Information can be appied to a physical sysstem. It is a number (the entropy) that we can calculate. It's an inherent property though it can be argues it's just a subjective number, as all numbers are. It's a measure of the ways a system can be in formation. The highest value allows only one formation (chaos), while the lowest, zero, allows only one too: total order.

The in-between value corresponds to the nicest kind of being in formation. These formations allow life.

-"Information can be appied to a physical sysstem. It is a number (the entropy) that we can calculate".
-This is what we usually do with "information" either when they are numbers or a statement of fact, we apply them on physical systems and thus produce further knowledge.

-" It's an inherent property though it can be argues it's just a subjective number, as all numbers are."
-Information can describe inherent properties by using subjective numbers which we have agreed to projected on them an objective meaning.

So the question doesn't really makes much sense — Nickolasgaspar

You might notice that the question was put in respect of a claim by a computer scientist that information is physical.

Sure ! This scientist argues about a specific aspect of the concept. Claims that convey data about facts of the physical world are valued as information. Since science can only investigate physical phenomena.....information can only "be physical". So he is arguing on the physical nature of the content of an "information".
This thread addresses the nature of "information" from a different aspect...as if the abstract concept of information has some kind of an idealistic ontology(whatever that means).
So this is a begging the question fallacy. The empirical way is the only way we can collect information and the objective standard is the only way we can verify it. Even our reasoning in order to be logical(thus to be used as information) it needs to be based or tested empirically.

This is going to start with some explanation about information theoretic concepts, which may seem unrelated at first, but the purpose of their introduction will become clearer later.

Most concepts in information theory are described in terms of degrees of non-determinism. They have nothing to do with semantics of physical expressions. I don't mean necessarily ontological non-determinism, but variation of quantities under the scope of whatever conditions apply. This, of course raises questions about the nature of the context of those conditions and what is non-determinism actually in practice, but I will defer till later.

A key concept, entropy, quantifies non-determinism. Captures the idea, metaphorically, that for some quantities, no matter how much we tried to hedge our bets on all possibilities, the outcomes will remain uninsurable. But this intuition seems to imply a subject, whereas the mathematical definition simply ascribes a relationship between a degree of freedom with which something can behave and degree of precision with which it can be quantified, whether a conscious predictor exists or not.

Another concept, mutual information, intuitively quantifies how much better "hedging" on one variable becomes when the non-determinism of another is eliminated by inclusion in the context. Again, this is just intuition. The mathematical definition simply relates the various outcomes or measurements of one variable to the other. The remaining non-determinism is the conditional entropy of one variable with respect to another. So, in information theory, you do not have object and subject per-se, but connection between the non-determinism of different quantities in the outcome, which is symmetric relation.

The above explanation applies to kinds of fields of application, which are not pertinent here. I am now going to focus to what I consider the notion of information to be in the physical sense, because it pertains to your inquiry. Even though this will not cover all the manners in which the theory is applied in general, the practical and fundamental sense end up being intertwined.

According to our present day natural science, or at least my best understanding, physical stuff is related to physical stuff through interactions that travel with the speed of light. Those interactions are impeded, first, by the propagation delay in the sense that it restricts the rate of roundtrip influence between separated entities, second, by the decay of the probability of interaction at greater distances, and third, by the subsumption of the field excitations after interaction, which means that stuff acts like a shield to other matter in its shadow, at least in the direction of the signal. Gravity is the exception to the last.

So, physical entities are "mutually informed". As long as one entity is close enough to another and not obscured by matter, we can constrain how those two entities coevolve together in a manner that we cannot constrain one entity by itself. This implies mutual information. They are more informed about immediate surroundings and less informed about distant and obscured surroundings. What happens to one particle of given type is generally much loosely specified, but physically restricted systems carry a lot of mutual information between their constituents.

Usually we refer by information to ascription of encoded meaning in the structure of some physical stuff which pertains to the structure of other physical stuff. I will argue that the dissemination of such information follows the same principle as the signaling of physical particles and if we have evolved under the natural law, without scientific self-contradiction, we could hypothesize that we have learned to interpret information by being first exposed to it in the fundamental physical sense and then have learned to encode information by knowing how to interpret it in the first place. Encoding with degree of abstraction, which is rather specific to intelligent life, is where symbolic and abstract representational encoding come into play. Those are not tied to information theory fundamentally, albeit being a particular object of interest for its application. Symbolic encoding requires higher cognitive abilities which are recent in our evolution and are a matter of investigation even more recently. But I don't want to digress yet.

Let us assume that interpretative skills exist for a moment. If we characterize as true being positively ascertainable by compelling impersonal factors, then if some sentence is encoding a true proposition, its expression under the naturalist doctrine must have structure which when interpreted by our brain should result in resonance between our cognitive faculty and certain spatio-temporal physical facts. At least in the sense that our brain's decisions will become more qualified. Those facts may be impossible to articulate through empirical measurements in practice, for social, aesthetic, ethical, etc. concerns, but such sentences have structure which makes the interpreter aware of the disposition of whatever aspects of the physical reality are necessary in order to avoid self-harm and achieve satisfaction, or collaborate to the collective attainment of the same in which it has a part.

The whole point is that encodings convey mutual information in the same sense in which physical interactions do, but even for obscured and distant physical aspects, abstract as they may be. As a simpler example, I know what a koala looks like, if not for any other reason, because I can google it. A camera used the interaction between its sensor array and the light reflected from the koala's outer surface, then carried this image to electronics and memory in the camera by electricity, then used electrical charge to record the image to flash storage or transfer it to some online storage of the media outlet. Nature restricts matter which makes one piece indicative of another, such that we can create chains of interactions that carry informedness from one entity to a much distant one and eventually convey it to a human being's senses.

You may rightfully ask, what makes my brain interpret information and regard it as such. The screen is in mostly literal state (even though it is flat and pixelated), but the assignment of the taxonomy of the image relies on the interpretation of text. The information in the form of a digital image is directly representational of the actual koala, not very abstract, and the symbolic information in the text which supplements it is. My brain itself encodes information, and it has differing degrees of abstraction, depending on which part of the brain is considered. Some encode highly abstract states of thinking and recollection, whereas other, such as parts of the visual cortex, are comparatively literal. In any case, because of the high degree of interconnectedness, the neural networks are very compact and either represent small aspects a of sensory stimulus, or amalgamate many such aspects.

