The only hurdle is trying to come up with a phrase that replaces the word mind — Rich

Not a phrase, an explanation that unites.

I take your point on its all mind, or life force. That is not in dispute here. The fact that these happenings are occuring in the face of Thermodynamics is powerful testimony. It is the driving force.

So now, the exciting journey is to track the emergence from what seems like inanimate matter to what we know is our own mind. What are the steps along the way? How does it all unfold? How does mind do it?

It comes down to the mind, the creative force, God, whatever it is that drives life.
Life is built like Russian stacking dolls.

Each layer begins with freedom. Atoms kicking about on a nice summer's day find themselves bonded into a molecule and suddenly with limited mobility.

The molecules flitter about in the Great Soup of Creation :) but then find themselves constrained inside cycles - good food to eat.

The cycles become entrapped in cells. Useless parts are discarded. Everything serves a purpose or is gotten rid of. It's streamlined efficiency. No freedom to just flitter about anymore.

The interesting thing though is that each level entraps itself. The molecules end up forming the systems. It is their creation and their captor.

Humans too, with this intrinsic drive inside to create, end up creating this world around us. Government, Big Business (Big Pharm - I know you'll like that one). But they have entrapped themselves, no different to the molecule. Same force, same feeling inside.

It forms a logical scaffold for me so that I can climb from atoms to mind. I like the semiotics idea, that there is function/purpose beyond the atoms. The next hurdle after semiotics is explaining intentionality. In these very low layers, intentionality is identified by behaviour.

Now, we know that Operant Conditioning, a branch of psychology - the study of the mind (just to emphasise the point), looked at these cause and effect behaviours through the lens of psychology - so there is an important link. We are now up to the level of the mind in explaining the transition from non-life to life.

The final nail then is to bridge behaviour and mind and we will have a working model.

That sounds like a good definition. Learning and evolving implies directionality. What do you think of the entombing ourselves idea?

Agreed. It is a cause and effect model of understanding behaviour, which could be extrapolated into explaining evolution or why we begin to identify sentient behaviours in cells etc. Behaviour can also be mapped to mind. The bridge may be out for now between Skinner and.... Freud? but it's a much narrower stream to ford.

So, when you suggest not a back door, do you mean no door or front door?

That sounds a bit like the rationale a behaviouralist might use. No depth to the mind. Have you heard of Operant Conditioning?

My dog can't touch type unfortunately, otherwise I would put him on. Splinter skill I'm afraid. But he did reply when I went outside with his lead this afternoon. He replied when he saw I was cross with him for eating my slipper. He spoke sharply to the postman the other day, and asked me if I was serious when I told him he could come inside yesterday.

Oh, and Skinner didn't believe that the mind is real. — Wayfarer

Just because I like his ideas doesn't mean I'm going to dress up as him and run around. A good idea is a good idea if it fits the situation well. I think Operant Conditioning deserves another look in relation to semiotics, and working out the kinks so that those of us who wish to can connect it to mind.

I think the greatest failure of the modern world, or perhaps the human world, is the belief that we are superior to animals. We are born into a world (souding a bit Matrix like here) that is disconnected from nature by the constructions of the generations before us. Constructions that have arisen out of the complex reasoning that is our splinter skill. Other animals can fly, some can use echolocation - we don't naturally have those things.

Animals are pets, things in a zoo or on a nature doco. But if you watch closely the nature clips, especially on YouTube, you will see a complex order out there driven by mixed emotions and drives and heirarhy. If you pay attention to the animals you pass on your daily jog, you will see the sentience in them. Apart from reason and applied reason, there is nothing I can see that separates us.

Can you give an example that is not based on reasoning or applied reasoning to support the idea that humans being no different to animals is a patent fallacy?

Thanks, I'll check it out. 20min sounds a good length for me.

I don't put any stock into claims that theories have been discredited. I like to see what works. A behaviouralist approach to physchology has many merits and may be a back door into mind. If we can find the back door we can link mind with semiotics and take a big step closer to clearing up the mess of the transition from non-life to life.

Human beings are a species of animal. When I look around I find no unique difference that separates us. I see our splinter skill of reasoning, and the application of that reasoning, but animals have splinter skills too, not just us.

