You're simply assuming that abstractions are something in themselves apart from our communications and understandings of them. It is precisely herein that lies your question-begging reification, I would say.

No, I’m assuming that abstractions a) are not concrete particulars of physicality and b) are products of mind. How are they not?

Abstractions can only be expressed as "concrete particulars of physicality"; what can they be apart from that? Even when you think an abstraction, the thinking of it would, according to current neuroscience, consist in a concrete particular neurological process.

Is something being a "product of mind" somehow different from it being a "product of brain"? If so, what precisely would that difference consist in?

So I don’t yet understand how your arguments can support the reality of different subjects sometimes sharing the same meaning. — javra

I do not believe that different subjects ever share the same meaning unless the meaning is within the physical object which is shared between them. They share the same physical object. Sometimes there are copies of the same book, and this is as close as we can get to saying that two distinct things have the same meaning. What exists within the different subjects' minds is always interpretations, and interpretations always have differences. So I think that if you want to say that different subjects share the same meaning, you need to allow for meaning to exist outside of the minds of subjects.

No two subjects will ever experience identical phenomenal information at any given time, this because each will be a unique first person point of view (nor will the same subject ever experience two identical bodies of phenomenal information during the entirety of its lifetime—but I’ll drop this second line of argument for now as regards stable meaning over time). — javra

We all have our unique points of view, but this does not mean that we cannot be viewing the same object, or hearing the same spoken words. So when we hear the same spoken words, we share the same meaning, regardless of the fact that we interpret the meaning in different ways depending on one's point of view.

Then, how does your argument not result in a solipsism regarding the body of meaning that any individual subject holds?

Seems to me this very conversation would then be nonsensical as a conversation since no meaning whatsoever would be common to us (i.e., the same relative to each of us). — javra

I think that you have things backward here. Those who claim that meaning is only within a mind are the ones who cannot show how any meaning could be common to us. Once you allow that the meaning which is within words and symbols, is not only within the mind, but outside the mind as well, then you have the grounds for common, shared meaning.

Abstractions can only be expressed as "concrete particulars of physicality"; what can they be apart from that? Even when you think an abstraction, the thinking of it would, according to current neuroscience, consist in a concrete particular neurological process.

Is something being a "product of mind" somehow different from it being a "product of brain"? If so, what precisely would that difference consist in? — Janus

This is a bit of a merry-go-round. Communication of an abstraction via concrete physical particulars is not the abstraction that is being communicated via concrete physical particulars. Else there is no difference between a) abstractions and b) concrete particulars.

As to brain and mind, if you find no difference between the two, we do not have enough common ground to debate with. To entertain your question as poignantly as I currently can, decomposed rot of organic matter can be a product of brains but not of minds; the imagining of this can only be a product of minds but not of mind-devoid brains.

To so much as even entertain a relation between brains and minds is to first acknowledge the reality that there is a difference between the two. Very sardonically stated: I can hardly wait to be explained how hallucinations, too, consist of physical information (this via the exact reasoning you’re just proposed so as to uphold that all abstractions are of physical information) … such conclusion being a literal lack of sense.

Lastly, there in fact being a relation between a mind and a living brain does nothing to establish what ontology of mind is real—physicalism being only one such possible ontology of mind amongst numerous others.

(Actually I read an interesting comment the other day on the etymological between 'idiosyncratic' and 'idiot'. An 'idiot' wasn't originally someone who was intellectually disabled, but someone who spoke in a language nobody else could understand.) — Wayfarer

You calling me an idiot?

Teacher writes a problem on the board, and I have to solve the problem. The chalk marks on the board are surely physical, but the algebraic problem that I have to solve, comprises the relationships between ideas, I would have thought. — Wayfarer

Is this really the case though? Does the algebraic problem deal with the relationships between ideas, or does it deal with the relationship between symbols? I think the latter. There is a process to follow, and the process involves rules concerning the relationships between symbols. What the symbols stand for (i.e. ideas), does not enter into the process, and is something completely different.

