[Fis] Emotional Sentience & Information - Science of the Self

[Alex Hankey]

Eric,
Stu's instincts are second to none.
I previously wrote a voluble email in praise of his reply.
Fis seems to think that 'Everything is (Digital) Information'.
It Very Definitely is Not.
Ideas are fundamental to Animal and Human Cognition,
and cannot be replaced by Digital Information.
It is time that Fis got round to trying to understand this.
Alex

On Wed, 10 Apr 2024 at 18:58, eric werner <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:

> Hi Stu,
>
> I think you are being too pessimistic about what we can know and do.
>
> Also there is a difference between knowing and understanding and acting.
> Understanding certainly helps with what we can possibly know and how one
> might act.  But what we can say often hinders what we can do.
>
> Communication, a form of action, offers more subtleties.   Often when
> truth is politically incorrect (where "correct" is defined by each group's
> special interests),  we can still make reasonable guesses as to what can
> happen even if we cannot express it and also stay alive.
>
> In this week we remember the slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutus.  Once
> started the ongoing slaughter was predictable yet no one stopped it.  The
> Clinton administration debated endlessly if the ongoing slaughter was
> technically definable as a genocide. If so they had to act, but by subtlety
> of wordings they excused themselves from acting.
>
> What are the emotions that lead to these kinds of human induced
> catastrophes?  What are the interests (emotions?) that override ethical
> action?  Once started they are quite predictable.
>
> Or am I totally missing the point of the power of emotions, their
> predictable consequences and their entanglement in language?
>
> -Eric
> On 4/10/2024 1:37 PM, Stuart Kauffman wrote:
>
> Thanks Kate, Eric, Pedro and All. I am fascinated by the entire topic of
> the evolution of emotion. Presumably the diversification of emotion along
> with morphology, behavior, and mind was typically of selective advantage.
> All have grown more complex and diverse in 3.8 billion years. Consider
> “Schadenfreude”, the pleasure at the pain of another. Why did that evolve?
> Is it a Gould Spandrel? I guess the ethologists know a lot. I am very
> ingnorant. As some of you know, Andrea Roli and I wrote, "A Third
> Transition in Science?”, J. Roy. Sci. Interface. We think we demonstrate
> that we cannot deduce the evolution of the biosphere or economy or culture.
> We do not even know what CAN happen, so cannot reason about these issues.
> What are the roles of emotion and ethics in this context?
>
> Best,
>
> Stu
>
> On Apr 10, 2024, at 4:01 AM, Eric Werner <eric.werner at oarf.org>
> <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:
>
> *Science of the self*
>
> Emotions from my perspective are fundamentally social. Here are some brief
> thoughts.
>
> The science of emotions is part of the the science of the self.  While
> there is a lot of work done in various fields on the the science of the
> self, it has not fit well with the classic Newtonian Science of the
> Outside.
>
> Fundamental to the science of the self is the science of the social and
> the science of the social mind. The latter involves understanding the
> science of the interaction between social minds and the birth of emotion in
> the social mind.
>
> The development of the self forms in part through the interaction with the
> other. This other is projected as having an emotional mind.
>
> The formation of the boundaries of the self and other is fundamental to
> the birth of the self. Impingement on boundaries is a form of denial of the
> other and can be destructive of the self.
>
> In mammals the mother child interaction is fundamental and formative of
> the self.
>
> Also fundamental to animal and plant cooperation is sexual cooperation.
> This has it roots in the cooperation between the two parental genomes. And
> goes all the way up the hierarchy to male and female cooperative
> interaction to produce an other, a new self.
>
> Communication involves information transfer by way of  operators on the
> representation of the other and of the self  by the self; transforming the
> self's representation of self and other.
>
> Fundamental to the mother-child relation is bonding, a delicate balance of
> emotional boundaries.
>
> Complex vertebrates have non-binary, complex emotional states that involve
> the representation of intentions of self and other. Most emotional states
> ride on top of and at the same time are entangled and contribute to these
> complex informational-intentional-evaluative states.
>
> Emotion is thus intertwined with the self's representation of self, of the
> outside, of the other, of intentions and what is the case. It forms a
> complex possibility space.
