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Author
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Topic: Information and Teleology
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James A. Barham
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Member # 50
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posted 09. May 2002 11:36
I would like to broaden the discussion on Brainstorms, if anyone else is interested, to include some of the discussion more typical of mainstream philosophy of mind.
Specifically, I feel that the concept of "information" cannot properly ground an inference to teleology, because it is itself a teleological concept that requires some sort of grounding of its own (either intrinsic or extrinsic). In the mainstream literature, the two main proposals have been a "causal" account of information use (e.g., Fred Dretske) and an evolutionary account of "proper" function, which in turn is supposed to ground information use (e.g., Ruth Garrett Millikan).
In illustration of the basic problem I have in mind, I cannot resist quoting a passage from the 17th-century Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More, that I recently stumbled across. In his treatise, "The Immortality of the Soul," More is discussing the failure of any sort of materialistic (i.e., Cartesian) account of mind to explain the goal-directed aspect of mental activity. In particular, he is making the point that if perception and thinking consist merely of motions in the "animal spirits" in individual nerves, then there will be no way for the mind to act in a coherent way to direct the body successfully in purposive action.
Here is the passage I found both amusing and highly pertinent:
"Again, That which is so confounded a Percipient, how can it be a right Principle of directing Motion into the Muscles? For besides what disorder may happen in this function upon the distracted representation of present Objects, the power of thinking, excogitating, and deliberating, being in these Animal Spirits also, (and they having no means of communicating one with another, but justling [sic] one against another; which is as much to the purpose, as if men should knock heads to communicate to each other their conceits of Wit), it must needs follow that they will have their perceptions, inventions, and deliberations apart; which when they put in Execution, must cause a marvelous confusion in the Body, some of them commanding the parts this way, others driving them another way. . ."
(Philosophical Writings of Henry More, ed. by F.I. MacKinnon. Oxford UP, 1925, reprinted by AMS, 1969, pp. 135--136).
There are serious problems with both the causal-role and the selection-history methods of grounding the teleological aspect of information, and I believe More puts his finger on the heart of the matter, which is global, purposive coordination. As most of you know, I think that the answer to More lies in a sui generis dynamics of the living state. Anyone else interested in pursuing this line of inquiry?
(BTW, I find that many of our discussion here on Brainstorms are reflecting discussions that were already occurring in the 17th c. between Cudworth, More, Boyle, Leibniz, and others. Anyone interested in opening a 17th-century thread?)
[ 09 May 2002, 11:37: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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warren_bergerson
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posted 10. May 2002 12:32
James,
You raise an interesting question. To paraphrase -"Can 21st century ideas and concepts offer a solution to the 17th century ‘How does the mind control the body?’ or more specifically, "How does the human mind control the human body?" I think that the concepts and techniques I have been working with, which might be called the adaptive perspective or paradigm, do offer a logical/scientific answer to the old questions. The answer, as might be expected is not simple, and involves a couple of somewhat unexpected twists.
The answer I propose might be interpreted as consistent with your idea of "a sui generis dynamics of the living state". From the adaptive perspective, the defining ‘property of the living state’ is not a simple physical property, but a paradigm or complex set of causal relationships.
The adaptive perspective solution to the mind body problem starts by viewing ‘mind’ as a ‘logical abstraction’ and ‘body’ as a phenomena of the real world. Mind, from this perspective, can be expressed in terms of mathematical logical concepts, and the relationship between the mind and the body is expressed by mathematical modeling. In ordinary terminology, the ‘mind’ is an engineering plan of the essential properties and operations of living matter.
Since the primary concern is with how the life form operates, it is useful to view life forms as logic machines or computers. Viewed from this perspective, ‘mind’ is the logical/mathematical program which controls the operation of the life form. [So far, there is nothing particularly new in this approach]
Like any computer, life forms convert input into output. The single most important and distinguishing feature of the input-output relationships generated by life forms is that they are purposeful or teleological. Life forms generate outputs which ‘increase the likelihood that the life form will survive and reproduce’. [The arguments about purpose in nature can be left for latter.]
It follows, if you give it some thought, that if a life form is to be viewed as computer, the program controlling the computer must be capable of 1)executing purposeful input-output relationships, 2)it must be capable of storing or preserving or repeating these relationships, it must be capable of modifying these relationships, and 4)it must be capable of creating these relationships.
