Hello Sara,

A very well written and supported essay!

You pull from a number of different (several non-physics) areas and tie them together in a powerful way. I think you have done a great job in defining how goal-directedness (including aims and intentions) can occur without identifying specific particles or low-level entities that cause them. This is up there with the best essays I...

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Hello Sara,

A very well written and supported essay!

You pull from a number of different (several non-physics) areas and tie them together in a powerful way. I think you have done a great job in defining how goal-directedness (including aims and intentions) can occur without identifying specific particles or low-level entities that cause them. This is up there with the best essays I have read for this contest.

At first I thought you were going to just be constrained to ‘microstates’ and ‘macrostates’ as limited to two levels. However, you then state parenthetically that: “this should always be assumed to include a hierarchy of nested levels across scales”. Even more you go on to state that there is “no a priori reason to assume that we should not treat all levels equally”.

I concur wholeheartedly with this statement, as I believe that all levels of scale are part of the same unified reality we experience and can interact between them. We are already entering an era where us larger beings (as macrostates) are starting to alter our own molecular structures (as microstates) as well as altering particle level structures (I am not suggesting we really know what we are doing here, just that we are doing it). I have yet to hear a physicist explain how an entirely reductionist perspective (everything builds from the smallest level only) can account for what physicists do today by building particle accelerators (which is sort-of this essay contest topic).

I did have to look up a few terms you use to understand what you mean (eg. counterfactual) and your range of terms from different areas involved, for me, additional research. Your last example proved difficult to fully comprehend, although I think I understood the gist of it.

I think your broad range solution is quite enticing, although you seem to become entrenched into a heavily modeled final example and conclusion explained via models rather than more understandable examples (trying to finish in under 9 pages?).

Please be aware of the limitations of the modeling tools you are using:

1) Statistics (and probability) are one-way tools, since they can only derive higher level structures from lower level ones. These tools do not allow the possibility of higher level actions to impinge on lower level ones and therefore any models built on them will involve the same limitations (eg. statistical mechanics). This would suggest that statistics is not an appropriate tool to model higher level actions impinging upon lower level entities (such as physicists building particle accelerators). It may indicate we need new mathematical tools for this purpose.

2) Attractors may provide good models; however, they presume an already defined goal that ‘attracts’ individual entities via actions toward it (seeming to be guided by an external source). The reality could be that individual entities act purposefully toward internally defined goals that are not externally located or defined (no external attractor). I think you are aware of this based upon your statements regarding the ‘backbone motif’ and integrated fission yeast cell cycle network.

It will be difficult to overcome the momentum of physics that ‘everything starts from the smallest’ particle, although there does appear to be progress being made (such as your essay).

As a final consideration: Consider that actions on all different scales may operate at the same time and that touching with our finger involves ‘touch’ at our level, at the cellular level, at the protein and macro-molecular level, at the molecule and atomic level, and at the particle level – all at the same time. This means our body exists at all these levels, each of which we model via a 3-dimensional space. Stacking 3-d spaces ‘on top’ of each other produces a 4-d space. If we model our bodies (and reality) as 4-d entities, then we would be able to model actions across these different levels (in the 4-d direction), including feed-back loops like constructing a nuclear reactor producing electric power for our TVs.

Take care,

Don

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Hi Sara –

I was hoping to find an essay from you here, and at the last minute one appears. I like very much the point you make at the beginning, that knowledge has power because it lets us do things… and that this applies not only to us human theorizers, but also to biological systems. What I take from this is that gaining information about the world is not only a matter of modeling,...

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Hi Sara –

I was hoping to find an essay from you here, and at the last minute one appears. I like very much the point you make at the beginning, that knowledge has power because it lets us do things… and that this applies not only to us human theorizers, but also to biological systems. What I take from this is that gaining information about the world is not only a matter of modeling, and not only of predictive modeling (per this essay by Sofia Magnúsdóttir), but also of making things happen in the world and getting feedback about what works.

