Would you like to say in the broadest terms what Friston is about? From my own very limited knowledge I believe that certain aspects of vision make use of Bayesian logic, but this is limited and does not apply to the brain generally.

What I am actually doing is taking a position that wraps first, second and third person points of view together in a single metaphysics - a metaphysics that is triadic. — apokrisis

Is this your own idea or the idea of another philosopher?

Does it have a connection to Peirce's triad?

Where is the evidence or the logic that says that consciousness can exist in the absence of a content? — apokrisis

There is a technical term in Advaita Vedanta, 'nirvikalpa samadhi', ' a state of awareness where the ego and samskaras have been dissolved and bare awareness remains'. It is elaborated in contemporary terms in The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object: Reflections on the Nature of Transcendental Consciousness, Franklin Merrill Wolff. Not the kind of book likely to interest you, but you did ask.

My assertion is that it's being used in such a way that it doesn't explain anything. The particle physics and the chemistry levels do each explain something, but the Informationists are saying it's information that is doing the work in both cases. — Daemon

I might agree with you, depending on what you mean.

Let's go back to an example you raised earlier, that of DNA. Consider the statement 'DNA encodes genetic instructions for the development and maintenance of all known life forms'. Does this qualify as a useful explanation of what DNA does? You might argue that we don't 'need' the references to 'instructions' and 'encoding', but if that's the case, then why does literally every textbook on cell biology and biochemistry (that I've encountered, at least) use the language of 'information' when explaining genetics? Biochemists seem to think it's doing so much work that they can hardly write a paper (much a less a book) without invoking it.

It's analogous to arguing that the periodic table is superfluous because 'we can just use the Schrodinger equation'. Maybe that's true in theory (maybe), but in practice I don't believe the periodic table has ever been 'derived' from quantum mechanics. Even if such a derivation has been achieved I'm not convinced that anyone could have accomplish it without first knowing the periodic table (and the higher-order principles encoded within it).

Thoughts?

I was vaguely hoping you understood Apo's position so you could explain it to me, but It's a big ask. — bert1

Where he and I seem to differ, from my perspective, is that although he gestures towards 'downward causation', ultimately all causation has to be bottom-up in nature i.e. to be accounted for in molecular or naturalistic terms. And this I ascribe to what Nagel calls 'evolutionary naturalism and the fear of religion' in the essay of that name.

Interestingly, C S Pierce had a rather pantheist and idealist philosophy (something which Nagel also comments on in that essay). Take for instance Pierce's advocacy of what he calls 'agapism' (not a very elegant-sounding word, but still...)

“Evolutionary Love” is one of Peirce’s most fascinating philosophical writings. It describes the existence of a cosmic principle of love throughout the universe creatively supporting the formation of new evolutionary forms. This love is a cherishing form of love, because it recognizes that which is lovely in another being and sympathetically supports its existence. Peirce calls his new theory “agapism,” and he contrasts it with evolutionary theories that are based on a selfish form of love; these preach “the Gospel of Greed.” Peirce points out the occurrence of such selfish, greed-based thinking in the modern politico-economical structures, and in Darwin’s biological principle of natural selection based on the competition of private interests. On the other hand, agapism promotes a devotion to helping one’s neighbors, and is a true doctrine of Christian ethics.

Peirce is often characterised as an 'objective idealist', about which I find this fragment in Peirce's writings:

The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in Cartesianism, as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find defenders today. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of hylopathy, otherwise called monism. Then the question arises whether physical laws on the one hand and the psychical law on the other are to be taken:

(A) as independent, a doctrine often called monism, but which I would name neutralism; or,

(B) the psychical law as derived and special, the physical law alone as primordial, which is materialism; or,

(C) the physical law as derived and special, the psychical law alone as primordial, which is idealism.

The materialistic doctrine seems to me quite as repugnant to scientific logic as to common sense ( :clap: ); since it requires us to suppose that a certain kind of mechanism will feel, which would be a hypothesis absolutely irreducible to reason, – an ultimate, inexplicable regularity; while the only possible justification of any theory is that it should make things clear and reasonable.

Neutralism is sufficiently condemned by the logical maxim known as Ockham’s razor, i.e., that not more independent elements are to be supposed than necessary. By placing the inward and outward aspects of substance on a par, it seems to render both primordial.

