I know Apustimelogist already answered, but I want to add the following link to flesh out the very literal sense in which synchronization occurs — wonderer1

I prefer the somewhat less reductionistic account of intersubjective coordination that enactivism offers:

“Interactions are not simply bits of information to be processed by individual cognizers, but rather, interaction processes move the participants in their sense-making activities, and these include affect. Participatory sense-making reaches directly into the precarious network of self-maintaining processes that constitute a subject's identity. Thus, our encounters with others may not only modulate our very self-maintenance, but to some extent even enable and constrain it. This means that the constitution of our subjectivity can be strongly dependent on the history of social encounters. Thus, self-constitution and self-affection happen with and through others while-importantly and basically-at the same time always retaining an aspect of closure.

This sharing in inter-affectivity comes through participating in a process that is not simply the summation of individual activities, but a jointly created and literally embodied pattern that affects each of our affections. (Hanne De Jaegher)

:up:

Does physics ground mathematics?
— Ludwig V

Do the smallest scales of existence ground our use of math?

Absolutely. — Apustimelogist

Actually, the most complex scale of existence grounds our use of math. Mathematics is a conceptual invention.

Can you explain in what sense you do mean "mechanistic"?
— Ludwig V

I just mean mechanistic in the sense of one event causing the next event and the next event in a way that is divide of any kind of extra meaning. Like knocking down dominos where one falls causes the next and the next and the next in a mindless ways. But I am not assuming any limits on complexity or non-linearity or recurrence or anything like that — Apustimelogist

The billiard ball model of causality does assume a limit on non-linearity. More precisely, it ignores it entirely. Efficient cause is itself a theoretical perspective, one which only emerged at a particular point in the history of science and has undergone numerous modifications. It was developed for , and is most useful for dealing with the behavior of non-living phenomena, but runs into trouble when we try to explain living systems this way. I would go even further. What we learn from the models we develop to describe cognitive systems can be applied backwards to natural
science domain. This is the only way to get beyond the hard problem, which resulted from taking the sorts of causality physics deals with as the gold standard. For instance, what makes the fall of dominoes ‘mindless’ is the determination of an effect as the mere consequence of a pre-assigned cause. In a dynamical system, the effect is not the mere product of a pre-assigned cause, but modifies the cause. Cause and effect are reciprocally affected by each other. This provides such processes with an anticipative intentionality that may be characterized as mindful in some sense.

As chatgpt says

Complex dynamical systems exhibit nonlinear effects and a type of causality called causal spread, which is different from efficient causality. The interactions and connectivity required for complex systems to self-organize are best understood through context-sensitive constraints

I suggest that such non-linear reciprocal affecting between cause and effect is more fundamental than the mechanistic billiard ball or domino form of description we might try to foist onto neural processes as their ‘real’ basis.

Actually, the most complex scale of existence grounds our use of math. Mathematics is a conceptual invention. — Joshs

Mathematics is something we enact, and in that sense it is grounded in the smallest scales of existence because our behavior and brain obviously is.

The billiard ball model of causality — Joshs

The fact that you may need higher levels of explanation to make a dynamic system intelligible doesn't negate the fact that it may be at the most fundamental level just a consequence of simple billiard ball causality. It could not be any other way since such explanations you talk about are by their very nature not fundamental. Brain message passing entirely functions by molecular interactions which is comparable to billiard ball causality. It doesn't mean that this behavior doesn't result in extremely complex or even chaotic behavior.

I just don't feel the need to qualify at every moment that the brain has extremely complex, non-linear, recurrent dynamics. This is how I inherently think about the brain all the time. That fact is simply not relevant to the point I am making in this context; nor does it even make sense to me to identify this kind of thing as some kind of different, special form of causality in any meaningful, non-trivial way. Clearly, whatever sense of 'mechanistic' you are thinking about is just much more narrow than mine.

I suggest that such non-linear reciprocal affecting between cause and effect is more fundamental than the mechanistic billiard ball or domino form of description we might try to foist onto neural processes as their ‘real’ basis. — Joshs

This doesn't make any sense since all of the complex behaviors neurons do are emergent from very simple ones at smaller scales - described by more fundamental laws of physics - such as ions crossing a membrane barrier.

