Dear Pedro, Dear Terry, Always an optimist, I was convinced that there could be a convergence of your approaches and my Logic in Reality starting from the domain of absence. What Pedro refers to as "functional voids, needs, gaps, deficiencies" (absences) are all predominantly negative aspects of systems that operate especially in living systems 'together' with their positive counterparts (presences). The evolution of these elements in the physico-chemical domain follows this logic, in which negative elements always are given the necessary ontological 'status'. They are the basis for the emergence of higher level entities, following Terry's hierarchies of dynamics. Thus we may have, to further support a scientific biosemiotics, a dynamic logic to replace the analogies to human-level semiotic categories many of which (read: Peirce) do not instantiate the necessary ontological complexity and commitment. Cheers, Joseph ----Message d'origine---- De : dea...@berkeley.edu Date : 24/04/2015 - 10:22 (PST) À : pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es Objet : Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture: Aftermath Hi Pedro, Indeed, you capture a fundamental point of my work. I entirely agree with your comment about living processes and their internal "informative" organization. The three exceedingly simple molecular model systems (forms of autogenesis) that I discuss toward the end of the paper were intended to exemplify a minimal life-like unit that—because of its self-reconstituting and self-repairing features—could both exemplify an origin of life transition and a first simplest system exhibiting interpretive competence. It is only because these autogenic systems respond to disruption of their internal organizational coherence that they can be said to also interpret aspects of their environment with respect to this. My goal in this work is to ultimately provide a physico-chemical foundation for a scientific biosemiotics, which is currently mostly exemplified by analogies to human-level semiotic categories. Thank you for your thoughtful comments and your mediation of these discussions. Sincerely, Terry On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 5:34 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote: Dear Terry and colleagues, I hope you don't mind if I send some suggestions publicly. First, thank you for the aftermath, it provides appropriate "closure" to a very intense discussion session. Second, I think you have encapsulated very clearly an essential point (at least in my opinion): "Among these givens is the question of what is minimally necessary for a system or process to be interpretive, in the sense of being able to utilize present intrinsic physical properties of things to refer to absent or displaced properties or phenomena. This research question is ignorable when it is possible to assume human or even animal interpreters as part of the system one is analyzing. At some point, however, it becomes relevant to not only be more explicit about what is being assumed, but also to explain how this interpretive capacity could possibly originate in a universe where direct contiguity of causal influence is the rule." My suggestion concerns the absence phenomenon (it also has appeared in some previous discussion in this list --notably from Bob's). You imply that there is an entity capable of dynamically building upon an external absences, OK quite clear, but what about "internal absences"? I mean at the origins of communication there could be the sensing of the internal-- lets call it functional voids, needs, gaps, deficiencies, etc. Cellularly there are some good arguments about that, even in the 70's there was a "metabolic code" hypothesis crafted on the origins of cellular signaling. For instance, one of the most important environmental & internal detections concerns cAMP, which means "you/me are in an energy trouble"... some more evolutionary arguments can be thrown. Above all, this idea puts the life cycle and its self-production needs in the center of communication, and in the very origins of the interpretive capabilities. Until now I have not seen much reflections around the life cycle as the true provider of both communications and meanings, maybe it conduces to new avenues of thought interesting to explore... All the best! --Pedro Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: Dear FIS colleagues, Herewith the comments received from Terry several weeks ago. As I said yesterday, the idea is to properly conclude that session, not to restart the discussion. Of course, scholarly comments are always welcome, but conclusively and not looking for argumentative rounds. Remember that in less than ten days we will have a new session on info science and library science. best --Pedro ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Retrospective comments on the January 2015 FIS discussion Terrence Deacon (dea...@berkeley.edu) During the bulk of my career since the early 1980s I studied brain organization with a particular focus on its role in the production and interpretation of communication in vertebrate animals and humans. One core target of these studies was to understand the neurological changes that led to the evolution of the human language capacity and why it is so anomalous in the context of the other diverse communication systems that have evolved. This work was largely conducted using standard lab-based neuroscience tools—from axonal tracer techniques, to fetal neural transplantation, to MRI imaging, and more—and studying a diverse array of animal brains. Besides evolutionary and developmental neuroscience, this path led me to explore ethology, linguistics, semiotic theories, information theories and the philosophical issues that these research areas touched upon. Indeed, my first co-authored book was not on neuroscience but on the design of the early Apple desktop computers. So I came at the issues explored in my FIS essay from this diverse background. This has led me to pose what may be more basic questions than are usually considered, and to reconsider even the most unquestioned assumptions about the nature of information and the origins of its semiotic properties. I am aware that many who are following this discussion have a career-long interest in some aspect of human communication or computation. In these realms many researchers —including many of you— have provided sophisticated analytical tools and quite extensive theories for describing these processes. Though it may at first seem as though I am questioning the validity of some of this (now accepted) body of theory, for the most part I too find this adequate for the specific pragmatic issues usually considered. The essay I posted did not critique any existing theory. It rather explored some assumptions that most theories take for granted and need not address. I believe, however, that there remain a handful of issues that have been set aside and taken as givens that need to be reconsidered. For the most part, these assumptions don't demand to be unpacked in order to produce useful descriptions of communicative and information processes at the machine or interpersonal level. Among these givens is the question of what is minimally necessary for a system or process to be interpretive, in the sense of being able to utilize present intrinsic physical properties of things to refer to absent or displaced properties or phenomena. This research question is ignorable when it is possible to assume human or even animal interpreters as part of the system one is analyzing. At some point, however, it becomes relevant to not only be more explicit about what is being assumed, but also to explain how this interpretive capacity could possibly originate in a universe where direct contiguity of causal influence is the rule. Although, this may appear to some readers as a question that is merely of philosophical concern, I believe that failure to consider it will impede progress in exploring some of the most pressing scientific issues of our time, including both the nature an origins of living and mental processes, and possibly even quantum processes. In this respect, my exposition was not in any respect critical of other approaches but was rather an effort to solicit collaboration in digging into issues that have —for legitimate pragmatic reasons— not been a significant focus of most current theoretical analysis. I understand why some readers felt that the whole approach was peripheral to their current interests. Or who thought that I was re-opening debates that had long-ago been set aside. Or who just thought that I was working at the wrong level, on the conviction that the answer to such questions lies in other realms, e.g. quantum theories or panpsychic philosophies. To those of you who fell into these categories, I beg your indulgence. The issues involved are not merely of philosophical interest. They are of critical relevance to understanding biological and neurological information. So if there are any readers of this forum who are interested in the issue of the whether reference and significance are physically explainable irrespective of human subjective observation, and who have been quietly reflecting on my proposals, I would be happy to carry on an email dialogue outside of this forum. For the rest, thank you for your time, and the opportunity to present these ideas. Sincerely, Terrence Deacon (dea...@berkeley.edu) -- Professor Terrence W. Deacon University of California, Berkeley -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ ------------------------------------------------- -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ ------------------------------------------------- -- Professor Terrence W. Deacon University of California, Berkeley
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