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Recognising Top-Down Causation

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Questioning the Foundations of Physics

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A fuller description is given here: http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/~ellis/cos0.html.

  2. 2.

    For a comprehensive discussion, see the many links on Denis Noble’s webpage at http://musicoflife.co.uk/.

  3. 3.

    This derivation does not refer to the time irreversibility of the weak interaction, which has no direct effect on everyday life: it cannot be the source of the arrow of time in physical chemistry and biology.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    George Ellis

Authors
  1. George Ellis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to George Ellis .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, USA

    Anthony Aguirre

  2. Foundational Questions Institute, New York, New York, USA

    Brendan Foster

  3. Foundational Questions Institute, New York, New York, USA

    Zeeya Merali

Appendix: Equivalence Classes

Appendix: Equivalence Classes

The key idea is that of functional equivalence classes. Whenever you can identify existence of such equivalence classes, that is an indication that top-down causation is taking place [4]. Indeed this is essentially the ontological nature of the higher level effective entity: a computer program is in its nature the same as the set of all possible implementations of the set of logical operations it entails. These are what enter into the higher level effective relations; they can be described in many different ways, and implemented in many different ways; what remains the same in those variants is the core nature of the entity itself.

An equivalence relation is a binary relation \(\sim \) satisfying three properties:

  1. 1.

    For every element \(a\) in \(X\), \(a \sim a\) (reflexivity),

  2. 2.

    For every two elements \(a\) and \(b\) in \(X\), if \(a \sim b\), then \(b \sim a\) (symmetry), and

  3. 3.

    For every three elements \(a\), \(b\), and \(c\) in \(X\), if \(a \sim b\) and \(b \sim c\), then \(a \sim c\) (transitivity).

The equivalence class of an element \(a\) is denoted \([a]\) and may be defined as the set of elements that are related to \(a\) by \(\sim \).

Fig. 3.1
figure 1

The lower level dynamics does not lead to coherent higher level dynamics when the lower level dynamics acting on different lower level states corresponding to a single higher level state, give new lower level states corresponding to different higher level states

Full size image
Fig. 3.2
figure 2

The lower level dynamics leads to coherent higher level dynamics when the lower level dynamics acting on different lower level states corresponding to a single higher level state, give new lower level states corresponding to the same higher level state

Full size image

The way this works is illustrated in (Figs. 3.1 and 3.2) higher level states H1 can be realised via various slower level states L1. This may or may not result in coherent higher level action arising out of the lower level dynamics.

When coherent dynamics emerges, the set of all lower states corresponding to a single higher level state form an equivalence class as far as the higher level actions are concerned. They are indeed the effective variables that matter, rather than the specific lower level state that instantiates the higher level one. This is why lower level equivalence classes are the key to understanding the dynamics (Figs. 3.1).

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Ellis, G. (2015). Recognising Top-Down Causation. In: Aguirre, A., Foster, B., Merali, Z. (eds) Questioning the Foundations of Physics. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13045-3_3

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