Greetings Professor Josephson,

I enjoyed your essay, in its final form, as I did the draft I had the privilege to see before you posted this. You do address the question of what is fundamental in Physics, and you do it in a most unique and novel way. I'm glad I was introduced to your recent work via the talk you gave at the Elche campus of UMH (Universidad Miguel Hernandez) for FFP15 - because this gave me a lot more time to consider your novel ideas, and to let the ramifications sink in.

I will admit also here that my initial reaction was a naive impulse similar to Jack's, that I was put off by your terminology, but that I could convey some aspects of your message to Physics folks better - by casting it in the language of quantum mechanics. I inform the readers here that in my e-mail to you, Brian, I referenced the paper "There are no Quantum Jumps, nor are there Particles!" by H.D. Zeh where quantum information in the wavefunction is more fundamental than material reality.

But you were kind to point out the differences in the pictures suggested by decoherence theory and biosemiotics, and how that relates to your central thesis that meaning is fundamental. What you are talking about is a shift of emphasis beyond the framework Jack Sarfatti uses to explain how consciousness arises. After reading the paper with Shimansky he posted above; I see that he has shown there is something worthwhile to investigate, but is making excessive claims as to its validity or universality - given the level of evidence or proof offered.

I like what you have done here Brian, and I don't think you are making any excessive statements that would prompt me to exclude your ideas from careful consideration.

All the Best, JJDAttachment #1: 1_no-quantum-jumps.pdf

    If I may interject...

    As I state below; I think Jack makes a compelling case for PQM being worth investigating, and offers a patchwork of ideas and evidence showing it might yield an explanation for consciousness, but the paper with Shimansky attached above does not provide such compelling proof it justifies some of the claims made. That does not rule out the possibility that much of what Jack is saying might be true.

    However; I think there is a fundamental difference in what Jack and Brain are trying to explain, and that Brian's essay or the validity of any concepts therein should not be rejected simply because another framework explains some of the same phenomena. I personally feel there is a profound difference between quantum information and life or perception - though there is an obvious and tantalizing connection.

    It is silly to imagine that the existence of PQM as a possible explanatory framework invalidates Brian's work, or makes the notion of scaffolding or other concepts from biosemiotics introduced in this essay less worthy to investigate. But claims like Sarfatti's, that his preferred formulation makes other work irrelevant are seen as suspect by astute readers like myself, and generally cause me to be suspicious about what flaws are being hidden.

    As covered in my comment below; I discussed the related picture from decoherence with Brian, before the contest, and he explained how it is different from his work. But as I have previously said to Jack the global wavefunction used by Zeh contains both advanced and retarded waves, so it automatically includes the retrocausal components. That is; one can obtain a similar picture as Jack's simply by relating the local and global perspective a la Zeh.

    But quantum information is not the same as meaning.

    All the Best,

    Jonathan

    For the record...

    I am somewhat familiar with the theories of DeBroglie and Bohm, and I find some aspects of this construction appealing. I investigated these ideas a number of years ago, because it related back to what I was researching. I have previously seen the slide sets by Towler, in fact, but enjoyed having the review of this interesting material. I have a fondness for the Quantum/Hydrodynamics analogues studied first by Couder and Fort in Paris and later by Bush and his team at MIT. I actually walked past the lab at Paris Diderot while at FFP11 and wondered what was the big deal, because the equipment looked so low-tech.

    Little did I know... But at this point I've seen Towler's work before.

    Regards,

    Jonathan

    Dear Sir,

    You have raised some interesting and important issues. Fundamental with reference to something is that component, which forms a necessary base, which is central to its existence. The view that matter and meaning are intricately entangled, goes back to thousands of years. The Nyaya Sootram of ancient India, which is a book on research methodology, and other texts describe it in vivid details, which also link the biological and abiological (inert) domains. You are also right that "Such a theory will not be mathematical in the same way that conventional physics theories are mathematical..", because mathematics only describes quantitative aspects of physics - "how much" a system changes when any of the parameters of the left hand side of the equation changes according to the special conditions denoted by the equality sign. It does not describe the other aspects of physics. Last year I wrote a paper on this subject here.

    You are also right that QM and GR do not commute and address different aspects of physics - gravity is an inter-body force, whereas the others are intra-body forces. They "fail to take proper account of the phenomenon of meaning", which is time-invariant perception, whereas physics describes time evolution - thus, "meaning has no significant influence on the outcome". However, I have a different opinion about weak interaction, which you can see in my paper "Genesis of Fundamental Charge Interaction" here.

    Bohm's assertion that 'meaning is capable of an indefinite extension to ever greater levels of subtlety' has to be interpreted in the time evolution context of concepts. Earlier people thought objects meant what we see or feel. Then the meaning changed to conglomerate of atoms. Then it changed to protons, neutrons and electrons. Then to quarks and so on.

