I've just been looking at your essay. The ideas sound similar to mine but my way of introducing them may be simpler. I hope to have a coherent presentation before too long, but need to slot the pieces clearly together (which my main critic in this thread seems to be notably unable to do in the way he presents his own rival picture!).

It intrigues me to note that you mention terms like 'edge of chaos'. Please elabortae for my clarity if we can differentiate between chaos of different degrees. Also, we may follow with similar procedure to consider Order and its degrees of less and more! We conducted an experiment where we mixed random events being sensed with different lower and lower degree of regular or ordered events. Chi square test clearly indicated such a mix taking place even at extremely low mixing % of regular pulses!

    You can look up the term on the internet if you want more, but the situation essentially is that chaos refers to 'sensitivity to initial conditions', with differences between two adjacent situations increasing exponentially over time. There is a definite edge between this increase over time and stable situations where differences decrease over time. Biology seems to make use of this because being near the edge supports the possibility of favourable mutations. But you are right in saying that there are varying distances from the edge and this may also be important.

    Thanks, Brain for your pertinent response. I hope Biologista along with Physicist colleagues may investigate such border line situations experimentally in order to clarify the siyuation. My youngdr colleague researches inmicro biology and your suggestion can be persued further!

    Dear Brian,

    I made similar assumption on central role of biology and I attempted to investigate such fundamental biological fact as Homochirality. I had found that Homochirality could be used also as heuristic in Number theory ( an existence of odd perfect numbers, fundamental theorem of arithmetic and ABC conjecture ) - please see my essay " Fundamentalness of Homochirality ". I suspect that fundamentalness of biological Homochirality also could be connected with an idea of violation of symmetry in physics.

    Generally,a central role of biology is easy deduced from my Quantum Idealism ( article published in Russian Uspekhi Physics in English in 2003,12 with support of Vitaly L.Ginsburg Nobel Prizer in physics 2004). I think your idealistic attitude is also important in understanding your biosemantics.

    With the best wishes

    Michael A.Popov

    Brian,

    I like the idea of mathematics as 'something that life does' because it makes no value judgment. After all, rape is something life does, too. Makes it possible for me to separate mathematics from mathematician, and accept Bieberbach's results without imposing my own prejudice against Nazis and rape. I take it, that you mean that meaning is an objectified thing--a higher meaning than any one person can impose. After all, some deem Nazis and rape 'something that life does' and are proud of it besides. One is reminded that philosophy was once known as moral science.

    " ... something that sufficiently evolved life does because in the appropriate context so doing is of value to life." Ultimately. The jury is out on the context for 'sufficiently evolved'. And no research mathematician proves theorems because she thinks it will add value to life--though it does, in the long run. Theorem-proving is 'something that life does' and it gets the mathematician through life. Perhaps its value is just that.

    There is no doubt in my mind, though, that meaning precedes the construction of a mathematical object. I embrace your premise.

    All Best,

    Tom https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3124

      Hi Brian:

      I fully agree with your statement - "... there are intriguing parallels between

      the quantum and biological domains, suggesting that there may be a more fundamental level underlying both."

      I would like to draw your attention to the missing fundamental physics governing - "What causes a photon to accelerate to the speed of light?" My paper - "What is Fundamental - Is C the Speed of Light". describes the fundamental physics of antigravity missing from the widely-accepted mainstream physics and cosmology theories resolving their current inconsistencies and paradoxes. The missing physics depicts a spontaneous relativistic mass creation/dilation photon model that explains the yet unknown dark energy, inner workings of quantum mechanics, and bridges the gaps among relativity and Maxwell's theories. The model also provides field equations governing the spontaneous wave-particle complimentarity or mass-energy equivalence. The key significance or contribution of the proposed work is to enhance fundamental understanding of C, commonly known as the speed of light, and Cosmological Constant, commonly known as the dark energy.

      The manuscript not only provides comparisons against existing empirical observations but also forwards testable predictions for future falsification of the proposed model.

      I would like to invite you to read my paper and appreciate any feedback comments.

      Best Regards

      Avtar Singh

      Thanks -- I've found it on the web now, at https://brianrotman.wordpress.com/articles/toward-a-semiotics-of-mathematics/. Pretty complicated and he seems uncertain of what to conclude in the end. I've written something on a similar theme, at https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.6707.

      "We Think That We Think Clearly, But That's Only Because We Don't Think Clearly": Mathematics, Mind, and the Human World.

      It could be that the idea of semiotic scaffolding which I refer to in this essay is relevant to the issue that you raise, but it is worth more detailed analysis.

