You are simply identifying use and token. They are not the same. — Banno

It's all use. You are mistakenly attempting to separate token from use, as if it is not a form of use.

The basic rules of the system (physics) guide the apparent self-organization of the system. So it's not really "self-organizing" it's just that we're recognizing certain behaviors of certain arrangements of matter (which through basic rules) produce a pattern of interaction that exhibits more complex behavior as a whole than the bits following simple rules that comprise it. — VagabondSpectre

I have great difficulty with this. Matter does not follow rules. We have laws of physics which describe the way that matter behaves, these are descriptive laws. They are not prescriptive laws which are telling matter how to behave. We do not seem to know why matter behaves in such regular ways which can be described by descriptive laws, but it requires a far stretch of the imagination to say that matter behaves like it does because it is following rules. Doesn't it require a mind to follow rules?

That's a vague claim. — apokrisis

It's not vague. Neurons communicate with muscles, for instance, by electric discharge. Look into it. It's fascinating stuff.

Modern biophysics would agree that electron transport chains are vitally important as "entropic mechanism". But even more definitional would be proton gradients across membranes. It is those which are the more surprising fact at least. — apokrisis

There is passive transport across cell membranes, yes. There's also active transport.

So it is the ability to separate the energy capture from the energy spending - the flow of entropy vs the flow of work - which is the meaningful basis of life. — apokrisis

Obviously mechanisms can store energy... so I'm not sure what you mean.

So again, silicon/electrons is just not that kind of stuff. — apokrisis

Could be, but it's not obvious. Science fiction writers have long imagined silicon-based life forms, silicon and carbon being similar. And as I said, living beings on earth utilize electricity. That's basically what we're looking at when we do an EKG or EEG.

Neurons communicate with muscles, for instance, by electric discharge. Look into it. It's fascinating stuff. — Mongrel

You mean acetylcholine discharge? The muscle fibres know to contract because they get given a molecular message?

And even if you are getting into the controversy of direct "electric synapses", it is still not about the conduction of an electrical current but a wave of membrane depolarisation - Na+ ions being allowed to flood in through the molecular machinery of membrane pores before being pumped out again to maintain a working gradient.

So everywhere you look, you see semiotics at work - messages being acted upon as the way the hardware does things - not some simple current flow which has been modulated to carry a "signal" as a physical pattern.

Think about it. A radio broadcast is modulated frequency. It encodes music and voices in a physical fashion that is simply a sign without interpretance. That pattern then drives some further set of amplifying circuitry and loudspeakers at the receiver end. So no matter how complicated or syntactic the physical pattern, zero semantics is happening as it flows. There is no "communicating".

Biology is the opposite. The physics and the message are an interplay happening right where it all starts. The circuits are alive because the flow is a process of communication. The two sides - the electron transfers that drive the production of waste, and the proton gradients that do the meaningful work - are strictly separated so they can also crisply interact.

So when you talk about "electrical discharge", that again sounds like you being vague so as to avoid getting into the complex semiotics that is actually taking place.

Computers have electrical circuits. Humans have electrical circuits. So hey. Life is just chemistry and mind is just information processing. [Pats small child on the head and walks away.] :)

Science fiction writers have long imagined silicon-based life forms, silicon and carbon being similar. — Mongrel

Fiction writers can take poetic licence with science. Science will point out the critical differences between silicon and carbon.

Like the weakness in bonds that means you couldn't make large complex organic molecules. Or the unsuitablity of silicon for redox metabolism as its waste electron acceptors are not a gas like CO2 but instead silicon oxides.

And you imagine having to excrete sand rather than CO2 which just leaks out of a cell.

So your objection is all based on silicon+electricity being the wrong stuff in the sense of being the wrong electrochemical stuff. Do you not get that the "wrong stuff" is about it being the wrong stuff in lacking a potential for semiotic mechanism?

Even if silicon life was limited by molecular complexity and also energetically constrained by the need to excrete solid waste, it could still exist - if it could implement actual nanoscale communication across an epistemic divide. Or be a semiotic "stuff" in other words.

