Is Chomsky's View on the Mind-Body Problem Redefining Materialism?

[Gold Barz]

So it is more his view of epistemology than complexity that I cite.

Correct me if I am wrong here but I find Rosen's complexity similar to your pansemiosis.

 

[apeiron]

Correct me if I am wrong here but I find Rosen's complexity similar to your pansemiosis.

It's not really "my" pansemiosis. But of course they are similar.

For instance...
http://www.lhl.lib.mo.us/services/reference/papers/fernandez/PRfinal.pdf

A comparison of Peirce’s sign systems with Rosen’s (M,R) systems yields
the following communalities: 1) they are both systems of triadic relations, 2)
they irreducibly involve self-referential loops, 3) some of the relata are
themselves relations, and 4) some of the relata are not things but temporal
processes unrepresentable in purely spatial terms.

But then...

There is also an important dissimilarity. The effect of self-reference in one
case is recursivity, through the production of an open-ended chain in which
each interpretant becomes a sign for another future interpretant. In the
other case the effect is circularity, in which each process is simultaneously
at the beginning and the end of a cycle.

Which I don't exactly agree with, but that is because both Rosen and Peirce don't properly bring in the further fact of hierarchical scale, I would say.

The recursive/circular bit only makes sense as an interaction across different spatiotemporal scales.

 

[apeiron]

This is also a good paper from Pattee on how he uses semiosis. (Pattee and Rosen were close colleagues, but their views are not identical).

The concept of Biosemiotics requires making a distinction between two categories, the material or physical world and the symbolic or semantic world. The problem is that there is no obvious way to connect the two categories. This is a classical philosophical problem on which there is no consensus even today. Biosemiotics recognizes that the philosophical matter-mind problem extends downward to the pattern recognition and control processes of the simplest living organisms where it can more easily be addressed as a scientific problem. In fact, how material structures serve as signals, instructions, and controls is inseparable from the problem of the origin and evolution of life. Biosemiotics was established as a necessary complement to the physical-chemical reductionist approach to life that cannot make this crucial categorical distinction necessary for describing semantic information. Matter as described by physics and chemistry has no intrinsic function or semantics. By contrast, biosemiotics recognizes that life begins with function and semantics.

Biosemiotics recognizes this matter-symbol problem at all levels of life from natural languages down to the DNA. Cartesian dualism was one classical attempt to address this problem, but while this ontological dualism makes a clear distinction between mind and matter, it consigns the relation between them to metaphysical obscurity. Largely because of our knowledge of the physical details of genetic control, symbol manipulation, and brain function these two categories today appear only as an epistemological necessity, but a necessity that still needs a coherent explanation. Even in the most detailed physical description of matter there is no hint of any function or meaning.

www.panmere.com/rosen/mhout/doc00007.doc[/URL]

 

[Gold Barz]

In Rosens theory (I do not know what the official name for it is lol) life is a consequence of complexity and while life is not a first principle in the universe, complexity is...is that true of pansemiosis too?

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Another post that tries to evade previous questions about your claims and asks me to repeat arguments I have already made.

Perhaps Bohm2 will have better luck getting a reply from you?

Then I guess we're done with this dialogue, with your positions collapsing into self-contradiction, mockery, vagueness and arbitrariness.

I think if you step back a bit and reconsider your own statements you'll see the merits of what I'm suggesting. As I've mentioned more than once, the systems approach has many similarities to my approach and can perhaps be subsumed, as Skrbina suggests, in the panpsychist approach to the hard problem.

 

[Pythagorean]

What? You still seem to be trying to map this to an epistemology/ontology distinction. And that is so missing the point that I doubt I can straighten things out.

well, no, I'm was answering bohm's question, which was exactly about epistemology vs. ontology, but it's still related very much to the epistemic cut:

Does semiosis bring any new facts to bear or is it just a different way of looking at the known "facts" of neuroscience, biology, cognition, etc.? I mean, does it make any new predictions/testable models? Is it a just a philosophical perspective or a different approach that offers new directions/predictions? If the latter what are some of those predictions/testable models?

Semiosis (and systems thinking) would take the symbol side to be as real, measurable and dependable as the material side. Software and hardware, if you like. Both distinct from each other (separated by an epistemic cut), but also both real.

I'm not saying the symbol side is "fake" by any means. But symbols are arbitrary. An 'a' does exist, but it has no meaning alone, and it's place is no better or worse served by a 'b'. But, you can't have an alphabet of just 'a' so there is something meaningful about how the symbols exist, but it's not their labels (i.e. it's not the symbol itself).

Have you read JA Scott Kelso's Dynamic Patterns? He is really good at modelling this kind of dynamics. But I am still arguing that you can only get so far with DST (otherwise that is all I would have needed to be interested in). You need the story from the other side of the epistemic cut as well.

So you can explain hysteresis in terms of bistability, but then something must be prodding the system from one state to the next. You could say it is a random internal fluctuation (which might be the best answer in a system which has such fluctuations). Or you could say it was a driving input - and now you have something further that is external and must be accounted for. And then this driving input might be a memory, a bit of coded information, a symbol. And now you are really talking about something diifferent in kind.

If you can offer a reference where you think bifurcation theory does the complete job here, please do.

I think DST is an important piece of the puzzle - it means that the computational side of reality has so much less work to do because dynamical systems do so much of their own self-organising. But then there still is that job of switching states in a way organised by memory and habit.

I have not heard of Kelso but looking over his CV he has many publications in Chaos, PRE, and IEEE. One of his publications looks relevant. I've bolded the part dealing with bifurcation. Here, the external 'force' is the control parameter.

Pattern formation and switching between self-organized states are often associated with instabilities in open, nonequilibrium systems. We describe an experiment which shows that systematically changing a control parameter induces qualitative changes in sensorimotor coordination and brain activity, as registered by a 37-SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) array. Near the instability point, predicted features of nonequilibrium phase transitions (critical slowing down, fluctuation enhancement) are observed in both the psychophysical data and the brain signals obtained from single SQUID sensors. Further analysis reveals that activity from the entire array displays spatial patterns evolving in time. Such spatiotemporal patterns are characterized by the dynamics of only a few coherent spatial modes.

