Another view of Leonard Peikoff

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Per your formulation, "In other words, everything is a holon and everything is made up of quarks." Which I think is wrong.

William,

I do wish you had read a post I made later not too long after that one. The post you quoted was a response to goading and I admit it was over-the-top. I will help you with the continuation of my previous thought.

Once we do hit rock bottom, if such even exists, I agree that that a "puff of existence" (to use Peikoff's quirky term) is not a holon. Just as I agree that the universe as a whole is not, since it is not a part of anything else.

Maybe it is a good time to highlight that the latter post qualifies the former. We are on a discussion forum after all and I would have never written that first statement in that particular manner as part of an article. I would always include the qualification in a formal presentation.

My original point, which I was trying to illustrate with the holon/quark statement and I still maintain is true, is that there are two ways of looking at all things and that these ways reflect the way the universe is built: from the bottom up and from the top down. In other words, all things have parts and all things are a whole, with perceivable principles obtained from observing the patterns at both ends. But I also provided an exception. I also maintain that at the extreme ends, words like holon lose part of their meaning because there is nowhere else to go. You can't make any parts out of the smallest existing stuff and a system cannot be part of a larger system if it is already the largest one that exists.

The whole problem I see with making absolute statements about the extreme ends is how to verify those statements and those ends. I stated this in the direct continuation of the post of mine I cited:

In both cases, though, I do not see any manner of verifying it. It's either too little or too big for our size and reach to make an absolute statement of fact. In this case, at least so far, the best we can do is presume.

I have no problem with looking at quarks and photons and so forth and saying they are the smallest stuff we know about, thus according to that standard, they are not holons. I do have a big problem with saying that learning more about them is impossible if such learning means encountering parts and that would make them holons. I have a bigger problem with this when I look at the pattern of scientific discovery in human history in the face of scoffers.

Many proponents of new ideas have been wrong and the scoffers right over the centuries, but many proponents have been right, too. Let's apply the falsifying principle: one instance of exception falsifies a proposition. Thus the scoffers' proposition that further knowledge is impossible about the fundament of something already examined because science has discovered all there is to know about it has been falsified by newbies too many times to be true. (The instance under discussion is specifically whether the smallest subatomic particles we know about have parts of their own.) Thus I look on in perplexity as people who use the falsifying principle as their meat and potatoes and are science oriented make absolute statements of no further knowledge being possible based on lack of evidence.

My original statement, being so emphatic and over-the-top, also prompted something very good which was being buried under a mountain of scoffing. Holon is now on the table and being discussed and examined by the best thinking the highly intelligent thinkers on OL (of which you are one) can bring to bear on it. It is a valid concept and it is no longer being treated as a fancy excuse to justify God or folly for the deluded. Scoffing by the knowledgeable does not produce a fundamental axiom and it never will. Only good things can come of intelligent discussion and scoffing stifles that.

Even the human species can now be acknowledged as being subject to the law of identity, but I don't think the discussion has progressed that far yet. (I like the Wilber quote Paul dug up about the different nature of different systems. If subparticles can be varied, why can't systems be varied? I personally like the idea of a varied universe, mainly because I perceive variety all around me.)

Back to the small stuff. In my own druther-land, I would prefer the subatomic particles already known not to have smaller parts. I would prefer them not to be holons. Ever. From the things I have read so far (including Bob's post), I cannot make an absolute statement that they are or are not without the "to the extent of our knowledge" qualification, but I actually would prefer them to be rock bottom. Men who govern other men are so foolish that they would fund a more deadly bomb out of such further knowledge. One day boom could really mean a boom that doesn't stop.

More later.

Michael

[tjohnson]

It seems clear to me that matter is composed of energy which is "knit together" somehow. The equation E=mc^2 shows that the two are intricately connected. Thus energy seems more basic than matter. I imagine that immediately after the big bang there was nothing but energy and then matter formed as it dissipated in space-time.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... The only difference between that kind of thinking and Wilber's is that the emergence people consider the force to come from the bottom up and Wilber considers it to come from the top down.

... I said nothing about emergence, let alone 'emergence people,' and I have no idea who you mean . . .

William,

Heh.

At least you asked before bashing.

