Month: February 2023

Been a bid distracted for a couple of weeks with no new deep reading or writing – not really sure why, some dent in motivation I can’t put a finger on, January blues maybe? Some domestic distractions, DIY car maintenance and planning our birthday city-break, probably relevant. Also tried to focus on engagement elsewhere in ISSS and AII and ECO, but inevitably reduced focus on my own projects. Too many foci.

Anyway, as I do every few years, I had announced some on-line housekeeping earlier in January. This was a significant driver:

“[I] have some glitches in [WordPress] Dashboard, Stats, Page & Post Editing and in published Page & Post functions: – (1) loss of Pingbacks – (2) unpredictable behaviour between Classic and Block Editors and advanced editing Plug Ins – (3) unpredictable behaviour losing “sessions” requiring fresh log-ins every few mins between the different functions above. Secure but time consuming!

So I need to do some maintenance to the blog.”

Pingbacks still seem to be dead(?) and I do have a few legacy character-set failures, but the other annoying inefficiency glitches seem to have been resolved simply by re-installing the existing Plug-ins in a natural order. So, even though I did investigate splitting content into older static copies and ongoing content creation on a fresh newer platform, I no longer have any real incentive to switch horses to SubStack, Medium and/or Mastodon. Onward and upward with WordPress on my DreamHost virtual server with the simple 2016 Theme. (Should probably tidy-up email subscription as well as Twitter follow engagements. Maybe just a theme refresh? Oh and I’ve updated DLVR.IT to share the blog notifications automatically to as many channels as possible – eg Mastodon and Discord as well as Twitter and maybe more?)

Also, my unread and/or re-read pile – not just the burgeoning wish-list -has grown to “where to re-start” proportions.

So, back to that Fields/Glazebrook/Levin (2021) paper which I started to review a couple of weeks ago?

Another informal chat from Michael Levin.
(These are very good and this is a good one.)

Chirality (asymmetry / handedness) from individual biochemistry and cells scaled-up to organs and anatomy- bio-electrical gradients – but sounds very bottom-up mechanistic / reductivist? Yes, much more, part of the “space” in which development happens.

Palpation – in slime-moulds – very much as used by Solms. How does it obtain / remember the information about its environment and then act on it. Computational – physical / hydraulic – view. Still difficult for Iain?

One vs two-headed worm body pattern – learned bio-electrically after normal genetic expression attractor.

The pleasurable-experience <exclusive-or> good-memory option? (Similar to the torture and forget thought experiment.) The fact it’s a counter-factual – can’t actually imagine “how” that exclusive situation could be engineered – means it’s really a philosophical question, to hold a strong-intuition position. The latter for me. People saying the opposite are attached to the now, all that’s real, and don’t see long-term value – (unless they’re cheating in the thought experiment and expecting the experience will give them something of value?) Some degree of permanence, continuity of individual identity – yes, I’m with Iain.

Everything is a whole at its own level, not just a sum of its parts (in time or space), hence the continuity. Left-brained autism to think otherwise possible (eg Derek Parfitt). (Schizo-autistic spectrum very similar to loss of right-brain function – per TMWT. Dissociated personality disorders – even total split-brain cases – tell us a lot about integrated / continuity of personal identity.)

Matter and mind as different aspects / manifestations / (phases?) of the same reality – I should say so. Obviously the affect each other – mad to suggest otherwise. Materialists / physicalists are probably those who least understand – appreciate the value of – matter. (That “reality” is information & computation btw. More mentions of Solms, Friston, Fields …)

Interminable, standard problems in philosophy – as a choice between isms / schools – reflects left-right brain choices. Lack of integration.