Self-Financing and Dynamically Hedged Portfolio – Robert Merton’s Option Pricing. Thought of the Day 153.0

As an alternative to the riskless hedging approach, Robert Merton derived the option pricing equation via the construction of a self-financing and dynamically hedged portfolio containing the risky asset, option and riskless asset (in the form of money market account). Let Q_S(t) and Q_V(t) denote the number of units of asset and option in the portfolio, respectively, and M_S(t) and M_V(t) denote the currency value of Q_S(t) units of asset and Q_V(t) units of option, respectively. The self-financing portfolio is set up with zero initial net investment cost and no additional funds are added or withdrawn afterwards. The additional units acquired for one security in the portfolio is completely financed by the sale of another security in the same portfolio. The portfolio is said to be dynamic since its composition is allowed to change over time. For notational convenience, dropping the subscript t for the asset price process S_t, the option value process V_t and the standard Brownian process Z_t. The portfolio value at time t can be expressed as

Π(t) = M_S(t) + M_V(t) + M(t) = Q_S(t)S + Q_V(t)V + M(t) —– (1)

where M(t) is the currency value of the riskless asset invested in a riskless money market account. Suppose the asset price process is governed by the stochastic differential equation (1) in here, we apply the Ito lemma to obtain the differential of the option value V as:

dV = ∂V/∂t dt + ∂V/∂S dS + σ²/2 S² ∂²V/∂S² dt = (∂V/∂t + μS ∂V/∂S σ²/2 S² ∂²V/∂S²)dt + σS ∂V/∂S dZ —– (2)

If we formally write the stochastic dynamics of V as

dV/V = μ_V dt + σ_V dZ —– (3)

then μ_V and σ_V are given by

μ_V = (∂V/∂t + ρS ∂V/∂S + σ²/2 S² ∂²V/∂S²)/V —– (4)

and

σ_V = (σS ∂V/∂S)/V —– (5)

The instantaneous currency return dΠ(t) of the above portfolio is attributed to the differential price changes of asset and option and interest accrued, and the differential changes in the amount of asset, option and money market account held. The differential of Π(t) is computed as:

dΠ(t) = [Q_S(t) dS + Q_V(t) dV + rM(t) dt] + [S dQ_S(t) + V dQ_V(t) + dM(t)] —– (6)

where rM(t)dt gives the interest amount earned from the money market account over dt and dM(t) represents the change in the money market account held due to net currency gained/lost from the sale of the underlying asset and option in the portfolio. And if the portfolio is self-financing, the sum of the last three terms in the above equation is zero. The instantaneous portfolio return dΠ(t) can then be expressed as:

dΠ(t) = Q_S(t) dS + Q_V(t) dV + rM(t) dt = M_S(t) dS/S + M_V(t) dV/V +  rM(t) dt —– (7)

Eliminating M(t) between (1) and (7) and expressing dS/S and dV/V in terms of their stochastic dynamics, we obtain

dΠ(t) = [(μ − r)M_S(t) + (μ_V − r)M_V(t)]dt + [σM_S(t) + σ_V M_V(t)]dZ —– (8)

How can we make the above self-financing portfolio instantaneously riskless so that its return is non-stochastic? This can be achieved by choosing an appropriate proportion of asset and option according to

σM_S(t) + σ_V M_V(t) = σS Q_S(t) + σS ∂V/∂S Q_V(t) = 0

that is, the number of units of asset and option in the self-financing portfolio must be in the ratio

Q_S(t)/Q_V(t) = -∂V/∂S —– (9)

at all times. The above ratio is time dependent, so continuous readjustment of the portfolio is necessary. We now have a dynamic replicating portfolio that is riskless and requires zero initial net investment, so the non-stochastic portfolio return dΠ(t) must be zero.

(8) becomes

0 = [(μ − r)M_S(t) + (μ_V − r)M_V(t)]dt

substituting the ratio factor in the above equation, we get

(μ − r)S ∂V/∂S = (μ_V − r)V —– (10)

Now substituting μ_V from (4) into the above equation, we get the black-Scholes equation for V,

∂V/∂t + σ²/2 S² ∂²V/∂S² + rS ∂V/∂S – rV = 0

Suppose we take Q_V(t) = −1 in the above dynamically hedged self-financing portfolio, that is, the portfolio always shorts one unit of the option. By the ratio factor, the number of units of risky asset held is always kept at the level of ∂V/∂S units, which is changing continuously over time. To maintain a self-financing hedged portfolio that constantly keeps shorting one unit of the option, we need to have both the underlying asset and the riskfree asset (money market account) in the portfolio. The net cash flow resulting in the buying/selling of the risky asset in the dynamic procedure of maintaining ∂V/∂S units of the risky asset is siphoned to the money market account.

Advertisement

Kant and Non-Euclidean Geometries. Thought of the Day 94.0

The argument that non-Euclidean geometries contradict Kant’s doctrine on the nature of space apparently goes back to Hermann Helmholtz and was retaken by several philosophers of science such as Hans Reichenbach (The Philosophy of Space and Time) who devoted much work to this subject. In a essay written in 1870, Helmholtz argued that the axioms of geometry are not a priori synthetic judgments (in the sense given by Kant), since they can be subjected to experiments. Given that Euclidian geometry is not the only possible geometry, as was believed in Kant’s time, it should be possible to determine by means of measurements whether, for instance, the sum of the three angles of a triangle is 180 degrees or whether two straight parallel lines always keep the same distance among them. If it were not the case, then it would have been demonstrated experimentally that space is not Euclidean. Thus the possibility of verifying the axioms of geometry would prove that they are empirical and not given a priori.

Helmholtz developed his own version of a non-Euclidean geometry on the basis of what he believed to be the fundamental condition for all geometries: “the possibility of figures moving without change of form or size”; without this possibility, it would be impossible to define what a measurement is. According to Helmholtz:

the axioms of geometry are not concerned with space-relations only but also at the same time with the mechanical deportment of solidest bodies in motion.

