[Fis] "Percepts" and self-reference and meaning
Eric Werner
eric.werner at oarf.org
Thu Jan 16 17:35:20 CET 2025
Dear Lou and Kate and all,
To point 1. There are those fascinating studies of pathologies of
disconnection between the right (holistic) and the left (linear) ideations.
2. The probability that what you are suggesting will be followed has low
frequency.
3. Of course, human perception includes unconscious processing. In fact
most of it is unconscious. Does the ant perceive the full moon? How is
perception related to the complexity of neural processing in the brain?
Are there degrees of perceiving the same object or event by different
agents of different neural structure and complexity?
4. Sorry I get all emotional when I see the lack of distinctions in GSB.
Wittgenstein version 2 would perhaps not agree with Wittgenstein
version 2 where he allows a much broader range of function and what can
be expressed in language and its games.
5. 'O' my God we have entered religion. As the country singer
disparages her partner-husband when she croons "You say it best when
you say nothing at all." Poor guy. But more seriously, Lou, do you
really think "All of language collapses into the meaning of a single
word or sign," ? The problem is that recursion generates repetition and
the lack of sufficient meaningful content whether it be in conversation
of the development of embryos.
But, Kate, I do think that emotions are not binary and rather continuous
gradations and multidimensional. Would such an assumption be deleterious
to your overall theoretical stance. Your remarks on cell signalling and
the approach-avoidance theme may hold at that level of ontology but
seems to fail at higher levels of more complex systems and beings.
And hats off to Stu and the problem of assuming a well defined phase
space of what is possible. It points to problems with the foundations of
probability theory.
And yes Pedro thanks for points about meaning and action which relates
to Wittgenstein version 2.
Thank you for the motivating discussion Lou,
Eric
On 1/14/25 2:58 AM, Louis Kauffman wrote:
> Dear Kate,
> I have questions and comments.
> 1. While the notions of right and left hemispheres are useful to
> summarize certain aspects, I actually do not know what is really meant
> when people use those words.
> So it would be better in communicating with me, a mathematician who
> needs definitions whenever possible, to rewrite statements without
> those metaphors.
> 2. I do not want the word probability unless you can tell me what you
> are counting. If you cannot tell, then please speak of frequencies.
> Same for so called probability in QM.
> 3. Perception does not include unconscious processing, but unconcious
> processing can affect perception. Perception is accompanied by
> awareness, often by consciousness.
> This is how I use the word perception. My camera does not perceive the
> sunset. I perceive the photo produced by the camera and I am involved
> in the taking of photos by the camera.
> Of course, I can set the camera to taking photos automatically. No
> perception occurs until I see them or you see them. But registration
> does occur. These issues are related to QM as well.
> The cat registers and is dead or alive at the end of the hour. I find
> out. But the potentia have come to rest before I find out because the
> cat is corporeal.
> 4. Do you feel that all awareness is related to emotions? GSB says
> every distinction is associated with motive. So maybe. Feeling is more
> general then emotion in my ways of speaking.
> Feeling has to do with going outside given language and meaning to a
> wider and not defined domain from which we return with possibly new
> ways of speaking. This is for me what Wittgenstein is speaking
> about when he says “Whereof one cannot speak one must be silent.”, and
> then new speaking can emerge, but NOT from a “hierarchy of languages”
> as Russell said in his introduction to W’s Tractatus, but by going
> beneath language to
> Its source.
> 5. In relation to 4. C.S.Peirce had the idea of a “sign for itself”
> that emerged from the ever expanding hierarchy of a person’s language.
> There is a truth in that. One can also see an icon, such as O, as a
> sign for itself when seen as both a distinction and a sign for a
> distinction. But then the sign O is enveloped in the interpretant that
> would see it that way. And we only understand the interpretant in
> terms of the ever expanding hierarchy of our language. The O is like a
> “quantum particle”. It takes the whole universe of
> discourse to disclose its meaning. All of language collapses into the
> meaning of a single word or sign.
> Best,
> Lou
>
>> On Jan 13, 2025, at 3:57 PM, Katherine Peil <ktpeil at outlook.com> wrote:
>>
>> **
>> Thank you so much Lou.
>> Self-reference is something very deep indeed, perhaps fundamentally
>> located at the nexus of subject~object itself (in terms of geometry
>> and association with quantum physics). The step from the Peircian
>> triangle to**George Spencer-Brown’s observer intervention and
>> wavefunction collapse seems to be in this territory. Self-reference
>> as being the perfect circle, representing the emergence from a sea of
>> possibilities the probabilistic manifestation of percept and concept
>> in one lovely unit.
>> From a psychological perspective, however, perception is a different
>> can of worms, distinct from (but related to/physical sensory
>> stimulus)/and the/embodied response/. Behaviorism noted the
>> stimulus-response coupling (and its essential role in learning), but
>> remained intentionally blind to any internal cognitive processing
>> inside the proverbial Black Box. Perception can be defined as
>> everything happening inside that Black Box, everything between that
>> stimulus and response, and the more neurally endowed the creature,
>> the more the perceptual processing involved. Unlike the perfect zero,
>> it can be reasonably accurate or riddled with error. This is why some
>> self-referential feedback is required in the stimulus itself.
