Eric has this weird faith that we can separate words from ideas. I hope he right, but I am not so sure.
Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles Sent: Monday, November 2, 2020 4:35 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Emergence and Downward Causation Jochen, At a first pass I don't think I disagree with any of that. But I also don't think it would count as 'downward causation'. I write a note on a board. The next day, seeing the note on the board causes me to take a pill (is part of a causal chain leading to the pill taking). That's just normal causation. I think the question is whether your "intention to take the pill" can cause the behavior of writing-the-note-on-the-board and the behavior of taking-the-pill-in-response-to-seeing-the-note. At that point Nick objects that there is some odd category error there, because both behaviors in question are constituent parts of the intention... because we aren't dualists who believe in disembodied intentions floating around in psychophysical parallelism with some mysterious causal mechanisms... we are some brand of behaviorist/materialist who understands intentions to be higher-order patterns of behavior in circumstances. And that's all fine and good... EXCEPT... that there are several past breakdowns of "types of causes" in which the constituent parts of something are recognized as some particular sub-category of causation. And at that point, we either agree to be clearer about our terminology, or we are just in some weird argument over words, not ideas. On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 1:36 PM Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net <mailto:j...@cas-group.net> > wrote: It is hard and at the same time it is not. This is what makes it interesting. From a psychological perspective the question is: do the words I think and ideas I have influence my own behavior directly, and if they do, how? In my opinion it is not possible to control oneself by ideas or words *directly*. At best they are confusing and prevent actions, like Hamlet's "to be or not to be" monologue. We react to events. We are driven by intentions, but also by emotions and instincts. If we do something we must have the desire to do it. Since we are biological animals we primarily follow the biological directive (eat! mate! replicate!). In addition to this rules we follow the laws society imposes on us. But a person can decide to do something, for example to learn more about mathematics. So he might enroll at some kind of college. Except the one moment where he decided to start studying others will tell him what to do and what to learn. He also can write down a note in his calendar which reminds him the next day to do something. Or he can speak to himself loudly so that he remembers it the next day. In both cases language allows us to interact with our future self. IMHO language in written or spoken form is the key to causation. Or would you disagree? As a psychologist you know better than me how the mind works. -J. -------- Original message -------- From: Eric Charles <eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com <mailto:eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> > Date: 10/30/20 13:50 (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Emergence and Downward Causation Come on man.... this shit isn't that hard.... First, you buy into a system of levels. Then something at a higher level causes something at a lower level. IF you really have a problem with it, it's because you think the "levels" and bullshit. That's a different issue. "Levels" are always at least somewhat arbitrary, and we should all just admit that from the start. Second, you have to buy into the many and various well-established meanings of "causation". Let's say I go to the store and have a stroke. Let's say someone demanded that you explain what caused me to have a stroke in the store, rather than at home. Obviously you could answer that lots of different ways. One "cause" (part of the efficient cause, if we are using Aristotle's categories) is that I was in the store. Because I was in the store, all the parts of me were in the store. Because all the parts of me were in the store, when something happened to one of those parts, it happened in the store. Is "All of me" a higher level of organization than "part of me"? If we buy that, then the-stroke-being-in-the-store was downward caused by I-was-in-the-store. Why does New Mexico have Trump as president? Because the entire U.S. has Trump as president, and Trump-is-President becoming true in the-entire-U.S. downward causes that to be the case in New Mexico. On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 6:11 PM Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net <mailto:j...@cas-group.net> > wrote: My two cents: I would say the secret to exotic phenomena like downward causation hides behind boring stuff we all know: behind laws and language, however boring that may sound. Aristotle said the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The difference between the whole and the sum of its parts is the interaction between the parts, their interplay and their organisation. These interactions are determined by laws - the laws of nature, the rules of swarm intelligence or the laws which are engraved on stone tablets. The laws lead to the emergence of high level structures, but they also constrain individual actions. So in principle downward causation is simple: the laws are the key. They lead to emergence or downward causation. Stone tablets which everybody ignores have apparently no causally determined effect. But stone tablets which everybody obeys have obviously a strong causal connection to everyone. -J. -------- Original message -------- From: thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> Date: 10/29/20 20:26 (GMT+01:00) To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> > Subject: [FRIAM] Emergence and Downward Causation All, Nobody seems to have the energy for a conversation about emergence right now, but if we were to, I would hope we would start with saying what we thought emergence is. My working definition comes from Wimsatt. He starts by defining aggregativity as a property of whole which is pretty much dependent on the number of the elements that compose it. Weight is an aggregate property of a football team. He then defines emergence as a failure of aggregativity. Winning ability is an emergent property of a football team because it depends on how you organize the players, not simply on their weight. (eg, you put the heavier players on the line, the lighter, faster players in the backfield or ends). He concludes that emergence is the rule and aggregativity a rarity. I like this definition because, unlike many others, it does not depend on “surprise” or “ignorance”. N Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On