Reviews and Comments

#JuarreroBook Ch. 7 Part 2

The remainder of h. 7 focusses on “catalytic closure” – closed loops of process or reaction that are self-reinforcing and hence self-sustaining mechanisms.

J’s first example is the Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) chemical reaction, which involves an autocatalytic step (where the same catalyst is both an input and an output embedded in a loopy 4 step hyper-cycle, whereby the product of the reaction in the last step catalyses the first. Because this recursive process self-renews the “hypercycle itself becomes an enabling constraint that induces its own production and maintenance.”

As such, it is ‘self causing’. Following Montevil, Ruiz-Mirazo, Moreno, and Mossio, J maintains that this kind of autocatalytic system “still depends on externally set (context independent) boundary conditions over which they have minimal influence”. Their constraint regimes are “not yet self-constraining”.

This is achieved through “closure of constraint” which gives rise to life (and with it self-determination and autonomy).

“As articulated by Montevil, Mossio, and Moreno, the word closure in closure of constraint refers to a specific mode of dependence between constraints whereby recursion in the chain [of constraints] “folds up and establishes mutual dependence” (Moreno and Mossio 2015, 20) among constraints. To wit: Formally, “a set of constraints C realizes closure if, for each constraint Ci belonging to C: Ci depends directly on at least one other constraint of C (Ci is dependent); There is at least one other constraint Cj belonging to C which depends on Ci (Ci is enabling).” (Moreno and Mossio 2015, 20)”

#JuarreroBook Ch. 7 “Catalysts, Loops, and Closure” Part I

This chapter (finally) moves the book to more interesting examples: systems and processes exhibiting “self-organizing self-cause” and richer mereological (part-whole) relationships.

The example is catalysts and the way they function as context-dependent constraints (reminder: the constraints that create dependencies).

“Catalysts speed up chemical reactions by lowering barriers to energy flow and thereby facilitating irreversible interactions without being consumed themselves.”

as such, they illustrate the general property of context-dependent constraints whereby they “weave together interlocking dependencies without directly injecting energy”

nb “Folding-back-on-themselves processes such as feedforward and feedback loops are also catalysts. Iteration and recursion are two such examples”

“In recursive iteration, full sequences are fed back on themselves. This looping causes processes and sequences to become self-referential; recursive iteration blurs the distinction between parts and wholes.”

“Iteration and recursion feed information from the context back into the next sequence as newly initialized conditions and constraints. Such looped and contextually constraining and constrained interactions effectively import spatial and temporal information about the world into those processes and their properties. As a result, the processes become interdependent and covary with events in the world.”

One example J. lists is backpropagation and the way weight modification in neural networks leads the system to attune to meaningful real-world distinctions

“It is important to note that recursion and iteration are possible only after temporal dependencies (straightforward sequences) have already formed in response to enabling, context-dependent constraints. That is, recursion and iteration are not possible without previously constrained ordinal relations. That said, however, when the last step of a sequence feeds back to become the first in the next iteration, the looping creates self- referential configurations and nonlinearities. Nonlinearities generate multiscale and multidimensional interdependencies.”

Iteration and recursion are “hybrid constraints”: “Both take systems farther from equilibrium ..so.. qualify as context-independent constraints. But by feeding real world information back into the process, iteration and recursion also weave context, history, and the subject’s own actions into a more encompassing coordination dynamic—the spatiotemporally more extended nterdependencies of a new context. In this role, ..they..function as context-dependent constraints. Once recursive or iterative loops close thanks to integration by enabling constraints, real-world spatiotemporal information becomes embodied in a qualitatively distinct set of interlocking relations with novel properties"

one example discussed later in the chapter is the Plaut & Shallice (1991), Hinton & Shallice (1991) connectionist model of deep dyslexia

#JuarreroBook Ch. 6, final part

We’ve been on context-dependent constraints- constraints that create non-independence. There are two types:

“Some context-dependent constraints are enabling constraints; others are constitutive (Mossio 2013; Moreno and Mossio 2016) or governing. Enabling constraints (Pattee 1973; Salthe 1985; Juarrero 1999) are context-dependent constraints that irreversibly link and couple previously separate and entities at the same scale as the constraints.”

These enabling constraints generate “constitutive constraint architectures of complex interdependencies” which in turn do “double duty as governing constraints”.

“Governing constraints ..exert control on their components and behavior in cascades of mutual constraint satisfaction” and “tie together individual and population levels dynamics, parts, and wholes”, ..stabilizing “the possibility space” within which the behavior of individual parts “must remain for the constrained global pattern to persist.”

