But that has lead many people to assume that science somehow can explain those very same regularities, when really why there are such regularities is beyond physics - i.e. meta-physical. — Wayfarer

But that natural order is explicable in terms of an accumulation of history if we understand the mechanism of the critical phase transitions.

So it is like our Universe being now in its water phase where before it was gaseous. Being watery imposes all sorts of material constraints that we can describe as "the laws of nature". But we can also understand why that is the case if we know about the gaseous phase from which water condensed. We can see how the world was once "a lot less lawful" and so how constraints got added.

This is why modern physics and cosmology is so focused on symmetry and symmetry-breaking. That is a mathematical strength metaphysics of phase transitions. It describes in a generic fashion what must have been the case before to get what is observably the case after. Or indeed, what we could hope to observe again if we got matter in an accelerator and heated it up enough to reverse the breakings.

It describes in a generic fashion what must have been the case before to get what is observably the case after. Or indeed, what we could hope to observe again if we got matter in an accelerator and heated it up enough to reverse the breakings. — apokrisis

I see what you mean, but I had the impression that there were many very large conceptual problems already with the standard model and what if anything is beyond it. But that is also besides the point in some ways - there is a lot of very precise predictive abilities that have real consequences arising from 'observing regularities', but speculating about why there are those regularities, is still a different kind of activity to utilising them. (Rather a positivist point, perhaps.)

You often ask why nature is so mathematical. And the reason would be that maths (especially symmetry maths) can be considered to be the order that emerges once one has abstractly - metaphysically - summed over all possibilities. Maths starts with everything in an abstract way and winds up with what can't be subtracted away. So you arrive at triangles as you try to remove as many corners from a polygon as you can. Or in the other direction, circles as you try to remove all the faces.

The argument then is nature arises the same way. To the extent it is the constraint or erasure of "every possible action over all possible dimensionality", it would find its way to the same mathematical outcomes. Simplicity will out.

So the standard model has "problems" in that it in fact gives a completely mathematical reason why there are quarks and electrons, for example. One is the result of the "eight-fold way" of breaking SU(3) chiral symmetry (the strong force). The other is the result of breaking the SU(2) symmetry of the weak force - the Higgs mechanism explaining how the four-fold way of SU(2) becomes completely broken down to the ultimate simplicity of U(1), the simplest possible kind of particle spin that is the electron with its electromagnetic field (or neutrino, without).

So the standard model is a stellar success. But having understood the lowest energy modes, we still need to discover the original more complicated initial symmetry that the whole of the Universe might have cracked with its 3D Big Bang. The "problem" is that there are a lot of candidates, such as SU(5), SO(10) and E(8). And to test the different ways of crumbling this "supersymmetry" into the simpler bits that make our observable world - SU(3) and SU(2) and U(1) - we would have to be able to detect the various other particles that the different candidate Big Bang symmetries predict.

So we could test for SO(10) say. It would have its own characteristic zoo of high energy particles (or excitation modes that exist because the "cosmic plasma" can still ring in a really complex higher dimensional way, and not just the much cooler and simpler way of a quark or electron).

Thus the Standard Model accounts for the observed world with mathematical simplicity. It already proves that nature shakes itself down to be as simple as organisationally possible. It arrives at the simplest shapes - just like the Platonic solids.

But the difficulty is to be able to make observations that then limit the earliest symmetry breaking - the configuration which was at the start of it when all forces (including maybe gravity) were "facets" of some still quite hot and multi-directional "vibration", and so still liable to spew out all sorts of weird higher-symmetry particles along with the much simpler ones that eventually came to dominate in a cold/expanded world.

As such, the Standard Model is hardly a failure or in crisis. It stands above everything in science to show we have got creation's basic shtick right. Given the practical impossibility of doing experiments at Big Bang energies, we might hope to use pure maths to discover the foundational symmetry. Like string theory tried, we might just be able to figure it out by mathematical reasoning. This is still promising, but of course string theory resulted in an almost infinite number of initial symmetry conditions. And it doesn't yet have any definite mathematical reason to pick out just one. And experiment may never come to the rescue as we are essentially asking about what happened "just prior" to the Big Bang itself.

So in just 500 years, science has managed to explain the stuff out of which everything observable has been made in terms of Platonically-necessary and maximally-simple mathematical principles. Pretty remarkable.

And yes, there is still the issue of the physical constants. But at worst, that just means there are as many universes as there are different values for those constants (the majority of which would then be unstable and rapidly inexistent anyway). So the formal framework would still be the same - there can only be some "simplest symmetry-breaking" when it comes to the maths. But every survivable arrangement of constants to scale the coupling strength of forces, and masses of particles, would survive to create a larger multiverse zoo of outcomes.

On the other hand, the constants of our Universe might turn out to be as mathematically necessary as everything else. And why not? Is there some good apriori argument against it?

But either way, you can see how maths might describe the Universe if both are the product of "sums over possibility". In each case, we can start with an everythingness that is every possibility. Then because much of that everythingness is then going to be parts contradicting some other part (like positive annihalating negative), pretty much everything falls away until we are only left with the simplest possible forms of organisation - the symmetries and symmetry-breakings which maths describes and the Universe physically embodies.