As you note, there are the genes as a straight dormant code, then the genes in action as a dynamical device. It is the gap between these two kinds of existence that the epistemic cut/semiosis seeks to span.

Yes, people do this with dynamical systems! All that's different is the philosophical approach, really (but this doesn't have a null-effect on the science)

here's some groundwork that I found quickly. I can spend more time on this later if you're really interetsed:

http://chaos.aip.org/resource/1/chaoeh/v11/i1/p160_s1?isAuthorized=no
http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v88/i4/e048101
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519305800785

 

[apeiron]

In Rosens theory (I do not know what the official name for it is lol) life is a consequence of complexity and while life is not a first principle in the universe, complexity is...is that true of pansemiosis too?

Well the pan- is the claim that it is a universal process. And Peirce did see even the development of the universe as being driven by semiosis.

His argument was of course philosophic rather than scientific. So pansemiosis today would be taking the next step of seeing if the idea can really be applied in a useful scientific fashion - a model that can be tested.

Rosen was making the point that reality is irreducibly complex (at least compared to the over-simplification of reductionism). And semiosis would be a particular view of what that complexity looks like at core.

 

[apeiron]

Then I guess we're done with this dialogue, with your positions collapsing into self-contradiction, mockery, vagueness and arbitrariness.

I think if you step back a bit and reconsider your own statements you'll see the merits of what I'm suggesting. As I've mentioned more than once, the systems approach has many similarities to my approach and can perhaps be subsumed, as Skrbina suggests, in the panpsychist approach to the hard problem.

So the answer is no, you cannot even answer Bohm2's query about pilot waves and telepathy?

 

[apeiron]

here's some groundwork that I found quickly. I can spend more time on this later if you're really interetsed:

http://chaos.aip.org/resource/1/chaoeh/v11/i1/p160_s1?isAuthorized=no

And as the abstract states..."This work places the study of dynamics in genetic networks in a context comprising both nonlinear dynamics and the theory of computation."

So are you intending to support my contention that the systems approach must somehow recognise the reality of both dynamics and computation?

 

[Pythagorean]

So are you intending to support my contention that the systems approach must somehow recognise the reality of both dynamics and computation?

I don't understand why you think that was ever a question...?

 

[Gold Barz]

Apeiron, would you agree to this statement made by Rosen, "mind is to brain as life is to organism"?

 

[apeiron]

I don't understand why you think that was ever a question...?

Well then what the heck are you trying to say? You appeared to be arguing that the whole of the story could be told in the language of dynamical systems.

Pattee puts the epistemic cut issue this way: "Matter as described by physics and chemistry has no intrinsic function or semantics. By contrast, biosemiotics recognizes that life begins with function and semantics."

How does DST deal with questions of function and dynamics?

That old Goodwin/Kauffman reference is in fact very good. It draws attention to the key fact of hierarchy theory that dynamics + scale does give you an epistemic cut. The dynamics of a much larger scale stretch out to look like an unchanging context, while those of a much smaller scale merge to become a grainy blur.

This is precisely the kind of approach I am talking about. But it does not seem to be the concept that you are appealing to here.

And even then, this dynamical story does not touch the story of the codes themselves. You still have to have all this hierarchical dynamics and also the something else.

 

[Pythagorean]

Well then what the heck are you trying to say? You appeared to be arguing that the whole of the story could be told in the language of dynamical systems.

Woah now, you started the argument. I never said anything about ONLY dynamical systems and I've never held that position. The position I do hold is that dynamical systems are necessary to quantify the subject, I said nothing about sufficient.

In our long history here, you're always very ready to argue, when I'm trying to discuss. It's unfortunate because, as I've said many time before, I think we could have productive discussions if you weren't always accusing me of being a cold-hearted, evil, malignant, cancerous, reductionist Nazi.

How does DST deal with questions of function and dynamics?

Another way to make my point in response to this: DST doesn't deal with questions, researchers do. But anyway, I'm not just talking about DST, I'm talking about complexity; a HUGE field. A huge field that has a journal called Chaos, that is most certainly not restricted to deterministic chaotic systems, and most certainly doesn't avoid discussions of scale or symbol.

That old Goodwin/Kauffman reference is in fact very good. It draws attention to the key fact of hierarchy theory that dynamics + scale does give you an epistemic cut. The dynamics of a much larger scale stretch out to look like an unchanging context, while those of a much smaller scale merge to become a grainy blur.

This is precisely the kind of approach I am talking about. But it does not seem to be the concept that you are appealing to here.

And even then, this dynamical story does not touch the story of the codes themselves. You still have to have all this hierarchical dynamics and also the something else.

Well my advice to you then is never try to judge people's intentions... it's really quite counter-productive (look at all the time and energy we've wasted... though I'm glad we could rediscover the Kauffman reference together).

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

So the answer is no, you cannot even answer Bohm2's query about pilot waves and telepathy?

apeiron, you may have noticed I asked bohm2 to elaborate on his question. Regardless, you've completely glossed over the meat of my ideas, which I provided at your request, choosing instead to nitpick at peripheral issues. Why don't you address the core concepts instead and dispense with the snarkiness?

 

[apeiron]

apeiron, you may have noticed I asked bohm2 to elaborate on his question. Regardless, you've completely glossed over the meat of my ideas, which I provided at your request, choosing instead to nitpick at peripheral issues. Why don't you address the core concepts instead and dispense with the snarkiness?

The point of his question seemed completely obvious, but I expanded it for you anyway. So this is now just further evasion. If you want to consider it now my question, then I'm fine with that.

As to nitpicking, I don't see how the question of how events have both a material and experiential aspect is so trivial.

You have only asserted that this is a fact, not given any reason to believe it is a fact.

If you had a model of the causes that said why it should be so, then that would be an argument whose logic could be examined.

If you had data which suggested that fundamental events have minds, then at least this would create an interest in looking for such a causal link.

Your assertion that electrons are making choices rather than behaving probablistically is just that - an assertion again unsupported either by theory or data.

You complain about my tone but you keep talking like a crank. I'm happy to discuss panpsychism because nothing should be ruled out without being fully examined. But as soon as we get into the detail of data and theory, you just make ungrounded assertions and get all huffy and abusive.

