Making sense of observer participation in physics

[ConradDJ]

I think you're conflating epistemology with empirical physics. The epistemological issues you are describing are valid, but what you seem to be trying to do is to insist that prior to empirical observation, there is the possibility of gaining an accurate epistemological approach to empiricism in terms of how it is organized, what it consists of, etc.
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How can "context that make information meaningful" be any except an epistemological construct? Unless you can provide an empirical example, it sounds like you are just applying cultural studies concepts to physics without any critical empirical rigor.

First, I’m not trying to prove anything about empirical physics, nor am I interested in epistemological rigor, if any such thing is possible. I’m only trying to suggest a certain way of looking at the world “out there” – the physical world, outside of consciousness – without putting it in terms of “objectively real” particles or fields, etc. that we imagine to have definite properties in and of themselves.

I’m suggesting that the physical world (outside of consciousness) that we experience (in consciousness) is not a world of things in themselves, but a world of physical interaction that conveys information. I don’t think this is controversial. It may be that there do exist things-in-themselves “behind” the interaction through which we get to know about them. Before QM, no one would have doubted that was the case.

But whether or not there is a physical reality out there that exists “in itself”, independent of any perspective or any context of observation, it’s reasonable to believe there is also a system of physical interaction that communicates information. And I’m trying to point out that this constitutes its own kind of system. It’s not physically different from the system we describe in terms of fields and particles – but it’s a different way of conceptualizing it.

And the key thing about this kind of system is that every kind of information it conveys must be definable in the context of other kinds of information it also conveys.

The argument to support that claim is this. Clearly we do get information about our physical environment, somehow – unless we want to fall back into solipsism. Making that information more accurate and reliable is an empirical process that has no absolute standard – we do the best we can, and we’re getting better at it over time. But we don’t have any access to “the things themselves” – we can only interact with the world, in many different ways. Therefore the interaction-system must be adequate to define / determine / measure all the information it conveys.

What different points of view? You mean like unifying physics and chemistry?

No, by “points of view” I’m referring to the viewpoints of different observers. That doesn’t necessarily mean “conscious” observers– they could be atoms, perhaps. The issue here isn’t how we observers process the information we receive... I’m trying to get at the structure of the interaction-system between the observers.

You could say that the brick is "communicating" its energy to the scale, or that the brick "translates" gravitational force into kinetic energy by falling. But this language shouldn't be taken to imply that the objects involved have consciousness or free-will in some sense, even though they can conflict with and resist each other's influence through, for example, inertia or friction. Is this what you're talking about or something else?

You’re right that “communication” in my sense doesn’t necessarily involve consciousness. But it involves more than just one thing impacting another thing.

If something hits you, but you can’t see it or hear it, and have no other way of interacting with it, then the impact conveys little or no information. In the physical world we live in, though, there are multiple ways of interacting, and we know that a tremendous amount of highly detailed information is available in this interactive environment. I’m suggesting that in order to do this, physical interaction has to be structured in a very special way. It’s not just that there is more than one way of interacting – it’s that each kind of interaction relates to the others in a way that contributes to an overall context, so that each interaction conveys some definite information.

 

[brainstorm]

I’m suggesting that the physical world (outside of consciousness) that we experience (in consciousness) is not a world of things in themselves, but a world of physical interaction that conveys information. I don’t think this is controversial. It may be that there do exist things-in-themselves “behind” the interaction through which we get to know about them.

There is a certain epistemological empiricism in this view. What you are basically saying, imo, is that the primary observation you can make with your senses is that there is information reaching you through them. You bracket the assumption of existence of anything outside of the information you are receiving. You want to view the transmitter as a synthetic extrapolation deduced from the observed existence of the signal, which is actually the truth from a perspective of rigorous empiricism. This is not solipsistic insofar as the information reaching your senses is presumed to emanate outside yourself.

But whether or not there is a physical reality out there that exists “in itself”, independent of any perspective or any context of observation, it’s reasonable to believe there is also a system of physical interaction that communicates information. And I’m trying to point out that this constitutes its own kind of system. It’s not physically different from the system we describe in terms of fields and particles – but it’s a different way of conceptualizing it.

