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1️⃣ Kihbernetic with
2️⃣ fundamental : a recursive self-production for growth and learning, and a linear production of "other things", such as behavior and waste, distributed in
3️⃣ Control , of , immersed in, and dealing with things in the system's environment, for managing the workload of different regulators, and to provide long-term goals and preserve the identity of the system, all using
4️⃣ : sensory of data and other resources, motor of behavior, as the difference that will make a difference in the subsequent (updated) state, all interconnecting
5️⃣ : the -ed to external stimuli, the of sensory states, the of the expected outcome of past behavior, and the repeated of new information into an updated knowledge state.

The "hard problem of consciousness" is characterized as the difficulty of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than unconscious.
If you regard as a of , then there is no "hard problem" as only a tiny part of (top) cognitive processing is actually conscious.

Also, objections from analytic idealism that physicalism attempts to explain experiential qualities (the territory) in terms of physical quantities (the map) are wrong because it is the physical processes in the brain that make the territory and the map is made by the subjective experience of physical quantities (differences).

You can have multiple maps of the same territory.

is a state of . Cognition is a necessary condition for , but consciousness isn't. Almost all cognitive processes are unconscious and will become conscious only when there are alternative options available requiring the conscious entity to exercise their and make a deliberate choice.

Making choices requires an where deliberation (competition) and can emerge. For unconscious living beings, the only available environment is the one external to them, where happens. Conscious beings, in contrast, have also an additional *internal* environment where they can make deliberations and choose between competing alternatives more or less independently from what happens outside.

‘To understand something is to stand under it, so that you may foster its development.”

Heinz von Foerster

People often "blame" Shannon's theory of for completely ignoring , maybe also because Shannon himself stated that "*the semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering aspects*"😀

However, if one recognizes that the content as defined by the is the measure of in a receiver about the sender's when producing the message, can it perhaps be interpreted that the receiver is trying to what the sender was to send?

The information the sender encodes in the message is never the *same* as that the receiver decodes from it on the other side of the channel.

Below is Shannon's description of the standard used for encoding and decoding the information in messages. The block diagrams are my rendering of the description (F is a "" function):

1️⃣ Kihbernetic with
2️⃣ fundamental : a recursive self-production for growth and learning, and a linear production of "other things", such as behavior and waste, distributed in
3️⃣ Control , of , immersed in, and dealing with things in the system's environment, for managing the workload of different regulators, and to provide long-term goals and preserve the identity of the system, all using
4️⃣ : sensory of data and other resources, motor of behavior, as the difference that will make a difference in the subsequent (updated) state, all interconnecting
5️⃣ : the -ed to external stimuli, the of sensory states, the of the expected outcome of past behavior, and the repeated of new information into an updated knowledge state.

" is a difference that makes a difference (G. Bateson, 1972, p. 315), and what it ‘‘does’’ or what it means is thus dependent on what is already in place and what alternatives are being distinguished."

(S. Oyama, 2000, p. 3)
dukeupress.edu/The-Ontogeny-of

Or, as more clearly defined in : is the difference between the results of -based (function A) and the (function B) of sensory inputs that will make a difference once integrated into a new knowledge of the dynamical (learning) system.

This brilliant essay by Robert Lawrence Kuhn (@CloserToTruth) about the *landscape* of all the **theories of consciousness** is a highly recommended reading for anyone interested in such things.

closertotruth.com/news/a-lands

's *epistemic cut* implies that living organisms at the same time operate on two separate levels of description in complementary modes:

1️⃣ A rate-dependent, dynamic, mode governed by *universal, inexorable, and incorporeal* of physics and chemistry, and

2️⃣ A rate-independent symbolic or linguistic mode of information processing, interpretation, and meaning governed by *local, arbitrary system*

Most theories of start with while a proper way to address any neural theory of consciousness should be as a science because the primary function of the nervous system is not to process information but to control the body.

Most control is internal to the system, a distributed, analog, homeostatic ***unconscious*** 1️⃣ of essential internal variables that are keeping the body alive and well. None of the mechanisms on this level "cares" about what is happening outside of the body.

