Not everyone. Firstly I don't think genes do (or did) produce life. — Daemon

:joke:

But secondly and more relevant to our discussion, it isn't the informational coding mechanism that does the work genes do: DNA is the mechanism. — Daemon

So you argue along the lines: "That's not a marsupial. It's a kangaroo!"

But when you've described the process in terms of deoxyribonucleic acid etc., you've said it all. There isn't any work for "information" or "semiosis" to do. — Daemon

No words....

Consciousness is not defined in functional terms, at least not in the relevant sense. — bert1

That's my complaint. You "consciousness" guys are bogged in the mud because you have a dys-functional conception of what its about. The mind can't make causal sense until you adopt a functional, enactive and embodied perspective.

So you argue along the lines: "That's not a marsupial. It's a kangaroo!" — apokrisis

Not at all. I'm arguing that semiosis and DNA are in different ontological categories, whereas marsupial and kangaroo are in the same category.

What do you mean by "no words"?

What do you mean by "no words"? — Daemon

Speechless incredulity.

You are welcome to your opinions but they make little contact with informed thought.

That's my complaint. You "consciousness" guys are bogged in the mud because you have a dys-functional conception of what its about. The mind can't make causal sense until you adopt a functional, enactive and embodied perspective. — apokrisis

Reminds me of Wittgenstein's characterisation of philosophy as "engine idling". We do philosophy to tune the engine of consciousness, but then we want to do something and go somewhere with it, and that's science or literature, or politics, or, love, or war. But alas, philosophers tend to think that philosophy is the function of the engine.

I'm super happy that you have noticed that it is at least an interesting question. I think most of us have a divided mind such that the world-and-self that is observed is not the observer, but that this division is an illusion.

Speechless incredulity. — apokrisis

Argument from incredulity, also known as argument from personal incredulity, appeal to common sense, or the divine fallacy, is a fallacy in informal logic.

You are welcome to your opinions but they make little contact with informed thought. — apokrisis

Argument from authority is a formal fallacy in which it is argued that because a perceived authority figure (or figures) believes a proposition (relevant to their authority) to be true, that proposition must therefore be true.

I'll repeat my point. Biochemical processes involving nucleic acids and the proteins they interact with are responsible for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of organisms. When you've described those processes, you've described everything that happens in genetics.

When we talk about processes like this we use language like "information", "encode". We say "A gene is a sequence of DNA that contains genetic information". But there aren't two different things, the information and the nucleic acid. It's the nucleic acid that does the work. "Information" is just a way of talking about it.

If you think "information" does something in addition to what the nucleic acids and proteins do, then tell us what that is.

If you think "information" does something in addition to what the nucleic acids and proteins do, then tell us what that is — Daemon

I guess the issue is how they do what they do. There is more than one account involved here. A reductively causal chemical description is a different account than a semiotic one.

Who do you agree with in this video, Dawkins or Rose?


https://youtu.be/QceGqKZMqIM

But alas, philosophers tend to think that philosophy is the function of the engine. — unenlightened

Not sure what planet you're on.

I'll repeat my point. Biochemical processes involving nucleic acids and the proteins they interact with are responsible for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of organisms. When you've described those processes, you've described everything that happens in genetics. — Daemon

If that is your point, it is a piss poor one.

Years ago someone put me on the right track when they pointed out that consciousness is not exactly a thing, even though language forces us to talk about it as if it is.

It's real & it has impact on things, how can it not be be a thing?

The fun of consciousness studies is trying to "grasp" something foggy, ghostlike.

It's power lies within its gravitational presence.

Years ago someone put me on the right track — ucarr

Gilbert Ryle? - https://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_ryle.html

@apokrisis
Can you offer a relatively theory-free definition of 'consciousness', that picks out what theories of consciousness are theories of?

@apokrisis

That's my complaint. You "consciousness" guys are bogged in the mud because you have a dys-functional conception of what its about. The mind can't make causal sense until you adopt a functional, enactive and embodied perspective. — apokrisis

The mind does make causal sense to me. I don't feel bogged down except when I try to make sense of various emergentist accounts, such as yours. There has not been one that makes sense to me that is faithful the phenomenal conception of consciousness. I'm interested though. Are you in agreement with Pattee in his cell phenomenology paper?

