What is the relationship between matter and information?

[bohm2]

"It from bit" or "Bit from it"

I've always had some difficulties understanding the whole concept of information:

Is matter really just information? Does one mean just our information about matter? Isn't all information embodied in some more basic "physical" stuff? Doesn't information require something to be informed? Can information be "active" (as per Bohm/Hiley's proposed "informational field" that guide the particle)? Nevertheless, I thought this would be an interesting poll. So, if you had to choose, which of the 3 options do you find more reasonable:

1. Information is more primitive/fundamental than matter/physical/energy ('it from bit')
2. Matter/physical is more primitive/fundamental than information ('bit from it')
3. None of the above (e.g. neither is more primitive/fundamental than the other or the question is meaningless)

Some interesting quotes for both positions:

I. IT FROM BIT:

Wheeler: It is not unreasonable to imagine that information sits at the core of physics, just as it sits at the core of a computer. It from bit. Otherwise put, every it—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits... ‘It from bit’ symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom–a very deep bottom, in most instances–an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes/no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.

Wheeler’s most pointed suggestion is that “information” can’t be defined in terms of “matter” or “energy” and that it may therefore be as or more fundamental than either “matter” or “energy”, the most basic notions in physics.

Introducing the Computable Universe
http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1206.0376.pdf

...perhaps information is more primitive than matter, underpinning the laws of physics...

The physics of downward causation
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/vi...44318.001.0001/acprof-9780199544318-chapter-2

II. BIT FROM IT:

With his aphorism ‘it from bit’, Wheeler argued that anything physical, any it, ultimately derives its very existence entirely from discrete detector-elicited information-theoretic answers to yes or no quantum binary choices: bits. In this spirit, many theorists now give ontological primacy to information. To test the idea, I identify three distinct kinds of information and find that things, not information, are primary. Examination of what Wheeler meant by ‘it’ and ‘bit’ then leads me to invert his aphorism: ‘bit’ derives from ‘it’...

Bit from It
http://platonia.com/bit_from_it.pdf

Here are some words which, however legitimate and necessary in application, have no place in a formulation with any pretension to physical precision: system, apparatus, environment, microscopic, macroscopic, reversible, irreversible, observable, information,
measurement...Then that notion should not appear in the formulation of fundamental theory. Information? Whose information? Information about what?

Against ‘measurement’
http://duende.uoregon.edu/~hsu/blogfiles/bell.pdf

 

[Ken G]

Given my other posts, you will no doubt not be surprised that I conclude that both "it" and "bit" rely on each other to exist. I think Wheeler is right on target that the universe is participatory, and that physics is about information, but we must also recognize that what we mean by "the universe" is not actually the universe "out there", it is precisely the universe that we interact with. We know about the universe by interacting with it, and so our every language about physical reality is actually a language about our own participation in physics. The universe is not participatory, we are, and we are the physicists too.

Thus to object to information being housed in our minds, rather than in the universe itself, is to miss that the two are not so easily separated after all. Yet there should need to be some "it" for the "bit" to exist, while there needs to be "bits" for us to know anything about "it", so both require the other to mean anything-- or else neither term belongs in any language. In the immortal words of the Talking Heads: "that word does not exist in any language, it will never be uttered by a human mouth." Hence, neither "it" nor "bit" is more fundamental-- they each give the other its meaning, and if you push either one too far to their extreme, they disintegrate into the other. It is the place where they interact that the concepts bear fruit.

 

[audioloop]

"IT"

 

[Gold Barz]

What does Wheeler's "it from bit" say about consciousness or subjective experience?

 

[bohm2]

At times I kinda get confused with these arguments. But my guess, is that Wheeler would probably say that physics doesn't have much to say on subjectivity? Consider this quote by him:

Caution: "Consciousness" has nothing whatsover to do with the quantum process. We are dealing with an event that makes itself known by an irreversible act of amplification, by an indelible record, an act of registration. Does that record subsequently enter into the "consciousness" of some person, some animal or some computer? Is that the first step into translating the measurement into "meaning" meaning regarded as "the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those who communicate." Then that is a separate part of the story, important but not to be confused with "quantum phenomena." (Wheeler, 1983).

Law without law
http://what-buddha-said.net/library/pdfs/wheeler_law_without_law.pdf

But then again, I'm not sure? I have a lot of trouble understanding some of their positions. There seems to be this dualism that really confuses me: bit (information) vs it (matter), mind vs body, configuration space vs 3-space, etc. What makes it even more difficult is there seems to be this implicit assumption that we really have a clear conception of what we mean by "matter" or "information" is. But I'm not sure we do?

 

[Paulibus]

... Do you know any Latin, William?"
" Jus' a bit," said William, guardedly. "I've learned a lot, but I don't know much."

I think this confession from children's literature just about sums up how little is known (including by the erudite Wheeler) about the fancied link between information and physical reality. To clarify what is supposed, I'd like to have explained exactly how the information in the quote, lost if all our books were to fall through an event horizon around a collapsing mass concentration, would nevertheless remain smeared out, as it were, all over the horizon. Are material binary bits scattered like confetti all over the horizon? And if they're material, why don't they also fall through it?

 

[ConradDJ]

Is matter really just information? Does one mean just our information about matter? Isn't all information embodied in some more basic "physical" stuff? Doesn't information require something to be informed?

I posted some thoughts about this a few years ago... currently working on a paper that talks about how information needs to be defined, in physics. The main thing is that if we define information quantitatively, in terms of “bits”, we can conveniently bypass the quantum measurement problem – but end up without a clear connection between information and “matter” or any other aspect of physics.

For me the basic question is how information actually does get defined, in the physical world. We know it does, because we can see it and communicate it. But we don’t yet have a good framework for understanding how measurement and communication actually work.

This is from a draft of my current paper –

Despite all we know about physical interaction at the quantum level, we still conceive these basic information-processes essentially the same way Plato and Aristotle did. We talk about information as if it were built into the intrinsic nature of things in themselves, as if it were inherently well-defined, apart from any context. In this framework, to measure something essentially means to copy data out of the object onto something else, like making an impression of the object on a wax tablet, or recording its length with a ruler. To observe a thing means to make a copy of it in your mind.

But at a fundamental level, there are no physical processes corresponding to this notion of how information works. Making copies of given data is something that hardly happens in the physical world, though living organisms have found ways to do it, as the basis for their evolution. And human culture depends on our being able to reproduce information, in many different ways.

But the basic information-processes in physics are quite different. They're not about replicating information that's already objectively pre-defined, in itself. Instead, they're about setting up contexts of interaction between particular local systems that can physically define the information in the first place.

 

[chiro]

Regardless of the model for causality and regardless of the actual constraints used whether they are implicitly or explicitly defined, language is still required not only for the ability to represent and describe something, but also to compute.

