If we use billiard balls as an analogy and the initial state was a tight group of balls and a player “breaking” was like the big bang, and we agree the subsequent actions are deterministic, then:
1 - Wouldn’t we see complexity emerge? This depends on the definition of complexity, but balls moving in all directions seems more complex than a motionless tight group of balls.
2 - If the balls were more complex, allowing for coupling and repulsion, etc., and enough energy in the initial conditions to keep the system going for a while, wouldn’t we also see even more complexity with clusters of balls in shapes that can harness the energy of other balls that run into them, etc.
Seems like determinism doesn’t prevent complexity, it just constrains the path of the universe to one of X possible paths based on Y initial variables.
You would need to replace the balls with random “clouds” that become balls in a random location when you interact with them.
This is one of the problems with the particle wave duality and trying to use absolute Newtonian determinism as Trinopus alluded to.
You cannot know the initial variables, and by measuring one variable about the existing state you lose access to the other variables.
Electrons are not balls orbiting a nucleus made up of balls an electron orbiting a nucleus is a cloud of probability which will collapse into what you view as a particle when you interact with it.
I should also add that part of the “information” or “complexity” is free energy.
As an example when you burn wood one of the chemical processes is to bond hydrogen and oxygen into CO2 or H20, which is at a lower energy state. This releases photons as heat, light etc… that released free energy makes it harder to describe thus more information or an increase in entropy.
While the above is still a massively simplified explanation this is typically how things tend to “disorder” (which is a very bad term for describing entropy) despite looking like a tendency towards order. The “information” or complexity in describing the system grows despite parts of the total system being more ordered.
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the speed limit of causality which is often referred to as the speed of light.
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I’ve not heard that specification. If there is an obvious place to read about how c is better framed as speed limit of causality, I’d appreciate it if you could point me to it.
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…disorder (which is a very bad term for describing entropy)
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How come?
I’m not exactly sure where the thread is, not that that is a bad thing
I do not believe Consciousness taps into an existing “plane” of conscious stuff, or any other stuff that may be interesting but is ungrounded.
I believe Consciousness emerges from our inherent complexity.
I believe, per the linked Free Will vs Determinism thread, that even if FW is illusory, it exists as part of our Consciousness “model.”
I think it is fascinating that the two levels of Reality that Humans perceive both depend on Potential Stuff snapping into place the instant it is “accessed.” Even while considering that the “I” that is doing the accessing is an…outcome?..of those instants.
Sometimes I feel like I am falling down the stairs of Reality and that tumble is something I “rationalize”, using Consciousness.
The fundamental concept here is the breakdown of simultaneity at a distance, and this is well illustrated by the paradigm of the light cone. The figure at the top of that article is a 2D analog to a real 3D light cone, illustrating the path that a flash of light at one point in space and time takes through spacetime.
If you read that article, including the next section (“mathematical construction”) you should find it quite instructive. The “mathematical construction” part isn’t math at all but a good conceptual explanation of how it relates to causality. The following will probably make more sense after reading that.
The light cone, which traces the expanding path of a point of light through spacetime, defines the limits of any type of communication or causality. The long and short of it is that simultaneity only exists in space locally, or more precisely, with respect to spacelike separations it only exists at a single point in space. The whole idea of chronology – i.e. cause and effect – is only meaningful within the expanding future light cone or coming at you from the past light cone.
Notice that if you’re moving straight up through the future light cone you’re staying at the same point in space and moving along the time interval. If you’re moving at an angle to the T axis you’re moving through space AND time, but the fastest you can move through space is the very edge of the light cone, a lightlike interval. Any faster and you’re outside the future light cone and can never be affected by events originating at the point in question (where our hypothetical flash of light occurred and the past and future light cones come together at a point in spacetime).
A simple conceptual way of looking at the causality question is that if you’re staring at a star that is 100 light years away, you’re separated from that star not just by space but by the lightlight interval that is the edge of its past light cone. If you hypothesize a fancy rocket that can travel faster than light, you would arrive at the star from outside its past light cone and in the star’s past, and would thereby be able to change events that have already happened as observed from earth.
