Personally I look at most of what has been said in this thread in terms of computability. I'm not a simulation theorist and don't believe in it given complexity class issues arising once one would try and model in expspace and exptime.

Furthermore, regarding my previous post, it seems possible that there could be some things one can have in causality (think synchronicity or Bell's inequality locality and non-locality) that can't simply be modeled.

Personally I look at most of what has been said in this thread in terms of computability. — Shawn

But remember Beckenstein’s bound? Even information theory has achieved the entropic closure which seals its deal.

Furthermore, regarding my previous post, it seems possible that there could be some things one can have in causality (think synchronicity or Bell's inequality locality and non-locality) that can't simply be modeled. — Shawn

That's another line of attack. To what degree can we tolerate a physics that is illogical or a logic that is unphysical?

The two have to hang together in some deep way or they both risk becoming abstract nonsense.

And there is a lot of that about, hey? :razz:

Sure, take it from this point of view. How could truth be possible without a formally consistent and complete system to render it as such?

How could truth be possible without a formally consistent and complete system to render it as such? — Shawn

Particular truths must be constrained by general truths. Particular worlds must be constrained by general worlds. This is the common structure of both a scientific and a mathematical approach to the business of metaphysical inquiry. As Peirce made especially clear.

Do you think, as possibly quite interesting ponderance, that if physics can be modeled in a direct correspondence between logic (a computer) and the world, then would that mean by entailment that certain features if not the entirety of the model proves (quite literally proof of simulation in logical space, that the system of logic utilized by the model itself) that it is actually a formally complete and consistent system contra Gödel?

No I think “computation” is quite misguided in that direction. And what logic are we talking about? Boolean, Turing machine, floating point simulation, python? Just some kind of digitalism in general? The questioned would have to be sharpened.

You could think about where maths and physics do come close as an effort to simulate reality. QCD lattice models of the inside of a proton. What is achieved and what is glossed over might inform such a debate. But probably not.

I know digital physics is one of those popular topics. But I don’t believe that is what information - as it applies as the notion of physical degrees of freedom or entopy bits - has anything to do with computational logic.

Holography is about dimensional constraint - extracting bits from wholes. Computation is about constructing patterns from bits.

Logic is mechanistic about relations, so I don't see the need to type-token issues. I also don't think logic has properties ascribed to these relations, again it's possible to do so as they do such things in computer games. Yet, to talk again in terms of complexity class I don't think we could do the things nature or any mechanistic conception of nature as science would we want or hope to do.

Again, I am not a simulation proponent but am only interested in logic being descriptive of physics.

I don't think we can have the cake and eat it too here. The way things seem is that the very notion of possibility within a system of physical laws gives rise to a logic that is modal. Modality might be a better term than contingent... — Shawn

I disagree. By 'contingent' I mean something that might to cease to exist/be valid. If physical laws are something contingent and they at some point change, the criteria by which we consider an explanation 'coherent' change, if we take them as the foundation of logic. I don't think that is acceptable.

It would be interesting to approach your question from the perspective of a counterfactual. What would a physics look like that could not be apprehended by any form of inferential or abductive reasoning? I don't think such questions are coherent, and there seems to be plenty of evidence attesting that everything in physics can be modeled. If it is indeed true that human logic can apprehend physics in a model or what have you (I think the right term, nowadays, is a "simulation"), then the circularity dissipates. — Shawn

Maybe physical theories, models etc cannot give us a picture of the 'physical world' but only useful tools to make predictions. If that is the case, it might be said that they work 'as if' they are a correct 'description'.

Consider, for instance, these two phrases:
"The sun moves from east to west and I predict that it reaches its maximum height at noon"
"When the bat hits the ball, (edit: it produces a force that) will cause an acceleration on the ball"

The first phrase is coherent, in many situations we can use it 'as if' it's correct, but it is nevertheless wrong if we take it literally: we know that the sun's movement is merely apparent. But for most practical situations I can certainly live 'as if' it's correct. I can take it seriously but not literally.
The second one is also coherent, for most practical purposes valid and yet we know that it cannot be taken as literally true.

You seem to assume that physical reality can be literally 'mapped' in a conceptual model, i.e. it has a structure that can be literally 'translated' in a conceptual framework. I guess that if we assume that this is true then maybe we might think that logic has a 'physical basis' (although then one might ask why this is so... but this is another story for another time).

