Meaning and Intentionality = Information + Evolution by Carlo Rovelli

Stefan,

I think you make an important point here.

What I would say in response is that the individual organism does not, itself, discriminate when interacting with the environment. Rather, the discrimination occurs over a generational timeline as the replicating lineage presents its templates (i.e., its individual organisms) to the environment. To explain... the consequences of survival pressures on the survival of a lineage's individuals make each individual, effectively, an interactive mechanism that serves to measure the merits of that individual's functional template in respect to the survival of the lineage. The discrimination is a generational process instituted by replication over a generational timeline. The consequences are physiological adaptations in which the lineage evolves increasingly complex discriminatory mechanistic individuals.

Of course, Carlo did not say this, but I am suggesting a solution to this issue.

Conscious agency in individuals is a feature of more complex interactive mechanisms which the mathematics does not address but I do believe that the mathematics can be extrapolated to do so.

My essay comparing the dimensions of meaning in physics, biology and human communication is now available here.

Congratulations, this is an excellent essay, truly original. I have 2 questions:

- would it be right to formulate darwinian evolution as: Species evolve by modifying p(x|y) in such a way as to guide the joint distribution p(x, y) in the direction of increasing M? This makes sense to me, at least, when considering a single species evolving in a static environment. When many species are coupled, and the environment of each species is defined by the state of all the others, recursiveness may abolish the existence of a global landscape to maximize. For example, it could happen that by adjusting p(x|y) in the direction of increasing M, a species may end up changing y, and producing a catastrophic effect on itself.

- P and P-tilde have been defined in terms of the probability of not surviving (S > Sthr), which makes the theory adequate to describe natural selection in living organisms. But could it be extended to more broad-directed behavior, encompassing all systems (not necessarily biological) that decrease their entropy as time goes by? Could the condition inside the integrals of Eqs. 7 and 8 be (Sinitial - Sfinal)? It seems to me that the meaningful information would in this case measure the degree up to which correlations contribute to a generalized goal, not necessarily survival. Or am I missing something?

Carlo,

Hope you check out my essay and provide your own comments.

Jim

carlo, hi,

i was pleased to see that you explore the importance of evolution - the ability of a bacteria to increase its chances of survival (and thus propagation) through awareness of its external environment. i would love to have seen this explored further in connection with the essay's goal. in what way could your essay be an answer to the main question (or a variant of the same), "how can mathematical laws give rise to aims and intentions?".

apologies if i have missed how your essay already answers that question.

I agree with you, Rodolfo

George

Dear Colleague,

This was a very interesting essay, even though I was hoping that you could have found a connection between the concept of relative information and your relational interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Jarmo Makela

Carlo,

Your good paper was thought provoking, in particular your distinction between meaningful information and directly meaningful information. This covers the stimulus-response relationship well. I was hoping to read how this relates to aims and intentions which encompass a not-yet achieved future state and encompass a strategy to achieve that desired future.

William Goodwin

Dear Carlo,

one of the (many) merits of you essay is, I believe, to draw attention to a concept - meaning, or meaningful information - that was left a bit in the shadow in the Context Guidelines (the keywords there being long-term goals, intentions, agency etc.), and to convincingly argue that this concept could indeed represent a first crucial step in the path from physical to mental, which is of course much relevant to the contest objectives.

Once the entropy-based notion of useful correlation between internal and external variables is given, it is easy to see how the human brain, enjoying memory and the ability to model the external world, can take advantage of these correlations even in a conscious manner, e.g. by playing simulations internally before triggering external actions.

But I would be much interested in the opposite extreme: how far down can your idea be pushed?

In a world conceived as a bunch of atoms of spacetime, or a causal set, rather than a network of cells or animals, when and how could I start spotting meaningful mutual information at work?

Prerequisites include the emergence of sufficiently persistent regions (X, Y...) with an inside and an outside, and macro-variables (x, y, ...) on top of the available micro-levels, which enable entropy notions. Talking about correlations between variables x and y also requires many instances of their value pairs in 'time' and/or in 'space' (thus, persistent or multiple copies of X and Y).

I am much attracted by the search for the most elementary formal systems -- possibly intended as models of a (young) universe -- that support your definition of meaningful mutual information, and its fruitful operation in evolutionary sense. I would be grateful if you could share your opinion on this issue.

Thanks!

Tommaso

Hi Carlo,

"We can easily imagine an alternative version of life where the meaning of two letters is swapped in the genetic code." Carlo Rovelli, 2017

This doesn't quite work because it is the chemical structure of the mRNA that is the template for protein construction. A change in the code is a mutation that would give a different product that may or may not be functional. There might however be alien life that operates with a different genetic code building alien life proteins. Synthetic life with extra base pairs has been developed in the lab, with the idea of building novel chemical structures. And there is the remote possibility of undiscovered Earth life that has a different cipher from all currently known Earth life.

The DNA can be regarded as a causal actor in eventual protein assembly. Looking back, the sequence of the DNA is an important underlying cause of the sequence of the protein. (It can't cause it alone though, as the cell apparatus and raw materials and energy supply are also needed). Does it add anything saying the DNA had this (protein sequence) meaning? Likewise, a signal carried by the optic nerve may cause a particular activation of the visual cortex. Does it add anything to say the signal had that meaning rather than it was cause of that activation?

