Replies

Hi Doug,

The deep neural network (DNN) is not a model of a biological neural network. This can be confusing because they use the word neuron. There is a historical relation between neuroscience and the McCulloch-Pitts neuron model which led to artificial neural networks (ANN) and later to DNN.

We no not understand how brains are capable of generating poetry so you can be sure that DNN generating poetry are not models of biological networks.

The artificial neuron used in DNN is so far removed from a biological neuron that it leads to a fundamentally different structure. You can see this in how biological intelligence is capable of learning in real time but DNN (like chatGPT) cannot not do that.

If you are interested in the modeling of biological neural networks and the application to AI then computational neuroscience has impressive results, in particular the work of Stephen Grossberg on adaptive resonance theory (ART). Those approaches do allow for abilities like real time learning.

I am not an expert in DNN either. I’ve been studying AI for several years (initially more bio-inspired approaches). I have a reasonable grasp of DNN theory and application, I was studying the architecture of systems similar to chatGPT before they became know to the general public in late 2022.

Perhaps what I wrote above was interpreted as mind being purely “intellectual” but that is one aspect of this sense. In Buddhism there is the concept of citta: heart-mind, encompassing both rational and emotional aspects. These aspects are not independent – I think Whitehead makes this case – the actual occassion is an integration. What is often not understood is the implications of the integration (in particular how language influences perception).

I am not sure what the “deep strands” of immanence in the USA implies. No other culture seems so subjugated to modernity. A possibility I see in US culture would use these modern dynamics to turn the line of progress into a curve so it will eventually consume itself. It is perhaps wiser to play to the USA’s strength rather than push back against them.

I was very surprised to learn that Putin was using the notion of harmonics to refer to the new “multi-nodal” world system BRICS want to see emerge. This shows a level of philosophical collaboration (and sophistication) between Russia and China at the highest levels and a sensitivity to process and relations that we cannot see in European leaders (I cannot even imagine the president of the USA being able to understand this paragraph).

I do not think the current form of Chinese or Russian governance is desirable. Still, China has a plan for 2049 that would see a revolution in their culture toward an ecological civilization with increased public participation in governance. Russia has recently adopted a process similar to China’s five year planning process. They must be laughing at how self-destructive Western cultures are – in many countries we literally have half the population pulling in opposite directions while the media hides the direction the system is actually being moved by elites. In France the neoliberal agenda has so divided the country that the 3rd most popular (and most neoliberal) party is maintaining power. Acting local is admirable and, as long as it stays local, supported by the neoliberal agenda – just pay your taxes.

I raise the points about China and Russia because our navel gazing assumes our culture has the answers but our culture is also the problem. We might be better to look at other cultures and learn from them. How the hell did Putin end up using more contemporary concepts about processism than we see being discussed here! How did China get the concept of an “ecological civilization” into its constitution in 2017.

The USA is a very religious culture so maybe that is a way toward a sensitivity to processism. The populist movement has relations that could be developed there. I am unsure if those who are sensitive to process have gotten over the left/right divide in the USA. It would be interesting to know if there are people here, from the USA, who favor Trump over Biden in the upcoming elections. I imagine if there are they are probably afraid of sharing their point of view…

Hi John,

I think of strong emergence as the emergence of properties that cannot be understood from the constituent parts i.e. reductionism fails. Weak emergence can be understood using reductionism e.g. traffic patterns

Because strong emergence can’t be derived we have to either build it or observe it to understand it (we can’t predict what it will do from the constituent parts). We can’t simulate strong emergence without knowing what the emergent behavior is.

We can only partially simulate strong emergence because the behavior will deviate from the actual system (the simulation will rely on simple “rules” that we measured in a strongly emergent system). For example simulation is often used in biology.

The situation with computers is a bit confusing when considering machine learning. In this case the computer is not simulating in the normal sense of the word because the computer actually is the system. For example, the LLM that generates poetry is not simulating a human brain.

It is worth making the distinction between something that is computable and/or simulable. We can compute a simulation of water but we can’t computer water this is because water uses different kinds of material and efficient causes that do not exist in a computer (the simulation of these causes is not realizing the causes e.g. simulations of water are not wet). This is why computers cannot realize living systems (they lack the efficient causes that allow for replication).

