Hi Counterpunch and Kenosha Kid

Thanks for your well considered responses.
I was beginning to get worried that this subject, which is a fundamental underpinning to most philosophical debates, would not be taken seriously.

I will respond to you individually below…. and apologies that I am still learning how to use the site and still haven’t seen how to use quotes.

Dear 'God Must Be An Atheist'

Your beliefs are clearly Materialist/Determinist and that is fine, but they are not the only beliefs.

As long as there are scientifically proven examples which challenge this philosophy then open-minded people have the right to consider other possibilities.

There are many such examples in science - indeed, you need look no further than every time science deploys probabilities in its mathematics. Your assumption that all answers must be found as a 'hidden variable' (ie. something within Matter/Energy that we have not yet discovered), is fine too, but as shown above, it is not the only possibility.

I am surprised by the ridiculous arguments you presented (eg. that you can be both a man and a woman), .... which scientific mathematical formula suggested them? None. I also think that you have missed the core logic too, because probabilities do not apply to objects. They only apply to events.

What you cannot say is that the logic I presented is flawed. The basic logic is undeniable. That is why science uses probabilities - to recognise different outcomes when it has no explanation. This reasoning has been successfully defended on many occasions. Your only option is to prefer one of the three explanations.

I would be interested to know which of the options other people prefer, and why.

The core idea of 'emergence' is that something like the 'underlying stuff of existence' (Matter/Energy) comes from something else. That 'Cosmological Argument' is founded on a belief in strict causality.

As mentioned elsewhere, the 'emergence' argument either suggests that there is something other than Matter/Energy propping up reality, or that there is true spontaneity and randomness which might allow existence to emerge without a prior cause. If there was only Matter/Energy, reality cannot be 'emergent' by the normal definition.

The only scientist that I have read who advocated a true spontaneous start to existence was Steven Hawking. All other published scientists seemingly believe in an eternal existence that is evolving within Matter/Energy over time.

Biblically (and indeed in other religions) the suggestion was that either God shaped an eternal chaos and changed it into the substance that we know today; or he produced reality out of nothing but his thoughts/will. That would either imply a spontaneous start, or potentially one which says that Matter/Energy came from another type of stuff - the stuff of God's thoughts.

However it is possible to deploy the same argument without resorting to God, by simply saying that more than one type of stuff underpins reality. This is where we see the old philosophies of Dualism and Pluralism kick-in.

Indeed, if you seriously consider the possibility that another type of stuff exists alongside Matter/Energy, there are some very easy ways to resolve some of science's most challenging issues - eg. like the dual slit experiments incl. the dubious principle of wave particle duality; the loophole free Bell Test experiments; and the whole concept of Entanglement.

Dear MadFool

I think you ought to research more.

Consciousness has not been explained, and while we do see that neurons receive and transmit electrical signals, these are not clockwork activities where the signals bounce around forever. The neurons somehow filter the signals and focus them as part of a narrowing assessment. But whether such assessments are done by individual neurons or a small group of them (somehow liaising with each other) assessment and decision-making is occurring - but we don't know how.

Yet each neuron is a full cell, with all of its internal workings. I am talking about activity within every cell - not even all of the components of a single cell working together. These are also functions which also happen in every cell, not just those in the brain.

If you actually read my posts you will see that I have not 'made up my mind that molecules are conscious' - as you have suggested. I have only referred to awareness (rather than consciousness which you seem to confuse), and also clearly stated that I would be happy with a chemical explanation if one were to emerge - which it isn't even close to doing.

Furthermore, you seem to confuse a description with an explanation. If there were explanations, we would not be having this conversation. The point about the phenomena I describe is that they achieve things which should go well beyond any chemical/mechanical activity - and yet these things are observed.

Recognising the observation, is a recognition of why things pose such a particular puzzle - ie. why it seems to challenge the existing laws of physics and chemistry. Once you see the points of principle that make these things difficult you might then try to resolve them in your way, but the fact that skilled scientists in their field have tried to do precisely that for almost 20 years means that this is a real issue.

