See above to my full response. I wrote more before you just posted.

When questions are so off the mark, yes, ignore them. But if you have a go at defining your ontology with clarity as requested, then sure, we can come back to them. — apokrisis

There is a subjective inner experience of what it is like to be something. No other process- triadic or otherwise causes this quality except this one. The "theater" is the inner experience. If you want to say all triadic processes have the same quality but to a lesser extent, then you are a panexperientialist. In other words, every triadic process is its own theater I would guess. But no, you are going to equivocate the triadic process for other things which you will use the same language but different results. Again peculiar.

The quick answer is that I am talking of a neuro-semiotic process of modelling the world in a self interested way. And so just in saying that, we can see that there is active modelling going on. And why would we not expect modelling - of the vast complexity of a brain with trillions of connections, and plugged into real-time action - should not "feel like something"?

What good causal objection is there to there being something that it would be like to be in a modelling relation with the world? It would have to feel like something surely? Or can you give some good reason why this modelling, this sign processing, can't be experiential?

Sure, no computer processing doing information processing would have this lived experience quality. We can point to a computer's physical disconnect from real life. All it needs is its umbilical cord that plugs it into a wall socket. In sits blindly in its little world.

But a neural network type computer starts to seem something different. It in fact has a semiotic architecture. It works by learning to anticipate the world. And surely there must be something that it is like to be anticipating the world the whole time? Even if a neural network so far is not even at the level of a cockroach so far as its complexity goes.

Anyway, you get the idea. If there is anticipation-based world modelling going on which is based on maintaining a fundamental distinction between "self" and "world", then why shouldn't that action, that process, be felt in exactly those terms? At exactly what point in the analysis does being experiential seem to drop out of the equation?

Dual aspect monism just starts with substance as unexplained fundamental stuff and then claims it has two different faces - the material and the experiential. It is not a causal story of nature at all. — apokrisis

Incorrect. Dual aspect monism: form+matter=substance (i.e., genetic predisposition plus living matter produces a living being having a set of powers).

You accept the weak form [of semiosis] and reject the strong form. — apokrisis

I reject pansemiosis as category error. Its acceptance requires the use of metaphorical explanations, which have no scientific or philosophical value.

question: can one accept bio-semiosis without accepting pansemiosis? (It would seem to me 'yes' but I am not well-schooled in the subject.)

Yes. That is the debate within the semiotics community apokrisis and I have been referring to. http://biosemiosis.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/re-pan-and-bio.html

What are you talking about?

In the philosophy of mind, double-aspect theory is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance. It is also called dual-aspect monism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-aspect_theory

What are you talking about? — apokrisis

It's a fair question. I have obviously not used the term "dual aspect" as it is traditionally used in philosophy of mind, but have applied it to Aristotle's formula for substance. So sue me.

I think Aristotle had an intuitive sense of genetic predisposition, and that his psuche ("the form of a natural body that has life") is the constraint which causes the development and exercise of a set of species-specific powers (including not only psychological functions such as perception, but also locomotion, homoeostasis, fine motor skills, etc., in short: everything that a being does).

It might be obvious to you that you use a standard term in idiosyncratic fashion. But why should it be obvious to me?

Weird.

The quick answer is that I am talking of a neuro-semiotic process of modelling the world in a self interested way. — apokrisis

Ah, the neuro brings with it the Cartesian Theaters.

And so just in saying that, we can see that there is active modelling going on. And why would we not expect modelling - of the vast complexity of a brain with trillions of connections, and plugged into real-time action - should not "feel like something"? — apokrisis

Ah TRILLIONS of connections is where that elusive Cartesian Theater lies now. So it's neuro-transimtters and trillions of connections in triadic format that IS experience. I see. So the quantity of physical connections and the fact that it is neurons with axions, cell bodies, dendrites, carrying molecules of neurotransmitters, and the whole neurobiological package- these are the reasons why THIS triadic process is equivalent to the Cartesian Theater of experience? So, simply making sure the material is neuron-type in composition and the quantity is sufficiently in the trillions, that this triadic modelling is experiential and other triadic modelling is not experiential? Odd. Why cannot it be a matter of degree. Perhaps millions of connections, and other composites produce a lower degree of experience? Why cannot it be a matter of difference? Perhaps experience exists in other models but it is so different and unknown, that we cannot say much other than it exists as experiential in some way in terms of being a part of the modelling process, just like THIS modelling process. Somehow you always have a ghost in the machine lurking around and popping up when it is most convenient. The Cartesian Theater is hidden somewhere- you just have to tease it out to realize you are hiding it. So far you have hidden it in quantity, material-type, the concept of "emergence" and various others.

