[Fis] What is Art?

[OARF]

Dear John and Fis Colleagues,

Having done some research on your life’s work, I must say “Hats off!”
A monumental effort integrating Margulis, Quantum Mechanics and Cell signaling and evolution in the universe starting from the Big Bang and star formation.  

As may have guessed from my previous responses, my first impulse is to question, be skeptical.  And I must admit, I did not take you seriously.  My own problem not yours. 

So I am forced to take you seriously.  I still think of Eddington finding conscious nowhere. 

I am also wondering about how I am conscious of not just a sensation but a whole room with persons all simultaneously, at once.  Yet I imagine I could also be an LLM guided robot with no conscience but with no way to tell the difference except by looking at the internals. But that would not prove to the external observer that the robot me was not conscious.  This brings us back to Eddington. 

If consciousness is embodied in the vast organized human brain, how does it ariase from bacteria or frogs or fish lungs. Come on, here the skeptic comes out again.

If consciousness is an embodied functional state(Putnam) then just about anything is conscious and can be cloned endlessly, but then where am I in this robot body or that one? Like twins who sometimes feel each other’s pain.

Best wishes,

Eric


Sent from my iPad


Sent from my iPad
> On Jan 17, 2026, at 10:59 PM, JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu> wrote:
> 
> Symbiogenesis