The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. — C S Peirce, The Architecture of Theories

You generally won't find these kinds of ideas in today's biosemiotics as it's too religious-sounding. But when Peirce was active, idealism was still the predominant school in Anglo-American philosophy - the 'golden age' of American philosophy produced Josiah Royce, Bowen Parker Bown and William James. That was before Moore and Russell swept idealism off the table for the majority of anglo-american philosophy.

Friston is returning neurocognition to its 19th century roots. The brain as a mix of habits and expectations. Helmholtz’s treatise on perception. Bayes’ work on probability and structures of belief. The brain as a semiotic prediction machine.

In the 20th century, the information revolution hijacked cognitive science. Turing’s theory of Universal Computation became the compelling mathematical framework for thinking about the brain.

This is the Cartesian data processing paradigm. Cognition as an input/output process. You have the sensations arriving and getting crunched into perceptual representations, then motor plans. A simple linear digestion of information.

Bayesian Brain theory flips this around so as to make cognition a cybernetic or autopoietic loop. The brain attempts to predict its inputs. The output comes first. The brain anticipates the likely states of its environment to allow it to react with fast, unthinking, habit - the shortcut, basal ganglia, level of brain processing. It is only when there is a significant prediction error – some kind of surprise encountered – that the brain needs to stop and attend, spend time forming a more considered response.

So output leads the way. The brain maps the world not as it is, but as it is about to unfold. And more importantly, how it is going to unfold in terms of the actions and intentions we are just about to impose on it. Cognition is embodied or enactive.

Friston’s contribution has been to take this commonsensical view and build it into a universalised mathematics to rival Turing computation. He has written out the prediction or forward-modelling algorithm in the language of differential equations.

There are a bunch of technicalities involved as he builds on standard chunks of such maths - formalisms like Markov blankets and self-evidencing information.

But simply put, the maths couples the way we expect our actions to change the world to the way we then find the world changing the states of our sensory systems. Simply put, if we can turn our heads quickly and feel it is us that is moving, not the world that is spinning, then we know our brains have got the hang of things. It is forward-modelling our environments in a way such that there is a self as the stable anchoring point of view. We are implementing an information optimisation principle that can be described in the "physics" of a gradient descent algorithm.

So Friston gives a formal mathematical account of the notion of a forward-modelling intelligence in just the same way Turing did for an information processing machine.

Other theories like Global Workspace and IIT sort of try to tackle the same thing - everyone is feeling the same elephant - but then lean into the information theoretic view rather than Friston's "thermodynamic" one.

So both GW and IIT see the brain as having to create structure and informed points of view via a process of integration~differentiation. To be conscious is to have a point of view ... that meaningfully sorts all things in terms of their relevance and irrelevance. And brains do that over both habit-forming, and attention-forming time scales. As I say, the more you can ignore about the world in advance, the more certain you can be that any Bayesian error is significant and should inform the next step in the rolling evolution of your world model.

But both GW and IIT are ill-suited to cashing in on the obvious. GW is stuck in the world of computer architectures - a rigid structural view that lacks any self-organising or self-optimising dynamic. And IIT has the opposite issue of being all dynamics without any computational structure. It can't measure the logic driving the action, just put some number on the degree of coherence in the neural statistics.

So both reflect Turing computation/Shannon information as the view that a bit is a bit. You don't really know if it is signal or noise. Your maths is set up to be agnostic about that crucial fact.

But Friston starts with a semiotic approach to information where it is mathematically a unit of meaning. It is a Batesonian "difference that makes a difference" - in being a prediction error, and thus something the system is working to suppress.

It is like looking at a switch on the wall and not knowing the world the switch was designed to control. The information theoretic view tells you only that you are looking at a physical device with two states. But it doesn't tell you if it is on or off, or whether its current state is good or bad.

The switch could be the way you turn on the heating, or the trigger for a nuclear bomb. Guess wisely.

But a semiotic view of switches is that they impose a general of/off choice on material reality. You can construct any kind of model of any kind of physical action and - by hooking the two together cybernetically - leave the damn thing to run itself in error-minimising, self-optimising, fashion. In simple terms, instead of a switch, you have something more useful, like a thermostat. Or an intelligent room that handles its own lights, or whatever.

There is a technical term in Advaita Vedanta, 'nirvikalpa samadhi', ' a state of awareness where the ego and samskaras have been dissolved and bare awareness remains'. — Wayfarer

Claims about stilling the mind are as believable as claims about levitating the body.

