On Plato, the Early Church, and Modern Science: An Eclectic Meditation

November 30, 2004 | Jean F. Drew

[PatrickHenry]

The underlying fallacy in reasoning here is a common variant of the classic False Dichotomy which we will call Quantizing The Continuum.

I never encountered that one before. Excellent. Numerous applications, such as in speciation. Thank you.

[Doctor Stochastic]

... difference between that which is alive and that which is not alive is information ...

I don't think that this connect has been established. Certainly not on this thread. There have been many ideas put forth, but no demonstrations. I would argue that things are far more complex that have been discussed here.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

I said "... difference between that which is alive and that which is not alive is information ..."

You said "I don't think that this connect has been established. Certainly not on this thread. There have been many ideas put forth, but no demonstrations. I would argue that things are far more complex that have been discussed here."

The theory of abiogenesis (life from non-life) was raised on this thread at least by December 11^th at post 253 - and has been much investigated since. We have objectively searched for the most current research on the subject in a variety of disciplines.

We have also raised a number of different types of complexity and discussed what must precede the rise of any kind of complexity in biological systems - namely, autonomy and semiosis.

At post 491 I summarized what we had discussed, the points of agreement and the next items for the investigation. The main proponent for abiogenesis, StJacques, agreed with a few additions at post 522.

The bottom line is this: there is no way we can investigate - nor is there any way a theory can be seriously received by an objective observer - for the rise of life from non-life (abiogenesis) without having a clear definition of what the difference is between that which is alive and that which is not alive.

A fuzzy definition for biological life - or a descriptive one such as "I know it when I see it" - is necessarily subjective and therefore erases the blackboard of all abiogenesis alternative theories for an objective observer. Without a "common denominator" it is "apples v oranges" to weigh a theory which says catalytic RNA is “alive” to another theory which says an organism with DNA is "alive".

If a fuzzy definition is what you and tortoise and PatrickHenry are suggesting is the true definition in science, then I would assert that abiogenesis is an intellectual shell game, too subjective to warrant serious consideration by an objective observer.

That would be enormously disappointing to me because a definition has been on the table for weeks. It is epistemologically zealous because it is mathematics. It doesn’t come from any ideological corner and it's based on solid theory which opened the door to technological advances since 1949: information theory. It is not an imagining of a closeted theorist - but is integral to biological research, including cancer research.

IOW, the Shannon-Weaver model allows us to observe mathematically and “under the microscope” that that which separates a live skin cell from a dead skin cell (as in taken from the same person) – is information. One is successfully communicating (reduction of uncertainty in the receiver) while the other is not. And by extension - the life is not in the DNA which retains its utility, for forensics, long after communications cease.

I do hope we can come to some kind of agreement on the definition of life v non-life so that we can resume sometime, some where, an objective investigation of the theory of abiogenesis.

[js1138]

But the theory of evolution as it was originally framed would require “randomness” in the process and that would put it into the other kind of complexity.

The original (Darwinian) theory of evolution did not address the cause of variation. Darwin's theory is about the direction of evolution, and Darwin proposed that the direction was a function of natural selection.

I would argue that selection shapes the direction of all kinds of systems, whether variation is random or designed. The clearest example is the marketplace, where all kinds of designed objects compete for survival. One could list all kinds of supposedly superior designs that have lost out in the marketplace.

One could also cite the dreary history of command economies, which consistently underperform market economies.

It is a simple fact of the world that selection is an efficient shaper of artifacts. You can debate the source of the artifacts and the source of the variation, but selection weeds everything.

One consequense of this fact is that complex things cannot be designed from first principles. There is no math capable,even in principle, of modeling the future, and it is the future that shapes things, not the present.

I know you are fond of postulating an intelligence outside our definition of time. What I have to say cannot address that possibility. Any such omnipotent and omniscient being could poke a finger into the fabric and change everything we know -- past, present, and future -- without us being able to detect the change. But such a being would have his own Ubertime, and the design process would have the same iterative nature in ubertime.

[js1138]

I am aware that the marketplace is comprised of supposedly intelligent individuals, and some on these threads insist that this disqualifies it as an analog to evolution. But it doesn't. The marketplace is comprised of people guessing about the future. No one knows the future, and no one can predict it. If you design a specific object, such as a building, you can insert safe values for the materials and guarantee that the structure will not fall down of its own accord. But this is a trivial kind of design, a sophistocated case of Legos.

The markeplace calls this commodities, known items with known properties.

