Jul 16, 2024 03:16 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 16, 2024 03:29 PM by C C.)
https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-dr..._auid=2020
EXCERPTS: Most scientists believe that consciousness, life’s most striking emergent property, cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry. This is false, argues Addy Pross, since the process by which consciousness evolved from inanimate matter, if known, would reveal its physical basis. Recent studies in chemistry reaffirm that an understanding of life lies at the level of chemistry, not biology.
[...] Before addressing the question of how a physical-chemical theory of evolution might shed light on the origin of the mind, it is illuminating to note what Darwin himself said. With minimal chemical knowledge – certainly no molecular biological knowledge – he intuitively understood that life’s mental dimension was also subject to an evolutionary process. As he put it: evolution took place through both ‘corporeal and mental endowments’. Evolution, as Darwin already sensed, is more about improving than inventing. Accordingly, the evolutionary process, from its outset, would have taken place along both physical and mental axes.
[...] So let me now address the question at the heart of this essay: how, and why, did mind emerge from matter? Why consciousness?
The answer to the ‘why’ question is relatively simple: nature, the ultimate technologist, ‘discovered’ that mind is functionally useful. Mind enables cognitive processes such as thinking, decision-making and memory. A mindful entity has survival advantages over a mindless one. Simply put, mind enhances persistence.
The ‘how’ question is the challenging one. A breakthrough event here was the novel preparation a little over a decade ago of a chemical DKS system, based on one of the most common reactions in organic chemistry...
[...] But what was striking about these unfamiliar chemical systems was that they exhibited unexpected life-like characteristics, in particular, rudimentary cognition. Cognition, a biological term, is traditionally defined as ‘the mechanisms by which living things acquire, process, store, and act on information from the environment’. Well, chemical DKS systems begin to do just that – they process, store, and act on information from the environment! Chemical DKS systems are necessarily in constant interaction with their environment and respond immediately to changes in that environment. They have to. Cut off a chemical DKS system’s material and energy resources and, like the physical water fountain, it collapses, the equivalent of dying.
[...] Two additional comments. First, a physical account of how consciousness was able to emerge offers a possible resolution of Chalmers’ ‘hard problem’. If being alive necessarily means being self-aware, it suggests that all living things are to some degree conscious. The answer to the frequently posed question as to why life’s cognitive processes don’t take place ‘in the dark’ becomes straightforward: because they can’t. Living things are intrinsically self-aware, intrinsically conscious. Cognitive processes are intrinsically ‘lights on’, though the level of consciousness that may exist in any living thing – how it would feel to be that living thing – is a separate (and likely intractable) issue. Presumably, however, the ‘lights on’ in a bacterium with no neural system would be less than in a human with its complex neural system. So, yes, bacteria, being alive, are conscious, a view that is consistent with recent biological research that concluded that bacteria can ‘think’.
Second, the relationship between cognition and consciousness can now be reaffirmed. Both are expressions of life’s mental dimension, however, cognition reflects its more objective aspects, such as those involved in information processing and storage. By contrast, consciousness expresses the subjective ‘inside’ view of that dimension – that ‘lights on’ feeling associated with enhanced self-awareness, one not directly accessible to an external observer. And, of course, both consciousness and cognition evolved over time for the survival advantages they provided.
To sum up, consideration of an energized DKS chemical state as the basis for the living state offers insight into both the chemical origin of life and the origin of life’s mental dimension. Though the laws of nature are objective, the nature of DKS states is such that it allows the emergence of subjective purposeful entities... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Most scientists believe that consciousness, life’s most striking emergent property, cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry. This is false, argues Addy Pross, since the process by which consciousness evolved from inanimate matter, if known, would reveal its physical basis. Recent studies in chemistry reaffirm that an understanding of life lies at the level of chemistry, not biology.
[...] Before addressing the question of how a physical-chemical theory of evolution might shed light on the origin of the mind, it is illuminating to note what Darwin himself said. With minimal chemical knowledge – certainly no molecular biological knowledge – he intuitively understood that life’s mental dimension was also subject to an evolutionary process. As he put it: evolution took place through both ‘corporeal and mental endowments’. Evolution, as Darwin already sensed, is more about improving than inventing. Accordingly, the evolutionary process, from its outset, would have taken place along both physical and mental axes.
[...] So let me now address the question at the heart of this essay: how, and why, did mind emerge from matter? Why consciousness?
The answer to the ‘why’ question is relatively simple: nature, the ultimate technologist, ‘discovered’ that mind is functionally useful. Mind enables cognitive processes such as thinking, decision-making and memory. A mindful entity has survival advantages over a mindless one. Simply put, mind enhances persistence.
The ‘how’ question is the challenging one. A breakthrough event here was the novel preparation a little over a decade ago of a chemical DKS system, based on one of the most common reactions in organic chemistry...
[...] But what was striking about these unfamiliar chemical systems was that they exhibited unexpected life-like characteristics, in particular, rudimentary cognition. Cognition, a biological term, is traditionally defined as ‘the mechanisms by which living things acquire, process, store, and act on information from the environment’. Well, chemical DKS systems begin to do just that – they process, store, and act on information from the environment! Chemical DKS systems are necessarily in constant interaction with their environment and respond immediately to changes in that environment. They have to. Cut off a chemical DKS system’s material and energy resources and, like the physical water fountain, it collapses, the equivalent of dying.
[...] Two additional comments. First, a physical account of how consciousness was able to emerge offers a possible resolution of Chalmers’ ‘hard problem’. If being alive necessarily means being self-aware, it suggests that all living things are to some degree conscious. The answer to the frequently posed question as to why life’s cognitive processes don’t take place ‘in the dark’ becomes straightforward: because they can’t. Living things are intrinsically self-aware, intrinsically conscious. Cognitive processes are intrinsically ‘lights on’, though the level of consciousness that may exist in any living thing – how it would feel to be that living thing – is a separate (and likely intractable) issue. Presumably, however, the ‘lights on’ in a bacterium with no neural system would be less than in a human with its complex neural system. So, yes, bacteria, being alive, are conscious, a view that is consistent with recent biological research that concluded that bacteria can ‘think’.
Second, the relationship between cognition and consciousness can now be reaffirmed. Both are expressions of life’s mental dimension, however, cognition reflects its more objective aspects, such as those involved in information processing and storage. By contrast, consciousness expresses the subjective ‘inside’ view of that dimension – that ‘lights on’ feeling associated with enhanced self-awareness, one not directly accessible to an external observer. And, of course, both consciousness and cognition evolved over time for the survival advantages they provided.
To sum up, consideration of an energized DKS chemical state as the basis for the living state offers insight into both the chemical origin of life and the origin of life’s mental dimension. Though the laws of nature are objective, the nature of DKS states is such that it allows the emergence of subjective purposeful entities... (MORE - missing details)