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

Hi George,

i always enjoy your insightfull comments here. Your example with the digital computer is, as always, very interesting. Some years ago i answered to Florin Moldoveanu here at fqxi in the same way. The question was if nature is as deterministic as maths, should mean, if nature is strictly deterministic or not and if there is something like a proof for this strict determinism. I argued that a strict determinism is a closed system as for example the Godel's incompleteness theorem and therefore - if strict determinism is true - this system cannot be consistent in every detail. What follows from this is, that it is inconsistent to try to achieve a proof of strict determinism via strictly deterministic procedures (for example via maths).

Florin replied that a computer - and therefore the underlying maths/logics has to be strictly deterministic. I replied that it isn't guaranteed at all that for the same input and output data of a computer the QM microdynamics that lead to the same macroscopic results must necessarily be the same.

A programming language like C++ surely is a man-made construct. It is based on logic, implemented into the hardware of the PC, but without the possibility of humans to exist, there would be no computers and hence no example of top-down causation to consider here. If one argues this way, we arrive at the well known anthropocentric questions about wether there is some special, "unphysical", determinism-contradicting entity in nature that enables consciousness, free will and so on or not. the main point for me here seems to be that, again there is no way to prove in a strict and deterministic way that the fact that there are observers possible in nature is a result of a strict determinism in nature.

What i assume to be fundamental, - as i outlined in my essay here - is, that those regularily re-appearing undecidabilities (determinism/indeterminism, free will/subjective lack of knowledge, completeness/consistence, which-way information/interference, non-locality/non-reality etc.) stem from a CLOSED SYSTEM itself. This system i have labeled with "logic of opposites" - it doesn't allow -due to its inherent rules- the possibility of another logic that isn't grounded on mutually exclusive possibilities. This logic of opposites (Boolean logic) doesn't allow to contrast it with something that hasn't mutually exclusive features. Because this would contradict that there are only mutually exclusive features possible at all. The "something" i spoke of is surely close to QM and its features like superposition. Mathematically spoken, it is simply the abandoning of completeness in favour of having consistence and truth as the fundamental features of reality. If one considers the problem of mutually exclusive possibilities concerning the scientific/philosphical questions raised above, then it is possible to gain an insight that nature has some top-down, acausal features. Because by giving up the completeness criterion, we at the same time give up the "strictly deterministic" criterion. This is possible not due to arbitrary wishes but due to the consideration of systems in maths, cognition, complexity theory and so on. It is always the same pattern there: By giving up the assumption of closed systems, we gain - as Godel has proven on a deterministic basis BUT with some considerations to the necessity and stronger meaning of consistence over completeness - consistence and truth must be more fundamental than completeness. Otherwise sience would state itself as an inconsistent system and all our lines of reasoning would be highly questionable right from the beginning. That the latter could be indeed true in nature, is at least in my opinion, very unlikely, because of the huge success in science, physics and the human mind to decipher nature.

The counter-argument of a strict determinism then can only be one that assumes a huge "coincidence" out of a somewhat wild "chaos". I assume the former to be true - on the grounds of my essay's considerations, and the latter to be absurd, inconsistent and illogical from the very start.

"Coincidences" for me are then just another term to explain that QM-dynamics is fundamentally about generating consistence in nature - a result that i consider as somewhat very fundamental and meaningfull.

Best wishes,

Stefan

George,

You have managed to engage and referee a very spirited and tenacious debate about top down causality, but doesn't it eventually have to lead to larger issues in how the discipline of physics is currently structured? Since bottom up causality is primarily based on reductionism, wouldn't the opposite be wholism? By this, I mean "oneness," as opposed to the "one" it is usually reduced to. As Stefan explained above, consistence rather than completeness. I would describe it as the network being foundational to the node, not the other way around. As I argue on occasion, when we add, we are adding the sets and coming up with a larger set, rather than adding the contents of the sets. Say 2 sets of 5 apples = 1 set of ten apples. If we actually added the apples together, it would be applesauce. More directly, all the parts of our bodies and our lives add up to a particular person. I think in this way, top down causality seems quite obvious. We can have infinite complexity, but sometimes the complex becomes simple again, much like the cycle of the chicken and the egg. Physics is currently dissecting the details of the details of the details, but I find that when I offer up ways different features may be different descriptions of the same thing, it seems like I'm stepping on toes to make such connections. For example, in a recent conversation I compared time and temperature to frequency and amplitude and the rejection was automatic.