Nevertheless, he was aware that a strict Kantian might argue that the rigidity of bodies is an a priori property, but

then we should have to maintain that the axioms of geometry are not synthetic propositions… they would merely define what qualities and deportment a body must have to be recognized as rigid.

At this point, it is worth noticing that Helmholtz’s formulation of geometry is a rudimentary version of what was later developed as the theory of Lie groups. As for the transport of rigid bodies, it is well known that rigid motion cannot be defined in the framework of the theory of relativity: since there is no absolute simultaneity of events, it is impossible to move all parts of a material body in a coordinated and simultaneous way. What is defined as the length of a body depends on the reference frame from where it is observed. Thus, it is meaningless to invoke the rigidity of bodies as the basis of a geometry that pretend to describe the real world; it is only in the mathematical realm that the rigid displacement of a figure can be defined in terms of what mathematicians call a congruence.

Arguments similar to those of Helmholtz were given by Reichenbach in his intent to refute Kant’s doctrine on the nature of space and time. Essentially, the argument boils down to the following: Kant assumed that the axioms of geometry are given a priori and he only had classical geometry in mind, Einstein demonstrated that space is not Euclidean and that this could be verified empirically, ergo Kant was wrong. However, Kant did not state that space must be Euclidean; instead, he argued that it is a pure form of intuition. As such, space has no physical reality of its own, and therefore it is meaningless to ascribe physical properties to it. Actually, Kant never mentioned Euclid directly in his work, but he did refer many times to the physics of Newton, which is based on classical geometry. Kant had in mind the axioms of this geometry which is a most powerful tool of Newtonian mechanics. Actually, he did not even exclude the possibility of other geometries, as can be seen in his early speculations on the dimensionality of space.

The important point missed by Reichenbach is that Riemannian geometry is necessarily based on Euclidean geometry. More precisely, a Riemannian space must be considered as locally Euclidean in order to be able to define basic concepts such as distance and parallel transport; this is achieved by defining a flat tangent space at every point, and then extending all properties of this flat space to the globally curved space (Luther Pfahler Eisenhart Riemannian Geometry). To begin with, the structure of a Riemannian space is given by its metric tensor g_μν from which the (differential) length is defined as ds² = g_μν dx^μ dx^ν; but this is nothing less than a generalization of the usual Pythagoras theorem in Euclidean space. As for the fundamental concept of parallel transport, it is taken directly from its analogue in Euclidean space: it refers to the transport of abstract (not material, as Helmholtz believed) figures in such a space. Thus Riemann’s geometry cannot be free of synthetic a priori propositions because it is entirely based upon concepts such as length and congruence taken form Euclid. We may conclude that Euclids geometry is the condition of possibility for a more general geometry, such as Riemann’s, simply because it is the natural geometry adapted to our understanding; Kant would say that it is our form of grasping space intuitively. The possibility of constructing abstract spaces does not refute Kant’s thesis; on the contrary, it reinforces it.

Velocity of Money

The most basic difference between the demand theory of money and exchange theory of money lies in the understanding of quantity equation

M . v = P . Y —– (1)

Here M is money supply, P is price and Y is real output; in addition, v is constant velocity of money. The demand theory understands that (1) reflects the needs of the economic individual for money, not only the meaning of exchange. Under the assumption of liquidity preference, the demand theory introduces nominal interest rate into demand function of money, thus exhibiting more economic pictures than traditional quantity theory does. Let us, however concentrate on the economic movement through linearization of exchange theory emphasizing exchange medium function of money.

Let us assume that the central bank provides a very small supply M of money, which implies that the value PY of products manufactured by the producer will be unable to be realized only through one transaction. The producer has to suspend the transaction until the purchasers possess money at hand again, which will elevate the transaction costs and even result in the bankruptcy of the producer. Then, will the producer do nothing and wait for the bankruptcy?

In reality, producers would rather adjust sales value through raising or lowering the price or amount of product to attempt the realization of a maximal sales value M than reserve the stock of products to subject the sale to the limit of velocity of money. In other words, producer would adjust price or real output to control the velocity of money, since the velocity of money can influence the realization of the product value.

Every time money changes hands, a transaction is completed; thus numerous turnovers of money for an individual during a given period of time constitute a macroeconomic exchange ∑_ip_iY_i if the prices p_i can be replaced by an average price P, then we can rewrite the value of exchange as ∑_ip_iY_i = P . Y. In a real economy, the producer will manage to make P . Y close the money supply M as much as possible through adjusting the real output or its price.

For example, when a retailer comes to a strange community to sell her commodities, she always prefers to make a price through trial and error. If she finds that higher price can still promote the sales amount, then she will choose to continue raising the price until the sales amount less changes; on the other hand, if she confirms that lower price can create the more sales amount, then she will decrease the price of the commodity. Her strategy of pricing depends on price elasticity of demand for the commodity. However, the maximal value of the sales amount is determined by how much money the community can supply, thus the pricing of the retailer will make her sales close this maximal sale value, namely money for consumption of the community. This explains why the same commodity can always be sold at a higher price in the rich area.

Equation (1) is not an identical equation but an equilibrium state of exchange process in an economic system. Evidently, the difference M –  P . Y  between the supply of money and present sales value provides a vacancy for elevating sales value, in other words, the supply of money acts as the role of a carrying capacity for sales value. We assume that the vacancy is in direct proportion to velocity of increase of the sales value, and then derive a dynamical quantity equation

M(t) - P(t) . Y(t)  =  k . d[P(t) . Y(t)]/d(t) —– (2)

Here k is a positive constant and expresses a characteristic time with which the vacancy is filled. This is a speculated basic dynamical quantity equation of exchange by money. In reality, the money supply M(t) can usually be given; (2) is actually an evolution equation of sales value P(t)Y(t) , which can uniquely determine an evolving path of the price.

