[Fis] Emotional Sentience & Information (reply from A. Sloman)

[Pedro C. Marijuán]

/(I am reentering into the list Aaron's reply--P.)/

---------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Pedro,

Many thanks for your very useful feedback on my message.

I confess I had signed out of the Fis list because getting rid of the
multiple
appended branching histories or even just ignoring them was too much
hassle. I
get these messages on a departmental computer (accessed from home),
where I am
still allowed to use email and post and update web sites despite having
formally
retired many years ago. So I did not wish to add huge amounts of Fis
stuff to
the (linux) filestore, in addition to all my web sites and email
messages both
via email and stuff used at workshops/conferences.

[I no longer travel to conferences at age 87 with no research budget
and, more
importantly, downward sliding brain damaged by dementia (Alzheimers),
currently
being treated with memantine. though I am sceptical about the ability of
current
medical science to cope with the complexities of brain biochemistry -- the
current focus of my research on cognition.]

I have added Gordana to the Cc: list because she and I have been in
contact for
several years, including discussing some of the issues in my message
posted to
Fis.

You wrote:

> Many thanks for your scholarly contribution (excuse the delay, but at fis we are
> not always very punctual in our responses).

I quite understand, especially as my message referred to a very large
and partly
indigestible web site, which most recipients would not have time to explore.
Your response has made the message worth while!

I hope you don't mind my format, quoting bits of your message by
indenting with
">", a style copied from some old linux software.

Double quotes ">>" refer to text from my message to which you are
replying. If
my previous message contained quotes from earlier messages or documents they
would now be indicated by ">>>", etc.

[Pedro:]
> The origins of nervous systems attracted my attention for a long time. So, your
> paragraph below strongly resonates to me:

responding to:

[Aaron]
>> Inspired by those ideas (and others, including Kant's comments on limitations of
>> David Hume's theories) my own work, begun over half a century ago, has recently
>> taken a new turn leading to a conjecture that the earliest ancestors of animals
>> with brains were single-celled organisms that were ancestors of current
>> synapses, which began to engage in various forms of collaboration, producing
>> increasingly complex organisms in which nervous systems evolved to enable
>> communication and coordination between subsystems, initially linking synapse
>> ancestors, then later providing connections to increasingly remote and
>> increasingly complex body parts, e.g. digestive systems, circulatory systems,
>> breathingn systems, movable limbs or wings, etc.

You:
> If I am not wrong, sex is an almost universal characteristic of eukaryotes, from
> the very beginning, including unicellular ones.

Yes and that is very important, with implications discussed in the work
of Tibor
Ganti

The Principles of Life,
(Translation of the 1971 Hungarian edition),
Eds. E. Szathmary, & J. Griesemer, OUP, New York.

The book, presents Ganti's "Chemoton" theory, specifying requirements
for the
earliest single-celled organisms capable of sexual reproduction.

There's an online website with a lot more information about his work and
related
work, produced by Gert Korthof, who also provides a large collection of
related references:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://wasdarwinwrong.com/korthof66.htm__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QBix3b950ePlkNzy7Zw9hCXjtI3kz-4SyjyEH5qrfR-mqkZTkFCoRF5ruUwbDrc1twUubDQICDz5zl7NBRVyhj8dQtfd$ 

You again:
> Then, for the sexual intercourse a mutual link has to be created where species
> identity, sex type, cycle phase, metabolic status, and other trophic
> determinants closer to the future immune system have to be examined.
>
> This is the ancestral eukaryotic synapse, which will evolve from sex background
> towards mainly the immunological function first, and later towards the
> bioelectricity function in multicellulars (with several steps covering motility,
> sensibility, organ coordination, etc., as you mention).

I'll need some time to digest all those ideas and relate them to what I had
previously learnt. I don't recall those ideas in Ganti's work.

Continuing your quote from my message:

[Aaron]
>> I now think that those ancient biochemical mechanisms in synapses can provide
>> answers to questions about ancient forms of human intelligence leading to
>> discoveries in geometry and topology, such as Pythagoras' theorem, centuries
>> before Pythagoras was born, using mechanisms that are related to forms of
>> intelligence in other species e.g. nest-building birds, apes, elephants, aquatic
>> mammals, etc. Octopuses are an amazing special case that I don't pretend to
>> understand!

You responded:
> The immune-neural link keeps a close functional interrelation, as Kate comments,
> related to behavioral options and their outcomes; but also in a crucial aspect
> of identity surveillance for the sake of the whole organism. This involves
> playing fascinating formal games, a la Godelian, as Sheri Markose has discussed
> in this list. And also Lou Kauffman.

