I have referred to his paper What is Information? — Wayfarer

Excellent primer. I struggle to find anything I would disagree with in this text, though if I may, I also don't find it so original and new. It sounds more like standard biology to me... You cannot understand modern biology if you treat molecules in an organism as just physical objects. The concept of feedback loop for instance becomes meaningless.

One aspect which I see as fundamental to the whole shebang is folding. I have talked about it in the "Emergence" thread. An organic protein is not just a linear sequence of amino acids, it is that sequence correctly folded into a functional molecular machine. Most of times the folding happens spontaneously. The sequence will fold naturally a certain correct, functional way, at least if temperature is within a certain range. In other cases, a chaperon protein (a protein that 'cares' for other proteins) is needed to fold a linear sequence of amino acids into a functional protein.

In Barbieri's terms, folding is what gives a meaning to the information that a linear sequence of aminoacids provides. In my terminology, the 1 dimensional information of the latter is translated (or interpreted) into a 3D functional form via protein folding. But folding is a more general process: a growing embryo is folding sheets after sheets of cells into a functional 3D machine called a body. It's the same general idea: folding is what you need to move from the one dimensional genetic information to a 3 dimensional organism.

A bit like an origami if you will. My intuition is that it's an important piece of the puzzle.

The meaning of any biological information can be equated to "What's in it for me?" What is the potential significance of the info for the organism? It is therefore context-dependent, emerging, and inherently subjective, in my opinion. In the literal sense that without a biological subject (a living organism with some inclination for survival and reproduction), information has no meaning.

As mentioned in other posts, it is also clearly demonstrated that some of the activities of enzyme molecules undertaking DNA repair, do seem to display the characteristics of awareness without any known chemical or computational mechanism, even in theory, to explain it.

That doesn’t mean that a materialist solution won’t be found, but as things stand after decades of research, the evidence shows that these molecules do seem to break known principles that we apply to Matter/Energy. — Gary Enfield

I try to be open minded and certainly do not define myself as a materialist, but the above is just incorrect. Nothing in biochemistry breaks the laws of physics, not even DNA repair enzymes. Those critters are not self-aware, they are just very sophisticated molecular machines.

As to how life could have appeared from inanimate matter, it must be through some intermediary stage between life as we know it and carbon-based chemistry as we know it. A stage were not yet cells but far simpler macromolecules (RNA, proteins) are the basic element of replication. A soup of self-replicating macromolecules, competing with one another (so to speak) through chemical reactions. The winners are the molecules that become more frequent than others in the soup.

I don't have any argument with any of that, in fact I find it intuitively congenial; but I just don't see how it could ever be definitively empirically demonstrated is all. — Janus

Among the real neuroscientists, I find Damasio very inspiring.
https://www.ted.com/talks/antonio_damasio_the_quest_to_understand_consciousness/transcript?language=en#t-9208

The other possibility is that there is more going on than we can possibly imagine, that our ways of conceiving and imagining evolution, the mind, consciousness and so on are clunky, inadequate and that our inevitable fate is to "see through a glass, darkly", and most particularly when we seek to practice analysis. — Janus

We see ourselves dimly, I agree. It may be that introspection did not provide much of a Darwinian advantage to our ancestors.

I shock myself sometimes when my internalized attitudes come out unexpectedly. — bert1

Me too actually... Better become aware of a prejudice than remain unaware though.

An old French stand up, on racism.



Hey! I'm not a fool, I'm a customs officer...

I don't like foreigners, they come to eat the bread of the French ... ouais!

It's curious: as a profession, I'm a customs officer, but I don't like foreigners...

When I see a stranger, if he is eating some bread, I say to him: "this is MY bread!" Since I'm French, and then he eats the bread of the French so it's MY bread to me...

I don't like foreigners because I'm French, and I'm proud to be French.

My name is Koularkientensky on my mother's side and Piazzano-Venditti on the side of a friend of my father. That should tell you how French I am!

I don't like foreigners... In the village where I live, we have a foreigner, so when we see him pass, we say: "Here, look at that: it's the foreigner". We point at him, like an object... We have no respect. When we have respect for a human being, we do not say "that" about him. One would say: "Look at this monsieur" ... But he's a foreigner, he comes to eat the bread of the French.

When his wife passes by, her head bowed, with her little children who bow their heads too; we say: "Look at that, it's the foreigners: they come to eat the bread of the French."

The other Sunday, in my village, it was at the ten o'clock mass - I was at the cafe opposite the church, to receive communion. There was the stranger who wanted to talk to me. I had so much to do, too much to do to talk with a stranger! I had my work to think of... I am a customs officer. I am not a fool.

