Jessica Flack | Coarse-Graining as Downward Causation | NUMEROUS NUMEROSITY 2021
Channel: SEMF
Date: 2021-05-28

Plenary session kindly contributed by Jessica Flack in SEMF's 2021 Numerous Numerosity

https://semf.org.es/numerosity

SESSION ABSTRACT
Downward causation is the controversial idea that ‘higher’ levels of organization can causally influence behaviour at ‘lower’ levels of organization. Here I propose that we can gain traction on downward causation by being operational and examining how adaptive systems identify regularities in evolutionary or learning time and use these regularities to guide behaviour. I suggest that in many adaptive systems components collectively compute their macroscopic worlds through coarse-graining. I further suggest we move from simple feedback to downward causation when components tune behaviour in response to estimates of collectively computed macroscopic properties. I introduce a weak and strong notion of downward causation and discuss the role the strong form plays in the origins of new organizational levels. I illustrate these points with examples from the study of biological, social and artificial systems.

SESSION MATERIALS
· Downward Causation (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2016.0338)
· Life's Information Hierarchy (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/from-matter-to-life/lifes-information-hierarchy/006CDEF205F1B03F7CBDC087B3CAF513)
· Biology Breaktrhoughs - Information Theory of Individuality (https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantas-year-in-biology-2020-20201223/)
· Collective Computation of Adaptive Social Structure (https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/1/e1603311)
· Collective Computation in Animal Fission Fusion Dynamics (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2020.00090/full)
· A Family of Algorithms for Computing Consensus about Node State from Network Data (https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003109)

JESSICA FLACK
Collective Computation Group (Santa Fe Institute): http://c4.santafe.edu/
Collective Computation Group profile: http://c4.santafe.edu/people/c4Jessica/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-c-flack-76b454133/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/c4computation

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MUSIC
https://www.youtube.com/user/Baroquenoise