Dialog with Howard Pattee - Part 5 - Flatland and Higher Dimensions

From Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid 
by Douglas Hofstadter.
A 3D block projects three different
letters when illuminated along the three axes.

Howard Pattee's 2008 paper Physical and functional conditions for symbols, codes, and languages is available for download here. I recently re-read it in detail and engaged in what was for me an interesting and rewarding email dialog with Howard.

This is the fifth in a planned multi-part posting that includes portions of our email dialog.

Click for Part 1 - His 2008 Paper

Click for Part 2 - Determinism vs Probability

Click for Part 3 - QM and Chess Analogy

Click for Part 4 - Property Dualism

INTRODUCTION

The following excerpts are from emails from Ira Glickstein to Howard Pattee (Oct 19 11:06 PM, Oct 21 11:56, Oct 23 10:21 PM, Oct 22 12:34 AM) and his replies (Oct 21 3:01 PM, Oct 23 10:21 AM).


[IRA GLICKSTEIN]  Howard, THANKS for your prompt and courteous replies to my questions and critique on your 2008 paper. If I have your permission, I am considering putting a new Topic on my Blog linking to your newly posted 2008 paper and possibly including our recent email dialog. … I think a new Pattee Topic with a specific paper link will be welcomed by your many admirers. So, please let me know how you feel about this "opportunity" :^)

[HOWARD PATTEE]  Ira, You have my permission to publish my more-or-less "scholarly" email discussions with you, but notify or link me to it so I know what's being discussed. …

[IG] Thanks for permission to publish your scholarly replies to my probing response to your 2008 paper. I will certainly link it to you when I publish it …

[HP] Other thoughts. Within a few years 90% of the population will have smartphones, and I estimate that much less than 1% will have any idea of how they work, or even have the background knowledge to understand how they work.

The world is already divided into the very rich and very poor, and all the large financial institutions owned by the rich have proven to be corrupt without help from technology. Technology divides us further into a priesthood of techies (good and evil) and the Luddites. This is now a very unstable situation as we are already experiencing with the NSA/CSS leaks and all the international hacking activities (e.g., Stuxnet and who knows what else?).

Experts say our infrastructure (power, transportation, finance) is at risk. I would say that compared to this technological instability global warming is a minor risk. What do you think? Howard

[IG] Well, as you know, I am a Guest Contributor to the world's most popular climate website. I accept that the mean surface temperature of the Earth has increased since 1880, and that part of that increase is undoubtedly due to human activities such as unprecedented burning of fossil fuels increasing Atmospheric CO2 from about 270 to the current 400 ppmv. However, I am sure the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has over-estimated the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity - ECS (how much the surface will warm given a doubling of CO2) by at least a factor of two, and perhaps three. That is why all IPCC warming predictions since their first in 1990 have been on the high side compared to measured temperatures.

That IPCC error explains why temperatures have stabilized over the past 17 years even as CO2 levels continue their rapid rise. Thus, most of the warming is due to Natural Cycles, not under human control. The moderate warming and moderate CO2 increase experienced so far may be net beneficial to human civilization, and, in any case, poses no real danger. (And, even if it does pose a risk, since most of it is due to Natural Cycles we humans cannot control, we really cannot stop it, so we will have to adapt, using TECHNOLOGY.)

So, I agree with you that technological instability IS a greater risk than global warming. Technological instability includes, IMHO, a genetic engineering disaster, nuclear disaster, political chaos disaster due to runaway debt triggering riots and class warfare leading to tyranny, etc. But, the only way we can continue human civilization given the inevitability of Natural Cycles of global warming (and global cooling - see the ice core record of alternating ice ages and warm ages about every 100,000 years) IS adaptation using technology.

Thus, we have to accept the risk of technological instability as the price of survival. Ira

[IG] Howard, you earlier brought up property dualism, where a single Material Substance can have both "physical" and "mental" properties as described in the linked Wikipedia entry. I think of these properties as being different aspects or views of a single material thing, such as continuous vs discrete, finite vs infinite, particles vs waves, energy vs matter, mind vs brain, etc. Thinking about it, I came up with the following analogy to Flatland, …

[HP] Ira: … Your idea of knowledge as projection from higher dimensions is essential. It also shows us that there is no one right answer. Complementary views are necessary, even when they appear contradictory …

[IG] … a 3D cylinder (like a can of soda) intrudes upon the Flatlander's 2D plane of existence. If it approaches slowly and side first, they will initially sense a line segment. Then, as it penetrates further they will sense a long, narrow rectangle. Further penetration will result in a somewhat wider rectangle. On the other hand, if the can approaches end first, they will sense a circle of constant diameter.