Is this your own idea or the idea of another philosopher?

Does it have a connection to Peirce's triad? — ZzzoneiroCosm

The triadic distinction of "I/you/them" is so basic to the logic of relations that it is built into the fundamentals of our grammar. And Peirce had the genius to indeed turn it back into a logic of relations.

You and me is a second person view of two individuals in interaction. Peircean secondness, in other words. — apokrisis

I would have said it could be either a first person view; I feel me, and I take it for granted that you feel you, even though I cannot feel you. I also take it for granted that you cannot feel me. I don't understand what you are taking the second person view to be; IE how it would differ from both first and third person views.

In medieval times, monks could be had up for the sin of accidie - a failure to feel the full private fervour of religious experience and merely going through the public semblance of prayer and exhaltation. — apokrisis

Yes, I've heard that, but it doesn't change the fact that people either experience God or they don't, and also that there is always the possibility of being mistaken; hence the importance of faith. I have not been able to find it within me to be one of the faithful unfortunately; I have no doubt it provides a kind of solace nothing else can.

Is this really so hard to understand? [Of course it bloody is. :grin: ] — apokrisis

I wish I could grasp what you said there and its significance, but I lack the background. If it is so hard to understand and only grasped by a few specialists after long study, then it would seem arcane, and I'm not seeing how it could therefore be useful to the vast majority of people, and to society and mankind in general.

Claims about stilling the mind are as believable as claims about levitating the body. — apokrisis

That's something you'd need to experience. I can attest that it is possible, but that it does not involve the cessation of all thought. So, it's not what the inexperienced might think, and it really cannot be explained.

And Peirce had the genius to indeed turn it back into a logic of relations. — apokrisis

Do you have a source on this? I didn't see this particular triad in a list of Peirce's triads....

Claims about stilling the mind are as believable as claims about levitating the body. — apokrisis

Janus's reference is something different from "stilling the mind."

More like the mind hovering in the early stages of sleep and infused with hypnagogic dreamlike activity.

I would have said it could be either a first person view; I feel me, and I take it for granted that you feel you, even though I cannot feel you. I also take it for granted that you cannot feel me. I don't understand what you are taking the second person view to be; IE how it would differ from both first and third person views. — Janus

You've pointed out the difference. I feel that I am me - the principle of identity. And I feel that you are you and not me. The principle of non-contradiction. I can't be both me and you at the same time, so we are distinct.

But then you and me can both be part of them. The law of the excluded can fail to apply because we find ourselves not distinct but part of the same collective generality where the distinction is sublated.

So secondness stands for the possibility of distinction or reaction - a difference. You just want to elevate this secondness to something fixed and standalone when it can only, in Peirce's analysis, arise within a logic of relations.

I wish I could grasp what you said there and its significance, but I lack the background. If it is so hard to understand and only grasped by a few specialists after long study, then it would seem arcane, and I'm not seeing how it could therefore be useful to the vast majority of people, and to society and mankind in general. — Janus

That's what folk say about science in general. Tl;dr.

And then they get back to sermonising on the Hard Problem.

That's something you'd need to experience. I can attest that it is possible, but that it does not involve the cessation of all thought. So, it's not what the inexperienced might think, and it really cannot be explained. — Janus

I've taken part in sensory deprivation experiments. My judo teacher was a Zen monk and we had to sit in the tropical sun, lotus style, ignoring the arriving mosquitoes.

So I've done the phenomenological research as well as understanding the neuroscientific reasons why this is a BS ambition.

The way I would attempt to explain it is by using a couple of Zen analogies. The "ordinary" mind is like a pond into which a stone has been thrown; it doesn't reflect the environment clearly. In a state of stillness, thoughts can be observed arising and crossing the mind like birds flying across a clear sky.

In a state of stillness, thoughts can be observed arising and crossing the mind like birds flying across a clear sky. — Janus

That's a good description.



I'm chary of the word "stillness" vis-a-vis the human mind. I don't think literal stillness is something the mind can do. After 20 years of meditative practice, the pursuit of stillness strikes me as a major, possibly the preeminent, pitfall of meditative aspiration.

You just want to elevate this secondness to something fixed and standalone when it can only, in Peirce's analysis, arise within a logic of relations. — apokrisis

It's not so. I acknowledge that a sense of self is relational. It's the relation between any experience whatsoever and the sense of me experiencing. It may not be fully formed in infants, but even tiny infants cry for a sense of want.

