• unenlightened
    9.3k
    I had intended to start a thread on Steps to an Ecology of mind, but I have diverted onto this book by the same author, that I think will be a more mature and coherent exposition of a topic that intrigues and confuses, and is of vital importance right now to the survival of the species:

    https://monoskop.org/images/c/c3/Bateson_Gregory_Mind_and_Nature.pdf

    Unfortunately, all the pdf versions I can find for free seem to be taken from the same poorly scanned hard copy. This means that the copy function does not work very well on some pages. But below is a clean version of the introduction and the first 2 chapters. Thereafter, we will have to rely on the above less than perfect version or spend actual money. :scream:

    http://cat4chat.narod.ru/m_nature.htm

    ——————————————————

    In the course of starting this thread, I was referred back to this old thread:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9585/incomplete-nature-reading-group/p1

    Unfortunately, that discussion did not progress much beyond the first chapter, (or the second if you count chapter zero) and that might just be because readers could not make the necessary paradigm shift. This book is older, and Bateson was a seminal voice in the beginnings of the bio semiotic approach. He was also a consummate educator and communicator, so I am hopeful that this book will provide a more approachable introduction to the topic, and help anyone who is looking for some kind of reconciliation between the scientific and religious traditions that does justice to both. Some folk may notice a connection between Incomplete Nature and my previous thread Reading the Laws of Form. Nothing, absence, the unmarked state...

    But this topic also relates to threads like The Mind Created World that are looking for that same reconciliation of science and religion, and also of idealism and realism.

    The introduction is quite long, and there are interesting and provocative things therein, so don't pass it by. But I start this thread with the end of the introduction which has the form of a declaration of intent. And an intention is an imagined goal; a nothing which we hope will be realised in the linear future that is represented by the subsequent chapters. (books are linear, but biological processes are circular).

    Here then, is the particular nothing that will guide the unfolding of the book - here is thought trying to express how it functions in relation to the world and the being to whom it occurs, expressing (no doubt in retrospect) why it was doing what the reader is about to see it doing. Expect this sort of instant and explicit reflexivity of language aware of itself as it speaks throughout :

    In what is offered in this book, the hierarchic structure of thought, which Bertrand Russell called logical typing, will take the place of the hierarchic structure of the Great Chain of Being and an attempt will be made to propose a sacred unity of the biosphere that will contain fewer epistemological errors than the versions of that sacred unity which the various religions of history have offered. What is important is that, right or wrong, the epistemology shall be explicit. Equally explicit criticlsrn will then be possible.

    So the immediate task of this book is to construct a picture of how the world is joined together in its mental aspects. How do ideas, information, steps of logical or pragmatic consistency and the like fit together? How is logic, the classical procedure for making chains of ideas, related to an outside world of things and creatures, parts and wholes? Do ideas really occur in chains, or is this lineal (see Glossary) structure imposed on them by scholars and philosophers? How is the world of logic, which eschews "circular argument," related to a world in which circular trains of causation are the rule rather than the exception?

    [snip]

    Throughout, the thesis will be that it is possible and worthwhile to think about many problems of order and disorder in the biological universe and that we have today a considerable supply of tools of thought which we do not use, partly because -professors and schoolboys alike- ]we are ignorant of many currently available insights and partly because we are unwilling to accept the necessities that follow from a clear view of the human dilemmas.

    Prepare to relinquish that unwillingness.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    My central thesis can now be approached in words: The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect.

    I warned some pages back that we would encounter emptiness, and indeed it is so. Mind is empty; it is nothing. It exists only in its ideas, and these again are no-things. Only the ideas are immanent, embodied in their examples. And the examples are, again, no-things. The claw, as an example, is not the Ding an sich; it is precisely not the "thing in itself." Rather, it is what mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other.
    — Introduction

    How many threads would this little quote feel at home in? Anywhere that idealism and realism is an issue, or being and nothingness. But this comes out of a detailed and down to earth consideration of the relations between various life-forms. A whole thread just on this would not be amiss.

    ————————————————————

    Professional linguists nowadays may know what’s what, but children in school are still taught nonsense. They are told that a "noun" is the "name of a person, place, or thing," that a "verb" is "an action word," and so on. That is, they are taught at a tender age that the way to define something is by what it supposedly is in itself, not by its relation to other things.

    Most of us can remember being told that a noun is "the name of a person, place, or thing." And we can remember the utter boredom of parsing or analyzing sentences. Today all that should be changed. Children could be told that a noun is a word having a certain relationship to a predicate. A verb has a certain relation to a noun, its subject. And so on. Relationship could be used as basis for definition, and any child could then see that there is something wrong with the sentence "Go’ is a verb."

