Once you allow that similarity is not the same as difference, it becomes evident that it is impossible that the two are created by the same process. — Metaphysician Undercover
Do you not see vagueness as inherent within meaning, and it is what we might try to exclude through the application of constraint? — Metaphysician Undercover
If you are interested, it would be worth checking out Howard Pattee’s papers on biosemiosis, the epistemic cut and the physics of symbols. His is the most incisive presentation of the crucial ideas. — apokrisis
Semantics is a social game of pretend. — bongo fury
But there just is no fact of the matter whether a word or picture is pointed at one thing or another. No physical bolt of energy flows from pointer to pointee(s). So the whole social game is one of pretence. Albeit of course a hugely powerful one.
Is drawing a rational inference - 'because this is the case, that must be the case' - also 'a brain state?'
— Wayfarer
Yes, I think so. — Kenosha Kid
Is Umberto Eco's A Theory of Semiotics a good place to start? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Need to read more carefully, but at first glance there's no explicit dissolution or even mention of the hard problem, which is odd as it was written in the last few years. — bert1
Is Umberto Eco's A Theory of Semiotics a good place to start? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Peirce and Eco approach this abstract/concrete duality of signs, and the theory of signs more generally, in quite different ways. The most obvious difference is that while Peirce's theory is triadic (revolving around sign, object and interpretant, with this latter bringing the sign-user into the formula), Eco’s is a modification of the dyadic theory of Saussure (which is built up entirely from the relation of sign and signified – no sign-user is considered14), but Eco’s dyad is operational, in my sense, and it is a difference that reaches to the core.
For Eco, the fact of lying is more important than telling the truth, or attempting to tell the truth. As he says, “semiotics is in principle the discipline of studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used ‘to tell’ at all. I think that the definition of a ‘theory of the lie’ should be taken as a pretty comprehensive program for general semiotics.” (Eco 1975: 6-7; 0.1.3).
https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1112
But who now believes the body is anything other than a complex machine? Life - as a phenomenon - holds no metaphysical mystery anymore. — apokrisis
Nevertheless, Pattee acknowledges that he has been unable to solve the question of the origin of life — Wayfarer
Maybe some very simple or even elementary fact about the nature of existence is beyond science, due to the specific ways that science has to go about analysis of an issue. — Wayfarer
I think that's Chalmer's point, and I think it's a valid point. — Wayfarer
The origin of life question is: How did this separation, this epistemic cut, originate? As Hoffmeyer (2000) has pointed out, the apparently sharp epistemic cut between these categories makes it difficult to imagine how life began and how these two categories evolved at higher levels. The epistemic cut appears to be a conceptual as well as a topological discontinuity. It is difficult to imagine a gradual cut. The problem arises acutely with the genetic code. A partial code does not work, and a simple code that works as it evolves is hard to imagine. In fact, this is a universal problem in evolution and even in creative thought. How does a complex functioning set of constraints originate when no subset of the constraints appears to maintain the function? How does a reversible dynamics gradually become an irreversible thermodynamics? How does a paradigm shift from classical determinism to quantum indeterminism occur gradually? At least in the case of thought we can trace some of the history, but in the origin of life we have no adequate history. Even in the case of creative thought, so much goes on in the subconscious mind that the historical trace has large gaps.
I will state at the outset that I have not solved this problem. — Howard Pattee
The ability to have an experience. I know this doesn't explain any more than the previous "definition". But that's because this can't be simplified. — khaled
I've also pointed you in the direction of Nick Lane's The Vital Question as a good contemporary view on abiogenesis. The picture of how life could have got started in the way I describe is explored there. — apokrisis
I think it cautiously supports dualism in recognizing the distinction between the 'inexorable laws of physics', and 'the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA... — Wayfarer
I'm not asking you to 'solve' this problem - who could? - but when I see the claim that life 'holds no metaphysical mystery', I'm going to object. — Wayfarer
If you really do take into account Aristotle's four causes, then the question of 'how' only addresses two of them. — Wayfarer
I was referring to Mental quality, not a different kind, or value, of Life.The metaphysical distinction I was making is a Qualitative difference -- a matter of degree -- rather than a Quantitative difference -- two separate things. A Metaphyiscal difference instead of a Physical difference. As a Quale, it is also a matter of opinion. :smile:Neither. I sharply disagree with the part about there being a metaphysical division between humans and all non-human life. — javra
Life and mind are now to be grounded in the science of dissipative structure. — apokrisis
Yeah I'm afraid 'dissipative structures' will never provide a philosophical rationale as far as I'm concerned. It's engineering speak. — Wayfarer
BTW, how do you rate Stuart Kaufman in the overall spectrum? — Wayfarer
Your logic is all over the shop... — apokrisis
I make the obvious point that similarity and difference are terms relative to each other. — apokrisis
Therefore "different" is an absolute sense of "not the same", while "similar" is a relative sense of "not the same". — Metaphysician Undercover
Now, don't get me wrong, I understood what you meant, but I was pointing out that both of us understood it even though it doesn't pass your criteria of a definition. — khaled
However you seemed to pretend that they don't so I wanted to see how you would define them without any ambiguity at all which is the standard you set for me and failed to keep yourself. — khaled
I didn't want to write a wall of text like the one you wrote only for you to say something like "'apprehend' is an ambiguous word so I don't get what you mean". — khaled
For instance: When a white blood cell attacks bacteria is it doing pattern recognition? It clearly doesn't just attack indiscriminantly — khaled
Obviously things like the ballness of the ball (recognising a ball as a ball irrespective of its colour, size, proximity, material, etc.) aren't freebies. There is some element of optimised recall (pattern-matching) that requires me to have already been trained to recognise a ball in terms of its other properties, most of which will be quite contingent (such as the nane 'ball') on things that have nothing to do with the phenomenon. This training relied on a general openness to information in my early environment in which I learned to associate contingent and non-contingent properties of balls with certain combinations of phenomena. — Kenosha Kid
You made a claim that neurological progress will lead to some theory of consciousness (not in that particular quote but earlier). I asked you how? In order to answer that question you need to define what you mean by consciousness and what you mean by neurological progress, as you are the one making the claim. You defined the latter but not the former. — khaled
Consciousness-as-brainstates actually supports the statement that neurological progress will lead to a theory of consciousness, but I think it makes no sense and your continued reluctance to mention it again makes me think you think so too. — khaled
You would need to explain how consciousness as "consciousness of something which (somehow) results from pattern recognition (whatever that means)" is related to neurological progress. — khaled
For consciousness as "consciousness of a subset of consciousnesses" I don't see how neurology has anything to do with that. It vaguely reminds me of the neural binding problem but that's it. — khaled
Well, here's the problem: this associates, or reduces, logical causation to a physical state. Whereas physical and logical causation operate on completely separate levels. — Wayfarer
Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form - which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson, Platonism v Naturalism
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