<div dir="auto"><div>Hi Joe</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I could have added my own list of questions about Bhaskar! But I knew him, and I remember the way he thought (he and his circle were, by the way, thoroughly Marxist). I admired the way he thought, even if I didn't always agree with what he thought. Also, intellectual work changes over time, long after the death of the author. Bhaskar's work looks different to me now than it did 20 years ago (his impossible book "Dialectic" is more comprehensible and interesting - chatGPT helps too). Your work will be the same, and so often the squabbles between ontologists are merely like two bald men fighting over a comb...</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm more interested in what might be called a meta-ontology. I don't think an ontological articulation of a mechanism that could produce the rich variety of life as we experience it is possible (could you make disastrous humans out of Logic in Reality? Could infocomputationalism?). This is the test... And yet Shakespeare manages it repeatedly! </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The key to the mechanism of our disaster lies in our striving to think why we are disastrous, and then believing we've got the answer!</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The irony in that, and the fact that it makes us smile, is perhaps the key to the simultaneous joy of living and the wonders of humanity.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Best wishes</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Mark</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Dr. Mark William Johnson<br><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health</div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">University of Manchester</div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Department of Science Education</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">University of Copenhagen</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">University of Liverpool</div>Phone: 07786 064505<br>Email: <a href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com" target="_blank">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a><br>Blog: <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XzHXZIvYquTBofnciJUHa3DTsJE2syRk10CjiDRjeg_6J1ceWVBKwQsLXdbur2fiSiJIr08pojsrqvnFyXEzK80$" target="_blank">http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com</a></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, 7 Jun 2025, 09:06 , <<a href="mailto:joe.brenner@bluewin.ch">joe.brenner@bluewin.ch</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<span style="font-size:13pt">Dear Mark,</span>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size:13pt">If you are tending in the direction you say, I suggest you might quarantine Bhaskar and his so-called Critical Realism. The following, taken from my Section on this subject from my <em>Philosophy in Reality</em> may suggest why</span>
</div>
<div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
The work of Bhaskar can be subsumed under the term of critical realism, seen as a non-Marxist continuation of the Frankfurt school of philosophy. While the objectives of this movement are laudable, we see a structural weakness in Bhaskar’s particular extension of it, namely, a form of transcendentalism that, to a non-reductionist realist seems naïve. According to LIR, if dualism is “hard-wired” into reality, then the solution to the problems of society cannot lie in transcending <em>its</em> duality but to live it. The former is what has been preached for centuries and is still being preached in a similar form, with the results that one observes. Reasoned and earnest restatements of ethical goals should always be welcomed. However, the value of such restatements should not be diluted by reintroduction of precisely those abstractions that are one cause of misunderstanding of the dynamics of society-in-conflict. The appeal of such positions makes it only more necessary to provide counterarguments in an appropriate dialectical manner. I listed several things in Bhaskar with which I agree, <em>e.g. </em>3. … we are inextricably connected with our fellow human beings, the social totality and the natural cosmos in which we are embedded and of which we are a part. … To be is in fact to be related.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
On the other hand, Bhaskar’s transcendental anti-realism results in apodictic statements that are unacceptable. Some examples follow:
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
2. To incorporate the transcendental or supramental, the intuitive, the mental, the emotional, vastly expands our ontology. <em>None of these can be derived in any way from physical reality </em>(emphasis ours).
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
3. Truth is in fact a more basic conception than reality, for truth, unlike reality, is not necessarily (NB: there are many hedges of this kind) implicated in a dualistic mood or structure of thought.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
4. At a more prosaic level, the aletheic fact that metals conduct electricity may consist (another hedge) in their possession of a free electron, … (NB: this is a scientific tautology. What is ‘prosaic’ about our reality?)
