Recognising Top-Down Causation by George F. R. Ellis

Tom,

that isn't very clear to me. If you mean we explain things by chopping them up into smaller systems we can understand, then yes I agree.Is that what you mean by assigning boundary conditions? Ultimately everything is is at the mercy of what is happening in the whole universe -at all scales-, it seems to me. If our star was to explode the organisation of the living beings and machines on Earth would become totally irrelevant.If sub atomic particles and atoms did not have the properties they have the universe would not be what it is.

It isn't necessary to use galactic or universal explanations, or explanations involving complexity, or sub atomic explanations for every occurrence. It is possible at various scales to see factors or processes that are having a particular disproportionate influence on output. For example its more helpful to describe the cause of a rate of photosynthesis to be its current limiting factor,(CO2, water, Light). Taking for granted that there is a plant in which photosynthesis can occur, and not bringing into account the universal conditions that have allowed complex plant life to evolve on Earth or the properties of different chemical elements.

Maybe all causation stories are a distillation and sticking together of available information by humans for specific human purposes, not what is really happening in universe independently of that information processing.I might be agreeing with you, but saying it in my own way.

Tom,

Does assigning boundary conditions mean specifying or at least deciding what will and will not be considered as part of the problem, the limit of the particular investigation? If so then I agree we do do that. Though we could have open ended investigations where gradually more and more parameters and variables are added to the boundary of the investigation, giving further complexity to the answer. Gaps could also be filled at different scales and linked, until theoretically everything is causally linked to everything else. Like a universal, physical and biological, ecosystem. Except we would hit lots of boundaries, which are not assigned by choice, but are the limits of our capabilities as a species.

Georgina,

"Does assigning boundary conditions mean specifying or at least deciding what will and will not be considered as part of the problem, the limit of the particular investigation?"

No. It means arbitrarily limiting a continuous function to an interval of analysis that does not result in infinities or singularities.

"If so then I agree we do do that. Though we could have open ended investigations where gradually more and more parameters and variables are added to the boundary of the investigation, giving further complexity to the answer."

That's the problem, though. One cannot extend boundaries with sufficient ad hoc parameters (adjustable variables) to assure a unique solution. Consider the various climate change models in this context -- there's a raft of parameters that produce a great number of predictions; however, the outcomes are all dependent on which variables are physically manifest. Information doesn't increase knowledge -- (the source of Einstein's aphorism "Imagination is more important than knowledge") -- knowledge is realized in the correspondence of theory (what we imagine) to physical result (what happens).

"Gaps could also be filled at different scales and linked, until theoretically everything is causally linked to everything else."

We already know that everything is causally linked to everything else -- at least, we assume so. If there are uncaused effects, the implication is that some force external to nature ("God of the gaps" argument) tinkers with creation at either random or unknown intervals. We can't treat such a case by scientific method, even if it should happen to be true. Science depends on replication of results in an objective way.

Suppose I have a pain in my stomach, and a physician determines that a signal from my brain is causing the sensation. She gives me a chemical to block the signal. No pain -- yet can we assign the cause of the pain to a random brain impulse? Probably not -- suppose an infection has created pressure on nerve endings in my gut -- the pain is a symptom, created by positive feedback between nerve endings and brain. The brain is not controlling the activity causing the pain; it is relaying information that compels the body to create a negative feedback loop, bringing into play a range of responses that release various chemicals and white cells to attack the infection and restore normal function. Any treatment intervention is only an extension of this negative feedback. If the body's reponses and treatment fails, a unbroken positive feedback loop leads to extinction of the organism.

Locally, positive feedback is always disagreeable. Consider the "squeal" of a positive feedback loop between a microphone and amplifier. We cannot identify the cause of the squeal (microphone or amplifier) though we know the effect is not uncaused.

By top-down causation, I think George Ellis implies that any ultimate cause must result in negative feedback -- i.e., there exists a universal control mechanism that accounts for the coherence and comprehensibility of the universe as we experience it. (I suggested in my ICCS 2007 paper, "Time, change and self organization" that gravity itself qualifies as such a mechanism, because it operates in but one direction, toward the center of mass.) The subsystems of the universe (such as we creatures) therefore must be endowed a priori with the means of cognitively choosing a direction that escapes the positive feedback loop that leads to extinction. As George says explicitly, "... life would not be possible without a well-established local arrow of time." The property of consciousness cannot be separated from all of the properties of life itself, whether organic or inorganic.

Tom

Tom,

thank you for trying to help me understand. Was I talking about continuous functions?

You said:"information doesn't increase knowledge". I think data acquisition is one important aspect of science but utilising the data to give solutions or comprehension of what is going on is another different aspect. There is perhaps a rush to interpret data and give it meaning or significance it doesn't have- because that seems like its creating new knowledge.

