Somehow I am not surprised common sense is a unknown concept to you. — Jeremiah

Sorry, do we know each other?

Can't say I ever heard dogs talk about god. How about cats? Do cats go door to door selling their worthless god theories? I have seen them go door to door for food, but I have never seen a cat go door to door to shove their religious beliefs down a strangers throats.

I have never rabbit write a book about gods, I have never seen a bird preaching about its messiah on TV. — Jeremiah

You've never seen those things? You need to get out more.

There is only one animal on this planet who cannot shut up about god, and strangely enough the collective conceptualize of god is a reflect of the narcissistic human mind. — Jeremiah

Yes, that's right. When I think of God, I think of the person I see whenever I look in the mirror Jeremiah. I figure he must of got out his tools one day and set to work sculpting me in his image.

I think you could argue that narcissism: the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one's own attributes - may actually stem from ones belief that we're such hot stuff we don't need to invoke a god to explain the profound mysteries around us.

Because only humans are egotistical enough to actually believe, that not only do they know how everything was created, but that creator actually gives a shit about them. — Jeremiah

Well, if you've been paying attention to the OPs, the God v Science debate is running pretty hot. Again though, claiming to know how everything was created is a science claim, not a god claim.

As for the creator actually giving a shit, If I were to personify him I would prefer to think of him as a poet who has planted a seed and watches with intense fascination as life blooms in a myriad of fascinating and unexpected directions.

constructing a set of related verbal concepts, such as: natural, artificial, produce, manufacture, create, etc. arranged to represent a composite concept, situation, or system — Galuchat

A composite concept, situation or system? Still not sure what you mean. Juxtaposition? Can we apply it to figuring out how to distinguish is something is manmade or not?

I believe that man's nature and obligation is to conquer and dominate . — Victoribus Spolia

The nature part, I can kinda see. The obligation part I have a real problem with. I think mankind has done enough conquering and dominating. I think it's time he pulled his head in and started looking about at the absolute carnage over creation he has caused.

How does that work?

Show me evidence — T Clark

Hi T Clark, there was a doctor of sorts on TV talking a few months back. He said he'd spent his life working with patients on the edge of death (actually physically recording their brain wave activity). He was wearing a white coat, so I assume he was telling the truth.

Anyway, he said that often after the brain waves go flat and the person is 'dead' there is a sudden flash of brain wave activity that can go on for quite a few seconds. I wish I knew this OP was coming up, I might have paid more attention to the name of the show.

He said, that during his lifetime there had been several occassions when the patient, being dead, had suddenly sat bolt upright in bed and stared ahead. He said the eyes weren't blank, like the eyes of a dead fish (I'm paraphrasing), he said they were definitely looking at something. There was something in their visual field. Then they collapsed back down dead again.

How's that? Second hand testimonial evidence from the TV should never be doubted, but seriously, it does make you think. And while we're on testimonial evidence, when my Great Grandmother?? passed, my Grandmother went out and starting hosing the garden at that exact time. It was 4am, and when my Pop asked her what she was doing, she replied, "She's dead." Weird huh? She had been in hospital.

I'll tell you another story, knowing how much you like testimonial evidence :). I was working many years ago putting insulation in people's ceilings. I came down and looked at the elderly guy's clock on the wall. It had stopped. I said to him 'Hey, you know your clock has stopped?"

He said, "Yeah, my wife went on a cruise two years ago. Up until that time the clock had never missed a beat. She had a heart attack and died. The clock stopped on that day and time of death was what's on the clock." Of course, maybe the fact it had never missed a beat just meant it was due for a battery change.

human verbal modelling — Galuchat

Hey, Galuchat, what do you mean by human verbal modelling?
If we could figure out a system of classifying what it man made v natural, we could apply it to the God problem.
I see symmetry, identical products, and the other things above. Can you think of any?

