I have the same problem with imagining some big daddy super-mind in the sky who counts or knows. — apokrisis

There's your problem in a nutshell - an inherited image which conditions your thinking (and not only yours). It's this kind of subterranean mountain, which we are duty bound to avoid.

It's more that in the Western philosophical tradition, there is the seminal idea of 'nous', which goes back at least to Plato (and is, I think, essential to the Western philosophical tradition). But I don't think you recognise anything that corresponds with that, whilst still seeking to retain some of its products. You will acknowledge that 'mind has been there all along' but if anyone suggests that this might amount to a notion of 'spirit' then you vociferously object (because of the 'subterranean mountain'). But quite what is the nature of 'nous' or 'mind' in that naturalistic sense, is obviously a very hard thing to conceive of.

I think I understand why, but to explain that requires a re-framing of the problem. In my philosophy, 'mind' is never an object of perception, but is nevertheless an ubiquitous reality. But it's not a 'that' to us, it is not something we can objectively know.

Whereas in your science-based approach, you're seeking to elucidate an essentially objective process, so when I make those kinds of remarks, you say 'aaargh, mysticism, hand-waving'. From your P.O.V., that is a valid criticism.

Do you want to argue for panpsychism? — apokrisis

Actually, no. A few months back I started a thread on that, on the basis of an essay by Phillip Goff, who actually turned up and posted a question about my response.

So there is a science of meaning-making. Semiotics. And it begins right at the intersection of physics and symbols. It is embodied or rooted in an pragmatic interaction between "a mind" and "a world". — apokrisis

It's all very good, except for when it tries to become a 'theory of everything'. That's where I think you're extending the model too far. But, I'm learning a lot of stuff thinking about it, which is after all why we post here.

I think we've already covered the vent scenario. It was good up to a point, but it does not bridge the gap.

Definitely there must be a connection between not having read the book and failing to see. That's true, I am an awful reader of late. I always feel I'm getting cheated out of my ideas to read other peoples ideas. That's why I like the forum where we can discuss and formalise our own ideas- sure we can use other people's concepts but I would prefer them only as a springboard into the imagination.

And I can't run out and read every book you recommend, Apokrisis, that's why it would be helpful if you could boil down the points so we can discuss them in some detail. As it stands there is no substance to the points being made in favour of abiogenesis- as you saw I used the same points of molecular machines to argue against abiogenesis..

There's your problem in a nutshell - an inherited image which conditions your thinking (and not only yours). — Wayfarer

Yeah. I just find it so hard to imagine reality in any but the most stereotyped and hackneyed old ways. You got me. Forever guilty of the unthinking Scientism you find in anything that doesn't immediately sound like it is agreeing with you.

It's more that in the Western philosophical tradition, there is the seminal idea of 'nous', — Wayfarer

Gosh darn. How did I never hear about that?

But I don't think you recognise anything that corresponds with that, whilst still seeking to retain some of its products. You will acknowledge that 'mind has been there all along' but if anyone suggests that this might amount to a notion of 'spirit' then you vociferously object (because of the 'subterranean mountain'). But quite what is the nature of 'nous' or 'mind' in that naturalistic sense, is obviously a very hard thing to conceive of. — Wayfarer

Gee whiz. Well maybe nous could be understood as a claim about "soul stuff", or maybe it could be understood as a claim about reason - semiotics - as a metaphysically general reasoning process?

I mean did we ever decide what Aristotle might have been arguing for in saying nous was the form that shaped the rational in the animal? Seems kind of an embodied approach. And so not so much your disembodied mind stuff.

So from your cite.....

In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the basic understanding or awareness which allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. This therefore connects discussion of nous, to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way, and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories the same logical ways.

...well that sure seems reasonable. Pretty straight semiotics.

Then...

Deriving from this it was also sometimes argued, especially in classical and medieval philosophy, that the individual nous must require help of a spiritual and divine type. By this type of account, it came to be argued that the human understanding (nous) somehow stems from this cosmic nous, which is however not just a recipient of order, but a creator of it.

...Oh there you go. Now we are into the soul stuff business. Unless you take a detour into pansemiosis where the Cosmos is a "mind" in that strict deflationary sense.

In my philosophy, 'mind' is never an object of perception, but is nevertheless an ubiquitous reality. But it's not a 'that' to us, it is not something we can objectively know. — Wayfarer

Yep. Your position is that what you say is true and cannot be falsified ... as if being above factual disproof is a good thing.

So the Cosmic mind is everywhere and nowhere, baby, It is immaterial, imperceptible and disembodied, knowable only via faith and deep meditation. That's your "philosophy" and it is impregnable to anything science might have to say.

