Erik,

Wow. I'm not sure I have anything to say or any questions left to ask. This is a very well-written. thorough, and complete essay. Well Done.

The only possible comment of interest I might have concerns Romeo and his motivations ... I don't think his brain was involved:-)

Best Regards and Good Luck,

Gary Simpson

    Dear Sirs!

    New Cartesian Physic based on the identity of space and matter. It showed that the formula of mass-energy equivalence comes from the pressure of the Universe, the flow of force which on the corpuscle is equal to the product of Planck's constant to the speed of light.

    New Cartesian Physic has great potential for understanding the world. To show it, I ventured to give "materialistic explanations of the paranormal and supernatural" is the title of my essay.

    Visit my essay, you will find there the New Cartesian Physic and make a short entry: "I believe that space is a matter" I will answer you in return.

    Sincerely,

    Dizhechko Boris

    Dear Erik,

    thanks for the well-written essay. I agree with Gary, there is not much left to ask. Your argumentation reminds on evolution.

    Here, there are two processes, mutation and selection. Mutation produces new information (=species) and selection is a global interaction among the species giving a goal to the process. In a more refined model of Co-evolution, the selection itself is formed by the interaction between the species, so again you will get a direction or goal. So, I think from this point of view, your model perfectly fitz.

    Maybe I have one question: you are an expert in neural science and I wrote about a brain (using methods from math and physics). Please could you have a look on my essay?

    Thanks in advance and good luck in the contest (I gave you the highest rating)

    All the best

    Torsten

      Thanks so much Gary! Also, your comment made me laugh - yes, there are many... types of teleological causation.

      EPH

      Thank you Torsten! I'll read your essay now.

      EPH

      Dear Erik,

      With great interest I read your essay, which of course is worthy of high rating. Excellently written.

      I share your aspiration to seek the truth

      «I argue that agents, with their associated intentions and goal-oriented behavior, can actually causally emerge from their underlying microscopic physics.»

      «being open to the environment is not sufficient for goals, although it is necessary ... there must be some set of conditions in the interactions with the environment in order for agency and goals to appear.»

      I agree with you

      «We can all wave our hands about emergence until the end of time but until you really drill down and give proof of principle examples.» And I tried to do it on examples.

      I wish you success in the contest.

      Kind regards,

      Vladimir

      Dear Erik Hoel

      You gave me new knowledge about top-down causation.

      Here I am interested, if top-down causaton can be proved by some software simulation, like artificial life? Such simulation is simpler than simulation of animal evolution.

      My opinion is that such theory does not yet directly explain free-will. I think so because all examples which you gave are also logical gates. But it is similarly with these logical gates as with some software. A software works according to logical gates, it has not free-will. For instance I think that red lines on your figure 3 are also logical gates.

      I speculate that the laws of Newtonian physics, (without quantum physics) does not give top-down speculations. Probably this is not true, what do you think?

      my essay

      Best regards, Janko Kokošar

        Thanks for reading Janko.

        In regards to directly explaining free will - you're right, this doesn't, by itself, give a full argument for free will. This is because free will can be broken into several related problems. However, one of those problems is shown to be moot by this line of reasoning. That is the problem of having an underlying explanation for your own behavior at a much lower scale. So for instance, if someone says "you only did x because your are a collection of [fundamental particles], and it was those [fundamental particles] that actually did x." You hear a more causal form of this argument when someone says "my brain made me do it." However, if someone claims consciousness is itself epiphenomenal, or makes an argument from fatalism, causal emergence does not directly address that (although given a theory of consciousness it may be able to prove that consciousness is causally efficacious). But, regardless, the first step in getting to a [scientifically adult version of free will that probably won't be everything we want but ends up being good enough] is showing macro-level causation. So I think of this as a first step.

        As for quantum physics - well, I actually think causal emergence is pretty common, even in things like cellular automata, which have very different "physics" from our own world.

        EPH

        Hi Eric...

        I've considered this a little more, and also discovered why I was confused about the meaning of "supervenience"... apparently it was used early on to describe loosely what you call "brute emergence" and only later settled into the technical definition you use.

        I don't think my hesitation affects your argument about causal emergence, based on discrete finite systems, which is clearly a relevant description from the level of deterministic physics on up. In fact, your essay really should be included in the published collection of work from this contest, since it takes a significantly different approach to emergence from the other best essays here, and one I'll be thinking about for a while.