This is an engaging introduction to semiotics, written by an acknowledged leader in the field (cheers, darthbarracuda): Sebeok, Thomas A. (2001). Signs: An Introduction To Semiotics. Canada: University of Toronto Press.
https://monoskop.org/images/0/07/Sebeok_Thomas_Signs_An_Introduction_to_Semiocs_2nd_ed_2001.pdf

Poor old Schop. The question was simple. Why shouldn't it feel like something to be modelling the world?

Ah TRILLIONS of connections is where that elusive Cartesian Theater lies now. — schopenhauer1

Yes, materialists always hide their Designer in Very Big, Very Complex, and Very Long Time. But despite the bluster, there remains zero evidence that conscious can arise magically from matter. It would indeed be a miracle. It is as one scientist confessed at the beginning of the video you linked to: He is a scientist, he wants to believe, he has to believe, for the sake of science it has to be. Out of the mouth of babes,it is all faith. Nice video. I bookmarked it for this confession alone. Must have been a weak moment.

And yet when you get high, neuroscience finds that messing with neural signalling is the prosaic cause. Or if you recognise your grandmother, specific neural connections light up.

So to claim that brains aren't responsible for consciousness is now a crackpot view. Pass the tin hats.

I know, it's tough being made a fool of by a beginner. Tell me again about my big beginner's mistake?

And yet when you get high, neuroscience finds that messing with neural signalling is the prosaic cause. — apokrisis

It's true that if brain anatomy has been injured, or brain physiology is not functioning normally, psychological function will also be abnormal. That is a causal relationship. However, the fact of neuroplasticity provides sufficient reason to reject epiphenomenalism. In other words, physical and mental conditions and activities have mutual effects.

Or if you recognise your grandmother, specific neural connections light up. — apokrisis

This is evidence of correlation, not necessarily of causation. In other words, is it neurophysiological activity which causes recognition, or recognition which causes neurophysiological activity?

So, Donald Hoffman says, "Despite substantial efforts by many researchers, we still have no scientific theory of how brain activity can create, or be, conscious experience. This is troubling, since we have a large body of correlations between brain activity and consciousness, correlations normally assumed to entail that brain activity creates conscious experience. Here I explore a solution to the mind-body problem that starts with the converse assumption: these correlations arise because consciousness creates brain activity, and indeed creates all objects and properties of the physical world."

It's just the last clause of his last sentence that I'm currently struggling with.

This is an engaging introduction to semiotics — Galuchat

Thanks, started on that, it looks very engaging. I also read the first half-dozen posts in the blog you linked to.

the Cartesian Theater — schopenhauer1

I think this 'Cartesian theater' is one of Dennett's ideas, isn't it? I agree with him that it is a very poor depiction or analogy for the nature of mind, but I also don't know how many people really hold to it. I certainly don't think it's anything like what Descartes himself would have thought.

**
I would like to take a step back and compare what I understand as Hoffman's basic contention with other philosophical models. He is, after all, saying that in some profound way, existence is not what it appears to be; that things we take to be real, are actually what he calls 'icons', which we as a species use to navigate the 'lebenwelt' (in Husserl's terms) of human existence.

If I am correct in that description, then it can be said that in some respect, Hoffman is harking back to the traditional philosophical distinction of 'appearance and reality', albeit in a very contemporary way. This is after all what allows him to make such apparently radical assertions as this:

Neurons, brains, space … these are just symbols we use, they’re not real. It’s not that there’s a classical brain that does some quantum magic. It’s that there’s no brain! Quantum mechanics says that classical objects—including brains—don’t exist. — Donald Hoffman

Now on face value, this is an outlandish statement - this is why, I think, Apokrisis said that Hoffman is a crank. But I think it can be interpreted in accordance with the above distinction between appearance and reality in such a way that it isn't quite so outlandish as it seems on face value.

What I think he's saying, is that 'classical objects' are not real in the sense we take them to be real. To borrow some Buddhist analysis: objects are not 'self-existent', or 'real from their own side'. The Buddhist Madhyamika view, is that the reality that objects have, is imputed by us, and is contextual; that things don't have inherent reality, they are not real in their own right, but are real in a given context; their reality is imputed and dependent on causes and conditions. (This is the basic idea behind the Buddhist teaching of Śūnyatā.)

