apokrisis

It is about reproduction - Von Neumann's influential work on self-replicating automata or universal constructors. But you have to have a blueprint of ...

Of course. But you took that statement out of context. Here is the context....

While on that subject, Stanley Salthe has written a bunch of my favourite papers on this point. If I am parroting anyone on the matter, it is his info...

You did say that life was "self-productive machinery" and so I mentioned the telling objection to that being a sufficient statement. The "self" has to...

I agree that entropy accounting can be a little shonky on this score. As we dig into the details of the usual view - entropy always increases – we can...

Ah. But the question when it comes to life is how can a machine self-reproduce. That is the essence of Pattee's epistemic cut issue. It is the central...

Indeed, I am comfortable with any stab at a black and white definition of life having its interesting grey areas. We may differ on that score. So a vi...

A robot has arms and legs doesn't it? Or at least wheels. And sensors. I'm confused which side of the argument you are running. Do you mean emulation ...

Or it self-organises and so intent and concrete possibility co-arise. The form is simply finality finding its fullest expression. The usual Peircean r...

It is alive when it is in the middle of hijacking some host cell's metabolic machinery. That fits the definition. But is it then "inanimate" when it i...

Sure. Plug syntax into the world - make it dependent on that relationship – and away you go. But then it is no longer just a simulation, is it? A simu...

I would say it illustrates a general semiotic truth. Signs in fact have the aim of becoming binary switches. Their goal is to reduce the messy complex...

If the competition here is for the most concise definition, I would go with Howard Pattee's epistemic cut. "Rate-independent symbols regulating rate-d...

I'm saying there is no difficulty. But then to call it a "pretence" is thus unnecessarilly loaded. The codes that could evolve to survive in the physi...

You are still being unconstructively hostile. I've given both ample references and corrected you on two crucial points. I can point you on your path, ...

I was just citing Searle's examples. A full semiotic argument would be more complex. For car drivers, it is the accelerator pedal that is the mechanic...

If coal is buried in the ground, that is a huge store of potential energy that inorganic nature is unable to unlock. But even a primitive first human ...

So this says that the least action path does win. Biology puts a whole bunch of paths in active Darwinian competition. And an ecosytem then arises tha...

And in the culture wars, the "poets" proclaim their own superiority over science. So for a start, we would expect some kind of dichotomy to emerge as ...

Searle did offer the argument that consciousness is a physically embodied process. And that makes the crucial difference. Against the AI symbol proces...

Are you familiar with the biological literature that takes this general entropy production route? Swenson, Schneider and Kay, Lineweaver, Salthe and m...

I am saying that this dualism is always actually a dichotomy, and thus something intrinsically relational. Hotter is only ever relative to colder. And...

Why can’t it be the Holism of the relation that is meaningful? The form represents the intent. The resulting materiality is the degree to which an int...

I see what you mean. But that is part and parcel of the constraints-based approach here. Sameness (or synechism in Peircean parlance) is the global co...

In fact, it is anti-engineering speak. It is natural process speak. A tornado is a classic dissipative structure. The interest of engineers is piqued ...

But does Pattee think that? What is relevant to this thread is the point I have already tied to make. Yes, there is a dualism at the heart of everythi...

We've had this discussion before. In my view - and I spent many years talking with him – he took this angle to sell his wares. He was making his name ...

It is worth knowing that semiotics is divided into the dyadic tradition of Saussure and the triadic tradition of Peirce. And until the rediscovery of ...

Maybe the Hard Problem is only a problem for those still stuck in the maw of Cartesian dualism? Pattee is a biologist. And biology had its own version...

I hadn’t read that one myself. But it’s a handy paper in connection with this Panpsychism thread.

Can it both be a pretence (in physical terms) and yet also a hugely powerful one? I would say that undercuts your own argument. My claim is that the h...

Your logic is all over the shop in your eagerness to foster a dispute. I make the obvious point that similarity and difference are terms relative to e...

In fact the concrete reality is obvious in biology. DNA codes for proteins. Neurons code for sensorimotor habits of response. The theoretical issue is...

Saussure and structuralism were indeed also an early part of my adventures. If you are interested, it would be worth checking out Howard Pattee’s pape...

And so you are claiming instead that the first person to utter this particular noise had exactly that clear intent of it being understood in that fash...

Again I will point out that there are two different notions of causality in play here. The mechanical notion of cause and effect would say that A give...

I don't understand your point. What definition of matter are you using? Matter can be seen as a material process or flow. So it is a succession of eve...

If it is a form of panpsychism, then it is one shorn of panpsychism's subjectivist and idealist tendencies. That doesn't really square with panpsychis...

Yep. He was talking about autopoiesis there most probably - one of the various incarnations of a systems science approach through the 80s and 90s. Or ...

I've made a good living putting complex stuff into the simplest lay explanations. I've even been commissioned to do such for the likes of Reader's Dig...

That's a challenge and a half. But the central claim of a biosemiotic approach to the science of life and mind is that the mind~matter divide can be b...

I nearly added that too. :grin: We are on the same page. I was also going to remind of the formal duality that has been established between informatio...

So how does this work? It seems that awareness is being defined by its freedom to be about anything. A mind can imagine what it wishes. Yet also minds...

That’s right. To in-form is to constrain or give shape. And information is a constraint on uncertainty. It produces concrete definiteness from a sea o...

Yep. Enactivism is another recent incarnation of the general idea. This is tricky as information is both a primitive, and also stands against the noti...

That is where panpsychism becomes even more intellectually dishonest. People do argue that neural complexity somehow amplifies the dilute awareness th...

I'm not sure what you mean. You may be making a point from linguistics that is not that relevant to semiosis in a more general triadic sense. But synt...

What I've emphasised in the past is that entropy and negentropy are two sides of the one coin. You have to have structure to dissipate, and dissipatio...

A car is in fact the worst kind of example as a car is a machine and not an organism. The whole point of a car is that it exists as the expression of ...

Yes and no. :grin: Panpsychism is a non-starter for a science-informed metaphysics because "consciousness all the way down" explains nothing and just ...