I guess my point is as I stated to begin with, doesn't a full discussion of top down causality lead to re-examining the structure of physics to date?

A related point would be; Wouldn't true emergence mean the principles of math are as emergent as the structure they inform. Simply because they are repetitious only means the same processes are being followed. As Stephan Wolfram said; It would take a computer the size of the universe to compute the universe. I think Robert H McEachern made some interesting observations regarding this in his entry.

That would be infinite complexity, so to take it the other direction, towards the absolute, if we had nothing, consequently there would be no computability. So to the extent we have bottom up emergence, we have top down structural/mathematical integrity, ie, Stefan's consistence.

Keep up the good work.

George,

Yes, emergence is like stepping out of a closed and ordered space, into one that is open and unconfined.

Instead of infinite, how about "continuous?"

Georgina and I have been discussing the dichotomy of information as static and energy/reality as dynamic, in which I made the following point;

"We live in a very dynamic reality and it's that reality we perceive. When we try to understand it, we create these conceptually static models, such as Julian's triangles. Or saying 1+1=2. Then because our most distilled and concentrated knowledge is impervious to change, or we wouldn't consider it fundamental if it was subject to change, then we assume reality must be also fundamentally static. It is a form of circular logic."

I thought that might also apply to defining what is known and what is understood.

Dear Dr. Ellis,

My opinion:

Top down or bottom up causations in the universe are not separate choices although they are presently ingrained as such in theoretical physics. I say this because theoretical physicists invented bottom up causes in support of their belief in reductionism. It is indequate by virtue of its lack of purpose which amounts to, as the same thing, lack of explanation of cause. No one knew then, during the guesswork of early theory, what is cause. It was recognized that the existence of effects required the existence of cause as part of theoretical physics, although, cause was not itself observable. Still today no one knows what is cause.

The universe evolved by means of bottom up processes because it contained, right from the beginning in potential form, the top down causation properties necessary to allow for the evolution of the universe to follow an effectual, prescribed for, bottom up process. Neither the fog of complexity nor observed feedback loops changes or obscures this requirement. Progress is possible if theoretical physicists remove the invented seperate mechanical causes of theoretical physics.

Theory can be developed with just one cause if the theorist will put forward a model of cause, to be used in their modeling equations, that is directly referenced to empirical evidence. In my essay, it is shown that the first step in this process is to defined mass in the same terms as is its evidence expressed. Its evidence is changes in patterns of changes of velocity of objects. Changes of velocity are expressed in units of seconds and meters.

Theoretical physicists should recognize and seek the cause, at least in name, for the existence of interpretation of information. This effort cannot be satisfied by efficiently cataloguing information. The cataloguing of effects as information, especially that which results from empirical evidence in the form of differences in patterns in changes of velocity, should not be put forward as explaining cause. Cause is its opposite. Cause is the meaningful, purpose filled interpretation, at all levels of operation of the universe, of information.

What should be avoided at all times during the development of theory is the tendency to accept givens, beyond the inescapable First one, whether proclaimed to be fundamental forces or its belated appearance called emergent properties. Properties appear because they are provided for. Lack of explanation is no justification for abruptly introducing the births of new properties after the beginning of the universe.

James

James,

thanks for that, you are looking at deep issues here.

