A thoughtful and concise post Otto. I know you were communicating with Meno and not me but something caught my eye. I hope you don’t mind me interjecting.
Are you talking about external sense here?
I am also curious what you mean by inorganic systems.
There is a grammar of scent and body language dogs have that we cannot be party to,
When dogs learn human words, as they do, they are learning not only a foreign language but a xenomorphic one.
They have also evolved a system of barks, and other noises that no other similar species has, and relate directly to their human-dog interaction.
Learning begs the question of how those associations arise between the various signs to producing the signals that become meaningful to both man and dog; which are recognized as other than what they were and what they have become.
The dog comes to recognize higher orders of signals, that ringing the bell means the promise of food, sAlivating to sound and nit smell.
This type of change is characteristic to both , and this is a premarket for advance to simularity, of ever widening forms of identifiable objects.
Simulation becomes possible in cognitive function , where substitution of cues gradually is learned both ways. Ideas arise in this way ,in a sense logic precedes language.
It occurs to me that my dog also has rudimentary grammar in English.
When I set down the food, she will go for it immediately unless I tell her not to, then she will wait, for instructions.
THe phrase I use is “ready, steady, go”. She stands on ready, moves forward on steady and eats on go. She understands perfectly what is required of her and is able to understand the phrase in sequence.
Not bad for a completely different species.
By “inorganic systems” I mean systems (and processes) of lifeless nature.
Sense exists exclusively as the sense of the operations that use it, i.e. only at the moment in which it is determined by operations, and neither before nor after. Sense is therefore a product of the operations that use it, and not a world quality that owes itself to a creation, a foundation, an origin.
It is helpful not to think so much in terms of behaviorism. That does not lead very far.
When I speak of signs, I mean everything that those who have signs and thus meaning (see: semantics) or sense in their operations. Seen in this way, everything is language, e.g. in the semiotic, in the purely linguistic, in the strictly logical, in the mathematical sense.
Non-human creatures do this only on the semiotic level. They can, however, understand a little of the other systems, but only if they can “incorporate” it into their language system, i.e. assign it semiotically. Conversely, humans can also have access to the system of the non-human creatures, but not 100%.
It is interesting that you mention the bell ringing. I mentioned this above, in passing.
Pavlov’s famous experiment is an example of hopeless reductionism. His conclusion was a that a dog upon hearing a bell had become conditioned to salivate; this was a conditioned response. The bell causes the salivation.
However, he failed to recognise the more obvious fact that the dog had learned that a bell meant food, and that as the dog IMAGINED the phenomenon of food with its mind, this thought made the parotid gland respond, because the dog could think.
Pavlov deleted the role of the mind and the imagination.
This conditioning is common enough, and we all do it. Next time you see an advertisment for a favoured food stuff on TV check your mouth. I submit that you too can make your mouth water by imagining chocolate. Why would that be any different from a dog?
I recently watched a video of a dog saving a man from drowning. The dog actually pulled the man to dry ground. What was that dog thinking? One clever scientist noted that the animal mind is confined to the four Fs—feeding, fighting, fleeing and sexual intercourse. I think they think more than those categories allow. A fifth F could be friendship.
Reductionism as a cognitive process is axiomatic, it happens across the board,
that is a penomenon prevy to man and
dog alike. Such general simplicity may strengthen
the argument for interlocking intrinsic processes
In most cases it stops just this side of absurdity.!.
FIve words: says more about the observer than the observed; it probably indicates the instrumentality of the observer in how the obsevred is to to used.
Then, we’d be back to the dead/ alive cat in the box, the observer unsure to open the box for fear of a sense that the observed would depend on his sense of it.
Reductionism did not just happen, it’s involved in anticipating diminishing verity, and it is probable that the observed acquires this sense on another level.
Does an animal has a sense that soon it is to die on way to the butcher? Even apart from the bleeting which is probably understood by the herd.
I am not pulling this stuff out of a bag, for instance, the dog senses something, that is on a very general level , like pain, bunger, affection, need for someone to takce care of it’s needs. That corresponds to a similar human link, where specific objective correlations have some sense with it.
The logical types differ , but their sense link, connecting the levels of appreception.
The dog can infer man’s actions through learned behavior of various responses, but the human must identify the causally linked response through the chain of relevant cues given.
So the relationship between the observer and the observed can not be quantufied, except maybe a long chain of inputs and responses, as they rise slightly in complexity and subtleness.
Both have to learn from one another, the owner of the dog has to gage the learning in accordance.
Interestingly I have found that there is plenty of absurdity in the generalization process and absurdity stops this side of the interlocking processes.
Due to again: a number of related processes that have already produced the most accurate and most useful judgments.