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Effect follows cause: But could this most basic of beliefs be mistaken?

#1
C C Offline
Effect follows cause: But could this most basic of beliefs be mistaken?
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/a-univers...s-auid-257

EXCERPT: Mathematician George Ellis made his name focusing on some of the big questions of cosmology and relativity. Along with Stephen Hawking, he co-authored 1973’s "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time", which attempted to describe the very foundations of space itself. More recently, Ellis has been focusing on top-down causation – the process by which higher level organised systems, such as humans, interact with their own component parts. His theories have important repercussions across many fields of research – from consciousness and free will to understanding quantum phenomena. Ellis is also an active Quaker and was a vocal opponent of apartheid during the 1970s and ‘80s. We spoke to Ellis about his theories, their implications, and the reasons behind certain resistance to these ideas.

Q: What exactly is top-down causation?

GE: A key question for science is whether all causation is from the bottom up only. If forces between particles are the only kind of physical causation, then chemistry, biology, and even our minds are emergent, bottom-up properties of physics. On the other hand, it might be that these emergent higher level structures, such as cells, neurons, and the brain, have causal powers in their one right. In the first instance, all the higher levels are epiphenomena – they have no real existence – and so the idea that you are responsible for your actions is false. But in fact top-down causation takes place all the time, with the higher levels controlling the lower levels, not by any magic force, but by setting constraints on lower level interactions. This means that higher levels such as cells, neurons, and your brain have real causal powers, and this means you can indeed be held accountable for your actions....

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Our knowledge, like the Earth, floats in nothingness, but does make it meaningless or more precious?
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/science-i...n-auid-455

EXCERPT: What seems most obvious about the world can in fact be false: this is the main characteristic of scientific thinking. Scientific thinking is a continuous quest for novel ways of conceptualising the world. Knowledge is born from a respectful, but radical, act of rebellion against what we currently think. This is the richest heritage the West has left to today’s global culture, its finest contribution. This act of rebellion is a challenge launched first twenty six centuries ago in Miletus, by Thales and Anaximander...
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#2
Magical Realist Online
Quote:But in fact top-down causation takes place all the time, with the higher levels controlling the lower levels, not by any magic force, but by setting constraints on lower level interactions. This means that higher levels such as cells, neurons, and your brain have real causal powers, and this means you can indeed be held accountable for your actions...

I saw a segment on a brain documentary about an experiment showing how our decisions to act in a certain way start before we are even conscious of it. It's basically confirmation of Libet's experiments. It's as if we make the decision unconsciously and afterwards take credit for making it consciously. While this shows the bottom-up role of brain processes, the experiment also showed that this process of acting in a certain way can be edited at even a very late stage. At the very last second, we can consciously change how we act. This suggests the top-down coming into play, exerting it's power of restraint over the bottom-level process already set in motion. The analogy of a row of dominoes falling and the last domino being removed at the last second was presented. We ARE the bottom up processes pre-engaged with the world. But we are also the emergent power to self-edit and change those processes from above, as if we are partly outside of them.
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#3
Yazata Offline
Quote:Q: What exactly is top-down causation?

GE: A key question for science is whether all causation is from the bottom up only. If forces between particles are the only kind of physical causation, then chemistry, biology, and even our minds are emergent, bottom-up properties of physics.

I think that's true, but I'm not willing to sign onto the idea in the strong way that this famous physicist wants people to.

Quote:On the other hand, it might be that these emergent higher level structures, such as cells, neurons, and the brain, have causal powers in their one right.

Sure, I think that's true too. Complex systems like computers have causal powers that can't be deduced from just examining the computers' components' constituent atoms individually. (That's why computers and not random piles of atoms drive robots.) I think that engineering (and biology, and...) can be reduced to particle physics, but can't be deduced from particle physics alone, without a lot of additional structural information being added.

Physical elements like atoms have physical properties, such as Ellis' "forces between particles". But those physical elements can come together into physical assemblages such as electronic components, which display new kinds of behavior of their own. The behavior of a complex system can be reduced to the physics of the system's individual parts. But a complex system (an electronic oscillator lets say) has its own unique properties regarding the kinds of oscillations it produces or whatever, dependent not only on the most elementary properties of its component parts added together in a simple sum, but dependent also on the details of how the components are assembled and on how they interact with each other.

(The topic of this thread doesn't really match the topic in the subject line, which looks like a different question entirely.)
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#4
C C Offline
(Nov 30, 2015 09:52 PM)Yazata Wrote: (The topic of this thread doesn't really match the topic in the subject line, which looks like a different question entirely.)


It was their byline for the article, which puzzled me as well. After missing it the first time around, I guess there is one passage in the interview where it might have been loosely abstracted from. An upper stratum or collective organization treated as an effect of the more fundamental agencies but which then nevertheless regulates the latter. Seems as much a matter of how the complexity of a system can scramble the once-simple discrimination of what has the rank of cause and what has the rank of effect at any particular period.

[...] In each case, one understands how higher level effects (like spikes in neurons) arise through lower level physics (flow of ions through gated channels) as directed by the higher level context. So your nerve cells act together to produce spoken English as a result both of your social context and education, and also your immediate train of thought. Top-down causation explains the interactions between the levels, and this is what governs what actually happens.
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