But even commodities cannot be traded without guesswork. Again, it is the future doing the shaping.

[tortoise]

I never encountered that one before. Excellent. Numerous applications, such as in speciation.

You've never encountered that one before because I just coined it. :-)

I keep seeing this particular fallacy, but I could never find a "named fallacy" that denoted this. False Dichotomy and Excluded Middle are in the ballpark, but do not really capture the essence of the problem in these cases.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your fascinating posts, js1138!

I’m not aware of any authority in any discipline who dismisses “natural selection” as a factor – and only one, Wolfram, who says that evolution happens by self-organized complexity in spite of “natural selection”.

But there is much dispute over what is the “engine” of the changes which feed the “natural selection”. The standard model as I’ve seen a gazillion times around here is: “random mutations + natural selection > species”.

But when I read the publications – especially by mathematicians and physicists who have addressed evolution – the von Neumann element of “self organizing complexity” keeps cropping up as the primary engine.

In the Shannon-Weaver model, the original formulation works nicely if one considers “random mutation” to be “noise” – however, if one looks at the greater “system” it is not possible to characterize the noise as random. It could be caused by harmonics – or harmonic distortion, for instance.

One consequense of this fact is that complex things cannot be designed from first principles. There is no math capable,even in principle, of modeling the future, and it is the future that shapes things, not the present.

If you are correct in this, then models of “self-organizing complexity” and “complex systems” wrt evolution are ill-conceived.

I believe you have hit upon the underlying problem in all kinds of evolution discussions – the worldview problem. Even people who are in agreement on the general concept of “gradual change over time” have real issues among themselves as to what is more fundamental – the driving force or the selection pressures. And by extension, what the driving force might be.

Of course the point is entirely moot if one leans to an end-oriented explanation of “all that there is”. Rather than forces driving (pushing) either by happenstance or some contained algorithm, they are being pulled toward an end result.

Your marketplace example is excellent! If there is intention and an objective, only contravening pressures would change the mix.

I know you are fond of postulating an intelligence outside our definition of time. What I have to say cannot address that possibility. Any such omnipotent and omniscient being could poke a finger into the fabric and change everything we know -- past, present, and future -- without us being able to detect the change. But such a being would have his own Ubertime, and the design process would have the same iterative nature in ubertime.

I agree with you up to the last point. Space/time is created as the universe expands (regardless of cosmology). God, the only possible uncaused cause for a beginning, would be outside all dimensionality including time dimensions and thus also beyond any physical or logical requirement for cause/effect.

The concept is very difficult and among the religious the battle rages between “predestination” and “free will” while the Scriptures speak to both. Truly, the concept of cause/effect is an illusion of space/time which doesn’t apply from the aspect of an extra time dimension (where this time dimension would be a plane and not a line) and certainly wouldn’t apply beyond that where dimensionality itself is not a factor.

[tortoise]

There is no math capable,even in principle, of modeling the future

Yes there is and has been for several decades, but it is grossly intractable as a practical matter of implementation which is why no one has ever used it in a visible fashion for "modeling the future". However, in the last five years there has been a lot of really interesting work on highly efficient approximations that are tractable for the prediction of non-trivial systems (a lot of the commercial R&D I do is in this area in fact), which could have an interesting impact on the landscape.

[js1138]

Yes there is and has been for several decades...

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "capable".

Let us postulate a computer capable of modelling the marketplace and of acquiring and exploiting all the data that exists in every nook and cranny of the marketplace, and can accurately predict market trends with some arbitrary precision. What happens when there are two such computers?

Didn't we see something like this a few years ago with the automatic hedging programs?

Life is competetive. Predicting the future confers a competetitive advantage. The ability of mutiple entities to predict the future will diminish the effectiveness of all similar systems, because, in a competetive marketplace, all will be attempting to predict each other's behavior.

[PatrickHenry]

You've never encountered that one before because I just coined it. I keep seeing this particular fallacy, but I could never find a "named fallacy" that denoted this. False Dichotomy and Excluded Middle are in the ballpark, but do not really capture the essence of the problem in these cases.

Well then, you join me in an exclusive (and very strange) club of two on this website. I've named the fallacy of Retrospective Astonismnent, and now you've named Quantizing The Continuum.

I've discussed my fallacy with a friend who teaches logic and philosophy, and he says that there are loads of unnamed fallacies out there. But it's very useful to name them. Makes it easier to spot them when they pop up.

[js1138]

If you are correct in this, then models of “self-organizing complexity” and “complex systems” wrt evolution are ill-conceived.

