On the Fundamentality of Meaning by Brian D. Josephson

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

Then, might we take a dynamical view toward mathematics? Just as the Zen master is said to be "In the world, but not of it," can't metamath be "In the world of mathematics but not of it"?

That suggests to me that mathematics (at the level of complex analysis) is self-organizing.

Dear Professor Josephson,

Tell me what you think of this statement: Our internal map is not the territory, this internal map is much richer that the territory because it has meaning.

Your essay is like a rocket blasting off to found a new civilization.

Do say something on my blog...It is very exhilarating to be in a contest with a Nobel Laurette! In an effort to save time there is no need to read my essay. It is exceptional, so just give it a 10 :)

Thanks,

Don Limuti

Ohm was not correct in his dispute with Seebeck when he used physics as a touch stone for physiology. On the other hand, I hope to be correct when I am claiming: Physiology in connection with common sense might be a good touchstone for putative fundaments of physics that are actually just semifoundational constructs.

For instance: No sense can perceive future data, and there is no scientifially agreed point t=0 of reference in biology.

Eckard Blumschein

Brian,

Obviously, this is a subject dear to my heart. I've imposed on your time long enough, though I hope we can have a discussion later. I wrote a conference paper 12 years ago titled "Self Organization in real and complex analysis", and I aim to have a complete description in another conference paper this year. Thanks for your references. I appreciate it.

Brian Josephson

On Feb. 12 I gave you a difficult question that you still have not answered. Was it too difficult?

Best regards from ________ John-Erik Persson

Dear Professor Josephson,

Heisenberg, in an interview by D. Peat in the 1970s, made a very polite remark regarding Bohr's principle of complementarity: "Now, Bohr had ... tried, from this dualism, to introduce the term complementarity, which was sufficiently abstract to meet the situation".

Isn't also Peirce's theory of signs deserving of a very polite remark?

Heinrich Luediger

Dear Professor Josephson,

W.v.O. Quine made clear why positivism failed (see: Two Dogmas of Empiricism). Things have meaning only in the widest context of other things, i.e. the sign is never attached to a thing and not even to a single observation sentence. When a woman is sent a bunch of red roses then it is usually taken (in Western culture) as a sign of romantic love. When a woman was sent a bunch of red roses by Al Capone it was a sign of her becoming a widow soon...

Your thermostat example is an example of a well-formed sentence adhering to syntax and semantics, which is why it has meaning, but I can't see how it relates to semiotics. If, however, you think that the thermostat can be objectively (pre-linguistically) described by signs (as the term biosemiotics suggest), Peirce, who described his mature ideas as being very close to Kant's, would most likely disagree. The things have meaning (are signs) for US, what they are beyond...we cannot know.

So, I read your essay with great interest, because it carries 'meaning' (without which all is nothing indeed) in its title, but was a bit disappointed to find it reduced to 'objectifying' semiotics.

Heinrich Luediger

Professor Josephson,

I found your essay on meaning fascinating, provocative, and alas troubling, due to the highly unsettling details of one of your major references. That said, your more formal explanation of that same reference led me to an interpretation that relies only on specific examples from well-established fundamental physics. I believe that re-interpretation both broadens and has relevance to your definition of meaning.

While my perspectives on meaning would likely fall under the "meaning is emergent" category of your essay, my version of meaning emergence is a bit more subtle than that. That is because I accept the various anthropic arguments that calculate unbelievably high probabilities against the emergence of life in a more randomly parameterized universe, let alone one with radically different fundamental rules. I do not find it plausible that the existence of life can be separated from the existence of meaning. So, when I say that meaning is "emergent" in terms of experimentally testable information theory definitions, I am referring only to our own limited human mechanisms for the discovery of meaning. Meaning itself appears to be inherent and pre-programmed into the very fabric of our cosmos, both at the level of the Standard Model and deeper. I do not think we are remotely close to understanding how that works, or even how to frame the question properly.

When I say that I reflexively re-interpreted your comments on "oppositional dynamics" and "scaffolding" in terms of fundamental physics, I would point out as a simple example the property of stability (persistence) that is characteristic of our universe from the fermion level up. That stability in turn is a fundamental prerequisite for all forms of information and meaning, and I unexpectedly agreed after reading your essay that this stability stems from a curious process of two (or more) opposing entities coming together... but only in certain very specific ways, which I would state as follow:

The Persistence Principle. Within our universe, persistence and stability emerge as a result of incomplete cancellation of fundamentally conserved quantities.

While it is not the most fundamental example of this principle, the hydrogen atom is a beautiful example. The simplest example of a bound positive-negative system is positronium, an electron and a positron in close proximity. In the singlet or para-positronium state it mostly decays into two gamma photons. When this occurs, any long-term stability or persistence lost, with the two gammas sailing off in opposite directions to perpetuate a smoother, more plasma-like state of the universe.

In sharp contrast, an electron bound to a proton cancels charge, but does not self-annihilate due to imbalances in other conserved quantities. A sort of stalemate is reached, one in which the universe as a whole become quieter and less dynamic due to fewer long-range electric fields. The hydrogen atom itself then persists in this quieter medium, no longer as subject to the overwhelming influence of such powerful fields. This is the first step in the creation of classical, history-creating information, since classical information is after all nothing more than the particular configuration of a local system after wave function collapse (or in David Deutsch terminology, after universe selection).

This emergence of persistence is, I'm fairly sure, a physics-level example of how our universe seems custom-designed (the anthropic numbers again) to create what you call scaffolding, that is, forms of persistence upon which still higher levels of persistence, information, and meaning can then exist. Your oppositional dynamics then become these incomplete cancellations of conserved quantities, at many different scales and levels of complexity.

It is important to note that scaffolding -- useful, usable persistences -- emerge only when two (or more, e.g. quarks) mutually canceling quantities are not exact mirror images. In effect, the incomplete cancelation allows the remaining fundamentally conserved quantities to emerge as first-order entities in their own rights. Thus hydrogen atoms are characterized at a distance primarily by both mass and location, both of which persist in ways that allow new forms of complexity to emerge at still higher levels.

I would humbly suggest that this path might be a way of translating some of your intriguing ideas into both a more fundamental and more accessible form.

If so, it means that your oppositional dynamics can (and really, must) be generalized to numbers beyond just two. A split circle at best represents only the binary case of incomplete oppositional cancelation, and that binary case becomes commonplace only at the less fundamental level of atoms. Quarks forming protons and neutrons are examples and proofs that trinary cancelation works extremely well for creating scaffolding, since protons are arguably among the most common and enduring information-conserving artifacts within our universe.

The chemical elements can also be interpreted as n-ary cancellations of charge, though of course one could also interpret them as bundles of proton-electron pairs. The intriguing aspect of this n-ary incomplete cancellation interpretation of atoms is that their cancelations are a bit flexible, allowing a tiny bit of charge-cancellation variation through which compounds can emerge to provide still higher levels of complexity.

Jumping to an enormously higher level of complexity, your quotation of Hoffmeyer:

"This network of [local] semiotic controls establishes an enormously complex semiotic scaffolding for living systems."

... invokes far more complicated networked and multi-level forms of cancelation that in economic theory would be called a "free market economy." Such economies produce new products that quickly discard (cancel out) the details of how they emerged, and instead become new, persistent components with higher levels of meaning that then enable new levels of interaction and emergence.

So what is the bottom line? I would simply suggest that your main ideas, especially if generalized to the n-ary cases instead of focusing solely on the limited binary case, are much more deeply embedded in fundamental physics than meets the eye at first glance. To repeat my proposed generalization:

The Persistence Principle. Within our universe, persistence and stability emerge as a result of incomplete cancellation of fundamentally conserved quantities.

Sincerely,

Terry Bollinger

(FQXi topic 3099, "Fundamental as Fewer Bits")

Dear Professor Josephson,

The point of 'objectivity' is indeed a crucial one: Newton's laws are inter-subjective, because everyone equipped with a yardstick, a clock and a balance can try to falsify or simply use his theory.

Now, theories of evolution in the widest sense are 'objective' inasmuch they are logical constructions definitely ruling out the inter-subjective observer - they are object-centered. However, what they claim WOULD be observable IS not observable, because the 'objective' vantage point cannot be taken by any subject. Then, however, the conclusion is that by being 'objective', i.e. not inter-subjective, such theories are subjective, a matter of belief or, rather, persuasion.

What keeps our thinking apart is (in my opinion) that you think of signs in terms of communication theory, whereas I consider language to be constitutive of experience and a lucky misunderstanding at best when it comes to communication.

Despite these differences I'm glad that we agree on the importance of meaning...

Heinrich Luediger