There's no way I can match your knowledge of the science, so let's get that out of the way. I'm looking at the question from a different perspective. But some initial responses are: why is maths considered to be the order that arises as a consequence? I would have thought the source of the 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics' is due to the fact that it is prior to the 'phenomenal domain' rather than a consequence of it it - nearer to the source. Number is characteristic of the formal domain which is on another ontological domain or level of being according to some philosophers. One reasonably recent re-statement of such an approach was Werner Heisenberg's essay on The Debate between Plato and Democritus, where he says that physics suggests that the fundamental entities that constitute nature are really much more like the Platonic ideas than the Democritean atoms.)

Now I think the reason that this seems backwards is because nowadays it is naturally assumed that intelligence is a result of evolution. It's not something that appears until the last second, in cosmic terms, so intelligence itself is understood as a consequence. Whereas in traditional cosmology the origin of multiplicity is the unborn or unconditioned which is symbolised in various (and often highly divergent) ways in different philosophical traditions but which, suffice to say, is depicted as in some sense being mind-like. Of course that is deprecated nowadays because it sounds religious.

So in just 500 years, science has managed to explain the stuff out of which everything observable has been made in terms of Platonically-necessary and maximally-simple mathematical principles. — apokrisis

I don't know. For every answer, there are many more questions. Remember this article? It ends

We are at a critical juncture in particle physics. Perhaps after it restarts the LHC in 2015, it will uncover new particles, naturalness will survive and particle physicists will stay in business. There are reasons to be optimistic. After all, we know that there must be something new that explains dark matter, and there remains a good chance that the LHC will find it.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the LHC will find nothing. The Higgs boson could be particle physics’ swansong, the last particle of the accelerator age. Though a worrying possibility for experimentalists, such a result could lead to a profound shift in our understanding of the universe, and our place in it.

This is the so-called 'nightmare scenario' which seems to be worrying a lot of people considerably more than yourself. (Might be a career opening there, 'philosophical counselling for physicists undergoing existential crises' ;-) )

You said that computation doesn't produce a steady-state system, and typically it doesn't. But does the mind produce a steady-state? I would say yes and no given the presumption that connected groups of neurons have persistence in some aspects of their structural networks (the neurons and connections approximating "cat" has somewhat coherent or permanent internal structure AFAIK), but parts of neuronal networks also exhibit growth and change overtime to such a degree that the dynamics of the entire system also change. — VagabondSpectre

Again, this is why machines and organisms are at different ends of the spectrum (even if it is the same spectrum in some sense).

So it is because biology can stabilise the unstable that it can easily absorb new learning. It is already a system of self-organising constraint. So it can afford to accept localised perturbations - new learning - without a danger of becoming generally destabilised.

Machines by contrast are only as stable as their parts. They have to be engineered so their bits don't break. Because if anything important snaps, the machine simply stops. It can't fix itself. Some human has to call in the repair-man with a bag of replacement components.

In machine learning - even with deliberate attempts at biological designs like anticipatory neural nets - this lack of the ability to stabilise the unstable shows in the central problems with building such machines. Like catastrophic forgetting. The clunky nature of the faux organicism means that a learning system can keep absorbing small differences until - unpredictably - the general state of coherence breaks down.

A human brain can absorb an incredible variety of learning with the same circuits. A machine's learning is brittle and liable to buckle because the top-down stability only reaches a small way down. At some point, human designers have to introduce a cut-off and take over. Eventually a repair-man has to be there to fix the breakdown in foundational hardwared stability which the computer still needs, even if it has been pretending in software emulation that it doesn't.

We could train a single artificial neural network to recognize "cats" (by sound or image or something else), and I'm not suggesting that this artificial neural network would therefore be alive or conscious, but I am suggesting that this is the particular kind of state of affairs which forms the base unit of a greater intelligence which is not only able to identify cats, but associate meaning along with it. — VagabondSpectre

And this is always the engineer's argument. If I can build just this one simple stable bit - the cat pattern recognition algorithm - then that gives me the stability to add the next level of computational complexity. Eventually we must replicate whatever the heck it is that life and mind are actually doing.

But this line of thought is fallacious for the reasons I've outlined. By continually deferring the stability issue - building it in bottom up rather than allowing it to emerge top-down - the engineer is never going to arrive at the destination of a machine in which all its stability comes top-down as stable information regulating critically unstable physics.

I still don't understand why life and mind needs to be built on fundamental material instability or it ain't life/mind. — VagabondSpectre

OK, you get that information is so immaterial that it can't push the world very hard. So to have an effect, it must find the parts of the world which respond to the slightest possible push. It needs to work with material instability because it itself is just so very, very weak.

Right. That entropic equation is then only definitional of life/mind as a central logical principle. It explains life/mind as semiotic mechanism. It show how the price of informational stability is material instability. It is a trade-off - a way to mine a world that is overall rather materially stable by comparison.

So the definitional strength argument is that life/mind is semiotic dissapative structure. Its essential characteristic is that it takes advantage of this particular informational stability vs material instability trade-off.

I know why biological life needs extreme material instability, but do minds need it? — VagabondSpectre

Yep. So you can accept biology is semiotic dissipative structure, but you think intelligence or even consciousness is something else - like really complex information processing. The biological or hardware side of the story can be set aside. Computers just deal with the informational realm of symbol manipulation. Syntax can do it.