[HP] See jacket of Hofstadter's Godel_Escher_Bach [NOTE: Illustrated above] where one block's projections cast three different letters. … I think the earliest example of projection is the allegory of Plato's_Cave. …

[IG] So, what is it? A line, a rectangle, or a circle? …

[HP] Projections from higher dimensions is basic in quantum mechanics where we model the "states of reality" by an infinite dimensional, complex, normed vector space (Hilbert space). A measurement is a projection of this space rotated by the choice of the basis vectors. Nobody agrees on what the "states of reality" means. Read a little of Schlosshauer's Elegance_and_Enigma:   The Quantum Interviews (The Frontiers Collection) Maximilian Schlosshauer ...

[IG] Thinking about aspect dualism further, if the can approaches at an angle, it will appear to the Flatlanders to be in any of a variety of shapes. It could look like a trapezoid, an ellipse, a triangle with one curved side, etc. However, when in circle mode, a cylinder will always have a constant diameter.

If a sphere (ball) approaches their plane of existence, they will initially sense a point, then a small circle, increasing in diameter. However, the sphere will never appear to be an ellipse nor anything containing a sharp angle. Flatlanders distinguish a cylinder from a sphere by it having a variable diameter and by never having a sharp angle.

So, if we humans are stuck (evolved) in a world where sensing 3D plus time is all that is needed to survive and replicate, we will forever be limited in how we sense 4D and higher material objects that intrude upon our 3D solid of existence. Sometimes material objects will appear to be continuous (like the edge if a can when it is in its circle mode in Flatland) and sometimes discrete (like the edge of a can when it is in it's rectangle mode in Flatland. Sometimes the intrusions will seem to us to be particles, sometimes waves, and so on.

But what about material vs "information" (otherwise known as brain vs "mind")? Well, I would say that "information" is an abstraction that may never be absolutely true, and will seldom be absolutely false. The Flatlanders may all agree that an intrusive object of type “C” has multiple modes (line, rectangle, trapezoid, circle, ellipse, and so on) and that it never has the ability to change diameter, and that an intrusive object of type “B” may change diameter but never have sharp angles, and thus correctly call them by different names (which we -but not them- understand to be a can and a ball), but that "information" is a mere abstraction that does not capture the material truth. …

[HP] Many physicists interpret the mathematics of QM as an expression of the statistical information that is just sufficient to give the best predictions. The wave function or a vector in Hilbert space is just a strange kind of potential distribution from which we calculate probabilities of measured events (N.B. Born's_Rule and Gleason's _Theorem appear to rule out determinism). When we get new information from a measurement, the probability distribution is immediately changed ("collapse of the wave function").

Born argued that this is also the case in classical mechanics because empirically it is not deterministic. I agree with Born that all dynamic models should be understood as change of probability distributions in time. …

[IG] Thus we (scientists) gather "information" and come up with ways to measure and distinguish different hyper-dimensional objects that intrude upon our solid of existence, and notice and document and quantify the correspondence between "electrons" or "photons" when in their "particle" mode or in their "wave" mode, but we will never really, really apprehend what these hyper-dimensional objects "really" are!

We know how to convert "matter" to "energy" (nuclear energy) but we will never know what they "really" are.

Like the child (or senior citizen) who knows how to skillfully operate his or her HDTV set and DVR and PC and iPad, but has no real knowledge of radio frequency waves or computers or software, we will forever possess incomplete "information" that is a rough abstraction of real, real, "reality"!

[HP] This should be called Ira's modern view of Plato's Cave-- the Allegory of the iPad. Howard

Ira Glickstein

Dialog with Howard Pattee - Part 4 - "Property Dualism"

"Property Dualism" based on Wikipedia

Howard Pattee's 2008 paper "Physical and functional conditions for symbols, codes, and languages" is available for download here. I recently re-read it in detail and engaged in what was for me an interesting and rewarding email dialog with Howard.

This is the fourth in a planned multi-part posting that includes portions of our email dialog.