You mean acetylcholine discharge? — apokrisis

Depolarization down the axon. It's tiny amounts of electricity, but then so is CMOS.

So botox works because it blocks tiny amounts of electricity and not large amounts of acetylcholine discharge?

Cool. I never understood that before.

Doesn't it require a mind to follow rules — Metaphysician Undercover

Only if the rule is only influencing and not compelling. If a rule is only influencing, then following it is a voluntary act of the mind. But if compelling, then the object does not need to have a mind. We are influenced by man-made laws, and it is our voluntary choice to follow them or break them. On the other hand, our bodies (and all mindless objects with a mass) "follow" the laws of gravity because they are compelling laws, and we cannot help but fall from the sky to the ground. All laws of physics are compelling laws.

I never understood that before. — apokrisis

It's often referred to as the neuro-endocrine system because the two function pretty thoroughly as a team in governing the body.

It's often referred to as the neuro-endocrine system because the two function pretty thoroughly as a team in governing the body. — Mongrel

I will think you will find that is BS. Triggering a gland is different from triggering a muscle. Even if "electrical discharge" is involved in neither.

So just like botox and muscles, there is a reason why endocrine disruptors are chemicals like dioxins or plasticisers that mimic biological messages. It is not stray EM fields you have to worry about - even if the folk with tin-foil hats might tell you otherwise.

I will think you will find that is BS. Triggering a gland is different from triggering a muscle. Even if "electrical discharge" is involved in neither. — apokrisis

Electrical discharge along axons precedes the release of acetylcholine. I'm not sure why you're denying that. It's a science fact, dude. :)

I believe you're suggesting that only a particular kind of material can be organized as a living thing. And this is somehow related to your understanding that life involves signs in a way that non-life does not. Eh.. I was an electronic engineer for 10 years. I've been a nurse for 10 years. Not exactly an expert in either domain, but I know the basics. As it happens, I worked on telecommunications signaling equipment, so I know something about electronic signs. We call a thing a sign because of what it means to us. The dark clouds are a sign that it might rain.

The clouds are signaling. Are they alive? If not, why not?

They're a sign to you, because you know that they signify.

Generally, the only two places where sign-like functionality seems to be fundamental is in living things and mental operations - life and mind. In the inorganic domain, there doesn't seem to me to be anything 'semiotic', but I would be happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken.

Yep. I think apo is working on a theory of life that involves an unconscious signaler and an unconscious receiver. But maybe he didn't mean that, because that type of thing is pervasive in electronics.

Electrical discharge along axons precedes the release of acetylcholine. I'm not sure why you're denying that. It's a science fact, dude. — Mongrel

You can dude all you like. But action potentials are not electron discharges.

Ion flow regulated by voltage-gated channels are electrical in that a change in membrane potential at a point does cause a change in protein conformation causing a pore to open. So a changed potential is a signal which the pore mechanically reads to continue a chain reaction of depolarisations.

But sodium channel blockers don't stop electrons flowing across or along membranes, do they? They block the ability of pores to respond to the signal of a potential difference.

And in describing the machinery of neural signalling, the striking fact is not the electrical gradients (why would it be?) but the intricate semiotics of messaging involved.

Eh.. I was an electronic engineer for 10 years. I've been a nurse for 10 years. — Mongrel

And I've written books on neuroscience.

I believe you're suggesting that only a particular kind of material can be organized as a living thing. And this is somehow related to your understanding that life involves signs in a way that non-life does not. — Mongrel

It's not just my understanding.

Yep. I think apo is working on a theory of life that involves an unconscious signaler and an unconscious receiver. But maybe he didn't mean that, because that type of thing is pervasive in electronics. — Mongrel

Just keep making random shit up.