But my argument is that all biology is regulated by information. There is "mind" operating even when it is just genetic information and not yet neural information. The genes are an anticipatory model of the organism. The neurons then put that model of "the organismic self" in a larger model of "the world".

And we can see how that world modelling depends on instability at its very interface between self and world. Sensory receptors wouldn't be sensitive unless they as unstable as possible. They have to be set up as switches that only respond to change in the world. And which stop responding as soon as the change stops. We don't hear the humming fridge because our neurons have already got bored with it. It is only if the fridge stops - data disappears - that they wake up again.

So minds don't need the world to be unstable in the same way. Perception isn't metabolism. Although the way we think is focused on the affordances of the environment. We are evolved to look for the causal levers by which we can move the world with the least effort. So it all comes back to an economy of control. It is great that the world is also materially stable - we don't have to worry about controlling its existence. We can build a house of solid foundations - or a computer with sound engineering - and then just get on with living and dealing with the surprising. Mental instability is reserved for creative problem solving - not being so fixed in our habits that we can't try new smart ways to regulate the world with the least effort.

And then to be able to have this kind of sensitivity, that has to be built in from the ground up - from the level of individual sensory receptors.

So it would only really be from the next level up - the sociocultural one - that we get that biological story of informational stabilisation in search of material instability to regulate. A society depends on a bunch of people who might go off in any direction, yet the lightest touch can keep them all bound in some common direction. Just wave a flag - the simplest signal - and the group will follow.

Again, this has implications for machine intelligence. If DeepMind is not good at having friends, being inspired by leaders, a natural at working in a team - all because it also has all the opposite potential of being moody, going off message, generally getting chaotic - then how is it ever going to simulate any actual human? A machine by definition is engineered for stability. Instability is the last thing we would engineer into DeepMind - or at least the kind of relationship instability that is critical for humans who are social creatures.

And all our science fiction gets that. Machines are inhuman - the misfit dynamics of teamwork is the last thing they get. They are never in on the jokes, just tagging along with the human gang in bewilderment. Where there is no risk of individual instability, there can be no reward of collectivised stability. Humans by contrast live on a constant knife edge of fractiousness vs compassion. The smallest social thing can tilt them. Which is ... why humans are so fantastically controllable. Just wave a flag, say thank-you, hoist a finger, or offer any other gesture of minimal effort. The results will be hugely predictable. Behaviour is simple to co-ordinate when there is semiosis to regulate the instability and tilt it in the right general direction.

But some initial responses are: why is maths considered to be the order that arises as a consequence? — Wayfarer

Maths is the science of patterns. It is our modelling of pure form. So maths remains just a model of the thing in itself and not itself the thing.

So I am not making an actually mystic Platonic point. In fact, our mathematical models are generally terribly reductionist - bottom up constructions with numbers as their atoms. So Scientism rules in maths too. But also, to be able to create these reductionist models - of forms! - maths has to be able to think holistically. So the informal or intuitive part of mathematical argument - the inspiration that makes the connections - does have to see the big picture which then gets collapsed to some more mechanistic description. That is how mathematical thought ends up with equations.

I would have thought the source of the 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics' is due to the fact that it is prior to the 'phenomenal domain' rather than a consequence of it it - nearer to the source. — Wayfarer

But I am not saying one has to come before the other. Rather both reflect the same process - a summing over everything to discover what doesn't get self-cancelled away by the end. So the first place it has to happen is out there in the real physical world. It starts as ontology. But then epistemology finds itself having to recap the same developmental process - because that just is the essence of development as a process.

So the surprise is that nature is a process. People normally think of it as a thing - an existence rather than a persistence. And then the process of modelling the world could only develop via the same logic. So that is why maths and reality look like mirror images. Each is a process - one ontic, the other epistemic.

This is the basis of Peircean metaphysics - the reason why we might call the cosmos semiotic, or - your favourite - consider matter as deadened mind.

Now I think the reason that this seems backwards is because nowadays it is naturally assumed that intelligence is a result of evolution. It's not something that appears until the last second, in cosmic terms, so intelligence itself is understood as a consequence. Whereas in traditional cosmology the origin of multiplicity is the unborn or unconditioned which is symbolised in various (and often highly divergent) ways in different philosophical traditions but which, suffice to say, is depicted as in some sense being mind-like. Of course that is deprecated nowadays because it sounds religious. — Wayfarer

As we have always agreed, Eastern metaphysics thinks this same general away about existence as a developmental process. Before the mechanistic mode of thought arose (to organise societies by democracy and law, then to harness the world with machines), everyone could see the natural logic of "dependent co-arising" as the basis of any metaphysics.

And as long as you say intelligence rather than consciousness, then yes, it is quite possible to place that there right at the beginning in some true sense. To me, intelligence means formal and final cause - the having of a purpose and then the organisation that results to achieve it. And even if it is just the second law - a driving desire to entropify which then results in the particular mathematics of dissipative structures - then even scientists are saying that intelligence or intent was there from the start with the Big Bang.

