The short answer, for me at least, is yes. It is a game for me to see if we or I can come up with the best story of how chemicals brought themselves to the coffee table. It's as simple as that and it's great fun.
— MikeL

I thought so. I believe it is like this for many others as well. I actually have so many other things I am doing and would like to do in my life, that I am primarily looking for truly new insights that allow me to have a better grasp of nature. — Rich

Just to respond to that, it is through directed games such as this one that fundamental truths (at least to satisfy our own logic) can be discovered and new insights revealed.

My understanding of philosophy and theories is that it is an indulgence of the imagination based on inconsistencies in our world view. It allows us to examine these through the lens of examples, stories and sometimes mathematics, but it is a game, not a creed. I am happy to jump from one side to another and argue just as strongly.

1. Tick
2. What is a memory, how does it form and at what point is it projected back out into the matter field? If it is stored, how and where is it stored?
3. Good, I had a whole bunch of arguments lined up on that one. :)
4. I get the point of the hologram. But my question is what are we in all of this? How do we form the ideas that project out if we are a hologram generator? What is the substance of us?

Sure Rich,

The short answer, for me at least, is yes. It is a game for me to see if we or I can come up with the best story of how chemicals brought themselves to the coffee table. It's as simple as that and it's great fun.

For me, it's the ultimate rubix cube. On the one hand we have those dumb little atoms bobbing around senselessly, and on the other we have the people who like to experience eating hotdogs.

There is a disconnect as we all know between those atoms and that person who smiles at the sunset and somehow feels fulfilled. The disconnect is huge.

Semiotics makes sense. A lot of sense. Although the fine details may disagree, on the whole it's just another way of saying explicate order or emergent properties. I think that by taking this shorthand approach we can quickly get out of the bog of biology and move into or close to the mind, and then we can have at it.

Of course there has been no substantial evidence presented at all in this thread that attempts to explain the first steps in life - the emergence and arrangement of the particles into a cell or why a system would continue to maintain a negentropic state after the removal of the initial gradients.

I don't want to eliminate the mind permanently, quite the opposite. I'm just not quite ready to turn my mind to the mind as an abstract philosophy though. My feeling on the matter is that to see the mind's true state and function, you must first remove it and see what happens.

The problem I have with saying life is all mind, is that there is no concept there that I can explore. Nothing to manipulate and turn around and examine in terms of biology. It doesn't acknowledge that we are made of atoms and molecules and cells that have organised themselves. Mind is not a path to understanding life in this instance, it's more like a get out of jail free card. I come away dissatisfied.

I also have problems understanding what is meant by mind. There are many features I can think of as mind that I think I would stand a really good shot at explaining biologically (neurologically) or through the idea coding (which is semiotic language).

In regard to your difficulty understanding why this is relevant for investigation or even real, I would ask you to hold in your mind what was mentioned in your OP about the spinning cube and how it can be perceived differently at different speeds. I would also point out Explicate Order, which you directed me to in one of your talks - the emergence of patterns etc.

It may be that the universe is just oscillating matter fields which we read as a holographic projection. But what the holograph is constructing for us is this world of atoms. It's natural to want to play with them and figure out how they all go together. There is pattern in the building of life.

I have the converse problem that you have Rich, I can't see how mind explains anything. How should we investigate it? What should we investigate? What are your definitions? What is the world that you are trying to show us, Rich?

You talking to me or Apokrisis? The questions are on your OP about qualia.

Understanding involves mastering a skill, a habit of thought, that reliably sees you always popping out on the right side of any particular speech act. — apokrisis

Thanks for explaining what understanding is. I prefer to pop out on the wrong side of a speech act, so long as my logic has taken me as far as it can go. If I'm right, how boring. If I'm wrong, my logic can be improved and there is personal growth.

The only time I don't want to be on the wrong side is when it has to do with morals.

Do you have any comment on this or my other post to you?

That's right, you did. I don't think it's too much to ask for a definition when claims are being made. Hey, did you get my questions on your OP?

Mind still continues to enter the scene. Even just 2600 years ago, we were simply linguistic minds, not mathematically and logically formed minds. — apokrisis

A definitions based mindset is itself anti-pragmatic. — apokrisis

pragmatic
adjective
dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.

Definitions become a waste of breath if your goal is truly to arrive at some new state of understanding. — apokrisis

It is true that word games are a waste of time, but definitions are the cornerstone of understanding. Otherwise you get the type of protracted arguments that have defined most of this thread with people talking at cross purposes because nobody truly understands what the other has said.

