I often wish you'd provide references to companion literature, — Terrapin Station

You mean like....? http://www.nbi.dk/natphil/salthe/NatPhil_of_entropy.pdf

Well, I could detail everything in your posts where I think, "I don't know what in the world he's saying, really," but that would be pretty tedious and we'd never get through much of it.

I was being serious above, by the way. I can't recall the example now, but one time you had referenced some paper relevant to your post, and when I read it, it made a lot more sense to me because of the way it was written.

Even in this last post, I just can't make sense of "You are trying to fit things into a view of existence that lacks spatiotemporal scale" and I have no idea what you'd be referring to exactly with "You are imagining reality as an atomistic state of affairs in which "everything that is" is crammed into the one place at the one time." I have no idea what "cogent moments" is supposed to refer to, etc. If you tried to explain your usage of those phrases, terms, etc., undoubtedly you'd simply say more things where I'd not have the faintest idea what you're referring to really.

A lot of it sounds interesting, but if I can't parse numerous things per sentence, I can't do much with it.

You mean like....? http://www.nbi.dk/natphil/salthe/NatPhil_of_entropy.pdf — apokrisis

Yes, that's a good example, actually. I didn't read through the whole thing yet (obviously given the time between you posting the link and me posting this), but even though I disagree with some of the author's claims to the point I read to, the vast majority of it is intelligible to me. I'm not left wondering what in the world he might be talking about or feeling that it's almost like he's just stringing words together randomly or a la the pomo essay generator.

I'm not meaning any of that as a knock against you, by the way. It's just that we apparently think about things so differently that I just can't make sense of what you write when you get more verbose about your views.

Yes, that's a good example, actually. — Terrapin Station

If you like that, then I would highly recommend Salthe's two books on hierarchy theory - Evolving Hierarchical Systems and Development and Evolution.

Even in this last post, I just can't make sense of "You are trying to fit things into a view of existence that lacks spatiotemporal scale" — Terrapin Station

Again, Salthe's books explain this in detail. He coined the term cogent moment.

http://projects.isss.org/doku.php?id=principle_of_scalar_levels

The use of psychological terminology here is to risk blurring pansemiosis with panpsychism. So it has to be done carefully. — apokrisis

I hadn't meant to use terminology in a psychological mode there. What I was trying to get at it is that since the mind-conceived 'mind-independent world' is always, obviously, conceived; then it is always conceptually articulated. We cannot have any idea what it could mean for something to be actual and yet not be in conceptualized form; any such thing would thus be "as nothing".

Of course there is, we must imagine, 'something' independently of human being. But this 'something' is only something insofar as we can think it, however minimal its form. It just seems we are committed to thinking that something independent of us, for instance something that existed long before humans existed, must have been, to be in any shape at all, in some kind of conceptualizable shape. If something is conceptualizable, then it is articulated in the same, or an isomorphic, manner as concepts are, i.e. logically. So, it seems that we are committed to thinking there is a logos in nature independently of human being. "In the beginning was the Word", in other words, semiosis, or some Form without which matter cannot be anything.

Yes, the very notion that the world could somehow not be conceptually articulated is, when you look at it closely, utterly unintelligible. — John

Yes, or so the argument goes. Not everyone agrees, of course. My understanding is that Ray Brassier, for instance, would consider such a view to be nothing more than a thinly veiled anthropomorphism, and of course many post-Heideggerian phenomenologists would take issue with the notion that reality is exhausted by the conceptual.

What I was trying to get at it is that since the mind-conceived 'mind-independent world' is always, obviously, conceived; then it is always conceptually articulated. We cannot have any idea what it could mean for something to be actual and yet not be in conceptualized form; any such thing would thus be "as nothing". — John

Yes, indeed. I think it's the collision of common sense (bumping into objects) with a more rigorous abstract thought. Logically, there is no thing outside the thing-system = concept-system. But this is such a violation of sanity that we just drag it in, since it involves less cognitive dissonance.

If they're not focusing on people mentally judging the relation, that would require some sort of mapping or comparison mechanism, too. — Terrapin

Yep, that’s usually where appeals are made to second-order perceptual capacities and/or defeasible/non-monotonic reasoning processes. “Error” is what occurs when the content of one perception/belief contradicts another, and the agent has to make a choice between designating one belief as true and another as false. The content of a false belief is then flagged as “subjective” insofar as the justification for it’s contradiction is considered to be decisive.

But more importantly than that, what are they taking to be evidence that "the structure of the world" in general matches "the structure of thought"? — Terrapin

The arguments are not based on empirical evidence, but on a priori reasoning (purportedly) demonstrating the incoherence, absurdity or undesirability of alternative theories.

