[Fis] Bill Miller's contribution: the "It" of a machine, truth and trust
joe.brenner at bluewin.ch
joe.brenner at bluewin.ch
Sun May 18 14:17:48 CEST 2025
Dear John,
I wish to apologize for not having recognized previously my failure to see and express the fundamental role played by gravity in science and philosophy as you have now expressed it. Please let me expand a little (like the universe, at this point) by calling attention to the fact that the force of gravity, or gravitational field, is inhomogeneous. We also exist by capitalizing (storing) the potential energy available from the differences in the strength of the field between two space-time points. We drink by catching part of a waterfall, converting gravitational energy from actual to potential in our cupped hands.
However, to explain the further development of phenomena to the point at which one can start to talk about information requiires an additional fundamental principle, the Lupasco principle of Dynamic Opposition: all systems move from states constituted by more potential and less actual energy - gravitational, electromagnetic, electrostatic - to the reverse, reciprocally and sinusoidally, without ever returning to exactly the point of origin. (Machines are also subject to this principle, but at short time scales it can be ignored to all intents and purposes - just a little wear at a microscopic level).
I thus am forced to a position that information is not more (but also not less) than the epistemic descriptions of those states. However our knowledge of these states as information is also not static. It is an ontic process of knowing which is itself subject to movement between actual and potential, becoming causally effective when transduced to muscle cells, etc. Other cognitive examples of the operation of this principle are our changing views of part and whole, or figure and ground.
Please let me know if you see any merit in this proposed synthesis of our ideas.
Thank you and best wishes,
Joe
> Le 18.05.2025 11:48 CEST, JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu> a écrit :
>
>
> To Mark, Mike, Bill, Joe, Tom, fis,
> I wanted to remark on the heels of the comments by Mark, Joe, Tom regarding machines vs organisms, that simply put, organisms are 'holisms' that are greater than the sums of their parts, machines are just the sums of their parts, without something 'greater than' themselves. In my opinion, the 'greater than' is the consequence of the force of gravity that caused the transition from non-life to life in the first place (Torday JS. Parathyroid hormone-related protein is a gravisensor in lung and bone cell biology. Adv Space Res. 2003;32(8):1569-76). I would like to point out that that experiment and that of others showed that it is the energy of gravity that is necessary for evolution, not information, with all due respect. There is no singular piece of information that one could deprive the cell by doing a so-called 'knockout' experiment that would have the same fundamental effect. And as for ontology and epistemology, I am of the opinion that to identify the fundamental nature of life, both of them must be accounted for by the same mechanism, as in the case of the effect of gravity, causing the protocell to react as an 'equal and opposite reaction' (Newton's Third Law of Motion). Subsequently, life is constituted by serial homeostatic control of energy by the organism, facilitated by Symbiogenesis, Lynn Sagan's explanation that, for example, bacteria were assimilated by archaea to form eukaryotes in order to maintain homeostatic balance in an ever-changing environment due to an expanding Cosmos.
>
> Best, John
>
>
> John S. Torday
> Professor of Pediatrics
> Obstetrics and Gynecology
> Evolutionary Medicine
> UCLA
>
> Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts
>
> On Sat, May 17, 2025 at 5:25 PM Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com mailto:johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Dear Bill, Mike and John
> >
> > First of all thank you to Bill and Mike for continuing the very stimulating discussion that began in the video call a few weeks ago.
> >
> > There are, as is often the case on FIS, a number of ontological assertions flying around which make navigating this space rather difficult. Mike does his best to address this head-on in his identification of two fundamental problems: "First, the belief that we can objectively and uniquely nail down what something is. And second, that our formal models of life, computers or materials tell the entire story of their capabilities and limitations."
> >
> > Channelling Warren McCulloch, and perhaps in response to those who ask "what is a machine?", I would like to ask "What is a machine that we might know it, and what are we that we might know a machine?"
> >
> > What follows from the formulation such a question (whether you ask about number, distinction, etc), is that any determination of "what a machine is" - the "it" of a machine - is both contingent and necessary. It is contingent because it must depend on the determination by the observer (Maturana). It is necessary because without any determination of what a machine is, we would have no machines, no science, no institutions, no coordination - the world would not be like the world we experience.
> >
> > Our arguments about ontology are an expression of the contingency of definition. The fact that we keep on going at it is indicative of the necessity of definition. We perhaps should be mindful that alongside contingency, is paraconsistency in definition: it is not x OR y, information OR energy. It is probably x AND y.
