Is Chomsky's View on the Mind-Body Problem Redefining Materialism?

[apeiron]

apeiron, I wanted to ask you also, which may warrant its own thread, how you view causality more generally?

I'm planning an essay on this issue and I don't see much basis for the duality you seem to have suggested many times between local and global causality. Rather, I see causality as, like most things, a continuum from near to far, both spatially and temporally.

In science and philosophy, we tend to focus on local causality, by which I mean near in time and space, but we never know what the actual causal influences on any given event are, in a comprehensive sense. We can never rule out causal influences other than the ones we've chosen to focus on - just as has happened in recent decades with non-locality.

The systems view divides causality into the local and global - construction and constraint. But it is also a hierarchical view, so while causality comes from two directions (bottom-up and top-down) it is mixed over all scales. The two directions have to be at equilbrium at any particular scale of observation for a system to reach stability, to have a persistent order. So yes, there is then also the third thing which is that spectrum of balanced interaction that lies inbetween.

In hierarchy theory, this is indeed made explicitly spatiotemporal. It takes a light-cone type view where causality does have a global upper bound. There can be an absolute physical cut-off.

It is true when you say that we can never rule out the possibility that we have failed to attend to all the causes of events.

But that is what the systems view is always saying. You are not paying proper attention to downwards causation, because your explanations are all focused on material and efficient cause. Formal and final cause are being neglected in the models.

 

[bohm2]

I found this article by Davies discussing "The physics of downward causation" interesting. He doesn't seem too convinced about the possibility except in a very limited sense. Some quotes:

Let me offer a few speculations about how. In spite of the existence of level entanglement in quantum physics and elsewhere, none of the examples cited amounts to the deployment of specific local forces under the command of a global system, or subject to emergent rules at higher levels of description. However, we must be aware of the fact that physics is not a completed discipline, and top-down causation may be something that would not show up using current methods of enquiry.

Many emergentists would not welcome it either. The conventional emergentist position, if one may be said to exist, is to eschew the deployment of new forces in favour of a description in which existing forces merely act in surprising and cooperative new ways when a system becomes sufficiently complex. In such a framework, downward causation remains a shadowy notion, on the fringe of physics, descriptive rather than predictive. My suggestion is to take downward causation seriously as a causal category, but it comes at the expense of introducing either explicit top-down physical forces or changing the fundamental categories of causation from that of local forces to a higher-level concept such as information.

http://www.ctnsstars.org/conferences/papers/The%20physics%20of%20downward%20causation.pdf

 

[apeiron]

I found this article by Davies discussing "The physics of downward causation" interesting. He doesn't seem too convinced about the possibility except in a very limited sense.

Davies is certainly sympathetic to a systems view, but I've never seen him discuss the detailed proposals as made by actual systems thinkers (who are mostly to be found in theoretical biology).

My suggestion is to take downward causation seriously as a causal category, but it comes at the expense of introducing either explicit top-down physical forces or changing the fundamental categories of causation from that of local forces to a higher-level concept such as information.

You see here that he talks about global causation in terms of another higher level of materiality. So he is unable to break out of the reductionist paradigm where anything real and fundamental is a form of material/effective cause.

The systems view is that top-down causality is about constraints. What acts downwards are limits that don't force something to happen, but instead limit the freedom for something to happen.

So it is a complementary view of causality. At the local level you have causality that looks like freedoms, at the global level you have causality that looks like restrictions.

This is standard scientific modelling - the separation into initial conditions and the laws of physics. But it places the local potentials and the prevailing constraints in a formal systematic relationship. It makes explicit the nature of laws in the organisation of material reality.

 

[disregardthat]

Surely you would agree that pain is not a single undifferentiated experience but reasonably rich in its variety and so we might have as many words to describe the shades of feeling as eskimo have for snow (or Brits for rain).

Of course it isn't, but the uncertainty is grammatical; that's the point, and furthermore, the meaning of the word pain has little to do with the "state of mind" of "being in pain". The richness of the experience of pain, equates to the richness of the utility of the word pain (in what circumstances it it used, how it applies, and how to react to its application etc..) And this is where we get confused when talking about qualia. For it is treated as something which must (logical must) have a physical correspondence, but this is ad-hoc, and we may very well never find such a thing.

Pain is used in so many different situations, yet still we insist on it being a sort of mental state of mind, distinguished from other types of states (such as happiness, anger etc..).

 

[bohm2]

bohm2, as with all inferences about other consciousnesses we make such inferences based on observed behavior, including movement, speech, etc. In the case of non-human consciousnesses, obviously the repertoire of behaviors doesn't include speech. Dyson's point, which I agree with, is that it makes more sense to ascribe a very rudimentary consciousness to electrons and other simple structures, on up the chain to us, because even these subatomic particles display behavior that suggests consciousness. As Dyson states, instead of ascribing such behavior to chance (the traditional QM interpretation, which is based on probabilistic predictions because predictions in any given instance are not possible due to the chance/choice nature of each instance), it makes more sense to ascribe such behavior to choice. So choice not chance.

I'm having trouble understanding this part. Consider the two-slit experiment. Are you saying that from a panpsychist perspective the wave function of electron(e.g. Bohm's quantum field-the "mental pole" to use Bohm's metaphor) represents a primitive mental element that determines/decides which hole the electron goes through?

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

bohm2, yes, I'm suggesting exactly that. Where does Bohm use the phrase "mental pole"? This is actually a phrase from Whitehead, who Bohm cites a number a times in The Undivided Universe and Wholeness and the Implicate Order, but I don't remember seeing that phrase.

The Copenhagen Interpretation holds that actual quantum events are entirely random. The panpsychist Bohmian Interpretation holds that actual events are choices.