What I find puzzling – as you note at the end – is that there still seems to be a widespread notion that emergence is somehow incompatible with deterministic physics. There are quite a few essays here – those by Ellis and Lisi for example – that deal sensibly with emergence, but there are also quite a few otherwise intelligent essays that assume the entire world has to operate according to a single set of rules.

I suppose that notion is implicit in the contest question, but I still find it strange. Empirically, it seems so obvious that the rules of quantum physics are very significantly different from those of classical physics, that the rules of chemistry are different too, and so forth. Apart from the quantum-classical transition, there’s no mystery about how atomic physics supports chemistry, or about how molecular physics supports self-replicating life-forms, or why organisms evolve goal-directed behavior.

Surely there are still important mysteries to investigate – as your paper on “the hard problem of life” aimed to show. But my sense is that confusion arises from trying to grasp too much in a single theoretical view. If we imagine the entire history of the universe as a single process, then understanding that process presents quite a challenge – but not necessarily a useful one, in terms of generating knowledge that helps us do things. In my own essay I try to describe this vast history as the work of three quite different basic recursive processes, in physics, biology and human communication, emphasizing the different conditions in which each of them operates. That seems quite “reductive” enough!

As to the question you come to focus on here, about whether higher-level systems have causal efficacy… I certainly agree with your conclusion that they do. I would only question why this is not obvious. The fact that living organisms operate based on the laws of atomic physics is clear, and it’s also clear that self-reproducing systems are subject to radically different forms of selection (p.3 of my essay). As a result, physical interactions happen in living cells that can’t happen anywhere else (except in our labs) – just as gold can only be created by stars. The higher-level structure evidently makes things possible that wouldn’t happen otherwise… so perhaps the issue you’re dealing with here is whether or not this counts as a form of “causality”?

In any case, I’m glad you got this essay in under the wire – thanks!

Conrad

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Dear Sara,

Reading this was an excellent way to wake up this morning.

We often use the non-determinism that arises from coarse-graining to argue for the *destruction* of patterns—e.g., the second law of thermodynamics. In those cases, we think of coarse-graining in a state-space like position/momentum (using a grid as in your Figure One). In those cases, when we lose the...

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Dear Sara,

Reading this was an excellent way to wake up this morning.

We often use the non-determinism that arises from coarse-graining to argue for the *destruction* of patterns—e.g., the second law of thermodynamics. In those cases, we think of coarse-graining in a state-space like position/momentum (using a grid as in your Figure One). In those cases, when we lose the fine-grained details, the trajectories tend to mush out in the usual ergodic fashion.

But in the cases you discuss, the coarse-graining has the opposite effect. It leads to robustness in goal directed behavior (the yeast case). Or, more generally, to non-trivial behavior as in your Rule 150 example.

Your essay make it clear that an obvious question has been hiding out all along. Which coarse-grainings work? (More formally, when coarse-grainings lead to goal-directed behavior, what do they tend to have in common.) Or, conversely, which systems tend to coarse-grain this way?

As an example of triviality: I'm finishing up some lectures for the SFI MOOC on renormalization, and one of my examples is renormalizing a Markov chain by coarse-graining in time. This invariably leads to hyper-simple, 2nd-law behavior where if you wait long enough everything equilibrates. In that case, the simplicity I think is due to the finite nature of the underlying system. With a CA, the light-cone can project backwards arbitrarily wide, and this makes them capable of all sorts of cool things if you wait long enough.

You take a few more steps there, even, to suggest that hierarchies and boundaries in the coarse-graining prescription are part of the story. It would be interesting to quantify the focusing effect (as in your Yeast case) as it competes with the second-law like equilibration effect in your CA models. You might find all sorts of interesting patterns, or at least covariances in the different properties.

For example, what's the average path length between a focusing event (a node with many incoming arrows) and an equilibration event (a node with many outgoing arrows)? How does the coarse-graining choice affect it? You might be the first person to actually have a good example of Maximum Entropy Production in action.

