you may be able to enlighten me about Biosemiotics (BS). Which has been proposed as an alternative to Panpsychism (PP) as a mechanism for the emergence of Mind from Matter. — Gnomon

I won’t be much help, and this because I so far find this very quoted affirmation to be nonsensical. Bio-semiotics is the semiotics of life – it addresses the meaning transference of lifeforms and all this entails. To apply biosemiotics to a former cosmos devoid of life from which life emerged will either necessitate a panpsychistic cosmos by default or, else, again, it will make no sense: the semiotics of life, i.e. biosemiotics, applied to processes of non-life in attempts to explain life’s emergence and all aspects of life, thereby explaining the semiotics of life. It’s circular reasoning consisting of a great sum of allegories and metaphors that utilize poorly defined words (if they are at all defined: e.g., life, meaning, etc.) that – after all the smoke and mirrors pass by – ultimately explains nothing: we start with biosemiotics to explain biosemiotics via a very fancy loop. Or, more simply, we use premise A to explain A. And then call it a done deal: everything explained, including the very issue of A which we were principally focusing on.

I have nothing against the study of biosemiotics. But using life to explain life from the vantage of a non-living (else, life-devoid) cosmos, again, to me so far does not make sense. Philosophically speaking. But that’s just fallible me.

So I’ll let others explain their own views as best they can, if they so wish.

So I’ll let others explain their own views as best they can, — javra

You did a splendid job of misrepresenting what biosemiosis claims. :up:

Simply put, semiotics resolves the antique dilemma of realism vs idealism by inserting the epistemic cut of the “sign” between the world and its interpretation.

That is the familiar epistemic first step.

Then semiosis becomes also an ontology by pointing out life and mind instantiate this epistemology as their Bayesian modelling relation.

No claims are made about pansemiosis in this. Life and mind are defined by instantiating a modelling relation within a world that has its own unmodelled reality.

And then things get more interesting. Physics starts to discover that physics is more lively - it houses self-organising dissipative structure. Quantum mechanics makes this fundamental by tacking on statistical mechanics and introducing decoherence/holography.

It gets a bit pansemiotic as there is somehow an “observer” baked into the physics. There is no model and no localised sign relation. But metaphorically there is interpretance - what quantum folk call contextuality. Dissipative structure has the kind of holism where every “wavefunction” collapse is read by us, as modellers, as a system of sign. The physical events that mark histories of interactions and destroy quantum information are “the cosmos measuring itself into ever more definite being”.

So it is metaphorical. But better than the reductionst and atomistic metaphors we were using to account for the “weirdness” of the quantum realm.

Then biosemiosis as a new science crystallised when Peirce’s introduction of a mediating sign as that which connected mind to world was replaced by Pattee’s introduction of a mediating switch.

Life is founded on mechanical switches or ratchets which physically link the informational and entropic aspects of a living and mindful dissipative structure.

Pattee had this crucial insight in the 1970s. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that enough of Peirce’s work had been recovered and understood well enough for Pattee to make the connection that his hierarchy theory and modelling relations approach was semiosis under another name. After going quiet for a few years - having fended of the arguments of myself among others - he suddenly emerged as a rebranded biosemiotician in a blaze of statement papers.

Then roll forward a decade and the other shoe dropped in terms of biophysics showing how biology indeed exploits quantum effects so as to be able to create an organised metabolism using the information bound up in enzymes and other kinds of ‘molecular motors”. Pattee’s mechanical switches and ratchets.

So biosemiosis makes contact with physical reality by that shift from the still rather nebulous idea of a sign to be read to the completely concrete story of switches to be flipped. Biology uses a mechanical interface to mediate between biological information and environmental entropy gradients. The combo is the system we call an organism with a metabolism.

As my interests are more on the mind side than the life side, I am focusing on the higher levels of semiosis that are founded on this basic biological level of “energy capture”.

So I’ll let others explain their own views as best they can, — javra

You did a splendid job of misrepresenting what biosemiosis claims. :up: — apokrisis

Either the extrapolated worldview of the cosmos you endorse is not one of biosemiotics or I stand by what I previously said - so far finding nothing that contradicts my statements.

Besides, this is between you and @Gnomon.

Unless you want to bring me into it. But then, in this thread about the science of consciousness you’ve so far been unable to address the rather basic question of whether “I am conscious of this text” is a truth-baring proposition. Not much of anything to go on here. So I’m not inclined to participate.

To apply biosemiotics to a former cosmos devoid of life from which life emerged will either necessitate a panpsychistic cosmos by default or, else, again, it will make no sense: the semiotics of life, i.e. biosemiotics, applied to processes of non-life in attempts to explain life’s emergence and all aspects of life, thereby explaining the semiotics of life. — javra

My question also.

