View Full Version : Neural correlates of free will
A recent thread on free will did not meet the criteria of the forum, but perhaps a similar discussion could be generated by borrowing directly from the example in the rules:
"The research of Benjamin Libet suggests that our decisions to act occur before our conscious awareness of them. Isn't this a serious problem for the idea of free will?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet". Specifically, does this imply an either/or battle between determinism and free will?
One might try adopting the approach that the neurological correlates of free will are deterministic (if one does wish to adopt a kind of dualistic picture where all that is physical is deterministic and free will is housed in some extra-physical seat of conscious choice). To summarize, Libet's research, and a host of follow-on studies of various kinds, suggest that when you look at the neural correlates of consciousness, as they have been identified (a tricky business in itself but the only one that neuroscience can access directly), you typically find that the experience of consciousness is a rather slow process, compared to the timescales on which we sometimes have to make (split second) choices that nevertheless are considered "conscious", albeit "snap", decisions. Does this mean that a decision we must make rapidly, say a life-or-death choice about whether to jump into a river to save someone, are not things we can attribute to free will, when a more long-term decision (like who to marry) might be?
That might be an interesting issue, to try to draw the line between what is "conscious" and what is just "instinct", but personally, I would look in a different direction-- I would look critically at the very assumption that physically identifiable processes are deterministic in some "absolutely true" way, such that they could preclude a concept of free will. Instead, determinism is a model, just like all scientific concepts. It was never intended to describe how reality actually is, and it is never used for that.
Instead, the model of determinism is applied to making predictions about outcomes, and in some situations, we know this model leads to good predictions, and in others, it has more limited success. For example, determinism in weather prediction leads to the fairly absurd concept that a butterfly can "change the weather", when a much more natural conclusion is that the butterfly is schooling us in the limitations of deterministic thinking. And in quantum mechanics, that which is deterministic is a process that does not lead to definite predictions, such that the outcomes of experiments are not in fact determined, are are of uknown determinism at best. I feel these should all be taken as a cautionary tale about the fundamental incorrectness of the equation physical = deterministic.
So in this sense, I would agree that there is something fundamental in how we do science that requires the determinstic model, but I disagree that this means we know the universe itself evolves deterministically-- rather, our scientific understanding of the universe involves placing the template of determinism against the universe, so a deterministic universe is what we get-- with all its blind spots. The deterministic approach produces a powerful, but the evidence is, an incomplete, way to think about things, as per the chaos and quantum mechanics examples.
It would be great if people could actually discuss freewill in the light of what is actually known about the neurology of choice making and the focusing of action plans, rather than applying the lens of reductionist physics. All the philosophical conundrums would rapidly vanish.
But if people want to debate in terms of universals, or mathematical constructs, then a good place to start is recognising that determined~random are two extremes of a spectum of constraint. Determined is to be locally constrained in some regard. Random is to be unconstrained in that regard.
There is then a third story - that of complexity. Here you have a systems view, rather than the reductionist's view, where there is a self-organising, equilbrium-seeking, interaction between global constraints and local degrees of freedom.
This is what the standard reductionist dichotomy (of determined vs random) cannot see. By only viewing causality as a local issue, the global or holistic aspects are missed (or treated as merely "emergent", epiphenomenal even).
So the whole freewill debate - which has been run through 1000s of times on PF - is motivated by a "too simple" reductionist view of reality. One that really works for physics, but does not work for neurology or the other sciences of the complex.
And anyone who is actually forced to study the neurology will quickly realise this.
As to focusing on Libet, his evoked potential approach is easily misinterpreted as it tells you so little about what is actually happening in the brain (it just says something happens ahead of the time it becomes reportable - but we knew that from psychology's very first experiments conducted by Wundt on perception/aperception).
As a laugh, here is an example of the current literature where you can see the kind of detail people are having to get into to explain the brain as a system that develops its actions.
How choice modifies preference: neural correlates of choice justification.
Qin J, Kimel S, Kitayama S, Wang X, Yang X, Han S.
Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Abstract
When making a difficult choice, people often justify the choice by increasing their liking for the chosen object and decreasing their liking for the rejected object. To uncover the neural signatures of choice justification, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor neural activity when subjects rated their preference for chosen and rejected musical CDs before and after they made their choices. We observed that the trial-by-trial attitude change (i.e., increase of preference for chosen items and decrease of preference for rejected items) was predicted by post-choice activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), right temporal-parietal junction, anterior insula, and bilateral cerebellum. Furthermore, individual difference in choice justification (i.e., increased preference for chosen items minus decreased preference for rejected items) was predicted by post-choice neural activity in the dorsal MPFC, left lateral prefrontal cortex, and right precentral cortex positively. In addition, interdependent self-construal was correlated with decreased activity in the ventral MPFC in the post-choice than pre-choice sessions. These findings suggest that both negative arousal/regulation and self-reflection are associated with choice justification. This provides evidence for the self-threat theory of choice justification.
I agree with your points about the limitations of the determined vs. random dichotomy. Often a debate on free will seems focused on that dichotomy, as if either was directly relevant (it's not even obvious which one provides more room for free will-- determinism is usually seen as anathema to free will, which then implies randomness somehow supports it, but of course we would always hold a person more responsible for a decision that emerged from the constraints of their persona moreso than something they did at random). I'm sypathetic to the claim that free will and conscious choice may require a different analysis than reductionism.
I'm sypathetic to the claim that free will and conscious choice may require a different analysis than reductionism.
Well let's see if there are any takers for a non-reductionist discussion for a change :smile:.
Hi Ken,
Instead, the model of determinism is applied to making predictions about outcomes, and in some situations, we know this model leads to good predictions, and in others, it has more limited success. For example, determinism in weather prediction leads to the fairly absurd concept that a butterfly can "change the weather", when a much more natural conclusion is that the butterfly is schooling us in the limitations of deterministic thinking.
I think what you're trying to suggest is that chaotic systems might not be fully deterministic, but that's not true. They are.
Chaos theory is a field of study in applied mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions; an effect which is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.[3][4] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
Baranger wrote a decent paper covering the various concepts of chaos and complexity called "Chaos, Complexity, and Entropy, A physics talk for non-physicists" that you might be interested in. About the "butterfly effect" or more appropriately, "sensitivity to initial conditions" he states:
A system who's configuration is capable of changing with time is known as a "dynamical system". A dynamical system consists of some "variables" and some "equations of motion" or "dynamical equations". The variables are any things which can vary with time. They can be multiple or single, continuous or discrete. They must be chosen in such a way that complete knowledge of all the variables determines uniquely the "state" of the system at one time. In other words, two similar systems with the same values of all the variables are in identical configurations now, and will evolve identically.
Ref: http://www.necsi.edu/projects/baranger/cce.pdf
So regardless of whether or not a system can be called chaotic, complex, nonlinear or whatever, at least given classical mechanical models, those systems evolve deterministically over time. A computer system for example, such as the one sitting on your desk, is utterly deterministic. Even random number generators in these machines are not random, but only pseudo-random, using 'environmental' cues to create seemingly random outputs. If classical mechanics governs mental 'decisions' then 'free will' (or perhaps more appropriately, "mental causation" which is the concept that phenomenal mental states have an influence over physical states) is false. There is no "downward causation" in the sense that locally efficient causes can be subordinated by global physical states.
The takeaway from all that is generally that mental causation, including free will, is epiphenomenal. A paper quoted by apeiron (http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=471841&page=3) (Farkus, "Mental Causation in a Physical Brain") for example, suggests:
I will defend and discuss the following claims: ... (4) the physical world is causally closed, rendering the mental causation epiphenomenal, ...
[and concludes with]
Since mental properties are claimed to lack causal power, mental causation is in conventional philosophical sense to be treated as a convenient metaphor and it can only refer to the top-down effects in the brain. It is also argued that the lack of causal power does not diminish the ontological importance of mental properties ...
In this case, "top-down effects" should not be confused with "downward causation". Not sure why apeiron suggests mental causation isn’t epiphenomenal since he’s quoted this paper as being the “systems approach”. Perhaps he can help explain what that really means. Regardless, it would seem that if our expectation of the brain is that of a chaotic, complex system that operates as we understand it today (ie: through the classical interaction of neurons) then the brain is deterministic as would be "free will".
So regardless of whether or not a system can be called chaotic, complex, nonlinear or whatever, at least given classical mechanical models, those systems evolve deterministically over time.
Conflating complexity and complication is precisely where reductionists get it wrong.
Chaos is merely an example of the complicated. The global constraints are simple and unchanging (holonomic).
Complexity by contrast involves non-holonomic constraints (as argued by Howard Pattee for example). Top-down causality is qualitatively different when we shift from the holonomic to the non-holonomic case.
Baranger's paper shows he has an intuitive grasp of this, but has not actually studied the subject from a theoretical biology standpoint. So this part of his presentation lack precision.
In this case, "top-down effects" should not be confused with "downward causation". Not sure why apeiron suggests mental causation isn’t epiphenomenal since he’s quoted this paper as being the “systems approach”.
I don't follow you here. Perhaps "effects" does seem a too-loose way of talking about global constraints (holonomic or otherwise), but it seems acceptable enough in context. And indeed, it would be exactly the right term if you wanted to draw attention to the crucial systems fact that the top-down action is having an "effect" on the local scale. Because this is the whole point. Top-down constraints do result in something at the local atomistic scale. That is, it creates what is there via its constraint of local degrees of freedom.
And likewise, I don't get your crack about epiphenomenal mental states. Farkus argues that the epiphenomal part of it all is that philosophers end up talking about something that does not in fact exist separate from the system.
So if you say "mental state" and I say "non-holonomic constraint", or even "top-down effects", only one of us is speaking the language of systems science. The other is stuck with the epiphenomenalism that is "solved" only by ontological dualism.
A recent thread on free will did not meet the criteria of the forum, but perhaps a similar discussion could be generated by borrowing directly from the example in the rules:
"The research of Benjamin Libet suggests that our decisions to act occur before our conscious awareness of them. Isn't this a serious problem for the idea of free will?
No. All it really tells us, is that the decision making process is distinct from the self-reflective process. It actually makes sense that the latter would require more processing. Compare how much more difficult it is to learn to drive a car... than it is to drive one after you have learned. In the former case, you have to 'be aware' of everything you are doing. In the latter, your decisions seem 'more unconscious', even though a truly unconscious driver would be in a lot of trouble. The real problem is that the conscious/unconscious dichotomy is overly simplistic. We're only scratching the surface of what consciousness actually is, so this is not surprising.
octelcogopod
Mar7-11, 02:19 AM
I agree with Joe about the conscious/unconscious dichotomy. I think there is a problem of what awareness and sensory stimuli (qualia) is, but I also think there is a whole lot of confusion as to what a conscious action is, how humans make a choice, and just what it means to be able to think but not able to control ones brain directly in any way. It's very hard to define what choice is, how one makes a choice, and what control is in terms of the influence a conscious mind might have on physical brain states.
I do think on some fundamental level that if everything is determined that the mind doesn't really have any true choice, but the problem then becomes the question of what other choices would we have that would truly be free? The mind is by definition limited to the choices it can see, and those choices are limited by the physical opportunities presented, no matter how free the mental mind might be.
nismaratwork
Mar8-11, 01:22 PM
Exploring free will from the perspective of modern neurology is a bit like trying to divine character traits via Phrenology... "scratching the surface" is generous IMO.
I would look critically at the very assumption that physically identifiable processes are deterministic in some "absolutely true" way, such that they could preclude a concept of free will.
Suppose an single-vote election design to elect one of two candidates. Let's modify slightly the usual rules so that a randomly chosen schedule determine when each voter will have access to the polling station. Suppose also that there is 108 voters. Finally suppose two hidden observers who have prior access to either the first 105 ballots or the next 105 ones.
In this example free will is what makes each voter decide on way or the other, consciousness is the public outcome publicised after the end of the pool, and everything in between is purely deterministic.
Because of the law of large numbers, there is no doubt that the hidden observers will be able to predict the outcome of the election, despite they look at only 0.1% of the individual ballots. Is it to say that the decision is taken by only 0.1% of the individuals? Of course not: the two observers does not even look at the same ballots, but both can predict the outcome.
What Libet showed is that one can predict the outcome of a decision before the decision becomes consciouss.* The shortcome is not with determinism. The short come is to equate decision with the ability to predict the decision.
Best,
*for the sake of clarity I lay aside the usual issues about this claim
nismaratwork
Mar8-11, 01:35 PM
In other words, true uncertainty vs. measurement problems?
Exploring free will from the perspective of modern neurology is a bit like trying to divine character traits via Phrenology... "scratching the surface" is generous IMO.
How so when the previous two posters raised a crucial distinction between attentional control and automatic or habitual behaviour. And you can go straight to your neurology textbooks to learn in intricate detail about the way the brain handles the two so that it no longer seems a mystery.
nismaratwork
Mar8-11, 02:28 PM
How so when the previous two posters raised a crucial distinction between attentional control and automatic or habitual behaviour. And you can go straight to your neurology textbooks to learn in intricate detail about the way the brain handles the two so that it no longer seems a mystery.
I find it mysterious because those distinctions don't always hold, and we know from observation that greater complexity exists... it's just an approximation of those intricacies. I'd add, for all the mapping that's done, the interactive and adaptable nature of the brain continues to stymie, and when you touch on consciousness and tne mind... yech.
I love neurology, but it has limits in terms of what is being looked for or screened during imaging, and the tendency to hyperfocus on one system.
Hell, we could probably debate all day about what constitutes the Limbic system... it's too messy for my tastes.
I find it mysterious because those distinctions don't always hold, and we know from observation that greater complexity exists...
What are you thinking of here? Broadly I believe the attention~habit dichotomy holds up pretty well.
The striatum can "emit" learnt behaviours in a habitual fashion in time frame of 120 to 250ms, the cortex can "evolve" novel states of response in 300 to 700ms. The distinction in terms of architecture, time frames, and processing logic looks robust.
Though I would agree there is a third level of responding probably in the reflexive - responses evolved over genetic timescales, such as all the brainstem and spinal level stuff (with time frames of 30 to 100 ms). And mostly very resistant to any learning, or top-down higher brain constraints.
The limbic brain is a pretty useless construct when it comes to the brain's architecture I agree. I prefer understanding the "emotional" aspects of the brain in terms of orienting responses.
But the thread is about the "willing centre" of the brain :smile:. And that becomes a bit of a laugh in the literature. Ohh, we can see the anterior cingulate light up, the nucleus accumbens, the insular cortex, the DPFC. When actually the whole brain is the willing organ - and divides according to grades of willing from the reflexive, to the habitual, to the "conscious" or attentive.
And all these grades are consciously reportable (if we learn to attend to them), but not so easily consciously controlled (because reflexes and habits are not meant to be attentively controlled by definition - that is just a mistaken cultural belief fostered by the socially constructed notion of freewill).
nismaratwork
Mar8-11, 03:38 PM
What are you thinking of here? Broadly I believe the attention~habit dichotomy holds up pretty well.
The striatum can "emit" learnt behaviours in a habitual fashion in time frame of 120 to 250ms, the cortex can "evolve" novel states of response in 300 to 700ms. The distinction in terms of architecture, time frames, and processing logic looks robust.
Though I would agree there is a third level of responding probably in the reflexive - responses evolved over genetic timescales, such as all the brainstem and spinal level stuff (with time frames of 30 to 100 ms). And mostly very resistant to any learning, or top-down higher brain constraints.
The limbic brain is a pretty useless construct when it comes to the brain's architecture I agree. I prefer understanding the "emotional" aspects of the brain in terms of orienting responses.
But the thread is about the "willing centre" of the brain :smile:. And that becomes a bit of a laugh in the literature. Ohh, we can see the anterior cingulate light up, the nucleus accumbens, the insular cortex, the DPFC. When actually the whole brain is the willing organ - and divides according to grades of willing from the reflexive, to the habitual, to the "conscious" or attentive.
And all these grades are consciously reportable (if we learn to attend to them), but not so easily consciously controlled (because reflexes and habits are not meant to be attentively controlled by definition - that is just a mistaken cultural belief fostered by the socially constructed notion of freewill).
Certainly that is the prevailing view, but I suspect that as you say, the combined action of numerous systems gives rise to the possibility of will, conscious or otherwise. When and how a behavior is initiated is a part of the answer, but it leaves major gaps that I don't think reflex alone can fill. PTSD is an example of "learned" reflexive behavior IMO, and yet it only begins to make sense once filtered through many of the regions you mentioned earlier.
In short, I'm not arguing for free-will... I'm saying that the whole mess is sufficiently complex that we can't pick it apart yet with scientific tools. This is a time when philosophy, psychology, and biology (in the form of neurology) have to find some kind of uneasy balance. How each part adds up to a 'willing' brain, or not, is beyond the ability to extrapolate based on imaging to this point.
I think what you're trying to suggest is that chaotic systems might not be fully deterministic, but that's not true. They are.
There is an important difference between a "chaotic system", which is something physical, and chaos theory, which is mathematics. Of course chaos theory is deterministic, the issue is whether or not the physical system is deterministic. How would you show that the chaotic system is deterministic? You cannot, you can only show that the chaotic analysis leads to useful results-- that's no surprise, holding the template of determinism to physical systems has led to many successes, none of which show that the physical system is actually deterministic. Indeed, as I argued above, there is considerable evidence that the physical system is not actually deterministic, and imagining that it is gives us that butterflies change weather. They do not-- instead, weather is fundamentally statistical, and no butterfly changes the statistical tendencies of the outcomes. Determinism is simply a limited concept.
So regardless of whether or not a system can be called chaotic, complex, nonlinear or whatever, at least given classical mechanical models, those systems evolve deterministically over time. A computer system for example, such as the one sitting on your desk, is utterly deterministic.The computer is built to be deterministic. The weather is not.
Regardless, it would seem that if our expectation of the brain is that of a chaotic, complex system that operates as we understand it today (ie: through the classical interaction of neurons) then the brain is deterministic as would be "free will".Again, there is no evidence that classical chaotic systems are deterministic, that's just plain not true. How would you show that a chaotic system, a physical system not a theory describing it to some degree of usefulness, is deterministic?
No. All it really tells us, is that the decision making process is distinct from the self-reflective process. It actually makes sense that the latter would require more processing. Compare how much more difficult it is to learn to drive a car... than it is to drive one after you have learned. In the former case, you have to 'be aware' of everything you are doing. In the latter, your decisions seem 'more unconscious', even though a truly unconscious driver would be in a lot of trouble. The real problem is that the conscious/unconscious dichotomy is overly simplistic. We're only scratching the surface of what consciousness actually is, so this is not surprising.I agree with what you have said here. That's why I tend to see the whole issue of free will as orthogonal to the issue of deterministic vs. random-- the latter are templates we use in reductionists analyses, the former may involve phenomena we are quite far from having much of a handle on.
In this example free will is what makes each voter decide on way or the other, consciousness is the public outcome publicised after the end of the pool, and everything in between is purely deterministic.
I can see where you are coming from on the first two issues, but the basis for the final claim just depends on what one thinks determinism really means. I would say determinism is quite demonstrably an analysis tool, not a description of how things happen (and you might be saying something similar, but then we cannot see that what happens is "deterministic", we can only say what happens admits to useful analysis via determinism). Indeed, when we attempt to use determinism as a literal description of how things happen, it invariably breaks down at some point along the way. Even when we say we are sure an apple will fall when we drop it, we are speaking in terms of probabilities-- it is highly probably the apple will fall, but we don't know that something else could happen we did not expect, like a bomb might go off that blows the apple upward instead. Probability is always an assessment of what you don't know as well as what you do, and determinism is an analysis tool that is intentionally blind to this fact.
Randomness is also an analysis tool-- my point is merely that being able to predict an outcome with high success is an example of the usefulness of the concept of determinism, not an example of a deterministic process. If you decide what movie you will see today, and I know you quite well, I might be able to write in an envelope what you will choose, based on my knowledge of you. That means I can determine your choice with high success rate-- it does not mean you are not exercising free will. The issue of determinism is nothing but predictability, and is quite orthogonal to issues of free will.
What Libet showed is that one can predict the outcome of a decision before the decision becomes consciouss.* The shortcome is not with determinism. The short come is to equate decision with the ability to predict the decision.
Here I would agree with you.
How each part adds up to a 'willing' brain, or not, is beyond the ability to extrapolate based on imaging to this point.
My feeling is different having studied precisely this question of how the brain "wills" actions. We already know more than most people could ever want to know.
I would just say pick up Luria's The Working Brain, published in 1973, and read chapter nine. The broad outlines were worked out 50 years ago, and the gaps have been filled in by electrophysiology and animal studies much more than neuroimaging. Read Graybiel on the striatum or Passingham on the frontal lobes for example.
The neural correlates of freewill are one of the "easy problems" even if you are a Chalmer-ite by persuasion. But who really reads neuroscience textbooks?
nismaratwork
Mar8-11, 04:18 PM
My feeling is different having studied precisely this question of how the brain "wills" actions. We already know more than most people could ever want to know.
I would just say pick up Luria's The Working Brain, published in 1973, and read chapter nine. The broad outlines were worked out 50 years ago, and the gaps have been filled in by electrophysiology and animal studies much more than neuroimaging. Read Graybiel on the striatum or Passingham on the frontal lobes for example.
The neural correlates of freewill are one of the "easy problems" even if you are a Chalmer-ite by persuasion. But who really reads neuroscience textbooks?
I guess wherre you see filled gaps, I see them as bridges to ever widening gaps in our knowledge... we know a lot, but not enough to really explore what the mind is. Well... we can explore, but not in what strikes me as a meaningful way.
Oh, and... nerd that I am, I read them... I read and read them, often for fun. So... that's me... that's a serious bias on my part I guess.
I would say determinism is quite demonstrably an analysis tool, not a description of how things happen...
Yes, determinism like randomness is in the eye of the beholder :smile:. It is how the world looks when it is reduced to its simplest alternatives.
The question then is how do we model complexity. It could be that it is just determinism~randomness made more complicated. Or it could be that in creating the simple model, we left out the "something else" - a story about the global constraints - which is what models of complexity require.
nismaratwork
Mar8-11, 04:25 PM
Yes, determinism like randomness is in the eye of the beholder :smile:. It is how the world looks when it is reduced to its simplest alternatives.
The question then is how do we model complexity. It could be that it is just determinism~randomness made more complicated. Or it could be that in creating the simple model, we left out the "something else" - a story about the global constraints - which is what models of complexity require.
See... this I agree with completely.
we cannot see that what happens is "deterministic"
Sure, but we can construct models that, by definition, are deterministic, and see what happens. That's exactly what I did: I constructed a deterministic model in which the same kind of problem can arise despite it's neither tied to consciousness nor free will. That says nothing about whether consciousness and free will are or are not determinist. That just shows that determinism is not at the root of the problem while interpreting Libet's finding.
That said, I'm not seeing determinism and randomness as just usefull tricks to guide interpretation. To me this has a precise meaning in terms of theory of computability and theory of complexity. I equate determinism with computabilty, and randomness with BPP class of complexity.
Let's begins with the latter: about everyone thinks that P=BPP, meaning that randomness is unlikely to provide any observable change from a more classical universe (that remains to be proven, however). That's exactly the situation with many-worlds versus Copenhagen interpretation: the first is purely deterministic without randomness, the second uses randomness to a large extent, and it does not make any difference in what we expect to see.
The former is more subtile: yes one will never prove that the universe is computable/determinist. However, the reverse (the universe being uncomputable/non deterministic) is IMHO theorically provable (can you compress most arbitray binary strings? If yes congratulation: you have hypercomputing abilities). So the question, to me, is not whether we can prove that the universe is deterministic. The question is: should we think otherwise when otherwise is such an extraordinary claim? To me extraordinary claims are good to Occamise until we find reasons not to.
I equate determinism with computabilty, and randomness with BPP class of complexity.
But BPP assumes determinism (the global constraints are taken to be eternal, definite rather than indefinite or themselves dynamic). So no surprise that the results are pseudo-random and Ockham's razor would see you wanting to lop off ontic randomness.
In the short run view, where global constraints by definition look "eternal", this is very valid and useful as a modelling approach. But it does not answer the larger case of the long run view where global contraints may be presumed to vary over time. Even the laws of physics could have evolved.
Real complexity modelling involves allowing the global constraints to develop, to self-organise. It is this intrinsic holistic dynamism that a strictly localised view, based on the standard dichotomy of random vs determined, misses.
Sure, but we can construct models that, by definition, are deterministic, and see what happens. That's exactly what I did: I constructed a deterministic model in which the same kind of problem can arise despite it's neither tied to consciousness nor free will.Exactly-- you constructed a model in which the same kind of problem can arise. Does that mean it is what happens in free will? Certainly not, your model does not exhibit free will. That is the Catch-22 in your argument-- you say computers are deterministic, so what they model is deterministic, and then you claim that free will has to be deterministic. But by making a deterministic model, you have not demonstrated free will, and you cannot tell that you have modeled free will. That is my point-- free will may have nothing to do with determinism, neither produced by it nor precluded by it. And none of your models answer that issue. I believe apeiron is making a similar point.
That says nothing about whether consciousness and free will are or are not determinist. That just shows that determinism is not at the root of the problem while interpreting Libet's finding. All the same, you said that we were talking about a deterministic system when we were talking about the brain. The issue is one of definition-- if by a "deterministic system" one means "a system that we gain limited predictive power by modeling it deterministically", then sure we can say the brain is deterministic. But most people's claims about "deterministic systems" require that the system is deterministic, i.e., it's behaviors are determined in advance, which is a very different claim, and not well substantiated by fact-- any better than fact can substantiate that weather is deterministic. Instead, the most straightforward interpretation of the facts is that it is not-- unless we restrict to the weaker meaning of the term.
I equate determinism with computabilty, and randomness with BPP class of complexity. Note those are both aspects of models of real systems, not aspects of real systems. The issue here is what evidence you have that your models are successful at modeling free will. What evidence is that?
So the question, to me, is not whether we can prove that the universe is deterministic. The question is: should we think otherwise when otherwise is such an extraordinary claim? To me extraordinary claims are good to Occamise until we find reasons not to.But it is not an extraordinary claim at all, the more extraordinary claim is that the universe is built to submit to our analysis. More simple is the claim that we tailor our analysis to achieve goals, and the universe is just the universe, and a brain is just a brain. The ultimate irony is when we think that our brains our built to understand how our brains are built.
That is the Catch-22 in your argument-- you say computers are deterministic, so what they model is deterministic, and then you claim that free will has to be deterministic.
Are you sure you don't mix-up my argument with those of someone else?
But by making a deterministic model, you have not demonstrated free will, and you cannot tell that you have modeled free will.
Didn't I explicitly said the same things? Again, my analogy says nothing about whether consciousness and free will are or are not determinist. That just shows that none are at the root of the problem while interpreting Libet's finding, because one can explicitly construct the same kind of result while evacuating both free will and determinism.
Note those are both aspects of models of real systems, not aspects of real systems.
I'd say it's mathematical definition. Whatever. What's is important is that from these mathematical definitions we can infer whether this or that properties lead to predictions. If an aspect of the model cannot lead to prediction, then you have the mathematical guarantee that this properties is not important to care about. If it allows some prediction, then you can check reality to decide which kind of model can or cannot describe reality: with or without the property?
The issue here is what evidence you have that your models are successful at modeling free will. What evidence is that?
From the mathematical definition of randomness, an informed guess is that either randomness isn't at the root of free will, or free will can account for nothing. From the mathematical definition of computability, you can infer that either free will is determinist or it allows hypercomputing. So if one find evidence for hypercomputing that'd be evidence against determinism. Notice hypercomputing doesn't mean unpredictability. It means extraordinary abilities. See Penrose for one who defends this line of though, and especially defends that mathematicians have superpowers.
the more extraordinary claim is that the universe is built to submit to our analysis.Some would disagree. (http://xkcd.com/54/)
32891
nismaratwork
Mar8-11, 08:37 PM
Science is a method, it's no guarantee that the universe is comprehensible.
Hi Ken G,
There is an important difference between a "chaotic system", which is something physical, and chaos theory, which is mathematics. Of course chaos theory is deterministic, the issue is whether or not the physical system is deterministic.
I understand what you're getting at, but chaotic systems are clearly defined as deterministic in the literature as I've quoted above. Yes, they are mathematically deterministic. Are they physically deterministic? When looking at the 'weather' or any other fluid system for that matter, we use statistical mechanics to define the fluid's momentum, density, internal energy, etc... at any point and at any time, and to the degree those values are accurate, the model will make accurate predictions. The fact that a fluid's momentum is made up of an aggregate of molecules and those molecules are being lumped together means that we can never be perfectly accurate. But does that really matter? Does it really matter that after an extended period of time, even our most accurate measurement of the macro states won't provide sufficient detail to define the micro states and thus the sensitivity to initial conditions might again cause a deviation from our model? I suppose one could also argue that given sufficient information about the micro states of molecules in the fluid, one could debatably predict the system with even higher accuracy, though I won't go that far. So are you suggesting that physical determinism isn't possible because we can't know the micro states, or are you suggesting that there might be some kind strong emergence and thus a form of downward causation that subordinates local physical laws? Or are you suggesting such systems aren't deterministic for some other reason?
So are you suggesting that physical determinism isn't possible because we can't know the micro states, or are you suggesting that there might be some kind strong emergence and thus a form of downward causation that subordinates local physical laws? Or are you suggesting such systems aren't deterministic for some other reason?
Have you found time to read this great paper yet?
http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.3507
You will see that Franks makes the argument that it does not matter whether the microscale is ontically random or ontically deterministic because it is the global constraints (the information preserved at the global scale and which acts top-down) which explains the patterns of nature.
We already knew this of course. You can generate fractals either by deterministic iterative equations or suitable stochastic processes. It looks the same in the end as what matters is the information represented as the global constraints.
But Franks makes this explicit. There is a top-down view which is not reducible to the bottom up. The whole is more than the sum of its parts (whether they be random or determined). And this is true even for simple systems (like those with a gaussian, or even simpler(!) powerlaw, statistics). It is of course obviously true for complex systems like life and mind.
Hi apeiron,
Chaos is merely an example of the complicated. The global constraints are simple and unchanging (holonomic).
Complexity by contrast involves non-holonomic constraints (as argued by Howard Pattee for example). Top-down causality is qualitatively different when we shift from the holonomic to the non-holonomic case.
I’m not familiar with “holonomic” so I did a search:
"A physical system is defined in terms of a number of degrees of freedom which are represented as variables in the equations of motion. Once the initial conditions are specified for a given time, the equations of motion give a deterministic procedure for finding the state of the systems at any other time. Since there is no room for alternatives in this description, there is apparently no room for hereditary processes. . . The only useful description of memory or heredity in a physical system requires introducing the possibility of alternative pathways or trajectories for the system, along with a 'genetic' mechanism for causing the system to follow one or another of these possible alternatives depending on the state of the genetic mechanism. This implies that the genetic mechanism must be capable of describing or representing all of the alternative pathways even though only one pathway is actually followed in time. In other words, there must be more degrees of freedom available for the description of the total system than for following its actual motion. . . Such constraints are called non-holonomic."
In more common terminology, this type of constraint is a structure that we say controls a dynamics. To control a dynamical systems implies that there are control variables that are separate from the dynamical system variables, yet they must be described in conjunction with the dynamical variables. These control variables must provide additional degrees of freedom or flexibility for the system dynamics. At the same time, typical control systems do not remove degrees of freedom from the dynamical system, although they alter the rates or ranges of system variables. Many artificial machines depend on such control constraints in the form of linkages, escapements, switches and governors. In living systems the enzymes and other allosteric macromolecules perform such control functions. The characteristic property of all these non-holonomic structures is that they cannot be usefully separated from the dynamical system they control. They are essentially nonlinear in the sense that neither the dynamics nor the control constraints can be treated separately.
It sounds like Pattee wants simply wants these macromolecules and genetics to have a stronger causal role in evolution but I'm not sure exactly what he's getting at. Perhaps you could start a new thread regarding Pattee and his contributions to philosophy and science.
Baranger's paper shows he has an intuitive grasp of this, but has not actually studied the subject from a theoretical biology standpoint. So this part of his presentation lack precision.
Sure, Baranger's paper is pretty basic, but it clearly makes the point that chaotic systems are deterministic given precise initial conditions, which is relevant to the OP. I think it’s important also to separate out chaotic systems that are classical (and separable) in a functional sense, such as Benard cells, from systems that are functionally dependant on quantum scale interactions. Our present day paradigm for neuron interactions is that they are not dependent on quantum scale interactions, so it seems to me one needs to address the issue of how one is to model these “non-holomonic” properties (classical or quantum mechanical influences) and whether or not such a separation should make any difference.
I don't follow you here. Perhaps "effects" does seem a too-loose way of talking about global constraints (holonomic or otherwise), but it seems acceptable enough in context. And indeed, it would be exactly the right term if you wanted to draw attention to the crucial systems fact that the top-down action is having an "effect" on the local scale. Because this is the whole point. Top-down constraints do result in something at the local atomistic scale. That is, it creates what is there via its constraint of local degrees of freedom.
This is a good example of what confuses me about everything you say about this "systems approach". Are you suggesting these "top-down constraints" are somehow influencing and subordinating local causation? That is, are you suggesting that causes found on the local level (such as individual neuron interactions) are somehow being influenced by the top down constraints such that the neurons are influenced not only by local interactions, but also by some kind of overall, global configuration? Or are you merely referring to how boundary conditions act as local causal actions at some 'control surface' such as we use in multi-physics approaches that use FEA to model physical phenomena in engineering and the sciences? Note that FEA and similar approaches are simplified versions of the underlying philosophy surrounding the more conventional “systems approach”, that nonlinear differential control volumes must be in dynamic equilibrium over time. It’s this dynamic equilibrium between local causes that might somehow be misconstrued as there being some kind of genuine downward causation which of course, isn’t a mainstream concept. Being an engineer, I’d readily accept that boundary conditions act on any given system, but the underlying philosophy of how those boundary conditions act on any classically defined, separable system, does not allow for nonlocal causation and thus does not allow for downward causation in any real sense of the term.
And likewise, I don't get your crack about epiphenomenal mental states. Farkus argues that the epiphenomal part of it all is that philosophers end up talking about something that does not in fact exist separate from the system.
After rereading his paper, I’d say that he does in fact try to separate mental states (phenomenal states) from the underlying physical states as you say, but that mental states are epiphenomenal isn’t an unusual position for computationalists. Frank Jackson for example (Epiphenomenal Qualia) is a much cited paper that contends exactly that. So I’d say Farkus is in line with many philosophers on this account. He's suggesting mental states ARE physical states, and it is the mental properties that are "causally irrelevant" and an epiphenomenon (using his words) which I’d say is not unusual in the philosophical community. Not that there aren’t logical problems with that approach. He states for example:
The intra-level causation in the brain is argued to simultaneously operate at various levels. At the lowest level (that we consider), a neuron (causally) affects the behavior of another neuron it projects [connects] to. At a somewhat higher spatial level, (activation of a) voxel A in certain brain area affects a voxel B in another brain area, …
That says to me, he accepts that neurons only interact locally with others but we can also examine interactions at higher levels, those that are defined by large groups of neurons.
There are some areas in his paper I’m not too sure about. Take for example:
In medium causation, the higher level entity emerges through a realization of one amongst several possible states on the lower level (their interactions) whereas the previous states of the higher level constrain conditions for the coming higher-level sates.
If he’s suggesting that this “higher level” is not determined by the interactions of the lower level (their interactions) in a deterministic way based only on the local interactions of neurons, then that sounds like strong downward causation which is clearly false. Certainly, there are people who would contend that something like that would be required for “free will” or any theory of mental causation. But I’m not sure that’s really what he wants.
In another questionable section he states:
I think that examples of inter-level causation can be found in the social domain as well. Imagine an audience, having just watched the enjoyable performance. Initially, independent claps are eventually converted into a synchronized applause, which is an example of bottom-up causation. And reversely, imagine yourself entering a classroom submerged into a dense atmosphere that can be “sensed in the air.” You are likely to become immediately affected by this global social state. I suggest that top-down causation can also be viewed as an intra-level causation where many parts simultaneously affect another single part (which differs from sequential, uncoordinated peer-to-peer interactions in the intra-level case).
In the part emphasized, I’d say he’s trying to suggest that a person is somehow “immediately” and “simultaneously” affected by a “global state” on entering this classroom which I picture as being a zone of influence of some sort per Farkus. Were the same person to enter the same room and was blind and deaf, would these same “global states” immediately and simultaneously also affect that person? Sounds like Farkus wants his readers to believe that also, but that sounds too much like magic to me.
I suspect that the punchline to all this is that the proposal these folks are after is that higher order levels influence the future higher order levels by influencing lower order levels. That of course is strong downward causation. I don't see any room for a 'medium' causation that somehow doesn't allow a higher level to influence a lower level but still allows higher levels to have some kind of influence. The higher level is made up of lower level constituents, so if there's no change in the lower level constituents caused by the higher level, there's no change.
I think this is a good lead in to strong emergence and strong downward causation which, in one way or another, is necessary for mental causation and free will. The question really is, can the higher physical levels somehow subordinate the local interactions of neurons? And if so, how?
Are you sure you don't mix-up my argument with those of someone else?
I did conflate your argument with Q_Goest, my apologies. Didn't I explicitly said the same things? Again, my analogy says nothing about whether consciousness and free will are or are not determinist. That just shows that none are at the root of the problem while interpreting Libet's finding, because one can explicitly construct the same kind of result while evacuating both free will and determinism.
Yes, and I agree with you-- Libet's finding really doesn't say much about free will at all, it says something about how we come under the conscious impression of having free will. That might be something quite a bit different from free will, just as the conscious impression of getting burned by a stove is quite a bit different from the process of burning. I should not have taken issue with your comments, I think we are largely in agreement.
What's is important is that from these mathematical definitions we can infer whether this or that properties lead to predictions. If an aspect of the model cannot lead to prediction, then you have the mathematical guarantee that this properties is not important to care about. If it allows some prediction, then you can check reality to decide which kind of model can or cannot describe reality: with or without the property?
Yes, I agree, the purpose of the mathematics is to empower the predictions, not to identify the actual process. In fact, I would say the express purpose of a mathematical model is to replace the actual process with something that fits inside our heads. For some reason, this replacement often gets misconstrued as a complete description, missing the point that the whole purpose was not to provide a complete description.
From the mathematical definition of randomness, an informed guess is that either randomness isn't at the root of free will, or free will can account for nothing. From the mathematical definition of computability, you can infer that either free will is determinist or it allows hypercomputingNo, this is the point, no mathematical definition can tell you something about free will other than whether or not the mathematical definition is a useful replacement for free will. It certainly can't tell you if free will is determinist, unless one adopts the weak meaning that anything that is usefully replaced by a determinist model is what we mean by "deterministic" when applied to a real thing.
So if one find evidence for hypercomputing that'd be evidence against determinism. Notice hypercomputing doesn't mean unpredictability. It means extraordinary abilities. See Penrose for one who defends this line of though, and especially defends that mathematicians have superpowers. An interesting tack, but all too easy to say, "according to the mathematician." An artist might say that artists have superpowers. My point here is only that there is no need to find evidence against determinism, the responsibility lies squarely on those who claim that determinism has something to do with free will, either for or against, to demonstrate that property.
I understand what you're getting at, but chaotic systems are clearly defined as deterministic in the literature as I've quoted above.But you see the error there right away, the word "defined" is inconsistent with the word "system." We don't define systems, we notice them. What we define are mathematical models of systems, but a model is never a system. If the literature is being lazy on this point, then it is really missing something important, perhaps along the lines of what apeiron is saying it is missing.
Yes, they are mathematically deterministic.No, systems are not mathematically deterministic, because systems are not mathematics.
Are they physically deterministic?That's the issue.
When looking at the 'weather' or any other fluid system for that matter, we use statistical mechanics to define the fluid's momentum, density, internal energy, etc... at any point and at any time, and to the degree those values are accurate, the model will make accurate predictions. The fact that a fluid's momentum is made up of an aggregate of molecules and those molecules are being lumped together means that we can never be perfectly accurate. But does that really matter?That's indeed the question. Or the follow-on question, does it matter to whom, and in what way? I would say it all depends on the goals. I think those who make models sometimes seem to forget that they are making models for a reason, they have a goal, and that goal is never to describe completely that which they model, for a complete description is not a model at all, it is only the system itself.
So are you suggesting that physical determinism isn't possible because we can't know the micro states, or are you suggesting that there might be some kind strong emergence and thus a form of downward causation that subordinates local physical laws? Or are you suggesting such systems aren't deterministic for some other reason?I'm suggesting that determinism is itself a construct, a mathematical idea, not necessarily applicable to real systems except that it makes a useful template to hold up to them-- just as all mathematical models of reality are useful templates. That's easy to state, but the issue in regard to free will is that we don't yet know what elements of free will we are even trying to model, so we cannot say whether or not determinism is a useful template to hold up to free will. We already have examples, in weather and in quantum mechanics, where determinism is not always a useful template, though it does have some applicability and some tendency to break down.
Pythagorean
Mar8-11, 11:04 PM
Q_Goest,
"Not quantum" doesn't mean classical. Nonlinear dynamics and complex systems are modern physics; in my undergrad curriculum they are taught in the two-semester modern physics course, after quantum and relativity.
They do make use of classical physics (moreso than QM does, for instance) but they are not constrained by classical physics, especially because they allow for dissipative (and stochastic) processes.
Dissipiative processes in thermodynamics are irreversible. Moving through a conservative force, like gravity, your can completely recover your ground... in the real world we have friction: a dissipative process from which heat and entropy flow.
This all becomes very important in turbulence models, where heat dissipation and entropy are rampant among correlated deterministic behavior (and change the deterministic behavior that is chaotic, so it's hard to predict how small, random changes from heat dissipation can manifest large consequences)
On stochastic non-holonomic systems
N. K. Moshchuk and I. N. Sinitsyn
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics
Volume 54, Issue 2, 1990, Pages 174-182
CUMULANTS OF STOCHASTIC RESPONSE FOR A CLASS OF
SPECIAL NONHOLONOMIC SYSTEMS
Shang Mei and Zhang Yi
Chinese Physics
Vol 10 No 1, January 2001
nismaratwork
Mar8-11, 11:05 PM
Q_Goest,
"Not quantum" doesn't mean classical. Nonlinear dynamics and complex systems are modern physics; in my undergrad curriculum they are taught in the two-semester modern physics course, after quantum and relativity.
They do make use of classical physics (moreso than QM does, for instance) but they are not constrained by classical physics, especially because they allow for dissipative (and stochastic) processes.
Dissipiative processes in thermodynamics are irreversible (that is one of the physical meanings of non-holonomic). Moving through a conservative force, like gravity, your can completely recover your ground... except for in the real world we have friction: a dissipative process.
This all becomes very important in turbulence models, where heat dissipation and entropy are rampant among correlated deterministic behavior (and change the deterministic behavior that is chaotic, so it's hard to predict how small, random changes from heat dissipation can manifest large consequences)
On stochastic non-holonomic systems
N. K. Moshchuk and I. N. Sinitsyn
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics
Volume 54, Issue 2, 1990, Pages 174-182
CUMULANTS OF STOCHASTIC RESPONSE FOR A CLASS OF
SPECIAL NONHOLONOMIC SYSTEMS
Shang Mei and Zhang Yi
Chinese Physics
Vol 10 No 1, January 2001
Nonlinar dynamics includes nonlinear optics, right? (just clarifying for me here, not a leading question.)
My point about nonlinear dynamics in general is that it starts with a kind of fiction, which is that the system has "a state." Mathematically, if we have nonlinear dynamics, and start at a state, we have deterministic evolution that obeys sensitivity to initial conditions. However, if we don't actually have a state, but instead a collection of states, involving some uncertainty, then our initial uncertainty grows with time. Mathematically, we would still call that deterministic, because we have a bundle of deterministic trajectories that fan out and cover most or all of the accessible phase space. But physically, if we have an initial uncertainty that grows, we cannot call that deterministic evolution, because we cannot determine the outcome. Hence, if we cannot assert that the reality begins in "a state", we cannot say that its future is determined either. Rather, we see determinism for what it is-- a gray scale of varying degree of predictability, not an absolute state of how things evolve.
The Catch-22 of chaotic systems is we cannot demonstrate that the system does begin in a state other than a state of uncertainty, nothing else is actually demonstrable. It is purely a kind of misplaced faith in a mathematical model that tells us a macroscopic system actually has a state. Even quantum mechanically, a macro system is treated as a mixed state, which is of course not distinguishable from an uncertain state (and here I do not refer to the Heisenberg uncertainty of pure states, but the garden variety uncertainty of mixed states).
I’m not familiar with “holonomic” so I did a search:
It sounds like Pattee wants simply wants these macromolecules and genetics to have a stronger causal role in evolution but I'm not sure exactly what he's getting at. Perhaps you could start a new thread regarding Pattee and his contributions to philosophy and science.
Given that Pattee is an excellent cite for the systems view, this is certainly the right place to mention him :rolleyes:.
What he is talking about here is the symbol grounding issue - how non-holonomic constraints can actually arise in the natural world. Genetic information has to make itself separate from what it controls to be able to stand as a level of top-down control.
Sure, Baranger's paper is pretty basic, but it clearly makes the point that chaotic systems are deterministic given precise initial conditions, which is relevant to the OP.
That was hardly the thrust of the paper. And the more correct statement is that chaotic systems (such as the weather) can be modelled using the mathematical tools of deterministic chaos. This is different from the claim that the weather, or any other system is deterministically chaotic in the ontic sense.
So sure, the models behave a certain way - unfold mechanistically from their initial conditions. And it certainly resembles the observables of real world systems like the weather. But we also know that the models depend on unrealistic assumptions (such as a real world ability to measure initial conditions with complete accuracy).
From a philosophical view, you just can't jump from "looks like" to "is". Especially when you know there are ways that "it isn't".
I think it’s important also to separate out chaotic systems that are classical (and separable) in a functional sense, such as Benard cells, from systems that are functionally dependant on quantum scale interactions. Our present day paradigm for neuron interactions is that they are dependent on quantum scale interactions, so it seems to me one needs to address the issue of how one is to model these “non-holomonic” properties (classical or quantum mechanical influences) and whether or not such a separation should make any difference.
Pardon me? Did you just suggest that a QM basis to neural function was mainstream?
This is a good example of what confuses me about everything you say about this "systems approach". Are you suggesting these "top-down constraints" are somehow influencing and subordinating local causation? That is, are you suggesting that causes found on the local level (such as individual neuron interactions) are somehow being influenced by the top down constraints such that the neurons are influenced not only by local interactions, but also by some kind of overall, global configuration?
What I've said is that global constraints act top-down to restrict local degrees of freedom. So that in a strong sense does create what is there are the local scale. Of course the logic is interactive. It is a systems approach. So the now focused degrees of freedom that remain must in turn construct the global scale (that is making them).
This is how brains work. A neuron has many degrees of freedom. A particular neuron (in a baby's brain, or other unconstrained state) will fire to just about anything. But when a global state of attention prevails, the firing of that neuron becomes highly constrained. It becomes vigorous only in response to much more specific inputs. This is a very basic fact of electrophysiology studies.
So it is not just a theory, it is an observed fact. And yes, this is not the way machines work in general.
After rereading his paper, I’d say that he does in fact try to separate mental states (phenomenal states) from the underlying physical states as you say, but that mental states are epiphenomenal isn’t an unusual position for computationalists. Frank Jackson for example (Epiphenomenal Qualia) is a much cited paper that contends exactly that. So I’d say Farkus is in line with many philosophers on this account. He's suggesting mental states ARE physical states, and it is the mental properties that are "causally irrelevant" and an epiphenomenon (using his words) which I’d say is not unusual in the philosophical community.
I'm not holding up the Farkus paper as a shining example of the systems view. As I made plain, it was just what I happened to be reading that day and my remark was here is another reinventing the wheel.
But I think you are also reading your own beliefs into the words here.
Not that there aren’t logical problems with that approach. He states for example:
That says to me, he accepts that neurons only interact locally with others but we can also examine interactions at higher levels, those that are defined by large groups of neurons.
I don't see the issue. This is the standard view of hierarchy theory. Except you introduced the word only here to suggest Farkus meant that there are not also the local~global interactions that make the brain a system.
There are some areas in his paper I’m not too sure about. Take for example:
If he’s suggesting that this “higher level” is not determined by the interactions of the lower level (their interactions) in a deterministic way based only on the local interactions of neurons, then that sounds like strong downward causation which is clearly false. Certainly, there are people who would contend that something like that would be required for “free will” or any theory of mental causation. But I’m not sure that’s really what he wants.
What he says is that you have two things going on. The higher level has a long-run memory which causes what we might call its persistent state. Then it is also responding to the input coming from below, so its state is also "caused" by that.
If you dig out Stephen Grossberg's neural net papers, or Friston's more recent Bayseian brain papers, you will get a much more elegant view. Yet one with the same essential logic.
In another questionable section he states:
In the part emphasized, I’d say he’s trying to suggest that a person is somehow “immediately” and “simultaneously” affected by a “global state” on entering this classroom which I picture as being a zone of influence of some sort per Farkus. Were the same person to enter the same room and was blind and deaf, would these same “global states” immediately and simultaneously also affect that person? Sounds like Farkus wants his readers to believe that also, but that sounds too much like magic to me.
Surely he is just using an analogy and not suggesting that psi is involved :rofl:. Why would his explicit claim that a person "senses" the atmosphere be read instead as a claim that a person who could not sense (being blind and deaf) would still sense?
All he is saying is that there is an ambient emotional state in the classroom - a generally shared state averaged across a connected set of people. Any newcomer then will respond to this globally constraining atmosphere.
I think this is a good lead in to strong emergence and strong downward causation which, in one way or another, is necessary for mental causation and free will. The question really is, can the higher physical levels somehow subordinate the local interactions of neurons? And if so, how?
Excellent. But there are so many thousands of papers on the neuroscience of top-down attentional effects on neural receptive fields that it is hard to know where to start.
Here is a pop account with some useful illustrations.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090325132326.htm
Here is a rather general review.
http://pbs.jhu.edu/bin/q/f/Yantis-CDPS-2008.pdf
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 02:25 AM
Nonlinar dynamics includes nonlinear optics, right? (just clarifying for me here, not a leading question.)
It appears so. I'm not sure, though, if it's always dynamical just because it's nonlinear optics, but there are plenty of dynamical examples of nonlinear optics' what I've seen are "simple" systems, not "complex" systems. But the Kerr effect (part of the origin of nonlinear dynamics) certainly appears like a nonlinear dynamical event to my mind.
As for complexity, we can model a complex network of "cells" (functional partitions in a material) as a system responding to the injected energy (the electromagnetic source) and talk about how the information propagates through the system and that's a complex dynamical system.
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 02:30 AM
My point about nonlinear dynamics in general is that it starts with a kind of fiction, which is that the system has "a state." Mathematically, if we have nonlinear dynamics, and start at a state, we have deterministic evolution that obeys sensitivity to initial conditions. However, if we don't actually have a state, but instead a collection of states, involving some uncertainty, then our initial uncertainty grows with time. Mathematically, we would still call that deterministic, because we have a bundle of deterministic trajectories that fan out and cover most or all of the accessible phase space. But physically, if we have an initial uncertainty that grows, we cannot call that deterministic evolution, because we cannot determine the outcome. Hence, if we cannot assert that the reality begins in "a state", we cannot say that its future is determined either. Rather, we see determinism for what it is-- a gray scale of varying degree of predictability, not an absolute state of how things evolve.
The Catch-22 of chaotic systems is we cannot demonstrate that the system does begin in a state other than a state of uncertainty, nothing else is actually demonstrable. It is purely a kind of misplaced faith in a mathematical model that tells us a macroscopic system actually has a state. Even quantum mechanically, a macro system is treated as a mixed state, which is of course not distinguishable from an uncertain state (and here I do not refer to the Heisenberg uncertainty of pure states, but the garden variety uncertainty of mixed states).
Well, sure, don't confuse the model with reality; that's always a good thing to remember.
nismaratwork
Mar9-11, 08:59 AM
It appears so. I'm not sure, though, if it's always dynamical just because it's nonlinear optics, but there are plenty of dynamical examples of nonlinear optics' what I've seen are "simple" systems, not "complex" systems. But the Kerr effect (part of the origin of nonlinear dynamics) certainly appears like a nonlinear dynamical event to my mind.
As for complexity, we can model a complex network of "cells" (functional partitions in a material) as a system responding to the injected energy (the electromagnetic source) and talk about how the information propagates through the system and that's a complex dynamical system.
Hmmmm... I like it... any good reading you could recommend?
I think we are largely in agreement.
I think so, but for one subtil choice of wording and that's maybe not so trivial.
no mathematical definition can tell you something about free will other than whether or not the mathematical definition is a useful replacement for free will (...) unless one adopts the weak meaning that anything that is usefully replaced by a determinist model is what we mean by "deterministic" when applied to a real thing.
This is well said and I largely agree, but for one word: to we what you call weak meaning is what I'd call physical or scientific meaning, and all other kind of meaning I'd call it either metaphysical, weak, or boring -depends on the mood ;-)
all too easy to say, "according to the mathematician."
What is easy is not necessarly wrong :biggrin:
The Catch-22 of chaotic systems is we cannot demonstrate that the system does begin in a state other than a state of uncertainty
Do you see of deep difference with non chaotic systems?
This is well said and I largely agree, but for one word: to we what you call weak meaning is what I'd call physical or scientific meaning, and all other kind of meaning I'd call it either metaphysical, weak, or boring -depends on the mood ;-)
I can accept that, it's just that in my experience, that scientific meaning often leaks over into a kind of metaphysical meaning without even realizing it. It's like the way many people claim to take a "shut up and calculate" approach to physics-- until they don't.
Do you see of deep difference with non chaotic systems?The difference is in how much it matters. For convergent trajectories, whether in reality there exists an exact initial state, or just a reasonably precise one, makes little difference when held to the lens of determinism. In chaotic systems, there's a huge difference in the practice of prediction, which is the operational meaning of determinism. So chaotic systems teach us, not that determinism leads to the butterfly effect, but that the butterfly effect challenges the very meaning of determinism.
octelcogopod
Mar9-11, 12:33 PM
My point about nonlinear dynamics in general is that it starts with a kind of fiction, which is that the system has "a state." Mathematically, if we have nonlinear dynamics, and start at a state, we have deterministic evolution that obeys sensitivity to initial conditions. However, if we don't actually have a state, but instead a collection of states, involving some uncertainty, then our initial uncertainty grows with time. Mathematically, we would still call that deterministic, because we have a bundle of deterministic trajectories that fan out and cover most or all of the accessible phase space. But physically, if we have an initial uncertainty that grows, we cannot call that deterministic evolution, because we cannot determine the outcome. Hence, if we cannot assert that the reality begins in "a state", we cannot say that its future is determined either. Rather, we see determinism for what it is-- a gray scale of varying degree of predictability, not an absolute state of how things evolve.
The Catch-22 of chaotic systems is we cannot demonstrate that the system does begin in a state other than a state of uncertainty, nothing else is actually demonstrable. It is purely a kind of misplaced faith in a mathematical model that tells us a macroscopic system actually has a state. Even quantum mechanically, a macro system is treated as a mixed state, which is of course not distinguishable from an uncertain state (and here I do not refer to the Heisenberg uncertainty of pure states, but the garden variety uncertainty of mixed states).
But isn't the collective whole of all the macroscopic systems actually one big deterministic one at the lowest level? Seems to me it becomes a matter of scope and not an inherent non determinism in the system as a whole. Also just for hypothesizing; wouldn't the universe during the big bang start out with almost no separated states and then evolve into many different states and thus create increased separation of systems, but ultimately be one big system?
nismaratwork
Mar9-11, 12:41 PM
But isn't the collective whole of all the macroscopic systems actually one big deterministic one at the lowest level? Seems to me it becomes a matter of scope and not an inherent non determinism in the system as a whole. Also just for hypothesizing; wouldn't the universe during the big bang start out with almost no separated states and then evolve into many different states and thus create increased separation of systems, but ultimately be one big system?
That would seem to depend on which Interpretation of QM one ascribes to.
scientific meaning often leaks over into a kind of metaphysical meaning without even realizing it
I couldn't agree more. I'm not sure it really makes a difference for physicists, but in "softer" sciences this has an impact. One example is uncautious naming. ABO gene is of course the gene for ABO phenotype, right? But once we name it this way, it's even becoming hard to remember that it may or may not be implicated in functions that has nothing to do with ABO phenotype. Not to speak that I've just mentioned "gene" as if this was something tangible rather than something we define after we find it's associated with some function.
In chaotic systems, there's a huge difference in the practice of prediction, which is the operational meaning of determinism. So chaotic systems teach us, not that determinism leads to the butterfly effect, but that the butterfly effect challenges the very meaning of determinism.
I understand your point, but you're going to far by thinking butterfly effect really introduce something new. As you know butterfly effect means that small perturbations can quickly becomes large perturbation. But this is an experimental prediction in itself, and in itself it is testable!
Of course what you actually underline is that there exists "bad questions" that can't be answered such as what will be the future state of a chaotic system given a known present state?. Theory says this is a bad question and all you can do is to assign probabilites to different possible outcomes. Maybe you can interpret that as a challenge to determinism, but the fact is that the existence of "bad questions" is not new. For example if you want to know both position and speed of a particule with a better precision than what Heisenberg allows, this is easy to ask and impossible to answer. The theory says you can't know that, and this interdiction is an experimental prediction in itself.