I don't think you can call a sleeping person unconscious. Their external senses are purposefully reduced in capacity. When we sleep our brain goes through a de-frag, like the computers of old. When we dream we sort through the file fragments internally, while the consciousness still processes input from the external world. The brain's job is to make sense of any and everything, and so it mixes all the info together with the defrag into a nice incoherent story. If the emotions flush at the same time, you may have quite a powerful dream. Consciousness is still there though, just not looking out the windows much. When it's important enough, the thalamus gives it a shove and tells it to turn on its senses again.

. I believe the best and only path is direct observation of experiences, and experiences should be varied so that patterns of similarities and differences can be discerned. — Rich

I was looking into Asian philosophy and came across Wabi-Sabi. I thought you might like it. Are you familiar with it? I know you've mentioned Daoism.

How DNA came about, what caused it to exist, is what is at issue. — Wayfarer

I've been reading up a bit on the formation of carbon chemistry at the year dot, and have to say that while we might be able to get to nucleic acids and amino acids at a stretch, we're not even close to explaining DNA - and once we get inside, holy crap. I'm working toward a post just on that alone.

And of course what better cell to trust in forming your group of cells then yourself. Replication is selected for strongly. — MikeL

This is an interesting revelation.

We can imagine an organism growing like a ball until the problems of waste removal and nutrient supply become too constrictive (before a circulatory system). At this point, similar to embryogenesis, some type of cleavage may need to happen or the outer most cells will have to bud off and form their own clusters of cells.

This of course is a primitive reproduction of the organism.

The revelation I stated at the beginning occurs because evolution, survival through time, is not directional in the sense of purposeful. It is based on the constraints of the present. A need to trust only self in the creation of the colony and a need to bud due to critical physical constraints.

I couldn't care less either way, so long as we can have some fun with it.

But I guess what you guys REALLY want to know is, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Life must surface. — MikeL

This surfacing would not have been easy though. Entropy would have had a field day with the temperature and pressure. It is hard to believe a smooth spectrum of temperature or pressure, let alone of being able to evolve to process light into sugar.

There would have been a 'dead zone' life would have had to pass through on its way up. One way around it is to invoke a mass migration of life upward so that canabalisation can sustain life.

The other problem would be buoyency. How would they now be able to float upward where before they were clustered around vents? Vacuoles? Modern cells actively extrude Na+ to create their concentration gradients. Extruding Na+ would reduce buoyency though.

What might be interesting to investigate is if this cannot be used as a motive force for a cell. A sudden opening of Na+ channels would cause a massive influx of Na+ increasing buoyency rapidly causing inflation through the strata of the ocean. If this rate of inflation was greater than the subsequent rate of deflation once the Na+ was extruded again (perhaps through an oceonic pressure difference), we would have a mechanism.

And of course what better cell to trust in forming your group of cells then yourself. Replication is selected for strongly. Of course there is a lot of intentionality and sentience in that statement.

Of course you also have your cooperative cell groups forming: gap junctions, diversification of function depending on position relative to the surface of the ball of cells - a bit like embryogenesis... Whack on some flagella and membrane bursting proteins and away you go. An ancient trireme.

Life must surface.

So, if we say successful protocells can be formed this way, and then the environmental drivers began to wane, we could see how 'accidentally' selected for traits of busting open cells to obtain the reactants might have occurred.

So evolution now must race against the balloon popping universe that provides reactants to form the protective features such as reinforced cell walls that allow survival. Once again though eventually the reactants would run out... which is why we need our photosynthesisers to enter the scene.

Oh, its actually quite straight forward. I was overlooking that proteins can of course have hydrophobic surfaces.
This article explains the formation of lipid membranes in eurkaryotes, which is not that helpful, but if we understand that a molecular cycle in the ocean could be attaching transmembrane proteins while others are synthesising a lipid string, it makes a more sense.

However this step could not occur until the Protein-Ribosome-DNA connection had been sorted.

So we have cycles out there, and the reactants are running low. How do they sense this? Sure there would be a decrease in the product that feeds into other reactions. The system would begin to disintegrate, perhaps freeing previously restrained molecules... but then to move into a higher order of restraint so that reactants are contained in a higher concentration than the environment by enclosing them in a membrane.

