List,
A few weeks ago, I posted a comment to a forum that was well-received, somewhat to my surprise. It was a summary of my main thesis, currently under review with a journal, available as a preprint, here (some of you were introduced to earlier drafts of it a couple of months ago): https://www.academia.edu/129898049/Association_as_Downward_Causation My brief comment to the forum was an outline of why, though I'm not a fan of panpsychism, I certainly do support a theory of "mind stuff" playing out throughout all levels of existence, including matter. Apparently, people can still "get it" without having to read the 20+ pages of my more thoroughly supported document. Here is that tl;dr summary for those who prefer a briefer outline. THEORY OF EVERYTHING FOR DUMMIES References to panpsychism make me nervous. I'm more inclined to look to raw "mind stuff" as first cause, and in this regard, the semiotic theory of CS Peirce and Terence Deacon's (2012, 2021) notion of molecules as signs are especially interesting. Peircean association, as downward causation, "informs" bottom-up causation (reductionism) of the options that are available, and so addresses the entropy problem. Example of association? Two Hydrogen atoms + one Oxygen atom, in association, constitute a water molecule. Association also plays out in the quantum void, virtual particles, etc, as per the Feynman diagrams - association relates to the tensions between the known and the unknown. What other entities must contend with the tensions between the known and the unknown? We do. All living things do, and that's why Peircean association is important to them and us, too (Jarosek, 2001). The opposable thumbs, eyes, ears, sex differences, vocal apparatus, etc that constitute human embodied cognition enable us to associate language, experiences, meaning and culture... culture is our downward causation, wiring our neuroplastic brains (Jarosek, 2020). Then factor in Carlo Rovelli's Relational QM to seal the deal. If my conjecture is right, this does away with physicalism, Copenhagenesque subatomic billiard-balls popping into and out of existence, and the even nuttier notions of multiverse, manyworlds, and dead-alive cats. Rovelli's RQM (1996) is key, imho... that's about as close to panpsychism as I'm prepared to venture. [Had I heard of Rovelli's work before 2001, I would have cited him in my 2001 paper] And with this extensive simplicity and generality, from top to bottom (Michael Levin's "all the way down"), we satisfy Occam's razor. REFERENCES Deacon, T.W. (2012). Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. New York: W.W. Norton&Co. Deacon, T.W. (2021, September 25). How Molecules Became Signs. Biosemiotics, 14, 537-559. Jarosek, S. (2001). The law of association of habits. Semiotica, 133(1/4), 79-96: https://www.academia.edu/3236556/The_law_of_association_of_habits Jarosek, S. (2020). Knowing how to be: Imitation, the neglected axiom. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 27(3), 33-63: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/chk/2020/00000027/00000003/art 00003 Rovelli, C. (1996). Relational quantum mechanics. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35, 1637-1678. Watson, R., & Levin, M. (2023, May 23). The collective intelligence of evolution and development. Collective Intelligence, 2(2), 1-22.
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