I begin with the definition of power, and find that it is finalistic inasmuch as work directs energy dissipation in the interests of some system. The maximum power principle of Lotka and Odum implies an optimal energy efficiency for any work; optima are also finalities. I advance a statement of the maximum entropy production principle, suggesting that most work of dissipative structures is carried out at rates entailing energy flows faster than those that would associate with (...) maximum power. This is finalistic in the sense that the out-of-equilibrium universe, taken as an isolated system, entrains work in the interest of global thermodynamic equilibration. I posit an evolutionary scenario, with a development on Earth from abiotic times, when promoting convective energy flows could be viewed as the important function of dissipative structures, to biotic times when the preservation of living dissipative structures was added to the teleology. Dissipative structures are required by the equilibrating universe to enhance local energy gradient dissipation. (shrink)

The Maximum Entropy Production Principle (MEPP) stands out as an overarching principle that rules life phenomena in Nature. However, its explanatory power beyond heuristics remains controversial. On the one hand, the MEPP has been successfully applied principally to non-living systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. On the other hand, the underlying assumptions to lay the MEPP’s theoretical foundations and range of applicability increase the possibilities of conflicting interpretations. More interestingly, from a metaphysical stance, the MEPP’s philosophical status is (...) hotly debated: does the MEPP passively translate physical information into macroscopic predictions or actively select the physical solution in multistable systems, granting the connection between scientific models and reality? This paper deals directly with this dilemma by discussing natural determination from three angles: (1) Heuristics help natural philosophers to build an ontology. (2) The MEPP’s ontological status may stem from its selection of new forms of causation beyond physicalism. (3) The MEPP’s ontology ultimately depends on the much-discussed question of the ontology of probabilities in an information-theoretic approach and the ontology of macrostates according to the Boltzmannian definition of entropy. (shrink)

The disciplines of cybernetics, semiotics and thermodynamics investigate evolutionary processes quite independently from each other. The aim of this paper is to draw the parallels and point out the possibility and necessity of a reconciliation between these disciplines. The concept of metasystem transition has been proposed by Turchin as a quantum of evolution from a cybernetic point of view. Semiotic processes are of prime importance for the realisation of metasystem transitions in the course of evolution. From a thermodynamic point of (...) view, the emergence of more complex, self-producing agents depends on the emergence of more advanced forms of semiosis. As an evolutionary consequence, more symbolic forms of semiosis that allow higher competence for abstraction and anticipation emerge. (shrink)

In their book, Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection, Depew and Weber (1995) argued for the need to address the relationship between self-organization and natural selection in evolutionary theory, and focused on seven “visions” for doing so. Recently, Batten et al. (2008) in a paper in this journal, entitled “Visions of evolution: self-organization proposes what natural selection disposes,” picked up the issue with the work of Depew and Weber as a starting point. While the efforts of (...) both sets of authors are to be commended, there are substantive errors in both the presentations of my work and of my work with colleagues (one of the “visions” discussed) that undermine theirs. My purpose here is to correct the errors in question, thereby removing the undermining effects and in so doing reassert the position my colleagues and I first advanced more than two decades ago, and that I still stand by and argue for today. The central points are as follows: (1) Self-organization or spontaneous ordering is a process of selection; (2) this selection process is governed by a “physical selection principle”; (3) this principle is the law of maximum entropy production; and (4) natural selection is a special case where the components are replicating. (shrink)

In their book, Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection, Depew and Weber argued for the need to address the relationship between self-organization and natural selection in evolutionary theory, and focused on seven “visions” for doing so. Recently, Batten et al. in a paper in this journal, entitled “Visions of evolution: self-organization proposes what natural selection disposes,” picked up the issue with the work of Depew and Weber as a starting point. While the efforts of both sets (...) of authors are to be commended, there are substantive errors in both the presentations of my work and of my work with colleagues that undermine theirs. My purpose here is to correct the errors in question, thereby removing the undermining effects and in so doing reassert the position my colleagues and I first advanced more than two decades ago, and that I still stand by and argue for today. The central points are as follows: Self-organization or spontaneous ordering is a process of selection; this selection process is governed by a “physical selection principle”; this principle is the law of maximum entropy production; and natural selection is a special case where the components are replicating. (shrink)

