[Fis] Mind, Life & Machines

Tue May 13 22:30:00 CEST 2025

To Pedro, Michael, Bill, Lou and fis, regarding whether living organisms
are machines, my laboratory and two others have shown that in the absence
of the force of gravity, cells lose their phenotypes within 8-12 hours,
recovering them in earth's gravity within 24 hours, i.e. they devolve, but
can subsequently evolve in the presence of gravity (Torday, J.S.,  2003.
Parathyroid hormone-related protein is a gravisensor in lung and bone cell
biology. Adv. Space Res. 32, 1569-1576). This experiment demonstrates the
interrelationship between life and non-life. In my opinion, these
observations speak to life being *'greater than the sum of its parts'* or a
*'holism'*, unlike a machine, which is the literal sum of its parts. The
missing feature that we refer to as soul or spirit is the product of the
interaction of the organism with the force of gravity, or Newton's Third
Law of Motion. And as for Bill's comments about 'information', speaking as
a developmental cell-molecular physiologist, when a fertilized egg develops
into the offspring the intermediate steps are all mediated by
soluble growth factors and their cognate receptors, bearing in mind that *the
growth factors are not information*. The 'information' is present within
each successive state of the organism, but the intermediates are not
information, they are high energy phosphate exchanges (cyclic AMP and
inositol phosphates 1-4), which are not 'information', they release
information at each successive stage of embryogenesis, like a Fibonacci
sequence, 1 + 2 =3, etc, etc, and beyond, to the formation of physiology.
So in my opinion, the processes of development and physiologic homeostasis
are not information, i.e. matter, they are the energy for maintaining and
perpetuating homeostatic control of the organism. Energy is not
information, it is the capacity for maintaining 'self' in an ever-changing
environment, due to an expanding Cosmos. The primary purpose of the
organism is to detect meaningful change (for itself), and either adapt or
become extinct.

