Okay, but this theory still seems non-standard. I — schopenhauer1

So your complaint is it is too philosophical? Well, OK...

Would you accept that hierarchy theory is regarded as a universal natural organisational structure just as natural selection is held to be held a universal natural organising process?

I mean even science itself is organised hierarchically.

And aren't Pattee and Salthe among those who have literally written the book on hierarchical organisation? Yet now they are really keen on calling it semiosis when talking about evolving systems.

Kind of makes you think.

Would you accept that hierarchy theory is regarded as a universal natural organisational structure just as natural selection is held to be held a universal natural organising process? — apokrisis

Well, I may well accept it, but then, if this is THE way to look at nature, why is science itself not really concerned with it? If it is so thoroughly explanatory, its actual usage in scientific theories ranging from physics to sociology would be much more far-ranging. As we have it now, it is positioned in a sort of enclave of an enclave if you will.

And aren't Pattee and Salthe among those who have literally written the book on hierarchical organisation? Yet now they are really keen on calling it semiosis when talking about evolving systems. — apokrisis

Now, yes there are some fairly well-lettered scientists involved with this theory, but again, they seem to have more of an enclave. Why wouldn't their work be diffused to a far wider range of problems, audiences, and works in general? It seems that everything would lead to this overriding theory eventually, so it would be constantly referred to in many distant scientific papers, aims, and experiments. It would have also more explanatory value in hypothesis and thus be a just as central as Darwinian mechanism, for example. As far as I know, I don't see that.

Now, I will grant you,the appeal of your theory is its totalizing nature. There is kind of an elegant aesthetics of seeing the world in more-or-less a framework that can explain everything in terms of semiotic principles, but it seems to be a niche and not THE theory that science is advancing towards.

More importantly, its main weakness is what I stated before: The explanation is implications taken after the fact and interpreted in a light that matches the overriding theory. All theories can thus never NOT fit into triadic theories because it is always there after the fact. Thus, what can ever disprove it? The traditional fields and experiments do not explicitly try to strengthen or weaken its explanatory ability, as it is rarely if ever tested, if it can ever really be tested.

Well, I may well accept it, but then, if this is THE way to look at nature, why is science itself not really concerned with it? — schopenhauer1

Err. It's new.

Also it is holistic. Science on the whole only needs to be reductionist. Holism only becomes important when science approaches the bounds of existence - the very small, the very large, the very complex.

Now, yes there are some fairly well-lettered scientists involved with this theory, but again, they seem to have more of an enclave. — schopenhauer1

Ah. You want to make out this is some small cranky cult of the embittered?

You are funny.

...but it seems to be a niche and not THE theory that science is advancing towards. — schopenhauer1

Would you say the information theoretic view is the one over-taking modern science at the general metaphysical level?

I wonder why that is? It surely can't be because reducing material events to the status of signals for "observing contexts" is a better metaphysics.

I mean next folk will be saying the whole Cosmos is an emergent self-organising process in which constraints shape its degrees of freedom.

My goodness, next we will have physicists like Lee Smolin saying this:

So if we want to ask cosmological questions, if we want to really explain everything, we need to apply a different method. We need to have a different starting point. And the search for that different method has been the central point in my thinking since the early 90's.

Now some of this is not new. The American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, identified this issue that I've just mentioned in the late 19th century. However, his thinking has not influenced most physicists. Indeed, I was thinking about laws evolving before I read Charles Sanders Peirce. But something that he said encapsulates what I think is a very important conclusion that I came to through a painful route. And other people have more recently come to it, which is that the only way to explain how the laws of nature might have been selected is if there's a dynamical process by which laws can change and evolve in time.

And so I've been searching to try to identify and make hypotheses about that process where the laws must have changed and evolved in time because the situation we're in is: Either we become kind of mystics, well, just those are the laws full stop, or we have to explain the laws. And if we want to explain the laws, there needs to be some history, some process of evolution, some dynamics by which laws change.

https://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-think-about-nature

So information theory is now dominating frontier physics thinking. And when physicists adopt evolutionary thinking as well, it starts to all sound like what some obscure bearded chappy was saying in 1880s.

Hmm. What could be brewing out there?

The explanation is implications taken after the fact and interpreted in a light that matches the overriding theory. — schopenhauer1

Ah. You mean that just like evolutionary theory or hierarchy theory, we are speaking of a general metaphysical framework - a mathematical truism - more than some particular theory of something?

As you say, natural selection was born as an explanation for speciation - the variety of life. (It certainly did not explain the origin of life, or in fact explain the generation of variety, just the removal of variety from a population). But despite this small beginning, natural selection is cited just as if it were ... a general statistical principle.