It by definition cannot be more fundamental even if you would never want to describe what brains do purely at the level of ions crossing membrane barriers and molecules interacting with receptors.

The fact that you may need higher levels of explanation to make a dynamic system intelligible doesn't negate the fact that ot may be at the most fundamental level just a consequence of simple billiard ball causality. It could not be any other wa since such explanations you talk about are by their very nature not fundamental — Apustimelogist

Physicist and philosopher Karen Barad is among the community of ‘new materialists’ who argue that “relations are not secondarily derived from independently existing “relata,” but rather the mutual ontological dependence of “relata”—the relation—is the ontological prim­itive. The notion of intra-actions constitutes a reworking of the traditional notion of causality.”

I suggest that such non-linear reciprocal affecting between cause and effect is more fundamental than the mechanistic billiard ball or domino form of description we might try to foist onto neural processes as their ‘real’ basis.
— Joshs

This doesn't make any sense since all of the complex behaviors neurons do are emergent from very simple ones at smalled scales - described by morr fundamental laws of physics - such as ions crossing a membrane barrier — Apustimelogist

I am not denying that complex psychological phenomena can be analyzed in terms of a supposed grounding that is itself irreducible to something more fundamental. What I am saying is that while some believe that complex dynamical processes are phenomena that simply emerge out of a lower level of nature that physics already describes perfectly adequately, I’m arguing that the full implications of the non-linearity of complex systems in living beings makes it impossible to derive them from physical models as they are currently understood. At least not without the modification in interpretation of causality that writers like Barad offer. Given the fact that it is through our conceptual
models that we come with theories of the oldest , simplest and most primordial beginning of empirical reality, it is not surprising that new insights into the nature of conceptualization can lead to new ways of thinking about that oldest, simplest origin. As apokrisis argued,

“How we can develop a logical understanding of the world is then our best model for how the world itself could come to have that logical structure. Epistemology becomes ontology in its most direct possible fashion.”

I’m arguing that the full implications of the non-linearity of complex systems in living beings makes it impossible to derive them from physical models as they are currently understood. — Joshs

"Currently understood" is rather vague. Currently understood by whom? Certainly there are plenty of people who have a deeper understanding of the implications of the non-linearity of complex systems in living beings than do most philosophers or even psychologists. Just to give an example I am experienced with... In an EE curriculum, linear circuit analysis is typically covered in the first two EE classes, from that point on, it is all about non-linear systems.

It is not the non-linearity that is particularly problematic when trying to grasp minds/brains. It is the complexity, and lack of anything remotely approaching a detailed account of that complexity.

Yes, these are very good examples I think.


Alot of that seems to be detailing experiments so I don't see how it can be contradictory to the view you offered in this post.

“relations are not secondarily derived from independently existing “relata,” but rather the mutual ontological dependence of “relata”—the relation—is the ontological prim­itive. The notion of intra-actions constitutes a reworking of the traditional notion of causality.” — Joshs

Just sounds like unnecessary obfuscation to me.

I’m arguing that the full implications of the non-linearity of complex systems in living beings makes it impossible to derive them from physical models as they are currently understood. — Joshs

I feel like you can in principle, it would just be extremely complicated - and that is probably an understatement.

about non-linear systems. — wonderer1

Like Hodkin-Huxley neurons!

:zip:

This doesn't make any sense since all of the complex behaviors neurons do are emergent from very simple ones at smalled scales - described by morr fundamental laws of physics - such as ions crossing a membrane barrier. — Apustimelogist

This ignores the fact that organisms are organised by codes and so exist in a semiotic modelling relation with the world.

This neatly inverts things. An informational mechanics is precisely what biology and neurology impose on the physical world. Not the other way around.

The world is organised by dissipation. It has an emergent structure of entropy flow. This starts down at the quantum level with thermal decoherence. Our best causal model of this is symmetry-based. Complexity arises as symmetry-breaking phase transitions – step ups in terms of the holistic constraints of topological order.

Nature is holonomic in the physics jargon. Then life and mind arise as information systems able to impose non-holonomic constraints on the prevailing systems of entropic flow. A machinery of photosynthesis can be constructed that stands between the sun's rays and the earth crust that would otherwise just bounce it off into space as waste heat.

