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

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

it becomes interesting.:) It was times to have concrete discussions.

Mr Ellis.

the artificial intelligence, that said , can be made if the biology is inserted. the informations can be encoded with a kind of sortings of these informations. But of course it becomes intriguing. The emotions indeed are results of specific biological evolution. Can we reproduce these emotions, I think that no also, but we can create a process of evolution and sortings implying a kind of artificial intelligence.I ask me how the synapctic messages can be inserted ? How the diffusions of informations are inside a closed system. The brain is fascinating. It is possible easily to insert parameters of movements. But this entanglement, correlated with the evolutive human brain for example, is so complex. I agree so, we cannot reproduce emotions, but we can imply a kind of comportment correlated. Like a specific algorythm of selectivity about these comportments. It is intriguing all that.

The brain is more than a turing machine, we are aged of 13.7 to 15 billions years ! It is evident that the biology is very complex in all its combinations. The brain and the adn like wonderful creations.

Regards

Zeilinger has indeed said that. However, he has also said that something which sounds to me a lot like superdeterminism cannot be ruled out. And his group's paper describing their experimental violation of [a slightly tweaked version of] the Leggett inequality [ArXiv 0704.2529, page 7] says this:

"... Furthermore, one could consider the breakdown of other assumptions that are implicit in our reasoning leading to the inequality. These include Aristotelian logic, counterfactual deniteness, absence of actions into the past or a world that is not completely deterministic. ..."

The first time I read the sentence I thought maybe they needed an editor for English clarity but no: it says what it says.

That's "counterfactual deFIniteness" of course. Careless cutting and pasting on this poster's part.