"Emergence people" is merely a layman's way of saying people who think emergence is the sole cause of form on an ontological level—that all the variety of forms in the universe ultimately emerged from one tiny thing whose nature is unknown, so to speak.

I see God in that principle, except He's tiny, not big. But apparently He packs one hell of a wallop. Boom. Big bang. Form from the Void. Emergence of new forms from the tiny as process.

I do hope that those who speculate thus realize that they are presenting a form of God.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Now, here you follow on my remarks that I understand the utility of a holon as an heuristic, but find that Wilber and Sheldrake (and in some small measure, Koestler) tend to reify a holon into something in and of itself. In other words, they make the holon-as-holon an actor or agent, rather than the thing or complex in question...

William,

I am not sure I fully understand this, but from what I do understand of it, I do not agree that holon has been "reified" and so forth by Koestler or Wilber (I have not read anything by Sheldrake). They merely report what they observe at the start of an idea.

You see, I can go at it from the other end. Do you think scientists have "reified" subparticle-as-subparticle, making it an "actor or agent" in the creation of form? And that subparticle does not actually exist, but is merely "an heuristic," essentially a speculation for further inquiry? (We can throw in energy for good measure, but that doesn't alter my point, so I will stick with subparticle for ease of expression.)

If you answer, "Why no. We observe subparticles as little thingies that have patterns, and those patterns cause the form of bigger thingies" why can't such a statement be applied to holon, but from the other way? The big thingies and their patterns are clearly observable and govern the behavior of the little thingies that make them up. That's where the statement, "more than the sum of its parts" comes from, except this is usually called "emergence" (from the bottom up) or "holism" (from the top down).

So what is the operating epistemological principle? Observation?

If so, I observe both and I observe many people who observe both. When they report their observations, these usually coincide with what I have observed under my own steam or they are very similar. I also observe many people favoring one or the other, but I usually find gaps in their positions when I examine them against what I have observed under my own steam. (When it gets really weird, like claiming that I have lived past lives on one end, or on the other end, that my perception of myself is a "user illusion," and other stuff like that, I simply can't relate it to anything I have observed. ) I am open, but I will need very good reasons to abandon what I observe in favor of any principle favoring one or the other.

Or is the operating epistemological principle "I'm right and you're an idiot"? That principle just doesn't do it for me.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

One thing cannot be denied. Evolution of life shows a historical pattern of movement from the simple toward the complex.

... See, there is no simple force that drives all life to the 'right.'

William,

This needs a bit more willingness to understand on your part. I was not claiming anything about a "simple force that drives all life." That's your baby, not mine.

I was observing the pattern of appearance of new life forms. Your graph even shows this and your comments even say simple on the left and complex on the right.

We are talking about different things.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I reject that holons are something apart in another realm from their constituents, existing timelessly, and exerting an independent force as holons. This is what Sheldrake and Wilber put forth, and which I reject.

William,

I reject this too, just as I would reject (to paraphrase) that the nature of subparticles is something apart in another realm from the subparticles themselves, existing timelessly, and exerting an independent force as "will to emerge and bind or repel" once it attaches to them or something like that. Yet subparticles do have identifiable natures, they do bind and repel and forms do emerge from them, and likewise whole systems have their own nature and this nature causes things to happen, even to subparticles.

I see no way to justify thinking that the nature of a subparticle exists qua nature of subparticle within this reality, but the nature of a whole system cannot be likewise. Why should that be so? If you want evidence, just look around you. And look with the same eyes you use when looking at the small stuff.

I need to read more Wilber, but I do not get the impression he is talking about another reality from what I have read so far. (But I admit I might be wrong.) I do get the impression that he is talking about what I call top-down nature.

As to the idea of finding the seeds of awareness in quarks (Wilber uses other words like sentience and prehension), isn't that essentially what reductionists are claiming when you unravel their arguments and take them all the way to the bottom?

To put it bluntly, according to logic, the seed of awareness was in that tiny unknown something that both existed and did not exist right before the big bang. It just took a long time to emerge after the boom. (Or as a variation, human awareness is merely a more complex form of what was already in that tiny unknown something and what any quark has—this position essentially being what Wilber claims.) Also, that tiny unknown something just happens to be "another reality" by its very definition.