Well semiosis arises as a science of meaning - a way to account for language use, both in the ordinary sense and propositionally. Or do you doubt that it even applies there?

All theories can thus never NOT fit into triadic theories because it is always there after the fact. — schopenhauer1

If you want to propose monism or dualism instead, you could give it a go.

Isn't this where we started? You couldn't even decide whether to be a panexperiential monist or a correlational dualist. Now you are bitching about a triadic metaphysics.

But keep on going. Prove to yourself that the reason you are confused is that better structured ways of thought are not available.

Well semiosis arises as a science of meaning - a way to account for language use, both in the ordinary sense and propositionally. Or do you doubt that it even applies there? — apokrisis

I don't really. I like the elegance of it like I told you. Does it have predictive value or only explanatory value? Can it be tested for, or is it something you think is not testable? To use your phrasing, what is the counterfactual to this, and how can it be proven either way :D?

Can it be tested for, or is it something you think is not testable? — schopenhauer1

I'll repost the particular way that biosemiosis has now been cashed out as a theory below.

Of course, the biophysicists involved don't frame their work as "biosemiosis".

And the shift from a focus on genetic codes to mechanical devices - molecular machinery - is very Pattean. Semiosis itself needs to be understood more generally in terms of essentially physical constraints - again, a closing of the apparent gap between the informational and material modes of action.

Life and mind don't just thrive despite material instability. Material instability is what they require as their ontic foundation. This is a profoundly new idea. Or at least profoundly different to the assumption that regular reductionist science makes about these things.

So yes. This is a classic Kuhnian paradigm shift. It is not some particular theory. It is the framework of thought within which theories and experiments are themselves grounded. It is the paradigm within which they could even make sense.

Counterfactually, it might have indeed proved the case that life doesn't arise at some level of critical instability as I describe below. As I say, it was the last thing most biologists would have expected even a decade or so ago.

I mean the ATP-ase enzyme is actually a rotating spindle device driven by a proton gradient?!? Kinesin transport proteins literally walk their way down actin tight-ropes?!?

That's got to be whacky science fiction right - if your paradigm of cellular metabolism is that it is a reaction vat or soup of chemistry.

So your complaint is that this is non-standard and seems more like a metaphysical catch-all than laboratory-ready. My answer is this is a paradigm shift. And it can be seen happening as a series of waves now.

Chaos and complexity theory were a big shake-up through the 1970s and 1980s for example. That is when the connection between material instability and emergent self-organisation was made.

That then sent shock waves through life and mind science. Now we are seeing the results of that in terms of increasingly semiotic approaches. The question of how "immaterial" information can harness material "possibility" or instability has come to the forefront.

Gene theory used to make the semiotic relation between information and matter look simple. Just code for some enzymes and toss them into an organic stew.

(Note here how you just completely miss the fact that semiotics is already as central to biology as natural selection, by the way.)

Well whoops. Genetic information and the sign relation they create is just the tip of the iceberg so far as semiotics goes. Looks like we need a better developed metaphysical paradigm to recognise semiosis in all its grades or guises.

Anyway, here is that post which argues how biological sign has been shown to arise at a particular level of physics. The claims of biosemiosis have demonstrated their foundations.

---------------------------------------------

Biophysics finds a new substance

This looks like a game-changer for our notions of “materiality”. Biophysics has discovered a special zone of convergence at the nanoscale – the region poised between quantum and classical action. And crucially for theories about life and mind, it is also the zone where semiotics emerges. It is the scale where the entropic matter~symbol distinction gets born. So it explains the nanoscale as literally a new kind of stuff, a physical state poised at “the edge of chaos”, or at criticality, that is a mix of its material and formal causes.

The key finding: In brief, as outlined in this paper http://thebigone.stanford.edu/papers/Phillips2006.pdf , and in this book http://lifesratchet.com/ the nanoscale turns out to a convergence zone where all the key structure-creating forces of nature become equal in size, and coincide with the thermal properties/temperature scale of liquid water.

So at a scale of 10^-9 metres (the average distance of energetic interactions between molecules) and 10^-20 joules (the average background energy due to the “warmth” of water), all the many different kinds of energy become effectively the same. Elastic energy, electrostatic energy, chemical bond energy, thermal energy – every kind of action is suddenly equivalent in strength. And thus easily interconvertible. There is no real cost, no energetic barrier, to turning one kind of action into another kind of action. And so also – from a semiotic or informational viewpoint – no real problem getting in there and regulating the action. It is like a railway system where you can switch trains on to other tracks at virtually zero cost. The mystery of how “immaterial” information can control material processes disappears because the conversion of one kind of action into a different kind of action has been made cost-free in energetic terms. Matter is already acting symbolically in this regard.

