METAZOA, Animal life and the birth of the mind, Peter Godfey-Smith

Philosophy
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Thanks for responding, I find it useful to get to know the people I’m talking to.

It is nice how you tied your “philosophy” to the topic at hand.

I believe the requirement for seriously undertaking that journey, is a profound appreciation for the “Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide”, it’s first base concept that everything builds upon.

To understand what I’m talking about you have to know that I’m all about “morality”. My framework is compatibalism. Taking white4u’s mechanistic/deterministic dialogue and merging it with your “humanistic” world view.

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To understand where people like write4u are coming from I think you have understand that we do live in a “mathematical universe”. That concept does not mean that we live in a “simulation” as “wet robots”. It is simply the recognition that we don’t have direct access to “reality”. We only evolved the senses that were necessary to serve fitness. Mathematics are a tool like a microscope that extend the senses. The other component is the limitations of the mind. We understand the world through a reductionistic process. The workings of our minds is entirely abstract. Our representations of reality are never the thing itself but a simplified version of the thing itself. Mathematics are a tool to reduce the complexity and chaos that we live in.

What is missing from this topic so far is a philosophy of science. To illustrate the importance of that topic I think looking at Darwin is important. Our concept of science has changed over time. In Darwin’s day he would have considered himself a natural philosopher. Science in a way had evolved from the mechanistic world view of say Newton. Thinking of the writings of Darwin from a philosophical world view is useful and reading Newton from a mechanistic world view is useful. The changing perspective was from a top down laws of nature perspective to a bottom up view of evolution, independent of purpose. What the current philosophy of science is is hard to say. Whatever it is seems hidden in complexity. Quantum mechanics seems to have put a nail in the coffin of the Newtonian laws of nature view. To deal with that it seems to me science as adopted a focus that is almost entirely based on accuracy and precision, the probabilistic focus. Theories are specific not general. When someone tries to inject a general theory such as the origin of consciousness it disrupts the system.

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Kinda, but that was more like a mathematical joke. Of course a cat cannot be both dead and alive in reality. It’s just that at quantum we are unable to predict which state a system is until we look to verify.

The double slit experiment is an example of superposition, i.e. uncertainty where each particle will become expressed.

Bohmian Mechanics does away with that uncertainty.

You are manipulating the data to fit your idea of mathematics.
In Reality , giving birth results in the addition of a new value unit (2 + 1 = 3). Not before.

Are you suggesting that having a period is killing an unborn person?
Note that a woman may have 1 million potential humans stashed inside,
What are we going to do with that number? 2 = 1,000,000 ?

A married couple cannot claim child support until the child is born and added 1 to the number of persons in the family. Value adding or subtracting in business is not only bad mathematics but may even be illegal, ask Trump.
(p.s. I once wrote a check for 1 cent to the State, to “account” for a taxable rounding error.

You say that human maths do not describe natural maths? And how do you do that? Deliberately introducing an ad hoc variable? That is not doing mathematics.
That’s doing “what if” with random variables, also called “set theory”.
A single value cannot be used to represent a different single value. It’s not mathematically logical.

Mathematics are “deterministic” in essence . An equation has to have equal value on both sides of the equation or else it is NOT an “equation”.
Two (2) does NOT equal Three (3), ever! (unless it is used in set theory)
That is the beauty of mathematics and makes it one dialect descriptive of universal mechanics.

Note that the maths are always the same, even if written in a different symbolic language, such as Latin.
The Latin numerals for the numbers 1 through 10 are: primus, secundus, tertius, quartus, quintus, sextus, septimus, octavus, nonus, and decimus.

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That is your opinion, but nature does not go by human expectations or by human measurements. It does it’s own thing.

I never said anything about menstruation or ovum. You are now putting words in my mouth. BUT if you want to go there, yes, nature can abort a fetus just as a human can. Nature’s abortion called spontaneous abortion, AKA miscarriage. Perfectly natural and not an issue to me. Just emotionally painful. I had one, at exactly 3 months gestation, before and it hurt more emotionally than physically. The bad part is, it wasn’t by choice. Nature made the decision for me. Such is life. Again, we are talking two different things and obviously something you don’t have a clue about either.

