I'll leave you to your crusade. — Banno

Yep. See the science and run for your burrow. Pretend it never happened.

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. — Apustimelogist

So are you saying that mathematical objects don't really exist? What is your criterion for existence? Is it, by any chance, being physical?
I don't think Quine's slogan "to be is to be the value of a variable" is perfect. But it's not bad as a slogan.

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. — Apustimelogist

I don't have any problem with the mirrored patterns of brain waves or with mapping the hormones circulating in my bloodstream with various emotions. But notice that in the latter case, the hormones do not map one to one with my emotions.
I do have a problem with saying A's brain is in love with B's brain. I simply don't understand why anyone would want to say that - except to wind up people like me.

I really have no idea because I don't think anyone knows exactly how they count or do plus tasks. — Apustimelogist

Nonsense. They know perfectly well how to count. Maybe they can't explain how they count very well, but that's a different know-how. So we say they act blindly. But the point is that they act correctly.

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

I never said it was. All I'm saying is that what I do is not what my brain does - except by synecdoche.

Given that, we can always in principle describe the brain behavior in terms of those more fundamental levels. — Apustimelogist

Quite so. But it doesn't follow that we can in principle describe my behaviour in terms of the same levels. You can describe my running in physical terms. But physics has no equivalent to an intention or to the rules of athletics, so you can't describe my running and winning a race in terms that physics would recognize.

I like wombats.

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. — wonderer1

As insults go, this is pretty weak if not quite odd. Perhaps try getting ChatGTP to give you a hand?

And they love you.

I like wombats. — Banno

:up:

There are certainly more unpleasant animals.

Indeed - and educative, in explaining the use of commas. You probably know the old joke about the difference between "The wombat eats roots, shoots, and leaves" and "The wombat eats, roots, shoots and leaves".

For those from 'merca, in the English speaking world "roots" is a synonym for "fucks".

Extra marks for getting the reference. But shame your skill at subtext is not matched by your diligence at doing actual work.

When you have no adequate response, you spit. Hegel is not physics.

When you have no adequate response, you spit. Hegel is not physics. — Banno

I never said Hegel was physics. As a paid up biosemiotician, you would have to show where I am a Hegelist rather than a Peircean. Produce the textual evidence.

And of course you can't. So you splutter. :up:

Meanwhile here is the relevant physics - The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut

Deal with it or womble off to lunch. Stop circling the bowl and be on your way.

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

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

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. — apokrisis

Alot of the details are probably out there in the field of biology in terms of things like gene translation and cellular development. Is any of this not mediated through fundamental physics? Seems implausible. Does any of these descriptions require the notion of "biological information"? I doubt it. At the same time, you're asking about deriving neuronal structure from physics but I don't really see where you would derive neuronal structure from "information processing which entropically entrains the physical world" either any more than you can from physical laws.

Indeed - and educative, in explaining the use of commas. You probably know the old joke about the difference between "The wombat eats roots, shoots, and leaves" and "The wombat eats, roots, shoots and leaves".

For those from 'merca, in the English speaking world "roots" is a synonym for "fucks". — Banno

Guess my straylian is not so bad. Didn't need the translation myself, but perhaps it will be helpful to my fellow mercans.

Alot of the details are probably out there in the field of biology in terms of things like gene translation and cellular development. Is any of this not mediated through fundamental physics? — Apustimelogist

Seems you are trying very hard to do exactly what biologists complain about. Failing to understand the epistemic cut.

Or as a physicist put it in The Physics of Symbols....

Evolution requires the genotype-phenotype distinction, a primeval epistemic cut that separates energy-degenerate, rate-independent genetic symbols from the rate-dependent dynamics of construction that they control. This symbol-matter or subject-object distinction occurs at all higher levels where symbols are related to a referent by an arbitrary code. The converse of control is measurement in which a rate-dependent dynamical state is coded into quiescent symbols. Non-integrable constraints are one necessary conditions for bridging the epistemic cut by measurement, control, and coding. Additional properties of heteropolymer constraints are necessary for biological evolution.

Meanwhile here is the relevant physics - The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut — apokrisis

Not so much. More speculation than physics. Which is not to say that it is not interesting - just that it is no where near as confirmed as you would have it.

More speculation than physics. — Banno

An opinion. Served as usual without argument or evidence. You are such a lightweight.