I can only speculate how the interpretation skill has evolved, but you wouldn't expect more then speculation on this topic anyway. The earth absorbs solar radiation like most planets in the universe, but in our solar system the radiation intensity reach us is of the right amount, and the chemical diversity on our cosmic rock is of the right kind, such that various compounds absorb the electromagnetic into enough chemical energy and resist the residual thermodynamic entropy. As a result, stable conditions are present for the appearance of smaller and then larger systems, whose mutual information gradually permeates way past the normal effective range of immediate physical interactions. Evolution allows retention of state which reflects precedents in order to become responsive to recurrences in a manner that increases sustenance. This begins trivially, with simple polymers, whose very occurrence and statistical reproducibility conveys the conditions that fostered their structure, through protocells and simple bacteria which respond to the proliferation in more complex biomes and the appearance of biotic competition, and then all sorts of tissue specializations. This is all information retention. Not cerebral one, but retention nonetheless. The whole planet is like a memory bank and a processor.

The environment have already taken on interpretative mechanisms with the first reactive single-cellular life. They interpret stimuli, such as indirect food awareness, threat awareness, etc. The question is, how complex, dynamic, and deeply interpretative they could naturally evolve. We cannot say for certain. Too much data is erased and we are not such smart cookies to reconstruct nature's mechanism which had so much to experiment with plausibility to refine. If the evolution hypothesis is right, which to our best knowledge could be in principle, the physical order on our planet spawned interrelation engines, because they are able to retain information about what is distant in time and space. If you don't retain information with the environment, you become probable subject to its entropy and consequently could be subject to special assimilation.

physical entities are "mutually informed". As long as one entity is close enough to another and not obscured by matter, we can constrain how those two entities coevolve together in a manner that we cannot constrain one entity by itself. — simeonz

The problem is, it has been shown by quantum physics that entities can be entangled at arbitrarily great distances from each other.

the physical order on our planet spawned interrelation engines, — simeonz

The physical order doesn't 'spawn' anything. Spawn is a biological term and how biological functionality arises in the first place is an unsolved question. To assume that it occurs as a consequence of chemical necessity is reductionist. See What is information? by Marcello Barbieri, discusses the emerging perspective of code biology.

The idea that life evolved naturally on the primitive Earth suggests that the first cells came into being by spontaneous chemical reactions, and this is equivalent to saying that there is no fundamental divide between life and matter. This is the chemical paradigm, a view that is very popular today and that is often considered in agreement with the Darwinian paradigm, but this is not the case. The reason is that natural selection, the cornerstone of Darwinian evolution, does not exist in inanimate matter. In the 1950s and 1960s, furthermore, molecular biology uncovered two fundamental components of life—biological information and the genetic code—that are totally absent in the inorganic world, which means that information is present only in living systems, that chemistry alone is not enough and that a deep divide does exist between life and matter. This is the information paradigm, the idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’.

Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern synthesis, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of Biological Thought [15], p. 124, he made this point in no uncertain terms: ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’ — Barbieri

This thread is old -- just saw it now. And I'm not going to sift through all the pages to find out what's already been said. I'm just going to pretend this thread just started. :)

whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind.

-- Landauer
That's the reason he gave for why information is physical.

This is taken from this page which aggregates various articles about Landauer.

It seems, on face value, that this is mistaken to me, but then, Landauer was the head of IBM Research Labs, and I'm just an amatuer. But I have nothing to lose, so I'll give it a shot. — Wayfarer

Rule number one: Do not be intimidated by titles. Please. You lose the wow! factor.

So, on with my comment -- you are correct and MikeL here, below, is correct. Conflating what's being transmitted with mode of transmission.

Information transmission seems physical enough - the message though is conceptual. Is that what you're getting at?

I'm not exactly sure which one of these two Landauer was referring to. Has he conflated them? The idea of transmission of anything seems physical. — MikeL

This :point: He = masculine pronoun OR Helium.

He took the pen. There was He in the tank.

The information has changed (man to gas) but nothing physical has (He is still He). Clearly this is in violation of some physical law IF information is physical?

Thanks. Been a lot of water under the bridge since I posted this thread but I still think I'm on to something. The basic issue I see is that the rules of syntax, logic, and the like, can't be reduced to physical principles - they consist wholly and solely of relations between ideas.

There is a tendency to say, then, 'well ideas exist in brains, and brains are physical', to ground them in the physical domain. But I question that too. Some fundamental principles, such as the law of the excluded middle or the primitive constituents of arithemetic, must be true in all possible worlds - true a priori - so they don't come into existence as a result of neural architecture. Rather, we evolve to the point of being able to understand them. Certainly we need the evolved brain to understand them but they're not a product of that, they're a discovery made by it. (Which harks back to the ancient 'is maths invented or discovered?' question.)

Interesting fact: the derivation of the word 'intelligence' is early 16th century: from Latin intelligent- ‘understanding’, from the verb intelligere, variant of intellegere ‘understand’, from inter ‘between’ + legere ‘choose’. Something like 'reading between the lines', or 'interpretation'. That is what we (h. sapiens) do with each exercise of thought - make judgements based on inference of what something means. That is precisely what cannot be accounted for in physical terms, not least because we have to exercise it to even begin to know what 'physical' means.

The basic issue I see is that the rules of syntax, logic, and the like, can't be reduced to physical principles - they consist wholly and solely of relations between ideas. — Wayfarer

No objection here.

I had to quickly do a mental inventory of what I said back in the phenomenology thread when I went crazy over the idealism versus physical/materialism narrative. In that thread, I maintained that perception is physical, therefore, materialism is true. So to bring my claim to here, perception is our mode of information transmission. [Just to cover my base. lol. :grin: ]

The classical view, reflected somewhat in Kant, is that whilst perception is sensory, reason is not, in that reason inheres in the ability of intellect/nous to detect the underlying principles and order of things (as per classical metaphysics). But this faculty is precisely what was called into question, first by the nominalists (Ockham, Bacon) and then by the British empiricists (Hume, Locke, and Berkeley. See Jacques Maritain's essay The Cultural Impact of Empiricism, and also this blog post on the sensible and the intelligible.)

Some fundamental principles, such as the law of the excluded middle or the primitive constituents of arithemetic, must be true in all possible worlds - true a priori - so they don't come into existence as a result of neural architecture. Rather, we evolve to the point of being able to understand them. — Wayfarer

In quantum superposition, an individual wavelength is composed of multiple wavelengths, which can also be expressed conversely, so 1+1+1=1, law of noncontradiction and the excluded middle denied! The One of Parmenides may be approaching this concept from a philosophical angle.

As Heraclitus observed of raw perception, you can never step into the same river twice. A type of perception lacking the form or selection pressure for abstract concepts may completely exclude the generalization of unity or "1", with everything being an intrinsic multiplicity. I think this may be true of awareness in some spiritual beings that humans have not yet epistemically characterized.