The role of money in (2) can be seen that money is only a medium of commodity exchange, just like the chopsticks for eating and the soap for washing. All needs for money are or will be order to carry out the commodity exchange. The behavior of holding money of the economic individuals implies a potential exchange in the future, whether for speculation or for the preservation of wealth, but it cannot directly determine the present price because every realistic price always comes from the commodity exchange, and no exchange and no price. In other words, what we are concerned with is not the reason of money generation, but form of money generation, namely we are concerned about money generation as a function of time rather than it as a function of income or interest rate. The potential needs for money which you can use various reasons to explain cannot contribute to price as long as the money does not participate in the exchange, thus the money supply not used to exchange will not occur in (2).

On the other hand, the change in money supply would result in a temporary vacancy of sales value, although sales value will also be achieved through exchanging with the new money supply at the next moment, since the price or sales volume may change. For example, a group of residents spend M(t) to buy houses of P(t)Y(t) through the loan at time t, evidently M(t) = P(t)Y(t). At time t+1, another group of residents spend M(t+1) to buy houses of P(t+1)Y(t+1) through the loan, and M(t+1) = P(t+1)Y(t+1). Thus, we can consider M(t+1) – M(t) as increase in money supply, and this increase can cause a temporary vacancy of sales value M(t+1) – P(t)Y(t). It is this vacancy that encourages sellers to try to maximize sales through adjusting the price by trial and error and also real estate developers to increase or decrease their housing production. Ultimately, new prices and production are produced and the exchange is completed at the level of M(t+1) = P(t+1)Y(t+1). In reality, the gap between M(t+1) and M(t) is often much smaller than the vacancy M(t+1) – P(t)Y(t), therefore we can approximately consider M(t+1) as M(t) if the money supply function M(t) is continuous and smooth.

However, it is necessary to emphasize that (2) is not a generation equation of demand function P(Y), which means (2) is a unique equation of determination of price (path), since, from the perspective of monetary exchange theory, the evolution of price depends only on money supply and production and arises from commodity exchange rather than relationship between supply and demand of products in the traditional economics where the meaning of the exchange is not obvious. In addition, velocity of money is not contained in this dynamical quantity equation, but its significance PY/M will be endogenously exhibited by the system.

Universal Turing Machine: Algorithmic Halting

A natural number x will be identified with the x’^th binary string in lexicographic order (Λ,0,1,00,01,10,11,000…), and a set X of natural numbers will be identified with its characteristic sequence, and with the real number between 0 and 1 having that sequence as its dyadic expansion. The length of a string x will be denoted |x|, the n’^th bit of an infinite sequence X will be noted X(n), and the initial n bits of X will be denoted X_n. Concatenation of strings p and q will be denoted pq.

We now define the information content (and later the depth) of finite strings using a universal Turing machine U. A universal Turing machine may be viewed as a partial recursive function of two arguments. It is universal in the sense that by varying one argument (“program”) any partial recursive function of the other argument (“data”) can be obtained. In the usual machine formats, program, data and output are all finite strings, or, equivalently, natural numbers. However, it is not possible to take a uniformly weighted average over a countably infinite set. Chaitin’s universal machine has two tapes: a read-only one-way tape containing the infinite program; and an ordinary two-way read/write tape, which is used for data input, intermediate work, and output, all of which are finite strings. Our machine differs from Chaitin’s in having some additional auxiliary storage (e.g. another read/write tape) which is needed only to improve the time efficiency of simulations.

We consider only terminating computations, during which, of course, only a finite portion of the program tape can be read. Therefore, the machine’s behavior can still be described by a partial recursive function of two string arguments U(p, w), if we use the first argument to represent that portion of the program that is actually read in the course of a particular computation. The expression U (p, w) = x will be used to indicate that the U machine, started with any infinite sequence beginning with p on its program tape and the finite string w on its data tape, performs a halting computation which reads exactly the initial portion p of the program, and leaves output data x on the data tape at the end of the computation. In all other cases (reading less than p, more than p, or failing to halt), the function U(p, w) is undefined. Wherever U(p, w) is defined, we say that p is a self-delimiting program to compute x from w, and we use T(p, w) to represent the time (machine cycles) of the computation. Often we will consider computations without input data; in that case we abbreviate U(p, Λ) and T(p, Λ) as U(p) and T(p) respectively.

The self-delimiting convention for the program tape forces the domain of U and T, for each data input w, to be a prefix set, that is, a set of strings no member of which is the extension of any other member. Any prefix set S obeys the Kraft inequality

∑_p∈S 2^−|p| ≤ 1

Besides being self-delimiting with regard to its program tape, the U machine must be efficiently universal in the sense of being able to simulate any other machine of its kind (Turing machines with self-delimiting program tape) with at most an additive constant constant increase in program size and a linear increase in execution time.

Without loss of generality we assume that there exists for the U machine a constant prefix r which has the effect of stacking an instruction to restart the computation when it would otherwise end. This gives the machine the ability to concatenate programs to run consecutively: if U(p, w) = x and U(q, x) = y, then U(rpq, w) = y. Moreover, this concatenation should be efficient in the sense that T (rpq, w) should exceed T (p, w) + T (q, x) by at most O(1). This efficiency of running concatenated programs can be realized with the help of the auxiliary storage to stack the restart instructions.

Sometimes we will generalize U to have access to an “oracle” A, i.e. an infinite look-up table which the machine can consult in the course of its computation. The oracle may be thought of as an arbitrary 0/1-valued function A(x) which the machine can cause to be evaluated by writing the argument x on a special tape and entering a special state of the finite control unit. In the next machine cycle the oracle responds by sending back the value A(x). The time required to evaluate the function is thus linear in the length of its argument. In particular we consider the case in which the information in the oracle is random, each location of the look-up table having been filled by an independent coin toss. Such a random oracle is a function whose values are reproducible, but otherwise unpredictable and uncorrelated.

