Two Challenges

 I continued to follow Michael Levin on youtube, Michael Levin & Matthew Segall discuss Meaning, Matter & Memory in Developmental Biology and started to notice a rather strange comment repeated by that brilliant scientist. When people ask "Where is the information that controlls morphogenesis written?", he adds in that context the following question "Where does the shape of the bell curve of normal distribution that emerges in stochastic processes (like when dropping marbles into Galton board) come from?", trying to say that not everything has to be written somewhere, "we get some things for free from mathematics". And this is true, we get so many things like that, that is a whole point of applied mathematics, for example a trajectory of a stone thrown by hand is a parabola, it may degenerate to a line if we throw it vertically, and there is always a slight air resistance, but if we disregard that, we can ask the same question: "Where does parabola come from?". Constant gravitational acceleration and calculus answers that question, however, this is not similar to the question "Where it is written that all vertebrates starting from early amphibians (that excludes fishes) are tetrapods with pentadactyl limbs, ie have up to two pairs of extremities, and up to five digits on each of them?". These numbers are hard facts (although one or both pairs may be degenerated, there is no case of three pairs of limbs, and although all five digits may be degenerated, so that an animal with a normally developed body according to a body plan for its species actually has no digits, there is no extant example of those who developed true sixth digit), in the sense that information is as hard physical fact as matter, energy, space, time, etc, and for it to exist, it must be written somewhere, and there must be a way for it to be read somehow, to cause the physical impact in the world. Hence, the question that intrigues people is the most natural and interesting question for anyone who is interested in morphogenesis, unlike those two about bell curve and parabola, which are rather artificial (metaphysical) questions, that only a professional thinker would consider worth of considering. Because, they can be reformulated like this: "Where are physical laws written?", to which a reasonable person can only respond: "In mathematics.". That is not the case with vertebrates, the shape of their body is not (only) the direct consequence of physical laws, it is also a result of the information written in genetic and epigenetic medium, that instructs cells to produce that shape. Hence, the information that is written into a chemical composition of DNA, gets transcripted to RNA, translated to proteins, and then when we have functional proteins, then some other information - we do not know from where exactly - gets transwritten to electric gradients of cell membrane networks by functioning of transmembrane proteins (ion transporters), and if I understand Levin properly, one can intervene into that information and change the body plan of an entity, but without that intervention, the transmembrane proteins will always behave in the same way, and create the same, default body plan designated for its species. That does not necessarily mean they control that process, they are probably just executors that receive signals from elsewhere. So, the first question is how does that discovery change our understanding of causality with respect to central dogma of molecular biology? Is it just a new stage in the flow of information from one medium to the other? I mean, although it may be easier to locate certain information in one medium, than in the other, and make a change where it is more convenient, does that substantially change our knowledge about where the original information is stored? Although, my description of the flow was simplistic, I mentioned just one cycle, while there are actually many feedback loops, that involve epigenetic influences, but what is the source of information in the whole process? Instead of indulging in philosophy that much by following him on youtube, I wish I could learn more about the real stuff that he discovers with his team of researchers (and less with his team of philosophers). 

Because, as I said in one of my previous essays, too much of philosophy can be as bad as too little of it. On that note, I have found a video of a philosopher that I quite liked, this one: Russell's Paradox - a simple explanation of a profound problem . But, since my ethical code does not allow me to flatter anyone, and forces me to critically question everyone, especially the people who I admire, I immediately started to search for the video from the same author, that would allow me to challenge his views, and I did not have to search for a long time. There is a video in which he explains what he thinks philosophy is, this one: What is Philosophy? , and I have to say that I see there some similarities with my view about the same question, described here On Methods of Dealing with Truth , we both define philosophy in terms of its relation to science and mathematics. He presents a decision procedure that serves to qualify questions into three legitimate categories, excluding from them subjective questions, as a separate category that does not try to assert any objective truth, and hence is not a subject of our interest. So, besides those, there are those that “can be answered with observation/experimenation”, which is his definition of empirical question, then, out of those others, non empirical questions, there are those which “can be answered by proof from stipulated definitions and axioms”, that is his definition of mathematical questions, and all others are philosophical questions, according to him. 

One weakness of his definition is that it includes a question such as “Can more than one angel be in the same place at the same time?” as a legitimate philosophical question. By the way, considering the fact that St. Thomas Aquinas discussed it in his “Summa Theologica” Question 52, and he is considered an influential medieval philosopher, such questions may be considered philosophical by that logic too, that whatever is considered philosophical by established philosophers, actually is philosophical. Although, that argument from authority was never implied by Kaplan. He might have been just a bit careless, not to exclude such nonsensical (metaphysical?) questions from his definition in the first place, together with subjective ones. On the other hand, he explicitely included the question “Does God exist?”, which might be considered equally nonsensical by some hardcore atheists, not by me, I am agnostic regarding that matter, and in my classification this is a religious question, but according to Kaplan it is a philosophical question, or rather the philosophical question, that he mentions as a first exemplar. So, it is actually hard to tell what he thinks about locality of angels, and does that belong to philosophy or not. Maybe it is a matter of preference, maybe in his view there is a room for metaphysics in philosophy, because he considers it a non digested piece of fruit, and I do not, and therefore in my view there is no room for such things. 