So, sometime the prediction is that the prediction you want is not something reality allows you to know. Is it a challenge to determinism? Maybe, but certainly that's not specific to chaos. To me this just shows that language allows us to ask a larger set of questions than the set of all meaningfull questions.
The claim that there might be some kind of randomness to nature, at any level, doesn't provide for free will. There has to be some form of strong downward causation which first requires the system to be nonseparable, and then it requires the whole of the system to intervene or subordinate the physical state of some part of that system. That might describe molecular systems but it doesn't describe the conventional view of neuron interactions.
There has to be some form of strong downward causation which first requires the system to be nonseparable, and then it requires the whole of the system to intervene or subordinate the physical state of some part of that system.
What is the evidences for thinking that this is a conventional view?
I can accept that, it's just that in my experience, that scientific meaning often leaks over into a kind of metaphysical meaning without even realizing it. It's like the way many people claim to take a "shut up and calculate" approach to physics-- until they don't.
While thinking at it, there is a very similar question in mathematics (Platonicist vs Formalist interpretation). I'd be interested in your position on this.
What is the evidences for thinking that this is a conventional view?
Good question. The computationalist crowd including Chalmers, Christly, Copeland, Endicot, many others, and those not in the computationalist crowd such as Maudlin, Bishop, Putnam etc... all argue over the issue of separability as discussed to some degree in my other thread regarding Zuboff's paper. If a system is separable, it's not holistic in any sense that allows for the emergence of a phenomenon like consciousness.
But a nonseparable system isn't enough to allow for that system to have a "choice" in the sense that the strongly emergent phenomena can have control over the constituents in any meaningful way. There's a lot of discussion in the past decade or two about emergence and how it applies to mental causation. If there is only local causation, then even if you have some kind of holistic, emergent phenomenon, it can have no influence over the constituent parts.
all argue over the issue of separability as discussed to some degree in my other thread regarding Zuboff's paper.
This may be evidence that the question was considered important, but of course this is not an evidence that the tentative solution you pointed is conventionnal view :wink:
If there is only local causation, then even if you have some kind of holistic, emergent phenomenon, it can have no influence over the constituent parts.
Don't you think these guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_(cellular_automaton)) challenge this view?
While tinking at it, there is a very similar question in mathematics (Platonicist vs Formalist interpretation). I'd be interested in your position on this.
Yes, this would seem to be the key issue indeed. Personally, I am heavily swayed by the formalist approach. I feel that there is an important difference between logical truth, which is rigorous and syntactic, and semantic meaning, which is experiential and nonrigorous. Mathematics is primarily about the former, because of its reliance on proof, and physics is primarily about the latter, because of its reliance on experiment. Why the two find so much common ground must be viewed as the deepest mystery in the philosophy of either, and I have no answer for it either, other than it seems there is some rule that says what happens will be accessible to analysis, but the analysis will not be what happens.
What's more, I think that Godel's proof drove a permanent wedge between certainty and meaning, such that the two must forever be regarded as something different.
In the issue of free will, one must then ask if free will is housed primarily in the abstract realm of syntactic relationships, where lives concepts like determinism, or primarily in the experiential realm of what it feels like to be conscious, where lives human perception and experience. To me, it must be placed in the latter arena, which is why I think the whole issue of determinism vs. free will is a category error.
If there is only local causation, then even if you have some kind of holistic, emergent phenomenon, it can have no influence over the constituent parts.But again one must ask, what is it that has only local causation, the brain, or the model of the brain that you are using for some specific purpose? It is important not to confuse the two, or you run into that Catch-22: you can never argue that the brain does not give rise to holistic emergent phenomena on the basis that you can successfully model the brain using local causation, because if local causation cannot lead to holistic emergent phenomena that influence the parts, then you may simply be building a model that cannot do what you are then using the model to try and argue the brain cannot do. In other words, you are telling us about the capabilities of models, not the capabilities of brains.
Don't you think these guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_(cellular_automaton)) challenge this view?
Cellular automata were given as a prime example of "weak emergence" by Bedau (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=bedau+weak+emergence&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&safe=active). His paper is fairly popular, being cited over 200 times. Bottom line, cellular automata are weakly emergent. They are separable and have no "downward" causal affects on local elements.
That might describe molecular systems but it doesn't describe the conventional view of neuron interactions.
But I just gave you references that show it IS the conventional view of neuron interactions.
The brain operates as an anticipatory machine. It predicts its next state globally and then reacts to the localised exceptions that turn up. Like Farkus's analogy of a classroom with an atmosphere, there is a running state that is the active context for what happens next.
This is completely explicit in neural network models such as Grossberg and Friston's.
So you are just wrong about the conventional view in neuroscience.
New Scientist did a good piece on Friston...
http://reverendbayes.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/bayesian-theory-in-new-scientist/
But again one must ask, what is it that has only local causation, the brain, or the model of the brain that you are using for some specific purpose? It is important not to confuse the two, or you run into that Catch-22: you can never argue that the brain does not give rise to holistic emergent phenomena on the basis that you can successfully model the brain using local causation, because if local causation cannot lead to holistic emergent phenomena that influence the parts, then you may simply be building a model that cannot do what you are then using the model to try and argue the brain cannot do. In other words, you are telling us about the capabilities of models, not the capabilities of brains.
But the brain IS modeled using typical FEA type computational programs. They can use the Hodgkin Huxley model or any other compartment method, of which there are a handful. FEA is an example of the philosophy of separable systems reduced to finite (linear) elements. Nevertheless, as I'd mentioned to aperion, FEA is just a simplificaiton of a full differential formulation as I've described in the library here (http://www.physicsforums.com/library.php?do=view_item&itemid=365). FEA and multiphysics software is a widespread example of the use of computations that functionally duplicate (classical) physical systems. Even highly dynamic ones such as Benard cells, wing flutter, aircraft crashing into buildings and even the brain are all modeled successfully using this approach. That isn't to say that FEA is a perfect duplication for a full differential formulation of every point in space. It's obviously not. However, the basic philosophical concept that leads us to FEA (ie: that all elements are in dynamic equilibrium at their boundaries) is the same basic philosophy that science and engineering use for brains and other classical physical systems.
Cellular automata were given as a prime example of "weak emergence" by Bedau (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=bedau+weak+emergence&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&safe=active). His paper is fairly popular, being cited over 200 times. Bottom line, cellular automata are weakly emergent. They are separable and have no "downward" causal affects on local elements.
Agreed, the very definition of Turing Computation is that there is no top-down causation involved, only local or efficient cause.
The programmable computer is the perfect "machine". Its operations are designed to be deterministic.
And there are now so many computers and computer scientists in society that people are coming to believe reality is also "computational". They can no longer imagine other forms of more complex causality it seems.
Hi aperion,
But I just gave you references that show it IS the conventional view of neuron interactions.
Hopefully my last post addresses this. Neuron interactions are philosophically treated using compartmental methods as described in my last post. If that's not what you feel is pertinant to the issue of separability, please point out specifically what you wish to address.
And there are now so many computers and computer scientists in society that people are coming to believe reality is also "computational". They can no longer imagine other forms of more complex causality it seems.
But it's not just "computer scientists". People are using that basic philosophy (computational/FEA) for everything now (at a classical scale). We can't live without it because it's so powerfully predictive.
Pardon me? Did you just suggest that a QM basis to neural function was mainstream?
Sorry! Thanks for pointing that out. I fixed it (edited it). Of course, QM is NOT the basis for neural function is what I meant.
But the brain IS modeled using typical FEA type computational programs.And that is my point. You are saying "the brain is modeled X". Then you say "X cannot do Y." Then you say "thus Y cannot be important in understanding the brain." That is the Catch-22, if you build a model that cannot do something, you can't then blame the brain on this inability. The model may do many things the brain does, so may be a good model of a brain, but one cannot reason from the model to the thing, that's essentially the fallacy of reasoning by analogy.
FEA and multiphysics software is a widespread example of the use of computations that functionally duplicate (classical) physical systems.Ah, now there's an interesting turn of phrase, "functionally duplicate." What does that mean? It sounds like it should mean "acts in the same way that I intended the model to succeed at acting", but you sound like you are using it to mean "does everything the system does." That is what you cannot show, you cannot make a model for a specific purpose, demonstrate the model succeeds at your purpose, and use that success to rule out every other purpose a different model might be intended to address-- which is pretty much just what you seem to be trying to do, if I understand you correctly.
Even highly dynamic ones such as Benard cells, wing flutter, aircraft crashing into buildings and even the brain are all modeled successfully using this approach. Certainly, "modeled successfully." Now what does that mean? It means you accomplished your goals by the model, which is all very good, but it does not mean you can then turn around and use the model to obtain orthogonal information about what you are modeling. Just what constitutes "orthogonal information" is a very difficult issue, and I don't even know of a formal means to analyze how we could tell that, other than trial and error.
However, the basic philosophical concept that leads us to FEA (ie: that all elements are in dynamic equilibrium at their boundaries) is the same basic philosophy that science and engineering use for brains and other classical physical systems.But so what?
The programmable computer is the perfect "machine". Its operations are designed to be deterministic.
And there are now so many computers and computer scientists in society that people are coming to believe reality is also "computational".This is the perspective I am also in agreement with. We are seeing a failure to distinguish the goals of a model from the thing that is being modeled. I see this error in lots of places, it was made many times in the history of science. When Newton came up with a sensational model of motion, very unified and highly predictive, people said "so that's how reality works." They then reached all kinds of conclusions about what reality could and could not do, none of which were worth the paper they were written on when other models deposed Newton's. The point is, that is just reversed logic-- we don't use models to tell us what systems can do, we use systems to tell us what we are trying to get models to do, and we choose the latter. The choice of what we want to answer determines the model, the models shouldn't tell us what we should want to answer.
But it's not just "computer scientists". People are using that basic philosophy (computational/FEA) for everything now (at a classical scale). We can't live without it because it's so powerfully predictive.
Or powerfully seductive :rolleyes:.
I am not denying that the computational view is powerful. It is great for technology - for achieving control over the world. But it makes a myopic basis for philosophy as it leaves out the other sources of causality. And you won't find many biologists or neurologists who believe that it is the truth of their systems.
In your sphere of work, FEA is a completely adequate intellectual tool you say. But you are just wrong when you say it is the way neuroscientists think about brains.
Can't you see how FEA is set up to remove questions of downward constraint from the analysis?
In the real world, systems have pressures and temperatures due to some global history. There is a context that causes the equilibrium results. But then FEA comes into this active situation and throws an infinitely thin 2D measuring surface around a volume. A surface designed not to affect the dynamics in any fashion - any top-down fashion! The surface is designed only to record the local degrees of freedom, not change them. You have even specified that the measurements are classical, because you know there is a quantum limit to how thin and non-interactive, yet still measuring, such a surface can be.
So what you are claiming as an ontological result (reality is computational) is just simply a product of your epistemology (you are measuring only local causes). And the map is not the terrain.
You are claiming that FEA is useful (nay, powerfully predictive) in modelling brains. So can you supply references where neuroscientists have employed FEA to deliver brilliantly insightful results? Where are the papers that now back up your claim?
cellular automata are weakly emergent. They are separable and have no "downward" causal affects on local elements.
Don't you think these guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_(cellular_automaton)) challenge this view?
Personally, I am heavily swayed by the formalist approach. I feel that there is an important difference between logical truth, which is rigorous and syntactic, and semantic meaning, which is experiential and nonrigorous. Mathematics is primarily about the former, because of its reliance on proof, and physics is primarily about the latter, because of its reliance on experiment. Why the two find so much common ground must be viewed as the deepest mystery in the philosophy of either, and I have no answer for it either, other than it seems there is some rule that says what happens will be accessible to analysis, but the analysis will not be what happens.
Don't you think this a deep mystery only if one takes the formalist approach?
Don't you think this a deep mystery only if one takes the formalist approach?Ah, interesting question. No doubt this is indeed the central basis of the Platonist idea that mathematical truths lie at the heart of reality, such that when we discover those truths, we are discovering reality. That was an easy stance to take in ancient times, but I would say that many of the discoveries of physics and math since then are leading us to see that stance as fundamentally naive. In physics, we had things like the discovery of general relativity, which calls into question just how "obvious" it is that the inertial path is a straight line in spacetime. Granted, that earlier view is replaced by an equally mathematical aesthetic, albeit a more abstract one, so one might say "see, it's still fundamentally mathematical, it's just different mathematics." To which I would respond, how many times are we allowed to say "OK, we were wrong before, but this time we have it right."
I would say that if we get a mathematical model, interpret it as the truth of the reality, and find time and again that it isn't, at some point we should just stop interpreting it as the truth of the reality. At which point, we begin to become amazed we did so well in the first place. In other words, I'm not sure which is more surprising, that our models are so accurate, or that a model can be so accurate and still not be true.
Then there's also the Godel proof, which is that in reasonably powerful and consistent mathematical systems, there have to be things that are true that cannot be proven from the finite axioms of that system (which means they cannot be proven at all, since any system for generating consistent axioms is itself a system of proof). This means there always has to be a permanent difference between what is true by meaning and what is provable by axiom. It may be a very esoteric and never-encountered difference, but it has to be there-- and I think that in fact the difference is not esoteric and is encountered constantly, which is why physics keeps changing.
Ah, now there's an interesting turn of phrase, "functionally duplicate." What does that mean? It sounds like it should mean "acts in the same way that I intended the model to succeed at acting", but you sound like you are using it to mean "does everything the system does."
In this regard, those who see deep philosophical truths in deterministic chaos need to remember the "dirty little secret" of truncation error in computational simulations of chaotic trajectories.
The shadowing lemma says the trajectories may stay "sufficiently close" for many practical purposes. So they can be functionally duplicate. But this is not the same as claming an ontological level duplication. The model is never actually replicating the system in the strict sense of philosophical determinism. Indeed, we know that it definitely isn't. Shadowing says only that the probability is high that the simulation will remain the vincinity of what it pretends to duplicate!
Here is an intro text on shadowing.
http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/Chaos_Course/Lesson26/Shadowing.pdf
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 03:58 PM
The truncaton error is not significant. If I run the same deterministic system twice, I wont get different results because of truncation error. The two systems will have exactly the same fate.
Anyway, as Kens been saying. The computer models are tools for analysis, not deep philosophical statements.
Shadowing says only that the probability is high that the simulation will remain the vincinity of what it pretends to duplicate!
Here is an intro text on shadowing.
http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/Chaos_Course/Lesson26/Shadowing.pdfThat is interesting. I interpret that as saying a computed trajectory can be viewed as an approximation of some true trajectory that the deterministic mathematical system does support, so it's not a complete fiction of the computation, but it is not necessarily the trajectory that every real system in the neighborhood would follow-- even if the mathematical model were a true rendition of reality. So this supports your point that we know deterministic models of chaotic systems cannot be the whole truth, even if we are inclined to believe they are close to the truth. The situation is even worse if we are inclined to be skeptical that there is any such thing as a "true trajectory" of a physically real system, let alone that a model can reproduce it consistently for long times.
The truncaton error is not significant. If I run the same deterministic system twice, I wont get different results because of truncation error. The two systems will have exactly the same fate.
That doesn't mean the truncation error is never significant, it means the truncation error is consistent, which is something different-- it might be consistently significant!
Anyway, as Kens been saying. The computer models are tools for analysis, not deep philosophical statements.That is the key issue, yes.
Ah, interesting question. No doubt this is indeed the central basis of the Platonist idea that mathematical truths lie at the heart of reality, such that when we discover those truths, we are discovering reality.
Plato was really more concerned with the form of things than mathematical truth as such. But maths is the science of patterns, so there is a large overlap.
The modern way of viewing this would be that the realm of form (as the counterpart to the realm of substance) is about self-organisation. Or global constraints (yes, sigh). It is about all the self-consistent patterns that can exist. And so it is all about symmetry principles. Changes which are not a change.
Maths looks like reality as maths creates a library of possible pattern descriptions and reality is a self-organising pattern.
Wolfram's cellular automata project was so funny because he took a very simple pattern generator and then just exhaustively generated every possible pattern to see which ones resembled reality.
But in general, this is what maths does. It defines some broad axiomatic truths (it creates some global constraints) and then generates all the possible patterns made possible by those constraints.
The problem then is that the axioms can't be known to be true (even if the consequences that flow from the axioms are deterministic, or at least taken to be proven step by step).
So the forms are real. But the maths is the modelling of forms.
However, maths can also hope to model self-organisation itself. Which is where chaos theory for example comes in as a hugely successful way of modelling "random nature".
Key constraints (on linearity for instance) are relaxed. The system is then allowed to organise its own constraints as part of what it does.
This is why maths can make historical progress. The early work was overloaded with presumed constraints (such as a presumption space was flat, it had just three dimensions, time was a separate clock, etc). Too much was taken as globally axiomatic when it was only specific to a local system.
But maths has just kept relaxing the constraints so as to arrive at the fewest and simplest axioms. And then more recently started to do the other part of the job - invent models of constraint development. Models of global self-organisation.
So first strip the constraints out, then find the way they can build themselves back in. Once maths reaches this level of modelling, it really will be powerfully close to the truth of a self-organising reality.
Don't you think these guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_(cellular_automaton)) challenge this view?
I responded to this one above.
The truncaton error is not significant. If I run the same deterministic system twice, I wont get different results because of truncation error. The two systems will have exactly the same fate.
Well you agree that the map is not the terrain.
Of course the map, the computer simulation MUST keep repeating its truncation errors at each iteration. The computer has been designed to be able to do just this...without error :biggrin:.
But the point is the reality is doing something else. There are no truncation errors in its "computation" of a chaotic trajectory.
The simulation actually starts on a different trajectory with every iteration because a truncation error changes what would have been the exact next state every time. The shadowing lemma just argues this is not a significant problem in the pragmatic sense. However in philosophical arguments demanding absolutes, such as absolute determinism, truncation error is indeed "the dirty secret".
So first strip the constraints out, then find the way they can build themselves back in. Once maths reaches this level of modelling, it really will be powerfully close to the truth of a self-organising reality.I think that approach is probably a description of the next-level of sophistication of models, rather than what makes the models the reality. We must always avoid the mistake of thinking that we are one step away from making our models real! People have pretty much always thought that. But I agree with the sentiment you are expressing that seeking constraints was too brute-force of an approach, and symmetries are in some sense the opposite of constraints-- they are patterns that emerge from necessity moreso than fiat, because all math is a search for order, and the first step for finding order is not the search for how to strong-arm the behavior into what you want, but rather how to recognize all the things you imagined were different but really weren't. That's how you throw out complexity without throwing out the "business end" of what you want to be left with-- and only after you've done that should you start looking for the rules of behavior.
It's an interesting insight that sometimes the rules require re-introducing the complexity that had been removed, like the way symmetry-breaking gives rise to interactions, played out against the backdrop of approximately unbroken symmetries. So I'm sympathetic to your perspective that the next place models need to go is into the realm of self-organization and top-down contextual support for constraints, rather than trying to intuit the bottom-up local constraints that will magically make it all work. But I still think that when you have done that, you will have just another set of models-- useful for doing what you wanted them to do, and important expressly because they represent a new kind of want.
I responded to this one above.
What was your response?
nismaratwork
Mar9-11, 04:56 PM
what was your response?
.
..:
one might say "see, it's still fundamentally mathematical, it's just different mathematics." To which I would respond, how many times are we allowed to say "OK, we were wrong before, but this time we have it right."
Ah I'm surprised you miss here an an important distinction to make between mathematical systems and mathematical models. Newton to relativity is not a switch between systems, it's a switch between models, and different models is not different mathematics, it's different... well models. The formalist-platonic match is about if there exists a single system that is at the root of reality or if systems of axioms are human choice that may have little to do physical reality. Up to now I'm not aware of any scientific theory that is not a model of Peano arithmetics (which is a system), so it's not different mathematics, only different models of the same mathematic.
I think that approach is probably a description of the next-level of sophistication of models, rather than what makes the models the reality. We must always avoid the mistake of thinking that we are one step away from making our models real!
Oh I agree completely. The map will still not be the terrain. But still, I wanted to highlight what real progress would look like.
One of the complaints about modern maths is that it has departed reality modelling and now spends too much time inventing fictional realities. And it is true. A lot of what would be studied and published is just creating an unnecessary clutter of journal papers.
But this masks a general progress in relaxing the constraints. For instance, projects like category theory. And it also masks the new thing of modelling self-organisation.
and symmetries are in some sense the opposite of constraints
I would say that symmetries are what you get having stripped out all constraints. And so symmetries become a fundamental ground on which you can start modelling the self-organising development of constraints.
This is precisely the metaphysics of CS Peirce, what he was talking about with his process of abduction, his machinery of semiosis, his logic of vagueness.
It's an interesting insight that sometimes the rules require re-introducing the complexity that had been removed, like the way symmetry-breaking gives rise to interactions, played out against the backdrop of approximately unbroken symmetries. So I'm sympathetic to your perspective that the next place models need to go is into the realm of self-organization and top-down contextual support for constraints, rather than trying to intuit the bottom-up local constraints that will magically make it all work. But I still think that when you have done that, you will have just another set of models-- useful for doing what you wanted them to do, and important expressly because they represent a new kind of want.
Yes, the map is not the terrain. No argument.
But as you say, the big switch that so many are struggling to take is the shift from the local view to the global one.
People are still trying to bury the global organisation in the local interactions. They still want to do the old-school atomism that worked so well at the birth of modern science - the atomism that scooped up all the low hanging fruit and then pretended the orchard was now bare.
Atomism has become nothing less than a scientific faith, a religion. There is only one answer when it comes to modelling, and all other heretical views must burn at the stake. :tongue2:
That is what makes PF so enjoyable. It is a natural bastion of reductionist fundamentalism. On other academic forums where I am just surrounded by biologists and neuroscientists, the debates are only about hair-splitting differences in shades of opinion. Like should we call this self-organising view of thermodynamics that has emerged, the maximum energy dispersion principle (MEDP) or the maximum entropy production principle (MEPP)?
Ah I'm surprised you miss here an an important distinction to make between mathematical systems and mathematical models. But all I'm saying is that one cannot make the argument that reality is fundamentally mathematical on the basis of the success of current models, without the argument falling under the weight of all the past models that were replaced by current models. One is essentially claiming that there is something special about the present, which seems like an illusory claim.The formalist-platonic match is about if there exists a single system that is at the root of reality or if systems of axioms are human choice that may have little to do physical reality. Up to now I'm not aware of any scientific theory that is not a model of Peano arithmetics (which is a system), so it's not different mathematics, only different models of the same mathematic.It is true that the core system of mathematics, a la Whitehead and Russell or some such thing, has not really changed, but that system by itself (and now if we wish to use the term "system", we will need to distinguish mathematical systems from physical systems) is never used to make the argument that reality is fundamentally mathematical. That mathematical system is based on axioms, and the axioms have never been found to be inconsistent, that is true-- but a system of finite axioms is a far cry from reality. To make contact with reality, the system must be injected into a model that invokes postulates, by which I mean things we have no a priori idea are true or not (whereas axioms must seem true), and that's essentially what physics is. So when someone claims reality is mathematical, it is not because of the success of Peano axioms or some such, it is because of the success of those physical postulates. And those are what keep changing-- the very success the argument is shouldered by keeps letting the argument down.
But isn't the collective whole of all the macroscopic systems actually one big deterministic one at the lowest level? Do you mean is it really deterministic, i.e., determined, or do you mean can we find value in modeling it with deterministic mathematics? The latter is certainly true, but the former claim is the one I am calling into doubt.
Also just for hypothesizing; wouldn't the universe during the big bang start out with almost no separated states and then evolve into many different states and thus create increased separation of systems, but ultimately be one big system?It sounds like you are asking if there is such a thing as "the state of the universe as a whole." I think that's an important question, and people do tend to talk about such a state, but no one has ever demonstrated the concept really makes any sense. For one thing, it leads us to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which to some seems quite absurd.
Hi Lievo,
What was your response?
See post 54, page 4.
Anyway, as Kens been saying. The computer models are tools for analysis, not deep philosophical statements.
But it makes a myopic basis for philosophy as it leaves out the other sources of causality.
This is a good discussion, but I disagree. There IS a deep philosophical reason why FEA is done the way it is. It isn't just so we can model something, and it DOES take into account every known source of causality. Benard cells for example, are highly dynamic, highly nonlinear phenomena (that have been used as a potential example of downward causation) that is easily modeled using FEA (http://wn.com/Rayleigh-B%C3%A9nard) only because it can take into account ALL the causality and ALL the philosophy of why fluids behave as they do. There's no need to suggest some kind of downward causation when local interactions are sufficient to bring about all the phenomena we see in Benard cells.
That same philosophy is used for modeling neurons in the brain, not just because it works, but because the philosophy of why the brain and neurons are doing what they do matches what science believes is actually happening. In short, the basic philosophy FEA analysis adheres to is that of first breaking down a complex structure, and then calculating the conditions on the individual elements such that they are in dynamic equilibrium both with the overall boundary conditions acting on the system and also with each other.
Now I’m not a neuroscience expert by any stretch. But it’s clear that neuroscience is also dedicated to using the same computational approach engineers use. They use compartment models just as FEA uses elements. Here's a picture of what you might see on the computer screen when you create these models:
http://www-users.mat.umk.pl/~susur/1b.jpg
Again, this isn’t done simply because they want to model something. It’s done because that’s how they believe the brain works. These models include all the causality and all the philosophy of what’s going on and their models are approaching the point where they are matching experiment. Two common software programs I’ve heard of are “NEURON (http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/)” and “GENESIS (http://www.genesis-sim.org/)” not to mention the “Blue Brain Project (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/)” which is yet another compartmental model (http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/markham.pdf) (FEA) on a grand scale.
Here’s a few examples:
Herz, “Modeling Single-Neuron Dynamics and Computations: A Balance of Detail and Abstraction” (Science 314, 80 (2006))
Herz discusses 5 different “compartment models” and how and why one might use one compared to another. Detailed compartment models are listed in Roman numerals I to V. Model III is the common Hodgkin-Huxley model. Herz concludes with:
These developments show that the divide between experiment and theory is disappearing. There is also a change in attitude reflected by various international initiatives: More and more experimentalists are willing to share their raw data with modelers. Many modelers, in turn, make their computer codes available. Both movements will play a key role in solving the many open questions of neural dynamics and information processing – from single cells to the entire brain.
Another typical paper by Destexhe, “Dentritic Low-Threshold Calcium Currents in Thalamic Relay Cells” J. of Neuroscience, May 15, ’98, describes work being done to compare dissociated neurons (in petri dishes) to neurons in vivo. I thought this one was interesting because it is explicitly stated the presumption that neurons can be made to function in the petri dish exactly as they do in vivo. He also uses the computer code NEURON as mentioned above.
There’s literally tons of papers out there that show how neurons are made to act exactly as local causal physics would have them (ie: weak emergence). Yes, neurons are highly nonlinear and yes to some degree they exhibit stoichastic behavior - to the experimentalist; which begs the question of whether or not they truly are probabalistic or are there ‘hidden variables’ so to speak, that we simply haven’t nailed down? Even if we find that neurons exhibit truly probabalistic behaviors such as for example, radioactive decay exhibits, is that single feature of a neuron truly going to lead us to finding “free will”?
There IS a deep philosophical reason why FEA is done the way it is. It isn't just so we can model something, and it DOES take into account every known source of causality.I agree this is a good discussion, and I would say that what your posts are primarily doing is making very explicit the good things that FEA models do. There is no dispute these models are powerful for what they are powerful at, the overarching question is, can they be used to model free will, or are they in some sense leaving that behind and then reaching conclusions about what it isn't. That same philosophy is used for modeling neurons in the brain, not just because it works, but because the philosophy of why the brain and neurons are doing what they do matches what science believes is actually happening.This is the place where I would say your argument keeps hitting a wall. Science has no business believing anything about what is actually happening, that is an error in doing science that has bit us over and over. It's simply not science's job to create a belief system, it's science's job to create models that reach certain goals. So science starts by identifying its goals, and then seeking to achieve them. There's simply no step in the process that says "believe my model is the reality." The whole purpose of a model is to replace reality with something that fits in our head, and makes useful predictions. But if the nature of what the model is trying to treat changes, if the questions we are trying to address change, then we don't take a model that is built to do something different and reach conclusions in the new regime, any more than we try to drive our car into the pond and use it like a submarine. It just wasn't built to do that, so we need to see evidence that FEA methods treat free will, not that they are successful at other things so must "have it right". We don't take our models and tell reality how to act, we take how reality acts and see if we can model it. How does one model free will, and where is the evidence that an FEA approach is the way to do it?
In short, the basic philosophy FEA analysis adheres to is that of first breaking down a complex structure, and then calculating the conditions on the individual elements such that they are in dynamic equilibrium both with the overall boundary conditions acting on the system and also with each other. The whole is the sum of its parts. Yes, that does seem to be the FEA approach-- so what we get from it is, whatever one gets from that approach, and what we don't get is whatever one doesn't get from that approach. We cannot use validity in some areas as evidence of uniform validity. It's not that FEA is doing something demonstrably wrong, it is that it might just not be doing something at all.
Even if we find that neurons exhibit truly probabalistic behaviors such as for example, radioactive decay exhibits, is that single feature of a neuron truly going to lead us to finding “free will”?I agree that random behavior is no better than deterministic behavior in getting free will, we are saying we don't think that either mode of operation is going to get to the heart of it. It's just something different from either deterministic or random behavior of components, it's something where the whole cannot be expected to emerge from algorithmic behavior of individual parts. The algorithms of a successful model will need to be more holistic-- if the entire issue is algorithmic in the first place (which I find far from obvious, given the problems with using our brains to try and understand our brains).
nismaratwork
Mar9-11, 07:18 PM
Ken G, Apeiron, Q_Goest, Lievo:... I'm out of my depth philosophically, but I just want to say that it's a real pleasure reading this interchange.
@Q_Goest: That's a very useful model... how did you get into this without a primary interest in neuroscience?
This is all more (pleasantly) than I expected from Philosophy... even here.
There’s literally tons of papers out there that show how neurons are made to act exactly as local causal physics would have them (ie: weak emergence). Yes, neurons are highly nonlinear and yes to some degree they exhibit stoichastic behavior - to the experimentalist; which begs the question of whether or not they truly are probabalistic or are there ‘hidden variables’ so to speak, that we simply haven’t nailed down? Even if we find that neurons exhibit truly probabalistic behaviors such as for example, radioactive decay exhibits, is that single feature of a neuron truly going to lead us to finding “free will”?
I ask about brains and you talk about neurons! So the scale factor is off by about 11 orders of magnitude. :rolleyes:
But anyway, your presumption here is that neurons make brains, whereas I am arguing that brains also make neurons. The system shapes the identity of its components.
One view says causality is solely bottom-up - constructed from atoms. The other says two kinds of causality act synergistically. There is also the top-down constraints that shapes the atoms. So now both the atoms and the global scale emerge jointly in a process of differentiaton~integration.
Absolutely everything is "just emergent".
The FEA approach you describe only works because the global constraints are taken as already in existence and so axiomatic. What does not change does not need to be mentioned when modelling.
So take a benard cell. An entropic gradient is presumed. The source and the sink are just there. The model does not seek to explain how this state of affairs developed, just what then happens as a consequence.
Order then arises at a critical temperature - the famous hexagonal cells. Local thermal jostlings magically become entrained in a global scale coherent motion.
Now these global scale cells do in fact exert a downward causal effect. As just said, they entrain the destinies of individual molecules of oil. This is what a dissipative structure is all about. Global constraints (the order of the flow) acting to reduce the local degrees of freedom (the random thermal jostle of the molecules become suddenly far less random, far more determined).
So benard cells are frequently cited as an example of self-organisation due to the "mysterious" development of global order.
There are other features we could remark on, like the fact that the whorls are hexagonal (roughly) rather than circular. The fact that the activity is confined (globally constrained) reduces even the "local degrees of freedom" of these benard cells. Circular vortexes are the unconstrained variety. Hexagonal ones are ones with extra global constraints enforced by a packing density.
Note too that the macro-order that the benard cell is so often used to illustrate is a highly delicate state. Turn the heat up a little and you have soon the usual transition to chaos proper - whorls of turbulence over all scales, and no more pretty hexagonal cells.
In a natural state, a dissipative structure would arrange itself to maximise entropy through-put. The benard cell is a system that some experimenter with a finger on the bunsen burner keeps delicately poised at some chosen stage on the way to chaos.
So the benard cell is both a beautiful demonstration of self-organising order, and a beautifully contrived one. All sorts of global constraints are needed to create the observed cellular pattern, and some of them (like a precisely controlled temperature) are wildly unnatural. In nature, a system would develop it global constraints rapidly and irreversibly until entropy throughput is maximised (as universality describes). So the benard cell demonstration depends on frustrating that natural self-organisation of global constraints.
So again, the challenge I made was find me papers on brain organisation which do not rely on top-down causality (in interaction with bottom-up causality).
Studying neurons with the kind of FEA philosophy you are talking about is still useful because it allows us to understand something about neurons. Reductionism always has some payback. But philosophically, you won't be able to construct conscious brains from robotic neurons. Thinking about the brain in such an atomistic fashion will ensure you will never see the larger picture on the causality.
I was looking to see if I had something to add and found I did not answer to the following. Sorry being late.
But BPP assumes determinism (the global constraints are taken to be eternal, definite rather than indefinite or themselves dynamic). So no surprise that the results are pseudo-random and Ockham's razor would see you wanting to lop off ontic randomness.
Yes (BPP is computable so determinist in my view), but I'm not so sure there is no surprise in P=BPP. Maybe we should wait for a formal proof that the equality truly holds.
PS:
I ask about brains and you talk about neurons! So the scale factor is off by about 11 orders of magnitude. :rolleyes:
12, actually.
EDIT forget that :blushing:
I agree that random behavior is no better than deterministic behavior in getting free will, we are saying we don't think that either mode of operation is going to get to the heart of it. It's just something different from either deterministic or random behavior of components, it's something where the whole cannot be expected to emerge from algorithmic behavior of individual parts. The algorithms of a successful model will need to be more holistic-- if the entire issue is algorithmic in the first place (which I find far from obvious, given the problems with using our brains to try and understand our brains).
To reconnect to the OP, I would restate that the top-down systems argument is that the determined and the random are what get shaped up down at the local level due to the self-organisation of global constraints.
So down at the ground level, there are just degrees of freedom. As many as you please. Then from on high comes the focusing action. The degrees of freedom are constrained in varying degree.
When highly constrained, there is almost no choice but to act in some specified direction. The outcome looks deterministic (and can be modelled as deterministic in the language of atomism/mechanicalism).
When weakly constrained, there is lots of choice and the direction of action becomes "random". Things go off in all the directions that have been permitted.
An analogy might be piston engine. The gas explosion has many degrees of freedom when unconstrained. But confined to a chamber with a piston, the result becomes deterministic. The action has a single available direction.
Freewill, voluntary action, selective attention, consciousness, etc, are all words that recognise that our reality comes with a global or systems level of downwards acting causality. We can organise our personal degrees of freedom in a way that meets evolutionary needs. My hand could wander off in any direction. But I can (via developmental learning) constrain it go off in useful directions.
There is no battle going on in my brain between the dark forces of determinism and randomness. I am not a slave to my microcauses. Instead, just as I experience it, I can exert a global constraint on my microscale that delivers either a highly constrained or weakly constrained response.
I can focus to make sure I pick up that cup of coffee. Or I can relax and defocus to allow creative associations to flow. There is a me in charge (even if I got there due to the top-down shaping force of socio-cultural evolution :devil:).
It is only when I swing a golf club that I discover, well, there is also some bottom-up sources of uncontrolled error. There is some damn neural noise in the system. The micro-causes still get a (constrained) say!
12, actually.
EDIT forget that :blushing:
Hmm, 10^11 neurons last time I counted, and 10^15 synaptic connections :tongue:.
But in actual size scale, just a 10^5 difference between neurons and brains. So an exaggeration there.
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 08:31 PM
Ken, apeiron:
Yes, we agree the map is not the territory. But the point about error truncation is that it's not particularly different than linear systems. It still happens whenever you stray from integers. This is a computational problem, not a theoretical problem.
That it's chaotic means you have to test your systems robustness which means varying parameters and initial conditions over a wide range of values so that you can say "this behavior occurs in this system over a wide range of conditions". It really has nothing to do with the error truncation, and only the chaotic nature of the system itself. We really have quite sophisticated methods for handling that technical detail (that's the problem of digital signal processing, not theoretical science; I was always concerned about this coming into the research, but I recognize the difference now after hands-on experience formulating robustness tests. In fact, I so doubted my advisor's assurance at the time that I strenuously tested the error tolerance of my system to see how it changed the results, which is computationally expensive and revealed that her intuition was correct).
What's being studied in complex systems is general behavior (the fixed-points of the system: stable, unstable, foci, saddle-points, limit cycles, etc) and the bifurcations (major qualitative changes in the system as a function of quantitative changes). Whether a particle went a little to the left or a little to the right is not significant to the types of statements we make about the system (which are not reductionist, deterministic statements, but general behavioral analysis. The plus side is that they can be reduced to physiologically meaningful statements that experimental biologists can test in the lab (as was done with the cell-cycle; a case where theoretical chaos and reductionist biology complemented each other, despite their apparent inconsistencies).
Hi Ken,
There is no dispute these models are powerful for what they are powerful at, the overarching question is, can they be used to model free will, or are they in some sense leaving that behind and then reaching conclusions about what it isn't. This is the place where I would say your argument keeps hitting a wall.
In the course of this thread, I am making an effort (apparently successfully) not to provide my opinion on free will. I think there’s a common desire for humans to believe that our feelings and emotions (our phenomenal experiences) actually make a difference. We want to believe we are not automatons, that we have “free will” and our experiences really matter. We intuitively feel that there is something different about our experience of the world and that of an automaton, and therefore, the computational paradigm must somehow be wrong.
The paper by Farkas that I discussed previously is (partly) about how mental causation is epiphenomenal. Frank Jackson wrote a highly cited paper suggesting the same thing called “Epiphenomenal Qualia”. However, epiphenomenal qualia and theories behind it, run into a very serious logical problem, one that seems to point to the simple fact that mental causation must be a fact, that phenomenal experiences must account for something, and they must somehow make a difference in the physical world. That logical problem is called the knowledge paradox. In brief, if phenomenal events are epiphenomenal and mental causation is false, then how are we able to say anything about them? That is, how can we say that we are experiencing anything if we aren’t actually reporting what we are experiencing? In other words, if we're saying we are having a phenomenal experience, and that experience is epiphenomenal, meaning that the phenomenal experience CAN NOT INFLUENCE ANYTHING PHYSICAL, then how is it we are acknowledging this experience? How is it we are reporting what we experience if not for the simple fact that the physical words coming out of our mouth are causally influenced by the phenomenal experience? If phenomenal experiences are really not causing anything, then they can't enter the causal chain and they can't cause us to report in any way/shape/form that experience. They are not phenomena that can be reported unless they somehow influence a person to reliably report the phenomena.
The solution to that question as provided by Farkas or Jackson or Jaegwon Kim or anyone else that’s tried to respond to it - is that there is a 1 to 1 relationship between the physical “supervenience basis” (ie: the neurons) and the phenomenal experience. What they’re saying is that the experience of some event, such as the experience of seeing a red fire truck, hearing the sirens, and smelling the diesel fumes as it passes, is “the same as” the physical interaction of all those neurons on which the experience relies. So yes, that experience relies upon the interaction of neurons, and we might say that we had an experience of the sight, sound and smell of the fire truck as it passed. But if this experience is truly epiphenomenal then we have no ability to report it. We have no ability to say “I experienced the site of red, the sound of “waaaaaaa” and the smell of diesel exhaust. It wasn’t just a physical thing, I actually experienced it.”
Why don’t we have an ability to report the experience? Because the experience is epiphenomenal, meaning that what these people are really wanting us to believe is that I’m not saying I saw red, and I’m not saying I heard the siren, and I'm not telling you about the smell of diesel fuel. Those expressions came out of my mouth merely because of the physical neuron interactions and because there is a 1 to 1 correlation between the phenomenal experience and the physical interactions. But it wasn’t the phenomenal experience that made me say anything, it was the physical interactions. So in short, there is no room to “reliably report” any phenomenal experience. The fact that I actually was able to behave as if I experienced those things and report my experience, is only due to serendipity. My report that there was an actual correlation between the phenomenal state and the physical state is utterly fortuitous. This line of reasoning was brought out by Shoemaker, “Functionalism and Qualia” and also Rosenberg, “A Place for Consciousness”.
I personally don’t believe that every time I say I’ve experienced something or act as if I did, the actual reason I’m saying and acting in such a manor is that there just happens to be a fortuitous correlation between those phenomenal experiences and the physical supervenience basis. That said, I still accept in totality, the philosophical basis that our science relies on. FEA is a correct philosophy, but it is not inconsistent with mental causation.
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 08:54 PM
There’s literally tons of papers out there that show how neurons are made to act exactly as local causal physics would have them (ie: weak emergence). Yes, neurons are highly nonlinear and yes to some degree they exhibit stoichastic behavior - to the experimentalist; which begs the question of whether or not they truly are probabalistic or are there ‘hidden variables’ so to speak, that we simply haven’t nailed down? Even if we find that neurons exhibit truly probabalistic behaviors such as for example, radioactive decay exhibits, is that single feature of a neuron truly going to lead us to finding “free will”?
Well, first, I think we all agree the notion of "free will" is already construed, don't we?
If we have any willpower, it's severely limited. Besides being confined by physical laws, as you probably know, there are a number of experiments that can show, at the least, that short-term free will is questionable. We can mark a lot of correlations between education, social class, and crime. We can find genes that link to behavior. If there's any free will in a single individual, it's a very weak force.
I don't see what "downward causation" really means. Physically, it doesn't seem any different from constraints. Constraints can be reduced to particle interactions themselves. And even if those constraints are holonomic, they can still be modeled as function of more degrees of freedom (though stochastic models are sometimes more successful). At some point though, you have to talk about what the initial conditions are for those degrees of freedom and how they arose. Once you model the whole universe, that becomes paradoxical... do you just weave them back into your system so you have one big closed loop? If matter and energy are to be conserved, it would appear so; and that would relieve the paradox (but I'm obviously speculating, here).
To me, "downward causation" seems to be an anthropomorphic desire to inject the subjective human quality of "willpower" into interpretations of global physical events. The only thing, to me, that makes global events significant, is the observer that sees several small events occurring at the same time and makes up a story so that it's all one big picture; that way the observer can have a stable world view. Evolutionary, of course, this makes sense, because it helps us (though bayesian learning) to instigate behavior towards food and shelter and away from danger.
Do I deny that, for instance, language and society influence the personality of an individual? Not at all. But it could simply be the case of the right reduced events happening at the right time that are often correlated together (so we see the global event as significant with our human brains).
That there's a subjective experience arising is another thing that so far, we can't touch, but through our research, we begun to gain an understanding of what the subjective experience is and is not... hopefully this will lead us to a mechanism for subjectivity (I don't have the slightest inkling how you would even begin to explain subjectivity with any more than story telling).
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 09:00 PM
I think there’s a common desire for humans to believe that our feelings and emotions (our phenomenal experiences) actually make a difference. We want to believe we are not automatons, that we have “free will” and our experiences really matter. We intuitively feel that there is something different about our experience of the world and that of an automaton, and therefore, the computational paradigm must somehow be wrong.
That's not completely true. It goes the other way, as well. I posted a Human Behavioral Biology lecture series in the Biology forum (excellent series, you should really watch it if this kind of stuff interests you). The lecturer discusses the history of the debate between the southern US scientists, and the european marxist scientists at the time.
The US scientists were promoting this largely biosocial view in which everything was predetermined and wild nature and it's largely speculated that they had a political agenda to justify their behavior at the time. There was even an outbreak with angry Marxists shouting and screaming "There will be law!"
So there is an allure to the opposite effect which we have to be equally careful of. To take accountability away from criminals and tyrants, particularly (but I'm sure we've all, at some point, justified our own behavior in some small trivial way as "it's just who I am").
Hi aperion, I honestly wish there was more to agree on. Anyway...
The FEA approach you describe only works because the global constraints are taken as already in existence and so axiomatic. What does not change does not need to be mentioned when modelling.
So take a benard cell. An entropic gradient is presumed. The source and the sink are just there. The model does not seek to explain how this state of affairs developed, just what then happens as a consequence.
Order then arises at a critical temperature - the famous hexagonal cells. Local thermal jostlings magically become entrained in a global scale coherent motion.
Now these global scale cells do in fact exert a downward causal effect. As just said, they entrain the destinies of individual molecules of oil. This is what a dissipative structure is all about. Global constraints (the order of the flow) acting to reduce the local degrees of freedom (the random thermal jostle of the molecules become suddenly far less random, far more determined).
So benard cells are frequently cited as an example of self-organisation due to the "mysterious" development of global order.
There are other features we could remark on, like the fact that the whorls are hexagonal (roughly) rather than circular. The fact that the activity is confined (globally constrained) reduces even the "local degrees of freedom" of these benard cells. Circular vortexes are the unconstrained variety. Hexagonal ones are ones with extra global constraints enforced by a packing density.
Note too that the macro-order that the benard cell is so often used to illustrate is a highly delicate state. Turn the heat up a little and you have soon the usual transition to chaos proper - whorls of turbulence over all scales, and no more pretty hexagonal cells.
There are no "global constraints" in FEA unless you consider the local, causal influences "global". I honestly don't know what you mean by global constraints unless those are the boundary conditions on the overall physical system. See, we can just as easily extend the boundary in FEA, such as by extending the liquid pool out past the area where it is being heated, to form Benard cells. When we do that, everything stays the same. The boundaries on every element have only the local, causal forces (momentum exchange, conservation of energy, conservation of mass, gravitational field strength, etc.....) ascribed to those boundaries, and those boundaries on every volume must be in dynamic equilibrium with every other volume and with the boundary on the system being modeled overall as if the boundary overall was just another layer of finite elements. FEA is truly an example of weak emergence as Bedau describes it in his paper.
Hi Pythagorean
I don't see what "downward causation" really means. Physically, it doesn't seem any different from constraints.
If you're not familiar with the term "downward causation", please read up on the topic. Here's a couple of papers I can recommend:
Chalmers, "Strong and Weak Emergence"
Emmeche et al, "Levels, Emergence, and Three Versions of Downward Causation"
From Chalmers
Downward causation means that higher-level phenomena are not only irreducible but also exert a causal efficacy of some sort. Such causation requires the formulation of basic principals which state that when certain high-level configurations occur, certain consequences will follow.
From Emmeche, strong downward causation is described as follows:
a given entity or process on a given level may causally inflict changes or effects on entities or processes on a lower level. ... This idea requires that the levels in question be sharply distinguished and autonomous...
Basically, it's saying that local level physical laws are over-ridden by these other physical laws that arise when certain higher level phenomena occur. I'm not sure what way "constraints" is being used in some of the contexts used here, but certainly, "strong downward causation" is something well defined and largely dismissed as being to much like "magic". Strong downward causation is largely refuted by everyone, at least on a 'classical' scale. There are some interesting concepts close to this that might apply at a molecular level, but that for another day.
There are no "global constraints" in FEA unless you consider the local, causal influences "global". I honestly don't know what you mean by global constraints unless those are the boundary conditions on the overall physical system. See, we can just as easily extend the boundary in FEA, such as by extending the liquid pool out past the area where it is being heated, to form Benard cells. When we do that, everything stays the same. The boundaries on every element have only the local, causal forces (momentum exchange, conservation of energy, conservation of mass, gravitational field strength, etc.....) ascribed to those boundaries, and those boundaries on every volume must be in dynamic equilibrium with every other volume and with the boundary on the system being modeled overall as if the boundary overall was just another layer of finite elements. FEA is truly an example of weak emergence as Bedau describes it in his paper.
Yes, I am sure there is no way to change your mind here. But anyway, boundary conditions would be another name for global constraints of course.
Immediately, when challenged, you think about the way those boundary conditions can be changed without creating a change. Which defeats the whole purpose. The person making the change is not factored into your model as a boundary condition. And you started with a system already at equilibrium with its boundary conditions and found a way to move them so as not to change anything. (Well, expand the boundary too fast and it would cool and the cells would fall apart - but your imagination has already found a way not to have that happen because I am sure your experimenter has skillful control and does the job so smoothly that the cells never get destabilised).
So FEA as a perspective may see no global constraints. Which is no problem for certain classes of modelling, a big problem if you are using it as the worldview that motivates your philosophical arguments here.
And as I said, a big problem even if you just want to model complex systems such as life and mind.
As asked, I provided examples of how top-down constraints such as selective attention have been shown to alter local neural receptive fields and other aspects of their behaviour. You have yet to explain how this fits with your FEA perspective where this kind of hierarchical causality does not appear to exist.
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 09:32 PM
Hmmmm... I like it... any good reading you could recommend?
Nonlinear optics: past, present, and future
Bloembergen, N.
Is what I found to answer your question (looking mostly at the history) which might be a goodd background to go and find your particular interests from. I think it really depends on your specific interest, but I've very little exposure to nonlinear optics.
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 09:36 PM
Hi Pythagorean
If you're not familiar with the term "downward causation", please read up on the topic. Here's a couple of papers I can recommend:
Chalmers, "Strong and Weak Emergence"
Emmeche et al, "Levels, Emergence, and Three Versions of Downward Causation"
From Chalmers
From Emmeche, strong downward causation is described as follows:
Basically, it's saying that local level physical laws are over-ridden by these other physical laws that arise when certain higher level phenomena occur. I'm not sure what way "constraints" is being used in some of the contexts used here, but certainly, "strong downward causation" is something well defined and largely dismissed as being to much like "magic". Strong downward causation is largely refuted by everyone, at least on a 'classical' scale. There are some interesting concepts close to this that might apply at a molecular level, but that for another day.
Yes, I've seen the definitions, but my point was I guess, that I stand along side the people that think it's "magic". It seems rather mystical to me, which means either I don't understand it or it's bs. I chose to say I didn't understand it, I didn't mean that I didn't know the definition.
I can definitely accept that there's global behavior that doesn't occur at smaller scales (a water molecule does not manifest a wave). I work in systems that can be considered weakly emergent. It seems to me that it would take omniscience to judge strong emergence. Or a really simple and perfectly closed system (but then you're chance of even weak emergence dwindles). Otherwise you're ignoring the rather high probability (as dictated by history) that there's another aspect ("hidden variable"). It will take a lot of evidence to rule out the higher probability.
Basically, it's saying that local level physical laws are over-ridden by these other physical laws that arise when certain higher level phenomena occur. I'm not sure what way "constraints" is being used in some of the contexts used here, but certainly, "strong downward causation" is something well defined and largely dismissed as being to much like "magic". Strong downward causation is largely refuted by everyone, at least on a 'classical' scale. There are some interesting concepts close to this that might apply at a molecular level, but that for another day.
Chalmers and others might like to stress irreducibility, but that is not actually what I've been saying at all.
The argument is instead that both local and global causes are reducible to "something else". Which is where Peirce's logic of vagueness, etc, comes in.
So Q Goest is presenting sources and ideas he is familiar with, not the ones I am employing.
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 09:46 PM
Chalmers and others might like to stress irreducibility, but that is not actually what I've been saying at all.
The argument is instead that both local and global causes are reducible to "something else". Which is where Peirce's logic of vagueness, etc, comes in.
So Q Goest is presenting sources and ideas he is familiar with, not the ones I am employing.
Good to know; this is what I mean by "hidden variable" but "variable" is too specific of a word and is attached to an irrelevant history. But this appears like weak emergence to me; I had the impression you were a proponent of strong emergence.
But this appears like weak emergence to me; I had the impression you were a proponent of strong emergence.
How much stronger can you get in saying everything emerges? :surprised
So mine is super-emergence. The uber, premium brand stuff! None of this namby pamby so-called strong stuff, let alone alone the wilting weak, that others want to palm off on you.
Pythagorean
Mar9-11, 10:09 PM
Ok, but what doe that mean functionally? I don't deny that, for instance, the star dust that makes us up was generated by gigantic thermodynamic processes.
But all I see is a bigger, possibly recursive, chain of weak emergent events.
Ok, but what doe that mean functionally? I don't deny that, for instance, the star dust that makes us up was generated by gigantic thermodynamic processes.
But all I see is a bigger, possibly recursive, chain of weak emergent events.
Well, this is a whole other thread if you want to start it. And I've given about 10k references already in many previous threads you have been involved in.
But you can check this thread I created on the notion of vague beginnings.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=301514&highlight=vagueness
nismaratwork
Mar9-11, 10:37 PM
Nonlinear optics: past, present, and future
Bloembergen, N.
Is what I found to answer your question (looking mostly at the history) which might be a goodd background to go and find your particular interests from. I think it really depends on your specific interest, but I've very little exposure to nonlinear optics.
Exposure... heh... I'll get on that, thanks Pythagorean!
How much stronger can you get in saying everything emerges? :surprised
So mine is super-emergence. The uber, premium brand stuff! None of this namby pamby so-called strong stuff, let alone alone the wilting weak, that others want to palm off on you.
The fundamental 'stuff' that everything is supposed to emerge from is still missing. For more than 100 years scientists have been failing to identify anything that resembles fundamental building blocks from which matter, time and space emerge(i reject strings and loops as idle speculation at this time and wavefunctions and Hilbert spaces as too ill-defined and ambigous mathematical tricks). One begins to wonder if the hidden variables lie within reality at all. If causality(this is crucial for the "free-will vs pre-determination" debate) is proven to be not fundamental(there are good hints that it is not), science as a tool for discovering truths goes out the window completely. A whole plethora of top physicists indulged in mysticism because of this in the 1950's and 60's and the sad thing is progress on this issue has stalled.
apeiron
Mar10-11, 05:05 AM
I don't see what "downward causation" really means. Physically, it doesn't seem any different from constraints.
Here is a good primer on downward causation (the whole site is a good one)...
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DOWNCAUS.HTML
Downward causation can be defined as a converse of the reductionist principle above: the behavior of the parts (down) is determined by the behavior of the whole (up), so determination moves downward instead of upward. The difference is that determination is not complete. This makes it possible to formulate a clear systemic stance, without lapsing into either the extremes of reductionism or of holism
Heylighen also wrote a good review paper on complexity and philosophy...
http://cogprints.org/4847/1/ComplexityPhilosophy.doc.pdf
Also the concept of emergent property receives a more solid definition via the ideas of constraint and downward causation. Systems that through their coupling form a supersystem are constrained: they can no longer act as if they are independent from the others; the supersystem imposes a certain coherence or coordination on its components. This means that not only is the behavior of the whole determined by the properties of its parts (“upwards causation”), but the behavior of the parts is to some degree constrained by the properties of the whole (“downward causation” (Campbell, 1974)).
John Collier wrote about downward causation in Benard cells....
http://www.kli.ac.at/theorylab/jdc/papers/BC-ECHOIV.pdf
The understanding we have of Bénard cells,
including the careful analysis by Chandresekhar
(1961) assumes the convecting state, and compares
that with the conducting state to derive the critical
Rayleigh number. There is no known way to derive
the convecting state from the microscopic movements
of the molecules or local fluid dynamics. It is very
likely impossible, a) due to the impossibility of
solving the equations of motion, and b) likely chaotic
at the molecular level. The Bénard cells are genuinely
emergent in the sense of Collier and Muller (1998).
apeiron
Mar10-11, 05:10 AM
The fundamental 'stuff' that everything is supposed to emerge from is still missing. For more than 100 years scientists have been failing to identify anything that resembles fundamental building blocks from which matter, time and space emerge(i reject strings and loops as idle speculation at this time and wavefunctions and Hilbert spaces as too ill-defined and ambigous mathematical tricks).
And I agree. I said that even local stuff (substance, matter, atoms) would be emergent. That is why a logic of vagueness is required here.
The belief in elemental building blocks is precisely what I have been arguing against.
apeiron
Mar10-11, 05:25 AM
A useful book on the complexity theory view of free will is Nancey Murphy and Warren Brown's, Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?
Murphy gives a summary of some of her arguments here.....
http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10865/Default.aspx
The topic of downward causation (and its opposite, causal reductionism) is an interesting one in its own right. But it would also be an interesting topic from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge. What I mean by this is, first, there are many ardent reductionists among philosophers and scientists, and I would state their position not in terms of “I have good grounds for this thesis,” but rather: “I can’t imagine how reductionism can fail to be true.” On the other hand, one can do a literature search in psychology and cognitive neuroscience and find hundreds of references to downward causation. Presumably these scientists would not use the term if they thought there was anything controversial about it.
Q_Goest
Mar10-11, 06:36 AM
Yes, I am sure there is no way to change your mind here.
Thanks apeiron. That's probably the one thing we'll always agree on! lol
But anyway, boundary conditions would be another name for global constraints of course.
Immediately, when challenged, you think about the way those boundary conditions can be changed without creating a change. Which defeats the whole purpose. The person making the change is not factored into your model as a boundary condition. And you started with a system already at equilibrium with its boundary conditions and found a way to move them so as not to change anything. (Well, expand the boundary too fast and it would cool and the cells would fall apart - but your imagination has already found a way not to have that happen because I am sure your experimenter has skillful control and does the job so smoothly that the cells never get destabilised).
So FEA as a perspective may see no global constraints. Which is no problem for certain classes of modelling, a big problem if you are using it as the worldview that motivates your philosophical arguments here.
And as I said, a big problem even if you just want to model complex systems such as life and mind.