This is how formal logic works. There are rules concerning the relationships between symbols, which must be followed in the logical process. What the symbols stand for (what they mean), is irrelevant to the logical process itself.

The point is that a lack of meaningfulness is as much a matter of interpretation as the presence of meaning. Which blows a big hole in any belief in a "Platonic realm of meaning" — apokrisis

Had the evidence of life been found on Mars, that would be big news.

The question I had asked was about the fact that SETI is searching for order of a particular kind, namely, that associated with the tell-tale signs of life. I said, it was in relationship to biology that the distinction between 'symbol and matter' has been made. So I don't see any sense in which that distinction can be made, with respect to inorganic matter. It is inorganic precisely because it is not ordered in the way that living things are ordered, and so the distinction between symbol and matter is not evident in it. Which is why, I think, I suspicious of 'pansemiosis'.

are you suggesting there can be a pile of pebbles that is not arranged in any particular way? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. It's called 'a landslide'. Or maybe, a pile of pebbles. But the point is, a pile of pebbles does not convey any information, whereas something spelled out in pebbles might.

We're not discussing the mere fact of physical existence.

Certainly number, laws. conventions, logic and the like don't exist as objects of the senses. However they certainly exist as phenomena, — Janus

They don't exist as phenomena. That is the crucial point.

we cannot think of any intelligible way in which they could exist apart from objects of the senses; the idea simply makes no sense. — Janus

Algebra and other abstractions exist as ideas in the mind. The fact that you can't think of them in any other terms doesn't detract from that.

You calling me an idiot? — Metaphysician Undercover

It wasn't directed at you ;-) (Actually it was an amusing article about the current US Idiot in Chief.)

Does the algebraic problem deal with the relationships between ideas, or does it deal with the relationship between symbols? I think the latter. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can look at the symbols and tell you quite clearly, 'x' is on the left hand side of 'y', and about an inch apart. But ask me what is the value of x, given that y is such and such - then I have to do the math, that is the domain of ideas.

There are rules concerning the relationships between symbols, which must be followed in the logical process. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is the whole point of Searle's Chinese Room argument - you can logically execute a series of instructions to translate Chinese, without knowing what they mean. In which case, you haven't grasped the ideas - which illustrates my point.

Computers manipulate symbols, but humans create the computers and interpret the output. The sequence begins with and ends with a mind.

Logic is the relationship of ideas - surely you of all people aren't going to disagree with this. Otherwise I might revise the above opinion. ;-)

a pile of pebbles does not convey any information, whereas something spelled out in pebbles might. — Wayfarer

You're just restricting the word "information" to mean "something a person thought of", making it a synonym for "semantic content". On your usage, the senses have nothing to do with information and that's patently absurd.

Communication of an abstraction via concrete physical particulars is not the abstraction that is being communicated via concrete physical particulars. — javra

I am not saying it is; I have asked you what the abstraction is apart from the communication and understanding of it, though. What are you suggesting we should think it is?

the imagining of this can only be a product of minds but not of mind-devoid brains. — javra

Obviously I was referring to living, functional brain: what is the difference between a living, functional brain and a mind?

I can hardly wait to be explained how hallucinations, too, consist of physical information — javra

The impressions we experience leave memories in our minds; or put another way they form neuronal structures in the brain. An hallucination may be a novel amalgamation of such memories, physically instantiated in the brain as neuronal structures.

physicalism being only one such possible ontology of mind amongst numerous others. — javra

Give an account of an alternative ontology then. Tell us what it could mean for something to exist, or to be real, completely independently of the physical.

I can look at the symbols and tell you quite clearly, 'x' is on the left hand side of 'y', and about an inch apart. But ask me what is the value of x, given that y is such and such - then I have to do the math, that is the domain of ideas. — Wayfarer

This is where I disagree. I think doing math is dealing with relationships between symbols. What the symbols stand for, the ideas, is something which doesn't enter into "doing math". It does enter into understanding the principles of mathematics though. So if the question is 1+1=?, then I must put the symbol 2 there. This is completely the result of the conventions of how to use arithmetical symbols. And this is independent from the ideas which the symbols stand for.