On the other hand, physical theories might be able to work even if they cannot give a faithful picture of physical reality. But if this is true, then logic isn't really grounded in physics: the conceptual map is imputed by us and is not 'forced' by physical reality.

If a simulation were so accurate that it would be impossible to distinguish it from 'reality', it could be still possible that such a simulation would be correct for all practical purposes and not a literal picture of reality.

In brief, I think that your reasoning is based on a hidden assumption, i.e. that it is possible to build a conceptual 'map' of reality that is a literal picture of it.

By 'contingent' I mean something that might to cease to exist/be valid. If physical laws are something contingent and they at some point change, the criteria by which we consider an explanation 'coherent' change, if we take them as the foundation of logic. I don't think that is acceptable. — boundless

I'd like to point out that I view the very notion of having possibility within a system can only mean in terms of modal logic the necessity of determined states which are truth apt regarding causality.

You seem to assume that physical reality can be literally 'mapped' in a conceptual model, i.e. it has a structure that can be literally 'translated' in a conceptual framework. I guess that if we assume that this is true then maybe we might think that logic has a 'physical basis' (although then one might ask why this is so... but this is another story for another time). — boundless

I hope this thread can go in such a direction. It seems plausible that the logic of causality can only be defined materially and temporarily.

I disagree. By 'contingent' I mean something that might to cease to exist/be valid. If physical laws are something contingent and they at some point change, the criteria by which we consider an explanation 'coherent' change, if we take them as the foundation of logic. I don't think that is acceptable. — boundless

I'd like to address this again given that my previous response was just conjecture. What I want to point out is the ability for a system to change. This change is dictated by causality. To understand causality we have to regard nature as a unitary system evolving through time. So, with this said, what do you think "possibility" might mean?

I'd like to point out that I view the very notion of having possibility within a system can only mean in terms of modal logic the necessity of determined states which are truth apt regarding causality. — Shawn

What do you thank that is the 'ground' of modal logic?

IMO: logic has no ground at all.

I hope this thread can go in such a direction. It seems plausible that the logic of causality can only be defined materially and temporarily. — Shawn

Let's concede that is indeed the case.

It seems to me that, according to you, we should infer logical principles by observing physical phenomena, which we assume that have regularities which can be 'translated faithfully' in a conceptual map.
Let's assume that it is indeed possible, in principle, to infer logical principles in this way.
But what does gaurantee us that, indeed, our inference is correct? On what grounds can we be sure that our inference is correct?

We cannot say 'further observations' because, after all, the problem remains the same.

So we now have two assumptions: (1) physical phenomena have regularities that can be 'faithfully translated' to conceptual maps/schemes and (2) we can know logical principles because we can have valid inferences based on observations made on the said physical phenomena

These two assumptions might be considered reasonable but... we have introduced the concept of 'inference', which is a type of logical operation which we actually want to ground in physical observations. This suggests to me that it is best to assume that logic is primitive.

I'd like to address this again given that my previous response was just conjecture. What I want to point out is the ability for a system to change. This change is dictated by causality. To understand causality we have to regard nature as a unitary system evolving through time. So, with this said, what do you think "possibility" might mean? — Shawn

I'll respond to this later!

It seems to me that, according to you, we should infer logical principles by observing physical phenomena, which we assume that have regularities which can be 'translated faithfully' in a conceptual map.
Let's assume that it is indeed possible, in principle, to infer logical principles in this way.
But what does gaurantee us that, indeed, our inference is correct? On what grounds can we be sure that our inference is correct? — boundless

The concept is so vaguely understandable only based on the way we perceive change itself. I don't really have an answer as to these deep "why" questions about what makes change possible.

What do you thank that is the 'ground' of modal logic? — boundless

Modal logic is supposedly grounded by processism. I think that's the best answer I can give.

I'd like to address this again given that my previous response was just conjecture. What I want to point out is the ability for a system to change. This change is dictated by causality. To understand causality we have to regard nature as a unitary system evolving through time. So, with this said, what do you think "possibility" might mean? — Shawn

Well, I admit that I have some difficulties to answer to your question. First of all, I wasn't assuming that change is necessarily due to causality. Second, I was merely saying that we simply do not know if 'laws of nature' are contingent or not.

