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

OK Tom,

I will try not to be insulted. Perhaps you did not mean to imply that all of my attempts to demonstrate the idea to you, (through numerous descriptions and analogies and references to the diagrammatic representation and the solutions that it provides) have not been rational. It seems to me that you are impervious to rational argument and require a concrete demonstration that is tangible. I'll have to see what I can do.

George,

I'm sorry for having taken up a lot of space on your thread and for putting my previous reply to Tom in the wrong place. I was pleased to see that you seemed to grasp what I was trying to convey. (Though it wasn't just about meaning. An Image reality can be produced by a sensitive material or device that does not interpret what is generated. I was using the analogies to try to emphasise the difference between foundational and emergent; implicate and explicate.) It makes me feel the time spent was not entirely wasted. Thank you.

Georgina, Tom.

Interesting conversation. Would a concrete rational explanation not be simply possibly? Perhaps using twin video cameras to show that observer state influences observation. At the simplest level just a coloured filter would do so, but if each camera is in a different state of motion, then the colour/ wavelength frequency, and in theory, size of the observed object would vary.

Indeed I suggest that no two detectors visual image of reality can be the same, as no more then one can't occupy the same space time at one (Boscovich). Yet we can find out about reality in many other ways than via em wave emissions, and often then find our assumptions were wrong.

Is that not concrete enough evidence Tom? It is indeed a very deeply held hidden assumption that Georgina has challenged, based on the anthropocentric thinking we all use by habit.

If you'd been as confident the sun orbited the Earth when someone suggested it was the other way around, would you not have reacted, along with most others, precisely as you are now and dismissed the evidence due to the unfamiliar interpretation?

Peter

Georgina, please don't be insulted. All I am saying is that in the meaning of "rational" is the implication that the term as applied to physical reality demands a measured correspondence between all elements of the representation (usually mathematical) and elements of the phenomenon. One of the reasons that we use mathematical language to represent a fundamental phenomenon, is that it removes ambiguities, i.e., allows us to make closed logical judgments so that theoretical precision constrains the limitations of the measuring apparatus to within a reasonable margin of error.

I can't give you a reason why reality *has* to be unitary -- you may very well be right that there are two (perhaps even more) realities. This does, however, complicate rational explanations of real physical phenomena by at least an order of infinity.

Tom

" ... I suggest that no two detectors visual image of reality can be the same, as no more then one can't occupy the same space time at one (Boscovich)."

That isn't true, Peter. The information contained in wave patterns detected by your radio or television receiver certainly does occupy a common spacetime with a wealth of other information, and your image does not differ from the image I receive on the same frequency via my detector. This isn't the case with discrete particle states, in which fermionic particles are forbidden to occupy the same state at the same time. In other words, continuous information is translated only in discrete states (like the pixels on your screen), yet a unitary reality does not require more spacetime to hold more information.

"Yet we can find out about reality in many other ways than via em wave emissions, and often then find our assumptions were wrong."

Which assumptions? Which ways?

"Is that not concrete enough evidence Tom? It is indeed a very deeply held hidden assumption that Georgina has challenged, based on the anthropocentric thinking we all use by habit."

I don't understand what you mean. If reality requires a layer of interpretation to make it comprehensible, that is anthropocentric -- since we humans are the ones doing the interpreting.

"If you'd been as confident the sun orbited the Earth when someone suggested it was the other way around, would you not have reacted, along with most others, precisely as you are now and dismissed the evidence due to the unfamiliar interpretation?"

The geocentric vs. heliocentric issue comes up frequently here, and I don't find it that profound. Fact is, that planetary orbits are so nearly circular that one can be easily forgiven for mistaking the evidence of approximation, for the absolute truth. The Copernican model is, however, more than an interpretation of how orbits work -- Kepler showed us that the sweep of equal areas in equal times demands acceleration of the orbiting body; without this insight, Newton would not have been able to connect the acceleration of a falling apple to the acceleration of the moon in its orbit around the Earth's curvature.

