My view is that there are a few fundamentally different methods by which people try to investigate reality and conclude something about it, that they hope is true. The produced statement is usually expressed in a natural language, however not always is that necessarily the best way of conveying the truth.
These are science, philosophy, religion and art. Religion is based on faith, while science is based on doubt. For instance, one can religiously believe that his wife will not cheat on him, regardless of temptations, because she loves him, but he will probably not conduct experiments conciously to test that theory. Or, one can religiously believe that his parents always had his best interests in mind, when they made desicions for him. Or that his children will be there for him when he will need them, just as he was there when they needed him. Or that they will contribute to society by doing their jobs, just as much as he did all his life. Doubting such things probably is not a good way of conducting ones life. Philosophy on the other hand is also about second questioning things, like science, but in a less consistent and systematic way, without providing exact answers. The scope of art is to answer what is beautiful, by producing examples of it, so called artefacts.
Let us elaborate a bit the distinction between science and philosophy. If you define negative selection as a process of filtering out members of the original set based on some positive attribute, then it obviously results in a set whose remaining members lack that quality. For example, a company which neglects their employees would soon be left by the most competent ones, the result is a company with a less competency, that has to be dealt with somehow. Or, if honest and competent people avoid to engage in politics, it unavoidably leads to kakistocracy. Another example is digestion, during which useful staff gets absorbed into bloodstream, and remaining feces has to be dumped eventually. Similar process occurred within philosophy, as soon as certain domain became more rigorous and suitable for mathematical description, and started to yield tangible practical and pragmatical results, it was removed from philosophy and established as a scientific discipline. Notable example is physics, defined by Newton as a mathematical philosophy of nature. The fact that organization of separate disciplines within the science is rather artificial, is a digression in the context of this essay. It may have served some purpose in the past, focusing people to certain areas, but today it is mainly not useful, and is often hard to cathegorize problems as single disciplinary ones.
Anyway, nowadays scientists are rarely interested in philosophy, let alone considering themselves to be philosophers, while vice versa case was allegedly described by Feynman with the witty quote “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” But, such a stance although widespread, is not shared by all scientists, and certainly was not predominant in the past. Besides already mentioned Newton, people like Leibniz, Descartes, Russel, Deutsch and many others who wrote philosophical works certainly did or do not share with Feynman the same contempt towards philosophy, and I believe Feynman did not dismiss it all, just the bad part. There are many reasons for that, science requires deep thinking from exceptional individuals, as well as a team effort, in order to achieve breakthroughs. So, nurturing contempt towards the traditional original discipline which tried in the past to accomplish the same thing (explain the world via deep thinking of exceptional individuals), must be counterproductive. As a philosopher would say, right measure of things is what counts most in life of any person: too little of philosophy is as damaging as too much of it. It is one of the rare things I am interested in to hear from the people who do not qualify themselves as professionals in that field, but who contributed significantly elsewhere. Although I am interested in philosophy of Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Alan Turing or John von Neumann, regardless of the fact that philosophy was never their main focus, my interest in works of Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, or Wittgenstein is second to none, regardless of how available are they to me, precisely because I know they offered nothing else but their thinking, that is questionable both in its substance and quality. Even worse than that, although I am interested in philosophy of David Deutsch, I do not appreciate equally Karl Popper, because, the subtle balance of things is the most important thing in life, namely the balance between concrete results of deep abstract thinking expressed precisely in mathematical language on one side (Deutsch), which rare people can produce, and useless abstract thinking on the other (Popper), which everyone sufficiently ambitious and unsufficiently self critical can produce time and time again. The apparent contradiction is that Deutsch highly regards Popper. But not really, it is entirely possible that people who have that exceptional capability to be concrete and precise in their abstract thinking and an opportunity to utilize it to solve problems, find inspiration in the works of philosophers who do not have the same capability. That does not mean that reading the same philosophers would do any practical good to me. As Eric Weiner said in “The Socrates Express”: “Only in a dictionary do the words philosophy and practical appear in proximity.”, or as my parents used to say to me: “Stop philosophizing, and do something useful for a change!”. What I think Weiner thinks (and my parents did not share that opinion) is that science tries to answer exactly less important questions (at least regarding one's personal happiness), while philosophy tries to answer more important questions, although not very exactly, to the extent that one can say it is mostly successful in posing questions, rather than providing any exact answers.
