Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture: Aftermath
Hi Terry, I have used the term ‘perception’ in referring to in-formation that affects internal structure or dynamics. This would contrast with forms of potential information that might pass through the system without being ‘perceived’. For example, we have a finite number of mechanisms we call senses, each of which is sensitive to particular modes of information we encounter in our environment, but we are not able to perceive every form of information that we encounter (e.g., UV light). I think you are using the term ‘interpretation’ to describe the same thing. Do you agree? Do you think the notions of perception and interpretation are effectively the same thing? Cheers, Guy Guy Hoelzer, Associate Professor Department of Biology University of Nevada Reno Phone: 775-784-4860 Fax: 775-784-1302 hoel...@unr.edumailto:hoel...@unr.edu On Apr 24, 2015, at 10:22 AM, Terrence W. DEACON dea...@berkeley.edumailto:dea...@berkeley.edu wrote: Hi Pedro, Indeed, you capture a fundamental point of my work. I entirely agree with your comment about living processes and their internal informative organization. The three exceedingly simple molecular model systems (forms of autogenesis) that I discuss toward the end of the paper were intended to exemplify a minimal life-like unit that—because of its self-reconstituting and self-repairing features—could both exemplify an origin of life transition and a first simplest system exhibiting interpretive competence. It is only because these autogenic systems respond to disruption of their internal organizational coherence that they can be said to also interpret aspects of their environment with respect to this. My goal in this work is to ultimately provide a physico-chemical foundation for a scientific biosemiotics, which is currently mostly exemplified by analogies to human-level semiotic categories. Thank you for your thoughtful comments and your mediation of these discussions. Sincerely, Terry On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 5:34 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.esmailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es wrote: Dear Terry and colleagues, I hope you don't mind if I send some suggestions publicly. First, thank you for the aftermath, it provides appropriate closure to a very intense discussion session. Second, I think you have encapsulated very clearly an essential point (at least in my opinion): Among these givens is the question of what is minimally necessary for a system or process to be interpretive, in the sense of being able to utilize present intrinsic physical properties of things to refer to absent or displaced properties or phenomena. This research question is ignorable when it is possible to assume human or even animal interpreters as part of the system one is analyzing. At some point, however, it becomes relevant to not only be more explicit about what is being assumed, but also to explain how this interpretive capacity could possibly originate in a universe where direct contiguity of causal influence is the rule. My suggestion concerns the absence phenomenon (it also has appeared in some previous discussion in this list --notably from Bob's). You imply that there is an entity capable of dynamically building upon an external absences, OK quite clear, but what about internal absences? I mean at the origins of communication there could be the sensing of the internal-- lets call it functional voids, needs, gaps, deficiencies, etc. Cellularly there are some good arguments about that, even in the 70's there was a metabolic code hypothesis crafted on the origins of cellular signaling. For instance, one of the most important environmental internal detections concerns cAMP, which means you/me are in an energy trouble... some more evolutionary arguments can be thrown. Above all, this idea puts the life cycle and its self-production needs in the center of communication, and in the very origins of the interpretive capabilities. Until now I have not seen much reflections around the life cycle as the true provider of both communications and meanings, maybe it conduces to new avenues of thought interesting to explore... All the best! --Pedro Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: Dear FIS colleagues, Herewith the comments received from Terry several weeks ago. As I said yesterday, the idea is to properly conclude that session, not to restart the discussion. Of course, scholarly comments are always welcome, but conclusively and not looking for argumentative rounds. Remember that in less than ten days we will have a new session on info science and library science. best --Pedro -- Retrospective comments on the January 2015 FIS discussion Terrence Deacon (dea...@berkeley.edumailto:dea...@berkeley.edu) During the bulk of my career since the early 1980s I studied brain organization with a particular focus on its role in the production and interpretation of communication
Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture: Aftermath
Dear Pedro, Dear Terry, Always an optimist, I was convinced that there could be a convergence of your approaches and my Logic in Reality starting from the domain of absence. What Pedro refers to as functional voids, needs, gaps, deficiencies (absences) are all predominantly negative aspects of systems that operate especially in living systems 'together' with their positive counterparts (presences). The evolution of these elements in the physico-chemical domain follows this logic, in which negative elements always are given the necessary ontological 'status'. They are the basis for the emergence of higher level entities, following Terry's hierarchies of dynamics. Thus we may have, to further support a scientific biosemiotics, a dynamic logic to replace the analogies to human-level semiotic categories many of which (read: Peirce) do not instantiate the necessary ontological complexity and commitment. Cheers, Joseph Message d'origine De : dea...