    Your comparison of the languages of QM and Biology are interesting. However, I hoped you would have extended these instead of referring to others views. For example, you could have correlated the so-called fundamental interactions to the mechanism of perception through our sense organs. Eyes require electromagnetic radiation, taste requires weak interaction, ears have similarities with propagation of gravitational interaction (weakens with distance), etc. Further, these interactions lead to compression, expansion, moving up or down (moving away from or towards the center of mass) and forming orbits, etc. in the macro world. Even these could have been correlated to mind waves like: alpha, beta, delta, theta waves and the gamma coupling. Some of these principles have been discussed in my essay, though I could not discuss it elaborately due to space constraints.

    I had discussed with Hankey in a Seminar, but was greatly disappointed. He had to change his presentation after our discussion.

    Regards,

    basudeba

      Dear professor Josephson,

      thank you for your insightful essay, which I found deep and pleasurable to read. The whole idea of Biosemiosis is very interesting, and the shift of perspective about "meaning" seems full of potential. I enjoyed the idea to think about things in term of "doings"; it reminded me very much the famous quote from Wittgenstein: "The world is the totality of facts, not of things". I also find correct to consider matter itself as a meaning, since its properties are such just in relation to something else.

      I was wondering, if "meaning" should be considered as fundamental, how can we manage the fact that it's always a relative concept, since something means something just in relation to something else? Why should the related form be biological, and not of some other kind? Shouldn't we consider relation itself as more fundamental?

      All the best, and thank you again,

      Francesco D'Isa

        You are right, this approach does depart from simplicity. But if reality is inherently biological it will not be simple and we have to accept that, as biologists have to do in conducting their trade. One tries to make things 'as simple as possible, but no simpler', as it is said Einstein said once.

        Many thanks for your thoughts, Jonathon. Rather than saying one should cast one's ideas in quantum language, I'd suggest one should complement them with quantum language and insights. So one might say that 'vibrations' are part of the picture and that there is a real collapse process under certain conditions, relating in Barad's terms to the actions of agencies. But then (connecting here with the approach of Stapp, who argues that mind is not included properly in QM) one would have to ask what is agency? Can decoherence theory really do this, or does it get one into issues with many-worlds? Also, I think it is an essential to start off with the correct picture, and people will make the effort to learn the basics once they start to see that the semiotic picture initiated by Peirce is the way ahead.

        One more point: I don't know if it was in the draft that I sent you or not, but at one point I included reference to the link between a statement by Yardley ending with the crucial phrase ad infinitum, and the concept of fractality or scale invariance. I've realised now that this is very relevant and will detail it separately. Let me say here just that it can be thought of as a radical extension of Feynman's idea 'there's plenty of room at the bottom!' (in effect an anticipation of nanotechnology).

        I'm sorry you can't see what I wrote as being an extension of what others have written.

        In regard to your questioning the fundmentality of meaning, I offer the following quote by Lewis Carroll (to some extent implicit in the blurb relating to this essay):

        "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."

        Apart from that, I agree that relationships are important. A number of different concepts are all tied in together.

        Apologies for misspelling your name (it was the keyboard what done it!).

        Thank you for your nice reply, that's a wonderful quote for sure.

        > Apart from that, I agree that relationships are important. A number of different concepts are all tied in together.

        I agree as well, my text for this contest is a philosophical attempt to consider them fundamental.

        All the best, and thank you again,

        Francesco D'Isa

        Turtles all the way down, Plenty of room at the bottom, and all that.

        Here are some comments that may help picturing my proposals (by a modest amount, at least). The above are both references to the idea that important things including organised activity can be going on at deep levels of reality, as does Bohm's idea that I quoted: 'meaning is capable of an indefinite extension to ever greater levels of subtlety'. Yardley goes a little further:

        An entity is always part of a process, a process always part of a system, which is always part of an entity, process and system, ad infinitum, to zero, and, then, one.

        The 'infinitum' is important here, suggesting something of the order of fractality (structures at all length scales), a well known concept in physics. So there are entities, which have two aspects: system, which emphasises structure, and process, which is what that structure can accomplish. There is circularity in that not only do systems give rise to processes but processes develop their underlying systems. More confusingly, an entity is not really a thing but more a 'doing', as I discuss in the essay. The situation is well described in the lyrics of a song by Trish Klein: 'everything changes in so many ways, everything rearranges, some things stay the same'. Here 'staying the same' is an abstraction, as when we speak of a specific person even though there is constant change at all levels.

        And why are there these constantly changing but in some ways staying the same 'entities'? That's because there are emergent mechanisms that achieve this: 'entities are always part of a process'.

        The above picture, with its many interrelationships, is a confusing one and yet makes quite a bit of sense, whereas conventional QM doesn't. As Feynman once said: 'If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics'.

          Version with notes at bottom of the page instead of end

          The rules require notes to be at the end, but if people prefer them to be at the bottom of the page I've uploaded an alternative in this format to PhilPapers, downloadable at https://philpapers.org/rec/JOSOTF. I may later upload an extended version with additional thoughts such as those presented here, keeping the essay as it is. I've also uploaded this version to the physics preprint archive, but ...

          /gripe begins

          ... the archive moderators, bless their tiny minds, have 'put it on hold' rather than making it public right away as is the norm. I gather from Ginsparg that all abstracts are run through an 'intelligent algorithm' to decide if a paper is OK. If the algorithm says it is unsure then it goes to arXiv's moderator team who scratch their heads when they look at my input. The perfectly reasonable conference proceedings 'Consciousness and the Physical World' was stuck on hold for 2 whole months before the moderators decided it was OK for the world to have access to it.