    I remember the boredom of analyzing sentences and the boredom later, at Cambridge, of learning comparative anatomy. Both subjects, as taught, were torturously unreal. We could have been told something about the pattern which connects: that all communication necessitates context, that without context, there is no meaning, and that contexts confer meaning because there is classification of contexts. The teacher could have argued that growth and differentiation must be controlled by communication. The shapes of animals and plants are transforms of messages. Language is itself a form of communication. The structure of the input must somehow be reflected as structure in the output. Anatomy must contain an analogue of grammar because all anatomy is a transform of message material, which must be contextually shaped. And finally, contextual shaping is only another term for grammar.
    — introduction

    Here again is a whole thread's worth of meat to pick over, and again I have left out the careful biological considerations that provoke and support the ideas. Children's (mis)education in grammar, is related to undergraduate education in anatomy and a pattern is displayed that relates them, and offers a better way of educating and a better way of thinking and a better way of looking at definitions an meanings - another topic that comes up here regularly.

    "And finally, contextual shaping is only another term for grammar."

    And this is the tertiary pattern of the pattern that connects.
  • Janus
    16.5k
    Thanks for starting a thread on one of my favorite thinkers. I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment, but this may motivate me to re-read the text, in which case I'll try to contribute. I'll certainly follow along in any case.
  • Gnomon
    3.8k

    My central thesis can now be approached in words: The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. — Introduction
    Do you think Bateson was talking about what we now know as "Information", in a broader philosophical sense than Shannon's narrow engineering useage? Ecology (the logic of Nature) is all about interconnections. Also the "hierarchic structure of thought" seems to be another reference to Logos in human conception.

    His writings seem to assume a "Great Chain of Being" ontology, which is denied by most evolutionists, who see no logical connection between one link and another in evolution : e.g. random bush vs linear tree analogies. The interconnections are indeed complex, but without logical links, Evolution would not make sense, and couldn't be "approached in words". :smile:

    What is Information Pattern? :
    An information pattern is a structure of information units like e.g. a vector or matrix of numbers, a stream of video frames, or a distribution of probabilities.
    https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/information-pattern/14438
    Note --- It's a logical structure, not a material substance.
  • Janus
    16.5k
    Do ideas really occur in chains, or is this lineal (see Glossary) structure imposed on them by scholars and philosophers? How is the world of logic, which eschews "circular argument," related to a world in which circular trains of causation are the rule rather than the exception?

    There is a sense in which all deductive thought is circular in that conclusions must be "contained" in premises, even if some considerable degree of unpacking is involved in deriving the former from the latter. Speaking less rigorously premises must at least be consistent with one another and with conclusions, so there is always an inherent "circling back" involved in chains of ideas.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    Do you think Bateson was talking about what we now know as "Information", in a broader philosophical sense than Shannon's narrow engineering useage?Gnomon

    The impression I have is that his conception of pattern would be closer to information redundancy and thus compressibility. I say that because he talks about symmetry and serial repetition and such.

    But in information terms he already wants to include the way that the development of an organism produces new information, both in the way particularly recursive definitions can produce complexity from simplicity, and practically in the way tree rings record the weather.

    My understanding of Shannon is that his notion of information is distinguished from 'noise' by a 'receiver'. Here, the organism as receiver is trying always to detect a message in the environment, and the pattern recognised is the message understood. But the receiver is also part of the pattern.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    The idea is developed in the next chapter in a section relating logic and causality, that I have already put on my previous reading the Laws of Form thread as a direct link to this. I repeat it here.

    [quote-Mind and Nature 2:13]When the sequences of cause and effect become circular (or more complex than circular), then the description or mapping of those sequences onto timeless logic becomes self-contradictory. Paradoxes are generated that pure logic cannot tolerate. An ordinary buzzer circuit will serve as an example, a single instance of the apparent paradoxes generated in a million cases of homeostasis throughout biology. The buzzer circuit (see Figure 3) is so rigged that current will pass around the cir­cuit when the armature makes contact with the electrode at A . But the passage of current activates the electromagnet that will draw the arma­ture away , breaking the contact at A . The current will then cease to pass around the circuit, the electromagnet will become inactive, and the
    armature will return ro make contact at A and
    If we spell out this cycle onto a causal sequence, we get the fol-
    lowing:
    If contact is made at A, then the magnet is activated.
    If the magnet is activated, then contact at A is broken.
    If contact at A is broken, then the magnet is inactivated.
    If magnet is inactivated, than contact is made.