My interpretation here of the MEP in your framework, is that MEP would be where you have lots of focusing in to a node that then blasts everything out again—the system moves rapidly to subspace of its state-space that dissipates free energy super-efficiently, a kind of Grand Central Station node that equilibrates the system like a highly-organized hurricane.

Thanks again for what I hope my notes here suggest was a terrific read,

Simon

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Sara - great essay! I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it's an excellent overview of the latest in the field. Of course, I may be a little biased in that I'm always happy to see causal emergence make an appearance!

You can check out my own essay on causal emergence and how it relates to agents: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2873

I did have a question though. At the end of your...

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Sara - great essay! I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it's an excellent overview of the latest in the field. Of course, I may be a little biased in that I'm always happy to see causal emergence make an appearance!

You can check out my own essay on causal emergence and how it relates to agents: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2873

I did have a question though. At the end of your essay you give a new analysis, which is important because you say "The point of this essay is to suggest that life is like the right of Fig. 5 rather than the left (and is not merely a coarse-grained macrostate of the left)."

The new analysis concerns ECA rule 150. You say that "Shown on the right, is the state transition diagram where a property like ‘top-down’ causation is explicitly introduced, and the dynamics are run again with Rule 150. Here macro causal interactions are are introduced by blackboxing the width w = 6 CA into two subsystems."

I'm wondering if you could go into further detail about exactly what it means that "a property like 'top-down' causation is explicitly introduced?"

How exactly did you implement these macro causal interactions? Did you add some extra update rules to represent some outside unknown kind of top-down causation? I ask because, if you did merely black box, there should be less states (as some are black boxed) but there are an identical number of states in each picture of the state-transitions. Black boxing would be leaving some states out of your model of the system, so there should be less on the right image.

Additionally, on the left, there are some states that lead only to themselves. But then on the right this isn't true anymore. I'm amazed black boxing could somehow, by itself, change that, as by definition, black boxing is just leaving states out of the model is just choosing to represent a subset of the state-space.

If you did add in some kind of extra macro-only update rules to represent top-down causation, I'm wondering exactly what that shows? We can obviously take any system, add in some outside source of causation or add in new rules, and that system may operate very differently. But the system operating differently will have some microscale description that has those rules in it... so I'm not sure what is being gained. I was just looking for more detail on that analysis.

Anyways, I greatly enjoyed the essay and how nimbly you present the field - thanks so much for the read!

Erik P Hoel

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Professor Walker,

Congratulations on a very interesting and well-written essay that discusses aspects of the theme of the contest.

It seems you believe only living systems exhibit goal-directed behavior and I share that belief with you. From that, I had hoped you would develop an argument for how the capacity for living systems to exhibit the behavior is born out of the...

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Professor Walker,

Congratulations on a very interesting and well-written essay that discusses aspects of the theme of the contest.

It seems you believe only living systems exhibit goal-directed behavior and I share that belief with you. From that, I had hoped you would develop an argument for how the capacity for living systems to exhibit the behavior is born out of the conglomeration of mindless mathematical laws. However, you chose to “recast” the theme question, ‘how mindless mathematical laws can give rise to goal-directed behavior,’ into ‘how it is that macroscopic systems can appear to cause transformations under the constraints of deterministic laws.’ These are two fundamentally different issues and, in my opinion, you “transformed” the rules by altering the question (which is likely acceptable).

Rather than proposing how physical systems evolved into ones that exhibit the features of life, including goal-directed behavior, you discuss how living entities (which we know are the result of the mindless laws) configured themselves to exploit their capacity to seek goals. You mention that ‘a whole can be more than the sum of its parts,’ and that ‘a system is integrated when, cut into parts, it loses cause-effect power,’ but, as far as I can see, you do not discuss what causes the synergy. What is it about the configuration of the living system that causes it make the jump from inert matter to a living entity? You describe how the integration works, but not why it works. What is it about a living entity that sparks the integration? (You may have done this and I just missed it. Some of your essay is beyond my current knowledge of the subjects you discuss.)

