Talk:Downward causation

Practopoiesis
Someone here seems obsessed with removing all refs to practopoiesis, giving self-promotion as the reason. Self-promotion isn't the real issue, the important question is whether the idea is well sourced and sufficiently notable. If the person concerned had done his homework and consulted Google Scholar, he would have found that there are 8 entries, only 2 of which involve the author. One at least is from a journal and appears to be genuinely using the idea. And I must say (OR) that it looks like an interesting concept.

Did the person concerned do any research before doing his delete? I rather doubt it. Under the circumstances I'm inclined to class his actions, both on this page and on the autopoiesis page, as close to vandalism. In any case, I don't see that WP's self-promotion criteria legitimately apply here -- check them out. --Brian Josephson (talk) 10:04, 26 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree that this idea is relevant and is notable enough for inclusion in this article. I also think it's important to assume good faith for all editors. --EPadmirateur (talk)


 * Hi Brian Josephson and EPadmirateur. Thanks for coming to the talk page. And yes, I agree that the obvious conflict of interest is not the chief concern (it just explains what likely has motivated the additions). The real issues are around notability and original research. In terms of the former, can I ask how you both established that the concept had passed reasonable notability criteria. By my assessment there isn't much to suggest that it is. For me the fact that google scholar returns only one use of the term by an author other than Danko Nikolić raises big notability questions.
 * In terms of original research, I think the reasons for being concerned about this should be obvious. This is a very recently introduced term, and we do not have the secondary and tertiary sources that would establish for us the veracity of the Danko's ideas (remember, peer review and publication is the beginning of scientific scrutiny, it does not conclude it). Frankly it seems way too soon to know whether practopoiesis will be rejected, accepted, or ignored by the scientific community. Before we have an answer for this question the default would be to exclude from wikipedia. Does that all make sense? Cheers Andrew (talk) 02:19, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

There are 'Afference copy as a quantitative neurophysiological model for consciousness' published in the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, and a paper in German: 'DIE KUNST DER SINNE – DIE SINNE DER KUNST (2015) ‚Digitale Synästhesie‘ als Modell für eine Kybernetik der Ästhetik', from a book on Cybernetics. So I don't think you can really maintain that the idea is being ignored (and neither, as far as one can tell, is anyone rejecting it). It is perfectly reasonable, IMHO, for some kind of reference to the idea to be included in the article, e.g. in the list of references. --Brian Josephson (talk) 14:33, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * As I read the above discussion, it seems to establish that the material in question is appropriate to this article. Does anyone now object to the reinstatement of the content removed on 30 March? DaveApter (talk) 08:29, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I've now reinstated those refs - if anyone wants to remove them, could they please justify that here in more detail? Thanks. DaveApter (talk) 16:22, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

An interesting consequence...
In the last paragraph, isn't this someone just doing their own armchair philosophy, citing no references? It doesn't make any sense at all to me either. Who on earth would think that a system is independent of its environment? If so, a conscious being would not be able to see anything, hear anything, not sense anything in its environment. Mental states supervenient only on the body? What??

Isn't this always about systems within an environment (which together constitute another system). It doesn't make sense to talk about systems independent of environments. Or to publish armchair philosophy. 2001:2042:3307:1600:7559:D5E8:75CB:ECF2 (talk) 20:16, 19 January 2024 (UTC)