What is mind-boggling is that people actually take this Thermodynamics Purpose seriously. Humans just love their myths. This never changes, pre-historic or modern, always weaving myths. — Rich

Kind of sounds like a postmodern stance- everything is just narrative. Here was something I found on Stanford Encyclopedia under postmodernism that sounds similar to what you are getting at:

Indeed, for Lyotard, the de-realization of the world means the disintegration of narrative elements into “clouds” of linguistic combinations and collisions among innumerable, heterogeneous language games. Furthermore, within each game the subject moves from position to position, now as sender, now as addressee, now as referent, and so on. The loss of a continuous meta-narrative therefore breaks the subject into heterogeneous moments of subjectivity that do not cohere into an identity. But as Lyotard points out, while the combinations we experience are not necessarily stable or communicable, we learn to move with a certain nimbleness among them.

Postmodern sensibility does not lament the loss of narrative coherence any more than the loss of being. However, the dissolution of narrative leaves the field of legitimation to a new unifying criterion: the performativity of the knowledge-producing system whose form of capital is information. Performative legitimation means maximizing the flow of information and minimizing static (non-functional moves) in the system, so whatever cannot be communicated as information must be eliminated. The performativity criterion threatens anything not meeting its requirements, such as speculative narratives, with de-legitimation and exclusion. Nevertheless, capital also demands the continual re-invention of the “new” in the form of new language games and new denotative statements, and so, paradoxically, a certain paralogy is required by the system itself. In this regard, the modern paradigm of progress as new moves under established rules gives way to the postmodern paradigm of inventing new rules and changing the game. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

If experience is there all the way down, experience is accounted for as a foundation. — schopenhauer1

Yes, this is attractive because it sounds like it is saying something. But unless this being the case makes some reasonable causal difference, then it is just empty words.

So in what way does the presence or absence of experience make a difference at the microscale? What would we expect to observe as a reasonable or causally-motivated counterfactual.

What I fear about your brand of semiotics philosophy is that it has a hidden dualisim (because it is not accounting for the nature of the difference between quality and material interactions) in that there is a spooky-like quality that results from the semiotic process. — schopenhauer1

Again, please remember that I am not claiming to answer this question. I only simply aim to give the most useful account. And a big part of that is starting with a deflation of your implicit assumptions about the nature of experience - questioning what you believe about observers, representations, qualia, etc. I also state up front the limits of any explanation I might have - the stone wall that exists if counterfactuals can't be imagined.

So sure. Anything I say is going to be understood by you of falling short of your explanatory requirements. But my reply is that your requirements are the result of faulty epistemology.

However, this hard ground at the bottom of the well, it really doesn't say much- thus the very speculative and imaginative answers to this question. — schopenhauer1

Except that my approach does travel a long way before a lack of counterfactuals kicks in. There is a huge amount of textbook science to traverse before one begins to feel any sense of the air growing thin.

Most folk love the hard problem because it means they can prattle on about the mind without having to actually study much mind science. Because no can know the answer - according to the hard problem - then no one need feel guilty about not even making a start on the vast amount of understanding that does exist.

Now, perhaps ideas like sign processing, the epistemic cut, hierarchical complexity, systems causality, etc. may be the light which leads out of this cave, but it has to be done with at least keeping in mind what I stated earlier about how the experientialness of certain processes should not be taken for granted as just "there" as the result of a series of processes without account for what "there" is. — schopenhauer1

Or translated: even if there is a lot of heavy duty theory to be mastered, luckily I can just ignore that fact as I've misrepresented how pragmatic explanation works.

I've given you the simple answer many times. If you understand how the brain models the world in a really detailed fashion, then it is hard to imagine all that being the case and it not feeling like something.

Yes, that may not mean much to you. But how much neuroscience have you mastered?

The counterfactual here would be if you knew as much as me on that front and still just saw no reason to think it would feel like something. Willing to conduct the experiment? Got 40 years to spare? :)

Yes, this is attractive because it sounds like it is saying something. But unless this being the case makes some reasonable causal difference, then it is just empty words.

So in what way does the presence or absence of experience make a difference at the microscale? What would we expect to observe as a reasonable or causally-motivated counterfactual. — apokrisis

There is non in speculative metaphysics- it's like defining the noumena when phenomena is based on time/space/causality/principle of sufficient reason. As you stated, there is a hard problem, and its relatively intractable.