This cross-over zone had to happen due to the fact that there is a transition from quantum to classical behaviour in the material world. As the micro-scale, the physics of objects is ruled by surface area effects. Molecular structures have a lot of surface area and very little volume, so the geometry dominates when it comes to the substantial properties being exhibited. The shapes are what matter more than what the shapes are made of. But then at the macro-scale, it is the collective bulk effects that take over. The nature of a substance is determined now by the kinds of atoms present, the types of bonds, the ratios of the elements.

The actual crossing over in terms of the forces involved is between the steadily waning strength of electromagnetic binding energy – the attraction between positive and negative charges weakens proportionately with distance – and the steadily increasing strength of bulk properties such as the stability of chemical, elastic, and other kinds of mechanical or structural bonds. Get enough atoms together and they start to reinforce each others behaviour.

So you have quantum scale substance where the emergent character is based on geometric properties, and classical scale substance where it is based on bulk properties. And this is even when still talking about the same apparent “stuff”. If you probe a film of water perhaps five or six molecules thick with a super-fine needle, you can start to feel the bumps of extra resistance as you push through each layer. But at a larger scale of interaction, water just has its generalised bulk identity – the one that conforms to our folk intuitions about liquidity.

So the big finding is the way that contrasting forces of nature suddenly find themselves in vanilla harmony at a certain critical scale of being. It is kind of like the unification scale for fundamental physics, but this is the fundamental scale of nature for biology – and also mind, given that both life and mind are dependent on the emergence of semiotic machinery.

The other key finding: The nanoscale convergence zone has only really been discovered over the past decade. And alongside that is the discovery that this is also the realm of molecular machines.

In the past, cells where thought of as pretty much bags of chemicals doing chemical things. The genes tossed enzymes into the mix to speed reactions up or slow processes down. But that was mostly it so far as the regulation went. In fact, the nanoscale internals of a cell are incredibly organised by pumps, switches, tracks, transporters, and every kind of mechanical device.

A great example are the motor proteins – the kinesin, myosin and dynein families of molecules. These are proteins that literally have a pair of legs which they can use to walk along various kinds of structural filaments – microtubules and actin fibres – while dragging a bag of some cellular product somewhere else in a cell. So stuff doesn’t float to where it needs to go. There is a transport network of lines criss-crossing a cell with these little guys dragging loads.

It is pretty fantastic and quite unexpected. You’ve got to see this youtube animation to see how crazy this is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8 . And these motor proteins are just one example of the range of molecular machines which organise the fundamental workings of a cell.

A third key point: So at the nanoscale, there is this convergence of energy levels that makes it possible for regulation by information to be added at “no cost”. Basically, the chemistry of a cell is permanently at its equilibrium point between breaking up and making up. All the molecular structures – like the actin filaments, the vesicle membranes, the motor proteins – are as likely to be falling apart as they are to reform. So just the smallest nudge from some source of information, a memory as encoded in DNA in particular, is enough to promote either activity. The metaphorical waft of a butterfly wing can tip the balance in the desired direction.

This is the remarkable reason why the human body operates on an energy input of about 100 watts – what it takes to run a light bulb. By being able to harness the nanoscale using a vanishingly light touch, it costs almost next to nothing to run our bodies and minds. The power density of our nano-machinery is such that a teaspoon full would produce 130 horsepower. In other words, the actual macro-scale machinery we make is quite grotesquely inefficient by comparison. All effort for small result because cars and food mixers work far away from the zone of poised criticality – the realm of fundamental biological substance where the dynamics of material processes and the regulation of informational constraints can interact on a common scale of being.

The metaphysical implications: The problem with most metaphysical discussions of reality is that they rely on “commonsense” notions about the nature of substance. Reality is composed of “stuff with properties”. The form or organisation of that stuff is accidental. What matters is the enduring underlying material which has a character that can be logically predicated or enumerated. Sure there is a bit of emergence going on – the liquidity of H2O molecules in contrast to gaseousness or crystallinity of … well, water at other temperatures. But essentially, we are meant to look through organisational differences to see the true material stuff, the atomistic foundations.

But here we have a phase of substance, a realm of material being, where all the actual many different kinds of energetic interaction are zeroed to have the same effective strength. A strong identity (as quantum or classical, geometric or bulk) has been lost. Stuff is equally balanced in all its directions. It is as much organised by its collective structure as its localised electromagnetic attractions. Effectively, it is at its biological or semiotic Planck scale. And I say semiotic because regulation by symbols also costs nothing much at this scale of material being. This is where such an effect – a downward control – can be first clearly exerted. A tiny bit of machinery can harness a vast amount of material action with incredible efficiency.

