Aren't there at least implied dualisms in biosemiotics? Between symbol and matter, — Wayfarer
Sure. But the dualisms are in a functional and causal relation. So they are really a triadic semiotic relationship. — apokrisis
Pattee says life is symbol and matter. — apokrisis
How can I describe what doesn't exist? — Janus
You know as well as I do that the world would look very different if we all cared as much about others as we do about ourselves. — Janus
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. — apokrisis
In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature – even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man – frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy. — Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason
What does your theory say about the distinction between the real and the imaginary stop sign? — ZzzoneiroCosm
Is there room for the word "mind" in this schema? Or must the word "mind" be completely rejected for this schema to work? — ZzzoneiroCosm
So a stop sign is a symbol and a stop sign is matter.
What does your theory say about the distinction between the real and the imaginary stop sign? — ZzzoneiroCosm
A stop sign down at the level of biology could be a messenger molecule that literally jams the jaws of an enzyme's binding site. The mechanism is pretty immediate and direct. — apokrisis
If you want a rough distinction, life is an organism's model of its body - its metabolic existence - and mind is an organism's model of the environment within which that body must persist. — apokrisis
In H. Sapiens, life reaches a threshold where it can contemplate 'the meaning of being'. — Wayfarer
That's what philosophy started out as. — Wayfarer
I've often said that once h. sapiens crosses the threshold of reason, abstraction, meaning-seeking, then horizons of meaning open up that aren't necessarily visible or intelligible from a strictly functionalist or scientific viewpoint. — Wayfarer
What you seem to be failing to see is that the simple notion that the world would very different if we all, or even a significant number of us, cared about others, about the collective, as we do about ourselves does not require analysis. — Janus
I'm not indulging in utopian thinking because I'm not suggesting it will come to pass, either; it most probably won't, — Janus
Nonetheless the 'shitness' of the modern world is due to lack of sufficient care to raise it out of its cesspit, mixed with the bewilderment that comes with being faced with unmanageable complexity. — Janus
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. — Joshs
One team of researchers used a technique called optogenetics to label the cells encoding fearful memories in the mouse brain and to switch the memories on and off, and another used it to identify the cells encoding positive and negative emotional memories, so that they could convert positive memories into negative ones, and vice versa. https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/mar/09/false-memories-implanted-into-the-brains-of-sleeping-mice
If people changed such as to care more, then we would see how it pans out. It can't be engineered. So, we'll muddle through as usual, semiotics aint going to help either. No better than snake oil. — Janus
You're stomping about making the claim to have the magical potion which cures all ills. But you're not going to let anyone taste even a drop. — apokrisis
A stop sign down at the level of biology could be a messenger molecule that literally jams the jaws of an enzyme's binding site. — apokrisis
So there's a need to couch the imaginary in physical terms?
What can be said about the substance of the imaginary stop sign? — ZzzoneiroCosm
Are there any symbols (or anything at all) in this schema that are non-physical, non-matter? — ZzzoneiroCosm
I don't think *anything* is 'purely physical'. — Wayfarer
All signs, symbols, and codes, all languages including formal mathematics are embodied as material physical structures and therefore must obey all the inexorable laws of physics. At the same time, the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA, voltages representing bits in a computer, the text on this page, and the neuron firings in the brain do not appear to be limited by, or clearly related to, the very laws they must obey. Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws. — Howard Pattee, The Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis
All signs, symbols, and codes, all languages including formal mathematics are embodied as material physical structures... — Howard Pattee, The Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis
I don't think *anything* is 'purely physical'. — Wayfarer
Nice. Either I'm original but wrong. Or I'm right, but not original. You win either way. :clap: — apokrisis
If the imaginary needs to be couched in physical terms aren't we left with a physicalist monism? Sure, there's symbols in the mix, but it has the ring of a physicalism. — ZzzoneiroCosm
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. — apokrisis
....but I just don't see how what is really an arcane discipline, pretty much incomprehensible to those who haven't spent sufficient time studying it, is going to help humanity. — Janus
Information would be the part of reality which is the least material, — apokrisis
So is the imaginary stop sign considered (basically) pure information? — ZzzoneiroCosm
stop sign seems like a purer informational thin — apokrisis
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