You also have not replied on the solid/liquid/gas remark. Was this an honest mistake on your part, or are you still really saying there are no readily apparent macro-distinctions when it comes to phase transitions?

 

[apeiron]

Apeiron, would you agree to this statement made by Rosen, "mind is to brain as life is to organism"?

But isn't the complete quote: "because both are examples of organisational complexity"?

So the point is that reductionism thinks the global interactions (global constraints) can be simply reduced to a host of local material causes. But the systems view is that local~global complexity is fundamental. And so brain~minds and bodies~life are just more complex versions of this basic complexity.

You then still need a fork in the path to distinguish life and mind from ordinary complexity - to start talking about complex complexity.

So simple complexity just has self-organising global constraints (it is more like what people think of as simple emergence - the way water turns to ice because something outside its control, a cooling temperature, forces the change).

But complex complexity has learned how to organise its own constraints. It is in control of the control parameters, to use dynamics-speak.

Which is where genes and words come in. And semiosis and the epistemic cut.

A system with life and mind can avoid freezing by moving somewhere that is warm. It has active choice and is not ruled by "chance", or rather circumstance - global constraints - outside its knowledge, modelling, and thus control.

So now we need another level of complexity theory that accounts for this.

Rosen's work emphasises the essential continuity - all reality is irreducibly complex. Pattee emphasised the essential transition - only part of reality appears to have achieved a complex complexity. So their work is nicely complementary.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

The point of his question seemed completely obvious, but I expanded it for you anyway. So this is now just further evasion. If you want to consider it now my question, then I'm fine with that.

As to nitpicking, I don't see how the question of how events have both a material and experiential aspect is so trivial.

You have only asserted that this is a fact, not given any reason to believe it is a fact.

If you had a model of the causes that said why it should be so, then that would be an argument whose logic could be examined.

If you had data which suggested that fundamental events have minds, then at least this would create an interest in looking for such a causal link.

Your assertion that electrons are making choices rather than behaving probablistically is just that - an assertion again unsupported either by theory or data.

You complain about my tone but you keep talking like a crank. I'm happy to discuss panpsychism because nothing should be ruled out without being fully examined. But as soon as we get into the detail of data and theory, you just make ungrounded assertions and get all huffy and abusive.

You also have not replied on the solid/liquid/gas remark. Was this an honest mistake on your part, or are you still really saying there are no readily apparent macro-distinctions when it comes to phase transitions?

"If you had a model..." Did you even read what I wrote?

As for snarkiness, I only escalated in response to your escalation. Cranks respond to reason with mockery. And which of us has done that? Put aside the silliness and let's discuss ideas.

As for data, as I've mentioned before, I follow Dyson's lead in reading the available data as supportive of some type of mind in electrons and other structures far below the human level. The whole point of science and philosophy is to interpret data in the most useful, logically consistent and parsimonious manner. I have asserted that panpsychism is a more logically consistent, more useful, and more parsimonious approach than the alternatives.

As for you, you have previously stated you can accept Griffin's panexperiential physicalism and then you dismiss with snarkiness panpsychism, which is the same thing. Which is it? Are there two apeirons or is there just residual confusion?

As for the water/ice/vapor issue, I guess I'll have to elaborate what I thought was a pretty basic point.

Liquidity is indeed a new feature of molecules that isn’t present until the right conditions are present. Hydrogen and oxygen molecules aren’t themselves liquid at room temperature. And yet the liquidity of water is entirely explicable by looking at how these molecules interact with each other. There is really no mystery now (well, surely some, but not much) in how these molecules combine to form dipolar molecules that attract each other more loosely than in a solid but less loosely than in the constituent gases. In other words, liquidity is pretty predictable, or at least explicable, when we consider the constituents of any given liquid. We’re dealing with “outsides” at every step in this process - first the outsides of the individual molecules and then the outsides of the combination of molecules in the liquid.

We can strengthen the point even further by considering the fact that both hydrogen and oxygen become liquids of their own if we cool them enough. Liquid hydrogen “emerges” from gaseous hydrogen at -423 degrees Fahrenheit. Liquid oxygen emerges from gaseous oxygen at the comparatively balmy temperature of -297 degrees. Liquidity thus emerges at different temperatures as a relatively straightforward shift in the types of bonds between the constituent molecules.

Consciousness is entirely different because we are not talking about relational properties of the outsides of various substances. We are talking about insides, experience, consciousness, phenomena, qualia, and all the other terms we can use for mind or subjectivity. And when we define our physical constituents as wholly lacking in mind then it is literally impossible for mind to “emerge” from this wholly mindless substrate. Emergence of mind from no-mind is what Strawson calls “radical emergence” and he makes basically the same argument that I’ve made here as to its impossibility, in “Realistic Monism” and Consciousness and Its Place in Nature.

It is “radical” because the emergence of insides from what previously consisted only of outsides would be the spontaneous creation of an entirely new category of reality. And it is philosophically profligate to suggest that this kind of thing can happen when there are other, more plausible, alternatives.

Now, maybe impossibility is too strong a word. Granted, at this level of abstraction we can’t prove anything (can anything be proved, period?). I can’t prove that it is impossible for mind to emerge from matter where it was wholly absent before. So perhaps a better word would be implausible. It is highly implausible, then, that the inside of matter (mind, consciousness) would suddenly emerge at some arbitrary midpoint in the history of the universe. Sewall Wright, a well-known American evolutionary biologist, stated it well in a 1977 article: “[E]mergence of mind from no mind is sheer magic.”

These last few paragraphs are from my previous essay: http://www.independent.com/news/2011/jan/08/c-wordconsciousnessand-emergence/

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

I'm also going to start a new thread and ask folks to cooperate. It's going to be called "Solving the Hard Problem" and I'd like the very intelligent people populating this thread and others to work with on specific aspects of the problems of consciousness and life in an attempt to gain some consensus on key issues. My hope is that with some better organization of thoughts and responses everyone here, obviously keenly interested in these issues, will be able to better arrive at their own conclusions.

 

[Gold Barz]

But isn't the complete quote: "because both are examples of organisational complexity"?

