#JuarreroBook Ch. 7 Part 2

The remainder of h. 7 focusses on “catalytic closure” – closed loops of process or reaction that are self-reinforcing and hence self-sustaining mechanisms.

J’s first example is the Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) chemical reaction, which involves an autocatalytic step (where the same catalyst is both an input and an output embedded in a loopy 4 step hyper-cycle, whereby the product of the reaction in the last step catalyses the first. Because this recursive process self-renews the “hypercycle itself becomes an enabling constraint that induces its own production and maintenance.”

As such, it is ‘self causing’. Following Montevil, Ruiz-Mirazo, Moreno, and Mossio, J maintains that this kind of autocatalytic system “still depends on externally set (context independent) boundary conditions over which they have minimal influence”. Their constraint regimes are “not yet self-constraining”.

This is achieved through “closure of constraint” which gives rise to life (and with it self-determination and autonomy).

“As articulated by Montevil, Mossio, and Moreno, the word closure in closure of constraint refers to a specific mode of dependence between constraints whereby recursion in the chain [of constraints] “folds up and establishes mutual dependence” (Moreno and Mossio 2015, 20) among constraints. To wit: Formally, “a set of constraints C realizes closure if, for each constraint Ci belonging to C: Ci depends directly on at least one other constraint of C (Ci is dependent); There is at least one other constraint Cj belonging to C which depends on Ci (Ci is enabling).” (Moreno and Mossio 2015, 20)”

(comment on Context Changes Everything, p. 102)

#JuarreroBook Ch. 7 “Catalysts, Loops, and Closure” Part I

This chapter (finally) moves the book to more interesting examples: systems and processes exhibiting “self-organizing self-cause” and richer mereological (part-whole) relationships.

The example is catalysts and the way they function as context-dependent constraints (reminder: the constraints that create dependencies).

“Catalysts speed up chemical reactions by lowering barriers to energy flow and thereby facilitating irreversible interactions without being consumed themselves.”

as such, they illustrate the general property of context-dependent constraints whereby they “weave together interlocking dependencies without directly injecting energy”

nb “Folding-back-on-themselves processes such as feedforward and feedback loops are also catalysts. Iteration and recursion are two such examples”

“In recursive iteration, full sequences are fed back on themselves. This looping causes processes and sequences to become self-referential; recursive iteration blurs the distinction between parts and wholes.”

“Iteration and recursion feed information from the context back into the next sequence as newly initialized conditions and constraints. Such looped and contextually constraining and constrained interactions effectively import spatial and temporal information about the world into those processes and their properties. As a result, the processes become interdependent and covary with events in the world.”

One example J. lists is backpropagation and the way weight modification in neural networks leads the system to attune to meaningful real-world distinctions

“It is important to note that recursion and iteration are possible only after temporal dependencies (straightforward sequences) have already formed in response to enabling, context-dependent constraints. That is, recursion and iteration are not possible without previously constrained ordinal relations. That said, however, when the last step of a sequence feeds back to become the first in the next iteration, the looping creates self- referential configurations and nonlinearities. Nonlinearities generate multiscale and multidimensional interdependencies.”

Iteration and recursion are “hybrid constraints”: “Both take systems farther from equilibrium ..so.. qualify as context-independent constraints. But by feeding real world information back into the process, iteration and recursion also weave context, history, and the subject’s own actions into a more encompassing coordination dynamic—the spatiotemporally more extended nterdependencies of a new context. In this role, ..they..function as context-dependent constraints. Once recursive or iterative loops close thanks to integration by enabling constraints, real-world spatiotemporal information becomes embodied in a qualitatively distinct set of interlocking relations with novel properties"

one example discussed later in the chapter is the Plaut & Shallice (1991), Hinton & Shallice (1991) connectionist model of deep dyslexia

(comment on Context Changes Everything, p. 90)

#JuarreroBook Ch. 6, final part

We’ve been on context-dependent constraints- constraints that create non-independence. There are two types:

“Some context-dependent constraints are enabling constraints; others are constitutive (Mossio 2013; Moreno and Mossio 2016) or governing. Enabling constraints (Pattee 1973; Salthe 1985; Juarrero 1999) are context-dependent constraints that irreversibly link and couple previously separate and entities at the same scale as the constraints.”

These enabling constraints generate “constitutive constraint architectures of complex interdependencies” which in turn do “double duty as governing constraints”.

“Governing constraints ..exert control on their components and behavior in cascades of mutual constraint satisfaction” and “tie together individual and population levels dynamics, parts, and wholes”, ..stabilizing “the possibility space” within which the behavior of individual parts “must remain for the constrained global pattern to persist.”

Basically, “governing constraints of context-dependent coherent dynamics generated by enabling constraints keep mutually dependent relations coherent. They regulate component processes top down such that the overarching dynamic remains metastable. Collective properties of constitutive constraint regimes do so by raising or lowering barriers to energy flow, adjusting timing and activation strength, as conditions warrant.”

(comment on Context Changes Everything, p. 86)

#JuarreroBook Ch. 6 Interlude: Game of Life

We’ve had problems seeing what we're meant to be seeing in the book's examples. This week we drifted off to one of our own, Conway's Game of Life. I'd like to continue a bit with that. GoL is fascinating, and helpful in contexts such as ours, see web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DCDRealPatterns1991.pdf

So can it give us informative examples of constraints? Here 3 examples for discussion

these seem possible examples of 'context' and 'constraint' to me. The way I'm seeing these is as external to the fundamental entities (squares) and their interaction rules. None of that has changed. But tweaking the temporal synchrony of updating, or having 'gaps' in the topology, alters the possibility space/the behaviour of GoL

So how would we describe these? (in what way) are they 'real'? are they causal or causal like? what explanatory role do they play? are they context dependent or independent constraints?