This is the whole point of Searle's Chinese Room argument - you can logically execute a series of instructions to translate Chinese, without knowing what they mean. In which case, you haven't grasped the ideas - which illustrates my point. — Wayfarer

Exactly, we can do math without understanding. what the conclusions mean. Grasping the ideas is something different from doing the math, just like translating from Chinese is different from understanding the ideas, and a voice recognition computer is carrying out a process which is different from understanding the ideas. So this illustrates my point, and denies the validity of your claim. Doing math is simply dealing with symbols, it is not understanding the ideas. The computer does math, it carries out the logical processes assigned to it, but it doesn't grasp the ideas.

Logic is the relationship of ideas - surely you of all people aren't going to disagree with this. Otherwise I might revise the above opinion. ;-) — Wayfarer

Sorry, but I do disagree. Logic involves the relationships between symbols. What the symbols represent is ideas. So logic isn't directly involved in relating ideas, it is only involved in this in a secondary sense, because the symbols which logic relates to one another, represent ideas. The art, which involves relating symbols to ideas is something other than logic, it's called dialectics. So the relationships between ideas requires more than just logic, first and foremost, it involves dialectics.

It is inorganic precisely because it is not ordered in the way that living things are ordered, and so the distinction between symbol and matter is not evident in it. — Wayfarer

So the flow networks of the body, like our vascular system, are fractally organised and so exhibit the pure forms we associate with nature at its inorganic level. It is the kind of pattern we read as "noise" - literally. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise

And I note how carefully you are evading the more important point directed at your position.

Are you willing to grant access to Platonia for these other forms of nature which are just as mathematical - chaos, entropy, and other patterns of nature that you prefer to call bad on the grounds they "lack meaning or purpose".

You're just restricting the word "information" to mean "something a person thought of", making it a synonym for "semantic content". On your usage, the senses have nothing to do with information and that's patently absurd. — Srap Tasmaner

In the context of the thread, the original post was about the fact that 'information' and 'representation' can be separated, thereby showing that while representation might be physical, the information it encodes is not.

They don't exist as phenomena. That is the crucial point. — Wayfarer

They do exist as phenomena, They don't exist as objects of the senses. They don't exist independently of objects of the senses, either, though. If you think they do, then give an account of what that existence is. If you can't give such an account then you can't meaningfully say that they exist or are real apart from physical reality and existence. It looks to me that you are reifying what is merely a definitional distinction.

Algebra and other abstractions exist as ideas in the mind. The fact that you can't think of them in any other terms doesn't detract from that. — Wayfarer

How is the existence of an idea in a mind a different thing than its neuronal existence in a brain? If you can't answer that then I can't see how you have any argument to support what are merely vague assertions.

In the context of the thread, the original post was about the fact that 'information' and 'representation' can be separated, thereby showing that while representation might be physical, the information it encodes is not. — Wayfarer

This is simply wrong. Information and representation cannot be "separated", but they can be distinguished between, which is not the same thing at all.

I do not believe that different subjects ever share the same meaning unless the meaning is within the physical object which is shared between them. — Metaphysician Undercover

To try to avoid a back and forth of endless opinions, I’ll offer a more metaphysical argument.

As per Heraclitus’ flux, we can never be privy to the same phenomenal information twice. Where, then, does the very apprehension of sameness in relation to that perceived fit in?

We can never perceive the same river in terms of the same phenomenal information. Yet we can nevertheless acknowledge that what we perceive and interact with is the same river over time, or that we as multiple subjects do in fact perceive the same river at the same time.