Aren't there at least implied dualisms in biosemiotics? Between symbol and matter, between self and other?

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

“What we call the real world” jumps out at me.

See the linked article for further elaboration.

I'll repeat my point. Biochemical processes involving nucleic acids and the proteins they interact with are responsible for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of organisms. When you've described those processes, you've described everything that happens in genetics.

When we talk about processes like this we use language like "information", "encode". We say "A gene is a sequence of DNA that contains genetic information". But there aren't two different things, the information and the nucleic acid. It's the nucleic acid that does the work. "Information" is just a way of talking about it.

If you think "information" does something in addition to what the nucleic acids and proteins do, then tell us what that is. — Daemon


If that is your point, it is a piss poor one. — apokrisis

And yet, it's not a point you're able to respond to.

If you think "information" does something in addition to what the nucleic acids and proteins do, then tell us what that is.

Oh come on Josh, that's an hour long video! Is my position not clear from the simple argument I've put forward? Do you have any response to that? Do you think information does something in addition to what the nucleic acids and proteins do? What is it?

Do you think information does something in addition to what the nucleic acids and proteins do? What is it? — Daemon

I think there are many sciences, eaxh with their own account of the ‘same’ phenomena, but described in relation to different levels of observation, and, more importantly, in relation to different purposes of description. Infrormational semiotic code is one account and a physico- chemical is another account of the ‘same’
phenomenon.

This is true of something as a simple as a point in space. Is there more than one legitimate account of what a point is ?

“If the composition of points out of lines or of lines out of points is conventional rather than factual, points and lines themselves are no less so. ... If we say that our sample space is a combination of points, or of lines, or of regions, or a combination of combinations of points, or lines, or regions, or a combination of all these together, or is a single lump, then since none is identical with any of the rest, we are giving one among countless alternative conflicting descriptions of what the space is. And so we may regard the disagreements as not about the facts but as due to differences in the conventions-adopted in organizing or describing the space. What, then, is the neutral fact or thing described in these different terms? Neither the space (a) as an undivided whole nor (b) as a combination of everything involved in the several accounts; for (a) and (b) are but two among the various ways of organizing it. But what is it that is so organized? When we strip off as layers of convention all differences among ways of describing it, what is left? The onion is peeled down to its empty core.”(Nelson Goodman)

Informational semiotic code is one account and a physico- chemical is another account of the ‘same’ phenomenon. — Joshs

My question is, what does the "informational" account tell us about the phenomenon, in addition to what the biochemical account tells us?

My question is, what does the "informational" account tell us about the phenomenon, in addition to what the biochemical account tells us? — Daemon

It seems to me that when we recognize a pattern as a pattern rather than a random collection of discrete parts, we are making use of a different sort of account. A hardware description of a computer includes all the contents of its software, but isn’t the sort of account that can give us the meaning of the software as software. Similarly , a biochemical description of a neural network that is organized to understand language ‘includes’ the biochemical contents underlying the hierarchically organized semantic categories on the basis of which language processing is structured in the brain. But notions like semantic pattern and category are invisible at the level of biochemical description. An informational code must be ‘added’ to the biochemical account. One couldgo further and argue that the informational level isnt just added on top of the reductively causal biochemical account. It is more fundamental, i. the sense that one can generate a reductively causal description within a semiotic language but not the other way around. This is the claim of Peircean pansmiotics.

Aren't there at least implied dualisms in biosemiotics? Between symbol and matter, between self and other? — Wayfarer

Sure. But the dualisms are in a functional and causal relation. So they are really a triadic semiotic relationship.

Pattee says life is symbol and matter. The symbol side is the rate independent information. The matter side is the rate dependent dynamics. The two sides are connected by the third thing of mechanistic structure.

The simplest conceptual example of this connecting structure is the notion of a switching device. A switch is either on or off. And the current either flows or is stopped. So a switch provides an atomistic grain for constructing complexity. It is a little lump of material. But it also stands for something in a network of information.