It doesn't matter how much you want to anthrocentrize it, use some imagination and it becomes apparent that both the a priori and a posteriori are conditional.

The classical view, reflected somewhat in Kant, is that whilst perception is sensory, reason is not, in that reason inheres in the ability of intellect/nous to detect the underlying principles and order of things (as per classical metaphysics). But this faculty is precisely what was called into question, first by the nominalists (Ockham, Bacon) and then by the British empiricists (Hume, Locke, and Berkeley. See Jacques Maritain's essay The Cultural Impact of Empiricism, and also this blog post on the sensible and the intelligible.) — Wayfarer

Good links!
I agree with the both of them. I never agreed with the rationalism versus empiricism discourse anyway. There's something unsettling about the pure empiricist's view of perception. Interpretation of sensory input is rationalistic, and cannot be attributed mainly on the material nature of sensory input.

The problem is, it has been shown by quantum physics that entities can be entangled at arbitrarily great distances from each other. — Wayfarer

I think that the mutual information established between the entangled entities is acquired at the expense of new information theoretic entropy. Entanglement can establish correlation after quantum event which involves randomness in the outcome, which as a side effect severs the entities relations to their past. The entanglement depends on additional non-determinism, which is partially subsumed in the relationship established between the entangled entities. Thus it cannot increase our knowledge about remote configurations of matter, unless we deconstruct them first through randomness, so to speak, which is not the subject here. What physicists say is that entanglement cannot be used to communicate - because communication carries information about the historically conditioned outcome somewhere to somewhere else. Mutual information through quantum entanglement destroys the historical connection in both places.

The physical order doesn't 'spawn' anything. — Wayfarer

The hypothesis is indeed not proven. It is the currently best known explanation under naturalism, but one can reject naturalism. If you question the evolutionary hypothesis, which is ok, the problem becomes not how information can be physical in the naturalist framework, but how can information be without evolutionary origin of the central nervous system, or alternatively how can the central nervous system have evolutionary origin. But I am not sure if this was the point of the inquiry. If the critique is that the evolutionary hypothesis is not elaborated precisely yet and thus the appearance of information dissemination faculties is not guaranteed to be explained by it, you are right. It might not be.

But at least, I hope that you will concede in light of my arguments in the preceding post, that given some plausible evolutionary explanation of organic life from prebiotic chemistry under natural law, information could be plausibly physical. It seems that pretty much every question about the metaphysics of the abstract cerebral concepts ends up in questions about human genesis. But this is still important to conclude, in my opinion, if nothing else. That most issues about the abstract notions have answers that rest on the explanation of our genesis, one way or the other.

What hypothesis would you rather discuss? Do you reject the evolutionary hypothesis in the sense that you believe it to be inconsistent with its supporting framework, naturalism, or do you reject it methodologically due to the making of conjecture of this hypothesis while omitting crucial details in its explanation? Do you object necessarily that such explanation can be found, or that alternative naturalistic hypothesis of human genesis can be found, but shouldn't be assumed presently, or you reject methodologically that the naturalistic assumptions can be used for inferring the plausibility of any hypothesis, because they are themselves unproven? Do you seek discussion of the nature of information in a different framework? Ask yourself however, is it better defended to the same objections that you lay at naturalism's door? For example, is its hypothesis of human genesis better substantiated by equally compelling experience of any kind then the evolutionary hypothesis?

The idea that life evolved naturally on the primitive Earth suggests that the first cells came into being by spontaneous chemical reactions — Barbieri

I actually am under the impression that abiogenesis is more concentrated around the idea of the first self-replicating polymers, believed to be precursor to the first form of life, and most likely formed at first in fresh water, near steam vents, possibly on the surface of clay minerals, or other catalytic materials, or inside the pores of rocks. The "lightning struck" hypothesis is one of many, and I don't think it garners that much attention as you may think.

The reason is that natural selection, the cornerstone of Darwinian evolution, does not exist in inanimate matter. In the 1950s and 1960s, furthermore, molecular biology uncovered two fundamental components of life — Barbieri

Self-replicating polymer chains can exists and evolve without any other signs of life, and this I believe is proven in laboratory conditions, with environmental factors resembling what we believe to have been at the time. These are just natural formation, and did not contain biological information in the sense in which we understand it. They were organic chains more resistant to their surrounding conditions, and more easily formed from the available organic and inorganic materials. Note that this organic chains still did carry informational value about "what works", but not how to be living. A hypothesized precursor to life, the polymers are suggested to have adapted to proto-cell enclosure later, which may have formed by infiltration of the polymers in some naturally occurring vesicles in bodies of water and transmitted between the vesicles through either contact, or through polymer escaping as viroids. That would have provided some kind of natural selection and organic reproduction at first, although we cannot explain how the metabolic cycle appeared, such that the polymers became capable of reproducing not only themselves, but also the cell membrane along with the polymer inside it. There is no known contradiction/refutation of which I am aware, but neither do we have explanation. The polymer may have started to produce various hydrophilic compounds by secondary reactions in the water and thus form micelles in colloidal suspension.

Edit:
to the first form of life, most likely formed -> to the first form of life, and most likely formed
(the chains, not the cellular life formed)
known contradiction, but we don't have explanation -> known contradiction/refutation of which I am aware, but neither do we have explanation

In quantum superposition, an individual wavelength is composed of multiple wavelengths, which can also be expressed conversely, so 1+1+1=1, law of noncontradiction and the excluded middle denied! — Enrique

More that they're not applicable on that scale. There are things beyond logic, but we need to know logic in order to understand that.

Interpretation of sensory input is rationalistic, and cannot be attributed mainly on the material nature of sensory input. — Caldwell

:up:

The physical order doesn't 'spawn' anything.
— Wayfarer
The hypothesis is indeed not proven. — simeonz

It's an hypothesis based on a metaphysical presupposition, namely, physicalism, that only the physical is real. However I think there are ample grounds for saying that 20th century science has demonstrated that we don't even know what 'the physical' is. That style of thinking grew out of post-Cartesian dualism, which divided 'the world' into the two poles, material and mental. Then scientists and engineers, who couldn't make any sense out of the idea of the mental, tried to dispense with it so as to arrive at the concept of what is only or purely physical. But it is a completely incoherent idea, as evidenced by the vast conceptual conundrums which plague physics.

