[Fis] Fwd: Information, computation, and causality in living systems: Fis Digest...
Pedro C. Marijuán
pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com
Wed Jan 17 18:51:14 CET 2024
-------- Mensaje reenviado --------
Asunto: Re: Information, computation, and causality in living systems:
[Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 108, Issue 5 - Kierkegaard, responsible free will
and the meaning of the new transition in science
Fecha: Wed, 17 Jan 2024 14:37:15 +0100
De: Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com>
Para: Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com>
CC: Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se>, Stuart
Kauffman <stukauffman at gmail.com>, Andrea Roli <andrea.roli at unibo.it>,
Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>, Eric Werner
<eric.werner at oarf.org>, joe.brenner at bluewin.ch <joe.brenner at bluewin.ch>,
Krassimir Markov <itheaiss at gmail.com>
Dear FISers, Stu, Lou, Alex, Paul and All,
This is my second post on one day and for the whole week, I am afraid,
but I think it is worth saying it in conclusion of my previous comment,
because a chance let me come to these "emergent thoughts" as this often
happens in life with the "law of attraction" when reading another source.
I came upon Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The System of Dr. Tarr and
Prof. Fether” and the advice of the head of a mental health hospital there:
"/You are young yet, my friend,” replied my host, “but the time will
arrive when you will learn to judge for //yourself of whatis going on in
the world, without trusting to the gossip of others./*/Believe nothing
you hear, and only one half that you see./”*
Thus I come back to Lou's and my earlier argument about the
(constructed) illusion which all science is for us per definition. Aley
will understand this easier. :-), but
I believe that most of you will object to this stance of extreme
scepticism in Poe's short story, while saying that if you don't believe
anything you hear, you might as well just give up trying to understand
anything about what is going on in this world. I understand this
frustration, but on the other hand I think that this is*a very good
starting point to revisit and revise many common scientific concepts we
got used to very easily and apply by default now. *What did people like
Einstein and Tesla 100+ years ago and Elons Musk is trying to remind us
about? You don't really need DNA engineering, AI and quantum computers
to step back (or aside) and look at the picture as an observer (from
first, second or third person perspective, or maybe all together
superposed!), to "feel" it (better), do you? Arran is going to open
another exciting discussion quite soon.
Have a great week ahead!
Plamen :-)
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 1:41 PM Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov
<plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com <mailto:plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com>> wrote:
Nicely said, Lou (bold face emphasis from me below).
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 5:41 AM Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com
<mailto:loukau at gmail.com>> wrote:
This is in response to Stu and the notion that deduction is not
all (I agree) and that it is impossible (I disagree).
We use deduction to see the results of constraints that persist
over time. If these constraints change too much then we cannot
reason from them.
But in many cases we know that certain constraints are in place
and with that we can deduce many other facts. This is how
mathematics and modeling using mathematics works.
*There is some given set of assumptions and what can be deduced
from them is valid just so long as these assumptions hold. *
When we are in situations where everything is up for grabs then
no deduction is possible. Most actual situations are somewhere
in between purely formal results from rules and the pure chaos.
I agree with Stuart that it is futile to try to deduce everything.
And that's why work needs to be done.
The question always is, can one deduce a key fact that will
forward the action? See the works of
Conan Doyle for many examples.
If you are smart or lucky or both enough.....
On the mathematical side, we have structures that everyone
agrees to. And in that realm it is just as certain as 2 + 2 = 4
that there are infinitely many prime numbers and that the number
of prime numbers less than or equal to n is asymptotic to
n/log(n) and that no consistent formal system can capture all
the truths of number theory. We reasoned ourselves right out of
the formal box because we have the ability to reason (as evolved
organisms). And luckily Stu agrees that this evolution is not
part of some formal system.
Or so it seems.
When reading Penrose's book "The Road Reality" long time ago, I
recall he had a drawing inside that he took from his former book
about consciousness "The Emperor's New Mind". It represented a
triple mapping of the Platonic spheres representing the different
realities we are exposed to. Here a nice new image of them:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://scientificgems.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/three-worlds/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Q_LXD3FaN87lhUDrWnDolG5NEoU-HzYT2h8X8Amb6NNMk9iuWdhmEd8RG_lJWjIz48yhx2RNVQZq_T2eNgUiNwavYx7F$
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://scientificgems.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/three-worlds/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Q_LXD3FaN87lhUDrWnDolG5NEoU-HzYT2h8X8Amb6NNMk9iuWdhmEd8RG_lJWjIz48yhx2RNVQZq_T2eNgUiNwavYx7F$ >.
