Hi Lorraine,

Thanks for your clear very readable essay. I can accept the conclusion of "emergence". But am hesitant to use it in my own essay ...I prefer to say "we do not know". And your take on AI is spot on!

Good to see you in another contest.

Don Limuti

    Hi Joe,

    I agree that "Only nature could produce a reality so simple, a single cell amoeba could deal with it", and I also agree with the Einstein quote: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." My essay take these types of ideas into consideration. I hope to find time to read your essay and comment on it.

    Lorraine

    Dear SNP Gupta,

    Thanks for your kind words about my essay. I hope to have a look at your essay, as soon as I can.

    Lorraine.

    Thanks Steve,

    Glad you liked my essay. I have a 2 metre high Amaranthus caudatus flowering in my garden at the moment: I like it even though it is a bit of a weed that self-seeds every year.

    Best wishes,

    Lorraine

    Thanks Don,

    I am also glad to see you in the contest again this year. I actually agree with you about "emergence": there seem to be a lot of confident claims made that a purely deterministic type of emergence exists (many in this essay contest, supported by impressive-looking diagrams and tables and research papers), but I am skeptical about what they say. Naturally, only more complex versions of what already exists could "emerge". My contention is that there is necessarily a choice aspect to "emergent" molecules, not just deterministic aspects.

    I enjoyed your essay, though I haven't yet conmmented on it on your essay page. I haven't rated any essays yet either.

    Lorraine

    Dear Lorraine,

    I am very impressed by your essay; to me, it is one of the best here. Your pronounced will to clear and distinctive statements and derivations, your ability to reach that, make your treatise very special and of highest rank in my eyes. I appreciate and share your criticism of the materialistic neo-Darwinist picture with its emergences out of nothing. Your rare understanding of deep unity between metaphysics and ethics, which I clearly saw in several places, is also common to us, and also very valuable for me. Because of all that, and notwithstanding my serious disagreement with panpsychism, I give your essay a high score. To avoid repeating here what was already said in our essay, I am inviting you to my page, where your comments, as critical as you like, would be highly appreciated.

    Good luck,

    Alexey Burov.

      Lorraine,

      I really liked and enjoyed your very original proposition that the universe continues to generate it's own rules. But I never quite seemed to find 'why' you suggest it does so or needs to do so apart from 'quantum uncertainty'. Perhaps that's enough, but did I miss anything else?

      So you write; " 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. It's certainly true that QM currently doesn't and can't predict individual interaction outcomes, but do you not think that may be a result of our inadequate understanding of the interactions?

      I also applauded your reminder that; "sloppy definitions of information persist: 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. But then if we step ahead consider AI and the ability to 'learn' via a feedback process, do you think that can closely model our own learning mechanism?, or not?

      I address that and most of the above in my own essay which I hope you'll follow and like. I also propose the layered structure of propositional dynamic logic (PDL) as fundamental (you may recall my analogy with arithmetical brackets last year). You show some understanding of logic so I'd appreciate your views.

      Well done and thank you for yours.

      Peter

        Dear Alexey,

        Thanks very much for that.

        I'm looking forward to reading your essay,

        Lorraine

        Hello Peter,

        Glad you liked my essay. Thanks for that.

        Re "did I miss anything else?":

        If oneself is entirely of-a-continuous-lawful-piece with the rest of reality, then no amount of philosophical gymnastics can turn this topology into "free will". Free will requires that a thing possesses the lawful power (i.e. the same status as a law-of-nature) to move itself in relationship to the rest of reality. Clearly, this is a power that even fundamental particles have: these are the outcomes that look random to an observer. Free will also requires us to acknowledge that the power to make laws resides within the universe, not in a mythical Platonic realm.

        Re AI:

        My point is that AI doesn't actually generate rules, it generates models/representations of rules, and models/representations of learning, and it processes models/representations of information. This is as opposed to actual "living" rules (e.g. laws-of-nature), and "living" information (i.e. subjective experience).

        Will read your essay as soon as I can.

        Lorraine

        Lorraine,

        Thanks for an enjoyable read. I am in complete agreement with you regarding constraints affecting behavior. That is the basis of catalysts and enzymes and probably all biological functions.

        I am puzzled by what you mean regarding "one-off" rules. A rule is something applied repeatedly. How can a rule be "one-off"? This may simply be a question of semantics. Saying "one-off" event might have the same general meaning that you intend.

        Can you provide an example of such a "one-off" rule or event as it pertains to physics or chemistry?

        Is there a measureable difference between a random event and a "one-off" rule or event? How can you know the difference between the two conceptions?

