And, ultimately we are a self organizing system. — Pop
We call it self organisation when it is physics being organised by its own boundary constraints, but there is no local selfhood involved. There is only local randomness and accident. Life adds mechanical order and that is another further trick which is quite novel. — apokrisis
To paraphrase The Killer: there's a whole lotta pseudo-scientistic confusing maps with the territory going on! So much so, that apokrisis' master class in actual sciences and science-respecting speculation are affecting the discussion like pearls cast before swine. This little piggie is grateful for the his/her edification and clarification of a number of my own vague, even confused, notions and intuitions. Y'all (@Pop & @Enrique especially) need to lift those snouts out of your dogmatic troughs of ill-informed slop while you snort-sqeal less and listen-reconsider more. :sweat: — 180 Proof
I think you focus too much on entropy, when what is obvious is that self organization is progressing. — Pop
Everything that exists, exists as an evolving self organizing system - a self in the process of accumulating / integrating information. This is the machine. — Pop
A description requires a symbol system or a language. Functionally, description and construction correspond to the biologists’ distinction between the genotype and phenotype. My biosemiotic view is that self-replication is also the origin of semiosis.
I have made the case over many years (e.g., Pattee, 1969,1982, 2001, 2015) that self-replication provides the threshold level of complication where the clear existence of a self or a subject gives functional concepts such as symbol, interpreter, autonomous agent, memory, control, teleology, and intentionality empirically decidable meanings. The conceptual problem for physics is that none of these concepts enter into physical theories of inanimate nature.
Self-replication requires an epistemic cut between self and non-self, and between subject and object.
Self-replication requires a distinction between the self that is replicated and the non-self that is not replicated. The self is an individual subject that lives in an environment that is often called objective, but which is more accurately viewed biosemiotically as the subject’s Umwelt or world image. This epistemic cut is also required by the semiotic distinction between the interpreter and what is interpreted, like a sign or a symbol. In physics this is the distinction between the result of a measurement – a symbol – and what is being measured – a material object.
I call this the symbol-matter problem, but this is just a narrower case of the classic 2500-year-old epistemic problem of what our world image actually tells us about what we call the real world. — Howard Pattee, last quotation on page
Life requires an epistemic cut between rate independent information and rate dependent dynamics (Pattee). Life is thus a modelling relation (Rosen). — apokrisis
In physics this is the distinction between the result of a measurement – a symbol – and what is being measured – a material object.
I call this the symbol-matter problem, but this is just a narrower case of the classic 2500-year-old epistemic problem of what our world image actually tells us about what we call the real world. — Howard Pattee, last quotation on page
Well you can’t even be listening to what I’m saying then. — apokrisis
I guess my pet theory is that waves and wavicles throughout nature combine as readily as a body of water whether we directly witness this or not, and these hybrids comprise both image qualia (dimensional) and nonimage qualia (feeling). But this matter is also extremely quantized, at least on the microscopic scale, which significantly disassociates it, so only specific, very complex and hyperorganized arrangements can give rise to complex qualitative experience, yet the possibilities are vast and far exceed the bounds of biological taxonomy as we currently define it. So that is why my view is a version of panprotopsychism: the actual substance of perception is present at the nano and micro scale, much more fundamental to matter than the level of organization that gives rise to either biological form or humanlike sentience. I regard human sentience as the somewhat arbitrary standard for what is conscious, just as the visible spectrum is our standard for what light is, corresponding to the brain and eye respectively. — Enrique
Consciousness is a state of integrated information - is the most coherent definition that I have come across. — Pop
Consciousness is a state of integrated information - is the most coherent definition that I have come across.
— Pop
That's really not a definition. Definitions are about what people mean and how words are used. People don't mean "I'm in a state of integrated information about this rose" when they say "I'm conscious of this rose". (Not that normal people would even say that to be fair.) The IIT is a theory, NOT a definition! — bert1
So in what way is a brain wave the same thing as a quantum wave? And what way is either like a ripple on a pond? — apokrisis
How a wavicle is turned into a symbol by neurobiology may be explained by simple neural networks. — Pop
Is any of what Apo said relevant to your theory? — bert1
So neural networks produce the integrated field that is consciousness, and quantum biochemical pathways produce the particulars of sensation. Consciousness is exacted as a steady state holism because of the integrating EM field, but we partially sense and feel the world as dispersed in space due to the quantum processes. — Enrique
Neuroplasticity tells us that established information is memorized in physical structure somehow. This is consistent with Constructivism, which suggests information accumulation is how knowledge is built. The way we thought about things yesterday, determines how we think about them today, which determines how we think about them tomorrow, more or less. So there is a construction going on - a building onto established knowledge, which is memorized in physical structure - this past knowledge is also integrated in a moment of consciousness. See my reply to Bert1 above. Any idea how this might occur from your perspective? — Pop
This flow within neurons creates an oscillating field extending throughout the entire brain. — Enrique
You are pinning all your hopes on some kind of coherent electromagnetic flux but what brain waves measure is the incoherent entropy of the dissipative physics of neurons... — apokrisis
You are mistaking the material index of the informational activity for the meaningful activity itself. — apokrisis
Imagine being able to draw a diagram in a textbook that represents the chemistry of qualitative perception — Enrique
"Information always travels over a substrate" - Shannon. — Pop
"Information always travels over a substrate" - Shannon.
— Pop
Bearing in mind that Shannon was an electrical engineer, and that his work was specifically about transmission of data across a medium. — Wayfarer
The electrical energy of brain waves is not dissipative like heat, — Enrique
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.