Each actual entity oscillates between a mental pole and physical pole. Or, to be entirely accurate, each actual entity has one oscillation because an actual entity only exists for one cycle and then forms a datum for the entire universe's next cycle, in what Whitehead called the "creative advance."

The choice I referred to earlier arises when actual entities transition from "prehension" (Whitehead's generic term for reception of information) to actuality. Once they become actual their experience perishes (Whitehead calls this "perpetual perishing"), but their objectivity continues as a datum for future entities.

Getting a bit more detailed, Whitehead's thought has a slightly confusing feature. Whereas the mental pole and physical pole are conceptually distinct, they are not considered to be temporally serial. Rather, the mental pole refers to "conceptual prehensions" and the physical pole to "physical prehensions." The former consists of information received from "eternal objects," very akin to Plato's Forms, and the latter consists of information received from the physical universe (the sum total of all actual entities). I'm still torn on whether I buy the idea of eternal objects or whether they are conceptually required. I think Whitehead's key motivations for including this term in his system is to explain the source of creativity and morality. For Whitehead, God, in his primordial aspect, was the set of all eternal objects, and he/it provides the "subjective aim" for each actual entity as a goad to progress. Actual entities can ignore this subjective aim, and this is where choice and free will come into the world for Whitehead.

In Bohm's terms, conceptual prehensions are referred to as "quantum potential," which is information received from the implicate order (I believe, it's been a little while since I read Bohm's stuff).

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

On causation, top-down causation is easily confirmed when I choose to lift my finger or type these words. Davies is a bit of a Whitehead fan but hasn't really grokked his system. Davies cites Whitehead numerous times in The Mind of God (a great book), but either hasn't taken the time to really understand Whitehead's system or has rejected key parts of it - such as the inherent free will/choice built into every level of actuality. For Whitehead, every actual entity is defined by its ability to make choices, so each level of physical and biological hierarchy has its own ability to choose, but constrained to varying degrees by history.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

I quite agree that in "Man's Glassy Essence", Peirce gets very carried away and ends up arguing for telepathy and group-mind (do you follow him there too?). But you can't just pick and choose your quotes to suit your beliefs here.

In that essay, Peirce was developing a train of thought in which he was trying to account for the evidence of "feeling" right at the protoplasmic level of life. Now if you have read it, you can see Peirce lacked a critical piece of information about how life is actually "mechanistic" in having genes and other forms of systems memory. There is a place where habit is encoded.

So his reasoning goes wrong from there. Because Peirce could not find a place for accumulated habit to reside in a global fashion, he had to speculate about an atomistic level memory.

Likewise, because there was not enough neuroscience to explain how attention is a global brain mechanism, he again had to try and place the "feeling of attending" at the atomistic moment when some habit is being eroded by the vagaries of spontaneity.

So you are jumping in where Peirce is clearly wrong (due to a lack of better knowledge in his day) rather than focusing on where he was right (which is in his hierarchical approach to logic itself - treating causality in self-organising systems terms).

His semiosis does not actually support his own argument towards the end of the essay. But it is modern biologists who are developing the field of biosemiosis on the back of his triadic process. And the critical modification they make is the clear recognition that both words and genes function as symbols - ie: Pattee's epistemic cut.

Then pansemiosis (again, a modern development) would be based on Peirce's logic, but be able to fill in the blanks properly.

So semiosis as a triadic process was a proto-theory in Peirce's hands. He polished up the essential logic. But a modern systems thinker can also see that Peirce failed to deal explicitly with the issue of the epistemic cut, and also the centrality of scale to hierarchy.

Coming back to your panpsychism = pansemiosis, if you read Man's Glassy Essence carefully, what happens is that he stretches semiosis as far as he can, then starts talking in a handwavy panpsychic way that is unsupported by the notion of semiosis.

He takes a correct subjective observation (attention loosens habits) and tries to associate it with some micro-physical event. But that is because he lacked a better understanding of brain architecture. If you asked a neuroscientist to explain the relation between habit and attention today, you would get a pretty straightforward account in terms of cortico-striatal interactions.

eg: http://web.mit.edu/bcs/graybiel-lab/pub.html

It would be unfairly anachronistic to use Peirce as a champion of panpsychism when the thrust of his work was instead a focus on systematic causality. That is what scientists are actually using today (biosemiotics does not exist because it supports a panpsychic view of life).

So by all means, try to square Peirce's statements. But you will have to deal with the fact that the panpsychism is not properly derived from the semiotics even in Peirce's own writings. It was a jump he made in handwavy fashion when he ran out of facts that would allow him to imagine the world differently.

Fortunately we now know about genes, neural circuits, and suchlike.

apeiron, I follow Peirce not only on his panpsychism but also on telepathy and the potential for group mind. There is ample evidence for telepathy and other paranormal phenomena. See Radin's Entangled Minds for an exhaustive overview. As for group-mind, I'm less certain on this, but the panpsychist view of mind and physical reality suggests that higher-level minds may form in certain situations. My own work suggests that the key to the formation of a unitary subject is the right kind of field coherence. This may require some type of quantum coherence, but I am far from convinced of that yet. Rather, where lower-level minds vibrate/oscillate/resonate at similar enough frequencies they may form a higher-level mind in addition to the lower-level minds. "The many become one and are increased by one" is a key Whitehead phrase of the deepest profundity for the workings of the universe. It is the process by which reality is laid down and how complexity arises.

