[Fis] Fwd: Bill Miller's contribution

[JOHN TORDAY]

Dear Pedro, Bill and fis,with all due respect,  I have attached my replies
to Bill's *Information in a cellular framework – abstract for discussion*
*William B. Miller, Jr.*

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

*Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts*


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu>
Date: Wed, May 14, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Bill Miller's contribution
To: Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>


Dear Pedro and Bill and fis, I have attached my responses to Bill's
"Information in a Cellular Framework".....

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

*Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts*


On Wed, May 14, 2025 at 3:45 PM Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> -------------------------------------------------
>
>
> *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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