      Wow. I opened your arXiv article and fell in love at first skim. The Mathematical Experience is probably my favorite book. I had a hard time locating it on the bookshelf because the spine was so worn. Will return for an enjoyable read as soon as I am out from under an imminent deadline.

      Brian Josephson

      You asked for the relevance if Planck's constant is a property of the detecting electron. The detector creates quantization, and that does not prove quanta in light.

      A bound and moving electron interacts with the ether, and the disturbance moves with speed c to our detecting electron. Only a potential force is produced and this force becomes real after some time and interacts with the ether. This means that bound electrons can emit without loosing energy.

      Best regards from __________________ John-Erik Persson

      Dear Brian D Josephson,

      Welcome the FQXi and thank you for your essay. You (and Todd Duncan) are the first to focus on meaning. You note that some current approaches are an "extension of sign theory". I've written several essays on consciousness, but those focused on awareness and volition rather than on meaning. So thank you for upping the game! Instead of decoding the meaning of the standard model, I believe physicists should start with an awareness of the meaning of three dimensions of space and one of time, including dynamics. How, through signs, does one grasp space, time, and motion?

      This will of course depend on the model of consciousness, and I believe consciousness is a field that has a 'self-awareness' property. Volition would seem to imply the ability of the field to interact with matter, and the field must also sense matter in motion. This leads to guesses about the nature and identification of the field, but let's ignore that and focus on 'meaning' of 3-D space in this model. How is 3-D space modeled with 'signs'?

      In this model the field is somewhat panpsychic, but the "meaning" is found by the brain, therefore the matter in motion being sensed by the brain will consists of ions flowing in axons and vesicles flowing across synaptic gaps. Of course one can "encode" such flows as sequences of spikes, etc., but how does one encapsulate the 'meaning' of 3-D space and dynamics in such symbols? As you note, the reality is a characteristic 'doing' in an organism.

      Now what separates the brain from current computers is its 3-D organization of flows and gates versus the 2-D arrangements of sequentially switched logic gates. Computers sequence logic operations very fast. Flows in the brain have an 'all-at-once' nature.

      At this point let us assume that optical signals excite flows in the 3-D circuitry of the brain and that these flows bear some relation to a 3-D scene or object being viewed. In our model, the flows themselves are not 'aware', per se. It is the pervading consciousness field that senses the actual flows in the brain, the 'doing' of the organ. This awareness may be rather chaotic initially, but after certain amount of training, the mobile above our crib may be reflected in a pseudo-stable flow in and between the neurons of our brain. With billions of neurons and trillions of 3-D interconnections, we can certainly model any 3-D object if our brain interacts with the consciousness field as postulated.

      Bear in mind that I'm not speaking of logic or logic networks, [which our brain can also implement.] I'm speaking of direct sensing of dynamic mass flows in the brain (assumed here a small subset of the brain, yet distributed in 3-D). The flow is maintained as long as we look at the object, but of course we can later invoke the same dynamic flows as a 'memory' or 'image' of the 3-D object. Of course the schema can be extended to multiple objects and even 'formalized' so we can do 1, 2, and 3-D problems in calculus, etc.

      If one spends some time trying to see how this might work with "encoded sequences" or other essentially non-physical symbols for encoding a sphere, a cube, an F-14 Tomcat, a beautiful woman, a waterfall, one will probably come to a greater appreciation of space in terms of the 3-D consciousness field directly sensing 3-D flows in axons and across gaps that 'model' what was first learned from 'looking', and later recalled as needed.

      You discuss the "growth and complexity". Assume the trillions of interconnects allow 3-D network flows of arbitrary complexity and indefinite recursion. The nature of the consciousness field is not computational, it is sensory awareness of immediate flow. Volition is too complex to explain in a comment, but we can obviously juggle ideas (as well as juggle real balls in 3-D). Obviously we have utilized the logical capabilities of switched nets to create algebra, math and physics, but the awareness of 'meaning' does not emerge from the 'logic', it emerges from the biological organism that grows a brain [in a consciousness field] connected by sensors to its environment, then directly senses 3-D through 3-D internal dynamic models or reflections of the environment.

      This theory of consciousness is only hinted at in this comment, but it is not based on quantum entanglement, or other fashionable theories. The field is a classic continuum whose local strength correlates with local mass flow density.

      You mention a theorist who "is trying to describe a situation that she herself cannot visualize." Having visualized this model for twelve years now, I can say it has handled hundreds of problems rather effectively.

      The consciousness field is primordial, here from the beginning, in the sense of Wheeler or Bohm. Awareness does not emerge, only the complexity of awareness is accounted for by evolution. Increased meaning emerges as we learn.

      I would be interested in any response you might have to this comment on meaning, and I would hope that you find time to read my current essay and remark upon that.

      My very best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman