Re frustrations, it looks like it logged me out and called me 'anonymous' up above, though one is not supposed to be able to make comments unless one is logged in. Not as bad has having it suddenly deciding to jump somewhere and lose your text!

Dear Brian,

I'm very much a fan of the Bohm and Wheeler elements.

Two small points: (1) I wonder whether the focus on meaning is a bit of a red herring? Wouldn't any emergent phenomenon make the same point (e.g. money, wetness, hurricanes, swarms, etc.)? What is special about meaning as distinct from other examples of emergence?

Also: you mention general relativity cannot be fundamental because all it does is gravity (ditto, mutatis mutandis, for the standard model that doesn't do gravity). But it should maybe be noted that attempts were made to get particle physics out of general relativity (Einstein and Wheeler), and attempts were made to get gravity from particle physics. They didn't work, of course, which is why you probably ignore them - but perhaps a mention is in order.

Best,

Dean

    Brian,

    I read all your linked papers, and delighted in them. Sorry I hadn't read more of your work before, aside of course from technical work on superconductors and Josephson junction. I'll do my best to correct that.

    Anyway, the notion that "Biosemiotics has a concept 'code duality' which is roughly the idea that codes and their references generate each other" resonates. And I think it goes deeper than organic life.

    Dear Brian,

    I write all my comments in word. When finished, I login and copy and paste them. For reading the comment(s) during writing in Word, I change Windows by simultaneously press alt shift.

    Terry,

    there are some things that had to be enhanced in these contest in my humble opinion. The logout-problem seems to me of secondary issue. As I wrote recently on Ilja Schmelzer's essay page, I agree that the ability for voting as such - and especially also for determining some finalists - is absurd, since it heavily involves psychological inertia such as likes and dislikes (just as on facebook) as well as group dynamics, mutual up- or downvoting and such things like that, as the essay contest's timeline proceeds. In my opinion, results that are labeled 'scientific' should not be a matter of some Darwinian selection process.

    But obviously they nonetheless are a matter of Darwinian selection in this contest, since otherwise the optional criteria of Acceptability and Relevance would be amongst the initial selection criteria for the eligibility of the submissions. Since FQXi refuses to proceed in this way and delegate this to the contestants themselves by some voting process, it installs a Darwinian competition process with all its highly subjective pros and cons. If FQXi is convinced that Acceptability and Relevance can be judged more objectively beyond such a Darwinian process of mutually excluding subjective interests, I would like to ask FQXi why they do not conform to this. From the 'bird's view' of the FQXi expert panel of judges, the criteria of Acceptability, Relevance and Interesting must be valid, since otherwise they couldn't adopt them at all for the final judging process.

    So why not abandon this absurd voting process and extend the mentioned eligibility criteria to the final judging criteria from the very start on before the essays get published? It would enhance the readability as well as understandability of the entries as well.

    There have been two new postings following the above by Dean Rickles, I'm told by the system. They are presumably buried somewhere and I've not managed to find them. If anyone knows which thread they belong to, please post that information here so I can look at them!

      Dear Brian,

      one comment was presumably from me, posted one thread above the one of Dean Rickles. The other post I don't know.

      Greetings,

      Stefan Weckbach

      Many thanks. I'm not sure why I didn't find that -- some other system issue or just me being phased out? The other one that I didn't find was posted at 3:31 am GMT today (i.e. 10:31 pm EST yesterday). I'll comment on yours in due course.

      I think I found the second post in your thread with Tom:

      Thomas Howard Ray replied on Feb. 17, 2018 @ 03:31 GMT

      I have the impression that searching for incoming posts at one's own essay page as well as searching for following-up posts for the own posts at other essay pages hugely increases traffic for the FQXi site and is some kind of advertising factor for the whole FQXi enterprise - regarding their sponsors.

      Thanks. I can't say I ever saw '10 nondisplayed posts' before, even with reloading. Is there a problem with the system? But does trying to locate a post in a page you're looking at increase traffic in any case? You don't have to look at another person's page to see if there's a followup post as you can subscribe to the page to get notified automatically if that is the case (and even told that you've posted yourself, which is hardly necessary!)

      I do the same as you but using Apple's notes. I'd assumed from the scheduling that the voting system was basically just used for shortlisting (and for the benefit of others to indicate what might be most worth reading), and the experts decided independently who should get the prizes. Indeed, the guidelines, which I've just checked, say Prizes will not be awarded directly on the basis of Public ratings, but these ratings may influence either Community evaluations or Expert judging. The voting does help determine the finalists but the experts can add more if they wish.

      It is not so much meaning but rather the 'thirdness' discussed by Peirce, that is to say one entity acting as mediator between two others, or alternatively a correlation between 3 entities that cannot be reduced to simple correlations between 2. Signs and their objects, connected by interpretation, form an example, but Yardley discusses other cases. As I shall be elaborating in detail, organisation related to thirdness has remarkable consequences, including that of the power of language. Emergence as such cannot account for this.

      ... this is the subtle spontaneous ordering mechanism that has been missed by conventional science.

      Oh, this is new to me. When I created my account, I found no such subscribe-option for other essay sites - but perhaps I haven't searched enough, so I will do it immediately.

