A picture of an NPN transistor and its circuit diagram.
Is a transistor matter or pattern? On the left of Fig. 1 we see the transistor as matter, a thing in the material world. On the right we see the transistor as pattern, a logical idea. There does not seem to be a perfect English word for this sort of fulcrum or janus-point which—like a transistor—is simultaneously both matter and pattern, but we will use the term hylomorph, a term which combines matter and form.
Mathematics is very much on the “pattern” side of the dichotomy, and it is reasonable to almost equate math and pattern: mathematics is something like the articulation of pattern. So we are equally interested in how math and matter relate.
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Besides transistors, there are other examples of hylomorphs, i.e. condensed instantiations of both matter and pattern.
DNA: As an acidic molecule embedded in 3D space that acts according to physical laws, DNA is matter; but as an ordered sequence of four letters whose three-letter words code for amino acids, it is pattern. Reading the DNA and elaborating its meaning involves many other parts of the cell, and we could consider that whole complex to be both matter and pattern, but DNA is more condensed, more symbolic. Is DNA matter or pattern?
Signature: As the process of moving a pen across paper to form an ink stain, a signature is matter; but as a token of people’s agreement to regulate their behavior, it is pattern. As we sign a contract in good faith, we’ve set up our internal state in such a way that we think it’s likely that our actions in the material world will follow the pattern dictated by the contract. Is signature matter or pattern?
There are many such examples, and what is perhaps most striking is that there appears to be some process by which examples are perpetually being created: hylomorphs keep getting formed and condensed in our world…In each case the hylomorph came to exist by way of some sort of natural push or process urging the formation of smaller, more concentrated symbols to instantiate pattern as matter or bind matter to pattern.
We are not interested in these examples per se, but rather in the fact that there appears to be a natural process by which hylomorphs are continually being formed and condensed, and the fact that this process seems to work at all scales and regardless of substrate.“
Notes on perception
What’s the relationship between how matter is arranged and whether it’s possible for a person, or other conscious organism, to have a certain experience?1 How is this related to the evolution and structure of our brains and sense organs?
As far as I know, in order to have visual or auditory experience, I need neurons in my brain that respond to variations in visual or auditory stimuli. In those famous Hubel and Wiesel experiments, cats who had only viewed vertical lines were blind to horizontal lines. These neural tuning curves don’t feel like hylomorphs to me, but David pointed out in conversation that our eyes and ears evolved into specific forms for effectively sensing their respective physical signals e.g. light, sound. To have auditory experience as an anatomically normal person, structures in our ear have to vibrate at the same frequency of the sound in our environment and then that information is converted into neural representations.
I don’t think we necessarily need intact eyes and ears to experience visual and auditory perception — direct neural stimulation of auditory and visual regions may produce these sensations. But, to form those neural tuning curves in the first place, neural stimulation alone seems insufficient to help, for example, a congenitally deaf and blind animal/human. Without the appropriate sensor, that physical information is inaccessible. To take a measurement, we need to interact with the phenomena of interest. Sound is a time-varying pressure field in air, so to collect information about sound, we need a sensor that can measure variations in pressure over time.
Congenitally blind and deaf people can gain sensory experience through medical procedures that repair their sense organs or replace them with prosthetics (although gaining these functions seems more difficult with age). For example, cochlear implants have microphones that vibrate at the frequency of the incoming sound. In this case too, the receiver has to match the physical form of the physical phenomena.
It doesn’t seem like there’s a way to replace this process with something entirely computational? You can’t get around that your receiver has to physically couple with the physical phenomena.2 But could someone with a cochlear implant remove the microphone and place the microphone in a physically distant location wirelessly and send digital signals to the implant? Would this enable a congenitally blind person to hear? Naively, if the latency was low enough, yes? So, the appropriate physical sensor seems essential, but proximity does not.
Misc
If David’s observations about hylomorphs are true, what hylomorphs may form in the future? What does the existence of hylomorphs imply about evolution? (or if you don’t like the use of evolution here, sub out “where we are going”. I like the use of evolution here and it reflects my intuitions about evolution).
Of interest is Kleiner’s Consciousness qua Mortal Computation ↩︎
This is different from asking whether you could simulate sound. ↩︎
