Re: MR as ontological

["John Kineman" <***>]

Hi Tim

This does get heavy. I wrestled with accepting it myself for quite a while.
It wasn't until I convinced myself that a viable theory of cosmology could
even be constructed this way that I finally turned the corner. Perhaps now
I should be locked up, but I can testify that I am happier and find fewer
contradictions that worry me. :)

Here's the nub of it: Its all formally aware, therefore the theory can be
general.

The biggest problem with this is our typically anthropomorphic
interpretation of "conscious." Thinking as such is very superficial
consciouisness and not all there is to it. That much is safe. Distinctions
between human and animal always break down or prove to not be categorical
but rather relative. Even parrots are now recognized as being able to think
as well as apes and dolphins, without a mammalian brain, which was
previously thought impossible. There is an awful lot of hubris about human
consciousness and much of the need to call it unique in nature stems
directly from the habit of viewing nature mechanically. From that view, it
becomes a necessity to exclude formal awareness, but then one is left with
the glaring contradiction of the scientist him/herself. So then we assume
that there is something qualitatively different that "emerges" or is
imparted externally. Rosen details all this very well. The other
alternative is that it is / was always part of nature and that it evolved
with the organism. Logically that makes more sense, but it also causes more
social trouble, and I think that is the primary reason we have been taught
to treat it with skepticism. The teaching is so thorough (in my case, being
originally trained in physics) that one is even afraid to think out of that
box. But it makes so much sense that the problem of psyche is related to
the same kind of problem appearing in quantum phenomena that even the top
physicists have discussed it seriously. I now see these are all problems of
ontological entailment, and thus it also connects to the problem of the big
bang (another origin of a system that otherwise must be whole). The
separation of these origins from the resulting system is part of the false
mechanical view that Rosen demolishes. Complex systems entail their
origins, when considered in the whole. This has the most profound
implications imaginable.

Anyway, this is certainly a topic that will not easily be agreed upon, so
we can continue to have fun with it.

>On second thought, I suppose it might be possible to extend this to any
>living organisms which are anticipatory systems. Trees dropping leaves in
>anticipation of winter is one example I recall Rosen using. In those cases,
>I might be able to consider that the tree is engaged in an MR of sorts with
>certain aspects of its environment.

Right. And thus do trees have minds?? If we skip the anthropomorphic
phobias, there is no reason to doubt that trees have a capacity for
self-representation, which we can also call a primitive kind of formal
awareness. What about quanta?? Why not consider a primitive formal
awareness there too? This is what Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose have
done (see Hameroff's quantum mind "Tuscon" conferences). The panel I set up
in 1999 that Rosen was to attend also included Stuart Hameroff. I wanted to
explore this ontological link.


>I think I'm having that same difficulty in going further down the road. :)
>I am unable to see how this notion extends to the general interactions of
>non-living systems. This is where I get lost.


I keep putting the idea out there to see what arguments exist that might
convince me otherwise. So far, I'm just getting more and more convinced. I
do believe it was Rosen's vision, even if he too had trouble going all the
way down this road (as Einstein did with quantum theory). The point that
Rosen did make, is that there are no non-complex systems, except by
arbitrary definition. He was vague about the relationship between
complexity and life (IMO), if perhaps they were the same, which he seemed
to entertain at times, and at other times hold out the safer position that
they could have some distinctions, but I don't think he provided that
distinction - they appear fundamentally synonymous to me. There is a
distinction between the living/complex phenomena and what constitutes an
organism, however. Not all complex systems evolve and thus achieve
organismic status. That requires a special arrangement of entailments. One
thus could use the word "life" to describe organisms, or more basically, to
describe a fundamental principle of nature. I think Rosen opted for the
safer position of making "complexity" the fundamental and "life" more
organismic, but it is at that point just semantics. I think one can discuss
"life form" as organismic and "life principle" as fundamental, but that is
surely personal preference and will be rejected generally to avoid
over-interpretation in non-technical usage. So then, I would guess we can
define life form as a complex system that self-replicates, but to my way of
thinking, the essence of "life itself" is in the complex relationship, not
the replication as such which is just an amplifier.

>About as close as I can come is recalling in FM where Rosen discusses how
>striking the realization was to him that the observables that we might
>observe and measure of a given system may or may not be relevant to how
>another system "sees" the first system when it interacts with it. But I am
>not sure if such cases show that the second system has an MR with the first
>system in any sense, since it has nothing to do with models or anticipation.
>But perhaps this is off-track of where you are heading, anyway.

That's on track in my view. What constitutes a system, and what is the most
primitive example? At least there must be some difference in relationship.
So a system consists of some kind of interaction. The observation of a
quantum state must be the most primitive interaction we know, and thus the
simplest case. In that, there is the state of the observer and that of the
observed (by definition). Violation of Bell's theorem demonstrates that
this distinction between two states is in some way arbitrarily perceptual,
and that there is a non-local reality always linking them. What is unique
to the interaction is the established state coordinates - space-time
itself. That's the relationship. On observation, evidence of the
interaction appears as an agreement of coordinates, in which the states can
be located in space and time, whereas previously they were not so much
"undefined" or "spread" as QM originally proposed, but no coordinate system
is established for looking at them. Space-time literally emerges from the
interaction as contextual information about the interaction. Now you have a
formal system. So the most basic percept is a complex system that is
formally aware of states. If that is true, then everything is formally
aware, but we do have to be careful to consider what the awareness is of.
Rocks, for example, are formally aware of quantum states, not rocks.
Evolutionary organisms can preserve this ontology, thus producing
occasionally thoughtful humans.

Sounds crazy, I know. I decided to go crazy.


Best,

-jjk