Yes that the complete quote, I do not know why I left that out since it's the key to the whole quote. I have not read much by Pattee, it seems at first glance, his work is going to be even harder to grasp.

Also apeiron, what would the free energy bayesian brain, ultimately say about the mind/consciousness? would this be an example of complexity Rosen was talking about?

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Here’s Chomsky’s argument on this topic. He is basically arguing that trying to delineate such boundaries of living/non-living or mental/non-mental is on par with delineating the boundary of the “chemical”/non-chemical, "electrical”/non-electrical, etc. From a naturalistic perspective, it’s pointless:

I will be using the terms "mind" and "mental" here with no metaphysical import. Thus I understand "mental" to be on a par with "chemical", "optical", or "electrical". Certain phenomena, events, processes and states are informally called "chemical" etc., but no metaphysical divide is suggested thereby. The terms are used to select certain aspects of the world as a focus of inquiry. We do not seek to determine the true criterion of the chemical, or the mark of the electrical, or the boundaries of the optical. I will use "mental" the same way, with something like ordinary coverage, but no deeper implications. By "mind" I just mean the mental aspects of the world, with no more interest in sharpening the boundaries or finding a criterion than in other cases.

...It is not that ordinary discourse fails to talk about the world, or that the particulars it describes do not exist, or that the accounts are too imprecise. Rather, the categories used and principles invoked need not have even loose counterparts in naturalistic inquiry. That is true even of the parts of ordinary discourse that have a quasi-naturalistic cast. How people decide whether something is water or tea is of no concern to chemistry. It is no necessary task of biochemistry to decide at what point in the transition from simple gases to bacteria we find the "essence of life", and if some such categorization were imposed, the correspondence to common sense notions would matter no more than for the heavens, or energy, or solid. Whether ordinary usage would consider viruses "alive" is of no interest to biologists, who will categorize as they choose in terms of genes and conditions under which they function. We cannot invoke ordinary usage to judge whether Francois Jacob is correct in telling us that "for the biologist, the living begins only with what was able to constitute a genetic program", though "for the chemist, in contrast, it is somewhat arbitrary to make a demarcation where there can only be continuity"

http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/old/class_text_095.pdf
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/mikhail/documents/Noam_Chomsky_Biolinguistic_Explorations.pdf

bohm2, thanks for the great quotes from Chomsky in support of my position. It would great also if you could bring these quotes into the new thread I just started.

 

[Pythagorean]

Here's an interesting PRE paper comparing word-use dynamics to allele expression using "[URL sampling formula[/URL]:

http://pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v70/i4/e042901

 

[apeiron]

"If you had a model..." Did you even read what I wrote?

So what is the model's answer on telepathy and pilot waves?

As for the water/ice/vapor issue, I guess I'll have to elaborate what I thought was a pretty basic point.

Please remember the context of the original point.

You said: "Last, a "fundamental seamlessness" and "very distinct transition" are entirely contradictory."

I said: "Would you make the same argument about the phase transitions of water from ice to liquid to vapour?"

So it is plain your assertion that there cannot be both continuity and distinct transitions is wrong. As you say, it is all just H2O molecules (continuity), but then very different macro-states (which we describe qualitatively as solid, liquid, gas).

Which in turn means you are wrong to say life and mind cannot be treated analogously. We have good reason to believe that "more can be different". There is no problem with radical state change as a result of gradual control parameter change.

This is the argument you need to pay attention to if you mean to address my comment.

Consciousness is entirely different because we are not talking about relational properties of the outsides of various substances. We are talking about insides, experience, consciousness, phenomena, qualia, and all the other terms we can use for mind or subjectivity.

Yes, your case for panpsychism rests on the argument that there is ordinary emergence and then radical emergence. One is not a problem for reductionism. The other is so inexplicable that we must look for its source in the most unlikely of places.

But if emergence is just reductionism, then it would be computable. If I gave you the genetic code for a protein, you should be able to model its emergent shape, its dynamical self-organisation resulting from a global minimisation of free energy.

Yet this kind of ab initio or free modelling of protein structure is known to be at least NP-hard (intractable for any reasonable size molecule on any physically-realisable computer), if not NP-complete.

Protein structure prediction can only be done by hand inserting various reasonable constraints - adding external information to guide the bottom-up number-crunching meant to represent the raw physics.

So even the emergence of a protein's folded shape is "radical" here. It's "computability" looks a matter of exponential, rather than polynomial, time. In other words, not actually computable in a meaningful sense. The calculation branches faster than any branch gets solved. It is only at infinity that there is "time enough" for everything to get done.

Now again, you say either a system is merely the sum of its parts or there has to be something mysterious going on. But we can see that real-world proteins manage routinely to satisfy a global constraint (the minimisation of free energy) without this being computable from the "outward properties" of its parts. They snap themselves into shape in a split second nevertheless.

Should we then impute some interior aspect to these parts that know how to assemble in a fashion that meets the global constraint? Or rather, should we just accept that this is the real world and constraints also exist as the proper causes of things?

And when we start talking instead about whole cells, or even whole brains, well if you are going to make claims based on your reductionist concept of emergence...

Deal first with something half-imaginable as "mere computational emergence" like a moderate sized molecule.

 

[bohm2]

You said: "Last, a "fundamental seamlessness" and "very distinct transition" are entirely contradictory." I said: "Would you make the same argument about the phase transitions of water from ice to liquid to vapour?"

So it is plain your assertion that there cannot be both continuity and distinct transitions is wrong. As you say, it is all just H2O molecules (continuity), but then very different macro-states (which we describe qualitatively as solid, liquid, gas)...Should we then impute some interior aspect to these parts that know how to assemble in a fashion that meets the global constraint? Or rather, should we just accept that this is the real world and constraints also exist as the proper causes of things?

And when we start talking instead about whole cells, or even whole brains, well if you are going to make claims based on your reductionist concept of emergence...

Deal first with something half-imaginable as "mere computational emergence" like a moderate sized molecule.