Fine, but what basis do you have to assume what's "out there" is in any way systematic, or that if it is that there's a single unified system? Why couldn't you suspect that it is the systematic character of your interpretive subjectivity that makes the information you receive only appear to be systematic, because you are systematically applying the same interpolative filters to diverse observations? If you compare everything material using a lever in a gravitational field, everything appears to have mass - but is that just because you are comparing it to other things? I don't see how such questions can lead to anything productive. Do you?

And the key thing about this kind of system is that every kind of information it conveys must be definable in the context of other kinds of information it also conveys.

why?

The argument to support that claim is this. Clearly we do get information about our physical environment, somehow – unless we want to fall back into solipsism. Making that information more accurate and reliable is an empirical process that has no absolute standard – we do the best we can, and we’re getting better at it over time. But we don’t have any access to “the things themselves” – we can only interact with the world, in many different ways. Therefore the interaction-system must be adequate to define / determine / measure all the information it conveys.

It never ceases to annoy me when people make solipsism out to generate a qualitative difference between things as they are observed. The sun appears exactly the same whether you assume it is a material artifact external to your body or a figment of your imagination contained within your mind. If everything would exist only in your mind, you could still measure it, utilize it, and do anything else with it you do when you have the perspective that it exists outside your mind. The internality of solipsism, just like the externality of materialism, is a status issue. Do you attribute external or internal status to the material universe? Either way, you have to deal with things in they way they appear to you, no?

No, by “points of view” I’m referring to the viewpoints of different observers. That doesn’t necessarily mean “conscious” observers– they could be atoms, perhaps. The issue here isn’t how we observers process the information we receive... I’m trying to get at the structure of the interaction-system between the observers.

Why don't you ever use specific examples to illustrate where you're trying to take this?

You’re right that “communication” in my sense doesn’t necessarily involve consciousness. But it involves more than just one thing impacting another thing.

Everything is cryptic general statements, like you're trying to combine scientific theorizing with mystery novel writing.

If something hits you, but you can’t see it or hear it, and have no other way of interacting with it, then the impact conveys little or no information. In the physical world we live in, though, there are multiple ways of interacting, and we know that a tremendous amount of highly detailed information is available in this interactive environment. I’m suggesting that in order to do this, physical interaction has to be structured in a very special way. It’s not just that there is more than one way of interacting – it’s that each kind of interaction relates to the others in a way that contributes to an overall context, so that each interaction conveys some definite information.

So this is just another attempt to insist on unified underlying structures in the universe? If you are so alert to the workings of subjectivity in perception, why can't you see that structuralist claims always have the effect of relegating individual phenomena to the level of subsidiaries of centralizing forces? Gravity, for example, when seen as a structuring force affecting everything in a system competes with the view that gravitation is the result of individual particles expressing gravitation separately from others. The perspective doesn't change anything either way, except one encourages people to think in terms of central control and the other in terms of decentralized behaviors. I hate making scientific philosophy into a political issue, but why else would it matter whether events are framed as being structured or decentralized and emergent?

 

[apeiron]

Biological evolution came about entirely by accident – so in your sense is hardly fundamental. But the nature of this particular series of accidents was to create a new way of being a basis, each individual organism becoming the physical basis for its offspring.

I do indeed see life and mind as just consequences of the second law - it arises naturally as dissipative structure.

There is also some new "trick" of course. Which is indeed the ability to be accidental.

So, taking the modern evo-devo approach of theoretical biology, half the story of life is about the self-organising processes of development - the realm of dissipative structure theory. Then subsequent on these are the various informational constraints that harness the order-creating energy of these dissipative processes.

Genes are the prime example of such constraints. They are memory structures that encode information in a non-dissipative fashion. Information in living systems becomes divided into the rate-dependent (the constraints that arise as part of a self-organising process, such as some metabolic reaction) and the rate-independent (the memories encoded in the genes). The genes then control the actual rate of a metabolic process via enzymes (there is a modelling relation of prediction and test between the process-modelling genes and the developing reaction).

So we have two kinds of information here - the devo and the evo. Or rather two spatiotemporal scales of information, the rapidly developing and the slowly evolving. There is a hierarchical local~global relationship.

But it is complex (bios is about complexity, so no surprise there). And we can also see how one of the features of genetic information is that what rate-independence leads to is the greater capacity for accidents. A developmental process has a certain capacity for variety or spontaneity (outcomes are defined by attractors). But an evolutionary process is more definitely constrained (determined) so that outcomes are defined as crisp probabilities. Genes are mechanisms designed to throw together new combinations, to generate crisp variety within gaussian statistical envelopes.