In the previous papers, it was demonstrated that applying the principle of maximum information entropy by maximizing the conditional information entropy, subject to the constraint given by the Liouville equation averaged over the phase space, leads to a definition of the rate of entropy change for closed Hamiltonian systems without any additional assumptions. Here, we generalize this basic model and, with the introduction of the additional constraints which are equivalent to the hydrodynamic continuity equations, show that (...) the results obtained are consistent with the known results from the nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and thermodynamics of irreversible processes. In this way, as a part of the approach developed in this paper, the rate of entropy change and entropy production density for the classical Hamiltonian fluid are obtained. The results obtained suggest the general applicability of the foundational principles of predictive statistical mechanics and their importance for the theory of irreversibility. (shrink)

In a previous paper, a statistical method of constructing quantum models of classical properties has been described. The present paper concludes the description by turning to classical mechanics. The quantum states that maximize entropy for given averages and variances of coordinates and momenta are called ME packets. They generalize the Gaussian wave packets. A non-trivial extension of the partition-function method of probability calculus to quantum mechanics is given. Non-commutativity of quantum variables limits its usefulness. Still, the general form of (...) the state operators of ME packets is obtained with its help. The diagonal representation of the operators is found. A general way of calculating averages that can replace the partition function method is described. Classical mechanics is reinterpreted as a statistical theory. Classical trajectories are replaced by classical ME packets. Quantum states approximate classical ones if the product of the coordinate and momentum variances is much larger than Planck constant. Thus, ME packets with large variances follow their classical counterparts better than Gaussian wave packets. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to intervene in debates about the digital and, in particular, framings that imagine the digital in terms of epochal shifts or as redefining life. Instead, drawing on recent developments in digital methods, we explore the lively, productive and performative qualities of the digital by attending to the specificities of digital devices and how they interact, and sometimes compete, with older devices and their capacity to mobilize and materialize social and other relations. In doing so, (...) our aim is to explore the implications of digital devices and data for reassembling social science methods or what we call the social science apparatuses that assemble digital devices and data to ‘know’ the social and other relations. Building on recent work at CRESC on the social life of methods, we recommend a genealogical approach that is alive to the ways in which digital devices are simultaneously shaped by social worlds, and can in turn become agents that shape those worlds. This calls for attending to the specificities of digital devices themselves, how they are varied and composed of diverse socio-technical arrangements, and are enrolled in the creation of new knowledge spaces, institutions and actors. Rather than exploring what large-scale changes can be revealed and understood through the digital, we argue for explorations of how digital devices themselves are materially implicated in the production and performance of contemporary sociality. To that end we offer the following nine propositions about the implications of digital data and devices and argue that these demand rethinking the theoretical assumptions of social science methods: transactional actors; heterogeneity; visualization; continuous time; whole populations; granularity; expertise; mobile and mobilizing; and non-coherence. (shrink)

The foundations of Statistical Mechanics can be recovered almost in their entirety from the principle of maximum entropy. In this work we show that its non-equilibrium generalization, the principle of maximum caliber (Jaynes, Phys Rev 106:620–630, 1957), when applied to the unknown trajectory followed by a particle, leads to Newton’s second law under two quite intuitive assumptions (both the expected square displacement in one step and the spatial probability distribution of the particle are known at all times). (...) Our derivation explicitly highlights the role of mass as an emergent measure of the fluctuations in velocity (inertia) and the origin of potential energy as a manifestation of spatial correlations. According to our findings, the application of Newton’s equations is not limited to mechanical systems, and therefore could be used in modelling ecological, financial and biological systems, among others. (shrink)

We formulate an elementary statistical game which captures the essence of some fundamental quantum experiments such as photon polarization and spin measurement. We explore and compare the significance of the principle of maximum Shannon entropy and the principle of minimum Fisher information in solving such a game. The solution based on the principle of minimum Fisher information coincides with the solution based on an invariance principle, and provides an informational explanation of Malus' law for photon polarization. There is (...) no solution based on the principle of maximum Shannon entropy. The result demonstrates the merits of Fisher information, and the demerits of Shannon entropy, in treating some fundamental quantum problems. It also provides a quantitative example in support of a general philosophy: Nature intends to hide Fisher information, while obeying some simple rules. (shrink)

