So when you say 'recognize' are you implying that reason, causal relations are 'out there'? — aporiap

Notice the implicit dualism of 'out there'. It imagines 'the world', as object, to me, the observer, 'in here'. Whatever is real is 'out there somewhere'. That is what I call 'instinctive naturalism'. I'm not saying it's wrong - but it is something to be noticed.

But I say the development of language, logic and reasoning - which I'm sure are inextricably connected - requires something more than the fortuitous combination of elements. It requires the ability to recognise meaning, to see that one type of thing equals or differs from another type of thing. That is inherently an abstract process, isn't it? Where else in nature do you find an analogy for that? I think this is why semiotics and bio-semiotics have become so influential of late - it's because of the 'language-like' processes that seem inherent in nature itself, which are not amenable to reduction to physical or lower-level processes.

(Actually there's a relevant review of this very topic, here (granted, it's in a conservative religious journal, but it's not an ID piece, and the authors concerned are definitely not pushing a religious ideology.)

Notice the implicit dualism of 'out there'. It imagines 'the world', as object, to me, the observer, 'in here'. Whatever is real is 'out there somewhere'. That is what I call 'instinctive naturalism'. I'm not saying it's wrong - but it is something to be noticed. — Wayfarer

Well I think the whole psychologism framing creates a dualism in posing the origin of logic being 'mental' vs 'physical' so I just took you saying 'recognize' as opposed to 'construct' to mean you side on the 'physical' side of the division.

But I say the development of language, logic and reasoning - which I'm sure are inextricably connected - requires something more than the fortuitous combination of elements. [It requires the ability to recognise meaning, to see that one type of thing equals or differs from another type of thing. That is inherently an abstract process, isn't it? Where else in nature do you find an analogy for that? I think this is why semiotics and bio-semiotics have become so influential of late - it's because of the 'language-like' processes that seem inherent in nature itself, which are not amenable to reduction to physical or lower-level processes.

You seem to reduce a physicalist picture of language, logic and reasoning to being in terms of a fortuitous combination of elements.

But this is simplification. There are [or at least from our scale, seem to be] rules that govern interaction between elementary particles. These principles can generate processes that result in "meaning-carrying" and "meaning recognizing" phemonena - e.g. a cell responding to a hostile environment, a cell responding to a change in signaling factors surrounding it. You can analyze these processes in terms of elemental ones that fundamentally work via electromagnetic and mechanical mechanisms- enzyme-substrate binding, diffusion electrochemical gradients, etc.

So it's not just fortune or luck at work int he world and hence I don't think you need to assume the physical needs some sort of extra element for there to be a logic intrinsic to it.

So seems like you think we start out with our own inference rules and we use it to figure out or 'discover' what the real 'rules' or 'logic' that's intrinsic to the world is [likewise with the 'actual' causal relations' and so on.].

Sorry for the late response, anyway I'll respond now since I still grapple with issues raised in the OP.

That's not possible. "Raw experience" as such is an abstraction, not an actual phenomenological way of experiencing. Even with the presence of some or the other form of aphasia, there still are background experiences present. — Ying

Firstly this is a strawman. My point doesn't depend on whether it's actually possible to perceive only color incongruities [which to me seems like a straight forward yes.. I mean what else do you actually directly see instead of infer that you see? Again I'm using color as a stand-in for the qualia that actually presents to you], the point stands by virtue of the fact that visual datum merely consists of essentially color and motion data. It's not objects that stream into your eyes, it's wavelengths of light spatially organized that change in position over time. Whether there is absolute significance or meaning to spatially separated sharp differences in color that form what we perceive as object boundaries or whether this is just a mind-independently meaningless arrangement, is my dillema and forms the basis for the further questions in OP.