Pop
I am now confused. Your early posts seemed to be saying that there was no awareness needed and that everything could be achieved by 'self-organisation' - whatever that may be.

My interpretation, as I indicated, was that self organisation was just that - an organisation or structuring of components/elements as we might see in molecules and crystals etc, - ie. an organisation achieved through chemical action. That is how it is normally interpreted.

The point is that such structures might then achieve chemical/mechanical things, which then have to be explained from their structure - but that has not been possible for the level of reasoning which we see in Homologous Recombination. The structures of a single molecule do not provide any capability for reasoning.

So when discussing these points we need to hone-in on examples of activity which which evade explanation by the organised structures that we see - ie. we seek examples to demonstrate what should not be possible.

I think the other examples that you gave (of motor proteins etc) are less strong on the reasoning side of things, because for instance, changes of direction onto different pathways, (and the associated swapping of motor protein driver), might possibly be triggered simply by chemical or mechanical means when encountering a different type of path, (filament or microtubule).

The 'reasoning' element of the transport puzzle is in how the motor proteins know where to deliver their cargo to. It is not a random distribution but effective 'direct' routes, that stop atthe correct destination.

Again, since my last post, there seems to be an avoidance of the points that I made.

You have not provided any examples which challenge my assertion that : any natural self organisation would only build structure, and not do anything to resolve dynamic conceptual problems.

Somebody also said that awareness was only necessary to communicate abstract values - and presumably be a factor in helping to resolve them too? The examples I gave were exactly the type of problem that requires abstract concept if a complex objective is to be achieved by these molecules. So is that an admission that it does exist?

The increasing complexity/length of catalyst molecules and proteins, as I understand it, is to form more elaborate shapes that enable one discreet reaction to take place in a particular location - the shape acting like a unique key. This has nothing to do with problem solving... and rarely if ever does the extra length achieve more than one chemical reaction.

And POP - I cannot see where I made any reference to prions, yet you launched into a diatribe on this matter claiming that it was a point that I made. Can you please explain?

Pop - I think that evolution is a classic form of self organisation, but self organisation builds structures over time. It is not a factor that resolves dynamic problems quickly in the moment. That is something different.

I think Finipolscie was right to build up an argument from undeniable basic logic, and to look for things which seem to break the existing models - for those are the areas which can teach us something new. He identifies the factors that have been shown to deviate from expected principles and tries to find pointers from them. His books are well thought out if you care to read them.

All
Ultimately consciousness needs to be explained in practical rather than purely philosophical terms. As mentioned above, awareness is an unexplained capability that is only one part of the effect we label as consciousness - so an explanation of awareness moves us closer to the ultimate goal. It may also help to reveal other factors at play that we may not have yet identified.

What philosophy can show us, is that some attempts at explanation break down if the principles they use are broken by the examples we find from experimentation, and if the repeated evidence of our eyes tells us that something more is going on. We have to simply begin by accepting the evidence, no matter how strange to our existing beliefs. That's how Quantum Mechanics and Abiogenesis were also started.

Indeed, Quantum Mechanics has now acknowledged that different rules seem to apply to the sub-atomic realm than we experience at our level of existence - but without explanation as yet.

Here we have a choice of whether to only explore purely chemical solutions through blind faith in one philosophy (materialism), or to consider the possibility that other factors may be at play and keep an open mind.

All discoveries are made because people follow the evidence and recognise when something different is happening. The difference here is that life somehow breaks the principles of the normal physical rules. It may follow familiar patterns of activity for living things, but the fact that we have ignored the differences in the past doesn't mean that we have to be blind to them going forwards.

Life is special and is still unexplained after thousands of years of human investigation. The Laws of Physics and Chemistry have served us well in recent centuries, but if we now see things to challenge our perceptions, we can begin by at least recognising those elements that make it special. We can then go looking for an explanation without blinkers.