So life and mind embody the Newtonian ideal of a cause and effect system. A mechanical construction that regulates physical flows. Billiard balls roll smoothly and recoil with constrained linearity because we have carefully machined things to be that way on a baize surface with ivory spheres.

But the world itself is not a machinery of linear cause and effect. So its non-linearity is only a comment about the degree to which it has been constrained or not in regards to some entropic process. Reality is fundamentally "non-linear" if that is our best term. And linearity or classicality is something reality can only approach asymptotically or effectively.

For all practical purposes, we may regard a wave function as collapsed as some probe with a switch mounted on its end has been heard to flip state. Holism can be considered localised. Another bit of thermodynamic history has now definitely been added to universe's equation of state.

If neurology relied on ions crossing membranes as its deep explanation, then it would be getting us nowhere. What matters in terms of a suitable causal explanation is in what sense a switch was flipped. And what meaning did that flip have within a larger holistic informational economy.

All this only works in the first place by the "information processing" being as causally separate from the physics it means to control as is possible. An organism has to stand outside its world to regulate that world. Or at least swim along in a purposeful manner while also caught in the midst of its tremendously strong entropic flows.

Anyway, my general point is that complexity theory is often reduced to just complicated dynamics – which already begs the question in that dynamics is inherently not mechanical if you dig into its causality. Non-linearity is its default as linearity is only ever some emergent tendency towards an organising topological order.

And then compounding the confusion over causality, life and mind arise by being able to impose mechanical order on entropic flows. A logic of switches can tame a river to become a transport system, an irrigation system, a power generation system. Or down at the level of organic chemistry, a logic of switches turns a bag of reactions into an an information-regulated metabolism. A cell with the intelligence to repair and reproduce itself despite the storm of entropy flowing through it.

This is proper complexity when it comes to the possible causalities of nature. The combination of entropy flows and negentropic memories. The ability to construct sluice gates across non-linear dynamics and so regulate nature in intentional fashion.

This neatly inverts things. An informational mechanics is precisely what biology and neurology impose on the physical world. Not the other way around. — apokrisis

Well this just ignores the context about which of two things is more fundamental. In any case, under my view of enactivism, a "semiotic modelling relation" cannot be fundamental because it is the kind of representationalism that my enactive views would prefer to actually explain away.

This ignores the fact that organisms are organised by codes and so exist in a semiotic modelling relation with the world. — apokrisis

More like what a modeller imposes on the world, including their models of modelling.

But the world itself is not a machinery of linear cause and effect — apokrisis

It is if you can unmix all the interactions that would make causality non-linear.. something that generally does not occur but arguably we infer or observe in experiments... but the point is that we generally do not study the fundamental nature of the world in terms of its full complicated mixture of effects... we separate out simpler, fundamental principles latent in theory complicated behavior. When causality seems non-linear, it is because of how different parts of reality interact. "Non-linear cause and effect" therefore emerges and isn't fundamental.

For all practical purposes, we may regard a wave function as collapsed as some probe with a switch mounted on its end has been heard to flip state. Holism can be considered localised. Another bit of thermodynamic history has now definitely been added to universe's equation of state. — apokrisis

Wave functions are not real objects nor do they physically collapse.

If neurology relied on ions crossing membranes as its deep explanation, then it would be getting us nowhere — apokrisis

And that is an epistemic issue not an ontological one and I have more or less explicitly alluded to this in recent posts. Again, just because it may not be your preferred level of explanation, does not preclude it from being more fundamental or at least perform a role of grounding the other more preferred explanation so that preferred explanation itself would in principle be explained by and depend on this more small scale perspective.

Well this just ignores the context about which of two things is more fundamental — Apustimelogist

Well of course the cosmos is more fundamental than the bios. One creates the possibilities that the other exploits. Life and mind don’t contradict the second law. They accelerate entropification.

Again, just because it may not be your preferred level of explanation, does not preclude it from being more fundamental or at least perform a role of grounding the other more preferred explanation so that preferred explanation itself would in principle be explained by and depend on this more small scale perspective. — Apustimelogist

But you said all the complex behaviours of neurons emerge from lower level physics which is quite wrong. They emerge from the information processing which entropically entrains the physical world in a way that brains and nervous systems can be a thing.

