Apokrisis:

I have really appreciated you input on this thread and also on "Why Can't the Universe be Contracting?" I've put "Life's Ratchet" on my reading list and I'm going back to reread some of your posts on this thread.

In other words, "feel like something" is its own phenomena that must be reckoned with. You never do, so therefore you always avoid the hard problem. You refer to it as the map, and never deal with it head on as this "other thing" which is the actual "feeling like something". WHAT is this "feeling like something". Explain the territory, not the map. In map world, everything is a map. But clearly, first-person "feels like something" experience is not just map but has this "feels like something" (experiential quality). What is this? Not what are its constituents in map world, but what is experience?

What say you? — schopenhauer1

@apokrisisI guess no answer.

I also read Life's Ratchet on apo's recommendation and it's excellent. There is relatively little about information** in it, and nothing I recall about semiotics, but the explanation of how the thermodynamics works is fascinating. Gets a little deep in the weeds on transport molecules, since I think that's what Hoffman spends a lot of his time doing, but worth powering through.

Once you can picture a kinesin binding an ATP to clamp one foot to a track, allostery causing the back foot to hydrolyze its ATP, and then relying on thermal motion to get the back foot to its new position -- wow. The combination of consuming free energy and "capturing"-- putting to use rather than resisting-- energy from what Hoffman calls the "molecular storm" of randomly moving water molecules, it's extraordinary.

** ADDED: But some nice stuff about regulation, which is, as @MikeL has been noting, what we're often looking to do with information.

Once you can picture a kinesin binding an ATP to clamp one foot to a track, allostery causing the back foot to hydrolyze its ATP, and then relying on thermal motion to get the back foot to its new position -- wow. The combination of consuming free energy and "capturing"-- putting to use rather than resisting-- energy from what Hoffman calls the "molecular storm" of randomly moving water molecules, it's extraordinary. — Srap Tasmaner

I was about to say that myself. Yes that's irony.

There is relatively little about information in it, — Srap Tasmaner

I found an article on the web - "The Algorithmic Origins of Life," by Walker and Davies, which I enjoyed, but need to read again at least once. Are you familiar with that? Is that what you are talking about?

Have not read.

Hoffman talks about Maxwell's demon and Landauer. But my memory is that a lot of the discussion of RNA, DNA, ribosomes, etc. is just focused on how they work. It seems like there should be another chapter or two to put some pieces of the puzzle together, but I guess that's because the idea here is to show what life is, rather than how it arose. It's not really intended to be a brief for abiogenesis. I'll probably check out Nick Lane's book, but I'm already reading four or five books, so it'll have to wait.

Enjoy Life's Ratchet.

Google 'pansemiosis bootstrapping' and see what comes up ;-) — Wayfarer

Hmm, seems like nothing, how telling. Why did apokrisis call this the "the mainstream information theoretic view" then?

I note you continue not to answer my question to you. Too dangerous.

But anyway, your question to me has already been answered. The reply is that it is a flawed question in that it is a dyadic semiotic framing of things and not a triadic one.

The metaphor of maps and territories of course in reality demands the third thing of "an interpreter" - a further habit of interpretance. The map itself is the physical sign, the symbol, the information that connects the interpreter to the world in terms of the interpreter's own interests.

You will of course immediately jump to the presumption that the interpreter is now the conscious part of the whole equation. You won't see how this is just a continuation of a substance monism that you feel forced to impose on any framing of the issues.

But there you go. You are stuck with a particular habit of interpretance. I can offer you a better map, but you are only going to insist again on holding it upside down and complaining you don't get it.

The metaphor of maps and territories of course in reality demands the third thing of "an interpreter" - a further habit of interpretance. The map itself is the physical sign, the symbol, the information that connects the interpreter to the world in terms of the interpreter's own interests.

You will of course immediately jump to the presumption that the interpreter is now the conscious part of the whole equation. You won't see how this is just a continuation of a substance monism that you feel forced to impose on any framing of the issues. — apokrisis

I think what schopenhauer1 is getting at is that this interpreter, however conceived (else, we wouldn’t hold any conceptualization of it), is itself only an inference of the map in your current system. It’s reality is not evidenced to be real metaphysically - i.e. is not evidenced to be in any way the real territory - but is inferred/deemed real, when logically addressed via noncontradictory reasoning, only as an entailed consequence of a map - which, as map, includes within it the concepts of both territory and interpreter. Hence, it’s all map sans metaphysically evidenced reality of any territory.