To emphasize: where does the meaningful understanding of “sameness” come from, then? For it certainly cannot be obtained from our raw awareness of phenomenal information; the latter is never the same. On the other hand, to presume reliance on abstract reasoning to explain the presence of this innate meaning of “sameness” by which phenomena is interpreted is foolhardy. One can try to do so if they think they can: this merely through the use of phenomenal information perception devoid of any prejudice of sameness. To keep this brief, you then also deny that toddlers can hold notions of sameness (e.g. the same parents); and that any form of meaningful sameness can be held by animals (e.g., the same caregiver)—and this is to boldly deny reality.

I am not here addressing the linguistic concept of “sameness” which can be analyzed by adults like any other mental object. I’m instead addressing what is the inherent means via which we can perceive sameness (same river, same apple, etc.) in a world in which no phenomenal information ever remains fixed or repeats with identical attributes.

For the record, so far my hypothesis is that sameness is a Kantian-like a priori property of awareness—itself as property being a meaningful understanding regarding what is and what can be, one with which we are birthed with. Be this as erroneous as it may, however, the very awareness of sameness cannot itself be derived strictly from physical information—else one will debate against the very notion that everything phenomenal is in perpetual flux.

To use the currently popular definition of information on this thread, awareness of “sameness” is a difference that makes a difference, and is thereby an awareness of information. Yet sameness, though it can take innumerable phenomenal exemplars, is of itself a meaning that is other than—and a priori to—the phenomenal information which we discriminate as either “the same” or “different from”.

It is also mental information which we all share in common by virtue of being human, and—again—is not an intrinsic aspect of physical information (which is forever changing).

All this being a more metaphysical means of arguing that not all meaning is identical to phenomenal information.

Tell us what it could mean [...] — Janus

I am but a little tyke, and have big aversions to debating with authoritative nobility. Sorry, yous.

Are you willing to grant access to Platonia.... — apokrisis

I have no idea what that means, sorry.

The question I asked (also evaded) was that the distinction between the symbolic and the physical that you generally refer to, seems to originate with Von Neumann's idea, as then picked up by Pattee, in the paper, Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis. I am saying, this is distinction that only appears evident in living systems - that is why, in scanning the universe for life, NASA has some idea what to look for. There is a particular order which is characteristic of living systems, is there not? And that is where the symbolic/physical distinction really comes into play.

This is where I disagree. — Metaphysician Undercover

Very well then, thank you for your comments.

They [numbers, laws, rules] do exist as phenomena, — Janus

Right, then get a camera crew and go out and film some of them. Or, bring some back and exhibit them.

They are nowhere naturally existing. Human laws are the artefacts of human society; natural laws can only be detected by their consequences; numbers can only be grasped by a rational mind. They're not among phenomena, they are on a deeper or higher level - that is a distinction going right back to the origins of philosophy, which I think is valid, but which I think is forgotten.

give an account of what that existence is — Janus

'Exist' is derived from 'ex-' outside or or apart from, and 'ist', to stand. So 'to exist' means 'to be this thing as distinct from that thing', to have a separate identity. And I maintain that 'existence' pertains to phenomena, or denizens of the phenomenal realm. Almost everything in the encyclopedia falls under that heading - what Keith Campbell used to refer to as 'medium size dry goods'

But 'abstract objects' such as number, are not among them. They belong to another domain. This has been expressed in such ways as Frege's Third Realm; actually, even the esteemed Karl Popper was a dualist in that sense.

Russell actually discusses this in the Problems of Philosophy - he notes that the word 'exist' is wrong for universals, that the term should be something more like 'subsist' (I can't remember the exact details).

The issue is this: that philosophical naturalism, by definition, only admits one substance (in the philosophical sense) - as I already said in this thread, nowadays 'existence' can only mean one thing; something either exists or it doesn't. Whereas in pre-modern epistemology, there were different levels of reality. Now I'm not saying this is necessarily correct but I think I am putting a modernist type of case for a sense in which it might be. That's what I'm trying to do, anyway.

Information and representation cannot be "separated", but they can be distinguished between, which is not the same thing at all. — Janus

OK, they can be distinguished.

Right, then get a camera crew and go out and film some of them. Or, bring some back and exhibit them. — Wayfarer

Emotions and sensations are phenomena; and yet they cannot be filmed; so, this seems like a ill-though out criterion.

