Maybe just a curiosity, but; because you mention color as an irreducible physical part—
If a human perceives a color, acknowledges its existence, would you not expect the language used by that human would include a name for that color? - languages with only two color terms exist, and those colors, always, are black and white, or closer to 'warm' and 'cold'. - languages with exactly three color terms exist and those colors, always, are black, white, and red - languages with exactly four color terms exist and those colors, always, are black, white, red, and green - languages with exactly five color terms exist and those colors, always, are black, white, red, green, and brown - languages with exactly six color terms exist and those colors, always, are black, white, red, green, brown, and purple after that there is no pattern Similar differences in the areas of pain/pleasure and the five(six) tastes. This would suggest, to me, that the physical can be no more than 'signal" [ on | off ] and anything other than that, linguistic term or expressed perception, e.g., "ouch" is probably cultural, definitely not simply physical. davew On Mon, Oct 5, 2026, at 5:13 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > I also see only some emails. Don't know why. > > Yes, a subjective experience is always linked to a specific subject. I would > say we can divide subjective experience into > > a) a physical part that depends on molecular biology and genes: receptors for > pain and pleasure, for red, green and blue colors or sweet, salty, sour and > bitter taste. this part is irreducible and depends on our species > b) a cultural part that defines subjective meaning (in China for example the > colors white and red have different meaning than in Europe) > c) a personal part that depends on the history of a person > > The mathematics used in the proofs describes more the personal part c) and > perhaps part b) if we model the history of whole countries. > > -J. > > > -------- Original message -------- > From: Santafe <[email protected]> > Date: 10/5/26 8:08 PM (GMT+01:00) > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A field theory of understanding > > For whatever reason, Jochen’s posts don’t forward to me, so I only see them > in the later context of somebody else’s replies. In this case EricC’s, on > Nick’s. > > I will clip to the focal sentence (acknowledging all that was clipped): > >>> > Claude was not happy about the theorem proofs that Gemini created. >>> > And Jon also mentioned that they are not waterproof. So I asked Claude >>> > and Gemini if they could write a new proof. They could. I asked them >>> > if we could use gauge theory to explain subjective experience - gauge >>> > invariance to describe objectivity, and symmetry breaking for >>> > subjectivity. > > I think there was a time when I had enthusiasm for using these > mathematical-physics metaphors. Something has apparently happened. > > I probably said, a while ago (so if you feel like it, forgive the > repetition), that since I don’t know what philosophers mean by objective and > subjective, I could take the more defensive posture of being a linguistic > semanticist, which to me seems like a more pragmatist standing-point anyway, > leaving many further mistakes for the future rather than making them all at > once. > > I could take “objective” and “subjective” to be two speech registers, in an > ordinary lexical/grammatical-semantics sense. A sentence in an “objective” > register is one that I can parse to a meaning (in the everyday sense; not in > some formal logic that everyday speech doesn’t use and that would need to be > invented) without needing as input who said it. A sentence in a “subjective” > register is one that cannot be parsed to a meaning without reference to some > speaker (in whatever representation; maybe more or less explicit), which must > thus be supplied. > > _Why_ we use those registers, why we have been handed them down from past > speakers innumerable, and how our experienced lives reward or discourage the > adoption of such registers, looks to me like a question that can to some > degree (as good a degree as anything in semantics) be separated or factored > from the classification of the locutions. > > Eric > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... > --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
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