In fact, our mathematical models are generally terribly reductionist - bottom up constructions with numbers as their atoms. So Scientism rules in maths too. — apokrisis

It's not maths, per se, but 'the reign of quantity' - that only what is quantifiable is to be considered. And the placing of mind among the 'secondary qualities' - that is the fatal mistake.

or - your favourite - consider matter as deadened mind. — apokrisis

Analogous to fingernail and hair clippings - the detritus of past vitality.

To me, intelligence means formal and final cause - the having of a purpose and then the organisation that results to achieve it. — apokrisis

No argument from me there!

There would be a unity or symmetry. That is implied by the fact something could separate or break to become the "mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive" two.

But the further wrinkle is that the initial singular state is not really any kind of concrete state but instead a vagueness - an absence of any substantial thing in both the material and formal sense.

This radical state of indeterminism is difficult to imagine.

Yes I know it is difficult to imagine, personally I would pull away from the focus on some kind of radical indeterminism as is implied by the great intensity and pressure etc which we are presented with by astrophysics for example. Yes there may have been some almighty squeezing, forging at the beginning of the known physical universe. But this may only be a requirement of forging such concrete stable substance in which we find ourselves. Also it isn't actually addressing anything necessarily fundamental about our existence, or existence in general. But rather it is simply focusing on physical conditions. (Note, I am very much a materialist, just not in the narrow terms of physical matter).

The Big Bang is thus more of a big collapse from infinite or unbounded directionality to the least number of dimensions that could become an eternal unwinding down towards a heat death.

I am with you in regards of the physical material, space, time and three dimensions etc, which is well described by science.

The details of this argument could be wrong of course. But it illustrates a way of thinking about origins that by-passes the usual causal problem of getting something out of nothing. If you start with vague everythingness (as what prevents everything being possible?) then you only need good arguments why constraints would emerge to limit this unbounded potential to some concrete thermalising arrangement - like our Big Bang/Heat Death universe.

Agreed, but the reason I asked the question about a unity is that it brings us to a set of conditions for which science and maths, even perhaps logic is blind and mute. There must be something going on in there which we are far from understanding. However, I don't think we necessarily should try to go there to solve any questions about our origins. As I said, it might simply be a means of forging dense physical material, the origin might be found elsewhere in which such extreme conditions are not required.

Quite, the way I put it is, say you take all the knowledge of humanity, all the understanding about who, how and where we are and when it is all complete, We look up and realise that we are still staring into the unknown.

This why the seeker turns to intuitive systems of progress. To literally grow into the knowledge, rather than to work it out.

Matter follows a set of physical laws which govern it's behavior is another way of saying "there is consistency in the way matter behaves". — VagabondSpectre

Clearly this is an unacceptable use of the word "govern". That's why I am trying to keep things clear here, to avoid such ambiguity. There is consistency in the way matter behaves. There are laws of physics which describe the way matter behaves. But obviously these laws do not govern the way matter behaves.

So when you say "existent material can interpret some fundamental laws", that's a more or less accurate way of saying that matter behaves with some consistency. — VagabondSpectre

No, this is false. It is one thing to say that matter behaves with consistency, it is quite another thing to say that matter "interprets" laws. The latter implies that matter has the capacity to apprehend the meaning of things. There is no indication that matter has the capacity to do this. That's an unsupported materialist assumption.

The problem is more that you are anthropomorphizing matter, in imagining that it would have to be able to "interpret' a law in order to be able to act in accordance with it. Even humans are capable of acting in accordance with laws without being able to interpret them; or even necessarily knowing they are acting in accordance with some law. — John

For matter to act in accordance with a physical law is one thing. For a human being to act in accordance with a governing law is a completely different thing. That they are different is evident from the fact that if matter is seen to behave other than in the way that the physical law describes, it is evidence that the law needs to be altered, but if a human being acts in a way other than the governing law prescribes, this is evidence that the human being needs to be altered. To equivocate between these two very distinct uses of "laws" is a mistake.

With this clarification, it seems there is not much in common between human laws and laws of physics. The two types of "laws" have completely difference essences. — Samuel Lacrampe

That's exactly what I am arguing, and I think it's a very important point to keep in mind in any metaphysical speculations.

My position on the laws of physics is that - to avoid any mystery - laws are "material history". Laws are simply the constraints that accumulate as a system (even a whole Universe) develops its organisation. — apokrisis

I think "material history" is very ambiguous. Human beings have a "history" because they record events, and this record acts as a way of remembering. But the record needs to be interpreted. It is useless without the means of interpretation. We could say that the geological formations of the earth provide us with a material history, but that "history" is really dependent on the interpretation.

We interpret such a material history with the use of the laws of physics. The laws are the tool of interpretation. To say that the laws of physics act as constraints in any way other than as constraining the minds of the interpreters, of this history, is simply mistaken. What you imply is that someone was following (being constrained by) the laws of physics when creating the geological formations, recording history in this way. But those geological formations were created prior to human existence, and therefore prior to the laws of physics, so this is actually impossible.

This again is a big advantage of turning the usual notion of material existence on its head. — apokrisis

If you want to turn the notion of material existence "on its head" you need to develop sound principles. You cannot expect to turn something upside down and have it stand alone on its head, without providing some support for it. It wasn't built to stand on its head, so if you turn it upside down you need to create a new foundation for it, to support it.

