But there is this grey zone, and I take it this is where apo's grand synthesis lives, in which we consider what a possible natural world could be, and that means, to begin with, showing that the actual natural world can be described without remainder as such a world. — Srap Tasmaner

The deep paradigm shift is from reductionism to holism.

A mechanistic and atomistic view of the world is that it is composed of stable bits of stuff. It is constructed bottom up and complexity “emerges” as a property at a higher level.

The rival view is that the world is fundamentally a state of instability that then gets organised by the emergence of top-down constraints. It is order out of chaos.

This systems science metaphysics has been around since philosophy began anywhere, and Aristotle’s hylomorphism is the usual cite. But Peirce gives us a view rooted in logic itself. He achieved the trick of unifying epistemology with ontology and so vaults us way past Kant.

So my “grand synthesis” indeed connects everything in this Peircean pattern.

You have what we believe about causation itself. An organismic causation replaces the more usual mechanistic one. The world does not begin in a state of atomistic fixity. It begins in a state of pure fluctuating uncertainty - a vagueness or quantum foam.

That is pansemiosis. It sounds remarkably like quantum field theory or ontic structural realism. Somethingness emerges via a self-limiting constraint on everythingness.

Then the new thing is biosemiosis. Now we find that life and mind are not mechanical constructions but systems of semiotic constraint. Codes can stabilise the instabilities of metabolisms and unlock entropy gradients.

Life and mind don’t require a stable world to thrive. They instead exist by seeking out criticality - the edge of chaos - because where the world is at its most “tippable”, that is where being a system which has a memory has the greatest advantage. Instability is the power source that the encoded information of biology harnesses.

Robots struggle to walk as they are designed mechanically. Animals can walk without thinking as "surfing instability" is what is designed in to their bodies and nervous systems from the ground up.

Being right on the point of always toppling is the efficient way to get around. You just have to master the trick of using instability to your advantage.

So you have the absolutely general metaphysics of pansemiosis, You have the paradigm shift in life and mind science that is biosemiosis.

Then you have the enactive turn in cognitive science that also flips the mechanical paradigm on its head, but has yet to catch up in terms of producing a fully fledged neurosemiosis. But a shift to a prediction-based ontology - one that is all about regulation of uncertainty - is clearly near enough the same thing. All that is missing is the Peircean branding.

Putting a Peircean spin on it all still brings you blank looks in metaphysics, let alone physics, biology or neurology. Yet for me, in the late 1990s, hooking up with Pattee, Salthe and their little community of theoretical biologists who were just discovering Peirce, it was like finally arriving home. Everything finally clicked into place at a metaphysical level under the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Dissipative structure theory was showing that open systems were more generic than closed or "gone to equilibrium" ones.

Hierarchy theory was a mathematical framing of what systems science had been trying to say.

The DNA revolution in biology was becoming properly understood in terms of a semiotic modelling relation.

A whole bunch of stuff fell into place, with Peirce proving to have a triadic model of logic that argued reality could not be organised any other way.

And now biophysics has come to the party in a big way with its molecular machines, while Friston has cashed in on enactivism and infodynamics with his free energy formalism.

It just keeps rolling.

Gestalt psychology, post-Pavlovian orientation response psychology, Hebbian network neuroscience, early cogsci guys like Neisser, any number of cybernetic approaches.

I started looking for embodied approaches in the 1980s and I found a ton of such work. I was shocked by how much had already been figured out. So I was fairly bemused when suddenly enactivism was being touted as this exciting new thing.

sometimes it does matter what the neurons of the defendant are doing — Isaac

A fair point, anomalous monism is after all monism.

"He cannot have intended to murder X because the neurons forming that intent were disrupted in their activities by a tumour" — Isaac

If the tumour caused his body to move, puppet-like, and against his volition he committed the murder, this would be a correct description. Perhaps the tumour brought about a rage in which the act was done without intent to kill. That we drop intent in such cases should make us more wary of attributing intent to dishbrain.

Again the intentional behaviour and language sits on and yet remains distinct from the physically causal description of events. As you say,

I don't think such a physical necessity matches they way we normally use 'intent'. It might show that there's no physical basis behind our word at all, but that's fine, I don't see there needs to be. — Isaac

This view is in apparrent contrast to

..this represents a primitive form of intending... — Joshs

Again the intentional behaviour and language sits on and yet remains distinct from the physically causal description of events. — Banno

If you insist on a mechanical understanding of physical causation, then of course you are going to wind up with this kind of half-arsed AP dualism.

Get your physics right, and things start to work. You will realise that you can't escape finality or "intent" once you've had your nose rubbed in the principle of least action.