I see the full repertoire of emotions in animals. I can communicate with them in a sentient way.
How are people different to animals in your opinion?

Thanks Wayfarer. I love this forum. What a breeding ground for new ideas when we have so many experts in so many fields all blending their knowledge!

Is there any more specific information on Logos and his role in life as you have shown above? Or any other of the religions, that might guide our ideas here? Any reference to self-encapsulation and loss of freedom through this force?

Well, almost the mind anyway.

Does invoking Skinner close the gap between everyone's ideas? Operant Conditioning links both the mind and semiotics.

"B. F. Skinner was one of the most influential of American psychologists. A behaviorist, he developed the theory of operant conditioning -- the idea that behavior is determined by its consequences, be they reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or less likely that the behavior will occur again. Skinner believed that the only scientific approach to psychology was one that studied behaviors, not internal (subjective) mental processes."

Yes, and it has collective attributes.... OK, the boat is right side up now, but I'm still in the middle of the ocean. Thanks for explaining your ideas Rich.

That's why you said it could be considered the mind.

Oh, like my God OP?

Ok, there is something faintly tangible in the mist, but I'm going to need to dwell on it (and ask questions).

I'm blurry still on the distinction you're making between being in the brain and out there. It seems to be important, but I can't see why.

I can understand that an experience may change how my reconstructive wave forms - hence creating a memory as it forms the image, bouncing it back out into the field, that some people with the right adjustment to their dials might be able to see.

But how can you stand by the claim that the imagined house and built house are of equal realness? I can imagine I live in a palace, surrounded by beautiful chambermaids, but wishing so don't make it so.

I haven't got the concept, so I can't flesh it out in my mind.

The theory is of perception. It is all out there (direct realism) and the brain constructs a hologram of it (that's why we are aware of an image). No problem.

The world is a wave field of which we see the qualia which includes form, which is really superfast oscillations of superstrings. No problem.

It can transmit memories and ideas (from where?) into 'it'. 'It' being the matter field. By transmit into, there is a bifurcation here. I can build a house in the field, or I can imagine a house in the field - both are projections and both are equally real?

Projecting memories into the public matter field. Can you read my memories if I stare at a tree and then you stare at the same tree? I don't get it.

OK, well that makes sense. I can buy the field and understand the idea of direct realism.

The public, shared memory fields seem a bit loose. Perhaps because I don't fully understand what that means. Does it suggest the memory is out there too and anybody can read it?

It makes sense that the fields are persistent and change.

I have not problem with the brain being a receiver (not sure of the context of it being a transmitter though - of ideas maybe?)

The last little bit, the mind perceives the holographic field as out there (not in here) and understands it. I'm not too sure on the difference between out there and in here. The hologram is created inside our head, of out there.

And how does it get around the Cartesian Theatre problem?

Hi Rich, not quite through the paper yet.
I like the idea of continual motion even in static environs, and of global velocity. The discreet v continuous argument for the mind and memory. Its a good tie in. I can see the point for a continuous memory, but might challenge it when the ideas settle a bit.

I also like the reference to the growing tree and observed velocity. How does Relativity address that question - the fact that everybody agrees the tree or balloon is growing in all directions relative to itself, regardless of the reference frame? It seems like an absolute motion.

I was doing well until the hologram. I'm getting a bit lost with the whole hologram idea the authors are so excited about though. I've missed their point. All points contain all information about the object? I've hit it before when I looked at the holograph theory. They lose me here. Can you explain the significance of invoking a hologram to read the wavefields of matter?

I think I've got it. Matter appears as matter because the waves are vibrating so fast we can't see them- matter is the blur of the rotating cube?

How do they make this leap, Rich?

"As the process velocity of B is raised further, the fly transforms to a near motionless
fly with wings barely moving, then to a motionless fly, then to
a vibrating, crystalline form, then to a collection of waves"

I checked out the details of binary fission, but there was nothing there that showed the incorporation of DNA strands. The process is tightly controlled.

I then thought of a virus (I went from bacteria to bacteriophages and plasmids). One possible explanation that I will hand to you is that the early mitochondrion might have had features of both a virus and a bacteria. It may have tried to hijack the host cell's DNA to replicate itself and got caught.