Except that my approach does travel a long way before a lack of counterfactuals kicks in. There is a huge amount of textbook science to traverse before one begins to feel any sense of the air growing thin. — apokrisis

Well, let's be clear, your approach is rather theoretic in itself, not strictly scientific per se. In other words, you are taking a somewhat unorthodox approach of totalizing science under a broad theoretic framework of Peircean semiotics which is not strict science qua science per se. Science per science has somewhat self-contained and discrete frameworks with less of an overriding pansemiotic bent. However, if for the sake of argument, we conflate your pansemiotic (non-traditional) approach with the more discrete approaches of the various hard sciences for the sake of argument, if you noticed I did say:

What is this spooky-like quality? Well, if we hit a wall of the hard problem because there is no "counterfactuals" that can be tested, that indeed is the very problem that we are getting at. Otherwise, yay for semiotics and systems approaches to neuroscientific/biological problems. However, this hard ground at the bottom of the well, it really doesn't say much- thus the very speculative and imaginative answers to this question. — schopenhauer1

So I am not denying the easy problems are hard (in the sense that they are not easily obtained- I recognize the extremely hard work of hypothesis, experimentation, making sense of the data, publication, review, and repeat). but that the easy problems don't dissolve the more philosophical questions which are the proverbial intractable ones which are only gotten at with speculation.

Most folk love the hard problem because it means they can prattle on about the mind without having to actually study much mind science. Because no can know the answer - according to the hard problem - then no one need feel guilty about not even making a start on the vast amount of understanding that does exist. — apokrisis

I think you are creating a straw man here and seeing enemies where there are not any. I am not an expert in neuroscience indeed- I have some basic knowledge of some concepts. I probably know more and have generally read up on more books related to the concepts than the average person, but definitely less than an expert in the field. However, I never denied the hard science that goes into understanding how the brain functions- how the different regions of the brain form networks. One great author on this front is Gerald Edelman, for example. Christopher Koch and Francis Crick also write some good work on this front. There are countless many more in academic publications and numerous books in the science sections of the library. I am in no way trying to leap over the fact that indeed, many answers of cognition and the correlates to consciousness have been and will be found through the usual scientific methodologies of neuroscience and related fields. I also think theories should take into account what the evidence provides from the hard sciences.

That being said, we must define what the debate is. The debate is the nature of mental events. Now, usually if you want to be good at communicating your ideas, you don't want to automatically condemn the opponent, no matter how wrong you think they are. You want to bring them to a point of enlightenment by starting at their point of view, and systematically breaking it down showing the inherent contradictions that make it unstable. Now, you are trying to do this by stating that panpsychism, though attractive due to its totalizing of mental events, has no way to disprove it. That is a good place to start. It is not even provable, so where can one go at this point? It is of a highly speculative nature as it is not grounded on what can be gleaned from empirical data. The only data we have is the fact that we know there is an internal aspect to certain processes. So all speculative metaphysics for you is illegitimate and so that, for you, this is where the argument stops. However, speculative metaphysics can have its own logic. It may not be grounded in empiricism, but it can have its own logic and rigorous structure that can be debated on its own merits, even though its speculative in its way in answering certain intractable problems. That is satisfying to some and perhaps unsatisfying to others.

So, for example, you have a notion of entropy and that the universe is in general entropifying while certain parts of the universe (i.e. living organisms) are negentropic locally but contribute to entropification as a whole. What does this mean for you? How does this contribute to our view of existence in general? Does that inform your theories of mind? You seem to be attached to semiotics. What does semiotics add to the scientific disciplines, that the standard models don't already say? How does semiotics solve problems that science qua science is not doing anyways? Isn't it redundant? How does semiotics really make a difference in these fields?

Anyways, I am interested in how how qualities arise due to epistemic cuts and downward causations, as long as the actual question at hand is not abandoned, which is how it accounts for mental events.

I've given you the simple answer many times. If you understand how the brain models the world in a really detailed fashion, then it is hard to imagine all that being the case and it not feeling like something. — apokrisis

Again, I don't discount neuroscientific explanations for how the neural correlates of consciousness model the world. However, we do know that there is a qualitative "something what it's like to be". If this is a process that exists, and we are both naturalists, then it is a natural process. But how odd it is that this one event of qualitative inner experience is a feature of the universe. If it is the result of a long series of physical and biological events, what is this feature that results in comparison to everything else in the universe that does not do this? That question is not meant to recount the neuroscience that goes into the event, by how it is that this radically different phenomena of experience is even a feature. One can say "it is the model understanding itself" but that is a tautology. The model is modelling. But if this is the only model that has qualitative aspects, what is the qualitative aspects in comparison to the non-qualitative aspects? I know that is beyond what you call "counterfactual thinking" which is just a fancy word for empirical testing, but that is why it is a question on a philosophy forum and not a neuroscience one perhaps.

