Category Archives: Probability

THE OKSIMO CASE as SUBJECT FOR PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. Part 5. Oksimo as Theory?

eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 24.March – 24.March 2021
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

This text is part of a philosophy of science  analysis of the case of the  oksimo software (oksimo.com). A specification of the oksimo software from an engineering point of view can be found in four consecutive  posts dedicated to the HMI-Analysis for  this software.

DERIVATION

In formal logic exists the concept of logical derivation ‘⊢’ written as

EX e

saying that one can get the expression e out of the set of expressions E by applying the rules X.

In the oksimo case we have sets of expressions ES to represent either a given starting state S or to represent as EV a given vision V. Furthermore  we have change rules X operating on sets of expressions and we can derive sequences of states of expressions <E1, E2, …, En> by applying the change rules X with the aid of a simulator Σ onto these expressions written as

ESΣ,X <E1, E2, …, En>

Thus given an initial set of expressions ES one can derive a whole sequence of expression sets Ei by applying the change rules.

While all individual expressions of the start set ES are by assumption classified as true it holds for the derived sets of expressions Ei  that these expressions are correct with regard to the used change rules X but whether these sets of expressions are also true with regard to a given  situation Si considered as a possible future state Sfuti has to be proved separately! The reason for this unclear status results from the fact that the change rules X represent changes which the authoring experts consider as possible changes which they want to apply but they cannot guarantee the empirical validity for all upcoming times   only by thinking. This implicit uncertainty can be handled a little bit with the probability factor π of an individual change rule. The different degrees of certainty in the application of a change rule can give an approximation of this uncertainty. Thus as longer the chain of derivations is becoming as lower the assumed probability will develop.

SIMPLE OKSIMO THEORY [TOKSIMO]

Thus if we have some human actors Ahum, an environment ENV, some starting situation S as part of the environment ENV, a first set of expressions ES representing only true expressions with regard to the starting situation S, a set of elaborated change rules X, and a simulator Σ then one can  define a simple  oksimo-like theory Toksimo as follows:

TOKSIMO(x) iff x = <ENV, S, Ahum, ES, X, Σ, ⊢Σ,X, speakL(), makedecidable()>

The human actors can describe a given situation S as part of an environment ENV as a set of expressions ES which can be proved with makedecidable() as true. By defining a set of change rules X and a simulator Σ one can define  a formal derivation relation Σ,X which allows the derivation of a sequence of sets of expressions <E1, E2, …, En> written as

EST,Σ,X <E1, E2, …, En>

While the truth of the first set of expressions ES has been proved in the beginning, the truth of the derived sets of expressions has to be shown explicitly for each set Ei separately. Given is only the formal correctness of the derived expressions according to the change rules X and the working of the simulator.

VALIDADED SIMPLE OKSIMO THEORY [TOKSIMO.V]

One can extend the simple oksimo theory TOKSIMO to a biased  oksimo theory TOKSIMO.V if one includes in the theory a set of vision expressions EV. Vision expressions can describe a possible situation in the future Sfut which is declared as a goal to be reached. With a given vision document EV the simulator can check for every new derived set of expressions Ei to which degree the individual expressions e of the set of vision expressions EV are already reached.

FROM THEORY TO ENGINEERING

But one has to keep in mind that the purely formal achievement of a given vision document EV does not imply that the corresponding situation Sfut    is a real situation.  The corresponding situation Sfut  is first of all only an idea in the mind of the experts.  To transfer this idea into the real environment as a real situation is a process on its own known as engineering.

 

HMI Analysis for the CM:MI paradigm. Part 2. Problem and Vision

Integrating Engineering and the Human Factor (info@uffmm.org)
eJournal uffmm.org ISSN 2567-6458, February 27-March 16, 2021,
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Last change: March 16, 2021 (minor corrections)

HISTORY

As described in the uffmm eJournal  the wider context of this software project is an integrated  engineering theory called Distributed Actor-Actor Interaction [DAAI] further extended to the Collective Man-Machine Intelligence [CM:MI] paradigm.  This document is part of the Case Studies section.

HMI ANALYSIS, Part 2: Problem & Vision

Context

This text is preceded by the following texts:

Introduction

Before one starts the HMI analysis  some stakeholder  — in our case are the users stakeholder as well as  users in one role —  have to present some given situation — classifiable as a ‘problem’ — to depart from and a vision as the envisioned goal to be realized.

Here we give a short description of the problem for the CM:MI paradigm and the vision, what should be gained.

Problem: Mankind on the Planet Earth

In this project  the mankind  on the planet earth is  understood as the primary problem. ‘Mankind’ is seen here  as the  life form called homo sapiens. Based on the findings of biological evolution one can state that the homo sapiens has — besides many other wonderful capabilities — at least two extraordinary capabilities:

Outside to Inside

The whole body with the brain is  able to convert continuously body-external  events into internal, neural events. And  the brain inside the body receives many events inside the body as external events too. Thus in the brain we can observe a mixup of body-external (outside 1) and body-internal events (outside 2), realized as set of billions of neural processes, highly interrelated.  Most of these neural processes are unconscious, a small part is conscious. Nevertheless  these unconscious and conscious events are  neurally interrelated. This overall conversion from outside 1 and outside 2 into neural processes  can be seen as a mapping. As we know today from biology, psychology and brain sciences this mapping is not a 1-1 mapping. The brain does all the time a kind of filtering — mostly unconscious — sorting out only those events which are judged by the brain to be important. Furthermore the brain is time-slicing all its sensory inputs, storing these time-slices (called ‘memories’), whereby these time-slices again are no 1-1 copies. The storing of time-sclices is a complex (unconscious) process with many kinds of operations like structuring, associating, abstracting, evaluating, and more. From this one can deduce that the content of an individual brain and the surrounding reality of the own body as well as the world outside the own body can be highly different. All kinds of perceived and stored neural events which can be or can become conscious are  here called conscious cognitive substrates or cognitive objects.

Inside to Outside (to Inside)

Generally it is known that the homo sapiens can produce with its body events which have some impact on the world outside the body.  One kind of such events is the production of all kinds of movements, including gestures, running, grasping with hands, painting, writing as well as sounds by his voice. What is of special interest here are forms of communications between different humans, and even more specially those communications enabled by the spoken sounds of a language as well as the written signs of a language. Spoken sounds as well as written signs are here called expressions associated with a known language. Expressions as such have no meaning (A non-speaker of a language L can hear or see expressions of the language L but he/she/x  never will understand anything). But as everyday experience shows nearly every child  starts very soon to learn which kinds of expressions belong to a language and with what kinds of shared experiences they can be associated. This learning is related to many complex neural processes which map expressions internally onto — conscious and unconscious — cognitive objects (including expressions!). This mapping builds up an internal  meaning function from expressions into cognitive objects and vice versa. Because expressions have a dual face (being internal neural structures as well as being body-outside events by conversions from the inside to body-outside) it is possible that a homo sapiens  can transmit its internal encoding of cognitive objects into expressions from his  inside to the outside and thereby another homo sapiens can perceive the produced outside expression and  can map this outside expression into an intern expression. As far as the meaning function of of the receiving homo sapiens  is sufficiently similar to the meaning function of  the sending homo sapiens there exists some probability that the receiving homo sapiens can activate from its memory cognitive objects which have some similarity with those of  the sending  homo sapiens.

Although we know today of different kinds of animals having some form of language, there is no species known which is with regard to language comparable to  the homo sapiens. This explains to a large extend why the homo sapiens population was able to cooperate in a way, which not only can include many persons but also can stretch through long periods of time and  can include highly complex cognitive objects and associated behavior.

Negative Complexity

In 2006 I introduced the term negative complexity in my writings to describe the fact that in the world surrounding an individual person there is an amount of language-encoded meaning available which is beyond the capacity of an  individual brain to be processed. Thus whatever kind of experience or knowledge is accumulated in libraries and data bases, if the negative complexity is higher and higher than this knowledge can no longer help individual persons, whole groups, whole populations in a constructive usage of all this. What happens is that the intended well structured ‘sound’ of knowledge is turned into a noisy environment which crashes all kinds of intended structures into nothing or badly deformed somethings.

