Drafts by Jean Pierre Legros
The Dichotomy is an aporia that Zeno of Elea illustrated with the paradoxes of Achilles, the Arro... more The Dichotomy is an aporia that Zeno of Elea illustrated with the paradoxes of Achilles, the Arrow and the Stadium. Twenty-five centuries later, the dichotomy seems to be resolved, and in several different ways. This is precisely a problem. These solutions are contradictory to each other, keeping the paradox all its relevance. Zeno wanted to demonstrate that movement is an illusion. In a block universe, is he not fundamentally right? We need an additional dimension, complexity, to start the movement, as well as time and consciousness.
After the highly contested match of theories of consciousness that began in 2018, which is markin... more After the highly contested match of theories of consciousness that began in 2018, which is marking time, Stratium could reconciles and surpasses them, as a self-organizing theory that seeks to explain the phenomenon in addition to the function. Neurons are elementary feedback loops that process the regularities of sensory signals. They organize themselves into graphs of increasing complexity. Complexity is considered here as a fundamental physical dimension and not a simple property of mathematics. This solution sheds light on the most difficult questions about consciousness. How does information become interpretation? How does the user of the information appear? Interpretation assumes a relative independence of each level of complexity on the previous ones, while remaining closely entangled with them. This independence is the stability of the configuration of the constitutive probabilities of the underlying level. A higher graph observes and synthesizes the constitution of the lower graphs in the complex dimension. This is the fundamental beginning of the phenomenon of consciousness. At the pinnacle of complexity, waking consciousness results from the aggregation of brain functions into a single level, overcoming a very large number of underlying stages of interpretation, each superimposing its layer of consciousness, explaining the remarkable final thickness of the phenomenon. Under this complex illumination the brain is able to "turn around" to experience the meaning of its own activity.
Critical review of a reference article on consciousness in AIs, published by Patrick Butlin and R... more Critical review of a reference article on consciousness in AIs, published by Patrick Butlin and Robert Long's team on 22/08/23. Part 1 analyzes the pitfalls and resulting breaches in the study: sacralized definition of consciousness, exclusions in the chosen method, transposition of human theories to the digital, occultation of the qualitative phenomenon. Part 2: The study shows how current neuroscientific theories can identify a human-like consciousness in an AI. Valuable information, even if it doesn't say what this consciousness is per se, or eliminate its possibility if the indicators aren't present. In Part 3, I cite two more complete alternative approaches to the subject, one of which is capable of encompassing the competing neuroscientific theories. Finally, a philosophical conclusion on the danger of conscious AIs.
The double look offers an astonishing perspective on the living, capable of overturning our usual... more The double look offers an astonishing perspective on the living, capable of overturning our usual concepts about it, but above all of recognizing the origin of these two sets of concepts, the classic and the revolutionary, which are not contradictory but complementary. After explaining what double look is, I describe an application to medical therapy and in particular to cancer.
Societarium presents a universal political system based on the re-hierarchization of society as i... more Societarium presents a universal political system based on the re-hierarchization of society as it grows. Why Rehierarchization rather than De-hierarchization desired by the contemporary participatory trend? The essay is based on an ontological model of our social relations, which is the conflict between principles of independence and belonging. Our ideals are not part of these natural principles. They are reclassified as signposts and no longer directors. 'Decivilization' is the term studied in Chapter 6. What is this measure of 'civilization' that rises and falls? I make it that of the relationship between citizens and the City, which gives an impression sur 2 5
Stratium is a body-mind theory describing the brain as a multi-tiered system with layered levels ... more Stratium is a body-mind theory describing the brain as a multi-tiered system with layered levels of meaning. Each level has a relative independence, indissoluble from its underlying structure, entangling its own level of representation with the previous ones. The remanence and synchronization of neural excitations surimposes (superimposes and merges) all the levels to form the conscious impressions in the highest working space. The principle of relative independence accounts for the blurring of the access of consciousness to its own constitution, until it disappears for the unconscious levels. Pledge of both stability and mental flexibility. The theory is confronted with the main existing philosophical and neuroscientific theses.
An activated synaptic configuration, as meaning, is a given distribution of probabilities among a... more An activated synaptic configuration, as meaning, is a given distribution of probabilities among all its possible meaningful states. It thus emancipates itself from its constitution and represents a qualitative leap. New mental experience. The mind is constructed from these tiers of meanings, a vertical complexity that makes up its intelligence. To begin this definition, I compare the information of Wiener and Shannon, I draw a model from it and transpose it into the physiology of neural networks. Meaning is not reduced to electrochemical exchanges. Its qualia appears and satisfies the philosophical prerequisites.
In a 2007 conference abstract, David Bawden attempts an equivalence between information and self-... more In a 2007 conference abstract, David Bawden attempts an equivalence between information and self-organized complexity. Encouragement to make these notions the fundamental principles of reality, while matter, energy, space and time would be productions. I am inspired by this presentation and bounce back on its limits to show how to pave the way for a unification of information in the physical, biological and human sciences. Reality is not one of uncertainty but of an alternation between uncertainty and certainty. The driving force is the self-organized sequence of the two indissoluble aspects of information, information-essence and information-communication.