Only if the rule is only influencing and not compelling. If a rule is only influencing, then following it is a voluntary act of the mind. But if compelling, then the object does not need to have a mind. We are influenced by man-made laws, and it is our voluntary choice to follow them or break them. On the other hand, our bodies (and all mindless objects with a mass) "follow" the laws of gravity because they are compelling laws, and we cannot help but fall from the sky to the ground. All laws of physics are compelling laws. — Samuel Lacrampe

This really doesn't make sense. Laws of physics, such as "the laws of gravity" are all man-made laws. They are generalities produced by logic, which describe the ways that things behave. They don't compel things to behave in the described way. The rule follows the behaviour, as a description, not vise versa.

Laws of physics, such as "the laws of gravity" are all man-made laws. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can't go along with that. Gravity was around long before anyone was there to describe it. Sure, the description is a human invention, but not the fact. It is true that the 'laws of physics' are 'compelling' in a way that 'rules of behaviour' are not, insofar as one cannot avoid falling if pushed, but one can avoid paying one's taxes. It's true, but it's not especially relevant.

We are not talking about "gravity" we are talking about "the laws of gravity". The former refers to a physical property of the world, the latter to a man-made description of how things behave when influenced by that property. We can say that gravity compels objects to move. But to say that objects are moving in this way because they are compelled to by the laws of gravity, is a category error.

The issue here is that we haven't found any thing in nature which corresponds to "the laws of gravity". So we cannot claim that there is some natural "laws of gravity" which are compelling objects to move. The laws of gravity are abstractions made from the movements of objects, they are not abstractions made from the cause of this movement. So we cannot claim that the "laws of gravity" refer to that which causes, or compels objects to move in that way, because it does not.

But to say that objects are moving in this way because they are compelled to by the laws of gravity, is a category error. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is true, and a consequence of the use of the term 'laws', as discussed in Nancy Cartwright's paper No God, No Laws. But nevertheless it is the case that Newton's laws do enable the making of extremely accurate predictions about the behaviour of objects, without which a lot of what we take for granted in day to day life would not be possible.

The accuracy of prediction is not what is at issue here. The claim was made that matter follows rules, and this is what allows for the apparent self-organizing of living beings.

This is what Vagabond Spectre said:

The basic rules of the system (physics) guide the apparent self-organization of the system. So it's not really "self-organizing" it's just that we're recognizing certain behaviors of certain arrangements of matter (which through basic rules) produce a pattern of interaction that exhibits more complex behavior as a whole than the bits following simple rules that comprise it.

Do you see the problem here? We have no precedent whereby we can say that matter is capable of following rules. But Sam L. responded with the claim that matter follows the laws of gravity. That's why I pointed out the category error. The position being argued by VagabondSpectre, and apokrisis as well for that matter, is completely supported by this category error. Simply stated, the error is that existent material can interpret some fundamental laws, to structure itself in a self-organizing way. it is only through this error, that supporters of this position can avoid positing an active principle of "life", and vitalism.

Do you see the problem here? We have no precedent whereby we can say that matter is capable of following rules. But Sam L. responded with the claim that matter follows the laws of gravity. That's why I pointed out the category error. The position being argued by VagabondSpectre, and apokrisis as well for that matter, is completely supported by this category error. Simply stated, the error is that existent material can interpret some fundamental laws, to structure itself in a self-organizing way. it is only through this error, that supporters of this position can avoid positing an active principle of "life", and vitalism. — Metaphysician Undercover

Matter follows a set of physical laws which govern it's behavior is another way of saying "there is consistency in the way matter behaves".

The way matter happens to behave allows it to combine into complex forms whose behavior is an amalgam of the behavior of it's more basic parts.


The basic rules are self-evident brute facts of reality. So when you say "existent material can interpret some fundamental laws", that's a more or less accurate way of saying that matter behaves with some consistency. (I.E: electrons will only exist in certain orbits around atomic nuclei, molecular bonds will only form between certain atomic structures, material texture is an expression of molecular structure (and pressure/temperature), gravitational forces are proportional to distance and mass, light can only be absorbed by substances at certain frequencies/light energy quanta, etc...)

When you have enough of these "rules" which "govern matter" (whether the laws are modeled from matter or matter is modeled from laws doesn't make any difference, we're inexorably trying to describe behavior we observe; laws bend to fit the behavior of matter, not the other way around; the "laws" are just our models.).