Those ideas will take me some time to digest. One of the things I learnt
only
recently (mentioned in the metamorphosis.html web site) is that newborn
mammals
have to acquire immunity mechanisms not from their genome but from bacteria
picked up in the mothers birth canal, during the birth process. (Which
apparently can cause problems for babies born via caesarian section,
unless the
surgeons understand this and compensate, which doesn't always happen,
unfortunately.)

I have not yet looked at this but will do:

[Pedro]
> See Godelian Self-referential Genomes
> <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/2022-October/003184.html>:
>
> Sheri Markose. October 25, 2022, in
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://fis.sciforum.net/fis-discussion-sessions/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QBix3b950ePlkNzy7Zw9hCXjtI3kz-4SyjyEH5qrfR-mqkZTkFCoRF5ruUwbDrc1twUubDQICDz5zl7NBRVyhlJg7Quz$ 

> (By the way, The fis list has a pretty long history, as you can see there, of
> more than 25 years of discussion sessions. It would be great if you could chair
> one of the coming sessions).

Thanks for the suggestion/offer.

I think that in view of my unreliable brain I should not attempt that. But I
would not mind jointly co-chairing with you (or someone you propose) in
charge.

[P]
> I remember that in one of my past messages I mentioned to Sheri (or to someone
> else?) that emotions become the guardians of our behavioral integrity,
> projecting in an extended temporal framework the instant now, so that it
> accommodates to the whole fitness maintenance. So i think emotions, and their
> progressive complexification, may respond to formal games too (far beyond
> conventional game theory)...

I have done a lot of work over many years, with several collaborators, on
emotions, and related phenomena (desires, hopes, fears, preferences, values,
attitudes and related phenomena, not all of which have names in colloquial
language or current psychological terminology -- in what I called the CogAff
(Cognition and Affect) project. But I don't immediately recognise what
you are
referring to here -- perhaps a note on what you mean by "formal games", with
examples, would help me.

I am aware of many formal models proposed by psychologists and others that I
think don't do justice to the complexity of biological affective mechanisms,
states and processes. In contrast, great novelists and playwrights have deep
(but unarticulated) insights used in their novels and plays.

Pedro:
> It could be great if we can throw more explanatory light to social emotions,
> that so many troubles have created in the past and continue to create. I think
> this dovetails with Aaron views:

Aaron:
>> I don't think current popular concepts of 'emotion' are rich enough to support
>> these theories.
>>
>> I have recently been working on an online document about all this (still work in
>> progress) including references to a huge, varied, and still growing collection
>> of evidence, along with my own new speculations about synapses (still under
>> development) available here:
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/metamorphosis.html__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QBix3b950ePlkNzy7Zw9hCXjtI3kz-4SyjyEH5qrfR-mqkZTkFCoRF5ruUwbDrc1twUubDQICDz5zl7NBRVyhipj5RW-$ 
>> .....

Thanks for this comment:
[Pedro:]
> Yes, it is great stuff. Some fis colleagues are also working in "artificial
> genomes" and biomorphologies. We could also discuss whether the new AI might
> contribute to adumbrate those "remote control" transformations unexplainable
> currently, as you say. If you can have the patience to endure our many tangents
> and digressions, we can have an exciting discussion time!

I've been lucky enough to have opportunities for many tangents and
digressions
since I switched from mathematics to philosophy of mathematics as a graduate
student (around 1959) which later led me into other areas of philosophy etc.
etc. Some of the deepest switches have occurred since around June 2023
(age 86)
when I started thinking about the complexities of (remote?) control
required for
insect metamorphosis, after spending the previous two years thinking
about the
multi-layered complexities of developmental processes in eggs of vertebrates
(partly encouraged by Gordana).

They are still continuing.

> All the best,

and to you

Thanks again. I hope my damaged brain has produced a message that is
readable!

Aaron
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/*axs__;fg!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QBix3b950ePlkNzy7Zw9hCXjtI3kz-4SyjyEH5qrfR-mqkZTkFCoRF5ruUwbDrc1twUubDQICDz5zl7NBRVyhrpXN4nI$ 



--
Este correo electrónico ha sido analizado en busca de virus por el software antivirus de Avast.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.avast.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QBix3b950ePlkNzy7Zw9hCXjtI3kz-4SyjyEH5qrfR-mqkZTkFCoRF5ruUwbDrc1twUubDQICDz5zl7NBRVyhoQikiw8$ 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20240411/c31769e1/attachment-0001.html>