Computers work with information and the structure must be known to the actual processing unit in order for a computation to take place.

This requires essentially one to describe the linguistic representation of the information being processed and thus indirectly a natural decomposition in the context of the computation exists.

Everything is completely based on a descriptive capacity, and the structure of the language itself as well as the entire spectrum of decomposition tells the scope of the analysis and subsequent computation that may be performed on the information.

Decomposition is the basis for analysis. It doesn't matter if the language is a spoken one, an aural one, a written one, a mathematical one: there has to exist methods to decompose things process them in some kind of decomposed state and then synthesize the results to bring something new.

For a programmer that is used to dealing with myriads of data structures all day, this is not really something out of the ordinary especially if the structures themselves are complicated.

The thing is though that computations at the fundamental level need to deal with some kind of representation of some sort and this requires a descriptional capacity.

 

[cobalt124]

It from bit. Damn, I've got it the wrong way round. Bit from it. It is more fundamental. I don't see how it could be any other way. Why would bit be more fundamental? Why would it be both? The only reason I can see is to give a better way of describing how the universe works, not what it fundamentally is. I don't see what previous posts are saying about actual reality. If it's just about usefulness of concepts then I don't see a big issue.

Could someone change my it from bit vote to a bit from it vote please?

 

[Paulibus]

Chiro, you have it exactly right: language is the key requirement because, as you put it, a "descriptional capacity" is needed --- I hope you mean to define and deal with information (and also its converse, entropy).

Well, it just so happens that such a capacity is innate in human beings, to a degree that far exceeds that in our fellow animals. Courtesy, somehow, of Evolution; we don't know exactly how and when we were lucky enough to evolve this capacity, but we now have it, in spades. Hence the inordinate length of threads in this forum about such matters as the philosophy of that most arcane, elegant and useful language, mathematics.

And indeed, hence physics and these forums, in which our attempted quantitative description of the contingent physical circumstances we find ourseves in is discussed. Not to be taken as engraved in stone as discovered truth, since the same information about circumstances may often be adequately described by us talkative primates in several distict dialects.

 

[chiro]

The important thing, building on Paulibus' comment is that descriptions are relative and not in a vacuum.

Different descriptions of something have relativity with other descriptions in the way of the similarities and differences with respect both the universal set of all descriptions, as well as with what something has been related to. So if we look at A compared to B of which both are in U, then A can not be just related to B, but also to U as well.

It is a subtle point, but when the notion of relativity is lost (i.e. the intent to always compare possible descriptions together for some kind of utility and to ascertain the advantages and disadvantages of one over the other), then that is the situation that creates a vacuum and all point of reference (which requires relativity is lost).

In the context of the computation, computational models are also relative to one another just like descriptions of information are, which is an important to consideration for constructing any argument or any discourse over why one computational model is preferable or not preferable to another.

 

[Paulibus]

Again, I agree that:

The important thing...is that descriptions are relative and not in a vacuum

as a practical matter for driving our understanding deeper, in physics as well as in writing computer software.

But it is also important to keep in mind that relative descriptions only describe and inform; they do not uncover what is. Indeed, I suspect that we have become overconfident about the use of the dangerous words "are" and "is", as well as about the deep importance of information, which is easily coloured by the fallible perspectives of folk who ferret information out of our complicated world.

Such overconfidence may well be derived from the simplicity, apparent truth and everyday utility of the information in, say; "this rose is red" — a statement that conveys quite different information when unpacked from the contrasting perspectives of a poet or a physicist.

Even the perspectives of respected Billy Thomson, who maintained that "atoms are vortices in the luminiferous ether", and of those who have more recently proposed that "atoms are tiny strings" may mislead if this information doesn’t lead to predicted phenomena that are later confirmed.

Information as a deep aspect of reality seems to me an idea that can be taken too seriously, especially in physics, where the Baconian tradition of making predictions and confirming them seems both necessary and sufficient.

I think "it from bit" is nonsense. How can such a claim be tested?

 

[chiro]

Again, I agree that: as a practical matter for driving our understanding deeper, in physics as well as in writing computer software.

But it is also important to keep in mind that relative descriptions only describe and inform; they do not uncover what is. Indeed, I suspect that we have become overconfident about the use of the dangerous words "are" and "is", as well as about the deep importance of information, which is easily coloured by the fallible perspectives of folk who ferret information out of our complicated world.

Such overconfidence may well be derived from the simplicity, apparent truth and everyday utility of the information in, say; "this rose is red" — a statement that conveys quite different information when unpacked from the contrasting perspectives of a poet or a physicist.

Even the perspectives of respected Billy Thomson, who maintained that "atoms are vortices in the luminiferous ether", and of those who have more recently proposed that "atoms are tiny strings" may mislead if this information doesn’t lead to predicted phenomena that are later confirmed.

Information as a deep aspect of reality seems to me an idea that can be taken too seriously, especially in physics, where the Baconian tradition of making predictions and confirming them seems both necessary and sufficient.

I think "it from bit" is nonsense. How can this claim be tested?

Anyone can measure something: that isn't really hard at all. You can ask anyone to observe what is happening and if you need an instrument to do it, and the analysis needs to be carefully done, then so be it.

But without any kind of relative analysis, it means absolutely nothing.

If I give you a string of random digits in an unknown language and you look at it, then it will probably mean absolutely nothing to you. If it's in a language you understand, then it will be decodable, but still won't contain anything that's useful.

But when the language has context, then it's an entirely different matter. When it has context it has a relative aspect to it, and the relative aspect means that the description can be differentiated from other descriptions that are otherwise also realizable but not: in short the context is a product of having a point of reference.

The way that measurement done now has no context.

If you want to give it context, the thing that needs to be done is to consider the alternatives and then consider any discussion as to why one should be realizable or preferred over another.

You ask how can it be tested? Well the thing is that you are forced to work under uncertainty: it is the foundation of science. We assume uncertainty and do the best we can.

The other thing that you have to realize is that most of science is inductive: we take results and try to wildly extrapolate general principles in most cases from said results, observations, and measurements.

One needs more than simple tests: you can measure all you want, but without a solid argument or any comprehension, the whole point is completely moot.

The linguistic argument is simple: in order to analyze something you need a descriptive capacity. Without a descriptive capacity you can not analyze: without analysis, you can't compute. Without computation, nothing can be transformed, or evolve.

The argument is based on our current theory and definition for a computer and subsequent ideas are found in computer science and linguistics.

It makes sense at least from some point and does not require measurement of any kind to understand.

If you want to test this in the lab, construct a statistical test to do so and perform the test on your data: that's how you can test the assumption. First come up with a null hypothesis and a normal hypothesis, differentiate the region for acceptance or failure to accept the null hypothesis and publish your findings. That's it.

But despite this, it would be interesting to ask you why the above assertion is wrong in any way whether partial or non-partial.

