Pedro,
Could you post this to the fis list for me? Apparently the mail handler
at unizar.es has acquired an overly active spam checker, and has blocked
my messages to either you or the fis list.
Cheers,
John
-------------------
At 06:49 PM 2006/01/16, Pedro Marijuan wrote:
Dear FIS colleagues,
Another interesting question about biomolecular networks may concern the
overall characterization of their emergent "dynamics" regarding the
parallel, we have so often discussed, with mechanical/Newtonian
dynamics. Let me attempt that exercise in a trivial way:
1. ("Inertia") The living is continuously engaged in the advancement of
a manifold trajectory: the life cycle of self-re-production.
2. ("Force & Acceleration") The advancement of the life cycle across the
inner structure of checkpoints is propelled (or nullified) by the
incoming environmental affordances.
3. ("Action and Reaction") Effects of signaling events are irrespective
of their material underpinning.
Point 1 basically concerns generative information, the consequences of
handling fabrication blueprints; point 2 is mostly about the processual
structures (and is highly related to ongoing discussions in systems
biology); while point 3 concerns the asymmetry of communication
phenomena and the systemic "freedom" in the cellular elaboration of meaning.
To reiterate the paradox: as one can find in most papers and texts on
biomolecular matters, the notion of mechanism seems to be valid up and
down any conceivable scale, particularly at the molecular level---what
is then the source of these strange emergences utterly culminating in
minds and consciousness? Surreptitious dualism?
--------------------------
Yes, this is too mechanistic for me. Pedro, you have neglected an
important Newtonian concept: friction. It is the dissipating force, and
appears in biology both as loss of usable energy, and the loss of usable
information (at least these two). The above do indeed give a mechanistic
system in the sense that we can in principle model any system depending
on only these factors (without friction) in terms of terminating
algorithms (if we include approximations that fit the trajectory within
some epsilon for some later time t1. In fact this is true of all systems
that fit the Hamiltonian formulation of physics. These are the
reversible systems, for which t can be inversed, and the result will
also fit the system laws.
If a system has either small or large dissipation, it can be
approximated as a Hamiltonian with corrections (small case) or as a
Hamiltonian with a step function (large case). In between, however, we
are in the realm that allows self-organization. If there are two or more
attractors then the attractor that ends up capturing the system in a
steady state cannot be predicted beyond probability. There is a bit
lengthier argument below.
Incidentally, this was what I was trying to lead Loet to a while back
when I argued that no new information arises from sociality alone. This
is just one of many difficult cases. Many physicists will say (as they
have to me) that the phase space of the system is a given, and thus all
of the information in the system is given in advance by that structure
of that phase space, so new information is impossible. I say that if we
have dissipation of the same order as that of a central property of the
system (especially its cohesion, or dynamical individuating property --
see, e.g. Collier and Hooker, “Complexly Organised Dynamical Systems”,
Open Systems and Information Dynamics , 6 (1999): 241-302), then new
information can appear, in the sense that a) it cannot be computed from
the original system, as long as its properties are localized, and b)
nothing can control the system to select one attractor over another
(unless it uses high power and substantially changes the phase space
itself).
What I was trying to lead Loet to was the requirement of additional
conditions on mere sociality, but he cleverly blocked my attempt to
illuminate him.
Of course there is nothing really new here; it's all in von Foerster. We
need to learn to learn from our ancestors, or we in fis will continue to
go around in circles.
Cheers,
John
==================================================================
Here is the full text of a short comment I published on the topic:
Collier, John (2004) Reduction, Supervenience, and Physical Emergence,
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27:5, pp 629-630.
Abstract:
After distinguishing reductive explanability in principle from
ontological deflation, I give a case of an obviously physical property
that is reductively inexplicable in principle. I argue that biological
systems often have this character, and that if we make certain
assumptions about the cohesion and dynamics of the mind and its physical
substrate, then it is emergent according to Broad’s criteria.
Reduction is ambiguous in three ways. It might mean intertheoretic
reduction, the reduction of fundamental kinds of things (substance,
traditionally), or that certain particular entities (objects, processes
or properties) can be eliminated without any loss of explanatory power
in principle. I will ignore intertheoretic reduction. The reduction of
the number of fundamental kinds of things is best called ontological
deflation. I will assume the closure of the physical (physicalism). And
I will assume that all scientific explanation is in some sense causal,
and that explanatory power is lost only if the causal nature of a higher
level entity is not in principle completely reductively explicable.
Despite supervenience, if explanatory reducibility fails in principle
for some entity, then it is emergent. If there is no possible argument
(deductive or inductive) from the parts, their intrinsic properties, and
their relations to the full causal powers of the entity itself, then
reductive explanation fails in principle. I will show that this holds
for certain obviously physical properties of some systems under certain
specific conditions. I will further argue that this helps to identify a
class of systems for which reductive explanability fails. In these
cases, even if physicalism is true, they are emergent. This idea of
emergence fits C. D. Broad’s criteria (Collier and Muller 1998).