God anyone?

If you claim that something comes from nothing, like awareness did not exist until it "emerged" as some kind of miracle with no relation to the inanimate matter that engendered it, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts just because the extra part springs into existence somehow, you step outside of causality.

Once again, God anyone?

I am not claiming God exists. I am merely pointing out some serious holes in the arguments as I have mulled them over so far. If you want to criticize one position, you must criticize the other by the same standard, or be guilty of using a double standard.

Rather than fall off into denial of the obvious or inadvertently arrive at a concept like God, I prefer to look at the principles that are operating and divide them into top down and bottom up. There is no separate reality for the nature of either. All things exist from the top and from the bottom in this reality and all things can be thus viewed.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

To put it bluntly, according to logic, the seed of awareness was in that tiny unknown something that both existed and did not exist right before the big bang. It just took a long time to emerge after the boom. (Or as a variation, human awareness is merely a more complex form of what was already in that tiny unknown something and what any quark has—this position essentially being what Wilber claims.) Also, that tiny unknown something just happens to be "another reality" by its very definition.

God anyone?

If you claim that something comes from nothing, like awareness did not exist until it "emerged" as some kind of miracle with no relation to the inanimate matter that engendered it, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts just because the extra part springs into existence somehow, you step outside of causality.

Once again, God anyone?

Do you believe that consciousness existed before baryonic matter emerged from the B.B.? If so, what was it that was conscious?

I propose that consciousness is an emergent property of systems of interacting particles and energy fields. That is more in line with currently available empirical evidence.

When one outruns empirical evidence by too much, one ends up with metaphysical speculation which

1. Is not testable

2. Produces no useful technology

3. Makes no useful predictions about the sensible world.

And that is philosophical vaporware.

I ask you: will this approach produce anything as useful as a computer, a transistor communications device, a GPS based location finder? I doubt it.

We are fortunate that the physicists and scientists in related fields (chemistry, medicine, engineering, etc) have purged philosophical nonsense from their operating modality. Else we should all be sitting in Plato's Cave, shivering in the dark.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited August 16, 2008 by BaalChatzaf

[Guyau]

Re: #270

“The Coming Revolutions in Particle Physics” by Chris Quigg

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-co...article-physics

Opening the TeV scale to exploration means entering a new world of experimental physics. Making a thorough exploration of this world—where we will come to terms with electroweak symmetry breaking, the hierarchy problem, and dark matter—is the top priority for accelerator experiments. The goals are well motivated and matched by our experimental tools, with the LHC succeeding the current workhorse, Fermilab’s Tevatron collider. The answers will not only be satisfying for particle physics, they will deepen our understanding of the everyday world.

But these expectations, high as they are, are still not the end of the story. The LHC could well find clues to the full unification of forces or indications that the particle masses follow a rational pattern. Any proposed interpretation of new particles will have consequences for rare decays of the particles we already know. It is very likely that lifting the electroweak veil will bring these problems into clearer relief, change the way we think about them and inspire future experimental thrusts.

Startup is 10 September 2008

http://www.lhc.ac.uk/latest-news.html

Edited August 16, 2008 by Stephen Boydstun

[tjohnson]

It seems clear to me that matter is composed of energy which is "knit together" somehow. The equation E=mc^2 shows that the two are intricately connected. Thus energy seems more basic than matter. I imagine that immediately after the big bang there was nothing but energy and then matter formed as it dissipated in space-time.

Here is an example of what I mean by "knitted together".

Most of the mass arises through the original form of Albert Einstein’s famous equation, m = E/c2, from the energy stored up in confining the quarks in a tiny volume. In identifying the energy of quark confinement as the origin of proton and neutron mass, we explain nearly all the visible mass of the universe, because luminous matter is made mostly of protons and neutrons in stars.

In other words, most of what we call 'matter" is made up of energy.

See http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hidden...hapes-our-world

Edited August 16, 2008 by general semanticist

[Roger Bissell]

Got Wetness? -- Got Wetness? -- Got Wetness? -- Got Wetness? -- Got Wetness? -- Got Wetness? -- Got Wetness?