To avoid the appearance that I am interested only in philosophy of people who are fluent in mathematical language, I might recommend the book "How Life Imitates Chess" by my compatriot Garry Kasparov as a very interesting and philosophical one. He may have not contributed to math and science in any way, but he proved he can be very accurate thinker, and that is what matters most to me.
Anyway, getting back to my fruitful analogy between digestion and the process of creation of modern philosophy, one has to notice that bear feces can contain undigested pieces of fruit, which can be life saving food in the wild, ie very useful substance, at least according to survival expert Edward Michael Grylls, AKA Bear Grylls. Epistemology, esthetics and ethics might be such useful undigested pieces of knowledge still placed deeply inside the domain of philosophy, which resist stubbornly to attempts of their scientific processing. Questions like what is an explanation, what is knowledge, is it possible to prove rigorously that certain action was ethical, or beautiful, probably captivated the minds of people who master the mathematical language for a long time, but without great success.
So, that is one reason, that there are topics that are interesting, and are traditionally placed within the area of philosophy, however, the other, more compelling reason to engage in philosophy becomes obvious when one reads for example “The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch, or when one listens to Karl Friston, Chris Fields and Michael Levin’s discussion Is reality real? , and that is the fact that philosophy still precedes science even today, and will always do, when people contemplate novel (scientific) topics that are interesting, and which pose questions to which there are still no scientific answers, proved practically in a laboratory or theoretically using math/logic (otherwise they would be not novel or not interesting). In such circumstances, the only thing that is possible is either not to consider these questions at all, or to philosophize, to chew a problem a little bit before a real digestion starts, there is no third option. But even then, such people remain concrete and solid when they speak abstractly about these things, although it is obvious they have no definitive answers, because the questions are new, or, at least the approach to answering them is new.
I am particularly impressed by Levin, of whom I heard for the first time in Lex Fridman podcast Michael Levin: Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots, and the reason is that his work tackles some of the questions that I regard as the most interesting ones, such as how to treat cancer most efficiently, how morphogenesis works, how exactly evolution of multicellular organisms works, what is the minimal cognitive structure that exists (or that can be constructed), how many intelligent agents are there in a multicellular organism and how information flows within it? He and his associates made some truly remarkable groundbreaking discoveries, such as xenobots, which are artificial life forms constructed out of frog skin and muscle cells, that exhibit surprising behaviour. The other discovery is the role of bioelectrical networks that control cell functions, with emphasis on their universality in various search spaces, which is a really deep idea, that originates from the assumption that neurons only specialized in something that existed in their precursors, and that exists in other types of cells, to a certain extent, namely, the capability to store, process and pass information.
This is challenging once again the central dogma of molecular biology, which basically says that the hereditary relevant information is held by DNA and in its morphogenetical expression it flows from DNA via RNA to proteins, and that the only possible search in morphogenetic space can be therefore done by altering DNA.
Levin shows that morphogenetically relevant information is also held by the mentioned bioelectrical networks, which if perturbed, can change drastically the body plan of an entity. And if the entity gets asexually reproduced, this information becomes hereditary relevant.
Since epigenetics is best defined as the study of changes in organisms brought about by modification of gene expression (turning genes on and off, caused by own behavior or environment), rather than by alteration of the genetic code in the form of DNA, another formulation of the discovery is that epigenetic information is not only stored in a so-called cis memory, local chromatin states that are associated, for example, with DNA methylation or histone modifications, or in trans memory in the concentration of a diffusible factor such as a transcriptional repressor, but also in the pattern of plasma membrane potential across the groups of cells, although it may be the same thing if the electric field of that potential causes changes in cis or trans memory. The exact nature of that relation is somewhat explained to me by reading this article coauthored by Levin: When left does not seem right: epigenetic and bioelectric differences between left- and right-sided breast cancer
>>Bioelectric gradients are considered epigenetic mediators in a broad sense of the word, since they can modify the transcriptome following environmental signals. The flow of ions (inside the tumor and between the tumor and the microenvironment) enables the transmission of membrane potential patterns, which are maintained as information for survival decisions in response to external challenges. Like epigenetics, bioelectric control is reprogrammable, rapid and dynamic, and is driven by physiological states that are not 1:1 mapped to specific genes. Bioelectric states are acquired by ion flux through channels and pumps in the membrane and are transmitted to neighboring cells via gap-junctions. The current flux produces changes in membrane potentials, which in turn generate downstream signaling to regulate different cellular processes, e.g. proliferation, migration, differentiation, or gene expression. Therefore, it is accepted that cells of the same tissue share similar bioelectric states, which is maintained as non-genetic information.<<
Multicellular species which reproduce asexually obviously can retain over generations that information contained in the bioelectrical network, but every species which reproduces sexually, potentially rebuilds that info from scratch, or rather from the info contained elsewhere, most obviously in DNA, at the point when multicellular parents produce a single cellular offspring that is about to divide in a process of morphogenesis, and build its own bioelectrical network, reset to defaults written in DNA. On the other hand, DNA contains just the instruction on how to build proteins, how influential is that information on the process of morphogenesis, could it be that it determines it completely?