It turns out to be relatively easy to write an ‘idealized’ logic machine program which is capable of performing these four functions. I call my version of this program the "Life Force Simulator". The program involves roughly four pages of code and I will make it available to anyone who is interested. [This program has a number of interesting features, including the ability to explain or simulate a very non-Darwinian form of evolution.]
Demonstrating that an idealized logic machine can produce purposeful information processing or behavior is not, of course, the same as demonstrating that life forms produce purposeful or goal-oriented behavior in the same manner. To address this issue it is necessary to analyze and model specific instances where life forms actually generate purposeful behavior. [I will eventually get back to the specifics of the mind body problem.]
In performing such analysis it is useful to note the difference between an ‘idealized mathematical system’ and ‘a real world manifestation’. Idealized systems are ‘efficient’. They have unlimited error-less storage and processing capacity. Real world manifestations, whether electronic computers or life forms have limited storage and processing capacities and processing and storage always has the potential for error. Real world systems therefore involve processes and mechanism to address error, processes and mechanisms to ‘get around’ processing and storage limitations. Real world manifestations, it can be expected, will look a lot more complicated than the idealized mathematical system.
The nervous system, and particularly the individual cell or neuron, is a useful place to determine if biological systems produce purposeful input-output processing in a manner analogous to the process used by the Life Force Simulator(LFS for short). The information currently available, while far from complete, clearly supports the claim that neurons and nervous systems perform information processing and generate purposeful input-output relationships in a manner similar to the LFS.
The suggestion that the brain can be viewed as powerful logic machine is of course not new. If the ‘human mind’ is the program controlling the ‘human brain’, then we have an answer to the question ‘how does the mind control the brain’. Not, it will be admitted, a very original or very convincing explanation, but an explanation. A couple of ‘interesting’ discoveries lead to a more original, and more testable explanation of how the human mind controls human behavior.
To begin, the nervous system is obviously not the only source of purposeful input-output relationships associated with life forms. Life forms without nervous systems also generate purposeful input-output relationships. As has been discussed elsewhere, it seems clear that individual cells can be viewed or modeled as logic machines capable of the same type of functionality defined by the LFS.
If both cells and brains can be viewed and modeled as ‘LFS type logic machines", is it possible that the human behavior, human intelligence, involves some type of logic machine which is outside of and not limited by the human nervous system? The human mind as something outside the human brain, is certainly a non-traditional view, but it is consistent
with a large body of data suggesting a major discontinuity between human intelligence and behavior and pre-human intelligence and behavior. My analysis has, in fact, identified this ‘outside the human brain’ logic machine which explains why humans exhibit intelligence and creativity far greater than intelligence and creativity of pre-human primates.
The explanation is, when once you recognize it, fairly obvious. Humanness, I propose, is defined by a vastly increased capacity to perform group or social thinking. Human intelligence and creativity appears so much greater than primates, because human intelligence is the result of 100’s and even millions of brains operating together. My research has identified the rather elegant mechanism that makes this group thinking possible. [Although the basic mechanism which makes ‘human social thinking’ possible is relatively simple, the topic is quite a bit more complex than a single mechanism. ]
Finally to get back to the question "How does the human mind control the human brain?" First, there is group or social process which creates ‘decision making logic’ used by individuals. Second, individuals ‘make decisions’ using this decision making logic. These, decisions initiate a series of information processing actions in the brain. Finally, these processing action result in producing via muscles and other mechanisms externally observable behavior. This ‘explanation’ is obviously both complex and unconventional, but I believe that each step in the process is both testable and verifiable.
I am sure I have raised more questions than I have answered, but I hope I have at least outlined a possible trail by which 21st century concepts can be used to address 17th century questions.
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James A. Barham
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posted 11. May 2002 22:55
Warren:
Thanks for your comments.
I agree that the kind of analysis of functional logic you speak of is both possible and useful, whether at the level of the individual cell or the human brain.
However, the whole problem, from my point of view, is to explain how it is possible for a concrete physical system to come to possess such functional logical properties. I have expressed this as the problem of bridging the gap between Maupertuis's Principle of Least Action and Ockham's Razor. Analysis of the specific forms of functional logic in the cell, while interesting and insightful, does not help us with this problem, so far as I can see.
There are some related remarks over on Micah's Multiple Realizability thread that are pertinent to this problem, that I will not repeat here---except to stress that I think the place we are all going fundamentally wrong is in believing that the teleological character of life is an abstract principle of organization, as opposed to a property arising from a concrete type of physical system.