"Properties appear because they are provided for." - Indeed. This is through what I call Possibility Spaces, see the link I give in my posting of Oct. 22, 2012 @ 12:29 GMT. The deep issue is why these possibility spaces are what they are; the complication is that they are interrelated, for example the possibility space of physics underlies the possibility space of biology.

As to cause, as I mentioned in my last post, Robert Rosen has a deep analysis of this concept in his book Life Itself.

George

John,

"continuous" is fine as an approximation. But in the end space time is almost certainly discrete at a fundamental level. The quantisation principle applies to space and time to.

As to change and dynamic reality: yes there is change all around but there is an unchanging underlying set of laws or principles, in my view - else there would be no stability or predictability. The change is founded in unchanging laws, one of whose deep manifestations is the fundamental constants of nature (see the writings of John Barrow and Jean-Philippe Uzan). However we try, we can't get order form nowhere: we have to have some basic set of principles - axioms if you like - from which to start our reasoning.

So why does reasoning work at all? In the end because there are some such unchanging principles out there that we can mirror in our minds.

George

George Ellis wrote, "So why does reasoning work at all? In the end because there are some such unchanging principles out there that we can mirror in our minds."

I strongly agree. Self-similarity between brain mechanics and nature's mechanics at every scale implies the absence of boundaries between physics and consciousness. The changing universe is therefore compelled to be metastable in its (possibly infinite) dynamical configurations that we observe at chosen scales.

More than philosophy, this view is comprehensible in mathematical language.

Tom

Dr Ellis and Tom,

So that you know: My opinion could have included a variable speed of light. I have posted three previous essays in the previous contests giving theoretical derivations to support it. Returning to the issue at hand:

"The deep issue is why these possibility spaces are what they are; the complication is that they are interrelated, for example the possibility space of physics underlies the possibility space of biology."

There are possibilities of effects and for good reason. The interrelationships are not, I think, 'the complication'. The complication is cause. Perhaps they are complicated for modeling purposes, but, not for understanding. Understanding requires the pre-existence of meaning and purpose before an effect can be meaningful or purposeful.

The mechanical interpretations put forward by theoretical physicists do not help in this matter. They represent a grossly insufficient limited mechanical interpretation of cause in the universe. Those causes are invented. The evidence, theoretically speaking, is revealed by choices made arbitrarily by theorists.

Tom posted a quote somewhere previously from Yaneer Bar Yam of New England Complex Systems Inst. that was a statement of what is a cataloguing of effects as gathered from empirical evidence. It did not contain understanding of cause.

Quoting from Tom's message above:

"George Ellis wrote, "So why does reasoning work at all? In the end because there are some such unchanging principles out there that we can mirror in our minds."

Tom, "I strongly agree. Self-similarity between brain mechanics and nature's mechanics at every scale implies the absence of boundaries between physics and consciousness. The changing universe is therefore compelled to be metastable in its (possibly infinite) dynamical configurations that we observe at chosen scales.

More than philosophy, this view is comprehensible in mathematical language."

The unchanging of principles or the predictable changing of patterns are not representative of understanding cause. They are the utilization of knowledge about effects that leads to predictions of future effects. It is the patterns that make these predictions possible. Cause is itself completely unpredictible for its own existence. It remains unexplained. No one knows what is cause.

I appreciate that you took the time to answer my message. I understand should you decide to not continue conversation with me. One reason might be that I repeat regularly that no one knows what is cause. One effect about guessing about the nature of cause is the mechanical nature of theoretical physics and its multiple natures of cause. Those multiple natures of cause result from accepting artificial theoretical endpoints in the search for understanding, at the least, the mechanical type of activities that occur in the universe.

The end products of the evolution of the universe make clear, for me, that mechanics is not the solution to understanding cause. Not the cause for the emergence of life and intelligence. Not the cause for the highest achievement of the evolution of the universe we call human free will.

Thank you for your suggestion of further reading. Your patience and participation here are admired.

