Thanks so much for reading David. I appreciate it.

I just checked out your article - I think figure 2 is a really wonderful representation of the truly diverse range of scales.

Thanks again,

Erik P Hoel

Thanks so much for reading Rajiv, I appreciate it.

I'll try to address some of these objections, which are rooted in misunderstandings or misconceptions.

"The function at the cellular level may not be entirely determined by the quarks, if there is a certain degree of indeterminism in the processes at any scale."

This is a misunderstanding between determinism and supervenience (where the lower levels determine, or fix, the higher levels). A non-deterministic system will still have strictly fixed supervening levels. The state of the cell supervenes (is determined by) the constellation of elementary particles below it.

"In statements like, "Recent research has argued exactly this [14, 15] by demonstrating the possibility of causal emergence: when a macroscale contains more information and does more causal work than its underlying microscale.", it is not clear what is referred to as more vs less information. I suppose, you just showed all along that complete description of microstates carry more information than any abstraction of the same at a macrostate"

This is the opposite of what is shown in my essay (and the associated papers). The definition of more or less information is pretty clear in the essay itself (given in the equation for effective information), and in the associated papers there are numerous examples demonstrating how to calculate this information and showing it done on model systems.

"If the elements of transition matrix are probabilities, that means it is not a fully described system, as per the presumption of determinism, or the determinism does not hold, or determinism is limited."

It's a metaphysical assumption on your part that all systems are deterministic. And it's simple not true - any open system will experience noise (for instance, a cell being bombarded by cosmic rays). Even in the deterministic universe the only way to get rid of any notion of noise is to avoid partitioning the universe into notionally separate systems (like a cell, by itself). If you can't do this, it leads to very serious problems (discussed in Appendix D). And besides, as said in the essay, the point is moot anyways, because causal emergence can occur even in deterministic systems.

"Given your definition of teleology, are we to understand that bacterium also possesses a sense of goal and purpose, acts accordingly to discover resource?"

Great question. It may be possible to design even simple systems with the kind of teleology I propose. I would view it as a matter of degree, not a binary answer, where humans might have orders of magnitude more "teleology" than a bacterium.

Thanks again,

Erik P Hoel

OK Erik, but further this figure, you should see a framework to explain a lot of Physics mysteries (Black matter and Energy, Uncertainly principle,...) and a way to follow up to improve in Cosmology: Universe scales are infinity (with diferent laws, concepts,..), and no TOEs will be possible.

Hi Eric,

I think you were very busy because untill now I didn't see your comment (nor a rating) on my essay "The Purpose of Life" where my thoughts passed the Planck Wall in order to find a reason for our reality.

I hope that you are still eager to read it.

thank you

and best regards

Wilhelmus de Wilde

PS sorry that I am a little pushing but I would appreciate the thoughts of someone with a worldview like you.

    Wilhelmus, I already read your essay two weeks ago.

    All the best,

    Erik P Hoel

    Hi Erik,

    You do a most wonderful job....(this is from a confirmed "we really do not know person"). And your participation in the Q&A above fully compliments your essay.

    What strikes me as most interesting is:

    The agents are up in complexity (and therefore information) and therefore the agents not only causally emerge, but significant aspects of their causal structure cannot be captured by any microphysical model. If this is true then causal emergence, whether through irreducible physical properties or because of measurement and observational tools, may explain why science has the hierarchal large structure that it does. New rungs in the ladder of science causally emerge from those below them. Different scientific fields are literally encodings by which we improve our understanding of nature.

    I cannot imagine that Darpa and other government agencies would not be throwing money at you.

    I personally would like to see a computer simulation of this causally emerging agent...I want to play with it :)

    Say hello at my blog. I think you will find some humor in it.

    Don Limuti

      Dear Erik,

      Thanks for taking the discussion forward.

      It appears, your claim of misunderstanding is indeed true. For example, you state, "A non-deterministic system will still have strictly fixed supervening levels. The state of the cell supervenes (is determined by) the constellation of elementary particles below it."

      I suppose, for a non-deterministic system, a given microstate description may still allow more than one possible description at supervening level. Is not that the very definition of non-determinism? Then, we cannot assert, "A non-deterministic system will still have strictly fixed supervening levels." There must be something more than strictly determined description of the microstate to give rise to a given supervening state description. I am sure, somewhere our definitions do not coincide.

      Misunderstanding goes deeper. In a specific context I stated, "If the elements of transition matrix are probabilities, that means it is not a fully described system, as per the presumption of determinism, or the determinism does not hold, or determinism is limited", it was meant to show the Smicro is also a 'multiply realized' description (not an ultimate description of unique reality). Here, the idea was to show that logic that applies to Smicro to Smacro, must be true even for Snano to Smicro, as well as to remind that you are not building a case here from a deterministic micro world to supervening Smacro, but rather a case for one indeterminate system to another.

      "It's a metaphysical assumption on your part that all systems are deterministic."