To put it bluntly, according to logic, the seed of awareness was in that tiny unknown something that both existed and did not exist right before the big bang. It just took a long time to emerge after the boom. (Or as a variation, human awareness is merely a more complex form of what was already in that tiny unknown something and what any quark has—this position essentially being what Wilber claims.) Also, that tiny unknown something just happens to be "another reality" by its very definition.

God anyone?

If you claim that something comes from nothing, like awareness did not exist until it "emerged" as some kind of miracle with no relation to the inanimate matter that engendered it, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts just because the extra part springs into existence somehow, you step outside of causality.

Once again, God anyone?

Do you believe that consciousness existed before baryonic matter emerged from the B.B.? If so, what was it that was conscious?

I propose that consciousness is an emergent property of systems of interacting particles and energy fields. That is more in line with currently available empirical evidence.

When one outruns empirical evidence by too much, one ends up with metaphysical speculation which

1. Is not testable

2. Produces no useful technology

3. Makes no useful predictions about the sensible world.

And that is philosophical vaporware.

I ask you: will this approach produce anything as useful as a computer, a transistor communications device, a GPS based location finder? I doubt it.

We are fortunate that the physicists and scientists in related fields (chemistry, medicine, engineering, etc) have purged philosophical nonsense from their operating modality. Else we should all be sitting in Plato's Cave, shivering in the dark.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Here's a similar issue that has been tugging at my medulla oblongata, Ba'al.

An emergentist (such as I have considered myself at times) would say that the wetness (liquidity) of water at "room temperature" is an emergent quality of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms which, as we know, are ~not~ wet or liquid at that temperature.

But what if...what if liquidness/wetness does ~not~ emerge ("from nothing"?), but instead HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE!

Wetness, anyone?

Did wetness, too, exist -- to adopt the form of Ba'al's query -- "before baryonic matter emerged from the B.B.?" And to paraphrase his followup question: If so, what was it that was wet?

For that matter, maybe ~baryonic matter~ didn't emerge from the Big Bang ~either~. Maybe ~it~ was always "there" (where?), too! If so, however, what was it the matter ~of~?

Perhaps we are seeing here an argument for Plato's World of Forms, a world of essences that existed before there was any physical manifestation of them. Maybe the WOF is "that tiny unknown something that both existed and did not exist right before the big bang"--a "tiny unknown something" that contained ~everything~ which did not yet exist, and yet did.

Plato would have been ~very~ "blunt" in laying out the "logic" to inform us that the "seeds" (Forms) of all the attributes we see around us in the world existed before the world. Maybe he was right! Who needs Mandrake the Magician and his woo-woo morphogenetic fields!

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's funny how changing the subject and mockery kick in when the logic of a sacred cow leads to an unwanted pasture...

It seems like all of a sudden, logic is not that appealing anymore...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Re: #270

“The Coming Revolutions in Particle Physics” by Chris Quigg

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-co...article-physics

Stephen,

Thank you for posting that. I am going to spend some time reading over this, but on my initial skim, I was very intrigued by Higgs and the following:

The new collider provides the greatest leap in capability of any instrument in the history of particle physics. We do not know what it will find, but the discoveries we make and the new puzzles we encounter are certain to change the face of particle physics and to echo through neighboring sciences.

In this new world, we expect to learn what distinguishes two of the forces of nature—electromagnetism and the weak interactions—with broad implications for our conception of the everyday world. We will gain a new understanding of simple and profound questions: Why are there atoms? Why chemistry? What makes stable structures possible?

Apparently there are new ways to smash stuff...

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

But these morphic fields? Either (with Ellen S.) they are just mathematical expressions of the inherent developmental forces in things or....enter Tinker Belle. Identity or pixie dust, the ultimate dichotomy!

Confusion reigns. Roger, I'm not understanding how you got that description of my comment about "morphogenetic [not "morphic"] fields" as used in a section I posted from The Ghost in the Machine:

The Ghost in the Machine

by Arthur Koestler

The Macmillan Company, New York

© Arthur Koestler 1967

pg. 341

[bold emphasis added.]

[....]