    This sequence is perfectly satisfactory provided it is clearly understood that the if . . . then junctures are causal. But the bad pun that would move the ifs and thens over into the world of logic will create havoc:
    If the contact is made, then the contact is broken. If P, then not P.
    The if . . . then of causality contains time, but the if . . . then of logic is timeless. It follows that logic is an incomplete model of causality .[/quote]

    This then links back to @Gnomon's point about information. The information 'implicit' in the axioms of Euclid unfolds into a whole book of elements consisting of theorems. But in practice, they don't do it by themselves, Euclid has to do it. Thus the algorithm for calculating pi does not contain the value of pi any more than a cake recipe contains a cake. You have to do the math, or the cookery, in time.
  • Janus
    16.5k
    I take your point, but the applications of logic, the unfolding of deductive arguments, also occurs in time. Another point of difference is that causation is not logically necessary (Hume).

    On another note, do you agree with @Gnomon that Bateson's' thought "seems to assume a "Great Chain of Being" ontology"? I'm not seeing it, but then Gnomon didn't explain why he thinks that.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    Excuse me. I'm reading through, and noting here things that strike me, personally. Hopefully others will drag me back to look more carefully at other things earlier in the text I have just mentally nodded at.

    At the bacterial level and even among protozoa and some fungi and algae, the gametes remain superficially identical; but in all metazoa and plants above the fungal level, the sexes of the gametes are distin­guishable one from the other.
    The binary differentiation of gametes, usually one sessile and one mobile, comes first. Following this comes the differentiation into two kinds of the multicellular individuals who are the producers of the two kinds of gametes.
    — 3:7

    Yin and yang (English: /jɪn/, /jæŋ/), also yinyang[1][2] or yin-yang,[3][2] is a concept that originated in Chinese philosophy, describing opposite but interconnected, mutually perpetuating forces. In Chinese cosmology, the universe creates itself out of a primary chaos of material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang and formed into objects and lives. Yin is 'receptive' while 'yang' is active; in principle, this dichotomy is seen in some form in all things—patterns of change and difference, such as seasonal cycles, evolution of the landscape over days, weeks, and eons (with the original meaning of the words being the north-facing shade and the south-facing brightness of a hill), sex (female and male), as well as the formation of the character of individuals and the grand arc of sociopolitical history in disorder and order.[4]

    It is usually translated as "creative" and "receptive", but "mobile' and "sessile" is possibly more accurate. But the accuracy of the 6,000 year old I Ching is indicative, I think, of a deep and necessary unity of thought and biology all on its own.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    I take your point, but the applications of logic, the unfolding of deductive arguments, also occurs in time. Another point of difference is that causation is not logically necessary (Hume).Janus

    Yes, he is close to Hume. I discovered further on, that he even mentions George Spencer-Brown, and in his book that I've been discussing, there is an exact parallel use of time. Euclid takes time to unfold his geometry, and we take time to read through and understand. Nevertheless, the geometry is static and timeless, and so are most logics. It is not envisaged that 2 + 2 will ever attain to 5. Whereas in time ignorant can become knowing, life can become lifeless, or reproduce and; x can become not x and x again.

    On another note, do you agree with Gnomon that Bateson's' thought "seems to assume a "Great Chain of Being" ontology"? I'm not seeing it, but then Gnomon didn't explain why he thinks that.Janus

    He is at some pains to be explicit about his assumptions. God and angels will not be playing a major role in this. But he is looking at what has been thrown out with the bathwater of religion, There is a passage in the introduction that talks about The Great Chain of Being, that ends thus:

    In what is offered in this book, the hierarchic structure of thought, which Bertrand Russell called logical typing, will take the place of the hierarchic structure of the Great Chain of Being and an attempt will be made to propose a sacred unity of the biosphere that will contain fewer epistemological errors that the versions of that sacred unity which the various religions of history have offered. What is important is that, right or wrong, the epistemology shall be explicit. Equally explicit criticism will then be possible. — Intro

    The next 2 chapters examine the various underlying assumptions that modern scientific thought makes, and criticises some of the misconceptions as he sees it, and lays outhit own assumptions and the pragmatic reasons for holding them - again echoing Hume in observing that causation is assumed, persistence is assumed and so on.
  • Julian August
    13
    But this topic also relates to threads like The Mind Created Worldunenlightened

    Hello unenlightened!

    If the reference of two things are dual then either reference would be impossible without the other, it would therefore be something outside of the sphere of either concepts which could be a conceivable ground for disputing whether either mind or nature were not a necessary unity, and that would contradict the correspondence between the reference and referents.

