Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Steps to a theory of reference significance] Terry Deacon
Hi Terry, I have a question about your ‘PS’. I think of MEP as being constrained by potentials and a limited set of material opportunities (the adjacent possibilities). I think of it as a thermodynamic version of natural selection in which some alternative states are thermodynamically favored over others, but this does not guarantee that dissipation will proceed to completion or that the particular alternative that absolutely generates the most efficient or effective dissipation will always be the manifested outcome (if there are a number of similarly optimal paths available). Contingency on idiosyncratic configurations within and in the neighborhood of a system might lead the system to follow a variety of alternative paths. Would you argue that autogenesis is not an MEP process from this somewhat fuzzy perspective? Cheers, Guy Guy Hoelzer, Associate Professor Department of Biology University of Nevada Reno Phone: 775-784-4860 Fax: 775-784-1302 hoel...@unr.edu On Jan 9, 2015, at 3:35 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es wrote: Message from Terry Deacon Original Message Subject: Re: [Fis] Steps to a theory of reference significance Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2015 03:32:22 +0100 From: Terrence W. DEACON dea...@berkeley.edu To: Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es References: 54ad3798.7060...@aragon.es 54ae7ca4.9080...@aragon.es This very brief reply should be routed to the FIS list please... One response: My choice of autogenesis is motivated by ... 1. It is the simplest dynamical system I have been able to imagine that exhibits the requisite properties required for an interpretive system (i.e. one that can assign reference and significance to a signal due to intrinsic properties alone - that is these features are independent of any extrinsic perspective). A simple organism is far too complex. As a result it is possible to make misleading assumptions about what we don't account for (allowing us to inadvertently sneak in assumptions about what information is and is not - for example just assuming that DNA molecule are intrinsically informational). As I note when introducing this model, developing a simplest but not too simple model system is the key to devising clear physical principles. 2. Autogenesis is not the same as autopoiesis (which is only a description of presumed requirements for life) rather autogenesis is a well-described empirically testable molecular dynamic, that is easily model able in all aspects. Autopoiesis fit with the class of models assuming that simple autocatalysis is sufficient and then simply adds (by assertion) the (non-realized) assumption that autopoiesis can somehow be causally closed and unitary, whereas in fact autocatalytic systems are intrinsically dissipative* and subject to error catastrophe. More importantly, the assumption about coherent finite unity and internal synergy is the critical one, and so it needs to be the one feature that is explicitly modeled in order to understand these aspects of information. 3. The self-regulating self-repairing end-directed dynamic of autogenesis provides a disposition to preserve a reference target state (even when its current state is far from it). This serves as the necessary baseline for comparative assessment, without which reference and significance cannot be defined because these are intrinsically relativistic informational properties (there is a loose analogy here to the 3rd law of thermodynamics and the relativistic nature of thermodynamic entropy). * PS: Autogenesis is also not a Maximim Entropy Production process because it halts dissipation before its essential self-preserving constraints are degraded and therefore does not exhaust the gradient(s) on which its persistence depends. — Terry On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 1:48 PM, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es wrote: Dear Terry and colleagues, Thanks a lot for the opening text! It is a well crafted Essay full of very detailed contents. My impression is that the microphysics of information has been solved elegantly --at least at the level of today's relevant knowledge-- with your work and the works of related authors, one of them Karl Friston, who could be linked as a complementary approach to yours (in particular his recent Life as we know it, Royal Society Interface Journal, 10: 20130475). His Bayesian approach to life's organization, coupled with (variational) free energy minimization principle, conduces to the emergence of homeostasis and a simple form of autopoiesis, as well as the organization of perception/action later on. Thus, quite close to your approach on autogenic systems. About the different sections of the Essay, the very detailed points you deal with in section 4 (steps to a formalization of reference) are,
Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Steps to a theory of reference significance] Terry Deacon
Hi Guy, Yes. Clearly self-organized dissipative processes can be blocked from completely dissipating or else autogenesis could not be possible. The key point is this: self-organized dissipative systems like tornados, growing snow crystals, or Benárd convection cells do not involve any dynamical features that intrinsically block rate increase to the point of maximizing entropy production *within the given boundary constratints.* But this starred phrase is the critical caveat. This is because Maximum Entropy Production (MEP) must always be defined as a function of boundary conditions, or as you might say available dissipation paths. This is true for both of the component self-organized dynamics constituting simple autogenesis (i.e. reciprocal catalysis and self-assembly) considered in isolation. But when these are coupled, as in autogenesis, each becomes a boundary condition for the other, both facilitating and limiting MEP of the other. For each process considered alone there is no intrinsic MEP limiting-regulating principle at work, but for the complex there is. And this is a dynamical constraint that IS intrinsic to the system dynamics, not an extrinsic boundary condition. This is why I would argue that living organisms and life in general cannot be fully described in MEP terms alone. Living processes build constraints utilizing self-organized processes but which are reciprocally prevented from fully dissipating. They therefore reciprocally *regulate* entropy production rate rather than let the process run to maximum. I would argue, for example, that life on earth has been continually (until the last couple of centuries) sequestering energy-rich molecules (e.g. fossil fuels, etc.) rather than helping that captured solar radiation to more rapidly escape into space. This offers a challenge to a theory (MEPP) that has recently been heralded as a key to explaining life. But it does not violate the basic logic of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics. It is rather a further development, that now includes a non-linear factor: dissipative processes that collectively produce and modify their own boundary conditions. But as with the introduction of an such nonlinearity this can produce some quite unexpected emergent consequences. This is what makes the dynamic that we call life so radically different in what it can do compared to non-living dissipative dynamics. To demonstrate