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

I think you’d be surprised by how compatible their views are with Peirce’s

Surprise me. Describe how their dualism is fruitfully connected.

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

I'm curious about this dualism.

So a stop sign is a symbol and a stop sign is matter. An imaginary stop sign (the one I'm now imagining) is symbol and is not matter.

What does your theory say about the distinction between the real and the imaginary stop sign?

The former is a symbol made of matter. And the latter is a symbol made of....?

Describe to me this world where we all "care enough". — apokrisis

How can I describe what doesn't exist? 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.

Pattee says life is symbol and matter. — apokrisis

Is there room for the word "mind" in this schema? Or must the word "mind" be completely rejected for this schema to work?

How can I describe what doesn't exist? — Janus

You said the words. You unpack them and show there is some kind of theory behind the hippie slogan.

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

Aha. So it starts with equal quantities of caring? If the quantity is x for the self, it should be x for others.

Now is this x an amount granted each and every single other, or instead spread out over all others in some average way (so diluted by a factor of 8 billion currently). Or do you advocate a proximity scale factor, so more care is spent on those closest, matchingly less is invested in those far distant.

You see how with even a cursory analysis, we start to arrive at the usual fractal dissipative structure of any triadic system.

But this your theory. You unpack what you think it means in practical terms to say we should "care for others as we care for ourselves".

I mean what do we do about those with low-esteem. What happens if they apply the Golden Mean? Are they doing something wrong within your moral economy?

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

The only criterion for success in biological theory and evolution is reproductive success - as you said, surviving and thriving. Obviously surviving is a desideratum, but crocodiles and blue-green algae are adept at that. In H. Sapiens, life reaches a threshold where it can contemplate 'the meaning of being'. That's what philosophy started out as. I agree it easily degenerates into empty words and idle speculation but it's not only that.

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 (not to mention from the perspective of other creatures). But as, in this culture, evolutionary theory has elbowed religion aside, then it subtly permeates all of our thinking about it.

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

As we have imagination as well as reason, we're able to imagine such things. Pure maths is almost entirely a combination of imagination and reason, isn't it? Or, imagination governed by mathematical logic?

Is there room for the word "mind" in this schema? Or must the word "mind" be completely rejected for this schema to work? — ZzzoneiroCosm

I'm always saying "life and mind". The two are pretty synonymous given that they are both about the special thing of a semiotic modelling relation.

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.

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 is social level switch. It is enforced by social level mechanisms. You might risk getting physically stopped by a patrol car and physically locked in a cell.

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.

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

So there's a need to couch the imaginary in physical terms?

What can be said about the substance of the imaginary stop sign?

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

Thanks, that's helpful.

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.

I'm not indulging in utopian thinking because I'm not suggesting it will come to pass, either; it most probably won't, . 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.

In H. Sapiens, life reaches a threshold where it can contemplate 'the meaning of being'. — Wayfarer

All hail H.philosophus . Nature's most grandiloquent animal.

That's what philosophy started out as. — Wayfarer

Or was it instead the metaphysical inquiry into the basis of being - the search for the universal substance, the logos of the cosmos?

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

And haven't we often agreed that that applies to Scientism - the kind of physicalism that rejects formal and final cause and is only concerned with models of reality that employ material and efficient cause.

My brand of physicalism is the full four cause analysis. It makes meaning and purpose part of the model.

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

How can I see what you won't properly flesh out. You haven't shown that adding more sugar to the recipe in fact makes it taste more delicious. You are just sloganeering and - on a philosophy site! - proclaiming your view to be self-evidently true.

I'm not indulging in utopian thinking because I'm not suggesting it will come to pass, either; it most probably won't, — Janus

What is it exactly that is going to come to pass, or not come to pass? What does this "caring more" look like in everyday lived practice? How does it cash out as something different in our social, political and economic institutions?

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

You keep on with your slogans - and the bewilderment when asked: well how its this "more care" put into effect? How would society be organised differently?

I mean do you think it would be a good thing to rewire the brains of the general population with oxytocin in the water supply?

Let's get into the mechanics of what makes humans "care for others" and see how the options pan out.

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

The meaning of the software is not intrinsic to the computer. It's in the minds of outside observers. By contrast, the semantic patterns and categories are intrinsic to the brain/mind. They are currently invisible at the biochemical level and may remain so, after all this is the most complex mechanism we know of, but they are there. We can already see the biochemical mechanisms underlying less complex mental states. For example:

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.

Thanks for the chat.

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

At least you can try the snake oil and see if the claims on the bottle match its real world effects.

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.

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

I don't claim to have the magical potion; if I had it, I would apply it and save humanity. I don't believe there is any magical potion that will make us all care enough to make a difference, circumstances will either bring that about or they won't. We'll have to wait and see. I live in a small rural community and you can see care operating a lot more there than in the urban environment.

How would we go about trying semiotics? What is it going to tell us about the world situation which is not already obvious?

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

Still wondering about this.

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.

Are there any symbols (or anything at all) in this schema that are non-physical, non-matter?