Let {φ^A_i (p, w): i = 0,1,2…} be an acceptable Gödel numbering of A-partial recursive functions of two arguments and {φ^A_i (p, w)} an associated Blum complexity measure, henceforth referred to as time. An index j is called self-delimiting iff, for all oracles A and all values w of the second argument, the set { x : φ^A_j (x, w) is defined} is a prefix set. A self-delimiting index has efficient concatenation if there exists a string r such that for all oracles A and all strings w, x, y, p, and q,if φ^A_j (p, w) = x and φ^A_j (q, x) = y, then φ^A_j(rpq, w) = y and φ^A_j (rpq, w) = φ^A_j (p, w) + φ^A_j (q, x) + O(1). A self-delimiting index u with efficient concatenation is called efficiently universal iff, for every self-delimiting index j with efficient concatenation, there exists a simulation program s and a linear polynomial L such that for all oracles A and all strings p and w, and

φ^A_u(sp, w) = φ^A_j (p, w)

and

Φ^A_u(sp, w) ≤ L(Φ^A_j (p, w))

The functions U^A(p,w) and T^A(p,w) are defined respectively as φ^A_u(p, w) and Φ^A_u(p, w), where u is an efficiently universal index.

For any string x, the minimal program, denoted x∗, is min{p : U(p) = x}, the least self-delimiting program to compute x. For any two strings x and w, the minimal program of x relative to w, denoted (x/w)∗, is defined similarly as min{p : U(p,w) = x}.

By contrast to its minimal program, any string x also has a print program, of length |x| + O(log|x|), which simply transcribes the string x from a verbatim description of x contained within the program. The print program is logarithmically longer than x because, being self-delimiting, it must indicate the length as well as the contents of x. Because it makes no effort to exploit redundancies to achieve efficient coding, the print program can be made to run quickly (e.g. linear time in |x|, in the present formalism). Extra information w may help, but cannot significantly hinder, the computation of x, since a finite subprogram would suffice to tell U to simply erase w before proceeding. Therefore, a relative minimal program (x/w)∗ may be much shorter than the corresponding absolute minimal program x∗, but can only be longer by O(1), independent of x and w.

A string is compressible by s bits if its minimal program is shorter by at least s bits than the string itself, i.e. if |x∗| ≤ |x| − s. Similarly, a string x is said to be compressible by s bits relative to a string w if |(x/w)∗| ≤ |x| − s. Regardless of how compressible a string x may be, its minimal program x∗ is compressible by at most an additive constant depending on the universal computer but independent of x. [If (x∗)∗ were much smaller than x∗, then the role of x∗ as minimal program for x would be undercut by a program of the form “execute the result of executing (x∗)∗.”] Similarly, a relative minimal program (x/w)∗ is compressible relative to w by at most a constant number of bits independent of x or w.

The algorithmic probability of a string x, denoted P(x), is defined as {∑2^−|p| : U(p) = x}. This is the probability that the U machine, with a random program chosen by coin tossing and an initially blank data tape, will halt with output x. The time-bounded algorithmic probability, P_t(x), is defined similarly, except that the sum is taken only over programs which halt within time t. We use P(x/w) and P_t(x/w) to denote the analogous algorithmic probabilities of one string x relative to another w, i.e. for computations that begin with w on the data tape and halt with x on the data tape.

The algorithmic entropy H(x) is defined as the least integer greater than −log₂P(x), and the conditional entropy H(x/w) is defined similarly as the least integer greater than − log₂P(x/w). Among the most important properties of the algorithmic entropy is its equality, to within O(1), with the size of the minimal program:

∃c∀x∀wH(x/w) ≤ |(x/w)∗| ≤ H(x/w) + c

The first part of the relation, viz. that algorithmic entropy should be no greater than minimal program size, is obvious, because of the minimal program’s own contribution to the algorithmic probability. The second half of the relation is less obvious. The approximate equality of algorithmic entropy and minimal program size means that there are few near-minimal programs for any given input/output pair (x/w), and that every string gets an O(1) fraction of its algorithmic probability from its minimal program.

Finite strings, such as minimal programs, which are incompressible or nearly so are called algorithmically random. The definition of randomness for finite strings is necessarily a little vague because of the ±O(1) machine-dependence of H(x) and, in the case of strings other than self-delimiting programs, because of the question of how to count the information encoded in the string’s length, as opposed to its bit sequence. Roughly speaking, an n-bit self-delimiting program is considered random (and therefore not ad-hoc as a hypothesis) iff its information content is about n bits, i.e. iff it is incompressible; while an externally delimited n-bit string is considered random iff its information content is about n + H(n) bits, enough to specify both its length and its contents.

For infinite binary sequences (which may be viewed also as real numbers in the unit interval, or as characteristic sequences of sets of natural numbers) randomness can be defined sharply: a sequence X is incompressible, or algorithmically random, if there is an O(1) bound to the compressibility of its initial segments X_n. Intuitively, an infinite sequence is random if it is typical in every way of sequences that might be produced by tossing a fair coin; in other words, if it belongs to no informally definable set of measure zero. Algorithmically random sequences constitute a larger class, including sequences such as Ω which can be specified by ineffective definitions.

The busy beaver function B(n) is the greatest number computable by a self-delimiting program of n bits or fewer. The halting set K is {x : φ_x(x) converges}. This is the standard representation of the halting problem.

The self-delimiting halting set K₀ is the (prefix) set of all self-delimiting programs for the U machine that halt: {p : U(p) converges}.

K and K₀ are readily computed from one another (e.g. by regarding the self-delimiting programs as a subset of ordinary programs, the first 2ⁿ bits of K₀ can be recovered from the first 2^n+O(1) bits of K; by encoding each n-bit ordinary program as a self-delimiting program of length n + O(log n), the first 2ⁿ bits of K can be recovered from the first 2^{n+O(log n)} bits of K₀.)

The halting probability Ω is defined as {2^−|p| : U(p) converges}, the probability that the U machine would halt on an infinite input supplied by coin tossing. Ω is thus a real number between 0 and 1.