Entangled Humans

From Quantum Mechanics we know the idea of entangled states. But we must not dig into quantum mechanics to find other phenomena which manifest entangled states. Look around in your everyday world. There exist many occasions where a human person is acting in a situation, but the bodily separateness is a fake. While sitting before a laptop in a room the person is communicating within an online session with other persons. And depending from the  social role and the  membership in some social institution and being part of some project this person will talk, perceive, feel, decide etc. with regard to the known rules of these social environments which are  represented as cognitive objects in its brain. Thus by knowledge, by cognition, the individual person is in its situation completely entangled with other persons which know from these roles and rules  and following thereby  in their behavior these rules too. Sitting with the body in a certain physical location somewhere on the planet does not matter in this moment. The primary reality is this cognitive space in the brains of the participating persons.

If you continue looking around in your everyday world you will probably detect that the everyday world is full of different kinds of  cognitively induced entangled states of persons. These internalized structures are functioning like protocols, like scripts, like rules in a game, telling everybody what is expected from him/her/x, and to that extend, that people adhere to such internalized protocols, the daily life has some structure, has some stability, enables planning of behavior where cooperation between different persons  is necessary. In a cognitively enabled entangled state the individual person becomes a member of something greater, becoming a super person. Entangled persons can do things which usually are not possible as long you are working as a pure individual person.[1]

Entangled Humans and Negative Complexity

Although entangled human persons can principally enable more complex events, structures,  processes, engineering, cultural work than single persons, human entanglement is still limited by the brain capacities as well as by the limits of normal communication. Increasing the amount of meaning relevant artifacts or increasing the velocity of communication events makes things even more worse. There are objective limits for human processing, which can run into negative complexity.

Future is not Waiting

The term ‘future‘ is cognitively empty: there exists nowhere an object which can  be called ‘future’. What we have is some local actual presence (the Now), which the body is turning into internal representations of some kind (becoming the Past), but something like a future does not exist, nowhere. Our knowledge about the future is radically zero.

Nevertheless, because our bodies are part of a physical world (planet, solar system, …) and our entangled scientific work has identified some regularities of this physical world which can be bused for some predictions what could happen with some probability as assumed states where our clocks are showing a different time stamp. But because there are many processes running in parallel, composed of billions of parameters which can be tuned in many directions, a really good forecast is not simple and depends from so many presuppositions.

Since the appearance of homo sapiens some hundred thousands years ago in Africa the homo sapiens became a game changer which makes all computations nearly impossible. Not in the beginning of the appearance of the homo sapiens, but in the course of time homo sapiens enlarged its number, improved its skills in more and more areas, and meanwhile we know, that homo sapiens indeed has started to crash more and more  the conditions of its own life. And principally thinking points out, that homo sapiens could even crash more than only planet earth. Every exemplar of a homo sapiens has a built-in freedom which allows every time to decide to behave in a different way (although in everyday life we are mostly following some protocols). And this built-in freedom is guided by actual knowledge, by emotions, and by available resources. The same child can become a great musician, a great mathematician, a philosopher, a great political leader, an engineer, … but giving the child no resources, depriving it from important social contexts,  giving it the wrong knowledge, it can not manifest its freedom in full richness. As human population we need the best out of all children.

Because  the processing of the planet, the solar system etc.  is going on, we are in need of good forecasts of possible futures, beyond our classical concepts of sharing knowledge. This is where our vision enters.

VISION: DEVELOPING TOGETHER POSSIBLE FUTURES

To find possible and reliable shapes of possible futures we have to exploit all experiences, all knowledge, all ideas, all kinds of creativity by using maximal diversity. Because present knowledge can be false — as history tells us –, we should not rule out all those ideas, which seem to be too crazy at a first glance. Real innovations are always different to what we are used to at that time. Thus the following text is a first rough outline of the vision:

  1. Find a format
  2. which allows any kinds of people
  3. for any kind of given problem
  4. with at least one vision of a possible improvement
  5. together
  6. to search and to find a path leading from the given problem (Now) to the envisioned improved state (future).
  7. For all needed communication any kind of  everyday language should be enough.
  8. As needed this everyday language should be extendable with special expressions.
  9. These considerations about possible paths into the wanted envisioned future state should continuously be supported  by appropriate automatic simulations of such a path.
  10. These simulations should include automatic evaluations based on the given envisioned state.
  11. As far as possible adaptive algorithms should be available to support the search, finding and identification of the best cases (referenced by the visions)  within human planning.

REFERENCES or COMMENTS

[1] One of the most common entangled state in daily life is the usage of normal language! A normal language L works only because the rules of usage of this language L are shared by all speaker-hearer of this language, and these rules are explicit cognitive structures (not necessarily conscious, mostly unconscious!).

Continuation

Yes, it will happen 🙂 Here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

KOMEGA REQUIREMENTS: From the minimal to the basic version

ISSN 2567-6458, 18.October  2020
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

As described in the uffmm eJournal  the wider context of this software project is a generative theory of cultural anthropology [GCA] which is an extension of the engineering theory called Distributed Actor-Actor Interaction [DAAI]. In  the section Case Studies of the uffmm eJournal there is also a section about Python co-learning – mainly
dealing with python programming – and a section about a web-server with
Dragon. This document is part of the Case Studies section.

CONTENT

Here we present the ideas how to extend the minimal version to a first basic version. At least two more advanced levels will follow.

VIDEO (EN)

(Last change: Oct 17, 2020)

VIDEO(DE)

(last change: Oct 18, 2020)

AAI THEORY V2 –A Philosophical Framework

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 22.February 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Last change: 23.February 2019 (continued the text)

Last change: 24.February 2019 (extended the text)

CONTEXT

In the overview of the AAI paradigm version 2 you can find this section  dealing with the philosophical perspective of the AAI paradigm. Enjoy reading (or not, then send a comment :-)).

THE DAILY LIFE PERSPECTIVE

The perspective of Philosophy is rooted in the everyday life perspective. With our body we occur in a space with other bodies and objects; different features, properties  are associated with the objects, different kinds of relations an changes from one state to another.

From the empirical sciences we have learned to see more details of the everyday life with regard to detailed structures of matter and biological life, with regard to the long history of the actual world, with regard to many interesting dynamics within the objects, within biological systems, as part of earth, the solar system and much more.

A certain aspect of the empirical view of the world is the fact, that some biological systems called ‘homo sapiens’, which emerged only some 300.000 years ago in Africa, show a special property usually called ‘consciousness’ combined with the ability to ‘communicate by symbolic languages’.

General setting of the homo sapiens species (simplified)
Figure 1: General setting of the homo sapiens species (simplified)

As we know today the consciousness is associated with the brain, which in turn is embedded in the body, which  is further embedded in an environment.

Thus those ‘things’ about which we are ‘conscious’ are not ‘directly’ the objects and events of the surrounding real world but the ‘constructions of the brain’ based on actual external and internal sensor inputs as well as already collected ‘knowledge’. To qualify the ‘conscious things’ as ‘different’ from the assumed ‘real things’ ‘outside there’ it is common to speak of these brain-generated virtual things either as ‘qualia’ or — more often — as ‘phenomena’ which are  different to the assumed possible real things somewhere ‘out there’.

PHILOSOPHY AS FIRST PERSON VIEW

‘Philosophy’ has many facets.  One enters the scene if we are taking the insight into the general virtual character of our primary knowledge to be the primary and irreducible perspective of knowledge.  Every other more special kind of knowledge is necessarily a subspace of this primary phenomenological knowledge.

There is already from the beginning a fundamental distinction possible in the realm of conscious phenomena (PH): there are phenomena which can be ‘generated’ by the consciousness ‘itself’  — mostly called ‘by will’ — and those which are occurring and disappearing without a direct influence of the consciousness, which are in a certain basic sense ‘given’ and ‘independent’,  which are appearing  and disappearing according to ‘their own’. It is common to call these independent phenomena ’empirical phenomena’ which represent a true subset of all phenomena: PH_emp  PH. Attention: These empirical phenomena’ are still ‘phenomena’, virtual entities generated by the brain inside the brain, not directly controllable ‘by will’.

