[Fis] Howard Bloom GPT - The potential for science and education

Mon Apr 7 13:18:13 CEST 2025

Dear OARF, if I may respond to you in* [brackets]*.....

"First Plamen, what is the soul test?  I have never heard of it. Do cats
pass the soul test? Ants? The problem is that these creatures may have
their own way of being conscious of the world. Does that mean they have
souls?

*[I am of the opinion that all living organisms are conscious in the sense
of being aware of their environment. For example, if you put a drop of
glucose in the water a planarian's calcium flux will be stimulated,
prompting it to move towards the source of the sense of sweetness. The same
holds true for you or me in the sense that if our heads were in an MRI and
the technician put a drop of glucose on our tongue, our brains would 'light
up' due to increased calcium fluxes' ]*

Second, I agree with you Plamen if you are getting at the idea of being in
the world, being conscious of it. Representing the possibilities in at
once, as a Kantian whole.

*[I recently published an article (*Torday JS. Symbiogenesis redicts the
monism of the cosmos. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2024 Sep;191:58-62)* in which
I used the process of Symbiogenesis to explain how and why we know we have
evolved from a 'holism'. Symbiogenesis is the mechanism by which we
assimilate hazardous substances in our environment such as iron, using them
to form our physiology, like the latter forming the basis for heme protein
in Red Blood Cells for oxygen carrying capacity, or iodine as the chemical
principle behind the thyroid gland. The question is why do we practice this
constructive process when just destroying such hazards would be
faster/cheaper/better??? Because Symbiogenesis in combination as the basis
for consciousness forms a history needed to evolve effectively....as
formulated by Gould and Vrba (1982), calling it exaptation. But if
evolution is serial pre-adaptations, where would Symbiogenesis have arisen
from? I maintain in the article that it's in reference to the 'holism'
fostered by gravity, promoting from whence we have evolved and act to
sustain that interrelationship through homeostasis]*

This very experience of the world seems to me NOT reducible to gravity or
any other combination of physical-chemical things in our 4D world.

*[With all due respect, my lab and two others have shown that gravity is
necessary for evolution. And in tandem, Claassen and Spooner have shown
that protocells cannot provide the means for life in microgravity either]*

Related to this is the question: Is consciousness a functional state as
people like Mike Levin seem to assume? If so then embodied LLMs could well
be conscious.  In fact it trivializes consciousness in that almost any
reactive system could be “functionally” conscious.

*[But if consciousness is both local and non-local, I propose that AI can
only mimic local consciousness. Non-local consciousness is a function of
Quantum Entanglement, which a mathematical algorithm cannot emulate. And if
all AI has is local consciousness it cannot express emergence, which is the
raison d'etre of consciousness]*

But if there are souls that enter and leave bodies then consciousness is
NOT a functional state. I mean functional state in the sense of Hillary
Putnam, the philosopher.

*[Not sure what you comment means, but epigenetic inheritance is a
mechanism for 'souls entering and leaving bodies'. Genetic traits can be
modified epigenetically by methylating or ubiquinating DNA to change its
readout. Such epigenetically inherited traits can persist for several
generations, but if the factor that causes that change is now absent, the
organism will purge itself of that epigenetic trait. Conversely, if the
factor persists, the epigenetic trait will ultimately become genetic
(Baldwin Effect). So in that context, consciousness is a functional state]*

If there are souls and they exist and have causal agency when in a body,
then they would appear to be in a higher dimensional space that encompasses
and interacts with our world.  By the way our world is not 4-dimensional
but multidimensional if we are free agents and/or quantum mechanics holds.

