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<big>No problem Bob, we can prolong the NY Lecture some extra days. My
concern was the overload that these final messages ---more intense and
argumentative-- could be causing on Terry's time budget. It is upon him
whether he wants to continue responding in the current regime for
instance until February the 15th (it means 12 extra days) or if he
prefers to finalize right now and afterwards behave as a common
participant, limited to two responding messages per week. We would
start the next discussion session some weeks later, so there might be
room for continuing the debate, but as an aftermath of the finalized
Lecture. In my experience, putting limits to things clarifies the
panorama and favors the debate. Very rarely we have had moderation
conflicts in this list--what I personally thank to the general good
mood of FISers. Nevertheless as a moderator I have to take care that we
are not invaded by a cacophony of messages that block interesting
exchanges, as happened in the first years of this list (18 years old!),
and that our lecturing invitees do not get into unnecessary burdens...
Navigating in between Scylla and Charibdis is not always easy! <br>
best--Pedro <br>
</big><br>
Bob Logan wrote:
<blockquote
cite="midE53D1F51-7AE2-45AD-9943-90CDAA83FF81@physics.utoronto.ca"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; ">
Dear Pedro, Terry and Fellow FISers -
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I was composing the email below when your email appeared asking
us not to respond any further to Terry's final remarks. I disagree with
this arbitrary cutoff as I was about to send out what follows below. It
also seems an abridgement of free speech to ask us not to discuss an
issue we might be interested in. Perhaps I am unfamiliar with the
ground rules of the FIS list but the other listservs I belong to have
never attempted to cutoff a topic. There have been occasions where they
have asked an individual who posts too often to not turn the list into
their own bully pulpit. Anyway as the guy who suggested that we ask
Terry to lead a FIS conversation I will exercise the perogative to
share my thoughts one more time. I would also be prepared to accept
your restriction if you had given us advanced notice with an exact
deadline of shutting down this thread.</div>
<div>Here is what I had written when you sounded the bell as a death
knell to this discussion which is s<span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 16px;">ubmitted
with respect and the undertaking to abide by the referee's decision and
not comment on Terry's final remarks although I would love to hear from
my colleagues their final thoughts on Terry's teleodynamic approach -
Bob </span></div>
<div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 16px;">In
order to respect the "only 2 per week" constraint here are my comments
to the flurry of recent posts in this thread. There is one caveat with
which I wish to preface my remarks and it is this:</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><span
class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 16px;">I
am </span><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 16px;">a
member of Terry research team and therefore I am biased, but I would
like to share with my FIS colleagues why I believe the teleodynamic
approach that Terry has developed is the best game in town for
understanding the origin of life and the nature of information.</span></span></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Pedro wrote on Jan 30:</div>
<div>"At your convenience, during the first week of February or so we
may put an end to the ongoing New Year Lecture --discussants willing to
enter their late comments should hurry up. Your own final or concluding
comment will be appreciated."</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Bob's reply: Since Pedro issued the above call for the end of
the discussion of Terry's provocative paper there has been a flurry of
activity. As <span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 16px;">The
English author Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) once wrote: "Nothing so
concentrates the mind as the hangman's noose!" I hope we can carry on a
week or two more as some of us are just warming up. The first of the
year is a logical starting point for a new discussion thread but it
also corresponds to the beginning of a new semester here in Canada and
other places in North America. I for one was focussed on launching the
new semester and my courses so I respectfully request that we keep the
conversation going for awhile longer before we start a new one.</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 16px;"><br>
</span></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span"
face="'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif"><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">Now I have a few
comments to support Terry's teleodynamic approach which I present:</span></font></div>
<div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span"
face="'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif"><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><font
class="Apple-style-span" face="'Helvetica Neue'">Joe Brenner wrote
later on Jan 30:</font></span></div>
<div>"we can all easily understand and agree that the incorporation
of ‘homunculi’, that is, unproven mechanisms, as explanatory, should be
avoided. In my view, however, Terry has a small army of homunculi at
work (sic!) who insure that his processes of self-organization,
self-reconstitution and ‘spontaneous’ self-assembly can take place! The
finality of using his simulated autogenic systems is “a rigorous
physical foundation upon which” future complex theories of information
may be based. If, as I contend, Terry’s approach has failed to take