But, I'm learning a lot of stuff thinking about it, which is after all why we post here. — Wayfarer

Me too. :)

You've got to bend these things, over-extend these things, to find whether they break. That's why I hope you can bring up stronger arguments in regards to your universal mind. I need more push-back.

In the end - as I've said - the sheer fact of existence seems the most remarkable thing of all. Whether we are talking experience or world, the "why anything?" question is basically mind-boggling.

In that light, God-causes and soul-stuffs just strike me as mundane. It is obvious they don't even get started at illuminating the big question.

As it stands there is no substance to the points being made in favour of abiogenesis- as you saw I used the same points of molecular machines to argue against abiogenesis.. — MikeL

Remind me how molecular machines argue against abiogensis?

If it is demonstrated that a tiny fragment of biological machinery can harness a vast amount of entropy, then that makes abiogensis vastly more probable. It goes from being a freak of nature to an inevitability of nature.

And you are saying....?

I am saying two things.
Firstly atoms forming biological machines is an absurd notion, but one that does occur, suggesting that even at this level some weird shit is happening that breaks the bounds of a dumb physical world.

Secondly, that the specificity of the machines found in the nucleus must be encoded in the DNA. I list a whole bunch of enzymes in my OP and their specific function, and Wayfarer has a good link above too about irreducible design: http://www.iep.utm.edu/design/#SH2a

In terms of encoding a massive paradox opens up. I know its a bit long and dry, but see try and read my OP.

Ultimately I guess its an engineering problem. Randomness cannot account for it in any sensible way. It may lay the materials all over the ground, but they will not assemble randomly into a racecar. And the degree of regulation inside the nucleus is staggering.

Firstly atoms forming biological machines is an absurd notion, — MikeL

It's not absurd if the thermodynamics enormously favours it.

That is the point. Folk have this notion that life is extraordinary because the Universe can only promote disorder. Well here is the evidence of how wrong that view is. Mechanical order can be hugely favoured. Hoffman gives you the actual numbers.

Secondly, that the specificity of the machines found in the nucleus must be encoded in the DNA. — MikeL

Yep. It's all about semiosis. You need to keep a blue print somewhere to build your molecular machines.

But again - if you read up on the biophysics - you will see how little DNA control is in fact required. We might call it molecular machinery, but it is also in fact the most unstable kind of machinery you have ever seen. The molecules want to fall apart and only hang together by going in the "right" thermal direction.

So the machinery doesn't require the kind of genetic control we used to think it did - the kind of "distant hand exerted by blind code" that left life still a mystery. The machinery only needs nudges to encourage it to keep it generally hanging together and continuing with its job.

So again - as a biologist - wow! We never knew. This is a revolutionary change in view. Life is a much more a natural and inevitable set-up then we ever could imagine. It is not a problem that complex organic molecules struggle to hang together for more than a few seconds or minutes. That is why they are "unreasonably effective". If they weren't always on the cusp of thermal dissolution, they couldn't be so easily nudged to keep doing their thing. That is the physical trick which makes informational control possible.

Ultimately I guess its an engineering problem. Randomness cannot account for it in any sensible way. It may lay the materials all over the ground, but they will not assemble randomly into a racecar. And the degree of regulation inside the nucleus is staggering. — MikeL

You are missing that the conversation in biology has gone way beyond this stage now. The organism is neither a random assemblage nor a deterministic machine. It already starts its story with the irreducible complexity of a semiotic relation.

The critical instability of the molecular machinery of life is the point. It both wants to fall apart and put itself back together. And so it comes to exist with any stability only then as an expression of the larger desires of the whole. Yes, you need DNA to encode that wish. But now that DNA only has to deliver gentle nudges, not tell every molecule what it must do the whole time. The simple fact that entropy flows through the circuits keeps the show hanging together and pointed in the right general direction.

So from both sides - the random emergence of order, and the deterministic control of that emergence - the new biophysics has immensely reduced the credibility gap. It used to be hard to see how life could evolve on Earth. Now it is hard to imagine how it could not.

There are a lot of claims here but a lot of interesting ideas too. I like the idea of critical instability. I will need a good while to turn it over before I get back to you.

In the meantime you say:

You are missing that the conversation in biology has gone way beyond this stage now. The organism is neither a random assemblage nor a deterministic machine.It is already starts its story with the irreducible complexity of a semiotic relation. — apokrisis

What level are you talking about here?

What level are you talking about here? — MikeL

The flipside of a molecular structure that has critical instability is that it is matchingly open to small nudges.

