Polycomputing and Process Philosophy (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ย. 2024
- "There's Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-scale Machines" by Joshua Bongard, Michael Levin: arxiv.org/abs/...
1:10 Polycomputing and Biological Complexity
15:05 Eternal Objects in Whitehead's Philosophy
27:59 Potentiality, Actualization, and Intentionality
38:52 Polycomuting, Adaptability, and Relational Entities
47:56 Realism, Purposes, and Holism in Science
1:01:51 The connection between Bayesian understandings of intelligence and Calvinist theology
1:09:23 Collective Intelligence in Cellular Communities
1:18:51 Relational Transcendence and Scale-Free Processes
1:32:40 Machine Learning, Evolution, and Constraint
1:41:12 Causality, Memory, and Relational Constraints
1:50:50 Abduction, Cognition, and Novelty
2:00:16 Relevant Novelty, Evolution, and Information
2:09:30 Next discussion: Exploring Carl Jung's Archetypes and Evolution
What you are talking about in the first 15 minutes or so reminds me of some of the conversations I have had with a physicist friend named Glen. He often uses the phrase that "Computation is a sequence of choices based on a set of rules." He later modified this to "a symphony of choices..." I like the symphony analogy for the musical imagery and also that it showcases a single idea in the composer's mind that is then parsed out to an arrangement of parts and instrumentation and finally brought into "being" by the players of the various instruments. Of course, in that analogy, there is a single score that everyone is following (each one has the freedom to follow or not to follow, but not following has consequences in that the whole is no longer congruent with the original idea). Although each player will add some variation due to his own style, embouchure, treble, etc., they are still following the score. But perhaps it is more like jazz, where each player has great freedom within the confines of the piece and within the confines of coherence with all the other members of the group and each choice informs each subsequent choice by all the players.
As Glen often says, a choice is only a choice if it changes the future.
There's even more to that analogy. Composers do get confronted with choices during the process of their craft. Even if they have a pretty good idea of what they are after, there will always be different ways to get to a result. Music is all about relationships and once you've established a few of those there will be forks in the road where multiple "naturally" occurring progression methods present themselves. These different choices are already implicit in the material worked out thus far.
On another level, music could be THE most apt analogy of everything: this lies in the fact that music does not exist without it being perceived. Music is about relationships and relationships are without dimension. No apparatus exists that can measure intervals in any direct way. The only way to do so is by analyzing the totality and then work out the existing relationships between all the different vibrations regarding frequency and intensity. I.e. harmonic analysis, which is the builder of bridges in Langlands program.
And then, harmonic analysis and composing (making choices based on the results of that analysis, through the process of "recursive distinctioning") is what, not just we are constantly busy with but the whole universe from the very start, which is pre-Big Bang (see David Bohm's "implicate" or "enfolded" order).
The Big Bang was when the first composition, with mind as the composer, started to get performed by the orchestra. Mind is both the composer AND the composition up to that point. The orchestra that starts performing the piece is the composition, is mind explicated into matter (autopoiesis). At that point, mind starts a new composition that builds on the one already explicated and sounding by matter.
Currently mind is busy figuring out the composition that will fit with matter, matter being the aggregate of already explicated and sounding compositions. Once it has figured this out it will become part of the grand total of explicated compositions, and thus a transformation will take place.
The composition mind is currently busy with is related to awareness becoming aware of itself. The part of the composition that does not harmonize with the already sounding matter, we call ego.
The novelty of a "next event" in a flow of time is measured by the Shannon entropy of the distinctions pre and post that event.
Nice intro Matt. Your vision of redefining (broadening) what is meant by polycomputation reminds me of the the conversationswe had about irrational numbers during the Astronomy course. In its simplest form this means that some constants in life and the univerise are non-computable. This creates within mathematics the same dynamic tension that we find between the infinite and the finite, apophatic and cataphatic theology or unknown (percept) and known (concept). The I finds itself living freely in the realm of this tension...... between Schillers Formtrieb and Spieltrieb.
