Stephen, List: You mentioned Michael Levin early last month in the thread on "Relational Quantum Mechanics, Peirce and Feynman diagrams" ( https://list.iu.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2025-07/msg00006.html). As far as I can tell, he has not otherwise come up previously on the List.
My class on modern physics as part of my undergraduate engineering degree program was way back before Rovelli even introduced RQM, but after reading up on it a bit, some additional thoughts come to mind. The basic idea that a measurement event is necessary to *actualize *a state as the relation between an observer and the system of interest strikes me as analogous to how I typically describe the nature of a continuum in accordance with Peirce's late topical conception--the undivided whole is ontologically prior to the parts, which are indefinite material parts until they are *deliberately *marked off as distinct actual parts. I apply this to my hypothesis that the entire universe is a *semiosic *continuum by saying that we *prescind *any "discrete" sign with its object and interpretant from the real and continuous process of semiosis. Similarly, I suggest that a "state" in RQM roughly corresponds to a "fact" in accordance with Peirce's definitions of the latter that I have recently quoted in the "Semiosic Ontology" thread--"something having the structure of a proposition, but supposed to be an element of the very universe itself" (EP 2:304, NEM 4:239, 1901); and "so highly a prescissively abstract state of things, that it can be wholly represented in a simple proposition" (CP 5.549, EP 2:378, 1906). In other words, the universe is not an assemblage of states/facts as its ontologically basic components, it is a continuous whole from which observers prescind states/facts by formulating propositions to signify them--perceptual judgments and subsequent inferences. When those propositions are true, the individuals denoted by their subjects become more definite and the concepts denoted by their predicates become more determinate, i.e., information increases. Nevertheless, it still seems to me that Schrödinger's cat is *really *either alive or dead--regardless of what anyone thinks about it--at any arbitrarily designated instant in time after being placed in the box, unless it happens to fall within the indefinite moment during which the cat is *dying* such that excluded middle does not apply. How could it be otherwise? Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 5:48 AM Stephen Jarosek <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, List, > > > > Have we discussed, in this forum, the work of Michael Levin at all? I’ve > not been participating consistently and might have missed any reference to > him that might have cropped up. Levin factors in conditioning (association, > Pavlov’s dog, etc) and speaks of cognitive processes at the > cellular/neuronal levels, extending “all the way down” (his terminology). > Much great material on Levin’s work available online, and it’s difficult to > select a “favourite”, as we all have different priorities of emphasis. But > here’s a recent one that relates, at least loosely, to our current thread: > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyM > > > Cheers, > > sj >
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