#terrence deacon

[artofthemindblog]

Demonstration of fractal characteristics of reaction diffusion pattern rendered experimentally through simulated tilt-shift blur

[perkwunos]

The concepts of function and semiosis (sign processes) are intertwined. Both are teleological concepts in the sense of being determined with respect to an end (or other than itself)—a specifically correlated absent content. Although it is unclear whether these two properties of living processes (function and semiosis) are exactly coextensive, it is clear that although time-asymmetrical, irreversible physical processes are found in the prebiotic physicochemical world; teleological processes that are specially organized with respect to specific ends or referents are unique to living processes.

If we think of a function as a process organized around an implicitly represented end, then these two classes of phenomena must be considered entirely coextensive. …

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Neo-Darwinian biology as practiced all over the world has prescinded (i.e., abstracted from necessary contextual support) an asemiotic conception of life as mere molecular chemistry, and yet at the same time it is dependent on unanalyzed semiotic assumptions. The reason why this is not felt as a problem is that biology compensates for the excluded semiosis by introducing a plethora of implicitly semiotic terms like “information,” “adaptation,” “signal,” “cue,” “code,” “messenger,” “fidelity,” and “cross talk.” These uses are seldom well defined and are often applied in an allegedly metaphoric way, with the implicit assumption that they can be reduced to mere chemical accounts if necessary.

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It is the aim of biosemiotics to make explicit those assumptions that are imported into biology by such unanalyzed teleological concepts as “function,” “information,” “code,” “signal,” and “cue” and to provide a theoretical grounding for these concepts. …

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Functions are not only the output of evolutionary history; rather, functionality is the prerequisite for organic evolution. For instance, autocells do not in all cases have an evolutionary history, but they do have functions. Evolution presupposes function rather than vice versa. Natural selection cannot be defined except with respect to a bounded, self-maintaining, and self-reproducing dynamical unit system. A discrete system with these properties must therefore be constituted by component materials and dynamical processes that reciprocally generate each other as well as their collective organization. The critical features and dynamical actions of these components exemplify Kant’s criteria for possessing intrinsic telos and are thus functional. The possibility of evolution derives from the fact that functions, because they can be realized multiple number of times, can coopt any incidental physicochemical properties of the substrates they utilize. Likewise, semiosis can coopt any incidental feature exhibited by functional processes or their properties.

Kalevi Kull et al., Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical Biology

[artofthemindblog]

Lionel Giles on Christianity,  Taoism and Hegel

  A foreigner, imbued with Christian ideas, naturally feels inclined to substitute for Tao the term by which he is accustomed to denote the Supreme Being--God. But this is only admissible if he is prepared to use the term 'God' in a much broader sense than we find in either the Old or the New Testament. That which chiefly impresses the Taoist in the operations of Nature is their absolute impersonality. The inexorable law of cause and effect seems to him equally removed from active goodness or benevolence on the one hand, and from active, or malevolence on the other. This is a fact which will hardly be disputed by any intelligent observer. It is when he begins to draw inferences from it that the Taoist parts company from the average Christian. Believing, as he does, that the visible Universe is but a manifestation of the invisible Power behind It, he feels justified in arguing from the known to the unknown, and concluding that, whatever Tao may be in itself (which is unknowable), it is certainly not what we understand by a personal God--not a God endowed with the specific attributes of humanity, not even (and here we find a remarkable anticipation of Hegel) a conscious God. In other words, Tao transcends the illusory and unreal distinctions on which all human systems of morality depend, for in it all virtues and vices coalesce into One.

The Christian takes a different view altogether. He prefers to ignore the facts which Nature shows him, or else he reads them in an arbitrary and one-sided manner. His God, if no longer anthropomorphic, is undeniably anthropopathic. He is a personal Deity, now loving and merciful, now irascible and jealous, a Deity who is open to prayer and entreaty. With qualities such as these, it is difficult to see how he can be regarded as anything but a glorified Man. Which of these two views--the Taoist or the Christian--it is best for mankind to hold, may be a matter of dispute. There can be no doubt which is the more logical.

--  Lionel Giles, Introduction to The Book of Lieh-Tzü

[artofthemindblog]

What is energy? One might expect at this point a nice clear, concise definition. Pick up a chemistry text, a physics text, or a thermodynamics text, and look in the index for “Energy, definition of,” and you find no such entry. You think this may be an oversight; so you turn to the appropriate sections of these books, study them, and find no help at all. Every time they have an opportunity to define energy, they fail to do so. Why the big secret? Or is it presumed you already know? Or is it just obvious?

H. C. Van Ness, Understanding Thermodynamics (1969)

[artofthemindblog]

symbolic>usefulness>life/semiosis,

 indexical>aboutness>morphogenesis, 

  iconic>medium capacity>equilibration/entropy

[artofthemindblog]

The meaning of “emptiness” in the Buddhist tradition

"Buddhism acknowledges that we have an idea of what it would be to have “own-being” (svabhava), but we never run across such a being in the world. The more deeply we inquire into the being of the world that we encounter the more we see that nothing exists in a way that is free from dependence on other things. Our idea of “own-being” does not come from, does not derive from, the world we know. It is an idea that arises in the human mind, but is never found in the real world. This is the meaning of “emptiness [śūnyatā] in the Buddhist tradition."

--Terrence Deacon, 'Steps to a Metaphysics of Incompleteness'

[artofthemindblog]

Previously, starting with the assumption of the infinite intelligence of a designer God, organisms—including those capable of flexible intelligent behavior—could be seen as progressive subtractions and simplifications from Godlike perfection. In the “Great Chain of Being,” mental phenomena were primary. The mind of God was the engine of creation, the designer of living forms, and the ultimate source of value. Mind was not in need of explanation. It was a given. The living world was derived from it and originally folded within it, preformed, as a definite potential. The evolutionary reconception proposed by the elder and younger Darwins, Lamarck, and others therefore posed a much more counterintuitive possibility. Mind and its teleological mode of interacting with the world could be described as an end product—not an initiating cause—of the history of life.

Terrence W. Deacon, Incomplete Nature

[twinkl22004]

Terrence Deacon, “The Symbolic Species: Co-Evolution of Language & Brain”, PART THREE (3).

Here I present: Terrence Deacon, “The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language & Brain”, PART THREE (3). INTRODUCTION. Reading is under-represented by Terrance Deacon in his book.  This blog post adds some things that general readers often discuss when considering reading. The fusiform gyrus is anatomically the structure for function of  reading.  Fusiform gyrus is also called Brodmann Area…

Terrence Deacon, “The Symbolic Species: Co-Evolution of Language & Brain”, PART THREE (3).