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

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?

Tom,

When I said a 3D manifold I should have said Space-time manifold to be clear. I just meant the "squashed" flat representation rather than the hypersphere. Both having 3 spatial dimensions and time but being different representations of them.

Tom,

It isn't that space isn't full of energy that is by definition unstable, but that it can't be simply dismissed as a measure of the actions of that energy. The parameters of logic are the absolute and the infinite. Energy and dimension are a consequence of opposites; positive/negative, up/down, expansion/contraction, etc. The center of which is zero. Zero is not a point, but an absence, a void. A singularity is a point. The complete absence of any reference is unbounded emptiness. That zero is what I refer to as equilibrium.

So all action and the principles describing it exist within the parameters of the absolute and the infinite and the effect of those parameters are what we call space.

Keep in mind the second step religions take, after the creation myth, is to lay out foundational principles.

Electricity is back, but Comcast is still out, so doing this on a phone.

Georgina,

"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?"

I had to google Pratchett and Discworld. I'm not positive of what you mean, but if I can guess -- if you're saying that fantasy and physics obey the same model, I'd answer, of course they do. You assign so much value to "reality" that you think there has to be some sharp demarcation between what is imagined and what you deem real.

If that were true -- i.e., if we actually knew the difference between what is fabricated in a brain-mind, Pratchett's or anyone else's, and what we know as "reality," theoretical models of physics would be entirely useless. As it is, because science is a rationalist enterprise, we only accept those imagined models that correspond to objectively measured results. I expect that if one devised a test for some phenomenon in Pratchett's world, it would probably not correlate to the reality we objectively share. Objective knowledge is the only reality that science is concerned with.

As George has made a point of saying in so many words -- and with which I strongly agree -- the reality of consciousness has as much potential for projection into the rational, objective world as any other theory that does not violate fundamental rules of physics. We just don't yet know what all those rules are. We do know that fantasies of a short time ago -- heavier than air flight, space travel, television, nanotechnology -- are realities today.

Tom

John,

You wrote, "So all action and the principles describing (the void) exist within the parameters of the absolute and the infinite ..."

I don't know what you mean by "parameter," but the way that mathematicians use the term, it means "adjustable variable." Neither the absolute nor the infinite are either variable or adjustable in any way that I understand.

" ... and the effect of those parameters are what we call space."

Not we, certainly. Not I.

Tom

Hi George,

I could have been clearer. When I said that quantum theory is incoherent unless it holds for the entire universe, I didn't mean the universe as a "single macro entity." I meant precisely what you proposed in the first of your four assumptions: "Physical reality is made of linearly behaving components combined in non-linear ways."

There is, after all, no way in principle to make a closed logical judgement of objective reality -- i.e., a prediction bounded by physical observables such as correlated quantum properties -- without assuming orientability (state vector preparation). In line with your earlier profound statement, "There is no life without a local arrow of time," I had some years ago based my program on the assumption (which is equivalent to your first assumption, though in an n-dimensional Hilbert space mathematical model) that time can be defined as, "n-dimension infinitely orientable metric on random, self-avoiding walk." Translated to a topological model, local and global boundaries are obscured by the property of orientability alone. Quantum correlations are strong at every scale.

I have to say, having long been familiar with the work for which you are most known, in relativity and large scale structure, how delighted I have been to become exposed to your quantum methods. Though I don't -- at least not yet -- agree with you that the classical world is an approximation to quantum completeness, perhaps the reason that I disagree is significant to the discussion:

If the classical world (classical continuity) can be built from quantum assumptions, I can see no place at all in physics, for Bell's theorem. It has been my disagreement with Joy Christian -- who holds that the theorem proves nothing at all -- that if the theorem is taken at face value on the measurement interval {- oo, oo} then the correlations are true; i.e., the mathematics of linear measurement results in a nonorientable space prove that no classical theory of measurement can be derived from quantum measurement theory. OTOH, I agree with Joy's topological model that demonstrates how strong quantum correlations are derived from classical measurement -- i.e., continuous measurement functions.

Best,

Tom

Tom,

You seem to have forgotten something. You conceded defeat in our minor disagreement. Recall our recent exchange on Michael Goodband's author-page. :-)

Joy

Joy -- LOL! -- I have never doubted the adage (Mark Twain?) that none of us has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

There's a subtlety here, though. What I concede is that you're right -- a topological model of continuous measurement functions is the correct way to think of quantum correlations at any scale.

The mathematical structure of Bell's theorem forbids continuous measurement functions (quantum measurement problem). So it would have no relation to the physical world (as I said in my essay) independent of what it assumes. IOW, the quantum theory tautology of "what you see is what you get" leaves no room for metaphysical realism. The stark realism of quantum mechanics dooms the theory to incompleteness.

IF quantum theory could be complete (as, e.g., George Ellis hints at a perturbative quantum measurement scheme in his linked arxiv paper), it might produce classical measurement results. If it did, Bell's theorem would have nothing at all to say about either the quantum measurement problem or classical continuous measurement functions. Or at least -- it would apply only in the limit of a nonorientable space, as a technically useful concept but not foundational.

Personally, I think completeness demands a theory that is nonperturbative, background free, singularity free and coordinate free. I used to think that could only be accomplished by a field theory.

Tom

"No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar." ~ Abe Lincoln

My memory is failing, but my research skills remain intact. :-)

Tom

The Science of Discworld Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen at SCIENCE GALLERY, Trinity College Dublin. Worth watching to the end for their interesting thoughts on science.

Tom, Sir Terry Pratchett's books are very clever and very amusing. Some are essentially highly intelligent children's stories and other's more complex and suitable for young adults. For example in the "Last Continent" the academics of the Unseen University, who find themselves trapped on a strange tropical island, decide that they must first of all find a library to learn how to escape. Very funny because it is so sensible within their sheltered view of reality that it is ridiculous. Quote" After finding a plant-based boat, the wizards start to question their surroundings even more and the god of Evolution, who has been causing the events, then turns up and helps explain things a bit. He created the boat plant so that the wizards would leave him in peace, as the plants are going haywire attempting to evolve to suit the wizards' every needs."Wikipedia. I also love the explanation for the camels being that they arrived by floating on driftwood. Unfortunately Sir Terry is now living with Alzheimer's, but still creating with collaborators.

Sorry I should have tested the link. Here it is working properly

The Science of Disc World

Tom,

There is a difference between imagined ideas shaping the world through human behaviour and those imagined ideas being synonymous with the physical laws in operation in the world. Great cathedrals exist because of the idea of God, but the buildings do not in themselves prove the idea. There are painted and printed images of a Discworld on top of 4 elephants on a turtle that exist, as that particular arrangements of paint or ink molecules on top of the paper or canvas' cellulose molecules, because of a man's idea. However the thing that is imagined does not to our knowledge exist as it is imagined out in space.

I agree with George about the importance of "top down" causality, that larger scales and higher level complexity has effects 'lower down'. Those ideas are briefly presented towards the end of my essay too. I do not agree that there is no difference between what is imagined to be and what is, which seems to be your own position. Though not, to my knowledge, what George has said. The fabricated world of our consciousness built using data input from the external environment, and the imagined world built from internally supplied data are both outputs of processing . The fabricated output can not also be the external raw data pool or the material sources of the data in that pool. They are separated by the function of the interface that turns whatever input data is received into output Image reality.