As for the "epistemic cut," as I've suggested in previous discussions with you, this is a major problem for your approach and Pattee's if we are concerned with ontology as well as epistemology. Peirce did in fact solve this problem with his panpsychism, that is, the epistemic cut exists between every actual thing and all other actual things because actuality is synonymous with experience. Pattee recognizes that the epistemic cut's placement is entirely arbitrary (from the paper you've cited):

"That is, we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer. In the former, we can follow up all physical processes (in principle at least) arbitrarily precisely. In the latter, this is meaningless. The boundary between the two is arbitrary to a very large extent. . . but this does not change the fact that in each method of description the boundary must be placed somewhere, if the method is not to proceed vacuously, i.e., if a comparison with experiment is to be possible." (von Neumann, 1955, p.419)

As for explaining consciousness through knowledge of genes, neural circuits, etc., such an approach (the "materialist project," to use a broad label) cannot provide an explanation of consciousness, in principle. This is because your approach has from the outset defined away interiority. This is the motivation for Chalmers' hard problem/easy problem distinction, of course, and it is a valid point. We can explain complex systems in as much detail from the outside as we like, but we will know exactly nothing about the interiority of such systems (your mind, for example) from purely objective physical descriptions. I could describe your brain in excruciating detail from the outside, with adequate time and tools, but I would never be able to say anything from such knowledge about your mind UNLESS we acknowledge that what I describe from the outside, objectively, is for you, from the inside, experience. The panpsychist approach merely extends this realization to all stuff because it recognizes that to be actual is to be experiential.

I provided a more substantive critique of Pattee's paper at this post: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3242532&highlight=Pattee#post3242532

 

[bohm2]

bohm2, yes, I'm suggesting exactly that. Where does Bohm use the phrase "mental pole"? This is actually a phrase from Whitehead, who Bohm cites a number a times in The Undivided Universe and Wholeness and the Implicate Order, but I don't remember seeing that phrase.

In Chapter 15 of “The undivided universe” Bohm and Hiley write:

It is thus implied that in some sense a rudimentary mind-like quality is present even at the level of particle physics, and that as we go to subtler levels, this mind-like quality becomes stronger and more developed. (p.386)

At each such level, there will be a ‘mental pole’ and a ‘physical pole’. Thus as we have already implied, even an electron has at least a rudimentary mental pole, represented mathematically by the quantum potential. Vice versa, as we have seen, even subtle mental processes have a physical pole. But the deeper reality is something beyond either mind or matter, both of which are only aspects that serve as terms for analysis. (p.387)

He actually uses apeiron’s “magnet pole” (Fig. 15.8 in book or Fig 5 of first link) as an analogy to argue his point.

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/local_papers/bohm_mind_matter_1990.pdf (this link is very similar to Chapter 15)

http://books.google.ca/books?id=vt9...m=3&sqi=2&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Further in Ontological basis for the Quantum theory (see-‘Extension to the many-body system’ (p.330-332 of link) he argues that this can be extended upwards for some complex systems with the “right” configurations (e.g. superconductivity, living organisms, etc.). So if I understand him correctly he is interpreting the quantum potential as a mental pole that can’t be measured (like the mental) but can be inferred via the behaviour of the physical pole which is picked up by our measurements. So the configuration space for Bohm is really an information/mental space that guides the electron? So it’s “real” but not in the typical "physical" sense?

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/local_papers/bohm_hiley_kaloyerou_1986.pdf

 

[apeiron]

As for explaining consciousness through knowledge of genes, neural circuits, etc., such an approach (the "materialist project," to use a broad label) cannot provide an explanation of consciousness, in principle. This is because your approach has from the outset defined away interiority.

On the contrary, it defines interiority in terms of systems complexity.

A reductionist here has the obvious logical problem that there can be nothing inside the smallest grain of reality (as otherwise there must be something smaller than that grain to be contained inside it).

So yes, materialism has that problem (and it can't be fixed by handwaving talk of interiority as a property of the smallest grain).

But the systems approach says the interior is that which exists between local and global limits. So it is a model of "insides".

I provided a more substantive critique of Pattee's paper at this post: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3242532&highlight=Pattee#post3242532

You are still utterly missing the point if you are asking for exact moments when something happens when the argument is that beginnings are vague. The epistemic cut is something that has to develop.

So for instance, if we are talking about the origins of life, one plausible theory is the RNA world idea where you start with RNA doing both jobs (acting as both genetic memory and metabolic catalyst), then these roles becoming more crisply divided with the evolution of DNA and proteins.

So RNA has the mix of stability and plasticity to do both jobs (act on both sides of the epistemic cut), but neither of them that well. It is to unstable to be the best coding material. And insufficiently dynamic to be the best enzyme material. Yet there is still enough of a division of roles to have a living system arise - dissipative structure controlled by rate independent information, or non-holonomic constraints.

And then life becomes much more firmly established as a process as the division becomes concrete with a chemistry specialised for the memory task and a second chemistry specialised for the metabolic dynamics.

This is what science looks like - models of causal processes tied to real world observations.

Whereas panzooism is a lot of handwaving nonsense. It does not actually have any model when you dig into it. It is just a claim that life is a fundamental property of material reality. No reason is offered as to why or how this might be so. No data exists that suggests it might be true.

 

[bohm2]

apeiron, I follow Peirce not only on his panpsychism but also on telepathy and the potential for group mind. There is ample evidence for telepathy and other paranormal phenomena.

Even if one was to accept panpsychism with respect to treating the quantum field/pilot wave as a proto-mental/informational pole, the pilot wave affects no other particles but its own. This is inconsistent with telepathy.

 

[apeiron]

He actually uses apeiron’s “magnet pole” (Fig. 15.8 in book or Fig 5 of first link) as an analogy to argue his point.

Not really the same analogy, because they are contrasting the north/south poles of a bar magnet with the magnetic field that is the "true whole" of the story.

And it is a bad analogy because it smuggles in the epistemic cut to make its point. The shape of the bar is what creates distinct north and south poles. Someone had to make a choice to forge the bar that way. So this is a further source of information, a further imposed constraint, that needs to be accounted for.

Bohm/Hiley compound this mistake just a couple paragraphs later, talking now about seeds growing into trees.