10:00 "how is it that organisms seem to be continually differentiating themselves from themselves, seem to be at odds with themselves, if indeed they can be fully described in these computational terms"
Because the next level of organizational principles---even though not fully brought to its stage of maximum potential yet, where everything fundamental to that level of organization has been uncovered---is already active in mind. This IS the interaction between mind and body. It is with the aid of mind that this level of organization is being tried out to see how it should fit in with body/matter. To the CAS, comprising of mind and body, involved it this process (the uncovering of the stage of maximum potential), it doesn't matter where the information is held. This is the origin the higher level causation that, when that stage of maximum potential is uncovered by mind, will lead to what is called strong emergence, bottom up-wise, in matter. What emerges then is an augmentation of matter/body and thereby reality itself as perceived by the CAS. Matter/body is transformed, while mind having been emptied is ready to receive the seed for unfolding (Bohm) the next level of organization.
The seed in each level of organization is unique and pertains to a harmonic relationship that comes in the form of a prime number. So, the chemical elements represent all the different ways, the aggregate, the integration, of the first two levels of organization can combine, where the first level gets described in the Standard Model.
And so, yes some form of mind was already present at the very beginning, just as Gregory Bateson's definition of mind suggests: "an aggregate of interacting parts". Mind as a system would also imply the existence of boundaries, and these boundaries are defined by what in musical terms is called an octave, the relationship that can be expressed as 2/1 or 1/2. This boundary is the same for all levels of organization, thereby making them one continuous whole. The octave works as a womb/incubator, where a third harmonic acts as an impregnating seed. From there on it is the process of recursive distinctioning that will eventually give mind enough material in which it will find the patterns involved in the stage of maximum potential. When aligned in the right way a sequence of phase transitions will present itself, where all attractors are related to the initial prime number seed.
Determined/predetermined? Yes, once the seed is determined, which might be a function of initial conditions at the start of life itself. What surely isn't determined is how mind goes about its journey uncovering the fundamentals in the level of organization. Backtracking, because this is all taking place in mind, is an option, as is getting lost. This latter case could happen when paying too much attention to mind only and not to the interaction between mind and body where all the indispensable feedback takes place.
God as imagined as the giant calculator or infinite calculator in my mind was changed to God as the imagined composer after listening to the conversation. You have atoned and scale with time but quality and measure riding on emotion God has the score written but plays along with us and lets us improvise that score and let us create within that tension.
Eru Ilúvatar conceived the Ainur from his thought and taught each of them how to make music. At first the Ainur would only sing alone or in small groups while the others listened. The observance of their brethren singing taught each Ainu more about the others and the mind of Ilúvatar. Their "unity and harmony" thus increased, and eventually, Eru brought all the Ainur together and declared that they would play a song greater and more complex than they had ever sung before. He told them that they would be allowed to weave their own thoughts and ideas into this Music, since they had been kindled with the Flame Imperishable and thus had the power of creativity. The Ainur were so overwhelmed by Eru's description of this Music that they bowed before him in silence.
I thoughoutly enjoyed this conversation, it motivated an interest in Simondon and Markov Blankets. and I'm wondering as we are investigating complicated/complex (designed/emergent) collective intelligences, you spoke of the individual (micro) and the Gods eye view (macro) however I'm wondering if the nature of our collective intelligence as societies should be thought of as an Agent, if it is more in the realm of designed or emergent, perhaps a little of both.
Unlike something like AI, this CI has had more time in human evolutionary history, whether or not that evolutionary wisdom/information has continued on to our societies is another question.
Paradoxically, it seems to me that the emergence of agency always involves both individuality and sociality across various scales, and that this emergence always already presupposes the ingression of novel potentiae (what Vervaeke has been calling "emanation") not present in the past environment of said agency.
@@Footnotes2Plato right, ya I think our perception of a definite agency at the "individual human" is somewhat arbitrary and thus that there isn't an individuated identity at either the individual human or the society. but I'd suggest there are network properties of such a collective, perhaps using Integrated Information Theory. If so, it would suggest there are ways societies can integrate or disintegrate, and that we construe mere representations of relationships within a network for the real processual relating that is needed to integrate.
Moreover, using this framing, or even simply Carlos Rovelli framing of Contextual Universe, it seems implausible to suggest agency without a context (or a universal context).
I haven't gotten into Whiteheadian ideas of God yet, but Im inclined towards the notion of "the world transcends God, just as much as God transcends the world"
as it seems like various conceptions of universal Gods or Daemons, are more like a thought experiment that chooses to ignore some aspect of our finitude. (as in measurement/knowledge without context, perception without action, etc)
Which Whitehead book should I start with? Process and Reality? I’m reading Schelling’s Essay on the investigation into the essence of human freedom
depends how much other philosophy you've read and how much science you know?
@@Footnotes2Plato Plato and Humberto Maturana