But a Peircean semiotic metaphysics - one where existence develops as a habit - says instead everything is possible and then actuality arises by most of that possibility getting suppressed. So the universal laws are universal states of constraint - the historical removal of a whole bunch of possibility. The objects left at the end of the process are heavily restricted in their actions - and by the same token, they then enjoy the equally definite freedoms that thus remain. — apokrisis

This is a totally unfounded use of "habit". "Habit" generally refers to the tendencies of living beings. Any habit is just a tendency, and it may be broken at will, by the living creature. Therefore we cannot produce a "law of physics" from a habit, because we do not observe the necessary consistency, due to the will which breaks the habits. So it is also a mistake to say that the laws of physics could refer to habits, because we know that habits are a type of thing which cannot be modeled by laws of physics.

But a constraints-based holistic metaphysics says instead that laws are simply historically embedded material conditions. History fixes the world in general ways that then everywhere impinge as constraints on what can happen. But in doing that, those same constraints also underpin the freedoms that local objects can then call their own. — apokrisis

This is clearly a mistaken metaphysics. Laws are created by human beings. The laws of physics are generalizations produced from observations. What they represent is inductive conclusions. The laws of physics act as constraints toward further logical proceedings, as premises and fundamental principles for deductive proceedings. It is a mistake to assume that laws of physics represent real constraints acting within the physical world because we know that inductive logic is fallible. The fact that many inductive conclusions turn out to be misleading is evidence that we cannot claim that inductive laws of physics represent anything real within the world. The reality of the laws of physics is that they are tools to aid us in understanding, they are not representative.

What is life?

Life is different for each species, but generally, it is the condition extending from cell division to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients, respond to stimuli, mature, reproduce, and adapt to the environment through semiosis.

For human beings, it is the condition extending from fertilisation to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients, respond to stimuli, be aware, mature physically and mentally, reproduce, and adapt to the environment through human semiosis.

As previously mentioned, it can also mean the duration of something's *existence.

I'm desperately trying to understand your argument (that the machines we build cannot be minds or that the machines (learning machines) we currently build are no where near approaching or approximating minds), but that understanding continues to elude me.

You point out that machines are stable in their individual parts which ensures stable and predictable outcomes, and generally this appears true, but ANN's are themselves built from what amounts to simulated instability in individual neurons which embrace chaotic interaction. A single simulated neuron can exist in a ridiculously large number of different configurations defined and determined by it's weighted connections to other neurons. This gives a single neuron the ability to dynamically influence and be influenced by networks of other neurons in steady-state like informational exchanges that manage to consolidate anticipatory power. Catastrophic forgetting demonstrates this instability very clearly in that such simulated neurons aren't stable enough in their environment to retain what sub-networks have learned because learning new tasks overwrites and destroys critical elements of the psychical network that comprised previous predictive models. (I think it's fair to point out that forgetting - usually not catastrophic - occurs in the human mind as well, perhaps due to similar causes). This is an engineering problem that might not be without possible solutions.

The bottom up stability found in the mechanisms of biological life doesn't exactly get carried across the matter-mind threshold in human minds. An individual cell pulls itself together, cleans itself, generally governs itself (as a physical expression of recorded information and rules of interaction) and also dismantles itself too when it's lifespan is done. That is very impressive, but how does this kind of bottom up stability contribute to the robustness of conscious human minds?

I do understand what you mean when you say there is "mind" operating even before the formation of the brain in a biological organism (you're speaking of DNA as an intelligent and anticipatory force, a description I agree with), but this primordial genetic mind is necessarily separated in many ways from the mind produced by interactions in biological brains. The genetic mind is able to build a brain and program certain autonomic functions (unconscious or hard-wired parts of the brain) and define the basic rules of the system (like the behavioral traits of neurons), but when the brain actually swings into function, the genetic mind can only sit back and watch as it's physical creation records and refines it's own networks of information and generates a mind which exists symbiotically with, but distinctly from, the genetic mind.

So in a way we can both assent to the idea that minds can be intelligently designed so to speak (DNA designs the brain), but what I'm specifically having a hard time with is how our current attempts at simulating minds are as far off base as you say they are? In other words, why is data stored and manipulated by artificial neural networks not analogous to the way biological neural networks also store and manipulate data in participation of creating human intelligence and mind? Hurtles such as catastrophic forgetting are to me indicators that we're not designing neurons and the basic principles of the system intelligently enough to sufficiently increase mental stability (compared to how intelligently DNA can build a brain). I see the recent successes in the anticipatory strength of these models as evidence that ANN's are in fact doing something similar to the biological neurons they loosely imitate.

What am I not understanding? What will prevent us from making progress on solving the top-down stability from fundamentally unstable parts dilemma?

That's an unsupported materialist assumption. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hardly. I've already clarified that laws describe behavior. How we informally use words for convenience hardly amounts to "materialist assumption".

