Dear James,

thanks for your comment! Regarding the claim that we interact with the world only through models, I think you have a point---I have formulated that bit a little too strongly. In fact, my own proposal doesn't really support it: phenomenal experience, which after all puts us 'in contact' with the world out there, is not due to modeling, but rather, subvenes it.

Modeling has more to do with what Ned Block calls 'access consciousness'---that is, as what or under what aspect we engage with the world. Think about how you can listen to either what a speaker is saying, or how it is being said---under this last point of view, all the uhms and ahs and ohs we normally ignore come to attention. But your phenomenal experience in both cases is the same---the same sound reaches your ears. So in a way, our models are build using that phenomenal experience in different ways.

Also, I'm sympathetic to your view of out picture of the world as a kind of quilt of many different models---as I wrote, I think quantum mechanics already points into such a direction. In a way, there is no unified 'view from nowhere' onto the world; there are just many different points of view that together form a tapestry too rich to be completely unified into a single picture. But I don't think this should worry us: after all, mathematics has lived with such a picture for decades now, and it still seems to be going strong.

Cheers,

Jochen

Dear Stefan,

sorry for being so slow to respond. I'm unfortunately a bit short on time, and your posts warrant some close examination that I wouldn't want to rush.

I think part of what you're talking about above is related to what's called 'the frame problem' in AI: old-style AIs, such as expert systems that basically boil down to long chains of 'if...then...else'-instructions, do very well in a restricted setting, where the sorts of things they might meet are limited. But the world is not such a setting (so very, very much not!); so how do you prepare a mind for the boundless complexity and multiplicity of the world?

I've given a sketch of an answer in last year's essay: basically, taking a hint from Edelman's treatment of the immune system as following an evolutionary algorithm to react to novel threats, I think something similar goes on in the mind. The data introduced by the senses sets up a kind of 'mental fitness landscape'. Self-replicating structures in the mind (perhaps patterns of excitations) are selected according to their fitness relative to the landscape; eventually, a dominant replicator emerges, which has 'adapted' to the sensory data in the same way, say, a dolphin has adapted to swimming in water, and thus, sort of bears the imprint of that data---and thereby, the environment.

In this way I believe an organism can 'evolve' appropriate reactions to even completely novel stimuli; although of course the story has to be told in much more detail here.

Regarding your further suggestions, I am always a little leery of dualist approaches. I think the first puzzle they have to face is how two substances that are different in kind could exert causal influence on one another---and if they do, whether they're not ultimately one substance: in the end, we know all that is physical only via its causal influences; so anything that causally influences something physical is effectively physical itself, simply by the fact of its influence.

Think of some purportedly nonphysical agent X: if it has causal influences on something physical, we could study those influences, come up with laws describing x's behavior; but then, that's all we're doing with things like quarks and electrons, too---study them by their causal influences and formulate laws on their behavior. So if something is physical, so is everything that causally interacts with it. Physicality is contagious!

Jochen,

So, there is no understanding without the model, and no model is complete. A nutshell view of quantum mechanics, as you suggest. Jim Cowan, a committed Buddhist, wrote a short story titled "The Spade of Reason" in which the protagonist on his last day as a mental patient, muses " ... some minds create weird models and those minds may be mad. I don't know about that. But I do know that one kind of madness is not knowing that the model is all we will ever know."

While I thoroughly agree, I have to think that the set of knowledge includes that which we don't know.

I loved the essay.

Best,

Tom

    Dear Jochen,

    no problem, I myself am totally busy with many important, rather non-daily like demands that came upon me after having recovered from an influenza a couple of weeks ago.

    "But the world is not such a setting (so very, very much not!);"

    I totally agree. I must re-read your essay from last year, but need at least a couple of days to do so to recall what your framing of the mind-problem had contained in detail. I only know that I commented this essay a few times.

    "I believe an organism can 'evolve' appropriate reactions to even completely novel stimuli;"

    Yes, absolutely. Since I had influenza B, my organism has presumably now adapted to this new stimuli, since I work with children (150!) and many of them had severe flue. All kinds of viruses circulate in my place of work .

    "I think the first puzzle they have to face is how two substances that are different in kind could exert causal influence on one another"

    If you think of causality in the old way, namely as mechanical push-and-pull forces, so to speak, I would have to agree. I would have to agree, because this implies that some action that leads to a reaction must have been caused by another action of the same mechanical kind. If I now introduce a non-material cause into this chain (of thinking...?), I am tempted to understand this non-material cause as just the same rigid mechanical cause and effect that we ascribe to the material domain.