And then they get back to sermonising on the Hard Problem. — apokrisis

I agree that the Hard Problem is a bogeyman, that comes form expecting a scientifc account to somehow be able to encompass the experiential reality; it can't because it is only an account. "The map cannot be the territory".

So I've done the phenomenological research as well as understanding the neuroscientific reasons why this is a BS ambition. — apokrisis

I don't think you'd say that if you had experienced it even for a few moments.

I've taken part in sensory deprivation experiments. My judo teacher was a Zen monk and we had to sit in the tropical sun, lotus style, ignoring the arriving mosquitoes.

So I've done the phenomenological research — apokrisis

Ignoring the mosquitoes in lotus position - that's a good start - but it doesn't follow that you've achieved a meditative state.

Unless you have a special talent, a stable meditative state (a requirement for the phenomenological research you seem to have in mind) requires years of diligent practice to achieve.

How diligent has your meditative practice been, and for how many years?

I'm chary of the word "stillness" vis-a-vis the human mind. I don't think literal stillness is something the mind can do. After 20 years of meditative practice, the pursuit of stillness strikes me as a major, possibly the preeminent, pitfall of meditative aspiration. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I also meditated for about 18 years, and my experience was that "stillness" consists in resisting the movement of thoughts; in not following them. I agree that total cessation of thought and imagery is probably impossible; but then who's to say? Neuroscience would presumably show that total cessation of neural activity is impossible (I mean that's all it could show, all that's measurable).

I didn't see this particular triad in a list of Peirce's triads... — ZzzoneiroCosm

He didn't make a direct mapping as the first person became not the crisp boundedness of the individual but its diametric opposite of the radical vagueness of the completely unbounded "individual". So Schiller's first person as "infinite impulse".

Peirce was wanting to move from atomism to holism. So what is primal is pure unbound possibility - that then becomes an atomistic kind of firstness when a suitable system of constraints evolve.

Which is why James talked of newborns as experiencing a blooming, buzzing, confusion. The real first person point of view - before anything has developed - is just a wide open, tychic, state of everythingness.

Likewise, his second person point of view only made sense in terms of the generality of thirdness. "All thought is addressed to a second person, or to one’s future self as a second person."

So the transition is to speaking to a second person in a way that depends on them being a member of a common linguistic community ... and thus being constrained to be another now suitably atomistic individual ... like yourself has started to act to be.

So Peirce used first, second and third person grammar to get started in his early work. But that doesn't stick out because his achievement was in fact to subvert it - turn it from a static and atomistic account to a dynamic and holistic account.

"stillness" consists in resisting the movement of thoughts; in not following them. — Janus

That sounds accurate to me.

Not to start a zen pissing contest, but I feel like I'm thinking of a deeper, hypnagogic state, one that skirts the realm of dream. Increased skill in sustaining that state opens the mind to the possibility of transitioning, without losing awareness, to the lucid dreaming state. That's what I've been working toward in my practice lately: bridging the gap between meditation and lucid dreaming.

So Peirce used first, second and third person grammar to get started in his early work. — apokrisis

Thanks. That should get me started.

The "ordinary" mind is like a pond into which a stone has been thrown; it doesn't reflect the environment clearly. In a state of stillness, thoughts can be observed arising and crossing the mind like birds flying across a clear sky. — Janus

Except the mind isn’t a mirror of the world, it’s a reciprocal interaction with an environment. Thoughts don’t appear before an unchanging theater of the mind , they transform the experiencer. We come back to ourself from out of what we perceive.

That's what I've been working toward in my practice lately: bridging the gap between meditation and lucid dreaming. — ZzzoneiroCosm

OK, I've not tried lucid dreaming much. Except I remember many years ago when I read the "don Juan" books by Castaneda, the instruction Don Juan gave to Castaneda was to find his hands in his dream. I used to try that and I once found them, but then I descended into a kind of "pit" of paralysis accompanied by an intense grinding sound, where I felt I was about to die and I had to struggle back to normal consciousness. This same experience used to occur to me at a time I was taking a lot of hallucinogens when I was on the edge of falling asleep; instead of falling asleep I would fall into the pit instead, always with the grinding or roaring sound. Weird!