Finally, from the height of my greatness, being a civil servant, I deigned to listen to him, this imbecile (he is a foreigner, of course).

He said to me, uh: "Don't you think that in our time [1972], it's a little ridiculous to call some people strangers, since we are all equal? This is what I had in mind, what I wanted to tell you, Officer, you who are a civil servant and very important, you who have the shield of the law... We are all equal. We can prove it to you: when a surgeon operates on a human heart, whether in Cape Town, Geneva, Washington, Moscow, Beijing, he does it the same way: we are all equal."

The idiot! Come and disturb me to say such nonsense !!! He continued... These foreigners are so stupid, they come to eat the bread of the French.

He said to me ... uh ...: "Do you know a race where a mother loves her child more or less than in another race?"

There, I did not understand what he meant... I concluded that he was a fool. Indeed, when someone expresses himself and we do not understand what he is saying, that is because he is stupid!

And I can't be stupid, I'm a customs officer... "Go away, stranger!" I told him.

He replied: “I'm fed up with you, your bread and your France. I am leaving." He took his wife, his suitcase, his children, they got on a boat, they sailed far away beyond the seas...

And, since that day, in our village, we don't have bread anymore.

He was our baker !!!

Give me an example of a thought you don't perceive. — khaled

Yours.

You can perceive a thought by definition. — khaled

There may be unconscious thoughts, if you believe Freud. But the interesting point is that for a thought to be perceivable, you need some mechanism. It doesn't happen by magic I think. Therefore our conscious thoughts must have an effect on something, a percievable echo, a way to get 'heard' by our conscious self. Therefore they cannot be epiphenomena. Otherwise you would have no way of knowing what you think.

you didn't have three effects. — Isaac

Indeed, just three narratives of the same effect.

But our own thoughts are clearly apparent to us from the outset — khaled

And therefore they must have some effect on something, if only our self. To be able to consider a thought, i need to be able to perceive it, to hold it in some sort of short-term memory accessible to my consciousness.

Where is the contradiction in noticing something that has no effect? — khaled

If some stuff has not effect on anything, it cannot be sensed, because we could not notice any perturbation in the world that we could trace to that stuff. When you see an apple, the apple is having an effect on you. If the apple did not affect light at all, it would be transparent and you could not see it.

The point is: if our thoughts were epiphenomena, we would have no way of noticing them, by definition of what an epiphenomenon is supposed to be: some stuff that has no effect on anything.

How do you notice the experience of seeing a red apple? — khaled

That's not my question.

I asked: if an epiphenomenon existed out there, how would we know of it? How does one notices an epiphenomenon, if by definition it cannot have any effect on anything?

And yet so many 'passers' are in deep denial of that fact. — 180 Proof

Traveling helps, being exposed to other forms of prejudice than the one at home, which we tend to internalize and be blind to. When I lived in the US, I realized that over there the Catholics were the underdog. There's quite some thick prejudice about them in America, whereas in France, Catholics tend to treat Protestants as the underdog.

There's a whole philosophical travelogue literature about the virtues of being exposed to other societies for seeing your own society in a new light.

How would you be able to notice an epiphenomenon?

Yes, but even then, how could we know whether the mind was "causa sui" or itself caused by some other antecedent processes? — Janus

It would make no sense for the brain to generate such a virtual mental space, if that space was not the locus for some vitally important mechanisms.

brain creates this 'virtual mental space' that the mind seems to be, we might also discover that the deliberations and decisions made within that mental space are needed, indispensable for the organism, not optional. Not frivolous, not an epiphenomenon, but something useful
— Olivier5

Sailing awfully close to dualist lines here. — khaled

The duality of matter and form, perhaps, but not that of two different substances.

It ought to be obvious to all, that minds exist for a reason, because life doesn't build things for no reason. It ought to be obvious that everything in this universe is connected to the rest, and therefore that epiphenomena are not logically possible (on top of being not noticeable so nobody would know if they existed).

Unfortunately, some people cannot see these obvious things, like some people cannot see red.

When I try to explain these things to you, I feel like I am trying to explain red to a blind man.

And Marchesk says he doesn't agree that qualia are symbols. — bongo fury

I am not saying they are man-made symbols but biological signs.

