Thank you, Lou.
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 8:24 PM, Louis H Kauffman wrote:
> Dear Plamen,
> I will make comments in the text.
> Best,
> Lou
>
> On Mar 9, 2016, at 7:21 AM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
> plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Lou,
>
> thank you for your response.
>
> On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 9:53 AM, Louis H Kauffman wrote:
>
>> Dear Plamen,
>> I suspect that what you would like to know about ‘distinction logic’ is
>> how distinctions arise in natural systems.
>> I would like to know more about this also!
>>
>
> I suspect Spencer-Brown has beeen working on this too.
>
>
> LK. We all work on this. But recall that Laws of Form begins “We take a
> given the idea of distinction and the idea of indication and that one
> cannot have and indication without drawing a distinction. We talk therefore
> the form of distinction for the form.”. This sentence, as Heinz von
> Foerster noted in his review of Laws of Form, cuts through 2000 years of
> semantic weeds.
> There is no conversation, no thought without distinction, without form.
> And yet we containually try to create a theory of the emergence of form.
> Each such theory is structured by the basic distinctions with which it
> begins.
>
"Let there be light."
>
>
>
>> One can imagine that complex interactions can under appropriate
>> circumstances lead to dynamic closed loops of interaction and even
>> concomitant spatial distinctions (in the eye of an observer of the system).
>> Such patterns would be the subject of a distinction logic or a logic of
>> distinctions for that observer. There is the related question of how
>> observers can arise but this is looped around with the first question. The
>> two questions are linked with one another and one can imagine that systems
>> that produce partly stable looping processes can begin to create naming and
>> reference.
>>
>
> This sounds intriguing. Does not this go into biosemiotics?
>
> LK. I suppose it does go into biosemiotics, and also it is related to the
> work of Stuart Kauffman. I am thinking about it in an elemental way. That
> large scale patternings that lead to partially stable recursive structures
> will lead internally to the development of the apparently infinitely clever
> devices we see in evolution. We see this in the exploration of spaces of
> rules and actions of simple structures like cellular automata.
>
Stu was also invited to this session. I hope he will be also able to tell
something. He recently mentions the role of metaphors in our informal
narrative description of the world. By using them we can flash “light”,
i.e. sweeping distinctions, nut the problem is that they are
language-dependent / anthropocentric and cannot always capture the
associations in one’s mind. Do you think there could be a formal way, a
categorisation of basic metaphoric notions?
>
>
>> If they can do that, they will not be far from self-reference. Exactly
>> how this could be done is a mystery. But that it happens is evident in the
>> biological world.
>>
>
> So we come back to the old Searle thesis about self-reference?
>
> https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/ijn_00089222/document
>
> LK. Hmm… I will have to look at Searle’s assertions about self ref. What
> I mean is that if a system can name processes then it can find a name for
> its own process of naming.
>
> LK. When it does this, it has found the linguistic I. “I am the one who
> says I.” I am the one who makes names and reference.” “I name myself I.”
> “I am that I am."
>
>
>> On the other hand you may be interested in the simplicities of the
>> calculus of indications or variations of that. I would be happy to talk
>> about that. When I do it is at the level of human observer and our mutual
>> abilities to distinguish, agree and disagree.
>>
>
> I see. This is the level of the scientist.
> This should be doable. Self-referential microbes are out of question for
> the moment.
>
> LK. Maybe maybe now. The Spencer-Brown Mark refers to itself since it
> refers to any distinction and it is itself seen to be a distinction by the
> observer who is him or her self a Mark.
> So is the microbe, but just how doth the microbe make observations. Answer
> through its interactions. And so … We must reflect on this.
>
This is interesting. So, it should be possible to develop a formal "virus
theory" that interacts with the external world (icl. human beings) from the
viewpoint of the virus, right?
Best,
Plamen.
>
>> On Mar 9, 2016, at 1:10 AM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
>> plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Dear Lou, Pedro and Colleagues,
>>
>>
>> I think that Pedro made an interesting comment suggesting an extension of
>> Lou’s original model that another sort of recursion can be injected from
>> the outside world in terms of multiple nested loops of action. That the
>> species (r)evolution was accelerated and “harmonized” via “cross-cultural”
>> exchange of DNA segments invoked by viruses is a known fact