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'.

Drill down into matter, and what do you find? What you would be seeking would be an ultimately-existing point-particle - an atom. But the bottom level is now called 'the standard model' - which is a mathematical construct, which manifest as atoms, but which is now said to comprise fields - whatever they might be. '...the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or — in Plato's sense — Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics' ~ Werner Heisenberg, Debate between Plato and Democritus.

I don't think *anything* is 'purely physical'. — Wayfarer

I'm familiar with these ideas but having no background in mathematics there's not much I can do to deepen my understanding. Interesting as it is, I have to take it with a grain of salt.

I'm interested in what apokrisis or his forbears have to say, if anything, about the non-physical-symbolic.

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

So it's another physicalism that reduces the imaginary to neurons firing etc? Is that how you see it?

How would we go about trying semiotics? What is it going to tell us about the world situation which is not already obvious? — Janus

Nice. Either I'm original but wrong. Or I'm right, but not original. You win either way. :clap:

Nice. Either I'm original but wrong. Or I'm right, but not original. You win either way. :clap: — apokrisis

Why would you worry; you haven't claimed to be original anyway: Peirce, Pattee, Salthe, Rosen etc.? I'm not saying that semiotics is not interesting or informative, 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 (if I had more time I'd probably study it myself to gain what is more than just a general sense of it), is going to help humanity.

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

Information would be the part of reality which is the least material, and matter would be likewise the part of reality with the least information. Physicalism is then the triadic relation in which information and matter are tied together by this dichotomistic or reciprocal story.

So a computer is a machine designed for manipulating information. It zeroes the cost of representing a digital bit. And so that bit can stand for "anything". The imagination has free rein to assign any kind of value to a bit string. The cost of running the program is the same no matter what the program is supposed to be about.

The CPU must consume some juice. It can't avoid having some materialism in the mix. But in practice, the cost is small enough to be easily afforded, and it is a cost that has zero bearing on the freedom of the software to represent "any world".

It is the same with genes, neurons, words, numbers. As codes, they are all designed to have this maximal informational freedom because they minimise and standardise the underlying entropic costs of their materiality.

A word is a puff of air in the throat. Grammar gives us the finite means for infinite expression. Talk is so cheap we can afford to speak any amount of nonsense. But that is also because speech is so powerful that it allows H.sapiens to dominate the resources of a planet. Speech easily pays for itself in terms of entropy disposal.

The same goes at the biological level for genes and neurons. The genes can code for any polypeptide chain and thus an effective infinity of protein structures. Useful or useless, the cost is near zero. And also - with the functional need to persist as an organism in an environment - this vast landscape of imaginary possibilities gets passed through a Darwinian filter.

So with words, the evolutionary filter on speaking nonsense isn't so apparent. Even if it is there in the long run.

Anyway, you get the principle of Pattee's rate independent information vs rate dependent dynamics. Semiotics is about how codes anchor evolutionary stories. By being "costless", the informational machinery opens up a trans-material version of physicalism. Even the genome has an imagination and can play with billions of times more molecular possibilities than it actually needs. Living a life then applies a Darwinian filter to ensure genomes focus back on the practicalities of the molecules that do the right job.

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

What I was saying is that if folk could shake off their romantic notions of causality then they might be able to focus on the rational solutions that are indeed the bleeding obvious.

That is why a hollow slogan like "everyone just be nice!" is so problematic. It flows directly from Romanticism. It sets up the false expectation that is followed by its deep disillusion.

If you think small rural communities have a much greater degree of social cohesion, then why not analyse why that might be the case - and apply those principles to the larger world we all now live in.

And then think also about whether a small rural community grants a matchingly pleasant degree of individual freedom. Analyse why that is the case and how it can be applied to a larger scale of human organisation. Or instead, decide small communities can be parochial and small minded. Maybe they can learn something from large city communities?

We get the lives we design, don't we? At least that was the Enlightenment project.

Information would be the part of reality which is the least material, — apokrisis

Thanks for the info. I'll need to do some reading.


So is the imaginary stop sign considered (basically) pure information?

So is the imaginary stop sign considered (basically) pure information? — ZzzoneiroCosm

The semiotics of traffic networks is based on switches. And in biosemiotic, what is being stressed is that switches are where the action happens as they mediate (as signs) between the informational and material aspects of the system.

So a traffic light is a better example as it tells you when to stop and go. It encodes on and off - in terms of the fossil fuel burning that moves the cars about in some kind of socially optimised flow.

A stop sign seems like a purer informational thing because it is more remote from the physical consequences involved. Occasionally you might get caught by the cops. Occasionally you might get T-boned for not halting to check properly. But an on-off switch like a traffic light is far more directly tied to its material consequences.

A pure form of information might be more like an art installation which says “don’t press this button”. Something as nonsensical and disconnected from useful material consequences as possible.

stop sign seems like a purer informational thin — apokrisis

I was referring to the imaginary stop sign I'm thinking of right now. Not a real stop sign.

What is the relation between matter, information and the imaginary stop sign?