[Fis] An Unbeatable Tradition?

[Stuart Kauffman]

Bless you Pedro.

Some not quite random comments:

1) Descartes got us started thinking about a “mind in a vat” wondering if it were being deceived. This mind never acts in the world, it only observes. Science is knowledge, not action,
2) living organisms are open non-equilibrium systems so we all must interact with the rest of the world, e.g. to eat, to sense food, avoid poison That is all life must ACT or Do. My wife, Katherine Kauffman, rightly adds life must sense the world, then FIND and CARE, or Orient and Evaluate Good or Bad for me, then choose and act. Value enters here, she rightly says. 
3) Essentially all British empiricism is about knowing the world, not acting in it. 
4) The understanding of “mind” as “representing the world", also  all of AI, is latter day Descartes. There is no doing in the world. There is mere synthetics, no semantics. Again, Andrea and I have struggled as have others, Kalevi Kull and biosemiotics. 
5) “Doing" in the world includes finding novel affordances that cannot be deduced. This is Orienting or FINDING. This is jury rigging,. How does that arise? 
…………….

Please turn to Kauffman Roli "The Third Transition", and Kauffman Roli, “Is the emergence of life’…..”

1) It really is true that living entities are Kantian Wholes that achieve Catalytic Closure, Constraint Closure, and spatial Closure.
2) Therefore cells really do construct themselves. Cells to not deduce themselves.
3) It is really true that the reproduction of a cell has nothing to do with a separable set of Instructions that are carried out. See Aristotles 4 causes below where the separate instructions can be followed or carried out by indefinitely many sufficient but not necessary  means. 
4) In evolution, leave MIND out of this for now, it is really true that evolving organisms create ever novel adaptions  by creating their ever- novel adjacent Possibles and seize SOME of these by heritable variation and genetic drift.
5) It is really true that these do constitute newly POSSIBLE ways to co-exist.
6) This IS, in one sense, the creation of new possibilities in the universe. ii. The new possibilities are NEW information.  iii This new information did not require MIND or consciousness. Think of the evolution of the heart or loop of Henle in the kidneys.
7) The Newtonian Paradigm requires a fixed phase space where no new possibilities can come to exist. So does Boltzmann and so does Shannon. This is profoundly inadequate - Andrea Roli and I wrote “The world is not a theorem.” There is no creation of information in all of physics. 

1) What about MIND, Free Will, Consciousness? Well….
2) Think about Aristotle’s Four Causes: Formal, Efficient, Material, Final.
3) E.g., the blueprint is the formal cause. The indefinite diversity of different materials, bricks, wood, stones, iron, that are used to construct the house are the material cause. But no one of this set of sufficient material causes is also NECESSARY. (Given a function, it can be realized in idenfintely many ways. The house is build via Efficient cause, again indefinite in variety, electric tools, sharp sticks. Each suffienct but not necessary. Final cause, “I sure want a house. We seem to be talking about a science of propagating sufficient but not necessary conditions. This is neither Classical nor Quantum Physics. (So also the evolution of morphologies without mind above.).
4) Given MIND,  Free Will, Consciousness and Responsible Choice Aristotle’s four cases make sense. They do NOT make sense for the Cell constructing itself. So what is going on? 
5) Mind, Responblible Free Will and Choice among more than one ontologically real possibilities makes sense and seems to be one clear sense of information that is different from the cell constructing itself. In both cases there is something about alternative sufficient but not necessary conditions. Both can be new in the universe information, ie a new plurality of possibles and information guides choice among them. We do Jury rig. Inventions are novel over the prior art. Jury rigging is not deductive, nor is invention. 

So somehow there seem to be more than one way new in the universe possibilities can come to exist and unleash, or better, enable the next actuals and possibles. 

Pedro, there is a lot once beyond the Newtonian Paradigm and strong reductionism. The world really is not (only) a theorem. 

But sometimes it is a theorem eg Classical and Quantum Physics.  Odd.

Thanks,

Stu


> On Jan 22, 2024, at 9:32 AM, Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> While watching the evolution of our discussions in this NY Lecture focused on the "Third Transition" I have the impression that physics becomes an inexorable attractor, the necessary end of any civilized discussion on information. Precisely, the initial arguments were about living organisms creating ever new ways of "getting to exist", adaptively constructing new-in-the-universe possibilities--with their exploration of the adjacent-possible going outside of the Newtonian paradigm... Fine, very fine.
> 
> My contention is that in the last decades we have heard many times that rejection of the Newtonian but seemingly we cannot advance in the development of truly independent views, post-Newtonian and non-physicalist anchored (about information). Not aspiring to any universality about the conceptions of this independent informational exploration of life--at least shouldn't it be attempted?? Once some basics could be cohered and decently developed, it might provide some interesting complementarity with the endless conundrums on its and bits by physicist and computerist colleagues. Michael Conrad (who in the 70s and 80s was already arguing about the unpicturability of enzyme function) put an interesting comment: "When we look at a biological system we are looking at the face of the underlying physics of the universe" (in BioSystems, 38, 1996, p.108). Quite enigmatic. So, an unexpected convergence might be found finally--but not mandating it at the very beginning.
> 
> As I briefly argued days ago, the adjacent possible may be considered in a variety of time-scales. The infamous "What is it to be done?" (in Spanish, the concise "Qué hacer?" ) may be repeated for cells, for organisms, for humans, for societies... Or in other more frivolous words, "Qué será, será... the future's not ours to see". No wonder that all these kinds of informational creatures are endlessly looking for "signals", to march towards truly adaptive adjacent possibles. Our new knowledge on Prokaryotic signaling systems, on how they are intertwined with the advancement of the life cycle, points exactly in that direction: exploring the external/internal environment so to self-orient towards adaptive outcomes. They were the First Ones. Our own nervous system continuously scans the external and the internal, and mixes up with an elaborate arrangement of emotional resources and socialization cues so to do more or less the same, achieving viable life courses, etc.etc. Our own societies are involved in dire prospects and strange policy navigation towards the adjacent--what? Possible? Impossible? Disastrous? Inevitable?
> 
> The lack of an informational cosmovision is patent. It was already evident for Ortega y Gasset in the 1930s: "The confusion on the terrible public conflicts of the present stems in good part from the incongruence between the perfection of our ideas on physical phenomena and the painful back-warded state of the 'moral sciences'--about that, both the politician and the physicist are at the very height of the barber" (in Revolt of the Masses, 1930s).
> 
> Before putting an end, I have found pretty interesting (maybe converging) recent comments on logics by Joseph, Eric, Plamen... Unfortunately the "reality" of the life cycle is always maintained perfectly invisible (or partially entered via some sanitized surrogates).
> 
> Thanking your attention,
> 
> Best --Pedro
> 
> 
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