Basically, “governing constraints of context-dependent coherent dynamics generated by enabling constraints keep mutually dependent relations coherent. They regulate component processes top down such that the overarching dynamic remains metastable. Collective properties of constitutive constraint regimes do so by raising or lowering barriers to energy flow, adjusting timing and activation strength, as conditions warrant.”

#JuarreroBook Ch. 6 Interlude: Game of Life

We’ve had problems seeing what we're meant to be seeing in the book's examples. This week we drifted off to one of our own, Conway's Game of Life. I'd like to continue a bit with that. GoL is fascinating, and helpful in contexts such as ours, see web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DCDRealPatterns1991.pdf

So can it give us informative examples of constraints? Here 3 examples for discussion

1) general mathematical relationships that express possibilities/impossibilities with respect to patterns in GoL. These seem analogous to the threshold for connectedness in J's button example (we didn't reach a definite conclusion on that..)

2) variants changing topology and/or synchronicity of updating, please see here arxiv.org/pdf/nlin/0405061

these seem possible examples of 'context' and 'constraint' to me. The way I'm seeing these is as external to the fundamental entities (squares) and their interaction rules. None of that has changed. But tweaking the temporal synchrony of updating, or having 'gaps' in the topology, alters the possibility space/the behaviour of GoL

So how would we describe these? (in what way) are they 'real'? are they causal or causal like? what explanatory role do they play? are they context dependent or independent constraints?

3) (now hypothetical) Imagine there were timing or topology parameters that made glider guns much more likely (instead of the "labyrinth pattern"). Would this be an "enabling constraint"? Would we be missing something without such a notion (by just continuing to point to the individual squares and rule set)? Are glider guns a ‘whole’ that we need for explanation etc?

[discussion on GoL started here: social.sunet.se/@dcm/112372763988712787]

#JuarreroBook Chapter 6 Part 2

so, moving on... The examples were meant to illustrate the notion of context dependent constraint, specifically context dependent enabling constraints:

"Enabling constraints (Pattee 1973; Salthe 1985; Juarrero 1999) are context-dependent constraints that irreversibly link and couple previously separate and entities at the same scale as the constraints."

e.g., "The rolling columns of fluid that constitute a Bénard cell are nothing other than interdependent, coherent dynamics generated by enabling constraints"

such " coordinated and coherent dynamics have emergent proper-ties their components severally do not, not least of which is their capacity to affect the properties and behaviors of those components that make them up. Phase locking, resonance, synchronization, and entrainment are emergent properties of coherently organized interdependent dynamics.Enabling context-dependent constraints are therefore constraints that make the probability of one event conditional upon another. "

"They irreversibly generate emergent and coherent, metastable patterns of matter and energy flow"

these patterns are coherent in the sense that the "interlocking and covarying interdependencies brought about by enabling constraints hold systemwide patterns of mutual dependence together across spatiotemporal scales."

"Complex systems ranging from convection cells to economic and ecosystems form and function in this fashion" (e.g., the pendulums and metronomes swing as one; the convection cells rotate as a unit)

These "complex entities formed by context-dependent constraints under conditions of nonequi-librium are coherent and persistent. Those interdependencies satisfy the second law: energy, matter, and information flow with greater ease as coordinated interdependencies than separately."

and "such coherent structures and dynamics constitute real and novel, interactional types of entities."

"Interactional types .... are internally consistent, multiscale,mutual dependencies brought about by enabling constraints operating against a stable background set by context-independent constraints ... They are measured with conditional probabilities..and ... they are multiply realizable in distinct tokens"

"They are the outcomes of multiple constraint satisfaction, a process of continuous adjustment of rates, weights, timing, and so on that satisfies as many constraints as possible."

hence "constraint satisfaction is an important form of “causality” that has been systematically ignored by modern science and philosophy. It can explain the generation and persistence of coherence."

and "in response to multiple constraint satisfaction, components acquire new relational roles and properties" that "reflect a real reconfigured probability distribution of events in possibility space."

Such enabling constraints include temporal enabling constraints - "contextual constraints that turn entities interdependent in time"

"Complex systems are therefore historical, not merely temporal; they embody temporal constraints in their very logic. They carry their history on their backs, as it were"

"Spatial and temporal constraints.. produce indexical ordering." that is

"First, second, and third, or before and after, are emergent ordinal properties of points in phase space structured by temporally organized constraints. Significantly, this distinction is possible only because individual steps in temporally constrained sequences are not independent of each other. The burst of entropy with which irreversible phase transitions are paid marks a qualitative transition to a now temporally organized phase space. This new space represents a novel four-dimensional landscape,a new distinct constraint regime organized by time as well as space."

