#HH_Pattee’s epistemic cut implies that living organisms at the same time operate on two separate levels of description in complementary modes:
1️⃣ A rate-dependent, dynamic, mode governed by universal, inexorable, and incorporeal #laws of physics and chemistry, and
2️⃣ A rate-independent symbolic or linguistic mode of information processing, interpretation, and meaning governed by local, arbitrary system #rules
Talking about the “nervous system” in isolation from the rest of the body and its environment is like trying to figure out what is the automobile about by looking at its motor running on a stand. You need to look at where the “rubber hits the road” to really understand what’s going on.
Only “bodies can do things” not the isolated nervous systems. Of course, brains have a #function within the body, the same way that individual bodies (with their respective brains) have a function within a social organization.
The nervous “(sub)system” has no need to be in direct contact with the environment, but it also can’t function or even survive (is not viable) without the support of all the other body parts, some of which are and must be in direct contact with the #environment.
According to #HH_Pattee, The whole purpose of the nervous system and cognition is the survival of the body:
“The major function of the brain is actually not to sit around and discuss things like we are doing now, but it is to make decisions - it has to decide whether to fight or run or eat …”
https://www.academia.edu/6576779/Rosen_and_Pattee_on_Theoretical_Biology
Thinking about the nervous “system” in isolation is typical for #Cybernetics thinking which separates the #control (management) system from the #controlled system (the plant) and does not recognize the fact that they depend on each other and should be thought of as one system.
People are “social animals” and the emergent capability and knowledge of an #organization as a system of people are quite different from the collection of all the individual learning capabilities and knowledge of the individuals it is composed of, so it is, therefore, appropriate to treat the organization as another dynamical #learning system.
Not all #control in real #life requires an immediate response of the dynamical #system to what’s happening in its environment.
Constraining the behavior of a system in a functional way, i.e., control, can be exerted here and now—by the specific parameters of environments. Such is the case of tropisms: a plant turns in the direction of a light. However, in cases in which control is displaced in time, the functional ‘‘freezing’’ of some degrees of freedom has to be written somehow and somewhere (i.e., some form of memory must occur), and—if one wants to have a physical description of this memory process—according to Pattee, one has to employ an alternative sort of description in the form of time-independent constraints. This description is “symbolic’’ in the sense of consisting of timeless structures, having external significance, that—themselves—form a system, being non-arbitrarily linked together by certain rules. According to Pattee, the two kinds of description (symbolic code and physical laws) are incommensurate. Neither is reducible to the other.
J. Rączaszek-Leonardi building on #HH_Pattee’s work on Reconciling #symbolic and #dynamic aspects of #language
The present paper examines natural language as a dynamical system. The oft-expressed view of language as “a static system of symbols” is here seen as an element of a larger system that embraces the mutuality of symbols and dynamics. Following along
Abstract A theory of emergent or open-ended evolution that is consistent with the epistemological foundations of physical theory and the logic of self-reference requires complementary descriptions of the material and symbolic aspects of events. The
Paraphrased #HH_Pattee from the same source:
This “#error_duality” (error in the #descriptions or error in the #operation) can be identified at all organizational levels:
➡️ Computer programs may have either an error in the program itself (#software error) or an error may happen because of the machine (#hardware error) that executes an otherwise correct program.
➡️ At higher levels it is possible to make an error in the choice of algorithm which is being programmed or even make a mistake in the choice of problem that the developed algorithm is supposed to solve.
➡️ Similarly in social and political organizations we distinguish between a faulty policy and the failure to execute a policy properly.
In other words, we try to distinguish between the error in our #models of reality which leads to incorrect policies (#predictions and descriptions), and the error in #control #constraints which leads to a failure of a (good) policy implementation.
Biological physicist #HH_Pattee on the futility of the attempts to create artificial #intelligence by reverse engineering #language.
“No amount of #semiotic information, thought, or discourse alone can cause the body to move. It takes some #physics. As Waddington has pointed out, the first function of #language was to cause #actions, not to make #statements.”
Umerez’s analysis made me aware of the fundamental differences in the culture of physics and molecular biology and the culture of semiotics from which the new field of biosemiotics arose. These cultures also view histories differently. Considering the evolutionary span and the many hierarchical levels of organization that their models must cover, models at different levels will require different observables and different meanings for common words, like symbol, interpretation, and language. These models as well as their histories should be viewed as complementary rather than competitive. The relation of genetic language and human language is the central issue. They are separated by 4 billion years and require entirely different models. Nevertheless, these languages have in common a unique unlimited expressive power that allows open-ended evolution and creative thought. Understanding the nature of this expressive power and how it arises remains a basic unsolved problem of biosemiotics.
According to #HH_Pattee there are
“two meanings for #machine and two meanings for #failure”:
“By the machinery of nature we mean the failure-proof #laws that we assume underlie the predictable behavior of matter. When we find certain types of #natural events unpredictable we assume that our description or theory of these events are failures, but not the events themselves.”
On the other hand, while we assume that the #rules of arithmetic are not subject to failure, it is clear that a physical machine #designed to execute these rules may fail all too often.”
https://www.academia.edu/863887/The_role_of_instabilities_in_the_evolution_of_control_hierarchies
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