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Author
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Topic: Defining extranatural
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Nel
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Member # 614
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posted 16. April 2003 18:07
RBH wrote:
quote:
Not quite. Cairns-Smith suggested (as I recall - I haven't read his Seven Clues for a decade or more) that clay crystals formed the scaffolding for organic molecules. That the scaffolding might have been silicates is irrelevant (to use your favorite word) to his argument. Actually, as I recall clays run around roughly half or a bit more silicon, with liberal infusions of aluminum and then a bunch of other stuff - is there a geologist in the crowd? In any case, as I recall Cairns-Smith's hypothesis, it's the physical scaffolding that counts, not the chemistry of the scaffolding. To call it "silicon-based" life in the same sense that we are "carbon-based" life is to distort Cairns-Smith. I reckon silicon-based life might be barely possible, though not real plausible. Organics really like the 4-fold bonds carbon can form. I remember reading science fiction about silicon life, but that's all.
Actually RBH, thats what I said:
quote:
He wanted to say that it was used as a scaffold to get our carbon-based life, but one can use that assumption on another planet.
But since silicon can be used as a starting point at all, in that it only requires a few amino acid chains, one can hypothesize that a simpler form of life can be derived from it. So that the scaffold may have been silicon is highly relevant. I agree it may not be plausible at all. But, since you are a Darwinian evolutionist, I know you can sympathize with me when I say it sure is possible.
[ 16. April 2003, 19:02: Message edited by: Nelson_Alonso ]
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gedanken
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Member # 594
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posted 16. April 2003 22:07
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I agree it may not be plausible at all. But, since you are a Darwinian evolutionist, I know you can sympathize with me when I say it sure is possible.
But this gets to a very important principle. Many things might be "possible". One must develop evidence to distinguish which of the "possible" concepts were consistent not only with the relationships of the physical world, but in many cases the issue is one of what actually exists in the physical world.
So for "silicon life" there are two levels of issue:
Can "silicon life" exist at some level? And does silicon life exist? Speculation on either question is useful in figuring out experimental verification. But then one must observe nature itself to get the answer. That is the real issue, basing what is claimed as science on actual observation of the evidence from nature.
This gets to the issue of greatest importance in discussions like this on relationships and "the extranatural".
When one's interpretation of evidence depends on the level of belief in some "extranatural" cause, then one's evaluation of the evidence is not based on the physical evidence. (It might include some physical evidence, but it is not based on that physical evidence if the result of the test procedure changes according to the belief.)
Evolutionary hypothesis are consistent in matching observation, whether or not one believes in extranatural events. This is due to the vast grid of consistency of observations of nature with the constraints set by the evolutionary theory, along with the important degree of predictability forded by that theory.
But it is very difficult, for example, to construct an ID hypothesis that depends furthermore on extranatural events which can be tested. The problem is that the result of the "test" depends upon the belief of the researcher, and thus is not objective.
This does not mean that the extranatural claim is wrong -- it simply means that it is not supported by scientific evidence. (Science may, for example, neither reject that claim -- rather it may reject that the claim is "scientific".)
[ 16. April 2003, 22:08: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Stephen Wright
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Member # 195
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posted 23. April 2003 12:03
quote:
“It also hurts when I read something like Stephen's remark that
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The energy spent on the thought process is balanced by this non-physical change of complexity in the environment.
Is that meant to be some kind of SLOT balancing, with real energy on one side and ... um ... well, non-physical something or other on the other side of the equation? Rolf Landauer did a bunch of work on the thermodynamics of information, but it was physical instantiations all the way.
RBH”
The non-physical something I was referring to is information. I assume that it can be altered resulting in more complexity in the thinking agent and his environment. An example of this occurs when an individual works out a plan. His/her current schedule is combined with a new opportunity to attend a meeting and an updated series of times and places are mentally arranged to meet a need. Here information from the context of the agent and new information from the environment are bound together. During the moments or minutes in which choices are made and a plan is computed, the agent expends energy devoted to mental effort. I presume this to be a well-understood fact. This plan will manifest physically in a short period of time, but SLOT is continuous and instantaneous. The energy spent that has reduced the entropy happened the moment the cognition of the plan was realized and decided upon, not when the actualization and instantiation takes place in a future setting. Not so mysterious, in this example.
