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? — Harry Hindu

For all practice purposes yes (unless either the materialist or idealist is off his/her rocker and has lost touch which reality). The reason for debate between the two schools of thought, however, isn't about practical issues, but about metaphysical issues, each school of though holding is own spectrum of metaphysical possibilities. As one example, the spectrum of possibilities regarding how existence of awareness ends (if at all). Despite this difference of perspectives, both ought to know darn well that bullets in the brain is not a good thing.

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. — Wayfarer

More bullshit. I have agreed umpteen times that the epistemic cut is where life and mind properly kick in. There is actual semiotic machinery involved, like receptors, membranes, pumps, channels, let alone the core stuff of codable memories - genes, neuons, language - that can read/write the information that stands for the purposes and constraints of a biological system.

A non-biological system can still be a dissipative structure. Now the world at large - the thermodynamic context - is the memory structure that represents the purpose and constraints. So there is no located epistemic cut - one internal to the self-describing or self-replicating organism. The cut is now only a distributed pattern of environmental information. This is when we get into the importance of event horizons as encoding the order of nature at a physical level.

So yes, we can also define pansemiosis as this more generalised type of metaphysics. And physics has been doing exactly that too.

But stop pretending that I am not clear about the fundamental difference between biosemiosis and pansemiosis in this regard. It gets really tedious.

In the context of the thread, the original post was about the fact that 'information' and 'representation' can be separated, — Wayfarer

Actually, no. Your data is that the same information can be encoded multiple ways; more precisely, that it is possible to translate from one system of encoding to another while preserving information; you have not shown that information ever occurs, or can occur, without in fact being encoded in some physical system.

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. — Harry Hindu

I am spelling out the ontological commitments of a model. So no, I am stating upfront that this is indirect realism, the proposal of a theory that can be falsified.

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)? — Harry Hindu

And I am pointing out the conceptual confusion that kind of talk produces.

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. — Wayfarer

What is "out there" is what has already been determined as some kind of intentional object, I would say. The Henry book I referred to earlier is interesting because there he says that what is "archi-given" is not given intentionally at all but as affectivity. There is nothing objective in this primordial givenness; but on the other hand what is archi-given as affective is determinitive of what is secondarily given as the very particular determinate objects of inter-subjective intentional experience.

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: — Wayfarer

From a phenomenological perspective the transcendental is what is primordially given. It is not given intentionally but it is the condition of the possibility of intentional givenness. It is thus not either physical or non-physical but is inseparable from the experience of the physical, because it is the real condition of any such experience. It cannot itself be experienced intentionally.

Apparently you have no aversion to false modesty, though.

And I am pointing out the conceptual confusion that kind of talk produces. — apokrisis

Confusion is subjective. What is confusing to one doesn't mean that it is confusing to others. Per your own argument, something being confusing is the result of one's own self-interest being imposed on what they hear or read.

I am spelling out the ontological commitments of a model. So no, I am stating upfront that this is indirect realism, the proposal of a theory that can be falsified. — apokrisis

And if it isn't, then what then? How can it be falsified?

Is it true that you actually spelling out the ontological commitments of a model? Are you actually stating upfront that this is indirect realism? Would you still be doing this if no one was reading your posts?

It seems to me that you haven't stopped using words to refer to real, objective states of affairs in this entire thread. It seems to me that you have been saying this entire time that you have a naive realist view of reality as you can't stop talking about how things really are - like you pointing out the conceptual confusion my kind of talk produces and how you are spelling out the ontological commitments of a model and stating upfront that this is indirect realism.

you have not shown that information ever occurs, or can occur, without in fact being encoded in some physical system. — Srap Tasmaner

That fact that it can be encoded in multiple ways,without the meaning being changed, shows that the meaning can be distinguished from the representation.

Look at the history of science. How much of that, has been the capturing of ideas of things which did not yet exist, and nobody knew could exist, but some imaginative individual saw a way in which they might exist, and actually made them exist. Where is that realm of possibility? I think it's a related question.

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

Are geometric forms, or Euclid's axioms, subject to entropy? Do they degrade over time?

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. — apokrisis

It's only meaningful to an observer who has in an interest in it. If it doesn't contain any information, then it can't convey any information, other than the fact it 'contains no information'.

(And also, if you could possibly spare the invective. I am trying to conduct a polite conversation, even with those with whom I differ.)