Anyway, I might define 'possibility' as a 'one state' in a collection of other possible state that 'something' might have.
So, a 'contingent entity' might be taken to mean that such an 'entity' can be either 'exist' or 'do not exist'.

The concept is so vaguely understandable only based on the way we perceive change itself. I don't really have an answer as to these deep "why" questions about what makes change possible. — Shawn

Well, I think that if we want to 'ground' logic then such answers must in some ways be answered.
I was trying to point out that 'grounding' logic on something else only seems to lead to some assumptions which are themselves 'ungrounded' and that, in fact, I think even stating those assumptions requires logic.

Modal logic is supposedly grounded by processism. I think that's the best answer I can give. — Shawn

Ok. Maybe you are right, but I think that even modal logic doesn't need such a 'grounding'

Physics cannot describe logic: the latter is presupposed for the former. E.g., to describe the physical relations of things, one must first presuppose that whatever is described is true and not also false.

IMO: logic has no ground at all. — boundless

Why not ground logic in its practical consequences? Like science.

That way entailment and causality might start to look like they have something in common.

Why not ground logic in its practical consequences? Like science. — apokrisis

Because, e.g. in order to establish if something is useful you need to have criteria to establish that it is useful, i.e. coherent with the concept of 'useful'.

Also, practical consequences are empirical facts.

That way entailment and causality might start to look like they have something in common. — apokrisis

I think that they do have something in common. In order to formulate the concept of 'causality', I think you need entailment as a prerequisite.

Not a very adventurous reply.

Because, e.g. in order to establish if something is useful you need to have criteria to establish that it is useful, i.e. coherent with the concept of 'useful'. — boundless

What else leaves us satisfied but that something works. It achieves some goal. It is consistent with our aims.

So sure there is a circularity here. But we know how to approach that. Is it impossible to say anything about what we find to be useful about a logic as opposed to a logic that we think of as patently useless?

We routinely apply this constraint to physics. What makes it impossible in logics? Especially given as we do it routinely. To the point that we think we know what has practical bite and what is verging on abstract nonsense.

Also, practical consequences are empirical facts. — boundless

Empirical facts are measurements. So epistemic facts really. Numbers on dials ready to get fed into formulas.

Physics might not be that physical, just as logic ain’t that unphysical when you get down to it. It is a bit of a social construction to claim that logic is some free choice abstract from reality, or indeed an inhabitant of Platonia.

I think that they do have something in common. In order to formulate the concept of 'causality', I think you need entailment as a prerequisite. — boundless

And vice versa. Did logic not arise from causal reasoning about nature? The concept of atomic actions? The concept of transformations but also closure?

How could both logic and physics be idealised in the language of number - of equations and variables, of operations and values - unless they are both birthed from the same deep concept? Global constraints coupled to local degrees of freedom. The dialectical intersection of necessity and chance.

Or structures and morphisms if you must. :wink:

Perhaps a sharper way to put it. If logic is meant to structure our thoughts and causality to structure the world, why should they not correspond in this way. Why not the pragmatic constraint that optimises the value of both?

The definition of pragmatic is found in the limit of inquiry. When further refinement is agreed to be pointless. A difference that would make no difference.

Every hates effective theory. But what if that is just the nature of both physics and logic? As we discover in our own good time.

What else leaves us satisfied but that something works. It achieves some goal. It is consistent with our aims. — apokrisis

I think I understand what you mean, but IMO logic is prior than understanding that. In fact, some kind of intuition of logical principles might be innate. Maybe even animals.

Of course I am speculating here. But I think no matter one tries to define logic with respect to something else, one encounters difficulties, circularities and so on.

We routinely apply this constraint to physics. What makes it impossible in logics? Especially given as we do it routinely. To the point that we think we know what has practical bite and what is verging on abstract nonsense. — apokrisis

In a sense, I think I agree. After all, if logic was useless nobody would employ it. But, on the other hand, even understanding the concept of 'usefulness' relies on understanding logic. What do you think?

Physics might not be that physical, just as logic ain’t that unphysical when you get down to it. It is a bit of a social construction to claim that logic is some free choice abstract from reality, or indeed an inhabitant of Platonia. — apokrisis

Not sure what you are getting at here. I don't think that saying that logic is 'primitive', 'a groundless ground' so to speak, requires a platonic view (although, maybe, it can be used as an argument in favor for such a view... but again, I don't think that if one accept that logic is not grounded in anything, then one is forced to accept a platonic view).

Ironically, what I am saying is IMO consistent with a pragmatical view of logic, given that there is no compelling evidence for a view or another of the 'ontology' of logic. Keeping it groundless, primitive, allows us to use it without relying on a theory of a supposed ontological 'ground' of logic.

↪boundless Perhaps a sharper way to put it. If logic is meant to structure our thoughts and causality to structure the world, why should they not correspond in this way. Why not the pragmatic constraint that optimises the value of both? — apokrisis

Let's say that, indeed, logical principles are a 'reflection' of an intelligible structure of the world. How could one 'prove' this view?

If one cannot prove this view, is this view really more pragmatically significant than other philosophical positions about the 'ontology' of logic (or the position that building an ontology of logic is impossible)?

Let's say one is a platonist. Does platonism limit the activity of logic more than other views?

The definition of pragmatic is found in the limit of inquiry. When further refinement is agreed to be pointless. A difference that would make no difference. — apokrisis

Yeah, I think I agree.

Every hates effective theory. But what if that is just the nature of both physics and logic? As we discover in our own good time. — apokrisis

Ok. But in order to accept a view or another, it might be needed to be shown that such a view is better than others (or a skeptical approach on the issue).

I use the 'might' here because, after all, it may not be the only criterion to choose a view over another.

In fact, some kind of intuition of logical principles might be innate. Maybe even animals. — boundless

Yep. Animals can induce or form associations. They can tell the difference between one, two three and many. But deduction, like the counting, or learning grammatical structure, is something no other animal but humans can turn into a fluid skill. So we can make something of that. The mindset behind logical and physical accounts of the world has some neuroantomical basis. We evolved this basic habit of thought that is recursive. We find it easy to think in a nested hierarchical fashion. A calculus of distinctions.

We likely evolved this first over a million years of tool making/using, and then this was further solidified by the development of articulate speech. We needed to think in terms of sequences of construction. Hold a rock and chip it into a desired form. Face the world and turn it into a “who did what to whom” narration.

So there is a pragmatic ground to how we might think reality is optimally decoded. A grammatical instinct. A semiotic system of rules and words, relations and relata, syntax and semantics. A habit of mind that proved itself by its sturdy usefulness over a million years. Even though it was not about the world but about our being able to impose ourself in a mechanical fashion - action sequences leading to desired results - on our world.

Thus there is a ground. But it is neither something of the world or even of our minds. It is a propositional attitude that arose from a semiotic modelling relation with the world. It is neither a pure realism or a pure idealism. It is something that cognitively worked. A tool using hominid could structure its world with a hierarchical order. A grammatical sapiens could impose a further level of still more consciously-distancing narrative structure,

We see then the ancient world where causality continued to have a human-centric narrativism, The animistic and magical thinking where the landscape is alive with spirits and powers. Even at the time of the Hesiod, the Greeks were equally comfortable with causal explanations that “the gods did it” as some more naturalistic account of why a storm blew up or sickness took a child.

Then we get to Anaximander and the first systematic naturalism. We have dialectical reasoning that develops into a variety of causal accounts such as hylomorphism and atomism. We have geometry and arithmetic becoming formalised by the constraints - the closure - of proofs.

What was a logic and causality of narration becomes a logic and causality founded in number rather than words. And this in turn becomes dialectically divided as science and maths. The grammar of physical nature and the grammar of pure ideas.

So yes, logic and causality seem to speak from different spheres today. And we are as comfortable with that as those of the Hesiod era were comfortable mixing the registers of mythical and animistic accounts with more physical and naturalistic accounts.

It seems to work that there is structured speech about the real physics of the world and the true or valid arguments of the mind.

And yet dig down. It all starts and ends in the pragmatism of the semiotic modelling relation we have with the world. What works - and thus what we believe in - is our ability to impose an imagined structuring order on our lived reality.

