[Fis] What is ³Agent²?

[Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic]

Dear All,

>From the philosophical/epistemological and particularly theory of science
point of view, Mark¹s remark is essential.
What conceptual primitives do we use and how do we undersand them?
Mark reminds us that even basic concepts of a basic science of physic such
as space, time and matter/energy are complex cognitive constructions.
Words which we agree upon (I hope there are such) are conventional by
origin, like physical units.
That might be an insight from the perspective of cognitive science - if
something is not strictly agreed upon by construction, there are different
interpretations of it.
And that which we have agreement about are procedures defining how we
behave in order to observe something or construct something.
Is there anything else that is self-evident in such a way that everybody
immediately can agree about it?

Best wishes,
Gordana




On 2017-10-23, 22:04, "Fis on behalf of Mark Johnson"
<fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es on behalf of johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com> wrote:

>Dear all,
>
>There are some terms from physics which we use continually and assume
>we all know what they mean. I'm taking my cue from Peter Rowland's
>physics - see http://anpa.onl/pdf/S36/rowlands.pdf - in asking some
>fundamental questions not only about information, but about physics
>itself.
>
>1. "Dimension" - what is a dimension? We are told in school that
>height, width and depth are three "dimensions", or that time is a
>fourth. At the same time, we understand that a value in one dimension
>is called a "scalar", and that in two dimensions we have "vectors"
>(and also in more dimensions).
>
>2. "Vector" - this gets used in all sorts of contexts from cartography
>to text analysis. But we have bivectors, trivectors, psuedovectors and
>then the weird rotational asymmetry of quaternions, octonions, nonions
>(see Peirce's work on these in the collected papers: his emphasis on
>triadic forms seems to derive from his interest in quaternions). It's
>important to be clear about what we mean by "vector".
>
>4. "Matter" and "Mass" - do we mean "mass" when we say "matter"? It's
>worth noting that mass is a scalar value.
>
>5. "Energy" - isn't this a combination of mass, space and time? (e.g.
>1/2mv^2) So... a scalar, a vector and.... time?
>
>6. "Time" - Is time "real" in the same way as we might consider mass
>to be real?... It is perhaps surprising that mass and energy are
>connected: Nuclear reactors turn scalars into vectors! Is time
>imaginary?.... is time i? That would make it a pseudoscalar.
>
>7. "Conservation" - some things are conserved and other things aren't.
>Time isn't conserved. Mass is. Energy is conserved. Space isn't
>conserved, is it? Something weird happens with conservation...maybe
>this is agency? Is information conserved?
>
>8. "Information" - Shannon information involves counting things. On
>the face of it, it's a scalar value - but in the counting process,
>there is work done - both by the thing observed and by the body that
>observes it. Work, like energy, is (at least) a combination of mass,
>time and space. This applies to *any* counting: there is an imaginary
>component, the dimensions of space and scalar mass. It probably
>involves charge too.
>
>9. "Agency" - Turning to Terry's definition of "agency", it involves
>"work", "conservation" and "organisation". The definition hides some
>complexities relating to the nature of work, and the ways in which
>mass and charge might be conserved, but time and space isn't. Implicit
>in the relation between extrinsic and intrinsic tendencies (what are
>they?) is symmetry. Is agency a principle of conservation which
>unfolds the symmetry between conserved and non-conserved dimensions?
>That means we are in a symmetry: "a pattern that connects" - to quote
>Bateson.
>
>Personally, I find the value of these questions is that they render
>less certain the dogmatically asserted principles of modern physics.
>Maybe we need this uncertainty in order to get closer to
>"information".
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Mark
>
>
>On 23 October 2017 at 17:39, Bruno Marchal <marchal at ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> Dear Gordana,
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 20 Oct 2017, at 11:02, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic wrote:
>>
>>
>> Dear Terry, Bob, Loet
>>
>> Thank you for sharing those important thoughts about possible choices
>>for
>> the definition of agency.
>>
>> I would like to add one more perspective that I find in Pedro¹s article
>> which makes a distinction between matter-energy aspects and
>>informational
>> aspects of the same physical reality. I believe that on the fundamental
>> level of information physics we have a good ND simplest example how
>>those
>> two entangled aspects can be formally framed.