    Yes, I agree that this kind of "if...then" relationship, a relationship that we interpret (and have strong reasons for that) as "because of X... Y or Z happens". But when I try to think this to its "end", I end up either with another particle picture that suggests that "cause" is "communicated" by some exchange particles (gluons) which need not "move" in the classical Newtonian sense to push and pull (otherwise we end up in an infinite regress once more!!!).

    If I do not adopt myself to this rather naïve push-and-pull story, I am forced to conceptualize the very physical term "cause" in a rather different manner. The first thing that comes to my mind is that when we speak about physical "causes", we really don't know any classical mechanism that could elucidate how these "causes and forces" operate - at a fundamental level.

    I think at this point we should confess that maybe the classical mode of imaginating "causes and forces" is just a model. The algorithmic approach to model cause-and-effect relationships is tempting because if elevates cause-and-effect relationships to the level of data processing. With that one has eliminated the problem of how physical causes and forces operate at a fundamental level, because now we can think of them as abstract relationships, relationships that have nontheless the needed property of being "necessary" in the classical, Newtonian sense - they are congruent to the classical push-and-pull forces, since they are now logically mandatory relationships "instead of physically mandatory" relationships, in which the former's dynamics can be understood as complex computations.

    It is tempting to think that all this results in the insight that at a funamental level, nature is either a computational process or a kind of dynamic mathematical landscape in the sense of Max Tegmark's MUH.

    In a certain sense, the informational approach must contain some truth I think. On the other hand, I would say that this truth does not exclude other, equally abstract "causes and forces". By taking the informational approach seriously, one must presuppose that such logico-mathematical systems which have the feature of being dynamic and adaptable (in contrast to a mere static platonical realm of mathematics) must be build up from certain axioms, since axioms are the very starting point for any logico-mathematical process to decide about the final output result. These axioms must be considered IMHO as somewhat be choosen amongst all possible logico-mathematical axioms to at all facilitate something like adaption - and life - and consciousness to think about it and grasp it. My lines of reasoning in my last post were to consider that 'mind' could be some additional fundamental axiom - in the sense that it can choose other axioms to start with for the sake of obtaining a certain final result. The mind feeds, so to speak, the computational processes with some initial data. In this sense the mind can be viewed as a self-programming computer program, a program that is able to deliberately freed some deterministic processes with changeable initial data to achieve certain goals.

    Since in my last post I assumed the mind to be a dualistic 'thing', you are right that there is a conceptual problem with it when you write

    "if it has causal influences on something physical, we could study those influences, come up with laws describing x's behavior; but then, that's all we're doing with things like quarks and electrons, too---study them by their causal influences and formulate laws on their behavior. So if something is physical, so is everything that causally interacts with it. Physicality is contagious!"

    But the study the laws describing x's behaviour is fundamentally limited, I would say. Simply think about the different interpretations of QM. How can we figure out which of the different ontologies does indeed match the facts? I would suppose we can't, we can only ever detect strong correlations between certain phenomena and link them together into a cause-and-effect relationship. But as described above, such relationships cannot be simply considered as merely reflecting classical "push-and-pull" forces. The informational approach is tempting, because it suggests that we can (at some abstract level). And if we can, I think we also can include some axiom generating fundamental "axiom", namely a mind that is able to change "if.... Then" correlations into "cause-and-effect" relations. If we can't fully adopt the informational approach to reality, then once more the quest for the real nature of causes and forces and how they act and become effective must be searched for along some non-classical lines of reasoning. Either way, I conclude that such non-classical causes and forces must exist, since it seems obvious for me that the mind has some *effective* cause-and-force effect onto the physical realm.

    I will re-read your last year's essay and will comment on it here when I think I have something additional to remark.

    Jochen,

    As the deadline approaches, I tend to revisit those I have read to see if I have rated them. Your excellent essay was rated on 2/22/18. Hope you get a chance to evaluate mine before the end of the contest since we have a number of ideas in common.

    Jim Hoover

      Dear Jochan,

      Thank you for a wonderful essay! Thank you also for commenting on my essay.

      I do not have any criticisms or corrections about your essay. It stands on its own. But I do have some comments.

      You are accepting strong AI. i.e. you accept that the mind is a physical machine and nothing more. I probably would agree with you on that. But I think many people would disagree. (There is a lot of criticism of reductionism in these essays.)

      Reading your essay I was reminded of Richard Rorty's "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature". His book is *the* criticism of using models to represent reality. There is a quote said to occur in the section on map reading in the Norwegian Boy Scout Handbook: "If the terrain differs from the map, believe the terrain."