To say we minds only 2600 years ago were simply linguistic minds, not mathematically formed or logical is something that requires me to ask how you could make such an outrageous claim, or more pragmatically, to ask how you would define mind.

Very general terms are the hardest to define. All you can do is point to various domains of discourse which use the term in recognisable ways. But to explain that in any depth, would be a diversion into philosophy of mind, which is a large topic in its own right. — Wayfarer

I see, but when you said mind only appeared in h sapiens, you seemed to have something specific in mind. I would like to know how it was, and why it is confined to humans.

How would you define mind as a verb?

So, how do you define observation and reason?

By reason you mean the ability to determine the best option given multiple choices?

By observation you mean awareness of sensory input?

Cam you also provide a definition for the mind your speaking of, Apokrisis.

Can you provide a definition for mind please Wayfarer.

I can't find the dissipative systems reference you speak of, but in terms of the dissipative structures that Aprokrisis talks about, my feeling is he is simply taking a low entropy object such as 'an apple' and running it through life eg a person so that it breaks down.

The apple has many molecules inside them. They have 'constraints' on them because they have lost entropy when they were bonded or double bonded. They can't kick about freely anymore. When we break the molecules down for food (or burn oil) we break the bonds thus dissipating the trapped energy. Of course life will try to use that release of energy to power its own building processes (that is how it is able to manifest its negentropy) but inevitably there will be loss out of the system.

I think that represents what he's saying, but there was a lot of philosophy talk in there too and references to things which I've not read up on yet.

Apokrisis initially suggested that based on a book he was reading life might have originated near volcanic vents because they would provide a ready source of reactants, the right pH, and a concentration gradient needed to force negentropy. The theory lacked a lot of necessary detail though.

Hi Navid, we're not arguing God's existence, for the sake of argument we are accepting it and arguing its nature.

But now, big business has closed off those options.
— MikeL
I think I would point that finger more at the remnants of socialism and whatnot. Bureaucracy, gov interventionism, among other things, is what really gets in the way of small entrepreneurs. They strangulate the market in favor of monopolies.

Not that monopolies are the good guys or anything. Just that in a non strangulated market they wouldn't have such an easy time because small entrepreneurs would have better chances. — Sephi

You're making my case here Sephi.

Afraid I have no evidence to back up the claim other than the observation that small businesses are going out of business and big businesses are growing huge.

You don't need a degree in maths to see that with the economies of scale if I can buy 10million apples off you, I can offer to pay you half a cent for each apple and ensure you sell your entire crop. Of course it has to be to me and nobody else. As the grower you could go the other route and sell your apples at 10c each to small businesses and hope to get better profit, but its more stress trying to move that crop.

It's the same with clothing or any other product. I will buy a massive amount from the supplier as cheap as chips, sell it through a massive chain outlet at massive margins that are still cheap,and demand high quality from my supplier. With my astronomical profit I will do it again, only larger this time, or expand into different product categories. What small business can survive in that market?

I watched a show called "The Profit" where someone wanted to open a gym, so he took them to rebel sport and put something like $50,000 worth of product on his credit card. How can small gym owners compete when people like that come onto the scene. Even 24hr swipe card gyms - its not about the guy that always wanted to open his gym, its about a guy who's trying to flip a quick profit.

I've been really wrestling with understanding the concept you are trying to explain Rich. It is extremely difficult to grasp, so I want to ask some clarifying questions of you. According to the theory Is it true to say:
1. There is only white noise in front of us (matter fields)
2. The matter fields are oscillating on the spot and the spot represents the present. However because it is an oscillation it also represents the immediate past and immediate future. For the world around us this matter field is directional not so much in space as in time. If we were to freeze everything and walk along the matter field we would see the continuous blur of matter as it passes through time.
3. We control the speed of the passing of time with our mind as it is all already written in the matter field.
4. The crux of the theory really has nothing much to do with holograms.

How does that sound?

We had non-semiotic activity occurring billions of years ago, prior to the arrival of life on earth, then magically semiotics (and life) occurred. If we assume that semiotic activity occurred prior to life on earth, and is responsible for the original shaping of material potential into substantial existence, then this is no other than assuming God as creator of substantial existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hi Metaphysician,
I find when thinking about semiotics it is best not to ascribe it the properties of a force or anything else. It is simply a way of reporting. It is possible not to use semiotics to explain what is happening as well. The chemistry gets extremely complex in all directions so fast though, that it is impossible to keep track of. By invoking the idea of semiotics we can ditch the detail of chemistry and look at what is occuring in terms of an emergent phenomenon. I gave the example earlier of the ion channel.