I thought about giving an analogy of tuning a very out of tune piano, but its long and complicated. When its right though the whole thing, which could be 120 strings, works together. Thats what science should be like eventually.I think it is possible to build up understanding. Certainly food chains or other kinds of ecological webs can be constructed staring by looking at a few species interactions and niches and then adding more and more. It would be possible to have two different partial webs that have one of the same species in them, but are otherwise totally different. Both can be correct. I don't think that is a problem unless it is assumed that because these studies have been done scientifically each one is by itself the absolute truth.

Tom I think I'm agreeing with you and George. There is a control at the largest scale, passage of time (as J.C.N Smith and I have been describing it) necessary for anything else to happen but not able to create the complexity of the universe alone, there also has to be continual motion of matter and particles (and I say in my essay and elsewhere that that is the cause of gravity not curvature of space-time.) Yes I think George is talking a lot of sense but what you have quoted also seem to me really obvious things said eloquently. Which isn't a bad thing. Maybe they need saying and saying well.

Hi nmann,

" ... we don't yet have an Infodynamics on the order of Thermodynamics."

Yes, we do. Shannon's information entropy is perfectly modeled by the same mathematics as thermodynamic entropy. Applied to a network of communication nodes, a dynamic system emerges.

Tom

Hi Tom,

What we don't have is an understanding of informational transduction. There's a sense in which energy comes coded too (for example, you can't make a computer operate directly on any form of energy other than electrical) but we've identified and defined electrical energy and understand how it as well as kinetic energy, thermal energy, mechanical energy etc. are linked and are able to be converted from one form to another.

But how does the electrochemical information coursing around in your brain relate to the symbolic information your brain outputs, as represented for instance by your post? How many transduction processes are involved, and what the heck are they?

Hi nmann,

Certainly, computers operate on as many varieties of energy as are available -- a computer as simple as an abacus uses mechanical energy, and one can conceive of constructing a more complex computer with, e.g., water or another fluid substituting for electricity flowing through logic gates.

" ... how does the electrochemical information coursing around in your brain relate to the symbolic information your brain outputs, as represented for instance by your post?"

George answered that in a reply to Georgina: "The placebo effect is fascinating; of course from my viewpoint it's a case of top-down action from beliefs (abstract entities) to physical systems (human bodies)." This can be generalized; the relation between thought and action is mediated by cognitive differentiation, between states of being, which is how a computer -- though by programming rather than cognition -- converts differential equations (difference equations, actually, because the computer is a finite state machine) to discrete output (information). The information can then be used as new input.

"How many transduction processes are involved, and what the heck are they?"

I don't think we need transduction to explain information processes. Though some favor the view that humans are only computers made of meat, I think that nature is more subtle, incorporating a structure by which information is continuous and infinite, which makes the meat computer -- the finite state -- view untenable. My essay in this contest explains why.

Tom

George,

Thanks for these links. Having read the first, I am impressed that the top down model driving " ... transition from a group of independent low-level entities to the emergence of a new higher level (collective) entity" is a much more robust model of evolution than the linear "warm little pond" myth that our generation were taught in school.

The description embodied in figure 2 also supports a dynamic self organized model of growth self-limited by boundaries of scale. Marvelous.

Tom

George

Excellently written piece, well argued and very agreeable. I see scale as a full 2 way causal street. But I have questions;

1. Has anybody argued otherwise? I agree few think about it, and need to, but you don't falsify a counter argument. I wonder if there even is one?

2. The point about complexity is anyway, I agree, worth eeking out and considering. I've suggested one step more, in that simply, because there are so many small particles, complexity is so great is resembles 'chance' to us. If we were the size of a proton might we not find nature simple, as we do macro nature now?

3. This suggests the 'bottom' may be only assumed the one way source of causality as we see, so feel we 'better' understand the top end. Do you agree?

4. Can mathematics using just 'point' particles really properly describe the effects of evolution of interaction between waves and 'real' particles over non zero time when negotiating a medium boundary in relative motion?

5. As a relativist, do you consider that understanding the quantum universe better will allow us to unite physics? - by providing a quantum mechanism to produce the macro effects we term relativity?

I've derived a 'two way' mechanism discussed in my essay. The motion of one medium or 'system' within another will give rise to quantum effects, which then in turn implement the postulates of special relativity and curved space time. This seems to resolve a number of astronomical anomalies, and a causality issue with assumptions about refraction not previously identified.

I'd be extremely grateful if you were able to read my essay and give your views.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1330

I've thrown is some kinetic theatre to break up the density.

Best wishes

Peter

George

5. Should read; ...the 'bottom' may be only assumed to be the (one way) source of causality because we can actually SEE the top end, so feel we better understand it. Do you agree?

Peter

An interesting interaction...

