[Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 108, Issue 5 - Kierkegaard, responsible free will and the meaning of the new transition in science

[Alex Hankey]

Dear Lou,
I thought I had discussed with you my theory of Fractal Physiology,
a universal property of biological control systems, that enables
the mind / consciousness to collapse wave functions
Stuart has seen me talk about it in Tucson.
Best wishes,
Alex


On Mon, 15 Jan 2024 at 12:22, Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> wrote:

> "After all, in Jon von Neumann's 'Mathematical Principles of Quantum
> Mechanics'
> the ability of consciousness to reduce wave packets is completely
> accepted,”
>
> You have there some causal ideas “ability of consciousness to reduce” that
> may lead to confusion.
> There is no question that in the models of QM that we use the buck stops
> when an experimenter knows the outcome.
> What collapses is mindstuff when the outcome is known. But before the
> outcome is known, what “could be collapsed” is evolving
> possibility. Possibility becomes actuality at the point of knowing.
> Knowing does not cause the collapse. We have no theory about a cause for
> the collapse except that what is so is so.
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 14, 2024, at 5:38 AM, Alex Hankey <alexhankey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Stuart and other friends and colleagues,
> Consciousness as we experience it cannot be understood properly from the
> second or third person perspectives.
> The ancient Vedic civilisation got it spot on when it held that only
> internal awareness developed through
> the practice of 'meditation' starting after awareness has been internally
> directed by using Yoga's
> Fifth Limb (called Pratyahara) can achieve this. I have been teaching
> Pratyahara in
> the form used by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi since 1971, and I can show how
> it fits the definition given in Pada II of Patanjali's 'Yoga Sutras':
> 'Directing Awareness Inward away from the Senses'.
> From the first person perspective, it becomes clear that consciousness is
> capable of 'Knowing Itself Directly without Intermediary'. Then
> 'The Self knows Itself by Itself'. That means that the Self
> constitutes a Perfectly Self-Observing System.
> The consequence of that is an explanation
> for how wave function collapse occurs.
> A serendipitous, unforeseen result,
> making the model appealing.
> After all, in Jon von Neumann's 'Mathematical Principles of Quantum
> Mechanics'
> the ability of consciousness to reduce wave packets is completely
> accepted, and
> it can be said of von Neumann that he never got anything (seriously)
> wrong.
> Here he was entirely in agreement with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.
> The next steps are to link this phenomenological picture into mathematics
> of biological regulation, in nervous systems, etc. In that regard, Jeffrey
> Goldstone whom I first met as an undergraduate at Trinity Cambridge
> gave me an invaluable hint - the Neural Net - Spin Glass identity.
> The detailed physics of this last section is not difficult to give.
> All best wishes to one and all,
> Alex (Hankey)
>
>
>
> On Fri, 12 Jan 2024 at 19:48, Stuart Kauffman <stukauffman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Lou. I agree that the discovery of mathematics is often not
>> deductive, and I need better to understand what you say below. I do mean
>> what I am saying about Mind, entanglement, and more. I have long adopted
>> Heisenberg’s interpretation of the quantum state, 1958, as potentia.  Dean
>> Radin and colleagues have powerful experimental data that deserves to be
>> considered on some of these issues. Some if this is in the Kauffman Roli
>> paper, “What is Consciousness?” recently published in the LInnean Society
>> journal.
>>
>> Best to all.
>>
>> Stu
>>
>> On Jan 11, 2024, at 11:37 PM, Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Stu,
>> My feeling (and I mean feeling) is that you are right Stu, but you choose
>> rhetoric that leads you into mistakes.
>> The purpose of mathematical models is structural and sometimes deductive.
>> We are concerned primarily with language where the words have meaning and
>> definitions can be
>> elicited. I suspect that you have been seduced by some notion that
>> mathematics is only a deductive or computational enterprise, but it is much
>> more than that at the level of the distinctions that it studies via the
>> definitions and constructions that are made. The error that can then result
>> is to throw away too much. And start making up words that in fact have no
>> meaning such as “mind is quantum”, “mind entangles with the world”, “we
>> collapse the wave function”, “we experience the single state as a qualia”.
>> By the time you start talking this way, you have left the grounds of
>> discourse with discrimination, for rhetoric for which some will applaud you
>> and others will scorn you.
>> (Again I am probably over my quota and can send again next week.)
