Complexity: the science of paradoxes

Last week I participated in a Workshop on Philosophy and Complexity at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies. Interesting meeting between people of different background and interest, that always inspires me a lot.  Though it was hardly discussed, I again observed that complexity is probably the science of paradoxes. Here are some:

1. Hierarchies exist, but they are not really helpfull and they are not de-composable. Might this be an ethical issue ?

2. An attractor is stable, but the process itself from the one to the other attractor is not. Though a "particle" seems stable, it is a highly dynamic existence. Isn't there an interesting role for diversity in there ?

3. Everything contains identity and difference.  It is just a matter of choice. Does identity need constraints ?

4. While (or when or if) determinism is not a choice, causality is.

And this latter one gave a lot discussion/confusion.  Seemingly different people understand determinism and causality different (interesting!). For me, determinism is opposite to randomness.  And when I look into a philosophical encyclopedia, they even are not clear.  Anyway, for me complexity is still deterministic and that means it is not random (otherwise, we could as well stop everything right away).  However it is "a-causal", a term I take from Pauli. A-causal means there is no longer a causal relationship (from cause to effect) but rather a coincidence (occuring at the same time). Of course this calls on concepts such as synchronicity, entanglement and non-locality. Indeed it is a "quantum interpretation" (more about it in my book), but above all, the big difference between causal and a-causal is probably "time".  In a causal relationship, there is time necessary between cause and effect.  In an a-causal relationship, there is synchronicity.  We did not get out of that discussion, but it is certainly worth a second thought.

Comments

[Armchair Guy]

Here is a comment I have also posted elsewhere. It concerns my inability to reconcile causality and determinism, even though most people seem to attempt to define determinism in terms of causality. The argument below implies that causality is meaningless in a deterministic universe.

The notion that determinism includes causality is perplexing. It seems to me that causality rests entirely on counterfactual outcomes. In a deterministic world, all outcomes are pre-decided throughout time. There is no possibility of any counterfactual outcome other than the one that occurred/will occur. Thus in a deterministic universe, any event A occurring before an event B vacuously "causes" event B. You cannot say, "But if A had not occurred, B would still have occurred," because under determinism the premise "If A had not occurred" is meaningless -- akin to saying "If 1 was equal to 2".

The only definition of causality that I can think of is one based on consensus or faith: A causes B if we *believe* A causes B.

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