The limitations of formal models of measurement, control, and cognition

Abstract

Two fundamental dissonances appear between physical laws and living organisms. The oldest is the dissonance between determinism and choice as reflected in the inexorability of dynamical physical laws and the flexibility of functional biological controls. By principle, physical laws are confined to events over which organisms can have no control. In contrast, the biological sciences are confined to descriptions of adaptable functions that are locally under control of the organisms. A second, converse dissonance arises between statistical laws of physics and the reliability of biological controls since controls are intrinsically dissipative and hence error-prone. Both these dissonances reflect an internal dissonance found within physics itself. The measurement problem epitomizes this dissonance. I elaborate the argument [29] that only organisms control what, when and where measurements are made on the physical universe, and that life exists and evolves only by virtue of nonformal measurement and control functions. I suggest that the rigidity of the syntax of our formal mathematical models creates artificial inconsistencies that obscure the functional evolution of measurement and control constraints from cells to brains.