[Fis] [External] Tao and information processing (for a human): Fwd: Re: Emotional Sentience #2 The Metaphor of The Tao (the last long post!)

Sun Apr 28 01:54:42 CEST 2024

Hi Aaron,

> but seriously incomplete, in my view,

	Absolutely; if this was complete, we could all go home and all of biomedicine would be solved :-)  certainly it is incomplete. I have focused on some specific issues and ignored many others, as the field is vast.

> As far as I know Levin has not mentioned or offered explanations for the
phenomena I've mentioned (and there's much more that I haven't mentioned). I've
written to him about this. 

	correct; I have nothing much to say about innate behavioral competencies of specific animals. But I view them as not more impressive than innate competencies of cells and various embryos in anatomical and physiological spaces - to me, the problem-solving strategies they deploy natively - "out of the box" - are of exactly the same type as the behavioral ones you emphasize. It is behavior, even though in other spaces besides our familiar 3D space, and complex problem-solving behavior at that. So, I think in working on the origin of that, we are addressing fundamentally the question you are asking: where do behavioral competencies, in whatever space, come from. We do have answers to some of that, although - absolutely, incomplete!

Best,

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>> on behalf of "a.sloman at bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.sloman at bham.ac.uk>" <a.sloman at bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.sloman at bham.ac.uk>>
Reply-To: "a.sloman at bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.sloman at bham.ac.uk>" <a.sloman at bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.sloman at bham.ac.uk>>
Date: Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 7:56 AM
To: "Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se <mailto:gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se>> 'fis'" <fis at listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>>
Subject: [External] [Fis] Tao and information processing (for a human): Fwd: Re: Emotional Sentience #2 The Metaphor of The Tao (the last long post!)

Dear Gordana (and Fis),

I apologise for the format of this message if anyone finds it difficult. I find
it very difficult to cope with the format of the Fis messages, which I have to
transform radically in order to be able to reply quoting parts, in the ancient
programmable text editor (part of Poplog) which I use on Linux for reading and
writing messages and other work, e.g. developing web sites.

I apologise for any errors or obscurities introduced by my re-formatting of
Gordana's text.

I am responding to the message in which she wrote:

> Dear Joseph
>
> Let me comment on the following statement in your mail:
>
> > You also introduce computability in an area where non-computability - the
> > absence of an algorithm - perhaps predominates.
>
> Allow me to disagree.
> Algorithm is not what it used to be -- the Turing Machine. Our late colleague,
> mathematician Mark Burgin has written extensively on that topic.
>
> I suppose you refer to this passage in Kate's mail:
> "wherein the ongoing cyclic transitions between them form the computational
> engine of The Tao. This dance delivers the algorithmic logic of Turing machines,
> and the opponent processes, metastability and regulatory switching, evident in
> metabolism, morphogenesis, genetic and the autonomic neural networks embody
> behavioral control."
>
> There is a way to represent all natural processes as computation -- natural
> computation, natural information processing.
>
> If we look at the physiological (bio-chemical) processes underlying emotions,
> feelings, and other sub-symbolic processes in the human body, all of them can be
> represented as information processes.

I have very recently taken that last idea much further and argued that the
oldest and most important forms of information processing in animals on this
planet are located in synapses, which are descendants of the most most ancient
ancestors of animals, including humans: single celled organisms, which later
evolved to the sexually reproducing single-celled organisms discussed by Tibor
Ganti in his book The Principles of Life, referenced in the huge, unfinished,
online document in which I am developing these ideas, referring to a vast, and
steadily increasing number of other sources:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/metamorphosis.html__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqvuMG5UA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/metamorphosis.html__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqvuMG5UA$>

(search in it for "Ganti" for references to his work and to commentaries on it.)

My claim (strongly influenced by the work of Seth Grant and colleagues in
Edinburgh University -- also referenced in that document, whose ideas I have
extended) is that the most powerful forms of information processing used in
cognition in animals, including humans, occur in synapses, with neurons having
important but subsidiary roles, including transferring information between
synapses and other, more recently evolved, parts of animal bodies. There are
also other forms of communication and control, e.g. using hormones transmitted
via blood vessels.

Gordana wrote:

> Michael Levin and collaborators have practical applications in their work in
> biology and medicine. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://drmichaellevin.org/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqJ6BmNk8$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://drmichaellevin.org/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqJ6BmNk8$>

That is important and impressive work, but seriously incomplete, in my view,
e.g. ignoring processes that have evolved in branching trajectories in species
that reproduce by laying eggs enclosed in shells, and emerge with very complex
physiological structures and significant unlearnt cognitive competences, e.g.
many species of newly hatched birds and reptiles, including sea-turtles emerging
from eggs buried in sand and abandoned by their mothers.

As far as I know Levin has not mentioned or offered explanations for the
phenomena I've mentioned (and there's much more that I haven't mentioned). I've
written to him about this. He has also heard me give presentations on some of
the ideas, but not the most recent ones mentioned below.

I have not been using the word "algorithm" in connection with the biological
information processing mechanisms. Instead I talk about varieties of information
processing, especially processing of information during control of complex
biochemical processes of reproduction and development, and most recently in my
discussions of metamorphosis, involving very complex chemical decomposition and
recombination processes -- arguably more sophisticated than anything prodced by
human engineers, all happening in very small spaces with small temperature
changes and using small amounts of energy.

No human designed assembly mechanisms that I know of come close to matching
those features.

I am grateful for pointers to relevant published work (preferably freely
available online) that sould be referenced in the metamorphosis.html document
The name of the document is misleading though I think any other short name would
also be misleading. In a sense, the name of the document is partly justified by
the non-biological metamorphosis constantly occurring in the document as I
work on it!

More from Gordana:
(Replying to Joe Brenner)

> More about natural computing:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_computing__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqR5mljTs$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_computing__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqR5mljTs$>
>
> A basic book: G.Rozenberg, T.Back, J.Kok, Ed., Handbook of Natural Computing,
> Springer Verlag, 2012
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-540-92910-9__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqDvbUgn8$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-540-92910-9__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqDvbUgn8$>
>
> The question if The Tao can be *completely* captured computationally is
> outside the scope of this discussion.
>
> A photograph cannot completely represent every aspect of its object but is still
> representative enough for a human observer.

Our current ideas about computation now seem to me to form a subset of a larger
collection of ideas about forms of control using huge amounts of information
produced over millions of years, also using surprisingly little energy and very
small but very complex forms of matter.

I hope my departure from the Fis format has not caused any problems.

Aaron

Aaron Sloman,
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/>*axs__;fg!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznq2Et8dy0$
Emeritus Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science
(Retired, but still working full time, on the Meta-Morphogenesis project,
while brain slides downhill)

School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT UK

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