Mercury was found in the 1960s to rotate on in axis three times for each
two times it revolves around the Sun. This was extremely surprising,
since it had been thought that it would be in the same 1:1 harmonic as
our Moon-Earth system. There are several more complex harmonic relations
in the Solar System. It is well known that the three body gravitational
problem is not solvable analytically, but it can be solved numerically,
in principle, to any degree of accuracy we might require for any finite
time (this is true for any Hamiltonian system). However, these cases
involve the dissipation of energy through tidal torques, unless the
system is in some harmonic ratio. We would like, ideally, a complete
explanation (possibly probabilistic) of why Mercury is in a 3:2
harmonic. Due to the high mass of the sun and the proximity of Mercury
to the Sun, the high tidal torque dissipates energy reasonably quickly
in astronomical time, so Mercury is very likely to end up in some
harmonic ratio in a finite amount of time. The central explanatory
problem then becomes “why a 3:2 ratio rather than a 1:1 ratio like our
Moon, or some other harmonic ratio?”
We cannot apply Hamiltonian methods, since the rate of dissipation is
roughly the same as the characteristic rate of the phenomenon to be
explained. If the dissipation rate were small, then we could use an
approximate Hamiltonian; if it were large, we could use a step function.
We are left with the Lagrangian. It is well known that these are not
always solvable even by numerical approximation. I will give an
intuitive argument that the Mercury’s harmonic is such a case. Each of
the possible harmonics is an attractor. Why one attractor rather than
another? If the system were Hamiltonian, then the system would be in one
attractor or another. In principle we could take into account the
effects of all other bodies on Mercury and the Sun (assuming the
universe is finite, or at least that the effects are finite), and decide
with an arbitrarily high degree of accuracy which attractor the system
is in. However, given the dissipative nature of the system, it ends up
in one attractor or another in finite time. If we examine the boundaries
between the attractors, they are fractal, meaning that every two points
in one attractor have a point between them in another attractor, at
least in the boundary region. This is as if the three body gravitational
problem had to be decided in finite time, which is impossible by
numerical approximation (the problem is non computable, even by
convergent approximation). Therefore there can in principle be no
complete explanation of why the Mercury-Sun system is in a 3:2 harmonic.
There is approximately a chance of 3:2 capture, � of a 1:1 capture, and
the rest of the harmonics take up the rest of the chances. The chances
of a 3:2 capture are good, but not that good. The system is obviously
physical, but it has a nonreducible property. This property fits Broad’s
notion of emergence.
How does this apply to the mind? It is highly likely that there are
nonlinear dissipative processes in the brain in which the rates of the
processes are of the same order as the rate of dissipation. There are
also likely to be huge numbers of attractors. The larger the number of
attractors, the lower the probabilities of capture in any particular
one, generally, so a complete reductive explanation seems to be highly
unlikely. This case is certainly true for many biological processes (as
in development and in evolution; see Brooks and Wiley 1988 and Kauffman
1990). The brain is, after all, biological. We must explain backwards
from the attractors that are formed, i.e., downwards from constraints on
the constituent physical processes that the order found in the
attractors that “win” supervene on (Campbell 1974).
But the situation is worse. Certain properties hold a system together
(called cohesion in Collier 1986, 1988, Collier and Muller 1998, Collier
and Hooker 1999). Cohesion is the unity relation for a dynamical system
(previous references and Collier 2002). The unity relation is the basis
of the identity of an entity. If the property of cohesion is
nonreducible, then the object is nonreducible (not the kind of object;
that can vary). It is certainly possible that the cohesion of the mind,
if there is such a cohesive thing, is of this sort. Kim’s arguments
address ontological deflation (and kinds of objects), not emergence in
particular dynamical systems. It is quite possible for an entity to be
physical in every respect, but not to be reducible in any way that is
relevant to complete scientific explanation, even in principle.
References
Brooks, D. R. And Wiley, E. O. (1988) Evolution as Entropy, 2nd edition.
University of Chicago Press.
Campbell, D.T. (1974) “Downward causation” in hierarchically organized
biological systems. In F.J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky (eds) Studies in the
Philosophy of Biology. Macmillan.
Collier, John (1986) Entropy in evolution. Biology and Philosophy 1:
5-24. http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/entev.pdf
(1988) Supervenience
and reduction in biological
hierarchies. In M. Matthen and B. Linsky (eds) Philosophy and Biology:
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume 14: 209-234.
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/redsup.pdf
(2002) What is
autonomy? Partial Proceedings of CASYS'01:
Fifth International Conference on Computing Anticipatory Systems,
International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems: 12. CHAOS 2002.
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/What%20is%20Autonomy.pdf
Collier, John and Hooker, C. A. (1999) Complexly organised dynamical
systems. Open Systems and Information Dynamics, 6: 111-136.
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/centre/casrg/publications/Cods.pdf
Collier, John and Muller, Scott (1998) The Dynamical Basis of Emergence
in Natural Hierarchies", with Scott Muller. In George Farre and Tarko
Oksala (eds) Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy and Organization, Selected
and Edited Papers from the ECHO III Conference, Acta Polytechnica
Scandinavica, MA91. Finish Academy of Technology.
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/echoiii.pdf
Kauffman, S. A. (1993) The Origins of Order. Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to INTAS and the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and
Cognition Studies for support while I was doing this research..
_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Wed Jan 25 12:32:00 2006