        Your motivation seems to be as a means of explaining some of the oddities from QM. Can an individual particle make a choice? Can an electron choose to be either up-spin or down-spin for example. Can a photon choose its path through the two-slit experiment?

        Best Regards and Good Luck,

        Gary Simpson

          Gary,

          Thanks for taking a look at my essay.

          Re "one-off" local rules:

          One way of looking at the situation in the universe might be in terms of possibilities and constraints: existing "law-of-nature" rules have constrained almost all possibility, but there are still gaps which require local fixing with one-off local rules to constrain "quantum randomness". We would represent such a one-off local rule with an equation that resets the value of one of the "uncertain" system variables to a new numeric value. Up-spin/down-spin outcomes and photon path outcomes in the two-slit experiment are examples of possibility having been locally constrained.

          Atoms and molecules and living structure are also further local constraints on possibility, but it is these constraints on possibility that allows the development of the structure. As structure progresses, all further constraints on possibility seemingly require existing rules plus new rules.

          But where are the rules and knowledge of the rules coming from? I'm saying that it is the structure itself that knows and creates new rules, while the structure itself embodies existing rules. The structure "knows" because rules are in effect categories, i.e. categories of knowledge, i.e. concepts, subjective experience.

          Lorraine

          Lorraine,

          If you have not done so, you should take a look at the essay by Peter Punin. He presents the question of the first occurrence of a new event. The nomenclature is very formal.

          Best Regards and Good Luck,

          Gary Simpson

          Gary,

          I'll have a look at Peter Punin's essay.

          But why the belief that what drives reality lies in greener pastures far away in a Platonic realm? Why the belief that our universe has no inherent capability? Why the belief that it's all happening somewhere else? What does that mean about your attitude to our here and now situation? I fear that you are intellectually and emotionally attached to the wrong (hypothetical) place.

          See my above post entitled Numbers in a universe without a Platonic realm where I say: "Physics can be seen as the discovery of actual relationships that exist in the universe; but mathematics can be seen as the discovery of the properties and nature of all possible types of relationships that can be represented symbolically, where the vast majority of these potential relationships don't actually exist in the universe." Mathematics merely symbolically represents possible relationships; but the actual universe has generated "living" relationships, not symbols of relationships.

          Lorraine

          Lorraine,

          If you have not read Punin's essay, how do you know he argues for Platonism? Or do you simply remember he is a Platonist from the last essay contest?

          For me personally, I don't necessarily believe in a Platonist universe but I do think that whatever laws exist already exist. They might be discovered but I don't think new laws are created. Having stated that, that does not exclude randomness from being a part of a law or a limit to information as being a part of a law. For example, my thinking regarding the uncertainty principle is fairly simple ... when a measurement is taken, some energy is exchanged between what is measured and whatever does the measuring. If the thing that is measured is very small, the energy that is exchanged is large enough to change the thing that was measured ... so, you can know where a small something was, but you cannot know where it now is because the act of measurement changed the thing that was measured.

          I agree with your post .... math represents all kinds of abstractions .... physics is a subset of mathematics that represents things that we observe in our universe. That was the essence of the last essay contest.

          As for me personally, I decide what to believe based upon two things ... what is observed and what is the simplest explanation for what is observed?

          I have a hard time believing that a single electron or a single photon has agency simply because they do not have any known internal structure. For me, I need some kind of empirical evidence that they are capable of making a choice and the evidence must be distinct from randomness. What I mean by this is that randomness and agency must make different predictions and the observed behavior must agree with the hypothesis of agency. If they make the same prediction then I go with the more simple hypothesis i.e., randomness.

          Best Regards and Good Luck,

          Gary Simpson

          PS - I scored your essay several days ago ... somewhere between a 5 and 10. No one bombing here.

          Gary,

          I didn't think that you would be one of the "bombers", so thanks for that.

          Randomness is not a "simple hypothesis", far from it. I'm hypothesising that the outcome of quantum randomness is due to a one-off local rule, in the same way that all fundamental-level outcomes are due to law-of-nature rules/relationships. Randomness is completely out of character, but a one-off local rule is not.

          As you will appreciate, new rules are never the result of a deterministic process: rules are the start of a deterministic process; the advent of rules in a universe is a non-deterministic event. My essay looks at a universe that generates/causes its own rules. Given the same set of rules, different hypotheses about the causes of the rules in the universe, will lead to different conclusions about the nature of reality in the universe.

          The trouble with "randomness" as a solution, is that it has the same effect as if a one-off local rule has been enacted, and therefore this "randomness" has the same status as a one-off local law-of-nature rule i.e. a genuine force of nature. And yet when you look at lists of the laws of physics, you will never see "random outcomes" as one of the items in the list. "Randomness" is not a cause: the word "randomness" when applied to quantum outcomes merely means that no hypothesis about the actual cause of the outcome has been ventured.

