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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: The physical basis of consciousness
Message-ID: <Dq2oKw.M7x@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <4ju8kp$j60@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <4l16dm$b8p@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 19:24:32 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:38315 comp.ai.philosophy:40264 sci.cognitive:12432 sci.philosophy.meta:26897 sci.logic:17886

In article <4l16dm$b8p@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, Den1P <den1p@aol.com> wrote:
>pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) wrote
>>>4. The claims of reductionism in general are unscientific because
>quantum
>>>inderminism and chaotic phenomena create null-zones for prediction, and
>>>hence such claims are unfalsifiable.  The laws are what the equations
>say
>>>they are and not what BJF's cultural mythology hoped they would be. 
>>>Nature has excused fundamental phyics from some realms of application,
>>>which are its null-zones.  Since the brain has certain known dynamical
>>>regimes of chaotic operation, a complete theory of mind must include at
>>>least some of these null-zones.
>>
>>While I fully agree with your assesment of the "theory" you criticise,
>I'd
>>like to point out that although it is true that indeterminism and chaos 
>>create null-zones for _single event_ predictions, situation is not as
>hopeless
>>for reductionism as might seem from the above. We still can make and test
>
>>predictions for a distribution of inputs - into what distribution of
>outputs
>>they will be transformed. In other words we still can make statistical
>>predictions. Science has not yet fully absorbed a need for this new
>attitude
>>(I do not claim originality here, first time I have heard this opinon
>voiced
>>by Priggogine - he talks about a radically new paradigm).
>    While it is certainly true that we often can and do make statistical
>predictions in qunatum theory, the ability to do so there is largely
>dependent on the linearity of the equations used.  It is less obvious that
>we can make useful statistical predictions in the non-linear chaos
>theoretic cases.  We can certainly characterize in a qualitative or
>semi-quantitative way some general system features - strange attractors,
>threshholds of instability, and so on - but this are much less informative
>than even the statistical predictions of quantum theory.

From what I know about these matters (and from what I heard Priggogine say), 
there is 'order' in chaos, i.e. we can even quantitatively characterise output
distributions from input distributions, even in quantum case.

>   Take some cases in point.  (1) In 1988 Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack
>Wisdom reported that chaoticf indeterminacy applies to the very bastion of
>classical determinacy built by Laplace, celestial dynamics.   In
>calculating the orbit of Pluto, they found that slight variations of
>initial conditions lead to complete unpredictability on a time scale of
>about twenty million years.  This unpredictability in Pluto ultimately
>communicates itself to the other planets, making the whole solar system
>unpredictable on a large time scale. If this is the case what would a
>statisical prediction of the position of Pluto be?  It would be that is
>somewhere inside of some toroidal surface, possibly with some distribution
>function for its radiial coordinate from the Sun, and for its distance and
>angle from the center of the toroid, but with a uniform distribution as
>far as it angle in the plane of the ecliptic is concerned.  This is
>certainly not the kind of information that we are used to getting out of
>celestial mechanics, but still it is a prediction of a sort, and might be
>able to distinguish certain dynamical hypotheses.

Yes, this is not the kind of informationwe are used to getting out but, as
Priggogine claims, this is exxactly why we need a new way of thinking, new 
paradigm. We have to accept that in many cases (perhaps in fact most) single
events predictions are not possible, this is a new face of nature we have 
discovered and we have to accept it.

>   (2)  Suppose I have a turbulent regime in a tank of some sort, and I
>drop in a neutrally bouyant marker bead.  If I want to know where the bead
>is in a few minutes, the only thing I can say is that it is somewhere in
>the tank.  Any set of dynamical equations that includes the continuity
>equation and gives rise to turbulence will give the same prediction. For
>example, I could have several alternatives for viscous coupling, add
>magneto-hydrodynamical terms, etc and still get the same prediction. 
>Clearly here the prediction is of virtually no use in distinguishing
>dynamical hypotheses.

If we get the same predictions and they agree with empirical data, then models
are equivalent at this stage, so what? You cannot distinguish two potential
fields differing by a constant either. 

>   Now, the reductionist hypothesis is not just that some macro properties
>are predictable from microproperties, but that all macroproperties are a
>dynamical consequents of micro-properties _as known from studies of the
>micro-constituents taken in isolation_.  Putting asside the details of

In principle I agree with your description, although you have to remeber that
certain properites can only show up in interaction of contituents. You will
not for instance notice the exclusion principle if you only investigate one
particle, or distinguish between Bose or Fermi statistics.

>BJF's theory, his basic assumption is that QED implies all that can be
>known of consciousness.  All the theories of fundamental physics and
>chemistry are derived from study of their objects in isolation.  For
>example, from proton-proton scattering or measurments of carbon-carbon
>coupling.  What reductionists explicitly reject is the notion that there
>can be any emergent properties, which is to say any properties that do not
>follow in some sense from the micro-dynamics.