Genes are a highly constrained way to be unconstrained - to experiment randomly in a highly controlled fashion. Genetic evolution asks crisp yes/no question of the future, and so can get crisp answers and arrive at crisp learnings.

Developmental processes - being constrained by the very information they produce - can only imagine a rougly always similar future for themselves. But an evolutionary process, because it creates for itself the crisp possibility of learning accidents - the chance discovery of new and unpredicted information - has an unconstrained future.

There is a creative blindness here. Which is why I resist an approach which stresses viewpoints as being informational. A network of observers, locked into viewpoints by their local information, seems quite unnatural because of this very rigidity. If everything is "collapsed" and definite, then everything is deterministic and the system appears to have neither the basic vague spontaneity of developmental processes (whose futures are only vaguely determined as "attractor" states), nor the clever trick of being informationally open by taking small (gaussian-scale) leaps into the dark via genetic experiment.

The thing is that if there is an evolutionary process underlying physics, I believe it has to do with the communication of information between systems, rather than the self-replication of the systems themselves. What evolves in the physical world is the informational environment in which physical systems and their properties get defined / determined through their effects on each other.

Yes, but modern theoretical biology is challenging things by looking now at the fundamentals of development vs evolution. And development is being seen as the more basic, the universal logos.

At least this is the work that convinces me - thinkers like Stan Salthe, Howard Pattee, Robert Rosen and many more.

From my point of view, I mainly see my local environment – my room, the dogwood tree outside my window and the street beyond – but I also see the sky beyond that, and at night even distant stars and galaxies. So having a point of view is more a matter of being inside the system, rather than a matter of scale per se.

Well just there you are describing looking through a whole set of scales - a lightcone view. Those stars are in your far distant past in fact. So you have some "instant" interactions spanning light-split seconds (the dogwood tree) and others spanning light-millenia (the stars). Take the QM aspect of information into account and "having a point of view" in the concrete sense you mean becomes problematic. And even in a classical computational sense, your consciousness is composed of multiple timescales - the foreground of the bark of a dog, the rustle of the wind, the mid ground of the dogwood tree and other familiar persisting features of the immediate landscape, the deep background of a star field and a thermalising universe.

What is special (complex) about consciousness is that so much information (so many scales) are organised into "a view". And then so much information gets discarded (you only actually pay attention to one aspect of all this perceptual experience at a time, perhaps now the dogwood, next the dog bark, next the dog star).

Consciousness is a viewpoint constructed of information, a multiscale viewpoint, and yet not locked into a single viewpoint as it can "freely" roam the field of view it constructs. Looking out the window, we are broadly oriented. But then we can narrow our attention by suppressing our awareness for some of that view (the tree, the stars) to enhance our awareness of some other aspect (the bark).

This creation of viewpoints within viewpoints all seems highly elaborate, the opposite of simplicity. So it does not make a promising candidate, even by analogy, for a logos - the fundamental way of the world.

 

[ConradDJ]

What you are basically saying, imo, is that the primary observation you can make with your senses is that there is information reaching you through them. You bracket the assumption of existence of anything outside of the information you are receiving. You want to view the transmitter as a synthetic extrapolation deduced from the observed existence of the signal...

Yes, I think that's right.

...but what basis do you have to assume what's "out there" is in any way systematic, or that if it is that there's a single unified system? Why couldn't you suspect that it is the systematic character of your interpretive subjectivity...?

This gets off track. Basically I take it for granted that there's a physical world out there that's structured just as established physical theory says it is.

I make a very limited use of epistemological argument, to make a single point -- that in addition to the structures physics currently describes, there is another kind of pervasive structure out there. For example, physics describes the structure of the electromagnetic field as a thing-in-itself, and that description merely assumes the existence of charged particles that serve as "probes" that make the field observable. Then it describes electrons and other charged particles as things-in-themselves, and in doing that it merely assumes the different kinds of interactions that make electrons observable. In all of this it assumes the inertial-gravitational field, apart from which none of the above would be observable, and it assumes the existence of stable atomic/molecular structures without which space and time would not be observable.

I don’t think this is an airtight airgument by any means. You seem to be willing to assume that our minds might create a structured view of the world based on structureless input, and on that basis my argument makes no sense.