Behalf Of David Eric Smith Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 11:32 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats I’m actually quite on board with your wish to make these questions more interesting than they may have started out, Nick. And I also think you are right that the namers meant the names to carry weight. (Though I also think most thought is a bit hurried and careless, and gives itself more credit than is earned.) The interesting struggle will be that the original calculation was in a way rather small, compared to the metaphor that many hope can be spun from it. Or perhaps said another way, maybe many of these things that have weight to compel as we experience them in life, are pointers to little mechanics below the surface that, in its own terms, is a small thing. I know that in each paper I write, I imagine getting at a big idea, and realize that the most I have done is a small calculation. So there is a foot in each boat…. Best, Eric On Oct 29, 2020, at 1:20 PM, <thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > <thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote: Sorry everybody. I seem to be out of my depth in many pools at once. I really like Eric’s analysis. I still want to protest abit. I think the dynamic relation between the physical concept and the physicist’s humanistic metaphor is much more interesting than this analysis would suggest. Physicists use those metaphors for a reasons, cognitive and communicatory. And humanists are right to explore their implications. Otherwise, it would be fair for the humanist to turn to the physicist and say, “Shut up and calculate.” The paradox of development (AKA epigenisis) is that there are all sorts of futures that can be known pretty precisely about a developing individual yet they are totally unknown to the individual that is developing. It has to do with our discussion of intenSion, a few months back. It may also be time for one of you to be delegated to “elder” me, in the quaker tradition. “Now, Nick, ….” N . N Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,8pikIqjsWmNuBHfzE3VVLQF4_vkvnGX1oPfmWg4qJVbO9ts2bygQUBET758DUPmA4dH0McR2MMXhK_cL-slNT6tfSaWx6GP41uIIowPT-1XJk62VKA,,&typo=1> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On Behalf Of David Eric Smith Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 10:00 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats I want to somehow say sigh and sigh on this thread. It comes somehow straight out of Monty Python (Blessed are the cheesemakers….) 1. Some physicists figure out how to do a calculation, showing that some parts can go dynamically into an organized state, appealing to a combination of their own shapes and laws of large numbers for events that happen, and they don’t need to have the organized form imposed by any outside boundary conditions beyond the very low-level rules for how the events are sampled. They already knew this happens in equilibrium, because that is how anything freezes. But here they are seeing it in a dynamical context, where the ordered form happens to be more ordered than the states they could produce from somehow-similar components in equilibrium. 2. Physicsts, like everyone, are usually impatient and don’t want to have to recite the whole operational meaning of something every time they want to refer to it in the course of saying something else. 3. So the physicists come up with a tag. It should be sort of evocative, sort of catchy, and easy to remember. Aha! “Self-organization”, to keep in mind that the organization is resulting from low-level local features, and not from the boundary conditions imposed on the system beyond that local stuff. 4. Nick encounters the term. It happens to contain two words about which he cares very very much, so to him they are not mere hackage generated by some physicists, but freighted with meaning. 5. Nick starts a thread: Which self? Is it the same self before and after? Is “organized” here a transitive or an intransitive verb? If transitive, what is the object? Can the same referent be both object and subject of a transitive verb? Does that make the verb reflexive? What are the implications for monists? For dualists? 6. Friam is willing to engage. 7. I write a long tedious email, trying to remind the humanists that the most important character trait of physicists is impatience. Eric On Oct 29, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Prof David West <profw...@fastmail.fm <mailto:profw...@fastmail.fm> > wrote: Nick, " I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled." By what definition? Your monist view that the self lacks ontological status in the first place? davew On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, at 5:48 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: > Jon, > > Is a steam governor a case of downward causation? > > This question will reveal, no doubt, that I don't understand your previous > answer, but perhaps others will explain it to me. > > I am always troubled by the notion of "self-assembly" since the self that is > assembling is never, by definition, the self that is assembled. > > Perhaps I am getting tangled up in words again. > > n > > Nicholas Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology > Clark University > thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,aryOhfVU48KQtN6xZTrA9DuKF6rEe-ZppSYOdQn_1Py6Cpgt586u2buLg3DjT-c0qFESZFBn3sJm21uO2hXWV9yFGAeZn5lBmiyLY_mGvBNki6JGqZr5Vawr0Cc,&typo=1> > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > > On Behalf Of jon zingale > Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 2:01 PM > To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats > > Nick, > > Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for > instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*. Additionally, > let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious > relations such as those which relate sticks to trees to soil and water. > Would it be cheap to narrowly define *downward causation* as the > manipulation of the world in accordance with this language to produce new > sticks? > > Consider as another example when one manipulates charge in bulk using analog > filters. Here, a circuit designer may not need to know about spin or > superposition or a lot of other details about the universe. In fact, the > designer may not know how to write a "mid-frequency ranged filter" if they > were only given a quantum mechanical view of the world. They may, however, > know how to build such a filter if they are given appropriately shaped > conductive surfaces and coils. > > My apologies in advance if this characterization (that of reducing *downward > causation* to manipulation of a domain-specific language) is horribly > flawed, but I spent this much time writing a response. 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