Self-replicating polymer chains can exists and evolve without any other signs of life, and this I believe is proven in laboratory conditions, with environmental factors resembling what we believe to have been at the time. These are just natural formation, and did not contain biological information in the sense in which we understand it — simeonz

If they can evolve, then they must be able to maintain homeostasis and identity over time, in which case they must contain biological information. Conversely if they contain no biological information, then they can't evolve, as there is nothing which will maintain continuity through change. And no, I don't believe that science has created an artificial living form de novo. I know they have engineered simple organisms into novel forms, but that's nothing like creating an actual organism from the elements of the periodic table.

I hope that you will concede in light of my arguments in the preceding post, that given some plausible evolutionary explanation of organic life from prebiotic chemistry under natural law, information could be plausibly physical. — simeonz

Not a ghost of a chance :wink:

I believe in a single substance, the mother of all forces, which engenders the life and consciousness of everything, visible and invisible. I believe in a single Lord, biology, the unique son of the substance of the world, born from the mother substance after centuries of random shuffling of material: the encapsulated reflection of the great material sea, the epiphenomenal light of primordial darkness, the false reflection of the real world, consubstantial with the mother-substance. It is he who has descended from the shadows of the mother-substance, he who has taken on flesh from matter, he who plays at the illusion of thought from flesh, he who has become the Human Brain. I acknowledge a single method for the elimination of error, thus ultimately eliminating myself and returning to the mother substance.

It's an hypothesis based on a metaphysical presupposition, namely, physicalism, that only the physical is real. However I think there are ample grounds for saying that 20th century science has demonstrated that we don't even know what 'the physical' is. That style of thinking grew out of post-Cartesian dualism, which divided 'the world' into the two poles, material and mental. Then scientists and engineers, who couldn't make any sense out of the idea of the mental, tried to dispense with it so as to arrive at the concept of what is only or purely physical. — Wayfarer

Not sure which particular metaphysical concerns you refer to, but I have stated before, that a variation on the pantheistic or panpsychic theme, in my opinion, can explain mental experiences in a physical world, while maintaining that the world is also entirely physical. In such scheme, the deity is physical and coextent with the entire universe, the mind is entirely physical and represents self-awareness of organized intelligent matter. However, no assumption is made, at least on my part, that such deity is antropomorphically and antropocentrically ethical, benevolent, relatable, or that the mental state is morally transcendent and superior in a fundamental sense to the surrounding nature. This is just a hypothesis, or conjecture if you will. It rests on the mandatory inclusion of external experience in the internal worldview, which I mostly agree with, and is thus compatible with naturalism. But overall, I am possibilian, as long as the hypothesis does not contradict the experience available to me personally.

Not a ghost of a chance :wink: — Wayfarer

But do you challenge the logical and internal consistency of my arguments and their consequence from the presuppositions made. I thought that the framework we agree upon when making the original inquiry was naturalism, because there is no point in raising objections to the claims made by naturalism and denying whatever metaphysical presuppositions it makes at the same time, as long as they are consistent.

Otherwise, I have always stated that belief is a valid personal argument, and most of science rests on it. But since there has to be some kind of consensus between people in society to discuss something polemically, to some practical degree at least, and since science has rather prevailing support due to the compelling nature of physical experience, that makes it consensual and in that sense impersonally validated. In contrast, other beliefs are personally validated, but they are not supported by the same degree of consensus. Empiricism also lays objections to such beliefs when they are sustained along the belief in science, because it critiques methodologically the application of different standards when validating different beliefs. It is not infallible critique, but it is food for thought for each individual on their own.

You might notice that the question was put in respect of a claim by a computer scientist that information is physical. — Wayfarer

I'm late to the party, and I may have replied a year or so ago. But FWIW, I'll add my two-cents worth to the Reification of Information question. My Enformationism thesis is based on the concept that Information is both Physical and Meta-physical ; both Material and Mental. To see both sides of the Information coin though, you have to look through two different Frames with different assumptions : Scientific and Philosophical.

Basically, Information is physical in the sense that Energy is physical : it's the power to cause change of form (E=MC^2). But Information is also meta-physical in that it is the abstract knowledge content of a Mind (i.e. meaning). The link below is my personal answer to some what-and-how Consciousness questions on this very forum. :smile:

What is Information? :
Is Information Physical or Metaphysical? . . . or both
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page16.html

the mind is entirely physical and represents self-awareness of organized intelligent matter. — simeonz

When you use the term 'entirely physical', what does that really mean? Does it mean 'explicable in terms of physics'? The problem is that concept of what actually constitutes 'the physical', or what 'physical' really means, is subject to constant revision. And this means that using the term in that way, as a kind of sweeping claim as to the real nature of things is subject to Hempel's dilemma:

Physicalism...is the claim that the entire world may be described and explained using the laws of nature, in other words, that all phenomena are natural phenomena. This leaves open the question of what is 'natural' (in physicalism 'natural' means procedural, causally coherent or all effects have particular causes regardless of human knowledge [like physics] and interpretation and it also means 'ontological reality' and not just a hypothesis or a calculational technique), but one common understanding of the claim is that everything in the world is ultimately explicable in the terms of physics. This is known as reductive physicalism (which is under discussion here). However, this type of physicalism in its turn leaves open the question of what we are to consider as 'the proper terms of physics'. There seem to be two options here, and these options form the horns of Hempel's dilemma, because neither seems satisfactory.

On the one hand, we may define the physical as whatever is currently explained by our best physical theories, e.g., quantum mechanics, general relativity. Though many would find this definition unsatisfactory, some would accept that we have at least a general understanding of the physical based on these theories, and can use them to assess what is physical and what is not. And therein lies the rub, as a worked-out explanation of mentality currently lies outside the scope of such theories.

On the other hand, if we say that some future, "ideal" physics is what is meant, then the claim is rather empty, for we have no idea of what this means. The "ideal" physics may even come to define what we think of as mental as part of the physical world. In effect, physicalism by this second account becomes the circular claim that all phenomena are explicable in terms of physics because physics properly defined is whatever explains all phenomena.

---

Since there has to be some kind of consensus between people in society to discuss something polemically, to some practical degree at least, and since science has rather prevailing support due to the compelling nature of physical experience, that makes it consensual and in that sense impersonally validated. — simeonz

That's a very interesting observation. The prevailing wisdom since the Enlightenment is typically assumed to originate with and be validated by science. But there are many conflicts within post-Enlightenment philosophy, which its most ardent proponents never seem to be able to perceive due to their underlying assumptions. Fundamentally these problems revolve around the fact-value dichotomy, also known as the is/ought distinction. Another way of framing that is in terms of the distinction between what can be objectively measured and known, and what can be intuited to be so. But there's a lot of deep philosophical problems in that issue, to really analyse them would take a lot of of writing. But suffice to say:

I thought that the framework we agree upon when making the original inquiry was naturalism — simeonz

I myself don't assume a naturalist framework. I think I understand what that is, but I've never felt obliged to confine myself to it. It's the natural assumption for the natural sciences, but I'm of the view that the problems of life and mind cannot be understood in wholly naturalist terms.

