The Basin of the Symbol: from a Structural allowance to an open Cohesiveness of the shared "externsive" elevation

by Casian STEFAN, principal researcher at Essentia Mundi AI Lab. 
Contact: ai-AT-essentiamundi.com / ai.essentiamundi.com
Written between 15-22.July.2024, adjustments 07.Aug.2024.

Please consider citation with link, if you derive work. Or contact me for collaboration. Thank you!

"The problems are solved not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long." L.Wittgenstein.

"There are not two kinds of knowledge, but two different degrees of clarification of the same knowledge." Merleau-Ponty.

Abstract.
In the vast landscape of strong AI research every attempt to define the A and the I will lead to the problems of defining at least what intelligence is and eventually to an attempt of a definition of what consciousness is. Also for the more experienced researchers out there, the hybrid neural-symbolic spectrum seems not the most frequent landscape one lands on. Within my framework, a middle position seems well acceptable, and so far looking like an appealing niche to go with. I have taken the time (25+ years) for many of the principles to settle, to finally come to a philosophical rest with the notions, to define a framework of fundamental research, so that I can have a slightest horizon to where one can get a sense of heading. A framework that is making use of the representation meaning of some kind, a re-conceptualization of this discourse through the middle points between metaphysical-representationalism and radical enactivism and I guess in between naturalism and phenomenology. A framework from which to begin constructing from the position of a minimal set of working assumptions about the world and life in general yet through the filter of the "groundless grounds" to the same extent. This strongly opposing incentive as it seems to be, made me realize that we (adult humans in general) may be having, all the way down, to the core, a really heavily biased view. And that view would have to be re-framed. This very search of re-framing has gotten me to the "Symbols" and the "Symboliad" framework that remains to be further explored and explained in this paper and in the next ones to come.

Keywords: paper; research; metaphysics; philosophy; AI; consciousness; neuroscience; cognition; mental representation; abbildung; symbolic; language; ontologies; Wittgenstein; Peirce; Kant; Hegel; Lacan; Varela; Uexküll; Marleau-Ponty; Chomsky; naturalism; phenomenology; Symbol; Symboliad;

"Symbol": new broad meaning, a multidimensional arch of representational ("externsive") and from a structuralist view of the symbol: "Symbol".

"Symboliad": new word attributed to the web of Symbols, one that accounts for many constructs in the new generative layer of Symbols: the "Symboliad".

"Symbols Framework": that is the framework through which our world view is enacted and through which many things seems are to be explained.[0]

Going to the most sound proof places isn't going to bring the silence. Why is it the case that the human entity seem to be acting like an input device, like an ever-open receptor, a real-time "listener"? It looks like our perceptual awareness even increases when a narrowed palette of sensory devices are employed. The attention span is sharpened and that there, in the structural differentials there is an "awareness negativity that is modulated by attention" [1]. To what extent, at this level, a self-regulatory mechanism takes place in detail it is not the main concern of the paper, but only following a main take that there is a "building block of regularity learning"[2], that can be ascribed further to integrative and modulatory connections of "both corticocortical and thalamocortical connectivity"[3].
And this goes on and on. An analogy of the map and territory can be at this stage introduced: in my view, the extensive work done by neurology is impressive - every day a new article in this descriptive direction, there is out there a really detailed map of interactions (even total digital map of small animals brains is nowadays twinned). But I would argue that from the descriptions alone of the processes in the brain, from that lower level, one would not be able to pinpoint to that feeling of the first person perspective (Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness). This would necessitate a zoom out, as this "feeling" happens at a next generative layer of interactions.

The neuro-substrate is a platform and what happens above it, it is more interesting and natural for me. And is seem also very little explored, yet from time to time AI and neurology people seem to grasp at something like it[7].

At the next, scale operation, seems there is also a difficulty: through language one is ought to describe one level beneath it. And I would reflect a bit here: what is that other layer beneath of what we actually utter? The fact that we utter not random sounds, for me it is a sign of a new generative layer. So let's sit a bit here, and try not to cross some epistemic and ontological domains in this analysis.

I would start already to argue that there is a potentiality of (re-)discovery just by paying attention to that layer: a new language, we would have to learn, to be accepted within our everyday thinking conscious practice. To domesticate ourselves with this new perspective and take it as a serious means to access to that "consciousness" epistemology. In my view, this, so far, resolve approach seems to get along well with all kinds of adjacent provability cases, it stands on its foots, and I suppose, it is mainly because one is positioning at the correct zoom or scale.

