ALICIA JUARRERO
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 10:10 PM
Spinoza got it right all along?
On May 16, 2012 4:05 PM, "Stanley N Salthe" <ssalthe@binghamton.edu>
wrote:
Well, without invoking a primordial observer, I think it 'simple' enough to
suppose that qualia are primordial, and become an aspect of all
phenomena, eventually becoming (self)conscious in brains. This is not in
my view dualistic; rather 'dual-aspect'.
STAN
On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 3:40 PM, Malcolm Dean
<malcolmdean@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 6:56 AM, Stanley N Salthe
<ssalthe@binghamton.edu> wrote:
Malcolm -On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 7:48 PM, Malcolm Dean
<malcolmdean@gmail.com> wrote:
Bob, I think you point in the right direction. In my view, two assertions in
Cognitive Thermodynamics help resolve the impasse.
The first is the Observer, who has somehow disappeared from most
variations of Information and digital physics. Perhaps Wheeler scared a lot
of people away when it became obvious that he had, in effect, recovered a
form of neo-Brahmanic philosophy. Nevertheless, his Primordial Observer
now appears in a new guise, the Bayesian Observer, which is its local
conditioned instance.
Second, in nearly all stories of cosmogenesis, objects just happen. There is
some kind of miracle, such as the Big Bang or Hawking's "it just happened,"
and the universe is filled with objects according to other theories, from
fields like geology, anthropology, psychology, etc. The result is a set of
incompatible and disconnected theories maintained by isolated scientific
communities. It's amazing to note that objects and object-creation have
only recently attracted the attention of philosophers.
This is an essential aspect of Peircean semiotics
I respect Peirce just as I respect Darwin: As a Nineteenth Century
genius. Just as Darwinians continue to hammer on his theory of Natural
Animal Husbandry, while adjusting it around the edges and ignoring all
kinds of advances in dynamics, so Peirce has attracted a community which,
present company excepted, does little toward recognizing recent advances
which may improve or contradict Peirce's theories.
To me, the key danger in all semiotic approaches is essentialism. There is
the idea that meaning can be communicated, when it obviously can not.
See Pask's exclusion principle. Edward Fredkin (2007): 'the meaning of
information is given by the processes that interpret it.'
This is why, from the first Working Paper, I wrote that cognition is recognition. As Bayesian Observers, we infer the meaning of observed
transformations in the world. But meaning is never transmitted. I answer
semeiosis with Bayesian epidemiology.
Cognitive Thermodynamics asserts that the end of a thermodynamic
process is beyond entropy, it is an object at another ontological level. So,
for example, Adler's sub-quantum thermodynamics produces quantum
objects, the Big Bang produces astrophysical objects, the Bayesian Observer
produces cognitive objects, cultural thermodynamics produces cultural and
economic objects, and religious systems produce sacred objects.
Object-creation is the function of Wheeler's Observer, which makes
distinctions. The result is a simple, consistent, trans-disciplinary observerbased view which reveals the fundamental "driver" of dynamic hierarchical
evolution, intelligence, and cognition. It eliminates the mind-body problem,
shows that the concept of consciousness is misleading, and with its
Bayesian extension (Jaynes), provides a natural logic for science.
What is the source of the observer?
STAN
All systems of science begin with a miracle, even when they deny (as does
Hawking) that they invoke a miracle. But even the "grand unified" theories,
do not easily account for all phenomena, including the human heart.
In Observer-Participancy, Distinctions are the fundamental contingencies
which Bob mentions below. As Wheeler showed, they are pre-law, premathematics, and pre-logic. Laws, mathematics, and logic are emergent
consequences. In this way, the Observer is primordial. In the language of
ancient theological systems, it is omni-present, and omni-potent.
The difference between Observer-based cosmogenesis and today's normal
theories of cosmogenesis is consistency. There is no need for mind-body
dualism, "consciousness," fundamental randomness, and the damaging
separation of the sciences we suffer. Observer-Participancy is a complete
and thoroughly consistent worldview which presents hierarchy, dynamic
evolution, "mind," and object-creation as fundamental built-in givens.
Like the cranberry juice commercial: "Give us just one miracle per cosmos,
that's all we ask!"
Malcolm
Finally, as you know, this approach extends to formal definitions of
religious systems, providing new ways to understand their logics and
terminologies as dynamic Bayesian ontologies (see Corso's work on
generalized image understanding). Many scientists have accepted the
Christian propaganda which dismisses other religions as "polytheistic." In
fact, we have texts from ancient Egypt which refer to one god, and even
those religions which now advertise themselves as monotheistic have
divine hierarchies. Many Christians believe in the Devil, which means they
have, at minimum, a dualistic cosmology.
