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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear FISers,<br>
<br>
My only addition to the below would be a further reflection on
what "potential" could mean when applied to the life course of a
human individual or other complex living. If we go too fast in the
connection with physics, we may leave aside some very interesting
aspects, precisely the deep connection with the humanities. It is
an intriguing coincidence that perhaps the two best works on
narratives (Booker 2004; Bonnet, 2006; that I have already
mentioned) are both written... from the perspective of Jungian
psychology/psychiatry. Terms such as archetypes, unconscious,
complexes, repression, initiation, regression, shadow, rebirth,
etc. appear not always with a clear necessity. I mean their
profound analysis of narratives (the former more concerned with
the literary, the latter with the filmic) probably could be
crafted in a more neutral conceptualization. I do not consider
unscientific the Jungian stance, but not quite scientific either.
Mobilizing the unconscious is one of the crucial points to handle
by the effective narrative according to these authors. But what is
the unconscious? It is not far more accurate considering the
brain-rest activation of contemporary neuroscience (Default Mode
Network) as taking charge of that involuntary emergence of
impressions and deep memories? And, similarly, does not
"potential" refer to cognitive/anticipatory capabilities that
somehow detect higher fitness possibilities along some behavioral
paths than others, and then conduce to the long term realization
and flourishing of a life cycle? The potential belongs, say, to
the "processual" not to the physical. In my view, the general
challenge is to re-explain narratives, the fundamental commodity
of social communication, in a more advanced conceptualization,
beyond the Jungian, the Shannonian, or the corrosive
fake-correctedness of our times... It can be done. The
neuroscientific approach would be badly needed to recreate the
terminology and the fundamental ideas.<br>
<br>
Best regards<br>
--Pedro <br>
<br>
El 21/11/2018 a las 9:31, Joseph Brenner escribió:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy">Dear
Colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB">Pedro’s approach, solidly
anchored in biology, allows for progress in understanding.
Two comments on his ‘logic’:
1) I would not call the ‘concoction’ within which we live
imaginary. It is rather a set of real, dynamic mental
processes, with actual
and potential, effectively causal components. 2) ‘Complex
life’
instantiates potential (and kinetic) energy not only in a
‘book keeping
role’. Complex life is constituted by actual and potential
energy evolving
in cycles and stages. Some myths (Epimetheus and
Prometheus) correctly express
this duality and its evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB">Unfortunately, there is another
myth that I believe correctly models part of Jerry’s
proposals. It is
that of Procrustes, an innkeeper who stretched or cut the
legs of his guests to
make them fit the only available beds, until taken care of
by Heracles. You
write: </span></font><span lang="EN-GB">A lot more needs
to be said about the
intimate nature of relations among scientific narratives
before one can bind
the logic of the perplex number system to the grammars
associated with
mathematically structured anticipatory systems.</span><font
size="2" color="navy"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB">This sentence needs to be
parsed, given the concatenation of terms: in my opinion,
the purpose of
understanding the relations among scientific narratives is
to understand real anticipatory
systems, whether or not mathematically structured. Perplex
numbers are
artificial numerological constructions with a
corresponding logic that may or
may not apply to other artificial constructions, such as
abstract anticipatory
systems, without dynamics. Narratives about real science
could be applied in
principle to such questions, but the implication must be
avoided that such
application would tell us anything about reality. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB">I cannot accept any manipulation
of numbers as being more than <i><span
style="font-style:italic">a posteriori. </span></i>This
applies also to Karl’s approach. Also, the concept of an
‘in-<i><span style="font-style:italic">formed</span></i>’
number is an oxymoron,
although I understand the attempt to ascribe
‘value-by-association’,
so to speak. Numbers cannot accept ‘form’, or its meaning;
they
exist, eternally, outside the world of form and change. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB">I thus stress the importance of
Pedro’s statement: processes do not go </span></font><span
lang="EN-GB">smoothly
upwards from the quantum level.</span><font size="2"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB"> As one proceeds to higher levels of reality,
there are discontinuities and different laws apply. One
only notes the presence
of some isomorphisms, such as the failure of some
macroscopic process equations
to commute or distribute. Finally, I, at least, will
resist any attempts to let
in, through the back door, anti-scientific concepts of
quantum processes in
mind and cognition.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB">Best wishes,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"
color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"
