Dear Lorraine,
It is a pity that I could not see your email earlier, since post Apr 7, my reviews, and comments, do not elicit responses. Below, your statements are quoted in double quotes.
Your opening lines, "unlike a model system that we might set up, where we impose the system rules from the outside, there is nothing and no one outside the universe to generate rules", appeared remarkably on the spot. I do hold similar views too. But a few statements later, one encounters, "So it is not illogical to hypothesise that the universe itself must in some sense know, must in some sense be aware of, the rules it generates", I began to feel uncomfortable with the use of the terms, 'know' and 'aware'. But, "Contrary to Rovelli's hypothesis, it is rules that are 'meaningful information'", gave a different picture altogether. Only difference I would like to add is that the rules are not meaningful information, but the reality of information is based on the natural causality of the rules.
There may be a small problem with, "But the single outcomes of quantum randomness also have the status of 'necessity' if you hypothesise that a one-off local rule for each outcome has been generated by the universe, a rule that can be represented by an equation that resets the numeric value for the 'uncertain' system variable." I am not sure, if one is to gather that this generation of rule is arbitrary, or does it also have a rule, since if it is arbitrary, then it must be random, otherwise determinism comes back in terms of having a rule for rule generation. Secondly, one measurement of a system must be related to another to maintain certain probability distribution? I mean the processes could be stochastic, but the generation of photon from a coherent source, and their arrival at a screen past a double slit must have a pre-determined distribution.
Aims and intentions are reflections of an element of desirability, why does any one context appear more desirable than another? Secondly, if such a sense of desirability is part of all elemental systems as well, then of course one should see violations of second law of thermodynamics everywhere if elements exhibited any degree of commonality of desirability. In contrast, if there is no centralized sense of desirability for a being / entity then it would be difficult for elements to set their courses of desirability such that they serve the purpose of the unified whole system. Later on, I do notice that you have offered resolution of this, "Paradoxically, it's seemingly the restriction of possibilities for lower-level entities (like particles, atoms and molecules) via structural constraints and rules, that leads to the potential for building higher-level entity structure (like single- and multi-cell living things), and the progressive refinement of information categories that might be used by the entity".
"computers do not actually process information - they process representations of information; computer programs do not actually generate rules - they can only generate representations of rules." In my view, information processing takes place at all interactions, where semantics of experiencing also emerges in the same process. The computers are not yet programmed to achieve this level of emergence.
"Despite the ubiquity of emergent behaviour there remains no deep understanding of emergence". What if one lays down the specific process of the emergence of higher level semantics from lower level primitives? This is what I have attempted. I do not attribute sense of knowledge, awareness, and desirability to all physical entities. But I work out how information processing via specifically organized interactions may give rise to high level complex and abstract semantics. It is very well possible !
Rajiv