Yes, the striking thing that comes through from Hoffman is that the basis of life is way more mechanical than we knew. It is all a bunch of little switches and rotors and pumps and chains and conveyor belts. So out of utter instability, a little bit of genetic information can conjure a fantastic apparatus. We used to think metabolism was a chemical soup. The cell was a bag of reactants. Now we can see it is a factory with structure.

So the explanation of life back a decade or two was focused on genetic information and metabolic reactions. At school, we all had to learn a bunch of chemical equations like the Krebs cycle. Now there is this third intervening level of mechanical organisation.

That is a huge realisation in terms of the metaphysics of life. No one was predicting that ATP production would actually involve a proper little rotating spindle device. That is just so outlandish.

Hoffman's book also makes it clear how just the tiniest, simplest scrap of mechanical structure can have outsized impact at the nanoscale. And that is key to the abiogenesis issue. It is much less of a step from nonliving to living than we imagined.

Nick Lane's book then comes from the other side and talks about how - with alkaline sea vents - the nonliving world closes the gap to make it a much tinier leap than we ever previously imagined. In terms of a chemical soup (with no biological machinery), there can be a dissipative energetic process in full swing.

So biological machinery can then just hop aboard a ride that is already going. It doesn't have to invent a metabolism de novo. It just has to offer that metabolism some extra degree of stability. And so it is easy to see evolution happening. Nothing needs to be created. All that is asked for is regulation. And natural selection is all about that kind of whittling away what doesn't work.

The standard complaint about natural selection is that it can't be creative. It is a constraint that can only remove possibilities. And biologists fully realise that.

Now we can see that if the nonliving metabolic cycle already exists, all the first life had to do was take away the possibility of that metabolic cycle collapsing.

It all adds up to a revolution in abiogentic thinking. Just 10 years ago, the answer seemed as though it must be some kind of RNA world hypothesis. The thinking was all focused on how a coding mechanism might have spontaneously appeared in some autocatalytic fashion (RNA being able to function as an enzyme as well as a memory). But now the first step looks far simpler. You just need a protein that wants to curl up and act as a physical gate - a sodium ion transporter.

I talked about a modelling relation rather than a map as that involves the interlocking causality of all three things - world, symbols and habits of interpretance. What we label consciousness is the wholeness of that lived and embodied relation.

The obsession with explaining feels is a hang over from dualism. If you think the Hard Problem is central, you are still stuck in the metaphysics of a different era.

We know substance dualism can't work in any sensible causal fashion. So just move on. Quit banging your head against that particular tree. Try on a triadic picture of the issues for a change.

The key thing the Peircean view does is deflate the notion of a mysterious witnessing self. Instead we just have a habit of interpretance - which at its core involves a running, or emergently-constructed, self vs world distinction.

So the self exists only like a whorl in a stream. It is not a substantial thing - a first person witnesser floating above the whole show. It is simply a state of organisation that emerges within an embodied flow of action. In regulating the world, there is then selfhood or autonomy.

We can see this quite simply from falling asleep or lying inside a sensory deprivation chamber. The ego dissolves as soon as there is nothing doing. There is nothing more to account for but the fact that an ego is what appears because of a particular kind of semiotic interaction where interpretance - an entropic modelling relation - is what is busy going on.

No rushing stream, no backward whorl either. The Hard Problem really is that simple.

Well, I’ll try to make myself clearer: When addressing aspects of our concrete reality, for example, are we founding things on the metaphysical reality of our experience (what it feels like to be aware (including of this and that) – this as one metaphysical reality that is a constituent of the total metaphysical reality) or on an abstract theory composed of what we take to be abstract, universal maths?

If on the former, the maths too—via which we quantitatively measure, and which you use to appraise physical reality—will be cognized due to the foundational metaphysical reality of experience. They will be a tool, but not the metaphysical reality of awareness to which the tools are of use (including those that occur on Platonic planes of mathematical reality).