The result of a machine learning algorithm is an algorithm which is both computable and simulable. But the process by which the machine learns is computable and not simulable i.e. the only way to get the result is to run the training process (there are no analytical shortcuts because this process is not derivable).

When the LLM (e.g. chatGPT) is actually running and we are interacting with it, then it is a simulation of intelligence (it is just an algorithm and we can predict the output from the basic functions of the program).

However, the training process is strongly emergent because we cannot reduce this to the parts – this is why LLM like chatGPT are considered to be a “black box” (funnily enough reductionist analysis of a system like chatGPT starts looking like neuroscience).

A key point relevant to your initial post is that a strongly emergent process can’t be reverse engineered in the way we currently define “reverse engineering” because reverse engineering assumes reductionism

To understand the classes of strongly emergent systems that interest us (e.g. life, intelligence, consciousness, the social “sciences”) we have to break away from the assumptions of modern science. The main insight I see from those who looked seriously into this is an acceptation that we must invoke final causation. This is painful for modern subjects as it means going back to things we already knew which contradicts another assumption of modernity – the notion of progress). The brilliance of relational biology is to introduce final causation into modern science. Whitehead introduced final causation into metaphysics but in a way that would have blocked the advances in relational biology – luckily Rosen was not a whiteheadian!

Without taking this too seriously we can say: Calculus gave us the math for a Newtonian world view. Category theory gave us the math for an Aristotelian world view. Unfortunately for Aristotle (and us) it took 2000 years to create the math!

Hi John,

Thanks for engaging in these difficult topics! The WMD issue goes deeper than the desire of Bush, Iraq played no role in 9/11 and the US military lied about that. There are many examples showing the military cannot be trusted. They are in the service of other processes such as politics and the MIC and the truth is not a high priority. I am not saying we should get rid of defense forces. I have served so I am not innocent either.

I doubt most US citizens understand that the majority of the world sees the US as the major threat to world peace. Here is a summary of a 2013 poll https://nypost.com/2014/01/05/us-is-the-greatest-threat-to-world-peace-poll/ I can’t find anything more recent.

I’m happy to move on to the key point of your post regarding UAP. I have looked briefly into this so I do not have a strong opinion. I think UAP are real in the sense that many are not hoax, they are aerial phenomena and they are unidentified.

Something strange seems to have happened in particle physics where theory is now driving experiments – the justification for an experiment is coming from speculative theory not from observations of incoherence given the current theory.

I wonder about your primary motivation for increasing our understanding of physics, for example, is it pure knowledge, discovery, new technology, etc

The idea of additional dimensions is appealing to me. For example, this is a way of thinking about consciousness. Evolution would have found this dimension in the same way it found the other dimensions e.g. early life might have experienced only two dimensions. Superstring theory has 11 dimensions!

Perhaps the thing I find strangest about UAP is when this becomes UFO that crash. I just can’t imagine a vehicle that would have technologies so advanced but crashes. Mind you we are headed toward an idiocracy here, so maybe that explains it!

Hi Matt,

Thanks for clarification about the role of God. Is it correct to say that God’s primordial nature is where the eternal objects reside and would it be reasonable to understand God’s primordial nature as the foundation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics?

How would you phrase Spyridon critique relating to the selection of prehensions ? Perhaps he does not like the reliance on the Consequent Nature of God and finds Bergson addresses this more effectively (I guess a more immanent story). I had the impression Spyridon was understanding God as something transcendent and I think Whitehead’s Consequent Nature of God is more like a combination of all the actual occasions, not independent of those occasions. I wonder how much the use of the word God causes a blocking point for scientists.

Hi John,

The principle of a closed path of efficient causation gives a theoretical basis for strong emergence. The mathematical formalism is provided using category theory in relational biology. We can already create closed paths of efficient causation e.g. machine learning uses the machine to learn a program that runs on the machine. This is not the same as a living system but it is strongly emergent: the process by which we train a system like chatGPT allows capabilities like “writing poems” to emerge. The computer itself is a simple mechanism but the process by which the machine learns is complex in that it iteratively improves its ability i.e. the learning process is self-referencing while learning.