That being said, we must define what the debate is. The debate is the nature of mental events. — schopenhauer1

Again, I am content with useful explanations. I don't see consciousness as a monistic substance and so I'm not expecting some kind of magic causal mechanism of completely unexpected kind that suddenly switches it on. I see it as a particular kind of process - a modellling relation - and so awareness is simply about how such a relationship is going to feel.

If there is visual modelling, then there is the appropriate kind of visual experience. As would be expected. It is hard to imagine it would not. Especially when we now know so much detail about how visual processing works.

The neuroscience explains so much about our visual phenomenology. It is not a mystery why we can experience bluish red but not greenish red. The design of the nervous system tells us why this must be the case.

Multiply that kind of exact causal account of phenomenology by a thousand other examples and really there just doesn't seem a basic mystery. There is no reason to treat awareness as a reified thing, a dualistic substance, which is the form of description you keep reverting to. It is just so obvious that the mind is whatever integrated set of habits get put together to forge a useful modelling relation with the world.

So your version of the hard problem hinges on consciousness being a substantial entity or state. It is, as you keep repeating, a particular quality.

I just don't feel the force of that argument as the level of mindfulness so clearly correlates with the complexity of the processing going on. Dennett would state it in more extreme fashion, but it is in the end a composite of multiple modelling processes tacked together to achieve a job. There is no one magic way of "doing consciousness", no special threshold to cross. It is a kitbag of useful habits that have evolved and yield whatever they yield.

So it boils down to our contrasting expectations. You want the one big answer that creates sudden causal magic. I instead see a ton of little answers adding up.

For me, it is about finding a metaphysical framework that best accounts for "mental" type processes whether they are very simple or instead a highly evolved collection. And that is what semiotics or the modelling relations approach targets. The commonality of the kind of process in question.

Kind of sounds like a postmodern stance- everything is just narrative. Here was something I found on Stanford Encyclopedia under postmodernism that sounds similar to what you are getting at: — schopenhauer1

What we have going on here, is narrative replacing actual experience, observation, and intuition (the detective work).

It is so much easier to read about something and then write about it than it is to experience it and explore it. So we write obscure, obtuse, opaque, overwrought narratives filled with palatable words which say and mean nothing, instead of actually spending the necessary effort to actually learn. It is a mouse on a treadmill going no where.

So we have, instead of insight, we have stories. Stories about how neuro-science knows this (e.g. the origin of qualia) and they know that (e.g., the origin of thought). And the same people who believe in these stories believe in God because They Want To. They want to believe that science and God know what they are doing and are watching out for them. They want to feel safe in this unknown, probabilistic universe in which nothing is determined and everything is constantly changing (psychologically there is no difference between Determinism/Materialism and God).

My approach is different. To accept Mind as real and fundamental because it simply IS. It is what we all share. To accept uncertainty because that is all there IS. And from this point on departure, actually learn skills about life that increase my ability to navigate through life without relying on either the myth of a omniscient and benevolent God or Science. Tales are not useful when navigating through life, but skills are.

I see it as a particular kind of process - a modellling relation - and so awareness is simply about how such a relationship is going to feel. — apokrisis

What is this "feel" qua feeling? If you are going to say it is a metaphysical limit that cannot be answered, then does that qualify "feel" as a basic property of the universe like charge or spin?

What is this "feel" qua feeling? If you are going to say it is a metaphysical limit that cannot be answered, then does that qualify "feel" as a basic property of the universe like charge or spin? — schopenhauer1

Yeah. Having said let's not start reifying any processes, I would then immediately agree with you about reifying a process.

I talk about "to feel". You want to turn that into "a feeling". Can't you see that your nominalism must have its metaphysical limit?

I've explained that limit in terms of counterfactuality - the limits of intelligible explanation. I've also said that in practice, that epistemic limit is at the very far end of a lifetime's worth of biology, neuroscience and social psychology. Gorge yourself on the knowledge that is available. Stop obsessing with that knowledge running into some ultimate limit. The details we can't know turn out to be insignificant.