"Recognising Top-Down Causation" might be characterized as a defense of Macrorealism, accomplished by means of conscripting Hierarchy Theory". Yes indeed: a nice description.

nmann, as Tom says, computers can function on any substrate (mechanical, electrical, electronic, fluid, molecular): what remains constant is the logical operations realised by whatever physical substrate is used.

Shannon's entropy measure quantifies how much information is transmitted at a certain level, but completely fails to relate to meaning and so somehow misses the point of what information is about. For example a single message "yes" or "no" might be encoded in a single bit; and it might be "yes" or "no" to dropping a nuclear bomb on a city and so initiating World War III, or it might be a decision about going to a show tonight or not. Context is the key to what it is about. The length of the message (in Shannon's terms) is decoupled from it's implications. I like the discussion of these issues in Juan Roederer's book "Information and its Role in Nature" .

Tom --

"Certainly, computers operate on as many varieties of energy as are available -- a computer as simple as an abacus uses mechanical energy, and one can conceive of constructing a more complex computer with, e.g., water or another fluid substituting for electricity flowing through logic gates."

I've tried for years to buy a hydraulic computer but whenever I go into the Apple Store and ask about it they laugh at me. My laptop only operates on electricity.

George --

"nmann, as Tom says, computers can function on any substrate (mechanical, electrical, electronic, fluid, molecular): what remains constant is the logical operations realised by whatever physical substrate is used."

Sure, for better or worse that's basic functionalism. My issue is the coding of the information. You wouldn't maintain, for example, that we actually eavesdrop on the internal communications of DNA and RNA simply because we've defined some of their operations and coded them in our own code ... one hopes you wouldn't, anyway.

Dear George:

What are your thoughts on the role of consciousness or free will as the top down causation that gives rise to human beings? I have expressed some of my thoughts below based on my paper -" From Absurd to Elegant Universe":

Causation vs. Free Will - What is Fundamental?

The following arguments support the conclusion that Free Will or Spontaneity or Consciousness is the fundamental or root cause process of all physical phenomena and the widely used assumption that particles/strings are fundamental reality is wrong as evidenced by its failure to predict/describe 96% of the universe and resulting in the prevailing paradoxes/inconsistencies.

An outcome of an event is determined by the input parameters and the governing law (or equation). The governing laws are the fundamental universal laws of conservation of mass, energy, momentum, space, and time which are existent at Free Will without any external cause. The input is also chosen at the free will of the observer or operator. In some cases, the input is determined by the outcome of a preceding event such as in the Domino Effect. But even in those cases, the originating or primary root input is always determined at the free will of the originator or source. Hence, the universe is not a Clockwork Universe wherein its fate is predetermined. The evolution of the material or manifested universe is subject to the free-willed laws and inputs.

The widely used assumption that particles or strings of matter are the most fundamental elements of universal reality is incorrect. The particles are known to be born spontaneously out of or decay spontaneously into the so-called vacuum or nothingness. Hence, the fundamental reality, both top-down and bottom-up, is vacuum (or the Zero point state of the mass-energy-space-time continuum as described in my paper. This state is synonymous with the implicit eternal and omnipresent laws of the universe.

The fundamental physical process that leads to spontaneous (no causation) birth or decay of particles is the free will or spontaneity in the universe. A universal theory that does not entail this free-will dimension allowing spontaneous conversion of mass-energy-space-time continuum will remain incomplete and unable to describe the universal reality. This is vindicated in my paper wherein it is demonstrated that allowance of such spontaneous process in conjunction with general relativity leads to the correct prediction of the observed universe, creation and dilation of matter, and classical as well as quantum behavior of particles eliminating black hole singularities and paradoxes related to inner workings of quantum mechanics.

Regards

Avtar Singh

nmann,

I expect that while you may be an expert on computers, you don't know much about computing.

I'm reminded of being at a conference a few years ago, being self-conscious about using the old-fashioned method of overhead projection on cels to present, while most who were much younger than I had prepared fancy PowerPoints. Marvin Minsky was a plenary speaker, however, and kept the assembly waiting while an overhead projector was rolled to the podium, set up and adjusted. He responded to an unasked question, "I just work work with computers. I don't like them."

Tom

George

Thank you. I'm not too astonished some argue against, in Quantum and Classical there must of course always be someone who's convinced black is white.

Point 4. You say "You have to take the properties of the boundary into account as well. You regard it as a macro entity, i.e. you don't try to describe its constitution detail." Interesting view. I know you're currently thinking in a different area, but my essay is actually ALL about the constitution of the quantum boundaries of 'space time geometries' (frames) and how the real interactions there (with non point particles and temporal evolution) produce all the classical macro scale effects we term Relativity.

I'm a little surprised and disappointed that did not emerge for you. I hoped you may try to falsify the ontology as we've have had no success doing so to date.

Have you actually read it all yet?

Best wishes

Peter