| | Just as DNA based self-replicating systems evolved sophisticated means of error checking - "is it ME or a viral intrusion or a copy error, etc.," a kind of primitive self-awareness on the molecular level designed to protect gigabytes of precious, hard won code, so the physical process of a nervous system in abstracting commonalities in order to respond on the basis of classes, from sensation to perception to conception, also reaches a level of complexity and open-endedness at the conceptual level of organization that requires a constant comparison to a model. Mental activity goes far beyond abstraction in the form of categorization or classification, doesn't it?
We are constantly comparing our behavior, from the gross physical actions of our bodies to our deepest feelings and thoughts, to a model, asking, "is this ME? Is this what I should be doing - compared to a standard held internally?" Just as there are specific "mirror" neurons - recently identified - that facilitate empathy with others (autistic kids have damaged or genetically defective mirror neurons, it seems), so we might hypothesize a specific mechanism or neural locus for the constant stepping back from the experience to the reflection on the experience, always checking for a match to what we believe to be our deepest self.
I remember reading an article about mirror neurons in Scientific American awhile ago. I'm intrigued by the discovery, and am optimistic that we can use our knowledge in this area to diagnose and address certain mental disabilities. However, I don't see how it is that mirror neurons nor other physical mechanisms can be identified with mental phenomena qua mental phenomena. Fermat's Last Theorem, as a mental conception, should not be confused with the neuronal activity with which it is correlated.
I'm not sure on what level to attempt to answer the broader question about the nature of abstraction. Very primitive creatures, including, I believe, ameobas even, can learn to associate one class of events - say a chemical or a bright light - with another class of events, say, an electric shock. Even lacking any capacity for real-time personal learning, such creatures nevertheless are examples of a kind of learning and abstraction via their DNA. Those with varients of DNA which increase the chances of survival and reproduction in a given environment will naturally dominate over time. This is a kind of learning, not by individuals, but by the system represented by the species. An ameoba that only requires two specific chemical cues to know that something is likely to be edible has an advantage over one whose genes dictate that it has to have five such cues.
I wonder whether we ought to say that an ameoba 'abstracts' and 'classifies' just because its material composition is capable of reacting differently to classes of events. Surely, as you say, this amounts to a "kind of learning", but it is nevertheless at a considerable distance from the sort of learning which the human intellect engages in.
The ameoba's "consciousness" would be useless in an unordered, random universe, one where there was no underlying regularity or order. It is only because there is order that consciousness in general is possible and useful. Because there is vast order in our old, highly evolved universe, there is room for and vast advantage to those living systems which can respond to other entities on the basis of identity, meaning class. Abstraction, as a general principle, consists of a system's capacity to respond to events as classes. Rand does a pretty good job of laying out a few more details in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
Abstraction, as it relates to human perception, seems to me something more. It consists in not only responding to events as classes, but also in being capable of knowing why the particular event falls under the particular class, which involves conceptual analysis, not mere systematic response.
I haven't read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science," yet, but as soon as I glanced at the first review, it felt very familiar. I'm guessing that if he hasn't answered the question about "why" the universe is self-ordering, then he probably at least raises the plane of discussion considerably, from the reviews and comments I've heard. The amazon.com reviews seem to be mainly negative. He allegedly re-presents ideas that have been on the table for decades, and passes them off as the stuff of originality.
I reached what I surmize were similar conclusions, although at a much less systematic and mathematically literate level, in the '60's while getting my B.S. in Physics. You might want to take a look at it, GWL. Perhaps you may get to it before me and then I will be able to depend upon you for a critique.
Yeah, I'll take a look. (I probably won't be able to read the entire thing; it looks a bit longish.)
What I find interesting is that we can at least reduce things to a few fundamental physical laws or constants and from there project everything that exists in all its complexity. I gather that these fundamental physical laws and constants must still be of a particular kind. Why of this kind and not another?
As an analogy, if you haven't looked at them, you might want to take a look at the Mandelbrot or Julia sets as explicated via the Kai's Power Tools Julia set explorer that comes with COREL Draw and probably with PhotoShop, or with the free graphics program, The GIMP as one of the included plug-ins. The neat thing about these infinitely complex mathematical sets is that altho there is obviously perceivable order throughout them, the only way that you can predict the value of the next point in the set is by going there, actually doing the calculation. I.e., vast order without any predictability.
I've looked at the sets before.
They remind me of this: http://www.jstor.org/view/00318205/di975051/97p0323q/0
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