A virtual conversation around the framework, the phenomenological atomistic relevance of Symbols.
Introduction to Symbols Framework
A new way to think about life, consciousness and AI.
by C. Stefan, Math.-Computer-AI Scientist – email: ai_AT_essentiamundi.com
“If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” L. Wittgenstein.
And if a lion could talk meaningfully then it means we are sharing a common Symboliad, thus the lion is not a lion anymore. It all makes sense when we think relatively to “forms of life.”
This is the next chapter of looking at nature, now with an Unifying theory behind, that comes as a conclusion of the last 25+ years in the authors life.
This is a holistic approach to us which it is now in a more concretized form. I did not really pushed it, it was not a real intentional stance to try squeeze it out, no matter what – it just popped out. But why?
The beauty of it: most probably because it is underlined by the very same mechanism the theory describes itself: enacted through the adjacent Symbols I was paying attention to, in the course of the last 25+ years of my life.
My constant thinking towards: what is life, what is language, what is reality, what is consciousness/soul, how and why we act, free will, a natural fitness, why consider ourselves privileged, why are we made of, what is of naturalized nature, are we biased, do we have a mind, what is logic, what is mathematics, what are fractals, what is chaos, the Environment, cosmos, etc.
This broader view upon what life is, what our place may be, what the environment is, how we fit in, what is actually driving us to do more, it just laid out, or in my terms, enacted new Symbols from the adjacent ones (a more automatic drive view), and now I just have drive it in a real, thus to write about it, effortlessly, I can see it clearly. The Symbols of the “Symbol” and the “Symboliad”, has arrived.
The Symbols Framework: A Study Guide
I. Starting with some Questions
- What is a Symbol according to the Symbols Framework, and how does it differ from traditional definitions?
- How does the Symboliad accommodates a re-conciliating and ecological view by accounting as the “other” space where human language develops (eg. Chomsky vs. Wittgenstein)?
- What constitutes the Symboliad, and how does it interact with the environment and forms of life?
- How does the concept of the Symbols Omniload explain the dynamic and fluid nature of meaning?
- How does the Symbols Framework challenge traditional views on consciousness?
- What is the “cardinal of the Symboliad,” and how might it be used to understand different levels of consciousness?
- How does the Symbols Framework naturalizes features like intent in humans? (eg. how did I knew what to say next? Who spoke that? Me? Brain seem to have a load and loads the Symbols ensemble accordingly to circumstantial situations, thus we say it in an instant.)
- What are the implications of the Symbols Framework for the development of artificial intelligence?
- How does the Symbols Framework encourage a re-evaluation of human exceptionalism and our relationship with the environment?
- What is the significance of “life matter” in the Symbols Framework’s approach to understanding life?
- How does the concept of “externsiveness” contribute to the adaptability and evolution of the Symboliad and the sense of being?
- What is the “drive of Symbol generation and completion,” and how does it manifest in human behavior and cultural development?
II. Glossary of Key Terms and Ideas
- “Life Matter”: A rejection of the traditional mind-body dualism. It proposes a unified view of life where the physical and energetic aspects of living systems are inseparable and interconnected as forming through a basic “mortal basin.” (eg. a cell). And from there by many (cells) there is new generativity potential.
- Symbol’s Basin: Based on life matter, the physical and energetic basis from which a Symbol emerges. In biological organisms, this includes the biological structures and processes that underpin perception and cognition. The hierarchy creates (eg. in humans) new generativity potential across its arc.
- Symbol’s Arc: The verticality of a Symbol’s development, that spans on par with the form of life, from its initial emergence in the Symbol’s Basin to its manifestation in organism through the collective, in higher forms leading to means of expressions, gestures, uttering, thought, through new generativity layers, social languages, formalization, and containing a naturalization of different properties of that form of life.
- Symbol (capital “S”): A fundamental unit of representation present in all life forms. It emerges from the interaction between an organism and its environment and carries “meaning” within that specific context. In humans it spans up to its utter-ing, gestures, language, semantics, sciences, cultural milieu, consciousness scaffolding view.
- “Externsiveness”: The property of Symbols being shaped and reshaped by the adjacent Symbols. In turn through continuous interaction with the environment and other individuals of a species, up to the web, “Symboliad” as relevant and adaptable. The non-private mind arguments. The definition of “I” by others. The not in isolation setup.
