What is the ontological distinction between mechanical, chemical and biological systems?

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Dr Sumangala

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Nov 16, 2019, 12:18:01 PM11/16/19
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Dear Friends,


Namaste.

In modern science some believe that all life forms including our own selves are either mechanical machines or chemicals contained in a membrane enclosure. There is no theory in science which talks about the concept of soul (atma) and ultimate goal of life. Are we mere 'mechanical machines'/'a random accumulation of chemicals in a membrane'? Or, life is beyond the simplistic explanation that physical sciences provide us? We request all of you to join an interesting conference at India's one of the premier institutes IIT-Madras to learn more about this most important subject.

The conference registration link can be found at  http://scienceandscientist.org/conference/…/registration.php


Sincerely,
Sumangala Devi Dasi, Ph.D.



 

Cosmin Visan

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Nov 18, 2019, 5:57:39 AM11/18/19
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The only ontology that exists is the subjective ontology, i.e. consciousness. Everything else are ideas in consciousness. I think that science should state clearly its goals to the students in schools and universities: "Science is about trying to guess the behavior of nature, and building models that help us build technology. But at all times we should not forget that all these are models built in consciousness, consciousness being the foundation of reality.". Instead, children are thrown into ideas that their unprepared mind takes them as being about how nature really is. Because of my desire to understand reality and the insincere way in which science is promoted in schools, I ended up studying physics at university, only to realize on my own during the studies that consciousness is the true reality and physics just an idea invented by consciousness to describe the regularities that it sees in its experiences. Now I'm a philosopher of consciousness. Such a waste of time to have to go through physics to realize these things on my own, when I could have gone the right way from the beginning if the educational system would have been honest.

BMP

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Nov 18, 2019, 6:42:16 AM11/18/19
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Dear  Cosmin,

Namaste. While it is true that modern science has completely ignored consciousness in its attempt to focus purely on the objects of consciousness in the form of Nature (conceived as material and mechanistic) it is not true that consciousness is the only reality. Modern science, with the development of quantum theory, is recognizing that it has made a mistake in its one-sided attitude and approach. [Of course, there are always those scientists who will never admit such a thing.] However, we must not make the mistake of thinking that consciousness is the only reality in which the object of consciousness is to be ignored. This would be as one-sided (and abstract) as the current idea of modern science, ant not concrete. Concrete would mean the contradiction of two opposing sides [thesis and its antithesis] is accounted for and not simply neglected due to failure to understand their dialectical relation [synthesis].

Consciousness is essentially a subject/object relationship. As Hegel has clearly enunciated, the Absolute truth is grasped as a whole, as both subject as much as  substance. The problem that abstract idealism faces,which seems to be the view you are holding, is that it is abstract, i.e. not admitting the antithesis. This error is also held by Deepak Chopra and others who embrace the abstract monist philosophy or abstract advaitins. 

There are the true advaitins who understand the negation that is involved in the a-dvaita conception. This negation means that there is both the positive and its negation involved in the concrete idea of advaita. 

Although consciousness determines the objects of consciousness in terms of what they are, it does not create them or produce their being. Likewise if you think that everything is consciousness then you must accept that the objects of consciousness are also conscious, and that means they can also effect or determine the consciousness that you one-sidedly hold to determine them. This clearly is inconsistent.

While ultimately in the Absolute subject and substance are identical as well as different, the difference is not eliminated despite the identity. The objects of consciousness are conscious as much as the subjects, but the difference is never eliminated. This is due to the structure of consciousness as a duality that is overcome yet preserved in order to maintain itself as a concrete actuality.

This may be difficult to understand but it is essential if the interest of science in consciousness is not to take the turn from abstract substance to abstract subject. One would be  as fallacious as the other. It will be due to a failure to understand the principle of the identity-of-identity-and-difference, as the German philosopher Hegel has so successfully demonstrated, and as explained over five hundred years ago in India in Chaitanya's teachings.