Yes, life is about all the matter flowing through it and so accelerating the entropification of the universe as required by the second law. But this does not underline the seamlessness of bios/abios, but instead the epistemic cut that is definitional of the divide between the animate and the inanimate.

The seed is the rate-independent information that stands separately from the rate-dependent dynamics which it controls to produce over time some tree.

The universe is in fact divided by this epistemic cut, this separation of constraints and construction.

Now pansemiosis - building on the philosophy of Peirce - would argue that all beginnings are vague and so the epistemic cut would be vaguely present even at the most primitive or simple levels of material organisation.

This is actually a contentious claim. Pattee himself is no great fan of the idea. While some of his colleagues, like Stan Salthe, say that all dissipative structure has at least a proto-epistemic cut. There is both a fundamental seamlessness and a very distinct transition.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

apeiron, "proto-epistemic cut"?? What does this even mean. You are shading into panpsychism even as you deny it.

You've stated previously you can accept Griffin's panexperiential physicalism. This is just another name for panpsychism.

The epistemic cut concept, it seems to me, can also be looked at as defined in a circular manner because you have suggested in previous discussions that the cut arose with the origin of life and yet you in this thread suggest that the cut is the origin of consciousness (so the origin of life is the origin of consciousness is the origin of life).

Last, a "fundamental seamlessness" and "very distinct transition" are entirely contradictory.

 

[apeiron]

apeiron, "proto-epistemic cut"?? What does this even mean. You are shading into panpsychism even as you deny it.

About time you replied to the many detailed questions that have been posed of your position in this thread.

But in the meantime...as I have said endlessly, I am arguing a developmental perspective in which the crisply structured emerges from the vaguely possible. So "proto" is a recognition that the definite has to develop.

If this is like anything, it is like neutral monism. But it is different from that.

The reason being is that the development is said to happen via a specific process - call it semiosis, or the epistemic cut. A specific model of causality, the systems model, is being invoked.

You, on the other hand, are not able to describe any process that distinguishes mind and matter at a root level. You keep being asked pointed questions about this, but failing to answer.

The epistemic cut concept, it seems to me, can also be looked at as defined in a circular manner because you have suggested in previous discussions that the cut arose with the origin of life and yet you in this thread suggest that the cut is the origin of consciousness (so the origin of life is the origin of consciousness is the origin of life).

The epistemic cut is a general description of a process, just like evolution is a generalised concept. And both would be justified in their use by observation - is a system organised by such a mechanism?

So that would be the "circular manner" here - the match between model and measurement.

And I have said that life and mind are fundamentally the same process once you get down to basics. They share a common mechanism (ie: epistemic cut, semiosis, anticipatory processing, modelling relation, etc).

Last, a "fundamental seamlessness" and "very distinct transition" are entirely contradictory.

Would you make the same argument about the phase transitions of water from ice to liquid to vapour?

So time now for you to address the many questions about your own theories?

 

[bohm2]

Is mysterianism/cognitive closure with respect to consciousness as advanced by McGinn (and perhaps Chomsky) as strange/incoherent as these authors suggest?

Mysterianists maintain that it is prejudicial hubris to suppose that humans are somehow spared this predicament and are cognitively closed to nothing. As a natural, evolved system, the human cognitive system must have its own constitutional limitations. Thus the initially reasonable position is that some phenomena and features of the world are bound to elude human comprehension. Just as misunderstanding of algebra is part of the canine condition, so misunderstanding of some other phenomena is part of the human condition. Mysterianism represents an unusual approach to the intellectual problem raised by consciousness. Rather than offering an explanation of consciousness, it attempts to quell our intellectual discomfort by offering an explanation of why we cannot obtain an explanation of consciousness. It thus combines first-order pessimism with second-order optimism: although we have no clue about consciousness, we have a clue about why we have no clue about consciousness!

The literature on mysterianism has so far been somewhat dogmatically dismissive. Critical discussions of the merits and demerits of the view are few and far between. In particular, McGinn’s argument is rarely if ever engaged. This is unfortunate, although perhaps understandable from a heuristic viewpoint. Nonetheless, some problems with, and suspicions about, the view have emerged in the literature. Perhaps the main suspicion (aired by Daniel Dennett among others) is that the view is based on a mistaken conception of the relationship between an intellectual problem and its corresponding solution. We may well understand a problem but not know its solution, or be unable to understand a solution to a problem we do not fully grasp. But it is incoherent to suppose that we cannot in principle understand the solution to a problem we can and do understand and fully grasp. Plausibly, understanding what a problem is involves understanding what would count as an appropriate solution to it (if not necessarily a correct one). It is true that dogs cannot in principle understand algebra; but that is precisely why algebraic problems do not pose themselves to dogs.

http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/frankthetank.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism

I'm guessing Gödel's incompleteness theorems would be evidence against these arguments?

 

[bohm2]

And I have said that life and mind are fundamentally the same process once you get down to basics. They share a common mechanism (ie: epistemic cut, semiosis, anticipatory processing, modelling relation, etc).

aperion

I'm a bit confused about semiosis. Does semiosis bring any new facts to bear or is it just a different way of looking at the known "facts" of neuroscience, biology, cognition, etc.? I mean, does it make any new predictions/testable models? Is it a just a philosophical perspective or a different approach that offers new directions/predictions? If the latter what are some of those predictions/testable models? As "incomplete" as reductionism has been, it has delivered the goods, so far, I think. I've been looking at some of the articles you linked and some articles on biosemiotics and found them interesting but again maybe I don't understand but I don't see anything beyond very useful descriptions. Having said that, it's possible that I'm just not "getting" it. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Pythagorean]

Does semiosis bring any new facts to bear or is it just a different way of looking at the known "facts" of neuroscience, biology, cognition, etc.? I mean, does it make any new predictions/testable models? Is it a just a philosophical perspective or a different approach that offers new directions/predictions? If the latter what are some of those predictions/testable models?

what does "epistemic cut" mean to you?