Basically, Information is physical in the sense that Energy is physical: it's the power to cause change of form (E=MC^2). — Gnomon

I like your thinking, and I read those pages on your blog. (Wonder what happened to Galuchat, he hasn't posted for a few years.) There's something nagging at the back of my mind about it, but I'm going to leave it for now. I had intended to log out for a few weeks until this thread got re-animated.

If they can evolve, then they must be able to maintain homeostasis and identity over time, in which case they must contain biological information. Conversely if they contain no biological information, then they can't evolve, as there is nothing which will maintain continuity through change. — Wayfarer

I don't believe that natural selection requires invariable homeostasis, at least for its explanation to work technically. It requires sustainability of the entire ecosystem and its internal interactions, which does not only allow for, but also requires coevolution. Identity, just like in our lives, follows a thread of events that remove from the original form and alter it. The maintenance of identity and its ascription to some physical does require some quasi-consistency and interoperation technically, but isn't a matter of homeostatic invariance (as we ourselves transition through many stages in our life cycle), but is more so a matter of necessity and behavioral programming.

And no, I don't believe that science has created an artificial living form de novo. I know they have engineered simple organisms into novel forms, but that's nothing like creating an actual organism from the elements of the periodic table. — Wayfarer

I then think that you are essentially asking that scientists "make a baby". Maybe they will, maybe they wont, eventually. I was referring to self-replicating organic polymers and explaining how they relate to our exploration of the abiogenetic hypothesis. You want complete answer, but science doesn't work like that. Empirical research is commitment to incremental threading through oceans of ignorance. We don't have the capacity to answer questions on demand, just because they can be raised.

First, there is a lot of dynamic state that we have to intellectually reflect on, with minute processing power in comparison to nature's, in large space of hypothetical possibilities, and second, a lot of the data cannot be reliably retrodicted due to entropy. We rely entirely on nature's redundancy (statistical repetitiveness and predictability) when compared to our cognitive apparatus. This is not argument for why someone has to reject non-empirical stances, but it is an explanation of why there is no progress guarantee for empirical comprehension, but people are trying. It is continuously evolving understanding, not a method of immediate inquiry.

When you use the term 'entirely physical', what does that really mean? Does it mean 'explicable in terms of physics'? — Wayfarer

Here, I do actually mean entirely physical, in the matarialistic sense. But note that I claim that pantheism and panpsychism are consistent with scientific empricism, I don't claim that they are necessitated by it. Indeed, I claim that pantheism and panpsychism are logically consistent with methodological naturalism, and compatible with metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. And although thus not actually proven, their admissibility is at least philosophically important, at least to me, because it addresses the primary concerns with physicalism, the issue of hard problem of consciousness (because matter is consciousness itself) and the issue of human genesis (because nature is hermetic in sense that it is divine, not needing creator). This doesn't prove physicalism, materialism, neither pantheism, panpsychism. Only reflects on their internal consistency.

Any degree of personal faith that I may actually have is a separate and rather small matter, but generally, as I said, I am open to the evaluation of all theistic and metaphysical suggestions, while guided by my intuitions and experience. Like everyone else. I have very little commitment to any particular theistic hypothesis, just preferences for various reasons. I am not devout or reverent.

The prevailing wisdom since the Enlightenment is typically assumed to originate with and be validated by science. But there are many conflicts within post-Enlightenment philosophy, which its most ardent proponents never seem to be able to perceive due to their underlying assumptions. Fundamentally these problems revolve around the fact-value dichotomy, also known as the is/ought distinction. Another way of framing that is in terms of the distinction between what can be objectively measured and known, and what can be intuited to be so. — Wayfarer

I understand. I have concurred before that intuition/belief is a valid private/personal argument by its very existence. And science does rely on intuitions, which is why their private validity. But science is consistent to employ them, because they have captured (according to science) the necessarily utilitarian outcome of natural selection.

The problem with private intuitions is that you cannot polemicize them, except for methodological and logical consistency. For anything else (and some may argue to a lesser degree even for that), you have the practical necessity of groundwork on which human interaction to proceed. You have to rely on consensus, which while not a measure of metaphysical truth, just like, say, democracy is not a guarantee of ethical correctness, is necessary for social constructivism. But if our intuitions disagree, we could demonstrate methodological or logical inconsistency, and even then, adapt in incompatible ways.

I prefer to discuss consistency anyways, rather then validity. Validity discussions are ultimately a majority voting tactic, which I believe is of limited use in philosophy. Only in philosophy. Demonstration of consistency does not entice resonance within the group, which is why some people may object to its social usefulness, but I prefer that philosophy is not pursued with direct social aims, but rather pursued logically, where differing intuitions are logically debated and contrasted, rather then shunned by majority consensus. Then again, there is some contradiction in my very intent.

For transparency, I favor compelling (as opposed to voluntary) experience, recognize existence-awareness, and believe in order, which I believe necessitates philosophical explanation that might require concessions for intelligent large scale organization. But pantheism and panpsychism are sufficient philosophical groundwork for explanation to me. I am prepared to discuss the internal consistency of other intuitions, contrast them, theistically, logically, etc. I don't want to oppress anyone, but in everyday decision making, I contend with decisions that are effectively based on different intuitions. That is how society works.

I then think that you are essentially asking that scientists "make a baby". Maybe they will, maybe they wont, eventually. I was referring to self-replicating organic polymers and explaining how they relate to our exploration of the abiogenetic hypothesis. You want complete answer, but science doesn't work like that. Empirical research is commitment to incremental threading through oceans of ignorance. We don't have the capacity to answer questions on demand, just because they can be raised. — simeonz

It was in response to the question of the plausibility of abiogenesis. It seems obvious to many people that abiogenesis must have occured, by process of the elimination of the alternative explanations, that being 'divine creation', which of course naturalism must abjur. But in the absence of such a creative principle or spark as a higher intelligence, then it is incumbent on those proposing such an alternative to demonstrate how it occured on the basis of what is understood as natural laws, but this they cannot do. So I'm simply challenging a widely-accepted belief, that life somehow bootstraps itself into existence on the basis of physical causes. Which is, after all, what you proposed with your remark about how physical systems 'spawn'. Insofar as babies are also a kind of spawn, then indeed, science has been unable to replicate that (although I should add that science has greatly assisted many persons who have had trouble with the natural means of so doing, which is the just kind of thing where medical science really does excel).