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warren_bergerson
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posted 12. May 2002 05:56
James,
JB: There are some related remarks over on Micah's Multiple Realizability thread that are pertinent to this problem, that I will not repeat here---except to stress that I think the place we are all going fundamentally wrong is in believing that the teleological character of life is an abstract principle of organization, as opposed to a property arising from a concrete type of physical system.
I think we agree there is some phenomena which accounts for the rather obvious teleological, purposeful or functional character of life. We both appear to believe that there is, or at least might be, a single factor accounting for all such teleological characteristics. You believe this single factor is some physical property. I believe the factor is a ‘paradigm’.
The adaptive paradigm, as I define it, is a set of causal relationships, where each of the causal relationships in the set has a physical manifestation. For the sake of discussion, let us denote the causal relationships in the adaptive paradigm as C1,…Cn. For a specific application of B of the adaptive paradigm, each causal relationship Cx has a physical manifestation Mbx.
One of the features that makes the adaptive paradigm ‘interesting’, is that physical manifestations Mbx can change or be substituted. One occurrence or application of the paradigm may involve the physical phenomena Mbx, another Mcx, and a third Mdx. As a simple example, the storage mechanisms in cell level behavior, in nervous system level behavior, and in human behavior are all different. Purposeful behavior occurs at the cell level, the nervous system level, and the level of human behavior. Purposeful or teleological behavior at all 3 levels can be modeled, simulated and explained by the same paradigm or set of causal relationships even though all three involve different physical mechanisms or manifestations. The fact that you can have different types of teleological behavior that do not share common physical manifestations is one argument against your concept of a single physical factor explaining teleological phenomena.
The fundamental issue associated with ‘purpose as a physical property or force’ and ‘purpose as a logical paradigm’ is which approach or concept is more useful in scientific analysis. Traditional thinking suggests that rigorous, predictive, ‘hard-science’ theories can only be constructed expressing simple- ‘permanent and universal’ causal relationships or forces. My analysis suggests that it is possible to construct scientific theories expressing complex causal relationships (or complex sets of causal relationships). Some what surprising, at least to me, was the discovery that theories constructed from complex causal relationships are very compatible with the scientific paradigm. [The subject of scientific theories constructed from complex causal relationships is in itself an interesting topic.]
I think we share the view that there is a single naturalistic explanation for the obviously purposeful nature of life forms. We seem to disagree on whether the single factor is a physical force, or a logical structure.
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James A. Barham
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posted 12. May 2002 21:40
Warren:
I think you state the problematic and the differences between us well. However, what do you say specifically to what I take to be the crucial issue: Understanding how a teleological system can come to exist, or even to continue to exist from moment to moment?
The functional logic is all well and good, but what sort of physical process must be posited in order to account for it? That is the crucial question, it seems to me. I don't think that any Darwinian would want to disagree with your interpretation---no one can really deny that the cell operates according to functional logic (which is not to say that pinning down the details is not very important, of course). But the Darwinian will want to say, in reply to my question, that the combination of chance and "selection" is the explanation for how such systems can come to exist. ID rightly points out that this is nonsense from a statistical perspective. There is just no way that that level of complexity can possibly arise through chance alone.
Then, I want to make the additional point, beyond where ID folks are willing to go, that even the moment-to-moment massive coherence and coordination of thousands of processes into a single, purposive whole could not possibly operate without some sort of intrinsic, robust coherence to preserve it. Even if (per impossibile) such a fantastically complex system could be assembled by chance (Darwinians) or atom by atom by a supernatural agent (ID), the whole thing would fall apart instantly without some global coherent forces to support it.
Perhaps you are simply not interested in that aspect of things, which is okay. Your project is certainly important in its own right. But I still think it is failing to address what I see as the heart of the matter.
[ 12 May 2002, 21:43: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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warren_bergerson
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posted 13. May 2002 09:06
James,
A number of good questions, all of which I have addressed at least to some extent.
JB: I think you state the problematic and the differences between us well. However, what do you say specifically to what I take to be the crucial issue: Understanding how a teleological system can come to exist, or even to continue to exist from moment to moment?
How did life forms or teleological systems come to exist. The adaptive paradigm suggests that there are something like 20 types of processes or operations which must occur together in order to create a self-sustaining, evolving teleological system. I would equate such a system to a life form.
