[Fis] John Torday

[JOHN TORDAY]

Dear Eric and FIS, I would like to reply to Eric's last email to us in
*[brackets]*

*"*Having done some research on your life’s work, I must say “Hats off!”

*[I appreciate your recognition, thank you]*

A monumental effort integrating Margulis, Quantum Mechanics and Cell
signaling and evolution in the universe starting from the Big Bang and star
formation.

*[Well, thank you again, but it's all for nought if it's not understood as
my understanding and expanendum for 'holism']*

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.

*[Are you referring to Eddington showing that gravity bends light?]*

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.

*[...Except that consciousness is not exclusive to the brain, it's
distributed throughout the body as cell-cell signaling. The big
breakthrough in evolution of the brain was Nick Holland's 'skin-brain'
hypothesis (Holland ND. Early central nervous system evolution: an era of
skin brains? Nat Rev Neurosci. 2003 Aug;4(8):617-27), showing that the skin
was the source of the brain. In all of the cases you cite....  bacteria or
frogs or fish....their consciousness is about calcium fluxes.]*


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.

*[Yes, every living organism is conscious, as determined by having an
'inside' and an 'outside' they are aware of as a 'topology', able to
reconstitute themselves due to the principle of homeostasis]*

Best wishes,



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

*Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts*
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