What makes life vital (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, March 02, 2015, 18:29 (3553 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: This is a constant source of misunderstanding between us. Of course life is a complex interaction of biochemical reactions, and that has never been the point at issue, which is summed up by the following: 
> DAVID: The terms you like to seize on are analogies, because the concept of how life works biochemically is so hard to describe.
> 
> The terms I seize on describe not the concept of how life works biochemically, but attributes of the living organisms - even including bacteria - which my “favourite scientists” say are sentient, conscious, intelligent, communicative, decision-making beings. (In the latest Talbott article, he italicizes “beings”, i.e. as opposed to machines.) These are not analogies. Your response has always been that they may look intelligent but in fact they are automata. Automata ARE machines.-I see the difference in our thinking. I understand living beings as living machines. All of the processes in a living being are automatic, i.e., the kidney controlling the blood by changing urine concentrations. What is not automatic is consciousness because we control what we wish to think and our brain controls the responses necessary to accommodate us. Bacteria are not conscious. My view is a process of reductionism, as I understand the biochemistry of the automatic reactions. I also understand that these reactions are under instructions in the genome (more vastly complex than just the genes themselves) and those instructions are information, the origin of which we discuss. The whole process of the reactions is very intertwined and what emerges is a living organism. Life is an emergent property as Talbott instructs us. 
> 
> TONY: I think I might start with the word "alive" "living" and "conscious". The problem is not the language that we possess, but rather our insistence on treating living creatures as machines. Sprocket A turns cog B and we get thigamajigger D to do a little dance causing bobble C to wobble precariously and create cancer. Presto!
> This goes hand in hand with our understanding of biology, genetics, and virtually all of life. Ever since the rise of naturalism and reductionism our outlook has been that of looking at everything mechanically. The problem is not our language, it is our worldview.
> DAVID: Good point. Sometimes it is hard to recognize our bodies are more than machines. But that is how we describe them.
> 
> dhw: I would like to think that Tony's comments do not refer solely to humans but to all organisms, as his reference to world view would seem to indicate, and not solely to bodies but to the attributes I have listed above. (Tony, please correct me if I'm wrong.) In other words, sometimes it is hard to recognize that non-humans (perhaps even single-celled organisms like bacteria) are more than machines, but that is how you, David, describe them. My “favourite scientists” describe them as sentient, conscious, intelligent etc. beings - terms which could easily be avoided if they were to be taken metaphorically and not literally.-I agree with Tony and I accept your comment to accept the terms as metaphors, recognizing the limitation of the use of metaphors to get around a language problem.-The other issue in live and dead animals is the availability of the information in the genome. This is really what creates life. The animal is dead because it can no longer access the life-running information. All the processes are stopped. In resuscitation failed organs (heart and brain) are supported until they can reacquire access to the information that runs life. Look at this quote:-“Information doesn't have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter doesn't have bytes. You can't measure so much gold in so many bytes. It doesn't have redundancy, or fidelity, or any of the other descriptors we apply to information. This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms.” - G. C. Williams, quoted in By Design or by Chance?, p. 234." (2004)-I couldn't say it better. The emergence of life from the materials in living beings is due to the information in the codes of the genome and in all the modifiers of the genome complex. The Darwin folks seem very reluctant to get into the information issue, because recognition of the importance of that information is a direct threat to a mechanistic chance process of evolution being the correct interpretation. You don't like my constant referral to chance since you 'sort of' accept that chance is a doubtful concept, but all of these considerations are bound together. Information is a direct antithesis to chance. Material processes can't create the information that guides life. Mentation does. Do you realize your pan-psychism theory feeds off of that statement? My case is rested for now.