Interesting conversation! I fully concur with Professor Deacon's observation that the field of semiotics has been regrettably overlooked within the scientific community. It's refreshing to see this important topic being discussed! Subscribed.
One thing interesting to note about the 1-2-3 (going back to Peirce ) is how these triads can get confusing depending on context/application. That is the ordering can differ depending on if what is being emphasized is firsness and secondness seen as adjacent in emergence, e.g. 1-2-3 or if one wants to emphasize the middle-ness of mediation (or harmony) with thirdness in the second spot. You even see this spiritual and/or archetypally with the question of how we nest the notions of body, spirit, and soul. To understand the complexity is to see it both through the lens of a beginning-end emphasizing lifecycle and also as a middle-emphasizing S-curve-like concept and that the triad is better described more subtly as a fractal with certain nesting constraints for its "degenerate" or mixed categories.
Thank you for this wonderful interview, Carlos. Very interesting take on Friston's idea especially when you consider the extent of focus Friston's idea and the concept of the "Markov blanket" has had in contemporary neuroscience. I wonder how long Deacon's careful analysis will continue to be ignored and dismissed in neuroscience with the fields' focus on information in only the flat (Shannonian) sense and with a lot of assumptions baked into the models. For me as a curious outsider, Deacon's analysis and model seems for the first time in biology and neuroscience capable of dealing with a strictly scientific analysis of self, representation, normativity, sentience and information in the rich (aboutness) sense. The book breaks new ground but is a very tough read. I urge those interested to poke around YT, there are lots of keynotes and interviews where he carefully explains his analysis. Truly exciting work from an impressive synthetic thinker and scientist. The key to understanding aboutness and content is to get more familiar with absence, in particular the concept of constraint.
@@adambjerre thank you for the incredible comment! I agree Deacon’s work doesn’t get nearly the attention it should. He has a few excellent keynotes on RUclips as you pointed out.
paused at 57 min, absolutely marvelous conversation, subbed. If asserting, allowing and enabling move thru size, shape and speed (or efficiency) and self is persistent in self corrective dynamics, then so far it seems quite neo-Platonic which I'm interested in. Thanks.
The part about 'information is not about information it's about the signal' could possibly be seen in the way a dc circuit is made. By providing a different voltage from the "world outside" via a battery, a current flows to the battery and recombines with the voltage then moves back to the world thru the ground I think, could be wrong. In this sequestered space this artistic medium, the signal, is shaped by various tools like resisters. If you don't have the signal part "the juice" the information access isn't there so the information retreats, and always in the same way which is not informative.
This is spot on emphasizing grounding, circuits and energy. Deacon generalizes the physics notion of "Work". Terry and & Stu Kauffman are both heavily influenced by Peter Atkin's definition defining the term to connote a thermodynamic lens (irreversibility/spontaneity). These slides contain a good diagram regarding his morphodynamic and teleodynamic information (and much else): www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/deacon/Deacon_information_to_semiosis.pdf Also the fact that he has a paper and lecture on EEG/MRI studying the causality and entanglement of the dual dynamics of cerebral blood flow and neuronal activity I think is a specific case of studying how the dynamics ground and unground. note: It is helpful to looks at all of Terry's diagrams, he has an impressive ability to illustrate these complex ideas diagrammatically in his books and articles. The Wikipedia page for Incomplete Nature contains quite a few, but I would also rec. looking at his icon, index, symbol diagrams from The Symbolic Species.
This should open to p268: books.google.com/books?id=aT_y7ao96LgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=incomplete+nature&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiurPaEqe-EAxUOHNAFHanCAyQQ6AF6BAgEEAI#v=onepage&q=Rod%20Swenson&f=false
What do you think of Terry's 3 levels of dynamic systems?
Always great to hear people who are excited to talk about what they work with ❤
Interesting conversation! I fully concur with Professor Deacon's observation that the field of semiotics has been regrettably overlooked within the scientific community. It's refreshing to see this important topic being discussed! Subscribed.