There is a further basic distinction which differentiates the empirical phenomena into those PH_emp_bdy which are controlled by some processes in the body (being tired, being hungry, having pain, …) and those PH_emp_ext which are controlled by objects and events in the environment beyond the body (light, sounds, temperature, surfaces of objects, …). Both subsets of empirical phenomena are different: PH_emp_bdy PH_emp_ext = 0. Because phenomena usually are occurring  associated with typical other phenomena there are ‘clusters’/ ‘pattern’ of phenomena which ‘represent’ possible events or states.

Modern empirical science has ‘refined’ the concept of an empirical phenomenon by introducing  ‘standard objects’ which can be used to ‘compare’ some empirical phenomenon with such an empirical standard object. Thus even when the perception of two different observers possibly differs somehow with regard to a certain empirical phenomenon, the additional comparison with an ’empirical standard object’ which is the ‘same’ for both observers, enhances the quality, improves the precision of the perception of the empirical phenomena.

From these considerations we can derive the following informal definitions:

  1. Something is ‘empirical‘ if it is the ‘real counterpart’ of a phenomenon which can be observed by other persons in my environment too.
  2. Something is ‘standardized empirical‘ if it is empirical and can additionally be associated with a before introduced empirical standard object.
  3. Something is ‘weak empirical‘ if it is the ‘real counterpart’ of a phenomenon which can potentially be observed by other persons in my body as causally correlated with the phenomenon.
  4. Something is ‘cognitive‘ if it is the counterpart of a phenomenon which is not empirical in one of the meanings (1) – (3).

It is a common task within philosophy to analyze the space of the phenomena with regard to its structure as well as to its dynamics.  Until today there exists not yet a complete accepted theory for this subject. This indicates that this seems to be some ‘hard’ task to do.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN BRAINS

As one can see in figure 1 a brain in a body is completely disconnected from the brain in another body. There is a real, deep ‘gap’ which has to be overcome if the two brains want to ‘coordinate’ their ‘planned actions’.

Luckily the emergence of homo sapiens with the new extended property of ‘consciousness’ was accompanied by another exciting property, the ability to ‘talk’. This ability enabled the creation of symbolic languages which can help two disconnected brains to have some exchange.

But ‘language’ does not consist of sounds or a ‘sequence of sounds’ only; the special power of a language is the further property that sequences of sounds can be associated with ‘something else’ which serves as the ‘meaning’ of these sounds. Thus we can use sounds to ‘talk about’ other things like objects, events, properties etc.

The single brain ‘knows’ about the relationship between some sounds and ‘something else’ because the brain is able to ‘generate relations’ between brain-structures for sounds and brain-structures for something else. These relations are some real connections in the brain. Therefore sounds can be related to ‘something  else’ or certain objects, and events, objects etc.  can become related to certain sounds. But these ‘meaning relations’ can only ‘bridge the gap’ to another brain if both brains are using the same ‘mapping’, the same ‘encoding’. This is only possible if the two brains with their bodies share a real world situation RW_S where the perceptions of the both brains are associated with the same parts of the real world between both bodies. If this is the case the perceptions P(RW_S) can become somehow ‘synchronized’ by the shared part of the real world which in turn is transformed in the brain structures P(RW_S) —> B_S which represent in the brain the stimulating aspects of the real world.  These brain structures B_S can then be associated with some sound structures B_A written as a relation  MEANING(B_S, B_A). Such a relation  realizes an encoding which can be used for communication. Communication is using sound sequences exchanged between brains via the body and the air of an environment as ‘expressions’ which can be recognized as part of a learned encoding which enables the receiving brain to identify a possible meaning candidate.

DIFFERENT MODES TO EXPRESS MEANING

Following the evolution of communication one can distinguish four important modes of expressing meaning, which will be used in this AAI paradigm.

VISUAL ENCODING

A direct way to express the internal meaning structures of a brain is to use a ‘visual code’ which represents by some kinds of drawing the visual shapes of objects in the space, some attributes of  shapes, which are common for all people who can ‘see’. Thus a picture and then a sequence of pictures like a comic or a story board can communicate simple ideas of situations, participating objects, persons and animals, showing changes in the arrangement of the shapes in the space.

Pictorial expressions representing aspects of the visual and the auditory sens modes
Figure 2: Pictorial expressions representing aspects of the visual and the auditory sens modes

Even with a simple visual code one can generate many sequences of situations which all together can ‘tell a story’. The basic elements are a presupposed ‘space’ with possible ‘objects’ in this space with different positions, sizes, relations and properties. One can even enhance these visual shapes with written expressions of  a spoken language. The sequence of the pictures represents additionally some ‘timely order’. ‘Changes’ can be encoded by ‘differences’ between consecutive pictures.

FROM SPOKEN TO WRITTEN LANGUAGE EXPRESSIONS

Later in the evolution of language, much later, the homo sapiens has learned to translate the spoken language L_s in a written format L_w using signs for parts of words or even whole words.  The possible meaning of these written expressions were no longer directly ‘visible’. The meaning was now only available for those people who had learned how these written expressions are associated with intended meanings encoded in the head of all language participants. Thus only hearing or reading a language expression would tell the reader either ‘nothing’ or some ‘possible meanings’ or a ‘definite meaning’.

A written textual version in parallel to a pictorial version
Figure 3: A written textual version in parallel to a pictorial version

If one has only the written expressions then one has to ‘know’ with which ‘meaning in the brain’ the expressions have to be associated. And what is very special with the written expressions compared to the pictorial expressions is the fact that the elements of the pictorial expressions are always very ‘concrete’ visual objects while the written expressions are ‘general’ expressions allowing many different concrete interpretations. Thus the expression ‘person’ can be used to be associated with many thousands different concrete objects; the same holds for the expression ‘road’, ‘moving’, ‘before’ and so on. Thus the written expressions are like ‘manufacturing instructions’ to search for possible meanings and configure these meanings to a ‘reasonable’ complex matter. And because written expressions are in general rather ‘abstract’/ ‘general’ which allow numerous possible concrete realizations they are very ‘economic’ because they use minimal expressions to built many complex meanings. Nevertheless the daily experience with spoken and written expressions shows that they are continuously candidates for false interpretations.

FORMAL MATHEMATICAL WRITTEN EXPRESSIONS

Besides the written expressions of everyday languages one can observe later in the history of written languages the steady development of a specialized version called ‘formal languages’ L_f with many different domains of application. Here I am  focusing   on the formal written languages which are used in mathematics as well as some pictorial elements to ‘visualize’  the intended ‘meaning’ of these formal mathematical expressions.

Properties of an acyclic directed graph with nodes (vertices) and edges (directed edges = arrows)
Fig. 4: Properties of an acyclic directed graph with nodes (vertices) and edges (directed edges = arrows)

One prominent concept in mathematics is the concept of a ‘graph’. In  the basic version there are only some ‘nodes’ (also called vertices) and some ‘edges’ connecting the nodes.  Formally one can represent these edges as ‘pairs of nodes’. If N represents the set of nodes then N x N represents the set of all pairs of these nodes.

In a more specialized version the edges are ‘directed’ (like a ‘one way road’) and also can be ‘looped back’ to a node   occurring ‘earlier’ in the graph. If such back-looping arrows occur a graph is called a ‘cyclic graph’.

Directed cyclic graph extended to represent 'states of affairs'
Fig.5: Directed cyclic graph extended to represent ‘states of affairs’

If one wants to use such a graph to describe some ‘states of affairs’ with their possible ‘changes’ one can ‘interpret’ a ‘node’ as  a state of affairs and an arrow as a change which turns one state of affairs S in a new one S’ which is minimally different to the old one.