The foundation of logical and causal thinking is this uneasy thing that is neither properly a realism or an idealism. It is instead a system for constructing dialectical structure - nested hierarchies or recursive pattern - that can fashion the world into ways that conform with our desires.

We use models of logic/causality to constrain nature mechanically. It started with tool-making, then society-making, then civilisation and technology making.

And we are left uneasy - some even claim a foundational crisis - as it is all kind of both weirdly intuitive yet also neither clearly of the world or of the mind.

But, on the other hand, even understanding the concept of 'usefulness' relies on understanding logic. What do you think? — boundless

Self-referentiality is not an issue for a self-organising system. Circularity creates problems. Hierarchies fix them. The disjunction of the dyad becomes the conjunction of the triad.

Let's say that, indeed, logical principles are a 'reflection' of an intelligible structure of the world. How could one 'prove' this view? — boundless

I am taking the Peircean approach here. Truth is what a rational process of inquiry arrives at in the limit.

We hazard a guess, take the risk of assuming a belief, and then discover the pragmatic consequences of doing that. We systematically doubt what we have assumed until we reach a point that further doubt has become useless. Moot. A difference that no longer could make a difference in practice.

Proof seems a really big thing. But it is only important to the deductive phase of Peirce’s three stages in the development of a state of reasonable belief.

We start with the abductive guess. An idea about an explanation. Then we apply a process of deduction that is rigorous in terms of being closed for entailment. We break down our intuition into a set of specific logical expectations. This formal encoding of a proposition - if A, then B, or however we might phrase it - proposes a consequence we can then measure in terms of what actually follows. We can inductively confirm the proposition to the degree that it isn’t being contradicted.

But in order to accept a view or another, it might be needed to be shown that such a view is better than others (or a skeptical approach on the issue). — boundless

If the semiotic modelling relation has been working for life and mind since its biological beginning, and a semiosis founded in number is merely the latest instantiation of this natural story, then that would be a pretty grounded tale I would have thought.

One that is neither stranded in realism or idealism but founded in a lived relation that humans have with their world.

One that is neither stranded in realism or idealism but founded in a lived relation that humans have with their world. — apokrisis

There's a rather awkward neologism I've heard several times of late, 'transjective - transcending the distinction between subjective and objective, or referring to a property not of the subject or the environment but a relatedness co-created between them.' I wonder if that is what you have in mind, and whether it also describes applied mathematics? (I assume it's a word of recent origin, wiktionary's earliest usage dates only to 2009.)

Many thanks for the informative and very interesting response. To be fair, I am not really familar with biosemiosis and Peirce's philosophy. So, I am sorry if some of my questions are 'trivial'.

Thus there is a ground. But it is neither something of the world or even of our minds. It is a propositional attitude that arose from a semiotic modelling relation with the world. It is neither a pure realism or a pure idealism. It is something that cognitively worked. A tool using hominid could structure its world with a hierarchical order. A grammatical sapiens could impose a further level of still more consciously-distancing narrative structure, — apokrisis

Let's take a broad definition of 'ontological idealism' and a somewhat restricted one of 'ontological realism', here (I think that you are using here). Let's say that 'ontological idealism' means that fundamental reality is mental and every other kind of 'realities' are dependent on that ultimate reality. On the other hand, 'ontological realism' as the view that there is an ultimate reality, which is of a non-mental kind and minds ontologically depend on it.

Now, I think that it can be argued, like I think you do, that all living organisms (and maybe even some of their components and non-living things like viruses) do have a 'semiotic modelling' of the world, as you say. But it this is true, then at least some aspect of their 'being' can be rightly said to be 'mental' (a very, very primitive kind of 'mentality', not a truly sentient one...).

In your view, is 'mentality' there in all 'levels' of 'physical reality' or does it emerge at some point? Or are you endorsing a form of 'panpsychism', where mentality is 'there' at the fundamental level of 'reality' (as one aspect of it)?
I ask you this because, unless your view is a sort of 'panpsychism' it should be called 'realism' as defined above. Of course, this is not a problem 'in itself', so to speak, but it is a problem if this kind of 'realism' assumes intelligibility. If intelligibility is assumed, then such an assumption remains an arbitrary feature of the 'world-view' because the 'emergent minds' are not in a position to know if their claim of intelligibility is sound or is mistaken. On the other end, if your view is 'panpsychist', then this problem does not really arise because intelligibility is an intrinsic feature of the world so to speak.

