Dialog with Howard Pattee - Part 2 - Determinism vs Probability

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 second in a planned multi-part posting that includes portions of our email dialog.

Click for Part 1 - His 2008 Paper

Click for Part 3 - QM and Chess Analogy

Click for Part 4 - Property Dualism

Click for Part 5 - Flatland and Higher Dimensions

INTRODUCTION

At the time I wrote my Oct 16th email (excerpted below), I had carefully re-read the first three 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 our long-standing differences of opinion as to causality, determinism, and the arbitrariness of symbols, here are the titles and initial paragraphs of each of the first three sections of Howard's paper:

1. Epistemology and terminology are problems for biosemiotics

There are classical epistemic problems that have troubled the greatest minds for over 2000 years without reaching any consensus. This is the case for conceptual dualisms, like discrete and continuous, chance and determinism, form and function, and especially the mind-body problem that has persistently puzzled philosophers, and is still a central issue for philosophy, psychology, artificial life, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. It is also closely related to fundamental issues in physics, the information-energy relation and what is known as the measurement problem. All of these problems are related to a category I have generalized as symbol-matter problem.

Biosemiotics, virtually by definition, cannot escape these problems. In my view, the central difficulty with the historical mind-body problem is that philosophy approached it from the wrong end of evolution. The many concepts and terminologies that have been invented to describe thought and language at the highest evolutionary levels of human cognition are not conceptually or empirically clear enough to adequately describe symbolic control at the cellular level where this duality first appears, and where it is simple enough to understand. Because my education began as a physics student, I learned that one must thoroughly understand very simple problems before one could even think clearly about more complex problems. …

2. The rules of symbols and the laws of matter have incompatible epistemic assumptions.

Let me begin with two epistemic assumptions that are a common source of misunderstanding. Models of symbol systems and material systems are based on incompatible epistemic assumptions. Physical laws ― the laws of matter and energy ― are based on the principle that any candidate for a law must give the same results for all conceivable observers and for arbitrary changes of reference frames. These conditions are called invariance and symmetry principles. Physical laws seek to describe those relations between events over which individual agents, whether single cells or humans, ideally have no control or freedom to make changes. Laws must appear universal and inexorable. By contrast, any candidate for a symbol system is based on the condition that all individual agents, from cells to humans, ideally have complete symbol-writing freedom within the syntactic constraints of the symbol system.

In other words, physical laws must give the impression that events do not have alternatives and could not be otherwise (Wigner, 1964), while informational symbolic structures must give the impression that they could be otherwise, and must have innumerable ways of actually being otherwise. Semiotic events are based on an endless choice of alternatives, not only in symbol sequences but also in codes that interpret the symbols. It is just those innumerable alternatives, selected by heritable propagation, that are the prerequisites for evolution as well as for creative thought. …

3. How can symbols and codes be free of physical laws?

This question is a second common source of misunderstanding about the symbol-matter problem. It is a belief among many scientists and philosophers that because physical laws are universal and inexorable there is in principle no room for alternative behaviors, in particular, the freedom of symbolic information, and ultimately free-will. This is a belief with a psychological basis that long predates the discovery of physical laws. It is rooted in the concept of causality ―the feeling that every event must have a cause. Aristotle and Lucretius could not accept indeterminism long before Laplace and Einstein. ...

The following excerpts are from an email from Ira Glickstein to Howard Pattee (Oct 16, 8:25 AM) and his reply (Oct 16, 12:51 PM)

[IRA GLICKSTEIN] Howard: thanks for uploading this paper. I am currently reading it in detail and am up to section 4. You make a very strong case for indeterminacy and arbitrariness of symbols. Of course, I accept that our human brains, even when assisted by highest technology sensors and computers cannot determine the future of evolution and natural (or even artificial) selection.

However, if (a BIG IF) time and space are finite and discrete (as, apparently are the quanta of matter) THEN (I would like to believe and therefore I do believe), at the Big Bang when a finite amount of matter/energy and space-time and the finite, Universal, and unchanging Laws of Nature originated, there were (and therefore still are) only a finite number of possible states of the Universe. 

[HOWARD PATTEE] The issue of determinism vs probability does not depend on discreteness. It depends on the nature of laws and what we call states of a system. There is no empirical evidence that the state of a system is exact. It is a probability distribution according to most interpretations of QM. Born even argues that classical models are probability distributions. …

The laws may be unchanging but still only probabilistic, as well as the states.

[IG] Thus, the sequence of formation of our Universe and ultimately of life and it's associated symbols, were (and are) fully determined.

I guess we are each too old to modify our basic beliefs.…

[HP] At least I can claim that all of the empirical evidence that I have acquired is consistent with a probabilistic universe. I have never come across any evidence of strict determinism. I have only experienced events with very good statistics.

I agree, however, that faith in determinism and God cannot be disproved by empirical evidence.

[IG] Meanwhile, THANKS again for being such an important part of my intellectual and personal life. …

[HP] Keep thinking. Howard

 

Ira Glickstein

Dialog with Howard Pattee - Part 1 - His 2008 Paper

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 (who is still paying the price for being Chairman of my PhD committee nearly two decades ago :^). He has given me his permission to share his comments on my email critiques of his 2008 paper, and I plan to do so in subsequent postings in this "Dialog with Howard Pattee" series.

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

Click for Part 2 - Determinism vs Probability

Click for Part 3 - QM and Chess Analogy

Click for Part 4 - Property Dualism

Click for Part 5 - Flatland and Higher Dimensions

HOWARD A FAVORITE ON THIS BLOG

Howard has been an Author, Commenter and/or Subject on this Blog almost since its inception in 2007. Although he has not actively posted here for some time, I've noticed that postings by or about him, as well as postings where he has made comments, consistently garner high numbers of page views, year after year. Clearly, his name is a popular Google search term!