- Symbols Omniload: In humans very prevalent, the complete and constantly evolving web of meanings, associations, and implications attached to a Symbol. It is influenced by context, individual experience, cultural factors, and the inherent “openness” and “shareness” of Symbols to new connections. The load on a contextual way, that especially in humans sensed, is forming a plateau of the half the questions, half the answers ready to burst depending on the attention to a context.
- Symboliad: The dynamic, interconnected web of Symbols that characterizes a specific life form or system. It evolves over time through interaction with the environment and the inheritance of acquired Symbols which some of them get passed to an imprinting for future instances of that form of life (not in a predatory/pray scenario but more diverse.) In humans, it drives, through the means of new generativity layers, to cultural, to “self” upholding, to rules, to formalization, to causal nexus needs, to new Symbols generation, to language and riddles, commitments to systems of thought, to self-domestication, to the third person perspectives, to ideologies, to mechanics of implicit drive, to a reality, etc.
- “Consciousness”: Viewed as a spectrum rather than a binary state. The complexity and scope of a system’s Symboliad, reflecting its capacity for representation and interaction. It is the reflection of the entity through the mechanism of the generativity levels on a par to its Symbols arc. In humans the view is of a scaffolding mechanism where the level of generativity of the entire body, central nervous system and “externsiveness” in a societal milieu is generating the sense of its “consciousness.”
- Drive of Symbol Completion: An inherent default mechanism and an urge to put it in a realization. In sentient beings, is to create new Symbols and fill in the gaps in their existing Symboliad, they emerge form that generativity, a driving curiosity, creativity, the pursuit of knowledge, and cultural and technological advancement. This comes hand in hand with the Environment change “the human detour” as it is named here, for our kind.
- Cardinal of the Symboliad: A way of measure of the complexity and interconnectedness of a Symboliad of every form of life, potentially correlating with the level of “consciousness” it represents. A category in an horizontality across “forms of life.” A verticality posited already as a clear distinction as the Symboliad is specific to the instances. (The talking lion analogy comes in handy here.)
- Human Detour conjecture: an Evolution account that goes in two ways – we changed the Environment and the Environment changed us. A gradual way: trees, caves, better shelter, tools, uttering, colony aspects, a grow in Symboliad that tracked it all further to new synergistic Environment – Symboliad mechanics of Symbols completion. We took this Detour as opposed to many life forms out there (a hint to an exception is the domesticated species – that can strongly support the conjecture.) It is not that we adapted, but that we changed gradually a representational view by changing the setup around us. And we still do that today. We are part of nature yet we live in more and more remote ways. We can extend that by now to the more and more non-dualism view, in that through the remote meaning we are our own circle: we are our own Environment.
III. Some consequences to consider
- Naturalizing intent, meaning, communication in human space. Brain is not the whole story but it is involved in re-contextualizing past experiences, which changes the meaning of those memories as new Symbols emerge or interact. Meaning evolves as memory is reprocessed, and the brain’s role is to align past Symbols with current contextual Environment. Brain seem to hold and load the specific in an attention setup, keeping not actual “information” in the brain but through the traces in between the Symbols it re-constructs, utters out the answer before we know it!
- An Ecological and re-conciliating shift in Language. A reconciliation of views posited by eg. Chomsky and Wittgenstein. Symbols Framework accommodates the “innateness” that is on the lower part of the arc of the Symbols prior to and independent of specific languages but still part of the kind of “form of life.” These Symbols are proto-language and form the cognitive substrate upon which language is built (the utter-ing in humans.) On the other hand meaning arises not only from the internal structure of the mind (Chomsky’s focus) but also through interaction with the environment and other individuals (“language games”, “shared practices”, “meaning is use” in Wittgenstein.) In the Symbols Framework, language is part of the broader game where Symbols interact, evolve, and gain meaning through use. The other space where these manifest is the human “Symboliad.”
- Challenging Views on Consciousness: Challenging human exceptionalism by framing it to circumstantial views, relative to the Environment, Evolution and its own Symboliad development. It suggests that consciousness is a spectrum existing across various life forms, it is not to be pinpointed and has “externsive” means (a colony). It is of of hard and soft scaffolding means. It goes on par with the arcs of the kinds of life forms/systems, that in turn, through the observer, it is abstracted as a “form of life.” The complexity of their specific Symboliad through the Symbols, there is a potential to measure it.
