1.Epistemology.
T Hello,
A beautiful weather today, isn't it? Are you sure you want to discuss philosophy,
instead of hiking and swimming?
STo
tell the truth, I am not. I came here from curiosity, but I am not sure
at all that we will not waste our time. Let us start. I reserve the right
to say at any moment: that is enough, I am out.
T All
right. I understand you very well. I also find many discussions on-
and near -
philosophy unproductive. Usually people simply do not understand each other;
they speak different languages. There are many philosophical languages,
and they change as time goes. As you know, I am not a professional philosopher,
and to compare in detail the languages of various great philosophers is
not within my competence. But I have always held the view that everyone
must have his own philosophical language in which to answer the everlasting
questions:
What
is the world? What am I? (the subject of Ontology).
What
is our knowledge of the world? How true is it? (the subject of Epistemology).
What
is Good and what is Evil?
What
are the supreme values and the meaning of life? (the subject of Ethics).
Having
such a personal language, one should be able to translate into it the ideas
expressed in other languages.
S But,
surely, it is not always possible to translate from one language to another.
Remember the complementarity principle in physics. You can describe a quantum-mechanical
particle in terms of its coordinate, or in terms of momentum, but you cannot
describe it in these two ways simultaneously. The more precisely you determine
coordinate, the less you will know about momentum.
TI
am afraid your example shows the opposite of what you intended to show.
The incompatibility of the two descriptions holds only as long as you use
the classical notions, and this was the point of Bohr's complementarity
principle. To avoid problems, do not use classical notions where they are
not applicable. In quantum mechanics the particle is described by its wave
function. It can be written in the coordinate representation, or in the
impulse representation, and it is easy to translate one into another by
making the Fourier transform.
When
we have two or more languages which partially describe a phenomenon, our
goal should be to create a more complete theory which synthesizes and unifies
the preexisting theories. This is what has been achieved with quantum mechanics.
I see no reasons why this should not be a typical case. I am against invoking
the complementarity principle as a justification for the absence of a unifying
theory. Maybe we simply did not work hard enough. I do not see any logical
reason why a useful unifying language and theory cannot always be found.
In the simplest case, different languages give u different projection of
the same phenomenon, and can be easily combined, as when we have three
projections of a moving particle on three orthogonal axes.
The
reason why we do not always want to combine philosophical texts and languages
is more down-to-earth: it is not that we cannot do it because of some universal
complementarity principle, but that we simply do not need it. A text, or
the whole set of texts written in a certain language,may
express the meaning that adds nothing new, because we already know this
and have expressed it in a different language. Or it may have no meaning
at all. To make a discussion meaningful, we must make it sure that we understand
each other. This is why I propose that we start our discussion with epistemology,
to which the problem of meaning belongs. For some time I have been looking
for a kind of a universal semantics, some guiding principle to understand
a text in every possible language, if it, indeed, has any meaning.
SDid
you find one?
T I
think I did -
to some extent.And I think every
philosophy,and science as well, must
start with the discussion of this, or a similar, principle. We need some
criterion of meaningfulness. Otherwise we will not be able to distinguish
between the meaningful and the meaningless. We simply will not know what
we are speaking about.
SI
am eager to hear about the principle you discovered.
TWell,
discover is too strong a word. My epistemology will not surprise anybody
who is not unfamiliar with the modern philosophy. My semantic principle,
briefly, is: the meaning of a linguistic object for me is in my ability
to use this object as an instrument for making models of the world, in
other words, in generating predictions about the world's processes. I come
to this principle by arguing that whatever has meaning must, somehow, increase
our knowledge, and the cybernetic idea of knowledge is that it is a model
of reality.
Closely
tied to this principle is the method in which I propose to develop philosophy:
the method of progressive formalization [16].This is the method
universally used in science. We first rely on an intuitive understanding
of simple concepts, then on the basis of this understanding we convey the
meaning of more formal and exact, but also more complex, concepts and ideas.
This
statement itself is an illustration of my method. I used in it the words
`understanding', Îmeaningâ, Îformal'. In due course,
these notions should be analyzed and `more formal and exact' meanings should
be given to them, in their turn. These new meanings, however, will not
come to replace the original meanings, but to make an addition
to them.
Compare
this with the situation in physics. We start this branch of science speaking
about bodies and their masses, measuring distances in space by applying
rulers, etc. Later, when we study the structure of matter, we find that
those bodies and rulers, are nothing else but certain structures consisting
ofhuge numbers of atoms. This concept
of a ruler is, however, a new concept, even though it refers to the same
thing. To come to the concept of a ruler as an atomic structure, we must
pass a long path, at the beginning of which a ruler is a simple thing the
usage of which is easy to explain.
In
the Principia Cybernetica Project [5], we come to philosophy with the standards
and methods of science. We try to define and explain such basic things
as Îmeaningâ, Îunderstandingâ, Îknowledgeâ,
Îtruthâ, Îobjectâ, Îprocessâ etc. But
to explain, e.g., understanding, we must rely on understanding in its usual
intuitive sense, because otherwise we will not know if we ourselves understand
what we are saying; so, there will be little chance for our words to be
meaningful.
Or
take the concept of an object. In Principia Cybernetica we have a conceptual
node devoted to it. But we cannot do without speaking about objects
long before we come to that node -- in a close analogy with the two concepts
of a ruler in physics.
Relations
between things in this world are very often circular, so we are often at
a loss when trying to start and finish definitions. Using various levels
of formalization allows us to avoid vicious circles in definitions.Suppose
we use informally some concept A to define a concept B. Let
us represent the fact that A conceptually precedes B or B
relies on A as A < B. Then we want to make
A
more exact: Aâ. We define it, and discover that it now
depends on the already defined B. Hence if we were to require thatin
a formal definition. of a concept all the concepts on which it relies are
formally defined, we would either have to limit ourselves to strictly hierarchical
subsets of concepts, or never finish the job, moving in a vicious circle.
Instead, we recognize that there are various levels of formalization of
essentially the same concept, and we allow them to coexist. Thus after
defining B with the use of A, we define Aâ using
the informal concept B; since B relies on A, the old,
informal version of A is not discarded, but stays in the system
of concepts. Now we could make the definition of B more formal,
basing it on A' instead of A; on the next turn of this spiral,
we may wish to define even more formal concept A'', etc.:
A
< B < A' < B' < A'' < B'' · etc.
Whenever
we want to understand a definition, we start unwinding the chain of dependent
definitions from right to left, until we come to basic intuitive notions
about which there should be no disagreements.
SYou
define your primitive concepts using the concept of modelling. But this
concept itself is far from primitive.It
relies on the same primitive concepts which your are defining.
TYes.
This is the process of progressive formalization. I define modeling by
appealing to your understanding of the basic method of science. After that
I start defining various concepts of philosophy referring to something
you already understand: modelling. I define the place of these concepts
in modelling. It gives you a way to decide if in a given context these
concepts are used properly. This means that my definitions are more formal
than if the concepts were not defined, but simply described and announced
primitive.
S But
the concept of modeling is quite advanced. Why should you take it as the
beginning? I may not believe in the model epistemology, but agree with
your ontology that actions are primary reality, and accept the idea of
progressive formalization. Starting from such primitives, I would come
to formal definition of modeling. But you insist on accepting epistemology
first. Thisonly makes things more
difficult for me.
T You
are free to start from any point in the spiral of progressive formalization.
But if this point is not what I take for the beginning, you have to rely
on the intuitive understanding of abstract philosophical concepts. With
different people it may be different; only the words used are the same.
I do not know how to compare intuitive meanings. But I know how to check
that a person uses the idea of modeling correctly. Therefore, the explanation
of abstract concepts in terms of the concept of modelling becomes, for
me, acceptable. This is why I start with epistemology. But I repeat that
you can start the discourse from any point. If you wish, start it with
ontological primitives. I start with epistemological primitives.
SI
expect that you will now explain, or, as you say, make more formal, what
is a model, and what does it mean that it is formal or informal.
TExactly.
First, about modeling. It is a kind of activity of a cybernetic system,
in particular, a human being.
SAnd
what is a cybernetic system?
T No
comment. I believe that whatever notion of a cybernetic system you have,
it will do. In due time, in this dialogue, or elsewhere in the course of
the Principia Cybernetica Project, we shall give an answer to this question.
But not now. This is the method of progressive, gradual, formalization.
SA
convenient method, indeed! I could go on insisting that you give a definition
now.
TAnd
block any further discussion. This is easy to achieve by various means.
To your irony I answer: yes, it is convenient. It allows to have things
started.
We
can construct models of various systems. Let me call the system we are
modeling simply `the world', meaning by that some part or aspect of the
world as we see it. The system that constructs the models, to which I have
been referring until now as `we' or `I', will be, in the third person,
called the subject of knowledge. The model we discuss is a subsystem
of the subject of knowledge.
The
most immediate kind of a model is a system that implements the concept
known in mathematics as homomorphism. This system can be described
as follows (see Fig.1).
Let
W1be
a state of the world as reflected in the primary sense organs of the subject
of knowledge. Let R1be
the representation of the state
W1. By
this I mean the existence of some procedure M (mapping) which produces R1whenW1is
given:M(W1)
= R1.
Suppose further that the subject of knowledge takes an action a.
As a result, the state W1
changes into W2.(Among
possible actions of a cybernetic system there is the action of doing nothing:
just waiting for a period of time).To be a model, the system must be able
to perform one more procedure, let us call it Fa.
It mimics in the model the effect of the system's action a in the
world, so that Fa(R1)
= M(W2).
Thus by applying Fato
R1
the system can predict, to some extent, the development of events if it
takes action a. Then it can choose an action which helps it survive.
Modeling is a powerful instrument of survival, and this is how it emerged
in the course of evolution.
SI
must note that your concept of a model is not the only one. For example,
if your mapping procedure, which implements a function, is replaced
by a general relation, that will be again qualifying as a model,
and you will find such a definition in some books.
T Yes.
But I have serious reasons to choose my definition. I will discuss this
later, when we come to the evolutionary origins of knowledge.
The
concept of modeling as I have defined it can be generalized by declaring
a model any tool which produces predictions. My definition of a prediction
is: a statement that a certain process is finite, meaning by being finite
Predictions are, in principal that it comes to a certain, specified in
advance, stage. In particular, the prediction supplied by the above-described
model, namely Fa
(M(W1))=M(W2)is
nothing else but the `finiteness' of the process which we shall denote
as Pand
which can be described as follows. ApplyMto
W1then
apply Fato
the result, and call X1 the
result of that. Let the cybernetic system that carriesthe
model make action a. Let the resulting state of the world be W2. ApplyM to
W2with
the result
X1. Apply
the comparison process to
X1and
X2.
We define comparison as a process which stops when (and if) the identity
(or equivalence) of
X1and
X2is
established. Thus a successful end of this process means a successful end
of the whole process P.
Therefore, the statementFa(M(W1))
= M(W2)
is a prediction thatPis
finite.
Predictions
are, in principle, verifiable. You only have to initiate the process that
it is about and wait until it comes to the final state.
As
you remember, I started by tying up meaning to the cybernetic concept of
knowledge. A model, or a generator of predictions, does certainly represent
knowledge. However, we must not limit the whole concept of knowledge to
a generator of predictions. Pieces of our knowledge (propositions) do not
necessarily produce verifiable predictions, but may produce something which
will produce predictions. Moreover, they may produce objects which produce
objects which produce predictions, and so forth to any height of the hierarchy
of knowledge objects. I will often refer to this process as hierarchical
production of predictions. A simple example from mathematics: the equation
x + y = y + x is not immediately verifiable, but it produces such
an equation as 7 + 4 = 4 + 7. This statement, in its turn, is still too
abstract for a direct verification. We can, however, verify the prediction
that four apples and seven apples can be added in either order with the
same result. If we take something even more abstract, like Maxwell's equations,
we shall see even a longer hierarchy of specification before we come to
observable facts.
I
propose, therefore, the definition: a piece of knowledge is an object which
we can use for hierarchical production (or generation of predictions. In
a more formal way: a piece of knowledge is a generator of predictions or
other pieces of knowledge. This recursive definition allows a piece of
knowledge to produce a hierarchy of objects before it starts producing
predictions. Note that according to my definition a thing may never start
producing predictions, and still qualify as knowledge: call it empty knowledge.
The reason for the inclusion of this case is that with a recursive definition
of generating procedures we cannot always tell in advance if a given generator
will produce a single object.
Now
I have come to the point where a more formal definition offormal
is due. A statement or a language is formal if its usage relies only
on the `form' of linguistic objects, and not their intuitive meanings.
SBut
whose
usage it is?
TA
good question. My next step in making this definition more formal and precise
is to specify a set of perceptions and actions which are registered and
performed in the same way by all members of the society whom the languages
serve. Let us refer to these perceptions and actions asuniversally
defined. A language is formal if the processes involved in its usage,
namely the representation function M(W) and the modeling
function Fa(R),are expressed in terms of universally
defined perceptions and actions. The notion of universally defined, though,
cannot be formally defined. Thus, the difference between formal and informal
always remains informal.
We
usually assume that universally defined perceptions and actions can be
relegated to a machine. The question is still open whether this is a realistic
assumption. We accept it with a qualification that if there is a doubt
about a specific abstraction or action, it must be excluded from the universally
defined set. Then a formal language is a language usable by a properly
constructed machine. A machine of that kind becomes an objective model
of reality, independent of the human brain which created it. Science is
construction of such machines.
SI
understand, this is the reason for your program of progressive formalization.
TExactly.
We create formal versions of our common notions in order to understand
better how our language and mind work, and to create artificial languages
and minds, which will imitate our mental processes, and one day, perhaps,
go beyond what is possible for us. By a series of consecutive formalizations,
philosophy becomes science.
Thus
let us continue on this path. Our definition of knowledge allows me to
further define what is meaning and what is truth. When we state something
we, presumably,express our knowledge,even
though it may be hypothetical or false. Thus to be meaningful, a proposition
must conform to the same requirement as a piece of knowledge:we
must know how to be able to produce predictions from it, or produce tools
which will produce predictions, or produce tools to produce such tools,
etc. If we can characterize the path from the statement to predictions
in exact terms, the meaning of the statement is exact.If
we visualize this path only vaguely, the meaning is vague. If we can see
no path from a statement to predictions, this statement is meaningless.
SYou
cannot say just ãmeaninglessä. It may be meaningless for
us, but will it forever remain meaningless for everybody?
TTrue
enough. This is why I said ãifwe
can see no pathä. What I want to emphasize is not the subjective side
of all knowledge (about which there is a general concensus nowadays), but
the specific mechanics of acquiring a meaning: production of verifiable
predictions. A piece of knowledgeis
true if the predictions made by theuser
of knowledge on the basis of this knowledge come true. Since there is no
general method to determine if a recursive generator produces a result
of a given kind, there is no generally applicable method to establish truths.
Since sets of predictions,like multidimensional
vectors, are hard to compare, there is no universal evaluation of truths.
Remember,
you asked if I have found a universal semantic principle to decide on meanings,
and I said `to some extent'. My reason for being cautious is that we usually
expect from such a principle that it guarantees a definite answer with
respect to any question. As I have just said, there is no such principle
to decide on truth, even if the statement is formal. As for the meaning,
the universal principle exists if we limit ourselves to formal languages.
It requires that by our construction of the statement, it is a machine
which produces only predictions. However, when we push forward the frontier
of theoretical knowledge, we deal with informal statements which cause
flows of ideas in our heads but are not (yet!) ready for formalization
as machines. There is no formal principle to judge on the validity of such
statements other than wait until they yield predictions. My semantic principle
only indicates the goal, but cannot offer a universal algorithm.
But
I believe that this semantic principle, nevertheless, can improve mutual
understandability in philosophical and methodological arguments, because
it indicates the direction in which to look for resolution of conflicts:
it is how what we say translates or may translate into production of predictions.
I am trying to show this in our present discussion. I formulate whatever
I have to say either as a model of reality, or as a way leading to construction
of models. Thus I see my own philosophy as definitely meaningful.