>> As far as I can tell, Terrys definition covers chemical and biological
>> agency.
>> Do we want to include apart from fundamental physics also full
>>cognitive and
>> social agency which are very much dominated by informational aspects
>> (symbols and language)?
>> Obviously there is no information without physical implementation,
>>
>>
>>
>> Hmm... I am not sure. Elementary arithmetic determines all
>>semi-computable
>> relative information state (with Oracles). So, with the numbers, once
>>you
>> accept the addition laws and the multiplication laws, information
>>"grows"
>> from inside, and consciousness differentiates.
>> When the information get deeper and deeper, in Bennett sense of debth,
>> dreams can stabilize and physical reality are "correctly" inferred, and
>> eventually derived from arithmetic.
>>
>> That might not make your point below invalid.
>>
>> It is yet an important metaphysical point. The incompleteness theorem
>> entails the existence of a sort of canonical information flux, or
>> consciousness differentiation internal to elementary arithmetic, or
>> elementary combinators, or to any universal machinery (universal in the
>> mathematical Church-Turing-Post-Kleene sense).
>>
>> We can decide to consider the arithmetical beings being zombies, but
>>this
>> would entails a very special definition of matter to make it differ
>>from the
>> testable "arithmetical distribution".
>>
>> We can't have weak mechanism and weak materialism, and the evidences
>>might
>> side on a mathematical (somehow theological or psychological) origin of
>>the
>> physical reality.
>>
>> Incompleteness entails that all (platonist, classical reasoner machine)
>>are
>> confronted with many different, and conflicting, views about itself.
>>Indeed
>> it enforces the Theaetetus' distinctions, between true, provable,
>>knowable,
>> observable, sensible:
>>
>> p,
>> []p,
>> []p&p,
>> []p&~[]f,
>> []p&~[]f&p
>>
>> With p sigma_1 arithmetical (equivalently: partial computable) this
>>gives a
>> proposition account of a theology, testable as it explains how the
>>physical
>> laws emerges from some "dream percolation" in arithmetic.
>>
>> The physical is very important, but like in Plato, it could be, and
>>seemed
>> to be, the border of another non physical, more mathematical, plausibly
>> arithmetical, reality.
>>
>>
>>
>> but when we think about epistemology and the ways we know the world,
>>for us
>> and other biological agents there is no physical interaction without
>> informational aspects.
>> Can we somehow think in terms those two faces of agency?
>> Without matter/energy nothing will happen, nothing can act in the world
>>but
>> that which happens and anyone registers it, has informational side to
>>it.
>>
>>
>> Without matter/energy nothing physical will happen. But if we assume a
>>very
>> weak form of digital mechanism, arithmetic justfies limiting dreams,
>>with
>> rich indexical, relative amount of information, from "inside
>>arithmetic".
>> And what we take as the physical might be what emerges from a first
>>person
>> statistics on those dreams.
>>
>> The logic of which is testable, and up to now, it matches the data
>>(thanks
>> to QM without coilapse of the wave).
>>
>> It is just premature to conclude that information (in the 1p and 3p
>>sense)
>> needs the physical. The physical might be an invariant in a notion of
>>normal
>> sharable number dream. (A dream can be defined by a computation
>>containing
>> the emulation of a Löbian machine (they know they are universal) with
>> respect to different or not universal numbers.
>>
>> In arithmetic, the universal numbers infers that below their
>>substitution
>> level, if it exists, they are confronted to a statistics on infinity of
>> universal numbers, and above, locally, only with a finite (but huge)
>>number
>> of universal machine/number.
>>
>> I am aware I ask a huge spiritual or theological effort, coming back to
>> Plotinus, and Parmenides, and Plato, if not Pythagoras.
>>
>> But in epistemology, computable can be defined in very elementary
>>theories
>> and languages. The deep reason is the closure of the partial computable
>> functions for cantor diagonalization (Gödel's called that a Miracle),
>>and
>> its price: the non computability of most predicate on most machines
>> behaviors (like halting), and the loss of control and the art of
>>letting go
>> the things which go without saying.
>>
>> The universal (Löbian) machine can already defeat all normative or
>> reductionist theory about their first person. They know that their soul
>>is
>> not a machine!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> For human agency (given that matter/energy side is functioning)
>>information
>> is what to a high degree drives agency.