1.5 More generally, the term 'holon' may be applied to any stable biological or social sub-whole which displays rule-governed behaviour and/or structural Gestalt-constancy. Thus organelles and homologous organs are evolutionary holons; morphogenetic fields [*] are ontogenetic holons; the ethologist's 'fixed action-patterns' and the sub-routines of acquired skills are behavioural holons; phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases are linguistic holons; individuals, families, tribes, nations are social holons.

[*] This isn't a reference to Sheldrake, whose writing I think postdated this book. "Field" is being used in the sense of spatial area; Koestler is referring to "location in the epigenetic landscape" (pg. 125), i.e., to an area of the genome which develops into a particular organ or sub-organ.

Possibly some quotes from Wikipedia will clear up the differences in usage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenetic_field

Morphogenetic field

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the mainstream developmental biology concept. For Rupert Sheldrake's concept of the same name see the corresponding section of Morphic field.

In developmental biology, a morphogenetic field is a group of cells able to respond to discrete, localized biochemical signals leading to the development of specific morphological structures or organs.[1][2] The spatial and temporal extent of the embryonic fields are dynamic, and within the field is a collection of interacting cells out of which a particular organ is formed.[3] As a group, the cells within a given morphogenetic field are constrained — i.e. cells in a limb field will become a limb tissue, those in a cardiac field will become heart tissue.[4]

Koestler, in The Ghost in the Machine, was using the term straight from mainstream biology, in particular from Waddington's "epigenetic landscape":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._H._Waddington

Conrad Hal Waddington FRS FRSE (1905–1975) was a developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher who laid the foundations for systems biology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._H._Wadding...netic_landscape

Epigenetic landscape

Waddington's epigenetic landscape is a metaphor for how gene regulation modulates development.[3] One is asked to imagine a number of marbles rolling down a hill towards a wall. The marbles will compete for the grooves on the slope, and come to rest at the lowest points. These points represent the eventual cell fates, that is, tissue types. This idea was actually based on experiment: Waddington found that one effect of mutation (which could modulate the epigenetic landscape was) was to affect how cells differentiated.

Koestler writes on pg. 120, The Ghost in the Machine:

[bold emphasis added.]

Once the future of a tissue's development is decided, it can behave in a strikingly 'determined' way. At the gastrular stage, when the embryo still looks like a partly infolded sac, it is nevertheless possible already to tell which organs each region will produce. If at this early stage a piece of tissue from an amphibian embryo, which would normally give rise to an eye, is transplanted onto the tail end of another, older embryo, it will become, not an eye, but a kidney-duct or some other organ characteristic of that region. But at a later stage in the embryo's growth, this docility of the presumptive eye-region is lost, and no matter to what location it is transplanted, it will develop into an eye--even on the host's thigh or belly. When a cell-group has reached this stage, it is called a morphogenetic field, organ-primordium, or bud, as the case may be. Not only the future eye, but a limb-bud too, transplanted to a different position (on the same, or on another embryo), will form a complete organ; even a heart may be formed on the host's flank. This 'ruthless' determination of morphogenetic fields to assert their individuality reflects, in our terminology, the self-assertive principle in development.

Here's Widipedia on Sheldrake's use of the term and its difference from that of mainstream biology (which latter usage Koestler was employing):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphic_field...hogenetic_field

[bold emphasis added.]

Morphogenetic fields are defined by Sheldrake as the subset of morphic fields which influence, and are influenced by living things.

“The term [morphic fields] is more general in its meaning than morphogenetic fields, and includes other kinds of organizing fields in addition to those of morphogenesis; the organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory.” — Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past (Chapter 6, page 112)

Morphogenetic fields contain the information necessary to shape the exact form of a living thing, as part of its epigenetics, and may also shape its behaviour and coordination with other beings. The term morphogenetic field has also been used in a different sense by mainstream developmental biologists, as regions within a developing embryo that will subsequently develop into particular structures or organs. Since 1920's, mainstream biology has used the term morphogenetic field to mean "that collection of cells by whose interactions a particular organ formed". This usage is distinct from Sheldrake's in that nothing external to the cells themselves is implicated. Sheldrake proposes that his ideas of morphic fields and resonance can give a better account of embryological development in terms of fields acting upon the embryo to give it the characteristic form of the organism.