But if we assume that empirical information about the world is in fact available to us (or anything else) through physical interaction, then I think my argument is strong. For any kind of information – the mass of a particle, say – to be determinable by an observer (of whatever kind), there has to be a physical context of other types of available information, conveyed by other types of interaction.

To refute that, someone would need to show that there’s some type of empirical information we get from the world that can be measured without a context of other types of data.

So in addition to the different structures physics describes – the various kinds of fields and particles and spacetime itself – there is an overall structure of inter-reference between these kinds of structure, that physics takes for granted and has not yet analyzed.

Why don't you ever use specific examples to illustrate where you're trying to take this? Everything is cryptic general statements, like you're trying to combine scientific theorizing with mystery novel writing.

You're right, I admit it. Since I’m trying to justify a very broad, all-encompassing viewpoint on physical structure, bringing it down to specifics is hard. The problem is that there’s been almost no analysis of what’s required to provide a context for any particular type of measurement.

So this is just another attempt to insist on unified underlying structures in the universe? If you are so alert to the workings of subjectivity in perception, why can't you see that structuralist claims always have the effect of relegating individual phenomena to the level of subsidiaries of centralizing forces?... I hate making scientific philosophy into a political issue, but why else would it matter whether events are framed as being structured or decentralized and emergent?

This is a false dichotomy – structure / no-structure. I’m very much in sympathy with “decentralized and emergent” – which to me means an evolutionary viewpoint ultimately based on the accidents of individual existence. But what evolves are structures that relate individuals in different ways. Politically we have a long way to go before we evolve the kinds of structure that are not dominating and relegating. We might be able to learn something about this from physics, which everywhere maintains a remarkable balance between many kinds of structure and many kinds of randomness.

I think the quest for unification in physics has been useful up to a point, but is basically misleading. My argument suggests that an observable world can not be based on a single type of structure. What’s needed is an understanding of how different types of structure relate to each other, and why. Notably, for example, the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field.

 

[ConradDJ]

Yes, but modern theoretical biology is challenging things by looking now at the fundamentals of development vs evolution. And development is being seen as the more basic, the universal logos.

...This creation of viewpoints within viewpoints all seems highly elaborate, the opposite of simplicity. So it does not make a promising candidate, even by analogy, for a logos - the fundamental way of the world.

Apeiron – Thanks, I find your descriptions very insightful and very interesting. But I think it does come down to a philosophical preference. The quest to interpret everything in terms of an ultimately simple logos has always been central to philosophy, but never appealed to me. Whereas the structure of the world in which I actually exist – as a viewpoint in multiple real-time relationships with other viewpoints – seems like almost uncharted conceptual territory, and interests me deeply.

Correspondingly, the types of dissipative developmental processes you take as basic don’t look fundamental to me. They seem like fringe processes that happen all over the place in a world where systems are always engaged in different kinds of interactions with each other... and which are picked up by biological evolution to play a major role in building organisms. So I get the evo/devo thing, but not making development fundamental as a universal principle.

 

[brainstorm]

This gets off track. Basically I take it for granted that there's a physical world out there that's structured just as established physical theory says it is.

Ok, I at least get what you're saying now. You basically accept that matter-energy works the way physics has more or less established, only you are looking for some inherent logic of contextuality in the "communicative interactions" of physical matter-energy.

I make a very limited use of epistemological argument, to make a single point -- that in addition to the structures physics currently describes, there is another kind of pervasive structure out there. For example, physics describes the structure of the electromagnetic field as a thing-in-itself, and that description merely assumes the existence of charged particles that serve as "probes" that make the field observable. Then it describes electrons and other charged particles as things-in-themselves, and in doing that it merely assumes the different kinds of interactions that make electrons observable. In all of this it assumes the inertial-gravitational field, apart from which none of the above would be observable, and it assumes the existence of stable atomic/molecular structures without which space and time would not be observable.

1) I'm not sure about using the term, "structure," to describe a field. "Structure" implies that a field only exists in relation to something else that is structured by it. Why can't fields just be things in-themselves that interact with other things? Why create a hierarchical relationship of primacy and subsidiary to interacting forces/fields/energies?