This is not to suggest that I believe you have not done good, useful work – I think you have. Compared to the bulk of the essays submitted (including mine), you deserve a relatively high score and I am glad that you currently have one. It is just that, given your apparent knowledge of the subject; your insights into what makes systems transition from deterministic entities, their fates driven by their environments, into living entities whose fates are determined by their wills, are likely invaluable.

Bill Stubbs

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Nice essay Sara Walker,

Wonderful opening sentences!….. “the extreme such as what happens under gravitational collapse or how the nucleus is bound together. However, so far our best theories of physics have not yet been able to explain why physical systems exist that can and do create theories to describe the world (Krakauer, 2014). Arguably this is the most interesting feature of...

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Nice essay Sara Walker,

Wonderful opening sentences!….. “the extreme such as what happens under gravitational collapse or how the nucleus is bound together. However, so far our best theories of physics have not yet been able to explain why physical systems exist that can and do create theories to describe the world (Krakauer, 2014). Arguably this is the most interesting feature of having laws at all”

Here this Dynamic Universe Model answers many physics questions starting from Micro level, Solar system level, Galaxy level and to the Universe level…………

………………… Hence at this point, I want you to ask you to please have a look at my essay ALSO, where ……………reproduction of Galaxies in the Universe is described. Dynamic Universe Model is another mathematical model for Universe. Its mathematics show that the movement of masses will be having a purpose or goal, Different Galaxies will be born and die (quench) etc…just have a look at the essay… “Distances, Locations, Ages and Reproduction of Galaxies in our Dynamic Universe” where UGF (Universal Gravitational force) acting on each and every mass, will create a direction and purpose of movement…..

I think intension is inherited from Universe itself to all Biological systems

For your information Dynamic Universe model is totally based on experimental results. Here in Dynamic Universe Model Space is Space and time is time in cosmology level or in any level. In the classical general relativity, space and time are convertible in to each other.

Many papers and books on Dynamic Universe Model were published by the author on unsolved problems of present day Physics, for example ‘Absolute Rest frame of reference is not necessary’ (1994) , ‘Multiple bending of light ray can create many images for one Galaxy: in our dynamic universe’, About “SITA” simulations, ‘Missing mass in Galaxy is NOT required’, “New mathematics tensors without Differential and Integral equations”, “Information, Reality and Relics of Cosmic Microwave Background”, “Dynamic Universe Model explains the Discrepancies of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Observations.”, in 2015 ‘Explaining Formation of Astronomical Jets Using Dynamic Universe Model, ‘Explaining Pioneer anomaly’, ‘Explaining Near luminal velocities in Astronomical jets’, ‘Observation of super luminal neutrinos’, ‘Process of quenching in Galaxies due to formation of hole at the center of Galaxy, as its central densemass dries up’, “Dynamic Universe Model Predicts the Trajectory of New Horizons Satellite Going to Pluto” etc., are some more papers from the Dynamic Universe model. Four Books also were published. Book1 shows Dynamic Universe Model is singularity free and body to collision free, Book 2, and Book 3 are explanation of equations of Dynamic Universe model. Book 4 deals about prediction and finding of Blue shifted Galaxies in the universe.

With axioms like… No Isotropy; No Homogeneity; No Space-time continuum; Non-uniform density of matter(Universe is lumpy); No singularities; No collisions between bodies; No Blackholes; No warm holes; No Bigbang; No repulsion between distant Galaxies; Non-empty Universe; No imaginary or negative time axis; No imaginary X, Y, Z axes; No differential and Integral Equations mathematically; No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to General Relativity on any condition; No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models; No many mini Bigbangs; No Missing Mass; No Dark matter; No Dark energy; No Bigbang generated CMB detected; No Multi-verses etc.

Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true, like Blue shifted Galaxies and no dark matter. Dynamic Universe Model gave many results otherwise difficult to explain

Have a look at my essay on Dynamic Universe Model and its blog also where all my books and papers are available for free downloading…

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/

Be
st wishes to your essay.

For your blessings please…………….

=snp. gupta

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Sara Walker,

This is a fantastic essay on the emergence of purpose. It is one of the best I have read; right up there with John Ellis.