The first 2ⁿ bits of K₀ can be computed from the first n bits of Ω, by enumerating halting programs until enough have halted to account for all but 2⁻ⁿ of the total halting probability. The time required for this decoding (between B(n − O(1)) and B(n + H(n) + O(1)) grows faster than any computable function of n. Although K₀ is only slowly computable from Ω, the first n bits of Ω can be rapidly computed from the first 2^n+H(n)+O(1) bits of K₀, by asking about the halting of programs of the form “enumerate halting programs until (if ever) their cumulative weight exceeds q, then halt”, where q is an n-bit rational number…

|, ||, |||, ||||| . The Non-Metaphysics of Unprediction. Thought of the day 67.1

The cornerstone of Hilbert’s philosophy of mathematics was the so-called finitary standpoint. This methodological standpoint consists in a restriction of mathematical thought to objects which are “intuitively present as immediate experience prior to all thought,” and to those operations on and methods of reasoning about such objects which do not require the introduction of abstract concepts, in particular, require no appeal to completed infinite totalities.

Hilbert characterized the domain of finitary reasoning in a well-known paragraph:

[A]s a condition for the use of logical inferences and the performance of logical operations, something must already be given to our faculty of representation, certain extra-logical concrete objects that are intuitively present as immediate experience prior to all thought. If logical inference is to be reliable, it must be possible to survey these objects completely in all their parts, and the fact that they occur, that they differ from one another, and that they follow each other, or are concatenated, is immediately given intuitively, together with the objects, as something that can neither be reduced to anything else nor requires reduction. This is the basic philosophical position that I consider requisite for mathematics and, in general, for all scientific thinking, understanding, and communication. [Hilbert in German + DJVU link here in English]

These objects are, for Hilbert, the signs. For the domain of contentual number theory, the signs in question are sequences of strokes (“numerals”) such as

|, ||, |||, ||||| .

The question of how exactly Hilbert understood the numerals is difficult to answer. What is clear in any case is that they are logically primitive, i.e., they are neither concepts (as Frege’s numbers are) nor sets. For Hilbert, the important issue is not primarily their metaphysical status (abstract versus concrete in the current sense of these terms), but that they do not enter into logical relations, e.g., they cannot be predicated of anything.

Sometimes Hilbert’s view is presented as if Hilbert claimed that the numbers are signs on paper. It is important to stress that this is a misrepresentation, that the numerals are not physical objects in the sense that truths of elementary number theory are dependent only on external physical facts or even physical possibilities. Hilbert made too much of the fact that for all we know, neither the infinitely small nor the infinitely large are actualized in physical space and time, yet he certainly held that the number of strokes in a numeral is at least potentially infinite. It is also essential to the conception that the numerals are sequences of one kind of sign, and that they are somehow dependent on being grasped as such a sequence, that they do not exist independently of our intuition of them. Only our seeing or using “||||” as a sequence of 4 strokes as opposed to a sequence of 2 symbols of the form “||” makes “||||” into the numeral that it is. This raises the question of individuation of stroke symbols. An alternative account would have numerals be mental constructions. According to Hilber, the numerals are given in our representation, but they are not merely subjective “mental cartoons”.

One version of this view would be to hold that the numerals are types of stroke-symbols as represented in intuition. At first glance, this seems to be a viable reading of Hilbert. It takes care of the difficulties that the reading of numerals-as-tokens (both physical and mental) faces, and it gives an account of how numerals can be dependent on their intuitive construction while at the same time not being created by thought.

Types are ordinarily considered to be abstract objects and not located in space or time. Taking the numerals as intuitive representations of sign types might commit us to taking these abstract objects as existing independently of their intuitive representation. That numerals are “space- and timeless” is a consequence that already thought could be drawn from Hilbert’s statements. The reason is that a view on which numerals are space- and timeless objects existing independently of us would be committed to them existing simultaneously as a completed totality, and this is exactly what Hilbert is objecting to.

It is by no means compatible, however, with Hilbert’s basic thoughts to introduce the numbers as ideal objects “with quite different determinations from those of sensible objects,” “which exist entirely independent of us.” By this we would go beyond the domain of the immediately certain. In particular, this would be evident in the fact that we would consequently have to assume the numbers as all existing simultaneously. But this would mean to assume at the outset that which Hilbert considers to be problematic.  Another open question in this regard is exactly what Hilbert meant by “concrete.” He very likely did not use it in the same sense as it is used today, i.e., as characteristic of spatio-temporal physical objects in contrast to “abstract” objects. However, sign types certainly are different from full-fledged abstracta like pure sets in that all their tokens are concrete.

Now what is the epistemological status of the finitary objects? In order to carry out the task of providing a secure foundation for infinitary mathematics, access to finitary objects must be immediate and certain. Hilbert’s philosophical background was broadly Kantian. Hilbert’s characterization of finitism often refers to Kantian intuition, and the objects of finitism as objects given intuitively. Indeed, in Kant’s epistemology, immediacy is a defining characteristic of intuitive knowledge. The question is, what kind of intuition is at play? Whereas the intuition involved in Hilbert’s early papers was a kind of perceptual intuition, in later writings it is identified as a form of pure intuition in the Kantian sense. Hilbert later sees the finite mode of thought as a separate source of a priori knowledge in addition to pure intuition (e.g., of space) and reason, claiming that he has “recognized and characterized the third source of knowledge that accompanies experience and logic.” Hilbert justifies finitary knowledge in broadly Kantian terms (without however going so far as to provide a transcendental deduction), characterizing finitary reasoning as the kind of reasoning that underlies all mathematical, and indeed, scientific, thinking, and without which such thought would be impossible.

