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<p>Glen -</p>
<p>Attempting a balance between succinctness and
completeness/contextualization/relevance I offer the following
excerpt from Rączaszek‑Leonardi's essay about 3 pages into the
7-page work:<br>
</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="page" title="Page 3">
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<p><i><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family:
'STIX'">One important implication of the proposed
scenario for the emergence of autogen
is that in the process of transferring a complex set
of constraints from substrate to
substrate, the “message”, never becomes an abstract
and immaterial “thing” – or a
set of abstract symbols, which seem to be a staple
substance of mind in a dualistic
Cartesian picture. On the contrary: the process can be
viewed, in some sense, as an
opposition to what is usually meant by abstraction: it
embodies, in a concrete physi-
cal structure, the complex dynamical and relational
constraints that maintain an
organism far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
</span></i></p>
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</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">This quotation is my attempt to
acknowledge/identify a possible resolution (or at least
explication) of the tension between the duals of the Cartesian
Duality we bandy about here.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Another correspondent offline offered
the correlation between Deacon's homeo/morpho/teleo-dynamics and
Kauffman's reflections on living systems in his 2000
Investigations:<br>
<blockquote>
<div dir="auto">- detect gradients</div>
<div dir="auto">- construct constraints to extract work from
gradients</div>
<div dir="auto">- do work to maintain those constraints</div>
</blockquote>
<div dir="auto">may be relevant (or interesting or both).</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/21/23 8:23 AM, Steve Smith wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:9b64496f-b69d-73c7-f236-8f1c8ea34d3d@swcp.com">
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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;" moz-do-not-send="true">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;" moz-do-not-send="true">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;" moz-do-not-send="true">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;" moz-do-not-send="true">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;" moz-do-not-send="true">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 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"
moz-do-not-send="true"><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"
moz-do-not-send="true">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/"
moz-do-not-send="true">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/" moz-do-not-send="true"><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"
moz-do-not-send="true"><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"
moz-do-not-send="true"><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"
moz-do-not-send="true"><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"
moz-do-not-send="true"><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>
<br>
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