 

[Whovian]

As the device I'm on can't load PDFs, I can't read the computible universe argument. However, I'm fairly certain Quantum Mechanics' randomness prevents the Universe from being computed, as it's been proven that software algorithms can't generate any sort of randomness.

 

[Whovian]

(Again, I can't edit posts on this flippin' thing, but I wish to make a correction. I didn't mean to call the Universe computible, but rather, the properties of it and its contents.)

 

[chiro]

As the device I'm on can't load PDFs, I can't read the computible universe argument. However, I'm fairly certain Quantum Mechanics' randomness prevents the Universe from being computed, as it's been proven that software algorithms can't generate any sort of randomness.

The flow-control need not be bound through deterministic paradigms: the flow-control can be based on non-classical means.

The argument relates to the representation of information having to have some kind of discrete representation and this being a requirement for a computation under paradigm to actually manifest.

Again, the issues is about requiring a descriptional capacity for analysis of any sort, but the requirement of a Turing machine or deterministic equivalent to underly the computational model for the universe.

 

[Paulibus]

Chiro: What "above assertion" are you talking about? the one that "is wrong in any way whether partial or non-partial"? I can't see anything wrong or even controversial in what you posted!

 

[chiro]

Chiro: What "above assertion" are you talking about? the one that "is wrong in any way whether partial or non-partial"? I can't see anything wrong or even controversial in what you posted!

The nature of descriptive capacity being required for computation regardless of the flow-control or transformation mechanism used in the computation.

 

[bohm2]

I thought these were interesting responses that would be in support of option 3, I think? Todd L. Duncan writes:

What if “analog” and “digital” are labels that apply to the quantitative formal systems we use to help describe our experience with reality, but ultimate reality transcends complete characterization by any particular formal system, and therefore also transcends these labels?...

Penrose reaches a similar conclusion but uses the "properties" of the mental to arrive at the following suggestion:

(If) the phenomenon of consciousness (or mental experience) can arise only in the presence of some non-computational physical processes in the brain...(then)...one can presume...that such (putative) non-computational processes would also have to be inherent in the action of inanimate matter, since living human brains are ultimately composed of the same material, satisfying the same physical laws, as are the inaminate objects of the universe. We must therefore ask two things. First, why is it that the phenomenon of consciousness appears to occur, as far as we know, only in or relation to brains-although we should not rule out the possibility that consciousness might be present also in other appropriate physical systems? Second, we must ask how could it be that such a seemingly important (putative) ingredient as non-computational behaviour, presumed to be inherent-potentially, at least-in the actions of all material things, so far has entirely escaped the notice of physicists? No doubt the answer to the first question has something to do with the subtle and complex organization of the brain...with regard to the second question, we must indeed expect that vestiges of such non-computability should also be present, at some indiscernible level, in inaminate matter...For physics to be able to accommodate something as foreign to our current physical picture as is the phenomenon of consciousness, we must expect a profound change-one that alters the very underpinnings of our philosophical viewpoint as to the nature of reality.

So he is arguing here that such properties cannot possibly emerge from a complex system like the mind-brain if vestiges of such properties are not present at least, in primitive form in "inaminate matter". Assuming Penrose is correct, doesn't that rule out the possibility of being able to model such processes?

 

[bohm2]

Even though I'm not sure this is really panpsychism (maybe panprotopsychism?), I thought this PhD dissertation just published was interesting and kind of relates to this topic. The author writes:

I argue that consciousness emerges from proto-consciousness, the fundamental property that is disposed to give rise to consciousness. Proto-consciousness is not an arbitrarily posited property; following an important contemporary approach in neuroscience (the integrated information account), I understand proto-consciousness as information...I solve the combination problem that by adopting Giuolio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness and demonstrating emerging higher-order conscious properties just is a system integrating information. Thus information is the fundamental property that, when integrated in a system such as a human being, is consciousness.

Naturalized Panpsychism: An Alternative to Fundamentalist Physicalism and Supernaturalism
http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1207&context=dissertations_mu

 

[ConradDJ]

There are quite a few entries in the latest FQXi essay contest on this theme, including one I wrote -- An Observable World.

The idea is that a fundamental theory in physics needs to address two distinct kinds of structure -- both the structure of what we think of as objective reality, and also the structure of the informational environment that makes facts measurable and communicable. I argue that both QM and Relativity can be seen as making the information-structure the more fundamental of the two. However, because observable information is inherently contextual, it can't be understood in terms of context-independent "bits".

Another of these essays I found interesting -- Toward an Informational Mechanics by Karl Coryat. It advocates for an "It from Bit" approach, but also takes seriously the fact that physical information is contextual.

 

[bohm2]

I noticed in your previous thread in your link you mentioned Rovelli's "relational QM". Tononi notes some points of similarities between his model and Rovelli's but there's one thing I never understood about all relational/contextual models: Don't relations need relata or intrinsic properties on some level, to ground them? It seems to me, that one can argue that things can't be relational all the way down?

 

[apeiron]

I noticed in your previous thread in your link you mentioned Rovelli's "relational QM". Tononi notes some points of similarities between his model and Rovelli's but there's one thing I never understood about all relational/contextual models: Don't relations need relata or intrinsic properties on some level, to ground them? It seems to me, that one can argue that things can't be relational all the way down?

Co-incidentally, Ellis addresses this in another FQXi essay.

Short answer, reductionist take the view that properties are intrinsic, but holists see properties as contextual.

So relata, along with the relations, are all jointly part of the whole that emerges.

Recognising Top-Down Causation by George F. R. Ellis

One of the basic assumptions implicit in the way physics is usually done is that all causation flows in a bottom up fashion, from micro to macro scales. However this is wrong in many cases in biology, and in particular in the way the brain functions. Here I make the case that it is also wrong in the case of digital computers – the paradigm of mechanistic algorithmic causation - and in many cases in physics, ranging from the origin of the arrow of time to the process of quantum state preparation. I consider some examples from classical physics; from quantum physics; and the case of digital computers, and then explain why it this possible without contradicting the causal powers of the underlying micro physics. Understanding the emergence of genuine complexity out of the underlying physics depends on recognising this kind of causation. It is a missing ingredient in present day theory; and taking it into account may help understand such mysteries as the measurement problem in quantum mechanics:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1337

 

[bohm2]

I'm not sure Ellis is adressing this issue? The question is whether information derives from underlying "objects/things", rather than vice-versa; that is, is physics only a theory of the relative information that systems have about each other so that this information exhausts everything we can say about the world as Rovelli argues?

or

Is such information underlain by other stuff so that there is a bearer of relational properties that isn't exhausted by it's relational properties: so that it must have some intrinsic properties, etc.

