Genetic determinism
- Thread starter Ibn Khaldoun
- Start date
You're probably thinking of complexity theory. Stuart Kaufmann and Brian Godwin were arguing along this sort of line a couple of decades ago. I don't think (though I'm not sure) DST is to do with that.
There is a sense in which DST is more reductionist than Maynard Smith at al. Their approach removes (or at least downplays) a high level form of explanation - that of meaningful information. They are concerned with how genes opperate rather than with what genes are for. They seem more interested in physics/chemistry type explanations rather than biology type explanations.
I think its important to distinguish ontological reduction from epistemological reduction.
Ontologically, everything reduces to QM, and to whatever descriptions pertain to the level(s) below QM. I know that some people would argue with this, but IMO their views are either unscientific gobbledygook (idealism), incoherent (strong emergentism), or both (dualism).
Epistemological reduction is much trickier- a matter of whether in practice the phenomena on a given level of description can be reformulated in terms of a lower-level theory. Quantum chemistry is a very good example of successful epistemological reduction. However, IMO biological phenomena, including mental phenomena, are just too complex for epistemological reduction to work.
Ontologically, everything reduces to QM, and to whatever descriptions pertain to the level(s) below QM. I know that some people would argue with this, but IMO their views are either unscientific gobbledygook (idealism), incoherent (strong emergentism), or both (dualism).
Epistemological reduction is much trickier- a matter of whether in practice the phenomena on a given level of description can be reformulated in terms of a lower-level theory. Quantum chemistry is a very good example of successful epistemological reduction. However, IMO biological phenomena, including mental phenomena, are just too complex for epistemological reduction to work.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Could the above 2 posts be reduced to the differences of 'Why' and 'How' positions?
and this:
'More than the sum of it's parts' or 'God'?
and this:
'More than the sum of it's parts' or 'God'?
My post could be. I suppose what I was saying earlier was that answers to how and why questions should not be seen as conflicting but as complementary.
Mind you I could have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I don't think that's right. Complexity isn't the issue – rather the reverse. You cannot reduce biology to quantum physics because the meanings in biology are not contained at the quantum level. Knowing which electrons are moving where tells you nothing about why one gene is selected above another, for instance. Also, neurons don't (or at least appear not to) hold information at the quantum level.
Even something as simple as whether or not a light switch is on or off cannot be reduced to the quantum level and retain any meaning.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
See, I've wondered for a long time now how biology can go foward without investigating how the quantum realm affects higher order matter, and vice versa. Also, there are a lot of assumption predicating this statement - can you honestly say that there is no effect on genes at the quantum level? And how do we know that neurons don't store information at the quantum level?
However, even thinking about that relationship while typing this is making my head hurt.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I used to think this, but I don't think it makes sense now. I don't have time for a considered response at the moment. Will try later.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Nah, that's fair enough, altho I do think that long term greater understanding of QM (and a lot of other stuff) will re-unite the sciences into a single discipline.
bhamgeezer
Dogs bark
I don't understand
bhamgeezer
Dogs bark
You can't really believe that is the case due to anything more than epistemological limitations though can you?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes, I can. I'll try to respond properly later this week.
You appear to be advocating a form of strong emergentism here. That is: you're saying that there are higher-level phenomena that don't reduce ontologically to lower-level phenomena (correct me if I'm wrong).
If this is the case, then you need an account of how the higher-level emergent phenomena can possibly be causally effective in the real world without some kind of QM-level instantiation.
I think it's just about answering questions at the same level of explanation as the questions are asked where possible. The question of why one gene is selected above another, is not a question of physics and so there is no reason to think that physics will give you an answer.
Remember that it's human beings that are constructing these theories and that it's for human understanding that these theories are formulated. The view that science is merely about the absolute description of the world is one sided.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
No. I'm saying that you can't understand biology by studying the behaviour of sub-atomic particles. No matter how much information you get about those particles, it won't tell you anything about, for instance, evolution.
(There are too many 'isms' kicking around for my liking. They often obscure more than they reveal – I'd like a little more of Einstein's maxim: "Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.")
This clarifies things. Will await for reply from littlebabyjesus.
Remember that there are different notions of causality that apply in different disciplines. Any sense of Darwinian causality is going to be a counterfactual causality as it involves the consideration of what didn't evolve. Causation in physics need not be counterfactual.
To nitpick, physics doesn't reduce to quantum mechanics. At best it reduces to a contradictory combination of general relativity and quantum field theory.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Ah ha. Now I agree with you partly on this, but only within the current frame of knowledge and thinking. There's no way of categorically saying 'X cannot tell you about Y' in this fashion, simply because there are still so many, many many unknown unknowns. I'm not saying that we could - you could be completely right - but you cannot discount the possibility completely. The behaviour of those sub-atomic particles at certain points of the process of gene change in evolution could be absolutely vital to the end result - to deny is kind of saying 'The foundations of my house might move, but it makes no difference to my house.'
Jonti
what the dormouse said
Why do you make it a bedrock assumption that causality must always go upwards?