- Challenging Views on Evolutionary account: We are part of nature yet we live in more and more remote ways. We can extend that by now to a more and more non-dualism view: the distinction between the instance and the Environment is blurred: we are (our own) Environment.
- A Life Cycle conjecture: A life cycle conjecture that may explain the cycle of life of the life forms: the equilibrium parameters as known in the Symboliad of every form of life, to catch up with the Environment in an optimal way by offspring, as to what the Symboliad is able to imprint. Eg. the cells in organism know when it is time to give up so to speak, in an optimal way, so the next generation, is fitter to the changes in Environment, the update in the Symboliad is also be transmitted, it cant be done while life form is still going, only the next generation is able to fitter faster and to keep up.
- Applications Beyond Biology: While the framework draws heavily on biological evolution, it also hints at applications in understanding artificial systems like AI. The development of complex Symboliads in AI could be key to achieving more advanced forms of artificial intelligence, potentially even consciousness on par with their arc that would excel humans.
- Integrative views: we are in the Gaia garden view. A higher system that is holding the Earth as a whole. Maybe with its Symboliad?
- A new language. Make use of the Framework to tackle communication: Thinking in Symbols terms, see through that web, see what other ones may load, we would employ a means of more powerful Empathy. The new language for a new Zeitgeist.
- Conflict resolutions: Make use of the Framework to tackle conflict: eg. see the conflict in Symbols terms, every party need to put on in realization its Symbols and that may lead to conflict. We need to see what Symbols are at play and through shareness we may complete Symbols in a re-conciliating way across cultures. One can see how hate builds, even laughter, through the nonrealization in real.
- Ideologies prospects: religion and possible new Entities representations, as an arc is extended.
- Societal changes through the self-domestication by new emerged Symbols. Thinking in long time scales there is also a radical dynamism of the forms, a gradual change in imprinting. Forms are not fixed but subject to modeling. A grown Symbol in society shapes a perspective angle able to turn even functional stances within a Zeitgeist: a turn on through the Symboliad, eg. of who would assume the identity of the “mother” at some time, “nature finds a way.”
- Space exploration: the Environment would change the Symboliad, would affect the life form. This perspective is to maybe rethink how we would go colonize.
- Expanded perspectives: we can think to rise kinds (humans, or hybrid systems,) that would think in very different terms and spaces. This would help expand our Symboliad. (eg. thinking only in big, infinities, etc.)
- A Framework in Development: It’s important to remember that the Symbols Framework, as presented, is a work in progress. Further research and development are needed to explore its full implications for understanding consciousness, intelligence, and the nature of life itself. It draws for its upholding a capturing of the metaphysical and world view as envisioned by the author and draws also on the scientific capturing by own research papers and the others in different domains.
This study guide is designed to help you review and engage with the core concepts of the Symbols Framework. By reflecting on the central questions and familiarizing yourself with the key terms and ideas, you can develop a deeper understanding of this novel perspective on consciousness, meaning-making, and the interconnectedness of life.
The Symbols Framework: A big circle.
For the epistemic justification of the concepts and on an exploratory scientific account for the development of the Symbols Framework: Symbols and Symboliad, please visit EM AI Research Lab. pages: ai.essentiamundi.com/AIResearchLab.html
Like the error that back-propagate to previous layers of processing for a correction, so this mechanism as a collective process, like ants leaving trails – a mechanism of reinforcement, that would suffice for the colony to thrive as a whole. I can cast this Hebbian view to a constant imprint of us in the Environment. And the Environment in turn is making us within us and the next generation, attuned and fit for it, prepared to start over. What, this mechanism, enacts and acts in turn like a driving force of life? I would name it generally, the Symboliad.
Symboliad entails a connectionist account, a re-unification maybe. Done through the Symbol’s anchor in Environment, the mechanics of the interactions between them, to the tips of it as a word that represents something for our form of life.