      What about non-computable. While the halting problem tells us that no computer can tell if a program is in an infinite loop, we humans have a deep hunch about some programs. I am not saying that a human can solve the halting problem. I am saying for particular programs, we do have a feeling that a program is in an infinite loop.

      You talk about Godel's incompleteness theorem and the inherent incompleteness of certain models. What about Godel's completeness theorem? Are there certain (very simple) models where we do know everything about that model?

      Again, thank you for a very interesting essay. I hope you win!

      All the best,

      Noson

        Hello Jochen,

        I admire your essay that got as close to "What is fundamental" as is possible.

        The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. (The Old Master was a Cosmologist). The named is the mother of ten thousand things. (The Old Master was also a Particle Physicist).

        In my essay I mate cosmology to particle physics. Do take a look.

        How should I say: You nailed it! Thanks,

        Don Limuti

          Dear Thomas,

          thank you for your warm words! The line you quote about madness is quite intriguing. I think there is certainly a spectrum of views on the world, not all of which necessarily align, or can be brought into agreement.

          Of course, I suppose for a Buddhist, being convinced that the world is only a model, and nothing is real (a sort of constructivist position) would also be a kind of madness.

          I'll read the story before bedtime, it looks very intriguing; thanks for pointing it out to me.

          Cheers,

          Jochen

          Dear James,

          thanks for reading and rating! It seems a lot of people have saved their votes for the final day---things have moved around quite a bit today. I'll try and have a look at your essay before voting is through!

          Cheers,

          Jochen

          Dear Noson,

          I'm very happy you found the time to have a look at my essay, and even more happy you found something to like about it!

          As for strong AI, it depends how you understand the thesis. I do believe that conscious machines are possible---and that, indeed, we are just such machines. The notion of dualism is superficially attractive, but so far, I simply have never found a good explanation of how two substances can causally interact, without effectively becoming unified: after all, we know the physical world only via cause and effect; whatever leaves some imprint on our measuring devices, via usually a fairly long chain of proxies unraveled by inference, we call 'physical'. But anything that can causally influence something physical is in principle detectable by a suitable measuring instrument; so what could make it non-physical?

          If, however, you take strong AI to mean that conscious machines are conscious due to computation, then I would be inclined to disagree: while I believe that model-building, and consequently, the mind's explanatory capacities are indeed computational, I also think that this computation has to be grounded in something non-computational to avoid infinite regress. So consciousness is not merely the right program running on some appropriate hardware.

          You're very right to point to Rorty, I think. But in a sense, my account is not wholly model-based: the connections between the model and the world, in a way the 'clay' from which the models are built, is not itself part of the model, but something more fundamental that underlies it. I think that we do build models in cognition is hard to deny: for instance, when I picture how to perform a task, say, tying my shoes, I can visualize it as a series of steps---a kind of algorithm.

          But we can model the world under different aspects, yet still cut from the same cloth: for instance, when listening to somebody speak, we can pay attention to what is being said---understand the meaning of the words---or we can pay attention to how it is being said---register inflection, tone, rhythm, the uhms and uhs that one usually does not consciously perceive.

          Both these views pertain to the same phenomenal experience, however: the same sounds reach our ears. We just attend to that experience in different ways---which is roughly what Ned Block calls 'access consciousness' (as opposed to 'phenomenal consciousness'). This is what my models really pertain to (although I formulated this somewhat stronger in the essay).

          As for an analogy to the completeness theorem, in a sense, I already use it in the essay: in my discussion of the zombie argument, I claim that, since phenomenal experience is in some sense 'undecidable', one can imagine both that a physical system (like a brain) possesses it, or fails to (in which case it would be a zombie).

          The completeness theorem, applied to a formal system subject to Gödelian incompleteness F, basically tells us that there exists a model of the system extended by its Gödel sentence G, as well as a model of the system extended by its negation, ~G. Applied to the zombie issue, this would entail a 'possible (or perhaps, imaginable) world' in which there are zombies, and a possible world in which brains possess phenomenal experience.

          Of course, this talk is somewhat metaphorical at best. But it's very interesting to think about!

          Thanks, again, for your comment, and your good wishes.

          Cheers,

          Jochen

          Hello Don,

          thanks for your kind words! I think it was in the discussion thread of Dean Rickles' essay that I stumbled upon a similar connection to cosmology versus particle physics as you point out, however, with ancient Greeks instead---the atomists favoring the bottom-up, particle physics style of explanation, and the Eleates considering everything to descend down from Oneness, Being, or what have you.