Re-reading some of the posts - can I just add that there is a vast difference between the mechanical and unthinking replication mechanisms which copy a section of genetic code to produce either a protein or RNA, and the processes that we see here.

Nobody denies that the rigid Laws of Physics and Chemistry operate well for the wider environment plus some purely chemical aspects of cellular activity. It is clearly observed that on mechanisms such as homologous recombination, we seem to be dealing with something different.

Similar points can be made about the transportation of proteins from their point of manufacture in a cell to the correct places that they might be used, via a container pulled by motor proteins across an ever-changing network of roads.

If we can identify the principles involved it may help us to explain consciousness. If that is via chemical means then fine, but as we're not even close to doing that, isn't it fair to consider other possibilities?

Sorry - it isn't practical for me to respond to people individually so I will try to cover off a few points collectively.

There seems to be a fair amount of confusion in these various responses between consciousness and awareness. Awareness is not consciousness and at best is just one of several factors in achieving consciousness.

While I admit that it is unusual to invoke the suggestion of awareness in molecules, people are avoiding the issues raised if they try to dismiss the question by pretending that my OP is in some way trying to promote a God of the Gaps argument. It isn't, and if you run away from the points by using God as a way to deflect from the issue, I think you have lost the argument. This is a serious question, because the computational models which can be applied to a single molecule, or even a few of them, cannot get close to explaining homologous recombination.

Evolution tells us how something may have arisen, it doesn't tell us how a dynamic process is made to work in ever-changing circumstances.

I am not sure that an enzyme is just a catalyst, but they are observed doing things which go well beyond simple chemical matching/enabling. Think about just one of the steps involved....

- the breaks on both stands of the DNA molecule are rarely clean and often result in missing pieces that form gaps of long and varying lengths. Yet enzymes need to establish the size of a gap before attempting to repair each strand. In doing this they seem to go hunting for parts of a different strand of DNA that equates to the full sequence of the correct gene - a different template which is generally not just side by side with the break but potentially curled up in a completely different place.

Neither is this matching process just a case of finding the first nucleobase pair and then continuing from that random point - no - the active molecules in the process go looking for a complete sequence that is appropriate to the unbroken sections of DNA that remain on either side of the break. How does it make that assessment? We can do this with a brain, because we understand the scenario, the objective, and the significance of the coded sequences on the remaining strands of the DNA. How does the matching occur without such awareness?

I do not mind a purely chemical solution emerging, and I am certainly not promoting a God-based solution, but when decades of research fails to even get close to an answer, and what we see is not a fixed process but a variable/dynamic one - aiming for an outcome that we can describe as an objective that we can predict - then I think it is fair to ask where that level of sophistication comes from if it is not from traditional sources.

Basic observation shows that the behaviour of these chemicals is far from the scenario normally predicted by the mathematics of the physical laws, and the deterministic principles commonly applied. There seems to be an additional factor here which has not been identified and if the logic that we humans might apply to mimic what is happing through our manual efforts, can only be achieved by millions of brain cells - and yet it is happening with a handful of enzymes - then we are truly missing something profound.

counterpunch - who are you replying to?

My post did not refer to consciousness, or bats and balls, but responded to the point in the opening premise about 'awareness' which is a sub-component of consciousness.

If you say that something/someone 'confuses consciousness with the conscious mind', you ought to explain the distinction.

Sorry - but chemistry says that DNA is no more than a template to produce components. It has no logical capacity/capability. It also does not describe solutions to problems, and even if it did, we should constantly see enzymes (with no apparent logical capability) having to refer back to DNA for guidance. But they don't. they clearly operate just on their own.

Firstly, let me say that Auto Response, (as you describe it), still has to have a cause based in the Laws of Physics and Chemistry, according to scientific principles.

I think the traditional way of explaining it, is that whether through evolution or experience, the neurons in the brain, (or equivalent 'control centre' in a multi-celled being), form pathways that can become an increasingly dominant path of response if used frequently or become a background survival factor.