My point, Peter, is that there is a big gap of knowledge between the heliocentric model and Newtonian mechanics and its completion in general relativity. So it matters little whether I personally, as a pre-Copernicus philosopher, accepted the geocentric or heliocentric model. As Vesselin Petkov has made a point of saying -- science never moves backward. I am at peace in accepting that everything I know may be wrong, and content that what knowledge I do have is compatible with the state of the art; i.e., it does not require great leaps of speculation. Details matter.

Tom

Hi George,

"The essential nature of information is that it is not phyaical. It gets embodied in physical ways but that is not what it is about. I refer to my example of computer programs."

Maybe. I agree with your computer example, particularly with the 1 October reply to Hector Zenil, "I am arguing that statistical physics is crucially limited in what it can do. It can describe unstructured systems very well. Most of the systems around us are structured in one way or another, and their essential causal properties are not statistical. Computers are an example."

Right on. The origin of order is not necessarily identical to the origin of computability. I think that Chaitin's Omega is a great example of why we can't trust arithmetic to answer fundamental questions about ordered functions -- and also a clue as to why the P vs. NP problem exists in the first place. We can, after all, recognize an assembled object -- whether it be an abstraction such as a jigsaw puzzle, or such creatures as lions and antelopes -- and identify a tremendous amount of ordered information. Scramble that information, and there is no guarantee that any algorithm can put it back together in the right order.

"A carbon atom in a lion is identical to one in an antelope. Where they end up depends on ecosystem and physiological level variables, and issues such as did the antelope see the lion. It is perverse to call these variables physical or label them physical information."

Of this I remain unconvinced. Multiscale information may or may not be tractable to algorithmic compressibility (I personally doubt it); however, given the limits of arithmetic uncertainty, it may be possible to base computable functions on recognition algorithms over these varieties of scales. Lev Goldfarb's research program is such -- actually the only such program that I know of -- a way to replace discrete arithmetic functions with a formalism that exploits the continuous range of variables by which we actually experience physical phenomena.

"Anyhow that's my view."

And really, pretty close to mine as well. In our correspondence of a couple of years ago, Goldfarb and I agreed (and have published independently) that time is identical to information. If spacetime is physically real (of course, there's solid physical evidence that it is), then information -- being not independent of spacetime -- remains metaphysically real in "the experiment not performed" (Peres) even as all the physics is real and local.

Tom

Tom,

I think the best principle to keep in mind as to what is "physically real" is conservation of energy. Prior and subsequent events to what is currently happening are not physically real because the energy that did manifest them or will manifest them is presently engaged in manifesting the current set of circumstances. Now these can seem quite fuzzy around the edges, because energy is, by definition, not always easy to precisely define, since it is inherently dynamic. The concepts we use to describe it, temperature, frequency, time, work, entropy, velocity, potential, etc, are aspects of energy which are emergent from such energetic actions.

Here is something I wrote in Georgina's thread some days ago:

"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."

The situation is that our minds seek some very precise understanding of reality, but that tendency becomes its own form of trap that blinds us to other aspects of reality. Understanding requires being able to sense both sides of the coin, even if you can only see one at a time. As someone once said; The opposite of small truths are false, but the opposite of large truths are also true.

Is diffusion a requirement of reality?

John,

As near as I can make out, your definition of "physically real" -- which you don't offer up -- somehow emerges from a concept you can't precisely define. I can tell, though, that what you mean by the term is not what Einstein meant -- you write, "Prior and subsequent events to what is currently happening are not physically real because the energy that did manifest them or will manifest them is presently engaged in manifesting the current set of circumstances."

This militates against a definition of physically real, which states simply and precisely: "Independent in its properties, having a physical effect but not itself influenced by physical conditions."

Spacetime, which you claim is not physically real, fits this definition (for which Einstein wrote it, in fact, by way of introducing general relativity). Spacetime also qualifies as physically real in what you seem to be describing in so many words as, "any dynamic phenomenon."