    Therefore mind and nature are necessarily united.

    Also, the concept of necessity is derived empirically (it is actually the most derivative concept we have disjunction->negation->possibility->necessity), and can hardly even be applied transcendentally to metaphysics for that reason. That is, if the necessity of their unity concerns the condition for the existence of anything at all as opposed to us in particular then the concept of necessity were applied transcendentally even though it were derived at bottom from sensations.

    I am suspicious of the contents within a book spouting an obvious tautology in its title, but I will read more up on Bateson and believe I am justified in commenting what I commented here without having read any further into him given the nature of my response.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    Hi there. I'm not sure what you are saying there. Maybe have a read of the introduction, and see if the topic interests you.
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    On another note, do you agree with Gnomon that Bateson's' thought "seems to assume a "Great Chain of Being" ontology"? I'm not seeing it, but then Gnomon didn't explain why he thinks that.Janus
    I got that impression from reading Mind and Nature many years ago. He interpreted Evolution as a directional progression, generally from simplicity (elements) to complexity (organisms). Criticism of that ancient notion is primarily concerned with the implication of a natural hierarchy, with humans at the top of the animal kingdom, and white humans at the top of a racial hierarchy. I don't know if Bateson was a racist, but I doubt that race was a primary concern. :smile:

    Bateson's Process Ontology :
    The work of Gregory Bateson offers a metaphysical basis for a “process psychology,” that is, a view of psychological practice and research guided by an ontology of becoming—identifying change, difference, and relationship as the basic elements of a foundational metaphysics. This article explores the relevance of Bateson's recursive epistemology, his re-conception of the Great Chain of Being, a first-principles approach to defining the nature of mind, and understandings of interaction and difference, pattern and symmetry, interpretation and context.
    https://philarchive.org/rec/TEMBPO
  • Janus
    16.5k
    Nevertheless, the geometry is static and timeless, and so are most logics. It is not envisaged that 2 + 2 will ever attain to 5. Whereas in time ignorant can become knowing, life can become lifeless, or reproduce and; x can become not x and x again.unenlightened

    Looking at it that way, I agree with the distinction between logic and physical process.

    In what is offered in this book, the hierarchic structure of thought, which Bertrand Russell called logical typing, will take the place of the hierarchic structure of the Great Chain of Being and an attempt will be made to propose a sacred unity of the biosphere that will contain fewer epistemological errors that the versions of that sacred unity which the various religions of history have offered. What is important is that, right or wrong, the epistemology shall be explicit. Equally explicit criticism will then be possible. — Intro

    That makes sense, he is replacing the Great Chain of Being, with a natural and logical hierarchy as God, archangels and angels have no place in his immanentistic, wholistic vison of nature, of "a sacred unity of the biosphere".
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    That makes sense, he is replacing the Great Chain of Being, with a natural and logical hierarchy as God, archangels and angels have no place in his immanentistic, wholistic vison of nature, of "a sacred unity of the biosphere".Janus
    Yes. That's why the article I linked above referred to his theory as a "reconception of the Great Chain of Being". In the link below, The Information Philosopher discusses mainly Bateson's notions of Cybernetics (feedback systems), Semantics (meaningful patterns), and Holism (integrated systems). He also mentions that "He variously identified this system as Mind or God, a sort of panpsychism. The supreme system he thought was a whole, not divisible into parts".

    I'm guessing that his Panpsychism is similar to Spinoza's "deus sive natura". Definitely not referring to the Bible God. Yet, he still views Evolution as a progressive, perhaps teleological, process. His "chain of being" metaphor looks forward to developments in Quantum, Cybernetic Systems (computers), and Information theories, instead of backward to ancient notions of a divinely-ordained order in nature. :smile:


    In his 1972 book, Mind and Nature : A Necessary Unity, Bateson defined his panpsychic and monist view :

    Mind is an aggregate of interacting parts or components. (his supreme cybernetic system)

    The interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference. (messaging depends on differences > information)

    Mental process requires collateral energy. (Bateson appreciated free energy, with negative entropy)

    Mental process requires circular (or more complex) chains of determination. (Bateson was a determinist)

    In mental process the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (that is, coded versions) of the difference which preceded them. (he describes causal chains)

    The description and classification of these processes of transformation discloses a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena.

    https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/bateson/
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    I have to take issue with your link quoted above on one issue. I do not believe Bateson was a determinist, and I certainly do not believe that determinism is one of the necessary presuppositions of the thesis he presents here, because if it had been he would have declared it and made an argument for it. He's a far too careful, and self-aware thinker to have missed it.