I
propose this as a general guiding principle in human attempts to understand
each other. If the other side in a dialogue produces chains of words the
meaning of which you cannot grasp, ask it to explain how these words are
relevant for construction of the world's models. I believe, optimistically,
that if both sides hold to this method, the discussion will become more
meaningful.
S What
is the meaning, in your theory, of the statement: The distance from
TIt
is the prediction that the following process comes to a successful end:set
the odometer in your car at zero, drive from
S But
my statement is more abstract. It does not include a specific indication
at the procedure of measuring. I could go from
TIf
you associate the concept of distance with more than one method of measurement,
the statement of the equivalence of various methods is implicit.
SDo
you seriously believe that in this way you can interpret the meaning of
any statement which we can express in a natural language? Even,
say, from Nursery Rhymes?
TYes.
TWell,
sentences of natural human languages are burdened with many different implications,
often conflicting. But I can sketch how your sentence can be interpreted
in terms of prediction-making. First of all, we deal here with the past
tense. Which means that our statement does not directly produce predictions,
but adds to what can be called an internal picture of the world, which
every person has.
SAre
not you retreating from your original position that all that has meaning
is prediction generation?
TNot
in the least. The personal picture of the world is part of prediction generation,
and has meaning to the extent it helps predict. Remember the modeling scheme?
We viewed Fa (R1) as a function of
the current state of the world R1 and the parameter
a, the action the subject system could take. But this function depends
also on our mental picture of the world as one more parameter.
SThen
what you call the picture of the world is nothing but memory.
T Almost.
It is that part of memory which is relevant for prediction making. Every
experience adds something to your memory, but this additionmay
or may not be meaningful. IfI say
to you: ãAderti was compy stallous yesterdayä, the fact that
I said this may stick in your memory, but the sentence itself will add
nothing to your ability to make predictions. So I say that the sentence
is meaningless.
Because
of the human ability to have and construct mental pictures of the
world -- the faculty of imagination, to which we shall return once again
-- we can treat mental pictures the same way as we treat reality. In particular,
we can make `predictions' about events in our pictures which, of course,
will not be predictions proper but some constructions in those pictures.
If Julius Caesar in our mental picture drops an apple, we assume that it
falls down, and this becomes one more element in our picture of the world.
If we know that Mary had a little lamb, we can assume that she gave it
some food, and it was not hamburgers and beer. In this way we reduce the
meaning of past-tense texts to the meaning of texts about the present.
So,
ãMary has a little lambä. Now we face a problem that
is known in computer science as knowledge representation. The standard
method is to decompose a natural language statement into a formula of the
predicate calculus using some primitive predicates. In our case
this translation may be:
$x,y
[Person(x)^ Called-Mary(x)
^ Little-lamb(y)^ Has(x,y)]
To
translate back into English: ãThere exist such objects x and
y
that x is a person called Mary, y is a little lamb, and
x has y.
Primitive
predicates are defined by appealing directly to our human perception, and
the predicate is true if and only if our perception -
which is a certain process of verification -- comes to a successful end.
For example, in order to establish thatLittle-lamb
(y) is true, i.e. some object y is a little lamb, and not
a big bad wolf, we just observe y and confirm that we see a lamb.
The meaning of the statement Little-lamb (y) is in the prediction
that the verification process ends successfully. Existential quantification,
i.e. the statement ãthere exists suchy
that ... etc.ä is also understood as a prediction, namely the
prediction that if you start examining all the objects in the Universe
-- in fact, on the Earth (this is clearly assumed in the sentence) in search
of an object x which is a person and meets all other requirements,
then you will sooner or later find it (and stop). The prediction is that
this search is finite.
Sentences
of natural languages will never allow to define their meaning in a completely
formal way; not until we decompose human thought and soul into billions
of billions of elementary units, which may or may not be possible, we do
not know yet. But we can move (almost infinitely) in the direction of greater
precision and formality. We can write a program which will distinguish
between an image of a lamb and that of a wolf. To checkthat
x is called Mary, we can refer to her birth certificate, or observe
that x answers when addressed as Mary, etc. As in the case of distance
measurement, the full definition of a concept should include all relevant
tests, and a mechanism to decide on the answer when there are disagreements
between...I see that you look wistfully through the window.
SYes,
it may be a good idea to have a swim.
T Very
well. I only want to make a few remarks to finish with epistemology.
First,
my theory of meaning leads to a theory of the value, or usefulness, of
information.
SYou
reduce meaning to knowledge only, which in your theory is generation of
predictions. But what about passing useful instructions? What about skills,
the know how? You cannot deny that such instructions have meaning. But
I cannot see generation of predictions there.
TNote
that you used the words know how, thus treating skills as knowledge,
which is quite correct. In my definition of a successful, finite process,
you can distinguish two parts: the process proper -- let us denote it as
P, and the test T which determines if the stage reached is
final, i.e. satisfying the preset requirement. When we want to find a set
of predictions, one of the following two cases usually holds. First, we
can specify P and then ask what will happen, i.e. which kind of
tests Twill be finally successful
when following P. This is the most direct meaning of the word ãpredictionä.
But equally important is the second case when we specify T and ask
what kind of processP will
leadto the desirable result. This
is your case of useful instructions. The essential content in both cases
is the same: that the process PT is
finite.
My
second remark is that I have tested elsewhere the validity of my approach
to knowledge, meaning and truth by applying it in the field which does
not allow imprecision and vagueness but requires a complete formalization
and unambiguity, ? in mathematics. I have done this in [14], where a ãcyberneticä
foundation of mathematics is developed, based exactly on the principle
that the meaning of mathematical statements is only in recursive generation
of predictions expressed in a formal language. This approach gives answers
to the classical questions about mathematics; in particular, it gives a
new and constructive interpretation of set theory.
Finally,
I have given you no more that a very brief introduction to the way I propose
to treat the problems of epistemology. Many aspects of these problems I
have left out, for example, the treatment of possibility, as in ãit
may be that ·ä. Many other aspects are not yet elaborated at
all, and I hope to have a chance to work at those in the frame of the Principia
Cybernetica Project.
2.Metasystem
Transition
SIt
is time to start discussing the concept of metasystem transition,which
is, after all, the goal of our meeting.
T Yes,
but in a moment I will have to make one more journey into philosophy.
In
The Phenomenon of Science [12] I define metasystem transition as
follows (see Fig.2). Imagine a system S of some kind. Suppose there
is a way to makea number of copies from it, possibly with variations.Suppose
that these systems are united into a new system Sâ whichhas
the systems of the S type as its subsystems, and includes alsoan
additional mechanism which controls the behavior and productionof the S-subsystems.
Then we callSâ a metasystem
with respect to S,and the creation ofSâ
from S a metasystem transition (MST for short).
As
a result of consecutive metasystem transitions a multilevel structure of
control arises, which allows complicated forms of behavior. I show, further,
that the major steps in evolution, both biological, and cultural, are nothing
else but metasystem transitions of a large scope. The concept of metasystem
transition allows us to introduce a kind of objective quantitative measure
of organization and distinguish between evolution in the positive direction,
progress, and what we consider an evolutionin in the negative direction,
regress. In particular, I offer an interpretation of one of the most important
aspect of the biological evolution: the appearance of human thinking and
human society.
SI
am distrustful about the notion of progress because it isvalue laden
-- and in a very skewed manner at that -- in our Western culture. I merely
observe a progression toward complexity.
TThis
is your right, of course. But in my value system this progression and the
emergence of man, in particular, come with the sign plus. So I call it
progress.
The
Phenomenon of Science
was written some twenty years ago. Since then I had a chance to read more
literature on cybernetics and evolution, and I discussed the concept of
metasystem transition with various people in various contexts. I am convinced
more than ever that mine is a valid way of seeing the evolution of the
world and predicting its future. But I feel a kind of necessity to make
the concept of control more definite and precise. In cybernetic
literature this concept is often identified with a very specific scheme,
which I prefer to call a regulation
scheme, where the metasystem's
purpose is to keep a certain variable constant; see, e.g. [10]. When I
speak of a hierarchy of control, I understand control in a very general
sense, which includes the classical regulation scheme and any ways of duplication,
variation, integration, manipulation, exploration etc. For example, the
creation of the language of formal logic to make mathematical proof into
a mathematical object is a typical MST, although it cannot be reduced to
a regulation scheme.
So
it seems to me that there must be a way of defining and using the MST concept
with a concept of control which is very general and fundamental, one of
the main features of being; then evolution by metasystem transitions will
also become an inalienable feature of the world.But
to define such a concept we need the context ofontology,
the part of philosophy which is called to tell us what does it mean to
be, and what, in the last analysis is the world. To define control,
I want first to define being.
SIs
it really necessary?
TWe
could discuss the world's future without it. But the work I am doing is
part of the Principia Cybernetica Project, and its purpose is to create
an all-embracing, complete philosophical system on the basis of cybernetic
ideas. We want to make this basis into a system of conceptual nodes which
could be then used both for construction of intelligent machines, and,
possibly, creation of new scientific theories.Also,
if we demonstrate that our concepts form a consistent and complete picture
of all that is, will make our conclusions about future more convincing.
As you remember, I insisted that we start with epistemology and the principle
of progressive formalization. We discussed why we needed progressive formalization.
Now we shall discuss how to start it.
SWait
a minute. You jumped from ontology, which is to me more or less the same
as metaphysics, to formalization and intelligent computers. I still do
not see the need for you to drown in the bog of metaphysics.
TI
said: to start progressive formalization. Metaphysics is often viewed as
something opposite to physics and utterly useless for any reasonable purpose.
This attitude is a hangover from outdated forms of empiricism and positivism,
namely the naive reflection-correspondence theory of language and truth,
which sees language as an image, a replica of the world. It is easy to
conclude from this theory that any expression of our language which cannot
be immediately interpreted in terms of observable facts, is meaningless
and misleading. This viewpoint in its extreme form, according to which
all un observables must be banned from science, was developed by the early
nineteenth-century positivism (August Comte). From this perspective, metaphysics
is definitely meaningless.
But
our view of language and truth is different. We understand language as
a hierarchical model of reality, i.e. a device which produces predictions,
and not as an image of the world. This device, especially in its higher
levels of structure, need not `look like' the things it is about; it only
should produce correct predictions. Therefore, the claim made by metaphysics
is now read differently. To say that the real nature of the world is such
and such means to propose the construction of a model of the world along
such and such lines. Metaphysics creates a mental structure to serve as
a basis for further refinements. Metaphysics is the beginning of physics;
it provides fetuses for future theories. It may take quite a time to translate
metaphysics into an exact theory with verifiable predictions. Before this
is done, metaphysics is, like any fetus, highly vulnerable. But we need
some metaphysics. On our agenda is the creation of universal models
of the world, which would allow us, in particular, to interpret human thought
expressed in natural language. How should we start this enterprise? What
concepts must be taken as the basis? This is the same as to ask: what is
the world? What is its ultimate essence? It is the business of metaphysics
to give answers to these questions.
SSo,
what is the ultimate essence of the world?
TMy
answer is: action [17]. Which means that it is action that must
be taken as the ultimate building element in the construction of world
models. This is a truly cybernetic approach. Physics is concerned with
the material of the world, the matter-energy aspect of it. Cybernetics
abstracts from the material and concentrates on control, communication,
information. All of these are actions.
Intuitively,
we see the world as a collection of objects occupying some space and changing
in time. Objects are seen as primary, change as some thing secondary, which
could or could not take place. I reverse this relationship. I modify the
famous Schopenhauer's formula as
The
world is action plus representation
with
action taking ontological precedence over representation.
SFor
Schopenhauer it was will, not action.
TYes.
But the two concepts are rather close. If I understand Schopenhauer correctly,
will is a universal factor that makes action possible. Will manifests itself
as action. Taking action as the basis, I get closer to our usual perception
of the world, yet far enough not to treat physical objects as the `true'
elements of reality. Objects are representations of the world in our mind.
They come into being through sensations. But sensations do not exist as
objects; they are actions, a form of interaction between
the subject of knowledge and the rest of the world.
SI
do not understand your ontological precedence of action over anything else.
I would rather understand Schopenhauer's will as existent. At least, will
is something definite, permanent. The quality of permanence is necessary
for being in existence. That action can exist seems to mea contradiction,
a logical absurdity.
THere
we face the most intriguing part of metaphysics: the concept of ãreal
existenceä. Our cybernetic epistemology, according to which all meaningful
statements are hierarchical models of reality, has a double effect on the
concept of existence. On the one hand, theoretical concepts, such as mechanical
forces, electromagnetic and other fields and wave functions, acquire the
same existential status as the material things we see around us. On the
other hand, quite simple and trustworthy concepts like a heavy mass moving
along a trajectory, and even the material things themselves, the egg we
eat at breakfast, become as uncertain and open to discussion as theoretical
concepts.
One
could argue that there is simply no need in the concept of real, or ultimate,
existence, because all theories, in the last analysis, explain and organizes
observable facts, which all are, and will always be, facts of our perception.
This is formally true. But we still do feel a need for our theory to start
with such basic entities that their existence is impossible to deny. Somehow
it seems that such a theory has better chances for success.
You
require permanence for things that exist. But you know that there is nothing
really permanent in this world. It seems to you that there is a logical
contradiction between action and existence because from the beginning,
subconsciously, you identify existence with being an object. When I define
existence as a feature of a theory of the world, this contradiction disappears.
Thus I take the concept of action in
abstracto, and on this basis try to interpret the fundamental concepts
of our knowledge: what are objects, what is objective description of the
world, what is space and time, etc.
SYou
did not yet define what is representation.
TSure.
You remember that according to our epistemology every meaningful statement
is a model of reality, a dynamic entity. There are certain correspondences
between the actions of the model and the actions in the real world: the
former mimic the latter. All the rest in the statement, is representation.
A statement is made significant by the actions involved in it; the representations
used are secondary. Two models may be similar but based on completely different
representations, as when we compare analogue and digital computation. While
actions in our models reflect actions elsewhere in the world, our representations
reflect nothing; they have no meaning of their own.
SSo,
representations are objects? Passive?
TUsually
we see them as objects. But the concept of an object itself isnot independent
of actions; it is only an expression of a certain stability in relations
between actions.
SMmm...
TI
see that I must explain what in my metaphysics is an object. Suppose
I am aware of a tea-pot on the table in front of me. I recognize the image
on my retina as belonging to a certain set of images, the abstraction ãtea-potä.
But there is more to it. I perceive the tea-pot as an object. The
object ãtea-potä is certainly not a definite image on the retina
of my eyes; not even a definite part of it. For when I turn my head, or
walk around the table, this image changes all the time, but I still perceive
the tea-pot as the same object. The tea-pot as an object must, rather,
be associated with the transformation of the image on my retina which results
from the changing position of my eyes. This is, of course, a purely visual
concept. We can add to it a transformation which produces my tactile sensations
given the position and movements of my fingers.
The
general definition of an object suggested by this example consists of three
parts.
1.First
we define a set Rob of representations which are said
to represent the same object; in our example this set consists of all images
of the tea-pot when I look at it from different view-points, and possibly,
my sensations of touching and holding it.
2.Then
from the set of all possible actions we separate a subset Acogn
of actions which will be referred to as cognitive; in our case Acogn
includes such actions as looking at the tea-pot, turning my head, going
around the table, touching the tea-pot etc. ? all those actions which are
associated with the registration of the fact that a tea-pot is there.
3.Finally,
we define a family of functions fa(r), where for
every cognitive action a ë
Acongthe function
fa :Rob?
Rob
transforms
a representationr ? Rob
into fa(r) = r'which is expected as a result
of action a.
The
most important part here is the third; the first two can be subsumedby
it. We define an object b as a family of functions fa:
:
b
= {
fa:
a ë
Acogn}
The
setAcognis the
domain of the indexa; the
set Robis the domain and co-domain of the functions of
the family.
When
I perceive an object b, I have a representationr
which belongs to the set Rob ;I
then execute some cognitive actions, and for each such actiona I
run my mental model, i.e. perform the transformationfaonr.If
this anticipated representation fa(r)
matches the actual
representationrâ after
the actiona:
fa(r)=râ
then
my perception of the objectb is
confirmed; otherwise I may not be sure about what is going on. Observing
a tea-pot I check my actual experience against what I anticipate as the
result of the movements of my head and eye balls. If the two match, I perceive
the tea-pot as an object. If I travel in a desert and see on the horizon
castles and minarets which disappear or turn topsy-turvy as I get closer,
I say that this is a mirage, an illusion, and not a real object.
