[FRIAM] Complexity Returns to the Mother Church (or v.v?).

[Nick Thompson]

A Homily from the Mother Church,

 

Dear Bretheren and Sisteren, 

 

Was it because Robert Holmes returned to the fold, or was it just a
coincidence that today we returned to discussions of such topics as
emergence, determination, downward causality, and the possibility of
explanatory reduction of all phenomena to particle physics.   Now, in the
past, where this matter has always seemed to settle, is on the idea that
while it is IN PRINCIPLE true that everything is determined and that, if we
had but time, and computer enough, we could predict the effect of the
butterfly's flap on Hurricane Michael, in PRACTICE it's a waste of time
thinking about because we can't, we won't, and we never will.  This solution
has the joint benefit of conceding that physics is the queen of sciences,
yet allowing us to tell  physicists to go screw themselves because, for most
of the things we think about, they are TOTALLY irrelevant.  

 

I have never been happy with this solution.  It's just not Jesuitical for
me.  As many of you know (because you have suffered through it) I have read
a lot of C. S. Peirce since the last time we talked about these issues at
FRIAM, so I was led to wonder Peirce has given me any purchase on these
questions in the meantime.  So here is what I came away from our discussions
with: 

 

1.       Determination means just, event A is accompanied by a higher than
average probability of event B.  Now, please, I would like to bracket for
once that fact that what I just wrote is non-sense.  Probabilities are
relative frequencies and inhere, therefore, to categories of events, not to
individual events.  Unless we are careful, this will lead us to an
uncomfortable discussion of how we will ever know if event A1 and A2 belong
to the same category and, I think, will soon discover that we are in a
vicious circle.  So PLEASE, let's not go there.  Allow me: "Determination
means just, event A is accompanied by a higher than average probability of
event B.  "

2.       Every event is accompanied by an infinity of other events which
have nothing to do with it.  I type the words, "Vladimir, Go Brush Your
Teeth" and, mirabile dictu, Putin is brushing his teach.  Yet there is no
connection between those events.  Most pairs of events are like that.  Or,
as Peirce puts it, the world is just about as random as it could be.  

3.       If there is ANY order in the world - and Peirce thinks there is -
organisms that smoked that order out would be much better off than organisms
that ignored it.  Groups of organisms that learned from one another such
contingencies would be better off than groups that didn't , etc.  Indeed,
physical structures that were in accord with such lawful relations (think
orbits) would be more enduring than others.  Thus, that the world around us
is mostly orderly is because we have adapted to,  sought out and thrived in
to that small part of it where order prevails.

4.       Not all determination is simple.  Some events are themselves
complex events.  So event X can consist of the concatenation of events A, B,
and C, and event Y can be determined by such a concatenation.  Any event
that is determined by the organization of its component events is said to be
an emergent.  That a triangular structure holds weight is an emergent of the
placement and attachment of its three legs.  

5.       Upward causation is partial.  Levels of organization supervene upon
the properties of the events of which they are composed.  From the strength
of the triangle one can infer something about the parts that make it up, but
from the parts themselves, lacking information about their arrangement, one
cannot determine that the triangle will be strong.

6.       Some structures are capable of generating their parts.  A supercell
thunderstorm can arrange the atmosphere around it in a manner that will
generate more thunderstorms.  A protein can arrange amino acids to make a
protein.  In such systems, at least, there is downward causality.  

7.       So, is everything reducible to particle physics?  No.  Not unless
you believe that two by four's are particles. I would submit, therefore,
that every physicist, no matter how wise, no matter how big his computer
might be, will require engineers to construct his particle accelerator.   

So there! 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20181012/126311c7/attachment.html>