For matter to act in accordance with a physical law is one thing. For a human being to act in accordance with a governing law is a completely different thing. That they are different is evident from the fact that if matter is seen to behave other than in the way that the physical law describes, it is evidence that the law needs to be altered, but if a human being acts in a way other than the governing law prescribes, this is evidence that the human being needs to be altered. To equivocate between these two very distinct uses of "laws" is a mistake. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes and that very mistake was yours. It's amazing that you now turn and around and emphasize the very point I was making against your position as if I had not made the point at all. You were equivocating in saying that matter had to be able to interpret a law in order to "follow" it, as we might say of a human that follows a law

You were equivocating in saying that matter had to be able to interpret a law in order to "follow" it, as we might say of a human that follows a law — John

No I don't equivocate. As I explained, only human beings "follow laws" whether they are following governing laws, or following laws of physics. I strongly affirm that matter does not follow laws.

You are creating a figure of straw, if you assert that when it is commonly said that matter follows laws, the implication is that matter is somehow interpreting laws. To say that matter follows laws is to say nothing more than that it acts in accordance with them.

How to put it simply? I would say you are far too focused (like all AI enthusiasts) on the feat of replicating humans. But the semiotic logic here is that computation is about the amplification of human action. It is another level of cultural organisation that is emerging.

So the issue is not can we make conscious machines. It is how will computational machinery expand or change humanity as an organism - take it to another natural level.

It is still the case that there are huge fundamental hurdles to building a living and conscious machine. The argument about hardware stability is one. Another is about "data compression".

To simulate protein folding - an NP-strength problem - takes a fantastic amount of computation just to get an uncertain approximation. But for life, the genes just have to stand back and let the folding physically happen. And this is a basic principle of biological "computation". At every step in the hierarchy of control, there is a simplification of the information required because the levels below are materially self-organising. (This is the hardware instability point seen from another angle.)

So again, life and mind constantly shed information, which is why they are inherently efficient. But computation, being always dependent on simulation, needs to represent all the physics as information and can't erase any. So the data load just grows without end. And indeed, if it tries to represent actual dynamical criticality, infinite data is needed to represent the first step.

Now of course any simulation can coarse grain the physics - introduce exactly the epistemic cut offs by which biology saves on the need to represent its own physics. But because there is no actual physics involved now, it is a human engineering decision about how to coarse grain. So the essential link between what the program does, and whether that is supported by the organisation that results in an underpinning physical flow, is severed. The coarse graining is imposed on a physical reality (the universal machine that is the computer hardware) and is not instead the dynamical outcome of some mass of chemistry and molecular structure which is a happy working arrangement that fits some minimum informational state of constraint.

Anyway. Again the point is about just how far off and wrongly orientated the whole notion of building machine life and mind is when it is just some imagined confection of data without real life physics. What is basic to life and mind is that the relation is semiotic. Every bit of information is about the regulation of some bit of physics. But a simulation is the opposite. No part of the simulation is ever directly about the physics. Even if you hook the simulation up to the world - as with machine learning - the actual interface in terms of sensors is going to be engineered. There will be a camera that measures light intensities in terms of pixels. Already the essential intimate two-way connection between information and physics has been artificially cut. Camera sensors have no ability to learn or anticipate or forget. They are fixed hardware designed by an engineer.

OK. Now the other side of the argument. We should forget dreams of replicating life and mind using computation. But computation can take human social and material organisation to some next level. That is the bit which has a natural evolutionary semiotic logic.

So sure, ANNs may be the architecture which takes advantage of a more biological and semiotic architecture. You can start to get machine learning that is useful. But there is already an existing human system for that furrther level of information processing to colonise and amplify. So the story becomes about how that unfolds. In what way do we exploit the new technology - or find that it comes to harness and mould us?

Agsin, this is why the sociology is important here. As individual people, we are already being shaped by the "technology" of language and the cultural level of regulation it enables. Humans are now shaped for radical physical instability - we have notions of freewill that means we could just "do anything right now" in a material sense. And that instability is then what social level constructs are based on. Social information can harness it to create globally adaptive states of coherent action. The more we can think for ourselves, the more we can completely commit to some collective team effort.

And AI would just repeat this deal at a higher level. It would be unnatural for AI to try to recreate the life and mind that already exists. What would be the point? But computation is already transforming human cultural organisation radically.

So it is simply unambitious to speculate about artificial life and mind. Instead - if we want to understand our future - it is all about the extended mentality that is going to result from adding a further level of semiosis to the human social system.

Computation is just going to go with that natural evolutionary flow. But you are instead focused on the question of whether computation could, at least theoretically, swim against it.

I am saying even if theoretically it could, that is fairly irrelevant. Pay attention to what nature is likely to dictate when it comes to the emergence of computation as a further expression of semiotic system-level regulation.

[EDIT] To sum it up, what isn't energetically favoured by physics ain't likely to happen. So computation fires the imagination as a world without energetic constraints. But technology still has to exist in the physical world. And those constraints are what the evolution of computation will reflect in the long run.

Humans may think they are perfectly free to invent the technology in whatever way they choose. But human society itself is an economic machine serving the greater purpose of the second law. We are entrained to physical causality in a way we barely appreciate but is completely natural.

So there are strong technological arguments against AI and AL. But even stronger here is that the very idea of going against nature's natural flow is the reason why the simple minded notion of building conscious machines - more freewilled individual minds - ain't going to be the way the future happens.