I don't see how a causal explanation of human agency (demonstrating that it is not free from the determinations of the causal nexus) is possible because if what we think of as human agency were determined by anything other than an unconditioned aspect of the self then it would not really be human agency, and the explanation would not be an explanation, but an elimination. — Janus

Not necessarily. The causal explanation could include the causality of the mental over the neuronal. The relationship between the mind and the body is a two way street, as always. If we discover how the brain creates this 'virtual mental space' that the mind seems to be, we might also discover that the deliberations and decisions made within that mental space are needed, indispensable for the organism, not optional. Not frivolous, not an epiphenomenon, but something useful: the capacity for an animal to consider multiple variables at once, what they mean for the animal's survival chances, and on this basis decide whether to fight or to flee, whether to mate or not with that other animal, where to go to drink, where to go to feed. A piloting system.

In any case how could we ever know that such a purported explanation of the sense of human agency was the true explanation?

Because we could then replicate it, like we replicate Beethoven's fifth. We could make machines that have agency.

No-one ever fakes pain. — Isaac


If you wish to abuse language to make a philosophical point. Otherwise, people fake being in pain.
— Marchesk

How do you know? — Isaac

Rather, blue the qualia is a sign that signifies 470nm light.
— hypericin

But ok, perhaps that doesn't describe yours or Luke's or @khaled's or @Olivier5's position? — bongo fury

Yes, I interpret colors as biological signs (like the genetic code is a set of biological signs). Colors code not exactly for wavelength in fact, more precisely for the levels of excitation of three types of cone cells in our retina. Each type of cone cells has a certain range of wavelengths exciting it so there is a lose correlation between wavelengths and colors. But there are many different combinations of those three 'feeds', beyond the 'pure' colors of the rainbow, and of course we don't have a type of cone cell per color (that would be uneconomical). Just three types of cone cells for all the colors. Orange, purple, yellow, brown etc. are 'composite' types of colors that are produced when two or three types of cone cells are excited at the same time in the same region of the retina.

The other side must show how a feeling can move an arm. — khaled

That seems doable.

This is taken from another thread because I think it's more topical here.

the different narratives cannot always be reconciled. But sometimes they can. Einstein famously said that "it would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of air pressure.” I think he was too dismissive of air pressure graphs, which come handy to reproduce Beethoven's work on vinyl and digital formats... — Olivier5

:up: :lol: — Janus

So there is this huge, seemingly inreconcilable difference between the experience of hearing a Beethoven symphony and that of seeing an air pressure graph of the same symphony. Two seemingly inreconcilable narratives of the same event. And yet, the funny thing is, it wasn't actually meaningless to interpret music as variations of air pressure. This was in fact the key to recording it and reproducing it mechanically (through vinyl etc.) and thus making music widely available to the people. Our rapport to music will never be the same. 200 years ago, most people would listen to music maybe a few times a year.

Did music become irrelevant once we discovered its physical underpinning? No, it became more relevant. More present. A big industry actually...

Will the human spirit become irrelevant if one day it manages to understand its own neurological basis? Allow me to doubt. On the contrary, they will make a even bigger industry out of it...

No-one ever fakes pain. — Isaac

I do.

I tend to think more in terms of ontological pluralism, so I don't think in terms of one world, or one reality — Janus

For me too, the different narratives cannot always be reconciled. But sometimes they can. Einstein famously said that "it would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” I think he was too dismissive of air pressure graphs, which come handy to reproduce Beethoven's work on vinyl and digital formats...

By "incompatible" I only meant that the different descriptions or explanations cannot necessarily be translated into each other's terms. So, we can't understand moral agency in terms of QM, or even neurology, for example. — Janus

From a monist standpoint, these different explanations must be coherent, at least in theory: they describe one unique world. It's like the story of the blind men and the elephant. One feels the foot and say "it's a tree", another gets at the trunk and concludes "it's a snake", etc.

It is a tendency to think of some explanations as more "fundamental' than others, and so, if, as per this example, moral agency cannot be understood in terms of QM or neurology, then it might be eliminated or considered an illusion or epiphenomenon.

I believe that epiphenomena are a hoax, and that no such thing as an epiphenomenon can logically exist. Minds are real and causal, like everything else, almost by definition.

All levels are compiled (so to speak) in one reality and I agree that they are all equally real. I also agree that in practice, it is yet impossible to derive the laws of chemistry from those of physics, or the laws of biology from those of chemistry, or those of psychology from biology, or socio-economics from psychology. In fact it may never be possible. Each new level appears to us as emerging somehow from a lower level but with a degree of autonomy and creativity. Each new level creates its own rules to a degree, and higher levels can also manipulate lower ones.

Life, for instance, does not contradict chemistry nor physics of course, rather it uses them. It makes them do wonderful things (living species, and their biological processes), things that even the smartest daemon would not be able to predict from the laws of chemistry because they are not contained in chemistry, only made possible by it.

