expression

The EXPRESSION of a BEING refers here to any signal, sign or symbol generated; whether external or internal to itself; whether or not it is consciously or deliberately generated; whether the medium of its transmission is biophysical e.g vocal, luminescence, neural, etc.; virtual, e.g text, ARTEFACT, smoke, etc.; or bio-virtual, e.g telephony, video, etc.

A BEING's EXPRESSION is its response to its PERCEPTION of an external and internal event, that is constructed from the meaningful internal representations that it generates from the chemical, electrical, or electro-chemical EXPRESSIONS of its systems of sensibility.

ARTEFACT here is a back-formation (from Latin: arte "by skill" and facere/factum "make/made") to refer to creations made by any BEING e.g to the sculptured sand bowers of Pufferfish, or the ornately decorated play-house of the Bowerbird.

Mind can be defined as a causally effective inner state.

The endocrine apparatus (the hormone system) .. should not be seen as an isolated regulatory system .. but rather as an integral part of both the immune system and the nervous system. Together, .. these endosemiotic tools are collectively responsible for the interaction of the organism with its social and physical world and constitute the fundament out of which so-called psychological reality, if any, of the organism will emerge.

Language: any system of sounds, gestures, symbols, or other signs that facilitates communication.

Microcosm / macrocosm: a macrocosm is a complex structure that is considered to be a whole; a microcosm is an element with a similar structure that exists within a macrocosm.

Metalanguage: a language or set of symbols that describes or defines another language.

Fluency, is generally limited to describing dexterity of verbal expression; however FLUENCY here refers to EXPRESSION in general, and in particular to its aptness, in its environmental FRAME, for the communicative goals of the MEANING that informed it,.

BIOSEMIOSIS is recursive. It enables BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION, with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them by themselves or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer to EXPRESSIONS that respond to the RECOGNITION of MEANING, ENDOSEMIOSIS to that in EMBODIED NOUMENA and EXOSEMIOSIS to that in external NOUMENA.

BIOSEMIOSIS is recursive. It enables BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION, with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them by themselves or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer to EXPRESSIONS that respond to the RECOGNITION of MEANING, ENDOSEMIOSIS to that in EMBODIED NOUMENA and EXOSEMIOSIS to that in external NOUMENA.

MEANING, refers here to that which a BEING PERCEIVES of the EXPRESSIONS of NOUMENA. Developed and encoded through the FRAME of an individual's ONTOGENY, MEANING is inheritable.

Inherited and learnt by experience, PERCEPTION is the RECOGNITION by a BEING of MEANING in what their senses can register, that then is incorporated into MEANING.

virtuality refers to abstractions of actuality that then pre-process EXPERIENCE.

A metatransition is a metasystem transition to EITHER a more complex OR a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory OR a permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.

Here, metasystem refers to a general, rather than to a restricted, controlling or organizational system which maintains the homeostasis necessary for the functioning of a system and its subsystems.

It is as correct or incorrect to say that hormones create love as it is to say that love creates hormones. Love is not definable in the way that hormones are; they are terms in different reference frames.

signification

Signs and symbols were written about by Aristotle and Plato — signs in the world of nature and symbols in human culture — symbols, such as numbers, letters, words etc, are now considered a type of sign, signifying through arbitrary conventions rather than through any direct relationship with what is signified.

The greek word, semio-, means a sign. The ending, -sis, of semio-sis, and BIOSEMIO-SIS, is equivalent in English to -ing, translating them literally then as sign-ing, sign-action, or signification. Anything, when RECOGNIZED, is a SIGN of what is RECOGNIZED, and the process through which it is RECOGNIZED then is BIOSEMIOSIS.

Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived". It is the word Kant used to identify the thing-in-itself, the underlying reality that is then recognized by an observer as a SIGN.

NOUMENA may function as SIGNS of themselves — as rocks, or holes, or hands, etc.; as qualities these are associated with — food, green, danger, etc.; or as things distinct from themselves — a woman: a mother; a sound: a river, a phoneme or "Mum!"; a mark: a word, or a symbol, like pi, or a photograph or a drawing of a pie or a pipe.

Kant referred to recognition of the thing-in-itself as perception but, PERCEPTION, is used here to label one of the four processes in BIOSEMIOSIS that are bootstrapped by RECOGNITION

Painting by Rene Magritte, Ceci n'est pas une pipe., 1929.

The entire sequence of events involved in the development of an individual BEING over its lifespan.

ontology, [onto- an individual BEING, -logy an account, to tell or speak], refers here not to metaphysical philosophy but to the METABIOLOGY of a BEING.

...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ...ontological security the basic existential position from which a BEING encounters all the hazards of life from a centrally firm place of their own and other's reality and identity.

...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ...ontological security the basic existential position from which [a BEING] encounters all the hazards of life from a centrally firm place of their own and other's reality and identity.

...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ..Ontological security.. is the basic existential position from which a person encounters all the hazards of life, social, ethical, spiritual, biological, from a centrally firm place of his own and other people's reality and identity.