Even so, the how a virus does what it does in terms of assemblage order etc is another (perhaps more managable from your perspective, dilemma).

Do you know what has started springing to mind though, starting with my drive to work this morning?
Something that may be a junction between chemistry and life - Operant Conditioning. You know Skinner - and how by controlling when you drop pellets you can get a chicken to cluck three times, flap its wings and spin around on the spot.

The Life/God approach is top down. We can start with the sentience of the mind and work down through consecutive levels of sentience, or we can start with chemistry and work up through consecutive levels of chemistry- with the drawback that chemistry is acting anti-entropically and does not create mind. AND both theories miss each other on the way up and down. One takes the stairs and the other takes the elevator.

Operant conditioning has intentionality and can probably be described in terms of your semiotics. Finding the link between the two may be the key to unravelling this whole thing and finding the missing link - a central unifying theory! :) .

I am still looking into the cockroach intracellular parasite story, and it is indeed similar to the mitochondrial story, but it does not serve to strengthen either of our cases. It only shows another instance of it.

Note the language.

It's good to see you putting it out there, Rich. I'll take a look and get back to you about my thoughts.

Hi Bitter Crank, I guess you're right about the idea of God as a creative force being out there, but where I change the story a fraction is by suggesting that the force entombs us within a larger structure.

The belief that something is there inadvertantly directs us to create it, and in doing so to change us into the tools of a system away from being individuals with individual freedoms.

Is that your definition of mind, Rich? How would you describe mind in your own words?

But that would predict the sun and the milky way stars all receding from us too. Every point in space would have to be contracting inwards .... at lightspeed .... to invert the same physical picture. — apokrisis

Yeah, I have no problem with that if it is the case that we have not actually observed any motion but only a snap shot through the telescope. Our time scale v the universe time scale suggests we've not tracked from A to B yet in our observations.

It well may be the case that space is contracting. Have we observed the reverse of any of this either? I mean are we a light-day "closer" to the sun every day, to take the opposite view of your example?

I don't know about the Plank scale. I'll have to check it out.

As T Clark points out back at the start, if the red shift was just us moving towards some mythical centre, then we would also be approaching other galaxies, creating a blue shift. And even if they were moving faster ahead of us for some reason, the resulting red shift would not be as red as galaxies in the opposite direction. — apokrisis

Can't talk long as I'm at work. The resultant red shift intensity would be relative to the speeds of objects. It could be that they are both red shifted equally, one is blue one is red, or one is more red shifted than the other, surely.

If the entire galaxy was not collapsing, but rather shrinking (space shrinkage), the we could observe the red shift.

Sorry for the brevity. Do you get what I'm saying?

So our entire assumption about the universe expanding is based on one interpretation of a bit of red in a telescope when there seems to be other interpretations for that bit of red? Nobody can tell me why my question can't be proved false? That's pretty cool, but it can't be right. We would need a whole new set of extrapolated physics for each scenario - it would be a physicists dream and too obvious to be overlooked.

In summary, we can define God as a Creative or building force innate within us all, that causes life to grow itself and enclose itself within higher levels like stacked Russian dolls, ultimately causing a reduction in free will and choice.

Nothing wrong with driving cabs Wayfarer. I heard of a guy that once worked in a Patent office. You won't believe his story.

To answer the question though, on the ground that the shift is caused by one object moving away from the other. One explanation is that it is moving away from you very fast, or another explanation is that you are moving away from it very fast. Directionality is the key here. They could also all be contracting toward their centre, in which case they are also all moving away from each other.

So in your scenario you have mitochondria running between host cells while down regulating the expression of their genes? It's an interesting idea, except that the genes are those genes for reproduction and cell health.

I guess if you slowed the reproduction rate down for the mitochondria so it matched the host cell..... still, no need for the swap. The host cell has control and it has taken that control from the mitochondria. Interesting thoughts though Schopenhauer.

Sounds interesting. I'll check it out.

And they both managed to find each other and hook up in the wide and deep oceans of the world? You would need a massive concentration of both. Let's take another look at your quote here.