There are many different known manifestations of each of the different types of processes or operations. The creation of life, in terms of the adaptive paradigm, comes down to identifying an environment or set of conditions where all 20 processes would have occurred together. Would, for example, a set of self-reproducing chemical enclosed in some sort of containing meet the required conditions? I have specifically addressed the question so I don’t have an answer. However, with respect to the creation of life the adaptive approach involves two key differences from Darwinian concepts.
First, the adaptive paradigm defines much more specific conditions that must of existed for life to have been created. The mutate-select type criteria are, IMO, rather trivial and useless.
Second, the adaptive paradigm suggests that it is very likely that the basic process which created life still exists and is still operating at some level in life forms. This is not logically necessary, but it seems extremely likely given the nature of other known transitions to higher levels of complexity.
I agree with your comment that identifying the source of the creation of the first teleological life forms is important. The adaptive paradigm provides a clear path for identifying this initial process. It should be noted that failure to find this initial process would suggest a identifiable and measurable discontinuity which would be consistent with the assumption of an external intelligence.
JB: The functional logic is all well and good, but what sort of physical process must be posited in order to account for it? That is the crucial question, it seems to me.
The adaptive approach identifies several major types of identifiable manifestations of the adaptive paradigm. This would include ‘cell level’ behavior, nervous system level behavior and human behavior. It is assumed that there are identifiable manifestations(often multiple manifestations) of each the roughly 20 processes of the adaptive paradigm at each level.
It should be noted that the adaptive paradigm was developed as a logical/mathematical system or process capable of executing, preserving, modifying and creating teleological causal relationships (called adaptive reactions). This mathematical paradigm is, or at least appears, capable of simulating all the behaviors associated with life forms and teleological systems.
The adaptive paradigm involves roughly 20 processes or operations. (nature doesn’t provide any clear line between logical operations and physical mechanism. A simple mechanism can perform multiple processes and a single logical process can involve multiple physical mechanisms.) If the adaptive paradigm is an appropriate model for a specific real world occurrence, then there must be identifiable physical manifestations of each of the 20 processes in the paradigm.
In some instances, the physical mechanism involved are well known. In many other instances, the actual physical mechanisms have not been identified. The hypothesis or assertion that adaptive change associated with life forms can be modeled by the adaptive paradigm involves predictions that physical mechanisms exist corresponding to the processes in the paradigm.
JB: I don't think that any Darwinian would want to disagree with your interpretation---no one can really deny that the cell operates according to functional logic (which is not to say that pinning down the details is not very important, of course). But the Darwinian will want to say, in reply to my question, that the combination of chance and "selection" is the explanation for how such systems can come to exist. ID rightly points out that this is nonsense from a statistical perspective. There is just no way that that level of complexity can possibly arise through chance alone.
I haven’t been able to figure out Darwinian’s actually stand for, but I completely agree that mutate-select is total nonsense from a statistical perspective and from every other perspective. I accept that fact the change in life forms over time may be explainable in terms of evolutionary change. However, it my view, you have not demonstrated on a scientific basis that such change occurred unless you can 1)precisely define what changed, and 2)can demonstrate a scientifically verifiable and repeatable process which can produce the defined change. Statistical miracles and vague ill-defined concepts like mutate-select, while they undoubtedly play a role in the universe and in understanding the universe are not science.
The adaptive paradigm, more specifically, the scientific theory that asserts that ‘under ideal conditions adaptive change in life forms occurs by the processes defined by the adaptive paradigm" claims that complexity arose from scientifically testable and verifiable processes, not from chance.
[ 13 May 2002, 09:07: Message edited by: warren_bergerson ]
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warren_bergerson
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posted 13. May 2002 09:26
James:
JB: Then, I want to make the additional point, beyond where ID folks are willing to go, that even the moment-to-moment massive coherence and coordination of thousands of processes into a single, purposive whole could not possibly operate without some sort of intrinsic, robust coherence to preserve it. Even if (per impossibile) such a fantastically complex system could be assembled by chance (Darwinians) or atom by atom by a supernatural agent (ID), the whole thing would fall apart instantly without some global coherent forces to support it.
First, you are dramatically underestimating the number of processes coordinated by even a single cell. I estimate that the human nervous system over a lifetime involves something like 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 processes. Whatever the number, life systems are extremely complex. The coherence of this complex structure seems to be illustrated by the nervous system. One the one hand, the basic concept is massive independent and parallel processing. The basic coordinating structure appears to be the multi-stage hierarchical structure (the pyramid or double pyramid ) where different processes operate at different levels. I don’t claim to understand all the mechanisms involved in creating coherence, but the mechanisms seem to be fairly observable.
