Habits belong to entities. — Pop
It's certainly a problem for physicalism, not so much for dualism or idealism. I mean, 'if the stuff of the world is mind-stuff....' — Wayfarer
This is the prevalent thinking that Barbieri and co are up against. — Pop
In contrast to much of the work in biosemiotics, Barbieri wants to stay within a mechanistic paradigm, assuming that “scientific knowledge is obtained by building machine-like models of what we observe in nature.” In 2012, Barbieri resigned as editor of Biosemiotics and founded the International Society of Code Biology, whose constitution committed it to using “the standard methods of science.” What he is trying to avoid is the more interpretive methods common in the humanities and social sciences. Barbieri does agree that information doesn’t speak for itself, and that it has to be given meaning through decoding processes. In addition to the genetic code, he describes numerous codes that biologists have discovered more recently, and he associates the appearance of each code with a major step in macroevolution.
Where Barbieri parts company with biosemiotics is in his understanding of decoding as a mechanical process rather than a process of contextual interpretation. He grants that humans and other brainy animals are subjects who experience, feel, and interpret signs and symbols. But aside from that, he regards decoding as a mechanical process governed by reliable coding rules, such that THIS information always translates into THAT result; for example, this genetic sequence translates into that protein. This makes the individual cell a “biological machine.” Hoffmeyer, on the other hand, rejects this context-free understanding of codes: “Modern semiotics…has abolished the conception of a code as a ‘simple mechanism for pairing of concept and reference.’”
To answer the biosemiotic contention that even simple organisms have context-dependent information and behavior, Barbieri maintains that this requires no more than a simple coupling of more than one mechanical coding process, such as genetic decoding PLUS transduction decoding. “It takes only two context-free codes, in short, to produce a context-dependent behavior.” Presto, no need for interpretation! I would have liked to see more discussion of how information from many coders using different codes, both digital (genetic) and analog, would be predictably combined, especially as the number and type of decoders expanded over the course of evolution. It seems to me that Barbieri jumps too easily from mechanical predictability at the single decoder level to mechanical predictability in the organism as a whole, at least until he gets to brainy animals. Given that any organism has to act as one, what is the logic by which a multitude of disparate information is synthesized to produce a predictable result?
Both Barbieri and Hoffmeyer say that the genetic code provides only part of the information necessary to construct an actual organism. For Barbieri, the coding rules supply the rest. But I didn’t see why a simple "this-information-equals-that-result" coding would supply the additional information. Hoffmeyer's theory of dual coding makes more sense to me. Analog-coded information throughout the cell provides the context in which the digitally-coded genetic information is interpreted. “Digital codifications…do not specify their own interpretation in the real world of spatio-temporal continuity. This is where living, analog codifications must take over.” In the end, life (not just the brain) requires an ongoing process of interpretation/unification within a living agent/interpreter, which distinguishes life from dead machinery. If that remains much more mysterious than our smartest machines, so be it.
You tell me what you might mean by an entity. That’s a mighty vague term. I will watch with interest as you try to justify some epistemic cut to separate the living and mindful from the physics of dissipative structure. — apokrisis
The anthropic principle is the interpreter ( the integrated laws of the universe ) - it causes the information to integrate. — Pop
A clue. To be a formal model, it needs to be testable. And that involves an epistemic cut between model and measurement. — apokrisis
What is your unit of measurement? You forgot something. — apokrisis
If it involves an atomistic notion of consciousness, well best of luck.
(Remember, you are claiming everything is panpsychist information.) — apokrisis
You can falsify it, by providing something that is not information. — Pop
It was a problem that got solved though. So physicalism prevailed. — apokrisis
In the end, life (not just the brain) requires an ongoing process of interpretation/unification within a living agent/interpreter, which distinguishes life from dead machinery. If that remains much more mysterious than our smartest machines, so be it.