> >
> > This gives rise to something that doesn't often come up on this list, which I have been reflecting on, which is dialectic. If you take necessity and contingency together, you get a dialectical process. This is political. I know (I'm sure he won't mind me saying this) that behind John's passionate emphasis on energy is a personal story about the pathology of humankind, and a fear that misapprehending the underlying mechanism of evolutionary development will lead to the kind of terrible consequences we saw in the middle of the last century. Personally, I very swayed by his arguments - they run very deep.
> >
> > Indeed, behind much of the anxiety of AI are political feelings, which are not properly inspected. As scientists, we are often rather too buttoned-up, pretending this is all completely rational. Well, we know it isn't. There are feasible dystopias and infeasible dystopias, and equally infeasible utopias.
> >
> > The politics comes from the dialectics which comes from the contingency and necessity of definition of what a machine is. This is not to say that there cannot be coordinated stability through science. But it fundamentally requires trust and humility, and acceptance of contingency and paraconsistency. As Von Foerster pointed out many years ago, the word "truth" has the same root as the word "trust" (see https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/Mc6YFUoPWSI?feature=shared__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XFwolLAtaNgXnnqDfYHpEDg-FypJFqgUUiNxOhdhRjPxn73zKntK4m1l_2NHConeknd8Q9y7VspUilyQ-1FdC3lowRk$ https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/Mc6YFUoPWSI?feature=shared__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Wsl84qM48TWmEsBlAC9YhD2IHxjMVlFr6erxin6en2yFgbYBGQlM8a5NGAk5ong88K_SAvMIBduo89SVofc$)
> >
> > Trust appears to be some kind of physiological process. Do machines help us to trust each other? Well, what do you think? You're in a machine right now. Do you trust me? If this wasn't email, what might we do to engender trust between us better? Could a machine help? How?
> >
> > Best wishes,
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 14 May 2025 at 22:02, JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu mailto:jtorday at ucla.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > Dear Pedro, Bill and fis,with all due respect, I have attached my replies to Bill's Information in a cellular framework – abstract for discussion
> > > William B. Miller, Jr.
> > >
> > > John S. Torday
> > > Professor of Pediatrics
> > > Obstetrics and Gynecology
> > > Evolutionary Medicine
> > > UCLA
> > >
> > > Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> > > From: JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu mailto:jtorday at ucla.edu>
> > > Date: Wed, May 14, 2025 at 4:56 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [Fis] Bill Miller's contribution
> > > To: Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com mailto:pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
> > >
> > >
> > > Dear Pedro and Bill and fis, I have attached my responses to Bill's "Information in a Cellular Framework".....
> > >
> > > John S. Torday
> > > Professor of Pediatrics
> > > Obstetrics and Gynecology
> > > Evolutionary Medicine
> > > UCLA
> > >
> > > Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts
> > >
> > > On Wed, May 14, 2025 at 3:45 PM Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com mailto:pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Given the archive difficulties with attached files, systematically scrubbed by the server, I am posting Bill's text as a regular message (today I finally could do that!).
> > > > It is an angle pretty different from the mechanism/non mechanism one... Regards --Pedro
> > > > -------------------------------------------------
> > > >
> > > > Information in a cellular framework – abstract for discussion
> > > > William B. Miller, Jr.
> > > >
> > > > A long-standing presumption among many physicists and mathematicians is
> > > > that biology is a descriptive endeavor and any deep understanding of the
> > > > living frame must issue from their more rigorous disciplines. Nonetheless,
> > > > neither physics nor mathematics has explained the non-equilibrium living
> > > > state in which intelligent self-referential cells deploy problem-solving
> > > > competencies to sustain themselves across living scales. Consequently, some
> > > > scientists argue that the reverse may be correct: biology might productively
> > > > inform physics and mathematics, offering insights into how natural laws
> > > > might extend beyond known physical and mathematical principles.
> > > > In the same spirit, examining the specific attributes of biological
> > > > information processing and living information management as specifically
> > > > exemplified by cells might provide a productive further thrust to the
> > > > fundamental action-logic of those theoretical information systems formulated
> > > > by visionary information theorists.
> > > >
> > > > To stimulate that initiative, it is proposed that information theorists might
> > > > direct their attention to the specific informational characteristics of intelligent,
> > > > measuring cells, which represent the basal strata of our living planetary
> > > > system.