      "But does trying to locate a post in a page you're looking at increase traffic in any case?"

      No, of course not, since the page is not reloaded, but only threads are unstubbed. But imagine that you (falsely or not) conclude that the new post somewhat hasn't been yet displayed at a certain page (since you aren't able to find it), you may think by reloading you can find it more easily, since it then may be actualized on this page.

      Anyways, the lack to give the full html-adress including the anchor to the thread is very inconvenient. I have to try whether or not emails about follow-up posts at other pages do include such a more complete link.

      Personally I did not find that there are any nondisplayed posts on my site. But maybe the exception proves the rule, so to speak (since even computers and software architecture are not immune of having bugs).

      Concerning your essay

      "As I shall be elaborating in detail, organisation related to thirdness has remarkable consequences, including that of the power of language. Emergence as such cannot account for this ... this is the subtle spontaneous ordering mechanism that has been missed by conventional science."

      I like your approach and am looking forward for your results. May I be allowed to email you a complete essay of mine (with footnotes, references and all that) which I wrote for the last essay contest, an essay that has been abandoned due to character limits (it has 12 pages and I couldn't make it shorter without distorting everything). In this essay I examine triads and related formal issues in more detail. I will not upload it here publicly, since I regard it as a highlight of my essay writings that should not be exposed to anybody's pet theories. If you want to read it, just give me a hint and I send it to your Cambridge email adress.

      Look at the top of the essay page, just below the date, and you should see a 'subscribe' button. Reloading does not help, as if there are too many responses in a given thread (more than 4 about) then the later replies are hidden, and you have to click on 'show all replies' to see them. And that only works for one thread at a time! I've just checked 'my account' and it does not seem to include an option to see all postings.

      Do go ahead and email me your essay.

      Thank you for the tip! This makes my life a little bit easier when visiting the FQXi contest pages.

      I've sent you the essay I spoke of to the mentioned adress. If you can squeeze some reasonable sense out of it, let me know.

      Dear Brian,

      As I am under the impression that you may find the mass of comments here at times a little overwhelming, I will keep my comments short (but hopefully sharp).

      1. I agree that under the current paradigm, "meaning" is not taken seriously enough by physicists and often unjustly dismissed as philosophy, but the possible reification of meaning and what seems to amount to a certain sort of panpsychism, is outside my comfort zone. Unfortunately I know too little about semiotics to be able to tell whether it lends itself to a mathematical representation that is more familiar to physicists (my unfounded suspicion is that it does), but if I were to defend your ideas, putting a greater emphasis on presenting them in a more familiar manner (to physicists) would be a high priority for me, if only to avoid misunderstandings (of which I am sure I had my share reading your paper).

      2. Although distinct in some important ways, your approach reminds me a little of the Conceptuality Interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Aerts. Also, The Vaxjo conference series on the foundations of quantum mechanics regularly features topics in which quantum foundations are connected to completely different fields, including biology.

      3. Despite my criticism, I would like to emphasze that I actually consider addressing questions of meaning a fundamental aspect of any scientific activity. Too much of contemporary high energy theory seems to me like mathematical pattern fitting entirely divorced from meaning whereas, in my view, conscientiously reminding oneself of its fundamental importance may even help us discover new ways of thinking about aspects of nature even with theories the meaning of which we thought we already understood. In my paper, I tried to illustrate this by associating a different meaning with Lorentz contraction.

      All the best,

      Armin

        Armin,

        The problem isn't actually the number of postings, but that of locating a new reply if it is hidden by default and not near the bottom of the page. New comments as opposed to replies are easy to find. As regards your first point, I'm currently thinking that instead of in effect starting with biology and saying that biology makes use of semiotic processes, as I did in the essay, one can argue that stability considerations in the presence of a potentially disruptive background favours structures related to semiosis which are the source of semiotic behaviour since the survival issue brings in semiosis. I will discuss this in more detail anon -- watch this space!

        Thanks for the response. I agree that the framing to which you hinted is more likely to prevent physicists from prematurely turning off the ideas you present. I will watch this space.

        Armin

        In line with your comments arXiv, predictably, deleted my submission as per the poem on my publications page:

        The revolution will not be brought to you by arXiv

        'cos arXiv deems revolutionary ideas 'inappropriate'.

        As obstructive as any censor

        Cross readers veto cross listing

        'Reader complaints' win the day.

        The revolution won't find you through arXiv

        So go tune in another way.

        I appealed their decision, quoting a number of positive comments here, and they then did accept it but, again predictably, moved it to physics-gen where no quantum physicist is likely to see it. Thanks to PhilPaper for treating the essay differently!

        I understood it that way:

        "The remainder of a base set of 30 finalists will consist of the entries with top Community ratings that have each received at least ten ratings"

        For this case you need top community ratings at least 10 community ratings (or maybe this means 10 ratings regardless of community or public).

        The additional 10 entries are selected at the descrition of the judges - ohh k., in this case I could have a real chance to be amongst the finalists. I did not consider this in my critics of the rating process. But nonetheless I think that the rating process is not a healthy procedure to 'help' determine the finalists, since I have not counted the auto-induced entries yet but others I think surely have to make numerical calculations that may influence their rating as well as their argumentation habbits.

        Anyways, it is what it is.