Except the mind isn’t a mirror of the world, it’s a reciprocal interaction with an environment. Thoughts don’t appear before an unchanging theater of the mind , they transform the experiencer. We come back to ourself from out of what we perceive. — Joshs

I wasn't making any theoretical claims about the relation between mind and world or that there is a mental theatre. I know from experience that I perceive things with greater clarity and vividness the less my mind is agitated by thoughts; that's all I was referring to.

I don't think you'd say that if you had experienced it even for a few moments. — Janus

A few moments is not hard. As you say, you can't stop stuff bubbling up, but you can just let it go. You can get into a dissociated state where nothing is sticking in working memory. At which point you either fall asleep or suddenly notice with a start that you weren't noticing.

But even Ram Dass said managing a whole 12 seconds would count you among the professionals. It is not a natural state for the mind to be in.

Ignoring the mosquitoes in lotus position - that's a good start - but it doesn't follow that you've achieved a meditative state. — ZzzoneiroCosm

No. It confirmed to me that the whole thing was pretentious bullshit. But still, it was another thing that got me in interested in the real story of how it all works.

Instead of meditation, I like to get "in the zone" playing sport. And that is of course more in keeping with my enactive metaphysics. Transcendence as a flashing down the line backhand. :wink:

No. It confirmed to me that the whole thing was pretentious bullshit. But still, it was another thing that got me in interested in the real story of how it all works. — apokrisis

I don't think it is pretentious bullshit, and I don't claim that sustaining those states is impossible (LSD works well for that for many hours at least), but it is the impossibility of substantiating claims that it is possible that lead me to believe that it is always a matter of faith. I don't believe any determinate and CERTAIN knowledge of anything (like the nature of reality, the existence of god and so on) is possible, despite claims of "perfect enlightenment" and so on.

I do think that is a myth, or at least that if it is possible or even actual, it can never be demonstrated to be so. On the other hand it cannot be demonstrated not be so, either, except in the intersubjective context it can be demonstrated to be undecidable. In other words it is always possible there is a god and that some people do know it directly, but whatever claims they might make about it are subject, just like everything else, from the discursive point of view, to being defeasible.

Instead of meditation, I like to get "in the zone" playing sport. And that is of course more in keeping with my enactive metaphysics. Transcendence as a flashing down the line backhand. :wink: — apokrisis

I can relate to that; I do it with woodworking, painting, playing the piano and writing poetry. I don't meditate much these days.

No. It confirmed to me that the whole thing was pretentious bullshit. — apokrisis

I get that. And it's an easy position to take. But it isn't pretentious bullshit. You just gave up.


I get getting into the zone via sports, music, dance, any kind of performance art. Not all meditative potentials can be accessed this way, to my view.

I'm a performance artist, by the way: classical piano and singer-songwriter stuff and I enjoy getting into the zone this way. And a performance can be more or less meditative. But the singular focus of sitting still opens up other vistas.

it is always a matter of faith — Janus

I got into meditation via J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey. What resonated most in Franny's experience was its faithlessness: repeat any name of god and eventually you will "see" god. (Using the g-word as loosely as possible...) There's no need to have faith in the practice.


I had some wild experiences with hallucinogens 20 years ago so now I only microdose. Not sure I've seen the same pit but I've certainly encountered a pit or two of my own. The microdosing is an interesting solution to the bad-trip issue.

Don Juan gave to Castaneda was to find his hands in his dream. I used to try that and I once found them, but then I descended into a kind of "pit" of paralysis accompanied by an intense grinding sound, where I felt I was about to die and I had to struggle back to normal consciousness. — Janus

There is a paralysis in REM sleep so it can be a little strange to sustain awareness as paralysis sets in. Probably panic vis-a-vis paralysis colored your experience.

There are a few more or less scholarly works on lucid dreaming that can help, I'll send them your way if you're interested. A Google search would do it too. :smile:


"Waking" to a lucid dream paralysis can be shocking....

There are a few more or less scholarly works on lucid dreaming that can help, I'll send them your way if you're interested. A Google search would do it too. :smile: — ZzzoneiroCosm

I'd be interested to take a look at he works you recommend. It's always good to start with recommendations, f you name them I can search for them. :cool:

I had some wild experiences with hallucinogens 20 years ago so now I only microdose. Not sure I've seen the same pit but I've certainly encountered a pit or two of my own. The microdosing is an interesting solution to the bad-trip issue. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I haven't tried microdosing; do you find it different/ more interesting than cannabis?