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
In our dualistic philosophy, the difficult but necessary exercise is, the "trick", if you like, is to see that all the wonderful things in human life, imagination and spirituality as well as understanding are possible <em>solely</em> within a natural, energetic world, in which the laws of physics hold (Principle of Naturalistic Closure). This world has, however, as part of its reality, the <em>appearance</em> of another world - call it noumenal or some equivalent term.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size:13pt">My conclusion was and is that Bhaskar's "practical approach to ontology" is attractive but misleading and counterproductive.</span>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size:13pt">As to whether computational (what, theory??) leads us to think that to be is is to be the value of a variable I leave to others to others who work with such theories to answer. Lupasco wrote that 20th Century science could be described as the search for values and invariants, with the results we know. </span>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size:13pt">Thank you.</span>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size:13pt">Joe</span>
</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
Le 06.06.2025 10:41 CEST, Mark Johnson <<a href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a>> a écrit :
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
Dear Gordana, all,
<div>
</div>
<div>
There's been a lively back-channel discussion which is perhaps now worth opening up to the broader group.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
The fundamental issues arising are not surprising - they are, I think, ontology, epistemology and experiment.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
I wonder whether, with regard to ontology, Bhaskar's Critical Realism might be useful. Bhaskar has what I think is a practical approach to ontology, which is a twist on Kant's idea of a transcendental argument - "what must be true in order to experience x". Fundamental to Bhaskar's ontological thinking is that ontology must be mechanistic in one way or another (echoing Mike's initial posting about living things and machines). Without getting into arguments about mind-independent mechanisms, the obvious point is to say that info-computationalism (deriving from Floridi), Logic in Reality, John's evolutionary gravitation theory, and Mike's multi-scale competency architectures are all mechanisms. I know there are also critiques of what a mechanism is (Lou) - but bear with me.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Say we posit an ontological mechanism z. This z is an answer to the transcendental question, so "z is what must be true in order to experience x". Then we have to say, "well, is it?". This is surely when we have to take z as a starting point for building a simulation of life and the universe. Then we might be in a position to say what emerges from z relates to my experience x. The epistemological problem is then one of mimesis: we are seeking to create a simulated reality and simulated experience which like the actual reality we experience. We're in the world of Golem, AI, etc (and Gombrich's "Art and Illusion")
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
This throws the spotlight back onto ontology and the assumption that there are mechanisms (mind independent or not), and this raises the fundamental question with which we began this session. Ontology is the study of being - so what is it to be? is it "to be the value of a variable"? That's what our computational inevitably lead us to think. Where does our knowledge that there is something bigger than ourselves arise from being the value of a variable? This is the key question for me - and perhaps there's an experiment to explore it.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Could we take any of the ontological mechanistic propositions (info-computationalism, etc) and produce a situation where emergent complex life turns on itself in the way that we see in today's world. Could we simulate the manufacture of disastrous humans? If we can't, I suggest we've not got our thinking right.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
It may also be the case that we need to think in a very different kind of way about how we theorise, how we act, and how we coordinate our discourse. This is the position to which I am tending.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Best wishes,
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Mark
</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div class="gmail_attr" dir="ltr">
On Fri, 6 Jun 2025 at 08:29, Gordana Dodig Crnkovic <<a href="mailto:gordana.dodig-crnkovic@chalmers.se" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">gordana.dodig-crnkovic@chalmers.se</a>> wrote:
</div>
<blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">Dear Bill,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">Thank you for this deeply insightful and beautifully articulated synthesis.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">Your interpretation captures the core of the info-computational view with exceptional clarity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">Your integration of embodied cognition, autopoiesis, and logic in reality into a coherent framework is truly inspiring. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">I especially value your emphasis on the dynamic, self-constructing nature of living systems, where ontology and epistemology are inseparable aspects of becoming.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">Regarding your question: yes, I do include valence as an essential aspect of infocomputation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">The capacity of living systems to evaluate and assign significance</span><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif"> </span><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">to internal states and external cues is fundamental for adaptive behavior.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">It is through such valenced appraisals that information becomes actionable and meaningful within the self-referential dynamics of life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif">Best</span><span style="font-family:'Avenir Light',sans-serif"> regards,<br>