An enzyme is a kind of switch that the genes can turn on and off. And turning it on and off causes chemistry to start and stop.

The genes are an evolutionary script of a material structure that they want to build. Building that structure then results in all the machinery that allows for the sustaining of that realm of gene-inscribed information.

So the two sides - symbol and matter - are yoked together as a functional and self-organising whole. They are in short locked in the embrace of a semiotic modelling relation. The model is the information that builds the structure, and the structure is the materiality that sustains the encoded model.

The relation is holistic or autopoietic. But it hinges on there being a scale of action - the switches - where the two worlds of information and dynamics get properly connected … as a grain of mechanism.

This is biosemiosis.

Fristion’s Bayesian mechanics makes the same case for neurosemiosis.

This time the switches aren’t the enzymes but the various sensory transducers, like a pressure receptor or light cone.

The organism is studded with an array of transducers of physical energy that get tripped by the dynamical changes of the world outside. Photons flick the switch of a retinal cell. A bump flicks the switch of a pressure sensor in the skin.

The nervous system is then a model that attempts to interpret what is going on in terms of a meaningful world of events - an Umwelt. This involves Bayesian reasoning and the minimising of prediction error.

Again we have the two worlds of symbol and matter. Rate independent information and rate dependent dynamics, connected by a system of switches. The world imposes the dynamics, the mind interprets them in functional fashion.

Like all things biological, the purpose is to survive and thrive. The aim of the nervous system is to maintain the integrity of the organism as the thing it has learnt how to be.

Again we have the two worlds of symbol and matter. — apokrisis

And what of fact and value? Are you familiar with the work of Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Prinz and Ronald De Sousa? Opposing Moral universalists like Nussbaum , they argue for empirical naturalism in the realm of science. and subjective relativism in the realm of moral
values. Values are drive by emotion, which is a subjective and intersubjective response , whereas science is fact-based.
Thus there can be consensus on empirical facts but not on moral values. Opposing sides of a political or ethical dispute can agree on all the facts relative to the dispute and yet disagree on the valuative
conclusions.

You can tell that a claimed dualism or dichotomy is wrong to the degree you can’t find a hierarchical reciprocality built into it.

So does fact-value feel like an opposition, even a paradox. Or a synergy - a fruitful win-win?

Values are drive by emotion, which is a subjective and intersubjective response , whereas science is fact-based. — Joshs

Biosemiosis and neurosemiosis build the biological organism - the one that is “driven by in-the-moment emotions”. The semiosis of word and number - language and maths - then build the social level of organism that is the human animal with its extra level of “dispassionate, reasoned, self-regulating behaviour”.

In a functional social setting, the two sides have an evolved harmony. They result in a group of like minds, being fed, housed, nurured, living meaningful lives.

The Enlightenment was a project to construct just such a practical philosophy in a world starting to be transformed by the new mathematical physics and its ability to model the rate dependent dynamics that is the burning of fossil fuels to drive a new “machinery of life”.

We had to learn to live in the new world we were creating by socially constructing a new model of how to be a self in harmony with such a world.

But then there was the Romantic reaction. A counter philosophy arose that said too much change was happening too fast. The belief hardened that humans were a mix of god and beast. That spirit was opposed to body, art to science, etc, etc. The divisions on which levels of semiotic complexity are based were tragedies of the human condition and not instead productive synergies to be constructed.

So this values-fact distinction reflects the tendency to spot the semiotic dichotomy and treat it as a fundamental opposition rather than a burgeoning synergy. The division gets painted as two sides, only one of which can be the right path, or the fundamental story. But really, the philosophical issue is the one fingered by the Enlightenment. How do we bring the two sides of a system into fruitful conjunction?

The shitness of the modern world is largely due to a failure to continue the Enlightenment project. Once you assert the primacy of either values or facts, then you have fallen into a deep misunderstanding about how intelligent dissipative structures, or Bayesian mechanics, are meant to work.

