A systems view of biological health

Section 2: Theory

16 : Meaning-making

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Meaning-making is a fundamental part of both sensing and responding, and links these together

All of these information streams are of potential use, but are of no use unless they have the potential to generate some kind of response. The response may be of use in itself, but also it is a form of translation (transduction) form one kind of signal into another. That translation then makes the information available to parts of your body-mind complex that cannot detect the original information, but are able to detect the response. So, for instance, a conversation might make you angry (anger is a physiological and physical preparation for self-defence), which then results in contraction of Titin (body armouring) and generation of adrenaline and cortisol… These are "seen" by other parts of your body-mind. If not interrupted by some kind of cognitive reflective self-control, the information can rapidly cascade out to affect the entire body and mind.

Therefore many parts of the body-mind complex act as transducers, converting from one form of information to another (so it is then visible to other parts of the body-mind complex) through a process of:

raw information / signals in →

sense → (representational / symbolic) meaning-making →

response (=signals out, movement, change in process)

Some must be simultaneously aware of at least two different streams of information (such as the complex integrated neuro-electro-chemical regulation of cardiac contractions, or your cognitive awareness).

It is difficult to know exactly where the meaning-making occurs … is it more in the sensory apparatus, or in the response itself? It cannot be at the extreme end of either because data is not equal to meaning, and response is already fully laden with meaning. All we can say is that there is an intermediary process. It may be that meaning-making is so computationally demanding that the window of attention is a function of how much meaning-making is possible. The sensory organs themselves play some part in pre-processing information – for instance, the ears may amplify or even literally generate small sounds themselves – hyperacusis.

Research shows that the human mind (in the state normally accessed by the majority of humanity – so there may be ecstatic and transcendental states that do not obey this rule) can only process ten new pieces of information per second.

Meaning-making is primarily about responding to the present, but it is also about predicting the near future – so that movement and body position, sensory engagement and physiology are all (so far as is possible) prepared in advance. Everything that self-propels uses energy, energy use and conservation is a survival agenda, so the movement must be seen as being worth the energy expenditure. There is an expectation that "there" is better/safer than "here" or that the act of movement itself has some value. Which requires anticipation and sense of a timeline from now to some possible future, no matter how primitive the sentience of a sperm or a mosquito might be. Given that communication runs all living processes, the science of Biosemiotics tells us that meaning-making is so inherently complex that it is inevitable that sentient (or even conscious) intelligence exists at all levels of biological organisation[1].

The diagram attempts to capture some of the complexity of sense-meaning-making—response . "Anatomy!!" underlies it all because we experience and respond to the world through a specific body with a certain range of capacities – fingers, limbs, senses, etc. Most people cannot respond by flying, tunnelling into the ground, flexing their claws out of sheaths, growing a new limb, or producing slime from their skin!

All this meaning-making is work in its own right...

Thus, communication within a single organism is not so much a set of deterministic instructions passing through a wire in a computer but is instead a meaningful conversation between two sentient and intelligent entities, almost like a telephone conversation. This level of consciousness/intelligence is not the same as you might have, but is more akin to that displayed by the broomsticks in "The Sorceror's Apprentice". Additionally, the "wire" by which the phone conversation takes place may also be intelligent in its own right, vary its activity depending on the conversations it is carrying, and even make useful contributions to the conversation.