nv - 10 May 2012 10:11 AM

eucaryote - 10 May 2012 08:38 AM

. . . I think that is my quote that you are attributing to SF but no matter.

Yes that was a misattribution. The older I get the more inevitable my errors become, goddammit.

eucaryote - 10 May 2012 08:38 AM

I think that Dennett only uses the term wrt to determinism. I scratched my head over it some, but I really think that all we wanted to do was to identify the idea that life itself is not entirely physically deterministic. When I think of the concept of determinism, the first thought is the relationship to thermodynamics and the extreme low probability of these biological levels and types. Time seems to be the only answer for what it took to get it started. LIfe couldn’t have originally self organized because there was no self to do the organizing.
However once that simple self arrived on the scene it did in fact grow by revealing different enabling functions in the environment, one of which was the ability to replicate itself into the future. An enabling function would be something that allowed the entity to use some local energy potential to support the organization and replication of the entity, solar, geothermal, chemical…..That entity, had no will in the matter, once the energy was applied that neo mechanism performed it’s function and produce results. It might be said that something shared by all life is this burdensome need to not die and to replicate. Even viral particles resist deconstruction and resist the prevention of replication. We all sort through our local environments doing everything we can to not die.I think that’s why is comes as a shock to us to learn that the universe doesn’t care.
I think if we have will this is it.
In an otherwise deterministic universe we have the freedom to choose not to die, for a while. And that’s a lot of freedom. Turns out there are lots of ways to do that, and it keeps us busy while we’re waiting for the universe to end. .

That’s very interesting. I wish I’d known about Dennett’s take on this back when I was looking for a word such as “life.” I think life answers my question here nicely:
http://www.project-reason.org/forum/viewthread/22551/P0/

Yes, possibly that was the word you were looking for. In a deterministic universe, the idea of randomness is also in question. There are reasons why coins flip the way they do and what we call chance is our inability to understand and control that reasoning to produce a particular result every time.
But where we don’t have randomness, we do have thermodynamics with the potential difference between order and disorder that provides time with a direction, the arrow of time.

I don’t know that my interpretation of Dennett and “evitability” is correct but this is what I came up with. I think that is why he claims that our notions of free will are “compatible with” an otherwise deterministic universe. Living systems use energy as a prop by which they temporarily stave off the otherwise inevitable. In Dennett-speak, living things practice and re-create evitability, that is what they do. Another way to say that is to say that all living things exhibit a “will to live” which is extra-ordinary in a deterministic universe consistent with thermodynamics. I think that is why Dennett says that we have all the will we could want or is possible. This makes sense,

If we were to invent an artificial life, think how much programming would have to go into the avoidance routines! We’d have to teach it all of the potential consequences to self from gravity…among other things. Natural Selection would just eliminate the robots who could figure it out, immediately.

nv - 10 May 2012 10:11 AM

That’s very interesting. I wish I’d known about Dennett’s take on this back when I was looking for a word such as “life.” I think life answers my question here nicely:
http://www.project-reason.org/forum/viewthread/22551/P0/

Hey nv - I think Euc warned you enough times that it was Euc’s take on evitability, not necessarily Dennett’s.  If you’re interested, I’d advise you to watch the 1.5 hour video back on page 8 to get the original explanation, which doesn’t mention any scientific concepts such as thermodynamics.  However I’m not saying Euc is entirely wrong in his stance either, it’s just that he tends to limit Dennett’s view to something that fits within his own view (as I am likely to do as well, which is why you should watch the video).

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 06:43 PM

If you’re interested, I’d advise you to watch the 1.5 hour video back on page 8 . . .

You’ve got that kind of time? I want to start making a living the way you do.

Just kidding. I’ll stay out of your word choices if you want me to, SF.