With humble and sincere regards,
B Madhava Puri

On Monday, November 18, 2019, 05:55:39 AM EST, 'Cosmin Visan' via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. <online_sa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:


The only ontology that exists is the subjective ontology, i.e. consciousness. Everything else are ideas in consciousness. I think that science should state clearly its goals to the students in schools and universities: "Science is about trying to guess the behavior of nature, and building models that help us build technology. But at all times we should not forget that all these are models built in consciousness, consciousness being the foundation of reality.". Instead, children are thrown into ideas that their unprepared mind takes them as being about how nature really is. Because of my desire to understand reality and the insincere way in which science is promoted in schools, I ended up studying physics at university, only to realize on my own during the studies that consciousness is the true reality and physics just an idea invented by consciousness to describe the regularities that it sees in its experiences. Now I'm a philosopher of consciousness. Such a waste of time to have to go through physics to realize these things on my own, when I could have gone the right way from the beginning if the educational system would have been honest.

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Cosmin Visan

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Nov 18, 2019, 9:13:16 AM11/18/19
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I don't understand what you mean. For example, when I see a table, in what way is the table concious ?

BMP

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Nov 18, 2019, 9:39:33 AM11/18/19
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Dear Cosmin,

Namaste. It seems to me that You! are the one who is proposing in your previous message that

>The only ontology that exists is the subjective ontology, i.e. consciousness.

Because you claimed this, I replied

>if you think that everything is consciousness then you must accept that the objects of consciousness are also conscious 

In other words, if you think that consciousness is the only ontology then you must accept that objects such as tables must be conscious. You claimed that objects are ideas in consciousness, but what are ideas made of if they exist only in consciousness? 

I hope you understand that if you are claiming the only ontology is consciousness, it seems to imply that tables and everything else are conscious. Am I misunderstanding you?

With humble and sincere regards,
B Madhava Puri

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Cosmin Visan

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Nov 18, 2019, 11:33:47 AM11/18/19
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They are not conscious themselves. They are just ideas that a consciousness experiences. Or if you want to put it another way: they are forms of manifestation of consciousness. When I see a table, the ontological state is "I am table". Basically you have the original self-reference that by looking-back-at-itself it experiences itself in all sorts of ways. The original "I am" becomes all sorts of qualia: I am red, I am music, I am John, etc. All these objects are not independent entities of consciousness, they are forms that consciousness takes into experiencing itself. The sensation of these objects being independent of consciousness is itself an experience.
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BMP

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Nov 18, 2019, 11:57:59 AM11/18/19
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Dear Cosmin,

Namaste.

You write:
>They are not conscious themselves. They are just ideas that a consciousness experiences.

If consciousness differentiates itself into so many different manifestations of itself, how are the manifestations of consciousness not made of consciousness? A lump of clay may manifest itself as a pot, a brick, a wall, a plate, and so on. Yet each manifestation is also clay. In the same way if consciousness manifests itself in different ways they must all be made of the same stuff = consciousness. Thus the manifestations of consciousness must also be conscious.

The other problem is: what is it that makes consciousness manifest itself in different ways? As soon as you introduce "differences" then you already admit that there is something different. In order for there to be something different, A and not-A, there must be both consciousness and not-consciousness. So something other than consciousness is required in order for consciousness to manifest itself at all, as well as to manifest itself differently in each circumstance. 

By claiming that consciousness is all there is, the ability to manifest itself, plus the ability to produce different manifestations of itself are not explained. In other words, how does One [thing] on its own produce differences or Many from itself?

With humble and sincere regards,
B Madhava Puri
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Diego Lucio Rapoport

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Nov 18, 2019, 1:33:40 PM11/18/19
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Would that be the case, the objects becoming more than attributes but operators of consciousness,this seems to be tantamount to  a confusion with the principle of consciousness, namely selfreference and heteroreference 
(as signified by the Hyper
´Klein Bottles) -
though restricted forcefully to selfreference as if genuinely independent of heteroreference and standing all by itself, with the objects of consciousness rather than the process.

Diego Rapoport 

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Sungchul Ji

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Nov 18, 2019, 7:41:00 PM11/18/19
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Hi,  

Please allow me to participate in this interesting conversation. 

(1)  In my opinion, there are two ways of defining a word or a concept -- (i) the dyadic definition of Saussure's (1857-1913)  semiology, and (ii) the triadic definition of Peirce (1839-1914).  Simply put, the former, when applied to defining consciousness, for example,  would take the form "Consciousness is X".  In contrast the latter would state that "The word "consciousness" is a sign that refers to "real consciousness" (called its object) and has the effect (called "interpretant") on the mind of the interpreter, either biotic or abiotic, in such a manner that the inerpretant refers to the same object as does the sign."  There are many other triadic ways of defining the sign.  In fact, Peirce has proposed no less than 76  different ways of defining the sign [1]. 