>
> It is this complex possibility space that is difficult to disentangle from
> emotional states.
>
> The drives of Freud, the empathy of Winnecott and Kohut and so many more
> are all non reductionist attempts to understand and form a science of the
> self and its emotional bedrock. More themes:  Utility-plans-expectations
>
> Sorry a bit abstract but gets to the essence of my understanding of
> emotional social communicative states of self and other.
>
> -Eric
>
>
> On 4/8/24 8:55 PM, Pedro C. Marijuán wrote:
>
> Dear Kate and FIS Colleagues,
>
> Just a short note addressed to those who were looking for clarifications.
> In the bibliography there is an excellent synthesis paper (XII) where most
> of the presented points are far better developed, particularly in the
> evolutionary aspects, which I consider become the gist of this whole
> approach.
>
> Peil, K. T. (2014). Emotion: the self-regulatory sense. *Global advances
> in health and medicine*, *3*(2), 80-108.
>
> Emotions have been one of the victims of "the first transition" (echoing
> Stuart's theme on the Newtonian), treating living beings , including
> humans, as mass points ("atoms" without inner drives), merely a result of
> of the push and pull of external, deterministic, physical forces (taken
> from Markos and Svorcova 2019) and fundamentally devoid of "innerness".
> Well, restoring the evolutionary history of that innerness that emerges
> from all living beings, in a continuum from the first viable cells to
> animal nervous systems, is what Kate discusses.
>
> Personally I concur with most points. Perhaps with different emphasis, and
> maybe cutting some of the complexity (more concrete comments in next days).
> But it clearly marks an arrival point from which new endeavors may be
> envisioned. In the parlance of philosopher Ortega y Gasset, which I often
> mention, it demands the creation of a few fundamental principles
> facilitating the further advancement in this new understanding of
> ourselves.
>
> By the way, could the new AI models help in this task? I think so!
>
> Best --Pedro
>
> PS. Yes, Joseph, emotions do mobilize a great deal of information
> 'processes'.
>
>
>
> El 08/04/2024 a las 19:05, joe.brenner at bluewin.ch escribió:
>
> Dear Kate,
>
> The quality of your exposition of phenomenological emotion, in its
> informational aspects, should encourage all of us to apply the best ideas
> we have to supporting and strengthening it. It is in this  spirit then,
> that I make a criticism in the area of logic, mentioned by Karl, and
> referred to by you twice.
>
> *Pace *my friend Karl, my view is that a dichotomy cannot be made between
> emotion as contemporary (timeless?) and action that involves temporal flow.
> Emotion is not a static state of some kind, any more than information is.
> Your view of emotion would seem to be consistent with an internal flow
> between two
> different but both complex states, one primarily emotionally colored and
> one or more others w,hich are less so. No dichotomy here either. There is a
> relation between emotion and intuition to be explored also.
>
> However, if your own view of emotion is something dynamic, and I believe
> it is, then the applicable logic cannot be binary!
>
> Perhaps you were seeking a characterization of emotion as soemthing
> "logical" in view of the prestige which standard logic still enjoys, I
> think. undeservedly. As followers of Pedro's initiative will remember (I
> hope), I have proposed an alternative to standard propositional of
> predicate logic that better reflects the properties and evolution of
> complex processes,  in which category I would hope that all readers would
> place emotion
>
> Like emotion, information is not static but involves going back and forth
> between complex dynamic states - being informed and not being informed.
> Perhaps for both emotion and information one should focus on their
> becoming, rather than being.
>
> In your work, and in that of some of the contributors to FIS, a process
> interpretation is possible but it has been largely latent or in my terms
> potentialized. It would be fantastic if the non-Boolean, non-computable
> aspects of emotion could help illuminate the corresponding aspects of
> information. I applaud the use of a term of Karl again, liaison, but what *kind
> *of liaisons, and what is their logic?