Why is red so red, and not instead ... well anything whatsoever? Why do we need to care? Have we already understood the story of colour processing so well that we have arrived at this issue as a scientific matter?

As I say, my view is that people who promote the Hard Problem are generally looking to put down that vast weight of scientific achievement. They want the last laugh - without having to get their hands dirty reading actual neurology textbooks.

So my response is that - knowing all that there is to know about how brains model worlds - why would we say it wouldn't just obviously feel like something to be doing all that?

Of course, if you haven't seriously studied the science, there is going to be no reason it would. That is the other side of the message I hope you can see by now.

I've explained that limit in terms of counterfactuality - the limits of intelligible explanation. I've also said that in practice, that epistemic limit is at the very far end of a lifetime's worth of biology, neuroscience and social psychology. Gorge yourself on the knowledge that is available. Stop obsessing with that knowledge running into some ultimate limit. The details we can't know turn out to be insignificant. — apokrisis

You realize this comes off as a lot of "don't look at the man behind the curtain".. So here we have limit- a very deep problem and you are saying simply back off from it. That doesn't sound suspicious at all :-} . Also, I am interested in what you say, but the question at hand is not one of causation but one of metaphysics in respects to the aspect of the "what it feels like".

Why is red so red, and not instead ... well anything whatsoever? Why do we need to care? Have we already understood the story of colour processing so well that we have arrived at this issue as a scientific matter? — apokrisis

No, you are slightly changing the question. What is this "feels like red" aspect to things? Not, why is red red and not green or some such other issue that I never stated. What is "feels like qualia" as opposed to all the form and matter that causes red that can be empirically derived from third-person mapping? You keep pointing to causes and not the aspect itself. What is this aspect of "feels like" itself as it is in-itself? Is this event of "feels like". If you answer "the feels-like aspect is just what it's like to be this particular process" then what IS this "what it feels like to be the process" as compared to every other part of the universe which is not this aspect of "what it fees like to be the process"? It is a question of what it is in-itself- its ontology, not its causation. Causation does not necessarily = what it is. You can say it is process, that is getting closer to ontology because you are getting more at the is, than the cause. However, clearly just saying it is process does not describe why this process is different than other processes in its ontology. You seem to only go back to causitive answers and then don't want to be bothered with the hard question of ontology. Sorry, but that's the question at hand here as it relates to physical processes that are not "what it feels like to be a process".

As I say, my view is that people who promote the Hard Problem are generally looking to put down that vast weight of scientific achievement. They want the last laugh - without having to get their hands dirty reading actual neurology textbooks. — apokrisis

That is simply a generalization that you have that really is not justified. It's a bias you have. I can imagine someone very steeped in neuroscience who still respects the Hard Problem- in fact I can probably find some with a simple Google search!

So my response is that - knowing all that there is to know about how brains model worlds - why would we say it wouldn't just obviously feel like something to be doing all that? — apokrisis

I don't disagree with you! The modelling obviously feels like something to be doing that. But what is "feels like that" aspect of the process in the first place! That's the question, not the cause or the third-person empirical structures that can be mapped.

Of course, if you haven't seriously studied the science, there is going to be no reason it would. That is the other side of the message I hope you can see by now. — apokrisis

But you assumed I never gave credence to the serious study of the science. It's not a one or the other thing here. I am a naturalist essentially, and know the scientific stance is the best one to gain causal and explanatory understanding of what is going on. It is you who keep assuming I do not because I ask a question about the this hard limit on a philosophy forum.

So here we have limit- a very deep problem and you are saying simply back off from it. — schopenhauer1

No. I'm saying get off your damn chuff and approach it properly, or not at all.

Spend enough time studying the relevant science. Then see what you feel like saying on the matter. Stop saying you can't see a finishing line and therefore you are not even going to get started.

It is a question of what it is in-itself- its ontology, not its causation. — schopenhauer1

It's about a reification, not the process, you mean.

Well, the idea that the Hard Problem is not about a failure of causal explanation is certainly a new wrinkle, I have to say.

You seem to only go back to causitive answers and then don't want to be bothered with the hard question of ontology. Sorry, but that's the question at hand here as it relates to physical processes that are not "what it feels like to be a process". — schopenhauer1

Again, you might want to check with Chalmers on this one.