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[quote=“mriana, post:104, topic:8495, full:true”]

[quote=“write4u, post:103, topic:8495”]
You are manipulating the data to fit your idea of mathematics.

That is your opinion, but nature does not go by human expectations or by human measurements. It does it’s own thing.

Yes and the universe’s own thing is mathematical in essence. This is why human maths work so well in producing natural processes. We copied them from natural processes.

Looks to me that you are still practicing category error…
Humans did not invent mathematical logic. Mathematics were and are being discovered from observing natural functional mechanics. Read the history of mathematics.
The scientists themselves are saying that they "discover "maths , not make it up to fit some probalistic model.

Einstein did not bend light, using mathematics he predicted that light would bend in
a strong gravitational field. It was Eddington who proved Einstein’s application of deterministic (not probabilistic) maths was correct.

I never said anything about menstruation or ovum. You are now putting words in my mouth.

No. You introduced a probabilistic mathematical variable out of context. All I did was extend your logic that takes at least 9 months to become expressed in reality, out further into the future,

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Well you are both right.

Reality is a complex chaotic system that is in some sense irreducible. Mathematics is a handy tool for reducing that complexity and chaos. It like all tools was not created but in a sense discovered by observation of nature. Where I think you are having a problem is that mathematics are abstract. They only become “real” through the way they interact with physical reality. The same however is true of the opposite argument in so far as terms such as nature are abstractions not to be confused with the thing itself. There actually is no such thing as a female only are rather limited understanding expressed in the way we deal with complexity and chaos through language, of which math is an example. What you are trying to do here is have a conversation in two different languages.

The interesting thing about that is that we all have are own language. The way we acquire language mimics evolution. No two copies of anything are identical but with evolved systems the complexity and chaos increases individuality. We learn to communicate by reducing that complexity and language allows for that because the key is in the definitions that turn out to be closed, arbitrary systems. The thing itself will always elude us.

The question becomes who is being more accurate and precise. It turns out that is not easy to determine, so carry on :-).

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The video is fun, but there’s another perspective to all that.

Behold this universe, whether fifteen billion or thirty-some billion years old, it evolved to be capable of producing something like Earth. Only an exquisitely ultra-fine tuned and consistent physical system could have produced Earth’s cornucopia, that humanity grew up in.

Seems self-evident that the right kind of mind would discover the world is describable by math.

The video is a repeat for me and it’s more and more difficult for me to take Tegmark serious, he tells me the Universe is made out of math.
But physics has shown us that the universe is made out of energetic particles, that have organized into various atomic components, organized into various elements, in various atomic configurations. Don’t be calling that math. It is Stuff. Belongs to Physical Reality.

No matter how many words geniuses throw at us,
Mathematics remains a product of our mindscape, developed from observing and interacting with the natural physical world. And a requirement for any intelligence that wants to learn about Earth/Universe’s deeper secrets.

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Max Tegmark proposes that the Universe is all mathematical in essence and that given sufficient information, we can “discover” all the relative values and how they all relate.
I believe he has a powerful argument. Most scientists will stipulate that the universe has some mathematical properties. Tegmark’s challenge: "why not only
mathematical properties?

In a dynamical universe the mathematics of the physics become extremely important for yielding deterministic results at any give instant in time.
The maths he speaks of are not causal, but functional

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Not human maths, The inherent mathematics of the universe, which humans have codified and symbolized into Human maths, a language compatible with the mathematics that guide the interaction of fundamental universal Universal values.
Tegmark thinks there may only be some 32 fundamental relational values plus a dozen or so equations that tie the regular behaviors together into a mathematical system that addresses all possible known Universal Physical Expression in Reality.

Tegmark believes we are not all that far off, now that we are getting access to quatum levels , where the earliest forms of spacetime geometry became manifest.

Fractals!

