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

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

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.

As I argue in my essay, if the source of all information is the point at infinity (which exists at every point of four dimensional spacetime), we have local and simultaneous access in principle to everything in Wheeler's world built of information alone, though the act of measurement orders recorded events into our unique worldline.

One recalls the arithmetic theorem that a single point may simultaneously approach any other set of points provided that the point is far enough away.

Tom

"Also 'a world that is not completely deterministic' is the standard view, is it not?"

"A world that is not completely deterministic" is "one of the other assumptions that are implicit in our reasoning leading to the inequality" which the results of the Leggett experiment (resulting in a violation of Leggett's inequality) might be regarded as having put at hazard ... made subject to "breakdown" as the experimenters put it. Along with other stuff I find personally find somewhat easier to live without ("Aristotelian logic, counterfactual definiteness" even "absence of actions into the past").

In other words, the experimental outcome brings forward the possibility of a world that IS completely deterministic. Zeilinger copped to that somewhere, as I recall, but stated that he personally found it unimaginable. Of course there'd be no possibility at all of "free will." Which isn't the standard view or else 't Hooft wouldn't be particularly controversial.

A lot of double negatives, agreed.

Dear George Ellis,

Apropos of nothing other than the topic of your essay, I just now stumbled upon another delightful quote which I think you might appreciate in the event you've not already seen it.

"We seek reality, but what is reality? The physiologists tell us that organisms are formed of cells; the chemists add that cells themselves are formed of atoms. Does this mean that these atoms or these cells constitute reality, or rather the sole reality? The way in which these cells are rearranged and from which results the unity of the individual, is not it also a reality much more interesting than that of the isolated elements, and should a naturalist who had never studied the elephant except by means of the microscope think himself sufficiently acquainted with that animal?" - - Henri Poincare, 'The Value of Science,' originally published in 1913, translated by George Bruce Halstead, Cosimo Classics, ISBN: 978-1-60206-504-8, p.21.

Cheers,

jcns

Hi J.C.N Smith,

Its another good one, well found.

I find it interesting that increasing in scale and complexity of pattern also affects how the arrangement is able to interact with its environment.The variety of ways in which it can interact seems to increase with complexity. The size of the impact on the immediate environment increases with scale. (Though shape (as form is related to function) and populations also need consideration.)