The morphogenetic field would provide a force that guided the development of an organism as it grew, making it take on a form similar to that of others in its species. DNA, in this view, is not itself the source of structure, but rather a "receiver" that translates instructions in the field into physical form. The principle of morphic resonance implies that the new individuals imprint upon the field, and the field then causes subsequent generations to tend to show that form.

In Sheldrake's theory, since humans have a different form to plants (for example) they do not "pick up" the pattern of plants during development.

There's a warning sign on the article about Sheldrake's morphic fields (from which the above is a segment) which says: "The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed."

I don't know the details of the dispute. I haven't read the whole article, only the part I quoted -- which I looked up specifically for the purpose of trying to make clear the difference between how mainstream biology uses (and Koestler used, in Ghost) the term "morphogenetic field" and how Sheldrake uses it.

(Jeez: In re-glancing at the Sheldrake entry, I see that Sheldrake apparently has made some sort of mixed up interpretation of Jungian theory. Oh, help, I don't know if I even want to find out about this. Enough error is too much for one few days!)

Ellen

___

Edited August 16, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Dragonfly]

As to the idea of finding the seeds of awareness in quarks (Wilber uses other words like sentience and prehension), isn't that essentially what reductionists are claiming when you unravel their arguments and take them all the way to the bottom?

No. It's nonsense to assign the property of sentience and prehension to quarks, just as it's nonsense to assign the property of wetness to quarks (or to atoms or molecules). These are properties that have only meaning to large aggregates and complexes of individual quarks or atoms. There isn't any wetness in a single H₂O molecule, it is a characteristic that emerges by the interaction of a huge number of those molecules. In a similar way prehension can only exist in very complex structures as these are the basis of the necessary information processing. A brain can think, a single firing neuron cannot think. Complexity is the fundamental element in sentience and prehension.

[Dragonfly]

And that is philosophical vaporware.

Right. As is the concept "holon". Has it resulted in any new discovery, in any new scientific insight? The only applications I've seen are New-Age crap like Cosmic Consciousness and conscious atoms. Otherwise it's just a new word for well-known hierarchical relationships.

[Ellen Stuttle]

And that is philosophical vaporware.

Right. As is the concept "holon". Has it resulted in any new discovery, in any new scientific insight? The only applications I've seen are New-Age crap like Cosmic Consciousness and conscious atoms. Otherwise it's just a new word for well-known hierarchical relationships.

A new word for hierarchical relationships was all it was meant to be by its coiner. It was meant as an integrating image to call attention to comparable features in different areas of study. And, yes, that original purpose of the term is a useful purpose -- or it was at the time (1967), when quite a bit "obvious" was going unnoticed by the field of psychology (for one example, that language acquisition and employment "obviously" did not fit the Behaviorist S-R model).

Ellen

___

[BaalChatzaf]

And that is philosophical vaporware.

Right. As is the concept "holon". Has it resulted in any new discovery, in any new scientific insight? The only applications I've seen are New-Age crap like Cosmic Consciousness and conscious atoms. Otherwise it's just a new word for well-known hierarchical relationships.

When I was a kid, we used to have wholes and parts, often in a hierarchical arrangement. A whole engine was part of var. A whole cylinder what part of an engine, etc. etc..

So who needs "holons"?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

And that is philosophical vaporware.

Right. As is the concept "holon". Has it resulted in any new discovery, in any new scientific insight? The only applications I've seen are New-Age crap like Cosmic Consciousness and conscious atoms. Otherwise it's just a new word for well-known hierarchical relationships.

When I was a kid, we used to have wholes and parts, often in a hierarchical arrangement. A whole engine was part of var. A whole cylinder what part of an engine, etc. etc..

So who needs "holons"?

I don't need no stinkin' holons!

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's nonsense to assign the property of sentience and prehension to quarks, just as it's nonsense to assign the property of wetness to quarks (or to atoms or molecules). These are properties that have only meaning to large aggregates and complexes of individual quarks or atoms. There isn't any wetness in a single H₂O molecule, it is a characteristic that emerges by the interaction of a huge number of those molecules. In a similar way prehension can only exist in very complex structures as these are the basis of the necessary information processing. A brain can think, a single firing neuron cannot think. Complexity is the fundamental element in sentience and prehension.