We hazard a guess, take the risk of assuming a belief, and then discover the pragmatic consequences of doing that. We systematically doubt what we have assumed until we reach a point that further doubt has become useless. Moot. A difference that no longer could make a difference in practice. — apokrisis

At which point does a belief, though, acquire the status of 'knowledge'?

For instance, we both agreeded in the other thread that newtonian mechanics is best understood as an useful 'fictional model' that give us the possibility to make predicitions, applications and so on. We know e.g. that a 'realistic' interpretation of 'newtonian force' as a physical entity is inappropriate.
But for a long time, an ontological interpretation of newtonian physics seemed to be supported by experiments.

Of course, we can guess, assume a belief, we can even speak of knowledge in some sense, but it's not certainty. Empirical knowledge doesn't seem to be able to give us certainty. Yet, logical necessity seems to demand it.

I am not saying that your view is wrong but IMO grounding logic in an uncertain knowledge doesn't seem a real 'grounding'. Logic reamains 'groundless' or at best 'grounded' as are empirical sciences. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but seems to IMO contrast the 'necessity' of logic. But maybe it's not an important point. IMO it is but I can understand why you do not think it is.

Neither I believe that, say, platonism grounds logic. It proposes a ground, tries to give a justification of logic. But that's not enough.

If the semiotic modelling relation has been working for life and mind since its biological beginning, and a semiosis founded in number is merely the latest instantiation of this natural story, then that would be a pretty grounded tale I would have thought. — apokrisis

If 'semiotic modelling' - I am wrong to call it 'mentation'? - has only been working since a certain point of this universe history, doesn't it lead us to an emergentist view?

BTW, are you familiar to the late Bohm views on 'active information'. I think that you would find them akin to yours.

Of course, we can guess, assume a belief, we can even speak of knowledge in some sense, but it's not certainty. Empirical knowledge doesn't seem to be able to give us certainty. Yet, logical necessity seems to demand it. — boundless

I want to stress that what I am saying is more like a skeptical position. I am suspending my belief on what the ground, if any, of logic (and mathematics) is. Why? Because I think we can't be certain of any view about this.

There's a rather awkward neologism I've heard several times of late, 'transjective — Wayfarer

Thanks for the pointer to John
Vervaeke. If you skim this review article, you can see he talks about all the same stuff as me. Modelling relations, anticipatory models, enactive cognition. So sits pretty squarely in what has now become the mainstream paradigm of cognitive science.

Vervaeke coins a few of his own terms. All academics have to brand themselves as adding something to the debate.

If I were criticising, I would say he would do better if he could root his general cognitive story in the nitty gritty of the brain's functional anatomy. Close the gap between the psychology and the neurology.

But generally his published papers are coming from the same place.

you can see he talks about all the same stuff as me. Modelling relations, anticipatory models, enactive cognition. So sits pretty squarely in what has now become the mainstream paradigm of cognitive science. — apokrisis

Very much. His main claim to fame was a lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. He's pretty wide-ranging but tries to stay within the bounds of cognitive science.

Let's say that 'ontological idealism' means that fundamental reality is mental and every other kind of 'realities' are dependent on that ultimate reality. — boundless

No. I was making an argument completely in a realist register there. No "mind stuff" or "qualia" at all. Our cognition has a physically real structure (or physically realised structure), just as the world has a physical structure too. And the semiotic point is that the cognitive structure is an embodied modelling relation which has the general purpose of regulating an organism's extended environment.

What we "experience" is not a re-presentation of reality, nor some epiphenomenal illusion, but a semiotic Umwelt. Which is what it feels like to be in the flow of living a life from a self-ish point of view.

This is a structuralist metaphysics that stands opposed to the usual materialist story. And it is thus – according to semiotic theory – an irreducibly triadic story, not the usual tale of some fundamental or monistic "stuff".

The triadic relation is the fundamental reality. And while it is easy to talk in a phenomenological register about the mind as being its own separate realm of experience or qualia, we know even from neuroscience that there is no structured experience without our brains being in interaction with an already structured world.