First of all - thanks! Helpful. I will check out that link.
Second of all - okay; cool. Yes, in my physics reading, I have come across the Light Cone* concept and the implications for it within the context of our relativistic universe. I guess I just hadn’t heard “the speed limit of causality” invoked as a “better” way to frame the speed of light. It makes sense why - but do Physicists use that term more frequently than “the speed of light”? Or perhaps only when causality is the core question being discussed? I was just curious.
I certainly am trying to understand if/how the two emergent models being used these days to frame QM and Consciousness relate, if at all, within the boundaries of our physical system as we know it, i.e., not depending on FTL** travel or other non-relativistic speculation.
*Light Cone: is it just me, or does anyone else imagine a dog with one of those “funnel puppy” protector cones around their head? I can see us all with similar “funnel puppy cones of potential” emanating from us
**FTL - should that be FTC: Faster than Causality?
Yes to both. The basic idea of quantum mechanics (quantum field theory is a bit more complicated) is that particles are simply wave-functions: normalizable function in spacetime. Characteristics like spin, momentum, etc. (but not mass, charge, etc.) are represented by operators acting on those wave-functions. The simplest case is one in which we measure something— say, the spin of an electron— that takes on a finite set of discrete values: here, up or down. (I’m glossing over some technical details here. In particular, I should probably mention that I’m talking about something like S_z rather than the inherent 1/2-spin of the electron.) When we do this, it turns out that the wave-function really does collapse into an eigenfunction for the operator in question; see the Stern-Gerlach experiment, for example. What causes this collapse, and what exactly does a ‘measurement’ constitute? That’s hard to get into, but it honestly doesn’t really matter for most of quantum mechanics.
What does all this have to do with consciousness? I have no idea; it’s your post. But really, there’s nothing more than some vague analogy between the two. For one thing, the description of consciousness you describe is more of a vague psychological dissection rather than anything neurological; and since quantum mechanics is a scientific, even axiomatic, theory, it’s hard to map anything from one to the other. I’ve say through too many lectures from philosophy-of-science professors to give any credence to fanciful similarities between the two without any some hard, specific, verifiable theories behind them.
I appreciate what you are saying. QM is defined by what’s been observed and established as axioms. Emergent-type Consciousness models, at this point, are speculation at best. Don’t confuse the two.
Cool, I get that - heck the middle of my options is that QM and C are metaphorically similar at best. If that’s the right answer, that’s helpful for my noodling.
I am merely trying to wrap my brain around the use of emergent models in both areas. If that speaks more to Humans’ limited ability to frame models for really complex stuff, then that’s helpful. If it just means that QM stretched our thinking to include emergent models, and folks who study Consciousness glommed onto that approach because they haven’t come up with anything better ;), then that’s interesting, too.
I do think that an emergent model for Consciousness has value. As I read material on “psychological economics” - Tversky and Kahneman, the Freakonomics guys, etc. - it seems like we have a lot of “reaction heuristics” built inside of us via Nature and Nurture, and we use Consciousness to “integrate and backfill” the rationale so it appears to make great sense as we move forward with that reaction and treat it as something we intended to do.
If I understand you correctly, I have to take exception here. It’s not that the emergent model of consciousness “has value”, it’s that it’s the only model there is. As I said to the guy who was proposing magic as the alternative explanation (even though he didn’t realize he was doing so), what other explanation would you propose?
Emergent properties aren’t even particularly mysterious. Suppose I were to write a simulator, say something that simulates a traffic system, or a biological system, or a climate system, whatever. I tune the system with real-world data, maybe tweak it with parameters for things that aren’t fully modeled. From the computer’s standpoint, this is just a computer program – an ordinary set of instructions and a bunch of data that it operates on. From my standpoint, this system is something fundamentally greater than the sum of its parts: the program plus the data plus a lot of computational power gives me new and unpredictable answers about how a very complex real-world system will behave under different conditions, genuine discoveries that I can use in the real world, and yet at no point have I actually understood or formally described the system. The real-world system might even be a chaotic one that is not amenable to any such description and can only be solved with probabilistic approaches.