>> Best,
>> Lou
>>
>> On Jan 11, 2024, at 6:21 PM, Stuart Kauffman <stukauffman at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Gordana I completely agree. Moreover, the Third Transition claims to
>> demonstrate that the evolving biosphere is a non-deducible propagating
>> construction, not a deduction, not a COMPUTATION at all. The grounds to
>> think human mind is a computation are being erased. We do not create
>> meaning by deducing, we create it as living organisms acting in the world.
>> “Meaning” is to ME, acting and doing in my world, for all living creatures.
>>
>> Andrea Roli and I wrote a further paper, “What is Consciousness?",
>> published in the Linnean Society recently, 2023 Vol 139.  We jury rig. Non
>> - embodied Universal Turing Machines are algorithmic and cannot jury rig.
>> Embodied UTM in robots can jury rig a bit, but far too slowly, we think.
>> We suggest mind is quantum, it entangles with the world, we collapse the
>> superposition wave function, and we experience the single state as a
>> qualia.
>>
>> And Kirkegard was exactly correct as are you.
>>
>> Stu
>>
>> On Jan 11, 2024, at 4:07 PM, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <
>> gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 9 January 2024 at 18:32 (below) Stuart wrote:
>> ”(...) responsible free will? Glad to argue for this. Gordana?”
>>
>> "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards"
>> Søren Kierkegaard, Journalen JJ:167 (1843), Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter,
>> Søren Kierkegaard Research Center, Copenhagen, 1997--, volume 18, page 306.
>>
>> Life cannot be understood forwards since we cannot know all possible
>> consequences of our present decisions. Despite this, ethical practice has
>> found pragmatic solutions. For example, a popular ethics topic today is AI,
>> a technology that is developing incredibly quickly. We have no idea what
>> will come next year. Yet, people have started thinking about future
>> scenarios, challenges, possible pitfalls, etc. Societies want to prepare
>> even under uncertainty. We do this all the time.
>>
>> Ethics is a distributed intelligent learning adaptive system.
>>
>> The question of predicting a system's future behavior also relates to
>> research. The paper "A third transition in science?" relates both to the
>> methodology of prediction and the direction of the new transition in
>> science, a post-Newtonian paradigm.
>> The current paradigm shift is occurring in the material sciences—physics,
>> chemistry, biology—as well as in other forms of knowledge production and *meaning
>> creation*.
>>
>> At the foundation of information, there is the concept of 'meaning'.
>> This meaning is tightly bound to values, but that is a subject for a new
>> discussion.
>>
>> Gordana
>>
>>
>> *From: *Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> on behalf of Stuart Kauffman <
>> stukauffman at gmail.com>
>> *Date: *Tuesday, 9 January 2024 at 18:32
>> *To: *Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com>, 0 <stukauffman at gmail.com>
>> *Cc: *fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>, Andrea Roli <andrea.roli at unibo.it>
>> *Subject: *Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 108, Issue 5
>>
>>
>> Lou how splendid!  I fully agree and perhaps even more. Wheeler’s
>> wonderful 20 questions is, as you say, OUR joint *conscious *construction
>> of what will become. What becomes did not yet exist.
>>
>> The clearest physical example is exactly the evolving biosphere. Whatever
>> the Actual biosphere is now, it enables an un-prestatable Adjacent Possible
>> into which it literally physically constructs itself. What is Actual now
>> must be stable enough to enable what can next arise. The same thing occurs
>> in the evolving global economy. Goods and services that now exist enable
>> the coming into existence of new, non-prestatable, non-deducible
>> complements and substitutes, screws and screwdrivers - screws and nails.
>>
>> We do not know what is “in” the Adjacent Possible of the biosphere. We do
>> not know the sample space of the process, so can have no probability
>> measure nor even define “random”.
>>
>> It is critical to our discussions to get beyond formal deductions.
>> Evolving life is an evolving physical, in part, construction.
>>
>> Beyond the way the biosphere physically constructs itself without appeal
>> to MIND and consciousness, we also are conscious, choose and act. Ask any
>> Venture Capitalists and entrepreneurs. They cannot deduce - compute “The
>> risk”.
>> As Soren Kirkegord roughly said, We live our lives forward into mystery.
>>
>> Uhoh, responsible free will? Glad to argue for this. Gordana?
>>
>> Stu
>>
>>
>> On Jan 8, 2024, at 8:38 AM, Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Stu,
>> The constituents of your Kantian wholes still obey the laws of physics. I
>> am made of atoms and molecules.
>> In studying mathematics the structures obey the axioms I have chosen to
>> study, but they are not so constrained by them that they do not have
>> surprising behaviour.
