Where is this epiphenomenal complexity occurring? Somewhere other than the universe?
Well…yes and no? Obviously, I’m niggling terribly here – but isn’t that what this whole thread has been about? “Physically joined” entails a vast spectrum of items being more or less integral to each other. A tow-truck is physically joined to the car it’s towing…but most of us would think of them as two objects.
As I said, it invites “line drawing.” How integral (is that modifying an absolute?) do the truck and the car have to be to be a single object? Welded together? Built together from the origin?
What degree of physical joining would make two brains “one object?” I’m envisioning some Frankensteinian process of grafting one into the other – RaftPeople notes this can happen in nature – so shouldn’t the increase in complexity be accepted as a “trivial exception” to the claim that a single brain is the most complex object?
Again…what if, by art or nature, they were physically joined?
And again, apologies for the absurd pedantic nitpicking; I’m only approaching it as a kind of game.
(ETA: not trolling, I pray you! More like pilpul!)
(Reminds me of an old math class where students enjoyed popping up with exceptions to various rules, based on the unique properties of the empty set. After a while, the teacher said, “Okay, no more trivial exceptions!”)
Do we understand the interplay of brains?
In other words, we do not understand how the secondary phenomena of consciousness derives from the primary phenomena of the motion and interaction between atoms.
Excellent observation. The human brain is contained in the universe; however, consciouness is not contained in a human brain (though I’m not necessarily saying that consciousness is contained in the universe).
Consciousness is not a thing. It is a poorly formed concept.
Inside the universe.
As I’ve been saying, you can define things however you like. However it is uninteresting to define complexity in such a way that the universe’s complexity is greater than or equal to the complexity of the objects it contains, because it depends on what epiphenomenal level you are interested in (primary, secondary, …, N-ary). As I see it, the only two sound options are to 1) only consider the primary phenomena, which implies that the complexity of everything is the same, and renders any discussion of complexity trivial and uninteresting, or 2) discuss complexity in terms of the relevant epiphenomena. Option 2 is what we do in our daily lives, because it is the only option with utility. But going a bit deeper, if you think hard about complexity, as researchers in algorithmic information theory have done, you will find that nothing is so simple as you seem to think. How would you define complexity? I would bet you can’t come up with a coherent and non-trivial definition that isn’t equivalent to discussing algorithms and information content. And when you do, you learn interesting things. For example in algorithmic information theory, the set of all descriptions has zero complexity; in other words complexity is not even a monotonically increasing function of the size of the set the complexity is describing! So no, just because brains are a subset of the universe does not at all mean that the universe is more complex than the brain. But this isn’t the only way in which you are wrong. When you discuss algorithms and information, it can be applied to relationships between all kinds of objects. For example, if you are considering a computer program, it could be run on silicon just as well as on an abacus, or even planets and galaxies, if they were arranged in the right way. The relevant level of complexity corresponds to a given epiphenomenal level. The universe as a whole does not appear to contain galaxies relating to each other in any interesting, complex way, the same way the neurons in our brains do. The neurons in our brains are running a program. The universe as a whole is note. Sure it does contain very dense, localized areas of complexity. But if you want to have a set of definitions are in any way interesting, you call those neuronal relationships, those localized areas of complexity (brains) “complex”, and the relationships between the macroscopic aspects of the universe, such as galaxies that are boringly moving away from each other in an endlessly expanding void, “not all that complex.”
BTW, the title of the OP is “Is the human brain the most complex object in the universe?”. It is unclear to me what the point is of discussing the complexity of the universe, which I think is a pretty ill-defined subject.
Yes. Yes. Which means that there is (at least) one program running in the universe.
The epiphenomenal complexity of group behavior doesn’t appear to be particularly high, however I don’t think we will completely understand it until we understand the human brain.
Yes. So you might phrase the OP question as “is the brain running the most complex program running in the universe?” The understanding is of course that it isn’t a very useful concept to blindly “combine programs” and call them “more complicated programs” in the same way it doesn’t make sense to combine MS Windows and OS X and call the combination one program. The universe is running many programs, which to a good approximation are running separately in parallel. The question is which programs are more complex, not whether the collection of programs taken together is complex, which is uninteresting because the programs do not work together as part of a larger program.
Yes, we don’t understand the human brain. Think of Google Cars, which don’t exist yet because we don’t understand the human brain yet. Think of cars in general, each which needs to be controlled by a human brain. You may see people driving cars, or you may see brains driving cars, or you may see cars driving cars.
People driving cars. Brains driving cars. You can drive a car (I hope!). I can drive a car (that wasn’t my driving!). However, it is not enough for one to drive a car well; anyone can drive well on a closed course. Indeed, the driver has to be able to drive well and anticipate other drivers, some who are able to drive well and some who are unwilling or unable to drive well.
Cars driving cars (Google Cars). All “drivers” are able to drive well because each “driver” is able to anticipate every “driver”.
And what is your point?
With all due respect…
That is silly. While the scope, size and integration of the various things that make up a skyscraper make them look complex----and to some degree they are---- the fact is much of them are not complex at all. To suggest that they are as complex as the human mind is just not the case.
I think I see what you mean. Thank you for your patience in explaining.
My point is that there is a problem with viewing the brain as a closed system and viewing the universe as a closed system.
No there isn’t. You can view it however you want. Viewing brains and the universe as closed systems don’t cause any problems.
You said consciousness is a poorly formed concept. I say the universe is a poorly formed concept as well.
Is consciousness a closed system?
Define ‘closed system’ before I continue.
closed system: My brain only controls my mental faculties, and not yours and anyone else’s.
At the simplest level, a brain is a closed system. It surely can be part of a non-closed system. Conciousness is just an ego driven explanation for reflection. We can’t use reflection to determine how the brain works, so we assume there is some woo-ish explanation for our ability to reflect and it’s effect on human thought. The universe could certainly be called a closed system based on a physical description, but I don’t know enough about the interactions of the components on a universal scale to comment. Why don’t you distract yourself with Mach’s Principlefor a while and tell me how you think that affects your concepts of the universe and closed systems. Personally I’m satisfied with examining the brain processes. The universe sounds like too much work to figure out.
You started a thread titled “Is the human brain the most complex object in the universe?” and now in order to advance your argument you call into question the coherency of the concept of the universe… it seems to me like that discussion might deserve a separate thread!
We “understand” traffic better than we understand the universe, because we understand the rules, and we understand the interplay of objects (cars). However, driving is coherent. In other words, you can drive; I can drive. Traffic, on the other hand, is incoherent. Just because you can drive and I can drive, it does not follow that we can drive. Because there can only be one brain behind the wheel! But what if traffic could be coherent? What if there could be one “brain” behind the wheel, a “Google brain” controlling all cars which can be called Google cars?
So I’m not calling into question the the coherency of objects (cars, brains). I’m not calling into question the coherency of rules (driving). However, I’m calling into question the coherency of traffic and of the universe itself.