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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear List,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">In my third of the week, I am
responding to Marcus. <br>
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<div>From your 11 July post . . .</div>
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<div>> The genuine properties of
information appear with life: the capability
to persist <</div>
<div>> and react and relate according to
inner drives unseen in inanimate matter.<</div>
<div>– This "informational way of existence"
(as you say), I typify as 'adaptive logic';
an equal concept that I hope we may agree
on.</div>
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<i>No problem if the "adaptive logic" is pretty similar and may also
be extended into cells, organisms, social entities... </i>
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<div>With that as background, in your 11 and
14 July posts there are some key points I
wish to address:</div>
<div>– Your 11 July post shows your bias to
LIFE (agency), which *in itself* is fine and
I have no problem with. But I have also seen
earlier notes from you elsewhere (and
implied above) where you seem to insist
LIFE's informatic expressions be held above
all else – I paraphrase – 'LIFE is Primary
in ALL informational respects!' Is this fair
to say, does this indeed reflect your view?
This view of yours seems clear to me from
prior exchanges, but I do not want to put
words in your mouth. Also, you are not alone
in taking this view. It is important to be
clear about this issue of Primacy, and your
position on the matter . . . as it often
seems to influence the nature of FIS
exchanges (re Loet's 14 July note).</div>
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<i>There are many different views in this list (see eg, what Karl
compiles in his recent message). As there are many "street lamps"
in the info fields, and the temptation is to remain searching
close to one of the "local lights", rather than going toward the
obscure place where the car keys were lost (as says the trite
anecdote often told by physicists on the drank driver). The place
to look for the info keys would be where, originally, info implies
the whole retinue of meaning, knowledge, adaptation, complexity,
etc.etc. It starts with living cells and radiates in multiple
directions. Life has two basic characteristics: <u>the active
elements are coded</u> inside inner memory banks of the system,
and <u>the system </u></i><u><i>itself </i></u><i><u>replicates</u>
along a functional trajectory --life cycle-- open both to
environmental energy flows and to signaling (info) flows. This
does not exist at all in inanimate matter, and the sheer molecular
complexity it generates is just abysmal, incomparable. </i><br>
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<div>– If you see LIFE as Primary in all
informational respects, I disagree with this
(as you know). To say LIFE is Primary
ignores Evolution by Natural Selection
(EvNS) which ultimately defines what all
LIFE looks like – what is extant, what Lives
and what is Extinct/Dead. In turn, EvNS is
guided by indifferent 'selection forces'
(purifying, divisive, and directional) which
are themselves ultimately 'inanimate'
[unless you subscribe to super-naturalism?].
As such, the inanimate defines what the
animate is: the INANIMATE is Primary in
guiding what the ANIMATE *might* be, but the
inverse is not true. LIFE does not direct
atoms and elementary particles in how they
might behave, or what they might *be*.
Still, this does not *by any means* negate
LIFE's vital informatics – it merely places
LIFE in an adaptive role, that of adapting
to inanimate (but still dynamic/chaotic)
matter. This schism between what is Primary
and what is Secondary, I think, must first
be resolved if FIS is to ever advance on its
presumed 'foundational' goal.</div>
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<i>When your computer compositional elements --SiO2 doped lumps plus
different metals and plastics-- are at work, they become immersed
in a systemic dynamics that "enslaves" them. The SiO2 in desert
sands is "more free", but it cannot show its potential
semiconductor properties that the fabrication & later
functioning make manifest. The inanimate is used by a higher order
organization because of its basic properties, not viceversa
(formerly, vacuum tubes were used instead of Silicon). Then, about
the role of natural selection, there is an ongoing serious debate
on the limits of that conceptualization. Probably, the term covers
only half of the biological evolutionary process. As it lacks the
crucial reference to the generation of "variety" --curiously, most
of the proponents of that debate (James Shapiro, Denis Noble, John
Torday, William Miller, Robert Reid, Guenther Witzany, even
Marcello Barbieri...) try to establish in informational terms the
"innovation" component that Darwinians omit. To put a familiar
example, we may state that it is the market which "selects" the
winner cell phone artifacts and technologies... So, evolution by
market selection? Nope! would immediately shout the thousands
engineers and technologists working in the phone industry
innovations, the winner ones and the eliminated ones as well. How
biological innovation crafts the varieties that go to the
selection markets? Basic aspects are not yet well understood, for
instance, the role of viruses, or the "hot points" of meiosis, or
epigenetic inheritance, or symbiosis... For Witzany and
Villarreal, viruses have been dismissed but they probably were
behind most further codes developed by multicellulars, and
pathogenic viruses would appear as the debris left along the
eukaryotic evolution of complexity --they ceaseless struggle to
enter into our own epigenetic systems as other ancestors achieved
(now the case of covid-19).</i><i> <br>
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<div>– To be clear when we say inanimate we
mean 'lacking conscious will or power
(survival intent) in manifest acts and
deeds'. But inanimate does NOT mean lacking
force or energy in the underlying dynamics
of EvNS. It is more that simple atoms, etc.
do not bother with adaptive survival, but
LIFE is mostly concerned with survival . . .
given its relatively 'higher-order'
vulnerable complexity. </div>
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<i>I do not belittle the microscopic (quantum information) world
within the "inanimate". There is some classical, great work by
Michael Conrad in that regard. But the discussion would go beyond
the present context.</i><br>
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<div>– Lastly, you alternatively speak of
'points' and 'principles' which are entirely
different things (which I am sure you know).
Still, I am unsure if the list you offer is
meant to convey 'points' or 'principles'?
Would you please clarify this. As 'points'
it seems little new is added. I do not see
how point 1 significantly improves Donald
MacKay's “Information is a distinction that
makes a difference” or Bateson's 'a
difference that makes a difference' – could
you offer some clarifying examples, or a bit
more detail? The 'adjacent' role you name in
point 1 is in scare quotes and unspecific. I
do not address later points, as I presume
they are shown in a step-wise manner, and I
must agree the first point before focusing
on later points.</div>
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<p><i>It is work in progress. Talking about points makes discussion
easier, I think, but the goal is that they become principles.
Although the whole set is very heterogeneous and who knows
whether it will be workable enough... time will tell. I prefer
to leave the discussion on Point 1 for a next exchange, as this
has already become too long.</i></p>
<p><i>Thanks for the comments.</i></p>
<p><i>--Pedro<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
<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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