Evgenii : I thank you for your questions, since It helps me to re-examine and clarify my position.
2012/7/29 Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> > On 29.07.2012 11:28 Alberto G. Corona said the following: > > These psycho-philosophical arguments like the one of John Ellis are >> what in evolutionary Psychology is called an explanation based on >> proximate causes. >> > > I guess that science is based on observation and hence it might be good to > define what observation is. To this end, past, present and future seems to > be quite a crucial concept. First a scientist plans an experiment. Hence at > the beginning the experiment is in the future. Then the scientist performs > the experiment and eventually the experiment is in the past. > The notion of past and present is not only crucial for science, but for human life. The consciousness of time appears as a consequence of two things: Lack of information and the hability that humans have of learning from experience. Plants and most of the animals have innate set of behaviours or at most, a short learning program that fixes behaviour after the young age. But humans modify their behaviour depending on the past, but not only the past but depending on the ordering of events in the past: In an experiment , as in a love affair or in a battle, the lessons learned depends in the order of the events. If we had not that ability to learn from experience and thus, the need to remember sequences of events, then our philosophers would not have the cognitive capacity to philosophize about time, nor the scientists would perform experiments. > > Instead, ultimate causes are the physical causes that generate, by >> natural selection, a mind with such concepts and such phenomenology >> that is capable of such reasoning. I take evolutionary reasoning >> because evolution is the only way to link both kinds of philosophical >> and physical explanations. The first is more important in practical >> terms, because our phenomenology defines what IS real. Period. But >> only ultimate causes can illuminate and explain them. >> > > Recently I have written about Grand Design by Hawking. It seems that > according to you, the M-theory could be an ultimate cause. Yet, it does not > contain the A-series based on past, present and future. One will find there > at best the B-series only. It is unclear to me how the M-theory could > describe a scientist planning and performing an experiment. > > I said at the end that the ultimate causes can be the consequences of the existence of the Mind. Of course the M theory is not a theory of everything, It may be mathematical manifold in which our bodies and the substrate of our minds live. but the world of the mind is different form the phisico-mathematical world. In a timeful way of thinking It can be said that the mind evolved (along time) by natural selection to permit its owm survival and reproduction, but it also can be said that the mind, or our shared minds, made of communicable concepts, make possible the existence of the mathematical substrate in which we live. > > [Our phenomenology conform a common, communicable reality among us >> because it is the product of a common mind, that is a product of a >> common brain architecture, that is a result of a common brain >> development program that is a result of a common genetic >> inheritance] >> > > Let me ask Max Velmans' question again. According to neuroscience, all > conscious experience including visual is in the brain. Hence, according to > the ultimate causes, is the brain in the world or the world in the brain? > What would you say? > Again, this question is quite important, as we have to define what > observation is. Does for example observation happens in the brain The activity of the brain is the mind and the mind is a separate world that includes all that can be perceived. What is outside of the mind may just plain mathematics. What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. Observations happen in the mind. We can repeat and verify experiments because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind, and because our minds have similar architecture and experience, so we have the same language, interests, experimental machines, procedures, so, as Eric Voegelin said, we live in a shared social mind. However, The COMP hypothesis it is possible to parsimoniously substitute every component of the brain by a silicon analogue without the mind being aware of the change. this , for me, makes the question "were our minds come from" a mistery > > > An example of ultimate causes may be the theory of Relativity, >> statistical mechanics, the fact that we live in a four dimensional >> universe and our 4d life lines go along a maximum gradient of >> entropy, and the desplacement along these lines is called time, that >> is local to each line. Another ultimate cause is the nature of >> natural selection, how and why a certain aggregate of matter can >> maintain its internal entropy in his path trough a line of maximum >> increase of entrophy, and it is by detection computation and acting >> to avoid dangers and to capture good things. The good and bad entropy >> must come in identifiable bags in an eternal "videogame". This is a >> requisite for life. Non avoidable changes of entropy causes mass >> extinctions. >> >> [The maximum gradient of entropy is paradoxically at first sight, the >> most computable path, that is why life proceed in this direction: >> http://www.slideshare.net/**agcorona1/arrow-of-time-** >> determined-by-computability<http://www.slideshare.net/agcorona1/arrow-of-time-determined-by-computability> >> >> >> ] > > In your presentation you use terms causation and computation. How would > you define them? > > Under the idea of four dimensional (or higuer dimensional) block universe where time are included and everithing is static, causality does not exist. The M theory describes a timeless manifold, but there are partial phisical laws, that describe particular local phenomenons, that uses time as parameters, but these phisical laws which take time as parameter, do not have a preference for a particular arrow of time, so, as I try to show, heat in the air can rearrange the pieces of a porcelain vase and push it up to the table. causality appears in our time-oriented mind, who proceed, as I try to demonstrate in the presentation, in the computable direction , the direction of entropy increase. for this reason causes are less entropic that consequences. is the drop of the vase what causes his crash because entropy increase is the direction of life and we observe it this way. > Let us say that there is some conglomerate of atoms. When it computes and > when not? > > From a black-box perspective, they compute when they are open to to the environment and they maintain its internal entropy. That may be the definition of life too. From inside, they must live in a predictable environment with smooth phisical laws where entrophy dangers and opportinities can be discovered to react appropriately > The same is with causation. What is causation according to ultimiate > causes? Does it mean something more as solution to some transient > inexorable governing laws? > At the end as I said ultimate causes can be just consequences. I used ultimate causes in the sense of evolutionary psichology, but this does not ultimately bring any definitive meaning of causality, when seen from a broader philosophical perspective. what is interesting is the link between the phisical and the philosophical world, betwen the world of phisico-mathematical and the world of the mind that evolutionary thinking brings. > As for the entropy and the arrow of time, recently I have found some nice > quotes about Boltzmann > > From Boltzmann’s fluctuation hypothesis to Boltzmann’s Brain > http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/06/**boltzmanns-brain.html<http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/06/boltzmanns-brain.html> > > That's what happens with the entropy approach: > > “And that minimum fluctuation would be “Boltzmann’s Brain.” Out of the > background thermal equilibrium, a fluctuation randomly appears that > collects some degrees of freedom into the form of a conscious brain, with > just enough sensory apparatus to look around and say “Hey! I exist!”, > before dissolving back into the equilibrated ooze.” > > The Boltzman brains , according with what i have read, are completely different beasts. Boltzman pressuposes, that , since no random arrangement of matter is statistically impossible, and Boltzman demonstrated it in certain conditions (ergodic conditions) , with enough time, some arrangements of matter would simulate minds, or even worlds and civilizations. But 15.000 Million years, that is the age of the universe is not enough. The Boltzman mechanism lies in random events. the process of natural selection instead select random events and create designs more fast. Seen from a mathematical four dimensional perspective,, or better, in what the phisicist call a phase space, adaptations may be seen as attractors in a chaotic evolution. boltzman evolutions are pure chaotic. 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