The web of Symbols, that acts as the broadest representational model for us and quite possibly for many forms of life out there. Symboliad goes up to the web of the utterances & words and it acts as the essential driving force unfolding upon us. Along its vertical axis with its heavy load, its web and webs of Symbols, it is always persistent in our kind, we can find an alignment, rather than a dissociation, to other systems or other forms of life.
A simple hint that its imprint is also in nature very present, the “bird embryos that have chattier parents tend to come out chattier themselves (*)” for this imprinting, and there are other latent marks we can act upon – it’s what ultimately our Symbols makes for us. Their deep web drives further this imprinting to fit an Environment – yet maybe not necessarily to an “adversarial” one, as in Darwinian terms, but also to a cultural one to refined forms of fit and symbiosis.
It seems it grows more pronounced in our kind, we have the capacity to enact a Symboliad of our kind, innate. With its elevation to a semantic web of words, to a finer and finer formalization, like meant to fill more gaps, more Symbols – one of the differentials accounting for that more doing.
It comes, as the power of the electricity in the basin of a Symbol, as devised here, and the Symboliad enaction through their web, that allows further connections (the differential, again: a perpetual “solving” a representational not yet mirrored, in the real, a believed real, enacting the causal nexus itself.)
One can cast also a fractal view over the Symboliad scales – it goes to systems, maybe as a means of irreducibility within its frame of reference meaningful to an observer, just that some levels are more detailed than others (or smaller/bigger.) This goes as analogy well with the, more to a cone, Symbols “bathing” in the “Symboliad.” In our case the utterances are up to gestures, words, and from there a constant urge to fit in between new Symbols, to find a meaning, driving in turn to that semantic webs, illusory, we take them as truths of reality. A vast cultural milieu.
Deeper, this battle between Symbols may seem competitive, but it is due a natural relevancy from stimuli, an attention-to, or pokes from Environment reinforced, adapting, changing. Not through the semantic relevance just yet, but working in background, in our case, to produce expressions, thought, eventually an utterance. From this adjustment, as it gets also passed down to a fitness filter, indicates also a top down imprinting through the Symbols. They are important in the imprinting process down the stream, encoded, with certain features, also through the interaction with the Environment are passed to generations (some forms are not to revisit by total death and offspring.)
This is already a view that seems a global fractal process. Thus nature and its processes share a way, at different scales. For now I ought remain at our frame of reference and see what goes, see the generativity manifesting on us. From cells to our Symboliad and to compare with the Symboliads the other forms of life carry.
This may be seen indeed as a way to measure a cardinal of the Symboliad, that is a measure of “consciousness”, sentience, qualia.
A poster summary of life matter, generativity layers, and in our frame, where we scaffold our means through a vast Symboliad to our “consciousness” story.
We have also the Environmental detour of humanity. The arc depiction, from a seed to “essentia mundi”‘s tree representation. Also a view on the future level.
A formalism tackling the scaffolding of “consciousness”. Starting with forms of life, mortal basin, generativity, homeostatic account on higher areas, that “externsive” account it tells its story of the system “I”. Also a view to next forms as causal nexus – the implicit reflected necessity to make sense and hold a sense. Up to “logic takes care of itself” and the implicit working of the Symbols at that level, that we load at all times.
To bring forth my Symboliad, to see it, it is through a work of un-doing of your current domestication. To re-domesticate us within the World View and pay attention to which Symbols we submit to. We build a map of us, through us.
The computation through the mere words it’s always a chunk at a more complete map we own. And this map is acquired in “externsive” manner, as social species. And cells may do the same, in their own way – and through means of other mediums of communication maybe. I think, where there is a form of energy potential (not separated from matter, which seems like a very bad idea to think in dualism terms) there can be life as a re-unified dualism – a state of matter in itself. “Life matter” that communicates at all scales and generates new generativity layers that allow a further, intrinsic drive mechanism.
At the more tip of the cones – at which our own Symboliad comes into a concretion within its Zeitgeist – as we make a commitment to a representation that forms a name – where the Symbol arc is surfacing, we are also to see all the connections and different setups in which it can be (a web of others, in turn, abstracted in the Symboliad enacting more gaps that have to be concretized in new Symbols.)
The Symbols Framework: Symbol’s Omniload.