Relational biology takes these ideas much further and defines living systems as those systems that have particular patterns when analyzed as relational processes. Category theory allows for a theoretical formalism. Mapping that formalism back to a natural system (i.e. creating life) is not understood. There have been very few people with the understanding of relational biology, the ability to do experiments, and the resources to carry out the experiments. Perhaps more importantly I don’t think our civilization has a morality that could survive these capabilities!

Hi Chris, do you mean that concrescence is a process in the subjective pole ? I’m thinking of it as a process that integrates data from both poles.

Hi Chris,

I’ll try to think of the object as an actual occasion i.e. a process.

If the smallest processes that we can know are alive then it seems we have “pushed done” the ontological problem not removed it – it is like the strongest strong emergence (it emerged from nothing).

The desire to satisfy our curiosity about a process by reducing to its constituent processes is the reductionist mind set. Processism does allow for a non-reductive and non-physicalist understanding of life e.g. the patterns of relations (the dynamics of the process) are not material and that could be a source of strong emergence. Whitehead applies a reductionist approach to process so what is not explainable through reductionism will “float into the world from nowhere” at the smallest scale (technically this is god for Whitehead so one could claim it is not “from nowhere”).

Does a “choice” imply an essence ? Is that notion a projection of our essentialism (e.g. informed by our concept of free-will). If I do not understand my options then can I make a choice ? For example, we have a category of accident that implies even humans can act without choosing.

It does feel very anthropocentric to push properties we see at human scale into a scale we do not experience. For example, Newton’s laws apply at our scale and we do not push those down to the smallest scale.

When we push properties all the way down we do not get rid of all the problems but swap one problem for another. If the smallest particles are living this raises the problem of how communities of particles could be living (I think the technical term is the combination problem). Whitehead tells us “the many become one and are increased by one” but how exactly that happens for “reproductive life” e.g. how rock becoming bacteria, is left to the reader.

A reductionist processism would be compelling if we could demonstrate the creation of living systems by accumulation e.g. stir rocks together in the right way and we get life (this reminds me of alchemy!).

The non-local behavior of quantum particles could be used to make the case for the determinism of the smallest processes e.g. given entangled particles A & B the actual occasion that is particle A has no choice given the measurement of particle B.

I doubt biologists want to be convinced that the answers to their questions are in physics. Whitehead was working at a time when physics was assumed, by most scientists, to be the source of answers to our deepest questions. The influence of systems thinking (where the whole cannot be reduced to the parts) and SSK has reduced physics envy. I would rather see physics as a subset of biology than the inverse.

If we wanted to make a case against strong emergence and for the combination problem, for a materialist, then perhaps start with explaining that Newton proved that mechanistic explanations are insufficient (gravity is spooky action at a distance, which destroyed Galileo’s mechanical view). This requires the materialist to move into physicalism (all phenomena, including mental states and consciousness, can ultimately be explained in terms of physical processes and properties). Whitehead could be interpreted as a “radical process physicalism”. Systems theory can be used to make the case for the whole being more than the sum of the parts (Whitehead’s metaphysics supports this too). Systems theory provides empirical evidence for the role of process and relation (e.g. a system has relations that do not exist in the parts so we cannot understand the role of those relations through reductionism). Quantum mechanics proves non-locality which shows that relations play a role at the scale of the smallest processes. Quantum mechanics also shows that we do not understand gravity (the theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics have not been reduced to a foundation that the physicalist can accept). So whatever metaphysics a materialist is relying on, it has been invalid for several centuries, and there is no obvious answer for a physicalist. At that point if we want an explicit metaphysics it can only be speculative so Whitehead’s is up for grabs. The argument for Whitehead (for me) then becomes more about what are the consequences of understanding the world in those terms e.g. Whitehead gives us a profound concept of relation, a god, a new respect for “matter” as part of our ecosystem, a sensitivity to being part of the systems we study etc.

Most people are not going to move out of a particular worldview through their intellect. I think the most compelling case might be a spiritual expereince, if the person has never been exposed to deep nature then get them into the wild for an extended period. If that has not worked for them then there is mushrooms 🙂

Hi te’a,

I agree there are many more human senses. The mind as a sixth sense is common in Buddhism, here is more about that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80yatana

Hi Eric,

There may be some confusion about “eternal objects”. I am learning that with Whitehead we need to assume basic words not longer have their common meaning e.g. an object is not an object, organisms are not alive, life does not reproduce, experience is not conscious, subjectivity does not have subjects etc… maybe this is so Whitehedians can quickly identify those who don’t understand Whitehead!

