Reductionism vs. Downward Causation

The article Downward Causation contains this quote describing downward causation:

all processes at the lower level of a hierarchy are restrained by and act in conformity to the laws of the higher level

The counterpart of downward causation is reductionism. Quoting from the same article:

Reductionism can be defined as the belief that the behavior of a whole or system is completely determined by the behavior of the parts, elements or subsystems. In other words, if you know the laws governing the behavior of the parts, you should be able to deduce the laws governing the behavior of the whole.

Note the philosophical outlook underlying reductionism. Knowledge about the parts leads to deductions about laws governing the whole. That's the paradigm through which investigations about the origin of life take place. Laws governing chemical reactions of organic compounds yield information from which laws governing cells can be deduced. But if such laws cannot be deduced then what? The "then what" may explain the spinning wheel results accruing from decades of OOL research. Our understanding of the chemical properties of cellular biochemicals provides no insight as to how reactions, involving such chemicals, leads to the formation of cells. Reductionist approaches have not led to progress. More from the same article:

Systems theory has always taken an anti-reductionist stance, noting that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. In other words, the whole has "emergent properties" which cannot be reduced to properties of the parts. Since emergence is a rather slippery concept, which has been defined in many different ways, most of which are highly ambiguous or fuzzy, I prefer to express this idea with the more precise concept of downward causation.

Cells indeed do have properties that are not reducible to the chemical properties of their constituent biochemicals. For example, cellular DNA is able to store genetic information that, when expressed, enables the synthesis of RNA, proteins and cellular structures consisting of proteins. This is possible because of the ordering of nucleotides according to patterns that conform to what are referred to as genetic codes. Yet the codon sequences within DNA do not have to be functionally ordered to retain their chemical properties. Chemical properties of DNA are indifferent to the unique sequencing needed to confer cellular function. DNA is DNA whether biologically functional or otherwise. Ribosome function is not explained by specifically referencing the properties of its individual proteins and RNA. It must be viewed holistically.

Do all systems exhibiting downward causation owe their origin to causes traceable to the properties of their constituent parts? Or does a causal flow downward better account for the origin of systems as well? Michael Behe's irreducible complexity can be viewed as an indicator of downward causality. Downward causality is exhibited in intelligently designed systems. The flow begins with an intelligent plan which, when put into effect, results in an arrangement of parts that make function possible. Technology is created this way.

Reductionists argue that the brain itself (intelligence) lies at the end of a causality trail that commenced with biological systems emerging from simpler biochemical reactions. That however is a belief not sustained by empirical results. When we follow existing causal trails we find no logical barrier to investigating a directional flow downward. Indeed excluding it a priori is a philosophical choice; not an empirical necessity.

Understanding Downward Causation

This article titled Excursus: Defining Downward Causation, helps to illustrate the meaning of top down or downward causation. The article uses the jaw anatomy of a worker termite or ant to demonstrate the concept of downward causation.

A design construction featuring hinge surfaces and muscle attachments allow for the application of maximum force at a distance from the hinge for a biting or grasping function. Underlying laws of physics are utilized by gross anatomical structures, composed of multiple parts, to accomplish an objective that is beneficial to the whole organism.

Contrast the foregoing with a bottom up effect which can be illustrated by the binding of ATP to a transmembrane protein to facilitate the transport of molecules across cell membranes. The molecular binding initiates a larger biological operation.

The following quoted paragraph from the article (in blue) is instructive:

Downward causation, then, is a matter of the laws of the higher-level selective system determining in part the distribution of lower-level events and substances. "Description of an intermediate-level phenomenon," he says, "is not completed by describing its possibility and implementation in lower-level terms. Its presence, prevalence or distribution (all needed for a complete explanation of biological phenomena) will often require reference to laws at a higher level of organisation as well"

In the case of the termite or ant jaws large biological structures, exploiting higher level physics concepts (Archimedes' levers), control lower level biological functions. Biological explanations for what occurs invoke references to actions controlled by higher level biological organization.

One final point, to be elaborated on in future blogs, concerns the original source of biological organisms. Mainstream biology utilizes bottoms up causal scenarios to explain life from abiogenesis through evolution. Intelligent design is a bit more flexible. Intelligent design can be evidenced in either direction. More on that to come.

Contrasting Views on the Nature of Causality

I previously blogged about the paper Top-Down Causation by Information Control: From a Philosophical Problem to a Scientific Research Program which is authored by G. Auletta, G. F. R. Ellis, FRS, and L. Jaeger. Differences between the perspective of mainstream biology advocates and Intelligent Design supporters ultimately come down to differences in perceptions of causal patterns.

The causal contrast pits emergence theorists, who believe complex biological systems self-assembled from simpler components, against top-down theorists who view causality as flowing from a direction of higher complexity to lower level components. Emergence theorists think basic forces evidenced in physics and chemistry ultimately account for causal pathways to complex biological systems like cells and cellular structures. A top-down approach to cellular information systems cites their function as an indicator of a different causal reality.

Conspicuously the origin of life is absent from the category of documented emergent phenomenon. Emergent theorists look for chemical outcomes that generate cellular hardware associated with information storage and the biochemical synthesis of encoded end products. Emergence advocates look to chemistry for solutions on how information was initially generated.

While top-down theoreticians are free to view coded information abstractly as represented by biochemical symbols (codons) coding for chemical properties (amino acid side chains) that determine protein function, emergent theorists are constricted to viewing abstractions only as useful cognitive tools that do not reflect causal realities. It is as if we are to ignore the possibility that symbolism implies intellect and tuck the idea away in a mental category reserved for apparent realities rather than actual ones. There is precedent of course for suspecting that our senses may not accurately convey reality. What IDist, with any significant experience observing internet exchanges, has not come across the flat earth argument aimed at clueless rubes by their sophisticated critics.