The
concept of an object naturally (one is tempted to say, inevitably)arises
in the process of evolution. It is simply the first stage in the construction
ofthe world's models. Indeed, since
the sense organs of cybernetic animals are constantly moving in the environment,
these actions are the first to be modeled. In the huge flow of sensations
a line must be drawn between what is the result of the animal's own movements,
and the other changes which do not depend on the movements, are objective.
Looking for objectivity is nothing else butfactoring
out certain cognitive action. Function fa
factors out the actiona by
predicting what should be observed when the only change in the world is
the subject's taking actiona.If
the prediction comes true, we interpret this as the same kind of stability
as when nothing changes at all. The concept of object fixates a certain
invariance, or stability, in the perception of a cybernetic system that
actively explores its environment.
SStill
I find it difficult to accept your view. It goes against the whole of modern
science, according to which the world exists as a collection of objects,
while actions are transitions between states of the world.
TBut
I do not reject this approach, I am perfectly ready to go along. The question
is: what are those states? You consider them as something primary. I go
further and define a state of the world as the set of all actions that
can take place in this state. If these sets are identical then the states
are identical. Note that in this way I reduce two basic concepts, action
and state, to one: action. You cannot do the same taking leaving only state.
Action as a change of state is a new concept; change cannot be expressed
in static terms, as we have known starting with Zeno's paradoxes. So, on
the purely logical reasons we are tempted to accept action as the only
foundation of the world.
Now,
consider this in the context of physics. According to our present understanding
of the world, all the variety of events we observe result from elementary
acts interactions between elementary particles. These acts constitute unquestionable
reality, while both our theory, and our intuitive picture of the world,
are only representations of reality. Furthermore, it is the physical quantity
ofactionthat
is quantizedby Plank's constant
h. This can be seen as an indication that action should have a higher
existential status than space, time, or matter.
SWell,
it is not immediately clear whether the concept of action as we understand
it intuitively and the physical quantity that has the dimension of energy
by time and is called ãactionä are one and the same, or related
at all.
TThis
is true. That the physicists use the word ãactionä to denote
this quantity could be a misleading coincidence. Yet the intuitive notion
of an action as proportional to intensity (intuitive understanding of energy)
and time does not seem unreasonable. Furthermore, it is operators, i.e.,
actions in the space of states, that represent observable (real!)
physical quantities in quantum mechanics, and not the space-time states
themselves!
Even
if we reject these parallels and intuition as unsafe, it still remains
true that neither space, time, nor matter are characterized by a single
constant omnipresent quantum, but a combination of these. Is it not natural
to take this combination as a basis for the picture of the world ? if not
for a unifying physical theory?
SIt
may be.
TWhat
concepts have we already defined in our metaphysics of action?
SRepresentation,
object, and state.
TGood.
Now I want to define agent, freedom, and related concepts.
When
we speak of an action, we speak also of an agent that performs the
action. Formally, we can define an agent as a set of actions which is organized
both sequentially and in parallel. We say then that every action from this
set is performed by the sameagent.
In a given state of the world there may be many possible actions for a
given agent. We say that this agent has the freedom to choose between
them. When one agent's action restricts the freedom of another agent, we
speak of causation. In the extreme case no freedom may be left to
the agent; such an agent is referred to as a (deterministic) machine.
SWhy
do agents only restrict other agents? Why you exclude the cases where an
action increases the freedom? For example, you can let somebody
out of jail, thus increasing his freedom.
TNote,
however, that I let the guy out by restricting the freedom of locks and
jailers to keep him inside. I think this is a general rule. Whenever an
action increases freedom, it does so by restricting restrictions.
Agents
are, of course, representations, not actions. But we distinguish them from
passive objects.We break down all
representations into agents and objects. Both agents and objects are defined,
in the last analysis, by actions; agents -
by those actions they perform, objects by the actions through which they
are perceived, as those I denoted fa(r) above.
SYou
defined agents as sets of actions. Now you say that agents are representation,
not actions. Is this not a contradiction?
TNo.
From a purely formal set-theoretical point of view, a set of actions is
not an action itself. I used the set-theoretical language in order to give
a concise definition, as they do in mathematics. You remember that one
of the definitions of a real number in calculus is that it is a
set of rational numbers. Here is does not mean is the same as
you may see the same girl on two different pictures. A real number is a
concept on its own, an element of our prediction machines. A set of rational
numbers defines one real number as different from others.
Now
I introduce an important relation between agents andobjects,
which I will call, following[8] and
[6], the semantic relation. The action which an agent A is
about to perform very often depends on a certain object b.
We shall call b acode,
agent A its interpreter, the action ofAinterpretation,
and the relation betweenAandba
semantic relation; we say thatbinformsA.
Often we want to distinguish between the objectband
the information it carries. Information is an abstraction from the
object in a semantic relationship, where only those features are left which
have bearing on the actions ofA.
Thus two texts carry the same information for the reader if they different
only in the font they are set in.
I
believe that the existence of semantic relations is such a fundamental
feature of the world that it cannot be reduced to, or defined through,
anything more primitive. If there were no semantic relations, there could
be no objects in our experience, because the perception of an objectis
its interpretation.
SAha!
You return to the objects their reality through semantic relations.
TI
never doubted the reality of objects. But they are secondary to the primary
reality of actions. An object is a code. An interpreter is an agent. These
are two aspects of the action. Both are representations, and to some extent,
are arbitrary. We often can alter the code without changing the action
of the interpreter. And we can define the same action using a different
code-interpretation pair.
As
we discussed, modeling is a dynamic process. Introducing agents we make
the first real step towards construction of the world's models. Our self-consciousness
plays a decisive role in this step. Among all agents there is a special
one: the agent denoted by the first person pronoun ãIä. This
is the only agent of which we know from within: by performing, not
perceiving actions. When we speak of our actions, or actionsof
other human beings, we know very well what the agent is: just the person
whose action it is. We reconstruct this notion, of course, by extension
from our own ÎIâ. When we speak of such animals as dogs, we
again have no doubt in the validity of the concept agent. This reasoning
can be continued down to frogs, worms, amebas, trees, and inanimate objects,
without any convincing arguments for stopping. When we say: ãthe
bomb exploded and the ship sankä, are there any reasons to object
against understanding this in the same way as if we were speaking about
people and dogs? After all, the bomb might not explode, and with a given
explosion the ship might or might not sink, depending on the ship itself,
the ship as a whole. Notice that even given a definite bomb and a definite
ship, the result might not be uniquely predetermined.
And
what about an act (sic!)
of radioactive decay? It is definitely an action, but whose action is it?
The physicist could say that the agents here are electrodynamic andchromodynamic
fields. This makes sense because of the theory the physicist has. If we
do not have such a theory, we simply say that there is a special agent
for each possible act of radioactive decay. At each moment in time this
agent makes a choice: to decay or not to decay. This immediately
explains the exponential law of radioactivity.
SThis
is an anthropomorphism, which has been obsolete for hundreds
of
years.
TSince
the primary instance of an agent for a human being is oneself, it is not
surprising that in primitive societies the concept of agent is understood
anthropomorphically: a ãspiritä which is very similar, if not
identical, to ourselves.
The
development of modern science banned spirits from the picture of the world.
But agents, cleared from anthropomorphism, still remain, even though the
physicists do not call them so. What is Newtonian force if not an agent
that changes, every moment, the momentum of a body? Physics leaves -
at least at present -
the concept of agent implicit. We need it explicitly because our metaphysics
is based on the concept of action, not to mention the simple fact that
cybernetics describes, among other things, the behavior of human agents.
Speaking
of a human being, we call the topmost agent its {will}. The freedom
of this agent is the freedom of will.
The
concept of will assumes the existence offreedomto
exercise the will. Thus recognizing will as a cornerstone of being, we
do the same for freedom. For the mechanistic worldview of the nineteenth
century freedom of will was a misconception, a nuisance which escaped satisfactory
definition within the scientific context. For us the human freedom of will
is a necessary element of the world order.
There
is genuine freedom in the world.When
we observe it fromtheoutside,it
takes the form of quantum-mechanical unpredictability; when we observe
it from within, we call it our freewill.
This freedom is the very essence of ourpersonalities,
the treasure of our lives. Logically, the concept of free will is primary,impossibleto
derive or to explain from anything else. The concept of necessity, including
the concept of a natural law, is a derivative:we
call necessary,orpredetermined,those
things which cannot be changed at will.
Now
I can finally define process, system, control, and metasystem transition.
Aprocess
is simply a collection of actions which are joint sequentially or in
parallel: a complex action.
A
system
is a collection of agents and objects, thus it is a complex
representation. This is a pretty general definition. It checks against
various definitions from the systems theory literature, though. For example,
one would often define a system as a collection of objects and relations
between them. In our terms, the objects will be passive representations,
while the relations will be seen as agents which initiate decision processes
which determine whether a relation is held (I believe only in constructivedefinitions).The
concept of control is presented in Figure 3, where system S composed
of some agent(s) A and representation(s) R,is controlled
by the system Câ.
SBut
agents are at the same time representation, so I do not understand the
breaking of S into A and R. Maybe you wanted to say
objects R?
TIn
a special case R may be an object. But generally R may include
agents too, those not included in A. Control usually effects only
some agents, and it is these agents that I include in A. The
actions and other representations that constitute the inner mechanics of
the system S would be typically preserved and possibly somewhat
modified.
The
arrows in the figure indicate causal relationships. The controlling system
Câ includes an agent Aâ which restricts the freedom
of the agent(s) A in S. It also includes another agent, Râ,
which we call a representation of S. Its actions are restricted
bySwhile
Râ
itself restricts Aâ. Thus the causal loop
is closed: a phenomenon known as feedback. However, the relation
between S and Câ is not symmetric; Câ controls
S, but S does not control Câ. The effect of
Aâ on S is direct and may be of any kind and degree,
including a complete destruction (though, as I said, this is not the most
interesting case). But S effects Aâ only through Râ,
which serves as a kind of transducer, or filter. The effect ofSâ
onAâ cannot be
greater than allowed by the changing states of Râ.
In
the most fundamental example of the control scheme, Câ is
an organism, and S its environment; the link Aâ ? S
represents the organism's actions, S ? Râ the sensation
creating a certain perception of the environment by the organism, and Râ
? Aâ the decision taking by the organism on the basis of its
perception of the environment.
The
concept of a computing machine is a direct expression of control. The machine
works on certain objects: input, intermediate and output. It is in a complete
control, changing them directly. The inverse influence of data on the machine
occurs only at certain moments and is limited to causing the machine to
take one of a few possible ways of computation when executing conditional
statements. The conditions in such statements create representations of
the data field. For example, when the statement if x
< y
then ·etc. is executed, the representation Râ
is the value of the Boolean expressionx
<y.
Control
is often called for keeping some variable x
in a system around its
desired value, or, more generally, achieving some goal expressible as a
representation. Then we have a regulation scheme, or a scheme of purposive
behavior, see Figure 4.
In
addition to the representation of the changing environment, the system
Câ has one more subsystem which represents a goal, such as
the ideal desirable value of x = x0. In this special
case Aâ operates in this manner: whenever x > x0
it performs an action which decreases x; when
x < x0
it performs an action which increases x. Generally, it compares
the current situation Râ with the goal Gâ and
performs an action which makes the two closer.
SDid
you say that the relation of control is antisymmetric?
TNo.
Only that it is not symmetric. It is possible that X
controls Y
and Y, at the same time, controls X. The control here
may be destructive, then we call it a conflict, as when two men
are fighting. Each one is effected by two channels: maintaining one's perception
of the other, and taking his blows. Or the parties may mutually strengthen
and build each other. This circular control we find between DNA
and proteins in the work of biological machinery.
More
interesting than conflicts are situations when hierarchies of control emerge.
A metasystem transition is the emergence of a new level of control, usually
accompanied by integration of a number of the pre-existing systems. In
Figure 3 we call a metasystem the system which includes Câ and
S;symbolically,Sâ
= Câ *S.IfCâ
exercises control overnsystems
of the type ofS,we
can put this symbolically asCâ
* (S1 + S2 + · + Sn).
A metasystem transition is a transition from a system to a metasystem:
S
? Sâ = C * ( S1
+ S2+
· +Sn)
It
was represented graphically in Figure 2.
S I
am not certain what you mean by transition.Is
it a physical process, or just a mental construction, as when we say:ãConsider
a metasystem...ä?
TAll
processes are, in the last analysis, physical processes. Yes, a MST is
a physical process, an action of a special type which creates a
new agent. We shall refer to such an action as an emergence.
Agents
come into, and go out of, existence. One of the problems of philosophy
has always been: how to distinguish simple (ãquantitativeä)
changes from the cases where something really ãnewäemerges.
What does it mean to be ãnewä, to emerge?In
our theory this intuitive notion is formalized as the coming into existence
of a new agent. An action can lead to an emergence of new agents. Take,
again, radioactive decay as an example. A neutron suddenly chooses
to break down into a proton, electron and neutrino. Whatever agents were
associated with the neutron (its kinetic energy, e.g.) do not exist anymore.
New agents emerge, such as the interaction between the newborn proton and
electron, or the kinetic energy of neutrino.
SIs
then the decay of a neutron a metasystem transition?
TNo.
I did not say that emergence is a metasystem transition. But I can
give a simple example of an emergence which is. Consider the formation
of a hydrogen molecule from two hydrogen atoms. Before this act we have
two agents, the two atoms. After it we have new agent: a molecule as a
whole. It is not the same as two free independent atoms. The atoms are
still there, but they are controlled by the molecule; more precisely, the
protons are controlled by the common electron shell. A molecule exhibits
actions which did not exist when the atoms were free: vibrations, rotations.
We have to accept the fact that a new agent has been born, and that it
results from the integration of the atoms.
SCan
you show how what is going on in the molecule fits your definition of control?
TSure.
This is a clear case of regulation. Our metasystem consists of protons
S1 and S2integrated by the electron
shell Câ. Let us first treat the system classically, and consider,
for simplicity, only one of the three spatial projections. The relevant
representation Râ is the distance x between the atoms.
Nothing happens as long as the protons are at the equilibrium distancex0.Suppose
some external agent pushes the proton S1, passing some
momentump. The coordinate
of the proton starts changing. This will cause a force F opposite
in direction to displacement of the proton and roughly proportional to
it. This force will start stopping the proton by changing its momentum
and finally reverse its movement. If the initial perturbation was not too
big, oscillations will result, but the molecule will preserve its identity.
The three causal links in the control scheme are obeying the following
equations:
(A
? Râ)dx/dt =p/m
(Râ
? Aâ)F = ?k (x
? x0)
(Aâ
? A)dp/dt = F
In
a quantum-mechanical version you will see the same factors, but in a different
mathematical formalism. Metasystem transition is a fundamental feature
of the world at all levels, including the basic physical processes.
SInteresting.
You represented as a control scheme the relation between the basic elements
of classical mechanics: coordinate, impulse, and force. I expect that crystallization
is also a metasystem transition according to your theory.
TQuite
true. This illustrates one of the characteristics of metasystem transitions.
There are two such general characteristics: the scope of a metasystem
transition and its scale of integration. The scope of a metasystem
transition is the original system S in the control scheme. The scope
may be vastly different. It is an atom in the case of the hydrogen molecule;
it is a human being when a human society is formed. The scale of integration
is the number n of integrated systems SiIt
is 2 in the case of a hydrogen molecule, and about 6á10"" for a
gram-atom of crystallizing matter.