I think your points are important in this issue. Chomsky makes similar points here where he seems to side with Strawson on some issues but is unwilling to go the full distance with Strawson's panpsychism for some of the reasons, you mention, I think (although you offer a solution replacing the missing "intrinsic" part with semiosis, I think:

Priestly, it seems, would reject Nagel's qualms while accepting Strawson's formulation, but without drawing the panpsychic conclusions. It should be noted that the molecule-water example, commonly used, is not a very telling one. We also cannot conceive of a liquid turnng into two gas by electrolysis, and there is no intuitive sense in which the properties of water, bases, and acids inhere in Hydrogen or Oxygen or other atoms. Furthermore, the whole matter of conceivability seems to be irrelevant, whether it is brought up in connection with the effects of motion that Newton or Locke found inconceivable, or the irreducible principles of chemistry, or the mind-brain relations. There is something about the nature of Hydrogen and Oxygen "in virtue of which they are intrinsically suited to constituting water", so the sciences discovered after long labors, providing reasons "in the nature of things why the emerging thing is as it is." What seemed "brute emergence" was assimilated into science of ordinary emergence-not, to be sure, of the liquidity variety, relying on conceivability. I see no strong reason why matters should necessarily be different in the case of experiential and nonexperiential reality, particularly our ignorance of the latter, stressed from Newton and Locke to Priestly, developed by Russell, and arising again in recent discussion.

(Chomsky in "Mysteries of Natureow Deeply Hidden", 2009, p. 192-3)

Repeating this theme, Chomsky writes:

The new version of the mind-body problem resurrects some observations of Bertrand Russell’s 80 years ago, and recently reinvented. Russell asked us to consider a blind physicist who knows all of physics but doesn’t know something we know: what it’s like to see the color blue. Russell’s conclusion was that the natural sciences seek to discover “the causal skeleton of the world.” Other aspects of the world of experience lie beyond their reach. Recasting Russell’s insight in naturalistic terms, we might say that like all animals, our internal cognitive capacities reflexively provide us with a world of experience, largely shared in fundamental properties – the human Umwelt, to borrow the term of ethologists. But being reflective creatures, thanks to emergence of the human capacity, we go on to seek to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena of experience. These exercises are called myth, or magic, or philosophy, or “science” in the sense of that term proposed in the 19th century, distinguishing the pursuit from the rest of philosophy. If humans are part of the organic world, we expect that our capacities of understanding and explanation have fixed scope and limits, like any other natural object a truism that is sometimes thoughtlessly derided as “mysterianism.” It could be that these innate capacities do not lead us beyond some understanding of Russell’s causal skeleton of the world – including the principles that enter into determining conscious experience; there is of course no reason to expect that these are even in principle accessible to consciousness. It is always an open question how much of Russell’s “causal skeleton of the world” can be attained. These could become topics of empirical inquiry into the nature of what we might call “the science-forming faculty,” another “mental organ.” These are interesting topics, in principle part of normal science, and now the topic of some investigation. They should not be confused with the traditional mind-body problem, which evaporated after Newton.

http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/mikhail/documents/Noam_Chomsky_Biolinguistic_Explorations.pdf

With respect to the whole concept of a "science-forming faculty", this paper is a really interesting one discussing this topic:

On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty

http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j108/faculty.htm

 

[apeiron]

It should be noted that the molecule-water example, commonly used, is not a very telling one. We also cannot conceive of a liquid turnng into two gas by electrolysis, and there is no intuitive sense in which the properties of water, bases, and acids inhere in Hydrogen or Oxygen or other atoms.

The liquidity example is a good one to examine.

The reductionist assumption is that everything can be accounted for as the sum of the action of the parts. So phizzicsphan's focus on "exterior properties".

The systems view, by constrast, says the causes of things are alway dichotomous and hierarchical. Yes, there is bottom up construction based on local properties or freedoms, but also always some matching global shaping context, some set of downward acting constraints.

(The "clever" part of this is that constraints are responsible for the local freedoms as constraints limit vague potential to crisp definite "directions" of action. While equally, those local freedoms have by definition to be of a kind that will keep reconstructing that global context of constraints. So each side is making the other synergistically, or ultimately, semiotically - semiosis being about a more specific model concerning the nature of global constraints.)

Anyway, when it comes to a liquid state, you need two things to account for its persistence as an equilibrium balance of causes. You need local thermal/kinetic jostle and you need global pressure/containment.

You need molecular bonds of some kind of course to create an actual potential for interaction. But this potential is the part of the story that is the continuum (it connects all the phases of H2O). To inquire into molecular bonds is a larger question. You are asking about what makes atoms and electromagnetism. But talking here about liquidity as an emergent state, we want to focus sharply on the actual variables. Which are local average kinetics and global average pressure.

Now we can take any H2O molecule and assign it a thermal energy as a property. But we can't locate pressure in the molecule. That isn't even a property correctly of a mass of molecules. What causes pressure here is some form of confinement. So external constraints like a vessel, gravity, a weight of atmosphere - something that is the source of the limits exerting a downward causality from "outside", or a larger spatiotemporal scale.

The causes of liquidity are thus dual. Two things in dynamical balance - local kinetics and global constraints - result in what is actually the interior property, the emergent quality, that we are labelling liquidity.

Worrying about other kinds of things, like the predictability of electrolysis or solvent actions, is an unnecessary complication of the discussion. The simplest description of liquidity boils down to a local freedom (thermal motion of particles) and their global constraints (there is no liquidity without suitable constraints being imposed). And it is clear liquidity emerges not from just one or other variable, but the balancing of both the bottom-up and the top-down.

A reductionist will try to argue that it is all about the molecular bonds. Well, at least they might remember that as the clinching idea presented to them in school chemistry class. But the significance of the bonds is that they are a constant that does not change. Every H2O molecule is identical in its inter-molecular attraction (given a normal range of temperature ad pressure).

So to squeeze liquidity or any other form of difference out of the something which does not change is of course going to seem paradoxical. There is just no liquidity (or gassiness, or solidity) intrinsic in the bonds as a further property. The bonds alone offer no account of the dynamics. And can't do.

Think about this. What if the inter-molecular bonds were in fact all much weaker, or much stronger? This alone would make no difference to whether a collection of molecules were liquid or solid or gas. It would determine nothing new. The story would still come down an emergent balance of local temperature and global pressure.