But if you now want to adopt a faith-based ontology - one that thinks ontology is "brute fact" rather than intelligible account - then of course nothing I say could impact on that. Reason has left the room.

The modelling obviously feels like something to be doing that. — schopenhauer1

Great.

But what is "feels like that" aspect of the process in the first place! — schopenhauer1

What it is like to be doing that. No need to reify the feeling as something further that must be caused, or worse yet, have brute fact existence and yet you still demanding of me its causal, intelligible, reasonable explanation.

What it is like to be doing that. No need to reify the feeling as something further that must be caused, or worse yet, have brute fact existence and yet you still demanding of me its causal, intelligible, reasonable explanation. — apokrisis

But we agree there is a "what it's like aspect" going on right? Whether we call it brute fact or whatever else. It is an event happening in the universe. Experiential events are happening. If you were to say that this is triadic-modelling system (or X other constituents) that is switching the subject matter. So, do we agree, experiential events are happening?

We agree that a process can be given a name.

But what you are missing is that I am asking about the degrees of generality or particularity in the processes that we might want to name.

I want to be able to label the most absolutely generic process. I call that semiosis. The conscious human mind is a particular example of that (although a most hierarchically developed and complex example).

Or I might want to talk about some sub-process of the human mind, like visual encoding. This would be a story about semiosis - the general process - in some much more particularising context.

Then in moving between so many different available levels of "semiosis in general/semiosis in particular", your presumption that "the human mind" is in fact some critical level becomes challenged by the facts. It no longer carries any conviction when I hear you speak of "the mind" in this privileging fashion.

Sure there is the undeniable feeling of a "point of view". To be a self is to be located ... in a world that is experienced as being the other of just that.

So the mind becomes defined in terms of this boundedness. There is a persistent identity that develops by a self/world distinction becoming engrained habit. Even if someone cuts off my leg, I will still feel a phantom limb until someone cuts out that bit of my brain as well.

So again, why being an embodied self feels like being an embodied self is something we can explain in terms of some persistent habit of semiosis that does occur at a particular level of organisation.

But more generally - when the issue is what is continuous across all the hierarchical scales - the idea that mind only exists at some one privileged brute fact scale of being is one that carries remarkably little weight. It just becomes an obvious habit of reification, a way folk have got used to talking about mindfullness, points of view, and selfhood.

But more generally - when the issue is what is continuous across all the hierarchical scales - the idea that mind only exists at some one privileged brute fact scale of being is one that carries remarkably little weight. It just becomes an obvious habit of reification, a way folk have got used to talking about mindfullness, points of view, and selfhood. — apokrisis

But how is seeing, hearing, feeling a reification? I simply call that experience and more specifically "qualia". How is that reification when there is an event of experiencing qualia happening? I don't think there is a privileged brute fact scale. I just think some sort of experiencing is happening and that experiencing is something in-itself. You do not want to recognize this because it is not quantifiable and that doesn't compute for you. Instead of dealing with it, you will simply go back to what is quantifiable. This is a dodge. Qualia is qualia is qualia. Electrons are electrons are electrons. Qualia is happening. Whether it "seems" like it is happening does not deflate the qualia event, as the term qualia just gets switched out with the "seems like qualia" is happening. The physical correlates are important, but looking at the correlates won't ever answer the qualia. Oh and switching electrons to process.. does the same thing..

In other words.. process is process is process.. experiential process is experiential process is experiential process.

I simply call that experience and more specifically "qualia". — schopenhauer1

On what grounds do you make that generalisation?

I think you say it is because that is all kinds of "mind", whereas I say it is all kinds of "minding" - or actually more generally, all kinds of semiotic world modelling.

I don't think there is a privileged brute fact scale. — schopenhauer1

Well that is what your talk about "mind" must imply. Although I agree that framing matters dualistically turns "minding" from an embodied process to the name of a reified and disembodied realm. Res cogitans.

You do not want to recognize this because it is not quantifiable and that doesn't compute for you. Instead of dealing with it, you will simply go back to what is quantifiable. This is a dodge. — schopenhauer1

Ad hom away. The fact that you refuse to think about this the proper way is your problem.

Qualia is qualia is qualia. Electrons are electrons are electrons. — schopenhauer1

That is hardly anything I would say, is it?

Why do you have to build this fictional me? ... apart from your need to have something symbolic to tear down in my place.