What separates -- precisely -- your concept of "physically real" from the physics of spacetime that you claim is not physically real?

Tom

"Is diffusion a requirement of reality?"

Yes, if the second law of thermodynamics is true.

Tom,

there is mathematical correspondence between the model of the output reality and experimental results- that's Einstein's and Minkowski's and Lorentz' and others' work on modelling relativity. Then there is the mathematics of Quantum electrodynamics, and as Feynman has explained in his lectures it works, the calculations are very precise and accurate, and the mathematics of QM. That is the realm of the source of potential sensory data and the sensory data itself.

Linking the two, this is the interesting part, is what happens to the potential data between origin and receipt.I.e. what is going on in the data pool. Its the same question that still intrigued Feynman at the end of his life. That's where Roger Penrose's light cone model could have a part to play and Joy's model could be relevant and that's why I think MIT's Femto photography is interesting (and the "multi shadowed" objects). The Femto photography technique is allowing a visualisation to be constructed, built up, from experimental data of what happens very close to light speed. How the photons are scattered yet is still able to transmit the data from its origin is an intriguing question for me. However such a set up but with several observer positions that make simultaneous detections should demonstrate that the potential data in the environment is able to generate multiple different output manifestations not just a singular output manifestation. So it is not that the observed object exists in a superposition of states prior to observation but the data to generate a manifestation exists in a superposition of states. Neither the data nor the output manifestation are the actualised object made of atoms. Thus overcoming the temporal paradoxes, fitting particle physics in its correct place, and allowing QM and GR to co exist without contradiction.

One reality Tom but with two facets.As the Image reality is contained with in the Object reality. It is a part of it but also not it. Rather than complicating The RICP explanatory framework simplifies matters as neither QM nor GR mathematical model need be rejected or thought limited because it cannot be the other and account for things shown by the other model. The wave function collapse is the switching from considering one kind of reality using the mathematics pertaining to it to the other facet of reality and the mathematics that pertains to that one. The many co-existing potential realities encoded in the sensory data in the environment become one processed output.

I think that if one would like just the observed output to be the whole of reality, or just the data pool( and the topology of its mathematical description ) to be the whole of reality, or just the material sources, the atomic structures and their arrangements, to be the whole of reality then each of those models are incomplete. The material facet of reality and the observed/experienced facet of reality are linked by the sensory data which allows conversion of information originating at the material actualisation source to be processed into output manifestations.

I can see that precisely what is happening in the data pool needs more investigation; so that not just the unhindered spread of data is mathematically modelled but all of the potential interactions with objects and media can also be precisely described. That will allow better prediction of what will be observed and working back allow better understanding of why/how certain manifestations have been observed. As well as with that clear understanding of the processes allowing development of novel ways of enhancing what can be observed, which MIT camera lab appear to already be working on. Maybe since FQXi's new large grant round is concentrating on information something helpful might come out from that research. There is nothing irrational about the concept of the proposed framework which is why the implication that there is annoys me.

Tom,

"Independent in its properties, having a physical effect but not itself influenced by physical conditions."

Wouldn't that be an effective description of a God? Yes, I would militate against that as a description of physically real, no matter who said it.

It is not that I can't describe the concept: That which is manifest is physically real. The problem is trying to qualify the boundaries. As I see time as an effect of action, there is no such thing as a dimensionless point in time, anymore than there is such a thing as a dimensionless apple. Anything multiplied by zero, is zero. So a dimensionless point in time would be like taking a picture with the shutter speed set at zero. Nothing exists without action. It's like a temperature of absolute zero. This means that nothing, not a quantum particle, not an automobile, not a pretty girl's smile, not a beautiful day, not a miserable day, exists independent of its action. There is no independance. When all action ceases, the manifest is no more. It cannot be measured, it cannot be seen. It cannot be felt, as all require action. Measurement is an action. So the boundary between what is and what is not, cannot be measured, because measurement is. As Eric Reiter shows, our ability to measure only extends to the limits of effects and effects are interaction between things that exist; The measurement device and the measured. Julian Barbour argues we cannot perceive distance, only angles, in his thread on shape dynamics. Does that really mean distance doesn't exist when it cannot be quantified? Is reality a function of measurement, or is measurement a consequence of reality? I argue the second.