        Still, it's not at all obvious that in the quantum realm "there is some microscale that is the case." The closest we get to describing the state of the microscale is the wave-function. As I understand it, not only is that a matter of probability, but they're probabilities of possible measurement results, rather than of possible microstates. If you don't specify what kind of measurement will be made on it, you don't even have a specific wave-function for a system. So there's reason to be suspicious of philosophical arguments that "all higher scales must supervene on lower ones."

        This is just to say that emergence happens differently at different levels, so no one approach gives the whole picture.

        Thanks again - Conrad

        Thanks for commenting again Conrad - and I'm very glad to hear it had an impact.

        As to your point, I actually generally agree with you on this. It may *not* be the case that all of science can be described in terms of a non-broken hierarchy of supervenience. Perhaps very strange stuff is going on at the microscale and causal structure of any kind can only exist at some level above the ultimate microscale anyways. However, causal emergence is relative to levels; so for instance, if biology does supervene on chemistry, biology could causally emerge from chemistry (regardless of whatever is going on beneath chemistry). It's also very probably that causal emergence can apply to non-strictly supervening scales - because again it's just comparing the macro to the micro causal structures. So these are really great questions - I'm not going to a priori ruling anything out. This is just the clearest way to present the idea without getting into all sorts of caveats about whether and where supervenience holds and how strict it is; which is, in a sense, a different (although just as interesting) problem. Certainly in the systems I'm working with supervenience always holds, which I view as the most difficult scenario in which to make a strong case for emergence, so that's why I always enforce that.

        EPH

        Hello Erik Hoel,

        I enjoyed your paper and I think that the ideas in your paper are a step in the right direction. But I do not think that your argument is sound. You assume in your first paragraph that agents have 'goals, intentions, and purpose', which, I believe, is the end point of the question as asked. I do not see how you link mindless mathematical laws to aims and intension.

        I do not think that supervenience is the right concept. There are at least two hierarchies: the physical hierarchy and the conceptual hierarchy. The physical hierarchy starts at the Plank distance and extends at least 70 orders of magnitude to the size of the observable universe. The physical hierarchy is the realm of physical process behavior as summarized by mindless physical-mathematical laws . The conceptual hierarchy of the sciences is a human semantic overlay on the physical hierarchy. In either case, the guiding mathematical laws or science of the higher levels to not necessarily reduce to those at the lower levels - the rules of organic chemistry does not really reduce to sub-atomic physics; and the rules of baseball do not reduce to biology. What can be said is: the lower levels implement the higher levels, and things that appear at the higher levels are not predictable by the laws of the lower levels.

        I think that implementation completes the emergence story. Emergence brings into being the parts that implement the next level up, but I think that implementation does a more natural job of 'carving nature at its joints'. Implementations are assemblies of parts selected from collections of what emerges from below.

        Thanks for the good read.

        Cheers,

        Bruce Amberden.

          Dear Sirs!

          Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of Newton returned as the New Cartesian Physic and promises to be a theory of everything. To tell you this good news I use «spam».

          New Cartesian Physic based on the identity of space and matter. It showed that the formula of mass-energy equivalence comes from the pressure of the Universe, the flow of force which on the corpuscle is equal to the product of Planck's constant to the speed of light.

          New Cartesian Physic has great potential for understanding the world. To show it, I ventured to give "materialistic explanations of the paranormal and supernatural" is the title of my essay.

          Visit my essay, you will find there the New Cartesian Physic and make a short entry: "I believe that space is a matter" I will answer you in return. Can put me 1.

          Sincerely,

          Dizhechko Boris

          Hmmm, let me try to clear some of this up.

          "I do not think that your argument is sound. You assume in your first paragraph that agents have 'goals, intentions, and purpose' which, I believe, is the end point of the question as asked."

          As I outline in the essay, the question is not whether agents can be described as having goals, intentions, and purpose. You do that every day, I do that every day, every human describes agents this way throughout their lives. Many scientific and quantitative fields also describes agents in this way, and even have associated mathematics and formalisms, as I point out. The real question is not whether some physical systems (agents) can be described as having goals, intentions, and purposes, because clearly they can, but whether those things are actually causally efficacious. That is, are they epiphenomenal, or can they be reduced to the mindless mathematical laws and relations of the microscale?

          "I do not think that supervenience is the right concept."