I don’t favour computer analogies but what do you think causes the state of a logic gate to flip. Is it the information being processed or the fluctuating voltage of the circuits?

The physics of neurons is shaped by the top-down needs of Bayesian modelling. Bayesian modelling isn’t a bottom-up emergent product of fluctuating chemical potentials.

But you said all the complex behaviours of neurons emerge from lower level physics which is quite wrong. They emerge from the information processing which entropically entrains the physical world in a way that brains and nervous systems can be a thing. — apokrisis

That's just backwards, and verging on magical thinking, not to mention overdetermination.

I don’t favour computer analogies but what do you think causes the state of a logic gate to flip. Is it the information being processed or the fluctuating voltage of the circuits? — apokrisis

I provided somewhat of an explanation of this on the forum beginning here.

A logic gate flipping is a physical process with emergent properties which allow us to treat it as if logic determines the results, by imposing additional constraints by only sampling the output of the logic gate on clock edges.

Logic gates don't flip, but they can 'slide' (or slew) pretty fast.

The physics of neurons is shaped by the top-down needs of Bayesian modelling. Bayesian modelling isn’t a bottom-up emergent product of fluctuating chemical potentials. — apokrisis

Bayesian brain theorizing is just another case of people looking for their keys under the street light, because that is where the light is. Sure neural nets behave in many regards as if they they are implementing a Bayesian process, but it would be thinking simplistically to think that is the whole story.

But I suppose humanity needs its simplisticators.

Does physics ground mathematics?
— Ludwig V
Do the smallest scales of existence ground our use of math?
Absolutely. — Apustimelogist

You rephrased the question. Surely, applying math to the smallest scales of existence implies that physics and math exist independently. So I'll take that as your answer. Which I agree with.

I am not going to be able to make you understand what I am saying without you giving up this kind of dualism. — Apustimelogist

Would a Popperian ontic triadism be better? I doubt it. I suppose it is time to come out. I do have a view of this. I see your claim as the classic philosophical mistake of thinking that a grammatical device, which is purely rhetorical, has some philosophical significance. "Brains do plus tasks" is synecdoche for "People do plus tasks". You may not know what synecdoche is (I had to look it up to be sure).

Synecdoche refers to a figure of speech in which the word for a part of something is used to refer to the thing itself (as "hired hand" for “worker”), or, less commonly, the word for a thing itself is used to refer to part of that thing (as when society denotes "high society"). In metonymy, a word that is associated with something is used to refer to that thing (as when "crown" is used to mean "king" or "queen").

I just mean mechanistic in the sense of one event causing the next event and the next event in a way that is divide of any kind of extra meaning. — Apustimelogist

Yes, I understand that. So the language that you use to describe the brain process excludes the possibility of describing a plus task. So in what sense can it explain or cause a plus task?

I know Apustimelogist already answered, but I want to add the following link to flesh out the very literal sense in which synchronization occurs: — wonderer1

Thanks very much. Very thoughtful of you. I did know about this, but I saw the reports so long ago that I have completely forgotten where. I noticed that in this report, there is no suggestion that A's brain is in love with or trusts B's brain. I'm completely relaxed about the idea that brain mirroring is among the symptomatic criteria for love and trust, along with heavy sighs, big smiles, dilated pupils, raised heart rate, the release of oxytocin and, on occasion, mild insanity. Yes, I realize I'm channelling Wittgenstein here.

The kind of synchronication between internal and external states as described by active inference / free energy principle. — Apustimelogist

However, the synchronization that is involved here (mirroring) is not obviously the same as the one that @Apustimelogist is concerned with. But I don't know what the active inference/free energy principle is, so I could be wrong.

As an engineer I'm a complicator. I have to consider a multitude of details, about the ways physical things interact, in order to do my job well. — wonderer1

I liked this distinction. I'm happy to admit that as a philosopher, I'm usually a complicator. But I don't deny that simplification has its uses and it would be hard to do without it. We need both, each in their place. It takes all sorts...

But you said all the complex behaviours of neurons emerge from lower level physics which is quite wrong. They emerge from the information processing which entropically entrains the physical world in a way that brains and nervous systems can be a thing. — apokrisis

I think you are saying that the a physical process can (under the right conditions) be interpreted as an information processing process, and conversely. If so, that's very nearly what I was getting at. Thank you.