I show briefly how Surimposium, a theory of consciousness based on complexity, encompasses existi... more I show briefly how Surimposium, a theory of consciousness based on complexity, encompasses existing positions on information and consciousness, that of phenomenologists, physicalists, and new panconscious theories including Tononi's integrated information.
Math contains cognitive biases. To support this astonishing observation, I begin by going back in... more Math contains cognitive biases. To support this astonishing observation, I begin by going back in the history of mathematics. By erasing any intention within them, we have at the same time lost track of complexity and quality. These intentions exist, but are now hidden in acronyms, in particular the '=' with multiple meanings. The biases are those of cognitive stages arbitrarily making choices between these meanings, mistakenly believing to access the real per se.
The concept of 'causality' deciphered with the Universal Philosophical Method (UniPhiM). This roo... more The concept of 'causality' deciphered with the Universal Philosophical Method (UniPhiM). This root concept was swept away from ontology by Bertrand Russell, then revived by different models: counterfactuals, agentism, probabilism, transfer-with in particular Max Kistler's solution in 2003, the transfer of a conserved quantity. I show how UniPhiM makes the ontological invisibility of causality coincide with the multitude of its teleological appearances. Science uses a pseudo-ontological language that does not access reality per se. The equations do not contain a principle of causality but answer only part of the ontological questions. I show how their acronyms can conceal the principle we are seeking.
I construct a universal philosophical method starting from the act of knowing, through different ... more I construct a universal philosophical method starting from the act of knowing, through different binarisms: known/ unknown, self/non-self-the interaction, within the mind, between representations of the self and the real; the former diverge from other self(s), the latter converge. How to fit all this into a single reality, especially with an inaccessible reality per se? I introduce a new dimensional manifold, the complex, with two axes, horizontality and verticality. The horizontal axis is that of systems of elements, virtual as well as material, unified by the ontological concept of information. The conscious, representational workspace is a horizontal conceptual plane. While its constitution is part of the vertical axis, from quantum levels to graphs created by neural networks, through the levels of neural physiology. Constitutional complexity of a nature other than representational. In this two-axis dimension, the place of the representative phenomenon cannot be reduced to that of the constituent system. On the contrary, their gap generates two opposing looks, ontological and teleological. The ontology of reality per se is not accessible, it is a pseudoontological look that generates our mind, a horizontal simulation of complex verticality. Driven by the representation of reality, the pseudo-ontological look converges-in science. While teleological views diverge-founding the diversity of philosophies.
Aristotle, the most influential genius that Earth has carried, used a double look at things but l... more Aristotle, the most influential genius that Earth has carried, used a double look at things but lacked a framework to formalize the complex dimension. It unwittingly fostered an inextinguishable confrontation between materialism and idealism. The most demanding analytical mind goes astray if it is not in the right framework.
Book Reviews by Jean Pierre Legros
'Time' is an amalgamation of two independent concepts, dimension and passage of time. Within 'dim... more 'Time' is an amalgamation of two independent concepts, dimension and passage of time. Within 'dimension' exist two subconcepts, course and arrow of time; the course is the sequence of states and the arrow the idea that the sequence has a preferential direction. The passage is the very different idea that the sequence is animated, that it scrolls. In front of who or what? This idea places the mind in the 'divine point of view', which makes reality dualistic. Reintegrating the passage into a monistic reality is done in two ways: 1) Either the passage is declared intrinsic to time; this becomes a specific dimensional variety, avatar of Newtonian universal time, a priori contradictory with the Einsteinian block universe which integrates time relatively to space and gravity; this is the solution retained, however, by Lee Smolin, who reverses Einstein's theory to make space relative to time; he thus manages to find a universal time to which we can attribute an intrinsic property of passage, what I call transrolling. 2) Either the reductionist discourse is abandoned and the property of time-dimension is returned to the systems; the related elements jointly form their temporal framework. When the evolution of the system is entropic, an arrow appears, which is a simple orientation of the sequence of states and not a passage. This solution requires giving the systems a relative independence summarized in the concept 'emergence'. But in what dimension does such independence appear? The non-reductionist solution requires recognizing another dimensional variety even more fundamental than space and time: the complex dimension. Here I enter the most speculative part of the book of which this article is a summary. Just as the spatial dimensional manifold has three geometric axes, the complex manifold has two axes, horizontal-the interactive level of a system-and vertical-the surimposition (superposition and entanglement) of the levels-. The horizontal axis is self-defined by the distribution of its interactive elements and their relational properties. The benchmarks of the vertical axis are the complex attractors, also self-defined by the systems when their information integrates together. Each complex level has its own time beat, based on an approximation of the sequence of the underlying level. A unit of time is a memory; it includes a beginning and an end in its
Uploads
Drafts by Jean Pierre Legros
Book Reviews by Jean Pierre Legros