          Supervenience means that if you fix the properties x at a lower scale you then fix y at a higher scale. Your example of baseball not being reducible to biology isn't capturing that. Obviously, given the set of fundamental physical properties that underlying a baseball game being played, whether or not someone is on first is fixed by those fundamental properties. Imagine fixing the fundamental makeup of a computer; that fixes the higher scale of the logic gates in the computer. That's supervenience. It sounds to me like you are talking about reduction between laws rather than supervenience between scales: do the laws of organic chemistry reduce to the laws of sub-atomic physics? This is actually a different question than: if you fix the set of fundamental physical properties in a system, do the higher level properties of that system follow? In fact, your very definition, that "lower levels implement the higher levels" implies supervenience (why else would implementing higher-level property y via lower-level properties x bring about y unless fixing x meant fixing y?). When talking about these issues it pays to be precise, and unfortunately special jargon is needed, and thus careful attention must be paid while reading to understand the definitions.

          All the best,

          EPH

          Hi dear Erik

          I have read your amazing work today only (and a little bit in hurry - sorry)

          I can evaluate it as high because it are well written and attractive-interesting, especially your underlining on the causal principle of arising of intentionality, coming from components-agents, which seems to me important. I have understand also that you had look somewhat pessimistically on the possibility to solve offered problem in whole, - for today. It seems to me important because I'm are inclined to approach to this discussion theme some critically. Hope you can look my essay in this short time and say some words (please in my page) that will be valuable for my.

          I wish you success in this contest!

          George Kirakosyan

            Thanks so much for commenting even though you were in a hurry George! I appreciate it all the more.

            And you're absolutely right - I'm trying in this essay to solve what I view as the underlying, fundamental, or ultimate problem which all approaches to the question will have: regardless of exactly how the goals/intentions/aims arise, there will be an ultimate problem for these descriptions, and that is whether they can possibly be causally efficacious.

            All the best - good luck in the contest,

            EPH

            Jonathan - I posted a link to my own twitter followers to read my essay. I don't think it's at all self-promotional or strange for someone to assume that their own followers might want to read their essay first. In fact, as far as I can tell, most everyone who is on twitter and in this contest has posted a link directly to their own essay at some point or another to their followers. Since I'm assuming you don't follow me on twitter, you obviously saw that my tweet got retweeted by @FQXi today - but who retweets my tweets isn't up to me! I don't have any control over @FQXi, and I think it's a serious moral category error on your part to assume that and to have read as much into it as you have.

            EPH

            Perhaps I misunderstand Twitter..

            Because I reject the Twitter mentality, and studiously avoid sites that would require me to authenticate myself via social media, I choose to isolate myself from that crowd. Ironically; this leaves me unable to edit my own page on MTV dot com. I find it suitable for folks in the Music profession to hype themselves to the max, in order to boost their standing. So I excuse my colleagues in Music for doing so. I find this far less palatable in academic professions, despite its recent popularity. It's not just you Erik; it sours my stomach to see any scholar behave that way.

            I might have erred to assume that you were posting directly to #FQXi when you posted to your own Twitter link and it was re-tweeted. But the content was yours to start with, and you should know that once something is on the Internet, you can't control who re-purposes it. So it is incumbent on you as a scholar to retain or portray a certain sense of dignity. I don't resent so much that you were preaching to the choir (your own 'followers') but seeing it on top of the FQXi feed still soured my stomach. So I own my emotional reaction, but I won't excuse it. I reserve the right to feel as I feel, and I'm sorry if my expressing that offends you.

            Regards,

            Jonathan

            Oh that should be..

            Pete Seeger's cabin... Pete was rather down to Earth and kept a low profile for someone of his stature. I guess I try to emulate his 'walk the talk' attitude, which kind of rubbed off after years of working with him. I could go on and on about contact with celebrities, conversations with various scientists, and so on. But that has lost its luster and I'd rather do some serious work instead. I am sorry to bristle at you, rather than understanding the context.

            Warm Regards,

            Jonathan

            Dear Erik P Hoel,

            I was impressed with your comments early in the contest. You commented upon my essay before you posted your own essay, and, having exchanged thoughts with you, I forgot that I had not read your essay.

            Having read it now, I enjoyed it very much, beginning with your toy system where you demonstrate that macroscale transitions are more deterministic and less degenerate, so interventions at the macroscale are essentially more effective. This may explain some of the power of the 'qubit' in statistical spin systems. The 0.81 -> 1.0 bit of information was extremely interesting.

            And I agree with your conclusion: "attempting to describe an agent down at the level of atoms will always be a failure of causal model fitting."

            Thanks for your excellent analysis and good luck!

            Best wishes,

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Glad to hear it Edwin - I definitely remember your own essay as being one of the ones that really interested me early on.

              Thanks for commenting and I'm glad you found the analysis of macro vs micro interesting/useful - the connection you see to qubits is intriguing.

              All the best!

              EPH