James

George,

" yes there is change all around but there is an unchanging underlying set of laws or principles, in my view - else there would be no stability or predictability."

Why wouldn't it be the other way around; Because there is predictable repeatability, that the same causes lead to the same effects, similar or identical patterns will emerge. Otherwise there is the implication of a platonic realm of which there is no other evidence, other than this predicability.

Look at the various stages of emergence; physics, chemistry, biology, culture. Each seems to go through waves of increasing complexity, until it reaches a degree of instability, such as the periodic table reaching a certain level of complexity before the elements become too unstable and degrade back down to more stable elements. It seems the same process goes on in the quantum realm, as unstable particles degrade to more stable ones. This suggests a wave pattern of increasing complexity, that peaks and then subsides. Do emergent layers grow out of the energy released? Such that there seems to be an upward/outward, emergent dynamic motivating the growth of this structure, but within that order, there are also the seeds of chaotic collapse, as the degee of complexity becomes unsustainable. Then it seems that within that collapse, emergence of the next level is possible, as it fuses prior complexity into the building blocks of the next level.

It's not as though there are not quite a number of those constants that have yet to be explained. Could it be they are the residue of underlaying processes which have folded into themselves, as to be indecipherable from our perspective? It's not as though humanity's desire to discover first principles hasn't previously, predictably constructed quite a number of scaffoldings of explanation and had them crumble in the face of far deeper chasms of reality. How is the assumption of foundational building blocks really different from assumptions of a foundational builder?

As I see it, if there is nothing, there is no order. Only if there is something, does order become necessary.

"As I see it, if there is nothing, there is no order. Only if there is something, does order become necessary."

That's what the creation myths of most of the world's religions believe too, John. That belief doesn't hold up against an information-theoretic model, where the void is just as real as what fills it, and order is organization with feedback. Physical information compels a universe from nothing to be ordered at its foundation. That doesn't mean that all order exists a priori -- it means that all ordered relations owe their existence to the " ... unchanging underlying set of laws or principles ..." of which George spoke. That's not necessarily a Platonic view; Platonism hypothesizes an ideal world *independent* of our physical existence. I think George is talking about real physical laws.

Tom

Tom,

you wrote "I strongly agree. Self-similarity between brain mechanics and nature's mechanics at every scale implies the absence of boundaries between physics and consciousness. The changing universe is therefore compelled to be metastable in its (possibly infinite) dynamical configurations that we observe at chosen scales.

More than philosophy, this view is comprehensible in mathematical language."

Tom that sounds so wrong to me. I can agree that the "mechanism" of the universe and the "mechanism" of brain function have similarity but consciousness, the product of the brain function, is something different. I think it might be helpful to consider instead a computer. The function of the computer is possible because of the same physics that is occurring in the outside world but the fantasy game that is generated from the inputs and information in the software is not the same as the external world. It might even be designed to have different rules of physics operating on that fantasy realm. If as you are implying there is no boundary between simulation and the real world, we would be in the situation, depicted in children's stories, where game or fantasy characters emerge from the computer into the room or players disappear into the computer world where the characters are real.

There is clearly a boundary between the computer simulated world and the external real world just as there is a boundary between the biologically simulated world and the external real world. I have for many years now been calling that boundary the Prime Reality Interface. There is lots of evidence that consciousness is a simulation, such as the optical illusions and If one is schizophrenic the imaginings of the mind are, during a psychotic break, subjectively indistinguishable from a healthy minds simulation of reality. Conscious reality is a fabrication. The fabrication can be represented mathematically but that does not make it any less an emergent fabrication rather than the foundational reality.

If by "universe" you are referring to the fabricated output of the processing of received data then yes the fabrication on screen or paper will have some similarity to the raw data from which it was made that had an independent existence in the external environment prior to it being received. Is that potential data -The universe- *in its entirety* though or just the the "veil"? I would say the photon data can persist for a very long time but it does not automatically follow that the unseen sources of data are also unchanging in form ,configuration and position in the universe.