The appearance of a flat earth is a sensual feedback phenomenon (sensual perceptions being consistent with the extrapolation) while symbolism is imputed based, not on a visual picture, (my cat views the same screen as me without a recognition of the symbolism of the words) but rather based on a capacity to correlate a visual object with a concept. Symbols retain their physical nature while conveying a concept to those with an understanding of the encoding convention rules. So emergence demands that a process, not influenced by the input of a mind, generates the hardware, symbolism and rules by which a coding system functions. Paradoxically it also requires intellects to discount an option having the earmarks of reason embedded in the designated cause (a symbolic code) in favor of an option (emergence) that requires a belief that nature mimicks reason through a mindless chemical process.

Top-Down Causation by Information Control: From a Philosophical Problem to a Scientific Research Program focuses on what are called functional equivalence classes of operations in an effort to establish an experimental basis for determining causal flow. In biological terms higher level signals that influence action on a lower level would indicate information control. As the authors state: "A key issue here is that of equivalence class of lower-level operations, ...where operations occurring in biological systems can be considered as coordinated space-time pathways of physical-chemical interactions. The criterion for an equivalence class of operations is the outcome that an operation brings about: if two different operations give the same outcome, they can be considered equivalent. Thus, what is of concern here are functional equivalence classes (sets of operations that produce the same outcome)."

I'll explore specific biological testing possibilites in future posts.

A Top-Down Approach to Brain Function?

Denyse O'Leary has a blog entry titled New theory of brain flexibility offers to explain rapid coping mechanisms, at her blog Mindful Hack. The subject of the blog entry is research related to brain function. Two things caught my interest in light of my recent post Top Down Causation: A Logical Foundation for Intelligent Design. Denyse mentions a dynamic collaboration between multiple brain locations which appears to be a constantly adaptive process. This looks very much like a top-down candidate for neurological functions.

Even more attention getting though is the possibility that more accurate predictions about brain behavior may result from what amounts to a top-down perspective. There are those who oppose the use of a top-down or a downward causation paradigm. They object that "real" causal patterns are a consequence of emergence- a bottoms up approach. Bottoms-up restrictions, particularly with regard to origin of life theories and gross anatomical functions, are an impediment to advancing science in my view.

Top Down Causation: A Logical Foundation for Intelligent Design

The abstract to Top-Down Causation by Information Control: From a Philosophical Problem to a Scientific Research Program, authored by G. Auletta, G. F. R. Ellis, FRS, and L. Jaeger, follows (in blue):

Abstract. It has been claimed that different types of causes must be considered in biological systems, including top-down as well as same-level and bottom-up causation, thus enabling the top levels to be causally efficacious in their own right. To clarify this issue, important distinctions between information and signs are introduced here and the concepts of information control and functional equivalence classes in those systems are rigorously defined and used to characterise when top down causation by feedback control happens, in a way that is potentially testable. The causally significant elements we consider are equivalence classes of lower level processes, realised in biological systems through different operations having the same outcome within the context of information control and networks.

The paper, to which the abstract pertains, frames the soundest theoretical approach to intelligent design that I have come across. Despite the focus on cellular mechanisms and the natural selection concept, the ultimate issue distinguishing competing paradigms is causality. We observe selection associated with resistence to antibiotics, selection utilized during the course of research and in breeding animals. The last two can be considered consequences of intelligent design. Linking intelligent design to bacterial resistance requires a distinct theoretical outlook establishing the association. That distinct outlook may be the one found in the referenced paper which identifies causal dynamics characteristic of intelligently designed systems. They contrast with the bottoms up approach utilized in mainstream evolution and abiogenesis theories. The difference could mark an experimental approach able to distinguish between conflicting theories and provide the empirical footing needed to establish a scientifically viable foundation for intelligent design.

Different Approaches to Tracing Causal Trails

Top-Down Causation by Information Control: From a Philosophical Problem to a Scientific Research Program is a paper having implications for intelligent design. The paper contains this insightful paragraph:

Many scientists consider `top-down causation’ not to be real: they believe it is just a complicated way of describing things that in the end confuses the real causal patterns, which are believed to be bottom-up only (see Fig. 1a). It is also assumed that phenomena that are not easily understandable in a bottom-up way today, will be so understood in the future. This approach has been extended to all natural systems thanks to the huge success of the reductionist methodology in physics and, in recent decades, in molecular biology and neuroscience. As in Francis Crick’s famous dictum: "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules" [Crick 1994]. The emphasis in the phrase “no more than” is a denial of the reality of anything additional to the pure assembly of cells and is therefore also a rejection of top-down causation.

What strikes me about this is two things. First, I think it is accurate with respect to the type of causality scientists consider to be "real." Secondly, the consideration of what is "real" is strictly philosophical. In other words it is not dictated by nature. Instead it is the chosen lens through which humans have decided to view nature.

Top-down causation is, of course, a natural part of the universe and is frequently observed on this planet. Homes and machines are constructed using this approach. So are many other things. It is the type of approach used by intelligent beings and is therefore a marker of purposeful, intelligent causality. You can see now why its consideration has been excluded from determinations of physical causes. You also might suspect that this exclusion has hindered our understanding of life's origins.

The challenge for IDists is to construct a methodology and apply it to test hypotheses related to the origin of life. OOL is a field noted for its lack of plausible details about how life came about. It has utilized a bottoms-up approach to no avail. It's time for change.