      Ah! This response goes deeper than simple misunderstanding, since if I responded to your statement, "In this reductionist view, a biologist studying a cell is really referring to some astronomically complex constellation of quarks", with, "The function at the cellular level may not be entirely determined by the quarks", I am also questioning the very presumption of determinism itself. I am implying here that 'a cell' is not just mere 'constellation of quarks'. So, I am not sure, how you happened to miss this argument to infer I am for determinism? By the way, I assert here, even greater indeterminism by saying, "one does not require a cosmic rays, or anything external to disturb a system exhibiting indeterminism, all systems at all levels inherently possess limited determinism." That is, even at microscopic level, even a quantum system exhibits indeterminism within limits. Therefore, 'determinism' could not be my metaphysical assumption.

      I suppose, there is enough misunderstanding already, therefore, I will hold my further queries at the moment.

      Rajiv

      sorry Erik,

      As you did not leave a comment I just didn't know that.

      regards

      Wilhelmus

      Thanks so much Don, that's great to hear. I wish DARPA was throwing money at me! They did fund the first paper on causal emergence (during my PhD), although I don't think in the original funding request to them causal emergence was even mentioned. I don't know if they've funded anything else - later research into it was funded directly by the Templeton foundation. The Templeton Foundation has had a great series of grants up and running on information and causation, which this definitely relates to. And right now I'm actually at a lab that gets a lot of DARPA funding, although not for this sort of purely theoretical research.

      You're spot on about how great a full simulation would be; in fact, I was recently talking to someone about this. It may be possible with a simple enough model. One of the things I've tried to avoid is all the hedging that can occur when people are vague about the assumptions in modeling - you can get the macroscales of systems to do basically anything you want if you don't directly specify the underlying microscale and do a rigorous compare and contrast. If you can do that *and* the macro still beats the micro, then you've got something real. That kind of rigor is difficult because of complexity blowups in simulations but it may be possible.

      I will definitely check out your blog - all the best!

      Erik P Hoel

      Sorry Joe - I missed this reply when it came in. Yes! Absolutely! As we're so close we should actually grab a drink sometime to chat as well. Expect an email (or shoot me one) at some point soon.

      EPH

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      • Post #71

      Erik,

      "I argue that agents, with their associated intentions and goal-oriented behavior, can actually causally emerge from their underlying microscopic physics. This is particularly true of agents because they are autopoietic and possess (apparent) teleological causal relationships."

      Is your underlying concept of "causal emergence from their underlying Microscopic physics" relate to the quantum decoherence caused by environmental noise and the trillions of particles the agent is composed of? Doesn't teleology usually see purpose in ends? And how is the agent's causal micro emergence relate to this causal relationship: "because they are autopoietic and possess (apparent) teleological causal relationships."

      A lot of complexity and detail in your compact essay, Erik.

      Quite interesting.

      Hope you get time to comment on mine.

      Regards,

      Jim Hoover

        You only arrive to the figure 2.... don´t you realize that this article, if true, could change the current Cosmology ?

        And you don´t answer my question about your article: "we should deduce that the greatest differences occur in the higher levels and not in the lower levels as I understand you propose."

        Thanks so much for reading Jim. It's a great question about how this relates to various physical phenomena: as I've said in some other comments, right now it's more a mathematical theory based on information theory and causal analysis. But you're totally right in that there are a few really good places to look for it in nature, maybe quantum decoherence due to environmental noise is such a one.

        In regards to teleology requiring purpose: it's subtle but purpose is in a sense present in the analysis. Non-purposeful actions wouldn't really be deterministic or path-independent. But this doesn't mean the teleology, or its accompanying purpose, has any grand meaning at all.

        It's a great question to ask how causal emergence relates to autopoietic and teleological causal relationships. I tried to generalize the causal emergence findings a bit here, to say there is an even more general phenomenon of causal fitting. This can be seen when, for instance, a microscale causal relationship immediately decays but a macroscale causal relationship is stable across time. So I think they are interrelated, all facets of the same underlying discrepancies between the microscale and the macroscale causal structure. Additionally, such a lack of "causal fit" due to the system being autopoietic and teleological primes it for causal emergence, so that's another relationship.

        All the best,

        Erik P Hoel

        Dear Erik,

        Now that we both agree on indeterminism, I mean on limited determinism, can we take on specific mechanism of emergence of quantitatively more information associated with macrostate than what exists in the complete description of microstate that reflects in the same macrostate? This was one of the original contention.

        When I said, I will hold till you agreed / disagreed whether misunderstanding is resolved, I meant, no new points will be raised till then.

        Rajiv

        Erik,

        "But you're totally right in that there are a few really good places to look for it in nature, maybe quantum decoherence due to environmental noise is such a one."

        In "Life on the Edge," Al-Khalili explores environmental noise and quantum coherence for photosynthesis, saying "the noisy interior of a living cell might act to drive quantum dynamics and maintain quantum coherence in photosynthetic complexes .." It's quantum biology I hadn't seen before.

        Hope you get a chance to comment on mine.

        Jim