> > > >
> > > > Several specific attributes of biological information have been
> > > > empirically verified at the cellular level, thereby defining the informational
> > > > conditions of our living system:
> > > >
> > > > --All cells are cognitive, problem-solving agents.
> > > >
> > > > --Their living context is the ambiguity of information.
> > > >
> > > > --The uncertain validity of environmental stimuli governs the cellular
> > > > reception, analysis, and deployment of all cellular resources.
> > > >
> > > > --Imperfect information requires cells to internally measure their
> > > > received information.
> > > >
> > > > --Accordingly, all cellular information is a product of infoautopoiesis,
> > > > entailing that all the information that any cell has about its external
> > > > environment is exclusive, self-referential, and self-produced.
> > > >
> > > > --Cellular infoautopiesis drives an obligatory and little appreciated
> > > > derivative: each cell, and then we as cellular beings, create our
> > > > exclusive self-referential representations of reality and act upon that
> > > > self-generated purview.
> > > >
> > > > --Obliged informational uncertainties stimulate the collective cellular
> > > > analysis of self-generated cellular information, driving ubiquitous
> > > > planetary multicellularity as a cellular expression of the familiar
> > > > 'wisdom of crowds'.
> > > >
> > > > --Cellular information processing directs toward narrowing distinctions
> > > > on the adjacents to diminish their obligatory uncertainty gap, yielding
> > > > the effective minimization of surprisal in conformity with the Free
> > > > Energy Principle.
> > > >
> > > > --Every cell does work to sustain its self-directed state of homeorhetic
> > > > preferential flux.
> > > >
> > > > --Narrowing the distinctions on the adjacents as the effective
> > > > minimization of surprisal enables cellular predictions and
> > > > anticipations.
> > > >
> > > > --Self-referential cellular states of homeorhetic preference drive
> > > > multicellular eukaryotic macroorganic behaviors and emotions.
> > > >
> > > > SOME BASIC QUESTIONS (for the discussion)
> > > >
> > > > Information in the living frame has been commonly defined according to
> > > > Bateson’s familiar definition as a 'difference that makes a difference over
> > > > time.' How might that definition explain internal self reference that governs
> > > > our lives, enabling living information management? Might other definitions
> > > > serve better?
> > > >
> > > > How can previously formulated information theories illuminate the cellular
> > > > living process within its obligatory context of informational ambiguity?
> > > > How do current information theories explain the presence of inference,
> > > > prediction, and anticipation.
> > > >
> > > > Why do these informational cues, which must first manifest at the level of
> > > > cells as exclusive states of self-referential homeorhetic preference, exert in
> > > > multicellularity as nuanced multicellular behaviors and emotions?
> > > > Recent research confirms the remarkable competencies of diverse
> > > > intelligences across living scales. How might applying information systems
> > > > theory contribute to our debate about any categorical distinctions between the
> > > > living frame and the abiotic realm? If a fluid continuum is asserted, how
> > > > might that be rationalized?
> > > >
> > > > Is our understanding of biological systems improved by asserting an
> > > > immaterial Platonic informational platform permitting cells to interrogate a
> > > > constrained portion of universal informational space-time (? phase space
> > > > partition) as part of a universal informational fabric?
> > > >
> > > > Given the extraordinary competencies of current AI systems and projected
> > > > future abilities, how might information theory inform constructive responses
> > > > to inevitable social, economic, and cultural pressures?
> > > >
> > > > What should govern our ethical responses to the still-developing organic constructs
> > > > which will include synthetic combinations of digital competencies and living cells?
> > > > If 'consciousness' is determined to be a litmus of our ethical stance toward
> > > > other living entities, what practical informational threshold exists, if any?
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > >
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> >
> > --
> > Dr. Mark William Johnson
> > Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
> > University of Manchester
> >
> > Department of Science Education
> > University of Copenhagen
> >
> > Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
> > University of Liverpool
> > Phone: 07786 064505
> > Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com mailto:johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
> > Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XFwolLAtaNgXnnqDfYHpEDg-FypJFqgUUiNxOhdhRjPxn73zKntK4m1l_2NHConeknd8Q9y7VspUilyQ-1FdBPnsUi0$ https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Wsl84qM48TWmEsBlAC9YhD2IHxjMVlFr6erxin6en2yFgbYBGQlM8a5NGAk5ong88K_SAvMIBduo1JSG9f0$
> >
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