(2)  The triadic definition of the sign by Peirce can be represented diagrammatically as shown in Figure 1 (d) below.  The logical principle underlying the Peircean definition of the sigh is called the "Irreducible Triadic Relation" or ITR [2] which can be diagrammed as shown in Figure 1 (b) which is isomorphic with the commutative triangle (Figure 1 (a))  of category theory [3, 4].  It is interesting to note that ITR applies to the communication system in general as shown in Figure 1 (c), which is not surprising because communication involves information transfer from the sender to the receiver carried by the sign. 

(3)  Probably the most relevant diagram in the context of the current discussion on consciousness is Figure 1 (d) below which applies the ITR principle to (i) semiosis, (ii) metaphysics/ontology, and (iii) quantum mechanics as interpreted by R. E. Kastner [6]. 

(a)


                                      f

                    A  ---------------> B
                        \                        |

                              \                  |    g

                           h        \           |

                                            \    |    

                                              C  

(b)

                        f                      g

            A  ------------> B  ----------->  C
             |                                               ^

             |                                                |

             |________________________|
                                     h

(c)    

                   COMMUNICATION      

 

 

                     f                          g

  Sender  -------> Message  --------> Receiver 
             |                                               ^

             |                                                |

             |________________________|
                                     h

 

f  = encoding
g = decoding

h = information flow

 (d)
           SEMIOSIS (or Sign Process)

  
                      f                      g

    Object ---------> Sign  ---------> Interpretant

   (Real W)            (Experienced W)          (Theorized W)(Possibility, Ѱ)   (Probability, Ѱ^2)        (PTI of QM [3])           |                                                       ^

        |                                                        |

        |____________________________|
                                  h

 

W = World or Consciousness

f = sign production (natural process;

      causality*)
g = sign interpretation (mental process)

h = correspondence /grounding (codality**)

Figure 1.  Two equivalent diagrams representing the semiotic principle of the irreducible triadic relation (ITR) discovered by C. S. Peirce (1839-1914). 

   One way to define ITR in words is that it is a relation among three entities, A, B and C such that A determines B directly and B in turn determines C directly so that C is determined by A indirectly. The two diagrams are thought to be equivalent from the network point of view, both having three nodes and three arrows (or edges). 

   The diagram on the right-hand panel is more convenient to type on a computer key board. The diagram on the left-hand panel is called the commutativity triangle in category theory, which is expressed algebraically as f x g = h, i.e., mapping f followed by mapping g leads to the same result as mapping h.  One meaning of the commutativity triangle is that, if A is similar to B and B is similar to C then C is similar to A.

*free energy-dependent, free energy being a function of energy and thermodynamic entropy.

**information-dependent, information I being defined simply as I = log2 (n/m) bits, where n is the total number of possible choices available and m is the number of choices actually selected [5].


References:


   [1] Marty, R. (2019). 76 Definitions of The Sign by C. S. Peirce. http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/rsources/76DEFS/76defs.HTM

   [2] Ji, S. (2018).  The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter.   World Scientific Publishing, New Jersey. Pp. 377-379.

  [3] Brown, R. and Porter, T. (1989).  Category Theory: an abstract setting for analogy and comparison. http://pages.bangor.ac.uk/~mas010/Analogy-and-Comparison.pdf
   [4] Spivak, D. I. (2013)  Category Theory for  Scientists.   http://math.mit.edu/~dspivak/teaching/sp13/CT4S--static.pdf
   [5]  Ji, S. (2012).  Molecular Theory of the Living Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms, and Biomedical Applications. Springer, New York.  P. 93. 

   [6] Kastner, R. E. (2012).  Possibilist Transactional Interpretation (PTI) of quantum mechanics. file:///C:/Users/user/Dropbox/Quantum-mechanics/Transactional-interpretation-of-QM/Ruth%20E.%20Kastner-infrmation-philosopher.html

If you have any questions, corrections, comments, please let me know.

Sung 




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Cosmin Visan

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Nov 18, 2019, 7:41:00 PM11/18/19
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Of course the manifestations of consciousness are consciousness. I don't understand what your misunderstanding is.
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