Dear Vladimir, thank you so much for your comments. Sure, I will read your essay carefully, hopefully soon. Looking forward!
inés.
The role of the observer in goal-directed behavior by Ines Samengo
5 days later
Very vividly written, I especially like the use of the verb "arrogate". (The comparison of Menelaus to a bacterium on the other hand failed to enlighten me, I'm afraid)
I like the idea that something like metabolism, as a continuous redefinition of the boundaries of "self" helps agents rise above the determinism of the physical level. I guess the redefinition can sometimes be more discontinuous as well, like when a lizard detaches and discards its tail to escape a predator.
Hi Ines,
Are you trying to hide! Your abstract is terrible....it confused me to the extent that I needed to return to your essay after two weeks recuperation.
May I redo your abstract: "The main conclusion of this essay is that the interesting part of agency is the observer. Physics does not make sense, observers make sense of it. Life does not have a meaning, we give it a meaning."
Several essays mentioned Maxwell's demon as a place for agency to creep in. However, Your analysis of Maxwell's demon describing agency is so insightful I will repeat it here:
Arrogating purpose, in this case, is to assume that the gas--who takes the role of the agent--wants to shrink. Other verbs may be used (tends to, is inclined to, etc.), but the phrasing is irrelevant. Maxwell's demon hid the initial conditions of the gas in its memory. As uncanny as it may seem, arrogating purpose to the gas is a rather accurate description of the gas' phenomenology. Purposeful agents, hence, only emerge from sub systems that eat up order like Maxwell's demon.
There are a lot of good essays in this contest, this essay is monumental (IMHO). Please excuse me for being in a loop of delayed recursive narcism.
Do visit my essay,
Don Limuti
Hi, Miles, thanks for reading and commenting! The entropy reduction of the bacterium is instantiated by the fact that no matter how nucleotides are arranged in the initial state, they become tidily arranged for DNA replication in the final state. The entropy reduction of Menelaus is larger. He manages to achieve DNA recombination not only irrespective of the initial spatial arrangement of nucleotides in Helen's womb, but also, irrespective of the initial location of Helen herself (Troy). Both he and the bacterium are able to circumvent obstacles, but his strategy is more complex. Anyhow, it was obviously not a good example, having to explain it once and again is a bit like explaining a joke (!).
I liked the lizard idea! Looking forward to reading your entry,
in[es.
That's the dilemma, right? Should I write a fancy abstract, and later bore readers to death? Or better a very obscure one, and later deliver an essay above their flattened expectations? Same as when choosing a photo for one's web page. Should we look good, and then disappoint people when they meet us? Or look terrible, and give some relief to the brave ones that dared to come anyway?
Anyhow, thanks so much for the help, your version of my abstract was very much improved. I'll keep it in mind for next time! And thanks also for the support.
Feel free to loop as much as you want, that's the whole point of consciousness, isn't it?
best!
inés.
Hey Inés,
Thank you very much for your detailed brainstorm, and I must apologize for my tardy reply. (I was fully expecting the website to let me know when my questions are answered on forums. That should teach me!) I agree with what you are saying.
As regards your question at the end, "Is it not surprising that relativity, and QM, and thermodynamics all point out to an active role of the observer in what we so far had regarded as objective reality?":
It does beg the question about just how fundamental observers are in the physical world. It can be argued from the plethora of information that is distributed by a-biological processes (such as red-shifted spectra of galaxies to name one example), that all of that would be useless if not for observers who can process such information to make sense of the universe.
I also think the issue of time is intimately related to all of this, though my thoughts on it are far from developed. But I do like the perspective of if we can adjust the rate of time, so the rate at which information is transported, all the way to zero, then nothing would exist. So time, no matter how we look at it, is as fundamental as energy conservation itself.
I'm digressing, but I also believe that a few choice essays in this contest would provide the seeds of progress on the question that was originally asked - mindless math leading to intention - and take us a step forward in that direction.
Once again, my apologies for replying so late.
Regards
Robert
[deleted]
Hi Ines, (I also posted on my blog)
1. Thanks for you review....much appreciated.
2. You say "I myself argue that there are no goals per se, but that we choose to see them. Not exactly because their existence makes us happier, but rather, because their detection allows us to make predictions, and thereby, to be more fit to pass on our genes."
Yea, Darwin and Dawkins have highly regarded points about how genes foster evolution and are selfish respectively. I will not argue with Darwin, however, Dawkins is wrong. Genes are both competitive and cooperative (see Yaneer Bar yam's work on complexity).
Instead of using the words goals I will substitute "choice" and rephrase your sentence: ""I (Don L) argue that there are no goals per se, but that we (humans but perhaps not all life) choose to see them. These choices are made because they satisfy us emotionally, (in healthy individuals they tend toward happiness), and thereby, to be more fit to pass on our genes."
About Choice and Emotions: I posted on one of mad max's minion's blogs "your emperor is totally nude (in Italian)". This minion was a determinist but his emotion (aka greed) caused him to delete my post (followed by my score plummeting). Was his choice determined by mathematics? This minion was much less fit to pass on their genes than someone like yourself.