That brought me to an extension of Robert Rosen’s concept of the
relations between science and life (itself) which I published in a
2010 article about the post-Newtonian paradigm. So I am asking
myself, and you all of course:: isn’t this paradox that Stu and
Rolli put before our eyes a clash between the Aristotelian and
Platonic view at Nature? What other mapping could be there? One of
the AI mind perhaps?
Prime numbers, complex numbers, and many more mathematical
object-tools are mind constructs, abstractions of physical entities,
but they also have their not so ideal image reflections in the world
which our senses decode, and which David Mumford and his colleagues
have so beautifully (and metaphorically) described their book
“Indra’s Pearls”. So, don’t we need to really try expanding our
consciousness, as Alex said, in order to perceive and understand
more shared reality?
*Everyone has to reason this out for themselves. *We can be
convinced by at least powerful rhetoric that we are not machines
(activated formal systems)
Well, I am not quite sure about this last thing, while taking on
Bruno’s stance who gets really back 2000 years ago to Plotinus.
and we can see that indeed it could be that this convincing is a
kind of illusion.
And this is what Alex and other followers of the Hindu philosophy
tradition is trying to tell us.
You can also deduce this, of course. I don’t recall who has compared
this process to looking through a Kaleidoskope. Maybe Mumford himself.
*I suggest that individuals can each come to their own conclusions*.
Best,
Plamen
> On Jan 13, 2024, at 10:42 AM, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
> <gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se
> <mailto:gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se>> wrote:
>
> Stu, thank you for the answer, and sorry that I cannot reply
> in the list.
> I want to comment on your claim below that life is “not a
> computation at all”.
> It depends on how you define computation.
> In your reply to Krassimir, and on several other occasions,
> you pointed out the limitations of computation that you define
> as necessarily algorithmic (in the sense of algorithm = Turing
> Machine). I can agree given the “computing = TM” assumption.
> However, in the Theory of computing people have already
> developed computational models beyond the TM, in the form of
> Unconventional computing, and Natural computing (physical
> computing).
> Within IAIS we have two leading names, Andy Adamatzky and
> Susan Stepney who could help us to present and discuss recent
> developments, explaining how those new kinds of computation
> can be used to describe life. Their research is about future
> computing, not the machines we are using.
> But yesterday I found a short (2-page) article“Information,
> computation, and causality in living systems” (in the
> attachment),bycomplexity researcherCarlos Gershenson,
> affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute,and focused on the
> informational-computational view of complexity.
> He describes the limitations of our present-day understanding
> of life. Questioning the adequacy of our knowledge, he quotes
> Kauffman and Roli “The world is not a theorem” from Entropy
> 2021*.*
> At the same time, Gershensonproposes using computational
> simulations on*existing computers*in combination with
> experiments to learn about living systems. He refers to
> algorithmic theories of life and the success ofAlphaFold and
> Evolutionary-scale prediction of atomic-level protein
> structure with a language model.
> I would propose inviting Carlos to give a presentation so that
> we can discuss those topics in depth and test all our
> objections and expectations of models of life explicitly.
> All the best,
> Gordana
> *From:*Stuart Kauffman <stukauffman at gmail.com
> <mailto:stukauffman at gmail.com>>
> *Date:*Friday, 12 January 2024 at 01:21
> *To:*Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se
> <mailto:gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se>>
> *Cc:*Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com
> <mailto:loukau at gmail.com>>, fis <fis at listas.unizar.es
> <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>>, Andrea Roli
> <andrea.roli at unibo.it <mailto:andrea.roli at unibo.it>>
> *Subject:*Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 108, Issue 5 -
> Kierkegaard, responsible free will and the meaning of the new
> transition in science
> 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
>> <mailto:gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se>> wrote:
>>
>> On9 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 forwardssince 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 bothtothe 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 isthe 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
>> <mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>> on behalf of Stuart
>> Kauffman <stukauffman at gmail.com <mailto:stukauffman at gmail.com>>
>> *Date:*Tuesday, 9 January 2024 at 18:32
>> *To:*Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com
>> <mailto:loukau at gmail.com>>, 0 <stukauffman at gmail.com
>> <mailto:stukauffman at gmail.com>>
>> *Cc:*fis <fis at listas.unizar.es
>> <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>>, Andrea Roli
>> <andrea.roli at unibo.it <mailto: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
>>> <mailto: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 <mailto: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
> <Information, computation, and causality in living
> systems-Carlos Gershenson.pdf>
--
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