Guess my straylian is not so bad. — wonderer1

This reminds me of when I let a straylian woman drive my car. Not the safest thing I've done. I had to keep reminding her that we drive on the right side of the road, because she was constantly drifting over to the wrong side of the road.

An opinion. Served as usual without argument or evidence. You are such a lightweight. — apokrisis

You are no lightweight, but what you serve is also opinion, hidden. Speculative physics mixed with rewarmed dialectic.

Evolution requires the genotype-phenotype distinction, a primeval epistemic cut that separates energy-degenerate, rate-independent genetic symbols from the rate-dependent dynamics of construction that they control. This symbol-matter or subject-object distinction occurs at all higher levels where symbols are related to a referent by an arbitrary code. The converse of control is measurement in which a rate-dependent dynamical state is coded into quiescent symbols. Non-integrable constraints are one necessary conditions for bridging the epistemic cut by measurement, control, and coding. Additional properties of heteropolymer constraints are necessary for biological evolution. — apokrisis

'Tis a thing of beauty, that in style might have been found in Phenomenology of Spirit.

I had to keep reminding her that we drive on the rights side of the road — wonderer1

No, you drive on the wrong side of the road.

You are no lightweight, but what you serve is also opinion, hidden. Speculative physics mixed with rewarmed dialectic. — Banno

I just served you with a paper by Howard Pattee. Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. One of the three sharpest thinkers I've had the privilege of learning from.

I accept that you find the task of following the paper's argument rather too daunting, even if it was written as a kind of introduction to the problem.

But is all the spit and splutter really serving any purpose? Shouldn't you be waddling off to bruncheon by now. You seem to have run out of jibes.

I just served you with a paper by Howard Pattee. — apokrisis

So what. It's speculative. Pattee is welcome to speculate.

It's speculative. — Banno

You can tell without even reading? Impressive. How mighty are the arguments you make on PF. How you make your foes tremble when they hear the soft padded approach of your wombling form before you turn, fart and waddle off with a small pleased expression.

So are you saying that mathematical objects don't really exist? What is your criterion for existence? Is it, by any chance, being physical? I don't think Quine's slogan "to be is to be the value of a variable" is perfect. But it's not bad as a slogan. — Ludwig V

I don't have a criterion for existence but my assumptions from what science and philosophy seems to say to me is that: there is a single realm of existence; everything is grounded on behavior at the smaller scales of that existence; there is no alternative platonic realm where mathematical objects exist. All I know is that my ability to use math comes from my brain, - and my brain and all my biology and behaviors are grounded in the behaviors of the smaller scales of existence.

I think we construct mathematical objects and impose them on the world enactively, which is not really any different from any other concepts or knowledge we use. I don't really have a problem saying mathematical objects exist, but I would not see any mystery to their existence beyond how our brain functioning has allowed us to use math.

But notice that in the latter case, the hormones do not map one to one with my emotions. — Ludwig V

Because emotions are much more than just hormones.

Nonsense. They know perfectly well how to count. Maybe they can't explain how they count very well, but that's a different know-how. So we say they act blindly. But the point is that they act correctly. — Ludwig V

Well then the only criteria I see for the plus task is that it is performed correctly in the way regular people deem it correct. A calculator can plus correctly imo.

I never said it was. All I'm saying is that what I do is not what my brain does - except by synecdoche. — Ludwig V

I just don't really understand what practical consequence saying this has when, even if I don't identify what I am doing as what my brain does, clearly everything I am perceiving and experiencing and all my acts are direct consequences of brain behavior interacting with the environment. I don't see any interesting consequences for what has been said so far by maintaining this distinction. You may not want to say a brain is doing what you are doing but lets see what happens when we stop the brain doing what its doing and knockout that occipital lobe - how that affects what you are doing.

From my perspective anyway, everything I am experiencing is literally what it is like to be some kind of higher level, higher scale functional structure in the vicinity of that part of existence which we might label my brain. So the distinction does not seem so big from my perspective. Even if I identify as a whole person in some sense that is something different from my brain, the whole person embedded in its external environemnt is still as much an inferred construct that I effectively would be experiencing from a perspective within the insulation of the brains sensory boundaries - given what I said in the first sentence of this paragraph. The self arguably might be seen as an inference like any other. Different brains may then have effectively different models or perceptions of persons or even self. And you can get hints into its constructed nature through how people perceive things like this:

https://youtu.be/9Tt7aqHFUCU?si=yHjzV0Mvr_YQJLQQ

Some people just struggle to understand these clips much more than others - they struggle to make the same inferences others do, suggesting how such concept are imposed and not directly apparent a-prior-i (perhaps in something like the Bayesian sense) from the moving images. But I digress!

