Evolutionary influence of the absent

Reintegration of a Remaindered World (Part #7)

An extremely valuable perspective on the argument here is offered by the recent work of Terrence W. Deacon (Incomplete Nature: how mind emerged from matter, 2011). His point is succinctly made by the distinct titles of his summary of his revolutionary new theory in its print and online variants (The importance of what is missing, New Scientist, 26 November 2011; Consciousness is a matter of constraint, New Scientist, 30 November 2011). His theory follows naturally from his previous book (The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution of language and the brain, 1997). Appropriately, like May, Deacon has used the above verse from the Tao Te Ching as a focus for his reflections (Emergence: The Hole at the Wheel's Hub, 2006).

His most recent work is presented as follows [emphasis added]:

As physicists work toward completing a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The "Theory of Everything" that appears to be emerging includes everything but us: the feelings, meanings, consciousness, and purposes that make us (and many of our animal cousins) what we are. These most immediate and incontrovertible phenomena are left unexplained by the natural sciences because they lack the physical properties-such as mass, momentum, charge, and location-that are assumed to be necessary for something to have physical consequences in the world. This is an unacceptable omission. We need a "theory of everything" that does not leave it absurd that we exist.

Incomplete Nature begins by accepting what other theories try to deny: that, although mental contents do indeed lack these material-energetic properties, they are still entirely products of physical processes and have an unprecedented kind of causal power that is unlike anything that physics and chemistry alone have so far explained. Paradoxically, it is the intrinsic incompleteness of these semiotic and teleological phenomena that is the source of their unique form of physical influence in the world.

Incomplete Nature meticulously traces the emergence of this special causal capacity from simple thermodynamics to self-organizing dynamics to living and mental dynamics, and it demonstrates how specific absences (or constraints) play the critical causal role in the organization of physical processes that generate these properties. The book's radically challenging conclusion is that we are made of these specific absences-such stuff as dreams are made on -- and that what is not immediately present can be as physically potent as that which is. It offers a figure/background shift that shows how even meanings and values can be understood as legitimate components

Deacon's argument is strongly grounded in a discussion of theories of information (What's Missing from Theories of Information? 2010) in which he argues:

Theories of information that attempt to sort out problems concerning the status and efficacy of its content - as it is understood in thoughts, meanings, signs, intended actions, and so forth -- have so far failed to resolve a crucial dilemma: how what is represented could possibly have physical consequences. The legacy of this has been played out in various skeptical paradigms that either conclude that content is fundamentally relativistic, holistic, and ungrounded or else is merely epiphenomenal and ineffectual except for its arbitrary correlation with the physical properties of the signs that convey it.

The core of his argument is that

... the apparent conundrums that make this notion controversial arise because we begin our deliberations with the fallacious assumption that in order for the content of information to have any genuine real world consequences it must have substantial properties, and so must correspond to something present in some form or other. By contrast, I will show that this assumption is invalid and is the ultimate origin of these absurd skeptical consequences. The crucial property of content that must be taken into account is exactly the opposite: its absence. But how is it possible for a specific absence to have definite causal consequences? [emphasis added]

Deacon's New Scientist summary focuses on the nature and emergence of consciousness in the light of the evident failure of cognitive neuroscience to offer adequate explanations. He argues:

... have we been looking in the wrong places for clues? ... brain researchers and philosophers of mind have focused on brain processes, neural computations and their correspondences with the material world. But what if we should be focusing on what is not there instead? ... I believe that in order to overcome this stalemate we need to pay more attention to what is intrinsically not present in everything -- from life's functions and meanings to mind's experiences and values. [emphasis added]

Deacon contrasts this approach with any conventional understandings of mysticism by relating it to "constraint" as recognized in the field of statistical mechanics, namely the degrees of freedom not realized in a dynamical process. As Deacon expresses it -- in terms which recalls a theme of the aesthetic argument of May:

Constraints reflect what is not there, and the more constrained something is, the more symmetric and regular it is

He addresses the challenge of whether missing attributes disassociate his theory from empirical science by comparing two fundamental theories: Darwin's theory of natural selection and Shannon's theory of information. He argues:

Yet despite their familiarity and importance, few recognise the powerful insight unifying these theories: both depend on attending to the relationship between what is present and what is specifically absent.... In both cases, what is not present (but could have been) is as important as what is present, whether for determining functional appropriateness or information.

Of relevance to the discussion below regarding zero, Deacon argues:

Our current scientific predicament reminds me of Zeno's paradox... No matter how many details we discover about brains or the quantum fluctuations that might (or not) be taking place inside synapses, we get no closer to a physical account of conscious experience. Zeno's paradox was solved when mathematicians figured out how to calculate with values that are virtually zero -- a trick that ultimately became the basis for calculus. So perhaps this paradox of the mind will only dissolve when we learn how nature operates with the physical analogues of zero -- the functions, meanings and experiences by which something virtual may become actual. [emphasis added]

Might the current paradoxes and dilemmas of governance be resolved with an analogous focus on nothingness?

To current developments in complexity theory, non-linear dynamics and information theory, Deacon adds what he terms a "game-changing twist" in the form of "emergent dynamics". This:

... shows how a process I call "teleodynamics" forms a bridge from matter to what matters... To explain teleodynamic (end-directed) processes, such as those found in organisms or human minds, we need to step beyond the way complexity and information theories use "constraint", to explain how constraints can become their own causes, how constraints can become capable of maintaining and reproducing themselves. This is essentially what life accomplishes. But to do this, life requires more than self-organisation and more than molecular self-replication: it must persistently recreate its capacity for self-creation.

In the case of living organisms such self-organizing teleodynamic systems have a key property. Deacon terms this the absential, namely a phenomenon "whose existence is determined with respect to an... absence.". Such "absentials" include beliefs and norms to which people subscribe. Mind is then to be understood not as having emerged from matter but rather from the constraints on matter. It is these constraints which then shaped the emergence of "higher level" properties -- mind and thought -- that are not susceptible to reduction. Of special interest is the manner in which this understanding is not dependent on a matter-centered approach to consciousness.

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Evolutionary influence of the absent