Only on the next level do we find the kind of information necessary for the rate-dependent negative mechanisms 2️⃣ keeping some *external* controlled variables within limits engaging (through the use of regulators) in performing whole-body actions (behavior) in the immediate environment. Those actions can be conducted either ***consciously or unconsciously***.

Finally, on the highest level, we have the rate-independent, open loop always ***conscious*** 3️⃣ maintaining the long-term goals and providing stability and direction to the lower level of control that will plan, implement, and track the fulfillment of those goals.

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Even if you are gullible enough to believe LLMs are like brains, with their own 'minds', you must surely realize that they are 'brains in a vat'.
There are three ways one can take from here:
1️⃣ Use them as intelligence amplification tools;
2️⃣ Equip them with bodies;
3️⃣ Join them inside the vat.😏

A is not something that can be found in an observer's mind. Representations are physical copies or models of the object they represent and they are all residing in the same domain external to the observer's mind.

According to , a (the ***representation***) is something that brings its (the ), into *the same sort of correspondence* ( of mind) as the it stands for. Therefore, and exist in a different domain internal to the system

= .

The representation can be a , or the re- of the object using the same the object is made of (e.g. a *carbon copy* of a page or a copy of a living cell). In contrast, a (a map) is the reproduction of the object's form in a different substance.

Unlike real (artisanal) art, the reproduction (copy) of "digital art" is indistinguishable from the original. In addition, what is usually referred to as the "digital copy" of a physical work of art, is, in fact, a digital *model* of the real object it represents.

>Although the history of science and ideas is not my field, I could not imagine adopting Alfred North Whitehead's opinion that every science, in order to avoid stagnation, must forget its founders. To the contrary, it seems to me that the ignorance display ed by most scientists with regard to the history of their discipline, far from being a source of dynamism, acts as a brake on their creativity.

***On the Origins of Cognitive Science*** - *The Mechanization of the Mind*

by J-P Dupuy and translated by M. B. DeBevoise

*An examination of the fundamental role cybernetics played in the birth of cognitive science and the light this sheds on current controversies.*

mitpress.mit.edu/9780262512398

A Springer Open access book from @decidim

**Decidim, a Technopolitical Network for Participatory Democracy**

*Philosophy, Practice and Autonomy of a Collective Platform in the Age of Digital Intelligence*

link.springer.com/book/10.1007

The difference between a and a is that a *transformer* can re**form**ulate (modify the form) of the same substance, while a *transducer* can re**produce** the form observed in one kind of substance into the *same* form but in *another* type of substance. This kind of *reproduction* is usually called the .

*Terrence W. Deacon* writes beautifully about this conundrum:

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi

I have a somewhat different position on his second statement, however.

I think there **is** a self that determines **how** the system responds to an external perturbation.

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Found it! 😎. It is called the
***Maximum Entropy Production Principle ()***:

>The so-called maximum entropy production principle (MEPP) is known much less (even among specialists in physics of nonequilibrium processes). This antipode, as its name seemingly means, of Prigogine's principle has been overshadowed by its more famous twin. MEPP was independently proposed and used by several scientists throughout the 20th century when they dealt with general theoretical issues of thermodynamics and statistical physics or solved specific problems. By this principle, a nonequilibrium system develops so as to maximize its entropy production under present constraints.

sciencedirect.com/science/arti

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A system doesn't ***feed*** on (or ) from the environment it has to ***create*** it.

You can't get your desk organized by just acquiring some order from the environment. You have to do some and use some of your . Schrödinger admits as much:

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as the ultimate form of is usually thought of as ***resisting*** the *Second Law* of thermodynamics that says all eventually dissipates over time into a state of thermal equilibrium and enduring uniformity (disorder).

An alternative explanation says that organization (order) spontaneously emerges in dissipative structures ***because*** of the Second Law of Thermodynamics because ordered structures are much better at dissipating energy (thus more rapidly increasing the ) than disordered ones.

The explanation (for which I now can't find the proper reference😟) exemplified this with whirlpools and how they spontaneously emerge because the water molecules in them don't bump into each other as much so the flow through the drain (transition to an equilibrium state) is faster when they are streamlined (organized) into a vortex.

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