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Fractals are mathematical curves that have a natural appearance and a fine, recursive, self-similar structure1. They do not follow the rules of classical geometry and their size is dependent on the scale at which they are measured1. Fractals can be described as sets of coordinates which are governed by a series of functions repeated ad infinitum1.

Square Roots & Pythagorean Theorem

Pythagoras, a Greek mathematician, developed a variety of theories including the Pythagorean Theorem. This theorem allowed Pythagoras to accurately measure the side length of right triangles. This has many applications, particularly within the world of design. Click on the image of the tree to the right to find a template to create your own Pythagorean tree.

Students will reflect on their understanding of triangle properties (grade 6) as well as the area of quadrilaterals (grade 7) to learn about square numbers. Students will investigate the are of squares in relation to their side length. These principles will be applied to right triangles to determine side length via the pythagorean theorem.
Understanding Squares - the BRUCE Zone

a) A fractal curve is a mathematical curve whose shape retains the same general
b) pattern of irregularity, regardless of how high it is magnified.
c) Platonic solids and their inherent potentials
d) Fibonacci Sequence and its exponential expressions
e) 4 Dimensional algebraic descriptions of the Universe (qubits)
f) Elementary Atomic values

With that I believe he means that all things in the universe have a value and that all interactive processes of these values at any specific spacetime coordinate are guided by the prevailing mathematical laws at that relative location.

Mathematics

Mathematical notation is widely used in science and engineering for representing complex concepts and properties in a concise, unambiguous, and accurate way. This notation consists of symbols used for representing operations, unspecified numbers, relations and any other mathematical objects, and then assembling them into expressions and formulas.[94]

More precisely, numbers and other mathematical objects are represented by symbols called variables, which are generally Latin or Greek letters, and often include subscripts.

Operation and relations are generally represented by specific symbols or glyphs,[95] such as + (plus), × (multiplication), ∫{\textstyle \int } (integral), = (equal), and < (less than).[96]

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An explanation of the sigma (Σ) [summation](Summation - Wikipedia) notation

All these symbols are generally grouped according to specific rules to form expressions and formulas.[97] Normally, expressions and formulas do not appear alone, but are included in sentences of the current language, where expressions play the role of noun phrases and formulas play the role of clauses.

Mathematics has developed a rich terminology covering a broad range of fields that study the properties of various abstract, idealized objects and how they interact. It is based on rigorous definitions that provide a standard foundation for communication.

An axiom or postulate is a mathematical statement that is taken to be true without need of proof. If a mathematical statement has yet to be proven (or disproven), it is termed a conjecture.

Through a series of rigorous arguments employing deductive reasoning, a statement that is proven to be true becomes a theorem. A specialized theorem that is mainly used to prove another theorem is called a lemma. A proven instance that forms part of a more general finding is termed a corollary.[98]

more… Mathematics - Wikipedia

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If we have the data and hopefully some logic, we can follow where the data leads…

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He you go.

Mathematical Models of Consciousness

This article pretty much addresses what I have been thinking.

Crucially, the framework is independent of whether one considers any of these characteristic features to be ontological in origin or simply due to a system’s particular design or cognitive functions . What matters, from the perspective of this framework, are only the epistemic restrictions that arise from these features of conscious experience, i.e., that access to some parts of conscious experience is limited by consciousness’ subjective nature and by ineffability, privateness, and inaccessibility in any type of experimental situation.

I take that to mean that you can’t start with experimental data and work your way back to a theory as is normally the case. For example you can understand the mechanism of a clock but it doesn’t tell you what time is. To address lausten’s point you can understand the logic of the clock but that wouldn’t tell you anything about the logic of time. That is not to say that physical reality doesn’t have a logic. All of our conventional logic systems are closed systems like the clock. They are self defining in a way. To escape that problem the paper proposes a new way to approach the problem.

Great care has been taken to keep the mathematical structure of this formalism as general as possible and to provide operational justifications of all essential definitions, so as to ensure that the framework is compatible with all types of mathematical structure one would want to use in modeling consciousness, including category theory, information theory , or complex system approaches , among many others.