As asked, I provided examples of how top-down constraints such as selective attention have been shown to alter local neural receptive fields and other aspects of their behaviour. You have yet to explain how this fits with your FEA perspective where this kind of hierarchical causality does not appear to exist.
I don't see anything in those papers that would seriously suggest there are something like "top down constraints" that influence local causation. If conservation principals (conservation of mass, energy, momentum) are valid at every level, there is no room for downward causation, top-down constraints or any other uber, super premium level forces influencing local causation. It's all just weak emergence, and that's all we're entitled to (per Bedau).
Q_Goest
Mar10-11, 07:21 AM
Hi Pythagorean,
Yes, I've seen the definitions, but my point was I guess, that I stand along side the people that think it's "magic". It seems rather mystical to me, which means either I don't understand it or it's bs. I chose to say I didn't understand it, I didn't mean that I didn't know the definition.
What is "it" you're refering to?
I can definitely accept that there's global behavior that doesn't occur at smaller scales (a water molecule does not manifest a wave).
I accept there's "global behavior" as well, just as Benard cells for example exhibit a higher level behavior that "doesn't occur at smaller scales". But that doesn't mean there's a global orchestra conductor or any kind of functionally relavant top down constraints that alter what physically occurs at a lower level. Weakly emergent systems (as defined by Bedau for example) such as The Game of Life exhibit simlar "global" behaviors. However, there's nothing but local, causal interactions that create those global behaviors. That's the philosophy behind FEA* and it's the philosophy behind the compartment models used in neuroscience today. Programs like NEURON and Genesis and the Blue Brain project demonstrate exactly the type of behavior we would expect given nothing but the weakly emergent rules set up by compartment models. There's no need for additional, higher level physical laws that somehow crowd out or take over the lower level laws. In fact, there are no such laws. When we talk about levels in nature, we're not talking about higher level laws, we're merely talking about the weakly emergent regularities that emerge from those lower level physical laws.
Bedau's paper regarding weak emergence can be found on the web here:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=bedau+weak+emergence&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&safe=active
I think you owe it to yourself to look at how neuronscience is treating the interactions of neurons at the level where computational modeling meets physical testing both disociated neurons and in vivo. There's an interesting talk by Henry Marlram on TED describing in broad terms how they're doing this on the Blue Brain project. He doesn't come out and explicitly state how they use the compartment method but that's what's being done. I have another link that discusses how the Blue Brain project is using this method in my previous post (the one with the picture).
http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.h tml
*Note: FEA also models dissipative and nonlinear systems.
I accept there's "global behavior" as well, just as Benard cells for example exhibit a higher level behavior that "doesn't occur at smaller scales". But that doesn't mean there's a global orchestra conductor or any kind of functionally relavant top down constraints that alter what physically occurs at a lower level. Weakly emergent systems (as defined by Bedau for example) such as The Game of Life exhibit simlar "global" behaviors. However, there's nothing but local, causal interactions that create those global behaviors.
Local, causal interactions between what? To be certain that your worldview holds, you have to get to the bottom of it. Let's see what the biggest names in physics have come up with so far:
1. Non-local relativistic and deterministic wave structures(though 'relativistic' undermines the whole idea of cause and its effect)
2. Abstract fields
3. Your own fantasy
4. Our collective fantasy
5. Strings
6. Loops
7. Add anything you like
Q_Goest
Mar10-11, 09:59 AM
Local, causal interactions between what? To be certain that your worldview holds, you have to get to the bottom of it. Let's see what the biggest names in physics have come up with so far:
1. Non-local relativistic and deterministic wave structures(though 'relativistic' undermines the whole idea of cause and its effect)
2. Abstract fields
3. Your own fantasy
4. Our collective fantasy
5. Strings
6. Loops
7. Add anything you like
Let's not get silly. Local causal interactions are well understood and modeled mathematically by engineers and scientists. Examples being the Navier Stokes equations, Hooke's law, etc... I really don't understand why that's a problem.
I think Maui's point is that even local causal interactions do not form a fully consistent ontology of the situation. So he/she might be saying that not only is there the issue that local causal interactions might be incomplete in regard to additional top-down mechanisms of the type apeiron is raising, it's even worse-- they are internally inconsistent in that they require we adopt an incomplete ontology even as far as local causal interactions go. This relates to the difference between computed trajectories and "true" trajectories, which raises the difference in the ontology of practical calculations versus what reality itself, even if we imagine it actually is deterministic, is doing. This seems a small issue, because the computed trajectories should mimic the "correct" ones in a statistical way, but there's always the chance that something underlying is going on that doesn't show up until you look for the right kinds of correlations.
Q_Goest
Mar10-11, 10:46 AM
I think Maui's point is that even local causal interactions do not form a fully consistent ontology of the situation. So he/she might be saying that not only is there the issue that local causal interactions might be incomplete in regard to additional top-down mechanisms of the type apeiron is raising, it's even worse-- they are internally inconsistent in that they require we adopt an incomplete ontology even as far as local causal interactions go. This relates to the difference between computed trajectories and "true" trajectories, which raises the difference in the ontology of practical calculations versus what reality itself, even if we imagine it actually is deterministic, is doing. This seems a small issue, because the computed trajectories should mimic the "correct" ones in a statistical way, but there's always the chance that something underlying is going on that doesn't show up until you look for the right kinds of correlations.
The only problem I see with this is that there is nothing 'functionally meaningful' that is gained by reducing classical scale phenomena (such as Benard cells or the interactions between neurons) to quantum scale interactions. By functionally meaningful, I mean that we choose to use classical descriptions because they account for the statistical agregate of all the particles (molecules) and there is nothing else in the configuration of those particles that can influence the system in a way that matters. No one is arguing that the classical description of the world is an exact one. The point is only that reducing a system of Benard cells or brain cells to the level of particle interactions doesn't gain us anything when we talk about the overall phenomena being studied.
In fact, the "dynamic systems" approach would agree with this. That approach holds that there are classical scale interactions and "global constraints" that don't need to be reduced to the quantum scale. The emergent structures emerge BECAUSE of the classical scale interactions (ie: nonlinear ones, etc...). Not that I agree with that approach.
The only problem I see with this is that there is nothing 'functionally meaningful' that is gained by reducing classical scale phenomena (such as Benard cells or the interactions between neurons) to quantum scale interactions. By functionally meaningful, I mean that we choose to use classical descriptions because they account for the statistical agregate of all the particles (molecules) and there is nothing else in the configuration of those particles that can influence the system in a way that matters. No one is arguing that the classical description of the world is an exact one. The point is only that reducing a system of Benard cells or brain cells to the level of particle interactions doesn't gain us anything when we talk about the overall phenomena being studied.
In fact, the "dynamic systems" approach would agree with this. That approach holds that there are classical scale interactions and "global constraints" that don't need to be reduced to the quantum scale. The emergent structures emerge BECAUSE of the classical scale interactions (ie: nonlinear ones, etc...). Not that I agree with that approach.
If one is certain that causality will hold after the foundational issues are solved, then one hasn't poked deep enough.
There are obvious problems with causality related to the implications of relativity as well - causality doesn't exist except as a description of a serious of seeming causally related events. No need to stick your head in the sand - if our knowledge of the world is in trouble, there is nothing to lose by figuring it out, as we are all here for the truth, whatever that may be. For all i have been exposed to, and the opinions i've seen on the subject by researchers working on the foundations of physics, causality is not fundamental and all of our knowledge of the world is incomplete, if not drastically false.
Let's not get silly. Local causal interactions are well understood and modeled mathematically by engineers and scientists. Examples being the Navier Stokes equations, Hooke's law, etc... I really don't understand why that's a problem.
The problem is(and it's very deep) what those local causal interactions are between. The ontology of Newton is wrong and doesn't work. What does work, does not always favor causality and when it does, it involves more magic than weak and strong emergence...
Your model, whatever that may be, is just a model. It's neither reality, nor HOW reality is. It's awefully easy for anyone to shoot it down, as reality is much weirder than human imagination would accommodate. In philosophy, we are seeking(at least striving towards) truths and complete ontologies and naive models are always easiest to demolish. As one of the great thinkers once said - if your theory is not crazy enough, there is no hope for it.
Q_Goest
Mar10-11, 01:32 PM
The problem is(and it's very deep) what those local causal interactions are between. The ontology of Newton is wrong and doesn't work. What does work, does not always favor causality and when it does, it involves more magic than weak and strong emergence...
Your model, whatever that may be, is just a model. It's neither reality, nor HOW reality is. It's awefully easy for anyone to shoot it down, as reality is much weirder than human imagination would accommodate. In philosophy, we are seeking(at least striving towards) truths and complete ontologies and naive models are always easiest to demolish. As one of the great thinkers once said - if your theory is not crazy enough, there is no hope for it.
Sorry, I really don't see anything deep here. Let's just say we disagree and leave it at that. :(
Sorry, I really don't see anything deep here. Let's just say we disagree and leave it at that. :(
Just one example and i am leaving - the satellites that keep the GPS system working measure time differently, because it runs differently for observers in different referential frames. This is a fact backed up by hardcore science and thousands of expereiments. The implication of time 'flowing' differently is that your NOW has already happened(passed) in another frame of reference(e.g. that of the GPS clocks). It renders causality apparent(for some reason things seem(just seem) to have causes in the world of relativity). The other implication is that of free-will and free choice. It must also be just apparent. Add fields(the most consistent contemporary model we've build so far) and not just causality but everything observable is just excitations of a field(for some reason the excitations of the fields tend to conspire towards a seeming classical causality).
By functionally meaningful, I mean that we choose to use classical descriptions because they account for the statistical agregate of all the particles (molecules) and there is nothing else in the configuration of those particles that can influence the system in a way that matters.But this is just the issue-- how do we know a priori what is an "influence that matters"? You start by choosing what will matter to you, and this will then motivate the models you create, and when you will declare success. But when trying to model something like free will, when will you claim success? It seems very possible that when the only influences that matter are the ones that achieve gross bulk statistical behaviors, expressed within preconditioned degrees of freedom (to borrow from apeiron's language) and boundary conditions, you will not learn what kinds of special correlations might lead to quantitatively different outcomes, and will not know if you have succeeded because you might not even be trying to model the right things to get free will. I'm not saying you know you'll fail, I'm saying you can't know you'll succeed, and there might be reason, for some at least, to suspect you will fail.
In fact, the "dynamic systems" approach would agree with this. That approach holds that there are classical scale interactions and "global constraints" that don't need to be reduced to the quantum scale. The emergent structures emerge BECAUSE of the classical scale interactions (ie: nonlinear ones, etc...). Not that I agree with that approach.For a second I had to check this wasn't coming from apeiron! I'm not saying we need to connect to the quantum scale, I view the quantum scale as simply an example of the kinds of unexpected correlations that emerge only when you know what to look for. For example, in a quantum erasure experiment, there is no hint in the raw data that any correlations exist there, they are embedded in the entanglements in ways that require clevel manipulation to extract. If someone happened to do a similar experiment prior to the days of quantum mechanics, they would have no idea whatsoever that they were missing anything using a classical mixed-state analysis-- and they might be tempted to use language about their assessment of their success that is similar to yours in the context of nonlinearly coupled systems.
apeiron
Mar10-11, 02:13 PM
I don't see anything in those papers that would seriously suggest there are something like "top down constraints" that influence local causation.
Yes, but you never actually made the argument against what has been said, only stated that you "don't see it".
You asked for the evidence with regards to the brain and I supplied references about top-down constraints shaping neural receptive fields. That evidence still stands because you have made no arguments against it.
Perhaps you don't realise how critical this is. The supervenience view of emergence says that given the same fixed set of micro-causes, we must always logically expect the same macro-outcome. So therefore, even if there appears to be top-down effects, these are merely supervenient on the micro-causes.
But if the micro-causes can be shown to be not fixed, but instead shaped actively by downwards causation, then supervenience fails. Instead the systems view rules.
So when presented with evidence of global constraints shaping the micro-causes - attention and expectation changing local neural firing characteristics - you have to explain why this is not what it appears to the neuroscientists who have done the studies.
Saying you don't see it is neither here nor there.
There are two themes I see emerging in apeiron's comments that I find intriguing. I don't have the expertise to recognize how critical they are for free will, but neither can I reject the possibility that they may be critical. Those themes have the flavor of a kind of "balancing act" or "tennis match", choose your metaphor, between different types of phenomena, which achieve greater power and richness by virtue of the interplay than they would have on their own.
One of those dichotomies of phenomena concerns microcauses vs. system-wide self-organization of the constraints/boundary conditions/degrees of freedom that affect the microcauses. This seems to allow a type of information exchange between the two aspects of the combined behavior, perhaps akin to how a brain interacts with its sources of perception. A brain with no perception is not a brain because it is not functioning like a brain, and a perception with no brain is not a perception because it is not being perceived.
The other dichotomy concerns deterministic vs. random behavior, or predictable and unpredictable if you prefer. I tended to see those as separate issues from free will, because they are concepts that relate to different kinds of questions, but apeiron's comments have suggested value in looking at the "razor's edge" between them, where "too much determinism" is the difference between a machine and something mentally alive, and "too much randomness" is the difference between the weather and something that can think. Perhaps an important element in the tennis match of the first dichotomy is maintaining the necessary balance in the second. That's at least an interesting insight, I think, even if Q_Goest can point to a wide range of current successes in the area of microcausation. I think to some extent, you get your returns in the places where you make your investments.
apeiron
Mar10-11, 02:37 PM
I'm not saying we need to connect to the quantum scale, I view the quantum scale as simply an example of the kinds of unexpected correlations that emerge only when you know what to look for. For example, in a quantum erasure experiment...
The lessons of quantum mechanics are completely relevant to my POV. What better example of downward causation is there than the idea that "observers" are required to develop a classical crispness in reality?
A quantum event, as in the eraser experiments, is shaped by the global constraints of the path set up by an experimenter. Unless you go to extreme ontologies like hidden variables or many worlds, you have to say there is nothing concretely "there" at the microscale apart from a quantum potential that then gets shaped to have an identity by the particular structure of classical world.
The classical world acts downwards to decohere the unformed potential of the quantum realm. There is nothing fixed at the QM scale, until it has been fixed.
And also consistent with my systems view, the classical world can only constrain the quantum potential, not determine it. Downward causation can restrict the degrees of freedom, but not remove them all. So there is still that essential "randomness" or indeterminacy about what actually does happen (even if statistically, that indeterminacy has hard bounds).
Q Goest mentions that this is the case...and then hurriedly says he doesn't want to go there. Indeed, it would be fatal to his insistence on causal supervenience. (Unless he resorts to hidden variables, many worlds, the usual attempts to avoid the "weirdness" of downward acting constraints by leaping to far weirder views of nature that appear to preserve the mechanical principle that all that exists is bottom-up atomistic construction).
The classical world acts downwards to decohere the unformed potential of the quantum realm. There is nothing fixed at the QM scale, until it has been fixed.Yes, I agree quantum mechanics forms an excellent example of this kind of surprising phenomenon, even if brains are not manifestly quantum mechanical. In quantum mechanics, everything happens that can happen, and it is only sorting of possibilities by the outer-scale environment that decides what actually does happen and brings the phenomena into the classical realm of black-and-white thinking. There remains no self-consistent ontology (without paying a radical price of subordinating the observed phenomena to how we conceptualize it) for describing how the microcausations that appear in the Schroedinger equation can create a single emergent classical reality. Decoherence is how we treat this event, but it involves deciding what we will care about, not an internally self-consistent treatment. I think that is also a relevant analogy to what FEA does-- first decides what we will care about, and then sees what harvest we reap from those choices.
Q Goest mentions that this is the case...and then hurriedly says he doesn't want to go there. Indeed, it would be fatal to his insistence on causal supervenience.I think the main source of disagreement is a choice of stance-- Q_Goest takes the position that he would prefer not leave a certain comfort zone, with demonstrable benefits, until he is absolutely certain it is required to do so, and what's more, he will tend to rig the meaning of "success" to increase its likelihood. We are taking the tack that it is better to jump into the unknown and murkier waters, and hope to discover something fundamentally new, than to avoid it simply because it is so murky. (Unless he resorts to hidden variables, many worlds, the usual attempts to avoid the "weirdness" of downward acting constraints by leaping to far weirder views of nature that appear to preserve the mechanical principle that all that exists is bottom-up atomistic construction).Interestingly, even many-worlds is not really an atomistic construction, it is about as holistic as they come. It begins and ends with accepting that the concept of a "state vector for the universe" is a meaningful and coherent construct, because if you start with that, and trust the Schroedinger equation, then you will always have it (and its encumbent many conscious worlds emerging within), and if you do not start with it, then you will never have it appear. You get out exactly what you put in, and no experiment tells you if putting it in has done anything useful for you, so it's purely a desire to apply top-down imagery that motivates many worlds in the first place. Elsewhere, I've made the point that if you think about it, pure states don't propagate top-down, they propagate bottom-up: you get a pure state when you break a piece off from a larger system and force it to satisfy certain constraints, and there's really no other way that we ever encounter pure states in quantum mechanical analysis.
apeiron
Mar10-11, 04:45 PM
The only problem I see with this is that there is nothing 'functionally meaningful' that is gained by reducing classical scale phenomena (such as Benard cells or the interactions between neurons) to quantum scale interactions.
But again, that is merely an epistemological point. We all agree (I think) that when reductionism works in the pragmatic sense of useful theories, then it works.
But what is under debate is whether the atomistic approach exemplified by FEA works when we consider complex systems such as brains that "have freewill, consciousness and the appearance at least of downward causation". Or indeed if we step back to take a systems view of physical reality itself (one that includes the quantum scale for example).
So arguing a modelling strategy works in some cases is not proving that it must work in all cases.
Unless you can make an ontological level case that the map is the terrain and reality really is just the sum of its parts. And here the observational evidence weighs heavily against you - such as the view from neuroscience and QM.
apeiron
Mar10-11, 05:23 PM
Interestingly, even many-worlds is not really an atomistic construction, it is about as holistic as they come. It begins and ends with accepting that the concept of a "state vector for the universe" is a meaningful and coherent construct, because if you start with that, and trust the Schroedinger equation, then you will always have it (and its encumbent many conscious worlds emerging within), and if you do not start with it, then you will never have it appear. You get out exactly what you put in, and no experiment tells you if putting it in has done anything useful for you, so it's purely a desire to apply top-down imagery that motivates many worlds in the first place. Elsewhere, I've made the point that if you think about it, pure states don't propagate top-down, they propagate bottom-up: you get a pure state when you break a piece off from a larger system and force it to satisfy certain constraints, and there's really no other way that we ever encounter pure states in quantum mechanical analysis.
I see what you mean but I think the critical question is about when does a developing QM potential encounter the global constraints that collapse it into a classical state.
Many worlds avoids the issue of this encounter because all destinies happen. So instead of a single global history, you just spawn endless micro-branches of history. Constraints break reality at a local level, atomising its history, rather than constraint being at the global level where it is more than the sum of its part and organising a single self-consistent history for reality.
Decoherence of course does not collapse the wave function but instead disperses it to a degree that it seems to have vanished as an issue - a Hopf flow model. But a systems view could fix this aspect of decoherence I believe by treating reality as a dissipative structure. The classical realm would have the downward causal power to actually collapse (that is constrain) any spreading QM degrees of freedom.
Pure state would propagate from the bottom-up on a probablistic basis because constraint is only constraint (the top-down causality is not a simple deterministic causality). All that constraint means is that the boundary conditions (such as the experimenter's set-up) exist in concrete fashion. But then the QM potential still has its remaining "internal" degrees of freedom which the constraints can never see.
Take spin for example. If I can constrain a point to a locale, I still have left open its potential to be spinning. Constraining the translational symmetries does not remove the degrees of freedom represented by the rotational symmetries.
So classical reality exists by constraining the degrees of freedom represented by the notion of a pure, or unconstrained, quantum realm. And instead of the "observer" being a mysterious device outside the system as it is in the reductionist view, the observer is clearly identified with the global constraints, the information that does the downward causation.
And this systems view also leaves room for the remaining quantum degrees of freedom that are the "weird" bit. When almost everything is being tidily regulated from the top-down, it can seem weird that the micro-scale is not actually under complete control but is still a little random.
nismaratwork
Mar10-11, 07:17 PM
Just one example and i am leaving - the satellites that keep the GPS system working measure time differently, because it runs differently for observers in different referential frames. This is a fact backed up by hardcore science and thousands of expereiments. The implication of time 'flowing' differently is that your NOW has already happened(passed) in another frame of reference(e.g. that of the GPS clocks). It renders causality apparent(for some reason things seem(just seem) to have causes in the world of relativity). The other implication is that of free-will and free choice. It must also be just apparent. Add fields(the most consistent contemporary model we've build so far) and not just causality but everything observable is just excitations of a field(for some reason the excitations of the fields tend to conspire towards a seeming classical causality).
Ummmm... it seems nobody else is going to break this to you, so I will... what the hell are you talking about? I understand your example, which is not one I'd use, nor does it have ANYTHING to do with causality, and free will in this context.
Pythagorean
Mar11-11, 01:57 AM
Hi Pythagorean,
What is "it" you're refering to?
downward causation (in the strong sense). Isn't that what we were talking about?
I think you owe it to yourself to look at how neuronscience is treating the interactions of neurons at the level where computational modeling meets physical testing both disociated neurons and in vivo.
Considering that's what both my courses and research consist of, I don't know what you think I'm missing. As we all point out though, the model is not the reality. The models are (successfully) predicting deterministic behavior of neural networks, it doesn't pretend to be the full story. It's a story about the electrical signal carried by the neurons. We don't consider, for example, the effects of calcium-triggered quantal release in the synapse via SNARE and SNAP proteins, or the way in which the postsynaptic terminal influences the transcription factors of gene networks (neuroscience epigenetics). Many models don't even consider the complicated geometry and electrotonic properties of the dendritic processes. Many models don't consider the volume transfusion or global field effects. But they can, and especially if those behaviors are your interest.
There's still a lot we don't even know about neurotransmitter interactions in the synapse, and we're just beginning to understand the role of gap junctions in global regulation.
[...] there's nothing but local, causal interactions that create those global behaviors. That's the philosophy behind FEA* and it's the philosophy behind the compartment models used in neuroscience today.
I doubt that's any scientific field's prevailing philosophy, please provide clear evidence of this. I think this is your interpretation. Particularly that you put "nothing, but" as a qualifier. The prevailing philosophy is empiricism. To say there's nothing but local, causal interactions that create those global behaviors is a claim I've never seen. Whether it's true or not isn't important though. The interesting part of these complex systems is how the global behavior causes local interactions to occur, regardless of whether the global behavior originated from local interactions or not. We're not really interested in chicken and egg arguments in the lab; that's for philosophy forums.
Many worlds avoids the issue of this encounter because all destinies happen. So instead of a single global history, you just spawn endless micro-branches of history. Constraints break reality at a local level, atomising its history, rather than constraint being at the global level where it is more than the sum of its part and organising a single self-consistent history for reality.And yet, it is really many-worlds which is holistic, and has a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Many-worlds subordinates the physicist to the physics, and so invents a gossamer web of invisible coherences that act like glue between the islands of different worlds. The whole pure state is more than the sum of the "worlds", because the worlds lack these connections that the denizens of these worlds can never cross or even perceive. Some would call that holism on steroids, and prefer to subjugate the physics to the physicist. In that case, there is no need to restore anything that has been ruled out by the constraints of the "classical realm" (by which we both mean, observer effects). When physics is seen as the way a brain interacts with its environment, rather than the way an environment gives rise to a brain, there is no need for the concept of a unified state-- a state is merely whatever usefulness and consistency is left when all that is useless or inconsistent with constraints has been thrown out. So many-worlds is a glue, and Copenhagen is a sifter.
And this systems view also leaves room for the remaining quantum degrees of freedom that are the "weird" bit. When almost everything is being tidily regulated from the top-down, it can seem weird that the micro-scale is not actually under complete control but is still a little random.
An emerging idea is that physics, if not consciousness itself, involves that razor's edge between that which seems determined and that which seems random. That tennis match may echo your points about an interplay between bottom-up and top-down interactions.
Ummmm... it seems nobody else is going to break this to you, so I will... what the hell are you talking about? I understand your example, which is not one I'd use, nor does it have ANYTHING to do with causality, and free will in this context.
You should have probably first read my previous posts instead of yelling. Anyway, my latest post(that you quoted) was hypothetically taking into account a global scale view of reality(the so-called "God's eye view") and the role causality plays in view of relativity. Causality in the blockworld is not a fundamental feature of reality, instead - it's just an ordering of events in a causally-looking way when the observer is in a particular FOR in this Lorentz-invariant reality. As i stated earlier, this undermines the idea that things and events are really what they are because of causality(though they appear to be what they are because of causality). I stand by my words, causality very likely will not be a fundamental feature of a TOE, but just apparent/emergent(it doesn't really matter if everyone is already aware of this, but there is already a consensus on this among those who work on the foundational issues).
For causality to be fundamental, you'd need the universe of Isaac Newton. That universe is a mirage, however.
If you've been reading Luboš Motl's blog, you've probably seen where the highest bets are being placed(which confirms what apeiron and i said earlier on emergence):
http://motls.blogspot.com/2004/10/emergent-space-and-emergent-time.html
Personally, I always get a chuckle when I see the term "fundamental" used in physics. What does that even mean? Perhaps when we look at the history of physics, we should start relating to what physics actually is rather than how we might like to imagine it. The natural conclusion is that the word "fundamental" by itself does not have meaning in physics, but "more fundamental" does. Given this, we should not be surprised that causality is not fundamental, but we can perhaps view it as "more fundamental" than a concept like space. The prevailing question of this thread is then, "which is more fundamental, causality or free will?" Or perhaps neither emerges from the other, but both emerge from something else.
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 08:15 AM
Personally, I always get a chuckle when I see the term "fundamental" used in physics. What does that even mean? Perhaps when we look at the history of physics, we should start relating to what physics actually is rather than how we might like to imagine it. The natural conclusion is that the word "fundamental" by itself does not have meaning in physics, but "more fundamental" does. Given this, we should not be surprised that causality is not fundamental, but we can perhaps view it as "more fundamental" than a concept like space. The prevailing question of this thread is then, "which is more fundamental, causality or free will?" Or perhaps neither emerges from the other, but both emerge from something else.
Hmmm... The very seach for what we like to imagine it to be is what set Einstein on his course to take a "Heuristic" view of light. It also hobbled him later in life...
... what to conclude from that?
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 08:19 AM
You should have probably first read my previous posts instead of yelling. Anyway, my latest post(that you quoted) was hypothetically taking into account a global scale view of reality(the so-called "God's eye view") and the role causality plays in view of relativity. Causality in the blockworld is not a fundamental feature of reality, instead - it's just an ordering of events in a causally-looking way when the observer is in a particular FOR in this Lorentz-invariant reality. As i stated earlier, this undermines the idea that things and events are really what they are because of causality(though they appear to be what they are because of causality). I stand by my words, causality very likely will not be a fundamental feature of a TOE, but just apparent/emergent(it doesn't really matter if everyone is already aware of this, but there is already a consensus on this among those who work on the foundational issues).
For causality to be fundamental, you'd need the universe of Isaac Newton. That universe is a mirage, however.
I'm fairly sure that the Bohmians would take exception to your assessment, and many others at that. Moreover, any speculation about a theory that is as elusive as any is a bit absurdist given your lead-in, but... OK. I think you should take these thoughts to QM, and see how they fly there (hint... lead... brick...)
If you've been reading Luboš Motl's blog, you've probably seen where the highest bets are being placed(which confirms what apeiron and i said earlier on emergence):
http://motls.blogspot.com/2004/10/emergent-space-and-emergent-time.html
I agree with apeiron, but in part because he makes his argument using... arguments and references. You're making suppostions and personal speculation, and that's nothing to work with, even if I agree with your conclusions. Again, perhaps that is what Q_Goest found wanting in your post?
Hmmm... The very seach for what we like to imagine it to be is what set Einstein on his course to take a "Heuristic" view of light. It also hobbled him later in life...
... what to conclude from that?Einstein was motivated by the search for something more fundamental, which is the highest goal of science. Why, then, do we feel the need to pretend that it was a search for something fundamental? Why can we not simply live in the truth?
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 09:08 AM
Einstein was motivated by the search for something more fundamental, which is the highest goal of science. Why, then, do we feel the need to pretend that it was a search for something fundamental? Why can we not simply live in the truth?
Um... as much as I'm dying to say, "[We] can't HANDLE the truth!", I wont... I did.
Anyway, why?... because that search has continually borne fruit such as QM, and Relativity, and perhaps elements of String Theory. The search itself tends to drive the field forward, but then the search becoming myopic is clearly crippling.
Einstein certainly seemed to believe that there was an underlying elegance he could uncover, although it's true that he settled for "more" fundamental.
I'd add, the truth is ultimately inconsistant in the absence of a better means to join gravity and the forces described by QM.
Q_Goest
Mar11-11, 09:59 AM
But when trying to model something like free will, when will you claim success?
So arguing a modeling strategy works in some cases is not proving that it must work in all cases.
As we all point out though, the model is not the reality. The models are (successfully) predicting deterministic behavior of neural networks, it doesn't pretend to be the full story. It's a story about the electrical signal carried by the neurons. We don't consider, for example, . . . But they can, and especially if those behaviors are your interest.
I doubt that's any scientific field's prevailing philosophy, please provide clear evidence of this. I think this is your interpretation. Particularly that you put "nothing, but" as a qualifier. The prevailing philosophy is empiricism. To say there's nothing but local, causal interactions that create those global behaviors is a claim I've never seen. Whether it's true or not isn't important though. The interesting part of these complex systems is how the global behavior causes local interactions to occur, regardless of whether the global behavior originated from local interactions or not. We're not really interested in chicken and egg arguments in the lab; that's for philosophy forums.
Let’s talk about what these models are for a minute because I think the philosophy of why they are the way they are is being overlooked.
Going back to the 1950’s when computers were just starting to be used for modeling natural phenomena, the first use of those models was in aerospace where wings for example, needed to be very accurately modeled. In a landmark paper by Turner et.al., “Stiffness and Deflection Analysis of Complex Structures” (J of the Aeronautical Sciences) he talks briefly of the fundamental philosophy behind why the model is created the way it is. Remember that although he’s referring to stresses and displacements in a solid structure, the same philosophy is used for modeling fluid behavior such as for Benard cells and for modeling brain behavior by compartmental models such as the Blue Brain project as I'll show in a moment.
The analysis may be approached from two different points of view. In one case, the forces acting on the members of the structure are considered as unknown quantities. In a statically indeterminate structure [think of this as your “top down constraint”], an infinite number of such force systems exist which will satisfy the equations of equilibrium. The correct force system is then selected by satisfying the conditions of compatible deformations in the members. ...
In the other approach, the displacements of the joints in the structure are considered as unknown quantities. An infinite number of systems of mutually compatible deformations in the members are possible; the correct pattern of displacements is the one for which the equations of equilibrium are satisfied.
So what does that mean? He’s suggesting the fundamental philosophy behind all of classical mechanics. He’s pointing out that there needs to be an equilibrium condition at every point in the system. At every point, we have to have equilibrium conditions such as conservation of mass, energy, momentum, equilibrium of forces (think "free body diagrams"), etc ... This can be static equilibrium or dynamic equilibrium. The system as a whole isn’t in equilibrium unless all the parts within that system are also in equilibrium at all times.
The philosophy behind this model also points to a second fundamental premise. The forces or causal affects at every point within the system are local. Every local event is dependent on being in equilibrium, but it should also be emphasized that those equilibrium conditions are due to the local interplay of the parts. In the case of structural elements, those parts flex and create forces on neighboring elements due to their ability to compress or stretch (ie: the modulus of the material), the amount of mass and force (ie: stress) that allows for that part to accelerate, etc ...
In the Hodgkin-Huxley model of neurons, those elements of the neuron act like electrical elements such as resistors and capacitors, but the concept that they are similar to those electrical elements has nothing to do with the much more important and fundamental premise. The Hodgkin Huxley model could have used water pipes, valves and pressure vessels. In fact, electrical phenomena and fluids are highly analogous so it seems the use of electrical circuits was likely made because that is what they were familiar with and because they actually USED electrical components to test with as opposed to converting to a fluidics basis. But the model itself is inconsequential. The philosophy behind what’s going on in nature is what’s important, and for the compartmental models of the brain, regardless of what kind of parts (ex: resistors and wires or valves and pipes) we use to model neurons with, no matter what kind of mathematics we decide on, or what equations we use, there will always be the same philosophical premise that is identical for ALL of those models. That premise is twofold as described by Turner.
1. Static and/or dynamic equilibrium conditions must exist between every point in the system.
2. These equilibrium conditions are not affected by nonlocal causes, they are affected only by those conditions that are immediately local to the affected point in the system.
One might now question whether this is REALLY a fundamental philosophical notion or is it just how science models nature in general. I’m sure that’s what must come through anyone’s mind as they consider the above. However, it is clear that discussions around emergence have popped up to address this. Bedau (“Weak Emergence” Philosophical Perspectives) also recognizes this when he refers to weakly emergent phenomena such as described for example by cellular automata:
The phrase “derivation by simulation” might seem to suggest that weak emergence applies only to what we normally think of as simulations, but this is a mistake. Weak emergence also applies directly to natural systems, whether or not anyone constructs a model or simulation of them. A derivation by simulation involves the temporal iteration of the spatial aggregation of local causal interactions among micro elements. That is, it involves the local causal processes by which micro interactions give rise to macro phenomena. The notion clearly applies to natural systems as well as computer models. So-called “agent-based” or “individual based” or “bottom up” simulations in complexity science have exactly this form. They explicitly represent micro micro interactions, with the aim of seeing what implicit macro phenomena are produced when the micro interactions are aggregated over space and iterated over time. My phrase “derivation by simulation” is a technical expression that refers to temporal iteration of the spatial aggregation of such local micro interactions.
That really is how science and philosophy view the world. There is no room for “downward causes” that interact at the local level, that might force the system to change in a way that isn’t predictable from examining the local causal events. I will only make this caveat that these models are how classical mechanical interactions are made, and not how quantum mechanical interactions are viewed. That is a different issue and isn’t of relevance here which is the ONLY reason I’m not going into that issue. If this above description of classical mechanics and the philosophy behind it isn’t clear and understood, going into the QM description is only going to confound things. Neurons interact at a classical scale, there are no quantum mechanical interactions between them that might lead to nonlocal causes arising from ‘top down constraints’. If/when such a phenomena is shown to be pertinent to how a brain works, that’s fine. But for now, no one should be bringing quantum mechanics up as a reason to believe there's room for downward causation or any similar concept that might be put into different terms such as 'top-down' constraints. Such terms are misleading since such things as top down can mean how a door hinge makes the door rotate only around some given axis which certainly isn't any kind of downward causation as referred to in philosophy of science.
One might now ask if downward causation (sometimes referred to as “strong downward causation”) has anything left to do with any of this? If events are local only as indicated above, how can global states intervene in the local events? Strong downward causation addresses this and suggests that “macro-causal powers have effects at both macro and micro levels, and macro-to-micro effects are termed downward causation.” (Bedau). Emmeche et al describes it as “a given entity or process on a given level may causally inflict changes or effects on entities or processes on a lower level”. These authors and many more including the paper by Farkas mentioned by apeiron all dismiss strong downward causation as crackpot science. There’s no evidence for it and there’s no support for it. For future reference, please don’t point to crackpot web sites that suggest strong downward causation is some kind of debatable concept. If a paper suggests there is some kind of top down constraint, it doesn’t necessarily refer to strong downward causation. The concept of strong downward causation needs to go back into the closet it came out of, as does any similar argument that suggests micro level causes are commandeered to act differently in different systems.
Um... as much as I'm dying to say, "[We] can't HANDLE the truth!", I wont... I did.
:D
Anyway, why?... because that search has continually borne fruit such as QM, and Relativity, and perhaps elements of String Theory. The search itself tends to drive the field forward, but then the search becoming myopic is clearly crippling.The search doesn't require adopting a belief system, it just involves doing science. The only required faith is the faith in the process, not the faith in the outcome. In fact, I would argue that faith in the outcome is what tends to close our minds to future advances, rather than the opposite. The same might be relevant to upwardly-causal approaches to free will.
Einstein certainly seemed to believe that there was an underlying elegance he could uncover, although it's true that he settled for "more" fundamental.
And indeed, elegance is certainly part of what we are seeking. We should look for elegance, and be happy when we find it, but not be seduced by it.
I'd add, the truth is ultimately inconsistant in the absence of a better means to join gravity and the forces described by QM.
Right, and although it is natural to always try to find more fundamental unifications that correct inconsistencies, it is unnatural to expect that physics will ever be absent of inconsistencies. Never was, why do we imagine it ever will be?
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 11:22 AM
:D
The search doesn't require adopting a belief system, it just involves doing science. The only required faith is the faith in the process, not the faith in the outcome. In fact, I would argue that faith in the outcome is what tends to close our minds to future advances, rather than the opposite. The same might be relevant to upwardly-causal approaches to free will.
And indeed, elegance is certainly part of what we are seeking. We should look for elegance, and be happy when we find it, but not be seduced by it.
I agree.
Right, and although it is natural to always try to find more fundamental unifications that correct inconsistencies, it is unnatural to expect that physics will ever be absent of inconsistencies. Never was, why do we imagine it ever will be?
I don't know... I think people expect the universe to conform to an anthropic view.
I don't know... I think people expect the universe to conform to an anthropic view.
Right, and we always think the ancient Greeks were so naive to put the Earth at the center! Still haven't learned that lesson.
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 12:18 PM
Right, and we always think the ancient Greeks were so naive to put the Earth at the center! Still haven't learned that lesson.
I think it's amazing that we've come so far based on such limited personal experiences... it's a testament to the scientific method IMO.
Agreed. Now the question is, where does the scientific method lead into the study of free will, and do we need a few new tricks?
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 01:25 PM
Agreed. Now the question is, where does the scientific method lead into the study of free will, and do we need a few new tricks?
I'm stumped when it comes to that application... I feel as though we're trying to visualize something based on concepts like the mind and consciousness, which are not well defined. Well, they tend to be somewhat fluid at least, and each new discovery seems to raise questions in the philosophical arena, not resolve them.
Ferris_bg
Mar11-11, 02:57 PM
Hi Ken G,
The topic of free will (http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/) is really the "big one" in the philosophy of mind, so when discussing it one should already know all the other philosophical concepts underlying it. How can we define free will? It's surely something above mental causation. And it's something above strong downward causation. So basically to say that one has free will is to say that one has some specific type of strong downward causation. What materialistic theories give credit to free will? Certainly not reductionism (http://www.iep.utm.edu/identity/). While mental causation is present there, it is identical with the physical causation, and there is absolutely no account for free will. So what about non-reductive physicalism? Take for example anomalous monism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_monism). The theory wants to mark causal interaction as possible, but could it be? Can we have downward causation, when we speak about token identity theories? Can we have even any mental causation?
If we want a mental event M1 to cause a physical event P2 and if we want the causal status of the mental to derive from the causal status of its physical realizer P1 (so that the theory doesn't fall in the substance dualist category) we are faced with over-determination (P2 could be realized by M1, as well as by P1 alone). If there are no greater causal powers that magically emerge at the higher level of M1 (if we want the theory to stay a materialistic one) then the causal powers of M1 are identical to the causal powers of P1, which means that P1 is the only realizer of P2, thus M1 becomes epiphenomenal. You can read more about this here (http://www.iep.utm.edu/mult-rea/#H4).
So, in the materialistic view you can either have mental causation identical with the physical causation or you can embrace epiphenomenalism and qualia. In both ways free will is impossible. If you want to find free will, you must seek it outside the materialistic domain.
Q_Goest,
In your post here (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3179362&postcount=90) you say you don't believe in the phenomenal-physical correlation and basically you reject epiphenomenalism. And at first it doesn't looks logic, how can one make a knowledge claim about consciousness if it's epiphenomenal? But does the agent's association of the conscious experience of some event and its labeled state in the brain contradict in any way? The definition of the word "consciousness" in the brain state is not associated with the experience of it, but does this interfere the brain to be able to label certain physical state? Think about it, how will you explain the word "consciousness" to a little boy and what association does his brain make. For me epiphenomenalism implies that in exactly every millisecond your brain takes the optimal decision based on the available information. Even when you do something anti-evolutionary (take a lot of drugs, commit a suicide) it must be somehow justified in your brain calculations. Because if it's not, epiphenomenalism is wrong (remember you don't have taken the drug because YOU liked it, but because your BRAIN liked it).
Pythagorean
Mar11-11, 03:01 PM
...
You can go back farther than computers. The computer is basically just a glorified calculator used to solve differential equations that we can't solve by hand (or we could.... but it would take hours and pages where the computer can do it in seconds and kilobytes).
But think about this: let's say you have some giant system of N differential equations to describe the whole universe. You have every single interaction reduced to a handful of variables. Now all you need to do is put in your initial conditions for those variables.
What do you do? Your theory already accounts for everything in the universe, yet your theory doesn't account for how the initial conditions arose. Do you make the initial conditions a function of some part of the system? So now there was always this loop and never a beginning or end? I'm puzzled, personally, I have no idea what I'd do.
Anyway, I'm hoping this demonstrates that the science and the philosophy are completely different, just like models and reality. As another examples, we know that quantum mechanics underlies all classical observations, yet we naively model things in the old classical view. Why? Because it's effective, it's productive, it works. This is not the same way I approach the problem in a philosophical setting.
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 03:04 PM
You can go back farther than computers. The computer is basically just a glorified calculator used to solve differential equations that we can't solve by hand (or we could.... but it would take hours and pages where the computer can do it in seconds and kilobytes).
But think about this: let's say you have some giant system of N differential equations to describe the whole universe. You have every single interaction reduced to a handful of variables. Now all you need to do is put in your initial conditions for those variables.
What do you do? Your theory already accounts for everything in the universe, yet your theory doesn't account for how the initial conditions arose. Do you make the initial conditions a function of some part of the system? So now there was always this loop and never a beginning or end? I'm puzzled, personally, I have no idea what I'd do.
Anyway, I'm hoping this demonstrates that the science and the philosophy are completely different, just like models and reality. As another examples, we know that quantum mechanics underlies all classical observations, yet we naively model things in the old classical view. Why? Because it's effective, it's productive, it works. This is not the same way I approach the problem in a philosophical setting.
A "shut up and calculate" philsopher? If you weren't so clearly a dude, I'd be in love. :biggrin:
(not sarcasm)
apeiron
Mar11-11, 03:07 PM
And yet, it is really many-worlds which is holistic, and has a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.
I would still argue not as many worlds is exactly the sum of its parts. Every locally forking history accumulates without any constraint. Holism would require that the local freedom to branch would be restricted so the system only manifested some paths and not all of them.
By contrast in QM views of causality, a Feynman sum over histories approach to collapse is holistic as all paths "happen" but then there is a global constraint to some single self-consistent event.
apeiron
Mar11-11, 03:22 PM
Personally, I always get a chuckle when I see the term "fundamental" used in physics. What does that even mean? Perhaps when we look at the history of physics, we should start relating to what physics actually is rather than how we might like to imagine it. The natural conclusion is that the word "fundamental" by itself does not have meaning in physics, but "more fundamental" does. Given this, we should not be surprised that causality is not fundamental, but we can perhaps view it as "more fundamental" than a concept like space. The prevailing question of this thread is then, "which is more fundamental, causality or free will?" Or perhaps neither emerges from the other, but both emerge from something else.
Causality is of course fundamental and freewill as near epiphenomenal as you can get :smile:. Causality would be our general or universal model of why anything happens (why even existence happens), while freewill is just some vanishingly rare, relatively impotent on the cosmic scale, feature of a complex system.
In philosophy, the fundamental is the general. In physics, it is generally taken to be the smallest scale - which is why atomistic reductionism is the driving idea.
And when it comes to identify these general principles or universals, philosophy finds that they are always dichotomies or complementary/synergistic/asymmetric pairs.
So as well as the local, there is the global. As well as the discrete, there is the continuous. As well as flux, there is stasis. As well as chance, there is necessity, etc.
Which is why it is no surprise that causality itself is dualised. As well as bottom-up construction, there is top-down constraint.
apeiron
Mar11-11, 04:39 PM
Let’s talk about what these models are for a minute because I think the philosophy of why they are the way they are is being overlooked.
It's great that you are willing to get into the details of a defence of your view. And my reply is that you are missing the wood for the trees :cool:.
What you are highlighting here is simply the fact that allowing a system to go to global equilbrium allows you then quite properly to drop the global causes from your model because now you are only interested in what can change - the local variables, the local fluctuations, the local events. This is what reductionist modelling is all about.
It is right there in Newton's three laws of motion. The first two laws atomised the notion of local action into a force and a mass. Mass could have intrinsic motion which was inertial, and that made any globally observable change in motion the result of an atomistic force (a force vector).
So already in the first two laws, Newton's great reductionist simplification was to equilibrate away the global spacetime backdrop. Taken the greek atomist's notion of the void, he said the background exists, but it is causally inert. It is simply an equilbrated or unchanging stage upon which there is a localised play of atoms - atoms of mass and atoms of force.
Then to make this highly reduced view of reality fly, he had to introduce his third law of action~reaction. For every forceful action, there is an equal and opposite forceful reaction - a little matching localised anti-vector.
Patently the reaction vector is not actually a symmetric entity. Instead it sums up all the contextual constraints that are found to impinge on the locale. If you push against the wall, then it is not just several square inches of wall that pushes back. It is the building, the planet to which it is attached, the gravity fields which affect the planet, etc.
The third law is the local equilbrium correction! The first two laws removed the generalised background and the third quietly accounts for any disturbances of the global state by localising it to another linear and atomistic event - a reaction vector.
So this is the "philosophy" of physics - or at least the highly successful modelling strategy on which all mechanical thinking is based. Equilibrate away the global causes, the context that constrains, and you can then just describe reality in terms of local atomistic entities and local forceful changes. Just treat reality as a collection of actions happening in a mute void.
Now FEA just repeats the same exercise. If you can't equilibrate away the whole global story at once, then break the job up into a suitably grained set of compartments. Create localised equilibration stories that add up with suitably low error to give you a globally equilibrated model.
Does this then say that global downward acting constraints don't exist? Or that reductionist modelling finds ever more clever ways around them?
Now this thread was about the neurology of freewill. (Not modelling neurons with FEA).
The kind of systems that FEA is suitable for modelling is stuff like fluid dynamics. This is the non-living world where global constraints are holonomic. We are safe to presume the constraints or boundary conditions are at equilbrium and unchanging. Locally the aircraft wing may be subject to some complexity due to emergent turbulent features. But generally temperature, pressure, material strengths, viscosity, are a stable backdrop to the model.
There is not a local~global interaction so that for example the flex of the wing causes a tropical storm that sends a bolt of lightning that changes the material strength of the wing, or even just causes a dramatic pressure drop in the vicinity of the wing. No, the FEA analysis rules out interactions across scale by choice.
But for living systems, we are now talking about systems that have non-holonomic constraints. They do have the informational machinery (such as genes, words, membranes, action potentials, etc) to control their own boundary conditions or downwards acting constraints.
So to model living systems, we have to model that ability to change the global constraints - for meaningful reasons. Which is why I keep challenging you to reply to the literature on top-down selective attention and its power to reshape local neural receptive fields.
You would rather keep the discussion focused on the most reductionist models of single neurons that you can find. And yes, you can take what a receptor pore does and model it as an isolated mechanical device sitting in a stable equilibrium world utterly unlike the real world of a receptor pore. It will tell you something about the local degrees of freedom that the device might have. But it cannot then tell you anything about the kinds of global constraints that act on those degrees of freedom. You literally cannot in principle see them.
Now you can do a Blue Brain exercise and throw a lot of devices together and simulate - see what kind of global organisation arises to constrain a network of artificial neurons. If you have built your simulation with local components that can change their behaviour (as is familiar with neural nets with nodes that can adapt their local weights), then you can start to get a realistic development of local~global interactions.
But a simulation is NOT a model. The results you are celebrating are the observable output, not an axiomatic input. You are demonstrating an effect, not a cause.
A proper model in this context would be one where you have a handle on both the bottom-up and top-down sources of causality and so can compute the outcomes directly - predict the observable state rather than merely discover it post-hoc.
So this is why systems modelling is different from reductionist modelling. Reductionism wants to deal only in local causation (and so finds ways to equilibrate away any global effects to make them a "void" - an unchanging backdrop). Systems modelling recognises that global constraints can be an active part of the mix and so seeks to include them in the model.
This is of course very difficult to do as yet. In fact it could be another 20 to 30 years before we have the real breakthroughs in this area. Everyone thought fractals, chaos theory and non-linear dynamics was some kind of mathematical modelling revolution. But that was just a first ripple of the change that could come.
I would still argue not as many worlds is exactly the sum of its parts. Every locally forking history accumulates without any constraint. Holism would require that the local freedom to branch would be restricted so the system only manifested some paths and not all of them.It appears we have a different idea of the meaning of "holism" as it pertains to quantum mechanics, so this might be interesting to delve into. To me, the quintessential example of holism is the violation of the Bell inequality. This requires correlations of a specific type, i.e., not the type of correlations we have classically-- instead, it requires a concept of a joint wave function, in effect. The simplest example there is a Bell state, like |A>|a> + |B>|b>, where capital letters are for one part of the system and small for the other, and A and B are two different outcomes. Classically, there's just three things there, A-like aspects, B-like aspects, and the probabilistic combination thereof, but the Bell state allows algebraic correlations that are also part of the state, so the state has four elements-- there's an extra element which is the algebraic consequences of the combination (the phase coherences), and that's what unifies the A-like and B-like aspects into a single whole, even when A and B are incompatible outcomes.
Seeing a macro reality as if it were akin to a Bell state is what many-worlds does-- Copenhagen treats the macro reality like the classical state, where the probabilistic element reflects our lack of information rather than something that is really true about the reality. In many worlds, the algebraic (holistic) combination is a legitimate aspect of the reality (it's one that we the observer are never privy to, because the phase coherences are of such a complex and intractable nature that we never see their consequences in any experimental outcome-- our degrees of freedom are limited to an "island" of coherent phases, the boundaries of which are unapproachable by the way we interact with our reality). In short, in Copenhagen, the observer effects are what determine reality, and in many-worlds, the observer effects are a prison that prevents us from seeing the reality. That's why I see the difference as which one subordinates to the other: the physics or the physicist. And the meaning of "holism" is also dependent on this choice-- if we subordinate the physicist to the physics, then what is "whole" is the mathematical concept, the state vector with all its invisible phase correlations that we cannot be affected by because they don't fit into our coherent subset. If we subordinate the physics to the physicist, then what is "whole" is the consistent history that physicist will use to describe their reality, and the "many worlds" seem fragmented.
By contrast in QM views of causality, a Feynman sum over histories approach to collapse is holistic as all paths "happen" but then there is a global constraint to some single self-consistent event.Yes, you take the Bohr view that the observer effects are global constraints that reality must satisfy-- many worlds drops that requirement. I prefer the pragmatism of the Bohr perspective, but I think that when we take the pragmatic approach, we don't really have a holistic perspective left, because we cannot say that only a single "state of reality" is consistent with the global constraints-- there may be many states that are equally consistent, at the level of precision by which those constraints can be defined.
Causality is of course fundamental and freewill as near epiphenomenal as you can get :smile:. Causality would be our general or universal model of why anything happens (why even existence happens), while freewill is just some vanishingly rare, relatively impotent on the cosmic scale, feature of a complex system.
Your certainty isn't warranted.
It doesn't really matter how convincingly well the 4 fields are able to mimic the existence of solid objects with causal relations between them. They are not. And this is a truly tremendous point for philosophy, as by far the most consistent model of reality we have today(it's also the only consistent one) is that of fields and the field intensity that represents the probability that some classically looking(causality preserving) event will take place somewhere. If you think you understand the reality via your models- you don't. If you hope to understand the future TOE(the master equation) - you won't. Causality is just another part of the human baggage and will play a secondary role(or no apparent role) in a complex, self-consistent mathematical scheme(TOE).
Another ponit would be that if causality were so important and fundamental, we'd have figured out by now why the Schroedinger equation works as it does and probabilities would give way to certainty.
The universe isn't classical(this is certain), it's quantum and it looks classical under specific circumstances but in others, the classical universe worldview is totally inconsistent and can't explain a whol;e miriad of phenomena that the quantum worldview can. In the other thread in the qunatum forum someone is asking how two solid bodies can actually 'touch'. Go explain that in classical terms when the whole mindset that prompted the question is completely false.
apeiron
Mar11-11, 06:05 PM
Your certainty isn't warranted.
But what I actually said was that even causality is something we "just model". Which is why both the reductionist model, and the systems model, could be "right" - each effective for their purposes, or within their domains.
So, in the materialistic view you can either have mental causation identical with the physical causation or you can embrace epiphenomenalism and qualia. In both ways free will is impossible. If you want to find free will, you must seek it outside the materialistic domain.Hello Ferris_bg, and welcome to the dialog. Personally I have no difficulty rejecting physicalism, it strikes me as weak logic. It seems to basically follow the path "because physical models have given us excellent predictive power, we will embrace the idea that the universe is physical." That is far from a syllogisim! Note also that when I say "physical" or "material", what I really mean (and what I would claim others really mean) is "physical models" or "material models", for the very use of the term invokes models. If one is not talking about models, then the terms "physical", "material", or "reality" have no distinctions, so add no content. Whatever is, is, and the labels we hang on it is of no consequence unless those labels characterize our models of it.
Patently the reaction vector is not actually a symmetric entity. Instead it sums up all the contextual constraints that are found to impinge on the locale. If you push against the wall, then it is not just several square inches of wall that pushes back. It is the building, the planet to which it is attached, the gravity fields which affect the planet, etc.
I think you are making a lot of valid and insightful points, but I would see a need for correction in this one. Newton's third law is not that "the universe will conspire in a complex way to insure that every force results in a reaction force", it is that every single force that can ever happen comes in a pair, because forces are binary relationships, and it makes no difference what the rest of the universe is doing at the time. This is why it is not necessary for that square inch of the wall to be attached to anything in order for any force you put on it to meet with an equal and opposite force on your hand. If the wall is attached, it can remain stationary and provide that counter-force. If it is unattached, it will accelerate, and then its inertia will allow it to provide that counter-force. If the wall is unattached and has no inertia, then you cannot apply a force to it in the first place. This is why the ability to generate and experience forces is connected to inertia-- an inertialess charge, for example, would be singular in Newton's scheme, not because the universe would conspire in some complicated way to disallow it, but because that one single massless charge in the presence of an electric field yields a mathematical singularity all by itself within the Newtonian framework.
Indeed, it is often said that the third law is the reason for conservation of momentum, but when conservation of momentum is viewed as an axiom of translational symmetry, the logic flows in the opposite direction: the third law holds because of translational symmetry. So Newton's "reaction" concept is indeed a symmetry principle, as action without reaction would always have to break translational symmetry. That is what could only happen if the larger universe conspires to break that symmetry, so it is not the presence of the reaction, but its absence, that requires a larger universe to provide the necessary constraints.
Causality is of course fundamental and freewill as near epiphenomenal as you can get :smile:. Causality would be our general or universal model of why anything happens (why even existence happens), while freewill is just some vanishingly rare, relatively impotent on the cosmic scale, feature of a complex system.That is certainly a commonly adopted stance, but I would like to suggest another angle. I think that everything we think about how reality "works" is subordinated to how we interact with reality. And how we interact with reality is subordinated to how our brain works, including free will. So free will should not be expected to emerge from our study of reality, it should emerge (if at all) from our study of our brains.
So then the obvious conundrum emerges-- is our brain not a part of reality, so will not the same techniques that worked on "external" reality work on the brain? Maybe yes, and maybe no-- that's the point. The way we learn about reality is so caught up in the functioning of our brains that it is no longer obvious "which side of the microscope" the brain is on. We have no guarantee that the way we think about causation for, say, a charge in a field, will help us understand how the charges in our brains help us think-- it's just an article of faith that the kinds of questions that are pertinent will be the same.
Now, I have no other suggestions other than to apply the same techniques and ask the same types of questions, perhaps on a more sophisticated level (like the tennis match between up-down and down-up causation that you have been advocating), or on the reductionist level that has also been discussed. I'm just saying we should not start out with the assertion that this must lead us to the most fundamental results-- it may lead us down a dead-end street. A brain trying to understand a brain might be like a puppy chasing its tail, and when a puppy chases its tail, it has no idea why the tail keeps moving just out of reach every time the pupply makes a lunge at it, so it keeps on lunging, because lunging has worked so well on everything else.
In philosophy, the fundamental is the general. In physics, it is generally taken to be the smallest scale - which is why atomistic reductionism is the driving idea.Yes, and it is remarkable that quantum mechanics obeys the correspondence principle-- there is nothing that appears to emerge in simple dynamical systems when passing from the quantum to the macro domain that invalidates the quantum analysis, it merely renders the quantum analysis inelegant. But as we both agree, that may be because of the way the problems are "rigged" to obey the correspondence principle from the outset-- the correspondence principle may not be a principle about reality, it may be a principle about physics, or how physics is generally done.
And when it comes to identify these general principles or universals, philosophy finds that they are always dichotomies or complementary/synergistic/asymmetric pairs.
So as well as the local, there is the global. As well as the discrete, there is the continuous. As well as flux, there is stasis. As well as chance, there is necessity, etc.