There
is also an important physical characteristic of control and metasystem
transition.which cannot be seen on the control scheme, exactly because
it is physical, and not cybernetical. It is theenergy
of the controlling agent. To break down a hydrogen molecule in its ground
state, an amount of energy is needed, which is known as the binding
energy of the hydrogen atoms in the molecule. Different phenomena in
nature are characterized by very different energy scales; thus the binding
energy of nucleons in atomic nuclei is orders of magnitude greater than
binding energies accounted for by electrons. Therefore, agents may be stronger
of weaker. Moreover, we can formally treat two independent hydrogen atoms
as a system of two atoms, a Îmoleculeâ, the binding energy
of which is zero. The concept of an agent has a quantitative aspect. An
agent may be Îvery weakâ, practically nonexistent. But we abstract
from this aspect when we draw control schemes.
Metasystem
transitions may originate either ãnaturallyä, or as a result
of human activities. I put the reference to nature in quotes, because human
activities are no less natural than processes we call natural --this is
the whole point of the MST theory; we see both biological and cultural
evolution as forwarded by metasystem transitions. The reason metasystem
transitions take place in biological evolution is that they enhance survivability.
In cultural evolution the most radical creative feats are also metasystem
transitions.
I
believe, David Hilbert was the first to use the prefix meta (from
the Greek over) in the sense we use it in metalanguage, metatheory,
and now metasystem.
He
introduced the term metamathematics to denote a mathematical theory
of mathematical proof. In terms of our control scheme, A in metamathematics
is a mathematician who proves theorems (mathematical texts in natural language
can be seen as R in the scheme); Râ is a representation
of mathematical texts in the language of formal logic; Aâ
is a metamathematician who translates texts into this formal language
and directs and controls the work of A by checking the validity
of his proofs and, possibly, mechanically generating proofs in a computer.
The emergence of the metamathematician is a metasystem transition. Complete
formalization of the actions by Aâ makes it possible to make
the next metasystem transition, where Aä proves statements
describing the activities of Aâ, in particular, finding out
that there are certain statements which can be neither proven refuted.
We see here a three-level system: A can be associated with the name
of
SA
metasystem stairway.
TExactly.
The link from representation to action in a control scheme may or may not
be semantic. In our example of the hydrogen molecule this link was not
semantic, but a direct and unchangeable manifestation of a natural law: F=-
k (x-x0). There is a class of metasystem transitions,
though, which, by definition, is based on a semantic relation: this
is when we embark on the task of description. Take an example from
computer programming. Suppose you have a function F(x). This
means that you have a machine, i.e. agent,F
and various objects which may become values of x. Then you describe
F in a certain formal language L, which is understood by
an interpreter Int. This description is a code; let us denote
it as code(F). To say that Int understands L is
to say that Int and code(F) are in a semantic relationship:
Int's action usingcode(F)
imitates the action of F. A new control structure is created.
Look, please, at Figure 3to see how
it fits the control scheme. The lower level S = Ob + A is what we
have at the beginning. Here A is the machine F,
To
finish with the definition of metasystem transition, I should mention a
special case where the control system Câ does not actually
include, or use, representation Râ. In other words, the actions
of Aâ are completely blind, chaotic. Such, apparently, is
the control of cosmic rays over genes when they cause mutations.
3.Evolution
SI
liked very much our dip in the waters of the Small Sebago lake.
TSo
did I. Sometimes I have my doubts about abstract thought versus concrete
enjoyment. But let us try to have the best from both.
I
want to discuss evolution now. According to the neo-Darwinist view, evolution
takes place due to creation of random combinations of matter, with the
subsequent struggle for existence, as a result of which some combinations
survive and proliferate, while other perish. Popper [9] describes this
as the work of the general method of trial and error-elimination.
From
the viewpoint of a physicist, evolution can be seen as a search for stability.
Consider a system of atoms in the framework of non-relativistic quantum
mechanics and statistics. Its configuration is a set of values of
all generalized coordinates of the system, e.g., the coordinates of all
atomic nuclei and electrons. The system is described by Schrsdingerâs
equation which includes the potential energy of the system as a function
of its configuration. This function can be visualized as a distribution
in the n-dimensional configuration space, where n is the
number of the degrees of freedom. The solutions of the Schrsdinger equation
for a given total energy E of the system constitute the total set
of all possible quantum states of the system. When we deal with a macroscopic
system, though it is never completely isolated, but constantly exchanges
energy with its environment, so there is an interval*E
of energy within which the exact energy of the system varies. Let the total
set of states with energies around E and inside *E be S.
The system jumps randomly within this set from one state to another.
The logarithm of the number of states in S is the entropy of
the system: ? = ln |S |.
We
also can see the state of a macroscopic system in the quasi-classical approximation
as a point moving in its phase space. The phase space has twice
as many coordinate axes as the configuration space: for each generalized
coordinate it includes the corresponding generalized impulse. The states
available for the system make a surface of a given energy E, or,
more precisely, the space between the surfaces for E and
E +
*E.The volume of this
space measured in the units of the Plank's constant h is the same
number of quantum states |S | as above. It defines the entropy of
the system.
A
quantum system tends to find itself in a configuration which has the minimum
of potential energy. But the potential energy of a macroscopic system is
an extremely complex and irregular function. It has a stupefying combinatorial
number of local minima and maxima. If the system finds itself in a local
minimum of energy, it must overcome a potential barrier in order to leap
to another minimum. The probability of such a leap includes the factor
e- b/Twhere b is the height of the
barrier, and T is the temperature of the system, i.e. the average
energy per one degree of freedom. Hence if the barrier is much greater
than T, the probability of jumping over it is exceedingly small.
Imagine
a potential energy function which looks like a crater on the moon:
an area C1 surrounded by a pretty high (as compared
with the temperature T) circular ridge. Let the phase space
volume corresponding to C1be
S1.Itis
a subset of the total set of states S,so
S1íS.
Accordingly,
as long as the system stays in S1its entropy ?1is
less than for the system free to be found in any state of S:?1
<?.
Now
the following fundamental fact is in order: given two quantum states, s1ands2the
probability of transition from s1tos2is
the same as that of the inverse transition froms2to
s1. If at some time the system is found in the state
s1 ëS1,it
may stay there until a transition to some state s2occurs,
which is not in S1:s2ëS
2
=(S ö S1).
But
the probability that it will get back fromS2toS1is
even much less; for macroscopic phenomena it is so small that it
is, in fact, impossible. Indeed, let the probability rate of a transition
between the states ofS1
andS2be
of the order of magnitudep.
Then the probability of jumping from (any state in) S1to
(any state in)S2isp
|S2|, while the probability of the inverse transition
isp
|S1|.
Recall now thatS1results
from a certain constraint on S. The properties of combinatorial
numbers are such that if a constraint is removed, the number of combinations
increases at a mind-boggling rate. Thus|S|is
not just greater than |S1|,but
many, many times greater. Hence |S2|is
also many times greater than|S1|.
The probability of returning to S1will
be less than that of escaping from it by the factor:
|S
1 | / |S2|=|S1|
/ |S |=e
ö (? ö ?1)
For
macroscopic phenomena the difference between the entropies will be macroscopic,
and the exponent vanishing.
Hence
the law of the growth of entropy. A system will not jump from the larger
set Sto a smaller setS1.When
a system changes its macroscopic state, its entropy can only increase.
In
this light let us look at stability. As long as the system stays in the
stateS1it
preserves its identity. But sooner or later, under the influence of cosmic
radiation, or just an especially big fluctuation of thermal energy, a quantum
leap takes place and the system is in S2.Some
part of its organization, defined as compliance with some specified
constraint, is lost. The entropy went up. How can we bring the system back
toS1?
The
answer is: we need a certain amount of energy to overcome potential barriers.
But there is an additional requirement to that energy: it must belong to
a single agent, or, may be, to a very few agents. An agent in this context
is a force or forces associated with one degree of freedom, or a few degrees
of freedom, between which there is a strong interaction(note: even deterministic
classical mechanics cannot do without speaking of freedom).A
big system of atoms can be divided into some regions within which there
is a significant interaction, while the interaction between the regions
is weaker by orders of magnitude. The potential barriers of which we speak
are regional. So are the corresponding degrees of freedom (generalized
coordinates). A jump over a barrier changes equilibrium values of a few
generalized coordinates. To make this jump the system must obtain an amount
of energy comparable with the height of the barrier and concentrated on
the coordinates which take part in the jump. In the language of agents,we
need to pass to the agent of the jump the necessary amount of energy. Then
it becomes possible to make a jump which amends the deteriorated organization,
or creates it anew.
Given
an amount of energy, we must ask an important question about it is this
energy concentrated on a single agent, or pulverized among a huge amount
of nearly independent agents. The latter is thermal energy; the former
is known in thermodynamics asfree
energy (freedom again!). It is only free energy which creates organization.
Energy distributed between a great number of independent agents is useless
for organization, because there is no force which could collect it into
an amount sufficient for overcoming potential barriers, while the probability
that this happens by chance is virtually non-existent.
So,
we used a quantum of energy to overcome a potential barrier and create
a desired regional configuration of atoms. When the point representing
a configuration jumps from one side of the barrier to the other, its level
of energy changes little, if at all.Then
where does the energy we passed to the system go? In the last analysis,
it dissipates between all the agents in the system, i.e. converts to the
thermal form. If we want to have a stable system, such as a living system,
there must be a way to get rid of this thermal energy, otherwise the temperature
will raise higher and higher until rampant agents of thermal motion kill
all organization around.
We
come to the conclusion that if we want to see a stable or growing organization,
there must be a relatively small number of agents which maintain the organization,
passing to it in the process some energy, which later escapes the system
as thermal energy. This flow of energy where it enters the system in a
low-entropy form, i.e. vested in a few number of agents, and leaves it
in a high-entropy thermal form, is essential for preserving organization.
SInteresting.
I knew about the phenomenon of a potential barrier, of course, but I did
not have a clear picture of how it is related to stability. I thought,
the lower is the energy of a system, the more stable it is.
TThis
is not so. A system may be in a state with relatively low energy but surrounded
by low potential barrier. It will have much greater probability to jump
someplace than the same system in a state with a higher equilibrium energy,
but surrounded by a high potential barrier. Stability is a feature of the
configuration-energy function of the system. Theoretically, it is this
function that is studied by cyberneticians and biologists. We are interested
in the structure of the energy function of systems, the existence of local
minima well protected by potential barriers. Evolution, and life itself,is
the wandering of the system around local minima, in search of more and
more protected configurations.
SI
hope you are not a reductionist. I hope you do not think that cybernetics
and biology can be reduced to a branch of physics.
TNo.
When we say that the reduction is possible `theoretically', we simply indicate
the place in our theory where physics borders with other fields of science.
The energy function for a system of many atoms is an object of mind-boggling
complexity. What can be done by methods of physics must be done, but this
will never be enough.
Now
let us think about possible paths to the points of stability. Given as
the starting point an unorganized matter, say, the primary soup of various
organic molecules, and a stable configuration as the desired end, one path
will require climbing a mountain and then descending to the valley, while
another path may lead around such mountains and overcoming much lower barriers.
The role of enzymes in biological processes is to make such paths possible
that reach the goal with minimal supply of energy.
Consider
the question of damage control
when a system deviates from stability by jumping over the surrounding
potential barrier, how is it brought back? We discussed it above in terms
of quantum mechanics. We came to the conclusion that an agent is necessary
to perform a reverse transition. If such an agent is available, and if
it is automatically called as a result of the disorganizing transition,
I will call such damage control, and the stability it achieves, causal.
Causal stability, in fact, is familiar in the context of macroscopic,
classical (not quantum) description. When we speak about the stability
achieved through control and regulation, we speak about causal stability:
all links in the control scheme are causal relationships. This is how stability
is achieved in the macroworld
When
we deal with phenomena on the level of individual atoms and molecules,
causal stability becomes difficult to organize. The number of possible
quantum transitions is huge, and to tie to each of these transitions a
corrective agent ? in the world where only probabilities are predictable
? this is some task! This is the case where it is easier to make a toy
from scratch according to its description than to fix it. And this is another
method of damage control and stability, replication
stability, which is the main method of achieving stability in the living
systems on the atomic level.
To
have a description is the key element. This role is played by molecules
of nucleic acids DNA and RNA. Proteins are responsible for creation of
a huge variety of configurations. There is also a universal agent which
carries energy necessary to jump over potential barriers. This is the molecule
of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The relation between these three basic
elements of life is that of circular control, shown in Figure 5..Proteins
are synthesized according to the DNA/RNA code; but it is the spatial
patterns of protein enzymes that determine where the agent ATP will do
its job and restructure a configuration. In particular, this makes the
process of replication of nucleic acids possible.
At
the molecular level life relies on replication for stability. All living
structures die because of the relentless entropy. But before they die they
produce modified copies that survive.
Combination
of replication with the trial and error method makes metasystem transition
the main vehicle of evolution. Integration of substructures at all levels
of evolution creates, generally, more chances for stability because of
two very general factors. The first is the simple geometric factor:
the binding energy is proportional to the volume of the structure, while
the external perturbation is proportional to its surface. The second is
the probabilistic factor: the more systems are integrated, the greater
is the probability that something useful will be discovered by the method
of trial and error, simply because there is more of trial.
There
is, however, one more factor, combinational, which works in the
opposite direction. Suppose that you have some numbernof
structural units and you expect that there is an arrangement(loosely speaking,
a combination) of these units which will be significantly more stable than
the other combinations. Using the trial and error method, you test one
arrangement after another and check their stability. The number of possible
arrangements grows catastrophically with the number of unitsn.Let
us take the simplest case where the units always form a linear structure.
Then our arrangements are permutations ofn
elements, and there aren!
of them. Ifn = 5the
number of arrangements is120.You
can easily try them all. Ifn
= 100there are some1056arrangements.
Even if there are billions of billions of useful arrangements of100
units, the probability that you will find one in 10 billion years, is vanishing.
Neither can mother nature try all possible arrangements of many units.
Instead she tries the arrangements of a relatively small number of units,
achieves partial success in terms of stability, and then makes a metasystem
transition to integrate any ? possibly very big ? number of successful
arrangements into a metasystem. The metasystem thus emerged becomes a new
structural unit for further combinations and arrangements. Such is the
origin of hierarchical structures in evolution, both biological and post-biological.
This is a way to use the geometric and probabilistic factors, but avoid
combinatorial explosion.
SHow
does the new control level emerge? There is something mystical about it.
I cannot see the mechanics of it.
TOK,
let us speak about the mechanics of metasystem transitions. Apparently,
there is nogeneral method for it;
the mechanics depends on the physical nature of the system. But there are
some common features of the process. A new agent can emerge as the result
of the collective effect; this is, in Hegelian and Marxian terminology
the transformation of quantity to quality. Crystallization is an example.
As long as there are only two or three atoms, there is no crystal, even
if they make a right configuration. A certain minimum is necessary for
stability; then the process of crystallization starts.
A
different mechanism of emergence we see in the control structure of animal
and human groups and societies. A kind of instability with respect to control
often exists. An animal who happens to be a little stronger than others
becomes dominant and takes more and better food. As a result it becomes
even stronger and more domineering.In
a human group, a member who happens to be the first to have a gun can prevent
others from having guns. On this principle multilevel hierarchies in human
societies have come into existence.
There
is a general feature of metasystem transitions, which I call in[12]the
law ofbranching growth of the
penultimate level of control. Initially, the integration of replicated
subsystems can take place only on a small scale, because of the combinatorial
factor we have discussed. However, when the needed combination is found,
and a new controlling agent has emerged, it becomes, typically, possible
to control greater and greater numbers of integrated subsystems, and this
is advantageous for stability because of the geometric and combinatorial
factors. An integration on a grand scale starts. The emergent agent ison
the ultimate control level of the emergent system; the integrated subsystem
make up the penultimate level. A metasystem transition leads to multiplication
of these penultimate-level subsystems.
When
nature had discovered the principle of coding protein forms with sequences
of four nucleotides, the growth of the number of nucleotides began, resulting
in huge molecules with many thousands of nucleotides. When the concept
of a cell that cooperate with other cells emerged, multicellular organisms
started being formed with growing numbers of integrated cells, until they
reached the sizes of present day animals. The same with human society.
A well organized society starts growing exponentially. All these are instances
of a general cybernetic law.
SYou
speak of evolution as if it were conceived and realized by what you call
Înatureâ, similar to how we ourselves design things and construct
them.
