Helmut,
Bees are conscious in accordance with the same principles that
we are conscious. This is one important aspect of the axiomatic framework that
I base my thinking on. That is to say, Peirce’s categories apply to all
organisms, even cells.
Now whether or not an organism is “self-aware” or aware of an
intention to raise offspring or build honeycombs is another matter entirely,
relating to Pragmatism, and this does not alter the axiomatic principles at
all. Regarding your reference to "know" or "knowledge" - this relates to
Pragmatism, and the things that matter to bees versus the things that matter to
people. A human organism with hands and vocal chords is going to reflect on
their choices at a deeper level than an insect, like a bee, would, and so
Pragmatism plays out very differently across the two species. The axiomatic
principles of cognition (Peirce’s categories) will establish how mind-bodies
define the things that matter. Pragmatism depends on Peirce’s categories, not
the other way around... you are looking at the different manifestations of
Pragmatism in bees and humans, and then incorrectly attributing different
“axioms” to them. Forget about instinct... it’s a red herring, an artefact of a
broken genocentric paradigm.
Cheers,
sj
From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, 7 September 2015 9:47 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]; 'PEIRCE-L'
Subject: [biosemiotics:8863] The problem with instinct - it's a category
Stephen, lists,
Does a bee know how to be a bee? I mean, when an organism is doing something,
does that mean that it knows why it is doing that? Does this question only
show, that there may be different concepts of the word "know" or "knowledge"?
For me, to know has to do with intention and conscious deliberateness by a
mind. And the intention to care for the offspring of bees I do not see in the
bee who is busy constructing honeycombs, but in the mind of the evolution, or
in the mind of the bee-species. But perhaps it is only a matter of different
definitions of the term "know", or that I conflate "to know what to do" with
"to know why to do this".
Best,
Helmut
"Stephen Jarosek" <[email protected]> wrote:
Helmut, list,
HELMUT: ”The symbols of bees, eg. pheromones (are they
symbols?), I would say, are instinctive”
I have a serious problem with the notion of instinct... either a thought, in
whatever manifestation, conforms to the three Peircean categories, or it does
not. If we took a closer look, we would probably find “instinct” subscribing to
the Peircean categories at some lower cellular level. Take, for example, the
medulla oblongata in the brain and the beating of the heart. It is not helpful
to regard the beating of the heart, for example, as “instinctual”. Talking
about instinct does not help us because there is no DNA blueprint (or data) to
define it. Instead, a developing embryo’s first neurons begin to wire
themselves the instant that its first heart muscles require directives from
what is on track to become the medulla oblongata, and this brings experience
and Peirce’s three categories down to the cellular level. Defining thought as
semiotic in one instance and instinctual in another is symptomatic of a
category error. Here is an excerpt from something I am working on that
summarizes why I believe that DNA entanglement, inferred from the manner of DNA
replication, might be integral to a robust semiotic paradigm:
Experimental evidence is increasingly coming to light to
suggest DNA entanglement. For example, Pizzi et al (2004) have established
nonlocal correlations between separated neural networks, which have been
cultured using the same DNA. In their conclusion, however, researchers seem to
be going down the reductionist line of trying to find how a mechanistic system
utilizes entanglement within the context of the clockwork. Perhaps they are
looking too hard for mechanistic linkages that don't exist. Maybe the answer is
staring them in the face... there is no "clockwork" that "utilizes"
entanglement… the entanglement is in the whole of the DNA molecule itself. My
own hunch is that the entangled DNA molecules enable the body's cells to access
the shared mind-body condition, to be informed by it. In this way, DNA
entanglement plays a crucial role in knowing how to be.
This would be analogous to how our telecommunication technologies
provide every person in a city with immediate access to the city's options, to
inform its people on how to be. For example, people growing up in working-class
or middle-class suburbs are more likely to know how to be tradesmen,
shopkeepers, nurses, police or the unemployed, while people growing up in
upper-class suburbs are more likely to know how to be professionals, investors,
office-workers or, simply, the idle rich. This interpretation would be
consistent with how stem-cells develop, contingent on their location within the
organs of the body. A stem-cell has to know how to be before it can become a
productive cell with its role in an organ properly defined. In the absence of
semiotic theory, it would seem that traditional biologists or physicists are in
no position to make such inferences. Knowing how to be does not even occur to
them as relevant. They are looking too hard for the clockwork that "causes" the
details, and therefore trying to incorporate entanglement within the mechanics.