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 06:43 PM

nv - 10 May 2012 10:11 AM

That’s very interesting. I wish I’d known about Dennett’s take on this back when I was looking for a word such as “life.” I think life answers my question here nicely:
http://www.project-reason.org/forum/viewthread/22551/P0/

Hey nv - I think Euc warned you enough times that it was Euc’s take on evitability, not necessarily Dennett’s.  If you’re interested, I’d advise you to watch the 1.5 hour video back on page 8 to get the original explanation, which doesn’t mention any scientific concepts such as thermodynamics.  However I’m not saying Euc is entirely wrong in his stance either, it’s just that he tends to limit Dennett’s view to something that fits within his own view (as I am likely to do as well, which is why you should watch the video).

Yes, you’re right about that SF. It’s my best take on what Dennett means by “evitability”. It’s a word he seems to have coined as an obvious contrast to inevitable, which is a word we at least think we all understand the meaning of. Also it’s a word we can find in the dictionary, unlike evitable, it’s contrasting counterpart.

At the same time I don’t know what else Dennett could really mean. One might as well call the 2nd law of thermodynamics the law of inevitability. Dennett knows and appreciates how important this is to the idea of “free will”. He gets the idea that we do live in an entirely deterministic universe, especially thermodynamically. He also gets the idea that life represents an apparent, albeit temporary, aberration or special case of determinism otherwise. According to thermodynamic determinism, life should not exist. However, it appears that there are loopholes in the 2nd law and this is a curious thing that must be accounted for. The exploitation of these loopholes appears to those of us with short attention spans as some kind of thermodynamic abrogation of the rules that the rest of the physical universe, must “live” by. (pun intended I suppose).

I’d appreciate if SF could tell us what he gets from the idea of “evitability”. I think it’s best to reduce it to as few words as possible. Occam’s razor and alll.

eucaryote - 10 May 2012 08:38 AM

I think that Dennett only uses the term wrt to determinism. I scratched my head over it some, but I really think that all we wanted to do was to identify the idea that life itself is not entirely physically deterministic.

Yes, Dennett uses the term with respect to determinism - and evolution.  Evitability means we are able evolve a level of success or freedom within our bodily subroutines that was not available to our predecessors.  But your last phrase is entirely wrong.  Dennett did not want to “identify the idea that life itself is not entirely physically deterministic” at all.  Dennett accepts the fact that life is “physically deterministic”.  The whole point of the concept of evitability was to show that life can be deterministic but also evolve into higher levels of order or structure that are better able to succeed in the unfolding environment.  This is blatantly true for all living things: Darwin explained the mechanism long ago.

But Dennett is particularly interested in Human Consciousness, and in humans with consciousness evitability takes on a whole new level through conscious learning.  Or as I would put it, through memes (for sake of a better word) rather than just genes.  As Dennett would more likely say, competencies have built on competencies to the point that the subroutines in human minds can teach themselves (through interaction with the environment) very quickly.  Dennett would also suggest that this high level of loopy competency has made humans conscious custodians of their subroutines now, which thus endows them with a level of moral agency and moral responsibility.

When I think of the concept of determinism, the first thought is the relationship to thermodynamics and the extreme low probability of these biological levels and types. Time seems to be the only answer for what it took to get it started. LIfe couldn’t have originally self organized because there was no self to do the organizing.

“Time” is a rather incomplete explanation here.  You oppose the concept of self-organisation but Dennett and Hofstadter don’t.  Dennett uses the concept in Consciousness Explained by way of Conway’s Game of Life.  To quote the Wikipedia article on Conway’s Game of Life:

“Ever since its publication, Conway’s Game of Life has attracted much interest, because of the surprising ways in which the patterns can evolve. Life provides an example of emergence and self-organization. It is interesting for computer scientists, physicists, biologists, biochemists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, generative scientists and others to observe the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules. The game can also serve as a didactic analogy, used to convey the somewhat counter-intuitive notion that “design” and “organization” can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer. For example, philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has used the analogue of Conway’s Life “universe” extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex philosophical constructs, such as consciousness and free will, from the relatively simple set of deterministic physical laws governing our own universe.”

Your throw-away line “LIfe couldn’t have originally self organized because there was no self to do the organizing” is incredibly shallow.  The universe and all that is within it can emerge into systems of greater order, living or non-living, as the above quote suggests.  Emergence is thus just a broader concept than natural selection that fully encompasses it.