How might we explain a leap to that from a disintegrating system?

If its been a while since you looked at it, this is a great link to explain what I mean. Jump to 3:15

Evolutionary theory assumes that DNA exists, it doesn't account for the existence of DNA. The existence of DNA is what has to be accounted for. — Wayfarer

Doesn't my ribosomal explanation account for the existence of DNA?

Apokrisis knows more than anyone here on that subject, having published books on related topics. — Wayfarer

That's great we have an expert in the house, but it doesn't make your logic or my logic any cheaper. Let's not sit quietly by the camp fire and be passive absorbers of others wisdom, let's exchange ideas with them and challenge it too and see if we can all learn from each other - which I think we are doing.

I have to disagree with you here, although I can see from your religious background why you are guarding words like creation and evolve.

A drop of rain falling on a puddle creates ripples. If there are many drops of rain and many ripples, they may evolve into small waves. That is all I meant when I used those words.

As to the origin of the ribosome, it's one more lower doll in the stack of Russian dolls.

Hi Wayfarer, I think that like all languages, semiotics in terms of a biological language evolved from the patterns created, and not the other way around. Semiotics is not the driver, merely the reporter that allows our perception to understand what is occurring and thereby make more logical leaps of understanding.

I brought up earlier about the ribosome. I think it is key. Nowadays the whole affair of DNA transcription, translation and replication is tightly controlled. The ribosome is key to changing the code of the DNA into the protein by marrying up nucleotide sequences with amino acids and sewing the amino acids together.

But if we impose bi-directionality on this effect, we could also have amino acids encoding 3 nucleotides and then another amino acid coming along and the ribosome sewing three more onto the chain. Bidirectionality means that at these 6 nucleotides that encode 2 amino acids are also being transcribed, and we get the emergence of a record on one end and a protein at the other, but emanating from a position central to both.

Where we have code, we have the start of language, we have semiotics.

The driver could have been the gradual winding down of vents or the population explosion of variant molecular cycles. The necessary constraint of reactants could have triggered the cycles to form into cells.... but from where and how does the membrane materialise? It is not a cycle.

No, I've given myself an out. The initial heat death of the ocean, or local environment at least, is what I am arguing should have caused life to wind down and die. What happened? If we're using vents as our driver, did it float to other vents on the current? Was there a smorgasboard of vents? Even if so, we are still looking at an eventual heat death (used loosely as a semiotic word), then predation must have started while vent feeders were in full swing.

You could argue that the removal of the reactant creates a concentration gradient for further reactant to move into that space- until the heat death of the ocean.

As life developed though the reactants became more constrained - inside a piece of fruit or another fish - enter the age of predation. But how do we explain it?

Maybe, if the material objects in the world are the signs moving about, entropy and negentropy are the slope of the road. We can use levers to push things up the road by coupling them with the movement of heavier things coming down the road (like a passive transporter does), but again, once the initial reactants (heavy things moving down the road) are exhausted, the lever stops working. This is death.

So a very important thing to conceptualize I think is the drive of the entire system, road and all, to find more reactants. That in itself seems anti entropic without a coupling to entropic movement.

If we throw the thin sheet of semiotics over the universe, so that rather than being full of disparate items with interactive properties they all become objects of a common sign language, such that an atom now becomes a 'potential bond partner' and a molecule becomes a 'willing cycle participant', how would we describe entropy and negentropy?

It is the desire for negentropy that needs to be explained now. Life should wind down after the initial concentration gradients are exhausted. Instead life actively seeks new reactants to sustain its reactions.

There is a prompt that arises when internal reactants drop below a certain point, much like the coming on of a fuel light. It makes me get out of the chair and go to the fridge. A lion will go out onto the plain to run down the gazelle. A tree will turn its leaves toward the sun and grope with its roots through the soil.

Aside: I could not care less if this is not discussed by Pierce or is not the focus of semiotics at all. It is my question.