If experience is denied, our awareness of what we are is restricted, we are estranged from our actualities. We are in a state of ontological insecurity, unable to take our being in the world for granted.

MEANING here refers not to the output or conclusion of a human mind or cognitive function, but to the motivation that is founded by LIFE and learning.

As little as a ball on a billiard table can move before receiving an impact, so little can a man get up from his chair before being drawn or driven by a motive. But then his getting up is as necessary and inevitable as the rolling of a ball after the impact.

And to expect that anyone will do something to which absolutely no interest impels them is the same as to expect that a piece of wood shall move toward me without being pulled by a string.

Anthropic, etc, refer here to anthropocentrism, a narcissistic belief that the human species is the central fact and final aim of a universe that must therefore be understood in terms of human experience, needs, and values.

Human beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. 

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delusions and illusions

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Einstein spoke the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum, a language characterized by its precision. It might the be reasonable to assume, as an inspection of Einstein's note also suggests, that his use of the word Täuschung (delusion) twice and Illusion once, was considered not careless.

 The German word Täuschung in the original note, meaning 'delusion' (JPG opens in a new tab).

Etymologically the word delusion implies an action, a deceiving, referring here to that suffered by human beings through our consciousness, through which we perceive a deceptive appearance, the illusion of being "separated from the rest".

Technically, delusion is a belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth; illusion is an impression that, though false, is entertained on the recommendation of the senses or the imagination. Illusion (n.), developed in Church Latin from the late 14c. onwards to mean: a "deceptive appearance".

On delusion, and illusion; from the Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved: 4 October 2022.

science

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.    Albert Einstein.

Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust it drove are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction.

Hormone, from the Greek, hormon, meaning 'that which sets in motion'.

from the Greek, akrasia, meaning 'loss of free will'; acrasins are signalling molecules, providing the function that hormones have, for instance, in humans.

context is king

A FRAME refers here to a frame of reference, a reference frame, or category. They are LANGUAGES, meta-LANGUAGES, that by contextualizing and defining the SIGNS that they contain and refer to, give them their meaning.

CULTURES are environmental FRAMES, meta-LANGUAGES that aggregate a community's PERCEPTION and EXPRESSION. Reflecting the wisdom, fears, and strategies that have been learned and passed on, their histories of families, communities, and peoples, are histories of privilege and trauma as varied, intransigent, and challenging to unravel as those of any individual are.

The differences between CULTURES provide opportunities for learning and development, but contextualizing and defining the LANGUAGES that evolve with them, and informing the interpretation of those that have not, they also construct semantic FALSE-FRIENDS.

..a structure of concepts, values, customs, or views by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior.

This definition of the term, frames of reference, taken from the Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, aligns with the broader application of it here for FRAMES.

category mistakes

In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes referred to the category errors that philosophers make. Three hundred years later, Gilbert Ryle coined the term category mistake, in The Concept Of Mind, illustrating it with several examples, one concerning a misunderstanding about universities.

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks "But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University." It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if "the University" stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.

The philosophical error had also been identified, by professor Heinrich Hertz, in respect of physics.

Our confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.

Meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.

The prefix "meta-" is used here as it is used in the term meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.

Language: a system of arbitrary signals, symbols or signs, used to communicate information.

to communicate: to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals.

Semantic: of or relating to meaning.

Meaning: the sense or reference of an EXPRESSION.

to recognize: to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.

from the poem The Stare's Nest by My Window, published in Meditations In Time Of Civil War (1922-23), by William Butler Yeats — on the Irish Civil War.

corporatism

the organization of a state on a corporative basis. — Collins English Dictionary.

the principles, doctrine, or system of corporative organization of a political unit, as a city or state. [1885-90] corporatist. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

the control of a state or organization by large interest groups; "individualism is in danger of being swamped by a kind of corporatism" — TFD Thesaurus, Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection.

corporative

of a state organized into and governed by corporations of individuals involved in any given profession, industry, etc. — Collins English Dictionary.

of or relating to a government or political system in which the principal economic functions, such as banking, industry, labor, and government, are organized as corporate entities. — American Heritage Dictionary.

of or pertaining to a political system under which the principal economic functions, as banking, industry, and labor, are organized as corporate entities. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

The first Gilded Age, from the 1870s to 1890s, was named after Mark Twain's novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which satirized the excesses and societal problems which had arisen from the laissez-faire capitalism, political corruption, and wealth inequality of the times. A second Gilded Age, named then for its resemblance to the first, is considered to have begun between the 1980s and 2010s and to have continued to the present day.