that this sort of nonlinearity is not weirdly divergent from standard theory I often use the following somewhat oversimplified and not uncommon thermodynamic example to show how a process of increasing entropy dissipation can be its own self-limiter. Consider convection through a tall building with an open door on the ground floor and an open window on an upper floor and heat convection causing airflow in from the door and out from the window. Now additionally, imagine that the window opens inward but only part way. So long as the convection flow is below a certain threshold it will increase in rate thus progressively increasing dissipation. But when it reaches a flow rate that is strong enough to blow the window closed it stops all dissipation. Though this is not intrinsic dynamical regulation as in autogenesis, in combination with the mechanics of the window and the capacity of the convection gradient to do mechanical work to alter this boundary condition we can see that for the very reason that dissipative processes have the capacity to do work to alter coupled systems there can be interesting nonlinearities to even simple dissipative systems. This should not be mysterious. but it does suggest that we may need to modify claims that life is merely an entropy maximizing process. — Terry On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 7:59 PM, Guy A Hoelzer hoel...@unr.edu wrote: Hi Terry, I have a question about your ‘PS’. I think of MEP as being constrained by potentials and a limited set of material opportunities (the adjacent possibilities). I think of it as a thermodynamic version of natural selection in which some alternative states are thermodynamically favored over others, but this does not guarantee that dissipation will proceed to completion or that the particular alternative that absolutely generates the most efficient or effective dissipation will always be the manifested outcome (if there are a number of similarly optimal paths available). Contingency on idiosyncratic configurations within and in the neighborhood of a system might lead the system to follow a variety of alternative paths. Would you argue that autogenesis is not an MEP process from this somewhat fuzzy perspective? Cheers, Guy Guy Hoelzer, Associate Professor Department of Biology University of Nevada Reno Phone: 775-784-4860 Fax: 775-784-1302 hoel...@unr.edu On Jan 9, 2015, at 3:35 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es wrote: Message from Terry Deacon Original Message Subject: Re: [Fis] Steps to a theory
[Fis] [Fwd: Re: Steps to a theory of reference significance] Terry Deacon
Message from Terry Deacon Original Message Subject:Re: [Fis] Steps to a theory of reference significance Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2015 03:32:22 +0100 From: Terrence W. DEACON dea...@berkeley.edu To: Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es References: 54ad3798.7060...@aragon.es 54ae7ca4.9080...@aragon.es This very brief reply should be routed to the FIS list please... One response: My choice of autogenesis is motivated by ... 1. It is the simplest dynamical system I have been able to imagine that exhibits the requisite properties required for an interpretive system (i.e. one that can assign reference and significance to a signal due to intrinsic properties alone - that is these features are independent of any extrinsic perspective). A simple organism is far too complex. As a result it is possible to make misleading assumptions about what we don't account for (allowing us to inadvertently sneak in assumptions about what information is and is not - for example just assuming that DNA molecule are intrinsically informational). As I note when introducing this model, developing a simplest but not too simple model system is the key to devising clear physical principles. 2. Autogenesis is not the same as autopoiesis (which is only a description of presumed requirements for life) rather autogenesis is a well-described empirically testable molecular dynamic, that is easily model able in all aspects. Autopoiesis fit with the class of models assuming that simple autocatalysis is sufficient and then simply adds (by assertion) the (non-realized) assumption that autopoiesis can somehow be causally closed and unitary, whereas in fact autocatalytic systems are intrinsically dissipative* and subject to error catastrophe. More importantly, the assumption about coherent finite unity and internal synergy is the critical one, and so it needs to be the one feature that is explicitly modeled in order to understand these aspects of information. 3. The self-regulating self-repairing end-directed dynamic of autogenesis provides a disposition to preserve a reference target state (even when its current state is far from it). This serves as the necessary baseline for comparative assessment, without which reference and significance cannot be defined because these are intrinsically relativistic informational properties (there is a loose analogy here to the 3rd law of thermodynamics and the relativistic nature of thermodynamic entropy). * PS: Autogenesis is also not a Maximim Entropy Production process because it halts dissipation before its essential self-preserving constraints are degraded and therefore does not exhaust the gradient(s) on which its persistence depends. — Terry On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 1:48 PM, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es wrote: Dear Terry and colleagues, Thanks a lot for the opening text! It is a well crafted Essay full of very detailed contents. My impression is that the microphysics of information has been solved elegantly --at least at the level of today's relevant knowledge-- with your work and the works of related authors, one of them Karl Friston, who could be linked as a complementary approach to yours (in particular his recent Life as we know it, Royal Society Interface Journal, 10: 20130475). His Bayesian approach to life's organization, coupled with (variational) free energy minimization principle, conduces to the emergence of homeostasis and a simple form of autopoiesis, as well as the organization of perception/action later on. Thus, quite close to your approach on autogenic systems. About the different sections of the Essay, the very detailed points you deal with in section 4 (steps to a formalization of reference) are, in my opinion, the conceptual core and deserve a careful inspection, far more than these rushed comments. In any case, the relationship Boltzmann-Shannon entropies has been cleared quite elegantly. However, for my taste the following sections have not sufficiently opened the panorama. And with this I start some critical appreciations. Perhaps the microphysics of information is not the critical stumbling block to me removed for the advancement of the informational perspective. We could remain McLuhan's stance on Shannon's information theory and von Neumann's game theory... yes, undoubtedly important advancements, but not the essential stuff of information. But in this list there are people far more versed in McLuhan's contents and whether the caveats he raised would continue to apply (obviously in a different way). I am also critical with the autogenesis model systems--wouldn't it be far clearer approaching a (relatively) simple prokaryotic cell and discuss upon its intertwining of the communication and self-production arrangements? The way a bacterium sees the world,