Click for Part 1 - His 2008 Paper

Click for Part 2 - Determinism vs Probability

Click for Part 3 - QM and Chess Analogy

Click for Part 5 - Flatland and Higher Dimensions

INTRODUCTION

By the time I wrote my Oct 19th email (excerpted below), I had carefully re-read the remaining sections of Howard's paper.

For Blog readers who have not yet read the original paper (and to remind those who have), and to provide context regarding Howard's personal journey from the "material school" to what is now called "biosemiotics", here is the first part of Section 4 of his paper:

4. Early personal history of the problem

There are more requirements for a polymer sequence to function as a symbol besides energy degeneracy, coding rules, and the ability to fold into a specific catalyst. The entire system must be able to replicate and to persist by heritable variation and natural selection. It was only after studying the nature of hierarchical organization, von Neumann’s logic of self-replication, and the measurement problem that I began to understand the essential semiotic requirement that symbols and codes must be part of a language to allow open-ended evolution. To explain this I need to recount a brief personal history.

The symbol-matter problem first arose in my thinking about the origin of life. I have to agree with Laotsu that symbols emerged from the lawful material universe at the origin of life. From an evolutionary point of view I do not see how one can support the claim that semiotic principles are on the same footing as physical laws. Symbols and life are coextensive concepts and their occurrence in the universe is cosmically very recent and exceedingly sparse, at least for life as we know it.

Before the discoveries of the genetic code and protein synthesis, physicists often viewed life as a basic challenge to natural laws, and many expressed doubt that life is reducible to physical laws. Bohr (1933), Delbrück, and Schrödinger are prominent examples of those whose thoughts on the subject are in the literature (e.g., McKaughan, 2005). Like many other physicists at the time, I was challenged by the central question raised by in Schrödinger’s "What Is Life?” He asks how the gene, “that miniature code,” could reliably control the development of such highly complicated organisms. In the 1960s there were two schools of thought; one school focused on the molecular structure and biochemistry of life, the other school (that should now be recognized as “biosemiotics”) focused on the informational aspects of genetic control (e.g., Beadle, 1963; Kendrew 1968; Stent, 1968; Delbrück, 1970).

I first belonged to the material school because my physics research was on x-ray microscopic and micro diffraction techniques for studying cell structure. Because the origin of life certainly requires understanding the origin of higher levels of organization, I also began to study hierarchical structures, specifically how new levels of organization are distinguished and whether higher levels of structure were objective, a descriptive convenience, or an epistemic necessity. …

The following excerpts are from an email from Ira Glickstein to Howard Pattee (Oct 19, 12:30 AM) and his reply (Oct 19, 10:58 AM).

NOTE: In his email, Howard includes the following links to Wikipedia that, for some reason, I could not get to be clickable within the quoted excerpts below, so here they are in clickable form: mind-matter problem, information-entropy distinction, and property dualist.

[IRA GLICKSTEIN] Howard, I just completed reading the remaining sections of your paper in detail. Of course I am always impressed by your writing style and calm, non-threatening attitude of presentation. I found it quite satisfying to once again spend time reading and trying to understand your reasoning processes, and I totally respect your valuable contributions to our understanding of hierarchy theory, complexity, the semiotic cut, biosemiotics, semiotic closure, and so on. So, please take the following in a positive sense as I intend it.

[HOWARD PATTEE] Ira, Here are my comments stimulated by your thoughtful discussion of my paper.

[IG] You contrast two schools of thought in the 1960s, one (with you, initially, as a member) that focused on the "material" aspects of molecular structure and biochemistry of life, while the second focused on the "informational" aspects of genetic control, that you note would now be called "biosemiotics".

You also ask whether hierarchical descriptions of complex systems are simply accepted and employed by humans because they make it easier to describe and understand these complex systems, or whether these levels actually exist. You, I am fairly sure, would now say the correct focus is on the informational aspects and that the hierarchical levels and structures are real and actually exist.

[HP] No, I am not focusing only on informational aspects. All information must have a physical embodiment. Symbols vehicles are matter or energy. I'm focusing on the symbol-matter problem. I consider the symbol-matter problem the primitive and simpler case of the philosophers' mind-matter problem. In physics it is related to the information-entropy distinction. I am a property dualist, or what I call an epistemic dualist; I am not a Cartesian substance dualist which is what you are worried about.