[discussion on GoL started here: social.sunet.se/@dcm/112372763988712787]

(comment on Context Changes Everything, p. 79)

#JuarreroBook Chapter 6 Part 2

so, moving on... The examples were meant to illustrate the notion of context dependent constraint, specifically context dependent enabling constraints:

"Enabling constraints (Pattee 1973; Salthe 1985; Juarrero 1999) are context-dependent constraints that irreversibly link and couple previously separate and entities at the same scale as the constraints."

e.g., "The rolling columns of fluid that constitute a Bénard cell are nothing other than interdependent, coherent dynamics generated by enabling constraints"

such " coordinated and coherent dynamics have emergent proper-ties their components severally do not, not least of which is their capacity to affect the properties and behaviors of those components that make them up. Phase locking, resonance, synchronization, and entrainment are emergent properties of coherently organized interdependent dynamics.Enabling context-dependent constraints are therefore constraints that make the probability of one event conditional upon another. "

"They irreversibly generate emergent and coherent, metastable patterns of matter and energy flow"

these patterns are coherent in the sense that the "interlocking and covarying interdependencies brought about by enabling constraints hold systemwide patterns of mutual dependence together across spatiotemporal scales."

"Complex systems ranging from convection cells to economic and ecosystems form and function in this fashion" (e.g., the pendulums and metronomes swing as one; the convection cells rotate as a unit)

These "complex entities formed by context-dependent constraints under conditions of nonequi-librium are coherent and persistent. Those interdependencies satisfy the second law: energy, matter, and information flow with greater ease as coordinated interdependencies than separately."

and "such coherent structures and dynamics constitute real and novel, interactional types of entities."

"Interactional types .... are internally consistent, multiscale,mutual dependencies brought about by enabling constraints operating against a stable background set by context-independent constraints ... They are measured with conditional probabilities..and ... they are multiply realizable in distinct tokens"

"They are the outcomes of multiple constraint satisfaction, a process of continuous adjustment of rates, weights, timing, and so on that satisfies as many constraints as possible."

hence "constraint satisfaction is an important form of “causality” that has been systematically ignored by modern science and philosophy. It can explain the generation and persistence of coherence."

and "in response to multiple constraint satisfaction, components acquire new relational roles and properties" that "reflect a real reconfigured probability distribution of events in possibility space."

Such enabling constraints include temporal enabling constraints - "contextual constraints that turn entities interdependent in time"

"Complex systems are therefore historical, not merely temporal; they embody temporal constraints in their very logic. They carry their history on their backs, as it were"

"Spatial and temporal constraints.. produce indexical ordering." that is

"First, second, and third, or before and after, are emergent ordinal properties of points in phase space structured by temporally organized constraints. Significantly, this distinction is possible only because individual steps in temporally constrained sequences are not independent of each other. The burst of entropy with which irreversible phase transitions are paid marks a qualitative transition to a now temporally organized phase space. This new space represents a novel four-dimensional landscape,a new distinct constraint regime organized by time as well as space."

"Long- lasting temporal constraints and the long-range temporal dependencies they induce also underpin persistent coherence, the temporal counterpart of stability"

Finally, ...." examples make clear that enabling constraints generate coherent dynamics whose boundaries need not be tangible, material structures"

"When enabling constraints weave together new coherences, autocorrelated dynamics are“lifted”—differentiated—from the contextual backdrop from which they emerged. Hurricanes, for example, are coherent structures sufficientlydistinct from their environment to be visible from space This notion of identity is quite different from the inherent essential traits of Aristotelian and Cartesian substances. It is grounded in persistent, extended, and dynamic interdependencies among individual entities; between entities and processes on the one hand and conditions in the environment on the other; and between all of these and the past."

(comment on Context Changes Everything, p. 79)

#JuarreroBook Chapter 6 Part 1 There's a lot in this chapter, and some of it I find hard to understand. So I'd like to split things up. We are now on context dependent constraints, the nature of which is to "take conditions away from independence"

The ch. outlines "three examples of the emergence of long-range correlations generated in virtue of context-dependent constraints. The first serves as a metaphor of phase transitions. The second illustrates inter-dependent dynamics among oscillators. The third is the textbook case of self- organizing, nonlinear, and far from equilibrium processes in the natural world. All three show how context-dependent constraints, operating against a backdrop established by context-independent constraints, weave global forms of order".

The examples are: 1. the phase transition of a random graph with sufficiently many links that it moves to connectedness

What do people make of these examples? do they involve "transitions to a new possibility space" (pg. 70)? Do the constraints seem 'real' (metaphysically)? Is 'constraint satisfaction' as seen in these examples "an important form of "causality" that has been systematically ignored by modern science and philosophy" (pg. 72) ?

(comment on Context Changes Everything, p. 72)

Ch. 5 #JuarreroBook “Why context matters- an Interlude”

To illustrate the role of context ch. 5 uses C-19 and other infectious diseases to introduce widely used notions in epidemiology: direct, indirect, and total effects of an intervention such as vaccination.

These seem to be recast as ‘effects of context’ (e.g., ‘indirect effects of context dependent phenomena’).

J notes (p. 66) “Indirect and total effects are not anomalies; they are real, but top-down, mereological effects of a transformed collective dynamic (marked by a different periodicity and different parameters). It all depends on the role context plays in some disease dynamics.

and “independence or dependence on context is itself dependent on the scale and periodicity of that embedding context. It might be necessary to look further back in time and/or zoom out spatially to reveal the scale at which context dependence kicks in or washes out. Independence or dependence on contextual constraints at each of those scales and time frames, however, is real. Context dependence is not subj., it is objective, but rather relational- and induced by constraints” (pg. 60)

(comment on Context Changes Everything, p. 66)