[Fis] 10 Principles

Mon Jul 20 00:28:10 CEST 2020

re: When your computer compositional elements --SiO2 doped lumps plus different metals and plastics-- are at work, they become immersed in a systemic dynamics that "enslaves" them. 
pedro, your computer metaphor is terrific.

with warmth and oomph--howard

-----Original Message-----
From: Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
To: fis at listas.unizar.es
Sent: Sun, Jul 19, 2020 4:39 pm
Subject: Re: [Fis] 10 Principles

 Dear List, In my third of the week, I am responding to Marcus. 

          From your 11 July post . . .  > The genuine properties of information appear with life: the capability to persist < > and react and relate according to inner drives unseen in inanimate matter.< – This "informational way of existence" (as you say), I typify as 'adaptive logic'; an equal concept that I hope we may agree on.           
 No problem if the "adaptive logic" is pretty similar and may also be extended into cells, organisms, social entities...   
           With that as background, in your 11 and 14 July posts there are some key points I wish to address: – Your 11 July post shows your bias to LIFE (agency), which *in itself* is fine and I have no problem with. But I have also seen earlier notes from you elsewhere (and implied above) where you seem to insist LIFE's informatic expressions be held above all else – I paraphrase – 'LIFE is Primary in ALL informational respects!' Is this fair to say, does this indeed reflect your view? This view of yours seems clear to me from prior exchanges, but I do not want to put words in your mouth. Also, you are not alone in taking this view. It is important to be clear about this issue of Primacy, and your position on the matter . . . as it often seems to influence the nature of FIS exchanges (re Loet's 14 July note). 

 There are many different views in this list (see eg, what Karl compiles in his recent message). As there are many "street lamps" in the info fields, and the temptation is to remain searching close to one of the "local lights", rather than going toward the obscure place where the car keys were lost (as says the trite anecdote often told by physicists on the drank driver). The place to look for the info keys would be where, originally, info implies the whole retinue of meaning, knowledge, adaptation, complexity, etc.etc.  It starts with living cells and radiates in multiple directions. Life has two basic characteristics: the active elements are coded inside inner memory banks of the system, and the system itself replicates along a functional trajectory --life cycle-- open both to environmental energy flows and to signaling (info) flows. This does not exist at all in inanimate matter, and the sheer molecular complexity it generates is just abysmal, incomparable. 

           – If you see LIFE as Primary in all informational respects, I disagree with this (as you know). To say LIFE is Primary ignores Evolution by Natural Selection (EvNS) which ultimately defines what all LIFE looks like – what is extant, what Lives and what is Extinct/Dead. In turn, EvNS is guided by indifferent 'selection forces' (purifying, divisive, and directional) which are themselves ultimately 'inanimate' [unless you subscribe to super-naturalism?]. As such, the inanimate defines what the animate is: the INANIMATE is Primary in guiding what the ANIMATE *might* be, but the inverse is not true. LIFE does not direct atoms and elementary particles in how they might behave, or what they might *be*. Still, this does not *by any means* negate LIFE's vital informatics – it merely places LIFE in an adaptive role, that of adapting to inanimate (but still dynamic/chaotic) matter. This schism between what is Primary and what is Secondary, I think, must first be resolved if FIS is to ever advance on its presumed 'foundational' goal.           
 When your computer compositional elements --SiO2 doped lumps plus different metals and plastics-- are at work, they become immersed in a systemic dynamics that "enslaves" them. The SiO2 in desert sands is "more free", but it cannot show its potential semiconductor properties that the fabrication & later functioning make manifest. The inanimate is used by a higher order organization because of its basic properties, not viceversa (formerly, vacuum tubes were used instead of Silicon). Then, about the role of natural selection, there is an ongoing serious debate on the limits of that conceptualization. Probably, the term covers only half of the biological evolutionary process. As it lacks the crucial reference to the generation of "variety" --curiously, most of the proponents of that debate (James Shapiro, Denis Noble, John Torday, William Miller, Robert Reid, Guenther Witzany, even Marcello Barbieri...) try to establish in informational terms the "innovation" component that Darwinians omit. To put a familiar example, we may state that it is the market which "selects" the winner cell phone artifacts and technologies...  So, evolution by market selection? Nope! would immediately shout the thousands engineers and technologists working in the phone industry innovations, the winner ones and the eliminated ones as well. How biological innovation crafts the varieties that go to the selection markets? Basic aspects are not yet well understood, for instance, the role of viruses, or the "hot points" of meiosis, or epigenetic inheritance, or symbiosis... For Witzany and Villarreal, viruses have been dismissed but they probably were behind most further codes developed by multicellulars, and pathogenic viruses would appear as the debris left along the eukaryotic evolution of complexity --they ceaseless struggle to enter into our own epigenetic systems as other ancestors achieved (now the case of covid-19). 

  – To be clear when we say inanimate we mean 'lacking conscious will or power (survival intent) in manifest acts and deeds'. But inanimate does NOT mean lacking force or energy in the underlying dynamics of EvNS. It is more that simple atoms, etc. do not bother with adaptive survival, but LIFE is mostly concerned with survival . . . given its relatively 'higher-order' vulnerable complexity.  

 I do not belittle the microscopic (quantum information) world within the "inanimate". There is some classical, great work by Michael Conrad in that regard. But the discussion would go beyond the present context.

           – Lastly, you alternatively speak of 'points' and 'principles' which are entirely different things (which I am sure you know). Still, I am unsure if the list you offer is meant to convey 'points' or 'principles'? Would you please clarify this. As 'points' it seems little new is added. I do not see how point 1 significantly improves Donald MacKay's “Information is a distinction that makes a difference” or Bateson's 'a difference that makes a difference' – could you offer some clarifying examples, or a bit more detail? The 'adjacent' role you name in point 1 is in scare quotes and unspecific. I do not address later points, as I presume they are shown in a step-wise manner, and I must agree the first point before focusing on later points. 

 It is work in progress. Talking about points makes discussion easier, I think, but the goal is that they become principles. Although the whole set is very heterogeneous and who knows whether it will be workable enough... time will tell. I prefer to leave the discussion on Point 1 for a next exchange, as this has already become too long. Thanks for the comments. --Pedro
  -- 
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group

pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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