Society has historically not taken a benign view of genetic disease. The laws permitting sterilization of the mentally re tarded~ and those proscribing consanguineous marriages are but two examples. Indeed as far back as the 5th-10th centuries, B.C.E., consanguineous unions were outlawed (Leviticus XVIII, 6). Case law has traditionally tended toward the conservative. It is reactive rather than directive, exerting its influence only after an individual or group has sustained injury and brought suit. In contrast, state legislatures have not been (...) inhibited in enacting statutes. Many of their products can be characterized as hasty, unnecessary, ill-conceived, and based on the heart rather than the head. Moreover the lack of expert consultation sought has also been remarkable. One state legislature, for example, has advocated immunization for sickle cell anemia! Many others have enacted laws for the screening of inborn errors of metabolism, e.g., phenylketon uria, but have poorly defined the lines of responsibility to secure compliance. A spate of specific disease-related bills has emerged in the u.S. Congress, each seeking recognition and appropriations. Sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, Cooley's anemia and Tay-Sachs disease have been among the front-runners for support. Finally, in 1975, Congress has begun to examine an omnibus bill concerning all forms of genetic disease. The bill, termed the National Genetic Diseases Act is, however, still far from being enacted. (shrink)

Sometimes we receive evidence in a form that standard conditioning (or Jeffrey conditioning) cannot accommodate. The principle of maximum entropy (MAXENT) provides a unique solution for the posterior probability distribution based on the intuition that the information gain consistent with assumptions and evidence should be minimal. Opponents of objective methods to determine these probabilities prominently cite van Fraassen’s Judy Benjamin case to undermine the generality of maxent. This article shows that an intuitive approach to Judy Benjamin’s case supports (...) maxent. This is surprising because based on independence assumptions the anticipated result is that it would support the opponents. It also demonstrates that opponents improperly apply independence assumptions to the problem. (shrink)

The principle of insufficient reason assigns equal probabilities to each alternative of a random experiment whenever there is no reason to prefer one over the other. The maximum entropy principle generalizes PIR to the case where statistical information like expectations are given. It is known that both principles result in paradoxical probability updates for joint distributions of cause and effect. This is because constraints on the conditional P P\left result in changes of P P\left that assign higher probability (...) to those values of the cause that offer more options for the effect, suggesting “intentional behavior.” Earlier work therefore suggested sequentially maximizing entropy according to the causal order, but without further justification apart from plausibility on toy examples. We justify causal modifications of PIR and MaxEnt by separating constraints into restrictions for the cause and restrictions for the mechanism that generates the effect from the cause. We further sketch why causal PIR also entails “Information Geometric Causal Inference.” We briefly discuss problems of generalizing the causal version of MaxEnt to arbitrary causal DAGs. (shrink)

This paper proposes a feature extraction algorithm based on the maximum entropy phrase reordering model in statistical machine translation in language learning machines. The algorithm can extract more accurate phrase reordering information, especially the feature information of reversed phrases, which solves the problem of imbalance of feature data during maximum entropy training in the original algorithm, and improves the accuracy of phrase reordering in translation. In the experiment, they were combined with linguistic features such as parts (...) of speech, words, and syntactic features extracted by using the syntax analyzer, and the maximum entropy classifier was used to predict translation errors, and the experimental verification was performed on the Chinese-English translation data set and compared. The experimental results show that different word posterior probabilities have a significant impact on the classification error rate, and the combination of linguistic features based on the word posterior probability can significantly reduce the classification error rate and improve the translation error prediction performance. (shrink)

We present a Gedankenexperiment that leads to a violation of detailed balance if quantum mechanical transition probabilities are treated in the usual way by applying Fermi’s “golden rule”. This Gedankenexperiment introduces a collection of two-level systems that absorb and emit radiation randomly through non-reciprocal coupling to a waveguide, as realized in specific chiral quantum optical systems. The non-reciprocal coupling is modeled by a hermitean Hamiltonian and is compatible with the time-reversal invariance of unitary quantum dynamics. Surprisingly, the combination of non-reciprocity (...) with probabilistic radiation processes entails negative entropy production. Although the considered system appears to fulfill all conditions for Markovian stochastic dynamics, such a dynamics violates the Clausius inequality, a formulation of the second law of thermodynamics. Several implications concerning the interpretation of the quantum mechanical formalism are discussed. (shrink)

