[Fis] Living and not living structures

[Krassimir Markov]

Hola, José Luis y queridos FIS colegas!

The discussion came to very important point marked by José Luis. 

Now it is seen that there exists a hierarchy of structures which are built by other structures from low levels. This model shows that, practically, all entities of the real world are hierarchically organized.

What about the live and the intelligence? 

Practically, we came to the W. Ross Ashby’s “PRINCIPLES OF THE SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEM”  https://emergent.blob.core.windows.net/classic-articles/3aa37176-f414-4820-b5e5-b3be0cdb0395.pdf .

I kindly recommend this paper to be reread.



For our discussion, very important are the next sentences:



“Every isolated determinate dynamic system obeying unchanging laws will develop "organisms" that are adapted to their "environments" 

and 

“In any isolated system, life and intelligence inevitably develop.”



At the given level of complexity and organization, some structures became “alive” and “intelligent” in some degree. As the structure (system) is more complex, so it may be more intelligent.

As Ashby remarked, live, intelligence, and (if I may add) consciousness emerge as new property of the structure (system).

There is no need to ask if the cell has consciousness and intelligence. The answer is clear - YES!

But its consciousness and intelligence are quite different of those of the fish, bee, dog, or human.

There is no clear boundary between live structures and not live ones. In every moment first may be destroyed to the second as well as the former may be organized to the first one. 

Finally, all live structures we know at this moment have very important feature of self-reproducing using DNA structures.

Friendly greetings

Krassimir



----

Krassimir Markov

Honorary professor, PhD

University of Telecommunications and Post

Sofia, Bulgaria




From: jose luis perez velazquez 
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2019 1:21 PM
To: fis 
Subject: [Fis] Fwd: "the mother of information"--MINI-BRAINS

---------- 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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