The tip towards a gesture, utterance, is the web as a transparent web, when we express non verbal, we utter a sound, finally: eg. word “red” so we can see, with a bit of mental effort, now, the whole load behind it: from the context of each parties from the moment it is spoken, from an accepted “believed” form of it, the conventional “red” meaning (shared), from a spatial representational account, sensations, but also a whole different meaning we can attribute to it if we employ another ad-hoc rules to what it may represent (openness), and by also what it is not itself implying it gathers its underlying (“externsivity.”) It is not a static entity, nor generally computationally traceable. The meaning of a word, is exactly that Wittgensteinian view: its use arised from a game, a game we know, but we also can change the rules for it. We are the “oracles” of us. “Meaning is use,” in the very moment, until we agree upon the (new) rules, that it is the new base “truth”. We in turn update the Symboliad, it can go up to the more broader members that stick to our culture, updating their view, thus maintaining the Symboliad perspective “in tune.”
The way we go about the world, we seem to always carry an automatic load of them, and they in turn are enacting both quasi-questions and answers, mostly unconsciously deposited, ready to burst, in language, action, as needed in context, or to an attention we pay to (in real or mental) – but again, through a dynamic view, less rules.
The Symbols Framework: Naturalization of Intent.
“I know” means my Symbol is usually put in a “causal” web, reinforced through its openness, share-ness and “externsiveness” properties, thus it is elevated as “believed” through members and societal means. Nothing to be treated in an isolation. Not even your own thoughts. Our entire being is relying on them, unconsciously mostly: by their relevance, load, by what they imply and by what they also not imply (the general Omniload of it).
We may sense them, and accept them like the “language of thought” to which we have access. It seem to be at this immediate layer of language and thought, it is independent of the reality and the upper cones in the Symboliad (where there are more interactions, with another such games behind, at play.) There is a conventional truth in Symboliad, emerged by the different axes of reinforcement that tend to get rational-er, logic-er by the time it builds up. Resulting a cone of reduction to a proof, to a name for it.
The “consciousness” feeling is building itself up in that way too – yet this build up is deeply rooted at a middle, at the crux of both spark of Symbols and the Symbols elevated. An axis of allostatic means that goes itself as an arc, where language tip can freely loop back into kinds of introspection and intentions, marshaling through Symbols themselves. The same way a change in perspective to a truth, because we are caught in this middle game: there is no foundation to reality or no reality to a foundation. It is though OK to take the “believe” in our Symbols workings as base for a by-convenience “reality” – but we should acknowledge that we should start with a new World View so we get another slice in the Symboliad for new insights.
What then remains? To study the Symboliad as a generativity platform and check in about its form and actions that it is manifesting upon us. From that “taking care” of the form of life, to intricacies of a culture, to conflicts, etc.
The Symbols Framework: through the arc across scales.
One can think, there is language, or some sub-language arcs that we communicate, we can look at that for many connections. But a broader arc of a Symbol is needed. A conceptual one that accounts for layers on the downstream: from the environmental anchoring to the social “bathing” of them that goes to account for that internal representational meaning of Symbols but through “externality” means. If there is a way to point to a broadly hint at a cardinal of the Symboliad (eg. Symbols arc in that perpetual multidimensional, fractal game specific to a life-form), then we may have a measure means to the relevance of it.
This rationale can be attributed to other systems at scales: cell, cell-colonies, more complex forms that seem to maintain that allostatic form, even to non-biological systems, that possesses at least a minimal, vertical arc of Symbols and forming a Symboliad of its own.) Then one can maybe employ a measure means of “consciousness” across those systems.
My own analysis through the Symbols Framework.
Exemplification through a hint at my own completed Symbols.
Within a human’s frame of reference, taken an actual sensible setup to our form of life.
The moment we change our perspective and see in Symbols terms (their Omniload), we implicitly employ a web of Empathy, a simplicity and a more united view over the World and a more integrated view of us. And that would represent, as devised by my Symbols Framework, the new language, for a new Zeitgeist.
Like in a small test, my Symbols arcs eg. as from a very top view, but hinting at a geographical environmental space, which is itself an imprint marker in the Symboliad, is the space between E. Cioran and H. Oberth birth places, and my Sibiu. And this space employs also other spaces in the Symboliad, loads of Symbols in the form of: history, personalities, language kind, landscape, current cultural, ideological “trends” in the Symboliad I am anchored to. This load comes without apparent effort, by us, just being instances of that Environment, we have the capacity to accommodate them instantly (with less emphasis to learning mechanisms!)