Barbour's piece I linked above discusses the second option pretty well, I think:

But whatever authors may mean by information, quantum states still give us probabilities for outcomes in the form of factual information about things. Moreover, the probabilites themselves are determined by observation of things. I therefore conclude that things are the ground of being and constitute the ontological basement. Reality creates information and is separate from it. Once this has been recognized, we see that, for all its importance, information theory can in no way change what has always been the starting point of science: that structured things exist, in the first place in our mind and, as a reasonable conjecture given the remarkable correlations in our mental experiences, in an external world. Moreover, the proper task of ontology is to establish the structure of things.

Then again, I might be misunderstanding.

 

[apeiron]

Is such information underlain by other stuff so that there is a bearer of relational properties that isn't exhausted by it's relational properties: so that it must have some intrinsic properties, etc.

So you don't see any problem with the idea it is turtles all the way down? To me, I take that as a no go theorem really.

Barbour's piece I linked above discusses the second option pretty well, I think:

...no way change what has always been the starting point of science: that structured things exist, in the first place in our mind and, as a reasonable conjecture given the remarkable correlations in our mental experiences, in an external world.

Structure might exist, but why call it a thing rather than a process or a dynamical equilbrium? What justifies such a sweeping statement by Barbour?

Is it a surprise that if you model the world in terms of "thingness" (ie: standard issue atomism and mechanical causality) then the world does appear to correlate to that vision to a remarkable degree. Until it doesn't. Until you run into QM, mind, and pretty much any real-life complexity.

 

[ConradDJ]

I'm not sure Ellis is adressing this issue? The question is whether information derives from underlying "objects/things", rather than vice-versa; that is, is physics only a theory of the relative information that systems have about each other so that this information exhausts everything we can say about the world as Rovelli argues?

or is such information underlain by other stuff so that there is a bearer of relational properties that isn't exhausted by it's relational properties: so that it must have some intrinsic properties, etc.

Barbour's piece I linked above discusses the second option pretty well, I think:

"But whatever authors may mean by information, quantum states still give us probabilities for outcomes in the form of factual information about things. Moreover, the probabilites themselves are determined by observation of things. I therefore conclude that things are the ground of being and constitute the ontological basement. Reality creates information and is separate from it."

I agree that top down vs bottom-up is a different issue. For Ellis and Apeiron the two issues are closely related, but that's not the way I look at it. Both "top-down" and "bottom up" are ways of describing the world from an outside (objective) viewpoint. My argument is that this viewpoint needs to be supplemented by the "observer's" viewpoint -- by which I don't mean the subjective contents of someone's mind, but the physical world "out there" as seen from a particular place in a particular moment, in the web of interaction.

I would respond to Barbour -- Yes, the information content we get from interaction consists of facts about things; yes, we can interpret our interaction as the observation of real things with intrinsic properties. This is a very important aspect of our informational environment. However it does not provide any logical basis for the conclusion he draws.

Physics traditionally ignores the question of HOW this information content actually gets defined and measured through physical interaction. I argue that the context-structure that makes this possible is just as important as the fact-structure, and that in principle it's not reducible to the fact-structure. Therefore a fundamental theory needs to deal with both kinds of structure. I go on to argue that this dual structure is just what we find both in Relativity and in QM.

So (like Ellis and Apeiron) I don't think there's an Either/Or here. Rather, information is about things, but it's ALSO communication between viewpoints. I argue that the communications structure is ultimately fundamental -- but not in the sense that physical things should be eliminated from theory and replaced by what Coryat calls "standalone information".

Don't relations need relata or intrinsic properties on some level, to ground them? It seems to me, that one can argue that things can't be relational all the way down?

The situation is something like -- which came first, chicken or egg? What's fundamental in that case is neither chicken nor egg but the evolutionary process of self-replication. Here we're asking which is basic, real things-in-themselves or relational information. But what's basic is the functionality of the communicative environment that can support observable information about things.

As to the question about "all the way down" -- the origins of self-replicating systems are difficult to envision, but we don't imagine that suddenly there appeared well-defined organisms that could create copies of themselves. In a similar way it's difficult to envision the primitive stages of communicative interaction and the kinds of information-content it conveyed. But I don't think there's any logical basis for assuming there have to be well-defined things-in-themselves at bottom, as you and Barbour suggest.

Supposing you do begin with some kind of real things, with well-defined intrinsic properties -- consider what you would need to add to your picture to make these things and properties physically measurable. I think you'll find that a difficult problem. And if you take it seriously that (as QM strongly suggests) ALL information about things in our universe is apparently not only measurable (no "hidden variables") but indeed actually "measured" by something, then my position may seem to make more sense.

Thanks, I appreciate your pursuing these questions -- Conrad

 

[bohm2]

But I don't think there's any logical basis for assuming there have to be well-defined things-in-themselves at bottom, as you and Barbour suggest.

I thought you would agree with this, as it’s for the same reasons (if I understand you) that you don’t buy the “standalone information” view. I just can’t see how something can consist of nothing but “relational structure” all the way down to the "bottom". The only model I can think of where such a view was entertained was Leibniz's with respect to space. I voted for option 3 (none of the above) because I still see some form of "dualism" at the bottom level as currently understood (e.g. wave function in configuration space and particle in 3D space).This point by Monton spells out this "dualism":

We have two disconnected spaces, with presumably no causal connection between the particles in the one space and the field in the other space, and yet the stuff in the two spaces is evolving in tandem. Presumably there is a nomic connection between the stuff in the two spaces, which supports counterfactuals of the following form: if the stuff in one space had evolved differently, the stuff in the other space would have evolved differently. But having that nomic connection without a causal connection makes it all the more mysterious how these spaces are associated with each other.

Quantum Mechanics and 3N Dimensional Space
http://spot.colorado.edu/~monton/BradleyMonton/Articles_files/qm%203n%20d%20space%20final.pdf

 

[Maui]

Structure might exist, but why call it a thing rather than a process or a dynamical equilbrium? What justifies such a sweeping statement by Barbour?

Is it a surprise that if you model the world in terms of "thingness" (ie: standard issue atomism and mechanical causality) then the world does appear to correlate to that vision to a remarkable degree. Until it doesn't. Until you run into QM, mind, and pretty much any real-life complexity.

Agreed completely. At a fundamental level, the ultimate constituents of the world are beyond comprehension. It may well be our evolutionary inaptness to deal with such situations. Discoveries in fundamental physics and neuroscience cast doubt over the idea that we as humans will one day be able to understand anything at all in depth and detail. I thus voted 'none of the above'.

 

[apeiron]

The only model I can think of where such a view was entertained was Leibniz's with respect to space.

Peircean semiotics is one such ontological model where it is indeed "all relata" and holistic emergence.

Monton: We have two disconnected spaces, with presumably no causal connection between the particles in the one space and the field in the other space, and yet the stuff in the two spaces is evolving in tandem.

If you end up with a disconnected dualism that makes no sense to anyone, surely it is time to retrace your steps to discover where you went wrong?

