[Fis] Thank you Lou!

Wed Jan 22 16:56:15 CET 2025

Dear All,

I am concerned that after having come all this way, we arrive at a categorization in which one cannot tell the ontic sheep from the epistemic goats. We are back, again, to "self-"organization as a meaningful term term for the way in which processess operate, but one which I have argued tells us nothing about how real processes, including and especially information processes, really operate. 

Talking in layer langauge reminds me of Peirce's categories, although the notes' authors may wish to take this as a compliment.

It is much simpler, I think, to stay with a picture of the universe as constituted by quantum and non-quantum domains, even if the latter are ultimately composed of quanta. The latter, but not the former, are the locus of meaningful change, process and information. The levels of reality - inorganic, biological, cognitive and social - are dependent on the properties of matter-energy in its various hetero-organizations. The term "serving as immediate context" tells us nothing about what is involved and how; it is epistemic. "Kicking-in" is not science.

I detect a strong empathy in Jason's note, which I share, for people who sufffer from problems of all kinds. But it is a perhaps an unwritten but frequently violated rule that one cannot argue from pathologiy.

I find Kate's discussion of the self inadequate in one particular respect. It seems to be a real feature of human consciousness is that it is not shared, although it may appear to be so in, again, in what I would call pathological cases,  drug- or cognitively induced. It is what connects individual human beings rather than what individuates them that has received too little attention.

Thank you and best regards,
Joseph

> Le 21.01.2025 15:56 CET, Jason Hu <jasonthegoodman at gmail.com> a écrit :
>  
>  
> Dear Lou, Dear Kate,
> I invite you to consider a related but different frame:
> Multiple Layer Self-Organization processes, or Multiple Layer Emergences.
> Indeed, "sensation" is at a lower layer than "perception," which might be the layer #2.
> There will be a self-organization process going on from Layer #2 to Layer #3-perception. "Memory/experience/imagination" kicks in in this process. 
> At the bottom, "Layer #1", is "context", i.e. "something,"
> You can enjoy philosophizing about the "Layer #0", which is "nothing," but that has less significance than the Multiple Layer Emergence frame.
> A lower layer serves as the immediate context for the higher layer.
> One of the benefits of this frame is what I call "the missing contextual element," which leads to cognitive difficulties.
> E.g., why some adults learning a foreign language can be very difficult? 
> Some contextual elements - in this case, specific movement patterns of voicing organs - are missing. For children learning a foreign language, "imitation" is their powerful approach. Adults' voicing organs are already "programmed" in a specific way and "reprogramming" is more difficult than 
> imitation or starting from "nothing."
> E.g.2, why is very difficult, sometimes almost impossible, to understand a different culture/different political system? Again, "missing contextual elements."
> E.g.3, why is communication difficult? "Missing contextual elements." I like Kate's term "course-grained information" - do you mean "information in less resultion"?
>  
> Both biological blind spot and cognitive blind spot are "missing contextual elements."
>  
> Thoughts?
>  
> Best regards - Jason
> 
> "" 
>  
> 
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:13 AM Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com mailto:loukau at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Dear Kate,
> > Thank you. That clarifies the matter.
> > I suspect that whenever we have a sharp distinction there is a context that supports it.
> > This is more general than a boundary. Often there is no discernible boundary.
> > Best,
> > Lou
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > > On Jan 20, 2025, at 5:46 PM, Katherine Peil <ktpeil at outlook.com mailto:ktpeil at outlook.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > Dear Lou (et al),
> > > Sorry for the delay. (I was in dutch with Pedro for too many posts). Apologies all around for that. I had only a narrow window of time to participate, and my enthusiasm can get the better of me – particularly for math models that might address autopoiesis! But to wrap up:
> > > What do I mean by binary? My concept of binary begins with the dualities we experience through our embodiment, which I see as a feature (of time and space) rather than a bug. Instead of some flaw in our perceptual systems, it has to do with course graining of information required for the here and now relationship between a distinct system and its immediate environment. (Your distinctions as boundaries?)  This leads into your post-Leibniz concept that encompasses formal logic and computers, the coding language or 0s and 1s. Given the incremental nature of time, at each iterative tick in any process, there areeither~or choices to be made, which I associate with digital information. Binaries – complementary opposites - are everywhere in nature, represented by Yin~Yang in my Tao Story. Ultimately, they relate to the distinctive self-referential dance between parts and wholes.  (What Dr. Thomas says about infinite sets is most intriguing here.)
> > >  
> > > In terms of my emotion science, while we can experience “mixed emotions” in terms of our complex human feelings and cognitive imaginings, raw pleasure and pain are binary categories. Any personally self-relevant event emerges in our experience as either painful or pleasurable, they enter our consciousness as either~or valanced surprises. As Martha Nussbaum put it, they are “eruptions in consciousness”, course-grained from the unconscious regulatory processes of the body (opponent processes, chemical signaling etc.) But in terms of their physical substrates and biological function, pleasure and pain operate together as a Both~And complementary pair. One cannot be understood outside the holistic context of its binary counterpart, like conjugate variables. They both subserve the ancient function of self-regulation, mediating the paradoxical balance between stability and change over time, or from the perspective ofthe self – the sentient subject – self-preservation (mediated by pain) and self-development(mediated by pleasure).
> > >  
> > > In terms of the word perception (as opposed to sensation), I would agree that the distinguishing feature isprediction – a feedforward cybernetic process that concerns the future (while sensation is more a feedback process about the immediate present). As sensory signals that serve as the Pavlovian “unconditioned stimulus-response pair” and the mode for conditioned learning categories, hedonic emotional qualia do both jobs. They provide the fundamental semantic information bit required for autopoiesis, all learning systems, and they undergird human values. I remain hungry for math models that can root them in quantum information. Both Federico Faggin and our own Dr. Thomas resonate here.
> > >  
> > > Thank you so much sharing your deep wisdom.
> > > Over and out,
> > > Kate Kauffman
> > >  
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