Eternal objects are pure potentials i.e. they are not objects but the potential for actual occassions. Basically there are no objects only the appearance of objects because this is a proess philosophy i.e. the foundation is process not essence. In this regard the brick obviously was a potential before it existed. There are an infinite amount of potential so I guess this means that whatever you empirically find is a potential that has arisen in an actaul occassion, so for Whitehead an electron refers to actual occassions not an object (I think the latest essentialist claim is to think of them as “strings”).

Somehow Whitehead has to get around god having established all the eternal objects and the universe being creative. I think this is the role that “societies” are intended to play whereby complicated objects (e.g. a brick) are understood as a community of actual occasions. This means the “eternal objects” include all possible patterns/communities (again not as objects like in the Platonic realm but as potentials). It is unlcear to me how the pattern of the potential for a community is available in a creative universe. If the potential is eternal then god somehow established this which means creativity is more about tracing a path through potentials than creating new potentials – that would be a redefinition of what creativity normlly means so it would be quite Whiteheadian!

Richard Feynmann seems to have been poking fun at himself without realizing it 🙂

The “idea” of a brick is itself an actual occasion. This is understood as the same process in terms of realizing the potential of an eternal object. But this process is unfolding in the mental/conceptual domain. Whitehead claims to have overcome dualism because there is a more fundamental process which realizes both the menal and material domains. I struggle to agree here as he is still referring to two domains. For sure he is proposing a different understanding of dualism. For example if I categorize the world into good people and bad people that does not become less categorical when I propose a moral theory that gives rise to good people and bad peolpe. We might say that Whitehead has swapped out substance dualism for process dualism.

I think Whitehead would agree that anthropomorhpic gods are available to us in the conceptual realm. In the material realm I think he would say that we need new empirical evidence to support anything like an anthropomorphic god that acts in the world independently. His metaphysics is speculative and he is open to the idea that it will need to change as the universe evolves.

I have similar concerns that Whitehead is trying to fit too much into science. I would not want to swap substance scientism for process scientism (it is hard not to see Whitehead attempting this). How do we bound the scientific endeavor so the word “science” has meaning and communicates its limits (which would mean giving up power and is therefore very unlikely to motivate scientists)?

Thanks for exploring these questions.

Hi John,

In conversation with Matt I’ve come to understand Whitehead’s conception of life as closer to what we might consider to be “complexity”. I believe Whitehead wanted to avoid a need for “strong emergence” of the properties he saw modernity struggling with, so we get a “sliding scale” from complexity (inherent in the nexus of actual occasions) with increasing “livliness” up to the systems that we traditionally consider to be “living” when we use that word. I find it quite frustrating that Whitehead takes common words and then gives them completely different meanings – so a word like “living” no longer means what we think it means but I guess Whitehead was trying to hammer home the point that we need to rethink our foundations.

Another example I see is Whitehead’s notion of experience that moves up a sliding scale to arrive at our subjective conscious experience (and would align with the idea of, what we consider as consciousness, slowly increasing over many millions of years).

I had initially confused Whitehead’s panexperientialism with panpsychism.

Hi Eric,

I’ll have a stab at this – hopefully someone will point out my misunderstandings. The actual occasion, such as the event of thinking about a dog, includes the prehensions of past actual occasions where you experienced dogs and the prehensions of eternal objects, which are the potentials for experiences of a dog. For example, if you imagine a pink golden retriever, past prehensions might inform the visualization of the golden retriever, and the prehension of eternal objects might inform the pinkness of that experience. Eternal objects do not exist in a concrete sense but are pure potentials; this is not Plato’s realm of forms. Therefore, there is no realm where gods exist separately.

In Whitehead’s metaphysics, God is the establishment of eternal objects (the potentials) and the process of becoming, meaning that God experiences all actual occasions. Whitehead’s God has a twofold nature: the primordial nature, which orders the realm of eternal objects, and the consequent nature, which evolves with the evolving universe. This makes God both immanent in the world and transcendent as the source of all potentials.

