Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[Constance]

The closest view I have read on information to my stance is Vigo . . . A key to his RIT is that information is dependent on the construct. It is not a commodity out there in the environment, but relates to the construct that is interacting with the world...

I downloaded and tried to read that paper last night and found it difficult to follow, even before the 'technical appendix'. I could give it another try but it might be easier to understand what Vigo is saying if we could find a response to the paper or a dialogue between Vigo and another expert in his field.

I don't get much of what he writes, so I can't be too sure. His RIT is quite one-dimensional i.e. it lacks the hierarchy of constructs, speaking only of 'conceptual' constructs (as he defines it)

Maybe he has gone on to write another paper in terms of a hierarchy of constructs. I think what we need to understand is what he means by the 'constructs' for which 'information' becomes informative and usable, which suggests to me that he draws his theory from the basis of 'constructs' that are living organisms increasing in complexity in the evolution of species. He appears also to support the view that artificial intelligences (computers) are also 'constructs' capable of experiencing something [the environment in which they operate? the nature of the world?] and learning from their interactions with [it?]? Is my impression of his theory accurate?

These last links provided by Pharoah -- Capurro and Hjorland; Peters; and now Vigo -- are vastly enlightening in revealing the multidisciplinary critical thinking about, and responses to, the undefined uses of the term 'information' in circulation since Shannon published his information theory. Unfortunately these theorists we're reading now are not being read by enough practitioners in 'cognitive science' or by the reading public.

 

[Pharoah]

The essay below... spot on re information. Super!

"On the Evolution of Determinate Information" Conrad Dale Johnson June 26, 2013

"This essay argues for Wheeler’s original idea – not just that the physical world is made of information, but that information depends on measurements. Not only those made by observers in a lab, of course. Wheeler imagined the universe itself as an information-defining system, in which we and our measuring devices participate on the same basis as everything else.[3] "

"The “measurement problem” in QM comes down to this question – at what point then does a measurement occur? When and how do superpositions “collapse” to give a factual result? Since there seems to be no issue with measuring things in classical physics, this seems to be an issue unique to QM. But I think the reason it remains unresolved, after so many decades, is that we have no idea what a measurement is, even in classical physics. All we know is that they happen – that we do have access to well-defined information about the things around us. But the linearity of the quantum equations tell us no such thing can happen. When things interact, their superpositions never collapse; they only get entangled in larger superpositions.[5]
Objectively, I think this is right. There’s no point at which a system physically changes from a superposition to a definite state. But let’s pull back from looking at individual events, and gradually widen our viewpoint, taking account of more and more of the web of interaction surrounding these atoms and molecules. At some point, we know, we’ll reach a higher level of structure that does provide measurement-contexts, where many kinds of interaction work together to set traps for specific information, that helps specify other information.
Even at that point, though, there’s no reason to think that any objective physical collapse occurs. If we could stand outside the universe and “see” the web objectively, not as participants in it, presumably we’d still find only superpositions of all possible correlated interactions. But from the viewpoint of local systems inside the web, there’s a tiny subset of all these possible interactions that happens to be able to define a mutually-supporting set of coherent facts. For systems in this sub- network, interactions that happen to fit its self-defining structure do define and communicate specific information, that contributes to contexts defining other information. Interactions that don’t happen to fit this structure aren’t physically eliminated; they’re just irrelevant to the ongoing process that makes things within this network observable to each other."p.4

 

[Soupie]

Re the measurement problem. Pretty much off topic for this thread, but since we've discussed QM from time to time, I think all of you might appreciate this. It's Thad Robert's answer to "whether the partical-wave duality of light" is an illusion. Agree or disagree with his superfluid vacuum approach, this is one of the clearest, easiest to read overviews of the problem (as well as the probability wave collapse and measurement issues) I've read. It's maybe a 10-15 minutes read.

Thad Roberts's answer to Is wave-particle duality an illusion? - Quora

 

[Constance]

The essay below... spot on re information. Super!

"On the Evolution of Determinate Information" Conrad Dale Johnson June 26, 2013

"This essay argues for Wheeler’s original idea – not just that the physical world is made of information, but that information depends on measurements. Not only those made by observers in a lab, of course. Wheeler imagined the universe itself as an information-defining system, in which we and our measuring devices participate on the same basis as everything else.[3] "