 

[bohm2]

A reductionist will try to argue that it is all about the molecular bonds. Well, at least they might remember that as the clinching idea presented to them in school chemistry class. But the significance of the bonds is that they are a constant that does not change. Every H2O molecule is identical in its inter-molecular attraction (given a normal range of temperature ad pressure).

So to squeeze liquidity or any other form of difference out of the something which does not change is of course going to seem paradoxical. There is just no liquidity (or gassiness, or solidity) intrinsic in the bonds as a further property. The bonds alone offer no account of the dynamics. And can't do.

Think about this. What if the inter-molecular bonds were in fact all much weaker, or much stronger? This alone would make no difference to whether a collection of molecules were liquid or solid or gas. It would determine nothing new. The story would still come down an emergent balance of local temperature and global pressure.

What about this reductionist argument:

Where there is discontinuity in microscopic behavior associated with precisely specifiable macroscopic parameters, emergent properties of the system are clearly implicated, unless we can get an equally elegant resulting theory by complicating the dispositional structure of the already accepted inventory of basic properties. Sydney Shoemaker has contended that such hidden-micro-dispositions theories are indeed always available. Assuming sharply discontinuous patterns of effects within complex systems, we could conclude that the microphysical entities have otherwise latent dispositions towards effects within macroscopically complex contexts alongside the dispositions which are continuously manifested in (nearly) all contexts. The observed difference would be a result of the manifestation of these latent dispositions.

So I'm guessing a reductionist can claim that we lack these "latent dispositions" because we don't have a complete physical theory, yet?

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/

I'm not saying the symbol side is "fake" by any means. But symbols are arbitrary. An 'a' does exist, but it has no meaning alone, and it's place is no better or worse served by a 'b'. But, you can't have an alphabet of just 'a' so there is something meaningful about how the symbols exist, but it's not their labels (i.e. it's not the symbol itself).

This is an interesting point. That sounds like an "intrinsicality" argument since anything can be a symbol. What determines what is a symbol comes from the subject. That seems like an argument against symbolic or semiotic function?

 

[Pythagorean]

What about this reductionist argument:

Where there is discontinuity in microscopic behavior associated with precisely specifiable macroscopic parameters, emergent properties of the system are clearly implicated, unless we can get an equally elegant resulting theory by complicating the dispositional structure of the already accepted inventory of basic properties. Sydney Shoemaker has contended that such hidden-micro-dispositions theories are indeed always available. Assuming sharply discontinuous patterns of effects within complex systems, we could conclude that the microphysical entities have otherwise latent dispositions towards effects within macroscopically complex contexts alongside the dispositions which are continuously manifested in (nearly) all contexts. The observed difference would be a result of the manifestation of these latent dispositions.

So I'm guessing a reductionist can claim that we lack these "latent dispositions" because we don't have a complete physical theory, yet?

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/
This is an interesting point. That sounds like an "intrinsicality" argument since anything can be a symbol. What determines what is a symbol comes from the subject. That seems like an argument against symbolic or semiotic function?

Whether it can be a symbol or not depends on the system context, as it should. If everything were red, we'd all effectively be blind. If the universe were all one temperature, nothing would happen.

 

[apeiron]

So I'm guessing a reductionist can claim that we lack these "latent dispositions" because we don't have a complete physical theory, yet?

So far as I recall, Shoemaker takes a fairly systems view of causality. It is not clear that this is his own argument rather than him musing on what a reductionist might say.

But anyway, the systems answer is that it works the other way round.

What this idea of latent dispositions appears to be saying is that the parts of a system have some set of properties. There are those that are used or apparent at one level of development, but other unseen ones may come into play with more complex forms of organisation.

The reductionist of course wants the parts to be as simple as possible. Really, it is hard to explain why there should be anything rather than a nothing. But to be fundamental, a part should at least have as few properties as decently possible. Every new property is an addition to a growing collection. It seems troublesome that a part could both have many properties, and also that some of these are subtle enough to be hidden until some kind of complexity harnesses them and brings them to the fore.

The systems approach views the situation the other way round. Reality at root is vague. Any locale in an undeveloped state will have an unlimited number of degrees of freedom. While things are indeterminate, the "properties" of the local scale are infinite because unbounded - but also not really properties as such because, being everything at the same time, this adds up to nothing definite.

So the first point is that a "part" has a potential infinity of properties, and then has to become some actual part by becoming bounded in its freedoms. It is no surprise that a part has many "latent dispositions" as it starts with an infinity. The task then is to constrain these dispositions so that they do something useful in the context of a system.

Which is what hierarchy theory is about. How the global scale constrains the freedoms of the local scale, limiting local freedoms to turn infinite potential into crisply bounded actuality.

So latently, anything is possible. But due to downwards acting constraints, this freedom becomes increasingly constrained. Parts become ever more definite and particular as complexity or global organisation increases.

This is an interesting point. That sounds like an "intrinsicality" argument since anything can be a symbol. What determines what is a symbol comes from the subject. That seems like an argument against symbolic or semiotic function?

No, rather it is the basis of semiosis and the epistemic cut. The whole point of symbols is that they are as detached as possible from any physical considerations. Rate independent information needs to be separate from rate dependent dynamics for there to be a semiotic relation between syntax (the realm of symbols) and semantics (the real world they refer to).

 

[bohm2]

The reductionist of course wants the parts to be as simple as possible. Really, it is hard to explain why there should be anything rather than a nothing. But to be fundamental, a part should at least have as few properties as decently possible. Every new property is an addition to a growing collection. It seems troublesome that a part could both have many properties, and also that some of these are subtle enough to be hidden until some kind of complexity harnesses them and brings them to the fore.

Some reductionists argue that, in fact, it is quite possible, in physics, to have a fundamentally important new property, completely different from any that had been contemplated hithero, hidden unobserved in the behaviour of ordinary matter. Although not the best example, one can argue that general relativistic effects "would have totally escaped attention had that attention been confined to the study of the behaviour of tiny particles." (Penrose).

No, rather it is the basis of semiosis and the epistemic cut. The whole point of symbols is that they are as detached as possible from any physical considerations. Rate independent information needs to be separate from rate dependent dynamics for there to be a semiotic relation between syntax (the realm of symbols) and semantics (the real world they refer to).