    See here for example for a claim that he "... consistently opposed determinism." https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783231?typeAccessWorkflow=login# (no special access required for the quote)

    Also the "Science never proves anything" section pretty much rules it out.
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    ↪Gnomon
    I have to take issue with your link quoted above on one issue. I do not believe Bateson was a determinist, and I certainly do not believe that determinism is one of the necessary presuppositions of the thesis he presents here, because if it had been he would have declared it and made an argument for it. He's a far too careful, and self-aware thinker to have missed it.
    unenlightened
    Thanks for the info. I also questioned that attribution. But There are several types of Determinism : Hard ; Pre- ; Biological ; Logical ; Causal ; etc. And, I am not an expert on Bateson's philosophy. So, I let it slide. :smile:
  • Janus
    16.5k
    The Information Philosopher discusses mainly Bateson's notions of Cybernetics (feedback systems), Semantics (meaningful patterns), and Holism (integrated systems). He also mentions that "He variously identified this system as Mind or God, a sort of panpsychism. The supreme system he thought was a whole, not divisible into parts".Gnomon

    If I'm going to be convinced about Bateson's purported panpsychism or deism, I'd want to see quotes from his own work not from some interpreter of it. It's a long time since I read Mind and Nature so even if I don't remember getting the impression that Bateson was panpsychist that might down to my failure to notice it or remember noticing it.

    Spinoza is often framed (and I think misinterpreted) as a panpsychist, but he was undoubtedly a deist.
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    If I'm going to be convinced about Bateson's purported panpsychism or deism, I'd want to see quotes from his own work not from some interpreter of it. It's a long time since I read Mind and Nature so even if I don't remember getting the impression that Bateson was panpsychist that might down to my failure to notice it or remember noticing it.
    Spinoza is often framed (and I think misinterpreted) as a panpsychist, but he was undoubtedly a deist.
    Janus
    Here's a link to an article that touches on your distinction between Panpsychism and Deism. It includes quotes from another of Bateson's books.

    Deism does postulate some kind of Universal Mind, while Spinoza's Nature God seems to be primarily the source of Causation in the world. The quotes below appear to be making the same distinction, between Causation & Consciousness, that I do in my Information-based thesis : Causation (e.g Energy) is universal & eternal, while Consciousness (Sentient Mind) is a late emergent phenomenon after billions of years of Evolution & Enforming.

    Bateson denies that "atomies" are conscious --- as some interpret Panpsychism --- and implies that it's "complex relationships" --- such as the neural networks of a brain --- that generate subjective Consciousness, not the material components themselves. Although, Bateson might accept the notion that Matter --- as embodied energy --- may contain the Potential for Mind (i.e Immanent).

    Hylonoism is a technical term, similar to Aristotle's Hylomorphism, referring to a combination of Matter & Mind. It appears to be used primarily by Panpsychists. Again, it seems to imply that Conscious Mind is primary, but I tend to view Creative Causation (i.e. First Cause) as the principal Source of everything in the world : both Mind and Matter.

    Fundamental Matter ; Prime Mind ; First Cause ? It's a nit-picky distinction that would be, literally & figuratively, immaterial to those who think of Matter as the fundamental element of Reality. Yet if so, then emergent Consciousness must be immanent in matter --- but in what form? Could it be . . . I don't know . . . maybe . . . incorporeal Energy . . . or EnFormAction : the power to transform? :smile:


    Bateson versus Panpsychism :
    Still, Bateson does not endorse a full-fledged panpsychism. The only exceptions for him
    are the fundamental atomic particles ('atomies').


    Quotes from Steps to an Ecology of Mind :
    This view is very close in spirit to hylonoism, which sees mind in all interactive
    exchanges of energy
    . I concluded that, therefore, mind must exist in hierarchic form
    throughout all levels of being; Bateson reaches the same conclusion:

    “we know that within Mind in the widest sense there will be a hierarchy of subsystems, any one of
    which we can call an individual mind” (ibid). It is not just ‘universal Mind’, but mind at
    all levels of existence – true pluralistic panpsychism
    ". . . .
    "It means…that I now localize something which I am calling "Mind"
    immanent in the large biological system – the ecosystem. Or, if I draw the
    system boundaries at a different level, then mind is immanent in the total
    evolution structure
    ". . . .
    "The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent
    also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind
    of which the individual mind is only a subsystem. This larger Mind…is still
    immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology." . . . .
    "I do not agree with Samuel Butler, Whitehead, or Teilhard de Chardin that it
    follows from this mental character of the macroscopic world that the single
    atomies must have mental character or potentiality. I see the mental as a
    function only of complex relationship.

    https://people.bath.ac.uk/mnspwr/doc_theses_links/pdf/dt_ds_chapter7.pdf
  • Janus
    16.5k
    In those quotes Bateson speaks of mind at all levels of relational existence, not of consciousness. I know that I am not conscious myself most of the time, if consciousness is defined as something like 'explicit awareness' as distinct from mere (implicit) awareness. That seems like a valid phenomenological distinction to me.

