Thanks to the advice of Crystalpunk i’m now reading the work of Peter Cariani, especially his 1989 thesis “On the Design of Devices with Emergent Semantic Functions”. It is the perfect read after the work of Robert Rosen; it largely treats the same kinds of subjects, but from much more varied angles and with a lot more context. I find it more easy to follow because of that. Like Rosen, Cariani is also very critical towards some (arguably the most important) aspects of Artificial Life, but i find his position more articulate and precise. And he refers to many philosophers I like, most notably Nelson Goodman. When reading this a lot of things which I thought belonged together suddenly fall into place within a coherent world-picture.

Two nice fragments he quotes in his thesis:

“The ‘Pythagoreans’ treat of principles and elements stranger than those of the physical philosophers (the reason is that they got the principles from non-sensible things, for the objects of mathematics, except those of astronomy, are of the class of things without movement); yet their discussions and investigations are all about nature; for they generate the heavens and with regard to their parts and attributes and functions they observe the phenomena, and use up the principles and the causes in explaining these, which implies that they agree with the others, the physical philosophers, that the real is just all which is perceptible and contained by the so-called ‘heavens’. But the causes and principles which they mention are, as we said, sufficient to act as steps even up to the higher realms of reality, and are more suited to these than to theories about nature. They do not tell us at all, however, how there can be movement if limited and unlimited and odd and even are the only things assumed, or how without movement and change there can be generation and destruction, or the bodies that move through the heavens can do what they do.”
(Aristotle, Metaphysics, I,8,990a).

“There is a further epistemological danger in the belief that a high quality simulation can become a realization–that we can perfect our computer simulations of life to the point that they come alive. The problem, as we stated, is that there is a categorical difference between the concept of a realization that is a literal, substantial replacement, and the concept of simulation that is a metaphorical representation of specific structure or behavior, but that also requires specific differences which allow us to recognize it as “standing for” but not still realizing the system. In these terms, a simulation that becomes more and more “lifelike” does not at some degree of perfection become a realization of life. Simulations, in other words, are in the category of symbolic forms, not material substances. For example, in physics the simulation of trajectories by more and more accurate computation never results in realization of motion. We are not warmed by the simulation of thermal motions, or as Aristotle said, ‘That which moves does not move by counting.'”
(Howard Pattee, “The Measurement Problem in Artificial World Models”, Langton, Artificial Life proceedings, 1989)