Tom,

1st order results are useful, but I'm suggesting that to really understand nature we need to understand the underlying quantum mechanism, which may only be apparent at 3rd order ('bottom up' logic).

Let's consider your proposition more closely. We make 'all round' emitters for em signals, but even then they are different photons, intervening conditions differ, and certainly distance and flight times differ. Light is far more varied. Of 80,000 in a stadium no two will have precisely the same view of the tackle so receive identical photons, and even then their lenses differ. Trivial in itself I agree, but no less true. And I'm saying I've found that thinking in that very new way (like Earth orbiting the sun), can shed new light on a very important hidden aspect of nature.

Firstly we realize there is NO observation until detection, which is ONLY possible by a process of interaction. The quantum 'measurement problem' then emerges. The measurer is part of the system measured. Unification is now just a Chinese puzzle I'm saying I've found the answer to, and will try to explain it;

An 'inertial system' must have n particles involved or it does not exist. n particles makes a 'medium' (however tiny). EM waves interacting with the medium (any observer) do not then just have a frequency which varies subject to relative motion, on interaction they also instantaneously have a 'wavelength' LAMBDA, which is DELTA lambda wrt the approaching waves. This is a very new but completely logical viewpoint. All detectors have lenses or similar, which all then represent dielectric media, and which all have a state of motion (as well as a refractive index n.) so represents a discrete kinetic field. Let's postulate that all particles re-emit absorbed energy at c. (in Proper Time, so in the rest frame of the particle system).

Now think hard about that, and consider that in all media c = f*lamba, = a constant, with f always the inverse of Lambda. Now I suggest the greatest realization since e= mc^2; This means c = f*lamba on approach becomes c' = f'*lambda' (plus a gamma factor) after transition.

So CSL ('continuous spontaneous location' by each particle) derives CSL.

Other hints are in the essay. I'm also about to post some links of some more cases of predictions verified, these on Earth's bow shock as a vector field of ions across two frames, similar to the fine structure of the surface of a detectors lens. Our ionosphere implements the ECI frame for local CSL.

Can you see the importance of that unfamiliar way of thinking?; the SR postulates are derived direct from Raman scattering at c. That's the DFM.

Peter

"Wouldn't that be an effective description of a God?"

Yes indeed, John. The intervention of an agent external to physical reality is a perfectly legitimate definition of "physically real." Where science is concerned, however, the God Hypothesis is what logicians call "sufficient but not necessary."

Einstein, who frequently spoke of seeking to know the thoughts of the Old One, allowed that one can either view all the world as a miracle, or nothing as a miracle. The rationalist scientific enterprise views nothing as a miracle. So "the mind of God" in Einstein's words (a phrase borrowed by Paul Davies for one of his marvelous books) is nature itself as reflected in the behavior of the world. (This is also Spinoza's theology.)

"Yes, I would militate against that as a description of physically real, no matter who said it."

And you would be in the company of militant atheists for whom reality is "just so." Personally, I am a non-believer as well -- but "just so" explanations keep me from being the kind of anti-believer that atheism requires; I really see no distinction between belief and anti-belief.

Skipping all that came before, and going right to your conclusion: "Is reality a function of measurement, or is measurement a consequence of reality? I argue the second."

Your argument logically self-destructs. A function of measurement, f(M), has measurement as consequence. I.e., the value of M is the value of the function.

I say again, only when *you* know what you mean when you use the term "physically real," can you communicate that meaning to me or anyone else.

Tom

"There is nothing irrational about the concept of the proposed framework which is why the implication that there is annoys me."

Georgina, my use of the word "rational" does not imply that your framework is irrational as one would mean to say goofy or off-kilter or some such. I have tried to be careful with context and speak of "rational correspondence of theory to result," which has no opposite, as "irrational" would imply. The correspondence is either there, or not.