We present a model of similarity‐based retrieval that attempts to capture three seemingly contradictory psychological phenomena: (a) structural commonalities are weighed more heavily than surface commonalities in similarity judgments for items in working memory; (b) in retrieval, superficial similarity is more important than structural similarity; and yet (c) purely structural (analogical) remindings e sometimes experienced. Our model, MAC/FAC, explains these phenomena in terms of a two‐stage process. The first stage uses a computationally cheap, non‐structural matcher to filter candidate long‐term memory (...) items. It uses content vectors, a redundant encoding of structured representations whose dot product estimates how well the corresponding structural representations will match. The second stage uses SME (structure‐mapping engine) to compute structural matches on the handful of items found by the first stage. We show the utility of the MAC/FAC model through a series of computational experiments: (a) We demonstrate that MAC/FAC can model patterns of access found in psychological data; (b) we argue via sensitivity analyses that these simulation results rely on the theory; and (c) we compare the performance of MAC/FAC with ARCS, an alternate model of similarity‐based retrieval, and demonstrate that MAC/FAC explains the data better than ARCS. Finally, we discuss limitations and possible extensions of the model, relationships with other recent retrieval models, and place MAC/FAC in the context of other recent work on the nature of similarity. (shrink)

We investigate uncertain reasoning with quantified sentences of the predicate calculus treated as the limiting case of maximum entropy inference applied to finite domains.

This paper is a sequel to an earlier result of the authors that in making inferences from certain probabilistic knowledge bases the maximum entropy inference process, ME, is the only inference process respecting “common sense.” This result was criticized on the grounds that the probabilistic knowledge bases considered are unnatural and that ignorance of dependence should not be identified with statistical independence. We argue against these criticisms and also against the more general criticism that ME is representation dependent. (...) In a final section, however, we provide a criticism of our own of ME, and of inference processes in general, namely that they fail to satisfy compactness. (shrink)

Jaynes's maximum entropy principle (MEP) is analyzed by considering in detail a recent controversy. Emphasis is placed on the inductive logical interpretation of “probability” and the concept of “total knowledge.” The relation of the MEP to relative frequencies is discussed, and a possible realm of its fruitful application is noted.

Two open questions of inductive reasoning are solved: (1) does the principle of maximum entropy (pme) give a solution to the obverse Majerník problem; and (2) is Wagner correct when he claims that Jeffrey’s updating principle (jup) contradicts pme? Majerník shows that pme provides unique and plausible marginal probabilities, given conditional probabilities. The obverse problem posed here is whether pme also provides such conditional probabilities, given certain marginal probabilities. The theorem developed to solve the obverse Majerník problem demonstrates (...) that in the special case introduced by Wagner pme does not contradict jup, but elegantly generalizes it and offers a more integrated approach to probability updating. (shrink)

An investigation into the historical development of Nike's award-winning advertising campaigns in the US reveals that, over the last decade or so, African-American athletes have become their almost exclusive focus. However, these ads have increasingly centered not on black personalities per se, but on the aesthetic, affective and visceral manifestations of skin, musculature and sweat. Black bodies in advertising are rarely to be seen at rest, unless in a state of exhaustion (from which the requisite product alone can provide relief). (...) Consideration is therefore given to the potential connotations of cultural producers' repeated references to extreme physical exertion. Anson Rabinbach's trope of the `human motor' evokes modern science's concern with matters of energy preservation and entropy; here it is utilized to provide a fresh insight into the chronic contradictions between commercial cultural production on one hand, and the reality of contemporary cultural and social inequalities on the other. (shrink)

The Madelung equations map the non-relativistic time-dependent Schrödinger equation into hydrodynamic equations of a virtual fluid. While the von Neumann entropy remains constant, we demonstrate that an increase of the Shannon entropy, associated with this Madelung fluid, is proportional to the expectation value of its velocity divergence. Hence, the Shannon entropy may grow due to an expansion of the Madelung fluid. These effects result from the interference between solutions of the Schrödinger equation. Growth of the Shannon (...) class='Hi'>entropy due to expansion is common in diffusive processes. However, in the latter the process is irreversible while the processes in the Madelung fluid are always reversible. The relations between interference, compressibility and variation of the Shannon entropy are then examined in several simple examples. Furthermore, we demonstrate that for classical diffusive processes, the “force” accelerating diffusion has the form of the positive gradient of the quantum Bohm potential. Expressing then the diffusion coefficient in terms of the Planck constant reveals the lower bound given by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in terms of the product between the gas mean free path and the Brownian momentum. (shrink)

Consideration of the property of action is proposed to provide a more meaningful definition of efficient energy use and sustainable production in ecosystems. Action has physical dimensions similar to angular momentum, its magnitude varying with mass, spatial configuration and relative motion. In this article, the relationship of action to thermodynamic processes such as the spontaneous increase in entropy of the second law is explained and the utility of action for measuring changes in energy and material distribution is promoted. (...) In particular, the view that increases in entropy and action are equivalent to disorder is challenged. Given that the development of action states may be assigned an economic value and the various sources of free energy assigned a price, action theory may provide a novel mechanism for the economic allocation of resources. The importance of the diversity and redundancy of energy resources and work processes to optimize action is highlighted. (shrink)