Complex dynamical systems exhibit nonlinear effects and a type of causality called causal spread, which is different from efficient causality. The interactions and connectivity required for complex systems to self-organize are best understood through context-sensitive constraints
I suggest that such non-linear reciprocal affecting between cause and effect is more fundamental than the mechanistic billiard ball or domino form of description we might try to foist onto neural processes as their ‘real’ basis. — Joshs

That's all very helpful. I do think it is high time that philosophers took seriously modern developments in the sciences and abandoned the concept of causality that developed in the context of 17th century science, with its Aristotelian heritage. (Not that the classical concept of causality was ever completely satisfactory; I'm sure you are aware that the concept of gravity was an exception.)

It is not the non-linearity that is particularly problematic when trying to grasp minds/brains. It is the complexity, and lack of anything remotely approaching a detailed account of that complexity. — wonderer1

It isn't just the complexity. The relation between minds and brains is cross-categorial, which means there can be no relation, which is absurd. There are other situations when we ache to understand different categories in relation to each other, but lack the conceptual resources to do so. I doubt that philosophers will find the way in this case; practical science seems already to be making progress, mainly by simply ignoring the problem.

I don’t favour computer analogies but what do you think causes the state of a logic gate to flip. Is it the information being processed or the fluctuating voltage of the circuits? — apokrisis

For my money, it depends what you mean by "cause". The system can be described as a physical process or as a information process. Both categories apply, so both the information and the voltage cause the gate to flip. If a physical bug is interfering with the process, you will apply the physical description and deal with the problem. If a software glitch is the problem, you'll apply the information description and deal with the problem.

A logic gate flipping is a physical process with emergent properties which allow us to treat it as if logic determines the results, by imposing additional constraints by only sampling the output of the logic gate on clock edges. — wonderer1

This made be realize why I'm so uncomfortable with the idea of "emergent" properties. It still locates the physical as original or fundamental. But, in the case of the logic gate, the gate emerged from the information process. I don't deny that it can work the other way round, of course.

I am sure you feel your opinions are well qualified. I could reply if I spotted some argument.

In case you are interested, the supporting detail can be found here - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/679203

and, on occasion, mild insanity. — Ludwig V

:monkey:

I think you are saying that the a physical process can (under the right conditions) be interpreted as an information processing process, and conversely. — Ludwig V

Not really. If we are talking causality, in biology it is the genome that is causing the physics. Enzymes are switches that turn chemical processes on and off. The entropy flow is regulated in a way that builds, and keeps rebuilding, a functional body. The physical blueprint that the genome had in mind.

That is why the information processing analogy fails even if it is somewhat helpful.

Neural information encodes the behaviours that switch entropy flows off and on at the level of a general world model. We move towards food. We move away from danger. By being able to navigate an environment in intelligent fashion, we can again keep rebuilding the body that now also contains a brain as well as a metabolism.

The neural structure of the brain is plastic. Connections are forever growing or disappearing. They do so under selective pressure. They do so because the reshaping is proving functional. It is the "program" that the brain is running that is the cause of the physical structure that underpins its cognitive action.

So brains aren't really like computers as a computer's program does not have to go as far as building and maintaining its hardware. It does not have to get off the desk and ensure it is properly plugged into the socket.

Of course the genes are far more directly connected to the basic chore of regulating the entropic flow that is our metabolism. Neurons are much more removed from that nitty gritty level of ensuring the functional integrity of the body. Biology builds the neurons as cells, and experience in the world is just sculpting the connectivity of the pathways.

But still, in causal terms the neural information is paying for its own keep. If the brain has a bad world model, then the whole organism is likely not to last long as a physical device.

In case you are interested... — apokrisis

I'm afraid that my grandiosity detector has become too sensitive to read much of that.

You rephrased the question. Surely, applying math to the smallest scales of existence implies that physics and math exist independently. — Ludwig V

But this is just the application of a tool which is nothing more than what is enacted in behavior or cognitive states. In fact, applying math to the smallest scales of existence is basically physics. (though physics isn't exclusively or fundamentally about describing the smallest scales of existence).