I'm desperately trying to understand your argument... — VagabondSpectre

Are you sure it's not more a matter of your desperately trying to avoid its conclusions? ;-)

You are creating a figure of straw, if you assert that when it is commonly said that matter follows laws, the implication is that matter is somehow interpreting laws. To say that matter follows laws is to say nothing more than that it acts in accordance with them. — John

What I assert is that it is wrong to say that matter follows laws, because "follows" implies that one is prior to the other. In this case it is implied by the word "follows", that laws are prior to matter. But clearly human beings create the laws, and this is by following the activities of matter. So laws really follow matter.

Therefore my claim is that to say "matter follows laws" is not the same a saying matter acts in accordance with laws. In fact, I assert that to say "matter follows laws" is not just an ambiguous way of speaking, it is misleading, deceptive, and false.

generally, it is the condition extending from cell division to death — Galuchat

Welcome. I agree that things made of cells are living things. But why is that the case? What makes a cell a living thing, and anything simpler than a cell a non-living thing (I assume you agree with the latter phrase too)?

characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients, respond to stimuli, mature, reproduce, and adapt to the environment through semiosis. — Galuchat

This may answer my previous question. But would that not make a fire a living thing much like a cell? Note, this seems to be the position of some people in this discussion. I am on the edge on that one; and yet I cannot seem to find a clear difference between a cell and a fire.

characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients, respond to stimuli, mature, reproduce, and adapt to the environment through semiosis. — Galuchat

This may answer my previous question. But would that not make a fire a living thing much like a cell? Note, this seems to be the position of some people in this discussion. I am on the edge on that one; and yet I cannot seem to find a clear difference between a cell and a fire. — Samuel Lacrampe

Fire seems not to meet the last one. I don't particularly agree with the list, since I can think of exceptions to the other four items, but semiosis alone seems not enough. I have bailed on attempting to define an essence, and leave it a call to be made on a case-by-case basis. Undoubtedly we will not always recognize life when encountered, and will classify some things as life that really shouldn't be.

So again, life and mind constantly shed information, which is why they are inherently efficient. But computation, being always dependent on simulation, needs to represent all the physics as information and can't erase any. So the data load just grows without end. And indeed, if it tries to represent actual dynamical criticality, infinite data is needed to represent the first step. — apokrisis

If digital computation requires infintie data to represent actual dynamical criticality (particular physical states and the laws of physics as they are?), don't human minds also need infinite data to do the same? (if so, where do human minds get that infinite data? If not, please disregard)

I can assent to your description of biological life as organized data expressing through material/chemical control channels (the semiotic bit) which maintains, reproduces, and develops itself by intelligently sequestering/creating dissipative engines (the thermodynamic facilitators of perpetual work (including semiotic work?)), and I'm well with you that we're far from reproducing or imitating that level of dynamic self-organizing complexity (in particular, the bit about how biological life builds it's own physical structure from the ground up and how it tends to rely on the non-grainy laws of physics themselves to provide the rules of interaction), but do human minds also exploit physics such that the data stored within them benefits from non-grainy amplifiers (adding NP potential) and such epic and far-reaching bottom up stability?

You've convinced me that DNA based biological life is nowhere near analogous to our highest hopes for ANN's, but you're also convincing me that human consciousness (and the functions of the data contained within the brain) is likewise not analogous to it's genetic underpinnings. Like ANN's, the human mind requires an external intelligence to step in and provide arbitrary instruction to ensure stability and proper function. DNA does this by governing the production and physical effects of some hormones which can also function as neurochemicals...

You mention that a camera cannot learn, but neither can an eyeball. Biology designed better and better eyes through natural evolution, and we design better and better cameras as our understanding grows. As far as data input goes, there's no necessary difference between incoming signals from a biological eye or a mechanical/digital one. In fact, digital eyeballs would probably be far superior to our own. Light enters our eyes and gets focused by the lens onto an membrane/array of light sensitive cells which individually form the pixel of our vision. There's not an infinite amount of data contained in light, and even if there were our eyes only imperfectly capture a finite amount of it at a certain refresh rate. Data being fed into a real brain from an eyeball cuts the connection between physics and information in the same way an artificial camera does because they both turn them into abstract and finite electrical impulses.

I am genuinely trying to grasp how your argument applies to a hypothetical ANN but not the human brain, but given that it is only the growing intelligence aspect of life which I am interested in as a defining feature, to me the fact that genetic biology can utilize the physics of protein folding to essentially encode unfathomably complex data isn't necessarily an issue because these basic biological mechanisms don't directly participate in the processes of human intelligence (they merely underpin it as it's designer and maintainer). The base informational units of the human mind appear grainy, finite, and cut off from physics in the same way the base units of digital information are.

An extremely powerful anticipatory model capable of real-time reaction, (something DNA is poor at) is like a tool that DNA creates for it's own benefit (our brains). DNA puts it's life in the hands of this more useful anticipatory model because letting it direct the whole leads to long term success. If and when we create ANN's with far more anticipatory power than humans, what we might see when we step back could be something not unlike a how a bunch of like minded cells all organize around the maintenance of this one more powerful anticipatory system. (side note: the processor of genetic diversity flows through death and reproduction where successful reproduction (over the long run) is what represents a successful model). So the more powerful and reliable learning machines become, the more humanity will come to rely on them for top down guidance (because we will be more successful in doing so).