The simplest finitary propositions are those about equality and inequality of numerals. The finite standpoint moreover allows operations on finitary objects. Here the most basic is that of concatenation. The concatenation of the numerals || and ||| is communicated as “2 + 3,” and the statement that || concatenated with ||| results in the same numeral as ||| concatenated with || by “2 + 3 = 3 + 2.” In actual proof-theoretic practice, as well as explicitly, these basic operations are generalized to operations defined by recursion, paradigmatically, primitive recursion, e.g., multiplication and exponentiation. Roughly, a primitive recursive definition of a numerical operation is one in which the function to be defined, f , is given by two equations

f(0, m) = g(m)

f(n′, m) = h(n, m, f(n, m)),

where g and h are functions already defined, and n′ is the successor numeral to n. For instance, if we accept the function g(m) = m (the constant function) and h(n, m, k) = m + k as finitary, then the equations above define a finitary function, in this case, multiplication f (n, m) = n × m. Similarly, finitary judgments may involve not just equality or inequality but also basic decidable properties, such as “is a prime.” This is finitarily acceptable as long as the characteristic function of such a property is itself finitary: For instance, the operation which transforms a numeral to | if it is prime and to || otherwise can be defined by primitive recursion and is hence finitary. Such finitary propositions may be combined by the usual logical operations of conjunction, disjunction, negation, but also bounded quantification. The problematic finitary propositions are those that express general facts about numerals such as that 1 + n = n + 1 for any given numeral n. It is problematic because, for Hilbert it is from the finitist point of view incapable of being negated. By this he means that the contradictory proposition that there is a numeral n for which 1 + n ≠ n + 1 is not finitarily meaningful. A finitary general proposition is not to be understood as an infinite conjunction but only as a hypothetical judgment that comes to assert something when a numeral is given. Even though they are problematic in this sense, general finitary statements are of particular importance to Hilbert’s proof theory, since the statement of consistency of a formal system T is of such a general form: for any given sequence p of formulas, p is not a derivation of a contradiction in T. Even though in general existential statements are not finitarily meaningful, they may be given finitary meaning if the witness is given by a finitary function. For instance, the finitary content of Euclid’s theorem that for every prime p there is a prime > p, is that given a specific prime p one can produce, by a finitary operation, another prime > p (viz., by testing all numbers between p and p! + 1.).

Weyl and Automorphism of Nature. Drunken Risibility.

In classical geometry and physics, physical automorphisms could be based on the material operations used for defining the elementary equivalence concept of congruence (“equality and similitude”). But Weyl started even more generally, with Leibniz’ explanation of the similarity of two objects, two things are similar if they are indiscernible when each is considered by itself. Here, like at other places, Weyl endorsed this Leibnzian argument from the point of view of “modern physics”, while adding that for Leibniz this spoke in favour of the unsubstantiality and phenomenality of space and time. On the other hand, for “real substances” the Leibnizian monads, indiscernability implied identity. In this way Weyl indicated, prior to any more technical consideration, that similarity in the Leibnizian sense was the same as objective equality. He did not enter deeper into the metaphysical discussion but insisted that the issue “is of philosophical significance far beyond its purely geometric aspect”.

Weyl did not claim that this idea solves the epistemological problem of objectivity once and for all, but at least it offers an adequate mathematical instrument for the formulation of it. He illustrated the idea in a first step by explaining the automorphisms of Euclidean geometry as the structure preserving bijective mappings of the point set underlying a structure satisfying the axioms of “Hilbert’s classical book on the Foundations of Geometry”. He concluded that for Euclidean geometry these are the similarities, not the congruences as one might expect at a first glance. In the mathematical sense, we then “come to interpret objectivity as the invariance under the group of automorphisms”. But Weyl warned to identify mathematical objectivity with that of natural science, because once we deal with real space “neither the axioms nor the basic relations are given”. As the latter are extremely difficult to discern, Weyl proposed to turn the tables and to take the group Γ of automorphisms, rather than the ‘basic relations’ and the corresponding relata, as the epistemic starting point.

Hence we come much nearer to the actual state of affairs if we start with the group Γ of automorphisms and refrain from making the artificial logical distinction between basic and derived relations. Once the group is known, we know what it means to say of a relation that it is objective, namely invariant with respect to Γ.

By such a well chosen constitutive stipulation it becomes clear what objective statements are, although this can be achieved only at the price that “…we start, as Dante starts in his Divina Comedia, in mezzo del camin”. A phrase characteristic for Weyl’s later view follows:

It is the common fate of man and his science that we do not begin at the beginning; we find ourselves somewhere on a road the origin and end of which are shrouded in fog.

Weyl’s juxtaposition of the mathematical and the physical concept of objectivity is worthwhile to reflect upon. The mathematical objectivity considered by him is relatively easy to obtain by combining the axiomatic characterization of a mathematical theory with the epistemic postulate of invariance under a group of automorphisms. Both are constituted in a series of acts characterized by Weyl as symbolic construction, which is free in several regards. For example, the group of automorphisms of Euclidean geometry may be expanded by “the mathematician” in rather wide ways (affine, projective, or even “any group of transformations”). In each case a specific realm of mathematical objectivity is constituted. With the example of the automorphism group Γ of (plane) Euclidean geometry in mind Weyl explained how, through the use of Cartesian coordinates, the automorphisms of Euclidean geometry can be represented by linear transformations “in terms of reproducible numerical symbols”.

For natural science the situation is quite different; here the freedom of the constitutive act is severely restricted. Weyl described the constraint for the choice of Γ at the outset in very general terms: The physicist will question Nature to reveal him her true group of automorphisms. Different to what a philosopher might expect, Weyl did not mention, the subtle influences induced by theoretical evaluations of empirical insights on the constitutive choice of the group of automorphisms for a physical theory. He even did not restrict the consideration to the range of a physical theory but aimed at Nature as a whole. Still basing on his his own views and radical changes in the fundamental views of theoretical physics, Weyl hoped for an insight into the true group of automorphisms of Nature without any further specifications.

Ricci-flow as an “intrinsic-Ricci-flat” Space-time.