The question that one needs to posit at this point is how I’ve solved a problem that is far too complex for me or any human to understand, and the answer is the same as the answer to how programmers can create a chess-playing program that is far better than they are, or a system that can be a Jeopardy champion on TV when its creators might be quite useless at Jeopardy themselves. The answer in all cases is that these impressive capabilities are the emergent properties of the assembled algorithms, databases, and computational power that together have created something entirely new.
In this same way, we will eventually create an intelligent consciousness that is an emergent property of an artificial intelligence just as our own consciousness is an emergent property of our own, and we still won’t be able to fully explain what it is – nor will we need to. The idea that we need to fully understand the complete neurophysiology of the human brain in order to create an artificial consciousness is as ridiculous as claiming that we need to be able to build an artificial bird – one that flaps its wings, eats worms, and migrates south in the winter – before we can possibly manufacture an airplane.
I realize that some of this has now gotten tangential to your OP, but I just got on a rant about those (not you) who seem to think that consciousness or even human intelligence is something mystical, non-physical, or supernatural.
I do, however, have to say that I disagree with the part of your OP that says “So, both QPhysics and Consciousness have this basic ‘lots of possibilities which collapse to one specific reality based on a relative observer’ model, yes?” No. Introducing QM concepts into any discussion of the human mind or consciousness is in my view just woo, plain and simple. The only thing – the ONLY thing – that QM and consciousness have in common is that there’s lots of shit we don’t yet know about either of them. So what? There’s lots of shit we don’t know about lots of stuff. IMHO they are totally different problem domains.
There’s lots of options, of course. Dualism, dual-aspect monism, panpsychism, idealism, neutral monism, and many more options that have been proposed over the years. Even most physicalist theories aren’t really emergentist—neither type- nor token-identity theories are, nor is anomalous monism, higher-order thought theory, etc. I wouldn’t even think functionalism counts as emergentist, but I could see room for discussion in that case. So implying that the only options are ‘emergence’ and ‘magic’ is really painting with a too broad brush.
I understand that the universe is not deterministic, but Trinopus seemed to be saying that if it was deterministic we wouldn’t see the kind of complexity we do with evolution.
That’s the part I’m not following. Depending on your definition of complexity, it seems like you could have increasing complexity in a deterministic system, at least locally, while there is still energy to be harnessed. But due to determinism, future states are determined by initial variables.
First of all - this is a great summary. Thank you!
Yes, I understand that “emergent systems” are something we have understood more as we have set up complex instruction sets and data sources. I see what you are saying that we are applying that model to Consciousness because it is a “best explanation so far” type of framework.
I also get that trying to applying QM Field-collapse concepts, literally, to a framework for Consciousness, you see that as woo. I believe that I do, too, and am rolling around some gedanken to see if I get it.
I need to think about what I mean by “collapsing probabilities” within the context of Consciousness. I think, at best, I am using the phrase metaphorically / figuratively, not literally. But our consciousness does go through an evolving set of perceptions that get positioned into an overall narrative, skipping over various pre-conscious actions that our reptilian brains have already kicked into motion.
Whatever we do to fix a narrative into our brains as actions play out, they are NOT in the same nature of emergent phenomena as what plays out at the quantum level.
I am appreciating this thread. I hope others are, too. Heck, it even led Itself to come back and share!
I don’t think that discredits anything I’ve said, because those are all philosophical positions that address a higher level of the philosophy of mind. All I’m really arguing at the basic level I’m addressing is that the brain is a machine that obeys the physical laws of the universe and is therefore subject to a complete and objective physical analysis and its state subject to a complete logical description, and that the distinctly human things that we admire about the mind like “intelligence” or “consciousness” are therefore incontrovertibly emergent properties of its physical substrate and its logical state, since there isn’t anything else.
Take, for instance, your mention of type- and token-identity theories and how they aren’t “emergenist”. Nonsense. They neither are nor aren’t, they simply address a higher level of abstraction of how the brain might work. It’s like I’m arguing that a computer is a device that uses a fast microchip that accesses instructions from RAM and executes them, and you’re saying no, no, we need to understand what kinds of algorithms it’s executing and what language was used to write its programs. These are entirely different issues.