Obviously "the structure of thought" would match "the structure of the world" insofar as we're talking about that part of the world that consists of thought--since they're identical in that case, but re the world outside of thought, what's the evidence or argument for that? — Terrapin

The argument is basically this: if the “outside” world is not in conceptual shape (or equivalent) then it is literally unintelligible and knowledge of it is impossible. Why choose an epistemology that makes knowledge of the world impossible from the outset? Because of science? Usually these folks are not convinced by the claim that science supports skeptical epistemologies.

I think pansemiosis has to be more subtle than that. — apokrisis

It is, generally speaking, I was just simplifying for the sake of discussion.

My understanding is that Ray Brassier, for instance, would consider such a view to be nothing more than a thinly veiled anthropomorphism, and of course many post-Heideggerian phenomenologists would take issue with the notion that reality is exhausted by the conceptual. — Aaron R

On the first point, I'm skeptical about an escape from an anthropomorphism-- and about the need to escape, which is human, all too human.
On the second point, I think we can easily assert that emotion and sensation exceed the concepts we need to point at them. So reality is more than concept, but does it make sense to posit a thing, an intelligible unity, beyond this system of tings? It looks like the natures or essences of things are interdependent/systematic. "No finite thing has genuine being." And pointing outside of this system looks like an empty negation or the sort of thing addressed by Parmenides, though I'm not sure he had this in mind.

In regard to Heidegger; I think any apparent disagreement from him or from those whose philosophies are famed in his terms, about the conceptually formed nature of the world, would be more due to terminology than anything substantive.

For Heidegger, as you probably are aware, Dasein is being-in-the-world, and there is no world for Heidgger absent being-in-the-world; and this is the primordial and archetypal conceptually or logically articulated mode of being; not in an explicit, but rather in an implicit, sense. Perhaps, it is a bit misleading when I use the word "articulated", because that term is commonly taken to suggest explicitation: but I think there are two senses at play here. For example, we can say that the 'machinery' of the world just is the way it is articulated; the way in which its part relate to one another and the whole; whatever we might think those parts to be.

What I was trying to get at it is that since the mind-conceived 'mind-independent world' is always, obviously, conceived; then it is always conceptually articulated. — John

Well that is different in focusing on the epistemic angle rather than the ontic. And pansemiosis is an ontic claim in saying, essentially, that epistemology becomes ontology here. The structure of the modelling relation we have with the world (what you are talking about) is in fact the structure by which the Universe also "knows things" - that is knows things like what its laws say about how its parts ought to be behaving in conformance with developed habit.

So what I would say in reply here is that while we need - epistemically - to be aware that the "mind-independent world" is in fact a free creation of the mind, just an idea, it is also true that the "mind" is also a construction of this kind. It is also "just an idea" we hold to explain things.

So both the world and the self that is imagined as its observer are articulated concepts. Together they form the very epistemic relation, the sign relation, which is what "we" then claim to believe in as our "objective truth".

What we can't get beyond is the need for a conceptually articulated view in general. And talk about the mind vs the world is what that articulation looks like.

Of course there is, we must imagine, 'something' independently of human being. — John

But strictly, we consider reality to start exactly where imagination fails. Imagination makes experience depend on "us". We can imagine flying for instance. So it is when experience comes to depend on something other than "us" that we can experientially say, well this is not "us" now. And let's call this other thing mind-independent reality.

If something is conceptualizable, then it is articulated in the same, or an isomorphic, manner as concepts are, i.e. logically. So, it seems that we are committed to thinking there is a logos in nature independently of human being. — John

Now we are back to ontic commitments. And the question is whether the structure of thought and world are the same in some way that is exactly as we conceive it, or whether - because we know we are manifesting an image - in fact it still remains likely that we are just projecting our articulate concepts.

And my own point about self and world as equally conceptual at root, should point towards the latter, in fact. There is now even less reason for the workings of our minds to be true to the thing-in-itself.

This is probably surprising, but it is already basic to psychological science. The brain is not there to re-present reality but to ignore it as much as possible. Attention and habit are filters set up to limit our physical connection to the world (so as to achieve the separation which constitutes the modelling relation's epistemic cut). Being a mind is all about constructing some minimal symbolic encoding that simply has the job of leaving us effective physical actors. Like DNA's relation to the metabolism it models, the contents of experience must be essentially unrealistic to be effective as semiosis.

