[Fis] Fwd: "the mother of information"--MINI-BRAINS

[jose luis perez velazquez]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: jose luis perez velazquez <jlpvjlpv at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 1, 2019 at 2:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] "the mother of information"--MINI-BRAINS
To: Alexander Fingelkurts <alexander.fingelkurts at bm-science.com>

     Hola a todos.   In what I wrote about lack of consciousness in
particles or cells I should have been clearer. I admit cells, bacteria
etc.  have some aspects/features of consciousness, but I would not say they
display self-awareness, perhaps one of the top features. These problems are
derived, once again,from the desire to define precisely something like
life, consciousness, or intelligence, things that are almost impossible to
define in one sentence. To wit, one definition of intelligence is the
ability to adapt to change, well, then bacteria are intelligent. One aspect
of life is compartmentalization and exchange of energy, tehrefore some
inorganic materials have this property and could be considered "half
alive". These notions we have created, life, consciousness, intelligence
etc. are nothing but that: our inventions. Out there in nature there is a
continuum;  evolution operates mainly as a continuum without sharp steps
(although some apparently existed), as a dynamical system, a process.
Similar principles of organization apply to the living and non living (as I
tried to expound in "Finding simplicity in complexity: general principles
of biological and nonbiological organization",
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2710456).
     Trying to impose clear demarcations in these concepts is, to me, a
mistake (or misunderstanding). Hence, I do agree that cells share some
features of consciousness, but perchance everybody would agree with the
fact that only humans, and perhaps other close relatives, have all the
properties one can think of when enumerating the features of consciousness,
and of course one can try to set up a hierarchy in which self-awareness
could be at the top... but again, that hierarchy would be our invention.
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