>> The prime numbers obey the Peano axioms but that does not make them staid
>> and predictable, quite the contrary. Novelty arises in relation to
>> constraints.
>> Look at the molecular biology. We are pretty damn sure the the molecules
>> in the cell obey physical law all the way down to quantum mechanics. And
>> those molecules have evolved into the dance of life. How those evolutions
>> occurred is your fantastic study AND all that occurred as far as we can
>> tell with no violation of physical law.
>>
>> I see that every even number not equal to 2 is the sum of two odd primes
>> (in many ways!) I also see that whenever this happens it happens within the
>> rules of arithmetic. The rules of arithmetic do not deny this phenomenon,
>> but it may well be that they neither predict it or make it possible for it
>> to be deduced from them. That is the way things are. Constraints are part
>> and parcel of creativity.
>>
>> Ah, but you ask Why can Physics have constraining laws? Ha!
>> Note that in the Feynman Path Integral version of QM the “particle” does
>> whatever it likes.
>> The laws arise from the phase relationships of the particles that arrive
>> at a given “place” in conjunction with assumed properties of “observers”.
>> Wheeler in his book on Gravity (Misner, Thorne and Wheeler) speaks
>> eloquently about “Law without Law”.
>> I suggest you read John Wheeler who, in my opinion has the best answer to
>> this question in terms of his
>> Parable of the Game of Twenty Questions.
>> I can send you my paper related to that but it will be too long for this
>> email.
>> Excerpt included below.
>>
>>
>> 86. Here is a remarkable story told by the physicist John Archibald
>> Wheeler about a Game of Twenty Questions (Davies, P.C.W and Brown, J. R.
>> (1986)): “ Then my turn came .... I was locked out an unbelievably long
>> time. On finally being readmitted, I found a smile on everyone’s face, a
>> sign of a joke or a plot. I nevertheless started my attempt to find the
>> word. ‘Is it an animal?’ ‘No.’ Is it a mineral?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is it green?’
>> ‘No.’ ‘Is it white?’ ‘Yes.’ These answers came quickly. Then the questions
>> took longer in the answering. All I wanted from my friends was a simple
>> ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Yet the one queried would think and think before responding.
>> Finally I felt I was getting hot on the trail, that the word might be
>> *cloud*. I knew I was allowed only one chance at the final word. I
>> ventured it: ‘Is it *cloud*?’ ‘Yes,’ came the reply, and everyone in the
>> room burst out laughing. They explained to me that there had been no word
>> in the room. They had agreed not to agree on a word. Each one questioned
>> could answer as he pleased – with one requirement that he should have a
>> word in mind compatible with his own response and all that had gone before.
>> Otherwise, if I challenged, he lost.
>> This surprise version of Twenty Questions was therefore as difficult for
>> my colleagues as it was for me ... What is the symbolism of the story? The
>> world, we once believed, exists *out there *independent of any act of
>> observation. ... I, entering the room, thought the room contained a
>> definite word. In actuality, the word was developed step by step through
>> the questions I raised ... Had I asked different questions or the same
>> questions in a different order I would have ended up with a different word
>> ... However, the power I had in bringing the particular word *cloud *into
>> being was partial only. A major part of the selection lay in the ‘yes’ or
>> ‘no’ replies of the colleagues around the room ... In the game, no word is
>> a word until that word is promoted to reality by the choice of questions
>> asked and answers given.” Wheeler’s allegorical fable was intended to
>> illuminate the conditions of the quantum physicist. In quantum physics no
>> phenomenon is an actual phenomenon until it is observed and agreed upon by
>> all the physics colleagues. The story just as well illustrates the world of
>> social interaction.
>> 87. My thesis is that all attempts to find stable knowledge of the world
>> are attempts to find theories accompanied by eigenforms in the actual
>> reflexivity of the world into which one is thrown. The world itself is
>> affected by the actions of its participants at all levels. One finds out
>> about the nature of the world by acting upon it. The distinctions one makes
>> change and create the world. The world makes those possibilities for
>> distinctions available in terms of our actions. Given this point of view,
>> one can ask, as one should of a theory, whether there is empirical evidence
>> for this idea that stable knowledge is equivalent to the production of
>> eigenforms. In this case we have only to look at what we do and see that
>> whenever “something is the case” then there is an orchestration of actions
>> that leaves the something invariant, making that something into an
>> eigenform for those actions. The eigenform thesis is not itself a matter of
>> empirical science. It is a matter of definition, albeit circular
>> definition. Another point of view is that the empirical evidence is all
>> around you. Examine any thing. How does it come to be for you? Investigate
>> the question and you will find that thing is maintained by actions. The
>> action could be as simple as opening your eyes and looking at the cloudy
>> sky. With that action, the cloudy sky comes to be for you. I do not assert
>> that this is the usual scientific explanation of cloudy sky. But if you
>> want to work with such things then it is usually even more transparent. The
>> sharp spectral lines of Helium are the result of setting up a very
>> particular experiment that produces them. The experiment, its equipment,
>> the scientists and all that is needed to perform it is the transformation
>> whose eigenform is the spectrum of Helium.