TYou
should take this as a metaphor. Actually, all my pronouncements of that
kind can be translated into the standart language of trial and error, or
blind variation and selective retention. But I would not be quite honest
if I did not tell you that sometimes I think that there is more behind
that metaphor than we are ready to accept at the present time.
SI
feel a closet vitalist in you.
TVitalist
or not, I said all I could say, at the present time, about the evolution
at the molecular level. Let me turn to the macroscopic level and causal
damage control, which will ultimately bring us to the focus of our discussion:
supreme human values and the future of the world.
Repeated
metasystem transitions create control hierarchies. One vertical cell of
such a hierarchy is pictured in Figure 6. Here the control unit of the
second level Cä controls the control unit Câ
and
maybe controlled, in its turn, by a higher level unit. Two flows of level-to-level
information are formed when control units are connected vertically. Creation
of representations proceeds upwards:Râis
a representation of the ultimate object of control (environment) R,while
Räis a representation
of the representation
Râ, etc. Execution of goal-directed
actions proceeds from top down. Every control hierarchy has its top level C(t).At
this level, the representationR(t)is
the most advanced abstract representation in existence, and the goalG(t)is
the supreme goal: survival and proliferation in the case of an animal.
Notice
that the growth of control hierarchy adds new loops of feedback without
destroying the already existing loops. The actionAä
informed by (i.e. trying to achieve) the goalGä
controls the agents Aâ, not the agents A of the
environment. Aâ still remains in the immediate control of
the environment and it tries to achieve its own goal Gä working
in the feedback loop Aâ(A + R)RâAâ
The second level agent Aä controls, of course, the whole first-level
systemCâ including Gâ.
Thus Gâ is nothing but a subgoal of Gä. The
latter can be seen as a program which calls the former as a subprogram.
When the goal is achieved, control returns to Aä which can
now set another goal Gâ as defined by Gä, and
let Aâ to achieve it. So it works by loops within loops:
a situation familiar from computer programming.
Figure
6 shows only a vertical section of the control hierarchy. In reality Cä
controls not one system Câ but many similar such systems,
which come into being by integration in a metasystem transition (see Fig.
2). For example, when a light receptor emerges and is used to control movement,
it becomes possible for an animal to have more of such receptors to receive
more of potentially useful information. But to make this information really
useful, a new level of control must emerge with a representation which
compresses information and translates it into action. When a control mechanism
of that kind emerges, the number of light receptors grows rapidly by the
law of the penultimate level. In the hierarchy of goals we also see integration
of subsystems: Gä may include many subgoals Gâ.
So,
a better idea of a control hierarchy will be given if we replace each control
unit by many units all connected to the unit above, as in Figure 2. The
control hierarchies which actually emerge in evolution are not, of course,
so regular and tidy. Remember that the scope of a metasystem transition
may vary; this jump may occur in different subsystems at different levels.
I
set aside the question of how the relation between Râ andAâ
is settled down. This relation may be dictated by a law of nature,
as is the case for the hydrogen molecule. But in biological systems this
relation is semantic
which means that the agent which makes the
transition from Râ to Aâ is formed of an object
and its interpreter. In a rough model, this object can be seen as a table
of pairs (RâAâ), with the interpreter working as we
do when we use tables: given an Râ it looks through the pairs,
finds (hopefully!) a pair with Râ as the first component,
and activates the A which is the second component of the pair. This
is the classical concept of a function in mathematics:the
function of behavior.
Semantic
relations, unlike relations reflecting a specific law of nature, provide
to the user the freedom of choosing and varying the tablethat defines the
relation. This is an asset in the struggle for existence, because it gives
the system the freedom to evolve to greater stability, by fixing the table
in a certain fashion. Specifically, it works according to the principle
of trial and error: the table varies randomly, and the creatures where
the table is `wrong' become extinct, while among the living creatures we
find only those with `right' tables.
SSo,
the relation then becomes defined because the table becomes defined, and
the freedom to have various tables is lost.
TYes,
this is the paradox of freedom in life and evolution. Freedom is needed
in order to make a choice, thereby loosing the freedom. You consume freedom,
like engine consumes fuel. This is theway
to survive.
You
could have noticed that I am not trying to present any structural scheme
or model of how the behavioral function works.This is not my piece of cake,
and anyway, at the present time we know so little about actual physical
mechanisms of the behavior of animals, that not much could be added, probably.
My method of analyzing the course of evolution has been purely functional.
But
I contend that even staying on this high level of abstraction, it is possible
to come to quite definite conclusions. This was, in fact, the main idea
ofThe Phenomenon of Science.
If
we refrain from drawing pictures of internal states and processes, what
is left for us is only to use the principle that evolution proceeds by
metasystem transition. In the most abstract waymetacystem
transition can be representing by the formula:
Aâ
= control of A
In
terms of such metasystem transitions, I can trace the major stages of the
evolution of life on the Earth. I start from the unicellular and the most
primitive multicellular animals, like Coelenterata.
SBut
the living cell is already an extremely complex machine. Life does not
starts with the cell.It starts with
the first macromolecules.
TI
agree. It would be very interesting to trace the metasystem stairway down
into the history of life from macromolecules to the cell. My knowledge
of molecular biology is not enough for even starting. Maybe somebody will
do this later. But for evolution from the cell to the human society, I
believe, the layman's knowledge of relevant subjects allows us to put up
a fairly convincing picture.
So,
we start with the most primitive animals. Unlike plants, they have an apparatus
that allows them to take actions of their own and to control those actions
through irritation of nerve cells.
Take
a hydra. It has two layers of cells containing muscle fibers which contract
when irritated, and nerve cells (receptors) which can irritate and pass
irritation to muscle fibers. If a hydra is pricked with a needle it squeezes
itself into a tiny ball. The emergence of this apparatus is a metasystem
transition (MST) from the stage of primitive plants where there are no
self-induced actions. This MST is defined by the formula:
cell-irritation
= control of actions
Indeed,
we see in the hydra all elements of the control scheme in Figure 3. Râ
is represented by the receptors in the ectoderm which get irritated
and pass irritation to muscle fibers; Aâ stands for
the muscle fibers, which act when irritated.
The
next MST in functional terms becomes possible due to the structural MST
of great importance: integration of more and more cells into big multicellular
organisms. Integration is accompanied by specialization.
In
particular, specialized nerve cells emerge. They make up a complicated
nerve net where one cell stimulates (irritates) another, and signals from
receptors may pass a long and tortuous way through the network before the
effector cells are stimulated and trigger bodily effects in the organism.
We call the whole process a (complex) reflex. The development and
perfection of biological nerve nets takes place, probably, by a series
of metasystem transitions, but thinking in functional terms we can unite
all them into one with the formula:
reflex
= control of cell irritation
The
final stimulation of effectors does not immediately follow irritation of
a receptor, but is the result of the work of a complex network which controls
irritation of millions of nerve cells. The control becomes hierarchical,
as in Figure 6, with the flows of representation and action in opposite
directions.
If
the preceding stage of evolution can be called the stage of hydra, the
new stagecan be characterized as
the stage of ant. Reflexes and behavioral programs are hierarchical and
complicated, but they are defined at birth and do not depend on individual
experience.
What
is the next stage? We can call it the stage ofdog.
Let us think of the reflex as a set of RâAâ pairs. Unlike
the ant (or at least the schematic ant according to our definition) the
dog can make an association between a situation represented by Râ
and an action Aâ which happens to enhance the dog's viability.
I hypothesize that at such a moment the dog feels a positive emotion, and
that an emotion, generally, is an internal view of the organism's action
which enhances viability. The dog is capable oflearning.
Experiencing
a few times, or even once, the emotion of a successful response Aâ
to the situation Râ, it makes the associationRâAâ and
keeps it in its memory.
So,
the formula of this MST is:
association
= control of reflexes
Here
by association I mean the action of association; associations
as elements of the table exist already at the stage of ant.
At
the stage of dog a new phenomenon emerges: the phenomenon of modeling the
environment. It is natural to assume that if the dog can associate a situation
with the immediately following action, then it also
can
associate such pairs following each another. Thus if in the flow of perception
and action after the pair Râ1Aâ1there
follows the pairRâ2Aâ2then
the sequence Râ1Aâ1 Râ2Aâ2may
stay in memory. But this sequence can also be seen as(Râ1Aâ1
Râ2)
Aâ2i.e.
as consisting of the triplet (Râ1Aâ1Râ2)followed
by the action Aâ2 (there is a hidden assumption
here that the code in which information isstored
is associative, like when it is stored in chains of symbols which seems
natural for living matter ever since the linear structure of chromosomes
was discovered). This triplet is a model of the world, as it was
defined in the epistemological part of our discussion (see Fig. 1). Those
triplets which predict false result Râ2of
actingAâ1
in the situationRâ1
have slim chances to bring positive emotion with any subsequent Aâ2
? it may be too late. So, such triplets will not enter memory. Those triplets
making correct predictions allow to take two correct actions; they stay
in memory and constitute the animal's knowledge. I started philosophizing
with the definition of knowledge as a model of the world. Now we see why
knowledge thus defined emerges in the course of evolution.
SI
suspect that the next MST is in order, and that this stage of evolution
will be characterized as the stage of man.
TYou
suspect right. The functional formula of this transition is:
thinking
= control of association
It
remains to demonstrate that the features of human thinking, as we know
it, do indeed fit this formula. I will try to do this tomorrow, if you
do not mind. It is time to have a good dinner.
4.The
Human Being
TGood
morning. Let me start with a commonly used disclaimer. We still know so
little about the process of thinking that any theory claiming to explain
the essence of this phenomenon is hypothetical. Thus my conception of thinking
must also be treated as a hypothesis. However, it indicates the place of
thinking in the row of natural phenomena and gives a coherent and consistent
explanation of the observable manifestation of thinking. I try to avoid
any assumptions regarding the concrete structure and working mechanism
of the human brain, except that there are some structures in it that allow
for the new level of control -- control of associations. I reason mostly
in functional and phenomenological terms.
SDo
you speak of thinking as a phenomenon, or specifically about human thinking.
After all, animals think too.
T I
do not know what is thinking as a phenomenon, if it is not human thinking.
Yes, in a certain sense higher animals do think, but I stress that I speak
of human thinking, having in mind those feature which are developed
in full only in the human being, even though they may be present in a rudimentary
form in some animals.
SAll
right. So, what is control of associations?
TRemember
we spoke yesterday of association triplets R1A1R2
etc. At the stage of dog they arise spontaneously and are selected
when they are beneficial. At the stage of man these triplets become objects
of work for the next level of control. In a metasystem transition some
things that were once fixed and determined from birth, or by external factors,
become variable and subject to the trial and error method. Control of associations,
like every metasystem transition, is a revolutionary step directed against
slavish obedience by the organism to environmental dictatorship. As is
always true in the trial and error method, only a small proportion of the
arbitrary associations prove useful and are reinforced, but these are associations
which could not have arisen directly by chance or under the influence of
the environment. A dog may be trained to drag a bench to a fence, climb
up on the bench, and jump from it over the fence. But if the dog was not
taught this, it will not figure it out with its own mind, even though it
may know how to drag the bench and how to jump from it over the fence.
SYou
do not say so. I had ...
TPlease,
don't. I know. You may have had an exceptionally clever pet, but this is
beside the point. We discuss two types of brain and behavior, not the abilities
of concrete creatures. I speak of a schematic dog, and take the simplest
acts of human thinking, which are on the verge of what a dog can do. You
cannot deny that there is a huge gap between a man and a dog. I would not
believe if you told me that your dog solved differential equations.
Back
to our dog, it has the model (triplet) R1A1R2
where R1 is the bench off the fence, A1
is dragging the bench, and R2 is the bench at the fence.
It also has the model R2A2R3 where
A2 is jumping on the bench and form bench over the fence,
andR3 is the desired
result (suppose the food is behind the fence). However, it cannot combine
these two models into R1A1A2R3,
and without this action the problem is not solvable. The dog does not do
A1 because there is no reward for it, and cannot do A2
(which promises a reward) because the situation R1 does
not allow it. We, humans, can combine representations in our mind, and
we call it imagination. The schematic dog lacks imagination which
is necessary to solve the problem.
SWait
a moment. You define imagination as putting two associations together,
and state that this becomes possible with a metasystem transition. But
you had it already at the stage of dog, when you combined R1A1
and A2R2. Then where is the metasystem
transition? What is new?
TThe
combination of representations into models is not new. It is there at the
stage of dog already. New is the mechanism of the combination of representations
and the closing of the feed-back loop. At the stage of dog spontaneous
and externally defined combinations of representations are translated into
actual behavior of the animal, and its survival is at stake in the process
of selection of correct models. At the human level the whole cycle of the
trial and error takes place inside the brain, in our imagination. We discard
the sequences of actions which lead to undesirable situations, without
actually doing these actions in real life. This is a new level of the control
of associations. Animals have models of reality. Humans create
them.
The
advantages of this metasystem transition are enormous. First, the trial-and-error
method inside the brain works many times faster than it works when the
evaluation of a situation takes place in real life. Second, when trial
and error occurs only in imagination, then situations where severe damage
is inflicted on the organism or its death becomes imminent can be recognized
as such, without actually being experienced. This is, obviously, a great
advantage in the struggle for existence.
SAll
right, imagination is accepted as control of associations.What
else?
TThe
use and manufacture oftools.This
is usually indicated as the first decisive difference between humans and
animals when speaking of the origins of human beings. The borderline here
lies between using tools and making them. Animals use tools occasionally,
and sometimes very skillfully. But making tools requires imagination, and
this is a human privilege.
SBut
a chimpanzee can manufacture a stick in order to extract a banana from
a tube.
TThis
is, again, a border case. But show me a chimp who can make a stone ax,
and I will say that this is a primitive man.
There
is another form of behavior which is a harbinger of the coming metasystem
transition. It is play. I am not referring to behavior related to
mating, which is also often called play, but rather to `pure' and, by appearance,
completely purposeless play -- play for pleasure. This is how the young
of almost all mammals play with one another, or how a cat plays with a
piece of crumpled paper on a string. Play is usually explained as a result
of the need to exercise the muscles and nervous system, and it certainly
is useful for this purpose. But how this behavior becomes possible? The
playing cat is not deceived into thinking that the paper is edible. Its
representation of the paper is not included into the concept `prey'. However,
this representation partially activates the very same actions normally
included into the concept ãpreyä.
Similarly, a wolf frolicking with another wolf does not take its playmate
for an enemy but up to a certain point it behaves exactly as if it did.
Play includes an arbitrary establishment of association between representations,
such as a crumpled paper and a real prey. As a result there arises a new
representation which, strictly speaking, has no equivalent in reality.
We call it fantasy.
But
let me move further. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with the contemporary
theories of emotions. So I will base my exposition on my own simple, home-made
theory. I believe that higher animals have positive emotions when the state
they are in, and/or the actions they perform (remember, in my metaphysics
this is the same) are favorable for the survival of the species; and they
have negative emotions in the opposite case. If so, the emergence of the
new apparatus of control over association of representations, which as
we have seen, enhances survivability, must call to life new kind of emotions,
which are characteristically and quintessentially human. These emotions
are experienced when the purpose of the new apparatus ? the creation of
new models of reality ? is successfullyachieved.In
the general form, I can call these emotions the joy of revelation;
in particular, they include the sense of the funny and the sense
of the beautiful,as well as
the religious feeling. The corresponding negative emotion is nothing
but boredom.
What
makes us laugh? A disruption of the Înormalâ
course of events which is completely unexpected but at the same time natural,
and in hindsight entirely understandable; an unexpected association, meaningless
at the first glance but reflecting some deep-seated relationship among
things. All this, of course, creates a new model of the world and gives
pleasure proportional to its novelty. When it is no longer new it is no
longer funny. When someone tries to make us laugh using a very familiar
model he only makes us bored. Another situation occurs when some people
laugh, while another glances around uncomprehending. ÎHe
did not get itâ they would say. The joke was two subtle for
that person; it relied on associations he did not have. The funny is always
on the borderline between the commonplace and the unintelligible.