"The “measurement problem” in QM comes down to this question – at what point then does a measurement occur? When and how do superpositions “collapse” to give a factual result? Since there seems to be no issue with measuring things in classical physics, this seems to be an issue unique to QM. But I think the reason it remains unresolved, after so many decades, is that we have no idea what a measurement is, even in classical physics. All we know is that they happen – that we do have access to well-defined information about the things around us. But the linearity of the quantum equations tell us no such thing can happen. When things interact, their superpositions never collapse; they only get entangled in larger superpositions.[5]
Objectively, I think this is right. There’s no point at which a system physically changes from a superposition to a definite state. But let’s pull back from looking at individual events, and gradually widen our viewpoint, taking account of more and more of the web of interaction surrounding these atoms and molecules. At some point, we know, we’ll reach a higher level of structure that does provide measurement-contexts, where many kinds of interaction work together to set traps for specific information, that helps specify other information.
Even at that point, though, there’s no reason to think that any objective physical collapse occurs. If we could stand outside the universe and “see” the web objectively, not as participants in it, presumably we’d still find only superpositions of all possible correlated interactions. But from the viewpoint of local systems inside the web, there’s a tiny subset of all these possible interactions that happens to be able to define a mutually-supporting set of coherent facts. For systems in this sub- network, interactions that happen to fit its self-defining structure do define and communicate specific information, that contributes to contexts defining other information. Interactions that don’t happen to fit this structure aren’t physically eliminated; they’re just irrelevant to the ongoing process that makes things within this network observable to each other."p.4

I especially like this last paragraph:

"Even at that point, though, there’s no reason to think that any objective physical collapse occurs. If we could stand outside the universe and “see” the web objectively, not as participants in it, presumably we’d still find only superpositions of all possible correlated interactions. But from the viewpoint of local systems inside the web, there’s a tiny subset of all these possible interactions that happens to be able to define a mutually-supporting set of coherent facts. For systems in this sub- network, interactions that happen to fit its self-defining structure do define and communicate specific information, that contributes to contexts defining other information. Interactions that don’t happen to fit this structure aren’t physically eliminated; they’re just irrelevant to the ongoing process that makes things within this network observable to each other."p.4

"Superpositions of all possible correlated interactions" describes, I think, the concept of an entangled (and evolving) 'universal' holographic structure that represents the way in which all aspects of physical reality are interwoven, interconnected, integrated. Many thinkers extend this integral state of 'reality' to include the nonphysicality of that which is felt and thought by living beings. I've read in numerous places the statement attributed to physical theorists that 'information is permanent, cannot escape the universe'. The question is the degree to which we can comprehend the integral structure of physical information holding the universe together.

'Collapses' that occur in qm experiments concern only what we can see, our limited purview of reality, at the q level. A few years ago at physorg.com there was a lengthy discussion, actually a vigorous debate, concerning the standard procedure in qm experimentation to theorize that that which is learned in these experiments can be interpreted only epistemologically rather than ontologically. Bohm and his followers (recently increasing in number) argue that what we can understand at present supports an ontological interpretation of q interaction and entanglement.

 

[Pharoah]

@Constance NB author bio @ An Observable World by Conrad Dale Johnson

 

[Constance]

A thread started by Han today at the link below might be relevant to our attempt here to understand how physical information operates in the world, and how beings more advanced than ourselves might be capable of manipulating it:

Real "Tractor Beam" in action! (video and article)

 

[Constance]

@Constance NB author bio @ An Observable World by Conrad Dale Johnson

Exactly on point. I think we need to read this paper. I'm on page 2 at this point.

 

[Pharoah]

paracast part 5 post 749

 

[Constance]

I knew I'd heard that name before. Here's a direct link to that post:

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

 

[Constance]

An extract from Johnson's first comment to Rovelli copied in his dialogue with Rovelli in that post:

"It's not just that such arrangements are never physically simple, but also that any way of measuring something depends on other ways of measuring other things. I argue that this complex interdependency of different ways of "observing" is really what's behind the measurement problem in QM."

 

[Constance]

Another statement by Johnson, extracted from the post following the one above, in his response to another fqxi essay in that competition:

"Since the relationships between physical parameters can be expressed in mathematical equations, no doubt physics is profoundly mathematical. But apparently it takes a very complex combination of very different mathematical structures to support a world like ours, where many different kinds of information are all physically definable in terms of each other. This is not at all the kind of system studied in pure mathematics."

I for one find it difficult to imagine that all of this interactive and integral complexity occurred by way of random events in the evolution of the universe, but that's another issue.

 

[Constance]

@Pharoah, speaking of Rovelli here's a link to an earlier paper of his entitled "Halfway Through the Woods: Contemporary Research on Space and Time," available in whole at

The Cosmos of Science

His conclusion on pp. 217-218 summarizes his position, but the paper itself is wonderfully well written.

 

[Constance]

@Constance NB author bio @ An Observable World by Conrad Dale Johnson

I read this again this afternoon and am even more impressed by it. How do you and others here react to it? It's highly relevant to the issue of the complexity of what we can think of as 'information' and to your hierarchical construct theory as I see it.