Here comes the amateur lumbering into the conversation, way over his head. All of the following statements are guesses. They should be prefaced with: “Could it be that…" I haven't even begun to parse it all, if I ever will. I see a lot of...

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Sara Walker,

This is a fantastic essay on the emergence of purpose. It is one of the best I have read; right up there with John Ellis.

Here comes the amateur lumbering into the conversation, way over his head. All of the following statements are guesses. They should be prefaced with: “Could it be that…" I haven't even begun to parse it all, if I ever will. I see a lot of additional homework ahead. A deeper understanding of information theory is definitely in order. I see a lot of good leads in your list of references. Can you recommend a good reference book on Boolean networks?

First off, I think we both can take for granted, the need for top-down causality in any sensible description of goal oriented behavior. I really like your statement: ‘it is not a goal if it is not internally programed.’ This line of thinking nicely decouples the word goal from my notion of teleological bias, which require sentience and places it earlier in the evolution of the causal chain.

I find it useful to slightly redefine several of the most common words used in these discussions. These are phenomenal definitions: a sentient being is nothing more than an individuated organism, which is connected to and reacts to the variations in its environment by way of receptor and proprioceptor nerve endings. By this definition a worm can be sentient. Intelligence is the quantitative and qualitative capacity to process and organize information. By this definition, the computer Watson is highly intelligent. Consciousness is the subjective phenomenal experience of the qualia of sentience as a first-person observation of the present moment. An agenda somehow comes out of this and presents itself directly to the subject. I generally try to avoid the use of the word intentional as it can be confused with the less descriptive philosophical term of art denoting the content or object of consciousness. This definition is unfortunate. So much of our language developed around the requirement of encoding the aspects of dealing with other living things in our environment. Consequently it has acquired all of the teleological trappings of directed, volitional goal oriented behavior which come to be applied to the behavior of inanimate objects in an attempt to explain them. Nature abhors a vacuum.

From my remarks to John Ellis on his essay:

Purpose is something we see within ourselves and see in others. As embodied minds, we take its existence for granted as part of the requirement for the evolution of life. And like consciousness, it seems to resist a reductionistic explanation. Existence, sentience, consciousness and the nature and mechanism behind the collapse of the wavefunction remain elusive and mysterious.

It would occur to us in retrospect that the veracity, completeness and therefore the predictive power of this internalized observation of reality would serve an organism well. But this would beg the question: how, on the evolutionary trail, did an organism’s acquisition of an agenda to extract meaningful and relevant information for survival arise? Somehow, it must be connected to existential threat. But how does the organism come to sense that existential threat? My simplistic answer is that an organism's nerve endings, no matter how primitive, provide the initial feedback. All sentient beings have skin in the game. But there still remains the problem of how that feedback might be converted into consciousness and the sensation of jeopardy. {Insert hand waving here} Once the sense of jeopardy has been detected, the obvious back reaction would be a teleological bias to fulfill the dual agendas: stay in the energy flux and avoid destruction. This would go for the tubeworms living near a steam vent or, as more neural circuitry is thrown at the problem in service of this agenda, an investment banker competing for her share of the billions in bonuses available to maintain herself far from equilibrium.

Now back to your teleologically more neutral idea of ‘goal’ which can occur within any intelligent information processing system sans sentience. This brings me closer to spanning the explanatory gap between the goal seeking capabilities of a single biological structure and the entire organism. If it can be had just in the structure, it might provide the bridge needed to arrive at its final destination within the organism.

There is a wonderful description of microtubules in The Quantum Brain by Jeffery Satinover where alternating rows of alpha and beta dimers join at a seam which is offset by three rows. This configuration would lend itself to the progressive evolution of cellular automatons winding their way down and continuing their deterministic evolution at the seam just as programmed cellular automatons go off the screen on one side only to appear again on the other side. And no, I am not advocating for OOR. The decoherence time associated with ambient temperatures would seem to rule that possibility out. But at the same time, I would not totally rule it out.

Best regards,

Jim Stanfield

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