Simply put, semiotics resolves the antique dilemma of realism vs idealism by inserting the epistemic cut of the “sign” between the world and its interpretation. — apokrisis

But this 'epistemic cut' is that between a subject of experience, and the world in which it exists, even if in very primitive form. On the Information Philosopher's page on Pattee, he quotes him as saying:

Self-replication requires a distinction between the self that is replicated and the non-self that is not replicated. The self is an individual subject that lives in an environment that is often called objective, but which is more accurately viewed biosemiotically as the subject’s Umwelt or world image. This epistemic cut is also required by the semiotic distinction between the interpreter and what is interpreted, like a sign or a symbol. In physics this is the distinction between the result of a measurement – a symbol – and what is being measured – a material object.

I call this the symbol-matter problem, but this is just a narrower case of the classic 2500-year-old epistemic problem of what our world image actually tells us about what we call the real world.

What he's calling 'an epistemic problem' is actually the metaphysical problem of appearance ('world image') and reality ('what we call the real world'). So I don't see that as 'resolving' the idealist-realist distinction.

there is somehow an “observer” baked into the physics — apokrisis

Somehow. There is a lot of argument about whether 'the observer' can be an instrument, if that instrument is itself not observed, or what if anything would happen in the absence of any observer, as by stipulation, that is not something we could ever know.

But then, in this thread about the science of consciousness you’ve so far been unable to address the rather basic question of whether “I am conscious of this text” is a truth-baring proposition. — javra

I gave you the answer. Your question suffers from logical vagueness. Affirming yes or no would make no useful difference.

It remains up to you to define consciousness in terms that pragmatically means anything measurable if you are indeed talking about “the science” of it. Or even just it’s metaphysics.

...you’ve so far been unable to address the rather basic question of whether “I am conscious of this text” is a truth-baring proposition. — javra

What is your theory of truth?

I would say the cat on the mat is the truth bearer for the proposition, "The cat is on the mat.", and I don't see it as making sense to think that a proposition could be inherently truth bearing.

I gave you the answer. Your question suffers from logical vagueness. Affirming yes or no would make no useful difference. — apokrisis

Honesty is important. For trust and the like. No, you only just gave me your answer right now. Its value here overlooked.

It remains up to you to define consciousness in terms that pragmatically means anything measurable if you are indeed talking about “the science” of it. Or even just it’s metaphysics. — apokrisis

To precisely demarcate what personal conscious is is not to define one's personal consciousness in ways that are measurable. Nor does metaphysics mandate that what is shall itself be measurable. I'll here point this truth at your own worldview, which infers the Apeiron to be a required aspect of what is real: The Apeiron by definition is immeasurable, and yet it is still what your metaphysics relies on at a basic level of explanation.

What is your theory of truth? — wonderer1

My own theory of truth in a nutshell: that which conforms to what is actual is true. Prior to you then testing out any and all possible ways this might not hold - but do if you so care - the question I asked apo was not based on "my theory of truth" but on his, regardless of what it might be.

:up:

Alright, my bad if I was a bit smug in my reply. But cool.

To precisely demarcate what personal conscious is is not to define one's personal consciousness in ways that are measurable. Nor does metaphysics mandate that what is shall itself be measurable. — javra

You do a lot of weaselling to avoid supplying a definition to the term that I must give a yes or no answer on.

I’ll help you out. Do you mean something more than attending and reporting if I agree I am conscious of the text? If more, what exactly?

What he's calling 'an epistemic problem' is actually the metaphysical problem of appearance ('world image') and reality ('what we call the real world'). So I don't see that as 'resolving' the idealist-realist distinction. — Wayfarer

Why not?

You do a lot of weaselling to avoid supplying a definition to the term that I must give a yes or no answer on. — apokrisis

You belittling insults aside (yes, that apes win by posturing is a fact of nature), how on earth could I when you address the proposition of "I am conscious of this text" as neither having a truth-value nor being without one. Weaselling, huh. Nonsense pure and simple.

I’ll help you out. Do you mean something more than attending and reporting if I agree I am conscious of the text? If more, what exactly? — apokrisis

And here it is. In assuming that "I am conscious of this text" can be true (what a stupendous presumption on my part; for who knows if this proposition can in fact be true, after all. Right?):

The addressed "I" is not identical to the text it is being conscious of. The text is other to that whose occurrence is addressed by the term "I", which holds awareness of the text. Fast forward to what I've previous said in this thread, and that which is addressed by the term "I" holds conscious awareness of empirical givens without itself being an empirical given - either to its own conscious being or to any others. Of note, even though the addressed "I" can only occur in a duality to other which it observes and thereby constitutes a self, it is never identical to that which it observes. Again, it is thereby other in relation to all empirical data. An AI program attends and responds to information - as does an alarm clock - but is not endowed with a conscious being which we term "I" in propositions such as that provided.