So a Buddhist would agree that objects are unreal, but not unreal in the sense of merely or simply non-existent (like optical illusions or fictitious creatures). Things are real in their own context and dependent on the causes and conditions which give rise to them, but they have no ultimate reality (svabhava). So they have a degree of reality. Now, I don't think that current philosophical lexicon allows that anything can have a 'degree of reality'; things are either existent, or not *. Whereas, I think some schools of philosophy can differentiate between 'what exists' and 'what is real' (which, I recall, is a distinction that Peirce recognises, but few other recent philosophers do.) Hence Hoffman is obliged to say, in the above quote, that classical objects 'don't exist', whereas a Madhyamika analysis might say: they exist, but they're unreal.

---------------
* This, in turn, goes back to Duns Scotus and his doctrine of the 'univocity of being', which marked the end of the so-called 'great chain of being', which underwrote the notion of 'degrees of reality'.

However, the fact of neuroplasticity provides sufficient reason to reject epiphenomenalism. In other words, physical and mental conditions and activities have mutual effects. — Galuchat

Yes I agree. That is why the story has to be foundationally triadic. There must be the two things of a separation of causality, and then the third thing which is their interaction.

And neuroscience has no problem with this. It already says that neural firing may be a physical process, but what is "really going on" is an informational process. Or taking the even more sophisticated view, the whole is a semiotic process, a sign relation. Or to borrow from psychology, we are talking about an enactive or ecological process. Mind is not epiphenomenal but just what it feels like to be a model in interaction with a world, really doing something.

This is evidence of correlation, not necessarily of causation. In other words, is it neurophysiological activity which causes recognition, or recognition which causes neurophysiological activity? — Galuchat

The simple answer is that at the informational level of analysis, the causation is holistic - a systems mix of top-down constraint and bottom-up construction. So asking which causes which is just a bad reductionist question. It takes both in interaction for some particular state of experience (or modelling) to emerge.

And then in this representationalist account of perception formation, the physiology falls out of the picture. The information process paradigm makes that clean divorce between the software and the hardware. So physiology simply supports the computations and - by design - plays no causal role in shaping them. It is the logic of the program which dictates the play of the patterns.

But as I say, the semiotic view of neuroscience takes the next step - the same as biology did to get rid of the mysteries surrounding the mechanisms of living processes. We can get rid of the lingering ghost in the machine, the elan vital, in the same fashion.

So this is where the epistemic cut of biosemiosis comes in. The whole point of the informational processes is to be in active regulation of physical processes. A computer may have a hard divorce between information and matter - hence computer analogies adding fuel to the Hard Problem bonfire - but organisms are all about the pragmatic interaction between information and matter.

This is the paradigm shift with enactive/ecological/embodied approaches to perception. The mind is all about regulating material processes, entropic flows. Consciousness is what it is like to be not just some pattern of information, but to be information doing stuff. It is all about the feeling of being intimately connected as a "self" with a point of view, some interest, that serves to control a world of physical events as much as is possible.

Nothing can make sense about the mind/brain connection until you actually stop thinking that this is the fundamental issue. You have to get past the monism of good old fashioned theism - a belief in inhabiting spirits. Then you have to get past the dualism of good old fashion computationalism - all the representationalist psychology where there is a mysterious self passively watching an inner theatre neural display. You have to arrive finally at a triadic sign relation ontology which speaks to the conjunction of model and world.

Now, I don't think that current philosophical lexicon allows that anything can have a 'degree of reality'; things are either existent, or not. — Wayfarer

And that is precisely what Peircean metaphysics embraces. It is based on there really being degrees of concrete or crisp existence. At a deeper level, things are vague or begin in Firstness. Anaximander started metaphysics rolling with the same idea - the Apeiron.

So the lexicon certainly exists. But as we know, it is not a mainstream approved mode of thought. Reductionism rules. And so vagueness or degrees of reality are standardly treated as being just a matter of observer ignorance or uncertainty, not a genuine ontic issue.

Russell made the famous case for this. Imagine a badly blurred photograph of Mr Jones. Well, the image is vague it seems. It could be Mr Smith or Mr Patel if we squinted. Yet still, points out Russell, the image itself is some definite set of marks. So the vagueness is epistemic - about what we can know - rather than the photograph itself being physically indeterminate.

So you are always up against this attitude. And even when quantum indeterminism showed up, the mindset remains to demonstrate that any vagueness or degrees of reality are only an epistemic issue, not something to do with reality itself.

But anyone dealing with emergence in nature has less of a problem. It starts to become obvious that emergence means starting out actually vague and then approaching counterfactual definiteness or concreteness "in the limit".