The
sense of the beautiful is more subtle and mysterious than the sense of
the funny. But here too we find the same dynamism related to the novelty
of the impression. Too frequent repetition of a pleasing piece of music
creates indifference to it, and finally revulsion. A sharp sensation of
beautiful is short in duration; it includes an element of revelation, enchanted
surprise. It can also be described as the sudden discernment of some deep
order, correspondence, or meaning. In cybernetic terms, this is creation
of a new model which uses some of our dormant associations as building
blocks, of which we were not aware, and would not be aware if the artist
did not reveal them to us through our own sense of beautiful. Like the
funny, the beautiful is on the borderline between the commonplace and the
unintelligible. A banal melody or a primitive geometric ornament will not
elicit a sensation of the beautiful in us; we have already this model in
our brain. But a Neanderthal man could, probably, be shaken to the depth
of his soul upon seeing a series of precisely drawn concentric circles.
The borderline at which we find art is shifting in the process of esthetic
education. The attempt ofsome schools
of thought to explain out the beautiful by reducing it to the narrowly
understood useful, like Chernyshevski did, is pitiful. Pure esthetic education
trains the brain to perform its highest and most subtle functions. The
models created in the esthetic education must unquestionably influence
the person's perception of the world and his creative ability. How exactly
this happens is still unknown. Esthetic education is the more precious
the less we know what we can substitute for it.
SIt
looks convincing. But I am especially interested to hear your interpretation
of the religious feeling.
TThat
will come soon, but first I want to interpret the other two characteristically
human features: planning and overcoming instincts. Goals
being elements of representations, the ability to associate representations
arbitrarily means the ability to make plans arbitrarily. Man can decide
as follows: first I will do A, then B, then C, and
so forth. The corresponding chain of associations arises.He
can decide that it is absolutely necessary to do X. The association ãX-necessaryä arises.
Action plans of animals are always part of a more general (standing higher
in the hierarchy) plan and, in the end, part of instinct. Instinct is the
supreme judge of animal behavior -
its absolute and immutable law. Man also inherits certain instincts, but
thanks to his ability to control associations he can get around them and
create plans not induced byinstinct,
and even contrary to it. Unlike animal, man sets his own goals. They partly
come from his social environment, partly as the result of a free creative
act.
SWhy
do you sayãcontrol
of associationsä and not justãcontrol
ofRepresentationsä?
TThat
would be a stronger hypothesis, and I do not know if it is justified. Control
of associations is a special kind of representation control where we are
limited to combining and arranging some of the pre-existing representations
only, but cannot create completely new representations from scratch. Can
we imagine something that is not assembled from pieces we experienced in
real life? I do not think so.
As
for the religious feeling, my hypothesis is that it is the emotion corresponding
to the setting of the supreme goal of the behavioralhierarchy.
Different states and actions on the animal level, in animal or man, produce
different emotions: the satisfaction of saturation is different from the
satisfaction of sexual drive, even though they may be phenomena of the
same kind. In the same way, the feeling of the beautiful which is triggered
by the creation of a new model, is a different phenomenon than the feeling
accompanying the setting of the supreme goal, even though these phenomena
are of the same origin: control of association of representations.
When
I speak of setting the supreme goal, I do not mean any goal, like
getting rich, or becoming the president of the
Religious
feeling belongs to the class of joys of revelation. When the supreme goal
is set, it becomes clear to the individual what he or she must do. It becomes
clear what is right and what is wrong. Apparently, this feeling is stronger
when the person does not realize the free, arbitrary nature of the setting
of the supreme goal. Then it is perceived as a discovery, revelation, God's
blessing. But even if one comes to set the supreme goals as a free act
religious feeling still is there.
SWell,
this is much less convincing to me than your interpretation of the funny
and beautiful. I doubt than a person who does not believe in God, or something
like that, can have a real religious feeling. As we know from literature,
a strong religious feeling often brings about an ecstasy.
T I
think that these two phenomena should be treated separately. They are very
different. Ecstasy,I believe must
be treated as a physiological phenomenon, like dizziness, or pain.
SDo
you, not being a believer, have a religious feeling?
TWhen
I first read, as a small boy, about evolution, the origin of species, and
emergence of man, I was awed. I had a strongest feeling which I cannot
call other than religious. It was very similar to how some people describe
their childhood experience of entering church for the first time. I also
can say that when I sorted out my ideas about the supreme goal, I did have
afeeling which could be called religious,
and something of it persists all along.
But
let us go on with the consequences of themetasystem
transition we are discussing. As long as we focus our attention at the
separated human being, we cannot appreciate how revolutionary these consequences
are. The frog is more intelligent than the jellyfish. The dog is more intelligent
than the frog. The ape is more intelligent than the dog. Now there appears
a creature that is more intelligent than the ape. So what?
The
revolution that allows us to state that a new era in the evolution of the
world starts, the era of reason, was made by the appearance ofhuman
society which possesses a definite culture, above all language. The creation
of language by humans is a direct result of the metasystem transition to
the control of associations. Once again we see that there is a borderline
phenomenon: all social animals, including ants and bees, have languages
for exchange of information. The difference between these and the human
language is of the same kind as in the case of tools. The language of animals
is instinctive; it develops as part of evolution of the species. But a
human beingcreates a language
by freely associating a name with its meaning. In a short biological time
languages come into existence which contain hundreds of times as many different
elements as animal languages, and allow their combination resulting in
an infinite number of messages to send and to understand.
Language
arises as a means of communication among members of a primitive community.
But once it has arisen, it immediately becomes the source of other, completely
new, possibilities which go beyond communication. It becomes a means of
the creation of new models of reality, such models which nature
did not put into our heads. Doing arithmetic is the best example.
Imagine
a primitive man who observes from his hiding place how members of a hostile
tribe walk in and out of a cave. If three men come into the cave and two
go out, he will know that one enemy is still in the cave: this is
the work of a model which is built into his brain. But what if twenty enemies
enter and nineteen exit? The brain model is of no use. But one can use
fingers or pebbles or whatever is at hand to create a model of the enemies
in the cave. The man will still use his brain models to perceive enemies
as distinct objects in counting, but the representation of situations is
now implemented in external material: fingers, pebbles, etc., not in the
brain's stuff. If tool is a continuation of human hand, then language is
a continuation of human brain.
SDo
you use here the term model in the same sense as in the epistemological
part of our discussion.
TYes.
I leave it to you to interpret counting in terms of that scheme.
There
is an analogy between the emergence of language and the emergence of nervous
system on a previous stage of evolution. Nerve cells also arise as means
of interaction and coordination in the cell community, but once having
arisen they develop into more and more complicated formations which serve
the purpose of modeling the world. Finally, such a huge and wonderful instrument
as the brain of mammals comes into being. Human language also develops
into such a wonderful means of knowledge as the body of contemporary science,
which is nothing but a huge linguistic model of the world.
The
appearance of language signifies one more distinctive human feature:
self-knowledge. The animal has no concept of itself; it does not need this
concept to process information received from the outside. Its brain can
be compared to a mirror that reflects the surrounding reality, but is not
itself reflected in anything. In the most primitive human society each
person is given a name. In this way a person, represented in the form of
sentences containing the person's name, becomes an object of his or her
own thought and study. Language is a kind of second mirror in which the
entire world, including each individual, is reflected and in which each
individual can see (in fact, cannot help but see!) his own self. The era
of reason is the era of self-knowledge. The system of two mirrors, the
brain and language, creates the possibility of a vast multitude of mutual
reflections. This gives rise to the unsolvable riddles of self-knowledge,
above all the riddle of death.
Control
of associations, which is a metasystem transition in the structure of the
brain -
started another metasystem transition, social integration, the unification
of human individuals into a whole unit of a new type: human society. All
human history has gone forward under the banner of social integration;
relations among people have been growing qualitatively and quantitatively.
This process is taking place at the present time, very intensively in fact,
and no one can say for sure how far it will go.
Owing
to the existence of language, human society differs fundamentally from
animal communities. People have contact by brain. Language is not
only a continuation of each individual brain but also a general, unitary
continuation of the brains of all members of society. It is a collective
model of reality on whose refinement all members of society are working,
one that stores the experience of preceding generations.
This
makes human society radically different from animal communities. We know
communities of animals, such as ants, where individuals are so adapted
to life within the community that they cannot live outside it. The anthill
may be justifiably called a single organism; that is how far interaction
between individuals and their specialization has gone in it. But there
is no contact by brains; there is no creation of new models of reality.
No fundamentally new possibilities are opened here by integration. This
is not a new stage of evolution. The anthill freezes in its development:
an evolutionary blind alley, apparently.
Society
can be viewed as a single super-being. Its `body' is the body of all people
plus the objects that have been and are being made by people: clothing,
dwellings, machines, books, etc. Its Îphysiologyâ
is the physiology of all people plus the culture of society, which
I understand in a very wide sense as a certain method of controlling the
physical component of the social body and the way that people think. The
emergence and development of the social body marks the beginning of a new
metasystem transition with the functional formula:
culture
= control of thinking
SThis
does not agree with your all-inclusive definition of culture.
TYes,
to some extent. But I do not know how to separate from the all-inclusive
culture that part which controls our thinking. Even the way you were taught
to lace your boots controls, to a degree, your thinking -
at least, with respect of boots.
Heylighen
[4] expresses the view that social integration creates only the supersystem
,
not a real metasystem , because it brings ãmerely additional
constraints on the exchange of thoughts, not on the development of new
systems of thinking.ä But it is the society as a whole which converts
thoughts of individuals into system of thinking and then implants these
systems in the heads of subsequent generations. An isolated human individual
could not create our culture, even if he was given million years for this
task. The emergence of the social super-being is a large-scale MTS which
closely parallels an earlier MST:the
emergence
of
multicellular organisms, and especially their nervous system. A single
nerve cell cannot do much in terms of adjustment of behavior to the changing
environment. It is interaction between nervous cells that creates
the worldâs models. The same with the human society. A supersystem
transition, i.e. integration, is a necessary (so not sufficient: look
at ants) condition for a metasystem transition. The two processes proceed
in parallel.
The
emergence of human society is a large-scale metasystem transition, in which
the subsystems being integrated are whole organisms. It may be compared
with the development of multicellular organisms from unicellular ones.
But its significance, its revolutionary importance, is even greater. If
it is to be compared to something, it can only be compared to the emergence
of life itself. For the emergence of human society signifies the emergence
of a new mechanism of evolution. Before it, the development and refinement
of the highest level of organization, the brain device, occurred only as
a result of the struggle for existence and natural selection. This was
a slow process requiring the passage of many generations. In human society
the development of language and culture is a result of creative efforts
of its members. The selection of variants involved in the trial-and-error
method now takes place in the human head. It becomes inseparable from the
willed act of a human person. This process differs fundamentally from the
process of natural selection in the genotype-phenotype cycles. It is incomparably
faster. Cultural evolution takes over from biological evolution. The human
being becomes the point of concentration of Cosmic Creativity.
Being
human ourselves, we cannot look indifferently at the change from biological
to cultural evolution, because cultural evolution depends on us; it is
of our own making. I would like to quote from Teilhard de Chardin [11]
In
fact I doubt whether there is a more decisive moment for a thinking being
than when the scales fall from his eyes and he discovers that he is not
an isolated unit lost in the cosmic solitudes, and realizes that a universal
will to live converges and is hominized in him. In such a vision man is
seen not as a static center of the world -
as he for long believed himself to be -
but as the axis and leading shoot of evolution, which is something much
finer.
SYou
obviously called your book, The Phenomenon of Science in parallel
to Teilhard's book The Phenomenon of
TYes,
and now I want to explain why. I see science as the apex of human culture.
This is not an expression of my personal taste or love for science. I trace
the evolution of human culture in the same terms as biological evolution,
namely, as a sequence of metasystem transitions, and this sequence leads
to science as the highest point in the hierarchy of control. Hence the
development of science defines the future of the evolving Universe. I believe
that the place and the role I ascribe to science is derived from an objective
reality. So let me make a brisk run through the most visible metasystem
transitions in the evolution of human culture.
I
spoke of the manufacturing of tools as a typically human activity. There
is an interesting detail. The difference between Upper Paleolitic and Lower
Paleolitic periods is that composite implements appear, i.e. such
that consist of two or more objects, e.g. a spear with a stone point. It
may seem trivial to us, but it was not such for our ancestors. Indeed,
the combination of two or more things into one whole which serves a definite
function is a metasystem transition. Even in historical times a population
was discovered, which did not know how to make composite tools. These are
the indigenous inhabitants of Tasmania. They had the stone hand ax, sharp
point, a crudely shaped cutting tool, two kinds of wooden clubs, wooden
spear, stick and spade. But apparently, they did not have a single composite
tool. They did not know how to attach a stone to a wooden handle.
The
next metasystem transition is known as the neolithic revolution.
This was a transition from hunting and gathering to livestock herding and
agriculture. The animal and plant worlds, which until that time had been
only external, uncontrolled source of food, now became subjectt activecontrol
by human beings. A typical MST. Riding horses, which had so great historical
consequences, is also an MST, as well as plowing with oxen.
Suppose
you know how to make a metasystem transition from a given systemS,
which belongs to some class C, to a metasystem Sâ.
And suppose that Sâ also belongs to the class C. Then
you know how to make an MST from S¢
to S ",
then to S"¢?etc.
A metasystem stairway emerges, potentially infinite. I call the
system that embraces all these systems and makes a growing metasystem stairway
possible an ultrametasystem. When man learned how to make tools,
andhow to make tools for making
better tools, he created an ultrametasystem where he is its driver. A huge
and complex production system has been constructed by a spiralin
a way similar to our method of progressive formalization:you
first create a few rough tools: set A; then using these tools you
create a set B of better tools; these better tools allow you to
improve the tools of group A; this will be set Aâ. Then you
improve B using Aâ, and it goes like that on and on:
A
- B - Aâ - Bâ - Aä - Bä
·etc.
(the
sign - reads: precedes).In the contemporary industrial system it
is impossible to say what precedes what: the chicken and egg problem.
But if the system is destroyed, the only way to restore it is to unwind
the spiral again, starting with bare human hands. This is a characteristic
feature of evolution by metasystem transitions. Mother Nature is a gigantic
ultrametasystem which allowed life to develop by a spiral between nucleic
acids and proteins. But we do not yet know what exactly played the role
of the human hand, so we cannot create life artificially.
As
in biological evolution, we can distinguish in the evolution of the production
system a few MSTs of the largest scale. Take the first industrial revolution,
where control was imposed on the natural sources of energy. Take the second
industrial revolution: control of information and control over control
itself. The evolution of computer technology can be described in terms
of metasystem transitions, but I will not do it here.
SYou
know, the fact that your method of progressive formalization looks so similar
to other evolving systems adds, in my mind, to its credentials. Indeed,
why not use in our science and philosophy the same evolutionary principles
that showed their power elsewhere?
TIndeed,
why not. When do you think science as such started?I
mean, something that is definitely not technology.
SAt
the Renaissance time, probably. Or with the ancient Greeks?
TI
would definitely say with the Greeks. I do not separate mathematics from
science, as you remember. And it was the Greeks who started mathematics
for real by introducing the concept of proof.
Neither
in Egyptian, nor in Babylonian texts do we find anything even remotely
resembling mathematical proof. An equivalent of what we know as formula,
but expressed partly in natural language, was known before the Greek wise
men. The Egyptians, e.g., computed the area of a circle by the formula
((8:9)2r)2(which
corresponds to ?
= 3.16). But
the idea that any proposition about figures and numbers which is not completely
obvious must be proved, i.e. derived from those completely obvious propositions
by a convincing logical arguing -
this idea was of Greek making. Apparently, their democratic social order
was responsible for it. Disputes and proofs played an important role in
their life. The concept of proof already existed as a social reality; all
that remained was to transfer it to the field of mathematics.
The
introduction of proof is an MST within language. The formula is no longer
the apex of linguistic activity. The proof is directed to the analysis
and production of formulas. This is a new stage in the development of language
and thought, and its emergence called forth enormous growth in the number
of formulas (the law of the growth of the penultimate level). A metasystem
transition always means a qualitative leap forward, an explosive development.
The mathematics of the countries of the Ancient East remained almost unchanged
for up to two millennia. But in just one or two centuries the Greeks created
all the geometry our high school students sweat over today.