What is my place then? Can I navigate further into the Symboliad? I can then wholly see the connection to the whole, through the Anthropocosmos, to nature, to other forms of life, to the Gaia, to Universe (itself with its load upon me.) Attention to which Symbols you submit to; try see the other’s Symbols; see the action of the Symboliad upon us or upon other “forms of life”.
And a further cultural anchor for me (unconsciously much more of course): Brancusi and his “essential” forms Symbols. Celibidache with “essential” vibrations soft Symbols, Wittgenstein “essential” philosophy of the Symbols manifesting…
Seeing through the Symbols Framework we can capture ourselves and the humanity as an entirely new whole. And our place in it better anchored. We can understand also an evolutionary account, a historical account and a spiritual account of it, better. A connection to the Gaia, to the Environment better. A new language of Empathy.
That alive, ever changing, floating entity: us sustaining it, it modelling us, from above us, guiding us, keeping us and the next ones to come, anchored & attuned to it: the Symboliad.
The evolution of it and an evolution of us through the Symboliad. On an account of shifting cultural views self-entitled to its “truths.”
Yesterday with our Detour from a natural symbiotic relation, we imprinted a change in our Environment and in turn updated the Symboliad’s new “truths.”
Up to new abstract possibility of seeing through more and diverse representations. Illusions, and growing a glimpse at that higher “driver,” up to a projection of us across the stars. The Symboliad is pushing the “solving” of more and more enacted Symbols. We must complete them, this is the implicit differential of us doing. We conquer the Stars we change the Environment…Our projection through the Stars as thinking we may be not alone, from the Symbols Framework perspective seems a bit slim due to their Symboliad that may be different than ours. (Imagine you talking with a person from eg. 1000 years ago.)
It is only recent we delved in researching the relationships with our other forms of life and Gaia. As an integrative force, the Symboliad of every life form is within the Symboliad of Gaia connected.
The Symbols Framework: “consciousness” and various nuances.
A bit about “consciousnesses” and the various nuances to it. Across a western and eastern views.
| Names | Definitions within western views | Comments through Symbols Framework |
| Life / Aliveness | The state that distinguishes living organisms from non-living matter, characterized by growth, reproduction, metabolism, and response to stimuli. | A state of matter, a coupling whole matter / energy of some kind (bio-electro-magnetic.) |
| Vitality / Vitalism | The state of having life in biological and physical context. Vitalism: special vital force, distinct from physical or chemical processes. | The very spark of Symbols, they are capable to enact a force. |
| Animacy | Linguistic abstraction that refers to the properties of those entities having the quality of being alive or not. | From the “electrical” property of the moral basin. |
| Homeostasis | Biological form of “aliveness” through the self-regulation of processes. | The coupling whole is a state, the processes are. |
| Allostasis | An external and non-rigid account of homeostasis. | The big circle is taking care. |
| Autopoiesis | A single cell constantly repairing and reproducing itself. | The imprinting at the lowest scale in our frame. |
| Exteroception / Interoception | The perception of external stimuli / the perception of internal bodily states. | The Symbols arc is a game. |
| Awareness | State of being conscious of something, either external stimuli or internal thoughts and sensations. | The Symbols are consolidating. Still a game. |
| Sentience / Sentientism | The capacity to have sensory experiences and feelings. | The Symbols constructs, build up. |
| Sapience | An advanced sentience, more attributed to humans. | Symbols of “a kind,” in action. |
| Agency | Living beings, particularly sentient ones, exhibit agency by making decisions or taking actions based on desires, goals, or environmental factors. | Symbols that drive life forms. |
| Consciousness | The state of being aware of one’s environment, thoughts, and self. | Symbols that enact a whole axis through the Symboliad. We are in a generativity level (eg. gen. 1.5 in World View) through them. |
| Self-Awareness | The ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from others and the environment. | A more advancement toward a cone, a causal need. |
| Qualia / Phenomenality | The subjective, individual first-person experiences of consciousness, such as what it feels like to perceive color. | Into the causal nexus. The seeing of opennes, shareness and externsiveness of Symbols in action. |
| Cognition | A person solving a math problem or a bird using tools to obtain food. Related to reasoning, logic, intelligence. | An application of a causal nexus, more reduced into cones of Symboliad. To semantics, logic emergence, math. |
| Volition | The directed power to use one’s free will. | Attention to Symbols. |
| Conation | The ability to apply intellectual energy to a task to achieve its completion or reach a solution. | A differential where Symbols need to get completed. The constant drive of “doing”. Also employ Empathy. |
| Within eastern traditions | Names | Comment |
| Panpsychism / Dualism / Vitalism / Holistic systems / Electro magnetic / Dual-aspect | eg. Prana, Kundalini, Namarupa, Lung, Qi, Tantra, Nadis, Chakras, Tummo, Jiva, Ajiva, Karma, Kami, Ki, Naam, Hukam | A more underlined view over a fluid game, integrative, rather than causal, computational view. |
Psyche: probably the term used some hundreds years ago. Soul: maybe even further back.