As a state of affairs I  understand here a ‘situation’ embedded in some ‘context’ presupposing some common ‘space’. The possible ‘changes’ represented by arrows presuppose some dimension of ‘time’. Thus if a node n’  is following a node n indicated by an arrow then the state of affairs represented by the node n’ is to interpret as following the state of affairs represented in the node n with regard to the presupposed time T ‘later’, or n < n’ with ‘<‘ as a symbol for a timely ordering relation.

Example of a state of affairs with a 2-dimensional space configured as a grid with a black and a white token
Fig.6: Example of a state of affairs with a 2-dimensional space configured as a grid with a black and a white token

The space can be any kind of a space. If one assumes as an example a 2-dimensional space configured as a grid –as shown in figure 6 — with two tokens at certain positions one can introduce a language to describe the ‘facts’ which constitute the state of affairs. In this example one needs ‘names for objects’, ‘properties of objects’ as well as ‘relations between objects’. A possible finite set of facts for situation 1 could be the following:

  1. TOKEN(T1), BLACK(T1), POSITION(T1,1,1)
  2. TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(T2,2,1)
  3. NEIGHBOR(T1,T2)
  4. CELL(C1), POSITION(1,2), FREE(C1)

‘T1’, ‘T2’, as well as ‘C1’ are names of objects, ‘TOKEN’, ‘BACK’ etc. are names of properties, and ‘NEIGHBOR’ is a relation between objects. This results in the equation:

S1 = {TOKEN(T1), BLACK(T1), POSITION(T1,1,1), TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(T2,2,1), NEIGHBOR(T1,T2), CELL(C1), POSITION(1,2), FREE(C1)}

These facts describe the situation S1. If it is important to describe possible objects ‘external to the situation’ as important factors which can cause some changes then one can describe these objects as a set of facts  in a separated ‘context’. In this example this could be two players which can move the black and white tokens and thereby causing a change of the situation. What is the situation and what belongs to a context is somewhat arbitrary. If one describes the agriculture of some region one usually would not count the planets and the atmosphere as part of this region but one knows that e.g. the sun can severely influence the situation   in combination with the atmosphere.

Change of a state of affairs given as a state which will be enhanced by a new object
Fig.7: Change of a state of affairs given as a state which will be enhanced by a new object

Let us stay with a state of affairs with only a situation without a context. The state of affairs is     a ‘state’. In the example shown in figure 6 I assume a ‘change’ caused by the insertion of a new black token at position (2,2). Written in the language of facts L_fact we get:

  1. TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2), NEIGHBOR(T3,T2)

Thus the new state S2 is generated out of the old state S1 by unifying S1 with the set of new facts: S2 = S1 {TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2), NEIGHBOR(T3,T2)}. All the other facts of S1 are still ‘valid’. In a more general manner one can introduce a change-expression with the following format:

<S1, S2, add(S1,{TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2), NEIGHBOR(T3,T2)})>

This can be read as follows: The follow-up state S2 is generated out of the state S1 by adding to the state S1 the set of facts { … }.

This layout of a change expression can also be used if some facts have to be modified or removed from a state. If for instance  by some reason the white token should be removed from the situation one could write:

<S1, S2, subtract(S1,{TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(2,1)})>

Another notation for this is S2 = S1 – {TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(2,1)}.

The resulting state S2 would then look like:

S2 = {TOKEN(T1), BLACK(T1), POSITION(T1,1,1), CELL(C1), POSITION(1,2), FREE(C1)}

And a combination of subtraction of facts and addition of facts would read as follows:

<S1, S2, subtract(S1,{TOKEN(T2), WHITE(T2), POSITION(2,1)}, add(S1,{TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2)})>

This would result in the final state S2:

S2 = {TOKEN(T1), BLACK(T1), POSITION(T1,1,1), CELL(C1), POSITION(1,2), FREE(C1),TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2)}

These simple examples demonstrate another fact: while facts about objects and their properties are independent from each other do relational facts depend from the state of their object facts. The relation of neighborhood e.g. depends from the participating neighbors. If — as in the example above — the object token T2 disappears then the relation ‘NEIGHBOR(T1,T2)’ no longer holds. This points to a hierarchy of dependencies with the ‘basic facts’ at the ‘root’ of a situation and all the other facts ‘above’ basic facts or ‘higher’ depending from the basic facts. Thus ‘higher order’ facts should be added only for the actual state and have to be ‘re-computed’ for every follow-up state anew.

If one would specify a context for state S1 saying that there are two players and one allows for each player actions like ‘move’, ‘insert’ or ‘delete’ then one could make the change from state S1 to state S2 more precise. Assuming the following facts for the context:

  1. PLAYER(PB1), PLAYER(PW1), HAS-THE-TURN(PB1)

In that case one could enhance the change statement in the following way:

<S1, S2, PB1,insert(TOKEN(T3,2,2)),add(S1,{TOKEN(T3), BLACK(T3), POSITION(2,2)})>

This would read as follows: given state S1 the player PB1 inserts a  black token at position (2,2); this yields a new state S2.

With or without a specified context but with regard to a set of possible change statements it can be — which is the usual case — that there is more than one option what can be changed. Some of the main types of changes are the following ones:

  1. RANDOM
  2. NOT RANDOM, which can be specified as follows:
    1. With PROBABILITIES (classical, quantum probability, …)
    2. DETERMINISTIC

Furthermore, if the causing object is an actor which can adapt structurally or even learn locally then this actor can appear in some time period like a deterministic system, in different collected time periods as an ‘oscillating system’ with different behavior, or even as a random system with changing probabilities. This make the forecast of systems with adaptive and/ or learning systems rather difficult.

Another aspect results from the fact that there can be states either with one actor which can cause more than one action in parallel or a state with multiple actors which can act simultaneously. In both cases the resulting total change has eventually to be ‘filtered’ through some additional rules telling what  is ‘possible’ in a state and what not. Thus if in the example of figure 6 both player want to insert a token at position (2,2) simultaneously then either  the rules of the game would forbid such a simultaneous action or — like in a computer game — simultaneous actions are allowed but the ‘geometry of a 2-dimensional space’ would not allow that two different tokens are at the same position.

Another aspect of change is the dimension of time. If the time dimension is not explicitly specified then a change from some state S_i to a state S_j does only mark the follow up state S_j as later. There is no specific ‘metric’ of time. If instead a certain ‘clock’ is specified then all changes have to be aligned with this ‘overall clock’. Then one can specify at what ‘point of time t’ the change will begin and at what point of time t*’ the change will be ended. If there is more than one change specified then these different changes can have different timings.

THIRD PERSON VIEW

Up until now the point of view describing a state and the possible changes of states is done in the so-called 3rd-person view: what can a person perceive if it is part of a situation and is looking into the situation.  It is explicitly assumed that such a person can perceive only the ‘surface’ of objects, including all kinds of actors. Thus if a driver of a car stears his car in a certain direction than the ‘observing person’ can see what happens, but can not ‘look into’ the driver ‘why’ he is steering in this way or ‘what he is planning next’.

A 3rd-person view is assumed to be the ‘normal mode of observation’ and it is the normal mode of empirical science.

Nevertheless there are situations where one wants to ‘understand’ a bit more ‘what is going on in a system’. Thus a biologist can be  interested to understand what mechanisms ‘inside a plant’ are responsible for the growth of a plant or for some kinds of plant-disfunctions. There are similar cases for to understand the behavior of animals and men. For instance it is an interesting question what kinds of ‘processes’ are in an animal available to ‘navigate’ in the environment across distances. Even if the biologist can look ‘into the body’, even ‘into the brain’, the cells as such do not tell a sufficient story. One has to understand the ‘functions’ which are enabled by the billions of cells, these functions are complex relations associated with certain ‘structures’ and certain ‘signals’. For this it is necessary to construct an explicit formal (mathematical) model/ theory representing all the necessary signals and relations which can be used to ‘explain’ the obsrvable behavior and which ‘explains’ the behavior of the billions of cells enabling such a behavior.