It is then important to make the conceptual distinction between the smallest scales if existence - which grounds everything - and our use of math or physics as a tool. The caveat is that the only way we can intelligibly describe or grasp the smallest scales of existence effectively is by applying the tools. But the tools have no inherent ontological existence beyond our enacting of them.

Sure, you could argue that the objects in math are not reducible to objects in physics... they are more general and perhaps abstract than physics... but we can make any sets of arbitrary tools we want that are not inherently related or reducible in a hard way to other tools or descriptions. They are, after all, just constructs. There is no hard reductions without bridges and assumptions anywhere in knowledge. At the same time, there can be multiplicitous applications of tools - e.g. fields of math can be applied to many different areas / different areas can have strong parallels. Nonetheless, if you want to talk about ontology and existence, then it seems that all behaviors of objects must be grounded in behaviors at smaller scales.

The fact that maths does not reduce to physics - in the way that arguably certain physical theories can be reduced to each other - has no ontological significance. What is significant is that mathematical behavior, mathematical intellectual ability, information processing is grounded ontologically in the smallest scales.

Would a Popperian ontic triadism be better? I doubt it. I suppose it is time to come out. I do have a view of this. I see your claim as the classic philosophical mistake of thinking that a grammatical device, which is purely rhetorical, has some philosophical significance. "Brains do plus tasks" is synecdoche for "People do plus tasks". You may not know what synecdoche is (I had to look it up to be sure). — Ludwig V

But is what a person does independent of what a brain does? No.

Is a brain how a person does a plus task? Yes.

Are persons and brains exemplifying constructs we use whose relations come from / are about different epistemic perspectives rather than inherently about ontology? Yes.

Then - while your issues about whether brains or people do plus tasks may have semantic validity in terms of how we characterize things relying on concepts or definitions or aquaintances from different perspectives - what are the consequences it has in terms of what actually happens in existence? Absolutely nothing, but for the caveat that we cannot view existence in a perspective-independent way. Nonetheless, empirical evidence about isomorphism of experience and brains is convincing. Philosophical arguments too like Chalmers' dancing / fading qualia, etc, are also convincing. Neither do I feel the need to qualify that humans have bodies and exist in both physical and cultural environments or niches every single time I talk about them. We can acknowledge the conceptual divides between different perspectives but I think we also must acknowledge that if different perspectives map up to each other substantially, like the brain and mind, then its simply seems impossible to me to not talk about those mappings in terms of some kind of underlying commonality. To say that a person can do a plus task but a brain cannot is an epistemic clarification that, if taken too absolutely, completely obfuscates a valid ontological clarification with tangible consequences...

Unless you are a hardcore dualist.

At the same time, I question whether your distinction between brains and humans doing plus tasks is even that interesting or valid. For the ways I would talk about a plus task, I see no issue with saying something like 'a calculator performs plus tasks'. I therefore see no issue with the notion that a brain can perform a plus task either. You could get an population of neurons, put it on a petri dish, wire it up to some computer or other apparatus and teach it how to do plus tasks. I have no inherent problem with saying it was performing a 'plus task' - we set up a 'plus task' with criteria on success, and the petri dish sarisfies them.

You could say that well this petri dish doesn't satisfy some kind of unique human criteria of doing a plus task experientially... but what is that exactly? I really have no idea because I don't think anyone knows exactly how they count or do plus tasks. They just do. Mental arithmetic is almost like a brute ability (from our own perspectives). The answers just come. I don't see a good criteria that makes human plus tasks special in some way, and from the third-person perspective, watching a human doing a plus task on a computer is not necessarily qualitatively different from the petri-dish.... they both share the fundamental resemblance of neurons hooked up to a computer. One might be immensely more complicated than the other but they are doing the same task. One we might want to characterize in terms of more complex experiences but I don't think experience is necessarily important for characterizing plus tasks. At the same time, I am inclined to say that questions about experience or if other things (e.g. neurons in a petri dish) have experiences may be both intractably meaningless and meaninglessly intractable.

Yes, I understand that. So the language that you use to describe the brain process excludes the possibility of describing a plus task. So in what sense can it explain or cause a plus task? — Ludwig V

Why would I use the language of brain processes to describe a plus task? On the other hand, I can get a brain to perform a plus task.