It is another emergent phase of matter – one where the transition to classicality can be regulated and exploited by the classical physics of machines. The world the quantum creates turns out to contain autopoietic possibility. There is this new kind of stuff with semiosis embedded in its very fabric as an emergent potential.

So contra conventional notions of stuff – which are based on matter gone cold, hard and dead – this shows us a view of substance where it is clear that the two sources of substantial actuality are the interaction between material action and formal organisation. You have a poised state where a substance is expressing both these directions in its character – both have the same scale. And this nanoscale stuff is also just as much symbol as matter. It is readily mechanisable at effectively zero cost. It is not a big deal for there to be semiotic organisation of “its world”.

As I say, it is only over the last decade that biophysics has had the tools to probe this realm and so the metaphysical import of the discovery is frontier stuff.

And indeed, there is a very similar research-led revolution of understanding going on in neuroscience where you can now probe the collective behaviour of cultures of neurons. The zone of interaction between material processes and informational regulation can be directly analysed, answering the crucial questions about how “minds interact with bodies”. And again, it is about the nanoscale of biological organisation and the unsuspected “processing power” that becomes available at the “edge of chaos” when biological stuff is poised at criticality.

The other key finding: The nanoscale convergence zone has only really been discovered over the past decade. And alongside that is the discovery that this is also the realm of molecular machines.

In the past, cells where thought of as pretty much bags of chemicals doing chemical things. The genes tossed enzymes into the mix to speed reactions up or slow processes down. But that was mostly it so far as the regulation went. In fact, the nanoscale internals of a cell are incredibly organised by pumps, switches, tracks, transporters, and every kind of mechanical device.

A great example are the motor proteins – the kinesin, myosin and dynein families of molecules. These are proteins that literally have a pair of legs which they can use to walk along various kinds of structural filaments – microtubules and actin fibres – while dragging a bag of some cellular product somewhere else in a cell. So stuff doesn’t float to where it needs to go. There is a transport network of lines criss-crossing a cell with these little guys dragging loads.

It is pretty fantastic and quite unexpected. You’ve got to see this youtube animation to see how crazy this is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8 . And these motor proteins are just one example of the range of molecular machines which organise the fundamental workings of a cell. — apokrisis

I see how this can possibly lead from chemical to biophysical, but how is it semiotic?

As I say, it explains how semiosis is even possible due to an emergent scale of physical convergence.

As I say, it explains how semiosis is even possible due to an emergent scale of physical convergence. — apokrisis

Would you say that pansemiosis may suffer from being too elegant? What of the idea that the universe is simply messy? Quantum mechanics is probabilistic, for example. But, even if that is not a good example, why should the universe follow some form of logic and not be discrete events that can have some empirical regularities, but no overriding ones? Wouldn't you say that this kind of theory would be self-reinforced by those who already have a penchant for logical systems in the first place?

If we are still discussing the nature of mind, we only need biosemiosis and its epistemic cut.

Peircean semiosis claims the irreducibility of spontaneity or tychism anyway. Othererwise what is there to constraint or regulate?

Then this is logical at the metaphysically general level because it is reasonable in a causal sense. If everything tries to happen, much will cancel out. An average will emerge.

Remember the high esteem with which you hold a statistical principle like natural selection? Well Peirce’s view is that physical existence is probabilistic and falls into the regularity of patterns due to emergent constraints.

Note also that evo-devo has been replacing the modern Darwinian synthesis in biology. This is a recognition that material self organisation - development - is as important as inheritance and selection, or evolution. ... Just as Pattee’s epistemic cut describes.

So as a result of the 1980s paradigm shift brought about by chaos theory, dissipative structure theory, self organising criticality theory, etc, even physics and chemistry seem lively and mindful in that self-constraining order can emerge for purely probabilistic or entropic reasons.

That makes pansemiosis a reasonable metaphysical framework. And biology certainly now recognises that life is not about bringing dead matter into action. It already wants to develop order. The trick then is to find material processes balanced at the edge of chaos - where they are at the point of critical instability and so easy to tip with just an informational nudge.

You can’t be a follower of modern biology and not have noted this paradigm shift. The 1960s genecentric view is out. It is now evolution and development because life has to rely on the more fundamental self organising tendencies of a material world.

Nature is rational or reasonable all the way down in that order cannot help but emerge to make disorder, or entropy, also an actual thing.