One thing interesting to note about the 1-2-3 (going back to Peirce ) is how these triads can get confusing depending on context/application. That is the ordering can differ depending on if what is being emphasized is firsness and secondness seen as adjacent in emergence, e.g. 1-2-3 or if one wants to emphasize the middle-ness of mediation (or harmony) with thirdness in the second spot.
You even see this spiritual and/or archetypally with the question of how we nest the notions of body, spirit, and soul. To understand the complexity is to see it both through the lens of a beginning-end emphasizing lifecycle and also as a middle-emphasizing S-curve-like concept and that the triad is better described more subtly as a fractal with certain nesting constraints for its "degenerate" or mixed categories.
Thank you for this wonderful interview, Carlos.
Very interesting take on Friston's idea especially when you consider the extent of focus Friston's idea and the concept of the "Markov blanket" has had in contemporary neuroscience. I wonder how long Deacon's careful analysis will continue to be ignored and dismissed in neuroscience with the fields' focus on information in only the flat (Shannonian) sense and with a lot of assumptions baked into the models. For me as a curious outsider, Deacon's analysis and model seems for the first time in biology and neuroscience capable of dealing with a strictly scientific analysis of self, representation, normativity, sentience and information in the rich (aboutness) sense. The book breaks new ground but is a very tough read. I urge those interested to poke around YT, there are lots of keynotes and interviews where he carefully explains his analysis. Truly exciting work from an impressive synthetic thinker and scientist. The key to understanding aboutness and content is to get more familiar with absence, in particular the concept of constraint.
@@adambjerre thank you for the incredible comment! I agree Deacon’s work doesn’t get nearly the attention it should. He has a few excellent keynotes on RUclips as you pointed out.
It amazes me the quality of interviewees on this channel!
Im curious - how do you get such great people on?
Thanks, that's kind of you! I just reach out to them via their publicly available emails. :)
To be less selfish, great advice but how practical 😅 ? Thanks for the blog .
@@martinfarfsing5995 great comment and I do want to frame future interviews to be more applicable for folks. How do we use this day to day?
paused at 57 min, absolutely marvelous conversation, subbed. If asserting, allowing and enabling move thru size, shape and speed (or efficiency) and self is persistent in self corrective dynamics, then so far it seems quite neo-Platonic which I'm interested in. Thanks.
Thank you! I find platonism quite appealing. :)
Gravity reduces entropy
The part about 'information is not about information it's about the signal' could possibly be seen in the way a dc circuit is made. By providing a different voltage from the "world outside" via a battery, a current flows to the battery and recombines with the voltage then moves back to the world thru the ground I think, could be wrong. In this sequestered space this artistic medium, the signal, is shaped by various tools like resisters. If you don't have the signal part "the juice" the information access isn't there so the information retreats, and always in the same way which is not informative.
I love this! I suspect these kinds of patterns of information transmission are central to the mystery...
This is spot on emphasizing grounding, circuits and energy. Deacon generalizes the physics notion of "Work". Terry and & Stu Kauffman are both heavily influenced by Peter Atkin's definition defining the term to connote a thermodynamic lens (irreversibility/spontaneity). These slides contain a good diagram regarding his morphodynamic and teleodynamic information (and much else): www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/deacon/Deacon_information_to_semiosis.pdf
Also the fact that he has a paper and lecture on EEG/MRI studying the causality and entanglement of the dual dynamics of cerebral blood flow and neuronal activity I think is a specific case of studying how the dynamics ground and unground.
note: It is helpful to looks at all of Terry's diagrams, he has an impressive ability to illustrate these complex ideas diagrammatically in his books and articles. The Wikipedia page for Incomplete Nature contains quite a few, but I would also rec. looking at his icon, index, symbol diagrams from The Symbolic Species.
yoooo my man is talking about convection cells, I wonder if he knows rod swenson
This should open to p268: books.google.com/books?id=aT_y7ao96LgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=incomplete+nature&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiurPaEqe-EAxUOHNAFHanCAyQQ6AF6BAgEEAI#v=onepage&q=Rod%20Swenson&f=false