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Re: Life without evolution/evolution without life?

Hi again,

You challenge me to be more precise. I'll try.


At 06:37 AM 3/23/04 -0500, you wrote:
John,

Here are some further thoughts on your long post. I can't follow all of it.

>[Howard] Imagining such a subject-object distinction before life existed
would be entirely gratuitous,

[John K] OK, certainly it would be a leap of faith (i.e., assumption) and
gratuity to a certain point of view; but it is not at all different from
the opposite leap of faith that we have all made, that material reality
existed before matter.

HP: I do not know what material reality means as distinct from matter as
we observe and measure and model it. Is it kind of a Platonic reality?


Well, that is what I mean. The frame of reference that is defined by
material concepts and in which those concepts are measured. The common
ontology is to consider that real rather than a mutual definition between
matter states and the frame of reference in which those states have
definition. The Rosennean view proposes a domain that is larger than that.

For example, the common answer to the question "what was there before the
big bang, i.e, before or at t=0, is that the question is meaningless.
However functions exist outside of space and time, so a functional
relationship with realization deals with a no-mans land, either before time
or in some other way not subject to its coordinates. Whether or not one
accepts that view, it is, by definition, outside the material framework
provided by space and time.

The Platonic realm, is related to the view I am calling "material" in an
interesting way, I believe. Time provides meaning to causality (A comes
before B as its cause). Simultaneous causalities becomes highly problematic
to model in that view for that very reason (n-body problem, organisms,
ecosystems, etc.). As RR detailed with great pains, our mathematics was
purposely restricted to those corresponding phenomena that could be
described with such temporal causality, throwing out mathematically
problematic "impredicativities." So, it should be clear that there can be
no material concept of origins any model of origins wholly contained in the
material view. T=0 does not exist in that view. That makes it possible to
place all the laws of nature external to the domain where explanations will
apply, i.e., in a Platonic realm. The fact that those laws are considered
immutable and not subject to modification by the system we are describing
with them is the same thing as removing impredicative loops and as
restricting the material view to everything after t=0. But life seems to
involve its own origins, in fact to thrive on them. When we think we seem
to originate ideas, etc. So, my great interest in the Rosenean view is
precisely that it can deal with the origin problem in a very intuitive way.
That allows RR to claim that his view is general with respect to the
material/mechanistic view which is specific. Whether functions are THE way
to go about that or not I don't know - it works well for me, an ecologist,
since ecology is largely about function. There are other ways to step
outside space and time. But hopefully this tells you what domain I am
referring to by "material."


JK: That particular gratuity to a particular way of looking at the world
has run into problems now that we have investigated it very thoroughly; so
it makes sense now to try the other one and investigate it.

HP: What is a particular problem you have in mind, and how does the other
way look like it might help?


Well, explaining life is the obvious one. The mechanical view gets far too
complicated before it accomplishes anything with regard to explaining what
life is. It tries to build life from mechanical parts, but as ecologists
like to say, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So we have to
start with a concept of the whole that can contain both the parts and the
organizing principle that is the "something more."

Another is cosmology and space-time. I'll make a separate post on that.

Evolution and ecology are poorly integrated because of this very issue.
Neo-Darwinian evolution tries to remain mechanistic and passive, fearing
active vitalism. But ecology must deal with life strategies and the like
that explicitly recognize intentions and motivations and anticipatory
processes. The ecologists are apologists when asked to explain what they
mean, but the shouldn't be. Passive evolution is what is too limited.
Functions, taken as real and causal, also play a role in evolution.

Finally, my main work is mapping ecosystems. Traditional maps apply
traditional concepts of mapping observed patterns. So you have ecoregion
maps with hard boundaries, which are fuzzy guesses at something dividing
the units. People are thinking mechanically and mapping that way, as if an
ecounit was a physical or geographical object. I'm developing an approach
to map functions as real aspects of ecosystems. The geography then becomes
context dependent. The model defines a functional space which can be
translated to geography using the context. It is still a computational
model, of course. But the design makes it much more flexible in dealing
with complex ecosystem issues and change than the usual models. One could
make an argument for this approach based on traditional concepts, I
imagine, but it is unlikely that one would have arrived at the same design
that way. It just wouldn't have made sense without the right metaphysics.
So the Rosennean view provides a design criteria for ecological models. We
design differently knowing there is more than the mechanical going on in
the thing we are modeling.



JK: This sort of dismissal is the most frustrating thing to combat,
because it presumes to need no justification other than habit and group
consensus, which the paper does a great job of transcending otherwise. Why
close this door?

HP: Who is dismissing what? I'm all in favor of new ways of thinking and
modeling. All we ask for a scientific model is that there must be some
consensus on how to tell what is real and what is imaginary.