Tom,

I'm the one who has been arguing for a "void" based reality, that space is an infinite equilibrium. Remember the arguments about how the concept of expanding space overlooks the fact it still assumes a constant speed of light, which is based on a constant dimension of space? If space truly expanded, wouldn't this essential measure of intergalactic distance also increase, but then we wouldn't have any measure to compare to.

That centrifugal force is the relation of spin to inertia, not outside references? So, yes, space, the void, is real.

Laws and principles are as real as the actions they define. Those actions are layers of evolving complexity, so is there a similar nesting aspect to the laws describing these processes, where the more complex manifestions are determined by actions and principles underlaying them? In his entry, George isn't arguing there is a top down set of such primary cause, but that we cannot ignore how top down causality is a significant feedback loop. As I keep pointing out, top down and bottom up are complimentary. Order defines energy. Energy manifests order. So I'm not saying laws are bottom up, so much as I'm saying laws are a top down effect of bottom up processes. Laws are induced from the actions of nature. We use them to deduce the actions of nature. We percieve them in nature and use them to predict nature. It is a feedback of reflecting our knowledge of nature back on nature. Sometimes though, we end up off in left field, when we miss a few important features. Asking what is missed is the question of this contest.

"I can agree that the 'mechanism' of the universe and the 'mechanism' of brain function have similarity but consciousness, the product of the brain function, is something different."

What gives you the notion that consciousness is a product of brain function, Georgina, vice brain function being a product of consciousness? The former is the bottom up assumption of causation which George questions. I question it, too. Laterally distributed causality -- in the form of negative feedback -- can only be effective ("consciousness ... a product of brain function") in the context of a continuous positive feedback loop. I.e., discrete information as negative feedback is the effective mechanism to control positive feedback, which by definition is an out of control state. The world is metastable not because of disconnected similarities between consciousness and physics; rather, because consciousness and physics are smoothly and infinitely self-similar.

I agree with Murray Gell-Mann -- we don't need "something else" to explain what the self organized world tells us. His statement is often taken to be reductionist in the extreme. I take it, however, in the way that John Horgan (*The End of Science*) interpreted it -- as a continuum of consciousness. That's not bottom-up causality; that's reduction to complexity.

Tom

"I'm the one who has been arguing for a 'void' based reality, that space is an infinite equilibrium."

I know, John, and as I have said many times before, your argument contradicts itself. A void cannot be said to be in equilibrium, because an equilibrium state (much less a state of infinite equilibrium) is empty of useful energy. So you leave yourself no basis on which to claim "Order defines energy ... Energy manifests order." For those statements to make sense, one needs a continuum of dynamic spacetime relations in which local energy is nonzero.

You might want to read Lawrence Krauss' latest book for a rational view of why the vacuum is compelled to be unstable.

Tom

Tom,

There does seem to be quite a lot of evidence from medicine and neuroscience that consciousness is a product of brain function. Brain injury and disease such as tumours affect brain function and the conscious experience is altered as a result. I agree there can be feedback from consciousness to other brain activity because experience can affect decisions and the behaviour that follows, which will affect which new inputs are received. So one might say consciousness is giving -that- brain activity, i.e. activity leading to motor function that in turn controls input (and so subsequent consciousness).

However I am talking about the experienced output of brain function from environmental input not alteration of the input due to alteration of behaviour resulting from the experiences. Though I think it is a valid point to raise it is complicating matters. An observer in a conscious but vegetative state incapable of motor function enabling control of data input would be an easier model and more easily compared to a stationary artificial device acting as an observer. I don't see why continual environmental input of data giving conscious experience and continual moderation of behaviour, controlling the data input should be considered an out of control state. It seems very well controlled to me; by inputs and organised processing to output and responses.