Poor old Schop. The question was simple. Why shouldn't it feel like something to be modelling the world? — apokrisis

Did you even read what I wrote? I was suggesting just that.. It is YOU who are not accepting your own logic to its ultimate conclusion, which is that ANY modelling can be experiential. See what I said above:

The quick answer is that I am talking of a neuro-semiotic process of modelling the world in a self interested way.
— apokrisis

Ah, the neuro brings with it the Cartesian Theaters.

And so just in saying that, we can see that there is active modelling going on. And why would we not expect modelling - of the vast complexity of a brain with trillions of connections, and plugged into real-time action - should not "feel like something"?
— apokrisis

Ah TRILLIONS of connections is where that elusive Cartesian Theater lies now. So it's neuro-transimtters and trillions of connections in triadic format that IS experience. I see. So the quantity of physical connections and the fact that it is neurons with axions, cell bodies, dendrites, carrying molecules of neurotransmitters, and the whole neurobiological package- these are the reasons why THIS triadic process is equivalent to the Cartesian Theater of experience? So, simply making sure the material is neuron-type in composition and the quantity is sufficiently in the trillions, that this triadic modelling is experiential and other triadic modelling is not experiential? Odd. Why cannot it be a matter of degree. Perhaps millions of connections, and other composites produce a lower degree of experience? Why cannot it be a matter of difference? Perhaps experience exists in other models but it is so different and unknown, that we cannot say much other than it exists as experiential in some way in terms of being a part of the modelling process, just like THIS modelling process. Somehow you always have a ghost in the machine lurking around and popping up when it is most convenient. The Cartesian Theater is hidden somewhere- you just have to tease it out to realize you are hiding it. So far you have hidden it in quantity, material-type, the concept of "emergence" and various others. — schopenhauer1

I think this 'Cartesian theater' is one of Dennett's ideas, isn't it? I agree with him that it is a very poor depiction or analogy for the nature of mind, but I also don't know how many people really hold to it. I certainly don't think it's anything like what Descartes himself would have thought. — Wayfarer

Yes I think he did, but what's funny is Dennett himself does exactly what he accuses others of. The Cartesian Theater, the way I'm using it is the experiential inner world of the thinking/feeling/sensing self that is unexplained for its existence and is often smuggled into the equation (hence the "hidden Cartesian theater).

Did you even read what I wrote? I was suggesting just that.. It is YOU who are not excepting your own logic to its ultimate conclusion, which is that ANY modelling can be experiential. — schopenhauer1

I was more specific. It is not modelling per se - as that is the representational story of computational information processing and Cartesean theatres that I have criticised. It is the modelling or sign relation of neuro-semiosis - a more advanced notion which you show no evidence of understanding as yet.

Neurons, brains, space … these are just symbols we use, they’re not real. It’s not that there’s a classical brain that does some quantum magic. It’s that there’s no brain! Quantum mechanics says that classical objects — Donald Hoffman

Actually pretty close to what is happening. What can be said it's that there exists a field that behaves in a certain manner depending upon different conditions. In itself, it is nothing.

When viewed as a reception/transmission vehicle for the mind, then it's value take shape. In it as itself, it is nothing and despite materialist fantasies it doesn't magical take on human characteristics. It needs the mind just as a TV needs the TV studio transmission. By itself, the TV is a dead box which if course can be made even deader it the wrong person starts tinkering with it without understanding what is going on. There are no humans hidden in the TV set.

But you show no sign of answering the very questions I posed. Again, here it is:

The quick answer is that I am talking of a neuro-semiotic process of modelling the world in a self interested way.
— apokrisis

Ah, the neuro brings with it the Cartesian Theaters.

And so just in saying that, we can see that there is active modelling going on. And why would we not expect modelling - of the vast complexity of a brain with trillions of connections, and plugged into real-time action - should not "feel like something"?
— apokrisis

Ah TRILLIONS of connections is where that elusive Cartesian Theater lies now. So it's neuro-transimtters and trillions of connections in triadic format that IS experience. I see. So the quantity of physical connections and the fact that it is neurons with axions, cell bodies, dendrites, carrying molecules of neurotransmitters, and the whole neurobiological package- these are the reasons why THIS triadic process is equivalent to the Cartesian Theater of experience? So, simply making sure the material is neuron-type in composition and the quantity is sufficiently in the trillions, that this triadic modelling is experiential and other triadic modelling is not experiential? Odd. Why cannot it be a matter of degree. Perhaps millions of connections, and other composites produce a lower degree of experience? Why cannot it be a matter of difference? Perhaps experience exists in other models but it is so different and unknown, that we cannot say much other than it exists as experiential in some way in terms of being a part of the modelling process, just like THIS modelling process. Somehow you always have a ghost in the machine lurking around and popping up when it is most convenient. The Cartesian Theater is hidden somewhere- you just have to tease it out to realize you are hiding it. So far you have hidden it in quantity, material-type, the concept of "emergence" and various others.