The physical correlates are important, but looking at the correlates won't ever answer the qualia. — schopenhauer1

Here we go. Back into the physical causal correlates having just been claiming causation is irrelevant to your "deep ontological question".

You again just ignore the fact that semiotics doesn't even presume "the real physical world" as its ontological base. Remember, semiosis starts with phenomenology and recovers the naive realist/idealist divide as the dichotomy of matter and sign.

I reject brute materialism just as much as I reject brute mentalism. Instead, both of these complementary aspects of reality are the polarities that emerge via semiotic development.

It is a different logic than you are used to. That's what gives you so much trouble.

I think you say it is because that is all kinds of "mind", whereas I say it is all kinds of "minding" - or actually more generally, all kinds of semiotic world modelling. — apokrisis

Is there a difference in aspect when we discuss semiotic world modelling on one hand and minding on the other?

Semiotics sees both sides of the equation as mutually emergent and synergistically persisting.

At the psychological level, it is self and world that emerge to organise experience, give it a useful phenomenological structure.

Then pan-semiotics would be the general metaphysical level that sees this emergence in terms of formal constraints and material degrees of freedom.

At the psychological level, it is self and world that emerge to organise experience, give it a useful phenomenological structure. — apokrisis

How does that emerging look? And what is the nature of this event that is emerging?

Right. Let's plunge back into the mysteries of how appearances can be felt. Let's not stop to think how this is itself a division of your reality into "self" and "world" - the feeling bit vs the appearing bit.

Right. Let's plunge back into the mysteries of how appearances can be felt. Let's not stop to think how this is itself a division of your reality into "self" and "world" - the feeling bit vs the appearing bit. — apokrisis

Clearly there is something novel going on- despite it all being pan-semiotic though. This self/world modelling is very different than other modelling in terms of the felt aspect that no other modelling has. Do you not disagree?

Have you found time to read up on Pattee's epistemic cut? Yes, there is something novel about life and mind according to biosemiosis.

Have you found time to read up on Pattee's epistemic cut? Yes, there is something novel about life and mind according to biosemiosis. — apokrisis

A lot of it is language I don't usually work in, but the general theory seems to be how physical systems turn into symbolic representations that store memory, or something like that. How is it written, stored, and read.

How is it written, stored, and read. — schopenhauer1

You mean how should you understand semiosis as if it were Turing computation? Yeah, that'll work just fine. That'll will let you preserve the mystery of the writer, the storer, the reader.

Really, if you want answers, spend weeks or even years getting to learn a different way of thinking. And Pattee is a really good and clear start.

You mean how should you understand semiosis as if it were Turing computation? Yeah, that'll work just fine. That'll will let you preserve the mystery of the writer, the storer, the reader.

Really, if you want answers, spend weeks or even years getting to learn a different way of thinking. And Pattee is a really good and clear start. — apokrisis

I don't know why you persist in thinking that I don't trust in the empirical sciences or that I don't get the general gist of how complex systems arise. There is just ONE particular phenomena that I think is harder to explain ontologically from a mapping point of view. That's it. I don't even have an ax to grind, or a particular reason to want to be skeptical other than I see the hard problem as almost intractable. You want to characterize it though as if that means I don't agree with evolutionary biology, neuroscience, biology, physics, and chemistry in one fell swoop simply for being a bit conservative on its application to this ONE problem. It's also not the case that, I am now some religious mystic or anything either. At this point, I am just more of a mysterian in terms of its intractableness, with an understanding of panexperientialism's attractiveness in solving the problem, though I really don't necessarily feel comfortable with that view either.

I don't know why you persist in thinking that I don't trust in the empirical sciences or that I don't get the general gist of how complex systems arise. — schopenhauer1

It is not what you trust, it is how you would understand. I'm pointing out that your line of questioning immediately reveals your ontological framework. So you are asking the right questions if the brain were a computer. When you understand how they might be the wrong questions is when you will start to know that you might be getting the organic approach that is biosemiosis.

You actually have to give something up to be able to go forward here. And I agree it is not easy.

You actually have to give something up to be able to go forward here. And I agree it is not easy. — apokrisis

You are funny. I must have unwittingly drank the Koolaid of the non-Peircean brand of panexperiential process theory at some point and must be deprogrammed from my current state of hysteria :P!