JB: Perhaps you are simply not interested in that aspect of things, which is okay. Your project is certainly important in its own right. But I still think it is failing to address what I see as the heart of the matter.
As should be apparent, the adaptive approach or adaptive paradigm is a very broad concept covering essentially all aspect of life forms and changes in life forms. It is not so much that I am not interested in all the different aspects, but that there is a limit to what can be addressed at one time. You are asking very good questions. Hopefully, I can start to answer some of them.
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James A. Barham
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posted 13. May 2002 13:22
Warren:
Thanks for your latest detailed and enlightening posts. I see now that the distance between us is not so great as I had thought.
However, there is still the one thorn of multiple realizability, as Micah put it over on his thread, and as it is commonly called in the philosophy of mind literature. You explicitly endorse it above.
But it seems to me that if we accept this thesis, then we are committed to either a Darwinian or an ID scenario. That is, if the matter out of which life is constituted (principally proteins and the protein--ordered water gel state) has nothing intrinsically to do with the functional logic of the cell, but is only accidentally related to life, and if the said functional logic could just as well be "instantiated" in titanium and dacron and silicon---then we are back to square one with respect to explaining the origin of life. Because intrinsically inert matter is just not going to give rise to functional behavior.
I have recently been reading Gerald H. Pollack's wonderful new book, "Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life," which is having a profound impact on my thinking. It is perhaps the best exposition yet of the way in which understanding the physical matrix of life is essential for understanding how function can come into existence, and how purely abstract, formalistic, information-theoretic approaches that ignore physics will never get us there.
Basically, Pollack is saying that the low-energy-trigger dependent reactions in the cell arise naturally out phase transitions in the ordered-water gel (the ordered-water gel state in turn being due to adsorption of water onto proteins in the microtrabecular lattice which constitutes most of the bulk of the cytoplasm). I disagree with Pollack in that he thinks this is all that is needed, whereas I think we still need quantum coherence to account for the coordination of the myriad reactions, but at any rate Pollack's theory is a huge step forward, in my judgment.
I would be very curious to know how you would react to the claims in this book (or other books by Mae-Wan Ho, Giuseppe Vitiello, and others), which attempt to go beyond abstractions and delve directly into the physics of the living state.
Again, it is not that I don't realize how necessary the correct abstract characterization of life is. Indeed, I have attempted to add my own two cents' worth in this regard (not being a physicist, it is all I could do). But as a philosopher concerned with the big picture, and with the issues that are of concern to the folks at ISCID, I am acutely conscious that such abstract formulations can never be an end in themselves, must remain a means for getting at the elusive underlying physics. Otherwise, it seems to me---and I agree with the ID folks here---we must abandon all hope of any sort of naturalistic explanation of life and mind.
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I'm afraid we have not succeeded in generating much discussion on this thread relating to the original topic (Dretske, Millikan, and the general problem of rationalizing the semantic or normative aspect of information). Perhaps we should shut this thread down, for lack of interest, and carry on the discussion of functional logic vs. physics on Micah's multiple realizability thread. The two sets of problems are of course related, but we seem to be going around in circles now.
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warren_bergerson
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posted 14. May 2002 09:18
James:
JB: Then, I want to make the additional point, beyond where ID folks are willing to go, that even the moment-to-moment massive coherence and coordination of thousands of processes into a single, purposive whole could not possibly operate without some sort of intrinsic, robust coherence to preserve it. Even if (per impossibile) such a fantastically complex system could be assembled by chance (Darwinians) or atom by atom by a supernatural agent (ID), the whole thing would fall apart instantly without some global coherent forces to support it.
First, you are dramatically underestimating the number of processes coordinated by even a single cell. I estimate that the human nervous system over a lifetime involves something like 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 processes. Whatever the number, life systems are extremely complex. The coherence of this complex structure seems to be illustrated by the nervous system. One the one hand, the basic concept is massive independent and parallel processing. The basic coordinating structure appears to be the multi-stage hierarchical structure (the pyramid or double pyramid ) where different processes operate at different levels. I don’t claim to understand all the mechanisms involved in creating coherence, but the mechanisms seem to be fairly observable.