This is the part that confuses me when trying to understand Chomsky. He favours an internalistic semantics:

The internalist denies an assumption common to all of the approaches above: the assumption that in giving the content of an expression, we are primarily specifying something about that expression's relation to things in the world which that expression might be used to say things about. According to the internalist, expressions as such don't bear any semantically interesting relations to things in the world; names don't, for example, refer to the objects with which one might take them to be associated. Sentences are not true or false, and do not express propositions which are true or false; the idea that we can understand natural languages using a theory of reference as a guide is mistaken. On this sort of view, we occasionally use sentences to say true or false things about the world, and occasionally use names to refer to things; but this is just one we can do with names and sentences, and is not a claim about the meanings of those expressions.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/#ChoIntSem

http://www.lainestranahan.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Stranahan_Thesis.pdf

Actually, I thought this is what Pythagorean was arguing for. Looks like I misinterpreted his/her post.

 

[apeiron]

So latently, anything is possible. But due to downwards acting constraints, this freedom becomes increasingly constrained. Parts become ever more definite and particular as complexity or global organisation increases.

In case this is too abstract, think of the classic substance~form argument. A lump of clay is a formless material. It could be potentially formed into an infinity of designs. It's "latent dispositions" are unbounded.

Humans can come along and impose constraints on that potential. A potter might make a vase. Or more interestingly, an engineer might impose even more "logical" form on matter to create screws, pistons, cams, ratchets, valves.

A lump of metal might be said to have these mechanical qualities as hidden dispositions - but only in the sense that just about any form could have been imposed on the substance. And it is plain how that form actually emerged - by a person with an idea, by an external source of information that cannot be called a hidden disposition of the metal.

 

[apeiron]

Some reductionists argue that, in fact, it is quite possible, in physics, to have a fundamentally important new property, completely different from any that had been contemplated hithero, hidden unobserved in the behaviour of ordinary matter. Although not the best example, one can argue that general relativistic effects "would have totally escaped attention had that attention been confined to the study of the behaviour of tiny particles." (Penrose).

This was phizzicsphan's argument - hidden microproperties are always conceivable. A reductionist is free to make any claim. But why would we take such a claim seriously unless there is a theory and data to show this to be so.

A reductionist would at least have to come up with a compelling instance of the kind of thing that they are talking about - show that it has been true of at least one system.

Special relativity at least might have been derived from time dilation of muon decay (or that would have been an observable demanding of some explanation).

I'm not sure how Penrose might have argued that general relativity shows "no observable effects" at the microscale. Perhaps you can give the source.

But then also the systems argument is that the global shapes the local, so it is not even necessary that that the global be visible as local properties. The argument would in fact seem the reverse. It would be a proof that GR is a maximally global description because it so purely resides at a global level in modelling.

It is of course the central project of current fundamental physics to unite GR and QFT. And the lack of success could be due to this point. Shrink GR to the limits of the microscale and instead of arriving at crisp micro-observables, you get the radical indeterminacy of singularities.

The internalist denies an assumption common to all of the approaches above: the assumption that in giving the content of an expression, we are primarily specifying something about that expression's relation to things in the world which that expression might be used to say things about.

The whole page you linked to is a result of the confusion of following reductionist approaches to reality.

As I keep arguing, the systems/semiotic approach says reality starts in vagueness, in radical indeterminancy, and then has to be constrained in its unbounded freedoms to become a something, a crisply definite entity or state.

A symbol stands for a constraint to be applied to naked meaning. It limits the freedom that the world can have.

So a word like "cat" is a token that constrains your thoughts. But there is still plenty of freedom that exists in what you might be thinking about. It could be a Persian, a lynx or Krazy Kat.

Further words can syntatically constrain the meaning, reducing the freedom of your thoughts. So a "fluffy cat". A "fluffy, white cat". etc.

A reductionist thinks meaning is constructed atomistically so therefore words somehow have to stand for some definite entity. But symbols work not by representing but by constraining. It is the limits that they can construct which are the causal source of their power.

So it is not about externalism or internalism, but about top-downism (which - the remarkable bit - is constructible from atomistic elements, discrete symbols).

It is the fact that symbols are global constraints, yet look like reductionist atoms, that probably does cause so much confusion. But anyway, to construct constraints you do also need rules - actual syntax. Which leads us even further towards modelling, semiosis and hierarchy theory.

 

[bohm2]

This was phizzicsphan's argument - hidden microproperties are always conceivable. A reductionist is free to make any claim. But why would we take such a claim seriously unless there is a theory and data to show this to be so..

The same argument could be said about semiotics, I think? I didn't fully understand his paper but I think phizzicsphan argues at least, in part, that the new "novel" property that may offer insight in how consciousness can emerge from matter is (in part) the non-locality/non-separability implied at the micro-level in the Bell experiments (e.g. Aspect, etc.) and/or entanglement of QM? Maybe he can elaborate, how?

With respect to hidden microproperties vs semiotics consider using the semiotic approach to pre-quantum physics. A reductionist at that time would have argued that the reason why we can't get Newtonian physics to spit out chemical stuff is because there are hidden microproperties that have yet to be discovered. They would have been right, I think. Would the semiotic approach predicted QM via a different approach? I can't see how except maybe as a model to describe the stuff after the fact. But again, I might be confused as I have a bit of trouble understanding the practical implications and predictions although you have done a good job describing the general perspective. Moreover, I've come across these weaknesses even by those who support the systems/semiotic approach. I'm not sure if you agree with this assessment but here is what Marcello Barbieri writes about biosemiotics:

Biosemiotics is a new continent whose exploration has just begun, and it is not surprising that people have gone off in different directions. In addition to the difficulties that arise in any new field, however, biosemiotics is also having problems of its own. Today, the major obstacles to its development come from three great sources of confusion.

1. The first handicap is that biosemiotics is wrongly perceived as a philosophy rather than a science, and in particular as a view that promotes physiosemiotics, pansemiotics, panpsychism and the like. Here, the only solution is to remind people that biosemiotics is a science because it is committed to exploring the world with testable models, like any other scientific discipline.