Which is why it is no surprise that causality itself is dualised. As well as bottom-up construction, there is top-down constraint.The tennis match. Indeed I have long felt the "yin-yang" symbolism of eastern philosophy was one of the most profound concepts the human mind has ever developed-- the importance of both apparent contrast and deeper unity in generating understanding.
apeiron
Mar11-11, 08:37 PM
I think you are making a lot of valid and insightful points, but I would see a need for correction in this one. Newton's third law is not that "the universe will conspire in a complex way to insure that every force results in a reaction force", it is that every single force that can ever happen comes in a pair, because forces are binary relationships, and it makes no difference what the rest of the universe is doing at the time. This is why it is not necessary for that square inch of the wall to be attached to anything in order for any force you put on it to meet with an equal and opposite force on your hand. If the wall is attached, it can remain stationary and provide that counter-force. If it is unattached, it will accelerate, and then its inertia will allow it to provide that counter-force. If the wall is unattached and has no inertia, then you cannot apply a force to it in the first place. This is why the ability to generate and experience forces is connected to inertia-- an inertialess charge, for example, would be singular in Newton's scheme, not because the universe would conspire in some complicated way to disallow it, but because that one single massless charge in the presence of an electric field yields a mathematical singularity all by itself within the Newtonian framework.
Not true. If the wall is not attached to anything, it just means you are having to exert less of an accelerative force and so the contextual back-reaction is matchingly less. All you have to overcome is the resistance of surrounding air molecules.
And it the wall "doesn't move", then the acceleration you exert will produce heat and noise. Equilibration is still happening.
If you and the wall are in space, then it becomes even clearer that who pushed who is a perfectly symmetrical question so far as the laws of physics are concerned.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say about inertia, but the whole point of an inertial body is that it is at equilibrium with the world. There is nothing acting on it to change its state of motion. There is no action, and so no re-action needed to re-equilibrate our local~global view of the body.
So Newton's "reaction" concept is indeed a symmetry principle, as action without reaction would always have to break translational symmetry. That is what could only happen if the larger universe conspires to break that symmetry, so it is not the presence of the reaction, but its absence, that requires a larger universe to provide the necessary constraints.
Err, it is the model that reduces the description of the world to a set of symmetries. That is how the actual entangled messy dynamism of the world can get abstracted away.
Science seeks the equilbrium stories because then it needs only measure the macrostate - the global constraints - and can ignore the confusion of local detail. The ontological mistake is then to call those robust and stable macrostates (like spacetime with its "inherent" symmetries) the fundamental ground of things.
apeiron
Mar11-11, 09:26 PM
That is certainly a commonly adopted stance, but I would like to suggest another angle. I think that everything we think about how reality "works" is subordinated to how we interact with reality. And how we interact with reality is subordinated to how our brain works, including free will. So free will should not be expected to emerge from our study of reality, it should emerge (if at all) from our study of our brains.
What you might like as the way out of this conundrum are the philosophies offered by CS Peirce and Robert Rosen.
Peirce starts completely from "inside subjectivity" and works his way out to an objective description of reality in a reasoned fashion. It is very important that in logic he places abduction as prior to even induction and deduction.
And Rosen (a theoretical biologist who died about 10 years back) wrote about modelling relations theory. This is ultimately a theory of mind as the mind is a modelling system.
The tennis match. Indeed I have long felt the "yin-yang" symbolism of eastern philosophy was one of the most profound concepts the human mind has ever developed-- the importance of both apparent contrast and deeper unity in generating understanding.
A good book here is Joanna Macy's Mutual Causality in Buddhism and Systems Theory.
But I have to say that yin yang is a very undeveloped logic. The ancient greeks did this systems view of logic much better (see Anaximander, then Aristotle). Of course, it is an open question whether the greeks inspired the Taoists or the other way round as both views arose around the same time.
See for instance...http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0309104
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 09:33 PM
What you might like as the way out of this conundrum are the philosophies offered by CS Peirce and Robert Rosen.
Peirce starts completely from "inside subjectivity" and works his way out to an objective description of reality in a reasoned fashion. It is very important that in logic he places abduction as prior to even induction and deduction.
And Rosen (a theoretical biologist who died about 10 years back) wrote about modelling relations theory. This is ultimately a theory of mind as the mind is a modelling system.
A good book here is Joanna Macy's Mutual Causality in Buddhism and Systems Theory.
But I have to say that yin yang is a very undeveloped logic. The ancient greeks did this systems view of logic much better (see Anaximander, then Aristotle). Of course, it is an open question whether the greeks inspired the Taoists or the other way round as both views arose around the same time.
See for instance...http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0309104
Hmmm... good reading... do you have any more along these lines? I got a Kindle, and I'm in a book-buying mood... a wide range would be best.
Not true. If the wall is not attached to anything, it just means you are having to exert less of an accelerative force and so the contextual back-reaction is matchingly less. All you have to overcome is the resistance of surrounding air molecules.
Not air resistance, inertia. And the force I can exert may have more to do with my physique than whether or not the wall is attached. My point is merely that no matter what the rest of the universe is doing, action/reaction is fundamental in Newton's system. The rest of the universe may get some input into how much force I can exert, that is a complex issue, but it doesn't get any say as to whether or not the force I can exert will be met with an equal reaction force, that is always true even in a universe of just me and the wall. This issue is actually a purely reductionist triumph-- if you analyze the force in terms of a bunch of pieces interacting with each other, and each of those pieces obeys Newton's third law (as is postulated in that system), then the whole will also.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say about inertia, but the whole point of an inertial body is that it is at equilibrium with the world.Inertia just means mass, it doesn't mean not accelerating-- that's "inertial." Why those terms are used like that, I have no idea.
Err, it is the model that reduces the description of the world to a set of symmetries. That is how the actual entangled messy dynamism of the world can get abstracted away.
Yes, the model is an abstraction. It involves a background against which a universe can exist, and the background is translationally invariant. That means you could take that same universe and translate it, with no effect, as long as you translate everything. If you only translate part, then the "everything else" becomes a place you can put unbalanced forces and momenta, such that the part you are dealing with won't have an action/reaction principle. So if you don't see action/reaction working, then it implies (in this model system) that you are not dealing with the whole universe-- the presence of an "external" universe makes it presence known in the violation of Newton's third law, not in its enforcement.
Science seeks the equilbrium stories because then it needs only measure the macrostate - the global constraints - and can ignore the confusion of local detail. The ontological mistake is then to call those robust and stable macrostates (like spacetime with its "inherent" symmetries) the fundamental ground of things.And indeed Newton's laws are found wanting for just this reason.
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 10:27 PM
@Ken G: I'd taking readng tips from you too...
What you might like as the way out of this conundrum are the philosophies offered by CS Peirce and Robert Rosen.
Peirce starts completely from "inside subjectivity" and works his way out to an objective description of reality in a reasoned fashion. It is very important that in logic he places abduction as prior to even induction and deduction.That does sound interesting. I must confess I had never even heard of "abduction" (other than the alien version) until I googled it, and it is indeed an important part of formal reasoning-- especially scientific reasoning. Indeed, I can see how easy it would be to argue that deduction and induction are just opposite extreme forms of abduction. This also gibes with the issue of truth vs. meaning that came up earlier: logic is often thought of as the arena for establishing syntactic truth, whereas experience is the arena of meaning. Induction and deduction are syntactic, a computer could be programmed to recognize them, but abduction would seem to straddle the domains of truth and meaning, sacrificing a formal stance in either realm in exchange for the ability to cross their boundaries. Fuzzy logic.
But I have to say that yin yang is a very undeveloped logic. The ancient greeks did this systems view of logic much better (see Anaximander, then Aristotle).I'm not sure I would consider yin/yang a form of logic at all-- perhaps the Greeks took a different turn when they explored the power of logic. Indeed that may be the fundamental turn that distinguishes western vs. eastern thinking-- form vs. function, reason vs. introspection, consistency vs. contradiction. The Greeks gained great powers by banishing contradiction, and it has taken thousands of years to "play out the string" they started. But something might have gotten left behind, something that must someday be confronted in a theory of mind. Was yin/yang left behind for being underdeveloped, or just too far ahead of its time?
@Ken G: I'd taking readng tips from you too...I'm not as adept at tracking my sources of inspiration-- my thoughts come from a mish-mash of ideas I've been exposed to, including by people such as those on this thread. Probably the usual cast of characters in physics philosophy: Feynman, Wheeler, Wittgenstein, Penrose, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, etc. Some of whom claim to be "shut up and calculate" types, a claim I never pay any attention to. :)
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 11:21 PM
I'm not as adept at tracking my sources of inspiration-- my thoughts come from a mish-mash of ideas I've been exposed to, including by people such as those on this thread. Probably the usual cast of characters in physics philosophy: Feynman, Wheeler, Wittgenstein, Penrose, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, etc. Some of whom claim to be "shut up and calculate" types, a claim I never pay any attention to. :)
I don't mind, although it seems we're already fans of similar authors. Thanks very much Ken G, and if you think of anything later, just drop me a PM... I'm always hunting for reading material.
apeiron
Mar11-11, 11:22 PM
Was yin/yang left behind for being underdeveloped, or just too far ahead of its time?
Or both - as first we had to work out reductionism, now we can go back to the project of holism.
I am just describing my own experience really. I learnt the modern view of systems first. Then heard about Peirce. Then discovered that Anaximander, the first real philospher, had with surprising completeness got the whole essential systems story just about. And Aristotle - if you are reading him with a systems eye - was in fact struggling to marry the two perspectives. Anaximander's systems thinking and the later equally compelling worldview of atomism.
This is not of course how many people are taught Aristotle. History is told by the winners and so the whole of Ancient Greek philosophy 101 is about how these old fools lurched from one metaphysical extreme to another.
The early philosophers sought the fundamental substance (was it air, water, the apeiron?). Plato said no the fundamental was form (his version of substance, chora, barely gets mentioned). Heraclitus said all was flux (actually no, his view was more complex) and Parmenides bamboozled them by arguing there was only stasis, the impossibility of actual change. And instead of the illusory many, just the perfect one.
So it goes on. Every step of the metaphysical development hinged on discovering nature's dichotomies, but modern reductionism demands the story be taught as a series of monistic turns of thought.
So what I am saying is there is some stunningly well worked out systems theory in ancient greek philosophy. But no one really tells that tale.
The best academic account of Anaximander's philosophy is Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology by Charles Kahn - pretty dry of course.
nismaratwork
Mar11-11, 11:48 PM
Or both - as first we had to work out reductionism, now we can go back to the project of holism.
I am just describing my own experience really. I learnt the modern view of systems first. Then heard about Peirce. Then discovered that Anaximander, the first real philospher, had with surprising completeness got the whole essential systems story just about. And Aristotle - if you are reading him with a systems eye - was in fact struggling to marry the two perspectives. Anaximander's systems thinking and the later equally compelling worldview of atomism.
This is not of course how many people are taught Aristotle. History is told by the winners and so the whole of Ancient Greek philosophy 101 is about how these old fools lurched from one metaphysical extreme to another.
The early philosophers sought the fundamental substance (was it air, water, the apeiron?). Plato said no the fundamental was form (his version of substance, chora, barely gets mentioned). Heraclitus said all was flux (actually no, his view was more complex) and Parmenides bamboozled them by arguing there was only stasis, the impossibility of actual change. And instead of the illusory many, just the perfect one.
So it goes on. Every step of the metaphysical development hinged on discovering nature's dichotomies, but modern reductionism demands the story be taught as a series of monistic turns of thought.
So what I am saying is there is some stunningly well worked out systems theory in ancient greek philosophy. But no one really tells that tale.
The best academic account of Anaximander's philosophy is Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology by Charles Kahn - pretty dry of course.
Dry is fine as long as it's informative... I feel cheated by my education, which fell to precisely the traps and tropes you describe.
apeiron
Mar12-11, 12:10 AM
Not air resistance, inertia.
Inertia? What is holding together the atoms of this bit of wall we are pushing about. There is a network of electrostatic bonds with an internal equilibrium to assert. We can only maintain a fiction of a localised reaction vector because the bit of wall does not fly apart into its atoms with the shove. If the wall did atomise, then we would have to chase after all the individual stories represented by the flying atoms (the now widely scattered "inertia").
You are of course familiar with the Machian mechanics debate as well?
Inertia just means mass, it doesn't mean not accelerating-- that's "inertial." Why those terms are used like that, I have no idea.
Inertia and mass do appear tied together. Though how this is the case is not completely straightened out (the Higgs mechanism is remarkably contextual wouldn't you say? :devil:)
And indeed Newton's laws are found wanting for just this reason.
You mean relativity fixed things by stepping back to more general symmetries - ones that could include spacetime as well its massive events.
So exactly as I have argued, Newton took his boundary conditions as static, eternal, uninvolved. This could not last. Einstein removed those specific constraints to model reality at a more general level - ones where those local values (the stress-energy tensor values) that make spacetime flat or empty have to be put back in to determine the state of the geometry.
Newton's model was so constrained that it lacked flexibility. Einstein's model was less constrained and so constraints could be added back in as a choice. But it is still all the same trick - mechanics. You equilbrate away your global constraints to arrive at a model based on global symmetries. Then you add stuff back in to this globally inanimate picture to animate it locally as required.
Talking about excellent reads, The Evolution of Physics by Einstein and Infeld is a great insight into how the mechanical view developed.
But there are thousands of must-read books. Sigh.
Pythagorean
Mar12-11, 12:26 AM
Q_Goest
in addition to what was already said, you might want to consider what you know about a particular brand of differential equations in which the differentiation is no longer an integer value (so we can the 5.4th derivative instead of the 5th or 6th). If you have a network of "cells" and you couple them with such a term, it's not classical diffusion anymore, but it's still valid.
In this case, we no longer have nearest neighbor influences only. Each member of the system can now depend on whole system's global state rather than nearest neighbor. It has been shown recently that the diffusive process in highly turbulent systems is better described by this non-classical diffusive process (and we're still not talking about QM despite it being non-classical).
And of course, via my argument from before, these are open systems in reality, so you can introduce any kind of driving/forcing term you want to represent particular global effects. You're not going to be able to take all the different models describing different aspects and put them all together without conflicts and inconsistencies. They're models; they only work for what they were designed.
I learnt the modern view of systems first. Then heard about Peirce. Then discovered that Anaximander, the first real philospher, had with surprising completeness got the whole essential systems story just about. And Aristotle - if you are reading him with a systems eye - was in fact struggling to marry the two perspectives. Anaximander's systems thinking and the later equally compelling worldview of atomism.
I hadn't heard much about Anaximander, I'll have to find out more. I've long been interested in Parmenides and Zeno, and how they tried to invent a form of logic that could tell them things about reality, even if it told them the reality they recognize is an illusion. Amazingly, it kind of worked, as modern physics has found some remarkable synergy with the logical impossibility of change-- and the modern "quantum Zeno effect" must be some kind of record for the longest time between an idea and it's experimental confirmation, even if in an unanticipated way.
The early philosophers sought the fundamental substance (was it air, water, the apeiron?).Which explains your handle...
So what I am saying is there is some stunningly well worked out systems theory in ancient greek philosophy. But no one really tells that tale.
I'm often struck by how many of the great questions they anticipated. It's almost impossible to find territory they didn't touch on somewhere. Ironically, they end up getting bashed for it-- so many questions, so few answers. People don't understand the most important thing philosophy does is map the terrain, you have to find your own destinations.
Inertia? What is holding together the atoms of this bit of wall we are pushing about. There is a network of electrostatic bonds with an internal equilibrium to assert. We can only maintain a fiction of a localised reaction vector because the bit of wall does not fly apart into its atoms with the shove.If the wall flies apart, the reaction vector might not be localizable into a single one, but there will still be reaction vectors. The forces that appear will depend on the larger context, but not the presence of reaction vectors-- in Newton's; scheme, every force always comes in pairs, whether the substance shatters or not. The internal forces of which you speak only affect the global context that determines how the forces play out, but not their coming in pairs-- the latter is purely reductionist, it's a sum of parts. If the wall did atomise, then we would have to chase after all the individual stories represented by the flying atoms (the now widely scattered "inertia").True, it would not be easy to make an accounting of all the action/reaction pairs there. But the Newtonian system says that they would be there all the same, and no matter how you group up the halves of the action/reaction pairs microscopically, the macroscopic result will always also be an action/reaction pair, because it is a simple sum.
You are of course familiar with the Machian mechanics debate as well?
Yes, the idea that mass there provides inertia here. But we're in the Newtonian system here-- explaining the source of inertia is not included!
Inertia and mass do appear tied together. Though how this is the case is not completely straightened out (the Higgs mechanism is remarkably contextual wouldn't you say? :devil:)
I'm not even sure the Higgs mechanism explains it.
So exactly as I have argued, Newton took his boundary conditions as static, eternal, uninvolved.Yes, that's true, I think your point is valid that Einstein's view is more of a systems view, because the spacetime backdrop is itself embroiled in the action. In fact, that's not the end of it, because Einstein generates differential equations, so are open to the need for additional boundary conditions-- more systems. I was just saying that the law of action/reaction percolates up from the atomistic foundation of Newton's approach, it's bottom-up. Had Newton been completely right, there wouldn't be much room for a systems approach to any aspect of physical reality. Perhaps an Anaximander fan in Newton's own day could have been skeptical that reality could exhibit rich phenomena, like conscious choice, in such a sterile scheme, but that was Newton's scheme all the same.
apeiron
Mar12-11, 04:26 PM
If the wall flies apart, the reaction vector might not be localizable into a single one, but there will still be reaction vectors.
I'm not sure whether you are agreeing or not. How do you account for a rocket ship for example? Do you try to sum up a bunch of tiny force vectors for the hot plume of combusting gas, or just go with the simpler single vector for the mass flow rate?
But the point I was making was about how the systems view is actually smuggled into mechanics.
Action~reaction is an example of how a global constraint (the presumption of energy conservation) has a downward causal effect(!) on the locales of a Newtonian system. That global symmetry entails the local ones. So any time something is seen to happen (an acceleration), there has to be a localised re-equilbration, a local conservation of energy. And this justifies the very simple approach of representing the situation as a pair of identical cancelling force vectors.
The same mechanical trick is repeated elsewhere.
In GR, of course, the law of conservation is not hardwired in as a global symmetry of the model. Instead, it has to be built in as a futher constraint - such as by specifying an inertial reference frame. So GR relaxes a global constraint to make the baseline model all flexxy, then allows you to put back in the constraints by hand to stiffen it up again and enforce a behaviour on a systems locales.
In QM, we have the problem of fluctuations - potential actions without a cancelling reaction. People start to think we might be able to turn the zero point energy into a perpetual motion machine! But fluctuations are tamed by the toy trick of virtual pair production. We say no, global conservation of energy still must rule. So what is actually happening down there (wink, wink) is that the vacuum is producing self-cancelling particle pairs.
The same with super-conductors. A real headache to model until BCS and the pretence that electrons joined hands to dash about as coupled bosonic pairs.
Mechanics is the sub-set of systems theory where the global constraints are treated as an equilbrium state that enforces also a local equilbrium. Once you have got the mechanics set up like this, a baseline view founded on a pervasive symmetry, then you can start modelling the propagation of change as symmetry breakings.
If the symmetry breakings are localised in some way, then you get a kind of quasi particle description of nature. If the symmetry breaking is global, well you get the big bang, the thermal model of time, etc.
(Talking of essential books again, Robert Laughlin's A Different Universe is a great polemic against the currently dominant reductionist mindset of physics).
I'm not sure whether you are agreeing or not. How do you account for a rocket ship for example? Do you try to sum up a bunch of tiny force vectors for the hot plume of combusting gas, or just go with the simpler single vector for the mass flow rate?You won't do the former, but you could-- the latter is the sum of the former parts. That is why you know the latter will be an action/reaction, because its pieces are. Newton's prescription is purely reductionist, it involves identifying the fundamental binary interactions, one by one, and summing them up, so any global conservation law stems from rules about those fundamental interactions. Later, physicists were able to see that the origin of these rules could also be viewed as global constraints (symmetries and conservation laws), but the reason the rules could be expected to apply to the fundamental interactions was the quintessentially reductionist principle that every interaction played out exactly the same whether its elements were part of a larger system, or if they were themselves the entire universe, individually subject to the global constraints. The universe in the head of a pin-- that is a fact about all of the force laws invoked in Newton's program.
Now, I think you are arguing that this is more of a bug than a feature, because the idea that every interaction in a complex system must be the same as it would have been had the elements been the whole universe misses out on how global constraints back-react on the elements. I think that's a valid point, but it is something quite missing from Newton's scheme-- it's not the reason behind the third law, all his laws are blind to it, and all would work without it. In a universe where nothing at all happened that was not understandable in a purely reductionist way, Newton's laws could describe it all (never mind relativity and quantum mechanics, those are detailed breakdowns of Newton's laws-- what you have in mind is a much more fundamental lacking element).
So I'm not disputing your point that conceptualizing all interactions as binary action/reactions at a distance misses what is going on at the systems level, I'm just saying that none of Newton's laws require a systems level to operate, they are perfectly self-consistent reductionist laws. I think that's what made them so seductive. The reason we have a systems level is not because we need it to get Newton's third law, it's that we need it to get the larger context of what richer type of behavior is possible than Newton's three laws. People who point to those three laws and say, "but I can get everything the system is doing just from those laws, oh and some appropriate boundary conditions and perhaps an externally applied time-varying field because I know that I'm going to need all that" are just ignoring how their fingerprints are all over the result, shoehorning the systems-level behaviors like a Greek playwright invokes the obligatory "deus ex machina" to make the end play out as desired. That's the part I agree with, the important part of the case you are making.
In GR, of course, the law of conservation is not hardwired in as a global symmetry of the model. Instead, it has to be built in as a futher constraint - such as by specifying an inertial reference frame. So GR relaxes a global constraint to make the baseline model all flexxy, then allows you to put back in the constraints by hand to stiffen it up again and enforce a behaviour on a systems locales.Yes, it's that deus ex machina again.
Mechanics is the sub-set of systems theory where the global constraints are treated as an equilbrium state that enforces also a local equilbrium. Once you have got the mechanics set up like this, a baseline view founded on a pervasive symmetry, then you can start modelling the propagation of change as symmetry breakings.The way I would frame that is, that's what mechanics looks like from the systems perspective. Mechanics can be set up from the reductionist perspective instead, which it normally is, but the advantage of seeing it from the systems perspective is that it immediately empowers you to relax the constraints of the model to encompass system-like behavior when you want to do that. Again it's the seductiveness of reductionism that shuns relaxing those constraints, almost like a person in deep water wishing to hold tight to the flotation device.
If the symmetry breakings are localised in some way, then you get a kind of quasi particle description of nature. If the symmetry breaking is global, well you get the big bang, the thermal model of time, etc.Yes I think that's a useful insight, so I'll let this stand repeating:
(Talking of essential books again, Robert Laughlin's A Different Universe is a great polemic against the currently dominant reductionist mindset of physics).
nismaratwork
Mar12-11, 09:55 PM
More books, and more debate... if I could somehow express clapping my hands together in girlish glee (a disturbing sight I assure you), I would.
Q_Goest
Mar15-11, 07:38 PM
Hi Ferris,
If we want a mental event M1 to cause a physical event P2 and if we want the causal status of the mental to derive from the causal status of its physical realizer P1 (so that the theory doesn't fall in the substance dualist category) we are faced with over-determination (P2 could be realized by M1, as well as by P1 alone). If there are no greater causal powers that magically emerge at the higher level of M1 (if we want the theory to stay a materialistic one) then the causal powers of M1 are identical to the causal powers of P1, which means that P1 is the only realizer of P2, thus M1 becomes epiphenomenal. You can read more about this here (http://www.iep.utm.edu/mult-rea/#H4).
So, in the materialistic view you can either have mental causation identical with the physical causation or you can embrace epiphenomenalism and qualia. In both ways free will is impossible. If you want to find free will, you must seek it outside the materialistic domain.
Q_Goest,
In your post here (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3179362&postcount=90) you say you don't believe in the phenomenal-physical correlation and basically you reject epiphenomenalism. And at first it doesn't looks logic, how can one make a knowledge claim about consciousness if it's epiphenomenal? But does the agent's association of the conscious experience of some event and its labeled state in the brain contradict in any way? The definition of the word "consciousness" in the brain state is not associated with the experience of it, but does this interfere the brain to be able to label certain physical state? Think about it, how will you explain the word "consciousness" to a little boy and what association does his brain make. For me epiphenomenalism implies that in exactly every millisecond your brain takes the optimal decision based on the available information. Even when you do something anti-evolutionary (take a lot of drugs, commit a suicide) it must be somehow justified in your brain calculations. Because if it's not, epiphenomenalism is wrong (remember you don't have taken the drug because YOU liked it, but because your BRAIN liked it).
I’m not too sure I really understand your point exactly, but I think you’d like to discuss the knowledge paradox a bit and I think your previous post to Ken is a perfect lead in to that paradox. Note that I’m not presenting my opinions as much as I’m trying to maintain logical rigor here. I’m not suggesting that I reject or embrace epiphenomenalism. I’d like to point out one issue the epiphenomenalist argument must address but at this point there seems to be a fault in the logic.
Frank Jackson (Epiphenomenal Qualia) is a highly cited paper, being reference over 1000 times. He makes the argument that phenomenal properties such as qualia are not phenomena that can be described by describing the physical information on which the phenomena supervenes. I think this is a perfectly clear and legitamate argument. For example, we can describe physical information about any given physical phenomena such as how fast a guitar string vibrates, the tension in it, pressure waves created in the air, the vibrational interaction between the string and guitar, or how the bonds within the steel string change length as the string stretches and how the mass and inertia of the string causes it to move at a given frequency over time. Once we describe ALL the physical information about how the guitar works we’ve exhausted all there is to describe and there really is nothing left. How any physical system changes over time can be described by describing the physical information, and once that is done, there is nothing left to describe because we’ve fully described everything. But as Jackson points out, for what we call qualia or phenomenal consciousness, we haven’t described THOSE phenomena. A hypothetical neuroscientist might be able to describe everything there is to know about our nervous system, how our brains work, how neurons interact, how glia support neurons, now neurotransmitters work on a molecular level, etc… but we still haven’t described what the guitar sounds like, how a rose smells, or any other phenomenal property.
Let’s take the lead you provided from Kim regarding mental states (M) and physical states (P). For the causal closure of the physical, there are physical events P that determine other physical events. The mental events M are supervenient on the physical states but they don’t cause physical states. What causes physical states, assuming the causal closure of the physical, are other physical states. So the hypothetical neuroscientist that knows everything there is to know about our nervous system, can tell you what physical state P2 will follow physical state P1 (or what set of potential physical states will follow P1 if there is some random nature to them). Mental states that are described as phenomenal states are therefore epiphenomenal on the physical state. The mental state doesn’t cause the physical state, the physical states are caused by other physical states.
Epiphenomenal however, means that not only do these mental states not cause physical states, they also don’t influence them. They don’t have any way of influencing or causing a change in a physical state. If mental states were being “measured” by the physical state, they would no longer be epiphenomenal, they would suddenly become part of the causal chain that created the following physical state, so epiphenomenal in this regard means they really have no influence whatsoever over any physical state. So the paradox is, how do we know these states exist? The only reason given is that there is a 1 to 1 relationship between P and M, but that means we aren’t saying that we experience qualia because we actually experience that qualia. It says we are saying we experience something because of the physical states that cause us to utter those words.
Shoemaker, “Functionalism and Qualia” 1975:
To hold that it is logically possible (or, worse, nomologically possible) that a state lacking qualitative character should be functionally identical to a state having qualitative character is to make qualitative character irrelevant both to what we can take ourselves to know in knowing about the mental states of others, and also to what we can take ourselves to know in knowing about our own mental states.
Rosenberg, “A Place for Consciousness”:
Shoemaker is worried that, if functionalism is false (and certainly if physicalism is false), the relations between brain states and concious states will be accidental in that the qualia involved in consciousness would make no contribution to determining our brain states. Because our brain states drive our behavior, including our knowledge claims, it seems that qualia would be irrelevant to what we could or could not claim to know.
...
Given that we are capable of making knowledge claims about consciousness, we need to understand how consciousness could be relevant to the production of those claims. To connect consciousness to the production of our claims about it, somewhere in our explanation of our knowledge we will need to appeal to the effects of consciousness on brain states. Now these brain states are solidly physical, and we are assuming the causal closure of the physical meaning that nothing nonphysical can make a causal difference. But if consciousness cannot affect brain states, it cannot play any part in producing our claims about it, and so it seems that we could not really know about consciousness. Yet we do know about it. Hence, Liberal Naturalism is caught in a paradox.
I am stating the intuitive problem. The Liberal Naturalist seems committed to conceding that consciousness makes no contribution to the fact that we make the claims about it that we do, and that is deeply troubling. Because any accuracy in our claims about it would seemingly be based on fortuitous coincidence, it seems impossible that we could know about it.
Q_Goest
Mar15-11, 08:10 PM
Hi Pythagorean,
But think about this: let's say you have some giant system of N differential equations to describe the whole universe. You have every single interaction reduced to a handful of variables. Now all you need to do is put in your initial conditions for those variables.
What do you do? Your theory already accounts for everything in the universe, yet your theory doesn't account for how the initial conditions arose. Do you make the initial conditions a function of some part of the system? So now there was always this loop and never a beginning or end? I'm puzzled, personally, I have no idea what I'd do.
Anyway, I'm hoping this demonstrates that the science and the philosophy are completely different, just like models and reality. As another examples, we know that quantum mechanics underlies all classical observations, yet we naively model things in the old classical view. Why? Because it's effective, it's productive, it works. This is not the same way I approach the problem in a philosophical setting.
Not sure what the begining of the universe has to do with. We don't have a theory of how the universe began, so let's not even consider it.
Regarding models and reality, it seems very confusing to me why you seem to feel that the philosophy of weak emergence is a "model" and not reality, but some sort of strong emergence or downward causation is not the model but is reality itself. Also, I can't help but wonder if your views of the dynamic systems approach are actually the same as those of the published work or not and if you really understand what the issue is. For example, do you think molecules in a fluid (say Benard cells for example) are causally affected not only by their local interactions with other molecules and with gravity but also causally affected by what occurs in distant parts of the fluid? What limits how quickly the molecules of a fluid at one point can affect molecules at a distant point? And what do you think is meant by the commonly used phrase, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts"?
Thanks for that clear description of what epiphenomenalism, and the "knowledge paradox", are all about. I don't think that Rosenberg's logic on the issue is solid. For example, when he says "But if consciousness cannot affect brain states, it cannot play any part in producing our claims about it, and so it seems that we could not really know about consciousness", there would seem to be a magical step in his argument: the step where he connects having knowledge about consciousness to having consciousness. I don't see those things as necessarily the same, so I see no paradox to the stance that a consciousness could emerge from a physical state, and knowledge about consciousness could also emerge from that same physical state. Indeed, that would seem to be an inevitable aspect of any flavor of physicalism. If both emerge from the same physical state, there is clearly no paradox in both having consciousness, and having knowledge about consciousness, without either affecting or altering the physical state at all.
But I don't buy it for other reasons. To me, physicalism, and functionalism, are both examples of putting the cart before the horse. We don't develop a physicalist, or a functionalist, viewpoint because we have any evidence that the universe really works that way, we do it simply because it succeeds in accomplishing the goals we have set out for the process. In a nutshell, if we establish physicalist goals, then physicalism is the path that leads there most economically. But whence comes the idea that this somehow means everything is physical? It's just bad logic to claim that follows, though one is certainly welcome to adopt it as a personal belief system, as with any religion.
However, a more natural stance, it seems to me, is that if one is interested in a physical question, like what are the neural correlates of some qualia, one should adopt a physicalist perspective, as one will not know where the blood is going by introspecting. But if one is interested in an epiphenomenal question, like what does pain feel like, one should adopt an epiphenomenal perspective, like introspection on the issue, because one will never know by watching blood flow what pain feels like.
As for which leads to which, again I see no evidence that a physical state leads to the qualia associated with it. Instead, it seems natural that both the physical state, and the epiphenomenal qualia, derive from something else, something we might consider to be what is Actually Happening There.
The physical correlates of the mental state are nothing but answers to a particular type of question about that state, and the idea that they are what "leads to" the mental state is an error in language, in my view. That's because what language is, above all, is connecting things to our experience. That's it, that's all language ever does-- it connects a phenomenon to our experience. What else can language do? Now, if our experience is always, at some level, a qualia, then the idea that physical states lead to the qualia has the situation exactly backward. Instead, when we speak of particles and potentials, we are using language, which connects to the qualia they trigger. We manipulate the qualia in terms of rules, or laws of physics, and generate outcomes, which are also qualia, which we then translate back to something we can compare to an experimental outcome, which is also a qualia. Somehow, in all that process, we are left with the idea that the qualia are derived from the physical states, but without the experience of qualia, the language we use to even talk about the physical states has no meaning at all. So it would seem that it is the qualia that lead to the physical states, in the sense that epiphenomenalism predates physicalism. The physical states do connect via a concept of causation, as Q_Goest described above, but as Hume so famously put it, we have no idea what causation is other than the observed tendency for one thing to follow another. In short, there is an algebra of qualia where one often follows another, and if we frame that in physicalist language, we can gain power over those causal connections whose origin is so mysterious to us.
In short, I would say the knowledge paradox has things backward-- the question is not, how can qualia matter if they never affect the physical states, the question is, how can what is physical matter if everything that we know about the physical is derived from our ability to experience qualia that we associate with a physical world? Instead of the qualia being a figment of our imagination, it is much easier to argue that the physical world we use the qualia to imagine is the thing we are imagining, albeit an imagination that follows rules outside our control. In short, the physical world is the thing we imagine when we want to imagine things that follow rules and are predictable, and what we call "our imagination" are the things we imagine when we don't impose that requirement.
Ferris_bg
Mar15-11, 09:41 PM
Let's not derive from the main topic of the thread a lot with the knowledge paradox.
The only reason given is that there is a 1 to 1 relationship between P and M, but that means we aren’t saying that we experience qualia because we actually experience that qualia. It says we are saying we experience something because of the physical states that cause us to utter those words.
Ken G said it very well:
For example, when he says "But if consciousness cannot affect brain states, it cannot play any part in producing our claims about it, and so it seems that we could not really know about consciousness", there would seem to be a magical step in his argument: the step where he connects having knowledge about consciousness to having consciousness.
According to the epiphenomenalists the physical states that cause the agent to utter certain words do NOT put the agent's qualia in their "equations", but this does not interfere the physical states to be able to define the word "consciousness" (associating it with certain neural firing).
According to the epiphenomenalists the physical states that cause the agent to utter certain words do NOT put the agent's qualia in their "equations", but this does not interfere the physical states to be able to define the word "consciousness" (associating it with certain neural firing).Yes, it would seem that one is welcome to explore both consciousness and free will from the perspective of its neural correlates, but doing so will only help to answer certain types of questions. The physicalist has the neat solution of simply discounting all other questions as irrelevant, but by doing so, they forfeit the ability to answer a host of issues that are clearly relevant to the human condition, issues like morality, ethics, aesthetics, and what is a life worth living. All irrelevant issues to the physicalist, who can merely look at causation, and only through that looking-glass, darkly.
Pythagorean
Mar16-11, 12:49 AM
Hi Pythagorean,
Not sure what the begining of the universe has to do with. We don't have a theory of how the universe began, so let's not even consider it.
It has nothing to do with the beginning of the universe, just the general idea of a closed system vs. open system. If you can introduce a driving term to your model (such as a global electric field) even though you don't have a mechanistic model of how that driving term arose (you just know that you can measure it in the lab) then you've spoiled absolute reductionism (until you can provide a mechanistic description of the driving term, otherwise it's just some mathematical function you've added to make your system more descriptive.)
This goes for initial conditions too... we pick initial conditions as scientists, we don't have a theory for how they arose, so our system is always essentially open if it relies on initial conditions.
Regarding models and reality, it seems very confusing to me why you seem to feel that the philosophy of weak emergence is a "model" and not reality, but some sort of strong
emergence or downward causation is not the model but is reality itself.
Why do you keep saying this?
1) I've told you three times now (once in a previous thread) that I don't advocate strong emergence or strong downward causation. That's one of the many place where apeiron and I differ.
2) I've never made an attempt to say "this is the reality". Only that models are not reality, they approximate it, you can't prove a negative, etc, etc.
3) models that contain weak emergence are successful in describing reality. As I've said before, "strong" emergence seems like a wanting human interpretation.
please acknowledge that I've said this, since you've missed it three times before now.
Also, I can't help but wonder if your views of the dynamic systems approach are actually the same as those of the published work or not and if you really understand what the issue is.
I work as a dynamicist, for dynamicists, reading papers by other dynamicists (my most frequented journals are the journal of Chaos and Physics Review E).
For example, do you think molecules in a fluid (say Benard cells for example) are causally affected not only by their local interactions with other molecules and with gravity but also causally affected by what occurs in distant parts of the fluid? What limits how quickly the molecules of a fluid at one point can affect molecules at a distant point? And what do you think is meant by the commonly used phrase, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts"?
Yes, they are affected by other parts of the fluid (in a turbulent regime, which is what most of nature is, even in biological systems). That is what the study of modern diffusion in turbulent transport is all about; fractalized diffusion terms (as opposed to classical diffusion). Anytime you have a fractalized derivative coupling your network components together, your behavior of one member no longer depends on just the nearest neighbors.
(by fractalized, I mean, as I said in a post above: the nth derivative is now the sth derivative. S is a real number, where n is integers, so you can have a 3.4th derivative). Using the fundamental theorem of calculus, derive the numerical form of a n=2 derivative, for instance. It will look something like V(m-1) + V(m+1) - 2(V(m)) (i.e. it will only depend on nearest neighbors, the m-1th cell and the m+1th cell). This is not the case if n is not an integer.
See the Hurst Exponent. When H = .5, you have classical diffusion.
We have one of the leading complexity experts working on this problem (fractal diffusion) at our university right now. He works on SOC and complexity in turbulent plasmas. My advisor (his partner) works on complexity in biological systems.
and this:
What limits how quickly the molecules of a fluid at one point can affect molecules at a distant point?
depends entirely on the system your modeling and what aspects you're modeling. You can't model everything at once in complex systems.
Pythagorean
Mar16-11, 01:15 AM
"whole greater than the sum of parts" to me means that (for instance) two people who take 2 hours to paint a house alone can paint it in :45 minutes (instead of 1 hour.. i.e. double the people doesn't mean half the time.. it actually makes more productivity because there's a synergistic effect). Energy and mass are still conserved (it still takes just as much paint, just as many paint strokes) but now the guy on the ladder doesn't have to climb up and down every time, since his partner doing the lower level can hand stuff to him.
In the same vein, as I double the number of neurons in my systems, the lifetime goes up exponentially (twice the neurons is four times the lifetime, for instance).
Pythagorean
Mar16-11, 04:35 AM
SPECULATION:
it seems to me that the holistic quantity is information.
But since (in principle) we can convert information to energy:
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v6/n12/full/nphys1821.html
It means that there would be something to work out between conservation of energy and information holism that's not immediately obvious.
So perhaps the Energy+Information+Mass balance in the universe must remain constant, but the information has two forms, just like energy: useless and useful. Useless information is entropy, and entropy must increases, but it is being compensated by a loss in useful information (information that acts, as in the demonstration above, to power the system).
Of course, from a human perspective, we're gaining useful information and compensating by putting useless information into the universe (entropy), but the universe as a whole continues to lose useful information, gaining entropy, diffusing towards heat death.
apeiron
Mar16-11, 11:22 PM
Let’s take the lead you provided from Kim regarding mental states (M) and physical states (P). For the causal closure of the physical, there are physical events P that determine other physical events. The mental events M are supervenient on the physical states but they don’t cause physical states. What causes physical states, assuming the causal closure of the physical, are other physical states. So the hypothetical neuroscientist that knows everything there is to know about our nervous system, can tell you what physical state P2 will follow physical state P1 (or what set of potential physical states will follow P1 if there is some random nature to them). Mental states that are described as phenomenal states are therefore epiphenomenal on the physical state. The mental state doesn’t cause the physical state, the physical states are caused by other physical states.
Epiphenomenal however, means that not only do these mental states not cause physical states, they also don’t influence them. They don’t have any way of influencing or causing a change in a physical state. If mental states were being “measured” by the physical state, they would no longer be epiphenomenal, they would suddenly become part of the causal chain that created the following physical state, so epiphenomenal in this regard means they really have no influence whatsoever over any physical state. So the paradox is, how do we know these states exist? The only reason given is that there is a 1 to 1 relationship between P and M, but that means we aren’t saying that we experience qualia because we actually experience that qualia. It says we are saying we experience something because of the physical states that cause us to utter those words.
OK, so here we have a view of reality that ends up arguing for a paradox. Which is why the intelligent response is to go back to the beginning and work on a different view, not to spend the rest of your life telling everyone you meet, "but this is the truth". That would be the crackpot response, wouldn't it?
Now it seems pretty transparent where the problem lies. If you start out assuming a definite separation between physical states and mental states, then it is no surprise that this is also the conclusion you end up with. And more subtly, you are even presuming something in claiming "states".
So let's start over. First we have to drop the idea of states because that already hardwires in a reductionist perspective. A state is something with spatial extent, but not a temporal extent. It is a term that already precludes change. It is the synchronic view of "everything that is the case at this moment"
A systems view is one that specifically includes time, change, potential, development. So of course if you analyse reality in terms of states, you cannot take a systems view of reality. You have not proved that the systems view fails, just that you did not understand what the systems view was.
The systems view equivalent of the notion of "state" would be an "equilbrium". That is a state where there is change that does not make a change. So you have an extended spatiotemporal view that is completely dynamic, but also at rest in some useful sense.
So your arguments cannot just hinge on a naive notion of a state here. That is the first point.
Second, P "states" are tales of material causality. And yes we expect the tales to be closed. This is a now standard physicalist presumption, and it works very well. So I am happy to take it as my presumption too.
I then, as said, make a distinction between varieties of physicalism.
There is the familiar reductionist physicalism of atomism - reality is constructed bottom-up from a collection of immutable parts. Though as also argued, reductionism does smuggle in global constraints as its immutable physical laws, and other necessary ingredients, such as entropic gradients, a spacetime void, etc.
Let's call this variety of physicalism Pr (because giving things this kind of pseudo-mathematical terminology seem more impressive).
Then there is the second systems model of physicalism - let's call it Ps. This, following Aristotle and many other systems thinkers, recognises holism. Realities are also made of their global constraints which act downwards to shape the identity and properties of their parts (by restricting their local degrees of freedom).
And as said, because even Pr smuggles the notion of global constraints into its simpler ontology, we can say {Ps {Pr}}. Reductionism is formally a subset of holism. It is holism where the top-down contraints have become frozen and unchanging, leaving only the localised play of atoms, or efficient causes.
You personally may disagree that Ps is a valid model of material causality, but you have yet to make any proper argument against it (I don't think you actually even understand it enough).
So on to M states. Again, you have to recognise the extra constraints implied by the very word "state". Consciousness has a rich temporal structure (we know this experimentally, Libet is part of the evidence). So it is not legitimate to hardwire your conclusions into your premises by presuming "M states" as an ontic category.
We must thus step back to the general metaphysical dichotomy of physical and mental (matter~mind). What do the terms properly denote?
We have already agree (I think) that P is a closed tale of material causes. And it can be seen that we are also presuming that it is an "objective" view. It is somehow what "actually exists out there", even though being good philosophers, we have long come to realise the map is not the territory and we are in fact only modelling the world. So it is what Nozick rightly calls the maximally invariant view - the supposed god's eye "view from nowhere".
So physicalism actually embeds further presumptions. It acknowledges its roots in subjectivity and becomes thus an epistemological device. It says this is how we model in a certain way.
The "material world of closed causality" - either Pr or Ps - is not actually the ontological view, just a view of ontology! P implies M. Or {M{P}}. Or indeed {M{Ps{Pr}}}
Now what in turn is properly denoted by "mental". Well it starts as everything that is so far as we are concerned. That is all there is really, as the only way we know anything is through being a mind.
But when used as part of a metaphysical dichotomy, the idea of mental, as opposed to physical, is trying after some more constrained meaning. It is trying to get at something which stands in contrast to our idea of the physical. So what? And what legitimately?
One of the obvious distinctions is between the observed and the observer, the interpreted and the interpreter, the modelled and the modeller. The very existence of a "done to" implies also the existence of a "doer". So there is a mind acting, and then the physical world it is acting upon.
And clearly a causal relationship is being suggested here, an interaction. I do the modelling and the world gets modelled. But I can also see the world is driving my modelling because of what happens when I wrongly model it.
So the everyday notion of the mental is about this contrast, and one that is still plainly causal. A connection is presumed as quite natural. So far the dichotomy seems natural, legitimate, and not paradoxical.
But then along come the philosophers who want to push the distinction further - to talk about res cogitans and res extensa, about qualia, about Ding an sich.
What were complementary aspects of an equilbrium seeking process (a systems view of the mind as a pragmatic distinction between the observers and the observed) suddenly becomes treated as different fundamental categories of nature. The distinction becomes reified so that there is the P and the M as axiomatically disconnected realms - where now a connection has to be forged as a further step, and not being able to do so becomes treated as a metaphysical paradox.
So yes, P~M has a social history as an idea. And the assumptions made along the way have got buried.
The "mental" properly refers to the fact that reality can become complexly divided into actors and their actions, models and the modelled, the subjective experience that is our everything and the objective stance that is our attempt to imagine an invariant, god's eye, view of "everything" (which is actually a view constructed of general theories - or formalised descriptions of global constraints - and the predictions/measurements that animate these theories, giving them their locally-driven dynamics).
So P here becomes a judgement of the degree of success we feel in modelling reality in terms of fundamental theories - theories describing reality's global constraints. And Ps is a more complete approach to modelling than Pr, but Pr is also the simpler and easier to use.
M is then epiphenomenal in the sense it is all that is not then part of this model - and so it stands for the modeller. It is not epiphenomenal by necessity - everything is actually just subjective experience in the end. But it is epiphenomenal by choice. We put the M outside the P so as to make the P as simple as possible. It is a pragmatic action on our part.
Now Pr quite clearly puts M way outside because it does away with observers, modellers, and other varieties of global constraint (as explicit actors in the dynamics being modelled). So Pr becomes a very poor vehicle for the pragmatic modelling of "mind" - of systems which in particular have non-holonomic constraints and so have active and adaptive top-down control over their moment-to-moment "mental states".
But with Ps, you can start to write formal models of observers and the observed. You can't model "the whole of M" as even Ps remains within M. This is the irreducible part of the deal. Nothing could invert the relationship so far a M is concerned. Yet within M we can have the Ps-based models of observer~observed relationships. And indeed I've referred frequently to the work of Friston (Bayesian brains), Rosen (modelling relations), Pattee (epistemic cut), as examples of such systems-based modelling.
So M - Ps = M'. We can explain away a lot via physicalist modelling, yet there will still be a final residue. But it is not the M that is epiphenomenal to the P. Rather the other way round. The mind does not have to have models based on physicalist notions of closed systems of entailment to exist. It existed already. And it created the P that claims to exist as causally isolated from the subjective wishes, whims and desires of the M.
Hi Q_Goest,
Let’s take the lead you provided from Kim regarding mental states (M) and physical states (P). For the causal closure of the physical, there are physical events P that determine other physical events. The mental events M are supervenient on the physical states but they don’t cause physical states. What causes physical states, assuming the causal closure of the physical, are other physical states. So the hypothetical neuroscientist that knows everything there is to know about our nervous system, can tell you what physical state P2 will follow physical state P1 (or what set of potential physical states will follow P1 if there is some random nature to them). Mental states that are described as phenomenal states are therefore epiphenomenal on the physical state. The mental state doesn’t cause the physical state, the physical states are caused by other physical states.
If you start out assuming a definite separation between physical states and mental states, then it is no surprise that this is also the conclusion you end up with. And more subtly, you are even presuming something in claiming "states".
Maybe another way to express apeiron's comment is the following:
Please give a look again at this gun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_(cellular_automaton)). Would you say it causes the emission of spaceship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_(cellular_automaton)) or would you say it doesn't, because all states just follows from a previous state?
I guess you would say there's a causal link despite this link can also be described in terms of P1 to P2 transitions. Of course we don't know if free will follows the same trick, but don't you think this analogy still demonstrate the lack of logical impossibility between determinism and free will?
Q_Goest
Mar17-11, 06:32 PM
Hi apeiron. Thanks very much for trying to explain. Seriously. I appreciate you attempting to thoughtfully and carefully bring out those views that you feel are pertinent to this portion of the discussion. I’d like to better understand your views, so I appreciate you taking the time to try and explain them. Perhaps you could start a thread that highlighted those views and provide references so I can dig deeper. That said, I honestly can’t make heads or tails of your post. Take this for instance.
A state is something with spatial extent, but not a temporal extent. It is a term that already precludes change.
I don’t see how physical states preclude change. Physical states exist in both space and time. In thermodynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_space#Thermodynamics_and_statistical_mechani cs) for example, if a system consists of N particles, then a point in the 6N-dimensional phase space describes the dynamical state of every particle in that system, as each particle is associated with three position variables and three momentum variables. In this sense, a point in phase space is said to be a microstate* of the system. Physical states require both dimensional and temporal information to describe them, so I don’t know why one would claim that physical states don’t have a “temporal extent”. I don’t know what that means.
I’d like to honestly understand why there are people that feel the nonlinear approach (dynamics approach, systems approach, etc…) such as Alwyn Scott, Even Thompson, many others, is so appealing, but these are not mainstream ideas. Would you not agree? The mainstream ideas surrounding how consciousness emerges regards computationalism which doesn’t seem to fit with this other approach. From where I sit, weak emergence and separability of classical systems are well founded, mainstream ideas that are far from being overturned. They are used daily by neuroscientists that take neurons out and put them in Petri dishes and subject them to controlled experiments as if they were still in vivo. Then they compare this reductionist experiment with the brain and with computer models which are clearly only weakly emergent. So what is it that is really being promoted by this systems approach?
*The microstates of the system are what Bedau is referring to when he defines weak emergence.
Please give a look again at this gun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_(cellular_automaton)). Would you say it causes the emission of spaceship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_(cellular_automaton)) or would you say it doesn't, because all states just follows from a previous state?
I guess you would say there's a causal link despite this link can also be described in terms of P1 to P2 transitions. Of course we don't know if free will follows the same trick, but don't you think this analogy still demonstrate the lack of logical impossibility between determinism and free will?
It is perfectly acceptable in laymen’s terms, to say that the gun caused the emission of the spaceship. I talk to other engineers about how a valve causes a pressure drop in a fluid flowing through it. Certainly the valve has no 'free will' just as the gun in the Game of Life (GoL) has free will to create a spaceship. The point being that laymen terms are not applicable to what is the ‘efficient’ cause. Yes, causes can go right down to some most primitive particle, and hence it is the desire of some physicists to find a “theory of everything”. One can say the gun caused the spaceship but as weak emergence would have it, the ability to emit a spaceship is dependant on the ability of individual cells in the game of life to change state from white to black and back again which is a function of the rules to the game, just as lower level physical laws are the ‘rules’ by which higher level phenomena appear. Even classical mechanics is taken to be 'emergent' on the interactions of many molecules, atoms or particles just as the gun and spaceship in the GoL emerge from the interactions of the individual cells. However, separability breaks down at the level of molecular interactions and below. Somewhere between the classical scale and the QM scale, there must be a change in the basic philosophy of how to treat nature, and how to treat causation.
Oh... and by the way. I (think I) agree with both of you regarding the fundamental issue that the knowledge paradox seems to flounder on. The problem starts out by using as an axiom that phenomenal states are not physically describable. They are not physical states. Once you define qualia that way, you may as well go whole hog and admit that the causal closure of the physical is false. These two axioms are at odds which is why there is a paradox.
apeiron
Mar17-11, 07:18 PM
I don’t see how physical states preclude change. Physical states exist in both space and time. In thermodynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_space#Thermodynamics_and_statistical_mechani cs) for example, if a system consists of N particles, then a point in the 6N-dimensional phase space describes the dynamical state of every particle in that system, as each particle is associated with three position variables and three momentum variables. In this sense, a point in phase space is said to be a microstate* of the system. Physical states require both dimensional and temporal information to describe them, so I don’t know why one would claim that physical states don’t have a “temporal extent”. I don’t know what that means.
So you would disagree with the Wiki definition of states in classical physics as " a complete description of a system in terms of parameters such as positions and momentums at a particular moment in time"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(physics)
All you are saying in pointing out that 6 dimensions can capture "all" the dynamics of a particle is that this is the way dynamics can be modelled in reductionist terms. You can freeze the global aspects (the ones that would be expressed in time) and describe a system in terms of local measurements.
Yet we know from QM that the position and momentum cannot be pinned down with this arbitrary precision - this seems a very strong ontological truth, no? And we know from chaos modelling that a failure to be able to determine initial conditions means that we cannot actually construct the future of a collective system from a 6N description. And we know from thermodynamics that we cannot predict the global attractor that will emerge in such a 6N phase space even if we did have exactly measured initial conditions - the shape of the attractor can only emerge as a product of a simulation. Etc, etc.
So we know for many reasons that a state based description of reality is a reduced and partial model good for only a limited domain of modelling. To then use it as the unexamined basis of philosophical argument is a huge mistake. Even if as you argue, it is a "mainstream" mistake.
You probably still don't understand why states are the local/spatial description and exclude global temporal development. But "at a particular moment in time" seems a pretty clear statement to me. It is the synchronic rather than diachronic view. Surely you are familiar with the difference?
I’d like to honestly understand why there are people that feel the nonlinear approach (dynamics approach, systems approach, etc…) such as Alwyn Scott, Even Thompson, many others, is so appealing, but these are not mainstream ideas. Would you not agree? The mainstream ideas surrounding how consciousness emerges regards computationalism which doesn’t seem to fit with this other approach. From where I sit, weak emergence and separability of classical systems are well founded, mainstream ideas that are far from being overturned. They are used daily by neuroscientists that take neurons out and put them in Petri dishes and subject them to controlled experiments as if they were still in vivo. Then they compare this reductionist experiment with the brain and with computer models which are clearly only weakly emergent. So what is it that is really being promoted by this systems approach?
Perhaps your area of expertise is computer science and so yes, this would not be the mainstream view in your world. But I am not sure that you can speak for neuroscience here. In fact I know you can't.
I have repeatedly challenged you on actual neuroscience modelling of the brain, trying to direct your attention to its mainstream thinking - the effects on selective attention on neural receptive fields has been one of the hottest areas of research for the last 20 years. But you keep ducking that challenge and keep trying to find isolated neuron studies that look comfortably reductionist to you.
You just don't get the irony. Within neuroscience, that was the big revolution of the past 20 years. To study the brain, and even neurons and synapses, in an ecologically valid way. Even the NCC hunt of consciousness studies and the brain imaging "revolution" was based on this.
People said we have been studying the brain by isolating the components. And it has not really told us what we want to know. We stuck electrodes into the brains of cats and rats. But they were anaethetised, not even conscious. And it was single electrodes, not electrode arrays. But now (around 20 years ago) we have better equipment. We can record from awake animals doing actual cognitive tasks and sample activity from an array of regions. Even better, we can stick humans in a scanner and record the systems level interactions.
Yet you say the mainstream for neuroscience is people checking the electrical reponses of disected neurons in petri dishes, or IBM simulations (gee, you don't think IBM is just about self-promotion of its supercomputers here?).
I used to write for Lancet Neurology, so I think I have a better idea of what is mainstream in neuroscience.
Again, remember that my claim here is not that reductionism (the computer science view of life) is wrong. Just that it is the subset of the systems view you arrive at when you freeze out the issue of global constraints. It is the adibiatic view. Where the larger Ps model also has to be able to deal with the non-adibiatic story - where global constraints actually develop, evolve, change, in time.
apeiron
Mar17-11, 07:26 PM
Oh... and by the way. I (think I) agree with both of you regarding the fundamental issue that the knowledge paradox seems to flounder on. The problem starts out by using as an axiom that phenomenal states are not physically describable. They are not physical states. Once you define qualia that way, you may as well go whole hog and admit that the causal closure of the physical is false. These two axioms are at odds which is why there is a paradox.
Or instead, you could recognise that you had made a wrong move in assuming P and M to be ontologically separate (rather than epistemically separable - big difference).
The axiom that P and M are separate can be false, and yet the axiom that P is close is true.
And you again seem to be missing the point that axioms are epistemological assertions of modelling convenience rather than statements of ontological truth. They are "truths" that seem reasonably in the grounds of generalised experience rather than truths that are known to be true due to some magical kind of direct revelation.
Perhaps you could start a thread that highlighted those views and provide references so I can dig deeper.
You're asking apeiron to provide references to support his claims... dude you like to live with risk! :biggrin:
The point being that laymen terms are not applicable to what is the ‘efficient’ cause.
I don't think I get your point here. What is the difference you see between layman causality and efficient causality?
One can say the gun caused the spaceship but as weak emergence would have it, the ability to emit a spaceship is dependant on the ability of individual cells in the game of life to change state from white to black and back again which is a function of the rules to the game
Or one can say that the gun is an algorithm, which indeed it is (and a simple one: it's just a periodic oscillator), thus the behavior does not need to tied with the particular rule of CGL: any system mathematically equivalent to these guns is in deep the same system. So if we afford to say that the gun cause the spaceship, then the causality is in fact the identity to a Turing machine. That said, a non trivial consequence is that free will is a set of algorithm, define as those who can behave as something we will recognize has having free will. (...) It's late I'm becoming unclear I guess. See you. :smile:
apeiron
Mar17-11, 08:50 PM
You're asking apeiron to provide references to support his claims... dude you like to live with risk! :biggrin:
I supplied Q Goest with the references he requested long ago. Perhaps he did not read them? That often happens here doesn't it :wink:?