This question is similar to the question where it is written how will proteins fold? Well, if chaperons are not involved in that process, then it is determined solely by the (linear) composition of protein according to which it will spontaneously fold in 3D space, unless some external agent does not affect the process. And that primary structure is determined by what's written in DNA, and chaperones are proteins, so, again everything seems to be eventually coded in DNA, including the functioning of chaperones.
Another similar question is where is instinct behaviour written (if not in DNA)? How the sea turtle hatchlings know how to reach the sea water, without any training? Probably the same way as the stomach knows how to process food, by being programmed somehow to do that.
Let us revise the experiment with planaria, and what it exactly tells us. These organisms can reproduce both asexually and sexually, cutting them in half is a rough equivalent of what they do when they reproduce asexually, and they can regenerate the whole organism from each piece, if cut to max cca 275 pieces or maybe more. The experiment reveals that an ectopic organ (for example head where the tail should be), which was in the past artifically produced exclusively by genome editing, intervening in homeobox genes that regulate morphogenesis (afterwards I found out that there are other methods available and used: The cutting-edge cellular therapies aiming to ease America's organ shortage), can be produced by altering the bioelectric network of cells where the wound is created due to a cut, and that such body plan is asexually passed on to future generations. An exemplar of an ectopic organ is a tumor, which is also a disfunctional organ without any purpose (first you have rogue cells, then if they are not eliminated by immune system you may get rogue tissue, and finaly you may even get the tumor), unlike the organs that are only ectopic, but functional. The difference is that tumor is not part of any body plan, while the ectopic organ is a part of a perturbed body plan.
So the question is what can disrupt the altered information in bioelectric network of parent organism and reset it back to factory default for future generations? Sexual reproduction of such organisms with perturbed information in their bioelectric network? Cutting such organism to more than 275 pieces? Nothing? It may be nothing, if they cannot survive cutting to more than some limit number of pieces which otherwise preserves altered information, or if sexual reproduction does not disrupt that information because it is somehow passed bioelectrically from parents to offspring even in that case, or if altered organisms become disabled for sexual reproduction. One thing I am sure is that although information stored in DNA may produce information stored in bioelectric network, the opposite direction of information flow, "hardening bioelectric information back into DNA" is not very likely to exist. To summarize my concern, how many cells can form a bioelectric network that is able to store that vital morphogenetic information, and how that information gets passed to next generation when sexual reproduction occurs? I would say it does not directly, considering the fact that the voltage of membrane potential of one germ cell is just one analog value, while its DNA contains megabytes of digital data, so, the conclusion seems obvious.
Although I started following Levin on youtube, it is not a serious study until you start reading papers that he coauthored, such as this one: Planarian Regeneration as a Model of Anatomical Homeostasis
There I found the similar question considered as an open one, and I do not know if something changed regarding that matter since then:
>> Just how much global information is encoded in physiological circuits, to what resolution a target morphology might be represented in tissue, the size of the smallest unit that processes bioelectric states (single cells, or cell groups), and how much predictive control can be gained over patterning in planaria, are open questions that will require not only technique development but conceptual advances that may need to borrow from neuroscience, control theory, and cybernetics.<<
I noticed that question posed here too: Collective Cell Intelligence & Bioelectricity: Can Your Body Regenerate? , and this is actually the best video interview of Michael Levin on youtube (I watched them almost all), basically because his interlocutor asks the right questions. So I recommend this video to be watched from the start.
Obviously, if Michael Levin does not know that yet, Chat GPT cannot know that either:
Asking Bard the same question a few months later: https://g.co/bard/share/e7e92628c281
I am also impressed by Deutsch’s attempt to explain the explanation, made in his book that I mentioned. First of all, history teaches us that one has to be careful when self referencing is involved. If one does not intuitively already know what it means to explain, how can one apply that verb to explanation itself? Well, maybe we can rely on that intuition in order to provide the logical understanding of explanation. So, one characterization of it is that it is information passed from explainer to explainee which includes specification of multiple steps that have to be followed precisely in order to perform certain task. Each step on its own should be understandable by explainee what it does, or at least followable how it is supposed to be done, but the magic is in what they do when performed in concert, otherwise the explanation is not needed if that is already known and obvious to explainee. Like, a single instruction in whatever language does not count as an explanation, while a procedure that contains multiple instructions, does.