Rolf Landauer might even have assigned some energy spent to forget the old schedule, but it is quite true that his and almost all conceptualizations are grounded in the information from physical events. This is reasonable: we are capable of measuring them. RBH you are correct to consider informational realism with a skeptical eye. However, metrics from information theory may force us to expand our view of realized ideas as being substantial and having structure. The concept of CSI becomes very simple if it is an actual complex bonded structure. One can say that the information of physics constants were random derivations of the way it “froze out” (assuming the current big bang standard model where all matter and energy came from a super heated energetic state). Or one could say that there is an inherently comprehensible structure of relationships flowing from structures of information “freezing out” as order and patterns, in the material domain.
By ignoring the possibility of a model where there is a domain of matter/energy events, a boundary diffusion layer and a domain of information events, you must jam pack an unreasonable amount of stuff (including all of what I would assign to a boundary layer) into a physical only universe to get your answers. I just don’t see material events wearing information like a hat. To hold all known phenomena as material with abstract information attached, leads to questions as to how life emerges, what is the conscious mind, where is purpose grounded and how does memory work, which don’t fit into the current paradigm.
Sorry to make your head hurt, but a dynamic bi-directional flow of information from a potential state to physicality - and from physicality to a realized informational state, opens avenues that may explain the major stumbling blocks in the current state of philosophy and reveal flaws in western scientific assumptions about reality.
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RBH
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posted 23. April 2003 14:14
Stephen wrote quote:
By ignoring the possibility of a model where there is a domain of matter/energy events, a boundary diffusion layer and a domain of information events, you must jam pack an unreasonable amount of stuff (including all of what I would assign to a boundary layer) into a physical only universe to get your answers. I just don't see material events wearing information like a hat. To hold all known phenomena as material with abstract information attached leads to questions as to how life emerges, what is the conscious mind, where is purpose grounded and how does memory work, which don't fit into the current paradigm.
Nor do I see "material events wearing information like a hat." I don't see material events wearing information as some sort of add-on or decoration. I see material events as embodying information intrinsically in their physical (matter and energy) configurations, not as a sort of extrinsic label on them. I see changes in information as changes in those physical (matter and energy) configurations. And I see no way of accessing anything else in what I deem to be a satisfactory scientific manner. What we have access to are the physical (matter and energy) manifestions; the immaterial stuff is out of empirical reach. Philosophy is bereft of ways of empirically investigating the immaterial. That's why it's philosophy and not science.
I don't ignore the possibility of that kind of immaterial-diffusion layer-physical model, I have considered it and actively rejected it. One can speculate about immaterial information stuff intersecting with physical (matter and energy) stuff via some sort of diffusion interface layer, but there's a price to pay if you want to call it science, namely providing an account of how immaterial stuff changes the configurations of physical stuff. How do quarks, electrons, atoms, molecules, and/or photons get pushed around (an energy-requiring operation subject to thermodynamic constraints) into new configurations that embody new information states? Calling the intersection a "diffusion layer" doesn't solve that problem, it merely names it.
Dembski speculated in "Intelligent Design Coming Clean" that an unembodied intelligent agent could transmit design information into physical (matter and energy) entities using an infinite wavelength (and therefore unfocusable) zero energy (and therefore zero channel capacity) signal. The mechanics of the "diffusion layer" have to be consistent with what we know on both sides of the boundary. Finding a way of transferring immaterial information into physical form has some real problems on this (physical) side of the boundary. Until I see something a lot more plausible than Dembski's speculation, I can only regard the notion of immaterial information as a semi-coherent philosophical fiction, fun to play with but having no real implications for doing science, western or otherwise.