I take that to mean they are going to start with the general and work their way back to the specific. Good luck with that.

I’m not saying that science doesn’t work that way. You start with a theory, gather a little bit of data here and little over there and test to see if it all fits the theory. The problem is that they already told us that it wasn’t subject to experimentation. If I keep going with my analogy you are going to need some very sophisticated clocks to test your theory of time. So understanding how to make a better clock is important. My problem is that if you don’t start with the experimental data which is somewhat disconnected from logic you will never have a theory of time. Here I’m talking about experimental data in the broadest possible sense. All of experience individual and collective which isn’t defined by what lausten calls logic .

If you define your test as conformity to the logic systems you deployed, all you are testing is the logic of the systems.

I’m agnostic as to the proposed process because I can’t process it. I don’t have the skill set required or thirty years to develop them. I will however propose a test. When the theory leads to the construction of a conscious machine of even test tube consciousness that will be proof enough for me. That really kind of ignores the problem however because how are you going to test the machine for consciousness? We think we know consciousness when we see it but as Dennett pointed out often it could be an illusion. He does the same thing when he discusses the phenomenal confusion over phenomenology.

I will use another example of what I see as the problem. Modern computers are very complex machines. So complex that nobody actually “understands” how they work. They are built up out of parts that were individually developed. Most complex software that runs on them is built up out of evolved operating systems that pieces of which are developed by teams of people. You put them all together and see if you can work out the “bugs”. It turns out you can’t get rid of all the bugs because there is nobody who understands all the parts. You can’t reduce the bugs to something comprehensible. What we seem to be discussing is even more complex.

I am aware that every once in a while a genius comes along and reduces the very complex to something simple. The best example I can think of is E equals M times C squared. Again however if you ask someone knowledgeable what it means they will go back to experimental data to show the “significance”.

Significance is an oddly subjective term for a scientific perspective. In a way I think that is what mriana is trying to say. In a way it is also what I was trying to say about logic, it is always self defining. The escape trick is experience broadly defined. In the article they take that into account by saying they are incorporating tautological theories. Trying to find a way to “experience” consciousness.

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Human math works very well for humans controlling nature, but it doesn’t work with how nature multiplies various species or the fact that nature doesn’t have straight lines. If you control procreation, then you need human math, but if you aren’t controlling it and allowing nature to take it’s course, human math does not work.

Again, that is your opinion, which makes absolutely not sense, because 1. not every species has a nine month gestation period. 2. I didn’t take anything out of context. You put words in my posts that I did not say. 3. Reality is that if you have one male and one female who do the wild thing, without birth control nature says that makes 3 or more depending on the species, if there is no spontaneous abortion (AKA miscarriage) within a given gestational time or abortion by choice if the species is human. The reality math is there as 1 + 1 = 3 or more depending on the species. That’s how nature’s math works and does not work like human math and you are stuck on human math, not nature.

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lausten want’s me to be succinct so here you go.

Genius is in the simplification not the complexity of the proof.

I will use evolution as an example. Everyone knew of “evolution” long before Darwin came along. It was called breeding. The selection of animals and plants to produce a better adapted version. All Darwin had to do was apply the same process to nature. His genius was the simplification of natural selection. Two words that changed the world. To be fair his proof was very complicated. Too complicated in fact until DNA came along.

The point is don’t confuse the proof with the insight.

The reason we say we live in a mathematical universe isn’t because it is analogous to a computer simulation or that we are wet robots. It is because there is no other way to simplify reality sufficiently for comprehension.

There is a new idea that overturns conventional reasoning however. The idea that no “comprehension” is actually necessary. It is tied to the evolution of computers. Computers don’t “comprehend” anything. They can however solve problems we cannot. They do that by mimicking evolution or trial and error at a very accelerated rate. You can see the genius of this idea in the work of Stephan Wolfram. Put in the right initial condition to a computer and it will produce elaborate patterns that contain “answers”.