Again the intentional behaviour and language sits on and yet remains distinct from the physically causal description of events. As you say,
I don't think such a physical necessity matches they way we normally use 'intent'. It might show that there's no physical basis behind our word at all, but that's fine, I don't see there needs to be.
— Isaac

This view is in apparrent contrast to
..this represents a primitive form of intending...
— Joshs — Banno

The biological notion of intending that I had in mind is not
at the level of physical causal description. It is similar to Joseph Rouse’s assertion that non-linguistic animals display an authentic rather than merely ersatz form of intentionality. His argument hinges on the assumption that animal intentionality is conceptually-based , even though it is non-linguistic.

He explains that while some animals respond to
stimuli in rigidly inflexible ways, “many organisms can change their behavioral patterns in flexible, instrumentally rational responses to novel or conflicting patterns of multiple cues and can make further adjustments shaped by the outcomes of their own earlier efforts. Call this difference between rigid and flexible responsiveness to envi­ronmental cues (which may be a difference in degree rather than kind) the “sphex/flex” distinction; to describe it initially in terms of causality, rationality, or intentionality may beg key questions.”

Rouse’s biological notion of intentional conceptuality applies to the following: “Some organisms also respond to some features of their environment in ways that support a distinction between merely taking them up, and taking them as relevant “under an aspect,” “as meant,” or “under a description,” such that they can mistake them.”

In the following quote, Rouse presents John Haugeland’s argument against Rouse’s claims for animal
intentionality. In reading this, I now realize that dishbrain’s generalizing and discriminating capabilities certainly don’t exceed Haigeland’s depiction of ersatz intentionality.

“Haugeland’s (1998) arguments against the possibility
of a biologi­cally based understanding of human intentionality make this mismatch especially clear, for his line of argument also provides a decisive con­sideration against treating expert chess play, and other forms of skilled perceptual-practical responsiveness, as nonconceptual. Haugeland ar­gued that biological functioning can only differentiate the patterns in the world to which it normally responds, even if those patterns are gerrymandered from the perspective of conceptually articulated under­standing. For example, a bird whose evolved perceptual responses are to avoid eating most yellow butterflies, except for one oddly mottled pattern of yellow, would not thereby be mistaken about the color of the mottled yellow ones. We identify the bird’s responses as almost in ac­cord with a conceptual category we endorse (“yellow”), but the bird’s behavior itself provides no basis for concluding that it was striving but failing to accord with that classification.

Moreover, even if the bird’s re­sponse patterns were de facto coextensive with conceptually significant features of the world, as in always and only avoiding eating yellow butterflies, those patterns would not then display an intentional direct­edness toward the butterflies’ color, for that coincidence would merely be a de facto contingency. For Haugeland, intentionality or conceptual understanding must introduce a possible gap between what some com­portment is directed toward and the manner or content of that directed­ness such that a mismatch between the two accounts for the possibility
of error. The birds’ pattern of behavior is only a complex pattern of response to actual circumstances. The single pattern of what the birds do in varying circumstances cannot then generate a dual pattern that could differentiate what they are responding to from how they take it to be. Individual birds can malfunction with respect to species-normal patterns of discrimination and response, but there is no further basis for concluding that the overall response pattern within the population aims for but falls short of something different than what its members actually, typically do.”

If you insist on a mechanical understanding of physical causation — apokrisis

I don't.

Classical physics – Newtonian mechanics – excludes choice or intent. That is its set-up. Blind determinism rules.

But what is under discussion here is Friston's Bayesian mechanics. And now intent in its most generic sense is the thing being modelled.

So you might not accept grades of intent. The currently most cited neuroscientist does.

See for example....

On Bayesian Mechanics: A Physics of and by Beliefs

The aim of this paper is to introduce a field of study that has emerged over the last decade, called Bayesian mechanics. Bayesian mechanics is a probabilistic mechanics, comprising tools that enable us to model systems endowed with a particular partition (i.e., into particles), where the internal states (or the trajectories of internal states) of a particular system encode the parameters of beliefs about quantities that characterise the system. These tools allow us to write down mechanical theories for systems that look as if they are estimating posterior probability distributions over the causes of their sensory states, providing a formal language to model the constraints, forces, fields, and potentials that determine how the internal states of such systems move in a space of beliefs (i.e., on a statistical manifold).

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.11543.pdf

Thanks for the extensive reply, but I wasn't able to follow how it addresses the issues I raised. There still seem to be two descriptions involved - perhaps the "possible gap" you ascribe to Haugeland...

It might be simpler to ask what you think of anomalous monism.

Yep.

Just to be clear, I mention anomalous monism as an example of an approach that separates physical and intentional descriptions. Similar ideas are found in Anscombe, Midgley and others, variously articulated. The question is whether the separation is one of degree or of kind.

