<font size="3">Dear Kate, Dear All,</font>
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<font size="3">I think Kate deserves a great deal of credit for having opened discussion of aspects of science and philosophy that richly deserve it in connection with information. A little belatedly, I address here points from Gordana's and Stu's posts:</font>
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<font size="3">1. I of course accept that computability may be present in living systems, but I maintain that it is substantively different from standard computation ij that its parts are not static, binary "impulses" but complex, dynamic and structured entities. These are ontological, not epistemological; they certainly don't look to me like a standard algorithm, but this is teminology</font>
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<font size="3">2. My parts (I call them "ontolons") of course have the properties of an autogen in the Deacon/ Kauffman sense, hence of a Kantian whole as set out by Stu in <i>Biosemiotics </i>2021. But I do not agree that there are no entailing laws for the emergence and change of meanings, since I consider that we are still squarely in a process-ontological domain, subject to the Lupascian laws pf evolution of natural processes. These concepts give support to Stu's view of the evolution of life and meaning being based of physics but rising above it. If yes, then one can question the purport of "auto-" in autogen as one can of "self-" in its many uses. o the extent any real process, of which emotion is a clear example, is always "hetero-" in the sense of dependence on prior - information_as_process.</font></div>
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<font size="3">3. Kate's approach allows us to include emotion in this universe of discourse.</font>
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<font size="3">4. Taken in this ontological sense, the answer to Eric's question about the dimensional architecture of Kantian wholes appears: I claim that it is not fundamentally different from that of other natural processes. In living beings, the capacity for recursive processing of mental states provides the basis for Kate's "creative interactions".</font>
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<font size="3">5. As I noted already in my 2008 book, <i>Logic in Reality, </i>on the wonderful 1930 source of Tscherbatsky (various spellings), the Jains' version of Buddhism and its logic was qualitatively different from others in this tradition. Stu's version of affordances has I believe a close relation to this non-semantic view.</font>
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<font size="3">6. Thus the work of Sudip Patra to which Stu refers in his short note becomes of extreme importance. There is in it, first of all, the correct statement of the existence, without total separation of the ontological and epistemological. The concept of an "unmanifest" calls for a relation with what is potential or potentialized. I would most welcome Patra's view of views of "buddhist logic" which correct or amplify those of Stcherbatsky.</font></div><div><font size="3"><br></font></div><div><font size="3">I look forward to further discussion of these issues, inside or outside the thread, as Pedro sees fit.</font></div><div><font size="3"><br></font></div><div><font size="3">Best wishes,</font></div><div><font size="3">Joseph</font></div><div><font size="3"><br></font></div><div><font size="3"><br></font></div>
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<blockquote style="margin-right: 0.0px;margin-left: 15.0px;">
Message d'origine----
<br>De : ktpeil@outlook.com
<br>Date : 29/04/2024 - 00:37 (E)
<br>À : fis@listas.unizar.es, pedroc.marijuan@gmail.com
<br>Objet : [Fis] Emotional Sentience & The Tao - Author Responses
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Dear FIS community,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">It has been an honor and pleasure to learn so much from you all. Although information science is new to me, I am finding treasure troves from many directions that lend support to my emotion model.</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Aaron:</span></b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> To my mind, your emphasis on origin and function of <i class="">synapses</i> gets to the deeper dynamics of computation in networks, the central role of relational connectivity, and how possibilities get tweaked up and down in Domain 0.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Stuart: </span></b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Your point about the unmanifest in Jain tradition reminded me that I forgot to mention </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">contextuality</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> as one of the key quantum features. Also too, the moral imperative in Jainism is perhaps the closest to that within our emotional biology: </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">“Do not do that to others which pains thyself”.</i><b style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""></b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">This is the reverse of the Golden Rule because the conditions which cause emotional pain are universal. Self-preservation gets the highest priority, which is why 4 out of 5 basic emotions are painful: </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Sadness</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> (is about loss, loss of energy, need-meeting resources, etc); </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Disgust</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> (is about </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">contamination</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> of food, poison, and germ aversion); </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Fear </i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">(is about </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">threats</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> in the immediate environment), and </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Anger</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> (is about just and equitable human dignity, agentic freedom and personal empowerment). This information is encoded in what is called the appraisal themes of the various emotions and they bridge cleanly to a set of </span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">universal</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> needs similar to Maslow</span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">’</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">s needs hierarchy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Krassimir:</span></b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> Yes! The [-1, 0,+1] interval describes the No~Yes dualist language of the body, and the logic of Negative~Positive emotion - which occurs in Domain 1. But the 0 would imply the optimal state of Tao-like balance on the edge-of-chaos, the homeodynamic state to which the system will return to as part of the corrective response. This is the basis of the negative feedback homeostasis and constraint closure. At a deeper level, in Domain 0 where language of waves (oscillations) is spoken; this 0 state of balance relates to the <i class="">natural harmonic</i> of the particular geometric, phenotypal structure of the living organism. This feels like the home state, like lowest energy state, emotionally relaxed and peaceful.