What, Why & How do we Know ?
Chris Fields and Mark Solms clearly seem to be aware of each other’s work even if this is the first time they’ve communicated. As the tweet says it’s a very informal chat facilitated by Mike Levin (interesting Tufts connection with Dan Dennett in my context.) Here is an informal conversation I had this week with … Continue reading “Chris Fields talks with Mark Solms”
In a break from writing, one or two pieces in need of reading and listening caught my attention. It’s all related. In an ISSS context there has been some debate between two schools, between many different aspects of systems definition, complex detail for systems of different types in different real-world applications versus abstraction of systems … Continue reading “Systems Connections”
Good to see actual scientists being public about the limitations to reductionist determinism, and why emergent objects can and do have their own causality. Noticed Philip Ball post a note to the effect that this really could be considered a given – “well established” and “not much left to debate” – now even though there … Continue reading “The Orthodoxy Softens on Determinism?”
Watching this wonderful “Krebs Cycle” RI lecture by Nick Lane – last mentioned him here – and just wanted to note two things for now. One, there is an obvious topological parallel (*) between (System) Markov Blankets and (Mitochondria) Lipid Membranes at two quite different levels of abstraction – information processes and biochemical processes. And … Continue reading “Markov Blankets vs Lipid Membranes”
A musical interlude: A couple of years ago I posted some pictures I took of John McGeoch, back in 1978 when he was playing in Howard Devoto’s Magazine, in a Facebook thread reminiscing on Devoto and Magazine. (Photos taken at The Nashville Rooms, a regular London pub-rock bar in the days of punk, that later … Continue reading “John McGeoch”
An information-and-computation-based metaphysics is fundamental to several recent sources (as well as my own metaphysics) – even if the specialist scientific researchers often don’t concern themselves with metaphysical aspects of ontology. Most recently John C Doyle and Mark Solms for example – information and its processes are simply taken as more fundamental than any other … Continue reading “More on Fundamental Information & Computation”
Author Michael Lewis lists “the books that made me” including: The book that changed my life Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig Interesting selection … I did fully read both Cervantes and Tolstoy. With me it was Anna Karenina that gave me many false starts until I read beyond the dysfunctional Karenins … Continue reading “ZMM – The Book that Changed my Life”
I’ve started to read The Idiot several times, got as far as Myshkin arriving in Petersburg once or twice, but never got as far as realising his “Prince” character was the “Idiot” – as the naïve and well-intentioned voice in a complex world of love, money, ambition and personal motivation. Dostoyevsky’s strategy to communicate his … Continue reading “Dostoyevsky – The Idiot”