 

[smcder]

 

[Pharoah]

@Pharoah, speaking of Rovelli here's a link to an earlier paper of his entitled "Halfway Through the Woods: Contemporary Research on Space and Time," available in whole at

The Cosmos of Science

His conclusion on pp. 217-218 summarizes his position, but the paper itself is wonderfully well written.

I found the Rovelli very interesting. Profound.
Wasn't so taken by "An observable world" as I was with "On the evolution of determinate information". Bit disturbed by Johnson's lack of referencing and absence in the 'World of Google', but his ideas are stimulating.

 

[Pharoah]

Are personalised gravatars out of fashion again? Is my Pluto like wearing flared jeans in the 80s?

 

[Constance]

I found the Rovelli very interesting. Profound.
Wasn't so taken by "An observable world" as I was with "On the evolution of determinate information".

I think Johnson is just getting started in publishing his theories, through the FXQi contests, and I'm encouraged by most of the responses he gets from physicists in that forum. His own background is in the History of Consciousness, according to his brief bio. Academic physicists, including Rovelli, avoid getting into that territory of course. But he was, or said he was, intrigued by Johnson's "An observable world" ideas (or said he was after that exchange with Rovelli that I quoted in that post you linked in part 5 of C&P). I'd like to see a dialogue by Rovelli and Johnson and wonder if one has taken place and is available in print or online.

Re Johnson's "On the evolution of determinate information" paper from the subsequent FXQi competition on the "It or Bit" question, he wrote this to another commentator:

"You're right that I neglected to answer the question as to which is the more basic, It or Bit. I would say that the existence of physical entities and their properties (It) ultimately depends on the ability of the physical interaction to communicate this information. It's this ability to define information between systems that evolves, just as in biology what evolves is the ability to reproduce information between a system and its offspring. Wheeler and others have argued that this process can be conceived in terms of asking yes/no questions, hence "It from Bit". But I think what's basic about information has more to do with the contexts that define it than with the fact that it can be cast in binary form."

I think this touches the very question we have been pursuing here regarding the sufficiency of 'information' to account for experience and thinking as evolved in our species, as does Peters's expansion of the definition of 'media' down to the interactions of our embodied being within the embodiment of nature at the level within which we experience the physical. We and the world grow increasingly more complex in our evolving interactions within the temporality of being, and the notion of the 'block universe' impedes our recognizing that.

Bit disturbed by Johnson's lack of referencing and absence in the 'World of Google', but his ideas are stimulating.

So am I, but I think the explanation is that he's in the beginning stages of developing and supporting his 'It and Bit' theory.

 

[Constance]

I just found a profile and bibliography of Conrad Dale Johnson at philpapers.org:

Profile for Conrad Dale Johnson - PhilPapers

His training was evidently in philosophy of law and ethics, with his recent interests moving into consciousness studies and the relation of consciousness to physics and 'information'.

 

[Constance]

Here is a well-informed review of a book we should cite in this thread: Mark Rowlands, The New Science of Mind.

The review:

An Extensive Enterprise
By Stephen E. Robbins on August 14, 2013
4 of 4 people found this review helpful

This book [The New Science of the Mind], I must note right away, is truly for the philosophical elite and for the philosophical psychology folks, with the scales tipping heavily to the philosophical side. The work is an extensive and intensive effort to examine notions of embedded mind, embodied mind, enactive mind, extended mind, while arriving at the author's particular view of extended mind. A key component of this framework is "action on external structures [ e.g., the environment] that transforms the information they contain from merely present to available... " Characterizing positions nicely and lucidly, he arrives at a position he terms "amalgamated," combining the embodied and the extended views. In this effort he reviews the visual theories and work of Marrs, O'Regan and Noë, Vygotsky, and Gibson, each discussion clear and well done. Gibson's concept of the "optic array," Rowlands notes, qualifies as the "external structure" of information par excellence, while his emphasis on the organism's action to transform this structure, thus isolating invariants and making this information available also fits perfectly.

The extended mind thesis that Rowlands defends is that at least some mental processes extend into the organism's environment in that they are composed of actions performed on the world around the organism. This therefore extends the notion of cognition beyond the brain, in that the whole body is (or can be) involved. In this general conception, Rowlands reserves a role for the standard notion of representations current in cognitive science, and in this he differs explicitly from the view that Gibson denied such a construct in his view of the brain. In all this, he emphasizes that this is to be viewed as process, rather than cognitive "states." It is obvious that this thesis is not the version of extended mind, e.g., a panpsychic-like framework, that some might be looking for, in fact, from this perspective, the thesis seems very conservative. Yes, it is different from the pure centered-on-the-brain notion that is attributed to the Cartesian view, but it still almost becomes a question of just how could this be really that controversial? Further, it is very unclear just why this view is not already implemented in and furtherable in, robotic/connectionist architecture, in fact, in studying Rowlands' (very interesting) discussion of certain elements of connectionist architecture and the subsumption architectures of situated robotics, it seems that he views this to be the case. In fact, it was not clear to me, given the book, why such robots are not perfectly conscious?