@berkeley.edu Date : 24/04/2015 - 10:22 (PST) À : pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es Objet : Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture: Aftermath Hi Pedro, Indeed, you capture a fundamental point of my work. I entirely agree with your comment about living processes and their internal informative organization. The three exceedingly simple molecular model systems (forms of autogenesis) that I discuss toward the end of the paper were intended to exemplify a minimal life-like unit that—because of its self-reconstituting and self-repairing features—could both exemplify an origin of life transition and a first simplest system exhibiting interpretive competence. It is only because these autogenic systems respond to disruption of their internal organizational coherence that they can be said to also interpret aspects of their environment with respect to this. My goal in this work is to ultimately provide a physico-chemical foundation for a scientific biosemiotics, which is currently mostly exemplified by analogies to human-level semiotic categories. Thank you for your thoughtful comments and your mediation of these discussions. Sincerely, Terry On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 5:34 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es wrote: Dear Terry and colleagues, I hope you don't mind if I send some suggestions publicly. First, thank you for the aftermath, it provides appropriate closure to a very intense discussion session. Second, I think you have encapsulated very clearly an essential point (at least in my opinion): Among these givens is the question of what is minimally necessary for a system or process to be interpretive, in the sense of being able to utilize present intrinsic physical properties of things to refer to absent or displaced properties or phenomena. This research question is ignorable when it is possible to assume human or even animal interpreters as part of the system one is analyzing. At some point, however, it becomes relevant to not only be more explicit about what is being assumed, but also to explain how this interpretive capacity could possibly originate in a universe where direct contiguity of causal influence is the rule. My suggestion concerns the absence phenomenon (it also has appeared in some previous discussion in this list --notably from Bob's). You imply that there is an entity capable of dynamically building upon an external absences, OK quite clear, but what about internal absences? I mean at the origins of communication there could be the sensing of the internal-- lets call it functional voids, needs, gaps, deficiencies, etc. Cellularly there are some good arguments about that, even in the 70's there was a metabolic code hypothesis crafted on the origins of cellular signaling. For instance, one of the most important environmental internal detections concerns cAMP, which means you/me are in an energy trouble... some more evolutionary arguments can be thrown. Above all, this idea puts the life cycle and its self-production needs in the center of communication, and in the very origins of the interpretive capabilities. Until now I have not seen much reflections around the life cycle as the true provider of both communications and meanings, maybe it conduces to new avenues of thought interesting to explore... All the best! --Pedro Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: Dear FIS colleagues, Herewith the comments received from Terry several weeks ago. As I said yesterday, the idea is to properly conclude that session, not to restart the discussion. Of course, scholarly comments are always welcome, but conclusively and not looking for argumentative rounds. Remember that in less than ten days we will have a new session on info science and library science. best --Pedro -- Retrospective comments on the January 2015 FIS discussion Terrence Deacon (dea...@berkeley.edu) During the bulk of my career since the early 1980s I studied brain organization with a
Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture: Aftermath
Hi Pedro, Indeed, you capture a fundamental point of my work. I entirely agree with your comment about living processes and their internal informative organization. The three exceedingly simple molecular model systems (forms of autogenesis) that I discuss toward the end of the paper were intended to exemplify a minimal life-like unit that—because of its self-reconstituting and self-repairing features—could both exemplify an origin of life transition and a first simplest system exhibiting interpretive competence. It is only because these autogenic systems respond to disruption of their internal organizational coherence that they can be said to also interpret aspects of their environment with respect to this. My goal in this work is to ultimately provide a physico-chemical foundation for a scientific biosemiotics, which is currently mostly exemplified by analogies to human-level semiotic categories. Thank you for your thoughtful comments and your mediation of these discussions. Sincerely, Terry On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 5:34 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es wrote: Dear Terry and colleagues, I hope you don't mind if I send some suggestions publicly. First, thank you for the aftermath, it provides appropriate closure to a very intense discussion session. Second, I think you have encapsulated very clearly an essential point (at least in my opinion): *Among these givens is the question of what is minimally necessary for a system or process to be interpretive, in the sense of being able to utilize present intrinsic physical properties of things to refer to absent or displaced properties or phenomena. This research question is ignorable when it is possible to assume human or even animal interpreters as part of the system one is analyzing. At some point, however, it becomes relevant to not only be more explicit about what is being assumed, but also to explain how this interpretive capacity could possibly originate in a universe where direct contiguity of causal influence is the rule. *My suggestion concerns the absence phenomenon (it also has appeared in some previous discussion in this list --notably from Bob's). You imply that there is an entity capable of dynamically building upon an external absences, OK quite clear, but what about internal absences? I mean at the origins of communication there could be the sensing of the internal-- lets call it functional voids, needs, gaps, deficiencies, etc. Cellularly there are some good arguments about that, even in the 70's there was a metabolic code hypothesis crafted on the origins of cellular signaling. For instance, one of the most important environmental internal detections concerns cAMP, which means you/me are in an energy trouble... some more evolutionary arguments can be thrown. Above all, this idea puts the life cycle and its self-production needs in the center of communication, and in the very origins of the interpretive capabilities. Until now I have not seen much reflections around the life cycle as the true provider of both communications and meanings, maybe it conduces to new avenues of thought interesting to explore... All the best! --Pedro Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: Dear FIS colleagues, Herewith the comments received from Terry several weeks ago. As I said yesterday, the idea is to properly conclude that session, not to restart the discussion. Of course, scholarly comments are always welcome, but conclusively and not looking for argumentative rounds. Remember that in less than ten days we will have a new session on info science and library science. best --Pedro* -- Retrospective comments on the January 2015 FIS discussion* Terrence Deacon (dea...