Matter matters

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Matter matters

• George Kampis
• Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science
• Eötvös University, Budapest

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• Machines and Materiality
• not identical
• matter not like machine
• this difference matters
• so, matter matters

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• There is a trivial sense, which is not
  interesting
• nothing is quite like a machine
• not even a machine is a machine
• but we use it when/because it is like one

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• Is there anything but machines?
• Probably yes, here is some criticism
• Fixed, rigid structure
• solipsism of symbolic mind
• finiteness and closure

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• Some proposed solutions
• evolution qua selection
• connectionism self-organization
• analog systems

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• Self-modifying systems
• change of constituent structure
• complexity related to time
• open-ended in particular unpredictable
• no self...

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• Self-modifying systems
• Kampis, G. 1991 Self-modifying Systems in
  Biology and Cognitive Science A New Framework
  Dynamics, Information and Complexity,
• Pergamon, Oxford, pp. xi 545.
• Kampis, G. 1991 Process, Information Theory, and
  the Creation of Systems,
• in Nature and the Evolution of Information
  Processing (ed. K. Haefner),
• Springer, Berlin, pp. 83-103.
• Kampis, G. 1991 Information Course and
  Recourse, in Nature and the Evolution of
  Information Processing (ed. K. Haefner),
  Springer, Berlin, pp. 49-63.

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• Trivial view amplified
• real stuff vs. model
• machine is a model,
• cf. error or new interactions

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• Every piece of matter can realize any machine
• Putnam proof (nasty)
• e.g. piece of chalk contains UTM
• as well as all other systems
• but not identical with any of them

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• Two ways of expressing this
• modal properties
• vs. substrate independence
• implicit causal power
• vs state label transformation
• Aristotelian matter and form

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• Fundamental concept mechanism
• not machine-related, more fundamental
• causal structures expressed as black box
• if then connection
• e.g. mechanical systems without physics
• Hempel d-n law-less, contingent, C--gtE
• enthymemes

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• Natural causality
• mechanism offer a cue
• causality is based on human action
• everyday notion of causality is based on m.
• (almost by definition...)

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• Different kinds of causal transitions
• aspect-preserving transitions
• relevant aspects unaffected by causal process
• aspect-changing transformations
• (availability) of aspects changed
• e.g. chemical reactions, origin of species

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• General mechanisms
• A to B, self-modifying process
• Special mechanisms
• machines, same model does it all
• New materialism non-formal properties

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• Utilization of the concept
• interaction of machines in unexpected ways
• creativity via misunderstanding
• function change
• origin of natural selection

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• Kinds of machines which are not
• Subers Nomic
• Chaotic Itinerancy (Tsuda, Kaneko)
• Embodiment

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• Chaotic itinerancy (I. Tsuda, K. Kaneko)

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• Properties of chaotic itinerancy
• very high dimensional nonlinear system
• (e.g. low level dynamics)
• strongly coupled subsystems, loosely coupled
• can realize any system
• but different principle from UTM
• high dimensional system invisible

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• Embodiment
• two versions
• phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger,
• Merleu-Ponty --gt Johnson, Varela, Thompson)
• robotics (Brooks --gt Thelen, van Gelder)

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• Phenomenology version
• structure of experience, first-person
• how bodily properties influence mental content
• implicit, situated nature of agent
• interaction (enactment, affordances, relation,
  etc.)

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• Robotics version
• structure of experiencing
• anti-representational
• body is a machine? Non-issue.

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• Summary
• machines are models based on state transformation
• causality is different from state transformation
• causality is mostly implicit, modal
• mechanism expresses causality
• mechanisms are in general self-modifying
• matter is evolutionary

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• Summary (contd)
• self-modification possible by other means
• chaotic itinerancy
• embodiment
• new materialism instead, causality based