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2501587&postcount=7
Q_Goest
Mar17-11, 08:50 PM
Hi apeiron. I found that last post to be totally understandable. Not like the previous post at all. I really wonder how you manage to switch the flowery talk on and off like that. No offense intended.
Yet we know from QM that the position and momentum cannot be pinned down with this arbitrary precision - this seems a very strong ontological truth, no?
But pinning down particles isn't important to classical mechanics. Sure, the real world isn't classical, but that's not the point. The conventional view is that quantum mechanics isn't a factor in how the brain works because there are sufficient statistical aggregates of particles that individual particles don't matter. They're simply averaged together. Is this "systems view" dependent on individual particles? Clearly Alwyn Scott for example, makes the point as do many others that classical mechanics has this 'more than the sum' feature already intrinsic to it and I’d think Scott’s views probably mirror your ideas fairly closely.
And we know from chaos modelling that a failure to be able to determine initial conditions means that we cannot actually construct the future of a collective system from a 6N description.
But is that because of not having the initial conditions of the individual particles? Or not having the initial conditions of the classically defined states? Density, internal energy, entropy, etc... of the system is obviously independent of specific individual particle states, but not of the aggregate. So not knowing individual particle states will lead to indeterminate future states, and yes, the classical model is a model. But one has to show that there is a "meaningful difference" between having initial particle conditions and having initial classical conditions. I see no meaningful difference. Sure the classical approach isn't exact, but it is exact to the degree you have the initial conditions of the classical states and that's what's important unless the quantum mechanical states are being roped into causing different classical states by downward causation which isn't possible.
And we know from thermodynamics that we cannot predict the global attractor that will emerge in such a 6N phase space even if we did have exactly measured initial conditions - the shape of the attractor can only emerge as a product of a simulation. Etc, etc.
Can you provide an example of a global attractor? One that regards classical mechanics and can't be predicted by weak emergence? This is fundamentally where we disagree. I would say Benard cells are a perfect example of a weakly emergent structure, and I’d contest that’s a mainstream idea not just my own. Regarding mainstream, perhaps that feels like a knock so instead I’ll say “cutting edge” or something. Anyway, as Davies points out.
Thus we are told that in Benard instability, … the molecules organize themselves into an elaborate and orderly pattern of flow, which may extend over macroscopic dimensions, even though individual molecules merely push and pull on their near neighbors. This carries the hint that there is a sort of choreographer, an emergent demond, marshalling the molecules into a coherent, cooperative dance, the better to fulfil the global project of convective flow. Naturally this is absurd. The onset of convection certainly represents novel emergent behavior, but the normal inter-molecular forces are not in competition with, or over-ridden by, novel global forces. The global system ‘harnesses’ the local forces, but at no stage is there a need for an extra type of force to act on an individual molecule to make it comply with a ‘convective master plan’.
Also from Davies
Strong emergence cannot succeed in systems that are causally closed at the microscopic level, because there is no room for additional principals to operate that are not already implicit in the lower-level rules.
However Davies does allow for some kind of emergence at the border between classical and quantum mechanics, which is where separability breaks down also.
You probably still don't understand why states are the local/spatial description and exclude global temporal development. But "at a particular moment in time" seems a pretty clear statement to me. It is the synchronic rather than diachronic view. Surely you are familiar with the difference?
No, I'm not. Feel free... Regardless, why should it be controversial to suggest that there exists a physical reality at a particular moment in time? If the argument drops into quantum mechanics, there’s no point in arguing. At that point, we have to suggest that neurons interact due to some quantum mechanical interaction, which isn’t worth arguing about.
Perhaps your area of expertise is computer science and so yes, this would not be the mainstream view in your world. But I am not sure that you can speak for neuroscience here. In fact I know you can't.
I guess I disagree.
I have repeatedly challenged you on actual neuroscience modelling of the brain, trying to direct your attention to its mainstream thinking - the effects on selective attention on neural receptive fields has been one of the hottest areas of research for the last 20 years. But you keep ducking that challenge and keep trying to find isolated neuron studies that look comfortably reductionist to you.
I think you misunderstand. My daughter has selective attention. I have no doubt they influence neural receptive fields! lol But that’s like saying the spaceship is caused by the gun that Lievo keeps talking about. Unless you can clearly define selective attention and neural receptive fields, it won’t help.
You just don't get the irony. Within neuroscience, that was the big revolution of the past 20 years. To study the brain, and even neurons and synapses, in an ecologically valid way. Even the NCC hunt of consciousness studies and the brain imaging "revolution" was based on this.
People said we have been studying the brain by isolating the components. And it has not really told us what we want to know. We stuck electrodes into the brains of cats and rats. But they were anaethetised, not even conscious. And it was single electrodes, not electrode arrays. But now (around 20 years ago) we have better equipment. We can record from awake animals doing actual cognitive tasks and sample activity from an array of regions. Even better, we can stick humans in a scanner and record the systems level interactions.
Yet you say the mainstream for neuroscience is people checking the electrical reponses of disected neurons in petri dishes, or IBM simulations (gee, you don't think IBM is just about self-promotion of its supercomputers here?).
I don’t disagree with anything you said here except that I’m sure IBM isn’t somehow influencing neuroscience with profits from their computers. Sure, we’ve made progress in understanding how brains work, just as you say. That’s all the kind of work that’s necessary for the reductionist approach. I suspect you intend to mean that all this experimentation is unique somehow to a systems approach, but I don’t see why.
Q_Goest
Mar17-11, 09:00 PM
I supplied Q Goest with the references he requested long ago. Perhaps he did not read them? That often happens here doesn't it :wink:?
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2501587&postcount=7
Not sure why you brought up that link.
You quoted Bedau who only accepts weak emergence as I've pointed out.
You quoted Emmeche who rejects strong downward causation and his medium downward causation is frighteningly like weak downward causation. It either has to drop into one or the other catagory, which isn't clear.
You quoted yourself on Physicsforums
You quoted Google
And this one: http://www.calresco.org/
and a handful of other web sites. I don't want to read web sites though except perhaps the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy or maybe Wikipedia.
I guess we should just disagree and leave it at that.
Q_Goest
Mar17-11, 09:04 PM
I don't think I get your point here. Why do you agree to attribute gun with freedom but not valves,
I'm not attributing the gun with freedom (free will). I'm saying it has just as much as the valve, which is none.
and what is the difference you see between layman causality and efficient causality?
Layman causality is not efficient causality.
I supplied Q Goest with the references he requested long ago. Perhaps he did not read them? That often happens here doesn't it :wink:?
Perhaps he had a look and the references were not supporting your claims unless a lot of creativity was involved. That sometime happens, doesn't it :wink:?
Layman causality is not efficient causality.
That what you said and I perfectly understood that it was what you said. My question again: please explain why you think there is a difference.
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 01:44 AM
I’d like to honestly understand why there are people that feel the nonlinear approach (dynamics approach, systems approach, etc…) such as Alwyn Scott, Even Thompson, many others, is so appealing, but these are not mainstream ideas. Would you not agree? The mainstream ideas surrounding how consciousness emerges regards computationalism which doesn’t seem to fit with this other approach. From where I sit, weak emergence and separability of classical systems are well founded, mainstream ideas that are far from being overturned.
This seems like a contradiction to me, nonlinear approach, systems approach. i.e. complex systems approach isn't at odds with computationalism (and is indeed part of it). Any time you read about spiking networks, you're reading about physiologically derived neuron models that are inherently nonlinear and give rise to chaos when coupled together with biologically derived coupling terms (excitatory, inhibitory, diffusive). Since there are several operating in a network, you have a complex system. Yes, this is mainstream (but in a nascent manner).
Evidence that it's mainstream:
Journals
Physics Review E now includes biological systems:
http://pre.aps.org/
neuroscience in that journal:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2713719/
AIP: Chaos: Journal of Interdisciplinary Science (you should actually read this:)
http://chaos.aip.org/about/about_the_journal
A neuroscience example from Chaos:
http://chaos.aip.org/resource/1/chaoeh/v18/i2/p023102_s1?isAuthorized=no
Neuroscience:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10362290
Chemical Physics and Physical Chemistry:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cphc.200500499/full
Published Authors:
Wulfram Gerstner (head of Computational Neuroscience department at the Mind-Brain Institute in Laussane, Switzerland)
http://icwww.epfl.ch/~gerstner//BUCH.html
Ermentrout:
http://www.pitt.edu/~phase/
Eugene Izhikevich's:
http://www.braincorporation.com/
Izhikevich wrote the textbook, "Dynamical Systems in the Neurosciences"
http://www.izhikevich.org/publications/dsn.pdf
There's Tsumoto:
http://pegasus.medsci.tokushima-u.ac.jp/~tsumoto/achieve/index-e.html
It's the complex global behavior that is unpredictable (which is why we have to run simulations, then interpret them geometrically: i.e. pretty pictures that we interpret from our personal experiences and what we know experimentally about the neurons). There's no "deterministic solution" to resulting complex behavior. Yet, it still can be quantified with average lifetimes, finding the different qualitative regimes through bifurcation analysis, etc, etc. You can go back and look at a bunch of numbers that the code spits out, but they're not very meaningful in the standard mathematical analysis. We need Poincare's geometric approach.
apeiron
Mar18-11, 02:29 AM
Hi apeiron. I found that last post to be totally understandable. Not like the previous post at all. I really wonder how you manage to switch the flowery talk on and off like that. No offense intended.
Do you have examples of this flowery language? Systems science being an interdisciplinary subject, there is a problem that there are a lot of different jargons - ways of saying the same things coming from different fields.
But pinning down particles isn't important to classical mechanics. Sure, the real world isn't classical, but that's not the point. The conventional view is that quantum mechanics isn't a factor in how the brain works because there are sufficient statistical aggregates of particles that individual particles don't matter. They're simply averaged together. Is this "systems view" dependent on individual particles? Clearly Alwyn Scott for example, makes the point as do many others that classical mechanics has this 'more than the sum' feature already intrinsic to it and I’d think Scott’s views probably mirror your ideas fairly closely.
QM shows there is a problem even at the fundamental physical level. And the systems argument is that the same thing is going on over all scales of analysis.
Let me remind you what the systems approach actually is.
It says systems are formed hierarchically from two complementary kinds of causality - bottom-up construction and top-down constraint. And they are "a system" in that they are mutual or synergistic in their causality. Each is making the other. And so the develop (emerge) together in holistic fashion.
You are arguing from the reductionist viewpoint where there is a definite atomistic grain to reality. You have a bunch of stuff that already exists (it is not emergent) and it constructs some kind of global order (the forms emerge from the materials).
The reductionist story cannot of course address the reasons why the local atomistic grain exists. And while a "global state" might emerge, this is not the same as the global constraints of a system.
The temperature or pressure of an ideal gas is a macroscopic measurement, not a constraint. The constraints of the ideal gas would be the walls of the container, the external bath that keeps the system at a constant equilibrium, etc. All the general conditions that allow the system to have "a condition".
The systems approach instead says all that exists locally are degrees of freedom. Well, exist is too strong a word for random fluctuations - an unlimited number of degrees of freedom. So there is nothing definite at the scale of the local grain at the beginning.
But then unconstrained fluctuations lead to randomly occuring interactions and at some point constraints start to form as a result. Constraints have the effect of limiting local degrees of freedom. There is suddenly the beginnings of less freedom in the fluctuations and so a more definite direction to their action. The global constraints in turn become more definite, feeding back again on the local freedoms and the whole system undergoes a phase transition to a more ordered state.
This is a model familiar from many fields - Peircean semiotics, spin glasses, generative neural nets, Haken's synegetics, second order cybernetics, Hofstadter's strange loops, Salthe's hierarchy theory, Ulanowicz's ecological ascendancy, etc.
The key point is that there is now no definite local atomistic grain. It is part of what must emerge. It is like solitons or standing waves. The "particles" composing the system are locally emergent features that exist because of global constraints on local freedoms.
So QM says there are no locally definite particles until there is an act of observation - a decoherence of the wavefunction by an observing world.
And the same at the neuroscience level. A neuron's receptive field is constrained first by a developmental history (learning over time) and then even by attentional effects (top-down shaping over the course of 100 ms or so).
So reductionism gives you the frozen, static, simple description of a system. The local grain just exists (whereas in the systems view it is shaped by constraint). And the global constraints are unchanging (whereas in the systems view, they are part of what has to self-organise).
Consider the parallels with genetic algorithms. A pool of code (representing many local degrees of freedom) is forced to self-organised by imposing some general global constraints. A program is evolved. (This is not exactly what I am talking about, just an illustration that might be familiar to you.)
As to Scott, it is a long time since I spoke to him or read his book, so I can't actually remember how close he is to my current views. Though from dim memory, I think he was a little more simplistic - like John Holland and others pushing the Santa Fe view of complexity that was vogue in the US at that time. (Gell-Mann and Kauffman were deeper IMO)
But is that because of not having the initial conditions of the individual particles? Or not having the initial conditions of the classically defined states? Density, internal energy, entropy, etc... of the system is obviously independent of specific individual particle states, but not of the aggregate. So not knowing individual particle states will lead to indeterminate future states, and yes, the classical model is a model. But one has to show that there is a "meaningful difference" between having initial particle conditions and having initial classical conditions. I see no meaningful difference. Sure the classical approach isn't exact, but it is exact to the degree you have the initial conditions of the classical states and that's what's important unless the quantum mechanical states are being roped into causing different classical states by downward causation which isn't possible.
If everything is nicely "linear" - static and unchanging at the atomistic level due to static and unchanging global constraints - then coarse-graining can be good enough for modelling.
But the discussion was about systems that are complex and developing - such as brains. Where the global constraints are, precisely, non-holonomic. Where the local grain (for example, neural receptive fields) are dynamically responsive.
Taking an ideal gas as again a standard classical physics model of a system, note that we can impose a temperature on the system, but we cannot determine the individual kinetic freedoms of the particles. Just constrain them to a gaussian distribution.
So this is coarse graining in action. The individual motions are unknown and indeed unknowable (Maxwell's Demon). But they are constrained to a single statistical scale - that of the system's now atomistic microstates. And we can calculate on that basis. We have frozen out the sources of uncertainty (either local or global) so far as our modelling is concerned.
Can you provide an example of a global attractor? One that regards classical mechanics and can't be predicted by weak emergence? This is fundamentally where we disagree. I would say Benard cells are a perfect example of a weakly emergent structure, and I’d contest that’s a mainstream idea not just my own. Regarding mainstream, perhaps that feels like a knock so instead I’ll say “cutting edge” or something. Anyway, as Davies points out.
I gave you the Collier reference on Benard cells. Can you instead supply me with a reference where the global organisation was predicted purely from a local model of the molecules thrown together?
...I'll answer the rest of your points later....
apeiron
Mar18-11, 02:36 AM
Perhaps he had a look and the references were not supporting your claims unless a lot of creativity was involved. That sometime happens, doesn't it :wink:?
Sometimes people say that is what happened - yet strangely cannot then support their opinion in public. At least Q Goest argues his corner. If you were more confident of your views, perhaps you would too?
apeiron
Mar18-11, 04:29 AM
Also from Davies
However Davies does allow for some kind of emergence at the border between classical and quantum mechanics, which is where separability breaks down also.
Davies correctly says that global constraints are not some extra force. Force is a localised, atomised, action - efficient causality. Constraints are just constraints. They might sound "forceful" because they act downwards to constrain the local degrees of freedom (as I say, shape them to have some distinct identity). But they are a complementary form of causality. A constraining or limiting action, not a constructive or additive one.
He is also right in saying that you cannot have constraints emerging if the analysis only recognises the micro-scale. If you close off causality at the microscale in your modelling, there is indeed no room for anything else.
No, I'm not. Feel free... Regardless, why should it be controversial to suggest that there exists a physical reality at a particular moment in time? If the argument drops into quantum mechanics, there’s no point in arguing. At that point, we have to suggest that neurons interact due to some quantum mechanical interaction, which isn’t worth arguing about.
The synchronic~diachronic dichotomy is used frequently in the emergence literature - as in the Bedau paper you appear to prefer.
http://people.reed.edu/~mab/papers/principia.pdf
This is not about QM issues but the general modelling of structures and processes - systems modelling.
I think you misunderstand. My daughter has selective attention. I have no doubt they influence neural receptive fields! lol But that’s like saying the spaceship is caused by the gun that Lievo keeps talking about. Unless you can clearly define selective attention and neural receptive fields, it won’t help.
What is undefined about the concepts of selective attention and neural receptive fields in the literature?
And Lievo's guns are precisely not an example of anything I have been talking about. What could be a more reductionist view of reality than CA? He may see "spaceships" and "guns" looking at the rigid operations of a finite state automaton. But that "meaning" is completely absent from the CA itself. It emerges nowhere within it.
Bedau uses these guns to argue for weak emergence. And I agree, so far as emergence goes, it is as weak as can be imagined. I am talking about something else here.
I don’t disagree with anything you said here except that I’m sure IBM isn’t somehow influencing neuroscience with profits from their computers.
I was saying IBM dreams up these kinds of stunts to sell more supercomputers to universities.
Perhaps you haven't been keeping track of the controversies? IBM getting savaged by its own original Blue Brain scientist.
Why did IBM let Mohda make such a deceptive claim to the public?
I don't know. Perhaps this is a publicity stunt to promote their supercompter. The supercomputer industry is suffering from the financial crisis and they probably are desperate to boost their sales. It is so disappointing to see this truly great company allow the deception of the public on such a grand scale.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/henry-markram-calls-ibm-cat-scale-brain.html
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 05:57 AM
from apeiron's link (criticizing IBM):
In real life, each segment of the branches of a neuron contains dozens of ion channels that powerfully controls the information processing in a neuron. They have none of that. Neurons contain 10's of thousands of proteins that form a network with 10's of millions of interactions. These interactions are incredibly complex and will require solving millions of differential equations.
This is exactly right, it's not an easy problem. My Textbook:
"From Molecules to Networks: and introduction to cellular and molecular neuroscience"
It is no exaggeration to say that the tasks of understanding how intrinsic activity, synaptic potentials, and active potentials spread through and are integrated within the complex geometry of the dendritic trees to produce the input-output operations of the neurons is one of the main frontiers of neuroscience.
But we do have NEURON and GENESIS to help us with this, using the compartmental models developed by Rall and Shepherd. (Sheperd co-authored this chapters of the text book).
I think what Q_Goest doesn't recognize is that passive currents (compartment models) only represent intrinsic currents, not the more interesting active currents (i.e. all the different channel dynamics. the feedback circuit between membrane potential and channel activation, the action potential.
Or the whole molecular/genetic behavior part that we've all continued to sweep aside. Neural activity also stimulates changes in genetic expression, so you have to talk about mRNA and transcription factors which modulate the geometry of the dendrites and the strength of both chemical and electrical synapses (by increasing and decreasing channel sites) so there's even more complicated feedback happening at the molecular level.
Yes, we use compartmental models. They're not nearly the whole story.
this is mainstream (but in a nascent manner).
Evidence that it's mainstream:
the effects on selective attention on neural receptive fields has been one of the hottest areas of research for the last 20 years.
As a neuroscientist, I wish you both stop what is either poorly supported or wrong view about what is mainstream in neuroscience. Saying that this or this work is compatible with an interpretation is not an evidence that the interpretation is influencial (in other words I agree about the nascent manner but a nascent mainstream is simply self-contradictory). Saying that receptive field has been one of the hottest areas of research in the last 20 is simply wrong. Single units technics in animals have been the gold standard from maybe 1935 to about 1990. Since that what happens is an impressive rise of new technics devoted to recording in humans, mostly fMRI, and these technics can't record receptive field. You may not believe me, in which case simply look at how many papers you can retrieve with either brain + MRI or brain + receptive field in the last 20 y.
However Davies does allow for some kind of emergence at the border between classical and quantum mechanics, which is where separability breaks down also.
Can you explain why separability should breaks down at this border, despite QM is perfectly computable?
that’s like saying the spaceship is caused by the gun that Lievo keeps talking about. Unless you can clearly define selective attention and neural receptive fields, it won’t help.
These two concepts are perfectly and operationnaly defined. What's the problem?
And Lievo's guns are precisely not an example of anything I have been talking about. What could be a more reductionist view of reality than CA? He may see "spaceships" and "guns" looking at the rigid operations of a finite state automaton. But that "meaning" is completely absent from the CA itself. It emerges nowhere within it.
Bedau uses these guns to argue for weak emergence. And I agree, so far as emergence goes, it is as weak as can be imagined. I am talking about something else here.
I'm sure you well aware that CGl is universal for computation. Meaning that any computable system you may think of can be implemented on it. So are you saying strong emergence is not computationnal? If not, on which basis would you decide that one CGL show or don't show strong emergence?
We seem to be getting deeply into the neuroscience at this point, which is a perfectly appropriate place to go to study the neural correlates of mental qualia like free will. I would just like to point out at this point, as we have been talking about Pr, Ps, and M states, that we are free to adopt a physicalist perspective, and even choose to assume that physical states actually exist, and further assume that they form a closed system (whether it be Ps or Pr that are the most useful approaches, or whether either approach can be more or less useful in a given context). All the same, every single one of those is an assumption involved in a modeling approach, not a single one is an axiom (because they are not self-evident), and not a single one has convincing evidence to favor it. They are just choices made by the scientist to make progress.
In my view, which may be a minority but is logically bulletproof, there is no reason to imagine that we know that physical states either exist, or are closed, or even that it makes any sense to imagine that either of those are true beyond the usual idealizations we make to get somewhere. What is demonstrably true is that everything we mean by a physical state arises from perception/analysis of a class of experiences, all done by our brains. We can notice that our perceptions are correlated with the concepts we build up around the idea of a physical state, and we gain predictive power by building up those concepts, and not one single thing can we say beyond that. This is just something to bear in mind as we dive into the physicalist perspective, either at a reduced or systems level-- it is not at all obvious that this approach will ever be anything but a study of the neural correlates of mental states, i.e., the mental states may always be something different.
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 01:53 PM
As a neuroscientist, I wish you both stop what is either poorly supported or wrong view about what is mainstream in neuroscience. Saying that this or this work is compatible with an interpretation is not an evidence that the interpretation is influencial (in other words I agree about the nascent manner but a nascent mainstream is simply self-contradictory).
Nascent mainstream is not self-contradictory. Nonlinear science is nascent to the mainstream, but it is mainstream (i.e. the work is published in well-known peer-reviewed journals). I don't know what you think my interpretation is; I responded to Q_Goest who (wrongly) put computational models and nonlinear science at odds.
You would agree, I hope, that Hodgkin's Huxley is a (~60 year old) mainstream model. It's a nonlinear model. Popular among computaitonal scientists is the Morris Lecar model (because it's 2D instead of the HH 4D, making phaseplane analysis and large networks much easier to handle).
Theoretical Neuroscience institutes and centers have popped up all over the world in the last 20 years, including exactly the kind of work I'm talking about (you have Redwood at Berkeley, CTN in New York, The Seung Lab at MIT, Computaitonal Neuroscience programs within neuroscience deparments)
We can argue about the semantics of "mainstream" but this a well-funded, productive area of research.
Here... from 2001, TEN years ago...
Neurodynamics: nonlinear dynamics and neurobiology
Current Opinion in Neurobiology
Volume 11, Issue 4, 1 August 2001, Pages 423-430
apeiron
Mar18-11, 03:51 PM
As a neuroscientist, I wish you both stop what is either poorly supported or wrong view about what is mainstream in neuroscience.... You may not believe me, in which case simply look at how many papers you can retrieve with either brain + MRI or brain + receptive field in the last 20 y.
You lose credibility with every post.
Check the top 10 papers from Nature Neuroscience over the past 10 years.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/luolab/Pdfs/Luo_NatRevNeuro_10Y_anniv_2010.pdf
Attention effects, neural integration, homeostatic organisation and other forms of global top-down self-organisation feature prominently.
2001 Brainweb 2.0: the quest for synchrony
2002 Attention networks: past, present and future
2004 Homeostatic plasticity develops!
2006 Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition
Your claim that scanning can't be used to research top-down effects is obvious nonsense.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/28/40/10056.short
or
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v3/n3/full/nn0300_284.html
or
http://www.indiana.edu/~lceiub/publications_files/Pessoa_Cog_Neurosci_III_2004.pdf
Or as wiki says...
In the 1990s, psychologists began using PET and later fMRI to image the brain in attentive tasks. Because of the highly expensive equipment that was generally only available in hospitals, psychologists sought for cooperation with neurologists. Pioneers of brain imaging studies of selective attention are psychologist Michael I. Posner (then already renowned for his seminal work on visual selective attention) and neurologist Marcus Raichle.[citation needed] Their results soon sparked interest from the entire neuroscience community in these psychological studies, which had until then focused on monkey brains. With the development of these technological innovations neuroscientists became interested in this type of research that combines sophisticated experimental paradigms from cognitive psychology with these new brain imaging techniques. Although the older technique of EEG had long been used to study the brain activity underlying selective attention by cognitive psychophysiologists, the ability of the newer techniques to actually measure precisely localized activity inside the brain generated renewed interest by a wider community of researchers. The results of these experiments have shown a broad agreement with the psychological, psychophysiological and the experiments performed on monkeys.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention
And are you suggesting electrode recording is somehow passe?
http://www.the-scientist.com/2009/10/1/57/1/
apeiron
Mar18-11, 04:02 PM
So are you saying strong emergence is not computationnal?
Yes, by design Turing machines are isolated from global influences. Their internal states are simply informational, never meaningful. Are you unfamiliar with Searle's Chinese Room argument for example?
BTW, I don't accept the weak~strong dichotomy as it is being used here because it too hardwires in the very reductionist assumptions that are being challenged.
As I have said, the entire system is what emerges. So you have a development from the vaguely existing to the crisply existing. But if weak = vague, and strong = crisp, then perhaps you would be making a fair translation.
apeiron
Mar18-11, 04:10 PM
All the same, every single one of those is an assumption involved in a modeling approach, not a single one is an axiom (because they are not self-evident), and not a single one has convincing evidence to favor it. They are just choices made by the scientist to make progress.
I agree. An axiom is just an assumption formulated for the purposes of modelling. Calling it self-evident is just another way of saying I can't think of anything better at the moment.
Mathematicians of course have often believed they were accessing Platonic truth via pure reason. But scientists follow the pragmatist philosophy of CS Peirce.
Yes, and if a convincing case can be argued for an equation along the lines of
M = Ps <--> Pr,
I think it would be even more interesting if the relation was something more akin to
P(M) = Ps <--> Pr,
where P means "the projection onto the physical." It would not be necessary for P to be invertible, so the physicalist claim that
M = P-1(Ps <--> Pr)
does not necessarily logically follow.
It is apparent that changes in the Ps <--> Pr interaction correlate with changes in M, and can be viewed as causal of changes in M because the detection of causality is one of the main properties of the P operation. However, if E signifies the evolution operator, involved in making some change, we still cannot say
E[M] = P-1(E[Ps <--> Pr]),
as that requires not only that P is invertible, but also that it commutes with E. Instead, what we can say is
E[P([M])] = E[Ps <--> Pr].
If we assert that EP = PE' as our definition of E', then we have
P(E'[M]) = E[Ps <--> Pr],
and this is the fundamental equation that systems-type neurologists study. But note we must wonder to what extent P is invertible, and to what extent P commutes with E. If neither holds, we have a particularly interesting situation.
apeiron
Mar18-11, 06:46 PM
Yes, and if a convincing case can be argued for an equation along the lines of M = Ps <--> Pr,
OK, you have lost me there. I'm not even sure if you are making a satirical argument. So you may have to explain it more fully :smile:.
A quick aside, to make a systems argument, one of the issues is having a systems notation. So I used set theory (as suggested by Salthe's hierarchy theory). But Peirce's sign of illation might be another route(http://www.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/TimeParadox.pdf).
Or because the = sign is always a statement about symmetry, and the systems view is about symmetry-breaking, then perhaps the notion of the reciprocal is the most accurate way to denote a process and its obverse - an invertible operation?
So Pr = 1/Ps could be another way of framing my argument. But then I was saying that Ps is the super-set, so not really invertible.
Anyway a logical notation that expresses the concepts is a live issue - and Louis Kauffman has highlighted the connections between Peirce, Nicod and Spencer-Brown. Another longer paper you might enjoy is http://www.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Peirce.pdf.
Back to what you posted.
M = Ps <--> Pr - I translate this as the mind contains two constrasting views of causality, that are formed mutually as a symmetry-breaking of ignorance. But I think still the set theoretic view is more accurate.
My claim on P (models of physical causality) is that Ps = Pl + Pg. So systems causality is local construction plus global constraints.
Whereas Pr = Pl. So reductionist causality is based on just local construction.
However I then also claim that global constraints are still implied in Pr - they are just frozen and so can be left out of the modelling for simplicity's sake. Only the local construction has to be explicitly represented.
So Pr = Pl + not-Pg? Doesn't really work, does it?
But you raise an interesting issue just about the need for a formal notation that captures the ideas of systems causality. There is an abundance of notation to represent reductionist constructive arguments, but not really an equivalent for the systems view.
it is not at all obvious that this approach will ever be anything but a study of the neural correlates of mental states, i.e., the mental states may always be something different.
Sure it's logically sound. But could you think of a way to make a positive statement along this line?
Nascent mainstream is not self-contradictory. Nonlinear science is nascent to the mainstream, but it is mainstream (i.e. the work is published in well-known peer-reviewed journals). I don't know what you think my interpretation is; I responded to Q_Goest who (wrongly) put computational models and nonlinear science at odds.
I certainly agree your view is mainstream within the subfields that care about it. My point is that you're stretching the mainstream too far by applying it to neuroscience as a whole. The fact is most neuroscientists are not influenced by this view, because it does not have any impact in their day to day job. By the way, I guess what I don't like is that calling one's view mainstream is close to appeal to authority, which is hardly ever a good thing. When someone use that, usually that's because it doesn't have anything better to say. I know you can do better than that. :wink:
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 07:24 PM
Q Goest is the one that introduced mainstream as being scientifically meaningful.
I don't think most neuroscientists are influenced by the view, but I interpreted mainstream as pertaining to scientific peer review: the list of acceptable journals.
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 07:27 PM
In other words, these idea aren't beingrejected by the scientific community, and are passing peer review, even in the traditional neuroscience journals.
My traditional neuro advisor is happy to reach across the table and help us motivate our models biologically.
apeiron
Mar18-11, 08:05 PM
By the way, I guess what I don't like is that calling one's view mainstream is close to appeal to authority, which is hardly ever a good thing. When someone use that, usually that's because it doesn't have anything better to say. I know you can do better than that. :wink:
Yes, you have made your position clear on appeals to authority....
As a neuroscientist, I wish you both stop what is either poorly supported or wrong view about what is mainstream in neuroscience.
And why you continue to battle strawmen beats me.
It is only you who set this up as claims about being mainstream. You can check back to the post where I urged Q Goest to focus on the particular literature of neural receptive fields and top-down attentional effects if you like. You will see that it was hardly an appeal to authority but instead an appeal to consider the actual neuroscience.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3177690&postcount=36
Of course, you are now trying to say that the receptive field studies are not mainstream, or not new, or not influential, or something.
But all you have supplied as a source for that view is an appeal to authority. And a lame suggestion for a google search.
BTW, google scholar returns 142,000 hits for brain + fMRI and 164,000 for brain + receptive fields. What does that tell us?
You lose credibility with every post.
Your usual line when you got it wrong, it seems. :rolleyes:
Check the top 10 papers from Nature Neuroscience over the past 10 years.
Small detail: this is Nature Reviews Neuroscience, which is not the same as Nature Neuroscience nor Nature.
Not so small detail: what you suggest is a bad methodology. Don't you know how to use pubmed?
I've check it anyway. Among these 10 papers, none but one discuss receptive fields, and only one reference is discussed. Among 114.
So again you said that "effects on selective attention on neural receptive fields has been one of the hottest areas of research for the last 20 years.", and again this is wrong. I can just wonder how you came to pretend otherwise despite it's wrong even using the data you emphasized.
Your claim that scanning can't be used to research top-down effects is obvious nonsense.
Obvious strawman building, given I never made this claim. I'm better not: this my line of research. :biggrin:
And are you suggesting electrode recording is somehow passe?
In a sense, yes. In a sense, no. The no part is that these kinds of data are still very interesting. The yes part is that data collection using electrode recording has been becoming too slow when compared to the 20-y-new neuroimaging technics in humans.
Q Goest is the one that introduced mainstream as being scientifically meaningful.
I don't think most neuroscientists are influenced by the view, but I interpreted mainstream as pertaining to scientific peer review: the list of acceptable journals.
Oh I just misunderstood you then. To me mainstream is "the common current thought of the majority". I've just missed the part where this definition was otherwise. My bad, sorry.
Yes, by design Turing machines are isolated from global influences.
If reality is computational, then all global influence are inside a TM. It may or not be the case, but if you assume the global environnement is not inside a Turing machine, there is no surprise you will conclude it's not computationnal.
Their internal states are simply informational, never meaningful.
By definition?
Are you unfamiliar with Searle's Chinese Room argument for example?
You actually give a sh.. about this argument? :surprised
BTW, I don't accept the weak~strong dichotomy as it is being used here because it too hardwires in the very reductionist assumptions that are being challenged.
As I have said, the entire system is what emerges. So you have a development from the vaguely existing to the crisply existing. But if weak = vague, and strong = crisp, then perhaps you would be making a fair translation.
Is there any system that does not emerge, from these definitions?
BTW, google scholar returns 142,000 hits for brain + fMRI and 164,000 for brain + receptive fields. What does that tell us?
*cough cough* I'm afraid it tells us you are not very familar with this engine. Brain + "receptive field" returns 88 700 hits. You see the trick?
You may notice that brain + MRI returns 1 130 000
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 09:17 PM
Oh I just misunderstood you then. To me mainstream is "the common current thought of the majority". I've just missed the part where this definition was otherwise. My bad, sorry.
Sarcasm is very productive. There's something Q_Goest and you are conflating here.
There's three things going on:
1. constituent reductionism
2. causal reductionism
3. philosophical reductionism
My point is that nonlinear dynamics conforms to 1. and 2. so it IS mainstream scientifically; there's no change of view necessary in a strictly fundamental, scientific manner. If you're a real neuroscientist, then you have got to understand this at least with the canonical Hodgkins Huxley model.
apeiron and Q_Goest are arguing about 2. I'm not part of that argument, I'm a causal reductionist (i.e. I agree with Q_Goest there). Nonlinear dynamics is in the same camp, strictly speaking (it says nothing about 3., human interpretation does).
I disagree with Q_Goest that he can jump from (1 and 2) to 3 as he did, suggesting that because there's compartmental models, 3. must be true too. Nonlinear dynamics is evidence to me, that 3. is wrong. This may not be a mainstream view in philosophy (I wouldn't know) but we were talking about science, weren't we? Which is why you flashed your alleged neuroscience credentials.
apeiron
Mar18-11, 09:17 PM
So again you said that "effects on selective attention on neural receptive fields has been one of the hottest areas of research for the last 20 years.", and again this is wrong. I can just wonder how you came to pretend otherwise despite it's wrong even using the data you emphasized.
Yeah, easy tactic to pick out isolated statements rather than deal with the substance of a post.
Again, the context was Q Goest disbelief in global constraints, and my saying global constraints are mainstream in neuroscience since forever (like since Luria for example). He asked about neurons so I cited the specific receptive field research.
Now you want to make it about receptive fields rather than top-down causality. Well still the effects of selective attention on receptive fields was the biggest thing to happen in the field since Torsten/Wiesel. Fair to say Singer/Gray oscillations would have grabbed more headlines, of course.
Perhaps you were not around at the time so don't quite appreciate the impact the work had?
Obvious strawman building, given I never made this claim. I'm better not: this my line of research.
And now you can tell us exactly how the scanning revolution has changed our view of the brain perhaps. What do you consider a few of the things that have been revealed that we never expected?
If scanning is the new gold standard as you seem to want to suggest, where are the results to match animal studies? Name your hot 5 or 10 results when it comes to the cognitive architecture of the brain and let's see what is not essentially a confirmation of animal studies.
Or you could just answer the OP. What new light has imaging thrown on the subject of freewill (that had not already been foreshadowed by EEG studies or animal studies)?
I expect the usual silence on matters of any substance.
Q_Goest
Mar18-11, 09:18 PM
Hi Pythagorean,
Nascent mainstream is not self-contradictory. Nonlinear science is nascent to the mainstream, but it is mainstream (i.e. the work is published in well-known peer-reviewed journals). I don't know what you think my interpretation is; I responded to Q_Goest who (wrongly) put computational models and nonlinear science at odds.
You’ve misunderstood then. I previously tried to bring out what your views were on the topic of downward causation and you took offense. The reason I was asking was to figure out what kind of downward causation, if any, you were supporting. As I’d eluded to before, I’m not sure you understand what some of these folks are saying about how nonlinear systems allow for downward causation. I have no problem with the fact that most of reality is nonlinear. Reality really is nonlinear. I only have a problem with the concept of strong emergence and downward causation, and it seems there are those in the literature who attempt to use the concept of nonlinear systems to push these ideas. I’m not sure if you’re aware of those attempts or not, but it appears you aren’t.
nismaratwork
Mar18-11, 09:19 PM
I would have to agree with Pythagorean here, or rather, his assessment. I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough yet to pick a camp beyond the default I thoughtlessly hold.
Put in terms of 123 however, and re-reading the thread, I have to say that either Lievo, you're not understanding Pythagorean's position, or you're uncharacterstically taunting him.
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 09:24 PM
Hi Pythagorean,
You’ve misunderstood then. I previously tried to bring out what your views were on the topic of downward causation and you took offense. The reason I was asking was to figure out what kind of downward causation, if any, you were supporting. As I’d eluded to before, I’m not sure you understand what some of these folks are saying about how nonlinear systems allow for downward causation. I have no problem with the fact that most of reality is nonlinear. Reality really is nonlinear. I only have a problem with the concept of strong emergence and downward causation, and it seems there are those in the literature who attempt to use the concept of nonlinear systems to push these ideas. I’m not sure if you’re aware of those attempts or not, but it appears you aren’t.
I clearly said weak emergence, and that I have no idea what downward causation means and that I'm not supporting it because I don't understand it. Then I was given definitions (for the fifth time) that don't help me to understand it. I'm not particularly concerned about understanding it, either.
I thought you were attacking nonlinear sciences (I do realize there are people that abuse it, just like they do with quantum mechanics, maybe my post above replying to lievo will clear up my disagreeance with you, if it exists; not sure anymore) post #211
apeiron
Mar18-11, 09:26 PM
If reality is computational, then all global influence are inside a TM. It may or not be the case, but if you assume the global environnement is not inside a Turing machine, there is no surprise you will conclude it's not computationnal.
But reality is not computational.
*cough cough* I'm afraid it tells us you are not very familar with this engine. Brain + "receptive field" returns 88 700 hits. You see the trick?
You may notice that brain + MRI returns 1 130 000
Why would I search for MRI instead of fMRI? You want that I compare anatomy studies to functional ones? So yes I did see your trick :smile:.
But continue with your appeal to the authority of google searches in place of engaging in substantive arguments by all means. It is really making you look clever.
Q_Goest
Mar18-11, 09:36 PM
Hi apeiron,
Davies correctly says that global constraints are not some extra force. Force is a localised, atomised, action - efficient causality. Constraints are just constraints. They might sound "forceful" because they act downwards to constrain the local degrees of freedom (as I say, shape them to have some distinct identity). But they are a complementary form of causality. A constraining or limiting action, not a constructive or additive one.
If one defines global constraints as you say, I have no argument. It sounds more like "boundary conditions". Benard cells for example, are bounded top and bottom with heat flux on the bottom and heat removed at the top. Are these "global constraints"? Certainly Benard cells are not an example of downward causation. I think the quote I've provided by Davies states that position quite clearly.
Q_Goest
Mar18-11, 09:48 PM
There's something Q_Goest and you are conflating here.
There's three things going on:
1. constituent reductionism
2. causal reductionism
3. philosophical reductionism
My point is that nonlinear dynamics conforms to 1. and 2. so it IS mainstream scientifically; there's no change of view necessary in a strictly fundamental, scientific manner. If you're a real neuroscientist, then you have got to understand this at least with the canonical Hodgkins Huxley model.
apeiron and Q_Goest are arguing about 2. I'm not part of that argument, I'm a causal reductionist (i.e. I agree with Q_Goest there). Nonlinear dynamics is in the same camp, strictly speaking (it says nothing about 3., human interpretation does).
I disagree with Q_Goest that he can jump from (1 and 2) to 3 as he did, suggesting that because there's compartmental models, 3. must be true too. Nonlinear dynamics is evidence to me, that 3. is wrong. This may not be a mainstream view in philosophy (I wouldn't know) but we were talking about science, weren't we? Which is why you flashed your alleged neuroscience credentials.
What do you mean by philosophical reductionism?
Yeah, easy tactic to pick out isolated statements rather than deal with the substance of a post.
You could say "Ok I was wrong". That happens, you know. Even to those guys who talk to Chalmer.
the effects of selective attention on receptive fields (...)
Perhaps you were not around at the time so don't quite appreciate the impact the work had?
Or perhaps it had little impact.
And now you can tell us exactly how the scanning revolution has changed our view of the brain perhaps. What do you consider a few of the things that have been revealed that we never expected?
That we never expected... strawman but interesting: at a glance I would say default mode, cognition in cerebellum, consciousness in insula, modulation of cortical tickness, BCI with person supposely in coma.
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 09:58 PM
What do you mean by philosophical reductionism?
epistemological reductionism?
The idea that we can (deterministically) predict what will emerge just by knowing the constituents. That the behavior of the whole can be described by behavior of the constituents.
I found this: It's really tough to read but it outlines the difference between ontological and the epistemological reductionism:
http://www.zeww.uni-hannover.de/026_Hoyningen_Ep_Reduct_Biol.pdf
Q_Goest
Mar18-11, 10:01 PM
Can you explain why separability should breaks down at this border, despite QM is perfectly computable?
Sorry. This is a great question, but I think our discussion of 'free will' has already gotten a bit far afield. Maybe another thread is in order?
Sarcasm is very productive.
I would have to agree with Pythagorean here
I give you my word I was not sacastic here. Please read my post #209 as pure first degree, including apology. I've no idea why it appears otherwise.
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 10:05 PM
I give you my word I was not sacastic here. Please read my post #209 as pure first degree, including apology. I've no idea why it appears otherwise.
Not a big deal, no worries. I even made my statement sarcastic for fun. But there was also substance in that post.
apeiron
Mar18-11, 10:12 PM
Hi apeiron,
If one defines global constraints as you say, I have no argument. It sounds more like "boundary conditions". Benard cells for example, are bounded top and bottom with heat flux on the bottom and heat removed at the top. Are these "global constraints"? Certainly Benard cells are not an example of downward causation. I think the quote I've provided by Davies states that position quite clearly.
OK, now go back to Pattee on the difference between holonomic and non-holonomic constraints.
Sorry about the jargon, but this is important. Remember that we are talking about the modelling of conscious freewill - and so the modelling of complex adaptive systems, or systems with life and mind.
So the claim is that these are systems with control over their global constraints/boundary conditions - in a way that non-living systems like Benard cells are not.
A dissipative structure like a Benard cell is about the self-organisation that occurs within certain fixed boundary conditions (the constraints are imposed from the outside - by an experimenter in this case). So there is a kind of downwards causality - the simplest possible kind. You could call it strong, or weak, or whatever. Holonomic is what some physicists would call it.
But life and mind are more complex. They have the memory mechanisms that can manipulate the constraints acting on dynamical systems. Genes know when to toss an enzyme into the mix to change the dynamics of a metabolic reaction. They can shift the global constraints.
The human mind - employing speech - does the same trick. Clear your mind as best you can (relax the constraints and so maximise the degrees of freedom). Now I will toss the word DONKEY at you. Your state of awareness will now be constrained selectively. You will be thinking about donkeys, what they look like, what they mean, etc. Now I will say ANGRY DONKEY, and your state of thought will become even more constrained, more selective, more highly specified.
So the point about complex systems is that they are also still just dissipative structures (all life and mind exists as order that accelerates the entropification of the universe). But they have these extra levels of control over the global contraints by which their dynamical processes are self-organising.
So now downwards causation starts to seem like something strong and distinctive. For example, I can of my own freewill decide to rest or run about. So even my rate of entropification is under some control (over a limited range of course).
You can see two things hopefully here. The first is that this view maintains a gradualism from the non-living system (like a Benard cell) to living ones. Yet it also defines the crucial difference. One is merely holonomic, the other is also non-holonomic.
And it seems fair enough to say both are examples of strong downward causation - one being of the strong holonomic variety, the other being of the strong non-holonomic one. But I am not going to die in the ditch over jargon.
The idea I am defending is that the causality of systems is based on a dichotomy of local construction and global constraint. This loosely translates to what people have meant by bottom-up and top-down causality. Or even initiating conditions and boundary conditions.
But the advantage of the jargon I prefer is that it is based on a logic of vagueness. It presumes the existence of local degrees of freedom (the indeterminate potential) and then the constraints that arise to organise them into a force that can actually construct.
But reality is not computational.
How do you know?
Why would I search for MRI instead of fMRI? You want that I compare anatomy studies to functional ones?
C'mon. You have to search MRI because fMRI does not appears in functionnal MRI, echo-planar MRI, sparse sampling MRI, event-related MRI, block designed MRI, ... and yes also anatomical MRI. A lot to look at with this technics alone. Alternativley, search for brain imaging.
I also suggest you look at the pattern in time. I did not keep the data, but that's impressing.
Q_Goest
Mar18-11, 10:14 PM
epistemological reductionism?
The idea that we can (deterministically) predict what will emerge just by knowing the constituents. That the behavior of the whole can be described by behavior of the constituents.
I found this: It's really tough to read but it outlines the difference between ontological and the epistemological reductionism:
http://www.zeww.uni-hannover.de/026_Hoyningen_Ep_Reduct_Biol.pdf
I'd say that, strictly speaking, we can't deterministically predict things, even in principal. The reason being that wave function collapse is not, in principal, deterministically predictable. But that doesn't mean that classical mechanics isn't deterministic. Yes, classical mechanics is a model that takes agregates of particles and sums them up and makes deterministic predictions which I don't see as being controversial at all. What I've tried to bring out is that the deviation from this deterministic prediction of the model is not important to providing for any kind of downward causation, mental causation, free will, etc... Just because our initial conditions may not be knowable down to the particle level in principal, doesn't mean that we now have wiggle room to allow for some kind of 'free will'.
nismaratwork
Mar18-11, 10:17 PM
I give you my word I was not sacastic here. Please read my post #209 as pure first degree, including apology. I've no idea why it appears otherwise.
Well, I did say it would have been uncharacteristic for you... for me that's practically a compliment. :tongue:
@apeiron: What does it say about someone who holds an image in their mind, ignoring everything including, (to keep the theme) 'ANGRY DONKEY'? Are they selectively bypassing this causation, or is it a matter of truly gathering your thoughts? Can you avoid the downward casuation by essentially swimming upstread to being with, or would you need to be utterly autistic for that to be meaningful?
Understand, I'm not trying to test your hypothetical, I just wonder how my speculative questions fit within its framework.
nismaratwork
Mar18-11, 10:19 PM
I'd say that, strictly speaking, we can't deterministically predict things, even in principal. The reason being that wave function collapse is not, in principal, deterministically predictable. But that doesn't mean that classical mechanics isn't deterministic. Yes, classical mechanics is a model that takes agregates of particles and sums them up and makes deterministic predictions which I don't see as being controversial at all. What I've tried to bring out is that the deviation from this deterministic prediction of the model is not important to providing for any kind of downward causation, mental causation, free will, etc... Just because our initial conditions may not be knowable down to the particle level in principal, doesn't mean that we now have wiggle room to allow for some kind of 'free will'.
What does the (possible fiction) of collapse have to do with determinism? That just leads to circular reasoning dictated by the choice of Interpreation one chooses, unless it's dBB in which case there is no wavefunction collapse of any form in any way.
Sorry. This is a great question, but I think our discussion of 'free will' has already gotten a bit far afield. Maybe another thread is in order?
No pb. I think this is the heart of what I don't get in your position, surely we will have to discuss it at one point.
apeiron
Mar18-11, 10:28 PM
How do you know?
Quantum mechanics.
So how do you know its computational?
C'mon. You have to search MRI because fMRI does not appears in functionnal MRI, echo-planar MRI, sparse sampling MRI, event-related MRI, block designed MRI, ... and yes also anatomical MRI. A lot to look at with this technics alone. Alternativley, search for brain imaging.
I also suggest you look at the pattern in time. I did not keep the data, but that's impressing.
Argument by citation impact still? Hilarious.
OK, if we are comparing modalities, then google scholar brain + "single unit". Try comparing apples and apples a little bit.
You are obsessing about techniques, I was discussing concepts. Let me know anytime you feel up to discussing concepts.
Sure it's logically sound. But could you think of a way to make a positive statement along this line?Yes-- if we adopt a physicalist perspective, we are led to imagine that ultimately, all means of understanding the mind must be framed in physicalist language. If one merely sees physicalist language as the most objectively accessible correlates of the mind, one is led in a different direction, one that continues to allow validity to more psychological, as opposed to strictly neurological, approaches. That is the positive way to say it-- we are embarking on an inclusive study of mind, not an exclusive one. This also relates to what insights a systems approach can bring to the table-- I'm merely expanding the view that top-down physical approaches have value to saying that nonphysical approaches (introspection, psychology, behavioral studies, etc.) have value as well. I doubt we'll get a well-rounded view of what the mind is strictly with physicalist reductionism, and probably not even by extending that to include systems approaches, if doing so means turning away from all other modes of investigation. Doing so is essentially mistaking the meaning of language, and its role in human inquiry, which would be a particularly unfortunate mistake in regard to language about the mind.
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 10:31 PM
I'd say that, strictly speaking, we can't deterministically predict things, even in principal. The reason being that wave function collapse is not, in principal, deterministically predictable. But that doesn't mean that classical mechanics isn't deterministic. Yes, classical mechanics is a model that takes agregates of particles and sums them up and makes deterministic predictions which I don't see as being controversial at all. What I've tried to bring out is that the deviation from this deterministic prediction of the model is not important to providing for any kind of downward causation, mental causation, free will, etc... Just because our initial conditions may not be knowable down to the particle level in principal, doesn't mean that we now have wiggle room to allow for some kind of 'free will'.
And I agree with you. I've actually pointed out (somewhere around here) two independent experiments that don't look good for free will, where experimenters were able to predict people's behavior who thought they were making choices up to six seconds later. So six seconds after the deterministic system was already on it's way, the individual thought "hey, I'll choose this one" but the computer had already detected the system's (the brains) direction and beat the individual to the conclusion.
here's one of the two videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ4nwTTmcgs
apeiron
Mar18-11, 10:35 PM
@apeiron: What does it say about someone who holds an image in their mind, ignoring everything including, (to keep the theme) 'ANGRY DONKEY'? Are they selectively bypassing this causation, or is it a matter of truly gathering your thoughts? Can you avoid the downward casuation by essentially swimming upstread to being with, or would you need to be utterly autistic for that to be meaningful?
Understand, I'm not trying to test your hypothetical, I just wonder how my speculative questions fit within its framework.
That's why you have to clear your mind - clear away any existing imposed state of anticipation/intention.
I presume you already have some thoughts organising your mind at that moment - a prevailing top-down constrained view of what to expect. So you have to relax that to appreciate the power of the words alone.
Q_Goest
Mar18-11, 10:37 PM
OK, now go back to Pattee on the difference between holonomic and non-holonomic constraints.
Sorry about the jargon, but this is important. Remember that we are talking about the modelling of conscious freewill - and so the modelling of complex adaptive systems, or systems with life and mind.
So the claim is that these are systems with control over their global constraints/boundary conditions - in a way that non-living systems like Benard cells are not.
A dissipative structure like a Benard cell is about the self-organisation that occurs within certain fixed boundary conditions (the constraints are imposed from the outside - by an experimenter in this case). So there is a kind of downwards causality - the simplest possible kind. You could call it strong, or weak, or whatever. Holonomic is what some physicists would call it.
But life and mind are more complex. They have the memory mechanisms that can manipulate the constraints acting on dynamical systems. Genes know when to toss an enzyme into the mix to change the dynamics of a metabolic reaction. They can shift the global constraints.
...
And it seems fair enough to say both are examples of strong downward causation - one being of the strong holonomic variety, the other being of the strong non-holonomic one. But I am not going to die in the ditch over jargon.
The idea I am defending is that the causality of systems is based on a dichotomy of local construction and global constraint. This loosely translates to what people have meant by bottom-up and top-down causality. Or even initiating conditions and boundary conditions.
But the advantage of the jargon I prefer is that it is based on a logic of vagueness. It presumes the existence of local degrees of freedom (the indeterminate potential) and then the constraints that arise to organise them into a force that can actually construct.
Ok, I guess we'll disagree on that. I think you're saying that genes and/or enzymes are causally influenced by the 'global state' of the brain. If that's what you're suggesting, then why allow one classical mechanical system to differ from another? By that I mean I see no reason to segragate 'living' systems that are described using classical mechanics from 'not alive' systems. That represents a paradox to me. We have 2 systems, both of which can be described to the degree necessary to make legitamate descriptions, modeled as classical, but the live one has genuine downward causation and the other non-living one doesn't. Is that what you mean?
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 10:45 PM
Ok, here's an argument, and it seems something along the lines of apeiron's argument.
ufkrJkVqems
I disagree with the assertion that we have choice over our environment. This video ignores the whole "did I really choose what I chose" question. Our choice of environment could easily be predetermined by the factors that he spoke of before drawing the final conclusion.
apeiron
Mar18-11, 10:48 PM
Ok, I guess we'll disagree on that. I think you're saying that genes and/or enzymes are causally influenced by the 'global state' of the brain. If that's what you're suggesting, then why allow one classical mechanical system to differ from another? By that I mean I see no reason to segragate 'living' systems that are described using classical mechanics from 'not alive' systems. That represents a paradox to me. We have 2 systems, both of which can be described to the degree necessary to make legitamate descriptions, modeled as classical, but the live one has genuine downward causation and the other non-living one doesn't. Is that what you mean?
No, you completely misunderstand if you think I said brain states are controlling genes and enzymes. The example I gave was of enzymes controlling metabolic processes, and making a parallel with the way words control brain states.
And the symbol grounding problem is an example of why there is more to life than just rate dependent dynamics (classical physics).
Perhaps we have indeed reached the end of the road on this discussion. I would really recommend reading Pattee carefully as I have founded him the sharpest writer on this particular aspect of the systems approach.
Pythagorean
Mar18-11, 10:54 PM
Here's the one I was talking about that predicted 6 seconds before the person consciously "made a decision" :
N6S9OidmNZM
Quantum mechanics.
So how do you know its computational?
That's you who pretend to know that. I personnaly don't know -altough it would be my guess.
What I know, is that if QM applies correctly describe reality, then reality is computationnal.
Argument by citation impact still? Hilarious.
Yep. An hilarious standard technics.
google scholar brain + "single unit"
Yep. For each paper mentionning single unit, 6 mention brain imaging. Again you're pointing data that show you're wrong, as if it was showing you right.
You are obsessing about techniques, I was discussing concepts.
Good for you. Just stop dig your heels in when you're so obviously wrong and we may switch faster to more interesting or at least fresh stuff. :zzz:
OK, you have lost me there. I'm not even sure if you are making a satirical argument. No satire-- just putting physicalism into a kind of operator formalism. When one does that, it exposes several hidden assumptions, in particular that P is invertible (so knowledge of a physical state of a mind is identical to knowledge of the mind) and that it commutes with E (so the evolution of a physical state is the same thing as evolution of mind). Those are actually different assertions, neither of which has any solid support.
For example, it is possible that the physical state of the mind is never going to suffice to tell us what is "in" that mind, and it is sheer assumption on our part that it ever could (and there I also echo your points about a reductionist "state" as being a kind of modelers fiction, indeed I extend that as well to the more potent coupling in the systems view). If knowing everything there is to know about the physical state of a mind is still not enough to know what is "in" that mind (imagine even trying to define the meaning of that phrase), then P is not invertible.
Also, one might imagine a situation where P actually is invertible, but does not commute with E. That is the case for invertible matrices, for example. Then if a mental state M evolves into E[M], and we look at its physical expression, we have P(E[M]). If we claim that P is invertible, we can say M = P-1(Pr<-->Ps), where by Pr<-->Ps I just mean whatever physical interplay between top-down and bottom-up interactions one wishes to imagine. However, we could still only say E[M] = E[P-1(Pr<-->Ps)], we could not say E[M] = P-1(E[Pr<-->Ps]). In other words, if we start out with a state where M = P-1(Pr<-->Ps) does hold, it does not necessarily continue to hold as it evolves, if P does not commute with E. This is the case, for example, in quantum mechanics, where states of known observables do not have to evolve into states of known observables, so even if we can initially invert the observable to obtain the state, we are not likely to be able to do that later on after evolving the observable correlates of the state.