Just to be clear, I mention anomalous monism as an example of an approach that separates physical and intentional descriptions. Similar ideas are found in Anscombe, Midgley and others, variously articulated. The question is whether the separation is one of degree or of kind. — Banno

I’m thinking that a biologically rooted account of intentionality such as that of Rouse is neither physical nor mental in the sense that anomalous monism distinguishes these, but rather something mid-way between them. Or maybe it simply abandons the assumption of ontological physicalism that Davidson’s non-reductive physicalism retains. Not sure.

The question is whether the separation is one of degree or of kind. — Banno

Of kind. But of the kind that begins at the level of biophysics, where the question is: how does a molecule function as a message?

So it is about the origins of intent or finality. The question of abiogenesis.

Ok...

It's just that this:

“Some organisms also respond to some features of their environment in ways that support a distinction between merely taking them up, and taking them as relevant “under an aspect,” “as meant,” or “under a description,” such that they can mistake them.” — Joshs

seems to make use of Davidson and Anscombe's notion of intent being "under a description" rather than countering it or offering an alternative.

So you would attribute intent to dishbrain? It is culpable in the murder described above?

I said at the beginning that it fails to be an organism in that it ain’t modelling its world in a proper semiotic fashion. It ain’t reducing the uncertainty of the Umwelt by which it sustains itself as a creature in an environment.

So as a borderline case, it sits to the other side of a virus in my view. The only semiotic intent on show would seem to be that of the experimenters who claim DishBrain to be playing Pong.

Slap some stems cells on a slab and poke them with electrodes. That’s not an organism in the biosemiotic sense.

It just demonstrates that biology has the kind of molecular machinery to grow its predictive processing structure in even the most “brain in a vat” circumstances.

I kind of yawned right from the start as I remember folk pushing “neural chip” tech like this in the 1980s.

...how does a molecule function as a message? — apokrisis

...sustains itself as a creature in an environment. — apokrisis

For you, does intent enter at the level of molecular messages or symbolic representation in an organism? You seem to be implying both.

To repeat myself - as you really don’t get it - the central point of the Free Energy approach is that homeostasis rather than “intent” is the true goal here. This is what is so clever about Friston finally arriving at this particular formulation.

The problem for life and mind is how to resist entropification. The body is a regulated metabolic state - a flow of chemistry that is having to constantly build itself back up as it is constantly being broken down.

That sounds scary. But this instability is the dynamical feature and not the mechanical bug. The semiotic modelling relation thrives on finding the tippable conditions that then cost next to no energy to tip in some intended direction. The direction that keeps rebuilding the organismic self.

So the foundation is intentional from the level of the enzyme or any other bit of molecular machinery. The chemistry is poised and going both ways in any reaction. An enzyme is a switch to tip the rate in the “right direction”.

Thus life and mind are intentional right where organic chemistry starts. This just doesn’t seem impressive as it speaks to a foundational desire to create a stable and predictable metabolic flow. You might protest that intention “means something else”.

But even at the level of human linguistic and technological semiosis, homeostasis comes first. Speech and engineering are ways of constructing a well-regulated world for the kind of selves that would feel at home in such an environment.

A dualist might indeed think of intent in terms of individual choice or preference. That is the standard Cartesian representational notion of the experiencing soul. It seems a given that humans with their freewill stand in vivid contrast to Newtonian physics with its blind determinism.

But the semiotic understanding of intent is all about homeostasis or practised habit. The mind exists to do stuff as mindlessly as it can get away with.

This is the deep metaphysical truth that Friston’s approach now foregrounds.

You can’t read this as “intent” because you are still stuck in an outdated paradigm of how biology and neurobiology might function.

For you, does intent enter at the level of molecular messages or symbolic representation in an organism? You seem to be implying both. — Banno

Is it implying or have I not explicitly said how it applies all the way up from that first threshold point?

...as you really don’t get it — apokrisis

You're right about that.

If what you are addressing is "how to resist entropification" then it is far from clear that you are addressing intent at all. You appear to think eliminative materialism or something similar has been demonstrated, confirmed. But that's not so. The discussion remains ongoing.

Are we on your view mistaken to talk in intentional terms? That would be quite an overreach. I'll leave you to it.

And hence my agreement with 's assessment.

If what you are addressing is "how to resist entropification" then it is far from clear that you are addressing intent at all. You appear to think eliminative materialism or something similar has been demonstrated, confirmed. But that's not so. The discussion remains ongoing.

Are we on your view mistaken to talk in intentional terms? That would be quite an overreach. I'll leave you to it. — Banno

As usual, not one thing you say engages with the position I argue. The good old wombat technique. :grin:

As usual, not one thing you say engages with the position I argue. — apokrisis

Well, in this case, that's right, since

If what you are addressing is "how to resist entropification" then it is far from clear that you are addressing intent at all. — Banno

...The promise of progress, lost?