          Neither quantum "random" outcomes nor outcomes due to human agency can be fully deterministically predicted (naturally, most but not all variable numbers representing these physical outcomes will be fully determined). It is only pseudo randomness that can be deterministically produced, and will always produce the same results if the same input numbers are given. I'm saying that you can't distinguish an essential difference between quantum "random" outcomes and outcomes due to human agency.

          Regards,

          Lorraine

          Lorraine,

          Thanks. But another question, on 'subjectivity'. What would you say the difference is between these pairs;

          A; Two advanced & complex 'fluid learning' AI Android brains, (a&b) getting different experiences, then categorising cross referencing and storing them, then accessing the data to inform 'test run' decisions, then again when the 'feedback' comes back, (ether from internal or external response mechanisms) maybe many times, to 'refine' to a final choice of decision. The decision (or it's neural switch pattern) may then be retained as a reference guide, so becomes what we call and an 'aim'.

          and B) Two humans given exactly the same two sets of different inputs, remembering them, then evaluating choices by imagining possible outcomes before reaching a decision which may become an 'aim'?

          Sop the question is; Are A (a&b) inputs and processes less 'subjective' that the two humans? If so; what do you see as the key difference/s?

          Best

          Peter

          Dear Lorraine,

          I read with great interest your essay with ideas and conclusions that will help us overcome the crisis of understanding in fundamental science through the creation of a new comprehensive picture of the world, uniform for physicists, lyricists, poets and musicians filled with meanings of the "LifeWorld" (E.Husserl).

          I completely agree with you:

          ﾂｫThe universe as an isolated system has necessarily generated, and continues to generate, all its own lower-level rules, both long-term law-of-nature rules, and simple one-off local rules to resolve quantum possibilities.ﾂｻ

          ﾂｫ...the actual universe has generated "living" relationships, not symbols of relationships.ﾂｻ

          Hence, the problem of the ontological basification (foundation / justification ) of mathematics (knowledge) today is the problem 邃-1 for fundamental knowledge and philosophy, taking into account all the "troubles with physics"(Lee Smolin," The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next") and "loss of certainty" (Morris Kline in "Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty"). . I give my highest rating.

          I believe, that only extremely constructive metaphysics, and the global "brain storm" will help us to overcome the crisis of understanding, crisis of interpretation and representation.

          I invite you to read my ontological ideas .

          Best regards,

          Vladimir

            Peter,

            Re What I think are "key differences":

            1. Lawful relationship.

            Subjectivity is information/knowledge/subjective experience that derives from lawful relationship, not from representations of relationship.

            E.g. you can represent the lawful mass-energy equivalence relationship on paper, or in a computer, but the computer components that symbolise m and the separate computer components that symbolise E are not themselves related by the lawful mass-energy equivalence relationship: they only represent the lawful relationship. Obviously, the representation does not have the power of the law.

            Similarly, the computer/ robot/ "AI" components that represent supposed brain processes are merely representations of inputs to brains, representations of physical brain components, representations of lawful causal relationship via representations of algorithms (e.g. logic gates represent an IF/THEN part-algorithm), representations of supposed connections linking brain components, and representations of outcomes.

            The representation does not have the power of the living/lawful relationships embodied in advanced molecules. It is the co-opting of law-of-nature rules, and their further lawful constraining, within the structure of advanced molecules, cells and organs that distinguishes higher-level information in living things from the lower-level particular-, atomic- and molecular-level information in non-living things like robots. In a computer/ robot/ "AI", it is actually lower-level information that is being processed, while at the same time representations of higher-level information are in effect being processed.

            Advanced information can maybe be seen as advanced lawful constraints on possibilities via laws/rules embodied in molecules (that can only exist within an appropriate environment): it is not about the representation of these rules by physically separated components in a robot.

            2. Subjective experience.

            Subjectivity is information/knowledge/subjective experience that derives from lawful relationship, not from representations of relationship.

            The similarity between law-of-nature rules and subjective experience is that they both consist of categories of information, and relationships between existing categories making new categories of information. Categories are merely transposed rules/relationships. Note that what are called "initial values" are also rules: simple rules involving information categories.

            I'm saying that categories are concepts are subjective experience.

            Dear Vladimir,

            Thanks. Good to see you back in this contest.

            I think that what you say is correct: "...only extremely constructive metaphysics, and the global "brain storm" will help us to overcome the crisis of understanding, crisis of interpretation and representation."

            Hope to read your essay as soon as possible.

            Regards,

            Lorraine