So it is perfectly poised. It faces two-ways in terms of its causality - both back towards the self-organising complexity of dissipative chemical structure and and also towards the newly available possibility of informational regulation.

The irreducible complexity is about a triadic semiotic relation. You can't have semiosis - a modelling relation - with less than three elements. A world, a sign, an interpretation.

And so abiogenesis would be about the first time this arises. And as a possibility to be exploited, we can see that it is already there - as a potential - as soon as you have critical instability in the form of a dissipatively structured material process.

I just find it so hard to imagine reality in any but the most stereotyped and hackneyed old ways. — apokrisis

I really wasn't trying to be unfriendly. I'm just pointing out that whenever a concept comes up that might be associated with 'theism', then look out.

maybe nous could be understood as a claim about "soul stuff", or maybe it could be understood as a claim about reason - semiotics - as a metaphysically general reasoning process? — apokrisis

But, as we said, you have a system wherein there is 'counting' - but no-one who counts; and 'knowing' - but no-one who knows! So at issue is, how does a 'metaphysically general reasoning process' exist - in what does it inhere - independently of a reasoning intelligence? You can say that nature 'counts' or 'knows', but isn't there an implicit dualism, not to say anthropomorphism, in these expressions?

In what sense does reason exist, independently of any mind? You appear to be saying that 'semiotic processes' are intrinsic to, or can be derived from, physics itself. But the point of the Pattee quote I provided was *not* that 'abiogenesis is a tough nut to crack', but that there is in some important sense an incommensurability between the physical and the semiotic. It is precisely this incommensurability which you then claim to have overcome by 'pansemiosis' - when this is actually the point at issue!

So what I'm arguing is that semiotics was originally derived from a philosophical tradition in which there was indeed a concept of 'mind-stuff' or 'soul-stuff' - horrible terminology, I agree - but which was nevertheless intrinsic to the conception of 'reason' in that tradition. But then to remove the ostensible ground of reason, and relocate it in the domain of physics - I think there's a metaphysical sleight-of-hand going on here. It's like the Cheshire Cat's grin. And appealing to theories of 'the holographic universe' isn't much of an out; that's just one of a number of current cosmological speculations.

In that light, God-causes and soul-stuffs just strike me as mundane — apokrisis

And I still say, that's because of how you think about it, how it occurs to you, what it means to you - and to a lot of people for that matter. 'God' has become a cliché, but what was it before it became that? (And also, 'mundane' means 'of the world'.)

the Cosmic mind is everywhere and nowhere, baby, It is immaterial, imperceptible and disembodied, knowable only via faith and deep meditation. That's your "philosophy" and it is impregnable to anything science might have to say. — apokrisis

What is the goal in the kind of philosophical understanding I'm seeking? It's not understanding the technicalities of how molecules come together, or what drives the processes of life in a biological sense - even if they're perfectly worthy goals in their own right. But the goal of 'classical' philosophies is 'sapiential' rather than 'scientific'.

You are laboring points that I don't disagree with. I want you to understand what the OP is saying. To do this you must abandon what Pierce or anybody else says about semiotics. Let me try and walk you through the concepts so we know where our opinions diverge. — MikeL

That is like reiterating over and again about the categorical imperative by asking one to abandon Kant. I don't need you to walk me through the concepts, I need you to understand that semiotics is not 'everything' but a process of articulating and interpreting signs based on a signified and the signifier, an object and you that enables meaning to an interpretation. Without solidifying your point rooted in this specific interaction, you are no longer talking about semiotics and sure, you can abandon Pierce since his theories have since progressed, but you are not presenting a strong enough case.

What I am saying is that I can understand the meta-scientific inquiry of semiotics based on finding this interpretative meaning in physical reality - that is the signifier and signified based on the information between you and the scientific material world - but your attempts at ameliorating this has since been unsuccessful, to me anyway. The actual science of meaning-making in semiotics is multidisciplinary, as mentioned already such as cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, even epistemology, but without an adequate focal point using pre-existing literature on the subject makes it hard for me to ascertain what your point actually is.

Do you agree that between the first two images and the third there has been information loss? — MikeL

No. Semiotics is not about the loss of information based on what we know in science as a whole, but the meaning that we obtain from the information to articulate and interpret its signification to the individual. The first image is all that is necessary for the doctor to develop meaning that will enable him/her to understand cell membranes, but a molecular biologist would understand from the first two that there is not enough information. That, however, does not mean that there is an error occurring.