-an infinitely regressive series of ever more fundamental materially efficient causes
-true spontaneity and randomness at the 'lowest' level
-or a most fundamental "primary uncaused cause".

I don't think we can split these(I'm treating "materially" in its broadest terms). This is because as I see it the reality is likely to be more subtle than the logic of these scenarios which is to simplistic and two dimensional. So the reality may well be more regressive, spontaneous and uncaused than is conceived of, while not in any way individually describable, or discernible by either.

Personally, I find the idea of an infinitely regressive series of materially efficient causes to be the least coherent or intelligible alternative.

There is a more subtle rendering of this notion in which "infinity" is read as without ends, or bounds, rather than a strict infinity, which itself is a human invention and susceptible to simplistic logical abstraction. Also "materially" can be treated as any form, or kind of extension in any manifestation in any realm, or dimension.

So it can be rewritten as,- an endless, or unbounded causal regression in any medium, or phenomena of extension in which a causal chain is manifest, while having some causal link to the world we find ourselves in.

It is different in that it explicitly embraces the holism of a dichotomy. It says reality is the result of a separation towards two definite and complementary poles of being - chance and necessity, material fluctuation and formal constraint, or what Peirce called tychism and synechism, that is, spontaneity and continuity

Etc.
That's all fine, so is there a "unity", a "singularity" in The Big Bang Event

Again, you are thinking that computers are doing something that is mind-like. And so it is only a matter of time before that gets sufficiently scaled up that it approaches a real mind. But syntax can't generate semantics from syntactical data. Syntax has to be actually acting to constrain interpretive uncertainty. It has to be functioning as the sign by which a mind with a purpose is measuring something about the world. — apokrisis

I realize that traditional computation is not analagous to a mind, but normal computation is not what I'm suggesting might be able to make the matter-mind leap from arbitrary mechanical abstraction and transformation of data to semantic/meaningful/anticipatory interpretation of it.

For example, I say: think of a cat, and hypothetically connected neurons which store the associated syntactic data (memories/images of cats, experiences with cats, the label "cat", and all their associations) start firing, and somehow from the interplay of these recorded and associated data sets emerges a more meaningful interpretation, which represents thought in a conscious mind. I don't pretend to know how living minds work, but I'm willing to experimentally presume that their construction involves data storage mechanisms and complex regimes of continuous and internal data exchange, refinement, and external input/output.

You said that computation doesn't produce a steady-state system, and typically it doesn't. But does the mind produce a steady-state? I would say yes and no given the presumption that connected groups of neurons have persistence in some aspects of their structural networks (the neurons and connections approximating "cat" has somewhat coherent or permanent internal structure AFAIK), but parts of neuronal networks also exhibit growth and change overtime to such a degree that the dynamics of the entire system also change. When strictly doing computational work there's no benefits from erecting a steady state because the data exchanges we're looking to make are well defined and finite, but if we're looking to simulate, then a steady state of data interaction/processing is exactly what occurs. Simulated or artificial neural networks can be trained from various inputs to detect something specific by feeding it specific information/data (like image data or sound-wave data), and I presume this must be analogous to the way that the brain physically transforms stimulus into coherent data. The ongoing exchanges that occur over such an artificial network simulate approximate steady states.

We could train a single artificial neural network to recognize "cats" (by sound or image or something else), and I'm not suggesting that this artificial neural network would therefore be alive or conscious, but I am suggesting that this is the particular kind of state of affairs which forms the base unit of a greater intelligence which is not only able to identify cats, but associate meaning along with it. What I'm suggesting is that a sufficiently large collection of interconnected neural networks which could then be trained by visual, auditory, and other sensory apparatus (detecting the external world in real time) might be able to learn, behave, and communicate (within the allowable physical parameters defined by it's output apparatus) in many of the same ways that human minds presently do. It might require a grossly large or grossly compact computer to achieve this level of simulation, but once we achieve it we're going to be left with no choice but to consider it a mind.

Is the brain not just a wet computer which simulates our own minds?