    I remember Whitehead defining himself as a "pan-experientialist" rather than a panpsychist, and he also asserts that most experience is not conscious. So, I guess the question is as to whether panpsychism postulates consciousness, as defined above, at all levels.
  • Paine
    2.5k
    I figure Bateson is a paradigm change that has not happened yet.

    Noticing the repetition of iterations is not the same as saying what they are.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    I figure Bateson is a paradigm change that has not happened yet.

    Noticing the repetition of iterations is not the same as saying what they are.
    Paine

    That is very much the feeling i have too; both for the academic world at large, and in my own understanding.

    Watching this sequence of cat behavior and the sequence of my reading of it (because the system we are talking about is, in the end, not Just cat but man-cat and perhaps should be considered more complexly than that, as man-watching-man's-watching-cat-watching-man), there is a hierarchy of contextual components as well as a hierarchy concealed within the enormous number of signals given by the cat about herself. — P. 117

    Here is a small example of one particular shift that is about the identity of the observer. Whenever what is going on is an interaction between living beings, all the sense of both are involved in a communication that affects both, and this communication is not distinct from the 'internal' communication that constitutes each being's own awareness. Man and cat merge in mutual observation.

    With this in mind, I can suggest that when we mutually understand each other, we are in that moment literally 'of one mind' in regards to that which we mutually understand, And this contrasts with the all too common case where I do not understand myself, and project that misunderstanding onto the other, recreating my own cognitive dissonance in the relationship.
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    ↪Gnomon
    In those quotes Bateson speaks of mind at all levels of relational existence, not of consciousness. I know that I am not conscious myself most of the time, if consciousness is defined as something like 'explicit awareness' as distinct from mere (implicit) awareness. That seems like a valid phenomenological distinction to me.

    I remember Whitehead defining himself as a "pan-experientialist" rather than a panpsychist, and he also asserts that most experience is not conscious. So, I guess the question is as to whether panpsychism postulates consciousness, as defined above, at all levels.
    Janus
    I make the same distinction in my Enformationism thesis. Based on my personal understanding of Quantum Physics and Information Theory, I have concluded that Consciousness is emergent, not fundamental. That notion began with physicist John A. Wheeler's postulation that "its" (material things) are derived from "bits" (elements of Information*1). In that essential distinction, Information (the power to enform) is more like Energy than Ideas (E=MC^2).

    Also, in physics, Information has been associated with Causal Energy, not with Sentient (experiential) Consciousness. So, I doubt that sub-atomic particles --- which exchange physical Energy --- actually know what is happening to them. Unfortunately, the term "to experience" has ambiguous meanings : A> practical physical interaction, and B> mental metaphysical communication. For an Electron, we call it an exchange of abstract energetic Charge, not of imaginative meaningful Ideas.

    Therefore, I infer that Primordial Causation (Plato's First Cause) was not Actual immanent Energy, but Potential relationship*2 Energy . But that's a complex technical topic, not appropriate for a forum post. I imagine that the Actual products of energetic causation range from sub-atomic particles, to human-scale matter, and on up to the most recent developments of Evolution : the emergence of sentient Minds, only a few million years ago. I suppose that primitive Life (e.g. plants & bacteria) is an example of "implicit" awareness, while Animal Life (mammals) is the beginning of "explicit" Consciousness, and human Self-Consciousness is the current apex of Information Evolution. Maybe (speculation), Artificial Intelligence will eventually develop an even higher form of Causal & Conscious Information.

    Because I view Consciousness as Emergent, instead of Elemental, I don't agree with the "pan-experiential" form of Pan-Psychism (all mind). Yet, I can agree with a similar notion of Pan-Potential (Platonic Form). If these abbreviated comments are difficult to follow though, I can elaborate in response to specific questions. :smile:



    *1. Information :
    Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".
    https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

    *2. Relationship :
    Mathematical Ratios (e.g 1/2) or Einsteinian Relativity (comparison of this to that).
    Example --- thermal energy is experienced as a statistical ratio such as Hot to Cold : 50% = neutral ; 70% = warm.
    Note --- The Bergsonian "difference" is a ratio between two values --- either numerical or meaningful --- which can be expressed as a percentage or a feeling.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    I came across this in my reading that might just satisfy you that the title was at least not intended to be understood tautologically.