>>
>>
>> OK.
>>
>>
>>
>> Do you think this would be a fruitful path to pursue, with ³agency² of
>> elementary particles and agency of social institutions as two limit
>>cases?
>>
>>
>> Agency of elementary particles? I am not sure this would not make all
>>the
>> number relations into an agent. Social institution are closer, perhaps
>>even
>> more the corporations, but none are really autonomous. I don't know.
>>
>>
>> This was my second (and last) post of the week.
>>
>> All the best and best to All,
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Gordana
>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> Gordana Dodig Crnkovic, Professor of Computer Science
>> Department of Computer Science and Engineering
>> Chalmers University of Technology
>> School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Mälardalen University
>> http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/~gdc/
>> General Chair of is4si summit 2017
>> http://is4si-2017.org
>>
>>
>> From: Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> on behalf of Loet Leydesdorff
>> <loet at leydesdorff.net>
>> Organization: University of Amsterdam
>> Reply-To: "loet at leydesdorff.net" <loet at leydesdorff.net>
>> Date: Friday, 20 October 2017 at 08:40
>> To: 'Bob Logan' <logan at physics.utoronto.ca>, 'fis'
>><fis at listas.unizar.es>
>> Subject: Re: [Fis] What is ³Agent²?
>>
>> Dear Bob and colleagues,
>>
>> I agree with the choice element. From a sociological perspective,
>>agency is
>> usually defined in relation to structure. For example, in terms of
>> structure/actor contingencies. The structures provide the background
>>that
>> bind us. Remarkably, Mark, we no longer define these communalities
>> philosophically, but sociologically (e.g., Merton, 1942, about the
>> institutional norms of science). An interesting extension is that we
>> nowadays not only perceive communality is our biological origins (as
>> species), but also in terms of communicative layers that we construct
>>and
>> reproduce as inter-agency (interactions).
>>
>> The relation with the information issue is not obvious. I worked on
>>this a
>> bit in the first half of the 90s:
>>
>> "Structure"/"Action" Contingencies and the Model of Parallel Distributed
>> Processing, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 23 (1993) 47-77.
>> The Production of Probabilistic Entropy in Structure/Action Contingency
>> Relations, Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 18 (1995) 339-56.
>>
>> Best,
>> Loet
>>
>> ________________________________
>> Loet Leydesdorff
>> Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
>> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>> loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
>> Associate Faculty, SPRU, University of Sussex;
>> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
>> Beijing;
>> Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London;
>> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Bob Logan
>> Sent: Friday, October 20, 2017 6:11 AM
>> To: Terrence W. DEACON <deacon at berkeley.edu>
>> Cc: fis <Fis at listas.unizar.es>
>> Subject: Re: [Fis] What is ³Agent²?
>>
>>
>>
>> Dear Terry and FIS friends - I agree with all that Terry has said about
>> agency. I do wish to however to point out that an agent has choice and a
>> non-agent has no choice. I would suggest that the defining
>>characteristic of
>> an agent is choice and therefore an agent must be a living organism and
>>all
>> living organisms are agents. Agents/living organisms have choice or are
>> capable of choice or agency and they are the only things that have
>>choice or
>> can interpret information. Abiotic non-agents do not have information
>> because they have no choice. We humans can have information about
>>abiotic
>> objects but those objects themselves do not have that information as
>>they
>> have no mind to be informed. That includes this email post, it is
>>abiotic an
>> has no agency. It has information by virtue of you reading it because
>>you
>> are able to interpret the visual signs with which I have recorded my
>> thoughts. Marshall McLuhan would add to my comments that ³the user is
>>the
>> content² as well as saying that Shannon¹s work was not a theory of
>> information but a "theory of transportation². I think of Shannon¹s work
>>in a
>> similar light. I also do not regard Shannon¹s work as a theory of
>> information but it is a theory of signals. Shannon himself said his
>>theory
>> was not about meaning and I say what is information without meaning and
>>that
>> therefore Shannon only had a theory of signals.
>>
>>
>>
>> Another insight of McLuhan¹s that of figure and ground is useful to
>> understand why we have so many different definitions of information.