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Plamen: </span></b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">The connection between physical and psychological “stress” is central to understanding the self-regulatory function of emotion. Keely’s work demonstrating the connection between feeling sick, inflammation, and feeling sad – energy loss from the system. The connection between brain and body are manifold, including the immune system, the HPA axis, endocrine and paracrine systems, polyvagal nerve, the microbiome, even epigenetic methylation as memory marks. However, the informational and causal flow goes both ways. Emotion is the language – the music – of the body. The binary feelings in emotional pleasure and pain (what Selye originally called Eustress~Distress) offer a course graining of all these lower levels and those conjured by our </span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">mindscape</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> feed back down yielding placebo and nocebo effects (in addition to inflammatory responses and chronic disease).</span><br class=""><br class=""><b style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Christophe: </b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Through Gordana’s link I’ve learned a bit more about your Meaning Making System. It’s wonderful in that it goes beyond syntactics to address </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">semantics</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> – values, which is largely missing from most approaches. But I would add that organisms have two overarching evolutionary purposes, </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">adaptive self-development</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> (which includes all learning) as well as “must stay alive”.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Gordana: </span></b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">You are a kindred soul indeed. Between your papers and that lovely talk on the role of natural computations undergirding basal intelligence you’ve pointed directly to some key features of our emotional sense. Since the parallels are so many, I’ll just offer some contrasts and additions. First, while Kahneman’s dual process model remains popular, its use in psychology still carries the pejorative Cartesian idea that the bottom-up pathways that inform the fast system are inferior and foul the mindscape with “cognitive biases” – much of which are rooted in misunderstandings of emotional processes. Second, I’m completely on board with Jablonka in terms of the Evolution of the Sensitive Soul – with one addition: She pins it all on </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">associative learning</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> but does not give Pavlov or emotion their rightful due. Learning in living systems requires the </span><i style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">fundamental semantic information</i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> bit that we experience as emotional (affective, hedonic) qualia. It is the “unconditioned” stimulus-response pair within classical Pavlovian conditioning, innate evaluative punishment and reward. Third, I hear you on that “speaking about that which cannot be spoken” thing. Its taken 35 years for </span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> science </span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">sufficient</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> to frame the </span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">emotional</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> system. Then again, </span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">“The Tao that can be spoken, is not The Tao” </span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> </span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">~ Lao Tzu</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Mike: </span></b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">Your work has been revelatory in identifying the deeper bioelectric levels of self-regulatory process and the sensory stimulus undergirding emotion. Thank you. For example, the Comparison step of my little loop of mind (the ongoing comparison between self and not-self, between internal and external environments) can be instantiated bio-electrically at the cellular level by the High~Low cell membrane potential V, which provides the step 2 Signal via polarized~depolarized states, which carries the Yes~No, Good~Bad Evaluation (depolarization being associated with cancer). Please correct me if I’ve misinterpreted or taken too much liberty. But this upward bridge to affect is huge. I </span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">also</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""> see a downward bridge to Watson</span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">’</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">s natural induction via Song and Hoffman</span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">’</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">s Markov </span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">Kernels</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class="">, via emotional resonance~dissonance.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;" class=""><b class="">Pedro: </b>Your absence herein has been </span><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">palpable. I hope life is delivering its very best to you and yours. As this month comes to a close, please know that I’m happy to continue this discussion if there is sufficient interest. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">With all best wishes, </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 21.333334px;" class="">Kate Kauffman</span></p>
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