In a simpler, ‘relaxed’ kind of modeling  one would not take into account the properties and behavior of the ‘real cells’ but one would limit the scope to build a formal model which suffices to explain the oservable behavior.

This kind of approach to set up models of possible ‘internal’ (as such hidden) processes of an actor can extend the 3rd-person view substantially. These models are called in this text ‘actor models (AM)’.

HIDDEN WORLD PROCESSES

In this text all reported 3rd-person observations are called ‘actor story’, independent whether they are done in a pictorial or a textual mode.

As has been pointed out such actor stories are somewhat ‘limited’ in what they can describe.

It is possible to extend such an actor story (AS)  by several actor models (AM).

An actor story defines the situations in which an actor can occur. This  includes all kinds of stimuli which can trigger the possible senses of the actor as well as all kinds of actions an actor can apply to a situation.

The actor model of such an actor has to enable the actor to handle all these assumed stimuli as well as all these actions in the expected way.

While the actor story can be checked whether it is describing a process in an empirical ‘sound’ way,  the actor models are either ‘purely theoretical’ but ‘behavioral sound’ or they are also empirically sound with regard to the body of a biological or a technological system.

A serious challenge is the occurrence of adaptiv or/ and locally learning systems. While the actor story is a finite  description of possible states and changes, adaptiv or/ and locally learning systeme can change their behavior while ‘living’ in the actor story. These changes in the behavior can not completely be ‘foreseen’!

COGNITIVE EXPERT PROCESSES

According to the preceding considerations a homo sapiens as a biological system has besides many properties at least a consciousness and the ability to talk and by this to communicate with symbolic languages.

Looking to basic modes of an actor story (AS) one can infer some basic concepts inherently present in the communication.

Without having an explicit model of the internal processes in a homo sapiens system one can infer some basic properties from the communicative acts:

  1. Speaker and hearer presuppose a space within which objects with properties can occur.
  2. Changes can happen which presuppose some timely ordering.
  3. There is a disctinction between concrete things and abstract concepts which correspond to many concrete things.
  4. There is an implicit hierarchy of concepts starting with concrete objects at the ‘root level’ given as occurence in a concrete situation. Other concepts of ‘higher levels’ refer to concepts of lower levels.
  5. There are different kinds of relations between objects on different conceptual levels.
  6. The usage of language expressions presupposes structures which can be associated with the expressions as their ‘meanings’. The mapping between expressions and their meaning has to be learned by each actor separately, but in cooperation with all the other actors, with which the actor wants to share his meanings.
  7. It is assume that all the processes which enable the generation of concepts, concept hierarchies, relations, meaning relations etc. are unconscious! In the consciousness one can  use parts of the unconscious structures and processes under strictly limited conditions.
  8. To ‘learn’ dedicated matters and to be ‘critical’ about the quality of what one is learnig requires some disciplin, some learning methods, and a ‘learning-friendly’ environment. There is no guaranteed method of success.
  9. There are lots of unconscious processes which can influence understanding, learning, planning, decisions etc. and which until today are not yet sufficiently cleared up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ADVANCED AAI-THEORY

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 21.Januar 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Here You can find a new version of this post

CONTEXT

The last official update of the AAI theory dates back to Oct-2, 2018. Since that time many new thoughts have been detected and have been configured for further extensions and improvements. Here I try to give an overview of all the actual known aspects of the expanded AAI theory as a possible guide for the further elaborations of the main text.

CLARIFYING THE PROBLEM

  1. Generally it is assumed that the AAI theory is embedded in a general systems engineering approach starting with the clarification of a problem.
  2. Two cases will be distinguished:
    1. A stakeholder is associated with a certain domain of affairs with some prominent aspect/ parameter P and the stakeholder wants to clarify whether P poses some ‘problem’ in this domain. This presupposes some explained ‘expectations’ E how it should be and some ‘findings’ x pointing to the fact that P is ‘sufficiently different’ from some y>x. If the stakeholder judges that this difference is ‘important’, than P matching x will be classified as a problem, which will be documented in a ‘problem document D_p’. One interpret this this analysis as a ‘measurement M’ written as M(P,E) = x and x<y.
    2. Given a problem document D_p a stakeholder invites some experts to find a ‘solution’ which transfers the old ‘problem P’ into a ‘configuration S’ which at least should ‘minimize the problem P’. Thus there must exist some ‘measurements’ of the given problem P with regard to certain ‘expectations E’ functioning as a ‘norm’ as M(P,E)=x and some measurements of the new configuration S with regard to the same expectations E as M(S,E)=y and a metric which allows the judgment y > x.
  3. From this follows that already in the beginning of the analysis of a possible solution one has to refer to some measurement process M, otherwise there exists no problem P.

CHECK OF FRAMING CONDITIONS

  1. The definition of a problem P presupposes a domain of affairs which has to be characterized in at least two respects:
    1. A minimal description of an environment ENV of the problem P and
    2. a list of so-called non-functional requirements (NFRs).
  2. Within the environment it mus be possible to identify at least one task T to be realized from some start state to some end state.
  3. Additionally it mus be possible to identify at least one executing actor A_exec doing this task and at least one actor assisting A_ass the executing actor to fulfill the task.
  4. For the  following analysis of a possible solution one can distinguish two strategies:
    1. Top-down: There exists a group of experts EXPs which will analyze a possible solution, will test these, and then will propose these as a solution for others.
    2. Bottom-up: There exists a group of experts EXPs too but additionally there exists a group of customers CTMs which will be guided by the experts to use their own experience to find a possible solution.

ACTOR STORY (AS)

  1. The goal of an actor story (AS) is a full specification of all identified necessary tasks T which lead from a start state q* to a goal state q+, including all possible and necessary changes between the different states M.
  2. A state is here considered as a finite set of facts (F) which are structured as an expression from some language L distinguishing names of objects (LIKE ‘d1’, ‘u1’, …) as well as properties of objects (like ‘being open’, ‘being green’, …) or relations between objects (like ‘the user stands before the door’). There can also e a ‘negation’ like ‘the door is not open’. Thus a collection of facts like ‘There is a door D1’ and ‘The door D1 is open’ can represent a state.
  3. Changes from one state q to another successor state q’ are described by the object whose action deletes previous facts or creates new facts.
  4. In this approach at least three different modes of an actor story will be distinguished:
    1. A pictorial mode generating a Pictorial Actor Story (PAS). In a pictorial mode the drawings represent the main objects with their properties and relations in an explicit visual way (like a Comic Strip).
    2. A textual mode generating a Textual Actor Story (TAS): In a textual mode a text in some everyday language (e.g. in English) describes the states and changes in plain English. Because in the case of a written text the meaning of the symbols is hidden in the heads of the writers it can be of help to parallelize the written text with the pictorial mode.
    3. A mathematical mode generating a Mathematical Actor Story (MAS): n the mathematical mode the pictorial and the textual modes are translated into sets of formal expressions forming a graph whose nodes are sets of facts and whose edges are labeled with change-expressions.

TASK INDUCED ACTOR-REQUIREMENTS (TAR)

If an actor story AS is completed, then one can infer from this story all the requirements which are directed at the executing as well as the assistive actors of the story. These requirements are targeting the needed input- as well as output-behavior of the actors from a 3rd person point of view (e.g. what kinds of perception are required, what kinds of motor reactions, etc.).

ACTOR INDUCED ACTOR-REQUIREMENTS (AAR)

Depending from the kinds of actors planned for the real work (biological systems, animals or humans; machines, different kinds of robots), one has to analyze the required internal structures of the actors needed to enable the required perceptions and responses. This has to be done in a 1st person point of view.

ACTOR MODELS (AMs)

Based on the AARs one has to construct explicit actor models which are fulfilling the requirements.

USABILITY TESTING (UTST)

Using the actor as a ‘norm’ for the measurement one has to organized an ‘usability test’ in he way, that a real executing test actor having the required profiles has to use a real assisting actor in the context of the specified actor story. Place in a start state of the actor story the executing test actor has to show that and how he will reach the defined goal state of the actor story. For this he has to use a real assistive actor which usually is an experimental device (a mock-up), which allows the test of the story.

