophy
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
