Commentary on Hut, Goodwin, Kauffman ICCS paper Sept 1997.
2/24/98
"InterJournal" paper # [139]
These remarks are from a philosopher who prefers to evaluate all organizations and systems in regard to behavioral dynamics and process tendencies. Mechanisms are open to interpretation, where suppositions survive on empirical proof, but do not negate multiple correlations. For example, analysis of plant phototropism can result in very accurate mathematics which chart the amount of light present over any given time periods and the way plants allign their photon gathering surfaces toward the light source. Shine a light and plants turn in that direction ... indicative of an "attraction" dynamics at work. However, a closer look at metabolic activities and tissue-increase shows that greater growth happens in the shade side, inhibited in the light side, forcing the plant to grow "toward" the light. A growth-inhibition ("rejection" of energy flow) metabolism is the causal mechanics involved. The first correlation of source-light to directional-growth is not invalidated out of hand, though it is given a quite different motivation -- or as is referred to in the paper under review, sense -- when the underscoring mechanics is illuminated.
Their paper explores new conceptual territory in the time honored tradition of Dirac and particularly of Bohm (Bohm & Hiley). I applaud the search though I would offer the caveat exampled above. In other words, of the three approaches offered by the authors for solving black-box problems, there is a fourth alternative (preferred by this writer) which blends them all. That is, re-interpreation of extant dynamics. Reduction is still a valid approach, any new interpretation is tantamount to a "new law", and that "newness" may include a quite novel perception of reality and information forms and integrations, exampled by "i", which has a mathematical reality though anyone would be hard pressed to give a physical spacetime correlate of it.
I skip to the closing paragraphs of section 2 where behavior of bacterium is discussed. That a bacterium is organized to metabolically reinforce and enhance its structure, is an integrated operation coincidental with the "food" it seeks and metabolizes. It is quite possible that in it's totally random "jigglings/happenings", which the paper refers to, they are simply that and no more, and, that if and when those happenings organize into motion toward areas of greater nutrient enrichment it is simply because the encountered molecules supply compatible forms/rate of electrons that can fill available energy shells emptied by prior ongoing cellular metabolism. Chemical interactions create an imbalance and a direction gradient in the metabolism, which saturation adds to cohesive functionality. Entropy reinforcing negentropy at the next larger level of organization . A coherent behavior that is interpreted as "sense" such that the utility of the environment chemistry is somehow known by the organism, is a real stretch. It is easier to allow that integrated functional "sentience" -- responsiveness to the compatible utile energy -- is what is occurring. Option space is randomly encountered, then taken advantage of. It is not "sought for".
The quest for defining "sense" as the authors are attempting should be cautioned from the implication that metaphysics and emergence are identical when their only commonality is plural-perspectives. They may not necessarily share derivational mechanisms. Again, I repeat the caveat found in my opening paragraph.
I read in the closing paragraphs of section 4 indications of Kauffman's "adjacent possible". This is an interesting approach but is eventually too limited if the ambitious scope of their paper is to ever be realized. If you want to rebuild the system conceptually then you have to be courageous, understand the relational properties of the mechanisms you are so familiar with and then produce a foundational mechanism which can produce the same tropisms which you found under gross observations. Anything else falls back into mysticism rather than metaphysics. Please understand that this is an admonishment I would make to any investigator of this topic, which is challenging and far from easy. I prefer Bohm & Hiley's approach, even as I respect the need to hash the topic out in discursive language first, to get a handle on it.
To continue ... In Sec. 4 the authors use the phrase, "Any description, no
matter how objective, is a description made by a subject, trying to make
sense." Recognizing that integrated-relationship
is truly an opportunity, which the authors seem to have just scratched the surface
of. I make note of my 1996 papers at the Tucson II conference on
Consciousness. (listed below) The next logical step in fleshing out systems
which are simultaneously objective and subjective, is recognizing that we should
must redefine them (retain reductive approach, determine a "new" law, and even
new relationships). I would submit that "objectivity" is not
"behavior untainted by subjective interpretations" (corruption by involvement,
ala Heisenberg), but is essentially the underlying rules of functioning, which science is
constantly exploring and refining. In that way, all events and processes do indeed
embody both "subjectivity" and "objectivity" together.
Abandoning old mind sets is necessary before new paradigms become
"obvious". Putting more elephants (more emergent domains) under turtles to
hold up the universe is the wrong path of reductive reality. Allowing that
"objectivity" is intangible and is relational-information gives us a fresh
perspective on how to distance ourselves from a perpetual string of discovered anomalies,
anomalies which expose the wrongness of models, forever forcing us to look for some other
"best set" of "initial conditions".
The section 4 closing sentence, "physics could be viewed as a specialization of biology, rather than the other way around", is both correct and wrong in one fell swoop. I absolutely agree that the fields should find mutual descriptive terminology and concepts, but developmentally, biology is obviously the emergent assembly not vice versa, even though the physics models grew out of biological sentience. If we dissect physics and biology for their common systemic-dynamics and behaviors, over and above the mathematical rigor of quantum mechanics, we can overlay on physics the biological interpretation (references below) that unused and open quantum states are available econiches, occupiable under the appropriate states/conditions. This is in no way a replacement for quantum mechanics. It is simply a meta-view. As valid a correlation as was "plants grow towards light". It highlights behavior commonality. Even tending toward defining "behavioral consciousness" ... something locally appropriate to information-holding-capacities of assemblies of different complications. But that is another topic.
In section 5 the authors broach another subject which to me seems the crucial advancement required in Complexity... a new perspective of the structure of Time. The second Geometer question should replace "fast-moving" with "massive". The physicist can then reply "Yes. ..." and both thinkers can move on to creatively exploring the black-box underpinnings which can produce such a phenomenon. Extremely massive entities alter spacetime. So there is "something there" accessible to "alteration" and therefore must have an alterable infrastructure. Even Relativity points to this. Time must have infrastructure, counter to the way it is mathematically portrayed to date. There is probably an alternative model -- set of correlations --which does not negate all current ones, but which exposes other previously unconsidered correlations, that portrays the presense of a possible temporal infrastructure compatible with ... such things as topology, communications networks, non-locality, and more. One atypical possibility being explored right now is that gravity is a quale resulting from interactions of temporal "dimensions".
I admire the fact that the authors are struggling to re-arrange the puzzle pieces science/mathematics currently has. It is an effort tantamount to Mendeleev reorganizing and synthesizing the periodic chart of the elements. But even he has been surpassed. I refer the authors to ceptualinstitute.com/genre/benking/landscape.htm (Sec2/fig.2) which shows at least 5 different charts of how the elements are organized.
Their use of the word "sense" and the domain they suggest is similar to the Implicate Order, and is well worth pursuing. I offer the above commentary based on more than 30 years of my own work, hopefully diverting them from revisiting already tested unproductive conceptual trails and help them hasten towards a competent and holistic model of how the universe is physically/functionally organized. The requisite paradigmatic change is excruciatingly difficult in this day and age. The current mathematical ediface is more mezmerizing than the Ptolemeic epicycles were in their day -- they both contain beauty, balance and elegance. But there just might be an alternative.
WEB REFERENCES:
<http://www.ceptualinstittue.com/uiu_plus/uiupotentia.htm>
<http://www.ceptualinstittue.com/uiu_plus/principles.htm>
<http://www.ceptualinstittue.com/uiu_plus/uiuapriories.htm>