I think one of the problems we have is that we have trouble seeing science as an evolutionary process. We see it from the eureka moment perspective not all the steps necessary to get to that moment. You need Newton to get to Einstein. Newton is the simple form Einstein a more complex form. The philosophical question is what is understanding. It certainly isn’t in the complexity.

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Knowledge leads to Memory, which leads to Cognition, which leads to Understanding, which leads to Self-reference, which leads to … Homo Sapiens ?

“Natura Artis Magistra” : Nature is the teacher of the arts (and science).

What we observe is Nature’s Thought process…?

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We are pretty much on the same page. The problem is I cannot communicate with you effectively because I don’t have the mathematical skills to critique the work you present.

I have been thinking about something that may be useful to you. We are born engineers or applied scientists but we have to disconnect from our naive or natural ideas about purpose to be scientists. Science reflects the purposelessness of nature. A common reaction to a scientific discovery is so what. How is it meaningful? If you want to connect with non scientists you will have to artificially inject purpose. Start by telling people why they should care.

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Longevity? The human biological sciences are a form of anthropomorphic selection for desirable properties and abilities and longevity regardless of procreation…

We are working on cures for Cancer, Dementia, Alzheimers and other health care issues that may prolong a longer productive life.

When the missing ingredients are beyond human reach, there may come a time when we must say “enough”, this is the end of science.
OTOH, when the missing ingredients are mathematical in essence, we may learn to model a TOE and attain immortality, well… a longer life… :star_struck:

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Nope. My family has had generations of longevity without math being applied. Small families, but long life. Still 1 + 1 =3 or more. My great grandmother was born before the turn of the 20th century (1890s) married at 15 to a man 20 years her senior, had 4 daughters, that’s it. No other children and lived to be 94 years old. First child at age 16. Her daughters- the oldest born 1911 was sewn with catgut at the age of 15. No kids of course, lived to be 99, as did her husband. My grandmother, born 1913, had two girls, no more kids, 5 years apart. Lived to be 94, outlived my grandfather by 20 years. The sister after her lived to be 99, no kids. The baby sister had two kids and also had a long life. I could continue but my mother is still alive and it remains to be seen how old she will be at time of death and she only had me. BTW, not only did and do they believe in vaccines, but both my aunt born 1939 and my mother 1944 were born in a hospital, unlike my father who was born on the kitchen table in 1946, as well as his other siblings (at least 6 live births by his mother).

A diet high in vegetables and little to no meat also helps. They all ate a diet high in vegetables.

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Well as you can see by the reply that didn’t work. It may be a good first draft.

I had a friend once, probably one of the most intelligent people I have every known, who said philosophy is a nice hobby but don’t take it too seriously. I couldn’t get him to understand that my interest in philosophy was historical context not the philosophy itself. His interests were in music and people. I think it could have something to do with how he almost died from cancer when he was a kid. The point I’m trying to make is that a lot of smart people won’t necessarily have much interest in science or the intellectual in general. They are interested in “life”. If they read much it will be for pleasure. There is an art to pleasure or finding meaning in life.

What we need to do if we want to reach people like that is make the science increase the meaning in life. Make the science a kind of symphony. I have no idea how that is done. I do have one observation however Einstein became something of a pop figure because he was charming. Nietzsche died an almost obscure figure to the public because he was disengaged from “real” life.

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I’m trying to figure out the point you are making and I’m struggling.

If we make it more autistic like we could say the meaning in life is fitness? If that is the point I agree with that. However because humans are the cultural ape fitness has shifted from individual selection to group selection. Civilization it turns out is a kind of artificial eusociality. It is hard to see how longevity increases group fitness.

Their are some horrible consequences that accompany group selection such as war. The prevailing solution seems to be to simply extend the group to include all of humanity. John Lennon’s living life as one. It is not hard to see how science can get in the way. Science produced nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, etc. The cultural response to that seems to be environmentalism in it’s broadest meaning. Not just the external environment of physical reality or nature but the internal environment of the individual. What I have suggested to white4u is that he is writing a kind of symphony of nature. Science detached from it’s physical consequences. Looked at from that perspective it has the potential to increase the meaning in life for the individual.