    We face, then, two great stochastic systems that are partly in in­teraction and partly isolated from each other. One system is within the individual and is called learning,· the other is immanent in heredity and in populations and is called evolution. One is a matter of the single life­ time; the other is a matter of multiple generations of many individuals.
    The task of this chapter is to show how these two stochastic sys­tems, working at different levels of logical typing, fit together into a single ongoing biosphere that could not endure if either somatic or gene­tic change were fundamentally different from what it is. The unity of the combined system is necessary.
    — P.149
  • Janus
    16.5k
    Because I view Consciousness as Emergent, instead of Elemental, I don't agree with the "pan-experiential" form of Pan-Psychism (all mind).Gnomon

    Thinking of Whitehead, I understand him to view consciousness as emergent, it is experience he sees as elemental. His concept of experience is broad, so he would say that, for example, "the cliffs experience the erosive effects of the wind and rain", which is analogous to the way our sentient bodies are precognitively affected by photons, sound waves, scent molecules and so on. These affects result in us seeing, hearing, smelling etc., a world of things, but we cannot be conscious of that process of affection except perhaps after the fact and then it is a defeasible analysis that yields propositional belief, not unmediated knowledge.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    Thinking of Whitehead, I understand him to view consciousness as emergent, it is experience he sees as elemental. His concept of experience is broad, so he would say that, for example, "the cliffs experience the erosive effects of the wind and rain", which is analogous to the way our sentient bodies are precognitively affected by photons, sound waves, scent molecules and so on.Janus

    This seems rather problematic to me. I suggest that the cliffs experience erosion the way I experience being operated on under general anaesthetic; which is hopefully not at all. Consciousness returns afterwards and I experience the after-effects of the wound and the healing thereof. In this regard there is a very clear distinction between stuff that happens to me and stuff I experience, and to equivocate between them is to confuse oneself. My toenails grow, but I am not conscious of their growth as they grow, though I may notice that they have grown when I cannot get my shoes on.

    I am interested here in looking at what Bateson is saying. And one of the things he is saying is that consciousness - he doesn't actually use the word much - so let us say that what is sensed is not ever the thing in the world, but always news of a difference. So the eye vibrates very slightly, and the vibration produces a strong change at the edges of objects in the field of vision. This edge detection is how we see and separate one thing from another. Always he is talking about relationships and layers of relationships between relationships. And patterns of coding. Edges are not things in the world as such, but the vibration produces a flashing at the edges that informs the organism about the environment in ways that matter to it, like telling friend from foe. In this way mind is simply 'more life', and it is all process and all networks of active relations.

    Cliffs don't have eyes or noses or nervous systems, so there is no 'news' generated by anything that happens to them, and thus no experience.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    One of the things I like about Bateson is the way he bypasses "consciousness" to a great extent, and bypasses ontology, in favour of process, relationship, sensation, and thinking. I feel if we could get some clarity about these aspects of our own being, the 'problem' of consciousness might be more tractable, or at least less important. Instead of asking what it is that thinks, ask what thinking does, and how it makes a difference in the world; and this involves recognising that thinking is what one is doing in asking or answering such questions.

    Back to the beginning.

    ... there is a single knowing which characterizes evolution as well as aggregates of humans, even though committees and nations may seem stupid to two-legged geniuses like you and me.

    I was transcending that line which is sometimes supposed to enclose the human being. In other words, as I was writing, mind became, for me, a reflection of large parts and many parts of the natural world outside the thinker.

    On the whole, it was not the most crudest, the simplest, the most animalistic and primitive aspects of the human species that were reflected in the natural phenomena. It was, rather, the more complex, the aesthetic, the intricate, and the elegant aspects of people that reflected nature. It was not my greed, my purposiveness, my so-called "animal," so-called "instincts," and so forth that I was recognizing on the other side of that mirror, over there in "nature." Rather, I was seeing there the roots of human symmetry, beauty and ugliness, aesthetics, the human being’s very aliveness and little bit of wisdom. His wisdom, his bodily grace, and even his habit of making beautiful objects are just as "animal" as his cruelty. After all, the very word "animal" means "endowed with mind or spirit (animus)."

    Against this background, those theories of man that start from the most animalistic and maladapted psychology turn out to be improbable first premises from which to approach the psalmist’s question: "Lord, What is man?"
    — Introduction

    The above are Bateson's words, Bateson's thoughts, and you and I can entertain them, attempt to understand them, and conceivably adopt them to some extent.