I don't have any strong opinions about the source of self-organizing behavior, or the deep causes of variation and change. I am, however, disturbed by the lack of attention given to selection as the shaper of things. I think it is key to our sense of free will.

I have posted this before, with little attention paid, pro or con. We attempt to predict the future -- that is what brains of all sizes do. Brains are predicting "machines". They correlate phenomena over time and form associations. With language, this ability is amplified astronomically.

But the future remains like a landscape viewed through a mist (or a glass, darkly). Even the smartest of us cannot see very far.

But think about this: it is the clouded vision of the future that shapes our immediate behavior. The immediate cause of our behavior is something that hasn't happened yet.

I am aware that this is a sloppy formulation of a sloppy concept, but I'm on my way out for a while. Back later.

[StJacques]

". . . others consider pollen to be a living hell, especially juniper pollen."

Ligustrums (Ligustrum Lucidum) are the absolute worst. They bloom in mid-March or thereabouts and they create hell on earth for me. I thank God that no one knows who I am here because I am going to reveal that there have been a couple of occasions when new homes were built near where I live when I prepared a quart of distilled water with large amounts of salt dissolved in it and snuck up to young ligustrum plants and poured the water around their roots to prevent their growing to maturity. Landscapers seem to love them because they grow profusely, require no fertilizer, can be clipped into a vigorous hedge, and are almost completely immune to wilt and insect pests. It's no wonder I think. The plants are practically poisonous themselves.

Sadly for me, I didn't get them all. Mid-March is still a difficult time.

[Doctor Stochastic]

The doctors tell me that chamisa is about the worst. People love them here. I removed (by steel and roundup) those around my house; now I sleep better.

When the contrail conspiracy was in full bloom here, one of the allergists remarked that, "People who have't lived in NM really don't understand allergies." People were calling radio stations claiming that planes were spraying things that made them sick.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply!

I have posted this before, with little attention paid, pro or con. We attempt to predict the future -- that is what brains of all sizes do. Brains are predicting "machines". They correlate phenomena over time and form associations. With language, this ability is amplified astronomically.

What you are describing here is very much akin to what betty boop was explaining from Dr. G's excerpt in recounting that applying force to a cat will draw much more than a simple Newtonian reaction.

Just as an investor might behave a certain way in anticipation of market trends, a cat might move intentionally to claw one's eyes out for drop-kicking him and an amoeba would move to ingest something it expects to be food.

IOW, this "intention" is an additive to a purely mindless or Newtonian reaction - and for a model of such a complex system to be successful it would have to factor in such competitive and reactive pressures of intent.

[js1138]

Intention is a OK word, but it can be embedded in a purely deterministic computer or machine. It doesn't have to imply consciousness. The phenomenon I am trying to discuss is that living things are affected by the consequenses of their behavior. This can occur by diffferent mechanisms in different time frames. Darwinian evolution describes the effect of changes to the bloodline. He didn't know about genes or DNA, but he understood that inheritance occurred with variation. It is the variation that has consequenses. On a very extended timeframe you could call mutation (and all the other kinds of genetic variation) a kind of behavior. It is a behavior exhibited by a species over tens or thousands or millions of generations.

On a faster timeframe, individual organisms do things that contribute to or detract from their survival. Even plants have processes and tropisms that could be called behavior. In the absense of neurons, indivisuals do not do much learning, so the consequenses of adaptive behavior work on the species rather than the individual.

Creatures that have neurons are subject to a kind of evolution that works directly on the individual. The process that behavioral scientists call learning can be mapped to the process of Darwinian evolution. Behavior is shaped by its consequenses. In both cases, what changes is frequency or probability. In Darwinian evolution it is gene or allele frequency. In behavioral psychology it is an associative response.

I am not a strict reductionist. I don't claim that everything is explained by these simple processes. But a lot is. These are very useful concepts. They have spawned a lot of useful research (and in the case of phobias, have inspired an effective treatment). All professional animal training employs this concept, as does all education and training for the retarded.

[betty boop]

Dear tortoise, congratulations on your discovery of a new fallacy! Since we all hope to get on the same page here, posters and lurkers alike, would you kindly give a demonstration by way of a specific example?

In another post you suggested that it was entirely possible that the means to predict the future at something like a 95-percent confidence level was almost within human reach. [Or at least that’s how I interpreted your remark.] Yikes!!! But what magic or miracle is this? What is the basis of this expectation?

Kindly pass the Shirraz, dear tort!!! (The serving girl is on her break.)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply and for sharing your insight!