Yours is a denial of those truths whose consequences are not useful to you - that of consciousness's occurrence very much included. I don't much admire your approach, for the same reason I don't admire the approach of Young Earth Creationist among others.

Try to insult me in a wiser way the next time around. That way, you end up having the last word.

how on earth could I when you address the proposition of "I am conscious of this text" as neither having a truth-value nor being without one. — javra

Let me insult you again. You continue to weasel your way out of the requirement to provide a counterfactual definition to fit your counterfactual proposition. Technically, your position becomes not even wrong, simply vague.

Now for more of your weaseling to pretend you are upholding your end of the proffered exchange.

What is a counterfactual definition?

Let me insult you again. You continue to weasel your way out of the requirement to provide a counterfactual definition to fit your counterfactual proposition. Technically, your position becomes not even wrong, simply vague. — apokrisis

He replieth!

Counterfactual conditionals (also subjunctive or X-marked) are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional

What on earth are you talking about??? Other than your ego's need to insult - which does hold semantic value - your expressions are entirely nonsensical.

That "I am conscious of this text" is not a counterfactual proposition, no more than is "the cat is on the mat".

Your turn.

Capable of being wrong rather than not even wrong.

Still not even an attempt to define your use of consciousness here then? You had many chances now. That says you can’t do it.

Capable of being wrong rather than not even wrong. — apokrisis

How can something entirely nonsensical be wrong instead of not even wrong?

Still not even an attempt to define your use of consciousness here then? You had many chances now. That says you can’t do it. — apokrisis

Back to the drawing board: What’s wrong with “first-person awareness” as a definition for consciousness? Well, unless one finds the given definition to be entirely nonsensical.

Yes. Exactly. Science needs materialism to work. Are there aspects of life where a materialist view is not helpful? — T Clark

Yes. Materialism is not helpful for dealing with the philosophy of mind*1. That's why David Chalmers, a professional Neurologist, calls the metaphysics of Mind : "the hard problem". The philosophy of Panpsychism is all about aboutness*2. :smile:


*1. Materialism in the philosophy of mind :
Materialism – which, for almost all purposes, is the same as physicalism – is the theory that everything that exists is material. Natural science shows that most things are intelligible in material terms, but mind presents problems in at least two ways. The first is consciousness, as found in the ‘raw feel’ of subjective experience. The second is the intentionality of thought, which is the property of being about something beyond itself; ‘aboutness’ seems not to be a physical relation in the ordinary sense.
https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/materialism-in-the-philosophy-of-mind/v-1

*2. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter is a 2011 book by biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon. The book covers topics in biosemiotics, philosophy of mind, and the origins of life. Broadly, the book seeks to naturalistically explain "aboutness", that is, concepts like intentionality, meaning, normativity, purpose, and function; which Deacon groups together and labels as ententional phenomena.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature

That's why David Chalmers, a professional Neurologist... — Gnomon

A neurologist is an MD. Wikipedia says:

Chalmers received his undergraduate degree in pure mathematics from the University of Adelaide in Australia.[10] After graduating Chalmers spent six months reading philosophy books while hitchhiking across Europe,[11] before continuing his studies at the University of Oxford,[10] where he was a Rhodes Scholar but eventually withdrew from the course.[12] In 1993, Chalmers received his PhD in philosophy and cognitive science from Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter,[13] writing a doctoral thesis entitled Toward a Theory of Consciousness.[12] He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program directed by Andy Clark at Washington University in St. Louis from 1993 to 1995.

Do you have any evidence for Chalmers being a neurologist?

I won’t be much help, and this because I so far find this very quoted affirmation to be nonsensical. Bio-semiotics is the semiotics of life – it addresses the meaning transference of lifeforms and all this entails. To apply biosemiotics to a former cosmos devoid of life from which life emerged will either necessitate a panpsychistic cosmos by default or, else, again, it will make no sense: — javra

I agree that Biosemiotics is a theory of living things, not thinking things. So, I don't understand why sarcastically replied that "You did a splendid job of misrepresenting what biosemiosis claims". His alternate explanation is way over my head : "Simply put, semiotics resolves the antique dilemma of realism vs idealism by inserting the epistemic cut of the “sign” between the world and its interpretation".