>> This marks the distinction between affective computations and
>> cognitive computations. Affective computations specifically concern
>> the self, they feel either good or bad, offering evaluative feedback
>> about the self within its local physical environment and they trigger
>> direct stimulus-response behavior. The stream of emotional
>> information came first and still provides primary behavioral
>> motivation. No observation no qualia? I agree but add no sensory
>> stimulus, no percept!
>>
>> Ian McGlichest’s work in the dual yet interacting functions of the
>> left and right brain hemispheres is instructive here as well. Music,
>> maths, non-verbal wholism, creative “unconscious”, intuitive
>> capacities and all imaginable possibilities…… and
>> emotion…collectively dwell in the right hemisphere – the Master to
>> the left-brain emissary where complex linguistic perceptual
>> processing occurs.
>> Kate Kauffman
>> On 1/12/25, 9:39 PM, "Stuart Kauffman" <stukauffman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Katherine Peil Kauffman
>>
>> Thank you both,
>> Stu
>>
>>
>> On Jan 12, 2025, at 8:52 PM, Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear Katherine
>> I do not yet take the step to “explain” how to go from percept to
>> concept.
>> The point I inhabit is prior to that.
>> In every situation where you have percept you also have concept.
>> They arise together for you.
>> Possibly not with the good concept you are searching for.
>> For example, consider the way the perception of Saturn’s rings
>> first appeared as lune-like patterns on the orb of the planet.
>> The better concept of rings took some time.
>> But every time there is a perception there is at the very least
>> some concept, some description and it is from this place of
>> percept/concept together that we proceed.
>> From there you may or may not conclude that there is no way to
>> reduce percept to concept and there is no way to reduce concept
>> to percept.
>> That is my position as a working position.
>> Experience provides evidence that there is much more to the
>> concurrence. In typing I can accomplish the task without looking
>> at the keys.
>> I have no training in this. I found that eventually I did it. I
>> do not know how it works or why it is reliable. If you asked me
>> which fingers make which letters, I could not answer.
>> The same goes for improvisation on my clarinet, but there I do
>> keep conscious track of the key and some other contextual
>> information. Then my “fingers” do the rest in feedback with ear
>> and brain.
>> LeDoux has an important point and I would like to know how he
>> links the Cognitive Computations with the Affective Computations.
>> In music practice we do this very deliberately, but in performance
>> (also part of practice) we let it happen. Music seems to begin
>> with the affective. Doing mathematics seems to often begin in the
>> cognitive, but achieves new creation at the nexus of cognitive
>> and affective levels.
>> This is why many people gravitate to geometry. And the
>> Pythagoreans knew that music and geometry were one.
>> Steiner in his early work focused on the self-reference of
>> "thought thinking thought” which I take to be at the nexus of
>> concept and percept.
>> In logical and pre logical work it helps to use signs iconically.
>> Thus a circle such as O can stand for a distinction and we can
>> “see” that the circle itself makes a distinction in the plane.
>> Thus the circle O is seen to refer to itself.
>> In this self-reference the Peircian Triangle
>> Interpretant
>> Signifier Signified
>> Collapses to.
>> Interpretant
>> O
>> The O does not have a separate meaning from its interpretant.
>> This leads George Spencer-Brown to declaim:
>> <GSBMarkObserverQuote.png>
>> I suggest that this situation is imaged in the orthodox form of
>> quantum measurement where the smooth and determinate evolution of
>> the wave function is
>> Interrupted by the mark of observation. Without an observer there
>> is no distinction and the world unseen evolves in potentia. With
>> an observer comes
>> percept and concept and all the rest. When I was 16 I called the
>> potentia the “guarded source of the discrete”. Can’t do any
>> better yet.
>> Best,
>> Lou
>>
>>
>> On Jan 12, 2025, at 5:21 PM, Katherine Peil
>> <ktpeil at outlook.com> wrote:
>> Thanks Pedro – great to hear from you. A quick comment on:
>> *…. I see a problem going from "percepts to concepts" as Lou
>> claims
>> below. Neuroscience has nowadays a rare consensus on not
>> dissociating
>> PERCEPTION and ACTION. The "Action Perception Cycle"…*
>> From the view of emotion science, this reflects a
>> neurocentric problem wherein “cognition” (perceptual
>> processing) confounds/sensations that lead to actions/–
>> embodied emotional sensations that came on the evolutionary
>> stage well before nerve nets or brains. It is emotion that is
>> central to action, behavior and motivation.
>>
>> Neuroscientist Jospeh LeDoux made this key distinction:
>> *Cognitive computations*: Reflective, conscious,
>> goal-directed thought, often linked to areas of the brain
>> involved in higher cognitive functions.