Emotions and sensations are phenomena — Janus

Are they? They can only be associated with persons and/or living beings. You can film a person or an animal apparently experiencing a sensation; but you obviously will never find either an emotion or a sensation in the absence of a sentient being.

But 'abstract objects' such as number, are not among them. — Wayfarer

Numbers "stand apart" from other numbers, and from all other things as well.

This is getting a bit rapid fire, Janus.

Clearly 6 =/=7, and 7 exists, whilst the square root of two does not. So, in the vernacular, yes, numbers exist - but I am saying, if you really consider what number is, they're not existent in the sense that concrete objects and particulars are existent. They're strictly dependent on the mind's ability to count, but at the same time, they're the same for anyone who can count. Ergo, intelligible but real.

That's why I explained, this is an heuristic, it's an interpretive model. That strictly speaking, numbers (etc) are not existent, but they're nevertheless real. But in customary speech, of course numbers exist.

One way of putting it is this: numbers don't exist. You will say, of course they do, here's 7, and 5. But they're not numbers, they're symbols. — Wayfarer

You're correct, they're symbols which represent numbers. But how about these asterixes (*****)?

In this case, the number five is present (or immanent) in those asterixes.

That is the Aristotelian immanent view of universals which is in contrast to the Platonic transcendent view.

Russell actually discusses this in the Problems of Philosophy - he notes that the word 'exist' is wrong for universals, that the term should be something more like 'subsist' (I can't remember the exact details).

The issue is this: that philosophical naturalism, by definition, only admits one substance (in the philosophical sense) - as I already said in this thread, nowadays 'existence' can only mean one thing; something either exists or it doesn't. Whereas in pre-modern epistemology, there were different levels of reality. Now I'm not saying this is necessarily correct but I think I am putting a modernist type of case for the sense in which I think it is. That's what I'm trying to do, anyway. — Wayfarer

Yes, I do seem to remember that distinction between "exist" and "subsist" in Russell. I would still want to say that universals exist, though; for example trees exist. The existence of trees is not the same thing as the existence of any particular tree; but the general existence of trees is not separate from the existence of particular trees, either.

Clearly 6 =/=7, and 7 exists, whilst the square root of two does not. — Wayfarer

I would say the square root of two exists,but is not precisely determinable. I haven't said that numbers exist in the same way that concrete particulars do, or in the same way that sensations or feelings do; they all have their own different kinds of existence; but I don't see any of them as having an existence which is completely independent of the physical: I don't even know what that could mean; what such a reality could be.

For sure some phenomena are only associated with living beings; digestion or homeostasis, for example.

I agree, I have just listened to a lecture on this matter - on Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism. Kreeft, the lecturer, was at pains to point out that whilst Aristotle didn't agree with Plato that the ideas exist in some abstract reality, he nevertheless accepts they are real; it's just that they are only real when they assume a form. But there's still a dualism of form and substance, which is related to the distinction I'm trying to work out.

A note on Plato's and Aristotle's idea of 'intelligibility':

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 vs Naturalism

that point about the distinction between 'the idea', and 'a synaptic state' is related to the point about the distinction between the physical representation and the meaning.

The existence of trees is not the same thing as the existence of any particular tree; but the general existence of trees is not separate from the existence of particular trees, either. — Janus

Right! Now you're getting it. What I'm saying is, we have an ineluctable tendency to 'concretize, externalise and objectify' - what is real is 'out there'. I think what Platonic realism is about, is not anything 'out there' but the nature of, and the way in which, we know anything.

I don't see any of them as having an existence which is completely independent of the physical: I don't even know what that could mean; what such a reality could be. — Janus

That's because it has been bred out of us! It is about the nature of 'transcendental reals', the baby that was thrown out with the bathwater of scholastic philosophy. But it's a distinction which is still alive in e.g. neo-thomism:

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism

For sure some phenomena are only associated with living beings; digestion or homeostasis, for example. — Janus

Right - they embody an order. It's a tangential point, but related insofar as the means by which that order exists, namely DNA, is also a type of code.