*[In the microgravity experiment I have alluded to I used Parathyroid
Hormone-related Protein (PTHrP) messenger RNA as a biomarker for the
differentiated state of lung or bone cells, whose phenotypes are dependent
developmentally and physiologically on PTHrP signaling for structure and
function. The PTHrP Receptor gene is known to have duplicated during the
vertebrate transition from water to land some 500 mya. I would submit that
in doing so, there was a concomitant transition in the consciousness of the
organism from cold-blooded to warm-blooded, buoyancy in water to the full
force of gravity on land, etc, etc. As for the 'higher dimensional
space that encompasses and interacts with our world' I have contended that
that is the result of Symbiogenic assimilation of the mathematics of the
Cosmos, which becomes integral to our physiology and consciousness as the
common language with the Cosmos, so yes I agree. And with regard to the
multidimensionality and quantum mechanics, I have shown the homology (of
the same origin) between Symbiogenesis and Quantum Entanglement as
homeostatic balance of energy as the continuum from Newtonian to Quantum
Mechanics.]*

Recall our discussion where I questioned the irreality of possibility
states, that they have real existence and the question was: Do they fit in
our world?"

*[I was not present for that discussion, so I'm just going to say that
possibility states are constrained by the force of gravity, rendering them
'real', and that they therefore 'fit in our world'. Even 'Phantom Limb',
the phenomenon by which someone feels an itch in the toe of a severed leg
is 'real' in the sense that it is a consequence of 'Terminal Addition', the
way in which new traits must be added on to the ends of a series of evolved
traits because acquisition of such traits is mediated by cell-cell
signaling due to soluble growth factors and their receptors. To add a new
trait to the beginning or middle of such a sequence of traits would be
disruptive, rendering the organism extinct if adopted in practice.
Conversely, that 'itch' is necessary to maintain consciousness of the
physiology up-stream from the severed leg]*

So intuitively the very notion of possibility spaces seem related to the
question of consciousness and the existence of souls."

*Please feel free to rebut....*

Best, John

John S. Torday
Professor of Pediatrics
Obstetrics and Gynecology
Evolutionary Medicine
UCLA

*Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts*

On Mon, Apr 7, 2025 at 2:47 AM OARF <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:

> Dear Plamen, Paul and you Pauvre Materialists,
>
> First Plamen, what is the soul test?  I have never heard of it. Do cats
> pass the soul test? Ants? The problem is that these creatures may have
> their own way of being conscious of the world. Does that mean they have
> souls?
>
> Second, I agree with you Plamen if you are getting at the idea of being in
> the world, being conscious of it. Representing the possibilities in at
> once, as a Kantian whole.
>
> This very experience of the world seems to me NOT reducible to gravity or
> any other combination of physical-chemical things in our 4D world.
>
> Related to this is the question: Is consciousness a functional state as
> people like Mike Levin seem to assume? If so then embodied LLMs could well
> be conscious.  In fact it trivializes consciousness in that almost any
> reactive system could be “functionally” conscious.
>
> But if there are souls that enter and leave bodies then consciousness is
> NOT a functional state. I mean functional state in the sense of Hillary
> Putnam, the philosopher.
>
> If there are souls and they exist and have causal agency when in a body,
> then they would appear to be in a higher dimensional space that encompasses
> and interacts with our world.  By the way our world is not 4-dimensional
> but multidimensional if we are free agents and/or quantum mechanics holds.
>
> Recall our discussion where I questioned the irreality of possibility
> states, that they have real existence and the question was: Do they fit in
> our world?
>
> So intuitively the very notion of possibility spaces seem related to the
> question of consciousness and the existence of souls.
>
> -Eric Werner
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Apr 6, 2025, at 6:38 PM, Paul Suni <paul.p.suni at gmail.com> wrote: Sent
> from my iPad
> Sent from my iPad
> _______________________________________________
> Fis mailing list
> Fis at listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis 
> ----------
> INFORMACIN SOBRE PROTECCIN DE DATOS DE CARCTER PERSONAL
>
> Ud. recibe este correo por pertenecer a una lista de correo gestionada por
> la Universidad de Zaragoza.
> Puede encontrar toda la informacin sobre como tratamos sus datos en el
> siguiente enlace:
> https://sicuz.unizar.es/informacion-sobre-proteccion-de-datos-de-caracter-personal-en-listas 
> Recuerde que si est suscrito a una lista voluntaria Ud. puede darse de
> baja desde la propia aplicacin en el momento en que lo desee.
> http://listas.unizar.es 
> ----------
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20250407/97495ec4/attachment.html>