A brain may not do what a person does in some sense but making the identification is where I am drawn and I personally find concepts flexible enough to allow that.

Quite so. But it doesn't follow that we can in principle describe my behaviour in terms of the same levels. You can describe my running in physical terms. But physics has no equivalent to an intention or to the rules of athletics, so you can't describe my running and winning a race in terms that physics would recognize. — Ludwig V

Yes, I get that and I have never excluded those things, after all that is the level at which we engage with the world in everyday life. But I think a distinction can be made between: the use of different explanatory frameworks and ways we engage with the world that are perspective-dependent for various reasons; and then the concept of ontological grounding in principle - that behaviors described at one scale will be grounded in those on smaller scales, even if I require different explanatory frameworks to make sense of the world in any pragmatic way.

Seems you are trying very hard to do exactly what biologists complain about. Failing to understand the epistemic cut. — apokrisis

I have said a couple times in the thread I see the importance of different explanatory frameworks on different levels but just seems to me all complex behavior are grounded on and emerge from the smaller scales as described by more fundamental, simpler physical laws or descriptions. As just said, I don't think that precludes higher level frameworks but they just aren't as fundamental.

I just don't find biosemiotics compelling as some kind of foundation for biology. I don't have an issue with studying something like that, but I don't see it as fundamentally necessary to describe how things work in biology. This is partly because I am already very biased against attempts to reify meaning and against views that seem inherently strongly representational. The idea of symbols or signs in biology then seem to me something like an additional level of idealization and approximation that is another way of telling stories about biology, perhaps more intuitively - similar to teleology. But it doesn't seem fundamental to me compared to notions like blind selectionism which does not necessarily require things to be packaged up in terms of neat symbols and meanings.

I personally find ideas like active inference and the free energy principle have more clarity, eloquence and mathematical grounding than the Howard Patee stuff, in addition to being prima facie simpler to couple with my enactive inclinations. The epistemic cut idea also seems to draw from ideas in quantum mechanics which I just do not believe to be the case

I have said a couple times in the thread I see the importance of different explanatory frameworks on different levels but just seems to me all complex behavior are grounded on and emerge from the smaller scales as described by more fundamental, simpler physical laws or descriptions. — Apustimelogist

Sure. You've certainly said how it seems for you. But as a biologist and neuroscientist, I see this as question-begging reductionism.

This is partly because I am already very biased against attempts to reify meaning and against views that seem inherently strongly representational. The idea of symbols or signs in biology then seem to me something like an additional level of idealization and approximation that is another way of telling stories about biology, perhaps more intuitively - similar to teleology. But it doesn't seem fundamental to me compared to notions like blind selectionism which does not necessarily require things to be packaged up in terms of neat symbols and meanings. — Apustimelogist

This package of prejudices could not be more familiar.

I personally find ideas like active inference and the free energy principle have more clarity, eloquence and mathematical grounding than the Howard Patee stuff, in addition to being prima facie simpler to couple with my enactive inclinations. The epistemic cut idea also seems to draw from ideas in quantum mechanics which I just do not believe to be the case — Apustimelogist

This just shows that you haven't read or understood the stuff.

I'm sure it will make no difference here, but an irony is that I was deep into theoretical neuroscience in the 1990s and meeting up with Friston when he was still trying to find his angle of attack. Back then, he was thinking in terms of dynamical coupling and neural transients. The non-linear dynamics of folk like Scott Kelso. I was prodding Friston about the importance of switching to an anticipatory-processing based point of view.

Friston was already clearly the smartest guy in theoretical neuroscience at that time. And events have since confirmed that. But it was because neuroscience and complexity theory still seemed so far from the proper way of thinking about the mind as an enactive process that I went off and stumbled into the path that theoretical biology had already blazed. The systems science, the hierarchy theory, the infodynamics, the dissipative structure, the epistemic cut, the modelling relation. All the parts of the puzzle that come together to form a general theory of life and mind.