The
emergence of proof was part of a larger process of movement towards critical
thinking, by which I understand the thinking about one's own thinking.
We ask ourselves: Is what I think true or false? Why do I think so? How
can it be justified? Why other people might think differently? In primitive
societies people accept their language, their beliefs, and their rules
of social behavior as something given, like the natural phenomena. It has
taken a long time, and also contacts between different cultures, for people
to realize that they can think of their beliefs, analyze and change them.
Philosophy, like mathematics, is the child of the metasystem transition
to critical thinking.
When
we look at the history of mathematics, we see, again, metasystem transitions
as the milestones. Take the emergence of algebra from arithmetic. When
some quantity must be found, this is an arithmetic problem, no matter whether
it is formulated in everyday language or in a specialized language. And
when the general method to solve a class of problems is pointed out -
by example, as is done in elementary school, or even written as an equation -
we still do not go beyond arithmetic. Algebra begins when the equations
themselves become an object of activity, and the manipulation rules for
equations and other formulas are studied. This is a metasystem transition.
The formula, which defines control over arithmetic operations, becomes
an object of control by the laws of algebra. Numerous new formulas are
produced (the law of the growth of the penultimate level). I remember my
delight when as a schoolboy I got acquainted with the basics of algebra.
The arbitrary, and often vague rules which we had to use before for solving
problems were replaced by clear and fully justified algebraic transformations.
The
use of abstraction, as in a step from school algebra to modern algebra,
includes a metasystem transition; it is a form of modeling. The creation
of formal logic and metamathematics is a large-scale MST. The proof, which
was at the top level of control hierarchy in mathematics, becomes itself
an object of control. The famous Gsdel theorem proves that something
cannot be proved.
Experimental
science, as distinct from simple observation, is also aresult
of a metasystem transition. It is controlled observation, with theory
as the control mechanism. It is like the jump from gathering to agriculture.
We do not just observe nature, we ask it questions which we formulate in
terms of our theories. Metasystem transitions which take place in the development
of science create a multi-level hierarchy of control as shown in Figure
6. We discussed this scheme in the context of a cybernetic animal; now
we deal with quite different material, sign systems, instead of nerve net,
but the principle is the same. Representations in classical and quantum
physics, and a possible system of metarepresentations are discussed in
[3].
For
human society science is what the brain is for an individual: the
instrument of knowledge, i.e. of the creation of new models of reality.
It is the highest level in the universal hierarchy of control, highest
not in the sense that it cannot be overruled (it can; and what reason tells
a human individual can also be overruled, alas, by emotions), but in its
evolutionary history (the sequence of MSTs) and, therefore, its significance
for future. We cannot Îoverrule the force of gravity, but the fact
that things tend to fall to the ground is not a great factor defining our
future; when we want we can circumvent it, as flying airplanes proves.
This is the essence of control hierarchies. Teilhard stressed the cosmic
importance of the phenomenon of man. I want to stress the cosmic importance
of the phenomenon of science as part of the phenomenon of man.
Science
is a superstructure over human brains which,though
created by brain,is partly independent
of it, has its own hierarchical structureanddirects
the workof individualhuman
brains. Science is not simply a means to improve human condition; it is
a cosmic phenomenon of tremendous importance. It is the top of the growing
tree of the Universe, the leading shoot of Evolution. Immortal itself,
it has as its goal the immortality for every human being.
SI
think many people will find your apology of science exaggerated, to say
the least.What about other forms
of the human spiritual life, say art?You
seem to write it off completely.
TNo,
I am not writing off the art, not even in its purest forms: remember
what I said about esthetic education. But there is a crucial difference
between science and art, which determines their long-range impact on the
future.
The
language of science tends to be formalized, which means that its
use can be relegated to the machine. Scientific models of the world can
be separated from the human mind. It is conceivable that an intelligent
Martian could understand the meaning of our mathematics and physics on
the basis of our records only, as he/she/it could do in the case of a mechanical
model of, say, Solar System. Because of this separation, each next level
in science can treat the preceding level as objective reality. Repeated
metasystem transition in the construction of model becomes possible, which
results in the stairway effect and an explosive, and seemingly, unlimited
development. Science walks out of the human mind, so to say.
The
art, on the contrary, is inseparable from the human mind; the language
of art becomes meaningless if it tells nothing to our soul. Thus there
are inherent limits for the development of art, because the human body
and soul remain constant -
at least on the scale of cultural evolution. Science can be ? and to some
extent already is -
superhuman; art is not and will never be. All modern art of our
century, music, visual arts, poetry, grew out of the desire to make something
really new, jump out of its own limits ...
SMake
a metasystem transition.
TYes.
But the results, from my viewpoint, even though often interesting and sometime
very impressive, only show once again the existence of the limits. Metasystem
transition is not in the nature of art. Whatever role is played in our
life by contemporary art, the classic art does not shine less, in a sharp
contrast with the situation in science (who reads now the original writings
of Galileo and Newton?). What is done in art -
and I mean, of course, the art of all times andpeoples -is
done, and only so much can be added.
I
want to stress once again that I am not in the least trying to diminish
the role of art; I only speak about the role of new development in art
and their impact on the future of mankind. While the role of new
science, i.e. the additions to the existing science, goes up and up, the
role ofnew artlet
us be generous -
remains constant.
SI
am sure that the majority will disagree with you, and many will be offended.
TI
cannot help it. It is science that shapes the future, not any other form
of human activity. This is a simple fact of evolution. On this note I announce
a coffee break.
TMy
picture of the future is based on my picture of the past. The present stage
ofCosmic Evolution is the integration
of human individuals on the planet Earth. An attempt to be more specific
produces more questions than answers. How far will the integration go?
There is no doubt that in the future(and perhaps not too far in the future)
direct exchange of information among the nervous systems of individual
people will become possible. Obviously, the integration (maybe partial)
of nervous systems must be accompanied by the creation of some higher system
of control over the unified nerve network. How will it be perceived subjectively?
One may hope that the new level of control will result in a new, higher
form of consciousness, which will come into existence on top of the consciousness
of the present day individual. This new consciousness may be, in principle,
immortal.
But
will our descendants want physical integration? Generally what will they
want? And what do we want, for that matter? Also, what do we want
to want? What do we take for Good and for Evil?
These
are the perpetual questions of ethics. Science, by its nature, does not
give direct answers to these questions. The gap separatingknowledge
and will can never be fully bridged. No matter what we know, we are still
free to arbitrary choose among our options. But science can provide guidance
by foreseeing the results of our actions.
Theevolutionary
growth of the control hierarchy is a fact of the natural history which
has the status of a natural law. Like every law of nature, the law of evolution
doesnotdetermineuniquely
and in detailhowthingsshould
develop. It only sets the boundary between the possible and the impossible.
No one has proved, and hardly will ever prove, that the existence of life,and
specifically, highly organized life, is inevitable. We have not yet had
any sign that life exists outside the Earth;as
for humankind,it can destroy itself,and
possibly the whole of life,if it
chooses to do so.Continuing constructive
evolution is a possibility but not a necessity.
No
one can act against the laws of nature. Ethical teachings that run counter
the general trend of evolution, i.e. set goals incompatible with it, cannot
bring about a constructive contribution to evolution. This means that the
deeds prompted by such goals will, in the final analysis, be erased from
the world's memory. Such is the nature of evolution: that which corresponds
to its general trend, or abstract Îplanâ,
is eternalized in the structure of the developing world; that which runs
counter to it, is overcome and perishes.
It
follows that if humanity sets itself some goals which are incompatible
with further integration of individuals, the result will be an evolutionary
dead end: further creative development and the engendering of qualitatively
new forms of life will become impossible -
at least with regards to our species. In such case we shall ultimately
perish. In the developing world there is no repose: all that does not develop
perishes.
SNow
I am suddenly appalled by what you are saying, especially because in the
coffee break I read The Cybernetic Manifesto by yourself and Joslyn.
We are given a vision of the universe as a hierarchical control system,
which inexorably moves towards more and more control. At each level there
is some kind ofãWillä
controlling whatever lies below it. This reminds me of the economic and
social system ofStalinism; the communal
masses strive together to meet plans which have been set by the higher
evolutionary level of hierarchical control. There are no chance events,
nor even more than one possibleevent
at any given time, since ãWillä
always determines an outcome; even conflict and disagreement are ruled
out be definition. This is not my idea of freedom, which has more to do
with spontaneous synergistic cooperation over a field of unknown possibilities.
TYou
are appalled by a picture which you took fromOrwell
and Huxley, not from me. Your outcry against The Cybernetic Manifesto
would have surprised me if I did not have a comparable experience before.
But I did. A few years ago it came as a complete surprise to me that quite
a number of the reviewers of my book The Inertia of Fear and the Scientific
Worldview [13] classified my views as inconsonant with pluralistic
democracy. The record was set by Major James F. Kealey. Reviewing my book
inNational Defense College Quarterly,
Joint Perspectives, he presented me as
ãa dissident who, like Solzhenitsyn before him, seeks to justify
a new order as totalitarian as the one he left in disgustä.
The
condemnation of The Inertia of Fear as a totalitarian book is paradoxical,
because the main contents of the book is an analysis and condemnation of
the Soviet totalitarianism. It also is strongly anti-Marxist: I made a
point of showing how philosophical premises of Marxism translate into the
terrible and miserable Soviet reality. The book was written in 1974 and
smuggled out of the Soviet Union. The first half of the manuscript was
confiscated by the KGB during a search of my apartment (I had to rewrite
it from scratch). I was an active member of the human rights movement in
the Soviet Union. Then how did I become a ãtotalitarianistä ?
The answer is: my book also included an outline of an evolutionary
approach to social organization and ultimate human values -
mostly along the same lines, as in The Cybernetic Manifesto. It
is these ideas that some of the readers perceive as totalitarian and Stalinist.
Now you joined them, even though you should have known better, because
you know from our previous discussions how fundamental the idea of freedom
is in this philosophy, and what is my concept of control
Needless
to say, I qualify accusations in totalitarianism as absurd, but I still
have to explain why this misperception is so persistent.
The
major part of the explanation is simply the superficial thinking of our
critics, when conclusions are made not on the basis of what we are actually
saying, but in the wake of current popular association with the terms we
use. You see our references to ãcontrolä,
ãhierarchyä, ãintegrationä, and this all
just sounds totalitarian to you.
When
you hear ãcontrolä, you
tend to imagine something like orders from the superiors, a scrutiny by
a governmental agency, etc. -
in any case something which should be minimized and is thus bad by its
nature. But you could see from our discussion that I use this term in its
most general sense. I am looking for the most general and deep aspects
of the world, and one of these aspects is that the world is not completely
chaotic. If the mechanistic science of the 19th century saw
the notion of a deterministic natural law as the adequate expression of
this idea, the cybernetic science of today puts the notion of control in
its place, leaving freedom as an non-illusory and non-eliminable element.
Control is not the same as compulsion. Control is only a limitation of
freedom, not necessarily its elimination, and this limitation is not necessarily
hurting the controlled entity. It may be life-saving, as in thecase
when somebody takes your hand and leads you out of a maze. Indeed, every
kind of problem solving is a kind of control. To solve a problem
usually means to pick up one true solution from a combinatorially huge
number of possible false answers. You can have the full freedom to choose
any answer and be very unhappy with this freedom. You wish somebody could
exercise control over you by limiting your choices to only a few. Society
controls children by teaching them, and adults by offering them jobs. The
mother controls the behavior of the child when she kisses it
SMaybe,
you should have chosen another term for your general control concept?
TBut
I cannot find one. And control is limitation of freedom. The idea
that philosophy must treat control as evil is an outdated liberal reaction
to the older idea of a rigid, mechanistic control.
Hierarchy
is another victim of bad associations. If control is identified with compulsion,
then hierarchy is almost always thought of as a pecking order-
a way to dominate the weak, so we must fight against it. But a hierarchy
is simply a relation of partial order in lines of control, not necessary
compulsion or domination. Thus by its definition a hierarchy is the presence
of some order, that is all. Often hierarchies intersect, so that one subsystem
may be above another subsystem in one hierarchy, and below it in another.
A colonel may command a regiment but be in complete subordination of his
wife. He is also controlled by the author of the paper he is reading, and
by mosquitoes when vacationing in Maine. Some of the control lines may
circle (feed-back), but this does not necessarily destroy the hierarchy.
Our colonel should heed to the feelings of the soldiers, but he is still
in command. And when we take a feed-back loop as a whole, we would typically
find that it is a part of a larger hierarchy.
Hierarchy,
like control, does not exclude freedom. It is opposite to chaos, not to
freedom. Organized systems are hierarchies of control, this is an observable
fact.We find them everywhere.
Speaking
about human hierarchies, we value a free democratic society not because
it is free of control hierarchies -
it has at least as many as a totalitarian society, but because the character
of control is different. The industrial hierarchy, for example, is controlled
by free market, state regulations, bank financing etc., but not through
direct administrative orders, as in the former Soviet Union. In fact, the
Western economical and political system is much more sophisticated and
includes much more intersecting hierarchies than the primitive Soviet system.
In a word, it is more ãcyberneticä than the ãmechanicalä
Soviet system. This demonstrates that a society can be both more free and
more ãhierarchicalä-
in the above sense, without confusing the presence of hierarchies with
the control through compulsion.
SYes,
I understand your point, but when one reads a short document like the Manifesto,
one gets scared.Perhaps you should
make more emphasis on the place of freedom in integration.
TI
was going to do this anyhow. In fact, we did this in the Manifesto, if
you read it carefully !
Freedom
and integration. We need both. Integration is an evolutionary necessity.
Let me repeat. I believe that if humanity sets itself goals which are incompatible
with integration the result willbe
anevolutionary dead end:further
creative development will becomeimpossible.Then
we shall notsurvive, because inthe
evolvingUniversethereis
no standstill:all thatdoesnot
develop perishes.
On
the other hand, freedom is precious for the human being; it is the essence
of life. The creative freedom of individuals is the fundamental engine
of evolution in the era of Reason.Ifit
issuppressedbyintegration,
as in totalitarianism, we shall find ourselves again inan
evolutionary dead end.This contradiction
is real, but not unsolvable.Afterall,
thesamecontradictionhas
been successfully solvedonother
levelsof organization in the process
of evolution. Whencells integrate
into multicellular organisms, they continue to perform their biological
functions -
metabolism and fission.The new quality,
thelifeof
the organism,does not appear despitethe
biological functions of the individual cells butbecause
ofthem and through them.The
creative act of free will is the ãbiological
functionä of the human being. In an integrated super -
beingit must be preserved as an
inviolable foundation, and the new qualities must appear through it and
because of it. Thus the fundamental challenge that the humanity faces is
to achieve an organic synthesis of integration and freedom.
SSo
what is then your ethical principle which you derive from your cybernetic
philosophy?
TThe
Supreme Good is constructive evolution spearheaded by science.Constructive
evolution includes further integration of human society combined with preservation
and enhancement of creative freedom of individuals. In perspective, the
achievement of immortality of human, or human-like, beings. Immortalityneeds
to be discussed separately.
I
very well remember that moment in my childhood when I clearly realized
for the first time that sooner or later I will die-inevitably.
It is not a matter of intellectual understanding, but rather the work of
imagination. Lev Tolstoy, and some other authors describe it. I believe
most people had this experience at some time. What about you?
SI
think I know what you are speaking about.
TThis
is a terrible feeling, worse than pain. It comes as a shock. You feel that
you are cornered, and there is no way out. Your imagination jumps over
the years you have still to live through, and you find yourself on the
brink of disappearance, complete annihilation. You realize that you are,
essentially, on the death row. Different individuals react to this situation
with different degree of pain. Some simply try to forget about it, and
succeed, to some degree. Others try forget but cannot. Life seems to have
no point, because all roads lead to annihilation; one is haunted by the
feeling that whatever he is doing is in vain.
The
realization of one's own mortal nature is one of the most fundamental distinctions
between a human being and an animal. The will for immortality, a
rebellion against death, is found at the source of religions, philosophies,
and civilizations. People look for a way to transcend the limit put on
our lives by nature. They look for a concept which would reconcile the
impulse to live on, which is inherent to every healthy creature, with the
inevitability of death. Some concept of immortality becomes necessary for
keeping life meaningful, and I can count four.