It might be said that something shared by all life is this burdensome need to not die and to replicate. Even viral particles resist deconstruction and resist the prevention of replication. We all sort through our local environments doing everything we can to not die.I think that’s why is comes as a shock to us to learn that the universe doesn’t care.
I think if we have will this is it.

Yes, but you haven’t explained the source of this drive in all living things - but emergent self-organisation (or Dawkins’ selfishness) to whatever level of competency required to succeed in the environment, does.  These are two concepts you can’t seem to come to terms with - emergence and self-organisation.  And before or as life emerges the same process existed in cloud formations or mountain-range formations or chemical formations: Emergent self-organisation within an environment that both demands and permits such evitability.

In an otherwise deterministic universe we have the freedom to choose not to die, for a while. And that’s a lot of freedom. Turns out there are lots of ways to do that, and it keeps us busy while we’re waiting for the universe to end. .

Again you haven’t explained your contradictory deterministic freedom.  And I would suggest this is impossible to do without the concept of emergence or evolution.  As the article above says “Daniel Dennett has used the analogue of Conway’s Life “universe” extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex philosophical constructs, such as consciousness and free will, from the relatively simple set of deterministic physical laws governing our own universe”.  That is, Dennett suggests “free will” evolves out of determinism (through many recursive or loopy iterations) rather than sits uneasily alongside it in some kind of mysterious thermodynamic niche…

SF,
I just scanned this, I admit. But you have to distinguish between that which allowed selection to take hold and that which started the process to begin with.
It’s not a throw-away line. It was Maturana who defended autopoiesis from “self-organization” as something that is not possible. There is no “self organization” in what we know of evolution, a process that requires raw material from which to select. One must answer the thermodynamic question before any other and the answer to that question necessarily portends unintuitive answers. The intuitive answer of course is, god did it.

eucaryote - 10 May 2012 08:21 PM

SF,
I just scanned this, I admit. But you have to distinguish between that which allowed selection to take hold and that which started the process to begin with.
It’s not a throw-away line. It was Maturana who defended autopoiesis from “self-organization” as something that is not possible. There is no “self organization” in what we know of evolution, a process that requires raw material from which to select. One must answer the thermodynamic question before any other and the answer to that question necessarily portends unintuitive answers. The intuitive answer of course is, god did it.

Ok - I may have been hasty in that statement.  My apologies.  What I’ve just read about Maturana’s philosophical leanings in the Wikipedia article on autopoiesis makes me wonder why you give him the time of day.  Still, the stuff Varela has since done seems likely to be interesting.  But I note the definition of autopoiesis is maybe still up for grabs.  The following Google links look interesting:
Beer
Bourgine

Could you give a simple layman’s summary to us of where the debate is up to at the moment?  Also, please let me know what you mean by “there is no self-organisation in evolution”.  How do you discount behavioural and “cognitive” self-organisation (e.g. in cells) in the severe struggle for life?  I’m also not convinced “One must answer the thermodynamic question before any other”.  Dennett and Hofstadter don’t seem to do this in their philosophical models of evolving freedom.  Please explain.  Thanks.

‘There is no “self organization” in what we know of evolution, a process that requires raw material from which to select.’

Stuart Kauffman has spent his career pitching the idea that self organization is a large part of the evolutionary process itself. Principles of self organization and emergence seem to explain things that genetics and natural selection filtering alone cannot, or as of yet have not.

‘Reinventing The Sacred’ is his latest and most refined offering on his hypothesis to date, and it is a fascinating read.

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 08:07 PM

Dennett did not want to “identify the idea that life itself is not entirely physically deterministic” at all.  Dennett accepts the fact that life is “physically deterministic”.  The whole point of the concept of evitability was to show that life can be deterministic but also evolve into higher levels of order or structure that are better able to succeed in the unfolding environment.  This is blatantly true for all living things: Darwin explained the mechanism long ago.

We have no disagreement here. I should have said that Dennett thinks that the idea that life and evolution is “compatible” with determinism.