The other characterization is that it always involves discovering new, unseen facts, that account for old, seen, but yet unexplained facts, like in a conjurer show where it is usually easy to predict the outcome of the trick, but not as well how it is done (because you do not see everything that magician does), which is Deutsch’s analogy by which he emphasized the fact that prediction is not the same action as explanation. For example, genotype was at a certain point in history a new fact that explained phenotype (obviously not entirely). Or, electromagnetic wave theory by Maxwell, confirmed by multiple experiments by Hertz, Zeeman, Stark, and others, explained the nature of light as a phenomenon related to electromagnetism, and that word by itself implies that electrical and magnetic phenomena are related, which was first discovered by Oersted. Of course that Maxwell's equations describe and predict things, that is, they explain the first mentioned relation precisely.
Obviously not every information counts as an explanation, by itself, and although insightful, Deutsch’s analogy is not perfect, because not always is someone actively hiding facts from us, but we still have to discover them. Now, if we accept mathematical proofs as exemplars of explanatory proofs, then they share both characteristics, they include both multiple steps (otherwise the proof is rather trivial), and they require discovering some hidden facts that help to prove the main claim. Let us consider a first theorem that comes into mind, and let us examine a first proof we can find on the internet, for example this one: https://www.math-only-math.com/proof-of-pythagorean-theorem.html
In the context of this proof, the hidden fact is that we can prolong catheti of the original right triangle, in such a way that we get a square WXYZ, which contains four original triangles, plus the inner square whose side is a hypotenuse of the original triangle. To achieve that, the amount of prolongation of each cathetus has to be equal to the length of the other cathetus, which by itself might require another shorter explanation. Accepting that, in a couple of operations the main statement of Pythagoras theorem is derived from there. Hence, that is one explanation why the squares of catheti combined are equal to the square of hypothenuse, which was not obvious at the beginning of the proof, and thus required an explanation. The very similar proof is given here by N.J.Wildberger Pythagora's theorem Math History which I mention because of a nice characterization of explanation as "a deduction from simpler things", in its final instance from axioms.
We can contrast this with an example of zero knowledge proof, explained here Computer Scientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty , which is a proof that proves that certain statement is true (for example that someone is able of performing certain task), without passing any knowledge other than that to a person who verifies the proof, ie without explaining how the task is performed. One example of such a proof is the algorithm that explains how to prove to a colorblind person that two objects otherwise identical can be distinguished by color. After receiving the proof, colorblind person will not get any more capable to distinguish the objects on his/her own, but he/she will be sure that the person who presented the proof can do that.
The procedure is very simple, colorblind person is allowed to switch or not to switch the objects, without allowing anyone to see what he/she did. Person who is not colorblind can always tell correctly if the switch was done or not. After a certain number of repetitions, it should be obvious to a colorblind person that the other person is not guessing, ie that objects are in deed distinguishable.
Such reasoning is kinda my contribution to development of epistemology, as an exact discipline.
At the end, I will describe one final thing I am impressed with. Everyone understands intutively what is information and how it can be stored. For example, I used to use shoe laces as an information medium, because, they have at least two states, knotted and straight, which are reversible and permutable, and when I wanted not to forget something that I have to do before I leave my apartment, I was using that capability of a shoe lace to serve as an information medium, as a reminder. It was before I purchased a tablet, which is much more sophisticated information medium, with alarming capabilities. What never occured to me is to build an exact constructor theory of information, based on such intuition and on knowledge of quantum physics, such as Deutsch did, probably because the other ingredient which I am missing is much more important, that and being fluent in mathematical language.
Actually, there is more than meets the eye at glance here, first, the fact that permutability and reversibility of states are connected due to Cayley's Theorem, and second fact that this feature only makes a shoe lace a computation medium, the further feature required (and satisfied) for it to be an information medium is readability and copyability of its states, that is, it requires a constructor that is able to copy its state into another such medium without disrupting the original state of the original medium (namely a person able to see the state of one shoe lace and set another uninitialized shoe lace to the same state as the first one).
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