The principle of maximum entropy is a general method to assign values to probability distributions on the basis of partial information. This principle, introduced by Jaynes in 1957, forms an extension of the classical principle of insufficient reason. It has been further generalized, both in mathematical formulation and in intended scope, into the principle of maximum relative entropy or of minimum information. It has been claimed that these principles are singled out as unique methods of statistical (...) inference that agree with certain compelling consistency requirements. This paper reviews these consistency arguments and the surrounding controversy. It is shown that the uniqueness proofs are flawed, or rest on unreasonably strong assumptions. A more general class of inference rules, maximizing the so-called Re[acute ]nyi entropies, is exhibited which also fulfill the reasonable part of the consistency assumptions. (shrink)

The principle of maximum entropy is a method for assigning values to probability distributions on the basis of partial information. In usual formulations of this and related methods of inference one assumes that this partial information takes the form of a constraint on allowed probability distributions. In practical applications, however, the information consists of empirical data. A constraint rule is then employed to construct constraints on probability distributions out of these data. Usually one adopts the rule that equates (...) the expectation values of certain functions with their empirical averages. There are, however, various other ways in which one can construct constraints from empirical data, which makes the maximum entropy principle lead to very different probability assignments. This paper shows that an argument by Jaynes to justify the usual constraint rule is unsatisfactory and investigates several alternative choices. The choice of a constraint rule is also shown to be of crucial importance to the debate on the question whether there is a conflict between the methods of inference based on maximum entropy and Bayesian conditionalization. (shrink)

Theory as History brings together twelve essays by Jarius Banaji addressing the nature of modes of production, the forms of historical capitalism and the varieties of pre-capitalist modes of production. Problematic formulations concerning the relationship of social-property relations and the laws of motion of different modes of production and his notion of merchant and slave-holding capitalism undermines Banaji’s project of constructing a non-unilinear, non-Eurocentric Marxism.

This paper concerns the question of how to draw inferences common sensically from uncertain knowledge. Since the early work of Shore and Johnson (1980), Paris and Vencovská (1990), and Csiszár (1989), it has been known that the Maximum Entropy Inference Process is the only inference process which obeys certain common sense principles of uncertain reasoning. In this paper we consider the present status of this result and argue that within the rather narrow context in which we work this (...) complete and consistent mode of uncertain reasoning is actually characterised by the observance of just a single common sense principle (or slogan). (shrink)

Objective Bayesian epistemology invokes three norms: the strengths of our beliefs should be probabilities, they should be calibrated to our evidence of physical probabilities, and they should otherwise equivocate sufficiently between the basic propositions that we can express. The three norms are sometimes explicated by appealing to the maximum entropy principle, which says that a belief function should be a probability function, from all those that are calibrated to evidence, that has maximum entropy. However, the three (...) norms of objective Bayesianism are usually justified in different ways. In this paper we show that the three norms can all be subsumed under a single justification in terms of minimising worst-case expected loss. This, in turn, is equivalent to maximising a generalised notion of entropy. We suggest that requiring language invariance, in addition to minimising worst-case expected loss, motivates maximisation of standard entropy as opposed to maximisation of other instances of generalised entropy. Our argument also provides a qualified justification for updating degrees of belief by Bayesian conditionalisation. However, conditional probabilities play a less central part in the objective Bayesian account than they do under the subjective view of Bayesianism, leading to a reduced role for Bayes’ Theorem. (shrink)

This editorial explains the scope of the special issue and provides a thematic introduction to the contributed papers.

Realists about laws of nature and their Humean opponents disagree on whether laws ‘govern’. An independent commitment to the ‘governing conception’ of laws pushes many towards the realist camp. Despite its significance, however, no satisfactory account of governance has been offered. The goal of this article is to develop such an account. I base my account on two claims. First, we should distinguish two notions of governance, ‘guidance’ and ‘production’, and secondly, explanatory phenomena other than laws are also candidates (...) for governance. My goal is to develop a unified account which captures both guidance and production as well as the governance of phenomena, such as essence and logical consequence. The account of governance I develop belongs to the family of modal accounts, which was popularized by David Armstrong, but it also employs essentialist resources. If successful, this modal-essentialist account not only reveals the costs that proponents of governance incur, but it also puts that important notion on a solid theoretical foundation. (shrink)