From a phenomenological perspective the transcendental is what is primordially given. — Janus

Meh. Not what I'm on about. Merleau Ponty and his ilk all hated anything like Thomism or Platonism. I know what I'm interested in is completely out of favour and out of fashion, by the way.

Yeah, well Michel Henry is not Merleau Ponty, he was a Christian and wrote this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Am-Truth-Philosophy-Christianity-Cultural/dp/0804737800/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507866316&sr=8-1&keywords=michel+henry

I know what I'm interested in is completely out of favour and out of fashion, by the way. — Wayfarer

Is that why you like it?

Apologies. It wasn't directed at him in particular. I have delved a little into him, but I am studying a different period of history.

Fair enough. There is certainly not enough time to study everything.

Is that why you like it? — Janus

No, that's not it. My very first post on forums, was about this very question - the reality of ideas (in the broadly Platonist sense). It was the first and only time I got a favourable response from 180 Proof! Been thinking about these things ever since.

180 must have changed his ideas, then? Maybe he lived up to his moniker and performed a 180! ;)

Not really - it was a good first post, even if I do say so myself, and 180proof just kind of picked up the theme and riffed on it....I thought I had saved his response in my notebooks, but apparently not...oh well. (I can't say he's someone I miss.)

Are geometric forms, or Euclid's axioms, subject to entropy? Do they degrade over time? — Wayfarer

Silly question. Does the Platonic apple wither? Does the Platonic white horse grow old and grey?

If you want the serious answer, the connection that makes these mathematical forms "real" as physicalist constraints is the symmetries they encode. So triangles and circles are eternal, timeless, necessary, etc, as they capture the basic symmetries of Euclidean dimensionality. And likewise, fractals, chaos, and other dissipative patterns capture the basic scale symmetry of a dimensional existence.

Permutation symmetries then are metaphysical-strength forms in accounting for the fundamental possible local excitations of nature - the standard model particles.

So access to Platonia is through a door marked fundamental symmetries. It is not as if we don't now know why some mathematics is "Platonic" or unreasonably effective.

That fact that it can be encoded in multiple ways,without the meaning being changed, shows that the meaning can be distinguished from the representation. — Wayfarer

So here's the thing.

We have the problem of universals. Two things have the same property, being red, say. Gracious, how is this possible? Is there some thing, redness, besides the two red things? Mysteries!

We're not satisfied with the idea that there's this thing redness besides red things. So instead we just say, it's not that redness is separable from red things, not physically, but we can separate it from red things in our minds. We're not sure what this mental separating consists of. Introspection suggests that when you imagine red, you imagine a red thing, however vague, so that's no help.

The very word "separating" starts to look wrong, so we might say "distinguishing" instead. We merely distinguish the property from the objects that possess it. And what is distinguishing?

Now here are some objects with the property of carrying the same information. We distinguish the information from the objects (meaning bearer of a property), just like we always do.

And yet, here, right in front of us, would seem to be exactly what we need to understand what distinguishing amounts to, to finally understand what the deal is with properties and universals. Here's an idea--information! -- that might actually help.

So it seems to me foolish not to look very closely indeed at how information works and instead give it the same tired old hand-waving treatment as we've given universals.

If it doesn't work out, we can always go back to hand-waving.

f you want the serious answer, the connection that makes these mathematical forms "real" as physicalist constraints is the symmetries they encode. — apokrisis

So I will interpret that to mean that the answer to my question is 'no'.

Does the Platonic apple wither? Does the Platonic white horse grow old and grey? — apokrisis

In the Platonist view, individual apples and horses die and wither, but not the idea of the horse, or the idea of the apple. it's the form or the idea that is considered imperishable, rather than the individual instance. Of course, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since the original theory was formulated.

We have the problem of universals. Two things have the same property, being red, say. Gracious, how is this possible? Is there some thing, redness, besides the two red things? Mysteries! — Srap Tasmaner

That's a rather hackneyed text-book presentation of what 'universals' mean. In their original context, they meant considerably more than that.

Can't resist throwing this in the pot:

The story is often told that in the late 1940s, John von Neumann, a pioneer of the computer age, advised communication-theorist Claude E. Shannon to start using the term "entropy" when discussing information because "no one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage"

Myron Tribus and Edward C. McIrvine. "Energy and Information," p 179-188 v 225, Scientific American, September, 1971.

Seems to work very well around here ;-)

You are resorting to non sequiturs now.

