Reading Nature’s Signals

I don’t disagree that there is such a thing as expanding and narrowing paths of learning, or that the quantitative metaphor fits approximately if you take the structure of your information container for granted, but I think the reason new states or organization are invented, species, philosophies, technologies, organisms, is that perfecting something is a natural consequence of inventing some larger idea.

Now if the king is upset that his armies refuse to go conquer more distant lands to add to his wealth, and want to settle down with the best they’ve gathered from several, he can stomp around, but the army is what makes the decision. It’s not necessarily that they couldn’t handle it. It could be just that the found something that works, and that turning inward diverts the creativity from expansion to perfection. Maybe perfection has more information content potential than expansion, certainly different kinds.

> >Sometimes this discussion turns depending on whether
> >you’re talking
> >about things or their explanations, though. I often mix it all up.
> >It’s quite tricky to arrange the language to distinguish
> >between the
> >four, inside v. outside, explaining v. experiencing, but
> they’re hugely
> >different, or make it 8 or is it more if you add images v.
> >things…
> Agreed. Yes. I try to keep my talk, when I can, to be
> about models and theories, but internalism is a break from
> that. I think, lacking a logic of vagueness, we can’t really
> get a model of the internal experience. It’s a challenge. If
> our mechanistic discourses could handle such stuff as
> complexity, it wouldn’t, I suppose, be a current problem.
> >> >I had a nice long conversation on FRIAM with
> >> >Nicholas Thompson on
> >> >the meaning of homing systems in nature, and their
> >> >taxonomies, ending in
> >> >proposing it as a natural scale of consciousness. To
> >> >summarize what I
> >> >got out of it, thermostats have loops, and so an interior,
> >> >but only a
> >> >one dimensional awareness of the world. Natural systems
> >> >with various
> >> >levels of homeostasis have internal worlds of greater
> >> >complexity and
> >> >evident multi-dimensional awareness and responses to their
> >> >environments. Mammals, consider a mouse strategically
> >> >scurrying for
> >> >it’s hole and apparently homing to an abstract image,
> >> >all have
> >> >precognition on various rather high levels.
> >> OK.
> >> >Nick initially seemed concerned with whether considering a
> >> >thermostat
>> >to have any measure of consciousness would mean human
>> >experience was no longer unique.
>> >Well, I don’t think ‘human experience’ can be really unique
>> >since it is scattered about partout. As well, if we 
>> >have some
>> >property, then the evolutionary viewpoint requires that
>> >our ancestors
>> >had its precursors — all the way back. Ergo, a tornado
>> >has some fleeting, very vague intentionality!

> >Two issues. Referring to things v. explanations changes the
> >issues to be addressed. When talking about ‘things’ terms
> >refer outside the
> >language and are designed to usefully link to physical
> >characters, as
> >with taxonomy. e.g. to talk about the ‘intentions’ of physical
> >tornados you’d need to have a taxonomic scale of
> >intentionality.
> The best I’ve come up with so far is: {teleomaty
> {teleonomy {teleology}}}, or {propensity {function
>{purpose}}}

> >On mine, because it’s ranks states rather than degrees,
> >tornados don’t
> >make it on the scale. ‘Intention’ was actually the word Nick
> >attributed to thermostats, treating it as a property of
> >degrees as you
> >do, and I pointed out, as you seem inclined, that that was
> >quite a stretch
> >considering the word’s most common usage. To me ‘intent’
> >involves a
> >focused mental image, not just a direction of drift, and
> >altering that
> >concept far enough to include thermostats (or tornados)|
> >would do damage
> >to my other uses of the term.
> I have, re the above, also tried, {{intentinality}} ->
> {intentionality} -> intentionality, to show the developmental
> refinement involved here. Tornadoes can only have a vague
> {{intentionality}} or propensity. You see, if one is to be a
> materialist, then it is necessary to find material precursors
> if we take an evolutionary perspective. I do, however,
> appreciate yor reluctance here. It does, given our general
> perspective, seem to be quite a stretch!

I don’t follow your parenthesis or alternate spellings schemes. If I get your meaning anyway, that being a ‘materialist’ means that physical qualities have no origin, I probably don’t agree. A souffle’ has ‘eggness’ but an egg does not have souffle’ness, and in either case the ‘ness’ suffix indicates a perceptual quality not a physical property. Because we definitely do think more in terms of perceptual qualities than physical properties I choose to us the latter as an aid in drawing otherwise arbitrary lines in the middle of perceptual continuities to reduce the chaos in my thinking!

> >If you refer to tornados as being
> >’explanations’ constructed of your personal associations,
> >e.g. having inherited ‘properties’ from you that you may
> >not be able to point to,
> >then they might well have intention in the usual sense.
> A curious(ly interesting) viewpoint! It is true that
> teleomaty is a generalization of teleology, if that’s what
> you mean. So, of course this is a model being constructed by
> me nia the process of generalization.

Well, I think what I mean is that normal human cognition mixes closely corresponding images of things with imaginary associations, and how we feel about them, quite freely, i.e. magical thinking that grounds all perception in our personal emotional dramas. (thought evolved from emotion I think) That brings up my original sense of the value of the ‘fuzziness’ of reality, that it’s only the vague and confusing parts of awareness that we haven’t overwritten with our normal magical thinking… It’s like learning not to trust foveal vision and relying more on peripheral vision.

> >> >What’s the way around that?… perhaps watching the
> >> >fuzzy bits in the natural connections, the indelible unique
> >> >emergence of things.
> >> Paying attention to intuition.
> >well, paying attention has *always* helped…

> >I remember when I seemed to have a real brain and could
> > watch my own
> >thoughts grow, reaching out like little branching root
> >systems, drawing
> >on associations from all kinds of recesses, and trying to
> >keep my mind
> >quiet enough to identify what the smallest possible thought
> >was. What
> >I seemed to find was that every one was stubbornly whole. I
> >seemed to
> >be somewhat good at it but had no success at all when I
> >tried to just
> >think half a thought…

> I understand this with emotions rather than thoughts.
> In dreams I have emotions NEVER experienced in ‘real life’,
> totally unique and whole. There seem to be a never ending
> variety of them, all ‘unused’.

One of the folks on Pianka’s list called me to tell me about his theory of sleep and learning, that learning began as a tandem work of waking and sleeping functions, accumulation and reprocessing, linear and gestalt, when and what. Interesting idea, but all he had to show was a plausible but very thin essay from 1969. Apparently he’s been cornering people to talk about it ever since then! I thought I was bad off! Still, it’s a good idea. Does it strike you in any way?

Phil
> STAN
> >Phil
> >> STAN