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<p>Glen -</p>
<p>FWIW, I'm still chewing on your assertions of 5 months ago which
referenced <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21103/">Christian List's "Levels"</a>
and the points he made (and you reinforced) on Indexicality and
first/third person descriptions *because* they tie in to my own
twisty turny journey of trying to understand the paradoxes of
mind/body substance/form duality (illusions?). <br>
</p>
<p>To give a nod to the Ninja's website (or more to the point, your
reference to it and comparison to teleodynamics.org) I assume your
criticism is that the website(s) is more rhetorical than
informational?</p>
<p>The relevance of Deacon's Teleodynamics in my thinking/noodling
has to do with the tension between supervenience and entailment.
Deacon's style *does* depend a bit on saying the same thing over
and over again, louder and louder which can be convincing for all
the wrong reasons. But that alone does not make what he's saying
wrong, or even wrong-headed. Perhaps I am guilty of courting
confirmation bias insomuch as Deacon's constructions of
homeo-morpho-teleo dynamics seem to support the style of dualism
which I suppose appeals to me for reasons I don't understand yet
or can't articulate.</p>
<p>Since I am not normally succinct, I restricted myself to a
handful of references rather than open ended descriptions of
what/why/where/how/when every detail of what he said meant to
me. I fail at (avoid) clarity with too much more often than with
too little, no?<br>
</p>
<p>I did NOT link Sheldrake's Wikipedia page because I thought you
(Glen) were unfamiliar with him and his stance/assertions and that
you needed to read him. The link was more for completeness for
*anyone else* who might not have ever bothered to get the word
from closer to the horse's mouth. I myself dismissed him 100% and
relied entirely on other's opinions and judgements of him until he
came here to SFe (2009?) and gave the lecture(s) where one of his
fans stuck a knife in him (I don't know if anyone ever figured out
what the point the fan was making?). It just so happened that at
SFx we were holding a "blender" (presentations with group
discussion) on the topic of morphometric analysis) that very same
night (or weekend) so my mind was on the topic of form ->
function which had me mildly more receptive to (curious about)
ideas *like* morphic resonance. After that I was more like 95%
dismissive of what he goes on about. So... now that I wasted
another minute of your time on *this* paragraph, I apologize for
seeming to promote Sheldrake's work in your direction or imply
that you should waste time reading him. Whether reading Deacon
turns out to be a waste of time is an open question for me
myself. I have invested quite a bit of time and still don't have
as much traction as I would like. I think that is because these
are steep and slippery subjects in their own right, not because
his work is a worthless collection of bits and pixels.<br>
</p>
<p>I offered Rączaszek‑Leonardi's essay on Deacon's much larger work
on Molecule-> Sign as a slightly more accessible intro to
Deacon's thinking about bits V atoms and supervenience. To the
extent that none of this tickles any of your own thoughts or
interests in what I assume to be somewhat parallel (though maybe
not convergent?) lines of inquiry, then I suppose it would be a
waste of your time to follow it to any distance.</p>
<p>The following bit from the introduction to the essay linked
*might* characterize what it is I *thought* you might find
relevant in the paper and in the larger body of Deacon's work:
_Information v information-transmission_ and _aboutism_ each were
reminiscent to me of some of your arguments about whether
communication actually exists and List's arguments about
indexicality perhaps.<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px
1.5em; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;
line-height: 1.8; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:
Georgia, Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start;
text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(252, 252, 252);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"><i>When Erwin
Schrödinger (</i><i><a data-track="click"
data-track-action="reference anchor"
data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref"
aria-label="Reference 1944" title="Schrödinger, E. (1944).
What Is Life? Cambridge University Press."
href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9#ref-CR24"
id="ref-link-section-d501344801e330" style="box-sizing:
inherit; text-decoration: underline 0.0625rem;
text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; background-color:
transparent; color: rgb(0, 75, 131); overflow-wrap:
break-word; word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset:
0.08em;">1944</a></i><i>) pondered</i><i><span> </span></i><i><span
style="box-sizing: inherit;">What is Life?</span></i><i><span> </span></i><i>from
a physicist’s point of view he focused on two conundrums:
how organisms maintain themselves in a far from equilibrium
thermodynamic state and how they store and pass on the
information that determines their organization. In his
metaphor of an aperiodic crystal as the carrier of this
information he both foreshadowed Claude Shannon’s (</i><i><a
data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor"
data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref"
aria-label="Reference 1948" title="Shannon, C. E. (1948).