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 08:07 PM

But Dennett is particularly interested in Human Consciousness, and in humans with consciousness evitability takes on a whole new level through conscious learning.  Or as I would put it, through memes (for sake of a better word) rather than just genes.  As Dennett would more likely say, competencies have built on competencies to the point that the subroutines in human minds can teach themselves (through interaction with the environment) very quickly.

Again I don’t disagree with this but I still think that “evitability” is all about avoiding that which is otherwise inevitable, which is the primary mission of all life. I would say that “subroutines can teach themselves”. Algorithms that function to produce results that produce results that are maladaptive are modified or eliminated by selection pressure from the environment.

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 08:07 PM

Dennett would also suggest that this high level of loopy competency has made humans conscious custodians of their subroutines now, which thus endows them with a level of moral agency and moral responsibility.

If he went this far I would have to disagree with him. What do you mean “custodians of their subroutines”?? There is no difference between the algorithms that provide us with functions and we ourselves.We may be custodians of vital information which is used in those algorithms, but I reject the dualism you imply above.

When I think of the concept of determinism, the first thought is the relationship to thermodynamics and the extreme low probability of these biological levels and types. Time seems to be the only answer for what it took to get it started. LIfe couldn’t have originally self organized because there was no self to do the organizing.

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 08:07 PM

“Time” is a rather incomplete explanation here.  You oppose the concept of self-organisation but Dennett and Hofstadter don’t.  Dennett uses the concept in Consciousness Explained by way of Conway’s Game of Life.

I understand that but I’m addressing the idea of life origins wrt to the idea of “evitability”, not evolution of life forms once started. Evolution of form by replication with change under the pressure of survival explains the variety of biological forms we see but it doesn’t entirely address the origins of life. LIfe origins remain almost thermodynamically impossible. I say almost, because after all, here we are. Thus there should be an explanation for this phenomena whereby a universe without life is thermodynamically inevitable, but life occurs anyway.

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 08:07 PM

Your throw-away line “LIfe couldn’t have originally self organized because there was no self to do the organizing” is incredibly shallow.  The universe and all that is within it can emerge into systems of greater order, living or non-living, as the above quote suggests.  Emergence is thus just a broader concept than natural selection that fully encompasses it.

I guess I touched a nerve here. See above. I’m talking about origins of life. Conways game always has a starting configuration and simple rules governing the “evolution” the players in the game. The starting configuration does not create itself, and in real “life”, is seriously thermodynamically constrained from doing so. The idea of self organization seems contradictory in both logical and thermodynamic terms. Once you have a self, evolution by natural selection can take over and produce incredible results in short time. There must be a way in which life is compatible with
thermodynamics, otherwise we seem to represent impossible events.

It might be said that something shared by all life is this burdensome need to not die and to replicate. Even viral particles resist deconstruction and resist the prevention of replication. We all sort through our local environments doing everything we can to not die.I think that’s why is comes as a shock to us to learn that the universe doesn’t care.I think if we have will this is it.

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 08:07 PM

Yes, but you haven’t explained the source of this drive in all living things - but emergent self-organisation (or Dawkins’ selfishness) to whatever level of competency required to succeed in the environment, does.  These are two concepts you can’t seem to come to terms with - emergence and self-organisation.  And before or as life emerges the same process existed in cloud formations or mountain-range formations or chemical formations: Emergent self-organisation within an environment that both demands and permits such evitability.

Life is very different from mountain ranges and cloud formations. To say that original life “emerges” from processes apparent in the universe is to say nothing at all. No shit sherlock. But these are just words that you want to substitute for facts in evidence. If you’re trying to say that god didn’t do it and it came from natural processes, well, obviously I’m cool with that, but it still doesn’t explain anything.

In an otherwise deterministic universe we have the freedom to choose not to die, for a while. And that’s a lot of freedom. Turns out there are lots of ways to do that, and it keeps us busy while we’re waiting for the universe to end. .