The cell that suddenly upregulates the expression of a glucose receptor may be in a low glucose environment or be expending lots of energy. (output: glucose receptor up, input: low glucose). It is upregulating to ensure supply ---- a semiotic explanation

When glucose levels fall below a certain level the cascades that are normally initiated when glucose binds to a cell receptor decrease. This means that secondary proteins that are normally bound up in the cascade are now more likely to participate in reactions involving the creation of glucose receptors. — MikeL

---- a chemical explanation.

The higher we go the more impossible it becomes to explain chemically - although it most probably can be done. There would come a point when even semiotics is too complex, which is why I suggested we look to psychology in terms of cause and effect principals, which were investigated by Skinner when he did Operant Conditioning.

I don't feel that semiotics actually addresses the how it happens at all, which is why I suggested the ribosome might be involved, and highlighted things that other people have deemed necessary such as concentration gradients etc.

Hi Rich,
Did you get my comment on behaviouralism? It would seem the model of mind you have actually fits in quite well. What do you think about that?

Hi Mad Fool,
This is an interesting question. Just off the top of my head, based on your reasoning, it would seem that no thing belongs to sets. The set is the set of things. As you point out, it forms the boundary of the set (which can be formulated as a rule) and a value of zero.

Does it have directionality I wonder? Infinite sets can ben infinite in one direction and limited in another. Can you think of a case where this may apply for no thing as well?

I was wondering about how the high concentation of proteins came about in a certain area of ocean before lipid membranes were used. They would need to be manufactured at a much higher rate than the 'drift away' or dispersion velocity in order to be useful - and the DNA to protein link seemed weak. Then I thought of the ribosome, which sews amino acids together into proteins, using messenger RNA (it itself is a protein-RNA complex... I know, I know)

It occurred to me that an early ribosome may well have been working bi-directionally, using proteins to make RNA strands and using RNA strands to make proteins. Perhaps ribosomes made the DNA we use today.

I did a search and found that ribosomes have indeed been implicated in the Origin of Life process and that they may have created proteins independent of any RNA, which is another interesting angle. Here is the extract from this page:

Evolution of the ribosome

The ribosome in three-dimensions shows us that the exit tunnel was a central theme of all phases of its evolution. The tunnel was continuously extended and rigidified. The synthesis of non-coded peptides of increasing length conferred advantage as some reaction products bound to the ribosome. The ribosome sequentially gained capabilities for RNA folding, catalysis, subunit association, correlated subunit evolution, decoding and energy-driven translocation. Surface proteinization of the decoding ribosome was one driver of a more general proteinization of other biological processes, giving rise to modern biology. The ribosome spawned the existing symbiotic relationship of functional proteins and informational nucleic acids.

And to further the point, those people who cannot make it in business now are forced into the workforce as employees. And what are employees but the workers of much larger businesses. From being in control to being the grunt.

I'll give you an example Blue Banana. Business. It used to be that if you wanted to start your business, you could open a fruit shop, or a milk bar, even a coffee shop, and you could do alright at that.

But now, big business has closed off those options. If I want to open a fruit shop, I am not competing against massive corporations that have merged and taken each other over and can now buy an apple for 2c and sell if for 10c while you cannot buy it yourself from the grower for cheaper than 12c.
So too, the milk bars have been sucked into the malls, the small takeaways are now global franchises, and there product is good. Better than your product.

It's not to say you can't open a successful business, but the degrees of freedom to do so successfully have been restricted.

Take 'Shark Tank' the show for example. Venture capitalists wanting to turn a buck invest in new ideas. Sounds great right? So someone comes in with an idea for a gym. The capitalists agree it is good and throw a couple of million dollars at it. Now, everybody in that space who has been trying to build their gym from the open garage to the small outlet is displaced. Who will go to their junky gyms when there is a nice shiny one with better equipment opening just down the road?

When you think of governments and laws and by-laws, you have to ask yourself for every new law they bring in, some fine, some no parking space, are they also repealing an old law? Or is it just another law in the web of laws that control your life.

I am not arguing the necessity of the laws. Indeed no parking zones are critical for access to certain areas etc, but they are, nonetheless, laws that did not exist before. For every law no matter how much it is for our own good, for every big business providing high quality cheap goods, no matter how much the consumer benefits, it is a degree of freedom that is lost.

The choices to move in those directions are restricted.

I've seen that 70's Show on TV. Regional and global issue I would say. They are different worlds with different degrees of freedom.