 

[apeiron]

You cite Barbour at the beginning - http://platonia.com/bit_from_it.pdf - and here he is talking about the difference that a holistic approach makes.

Reality emerges as a self-organising sum over histories where global coherence determines local instances (even as it is also, bottom-up, constituted of them).

His resulting law of inertia became the prop of reductionism; it suggests that the most essential property of a body can be established by abstracting away everything in the universe that is observable. The catch, all too often forgotten, is that an inertial frame of reference is needed to define the motion. If one asks after its origin, one is led to an account of motion in which configurations, not bland empty space, determine local inertial motion (Appendix B). I believe this undermines reductionism. It also calls for a definition of the universe. I define it [7] as a set of possible configurations that nature has selected for reasons, perhaps of simplicity and consistency, that we have not yet fathomed.

So the OP poll needs a fourth option - the holistic story of "It from bit and bit from it" that covers such a fully relational, strongly emergent, view of the causality.

 

[bohm2]

If you end up with a disconnected dualism that makes no sense to anyone, surely it is time to retrace your steps to discover where you went wrong?

Nobody is claiming this is the final picture. It's the model we currently have. In QM, it's the wave-particle duality, in neuroscience/cognitive sciences it's the mind-body problem and quantum gravity is another area that awaits some unification between QM and gravity. What exactly needs to be done to allow for unification is an open question. There's nothing that excludes the possibility that nature is dualistic or monistic, etc. This assumes that a linguistic/symbolic chimp like us has the cognitive powers to probe nature deeply enough.

So the OP poll needs a fourth option - the holistic story of "It from bit and bit from it" that covers such a fully relational, strongly emergent, view of the causality.

Option 3

 

[apeiron]

What exactly needs to be done to allow for unification is an open question.

Yes, so we need to be considering answers that could possibly work.

Monton points out the Liebnizian absurdity that results from standard thinking - you end up with two realms that must be completely in correlation, but with no possible causal connection. Once you are up the cul de sac that leads to windowless monads, time to back up and see where your thinking took a wrong direction.

There's nothing that excludes the possibility that nature is dualistic or monistic, etc. This assumes that a linguistic/symbolic chimp like us has the cognitive powers to probe nature deeply enough.

On the contrary, we should be smart enough to recognise a no go theorem when we run up against it.

Dualism has to be excluded on the grounds of logic if we find ourselves saying that there both must be an interaction, and there can't be an interaction. Calling this impasse "mysterious" is just avoiding the issue.

 

[bohm2]

Dualism has to be excluded on the grounds of logic if we find ourselves saying that there both must be an interaction, and there can't be an interaction. Calling this impasse "mysterious" is just avoiding the issue.

It kinds of depends on what one means by interaction. And not that I'm necessarily suggesting that there's a connection in the problems listed above, but consider quantum entanglement. You have what seems to look like an invisible, seemingly instantaneous wire/hidden signal between two particles. As some physicists have described it:

...whatever causes entanglement does not travel from one place to the other; the category of “place” simply isn't meaningful to it. It might be said to lie *beyond* spacetime. Two particles that are half a world apart are, in some deeper sense, right on top of each other.

Of course, one doesn't directly "see" any entanglements, just the correlations but then what is responsible for such instantaneous correlations? They are not the normal classical "interactions" as traditionally understood. All I'm saying is that we should not set apriori limits on some metaphysical reasons of what type of -ism (monism/dualism) there is. With respect to mysterianism/cognitive closure, , I'm not saying that we should abandon hope but be open to the possibility, as many have argued, that like all other animals we have cognitive limitations. There may be stuff that we will never know. Areas where we seem to have little or no progress (philosophical questions like free will, MBP/"hard" problem, etc.) may be beyond our capabilities.

 

[ConradDJ]

I argue that the communications structure is ultimately fundamental -- but not in the sense that physical things should be eliminated from theory and replaced by what Coryat calls "standalone information".
...
But I don't think there's any logical basis for assuming there have to be well-defined things-in-themselves at bottom, as you and Barbour suggest.

I thought you would agree with this, as it’s for the same reasons (if I understand you) that you don’t buy the “standalone information” view. I just can’t see how something can consist of nothing but “relational structure” all the way down to the "bottom"

I agree with you in part... in general, wherever there’s “relational structure” there are also things of some kind IN the relationships. I don’t believe in “standalone information” for the same reason I don’t believe in “standalone things”.

Though it’s intuitively obvious to us that relationships imply things, it’s not intuitively obvious that things imply relationships. It’s very easy for us to imagine objects existing in and of themselves, with intrinsic properties, independent of anything else in the world. (In fact, that was Ockham’s criterion for the “reality” of a thing – that you could still imagine it as existing even if everything else in the universe were no longer there.) My thought is that the notion of things-in-themselves is nonsense, apart from a system of relationships that communicates information about them. That's why I like Rovelli's Relational QM.

This debate tends to be framed – Either the world is made of Things, Or the world is made of Relationships. But I believe relationships only exist because of things, and it’s equally true that things exist only in and through their relationships. The latter part of that sentence is what needs emphasis, against our “common sense” intuition.

As to the foundations – I tend to imagine the low-level physics in terms of graph theory. There we have nodes and edges, but a good deal of structure needs to evolve before we have anything that resembles a physical thing (particle) in dynamic spacetime relationships with other things. So the lowest level may have a kind of “duality” that’s a precursor to the thing/relationship dichotomy. That’s what I had in mind by bringing up chickens and eggs in the previous post.

Thanks again – Conrad

 

[apeiron]

It kinds of depends on what one means by interaction. And not that I'm necessarily suggesting that there's a connection in the problems listed above, but consider quantum entanglement. You have what seems to look like an invisible, seemingly instantaneous wire/hidden signal between two particles. As some physicists have described it:

Yes. And surely this proves my point? It illustrates the conviction that ontic dualism cannot possibly be the case and so there must be some "hidden" non-local interaction.

So if we accept dualism is a no go, then that means we can get on with considering the alternatives.

Holistic causality also recognises contextual causation - global or top-down acting constraints. And that at least fits generally with QM and decoherence type interpretations.

To get back to the OP, I very much like Davies arguments which you cited right at the start.

See also the paper which was the basis for that chapter... http://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0703/0703041.pdf

He makes clear the consequences for theory of the fact that the universe's information is materially constrained by holographic bounds. It from bit presumes an interactive ontology. It is about the questions the universe, as a globally decohering context, can ask of its specific space time locales. So, the universe may be "made of bits", but it is also forming those bits. And there is thus a material limit to the crispness of those bits.

 

[chiro]

So, the universe may be "made of bits", but it is also forming those bits. And there is thus a material limit to the crispness of those bits.

One thing that I think is good to note, is that all information is isomorphic to a binary representation: in other words, you take any information in one representation and you can then create an isomorphism to convert that to base-2 and back to it's original representation.