 

[bohm2]

what does "epistemic cut" mean to you?

In physics it would be the “measurement problem”. Higher up (language, etc.), it would be the information/meaning distinction. For consciousness, how the brain/neurons can generate mental representations/qualia, etc. At least, that's how I interpret it.

 

[Pythagorean]

In physics it would be the “measurement problem”. Higher up (language, etc.), it would be the information/meaning distinction. For consciousness, how the brain/neurons can generate mental representations/qualia, etc. At least, that's how I interpret it.

Woah, slow down! Let's go backwards a little bit. What does "epistemic" mean to you?

 

[apeiron]

I'm a bit confused about semiosis. Does semiosis bring any new facts to bear or is it just a different way of looking at the known "facts" of neuroscience, biology, cognition, etc.?

In my view, you have to look at it as a whole framework of logic.

So people are generally taught to think about the world in a way that is non-systematic. If asked the question of why things happen, they will start to analyse using an interlocking set of assumptions that we generally call reductionism. The elements of this include atomism, mechanicalism, monism, locality, determinism. Cause is equated with material construction - parts stuck together make wholes. So explanation begins with the smallest, simplest, action or component.

This is a powerful and familiar way to look at the world. It really works. But - systems thinkers claim - it is not the whole of things. It is a too-simple view that gains efficiency at the expense of leaving out the full story. And this is what create problems with explanations - scientific, philosophical or otherwise - when you get towards the limit of things. When what you are seeking to explain is the whole.

So the systems approach seeks the expanded view. Like Aristotle argued, you need to at least include formal and final cause as part of the package of causes. You need to deal with development and process.

Systems science thus has a more complex model of causality. Principally, it sees cause as hierarchical. There is both the local and global (as a fundamental fact). So scale matters. Cause is divided into bottom-up construction and top-down constraint.

The other fundamental assumption is that reality is dynamic. Everything must arise as a process of development. So change is also real (not merely rearrangement).

We could call this the organic view, in contrast to the mechanical. But the point is that it is another way of modelling reality. And it both includes reductionism and contradicts it.

So it has a place for bottom-up construction, but then also says that the parts or atoms or degrees of freedom doing the construction are not fundamental. Instead, they in turn are being shaped into crisp being by a system's downward acting constraints. The parts are emergent rather than existent.

In this way, you can have the same material facts (the existence of atoms) but a different explanation of those facts (one says the fundamentally small just is...somehow, the other says smallness is ultimately created as the counterpart to largeness).

I haven't even mentioned semiosis yet. But semiosis was really the particular view of systems taken by CS Peirce, who emphasised certain aspects of systems logic (and neglected some others). His writings have become only recently fashionable and so the tag 'semiosis' has become a bit of a bandwagon among the current generation of scientists who are dabbling in the systems view.

The key thing that I mean to draw attention to by talking about semiosis and the epistemic cut is a yet a further dimension to the whole systems view. I just said the two principle elements of systems thinking are hierarchical causality and a developmental ontology. Well this is enough for simple complexity, but not complex complexity (as we know it from life and mind).

You also have the possibility of global constraints being locally constructed. Systems with some kind of memory can store information and make active choices. So as well as dynamicism we also have computationalism, as well as semantics we also have syntax. There are coding mechanisms like genes and words, neurons and membranes, that can be used to control the world of rate-tied dynamics.

Now, science already knows this of course. We build computers and use them all the time. We invent mathematical syntax. We long ago discovered genes and realized the difference speech made to human consciousness.

But regular science, based on a reductionist model of causality, cannot ground these facts in a common framework of logic. Lacking a systems view of complex complexity, all sorts of philosophical problems arise about how to define life and mind. Not to mention all the other regulars in philosophy forums, like the problem of freewill, the nature of maths, etc.

So semiosis is systems science as it gets to its most intricate. It provides a different framework for the same facts. But does it predict different facts?

Potentially it should. But it would first need to be made more mathematical - hierarchy theory is semi-mathematical at the moment. And also, many of the facts we have discovered are as a result of scientists using systems thinking intuitively (and presenting the results in terms of reductionist models). So we can say it has already worked in that sense.

But an example of applied systems thinking is Friston's Bayesian brain, which I've mentioned. There explicitly is a systems model of brain function. And it claims to account better for a whole range of facts than previous models. It proposes an actual probability process that can be measured experimentally.

 

[Pythagorean]

I like to refer to the scientific journal, Chaos and their "about us" page:

In the past two decades the "new science," known popularly as "chaos," has given us deep insights into previously intractable, inherently nonlinear, natural phenomena. Building on important but isolated historical precedents (such as the work of Poincaré), "chaos" has in some cases caused a fundamental reassessment of the way in which we view the physical world. For instance, certain seemingly simple natural nonlinear processes, for which the laws of motion are known and completely deterministic, can exhibit enormously complex behavior, often appearing as if they were evolving under random forces rather than deterministic laws.

http://chaos.aip.org/about/about_the_journal

Notice that "new science" is in quotes. This is because fundamentally, there is no new science, but a different perspective on "causation". More accurately, it calls us out on our definition of causation.

What it does is expand our coverage of science by adopting another method of troubleshooting for systems that are so complex that we can't piece-wise them apart. This is the reason there are "soft" and "hard" sciences (or, in reality, a spectrum of soft to hard sciences).

Soft sciences classically have much less deterministic models, mostly only correlations (which we all know doesn't immediately mean causation) so there's little in the way of predictions; you can try to predict that the correlation will hold, but sometimes correlations only appear linear... or even curvlinear... on a short range and in the right "parameter regime" (the technical case of "too many variables").

As per the quoted paragraph above, the new perspective is that there are still deterministic models underlying these correlations in complex systems, we just need to understand and find generalities about "systems" in general; that is, "laws" of emergence.