>>McLuhan
>> maintained that one could not understand a figure unless one understood
>>the
>> ground in which it operates in. (McLuhan might have gotten this idea
>>from
>> his professor at Cambridge, I. A. Richards, who said that in order to
>> communicate one needs to feedforward [he coined the term btw] the
>>context of
>> what one is communicating.) The different definitions of information we
>>have
>> considered are a result of the different contexts in which the term
>> information is used. We should also keep in mind that all words are
>> metaphors and metaphor literally means to carry across, derived from the
>> Greek meta (literally Œacross') and phorein (literally 'to carry'). So
>>the
>> word information has been carried across from one domain or area of
>>interest
>> to another. It entered the English language as the noun associated with
>>the
>> verb 'to inform', i.e. to form the mind. Here is an excerpt from my book
>> What Is Information? (available for free at demopublishing.com):
>>
>> "Origins of the Concept of Information - We begin our historic survey
>>of the
>> development of the concept of information with its etymology. The
>>English
>> word information according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) first
>> appears in the written record in 1386 by Chaucer: 'Whanne Melibee hadde
>>herd
>> the grete skiles and resons of Dame Prudence, and hire wise
>>informacions and
>> techynges.' The word is derived from Latin through French by combining
>>the
>> word inform meaning giving a form to the mind with the ending ³ation²
>> denoting a noun of action. This earliest definition refers to an item of
>> training or molding of the mind.² This is why abiotic objects have no
>> information as I claimed above because they have no mind that can be
>> informed.
>>
>> I hope that by informing you of the origin of the word information I
>>have
>> shed some light on our confusion about what is information and why we
>>have
>> so many definitions of it. It might even shed some light for that
>>matter as
>> to what is an agent. Got the ticket? If so that makes me a ticket
>>agent. I
>> hope you get the joke. all the best - Bob
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________
>>
>>
>>
>> Robert K. Logan
>>
>> Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto
>>
>> Fellow University of St. Michael's College
>>
>> Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
>>
>> http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan
>>
>> www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications
>>
>> https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/people/homepages/logan/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Oct 19, 2017, at 7:11 PM, Terrence W. DEACON <deacon at berkeley.edu>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> AUTONOMOUS AGENCY: The definition I propose for autonomous agency It is
>>open
>> to challenge. Of course, there are many ways that we use the term
>>'agent' in
>> more general and metaphoric ways. I am, however, interested in the more
>> fundamental conception that these derived uses stem from. I do not claim
>> that this definition is original, but rather that it is what we
>>implicitly
>> understand by the concept. So if this is not your understanding I am
>>open to
>> suggestions for modification.
>>
>>
>>
>> I should add that it has been a recent goal of my work to describe an
>> empirically testable simplest model system that satisfies this
>>definition.
>> Those of you who are familiar with my work will recognize that this is
>>what
>> I call an autogenic or teleodynamic system. In this context, however,
>>it is
>> only the adequacy of the definition that I am interested in exploring.
>>As in
>> many of the remarks of others on this topic it is characterized by
>> strange-loop recursivity, self-reference, and physicality. And it may be
>> worth while describing how this concept is defined by e.g. Hofstadter,
>>von
>> Foerster, Luhmann, Moreno, Kauffman, Barad, and others, to be sure that
>>we
>> have covered the critical features and haven't snuck in any "demons".
>>In my
>> definition, I have attempted to avoid any cryptic appeal to observers or
>> unexamined teleological properties, because my purpose is instead to
>>provide
>> a constructive definition of what these properties entail and why they
>>are
>> essential to a full conception of information.
>>
>>
>>
>> CENTRALITY OF NORMATIVE PROPERTIES: A critical factor when discussing
>>agency
>> is that it is typically defined with respect to "satisfaction
>>conditions" or
>> "functions" or "goals" or other NORMATIVE properties. Normative
>>properties
>> are all implicitly teleological. They are irrelevant to chemistry and
>> physics. The concept of an "artificial agent" may not require intrinsic
>> teleology (e.g. consider thermostats or guidance systems - often
>>described
>> as teleonomic systems) but the agentive properties of such artifacts are
>> then implicitly parasitic on imposed teleology provided by some
>>extrinsic
>> agency. This is of course implicit also in the concepts of 'signal' and
>> 'noise' which are central to most information concepts. These are not
>> intrinsic properties of information, but are extrinsically imposed
>> distinctions (e.g. noise as signal to the repair person). So I consider
>>the
>> analysis of agency and its implicit normativity to be a fundamental
>>issue to
>> be resolved in our analysis of information. Though we can still bracket
>>any
>> consideration of agency from many analyses my simply assuming it (e.g.