The phenomenon I am trying to discuss is that living things are affected by the consequenses of their behavior.

Indeed, well said, js1138!

In the absense of neurons, indivisuals do not do much learning, so the consequenses of adaptive behavior work on the species rather than the individual.

Creatures that have neurons are subject to a kind of evolution that works directly on the individual. The process that behavioral scientists call learning can be mapped to the process of Darwinian evolution. Behavior is shaped by its consequenses. In both cases, what changes is frequency or probability. In Darwinian evolution it is gene or allele frequency. In behavioral psychology it is an associative response.

Indeed - that is a very important but woefully overlooked aspect to the whole concept of gradual change over time!

The history and prospects of conscious creatures cannot be evaluated with the same "yardstick" used for those creatures who do not have consciousness. A model of that type would be misleading.

And, I would add, that neither conscious biological life nor biological life which lacks consciousness can be evaluated with the same measure that would apply to the gradual change of the non-biological: forces, galaxies, solar systems, planets, chemicals, etc.

To me, it is as if each level does more than simply add to the previous one. And I'm not convinced that adding conscious creatures always enhances the prospects of the "whole". After all, individual free will can be anywhere from altruistic to self-serving to annihilative.

[betty boop]

Dear js1138, I hope you won’t mind if I barge into the marvelous conversation you’re having with Alamo-Girl with my two-cents’ worth; but I gather that you have been thinking about problems of time as intelligent beings nominally experience it; and the emphasis that you seem to place on the future seems to have teleological implications. [General definition: Teleology is the “science” that concerns itself with knowledge of ends, a/k/a/ goals, purposes.]

But hey! Even the laws of physics have a teleology: On Boltzmann’s view, for instance, the second law is dedicated to the end of thermodynamic equilibrium; i.e., to “heat death.” This is the inevitable “future of matter” qua matter. But I think it is obvious to any thinking person with eyes that this “teleology” is not the one that living systems follow, or try to express in their existence. Quite the contrary….

Skipping over millennia of intervening biology here [skipped for present purposes, but not forgotten], it seems homo sapiens sapiens experiences his most fundamental context or orientation as aligning to a linear “arrow of time” that moves from past, to present, to future. This is the “picture of reality” we get from our perch within 3+1D spacetime. But the human mind also seems to understand that somehow the question of time is not so neat as a mere linear sequence of events.

I cite you as a “’demonstration,” js: for you understand that the future – that “part of time” that we do not yet occupy, but to which we ever look forward nonetheless – has real impact on our decisions in the living present, and also on our “dead” past – a past that cannot be changed (unlike the physical laws, it would seem that living systems are not “time-reversible”; I have it on good authority that the same holds for memory) -- takes on ever-new meaning for us living in our present, all viewed, renewed, and integrated into the “framework” of our future hopes and expectations, translated in present action.

I dunno; but it seems to me that the next great conceptual breakthrough in the natural sciences will derive from a better understanding of the nature of time. Maybe it will come through string theory; maybe through the so-called Intelligent Design school; maybe through advances in information theory (mathematics is, after all, an “eternal” thing…).

As I said, I don’t now. Still it seems very clear to me: “Time is of the essence.” I’m glad you’re thinking about the problem, js1138. If you get any bright ideas, please do ping me!

[betty boop]

And I'm not convinced that adding conscious creatures always enhances the prospects of the "whole". After all, individual free will can be anywhere from altruistic to self-serving to annihilative.

So true, A-G. OTOH, if God wanted to create a creature that He wanted to co-create with Him, then the accent on consciousness and free will would seem to be important. If not, then not.

I'm sure a remark like that could have gotten a person "brought up on grievious charges" before the Inquisition, not too many centuries ago....

Time for bed... I really do need some sleep. Good night and sleep tight dear Alamo-Girl, and All!

[Alamo-Girl]

What a beautiful essay, betty boop! I'm amazed at how these eloquent insights just roll off the top of your tongue. Jeepers...

I cite you as a “’demonstration,” js: for you understand that the future – that “part of time” that we do not yet occupy, but to which we ever look forward nonetheless – has real impact on our decisions in the living present, and also on our “dead” past – a past that cannot be changed (unlike the physical laws, it would seem that living systems are not “time-reversible”; I have it on good authority that the same holds for memory) -- takes on ever-new meaning for us living in our present, all viewed, renewed, and integrated into the “framework” of our future hopes and expectations, translated in present action.

This, for instance - who could ask for a better or more timely example?