So I was hanging out with that new crowd for a decade. I was there as it realised how theoretical biology had been recapitulating the metaphysics of Peircean pragmatism/semiotics. The idea of the sign relation.

A further irony was that Pattee resisted this new biosemiotic turn in our discussions. After all, I guess, he had already made the same points more sharply. He had had the benefit of the genetic code being cracked and so focusing attention on the practical issue of how a molecule could be a message.

Pattee went off radar for a few years in what seemed like a bit of a huff. But then he surprised by suddenly releasing a flood of papers proclaiming himself a biosemiotician. He sharpened what this should mean and so put a couple of the other pretender camps in their place.

So you may talk from your experience, but I talk from mine. The question you deny is even a question is a question I've been academically engaged with for a long time.

Still raging.

Sorry you got caught in it @Apustimelogist.

Sure. You've certainly said how it seems for you. But as a biologist and neuroscientist, I see this as question-begging reductionism. — apokrisis

Why is it reductionist if I explicitly talk about the importance of higher level explanatory frameworks?

When are you going to refute the idea that all coarse-grainings of behaviors over larger scales are grounded on higher resolution details at smaller scales of space and time?

This just shows that you haven't read or understood the stuff. — apokrisis

I feel like I read enough of what you sent to get a gist.

All the parts of the puzzle that come together to form a general theory of life and mind. — apokrisis

Show us the state of the art papers of this theory then rather than one from 2001.

The question you deny is even a question is a question I've been academically engaged with for a long time. — apokrisis

Well, unfortunately that doesn't guarantee anything. I have no doubt Bernardo Kastrup has been academically engaging in utter drivel for some time. I even would say Qbism and many worlds are as bad.

Why is it reductionist if I explicitly talk about the importance of higher level explanatory frameworks? — Apustimelogist

I’m talking about ontology rather than epistemology. Life and mind as a further source of causality in the cosmos. The stakes are accordingly higher.

When are you going to refute the idea that all coarse-grainings of behaviors over larger scales are grounded on higher resolution details at smaller scales of space and time? — Apustimelogist

How can I refute that in the face of your refusal to engage with the question of how physics - coarse or fine - accounts for the functional structure of a neuron?

You haven’t yet made the argument. Only asserted your belief system.

Well, unfortunately that doesn't guarantee anything. — Apustimelogist

It at least means I understand more than the gist.

How can I refute that in the face of your refusal to engage with the question of how physics - coarse or fine - accounts for the functional structure of a neuron? — apokrisis

I replied here:

Alot of the details are probably out there in the field of biology in terms of things like gene translation and cellular development. Is any of this not mediated through fundamental physics? Seems implausible. Does any of these descriptions require the notion of "biological information"? I doubt it. — Apustimelogist

What I was implying is that all of the events that led to the development of neuronal structure- whether on an evolutionary or developmental scale - can be in principle described purely in terms of particles and how they move in space and time. In principle, such a thing could be simulated using a complete model of fundamental physics - it would just obviously be orders of magnitude too complicated to ever be possible to do.

From this, it would follow that higher-order descriptions are both in principle: redundant, in the sense that they are describing behavior that could be described purely in terms of smaller scales; and also incomplete, in the sense that any higher-level description would have to be missing out on details that actually occur in reality on the smaller scale but are not included in the higher-order description.

Obviously that doesn't mean we don't need the higher level description - but clearly, higher level descriptions will be grounded on the details of smaller scales. How could it not be?

Why use the higher-level description then? Obviously it is required because it is less complex and doesn't require precise resolutions, maybe it is also closer to our everyday levels of descriptions. The reasons for using the higher-level description or a lower-level description are clearly about epistemic, explanatory needs, not ontological ones - this makes the following quote from your post clearly ass-backward:

I’m talking about ontology rather than epistemology. Life and mind as a further source of causality in the cosmos. The stakes are accordingly higher. — apokrisis

When you are asking about neuronal structure, you are clearly asking for an explanation that you can understand. Because obviously, in principle one could describe the entire process of cell development and the entire history of the world in which evolution occurs in terms of particles moving in space - it would just not be tractably comprehensible by yourself.