Newton is often claimed by modern science, but he was deeply interested
in ancient religion. He must have studied the Egyptian god Kheper, whose
symbol is the dung beetle, an insect which rolls matter into spheres and
pushes them along -- symbolism which could easily have suggested
gravitation to Newton's fertile imagination.
Malcolm Dean
Member, Higher Cognitive Affinity Group, BRI
Research Affiliate, Human Complex Systems, UCLA
Member, BAFTA/LA
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Stanley N Salthe
<ssalthe@binghamton.edu> wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------From: Bob Logan <logan@physics.utoronto.ca>
Date: Tue, May 15, 2012 at 10:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Stephen Wolfram discussing his ANKS in Reedit this
Monday
To: Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnkovic@mdh.se>
Cc: "fis@listas.unizar.es" <fis@listas.unizar.es>, Robert Ulanowicz
<ulan@umces.edu>
Dear Friends - please do not take the following critique as disrespectful but
the following amusing thoughts came into my head as I read that the
cosmos is engaged in computing and is a cosmic computer. During the age
of polytheism the different aspects of the cosmos were at war with each
other and the cosmos was a battleground. Then with monotheism the
cosmos bifurcated into the good side with angels fluttering about God
sitting on a throne and the cosmos was basically praying and doing all kinds
of good things except for the fallen angels who stoked the fires of the
inferno somewhere in the netherworld.
Then came Newton or as Alexander Pope put it
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
Suddenly the cosmos was a machine, a clockworks, that God created, set in
motion and the cosmos mechanically followed the Creator's law.
My couplet for our current time with attribution to Alexander Pope is:
Now we are in the brave new age of information
God said "Let Turing be" and all was computation.
Suddenly the cosmos has evolved into a cosmic-super-computer
having evolved from the clockwork universe which had in turn
evolved from the dual domain of God's heaven and the Devil's hell
which had in turn evolved from the battleground of the gods. What's
next. Well from biology we got the Gaia hypothesis, the earth as an
organism. What would be the next step - yes you guessed it the
Cosmic Organism. Just google "cosmic organism" and you will find
some 20,200 hits.
It does not stop there either - here are the following cosmoses as
revealed by Google
quantum cosmos - 194,000 hits
string theory cosmos - 10,000 hits
holographic cosmos - 2,200 hits
black hole cosmos 20,200
In fact take any metaphor from science or technology and someone
will have a theory how our cosmos operates as that technology or
science metaphor.
With the concept of the multiverse or multiple universes we are back
to the polytheistic world since every universe will have its own God.
My conclusion is that there is one cosmos with multiple ways of
describing it each of which employs a particular metaphor. The
computational universe is just one example in a long line of cosmic
metaphors and as our science and technology evolves so will the
metaphors to describe this cosmos of ours.
with kind regards - Bob Logan
On 2012-05-15, at 9:42 AM, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic wrote:
Dear Bob,
I am not sure if I have right to reply, but you make a very important remark.
The answer is: computing nature performs much more than existing
computers.
What is computable in computing nature is what nature is able to perform
through its continuous changes.
Dialectical processes are also typical in nature and thus in the framework of
computing nature, those also are computations.
In short the question is: what kind of computations are those dialectical
processes?
That is what we want to learn.
All the best,
Gordana
-----Original Message----From: Robert Ulanowicz [mailto:ulan@umces.edu]
Sent: den 15 maj 2012 15:36
To: Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
Cc: Bruno Marchal; fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Stephen Wolfram discussing his ANKS in Reedit this
Monday
Quoting Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnkovic@mdh.se>:
2.
Whatever changes in the states of the physical world there
are, we understand them as computation.
Dear Gordana,
I'm not sure I agree here. For much of what transpires in nature (not
just in the living realm), the metaphor of the dialectic seems more
appropriate than the computational. As you are probably aware,
dialectics are not computable, mainly because their boundary value
statements are combinatorically intractable (sensu Kauffman).
It is important to note that evolution (which, as Chaisson contends,
applies as well to the history of the cosmos [and even the symmetrical
laws of force]) is driven by contingencies, not by laws. Laws are
necessary and they enable, but they cannot entail.
Regards,
Bob
Robert K. Logan
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto
www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan