I don't specifically recall the "distinction" you cite. — Pop

That's the point! Go back and look at it again, and consider the distinction that Barbieri is making between 'the chemical paradigm' and 'the information paradigm', It is central to the entire paper, and what he means by 'code biology' so if you're not seeing that distinction then you're not understanding the point of the paper.

I wasn't getting at anything, although I do think we're getting semantic information mixed up with the kind of information scientists use, including biologists. Do you think? — frank

This is the thing Frank, a lot of people are advocating for a reconsideration of "what information is".

There are two papers in the link titled "What is information". The focus is DNA and information, but it is still relevant to general consideration.

Just so we're clear that copying DNA is not a case of semantic information. No cognition involved.

There are two papers in the link titled "What is information". The focus is DNA and information, but it is still relevant to general consideration. — Pop

There's a reason that Marcello Barbieri launched in 2012 what he considers a new scientific discipline which he calls 'code biology'. It is specifically about the way in which DNA encodes and transmits information. It is not a general theory about information, nor a theory that maintains that everything is information or is reducible to information, it's a study of codes. So, again, unless you understand why he is using the term 'code biology' and how he differentiates that from 'the chemical paradigm', you're not seeing the point of his paper.

Maxwell's demon
— frank

We are talking about open systems. Natural systems are dissipative. I'm not sure what you are getting at? — Pop

Good lord. Maxwell’s demon is how classical mechanics introduces the epistemic cut that underpins thermodynamics and hence dissipative structure theory.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-maxwells-demon-continues-to-startle-scientists-20210422/

And that led to Feynman’s ratchet to show the quantum limit of any such informational demon.

Just so we're clear that copying DNA is not a case of semantic information. No cognition involved. — frank

Semantic - relating to meaning in language or logic. - Google.

We need therefore a paradigm that goes beyond the two present paradigms of biology. A paradigm that fully accepts the implications of the existence of the genetic code. The implication that life is based on copying and coding, that both biological sequences (organic information) and biological coding rules (organic meaning) are fundamental observables that are as essential to life as the fundamental quantities of physics. This is the code paradigm, the idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information plus codes’. - Barberi.

Please read the paper. It is very interesting.

Good lord. Maxwell’s demon is how classical mechanics introduces the epistemic cut that underpins thermodynamics and hence dissipative structure theory.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-maxwells-demon-continues-to-startle-scientists-20210422/

And that led to Feynman’s ratchet to show the quantum limit of any such informational demon. — apokrisis

We have been through this before - How is it relevant for irreversible systems?

Please read the paper. It is very interesting. — Pop

Ok, but DNA replication still isn't semantic information. Should we discuss the difference?

This is the code paradigm, the idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information plus codes’. - — Pop

To provide more context for that statement:

What is not clear...is the ontological status of information, and the result is that today we have two conflicting paradigms in biology.

One is the ‘chemical paradigm’, the idea that ‘life is chemistry’, or, more precisely, that ‘life is an extremely complex form of chemistry’.

The other is the ‘information paradigm’, the view that chemistry is not enough, that ‘life is chemistry plus information’.

This implies that there is an ontological difference between information and chemistry, a difference which is often expressed by saying that information-based processes like heredity and natural selection simply do not exist in the world of chemistry.

Against this conclusion, the supporters of the chemical paradigm have argued that the concept of information is only a linguistic metaphor, a word that summarizes the result of countless underlying chemical reactions. [This is exactly the contention of reductionist physicalism - wayfarer]

The supporters of the information paradigm insist that information is a real and fundamental component of the living world, but have not been able to prove this point. As a result, the chemical view has not been abandoned and the two paradigms both coexist today.

Here [e.g. in this paper - wayfarer] it is shown that a solution to the ontological problem of information does exist. It comes from the idea that life is artefact-making, that genes and proteins are molecular artefacts manufactured by molecular machines and that artefacts necessarily require sequences and coding rules in addition to the quantities of physics and chemistry. More precisely, it is shown that the production of artefacts requires new observables that are referred to as nominable entities because they can be described only by naming their components in their natural order. From an ontological point of view, in conclusion, information is a nominable entity, a fundamental but not-computable observable. — Marcello Barbieri

So, what is crucial here, is that Barbieri is claiming there's an ontological distinction between living organisms and non-organic matter. That is what is resisted by 'the chemical paradigm', because if it's true, then materialism proper - the contention that matter-energy is all that exists - can't be maintained.

Information is a property.

Ok, but DNA replication still isn't semantic information. Should we discuss the difference? — frank

I think what @Wayfarer has brought up is good. We shouldn't rely on only one source however. we have an excellent 21 sources, all vying to be the next Darwin, so we get a great insight into what the thinking is.

Ok. I shy away from ontological discussions because they seem to conjure the dragons they want to kill.

This has the makings of a super massive thread, though.

Information is a property. — frank

I have always thought of it as a quality. Barbari goes into this in the paper. Traditionally quantities are measurable, but in biology they are not.

So whether it is a quality or quantity is up in the air, to some extent.

Barbari suggest it should be a non measurable quantity.

The point that he is making, that I think Pop is overlooking, is that information is a critical aspect of organic life, but it's not observed in non-organic life, i.e. minerals and the like. But the OP wants to claim that, somehow, everything is information. That's where I think it falls down - it's too broad a claim to be meaningful, specifically, the first two sentences under 'definitions'.

What Barbieri is showing, is the sense in which the storing and transmission of information differentiates life from non-life. So it's properly defined - to define something is to say what it isn't, which enables you to say what it is.

Information is a property. — frank

I think you need to consider what 'biosemiosis' means (and I'm not an expert by any stretch, I've only learned about the concept on this forum and readings from it. The Wikipedia definition is 'Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος bios, "life" and σημειωτικός sēmeiōtikos, "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, or production and interpretation of signs and codes and their communication in the biological realm.[1]

Biosemiotics integrates the findings of biology and semiotics and proposes a paradigmatic shift in the scientific view of life, in which semiosis (sign process, including meaning and interpretation) is one of its immanent and intrinsic features.'

So, my take is that 'semiosis', which is interpretation of signs, is also something that happens on a cellular level - the whole of biology is a form of interpretation, in the broader sense - not just the conscious act of reading a sign, but the interactions between cells on a micro level. And what I think it is replacing is the metaphor of mechanism - that living things are like machines. They're much nearer to language, than to mechanism. That's my take.

What Barbieri is showing, is the sense in which the storing and transmission of information differentiates life from non-life. — Wayfarer

What you do not understand is - when you look at a rock it changes your brain patterning. So what exactly changed your brain patterning?

This is what enactive means - a reciprocal causation.

We have been through this before - How is it relevant for irreversible systems? — Pop

How is it not?

You might be suffering from a faulty understanding of irreversibility though. Thermodynamic equilbriums are simply states were reversion has become homogenised and so all fluctuations are confined to a Gaussian bell curve distribution.

In an ideal gas, the particles exchange position and momentum with wild thermal abandon. They bash about gaining and losing in Brownian motion fashion. But at a macro scale view of this microscopic fluctuation - the epistemic cut where the global view is made separate from the local view - all the information you need to describe the system is largely told as a general temperature and pressure reading. A statistical mean.

The irreversibility comes from heat being lost to the environment. The flask of particles can’t head back towards higher pressures and temperatures all by itself (give or take ergodic scale fluctuations).

But heat can be supplied. And work could even be extracted up to a point, as Maxwell’s demon illustrates.

All irrelevant to the topic at hand.

So, what is crucial here, is that Barbieri is claiming there's an ontological distinction between living organisms and non-organic matter. That is what is resisted by 'the chemical paradigm', because if it's true, then materialism proper - the contention that matter-energy is all that exists - can't be maintained. — Wayfarer

As Pattee put it, the central problem for biology is to explain how a molecule can be a message (and not just a material). :up:

As Pattee put it, the central problem for biology is to explain how a molecule can be a message (and not just a material) — apokrisis

We are discussing Barberi's paper. Did you read it?

We are discussing Barberi's paper. Did you read it? — Pop

What? The paper on biosemiosis? Is that the toipic we are meant to be discussing now?

Have you read the Barbieri team mission statement?….

Since the early 1970s, Italian embryologist and theoretical biologist Marcello Barbieri has been developing a biosemiotic framework for biology based on his analysis of the cell’s internal organic codes. Developing his theory of semantic biology in complete independence from the Sebeokian biosemioticians, but now widely recognized as a key figure in the development of 21st century biosemiotics, Barbieri proposes an alternative biosemiotic paradigm that is not organicist and qualitative in its origins, but mechanist and molecular instead – but that is just revolutionary a framework for the attempt to scientifically investigate and understand the reality of sign processes in life processes

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Well that is more like it.

At least this is relevant to what is being discussed.

There are 21 papers we are focusing on, and the broad thrust is a reconsideration of what is meant by "information" at the cellular level.

**These papers an excellent source for getting a feel for the cutting edge in contemporary understanding.

I have always had trouble with the term semiosis as it implies an interpreter. But why should meaning have an interpreter?

Meaning may be meaningful in its own right. Integrated information may be meaningful at all scales.

There are 21 papers we are focusing on, and the broad thrust is a reconsideration of what is meant by "information" at the cellular level.

**These papers an excellent source for getting a feel for the cutting edge in contemporary understanding. — Pop

Sorry to say it ain’t the cutting edge of biosemiosis. I can tell that just from the authors and the titles. I just read Ball’s journalistic summary and skimmed Barbieri - whose position remains a second rate summary of more incisive thinking.

But if you are eager to read and learn, that is great. If you can tag Barbieri and his mates as closet panpsychists, even better. :clap:

I have always had trouble with the term semiosis as it implies an interpreter. But why should meaning have an interpreter? — Pop

Peirce stresses that it is not about an interpreter - as some kind of ego or subject. It is about systems of interpretance. And that is entirely different …. In ways I’ve now exhaustively describes, starting with Friston’s Bayesian Brain.

A semiotic relation exists when some sort of habit of interpretance reads the world in terms of its “signs” and responds with the certainty of automatic reflex.

The light goes green, I go. That is what a green light means. It tells me that the road is clear of crossing cars.

But then I shoot off on green and I am immediately t-boned. Oh dear, the epistemic cut meant to plug me enactively into the physics of the world suddenly seems to have left me separated from that actual world. It seems there can be surprises in this well regulated life - entropic exceptions to the informational rules.

This was the chemical paradigm view of information from the Barbieri paper.

"supporters of the chemical paradigm have argued that the concept of information is only a linguistic metaphor, a word that summarizes the result of countless underlying chemical reactions."

I agree with it so maybe I'm a chemical paradigm supporter. If you reject this view you are saying matter and energy are not sufficient to support life. And it's not anything close to the information we experiece with our brains (refering to both views).

A semiotic relation exists when some sort of habit of interpretance reads the world in terms of its “signs” and responds with the certainty of automatic reflex. — apokrisis

In the early universe there could not have been an interpreter, but form arose and developed.

In one sense everything is a development of form.

In constructivism, understanding develops as a result of more information.

Meaning arises as a result of integrated information?

Form is meaning, because without it , only nothing could exist.

"The parts" of the universe could not be integrated without form.

Just some thinking that badly needs integration. :sad:

In the early universe there could not have been an interpreter, but form arose and developed.

In one sense everything is a development of form. — Pop

Why are you telling me this when I’ve just told you how my position does not involve an interpreter but habits of interpretance?

Just some thinking that badly needs integration. :sad: — Pop

One can lead the horse to integration, but one can’t make it integrate.

Why are you telling me this when I’ve just told you how my position does not involve an interpreter but habits of interpretance? — apokrisis

Habits belong to entities. Who / what is the entity with such habits?

What you do not understand is - when you look at a rock it changes your brain patterning. So what exactly changed your brain patterning? — Pop

That is a very crude way of phrasing a basic question of philosophy.

Meaning may be meaningful in its own right. — Pop

Meaning is always imputed or interpreted. It doesn't exist in its own right.

That's the problem - there's an unavoidably idealistic or possibly even theistic :groan: implication. See the argument from biological information.

As Pattee put it, the central problem for biology is to explain how a molecule can be a message (and not just a material). — apokrisis

It's certainly a problem for physicalism, not so much for dualism or idealism. I mean, 'if the stuff of the world is mind-stuff....'

One can lead the horse to integration, but one can’t make it integrate. — apokrisis

'You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think' (Dorothy Parker, when asked to use 'horticulture' in a sentence.)

Meaning is always imputed or interpreted. It doesn't exist in its own right. — Wayfarer

This is the prevalent thinking that Barbieri and co are up against.