You really haven't described the process of emergence of self/world modelling. I can see how constraints and downward causation can lead to let us say, DNA message coding/decoding and programming in general. I just don't see it creating qualia from fiat. It all seems either a) qualia does not exist (which is denying the very thing you are using right now) or b) epiphenomalism which is essentially just saying "I give up.. it just exists as some mystical steam rising up at the end result of physical processes". I know you are not B, so you seem to fall under A.

When you understand how they might be the wrong questions is when you will start to know that you might be getting the organic approach that is biosemiosis.

You actually have to give something up to be able to go forward here. And I agree it is not easy. — apokrisis

Here, I'm willing to go along with the theory for arguments sake- there is a subject/object split that happens between interpreter and what is interpreted. How does this not devolve into panexperientialism though? If "mental states" are a well-formed umwelt/world image that is ramped up from previous epistemic splits all the way down to the very beginning of epistemic splits (the apeiron I guess in your terms).. it's really looking at the process from the other side of the equation. Instead of all experiential it is all semiotic- but in this case the two are the same unless you are trying to reify this particular semiotic event!

In other words, both are saying the same thing- both panexperientialism and pansemiosis are totalizing nature to a certain process dynamic. Both vigorously deny that there is any difference all the way down in what's going on. Functionally, they are the same!

Your questions are gibberish. So I'll leave it there if you are so unwilling to start with the biological simplicity of Pattee's epistemic cut before leaping straight back into the neuroscience. Get it figured out for life, then you can see how that lays the ground for mind.

(I mean even just the way you call it the "split" rather than the "cut" tells me you aren't really bothered by precise thinking here.)

Split, cut, yadayada. It all amounts to there being something that is interpreting and something that is interpreted. This is where you bring in the idea of all this is emergent order from triadic modelling.

One question, off topic of mind-body problem- what does triadic modelling (like I guess Pattee's cut and just about every other physical process it seems according to pansemioisis) add to the biological and/or physics traditional frameworks? Is this overarching theory a way of describing how physical/biological systems emerge hierarchically into more complex phenomena? Is this theory non-standard for most scientists? If so, why? If it is non-standard, why is it not recognized? In other words, this is very theoretical and more to do with playing around with experimental/applied concepts and already established theoretical concepts.

Hierarchies are triadic structures. Semiotics is a triadic process. So two views of the same thing.

That is why Pattee, Salthe and other hierarchy theorists get semiotics.

That is why Pattee, Salthe and other hierarchy theorists get semiotics. — apokrisis

Okay, but this theory still seems non-standard. It is an overriding framework that is not assented (or probably known) by most scientists in their respective field. For example, a microbiologist or physicist who work for a company, non-profit, or university research grant, would probably not be publishing their findings in Peircean scientific terminology or even perhaps be aware of this framework. It is highly theoretical and looks like it started mostly as abstract ideas that though based on Peirce, were essentially applied in anthropology (Bateson) and biology (Pattee) and then evolved into the other sciences as people divined more areas where this logic looked like it made sense to them (everything is triadic hierarchies.. it was seen by them as immanent throughout nature). So, to me, though it is using highly technical language and maths (especially thermodynamics, energy distribution in an open system, and the overriding principle of entropy, etc.), it is still not necessarily something that the hard science fields will pick up as "the" theory of the universe. It reminds me of physics forums where every poster had a new idea for the Unified Field Theory (TOE). The postings were by no means non-technical (many deeply involved mathematical concepts and scientific principles involved), it is just that they were/are unprovable, or unlikely to be championed by any actual scientific communities to be proven in any experimental way. Semiotics theorticians (i.e. systems theorists?) can always claim a scientific fact as fitting in their theoretical framework, but it is not actually what the scientists involved were aiming for or even discussing in their work- it is implications taken after the fact and interpreted in a light that matches the overriding theory. All theories can thus never NOT fit into triadic theories because it is always there after the fact, and not as a the explicit hypothetical framework the scientific team was trying to prove or inform.

A counter example would be Darwinian evolutionary theory. Here is an overriding theory at the core of biological sciences. It is a theoretical framework, just like semiotics. It is not a tangible "fact" but a principle that is informed over time and keeps getting strengthened with each passing year with more nuanced details of how evolution/genetics/biochemistry works/worked to explain the variation, novelty, and relatedness of species over time. However, semiotic theory which is only discussed by a small group of theoretical biologists/systems theorists, unlike Darwinian evolutionary theory, is NOT constantly being tested/hypothesized with it being the overriding theoretical assumption or principle the community was trying to inform.