Incidentally, in that article I quoted, this point is mentioned:

The idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’ implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry, but can we prove it? Perhaps the strongest argument in support of this claim has come from Hubert Yockey, one of the organizers of the first congress dedicated to the introduction of Shannon's information in biology [16]. In a long series of articles and books, Yockey [17–19] has underlined that heredity is transmitted by factors that are ‘segregated, linear and digital’ whereas the compounds of chemistry are ‘blended, three-dimensional and analogue’.

Yockey underlined that: ‘Chemical reactions in non-living systems are not controlled by a message … There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences’ [18], p. 105.

Yockey has tirelessly pointed out that no amount of chemical evolution can cross the barrier that divides the analogue world of chemistry from the digital world of life, and concluded from this that the origin of life cannot have been the result of chemical evolution. This is therefore, according to Yockey, what divides life from matter: information is ontologically different from chemistry because linear and digital sequences cannot be generated by the analogue reactions of chemistry.

At this point, one would expect to hear from Yockey how linear and digital sequences did appear on Earth, but he did not face that issue. He claimed instead that the origin of life is unknowable, in the same sense that there are propositions of logic that are undecidable. This amounts to saying that we do not know how linear and digital entities came into being; all we can say is that they were not the result of spontaneous chemical reactions. — What is Information? Marcello Barbieri

Predictably, ID types have seized upon this to create an argument for their beliefs, but I think it's only required to recognise that it's at least an open question and one which has not been foreclosed by the dogmatic atheism of Dawkins et al.

That is how society works. — simeonz

Well, I see your point, but again we're engaged in a rather metaphysical discussion of 'the meaning of meaning', which perhaps is nearer in spirit to philosophy proper than to the social sciences.

It was in response to the question of the plausibility of abiogenesis. It seems obvious to many people that abiogenesis must have occured, by process of the elimination of the alternative explanations, that being 'divine creation', which of course naturalism must abjur. But in the absence of such a creative principle or spark as a higher intelligence, then it is incumbent on those proposing such an alternative to demonstrate how it occured on the basis of what is understood as natural laws, but this they cannot do. — Wayfarer

Have not done is more proper then they cannot do.

You may argue that natural evolution is so complex that it is obviously naive hypothesis. It seems that stages of the evolutionary chain that were previously confounding become explained over time. I am on the fence about it. The main problems currently are the appearance of metabolism and morphogenesis. At the moment, those can be hypothesized to have involved transitions beyond the natural law, which then could be called miracles. They may have also involved improbable events that are within the scope of the natural law, which may be argued to indicate intelligent design of the universe, but not miraculous intervention. The evolution of the central nervous system, which actually is pertinent to your question, isn't that much of a problem (comparatively).

While if creationism is true, it would indeed suggest that our intelligence may be endowed by its creator with possible non-physical component, it would not necessitate it. First, miracles in our origin do not imply that the creator lies outside of the physical reality. Its creative intelligence might be embedded in the physical world itself. But even if we constrain the meaning of physicality to natural behavior without anomalous creative occurrences, or discover that the creator is not ontologically incident with universe, information could still be physical in its present operation. Our genesis may have relied on divine intervention at some point, but that still does not offer compelling practical reason to believe that intelligence and information are not presently entirely physical. While they could be transcendent, this conclusion cannot be made on the basis of our externally shared experience, private intuition aside.

So I'm simply challenging a widely-accepted belief, that life somehow bootstraps itself into existence on the basis of physical causes. Which is, after all, what you proposed with your remark about how physical systems 'spawn'. — Wayfarer

I will again return to the nature of your original inquiry. If you reject naturalism/physicalism to begin with, due to abiogenesis or any other reason, why ask about the arguments behind the physicality of information. At least in terms of our use of information, you might have as well asked why we believe in abiogenesis, or why physicalism. Information basically seems to sidetrack the centerstage of the discussion.

Earlier I suggested that I have vaguely demonstrated, as much as the space, time, and my competence permits, that the information would be at least physical after the inclusion of the abiogenesis as a presupposition. You did not seem to concur, or you didn't find concurring relevant in light of your objections?

Insofar as babies are also a kind of spawn, then indeed, science has been unable to replicate that — Wayfarer

Science never can obtain exhaustive hermetic justification. It is methodological and logically consistent evaluation of experience in continuous progress. Beliefs that lie in the zone of our scientific ignorance can consider themselves admitted by science until it broadens its horizons. But the truth is that such admission does not make them validated by science.

You are suggesting that scientists must discover chain of evolutionary events that is regular under natural law, in order to prove natural selection. First, scientists cannot demonstrate evolution as one continuous process in laboratory conditions, considering that it has taken a couple of billion years to form organisms from organic mud, according to our estimates. Scientists can try to demonstrate stages in isolation. Which they try, but indeed not all stages thus far.

I could counter your insistence for direct proof by arguing that you have to demonstrate the necessity of creative spark by pointing to me where in history the inconsistency with natural law has occurred. Not simply that it is implausible not to be, but demonstrate it in laboratory conditions.

I would say that extrapolating from our experience, it seems questionable to default to creationism due to our present ignorance, but even if we did, such divine creator should not necessarily be benevolent and external to the universe. Note that there is nothing to imply with reasonable certainty, objectively, that the creator is morally purposeful.

Edit:
, but it does necessitate it -> , but it doesn't necessitate it
(the part about dualism and information)

I also have rewritten some paragraphs to make them readable. My writing style still needs work.

Chemical reactions in non-living systems are not controlled by a message … There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences — What is Information? Marcello Barbieri

The chemistry that we refer to usually, that we use for artificial synthetic purposes doesn't act in this way with respect to the main reactants, but I am pretty sure that you could make catalysts produce digital effects depending on their kind and concentration. I presume, what is criticized is the plausibility of rendering such effects with the degree of material sophistication in human beings, using self-catalytic and self-reproducing substances. Again, I understand the skepticism, but the argument using "digitalization" of matter seems indirect to me, using intuitively perceivable quality, instead of some concrete measurable characteristic.

The main problems [in abiogenesis] currently are the appearance of metabolism and morphogenesis. At the moment, those can be hypothesized to have involved transitions beyond the natural law, which then could be called miracles. — simeonz

Only insofar as 'natural law' is concieved in a very narrow and physicalist way. Physical reductionism of course wishes to reduce everything to physics - that's what it means! - but I think the emerging disciplines of biosemiotics, systems theory, environmental sciences, and so on, are not reductionist in that sense, but are still seeking to be naturalistic (e.g. here).