I don't think there is anything to 'meaning' beyond enaction. So there is nothing special. 'Meaning' is entirely enacted... in the mechanistic flows of experience.

However, the synchronization that is involved here (mirroring) is not obviously the same as the one that Apustimelogist is concerned with. But I don't know what the active inference/free energy principle is, so I could be wrong. — Ludwig V

It is the same kind of synchronization.

But you said all the complex behaviours of neurons emerge from lower level physics which is quite wrong. They emerge from the information processing which entropically entrains the physical world in a way that brains and nervous systems can be a thing. — apokrisis

I am not sure this makes sense. A neuron is characterized as a physical object made up of particles that behave according to the laws of physics. All neuronal behaviors follow from this and we put information processing on top of it. Not the other way round.

I don’t favour computer analogies but what do you think causes the state of a logic gate to flip. Is it the information being processed or the fluctuating voltage of the circuits? — apokrisis

It is obviously the latter. The most advanced models of functioning neurons are characterized in exactly the same way. It explains how neurons seem to process information.

The physics of neurons is shaped by the top-down needs of Bayesian modelling. Bayesian modelling isn’t a bottom-up emergent product of fluctuating chemical potentials. — apokrisis

You can always in principle describe whatever a brain is doing in terms of more fundamental physics. You may choose a higher level of explanation for what a brain does but that will still more or less have a grounding in and depend on the fundamental physics of brain components. The only way to dispute that is to dispute what the brain is composed of which no one would sanely do. Given that, we can always in principle describe the brain behavior in terms of those more fundamental levels. Exactly the same goes for how it got there, whether developmentally or evolutionarily - even if such things are more desirably explained in terms of higher level explanations regarding things like selectionism, canalization, gene-environment interactions or whatever.

I'm afraid that my grandiosity detector has become too sensitive to read much of that. — wonderer1

…he says pompously. :up:

A neuron is characterized as a physical object made up of particles that behave according to the laws of physics. All neuronal behaviors follow from this and we put information processing on top of it. Not the other way round. — Apustimelogist

So how do you derive the structure of a neuron from the laws of physics?

Sure, the laws don’t forbid the structure. But in what sense do they cause the structure to be as it physically is?

You can always in principle describe whatever a brain is doing in terms of more fundamental physics. — Apustimelogist

Well do so then. Tell me how the physical structure of a neuron is the product of fundamental physics. Tell me how neurons appear in the world in a way that does not involve the hand of biological information.

So how do you derive the structure of a neuron from the laws of physics? — apokrisis

You pretend to be doing physics; but you are merely reworking Hegel.

The wombat stirs, farts and leaves. Pleased to have made its small contribution.

So how do you derive the structure of a neuron from the laws of physics?
— apokrisis

You pretend to be doing physics; but you are merely reworking Hegel — Banno

And why not? Physics was until recently ( and for many still is) a reworking of Leibnitz and Kant.

It's the pretence that is irksome. Reworking Hegel is fine, if one is honest about it.

It's the pretence that is irksome. Reworking Hegel is fine, if one is honest about it. — Banno

Be honest about it. My biosemiotic position arises within a community of reason that was Aristotelean and then became Peircean. So the reworking of Hegel would have been done by Peirce.

But you seem quite ignorant of all these metaphysical distinctions. Time to womble off in the direction of your lunch. Don't pretend you have any training in either biophysics or functional neuroscience.

My biosemiotic position arises within a community of reason that was Aristotelean and then became Peircean. So the reworking of Hegel would have been done by Peirce. — apokrisis

See how this is not physics? QED.

See how this is not physics? QED. — Banno

How is this not physics exactly?

The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut

How is this not physics exactly? — apokrisis

:rofl:

I'll leave you to your crusade.

Be honest about it. My biosemiotic position arises within a community of reason that was Aristotelean and then became Peircean. So the reworking of Hegel would have been done by Peirce.

But you seem quite ignorant of all these metaphysical distinctions. Time to womble off in the direction of your lunch. Don't pretend you have any training in either biophysics or functional neuroscience. — apokrisis

So here we see the rage of grandiose narcissist in most splendid form. Note the venom dripping out it's mouth when it howls. That is one fine specimen folks.