That makes pansemiosis a reasonable metaphysical framework. And biology certainly now recognises that life is not about bringing dead matter into action. It already wants to develop order. The trick then is to find material processes balanced at the edge of chaos - where they are at the point of critical instability and so easy to tip with just an informational nudge. — apokrisis

I can accept pansemiosis as an overriding philosophy of science, but does it really solve the larger metaphysical problems? Does it, for example, solve what it means for something "to be"? If so, how does it even approach this question? Does it explain the noumena of the in-itself?Most of the time, when this kind of question appears, you seem to balk, claim that we are these lowly substance ontologists (perhaps unfoundedly so), and then proceed to describe epistemological claims, and dodging the metaphysical questions. This is a philosophy forum, so speculating on the nature of being is not so far fetched or uncalled for.

Meh. It is a self consistent story about how existence could develop. So of course it may not totally do away with brute fact, but also it minimises the brute factness that normally dominates most folk’s metaphysics.

Yes, the noumenal is never grasped. This is a phenenological approach, as it says on the box. Yet the noumenal is going be approached the most closely this way. Hence how semiosis is the pervasive theme of new frontier science.

Now your latest ludicrous charge is that I’m dodging metaphysics. Christ you’re basically such a miserable bugger. Don’t you find any joy in encountering new ideas?

Meh. It is a self consistent story about how existence could develop. So of course it may not totally do away with brute fact, but also it minimises the brute factness that normally dominates most folk’s metaphysics. — apokrisis

I don't see how this is justified. Other than saying metaphysics is process-based and not substance ontology, that is not well developed. It's okay to not want to speculate, but you see how that could be unsatisfying as far as philosophical inquiry goes.

Christ you’re basically such a miserable bugger. Don’t you find any joy in encountering new ideas? — apokrisis

I don't see how this has to do with dodging metaphysics. You have a well-developed epistemology, and philosophy of science, no doubt. But part of the problem is that some philosophical topics are trying to ground a metaphysics of being, and that really does not cohere to a lot in the pansemiotic theory which is based on the logic behind the mechanics of hierarchical processes, not what the processes are in and of themselves.

It is a self consistent story about how existence could develop. So of course it may not totally do away with brute fact, but also it minimises the brute factness that normally dominates most folk’s metaphysics. — apokrisis

I like your theory. I don't know that it exactly minimizes brute fact, though. What would this mean, exactly? A good theory arguably increases either our power to change the world or our sense of satisfaction with the world and likely both. Your theory seems to offer that.

But I don't see how making the world more enjoyably intelligible or malleable for human desire reduces the facticity of existence. No matter how complicated, rich, and effective the system is, the system apparently necessarily reveals or describes a contingent world. To be clear, I like this contingency. I also like rich, effective theories. I see no conflict. The more theories/lenses the better, as far as I'm concerned.

I like your theory. I don't know that it exactly minimizes brute fact, though. What would this mean, exactly? — t0m

A semiotic approach to metaphysics says all you need to get things going is naked potential. Just the sheer fact of "something happens". So a propensity towards fleeting and dimensionless fluctuations.

So the first action is neither accidental nor necessary - there is as yet no context to decide that either way.

It is neither form nor material. It might seem like a fluctuation is the suggestion of an action in a direction, but the world as yet lacks the kind of definite history of existence that could determine that it expressed some direction as a definite fact. Well, there just is no world.

And likewise, while it seems the fluctuation might have expressed an action, it didn't have a material effect. It did not react with anything else. Its existence left no mark.

So again, this fluctuation - the first expression of a naked propensity - is the very least state of Being that we could possibly imagine. We start with a brute fact that is also the very least kind of brute fact that seems possible.

This is what Peirce called Firstness or Tychic spontaneity. His logical term for it was Vagueness. Ancient Greek metaphysics started with it with Anaximander's Apeiron.

So then Peirce says what if a lot of fluctuations are just popping off? Well, they are going to start reacting with each other. They are going to amplify or cancel. Alignment will form. Dimensionality itself will start to emerge like the way rain drops falling on a virgin hill slope would eventually start to carve our regular channels, a pattern of rivulets, streams and rivers.

This third stage is Thirdness or indeed the carving out of habits, the establishment of strong constraints that tell of a developing history of action and the statistical emergence of whatever regularity is thus natural.

So a semiotic metaphysics begins with less than nothing - as nothingness is some kind of already definite state, like a world with dimensionality and some absolute absence of content. And while you might say that this vague potentiality or Firstness is still "a something", a brute fact, it is the least kind of somethingness imaginable.

But part of the problem is that some philosophical topics are trying to ground a metaphysics of being — schopenhauer1

So is Being a verb or a noun here? Are we describing the process of how things could come to be, or frustrating ourselves because claiming existence as a brute fact leaves us with no counterfactuals to make a description of "what is" even possible?

You driven yourself up a mental cul-de-sac with your insistent reifications. Back up the truck and get back on the road.