A computer could be designed to simulate this kind of triadic relation. That is what neural networks do. But they are very clunky or grainy. And getting more biologically realistic is not about the number of circuits to be thrown at the modelling of the world - dealing with the graininess of the syntactic-level representation - but about the lightness of touch or sensitivity of the model's interaction with the world. And so again, it is about a relation founded on extreme material instability. — apokrisis

I still don't understand why life and mind needs to be built on fundamental material instability or it ain't life/mind. The mechanisms of biological life are very delicate, I get that. I get that life "seeks out" (read as: evolution exploited) material instability because materially unstable parts are easier to affect/manipulate, but as such material instability is a feature of biological life because biological life slowly evolved and overtime incorporated what was readily available to be incorporated: the materially unstable.

The main material instability in digital infrastructure is the switch like property of a memory cell. 99% of the complexity of computer operation is located in the complexity of the way these memory cells connect together. Yes a truly learning and sentient machine would behave in a deterministic fashion, but it would be unpredictable, it would demonstrate intelligence, communication, grasp of meaning, it could even have values of it's own if it were given biological imperatives. It's internal computations would involve unguided emergent complexity that we're incapable of deciphering. In short it would exhibit all the traits required to create the illusion of free-will, such as creativity. It might even think it's alive and claim to have continuous conscious perception.

I know why biological life needs extreme material instability, but do minds need it?

That's all fine, so is there a "unity", a "singularity" in The Big Bang Event — Punshhh

There would be a unity or symmetry. That is implied by the fact something could separate or break to become the "mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive" two.

But the further wrinkle is that the initial singular state is not really any kind of concrete state but instead a vagueness - an absence of any substantial thing in both the material and formal sense.

This radical state of indeterminism is difficult to imagine. But so are many mathematical abstractions. And it is a retroductive metaphysical argument as we are working back from what we can currently observe - a divided world - to say something about what must have been the undivided origins.

So note how our universe is limited to just three spatial directions. Going on the "everythingness" argument, there seems no reason that before the Big Bang symmetry breaking moment, when a vague everythingness was constrained, this would mean the pre-Bang was infinitely dimensional. Anything happening, bled into an unlimited number of directions. And so nothing could really happen.

There are good arguments for why the only stable arrangement of dimensions is three. Forces like gravity and EM dilute with the square of the distance. In a universe of less dimensions, force would remain too strong. In more dimensions, it evaporates too fast. So we can argue that there is something Goldilocks about three dimensionality as having the best balance if you have to build a spacetime that is a dissipative structure, expanding and cooling by a steady thermal spread of its radiation.

So from that, you can imagine the pre-bang state being simply radiative fluctuations that instantly thermalise. Every attempt at action gets swallowed up instantly as it is draining in infinite directions and not taking its time spreading out and thinning inside three dimensions.

The Big Bang is thus more of a big collapse from infinite or unbounded directionality to the least number of dimensions that could become an eternal unwinding down towards a heat death.

The details of this argument could be wrong of course. But it illustrates a way of thinking about origins that by-passes the usual causal problem of getting something out of nothing. If you start with vague everythingness (as what prevents everything being possible?) then you only need good arguments why constraints would emerge to limit this unbounded potential to some concrete thermalising arrangement - like our Big Bang/Heat Death universe.

Simply stated, the error is that existent material can interpret some fundamental laws, to structure itself in a self-organizing way. it is only through this error, that supporters of this position can avoid positing an active principle of "life", and vitalism. — Metaphysician Undercover

The problem is more that you are anthropomorphizing matter, in imagining that it would have to be able to "interpret' a law in order to be able to act in accordance with it. Even humans are capable of acting in accordance with laws without being able to interpret them; or even necessarily knowing they are acting in accordance with some law.

I see what you are saying now. Laws of physics are statements and math formulas that predict the behaviour of objects. These objects are compelled to forces, such as gravity, but not laws, such as the laws of gravity. Therefore mindless objects indeed don't "follow laws" in the sense that they are caused or motivated by them to behave in their predictive ways.