The extended mind thesis that Rowlands might have arrived at would indeed be radical had he not ignored several major questions. The first is the problem of qualia, only obliquely approached in his examination of Nagel, but not come to grips with in terms of Chalmers. This problem is actually more general, for avoiding Chalmers' misleading emphasis on qualia, it is, at least in vision/audition, the problem of the origin of the image of the external world. How does this image arise, or get generated, or in general is it accounted for? If you are still holding, as Rowlands, that the brain employs representations, then you have the "coding" problem that the concept of representations involves. Three dots (...) can stand for an "S" in Morse code, or three tomatoes, or a stove. One must know the domain to which to map the code, and the brain would then, in effect, have to already know what the external world (the domain) looks like to use its "representational" code (for the neural-chemical code cannot look anything like the external world). If to solve this, you are relying surreptitiously on the external structure (or field) , say, the optic array, then at what scale of time are you conceiving this structure/array/field to exist - the scale of a "buzzing" fly in the field, a fly slowly flapping his wings like a heron, a fly as a vibrating ensemble of atoms, or what? If the external field is indeed holographic (as one could also construe the optic array) - a massive interference pattern - then it is un-imageable - at any scale of time. You cannot just assume the environment as a nice "external structure" that the brain uses - as though somehow the image of the external world as we know it already exists! Yet this is what is going on in Rowlands, or in O'Regan and Noë for that matter. Further, the external structure is not static, it is dynamically transforming with buzzing flies, falling leaves, rotating cubes. One does not need action from the body to "make the structure change." But now you open another set of problems, for now you need a theory of the basic "memory" that allows the brain to specify (or us to perceive) these transforming events - as extended events over time. It is a problem hidden currently under the notion of "temporal consciousness" that is equally a problem of qualia, in fact has greater primacy, for all perceived qualia extend over time.

This is where Rowlands goes wrong in holding that Gibson is compatible with representational models. Gibson was well aware of the problem of the origin of the external image of the world, and further, the difficulty with invariants defined only over time, for example form as defined only over flow fields. No static representations can capture this - no symbolic manipulation or connectionist architecture as I think Rowlands fails to see. An invariant defined over time cannot exist as a "bit" traveling along the nerves. This is why Gibson went to the notion that the brain is "resonating" (a time-extended process) to these invariants and in this resonance is "specific to" the environment. This "specific to" has been the problem, for how does this "specific to" actually explain the origin of the image of the external environment and at a certain scale of time? This brings us to the greatest philosopher of the extended mind, apparently unknown, despite Rowlands' attention to Heidegger (with another nice exposition), Husserl, Sartre, and others, and this is Bergson. Bergson, I have argued, presciently (and uniquely) using the essence of holography, fills in the missing piece of Gibson, but Bergson's mode of mind is indeed extended, for the relation and the difference between subject and object is not in terms of space, but of time. (See for example [Collapsing the Singularity: Bergson, Gibson and the Mythologies of Artificial Intelligence]) In this the brain is seen as an entirely different form of device, with a critical dynamics that is far from achievable by the connectionist or robotic or computer model. The neglect of Bergson in this embedded, embodied, enactive, extended literature - even if only to consider and reject his vision for hopefully solid reasons - is indeed unfortunate.

I could add more analytical objections for I see problems in the conception of cognition, the role of consciousness in cognition, the nature of the problem of memory (one can have no theory of the "storage" of experience when the problem of perception - the very origin of experience - is unresolved). However, the book, as I noted, is an extensive and intensive piece of thought, attacking effectively the Cartesian framework and making a case for a wider view of mind. Rowlands, obviously in tune with the state of various minds in his field, sees this as necessary, noting that his amalgamated (embodied/extended) vision is yet seen in these quarters as "outlandish." As such, the case needs to be made; there is just, imo, far more room to extend."

There are other helpful reviews at this amazon.com link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262014556/?tag=rockoids-20

The beginning pages of Rowland's book at the amazon link summarize clearly the deeper issues concerning mind (and thus consciousness) to which recent neuroscience, studies of cognition, philosophy of mind, and phenomenology have brought us.

 

[Pharoah]

Is there a life expectancy for atomic and subatomic psrticles?
If, for example, you left a hydrogen atom floating in space, would it eventually stop being a hydrogen atom? Decay or something?