A Ricci flow solution {(M^m, g(t)), t ∈ I ⊂ R} is a smooth family of metrics satisfying the evolution equation

∂/∂t g = −2Rc —– (1)

where M^m is a complete manifold of dimension m. We assume that sup_M |Rm|_g(t) < ∞ for each time t ∈ I. This condition holds automatically if M is a closed manifold. It is very often to put an extra term on the right hand side of (1) to obtain the following rescaled Ricci flow

∂/∂t g = −2 {Rc + λ(t)g} —– (2)

where λ(t) is a function depending only on time. Typically, λ(t) is chosen as the average of the scalar curvature, i.e. , 1/m ∱Rdv or some fixed constant independent of time. In the case that M is closed and λ(t) = 1/m ∱Rdv, the flow is called the normalized Ricci flow. Starting from a positive Ricci curvature metric on a 3-manifold, Richard Hamilton showed that the normalized Ricci flow exists forever and converges to a space form metric. Hamilton developed the maximum principle for tensors to study the Ricci flow initiated from some metric with positive curvature conditions. For metrics without positive curvature condition, the study of Ricci flow was profoundly affected by the celebrated work of Grisha Perelman. He introduced new tools, i.e., the entropy functionals μ, ν, the reduced distance and the reduced volume, to investigate the behavior of the Ricci flow. Perelman’s new input enabled him to revive Hamilton’s program of Ricci flow with surgery, leading to solutions of the Poincaré conjecture and Thurston’s geometrization conjecture.

In the general theory of the Ricci flow developed by Perelman in, the entropy functionals μ and ν are of essential importance. Perelman discovered the monotonicity of such functionals and applied them to prove the no-local-collapsing theorem, which removes the stumbling block for Hamilton’s program of Ricci flow with surgery. By delicately using such monotonicity, he further proved the pseudo-locality theorem, which claims that the Ricci flow can not quickly turn an almost Euclidean region into a very curved one, no matter what happens far away. Besides the functionals, Perelman also introduced the reduced distance and reduced volume. In terms of them, the Ricci flow space-time admits a remarkable comparison geometry picture, which is the foundation of his “local”-version of the no-local-collapsing theorem. Each of the tools has its own advantages and shortcomings. The functionals μ and ν have the advantage that their definitions only require the information for each time slice (M, g(t)) of the flow. However, they are global invariants of the underlying manifold (M, g(t)). It is not convenient to apply them to study the local behavior around a given point x. Correspondingly, the reduced volume and the reduced distance reflect the natural comparison geometry picture of the space-time. Around a base point (x, t), the reduced volume and the reduced distance are closely related to the “local” geometry of (x, t). Unfortunately, it is the space-time “local”, rather than the Riemannian geometry “local” that is concerned by the reduced volume and reduced geodesic. In order to apply them, some extra conditions of the space-time neighborhood of (x, t) are usually required. However, such strong requirement of space-time is hard to fulfill. Therefore, it is desirable to have some new tools to balance the advantages of the reduced volume, the reduced distance and the entropy functionals.

Let (M^m, g) be a complete Ricci-flat manifold, x₀ is a point on M such that d(x₀, x) < A. Suppose the ball B(x₀, r₀) is A⁻¹−non-collapsed, i.e., r^−m₀|B(x₀, r₀)| ≥ A⁻¹, can we obtain uniform non-collapsing for the ball B(x, r), whenever 0 < r < r₀ and d(x, x₀) < Ar₀? This question can be answered easily by applying triangle inequalities and Bishop-Gromov volume comparison theorems. In particular, there exists a κ = κ(m, A) ≥ 3^−mA^−m−1 such that B(x, r) is κ-non-collapsed, i.e., r^−m|B(x, r)| ≥ κ. Consequently, there is an estimate of propagation speed of non-collapsing constant on the manifold M. This is illustrated by Figure

We now regard (M, g) as a trivial space-time {(M, g(t)), −∞ < t < ∞} such that g(t) ≡ g. Clearly, g(t) is a static Ricci flow solution by the Ricci-flatness of g. Then the above estimate can be explained as the propagation of volume non-collapsing constant on the space-time.

However, in a more intrinsic way, it can also be interpreted as the propagation of non-collapsing constant of Perelman’s reduced volume. On the Ricci flat space-time, Perelman’s reduced volume has a special formula

V((x, t)r²) = (4π)^-m/2 r^-m ∫_M e^{-d2(y, x)/4r2} dv_y —– (3)

which is almost the volume ratio of B_g(t)(x, r). On a general Ricci flow solution, the reduced volume is also well-defined and has monotonicity with respect to the parameter r², if one replace d²(y, x)/4r² in the above formula by the reduced distance l((x, t), (y, t − r²)). Therefore, via the comparison geometry of Bishop-Gromov type, one can regard a Ricci-flow as an “intrinsic-Ricci-flat” space-time. However, the disadvantage of the reduced volume explanation is also clear: it requires the curvature estimate in a whole space-time neighborhood around the point (x, t), rather than the scalar curvature estimate of a single time slice t.

The Politics of Speed and the Ascendancy of the Right. Thought of the Day 55.0

Speed and Politics and (Popular Defense; Ecological Struggles) register the scope of the vast change in Virilio’s position. The problematic shifts from space to time, and from an expansive politics of mobilization and liberalization, to a defensive and conservative politics of resistance to acceleration and to a defence of the social. Responding to the appeals of theologians like Bonhoeffer, Virilio begins to warn of the dangers implied in the new state of the world, dangers to the experience of space of the city and of democracy, and of the new possibility of apocalypse brought about by new technologies and strategies available to and adopted by the military elite. In a sense the essay Speed and Politics, with its theory of power through control of movement a ‘dromocracy’, was the culmination of an analysis applicable to a world already passing away. If the proletariat still thinks in terms of the control of streets and physical movement, the military thinks otherwise: it thinks logistically in relation to new meeting points such as airports, highways and telecommunications. Communism died, fascism survives and has adapted. In this world, available in instantaneous communication and immediate information, a new permanent state of emergency is created which brings a sharp end to struggles in relative speed.

Virilio draws out these conclusions more dramatically in his book Popular Defense:

If… civilians could have resisted the assault of the war machine, gotten ahead of it, by creating a defence without a body, condensed nowhere, it is quite evident that today they don’t even realize that technology has surpassed this kind of defence.