In spite of my stated intention, ha ha. I hope you win this contest.
Don Limuti
Hello Inés,
The reference to "if a tree falls, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?" clarifies matters for me. I understand why you say, "Maybe yes, maybe no." The subsystem exists independently of external observers, but for the subsystem to exist as an agent in a full sense, it must be detected, observed, or interpreted as such.
On another issue, I might say that at some point it would be interesting to think about the relationship between your understanding of arrogating agency and what Daniel Dennett calls "taking the intentional stance." Of course, Dennett is also concerned to show that entities which take the intentional stance and those entities to which intentionality is attributed can both arise in the course of evolution.
Best wishes.
Laurence Hitterdale
THank you for commenting on my essay. I read your essay and really liked it. You make some very novel points.
Thank you.
Noson
Ines, you say:
The main conclusion of this essay is that the interesting part of agency is the observer. Physics does not make sense, observers make sense of it.
I say in my essay:
Our vision (and knowledge) of the different scale LANDSCAPES is always from our own scale spectra (our LANDSCAPE: Newtonian Landscape). And from there we try to understand everything that
happens in the others scale landscapes.
But, what would happen if we could observe these same LANDSCAPES from their own scale?
It could give us a completely different point of view that we have now, and it would surely help us to understand better many concepts and phenomena that now we do not fully understand.
Dear Ines Samengo
I agree a lot, what you wrote, especially about entropy.
But you wrote:
»By iterating the algorithm, profuse RNA replication in free solutions can be observed to give rise to prokaryote cells, who in turn evolve into eukaryotes, from which multi-cellular organisms appear, all the way up to the ever growing branches of the tree of life. In the way, conscious humans, civilization, and artificial intelligence emerge.«
Here I add that consciousness cannot arise out of materialistic world. The first reason is because consciousness is from different material than materialistic world. The second reason is that materialistic world per se, does not exist.
The second problem is "self", as you write at the end. I think that the smallest units of consciousness is qualia. Qualia as pain, for instance, is a negative feeling, but it does not need to know what is self.
I admit, I am not so sure as in non-emergentism of consciousness.
Can you write, what you think about quantum consciousness?
Best regards, Janko Kokosar
Hi, Lawrence, sorry for the late response, I had a lot of demand at work, I'm now trying to catch up with the fun in my life, which includes discussions in this forum.
I have not read "The intentional stance", but heard about it in lectures and talks - and surely liked the ideas that those talks triggered in me. Actually, it may well be the case that I developed my point of view in this essay based on Dennett's ideas. (It's not really easy to say which ideas are ours, and which are inherited, is it?). I believe he goes further than me, going all the way down to arrogating mentality, that is, assuming agents are rational, and have beliefs and desires. I believe intentionality is less than mentality. I do not think we gain much by assuming a robot has mentality, nor that evolution, or a football team have mentality. But I am ready to ascribe goals to them.
In my essay, I have focus more in the initial steps of the arrogation process. Before arrogating intentions (or even mentality), we need to identify the agent by cutting it out from the huge amount of particles populating spacetime. I tried to emphasize that predictability (or entropy reduction) is the crucial property guiding the cutting process. And I also tried to underscore that this process is an economic representation of the outer world, and to conjecture that this very same process is involved in the construction of the self. I did not delve in the construction of the representations of other minds, but I guess it follows naturally.
So yes, you are right, all what I say may well be aligned with Dennett's thoughts. To be able to make a more certain statement, I have just bought "The intentional stance" and I should get it here in a month or so. So maybe in a little while, I'll have a better answer!
Thanks for commenting,
inés.
Dear Ines Samengo
If you believed in the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes, then your essay would be even better. There is not movable a geometric space, and is movable physical space. These are different concepts.
I inform all the participants that use the online 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 in your theme
Sincerely,
Dizhechko Boris
Hi Ines,
I believe that Dennett does go further than you in identifying mentality and consciousness for that matter with functional states such as having intentions. Based on what you say in your comment, I would agree with you more than with Dennett. In any case, I think you will find "The Intentional Stance" an interesting book. As you know, Dennett has recently published a new book, "From Bacteria to Bach and Back." I haven't read it yet, but it will be interesting to see his current expression of his ideas.
Best wishes.
Laurence Hitterdale
Hi David, thanks for reading and commenting. I will give a look into your essay soon! inés.
Hi, Janko, thanks for reading and commenting.
> Here I add that consciousness cannot arise out of materialistic world. The first reason is because consciousness is from different material than materialistic world.
True, consciousness is a first-person experience. I would not dare to assert, however, that a difference in perspective necessarily means that one thing cannot derive from the other.
> The second reason is that materialistic world per se, does not exist.
I am sorry, again, I would not dare to make such a claim. Under certain premises, I can state that the materialistic world exists per se, under others, I can state that it emerges out of the interaction with observers. But as I understand it, these issues cannot be resolved if we do not first agree on the basic premises. Which, as far as I know, is not a settled matter.
> I think that the smallest units of consciousness is qualia. Qualia as pain, for instance, is a negative feeling, but it does not need to know what is self.