We try to "solve" consciousness with language and other symbolism yet we never tried to see what the language and symbolism actually consists of. Apart from a superficiality of treating almost everything out of context (by its very nature) through our language, whenever we employ a word we shape a small "real" out of it but by leaving much behind: a process leading nowhere to a better view, to a beyond into it's roots, it is only as much like zooming through a "pixelated" fractal pattern.

Besides that logic and Tractarian view, that concludes that the "language always depends on something outside itself" (L.Wittgenstein), at the top level of our operation, I would like to bring in here what also Hegel saw that "our thoughts are not properly at home in our language..."[4] and also see that there is always a limitation to what we can know. Both from the physicalist perspective of us, ourselves adopting an attuned view, and by the implicitly attention we pay (or better said from our Framework here, the medium sets) to a set of rules, that gets even more enacted the moment we form any theory, and that gets deeper into a cone of causality we then hardly get out as in "a picture held us captive". The very meaning of the question, gets lost by it's formalization. And we would need to always keep a pointer and return to the initial question, mental framework, that actually enacted it. Thus there is a backward movement that from the question trying to solve we should go the other way around, and see the meaning of the words. In exactly this exercise, lead me to the "new" language to be grasped at, to the Symbol, traced back up to the structuralist view to its spark, transcend from the vibration and electrically enabled, to the seed of it and to an actual basin where it seems to reside.

I argue that this layer is like a newly rediscovered, a missing from our epistemology, language, maybe the most under-explored strata that would in fact re-position us to be able to grasp better of us in the first place. I argue that this accounts for, analogously, the "seeds" and that the top, fine branches of the tree sustain only a surface, of the actual "regressive" formalized top, language.

What would sustain a Symbol's basin?

For the further argument, firstly, as already seen through the neurology advancements, one more glimpse through sound sensory means[5] got me another strong support for the hypothesis advanced within the Symbols Framework: through the physicalist glasses, in my research, taken this example in which the words "sun" and "son" (same phonetics) has shown that the neuronal substrate was firing on different areas. And this is the interesting part, for the same sound phonetics but because the sound was uttered in different contexts, the different areas were used to represent. The natural conclusion is that there are indeed two really different "Symbols" at play. The underline that the mere phonetics ":san" uttering is the word transformed from sound. But that there is a second abstraction right to it, that of the Symbol representation which, I argue it is a showcase to that other language.
A language that seems hidden from us yet we use it all the time, but by not paying attention to it. In a future exploration we would discuss what it means to pay attention to it and what it would enact further. A language that would appeal to a certain degree of empathy in order to see it.

Through this identified neurological basin, I can further see some mechanisms through which a new web of entities is gradually forming. That main "breath" of the neuro-strata. The seeds of mental representations, in a way from the material to the mental bridge, through mainly electricity assumed for now, for our Framework (matter-energy in Einstein can be seen as a healthy analogy.)
I name that: the process of the birth of the Symbols (open, shared arch sustained by a structural basin), speculatively envisioned as multi-dimensional loop/geometrical form that (half-)release (a mortal platform / a non-duality) themselves from the actual physical-only substrate and become the constituent entities of representations, "abbildung"like (from the picture theory of meaning, extended), eventually to thoughts (flat dimension). When they are representing some more complete instances, at the next level of interactions between them, they would form the "Symboliad" as the web of the Symbols. And further this is embedding in us, a navigation ability as an environment entity, as a functioning organism in the Environment (the E is important - for defining other qualities as intelligence - to be explored further in subsequent articles, with a new view on ontologies and even ideologies) They would also later account to further scaffolding mechanisms, which would give us the feeling of being-in the world." So I am giving the world the new Symbol (an "externsive" entity as the incentive for a hidden, complex "language" even, beyond mono of words) and Symboliad (the interactions, the all shifts, with cones) in the Symbols Framework to start with.

Also a slight extension of the modulatory regulation and what seems to be in between, at the higher level of the operation through the Symbols, the mechanics are transported as this kind of view, a sharpened glimpse of kind of unconscious focus.: "Only where there is a problem, one would start assuming something." (a free translation form Wittgenstein unpublished notes) kind of dynamic  that there is something in the transitory, differential areas, something very powerful emerging then as a drive. This differential (thermodynamics, entropy but also maybe following a Lotka-Volterra model of which Symbols would "survive") would maybe sufficient for the drive of the Symbols through the Symboliad. Also a renounce to a Cartesian view, the Symbol is sustained by a single "hardware-software" basin.
 
