• Wayfarer
    22.6k
    from the patterns createdMikeL

    Shouldn't use that word, 'created', I'm sorry. Nothing is created by anything, that's either disguised theism, or anthropomorphism. And the other thing is, nothing can 'evolve from something' until the means of evolution exists. 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. To be fair, Apokrisis knows more than anyone here on that subject, having published books on such topics. But I still think it's fair to say it's an open question.
  • MikeL
    644
    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.
  • MikeL
    644
    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.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k
    So just the experience or interpretance relation, no ghostly experiencer or interpreter.apokrisis

    I don't even dispute that necessarily. My question is "what" is this "experience"? You use the word emerging like a parlor trick. You have not addressed the issue of what this illusion of mind is that "emerges" other than being self-referential to its constituents. You answer it with things like there needs to be an "interpreter" which just sounds like some form of background experiencer has to be there in the first place. Wow, sounds suspiciously panspychic, and you knew I was going to say this because that is exactly what it sounds like. Just because the background interpreter needs symbols and signs as it learns and gets more complex, doesn't mean that there isn't "something" there, interpreting in the background, according to your OWN schema. You cannot escape it. Either first person experience exists in the equation or there is a dualistic nature to reality. Unfortunately, you don't get that your triadism collapses into a dualism, despite you really really wanting it not to.
  • MikeL
    644

    If its been a while since you looked at it, this is a great link to explain what I mean. Jump to 3:15
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    You'll have to try harder to make it worth continuing the conversation.

    Start by answering honestly why a modelling relation with the world wouldn't feel like something. On what basis can you simply presume that?
  • javra
    2.6k
    Start by answering honestly why a modelling relation with the world wouldn't feel like something. On what basis can you simply presume that?apokrisis

    Isn’t your triadic system one of pan-modeling-relation-with-context/the world? If I’m not extremely mistaken in so appraising, then why would a lepton, for example, not hold feelings - given that it is this triadic relation that in your system explains the "what it is like" of human feeling? Why would information, as information, not hold feelings? This must be wrong, though. It leads into nonsensical conclusions.
  • MikeL
    644
    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?
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    I've explained why all through the thread. There is a difference between biosemiosis and pansemiosis.

    Biosemiosis is an actual modelling relation. The information, the constraints, are internalised to construct a point of view.

    Pansemiosis is then more general. The information, the constraints, are environmental. The point of view in operation is external and so highly generic - just the state of the cosmos at some point along its historical development.

    This bloody huge difference is why I wouldn't say leptons have feelings. There is no reason to think they form a point of view or have any autonomy. They are the products of a generic cosmic sign relation, not the authors of particular located points of view.
  • MikeL
    644
    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.
  • MikeL
    644
    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.
  • MikeL
    644
    Life must surface.
  • MikeL
    644
    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.
  • MikeL
    644
    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.
  • javra
    2.6k


    OK, yes, but in your view bio-semiosis must emerge from pan-semiosis (e.g., not the other way around at some grand scheme of things; this where “bio” signifies “life”, which I acknowledge to loosely interpret as being “the presence of a first person point of view, aka awareness”). Other than things being such that our awareness-based knowledge does indeed illustrate—to the best of our knowledge—that life followed non-life, why must biosemiosis emerge from pansemiosis when rationally analyzed?

    This is the part that I initially hoped you held a cogent grasp of when I started this tread.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    This is the part that I initially hoped you held a cogent grasp of when I started this tread.javra

    Did you really ever follow what I said then. You keep coming up with questions I've already covered.

    Pansemiosis is about the fundamentally of thermodynamic purpose. And biosemiosis is entrained to that cosmic goal. It is required (if it is possible for it to be) by the need to break down blockages to entropy's great flow.