This is because: ‘There is no need for an armed body to attack civilians, so long as the latter have been properly trained to turn on their radios or plug in their television sets’. In these conditions the political state declines, and where ‘hyper-communicability’ exists there grows totalitarian power. The right of armed defence by citizens is lost, while on the other hand ‘from now on’ the military power is so ‘shapeless’ it can no longer be identified as it installs itself in a regime of generalized security: an important and irreversible shift from a state of political and civil justice, to a state of logistical and military discipline. This is achieved through the systematic destruction of all the major forms of social solidarity which previously offered real resistance to the state: particularly the family, conceived by Virilio as essentially a combat unit. The liberation of women effectively weakens the solidarity of the family as a defensive form against the state. The resort to terrorism by ultra-left-wing groups again only serves to strengthen, not weaken, the war machine. This creates a paradox: the possibility that the revolution can succeed through control of the streets has been lost yet ‘there is no more revolution except in resistance’. Virilio returns to his bunker.

Expressivity of Bodies: The Synesthetic Affinity Between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty. Thought of the Day 54.0

It is in the description of the synesthetic experience that Deleuze finds resources for his own theory of sensation. And it is in this context that Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty are closest. For Deleuze sees each sensation as a dynamic evolution, sensation is that which passes from one ‘order’ to another, from one ‘level’ to another. This means that each sensation is at diverse levels, of different orders, or in several domains….it is characteristic of sensation to encompass a constitutive difference of level and a plurality of constituting domains. What this means for Deleuze is that sensations cannot be isolated in a particular field of sense; these fields interpenetrate, so that sensation jumps from one domain to another, becoming-color in the visual field or becoming-music on the auditory level. For Deleuze (and this goes beyond what Merleau-Ponty explicitly says), sensation can flow from one field to another, because it belongs to a vital rhythm which subtends these fields, or more precisely, which gives rise to the different fields of sense as it contracts and expands, as it moves between different levels of tension and dilation.

If, as Merleau-Ponty says (and Deleuze concurs), synesthetic perception is the rule, then the act of recognition that identifies each sensation with a determinate quality or sense and operates their synthesis within the unity of an object, hides from us the complexity of perception, and the heterogeneity of the perceiving body. Synesthesia shows that the unity of the body is constituted in the transversal communication of the senses. But these senses are not pre given in the body; they correspond to sensations that move between levels of bodily energy – finding different expression in each other. To each of these levels corresponds a particular way of living space and time; hence the simultaneity in depth that is experienced in vision is not the lateral coexistence of touch, and the continuous, sensuous and overlapping extension of touch is lost in the expansion of vision. This heterogenous multiplicity of levels, or senses, is open to communication; each expresses its embodiment in its own way, and each expresses differently the contents of the other senses.

Thus sensation is not the causal process, but the communication and synchronization of senses within my body, and of my body with the sensible world; it is, as Merleau-Ponty says, a communion. And despite frequent appeal in the Phenomenology of Perception to the sameness of the body and to the common world to ground the diversity of experience, the appeal here goes in a different direction. It is the differences of rhythm and of becoming, which characterize the sensible world, that open it up to my experience. For the expressive body is itself such a rhythm, capable of synchronizing and coexisting with the others. And Merleau-Ponty refers to this relationship between the body and the world as one of sympathy. He is close here to identifying the lived body with the temporization of existence, with a particular rhythm of duration; and he is close to perceiving the world as the coexistence of such temporalizations, such rhythms. The expressivity of the lived body implies a singular relation to others, and a different kind of intercorporeity than would be the case for two merely physical bodies. This intercorporeity should be understood as inter-temporality. Merleau-Ponty proposes this at the end of the chapter on perception in his Phenomenology of Perception, when he says,

But two temporalities are not mutually exclusive as are two consciousnesses, because each one knows itself only by projecting itself into the present where they can interweave.

Thus our bodies as different rhythms of duration can coexist and communicate, can synchronize to each other – in the same way that my body vibrated to the colors of the sensible world. But, in the case of two lived bodies, the synchronization occurs on both sides – with the result that I can experience an internal resonance with the other when the experiences harmonize, or the shattering disappointment of a  miscommunication when the attempt fails. The experience of coexistence is hence not a guarantee of communication or understanding, for this communication must ultimately be based on our differences as expressive bodies and singular durations. Our coexistence calls forth an attempt, which is the intuition.

Quantum Energy Teleportation. Drunken Risibility.

Time is one of the most difficult concepts in physics. It enters in the equations in a rather artificial way – as an external parameter. Although strictly speaking time is a quantity that we measure, it is not possible in quantum physics to define a time-observable in the same way as for the other quantities that we measure (position, momentum, etc.). The intuition that we have about time is that of a uniform flow, as suggested by the regular ticks of clocks. Time flows undisturbed by the variety of events that may occur in an irregular pattern in the world. Similarly, the quantum vacuum is the most regular state one can think of. For example, a persistent superconducting current flows at a constant speed – essentially forever. Can then one use the quantum vacuum as a clock? This is a fascinating dispute in condensed-matter physics, formulated as the problem of existence of time crystals. A time crystal, by analogy with a crystal in space, is a system that displays a time-regularity under measurement, while being in the ground (vacuum) state.

Then, if there is an energy (the zero-point energy) associated with empty space, it follows via the special theory of relativity that this energy should correspond to an inertial mass. By the principle of equivalence of the general theory of relativity, inertial mass is identical with the gravitational mass. Thus, empty space must gravitate. So, how much does empty space weigh? This question brings us to the frontiers of our knowledge of vacuum – the famous problem of the cosmological constant, a problem that Einstein was wrestling with, and which is still an open issue in modern cosmology.

Finally, although we cannot locally extract the zero-point energy of the vacuum fluctuations, the vacuum state of a field can be used to transfer energy from one place to another by using only information. This protocol has been called quantum energy teleportation and uses the fact that different spatial regions of a quantum field in the ground state are entangled. It then becomes possible to extract locally energy from the vacuum by making a measurement in one place, then communicating the result to an experimentalist in a spatially remote region, who would be able then to extract energy by making an appropriate (depending on the result communicated) measurement on her or his local vacuum. This suggests that the vacuum is the primordial essence, the ousia from which everything came into existence.