Ah, the neuro brings with it the Cartesian Theaters. — schopenhauer1

You keep repeating what the modelling relation approach explicitly rejects. If you want someone to defend representationalism to you as an ontology, you need to go elsewhere.

You keep repeating what the modelling relation approach explicitly rejects. If you want someone to defend representationalism to you as an ontology, you need to go elsewhere. — apokrisis

You aren't getting the point.. willfully perhaps.

You aren't getting the point.. willfully perhaps. — schopenhauer1

You are just bad at making your points. You can't explain what your own words like "mentality" might mean in terms of their ontic commitments. And you are unwilling to even have a go at answering the same kind of questions you demand of others.

You ask why should an active modelling relation feel like something? I reply why shouldn't it? If you haven't got the flexibility of thought to even try to see an issue from its reverse perspective, then the problem is only yours. You disqualify yourself from proper discussion already.

Another clarification that might help here is that I have been trying to address the philosophy of mind issue of "strategies of explanation". So that is a meta-level discussion. Then there is also the scientific project that would cash out some actual strategy. But to follow that, you would need to have an understanding of the relevant literature.

So sticking to strategies of explanation, I've showed how it breaks down into three levels of increasingly sophisticated inquiry. Stage 1 is thinking consciousness is a monistic spirit stuff - substance ontology. Stage 2 is dualistic representationalism - information processing ontology. Stage 3 is triadic semiotics - sign relation ontology.

Then a separate issue is this constant demand of "explain it so I can understand why it feels like what it feels like". We can have a meta-discussion about whether science should even do this. Science is the business of explaining through sufficiently abstract generalities. Like laws or mathematical forms. If we say a ball rolls due to Newtonian Mechanics, we don't expect to get what it feels like to "be in motion".

The explanatory strategy of science is based on ... modelling. It objectivises and constructs a third person view.

Well, reductionist science certainly does that. A holistic or systems science approach - one that attempts to include subjectivity, meaning, interpretation, purpose, observers, etc, in its larger triadic model - does then have a chance of starting to say something about why it feels like what it feels like.

Even Hard Problem promoters like Chalmers agree that we know a lot about why it feels like what it feels like from neuroscientific explanations. Why is drunkenness what it is? Why do visual illusions have their particular quality? Why are the objects we see made artificial sharp by Mach bands around them, or organised by Gestalt effects?

It is just that Chalmers then calls these easy problems. The game is to raise the bar until it reaches the eternal self-referential metaphysical question of "why anything?". Why should anything be anything, let alone green be green, or the Universe a something rather than a nothing?

Fine. That is another meta-level discussion we can have. It seems obvious that science - and reason itself - can't deal with any question rationally unless it can define its counterfactuals. So the issue is as bad for philosophy as it is for science.

As you can see, there are a variety of meta-issues that lie at the back of any discussion about the best strategies of explanation. You can't just plunge into things in confused fashion. Otherwise only confusion results.

You ask why should an active modelling relation feel like something? I reply why shouldn't it? If you haven't got the flexibility of thought to even try to see an issue from its reverse perspective, then the problem is only yours. You disqualify yourself from proper discussion already. — apokrisis

But that is my point.. Why shouldn't a modelling relation feel like something? Then you throw in the word "neuro" and "trillions" and that is supposed to answer why this triadic modelling is different from all other triadic-modelling and hence gets to be the "what it feels like", while others do not. It seems like you are not getting the implications of your own theory. There is no X time when "experience" happens.. The modelling IS the experience, thus either ALL modelling is experiential or none of it is.. Well which is it? If you say only THIS modelling is experiential, your hidden theater comes into play- an irrevocable split between mind/body (your hated duality) then comes into play (whether you like it or not). Is it hidden in neurons, the quantity of neurons? "What" is this illusion?

Then a separate issue is this constant demand of "explain it so I can understand why it feels like what it feels like". We can have a meta-discussion about whether science should even do this. Science is the business of explaining through sufficiently abstract generalities. Like laws or mathematical forms. If we say a ball rolls due to Newtonian Mechanics, we don't expect to get what it feels like to "be in motion". — apokrisis

Who said I used Newtonian notions to explain this? Straw man.