 

[apeiron]

I like to refer to the scientific journal, Chaos and their "about us" page:

As per the quoted paragraph above, the new perspective is that there are still deterministic models underlying these correlations in complex systems, we just need to understand and find generalities about "systems" in general; that is, "laws" of emergence.

Chaos, and most of the Santa Fe brand of complexity, are in fact just extensions of reductionism and not at all true models of complex causality in the systems sense.

So they are useful models, but most definitely not what I am talking about.

Non-linearity arises when constraints are removed from a system. Linearity arises as constraints are added. But who is now talking about how constraints themselves arise? That is the next step taken by a semiotic view of complexity.

 

[Pythagorean]

Chaos, and most of the Santa Fe brand of complexity, are in fact just extensions of reductionism and not at all true models of complex causality in the systems sense.

So they are useful models, but most definitely not what I am talking about.

I don't know what you mean by Santa Fe complexity... never heard the designation before, sounds like "in-crowd/out-crowd" language.

This is not about chaos (sensitivity to initial conditions) just because one of the journals is called "chaos". Chaos is a very small piece of it (but it's the element of it that caught attention and the imagery is attractive so the title stuck).

Anyway, the field itself (sometimes called chaos theory, sometimes called nonlinear dynamics, sometimes called complex system theory) is neutral on the matter of reductionism (and in fact, embraced by systems theory). There is also no requirement for purely deterministic model, but it is an important aspect that seemingly random behavior can sometimes be determinstic.

Non-linearity arises when constraints are removed from a system. Linearity arises as constraints are added.

In my field's language, it seems it would always depend on the nature of the constraints. What context do you mean this in; do you have a quote and citation?

But who is now talking about how constraints themselves arise? That is the next step taken by a semiotic view of complexity.

Implicit in this sentence is supposed to be that scientists submitting papers to PRE and Chaos don't talk about how constraints arise?

 

[apeiron]

I don't know what you mean by Santa Fe complexity... never heard the designation before, sounds like "in-crowd/out-crowd" language.

The Sante Fe Institute? Kauffman, Gell-Mann, Anderson, Crutchfield, Farmer, etc?

When people wrote books titled "Complexity" in the early 1990s, that is what they were talking about.

Anyway, the field itself (sometimes called chaos theory, sometimes called nonlinear dynamics, sometimes called complex system theory) is neutral on the matter of reductionism (and in fact, embraced by systems theory). There is also no requirement for purely deterministic model, but it is an important aspect that seemingly random behavior can sometimes be determinstic.

Deterministic chaos is not "neutral" if it calls itself deterministic. I agree there is a lot of overlap between chaos people and systems people. But there is still a big difference in orientation depending on whether you believe all systems to be an extension of reductionist analysis, or whether you believe that reductionism cannot in principle capture the full picture even with "add-ons" such as chaos.

The giveaway is your quote to the effect that "chaos theory shows that randomness is merely an appearance, the reality is a complicated determinism".

As I have said, the semiotic/systems view, as expressed for example by Peirce, is that the indeterminacy of reality is something that is real, not mere appearance.

Note also how your quote slides "the laws of nature" off to one side. The Peircean view puts them centre stage as part of what must develop to make the system.

So as a journal, I have to class Chaos as extended reductionism rather than systems science. Doesn't make the field less valuable. Just makes it not the same thing.

Implicit in this sentence is supposed to be that scientists submitting papers to PRE and Chaos don't talk about how constraints arise?

Are you claiming that these journals regularly feature articles addressing the semiotics of constraints?

The systems view (as I've referenced in Pattee's work on the epistemic cut) is that complex complexity (of the kind relevant to this thread) depends on control over non-holonomic constraints.

So if you want the more exact claim, it is about talking about how non-holonomic constraints arise (and then, from there, having established the biosemiotic view, perhaps making the pansemiotic leap to being able to talk about holonomic constraints as well).

 

[Gold Barz]

I always thought Kauffman was a systems guy?

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

About time you replied to the many detailed questions that have been posed of your position in this thread.

But in the meantime...as I have said endlessly, I am arguing a developmental perspective in which the crisply structured emerges from the vaguely possible. So "proto" is a recognition that the definite has to develop.

If this is like anything, it is like neutral monism. But it is different from that.

The reason being is that the development is said to happen via a specific process - call it semiosis, or the epistemic cut. A specific model of causality, the systems model, is being invoked.

You, on the other hand, are not able to describe any process that distinguishes mind and matter at a root level. You keep being asked pointed questions about this, but failing to answer.
The epistemic cut is a general description of a process, just like evolution is a generalised concept. And both would be justified in their use by observation - is a system organised by such a mechanism?

So that would be the "circular manner" here - the match between model and measurement.

And I have said that life and mind are fundamentally the same process once you get down to basics. They share a common mechanism (ie: epistemic cut, semiosis, anticipatory processing, modelling relation, etc).
Would you make the same argument about the phase transitions of water from ice to liquid to vapour?