However, mitochondrial ancestors that had the mutations that allowed for them to not reproduce but continue to survive in the cell, and the cells that had the mutation to allow the mitochondria to stay and provide its energy were selected for — schopenhauer1

If the mitochondrial ancestors had a mutation that didn't allow them to reproduce, guess what? No mitochondria. The assertion is that just by chance a mitochondria that will soon perish off the face of the earth because it can't reproduce drifts into a cell, that rather than killing it in fact has the capacity to allow it to reproduce and maintain it's health? That's one hell of a happy coincidence.

How about we just say the host cell snatched it out of the mitochondria? Seems so simple my way don't you think?

A replicating lifeform inside another lifeform will kill it, cold.
— MikeL

Well it was nice knowing you then. Goodbye to you and the 100 trillion bacteria living mostly symbiotically in your gut. And the vast variety of retroviruses hijacking a ride on your DNA. — apokrisis

Well there's inside the body alongside our cells and there's inside the cell itself. The bacterial flora of our gut are not inside our cells, unlike the mitochondria. And if any of those retroviruses hitching a ride decide they might just pop out and see what's happening, guess what?

That was a very smart decision. When did it come to this decision? Before or after it killed the host?
— MikeL

Did you miss the key point? The host was a handy supply of its food. While it was a handy source of energy for its host. So the situation was SYMBIOTIC. :) — apokrisis

I agree that the host was a very good supply of food that the host cell had intended to use for itself. The mitochondria also provided energy for the cell, however, I think that some tweaking may have been needed here before they got it right. In the meantime you have a replicating cell that has invaded another replicating cell and is consuming it's resources. Not so symbiotic. Not yet.

They went together so exactly that they created a whole new evolutionary era. All their fellow microbes were left in the dust. In 4 billion years, the other guys have shown no essential structural change. — apokrisis

Wow, you've skipped right to the end of the story.

But it floats in a gene pool - a metagenome - of 18,000 genes that it can pick up as it needs as food sources change and a different kind of digestion might be needed, or whatever the environmental challenge happens to be. — apokrisis

The megagenome is interesting and you might have me there. I'll have to check it out.

In the meantime you have one cell membrane bound organism inside another cell membrane bound organism - What happened here? Did the mitochondria extrude its genome through its own cell membrane, (essentially throwing it away) have it get entangled with the host genome, somehow re-capture it's genome (lucky it hadn't floated off in the ocean)? And then in this seemingly lucky (for recapturing the genome it flushed out of its body) event suddenly find out that it was not so good after all, for in the recapturing of it's own genome processes it failed captured any of the host genome while also unfortunately losing the genes most critical for its own survival.

But not to worry because then the DNA of the host cell begins producing the promoters and transcription factors required for the mitochondria to survive (before the mitochondria does actually die of course - so within one generation unless it is assault of a mitochondrial army against the archaeon which could be feasible [ramping up the probability index for you there]).

So the happy ending for this chaotic disaster is the perfect regulation of the health of the mitochondria and the division of the mitochondria by the host cell, in exchange for energy it learnt to use. Not bad. Chalk one up for nature.

Could they? How did they come to that arrangement? Enterprise bargaining? The blind mitochondria said to the blind cell, "I don't know what the hell you are or where the hell I am but here comes some genes. Catch."
— MikeL

This is a bit of smart alec reply given the realities of bacterial and archaeon sex. — apokrisis

You're right, it was a bit tongue in cheek. I was just playing with you. Great to get your ideas, they always make me think.

The real question though should be, if the US spends so much on military, why doesn't it completely dominate the world? Its military should be many tens of years ahead of everyone else. But I don't think this is actually the case. — Agustino

Yeah, it's an interesting question. When you consider that the US has spent more than the rest of the world combined on its military year after year after year, and yet its observable military is only fractionally larger than other militaries, it makes me think secrete weapons (although not so secret now that I've told everyone).

It seems a little commonsensical that we asign the meaning of our experiences to our experiences doesn't it? Like when I'm stuck behind a slow car, I sometimes think, this person is actually saving me from the cop up the road, or from the oncoming semi that's about to lose control 500m (yards for you Americans) further along. So it's a positive value. Of course when I know that the rerun of MASH is about to start.... well.

Isn't it the Quantum Computer that has the superposition of O and 1? Either, Or, And That's a bit like us I guess.

Who are you talking to? Was the muon comment for me or for Rich?