lang="EN-GB">Joseph<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center"
align="center"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"
color="black"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
color:windowtext" lang="EN-US">
<hr tabindex="-1" size="3" align="center" width="100%">
</span></font></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><font size="2" face="Tahoma"
color="black"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:windowtext;font-weight:bold"
lang="EN-US">From:</span></font></b><font size="2"
face="Tahoma" color="black"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma;color:windowtext" lang="EN-US"> Fis
[<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es">mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es</a>]
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">On Behalf Of </span></b>Pedro
C. Marijuan<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span></b>
mardi, 20 novembre 2018
21:15<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span></b> fis<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Cc:</span></b> Jerry
LR Chandler<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span></b>
Re: [Fis] Anticipatory
Systems--"Potential"</span></font><font color="black"><span
style="color:windowtext" lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"
color="black"><span style="font-size:12.0pt" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"
color="black"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Dear Jerry
and FIS colleagues,<br>
<br>
I wonder how big or how clever your Chemostat apparatus
should be. There are
thousands of metabolic intermediates in an organism, and
there are another
thousands of diversified signals. And we have in the
order of 30 billion cells
(trillions in the US system). Plus around 100 trillion
of bacterial cells in
the microbiome. "We" are the emergence all of that
molecular
diversity. It does not mean that life exactly "controls"
all the
details of the mega-information of this whole system...
How that control is
organized, the principles of biological information, so
to speak, become
another great question, but probably very different from
the idea of mass
control in a chemostat. </span></font><span
lang="EN-GB">In any case, the way you
have argued it, seemingly smoothly going upwards from the
quantum level, is
beyond of what I consider feasible. </span>Scientific
overstretching of a
reasonable paradigm perhaps.<br>
<br>
Socially, indeed, we do not try to communicate around by
following a colossal
strategy of reducing happenstances to their quantum
description; neither to the
kind of meta-languages you mention. In general, social
communication revolves
around narratives. They are not free-wheeling constructions
(at least referring
to the "great stories" of all epochs) but optimized tools to
guide
individuals in the advancement of their lives, in the
achievement of their
"potential". Looking at the historical evolution of those
great
stories, they are teaching us about which were the cardinal
aspects of common
life to be specifically grasped by the child, by the
adolescent, by the maiden,
the artisan, the warrior, the priest... And in this social
communication
endeavors, life cycles do not appear as homogeneous linearly
"timed".
Human lives are continuously looking ahead, anticipating
("Prometheus" style) but simultaneously looking at the past
and
pondering on it ("Epimetheus" style). Although
"presentists", we live within an imaginary concoction built
of mosaic
pasts and futures, "multi-timed" so to speak. The way to
harmonize
past, present, and future (vital information) is one of the
leit motifs of
those great stories.<br>
<br>
And about cycles, so many of them can be found. At the scale
of the
organism: cellular & tissular cycles, metabolic cycles,
behavioral
cycles, ultradian cycles, circadian cycles, seasonal cycles,
yearly cycles,
secular cycles, and many others related to social mores.
Some of them can be
arranged in a sort of hierarchy or inclusivity, but there is
a fundamental
diversity. That most of this orchestration of cycles does
not require a
conscious effort does not mean that we should ignore them
concerning the roots
of social communication. The cycles and stages (and
"passages")
within a life cycle have an ominous presence. As i was
saying, the
"potential" of each young life in ascend requires the
reception of
wisdom (via social communication narratives) to integrate
the own individual
path within the social matrix of the time.<br>
<br>
Thinking twice about the "potential" of life, it might be
something
important to consider regarding any form or manifestation of
life. Perhaps
better than the Principle of Conatus from Spinoza I was
referring days ago (the
effort to self-maintain and flourish). Complex life has
"potential"
to advance along some multi-time, multi-cycle developmental
path in the most
complex of all environments: the social matrix. Is there
some deep similarity
of this potential with the role that "potential" energy
plays in our
book-keeping of energy conservation?<br>
<br>
Thanking the comments,<br>
Best--Pedro<br>
<br>
</p>
</div>
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<pre wrap="">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
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<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
------------------------------------------------- </pre>
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