The Physical Basis and Origin of Hierarchical Control

Pattee, H. H.

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5161-3_6

Cited by 40 publications

(50 citation statements)

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“…They can be conceived as local and contingent causes, which reduce the degrees of freedom of the dynamics on which they act (Pattee, 1973), while remaining conserved (at the time scale which is relevant to describe their causal action) with respect to those dynamics 17 . In describing physical and chemical systems, constraints are usually introduced as external determinations (boundary conditions, parameters, restrictions on the configuration space, etc....), which means that they contribute to determining the behaviour and dynamics of a system, even though their existence does not depend on the dynamics upon which they act (Umerez, 1994;Juarrero, 1999).…”

Section: Organisation and Self-determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes biological organisation teleological?

2014

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This paper argues that biological organisation can be legitimately conceived of as an intrinsically teleological causal regime. The core of the argument consists in establishing a connection between organisation and teleology through the concept of self-determination: biological organisation determines itself in the sense that the effects of its activity contribute to determine its own conditions of existence. We suggest that not any kind of circular regime realises self-determination, which should be specifically understood as self-constraint: in biological systems, in particular, self-constraint takes the form of closure, i.e. a network of mutually dependent constitutive constraints. We then explore the occurrence of intrinsic teleology in the biological domain and beyond. On the one hand, the organisational account might possibly concede that supra-organismal biological systems (as symbioses or ecosystems) could realise closure, and hence be teleological. On the other hand, the realisation of closure beyond the biological realm appears to be highly unlikely. In turn, the occurrence of simpler forms of self-determination remains a controversial issue, in particular with respect to the case of self-organising dissipative systems.

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Section: Organisation and Self-determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes biological organisation teleological?

2014

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“…The linguistic paradox I have discussed in detail here demonstrates only a small part of the reefs we can expect when steering a project in the inshore waters between such big islands of knowledge as physics, philosophy and mathematics. We will come back to it later when discussing a recent version of the Block Universe 34 Theory (Salthe, 1993) is also a kind of relativity in time (dilaton); Pattee speaks of hierarchy timescales (Pattee, 1973) 36 (Fresnel, 1819;Lorentz, 1899; Poincaré, 1904/6;Poincaré, 1906) 37 However, Bohm suggested a more subtle idea of ether later (Bohm, 1952(Bohm, , 1980). …”

Section: On Time With Time In Physics: a Personal Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Vrobel suggests to unify Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological notion of nowness as a 1 st person's perception of depth (associated with individually registered superposition of events) involving the rationalization of systemic blind spots (Merleau-Ponty, 1945) and the one of temporal length ("cogent moment", Salthe, 1993) or duration (associated with the individually registered successive flow of events, Vrobel, 2013) from the perspective of the obserpant, the observer-participant who represents the model of the system itself (Vrobel, 2015). This approach is supposed to deliver an integral description of the subjective reality under investigation involving these two locally experienced (and possibly a few more) temporal scales ("timescales", Pattee, 1973) and tenses (Matsuno & Salthe, 2002) into one overall "fractal dimension" of superposed and sequenced events, known as density of time (Vrobel, 2007). These new scales of time are proposed to replace the single dimension in Einstein's relativistic model.…”

Section: Planck's Equation About Quantum Energy Is Another Example: Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Yet another time about time … Part I: An essay on the phenomenology of physical time

Simeonov¹

2015

Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology

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This paper presents yet another personal reflection on one the most important concepts in both science and the humanities: time. This elusive notion has been not only bothering philosophers since Plato and Aristotle. It goes throughout human history embracing all analytical and creative (anthropocentric) disciplines. Time has been a central theme in physical and life sciences, philosophy, psychology, music, art and many more. This theme is known with a vast body of knowledge across different theories and categories. What has been explored concerns its nature (rational, irrational, arational), appearances/qualia, degrees, dimensions and scales of conceptualization (internal, external, fractal, discrete, continuous, mechanical, quantum, local, global, etc.). Of particular interest have been parameters of time such as duration ranges, resolutions, modes (present, now, past, future), varieties of tenses (e.g. present perfect, present progressive, etc.) and some intuitive, but also fancy phenomenological characteristics such as "arrow", "stream", "texture", "width", "depth", "density", even "scent". Perhaps the most distinct characteristic of this fundamental concept is the absolute time constituting the flow of consciousness according to Husserl, the reflection of pure (human) nature without having the distinction between exo and endo. This essay is a personal reflection upon time in modern physics and phenomenological philosophy.Keywords: space, time, consciousness, physics, mathematics, philosophy, phenomenology. ___________________________________________________________________ PrologueSpace and time are particularly modalities of human consciousness. Whereas space can be realized through our eyes and limbs, time remains elusive to our minds and still bothers philosophers since antiquity (Dyke & Bardon, 2013). In the beginning of the 20 th century science made a crucial switchover. Time was spatialized 1 . Until then the world was threedimensional. With the Special Relativity Theory (Einstein, 1905;Minkowski, 1909) the concept of time became the fourth dimension 2 and an integral element of the new physical worldview. It caused confusion among many of Einstein's contemporaries, and not only with its relativistic dilation in the well-known equation with the speed of light ť = t (1-(v/c) 2 ) ½ .1 It could be argued that time was spatialized earlier. Though time and space were separate for Newton (something that Einstein challenged), the clock time he assumed was laid out like space and was devoid of the dynamism of Bergsonian durée, (Bergson, 1912;Čapek, 1961). 2 It was Laplace who treated time as just another dimension equivalent to space, and thereby paved the way for the development of relativity theory as it came to be understood (but not as Čapek, following Bergson, understood it).This notion of relativistic time appeared wrong and unnatural, not without good reason, since:• Time is ineffable, eluding science and mathematics: it can only be grasped through intuition and shown indirectly and partia...

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“…The theory of hierarchically complex dynamic systems derives from concepts of complexity (Simon 1962(Simon , 1973(Simon , 2002, control and causation (Corning 2001;Pattee 1973Pattee , 2000, and scalar levels of organisation and emergence (Hall 2006a;Salthe 1985Salthe , 1993Salthe , 2004. The dynamics of control and causation in a system are entropically driven by the dissipation of free energy in the transport of energy from a high potential source to a low potential sink (Prigogine 1955(Prigogine , 1981.…”

Section: The Theory Of Hierarchically Complex Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Constraints applying downward control may be negative (inhibitory) or positive (facilitative). The dynamic structure of a focal system (the specific states, interactions and trajectories of the components comprising the system) at a point in time establishes conditions that provide a downward control over the dynamic possibilities available to the subsystems comprising the focal system (Pattee 1973(Pattee , 2000. The structures providing that control can be considered to embody 'control information' (Corning 2001;Pattee 2000).…”

Section: The Theory Of Hierarchically Complex Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%