The challenge to this comes when we see factors inside a single living cell that can be run by single molecules, which are observed doing complex things, not 'single task' things. That is 'awareness' at a wholly different level, and therefore it requires something extra to explain it, if the actions observed seemingly break the principles identified by the known Laws of Physics and Chemistry - which many do.

What is the nature of the missing factor(s)?

Are they 'hidden causes' or something more fundamental - eg. a capability that goes beyond strict causality; or a perhaps a secondary type of underlying stuff that operates by different rules to the Matte/Energy we have been able to analyse so far?

What level does the evidence have to reach before we start saying that existing explanations are insufficient and we have to at least consider other possibilities. There are many factors in everyday life where the choices do not seem to be pre-determined by inevitable chemistry - and indeed, our societies laws assume that we do have the ability to make genuine choices which are not inevitable.

I think that Christophe Finipolscie hit the nail on the head when he he explored this subject in his 2nd book. He firstly argued that consciousness is made of of 3 more basic elements, each of which might have a range of simpler and more complex forms. These were:
- Awareness
- Control, and
- Thought (ie. a way to generate ideas/concepts and influence the wider world)

He also basically argued that we identify life when it appears to demonstrate a breach of the seemingly deterministic prinicples, which the purely chemical world seems to be governed by, (according to the traditional mathematical Laws of Physics and Chemistry).

So we see Life when activities appear to start something new, or assemble things; or produce multiple outcomes when only one should be possible if determinism was everything, (as some people argue).

He then went on to list many of the factors/processes at the core of Life which seemingly break the Laws of Chemistry and Physics. The element which resolves some of these are explained away in science through the use of probabilities (in themselves an admission of no known cause); and yet there are many other of these processes which seem to point to controlling influences which have awareness.

I have just raised a separate discussion about one of these.

I try to boil these questions down to basics.

From what I have read, philosophically, there are only 2 possibilities:
1 - Existence and time had a beginning
2 - Existence and time didn't have a beginning - they are eternal.

Any fundamental start point requires an action that had no cause. So you would have to believe in the reality of true spontaneity (without cause) if you envisage a start point. Do you?

If there was an eternal state and then a change occurs, you still need a truly spontaneous or truly random act (also without cause) in order to bring about that change.

The only other possibility is the argument from Determinism - that we are all part of an eternal and inevitable process.

Top scientists these days say that 'space-time' does not exist (as an example - see Dr.Nima Arkani-Hamed video (between about 4 - 10 mins in...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47kyV4TMnE). In this clip he also states that the operations of Universe produce inevitable outcomes.

All of these questions relate to the underlying principle of cause & effect. For some reason this forum seems to keep bringing me back to the book by Finipolscie "Our Existence part 1 : The Nature and Origin of Physical Reality" It's all in there, and explained very clearly... but in a way that also lets you make up your own mind about the evidence. (It's on Kindle if you want to read it in the USA).

Time to me is inextricably linked to movement, and so it may be the same thing. If time did begin it would have to also be the first movement - as the ancient Greeks suggested. But it is quite possible to have physical existence without movement. However the introduction of movement to a static Universe would require a spontaneous act.... etc

Hi Spyroe

I can't tell if you're being serious or not by your post, as 'shape' isn't a thing in itself - it's an outcome or consequence from something else. The term 'shape' is therefore not helpful to people reading your post.

However, if I try to interpret your words, I'm afraid that the underlying notions do seem to have been well explored in philosophy already.

The concept/philosophy that everything is in the mind, and that the mind is infinitely variable etc. is known as 'Idealism' (in its different forms) and it represents the polar opposite of Materialism/Determinism in philosophy. It says that we generate a mental picture of stability by putting rules around our mental operations, but beyond those rules everything and anything is possible.

To argue that we achieve a collective/common perception of what reality is by 'mentally syncing' our collective experience is part of Gaia theory.

Finipolscie's books explain this in their early chapters, to set the scene for the science he explains later. That's why I was intrigued by it, and to ask for everyone else's perceptions.

