1/4/2000:

Let me begin by briefly summarizing Complexity Studies / Complexity Theory as I understand it to be generally understood in the scientific community at the beginning of this third millenium. I start here not because CS holds the sole key to my notion of consciousness, but because few people outside the field know, much less understand, it and its elegant simplicity. But yes, the field is essential for my purpose though only as one of the fundamentals. The best complete book on the subject available and understandable to the average reader remains physicist/writer M. Waldrop’s 1992 volume, Complexity (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster.) For the moment, here’s my understanding of CS, with my apologies to any experts who would describe it otherwise. [For a short intro to complexity see U. Mich's "What is..."   page or more practical page at at NESCI.. But for serious science in complexity studies see the Santa Fe Inst.  and for a graduate level professional education visit the U. Mich.]

Complexity Studies focuses attention both on things, like atoms, brains, or nations, and on phenomena like hurricanes and stock market behavior. It includes such a staggering array of subjects simply because they all exhibit seemingly unfathomable complexity that defy any apparent generalized laws of nature. Many exceptional scientists spent long years investigating such things, each in their own specialty. At one point they began talking to one another stepping out of the bounds of their specialties. As it turned out, they saw many similarities and generalized features that complex subjects have in common regardless whether in physics, biochemistry or economics. The work of a computer scientist (John Holland at the U. Mich.) in an attempt to create a simplified model of evolution provided some of the key elements that now define the field known as Complexity Studies (CS from here forward.)

1/11/00:

Generally speaking highly complex things and phenomena come out of nowhere, without pre-planning, without central control, without an end goal presumed or pursued. Instead complex systems emerge (key term, remember it) from a large usually huge collection of simple, small elements each doing what it must does. Waldrop uses a wonderful example which I’ll repeat.

The simple water molecule H₂O behaves very simply and almost completely predictably. Scientists know pretty much all there is to know of it (subatomic and quantum behavior within it still pending study.) Consequently you can predict anything one molecule will do, as well as what many of them will do. However, despite knowing "all there is to know" the scientist cannot predict that when a gazillion water molecules arrive in a hand sized container they will slosh. The property of sloshing does not exist at the molecular level, nor would you expect it, yet it occurs. Where did property "sloshing" come from? Another common example used in CS involves a collection of birds. Although many birds, bats, and butterflies in one place appear to have "one mind" where great and small flocks form and give the appearance of a single large entity engaged in a unified, purposeful action, it only appears that way. Instead, the apparent "group mind" of a flock simply emerges from a collection of simple individuals who all take similar actions for similar reasons. There is no group mind, it just looks that way. To further understand this consider (human) sports.

In a football stadium on game day sudden spontaneous crowd roars display a similar appearance of a group mind. However, everyone attending the game knows perfectly well that the players do not control the crowd, nor does the crowd give control over itself to the players or anyone else, nor have they made some massive set of agreements to behave as one thing. Instead, each spectator simply watches the game and responds as he or she voluntarily chooses to respond, whether with a cheer or a jeer. However, everyone is limited to only a few possible responses to events on the field; for example, few can levitate with joy but all can, if they choose, jump, clap, boo, or yell. Thus, when a majority freely choose the same action, like yelling, 10,000 voices give the appearance of one massive action by one entity called the crowd. Yet we know every individual made independent choices from the available options, cheering jumping, etc. No central authority commanded the roar, even though the single event on the field may appear to have caused it; the individual fans just chose to respond similarly to the same event. Similarly billions of water molecules individually act according to another much smaller set of choices when they each respond to a change in their environment, for example, suddenly moving the glass of water that leads to a slosh over the edge.

Holland and others have clearly shown in a more scientifically precise way that events, phenomena, and properties of groups emerge as a consequence of individual actions and reactions to the environment. In order to generalize the notion of individuals across many different types of individuals scientists use the term "agent" generically. An agent is one of many similar entities, as a collection of water molecules but not the mud particles interspersed, or a collection of brain rather than muscle cells. It applies to atoms, or molecules, or cells, or organisms, or even entire nations as long as they are all the same thing.

Holland today offers a small set of tenets of CS to his classes.

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1/13/00: This work in concert with formative research by Stuart Kauffman, physicist Murray Gell-Mann, et al has progressed beyond an explanation of mere phenomena. As it turns out the principle of complexity emerging from a multitude of simple individuals that interact also yields complex systems. The innumerable atoms of air carrying out individual actions certainly explains the fluid properties, and the phenomena of wind, but a complex of winds & humidity yield massive systems like hurricanes, tornadoes, and monsoons that exist and act as things unto themselves with rule sets derived of the rule-set that emerged for the wind. Under certain conditions complex systems seem to "click" into a final form that becomes an entity unto itself with a rule set of its own. Sometimes such a complex system may emerge and persist in a way that it changes itself in order to continue existing despite changes around it. This final stage of complexity emerging from interactions of simple things Gell-Mann has called a Complex Adaptive System because of the self-induced changes that allow it to persist.

... 1/7/00 "process" and the math of process resemble the ancient notion of "chi" energy, also known as prana, etc. The plentitude of ancient traditions giving chi fundamental importance suggests to me that "process" underlies all matter, systems, beings, and "all that is." In a word, action acts then rests [then acts, rests, etc] The rest allows chi to coalesce. In allowing chi to rest one’s "will" relinquishes control so emptiness/Void/yin can manifest what imagination has conceived. [1/22/00] Indeed, even Jesus is reported to have said "We worship the Holy Breath."