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 08:07 PM

Again you haven’t explained your contradictory deterministic freedom.  And I would suggest this is impossible to do without the concept of emergence or evolution.  As the article above says “Daniel Dennett has used the analogue of Conway’s Life “universe” extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex philosophical constructs, such as consciousness and free will, from the relatively simple set of deterministic physical laws governing our own universe”.  That is, Dennett suggests “free will” evolves out of determinism (through many recursive or loopy iterations) rather than sits uneasily alongside it in some kind of mysterious thermodynamic niche…

Again, origins “emergence” and evolution of that which “emerged” are two different things.

SocialFabric - 10 May 2012 11:53 PM

eucaryote - 10 May 2012 08:21 PM

SF,
I just scanned this, I admit. But you have to distinguish between that which allowed selection to take hold and that which started the process to begin with.
It’s not a throw-away line. It was Maturana who defended autopoiesis from “self-organization” as something that is not possible. There is no “self organization” in what we know of evolution, a process that requires raw material from which to select. One must answer the thermodynamic question before any other and the answer to that question necessarily portends unintuitive answers. The intuitive answer of course is, god did it.

Ok - I may have been hasty in that statement.  My apologies.  What I’ve just read about Maturana’s philosophical leanings in the Wikipedia article on autopoiesis makes me wonder why you give him the time of day.  Still, the stuff Varela has since done seems likely to be interesting.  But I note the definition of autopoiesis is maybe still up for grabs.  The following Google links look interesting:
Beer
Bourgine

Could you give a simple layman’s summary to us of where the debate is up to at the moment?  Also, please let me know what you mean by “there is no self-organisation in evolution”.  How do you discount behavioural and “cognitive” self-organisation (e.g. in cells) in the severe struggle for life?  I’m also not convinced “One must answer the thermodynamic question before any other”.  Dennett and Hofstadter don’t seem to do this in their philosophical models of evolving freedom.  Please explain.  Thanks.

Thanks for the links. I was too hasty in saying that self oganization doesn’t have anything to do with evolution. I should have stuck to origins. I got to origins by trying understand “evitability” a word I can’t find in the dictionary, in terms of something I think I understand, inevitability.  I don’t know why else Dennett would choose this word. It seems that the distinguishing characteristic of all life is that it temporarily avoids that which is inevitable. Origins are an extreme example. of that.
I listen to that Dennett again and see if I can figure out anything else that he could be talking about. I don’t know why he would use that word.

eucaryote - 11 May 2012 11:18 AM

Thanks for the links.

I spent some time reading them myself and hope you are ready to discuss them.  I think they provide a means of bringing all our views into alignment.  The latter paper’s abstract says:

”...We propose a modified definition of autopoiesis: “An autopoietic system is a network of processes that produces the components that reproduce the network, and that also regulates the boundary conditions necessary for its ongoing existence as a network.” We also propose a definition of cognition: “A system is cognitive if and only if sensory inputs serve to trigger actions in a specific way, so as to satisfy a viability constraint.” It follows from these definitions that the concepts of autopoiesis and cognition, although deeply related in their connection with the regulation of the boundary conditions of the system, are not immediately identical: a system can be autopoietic without being cognitive, and cognitive without being autopoietic. Finally, we propose a thesis T2: “A system that is both autopoietic and cognitive is a living system.”

That is, an autopoietic system regulates boundary conditions whereas a cognitive system serves to satisfy viability constraints.  These may seem only subtly different concepts, but I see the second as perhaps far more “strangely loopy” than the former.  The former seems to only include the idea of passive reactions to a boundary within a domain (an adapted struggle if you like, maybe more in Mr Hippo’s domain), whereas the later seems to suggest something more like an active and loopy observation of environmental constraints that might act as a kind of delayed internal input to an autopoietic system (maybe more in Mr Now’s & Mr Flashlight’s domains)...

Avogadro’s number - 11 May 2012 07:33 AM

‘There is no “self organization” in what we know of evolution, a process that requires raw material from which to select.’

Stuart Kauffman has spent his career pitching the idea that self organization is a large part of the evolutionary process itself. Principles of self organization and emergence seem to explain things that genetics and natural selection filtering alone cannot, or as of yet have not.

‘Reinventing The Sacred’ is his latest and most refined offering on his hypothesis to date, and it is a fascinating read.

Thanks Av, sounds like my next book purchase…