Are we on your view mistaken to talk in intentional terms?

Are we on your view mistaken to talk in intentional terms? — Banno

Stop trolling. How can you construe my talking in terms of intentionality as not intending to talk in those terms?

I might ask, Banno, have you stopped beating your wife?

By the way, its now G-theory (in homage to M-theory). :lol:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.11543.pdf

I don't follow how

life and mind are intentional right where organic chemistry starts. — apokrisis

and yet when I asked

would attribute intent to dishbrain? — Banno

you replied

it fails to be an organism in that it ain’t modelling its world in a proper semiotic fashion. — apokrisis

leaving me to conclude that being an organism was essential to having intent. Does it go all the way down to the chemical level, or begin at the level of an organism?

I suppose this is consistent in some fashion, but I don't see it. Perhaps intent goes all the way down to chemicals but culpability starts near viruses?

But more than that, there seems to me to be something peculiar in talking about the intent of chemicals. Something like attributing democracy to chalk. A misattribution of kind.

Stop trolling. — apokrisis

I'm not. Don't answer if you think I am.

“Some organisms also respond to some features of their environment in ways that support a distinction between merely taking them up, and taking them as relevant “under an aspect,” “as meant,” or “under a description,” such that they can mistake them.”
— Joshs
seems to make use of Davidson and Anscombe's notion of intent being "under a description" rather than countering it or offering an alternative. — Banno

Davidson’s distinction between ways the mind grabs onto the world in terms of non-propositional vs propositional, pre-conceptual vs conceptual meaning , is rejected by McDowell , Rouse and others who argue that perceptual experience in humans and animals is already conceptually articulated. As Rouse explains, “Davidson understood perception as a merely causal prompting of discursive judgment in thought and talk. If David­son were right, McDowell picturesquely proclaimed, conceptual thought could only be a “frictionless spinning in a void”.

For Rouse et al, being ‘under a description’ doesn't require linguistic representation. A situated perceptual mapping will do just fine. More specifically, what is required for conceptual intentionality is “a robust capacity to discriminate and respond flexibly and mostly appropriately to subtle, often disguised aspects of ac­tual circumstances that matter to a species-characteristic way of life, including novel behaviors by other organisms. Moreover, these percep­tual discriminations and motor-behavioral responses are not distinct but correlated subsystems of the organism’s overall way of life. They instead constitute an integral entanglement of the organism’s physical and behavioral repertoire with its selective environment.”

Perhaps intent goes all the way down to chemicals but culpability starts near viruses? — Banno

Do you really not understand or are you just mucking about?

Read this post where I explained it carefully...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/68661

But more than that, there seems to me to be something peculiar in talking about the intent of chemicals. — Banno

Strawman. It should be clear enough that I said the intent lay in the enzyme's regulation of a chemical process.

The reaction can and does go both ways. The enzyme is the bit of molecular machinery that adds a switch which gives the reaction a functional direction.

If you see a switch on a wall, that speaks to intentionality right? Whether the switch is on or off must mean something to someone.

What is quite spectacular so far as biology is concerned is to be discovering just how much life is based on molecular engineering. We used to think cells were more or less bags containing a soup of chemicals. Toss in a few enzymes to speed up or slow down parts of the cycle.

But over the past 20 years, there has been a complete revolution of thought. It is regulation or semiosis all the way down to even the quantum level of chemistry.

DishBrain says neural networks shows that biology has some neat little semiotic tricks up its sleeve. But drill down to the foundational scale and you find life is so skilled at building systems of physics-regulating switches that is doing quantum-tunnelling to manage its chemical environment.

Davidson’s distinction between ways the mind grabs onto the world in terms of non-propositional vs propositional, pre-conceptual vs conceptual meaning... — Joshs

Not quite what I had in mind with 'Davidson and Anscombe's notion of intent being "under a description"'. You are familiar with Davidson's example of flicking the switch turning on the light and alerting the burglar? One act, but flicking the switch is intentional while alerting the burglar isn't. Anscombe seems to have made a similar point - that one description of an event may be intentional, and another of the very same event, not.

I've no clear idea of what a non-linguistic description might be, but what you said does not seem to touch on the point that dishbrain does not intend to move the paddle.

Indeed, from what you have said it is not clear that Rouse's account of Davidson is quite right... " the mind grabs onto the world in terms of non-propositional vs propositional, pre-conceptual vs conceptual meaning"?

Stepping back again from that discussion, I suppose there is no contradiction or inconsistency in claiming that dishbrain intends to move the paddle to hit the ball. I suppose we might one day find our courts embroiled in deciding if one of dishbrain's descendants is culpable for some crime. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.