RBH
[ 23. April 2003, 14:29: Message edited by: RBH ]
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Stephen Wright
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posted 01. May 2003 10:35
RBH,
I agree that IF this model describing material/information exchange across a boundary is to be taken seriously let alone accepted as a considered viewpoint, it must not only be consistent with all known data on both sides as you said, informational realism must also be predictive of answers regarding currently unsolved issues. The question of how it is that information is computational, by both organisms and electronic devices, would be one that comes to the foreground.
The idea of information, as an “abstraction”, being drawn outside of material circumstances by mental recognition, is common in the general perception. We both agree that it is inaccurate as a model - the hat metaphor. Similarly, the TV commercial that exclaims, “it’s in there” likewise is not on target as a concept describing information. I would maintain that information is NOT spatially oriented to the material world and therefore it is not inherent within it. Neither outside nor inside, information can be viewed as separate but fully interconnected to the domain where physics principles rule. If information is separated, as a domain of activity, the rules of logic and data processing can hold true and not be fettered, while computation is taking place. If all information is tied to material reality how can “what if” computational processes have causal effects? Are all computations also causing physical things to happen? Is potential information from computation something other than information? Is potential information FICTION?
The information corresponding to a material/energetic event exists as part of the wholeness of the phenomena. It is not in it, or from it, but rather exists in identity with it. When you say that it is “embodied by matter”, the teleological context of what it means to embody something - throws your comment into confusion. The effort made, by using that description to make physicality inclusive enough to hold all systemic organization, carries intent and computation into the material-only bag you want.
I know what you mean, but by trying to define what is information distinctly and what is matter/energy, I am ready to point out how common conceptions are always leaking, by unconscious semantic inference, what is from the informational domain into an “all-inclusive” material world. As you stated, the material domain is made up of pieces or building blocks, such as quarks and photons etc. They are granular in nature. You seem to express that “inside” these granules there is found the structural order that makes them relatable and computational. This line of thinking makes the material domain too holistic for my pragmatic perception of it.
All the attributes you will go on to name that makes this “one-bag holds all” theory true, will be aimed especially at adding structure to this material/energetic pile of sand. I anticipate each reason submitted will be an attribute of information. The four forces work to spatially arrange matter in a predictable way, but the order they predict AND further the ability to compute that order, do not come from the pile of sand’s essential nature. Order and complexity come from the informational properties associated with the four forces. Relatedness and connectivity are not part of the blocks of matter/energy; they are real information from actual circumstances.
Physics understands order to be a quality brought to a system by energy expenditure. The fact that there is relational order and that this order is comprehensible by agents, who can observe and respond, lies outside of the domain of material/energetic events. Manifest events reflect each transform that occurs, perfectly translated in the domain of information. Information flows from material events, sequenced by the forward arrow of time, as they occur. That they flow in a determined procession is now known to be untrue. We also now understand that there is potential information that is left unrealized as events follow one course and leave behind other statistical possibilities. Once the event has occurred, its actual occasion is locked-in and its place/state in the order of things is determined. The material/energetic transformation has exchanged information with its environment and created a new fact from what was before only an informational possibility.
In line with the title of this topic, I find that there is no need to postulate an extra-natural category to explain life’s capability to process information. However, I find it a necessary to declare the observe/respond phenomenon as not coming from the inside of matter. There are two primary, non-theological, camps at this time: 1) it’s inside matter and it came out as a random and meaningless events and 2) matter thinks so it came out with a natural meaning.
I am promoting that matter/energy is just ultimately a pile of granular stuff and that it manifests existentially only in compete concert with the higher-level properties of information. Further, it is maintained that observe/respond phenomena are transcendent to both. Analogous to energy transforming the same matter into endless iterations, so to does the observe/respond phenomena transform information.
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RBH
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posted 01. May 2003 20:24
Stephen wrote quote:
As you stated, the material domain is made up of pieces or building blocks, such as quarks and photons etc. They are granular in nature. You seem to express that "inside" these granules there is found the structural order that makes them relatable and computational. This line of thinking makes the material domain too holistic for my pragmatic perception of it.
