[Fis] new year lecture

[Joseph Brenner]

Dear Loet, Jose Luiz and All,

 

Another series of New Year's Greetings - can there be too many?

 

As he knows, I have already found the positions of Jose Luiz most
significant, also the commentaries which they generate as this of Loet.
According to my own interpretation of 'how things are', it is best to look
at how things are (partly) the same rather than only what distinguishes
them.

 

Two such 'things' are construction and control, and my point is actually
exactly implied by Loet's phraseology: "when the balance tips". In my view,
this is the same question as what determines the change from (primarily)
potentiality to (primarily) actuality. Lupasco thought, eighty years ago,
that at the limit, no more than one quantum of energy is required for a
'flip'. At this point, logic and statistical mechanics, determinism and
stochasticity, converge. Probability enters here through the front door,
since if the change from potential or actual (or vice versa) is more
probable in terms of global energy potential difference, so is the chance of
the flip being in the preferred direction, The system then 'stays' there,
for a longer or shorter time as the case may be, until 'flipped back'
(reverse chemical reactions near equilibrium). 

 

Also very suggestive is Loet's expression that "emergence rewrites the
history from which it emerged". This is a bit opaque since cast in terms of
abstractions. But, again as proposed by Lupasco, for complex systems, the
emergent entity being actualized is not totally separate from the still
partly potentialized states from which it emerged. I believe on close
inspection, which my formulation has not received, it provides for the
apparent concomitant operation of two opposing chains of causality, for
which Loet uses a modification of a univocal arrow of time. The advantage of
my formulation (I suggest) is that it avoids reference to history and time
in their usual senses.

 

Best wishes,

 

Joseph

 

 

  _____  

From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Loet
Leydesdorff
Sent: samedi, 5 janvier 2019 13:23
To: jose luis perez velazquez; fis at listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] new year lecture

 

In summary, these studies represent our preliminary attempt at finding
organising principles of brain function that will help to guide in a more
formal sense inquiry into how consciousness arises from the organization of
matter. The extension of this work that we are now carrying out includes a
description of the evolution equation of brain dynamics using a
probabilistic framework incorporating the probabilities of connections among
brain cell networks. But this is a story for a future talk!  In the
meantime, buena suerte for the new year we just started. even though I don't
really believe in luck but this is another story too, one about determinism
and stochasticity..

 

Dear Jose Luis,

Thank you for the lecture. 

 

It seems to me that one has to distinguish between genesis and validity.
"How consciousness arises from the organization of matter" is typically a
question about the genesis; some would say "morphogenesis" or a next-order
systems level. However, the emerging level has a (sub)dynamics of itself
which can also function as a control mechanism. Construction is bottom up,
but control top-down. Interesting is, in my opinion, the question when the
balance tips in favor of the emerging system?

 

Whereas the genesis is entropy-driven, the control mechanism operates as a
feedback and therefore in terms of generating redundancy (as different from
entropy); against the arrow of time or, in other words, not in historical
time, but in terms of an evolutionary clock. The emergence rewrites the
history from which it emerged. One thus has to specify the differentia
specifica of the next-order in terms of how it operates as a selection
mechanism upon the variation (entropy). This specification cannot be
achieved by focusing on the genesis as you advocate. 

 

Hopefully, you find this a fruitful approach and contribution. The
historical genesis can be studied objectivistically since it occurs in
history. The selection mechanisms first have to be specified on theoretical
ground and thus require another design; namely one of hypotheses and
hypothesis-testing. Would you agree?

 

Best,

Loet

 

  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Associate Faculty,  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of
Sussex; 

Guest Professor  <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Fellow,  <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London; 

http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ
<http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en> &hl=en





 



---
L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel antivirus Avast.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20190106/08182169/attachment.html>