into account the fundamentally dualistic physical properties of real
systems, it is hard to see how it could do so."</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Bob's reply: As much as it pains me to disagree with my friend
Joe who is in general in support of Deacon's approach I have to counter
his accuasation that "Terry has a small army of homunculi at work":
There are no homunculi in the autogen model. According to Deacon's
approach an incredible co-incidence has occurred in which the two self
organizing processes of auto-catalysis and the self assembly of the
crystal-like membranes became self-supporting. It is only by a chance
event that one can explain how an organization of molecules with
properties so different from abiotic matter suddenly became alive, able
to propagate its organization and emerge as a self that acts
teleonomically in its own interest. That co-incidence is the one in a
billion or more chance that the by product of a particular
autocatalytic set were also the ingredients for the self assembly of a
bi-lipid membrane that could encase the autocatalytic set in a
protective membrane and that the by products of that self-assembly
process provided the raw materials for the very same autocatalysis.
This is not a homunucli but just plain dumb luck or to give it a fancy
name an aleatoric event, a one in a trillion event, but given the
billion year (or multi-trillion second) time scale it becomes
inevitable that such a rare event will occur. The two self-organizing
processes that combined to form the purported autogen are due to first
order extrinsic constraints. That these two constraints could be
mutually self-supporting and hence create a second-order intrinsic
constraint provides a non-magical mechanism for how an autogen and
subsequently life might have emerged. Deacon's claim is not that this
is an indisputable fact, but, as I read him, it is a valid hypothesis
that is worthy of further study such as computer-based model building.
Given that it suggests a plausible model for how a living self might
have emerged it is worthy of investigation and serious conversation and
thought. It has the added feature that it provides a mechanism of how
information that possesses significance for some agent might have
arisen. Shannon information theory, which I prefer to regard as signal
theory, does not deal with reference or significance as Shannon himself
has admitted in the past. Shannon is no shannonian. And Deacon nor I
are no deaconians. Terry is offering us a hypothesis, which I believe
offers some hope that we can understand how reference, significance,
values have emerged from abiotic matter without invoking a
dualistic-based explanation. My favourite line from Incomplete Nature,
which to my mind sums up Terry's approach is: <span
class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 22px; font-size: 16px;"><span
style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“There
is more here than stuff. There is how this stuff is organized and
related to
other stuff (</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">p. </span><span
style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">544).” </span></span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 22px; font-size: 16px;"><span
style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">In essence what Terry offers
us in Incomplete Nature is a hypothesis of how stuff (abiotic matter)
is organized to create information that has significance and reference
for agents that are selves, which act in their own self interest and
propagate their organization. </span></span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 22px; font-size: 16px;"><span
style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br>
</span></span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,san-serif; line-height: 22px; font-size: 16px;"><span
style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Just recently (Feb 3)
Ericsson-Zenith challenged Terry's use of dynamic constraints. The
autocatalysis and the self-assembly just alluded to are dynamic
constraints in that they constrain the dynamics among certain molecules
to form the structures they do. The second order constraint is a
constraint on the first order constraints that assures that the autogen
is self-repairing. and hence self-sustaining. </span></span></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'"><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'"><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;">Joe
in his remarks that I quoted above also talked about 'unproven
mechanisms.' All scientific explanations make use of 'unproven
mechanisms" because a mechanism that is framed within a scientific
proposition has to be unproven because if it were a proven mechanism it
would constitute a scientific proposition that cannot be falsified
because it was proven to be true. As Karl Popper pointed out a
proposition to be considered scientific must be fallsifiable, which
would be impossible if it purports a proven mechanisms. In other words
we must regard all scientifically based mechanisms as 'unproven
mechanisms' constantly subject to challenge. The autogen mechanism is a
hypothesis - nothing more and nothing less. <br>
</span></font>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span"
face="'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, san-serif"><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div>
<div>
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<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">______________________</span>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
</span></div>
</span></div>
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<div
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K. Logan</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: 12px;">Prof.
Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto </span>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;"></span><span
class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: 12px;">Chief
Scientist - sLab at OCAD</span><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; widows: 2;">
<div style=""><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; widows: 2;">
<div style=""><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: 12px;"><a
href="http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan">http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan</a></span>
<div
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class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><a
href="http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan">www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan</a></span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><a
href="http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications">www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications</a></span><br>
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<div>
<div>On 2015-01-30, at 12:31 PM, Terrence W. DEACON wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>Thanks to Pedro and Bob for these last few comments. Indeed,
like<br>
Darwin in 1859 we are still just beginning to formulate "one long<br>
argument" that will need to be progressively refined in the decades to<br>
come. The question is where best to begin the task of synthesizing. I<br>
too find the metaphor of searching for lost keys quite apropos, but I<br>
would beg your indulgence while I add an elaboration to this metaphor<br>
that sheds light on the perspective I have offered.<br>
<br>
Yes, we must at first search close to the light, even though there we<br>
will only find vague hints. But, importantly, as we cover more and<br>
more territory we will discover that the light progressively<br>
brightens. So long as we keep searching and don't walk out into the<br>
dark too quickly, skipping over important territory in between, the<br>
entire territory will become more and more thoroughly illuminated,<br>
searchable, and familiar to us.<br>
<br>
I believe that the light is brightest in the domain where we can see a<br>
clear relation between the two quite different concepts of entropy and<br>
the relationship of both to the concept of work. Admittedly, starting<br>
so minimally as I have in this essay seems remote from the interests<br>
of psychologists, anthropologists, economists and their kin, who<br>
demand an account of human-scale information processes, while at the<br>
same time appearing to introduce the messiness of semiotic concerns<br>
into the seemingly pristine world of information as a simple physical<br>
parameter. But of course the problem is to find the best illuminated<br>
middle ground between these two extremes, both still bathed in the<br>
darkness of simplifying assumptions that make them seem mutually<br>
exclusive— separated by darkness.<br>
<br>
This is what I am trying to accomplish. Though deceptively simple, I<br>
believe that the autogenic model system is just sufficiently complex<br>
to provide complete illumination of each of the critical defining<br>
features of the information concept—sign medium properties (entropies,<br>
uncertainty, constraint), reference (aboutness), significance<br>
(function, value, normativity), and interpretation (adaptation,<br>
intelligence)—while not artificially simplifying the issue by ignoring<br>
one or the other of these facets.<br>
<br>
Because of its simplicity none of these basic concepts are left in the<br>
dark as black boxes or excluded as taboo concepts. But of course,<br>
working at such a basic level means that the nature of more complex<br>
phenomena as thinking, subjectivity, language, and culture (to mention<br>
only a few) are not yet well illuminated by this light. This isn't to<br>
suggest that other pursuits in these other domains should be<br>
abandoned—for they at least clear away some of the underbrush creating<br>
paths that will help to ease the linkage between the different<br>
subterritories when finally the light brightens (to continue the<br>
metaphor). I just believe that this middle level is where the light<br>
best illuminates all the critical foundational issues.<br>
<br>
I don't expect agreement, but so far I haven't felt that the specific<br>
components of this proposal have been addressed in this thread. And in<br>
these closing days of discussion (as well as in future privately<br>
shared emails after this window closes) I hope to receive some<br>
suggestions and constructive criticisms pointing to where I might go<br>
next with this approach.<br>
<br>
Thanks for all your inputs. Terry<br>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
-------------------------------------------------
</pre>
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