A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System
Technical Journal, 27, 623–656."
href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9#ref-CR25"
id="ref-link-section-d501344801e336" style="box-sizing:
inherit; text-decoration: underline 0.0625rem;
text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; background-color:
transparent; color: rgb(0, 75, 131); overflow-wrap:
break-word; word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset:
0.08em;">1948</a></i><i>) analysis of information storage
and transmission and Watson and Crick’s (</i><i><a
data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor"
data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref"
aria-label="Reference 1953" title="Watson, J. D., &
Crick, F. H. (1953). A structure for deoxyribose nucleic
acid. Nature, 171, 737–738."
href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9#ref-CR27"
id="ref-link-section-d501344801e339" style="box-sizing:
inherit; text-decoration: underline 0.0625rem;
text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; background-color:
transparent; color: rgb(0, 75, 131); overflow-wrap:
break-word; word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset:
0.08em;">1953</a></i><i>) discovery of the double helix
structure of the DNA molecule. So by 1958 when Francis Crick
(</i><i><a data-track="click" data-track-action="reference
anchor" data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref"
aria-label="Reference 1958" title="Crick, F. H. (1958). On
Protein Synthesis. In F. K. Sanders (Ed.), Symposia of the
Society for Experimental Biology, Number XII: The
Biological Replication of Macromolecules (pp. 138–163).
Cambridge University Press."
href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9#ref-CR3"
id="ref-link-section-d501344801e342" style="box-sizing:
inherit; text-decoration: underline 0.0625rem;
text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; background-color:
transparent; color: rgb(0, 75, 131); overflow-wrap:
break-word; word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset:
0.08em;">1958</a></i><i>) first articulated what he called
the “central dogma” of molecular biology (i.e. that
information in the cell flows from DNA to RNA to protein
structure and not the reverse) it was taken for granted that
that DNA and RNA molecules were “carriers” of information.
By scientific rhetorical fiat it had become legitimate to
treat molecules as able to provide information “about” other
molecules. By the mid 1970s Richard Dawkins (</i><i><a
data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor"
data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref"
aria-label="Reference 1976" title="Dawkins, R. (1976). The
Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press."
href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9#ref-CR5"
id="ref-link-section-d501344801e346" style="box-sizing:
inherit; text-decoration: underline 0.0625rem;
text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; background-color:
transparent; color: rgb(0, 75, 131); overflow-wrap:
break-word; word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset:
0.08em;">1976</a></i><i>) could safely assume this as fact
and follow the idea to its logical implications for
evolutionary theory in his popular book</i><i><span> </span></i><i><span
style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Selfish Gene</span></i><i>.
By describing a sequence of nucleotides in a DNA molecule as
information and DNA replication as the essential defining
feature of life, information was reduced to pattern and
interpretation was reduced to copying. What may have
initially been a metaphor became difficult to disentangle
from the chemistry.</i></p>
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px
1.5em; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;
line-height: 1.8; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:
Georgia, Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(252,
252, 252); text-decoration-thickness: initial;
text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;"><i>In this way the concept of biological information
lost its aboutness but became safe for use in a
materialistic science that had no place for what seemed like
a nonphysical property.</i><span><i> </i><br>
</span></p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p align="center"><img moz-do-not-send="true"
src="https://i0.wp.com/teleodynamics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/pic2.jpg?w=795&ssl=1"
alt="" width="409" height="305"></p>
<p>Just to keep my flog landing on the hide of the horse that may
have expired several posts ago in this chain: Deacon's
introduction of *teleo* to this characterization of complex
adaptive systems is the *first* example I have found which is
even a little bit compelling toward understanding "Life Itself"
(in the sense of what Schrodinger was going on about in 1944)...
with enough inspection (or flogging) it may fizzle out and become
nothing more than wet ash. For the moment it feels like the
glimmer of a signal where Sheldrake (and his ken) were mostly
generating noise (more to the point, wishful thinking?)
previously...<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/20/23 11:32 AM, glen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:11956eab-7483-83f1-32c3-683a25a7835c@gmail.com">[sigh]
But the whole point of knowing other people is so that they can
make your own work more efficient or effective. While I appreciate
the *citation* of tomes, to some extent, citation isn't really
useful for construction of a concept. It's only useful for
auditing constructs. So, rather than go read the teleodynamics
website (or sieve Sheldrake's spooky action at a distance stuff),
I'll ask you to explain *why* teleodynamics is interesting from a
panpsychist stance? (Or to drive my point home about how useless
citations are, how is it related to Biology's First Law
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/biology-s-first-law-the-tendency-for-diversity-and-complexity-to-increase-in-evolutionary-systems-daniel-w-mcshea/8308564?ean=9780226562261"><https://bookshop.org/p/books/biology-s-first-law-the-tendency-for-diversity-and-complexity-to-increase-in-evolutionary-systems-daniel-w-mcshea/8308564?ean=9780226562261></a>?)<br>
<br>
Or, barring that, I'll add it to my (practically) infinite queue
of stuff I should read but probably won't until I have a hook into
it. And even if I do read it, I probably won't understand it.