Dragonfly,

I think it is so weird to compare wetness to awareness. I just don't see it. This one groks in my mind as nonsense in the most literal meaning of that term (without trying to be hostile). I get no sense out of it.

Today it's Tuesday. Of course it is. You can thank the rubber on the tire and the meaning of sunlight for such similarity.

Grok...

I get nothing... No connection...

Michael

[Dragonfly]

I think it is so weird to compare wetness to awareness. I just don't see it. This one groks in my mind as nonsense in the most literal meaning of that term (without trying to be hostile). I get no sense out of it.

It's simply an analogy, just another example of a property that is meaningless when applied to a single building block (in this case a molecule), as it is the interaction between many building blocks that generates that property, just as it is the interaction between many building blocks (in this case brain cells, neurons) that makes awareness possible and not a single neuron, let alone a single atom or quark.

[Paul Mawdsley]

To put it bluntly, according to logic, the seed of awareness was in that tiny unknown something that both existed and did not exist right before the big bang. It just took a long time to emerge after the boom. (Or as a variation, human awareness is merely a more complex form of what was already in that tiny unknown something and what any quark has—this position essentially being what Wilber claims.) Also, that tiny unknown something just happens to be "another reality" by its very definition.

God anyone?

If you claim that something comes from nothing, like awareness did not exist until it "emerged" as some kind of miracle with no relation to the inanimate matter that engendered it, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts just because the extra part springs into existence somehow, you step outside of causality.

Once again, God anyone?

Michael,

What do you mean by "seed of awareness?" Do you mean some sort of proto-awareness? Or do you mean particles with specific properties of action that have the potential to interact in such a way for awareness to emerge? It seems as though you are suggesting the former. Suggesting awareness emerged from inanimate matter does not step outside of causality. Our concept of causality just needs to be able to meet the challenge of connecting the dots. To suggest, if you are, some sort of proto-awareness in quarks is necessary to account for awareness in more complex entities is to draw conclusions based on a mistaken concept of causation.

Without any form of proto-awareness modern physics can account for the four states of matter: liquid, solid, gas, and plasma. I have speculated that if the properties of plasmas integrate with the properties of solids (if a force-free plasma filament is created within the stable structures of amino acids) the properties of life and proto-awareness could emerge. Whether such a speculation is right or not is not the point. It emphasizes the idea that life and awareness can be causally conceived to emerge from inanimate matter without there being a proto-life or proto-awareness substance.

Do you believe that consciousness existed before baryonic matter emerged from the B.B.? If so, what was it that was conscious?

I propose that consciousness is an emergent property of systems of interacting particles and energy fields. That is more in line with currently available empirical evidence.

When one outruns empirical evidence by too much, one ends up with metaphysical speculation which

1. Is not testable

2. Produces no useful technology

3. Makes no useful predictions about the sensible world.

And that is philosophical vaporware.

I ask you: will this approach produce anything as useful as a computer, a transistor communications device, a GPS based location finder? I doubt it.

We are fortunate that the physicists and scientists in related fields (chemistry, medicine, engineering, etc) have purged philosophical nonsense from their operating modality. Else we should all be sitting in Plato's Cave, shivering in the dark.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I agree with Bob here. I just tend to give imagination and metaphysical speculation a fair bit of slack before reigning it back in to the empirical evidence.

Paul

[william.scherk]

My original point, which I was trying to illustrate with the holon/quark statement and I still maintain is true, is that there are two ways of looking at all things and that these ways reflect the way the universe is built: from the bottom up and from the top down. In other words, all things have parts and all things are a whole, with perceivable principles obtained from observing the patterns at both ends.

Okay. You assert that there are two ways of looking at all things, and that these two ways reflect the way things are built. I must admit I don't understand this fully. If we are speaking of "building the universe," and there are two ways of looking at this building, one from the top and one from the bottom, I can't immediately think of an example to clearly illustrate the assertion with regard to the universe.