JB: Perhaps you are simply not interested in that aspect of things, which is okay. Your project is certainly important in its own right. But I still think it is failing to address what I see as the heart of the matter.
As should be apparent, the adaptive approach or adaptive paradigm is a very broad concept covering essentially all aspect of life forms and changes in life forms. It is not so much that I am not interested in all the different aspects, but that there is a limit to what can be addressed at one time. Over time I hope to address more of the issues involved.
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Stephen Wright
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posted 15. May 2002 09:29
James Barham wrote, “Specifically, I feel that the concept of "information" cannot properly ground an inference to teleology, because it is itself a teleological concept that requires some sort of grounding of its own (either intrinsic or extrinsic).” And “I believe More puts his finger on the heart of the matter, which is global, purposive coordination.”
“Information is information, not matter or energy” Norbert Wiener
James, please consider a simplified relational structure for review. The background and figure of this issue is the fabric of reality and the flow of teleology in the form of intent from this fabric into actualization. Today, it seems appropriated to refer to the physical world as composed of a single thing, matter/energy. We understand that energy can be transformed to matter. We know that particles are formed from high-energy interactions. They are bound together in the mutual manifestation of their properties, as one does not seem to exist without a reference to the other. Information and intent may exist as partners in the same way. They also may not be abstractions, but exhibit a measurable substantial essence.
Plato, along with the 17th century viewpoints of his work, was not so sure that the physical world was the only substantial set of items and actions. Assuming that the fine-tuning of the universe with life, as expressed by John Wheeler and others, establishes an intrinsic connection of matter/energy with the observer or conscious presence, this background field or matrix can be perceived as fully integrated. A fabric in which, matter/energy and information/intent are woven together, heavy laden with a potential, which is available for manifestation. Information theory has unearthed the real time effects of non-material coded structures that surely echo Plato’s Forms. Science can now measure the parameters of information in a way similar to matter/energy. It may not be that information must flow to a different ground, but that in a complementary way the essence of information just changes state to appear to our minds to be intent or purpose.
The concept of “the observer” is both descriptive and familiar. At the same time mysterious and threatening in connotation. Broken into a dipole, whose components are; viewing events and having the ability to act, the observer becomes just the active property of life. Maybe you could help me understand how this may be increased to be similar to your sui generis dynamics? Taken together these two natures of the observer exhibit the properties of universality and complementartity implicit in this concept of information/intent. Surely, coherence is dictated by the fact that they are bound as one with each other and with matter/energy.
So a process can be defined and reviewed. From a source field – an emergent potential, as substantial information/intent interacts with extant matter/energy. The flow of the structures of potential (information) into actualization by active living responses (intent) is the essence of teleology. The will to live and to connect to the whole are the foundation for life. Life, as the observer, is woven into the background field and emerges as units of matter/energy motivated by a desire to experience and influence its environment.
I in no way want to suggest I understand the work of Stephen Wolfram. However, I do intuitively think that his emphasis on the “cell” as a source of emergent and seemingly autonomous functional strength makes sense. It corresponds to the organization we see in living things. Individual biological cells work with blind independence to maintain their sustaining functions of the organism. In this analogy I see a response to your friend Henry More. The problem of a life form deciding what to focus attention on, among the constant possibilities, points to another attribute of the observer’s use of information/intent. Internal affairs are unitized and made discreet and external affairs are holistic and command attention.
The organism cobbles together the stones (cells) with blind faith that they know how to do their own self-maintenance and additionally, their assigned job for the whole body. Their own self-maintenance never requires attention and the instructions appear to be protected code. The devotion to the job assignment that is useful to the whole organism can be reached on an as needed basis. This leaves the organism free to focus on the wholeness of its self and for reaching outside to its environment.
Conscious intent slides in importance upward from cellular self-concern to outside relations of the individual. This individual could be viewed as a cell in the larger whole of a species or of all living things. How does this sliding assignment of importance for attention occur? Beats me! Well, it just seems to be a natural property of the process of the actualization of intent. That cells are powerful unto themselves is surely observable.
[ 15 May 2002, 14:47: Message edited by: newchurchguy ]
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James A. Barham
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posted 15. May 2002 19:02
Newchurchguy:
Thanks for your detailed and insightful comments.
In the beginning of your comments, you seemed to be criticizing my emergentist position from the direction Wheeler-style "pan-informationism." Then, later, you seemed to be almost agreeing with me. So, I am not quite sure what sort of response is required.