M = Ps <--> Pr - I translate this as the mind contains two constrasting views of causality, that are formed mutually as a symmetry-breaking of ignorance. But I think still the set theoretic view is more accurate.Indeed, I would say the actual equation must be P(M) = Ps<-->Pr, such that physical language we apply to the mind contains the two contrasting views you mention. The mind itself does not contain those contrasting views, because the mind is just the mind, and is not responsible for our language about it. This is usually a nitpick, but here it becomes centrally important-- we are trying to understand the limitations we impose when we use reductionism, so we should also understand the limitations we impose when we choose any type of language. The mind leading the mind, in effect-- and I'm going to claim that one! (neuroscience: the mind leading the mind.)
My claim on P (models of physical causality) is that Ps = Pl + Pg. So systems causality is local construction plus global constraints.
Yes, I see your point that Ps subsumes Pr, so my notation Ps<-->Pr does not embody that-- I wasn't too worried about the notation, only the issue that one may or may not take a systems approach, what I'm focusing on at the moment is the physicalist element of either.
However I then also claim that global constraints are still implied in Pr - they are just frozen and so can be left out of the modelling for simplicity's sake. Only the local construction has to be explicitly represented.
Yes, I agree here completely. I haven't heard it said from a systems perspective, but I always stress that all laws of physics are differential equations, so are never complete-- there is no "theory of boundary conditions", that is the dirty little secret of the manual elements of physics. It's the thaumaturgical element.
But you raise an interesting issue just about the need for a formal notation that captures the ideas of systems causality. There is an abundance of notation to represent reductionist constructive arguments, but not really an equivalent for the systems view.That's an interesting point, and I agree that causality in the Ps and Pr domains is a very important aspect of physicalist thinking. What I'm saying, though, is that we also need a notation for lifting the physical language into a broader language of mind. Simply assuming that the mind is completely describable by its physical correlates strikes me as a good way to shoot ourselves in the foot down the road, and the notation involving P and E operations is intended to draw out the hidden (and unlikely) assumptions being made.
Yes-- if we adopt a physicalist perspective, we are led to imagine that ultimately, all means of understanding the mind must be framed in physicalist language.
One precision please: here do you equate physicalist and mathematical language?
And I agree with you. I've actually pointed out (somewhere around here) two independent experiments that don't look good for free will, where experimenters were able to predict people's behavior who thought they were making choices up to six seconds later. So six seconds after the deterministic system was already on it's way, the individual thought "hey, I'll choose this one" but the computer had already detected the system's (the brains) direction and beat the individual to the conclusion.
But that doesn't necessarily preclude free will for (at least) two reasons:
1) The ability to predict with high precision an outcome does not necessarily mean free will was not expressed. I love creme brulee, and so if I am choosing a dessert at a restaurant that serves creme brulee, a scan of my brain can probably detect that I am salivating over creme brulee before I actually decide to order it. Does that mean I do not have the free will to choose to order creme brulee? Free will is more subtle than that, we tend to imagine there is a "moment of decision", but that's probably a fiction-- decisions are more likely a process, with varying levels of predictability throughout the process, than they are an instantaneous moment of execution of free will.
2) Free will is not the same thing as the perception of free will. I may make a free will choice 6 seconds before I perceive that I have made a free will choice, and it can still be free will.
So what I would say that studies like this do, above all, is force us toward a more sophisticated understanding of what free will is, not challenge the basic concept. At worst, the neurology of free will might make free will seem like a kind of mirage, but even in a mirage, there is really light doing something there, it is merely our naive interpretation of what it is doing that needs to be replaced by the science. More likely, in my view, we will find that a workable definition of free will must include the perception of it-- such that, free will must involve multiple elements, including absence of coercion, and either conscious introspection, or a free will choice to activate "autopilot", and the perception of these factors persisting both during and after the fact.
Pythagorean
Mar19-11, 12:48 AM
Well yes, that's my point: Our concept of free will is being challenged. I don't come out and say that there is no free will, but you seem to detect that I feel that way (which is largely irrelevant).
apeiron
Mar19-11, 02:28 AM
What I know, is that if QM applies correctly describe reality, then reality is computationnal.
I see. So the planck scale is not a limit on computation after all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_computation
Yep. For each paper mentionning single unit, 6 mention brain imaging. Again you're pointing data that show you're wrong, as if it was showing you right.
Good for you. Just stop dig your heels in when you're so obviously wrong and we may switch faster to more interesting or at least fresh stuff. :zzz:
So it wouldn't matter how trivial a victory you could score, you would feel ever so grateful about it? :smile:
But clearly you selectively quoted. You did not relate the statement to the context of what I said....which was...
Within neuroscience, that was the big revolution of the past 20 years. To study the brain, and even neurons and synapses, in an ecologically valid way. Even the NCC hunt of consciousness studies and the brain imaging "revolution" was based on this.
People said we have been studying the brain by isolating the components. And it has not really told us what we want to know. We stuck electrodes into the brains of cats and rats. But they were anaethetised, not even conscious. And it was single electrodes, not electrode arrays. But now (around 20 years ago) we have better equipment. We can record from awake animals doing actual cognitive tasks and sample activity from an array of regions. Even better, we can stick humans in a scanner and record the systems level interactions.
Yet you say the mainstream for neuroscience is people checking the electrical reponses of disected neurons in petri dishes, or IBM simulations...
I do still feel that the demonstration of attentional enhancement and other top-down effects in microelectrode studies was the most important discovery made from this move to ecologically valid brain research (others might argue for neural oscillations of course).
You have only stated that you don't agree with this. And then attempted to find evidence in patently spurious google counts.
So first you say compare MRI and receptive fields (why compare a modality for anatomical studies with a functional construct?). To compare like with like, you would have to compare a functional modality with a functional modality (fMRI with single unit) and yet even since this error of logic was pointed out, you still try to get away with comparing generic MRI with a specific functional technique.
If you did compare the appropriate terms, you would in fact find that it is 155k to 153k in favour of single unit. Not that I think this means anything much, I'm just humouring you here.
Actually I am surprised a little by these numbers because any masters psychology student can whip up an fMRI study in a few days given access to a machine. But doing microelectrode studies on animals is grinding science. You have to work in a fortress in fear of animal liberation terrorists. You need considerable technical skill as well as a good ethical justification.
So as you would know, being a neuroscientist and all, the pool of animal experimenters is far smaller than that of neuroimagers, and that would be an obvious constraint on raw publication tallies.
But anyway, if you believe the debate was all about the number of times the words neural receptive field has ever been mentioned, or whether neuroimaging has more research impact than animal studies, then that is up to you. My arguments were about the fact that top-down has been a mainstream neuroscience concept since Luria and Sperry.
If you want to challenge that, be my guest.
Pythagorean
Mar19-11, 02:48 AM
This always had interesting implications to me (only the first couple minutes about bacteria/human symbiosis)
TVfmUfr8VPA
That, and the idea of a transition from unicellular to multicellular life. Slime molds are an especially interesting case that could lead to explanations about the transition; from single celled community to multicellular slug:
bkVhLJLG7ug
I think these may have interesting insights to understanding human behavior as well. Where does the consciousness of the individual (cell or person) stop and the consciousness of the community (cells or persons) begin?
Pythagorean
Mar19-11, 02:57 AM
here is some excellent footage. It's in german, but fastforward to 7:25 and enjoy the visuals knowing what you're looking at (slime molds described above).
tLO2n3YMcXw
apeiron
Mar19-11, 05:05 AM
That we never expected... strawman but interesting: at a glance I would say default mode, cognition in cerebellum, consciousness in insula, modulation of cortical tickness, BCI with person supposely in coma.
OK, you suggest five neuroimaging breakthroughs. Let's see if they involve the discovery of top-down principles.
1) Default mode network
Yes. Raichle/Snyder contrast the bottom up "driven" view of computer science and the top-down systems view now revealed.
One view posits that the brain is primarily reflexive, driven by the
momentary demands of the environment. The other view is that the
brain's operations are mainly intrinsic involving the maintenance
of information for interpreting, responding to and even predicting
environmental demands.
http://www.appliedneuroscience.com/Default%20mode-a%20brief%20history.pdf
Then Friston/Carhart-Harris have more explicitly linked the default mode to the top-down Bayesian brain model in http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/133/4/1265.full.pdf+html
Some interesting snippets in that like...
Furthermore, we associate failures of top-down control with non-ordinary
states of consciousness, such as early and acute psychosis, the
temporal-lobe aura, dreaming and hallucinogenic drug states.
2) Cerebellum plays role in cognition and behaviour.
Again yes. I well remember the shock that the Fox/Raichle paper created (a PET experiment BTW, not that that matters).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC391365/
It did indeed show that language production was not confined to a couple of brain modules but was a dynamical hierarchy that included even "low level" structures like the cerebellum. For a long time critics insisted it must be an artifact.
So again a significant experiment because it undercut the reductionist computational model of brain processing and pointed to a hierarchical view of top-down in interaction with bottom-up. That was precisely why it got people excited. I was at conferences where the work was presented (as well as discussing it with Raichle, Fox, Posner and others).
3) Consciousness in insula
I presume you mean Craig's recent hypothesis - http://www.appliedneuroscience.com/Insula-what%20you%20feel%20&%20consciousness.pdf
Sadly you would be right that he wants to call it the seat of consciousness. So not a systems point of view. But then dig into the actual research and this claim starts to evaporate like the attention grabbing hype it is.
Quite quickly we are back into a standard hierarchical view of brain function. Craig says the insular handles the high level view of the interior millieu while the cingulate does the job for motor intentions. They work as a team and both have spindle cells (for strong and fast top-down control over the respective hierarchies below them). Etc. The seat of consciousness fast becomes the hierarchical systems story that it should be.
So disregard the hype and the insular cortex is not especially significant except as a higher brain area that is important for top-down influences.
4) Modulation of cortical thickness
Not sure what you mean here unless you are talking about the anatomical studies of brain maturation?
If so, isn't it interesting that the most top-down areas develop the slowest. As a hierarchy it takes time to develop from the bottom up (construction) and for the global constraints to fully organise. Exactly as hierarchy theory would predict (see Salthe on the stages of immaturity, maturity and senescence).
Adolescents are now said to be impulsive and temperamental simply because they are incapable of top-down regulation of their behaviour. The brain areas have not fully developed.
So if this was the neuroimaging finding you meant, yes it was big news. And because it was all about top-downness in neuroscience.
5) BCI with person supposely in coma
OK, again top down (if you are talking about brain computer interfaces and locked in syndrome) - if indirectly this time. A loss of top-down control in coma patients means they can't overtly produce response. But can generate enough EEG activity to be translated as an attempt to command. So a demonstration of top-down control over computer hardware.
I'm puzzled how this counts at a great breakthrough for fMRI though. Perhaps you can elaborate.
Anyway, five findings and the actually significant ones (that is 1, 2 and 4) are significant because they confirmed that the hierarchical approach to the brain, with top-down effects being key, are the way to go.
Q_Goest
Mar19-11, 06:59 AM
No, you completely misunderstand if you think I said brain states are controlling genes and enzymes. The example I gave was of enzymes controlling metabolic processes, and making a parallel with the way words control brain states.
And the symbol grounding problem is an example of why there is more to life than just rate dependent dynamics (classical physics).
Perhaps we have indeed reached the end of the road on this discussion. I would really recommend reading Pattee carefully as I have founded him the sharpest writer on this particular aspect of the systems approach.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Thanks also for clarification on the "top down constraints" and all that. I understand your position more clearly now, though I think I'm still not understanding a large chunk of it.
Are you suggesting that genes are what overcome the symbol grounding problem that Harnad talks about? What paper does Pattee have that explains that concept best? I might go along with that. Here's the problem though. Neuron interactions are governed by classical mechanics, so any strongly emergent phenomena (ie: phenomenal consciousness) can not emerge from those interations alone since classical interactions only allow for weakly emergent phenomena. Yet the mainstream view holds that phenomenal consciousness is emergent on the neuron interactions and not for example, genes or any molecular interactions. Does Pattee address this issue or does he go along with the mainstream view that phenomenal consciousness emerges from neuron interactions alone?
I see. So the planck scale is not a limit on computation after all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_computation
Absolutly not.
But clearly you selectively quoted. You did not relate the statement to the context of what I said....which was...
You said something stupid. Context doesn't change it was stupid. If I wanted to challenge the context, I'd have quote the context.
Actually I am surprised a little by these numbers because any masters psychology student can whip up an fMRI study in a few days given access to a machine. But doing microelectrode studies on animals is grinding science. You have to work in a fortress in fear of animal liberation terrorists. You need considerable technical skill as well as a good ethical justification.
Any fMRI experiment cost at least 5000$. I don't think many master student are allowed to whip up an fMRI study in a few day.
Regarding electrods studies, that's not the problem. The problem is that when you work in humans, you can ask anything and the subject will do it. When you work even in squirel monkeys, that's 6 month to learn to be quite with the head fixed, then 6 month to understand the task, then one to two years of data collection. Every day, every week, one week-end free every three weeks (ethical concern for the animal, good the student can benefit it also) Hope you have a result.
My arguments were about the fact that top-down has been a mainstream neuroscience concept since Luria and Sperry.
This is not the claim I contested. I would agree that top-down is one of the mainstream approach. However Luria and Sperry has little impact here. It's simply that there's only two logical possibilities: bottom-up and top-down approach. If you think that's a big claim one of the two is mainstream...well at least it's not false :biggrin:
OK, you suggest five neuroimaging breakthroughs. Let's see if they involve the discovery of top-down principles. (...) they confirmed that the hierarchical approach to the brain, with top-down effects being key, are the way to go.
That's very instructive. So I understand now, that when you say your claim are supported by evidence, what you mean is that your claim are general enough to accomodate any evidence. Good to know, I won't have to lose my time next time. :redface:
Ferris_bg
Mar19-11, 08:33 AM
By that I mean I see no reason to segregate 'living' systems that are described using classical mechanics from 'not alive' systems. That represents a paradox to me.
May be apeiron's view is that the functionality, which gives rise to consciousness can be implemented only through neurons.
But that's really not a problem relating to free will. The core problem is that even if we accept that the mental (defined as a property of the physical and qualia capable) is somehow reported by the physical, even then we still have some weak form of top-down causality, which in no way implies that there is any free will. To have free will the mental should apply some unique type of strong downward causality. And if you want to have such thing, you must accept that these greater causal powers of the mental do not derive from the physical substance thus you must accept dualism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reductive_physicalism#Jaegwon_Kim.27s_argument_aga inst_non-reductivism).
And don't assume that I say that dualism is not a possibility, I am just saying that you can't have free will in any materialistic theory of mind. To illustrate my above writings I present you this example:
1) I throw a ball in a lake. I know where the lake is, but I do not see it. I know that the way I throw guarantees the ball to fall inside the lake. Now I want to find out the exact position of the ball, and Q_Goest can report it to me. I have a visual contact with him and he with the lake. So he says to me the exact coordinates of the ball.
2) Now imagine that apeiron is in a machine in the bottom of the lake and can influence the waters the way he likes. I throw the ball, apeiron modifies its location and Q_Goest reports it to me.
In example 1) we have a form of weak top-down causality, while in example 2) we have strong downward causality. Now if I define the lake as a property of the park, which I control, then we can only be in situation 1). The park is the only substance, even if it can have a special property like the lake, which I can not report by myself. But if the lake is itself a substance named apeiron then we find ourselves in 2). Apeiron can influence the ball's location thus changing my further computations. We can say that he has used his free will upon the park.
That's very instructive. So I understand now, that when you say your claim are supported by evidence, what you mean is that your claim are general enough to accomodate any evidence. Good to know, I won't have to lose my time next time. I'm not sure I understand this comment. Where I come from, making statements that are both unexpected, and general enough to accomodate all the evidence, is one of the highest goals of scientific inquiry-- hardly a waste of time.
To have free will the mental should apply some unique type of strong downward causality.I think we have to be extremely careful with language. The only way to express free will with language is, as usual, by connecting it to our experience. We have two relevant experiences there: the experience of free will itself, which is accessed via introspection, and the experience of measuring the neural correlates of free will, which is accessed via instruments and the "physical world," whatever that is. Causation appears at both of these levels, because causation is really nothing but a strong tendency for one type of event to be preceded by another. In the case of introspecting mental states, we can have the same kind of interplay between downward and upward causation that apeiron has discussed-- if I decide to take a deep breath and count to ten to calm some upset I'm having, I have downward causation of my mental state on my physical state, and the reverse as well. So we have intricate couplings.
Now, the physicalist reductionist will attempt to maintain that in this example, it's all upward causation of the physical onto the mental, while the physicalist systems analyst will maintain that the causation in the physical realm goes in both directions, but it all ends up determining the emergent mental state, which is only a kind of moot witness to the outcome. Those two pictures involve two very separate forms of free will, but both of a physical nature that may not gibe with most people's perception of free will. The common perception of free will involves a downward causation from the mental realm to the physical, not just the other way around.
The physicalist rules out such a possibility from the start, with little evidence for doing so I might add, it is more a kind of acquired bias. The question to ask ourselves is, if someone reports making a decision to calm down, and we can find neural correlates of that decision, and can track how the decision effects physiological changes in the brain, have we really shown that the mental states associated with that decision emerge from the physical, or have we just shown that the whole process involves a kind of tennis match between processes that we can only access via the experiential milieu of introspection of mental states and measurement of physical ones? I'm saying that everything we can talk about here, every word we use, comes through an experiential filter that the brain itself is responsible for the very existence of. We must not forget that, and glibly use language as if mental states could actually "apply downward causality." Neither mental states, nor physical states, do any such thing-- this is just the way we talk about them, which means it is the way we interpret their actions through our experiential filter. A filter that the brain is on both sides of, not just one.
And if you want to have such thing, you must accept that these greater causal powers of the mental do not derive from the physical substance thus you must accept dualism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reductive_physicalism#Jaegwon_Kim.27s_argument_aga inst_non-reductivism).I see what you mean here, and I think it's largely true, as long as we continue to recognize that the dualism here is traceable to our language about reality, our map of reality, not reality itself, not the territory. It is quite demonstrably true that our language about reality is inherently and inescapably dualistic-- language is connecting to experience, and we have dual experience: we introspect mental states, and we perceive measurements. Duality is unavoidable, what we make of that is all we can debate.
nismaratwork
Mar19-11, 01:22 PM
That's why you have to clear your mind - clear away any existing imposed state of anticipation/intention.
I presume you already have some thoughts organising your mind at that moment - a prevailing top-down constrained view of what to expect. So you have to relax that to appreciate the power of the words alone.
....And does that self-imposed constraint show some ability to will for no better reason than to do so? It's a self-imposed restraint, and if you're then free from gross external influence (however fragile this situation may be), is that some element of free will? I look at meditation and often the goal is just that, a freedom gained through focus and a lack of external influence.
I wonder if it means anything at all....
apeiron
Mar19-11, 02:54 PM
That's very instructive. So I understand now, that when you say your claim are supported by evidence, what you mean is that your claim are general enough to accomodate any evidence. Good to know, I won't have to lose my time next time. :redface:
Sound of Lievo beating another hasty retreat....:smile:
apeiron
Mar19-11, 03:25 PM
....And does that self-imposed constraint show some ability to will for no better reason than to do so? It's a self-imposed restraint, and if you're then free from gross external influence (however fragile this situation may be), is that some element of free will? I look at meditation and often the goal is just that, a freedom gained through focus and a lack of external influence.
I wonder if it means anything at all....
Not completely sure of your question, but the ability to direct attention, form intentions, generate anticipations, would all be part of our sense of autonomy - the sense of freewill that would come from being able to juggle internal goals and external threats and opportunities.
What you may be pointing to here is a sharp dichotomy between endogenous and exogenous focus - or concentration and vigilance. So the whole brain can tilt towards a "stick to the internal plan regardless" state, or a "wide-eyed vigilance state". And the neural correlates are not hard to find. So dopamine underpins plan focus, noreadrenaline underpins a twitchy vigilance. Focus is more left brain, vigilance more right. Etc.
Relaxation and defocusing would be different again.
We can learn to shift between attentional styles "at will" just like we can learn to lift a hand and make it scratch out heads.
Maybe you might notice that if you want to disengage and search for an image or association while you are thinking, you look up and off to the left. Willing the eyes to move in that direction is easy. And what it also does is tilt the brain towards right-hemisphere peripheral focus - the kind of general vigilance where you can now "see" thoughts lurking on the fringe. Well, that is the hypothesis some have argued anyway.
So this would be an example of bottom up control over the top down state :smile: (but achieved by a top down "act of will" over the direction of out gaze...or top-downish as it is such a well-practised habit that we do it automatically, unthinkingly.)
apeiron
Mar19-11, 03:48 PM
Are you suggesting that genes are what overcome the symbol grounding problem that Harnad talks about? What paper does Pattee have that explains that concept best? I might go along with that. Here's the problem though. Neuron interactions are governed by classical mechanics, so any strongly emergent phenomena (ie: phenomenal consciousness) can not emerge from those interations alone since classical interactions only allow for weakly emergent phenomena. Yet the mainstream view holds that phenomenal consciousness is emergent on the neuron interactions and not for example, genes or any molecular interactions. Does Pattee address this issue or does he go along with the mainstream view that phenomenal consciousness emerges from neuron interactions alone?
You keep building your position on the claim that because classical physics does not seem to permit something, it is not permitted. Plus then the assumption that the purpose of a model is to give the modeller "the feeling of what it is like to be" rather than a formal theory of the general constraints (which feel nothing like anything in particular precisely because they are maximally generic, maximally abstract).
Newton gave us F = ma. That describes a completely generic symmetry of nature. It does not tell you what it is like to be a falling apple or a human throwing a baseball.
So Pattee and other systems thinkers are trying to abstract the general laws of symbols, or hierarchies, or global constraints, or whatever. Phenomenal consciousness is something very particular (even your own state of mind is constantly changing). So it is just a false goal to demand that physicalist models must tell you why anything in phenomenological terms. It is a category error.
On the genes thing and symbol grounding, genes are just one example of semiotic constraints. Membranes, words, organelles, axon fibres - any kind of dimension reducing structure is a meaningful constraint on a systems free dynamics. But genes and words would be significant in being about the strongest level of semiotic constraint. Being 1D serial codes, they are both as removed from the worlds they control as they can be.
Anyway, there was a good conference on Pattee's work that offers a variety of views...
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/
And some of the papers from it....
The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut
H. H. Pattee
Evolution requires the genotype-phenotype distinction, a primeval epistemic cut that separates energy-degenerate, rate-independent genetic symbols from the rate-dependent dynamics of construction that they control. This symbol-matter or subject-object distinction occurs at all higher levels where symbols are related to a referent by an arbitrary code. The converse of control is measurement in which a rate-dependent dynamical state is coded into quiescent symbols. Non-integrable constraints are one necessary conditions for bridging the epistemic cut by measurement, control, and coding. Additional properties of heteropolymer constraints are necessary for biological evolution.
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/pattee.html
Symbols and Dynamics in the Brain
Peter Cariani
The work of physicist and theoretical biologist Howard Pattee has focused on the roles that symbols and dynamics play in biological systems. Symbols, as discrete functional switching-states, are seen at the heart of all biological systems in form of genetic codes, and at the core of all neural systems in the form of informational mechanisms that switch behavior. They also appear in one form or another in all epistemic systems, from informational processes embedded in primitive organisms to individual human beings to public scientific models. Over its course, Pattee's work has explored 1) the physical basis of informational functions (dynamical vs. rule-based descriptions, switching mechanisms, memory, symbols), 2) the functional organization of the observer (measurement, computation), 3) the means by which information can be embedded in biological organisms for purposes of self-construction and representation (as codes, modeling relations, memory, symbols), and 4) the processes by which new structures and functions can emerge over time. We discuss how these concepts can be applied to a high-level understanding of the brain. Biological organisms constantly reproduce themselves as well as their relations with their environs. The brain similarly can be seen as a self-producing, self-regenerating neural signaling system and as an adaptive informational system that interacts with its surrounds in order to steer behavior.
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/cariani.html
Howard Pattee's Theoretical Biology - A radical epistemological stance to approach life, evolution, and complexity.
Jon Umerez
This paper offers a short review of Pattee's main contributions to science and philosophy. With no intention of being exhaustive, an account of Pattee's work is presented which discusses some of his ideas and their reception. This is done through an analysis centered in what is thought to be his main contribution: the elaboration of an internal epistemic stance to better understand life, evolution and complexity. Having introduced this core idea as a sort of a posteriori cohesive element of a complex but highly coherent and complete system of thinking, further specific elements are also reviewed
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/umerez.pdf
The semiotics of Control and Modeling Relations in Complex Systems
Cliff Joslyn
We provide a conceptual analysis of ideas and principles from the systems theory discourse which underlie Pattee's semantic or semiotic closure, which is itself foundational for a school of theoretical biology derived from systems theory and cybernetics, and is now being related to biological semiotics and explicated in the relational biological school of Rashevsky and Rosen. Atomic control systems and models are described as the canonical forms of semiotic organization, sharing measurement relations, but di.ering topologically in that control systems are circularly and models linearly related to their environments. Computation in control systems is introduced, motivating hierarchical decomposition, hybrid modeling and control systems, and anticipatory or model-based control. The semiotic relations in complex control systems are described in terms of relational constraints, and rules and laws are distinguished as contingent and necessary functional entailments respectively. Finally, selection as a meta-level of constraint is introduced as the necessary condition for semantic relations in control systems and models.
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/joslyn.html
(some detailed comments where it seems necessary)
3) Consciousness in insula
I presume you mean Craig's recent hypothesis - http://www.appliedneuroscience.com/Insula-what%20you%20feel%20&%20consciousness.pdf
Sadly you would be right that he wants to call it the seat of consciousness. So not a systems point of view. But then dig into the actual research and this claim starts to evaporate like the attention grabbing hype it is.
Yes. I agree this is tentative, not to the extent to call it hype.
4) Modulation of cortical thickness
Not sure what you mean here unless you are talking about the anatomical studies of brain maturation?
No, this is interesting but too linked to older studies to meet your requierement. I was thinking at the variations we now find in adults.
http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/1/25.full.pdf+html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361002/
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/27/9240.full.pdf+html
(edit: reference to MRI experiment provided instead of animal studies)
5) BCI with person supposely in coma
OK, again top down (if you are talking about brain computer interfaces and locked in syndrome) - if indirectly this time. (...) I'm puzzled how this counts at a great breakthrough for fMRI though. Perhaps you can elaborate.
(this time :biggrin:) I see this finding as important not only for the patient themself but as directly pertinent to any embody cognition model. This show one can remain conscious and mentally sane despite years of lost of motor and sensory inputs. This does not refute these theories, but at least implicate the importance of the body to the developemental phases mostly. In other words, if standard AI did not manage to set up a mind, that's not because it was a wrong move to try to have a disembodied mind (or more properly, if it was wrgon, that's because of the developpemental part, not final result)
apeiron
Mar19-11, 03:55 PM
No satire-- just putting physicalism into a kind of operator formalism.
Thanks for explaining further. It seems an interesting line of thought. I'm not familiar with operator formalism. Is it the same as bra-ket and complex number magic? And then your argument about the evolution operator connected to how passing light through two polarising filters "resets" the indeterminancy each time rather than constraining it additively as a reductionist thinker might expect?
That's very instructive. So I understand now, that when you say your claim are supported by evidence, what you mean is that your claim are general enough to accomodate any evidence. Good to know, I won't have to lose my time next time. :redface:
I'm not sure I understand this comment. Where I come from, making statements that are both unexpected, and general enough to accomodate all the evidence, is one of the highest goals of scientific inquiry-- hardly a waste of time.
I think what you have in mind is accomodating all known evidence, whereas I was talking about accomodating any possible evidence. The first is what you want in science, the latter is not even wrong.
Suppose one claim that a given bunch of evidences support one's view. Then question yourself: would it be possible to find the opposite results, and using the same arguments still make the case that these evidences supports these view? If that what you constat, the claims have just no value at all. (edit: I mean no scientific value. Spirituality or sense of aesthetics is not bad in itself -until you don't confound that with science)
(unrelated stuff, please see #240 (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3196911&postcount=240))
apeiron
Mar19-11, 04:06 PM
No, this is interesting but too linked to older study to meet your requierement. I was thinking at the variations we now find in adults.
http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/9/1/1.short
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361002/
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/24/3/628.abstract
(this time :biggrin:) I see this finding as important not only for the patient themself but as directly pertinent to any embody cognition model. This show one can remain conscious and mentally sane despite years of lost of motor and sensory inputs. This does not refute these theories, but at least implicate the importance of the body to the developemental phases mostly. In other words, if standard AI did not manage to set up a mind, that's not because it was a wrong move to try to have a disembodied mind (or more properly, if it was wrgon, that's because of the developpemental part, not final result)
OK, you were going to give me your five great breakthroughs delivered by functional neuroimaging. You ran out after three and now give me an animal study and a BCI one.
Attempts to engage with your point of view are just becoming increasingly flaky.
OK, you were going to give me your five great breakthroughs delivered by functional neuroimaging. You ran out after three and now give me an animal study and a BCI one.
Attempts to engage with your point of view are just becoming increasingly flaky.
I gave you five and add comment for the two you were not understanding. I guess this is your spicy way to say thank you. :rolleyes:
apeiron
Mar19-11, 04:25 PM
Now, the physicalist reductionist will attempt to maintain that in this example, it's all upward causation of the physical onto the mental, while the physicalist systems analyst will maintain that the causation in the physical realm goes in both directions, but it all ends up determining the emergent mental state, which is only a kind of moot witness to the outcome. Those two pictures involve two very separate forms of free will, but both of a physical nature that may not gibe with most people's perception of free will. The common perception of free will involves a downward causation from the mental realm to the physical, not just the other way around.
This is it in a nutshell.
The reductionist says objective physical theory says states of mind are constructed bottom up from firing neurons creating brain-wide patterns. Yet I also have the feeling of being a conscious doer, a unified high level being with free choice and control over my actions. So there seems to be something strong that can act top down. That has no place in my physicalist theory.
So either I believe in dualism, with a spirit in charge of the matter. Or I believe my sense of being a self with top-down causality is an illusion (epiphenomenalism). Or I believe that consciousness is another local property of matter (the panpsychic view).
But the systems approach by-passes all these kinds of paradoxical conclusions because it recognises the existence of both bottom-up and top-down as universal in nature. It says it is not just brains that are organised this way. The whole of reality follows the same causality. Even QM, for instance, needs the top-down constraints represented in the notion of an "observer" to decohere the possibilities being venture from the bottom-up evolution of a wave function.
And then, even though all nature is organised via a systems logic, we can see that life and mind are a bit different. Which is where we get into theories about complex adaptive systems, non-holonomic constraints, semiotics, etc. Theories of complex systems, and not just simple systems - yet still with the same fundamental assumptions about causality involving both bottom-up and top-down in dynamic interaction.
apeiron
Mar19-11, 04:36 PM
I gave you five and add comment for the two you were not understanding. I guess this is your spicy way to say thank you. :rolleyes:
I see you have gone back and edited your post to insert an MRI reference for 4. Very deceptive behaviour on your part.
I could point out that the MRI studies in humans are confirmations of animal studies (you replaced a 2002 animal study with a 2010 MRI one), but given the flakiness of your debating methods, it really is not worth taking anything you say seriously.
I still don't see the coma stuff as an fMRI breakthrough, but don't bother with further explanation....
nismaratwork
Mar19-11, 05:46 PM
Not completely sure of your question, but the ability to direct attention, form intentions, generate anticipations, would all be part of our sense of autonomy - the sense of freewill that would come from being able to juggle internal goals and external threats and opportunities.
What you may be pointing to here is a sharp dichotomy between endogenous and exogenous focus - or concentration and vigilance. So the whole brain can tilt towards a "stick to the internal plan regardless" state, or a "wide-eyed vigilance state". And the neural correlates are not hard to find. So dopamine underpins plan focus, noreadrenaline underpins a twitchy vigilance. Focus is more left brain, vigilance more right. Etc.
Relaxation and defocusing would be different again.
We can learn to shift between attentional styles "at will" just like we can learn to lift a hand and make it scratch out heads.
Maybe you might notice that if you want to disengage and search for an image or association while you are thinking, you look up and off to the left. Willing the eyes to move in that direction is easy. And what it also does is tilt the brain towards right-hemisphere peripheral focus - the kind of general vigilance where you can now "see" thoughts lurking on the fringe. Well, that is the hypothesis some have argued anyway.
So this would be an example of bottom up control over the top down state :smile: (but achieved by a top down "act of will" over the direction of out gaze...or top-downish as it is such a well-practised habit that we do it automatically, unthinkingly.)
That's what I'm getting at, but I was curious how it would be seen from the Systems approach, which I'm familiar with, but only just. It also seems like an interesting event for humans, an I wonder if that fractured nature of the mind is why we are sentient at all. Sadly, it has little impact on free will as it's being discussed here, but I couldn't pass the opportunity by.
Thanks for indulging me!
As it happens I believe in a messy combination of reductionism and physicalism... I think it largely depends on the kind of activity and the part of the brain involved. I'm guessing that your view is most useful in dealing with the "new" parts of the human brain, and its very impressive cerebral cortex. I think it's one of the more impressive feats of biology that we manage to reconcile the two experiences of top-down direction, and bottom-up events we 'react' to.
I don't believe in dualism, but I think that experience is a result of a kind of... maybe you'd call it a 'systems dualism'. I wonder if that's what also helps to give us the messy combination that we percieve as being conscious, sentient, and self-directing. Sometimes we are, sometimes not, but most of the time it's a mix at the same time.
apeiron
Mar19-11, 06:10 PM
I don't believe in dualism, but I think that experience is a result of a kind of... maybe you'd call it a 'systems dualism'. I wonder if that's what also helps to give us the messy combination that we percieve as being conscious, sentient, and self-directing. Sometimes we are, sometimes not, but most of the time it's a mix at the same time.
Maybe you are talking about the attention vs habits dichotomy here. As I said early in the thread, the neural correlates of these two modes is well understood now.
Habits are where we merely "emit" a behaviour. There is no need for conscious oversight because the lessons have been learn earlier during the development of the habit. So now the top-down global constraint is not being actively evolved to create the behaviour. It has been frozen in exactly the way I have been describing. The state of constraint has become embedded, no longer dynamic. And so habits look like local, purely bottom up, responding (stick someone in a scanner and a habit produces minimal activation literally).
This is another of the "surprises" of the systems view. The brain is trying to do least conscious oversight it can get away with (the Bayesian brain principle - minimising the free energy).
So "freewill" is all about the fact we must have continual high level oversight (we can chose to do it, or not do it). Then the paradox is that so much of our life seems determined by reductionist habits and reflexes. We just do it.
This is where Libet's experiments caused so much confusion. He asked subjects to do something so routinised, and with as little conscious oversight as they could achieve (twitch a finger in "spontaneous" fashion), then made a deal that the point of top-down countermanding followed the initial bottom-up habitual urge to act.
But the design of the brain has in fact the goal of minimising the effort involved in global attentional processing. Relaxing the global constraints so as to be able to learn new states of constraint is costly and destabilising (what Grossberg explored as the stability~plasticity dilemma for neural network models - learning is very unstable in naive neural net models because there is no hierarchy of responses to match attention vs habit).
So humans have neurological "freewill" - the ability to plasticise the global constraints on their behaviour repertoire and learn from fresh experience. But the larger goal is to learn to do as much as possible at the routine unthinking level where the global contraints have been frozen and behaviours can be simply emitted in a fast efficient way, as when we are driving a car, eating our dinner, etc.
nismaratwork
Mar19-11, 06:37 PM
Maybe you are talking about the attention vs habits dichotomy here. As I said early in the thread, the neural correlates of these two modes is well understood now.
Habits are where we merely "emit" a behaviour. There is no need for conscious oversight because the lessons have been learn earlier during the development of the habit. So now the top-down global constraint is not being actively evolved to create the behaviour. It has been frozen in exactly the way I have been describing. The state of constraint has become embedded, no longer dynamic. And so habits look like local, purely bottom up, responding (stick someone in a scanner and a habit produces minimal activation literally).
This is another of the "surprises" of the systems view. The brain is trying to do least conscious oversight it can get away with (the Bayesian brain principle - minimising the free energy).
So "freewill" is all about the fact we must have continual high level oversight (we can chose to do it, or not do it). Then the paradox is that so much of our life seems determined by reductionist habits and reflexes. We just do it.
This is where Libet's experiments caused so much confusion. He asked subjects to do something so routinised, and with as little conscious oversight as they could achieve (twitch a finger in "spontaneous" fashion), then made a deal that the point of top-down countermanding followed the initial bottom-up habitual urge to act.
But the design of the brain has in fact the goal of minimising the effort involved in global attentional processing. Relaxing the global constraints so as to be able to learn new states of constraint is costly and destabilising (what Grossberg explored as the stability~plasticity dilemma for neural network models - learning is very unstable in naive neural net models because there is no hierarchy of responses to match attention vs habit).
So humans have neurological "freewill" - the ability to plasticise the global constraints on their behaviour repertoire and learn from fresh experience. But the larger goal is to learn to do as much as possible at the routine unthinking level where the global contraints have been frozen and behaviours can be simply emitted in a fast efficient way, as when we are driving a car, eating our dinner, etc.
This is a large part of what I'm getting at, but consider: if you have the freewill to act in a manner that we're not evolved to do, at the cost of generally beneficial behaviours... does that imply a more global freedom of will and choice?
apeiron
Mar19-11, 07:05 PM
This is a large part of what I'm getting at, but consider: if you have the freewill to act in a manner that we're not evolved to do, at the cost of generally beneficial behaviours... does that imply a more global freedom of will and choice?
In humans there is also a socially constructed dimension to our chosing and willing. So social evolution develops constraints that we then internalise and apply to our thinking. And these are indeed constraints evolving at a higher level and so more global in their scope.
We have more choice as a result of this extra degree of constraint of our individual psychologies. For example, we can choose to defy what we percieve as the social conventions. (That is, we are aware there is an alternative path even if we rarely go very far down it).
And even this level of freewill is a recent social innovation. You can trace the idea of the free-thinking human back to Socrates and Athenian democracy. But it remained a priviledged view of the few for a long time before becoming the mainstream view in modern Western society following first the Enlightenment, then the Romantic reversal that followed - the switch from Hobbes to Rousseau philosophically.
So that is the current irony. We believe we are independent of society in the choices we can make. But this is just our most recent state of social evolution. It is a particular brand of social organisation that teaches this belief.
In the short-term, it has been a belief with a strong competitive advantage. By relaxing the global social constraints (such as views on religion, morality, conformity, etc), a greater local creativity, diversity and experimentation is permitted.
In the longer term, well, history will judge. As has been argued, it is all about a balance between attention and habit, plasticity and stability, novelty and custom. And there could be various views about what is the most adaptive balance for a global-scale society (one that incorporates all the people of the planet).
apeiron
Mar19-11, 07:30 PM
I haven't heard it said from a systems perspective, but I always stress that all laws of physics are differential equations, so are never complete-- there is no "theory of boundary conditions", that is the dirty little secret of the manual elements of physics. It's the thaumaturgical element.
Ken, I hope you find time to read Pattee's summary. It addresses this point exactly.
Pattee was also a phd student of von Neumann (if memory serves correctly) and so his view arose pretty directly out of the QM observer issue (and ways von Neumann's own views were often over simplified).
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/pattee.html
Maybe you are talking about the attention vs habits dichotomy here. As I said early in the thread, the neural correlates of these two modes is well understood now.
Another example of these claims you're making everywhere about the status of neuroscientific questions. There are hundred if not thousand of neuroscientist trying to figure out this question. Your statement just mean that you're not really interest in how it's works, not that we know how it is working.
apeiron
Mar19-11, 07:50 PM
Another example of these claims you're making everywhere about the status of neuroscientific questions. There are hundred if not thousand of neuroscientist trying to figure out this question. Your statement just mean that you're not really interest in how it's works, not that we know how it is working.
More noise from someone with nothing to say.
As usual, I can happily source my views if requested. I won't be needing to doctor my too hasty posts when I get caught out. :uhh:
So Lievo, what exactly are your credentials then...as a neuroscientist? Just give us a few of your publications to give a hint of the actual extent of your knowledge when it comes to the topics that have been under discussion here. You can PM them to me if you are shy.
So Lievo, what exactly are your credentials then...as a neuroscientist?
Your usual line when you got it wrong, isn't it? :redface:
nismaratwork
Mar19-11, 08:11 PM
In humans there is also a socially constructed dimension to our chosing and willing. So social evolution develops constraints that we then internalise and apply to our thinking. And these are indeed constraints evolving at a higher level and so more global in their scope.
We have more choice as a result of this extra degree of constraint of our individual psychologies. For example, we can choose to defy what we percieve as the social conventions. (That is, we are aware there is an alternative path even if we rarely go very far down it).
And even this level of freewill is a recent social innovation. You can trace the idea of the free-thinking human back to Socrates and Athenian democracy. But it remained a priviledged view of the few for a long time before becoming the mainstream view in modern Western society following first the Enlightenment, then the Romantic reversal that followed - the switch from Hobbes to Rousseau philosophically.
So that is the current irony. We believe we are independent of society in the choices we can make. But this is just our most recent state of social evolution. It is a particular brand of social organisation that teaches this belief.
In the short-term, it has been a belief with a strong competitive advantage. By relaxing the global social constraints (such as views on religion, morality, conformity, etc), a greater local creativity, diversity and experimentation is permitted.
In the longer term, well, history will judge. As has been argued, it is all about a balance between attention and habit, plasticity and stability, novelty and custom. And there could be various views about what is the most adaptive balance for a global-scale society (one that incorporates all the people of the planet).
Then what to make of psychopaths?... They lack even a sense of those constraints, and are ruled by impulse. That impulse is subject to their environment, but for all their 'sameness', they do manage to show a shocking degree of going down multiple paths.
nismaratwork
Mar19-11, 08:11 PM
Your usual line when you got it wrong, isn't it? :redface:
Given what you've said and cited, and claimed as personal knowledge, it's actually quite a reasonable question.
apeiron
Mar19-11, 08:24 PM
Then what to make of psychopaths?... They lack even a sense of those constraints, and are ruled by impulse. That impulse is subject to their environment, but for all their 'sameness', they do manage to show a shocking degree of going down multiple paths.
That is why psychopaths are presumed to be suffering from a brain dysfunction. So the exceptions that prove the rule.
Of course, we could also agree that there is genetic variety and that is part of the evolutionary learning story. Evolution supplies a global constraint, but the very systems logic that I have been employing explains why constraint is simply the constraint of local degrees of freedom. So genetics has that irreduciable random element that means the global genome does not freeze and lose the capacity to adaptively learn. There has to be Ashby's "requisite variety".
Thus we should expect some gaussian distribution of empathy or whatever trait you believe psychopaths to be lacking. And we would also expect to find the pathologically empathetic at the other extreme (if empathy were a simple trait).
The audience for chick flicks must come from some part of the human gene pool!
apeiron
Mar19-11, 08:29 PM
Your usual line when you got it wrong, isn't it? :redface:
It is you who has been simply relying on your personal standing rather than making arguments backed by references (and undermining that standing by dishonest behaviour like editing posts).
Frankly your behaviour does not add up. It is very flaky. So if you claim to be a neuroscience researcher with a personal knowledge of the areas under discussion, then sources please! :uhh:
nismaratwork
Mar19-11, 08:52 PM
That is why psychopaths are presumed to be suffering from a brain dysfunction. So the exceptions that prove the rule.
Of course, we could also agree that there is genetic variety and that is part of the evolutionary learning story. Evolution supplies a global constraint, but the very systems logic that I have been employing explains why constraint is simply the constraint of local degrees of freedom. So genetics has that irreduciable random element that means the global genome does not freeze and lose the capacity to adaptively learn. There has to be Ashby's "requisite variety".
Thus we should expect some gaussian distribution of empathy or whatever trait you believe psychopaths to be lacking. And we would also expect to find the pathologically empathetic at the other extreme (if empathy were a simple trait).
The audience for chick flicks must come from some part of the human gene pool!
Heh... there is that...
I certainly believe that ASPD is primarily a neurological dysfunction, specifically in executive functions. What's interesting is that while most end in a spiral of behavior they seem unable to analyze or reconcile with society, quite a few manage to enter society to one degree or another. These people are not dysfunctional in a way that is anything like another known disorder... practically a different species for all intents and purposes.
Still, while exceptions in the general population, there is ample evidence they've been a pretty steady percentage for as long as we have records. Maybe it's a persistent flaw in the old genome, but I wonder that it seems to be so steady and universal. Schizophrenia is another, but lets put that aside for the moment, in favor of the less clearly disturbed sociopath.
In the absence of social order, a sociopath would fail to meet specific criteria for ASPD, only NPD and probably severe ADD, and other issues. So sociopaths are broken people by our standards, and probably any standard humans could apply, but exception or not they may be a window into our own experience.
I wonder how much of relatively high functioning sociopath's thinking is influenced by others' words, as emotions and many social cues would either be lost on them or ignored. Contrast that with a 'normal' person (i.e. non-psychopath) and it's the basis for that dichotomy you mention. Still, it exists with the sociopath, but to what degree?... they seem to be creatures of action and impulse without much if any restraint. That argues for the reductionist view, with social cues and evolution being almost entirely lost on this group.
I would dismiss it as disordered thinking, but ASPD is unique. Schizophrenia I think, is another view into human consciousness, and therefore freewill. You have a steady %'age of the population across gender, race, nationalities with this mental illness, yes? It's far more complex than sociopathy, and its often debilitating nature mixed with constant prevalence argues for it being some kind of inescapable result of human genetics or the brain... a kind of "risk of being conscious".
When I compare the sociopath-average-schizophrenic trio, I feel as though I'm looking at very different elements of the 'average' thought process. The person suffering from Schizophrenia thinks differently, not just in terms of hallucinations and other frank symptoms; they are often HIGHLY driven by surroundings, and can range from hysterical to catatonic.
There is something in that continuum from impulsive internally driven behavior, somewhat random and pattern-seeking (and failing) behavior, that mixed seems to be the 'norm'. I'd argue that the former and latter lack a degree of freewill that could be argued for a 'healthy' individual (i.e. not a sociopath, nor schizophrenic). If we consign these to "abnormalities", then it's just as you say, points on the bell curve, but if we consider these to be inevitably linked not to our genome alone, but consciousness and sentience... do you see where I'm going? Ignore psychotic symptoms for a moment and consider the high functioning sociopath and schizophrenic, both of which are predictable percentages of humanity and seem to always have been so.
For a random genetic variety issue, or evolutionary 'experiment' it's terribly constant and has been for a long time. Remember, you can have profoundly emotionally stunted people, lacking empathy who are not sociopaths. You can have people with a range of schizoid/schizophreniform disorders who are in the end, very little like Schizophrenics; when properly treated the former are "normal", the latter are not. I hate to say normal, but for the sake of brevity I am... anyway... what is it that makes those two disorders so constant, so persistant, and so unlike other mental illness?
Perhaps they are examples of the constraints top-down, or bottom-up failing in some profound way, and if so, it implies a combination of the two in a "normal" person. Depresed, anxious, manic, schizoid, psychotic... you don't find the same persistance of thought disorder that is a CONSTANT once the acute issue is dealt with. I find that more than a little fascinating, and why I wonder if the approach you outline is sufficient, in that it seeks an answer, rather than a gray area between reductionism and your view.
apeiron
Mar19-11, 09:27 PM
For a random genetic variety issue, or evolutionary 'experiment' it's terribly constant and has been for a long time. Remember, you can have profoundly emotionally stunted people, lacking empathy who are not sociopaths. You can have people with a range of schizoid/schizophreniform disorders who are in the end, very little like Schizophrenics; when properly treated the former are "normal", the latter are not. I hate to say normal, but for the sake of brevity I am... anyway... what is it that makes those two disorders so constant, so persistant, and so unlike other mental illness?
I think you are seeking too simple a view of dysfunction. I would say the normal brain is more like a minestrone soup and there are a lot of ingredients that could be under-represented or over-represented and so unbalance the flavour.
But there is a very simple model of why "faulty" genes persist stabily in gene pools - the standard sickle cell anaemia model. So a little bit of "dysfunction" may be part of the essential variety. We could ask how genes produce gay brains too. That seems even more of a challenge to simple minded genetics.
Dyslexia, discalculia. People who are unco. Who actually ends up representing normal?
Brain development would in fact to seem to have an alarming number of degrees of freedom. So it is probably a good thing that our physical and social worlds enforce such strong constraints on our actions. Between them, they create much greater actual conformity than would otherwise exist.
A lot of the things you describe are really modern mental diseases. What was just borderline odd in the highly constrained life of previous ages can flower into full glorious psychopathy given the freedoms of the modern era.
It is you who has been simply relying on your personal standing rather than making arguments backed by references (and undermining that standing by dishonest behaviour like editing posts).
No it's you who self-promoted yourself, and in a ridiculous way (I've talk to Chalmer!). Don't count I will do the same.
You also insulted me several times, and others too, and you're again insulting me by pretending it was dishonest to edit my poost, even though I let an explicit note of what I had change.
That's enough. You win. Place as much bull **** as you want, I won't correct you anymore.
apeiron
Mar19-11, 10:44 PM
No it's you who self-promoted yourself, and in a ridiculous way (I've talk to Chalmer!). Don't count I will do the same..
Poor Lievo! You asked me if I had talked to Chalmers. I just replied honestly to your out-of-the-blue enquiry. And you shut up rather quickly after that.
You also insulted me several times, and others too, and you're again insulting me by pretending it was dishonest to edit my poost, even though I let an explicit note of what I had change.
Whereas you have always been the model of politeness and integrity.
Your edit came after my reply pointing out your failure. Honesty would have been correcting it via a reply in turn.
Honesty would also have involved telling me how it was an MRI breakthrough rather than an animal one (hint: if you had said http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4398, then maybe I could have agreed with you).
Honesty would have further involved answering how fMRI has anything to do with the BCI coma work.
You have had the chance to come clean on so many things so often it could have its own thread.
That's enough. You win. Place as much bull **** as you want, I won't correct you anymore.
So you will be forever that "mysterious neuroscientist"? The one who could never substantiate his claims to a greater expertise than the people he had to deal with.
Again, that would not matter if you could simply make a coherent case for your beliefs, supported by relevant references. But your choice.
Ferris_bg
Mar20-11, 06:45 AM
Offtopic: Guys, what's your age, really? How can you continue to argue through multiple threads about things not related with the thread subject? Really there should be some rules about that, because flooding the thread in a way like that have not a single positive side. Apeiron, no offense, I really enjoy reading your posts, but you don't see how flawed sometimes your position is and what is more important, you take for granted that your position is the absolute truth. Please let us know if you are from the future, because ignoring other comments and refusing to even consider other positions is not at all philosophy.
Edit: @nismaratwork: I completely agree with you, offtopic posts should not be tolerated!
nismaratwork
Mar20-11, 07:01 AM
I think you are seeking too simple a view of dysfunction. I would say the normal brain is more like a minestrone soup and there are a lot of ingredients that could be under-represented or over-represented and so unbalance the flavour.
But there is a very simple model of why "faulty" genes persist stabily in gene pools - the standard sickle cell anaemia model. So a little bit of "dysfunction" may be part of the essential variety. We could ask how genes produce gay brains too. That seems even more of a challenge to simple minded genetics.
Dyslexia, discalculia. People who are unco. Who actually ends up representing normal?
Brain development would in fact to seem to have an alarming number of degrees of freedom. So it is probably a good thing that our physical and social worlds enforce such strong constraints on our actions. Between them, they create much greater actual conformity than would otherwise exist.
A lot of the things you describe are really modern mental diseases. What was just borderline odd in the highly constrained life of previous ages can flower into full glorious psychopathy given the freedoms of the modern era.
Psychopaths, sure, but that's at least in part why I mentioned that in a less socially organized group "sociopath" is reduced to a collection of other disorders, at least in diagnosis. Schizophrenia however is no advantage in a more primative society... far from it... yet it also persists, not growing in numbers, not shrinking, not bound by gender or race or region.
I don't claim to find a "normal", which is why I define it simply as "not having ASPD or Schizophrenia" for the sake of this discussion. Sociopaths are also, much to the dismay of popular views, not necessarily built for a harsher world... poor impulse control and a lack of planning, mixed with no empathy is not great for survival in a group. It MAY be useful in passing along genetics for a time, but with its roots in Conduct Disorder, you'd expect such people to be killed by even a small group.
A few would certainly become the Genghis Kahns of history, and the Vlad Tepes', but that is the exception to the sociopathic rule. It is true that I'm simplifying dysfunction here, but this is philosophy not neurology and I'm trying to adopt only a stance that survive in the former. I'm not finding as easy as I'd hoped... or easy at all, but then, I am learning.
What I'd point out in the case of a sociopath is that social constraints which we both agree are so valuable, don't even register most of the time. Schizophrenia I'd be willing to cede as a 'late onset' illness that allows for reproduction, but then you'd expect more variation in the overall occurance.
@Ferris_bg: Arguably, as much as Lievo an Apeiron are snarling at each other, yours is the only post that would certainly be worth a warning at least.
apeiron
Mar20-11, 02:50 PM
Apeiron, no offense, I really enjoy reading your posts, but you don't see how flawed sometimes your position is and what is more important, you take for granted that your position is the absolute truth. Please let us know if you are from the future, because ignoring other comments and refusing to even consider other positions is not at all philosophy.
If there are flaws in my position, perhaps you should highlight them. All I have done is argue things through by stating a position, providing sources, and replying to points made in reply. The complaint with Leivo is that he just says I'm wrong with nothing to back it up.
And what other positions am I not considering? Like reductionism? If I am arguing against anything then of course I am in the middle of considering it.
Perhaps it is just the friction you object to? If so, I apologise. If Leivo had played polite and fair, then that is certainly what he would have got in return.
Ferris_bg
Mar20-11, 03:25 PM
And what other positions am I not considering?
The position that the non-reductive physicalism theories imply epiphenomenalism (I tried to explain that as best as I can here (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3182518&postcount=141) and here (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3197352&postcount=250)). This argument from Jaegwon Kim is really solid. If you want to have downward causation in non-reductive physicalism your only option is to accept dualism (http://www.iep.utm.edu/mult-rea/#H4).
apeiron
Mar20-11, 03:30 PM
Given the way supervenience has been conflated with weak emergentism in this discussion, it is worth reminding that there are other views.
There is nothing inherent in supervenience that requires higher level
states to be epiphenomenal, incapable of bringing anything about in their own
right. In some cases, it might be the higher-level states, and not the lower-level ones, which are causally responsible – there might, that is, be downward causation, even though there is determination from the bottom up. Which higher-level states a thing has will be determined by the lower-level states it has. But the causal powers of the lower-level states themselves are not sufficient to explain the result. In this sense, the higher-level states have genuinely new, emergent causal powers that are not reducible to the lower-level ones, even though they supervene upon them. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emergentists such as John Stuart Mill and C. Lloyd Morgan argued that this was in fact the way that chemistry was related to physics
This is from a nice paper discussing Aristotle's approach to the mind.
http://ancphil.lsa.umich.edu/-/downloads/faculty/caston/aristotles-psychology.pdf
apeiron
Mar20-11, 03:50 PM
The position that the non-reductive physicalism theories imply epiphenomenalism (I tried to explain that as best as I can here (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3182518&postcount=141) and here (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3197352&postcount=250)). This argument from Jaegwon Kim is really solid. If you want to have downward causation in non-reductive physicalism your only option is to accept dualism (http://www.iep.utm.edu/mult-rea/#H4).
Your lake analogy does not represent what I mean by a system where global constraints are in interaction with local constructive action.
You would have to be saying something more along the lines that throwing balls create the lake, and the existence of the lack comes to constrain your throwing of the ball so that it creates a still more definite lake.
You are starting off by imagining disconnected things (throwing and lakes) and thus you wire in a dualism. I argue the opposite - interaction from the start, which begins vaguely organised and develops to be a crisply systemic state of affairs.
I don't think Kim's arguments are at all solid or conclusive.
But I would agree that freewill or any notion of downward causality is a problem for materialistic ontologies. ie: reductionist ones.
What I have argued repeatedly is that systems causality is a physicalist ontology which recognises both material and formal cause, both effective and final cause.
So it is "dualistic" in the sense that substance and form are take as equally fundamental, but then not dualistic as it is an interactive ontology, where each is causing the other, and likewise a process or developmental ontology, as the whole develops (everything emerges, because local degrees of freedom and global organising constraints are each developing each other).
Ferris_bg
Mar20-11, 04:24 PM
Most of the non-reductive physicalism theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism#Non-reductive_physicalism) claim that mental to physical as well as physical to mental causal interaction exists. But it's not what you claim, it's what is logically consistent (eliminativists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism) for example claim the mental does not exist, but that's not logically consistent).
I don't think Kim's arguments are at all solid or conclusive.
Why so? What's wrong with his argument?
apeiron
Mar20-11, 04:47 PM
What I'd point out in the case of a sociopath is that social constraints which we both agree are so valuable, don't even register most of the time. Schizophrenia I'd be willing to cede as a 'late onset' illness that allows for reproduction, but then you'd expect more variation in the overall occurance.
I'm not sure where you are going with this line of thought.
If it is why genes for certain brain disorders are maintained at a steady level in the gene pool, that is a murky topic. Worth its own thread, but not relevant to the OP nor really a question of philosophy (just perhaps with some implications for philosophy).
So far as neural correlates of freewill go, my point was that freewill is largely a socially constructucted notion that serves the purpose of creating a layer of self-regulating constraint at the level of individual psychology. Animals just act autonomously, directly. We learn to have consciences and to act as a constant social guardian over our "selfish" urges.
