2021-06-17, 07:19 PM
(2021-06-17, 01:59 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]......................................................
OK - life (let alone Life) doesn't emerge from material systems with some magic from "complexity" or other "wider wholes". The bridge theory is not pragmatically backed by the applicable logic and math. Here we agree.
My assertion is that information science can mine from what we know about integrative levels, complex systems, biological perception and biological regulatory functioning to find a complete level of activity describing the evolution of mind.
The emergence of mind from the brain is a failed neurobiological philosophy. My formulation is: brain organization emerges from the action of will (as measurable enforced meaning changing real-world probabilities) driving the bio-information goals that are functional behavior.
There is the well-hewn science of physiology where organic materials are chemically organized into cells and organs. There is also, the fast developing science of bio-informatics, which is the tools and pattern analysis that track the information processing and functional behaviors of living things.
The bridge theory between physiology and bio-informatics needs to append the information objects of mind, such as perceptions, memory, goals and stimulus responses to their corresponding chemical organizations. Top-down and bottom-up.
Goals, with an organic will behind them, are active structured information. Seeing two separate environments, each discrete, we can define one where mind is active. And know that the information objects generated by living things are real - just as we physically see arms as real. Hence, informational realism is a framework for parsing how mind changes real-world probabilities.
in the past I did mention that Dembski has espoused some view of Informational Realism?
Not that I want to become repetitive in my use of repetitions of some of my previously posted statements, but it seems to me that it is again very appropriate in my response to this latest post of yours:
"It is still the case that none of the interesting material you just covered addresses this as far as I can tell. It does address how relatively simple unicellular organisms can carry out very simple stimulus/processes dictated by immediately occuring inner survival needs/response patterns of action. This simply doesn't constitute design of an irreducibly complex machine - a process which I contend requires a complex and creative mind of some sort. A mind that can envision the need for each of the many parts or components, and how they must work together to accomplish what the overall design is required to do, and judge whether the overall design meets the requirements (which include not interfering with the other existing functions of the cell). A mind that can realize, for example, that a whip-like "propeller" requires a hub and bearing assembly and also a "motor", and a system to respond to environmental stimuli, and also a system to manufacture the overall system of subsystems. This is just the tip of an iceberg of complexity."
Your statement is
Quote:"My formulation is: brain organization emerges from the action of will (as measurable enforced meaning changing real-world probabilities) driving the bio-information goals that are functional behavior."
Brain organization is extremely complex (in fact it is apparently the most complicated machine known in the Universe), and you dismiss its origin as some sort of magical "emergence" phenomenon.
This presumes that a very high level (enough to create the brain) of mind (in the form of "will" and "goals") already pre-exists as a property of living organisms. How living organisms and their complex biological machines originated, how mind originated and what is its true nature are the main issues in contention, in addition to the issue of the magnitude or level of mind that is required to create complex biological machines.
Your statement is
Quote:"...if you have coded communication and a will to live - biological designs will emerge in service to life."
This again presumes the prior existence of mind, in this case something (it must be mind) with a "will" to live. And claiming biological designs will simply "emerge" from coded communication and a will to live, is both circular and an appeal to magic. Coded communication presumes the existence of mind in the first place (starting with the origination of the DNA coding system), and a "will" to live is a property of consciousness which remains a mystery both is its true nature and its origin.
Your statement is
Quote:"The bridge theory between physiology and bio-informatics needs to append the information objects of mind, such as perceptions, memory, goals and stimulus responses to their corresponding chemical organizations. Top-down and bottom-up.....Goals, with an organic will behind them, are active structured information. Seeing two separate environments, each discrete, we can define one where mind is active. And know that the information objects generated by living things are real - just as we physically see arms as real. Hence, informational realism is a framework for parsing how mind changes real-world probabilities."
This runs squarely into Chalmers' Hard Problem in the philosophy of mind and its ultimate nature. All attributes or characteristics or qualities of mind are immaterial and cannot be defined in material terms, certainly not ones like "active structured information" and "information objects". An example is the fact that mentally experiential qualia like the perception and experience of the color red are indefinable (are not possibly parameters of) the physical facts of the wavelength and intensity and spacial pattern of the electromagnetic radiation (light) that corresponds to it.
All the physical descriptors of the physical nature and organization of the experienced color red don't go anywhere in understanding what is the essence or true nature or property of mind called Qualia.
As your words don't go anywhere in understanding the origin of Qualia (or of the experience or agency or will or intentionality or meaning of consciousness of any kind). Even though your statements seem to be attempting to do so.