Well, as you know, what is real or imaginary is subjective any field, but
you are correctly focusing on the criteria for acceptance. Descartes said
all we can be sure of is our own experience, everything else being subject
to doubt. What we call "real" is what we find conceptually useful. Are
solid objects "real"? Well, solidness is a macroscopic property, but it
disappears at depth. In fact there is a great debate between the realists
and the instrumentalists, and it seems the instrumentalists have the edge.
Personally I consider reality as a theoretical reality, not fully
instrumental in the sense that it is arbitrary, but not fully real in the
sense that we should believe what we see in theory is what is actually in
nature. The effort then should be to seek more real theory elements, but
never to believe you have them. Sounds crazy I know, but I'm sure you know
what I'm referring to being a better expert than I on the philosophy of
science. I think what we ask of a scientific model is that it mean
something and that it be testable (along with various other criteria for
good science - I identified 6 from the literature). The criteria establish
what is to be accepted as "Real." Nothing I'm suggesting (or what I think
Rosen suggested) violates epistemological criteria. It just challenges dogma.

But your main question is what is being dismissed. I did not mean to
suggest you were in any way being unfair, so please don't take it that way.
I think the paper is brilliant in fact. I'm quibbling over my own
predisposition to take it one step farther at the very end, and include the
possibility that complexity may have been first and simplicity second,
rather than the traditional view that our material concept of nature is a
baseline from which we need to explain complexity. I take complexity as the
baseline. That's all. I'm just saying why not mention (leave the door open)
to that view.



HP: A distinction is made by a subject that is not a distinction derivable
from the object. In physical language this means a subject must create
some form of distinction or classification between physical states that
is not made by the laws themselves (i.e., measuring a particular initial
condition, removing a degeneracy or breaking a symmetry).

JK: Yes - form-function complementarity does that, but does it go too far???
I first thought it must be too radical, but have since found the
necessity. If I changed no other words in your paper, this could be an
alternative conclusion. Being the big taboo, have you given it serious
thought?

HP: I don't know what you mean here. Have I given serious thought to what
exactly?



As above, to the idea that complexity could be the metaphysical foundation
rather than traditional material concepts. [Let me note that there is some
confusion of terms here, as Rosen apparently referred also the "material
world" as containing all he was proposing. We discussed this earlier at
some length on the list and I made the observation that he is actually
altering the traditional view of the material world to include the reality
of functions when he said this. I think he was trying very hard to
legitimize it in comfortable language.]

One could take an instrumental view that functions are as real as realized
material states, and in continuous relationship with them. I attribute
theoretical "reality" to that view, but one need not do that. The issue
would be if taking that perspective has ivalue in explaining certain
phenomena. I've found that it does and am actively pursuing the path. But
to defend it, I have to admit that it implies a complete reversal of the
usual ontology, as mentioned above.

Now I perhaps should apologize for the question, because I know you have
considered many variations of this idea and have very developed views of
them. So I'm really asking what considerations you have found important to
accepting or rejecting concepts of functional "reality." The common view is
that functions are ultimately reducible to physical states, and so do not
need to be considered in a causal sense. I think RR says they are not
reducible. From what I've read of your work, you seem to say the same, but
stop short of making it a universal principle. So, all I asked was why not
mention that possibility. After all, cosmologists are not shy about
mentioning all manner of strange ontologies from multiple dimensions to an
infinite set of parallel universes. Surely a small thing like making
functions real shouldn't be a problem if there seems to be an application
for that.


>HP: Where does a new distinction first occur?

JK: I would say the first distinction occurs in the most primitive physical
interaction, as we can observe at the quantum level or in conscious
decision making.

HP: I've lost the context here. What "new distinction" was I talking about?
In any case, I don't think of physical interactions as primitive. They
just exist as inexorable laws of nature. On the other hand, I think of
consciousness as a very slowly evolved emergent, but very short-lived,
property of individual organisms.


You were asking about how a biological system first distinguished itself, I
believe. I replied that it occurs much before that, in material reality
itself. Your statement here clarifies the difference in views. I flip it
around the other way and consider consciousness as an elaboration of
something already inherent in nature, in the complexity principle. By
"interaction" I mean any measurement or causal effect of a physical state.
What I am suggesting is that there is an ontological relationship between
the act of measurement and the production of the space-time frame of
reference in which that measurement takes on coordinates (applies also to
observership in QM). The two arise simultaneously. When you put that
together and give a time for things to remain fixed (as in the old idea in
QM of spread of the QWF after measurement), there is a self-reinforcing
aspect to the space-time agreement and it organizes into a common reference
frame for those events that are in communication. So, what I'm talking
about, whether the theory is right or not, is how space-time originates
(and perhaps could originate in an isolated framework to allow functions
and thought) and I'm looking at that as basic to understanding
consciousness and life. One cannot do that remaining within a space-time
reference frame, obviously, or by accepting only the Platonic laws applying
to that frame from outside it. One has to fold the origin into the model
somehow. I see life as a system that reacts to and affects its own origin
in this extremely fundamental way and the agents of that effect are
functions, somehow isolated from the rest of the material world.

PS I don't claim to be sane, but I can't help finding meaning in this approach.



Howard


http://www.ws.binghamton.edu/pattee/
http://www.c3.lanl.gov/~rocha/pattee/