Hi jgill

Yes, I agree that if one formula doesn't produce the right outcome, another is required. But the point made in the book, (and I think it is correct), is that each formula (other than those applying probabilities), will only lead to one inevitable outcome from any specific start point. That is Determinism.

All formulae are there to enable 'Prediction' as that is the factor which establishes our faith in science. However 'Prediction' is limited by what you know, compared to the underlying reality which might be 'inevitable'.

The use of probabilities means that science can effectively describe a range of outcomes, but it can't explain them causally.

As far as I can see, QM uses probabilities because it cannot directly see what is going on below the level of an atom, and while multiple outcomes would suggest other hidden causal factors, we do not know what they might be. That is the old Determinist explanation for such experimental results. However the philosophy then argues that if we did know all of the factors, everything based in Matter/Energy would produce 'inevitability'.

The only way to break that possibility is to suggest that some effects, (whether random or spontaneous), have no cause. So which of the 3 options do you believe explains the multiple outcomes?

I don't know if you've read the book but it makes a number of other points too - suggesting other potential instances of effects without cause, and suggesting that this may be due to a different 2nd type of 'stuff' underpinning reailty.

Tim - taking your analogy, you either have to admit that there were 2 more children in your sister's family than you ever knew of; or that she had suddenly acquired a couple more out of nowhere; or that there are a couple of impostors.

Philosophically, the question is : which of these applies?

Bell's theorem is not the only bit of evidence from the book. The author points us to the results from various 'double slit' experiments, plus the accelerating expansion of the universe - which points us towards the possibility that truly spontaneous acts (without cause) may occur.

Cosmologically, this is because any change to a previously eternal sequence (such as bang-crunch) must logically come from a spontaneous or external influence.

Hi Zelebg

Reading the Wikipedia articles, or indeed reading the book I referred-to, you don't see the underlying maths. But there is lots of evidence to suggest that the experiments and results were peer-reviewed and therefore the conclusions were valid.

In essence, as I understand it, these experiments used 'paired particles' (ie. split photons or electrons which retain an unknown communication between them - referred-to as entanglement), to show whether results are deterministic or have an additional (unknown or random) influence on them. The theorem uses Game theory, that is explained in the book far better than I can do it here.

There are different ways in which the experiments have been conducted, but they always have a numerical result that should never be exceeded. On one UK programme that I watched (presented by a top scientist - Jim Al-Khalili - called the Secrets of Quantum Mechanics), the number was '2' but the results were always significantly beyond that - proving that the world was not entirely deterministic - at least, not within the known parameters of Matter/Energy as we know them.

Hi 3017amen

The underlying nature of 'chaos' theory is our inability to predict something.

In terms of traditional philosophy, Determinism says that we cannot predict things accurately as we don't necessarily know all of the factors which are influencing a given situation - but if we did, we would see that the underlying nature of things was that Matter/Energy produces inevitable outcomes. The mathematics in science follows deterministic lines (except QM's use of probabilities - which is an admission that there is no deterministic explanation for the multiple outcomes).

The counter-view was 'Idealism' which argued (on the basis of Free Will and non-inevitability) that it was possible to have true spontaneity and randomness (without cause) and that this was most evidently displayed in our thoughts, (which would otherwise be entirely governed by the strict causality of matter/energy).

For these reasons, I can't see now 'non-linear' is a different concept.

Hi Tim

I live in the UK normally, but I'm visiting the US at the moment.
The book is certainly on Amazon UK, and I also see it on Kindle.

There is a lot of substance to the book, but my reference to 'feelings' concerns the readership here, not the arguments presented by the author... and I think that's fairly clear in my words.

There seem to be plenty of references to scientific source material - so yes, it is a serious work, but it presents a different take on things.

I am not a top scientist, so I can only go by what the author says about Bell's Theorem, but it does seem to be borne-out by articles I've seen on Wikipedia etc. The key things which the author is testing, are potential examples of 'true' spontaneity or randomness (without cause) to see which of the old philosophical concepts have merit.