So again, this fluctuation - the first expression of a naked propensity - is the very least state of Being that we could possibly imagine. We start with a brute fact that is also the very least kind of brute fact that seems possible. — apokrisis

Thanks. I did have some idea what you meant by minimizing brute fact, though, so my question was somewhat rhetorical. I was pointing out that this apparently leaves that which every bit as contingent as a whole. A richer theory will explain as much as possible, perhaps, by shrinking whatever plays the role of first cause. For instance, Hegel starts with undifferentiated Being, which in its generality is Nothing, and this leads on to the synthesis of Being and Nothing in Becoming.

So a semiotic metaphysics begins with less than nothing - as nothingness is some kind of already definite state, like a world with dimensionality and some absolute absence of content. And while you might say that this vague potentiality or Firstness is still "a something", a brute fact, it is the least kind of somethingness imaginable. — apokrisis

I don't know if that's what some philosophers mean by "nothing." Yes, it's absolute absence of content, but you also mention dimensionality. For my anyway, nothingness is not just empty space. It's what we experience (or do not experience) in dreamless sleep. It's what the world was for us before we are born and presumably after we die.

If I understand you, the smallest fluctuation in [something, I'm not sure] gave rise to all of this. What is "naked potential"? If all of this can be derived from X, then I suppose X will have to be some kind of potential. It sounds like God almost but not quite creating himself ex nihilo. Is what you're describing like the evolution of a personality, fading into differentiated consciousness/world?

For what it's worth, I think the telos is the stronger part of the theory. I'm not especially qualified to judge, but what I find striking is that the order exists only to speed up chaos. The "backflow" emerges from the flow in order to accelerate the flow globally. We help the heat death along. That's grimly beautiful. The beginning is indeed vague. Is this something that is crystal clear in your mind, or is this the sketchier part of the theory you are still working on?

You’ve got to see this youtube animation to see how crazy this is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8 . And these motor proteins are just one example of the range of molecular machines which organise the fundamental workings of a cell. — apokrisis

On the video you get to see a protein instantiation called John - with legs! Wouldn't it be cool if when we unravel the quantum level there's assemblies of subatomic particles with tentacles, some called Joan! The video supports my new metaphysics of infinitely fractally embedded agents, IFEA.*

The more realistic and serious simulation animations of proteins in action etc made by the TED talker are indeed suprising and "crazy" (ironically for depicting "sensible" behavior ) - thanks for the link apokrisis :)





*only joking

. It's what we experience (or do not experience) in dreamless sleep. — t0m

Even in dreamless sleep, there is a desultory rumination going on. There actually is experience of some deeply disorganised and unremembered kind. And when we try to shut off our minds when awake, or are sitting in a sensory deprivation chamber, the mind still rustles with fleeting visions and half-thoughts.

So phenomenology support a “nothingness” that is an active vagueness of fluctuations rather than a passive nothingness or emptiness.

And I also prefer a foundational tale based on active fluctuation as that is what science has been finding. The quantum vaccuum seethes with virtual particles. It is not empty nothingness but furious action which complete cancels and so amounts to nothing.

So the ontological argument for a fluctuations based picture is derived from Peircean logic, phenomenology and our best physical theories. All roads seem to lead to Rome here.

The beginning is indeed vague. Is this something that is crystal clear in your mind, or is this the sketchier part of the theory you are still working o — t0m

As metaphysics, sketchy is fine. So my interest is in how the concept of a vagueness of unlimited fluctuations could be a proper scientific theory - actually modelled mathematically. That is what would take it forward.

And there is already a lot of such physical modelling that bears on the question. Fluctuation based thinking is pretty common. Virtual particles is one example I just mentioned.

Even in dreamless sleep, there is a desultory rumination going on. — apokrisis

Let me use a stronger metaphor then: the world for us before we were conceived. Nonexistence.

The quantum vaccuum seethes with virtual particles. It is not empty nothingness but furious action which complete cancels and so amounts to nothing. — apokrisis

This isn't the philosophical nothing, though. It's a seething chaos. As you say it's not an empty nothingness. But that is to say that it's not a nothingness. There is a here here. Why is there a here here? One could argue that there is always a here here. But why?

I think the mind reaches for reasons as "handles" that it can turn for its benefit. Give me a causal relationship and maybe I can put it to use. But this tendency seems to founder on trying to explain the whole. There is nothing with which it can be put in relationship. IMO metaphysicians tend to dodge this by trying to sneak an object "out" of the whole, from which the whole can be derived. In your case it's a minimal fluctuation. But the whole includes this minimal, original fluctuation. Why was there such a minimal fluctuation? If there was always such a fluctuation, then why?