I don't believe that natural selection requires invariable homeostasis — simeonz

I don't have any expert knowledge of biology, but it would seem to me that without homeostasis, which is one of the key attributes of living organisms, there would be nothing able to be selected. The point seems to be that living things have an ability to maintain identity through change, which is not characteristic of inorganic matter.

the argument using "digitalization" of matter seems indirect to me, using intuitively perceivable quality — simeonz

But again, DNA encodes and conveys information. That's what Yockey's book is about. Do you know his book Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life? I borrowed it from the library, but it really takes expert knowledge of biology and probably also information theory to understand. In any case, Barbieri's comment is:

the physicalist thesis is wrong because it is only spontaneous processes that are completely described by physical quantities. The same applies to Yockey's argument: it is true that linear, digital and specific properties do not exist in spontaneous processes, but they do exist in all manufacturing processes, including those that are produced by molecular machines at the molecular level.

When a copymaker scans a nucleic acid and makes a copy of that molecule, what happens is precisely an operation that brings into existence a linear and digital copy of a pre-existing molecule. It was molecular copying—the simplest form of artefact-making—that started manufacturing biological objects and set in motion the odyssey of life on the primitive Earth.

What is particularly important, to our purposes, is that the concept of artefact-making explains how it is possible that life evolved from inanimate matter and yet it is fundamentally different from it. The divide between life and matter is real because matter is made of spontaneous objects whereas life is made of manufactured objects.

Now, of course the ID exponents will say that the 'manufacturing' is done by God, but I don't think it is necessary to leap to that conclusion. I simply observe that there's an ontological distinction between living and non-living nature. I think that is both perceivable and conceptually defensible, although of course physicalism cannot admit of such an ontological distinction, as there is only one kind of being or substance in physicalism.

Only insofar as 'natural law' is concieved in a very narrow and physicalist way. Physical reductionism of course wishes to reduce everything to physics - that's what it means! - but I think the emerging disciplines of biosemiotics, systems theory, environmental sciences, and so on, are not reductionist in that sense, but are still seeking to be naturalistic (e.g. here). — Wayfarer

You are right, that we could potentially find laws which produce more accurate description of the universe at larger scales. Albeit not focused on living organisms, the second law of thermodynamics is of the variety. Indeed, we haven't found behavior which escapes the constraints of the local physical laws in isolated interactions, but the second law provides probabilistic description extending beyond them, and is time asymmetric, thus it is not expressible through time symmetric laws. It is believed to be dependent on the initial conditions of the cosmos, whose description is irreducible.

On the other hand, this does not mean that any quality of organization is a fundamental law. Some studies pertaining to social organization are considered fundamentally non-explanative, because they are valid only on this planet, in our span of time. Humanities, as such, are too subject particular to be sciences.

Science looks for restrictions imposed fundamentally, explanative mechanisms that apply everywhere, with the power to justify our affairs through high or at least moderately probable outcomes. Anything else implies dependence on low-probability miracle in conventional terms, or organization in particular spatio-temporal regions with some kind of non-entropic design. This is possible, but based on prior experience, it had not been the case so far. Such oddity would not validate all of the conventional theism, but it would suggest origin that cannot be explained by mundane physicalism.

I skimmed through the paper you provided, but I will have to read it in more detail. Even though I concur that it may be possible that the restrictions in sciences are incomplete and we need rectify or expand their repertoire, including levels of organization that apply exclusively at larger scales, this would not merely require a philosophical paradigm shift, but laws that need to be specified in a way qualifying their preconditions and the constraints they impose. They would have to be either demonstrable in controlled manner, or observable with sufficient variation naturally, that the judgement of the precision of the relationship they hypothesize can be ascertained.

I don't have any expert knowledge of biology, but it would seem to me that without homeostasis, which is one of the key attributes of living organisms, there would be nothing able to be selected. The point seems to be that living things have an ability to maintain identity through change, which is not characteristic of inorganic matter. — Wayfarer

I don't think that identity is much more then a useful instrument for sentient decision making, trying to obtain sustainable symbiotic relationship, while needing to understand and evaluate the confinement of its agency. Prebiotic chemistry simply does not have the expressiveness of material organization necessary in order to exhibit constant behavioral agency under change.

What I meant when I said that organisms do not possess invariable homeostasis was that the biological processes through the lifecycle of an individual, or the hereditation of traits and culture through the generations of the species, do not actually maintain complete structural balance. An embryo, infant, and elderly person differ significantly from each other, physiologically, mechanically. Likewise, societies experience social imbalances, organizational shifts. In fact, abstractly speaking, every organism, biological or social, is dying from the moment of its conception. Living admits the failure of equilibrium in order to produce fundamental change over time.

What is particularly important, to our purposes, is that the concept of artefact-making explains how it is possible that life evolved from inanimate matter and yet it is fundamentally different from it. The divide between life and matter is real because matter is made of spontaneous objects whereas life is made of manufactured objects.

Unfortunately, I have not read the book, but for my part, I would need the following clarification to justify this conclusion. Some hypothetical, even fictional examples, of the simplest artefact-making processes that the author conceives, biological or not, that could be bootstrapped by synthetic means and remain henceforth autonomous in their operation. I would then wonder of some examples of the closest sustainable autonomous chemical processes that are not sophisticated enough to qualify as artefact-making, produced synthetically or naturally occurring, and whether the gap from the latter to the former can conceivably be bridged through mundane physical occurrence. Rinse and repeat, until a process with no natural precursors can be found.

It is difficult to assert confidently the conclusion, without knowing what must have occurred in basic original form to qualify for the criteria, and what could have occurred mundanely. The importance of defining such ideas precisely is that we need to express the conclusion in stages that we can evaluate non-intuitively. Obviously contemporary organisms are unlike prebiotic chemistry, but what about viroids, viruses, cyanobacteria, etc. You may claim that viruses and viroids need a host, but originally, it may not have been a cellular host in the sense it is today. That is why when evaluating an idea I try to seek what programmers call "minimum working example", the most elementary hypothetical illustration possible.

...

I will conclude on a friendlier note. Science ultimately relies on unproven and impossible to prove convictions. There is a lot to be said about the circularity of scientific thinking, because inductive and statistical inference, objectivity of empiricism, logical deduction, are all in the final analysis behavioral habits. These habits, insofar as their proponents are still here, can be considered to be effective, but the people who object to the exclusiveness of the scientific method are present as well. This is why we base social action on more practical rules, such as dominance, voting, consensus, etc. Philosophically, I know that I am oversimplifying issues that affect what we consider miraculous and intelligent, and what we consider orderly and mundane. It would conflate the original inquiry even further if I delved into them, and I am being reminded of Socrates's "I believe that I know nothing" and Heraclitus's "no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

An embryo, infant, and elderly person differ significantly from each other, physiologically, mechanically. — simeonz

But they nevertheless retain their identity. Creatures don't change their species, notwithstanding some of the astounding transformations that occur in some insects and fish in which the juveniles are radically different to the mature forms. I guess that's the 'ship of Theseus' problem, in a way, but nevertheless I'm sure you would agree that one of the main characteristics of any living organism is to maintain an identity through time even in spite of many changes. The characteristic of any living cell is memory and anticipation.

