Jeff, Ben, Howard, lists,
I like the way Stan described "self" in [biosemiotics 8669]:
"When I try to imagine my own selfhood I visualize neuron connections -- a
unique pattern of neuron connections, some -- the most important ones of
which -- have been maintained for years, some of which are perhaps only
days old. Thus a self is a pattern of activity, a collection of likely
pathways of energy flows."
I have long felt that "self" and "consciousness" are somehow related to the
neural firing patterns of the brain. For convenience, we may refer to
these neural activities as "neural dissipative structures" or "neural
dissipatons" more briefly. ('Dissipative structures' can be defined as any
material systems whose non-randomly organized components become randomized
when the energy supply to the system under consideration stops: e.g., EEG
disappears when the brain runs out of energy.) The "self" encoded in the
neural network of a brain may be identified with what Prigogine (1917-2003)
called "equilibrium structures" which I shortened to "equilibrons" in 2012
[1].
The philosophical discussions on "self", "consciousness", and "mind" may be
greatly facilitated, if the physics and chemistry of these mental states
are taken into account.
All the best.
Sung
Reference:
[1] Ji, S. (2012). The Triadic Relation Between Dissipative Structures
(Dissipatons) and Equilibrium Structures (Equilibrons). *Molecular Theory
of the Living Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms, and Biomedical
Applications*. Springer, New York. Pp. 76-78. PDF at
http://www.conformon.net under Publications > Book Chapters.
On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 4:01 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <
jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> wrote:
> Ben, Lists,
>
> I, too, find the thread puzzling. In order to get a better grip on what
> the discussion is about, I wanted to ask a simple question: what are the
> phenomena that need to be explained? We use the word 'self' to talk about
> a wide range of things. As such, I was hoping that someone might point to
> sample phenomena--preferably some that are surprising in one respect or
> another--so that we could compare different explanations in terms of their
> adequacy in accounting for the phenomena.
>
> --Jeff
>
> Jeff Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> NAU
> (o) 523-8354
> ________________________________________
> From: Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 5:52 AM
> To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
> Subject: [biosemiotics:8665] Re: self-R
>
> Kalevi, Howard, list,
>
> I've been trying to understand this discussion thread's idea that the
> individual self is founded in (self-)replication. Replication seems for
> continuation of kind, species, lineage; it doesn't seem obvious how,
> furthermore, the individual self is _founded_ there too, even if the
> individual self is underpinned by that level. When I try to think of it in
> my simplistic ways, it seems to me that the individual self is founded at a
> 'higher' level. Let me resort for what it's worth to an analogy.
>
> In the analogous scientific practice, replication of results (even one's
> own across various occasions), is not the same thing as the checking,
> balancing, structurally supporting of results by various lines of evidence,
> observation, etc., by various inquirers (or by oneself qua various),
> converging from various directions, which seems a process of buttressing
> and evolutionary (renovating, re-designing) buildup of results.
>
> While biological replication is needed for evolvable species and lineages,
> the evolutionary process itself seems more analogous to that 'buttressing'
> process in scientific practice. Insofar as an individual's learning
> process, even though it depends on a general inherited capacity to learn,
> does not follow inherited pre-programmed developmental paths, it is
> 'evolutionary' (in the sense that various people including Stan Salthe use
> the word), and this makes each individual an individualized self who is
> checked and balanced both within the self's own experience and by other
> individuals and experiences.
>
> (Such seems even more so the case when the individual learns not just by
> trial & error (struggle) in various directions, practice & repetition, and
> emulation/replication of valued exemplars and results, but by investigating
> and testing claims made by various people or virtually made by various
> appearances, the testing our notions to destruction rather than ourselves,
> as Popper would put it.)
>
> Best, Ben
>
> On 5/20/2015 2:07 AM, Kalevi Kull wrote:
>
> Dear Howard,
>
> let us try whether we can find more agreement here.
>
> KK: yes, both construction and description, here von Neumann is right, I
> agree - but the way how he defines self-reproduction is not what we could
> apply in biology or biosemiotics.
>
> HP: How does it not apply?
>
> What I mean is this: von Neumann assumed that "self-reproducing
> configuration must be capable of universal construction. This criterion,
> indeed, eliminates the trivial cases, but it also has the unfortunate
> consequence that it eliminates all naturally occurring self-reproducing
> systems as well, since none of these have been shown to be capable of
> universal construction." (Langton C. G. 1984. Self-reproduction in Cellular
> Automata. Physica D 10: 135-144 - p. 137)
>
> KK: Therefore, if You state that "An individual self is first defined by
> self-replication", it would require a relevant definition of
> self-replication. Do You have one?
>
> HP: Yes. Von Neumann's logical conditions plus my physical conditions
>
> Von Neumann's logical conditions (which include the existence of universal
> constructor) are not necessary - these are not used in the real living
> systems. That is the point.
>
> Best
>
> Kalevi
>
>
>
--
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701
www.conformon.net
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