>> assumed users, interpreters, organisms and their functions, etc.), but
>>this
>> explicitly leaves a critical defining criterion outside the analysis. In
>> these cases, we should just be clear that in doing so we have imported
>> unexplained boundary conditions into the analysis by fiat. Depending on
>>the
>> goal of the analysis (also a teleological factor) this may be
>>unimportant.
>> But the nature and origin of agency and normativity remain foundational
>> questions for any full theory of information.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 12:47 PM, Stanley N Salthe
>><ssalthe at binghamton.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Here is an interesting recent treatment of autonomy.
>>
>>
>>
>> Alvaro Moreno and Matteo Mossio: Biological Autonomy: A Philosophical
>>
>> and Theoretical Enquiry (History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life
>>Sciences
>> 12);
>>
>> Springer, Dordrecht, 2015, xxxiv + 221 pp., $129 hbk, ISBN
>>978-94-017-9836-5
>>
>>
>>
>> STAN
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 11:44 AM, Terrence W. DEACON
>><deacon at berkeley.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> AN AUTONOMOUS AGENT IS A DYNAMICAL SYSTEM ORGANIZED TO BE CAPABLE OF
>> INITIATING PHYSICAL WORK TO FURTHER PRESERVE THIS SAME CAPACITY IN THE
>> CONTEXT OF  INCESSANT EXTRINSIC AND/OR INTRINSIC TENDENCIES FOR THIS
>>SYSTEM
>> CAPACITY TO DEGRADE.
>>
>>
>>
>> THIS ENTAILS A CAPACITY TO ORGANIZE WORK THAT IS SPECIFICALLY
>>CONTRAGRADE TO
>> THE FORM OF THIS DEGRADATIONAL INFLUENCE, AND THUS ENTAILS A CAPACITY
>>TO BE
>> INFORMED BY THE EFFECTS OF THAT INFLUENCE WITH RESPECT TO THE AGENT¹S
>> CRITICAL ORGANIZATIONAL CONSTRAINTS.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 6:00 PM, Koichiro Matsuno <CXQ02365 at nifty.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> On 19 Oct 2017 at 6:42 AM, Alex Hankey wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> the actual subject has to be non-reducible and fundamental to our
>>universe.
>>
>>
>>
>>    This view is also supported by Conway-Kochen¹s free will theorem
>>(2006).
>> If (a big IF, surely) we admit that our fellows can freely exercise
>>their
>> free will, it must be impossible to imagine that the atoms and molecules
>> lack their share of the similar capacity. For our bodies eventually
>>consist
>> of those atoms and molecules.
>>
>>
>>
>>    Moreover, the exercise of free will on the part of the constituent
>>atoms
>> and molecules could come to implement the centripetality of Bob
>>Ulanowicz at
>> long last under the guise of chemical affinity unless the case would
>>have to
>> forcibly be dismissed.
>>
>>
>>
>>    This has been my second post this week.
>>
>>
>>
>>    Koichiro Matsuno
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Alex Hankey
>> Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2017 6:42 AM
>> To: Arthur Wist <arthur.wist at gmail.com>; FIS Webinar
>><Fis at listas.unizar.es>
>> Subject: Re: [Fis] What is ³Agent²?
>>
>>
>>
>> David Chalmers's analysis made it clear that if agents exist, then they
>>are
>> as fundamental to the universe as electrons or gravitational mass.
>>
>>
>>
>> Certain kinds of physiological structure support 'agents' - those
>>emphasized
>> by complexity biology. But the actual subject has to be non-reducible
>>and
>> fundamental to our universe.
>>
>>
>>
>> Alex
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Fis mailing list
>> Fis at listas.unizar.es
>> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
>> University of California, Berkeley
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Fis mailing list
>> Fis at listas.unizar.es
>> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
>> University of California, Berkeley
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Fis mailing list
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>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>-- 
>Dr. Mark William Johnson
>Institute of Learning and Teaching
>Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
>University of Liverpool
>
>Phone: 07786 064505
>Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
>Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com
>
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