Gordana</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<div style="border-right:none;border-bottom:none;border-left:none;border-top:1pt solid rgb(181,196,223);padding:3pt 0cm 0cm">
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:black">From: </span></strong><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:black">William Miller <<a href="mailto:wbmiller1@cox.net" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wbmiller1@cox.net</a>><br><strong>Date: </strong>Friday, 6 June 2025 at 03:31<br><strong>To: </strong>Mark Johnson <<a href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a>>, "to: Joseph Brenner" <<a href="mailto:joe.brenner@bluewin.ch" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">joe.brenner@bluewin.ch</a>>, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <<a href="mailto:gordana.dodig-crnkovic@mdu.se" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">gordana.dodig-crnkovic@mdu.se</a>>, "<a href="mailto:goernitz@em.uni-frankfurt.de" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">goernitz@em.uni-frankfurt.de</a>" <<a href="mailto:goernitz@em.uni-frankfurt.de" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">goernitz@em.uni-frankfurt.de</a>>, "Levin, Michael" <<a href="mailto:michael.levin@tufts.edu" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">michael.levin@tufts.edu</a>>, "Pedro C. Marijuán" <<a href="mailto:pedroc.marijuan@gmail.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">pedroc.marijuan@gmail.com</a>>, Moshe Klein <<a href="mailto:gan_adam@netvision.net.il" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">gan_adam@netvision.net.il</a>>, Gordana Dodig Crnkovic <<a href="mailto:gordana.dodig-crnkovic@chalmers.se" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">gordana.dodig-crnkovic@chalmers.se</a>>, JOHN TORDAY <<a href="mailto:jtorday@ucla.edu" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">jtorday@ucla.edu</a>><br><strong>Subject: </strong>Re: [Not Fis] Gravity, Holism, and Biological Information Processing--Bill Miller's contribution: the "It" of a machine, truth and trust</span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Dear Gordana, Joe, and all, </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">I have greatly appreciated your most recent exchange and am in full agreement with both of your perspectives. Indeed, I regard them as an integrated whole, and further, that the crux of that integration is embodied cognition epitomized within cells, which I regard as intelligent agents engaged in measured infocomputation. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Gordana highlights the interwoven relationship between ontology and epistemology within the living frame and notes that this enaction stems from 'embodied cognition'. Naturally, I couldn't agree more, which leads to our perspective (my colleagues and I) that ontology unites with epistemology within that cellular form. This is why we stress that biology is information management and, accordingly, represents a continuous natural learning system. Implicit to that frame, ontology is "constantly evolving as the agent learns" and "being and becoming are dynamically co-defined, " as Gordana so eloquently expressed. Cells are self-realizing and self-becoming through continuous self-construction, so ontology and epistemology are always reciprocal aspects of a unitary living process. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Cellular infocomputation propels these relationships, as Gordana stresses. So, having a firm grasp of what each of us means by 'infocomputation' is important, including its competencies and constraints. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">I'll take the liberty of supposing that Gordana includes the valenced components of internal cellular measurement. Gordana will correct me if I've overstepped. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">If both of these informational characteristics are accredited (infocomputation as amplitude and infocomputation as valenced appraisal of self-referential status, then I see a natural melding between infocomputation and Joe's brilliant work in dynamic and lemmic logic through his Logic in Reality. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">That linkage centers on the constraints of information in the living frame, as imposed ambiguity, and the structural necessity of cellular autopoiesis (internal self-generation of its available, actionable, semantic information). </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Joe's LIR is quite attractive, although we certainly come from different disciplines. Nonetheless, there are compelling overlaps. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">LIR rejects classical binary logic, arguing that reality is not static or directly reducible to discrete true/false statements. Instead, our representation of reality, achieved via internal self-appraisal of uncertain external environmental cues, is a dynamic interplay of contradictory forces and emergent states. Of course, this living feature specifically delineates the gap between machines and the living frame. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Further, in LIR, as I understand it, its Principle of Dynamic Opposition maintains that the movement between potentials (implicates) and actuals (explicates) involves inherent contradictions that shift continuously as new states emerge. In my terms, this principle is exemplified in cells that have constructed their inner representational map of reality, measured ambiguous cues, and then determined which tools to deploy and what resources to expend to attempt to be in synchrony with that self-produced construct. However, an entailment of the 'doing' is that all aspects of that decision tree are shifting as those decisions are made, both externally within the environment which is never static, and internally through self-improvising memories that Gordana had pointedly noted. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">This brings us to the 'included middle' (T-state), where oppositions co-exist in dynamic tension, leading to an emergent third state. Recently, we introduced a revision of Adrian Bejan's Constructal Law, which states that a flow system to persist in time must evolve to provide easier and greater access to its currents. This construct is meant to address thermodynamic flows in all finite physical systems and offers some explanatory insight into living system architecture. We have offered a revision that incorporates the flow of information in living systems, describing how both thermodynamic flows and information flows must accommodate each other, short of their optimized degrees of freedom, and thereby provide 'mutualizing' constraints that channel biological expression. Thus, there can be no perfection in living systems or perfection in evolution since the functional choices are always based on compromises. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">This can be considered a good example of how life conforms to the 'included middle'. Notably, both flows are in consistent, reciprocated adjustment, so there is never a static state. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Cognition-Based Evolution is not just an evolutionary theory but a distinct framework about the fundamental nature of living systems and how that shapes their evolutionary trajectory. Most significantly, cells are not passive subjects of selection but are the actual agents of selection. Their infocompuational competencies determine the cell's choice of tools (including genes) and partners (synergisms). Variations arise from this cognitive selection, and these either meet environmental proscriptions or fail. Critically, that feedback is natural learning, with the environment exerting its role as a filter of precedent cellular decision-making and problem-solving. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">In all such actions, cells and their aggregates are not only existing within their approximation of reality but engaged in active niche constructions to continually shape their environment, which reciprocally changes their grasp of reality through infocomputation. In this manner, emergence, inherent tension, and contradictions flow as continuous living adaptations in which both the flow of information and energy are crucial.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Circling back to Gordana's illuminating post on Jun 4., good theories, if correct, drive new avenues for empirical research. Both are necessary aspects of scientific progress. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Best regards to all, </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Bill </span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:12pt"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="m_-4833904419835702593m_-6747352157555785779yahoo_quoted_0084779516">
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Helvetica Neue';color:rgb(38,40,42)">On Thursday, June 5, 2025 at 05:59:24 AM MST, JOHN TORDAY <<a href="mailto:jtorday@ucla.edu" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">jtorday@ucla.edu</a>> wrote: </span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Helvetica Neue';color:rgb(38,40,42)"> </span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Helvetica Neue';color:rgb(38,40,42)"> </span></p>
</div>
<div>
<div id="m_-4833904419835702593m_-6747352157555785779yiv7206862452">
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:'Helvetica Neue';color:rgb(38,40,42)">Dear Mark, Joe, Bill, Michael, Gordana, Thomas, Pedro, Moshe, I greatly appreciate the recent comments by Gordana, Joe and Mark. I just wanted to say that I put much stock in consciousness as a manifestation of physiology based on the latter having evolved from the Cosmos through Symbiogenesis. In that vein, I have traced the cellular-molecular evolution of physiologic accommodation and exploitation of oxygen as a sequential interplay with lipids (</span><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Roboto;color:rgb(33,33,33)">Torday JS, Rehan VK. On the evolution of the pulmonary alveolar lipofibroblast. Exp Cell Res. 2016 Jan 15;340(2):215-9)</span><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:'Helvetica Neue';color:rgb(38,40,42)">, starting at the end of the sequence with the evolution of lung surfactant as the means by which the swim bladder evolved into the lung in amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.....that interplay of lipids and oxygen goes all the way back to Konrad Bloch's discovery of the role of cholesterol in thinning the cell membrane to facilitate oxygenation.....and beyond, me speculating regarding the role of lipid molecules in the formation of micelles as the origin of the protocell. Obviously, we'll never know how life began, except through such 'chicanery', but suffice to say that Claassen and Spooner (</span><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Roboto;color:rgb(33,33,33)">Claassen DE, Spooner BS. Liposome formation in microgravity. Adv Space Res. 1996;17(6-7):151-60) showed that gravity was necessary for lipid micelles to form the structural basis for life. And when Besnard et al. (Besnard V, Wert SE, Stahlman MT, Postle AD, Xu Y, Ikegami M, Whitsett JA. Deletion of Scap in alveolar type II cells influences lung lipid homeostasis and identifies a compensatory role for pulmonary lipofibroblasts. J Biol Chem. 2009 Feb 6;284(6):4018-30) deleted the ability of the alveolar type 2 cells that make lung surfactant in alveoli to synthesize cholesterol, the mice survived that deficit in surfactant function by forming more lipofibroblasts, the cell-type that has facilitated lung surfactant production in land vertebrates, which was an exaptation (Gould and Vrba, 1982), or the re-purposing of a historic trait evolutionarily. My point is that there is a means for deconvoluting physiologic evolution by seeing how and why traits evolved under specific geo-physical and -chemical conditions, which are testable/refutable, as I have shown for the role of gravity in evolution (Torday JS. Parathyroid hormone-related protein is a gravisensor in lung and bone cell biology. Adv Space Res. 2003;32(8):1569-76), as have others. I find this preferable to simply 'deducing' evolution without experimental evidence. And all of the above leads to insight to the evolution of consciousness as the vertical integration of cell-molecular physiology (Torday JS. The holism of cosmology and consciousness. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2023 Jan;177:181-184), which is considered the most important question that faces us, particularly as AI encroaches.</span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Helvetica Neue';color:rgb(38,40,42)"> </span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Roboto;color:rgb(33,33,33)">Best, John</span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Helvetica Neue';color:rgb(38,40,42)"> </span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote></div>