With this clarification, it seems there is not much in common between human laws and laws of physics. The two types of "laws" have completely difference essences.

The problem is that indeed the "map is not (is never) the territory". So our idea of infinity is not infinity, our idea of the continuum is not the continuum, our idea of the world is not the world, and so on. But, despite the fact that when we attempt to address these metaphysical issues we are always, as Wittgenstein says "running up against the limits of language", we can only think in the terms of what we are capable of thinking, and speak in the terms of what we are capable of saying, and any purportedly greater reality beyond our possible understanding is of no use to our discourses if we cannot say what it is.

The accuracy of prediction is not what is at issue here. The claim was made that matter follows rules, and this is what allows for the apparent self-organizing of living beings. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do indeed see the problem - it is reductionism, pure and simple.

The basic rules are self-evident brute facts of reality. So when you say "existent material can interpret some fundamental laws", that's a more or less accurate way of saying that matter behaves with some consistency. — VagabondSpectre

But, as Apokrisis has shown in great length and detail, you can;t get from physical laws to life by way of a linear progression. 'The laws of matter', qua physical law, just don't cut it. What you're unconsciously doing is attributing what was formerly thought to be 'divine law' to 'physical law', which is the fundamental basis of materialism.

I might also mention by way of a footnote, that questions such as 'how life began', although they're central to the cultural conflict between science and religion in the West, are not considered significant by Buddhists, who don't premise their discipline on the idea of finding an origin or first cause. As far as Buddhists are concerned, debates about what came before the big bang, or such matters, are categorised as being like the asking of questions about 'who shot the poisoned arrow' that you have been struck by, instead of seeking treatment and cure.

But Sam L. responded with the claim that matter follows the laws of gravity. That's why I pointed out the category error. The position being argued by VagabondSpectre, and apokrisis as well for that matter, is completely supported by this category error. Simply stated, the error is that existent material can interpret some fundamental laws, to structure itself in a self-organizing way. it is only through this error, that supporters of this position can avoid positing an active principle of "life", and vitalism. — Metaphysician Undercover

My position on the laws of physics is that - to avoid any mystery - laws are "material history". Laws are simply the constraints that accumulate as a system (even a whole Universe) develops its organisation.

So that is how something global can be felt locally. The Universe has crystalised as some general material state. And that constrains all local actions in radical fashion from then on.

This again is a big advantage of turning the usual notion of material existence on its head.

The usual notion is that existence is the result of causal construction. First there was nothing, and then things got added. So that implies someone must have chosen the laws of nature. There was a law-giver who had some free choice and now somehow every object knows to obey the rules.

But a Peircean semiotic metaphysics - one where existence develops as a habit - says instead everything is possible and then actuality arises by most of that possibility getting suppressed. So the universal laws are universal states of constraint - the historical removal of a whole bunch of possibility. The objects left at the end of the process are heavily restricted in their actions - and by the same token, they then enjoy the equally definite freedoms that thus remain.

That is what Newtonianism was about. The motion of massive bodies is universally restricted so that it is only free, or inertial, if it is constant motion in a straight line or spinning on a spot (translational and rotational symmetry is preserved). So it is extreme restriction which underpins extreme freedom - the inertia that means a mass has some "actual physical properties", like a quantifiable position and momentum.

So laws are a mystery in a "something from nothing" metaphysics. There seems no reason for the rules, and no connection between these abstractions and the concrete objects they determine.

But a constraints-based holistic metaphysics says instead that laws are simply historically embedded material conditions. History fixes the world in general ways that then everywhere impinge as constraints on what can happen. But in doing that, those same constraints also underpin the freedoms that local objects can then call their own.

There seems no reason for the rules, and no connection between these abstractions and the concrete objects they determine. — apokrisis

One of my bits of folk wisdom is that 'the order of nature' is one thing, but 'the nature of order' another question altogether. In other words, science can clearly exploit the order of nature by discovering regularities and making predictions on that basis. But that has lead many people to assume that science somehow can explain those very same regularities, when really why there are such regularities is beyond physics - it's a metaphysical question