"Long- lasting temporal constraints and the long-range temporal dependencies they induce also underpin persistent coherence, the temporal counterpart of stability"

Finally, ...." examples make clear that enabling constraints generate coherent dynamics whose boundaries need not be tangible, material structures"

"When enabling constraints weave together new coherences, autocorrelated dynamics are“lifted”—differentiated—from the contextual backdrop from which they emerged. Hurricanes, for example, are coherent structures sufficientlydistinct from their environment to be visible from space This notion of identity is quite different from the inherent essential traits of Aristotelian and Cartesian substances. It is grounded in persistent, extended, and dynamic interdependencies among individual entities; between entities and processes on the one hand and conditions in the environment on the other; and between all of these and the past."

#JuarreroBook Chapter 6 Part 1 There's a lot in this chapter, and some of it I find hard to understand. So I'd like to split things up. We are now on context dependent constraints, the nature of which is to "take conditions away from independence"

The ch. outlines "three examples of the emergence of long-range correlations generated in virtue of context-dependent constraints. The first serves as a metaphor of phase transitions. The second illustrates inter-dependent dynamics among oscillators. The third is the textbook case of self- organizing, nonlinear, and far from equilibrium processes in the natural world. All three show how context-dependent constraints, operating against a backdrop established by context-independent constraints, weave global forms of order".

The examples are: 1. the phase transition of a random graph with sufficiently many links that it moves to connectedness

1. synchronising pendulum clocks on a shelf

2. convection patterns such as Bernard cells

What do people make of these examples? do they involve "transitions to a new possibility space" (pg. 70)? Do the constraints seem 'real' (metaphysically)? Is 'constraint satisfaction' as seen in these examples "an important form of "causality" that has been systematically ignored by modern science and philosophy" (pg. 72) ?

Ch. 5 #JuarreroBook “Why context matters- an Interlude”

To illustrate the role of context ch. 5 uses C-19 and other infectious diseases to introduce widely used notions in epidemiology: direct, indirect, and total effects of an intervention such as vaccination.

These seem to be recast as ‘effects of context’ (e.g., ‘indirect effects of context dependent phenomena’).

J notes (p. 66) “Indirect and total effects are not anomalies; they are real, but top-down, mereological effects of a transformed collective dynamic (marked by a different periodicity and different parameters). It all depends on the role context plays in some disease dynamics.

and “independence or dependence on context is itself dependent on the scale and periodicity of that embedding context. It might be necessary to look further back in time and/or zoom out spatially to reveal the scale at which context dependence kicks in or washes out. Independence or dependence on contextual constraints at each of those scales and time frames, however, is real. Context dependence is not subj., it is objective, but rather relational- and induced by constraints” (pg. 60)

#JuarreroBook Ch. 4 goes into more depth on the nature of context-independent and context-dependent constraints.

"Context- independent constraints take conditions away from equilibrium. They render conditions, events, and processes that were equally likely no longer equiprobable (Gatlin 1972). They establish the boundaries of uneven possibility landscapes (like fields) within which energy can flow and other constraints can emerge. Context-independent constraints turn the space of possibilities in which a system’s events and processesp lay out nonuniform or inhomogeneous. They induce nonequilibrium." e.g., gradients of inclined planes, polarities, diffusion or concentration gradients, the epigenetic possibility space of an organism (see Waddington's epigenetic landscape)

they 'initialize the prior probability distribution, of the possibility space'

"Context- dependent constraints are defined as constraints that take particles of matter and streams of energy flow away from independence from one other. They weave together streams of matter and energy into the coherent and covarying pattern of a coordination dynamic. They make distinct entities and processes interdependent without fusing them into a monolithic entity"

"In contrast to context-independent constraints, context-dependent ones generate complex forms of coherence such as multiply realizable interactional types, degeneracy, pluripotency, individuation, and evolvability. Context-dependent constraints also underlie metastability"

#JuarreroBook Ch. 3 starts out by again highlighting the importance of “context” – which can by temporal, spatial or hybrid (includes aspects of both).

Spatial context is understood extremely broadly and includes “psychosociocultural situations such as economic conditions and social activities, as well as those physical, material, chemical, and biological conditions in which events and processes take place”

Context exerts influence through constraints. Constraints come in two variants: context-independent and context-dependent.

“By precipitating symmetry breaks and making entities and processes covary conditional on each other, constraints turn possibility spaces irregular.”