<br>
<br>
With the Toribio article, I'm motivated to read it because BC
Smith hooked me a long time ago. But Sheldrake? No way in hell am
I going to invest time in that. Teleodynamics? Well, it's a
website. And the website for ninjas is more interesting:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.realultimatepower.net/index4.htm">http://www.realultimatepower.net/index4.htm</a>
<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote><i>On Mon, Sep 12, 2022, at 6:29 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:
</i><i><br>
</i><i>My question of how well we can describe graph-based ...
what? ...
</i><i><br>
</i><i>"statements"? "theorems"? Whatever. It's treated fairly
well in List's
</i><i><br>
</i><i>paper:
</i><i><br>
</i>
<i><br>
</i><i>Levels of Description and Levels of Reality: A General
Framework by
</i><i><br>
</i><i>Christian List </i><i><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21103/">http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21103/</a></i><i>
</i><i><br>
</i>
<i><br>
</i><i>in section "6.3 Indexical versus non-indexical and
first-personal
</i><i><br>
</i><i>versus third-personal descriptions". We tend to think of
the 3rd
</i><i><br>
</i><i>person graph of possible worlds/states as if it's more
universal ... a
</i><i><br>
</i><i>complete representation of the world. But there's
something captured
</i><i><br>
</i><i>by the index/control-pointer </i><i><b
class="moz-txt-star"><span class="moz-txt-tag">*</span>walking<span
class="moz-txt-tag">*</span></b></i><i> some graph, with
or without a
</i><i><br>
</i><i>scoping on how many hops away the index/subjective-locus
can "see".
</i><i><br>
</i>
<i><br>
</i><i>I liken this to Dave's (and Frank's to some extent)
consistent
</i><i><br>
</i><i>insistence that one's inner life is a valid thing in the
world, Dave
</i><i><br>
</i><i>w.r.t. psychedelics and meditation and Frank's defense of
things like
</i><i><br>
</i><i>psychodynamics. Wolpert seems to be suggesting a
"deserialization" of
</i><i><br>
</i><i>the graph when he focuses on "finite sequences of
elements from a
</i><i><br>
</i><i>finite set of symbols". I.e. walking the graph with the
index at a
</i><i><br>
</i><i>given node. With the 3rd person ... whole graph of
graphs, the
</i><i><br>
</i><i>serialization of that bushy thing can only produce an
infinitely long
</i><i><br>
</i><i>sequence of elements from a (perhaps) infinte set. Is the
bushiness
</i><i><br>
</i><i><b class="moz-txt-star"><span class="moz-txt-tag">*</span>dense<span
class="moz-txt-tag">*</span></b></i><i> (greater than
countable, as Wolpert asks)? Or sparse?
</i><i><br>
</i>
<i><br>
</i><i>I'm sure I'm not wording all this well. But that's why
I'm glad y'all
</i><i><br>
</i><i>are participating, to help clarify these things.
</i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:11956eab-7483-83f1-32c3-683a25a7835c@gmail.com">
<br>
On 2/20/23 10:10, Steve Smith wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<br>
As the discussion evolves:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">But the bot *does* have a body. It just
doesn't take the same form as a human body.
<br>
<br>
I disagree re: panpsychism revolving around "interest" or
"intention" ... or even "acting". It's more about accumulation
and the tendency of cumulative objects to accumulate (and
differentiate). Perhaps negentropy is a closer concept than
"interest" or "intention". And, although I disagree that
experience monism is more primitive than panpsychism, I agree
that these forms of panpsychism require mechanisms for
composition (against which James is famous) and other
structure.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I re-introduce/offer Terrence Deacon's Teleodynamics
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://teleodynamics.org/"><https://teleodynamics.org/></a> which I do not take to be
(quite?) as difficult to integrate/think-about asSheldrake's
Morphic Resonance
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake"><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake></a>
<br>
<br>
As with Torebeo's essay on BCS' OOO, Joanna Rączaszek‑Leonardi
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://c1dcs711.caspio.com/dp/6e93a00069a6c46c407e42c6b540/files/3503861"><https://c1dcs711.caspio.com/dp/6e93a00069a6c46c407e42c6b540/files/3503861></a>reviews
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://c1dcs711.caspio.com/dp/6e93a00069a6c46c407e42c6b540/files/3503861"><https://c1dcs711.caspio.com/dp/6e93a00069a6c46c407e42c6b540/files/3503861></a>
Deacon's How Molecules Became Signs
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9.pdf?pdf=button"><https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9.pdf?pdf=button></a>
giving me a hint of a bridge between the "dualistic" worlds
(form V. substance or body V. mind) we banter about here a lot?
<br>
<br>
I found EricS's recent response very thought provoking, but
every attempt I had to respond directly felt like more
"stirring" so am holding off until/when/if I might actually be
able to add coherent signal to the one I get hints of forming
here...
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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