[Fis] Bill Miller's contribution

[Pedro C. Marijuán]

Given the archive difficulties with attached files, systematically 
scrubbed by the server, I am posting Bill's text as a regular message 
(today I finally could do that!).
It is an angle pretty different from the mechanism/non mechanism 
one...      Regards --Pedro
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*Information in a cellular framework – abstract for discussion
William B. Miller, Jr.*

A long-standing presumption among many physicists and mathematicians is
that biology is a descriptive endeavor and any deep understanding of the
living frame must issue from their more rigorous disciplines. Nonetheless,
neither physics nor mathematics has explained the non-equilibrium living
state in which intelligent self-referential cells deploy problem-solving
competencies to sustain themselves across living scales. Consequently, some
scientists argue that the reverse may be correct: biology might productively
inform physics and mathematics, offering insights into how natural laws
might extend beyond known physical and mathematical principles.
In the same spirit, examining the specific attributes of biological
information processing and living information management as specifically
exemplified by cells might provide a productive further thrust to the
fundamental action-logic of those theoretical information systems formulated
by visionary information theorists.

To stimulate that initiative, it is proposed that information theorists 
might
direct their attention to the specific informational characteristics of 
intelligent,
measuring cells, which represent the basal strata of our living planetary
system.

Several specific attributes of biological information have been
empirically verified at the cellular level, thereby defining the 
informational
conditions of our living system:

--All cells are cognitive, problem-solving agents.

--Their living context is the ambiguity of information.

--The uncertain validity of environmental stimuli governs the cellular
reception, analysis, and deployment of all cellular resources.

--Imperfect information requires cells to internally measure their
received information.

--Accordingly, all cellular information is a product of infoautopoiesis,
entailing that all the information that any cell has about its external
environment is exclusive, self-referential, and self-produced.

--Cellular infoautopiesis drives an obligatory and little appreciated
derivative: each cell, and then we as cellular beings, create our
exclusive self-referential representations of reality and act upon that
self-generated purview.

--Obliged informational uncertainties stimulate the collective cellular
analysis of self-generated cellular information, driving ubiquitous
planetary multicellularity as a cellular expression of the familiar
'wisdom of crowds'.

--Cellular information processing directs toward narrowing distinctions
on the adjacents to diminish their obligatory uncertainty gap, yielding
the effective minimization of surprisal in conformity with the Free
Energy Principle.

--Every cell does work to sustain its self-directed state of homeorhetic
preferential flux.

--Narrowing the distinctions on the adjacents as the effective
minimization of surprisal enables cellular predictions and
anticipations.

--Self-referential cellular states of homeorhetic preference drive
multicellular eukaryotic macroorganic behaviors and emotions.

*SOME BASIC QUESTIONS (for the discussion)*

Information in the living frame has been commonly defined according to
Bateson’s familiar definition as a 'difference that makes a difference over
time.' How might that definition explain internal self reference that 
governs
our lives, enabling living information management? Might other definitions
serve better?

How can previously formulated information theories illuminate the cellular
living process within its obligatory context of informational ambiguity?
How do current information theories explain the presence of inference,
prediction, and anticipation.

Why do these informational cues, which must first manifest at the level of
cells as exclusive states of self-referential homeorhetic preference, 
exert in
multicellularity as nuanced multicellular behaviors and emotions?
Recent research confirms the remarkable competencies of diverse
intelligences across living scales. How might applying information systems
theory contribute to our debate about any categorical distinctions 
between the
living frame and the abiotic realm? If a fluid continuum is asserted, how
might that be rationalized?

Is our understanding of biological systems improved by asserting an
immaterial Platonic informational platform permitting cells to interrogate a
constrained portion of universal informational space-time (? phase space
partition) as part of a universal informational fabric?

Given the extraordinary competencies of current AI systems and projected
future abilities, how might information theory inform constructive responses
to inevitable social, economic, and cultural pressures?

What should govern our ethical responses to the still-developing organic 
constructs
  which will include synthetic combinations of digital competencies and 
living cells?
If 'consciousness' is determined to be a litmus of our ethical stance toward
other living entities, what practical informational threshold exists, if 
any?

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