[Fis] HI All,

[Stuart Kauffman]

To FIS Jan 31
 
Hello to All,
 
I have very much enjoyed the past month and all the ideas flooding back and forth. If I may, a few summary comments:
 
I ask you all to please focus on “Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?” Here two aspects seem important in a discussion on information:
 
1)    It is true that a living cells, a Kantian Whole with Catalytic, Constraint and Spatial Closure, specifically constructs itself.  There really is no “separate” set of embodied instructions with dual uses as is in von Neumann’s self - reproducing automaton. Yet Information as “encoded bit” descriptions of a Mondrian painting also is true. The encoded description can be sent by email and used to construct a copy of the picture and the encoded description in bits can be copied and stored.  These two are not the same thing. Both seem to be information. So, what do we mean by “information”?
2)    The Third Transition in Science also seems well founded. The same object has different subsets of causal properties, any one of which might become the basis of a new function arising by Darwinian preadaptation. This drives the open - ended evolution of the biosphere. This jury rigging is not algorithmic. No formal system, e.g. computational Artificial Life, or algorithmic computation on a non-embodied Universal Turing Machine can achieve open ended evolution. Yet A Llife and the Mind as a Computer are powerful metaphors. Both are wrong. The evolving biosphere is not a computation at all, it is a propagating non deducible construction entailed by no law. General Artificial Intelligence seems ruled out.  
3)    We humans jury rig, so do Caledonian Crows. Jury rigging is not algorithmic. How do we and crows do it? My own hunch is that qualia arise by collapse of the wave function to a single state that “I” experience as a qualia. Collapse of the wave function is also not a deduction. I bet this is related to non-algorithmic jury rigging. 
4)    If mind and consciousness are related to acausal collapse of the wave function, how does that bear on “information”? I want to say, my qualiae ARE information about my world. With my Responsible Free Will I choose to act in my world. This why mind evolved.
 
 
Very good wishes to you All and warm thanks.
 
Stu Kauffman
 
 
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