Although I have known and highly respected Howard since I first met him at Binghamton University as a System Science professor in the early 1990's, I still have difficulty getting my anal engineer's brain around his important contributions to the field now called "biosemiotics" (from the Greek bios meaning "life" and semeion meaning "sign"). At my request, he summarized the field of biosemiotics on this blog, here.

HOWARD'S RESEARCH INTERESTS

He began his graduate study of physics in the 1940's and was attracted to the classic problem of the physical basis of life. Rather than concentrate on the chemical basis of how living organisms are created from non-living matter, he approached it from the conceptual problem of where symbolic function emerges in the context of physical laws. Howard's research interests include: Physics of Symbols, Origin of Life, Epistemology, the Symbol-Matter Problem, the Quantum Measurement Problem, Biosemiotics, and the Epistemic Cut.
 
The very idea of the "physics of symbols" seems like a contradiction in terms to me. Howard and I have gone round and round on the "reality" of how a physical thing becomes a "sign" and a "sign" becomes a "symbol".  Although Howard is not a "dualist" in the way René Descartes considered "mental" and "material" to be two different substances, he calls himself a "property dualist" in our dialog, believing that the world consists of one type of physical substance that has both "physical" and "mental" properties.

His latest book, co-authored with Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi, was published in 2012 as Biosemiotics, Volume 7 2012, LAWS, LANGUAGE and LIFE, Howard Pattee’s classic papers on the physics of symbols with contemporary commentary.

Links to many of his papers are available at:  http://binghamton.academia.edu/HowardPattee.

I hope Howard's many fans will post comments on this Blog.

advTHANKSance!

Ira Glickstein

Biosemiotics

Ira suggested that I try to summarize the field of BIOSEMIOTICS ― the study of how symbol systems control living organisms and societies. I’ll try to do this in a series of short posts of less than 750 words. Then you can ask questions if I am unclear, make comments or disagree with what I have said. Hopefully, we can clear up the problems, and go on to the next post.

1^ST TOPIC: WHAT IS MEMORY

A symbol system, like the genetic code, a natural language, mathematics, or an artificial computer language, requires a set of symbols and rules that reside in a memory. Memory-stored symbols are the fundamental and essential requirement for life. It is required for self-replication and all open-ended evolution. Memory is also necessary for any learning and thinking process in nervous systems. Memory is also a requirement for universal computation.

Memory and symbols can be physically implemented in endless ways, in molecules like DNA, in texts like this page, in photographs, in digital magnetic, electric and optical patterns in computers, and in neural patterns in the brain. But these particular types of memory are not what make memory of fundamental importance. So, what are the properties of memory that are essential in evolution, learning, and computation?

Two essential properties of memory are PERMANENCE and CHANGEABILITY. These properties sound incompatible, but they are complementary. In a previous post on the C- and L-minds, I compared permanence to the CONSERVATIVE aspect of memory, and I compared changeability to the LIBERAL aspect of memory. Clearly, success in adaptive evolution, learning, and social systems requires the proper balance of conservative permanence and liberal change. That is why I disagree with any liberal or conservative who claims an ideological superiority.

A good memory must also be quickly accessible, and its symbols must have the ability to effect or control a specific change. A gene must be capable of controlling protein synthesis. A brain must be capable of controlling muscles. A computer memory must be capable of changing the state of the hardware. In all of these symbol systems, genes, brains and computers, the memories have also evolved the property of self-reference. That is, genes can control their own expression, brains can think about their own thoughts (e.g., consciousness), and computer programs can address themselves. This turns out to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it allows organisms, brains and computers to inspect internal predictive models of the world. On the other hand, self-reference can lead to contradiction, infinite regress, and undecidable questions like whether we have free will.

While it is clear that evolution, learning, and computation could not occur unless memory has some degree of permanence and some degree of change, the nature and results of the changes are different in all three cases. In evolution, memory change is called mutation or variation, and changes are largely random. Natural selection determines the ultimate results. In nervous systems memory change is called learning. Learning is more complex and includes instruction, experience, reorganizing existing memory (thought or reasoning) and random or directed search, and often cultural selection. In computation, memory change is often called recursion or rewriting. A memory-stored program usually determines change, but programs can simulate random change and, model evolution, learning, and thinking.

Here is the classical problem of symbolic memory. The peculiar fact is that the physics of memory ― that is, the laws governing the material structures of memory symbols ― has no necessary relation to the function or meaning of the symbols. Symbol vehicles obey physical laws, but analysis of these diverse physical structures does not tell us what is important, namely the function or meaning of the symbols. Neither does analysis of these physical embodiments of memory tell us how the behaviors of memories differ in evolving organisms, brains and computers. Physical laws alone cannot predict or usefully describe the course of evolution, learning, thinking, or computation. Briefly, the problem is that symbols are arbitrarily related to their meaning or referent. The meaning or function of symbols is determined by a code or an interpreter. Symbols do not exist alone, but are a part of a language.

This fact has been a problem since the beginning of philosophy. It is
the root of the classical body-mind problem. Today in physics it is the basis of the measurement problem ― how the irreversible process interpreted as a measurement can arise from state-determined reversible laws. Some physicists also see this as an energy-information dichotomy. In biology this is the crux of the origin of life problem, how did this symbolic control of matter begin? How did molecules become messages? I call this the symbol-matter problem.

NEXT TOPIC: WHAT IS A LANGUAGE?

Howard