In a sensory deprivation chamber, we soon loose any normal sense of being in a body, and even being in a normal flow of thought. Just to see the world in a stable fashion, we need to jitter our eyeballs and keep "surprising" the photoreceptors with the fact that the boring backdrop that was there an instant ago is still there – and remains ignorable – right now.

So my argument starts from an enactive cognition perspective. There is a brain in a modelling relation with a world, and so already we are talking about the reality of a functional, physically-embodied, process.

After that, in talking about our intellectual modelling of causality and logic, we can assign each to its "realm" in the fashion of the good old Cartesian mind~world divide. This is the conventional socially-constructed way of looking at things which of course was the basis for how humans even added self-awareness, "freewill", complex feelings, and all the rest as sociocultural habits of cognition.

Breaking things into mind and world is physically incorrect (a cognitive neuroscientist would say), but it is also the cultural convention which turns a smart ape into a self-actualising human being.

Sorry, that is a lot of complexity. But it goes to the stress I lay on there being not just a triadic semiotic modelling relation in play, but with the physical reality of life and mind, this dynamic plays out at four key levels of semiotic mechanism – genes, neurons, words and numbers. So in terms of causality vs entailment, I was making a case of how this applies semiotically at the level of human sociocultural organisation once it has become a talk at the level of "pure abstraction" – a symbolism of number systems.

I ask you this because, unless your view is a sort of 'panpsychism' it should be called 'realism' as defined above. — boundless

After my explanation, you can see I am definitely neither arguing for a monistic, nor dyadic, version of panpsychism. But also I am not arguing for a conventional realism.

I wasn't trying to argue a general case at all, just saying something about how – after the ancient Greek "mathematical turn" – logic and causality became their own divergent academic domains. That can be simply described as scholarly convenience. It could be construed as causality speaking to the experiment-restricted physics and entailment speaking to the Platonically soaring maths.

However if you want the full Peircean semiotic position, that says we know life and mind to be biosemiotic. That is just everyday psychology and biology now. It is grounded in biophysics and gives us a consistent account of the structure of human relations with the world through all its four levels of semiotic mechanism.

Controversially on PF, that means all of the humanities fall under the domain of biosemiosis as a general science of meaningful thought and behaviour.

And then also speculatively and controversially, one can go with Peirce and wonder about pansemiosis as a metaphysics of reality in general. The same triadic relational structure could account for the deep causality of the Cosmos as a whole. The Big Bang Universe becomes Peirce's "growth of universal reasonableness". The emergence of hierarchical or topological order from out of a "quantum foam".

You say you did condensed matter physics? Dissipative structure can be seen as this pansemiotic thesis now being realised in physicalist theory.

Peirce's position was that what works as a structure of phenomenology – the givenness of our experience – should work as the structure of logic as the refined product of how we find ourselves thinking and feeling and reasoning. So the first step is from our psychology to our logic.

Then the second step is finding that the world beyond is also structured by the logic that we found in our minds. It too has a causality that is a process of reason – or at least triadically structured in some meaningful way.

Of course Peirce didn't know about genes and so had no concrete model of how there could be an actual machinery of semiosis. So that meant he got a little woo in treating mind and cosmos as being a little too literally the same. But the Universe, as a dissipative structure, lacks an encoding machinery. We only kind of imagine that as the case in now talking about holographic spacetime boundaries and suchlike. A useful metaphor with calculable consequences.

Biosemiosis has since come along to make that difference clear. And that also sparked the conversation about pansemiosis as now being covered by dissipative structure theory.

So it is all a concrete realist project. But one that hopes to ground the sciences of life and mind in the sciences of physics and chemistry, with now an "epistemic cut" to glue the two sides of the divide, and so get rid of the tired old "Cartesian gap".

This is why I take my pragmatist approach in this thread. Logic and causality are both modelling constructs so come from the same place – human matheo-semiosis. They are taken to speak to a Cartesian divided reality, but we should expect them to be pragmatically related by the triadicism of the semiotic modeling relation.

If one seems to deal in entropic relations, the other in informational relations, then well, this is just what a biosemiotician would expect. A biosemiotic story is all about how this division is actually necessary to get to the next thing of its fruitful interaction which is the "living and mindful" point.