The
immortality as understood in the classical religions I designate as
metaphysical. It is referred to as immortality of soul, life after
death, etc. Metempsychosis, the lore of migration of souls, is also a variation
on this theme. The basic feature of metaphysical immortality is that it
is limited to the conceptual sphere. No physical reality takes part in
forming this concept. In fact, the concept defies physical reality and
proclaims -
without a hint of proof -
the reality of a different kind. Traditional religious teachings begin
from anunconditional beliefin
the immortality of the soul.In this
case the protest against death is used as a force which causes a person
toaccept thisteaching;after
all,from the very beginning itpromises
immortality.Buy underthe
influence of the critical scientific method,the
notions of immortality of the soul and life beyond the grave,which
were once very concrete and appealing, are becoming increasingly abstract
and pale;old religious systems are
slowly but surely losing their influence.
I
will call creative immortality the idea, in one form or another,
that a mortal human being contributes something to the ongoing universal
and eternal process, which can be called Evolution, or History, both with
capital letters. I call it Evolution, because contemporary science tells
us that human history is but a small part of the universal cosmic process.
The
concept of Evolution provides a link between knowledge and will which can
serve as a basis for distinguishing between good and evil. The contribution
to the Evolution made by an individual can be of critical importance. It
can also be everlasting. The contributions made by Aristotle or
The
concept of a simple biological immortality is as easy to understand
as it is hard to implement. I am speaking of the infinite continuation
of individual life in the same form as we know it, i.e. based on the same
biochemical processes in our bodies that make us living now. There is a
mechanism of aging and death which is built into our bodies by nature.
If we could somehow switch off this mechanism, we could, in principle,
live indefinitely long. Our life is based on a metabolism; the body has
a capacity of self-renewing. The process of life could be, in principle,
unlimited in time.
However,
there are some qualification to this concept. First, there are still chances
of an accidental death, which become the more serious the longer we live.
Second, contemporary biology does not yet answer definitely whether the
infinite (or very long; say, hundreds of millions of years) life is feasible.
It is possible that the mechanism of aging is built-in on such a deep level,
that you cannot switch it off without radically altering the whole machinery
of bodily life.
This
brings me to the last concept: cybernetic immortality. For the time
being we find it only in science fiction. The idea of cybernetic immortality
is that the human being is, in the last analysis, a certain form of organization
of matter. This form is distinguished by a very sophisticated organization,
which includes a high multilevel hierarchy of control. What we call our
soul, or our consciousness, is associated with the highest level of this
control hierarchy. This organization, which we associate with ourã
I äcan survive a partial -
perhaps, even a complete -
change of the material from which it is built. Moreover, it can infinitely
evolutionize, become even more sophisticated, and explore new, yet not
thought of, possibilities. Even if the decay of biological bodies is inevitable,
we can look for some ways of information exchange between bodies and brains
which will preserve in some form the essence of self-consciousness, our
personal histories, our creative abilities and, at the same time, make
us part of a larger unity embracing, possibly, a huge number of human individuals.
This
aspect of cybernetic immortality, integration of individuals, seems to
be its inevitable component. The exchange of information between brains
through the channels of sense organs is, cybernetically, extremely imperfect.More
direct forms of exchange signify a much higher degree of integration than
we can speak of at present. Direct exchange will give tremendous advantages
in terms of intellectual strength. By the evolutionary law of survival,
human conglomerates exercising such exchanges must proliferate and seize
the top level of control in the world. Also, from the view of personal
immortality some kind of integration is inevitable: If your soul
is to be stored somehow in a form similar to computer software, you will
want the storage to be attended, properly updated, and preserved with some
redundance to fight accidents.
SHow
do you envision the process of ultimate integration?
TOK,
let us speculate. Judging from the history of evolution, it is unlikelythat
the whole humanity will unite into a single super-human being. Even though
human beings have seized control in the bioshpere, they make up only a
tiny part of the whole biomass. The major part of it is still constituted
by unicellular and primitive multicellular organisms, such as plankton.
Realization of cybernetic immortality will certainly require some sacrifices -
a vehement drive to develop science, to begin with. It is far from being
evident that all people and all communities will wish to integrate into
immortal super-beings. It is probably as certain that this will not
happen as it is certain that some individuals, and then communities, will
set this as the supreme goal. The will for immortality, as every human
feature, varies widely in human populations. Since integration we speak
about can only be free, this means that only a part of mankind will be
involved in integration. The rest will continue to exist in the form which
in the Manifesto we called ãhuman
planktonä.
SWhich,
again, will be resented by many. I see here the division of people into
a higher race, which will be integrated and will become the race of masters,
and the lower race which will not be integrated and will exist as the race
of slaves, Îhuman planktonä.
TWell,
this is a result of my respect for your freedom. If you do not want to
integrate, do not, but be prepared to accept the consequences. There is
an alternative: to compel everybody to integrate, but you certainly would
not accept this either.
SCertainly
not. But I will prefer another alternative: not to integrate at all. The
life of the mortal human individual, as I know it, suits me very well,
and will suit by children and children of my children. And this, I am sure,
is the feeling of the vast majority.
TOh,
yes. This line of thought is familiar. Now you want to limit my
freedom to integrate.Fundamentalists
of various kinds agree on one point: to curb science so that it
does not ...
SI
am not a fundamentalist.
TIn
some sense you are; only you have different scriptures. Well, call it conservative.Since
you tend to block the road of evolution as seen through the eyes of science
...
SBut
this is not the eyes of science, this is seeing it throughyour
eyes !
TQuite
true. But I am trying to make next step on the basis of what has been firmly
established and agreed upon. If you disagree, give your picture of evolution.
SWhy
should I? Evolution is a result of the actions of billions of people, as
well as natural causes. Let it proceed as it does.
TIn
other words, do not interfere with Divine Providence. I told you you are
a fundamentalist. You are washing your hands. And your justification is
that the future does not depend on what any single individual is doing.
I call this unethical. Because your justification is false. You imply that
only global factors matter, only averages over big numbers of individuals
make a difference. But the use of the law of big numbers would be justified
only if the actions of those individuals were independent. They are not,
of course. Society is a tightly bound system, and we know that in such
systems trajectories in the configuration space diverge: small variations
in the present may lead to huge differences in the future.
SSpeaking
of justification, you cannot call anything unethical without really justifying
what you believe to be ethical.
TThis
is quite true, again. But the question is: what kind of justification can
be found? Let me repeat what I said before: the gap between knowledge and
will cannot be fully bridged. You are free to choose any ethics. The ethics
based on the theory of evolution can only tell you how you can hope to
achieve immortality. It appeals to your will for immortality. If
you do not want it, you can do whatever you please.
SYou
mean ãcreativeä immortality.
TCybernetic
immortality, too.
SBut
this is only for the people in a distant future.
TNot
necessarily. You know that there are organizations which accept human bodies
for keeping them at the liquid nitrogen temperature until the time when
it becomes possible, because of the development of science, to revive and
cure them. If one believes that cybernetic immortality will ultimately
become a reality, one can, in principle, keep one's body, or only the brain,
in that way, and ultimately become immortal.
SBut
this is absurd.
TWhy?
As long as the information identified with what we call one's soul is not
lost, it should be possible to launch a form of life which will be a continuation
of the person's former life. This is, of course, a question of faith, but
to believe in it is not, from my view point, absurdly. There is short-range
and long-range memory. Even if short-range memory is lost at clinical death,
the long-range memory may, probably, be preserved at the liquid nitrogen
temperaturefor many hundreds of
years.
SThe
crystals of ice which are formed in freezing damage the cells.
TI
know. But can you prove that nobody will ever discover a way to solve this
problem? Certainly,not. This is why
I say that this is a question of faith, but this faith is not absurd.
SYou,
apparently, believe in cybernetic immortality. Will you instruct to keep
your dead body frozen?
TI
am afraid it will be too expensive for me. Immortality costs money. But
I can imagine that in some time some people and organizations will emerge
which will work to make cybernetic immortality real, and they will preserve
their bodies for reincarnation.
SThis
would cause most severe social problems... But I, really, do not take this
seriously. This is just a fantasy.
TIt
may seem like a fantasy right now, but recall how many things were just
a fantasy before becoming one more miracle of science. When I was a boy,
I read a lot of science fiction about space flights, and I would have never
believed that man would be on the moon before I am forty. I think you underestimate
the impact that the idea of real immortality can have on the human race
if it at some moment it becomes taken seriously. From the emergence of
human beings our history has been a history of surviving. Now the time
is close, hopefully, when due to science and technology the whole human
world is integrated, peaceful and thriving in the bounds set by biology.
Then what?What great purpose will
the human being set for itself? To overstep those bounds, of course! Immortality
is the only natural supreme goal -
in the sense that it is not invented and does not rest on blind faith.
The will for immortality is a continuation in a thinking creature of the
animal will to survive.
SYou
refer all the time to evolution and its natural course, but what
you defend is highly unnatural, it threatens to destroy human life
as we know it with all the beauty of human body and mind created by nature.
TNot
at all. There is a general law of evolution: ontogenesis, the history of
an individual development, roughly repeats, or recapitulates, phylogenesis,
the history of the species. Evolution tends to build on the existing foundation,
making only those alterations that are necessary. Applyingthislaw
to the post-biological developmentwe
visualize a future when human beings are born and grow up in the same way
as now, more or less. It is only later, probably when aging becomes a problem,
that they establish a direct cyberneticcontactbetween
their individual nervous systems and the super-brain of the human super-being.
Astime goes on and the biological
bodydisintegrates, theindividual
mind -- or soul -- becomes only a part of theSupermind -
or the Oversoul.Cybernetic immortality
come notinstead of our normal
life, but in addition to it, instead of death.
I
will go further and draw an analogy between the human person and a gene.
Innatural selection the source of
change is the mutation of the gene; nature creates by experimenting on
genes and seeing what kind of a body they produce. Those bodies are selected
that better preserve the genes. The journal of progress is kept in genes,
thus genes are immortal. As for our bodies, and therefore, minds, they
are expendable; nature does not care about them. Biologically we are mortal.
In the evolution of the human superbeing it is the creative core of the
human individual that is the engine of evolution. Therefore evolution must
make it immortal, as it made genes immortal at the preceding level of development.
Brain was an object of experimentation in the biological era of evolution.
At the present stage of evolution, it is the source of creativity,not
an object of experimentation.Its
loss in death is unjustifiable;it
is an evolutionary absurdity. The immortality of human beings is on the
agenda of Cosmic Evolution.
SObjection.
You speak of nature as if it were a thinking entity which calculates how
it should proceed. In fact, evolution is a result of the interplay of many
blind actions.
T Objection
sustained. You should understand this argument metaphorically. But it can
be easily translated into a more strict language; it is quite convincing
to me.
SThe
chain of deaths and births makes it possible for new brains to adjust to
new situations. If it is stopped, you will face millions of old people
who are unable to get beyond the notions of their youth.
TFirst,
I did not say that thebirths
will stop. I assume that the Universe will accommodate for more and more
human (superhuman) souls in the foreseeable future. Second, the individual
soul will not stay unchanged and petrified, because it will not me implemented
in the current biological material. We can, again, understand this situation
by analogy with the level of genes.
Genes
are controllers of biological evolution and they are immortal, as they
should be. They do not stay unchanged, however, but undergo mutations,
so that human chromosomes are a far cry from the chromosomes of viruses.
Cybernetically immortal human persons may mutate and evolve in interaction
with other members of the super-being, while possibly reproducing themselves
in different materials. Those human persons who will evolve from us may
be as different from us as we are different from viruses. But the defining
principle of the human person will probably stay fixed, as did the defining
principle of the gene. The new will be a superstructure on this basis,
as is typical for evolution.
SBy
the way, genes are not immortal. They decay together with the body. And
in the case of a bad mutation they become extinct.
TWe
speak of organization or form of these things, not their implementation
in concrete markable objects. Atoms are identical. When a gene reproduces
itself, we say that this is the same gene. As for mutations, the
constancy of an object is always relative. It remains ãthe
sameä as long as only small changes take place. An object is
its history. (Remember my ontology?)This
applies also to human soul. It is the sudden disintegrationof
the soul in death that I find unjustifiable.
SDo
you consider the possibility that man could be the last link of biological
evolution and the stepping stone ofãmineralä
evolution through our evermoresophisticated
artificial creatures which may in the end eliminate human beings as
a hangover of the distant past?This
one of the most pervasive themes of sciencefiction.
TIn
some sense ãmineralä evolution
has already started: look at millions of people who carry pacemakers. But
it is extremely unlikely hat humans will create independent artificial
creatures which will exterminate their creators. That would be against
the essence f evolution, which is building new developments on the basis
of the already existing achievements. The future belongs to man-machine
combinations which will be more human beings than machines (by a machine
I mean here any artificial component), because they will beäimprovementsä
of human beings.Nothing human will
be lost: there is no reason for it. Evolution is an on-going search for
better and better solutions of the problem of stability. In the last analysis
it is what in computer science is known as exhaustive brute-force search,
whether it occurs naturally, or is set up by scientists and engineers.
Evolution of life has been going on for billions of years on the scale
of the Earth. To throw away its achievements and start from scratch as
independent ãmineralä beings which could ultimately overpower
man-machine combinations? It seems impossible. At least, this is much lessprobable
than for us to perish from our distant cousins, some especially malicious
bacteria or viruses.
SOh,
I wanted to note several times already that you cannot speak of human immortality
anyway, because the whole Universe may come to an end.
T That
is all right with me. I will be quite satisfied with a life span of a few
billion years. What I am after is a cosmic role for the human race or,
rather, its integrated part. No such role is possible without integration.
Can we imagine ãhuman planktonä
crowded in space vehicles in order to reach a distant star in ten, twenty
or
fifty generations? The units that take decisions must be rewarded for those
decisions.Only integrated immortal
creatures can conquer the outer space.
SMeanwhile
?
TMeanwhile
I believe that now more than at any time we need an integrated worldview,
a comprehensive philosophy based in the modern science, and specifically,
cybernetics. It is necessary for future development of science itself.
And most important, it should give answers to the fundamental to every
human being questions about the meaning and the goals of life. The problem
of ultimate valuesis the central
problem of our present society. What should we live for after our basic
needs are satisfied by the modern production system? What should we see
as Good and what as Evil? Where are the ultimate criteria for judging social
organization?
Historically,
great civilizations are inseparable from great religions which gave answers
to these questions. The decline of traditional religions appealing to metaphysical
immortality threatens to degrade modern society. In fact, it is
degrading. Cybernetic immortality can take the place of metaphysical immortality
to provide the ultimate goals and values for the emerging global civilization.
We shall badly need it, I believe, in the immediate future. As for a moredistant
future, it will be defined, if I can predict, by the conflict between integrationists
and the rest of society. Such are the ways of evolution. Integrationists
will be denounced from both the right, and the left. The conservatives
will cry murder. Those now called liberals will cry elitism and totalitarianism.
God only knows what will come out of it, but I believe in evolution. Those
who think that the history is about to end are mistaken. The real history
of mankind is only beginning.
SThis
sounds as a conclusion, and it should. Thank you. It was interesting, even
though I disagree on some important points. I also must note that your
exposition has often been sketchy, and on many occasions it was not exactly
clear what you meant.
TThis
is true. But I wanted to give a review of the system as a whole, hence
the sketchy character of it. You also should be aware that I do not speak
of a completed work. This is only an outline of the most salient points
as I see them at present. Further collective work is needed to actually
bring our philosophy to an acceptable form. And by the nature of a philosophy
that puts evolution above all, our work must undergo continuous development,
and thus never be fully completed. Thank you, and let us hope that we will
have more occasions to meet and continue our discussions.
Acknowledgment
It
is my pleasure to acknowledge that from the inception of the PrincipiaCyberneticaProject
in 1990 constant discussions with Francis Heylighen and Cliff Joslyn have
been very important for sorting out, clarifying and developing the ideas
presented in this work.
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