They don't get it… they cannot get it because their mechanistic narratives
don't apply any more… it's all about knowing how to be, even at the cellular
level.
Pizzi, R., Fantasia, A., Gelain, F., Rosetti, D., & Vescovi, A.
(2004). Non-local correlations between separated neural networks (E. Donkor, A.
Pirick, & H. Brandt, Eds.). Quantum Information and Computation (Proceedings of
SPIE), 5436(II), 107-117. Retrieved August 2, 2015, from
http://faculty.nps.edu/baer/CompMod-phys/PizziWebPage/pizzi.pdf
The ball is in our court, folks. There is no such thing as “instinct.” Even a
cell has to know how to be.
sj
From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, 4 September 2015 8:16 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [biosemiotics:8851] Re: Can crystals think ?
Stephen, Sung, Stan, list,
Thank you, Stephen, for the hint about the Holon theory! Thinking, I think, is
in symbols, therefore a matter only of the thirdness of the mind (Peirce:
"Medisense"). So I guess that, besides humans, many animals can think, but
nematodes not. The evolution can think, because the DNA may be said to contain
symbols. The symbols of bees, eg. pheromones (are they symbols?), I would say,
are instinctive, so the thought, that appears in them, is thought of the
evolution´s mind, not thought of the bee´s mind. When the part of the
mind-structure, that in some certain respect controls an organism, is not from
the mind of the organism, but inherited, this is a matter of subsumptive
hierarchy (Stanley N Salthe: "Salthe´12Axiomathes.pdf"). The "holarchy" of the
Holon-theory is a compositional hierarchy, have I got the impression, so I
suspect that the Holon-theory may be unable to cope with this problem of
elsewhere-located or else-restricted mind.
Peirce-Quote:
"There are no other forms of consciousness except the three that have been
mentioned, Feeling, Altersense, and Medisense. They form a sort of sytem.
Feeling is the momentarily present contents of consciousness taken in its
pristine simplicity, apart from anything else. It is consciousness in the first
state, and might be called primisense. Altersense is the consciousness of a
directly present other or second, withstanding us. Medisense is the
consciousness of a thirdness, or medium between primisense and altersense,
leading from the former to the latter. It is consciousness of a process
bringing it to mind. Feeling, or primisense, is the consciousness of firstness,
altersense is consciousness of otherness or secondness; medisense is the
consciousness of means or thirdness. Of primisense there is but one fundamental
mode. Altersense has two modes, Sensation and Will. Medisense has three modes,
Abstraction, Suggestion, Association". (CP 7.551)
Best,
Helmut
"Stephen Jarosek" <[email protected]>
Sung, Helmut, list,
For clarity... surely any discussion of thought can only be considered for
those entities that can be understood as mind-body unities. Thus, an atom or a
molecule can be said to be a mind-body, and it has to “know how to be” to
manifest its properties. I believe that Ken Wilber’s reference to “holons”
might be a reference to this mind-body unity that I am thinking of. Thus
(Jungian principles of the collective unconscious or the quasi-mind of the
universe notwithstanding), a crystal, like a beehive, cannot think, but it is a
manifestation of a collective of thinking entities (atoms), like a beehive is a
manifestation of a collective of bees, hence its order.
As to the question of entropy, and where such mind-bodies derive their energy
from to “think”... irrespective of which model of the universe one prefers
(e.g., big bang versus static universe comprised of galaxies in circular
motion), the motion of matter through space, like the motion of a wire through
a magnetic field, might sustain the activity that is integral to “knowing how
to be.”
The question of whether or not a rock is “conscious” sometimes enters
narratives that I’ve seen on other forums. A rock, in and of itself, can NOT be
conscious. It cannot be conscious because it has neither order nor form nor
anything that can be construed as a mind-body. Only the individual mind-bodies
(holons) of which it is comprised (atoms/molecules) can realistically be
considered possible contenders for the thought paradigm.
sj
From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, 3 September 2015 5:54 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [biosemiotics:8849] Re: Can crystals think ?
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
<http://www.conformon.net/?attachment_id=1088> Self-Organization and
Dissipative Structures. 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
--
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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