It's a very basic idea, but when people argue about information, it seems that sometimes this fact is lost.

 

[bohm2]

Yes. And surely this proves my point? It illustrates the conviction that ontic dualism cannot possibly be the case and so there must be some "hidden" non-local interaction.

I don't follow how this proves your point. Explain how a hidden non-local "interaction" shows dualism to be false. In fact, in the dualist ontology (e.g. wave in configuration space + particle in 3-D space) that is the mechanism of explanation. Wave guiding a particle via non-local "interaction"/guiding/informational field. Dualism occurs because one cannot project configuration space unto real space. By projecting configuration into real space, we lose information because that information was stored in the extra dimensions of configuration space. And I'm not saying dualism is true. All I'm saying is that there is no strong evidence whatsoever that it false. In fact, if one prefers an ontological interpretation, dualism is almost necessary (Albert's monistic Bohmian interpretation is an exception), unless one prefers MWI (which is anything but monistic).

 

[apeiron]

Wave guiding a particle via non-local "interaction"/guiding/informational field. Dualism occurs because one cannot project configuration space unto real space. By projecting configuration into real space, we lose information because that information was stored in the extra dimensions of configuration space.

Remember, it was you who cited Monton on this point...

Monton: We have two disconnected spaces, with presumably no causal connection between the particles in the one space and the field in the other space, and yet the stuff in the two spaces is evolving in tandem.

So in what sense is there "interaction" or guidance going on? You can't just smuggle in this kind of suggestion of a material connection between configuration space and real space while also apparently accepting Monton's argument.

 

[bohm2]

One can accept that both spaces represent some "real" physical structure (dualism) but not Monton's insistence of a local causal (material) connection. The Bohmian interpretation is an example (at least in some of its varieties). As long as one is willing to accept non-locality or in Bohm's ontology an information wave guiding the particle. It seems to me that the Bohm interpretation is an obvious example of a dualistic ontology? Even the Bohrian/Copenhagen is dualistic, in some sense but for different reasons. So I still don't see how you can argue that:

It illustrates the conviction that ontic dualism cannot possibly be the case

Maybe you can elaborate what you mean that dualism cannot possibly be the case. This is not to say that there are no problems with a dualist ontology or that at some "deeper" level the two may involve some type of monistic model as pointed out by Hiley:

Bohm draws attention to what he calls 'a serious problem' that confronts us when the theory is extended to deal with more than one particle. The problem with N particles is that the wave function is not in ordinary 3-dimensional space, but instead, in an abstract 3N-dimensional configuration space. While of course this space is logically consistent, the concept of a wave in a 3N-dimensional space is far from physically obvious. At this stage Bohm simply regarded his proposals as an artifice that could be used provisionally until a better theory emerges "in which everything is expressed once more in ordinary 3-dimensional space". This problem of configuration space was eventually resolved by introducing the notion of 'active information' . However there remains a deeper problem as Bohm points out:

Finally, our model in which wave and particle are regarded as basically different entities, which interact in a way that is not essential to their modes of being, does not seem very plausible. The fact that wave and particle are never found separately suggests instead that they are both different aspects of some fundamentally new kind of entity which is likely to be quite different from a simple wave or a simple particle, but which leads to these two limiting manifestations as approximations that are valid under appropriate conditions.

Some Remarks on the Evolution of Bohm's Proposals for an Alternative to Standard Quantum Mechanics.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/tpru/BasilHiley/History_of_Bohm_s_QT.pdf

 

[apeiron]

One can accept that both spaces represent some "real" physical structure (dualism) but not Monton's insistence of a local causal (material) connection.

Again, it was you who cited Monton's definition of dualism in post 27 in support of your belief in "some form of "dualism" at the bottom level as currently understood (e.g. wave function in configuration space and particle in 3D space)."

Monton was illustrating why dualism is a dead-end. And now you appear to be agreeing because you are arguing that some kind of causality must connect that which seems separate. The "relationship" cannot be just nomic.

There are two ways out of the impasse of ontic dualism. One is to seek some kind of local monism - for instance, a dual-aspect theory of reality such as panpsychism where reality has its material properties, but then also its "immaterial" ones such as mind.

Though not sure how that kind of monism could apply to QM. Unless this is how you view particles and pilot waves in BM. But then, that would be reducing the non-local aspect to a local aspect, making the pilot wave somehow an intrinsic property of the particle.

Then the other route out is the systems or triadic route where you have the two things, plus the thirdness that is their interaction.

So, as you quote Hiley:

The fact that wave and particle are never found separately suggests instead that they are both different aspects of some fundamentally new kind of entity which is likely to be quite different from a simple wave or a simple particle, but which leads to these two limiting manifestations as approximations that are valid under appropriate conditions.

Wave and particle are the global and local limits on what can be the case, and the reality is the emergent interaction.

Monton also appears to be arguing something like this kind of triadic story:

That’s how the wave function fits into my picture: the wave function doesn’t exist on its own, but it corresponds to a property possessed by the system of all the particles in the universe (or whatever closed system you’re interested in).

http://spot.colorado.edu/~monton/BradleyMonton/Articles_files/qm%203n%20d%20space%20final.pdf

So the wave function would be a global property of the system (and the particles the complementary local property?).

Of course, Monton only argues on the basis of a pure state closed system, which is not itself very realistic.

Anyway, my point was that dualism does indeed keep rearing its ugly head in physical models. People want to be good reductionists and have only monism, yet they keep ending up in duality. "It from bit" is yet another example. And then the obvious route out of this impasse is triadism, or systems causality, where it becomes about complementary limits on existence and then what emerges in the middle from the resulting interaction.

The alternative is dual aspect thinking, but this is just an attempt to shrink the problems of dualism so small that they seem to have been disappeared from the discussion.

 

[bohm2]

As I'm sure you know, there are monistic QM ontological models (GRW) but they have other problems. Not sure if you've read the piece but Maudlin's Ch. 4 in this link hi-lites some of the problems of wave function monism. Some interesting quotes:

The first is the widely cited formulation of the measurement problem by John Bell: ‘Either the wavefunction, as given by the Schrodinger equation, is not everything, or it is not right’ . Bell’s dilemma appears to offer us two quite distinct routes to solving the problem: either add to the ontology, so that the wavefunction is not everything, or change the dynamics, so that the linear evolution does not always obtain. Like many others, I took the first option to be the way to understand deBroglie–Bohm, and the second to be the way to understand GRW.

In sum, any theory whose physical ontology is a complete wavefunction monism automatically inherits a severe interpretational problem: if all there is the wavefunction, an extremely high-dimensional object evolving in some specified way, how does that account for the low-dimensional world of localized objects that we start off believing in, whose apparent behavior constitutes the explanandum of physics in the first place?