@berkeley.edu) During the bulk of my career since the early 1980s I studied brainorganization with a particular focus on its role in the production andinterpretation of communication in vertebrate animals and humans. Onecore target of these studies was to understand the neurologicalchanges that led to the evolution of the human language capacity andwhy it is so anomalous in the context of the other diversecommunication systems that have evolved. This work was largelyconducted using standard lab-based neuroscience tools—from axonaltracer techniques, to fetal neural transplantation, to MRI imaging,and more—and studying a diverse array of animal brains. Besidesevolutionary and developmental neuroscience, this path led me toexplore ethology, linguistics, semiotic theories, information theoriesand the philosophical issues that these research areas touched upon.Indeed, my first co-authored book was not on neuroscience but on thedesign of the early Apple desktop computers. So I came at the issuesexplored in my FIS essay from this diverse background. This has led meto pose what may be more basic questions than are usually considered,and to
Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture: Aftermath
Hi Guy, Yes. At the very basic level that I explore with these ultra simple model systems it would not be easy to distinguish perception and reaction. Both involve interpretive steps, in that only some material features—specifically those with potentially disruptive or constructive potential for system organization—are assigned informative value in consequence of the self-rectifying dynamics they correlate with. — Terry On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Guy A Hoelzer hoel...@unr.edu wrote: Hi Terry, I have used the term ‘perception’ in referring to in-formation that affects internal structure or dynamics. This would contrast with forms of potential information that might pass through the system without being ‘perceived’. For example, we have a finite number of mechanisms we call senses, each of which is sensitive to particular modes of information we encounter in our environment, but we are not able to perceive every form of information that we encounter (e.g., UV light). I think you are using the term ‘interpretation’ to describe the same thing. Do you agree? Do you think the notions of perception and interpretation are effectively the same thing? Cheers, Guy Guy Hoelzer, Associate Professor Department of Biology University of Nevada Reno Phone: 775-784-4860 Fax: 775-784-1302 hoel...@unr.edu On Apr 24, 2015, at 10:22 AM, Terrence W. DEACON dea...@berkeley.edu wrote: Hi Pedro, Indeed, you capture a fundamental point of my work. I entirely agree with your comment about living processes and their internal informative organization. The three exceedingly simple molecular model systems (forms of autogenesis) that I discuss toward the end of the paper were intended to exemplify a minimal life-like unit that—because of its self-reconstituting and self-repairing features—could both exemplify an origin of life transition and a first simplest system exhibiting interpretive competence. It is only because these autogenic systems respond to disruption of their internal organizational coherence that they can be said to also interpret aspects of their environment with respect to this. My goal in this work is to ultimately provide a physico-chemical foundation for a scientific biosemiotics, which is currently mostly exemplified by analogies to human-level semiotic categories. Thank you for your thoughtful comments and your mediation of these discussions. Sincerely, Terry On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 5:34 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es wrote: Dear Terry and colleagues, I hope you don't mind if I send some suggestions publicly. First, thank you for the aftermath, it provides appropriate closure to a very intense discussion session. Second, I think you have encapsulated very clearly an essential point (at least in my opinion): *Among these givens is the question of what is minimally necessary for a system or process to be interpretive, in the sense of being able to utilize present intrinsic physical properties of things to refer to absent or displaced properties or phenomena. This research question is ignorable when it is possible to assume human or even animal interpreters as part of the system one is analyzing. At some point, however, it becomes relevant to not only be more explicit about what is being assumed, but also to explain how this interpretive capacity could possibly originate in a universe where direct contiguity of causal influence is the rule. *My suggestion concerns the absence phenomenon (it also has appeared in some previous discussion in this list --notably from Bob's). You imply that there is an entity capable of dynamically building upon an external absences, OK quite clear, but what about internal absences? I mean at the origins of communication there could be the sensing of the internal-- lets call it functional voids, needs, gaps, deficiencies, etc. Cellularly there are some good arguments about that, even in the 70's there was a metabolic code hypothesis crafted on the origins of cellular signaling. For instance, one of the most important environmental internal detections concerns cAMP, which means you/me are in an energy trouble... some more evolutionary arguments can be thrown. Above all, this idea puts the life cycle and its self-production needs in the center of communication, and in the very origins of the interpretive capabilities. Until now I have not seen much reflections around the life cycle as the true provider of both communications and meanings, maybe it conduces to new avenues of thought interesting to explore... All the best! --Pedro Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: Dear FIS colleagues, Herewith the comments received from Terry several weeks ago. As I said yesterday, the idea is to properly conclude that session, not to restart the discussion. Of course, scholarly comments are always welcome, but conclusively and not looking for argumentative