Anyway:

"One reality Tom but with two facets.As the Image reality is contained with in the Object reality."

What you describe, though, is not one reality with two facets; you describe two realities with boundary. That's why I interpret your framework as dualistic. Think of Cartesian dualism (mind-body). If you really do mean to describe one reality with two facets, those facets -- like the facets of a cut diamond -- are smoothly connected, without boundary. As Wheeler put it, "The boundary of the boundary is zero." Show where this boundary is degenerate(zero valued) as two facets of a diamond connect at their common edge, and you have it.

Tom

I think I misinterpreted your meaning of unitary there, which (non-)explains the non-important question about diffusion (although during the thoughts I found an article which is interesting to read http://www.icfo.es/images/publications/J06-051.pdf ).

Anyway, wow, that femto-camera imaging stuff is pretty wild. I see in a video that they construct an isosurface (a little blue person in a running pose) from the data, which means that they have extracted some kind of 3D field of density values (I did not read any of the papers, so I don't know precisely how it's done). That density data would be a pretty awesome tool for augmenting the standard 2D computer vision toolbox -- kind of like a brain function augmenting the eye functions (if you haven't already, see Werblin, Roska for how the eye is like a multi-channel / multiple render target graphics processor, because it'll blow your mind and stuff). Exciting times. Thanks for that stuff, Georgina the Awesome Link Hunter.

- Shawn

P.S. I just found the Werblin and Roska Nature article. Probably breaking copyright by linking to it, but here goes anyway:

http://hebb.mit.edu/courses/connectomics/Roska Werblin vertical interactions ten parallel stacked representations mammalian retina 01.pdf

The coolest is Figure 2, second row (ganglion type "3"): it shows how one of the channels is geared specifically for edge detection, which means that the eye is most definitely a processor that exists beside/outside of the brain proper.

Ending off-topic babble now.

George,

Thank you for your reply. Finally I found it, and I do not blame Georgina for her misplaced answer to Tom. Incidentally I agree with Tom who objected to Peter's utterance "... occupy the same space time at one (Boscovich)":"That isn't true."

Well, Josip Boskovic lived from 1711 to 1787 and spacetime was fabricated by Minkowski. I intend being more careful than Peter and G. Cantor and if possible even more critical than Feynman. The reason why I am not just writing Cantor is the fact that Moritz Cantor deserves at least as much respect as does Georg Cantor.

Again, I agree with you on that infinity is an ideal property in mathematics, and there is not even a chance to experimentally verify that something has a potentially infinite extent. If I am using Fourier or cosine transformation I am using the ideal entity of an infinite amount of mathematical components. I would never follow Weierstrass and speak of infinite numbers.

Maybe you will agree on that potentially infinite scales of time and spatial distance are reasonable and a bit lazy assumptions, while the belief in an actually infinite time scale and beyond (Schwarzschild solutions) is more hypothetical and ambitious.

I found already some decisive weak points in Feynman's lectures:

- He did not see the possibility I tried to reveal with my Fig. 5.

- He did not take unilateral restrictions of physical quantities into account, see e.g. my Fig. 1.

- Consequently, he introduced the complex calculus without being aware of some trifles like redundancy and arbitrariness, cf. my Fig. 2

- I commented elsewhere on his Fig. 38-1 in vol. 1. See also my IEEE paper.

Tom, it is rational in the way that you use the word and I explained how. The output reality is not actually in "another place" separate from the foundational space, it just appears so. They co-exist while being different. Though there is a also a boundary where conversion occurs which is a reality interface. Many of the problems of physics have been due to not taking account of that naturally occurring "duality", which has without it being realised, been built into the physics that has been constructed.

S. Halayka, I'm afraid your link does not work but I think that the structure and function of the visual system is relevant both to George's argument about top down causality and mine about output reality being distinct from the foundational; reality. So thank you for the suggestion that we look at that work.