While Whitehead’s system could conceptually support the notion of socially constructed gods within the infinite potential of eternal objects, there is no place for independent gods. There is one God in Whitehead’s metaphysics, who is immanent in the process of becoming and also transcends it by establishing the potentials.

A minor point on chatGPT – it will tend to be definite when it hallucinates (is obviously wrong). This is quite deceptive!

I like the idea of a very subtle progression in consciousness. It makes for a more coherent evolutionary story. This reminds me of another thread of discussion – relational biology makes a case for life as strongly emergent i.e. it requires a particular nexus that either is present or is not present (there is not a gradual shift from less living to more living but distinct subsets e.g. complex > anticipatory > living). I’m very grateful this is giving me a chance to clarify RB for myself too!

Thank you for elaborating on the inter-dependence of objective and subjective. It is quite the leap 🙂 I would have typically fallen back on Wittgenstein regarding these questions. I agree that the idea of an objective reality without subjective experience seems strange, perhaps it would be a poorly posed questions undeserving of a coherent answer.

I reminded of non-philosophy where there is a notion of a “decision” that allows for a philosophy to “get off the ground”. I think of post-structuralism as paying attention to this process (not so much the content but the necessity and the consequent issues with foundations).

I assume Whitehead does map the subjectivity of actual occasions to the “sense of self” that humans experience. I wonder if Whitehead analyzed human experience in a similar way to the types of analysis we see in dependent co-origination of Buddhist “psychology”. Did Whitehead develop any practices ?

I’m conscious that this thread is getting long and I would completely understand if we need to move on.

I tend to favor Louie’s interpretation of Rosen when discussing Rosen publicly but I also see possibilities for other interpretations. Rosen’s perspective evolved (this is partly why “Essays on Life Itself” can be confusing).

Louie focuses on living systems, he touches on complex systems and anticipatory systems in his first book but as stepping stones toward living systems.

In relational biology one distinction we can hold on to is that of systems into two classes (simple and complex). Life in relational biology is defined as a subset of complex systems, organisms in relational biology are in this subset. Complex systems in relational biology are associated with at least one “closed path of efficient causation” i.e. they are impredicative, which is probably close to what you are referring to as “organism” in Whitehead. Organisms (or living systems) in relational biology would refer to one or more “closed loop of efficient causation”.

There are challenges in interpreting Rosen’s work regarding these two classes of system. One can make the argument that no matter how complicated a simple system becomes it cannot transition into a complex system. I am following another interpretation, which is to say that complexity can be “strongly emergent” from simple systems that are configured in the “right” way. I’ve had long discussions with Louie about this and I would not want to say he is convinced but I would say he is supportive.

Another angle is to see that complexity goes “all the way down”. This would probably be in line with what you are thinking of. It raises a number of interesting questions for me. In the book Anticipatory Systems Rosen makes the case that time is complex and this opens fascinating ideas of an impredicative universe (I’ve not read Rosen or Louie developing this angle). However I think it is not really in the spirit of relational biology because Louie and Rosen present fundamental classes of systems as either complex or simple (simple is not a subset of complex). Basically we bound a system and then look at the relations and if there is not an impredicative relation then the system is considered to be simple .We can see how in the case of quantum systems it may be more appropriate to consider the system as complex.

Perhaps the key point is that Rosen is not proposing a metaphysics.

The quote “Rosen argues that the mechanistic laws of physics, which are purely efficient in terms of Aristotle’s four causes” is from the transcript of “On the Place of Life in the Cosmos”

Thanks Matt, it helps a lot to have that distinction of experience and consciousness. I associated panpsychism with Whitehead, it seems panexperientialism would be the appropriate term.

I think I’ve grokked the idea of the whole being more than the parts in terms of the nexus (which reminds me of impredicativity in relational biology).

I see “properties” is not the right term it might be fair to say experience and life are fundamental in Whitehead’s metaphysics?

It would be interesting to know more about how Whitehead distinguishes consciousness and subjectivity. It seems, for Whitehead, consciousness is a specialized form of subjectivity. I’m used to thinking about this the other way around – that subjectivity can be part of the content of conscious experience. I like the idea (which I believe is Whiteheadian) of multiple layers of subjective experience. Does Whitehead clarify the subjectivity humans typically refer to (and often assume to be consciousness) ?

Thanks again.