As society has evolved, the demand for individual self-regulation has only increased. (This is the "paradox" of systems causality - downward constraint sharpens local identity...it actually achieves something, produces something that was not there before so crisply).
So given natural brain variability (which we evolved for a hunter-gather lifestyle), more and more people might be expected to fall outside what has become an ever narrower norm in terms of self-regulation. Take hyperactivity as a classic example.
And our treatment of those falling outside the norm reveals the fact of top down constraint. We are individually all as free as can be in the Western liberal laisser faire postmodern life. Completely free to be what we want to be, act like we want to act. Until the point where suddenly we are not. And get sectioned under the mental health act, committed to the dementia ward, doped up with strong drugs, etc.
If we can't constrain ourselves within narrow bounds (cynically you would describe that as being productive consumers in a consumer society), then we discover the second kind of more forcible constraints that society has in store.
apeiron
Mar20-11, 04:49 PM
Why so? What's wrong with his argument?
It fails to address the systems model of causality.
(Edit: Well, I should add that what Kim actually argues, and what people think he argues, can be two different things...and even he has shifted his position over time. So I prefer to begin with thinkers like Pattee and Rosen who I agree clearly with, rather than have to spend time disentangling bits where Kim is pretty much right, and where he rather obscures what matters.)
apeiron
Mar20-11, 05:14 PM
Most of the non-reductive physicalism theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism#Non-reductive_physicalism) claim that mental to physical as well as physical to mental causal interaction exists. But it's not what you claim, it's what is logically consistent (eliminativists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism) for example claim the mental does not exist, but that's not logically consistent).
But you can see from that wiki definition that I am not claiming a non-reductive physicalism. Instead, the systems approach could be called doubly reductionist I guess. Which is why it seems vaguely dualistic (it is in fact triadic).
So local causation (events, efficient causes, locales, atoms, etc) reduce upwards to global contraints. They are what they are because of global constraints. And equally, global constraints (laws, forms, boundary conditions) reduce to local causes.
The whole is reducible to its parts, and the parts are also reducible to the whole.
Now if you can show me where Kim addresses this notion, then fine. Otherwise I will stick to the sources that do discuss it.
nismaratwork
Mar20-11, 06:46 PM
I'm not sure where you are going with this line of thought.
If it is why genes for certain brain disorders are maintained at a steady level in the gene pool, that is a murky topic. Worth its own thread, but not relevant to the OP nor really a question of philosophy (just perhaps with some implications for philosophy).
This is more where I'm going... maybe I should make a thread. Sorry for the inadvertant hiijack, but it seemed to be a possible window into the issues you've raised. In and of itself, as you say, it's murky enough that I'm not sure how I'd START such a thread.
So far as neural correlates of freewill go, my point was that freewill is largely a socially constructucted notion that serves the purpose of creating a layer of self-regulating constraint at the level of individual psychology. Animals just act autonomously, directly. We learn to have consciences and to act as a constant social guardian over our "selfish" urges.
Here's where I'm hooked again... a psychopath is still human, but they have no guardian for their selfish urges. Are they less free, more free, or is it totally irrelevant? I think that it's less freewill inherent in a lack of contraints from our evolved and social conscionce, and I find that interesting.
As society has evolved, the demand for individual self-regulation has only increased. (This is the "paradox" of systems causality - downward constraint sharpens local identity...it actually achieves something, produces something that was not there before so crisply).
So given natural brain variability (which we evolved for a hunter-gather lifestyle), more and more people might be expected to fall outside what has become an ever narrower norm in terms of self-regulation. Take hyperactivity as a classic example.
So far I'm with you, and the existing body of knowledge in psychology would tend to agree AFAIK.
And our treatment of those falling outside the norm reveals the fact of top down constraint. We are individually all as free as can be in the Western liberal laisser faire postmodern life. Completely free to be what we want to be, act like we want to act. Until the point where suddenly we are not. And get sectioned under the mental health act, committed to the dementia ward, doped up with strong drugs, etc.
If we can't constrain ourselves within narrow bounds (cynically you would describe that as being productive consumers in a consumer society), then we discover the second kind of more forcible constraints that society has in store.
This is why I chose two mental illnesses which are absolutely unique, and universal, but I'm not sure how to properly apply it as a lens into the issues raised here. Unfortunately, I'm more familiar with the physical and medical impliations... the philosophical formalism is something I'm learning here on the fly. In fact, much of what I've learned beyond the basics has been from links in this forum. If I seem to wander, it's not intentional, and I welcome the correction from you or anyone else.
Ferris_bg
Mar20-11, 09:13 PM
The view of Rosen and Pattee (http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/109/218) seems like some form of bio naturalistic non-reductive physicalism - "they achieve a certain level of complexity and life is an emergent property of that complexity" (http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mikuleck/rsntpe.html). And if you ask these guys, do people have free will, they will surely say "yes". The problem is, the frog stays a frog, no matter how many times you kiss it. Unless of course it's not in your imagination, but thats another story.
apeiron
Mar20-11, 09:50 PM
The view of Rosen and Pattee (http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/109/218) seems like some form of bio naturalistic non-reductive physicalism - "they achieve a certain level of complexity and life is an emergent property of that complexity" (http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mikuleck/rsntpe.html). And if you ask these guys, do people have free will, they will surely say "yes". The problem is, the frog stays a frog, no matter how many times you kiss it. Unless of course it's not in your imagination, but thats another story.
I didn't really follow anything you said there - even whether you are generally expressing agreement or disagreement with the papers you linked to. Can you explain the nature of your objections, if it is objections you are making?
Anyway, the first paper does give a reasonable account of the social history of a systems approach to biology...
Overwhelmingly, theoretical biologists are anti-reductionists. In one way or another they all argue that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and that it is necessary to overcome the assumptions of traditional science to make sense of life. However, such work is marginal to mainstream biology which has been far more influenced by the reductionism of the molecular biologists and socio-biologists (Francis Crick, James Watson, Jacques Monod, W.D. Hamilton and Richard Dawkins) and those who have modelled cognition on artificial intelligence. As Rosen noted: ‘The question “What is life?” is not often asked in biology, precisely because the machine metaphor already answers it: “Life is a machine.” Indeed, to suggest otherwise is regarded as unscientific and viewed with the greatest hostility as an attempt to take biology back to metaphysics."
And the second has a more explicit statement on freewill than you seem to be suggesting....
The tendency over the last several hundred years, perhaps since Newton, is to try to capture all of the world, the external world, everything that science pertains to, in one principle-one way of grasping reality. And that leads directly to the concept we call the "machine". So nature is a big machine, an organism is a machine, mechanism is the goal and the end of science, and mechanism itself can be embodied in one principle or one set of principles. They're the principles of Newton, the principles of Descartes, or they're principles of mathematics... There are many attractive features, which flow from the idea of the machine. One of them is the idea of objectivity. You want to explain nature in a way in which individual consciousness, or "will", has no part. That's what it means to say that nature is "objective". If you ask most people what they understand by objectivity, that's what they will tell you. Consciousness, or will, or volition, all of the things which are characteristically human, play no part. As I say, that has been attractive and that has set up the ideal. And that is partly why the Cartesian ideal of the machine was so nice; because it's inherently objective. If something can be done by a machine, then it clearly doesn't involve will, doesn't involve subjectivity or consciousness or anything like that. And that has animated most of epistemology for the last 300 years. Part of the attractiveness of mathematics was that it embodies this kind of objectivity, even though mathematics exists only in the mind. Well, anyway, complex systems are not like that. If you try to compress a complex system into that kind of mold, you'll miss it completely.
nismaratwork
Mar21-11, 07:53 AM
The view of Rosen and Pattee (http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/109/218) seems like some form of bio naturalistic non-reductive physicalism - "they achieve a certain level of complexity and life is an emergent property of that complexity" (http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mikuleck/rsntpe.html). And if you ask these guys, do people have free will, they will surely say "yes". The problem is, the frog stays a frog, no matter how many times you kiss it. Unless of course it's not in your imagination, but thats another story.
If bio-naturalism is the same thing as bio-materialism, then I think it's little more than an aesthetic view of how you'd like to view these issues, with the assumption of more evidence than exists. Beyond that, your argument is... I don't know what the heck it is, but it's not agreeing with bio-materialism which assumes a much more unified view of consciousness than currently exists.
How can you form an aesthetic preference about an as-yet unverified property of something that hasn't been formulated?
Ferris_bg
Mar21-11, 08:22 AM
Can you explain the nature of your objections, if it is objections you are making?
Now if you can show me where Kim addresses this notion, then fine. Otherwise I will stick to the sources that do discuss it.
Kim's argument is exactly pointed at such kind of theories like those of Rosen and Pattee (non-reductive physicalism theories). And my frog metaphor was pointed at the way one describes something. No matter what different kind of words you use, it's still the same old story.
I accept if you think Kim's argument is not sound. There is no way for me to change your views. You should know that once one take a side, one is not objective about it anymore (his position is under the referent power of the side he has taken). So even if I created some kind of doubt in you, I am happy about it. I myself would prefer functionalism over reductionism if I should be forced with such kind of choice, but that doesn't change my judgment about the illusion of free will in both theories.
nismaratwork
Mar21-11, 08:26 AM
Kim's argument is exactly pointed at such kind of theories like those of Rosen and Pattee (non-reductive physicalism theories). And my frog metaphor was pointed at the way one describes something. No matter what different kind of words you use, it's still the same old story.
I accept if you think Kim's argument is not sound. There is no way for me to change your views. You should know that once one take a side, one is not objective about it anymore (his position is under the referent power of the side he has taken). So even if I created some kind of doubt in you, I am happy about it. I myself would prefer functionalism over reductionism if I should be forced with such kind of choice, but that doesn't change my judgment about the illusion of free will in both theories.
The conclusion that free will is an illusion is so clearly premature that I'd have to ask you support it with more than you have so far.
Ferris_bg
Mar21-11, 08:38 AM
The conclusion that free will is an illusion is so clearly premature that I'd have to ask you support it with more than you have so far.
I have already done that in my previous comments in this thread, if you checked them out and read the given sources and still something doesn't sound clear, I would try to explain it. Please comment the parts that sound unclear.
Biological naturalism: Consciousness is a higher level function of the human brain's physical capabilities. More here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism).
nismaratwork
Mar21-11, 08:47 AM
I have already done that in my previous comments in this thread, if you checked them out and read the given sources and still something doesn't sound clear, I would try to explain it. Please comment the parts that sound unclear.
Biological naturalism: Consciousness is a higher level function of the human brain's physical capabilities. More here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism).
This entails that the brain has the right causal powers to produce intentionality. However, Searle's biological naturalism does not entail that brains and only brains can cause consciousness. Searle is careful to point out that while it appears to be the case that certain brain functions are sufficient for producing conscious states, our current state of neurobiological knowledge prevents us from concluding that they are necessary for producing consciousness. In his own words:
"The fact that brain processes cause consciousness does not imply that only brains can be conscious. The brain is a biological machine, and we might build an artificial machine that was conscious; just as the heart is a machine, and we have built artificial hearts. Because we do not know exactly how the brain does it we are not yet in a position to know how to do it artificially." (Biological Naturalism, 2004)
I don't find this helpful at all... it seems to be the Penrose Hypothesis without even the flimsy foundation of microtubules. I'm not seeing support for your statements in articles that fail even to meet the standards of Wikipedia.
I'm sorry, protests aside, this sounds like messy dualism.
Ferris_bg
Mar21-11, 09:13 AM
I'm not seeing support for your statements in articles that fail even to meet the standards of Wikipedia.
I haven't posted this link to support my statement, I have posted it because you asked what that mean. And I think the article can give you some basic info.
If you address future posts or questions to me about my previous posts, I'll edit this post with the answers, so be sure to check it out.
apeiron
Mar21-11, 03:55 PM
Kim's argument is exactly pointed at such kind of theories like those of Rosen and Pattee (non-reductive physicalism theories).
But Kim's argument against emergentism does not cover the systems approach as taken by Pattee, Rosen, Salthe and others. Or at least I have never seen that anywhere. So if you can provide a reference.
Kim's whole analysis is flawed once you reject the idea of "mental states" as a meaningful ontological construct. You can talk about consciousness being a single thing with a moment to moment state in a loose way, but this does not bear up under analysis.
Consciousness is a spatiotemporally complex process (the standard process philosophy position as well as standard psychophysics). So the notion of instantaneous states is just wrong on this view.
And yes, there is a limit to a physicalist account when it comes to "qualia" like the redness of red. But this is a common garden variety of epistemic failure I would argue. For a model to be able to predict something, it must also be able to predict what it is not. To take a path, there must be represented some alternative paths. And when it gets down to the level of explaining red, we just run out of imaginable alternatives (like fubble, or blech).
So consciousness is irreduciable to a succession of states because it is spatiotemporally complex - organised across space and time. And qualia are irreducible in the limit because they become explanatory singularities. Models explain alternative fates and chop fine enough, you reach a pragmatic limit to prediction and measurement. But is this a failure of modelling, or a failure of subjectivity - you cannot imagine alternatives to the primary colours you see, the distinct scents you smell?
So there is that general failure of Kim's approach. Systems thinking is not even dealing in states that map. That is the way reductionism works. The systems approach deals in hierarchical spatiotemporal scale where fleeting local events are constrained within longrun global contexts.
A second issue is that the systems logic is interactive. So - using Kim's terminology for sake of argument - the P facts may determine the M facts, but the M facts are also determining the P facts. The local events may construct the global longrun state of constraint. But that global longrun state of constraint is equally shaping the identity of those local events.
This is why I urged a consideration of selective attention and neural receptive fields. A global state of memory and expectation acts as the context that acts downwards to shape up the kinds of things that local neurons can even say at that moment. Their repertoire of responses, their degrees of freedom, become constrained and so sharpened.
So Kim is dealing with "non-reductive physicalism" which claims that P => M. But the systems view is that P <=> M. And M cannot be consider a state at the same scale as P. So it is more like (P1, P2, P3....) <=> M. And then M is not "mental" as the mental state would be the emergent property of all of the system. So it would be (P <=> M) ---> Mind.
The general template for the systems view would thus be L <=> G, of whole systems emerge due to the interaction of local and global causality.
Then we can get into the more particular models of systems advanced by Pattee and Rosen.
So Pattee says D <=> S, or rate dependent dynamics is in interaction with rate independent semiotics. And D <=> S ---> Bios, or this is a general systems description of living and mindful systems, dissipative structures with non-holonomic constraints.
So three issues that Kim needs to tackle to be talking about the systems view.
1) The validity of mental "states" as a construct.
2) An interactive causality where "mental facts" also determine the "physical facts".
3) The claim that mind emerges "at the top" rather than the mind emerging "as a whole".
Thanks for explaining further. It seems an interesting line of thought. I'm not familiar with operator formalism. Is it the same as bra-ket and complex number magic?That's the flavor used in quantum mechanics, I don't mean anything so intricate or specific. Just the generic idea that the process of analyzing anything is a process of "operating", or mapping. It's the basis of the "map is not the territory" thinking, the need to distinguish the image space of our thoughts from the inverse-image space we are attempting to analyze with those thoughts.
And then your argument about the evolution operator connected to how passing light through two polarising filters "resets" the indeterminancy each time rather than constraining it additively as a reductionist thinker might expect?Yes, the important thing about distinguishing an image space from the inverse-image space is that the evolution seen in the image space does not have to map backward onto the evolution in the inverse-image space. The algebra that maps forward onto its image can have mysterious elements, like imaginary wave functions and superposition states, that have no corresponding appearance in the image space. The projection is fundamentally non-invertible, so our contact with the inverse-image is tenuous, not "crisp". The emergence of crispness is not a mapping from the physical world into itself, it is a mapping from something else into how we think about the physical world.
Kind of like Einstein's unopenable watch, except that it's more than we just can't see what's in the watch, it's that we can't even assert the watch is made of components that we can understand separately from a watch. What is a wave function when it isn't being used in quantum mechanics? What is a mind when it isn't forming perceptions? These are not components we can analyze independently, and wonder how they are interacting inside the watch-- they are the models that meet some set of goals, and they only do what they do within some regime of global contraints that partly defines them.
Another way to express this is, saying "the whole is not the sum of its parts" may not go far enough, it may need to be extended to saying "the inverse-image of the image space where our analysis lives is not everything that is creating the reality we are analyzing." The inversion isn't crisp, so what is "really there" might not be either-- crispness is an output of reality, not an input to reality.
apeiron
Mar21-11, 05:57 PM
Yes, the important thing about distinguishing an image space from the inverse-image space is that the evolution seen in the image space does not have to map backward onto the evolution in the inverse-image space.
I get you. And I agree. Are you basing this view on any sources in particular?
To me, this is the basic Peircean argument based on a logic of vagueness. And Prigogine makes the same essential case in the End of Certainty. As does Salthe in his Development and Evolution.
So our reductionist models (based on statements of local symmetry) create the impression that time is simply reversible. The current state predicts all future states deterministically, and also retrodicts all prior states. The block universe view of reality. The inverse view works equally well.
But a developmental ontology says real novelty and surprise occurs in some fashion. Our current map of the situation cannot capture all the information. So although we might feel there is a discrete series of events that got us to where we are, history cannot in fact be run backwards. We don't have the "hidden variables" that would allow us to recover those prior events in deterministic fashion.
The question then is what is the source of this uncertainty and unpredictability? Are there just hidden variables (discrete local infomation that we simply have not measured, but which in the god's eye view exists to ensure determinism). Or is nature inherently spontaneous in some way that defies complete measurement?
Well even if that is so, it would still seem that that spontaneity (for example, the probablistic collapse of a wavefunction into some discrete outcome) is still localisable as an event in time. But then what came before is a blur. So this would be a reason why the view backwards becomes indeterminate.
In complex systems - the kind with evolving rather than fixed global constraints - this would then be a second kind of blurring of the view. If the view based on states of the system can only capture the local information, and not see the global information - the story of how global constraints are changing - then that introduces a second kind of unpredictability into the story. You can't run the global state of the system backwards (or forwards) unless you have been recording that information properly.
In the short term, projections based on local state information can be used to predict the next state, and the state after that. But eventually the global constraints have changed in some way and prediction errors start to mount up. As Prigogine argues, the future becomes vague and approximate, not deterministic, because you cannot see global change from localised measurements.
Having said all this, I think the local QM errors and the lack of information about evolving global constraints are just two sides of the same coin.
As for example in Cranmer's transactional intepretation of QM, the future does constrain the past. How things will be, acts backwards to determine the events that arose to make them so. There is strong downward constraint from the global to the local scale.
So take the quantum eraser experiment. Things that happen in the future of an emission event - like some fool experimenter fiddling around with the flight path open to a photon - act backwards to constrain the probabilities for that "spontaneous" event. Top-down constraint (the total shape of the path of the event as it exists in the history of the universe) acts downwards to constrain what actually happens at the universe's locations.
Accepting Cranmer's approach is accepting strong downwards causation at the deepest level of reality. The alternative is some locality-preserving ontology like many worlds where every history just happens and there are no developing constraints.
[edit: sorry, that may have got confusing. What I was saying that there would be both a genuine local indeterminacy in QM spontaneity, and also a global lack of determination due to failure to measure global scale variables.
So the lack of an inverse image would be due both to a local ontic indeterminacy, and a global epistemological indeterminacy. But a systems view of causality - as implied in a transactional interpretation - can at least fix the history of a particular event in a fashion that is fully reversible within the timescope of that event.]
I get you. And I agree. Are you basing this view on any sources in particular?No, just my own amalgamation of different insights from all over, including some in this very thread.
But a developmental ontology says real novelty and surprise occurs in some fashion. Our current map of the situation cannot capture all the information. So although we might feel there is a discrete series of events that got us to where we are, history cannot in fact be run backwards. We don't have the "hidden variables" that would allow us to recover those prior events in deterministic fashion.Yes, I think time is an interesting entry point to find weaknesses in reductionist thinking. There are so many holes in that ontology that one can start worming one's way in almost anywhere. The paradox of "hidden variables", a la Bohm, is particularly enlightening-- how badly must we want to imagine that the universe is deterministic to postulate the existence of a "hidden" determinism? Does that not violate the whole point of determinism as a scientific tool?
The question then is what is the source of this uncertainty and unpredictability? Are there just hidden variables (discrete local infomation that we simply have not measured, but which in the god's eye view exists to ensure determinism). Or is nature inherently spontaneous in some way that defies complete measurement?
Well even if that is so, it would still seem that that spontaneity (for example, the probablistic collapse of a wavefunction into some discrete outcome) is still localisable as an event in time. But then what came before is a blur. So this would be a reason why the view backwards becomes indeterminate.Right, you get what I'm saying above about evolution. When we imagine the universe evolves from specific state to specific state, then evolution is a kind of mapping of reality into itself, nothing is being fundamentally altered there (nothing "surprising" as you put it), just some details being moved around. But when temporal evolution is recognized as a mode of thought rather than something reality actually does, we can see that evolution is an operation of sorts, which maps into an image space from something different. It's like watching a movie-- we don't see the frames of the movie, we see the movie, which is something different-- we see a flow of dialog and action, not takes and cuts and scripts and directors intervening. Those are not just "hidden variables" in a movie, they are what the movie really is, which is something quite different from how we experience it in the theatre.
In fact, I have to chuckle even at the phrase "hidden variables." If the universe goes to all the trouble to hide its variables from us, then the whole concept of a "variable" would seem to be rather missing the point. Why should that which is hidden from us follow the same basic paradigm as that which is not? Why should the "science of what is hidden" look just like the science of what is apparent, only below our radar? Extrapolated ontologies is basically the mode of thinking of children, and it often produces rather humorous outcomes.
In the short term, projections based on local state information can be used to predict the next state, and the state after that. But eventually the global constraints have changed in some way and prediction errors start to mount up. As Prigogine argues, the future becomes vague and approximate, not deterministic, because you cannot see global change from localised measurements.Indeed I would argue that is just one interesting and important way that the future becomes vague-- it also does it when one applies purely reductionist approaches to chaotic systems, or to quantum systems. The "butterfly effect" is a quaint name for an attribute of a mathematical model-- in the image plane of our experience, butterflies don't actually "change" the weather, the claim mistakes the map for the territory in such a clearly absurd way, it's remarkable how tightly many scientists seem to claim to that idea.
Having said all this, I think the local QM errors and the lack of information about evolving global constraints are just two sides of the same coin.
A coin with many sides, and they all say the same thing-- there is no more absurd premise in the history of philosophy than the one that says the universe is fundamentally understandable, once the intellect of a biological organism gets off on the right path. It's amazing we do as well as we do, but one amazing truth does not make logical a preposterous extrapolation.
As for example in Cranmer's transactional intepretation of QM, the future does constrain the past. How things will be, acts backwards to determine the events that arose to make them so. There is strong downward constraint from the global to the local scale.
The way I would put it is, the direction of that connection is arbitrary. We tend to frame time as if it "marches forward", because that is how we process the information we get, giving us the idea that a cause leads to an effect. However, one can just as easily argue that effects produce causes-- the fact that something occurs necessitates all that comes before it. A huge universe necessitates the need for a smaller one to expand into it, and the chain never encounters the singularity any more than dividing by two over and over will ever get you to zero. The fact that you are here necessitates that your parents lived their lives, etc. It's all in how we process the information, there's no logical requirement for a cause to determine an effect because the concept is really just about linking information.
Accepting Cranmer's approach is accepting strong downwards causation at the deepest level of reality.It sounds a bit like the anthropic principle taken to the extreme-- not just the parameters of our universe, but it's entire history, has occured so that this moment could come into being. And this moment exists because it must lead to what comes next. It's a kind of backwards-determinism-- the future is not strictly predictable but it has already happened anyway. Does anyone ever wonder if the past is determined because we can infer what had to have happened to get us here?
This reminds me of a point I've made in the past about physics-- physics never predicts the future, because one cannot test the future and physics is a testable science. So what physics really does is predict events in the past earlier in the time stream than the events themselves, that's what it is demonstrably successful at. Any other statement is philosophy inspired by this fact about physics. Perhaps all that is happening is that some events necessitate their own predictability, and we've had the direction of determinism wrong all this time. (In one Arthur story I read, Merlin lived his life backward in time-- maybe Merlin was the one living forward. But I digress.)
[edit: sorry, that may have got confusing. What I was saying that there would be both a genuine local indeterminacy in QM spontaneity, and also a global lack of determination due to failure to measure global scale variables.
So the lack of an inverse image would be due both to a local ontic indeterminacy, and a global epistemological indeterminacy. But a systems view of causality - as implied in a transactional interpretation - can at least fix the history of a particular event in a fashion that is fully reversible within the timescope of that event.]
Ultimately I think we have an amazingly complex problem on our hands, that we have no hope at all of ever fully comprehending, but we can accomplish some fairly simple predictive goals with reductionist thinking, and some more profound ones require more systems-level thinking, and the really tough ones are just plain out of reach and always will be.
Ferris_bg
Mar22-11, 11:42 AM
But Kim's argument against emergentism does not cover the systems approach as taken by Pattee, Rosen, Salthe and others. Or at least I have never seen that anywhere. So if you can provide a reference. (...)
So Kim is dealing with "non-reductive physicalism" which claims that P => M. But the systems view is that P <=> M. And M cannot be consider a state at the same scale as P. (...)
All non-reductive physicalism theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism#Non-reductive_physicalism) except epiphenomenalism commit to these three claims:
NRP can be characterized by a commitment to three claims, roughly:
Physicalism: Everything is physical – all objects, properties, and events are the sort that can be exhaustively described and/or explained by the natural sciences.
Mental Realism: Some mental types are genuine properties.
Antireductionism: Mental and physical types are not identical.
Physicalism implies a single physical substance, mental realism implies physical to mental and mental to physical causal interaction (P <=> M) and antireductionism implies multiple realizability. So you see the "systems view" falls exactly in this category, as it embraces all the above three claims.
Now the argument from Kim shows that the realization physicalists must sacrifice one of these three claims in order for their theories to be logically consistent:
They could (a) deny the causal status of mental types; that is, they could reject Mental Realism and deny that mental types are genuine properties. Alternatively, they could (b) reject Physicalism; that is, they could endorse the causal status of mental types, but deny their causal status derives from the causal status of their physical realizers. Or finally, they could (c) endorse Mental Realism and Physicalism, and reject Antireductionism.
And because they can not (c) sacrifice antireductionism, their only choices are to (a) embrace epiphenomenalism or (b) accept dualism.
I can accept if one rejects the argument from Kim, which I presented in my previous posts. The argument has received a lot of criticism through the years, but at the same time most of the philosophers who don't defend any form of physicalism think that it's sound.
If one wants to reject the argument, one must reject some of the rules it is based on:
The Supervenience Argument incorporates three central assumptions. The first one specifies that the physical world is causally closed:
Closure: If a physical event has a cause at t, then it has a physical cause at t. (Kim 2005: 15)
The second one stipulates that mental properties supervene upon physical properties:
Supervenience: If any system s instantiates a mental property M at t, there necessarily exists a physical property P such that s instantiates P at t, and necessarily anything instantiating P at any time instantiates M at that time.
And the third is an exclusion principle expressing the prohibition of systematic overdetermination:
Exclusion: If an event e has a sufficient cause c at t, no event at t distinct from c can be a cause of e (unless this is a genuine case of causal overdetermination).
According to Kim, if we further assume that mental properties are neither reducible to not identifiable with physical properties, what results is a set of propositions inconsistent with the causal relevance of mental properties:
The problem of mental causation: Causal efficacy of mental properties is inconsistent with the joint acceptance of the following four claims: (i) physical causal closure, (ii) causal exclusion, (iii) mind–body supervenience, and (iv) mental/ physical property dualism—the view that mental properties are irreducible to physical properties.
The reasoning behind this contention is as follows. Suppose we wish to identify a mental property instance, M, as the cause of a subsequent physical property instance, P. By Supervenience we know that there must be some physical property instance upon which M supervenes and by Closure we know that if P has a cause at a time t, it has a physical cause at t. Let us suppose that P has a cause at t and that the physical cause of P (at t) is P0, and let us assume that P0 is the physical property instance upon which M supervenes. By Exclusion we know that P has no cause other than P0 unless this is a case of genuine causal overdetermination, which, we will assume, it is not. From this it follows that M is the cause of P only if M = P. But given that no mental property is identical with or reducible to any physical property, it follows that the putative mental cause, M, is not in reality a cause of P. Since there is nothing special about M, P, or P0, the argument generalizes to show that instances of irreducible mental properties do not have physical effects, so that nonreductive physicalism entails epiphenomenalism: ‘That then is the supervenience argument against mental causation, or Descartes’s revenge against the physicalists’ (Kim 1998: 46).
I personally don't exclude the possibility the mental to be somehow reported by the physical as I stated here (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3197352&postcount=250) (possibility for violating exclusion). Thus there will be mental causation, but there won't be any kind of free will, because of the supervenience condition, which won't allow for any unique type of downward causation (you will have exactly the same mental causation in two identical systems). There is no problem of course to reject the supervenience condition or deny the causal closure principle, but you will be a dualist then.
nismaratwork
Mar22-11, 11:53 AM
All non-reductive physicalism theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism#Non-reductive_physicalism) except epiphenomenalism commit to these three claims:
Physicalism implies a single physical substance, mental realism implies physical to mental and mental to physical causal interaction (P <=> M) and antireductionism implies multiple realizability. So you see the "systems view" falls exactly in this category, as it embraces all the above three claims.
Now the argument from Kim shows that the realization physicalists must sacrifice one of these three claims in order for their theories to be logically consistent:
And because they can not (c) sacrifice antireductionism, their only choices are to (a) embrace epiphenomenalism or (b) accept dualism.
I can accept if one rejects the argument from Kim, which I presented in my previous posts. The argument has received a lot of criticism through the years, but at the same time most of the philosophers who don't defend any form of physicalism think that it's sound.
If one wants to reject the argument, one must reject some of the rules it is based on:
I personally don't exclude the possibility the mental to be somehow reported by the physical as I stated here (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3197352&postcount=250) (possibility for violating exclusion). Thus there will be mental causation, but there won't be any kind of free will, because of the supervenience condition, which won't allow for any unique type of downward causation (you will have exactly the same mental causation in two identical systems). There is no problem of course to reject the supervenience condition or deny the causal closure principle, but you will be a dualist then.
Sorry to boil this down, but essentially you're a slightly modified modern animist?
Q_Goest
Mar22-11, 12:57 PM
Hi nismaratwork,
Sorry to boil this down, but essentially you're a slightly modified modern animist?
Just thought I'd intervene here. Ferris is correctly pointing out what mainstream scientific views hold to be true. Further, that there is a fundamental inconsistancy between those views. Certainly that doesn't make anyone an animist, though I'll let Ferris talk for him/her self.
nismaratwork
Mar22-11, 01:25 PM
Hi nismaratwork,
Just thought I'd intervene here. Ferris is correctly pointing out what mainstream scientific views hold to be true. Further, that there is a fundamental inconsistancy between those views. Certainly that doesn't make anyone an animist, though I'll let Ferris talk for him/her self.
In what way is he pointing out a mainstream view? He appears to be arguing for thinking rocks, but if you have some other view I'm listening raptly. Perhaps it's just the garbled nature of his posts, a point I have to agree with apeiron on?
Maybe you can tell me what those views are, and how they differ from, "my best thinking is done in my toes!" :rolleyes:
Pythagorean
Mar22-11, 02:58 PM
Animism and panpsychism are misunderstood. Te point is no that trees and rocks ar like humans, but that humans, like rocks and trees, are just a collection of interacting particles.
If you want to explain consciousness rationally, you have to find what is fundamentally different about consciousess and nonconsciousness. I still have no idea on that..
Ferris is correctly pointing out what mainstream scientific views hold to be true. Further, that there is a fundamental inconsistancy between those views.This is an interesting statement, can you paraphrase for me just what these views are, and what is the inconsistency? The case hasn't clicked for me yet.
Animism and panpsychism are misunderstood. Te point is no that trees and rocks ar like humans, but that humans, like rocks and trees, are just a collection of interacting particles.
This is an interesting angle to use, but note that saying humans are fundamentally like rocks is one thing, and saying that the reason they are fundamentally like rocks is that they are both "made of" particles is something very different. I would say that neither claim is particularly clear-- the first claim rests on what what means by "being like", and the second rests on what one means by "being made of." I have no idea what either of those phrases would mean to an animist or anyone else, but I suspect that 10 different meanings spawn 10 different philosophies, some totally different.
nismaratwork
Mar22-11, 03:12 PM
Panpsychism! That's what I was looking for... aka animism minus the soul.
Really, the difference is the same as a drawing of an bird, and a bird in flight. That both are made of similar stuff is not a puzzle as to why the paper doesn't fly, mate, sing, and eat.
We are all "made of stars" *thanks Moby*, but that doesn't mean we're about to fuse hydrogen.
The evidence we have is that we're different if for no other reason than complexity, and there is no need to distribute cognition to the toes and rocks.
apeiron
Mar22-11, 04:24 PM
NRP can be characterized by a commitment to three claims, roughly:
Physicalism: Everything is physical – all objects, properties, and events are the sort that can be exhaustively described and/or explained by the natural sciences.
Mental Realism: Some mental types are genuine properties.
Antireductionism: Mental and physical types are not identical.
The systems view I have outlined would say....
1) Yes, everything is physical. There is nothing supernatural going on. Causal closure is claimed.
2) But mental realism? No. The mental is not accepted as a category of property.
Systems can exhibit mindfulness as a form of organisation, as a capacity for adaptive change, as a particular kind of process. But it is not a property that an object possesses.
3) Antireductionism? So again no. Except in the modelling sense that subjective experience and objective description are clearly different POV. But objectively speaking, the systems view says all systems reduce to systems. :smile:
That is what I mentioned regarding pansemiosis and the search for the minimal definition of a system.
So you can see that systems thinking does not fit the tag of non-reductive physicalism.
I have never seen where Kim tackles the system view as I would understand it. Again, if you can point to a place, that would be useful. But the arguments you are raising do not cover the systems view.
Ferris_bg
Mar22-11, 04:24 PM
Sorry to boil this down, but essentially you're a slightly modified modern animist?
No, I am neither animist, nor defending or rejecting any form of panpsychism. I can't understand the origin of your question, because in my previous posts I don't speak about panpsychism at all.
The sum-up of all my posts in this thread until now is that I defend the position that you can NOT have free will in any materialistic theory of mind. My position is entirely objective because I am not sided with any form of physicalism thus defending its dominance over the other.
I am sorry that the language in my posts involves many philosophical concepts, but I already warned about that in my first post (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3182518&postcount=141). So if you just found out what some of these concepts mean, don't classify the nature of my posts (kapish nismaratwork?).
nismaratwork
Mar22-11, 04:44 PM
No, I am neither animist, nor defending or rejecting any form of panpsychism. I can't understand the origin of your question, because in my previous posts I don't speak about panpsychism at all.
The sum-up of all my posts in this thread until now is that I defend the position that you can NOT have free will in any materialistic theory of mind. My position is entirely objective because I am not sided with any form of physicalism thus defending its dominance over the other.
I am sorry that the language in my posts involves many philosophical concepts, but I already warned about that in my first post (http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3182518&postcount=141). So if you just found out what some of these concepts mean, don't classify the nature of my posts (kapish nismaratwork?).
Kapish sounds like a a poorly spelled Hungarian name, you're reaching for "capiche".
Anyway, I just guessed based on your points, since you argue against free will in materialism, but you're also against dualism. Kim's argument seems geared towards panpsychism, so at some point I had to try and decode your... argument.
In your case, no, I don't find the terminology baffling, in that regard I was thinking of Apeiron, alt, and Ken G... sorry.
edit: Or should I say, "verständlich?"
What I don't understand is, why is there any reason at all to "commit" to physicalism? Do I "commit" to a hammer when I'm building a house? Do I "commit" to driving a car when I commute to work? No, depending on the goals I have at the moment, I may use a staple gun instead, or I may take the bus. To me, "committing" to a position in philosophy is nothing more than adopting a mindset to see where it leads. Anyone is welcome to adopt the physicalist mindset to see where it gets them, but why anyone would want to enter into a belief system which required that is beyond me. Belief systems are mental crutches, they have no place in science, and I hardly see why philosophy needs them either. They are basically the reason that old ideas don't die until their proponents do.
apeiron
Mar22-11, 06:38 PM
What I don't understand is, why is there any reason at all to "commit" to physicalism?
I agree. We would only commit to physicalism (of any variety) as epistemology. To construct models, we do need to start with some definite axioms. And so we "commit" on the basis that "if this were true, then this is what would seem to follow". Beyond that, we are talking religious faith indeed.
Ferris_bg
Mar22-11, 06:51 PM
2) But mental realism? No. The mental is not accepted as a category of property.
Systems can exhibit mindfulness as a form of organisation, as a capacity for adaptive change, as a particular kind of process. But it is not a property that an object possesses.
Mental realism means that the mental is not epiphenomenal (it can have causal powers). So if you want to have free will you need to have mental causation.
3) Antireductionism? So again no. Except in the modelling sense that subjective experience and objective description are clearly different POV. But objectively speaking, the systems view says all systems reduce to systems.
Antireductionism does not mean that the systems can't be reduced to systems, but that the mental states are not reducible to physical states. The mental types and physical types are correlated one-many, not one-one (P = M), thus there is a subjective account.
What I don't understand is, why is there any reason at all to "commit" to physicalism?
No reason at all, thread is about free will, so I wanted to share that committing to physicalism denies free will.
nismaratwork
Mar22-11, 07:08 PM
Mental realism means that the mental is not epiphenomenal (it can have causal powers). So if you want to have free will you need to have mental causation.
Antireductionism does not mean that the systems can't be reduced to systems, but that the mental states are not reducible to physical states. The mental types and physical types are correlated one-many, not one-one (P = M), thus there is a subjective account.
No reason at all, thread is about free will, so I wanted to share that committing to physicalism denies free will.
No reason except that reason... :bugeye:
Ooooook. Well, let me join the chorus of disagreement with that bolded statement (bolding mine).
apeiron
Mar22-11, 07:25 PM
Mental realism means that the mental is not epiphenomenal (it can have causal powers). So if you want to have free will you need to have mental causation.
But it is not "the mental" which has causal power in my view. What I have said is that there is both upwards and downwards causal action - and of distinctly different types. So one is locally constructive action, the other is downwardly constraining.
The subtlities of this are just not recognised in the emergentist and supervenience arguments that you and Q Goest have been citing.
Nowhere have I argued that freewill = mental causation. The whole point of the systems approach is to deflate terms like freewill and mental.
Antireductionism does not mean that the systems can't be reduced to systems, but that the mental states are not reducible to physical states. The mental types and physical types are correlated one-many, not one-one (P = M), thus there is a subjective account.
Again, it is your choice to believe that physical and mental might be proper terms to assign to different levels of a system's causal hierarchy. I am just telling you it is not. That is not the argument I have advanced, so it is not one that I have to defend.
As I say, there is a disconnect between Kim's argument and anything I might be talking about. Kim is in the class of counter-positions that are "not even wrong" here.
No reason at all, thread is about free will, so I wanted to share that committing to physicalism denies free will.
And I agree, but for very different reasons. To the degree that freewill is conflated with a dualistic mental realm (even one that is "physically emergent" or "panpsychically reducible") it is not connecting with a systems view.
Systems science has tried to create its own parallel constructs that are like freewill, but without being the kind of mental state causation you are so troubled by. Terms like autonomy, ascendancy, autopoeisis have been coined. Some like ascendancy have been framed in terms of actual measurements and so can be the basis of scientific modelling.
You are arguing with ghosts here as the systems view just isn't connected to a presumed dualism between the physical and the mental that then has to be overcome somehow.
It works the other way round. Instead of presuming dualism (and so making the mission to heal the divide), it presumes that there is no essential division. And so what has to be explained is how the apparent division arose. How did rocks and atoms become the mindless? How equally did humans also become so mindful?
No reason at all, thread is about free will, so I wanted to share that committing to physicalism denies free will.I'm not pointing that comment at you, it is really pointed at the general way philosophy is communicated. It is in vogue for philosophers to "declare their convictions" to assist in understanding their points, so they are always "committing" to various viewpoints, but frankly I don't really think it's such a good idea, beyond simply saying "this is the avenue I am currently most interested in exploring." That would be a useful declaration, without the stultification.
Instead of presuming dualism (and so making the mission to heal the divide), it presumes that there is no essential division. And so what has to be explained is how the apparent division arose. How did rocks and atoms become the mindless? How equally did humans also become so mindful?I agree this is a useful way to frame the issue. I'm just saying that one question we know in advance that physicalism will never answer is whether or not reality really is physical. Making that assertion should not even be a goal of physicalism, similarly to how mathematicians don't ask if the parallel postulate is true or not, they ask what ramifications it has in realms where it is true. Thus the question is not, is everything physical, the question is, what is physical-- and in particular, is free will. Even that isn't precise enough, because free will actually means different things when projected onto a physicalist perspective than onto some other perspective, so the real question is, what can we learn about the projection of free will onto physicalism, and do we learn more about that projection from a systems or a reductive standpoint? Maybe we just learn different things about it from those standpoints.
Pythagorean
Mar23-11, 02:42 AM
This is an interesting angle to use, but note that saying humans are fundamentally like rocks is one thing, and saying that the reason they are fundamentally like rocks is that they are both "made of" particles is something very different. I would say that neither claim is particularly clear-- the first claim rests on what what means by "being like", and the second rests on what one means by "being made of." I have no idea what either of those phrases would mean to an animist or anyone else, but I suspect that 10 different meanings spawn 10 different philosophies, some totally different.
That the conscious experience really doesn't change much about what we are, objectively. Our behavior isn't short on deterministic models. It's only through delusion that we find each other conscious. Many people thought and still think animals or colored people aren't conscious. It's all about similarity. The more similar something is to you, the more likely you'll allow it to have your "subjective" qualities.
I don't pretend to have any idea how consciousness arises, but what we do, how we evolved, and our matter/energy/information structure (as complicated as it is) doesn't seem to depend on consciousness. So a rock... and let's take a second:
A rock is complicated information structure too. It's not just sitting there. It has thermoydnamic energy surging through it, phonons colliding, light barraging it.
So a rock, like humans has a complex structure of input output relationship with the universe, both in terms of matter (sediment and ware) and energy (thermal) and a complex internal structure that defines those input outputs and can change also change (nonholonomically) as a function of its interactions with the universe (thereby changing how it handles input-outputs).
Now, let's step it up a little bit to something closer to humans, like a Grey-Scott chemical species reaction. They act very much like neurons, actually. They have a stable point, but if you perturb them sufficiently, they go through excitation and if you then drive them with constant energy, they will actually oscillate. Dynamically, the Grey Scott model has a lot of similarities with neurons. If we come up with complicated topological structures of a network of Grey-Scott reactions, we can have some very interesting behavior indeed.
Now consider a complicated milieu of proteins, alkalis, acids, etc involved in similar chemical species reactions. Earth, the sun, the moon... all drive these reactions to their rhythms. Somehow, maybe all over, maybe only in particular place, I don't know... but somehow, the molecular reaction network, with all it's synchronized damping and driving, developed a memory system (a physical memory system, not like the abstract human memory, but the same fundamental physical principles are necessary: state representation, compression, and storage). They would, perhaps billions of years later, be called "genes".
In some bewildering tangle of matter, energy, and information (i.e. geometry: how everything compares to everything else) a entropy pump has been created, powered by the sun, regulated by planetary motion. The entropy pump generates lots of entropy. It's like a refrigerator. It's keeping it's insides cool (lower entropy), but at the cost of additional energy, which is converted to work, which produces even more entropy than is being pumped out (a Maxwellian Demon).
From here, the information structure of the system can only get more complicated and discover higher degrees of freedom as long as the environment remains stable enough for the phenomena to persist.
Of course, the information structure is not contained, it's not isolated. It's a small part of the information structure of the whole universe. Like the rock, it exchanges matter and energy and information with the universe. It has much more complicated information structures than the rock (namely that it's an entropy pump, which IS special I agree, but biological systems aren't the only entropy pumps) but in terms of behavior, there is nothing at all fundamentally different about it.
That we have conscious experience doesn't imply at all to me that we have free will (willpower we do have, but the notion of free will is becoming harder to define for those who struggle to cling to it). What's the alternative to a deterministic model? It would require magic, a soul, interacting with the brain. We don't need that. We have the general story covered from stimulus to response in terms of all the physical interactions that go on.
Not the center of the universe, not going to live forever in an after life, not a soul, just a very confused chunk of universe.
That the conscious experience really doesn't change much about what we are, objectively.OK, that is a more clear meaning to take. But that also makes it easier to identify and test its implicit assumptions. I would claim that this sentence is internally inconsistent-- because there is no such thing as what is "objective" without "conscious experience." This is demonstrably true-- any definition of objectivity is inevitably going to have to refer to conscious experience at some point. That's the fundamental Catch-22 of physicalist thinking, it is basically an error in language.
It's only through delusion that we find each other conscious. But again we have language problems. In addition to the demonstrable fact that all attempts to distinguish what is a delusion from what isn't is going to have to reference conscious experience (and then go on to test the self-consistency of that experience, something you simply cannot do in a universe of rocks), we have the even more basic fact that any standard definition of "delusion", when applied to "consciousness", encounters problems. Most basically, a delusion is an impression that is not shared by sane people, so your statement would need to claim that finding each other conscious is not something that sane people do. I would argue just the opposite-- I'd worry much more about the sanity of someone who does not find themselves to be conscious.
So perhaps the word "illusion" comes closer to your meaning that "delusion"-- at least an illusion is something that sane people can share, like a mirage. But again the language has problems-- the reason a lake in the desert is an illusion is that it is inconsistent with all our other experiences relating to deserts. What other experiences (conscious experiences, mind you) do we have that is inconsistent with the concept of consciousness? Again the Catch-22.
Many people thought and still think animals or colored people aren't conscious. It's all about similarity. The more similar something is to you, the more likely you'll allow it to have your "subjective" qualities.I agree that this is the basis we use to extend our concept of consciousness from ourselves to others, but such an extension is rational and sane. So consciousness must begin with ourselves-- if we have it, then extending it is natural. Thus, in discussing the real vs. illusory elements of consciousness, there is no need to look any farther than our own experience of it. Indeed, were we the only human on the planet, we might have a paucity of test subjects, but our inquiry into consciousness could still be fundamentally the same.
I don't pretend to have any idea how consciousness arises, but what we do, how we evolved, and our matter/energy/information structure (as complicated as it is) doesn't seem to depend on consciousness. I don't either, in fact, I would say we cannot even tell if consciousness "arises" at all, or if it pre-exists the mind that experiences it. It is common to use language that says consciousness "emerges" due to physical brain function, but no one would say that a planetary nebula "emerges" due to the physical functioning of a telescope. If we have ten working telescopes that look at that nebula, they all see more or less the same thing, and if we have ten working human brains, they are all conscious in more or less the same way. So by what basis can we claim that consciousness "emerges" from the brain? We don't know that at all.
In some bewildering tangle of matter, energy, and information (i.e. geometry: how everything compares to everything else) a entropy pump has been created, powered by the sun, regulated by planetary motion. The entropy pump generates lots of entropy. It's like a refrigerator. It's keeping it's insides cool (lower entropy), but at the cost of additional energy, which is converted to work, which produces even more entropy than is being pumped out (a Maxwellian Demon).Yes, that is a reasonable description of what is going on. But note I could also use language to describe what is going on in a telescope, and I could describe the evolution of the eye in exactly the same terms you used to discuss the evolution of a brain. Yet what the eye sees does not "emerge" from the eye, so where is the basis that consciousness emerges from the brain? Placing consciousness in an evolutionary context still does not tell us that it is something physical, or that it emerges from the action of something physical. That's pure assumption-- it's a first step down the path of adopting a belief system, and is to be regarded with extreme caution because we must never mistake a search for ramifications of a postulate with the truth of that postulate.
Of course, the information structure is not contained, it's not isolated. It's a small part of the information structure of the whole universe.Here the language again is in danger of falling into certain traps. We often hear language that suggests "information" is something physical. But it's not-- information is an abstract output of high-level processing. So brains don't "contain" information, and they are not "made of" information, but rather, it is our process of understanding brains (and everything else) that refers to information.
That we have conscious experience doesn't imply at all to me that we have free will (willpower we do have, but the notion of free will is becoming harder to define for those who struggle to cling to it). Yes, we can distinguish free will and consciousness, but many of the same issues come up.We have the general story covered from stimulus to response in terms of all the physical interactions that go on.But when the story forces us to conclude that everyone is having delusions, we may have a problem in our story.
Panpsychism! That's what I was looking for... aka animism minus the soul.
Really, the difference is the same as a drawing of an bird, and a bird in flight. That both are made of similar stuff is not a puzzle as to why the paper doesn't fly, mate, sing, and eat.
We are all "made of stars" *thanks Moby*, but that doesn't mean we're about to fuse hydrogen.
The evidence we have is that we're different if for no other reason than complexity, and there is no need to distribute cognition to the toes and rocks.Exactly, the only difference is the complexity. That means there are less complex versions of everything about us, including consciousness. Unfortunately this flies in the face of the idea that consciousness is absent when a system is not complex enough (for example non-brains).
nismaratwork
Mar23-11, 08:47 PM
Exactly, the only difference is the complexity. That means there are less complex versions of everything about us, including consciousness. Unfortunately this flies in the face of the idea that consciousness is absent when a system is not complex enough (for example non-brains).
That's not at all what I meant; there is also the issue of emergent properties such as sending signals through chemical or electrical means that are absent in a rock. I was trying to draw the comparison that just because say, we have Hydrogen in us, doesn't mean we're ever going to fuse it into helium. We lack major elements of MORE Hydrogen, the effects that as as a result of gravity, and heat.
Panpsychism strikes me as the ultimate in reductionism; much as the assumption was once made that a protein was a protein... well look, how it encodes/folds is rather more the issue!
It's not always a matter of complexity, it can just be a matter of potential within the bounds our complexity provides. A rock is not a stupid human, and a human is not a thinking rock, anymore than some vast intelligence beyond humanity would be a "really bright" human.
JDStupi
Mar23-11, 11:00 PM
So Ken G, am I to assume you disagree with the intentionality thesis? Namely that all consciousness is consciousness of something or is directed towards something?
I simply do not see what it would mean to say that
I would say we cannot even tell if consciousness "arises" at all, or if it pre-exists the mind that experiences it
What is a conception of consciousness devoid of its relation to mind? The language you used seems to betray some view of consciousness as some substance, some "it". That we all tap into in our own way. Of course, it may be argued that the question "What is x devoid of its relation to mind?" Can be asked for any x, and indeed this is true. However, for various reasons certain hypotheses or "Models" are more accurate then others, and the idea that consciousness is a "thing" that we tap into seems devoid of meaning. At least with something such as physical substances we can draw (not saying I agree) Lockean esque distinctions between "primary" and "secondary" characteristics of something. The primary being those "invariances" which will find themselves being expressed in any relation to the object. What would be the invariances or primary characteristics of some diffuse "consciousness" that is not connected to any individual?
What happens when we go to sleep? Does the substance hide? What happens when somebody takes drugs? Though you may say that the brain does not necessarily create consciousness, nor does it necessarily not. As such, I find the evidence that certain changes in the functioning of certain brain regions have similar effects on the consciousness of most, mixed with mental disorders and sleep/death to be more convincing.
I can appreciate the general epistemological way at which you approach things, always pointing out how we can not be quite so certain of the physicalist ontology we are all largely "brought up with" due to its necessarily being forumlated and confirmed/refuted through experience, but I do not even see what it could mean to take a subjective notion like consciousness and treat it as some property-less substance.
Oh, and out of curiosity
We often hear language that suggests "information" is something physical. But it's not
Do you accept the idea that all information must necessarily be physically implemented? Or do you see this as attatched to the general physicalist thesis and so discard it?
Pythagorean
Mar23-11, 11:42 PM
there is no such thing as what is "objective" without "conscious experience." This is demonstrably true-- any definition of objectivity is inevitably going to have to refer to conscious experience at some point. That's the fundamental Catch-22 of physicalist thinking, it is basically an error in language.
You'll have to be more explicit about the contradiction. In my view (weak emergence, I think is the label that fits me) "objective" and "subjective" are both emergent properties: representations that follow from the tendency of organic systems to generalize stimuli for a coherent world view. I don't really believe that things are stored in a binary system: either objective or subjective. Some information is more subjective, some information is less subjective.
In the course of the history of man, phenomena that are subjective have found objective measures. How somebody feels about something can be a direct insight into their history with that thing and how it affected there dopaminergic system.
But again we have language problems. In addition to the demonstrable fact that all attempts to distinguish what is a delusion from what isn't is going to have to reference conscious experience (and then go on to test the self-consistency of that experience, something you simply cannot do in a universe of rocks), we have the even more basic fact that any standard definition of "delusion", when applied to "consciousness", encounters problems. Most basically, a delusion is an impression that is not shared by sane people, so your statement would need to claim that finding each other conscious is not something that sane people do. I would argue just the opposite-- I'd worry much more about the sanity of someone who does not find themselves to be conscious.
It's important to clear up the semantics, I agree. Since you're practicing deconstructionism on my post, you might have missed the message. There's no need to fixate on the word "delusion". I just meant we instinctually believe each other to be conscious before we ever develop rational thinking.
But again the language has problems-- the reason a lake in the desert is an illusion is that it is inconsistent with all our other experiences relating to deserts. What other experiences (conscious experiences, mind you) do we have that is inconsistent with the concept of consciousness? Again the Catch-22.
I don't get your point, I guess. I don't find anything inconsistent with consciousness. I find consciousness a very interesting emergent property that I'd like to know more about the mechanisms of. And I'm satisfied by my studies in systems biology.
I agree that this is the basis we use to extend our concept of consciousness from ourselves to others, but such an extension is rational and sane.
I don't agree that it's rational or sane to think that colored people aren't conscious just because they're skin color is different. With rocks, we have no idea. But if a theory comes up that implies panpsychism, there's no previous successful theory that requires that panpsychism be false. So judging the theory on whether it allows panpsychism or not is egocentric.
And furthermore, the point isn't that rocks are conscious. It's that any matter is capable of consciousness if it becomes the right system in terms of its dynamics (information, energy, mass transfer). Rather than matter gathering around a "soul". Emergent properties emerge.
So consciousness must begin with ourselves-- if we have it, then extending it is natural.
There's no place consciousness must begin. Is this a prevalent view?
So by what basis can we claim that consciousness "emerges" from the brain? We don't know that at all.
Who claimed that? Consciousness emerges as an interface between two complex systems (though, the boundary that divides them into to systems is my own creation, as with the boundary that divides them from the rest of the universe). The systems are often labeled "internal" and "external" and are generally defined by the epidermal layer of an organism.
All the cells play together. The brain is the most efficient information handler, but it's not the only information handler. The system emerges from more than just neurons. You take away glial cells at the start, for instance, and the system will never evolve to be conscious. Likewise if you take stimuli away from the organism from the start, it will never develop consciousness.
I am breathing the universe.
But note I could also use language to describe what is going on in a telescope, and I could describe the evolution of the eye in exactly the same terms you used to discuss the evolution of a brain. Yet what the eye sees does not "emerge" from the eye, so where is the basis that consciousness emerges from the brain?
I'm not sure I follow...
Here the language again is in danger of falling into certain traps. We often hear language that suggests "information" is something physical. But it's not-- information is an abstract output of high-level processing. So brains don't "contain" information, and they are not "made of" information, but rather, it is our process of understanding brains (and everything else) that refers to information.
You could use that pedantic argument for mass and energy, then...
Information is physical. You can't talk about a system just by talking about it's mass and energy. You have to talk about it's configuration in spacetime. This is what information is. And it's very interesting and productive to think about things this way:
Without unique geometrical configurations in time and space, there wouldn't be near the permutaitons available to each system and the dynamics would be rather boring and it wouldn't be a complex system, worthy of being published in Physics Review E:
http://pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v53/i3/p2957_1
or Nature magazine:
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v6/n12/full/nphys1821.html
Hello JDStupi, welcome to the conversation!So Ken G, am I to assume you disagree with the intentionality thesis? Namely that all consciousness is consciousness of something or is directed towards something? It's not that I disagree with it, I just don't see why we should adopt it as true. We should simply ask what are the implications of that possibility.
What is a conception of consciousness devoid of its relation to mind?I guess that depends on what you mean by "mind." Judging from my remarks that you are responding to, it sounds like you are equating the mind with the brain. Often, we think of the brain as the physicalist elements of the seat of consciousness, so as soon as we invoke brain language, we are invoking a physicalist perspective. So if you are indeed equating brain and mind, then your question becomes, what is a conception of consciousness devoid of its relation to a physicalist description of the brain? And that is, what I would say, the $64,000 question right there. What do we learn about consciousness (or free will) by taking a physicalist perspective, and what do we lose by doing that?
The language you used seems to betray some view of consciousness as some substance, some "it". That we all tap into in our own way.I have not asserted a claim that this is true about consciousness, I have only pointed out that we have no idea that this is not true about consciousness. So we should not adopt language that suggests we know it is not true, or even that we have any evidence it is not true, because we don't. We only have a choice to frame it differently, made by us, for various reasons that we should not lose contact with.