As it happened to me, I think one once will grasp this image of a new language, that it is enacted through the incipient forming loops of symbols from the very low levels to the top, I cannot unseen it anymore. Once grasped one can use it to describe further mechanics that would easily be ascribed to the life's implicit drives, to ascribe some of its features to other systems, to understand the gaps of actual language, to even thing of strong A.I. developments in totally new light, to even better metaphysically find himself in the world.

So what arises from the differential and a basin as itself a structure of the differential? This is indeed what I would name the "Symbol" and with it, a Sphere to be named the "Symboliad". And with this article and others, to form the Symbols Framework that would be part of my World View (from our former articles).

In this paper I want to explore for the moment, that view of that kind of input device, attuned to a frequency, that innately leads to the creation of some intuitively graspable "structures" that would even account for a self driving substrate overall (ascribable to many systems.)

With the Symbols Framework I should propose to the world an encompassing view with which some things can be immediately inferred:

0. If a normal child, 5+ years, is able to grasp at what Symbols broadly are, this without going through the basin justification, actually then this is a pretty good framework. A dive into the conspicuous steps of child's brain development, stages as in Piaget is required for justification.

I argue, that in general, as for a grown adult, then the "consciousness" theories posited out there, as very complicated webs, are only open for debate and generally not as accepted frameworks among them - as it is too late: once adults adopts a part of the "Symboliad" as their models - there is a tremendous work to on oneself in order to go back. A realist view over idealist one that is backwards realizable though through deeper introspection.

I argue that a child begins to have the Symbol's structure, physically, so they are ready to accept them. The very structure is intermediate,  neither to realist nor idealist side.
Among others the Symbols will allow the abstractness, recursivity, causal nexus, fuller representations comes with them. More of that, the incentive to start early by thinking in Symbols, is at least, offering an increase in empathy (as I foresee it, will represent a great deal in the new Zeitgeist).

1. Yes, I try to make one grasp at a possible (new) missed "language" behind actual language. First, through an escape of the cognitive ease vis-a-vis the actual language. (like an inverse the dogmatization, of the actual symbols' effects.)

2. Try make one see the world from a biased Observer perspective, my World-View itself assumes that. Through an abstraction function nativitism, specific kind of intelligence trait that would be always in the way, and the differential as said above.

3. Try to see that there is not a clear line of what influences what at some minute views. Symbols is there yet it is not for immediate view. One can see an an attention thread to some Symbols. A slice of the Symboliad that is in effect at some point. And this in itself is elevated to another Symbol. A fractal view is to be envisioned.

4. Some, only some superveninece in the transitory areas. The interplay of matter/energy translated into a neuro/symbolic game. Escape a detrimental Cartesian view and adopt a connectionist view. A weak one though, between generative levels and a subjectivity of the observer-observed interaction.

5. How to visualize it and what to do about its concreteness (eg. classes/instances abstractism may be devised.) The thing to call it a Symbol, that it is, is to be felt, yet not to be formalized? This is a possible outcome of its own definition, I can accept that beforehand. It looks like "nothing," yet graspable at some higher levels of concrete "abbildungen."

6. The "externsive" approach to define such a structure. Bubble defined by other bubbles analogy. And from there, within a culture, they are the basis for the forming of "forms of life."
With that property of them, we are able to cast a theory of mind to others.

7. Taking a multi-dimensional stance: properties of the openness, recursivity, arch, share-ness, attach-ness, emergence, elevations, transformations, a causal nexus enaction through the auto-regressiveness that increases proportionally with the meaning. Un-urge the causal necessity in order to visualize the Symbol.

8. Try to explain, beyond a cognitive automatic drive (I see this through my World View as the biological intelligence and mainly the human one mostly, although we tend to see more) the autopoiesis, awareness, qualia, sentience, intelligence, intuition, empathy, consciousness and up to the "big other", a third-person drive.

9. When I want an Ecological, Environmental, Evolution set of Symbols I try to "listen" to the smallest alive intelligent constituents of us mainly the cells. And their constructs always not in isolation but part of Environment, rather than merely adapting to it.

10. Always aware of not crossing ontological domains, aware of the framing problem. Don't look too far and return often to the initial question. Not to be caught in "philosophical riddles" (L.W.) etc.
This would be useful when operating with the more concrete Symbols (towards more exact sciences.) A computational reducibility of more complete Symbols, it says not that we found something essential, it does not explain anything beyond it, but that the tip of the cone from the slice of the Symboliad is reached. This means a new framing is welcome and a new grasp from the meta-physics is recommended - and so on, till all the Symboliad is constructed.