My argument was against naive realism and in favour of indirect realism. And indirect realism accepts both the fact that knowledge is grounded in the subjectivity of self-interest, but can then aspire to the objectivity of invariant or self-interest free "truth" by a rational method of theory and test, or abductive reasoning.

So there is available to us a method for minimising the subjectivity of belief. We know how to do that measurably. It's called the scientific method. Pragmatism defines it.

You seem to both accept and reject indirect realism. It sounds as though you want to insist on some naive realism at base in talking about a cause and effect relation between the dynamics of the world and the symbols then generated within the mind.

The thing in itself is actually a pattern of radiation. The experience we have is of seeing red rather than green. Somehow that is veridical and direct as there is a physical chain of events that connects every step of the way.

But even the fact that the world is constituted of patterns of radiation - everything can be explained by the different possible frequencies of a light wave - is simply another level of idea or conception. It is a further level of theory and test.

Naive realism fails. It is indirect realism all the way down. All we can say is that a particular way of looking at the world is proving to be a good habit of interpretation over some larger scale of space and time. — apokrisis

It seems to me that you are also insisting on some naive realism every time you talk about reality being a triad, as if it were ultimately true. Even saying that it's indirect realism all the way down is an objective statement about reality - independent of any observation of it. It also seems to imply that nothing is real, so it seems contradictory.

How did you come to know about pragmatism and semiotics? Where did you hear about it from? Wasn't is someone else's idea (probably a theory that fit that person's self interest) that you picked up and fit your self-interest, so you ran with it? Either semiotics is simply another level of idea or conception, or it is an accurate and objective (true) explanation (representation) of reality itself. Which is it?

What I'm saying is that the contents of a mind are just as real as everything else. Colors are real. Sounds are real. They exist. They are both effects and causes themselves. They are the cause of me saying, "The apple is red.", or eating the apple because I like red apples. But colors are also an effect - the effect of light interacting with a visual sensory system. If they weren't then how can I say anything about the apple's state (like it being ripe or rotten)?

To say that "there is an experience of the color red" would a truthful statement, no?

If I have a self-interest in eating only ripe apples instead of rotten ones, then isn't my self-interest also a real thing?

Meaning or semantics arises by a symmetry breaking of information. The information must be divided into signal and noise. The greater the contrast - the more information that is discarded as noise - the more meaningful the remaining information which is being treated as the signal.

So that is what the information theoretic approach is about. First establishing a baseline understanding of information in itself - as a physical capacity for variety, as some actual ensemble of possibilities. And then we can get to where we want to go - a principle for extracting the meaning of a message (or the physics of the world).

Semantics can be defined in a measurable fashion as the differences that make a difference ... because they are not a matter of general indifference.

That is why Landauer's principle was one of the important advances in turning attention to information discard or erasure. In the real world, eliminating noise is a big energetic cost. — apokrisis

Are you making more objective statements about reality or not? Is what you are saying accurate? Why should I believe you? What makes your statements more accurate than mine? How did you come by all this information? Where did it come from if not from "out there"?

Left to its own devices, a pile of pebbles won't convey information; it has to be arranged in order to convey information. — Wayfarer

A geologist would vehemently disagree.

I have no idea what that means, sorry. — Wayfarer

Bullshit. Plato's Heaven. Plato's realm of perfect ideas. This other place where you claim meaning finds its reality.

So again, are you willing to grant entropy the same Platonic status as negentropy, to summarise the nub of our long standing disagreement?

You argue information is only really information to the degree it is a signal, not noise. But I argue that the erasure of information - the very thing you cited in the OP - is also just as meaningful in being that which is the erased, the ignorable, the definitely meaningless.

A materialist would say that the mind is made of the same stuff "out there".

An idealist would say that the world is made of the same stuff "in here".

Then aren't they both saying the same thing?