[PEIRCE-L] The problem with instinct - it's a category error

[Stephen Jarosek]

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:h.raul...@gmx.de] 
Sent: Friday, 4 September 2015 8:16 PM
To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
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 

[PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:8859] Re: Can crystals think ?

[Sungchul Ji]

Helmut, Stan, lists,

"A subsumes B" can be interpreted in more than one ways:

"A contains B."

"A depends on B."

"A is supervenient on B."

"B is prerequisite for A."

"A emerges from B."

The choice between these possible interpretations under a given context of
discourse can be made only on the basis of the physicochemically realistic
*MECHANISMS *that can implement the relations, and not just based on logic.
I believe that

"When it comes to evaluating the validity of any suggested   (090715-1)
physicochemical interactions, MECHANISMS trump logic."

For the convenience of possible future discussions, Statement (090715-1)
may be referred to as the *Principle of Mechanisms over Logic*" (*PoMoL* or
more briefly *PML*).

Most theoretical and philosophical discussions on *emergence* and
*organizations
*seem to ignore discussing the difficult problems of specifying the
physical, chemical, macroscopic, and/or microscopic *mechanisms* responsible
for emergence or organization, resulting in end-less and futile debates.
For example, the issue of whether or not neurons synchronize their
electrical activities through non-local effect (i..e, via entanglement) is
an issue concerning the MECHANISM of neuronal interactions, and not
concerning something outside of it,  as some members on these lists seem to
assume.

To highlight the fundamental import of mechanisms in science, I am tempted
to suggest the following generalization:

"*Mechanisms* are to hard sciences (new philosophy ?)
 (090715-2)
what *logic* is to soft sciences (traditional philosophy ?)."


If I am not mistaken, Statement (090715-2) applies to Peirce's philosophy
as well, since most of the *mechanisms* that are widely discussed in the
contemporary physics (e.g., the second law, statistical mechanics, quantum
mechanics, dark matter and structure of the spiral galaxies), chemistry
(e.g., covalent vs. noncovalent bonds, transition-state theory of chemical
kinetics, self-organizing chemical reactions or chemical waves), and
biology (e.g., the role of DNA in storing and expressing genetic
information, molecular biology, role of chemical waves in cell biology,
neurotransmitters, neural synchrony and consciousness, fMRI and human
thought, etc.) were unknown to him.  If this is true, PML would suggest the
following conclusion:

"It is impossible to anticipate a complete agreement between
(090715-3)
Peircean semiotics and natural sciences because the former
is based mainly on *logic* while the latter is based mainly on
*mechanisms*."


With all the best.

Sung





On Mon, Sep 7, 2015 at 6:46 AM, Helmut Raulien  wrote:

>
> Sung, Stan, lists,
> the interpretation as a subsumptive hierarchy in this case has a
> metaphoric character, I think, because there is the demand, that within
> subsumption the higher level "is-a-kind-of " the lower level: To say, that
> cells are a kind of molecules, is a metaphor. And it is only understandable
> (for an alien who has visited the earth, and whose body does not consist of
> cells) from the time on when there have emerged multicellular organisms.
> Best,
> Helmut
>
>
> "Sungchul Ji"  wrote:
>
> Helmut, Stan, lists,
>
> (*1)*  I agree. The structural hierarchy shown in Figure 1 is both
> *compositional* and *subsumptive*.  "Compositional" can mean either
> reductive or reductionistic (top-down) or constructive or synthetic
> (bottom-up), and "subsumptive" can mean emergent (bottom-up) or
> supervenient (top-down). It may well be that these various names mean
> little unless their associated *mechanisms *of *organization *are
> specified*, *of which there are almost infinite number, just as there are
> almost infinite number of organizations (both as types and as tokens) in
> the Universe.
>
>
>  *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  = *SUBSUMPTION HIERARCHY *[1] (?)
> Reproduced from   [biosemiotics:8854].
>
>
> (*2*) I think the type-token distinction applies to each level of Figure
> 1.  For example, the atom is a type and the hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen etc.
> atoms are tokens.  The society is a type, but the American society, the
> Nigerian society, the Korean society, etc. are tokens.
>
> (*3*)  Again, I would like to emphasize that Figure 1 embodies the
> 'principle 

[PEIRCE-L] Aw: [biosemiotics:8860] The problem with instinct - it's a category error

[Helmut Raulien]

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"  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:h.raul...@gmx.de]
Sent: Friday, 4 September 2015 8:16 PM
To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
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