>> *Affective computations*: Automatic, unconscious, emotional
>> processing, often linked to areas of the brain involved in
>> emotional regulation and survival mechanisms. They always
>> concern “the self” and the lead to actions.
>> I can paraphrase his example…” there is a huge experiential
>> difference between the thought that a snake is a reptile,
>> that its skin can be made into belts and shoes, and the
>> thought that a snake is likely to be dangerous.”
>> Recall my claim that emotion in its simplest binary form –
>> akin to pleasure or pain - carries the foundational semantic
>> information bit that undergirds all learning systems, but
>> emerges from the dynamics and logic of genetic, epigenetic
>> and immune regulation. The Perception-Action-Cycle relies on
>> the emotional component, so IMHO Lou is still on safe and
>> important new ground.
>> Kate Kauffman
>> On 1/12/25, 2:59 PM, "Fis" <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>
>> wrote: Katherine Peil Kauffman
>>
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>> 1. Re: LOF Friday (Pedro C. Mariju?n)
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>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2025 22:58:21 +0100
>> From: Pedro C. Mariju?n <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
>> To:fis at listas.unizar.es
>> Subject: Re: [Fis] LOF Friday
>> Message-ID: <d93cbae2-038d-4733-8071-4f7b93a4f6d6 at gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>>
>> Dear List,
>>
>> Please, take care to post properly (as the server automatically
>> demands), as otherwise I become rather overwhelmed wit all
>> the different
>> warning messages. Thanks Lou for the tip about that.
>>
>> Well, I see a problem going from "percepts to concepts" as
>> Lou claims
>> below. Neuroscience has nowadays a rare consensus on not
>> dissociating
>> PERCEPTION and ACTION. The "Action Perception Cycle" is the
>> most common
>> acceptation. The "concept" gets? not too far from either
>> side, and
>> usually it is incorporating elements of each kind, with different
>> predominance. Joaqu?n Fuster (2008 and 2014 I think) coined
>> the term
>> "cognit" to refer to the intermediate stage, having both
>> percept ears
>> and action legs (so to speak). The union of cognits legs and
>> ears (or
>> legs and legs, ears and ears, etc.) would give birth to
>> different kinds
>> of concepts, and the union of concepts via shared cognits
>> would give
>> rise to conceptualizations, sentences, etc. Having entered
>> action in the
>> world scheme is not trivial at all. Our litmus test for
>> reality is not
>> that the percept agrees with the concept, but with the
>> action. It is, as
>> we consider in the world of science, the whole experimental
>> part... the
>> "fact". As Goethe's Faust aptly says: "In the beginning was
>> the deed"!
>>
>> My other brief pill refers again to autopoiesis. A few cellular
>> arguments not well tolerated (or only partially some of them) by
>> autopoiesis:
>>
>> --The enormous cellular importance of protein degradation.
>> The world of
>> proteasomes (the cell "industry of destruction") is
>> fascinating, even in
>> the simplest cells.
>> --The different classes of programmed cell death, essentially
>> apoptosis,
>> is also of enormous multicell--and even bacterial-- importance.
>> --The absorption of external DNA is quite frequent, and even
>> customary
>> in some bacteria.
>> --The horizontal gene transmission is of great evolutionary
>> importance
>> too (the world of phages, plasmids, transposons...)
>> --A number of genes in E. coli are never expressed in a
>> regular life
>> cycle (close to 30 or 40%, depending on the happenstances)
>> --The revolutionary role of 'external' viruses in the
>> greatest evo
>> transitions (Villarroel, Witzany).
>>
>> So, even if you consider these caveats fulfilled in larger
>> and larger
>> definitions of autopoiesis, there is another point that may
>> be quite
>> troubling: information flow and signaling disappear, and are
>> substituted
>> by the structural coupling with the environment and the observer
>> conceptualization involvement. The big concern is that
>> advancement of
>> the life cycle, as the central hub to which signaling or
>> external flows
>> cohere, and to which biological meaning relates, does not
>> occupy its
>> explanatory essential role... while adaptively advancing the
>> life cycle
>> is the silver thread that connects all biological world,
>> including our
>> own societies.
>>
>> I understand that for a mathematician the AP idea is quite
>> handy, and
>> fruitful, but for those interested in the evolution of signals,
>> sensibility, action, emotions, social emotions, etc. is perhaps a
>> stumbling block to overcome. By the way, your previous post
>> to Krassimir
>> on information was quite valuable, a firm standpoint which I
>> share. I
>> was trying to comment on it, but my daily schedule is bizarre.
>>
>> Best--Pedro
>>
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/Dr. Eric Werner, FLS
Oxford Advanced Research Foundation
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://oarf.org__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!U-1d4fFrP1fNEeg1xLJuO0cKh1K5D7V9ie0cbI3MCHm3geoIqYXPebOgTl_0e6w-84PAOli1PDAlXn1s7ppJym0$
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