So time now for you to address the many questions about your own theories?

apeiron, as far as I remember the only direct question I've left hanging is the issue of brute facts (please remind me if I've forgotten other questions you've posed). Here's how my ontology works, inspired primarily by Whitehead, Griffin, Bohm, Watts, Vedanta and Buddhism, in brief:

- the ground of being/pure potentiality/implicate order/apeiron/Brahman is the metaphysical soil from which all actuality springs.
- we can't know anything directly about this realm because it is not actual. We can, however, infer much about it, as with all human knowledge (we don't really know anything directly other than our own awareness).
- it is only when potentiality becomes actuality that experience/consciousness arises. To be actual is to be experiential and it is not possible to be actual without being experiential. This and the very existence of the ground of being are the brute facts of my system.
- my working model for the ground of being is an infinite grid of what can be envisioned as 3-d pixels. These pixels manifest as either space or matter/energy.
- matter/energy behaves according to the dual influences of the implicate order (described by Bohm and Hiley as the quantum potential or guiding wave) and explicate order (classical forces)
- it is the suggestibility rather than coercion of the quantum potential that results in free will from the lowest level of actuality to the highest
- the universe is more akin to a computer program than a physics equation in that it is irredeemably irreversible. Time is serial and quantized. Each click of the universe is a chronon and it may be as brief as the Planck moment. The universe is laid down in each chronon anew, with the prior actualities forming the data (prehensions) for all actualities in the present moment
- there is a finite speed with which causality propagates in the universe and this speed is the ultimate limit for actuality. In other words, each single actuality is limited by the speed of causal propagation. There are, however, ways in which causal speed may be bootstrapped to far faster levels than would otherwise be possible. Life may be defined by this ability, but it's a sliding scale, not an all-or-nothing attribute (all things are alive to some degree, a position known as panzoism or hylozoism).
- the simplest actualities combine into higher-order actualities, at many different hierarchical levels, through coherence in terms of the frequency with which they resonate at different chronon multiples. Through resonation, causal influence may be propagated in each chronon far further than would otherwise be the case.
- mere aggregates (clumpings of matter) may be distinguished from actualities (individuals) through this informational coherence. There is a certain type of coherence in any clumping of matter (or it wouldn't be a clump), but it's a particular kind of coherence that leads to true individuals. I'm still pondering what is the exact nature of the required coherence, but it may be that quantum bootstrapping is itself the required coherence. However, it is probably not beany qualitative difference in terms of the required coherence; rather, it may simply be that what we normally describe as life has mastered causal channels to the point that coherence is achieved at much greater spans within each chronon or chronon multiple than would otherwise be the case. So a mere aggregate is a larger clump of matter than the individuals that reside within it. An actual entity/individual is defined not by the physical clumping but by the informational/causal coherence made possible by its particular organization.

Much of this is still a work in progress and as I've mentioned many times my first hefty paper on these topics is coming out in JCS soon (hopefully Nov/Dec this year), so stay tuned.

As for your points above, circular definitions are by definition not helpful for anything. You can't learn anything about the actual universe through circular definitions.

As for seamlessness and sharp distinctions, I agree with you at the most general level that some type of radical emergence with respect to consciousness has to occur somewhere. But where you seem to be happy with positing it at some vague mid level of reality, I suggest that it is far more likely to occur at the very beginning of the chain of being. If we are to posit a miracle, far better for that miracle to occur at the beginning of the chain of being than at some arbitrary mid-point. In my system, the miracle occurs in each chronon as each actuality emerges from potentiality and with it experience. This rudimentary experience at the most basic physical level compounds upwards. In some cases, like humans, it compounds to a very high degree, made possible through the causal bootstrapping of the various information channels in our brains and bodies.

Phase transitions from ice to water to vapor are sharp at one level of description: the molecular bonds. There is a very easy explanation for such transitions in terms of the difference in bonding. But this is not radical emergence and nor is it seamless at this level of description.

The emergence of consciousness and life is best conceived as occurring at the very beginning because we recognize that to be actual is to be experiential is to be alive. It's a continuum from the first brute emergence to the last.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Is mysterianism/cognitive closure with respect to consciousness as advanced by McGinn (and perhaps Chomsky) as strange/incoherent as these authors suggest?

Mysterianists maintain that it is prejudicial hubris to suppose that humans are somehow spared this predicament and are cognitively closed to nothing. As a natural, evolved system, the human cognitive system must have its own constitutional limitations. Thus the initially reasonable position is that some phenomena and features of the world are bound to elude human comprehension. Just as misunderstanding of algebra is part of the canine condition, so misunderstanding of some other phenomena is part of the human condition. Mysterianism represents an unusual approach to the intellectual problem raised by consciousness. Rather than offering an explanation of consciousness, it attempts to quell our intellectual discomfort by offering an explanation of why we cannot obtain an explanation of consciousness. It thus combines first-order pessimism with second-order optimism: although we have no clue about consciousness, we have a clue about why we have no clue about consciousness!

The literature on mysterianism has so far been somewhat dogmatically dismissive. Critical discussions of the merits and demerits of the view are few and far between. In particular, McGinn’s argument is rarely if ever engaged. This is unfortunate, although perhaps understandable from a heuristic viewpoint. Nonetheless, some problems with, and suspicions about, the view have emerged in the literature. Perhaps the main suspicion (aired by Daniel Dennett among others) is that the view is based on a mistaken conception of the relationship between an intellectual problem and its corresponding solution. We may well understand a problem but not know its solution, or be unable to understand a solution to a problem we do not fully grasp. But it is incoherent to suppose that we cannot in principle understand the solution to a problem we can and do understand and fully grasp. Plausibly, understanding what a problem is involves understanding what would count as an appropriate solution to it (if not necessarily a correct one). It is true that dogs cannot in principle understand algebra; but that is precisely why algebraic problems do not pose themselves to dogs.

http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/frankthetank.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism

I'm guessing Gödel's incompleteness theorems would be evidence against these arguments?

For me, mysterianism is a copout, a giving up. It's a conversation ender, not a conversation starter. For me and many others like me, thinking about consciousness and other grand questions is as fun in its process as it is in its conclusions. And, frankly, each of us could simply pronounce the hard problem solved well enough for own needs and thus pronounce mysterianism wrong. This raises the question of what constitutes an explanation, more generally. When will the majority of philosophers and scientists consider the hard problem solved? Ever?

 

[Pythagorean]

The Sante Fe Institute? Kauffman, Gell-Mann, Anderson, Crutchfield, Farmer, etc?