As metaphysics, sketchy is fine. So my interest is in how the concept of a vagueness of unlimited fluctuations could be a proper scientific theory - actually modelled mathematically. That is what would take it forward. — apokrisis

Sure, I agree. I like Popper. Metaphysics is a womb. Ideas aren't born sharp and finished.

This isn't the philosophical nothing, though. It's a seething chaos. — t0m

But I did say that I am talking about a vagueness - something that is less than nothing.

Your approach looks to take the form that the mind is a busy place, when it is attentive and self-consciously thinking especially. And then it can relax and go quiet. And if it kept on going it would have to be completely quiescent. It would become the nothing of the mind ceasing to exist.

Which is fine for idealists perhaps.

But I am talking as someone with physicalist ontological commitments. And so any "nothingness" has to make sense within that framework.

And as I say, my metaphysical goal is imagining the least brute fact foundation for a tale of cosmic development. So vagueness understood as "mere fluctuations" is where that line of thought arrives.

Sure, some absolute passivity seems like a better ontic candidate. Yet we must accept the fact that the materiality of action exists, along with the directionality provided by global organising form. So the best we can do is imagine the initial conditions as representing the least of both these things. A fluctuation is what that looks like.

It would become the nothing of the mind ceasing to exist. — apokrisis

Yes.

And as I say, my metaphysical goal is imagining the least brute fact foundation for a tale of cosmic development. So vagueness understood as "mere fluctuations" is where that line of thought arrives. — apokrisis

Of course I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that. But you are (seems to be) presupposing the scientific image of reality. That makes sense, since your metaphysics includes this image. Still, you do tend to downplay the "wonder" at existence as such. That's fine. I don't think such wonder is sustainable for mostly practical creatures like ourselves.

But can you relate to this wonder at existence as such? You also didn't respond to my other points. That's fine, but it's not ideal.

I don't think of myself as an idealist. There's a world out there, whether I am here to see it or not. If natural science is our best lens on this world (which is arguably the case), I still don't see how natural science could hope to account for the presence of this world (universe, totality) as a whole, but only link intra-wordly events in time and space.

Still, you do tend to downplay the "wonder" at existence as such. That's fine. I don't think such wonder is sustainable for mostly practical creatures like ourselves. — t0m

I dispute that the wonder is something separate - mystical, supernatural, transcendent. I am certainly applying the scientific image of reality - Peirce's definition of inductive reasoning. And this follows from the presuppositions of being a natural philosopher - making the assumption the world is a functional unity, and so explainable in its own rational, immanent, developmental terms.

So yes, we may be "worlds apart" on that score.

But that doesn't mean that I just leave some aspects of life unattended. Indeed, rather than downplaying these psychological and cultural aspects of our lived reality, I tend to go after them pretty aggressively according to most people.

So explaining art or morality or whatever in naturalistic terms is not downplaying. But it is certainly an attempt to "explain away" the mystical, the supernatural, the transcendent. That is, dispel their lingering claims to be part of any totalising metaphysics.

I dispute that the wonder is something separate - mystical, supernatural, transcendent. — apokrisis

I'm not saying that it is any of those things, or not necessarily. The wonder I have in mind especially is revealed logically, but examining the concept of explanation. Epistemic brute fact is revealed, as I see it, by looking at the nature of reasoning. It postulates necessary relationships between entities and makes deductions from postulated necessary relationships.

So I'm making something like a Kantian point. We are hardwired to assume the uniformity of nature. Hume's problem is unanswered, as far as I see it, but we keep building skyscrapers and getting in airplanes. We don't/can't really doubt the laws of nature, despite their logical groundlessness.

But these laws are also applied between entities. We input initial conditions and output predictions. The "box" works. We trust it for the same reason we trust the laws. We trust what serves us. All of this is great. But applying the "machine" of this kind of thinking to the whole of reality doesn't make sense. From what could reality be deduced? From what initial state? The laws themselves are what we would also want a "cause" for, philosophically. But this is absurd. And this absurdity is what is revealed by thinking all of this through.

So I'm making something like a Kantian point. We are hardwired to assume the uniformity of nature. Hume's problem is unanswered, as far as I see it, but we keep building skyscrapers and getting in airplanes. We don't/can't really doubt the laws of nature, despite their logical groundlessness.

But these laws are also applied between entities. We input initial conditions and output predictions. The "box" works. We trust it for the same reason we trust the laws. We trust what serves us. All of this is great. But applying the "machine" of this kind of thinking to the whole of reality doesn't make sense. From what could reality be deduced? From what initial state? The laws themselves are what we would also want a "cause" for, philosophically. But this is absurd. And this absurdity is what is revealed by thinking all of this through. — t0m

Good points. Don't take the epistemology for the metaphysics. What is, what is being, what are beings, what is a process in itself, etc. may not be gathered through pure synthesis of empirical evidence through logical construct. But this is where the major divide lies. @apokrisis believes that this process-system of the human mind, being a part of a larger pansemiosis can reveal its own pansemiotic nature through synthesizing the logic of the empirical evidence, and thus get at the root of metaphysics. All or almost all can be revealed empirically and logically to the human mind, and thus there is no noumena that is missing.