I am not saying that your view is wrong but IMO grounding logic in an uncertain knowledge doesn't seem a real 'grounding'. — boundless

Isn't this like being nervous of riding a bicycle as its obviously unstable and only going to get more dangerous the faster you pedal?

A tripod is a firmer base than a single point of contact, no? So just think of how soundly based pragmatism seems when compared to the instability of the folk flipping between whether maths is a free construction or a Platonic truth. Trying to balance the pencil on it tip and wondering why it always falls.

Or another metaphor, calling for a grounding does the very opposite as we find with the "tower of turtles" infinite regress. If we try to find solid ground, it immediately drops endlessly away.

The triadic hierarchical approach instead grounds in the pragmatism of the dialectic. The middle ground is that which is bounded both looking up and looking down.

Looking down, the middle ground dissolves into a blur of smallness. A random jitter of events that just smooths over into one kind of continuum. And likewise, looking up and any differences swell until just one "difference" so completely fills our vision, like the sky, that it becomes a global continuum to match the local one.

So our middle ground is secured by the closure of being the meat in a sandwich of complementary limits. Or in the parlance of cosmology, a de Sitter conformal universe. A global container specified by general relativity with a local contents specified by quantum field theory.

So your instinct is to demand a reduction to a single monistic ground. The Peircean counter-argument is that reality is a hierarchical structure of relations, and that makes it irreducibly triadic.

Reality doesn't come stacked up on an infinite tower of turtles. It instead is a structure of relations that exists by growing in de Sitter fashion. It expands and cools, doubles and halves, in geometric fashion until – as far as any middle-grounders living at the classical scale of medium-sized dry goods knows – any quantum small and hotness dissolves into a lower bound blur, while any relativistic difference smooths over into the large and coldness of a cosmic event horizon. The de Sitter Heat Death void as it becomes at the effective end of time. The ultimate largeness that stretches way past the edges of our merely middle ground scale of view.

If 'semiotic modelling' - I am wrong to call it 'mentation'? - has only been working since a certain point of this universe history, doesn't it lead us to an emergentist view? — boundless

Again, there are two conversations. The first is that life and mind are now explained by the causality/logic of biosemiosis. It is a conventional view in the relevant sciences. We can talk about its mineral beginnings in warm ocean floor sea vents where you had a natural starting point of alkaline vent mixing with acid ocean and setting up a proton gradient across thin vent walls suitably laced with the chemical "enzymes" to start producing complex amino acid crud.

The second is pansemiosis – just dissipative structure before informational mechanism started getting its hands on it. So that covers everything out to the Big Bang as the foundational dissipative event. A hylomorphic mix of its energy potential or quantum indeterminism and the symmetry structures that Platonically lay in wait to shape it topological transformations.

BTW, are you familiar to the late Bohm views on 'active information'. I think that you would find them akin to yours. — boundless

Sort of the same. Everyone is feeling the same elephant once they get fed up enough with reductionism.

Wow, thank you very much for the response, again. I am sorry if I do not answer in a comprehensive way which is also because admidettly I don't know enough or reflected enough* in the past about various topics you addressed . I think that your view may have many merits and I think it points to the 'right direction': I think that it might be right explanation of the emergence of life but I am not sure about consciousness as such - by this I mean a consistent 'first-person perspective' (I think that the 'first' and 'third' person perspecive are complementary and one cannot be reduced to the other...but I treat this as a working hypothesis, so to speak)

Sort of the same. Everyone is feeling the same elephant once they get fed up enough with reductionism. — apokrisis

:up:

Anyway, I cited Bohm because he noted that his own interpretation of QM, depsite being realist or even physicalist, treated the (universal) wave-function/quantum pontential as a unique field that has no source and its 'influence' mathematically does not depend on the magnitude of the field but rather on its form. This, especially in the 80's, lead him to think that this 'field' is actually a 'pool of information' available to everything. So, according to him, even the most simple physical objects have a 'mental aspect' so to speak, a very very rudimental ability to 'read' information and meaning, so to speak. Note that the 'very very rudimental ability' in Bohm's is present even in the most basic level of physical reality, so no concept of 'emergence' is needed! Based on what I understood of your position, it seems that you agree with him.
While I am not sure that it can explain consciousness, I do think that it can explain the emergence of life. On the other hand, conventional physicalism is reductionistic, matter is seen as inert.