Cathedrals are made of stone, but one cannot derive their architecture from a knowledge of geology.

See? Miracles happen... :smile:

Or maybe need not be. — simeonz

Hey, a little mystery never hurt anyone...

I am making the point that we cannot call the universe non-deterministic. It is more accurate to call it locally unpredictable. — simeonz

If it's locally unpredictable, it is no-deterministic in that sense of the word. It may still be called deterministic in the sense that some predictions can be made at macro scale. Like we can predict that the sun will become a red giant at some point, but not who will win the lottery tomorrow.

So, I doubt that free will can rest on that. — simeonz

"That" is indeterminism, a metaphysical view of a universe open to novelty, where opportunities happen, where time is not wholly redundant, where something as radically new as life can emerge from inanimate matter.

It's not about total chaos, it's about letting a little lash between the big wheels of determinism, a little play without which those big wheels won't turn.

I personally don't see much of a connection between the question of free will, which in my view is rather straightforward, and the question of determinism vs. indeterminism, a question which I see as at best aesthetical, and at worse metaphysical.

But that's the thing: indeterminism never ever pretended that the world was pure chaos. It just says that the future is not fully determined by the past.

make it statistically predictive. — simeonz

Rest assured that I am well aware of this.

But if some such representation is possible by any species, then the world is approximately deterministic, at least on the necessary scale. And if that is true, then the neurological processes are governed by deterministic laws (assuming they are not influenced by microscopic interactions sufficiently.) — simeonz

A lot of assumptions you got there... The reason in question could be purely probabilistic.

that as long as indeterminism doesn't include the notion of propensities, it is testable by a finite collection of observations. QM is a different kind of indeterminism, — simeonz

Ah okay. I guess I go by the QM type then. Didn't know a form of indeterminism existed that did not function with probabilities.

But if you are proposing that the natural law is completely impossible to internalize homomorphically — simeonz

Not saying that, just saying that our human reason may not be fit for this purpose. There could be stuff that forever escape us humans, but they would not escape any conceivable species of course. Others could think better than us.

MWI doesn't posit that everything you can think of happens. You need to show there actually is a part of the universal wave function with unicorns on it; otherwise you're just fantasizing. — InPitzotl

Okay so I can't prove that determinism is not lurking somewhere in this infinite number of invisible universes, and you cannot prove that a unicorn isn't hiding in some of them either. That makes us even...

Sure, one of those worlds may contain a unicorn, but it would have to be shown that it does to meaningfully discuss it; same with the flying. As for the invisibility part, that sounds like an amphiboly. I've never seen my liver either, but I don't think I can call it invisible based on that. — InPitzotl

You can see your liver with a CT scan. Can you see these other worlds posited by MWI?

Could you be just a tad bit more specific? — simeonz

First you said:

What I mean by factual indeterminism is the experience, or at least the conjecture, that more than one possible outcome can arise from a given circumstance.

You also implied that this should be testable empirically.

Then you said:

The universe of QM is not just non-deterministic, but probabilistic,

Then you implied that the double-slit experiment doesn't prove indeterminism.

I find all this rather conflicting.

Have you considered that quite a few among this infinite number of invisible universes posited by the MWI may contain at least one unicorn, and that these unicorns would then be invisible to us?

You must have something else in mind, I suspect, to compel you to propose that reason for absurd reality exists beyond our comprehension. Could you elaborate any of its qualities, even if you can't define it? — simeonz

You call it absurd, I don't. I'm just saying that human beings are contingent. They could never had appeared, or be different than they are. Therefore their reason, our reason, which has at least some natural, evolutionary basis, could also be different. It's at least possible that it be contingent. Otherwise what? God gave us the Eternal Logos? Or did we get it by eating a forbidden fruit?

Do you think for instance that a race of cogent aliens would follow exactly our logic, and reason exactly the way we do? Or do you think their reason might have blind spots that we don't have, or vice-versa, that they could access realms of reason that we can only dream of?

I fail to understand what reason means as a more general concept, beyond human comprehension. — simeonz

Why would there be only one form of reason? Just because we are born with a particular form of reason doesn't mean it is the only one. Our human reason is likely the result of our Darwinian history. Other animal species could conceivably operate under slightly different logics for instance. Even within the human species, the form of reason applied at national, state level is different from individual humans' logic. Raison d'État is much more shrewd, ambiguous and machiavellian than normal human reason.

That's correct.

I don't mean to be impolite, but I don't want to double post it. — simeonz

You may wish to be coherent. You can't say something and then its opposite.