    So I hope you now suddenly remember another part of the argument which I've so frequently presented. Maybe even an apology will be forthcoming, seeing you have chosen to join the insulters? :)
  • Rich
    3.2k
    Pansemiosis is about the fundamentally of thermodynamic purposeapokrisis

    Catching the sleight of hand in this trick was way too easy.

    cosmic goal.apokrisis

    It appears the story has now been extended to include God.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Rich, you are proof the Cosmos loves hot air.
  • javra
    2.6k
    Did you really ever follow what I said then. You keep coming up with questions I've already covered.apokrisis

    You've covered them by placing the cart before the horse: better spelled out, maths before awareness ... then by explaining awareness via maths, you feel justified in using observations to model your system in what logically amounts to ad hoc explanations of why things must be.

    An observation; yes, made by one who is nevertheless fallible and proudly knows himself to so be. Not an insult, and certainly not an apology.
  • Rich
    3.2k


    I didn't know your theory included cosmic propose.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    You've covered them by placing the cart before the horse: better spelled out, maths before awareness ...javra

    Again, you aren't really listening. Peirce begins with an examination of human reason - epistemology. And then pansemiosis argues ontology - existence itself - also shares the same self-organising logic.

    Further - all thought/all reality being irreducibly complex - making your argument in terms of "cart before horse", or "chicken before egg", simply betrays a Procrustean need to make all argument conform to the mode of reductionist analysis rather than holistic understanding.

    You want a sequential story of cause and effect. But this is explicitly a triadic developmental story. I know you will be starting to understand when you yourself think "cart before horse" is a nonsensical kind of issue to be complaining about.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    These are very important thoughts you are sharing.
  • MikeL
    644
    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.
  • Rich
    3.2k
    I'm the audience merely observing the sleight of hand, the latest being holistically fusing cosmic purpose into everything including thermodynamics. Sounds like Panpsychism or vialism to me. With this, we are getting very close to agreement. Bergson called it the Elan vital, and Whitehead referred to it as God.
  • MikeL
    644
    But I guess what you guys REALLY want to know is, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
  • Rich
    3.2k
    I guess what you guys REALLY want to know is, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.MikeL

    The OP was fine, and it seems like we are all rapidly converging upon an agreement that there is cosmic purpose. How do you feel about this as a fundamental theory of life? I'm actually good with it.
  • MikeL
    644
    I couldn't care less either way, so long as we can have some fun with it.
  • Wayne L Foley
    1
    Something, a substance having mass born of Nothingness is a creation; Creation being an original product of a particular sate or condition of the mind, rather than being born of ordinary means, cause and effect, a creation having more than a singular, direct material cause.

    As if by Magic, being born of the Air, a creation, a substance having mass, an entity, born of Nothingness, the ether, results in an affect rather than an effect.

    Original, First Cause, being an affect rather than being an effect, there being a
    single direct material cause of the existence of Everything.

    0/1 being the mathematical formula, the equation, that allows for the Existence of Everything, giving an explanation as to why something rather than nothing.

    Nothing, A Singularity of Zero-0, having no numerical value, must be transfigured, converted into a Singularity having relative, a numerical value of One-1.

    Once transfigured, going through a metamorphic transition, process, a Singularity
    of Zero-0 is converted into the First Singularity to have relative a numerical
    value of One-1, said Singularity of Zero-0 is reborn a Singularity having a relative,
    the numerical value of One-1, evolves into “The Reality of First Cause.”

    The Reality of First Cause being the single direct material cause, as in the butterfly
    effect, the single direct material cause of the System of Chaos that has made manifest
    the Heavens and the Earth, the Universe, Something, the Reality of Everything
    that exists in the material sense of the word.
  • MikeL
    644
    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.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k
    Start by answering honestly why a modelling relation with the world wouldn't feel like something. On what basis can you simply presume that?apokrisis

    I don't know, "WHAT" is this "feel like something"? You presume a non-dualism when right here is admittance. There IS a feel like something. What is THAT? You can't run to the idea of illusion as you are going to have to explain THAT then. More a=a. I can agree with you all day that modelling relations have feel like something aspects to it. That is not the hard problem. The hard problem is WHAT is the feel like something?
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.