[IG] I would like to join your view, but I am worried that it veers too close to the Scilla and Charybdis of dualism - the idea that material and "spirit" are separate and distinct (and only interact thru the agency of God). You are careful to say you are not a dualist and that everything is material. The "mind" is not separate from the physical brain, and so on. But, is that a tenable position? Useful it definitely is, but is it in any sense to be literally interpreted?

[HP] Yes, I expect to be interpreted literally, which by definition means "following the words of the original very closely and exactly." I am a property dualist (which is not close to substance dualism) and I state that all symbols and symbolic activity require a material basis, which includes all forms of matter and energy, known and unknown.

[IG] At IBM and Lockheed Martin I conceptualized and designed complex avionics systems and software. On my diagrams, I had a hierarchy of software modules inside a number of physical computers. … Now, if you and I examined an actual aircraft, we would find the avionics as a number of metal boxes, connected by wires. … We would be hard-pressed to find that hierarchy of software modules and systems and subsystems I used to conceptualize and design that avionics system! What happened to my neat and easily conceptualized hierarchy of systems, subsystems, components and modules? It vanished into thin air like your fist when you unclench it to shake hands.

The above reasoning seems to me to support the idea that the actual avionics system is merely "material" and all the "informational" and "hierarchical" stuff is simply the way we humans have come up with to make it more convenient for us to conceptualize, design, and construct a complex system.

[HP] It is not "merely material." It is carefully selected matter precisely assembled only by virtue of the information in your brain (which is also a material structure). This design and construction information is certainly not just a "convenience." It is an absolute necessity. The genetic information performs the same design and construction information for the organism.
 
[IG] Even the computer program, when loaded into the computer as a string of electrical pulses, causes millions of semiconductor junctions to physically flip to different electrical states (that we call "1" and "0"). It is all physical!

[HP] Of course as a monist it must be all physical. To a physicalist, existence is all physical. But you have to understand what "physical" really entails. The laws of physics are moot without the information acquired from measurement of initial conditions and boundary conditions. Information structures are boundary conditions that control the lawful dynamics.

[IG] Yes, the specific order of those computer bits does control the displayed symbols and does make the radar antenna scan back and forth and so on, and (if it is the flight control subsystem) actually control the engine and airfoils and make the plane fly, but all the "information" is in the "minds" of us human engineers and programmers. Oh, and our "minds" (as you agree) are merely patterns of neuronal connections among the physical neuronal cell of our brains! So, where is the "information"? The "hierarchy"?

[HP] As I said, the computer code and the neural structure are not "merely" anything. They form the informational boundary conditions that control the dynamics.

[IG] Don't tell me the information and hierarchy is on my diagrams and computer program listings.

[HP] That is exactly what I'm telling you. The hierarchical levels are obvious in computer design, and not so obvious in brains. Without your information there would be no computers, and without genetic information there would be no brains.

[IG] Nope, all those are merely paper with ink marks, or computer chips with various voltages on millions of tiny structures, and displays with complex dots of light. None of this is "information" until a human looks at it, and, even then, all it is is patterns and weights of neural connections. OY!

[HP] Four billion years before humans looked at genes, their information was instructing matter how to replicate and evolve into humans.

[IG] As I write the above I feel a sense of loss. I never really believed in God as an intelligence external to the Universe, but I can imagine how a true believer might feel a big loss if we reasoned him or her out of the "God delusion". Is the "mind" a delusion if we really believe it exists? But you say you are a materialist, and I believe you are.

[HP] What do you think you have lost? Eddington: "There is nothing to prevent the assemblage of atoms constituting a brain from being of itself a thinking object [with 'free will'] in virtue of that nature which physics [the laws] leaves undetermined and undeterminable." Most of the structures in the universe are not determined by laws, but by chance (Gell-Mann's "frozen accidents").

[IG] … the "mind" is a word we use to conveniently describe something that is too complex to describe in full neuronal detail. Just as "God" is a word we use to describe the aspects of the Universe that we will never understand in full detail - the wonderful Laws of Nature, the Universal substance we can only perceive as interchangeable "energy" and "matter", of "waves" and "particles", of "random" and "deterministic", of "infinite" and "finite", of "continuous" and "discrete". … but I am optimistic:

“My candle burns at both ends / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - / It gives a lovely light.” Edna St. Vincent Millay, "A Few Figs from Thistles", 1920

Love from Ira (who did not expect this tome to keep me up past midnight)