Even Hard Problem promoters like Chalmers agree that we know a lot about why it feels like what it feels like from neuroscientific explanations. Why is drunkenness what it is? Why do visual illusions have their particular quality? Why are the objects we see made artificial sharp by Mach bands around them, or organised by Gestalt effects?

It is just that Chalmers then calls these easy problems. The game is to raise the bar until it reaches the eternal self-referential metaphysical question of "why anything?". Why should anything be anything, let alone green be green, or the Universe a something rather than a nothing? — apokrisis

Yes, and I too agree that the easy problems are answerable with science. I never said differently either, and have emphasized that throughout this and other threads on the topic. So, yes, why is it that there is a "feels like" aspect to some modelling and not others is a great question, and Chalmers is willing to say that it is fundamental to the universe- possibly the modelling itself is somehow experiential.

But that is my point.. Why shouldn't a modelling relation feel like something? — schopenhauer1

So you agree with me that it prima facie should? You might have to quote me the bit where you say it was also your point.

Then you throw in the word "neuro" and "trillions" and that is supposed to answer why this triadic modelling is different from all other triadic-modelling... — schopenhauer1

That is a leap that you make, not me.

Is there some other triadic modelling that is different here? It would help if you could reference what you have in mind.

As to neuro and trillions, the point there is obviously to remind that there is a definite ground zero so far as the coding aspect of semiosis goes. This is about neurons in particular as the informational medium, not genes or words. Neurons do have particular qualities that justify talk of "neuro-semiosis".

And then trillions of interconnections is relevant because this is an emergent ontology. You need large numbers to get the kind of useful complexity I am talking about. A few neurons might make up a rather deterministic or robotic circuit. But a lot of them will start to show collective behaviours. This is a familiar concept now from the study of dynamical systems.

So you seem to be latching onto trigger words without understanding the context in which I would use them.

I never just throw things in. ;)

If you say only THIS modelling is experiential, your hidden theater comes into play- an irrevocable split between mind/body (your hated duality) then comes into play (whether you like it or not). — schopenhauer1

Again, you just don't appear to understand the difference between a triadic modelling relation and a dualistic computer model. One is properly connected to the world - it has to learn by doing. The other ain't. It has to be programmed and then at best runs a virtual simulation.

I fear if you can't keep these different concepts separate in your head by now, you never will.

Who said I used Newtonian notions to explain this? Straw man. — schopenhauer1

I can happily accept that you personally don't think scientifically about these things. But what I said is science does.

So, yes, why is it that there is a "feels like" aspect to some modelling and not others is a great question, and Chalmers is willing to say that it is fundamental to the universe- possibly the modelling itself is somehow experiential. — schopenhauer1

It would be a big advance to be able to say a particular notion of modelling - neuro-semiosis - does a good enough job at explaining the issue of "feels". Far better than Chalmers own half-hearted suggestion of dual aspect monism where mind is a property of information (rather than matter).

It would be victory for the triadic view. Wave goodbye to substance monism and information processing dualism.

But neuro-semiosis itself couldn't be "fundamental to the Universe". It is instead only something rather specialised - part of the emergent level of complexity we call biological life.

The pan-semiotic story is the one that talks about the Universe in a fundamental metaphysical fashion. And I have no problem with anyone labelling that a highly speculative inquiry. It is still more philosophy than science.

And either way, the pan-semiotic thesis itself stresses the huge divide between the physico-chemical level of semiosis and the biological one.

As I explained to Wayfarer, for physics, all the "mindful" informational constraints are external to the play of the material dynamics. A tornado arises because of a larger context of thermal gradients making up that day's weather.

But life and mind are the trick of being able to code for that kind of contextual information - form a memory using a symbolising mechanism like genes, neurons or words - and so take ownership of top-down causality as something packaged up and hidden deep inside.

So pan-semiosis is far from the silly mysticism of pan-experientialism or pan-psychism. It includes in formal fashion an account of exactly what changes in the transition from material systems to living systems.

We all know there is a difference. Pan-semiosis is about putting a finger on what that actually is in the most general metaphysical sense.

Pan-semiosis is about putting a finger on what that actually is in the most general metaphysical sense. — apokrisis

Something to do with meaning, one suspects.

A tornado arises because of a larger context of thermal gradients making up that day's weather. — apokrisis

Still struggling with the meaningfulness of tornadoes, or any sense in which they embody the meaning that seems intrinsic to organisms.