Shannon reduced information to a binary code — apokrisis
The difference is specific Intention versus general progression. Evolution is a process of enforming, by which general laws "select" the fittest forms from among those produced randomly. You could say that Nature "sculpts" new species from the raw material of old "stuff". Human intention (design) creates novelties much faster by eliminating most of the randomness. We "select" the best elements for our creations by applying personal values, rather than by rolling dice. Come to think of it, you might say that Natural Laws are the cosmic values that fashion turbulent amorphous matter into the stable natural forms that we know and love. :smile:What would be difference between a wood carver carving away his mental image in his brain into a woodspirit carving, and something taking physical shape in the universe via / caused by "information"? Could they not be simply described as the same form of manifestations? — Corvus
Information is not only fundamental to the universe, it is ubiquitous. In my view, it is the essence of both Energy and Matter . . . . and Mind. Some would interpret that datum as proof of a Universal Consciousness. But I prefer to remain agnostic about any "mind" that I can't converse with. Instead, I tend to use the less grandiose term : "Universal Enformation". That keeps me more grounded in empirical observations instead of unfettered speculation. Although, I can't help but conjecture from "what is" to "what if?" :smile:This validates the view, that gnomon and myself have been advocating in our own way. That information is in the fundamental mix. — Pop
Don't get me started. I have a webpage and a blog devoted to exploring that equation. Shannon defined his concept of Information in terms of the absence of energy (entropy). But the math works both ways. Here's a link, not written by me, that might point you in the direction I'm looking. :cool:In my view, it is the essence of both Energy and Matter . . . — Gnomon
Why do you think that? — frank
Shannon defined his concept of Information in terms of the absence of energy (entropy). — Gnomon
Neuromodulating chemical signals that produce reciprocal states of response. One puts us in a cooperating state of mind - inclined to be sympathetic in terms of our empathic understanding of another’s state of mind. But high testosterone, low oxytocin, switches things. You employ your empathic skills to find the least sympathetic ways to undermine your competition. — apokrisis
Everything is a nested hierarchy of switches that delivers a self-balancing outcome - one that is both stable and yet dynamic, conservative and liberal, loving and hateful, habitual and attentional, or whatever other dichotomy has come to your notice as a nasty dualism that must be hammered flat by your brand of philosophical monism. — apokrisis
If a series of mutations were to occur , could they wreak havoc with the motivational-affective system in such a s way as to reverse the poles of the dichotomy cooperation-competition , fight-flight, approach-avoid, love the insider-hate the outsider? — Joshs
Where do you stand on this? — Joshs
Do we suspect the outside and embrace the insider because of arbitrarily tuned machinery or because we attempt to make sense of our world with the neural machinery we have and the alien is intrinsically unassimilable? — Joshs
Thus, my goal is to better abs better anticipate the trajectory of your thinking , where your passion lies in the conversation. Again, how successfully I construe your larger worldview now. it up to me to decide, it’s up to you to let me know by your assent or objections , by the fruitfulness of our interchange. — Joshs
There is a reciprocal dialogic altering of thinking going on, but that doesn’t guarantee that our two approaches become more aligned with each other. That can only happen if either one or both of us manage to transform and expand our own thinking enough to accommodate what initially appears as the alienness of the other. — Joshs
for me information is the product of contrast. Without two poles - without a binary interaction there is no information.
0 = nothing or no discernible “content” however -1 +1 is a contrast of equal opposites - a spectrum which can be appreciated from within itself and yet still equals zero.
You cannot have black without white or space without matter to occupy it. Information is difference. — Benj96
For a communications engineer (Shannon), it wasn't about the energy. But for more recent information theorists, their topic has much broader applications & implications than just 1s & 0s. For physicists, it's all about the energy. :smile:It's not about absence of energy. — frank
Perhaps it is also hard for folk to paradigm shift if they haven’t first established a paradigm to shift away from? Often people don’t understand their own socially constructed belief systems, just like fish don’t know water. — apokrisis
That is just the general rationality of the Cosmos expressing itself.
The brain recapitulates what is ontologically the way that reality organises itself — apokrisis
The brain recapitulates what is ontologically the way that reality organises itself. But then also inserts a self interested point of view into the map of this terrain. Hence Gestalt psychology. We experience an Umwelt which is symmetry broken into the figure and ground that has now a personal meaning. We highlight what matters to us as a point of view, and ignore everything else as peripheral detail. — apokrisis
Yes. They see the world as they are. — Gnomon
One can think of such feelings as anxiety as the experience of impending chaos , the near meaningless of a world that one cannot construe on the basis of similarities with what one already knows. One cannot move forward. — Joshs
So it’s not simply that we ignore what doesn’t matter to us , we would disintegrate as organisms if we attempted to ‘assimilate’ what was not compatible with our current functioning and interests. I suppose one could put this in dialectical terms and say with Piaget that the interest-based equlibrarion of cognitive structures is progressive ,
the direction is from weaker to stronger structures. — Joshs
I suppose that , rather than taking the individual
organism as focal point , one could take a broader ecological stance and put in question the coherence of biological ‘selves’. I don’t think that such an approach would alter the general features of the dialectic. It would merely identify the self as the totality , the world coming to know itself. — Joshs
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