So I think you are talking about explanation, not ontology. Redundancy is acceptable, even useful and required, when it comes to explanation. I disagree that it is when it comes to fundamental ontology.
I don't want to crystallize descriptions from physics too much as some kind of in principle absolute perspective independent view of reality but clearly any treatment of reality that misses out on the smallest scales misses out on details that are fundamental to reality in the sense of having observable consequences which undergirds observations from a less resolved perspective of larger scales.

Smaller scale descriptions don't give us all our required explanations, but clearly a model of reality could only be in principle complete at the highest resolution, other resolutions being redundant. Our observations about reality are grounded on and instantiated in the most zoomed-in scale, fully resolved, fully decomposed - higher scale observations reflect coarse-grainings of that over space and time.

What I was implying is that all of the events that led to the development of neuronal structure- whether on an evolutionary or developmental scale - can be in principle described purely in terms of particles and how they move in space and time. In principle, such a thing could be simulated using a complete model of fundamental physics - it would just obviously be orders of magnitude too complicated to ever be possible to do.

From this, it would follow that higher-order descriptions are both in principle: redundant, in the sense that they are describing behavior that could be described purely in terms of smaller scales; and also incomplete, in the sense that any higher-level description would have to be missing out on details that actually occur in reality on the smaller scale but are not included in the higher-order description.

Obviously that doesn't mean we don't need the higher level description - but clearly, higher level descriptions will be grounded on the details of smaller scales. How could it not be? — Apustimelogist

What you’re calling the lower level physical description, the irreducible ground floor for the understanding of all higher order descriptions (chemical, biological, psychological and cultural) has evolved over the history of philosophical and scientific inquiry. And it has evolved in such a way that all of the higher order resources of cultural knowledge arebrought to bear on redetermining in each era of inquiry the nature of the lowest level. Another way of putting it is that the very highest level of cultural understanding is inextricably intertwined with our models of the very lowest level. This may not seem like an objectionable claim in itself, but what if I were to suggest that it often happens in the historical course of scientific inquiry that insights gained from scientific and philosophical investigations of phenomena seemingly far removed from the subject matter of physics, that supposed ground floor level of study, can point the way toward paradigm shifts in the models describing the nature of that lowest level?

But how can new theories of language, intersubjectivity, perception, cognition and affect pertaining to a higher level like psychology challenge the way we understand causality at the lowest level, rather than simply representing more complex manifestations of these physical laws? The answer, as physicists are increasingly discovering, is that, try as they might, they cannot bracket off the external world from our psychological relation to it. As a result , just as models of the world that physics employs lurk under the surface of many human sciences as guiding presuppositions, psychological and philosophical presuppositions lurk beneath the surface of physical models. Given that physics emerged out of Enlightenment presuppositions assuming a split between subjective phenomena and a world of objective, external causes, physics can be slow to recognize when it has fallen behind the insights of higher order fields like evolutionary biology and human psychology. An example of this is the way that time has been treated within physics as irrelevant. In recent years, physicists like Ilya Prigogine and Lee Smolin have argued that physics desperately needs to learn from evolutionary biology how essential time is to the very essence of physical reality. Jean Piaget wrote:

In all fields of knowledge the situation arises periodically where the concepts in use divide into two levels, of which one is more complex, hence 'higher', and there is then a tendency to reduce the higher to the lower or a contrary tendency as a reaction against the excesses of the former. In the field of physics, for example, mechanical phenomena have for long been regarded as elementary and for that matter as the only intelligible elements to which everything ought to be reduced: whence the futile attempts to translate electromagnetism into the language of mechanics. In the biological field there have been attempts to reduce living processes to known physico-chemical phenomena, attempts that failed to note the possibility of change in Aa discipline which is continually being modiied; and the reaction was an antireduvtonist vitattsm, whose sole merit was the entirely negative one of denouncing the illusions engendered by such pre- mature reductions. In psychology there has been the attempt to "reduce' everything to the stimulus-response scheme, to associations,etc.

If these remarks appear strange, this is no doubt because physics is far from complete, having so far been unable to integrate biology and a fortiori the behavioural sciences within itself. Hence, at present, we reason in different and artificially simplified domains, physics being up to now only the science of non-living, non-conscious things.