Not quite what I meant. I mean that the information inheres in - is - the patterns of inter-relationsips of matter and energy "things," the granular matter-and-energy entities that are quarks, electrons, photons, or whatever. While I can think about "information" as an abstraction, in much the same manner as I can think about triangles or unicorns, that thinking, itself embodied in patterns of neural activity in my brain, does not exist in any meaningful sense of the word except as it is embodied in brain. I think there's a sort of category error lurking hereabouts: the abstractions we use to think about stuff like information, triangles, and unicorns being taken as real entities having causal efficacy in a matter-and-energy universe. I don't think those abstractions do have causal efficacy in the physical; it is the embodiments of them in matter-and-energy that do. I guess that makes me a materialistic monist or something. But any account that gives a causal role to something that requires pushing matter and energy around has to account for that pushing around in physical terms.
Stephen further argued that relational order in the matter-and-energy world, created/imposed by physical laws operating on matter and energy, in some sense creates information that is not itself matter and energy. "Information flows from material events, sequenced by the forward arrow of time, as they occur." That information exists because it is comprehensible by agents - us humans, presumably. The order, according to Stephen, lies "outside" the matter-and-energy world. Stephen only provides a sketchy account of 'transmission' from matter-and-energy to the abstract realm of information, though. I'm concerned with transmission in the opposite direction. How does that abstract transcendental realm affect matter-and-energy? Or is the transmission just one way?
RBH
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Stephen Wright
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Member # 195
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posted 09. May 2003 11:20
quote:
Stephen further argued that relational order in the matter-and-energy world, created/imposed by physical laws operating on matter and energy, in some sense creates information that is not itself matter and energy. "Information flows from material events, sequenced by the forward arrow of time, as they occur." That information exists because it is comprehensible by agents - us humans, presumably. The order, according to Stephen, lies "outside" the matter-and-energy world.
RBH
I would acknowledge and adhere to the conceptual thinking of Norbert Wiener’s famous quotation, already posted by gedanken in the thread “Shapiro on the Genome”; on page 5, which declares information, is information and not matter/energy. Information appears to be associated with matter/energy events from the opening moment of the big bang and in every event hence. It in no way needs direct observation by humans to be part and parcel of reality. Again, inside and outside are not germane to the issue of how information and matter/energy are bound together in a reciprocal relation. I reiterate my viewpoint that information does not have a spatial location either within or without matter. It maintains that the principles and laws that prevail in the domain of matter/energy are different from the laws that prevail for information. Further posed, is that both domains must fully correlate with their respective principles while exchanging influence on each other. Information exists because it is a primary component of reality. Knowledge, or observed information, exists because of a separate level of interaction where the transcendent “observe/respond” capability is involved. Through much of time and in many places human consciousness has not been available and yet the behavior of information and matter/energy are considered as ordered continuously by the laws of physics and of information theory. Information exists without knowledge.
Information seems to be “outside” of matter/energy only in that there are states of information that can be transformed without a corresponding change in actual physical events. RBH, you have not responded to my claim that computation is one of these states. During computation, potential information can be fully explored without actualizing it materially. Further, new and causative information, from computation processes, can be generated and applied to a complex system with definitive results. Please examine the following quote that creates a great picture of the “inside” of matter. It seems it is more virtual (like computational processes) and less structured toward determinate and solid physical ness. It, at its core, presents itself ready to exchange information from a “non-local and outside the forward arrow of time” domain of potentialities.
quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/science/06PROT.html?8hpib
"The tiny objects detected within the proton turned out to be quarks. However, a proton is not made of just two up quarks and one down quark; the total mass of those three quarks is far less than that of the full proton. Part of the mass gain comes courtesy of special relativity; the quarks swirl at nearly the speed of light.
But the proton also contains a roiling sea of "virtual particles" — pairs of quarks and their corresponding mirror twins, or anti-quarks, that continually wink in and out of existence — and gluons, particles that bind the quarks together.
"It's like looking inside a black hole," Dr. Ralston said. "Everything must be roaring at superhigh energies."
