Some remarks on Arturo’s comment below. John Collier Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier
From: Fis [fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] on behalf of tozziart...@libero.it</compose?To=tozziart...@libero.it> [tozziart...@libero.it] Sent: December 6, 2016 4:17 AM To: Jerry LR Chandler; fis@listas.unizar.es</compose?To=fis@listas.unizar.es> Subject: [Fis] R: Re: Who may proof that consciousness is an Euclidean n-space ??? Dear Jerry, thanks a lot for your interesting comments. I like very much the logical approach, a topic that is generally dispised by scientists for its intrinsic difficulty. We also published something about logic and brain (currently under review), therefore we keep it in high consideration: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/11/15/087874 However, there is a severe problem that prevents logic in order to be useful in the description of scientific theories, explanans/explanandum, and so on. The severe problem has been raised by three foremost discoveries in the last century: quantum entanglement, nonlinear dynamics and quantistic vacuum. Quantum entanglement, although experimentally proofed by countless scientific procedures, is against any common sense and any possibliity of logical inquiry. The concepts of locality and of cause/effect disappear in front of the puzzling phenomenon of quantum entanglement, which is intractable in terms of logic, neither using the successful and advanced approaches of Lesniewski- Tarski, nor Zermelo-Fraenkel's. The same stands for nonlinear chaotic phenomena, widespread in nature, from pile sands, to bird flocks and to brain function. When biforcations occur in logistic plots and chaotic behaviours take place, the final systems' ouputs are not anymore causally predictable. Quantistic vacuum predicts particles or fields interactions occurring through breaks in CPT symmetries: this means that, illogically, the arrow of the time can be reverted (!!!!!) in quantistic systems. [John Collier] I believe the problems here can be resolved by adopting an information-theoretic account of causality. I have not yet shown how it applies in QM or in complexly organised systems, but I see no special problems. The basic idea is that causal connection between two things is that the same information is carried by both. It is a development of Reichenbach’s markability account of causation, but without the questionable invocation of counterfactuals. You can find accounts in the two papers below. The second gives a brief account of how it should be applied to complexly organized systems. The papers are very condensed, I warn readers, but several people have got the idea on the first read. The second paper uses the Barwise-Seligman notion of information flow explicitly. It helps to know that first, but I give a brief description. * Causation is the Transfer of Information<http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/causinf.pdf> In Howard Sankey (ed) Causation, Natural Laws and Explanation (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999) * Information, causation and computation<http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/CollierJohn%20formatted.pdf> (2012. Information and Computation:<http://astore.amazon.co.uk/books-books-21/detail/9814295477> Essays on Scientific and Philosophical Understanding of Foundations of Information and Computation, Ed by Gordana Dodig Crnkovic and Mark Burgin, World Scientific) John
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