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

      Hi Erik,

      Indeed it is very interesting essay and I enjoyed reading it. I agree with you that all phenomena are Ontological and are not theological in their evolvement-occurrence.

      Yet, you state:"They (the agents,Y.A) maintain their identity over time while continuously changing out their basic constituents." What keeps them from holding their self-organization? How they perceive their unique singular identity?

      You rely on Causality principle on your hierarchical mapping from lower lever systems to higher one, and for predictions in a causal perception it works to some degree, but we find in reality that its limited. This is why we (humans) at a place and state were we are - in suffering, pain and confused.

      I see reality evolving differently and causality is a special case in the occurrence of phenomena. (see my essay). Yes, we are evolving in the present continuous and continuously changing while holding to our unique self.

      Your essay is challenging but raise more questions, which is good.

      I hope we get high exposures to our potential readers.

      With thanks

      yehuda atai

      Erik,

      An absorbing analysis, well written and described. Also one of few consistent with my own but from an interestingly different perspective.

      You do a good job on what you cover but don't go into mechanism itself, either for causal interactions or to construct how Romeo responds to finding a wall and overcomes it. I hope you may study and comment on the 'scenario test runs' and 'feedback loops' I invoke, and hierarchical levels within our cortices.

      I agree entirely with your hierarchy, well represented and employed. But I suggest that contrary to many assumptions these are ubiquitous throughout nature. From Einsteins 1952 STR concept of "spaces in motion within spaces" down to fractal and perturbation theories and on to the rules of brackets in arithmetic and identically 'layered' (see my last essay) propositional dynamic logic (PDL). Even the macro 'extra spin state' of the Higgs process is analogous! You refer to 'rungs'. Do you perceive underlying 'hidden likenesses' with any of these?

      I did struggle to follow yours at first read (and I promise mine returns the compliment!) but I think unravelling density and complexity is essential so that's a positive attribute. Mine also goes on the to identify an extra 'layer' of information hidden in quantum interactions disguised as noise. My 2013 IQbit essay precursed this years which decodes it to get Classic QM. (thought that'd need understanding of 'spooky' QM then overcoming major dissonance to perceive!). More details of the mechanism are in my string with Stefan of 4/3.

      I'd greatly value your comments on mine, which is testament to the quality, value and (my opinion!) veracity of yours. Thank you for the informative and enlightening new view of compatible conceptions.

      Best of luck in the contest.

      Peter

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        • Post #79

        Dear Erik

        regarding our discussion on supervience, I have come up with the following aphorism:

        "Bottom-up action enables top-down realisation to take place".

        which actually captures part of what is going on. The other part ifs

        "Top-down realisation puts in place the relations between elements that participate in Bottom-up action".

        Regards

        George

        Hi Erik -

        In the context of this contest, your essay is outstanding for the careful clarity with which you address a specific version of the problem we're supposed to be thinking about. I now have a much clearer notion of "supervenience" and its limitations, thanks to you, and the concept of "causal emergence" fits nicely into the wider perspective you indicate in Appendix E.

        I have a question, though, about how the concept of supervenience fits into our current empirical understanding of the world. Your Figure 1 implies that quark clouds cause atomic structure, and ??? causes the quark clouds. I realize these labels are just short-hand, and this doesn't represent your view of the world. Yet it hardly seems plausible here that "all the information and causal work seems to drain away down to the microscale." The domain of particle physics is both vastly more complicated than that of atomic structure and radically less determinate. As to ???, the speculative quest for a deeper-level physics hardly gives a picture of "lower-level properties from which all the higher-level properties necessarily follow." On the contrary, most features of the Standard Model are currently explained by random "symmetry-breaking".

        You note that formulating "the problem in terms of higher and lower scales puts aside the details and complications of physics." But am I wrong in thinking that supervenience only seems plausible because we're used to the simple logic and precise determinism of classical physics?

        This is not to deny that the physical world is deterministic, to a very close approximation... so there's still the question of how higher-level structures come to play an important role in the macrophysical world... and there's still a very interesting network of answers involving multiple realization, error-correcting codes, etc.

        In Section 3 of my own essay, I consider the fact that deterministic physics seems itself to be a higher-level structure not reducible to its less determinate lower-level components, and that the process of quantum measurement is analogous in important ways to much better-understood evolutionary processes. Sadly, this work is at the other end of the scale of logical rigor from yours, but I hope you'll find it of interest.

        Thanks - Conrad

          Thanks so much Conrad these are really great questions.

          To your question of: "But am I wrong in thinking that supervenience only seems plausible because we're used to the simple logic and precise determinism of classical physics?"

          So suprevenience turns out to be a surprisingly flexible way of talking about systems and scales. It doesn't actually imply that the microscale must be simple or deterministic. Noisy systems, or those with complex interactions or functions. Here I use it solely over discrete finite systems. For any such system there's some definable set of supervening scales {S}, which may be extremely large.

          I'll note first of all that for most of what we consider physical systems this holds: for example, given a group of cells, those cells will have some supervening scales the definition of which seems, at least to me, pretty non-controversial. Same with say, the logic gates of a computer all the way up the supervening program of a web browser. In theory there is some mapping between the web browser and the underlying circuits, even if that mapping is *enormously* complex and unwieldy.

          To your point that: "the speculative quest for a deeper-level physics hardly gives a picture of 'lower-level properties from which all the higher-level properties necessarily follow.' On the contrary, most features of the Standard Model are currently explained by random "symmetry-breaking.""

          Perhaps the word necessary is confusing here. By that I mean, given the state of the microscale, the state of the macroscale *necessarily* follows. For instance, in the case of symmetry breaking, given the infinitesimally small flucations of the system, some macrostate follows. This may appear as arbitrary to an observer, but there is some microscale that is the case. Philosophers have thought before about supervenience and emergence. There's one notion of "brute emergence" where somehow properties come into being that *don't* supervene on the underlying properties (or states on the underlying states). A lot of people have argued that this is nonsensical - in other words, that all higher scales must supervene on lower ones. But these are great questions, because applying this to the details of our own physics has not been done yet.

          All the best! Erik P Hoel

          Np George - did that myself earlier.

          Interesting aphorisms! I think the field is so early that conventional language has a problem mapping to its contours. For instance, what's the difference between something being a "top-down realization" and just a "realization"? If a bunch of NOR gates realize some logic function, is that automatically a top-down realization? These are really interesting questions.

          If I remember correctly, you've also used the word "constraint" to describe some of these issues before. I really like that. Constraint is nice because it can exist at a single timepoint and thus we can get really precise about space and time, supervening levels, etc. I also used "constraint" as a mathematical descriptor in a paper about causal emergence, and we showed that at time t, the supervening macroscale constrains the future (t+1) to a greater degree than the underlying microscale constrains that same future. One might then say, in english, something like: "The macroscale constrains the future of the microscale." What do you think of that phrasing? Do you feel it matches up to what you're talking about?

          Thanks so much George!