top-down causation

Originally posted by twhitehead
My guess would be that the definition treats information as not being part of the system.
So for example, you could analyse my computer all you want, but you would not know how it will behave after I install a program (information) that you do not have access to. The behaviour of a computer is largely driven by information rather than its physical design ...[text shortened]... transient electricity rather than the brain where it can be physical connections between cells.

If your guess is correct and the definition treats information as not being part of the system then I personally don't think what it defines is a noteworthy concept. I mean, of course you need information to analyze what's going on! That would be extremely unenlightening concept; it tells us absolutely nothing we didn't already know.

Originally posted by humy
If your guess is correct and the definition treats information as not being part of the system then I personally don't think what it defines is a noteworthy concept. I mean, of course you need information to analyze what's going on! That would be extremely unenlightening concept; it tells us absolutely nothing we didn't already know.

I think it is a confusing and not very helpful attempt at distinguishing between information and physical structure. Much better to just talk about information itself rather than 'top down causation'.
I suspect it has to do with attempts to talk about a soul.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I think it is a confusing and not very helpful attempt at distinguishing between information and physical structure. Much better to just talk about information itself rather than 'top down causation'.
I suspect it has to do with attempts to talk about a soul.

I had similar suspicions about it.

If I wanted to talk about soul, I'd start a thread. You are acting like a couple of boofheads!

Btw, the point was made that top-down doesn't preclude determinism. I accept that point. I must've been conflating determinism and reductionism a bit. Since they are in fact closely associated, I can be forgiven.

Originally posted by apathist
If I wanted to talk about soul, I'd start a thread. You are acting like a couple of boofheads!

Btw, the point was made that top-down doesn't preclude determinism. I accept that point. I must've been conflating determinism and reductionism a bit. Since they are in fact closely associated, I can be forgiven.

You're not related to Dasa are you? It's just the mention of "boofheads" that made me wonder...

Originally posted by apathist
If I wanted to talk about soul, I'd start a thread. You are acting like a couple of boofheads!

I was not referring to you, I was referring to the website you referenced.

Matter and information are both distinct and fundamentally intertwined. If you look at a piece of DNA, you can fully understand the individual atoms, and many of them are virtually identical, but what matters in the higher order structure is the arrangement of those atoms which is both physical and a kind of information. Further the atoms make up molecules which in turn are joined to make up the whole DNA strand which in turn contains the instructions for making a protein. For particular proteins every cell in your body contains a piece with the same information and in fact every cell in every human, and every cell in every mammal has the same information. So we can almost separate the information from the physical configuration of the atoms. This concept I believe is what the whole 'top-down' definition seems to be getting at but from a slightly different and more confusing angle. And I think its focus is to look for causes and in particular to find non-physical non-of this universe causes.

Originally posted by humy
I just remembered! I have already done this with a computer program for the tank problem! I did this when I was not so sure that my mathematical proof was valid (initially it was a bit incomplete but it is complete now ) and did it using a numerical method with a large number of 'tests' just to see if it was at least in the right ballpark. What I observed was a ...[text shortened]... ion predicts; this will surely leave readers with vary little doubt of the validity of my claim!

misedit:

I said

"What I observed was a mathematical convergence on the probabilities that I predict BUT a mathematical divergence on what the conventional equation predicts thus..."

Which is very wrong because that should have been;

"What I observed was a mathematical convergence on the probabilities that I predict BUT a mathematical non-convergence on (not to be confused with mathematical divergence) what the conventional equation predicts thus ..."