Can the World be Only Wavefunction?
http://bacon.umcs.lublin.pl/~lukasik/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Many.Worlds.EverettQuantum.Theory.and.Reality.pdf

There are two ways out of the impasse of ontic dualism. One is to seek some kind of local monism - for instance, a dual-aspect theory of reality such as panpsychism where reality has its material properties, but then also its "immaterial" ones such as mind.

Well some of the links above do argue for a type of ontology kind of like that but it can't be local and it wouldn't really be true panpsychism but panprotopsychism. Where the pan-proto stuff is really "information". This was also Bohm's metaphysics although he felt that at the deepest level there was 1 kind of stuff that goes beyond this. So, I'm guessing he would be sympathetic to Russell's neutral monism view. There is also experimental stuff at the macroscale (see thread I started before) that does show some aspects of this dualistic ontology seen in QM but even here at the bottom level both involve one kind of stuff (e.g. the silicon oil):

Wave-particle duality at the macroscale?
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=550729

 

[apeiron]

As I'm sure you know, there are monistic QM ontological models (GRW) but they have other problems.

Yes, I agree that monism has its deep problems too. Many try to make some kind of monism work because that seems like the correct reductionist thing to do. But it is hard to get away from all the evidence pointing towards some kind of concrete dualism - as for example between entangled and decohered states. But this in turn is what requires the third thing of the interaction - the causal machinery connecting the wavefunction to its collapse.

There is also experimental stuff at the macroscale (see thread I started before) that do show some aspects of this dualistic ontology seen in QM but even here at the bottom level both involve one kind of stuff (e.g. the silicon oil):

The walking droplet is a nice illustration of a triadic story. There are the two sources of action - the bouncing droplet and the vibrating surface. Then there is the emergent interaction which is the "reality" of the droplet that also walks. And the two-way nature of the causality is explicitly represented in the model. The "lean" on the motion of the droplet shapes the pattern of the waves, which in turn reinforces the lean of the droplet.

So maybe you would be happier with a distinction between nomic dualism and causal dualism here?

Monton was making the case against the nomic variety (which is what dualism normally ends up being, from Plato's forms down to Descartes res cogitans/res extensa). But maybe we agree that it must be duality + causality?

I am then arguing for a particular brand of dualism with causality. It has a bunch of particular features, such as a grounding in vagueness (or indeterminism), the assertion that the duality is about complementary limits rather than separate ontic realms, etc.

Coming back to the OP, an undiscussed issue is the role that temperature plays in all this. QM indeterminacy rules when the universe is small and hot, classical decoherence rules when it is large and cold. So the idea of counting the total number of bits - degrees of freedom - at the big bang is rather a fiction. Everything was melted into a vague quantum foam back then. It is only with hindsight, a frame of reference, that we can look back and say something about the number of crisp bits that "existed" within the original undifferentiated it-ness.

This is why I think more attention should be paid to Davies and his co-workers (like Davis and Lineweaver). Information theory has been too Platonic - based on fantasies of infinite computability and perfect crispess. They are now highlighting the material limits on information in any real world.

 

[bohm2]

I am then arguing for a particular brand of dualism with causality. It has a bunch of particular features, such as a grounding in vagueness (or indeterminism), the assertion that the duality is about complementary limits rather than separate ontic realms, etc.

I'm having trouble understanding causality? Do you think that QM can still allow us to claim that science is governed by a law/principle of causality? I'm asking because there are some previous papers that question this premise:

Causation as Folk Science
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod...olk-science.pdf?c=phimp;idno=3521354.0003.004

And recently there are some interesting papers that also seem to question our "normal" notion of causality/causal order. This is really interesting and yet confusing.

Quantum correlations with no causal order
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n10/pdf/ncomms2076.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121002145454.htm

Entanglement Between Photons that have Never Coexisted
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1209.4191v1.pdf
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=637454

The walking droplet is a nice illustration of a triadic story. There are the two sources of action - the bouncing droplet and the vibrating surface. Then there is the emergent interaction which is the "reality" of the droplet that also walks. And the two-way nature of the causality is explicitly represented in the model. The "lean" on the motion of the droplet shapes the pattern of the waves, which in turn reinforces the lean of the droplet.

It's interesting that in the QM version of the pilot wave, one of the differences is that such bi-directional "interaction" does not occur as the wave function acts upon the positions of the particles but, evolving as it does autonomously via Schrödinger's equation, the wave function is not acted upon by the particles.

 

[apeiron]

I'm having trouble understanding causality? Do you think that QM can still allow us to claim that science is governed by a law/principle of causality?

But you are talking about just the reduced definition of causality - the mechanist model that reduces Aristotle's four causes to simply an account in terms of local efficient/material cause.

So in the philosophy of physics, people talk about it as the principle of locality. The idea that all change is mechanically triggered by one body acting on another. The cause precedes its effects. Dynamics are constructed. Complexity is built bottom-up.

By definition, this is a model of causality that discards top-down acting global causes - Aristotle's formal and final cause.

So yes, quantum mechanics does create a severe problem for this simplified model of causality. It's interpretation demands a larger model that includes global (ie: non-local) causation.

Atomism, Newtonian dynamics, statistical thermodynamics and other physics models have proved very powerful because they do radically simplify the description of the world. They create a view in which there are localised particles with properties, and that is all you need to measure or know about.

The background or context is averaged away to become a void, an a-causal backdrop. Space and time become globalised degrees of freedom. There still has to be a global causality of course. The material atoms are ruled by inviolable laws of nature. So formal/final cause is still part of the picture in fact.

But these global causes, these fundamental laws, are mysterious in their workings. They somehow constrain all local material action, yet how they do that is not made clear. It is just "what happens". And also, unlike a fully interactive systems view of causality, the laws are not themselves developing or evolving as a result of what occurs locally.

So you are talking about a very particular brand of causality - one that is highly successful for certain kinds of modelling, but hardly what philosophers or those concerned with complexity would consider the whole story.

Quantum theory does require a larger model of causality to "make sense". But that is only the interpretation issue. The theory itself "works" because it reduces things as much as possible to a simplified mechanical account of reality - the deterministic evolution of a wavefunction. It is only the collapse (treated as a further level of triggering material cause, the action that makes the indeterminate aspects now definite) that has to be inserted into the story by hand.

So yes, QM does ultimately challenge an overly-simplified modelling of causality. But equally, it is also a supremely successful example of the mechanical approach - being all the better because it is so clear where the working model ends and the "metaphysics" of interpretation begins.

It's interesting that in the QM version of the pilot wave, one of the differences is that such bi-directionality does not occur as the wave function acts upon the positions of the particles but, evolving as it does autonomously via Schrödinger's equation, the wave function is not acted upon by the particles.

Yes, and this would be a big reason for rejecting it as a possible interpretation.