          Neither may be any more right than the other: like with the initial values of differential equations, which you can specify at the beginning, the end, or every Cauchy surface in between, maybe one can in fact smoothly interpolate between 'levels' of fundamentality. Maybe that would have been a nice idea for this contest, too!

          I'll try to sneak a brief look at your essay before voting closes.

          Cheers,

          Jochen

          14 days later

          Dear Jochen,

          I fully agree with your support of Whitehead's warning against "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness". Regarding this aspect, I did recommend your essay to Sebastian De Haro. On the other hand, I would like to point you to another essay, too: that of Karen Crowther, because she manages skilfully to navigate around your Kantian worry that "we are never in contact with the world as it is".

          While I don't agree that "the only way we interact with the world is through such models" (what about breathing and many other parts of living?), it does sound more plausible for perception (as your text continues), although that too has a strongly embodied-in-the-world perspective. So, some attention to concreteness does not seem misplaced here.

          While I find many of your observations interesting, I'm not convinced by your central propositions. Moreover, while reading I had the impression that your suggestion that "modeling that can be modeled is not true modeling" actually goes against Proposition 1, but on rereading my notes I must admit that it's hard to spell out that tension. Which brings me to a side note: I was wondering whether your first proposition was intentionally hinting at Wittgenstein's sentence from the preface to his Tractatus ("what can be said at all can be said clearly")?

          Some of the other associations and shortcuts in your essay don't seem ultimately convincing either. Two examples. (1) The way you bring up the hard problem: while I might see some analogy between modelling and experiencing, I don't think it is correct to present the latter problem as a consequence of the former. (2) And as to your observation that the largest set (in a given context) has the same information content as the empty set: that seems unproblematic, unless you assume the latter has zero information content (as you do), which is not as obvious as it seems.

          Despite these reservations, your essay has certainly given me food for thought.

          Best wishes,

          Sylvia - Seek Fundamentality, and Distrust It

            PS: For fairness, I would like to add that Sebastian De Haro has replied to my comment: his essay does containment an explanation of how his proposal avoids "misplaced concreteness".

            11 days later

            Dear Sylvia,

            sorry for taking so long to reply to your comment---it's only now that I've got some free time on my hands again.

            Anyway, I think you've given my essay a fair reading, and your criticism is reasonable---I've already conceded above that I put things too strongly in claiming that we interact with the world only via models.

            I should have included a more careful discussion on what it is that models do for us---and here, I mostly have the notion of Ned Block's 'access consciousness' in mind. Think about the famous Necker cube: on paper, it's really a collection of seven peculiar shapes adjoining each other. This is what we see, what is phenomenally present.

            But since this is a somewhat unlikely, complicated collection, our brains soon find a much simpler description: namely, as the projection of a three-dimensional cube. This puts the seven unrelated shapes into a context from which they emerge naturally.

            However, the 2D mesh underdetermines the cube with respect to its orientation. Thus, there is no information to differentiate which side should be the 'front'; hence, both orientations are equally consistent, and we experience the somewhat disorienting sensation of the cube 'flipping'.

            I think this 'flipping' is due to two competing models; and thus, it's here that my notion of model really ought to be introduced: as organizing phenomenal impressions 'as' something. Thus, we have phenomenal experience, which allows us to model the world as being a certain way---say, containing a cube facing a particular way. Modeling determines the structure of the world, in this sense.

            Maybe my propositions make more sense to you under this interpretation. To me, it seems hard to escape---in the end, computation is just the transfer of structure, so that 'structural' and 'computational' end up picking out the same things, which then leads to the identity of computation and modeling.

            Perhaps this also helps making the connection to the hard problem more clear. I don't think that experience itself is due to modeling, but rather, that modeling 'organizes' experience---the raw experience is the same in both views of the Necker cube, but we possess different models of it. But since experience underlies modeling in this sense, experience itself can't be modeled, and hence, we have the hard problem (under the---to me, plausible---assumption that we need a model to answer 'how come'-type questions).

            As for the information content of sets, this is perhaps clearer if phrased in the context of computations: a computer program that produces no output has vanishing length, up to an additive constant that is generally taken to be of no importance in Kolmogorov complexity. The same goes for the program that produces every output.

            As for Wittgenstein, while I didn't consciously pattern the first proposition after him, he certainly was a major influence on the thoughts that are collected in my essay (I've discussed this above for a bit, I think).

            Finally, I'm glad you focused on Whitehead's insight---it's something that I think is all too often overlooked these days.

            Thanks again for your reading and constructive criticism.

            Cheers,

            Jochen

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