2) You're assuming that space and time are observable at all. What makes you think you're observing space and time directly rather than inferring their existence as a pattern in the matter-energy interactions you witness? I tend to see space as analogical to your shadow; i.e. your brain can recognize its shape and thus interpret it as a bound region, but what you're really seeing is the line formed by the light around it that got past your body. You can only see light, not darkness. Darkness is just the relative absence of light, the same way cold is just the relative absence of heat. Space, I believe, is just the absence of matter and the inability of gravity to collapse surrounding matter into a singularity due to relative velocity/momentum. Time is a generalized abstraction to refer to simultaneity between clocks, not some external force that causes the clocks to work in the first place. That's just energy that does that.

I don’t think this is an airtight airgument by any means. You seem to be willing to assume that our minds might create a structured view of the world based on structureless input, and on that basis my argument makes no sense.

There is experimental evidence that shows human minds can generate patterns from random data. Ethnomethodologists performed experiments with yes/no cards and were able to evoke meaningful conversations with people just by reading the cards. This doesn't prove external stimuli are inherently unstructured - it just shows that if they were, the human mind could generate patterns and logics to make sense of them as being structured and interpret the structure as inherent in the data.

But if we assume that empirical information about the world is in fact available to us (or anything else) through physical interaction, then I think my argument is strong. For any kind of information – the mass of a particle, say – to be determinable by an observer (of whatever kind), there has to be a physical context of other types of available information, conveyed by other types of interaction.

I think this is an epistemological issue, albeit an interesting one. I think science just involves performing systematic comparisons of empirical observations to generalize about distinct events. I don't see what other "context" there could be for mass to be measurable except the ability to observe a scale balance and the assumption of uniform gravitation on both sides of the scale.

To refute that, someone would need to show that there’s some type of empirical information we get from the world that can be measured without a context of other types of data.

Measurement always entails comparison and presumptions of ceteris parabis, as far as I know. Empirical information can, however, be appropriated without comparison/measurement. Qualitative inductive observations, for example, only compare observations to the language used to describe them. So, for example, writing "the sunlight hits the specimen" does not compare the sunlight you observe to anything except the denoted and connoted meanings of the word, "sunlight." If, by "light," only visible light is implied, you might have to revise your observational description to refer to "invisible solar-emitted radiation."

There is yet a less comparative method of interacting with physical phenomena, which involves not observing them empirically at all, per se' (at least not for the purpose of data-recording). You can simply bring physical phenomena into interaction and interact with the effects without observing them for the sake of data-collection. This is what I would call anti-voyeuristic science. You become a pure participant, applying knowledge without doing any observation or testing. I don't know how valuable this would be, but it is possible.

So in addition to the different structures physics describes – the various kinds of fields and particles and spacetime itself – there is an overall structure of inter-reference between these kinds of structure, that physics takes for granted and has not yet analyzed.

Do you still think that this could go beyond epistemology? If so, how?

You're right, I admit it. Since I’m trying to justify a very broad, all-encompassing viewpoint on physical structure, bringing it down to specifics is hard. The problem is that there’s been almost no analysis of what’s required to provide a context for any particular type of measurement.

I agree, and I find it irritating. People post their measurements based on complex instrumentation, but there's no way to critically review the operation of the instrument because it is treated as a black box that transparently generates data from measured-phenomena.

Politically we have a long way to go before we evolve the kinds of structure that are not dominating and relegating. We might be able to learn something about this from physics, which everywhere maintains a remarkable balance between many kinds of structure and many kinds of randomness.

Technically, I think you're right - but I think a lot of physics models do reproduce domination-subjugation logics. Ultimately, I don't think there are determinate structures in physical events. Yes, particles and objects interact deterministically but the extent to which these are structured into coherent systems is a product of human interpolation, I think. At the empirical level, all that can be observed actually are matter-energy or energy-energy interactions, I think. To move beyond that to generate systems-models and generalizations you have to move beyond empirical observation to theoretical synthesis. I'm not sure why people find it important to attribute a pattern to the physicalities themselves once they've observed them. I think it has something to do with a culture of commodity-fetishism where knowledge is only validated if it is "of the object" instead of "of the observer."

I think the quest for unification in physics has been useful up to a point, but is basically misleading. My argument suggests that an observable world can not be based on a single type of structure. What’s needed is an understanding of how different types of structure relate to each other, and why. Notably, for example, the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field.

Yes, I wonder about field-interactions too - but I still wonder why you call them structures? If something interacts with multiple other interactants simultaneously or in the course of time, does that justify describing it as a "structure?" Or does "structure" specifically refer to something whose primary function is to determine other things?