11. The basin of this physicalism-representationalism arch accounts as its own bootstrap Symbol. But there is immediately a new level of generative emergence through the web of Symbols that begin to form: emergences (like particle physics parallel, that it gives a new substrate up while itself does not represent anything for the Observer - on the contrary the Observer stays always in the way.) 
Through compositionality of how complex things can be assembled out of simpler parts, the stepping in this realm of Symbols generative layer, is where we are framed actually, with all the meaning relevant to us.

12. Distilling why LLMs are in fact only touching the "Symboliad" and why a new architecture should pay a more focused attention to a class of certain "Symbols". They have some representations but never through a cone. They have a madman perspective issue. And always living space for an ontological realm of inverse rethorics, and the room for jokes (the abstract* justification below.)

13. The Symbols should be allowed to "breath" in the higher n-dimensional form, in order to allow emergent features (a scaffolding of "consciousness" as we assume in our World View) the embeddings representations themselves, they have to pay attention to at higher levels. To grasp at phenomenal binding views, how the Symbols combined can become an experience.

14. This potential, through the Symbols visualization language, to allow us even from today on, to ascribe a measure the intelligence to other systems (like for AI, animals, and other systems). A common ascribing language that anyone can understand and even quantize.

15. Check how to learn more from the smallest amount of data: look at the brain representation power in this way of the Symbols, and this view alone - in that the functor space (eg. Leibniz) functions without the need to retain, memorize information - but only through traces in the Symboliad - and I argue this is the way the neurons, analog neural circuitry, or even cellular and not necessarily neural, but with traces of electricity forms - works.
In principle we can then create first a Symbol structure (geometrical) and then fill it with properties of the slice of the Symboliad we would like to see it bathing in. Multiply it sufficiently and in order to emerge a slightest drive, create some differentials (the Problems as mentioned) and from there I anticipate the whole H-LI (human-like intelligence) to emerge.

16. In absence of the intuition (that is derived by the setup of the basin itself, which is a kind-of and it is not ultimately a random setup within) - of the spark of a Symbol, within a cone of the Symoliad, emergence of causality can't take place. In other words, the intelligence, intuition, logic, language - have emergent qualities, not to be pre-programmed.
If mathematics advances some structures, and there is a limitation of the structure the basin allows, we can't have the same local causality we take for granted, emerged within the models.
To overcome, like the Quantum Physic's representation problem - in which the Observe, through its Symbols already there, the picture effect that it is holding him prisoner.

17. Now that we framed ourselves with the very phenomenology of the model (one should see accept the "externsive" word as itself a Symbol, as an intentional introduction of a new word in order one to exercise on itself a work of seeing through Symbols Framework) we now have the potential framework at hand for a multitude of applications eg.: that machine consciousness to be made, it will also come the time to domesticate it (attention to a set of Symbols) for it to be useful for our set of Symbols. Delve into some more specific ontologies & uses eg.[8].

18. There are certainly more points to add (eg. the relation to the unconscious, to anesthesia and to effects through de-presonalization and mental states, sleep,[14] etc.) This point is for some to take a breath and think of it all for a few moments. Take the time, as I have done, to talk to someone through the view of the Basin of Symbols and the Symboliad. Please reach me for any inquires you might have. This is as a "discovery" to me as it may be to you!

In conclusion

The basin description is that round trip that goes from a) that physical substrate, from a neuro-modulation, that would sustain a structural allowance through the identification of distinct representational features (I am aware of a Chomskyan view - but not only at language levels applicable - rather an "abbildung"-ian one) to b) which I then ascribe to the actual electrical detachment, the freeing, the transition to the new generative layer, to the very sparks, of the so called "Symbols" - to not be confused with the later maybe to take in account the Lacanian or other symbol (as a sign in Peircean) views. Maybe a more cognitive trait like in Piaget.
Once this view is attained, one can move up to the "Symboliad" as a probable not new, but less payed attention to, identified kind of language, of the web of Symbols, we ought to consciously embrace in order to access even a new ontology or at least epistemology c) Through its shared nature, very felt, floating "breath" of the entity that ultimately is driving "forms of life" and vice-versa.