I agree with this statement. I am not sure I understand, however, why this is a problem in my argumentation. Even if qualia may be more basic, I chose to speak about consciousness, because consciousness is more related to the topic of observing observers than qualia. Mind you, I never meant to explain all what there is to be explained ...
I may be missing, however, some key points of your way of thinking - I have not managed to go through your essay yet. I hope to do it soon, and if reading it allows me to better understand your objections, I will surely come back to you. Thanks for getting in touch!
inés.
Hi Robert (this time it was me who took a while to reply!). Sure, time is at the bottom of everything, I wish I had a clearer image of it...
> all of that would be useless if not for observers who can process such information to make sense of the universe.
Yes, this is one way to answer your question about the measurement problem, and is tightly related to the question "If a tree falls, and nobody hears it, does it make a noise?".
There is, however, still a more fundamental level in which your question strikes me. In quantum mechanics observers actually change the story of the world. It's not just that they give relevance to the world, they actually build it! Ok, in the many world interpretation, there are many observers. But as long as we follow a single observer, there is no such thing as the objective physical world, because what happens depends on which observer we follow. As far as I know, not such thing happens in relativity: although different observers see different things (for example, they have different notions of simultaneity), all views are compatible with a single external reality. Up to what degree do observers of thermodynamic processes influence the so-called external reality? I am not sure about this question. Naively, I would answer: they change nothing. There are experiments, however, that show that the amount of information that we have about a system (an amount that depends on the observer) can be transformed into energy, see for example http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v6/n12/full/nphys1821.html So the natural question is: can different observers extract different amounts of energy from a system only because they have different amounts of information about it? The answer seems to be yes...
This is not to say that thermodynamics is as weird as the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, nor anything of the sort. I may well not have understood the relation between information and thermodynamics quite right (I need to dedicate more time to the topic!). But I just want to mention this controversial aspect, because this is what fascinated me when you asked me the question about the measurement problem. Hopefully in a little while I may have an answer for it!
Thanks,
inés.
Dear Ines Samengo,
very interesting and mindful essay. I enjoyed the reading.
Your argumentation reminds on evolution which is in some sense also a process towards wandering to a goal (which is not always well-defined).
Here, there are two processes, mutation and selection. The mutation process increases the entropy (as a stochastic process) but produces information at the same time (new species with up to this time completely new properties). But this new information is meaningless without an evaluation or better selection. Here one uses a fitness function (or something similar) to select the new species. This process reduces the entropy. At the end, you can produce more entropy but you reach a goal (or you have directed process). Is this example what you had in mind?
Maybe you are also interested to read my essay? I see in your vita that you work in neuroscience and I'm eager to read your opinion.
All the best for you and in the contest (with my uovoting for the great essay)
Torsten
Dear Ines Samengo,
The owl's hunger improves the bat's echo-location for the good of species. Nice.
I very much appreciate your entropy-information discussion and reorientation in terms of open and closed systems. In my own endnotes I 'teach' a robot how to construct a theory of physics from measurement data. The pattern recognition and feature extraction somewhat resembles your figure 1. This agrees with your claim that entropy not only characterizes a physical system, but the way it is described. The robot's theory is an entropy-lowering model or description. This is the robot's goal (impressed by me, the agent, of course.) The robot somewhat randomly acquires measurement data, so the system is open. So thanks for the reorientation. You say "observers do not assign agency to all the entropy-reducing systems they meet." I do not assign agency to the robot.
But you magnificently state that "Ascribing agency is all about ignoring who really did the job (the universe, to put it grandly.)" That is what the body of my essay is concerned with. You note "observers produce agents. In the absence of agents, no subsystems are cut out of the wholeness of the cosmos, and complexity cannot be measured." I think that is profound.
I hope you will gain something from my essay and truly hope you comment on it.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Hi Inés,
Thank you for posting on my forum page. I have in the meantime set up a spreadsheet tracking my conversations during this contest.
Two things I want to mention. Firstly, George Ellis has done some great work on the Emergent Block Universe, which is what you are saying as regards the influence that observations (observers) have on the microphysical level, but which can be manipulated easily to affect the macrophysical level too. I think you will enjoy some of his papers on this, if you have not seen them already. And I am particularly intrigued by your ideas in this regard. The observer creates the universe. That being the case, it would seem that the more fascinating question would be, why there is determinism (such as Newtonian physics) at all?
Secondly, I am formulating ideas that the quantum measurement problem in and of itself seems very analogous to emergent phenomena. Here is a toy example: If you consider a person driving a car, it would not be very politically correct to say "there's an accident looking for a place to happen". But in truth if you place a large number of people in a big city then the rate of car accidents can be predicted so accurately that insurance companies make a profit off that distribution. So in a way, the existence of car insurance is realized by a large sample of individuals, though we have no idea who will get into a car accident next - much like the measurement problem.
Thank you for your perspective of: "different observers extract different amounts of energy from a system only because they have different amounts of information about it". I'd like to think a little more about that. There's real progress to be made here.
Regards,
Robert