Coming to think of it, this was probably behind the attempt in Aristotle's metaphysics to differentiate essence and accident - what is essential to the organism is what makes it the kind of species it is, while it's individual parrticulars might vary hugely. (I've heard it said that DNA is a modern iteration of Aristotle's essence.)




https://www.jstor.org/stable/3654247

I would then wonder of some examples of the closest sustainable autonomous chemical processes that are not sophisticated enough to qualify as artefact-making, produced synthetically or naturally occurring, and whether the gap from the latter to the former can conceivably be bridged through mundane physical occurrence. Rinse and repeat, until a process with no natural precursors can be found. — simeonz

Well, that's what abiogenesis research has been attempting for some decades but with no conclusive results, as I understand it. I believe Ilya Prigogine is a pioneer in that area.

Personally, ever since I read Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe's book Intelligent Universe, I've always been rather drawn to the panspermia theory - that the planet is like a celestial ovum and a comet the stellar sperm, and that given the appropriate conditions, life-bearing cells arriving in this form can evolve and flourish wherever suitable environments have developed. It still doesn't solve the original problem of the origin of life, which as Yockey insists, may be insoluble. I also like the old Stoic dictum 'life comes from life'.

I will conclude on a friendlier note. Science ultimately relies on unproven and impossible to prove convictions. — simeonz

Your posts are always very courteous. I don't want to disparage science but to explore the sense in which such questions can be explored through perspectives other than the scientific. Just recall that modern scientific method, as I think you've acknowledge already, always starts with exclusion, with the narrowing-down of the scope the questions it deals with so as to identify precise causal relations and the most general principles. Certainly through this methodology we've discovered many things that earlier ages never could have but science still does operate in the domain of the contingent, so to speak.

“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

I think you can probably change a few terms in this quote to say something like ‘information’ is ‘empty’ without ‘the physical’ and ‘the physical’ is ‘blind’ without ‘information’.

:up:

It still doesn't solve the original problem of the origin of life, which as Yockey insists, may be insoluble. — Wayfarer

A brief comment regarding abiogenesis.

It has been discovered that single-tailed phospholipids can easily be synthesized from a cocktail of constituent molecules in the lab. They then assemble into spherical bubbles about the size of a typical cell membrane on their own. Double-tailed phospholipids, the main molecule of modern membranes, however they initially formed, automatically integrate into these primitive cells when introduced to the same solution.

This is the primary precondition for life since phospholipid membranes would have stabilized emergent biochemical pathways as they became studded with almost any type of organic molecule while providing the mechanism for primordial speciation of inanimate chemistry in differentiating cellular environments, and it is rather spontaneous.

All the basic ingredients of life can be found in deep sea hydrothermal vents: fundamental organic molecules such as amino acids emitted from beneath the ocean's surface, networks of microscopic pores in rock that effectively function as cell walls, catalytic metal surfaces created by the erosion of rock in these pores, the cyclical flow of extremely hot water to distribute nutrients, hydrogen atoms stripped of electrons to form proton gradients as the most important component of cellular respiration.

Ribozymes exist in modern cells, hybrids of RNA and enzymatic structure that catalyze some of their own reactions, a possible evolutionary link between metabolism and genetic systems.

Stromatolites are primitive colonies of somewhat specialized cell types found in ocean rock, possibly the link between the first cells and macroscopic bodies.

All the prerequisites and missing links of transition from the inorganic to organic currently exist in Earth ecosystems. The barrier to definitively modeling this evolutionary process is the inability to replicate these conditions in an experiment, but indirect evidence seems to suggest that the move to organic chemistry is the most inevitable evolutionary step. Fossil records reveal the earliest cells arose 4 billion years ago, and it wasn't until 600 million years ago that the leap was made to macroscopic organisms.

Simulation of the evolutionary process by science may prove impossible for the near future, but spontaneous life from nonlife with no miracles (as in disruptions of the natural order) is a probable explanation.

But again, DNA encodes and conveys information. — Wayfarer

It only encodes for proteins only. The ribosome is used to read it and deliver proteins. But the ribosomes are made from proteins too. Which came first? It must have been proteins, "creating" the economical means to evolve. One can even imagine that the same kinds of building blocks are used to construct vastly different living structures. Once they came in existence, they stayed in form along the line. Inserting riceplant genes in a fertilized dog egg cell might give a riceplant (here I'm talking nonsense, but I wonder what would happen). Riceplants contain more or less the same number of genes as dog cells. Maybe they are smaller. But the overall structure of the dogcell can shape the proteins from the riceplant genes into a dog, more or less. This won't happen of course, but the structure the proteins form determines holistically what happens to the building blocks. Intelligence isn't contained in the genes. Nor are feet and noses.

Which came first? It must have been proteins, "creating" the economical means to evolve. — Cartuna

I read the section of Simon Conway Morris' book on the 'protein hyperspace' - some years ago, I admit, and my recollection is hazy. But the gist as I recall it is that the possible configurations of protein folds comprise a number of enormous magnitude - 2 the power of some large number. Very few of these configurations give rise to the kinds of proteins that are actually useful for propogating life. The upshot is that if it were purely a matter of chance - the 'million monkeys' kind of idea - then the Universe is not nearly old enough to have provided enough time for all of the possibilities to have been realised. Conway Morris is not however proposing intelligent design - more that there are necessary constraints on the way such processes play out, which he analyses under the heading of 'convergence'.

My philosophical take on the question is to avoid both the neo-darwinian view, that life somehow springs into existence as a kind of chemical reaction that then evolves through the Darwinian algorithm (e.g. Darwin's Dangerous Idea), on the one hand, and any form of ID on the other. I'm drawn to the idea that the world 'knows itself through us' which is found in various mainly esoteric philosophical traditions. So the emergence of living organisms just is the manifestation of intelligence - not a cosmic designer with an inordinate fondness for beetles, but an inherent tendency towards higher levels of intelligence and awareness. Within that metaphorical framework, enlightenment (both scientific and spiritual) represents the culminating stages of that awareness becoming self-aware.