Dear Pedro and All, Pedro is correct in calling our attention to a Neurodynamic Central Theory (NCT) as a necessary, essential component of a proper Theory of Information. One of the corollaries would be that most of us would actually have to study the NCT in order to understand it and its relevance, at least in part. I am sure that Pedro does not intend that NCT will or is sufficient to solve the problems of being and existence, or that language will "wither away". His approach is intended to restore the balance, in the discussion of information, between hard, "unfeeling" science on the one hand and over-philosophical approaches, both Peircean and non-Peircean, on the other which lump Pedro's science together with the former. The reason that Logic in Reality, in my humble opinion, has a role in this discussion is that it naturalizes (brings into science), conflicting concepts at all levels - local/global; afference/efference; hierarchical/heterarchical schemes - and allows them to "co-exist" and provides a principled framework for their interaction. Note that Pedro does not separate "logics" (say, LIR) from neuroscientific findings, but insists they must inform one another. Thank you and best wishes, ----Ursprüngliche Nachricht---- Von: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Datum: 06.05.2011 13:59 An: <fis@listas.unizar.es> Betreff: [Fis] The world of singularities, beyond language Dear Joseph and colleagues, In some important respect, language is only a clever means to an end. It is a way for transmitting knowledge from an individual to another. Following Dunbar (2010), the real issue is the mental, cognitive mechanisms and abilities that underly language... and seemingly we are not quite unique in that regard. The continuum of communicating and cognizing capabilities goes downwards (or upwards) quite smoothly: modern Homo, archaic Homo, Homo erectus, great apes, advanced mammals... In other words, part of the response to the important point raised by Karl, Rafael and others, and continued so long, also lies in the province of neuroscience. Neither literature, philosophy, logics, etc. can provide the most cogent scholarly response (in our times!) without the recent neuroscientific findings, which unfortunately have not entered into the general scientific communication yet (as Gordana commented, living philosophers would talk about dead neuroscientists, and the living neuroscientists about dead philosophers). However, if I am not too wrong, we might be close to a neural breakthrough similar to what the genetic code represented for biology about two generations ago. My optimistic stance is that one of the most interesting places to contribute to the scholarly circulation of new cognitive ideas so badly needed might be this very list. In that regard, some parties could find interesting my personal neuroscientific version of the problem... (see two paragraphs of mine about that): The NCT scheme (“Neurodynamic Central Theory”) addresses a new way of explaining the organization of brain information processes (Marijuán & Panetsos, 2011). It establishes the correspondence between neurodynamics and behavior by means of a central theory grounded on dynamic connectivity (conectome) and on optimality (principles of brain economy). As the core of this theory, it is proposed the development of an informational "behavioral-processual engine" ingraining the multidimensional operations of composition-decomposition of sensorimotor afferences and efferences with the realization of an action/perception cycle, producing adaptive behavior and associative learning (efficient knowledge) as outcomes. A number of disparate behavioral and cognitive aspects might be unified out from the development of this theory, including the recently coined brain’s “dark energy” (Raichle, 2006, 2010) and the global “workspace” proposed by Changeux, Dehaene, and others (Dehaene et al., 2001). To reiterate, a new integrative theory is badly needed, a radically whole new approach rather than the piece-meal approach followed in most theoretizations of neuroscientific disciplines. The ongoing neurocomputational, neuromolecular, neuroinformatic and neuroimaging revolutions (to name but a few of the emerging disciplines responsible of the enormous experimental data-accumulation taking place in neurosciences) have not been accompanied by any parsimonious synthetic approach yet. Very recent findings about the "Conectome" need to be elaborated and generalized, both in their theoretical interpretation and in their experimental content (Zamora-López, 2010; Sporns, 2011). The dynamic "Conectome" has to be interpreted in terms of supersystem configurations of an information processing engine realized by cortical areas and medial nuclei, along an optimization process of local/global nature, and following symmetry-breaking/symmetry-restoration operations that make each cortically stored information unique and recoverable (Collins, 1991; Collins & Marijuan, 1997; Turvey, 2004). In the optimality aspect, the NCT scheme integrates those findings with principles of maximum economy in space and time, and with symmetry-breaking and group theory concepts for distributed processes that will configure a hierarchical-heterarchical scheme of information processing, learning and adaptive behavior (Marijuán, 2001). thanking the attention, ---Pedro joe.bren...@bluewin.ch escribió: --> Dear John, The reference you cited looks like essential reading and I have ordered it. Thank you for calling it to our attention. I believe, also, that the conventional view of meaning leads to its erasure, and this exactly why a Derridean view of writing (and speech) is required in which erasure does not mean the total loss of meaning. As far as signs go, the area of debate is clear. A theory of signs (or sign-relations) is essential to the understanding of information and questions of reality and illusion. You believe that Peirce delivers this and I do not. The reason is that the critical fallibility, I think, is not in our representations, about which there should be no debate, but in taking signs (Peirce's icon and index) as representations in the first place. Doing this leads straight to the illusions we as realists wanted to avoid. Thus when you write: "A proper understanding of how signs, and thus logic, works can avoid these problems", I agree, but wish to suggest that neither standard logics, nor Peirce's logic, also truth-functional, grounded in language, can do the job. Something like Lupasco's extension of logic to real processes, his "Logic of Energy" (1951), may be required. I am looking forward to the Taborsky opus to help develop this approach. Best regards, Joseph ----Ursprüngliche Nachricht---- Von: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Datum: 05.05.2011 14:36 An: <fis@listas.unizar.es> Betreff: [Fis] The world of singularities, beyond language - John Collier Message from John Colier ------------------------------------ Hi all, This is interesting, as it brings up some ancient issues that continue to roil philosophy. I think that C.S. Peirce has the best answer to these puzzles (and does not eliminate the wonder). For his (realist) pragmatacism Peirce adopts the pragmatic principle that all of the meaning of a sign is contained in our the totality of our expectations for possible experience. He realized that this can be vague, and subject to change based on further experience. In particular, he thought that it is the possibility that our expectations can be contradicted by experience that commits us to a real external world, beyond our ideas, and requires that we should regard our representations as fallible. This allows for the sort of leaps Rafael mentions (and which are the subject of my doctoral dissertation). I also agree that the usual notion of the observer is flawed, as it does not typically recognize our involvement in the world. It is a philosophical illusion that we alone determine meaning, and that our meanings are determinate. In THE DYNAMICAL BASIS OF INFORMATION AND THE ORIGINS OF SEMIOSIS, in Edwina Taborsky (ed) Semiosis. Evolution. Energy Towards a Reconceptualization of the Sign. Aachen Shaker Verlag 1999 Bochum Publications in Semiotics New Series. Vol. 3 (1999): 111-136, I argue that the conventional view of meaning ironically leads to the erasure of meaning. In Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, Clarendon Press (2007), we argue (and this is grounded in Peircean principles) that the thing in itself is a metaphysical illusion, and does not fit modern science. Peirce also argued against such metaphysical illusions. If you maintain the illusion, then you get caught in nominalism and antirealism. A proper understanding of how signs, and thus logic, works can avoid these problems. My best, John --------------------------------------------- -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554 pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ -------------------------------------------------
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