On the Fundamentality of Meaning by Brian D. Josephson

Brian Josephson

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.

Stefan Weckbach

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.

Brian Josephson

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!)

Brian Josephson

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.

Brian Josephson

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.

Brian Josephson

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

Stefan Weckbach

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.

Brian Josephson

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.

Stefan Weckbach

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.

Armin Nikkhah Shirazi

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

Brian Josephson

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!

Armin Nikkhah Shirazi

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

Brian Josephson

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!

Stefan Weckbach

For case you search a comment from me just made, it is in the thread of Terry Bollinger 2-3 threads above.

Stefan Weckbach

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.

Stefan Weckbach

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

'Top community ratings' mean for me that you should have a community rating that is amongst the 30 top community ratings.

Lorraine Ford

Dear Professor Josephson,

I agree that meaning is fundamental, though I would argue that it is subjective meaning (corresponding to subjective information) that is fundamental to the way the universe works.

In the Notes [10] you say: "...Yardley writes ... : "There is a symbolic man, in mind, which is the idea of man, which had to be present somewhere hidden (imaginary, an idea) before man could appear". This assertion recalls analogous facts such as the fact that, for example, the idea of a computer had to be present in someone's mind before computers could come into existence."

This is an example of how your essay seems to assume absolute, objective meanings for signs and symbols, i.e. the essay seems to assume the existence of a Platonic realm. But a Platonic realm is never mentioned in the essay except in the References section (the book chapter What can music tell us about the nature of the mind? A Platonic Model, Josephson, B.D. and T. Carpenter (1996a), in Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak & Alwyn C. Scott (eds.), Toward a Science of Consciousness, MIT).

I would have liked you to mention the Platonic realm assumption upfront, because a Platonic realm is an assumption that the universe itself is a poor, incomplete thing that needs something external like a God or a Platonic realm to bring it to life. I believe that this type of view is an insidiously damaging and inherently disrespectful way to view our universe, a view that has real consequences for the way we treat the Earth and it's living things.

Best wishes,

Lorraine Ford

Brian Josephson

The reference you quote is actually referred to in footnote 1 of the notes at the end: "In this connection a case can be made as in Josephson and Carpenter (1996a), based upon an objective analysis of regularities discernible in the corpus of musical compositions, that musical aesthetics involve subtleties not currently accommodated within science", and the referring text to that footnote, quite near the beginning, says 'In this regard, it might be argued that thoughts are influenced by the subtleties of meaning referred to by Bohm, and at the same time have observable effects that current physical theories do not take into account, implying that they are inexact'. I trust this at least partly answers your point.

For those wondering if my supplement is ever going to appear, I had hoped to produce it today but got held up with events, and hopefully will get it done tomorrow. As a preview, the best way to summarise what is going on is perhaps that there is a 'cumulative coordination process', having resemblances to what happens with superconductivity. Language illustrates the point at issue quite strikingly.

Lorraine Ford

My point is that, I think you are saying that, the source of signs, symbols, ideas and meaning is external to the universe: the source is a Platonic realm which somehow inputs ideas to the universe.

This seems to 1) assume the preexistence of all possible signs, symbols and ideas - which live in a Platonic realm, and 2) makes the universe itself to be a poor, incomplete thing, a thing that does not have the capacity to create its own ideas - it only has the capacity to implement externally input ideas.

This is my impression of what you are saying in your essay.

Best wishes,

Lorraine

Lorraine Ford

P.S. When I say that "This is my impression of what you are saying in your essay", I mean that I am reading between the lines to see what your assumptions/preconceptions are.

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