>
> Best wishes,
> Joseph
>
> ----Message d'origine----
> De : karl.javorszky at gmail.com
> Date : 08/04/2024 - 13:49 (E)
> À : fis at listas.unizar.es
> Objet : Re: [Fis] Emotional Sentience & Information
>
>
>> Dear Kate and FIS,
>>
>>
>> Emotional Sentience and Information 24 04 08
>>
>>
>>    1. Subject introduced
>>
>> Kate directs our attention to emotions, specifically *the informational
>> logic**. *
>>
>> Eric points out:*“…**we need a more clear definition of what do you
>> think emotions are as related to information. … Are they a type of
>> information?...** a whole bunch of different concepts together …[need ]
>> … linking….*
>>
>> Aaron: *“…evidence related to the evolution of various interacting forms
>> of life … roles of biochemical mechanisms involved in processes of
>> evolution, reproduction, development, learning and interacting with the
>> environment, including features of the environment that are products of the
>> above relatively recent processes, such as … social
>> constraints/influences.”*
>>
>>
>> In my eyes, Kate’s concept fits well to the contribution of a young
>> English woman colleague who discussed permutations and their role in
>> surprisingly many fields of the world, including genetics, maybe a year
>> ago. It is a pleasure to greet a clinical psychologist here.
>>
>
>
>>
>>    2. Context of emotions: general, as opposed to
>>
>> To have emotions (to be in a state of being subject of physio-chemical
>> fundaments of thinking which state deviates in quality and/or intensity to
>> the usual states) is a distinguishable experience and it is possible to
>> conduct a reasonable discussion about the subject. (This is such a case
>> where the eye can see itself.) As the definition shows, the living organism
>> is always in a state of being emotional, only we usually discuss the
>> extraordinary, as being contrasted to the no-news flow of status reports.
>>
>> Neurology is embedded between physiology and psychology. It is a Black
>> Box. Let us consider that we have found an alien contraption, left on Earth
>> by visiting extraterrestrials, and we understand how it intakes and how it
>> discharges what it feeds on (which can be information), but we have no idea
>> how it senses (maybe erroneously) the well-suited situation to flirt, do
>> business, hide or fight, etc.
>>
>> Kate’s proposition approaches the subject in a fundamental way. Widening
>> our perspective, we say that what we call emotion is a phenomenon that is *contemporary
>> *while what we call action is in a temporal flow.
>>
>> Kate directs our attention to the fact, that whatever differentiation we
>> exercise on classifying the material substrate of the input of the brain,
>> we mix together a cocktail which nourishes tha brain. In whichever
>> numbering system we differentiate the constituents of the usual, normal
>> nourishment of the brain, we end up with one maximal number for the kinds
>> of variants that can be cooked up by the biochemical kitchen of that
>> individual. Whether we count in liter, centiliter, mililiter or microgram
>> per mililiter, there is an upper limit for the number of qualitative
>> differences within a mixture.
>>
>> We discuss here, in colloquial speech, emotions in the understanding that
>> these are extraordinary, significant, decisive degrees of emotional
>> charges. In a neutral view, all variants of possible emotions should be
>> considered as a background, and the importance is not that some mixtures
>> lead to agitations, illness or death, but rather that the interchange
>> between emotions and actions incessantly works, except exactly in those
>> cases, where there is too much of an emotional imbalance.
>>
>>    3. The usual background
>>
>> What Kate speaks about is the collection of coincidences that can be
>> concurrently the case. For an individual to be as usual, *{k1,k2,k3,…ki}
>> *of physiological values should be within ranges *{r1,r2,r3,…ri}. *As
>> colloquially understood, an emotional state is diagnosed if any of *{k1,k2,k3,…ki}
>> *is outside the ranges of *{r1,r2,r3,…ri}. *(Colloquially explained:
>> emotions in social usage of the term: flares and ejections of the Sun,
>> neutral usage: the activities of the Sun.)
>>
>> Having an overall fixed numeric limit helps in understanding how the
>> contemporary is interwoven with that has been and that which shall come.
>> Emotions are those states of the assembly which are at the same time, a
>> temporal cross-section. Actions are sequences of states in which everything
>> is contemporary. (Slicing the film into very thin snapshots.)