Most physicists believe they now have a fundamental theory known as quantum chromodynamics that fully describes the behavior of particles within that roiling sea within the proton. But the equations are too complex to solve exactly.
So physicists simplify. Instead of trying to track every virtual particle and gluon in the calculations, one approach is to clump each of the three bare quarks with a surrounding cloud of virtual particles and then regard each clump as a single object."
Kenneth Chang
Mirror images, aspects winking in and out of existence and countless virtual particle exchanges to balance the four forces: this is the heart of matter’s actual mass. Here is, maybe, part of the boundary layer between what is manifest as real as well as an actual occasion and what is possible in the sum total of potential information.
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Stephen only provides a sketchy account of 'transmission' from matter-and-energy to the abstract realm of information, though. I'm concerned with transmission in the opposite direction. How does that abstract transcendental realm affect matter-and-energy? Or is the transmission just one way?
RBH
In calling my wording a sketchy account, you are probably giving me a large benefit of the doubt regarding describing transmission from matter/energy to information. I am relying on the common understanding of the simple definitional fact that each real and actual occurrence in the material world has created information exactly corresponding to the events related to the occurrence. I am not qualified to describe this in any better terms. It is hard and fast that in the past that information has been “frozen” and all potentialities have been eliminated from the information of an actual occurrence. This has nothing to do with information held by observers (knowledge); it is only about information from material reality.
I also want to strenuously correct a misconception of my view. The domain of information is in no manner transcendental or extranatural. It is absolutely actual and bound in function and form with the material world. It obeys hard and fast principles and laws. It is scientifically understood as natural and causative. It may be perceived as abstract, although I think that this viewpoint is a block to seeing all information’s principles and laws obtain functional results in the realm of consciousness or the comprehensibility of natural events.
The transmission is a two-way system. Obeying all rules of interaction, it crosses over a boundary circumstance by means of virtual particles, in at least one case. Please find below a simple statement of what is known about the opposite way that information crosses into the material domain and into use by intelligent agents, achieved as the transcendent capability of the observe and respond functionality, exhibited by all living things. The following is contained in The Touchstone of Life, subtitled Molecular Information, Cell Communication, and the Foundation of Life, Oxford University Press 1999.
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Addressing the virtual photon, page 21, Werner Loewenstein explains:
“a real photon coming in from the environment is absorbed when it strikes an atom and its energy is used up in switching an electron to a farther orbit. This transit from real to virtual photon, we shall see, is the bridge between the nonbiological and biological organizations in the universe; it is the window through which living beings let the cosmic information in.”
We understand from the current paradigm of science as an established fact that information reaches the earth as sunlight, for the most part. We also understand the sequential transmission steps for information to be used one bit at a time by organisms. Loewenstein makes the case for “cosmic”, non-biological or matter/energy information as distinct from information in the chain of biological events and the two being separated by a bridge or boundary. I want to also say that my quoting Loewenstein does not imply that he agrees with any specific point I am making. That information from a material source is absorbed and put to work by all biological organisms is without doubt. So, is the fact that humans can secondarily put to work information derived from computational processes that are only representations of possible facts, which have never been materialized, yet are clearly capable of adding organization to the local environment.
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“But any account that gives a causal role to something that requires pushing matter and energy around has to account for that pushing around in physical terms.”
RBH
Like information being positional or local in relation to matter, your language suggests the issue to be self-referential to a physical-only world. Information does exert influence, but not by pushing or pulling at anything, physically. Your above statement is made with the criterion that information be a kind of energy. It is not, but it can be exchanged for energy. Information regarding a material system relates the physics principles (their information) from the components of that system. Organization is quantifiable in certain aspects of information theory to express the amount and specific type or quality of information that a system has. The organization does not push anything around but usually harnesses a potential that must be systemically fine-tuned to realize its fullness for work output. An organized pathway that maximizes a physical/energetic capability, in a system, is actualized from a potential that was inherent in the information domain.
[ 09. May 2003, 11:32: Message edited by: Stephen Wright ]
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