If on the latter, than both our notion and awareness of experience will themselves be byproducts of an abstract maths whose axioms and conclusions can logically be as malleable and replaceable as would be the whims of a deity. (with no metaphysical reality being here established)

Needless to add, while we may agree on many facets of the physical, this is a metaphysical disagreement. For you to project this and that label on “my” perspective would be just that: projections of your own conceptualizations. But yes, that I find awareness (and not homnculi) to be metaphysically real then definitely precludes me from assuming the labeled of a physicalist.

OK, so I understand that you assume two distinct types of constraints, the constraints which act on material potential causing substantial being, and semiotic constraints which act on substantial being. This is what you just told me: — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. Remember that a dissipative structure is organisation produced by environmental constraint. All the information involved is just how the world around it is organised.

Then a living system internalises that information. It takes control for itself by being able to build its own environment. That starts just by building a membrane with ion pores that can create a proto-cell.

So yes. Two quite distinct situations. And that is the mainstream understanding. Only the second is explicitly semiotic - an autopoietic point of view based on an informational machinery.

Pan-semiosis is then a further speculative metaphysical project where dissipative structure is also understood as a generalised sign relation. It connects to the mainstream of current physics now that it has turned productively from talking about reality in terms of particles to bits of information.

Rich has illustrated how deeply confusing this turn is for traditional metaphysics. The holographic principle now makes it sound like information - as some kind of magical stuff - paints a representation of reality on some outer surface, then a universe of matter particles flying about is some kind of projected illusion.

As usual, the map of the territory is being confusedly treated as itself the new territory. We are back into the dualism of representationalism that pushes the question of interpretation into homuncular infinite regress.

So the way out of this observer problem that dogs the metaphysics of physics is the same - the triadic observer-including modelling relation. That is where pansemiosis comes in. Semiosis can apply to physics too. But there is still a big difference between semiosis based on an epistemic cut and internalised points of view, and semiosis without that coding machinery, simply an environmental structure which creates some generalised, or universally coherent, point of view.

Our difference is that you seek what concretely must exist as a foundation, I instead think everything fluidly emerges.

So for me, the question is what then concretely limits the inherent dynamism of "existence". And that is where maths (of symmetry) comes in. There are universal mathematical structures we can describe that are the invariant and necessary features of nature as they are the limits that must eventually emerge. Chaos has no choice but to throw up certain eternal regularities even in its attempts to be as unstructured as possible.

Our difference is that you seek what concretely must exist as a foundation, I instead think everything fluidly emerges. — apokrisis

No. Our difference dwells in justification for that which physically is. On what do you base your justifications that "everything fluidly emerges"?

No. Our difference dwells in justification for that which physically is. On what do you base your justifications that "everything fluidly emerges"? — javra

It appears to me that the sentences and the overall story is being presented in lieu of any evidence. Now as for the story itself, I find it pretty incomprehensible, which may actually be intended. I can't tell. But any time I see consciousness bring defined as a relation and then declaring the Hard Problem had been solved, I begin to suspect I have found the sleight of hand once again.

Hey, while I’m myself not fully certain of how to interpret your statement, to be clear, I’m addressing “the physical” in the sense interpret-able via a dual-aspect monism, be it termed neutral monism or objective idealism. Personally, I could give a hoot either way.

Pan-semiosis is then a further speculative metaphysical project where dissipative structure is also understood as a generalised sign relation. — apokrisis

So, question - where does mind enter the scene? Presumably not until very late in the piece, as h. sapiens has only existed for a minute sliver of time relative to the duration of the Earth, let alone the universe. So whilst matter and energy have presumably existed all that time, mind is a very recent arrival, isn't it?

Can you provide a definition for mind please Wayfarer.

Mind still continues to enter the scene. Even just 2600 years ago, we were simply linguistic minds, not mathematically and logically formed minds. Who knows where mind goes as the internet and AI takes on a mind of its own. Or how we might view the evolution of mind as we recognise formally the ability of fossil fuels to so thoroughly reorganise human culture and its organisational structure.