2. The second handicap is that biosemiotics appears to be only a different way of looking at the known facts of biology, not a science that brings new facts to light. It is not regarded capable of making predictions and having an experimental field of its own, and to many people all this means irrelevance. Here the only solution is to keep reminding people that the experimental field of biosemiotics is the study of organic codes and signs, that biosemiotics did predict their existence and continues to make predictions, that codes and signs exist at all levels of organization and that the great steps of macroevolution are associated with the appearance of new codes. This is what biosemiotics is really about.

3. The third handicap is the fact that biosemiotics, despite being a small field of research, is split into different schools, which gives the impression that it has no unifying principle. Here we can only point out that a first step towards unification has already been taken and that the conditions for a second, decisive, step already exist. When biosemioticians finally accept that the models of semiosis must be testable, they will also acknowledge the existence of all types of semiosis that are documented by the experimental evidence and that is all that is required to overcome the divisions of the past. At that point, the old divides will no longer make sense and most schools will find it natural to converge into a unified framework.

Biosemiotics must overcome all the above obstacles in order to become a unified science, but this process of growth and development has already started and there is light at the end of the tunnel.

http://www.biosemiotica.it/internal_links/pdf/Marcello%20Barbieri%20(2009)%20A%20Short%20History%20of%20Biosemiotics.pdf

 

[apeiron]

Would the semiotic approach predicted QM via a different approach?

Well, it does predict reality is fundamentally indeterminate (vague) and requires constraints (measurement) to make the local crisp (collapse). So in fact yes, it always argued against simple atomism.

1. The first handicap is that biosemiotics is wrongly perceived as a philosophy rather than a science, and in particular as a view that promotes physiosemiotics, pansemiotics, panpsychism and the like. Here, the only solution is to remind people that biosemiotics is a science because it is committed to exploring the world with testable models, like any other scientific discipline.

I don't call this a weakness. Do you?

2. The second handicap is that biosemiotics appears to be only a different way of looking at the known facts of biology, not a science that brings new facts to light. It is not regarded capable of making predictions and having an experimental field of its own, and to many people all this means irrelevance. Here the only solution is to keep reminding people that the experimental field of biosemiotics is the study of organic codes and signs, that biosemiotics did predict their existence and continues to make predictions, that codes and signs exist at all levels of organization and that the great steps of macroevolution are associated with the appearance of new codes. This is what biosemiotics is really about.

Yes, biosemiosis actually won't achieve much except give a more principled understanding of facts already discovered unless it comes up with mathematical-level models.

There is a lot to do to turn philosophy into actual science.

3. The third handicap is the fact that biosemiotics, despite being a small field of research, is split into different schools, which gives the impression that it has no unifying principle. Here we can only point out that a first step towards unification has already been taken and that the conditions for a second, decisive, step already exist. When biosemioticians finally accept that the models of semiosis must be testable, they will also acknowledge the existence of all types of semiosis that are documented by the experimental evidence and that is all that is required to overcome the divisions of the past. At that point, the old divides will no longer make sense and most schools will find it natural to converge into a unified framework.

Again, this is a weakness only in the sense that biosemiosis is a field that is still new and hopeful.

So I don't dispute Barbieri assessment at all.

 

[bohm2]

Well, it does predict reality is fundamentally indeterminate (vague) and requires constraints (measurement) to make the local crisp (collapse). So in fact yes, it always argued against simple atomism.?

So I'm guessing it doesn't much favour the Everett or Bohmian interpretations of QM.

I don't call this a weakness. Do you?

No. Assuming it's wrongly perceived as a philosophy. What is interesting is attempts by Barbieri's group to form a synthesis with biolinguistics and with linguists like Chomsky (see link below) given Chomsky's nativism and premise that syntax determines meaning. This is inconsistent with "the pragmatic context" which determines meaning for systems view.

http://www.biosemiotica.it/internal_links/pdf/2010-%20Group%20Discussion%20of%20On%20the%20Origin%20of%20Language.pdf

On the Origin of Language: A bridge between Biolinguistics and Biosemiotics

http://www.biosemiotica.it/internal_links/pdf/Barbieri%20M%20(2010)%20On%20the%20Origin%20of%20Language

I think Chomsky would agree with Barbieri that:

animals do not interpret the world but only representations of the world. Any interpretation, in short, is always exercised on internal models of the environment, never on the environment itself.

So that, perception of "external reality" is always mediated/filtered through our mental organs. But I'm not sure Chomsky would be sympathetic to the view that:

the environment (in an objective sense) necessarily represents the final/ultimate object of any perception.

 

[apeiron]

So I'm guessing it doesn't much favour the Everett or Bohmian interpretations of QM.

That is certainly true for me.

What is interesting is attempts by Barbieri's group to form a synthesis with biolinguistics and with linguists like Chomsky (see link below) given Chomsky's nativism and premise that syntax determines meaning. This is inconsistent with "the pragmatic context" which determines meaning for systems view.

It is hardly Barbieri's "group". Quite a few are hostile to his view of what biosemiosis is, let alone his attempts to make a connection with Chomsky.

Barbieri himself calls his approach code-semiosis and distinguishes it from a number of approaches including Pattee's physical-semiosis, or the more strictly Peircean sign-semiosis.

Having read his papers, my main reaction is not that he is wrong (and others right) but he over complicates the analysis whereas others (principally Pattee and Salthe) are seeking to strip things down to their barest bones. And these two are also seeking the pan- view where semiosis is described with such generality it can be appreciated as a universal process (as Peirce envisaged).

 

[MarcoD]

Having read his papers, my main reaction is not that he is wrong (and others right) but he over complicates the analysis whereas others (principally Pattee and Salthe) are seeking to strip things down to their barest bones. And these two are also seeking the pan- view where semiosis is described with such generality it can be appreciated as a universal process (as Peirce envisaged).

This is my main problem with most semiosis theories too. I've read some Peirce and Sebeok and some others, and the posted attempt of Barbieri to bridge two fields. Again, I've always found that even the simplest models are debatable, the more complex models are based on so many assumptions and leaps-of-faith that they can only be incorrect, and given those observations it looks like most analysis deflate to too many words conveying gibberish.

It's nice with a glass of wine, though.