It becomes dangerous when we try to anthropomorphize it, not like the Greek Gods or the idea of the old man, but when as you said we "hunted for the higher order" which is assuming that god has intention or purpose. So, we thought that since humankind reaches the ultimate cause which is planning and purpose, the nature or god must have a/the purpose too. — Navid

I agree, but I only anthropomorphized humans, which I think we can both agree is OK.

It is human kind that is assuming purpose, in this OP I am only assuming a directional force acting on matter in such away that self-assembly occurs and then is enclosed as another layer starts above it.

The OP suggests that as this force acts on us we become 'aware' of its presence although not its effect. As the force acts on us we begin to build higher order structures. Just like the molecules and cells each in their turn did.

Nah, it doesn't. I've already watched it based on your recommendation. It is an interesting concept with appeal, though one whose finding and conclusions I am a little skeptical of - but know no different either way.

I can't see it's usefulness in this particular instance of waves and being, but I'll keep thinking about it.

Ok, the fluctuations of a field creates particles or energy knots. But how do we relate waves back to the single being composed on may particles within the wave and then to the multiple single beings that interact, as discreet entities?

I really don't have any arguments, since that is not my game. — Rich

Yes you do. :)

I do understand what you mean by creativity expression in the world. No two people are alike. I am still not clear on the reason for you position though that the truth should be a creed and not a game. Not to worry, its good to get a diversity of creative opinion.

There Mind creates substantiality. — Rich

Is there just one mind? Is there one mind that is infinitely divisible? Are there completely separate minds? How do we get a union of minds (squillions of quanta) to create the solitary being? Why is there separation of mind between beings?

Life evolved exactly as you observe. — Rich

But I observe it evolving logically. If someone stands on a tree branch that is too thin, it will break, they will fall.

Arguing over the premise doesn't discount the logic between the premise and conclusion. It is not false logic, just a false premise. Logic may not lead to truth, but it leads to insight. Insight leads to a relative truth when we reflect it out against the world and get the right echo back. Relative truth leads to predictions which lead to a stronger truth in our frame of being if proven true.

Life experiments, learns and changes and follows many, many different paths. Just observe. It's all there. — Rich

Would I be right to say that this is the crux of your argument? That sentience is denied by logical progression? There is no choice is everything is a consequence?

I can move spatially and the memory goes with me even though it is supposed to be deflected back out into the matter field.

If course, there is substantiality that we "feel". Remember, we are basically empty but we feel substantiality. Two painters sharing a canvas doesn't mean they will not bump into each other. — Rich

What is our substance? Two painters bumping into each other share a different substance to the canvas. If we are in and part of the matter field, how do we generate and isolate feeling and thoughts to ourselves given that all memory and experience is shared?

So are you arguing that irrationality undermines the premise that life evolved along logical and predicable lines?

And yet I can walk down the street and bump into someone.

I get the idea of being connected to nature and life. When you stand on top of a high mountain and stare out you can feel every atom inside you wanting to explode and merge with nature. When you go dancing you come alive.

How do you reconcile this idea of an energy flow between all things with the physical realities of our observable world (our 4n). It seems like you are saying that rather than being an emergent property of the matter field you are denying the existence of our semiotic world. You make the argument that it is pointless to pursue ground based reasoning of our world when it seems that such an approach does yeild results (being it produces a logical path of causality and predictability).

This idea that chemicals evolved in such ac way that they have to eat a whole bag of potato chips and then bemoan it because of the weight they gained is equivalent to moving my Queen to a square where it can be taken by a pawn. — Rich

That's right, its a crazy thing to do, but it can be understood logically. The immediate satisfaction of eating the chips outweighs the possible future result of putting on the pounds. It is only when the immediate satisfaction is satisfied that the much lower weighted future consequence remains.

But if one doesn't care about these things, which is perfectly permissible, then one doesn't care. — Rich

Sorry, Rich, I've missed your point again. Care about what things? I was following your chessboard analogy until the bag of chips. If you can back up to the chessboard again and take another run at it, I would appreciate it.

But if we are painting on the canvas we are separate from the canvas, so what is the substance of us? If we are in the canvas, then what separates our mind from it so that we may have perspective over it? What is the substance of us?