Stan, lists,
Figure 1 seems to represent your 'scale hierarchy' (viewed from bottom up),
since atoms are smaller than molecules which are smaller than cells which
are smaller than brains which are smaller than societies [1].
Can we also say that Figure 1 represents a "specification" hierarchy [1] as
well in the sense that
"Physical laws constrain chemistry, chemical laws constrain biology,
biological (090515-1)
laws constrain psychology, and psychological laws constrain social
behaviors."
I think the term "supervenience" may apply here as well -- "supervenience"
as defined in [2]:
"A set of properties *A* supervenes upon another set *B* just in case no
two things can differ with respect to *A*-properties without also differing
with respect to their *B*-properties."
"Donald Davidson played a key role in bringing the idea to center stage. He
introduced the term ‘supervenience’ into contemporary philosophy of mind in
the following passage:
[M]ental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on
physical characteristics. Such supervenience might be taken to mean that
there cannot be two events alike in all physical respects but differing in
some mental respect, or that an object cannot alter in some mental respect
without altering in some physical respect (1970, 214)."
Employing the concept of supervenience, Figure 1 may be described
alternatively thus:
"Sociology is supervenient on psychology which is supervenient
(090515-2)
on biology which is supervenient on chemistry which is supervenient
on physics."
*Societies* (Languages, sciences,
technologies, arts, religions;
SOCIOLOGY)
^
|
* Brains* (Self-replication with
variations, symbolic;
PSYCHOLOGY)
^
|
*Cells* (Life, or the highly
condensed form of information [3];
BIOLOGY)
^
|
*Molecules* (Catalysis of chemical
reactions;
CHEMISTRY)
^
|
*Atoms* (Crystals;
PHYSICS)
Figure 1. Five levels of material ORGANIZATION with associated EMERGENT
properties.
The bottom-up direction = *COMPOSITIONAL HIERARCHY*
The top-down direction = *SUPSUMPTION HIERARCHY *[1] (?)
If the logic behind the above considerations is sound, we may conclude that
"Figure 1 embodies both the *scale* and *specification* heirarchies
(090515-3)
of Salthe."
"The emergence of new properties may required both scale and
(090515-4)
specification hierarchies."
"When A *emerges* from B in a hierarchy, A can be said to be
(090515-5)
*supervenient* on B."
All the best.
Sung
References:
[1] Salthe, S. (XXXX). Where Science Meets Philosophy. *Axiomathes* *22*
:355-383.
[2] Supervenience. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/
On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 9:31 AM, Stanley N Salthe <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Sung -- It's OK as a compositional hierarchy
>
> STAN
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 8:03 PM, Sungchul Ji <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Helmut, Stan, and lists,
>>
>> Applying the so-called "the principle of the *emergence-invariance
>> complementarity*" discussed on these lists recently [1, 2] to the
>> problem of "thought", I came up with the following tentative conclusions:
>>
>> (1) *INVARIANCE:*
>>
>> "What is common to crystals and the human brain is ORGANIZATION,
>> (090415-1)
>> of matter, there being various degrees of organizations, each of
>> which
>> having a distinct function."
>>
>> (2) *EMERGENCE:*
>>
>> "What emerges when the complexity of organization increases from
>> (090415-2)
>> that of crystals to that of the human brain is *thought*."
>>
>> What connects crystals and the human brain is the living cell or life
>> which is in turn a highly condensed form of information leading to the
>> following thesis.
>>
>> (3) *EMERGENCE of LIFE from MATTER:*
>>
>> "Life can be viewed as highly condensed form of *information*,
>> just (090415-3)
>> as physicists consider matter as highly condensed form of
>> *energy*" [3].
>>
>>
>> Statements (090415-1), (090415-2), and (090415-3), can be organized as a
>> hierarchy as shown in Figure 1.
>>
>>
>> *Societies* (Languages, sciences,
>> technologies, arts, religions, etc.)
>> ^
>> |
>> * Brains* (Self-replication with
>> variations, symbolic)
>> ^
>> |
>> *Cells* (Life, or the highly
>> condensed form of information [3])
>> ^
>> |
>> *Molecules* (Catalysis of chemical
>> reactions)
>> ^
>> |
>> *Atoms* (Crystals)
>>
>> Figure 1. Five levels of material ORGANIZATION with associated EMERGENT
>> properties.
>>
>>
>> All the best.
>>
>> Sung
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
>
>> References:
>> [1] Ji, S. (2015). Emergence vs. Invariance: Are they complementary
>> aspectg sof complex system
>> Posted to PEIRCE-L on September 1, 2015.
>> [2] Ji, S. (2015). Can crystals think ? Posted to PEIRCE-L on
>> Septbmer 2, 2015.
>> [3] Ji, S. (2004). Semiotics of Life: A Unified Theory of Molecular
>> Machines, Cells, the Mind, Peircean Signs, and the Universe based on the
>> Principle of Information-Energy Complementarity.
>> <http://www.conformon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/SOLManuscriptsubmitted_final_downloaded_from_Taragona_09032011_modified_07282012.pdf>
>> In:
>> Reports, Research Group on Mathematical Iinguistics, XVII Tarragona Seminar
>> on Formal Syntax and Semantics, Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona,
>> 23-27 April 2003. PDF at http://www.conformon,.net under Publications >
>> Proceedings and Abstracts. P. 2.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Sung,
>>> I think, that the human mind is a (as I call it) "causally closed"
>>> system, because the pictures and wishes a human has got in his/her mind,
>>> are not (except if they are communicated) shared by other minds. See in my
>>> first post about "causalities" the attachment. And I think, that crystals
>>> are not causally closed. The quasi-mind of the universe, or of the
>>> evolution, has made human minds possible, but does not have telepathical
>>> connection with them either. That is what I assume, but it may be
>>> different. Some religions say that it is, eg. the Atman- Paratman theory by
>>> the Hindus, I think. Peirce thought, that all minds are connected, which I
>>> just do not understand:
>>>
>>> "[B]y the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in any way
>>> or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it
>>> corresponds to any real thing or not. If you ask present when, and to whose
>>> mind, I reply that I leave these questions unanswered, never having
>>> entertained a doubt that those features of the phaneron that I have found
>>> in my mind are present at all times and to all minds." (Adirondack
>>> Lectures, 1905; in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 1 [eds.