Assuming I was right about the implicit critique of emergentism---and by implication of denying the existence of either information or teleology in the universe before the origin of life---then I think I can do no better than copy here some comments I recently made on the Foundations of Information Science (FIS) 2002 e-Conference, in this very connection:
"Dear Gyorgyi [Darvas] and Norbert [Fenzl]:
Thank you very much for your comments. Just a couple of points of clarification:
I think that perhaps a big part of our disagreement is purely semantic (no pun intended!). As Karl Popper liked to say, one should not quarrel about the meanings of words. On the other hand, if we can't agree on what we mean by words, then we run the risk of misunderstanding each other and talking past one another. So let me give my reasons again for preferring to use "information" in the way that I do.
First, I think it is crucial that "information" be understood as having a semantic interpretation. Without any need for meaning to enter the picture, I just don't see why we wouldn't use a purely physical term, whether "structure", or "process," or "dynamics," or something else. But
if that is so, then we should limit the word "information" to cases where there is clearly a cognitive agent involved.
When I speak of "objective" information, I just mean information that is independent of the human observer---that is, information that would still exist whether human beings existed or not. Gyorgyi wrote that what I am calling "intrinsic, observer-independent information" is precisely what he wants to call "subjective." I think I see what he means. If I am saying that every instance of information use in the true sense depends upon some cognitive agent, then I guess there is a sense in which it must be "subjective," in the sense of being FOR a subject. But even so, we still need to distinguish information FOR organism A as its own subject from information ABOUT organism A as an object for me-as-observer.
When I say that information exists "objectively," I mean that it exists in the first sense, for other organisms as subjects in their own right, whether I or any other human being observes them as objects or not. This is kind of confusing, because of course I am simultaneously an objectifying observer and also a subjective cognitive agent in my own right with intrinsic information dynamics. So I am also like organism A and have my own objective information that exists whether I am observed from the outside or not. It was to avoid this confusion in the terms "subjective" and "objective" that I introduced the terms "allotelic" (information ABOUT organism A FOR organism B) and "autotelic" (information FOR organism A itself), but whatever we choose to call it, I still feel that it is an important distinction, which we ignore at the peril of great confusion.
Of course, as Gyorgyi says, "dynamical interactions characterise physical processes as well." But I believe that there is a sui generis dynamics of the living state which characterises information use in the true sense. Probably no one else will agree with me here, so perhaps this is the source of most of the confusion. I see all pre-living dynamics as simply minimizing energy, whereas living dynamics is doing WORK, i.e., not merely minimizing energy but guiding it in a goal-directed way. More specifically, I think that information is the means by which cognitive agents do work (attain their goals). More specifically still, according to my dynamical model, information is a low-energy trigger that correlates the higher-energy oscillation of a nonlinear oscillator with the external conditions that will tend to preserve its dynamical stability. Of course, explaining how all of this is possible in terms of some recognizable laws of physics is a tall order, mainly for the future (although Giuseppe Vitiello and others have some interesting ideas). But however that may be, the issue with respect to information is not dynamics per se, but a very special sort of dynamics characteristic of the living state alone and constitutive of information. Or so I believe.
Finally, Norbert says that "matter, energy and information are bound in inseparable unity," but that is clearly only true in the allotelic sense of information, not the autotelic sense---at least if one is willing to grant me that autotelic information emerged into existence only with the advent of life and its sui generis dynamics as mentioned in the previous paragraph. Before there was life and such a special dynamics, there was simply no information at all in the autotelic sense. Sure, we can interpret anything whatsoever as information in the allotelic sense, but I do not see what advantage there is to reinterpreting physics in terms of information theory, when the old-fashioned dynamical approach seems to work just as well, with much less confusion.
On second thought, perhaps it is not so much confusion that is the issue, as a deep metaphysical disagreement. My chief concern is to understand how the universe gave rise to life and mind. If we build information into the foundations of our physics, as Wheeler and Stonier and Norbert and I believe John Collier and others wish to do, then we are saying that the human being is at the center of existence. By putting the human being logically before the cosmic evolutionary process, we make it impossible to understand the human being as an outcome of that process, and so make it impossible to understand the human being in naturalistic terms at all. In short, I see pan-informationism as either a gratuitious and confusing misuse of terminology, or (what is worse, in my view) as a form of idealism.