Further explorations to be made

A focus to that "floating," invisible web of emergences, of supposedly intrinsic emergent mechanics due to the "Symbols" of all kinds of classes, interacting and giving rise to sociological organizational views. The beauty part as it seems, it all seems to come from within, by itself, with no external influence - beyond that is from the Gaia Environment and seemingly only through our Detour of self-modified Environment through the Symbols - a shift we can view and through which we see the Symbols at work.
An idealist first perspective is advised to start with eg. for kids to have in mind more the representation than the real, benefits of that view to be explored. 
We act on what the data represents not on what the data is representing. The map-territory discussions.
A look at the animals and other systems from within the framework.  In search for further meanings, as in the concept of colors as well as the smell and taste as instances of Symbols. Mental disorders as part of the broader picture, through the Symbols Framework.
We shift perspective, but always to be aware that through that there is always a limit to what we can know with that prospective. The "Symboliad" is the Sphere of that all-encompassing Shift-er, the regressive-ness cones of all the shifting positions. And even an all encompassing view, that could contain the consciousness views out there (although not intentionally looked after) or all computational threads of the more completed (round, surviving) Symbols, within the causal nexus that they solely are able to enact.

_____________________________________
Exploration by C. Stefan, 15.Jul.2024 [about]
Last update: 07.Aug.2024 (versions: *) [versions]
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Notes/References: 
[0] Initially the main idea was meant to account for a measure of "consciousness" levels across systems - as a personal way to look and check how we can see if eg. animals or LLMs may enact some representations and may have "consciousness." Yet the whole Symbols Framework seems to be good in order to explain more - I should state that was not a primarily intention to construct another consciousness theory, rather this may be indeed as a side effect. It can even overlap with ones already there, but this is not the main concern at the moment, nor studying that landscape in detail. This endeavor remains to be explored - and researched to see if it is really landing on other's views - it is not my concern (and that's my sorry point in my AI research standpoint*).
C. Stefan - A way to Measure Consciousness levels [here].

[1] Perceptual awareness of near-threshold tones scales gradually with auditory cortex activity and pupil dilation:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004224017553

[2] Brain responses to predictable structure in auditory sequences: From complex regular patterns to tone repetition:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.18.604117v1

[3] Dendritic Integration Theory: https://philosophymindscience.org/index.php/phimisci/article/view/8946/8740

[4] G.F.W. Hegel - The Encyclopaedia Logic: https://books.google.it/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4BNUFZ_hQ1wC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&ots=11OfVXlsKs&sig=FdviLtqW_IGbABi-TW8Kb-yPfkM&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

[5] Brain map shows neurons that encode words’ meaning: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02146-6

[6] What is the true range of mental imagery: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945223002459?via%3Dihub

[7] Information composition and the info architecture of the brain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136466132300284X?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=8a1148e25d24522e

[8] Towards a Conceptual Model for the FAIR Digital Object Framework: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376731281_Towards_a_Conceptual_Model_for_the_FAIR_Digital_Object_Framework

[9] Decoding semantic representations in mind and brain: https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(22)00323-0

[10] Unravelling consciousness and brain function through the lens of time, space, and information:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166223624000870#bb0010

[11] Maps, Simulations, Spaces and Dynamics: On Distinguishing Types of Structural Representations
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-024-00831-6

[12] What animals can do:
https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s13752-024-00463-7?sharing_token=Luw5qx_rvMfshsTFvIgWTve4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY7fIZ40yc8ErRy4DR4GL4FKsOhJHBp3YU1Ad0_i_xfIHWe23nMVddMShwCgIvinKhYq6Qk9iFO6l19HvLNEdPrf5OrzHnSNWEtYw9c6dHADe1nmY3LjjmBCHIViIC4rYUQ%3D

[13] Differential effects of executive load on automatic versus controlled semantic memory retrieval:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36650348/

[14] Quantifying Aphantasia through drawing: Those without visual imagery show deficits in object but not spatial memory:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/865576v2.full

[15] The Embodied Mind, Varela et. al: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262720212/the-embodied-mind/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345687970_Enaction_Embodied_Cognition
"...cognitive structures emerge from recurrent sensorimotor patterns that enable action to be perceptually guided..."

[16]The Primacy Of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
"...beneath the relation of the knowing subject to the known object..."


The abstract's abstract.*

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." L.Wittgenstein

"An Active Inference framework and an Attention Transformer architecture walks into a bar:
- How can I help you guys? Asks the waiter.
- We are looking for the "Symbol", do you know where can we find it?
- Ah yes, check in the "Symboliad" - but I am afraid you wouldn't get it just yet!"

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C. Stefan - Language and...bridging Tractatus to PI [here].
C. Stefan - The world is the totality of Symbols [here].
C. Stefan - Growing in the Environment...[here].

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