Now, I happen to be a firm believer in the computational theory of mind which posits that our mental processes are fundamentally computational and therefore can have arbitrary physical realizations, which conflicts with the type-identity kinds of theories that place great reliance on the physical substrate, but neither one contradicts the notion that the brain acquires fundamentally new qualities due to the emergent properties of information content and processing capability, just as in my simulator analogy. Which is ultimately the difference between the brain of a human and the brain of a carpet beetle.
I’m saying that if the universe were absolutely deterministic (Newton’s idea that if you knew the position and velocity of every particle, you would be able to predict the future) then the information we see now would have to have been inherent from the beginning of time.
(Just as the position of the billiard balls on the table must lead back to the compact triangular rack before the first break.)
In such a system, there is no means to create information. All the information is “there” already.
In a system that permits randomness, you can gain information by random processes.
(One example I use a lot is wind blowing across sand, creating highly ordered and organized sand-dune ridges. In our world that geometric regularity is created by randomness; under Newton’s model, those ridges were pre-determined in exact detail from the beginning of time.)
Anyway, a bit of a highjack, and I apologize for perpetuating it. (Randomly.)
NNnnno. I’m using the definition of “emergent” that I found when I looked it up before answering, which basically boiled down to the general idea that big things are the result of a lot of smaller things acting in a recognizable way. You would need a different definition to conclude as you seem to think I did.
More directly, both the current model for consciousness and the models for our current understanding of physics, were built during a long period of time where we as a society have been convinced that everything that we want to understand, is the result of smaller elements.
In the same way, back when the prevailing view as to what was at the bottom of everything we wanted to understand, was all powerful magic beings, all models of the universe were designed around THAT paradigm.
Nothing profound involved, and no reason to make anything of the fact that both models are in the “emergent” realm. But to be clear, there IS a good reason why we do adhere to emergent models these days, and that’s because it seems to work a lot, whereas non-emergent models of the past, were not really useful. It’s not just a fad, or an arbitrary decision.
An avalanche, the slope of a sand-pile and a drivable automobile are examples of “emergence”
If you try to use emergence in a mystical, magical or unscientific manor the whole concept falls down.
true emergent properties are irreducible, they are not destroyed or decomposed but they just simply appear or disappear.
Is is quite simply a logical fallacy to say that because two things are the result of emergence that they have any relation.
Wikipedia is an emergent property of the Internet but what relation does it have to a bowl of ice-cream that is also a product of emergence.
Any attempt to connect Quantum Physics and Consciousness needs to have a testable hypothesis, which I have not seen.
I should also point out that one critical aspect of emergence is irreducibility, which if these are truly emergent systems will rule out a connection based on that claim.
Several of the approaches above deny this—dualism, idealism, neutral monism, dual-aspect monism, and panpsychism in particular. That doesn’t necessarily make them ‘magic’—nobody guarantees us that the world is exhausted by the physical.
Even if the physical is all there is, that doesn’t follow. There are perfectly reductionist physicalist approaches. And on elmininativist theories, there’s just nothing there that could emerge!
Hmm, I think we might mean different things by ‘emergence’. For instance, on type-identity theory, certain types of mental states—e.g., feeling pain—are simply identical with certain types of neural activity—e.g., c-fibers firing. There’s no emergence here (‘emergence’, in the way I’m familiar with the term, means the appearance of qualitatively novel phenomena which precisely don’t reduce to—or are identical with—phenomena from which they emerge; emergentism thus contrasts with reductionism).
I’m sorry, but I don’t get the analogy. You claimed (or I understood you to claim) that the only way of getting mental properties from a physical base is via emergence, and that the physical base is all there is for getting out mental properties. Both are very hotly contested claims, which I simply meant to point out.
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I should also point out that one critical aspect of emergence is irreducibility, which if these are truly emergent systems will rule out a connection based on that claim.
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I am appreciating the clarification of emergence. What you are describing is what I mean, and I see how that applies to Consciousness. I think where my OP may get pear-shaped is that I am basically assuming that that definition of emergence applies in the same way to QM. But I don’t think the collapse of Fields is the same type. ??