When people wrote books titled "Complexity" in the early 1990s, that is what they were talking about.

not familiar with their work, at least not directly.

Deterministic chaos is not "neutral" if it calls itself deterministic.

As I said, real chaos (sensitivity to initial conditions) is only a small piece of complex dynamical systems. The namesake has stuck. See Prigogine, for instance, who used Markov (i.e, stochastic, as opposed to deterministic) models and always spoke against determinism:

In his 1997 book, The End of Certainty, Prigogine contends that determinism is no longer a viable scientific belief. "The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism." This is a major departure from the approach of Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, all of whom expressed their theories in terms of deterministic equations. According to Prigogine, determinism loses its explanatory power in the face of irreversibility and instability.

I agree there is a lot of overlap between chaos people and systems people. But there is still a big difference in orientation depending on whether you believe all systems to be an extension of reductionist analysis, or whether you believe that reductionism cannot in principle capture the full picture even with "add-ons" such as chaos.

You're still focusing too much on the word chaos. Chaos is one very small statement about a maximal positive lyapunov exponent. "Chaos theory" has grown to be so much more than that. I don't really like the name, and it's actually not used within the field in my experience (we use 'complex dynamical systems'), but it's how the public knows us.

The giveaway is your quote to the effect that "chaos theory shows that randomness is merely an appearance, the reality is a complicated determinism".

Which of course, was a "for instance" if you read the quote carefully. This is true: systems that appear irregular and random can be completely deterministic. This does not speak for all systems nor does it represent the whole complex systems approach.

As I have said, the semiotic/systems view, as expressed for example by Peirce, is that the indeterminacy of reality is something that is real, not mere appearance.

But this has nothing to do with dividing types of complexity up. All across the sciences, and especially in QM and quantum chaos, this is a well-supported perspective. For instance, we cannot define space and time as we'd like to below the Planck-scale and there's of course Heisenberg principle.

Once you come into thermodynamical systems, it's a hodge-podge of classical and modern physics. The so called, "quasi-classical" physics.

That we can't put concepts and entities cleanly into little buckets is stressed heavily in the first couple lectures of Sapolsky's "Human Behavioral Biology". Sapolsky is also a fan of chaos and neuroethology.

Note also how your quote slides "the laws of nature" off to one side. The Peircean view puts them centre stage as part of what must develop to make the system.

So as a journal, I have to class Chaos as extended reductionism rather than systems science. Doesn't make the field less valuable. Just makes it not the same thing.

There are no laws at this point; we use quotes in "laws" but terminology is officially dead; even as far back as QM, we started saying postulate and principle.

And no, I hardly no any scientists that are actually reductionists, depending on what you mean. I assume you mean philosophical reductionism:

a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.

This is definitely not the case for a dissipative nonlinear system (in which superposition and reversibility fail).

Are you claiming that these journals regularly feature articles addressing the semiotics of constraints?

I don't know if you're intentionally moving the goal post, but regularly is no requirement. You had previously had the tone "worlds apart" "nothing to do with" and I had the tone "no, it's neutral".

You would actually find more regular crossings between chaos and stochastic systems in ieee with regards to control systems; but they're still not unheard of in Chaos and PRE.

A nonholonomic system is just one that is path-independent (there is a specific definition that can be applied to a system to test this) and changing constraints can be investigated through bifurcation theory. There's also "symbolic dynamics" which can be modeled through Markov partititions.

All the quantitative tools and techniques developed for by Poincaire are important to complexity if you want to be able correlate evidence with theory on a systems level.

 

[bohm2]

Woah, slow down! Let's go backwards a little bit. What does "epistemic" mean to you?

You mean what I think constitutes (scientific) knowledge?

 

[apeiron]

I always thought Kauffman was a systems guy?

Not really in the sense that I mean here. He was certainly trying to model the computational/semiotic aspects of systems. But doing so fairly strictly in the language of dynamics.

I'd say the same thing about some other important thinkers like Scott Kelso and Walter Freeman. They were trying to build up to computational looking behaviour (rate independent control in Pattee's terminology) from dynamical models (the rate-dependent side of the epistemic cut).

It's difficult to describe, and it becomes my personal opinion, but while something of the truth of systems can be modeled from either side of the epistemic cut - from the dynamical or the computational perspective - to do the job properly requires a new hybrid discourse. Or better than just a hybrid. A deeper level that unites both.

Which is where semiosis, the epistemic cut, dissipative structure theory, etc, all come in. Semiosis is as good a name as any for current efforts to knit the essential dichotomy together.

Some of Kauffman's work does get close to this area. But then it comes down to orientation. I've not seen any consciousness in anything he has written that this is what he wants or needs to do. Instead he kind of backs into it without realising.

By contrast, Gell-Mann is much more the proper systems thinker at Santa Fe. But he was not actually producing mathematical models like Kauffman and the others. So his influence has not been that great.

I personally have had no contact with the Santa Fe crew, or even many chaologists. So this is just what I have heard and observed in their writings.

But I have talked enough with others like Freeman, Kelso and Friston who are trying to make it work from a neuroscience perspective. And also of course plenty with Pattee, Salthe, Ulanowicz and the others who have been doing it for longer in biology.

If you are talking about "who is systems?", then you would have to include all sorts of people including some fairly crackpot people like Ken Wilber and Ervin Laszlo.

And if you just relied on the "official view" of who is who - like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory - then again, the people I talk about hardly feature. None of this lot are part of the latest semiotic paradigm, if I can call it that, though many would be precursors.

There is a good attempt at a genealogical map of systems thinking here...
http://www.nickbaily.com/Complexity-map-overview.png

Then a further much more complete (and confusing) family history here...
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=273

But anyway, Kauffman is a landmark figure in science, he does work that is very relevant to those taking the semiotic view of systems, but he himself is not a semiotician in his general orientation.