>>> Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
>>> Press, 1931], paragraph 284)
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Helmut
>>>
>>> "Sungchul Ji" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Helmut,
>>>
>>> By the same token then, wouldn't you have to say that " . . . .although
>>> humans do not think, it is the quasi-mind that is thinking" ? The key
>>> question would be, do we need to invoke a quasi-mind to explain the human
>>> mind ? Aren't humans self-sufficient to think and mind ?
>>>
>>> To me, "thought" can mean either the "result" or the "process" of
>>> thinking. In either case, "thought" is an example of what Prigogine called
>>> "dissipative structures" [1, 2] which I have abbreviated as "dissipatons"
>>> in [3].
>>> Again, I agree with Pickering that crystals do not think as we do [4],
>>> because crystals are *equilibrium structures* and not *dissipative
>>> structures*. From the thermodynamic point of view, the raising of
>>> questions like "Can crystals think ?" is unthinkable.
>>>
>>>
>>> All the best.
>>>
>>> Sung
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Reference:
>>> [1] Prigogine, I. and Lefever, R. (1968). Symmetry-breaking
>>> instabilities in dissipative systems. II. *J. Chem. Phys*. *48:*1695-1700.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> [2] Prigogine, I. (1977). Dissipative Structures and Biological
>>> Order, *Adv. Biol. Med. Phys.* *16: *99-113.
>>>
>>> [3] Ji, S. (2012). Principles of Self-Organization and Dissipative
>>> Structures. <http://www.conformon.net/?attachment_id=1088> In: *Molecular
>>> Theory of the Living Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms, and Biomedical *
>>>
>>> [4] Pickering, J. (2007). Affordances are Signs. *tripleC* *5*
>>> (2):64-74.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Applications.* Springer, New York. Chapter 3, pp. 69-78. PDF at
>>> http://www.cpnformon.net under Publications > Book Chapters.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 1:53 AM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Sung, List,
>>>> Maybe it is correct to say, that "Thought (...) appears in the work
>>>> (...) of crystals", although crystals do not think, if it is the quasi-mind
>>>> of the universe that is thinking, but not each single crystal. Just like
>>>> when a human is uttering a symbolic word, it is not the word, that is
>>>> thinking.
>>>> Best,
>>>> Helmut
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "Sungchul Ji" <[email protected]>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Peirceans and biosemioticians,
>>>>
>>>> These following two quotes address the relations among three quite
>>>> distinct types of material objects -- *crystals*, *bees*, and *humans*.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "Thought is no necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the
>>>> work of bees, of crystals and (090215-1)
>>>> throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it
>>>> is really there, than that the
>>>> colors, the shapes, etc. of objects are really there." (CP 4.551)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ". . . . This is not to say that bees and crystals think in anything
>>>> like the way that human beings think, (090215-2)
>>>> and they surely cannot know they are thinking, . . . " [1]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> To me, the first quote of Peirce highlights the CONTINUITY or
>>>> invariance (i.e., thought, mind, semiosis, or ITR, irreducible triadic
>>>> relation) found among these material systems. In contrast, Pickering [1],
>>>> while cognizant of the continuity, nevertheless, is not blind to the
>>>> DISCONTINUITY, or the emergent properties (resulting from the increasing
>>>> organizational complexities from crystals, to bees and to humans), among
>>>> the same set of objects. I agree with Pickering. Organizations are not
>>>> all same. Some organizations (as in the human brain) can cause thinking
>>>> that is detectable by an EEG machine, while some other organizations (e.g.,
>>>> in crystals) cannot cause any thinking since no EEG signals can be
>>>> generated.
>>>>
>>>> To emphasize Statement (090215-1) at the neglect of Statement
>>>> (090215-2) would be akin to asserting that light is particles (ignoring its
>>>> wave properties) or waves (ignoring its particle properties), as was the
>>>> common thinking among physicists before the principle of complementarity
>>>> was established in the mid-1920s' [2].
>>>>
>>>> Some Peircean scholars may wish to uphold (090215-1) and deny the
>>>> validity of (090215-2), but, if what I referred to as "the principle of
>>>> "*emergence-invariance
>>>> complementarity*" in my last posting on these lists [3] is right, both
>>>> (090215-1) and (090215-2) would be valid since they reflect the
>>>> *complementary
>>>> aspects of mind. *That is:
>>>>
>>>> "*Mind may be both continuous* (as Peirce asserts) *and*
>>>> *discontinuous* (as suggested by the complementarity principle)."
>>>> (090215-3)
>>>>
>>>> All the best.
>>>>
>>>> Sung
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Reference:
>>>> [1] Pickering, J. (2007). Affordances are Signs. *tripleC* *5*
>>>> (2):64-74.
>>>> [2] Plotnitsky, A. (2003). Niel Bohr and Complementarity: An
>>>> Introduction. Springer, New York.
>>>> [3] Ji, S. (2015). Emergence vs. Invariance: Are they complementary
>>>> aspects of complex systems ? Posted to PEIRCE-L on 9/1/2015.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> 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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