>>
>> Which contemporary state has evolved from which different contemporaneous
>> state and to which state of contemporaneous coincidences will lead to, is a
>> complicated combinatorial mechanism. Having a Grand Total means the problem
>> is solvable.
>>
>>    4. How Nature does it
>>
>> Nature, bless her heart, makes use of a numerical discongruence within
>> the counting system that makes the whole system double-focused, by a
>> combinatorial discongruence to the tune of 3.4E-92 %, a very small extent
>> indeed. The consequences of this small inner relative inexactitude are felt
>> all through the system. Nature uses the fact, that if the total is known,
>> and value of the last sudoku token is no more a question, then in a
>> representation on the level of how many guesses till you solve the sudoku
>> can simply do away with a whole unit and can reset the calculation in the
>> fashion like astronomers reset to a new epoch. The same informational
>> content with one material unit less. The exchange in the *bazaar **(oeis.org/A242615
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://oeis.org/A242615__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!TSiukTIsFgXROB4-BcSARDP-UG1cUuxj2qtOrJnue-ru9rJkt2z5alF9jgxay7m2A4Ic8gmdRDfdU2TZV3HLtMJyhYc$>)*
>> provides the means/terms for the interchange.
>>
>>    5. How we do it
>>
>> Slowly and circumspectly. Even the Himalaya of convincing evidence that
>> the Sumerian way of counting works all right will be subverted by erosion
>> due to periodic changes. Empirical science shows how Nature does it,
>> adapting to and within itself due to requirements posed by periodic
>> changes. This basic technique had been discovered by some protoplasma and
>> is solidly based in laws of physics. The transmission happens by means of
>> synapses in Nature. That what is being transmitted has been given the name
>> of *liaison* in a model depicting the interactions. Slowly, small
>> insights will organize into a whole idea and on a day not so far off, one
>> of he learned Friends will say to a different learned Friend,
>>
>> So, this means
>>
>>             Neurology works by using complicated truth tables, extents,
>> frequencies, qualities;
>>
>>             The main idea is to use two perspectives: *along *and *across
>> *time;
>>
>>             Using cycles from periodic changes, one has a complete
>> catalog of all possible slices and therefore of all possible combinations
>> of coincidences that can be contemporary;
>>
>>             Nature has provided for us elaborate tables, on which we can
>> measure what happens next, based on that what is now;
>>
>>             There is a gearbox between the idea of a periodic change and
>> such facts which make/show it possible that a periodic change is taking
>> place. This gearbox consists of cycles;
>>
>>             The best introduction to understand emotions and actions and
>> non-actions is to place 12 books on one’s desk, sorted on author-title, and
>> reorder the sequence into title-author, all the while noting the occurrence
>> and properties of cycles.
>>
>>
>> Those books which are *in transit *are different to each other.
>> Together, they constitute a logical reality which has its own rules,
>> notwithstanding the identities of the books. Being in transit becomes a
>> logical universe, like tourism is an industry as such. What we propose is
>> to learn the rules of ‘transitism’ and become a competent operator like a
>> tourism manager. Time is counted on the community of books in transit in
>> many different ways. Nature appears to use a *metronome *cycle of 129
>> length which is inside/outside of a *folding* cycle, which is 128 long.
>>
>>
>> Thank you, Kate for introducing the subject of how a commutative assembly
>> and a sequenced assembly interact. Due to some rigidities of the Sumerian
>> canon, it needs parallel to it the Accadian canon, which deviates to the
>> Sumerian in following:
>>
>>    1. Limited number of units (Eddington 137)
>>    2. Units are individuals (pairs of* a,b*)
>>    3. Their habitat is subject to periodic changes (resortings)
>>    4. The movement patterns of individuals due to periodic changes draw
>>    their own geometry (serving as a spatial background)
>>    5. The lateral relations among elements due to being members of
>>    cycles create a system of *liaisons.*
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks again
>>
>> Karl
>>
>>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.) DSc. (Hon Causa)
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Teacher Yoga Pratyahara and True Dhyana Meditation (50 years)
Professor Emeritus of Biology,
MIT World Peace University,
124 Paud Road, Pune, MA 411038
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
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