Stephen P. King (stephenk1@home.com)
Tue, 30 Mar 1999 11:58:25 -0500
Dear Ben,
Ben Goertzel wrote:
>
> At 12:29 PM 3/29/99 -0500, Stephen P. King wrote:
> >Hi Ben,
> >
> > I recommend you read Hitoshi's papers. :) This is the "philosophical"
> >one.
> >
> >http://www.kitada.com/time_III.html
>
> yes, I read this before, but it does not explain why R^6 instead of R^4
>
> This is explained in another of his papers which I have not gotten through yet
We should deal with that at another time. :) I do not fully understand
how Hitoshi deals with this "reduction". But I suspect that we will sort
this out quickly. ;)
> Returning to
>
> >> >1) How the quantity of time (past, future, "history") as it is
> >> >considered "classically" by observers is derived from the interactions
> >> >of LSs, which give us local clocks.
>
> this is indeed tricky, but seems to me to NOT be equivalent, as you suggest, to
> the problem of projecting R^6 to R^4, which is a quantum-mechanics-internal
> problem, standard Kaluza-klein type stuff, and much less difficult IMO.
Agreed, but... To redirect... :) I picked up my copy of Gerald
Edelman's "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the matter of the mind" and I
am reminded of why I am so much of a fan of Edelman! You should read
this book! His Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) has very much
influenced what I am thinking of how Local Systems (LSs) interact.
The idea of "re-entrant mappings" and darwinian selection is at the
heart of my thinking of how consciousness is generated by "mappings"
between "types of mappings". He even said: [substituting LS for "human
beings"] "A person, like a thing [or LS], exists on a world line in
four-dimensional spacetime. But because LSs have intentionality, memory
and consciousness, they can sample patterns at one point of that line
and on the basis of their personal histories subject them to plans at
other points of that world line. They can then enact these plans,
altering the causal relations of objects in a definite way according to
the structures of their memories. It is as if one piece of spacetime
could slip and map onto another piece." pg. 169 ibid.
> There seems to me to be a freaky ontological problem with the idea that
> centers of mass live in finite-dimensional Riemannian space whereas the particles that
> are averaged to yield these centers of mass live in Hilbert space.
We grant equal ontological status to Hilbert spaces and Riemannian
spaces. I am looking for a duality between them, I am thinking of them
as "two sides" of a coin. This is a "chicken or egg" question. We do not
assume an a priori status to either, so the statement of "averaging" is
considered as an example of assuming one of the complementary aspect as
fixed ab initio.
The "centers of mass" refer to how LSs "observe" (which is an example
of mappings among "relative stabil[ble]ity of structur[s]e under
selective mapping events" pg. 204 ibid.) the "exteriors" of each other.
> Hitoshi, your "philosophical" paper does not really address this philosophical issue.
> I'm not interested in philosophical verbiage so much as in the logic of
> this relationship.
> Quantum logic encapsulates the structure of quantum theory in an abstract
> way; is there a similar abstract conceptual formalism that captures this reduction?
> Logicians have formulated numerous "temporal logics." I would like to see a consistent "temporal
> logic" involving these two time scales....
I highly recommend Vaughan Pratt and Peter Wegner's paper's as a
background to address this question. There is a large body of work
addressing this and we will have to sort it out carefully. Suffice it to
say that there is no a priori apartheid on the logic; all logics, as the
mappings between the information content of LSs are equiprobable at the
level of the Total Universe. This is equivalent to saying that all
possible "connections" exist equiprobally between LSs at the level of
the Totality U. We have a hierachy here...
> How do we decide when we have a system with a center of mass. to be treated general-relativistically and not > just a multiparticle quantum system? Is the center of mass of 2 particles a GR particle?
We think of GR as a model of how two (or more) LS's center of mass
appear to each other. Like Hitoshi said: (I paraphrase) GR is a filter
with which we observe each other. http://www.kitada.com/time_III.html
discusses this well! ;)
> 3 particles? 9372? Obviously there is no magic number. But what then?
> do we have to view the GR perspective as fuzzy, as having more and more plausibility as there
> are more and more particles in the system, and as their mean becomes more and more stable (in
> a highly dynamic, high-variance quantum system there may be no reliably detectable center of
> mass over finite time scales).
In short, YES! :) There is the possibility of a truncation or cut-off
of the number of LSs interaction in a single "cosmos" system, (I find
Matti's work covering this!) but that is a subject of its own. ;)
> In psychological terms, a center of mass is the "exemplar" of a category,
> so what Hitoshi is proposing is that a different logic applies to categories than to
> individual elements. In the mind this corresponds roughly to the distinction between cognition to
> perception. QM is being posited as the "perceptual level" of the Universal Mind, and GR is being posited as
> the cognitive level.
Yes. Read Pratt, Edelman and Wegner. I would say that QM is "mind" and
GR is "body", but this is very hand waving... :)
> Consciousness I have argued serves to group perceptual features into wholes
> (wholes= categories, very roughly speaking). This has an interesting resonance with
> Hitoshi's theory, when one considers that consciousness in quantum physics is related to
> making phenomena into macroscopic events. The synthetic idea here would be
> that, once consciousness has grouped some percepts (particles) into a whole, this whole is then susceptible > to the laws of wholes,
> i.e. GR, rather than the laws of raw percepts, i.e. QM.
Yes. We are merely using different formalism, aka jargons... :)
> ben
We are definitely approaching resonance! :) Let's keep up the bandwidth
and correlate our thinkings.
Onward to the Unknown!
Stephen
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