Seems to work very well around here ;-) — Wayfarer

So Information theory has been around 70 years and ignorance remains an excuse? Cool.

What does it mean to say that sweetness exists? The phenomenal makes no sense without me, but the phenomenal is not an hallucination, there is something that is responsible for what I perceive, and it is real or factual. The sensuous is solely the result of my relationship with the world, and it makes no sense to talk about things without me, things in themselves.

Speaking of things real but not physical....

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. — Wayfarer

Yes, as Gerson says, an idea is not identical with particulars (such as synaptic states), it is instead a formal abstraction of particulars, just as the number five is a formal abstraction of these asterixes (*****).

But this is the crucial point - there is no representation occurring here at all. That is what distinguishes Aristotle's view from Plato's. The asterixes don't represent or refer to the number five (as if the number five were something in addition to or independent of the asterixes). Instead, we just see that there are five asterixes. Or, on Gerson's usage, we mentally see the number five that is present in the asterixes.

Instead, we just see that there are five asterixes. Or, on Gerson's usage, we mentally see the number five that is present in the asterixes. — Andrew M

The ***** might represent the number five, but only if you tell me that is what it means. And furthermore, only if I can count.

The ***** might represent the number five, but only if you tell me that is what it means. And furthermore, only if I can count. — Wayfarer

***** doesn't re-present the number five. The number five is present (immanent) in *****. It doesn't matter if you don't know that it is there or don't know how to count. It also wouldn't matter if there were no sentient beings in existence. The number five is there as a consequence of the asterixes being there.

thank you I see your point.

So Information theory has been around 70 years and ignorance remains an excuse? Cool. — apokrisis

Has information theory really been around for 70 years? It seems to me that you have some way of determining that information theory has been around for 70 years to make that claim. You'd need a naive realist view of reality to make that claim and expect it to actually carry any weight to make that argument as if it really were the case, or accurate, or true. Is it objectively true that information theory has been around for 70 years?

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”. — javra

If "sameness" is what is important, then it appears like any difference makes a difference, because any difference negates the possibility of sameness. To speak of "a difference that makes a difference" in relation to sameness, is rather meaningless and somewhat illogical because in relation to sameness, a difference, by definition makes a difference.

In relation to a type, or a concept of generality, we identify what is essential and what is accidental, and in this case it makes sense to talk about a difference which makes a difference. However, any difference is critical to sameness. Therefore a type is determined by criteria other than sameness.

In the case of information now, there is a need to identify two distinct types of information. We need information related to the particular, which will allow for the identification of the same particular, and we also need information concerning types, to identify the type. The latter may consist of differences which make a difference, but the former consists of something completely different.

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. — javra

So here we have this use of "same". You want to say that the river is the same river despite all of its activities and changes, flux. I suggest that identity in this case consists of a temporal continuity of existence in the same spatial location. We overlook all the differences, created by the changing river, to say that it is the same river because of observed temporal continuity of existence. And even "the same spatial location" is not necessary, because we identify objects as the same object, despite them moving around as well. So we can allow any category of difference, and still designate the identified thing as "the same". What is important to us, in designating the particular as the same particular, is temporal continuity. If we identify the temporal continuity, we can say that it is the same particular. This is the case with "energy", it is a case of identifying the temporal continuity of a particular, it is not a case of identifying a type of thing, or a difference which makes a difference. Differences are irrelevant when something is identified as the same, through temporal continuity.

To emphasize: where does the meaningful understanding of “sameness” come from, then? — javra

The answer to this question is quite simple now. We develop an understanding of sameness from our capacity to recognize the temporal continuity of things. However, there is a certain degree of self-deception which occurs in this process. What is most evident in temporal continuity, and what brings temporal continuity to our attention, is a certain degree of unchangingness in the world. Because of this we are inclined to attribute "same" to "unchanging". But this is the naïve and self-deceptive perspective. What really is referred to when we call a particular object "the same thing", is not its unchangingness, but its temporal continuity.

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. — javra

From the Kantian perspective, "sameness" is attributable to the internal intuition of time.

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

I don't think you've yet provided an argument for this. If the internal intuition of time is what allows us to apprehend, and interpret the world in terms of "sameness", phenomenal information is necessary to make this interpretation. How do you propose to separate this "phenomenal information" from "meaning"?

Err. Wayfarer had just said Shannon published in the late 1940s. So I was referring to something specifically just mentioned.