Good points. Don't take the epistemology for the metaphysics. What is, what is being, what are beings, what is a process in itself, etc. may not be gathered through pure synthesis of empirical evidence through logical construct. — schopenhauer1

Yes, that makes sense to me. I think we do well to question the question and the questioner. I think in terms of motive. Why do we want to know? What does a theory do for us "emotionally?" I don't think we are fundamentally rational animals. The concept-system is itself a tool. If this theory is true, then it puts itself in question as one more "irrational" tool, but I'm OK with that, as long as it keeps working for me on the level of affect.

apokrisis believes that this process-system of the human mind, being a part of a larger pansemiosis can reveal its own pansemiotic nature through synthesizing the logic of the empirical evidence, and thus get at the root of metaphysics. All or almost all can be revealed empirically and logically to the human mind, and thus there is no noumena that is missing. — schopenhauer1

That sounds about right. I've put some real time into Hegel, but that's the part of him I could never quite take seriously. The "speculative" mode allows for some beautiful thinking, but I can only "betray" the "manifest image" so much and no further. And there are aesthetic reasons for that. If metaphysics is poetry (and I think it more or less is), then that's not my genre. I'm interested in the wicked human heart, in the gallery of fundamental poses. I'd rather be Shakespeare than Hegel. (Not saying that I can manage either, of course.)

*Do you happen to like Heidegger ? His 20 page lecture (not the short book of 100 pages which is also good) The Concept of Time is like his version of the TLP. It's brief, suggestive, beautifully translated. It''s an ultra-condensed Being and Time. I mentioned it because he (as you may know) addresses boredom and restlessness. And then the being of beings is of course revealed against the background of time, which is (as I understand it) in terms of human purposes. We emerge the past, plunging into our future. We the world in one mode as a network of equipment (your instrumentality). But death anxiety allows another vision of being and time.

The laws themselves are what we would also want a "cause" for, philosophically. But this is absurd. — t0m

But the laws can be accounted for at least in terms of symmetry maths and the logical principles they encode.

So all physical laws respect a least action principle. Action takes the shortest path. Also total action is conserved. And action wants to achieve its most degenerate form.

These are all symmetry maximising arguments. So the logic of symmetries is the cause of emergent physical regularities, or the laws of nature. The laws have mathematical necessity. What would be absurd is if the actual world didn’t conform to symmetry based principles.

But why this logic of symmetries? Why is existence such that it would be absurd if the actual world didn't conform to symmetry based principles?

But why this logic of symmetries? — t0m

Because symmetries are logical. They are the invariances that emerge as the sum or average of all possible variances.

So if you feel it is logical to ask the very question of "why not this, that or the other", then already you accept variance as your ground here. You accept the essential possibility of action that is directed and yet directionless. You begin vaguely with nothing being as yet limited.

Great. Then assuming the free expression of variation - anything can be possible - leads to the next step. Not everything can be possible at once. Interaction produces limits. Many possibilities will cancel each other out. What gets left after all conflict has gone to equilibrium is whatever symmetry state describes a reality in which differences seek to make a difference.

Freedom can't help have an emergent pattern. This is what we see in statistics. Random action leads to Bell curves.

So the argument is that if you truly believe anything could be the case (as what would stop that being so), then still global regularity must emerge. Chaos also has to be lawful. Absolute variation is also going to wind up absolutely self-limiting. Laws, or the symmetry of an equilibrium balance, just have to evolve within a system which begins in an initial state of free and undirected foment.

Just to be clear, I don't think there is an answer to this "why." I think it's a pseudo-question, however lyrical.

My argument is centered around my notion of explanation, which is more or less this one:

...given the particular circumstances and the laws in question, the occurrence of the phenomenon was to be expected; and it is in this sense that the explanation enables us to understand why the phenomenon occurred... — Hempel

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/#DNMod

My point more or less boils down to the "top level" laws being, by definition, inexplicable. These top level laws are "brute fact." For you these brute facts seem to include some kind of random variation and the laws of mathematics at least. These variations are assumed to be quantifiable. So your'e not starting from nothing. Of course I don't think it's possible to start from nothing, so that's not a fault in your system.

There's also Hume's problem. Your system (I think) assumes the metaphysical necessity of scientific laws? But I don't know of any deduction of this necessity. It seems to be a hardwired prejudice.