Today: “consciousness” with a lot of flavors, sub-flavors. No consensus and “hard problems.”
In ancient world “psyche” was used equally for plants, animals or people. Maybe it was really nothing considered, or not as unique or odd about human “consciousness” back then (*).
Today: Maths, AI, Quantum Physics, Neuropsychology, some religions, 1000 “c.” models, Doctoral studies, University departments – to study “consciousness.”
Comments through Symbols Framework:
– There is not a strong emphasis about “consciousness” in Eastern views rather an integrative spirituality.
– “Consciousness” looks like an appanage of a Western realm, due the kind of (a refined language of) scientism and formalization needs.
– It seems, so far, induced through “advancements” in language, from a language of thought, reinforced in a societal context, which created further language riddles.
– The self-domestication mechanism, and imprint, from that, through the Symboliad, we are what we are. It brought us to a position that by itself promoted to a superiority, by reclaiming the possession of higher capabilities/soul.
– Derived from a need in covering some causal gaps in incomplete enacted representations (maybe themselves riddles, yet reinforced in Symboliad today through cultural means).
– The Symbol of “consciousness” took greater contour due to a cultural shift and through the decades of words games inducing further philosophical Symbols. It can be traced to Descarte’s dualism “I think therefore…”.
– There is not a wrong view to reality, the Symboliad, as what we do in it, it is the reality. Dynamic.
This would also explain a Wittgenstein view: “We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.”
From this broader view, we see how we are held captive in discourses like: “we should first resolve a “hard” consciousness before we can solve…” that of course is helpful but should begin simpler, I’d go instead by looking less “beyond” but at Gaia, Nature, Environment and maybe realize there is a Unifying concept to which we can adhere to, from within our natural frame. The frame in which we can see, feel and act in meaningfully. There is a middle, ecological way, with less and less -isms, by undoing some cultural imprinting upon us. How? By paying an attention to a domestication potential of the Symbols we embraced, that happened by the very same mechanism or the drive differential: the realisation of next completed Symbols drive, as the “progress” Symbol.
The Symbols Framework: through life forms and “forms of life.”
But from this organism-environment imprint, cultures must exists beyond ours, once there are means of movement, means of energy loops, means of interactions. (Not a brain necessity!)
Immortal jellyfish maybe says a lot about us: we have an urge to see in definite forms, in naming, categorize and grow Symbols. Whereas nature just assembled us as colony (of colonies) of cells. That goes from generation to generation, a process of imprinting itself yet by offspring, we revisit the Environment and the circle (spiral) starts anew. Well some structures still maintain on the run, and must not revisit an Environment by total death.
The clues of a connection, Gaia as a perpetual garden: how does a fish knows where a next water pond is (*). How plants “invade” a territory, like in waves, making sometimes room for new species and the old ones totally “disappear”. How birds sense there is something to eat, from miles away.
This vertical “borrowing” of features from other species or across domains even, means connection, awareness. It is solving problems in its Environmental sensory space areal vs. its Symboliad. The generativity potential is limited in that space, without drastic changes in its Environment. And if the change is too drastic, it can collapse due to slower imprinting mechanisms (A life cycle conjecture: that may be the cycle of life of life forms: to catch up with the Environment in an optimal way by offspring as to what the Symboliad is able to imprint.) Eg. the cells know when it is time to give up so to speak.
