[Fis] where we are? Communication!

Tue Nov 19 03:25:06 CET 2024

Pedro, List:

As I reread the discussion, we may decide to stop. I suggested to discuss the concept of feedback of Wiener's cybernetics. We got posts from very different directions, from statistics via Eastern civilization and evolutionary theory to communication.

Pedro, would you agree that now that we have spent a month on this topic, we may move on?

Peter

________________________________
From: Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> on behalf of Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2024 12:07 PM
To: fis at listas.unizar.es <fis at listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] where we are? Communication!

Dear Peter and FIS Colleagues,

Just some addition to the Meandering pathways or the Borges' garden of bifurcating paths... I will try to be brief.

Communication is the most massive way of creating and maintaining feedbacks among behaving individuals within society--can we accept that? In a similar way, in the biological world, cellular signaling systems constitute the massive communication tools of the cells arranged into organisms... propelling evolutionary changes and culminating in the evolution of nervous systems. The point is that, socially, as ways of communication have changed, societies have entered in deep processes of change, in thinking and political revolutions often. Let us think on the enormous historical influence of changes via tablets, papyri, parchment and codices, printed books, steam engine communications, electricity communications...  Socially, one of the most serious concerns in this epoch is about the pervasive influence of the new media & social networks. One of the coincidences is that the "counterculture" around the middle/peak of the 1970s was launched by the first generation "taught" and "matured" via TV... Around the middle/peak of the 2010s came to the fore the first generation "taught" and "matured" via social networks. A new form of establishing common generational goals and communication styles was born (as Sherry Turkle has put, abhorring face-to-face exchanges, texting and texting, and engaging in closed "identity" circles).

A classic to inspect is Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution. By Michael E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Unfortunately their analysis stops with the Internet. A nice review of this book (too long to be copied here) can be found at https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236795169_Information_Ages_Literacy_Numeracy_and_the_Computer_Revolution_review__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XFny_CQiVnLhQv8JeKzIJ9bRrmiOzVXPMk5yXVvzwQOIqSGTf1EgqyTTmrXCWwv4qXtZCqdr4rY2f1isagtwzmJ7$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236795169_Information_Ages_Literacy_Numeracy_and_the_Computer_Revolution_review__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XpKEOaXbk6i5Dt77SpTlxudcceLKWL3PJ1L3Rc5acbP4bIVA8OBgLkHUD9DNtZc7xlMDhUKiIkzW6tXU_Y41ZeA8Tq1B$>

And that's all!
--Pedro

El 11/11/2024 a las 3:21, Peter Erdi escribió:
Dear All,

Initially, I worried there would be fewer posts than we expected.
Now, we walk on a meandering pathway and see exotic flowers of the branching ideas.

I will wait several more days before I try to summarize the discussion.

All the best,
Peter

________________________________
From: Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com><mailto:johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 8, 2024 8:53 AM
To: fis at listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es> <fis at listas.unizar.es><mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>; Kate Peil <ktpeil at outlook.com><mailto:ktpeil at outlook.com>; Peter Erdi <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu><mailto:Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu>
Subject: Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 116, Issue 8

Dear Kate, Peter, all

Re. the "emotional system", this presentation I gave to Liverpool's Music Research group might help in clarifying the epigenetic position I was trying to articulate earlier: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/fFKZYN1pigE?feature=shared__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XFny_CQiVnLhQv8JeKzIJ9bRrmiOzVXPMk5yXVvzwQOIqSGTf1EgqyTTmrXCWwv4qXtZCqdr4rY2f1isajKcZDCt$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/fFKZYN1pigE?feature=shared__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!U6g4FFeIrpAYGdRXg5v5Z-y9pVAIICX2-JLQTfcjPK4cr7eKNFwthjUW-c-SL-w6_VsPooFEtY2piMdn02FN9Kvz$>

Starting from Suzanne Langer's view that music is a "language of emotion", a number of key questions follow, particularly with regard to musical agency, biology and physics. My presentation draws attentions to the "leaning" note at the beginning of Schumann's piano piece "Vogel als prophet" (whether that note is really an appoggiatura or something else is a bit of a moot point!), but the real issue is that it "leans" - so gravity is involved... is the "leaning" metaphorical or is it causal in terms of biology and physics? I argue for the latter.