Why use the higher-level description then? Obviously it is required because it is less complex and doesn't require precise resolutions, maybe it is also closer to our everyday levels of descriptions. The reasons for using the higher-level description or a lower-level description are clearly about epistemic, explanatory needs, not ontological ones - — Apustimelogist

This was true in the early days of the social and psychological sciences, when they were consumed by physics envy. But this is not true any of the high level, psychological and philosophical accounts that are important to my understanding of the world (embodied, enactive cognition, phenomenology, poststructuralism, later Wittgenstein, etc). Relative to these perspectives, it is the physical account which is less complex and closer to our everyday understanding. It seems to me that there are one of a number of reasons for your view.
1) You are not actually treating the higher order psychological account as consistent with the lower order one, but you are just assuming without examining the details that the higher must be reducible to the lower since of course the physics has been rigorously validated empirically.
2) You interpret the higher order as subsumed by the same theoretical logic as the lower one, and so miss the radical departure of the former from the latter’s grounding assumptions.

I don't have a criterion for existence but my assumptions from what science and philosophy seems to say to me is that: there is a single realm of existence; — Apustimelogist

I agree with that.

I think we construct mathematical objects and impose them on the world enactively, which is not really any different from any other concepts or knowledge we use. — Apustimelogist

But you didn't get the memo about categories. I'm afraid the news is that there are many different kinds of existence.
I wouldn't use the word "impose". It has all the wrong connotations. "Apply" would be better.
No, it isn't any different from any other concepts or knowledge we have/use. Including physics.

Because emotions are much more than just hormones. — Apustimelogist

Oh, to be sure they are. My brain is heavily involved. But the point is that my brain is not the whole story. Same applies to plus tasks.

From my perspective anyway, everything I am experiencing is literally what it is like to be some kind of higher level, higher scale functional structure in the vicinity of that part of existence which we might label my brain. — Apustimelogist

You seriously mean that you live in your head? I'm sorry. If I knew how to let you out, I would rush to the rescue. (That may seem a bit sarcastic, but it isn't meant to be. It's an attempt to get you to see how you are misusing language here.)
The idea that the self or the person is another creature like us inside our heads was the founding mistake of dualism. Now you are positing that there is particular physical structure inside my head which is the real me. The only difference is that your internal person is a physical structure. That won't explain anything, will it?

So the distinction does not seem so big from my perspective. — Apustimelogist

And yet you defend your brain tirelessly. So it must be important to you even if it is not big.

Yes, I get that and I have never excluded those things, after all that is the level at which we engage with the world in everyday life. But I think a distinction can be made between: the use of different explanatory frameworks and ways we engage with the world that are perspective-dependent for various reasons; and then the concept of ontological grounding in principle - that behaviors described at one scale will be grounded in those on smaller scales, even if I require different explanatory frameworks to make sense of the world in any pragmatic way. — Apustimelogist

So the concept of ontological grounding is not perspective-dependent? H'm.

Well then the only criteria I see for the plus task is that it is performed correctly in the way regular people deem it correct. A calculator can plus correctly imo. — Apustimelogist

Oh, I agree with you. Some people wouldn't. But I have to note an important difference. The calculator neither knows not cares whether it is correct. It cannot evaluate its own answer, in the sense of trying to correct wrong answers.

You may not want to say a brain is doing what you are doing but lets see what happens when we stop the brain doing what its doing and knockout that occipital lobe - how that affects what you are doing. — Apustimelogist

Try stopping your heart or draining your blood. Same result.

Let me try again. Consider what philosophers have said:-
1 Everything is physics
2 Everything is language
3 Everything is experienced
All true. They are all perspectives and there can be more than one perspective on anything. Physics, from my perspective, is not unique in any respect.

Neural information encodes — apokrisis

That's like saying that a phone encodes the information passing down it. (Let's assume an old-fashioned phone that is connected by a wire without computers interfering). Then I can say that what is passing down the wire is the causal consequence of the sounds at the end of the line and the "decoding" is a reversion to the sounds at the other end. In a sense, it is just like a fancy megaphone. So what you are doing is treating what is passing down the wire as information. I can see nothing wrong with that, except it's a stretched sense of "code" - probably the result of the misleading analogy with information processing machines.
I do get the point, though, at least I think I do. Biology is not reducible to physics because a living body, though it is a physical object, cannot be explained without reference to concepts that have no place in physics. They cannot be understood without taking a holistic view of the organism and what helps to keep it alive - a concept that physics has no room for.
Except I heard that some physicists are talking of causality as information. But I don't know anything about the background.