John Torday

On Tue, May 13, 2025 at 9:30 AM Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Mind, Life & Machines
>
>
> *From Mike Levin: Living Things Are Not Machines (Also, They Totally Are)*
>
> To start with, different contexts require us to adopt diverse perspectives
> as to
> how much mind, or mechanism, is before us. The continuing battle over
> whether
> living beings are or are not machines is based on two mistaken but
> pervasive
> beliefs. First, the belief that we can objectively and uniquely nail down
> what
> something is. And second, that our formal models of life, computers or
> materials
> tell the entire story of their capabilities and limitations.
>
> Despite the continued expansion and mainstream prominence of molecular
> biology, and its reductionist machine metaphors, or likely because of it,
> there has
> been an increasing upsurge of papers and science social media posts
> arguing that
> “living things are not machines” (LTNM). There are thoughtful, informative,
> nuanced pieces exploring this direction, such as this exploration of “new
> post-
> genomic biology” and others, masterfully reviewed and analyzed by cognitive
> scientist and historian Ann-Sophie Barwich and historian Matthew James
> Rodriguez at Indiana University Bloomington. (A non-exhaustive list
> includes
> engineer Perry Marshall’s look at how biology transcends the limits of
> computation, computer scientist Alexander Ororbia’s discussion of “mortal
> computation,” biologist Stuart Kauffman and computer scientist Andrea
> Roli’s
> look at the evolution of the biosphere, and the works of philosophers like
> Daniel
> Nicholson, George Kampis and Günther Witzani.)
>
> Many others, however, use the siren song of biological exceptionalism and
> outdated or poorly defined notions of “machines” to push a view that
> misleads lay
> readers and stalls progress in fields such as evolution, cell biology,
> biomedicine,
> cognitive science (and basal cognition), computer science, bioengineering,
> philosophy and more. All of these fields are held back by hidden
> assumptions
> within the LTNM-lens that are better shed in favor of a more fundamental
> framework.
> In arguing against LTNM, I use cognitive science-based
> approaches to understand and manipulate biological substrates.
> I have claimed that cognition goes all the way down to the molecular
> level; after all,
> we find memory and learning in small networks of mutually interacting
> chemicals, and studies show that molecular circuits can act as agential
> materials.
> I take the existence of goals, preferences, problem-solving skills,
> attention,
> memories, etc., in biological substrates such as cells and tissues so
> seriously that
> I’ve staked my entire laboratory career on this approach.
>
> Some molecular biology colleagues consider my views — that bottom-up
> molecular approaches simply won’t suffice, and must be augmented with the
> tools
> and concepts of cognitive science — to be an extreme form of animism.
> Thus, my
> quarrel with LTNM is not coming from a place of sympathy with molecular
> reductionism; I consider myself squarely within the organicist tradition of
> theoretical biologists like Denis Noble, Brian Goodwin, Robert Rosen,
> Francisco
> Varela and Humberto Maturana, whose works all focus on the irreducible,
> creative, agential quality of life; however, I want to push this view
> further than
> many of its adherents might.
>
> LTNM must go, but we should not replace this concept with its opposite,
> the dreaded presumption that living things are machines;
> that is equally wrong and also holds back progress.
> Still, it is easy to see why the LTNM-lens persists. The LTNM framing
> gives the
> feeling that one has said something powerful — cut nature at its joints
> with
> respect to the most important thing there is, life and mind, by
> establishing a
> fundamental category that separates life from the rest of the cold,
> inanimate
> universe. It feels as if it forestalls the constant, pernicious efforts to
> reduce the
> majesty of life to predictable mechanisms with no ability to drive
> consideration or
> the first-person experiences that make life worth living.
> “Many use the siren song of biological exceptionalism and outdated
> or poorly defined notions of ‘machines’ to push a view that misleads
> lay readers and stalls progress.”
>
> But this is all smoke and mirrors, from an idea that took hold as a
> bulwark against
> reductionism and mechanism; it refuses to go away even though we have
> outgrown it. The approach I am advocating for is anchored by the
> principles of
> pluralism and pragmatism: no system definitively is our formal model of
> it, but if
> we move beyond expecting everything to be a nail for one particular
> favorite
> hammer, we are freed up to do the important work of actually
> characterizing the
> sets of tools that may open new frontiers.
>
> As scientists and philosophers, we owe everyone realistic stories of
> scaling and
> gradual metamorphosis along a continuum — not of magical and sharp
> transitions — and a description of the tools we propose to use to interact
> with a
> wide range of systems, along with a commitment to empirical evaluation of
> those
> tools. We must battle our innate mind-blindness with new theories in the
> field of
> Diverse Intelligence and the facilitating technology it enables, much as a
> theory
> and apparatus for electromagnetism enabled access to an enormous, unifying
> spectrum of phenomena of which we had previously had only narrow,
> disparate-
> seeming glimpses. We must resist the urge to see the limits of reality in
> the limits
> of our formal models. Everything, even things that look simple to us, are
> a lot
> more than we think they are because we, too, are finite observers —
> wondrous
> embodied minds with limited perspectives but massive potential and the
> moral
> responsibility to get this (at least somewhat) right.
>
>
> *See an enlarged version of this text at: *
>
> *https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.noemamag.com/living-things-are-not-machines-also-they-totally-are/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Ve39rRWoVFPiJId2876bBCDPioScO_Au7aF4-nWLNzvJRilizu4DQzjcwQLyQrP_sXvTDksO1LCHsusUwFM$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.noemamag.com/living-things-are-not-machines-also-they-totally-are/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!TuRf27kMqxXb6vn61GDuY5SQFOpW-2bJsv9g_xjpV95LAvd4KXEvjSvlYJyKOCwm5VRzNhHx_qeJdN1pix7IJbKTwFLX$>*
>
>
> *-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *
>
> * From William B. Miller, Jr. : **Information in a cellular framework* –
> abstract for discussion
>
> See in the accompanying attached file (for technical reasons)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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