My definition of a God being a sentient force and presiding over the creation of life is not too far off track. As to being the first thing that existed, the creation of the universe caused the creation of the atoms that were imbued with the sentient force for assembly and system layering. God can still be the first.

Actually Rich, I'm surprised you're not a behaviourialist.

If you want to understand the mind in terms of Hebbian networks, Hebb had already made a better start. — apokrisis

I looked up Hebbian networks: Cells that fire together wire together? That is a neural explanation for the emergence of cognitive patterns and not at all useful in understanding the emergence of life - unlike Operant Conditioning.

Just because Skinner fell on his face trying to bridge to mind, doesn't mean there is no bridge to mind, it just means Skinner's bridge was made of sticks.

Through observing behaviours we observe the output of minds. The more behaviours we study, the more we can ascertain with a high degree of certainty what is ocurring inside the mind.

The man who sits down and sobs, is probably sad. The one who leaps up and starts hugging people, is probably happy. We can increase our certainty by looking for the input which may have caused this: The woman who dumped him, the lottery draw he was watching on TV.

So too, the cell that suddenly upregulates the expression of a glucose receptor may be in a low glucose environment or be expending lots of energy. (output: glucose receptor up, input: low glucose)

When glucose levels fall below a certain level the cascades that are normally initiated when glucose binds to a cell receptor decrease. This means that secondary proteins that are normally bound up in the cascade are now more likely to participate in reactions involving the creation of glucose receptors.

It is sentience, it is behaviour, it is semiotics, it is chemistry.

Hi Sephi, you are right. I am exploring the theme of god and offering possibilities that can be reconciled with my understanding and observations of the world. I am not trying to define god outright, but rather take this tangental view of a creative force. To do this I am trying to marry some concepts together. Namely:
1) People of faith believe in a higher power
2) Life is stackable and with each new stack freedom is lost from the things that created the next level.
3) Society is like a next level beyond people, and it too is reducing our freedoms.
4) So the link I am proposing for thought is:
Society is a continuation of the stackable nature of life, which reduces freedoms. Because the stacks are built by the underlying factors, and because people believe in a higher power, perhaps the higher power is the force that is causing the stacking.

Do I actually believe this? No. But I want to run the logic through people such as yourself and see how it comes out in the wash.

The layers of cognition, being stackable in nature, have created a limited power central command that floats over parts of my thoughts. Today this power (I) has decided:

I have opened the box of enjoyment, now that my basic needs of food, rest, shelter have been met, as well as my less basic but still important needs of doing the washing, doing the dishes tidying the house. Truth be told though, even during these tasks, I let the anticipation of discussion filter in. They are not hard containers that separate these actions.

Inside my box of enjoyment I have much to choose from. The one with the greatest weighting at the moment is this forum. I have other boxes I can draw from to bring things into this work space: some knowledge, of varying degrees of understanding, I have the tool of logic that I am going to bring into it. I have the problems that have been posed by yourself and others that I want to try and solve.

I will then output the result of this enjoyment to a mind file or to the computer screen or mostly likely both and await the next input from the screen while also running logic through the existing arguments, looking for connections.

The stimulus for my actions is this forum. For years, with few (except recently my brother, and occassional friends) to discuss my ideas with, they fell dormant and I have not paid them any serious attention. They kept popping up though, intrinsically - some mismatch of a sorting algorithm, but only recieved a passing eyeroll from myself.

It's not a way of killing time, but it is a reflection of how I've weighted my time.

Just so we're on the same page here.

That it is not a window into a functional understanding of cognition. Quite deliberately, it doesn't go there. — apokrisis

Perhaps not, but it is a rudimentary understanding of cognition. Like I said, the bridge may be out between behaviourialism and mind, but the disagreement is occurring at the front door of the mind and not the cells. it is a much narrower stream to ford than a model of non-life to life that is all chemistry or one that is all mind.

Slot machines are so much like cells.

I take your point Rich, but I take the opposite view. I don't like to use the word consciousness because it is a neat little bag we don't need to open - a quanta of life. I am ready to resign myself to that position if I can't open the bag, but I'm not there yet.

The methodologies associated with Operant Conditioning may be primitive but it seems that the stimulus shock/reward slides in nicely with evolution and molecular/cellular evolution. Do something and it works you keep doing it. You may even elaborate in the directon of doing it. Do something and it doesn't work, you're eliminated from the system or down regulated. Simple feedback loops where the only difficulty is making sure the feedback you're getting is from your output.