So this hinges on the science of perception, and gravity's role in perception, and the deep structure of the universe. It might be that Penrose is right in implicating gravity in quantum consciousness, or Torday in implicating gravity in evolution and consciousness, etc. But then there is the whole question of the constitution of totality, and whether (as I suspect), Peter Rowlands's "niltpotent" view of totality is powerful in articulating a dimensioned reality of "nothing", of which we have a limited grasp, and so much act and "construct time" through musical/emotional acting...

What's the emotional acting about? John Torday and Bill Miller would say its about gathering epigenetic marks to take back to the zygote - the "phenotype as agent" argument I mentioned earlier...

Best wishes,

Mark

On Thu, 7 Nov 2024 at 22:03, Katherine Peil <ktpeil at outlook.com<mailto:ktpeil at outlook.com>> wrote:

Hi Peter,

I’ve only been able to pop in occasionally, but I find your thoughts on feedback to be highly relevant to many of the big open questions. Not only “information” but agency, cognition, creativity and the structure of “identity” itself (something that our best hard science theory does not address.)

At the beginning of the year, I led a discussion herein where I suggested that the emotional system was central to our “self-regulatory” hardware (genetic, epigenetic and immune regulation). In this view, binary feelings (pleasurable or painful, eustress or distress) serve as cybernetic feedback signals – informative software -  that originate in the non-equilibrium dynamics of complex adaptive systems (those that must constantly exchange energy and resources with their local environment in order to exist). I cited a four step cybernetic control loop instantiated by a coupling between bottom up positive (amplifying) feedback and top-down negative (homeostatic) feedback that works like this: 1) An ongoing comparison is made between internal and external environments; 2) A signal is sent when self-relevant mismatches occur; which 3) triggers a coupled self-correcting response, which is then 4)  fed back as a memory into the next cycle “comparison”. (AI uses a similar arrangement for deep neural learning networks, by comparing two probability distributions that compare internal requirements and external circumstances, modelling mismatches as free energy – “surprises” to the system - wherein learning occurs the via the goal of reducing free energy.)

But as living systems, we have direct experience of a binary feedback signal as emotional sensory qualia – self-regulatory surprises that come in feel-good or feel-bad categories and are coupled to approach or avoidant self-correcting behavioral responses. I call these binary qualia the fundamental semantic information bit, for their binary categories drive each step in the loop and set the stage for all Pavlovian learning.

This loop, and its subjective binary hedonic driver, is central to the operational, organizational and informational closure of complex self-organizing and autopoietic systems, and it is central to the ongoing construction of the enactive “mind”. It enables an identity structure that behaves as a dance of both parts and wholes, an autonomous yet collective agent, both determined yet with minor participation, in ways that mediate both being and becoming. And so much more…

Sorry for the quick core dump, but I thought I’d pop in to applaud Peter’s inquiry and say hi to you all!

Katherine Kauffman

(Kung Fu Kate)

From: Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>> on behalf of fis-request at listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis-request at listas.unizar.es> <fis-request at listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis-request at listas.unizar.es>>
Date: Wednesday, November 6, 2024 at 7:40 PM
To: fis at listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es> <fis at listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>>
Subject: Fis Digest, Vol 116, Issue 8

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Fwd: Re: New Discussion Session--Complexity & feedback
      (Peter Erdi)

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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2024 02:39:45 +0000
From: Peter Erdi <Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu<mailto:Peter.Erdi at kzoo.edu>>
To: Pedro C. Mariju?n <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com<mailto:pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>>,
        "fis at listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>" <fis at listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>>
Subject: Re: [Fis] Fwd: Re: New Discussion Session--Complexity &
        feedback
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        <BY5PR12MB39852EDD96A4B026324DCA5EF35C2 at BY5PR12MB3985.namprd12.prod.outlook.com<mailto:BY5PR12MB39852EDD96A4B026324DCA5EF35C2 at BY5PR12MB3985.namprd12.prod.outlook.com>>

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Thank you, Pedro, for your thoughtful post. I hope some people will react, and we will kick the ball towards some goal.  Alternatively, the discussion might evolve by random mutations.

By the way, Gordana and Sheri: more thoughts about the relationship between cybernetics and complex systems theory with evolution?

Peter
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--
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
University of Manchester

Department of Science Education
University of Copenhagen

Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
University of Liverpool
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