So mind is a journey of open-ended semiosis. You are doing the usual thing of treating it as a static, already fully substantial and realised existence. Hence you have a whole lot of questions about nature that make perfect sense within your paradigm and are incoherent - not even wrong - within mine.

So my story can't see any necessary end to the development of mind. It just sees a pragmatic limit in terms of what we know about the entropy balance sheet of the Universe. Minds, as negentropy, exist only by earning their entropic keep.

By the same token, mind enters the picture right from the start. As soon as there is the vaguest speck of semiotic mechanism in play.

I can see that is just as incoherent within your paradigm as what you assert is within mine. I only have the advantage that my paradigm is thoroughly supported by scientific investigation. Yours is the view from comparative religion.

I can't make you change your paradigm. You have to want to do it fo yourself.

Cam you also provide a definition for the mind your speaking of, Apokrisis.

Reason and observation. The usual combo of metaphysical speculation and scientific test.

By observation you mean awareness of sensory input?

By reason you mean the ability to determine the best option given multiple choices?

Nope. I can only keep telling you that speaking of mindfulness as a noun rather than a verb is where folk always go wrong. If you assume mind to be a substantial state rather than a variety of process, then already you have painted yourself into an intellectual corner from which nothing will ever make sense.

So, how do you define observation and reason?

Reason and observation. The usual combo of metaphysical speculation and scientific test. — apokrisis

X-) OK, your joking with me by stating the superficially obvious. Good one.

Do you know of reason due to awareness OR do you know of awareness due to reason? That's the metaphysical question.

How would you define mind as a verb?

Can you provide a definition for mind please Wayfarer. — MikeL

Very general terms are the hardest to define. All you can do is point to various domains of discourse which use the term in recognisable ways. But to explain that in any depth, would be a diversion into philosophy of mind, which is a large topic in its own right.

You are doing the usual thing of treating it as a static, already fully substantial and realised existence — apokrisis

No, what I asked was when 'mind' entered the picture. And your answer was:

mind enters the picture right from the start. As soon as there is the vaguest speck of semiotic mechanism in play. — apokrisis

Which was when? Right at the outset of the Universe? Pansemiosis seems to imply that even the so-called 'laws of physics' are language-like, that in some sense 'representation' must have been part of the early universe as well. So that implies that mind is not a product, but a causal factor. Seems to me you can't have it both ways.

I only have the advantage that my paradigm is thoroughly supported by scientific investigation. — apokrisis

Again, I think it's more a matter of your view being supported by the kinds of ideas that the natural sciences are prepared to consider. Other schools of philosophy proceed according to different principles.

Now you appear to be talking about the basis for self-awareness. I know that I am a self because in modern human culture, that is a well-defined socio-linguistic construct. We are all taught the same habit of introspective self-regulation. We internalise a useful socially evolved habit where we understand our being in those very terms and do our level best to comply.

Check out anthropology and this vaunted Western sense of self - which really became crystallised as a the foundational myth of Socrates - is a reasonably new thing.

So I am careful to make a distinction between the usual conflated notion of consciousness as being inherently introspective - a view in which the self is already being seen - and an "extrospective" awareness which is the biological, pre-sociolinguistic, experience of the animal mind.

An animal just is a self. It is always acting from a selfish first person point of view. It sees a world, an umwelt, in which it's self is implicitly represented, not explicitly represented. It doesn't see itself experiencing that selfhood in a second order recursive fashion like we all learn to do.

Even the Hard Problem acolytes dismiss self consciousness as an easy problem. Anthropology and developmental psychology can explain it in mundanely comprehensible fashion.

So it is biological level extrospective awareness that is the scientific mystery. And then that is in turn already much less of a mystery because extrospection would produce a different kind of "feeling".

Schop, Wayfarer and the rest just presume an explicitly felt sense of self is intrinsic to consciousness. That is then the reason why they can't get their heads around an explanation which targets what it would feel like for "self" to be only an implicit and "unobserved" aspect of the flow of an umwelt - experience as an animal experiences it.

So just the experience or interpretance relation, no ghostly experiencer or interpreter.

We are all taught the same habit of introspective self-regulation. We internalise a useful socially evolved habit where we understand our being in those very terms and do our level best to comply. — apokrisis

You think yogis don't know this?