          /gripe ends

            Professor Josephson,

            One way I see processes and entities being distinct is that they effectively go opposite directions of time.

            Think in terms of a factory, where the product goes start to finish, while the process points the other direction, consuming material and expelling product.

            Life is similar, in that individuals go from birth to death, their lives being in the future to being in the past, while the species is constantly moving onto new generations, shedding old.

            The relationship between consciousness and thought compares as well, as consciousness moves onto new thoughts, past to future, while the thoughts go future to past.

            It is not as though one exists without the other, rather they are two sides of the same coin. Process is bottom up dynamic/energy, while structure and form are top down framing. The relationship, as it interacts and feeds back on itself, functions like a convection cycle, energy expanding out, as structure precipitates back down.

            Consider as well the basic aspect of galaxies where radiation expands out, as mass precipitates in.

            Thank you for participating in this contest.

            It is a brief, interesting and rich in content essay; I have to digest it.

            The semiotic approach, if I understand well, applied to the physics it is like a physical system influence (it is coded) in the experimental observation.

            If the biosemiotic was applied to robotics, using the parallelism with the new functional genes and agents, then would the robot evolution be possible, with a complex scaffolding?

            The simulation of the Caenorhabditis elegans could provide some information on the semiotic scaffolding of Openworm project?

            I think that biosemiotic work well in biology, but the writing of a differential equation for a dynamics system is not semiotic for mathematical symbols?

            Regards

            Domenico

              Regarding arXiv shenanigans...

              This is precisely why Phil Gibbs founded viXra, the alternative academic archive, because many people including full professors have found similar problems, suffering rejections, delays, or reclassification of preprints to gen-ph even when those same papers were later published in respected journals. There seems to be no recourse or protocol for the redress of grievances either. Raising an objection has gotten some people banned from arXiv entirely. This is why I am part of the support team for viXra, and will not even consider submitting papers to arXiv.

              Regards,

              Jonathan

              Excellent!

              I'll be interested to see what develops, or to research further myself how fractality enters the picture. I see that as nature's way to squeeze more detail into a smaller space, or to compress details appearing in higher dimensions onto the lower-dimensional structures and constructs.

              All the Best,

              Jonathan

              p.s. - no offense taken

              I'm aware of viXra, but that doesn't have the feature that arXiv has that subscribers to a given list get daily lists of new abstracts, which is why reclassification combined with 'this paper is inappropriate for crosslisting' is so regrettable. Actually, there is an appeal process you can find if you look in help, something like emailing moderation@arxiv.org, and I appealed successfully once this way when a submission of mine was totally barred.

              If you have a bit of time to spare, you might find the following articles enlightening in regard to arXiv:

              arXiv unloaded

              Covert censorship by the physics preprint archive (extract follows)

              It is just an ordinary day at the headquarters of the physics preprint archive. The operators are going through their daily routine and are discussing what to do about recent emails:

              'Some "reader complaints" have come in regarding preprints posted to the archive by Drs. Einstein and Yang. Dr. Einstein, who is not even an academic, claims to have shown in his preprint that mass and energy are equivalent, while Professor Yang is suggesting, on the basis of an argument I find completely unconvincing, that parity is not conserved in weak interactions. What action shall I take?'

              'Abject nonsense! Just call up their records and set their 'barred' flags to TRUE.'

              'And here's a letter from one 'Hans Bethe' supporting an author whose paper we deleted from the archive as being 'inappropriate'.'

              'Please don't bother me with all these day to day matters! Prof. Bethe is not in the relevant 'field of expertise', so by rule 23(ii) we simply ignore anything he says. Just delete his email and send him rejection letter #5.'

              Vital resource should be open to all physicists

              Prof. Josephson,

              In my opinion, Life is but the normal extension or evolution of what the universe does. Life is a recipe for an even better dispersion of energy in space and time than that of the simple black body. As for "simple", I am getting to it in my essay. I am taking the old "substance" and "cause" approach and it gives interesting insight in the matter.

              All the bests,

              Marcel,

              Thanks for replying Brian,

              I agree that with arXiv as the de facto standard; it has become a vital resource that should be open to all physicists. If our work is perfected and polished enough to be published in a proceedings volume or journal, or to appear as a chapter in a volume of academic work, it is wholly inappropriate for the arXiv folks to pass judgement that unduly restricts access or relegates papers to a category like gen-ph where they may never be found.

              It is well-known that it is nearly impossible to get a paper posted in hep-th unless it has a String Theory lineage. I have met and/or heard lectures by some of ST's most prominent figures, but I think it is a grave mistake to regard it as the only game in town. I can see why people like Geoffrey Dixon become curmudgeons, because they are not taken seriously by mainstream scientists regardless of the predictive power their proposed framework offers.

              So I am not convinced that arXiv could ever be fair or will ever live up to its mandate and promise. It is a good idea gone bad!

              Regards,

              Jonathan