The shitness of the modern world is largely due to a failure to continue the Enlightenment project. — apokrisis

You state that as though it is a fact; but it's a dogma or else it's merely an opinion, depending on how you look at it.
In my view the shitness of the modern world is due to unmanageable complexity coupled with stupidity and cupidity; the financialization of the economic system. Religions warned against usury 2,000 years ago, but scientistic hubris deluded the (un)thinking ape into imagining that he could get away with it,

You state that as though it is a fact; but it's a dogma or else it's merely an opinion, depending on how you look at it. — Janus

Why is it not a falsifiable theory?

The world has many countries running somewhat different functional balances. The societies that manage the healthiest pragmatic balances of the ecologically constraining and economically progressive shouldn't be hard to spot. Or if you want to measure more narrowly, you could look to their mix of social cohesion and individual freedom.

One could argue over the right measure - as being a complex thing, it is multidimensional. But the theory says what works is synergy - the classical unity of opposites that got the Enlightenment started in ancient Greece. And what thus fails is to misunderstand the logic of systems as a broken and disconnected duality - a tragic choice between good and evil, value and fact, spirit and flesh, god and beast, art and science, machine and nature, etc, etc.

The Hard Problem is simply another example of the flawed metaphysics of Romanticism. A broken way of thinking about systems has become the popular understanding of all causality, all reality.

And I frame this as falsifiable theory. There are two views in play - dualism and triadicism. Which project laments about all its failures, which gets on with its evolutionary progress?

Once you assert the primacy of either values or facts, then you have fallen into a deep misunderstanding about how intelligent dissipative structures, or Bayesian mechanics, are meant to work. — apokrisis

I wouldnt say that Prinz and Haidt are giving preference to empirical fact over subjective moral valuation. They are pointing to two equal but different categories of judgement.

Biosemiosis and neurosemiosis build the biological organism - the one that is “driven by in-the-moment emotions”. The semiosis of word and number - language and maths - then build the social level of organism that is the human animal with its extra level of “dispassionate, reasoned, self-regulating behaviour” — apokrisis

Does this mean that dispassionate reason is built on top of in-the-moment-emotions and longer lasting moods? Perhaps, then, ‘emotionless reason’ is always affectively charged. If so, is empirical validity the expression of an affect-driven value system? Does this make changes from one empirical worldview to the next arbitrary and incommensurable, like transitioning from one historical aesthetic movement to another?

Like all things biological, the purpose is to survive and thrive. — apokrisis

Right. Philosophy seeks something beyond that.

What did you have in mind beyond surviving and thriving?

Sure, people can find the unpragmatic in philosophy. Some around here even celebrate the lack of utility. It becomes a badge of honour for them. Philosophising is about having a throbbing intellectual engine ... and sitting in an armchair idling.

But historically, philosophy has made the claim it is the path to higher things. It should be useful if it is true. And indeed, it aims to be a training in how to think in the ways that would get you there.

They are pointing to two equal but different categories of judgement. — Joshs

And they then fail to point to the third thing of their fruitful connection?

And I frame this as falsifiable theory. There are two views in play - dualism and triadicism. Which project laments about all its failures, which gets on with its evolutionary progress? — apokrisis

All dualisms are really traidisms; not to see that is just a failure of the imagination where thinking stops up short. As Gurdjieff said "Man is third force blind". Bread is understood as flour and water, forgetting the heat. So people see Saussurean semiology and think it is merely a matter of signifier and signified, forgetting the relation of signification. The Three Gunas: "creation, preservation and destruction" or astrology's "cardinal, fixed and mutable".

These are archetypes; they have been with us for aeons. In any case since humans do not consist of a majority of intellectuals (for better or for worse) our problems are far more basic than a mere failure to grasp semiotics. More broadly, it is a failure to care enough.

If you worship at the altar of science you take account of only one small (albeit important) part of human life

In any case since humans do not consist of a majority of intellectuals (for better or for worse) our problems are far more basic than a mere failure to grasp semiotics. More broadly, it is a failure to care enough. — Janus

Describe to me this world where we all "care enough". What does that look like precisely? How does it operate in a way that might maximise the upside of the dichotomy it must be founded upon. Give me your pragmatic recipe for this utopia and not just the empty slogan.