Because an executive actor is usually a ‘learning actor’ one has to repeat the usability test n-times to see, whether the learning curve approaches a minimum. Additionally to such objective tests one should also organize an interview to get some judgments about the subjective states of the test persons.

SIMULATION

With an increasing complexity of an actor story AS it becomes important to built a simulator (SIM) which can take as input the start state of the actor story together with all possible changes. Then the simulator can compute — beginning with the start state — all possible successor states. In the interactive mode participating actors will explicitly be asked to interact with the simulator.

Having a simulator one can use a simulator as part of an usability test to mimic the behavior of an assistive actor. This mode can also be used for training new executive actors.

A TOP-DOWN ACTOR STORY

The elaboration of an actor story will usually be realized in a top-down style: some AAI experts will develop the actor story based on their experience and will only ask for some test persons if they have elaborated everything so far that they can define some tests.

A BOTTOM-UP ACTOR STORY

In a bottom-up style the AAI experts collaborate from the beginning with a group of common users from the application domain. To do this they will (i) extract the knowledge which is distributed in the different users, then (ii) they will start some modeling from these different facts to (iii) enable some basic simulations. This simple simulation (iv) will be enhanced to an interactive simulation which allows serious gaming either (iv.a) to test the model or to enable the users (iv.b) to learn the space of possible states. The test case will (v) generate some data which can be used to evaluate the model with regard to pre-defined goals. Depending from these findings (vi) one can try to improve the model further.

THE COGNITIVE SPACE

To be able to construct executive as well as assistive actors which are close to the way how human persons do communicate one has to set up actor models which are as close as possible with the human style of cognition. This requires the analysis of phenomenal experience as well as the psychological behavior as well as the analysis of a needed neuron-physiological structures.

STATE DYNAMICS

To model in an actor story the possible changes from one given state to another one (or to many successor states) one needs eventually besides explicit deterministic changes different kinds of random rules together with adaptive ones or decision-based behavior depending from a whole network of changing parameters.

QUANTUM THEORY (QT). Basic elements

eJournal: uffmm.org, ISSN 2567-6458, 2.January 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email:
gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

This is a continuation from the post WHY QT FOR AAI? explaining the motivation why to look to quantum theory (QT) in the case of the AAI paradigm. After approaching QT from a philosophy of science perspective (see the post QUANTUM THEORY (QT). BASIC PROPERTIES) giving a ‘birds view’ of the relationship between a QT and the presupposed ‘real world’ and digging a bit into the first person view inside an observer we are here interested in the formal machinery of QT. For this we follow Grifftiths in his chapter 1.

QT BASIC ELEMENTS

MEASUREMENT

  1. The starting point of a quantum theory QT are ‘phenomena‘, which “lack any description in classical physics”, a kind of things “which human beings cannot observe directly”. To measure such phenomena one needs highly sophisticated machines, which poses the problem, that the interpretation of possible ‘measurement data’ in terms of a quantum theory depends highly on the understanding of the working of the used measurement apparatus. (cf. p.8)
  2. This problem is well known in philosophy of science: (i) one wants to built a new theory T. (ii) For this theory one needs appropriate measurement data MD. (iii) The measurement as such needs a well defined procedure including different kinds of pre-defined objects and artifacts. The description of the procedure including the artifacts (which can be machines) is a theory of its own called measurement theory T*. (iv) Thus one needs a theory T* to enable a new theory T.
  3. In the case of QT one has the special case that QT itself has to be part of the measurement theory T*, i.e. QT subset T*. But, as Griffiths points out, the measurement problem in QT is even deeper; it is not only the conceptual dependency of QT from its measurement theory T*, but in the case of QT does the measurement apparatus directly interact with the target objects of QT because the measurement apparatus is itself part of the atomic and sub-atomic world which is the target. (cf. p.8) This has led to include the measurement as ‘stochastic time development’ explicitly into the QT. (cf. p.8) In his book Griffiths follows the strategy to deal with the ‘collapse of the wave function’ within the theoretical level, because it does not take place “in the experimental physicist’s laboratory”. (cf. p.9)
  4. As a consequence of these considerations Griffiths develops the fundamental principles in the chapters 2-16 without making any reference to measurement.

PRE-KNOWLEDGE

  1. Besides the special problem of measurement in quantum mechanics there is the general problem of measurement for every kind of empirical discipline which requires a perception of the real world guided by a scientific bias called ‘scientific knowledge’! Without a theoretical pre-knowledge there is no scientific observation possible. A scientific observation needs already a pre-theory T* defining the measurement procedure as well as the pre-defined standard object as well as – eventually — an ‘appropriate’ measurement device. Furthermore, to be able to talk about some measurement data as ‘data related to an object of QT’ one needs additionally a sufficient ‘pre-knowledge’ of such an object which enables the observer to decide whether the measured data are to be classified as ‘related to the object of QT. The most convenient way to enable this is to have already a proposal for a QT as the ‘knowledge guide’ how one ‘should look’ to the measured data.

QT STATES

  1. Related to the phenomena of quantum mechanics the phenomena are in QT according to Griffiths understood as ‘particles‘ whose ‘state‘ is given by a ‘complex-valued wave function ψ(x)‘, and the collection of all possible wave functions is assumed to be a ‘complex linear vector space‘ with an ‘inner product’, known as a ‘Hilbert space‘. “Two wave functions φ(x) and ψ(x) represent ‘distinct physical states’ … if and only if they are ‘orthogonal’ in the sense that their ‘inner product is zero’. Otherwise φ(x) and ψ(x) represent incompatible states of the quantum system …” .(p.2)
  2. “A quantum property … corresponds to a subspace of the quantum Hilbert space or the projector onto this subspace.” (p.2)
  3. A sample space of mutually-exclusive possibilities is a decomposition of the identity as a sum of mutually commuting projectors. One and only one of these projectors can be a correct description of a quantum system at a given time.cf. p.3)
  4. Quantum sample spaces can be mutually incompatible. (cf. p.3)
  5. “In … quantum mechanics [a physical variable] is represented by a Hermitian operator.… a real-valued function defined on a particular sample space, or decomposition of the identity … a quantum system can be said to have a value … of a physical variable represented by the operator F if and only if the quantum wave function is in an eigenstate of F … . Two physical variables whose operators do not commute correspond to incompatible sample spaces… “.(cf. p.3)
  6. “Both classical and quantum mechanics have dynamical laws which enable one to say something about the future (or past) state of a physical system if its state is known at a particular time. … the quantum … dynamical law … is the (time-dependent) Schrödinger equation. Given some wave function ψ_0 at a time t_0 , integration of this equation leads to a unique wave function ψ_t at any other time t. At two times t and t’ these uniquely defined wave functions are related by a … time development operator T(t’ , t) on the Hilbert space. Consequently we say that integrating the Schrödinger equation leads to unitary time development.” (p.3)
  7. “Quantum mechanics also allows for a stochastic or probabilistic time development … . In order to describe this in a systematic way, one needs the concept of a quantum history … a sequence of quantum events (wave functions or sub-spaces of the Hilbert space) at successive times. A collection of mutually … exclusive histories forms a sample space or family of histories, where each history is associated with a projector on a history Hilbert space. The successive events of a history are, in general, not related to one another through the Schrödinger equation. However, the Schrödinger equation, or … the time development operators T(t’ , t), can be used to assign probabilities to the different histories belonging to a particular family.” (p.3f)

HILBERT SPACE: FINITE AND INFINITE

  1. “The wave functions for even such a simple system as a quantum particle in one dimension form an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space … [but] one does not have to learn functional analysis in order to understand the basic principles of quantum theory. The majority of the illustrations used in Chs. 2–16 are toy models with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space to which the usual rules of linear algebra apply without any qualification, and for these models there are no mathematical subtleties to add to the conceptual difficulties of quantum theory … Nevertheless, they provide many useful insights into general quantum principles.”. (p.4f)

