[Fis] Fwd: Re: [External]... miscellany

Thu Feb 29 17:25:01 CET 2024

Dear Pedro and All,
I concur with Pedro's assessment of Jacob's Logic of the Living, a discussion of which which I have not found necessary to include in my Logic in Reality. Jacob's review of the history of biology has value as history. It has also been described as a "veritable epistemology" of the living. It includes the role of all the functional structures present from DNA on up, the "hidden architecture of the living".
That said, in his attempt to show the uniqueness of life, I feel Jacob, like many others, neglected to give proper value to its ontological ground in the elements of  physics and chemistry. It is their fundamental incompleteness that is necessary for more complex structures to form.
While of course avoiding naïve vitalism, Jacob retained the naïve dualisms of classical logic. That we of necessity "sit in uncertainty", as Noble suggests, should be looked at as something positive.
Best wishes,
Joseph
----Message d'origine----
De : pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com
Date : 29/02/2024 - 15:20 (E)
À : fis at listas.unizar.es, wbmiller1 at cox.net, unb15e at uni-bonn.de
Objet : Re: [Fis] [External]... miscellany
 Dear All,

 In the exchange below between Joseph and Lou, there is a comment: 
 "I repeat, concepts come along with percepts. Every percept you have is accompanied by concepts and by the possibility of new concepts that can inform it" by Lou, that seems very adequate to reiterate by point on the underpinning of logics. First, concepts would be accompanied by a "shadow" of perceptions as well as by another germane shadow of "actions". The way our cerebellum contributes to organize the coherence between associated percepts & acts for our efficient stay in the world, is automatically translated to our assemblages of concepts and their sensori-motor associated shadows in language.  "True" is when an efficient closure can be achieved, versus "False" when the associated sensory-motor constellations do not match properly. This is the realm of natural logics, as expostulated  long ago by Aristotle. When this natural logics cross-fertilizes with our counting capability and with the invention of more and more abstract operations are added (with their subtle load of percepts/movements increasingly abstract as well), we land on the territories described by Karl and Lou. However, the extent to which the whole concepts, operators, algorithms, formal logics, etc. may approach nature's depths would have intrinsic and extrinsic limits. The intrinsic ones can be expanded via new abstract inventions... just to find new limits. This has been put very well by Lou and Carlos. 

 As for the extrinsic limits, Cosmology, the quantum and consciousness, as well as the "logics of life", represent perennial challenges. The "quantum consciousness", as discussed by Stuart conflating both realms, has been rarely discussed in this list (many years ago by von Baeyer and some isolated messages from Khrennikov). Indeed it would be quite timely to retake the theme one of these months. Cosmology too... as we now could count with Carlo Rovelli's possible contribution. Anyhow, excuse for the digression, going then to the classic book "La Logique du vivant" by Francois Jacob, we would not find a trace of the inner logics residing in the biological system (just dealing with history and his personal contributions to the mol.bio. revolution). What is the equivalent to the "well formed sentence" of syntax and the "true sentence" of natural logics? I was checking a series of fundamental points of biological information by J. Shapiro (2011)--quite unsatisfying, only going along the computer & informatic metaphor. In my own attempt to establish a parallel with the above comments on the cerebellum and our natural logics, addressed now to the "well formed" episodes of the cellular, and of the developmental, I confess the absence of sufficiently sound --information!-- principles... So, in my unfinished discussion with Joe Brenner on the biological sides of his LIR, Logic in Reality, I would like to concur with David Noble quite recent comment in Nature 
 "sitting in uncertainty, while working to make those discoveries, will be biology's great task for the twenty-first century" (vol. 626, 8 February 2024, pp. 254-5).

 Best--Pedro
 PS. I am putting in cc. to William Miller and 
 František Baluška, inviting them, as they probably would respond far more meaningfully about the logique du vivant theme--see their recent "
 The Sentient Cell" (2024).