We'll agree that the study of the universe and its building is called cosmology, then -- is there a top-down cosmology and a bottom-up cosmology, to your mind? Can you point to some issues and controversies where the two are in contention, so that we can more fully understand what you mean by top-down/bottom-up?

Another question that arises, can you name a principle that has emerged from 'top-down' cosmology and one that has emerged from 'bottom up' cosmology?

I guess I am also looking for another term that might shed light on the two ways of looking. Is the Anthropic Principle a reflection of top-down or bottom-up cosmology?

[tjohnson]

When I hear Micheal speak about 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' I am reminded of Northrop's 'concept by intuition' and 'concept by postulation'. In one case we create an image based on perception and in the other from postulation. The relation between the two he calls 'epistemic correlation'.

[william.scherk]

But these morphic fields? Either (with Ellen S.) they are just mathematical expressions of the inherent developmental forces in things or....enter Tinker Belle. Identity or pixie dust, the ultimate dichotomy!

Confusion reigns. Roger, I'm not understanding how you got that description of my comment about "morphogenetic [not "morphic"] fields" as used in a section I posted from The Ghost in the Machine

He got that from me, in my misreading: The 'morphogenetic field,' noted by Ellen, is an abstraction of the constraints of development -- it is not the constraints itself. It is a mathematical rendering of the constraints, a map or graph. Do you follow that distinction?

Reading that now it seems translated to Slavonic and back. There are morphogenetic field models, and graphical representations, I understand, but I conflated them with the basic biological concept which does contain the concrete cells/area. The distinction I meant to make was between a field with actors (in this case cells) and a reified notion where the field itself is the actor (as in Sheldrake's wacky notion of something extrinsic). I should have underlined that, and not taken the 'rendering' idea so far. Thanks for picking up the error, Ellen, and for the extensive posts above.

Sheldrake says, "Most biologists still regard morphogenetic fields simply as a way of thinking about morphogenesis rather than something that really exists." [see note four on Wiki's 'morphic resonance' page]

Here is vintage Sheldrake to help us see what a morphogenetic field is not (from a great post at Pharyngula which does a good job of explaining the distinction:

The fields organizing the activity of the nervous system are likewise inherited through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive memory. Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species. This means that new patterns of behaviour can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. For example, if rats of a particular breed learn a new trick in Harvard, then rats of that breed should be able to learn the same trick faster all over the world, say in Edinburgh and Melbourne. There is already evidence from laboratory experiments (discussed in A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE) that this actually happens.

The resonance of a brain with its own past states also helps to explain the memories of individual animals and humans. There is no need for all memories to be "stored" inside the brain.

Edited August 17, 2008 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

If you do not like top-down and bottom-up, I am happy with using terms like form and content.

When we look at form, this is what I mean by top-down. When we look at content, this is what I mean by bottom-up.

I hold the following two positions: (1) All content has form and all forms are made up of content, and (2) The law of identity governs both.

As you can see, in my conception, there is no such thing as one without the other. There are people who are claiming that there is, or that one produces the other. I disagree. I have seen no arguments so far that convince me of this.

(And the rhetoric is usually to ignore that I claim both and attribute me with claiming one—the opposite of which they claim. That doesn't make it right, but that's what they do.)

Here is an example of looking at form. One of the principles governing form is the idea of holon. Small particles group into small forms and these small forms interact with each other and with the particles themselves to produce larger forms, of which they are components. And these larger forms do the same. And so on.

One of the good comments I got from Peikoff was his idea of the Frankenstein monster. You can take the same body parts as a man and sew them together without this hierarchy of forms (and causality) interconnecting them and you get something that looks like a man. But the monster will not be able to function as a man.

There is nothing in the nature of a subatomic particle (as something isolated from form) that inherently causes this hierarchy of forms. It just is the way it is and it is found across all of existence, like the subatomic particle is the way it is and is found across all of existence. You can't isolate particles from form just like you can't isolate holons from particles, yet principles are observable with both.

If you don't like form and content, we can use systems and components. Or patterns and the little thingies used for alignment. Or holons and reductionist parts. I can probably come up with oodles more. There are several terms that express these concepts.

Trying to relegate this to cosmology only is stepping outside of what I am talking about. The principles I am discussing cover all the universe, from the big to the small.

Michael