The point is to recognise that a "realm of information" or semiotic interpretance becomes possible at the limit of physics. It is itself a natural or immanent fact. The world is on the whole entropic and dynamic - always in motion and running down an energy hill. But immanent in that is then inherently the "other" which is the possibility of a "non-physical" mark. — apokrisis

There is the same sophistication in language, hence why language is arbitrary to ensure that it adapts to the dynamism and why we progress through negative differentiation. Really well said, though.

It's a pity you can't understand what my OP is saying. You're arguing semantics with me and can't abandon Pierce for love or money. There is more than one way that something can be a symbol TimeLine. Once you get that, you might get the OP.

All manner of equivocation is serving to confuse this thread; probably because the OP was confused to begin with.

Information not defined in terms of meaning is physical. Information defined in terms of meaning (i.e., semantic information) is psychophysical.

Everything is semiotic (adjectival form of semiosis) only for psychophysical organisms in that semiosis is how they model their world (at every level of investigation).

Everything is information (in a nominal sense) in that everything is composed of relational data (i.e., physical or psychophysical variables).

Information must be interpreted to have meaning. Because interpretation is a psychological process, information only has meaning for psychophysical organisms.

there is in some important sense an incommensurability between the physical and the semiotic. It is precisely this incommensurability which you then claim to have overcome by 'pansemiosis' - when this is actually the point at issue! — Wayfarer

Once more, you can leave pansemiosis out of it if you like. Biosemiosis alone makes the crucial point when it comes to how life/mind can be both a physical process, and then more than physical in being informational.

Then pansemiosis is the larger view which shows how an informational view can be applied to the purely physical.

Now the epistemic cut is not due to some internal coding machinery - a memory that provides the constraints that shape the organism - but is a physical feature of material interactions themselves. All interactions are limited by lightspeed. And so this creates an event horizon when it comes to the history that is the shaping context of any material events.

It is this fact that creates a sharp topological discontinuity. You can't be affected by what hasn't yet had time to affect you. So in a real sense, every physical event is being shaped by a "personal" history. It is seeing the Cosmos from a particular point of view.

This is what the holographic principle is about. Event horizons aren't real in the sense of being material. They are just the fact that it takes time for distant events to impinge upon you as now part of your history.

But then this situation is best described as informational. Whether you know or not makes an actual difference. It is meaningful to you. Or if you are a particle, it is the context that determines your state.

So physics does have a need to make a distinction - draw a line, make an epistemic cut - to mark the event horizon which is not a physical thing itself but is an definite informational effect.

Well at least that is where the information theoretic approach begins. As you get properly quantum, and materiality gets totally slippery, the event horizons start to look like they are creating our reality as a holographic projection.

That is getting crackpot of course. But that is another reason for liking pansemiosis. It stops the metaphysics going that far and becoming nonsense.

Continuing on the rationale for pansemiosis - and touching on something critical Mikel did mention - the hierarchical organisation of causality in nature does depend on information loss between the levels. Otherwise we would be stuck in LaPlacean determinism.

Macrostates of nature have to be multirealisable. Indifferent to their particulars. An ideal gas has a temperature and pressure despite the fact that there are any number of ways the particles composing that gas could have distributed their motions, their kinetic energies.

So the actual arrangement of the particles is information that needs to be shed for more macro levels of reality to emerge. The dynamics of the micro scale are averaged over.

Newtonian concepts of causality are locked into determinism. Quantum indeterminacy does undermine that fundamentally. But also our models of nature need this idea of hierarchical information loss to explain how higher organisation - habits or laws - could even emerge from "fixed motions".

At the microscale, particles seem fixed in their relations. They have no means to be indifferent to a world of impressed forces. So a capacity to be indifferent is the physically new macro property that emerges. Global states, like temperature and pressure, become real to the extent they don't have to sweat the detail. A capacity to shed information is the key to the macro scale having causal meaningfulness.

So this can be treated as metaphorical. And yet semiotics is the actual metaphysical model which makes sense of this "paradox". It explains why systematic information loss is key to the hierarchical self organisation of nature. It provides a way out of traditional reductionist causal thinking based on efficient/material causality.

touching on something critical Mikel did mention — apokrisis

Mention? It's the entire OP minus some implications, although you did do a good job at rewording it. Personally I've tried to present my writing to be simple and easy to understand rather than technical and hard to access, however perhaps I should ramp it up a bit. It seems sometimes like rather than pitting idea against ideas, some people prefer to pit their words against your words - using the most highly sophisticated words they can find, regardless of whether their sentences actually makes sense anymore. Anyway, to each their own.

I'm reading Hoffman and should have some comments for you in the not to distant future.