 El 29/02/2024 a las 10:41, 
 joe.brenner at bluewin.ch escribió:

 Dear Louis,

  My entire approach could be summarized as trying to give meaning to the expressions you just used - "actual instantiations" and "accompanied by" referring to concepts and percepts. Some considerations will apply to questions of chess, but as I believe you imply, it is the mental processes behind the moves that are of interest rather than their epistemic outcomes.

  n

  Your last phrase, in my opinion, should read "the probability of new concepts". Except for what are essentially pathological cases (all too frequent, unfortunately), concepts are dynamic and can change.

  The principles of my logic do not apply to infinite sets, or to any other equivalent mathematical (abstract) object. They are however modeled by the Axiom of Choice, and I can repeat my argument if is of interest.

  Finally, I would wish that Carlos, in his commendable restudy of Being, might devote a bit or more of his energy to Becoming, to see how that, also, would look today.

  Thank you and best wishes,

  Joseph

   , "----Message d'origine----

 De : 
   loukau at gmail.com

 Date : 29/02/2024 - 00:38 (E)

 À : 
   cgershen at gmail.com

 Cc : 
   stukauffman at gmail.com, 
   fis at listas.unizar.es, 
   joe.brenner at bluewin.ch

 Objet : Re: [Fis] [External] Re: " express matter and energy in terms of information"

     Dear Carlos, 
    When I write P = {n | n is a prime number} and assert the existence of this set, I am asserting the existence of the CONCEPT that the set expresses. 

     I am not asserting the existence in some realm of all of its members. This is my way to handle the epistemology of set theory. 

     Set theory is a way to handle concepts. The concept of a prime number is not problematical in relation to any questions of existence. 

     The same is true of the concept 2^{N} = { S | S is a subset of the natural numbers} and all the other sets that can be expressed in ZFC. 

     With this understanding it is fun to play with the fantasy that the primes or the real numbers are “actually there” somewhere. This is fun and helps in thinking about them. 

     When I prove that a specific knot is knotted it excites me to realize that I have proved something about the infinity of instantiations of this knot, only a finite number of which I shall ever see. They all exist in potentia.  

     These rhetorical flourishes about potentia, possibles and adjacent possibles are a similar incitement to fantasy as we get a feeling about worlds unseen. 

     It is fun, but lets remember that just working with concepts and percepts is the main line. 

     Some concepts, maybe most, are tied up with their realizations. So if I am looking at Chess, I imagine the existence of all possible chess games.  

     "All chess games” is a concept just like “all primes”.  That it happens to be a finite set does not make it more accessible than the infinity of the primes. 

     I can also indulge in the fantasy that I can “know” about “all chess games” but the only way to know about it is through a big sliice of experience with actual games and with  

     the hypotheses that people have made about general principles for the game. 

     The same is true for mathematics. The nice thing about infinite sets is that one has an open field for studying examples and finding principles that govern these examples. 

     Concepts are not “just” abstractions. You need to find out how they work in actual instantiations. I think the reason mathematics works even though people could argue about potential versus actual infinity forever, is that mathematics does not need to worry about existence of anything except concepts and to hope that the arena of concepts that it uses is consistent for the logic that is adopted for dealing with them. 

     And again I repeat, concepts come along with percepts. Every percept you have is accompanied by concepts and by the possibility of new concepts that can inform it. 

     Best, 

     Lou 

        On Feb 28, 2024, at 10:43 AM, Carlos Gershenson < 
       cgershen at gmail.com> wrote: 

          About latent/Platonic information: 

          I think we can agree that there are (infinite) primes that have never been written down. Do they exist? I think so, in a particular way. Perhaps, as it was mentioned, the difference can lie between information that has been observed, and that which has not. Like the tree falling in a forest with nobody there to listen (observe), I guess we can assume that ontologically the tree fell, even if epistemologically no observer can say anything about that. (I elaborate on this distinction between “absolute being” and “relative being” here  
         https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/nlin/0109001__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!RKuWIcYXzk6JtzlDXJ1-hGBhFTZWuFour5xnPbtbI7HQge2ZBAaLNM4M7mqWumeJTgCrSoFoPP9KI_BZyKLH3kGSBb8$  although this is from my undergrad years and for sure could be updated). 

          Gordana: Isn’t ChatGPT an observer? I mean, LLMs can be said to be trained through “observation". 

         Best wishes, 

              Carlos 

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