For a while, I was regularly attending café philo in Zagreb, and when I said that my opinion about metaphysics during one session, the other participants hinted they consider me a STEM fachidiot, who does not care about soul and spirit things. So I asked what is the difference between the two, and some older guy and a younger woman started to discuss the question enthusiastically, confirming every now and then that they agree with everything the other says, and after some fifteen minutes of talking, pretty much nonsense in my opinion, they concluded that their only disagreement is that what one thinks is a spirit, the other one thinks is a soul, and vice versa, and they seemed very pleased with their discussion, showing off their great intelect and spiritualism. If their only problem was naming mismatch, that would be great for them, but their definitions of both notions were so vague and arbitrary, and that cemented my opinion on that subject, forever.

But, let us get back to Kaplan's video, there are worse things than just that, in his First Lecture of the Semester. There is an interesting question (potentially related to God and angels) that he mentioned, and qualified as philosophical: “Does my mind continue to exist after my bodily death?”, the problem is he can dedicate his whole life to answering that question, and deploy all his skills of clear thinking and rational arguments, developed due to his every day philosophical practice, and he can include into the project all of his colleagues all over the world, who are also good at clear and rational thinking, and at passing GMAT, and they will not manage to answer it, neither that question, nor does God exist. They will not be able to answer it better than everyone can answer it for itself and to itself, after only a few seconds of thought, for example my answer: "From an empirical point of view, noone's mind continues to exist after bodily death of that person, because there is no manifestation of that mind observable to other living persons. But you can believe the opposite is true, that your mind will then be able to operate on its own, unnoticed by living persons, able to communicate with other such minds, and with God, and you will find out what is true when you die. Or you won't, because you need your mind to find out anything, and if it does not continue to exist after you die, than you will not be able to find out that too. Also, you can ask the same question about unconsciousness caused by anesthesia, or coma, out of which I have experienced only the former one, on a few occasions, and from my empirical point of view, my mind did not exist during these periods, although it was correctly restored afterwards. It was totally suspended, like during the sleep when you do not dream, or maybe even more. That is why I can imagine it can disappear forever when I die, just as it appeared out of nowhere at a certain point in my early childhood, and my mind is not that great that it would be a big loss if it one day disappears forever, I was always obsessed by STEM and hated metaphysics, so maybe that would be justice, plus, I am pretty much convinced my mind needs my body to be alive to produce it, because mind is a physical phenomenon, it gets affected by physical impacts, like anesthesia, but I cannot be sure it is entirely and only that. I cannot be sure that death, sleeping without dreaming, and unconsciousness caused by anesthesia are equivalent states with respect to absence of mind (they are obviously not equivalent with respect to its restorability), or if mind continues to exist in some metaphysical space after bodily death, because whoever went there and experienced death cannot tell me how it is, and those who went near, tell the different story from what I expect is true, and similar to that what is traditionally taught in pretty much any mainstream religion. That however may be a hallucination, similar to that caused by drugs, but caused by dying, accepted by religious thinkers as truth, but, hallucination is yet another state of mind I have never experienced, so, I must admit I am clueless about many things related to my mind. And this question is not entirely non empirical, although it is very misterious. Finally, an argument (just a hint in that direction, not any kind of proof) in favour of afterlife is terminal lucidity, of which I heard for the first time from my mother, when I was six. My grandfather had dementia senilis, and his mind appeared severly degraded at first and then completely absent for a year or two, he did not recognize her, let alone me, or anyone else. At the end, he was not able to speak, and yet, on the day he died, she claimed she saw in his eyes he was suddenly completely lucid. I cannot explain it, but I am certain she was right.”

I said there is a similarity in the approach to answering the question “What is philosophy?”, between Kaplan and me, now let me stress a difference. To me, science impacts philosophy in two opposite ways. First way is digestive, by extracting exact topics (those that can be described by using math) from it, making its remains a less desirable subject. The other is generative, by adding new topics to philosophy, in the form of new scientific questions, that at the moment have no scientific answers, so that basically the only thing possible is to philosophize about them. 

So, I think the nature of relation between the three (science, math, philosophy) is more complex than Kaplan assumes, and his definition of philosophy appears to me a little bit too simplistic. He never asked himself how come empirical questions are not philosophical questions at the same time, was it always so? Or, is it not a fact that some important philosophers pretended that they can build their theories like mathematicians do, via axioms, definitions and rigorous proofs, the only difference was that they were not that successful?