>> 88. It is a fruitful beginning to look at present scientific endeavors
>> and to see how they are interrelated and find connections among them, to
>> engage in meta-scientific activity. This can reveal how theories, seemingly
>> objective, actually affect the world through their very being, and how
>> these actions on the world come to affect the theories themselves. In
>> exploring the world, we find regularities. It is possible that these
>> regularities are our own footprint. In the end we shall begin to understand
>> the mystery of the eigenforms that we have created, constructed and found.
>> (LK in Constructivist Foundations, Vol. 11, No. 3)
>> This is of course related to Wheeler’s “It from Bit”. Each question gives
>> a bit of information. The whole pattern of questioning gives the resulting
>> world of “everything that is the case”. The striking thing in the parable
>> is the lack of causality, and the philosophical question: How much comes
>> just from our demand for consistency? And you will note to what great
>> lengths we go as (mathematical) scientists to preserve consistency even in
>> the face of acausality.
>> Best,
>> Lou
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 7, 2024, at 7:27 AM, Stuart Kauffman <stukauffman at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Thank you Lou. I agree. Creativity is not deduction. Given what you
>> write, Andrea and I claim to have shown that no laws at all entail of the
>> evolution of the biosphere which is a non-deducible, propagating,
>> construction. Assume this is correct. But physics DOES HAVE LAWS THAT
>> ENTAIL. So  if Andrea and Stu are right and physics with laws is right, why
>> can physics have entailing laws but not the evolving biosphere. One answer
>> is that living organisms really are Kantian Wholes with Catalytic and
>> Constraint closure, that can evolve new boundary conditions creating novel
>> phase spaces, that can evolve and create ever-new phase spaces by *selection
>> on the whole, which is downward causation* for those feature that
>> survive and propagate best in the current context - and there is no prior
>> description of what the current context will become.
>>
>> But even if Andrea and I are right about evolving life, why can PHYSICS
>> have entailing laws?
>>
>> All very odd.
>>
>> Stu
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.) DSc. (Hon Causa)
> Board Member Ayushman India (https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.ayushmanindia.in__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Wps-kxDBFlgAiU2R_ZUVnW1l4qmt0OwlIglUVupyfWiTucrFRS0sBw7yaBrunflX0W41dwVACCuiyZisdikd3g$ )
> Teacher Yoga Pratyahara and True Dhyana Meditation (50 years)
> Professor Emeritus of Biology,
> MIT World Peace University,
> 124 Paud Road, Pune, MA 411038
> Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
> Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789
> WhatsApp: as for Mobile, India
> ____________________________________________________________
>
> 2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences,
> Mathematics and Phenomenological Philosophy
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00796107/119/3__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Wps-kxDBFlgAiU2R_ZUVnW1l4qmt0OwlIglUVupyfWiTucrFRS0sBw7yaBrunflX0W41dwVACCuiyZir8L8qPQ$ >
>
>
>

-- 
Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.) DSc. (Hon Causa)
Board Member Ayushman India (https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.ayushmanindia.in__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Wps-kxDBFlgAiU2R_ZUVnW1l4qmt0OwlIglUVupyfWiTucrFRS0sBw7yaBrunflX0W41dwVACCuiyZisdikd3g$ )
Teacher Yoga Pratyahara and True Dhyana Meditation (50 years)
Professor Emeritus of Biology,
MIT World Peace University,
124 Paud Road, Pune, MA 411038
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789
WhatsApp: as for Mobile, India
____________________________________________________________

2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences, Mathematics
and Phenomenological Philosophy
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00796107/119/3__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Wps-kxDBFlgAiU2R_ZUVnW1l4qmt0OwlIglUVupyfWiTucrFRS0sBw7yaBrunflX0W41dwVACCuiyZir8L8qPQ$ >
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