1/12/00: Zero point energy contains, to my way of thinking, two components. First it contains the notion of energy, or "action acting" independently. This fundamental level may suggest randomness and chaos to some thinkers, but to me it suggests unchained choice and willfulness. Second ZPE contains the notion of a zero point, a total absence of anything and everything. Because any place in the universe other than an occupied point exhibits the property of total absence, that emptiness is the zero point. Although it would seem, then, to be a scattered collection of points it is in fact the same point as any other point of absence: only one zero point underlies everything.

Now, together they form a kind of yin-yang. Energy amounts to nothing more than an action occurring, or in my terms action acting. To native English readers a non-standard word like "moving-ness" would convey the notion of movement apart from both the movement and the object moving. Action never ends -- energy/mass conservation -- it merely changes form; action is eternal. "Moving-ness" simply continues forever the same we, in a practical sense, understand that a particle continues being itself throughout time, simply changing direction just as particles change position. "Movingness" is a priori, just as we have always assumed "particle-ness" to be. It acts upon & within the sole zero point. By contrast the ZP itself responds to action; the emptiness fills with motion. How can absence respond when nothing is there to do the responding, and there isn’t even a "place" there? In particular, how does nothing respond to the mere quality that I call ‘moving-ness’ when in fact there is no thing/object in motion? To me, that exposes both the mystery and magic of all that is. It also reminds me of the Buddha’s claim that "It is all merely flames/light."

Scribbled note from ~2/15/2000

Action :: wave

Wave reveals the act or action, i.e., the thing acting reveals action acting

How?

The medium responds to action

Well, at the deepest level, what reponds to action?

Awareness [rather than inanimate objects] itself responds – awareness ‘creates’ stuff so as to indicate it responds

Animacy vs. inanimacy

Proof? Maybe examples:

Birds take to flight with a rule-set [cf. J. Holland]

In totality flocking emerges, thus a flock-thing emerges

Where did the flock come from?

It came from perception of the flock as a flock.

Perception took a step up. Awareness expanded.

By contracting or narrowing one's perception the perception reveals only many birds, not a flock; cf. "Not seeing the forest for the trees."

The flock still ‘objectively’ exists, only the level of awareness changed.

The bird disappears as focus narrows down to cells, then proteins, atoms, and quanta. Yet the bird remains a bird at that expanded awareness level.

At the Heisenberg, Copenhagen Interpretation level, observation / perception appears to alter the object perceived. Suppose, instead, that the ‘object’ seen in fact remains unchanged while only the act of choosing enables awareness to respond. Choice evokes response, choice of level of perception (bird, flock, or protein) reveals anything that can be perceived at that level. Awareness responds to choice. The object perceived simply appears like a stereoptic print, but is only a marker, a place holder. The ‘object’ only appears according to the seer’s choice; it locks the choice down.

2/22/2000 ~6:30pm

Two years ago I bought Alwyn Scott’s book ‘Stairway to the Mind" simply because he offered a thesis similar, but not identical to mine. To quote him [p. 3] "consciousness is an emergent phenomena, one born of many discrete events fusing together as a single experience."

To distinguish my notion(s) from his well-reasoned argument, I want to point out that like all others he focuses on the actions of agents, rather than on the actions themselves. Although the reader must take my word for it, I arrived at my conclusion about two years prior to finding his book (a 1995 book I picked up 5/98.) But, I also admit to a superficial, incomplete perusal of his work. So keep that in mind.

As the notion of emergence seems to have a stable meaning, and complex systems also seem to generally fall into a single meaning, using the terms should evoke little confusion. To the point, then, A. Scott seems to argue that consciousness derives from a hierarchical increase in the actions of things. Thus he reviews things at gross, fine, and fundamental levels. Nonetheless, he presumes that things have primacy and that only things act. Thus, he fails to see or to consider the possibility that actions may in fact move things, rather than appear as epiphenomena of things. Action itself, in my thinking, precedes any kind of thing, regardless how gross or fundamental a discrete or particulate thing may be.

I find it oddly amusing that he, and all the complexity scholars, including John Holland, Stuart Kauffman, etc., repeatedly use or refer to the "actions of agents" but ignore any discussion of action itself. They presume action, without addressing any fundamental notion of action, and use the notion of action without examining the possibility that action has structure. Thus they lose the opportunity – are blind to – my assertion that a complex system need not be a thing at all. In fact a complex system could be a complex event, a complex action, an event with a boundary that possesses an integrity or wholeness unto itself. A complex event or action exhibits all the usual characteristics of a complex system in its co-evolutionary sub-parts, its wholeness, emergent properties, and so forth.

…other (remotely related) note, bibliographic:

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, "The Evolving Self", Harper Collins, 1993, New York, NY; 1^st ed.

Pg. 120, "So even though memes are initially shaped by the mind, they soon turn around and begin to shape minds." Sounds like co-evolution to me. He continues, "once free of their creators, do memes continue to serve our [creators] purpose?" and p. 124 "The point is that, once a meme is well established, it tends to generate inertia in the mind, and forces us to pursue its logical consequences to the bitter end." P. 126 "exact[ing] a price from those who let their minds be colonized by them, a price reckoned in psychic energy, labor, resources, and money" "… which conform[s] to the definition of a parasitic species."

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