I don't expect us to try and install emotional intelligence as an operator of AI's or stick them in human-like bodies (why re-engineer the wheel? Although we will want them to recognize human emotion), instead we will manipulate their base structure in order to guide them toward the completion of tasks we desire (much like how DNA does that for human minds via pain/pleasure/instinctual drives). I can't think of how we might go about doing that just yet, but I also cannot understand why not.

This:

https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/life%27s_working_definition.html

Especially the first question to Dr. Cleland.

...In which she criticuzes the limitations of mere language as inadequate to the tasks of biologists.

Welcome. I agree that things made of cells are living things. But why is that the case? What makes a cell a living thing, and anything simpler than a cell a non-living thing (I assume you agree with the latter phrase too)? — Samuel Lacrampe

Why do you think that a cell is the simplest possible living thing?

This may answer my previous question. But would that not make a fire a living thing much like a cell? Note, this seems to be the position of some people in this discussion. I am on the edge on that one; and yet I cannot seem to find a clear difference between a cell and a fire. — Samuel Lacrampe

Why would you think that a fire metabolizes? Metabolism is clearly defined as what living things do. What "metabolism" refers to is confined to the activities of life. I do not think that a fire is a living process. But metabolism, as a release of energy by an organism, also has a flip side, which is the storing of energy, best exemplified by photosynthesis.

This:

https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/life%27s_working_definition.html

Especially the first question to Dr. Cleland. — Banno

Brief, but I like it. The author of the article (identified only as 'magazine staff') seems not to entirely understand the subject, giving this statement:
"For example, a crystal can grow, reach equilibrium, and even move in response to stimuli, but lacks what commonly would be thought of as a biological nervous system."
Lack of something serving as a nervous system is what disqualifies a crystal as life. Hmm...

Anyway, the article is about the theory of what life is, but only one question touches on that, the other ones being about the origins of the one example we know. Dr Cleland hits on many of the points discussed in this thread, and warns against any hard criteria to use in the identification of life since it seems pretty easy to come up with a counter-example of any rule. My favorite quote is her last one:
"Merely defining "life" in such a way that it incorporates one's favorite non-traditional "living" entity does not at all advance this project."
I think I have observed that. Several of us have tried to pinpoint an essence, and the attempts indeed seem not to have advanced the project. I notice Dr Cleland does not offer even a hint of a description of this scientific theory of life. We need one, but we don't have one, and probably cannot have one until we have several other examples under our belt. Our current same size of 1 is insufficient.

...In which she criticuzes the limitations of mere language as inadequate to the tasks of biologists. — Wayfarer

In which she criticizes the term 'definition' of life, as opposed to 'scientific theory' of life. Asking for a definition is not to ask what the thing is, but merely how the word is used in one particular language.
I need to remember that in other discussions.

I apologize if this was already brought up before. I want to bring up one more essential property of all living things: The ability to attempt to be self-sustainable, that is, to keep their parts functioning properly. Not all living things achieve this, but they can all attempt to. This now differentiates living things from mere physical reactions: a tree will attempt to extend its roots and lean in a certain direction to find more energy, where as a fire will not attempt any of this and is merely acting upon the laws of physics. Similarly, a car engine has functioning parts, but none are aimed at being self-sustainable. Even a newborn baby will cry for the aim at improving its health state.

All the properties mentioned previously (needs energy, can grow, can reproduce, adaptability, ...) are all means to the end of self-sustainability. None of these means appear to be essential because one mean may work for one thing but not another (at least in theory).

On an unrelated note, this marks my 100th comment. I am treating myself to a cookie.

Why do you think that a cell is the simplest possible living thing? — Metaphysician Undercover

By the definition of the term itself: the smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. With this definition, if we were to ever find simpler organisms than our currently known cells, then these would also be called cells I think.

Why would you think that a fire metabolizes? Metabolism is clearly defined as what living things do. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah I agree. As such, metabolism should be excluded from the essence of living things because it presupposes it. We can replace it instead with "interaction with environment, either input or output".

Fire seems not to meet the last one. — noAxioms

Yeah I admit I don't understand what the term "semiosis" means (process that involves signs?).

I have bailed on attempting to define an essence, and leave it a call to be made on a case-by-case basis. — noAxioms

This may be the end result. But at least I think I can prove that the essence of life exists:
- Either a being is a living being or a non-living being. It cannot be both.
- There exists an instance where a being is clearly labelled as living and another instance where a being is clearly labelled non-living: e.g. a dog and a rock.
- Therefore a separation/border exists between the two labels, which is the essence. Its location may not be clear, but it must exist.

But clearly human beings create the laws, — Metaphysician Undercover

Human beings formulate laws, and we don't know for sure whether those formulations reflect actuality in any absolute sense.

Therefore my claim is that to say "matter follows laws" is not the same a saying matter acts in accordance with laws. In fact, I assert that to say "matter follows laws" is not just an ambiguous way of speaking, it is misleading, deceptive, and false. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you are quibbling over different senses of "follows". Nature either invariably and absolutely acts in accordance with laws, or follows laws, or it doesn't. In either case what those laws are, where they "come from"; what their ontological status is; is a whole other (I would say ultimately undecidable) question.