CALCULUS AND PROBABILITY

  1. Griffiths (2003) makes considerable use of toy models with a simple discretized time dependence … To obtain … unitary time development, one only needs to solve a simple difference equation, and this can be done in closed form on the back of an envelope. (cf. p.5f)
  2. Probability theory plays an important role in discussions of the time development of quantum systems. … when using toy models the simplest version of probability theory, based on a finite discrete sample space, is perfectly adequate.” (p.6)
  3. “The basic concepts of probability theory are the same in quantum mechanics as in other branches of physics; one does not need a new “quantum probability”. What distinguishes quantum from classical physics is the issue of choosing a suitable sample space with its associated event algebra. … in any single quantum sample space the ordinary rules for probabilistic reasoning are valid. ” (p.6)

QUANTUM REASONING

  1. The important difference compared to classical mechanics is the fact that “an initial quantum state does not single out a particular framework, or sample space of stochastic histories, much less determine which history in the framework will actually occur.” (p.7) There are multiple incompatible frameworks possible and to use the ordinary rules of propositional logic presupposes to apply these to a single framework. Therefore it is important to understand how to choose an appropriate framework.(cf. p.7)

NEXT

These are the basic ingredients which Griffiths mentions in chapter 1 of his book 2013. In the following these ingredients have to be understood so far, that is becomes clear how to relate the idea of a possible history of states (cf. chapters 8ff) where the future of a successor state in a sequence of timely separated states is described by some probability.

REFERENCES

  • R.B. Griffiths. Consistent Quantum Theory. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003

 

WHY QT FOR AAI?

eJournal: uffmm.org, ISSN 2567-6458, 2.January 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email:
gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

This is a continuation from the post QUANTUM THEORY (QT). BASIC PROPERTIES, where basic properties of quantum theory (QT) according to ch.27 of Griffiths (2003) have been reported. Before we dig deeper into the QT matter here a remark why we should do this at all because the main topic of the uffmm.org blog is the Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI) paradigm dealing with actors including a subset of actors which have the complexity of biological systems at least as complex as exemplars of the kind of human sapiens.

WHY QT IN THE CASE OF AAI

As Griffiths (2003) points out in his chapter 1 and chapter 27 quantum theory deals with objects which are not perceivable by the normal human sensory apparatus. It needs special measurement procedures and instrumentation to measure events related to quantum objects. Therefore the level of analysis in quantum theory is quite ‘low’ compared to the complexity hierarchies of biological systems.

Baars and Edelman (2012) address the question of the relationship of QT and biological phenomena, especially those connected to the phenomenon of human consciousness, explicitly. Their conclusion is very clear: “Current quantum-level proposals do not explain the prominent empirical features of consciousness”. (Baars and Edelman (2012):p.286)

Behind this short statement we have to accept the deep insights of modern (evolutionary and micro) biology that a main characteristics of biological systems has to be seen in their ability to overcome the fluctuating and unstable quantum properties by a more and more complex machinery which posses its own logic and its own specific dynamics.

Therefore the level of analysis for the behavior of biological systems is usually ‘far above’ the level of quantum theory.

Why then at all bother with QT in the case of the AAI paradigm?

If one looks to the AAI paradigm then one detects the concept of the actor story (AS) which assumes that reality can be conceived — and then be described – as a ‘process’ which can be analyzed as a ‘sequence of states’ characterized by decidable ‘facts’ which can ‘change in time’. A ‘change’ can occur either by some changing time measured by ‘time points’ generated by a ‘time machine’ called ‘clock’ or by some ‘inherent change’ observable as a change in some ‘facts’.

Restricting the description of the transitions of such a sequence of states to properties of classical probability theory, one detects severe limits of the descriptive power of a CPT description compared to what has to be done in an AAI analysis. (see for this the post BACKGROUND INFORMATION 27.Dec.2018: The AAI-paradigm and Quantum Logic. The Limits of Classic Probability). The limits result from the fact that actors within the AAI paradigm are in many cases ‘not static’ and ‘not deterministic’ systems which can change their structures and behavior functions in a way that the basic assumptions of CPT are no longer valid.

It remains the question whether a probability theory PT which is based on quantum theory QT is in some sense ‘better adapted’ to the AAI paradigm than Classical PT.

This question is the main perspective guiding the further encounter with QT.

See next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

QUELLEN

  • Bernard J. Baars and David B. Edelman. Consciousness, biology, and quantum hypotheses. Physics of Life Review, 9(3):285 – 294, 2012. D O I: 10.1016/j.plrev.2012.07.001. Epub. URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22925839
  • R.B. Griffiths. Consistent Quantum Theory. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003

 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION 27.Dec.2018: The AAI-paradigm and Quantum Logic. The Limits of Classic Probability

eJournal: uffmm.org, ISSN 2567-6458
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Last Corrections: 30.Dec.2018

CONTEXT

This is a continuation from the post about QL Basics Concepts Part 1. The general topic here is the analysis of properties of human behavior, actually narrowed down to the statistical properties. From the different possible theories applicable to statistical properties of behavior here the one called CPT (classical probability theory) is selected for a short examination.

SUMMARY

An analysis of the classical probability theory shows that the empirical application of this theory is limited to static sets of events and probabilities. In the case of biological systems which are adaptive with regard to structure and cognition this does not work. This yields the question whether a quantum probability theory approach does work or not.