Behaviouralism though must include the mind, even if doesn't want to - because associations are being formed in the mind and choice is being made based on those associations. An animal/system incapable of associating the stimulus with the reward will never understand nor grow in complexity. The bird chooses to eat the pellet because it doesn't want to get zapped, or because it wants a treat.

I understand the crudeness of the results. A causes B is not the mind, but it is a window into it. As complexity layers, more weightings can be placed between A and B providing uncertainty. The weightings may come intrinsically from the organism or extrinsically from the environment.

What I am I not seeing?

More than this, I am asking how they (the chemicals) got the notion that they have function? — Rich

I know, that's a curly one, that up to now I have been ascribing to the features of the force that is driving the process anti-entropically - a force innate within the atoms. Perhaps this also needs more thorough investigating.

The short answer to your question though is that they chemicals don't need a notion that they have function because there is a cause and effect process. It is, I agree, for descriptive purposes that we ascribe function to them. Giving function to form allows us a mental shorthand method of understanding the processes that are occurring. When we understand that the function of this interaction is to move an ion from A to B we can look at the surrounding environment and see if it supports that assumption.

When we find that the functional hypothesis is supported, that there appears to be purpose to the action, that it is not random, then we can say we have a workable model of understanding (just like your 4n spinning cube).

As we all know it is an extraordinarily complex cause and effect environment that bubbles away, and I believe that the key to understanding it is to reduce it as well as inflate it.

The best I can reduce it at the moment is to say, like Apokrisis says, the system is constrained. That is a key feature. It constrains itself. It reduces its free energy. The other part is that it builds. It is not just a dog chasing its tail, but more like a growing hurricane, continually drawing in the environment into its constrained system, causing the system to layer.

You are asking about how the pieces came together in the assembly line. I have no idea whatsoever. We know they are together though. The closest thing to a reasonable idea I've read was that some RNA also possess enzymatic function. There would need to be inequalities in the initial environmental system - gradients/motive forces that can drive anti-entropic processes. This would be the vents. You would need a ready supply of atoms, preferably ions to keep the wheel turning. But I agree it is still a big hole that needs to be filled.

Since when does a tube of chemicals view themselves as having a function? — Rich

You're asking about self-awareness. Is it emergent or is it in the channel? Well, I can't tell you, probably emergent as semiotic complexity layers upon itself. I don't see much chance of a voltage-gated ion channel saying to to a depolarising membrane, I'm going to sit this one out.

But what we can see is that chemistry will cause it to open and close, AND it is serving a purpose AND the purpose is more important than the structure. This links across now to biology.

We also see the purpose becoming more intentional as we move up through the layers. Intentionality and behaviour can be explained by psychology - Operant Conditioning would fit best.

After Operant Conditioning we are at mind level, ready to burrow in.

Hi Sephi,
You're right. A lack of a singular definition for God has both rendered it both disprovable AND brought it under great scrutiny.

I'm not quite following your logic in relation to this OP though. Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean, for instance when you say it is just a name I attributed to the first thing that is currently known to science? What problems can you see?

There seems to be a lot of semantic games here for what appears to be a relatively simple idea. Unless I'm missing something, Apokrisis is providing the pivot we need to understand the transition from non-life to life. Semiotics allows us to jump track from chemistry to biology by considering function over form. In doing so it does not abandon chemistry, but considers its role in function.

Molecule (a construction of atoms without purpose) --> Molecule (same molecule, but serving a function [open-close the ion channel])

We can now talk about purpose and intentionality and behaviour. The process can still be explained in the cause-effect terms of chemistry.

There is nothing to unite. It is a unity. — Rich

I agree. The goal is not to unite atoms with mind per se, but rather shine a light on the unity so we can understand it in a new fascinating way. For me, at least, shining the torch around and trying to link things that might not appear to be linked at first glance is exciting. Working on the project with other minds is great fun.

It's the exploration and discovery of it I love. Once the story is fully known, my interest level plummets

Discovering new art, music, dance, etc. may be far more interesting. — Rich

Talking about these ideas is my art, music and dance, all rolled into one. :)
.

I use the word entrapment because there is a loss of personal freedoms. The entropy has been constrained. We have been constrained. Creative expression is driven out by bureaucratic thinking which demands to see the paperwork on everything you are trying to do.

Government decrees we can no longer walk our dogs along the beach, or picnic by that river. Big Business insists you pay back twice the money they lent you. Rents go up, bills go up, wages fall. You are replaceable in the workplace so you had better conform. The layer we create does not see us. It sees the commodity they can use.