The idea of an unmoved mover is just very unnatural, whether we are talking about gods, Platonic forms, laws of nature, dualistic theories of mind, or BM pilot waves. This is top-down causality without the matching bottom-up half of the story.

Can you see the irony here? The more people insist that reality is mechanical - a story of local efficient causes acting bottom-up - the more this gets matched by an equal need to smuggle in a mysterious form of top-down causality into the story.

They find they have to treat mind as a further variety of substance, or the laws of nature as some kind of Platonic truth of unexplained origin. They insist there is no such thing as top-down causality - because no interaction is being modeled - and yet somehow an interaction is also happening. The mind does move the body. The laws of nature do determine the motions of a particle.

Philosophically, this dualism is incoherent. But scientifically it works OK because scientists can get by on pragmatically treating reality as an arrangement of local efficient causes - a bunch of bits, a collection of atoms, the parts of a machine, etc - and leave all the global questions (like who designed the machine, who made the atoms, who extracted the bits from the it) outside of the working model.

 

[bohm2]

The idea of an unmoved mover is just very unnatural, whether we are talking about gods, Platonic forms, laws of nature, dualistic theories of mind, or BM pilot waves. This is top-down causality without the matching bottom-up half of the story.

What about a catalyst in a chemical reaction?

 

[apeiron]

What about a catalyst in a chemical reaction?

Do catalysts exist in some Platonic sense as necessary ideas that create a material effect without being in turn affected by the fact there is that successful effect?

Life invents catalysts (enzymes) to exert top-down control over cellular chemistry. Industrial chemists do likewise to control some industrial process. There is thus a clear causal interaction here between the global purpose and local effect. If something didn't work, you couldn't even define it as a catalyst. If something was only working weakly, you would have reason to want to improve on its design.

I see that you are focusing on the fact that catalysts are "unmoved" as a result of "moving" someone else's reaction. But that is a classical reductionist POV. You are framing "catalysis" in terms of the local materials and ignoring the global purposes. And yet it is the ability to achieve a purpose that is crucial to distinguishing a chemical as also a "catalyst" in the first place.

 

[bohm2]

I see that you are focusing on the fact that catalysts are "unmoved" as a result of "moving" someone else's reaction.

Yes. Personally I still can't think of any reason why one should reject a particular model simply because of no back-reaction or bi-directionality. Same with dualism and I'm not sympathetic to it myself. I suppose one can hope/strive for some unification but must also recognize that this is at most a hope that might not be realized, either because nature really is not unified/monistic, or because human cognitive capacities are not capable of discovering that unity. Either alternative is a possibility.

 

[apeiron]

Yes. Personally I can't think of any reason why one should reject a particular model simply because of no back-reaction or one-way interacion. Same with dualism and I'm not sympathetic to it myself. I suppose one can hope for some unification but must also recognize that this is at most a hope that might not be realized, either because nature really is not unified/monistic, or because human cognitive capacities are not capable of discovering that unity. Either alternative is a possibility.

That response would be a lot more convincing if you could offer concrete examples of well-understood systems in which there is in fact a one-way interaction with no back-reaction.

Newton's third law alone would seem to suggest that this cannot be the case.

You keep using "we are just dumb chimps" as if it is a get out of jail card. But we are quite capable of criticising our models on the basis of what has worked, what hasn't.

Newton's laws clearly work. And they rule out an unmoved mover at the material level of causality.

A materialistic theory of life clearly works - to the extent we all now agree there is no need for a dualistic ontology.

The dumb chimp keeps working things out, taking one ontological route rather than another one. The job of philosophy - as the meta-level of the scientific discussion - should be to focus on the general principles of that continued proven success. There are alternatives now - like dualism, or other varieties of causal mysterianism - that we can safely consign to history.

 

[bohm2]

Newton's third law alone would seem to suggest that this cannot be the case. Newton's laws clearly work. And they rule out an unmoved mover at the material level of causality.

A lot of these arguments hinge on what the nature/ontology of the wave function is. Even within the pilot-wave camp, some like Goldstein don't regard the wave function as "physical" (whatever that means) but as nomological (a component of physical law). Others (Bohm/Hiley) as an objective informational field. Others treat the wave function as dispositional. Valentini and Maudlin somewhere in between and not very clear:

Quantum States for Primitive Ontologists
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8468/1/DemiChesterFinal.pdf

All models have strength and weaknesses. Same with non-pilot-wave models. You still haven't offered your explanation of the double-slit experiment, etc? Then there's the question about the applicability of third law in QM. Riggs who offers another pilot wave scenario makes this argument:

...the Schrodinger wave field is not a mediated field and therefore there is no familiar means to carry a classical reaction from the quantum particle to the wave field. The lack of a classical reaction on the wave field should not be viewed as a flaw in deBroglie–Bohm Theory as has been suggested by some commentators. It has also been mooted that a source term should be added to the Schrodinger equation in order to rectify the ‘problem’. This, however, would lead to a non-linear wave equation which would produce predictions in conflict with well established empirical results...Instead of viewing the absence of a classical reaction as a defect, it should be seen as a new insight into the quantum domain. Indeed, the late James Cushing argued that our intuitions about classical action-reaction might not be reliable in the quantum realm.

He then offers this suggestion:

It would seem suitable at this juncture to consider whether we might be looking at this problem from the wrong perspective. The discussion so far has been treating wave field and particle as separate but interacting entities for the purposes of the Third Law (like a charged particle in an external electric field). They are not, of course, separate entities and this needs to be taken into account. Equations 13 and 15 together indicate that the energy exchanges between particle and wave field are related to changes in the shape of the wave field. One part of a quantum system merely responds to changes in another part of the system without this being of a classically expected kind. It must be remembered that what is occurring in the quantum case are changes in a single entity.

Reflections on the deBroglie-Bohm quantum potential
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/local_papers/riggs_2008.pdf

 

[Pythagorean]

I've just skimmed the four pages, but I voted "none of the above". Sorry if I'm rehashing old arguments.

Firstly, it depends on how you define "information". If you define it only as the geometric configurations of matter then it is an important, fundamental property of space that objects can be separated at varying distances. In a more abstract space, objects can vary in charge, mass, etc, and they can do so over time. If you consider information to be the geometric vector space of all these properties for each object, then information is arguably fundamental. But is it more fundamental than the physical properties themselves?

In modeling in science, we generally call something fundamental if it can't be broken into more parts. But that depend on what level we're modeling. We don't want to practice "greedy reductionism" or we begin to have more information than we need (nobody can currently model cannon balls as an ensemble of quantum particles).

Regardless, we can't break phase space up into smaller concepts (other than smaller pieces of phase space), but we also can't break "charge" or "mass" up into some contributing parts of an emergent phenomena.

One could equally argue that, as human concepts, both are somewhat emergent conceptually in our minds; something we've put in a box and considered as some isolated event of significance, some result of how we process and understand information.