I wrote "meaning is translated, extracted or produced," extracted is definitely not the right word there . I should have said translated, inferred or produced, as i am saying meaning is not carried.

Better still:'...obtained by translation, inference or production.'

Your essay was very readable and held to the boundaries of its topic.

I did not see you discuss the boundaries between the life form and its environment, only correlations between "system A" and "system B". If this means what I think it means, I find it interesting that you find the meaningfulness of information in the correlations that cross the boundaries between life and non-life.

Hi Carlo, I ought to add that I think you have presented some very interesting ideas worth pondering in an accessible, enjoyable, relevant essay. Kind regards Georgina

Hi Carlo,

I do have the feeling you are trying to convince me that the emperor (physics) could be clothed in the ultimate source of meaning.

Working on the "could be" is a good idea. And many of these FQXi.org essays offer some thoughtful ideas. However, at this present moment in history (IMHO) the emperor is Tutta Nuda.

1. You suggest that "to know is to have information about" is misleading. A more complete definition would be: To know is to have information in your mind. The mind being the faculty of consciousness and thought.

2. Your thesis points to a suggestion: "The suggestion is that the notion of meaningful information serves as a ground for the foundation of meaning. That is, it could offer the link between the purely physical world and the world of meaning, purpose, intentionality and value. It could bridge the gap."

I do like this suggestion as a way to spur experimentation and promote new discoveries in physics and mathematics and push the boundaries of what we are about.

3. I think Valentino Braitenberg has done some very interesting work in this area : [link:people.cs.uchicago.edu/~wiseman/vehicles/]

"In the book Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology, Valentino Braitenberg describes a series of thought experiments in which "vehicles" with simple internal structure behave in unexpectedly complex ways. He describes simple control mechanisms that generate behaviors that, if we did not already know the principles behind the vehicles' operation, we might call aggression, love, foresight and even optimism. Braitenberg gives this as evidence for the "law of uphill analysis and downhill invention," meaning that it is much more difficult to try to guess internal structure just from the observation of behavior than it is to create the structure that gives the behavior."

This site and others have programs that run the vehicles. I did not have the plug-in to run them so I don not know how good they are.

This is a very good essay.... forced me to think (a lot).

Thanks,

Don Limuti

Dear Carlo Rovelli

I found really interesting the concept of "meaningful information", which allows quantifying the relative importance of information, a quality measurement essential to support the analysis of global properties of systems, namely of systems of connecting elements, the importance of which I show in my essay. Thermodynamics concerns only systems with non-connecting elements; analyzing systems with connecting ones is much more complex and needs concepts like this "meaningful information".

Your essay is extremely well written, the ideas being presented with such clarity that what is subtle becomes almost trivial. It is focused on how to process information that we know to exist. My essay is somewhat the opposite because I present new information, an information that is critical for understanding the creation and evolution of life. Your essay provides a tool for analyzing the new information I present, while my essay provides new information that may show the importance of the tool you created; namely, the concept of meaningful information seems to be essential for quantifying the "intelligence" of physical systems, considering the non-anthropomorphic definition of intelligence I use.

Given your apparent special aptitude to analyze the subtle side of things, I think that you may find my essay interesting.

Alfredo Gouveia Oliveira

Thanks Carlo for a thought provoking essay.

It is apparent that you have a keen interest in the interplay between living organisms and the external environment and the mechanism that can affect survival. Let me therefore seize the opportunity of this essay contest to extract expert comment from you on two ideas:

(1) If I may paraphrase your statement, "A life form that increases in mass, as the universe increases in mass, and reduces in mass, when the universe is reducing in mass prospers; while that life form that reduces in mass when the universe is increasing in mass, and increases in mass when the universe is reducing in mass has less chances.... Therefore we see many life forms are of the kind that grow in mass, rather than reduce in mass"

What do you think of the idea that dinosaur survival was affected by the later increase in Earth gravity?

(2) The cosmological history of the parameter, Ω being approximately one. This approximation as you know is described as the 'flatness riddle'. This ratio of the density of the universe, ρ (or when multiplied by volume, the mass, M) to the critical density, ρc (or critical mass, Mc) suggests a universe whose mass is increasing with its expansion.

I touch on these two ideas in my paper and would value an expert's commentary.

Regards,

Akinbo

Dear Carlo Rovelli

I inform all the participants that use the electronic translator, therefore, my essay is written badly. I participate in the contest to familiarize English-speaking scientists with New Cartesian Physic, the basis of which the principle of identity of space and matter. Combining space and matter into a single essence, the New Cartesian Physic is able to integrate modern physics into a single theory. Let FQXi will be the starting point of this Association.

Don't let the New Cartesian Physic disappear! Do not ask for himself, but for Descartes.

New Cartesian Physic has great potential in understanding the world. To show potential in this essay I risked give "The way of The materialist explanation of the paranormal and the supernatural" - Is the name of my essay.

Visit my essay and you will find something in it about New Cartesian Physic. After you give a post in my topic, I shall do the same.

Sincerely,

Dizhechko Boris

Carlo Rovelli,

Can we see from perspective of matter? Why matter sustain (survive)? What is that makes atom resist to disintegration?

Why matter has inertia?

Anything that exist has to have the goal of survival.

What are differences between animate goals and inanimate goals?