However, for various reasons certain hypotheses or "Models" are more accurate then others, and the idea that consciousness is a "thing" that we tap into seems devoid of meaning. At least with something such as physical substances we can draw (not saying I agree) Lockean esque distinctions between "primary" and "secondary" characteristics of something.So if one cannot draw Lockean distinctions, the sole alternative is absence of meaning? Is there any other logical argument here that it is devoid of meaning to think of consciousness as something that has an existence separate from the physical action of the brain that interacts with it in some poorly understood way? Maybe we are just a whole lot better at thinking in terms of physical models, and consciousness is not beholden to this particular skill of ours. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail-- that is the flaw of positivism when used as an assertion of truth.
What would be the invariances or primary characteristics of some diffuse "consciousness" that is not connected to any individual? That depends on how you imagine the "connection" you are talking about. What are the primary characteristics of a planetary nebula that are not connected with human perception? There are none, so just what is the "connection" between us and planetary nebulae?
What is demonstrable is that memories and opinions and personalities are directly linked to individuals, all the things that go into our identity. But anyone who counts consciousness as being among the unique elements of their identity, must count themselves the only conscious being. Instead, we generally treat consciousness as part of our shared experience as humans, and rightly so-- that would seem the default expectation.
What happens when we go to sleep? Does the substance hide?What happens to the Moon when you are not looking at it, does it "hide"? No, you don't see it because you are not looking at it, there's no requirement for it to "go" or "hide." I'm not claiming this perspective is necessarily the correct one, I'm saying there is zero evidence it is any less valid or useful, and it might even be argued it is a more natural default option.
For example, what evidence do we have the planetary nebulae "emerge" from our telescopes when we focus on them? Why do we think they are still there when we are not looking at them? There is nothing about planetary nebulae that would allow us to create an experiment that comes out A if planetary nebulae emerge from the action of building a telescope or B if they are already there, it is purely a mental convenience that we choose the latter interpretation. Ironically, most take the opposite stance when it comes to consciousness, and for no better reason. If that is not so, what is the better reason?
As such, I find the evidence that certain changes in the functioning of certain brain regions have similar effects on the consciousness of most, mixed with mental disorders and sleep/death to be more convincing. What has that got to do with it? There are things I can do to a telescope that will have inevitable effects on the image of a planetary nebula. If I defocus the telescope, the image will be blurry. So this is evidence that the planetary nebula emerges from the telescope?
I can appreciate the general epistemological way at which you approach things, always pointing out how we can not be quite so certain of the physicalist ontology we are all largely "brought up with" due to its necessarily being forumlated and confirmed/refuted through experience, but I do not even see what it could mean to take a subjective notion like consciousness and treat it as some property-less substance. It is not necessary to treat it as property-less to not treat it as physical. Here your argument seems to rest on the assumption that all properties are physical properties. That is a standard step in positivist arguments-- they generally begin by assuming what they will later claim is their evidence for making the assumption. "Consciousness" is a word, and so like all language, all it does is make contact with our shared experience. That's it, that's all words ever do. So if consciousness has shared properties, then it is not propertyless. None of that has anything to do with physicalist assumptions, they are something quite different.
Do you accept the idea that all information must necessarily be physically implemented? Or do you see this as attatched to the general physicalist thesis and so discard it?I would say that anyone who would claim that all information must necessarily be physically implemented accepts the onus of proof that this statement is correct. It does not fall to me to falsify it-- I see no evidence to support it. Indeed, it looks like reverse logic-- physicalist models are what we construct from information, not the other way around.
You'll have to be more explicit about the contradiction. In my view (weak emergence, I think is the label that fits me) "objective" and "subjective" are both emergent properties: representations that follow from the tendency of organic systems to generalize stimuli for a coherent world view. I'm fine with the idea that subjective and objective are types of representations that follow from how we generalize stimula to create a coherent world view. If that is all you mean by "emergence", then sure, they emerge. But if that is all we mean by emergence, then a planetary nebula emerges from a person looking into a telescope, because the reason we talk about planetary nebulae is our tendency to generalize stimula (from telescopes) for a coherent world view. I don't think that's really what you mean by weak emergence.
What I'm saying here is that free will and consciousness are not known to "emerge" as a result of the action of a physical system, any more than a planetary nebula is known to emerge from the action of a telescope. Instead, we have an interaction going on, and some of the aspects of that interaction can be framed in physicalist language (the neural correlates), and some cannot (the actual experience of it). We have no idea that one part of this interaction emerges from the other, and we really have no reason to assert that it does-- the study of the interaction will look more or less the same either way, the only difference is we are less likely to take a wrong turn if we don't pretend to know something that we don't actually know to be true. Think about how much easier it would have been to understand quantum mechanics had we learned that lesson better!
I don't really believe that things are stored in a binary system: either objective or subjective. Some information is more subjective, some information is less subjective.
Yes, that must be true-- subjective and objective are just poles of a continuum of types of experience, a continuum of generating that coherent world view you speak of.
It's important to clear up the semantics, I agree. Since you're practicing deconstructionism on my post, you might have missed the message. There's no need to fixate on the word "delusion". I just meant we instinctually believe each other to be conscious before we ever develop rational thinking.
Yet words are very important, because they are all we have. We want to know what we mean when we talk about free will, so we must pick our way carefully through the words. Ultimately, it is probably impossible to be careful enough to avoid falling into incoherency or circularity, but we can try our best.
I don't get your point, I guess. I don't find anything inconsistent with consciousness. I find consciousness a very interesting emergent property that I'd like to know more about the mechanisms of. And I'm satisfied by my studies in systems biology.
There's no problem with being satisfied with an approach to understanding consciousness. What I objected to is the claim that consciousness emerges from the action of a physical system, unless one defines "emerges" to be completely generic of everything that any system does, and one treats the modifier "physical" as if it was completely redundant. That's my challenge to physicalists-- tell me why, in your philosophy, the phrase "physical system" is not completely redundant. And if it is completely redundant, why don't you conclude that you are simply assuming what you believe to be true? The difference between an assumption and a belief rests on the appearance of something other than complete redundancy.
I don't agree that it's rational or sane to think that colored people aren't conscious just because they're skin color is different.I believe you have taken the opposite of my meaning-- I said that whatever we decide for ourselves, in regard to whether or not we have consciousness or free will, is natural to extrapolate to others, in the absence of good reason not to.
But if a theory comes up that implies panpsychism, there's no previous successful theory that requires that panpsychism be false. This is the kind of point I'm making. We must not adopt claims on truth that could be false without a single one of our experiments coming out differently. The claim that consciousness is "generated by" or "emerges from" physical systems is just such a claim-- what experiment that has been done has to be wrong if the physical systems are only interacting with consciousness in some currently poorly understood way, rather than generating it? A camera generates a photograph, but not what is depicted in the photograph. Consciousness is what is being depicted by our language about it, it is not being created by the way we think about it.
And furthermore, the point isn't that rocks are conscious. It's that any matter is capable of consciousness if it becomes the right system in terms of its dynamics (information, energy, mass transfer). Rather than matter gathering around a "soul". That is one of those claims we do not have evidence to support, we have no idea what the matter is doing, because both matter, and consciousness, are concepts that we are manipulating, and we have no idea how those concepts connect to each other other than what limited correlates we can subject to scientific investigation.Emergent properties emerge.And that exposes the fundamental circularity in the claim.
Consciousness emerges as an interface between two complex systems (though, the boundary that divides them into to systems is my own creation, as with the boundary that divides them from the rest of the universe).Not just that boundary, but every single word you used in that sentence is your creation. That's how language works. So you are contradicting yourself, because you are saying you have a model that is true, and then you are admitting that the model is an idealization made by your mind. It certainly cannot be both-- to avoid the contradiction, you would have to say that you are choosing to model consciousness as that interface. I've no objection to choosing to impose physicalist models and see what they can tell us, my objection was claiming that we somehow have evidence that consciousness actually emerges from the action of physical systems. That is simply mistaking an assumption for a conclusion, an error that crops up over and over in positivism.
I'm not sure I follow...The point there was that being able to trace a continuum of systems that we model in physicalist language, and correlate that continuum with levels of consciousness, is in no way evidence that consciousness is generated by those physical systems. The analogy of the telescope exposes the logical flaw in claiming that evidence.You could use that pedantic argument for mass and energy, then...
And it would be just as correct. Being correct does not make something pedantic.
Information is physical. You can't talk about a system just by talking about it's mass and energy. You have to talk about it's configuration in spacetime. This is what information is.So you say that information is physical, and then you say it is about a configuration in spacetime. A configuration in spacetime is not something physical, it is something mathematical. So now we have that mathematics is physical too? This is exactly the circular reasoning that permeates physicalism-- everything has to be physical by assumption, ergo, everything is physical.
No, if everything is physical, then "physical" doesn't mean anything. Meaning must stem from contrast-- a category means something if it establishes a difference between what falls under the category and what doesn't. Physicalism cannot have it both ways-- either "physical" is a completely meaningless word, or else it is not true that everything is Without unique geometrical configurations in time and space, there wouldn't be near the permutaitons available to each system and the dynamics would be rather boring and it wouldn't be a complex system, worthy of being published in Physics Review E:
http://pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v53/i3/p2957_1
or Nature magazine:
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v6/n12/full/nphys1821.htmlI certainly never said we cannot do science, or mathematics. We do both, and get lots of insights (fascinating papers, by the way). Yet mathematics is not physical, it is an abstract means of manipulating information. Energy isn't physical either, it is a word, corresponding to a formula, that can be interfaced in a useful way with physicalist language without actually being physical (note, for example, that any constant energy can be added to the potential energy of a system with no physical consequences at all, so energy is demonstrably something different from what is physical.) Hence the information is also not physical. We can imagine, if we choose, that the information stems from a physical system, but it makes more sense to simply assert that whatever the information stems from, we will attempt to model in a physical way. "Physical" is a word that talks about constraints on a model, nothing more.
That's not at all what I meant; there is also the issue of emergent properties such as sending signals through chemical or electrical means that are absent in a rock. I was trying to draw the comparison that just because say, we have Hydrogen in us, doesn't mean we're ever going to fuse it into helium. We lack major elements of MORE Hydrogen, the effects that as as a result of gravity, and heat.
Panpsychism strikes me as the ultimate in reductionism; much as the assumption was once made that a protein was a protein... well look, how it encodes/folds is rather more the issue!
It's not always a matter of complexity, it can just be a matter of potential within the bounds our complexity provides. A rock is not a stupid human, and a human is not a thinking rock, anymore than some vast intelligence beyond humanity would be a "really bright" human.My reply is here http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3206396#post3206396
It's about emergence so it fits better in that topic than in this free will one.
Pythagorean
Mar24-11, 04:56 AM
Being correct does not make something pedantic.
Your blanket response is pretty much, "you can't prove that", and a vague notion of "solipsism could be true". Which is 100% accurate and 100% useless. It's something that's already understood that we move forward from. It's pedantic because it's not productive. You're not making any thought progress with me.
Emergence is not so circularly defined just because I didn't extrapolate in the sentence you quoted, I just assumed you knew what emergence was. Should I even bother to elucidate on the scientific formalism? You seem not to really appreciate the same division of reality that I do, so why don't you tell me about yours instead?
Why don't you tell me something productive?
Ferris_bg
Mar24-11, 07:33 AM
Pythagorean, I don't think the idealistic viewpoint that Ken G explained is useless. You don't know if mind emerges from matter or matter from mind. In fact the both terms are not defined at all, they depend on our still primitive understanding of the world. So one must always assume all the possibilities, because the "productiveness" depend on all of them. Thats what Ken G wanted to say with his/her questions, what do we learn from this and this standpoint.
As for the information, let's not focus on its configuration in spacetime, but rather on its origin. Is it again a psychological property just like weak emergence, can information be created without depending on sentience?
Your blanket response is pretty much, "you can't prove that", and a vague notion of "solipsism could be true". Correction, that is what you heard. What I was actually telling you is that you are making claims you cannot support. What "use" have you demonstrated from your claims? Science does not require those claims in order to be useful, science is not a belief system nor does it need physicalist philosophy.
You do not seem not to really appreciate the same division of reality that I do, so why don't you tell me about yours instead?You don't have a "division" of reality at all, that's the point. All you have is a belief system that you cannot even support. Basically, you have made a claim that has no use, and are objecting to my pointing that out on the basis that my pointing it out has no use. Ferris_bg has it right.
nismaratwork
Mar24-11, 08:05 AM
My reply is here http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3206396#post3206396
It's about emergence so it fits better in that topic than in this free will one.
Good point, responded! Seems like a fun thread too, I'll stick around it.
Ken G, Pythagorean... easy guys, you're both smart and thoughtful, and have been and can do better than these last couple of posts.
Believe it or not, it's actually quite useful for amateurs like me to read your arguments, but not your spats.
As for the information, let's not focus on its configuration in spacetime, but rather on its origin. Is it again a psychological property just like weak emergence, can information be created without depending on sentience?That's an important question, and I would say that what is demonstrable is that it does. Maintaining the inverse requires, at least, some evidence.
nismaratwork
Mar24-11, 08:08 AM
An ant can create novel and unique chemical trails encoding information without a HINT of sentience, I'm not seeing the hook here.
The hook lies in the question of, according to whom is the ant trail encoding information? Does the ant think there is information there? Is an ant an information broker of some kind, or is it just following a program of some kind (the information content of that program being, of course, something that the ant also does not see nor has any use to see)? The deep question here is, to what extent are our minds responsible for how we think, and how we use mental constructs like information and energy. I wouldn't even claim a relation like sentience --> information, or information --> sentience, but rather that the only place where they appear (in our minds), they appear together.
nismaratwork
Mar24-11, 09:17 AM
The hook lies in the question of, according to whom is the ant trail encoding information? Does the ant think there is information there? Is an ant an information broker of some kind, or is it just following a program of some kind (the information content of that program being, of course, something that the ant also does not see nor has any use to see)? The deep question here is, to what extent are our minds responsible for how we think, and how we use mental constructs like information and energy. I wouldn't even claim a relation like sentience --> information, or information --> sentience, but rather that the only place where they appear (in our minds), they appear together.
Regardless of its awareness or instruction-set, the ant encodes information that not ONLY other ants can follow, which an alien intelligence COULD in theory also benefit from. The ant is producing new information through exploration, sans sentience or anything LIKE sentience. Despite that, it's a universal kind of organized information that other beings on the same thermodynamic arrow can understand given the right tools.
A rock is information, but cannot create new information, cannot explore information, it just IS. Life allows information to spread and change, accumulate and organize; a rock is a stable structure, however it resonates or reacts in a piezoelectric fashion.
Information is universal, but how that information is manipulated, created, changed, and interpreted is the realm of the living. Complexity isn't even the issue as arguably a planet is far more complex than an ant, yet the planet is a dissipative system... it's just a chunk of the universe slowly cooling.
Regardless of its awareness or instruction-set, the ant encodes information that not ONLY other ants can follow, which an alien intelligence COULD in theory also benefit from.My point is, it is you who have labeled that as information, it is your brain that is gaining the benefit from the label. The ant doesn't need it, or use it, or even want it. Information means nothing to what an ant is doing, it means something to your attempts to analyze what the ant is doing. You are responsible for information, the ant is responsible for a chemical trail. (And we don't need to get into what a chemical trail is, and the responsibilities there.)
The ant is producing new information through exploration, sans sentience or anything LIKE sentience. No, the ant is doing no such thing. It is quite demonstrable what the ant is doing, and it isn't that. Where that language originates is in your mind's efforts to categorize, organize, and understand, what the ant is doing. Someone with a very different way of thinking about ants might not have any idea what you are talking about or why you would want to analyze it that way, and the ant wouldn't have any idea what either one of you are talking about.
A rock is information, but cannot create new information, cannot explore information, it just IS. Life allows information to spread and change, accumulate and organize; a rock is a stable structure, however it resonates or reacts in a piezoelectric fashion.Yes, when we think about life, and our concept of information, this is what we find. It's all about our relationship with our own concepts, and what they do for us. Us.
Information is universal, but how that information is manipulated, created, changed, and interpreted is the realm of the living.The universality of information is that all minds that work like ours universally find value in the concept. That's a limited form of "universality", but it is the one used in science. The only one we can use, but it's not the one many people imagine when they lose track of their own involvement.
Complexity isn't even the issue as arguably a planet is far more complex than an ant, yet the planet is a dissipative system... it's just a chunk of the universe slowly cooling.Yes, I agree here-- we don't even know how to "rate complexity" in a way that tells us when you get life. Random bits contain more information than does language, so something about communication requires that we suitably limit the information, rather than conveying it willy nilly. Something like that must also be true for life.
nismaratwork
Mar24-11, 09:37 AM
My point is, it is you who have labeled that as information, it is your brain that is gaining the benefit from the label. The ant doesn't need it, or use it, or even want it. Information means nothing to what an ant is doing, it means something to your attempts to analyze what the ant is doing. You are responsible for information, the ant is responsible for a chemical trail. (And we don't need to get into what a chemical trail is, and the responsibilities there.)
I'm thinking of information in terms of Information, as in physics; the ant IS information, whether I'm there to watch it or not. Granted that last bit is a function of my not believing in wavefunction collapse, but there it is. Other animals such as an ant-eater are not just attracted by such trails, but use them to track the home of the ants. In short, it is universally available information, and as real as anything.
No, the ant is doing no such thing. It is quite demonstrable what the ant is doing, and it isn't that. Where that language originates is in your mind's efforts to categorize, organize, and understand, what the ant is doing. Someone with a very different way of thinking about ants might not have any idea what you are talking about or why you would want to analyze it that way, and the ant wouldn't have any idea what either one of you are talking about.
The ant(s) form a trail to and from food sources, establish dead ends, and all of that is useful to them, and some other animals. Indipendant of my observation, the information exists, then dissipates over time adding to the total entropy of the 'system'. Even if nobody knows what an ant is, even if ants are gone, those trails still encode additional information about the habits of the colony, food sources, and inter-ant communication.
You don't need to even be sentient to use that information (see anteater again).
Yes, when we think about life, and our concept of information, this is what we find. It's all about our relationship with our own concepts, and what they do for us. Us. The universality of information is that all minds that work like ours universally find value in the concept. That's a limited form of "universality", but it is the one used in science. The only one we can use, but it's not the one many people imagine when they lose track of their own involvement.
Again, I mean information as in "Information Paradox", not the semi-solopsistic view. Minds with vastly different natures COULD access the ant's information until it fully dissipates, whether or not they do or exist in that fashion is another matter. Human minds are not required for that to be meaningful information about paths.
Yes, I agree here-- we don't even know how to "rate complexity" in a way that tells us when you get life. Random bits contain more information than does language, so something about communication requires suitable limiting information, rather than conveying it willy nilly. Something like that must also be true for life.
Here I think we converge on apeiron's points about downward constraints... it's part of squeezing the signal out of the noise. Random bits, like the human Genome without context is chaos, but the difference is that ruly random bits could just be called 'waste heat', and the genome is a totally different animals.
I'm thinking of information in terms of Information, as in physics; the ant IS information, whether I'm there to watch it or not.Correction, you can analyze the ant as being information, whether you are there or not, except that you need to be there to analyze anything. This is all inescapably true, it comes simply from keeping careful track of what the words mean. And recognizing it makes both quantum mechanics, and relativity, make a lot more sense, but those are two additional threads.
Other animals such as an ant-eater are not just attracted by such trails, but use them to track the home of the ants. In short, it is universally available information, and as real as anything.
Again, the truth here is that your analysis of the situation can be framed in terms of universally available information. If an anteater is just following a program of some kind, there is no information there for the anteater, any more than an electron uses information to fall toward a proton. Information is a mental construct, that is demonstrably true using any definition of information you like.
You don't need to even be sentient to use that information (see anteater again).You are the one who are saying that information is being used there, the anteater says no such thing. You are also sentient. Coincidence?
Here I think we converge on apeiron's points about downward constraints... it's part of squeezing the signal out of the noise. Random bits, like the human Genome without context is chaos, but the difference is that ruly random bits could just be called 'waste heat', and the genome is a totally different animals.Yes, our analysis about information is similar here, what differs is our claims about what information is.
nismaratwork
Mar24-11, 12:27 PM
Correction, you can analyze the ant as being information, whether you are there or not, except that you need to be there to analyze anything. This is all inescapably true, it comes simply from keeping careful track of what the words mean. And recognizing it makes both quantum mechanics, and relativity, make a lot more sense, but those are two additional threads.
Again, the truth here is that your analysis of the situation can be framed in terms of universally available information. If an anteater is just following a program of some kind, there is no information there for the anteater, any more than an electron uses information to fall toward a proton. Information is a mental construct, that is demonstrably true using any definition of information you like.
You are the one who are saying that information is being used there, the anteater says no such thing. You are also sentient. Coincidence?
Yes, our analysis about information is similar here, what differs is our claims about what information is.
Your view seems solipsist, or an generally extreme Copenhagen Interpretation... I don't believe that we have to be present for something to exist. We need to be present for that information to be meaningful to us, but it exists whether or not we're there. The anteater, unlike the electron, is not simply a smear of probability, it's a macroscopic object which, without the information from the ants would not exist. They existed before we were there to observe them, and will (hopefully) continue when we're gone.
That the next ant in order can glean, even by genetic program, and reinforce the information of the trail is enough frankly, but the exploitation of that information by the anteater is a nail in that coffin to me. Remember, the anteater isn't merely attracted to the trail, it eats along it, back to the nest/bivouac/hill/etc. Unlike an electron it's following a defined path, even if it's instinctual, and if it's not hungry it can still recognize the path-information of the ant.
We can do the same, so could in theory, an alien intelligence. That to me argues for an objective reality about the specific information encoded by the ants, independent of us.
Ferris_bg
Mar24-11, 01:16 PM
You both are right, because your definitions of information are not identical. In fact everything boils down to whether information is a property of matter or not. If you want we can move to a new thread discussing that, because we moved away from the main topic.
Pythagorean
Mar24-11, 01:37 PM
Ken G,
there's plenty of experimental evidence that suggests mind arises from brain:
labotomies, pharmaceuticals, recreational drugs, neuropsychology experiments...
But if you're a solipsist, this discussion is not really worth having, since I'm just a figment of your imagination.
You both are right, because your definitions of information are not identical. In fact everything boils down to whether information is a property of matter or not. If you want we can move to a new thread discussing that, because we moved away from the main topic.Yes I agree, that's really a different thread. In a thread like that, I'd bring up observer effects in quantum mechanics, and the role of the observer in relativity, to show that physical information doesn't mean much of anything until you have an intelligent observer who is processing that information. A key point is that the intelligent observer can be hypothetical-- but that just means some other intelligent observer, who is real, is imagining a hypothetical intelligent observer, as part of the real observer's analysis of the situation.
Pythagorean
Mar24-11, 01:41 PM
observers don't have to be living things in QM....
Ken G,
there's plenty of experimental evidence that suggests mind arises from brain:
labotomies, pharmaceuticals, recreational drugs, neuropsychology experiments...
Not a single one of those is evidence of your claim, they are all examples of what I am talking about-- interactions between what we call mind and what we call brains that we have not the least idea the structure of the connection. I covered that already, around what you can do to telescopes to make planetary nebula look different.
But if you're a solipsist, this discussion is not really worth having, since I'm just a figment of your imagination.A lot of people don't understand the point of solipsism. In constructive usage, solipsism is nothing but the core principle of all science-- that knowledge is provisional, and that skepticism is our primary tool for obtaining more knowledge. A lot of people don't understand that. If you restrict solipsism to meaning a claim that nothing is real except the mind, then note that at no point have I ever made that claim. Instead, I have noted the undeniable truth that everything we know comes through the filter of our minds, and to ignore that is just living in denial.
Pythagorean
Mar24-11, 01:50 PM
I understand it, but it's not a productive place to do science from. Do you know what I mean? Our belief that brain provides consciousness has been useful in troubleshooting consciousness. Ignoring the brain all together was the tradition psych approach. And that's fine: I often pretend an ensemble of QM particles is something called a "ball". Simplifying assumptions help us understand things more deeply even though they're technically lies.
observers don't have to be living things in QM....
Again, yes they do. However, they can use the device of imagining hypothetical observers, as part of their analysis. Note that everything in quantum mechanics that is an observable is something that makes sense to you and I.
I understand it, but it's not a productive place to do science from. Do you know what I mean?I do know what you mean, but I also know that you are misconstruing what I mean. Let me give you a concrete example, Einstein and quantum mechanics. Einstein made the classic mistake of thinking that he knew something that he did not in fact know-- he thought that he knew that reality exhibited local realism (in which every object "carries with it" all the information needed to determine how the object will behave in any situation, even if the information is purely statistical). So he developed the EPR paradox to show why quantum mechanics had to be wrong. Unfortunately, experiments showed that quantum mechanics was right, and reality did not exhibit local realism. In any time period earlier than the last 100 years, if anyone had said "but how do you know that reality exhibits local realism", that person would have been branded a solipsist for being skeptical about something that everyone already knew was true, for all practical purposes. They would have said the person was nitpicking, making formally correct but useless in practice observations. But not in the last 100 years, then that person's insight would have been viewed as an entry point to multiple-particle quantum systems.
Our belief that brain provides consciousness has been useful in troubleshooting consciousness.A thousand times no. Our "belief" in anything is completely irrelevant to scientific discovery, there is simply no step in the scientific method that says "now believe your hypothesis." Belief systems have nothing to do with good science, and history is rather clear on that. They only get in the way of good science occasionally, but when they do, they are stultifying.
Simplifying assumptions help us understand things more deeply even though they're technically lies.Yes, that is absolutely true, but we never need to believe our simplifying assumptions, we only need to believe that the assumptions could help us reach some goal or other. That's what motivates making assumptions, not the belief that they are true, or the belief that alternative assumptions cannot have their own value.
nismaratwork
Mar24-11, 03:44 PM
Yes I agree, that's really a different thread. In a thread like that, I'd bring up observer effects in quantum mechanics, and the role of the observer in relativity, to show that physical information doesn't mean much of anything until you have an intelligent observer who is processing that information. A key point is that the intelligent observer can be hypothetical-- but that just means some other intelligent observer, who is real, is imagining a hypothetical intelligent observer, as part of the real observer's analysis of the situation.
That is not what is meant by an observer in QM; a photon interacting with a system is permutation enough. Solipsism is fine, but you still need to keep your physics facts in order; observer as in "intelligent observer" is only ever used in "Interpretations" of QM, not the formalism, or information theory. Hawking Radiation appears to violate unitarity, as it causes a loss of certain information relating to what "went in", regardless of whether people or ants or gods are around to see.
If your argument is based in intelligent observation, that's really just a flavour of Solipsism, and while I can't say you're wrong, there's nothing to discuss.
JDStupi
Mar24-11, 10:25 PM
Thanks for the reply Ken G. I wish to add that I am not entirely "committed" to viewpoints as much as it may seem, though I suppose I am simply trying to look at it from a different view. First, yes you were fairly right when you said:
[...]what is a conception of consciousness devoid of its relation to a physicalist description of the brain? And that is, what I would say, the $64,000 question right there. What do we learn about consciousness (or free will) by taking a physicalist perspective, and what do we lose by doing that?
I suppose it it may be simply un-intuitive for me to regard consciousness as a substance. I don't have a problem with relationalist views, simply the seemingly simplistic idea of consciousness as some substance with properties we predicate to it. In fact, given the advent of Modern Physics, I would say that the simplistic notion of matter as being some substance which we attribute properties to as being overly simplistic.
I could quite possible say that my problem is that the positing of some substance called consciousness seems to me to be the superflous positing of an entity. Whereas you might point out that it is only superflous insofar as I start with a physicalist ontology, at which point the dualism becomes ad hoc.
Ultimatley, I am not prepared to make a compelling argument for I cannot argue that my position must necessarily be the case, I can only argue that given the acceptance of some set of assumptions it must be the case. We are not accepting the same basic assumptions, and therefore I can't argue as to what necessarily must be the case.
If there is one thing that I realize, it is that in philosophy (life) there are aspects of reasoning which are not dictated by logic or reason alone. As William James stated, there are "tender-minded and hard-minded philosophers" and it is epistemologically the case that we can never establish definitively the ontological primacy of the physical or the mental. I suppose this is what seems to motivate a phenomenological project, based around situated ontologies viewed from the inside where we bracket our ontological assumptions and simply treat the world of phenomena. This may be (excuse me for extrapolating) close to the type of epistemological position you tend to take. Namely, that the Scientific project does not require ontological commitment to a physicalism. Regardless of my state of belief towards that proposition at the present time, I accept it as true.
My contention is essentially the same as Berkeley's argument against materialism (nowhere near his original words): "How can we abstract away all properties of matter which relate themselves to our experience and define that as the material substratum, when we only know matter through its appearance in our experience". Replace "matter" with "consciousness" (or it seems any x with matter) and this is the argument I am presenting
You may rightly point out, though, that as I myself brought to the forefront, the argument applies equally to matter as well as consciousness. It would seem the idea that matter can be more easily defined and abstracted away from is simply a socio-cultural contingency more so than a philosophical necessity. This may be your point.
Also, excuse me for possibly erroneously extrapolating, but it doesn't seem as though you are a solipsist. It doesn't seem you deny the existence of things in the absence of your presence, simply that distinctions must be drawn between the world of phenomena and the concepts we form thereof, and that we can speak about "independantly existing" reality only if we are here to experience it. You are making an epistemological claim, not an ontological one.
With regards to the information discussions, it seems as ferrisbg pointed out that you are not sticking to the technical scientific definition of "information" so much as pointing out that information is a label we apply to some phenomena in the creation of cognitive tools for the understanding of reality. Kind of reminds me of this:
"Before you have studied Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying it, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers no longer rivers; but once you have had Enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers are rivers"
First, I have taken this radically out of context as it is evidently not being applied to personal practice and "no-mind", regardless some insights may yet still be gained.
The point, which seems in my interpretation close to what your point sometimes is, is that reality simply is. Reality is, and reality occurs regardless of what labels we apply to the various phenomena in our relatively arbitrary divisions we create. The "information" is there in the sense that the anteater follows "it" and "it" is "real", but the "information" is not necessarily there, for the anteater will do what he does regardless of the appellation "information", which has a specific theoretical background and interpretational structure behind it. This may be able to be argued even from a Quinean Indeterminacy of translation perspective. Given observations of some animals behavior we can not ever say, that the specific "information" within our theoretical framework is uniquely determined by the animals behavior. There exists a number of other ways to define and coneptualize the animal's behavior and we could argue that given some equivalent theory P' the interpretation given to that behavior under that theory "exists" and is "corroborated" by the behavioral predictions. Even if the underlying ontology is radically different. Nothing determines what translation and ontology must be supplied to a given formalism
It is also interesting to note that the above quote may be similar to Einstein's physical/philosophical development, for he openly acknowleged that scientific theories are "free constructions of the scientist's mind" and that science does not describe phenomena as they must be but provides a "window on nature". So far as I can tell, his qualms with QM were based off of what he considered as necessary conditions for any successful explanation of nature, namely a principle of spatial individuation.
However, if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I do not at all see what physics is supposed to describe. For what is thought to by a ‘system’ is, after all, just conventional, and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objectively so that one can make statements about the parts.
also, seemingly of relevance
“The physical world is real.” That is supposed to be the fundamental hypothesis. What does “hypothesis” mean here? For me, a hypothesis is a statement, whose truth must be assumed for the moment, but whose meaning must be raised above all ambiguity. The above statement appears to me, however, to be, in itself, meaningless, as if one said: “The physical world is cock-a-doodle-doo.” It appears to me that the “real” is an intrinsically empty, meaningless category (pigeon hole), whose monstrous importance lies only in the fact that I can do certain things in it and not certain others. This division is, to be sure, not an arbitrary one, but instead ….
I concede that the natural sciences concern the “real,” but I am still not a realist
(btw those were taken from this article for all who are interested http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/#ReaSep)
JDStupi
Mar24-11, 10:44 PM
As a side note, it seems that when others say QM doesn't require an intelligent observer and you say it does, you are both right to some extent. QM definatley does NOT require a conscious observer. It is not in the formalism, nor is it the most parsimonious interpretation. However, as an epistemological statement, QM does require an intelligent observer to "make measurements", "record information" and "calculate a wave function", the clincher is that this is trivially true to the extent that it is just as true for classical mechanics or any other scientific theory and so bringing "intelligent observers" into discussions of QM is misleading, unless you are arguing for some "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation.
That is not what is meant by an observer in QM; a photon interacting with a system is permutation enough. No, that is exactly what is meant by an observer in QM. An observer in QM is always a kind of "mini me", it is given meaning entirely by how we perceive and interact with our environment. That is why the observables of the quantum realm are the same as the observables of the macro realm, they just function differently in that realm. The way I put this is, if electrons could think, they wouldn't do quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is always the way we relate the quantities that make sense to us to a realm that does not make sense to us. There is an amazing abstract mathematical structure behind that relating, but it is a relating all the same.
Solipsism is fine, but you still need to keep your physics facts in order; observer as in "intelligent observer" is only ever used in "Interpretations" of QM, not the formalism, or information theory.My quantum facts are just fine. There is not one single shred of any formalism of information theory that does not directly refer to how humans think. Indeed, there is simply no alternative to this. It's just that we often push this fact under the rug-- which is not the same thing as it not being a fact.
Hawking Radiation appears to violate unitarity, as it causes a loss of certain information relating to what "went in", regardless of whether people or ants or gods are around to see.Violating unitarity is trivial-- any measurement of a non-eigenstate does it. That's why many-worlds are invented to restore the unitarity, but that's their sole reason for existing-- they have no effect at all on any of our observations, they are a fiction of our desire to see unitarity when our observations do not. It is an effective device, I don't reject using the pedagogy-- only the interpretation that we somehow can know this is what is really happening despite not being able to observe it.
If your argument is based in intelligent observation, that's really just a flavour of Solipsism, and while I can't say you're wrong, there's nothing to discuss.On the contrary, it is all about understanding what information actually is, which is a crucial topic in physics. More and more, we cannot escape an accurate portrayal of what information is, and the role of how we think in our physics. That was a key lesson of both quantum mechanics and relativity, actually-- not pointless solipsism, far from it. It is all too easy to label these cautionary tales as "solipsism" to avoid having to deal with the lessons reality is giving us.
nismaratwork
Mar24-11, 11:26 PM
No, that is exactly what is meant by an observer in QM. An observer in QM is always a kind of "mini me", it is given meaning entirely by how we perceive and interact with our environment. That is why the observables of the quantum realm are the same as the observables of the macro realm, they just function differently in that realm. The way I put this is, if electrons could think, they wouldn't do quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is always the way we relate the quantities that make sense to us to a realm that does not make sense to us. There is an amazing abstract mathematical structure behind that relating, but it is a relating all the same.
My quantum facts are just fine. There is not one single shred of any formalism of information theory that does not directly refer to how humans think. Indeed, there is simply no alternative to this. It's just that we often push this fact under the rug-- which is not the same thing as it not being a fact.
Violating unitarity is trivial-- any measurement of a non-eigenstate does it. That's why many-worlds are invented to restore the unitarity, but that's their sole reason for existing-- they have no effect at all on any of our observations, they are a fiction of our desire to see unitarity when our observations do not. It is an effective device, I don't reject using the pedagogy-- only the interpretation that we somehow can know this is what is really happening despite not being able to observe it.
On the contrary, it is all about understanding what information actually is, which is a crucial topic in physics. More and more, we cannot escape an accurate portrayal of what information is, and the role of how we think in our physics. That was a key lesson of both quantum mechanics and relativity, actually-- not pointless solipsism, far from it. It is all too easy to label these cautionary tales as "solipsism" to avoid having to deal with the lessons reality is giving us.
You seem stuck where Dirac was... and no, I don't think that MWI is necessary to resolve the BH Information Paradox, it would seem that Hawking is trying to circumvent the need. Granted, the math is far beyond me, but I'm more impressed by "shut up and calculate" than endless iterations of omphaloskepsis. The idea that the observer must be human, as opposed to a filler for permutation of a system is not palatable to me, and frankly seems unreal in the light of DCQE.
Your relation between the math and your philosophy strikes me as tenuous, but then, maybe you have a very deep understanding of the math.
Thanks for the reply Ken G. I wish to add that I am not entirely "committed" to viewpoints as much as it may seem, though I suppose I am simply trying to look at it from a different view.I wasn't really aiming that comment at you, it was more of an aside about my reactions when I hear philosophers use the expression "I am committed to..." . I know why they do that, it is to say "by proclaiming my allegiances, I can save myself 90% of the arguments I would need to put forward, because you will already know them based on the history of those allegiances." But the same can be accomplished just by saying "I am currently swayed by such-and-such a position", or "I am now interested in pursuing the ramifications of such-and-such an ism." That's in the spirit of a hypothesis, rather than a stultifying belief system, and certainly not a commitment.
I suppose it it may be simply un-intuitive for me to regard consciousness as a substance. I don't have a problem with relationalist views, simply the seemingly simplistic idea of consciousness as some substance with properties we predicate to it.But if you look up a definition of consciousness right now, will it not look much more like a set of predicated properties, rather than a process of emergence? The definition list properties, so it is already a kind of substance-- the idea that it emerges from something else is added on top of that, rather belatedly, and without much in the way of solid evidence. When you note that an awake person is more conscious than a sleeping person, it is not because you sense the presence or absence of a process of emergence, it is because you either detect or do not detect the properties that define the substance itself.
Now, it is not necessary to consider consciousness to be a physical substance like a planetary nebula, I did not mean to carry the analogy that far. I reject physicalism on the grounds that it has not made its case, it is just a convenient assumption that many like to make to simplify their reasoning. That makes it a hypothesis, not a belief system, when used responsibly. So we can hypothesize that consciousness cannot be a substance because it doesn't seem to make much sense to give it physical characteristics (rather than experiential ones), or we can hypothesize that consciousness is an experiential substance (like a qualia) that is nonphysical, but that is nevertheless defined by its properties and does not need to be created by a brain, it can just be interfaced with, interacted with, detected, or stored by a brain-- perhaps like a glass in the rain collects water without generating the water. But it must begin with allowing the possibility of interactions between what we count as primarily physical with what we count as primarily nonphysical, or more accurately, the recognition that the concepts of physical and nonphysical are not fundamental aspects of reality, they are polar modes of thought that we subject reality to.
In fact, given the advent of Modern Physics, I would say that the simplistic notion of matter as being some substance which we attribute properties to as being overly simplistic.Agreed, another reason to be suspicious of physicalist idealizations. When it is hard to even define what "physical" means, we have a hard time claiming that everything is it. Fields, virtual particles, extra dimensions, multiverses-- "physical" just ain't what it was cracked up to be in Newton's day.
I could quite possible say that my problem is that the positing of some substance called consciousness seems to me to be the superflous positing of an entity. Whereas you might point out that it is only superflous insofar as I start with a physicalist ontology, at which point the dualism becomes ad hoc.Yes, that is just what I might say.
Ultimatley, I am not prepared to make a compelling argument for I cannot argue that my position must necessarily be the case, I can only argue that given the acceptance of some set of assumptions it must be the case.If that kind of honesty was characteristic of physicalist perspectives, I'd have no problem with them.
We are not accepting the same basic assumptions, and therefore I can't argue as to what necessarily must be the case.The issue is not which assumptions we should accept, it is the whole question of whether we need to "accept" assumptions at all. It gets back to the basic issue of, is the purpose of philosophy to generate a personal belief system, or is it just to see where certain assumptions lead. I'd have no problem at all with the statement "the assumption that consciousness emerges from a strictly physical system leads me to conclude that X would then be true about consciousness", especially if X was something different from the very assumptions that are being adopted (which so far I really haven't seen). That's the challenge, to create an argument like "assumption A leads to conclusion X", not "assumption X leads to conclusion X", which is all I really see from physicalist arguments. Note I am not talking about using physical models of the emergence of consciousness, that's just making a model, I'm talking about physicalism-- the claim that nothing else exists or could ever matter, the claim that there could not be any value in any nonphysical perspective. It's institutionalized lack of imagination.
If there is one thing that I realize, it is that in philosophy (life) there are aspects of reasoning which are not dictated by logic or reason alone. As William James stated, there are "tender-minded and hard-minded philosophers" and it is epistemologically the case that we can never establish definitively the ontological primacy of the physical or the mental. I suppose this is what seems to motivate a phenomenological project, based around situated ontologies viewed from the inside where we bracket our ontological assumptions and simply treat the world of phenomena. This may be (excuse me for extrapolating) close to the type of epistemological position you tend to take. Namely, that the Scientific project does not require ontological commitment to a physicalism. Yes, that's just what I'm saying. It seems to be an almost invisible prejudice that physicalism can be equated to science, but there's just no such equation when the demonstrable goals of science are at the forefront. My contention is essentially the same as Berkeley's argument against materialism (nowhere near his original words): "How can we abstract away all properties of matter which relate themselves to our experience and define that as the material substratum, when we only know matter through its appearance in our experience". Replace "matter" with "consciousness" (or it seems any x with matter) and this is the argument I am presenting But that sounds more like what I'm arguing to me-- that it makes little sense to conclude that consciousness is fundamentally emergent from the physical, when our most direct connection with consciousness is the nonphysical experience of it. Instead, I prefer the stance that although we know perfectly well that consciousness is not emergent from the physical, all the same we anticipate progress in understanding consciousness by adopting a physical approach. That more or less sums up the Scientific project.
You may rightly point out, though, that as I myself brought to the forefront, the argument applies equally to matter as well as consciousness. It would seem the idea that matter can be more easily defined and abstracted away from is simply a socio-cultural contingency more so than a philosophical necessity. This may be your point.
Then I needn't say it!
Also, excuse me for possibly erroneously extrapolating, but it doesn't seem as though you are a solipsist. It doesn't seem you deny the existence of things in the absence of your presence, simply that distinctions must be drawn between the world of phenomena and the concepts we form thereof, and that we can speak about "independantly existing" reality only if we are here to experience it. You are making an epistemological claim, not an ontological one. Yes that's true, I'm not being solipsistic in the sense that I'm claiming reality lies on "our side" of the observer/observed duality, I'm solipsistic only in the sense that I'm claiming we have no idea what reality is, but we have a means of gaining knowledge about reality via the observer/observed duality. Just as you say, it is an epistemological stance, not an ontological one. The point, which seems in my interpretation close to what your point sometimes is, is that reality simply is. Reality is, and reality occurs regardless of what labels we apply to the various phenomena in our relatively arbitrary divisions we create. The "information" is there in the sense that the anteater follows "it" and "it" is "real", but the "information" is not necessarily there, for the anteater will do what he does regardless of the appellation "information", which has a specific theoretical background and interpretational structure behind it. I see more the weight of the latter part of this reasoning. Let me give an example-- when I say that physics began with physicists, it is normal for people to ask "are you saying that the laws of physics didn't apply prior to human appearance on Earth?" And of course I am not saying that-- I am saying that physics, once it appeared, applied retroactively, because that is a constraint on physics-- it has to apply retroactively, it has to apply over all times.
This may be able to be argued even from a Quinean Indeterminacy of translation perspective. Given observations of some animals behavior we can not ever say, that the specific "information" within our theoretical framework is uniquely determined by the animals behavior. There exists a number of other ways to define and coneptualize the animal's behavior and we could argue that given some equivalent theory P' the interpretation given to that behavior under that theory "exists" and is "corroborated" by the behavioral predictions. Even if the underlying ontology is radically different.Yes, I think that's an astute point.
It is also interesting to note that the above quote may be similar to Einstein's physical/philosophical development, for he openly acknowleged that scientific theories are "free constructions of the scientist's mind" and that science does not describe phenomena as they must be but provides a "window on nature". So far as I can tell, his qualms with QM were based off of what he considered as necessary conditions for any successful explanation of nature, namely a principle of spatial individuation. Yes, I agree with Einstein on the "window on nature" perspective, that language seems very appropriate. And I side with Bohr on the issue of what are necessary conditions for explanations of nature-- the "stop telling God what to do" perspective. We are here to learn the lessons of nature, as they intersect with our ability to perceive and reason, not to tell nature how she must behave, or even that she has to be "physical."
The idea that the observer must be human, as opposed to a filler for permutation of a system is not palatable to me, and frankly seems unreal in the light of DCQE.And who came up with DCQE? Oh yeah, humans.
nismaratwork
Mar25-11, 01:22 AM
And who came up with DCQE? Oh yeah, humans.
You're ignoring the implications of the experiment in favor of the experimentor? Come on Ken...
You're ignoring the implications of the experiment in favor of the experimentor?I am doing no such thing-- I am simply stating that the experiment and the experimenter are not separable in the way you imagine. The experiment can still be very important-- within the context of unity with the experimenter, not in any other context, because that is the only context that is demonstrably true. Should science not exist in the realm of what is demonstrable?
Pythagorean
Mar25-11, 02:13 AM
I am doing no such thing-- I am simply stating that the experiment and the experimenter are not separable in the way you imagine. The experiment can still be very important-- within the context of unity with the experimenter, not in any other context, because that is the only context that is demonstrably true. Should science not exist in the realm of what is demonstrable?
Yes, but you're not respecting the language of QM. Observer doesn't mean the same thing as the laymen's observer. It has a meaning specific in QM.
You're talking about a different subject (as humans observe, their skewed perspective is somewhat an invention of reality) which frankly, is philosophy 101. When we teach undergrad physics or write journal articles, this basic philosophical concept is well considered.
We move past that. Our world view is called empiricism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism#Scientific_usage), but I would have thought you already knew that. I don't understand why you keep teaching us 100 level philosophy.
Yes, but you're not respecting the language of QM. Observer doesn't mean the same thing as the laymen's observer. It has a meaning specific in QM.Yes, and it is precisely that meaning I am using. The mathematics of quantum mechanics has observables corresponding to operators in a Hilbert space, and the bilinear forms they generate but I'm talking about what that mathematics means. Operators and bilinear forms exist independently of quantum mechanics, they are formal abstractions only. What makes them relevant to physics is how they relate to the interaction of an observer with the observed. Yes, even in quantum mechanics.
You're talking about a different subject (as humans observe, their skewed perspective is somewhat an invention of reality) which frankly, is philosophy 101. When we teach undergrad physics or write journal articles, this basic philosophical concept is well considered.
Yes, that is why it is so surprising you are using the language you are using to talk about quantum mechanics. Your language is not consistent with those basic philosophical lessons. That is also why I am not quoting sources-- what I am saying is inescapable and elementary, and frankly, people really have no business not recognizing the importance of an observer in an observation, even if the observer is a hypothetical extrapolation of a real observer.
We move past that. Our world view is called empiricism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism#Scientific_usage), but I would have thought you already knew that.Empiricism, above all, does not escape the role of the observer. The role of the observer, and the way the observer perceives and processes information (i.e., their mind, see the catch?), is paramount to empiricism. But you should already know that.
Empiricism, above all, does not escape the role of the observer. The role of the observer, and the way the observer perceives and processes information (i.e., their mind, see the catch?), is paramount to empiricism. But you should already know that.
And the fact is they have no idea what a mind is. Nor what an observer is and neither do they know what the environment is. It's all just a fight between(likely wrong) philosophies to keep the current prevelent but inconsistent views of existence. In a way, we have to teach our children stuff we know is flawed on many levels, just to keep the balance and their own sanity.
nismaratwork
Mar25-11, 10:11 AM
Yes, and it is precisely that meaning I am using. The mathematics of quantum mechanics has observables corresponding to operators in a Hilbert space, and the bilinear forms they generate but I'm talking about what that mathematics means. Operators and bilinear forms exist independently of quantum mechanics, they are formal abstractions only. What makes them relevant to physics is how they relate to the interaction of an observer with the observed. Yes, even in quantum mechanics.
Yes, that is why it is so surprising you are using the language you are using to talk about quantum mechanics. Your language is not consistent with those basic philosophical lessons. That is also why I am not quoting sources-- what I am saying is inescapable and elementary, and frankly, people really have no business not recognizing the importance of an observer in an observation, even if the observer is a hypothetical extrapolation of a real observer.
Empiricism, above all, does not escape the role of the observer. The role of the observer, and the way the observer perceives and processes information (i.e., their mind, see the catch?), is paramount to empiricism. But you should already know that.
By the same token, there is no privelaged observer.
nismaratwork
Mar25-11, 10:12 AM
And the fact is they have no idea what a mind is. Nor what an observer is and neither do they know what the environment is. It's all just a fight between(likely wrong) philosophies to keep the current prevelent but inconsistent views of existence. In a way, we have to teach our children stuff we know is flawed on many levels, just to keep the balance and their own sanity.
I'd say we teach it as a theory, which is always conditional, explain the conflicts AND the fact that both are marvelously predictive. It's not for lack of trying to be rid of it that we're saddled with QM!!!
And the fact is they have no idea what a mind is. Nor what an observer is and neither do they know what the environment is. It's all just a fight between(likely wrong) philosophies to keep the current prevelent but inconsistent views of existence. In a way, we have to teach our children stuff we know is flawed on many levels, just to keep the balance and their own sanity.
There may be something to that-- do we do philosophy to establish truth, knowing we will probably fail, do we do it to obtain a soothing illusion of truth, knowing it is probably self-delusion, or do we do it because we simply would like to explore the territory, like a kind of mental nature walk?
nismaratwork
Mar25-11, 11:05 AM
There may be something to that-- do we do philosophy to establish truth, knowing we will probably fail, do we do it to obtain a soothing illusion of truth, knowing it is probably self-delusion, or do we do it because we simply would like to explore the territory, like a kind of mental nature walk?
I vote nature walk.
Pythagorean
Mar26-11, 02:37 PM
ah, nature walking amongst itself, pretending to be something else. A provocative sight!
Pythagorean
Mar26-11, 03:07 PM
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.htm l
nismaratwork
Mar26-11, 05:09 PM
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.htm l
I wasn't impressed by her work before her incident, nor are any I know at BI: Deaconnes, Mass General, or Harvard Med. Her work after is even less impressive, although like a smoker with a laryngectomy... long on impact, short on news.
What, smoking is bad for you? I never would have guessed!
Partial hemispherectomies are not new, and the plasticity involved (see work being done at BI: Deaconness, Mass General and Harvard), also studied in tandem with the effects of exercise on neural plasticity in Alzheimers patients. Frankly, this isn't good, or bad, just blaaaah.
Pythagorean
Mar26-11, 06:30 PM
I wasn't impressed by her work before her incident, nor are any I know at BI: Deaconnes, Mass General, or Harvard Med. Her work after is even less impressive, although like a smoker with a laryngectomy... long on impact, short on news.
What, smoking is bad for you? I never would have guessed!
Partial hemispherectomies are not new, and the plasticity involved (see work being done at BI: Deaconness, Mass General and Harvard), also studied in tandem with the effects of exercise on neural plasticity in Alzheimers patients. Frankly, this isn't good, or bad, just blaaaah.
You're absolutely welcome to that view, but you might appreciate that ad hominem, appeals to authority and expression of distaste aren't going to convince me of anything. I would love to learn rather than hear fallacies. You sound informed, why not share?
nismaratwork
Mar26-11, 07:54 PM
You're absolutely welcome to that view, but you might appreciate that ad hominem, appeals to authority and expression of distaste aren't going to convince me of anything. I would love to learn rather than hear fallacies. You sound informed, why not share?
I'm less informed than I sound, and really feel little desire to go further with this particular woman's views than contempt and ad hominem. Above all, her own style is an appeal to her own authority in several ways, offering little in the way of understanding how the brain adapts.
The exercise bit... I'm forgetting the last name... is Art... something. I'll talk to a guy at BI:D on thursday and get the name. Until then, I don't think I can properly address her fallacies... my knowledge is not so deep that I can pass the "teach it to anyone" test,a nd I'd rather not make a greater fool of myself and I already am.
apeiron
Mar26-11, 08:33 PM
You're absolutely welcome to that view, but you might appreciate that ad hominem, appeals to authority and expression of distaste aren't going to convince me of anything. I would love to learn rather than hear fallacies. You sound informed, why not share?
You pasted a link to a video seminar that would not pass muster if it had been a peer-reviewed paper. Utter crank stuff. So what is the point you are attempting to make here?
Do you expect this to be taken seriously as evidence for something? What exactly?
If you want a neuroscientific explanation of her symptoms, that isn't hard to supply. A general state of disinhibition has this everything happening/nothing happening quality of raw potential experience. Attentional states are needed to suppress activity, creating a state of meaningful activity. The left brain is the lead player in creating focal attentional states.
Yes, there is a strong dichotomy expressed in the left~right brain. It is focus and fringe, event and context. A processing dichotomy. Left zooms in, the right pans out. But this woman soars way off into la-la land when it comes to a scientific view of what is going on.
nismaratwork
Mar26-11, 09:42 PM
You pasted a link to a video seminar that would not pass muster if it had been a peer-reviewed paper. Utter crank stuff. So what is the point you are attempting to make here?
Do you expect this to be taken seriously as evidence for something? What exactly?
If you want a neuroscientific explanation of her symptoms, that isn't hard to supply. A general state of disinhibition has this everything happening/nothing happening quality of raw potential experience. Attentional states are needed to suppress activity, creating a state of meaningful activity. The left brain is the lead player in creating focal attentional states.
Yes, there is a strong dichotomy expressed in the left~right brain. It is focus and fringe, event and context. A processing dichotomy. Left zooms in, the right pans out. But this woman soars way off into la-la land when it comes to a scientific view of what is going on.
She was that way before she lost of a chunk of her brain; who'd have guessed that radical neurosurgery wouldn't have improved her grasp of reality?
apeiron
Mar26-11, 10:00 PM
She was that way before she lost of a chunk of her brain; who'd have guessed that radical neurosurgery wouldn't have improved her grasp of reality?
She said she had a blood clot pressing on the language areas. And had that removed. So she may not have lost a lot of gray matter. On the other hand, her style is a bit wild....
I have to say I did very like her account of the stroke itself. That did seem accurately observed. It is the cartoon version of neuroscience - the right brain in tune with the cosmos, the left brain standing for the selfish self - which makes it invalid as a PF citation here.
nismaratwork
Mar26-11, 10:00 PM
She said she had a blood clot pressing on the language areas. And had that removed. So she may not have lost a lot of gray matter. On the other hand, her style is a bit wild....
I have to say I did very like her account of the stroke itself. That did seem accurately observed. It is the cartoon version of neuroscience - the right brain in tune with the cosmos, the left brain standing for the selfish self - which makes it invalid as a PF citation here.
Agreed.
Pythagorean
Mar26-11, 10:50 PM
So what is the point you are attempting to make here?
Do you expect this to be taken seriously as evidence for something? What exactly?
This:
If you want a neuroscientific explanation of her symptoms, that isn't hard to supply. A general state of disinhibition has this everything happening/nothing happening quality of raw potential experience. Attentional states are needed to suppress activity, creating a state of meaningful activity. The left brain is the lead player in creating focal attentional states.
Yes, there is a strong dichotomy expressed in the left~right brain. It is focus and fringe, event and context. A processing dichotomy. Left zooms in, the right pans out. But this woman soars way off into la-la land when it comes to a scientific view of what is going on.
It's not a scientific view... how can you think that? It's a phenomenological view. The assumption was that we already knew the neuroscience. Nismar was commenting on what people felt and experienced. We were talking about subjective experience.
I was demonstrating how the subjective experience of self that binds you to one location in your head requires functioning neural circuitry.
apeiron
Mar26-11, 11:13 PM
I was demonstrating how the subjective experience of self that binds you to one location in your head requires functioning neural circuitry.
So please when you post links, make it clear what it is we are supposed to notice.
And you still don't make sense as she was talking about her emboddied experience. Subjectively she never felt located in a side of her head. But she did find her own hands and body start to feel alien. And then her own presence swell and break the physical bounds of her body.
If you wanted to talk about the psychophysics of body image, there is a ton of peer-review papers you know.
A recent one...
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/4082/full
Pythagorean
Mar26-11, 11:22 PM
So please when you post links, make it clear what it is we are supposed to notice.
A fair request.
It was in the heat of a discussion between nismar and I (the collective conscious vs. self discussion) that transcended a couple threads, so I had already habituated to the context and failed to continue to declare it.
Darken-Sol
Apr30-11, 06:19 PM
No. All it really tells us, is that the decision making process is distinct from the self-reflective process. It actually makes sense that the latter would require more processing. Compare how much more difficult it is to learn to drive a car... than it is to drive one after you have learned. In the former case, you have to 'be aware' of everything you are doing. In the latter, your decisions seem 'more unconscious', even though a truly unconscious driver would be in a lot of trouble. The real problem is that the conscious/unconscious dichotomy is overly simplistic. We're only scratching the surface of what consciousness actually is, so this is not surprising.
my sensei says we train so we do not have to think. when we fight from "no-mind" we will always be faster than some one who has to process information and decide. when i learn and train a new technique i am making the decision then and there to use it if the situation ever arises.
Yes, I think there are (at least) two kinds of being conscious-- one which is very self-reflective, possibly even internally verbal (like analysis of one's situation), and the other that is less verbal and more animalistic-- "in the zone", if you will. We might err to jump to the conclusion that the higher form of consciousness is the former because it is the more separate from animals-- the "in the zone" form actually feels like a higher consciousness, we feel more in tune with our surroundings and more able to act (and act faster, as we heard just above). I don't say that animals are "in the zone" the way people are-- it seems more like a person coming full circle to a kind of animalistic state of mind is still a higher or more complete self-awareness than what animals might experience. Perhaps the goal should not be to take our greater intelligence and achieve a state of mind as different from animals as possible, but rather, to take our greater intelligence that separates us from animals and find the road back that allows us access to both worlds.
In relation to the thread, if this is true, it means that what we mean by "free will" could be more than just one thing, so we should not study it as though we were studying just one thing.
vBulletin® v3.8.7, Copyright ©2000-2012, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.