    So necessarily, a cell, any living cell, has to know how to live, and how to reproduce. Necessarily, a committee has to know how to make a decision. Necessarily, a philosopher has to know how to think about thinking. And in each case there is an abstract pattern that informs and directs a circular relation of influences that constitutes a complex system.
    "A cell knows how to divide" does not seem to mean that I know how to divide; my cells know things that I do not. Likewise, committees often seem to know less than their members know.

    I know how to direct my fingers to the keys to make sentences, but I cannot explain that knowhow to you, any more than the planning department can handle a spade, but only how to commission a workforce. Have a play in your own mind with what knowing is going on in and around you; have a look at some of the examples in this book. Do you think a post through first and then dictate/copy it through your fingers, or does each phrase somehow suggest the next one, in concert with some overall vague scheme?

    Read a little beyond what I have quoted, and you will find a suggestion that we moderns have formed a distorted conception of ourselves as angel/devils or soulless machine masters of the universe. It is in how we understand the 'human condition' that I think a paradigm shift is being proposed. A psychological shift that reunites human with nature, and mind with body. Quick as you like please, because the soulless machine masters are killing us all.
  • Janus
    16.5k
    I agree with a distinction between experienced and consciously experienced, which is what you seem to be aiming at. I was certainly not wanting to diminish the status of animals or humans to that of machines.

    If anything, I want to raise the status of cliffs and rivers, as well as animals and humans and even the lowly machine, but not claim they are all equal.

    Cliffs don't have eyes or noses or nervous systems, so there is no 'news' generated by anything that happens to them, and thus no experience.unenlightened

    I would say that when the rain streams down the cliffs and the wind howls against them, there are changes and that changes are "news", at least potentially. I'm not claiming the cliffs, the rain and the wind are conscious.

    We are completely unconscious of the processes by which our senses are affected, we are (possibly) conscious only of the end result; of those things we come to notice and care about.

    Read a little beyond what I have quoted, and you will find a suggestion that we moderns have formed a distorted conception of ourselves as angel/devils or soulless machine masters of the universe. It is in how we understand the 'human condition' that I think a paradigm shift is being proposed. A psychological shift that reunites human with nature, and mind with body. Quick as you like please, because the soulless machine masters are killing us all.unenlightened

    This is an important point; we are bedeviled by polemics. the battle between the "too otherworldly" and the "too this-worldly". On account of this state of conflict and confusion we are killing ourselves or at least allowing ourselves to be killed.
  • wonderer1
    2.2k
    This is an important point; we are bedeviled by polemics. the battle between the "too otherworldly" and the "too this-worldly". On account of this state of conflict and confusion we are killing ourselves or at least allowing ourselves to be killed.Janus

    :100:
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    I would say that when the rain streams down the cliffs and the wind howls against them, there are changes and that changes are "news", at least potentially.Janus

    They are changes that make a difference to a seagull that nests in the cliff.
    They are differences that make a difference to a seagull that nests in the cliff.

    The seagull has a mental map of its home, and the change in the cliff is news to the seagull that makes a difference to its map. It might also make a difference to the map of a local fisherman.

    But at least on Bateson's map of mapping, if it doesn't make a difference to a life-form it is a difference that makes no difference.

    If a rock falls from a cliff and no one is around to notice, it doesn't make a difference that makes a difference, but if a tree falls in the forest, the whole forest knows about it in all sorts of ways, especially the tree itself if it is still alive.

    So changes are potential news, only to life that can be affected in some way. News is not events, but the communication of events.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    DNA "is" (functions as) a recipe, an algorithm, a memory, in relation to an organism - environment matrix.

    Example: a human zygote has DNAprogramming that begins something like "repeat n, [divide, stick together]. if endometrium, then implant." If this goes wrong, there might result an ectopic pregnancy, or a clump of cells going down the pan. But if all goes well, on implantation a communication begins between mother and embryo that eventually results in another little unenlightened, or Bateson, or someone.

    So to make a human, all you need is around 700mb of DNA ...

    ... and a fully functioning female human and supportive environment and about 9 months construction time.

    Notice the recursion in the recipe, as if Delia were to say, "to make a cake, start with a cake, and then..."

    And someone is going to ask, "Which came first, the human or the human genome?" as if there was a beginning to the circle of life.

    Likewise, all the algorithm for the decimal iteration of pi needs is a computer and energy and time to produce a decimal string vastly larger than the algorithm.

    So much for computers and little biological machines. Now what are the ingredients and recipe for thinking all this stuff? A bunch of humans, a supportive environment, communication...
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