THE CPT IDEA

  1. Before we are looking  to the case of quantum probability theory (QLPT) let us examine the case of a classical probability theory (CPT) a little bit more.
  2. Generally one has to distinguish the symbolic formal representation of a theory T and some domain of application D distinct from the symbolic representation.
  3. In principle the domain of application D can be nearly anything, very often again another symbolic representation. But in the case of empirical applications we assume usually some subset of ’empirical events’ E of the ’empirical (real) world’ W.
  4. For the following let us assume (for a while) that this is the case, that D is a subset of the empirical world W.
  5. Talking about ‘events in an empirical real world’ presupposes that there there exists a ‘procedure of measurement‘ using a ‘previously defined standard object‘ and a ‘symbolic representation of the measurement results‘.
  6. Furthermore one has to assume a community of ‘observers‘ which have minimal capabilities to ‘observe’, which implies ‘distinctions between different results’, some ‘ordering of successions (before – after)’, to ‘attach symbols according to some rules’ to measurement results, to ‘translate measurement results’ into more abstract concepts and relations.
  7. Thus to speak about empirical results assumes a set of symbolic representations of those events as a finite set of symbolic representations which represent a ‘state in the real world’ which can have a ‘predecessor state before’ and – possibly — a ‘successor state after’ the ‘actual’ state. The ‘quality’ of these measurement representations depends from the quality of the measurement procedure as well as from the quality of the cognitive capabilities of the participating observers.
  8. In the classical probability theory T_cpt as described by Kolmogorov (1932) it is assumed that there is a set E of ‘elementary events’. The set E is assumed to be ‘complete’ with regard to all possible events. The probability P is coming into play with a mapping from E into the set of positive real numbers R+ written as P: E —> R+ or P(E) = 1 with the assumption that all the individual elements e_i of E have an individual probability P(e_i) which obey the rule P(e_1) + P(e_2) + … + P(e_n) = 1.
  9. In the formal theory T_cpt it is not explained ‘how’ the probabilities are realized in the concrete case. In the ‘real world’ we have to identify some ‘generators of events’ G, otherwise we do not know whether an event e belongs to a ‘set of probability events’.
  10. Kolmogorov (1932) speaks about a necessary generator as a ‘set of conditions’ which ‘allows of any number of repetitions’, and ‘a set of events can take place as a result of the establishment of the condition’. (cf. p.3) And he mentions explicitly the case that different variants of the a priori assumed possible events can take place as a set A. And then he speaks of this set A also of an event which has taken place! (cf. p.4)
  11. If one looks to the case of the ‘set A’ then one has to clarify that this ‘set A’ is not an ordinary set of set theory, because in a set every member occurs only once. Instead ‘A’ represents a ‘sequence of events out of the basic set E’. A sequence is in set theory an ‘ordered set’, where some set (e.g. E) is mapped into an initial segment  of the natural numbers Nat and in this case  the set A contains ‘pairs from E x Nat|\n’  with a restriction of the set Nat to some n. The ‘range’ of the set A has then ‘distinguished elements’ whereby the ‘domain’ can have ‘same elements’. Kolmogorov addresses this problem with the remark, that the set A can be ‘defined in any way’. (cf. p.4) Thus to assume the set A as a set of pairs from the Cartesian product E x Nat|\n with the natural numbers taken from the initial segment of the natural numbers is compatible with the remark of Kolmogorov and the empirical situation.
  12. For a possible observer it follows that he must be able to distinguish different states <s1, s2, …, sm> following each other in the real world, and in every state there is an event e_i from the set of a priori possible events E. The observer can ‘count’ the occurrences of a certain event e_i and thus will get after n repetitions for every event e_i a number of occurrences m_i with m_i/n giving the measured empirical probability of the event e_i.
  13. Example 1: Tossing a coin with ‘head (H)’ or ‘tail (T)’ we have theoretically the probabilities ‘1/2’ for each event. A possible outcome could be (with ‘H’ := 0, ‘T’ := 1): <((0,1), (0,2), (0,3), (1,4), (0,5)> . Thus we have m_H = 4, m_T = 1, giving us m_H/n = 4/5 and m_T/n = 1/5. The sum yields m_H/n + m_T/n = 1, but as one can see the individual empirical probabilities are not in accordance with the theory requiring 1/2 for each. Kolmogorov remarks in his text  that if the number of repetitions n is large enough then will the values of the empirically measured probability approach the theoretically defined values. In a simple experiment with a random number generator simulating the tossing of the coin I got the numbers m_Head = 4978, m_Tail = 5022, which gives the empirical probabilities m_Head/1000 = 0.4977 and m_Teil/ 1000 = 0.5021.
  14. This example demonstrates while the theoretical term ‘probability’ is a simple number, the empirical counterpart of the theoretical term is either a simple occurrence of a certain event without any meaning as such or an empirically observed sequence of events which can reveal by counting and division a property which can be used as empirical probability of this event generated by a ‘set of conditions’ which allow the observed number of repetitions. Thus we have (i) a ‘generator‘ enabling the events out of E, we have (ii) a ‘measurement‘ giving us a measurement result as part of an observation, (iii) the symbolic encoding of the measurement result, (iv) the ‘counting‘ of the symbolic encoding as ‘occurrence‘ and (v) the counting of the overall repetitions, and (vi) a ‘mathematical division operation‘ to get the empirical probability.
  15. Example 1 demonstrates the case of having one generator (‘tossing a coin’). We know from other examples where people using two or more coins ‘at the same time’! In this case the set of a priori possible events E is occurring ‘n-times in parallel’: E x … x E = E^n. While for every coin only one of the many possible basic events can occur in one state, there can be n-many such events in parallel, giving an assembly of n-many events each out of E. If we keeping the values of E = {‘H’, ‘T’} then we have four different basic configurations each with probability 1/4. If we define more ‘abstract’ events like ‘both the same’ (like ‘0,0’, ‘1,1’) or ‘both different’ (like ‘0,1’. ‘1,0’), then we have new types of complex events with different probabilities, each 1/2. Thus the case of n-many generators in parallel allows new types of complex events.
  16. Following this line of thinking one could consider cases like (E^n)^n or even with repeated applications of the Cartesian product operation. Thus, in the case of (E^n)^n, one can think of different gamblers each having n-many dices in a cup and tossing these n-many dices simultaneously.
  17. Thus we have something like the following structure for an empirical theory of classical probability: CPT(T) iff T=<G,E,X,n,S,P*>, with ‘G’ as the set of generators producing out of E events according to the layout of the set X in a static (deterministic) manner. Here the  set E is the set of basic events. The set X is a ‘typified set’ constructed out of the set E with t-many applications of the Cartesian operation starting with E, then E^n1, then (E^n1)^n2, …. . ‘n’ denotes the number of repetitions, which determines the length of a sequence ‘S’. ‘P*’ represents the ’empirical probability’ which approaches the theoretical probability P while n is becoming ‘big’. P* is realized as a tuple of tuples according to the layout of the set X  where each element in the range of a tuple  represents the ‘number of occurrences’ of a certain event out of X.
  18. Example: If there is a set E = {0,1} with the layout X=(E^2)^2 then we have two groups with two generators each: <<G1, G2>,<G3,G4>>. Every generator G_i produces events out of E. In one state i this could look like  <<0, 0>,<1,0>>. As part of a sequence S this would look like S = <….,(<<0, 0>,<1,0>>,i), … > telling that in the i-th state of S there is an occurrence of events like shown. The empirical probability function P* has a corresponding layout P* = <<m1, m2>,<m3,m4>> with the m_j as ‘counter’ which are counting the occurrences of the different types of events as m_j =<c_e1, …, c_er>. In the example there are two different types of events occurring {0,1} which requires two counters c_0 and c_1, thus we would have m_j =<c_0, c_1>, which would induce for this example the global counter structure:  P* = <<<c_0, c_1>, <c_0, c_1>>,<<c_0,  c_1>,<c_0, c_1>>>. If the generators are all the same then the set of basic events E is the same and in theory   the theoretical probability function P: E —> R+ would induce the same global values for all generators. But in the empirical case, if the theoretical probability function P is not known, then one has to count and below the ‘magic big n’ the values of the counter of the empirical probability function can be different.
  19. This format of the empirical classical  probability theory CPT can handle the case of ‘different generators‘ which produce events out of the same basic set E but with different probabilities, which can be counted by the empirical probability function P*. A prominent case of different probabilities with the same set of events is the case of manipulations of generators (a coin, a dice, a roulette wheel, …) to deceive other people.
  20. In the examples mentioned so far the probabilities of the basic events as well as the complex events can be different in different generators, but are nevertheless  ‘static’, not changing. Looking to generators like ‘tossing a coin’, ‘tossing a dice’ this seams to be sound. But what if we look to other types of generators like ‘biological systems’ which have to ‘decide’ which possible options of acting they ‘choose’? If the set of possible actions A is static, then the probability of selecting one action a out of A will usually depend from some ‘inner states’ IS of the biological system. These inner states IS need at least the following two components:(i) an internal ‘representation of the possible actions’ IS_A as well (ii) a finite set of ‘preferences’ IS_Pref. Depending from the preferences the biological system will select an action IS_a out of IS_A and then it can generate an action a out of A.
  21. If biological systems as generators have a ‘static’ (‘deterministic’) set of preferences IS_Pref, then they will act like fixed generators for ‘tossing a coin’, ‘tossing a dice’. In this case nothing will change.  But, as we know from the empirical world, biological systems are in general ‘adaptive’ systems which enables two kinds of adaptation: (i) ‘structural‘ adaptation like in biological evolution and (ii) ‘cognitive‘ adaptation as with higher organisms having a neural system with a brain. In these systems (example: homo sapiens) the set of preferences IS_Pref can change in time as well as the internal ‘representation of the possible actions’ IS_A. These changes cause a shift in the probabilities of the events manifested in the realized actions!
  22. If we allow possible changes in the terms ‘G’ and ‘E’ to ‘G+’ and ‘E+’ then we have no longer a ‘classical’ probability theory CPT. This new type of probability theory we can call ‘non-classic’ probability theory NCPT. A short notation could be: NCPT(T) iff T=<G+,E+,X,n,S,P*> where ‘G+’ represents an adaptive biological system with changing representations for possible Actions A* as well as changing preferences IS_Pref+. The interesting question is, whether a quantum logic approach QLPT is a possible realization of such a non-classical probability theory. While it is known that the QLPT works for physical matters, it is an open question whether it works for biological systems too.
  23. REMARK: switching from static generators to adaptive generators induces the need for the inclusion of the environment of the adaptive generators. ‘Adaptation’ is generally a capacity to deal better with non-static environments.

See continuation here.