If you want people to stop at road junctions, you put the stop sign to one side rather than erecting a physical barrier in the middle of the road. Or at least that is the simple and cost-effective way to co-ordinate driving behaviour. The stop sign looks nothing like a physical barrier. It doesn't represent the world. Yet as a symbol, it articulates a concept about how the world "ought to be".

So this is very tricky stuff. We have every reason to be suspicious of every articulate conception as their whole point is not to be true in some veridical "thing-in-itself" sense. That is not even the ambition. The ambition is to be pragmatically effective. And that is achieved by a capacity to leave just about everything material out of the concepts. Classic reductionism to theory and measurement in other words.

However then - having properly understood this psychological apparatus, this epistemic truth - that is the structure of the modelling relation which pansemiosis would project onto our imaginings of reality. The thing-in-itself has the form of wanting to self-simplify in terms of concepts like particles or waves ruled by dynamical laws of motion, for instance.

People always complain that we look at reality but then talk about the abstracta that aren't really there. We end up treating a logos as the essence of the real (while the actual physical stuff is reduced to mere appearance).

Pansemiosis - in transferring the psychological account into the space of cosmological accounts - gives us a formal way of accounting for just this. It says, nope, logos really is what is most real here. The thing-in-itself is not just some bunch of stuff, a state of affairs. It does boil down to an encoding relation where there is a cosmic purpose expressing the desire to produce the simplest definite actions.

Anything might be quantumly possible. But semiotically, existence arises due to the collapse of all this potential being to some historic collection of binary-framed choices. Was the electron spin-up or spin-down all along? Who can know. But history remembers some now fixed answer.

It is, generally speaking, I was just simplifying for the sake of discussion. — Aaron R

I appreciate that you even mentioned it. Treat my post as mostly a trigger for my own self-clarification.

Objective truth means that a statement has the property of referring to something which is the case independently of our beliefs or statements.

For example, "the earth revolves around the sun" is true by referring to what is the case, and objective by being true independently of whether anyone says or believes it.

What I was trying to get at it is that since the mind-conceived 'mind-independent world' is always, obviously, conceived; — John

I don't think that's obvious at all. From a human perspective it can simply be observed/perceived.

For example, "the earth revolves around the sun" is true by referring to what is the case, and objective by being true independently of whether anyone says or believes it. — jkop

Except it isn't the case, and so isn't true. The planets and the Sun all revolve around the Solar System's barycenter (which, incidentally, sometimes lies outside the Sun):

You wish. But to also revolve around other things wont make 'The earth revolves around the sun' false.

I don't know what it could mean to say that truth is objective. The idea of truth seems to be the idea of something really being the case; the idea of an objective state of affairs or actuality. So, truth is the idea of the objective, it is of the objective, but is not itself objective, it is of actuality, but is not itself actual. — John

There's a difference between truth and the idea of truth, isn't there? You start off by speaking about what the idea of truth seems to be, yet your conclusion is regarding truth itself, and consists of conflating the two. The idea of truth vs. truth, and also seems to be vs. is. Your reasoning is invalid.

I wish? It's scientific fact. The Earth revolves around the Solar System's barycenter, not the Sun. Jupiter revolves around the Solar System's barycenter, not the Sun. The Sun revolves around the Solar System's barycenter, not nothing.

Edit
Correction: given that gravity propagates at the speed of light, the Earth revolves around where the Solar System's barycenter was ~8 minutes ago.

Again, to also revolve around other things wont make 'The earth revolves around the sun' false

And again, the Earth doesn't revolve around the Sun. It only revolves around the Solar System's barycenter.

"The Earth revolves around the Sun" is as false as "The Earth revolves around Venus".

You're both wrong. The Earth revolves around me.

I'm reminded of Isaac Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

So much for the principle of bivalence, then? Proposing fuzzy logic?

I do believe there is an objective truth. I don't see how there could not be. But, fallibilism is also the case.

Asimov's article does nothing to dissuade me from those beliefs.

Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete.

I did hear Graham Priest speak about paraconsistent logic. It is intriguing.

I do believe there is an objective truth. I don't see how there could not be. — anonymous66

Well, it could be that we never talk about the objective world; only the world as we experience and understand it.

The question then becomes, is there an objective world to experience? Do you agree that there is evidence that an objective world is there to experience?

Yeah but since we all seem to be referring to the same world in our conversations,etc, is it unreasonable to assume that there exists an "objective" world which is independent of each of us?

I didn't suggest that there isn't a world which is independent of us. I suggested that perhaps we don't talk about this world, in which case that we seem to be referring to the same world is mistaken.

Would you say that it is probable that a world exists; one that is independent of us?