The notion of an "epistemic cut" is not included in my everyday vocabulary. And I am not educated in Postmodern linguistic analysis, so the quote below*1 just sounds like gobbledygook to me. I asked apo to dumb it down for us un-indoctrinated dummies, but he seems to think it's beneath his dignity to stoop that low. Terrence Deacon's use of semiotics*2 seems to be limited to the recent biological phases of evolution, not to a "primeval epistemic cut". And I find his language much easier for a layman to grasp. Is the "epistemic cut" a case of circular reasoning, or of cutting Nature at imaginary joints? :smile:




*1. The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut :
Evolution requires the genotype-phenotype distinction, a primeval epistemic cut that separates energy-degenerate, rate-independent genetic symbols from the rate-dependent dynamics of construction that they control. This symbol-matter or subject-object distinction occurs at all higher levels where symbols are related to a referent by an arbitrary code.
https://casci.binghamton.edu/publications/pattee/pattee.html

*2. How Molecules Became Signs :
These molecules are not the source of biological information but are instead semiotic artifacts onto which dynamical functional constraints have been progressively offloaded during the course of evolution. ___Terrence Deacon
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9

Do you have any evidence for Chalmers being a neurologist? — wonderer1

Sorry. Perhaps I mis-spoke. What do you call a "neural scientist" if not a "neurologist"? A "neuroscientist"? I didn't mean to imply that he is an MD. Apparently, he's merely a Ph.D. :smile:

David Chalmers :
He is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU's Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › David_Chalmers

What he's calling 'an epistemic problem' is actually the metaphysical problem of appearance ('world image') and reality ('what we call the real world'). So I don't see that as 'resolving' the idealist-realist distinction. — Wayfarer

Thanks for stepping-in there. Your explanation makes more sense to me than the "epistemic cut" notion. For someone with no formal training in Philosophy or Biosemiotics, such jargon is way over my pointy little head. :smile:

Back to the drawing board — javra

You just switched from “conscious of x” to “first person awareness”. Are we talking about a thing or a process, counterfactually speaking here?

I was talking about a process.

And then when you make claims about consciousness of x - as something more than attention+reporting - is consciousness of the presence of a colour the same as consciousness of some bit of text? And is consciousness of a lump of rock the same as consciousness of a bit of text?

Are these all exactly the same propositions in your book or are there telling differences that might cause you to qualify your meaning in speaking about “consciousness” as a process.

Yes, you do need to back to the drawing board and do some work on your definitions so that there could be a less amateur discussion here.

All definitions are capable if being wrong as they all may incorrectly describe usage. On the other hand, some hypotheses are not falsìiable except by empirical investigation. Is that what you mean?

You just switched from “conscious of x” to “first person awareness”. Are we talking about a thing or a process, counterfactually speaking here?

I was talking about a process. — apokrisis

And how is any awareness of which we can be in any way aware of not a process? Even none-empirical experiences such as those of our own happiness and sureness (as two examples) are process. Never mind our awareness of percepts and, hence, of empirical data.

Besides, as I’ve previously expressed, I make no inferential speculation as to awareness being an entity/substance, a process, both, or neither. Period. That unknown, or uncertainty, or vagueness as you term it, is part of my stance.

So what is first-person awareness? One should intimately know via one's own experiences.

And then when you make claims about consciousness of x - as something more than attention+reporting - is consciousness of the presence of a colour the same as consciousness of some bit of text? And is consciousness of a lump of rock the same as consciousness of a bit of text? — apokrisis

I've already addressed these questions here.

-----

Yes, you do need to back to the drawing board and do some work on your definitions so that there could be a less amateur discussion here. — apokrisis

From our exchanges it so far seems to me you want to win arguments by vanquishment – as though philosophy were a zero-sum game. It isn’t. You might want to ask more questions of those you disagree with, answer those questions you’ve been asked by them, and address the replies you've already been given.

This since we're so candidly exchanging advice on what the other should do.

All definitions are capable if being wrong as they all may incorrectly describe usage. — bert1

Sure. But if that definition isn’t being offered, as in this case…

And if the term is meant to be meaningful as a scientific definition rather than, say, just a woolly catch-all word with no clear ontological commitment except Cartesian dualism in sight…

You can see my problem now can’t you?

You might want to ask more questions of those you disagree with, answer those questions you’ve been asked by them, and address the replies you've already been given. — javra

So you think I should take you more seriously? You believe this is a discussion to be cashed out in propositional logic?

That unknown, or uncertainty, or vagueness as you term it, is part of my stance. — javra

Well, yup! :lol:

Let’s see. You’re laughing because you, in contrast, have certain knowledge of what consciousness is and isn’t in an empirically measurable way. This while at the same time holding that whether the proposition “I am conscious of this text” can hold a truth-value is unanswerable. :up:

As I previously expressed: Good luck with that!

You’re laughing because you, in contrast, have certain knowledge of what consciousness is and isn’t in an empirically measurable way. — javra

I laugh as what else can one do when being pestered by someone so incapable of following a straight line of thought.

I asked for your measurable definition - the one that would make sense to a scientist wanting to get on with their scientific inquiry. I offered the kind of pragmatic definition a scientist would use - verbal reports of acts of attention. But for some reason you don’t want to go there.

I ask what more would you want to say. You get all huffy and evasive. Answer my questions, you keep demanding. What question was that I have to say.

So stamp your feet and splutter away. But I’ve lost interest.