It seems to me the contentious issue is where the “representation” occurs. I would suggest that from the moment your hand touches the kettle, nerve ending are stimulated that evoke electric potentials that are then conducted along the nerves to your brain. And as long as all that happens is that you subjectively experience pain or some other perception, then this is just a physical/chemical process that involves no representation. It is only when your higher cognitive functions become involved and you begin to have thoughts that can be represented in language. (“Ow! That kettle is hot.”) that “representation” exists.
Yes. I think that is similar to what I said above.
OK, I should have been more clear - that paper gives as good a definition for “meaning” with respect to biological information as I have seen - linking to a measure of biological importance. It’s a bit of a leap from that to your statement about what I want.
Ugh, sorry about that! I didn’t intend to project stuff onto you but that’s what happened. My apologies, and FWIW my intention was to reinforce a distinction that you have made before and that I have taken on board in my thinking: information vs meaning.
A but pedantic but… The protein output is generally the same with the same input. Note that ‘input’ means “all the conditions”. The conditions will vary spending on the current state of the cell and so protein production can be affected. Basically, this means that the relationship between DNA transcription and whatever proteins are ultimately produced at any particular time need not to be linear. There are regulatory and stochastic mechanisms that affect protein abundance in addition to DNA transcription rates.
So I had another look at that paper you gave me about frameshifting and this kinda led me to something else I had never heard of before, aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetase. I think you were right. “Read” is the right word for it. I like the word “conveyed” a bit better, but anyways. So I’m sorry for being so dumb. This is what I am seeing now;
Information is being conveyed within a cell according to natural law. There is a code, but this was not appearant to me at first, because I could not see where a set of values were assigned (instructions, so to speak) which tell the cell how to read the code. If I am correct, then there are none, because nature is the value, so to speak. God set the values when He created nature and He created our bodies from nature.
However, our spirits were not created from nature. They must use the brain as an interface for natural information to be communicated to it. So we require the extra step of having to assign our own values before information can be communicated to us. Like lines on a thermometer. So I was looking for an extra assigned value where it wasn’t needed. That was the mistake I made.
This may be why biologists want to say it’s a different kind of information. Though It isn’t really. It’s being conveyed exactly as it should be, by my definition. It’s just had a particular value or values set at the creation so it can be “used”.
Yep, it’s physico-chemical processes. The metaphors come about when we notice some common processes across organisms and cells and try to describe them. But there are almost always some exceptions or complications that make any metaphor/ analogy imperfect.
It’s the classic case of “All models are wrong. Some are useful.”
Well that’s a good point. As you said, pain is a subjective experience. The brain itself does not feel any pain. It can be operated on without anesthesia. But nerves are used to invoke experiences and reactions. When a doctor strikes your knee with that little hammer and your leg moves, this is not a subjective experience, it’s a reaction. So this might make it difficult to say when and where exactly representation occurs. I would say it occurs in the brain, where the information required for a subjective experience is processed. But even then, things get unclear. We know vision is a subjective experience and there is no place in the brain where a complete visual image is compiled(As far as I know, anyways).
This is pretty close to the concept of a “Utility Function” from Economics. It’s OK to value things differently (we all do it), but we have to be careful about extending personal values “beyond the thermometer”, so to speak.
Conveyed is great! And come on, you aren’t dumb and you weren’t even acting dumb… maybe you just came with some ideas and definitions that were hindrances. Maybe that’s just human?
I can’t speak for others here, but I don’t think of biological information as a “different kind of information” unless you are referring to your comments about “assigning our own values” and/or “an extra assigned value.” Those concepts aren’t necessarily things a biologist would reject as a biologist, but they sound (to me) like things a person would reject if they are (like me) a materialist.
That’s all true. The point is not pedantic IMO, but it is separate from the interesting fact that the ribosome is a reader (or better, an interpreter) that can read the input differently, and thereby generate different output. We see this in ribosome recoding and in tRNA tinkering that can create alternative genetic codes.
I am curious. If you don’t see an assigned value, then how are you able to determine a purely mechanical process from a process that involves a code?
From a materialistic perspective, I would say that Humans assign values and Humans are natural. So this is no different than saying nature assigns values.
Isn’t that the whole point of being a materialist? To equate everything as natural?
Codes created by intelligent agents involve abstract, arbitrary representations. That’s the mechanism by which they hide information from those who don’t know the code. Codes that are not arbitrary are easier to break.
Codes are being used as metaphors to describe biology, because there are no abstractions in these purely mechanical processes.
I suggest three things to consider:
Different metaphors for the same thing are routinely used at different levels of mechanism/function. My field has multiple examples of that.
All biological metaphors eventually fail, which explains #1.
An engineer already knows what components went into the mechanism s/he created. If YOU had just discovered a biological mechanism that no one has described before, what linguistic tools do YOU have to describe it to others except metaphors?
I don’t care about that distinction and I’ve already tried to point out these false dichotomies to you. I’m not married to hard dichotomies or to definitions of “code” so beloved by engineers.
Yep, totally agree.
Weird way to say it. I’m a materialist because I don’t believe in supernatural spooky stuff. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about information etc. (Which by some definitions might disqualify me as a materialist. Oh darn.)
As an aside, apparently the terms “naturalism” and “materialism” are falling out of vogue among philosophers, and are being replaced by physicalism. The difference being that latter holds that all that exists is that which is “treated by fundamental physics.” The concept is explained further in the paper below. I was actually able to discuss the paper with its author a few days ago at a New Year’s Eve party.