We don't see causality, we only infer its existence. It's just a theory, so to speak. Of course, I have no doubt that I am causally effective in the real world (else I wouldn't bother with even this discussion!). Nor can one doubt that the body is an emergent phenomenon. It is a homeostatic relationship between a vast number of component processes, and that homeostasis is by definition 'emergent'.
So, regardless of whether it gives some physicists mental indigestion, one can usefully talk about conscious bodies as higher-level emergent phenomena which are causally effective in the real world
bhamgeezer
Dogs bark
Clearly you can't just go from physics to evolution, however hypothetically knowing everything about the subatomic particles would tell you everything about the atomic particles which in turn would tell you everything about the distribution of different substances that would tell you everything about biological systems are various levels until you understood the whole organism which would allow you to understand the evolutionary process. If this is not possible I think the question is how? The conclusion flys in the face of intuition.
I don't think anyone here believes that it does. I don't think the question is whether it even could but rather whether a hypothetical vastly superior science would be able to, or whether our intuitive belief that science should attempt this is quaint human psychological misinterpretation.
That depends very much on how you have tuned your intuition. What do you mean by "tell you everything about"? If you mean it will give you a tool from which to predict the future evolution of a system then yes it will tell you that. But if you mean "answer any question you wish to ask" then no it won't.
Why are things like this? Because they have evolved from things like that, but then why were things like that? This what Darwin does - you can explain in terms of organising principles rather than in terms of outcomes from microscopic systems given certain initial conditions.
If you think about it the assumption that explanatory frameworks are necessarily predictive frameworks flies in the face of intuition.
bhamgeezer said:
Again remember science is there for humans to understand. We understand different things in different ways. Science is not a method or type of explanation it is a family of methods and types of explanation suited to all manner of different problems. The single framework hypothesis is quaint for that simple reason.
Why do you make it a bedrock assumption that causality must always go upwards?
We don't see causality, we only infer its existence. It's just a theory, so to speak. Of course, I have no doubt that I am causally effective in the real world (else I wouldn't bother with even this discussion!). Nor can one doubt that the body is an emergent phenomenon. It is a homeostatic relationship between a vast number of component processes, and that homeostasis is by definition 'emergent'.
So, regardless of whether it gives some physicists mental indigestion, one can usefully talk about conscious bodies as higher-level emergent phenomena which are causally effective in the real world
As it happens, I don't make it a bedrock assumption that causality always goes upwards, and in fact would tend to say that causal descriptions only apply above the QM level (QM certainly doesn't seem very causal to me). The best way of looking at causality might be to see it as a stance in the Dennettian sense- a (necessary) way of apprehending how the world works on certain levels of description.
All the same, any description of a state of affairs supervenes on lower-level descriptions; this is the case regardless of whether or not the lower-level descriptions are framed in causal terms. Any change in the higher-level description means that the lower-level description must also change. (The reverse is not true, of course, as the higher-level description is necessarily coarser-grained than the lower). Thus if C causes E, there must also be changes on the QM level. This doesn't in any way rule out C being a higher or same level phenomena relative to E.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It's not possible for the simple reason that something has to do the knowing, and that is a physical something made from subatomic particles. In addition, you have the uncertainty problem – you cannot simultaneously know a particle's position and its velocity. You cannot, even hypothetically, know everything about subatomic particles.
Intuition is hugely misleading when it comes to quantum mechanics. You really need to leave it at the doorstep.
bhamgeezer
Dogs bark
Why do you make it a bedrock assumption that causality must always go upwards?
We don't see causality, we only infer its existence. It's just a theory, so to speak. Of course, I have no doubt that I am causally effective in the real world (else I wouldn't bother with even this discussion!). Nor can one doubt that the body is an emergent phenomenon. It is a homeostatic relationship between a vast number of component processes, and that homeostasis is by definition 'emergent'.
So, regardless of whether it gives some physicists mental indigestion, one can usefully talk about conscious bodies as higher-level emergent phenomena which are causally effective in the real world
The bottom up, top down distinction doesn't quite capture the problem, clearly we can see instances where causality is appears top down, but this is still mechanical causality, the whole doesn't generate anything above this that has the property of making something causally effacious. If you want to suggest a phenomena like this you have to explain exactly how this occurs. How exactly do you know you are causally effacious, in fact I would like to know what it even means for a thing to be causally effacious.
bhamgeezer
Dogs bark
Those are all epistemological problems! Positing a god like alien force capable of such a feat. Ok it might now be a question that can be given a totally serious answer but it I think peoples intuitions of the problem are at least interesting.
This whole discussion of reductionism seems very strange to me. Surely the problem of how to build an organism from an embryo is an engineering problem. If we were talking about building a bridge we would certainly rely on principle of physics, but we wouldn't try to reduce the whole problem to a branch of physics. Physics won't tell you what you need the bridge for. There are no theories of physics that give you the specifications of London bridge - that's to do with human interest. Surely a component of developmental biology is evolutionary fitness.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
That's debatable at the very least. Positing something outside existence to explain existence begs more questions than it answers.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
BTW, Knotted has more or less explained what I meant. I'm grabbing posts at work at the mo.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
I now have a vision of you doing some kind of Total Wipeout course where you have to 'grab posts' in order to do your job