Several authors have investigated the question of whether canonical logic-based accounts of belief revision, and especially the theory of AGM revision operators, are compatible with the dynamics of Bayesian conditioning. Here we show that Leitgeb's stability rule for acceptance, which has been offered as a possible solution to the Lottery paradox, allows to bridge AGM revision and Bayesian update: using the stability rule, we prove that AGM revision operators emerge from Bayesian conditioning by an application of the principle of (...) class='Hi'>maximum entropy. In situations of information loss, or whenever the agent relies on a qualitative description of her information state - such as a plausibility ranking over hypotheses, or a belief set - the dynamics of AGM belief revision are compatible with Bayesian conditioning; indeed, through the maximum entropy principle, conditioning naturally generated AGM revision operators. This mitigates an impossibility theorem of Lin and Kelly for tracking Bayesian conditioning with AGM revision, and suggests an approach to the compatibility problem that highlights the information loss incurred by acceptance rules in passing from probabilistic to qualitative representations of beliefs. (shrink)

Einstein’s razor, a corollary of Ockham’s razor, is often paraphrased as follows: make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. This rule of thumb describes the challenge that designers of a legal system face—to craft simple laws that produce desired ends, but not to pursue simplicity so far as to undermine those ends. Complexity, simplicity’s inverse, taxes cognition and increases the likelihood of suboptimal decisions. In addition, unnecessary legal complexity can drive a misallocation of human capital toward comprehending and (...) complying with legal rules and away from other productive ends. While many scholars have offered descriptive accounts or theoretical models of legal complexity, most empirical research to date has been limited to simple measures of size, such as the number of pages in a bill. No extant research rigorously applies a meaningful model to real data. As a consequence, we have no reliable means to determine whether a new bill, regulation, order, or precedent substantially effects legal complexity. In this paper, we begin to address this need by developing a proposed empirical framework for measuring relative legal complexity. This framework is based on “knowledge acquisition”, an approach at the intersection of psychology and computer science, which can take into account the structure, language, and interdependence of law. We then demonstrate the descriptive value of this framework by applying it to the U.S. Code’s Titles, scoring and ranking them by their relative complexity. We measure various features of a title including its structural size, the net flow of its intra-title citations and its linguistic entropy. Our framework is flexible, intuitive, and transparent, and we offer this approach as a first step in developing a practical methodology for assessing legal complexity. (shrink)

In recent decades, several theories have claimed to explain the teleological causality of organisms as a function of self-organising and self-producing processes. The most widely cited theories of this sort are variations of autopoiesis, originally introduced by Maturana and Varela. More recent modifications of autopoietic theory have focused on system organisation, closure of constraints and autonomy to account for organism teleology. This article argues that the treatment of teleology in autopoiesis and other organisation theories is inconclusive for three reasons: First, (...) non-living self-organising processes like autocatalysis meet the defining features of autopoiesis without being teleological; second, organisational approaches, whether defined in terms of the closure of constraints, self-determination or autonomy, are unable to specify teleological normativity, that is, the individuation of an ultimate beneficiary; third, all self-organised systems produce local order by maximising the throughput of energy and/or material (obeying the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle) and thereby are specifically organised to undermine their own critical boundary conditions. Despite these inadequacies, an alternative approach called teleodynamics accounts for teleology. This theory shows how multiple self-organising processes can be collectively linked so that they counter each other’s MEP principle tendencies to become codependent. Teleodynamics embraces – not ignoring – the difficulties of self-organisation, but reinstates teleology as a radical phase transition distinguishing systems embodying an orientation towards their own beneficial ends from those that lack normative character. (shrink)

An important suggestion of objective Bayesians is that the maximum entropy principle can replace a principle which is known to get into paradoxical difficulties: the principle of indifference. No one has previously determined whether the maximum entropy principle is better able to solve Bertrand’s chord paradox than the principle of indifference. In this paper I show that it is not. Additionally, the course of the analysis brings to light a new paradox, a revenge paradox of the (...) chords, that is unique to the maximum entropy principle. (shrink)

Kristina Toutanova Christopher D. Manning Dept of Computer Science Depts of Computer Science and Linguistics Gates Bldg 4A, 353 Serra Mall Gates Bldg 4A, 353 Serra Mall Stanford, CA 94305–9040, USA Stanford, CA 94305–9040, USA [email protected] [email protected]..