Best regards,
James"
[BTW, if anyone is interested in the FIS e-conference, it may be accessed at:
http://www.mdpi.net/fis2002/
[ 15 May 2002, 19:07: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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Stephen Wright
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posted 15. May 2002 23:27
James thanks for posting further explanation. I doubt J. Wheeler would agree with my viewpoint that information and the desire to act (intent) spring from a single source. Like wave/particle or heat/light they are detected by our minds as operating differently. However, regarding either information or intent, the fact that one is always implied in a Gestalt pairing with the other; creates a strong reason for using this concept in my personally constructed philosophy. I am very open to your critical view of it. My worldview is one where finding paradoxes leads to a rewarding feeling of being on a good track of thought.
You are right to see my following your view of emergence closely, as I am learning and agreeing with much of it. I am less probing for the process that lends ability to “understand how the universe gave rise to life and mind.” I accept that it was done by an unfolding, through time and interaction, of a latent potential to an actualized one. On the other hand, I am very curious and want to have a better grasp on how to express in innocence and simplicity the fact that everything has to be reductively connected to reality and at the same time be shaped by the infinite and eternal. I find comfort in seeing human beings as transformers of physical matter/energy and information/intent, without them being anything much of either. The nature of our humanity may just be in the fact that these potent aspects of reality pass though our observant field of being and are changed when they return to the environment.
With respect,
Stephen
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John 3
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posted 16. May 2002 01:40
"When I say that information exists "objectively," I mean that it exists in the first sense, for other organisms as subjects in their own right, whether I or any other human being observes them as objects or not. This is kind of confusing, because of course I am simultaneously an objectifying observer and also a subjective cognitive agent in my own right with intrinsic information dynamics." James
The meaning of objective is that which does not perceive. That which is not influenced. Some think that the whole world is subjective. Some think the whole world is objective. I agree with you. Were both. But I think every'thing' is both.
That which can percieve itself is subject to itself, so it creates an internal subjective loop, objectifying itself and the world as it takes on information.
But I see this agency in hurricanes. They are subject to themselves and also take on information. Yes, they eat little storms.
"More specifically still, according to my dynamical model, information is a low-energy trigger that correlates the higher-energy oscillation of a nonlinear oscillator with the external conditions that will tend to preserve its dynamical stability." James
Perhaps this subjective loop is your stability oscillator.
You propose that autotelicacy does not apply to organizations below life, right? Thus, according to you, a rock is not really a rock to itself -- but only a mixture of particles and laws.
The rock is subject to the physical bonds of itself. If I where to throw it, it would hold its form when it hits the rocks on the ground, thereby objectifying itself and its world. Did the interaction between those "objects" mean anything to themselves or did the "rocks" not percieve anything?
"If we build information into the foundations of our physics..... then we are saying that the human being is at the center of existence." James
Perhaps if we were to believe that not everything was autotelic, it would seem that humans are at the center of existance. As far as I can see, every system has a center. Some are realized and some are not.
[ 17 May 2002, 00:08: Message edited by: John 3 ]
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James A. Barham
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posted 16. May 2002 21:46
Thanks to both Newchurchguy and John 3 for your thoughtful comments.
Two quick points (not to rehash too much).
I think there are two commonly accepted meaning of "objective," one epistemological, the other ontological.
The epistemological meaning is "publicly accessible," or "conducive to intersubjective agreement." In this sense, the existence of the Presidency of the United States is objective. We can all agree that it exists. It does not depend on any one of us in particular, or on anyone's particular point of view.
However, in the ontological sense, it seems clear that if there were no human beings, there would be no human social institutions, and so a fortiori no Presidency.
On the other hand, the moon would still be there whether we existed or not (or so I, as a metaphysical realist, am committed to believing). It is objective in both the epistemological and the ontological senses.
On the difference between rocks, hurricanes, and life:
I have to agree with you that a hurricane is an intermediate case. It definitely has a tendency to resist disruption (exhibits equifinal final in the dynamical sense), in a way that the rock does not. However, they are both systems that owe their coherence purely to the second law + constraints. Organisms are very different. While obeying the letter of the second law, they violate its spirit, just as birds violate the spirit of the law of gravity, while obeying its letter.
What is the "lift" that allows organisms to actively resist the second law? I believe it is the informational coordinating relation that I have described, but that is just a crude and preliminary guess at the riddle. But whatever the explanation, the phenomenon itself (the rational agency of life) is plain for all to see, and lifts life far above other kinds of physical systems.
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