“Because numerous constraints must be continuously satisfied on many dimensions and time scales simultaneously, possibility spaces also reconfigure moment by moment in response to those multiple constraints, entrenched as well as current new ones. Possibility spaces are thus defined by their probability contour (Buchler 1977) or dynamic signature (Kelso 1995). I call it its profile.”

These possibility spaces are not just epistemic (possibilities we can conceive) but “real, bounded, and sculpted by constraints”.

She refers to phil. John Collier who identifies three pre-requisites of complexity: an energy source, gradients and interactions that convert some of the energy influx made available by gradients into structure.

She considers gradients to be constraints and interactions “can also be subsumed under the general notion of constraint” (are constraints?). The notion of ‘interaction’ here is one that goes beyond the ‘reversible bumping and jostling of Newtonian forceful impacts’.

‘coherence’ is a term for the “unity relations of complex systems like snowflakes, tornadoes, ..living things..ecosystems…cultures”

The rest of the chapter is examples of these various concepts some of which might be worth discussing

#JuarreroBook Ch. 2

The chapter gives a roadmap of the book. The goal: the conclusion that coherence, wholeness, and identity arise from the operation of constraints. More specifically, an argument that “that complex systems, living and nonliving, are coherent dynamics analogously generated by enabling constraints”.

The means: consideration of the dynamics of complex systems which reframes notions of cause and effect, wholeness, relations, context and history.

The systems of interest are so-called dissipative structures – open systems far from equilibrium that exchange matter, energy, and in information with their environment. Such systems “self organize and act as coherent totalities in response to constraints” and “persist as themselves in a paradoxical state of dynamic stability despite being in non-thermal equilibrium”.

Context-dependent constraints induce integration and coordination that leaves marks on interacting ‘parts’ or elements in the sense of multiscale and multidimensional coherent dynamics (patterns of energy, matter, and information flow) that “transform erstwhile separate and isolated elements into interdependent skeins”.

“erstwhile independent elements from which the coherent dynamics were generated are in- formed by the constrained relations in which they are now embedded and on which they are now conditional. These interlocking relations become governing constraints that hold those coherent dynamics together and contribute to their persistence.” “These dynamics are simultaneously constraining AND constrained.”

“constraints” are factors (both context independent and independent) that shapre the possibility space of a system. They are not “forceful causes” (efficient causes transferring energy billiard ball style), and the word “constraint” is chosen to avoid the baggage of past causal language. An example is a roundabout that constrains traffic flow and to give rise to very different possibilities than traffic lights.

They give rise to wholes with meta-stability (flexible and dynamic steady state behaviour that remains in thermal non-equilibrium). The constraints and dynamics involved simultaneously span multiple scales, and allow ‘downward causation’ from wholes to parts, ie elements constrained to interact in certain ways loop down to affect those very parts. That mereological influence is “real”, as are the interactions, the wholes and their powers. None of this conflicts with causal closure, because constraints are not forces.

“Context“ includes both time and space and it modulates/co-determines outcomes.

#JuarreroBook Ch. 1

This chapter is stage setting for where we seem to be headed: understanding context- dependent interdependencies

“Relational types are real and coherent patterns of energy flow, structure, and activities that form locally from contextually constrained interactions among individuals and that, in turn, as coherent dynamics, constrain the individuals and circumstances from which they emerge. Reimagining cause-and- effect relations, especially mereological relations between parts and wholes, and the influence of context and history on those relations, will be the hinge on which this reformulation turns”. Pg 20

I understand this to mean that the goal is setting out a perspective that gives a proper role to interactions (as are crucial for complex systems) can reshape our understanding of what makes something ‘a thing’, that is, how it ‘coheres’ (or ‘hangs together’), in such a way that we will be able to make sense of currently seemingly problematic cause-effect relations such as “mental causation” (how can my intentions cause something) or ‘downward causation’ (higher levels seemingly exert causal effects on lower levels) that invariably arise in a picture of the world where at root is physics, and higher level properties, ‘objects’, or theories as they figure in higher level disciplines (chemistry, biology, social sciences) and in our everyday life are to be understood in terms of (‘reduced to’) lower level properties, ‘objects’ or theories of physics.

The key inter-related themes crucial to this ‘reimagining’ that makes relations and interactions real lie in reconsidering mereology (part-whole relations), the notion of ‘cause’ (as more than just billiard ball, “efficient causation”), and the role of context (space and time) as more than just a container in which entities are plonked

Did I get that right?

@UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org