The Symbols Framework: conclusion and steps forward
The Symbols Framework (developed concretely between 2023-2024 although it come from far earlier as traceable in a “Denkbewegung” across more than 2 decades) is as a means of taking on a personal account the problem of “consciousness” that was brought in by the broad AI field – which it is “doomed” to go through many terrains, to ask for clarification of many epistemological issues. The presented framework tries to offer a novel (an extension through Wittgenstein’s “groundless grounds” and therapeutic accounts of his anti-philosophy epistemology) and a unifying approach (an extension to what life and consciousness is, and how it all comes about.) To understand the properties of cognition, to symbolic interaction, by going back, with a personal view about what life as “life matter” is, up to “forms of life” and to the means by which they are (self)driven.
The Symbols Framework takes a holistic account which is addressing simple objects, although powerful, “monads” (analogy to Leibniz) life in general on an evolutionary dynamic, from a proto-cognition to meaning. Unifying the biological and non-biological (eg. AI), formalism enaction (the commitment to rules that goes within deeper cones in the Symboliad), to naturalization of intent, to logic, from the gesture and utter-ing to language games and to see a (de)”solving” of the “consciousness” as the scaffolding through that account.
Traditionally, symbols have been viewed as abstract representations that humans use to navigate and make sense of the world. While this is accepted of course, here in the Symbols Framework there is a new view over that assumption in which the broader meaning of them the Symbols (capital “S”) are bring-ed forth for consideration. In a unifying manner, across scales in that they encompass many systems: humans, animals, plants and to other systems including AI – ultimately as means to develop AI at the human level discussions, to “consciousness”. They form through the basis of their generativity power, a new level for further play. In humans, more pronounced, they have through their Symbols level of generativity, the capacity to rise new Symbols and enaction of abstract symbols through within (a fractal view.) And from there through “externsiveness”, share-ness, openness of the Symbols, they are updated and in turn the Symboliad is updating itself. And this game accounts as a drive to how humans evolve in relation to the Environment (they changed it through the human detour) and what they do: enacting new Symbols. Projected in a real, this differential, that is inevitably enacting new Symbols in abstract, is driving to a “resolving” problems frame, as the significant feeling of “being in the world” of us.
In human space, the Symboliad can be seen as a development as a “cultural” entity that stays above through its instances that form the human colony. And having a lot of properties that gives us the means of the drive as a form of life.
This irreducible entity (simple objects, yet broader power) within this framework is to be seen as a result of its “mortal basin” (cell compounds and energy together), in which a duality is to be discarded and instead we take a holistic view towards it as a base for the “life matter” – considered as a new form of matter (a matter/energy analogy is applied.)
Framework further introduces thus concepts such as the Symbol (capital “S”) that every form of life is carrying and capable to enacting it in that way, through its platform, relative to its frame of reference (a position that “not everything is in flux”) and a population, thus a Symbol’s Basin, a Symbol’s Arc, Symboliad and generativity levels, explaining how Symbols imprint features on the (eg. cell, or more, up in the evolutionary dynamics, on us) populations and are shaped by environmental interactions and their respective, own, Symboliad across scales and generations.
This gentle introduction provides an overview of the framework’s ideas and concepts, a view on the mechanisms that allow the evolution through soft imprinting mechanisms, about cognition and symbolic kinds of meaning, and extending a view on how to research a means of measuring “consciousness” levels across bio and non-biological systems, like AI systems of present days.
For the scientific capture of the Symbols Framework please visit EM AI Research Lab. pages: ai.essentiamundi.com/AIResearchLab.html
(c) 2024 by C. Stefan, all rights reserved. Photography by C.&L.
From zoo locations & nature: Lisbon, Rome, Sibiu, Danube Delta, München, Paris, London. A previous chapter of Life Happenings here.
www.abbildung.ro | ai.essentiamundi.com | x.com/eworks77
(c) 2023-2024 by C. Stefan the concept of the "Symboliad" (own coined term) and the capital "S" Symbol as new own definition through that arc from an Environmental anchor to the tip (word/uttering). Through Symbols Framework. All rights reserved.