The narrative of a second Gilded Age erroneously suggests that the current dynamics are repeating those of the late nineteenth century. (But) these are profoundly different historical moments. ... the "before" and "after" to a lengthy period when the cruelest characteristics of corporate capitalism were temporarily constrained. The late nineteenth century saw the ascent of serious efforts to rein in the power of the new capitalism and force it to bow down to the needs of civil society. During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, we are experiencing the decline of that effort as capitalists and their ideological and political supporters push to see how far they can go to ensure the unchallenged hegemony of corporate and property rights. The slow climb toward a more humane capitalism and the rapid descent away from it constitute two very different experiences.

The nature of the differences between the first and second Gilded Ages, was also examined in 2015 by historian Steve Fraser.

What fueled the resistance to the first Gilded Age, [argues Fraser), was the fact that many Americans had a recent memory of a different kind of economic system, whether in America or back in Europe. Many at the forefront of the resistance were actively fighting to protect a way of life, whether it was the family farm that was being lost to predatory creditors or small-scale artisanal businesses being wiped out by industrial capitalism. Having known something different from their grim present, they were capable of imagining — and fighting for — a radically better future. It is this imaginative capacity that is missing from our second Gilded Age.

biophysicality

The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?     Albert Einstein.

If it is unavoidable that descriptions of the ineffable are in some manner metaphorical, and anthropocentric concepts of the soul are set aside, BEINGS can be defined as 'vehicles' of life and LIFE inferred recursively.

BEINGS are BIOPHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS; the interpretations their ENDOSEMIOTIC systems generate in response to changes in their internal and external environments constructing their ONTOLOGICAL sensibility of self and other that organizes and animates them..

Every BIOPHYSICAL construct requires a psychological correlate in order to survive, any psychological construct requires a BIOPHYSICAL correlate in order to exist. Psychology in actuality is then the METABIOPHYSICAL account signified by a BEING.

wellness

The development of wellness and illness in an individual, is a function of the interaction between their BIOPHYSICAL actuality and their environment. This system as a whole then is impacted by the receipt or privation of care and support and medical or psychological interventions.

Research into cancer and other diseases has identified the existence and primacy of METABIOPHYSICAL systems, and the need to address them as a whole, but despite the work of the WHO the BROADCASTING systems of modern societies seem increasingly to discount 'holistic' systems and promote reductionist mechanical models.

functioning, disability and health

After nine years of international revision efforts coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Health Assembly on May 22, 2001, approved the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and its abbreviation of "ICF." This classification was first created in 1980 ...to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease... ...Functioning and disability are viewed as a complex interaction between the health condition of the individual and the contextual factors of the environment as well as personal factors. The picture produced by this combination of factors and dimensions is of "the person in his or her world." The classification treats these dimensions as interactive and dynamic rather than linear or static. It allows for an assessment of the degree of disability, although it is not a measurement instrument. It is applicable to all people, whatever their health condition. The language of the ICF is neutral as to etiology, placing the emphasis on function rather than condition or disease. It also is carefully designed to be relevant across cultures as well as age groups and genders, making it highly appropriate for heterogeneous populations.

The holistic biopsychosocial overview of wellness and illness the WHO presents, is taught today in medical schools; however, despite this, and the publication of the ICF, and now the ICD (International Classification of Diseases), its significance still seems relatively unrecognized and its impact on social organization and its institutions relatively minimal — on account, perhaps, of negative political lobbying.

I'd like people to reconceptualize cancer as a biological event that triggers stress responses affecting how the disease progresses... Managing those stress responses by adopting healthy eating and exercise habits, getting a good night's sleep, and finding good emotional and social support, should be regarded as much a part of cancer treatment as chemotherapy or radiation.

The article, from which the quote was taken, although accessible in 2024, has now been taken down by Stanford Medicine. The new article (at Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression) still refers to Spiegal's work, but the expurgated quote there now, intentionally or otherwise, seems to downplay the research, and to distance Stanford from Spiegal and the view he expressed.

The term BEING, applies here to all forms of LIFE, whether multicellular (humans, ants, plants, etc.); unicellular (bacteria, archaea, algae, etc.); or the MODULAR societies of spcial amoeba, jellyfish, ants, humans, deer, etc.

being — defined recursively.

Life is the condition of being.

Being is the condition of BEINGS.

A BEING is a descendant of BEINGS.

I am a BEING.

Hydrozoa show great diversity of lifestyle; some species maintain the polyp form for their entire life and do not form medusae at all. Polyps of some species propagate vegetatively, forming colonies.. polymorphism occurs in colonies of some species of hydrozoans and anthozoans, the polyps being specialized for functions such as feeding, defense, and sexual reproduction.

Ruppert, Edward E.; Fox, Richard, S.; Barnes, Robert D. (2004). Invertebrate Zoology, 7th edition. Cengage Learning. pp. 148-174; cited in Jellyfish, Taxonomy (list item: Staurozoa), Wikipedia..

Fautin, Daphne G. and Sandra L. Romano. 1997. Cnidaria. Sea anemones, corals, jellyfish, sea pens, hydra. Version 24 April 1997. http://tolweb.org/Cnidaria/2461/1997.04.24 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/.

Emphasizing the whole and the interdependence of its parts.