A continuum of consciousness sounds nice but I think it is an ideal based upon misinterpretation of what is observed. The output of processing. The consciousness is internally fabricated within the observer from the discreet data that has been received and processed, which overcomes the paradoxes. The potential data is external in the environment. How it spreads through the environment and the interaction with different media and material objects is the interesting part because it isn't as simple as just a hypersphere of data spreading out from a singular source, though that's a good starting place to think about before the environment under consideration gets more complex and scattering and refraction need to be considered.

"I don't see why continual environmental input of data giving conscious experience and continual moderation of behaviour, controlling the data input should be considered an out of control state."

Georgina, what you call 'moderation of behavior' is negative feedback by definition, a control mechanism. A positive feedback loop (think of microphone-amplifier feedback) is an out of control state by definition.

I think the problem with believing that "The consciousness is internally fabricated within the observer from the discreet data that has been received and processed ..." is that quantum mechanical correlations are not limited to isolated observer systems. That there are no such systems is a theoretical principle, experimentally validated (Bell-Aspect). While consciousness can be said to be nonlocal, however, the physics of consciousness cannot be. As you note, local mechanical functions are affected by local conditions. What's left to be called "physically real" is information itself.

" ... which overcomes the paradoxes." There is no paradox. Either quantum theory applies to the universe in toto, or it is not coherent. Whether classical mechanics can be derived from quantum theory -- or vice versa -- is the problem of unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics. My own result says "vice versa" -- that quantum correlations are self-limited by a local classical time parameter, and correlated in proper time to infinity. I accept that Bell-Aspect proves that no classical theory of quantum correlations can be derived from quantum mechanics; it says nothing about what happens the other way around, however.

Tom

Tom,

I don't see why you are assuming the " positive feedback loop (think of microphone-amplifier feedback)."

I said the data was discreet because it seems to be received as light quanta, in either sufficient quantity to activate a sensor or not. There isn't any problem Tom. I am aware that different observers can receive data from the same event and fabricate it into their own reality. That is because the potential sensory data is not just a single particle or ray but many photons spreading out from the source over time. I mentioned the quaternion light cone model described by Roger Penrose (in his PI lecture Twistor space and quantum non locality) in my essay as a potentially useful description of what is occurring as well as the potential usefulness of related algebras.

Yes Tom what is left to be called physically real, that is -your- use of the phrase physically real, is information. (How marvellous that that is the topic of the next FQXi large grant round.) I do not call it information because it is a problematic word that is used in different ways by different people and causes confusion and argument. I have been calling it potential sensory data because that is what it is to us and our technology. It can be received and made into something; it is not just what it is and that's all.

I too have talked about the correlation in my essay. I think I understand what you mean by that "quantum correlations are self-limited by a local classical time parameter". You are talking about how the potential 'data' spreads out and so what is found where, when. When one tries to project what is happening in the quaternion model onto a 3D manifold it then looks rather strange, as Roger Penrose explains. It is also going to be strange for Octonian algebra too. The problem is from incorrectly assuming that the space-time in which objects are seen to exist,( that can be adequately described with a space-time manifold), is that space in which the data exists and propagates. The relationship between Object reality and Image reality has some similarity to the description of implicate and explicate orders described in this paper ALGEBRAS, QUANTUM THEORY AND PRE-SPACE by F. A. M. FRESCURA and B. J. HILEY, Department of Physics, Birkbeck College, London WC1E 7HX UK (Received In February, 22, 1984)

Quote " In this view, the space-time manifold is not a priori given. Rather it is to be abstracted from a deeper prespace.... Quote "In this pre-space, the notion of locality is not primary but is a relationship in prespace which, in an appropriate explicate order, becomes a local order in the explicate space-time."

The framework I have set out shows the primary relationships. The Object reality is analogous to an implicate order and the Image reality the explicate order. different words same generally implied meaning. Now do you want to tell me that Sir Terry Pratchett's "Disc world" physics and the physics of our universe must be united into a single model of reality because the fabricated reality was made within our reality?