Agreed, with the proviso above.

>   What is clear form chaos theory is that this sense can no longer be
>taken to be logical. That is to say that the hope of _deducing_ all
>macroproperties from microproperties must be abandoned.  This leaves open

Not in the sense discussed at the begining. Yes, we cannot deduce single
events, but this has already been accepted in case of QM (although there still
are some hidden-variable holdouts). Chaos theory tells us that this has to be
accepted even for classical systems. It still remains true (at least in the
modified reductionist sense) that the output distribution can be determined 
from knowledge of input distributions. 

>the possibility of a dynamical sense in which macro-properties may be said
>to follow from micro-properties, i.e. even though we cannot deduce the
>macro-properties, still there is no more physics in macro-systems (such as
>organisms) than there is in their constituents taken is isolation. 

Exactly.

>Clearly, in the absence of logical reducuibility, such a position is not
>scientifically confirmable or falsifiable.  It is merely a philosophic
>stance or a faith tradition.

True, the same way as the traditional reductionism. However, one can say
that it is justified by Occam's razor - as long as there is no need to invent
additional axioms, we stay with what works.

>   Is dynamical reductionism reasonable?  I think not.  While it is
>tautological that the laws followed by the components of a system must
>conform to over-all system behavior, it is neither tautological nor
>reasonable to assert that the behavious of all systems follows fron the
>behavior of their components as the operate _in isolation_. First, as
>noted in the last paragraph, it is not a scientific position.  Secondly,
>as a sweeping generalization, it is always possible that a new
>counter-example can be found.  Third, it does not fit the facts as we know

As long as there is no counter example, pragmatism (as expressed by Occam's
razor) seems to be preferable. We should of course keep our eyse wide open,
this is the essence of doing science.

>them.  For example, no amount of study of an electron in isolation (if
>such a thing were even possible - maybe we could probe it with neutinos,
>then it would not be in isolation, but it could not interact
>electrodynamically) would reveal its electodynamic modes of interaction
>with other charged particles.  It is only when it actually interacts with
>charged particles that these modes of interaction are revealed.  Fourth,

Right, I have said this at the begining.

>it gatuitously assumes that all forces are two-body forces, but meson

Such assumption simply indicates ignorance, why bother talking about it?

>theories of nuclear binding predict multibody forces over and above the
>sum of all the two body forces taken in isolation.  Further, the
>gravitational effects of multiple particles is not simply the sum of the
>gravitational effects of the particles taken separately. So, if we can
>deduce multi-body force laws in some cases and cannot deduce the dynamical
>behaviors of all systems, it is unreasonable to assume that specifically
>multibody interactions do not occur in the cases whose behavior we cannot
>deduce.

All true, but we proceed by making most economical assumptions - we know
that in many cases the matter of our inability to deduce behavior of systems
is caused by the sheer complexity and when we have many examples that when
we manage to overcome this problem the said behavior becomes understandable
(or we discover that there were factors we did not know about like an 
additional planet perturbing the orbit of Neptune, for instance). We will 
assume multibody interactions when we cannot in any way explain the said
behavior by the forces known so far.

>   Whereas it is often aserted that reductionism is an essential axiom of
>science, in practice only a very limited form of reductionism is ever
>used.  It is only when two areas of study apply to a common object that we

I disagree. Science looks for underlying reasons of phenomena, does it not?
Every time you ask "why?" (or "how?") expecting to find underlaying causes, 
you practice reductionsism. Isn't science this search for "why?" nad "how?"?

>expect them to agree to a reasonable approximation.  No one designs
>bridges using quantum chromodynamics, nor even applies it to thermodynamic
>problems.  In fact, even the deduction of Newtonian mechanics from
>classical quantum mechanics is not rigorous, but merely suggestive. 

Yes, we do not very well understand the transition from quantum to classical
regime, but it does not mean that we do not try. Are you suggesting that we
do not concern ourselves with this? It is an element of science that we ask
"how" this transition happens (and in recent years thae answers started to
emerge).

>Rather, each level of integration is studied at is own level, and the
>relation to lower levels of integration is via empirical correlation
>rather than dynamical deduction.  Thus, gene sequences are correlated to
>physiological characteristics, and brain scans are correlated to
>behaviorial characteristics, but in neither case is the one deduced from
>the other.

True, but this is because these links are very hard. 100 and more years ago
chemistry has been studied in isolation from physics too. Are you saying
that the correlations between brain scans and behavior is something which
cannot be understood? I do not understand your point.

>   Reductionism is a good motivational stance, serving to motivate
>research and increase the unity of science, but it fails as a basic truth.
>
>Dennis Polis

I am sorry but your last sentence follows from your examples the same way as
someone saying that all this claims of progress in medicine are crap 
because his/her friend died at the age of 20 inspite of being treated by 
the best specialists.

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Information Commons                   what they think and not what they see.
pindor@breeze.hprc.utoronto.ca                      Huang Po
