These meteorites contain all of the building blocks of DNA

DNA "alphabet"?  Help me with what you mean.

The DNA alphabet - C,G,T,A.

The bio-code includes more than DNA information.

Probably true, but mixing another vague source of information is not likely to illuminate the problem - which is that the central problem to understand - how the DNA alphabet (analogous to alphabet soup) can be arranged without help into the kind of specific information we find in DNA. It is probably best to think in terms of alphabet soup (I hope they still make the stuff). If you looked into a plate of the still, you'd be lucky to see one word of more than four letters, but how do you get it organised into a whole sentence that means something. Really the only way would be to ask someone to join the letters up.

David

- which is that the central problem to understand - how the DNA alphabet (analogous to alphabet soup) can be arranged without help into the kind of specific information we find in DNA. It is probably best to think in terms of alphabet soup (I hope they still make the stuff). If you looked into a plate of the still, you'd be lucky to see one word of more than four letters, but how do you get it organised into a whole sentence that means something. Really the only way would be to ask someone to join the letters up.

David

I get this as a starting place to have a framework to approach the evolution problem.  We know how we experience writing, and project it to nature.

But, since we don't experience the unconscious information processes (such as instinct) it seems its role is mistakenly excluded from the results.  Mind changes the picture as it injects changed probability in the environment.  A dead body has no active means of changing its circumstances.  Yet, a plant can adapt to changing light and water affordances that will help it survive.  Bacteria respond with simple strategy, with no brain material.

Isn't missing the role of unconscious mind in bio-evolution, revealing an oxymoronic situation?  Most of the active processes of mind are unconscious and yet they clearly move the bits where they need to go.

I get this as a starting place to have a framework to approach the evolution problem.  We know how we experience writing, and project it to nature.

But, since we don't experience the unconscious information processes (such as instinct) it seems its role is mistakenly excluded from the results.  Mind changes the picture as it injects changed probability in the environment.  A dead body has no active means of changing its circumstances.  Yet, a plant can adapt to changing light and water affordances that will help it survive.  Bacteria respond with simple strategy, with no brain material.

Isn't missing the role of unconscious mind in bio-evolution, revealing an oxymoronic situation?  Most of the active processes of mind are unconscious and yet they clearly move the bits where they need to go.

Absolutely and necessarily, sentient mental processes (including analysis, insight, memory, foresight, creative imagination, etc.) must have been involved in devising a very efficiently and ingeniously organized DNA code of bases whose purpose is, beginning with the necessity of self-reproduction, ultimately to create chains of amino acids which in turn form the constituent parts of innumerable different protein molecules whose exact manner of infolding and corresponding mechanical shapes and resultant biological functions are determined by the exact order of these amino acids. I don't think you can somehow get rid of the necessity for intelligent conscious mind in the origin of the code of life.

Isn't missing the role of unconscious mind in bio-evolution, revealing an oxymoronic situation?  Most of the active processes of mind are unconscious and yet they clearly move the bits where they need to go.

I don't deny the (very probable) role of mind in evolution - and indeed the origin of life.

What I deny is the idea that mind just arises in complicated chunks of matter. I think that mind is (very probably) more basic than matter.

Maybe we are inching towards agreement - I don't know.

David

I don't think you can somehow get rid of the necessity for intelligent conscious mind in the origin of the code of life.

At the very beginning, a process needs to cause changes to the probable outcomes of chemical interactions.  These changes must be selected to overcome natural entropy.  Mind, as an activity does just this, building informational structure.  Evolution can be seen as a series of physical pictures, or as bio-programs.  Science is finding researching the bio-programming more factual than what had come before.  The "how" of bio-programs is where science is hot!!
 
An outside intelligence whose mind can change outcomes using communication and command to organize environments is a historically accepted answer.  But the ancient memes are slowly falling out of favor for modern culture.

A second answer seems to be also falling out of favor, one where processes measured in physical units, somehow find their ways to guide unnatural entropic patterns.  Game changing objects appear.  Constructed so that outcomes reveal dramatic specified structure aimed at overcoming entropy. from simple electro-chemistry.  These first are active as instinctual behavior and are based on evident self-focus. This view of mind in evolution is now changing to Panpsychism. 

A third answer is that neither are true and we are ignorant in both our metaphysics and our science.

A fourth answer is that both are true, there is an outside intelligence integrated with natural processes contributing at separate levels.  The rise of bio-information as a system comes because there is active - "wanting for life".  That part of mind may have been evolving before the chemistry afforded it manifest physical means.  Active in an informational space of probabilities.

Finding mind in natural processes will help to the depth of its activity.  If both are true, then it makes sense to continue to develop how mind is at the core of evolution.  What is mind in a natural sense but the ability to know and execute response?  These do not directly interact with the physical, but minds actions are informational.  Minds can change from sensing reality and minds change realty by changing the probability of environmental information.

Isn't that exactly what quantum experiments have taught us, probability waves?

At the very beginning, a process needs to cause changes to the probable outcomes of chemical interactions.  These changes must be selected to overcome natural entropy.  Mind, as an activity does just this, building informational structure.  Evolution can be seen as a series of physical pictures, or as bio-programs.  Science is finding researching the bio-programming more factual than what had come before.  The "how" of bio-programs is where science is hot!!
 
An outside intelligence whose mind can change outcomes using communication and command to organize environments is a historically accepted answer.  But the ancient memes are slowly falling out of favor for modern culture.

A second answer seems to be also falling out of favor, one where processes measured in physical units, somehow find their ways to guide unnatural entropic patterns.  Game changing objects appear.  Constructed so that outcomes reveal dramatic specified structure aimed at overcoming entropy. from simple electro-chemistry.  These first are active as instinctual behavior and are based on evident self-focus. This view of mind in evolution is now changing to Panpsychism. 

A third answer is that neither are true and we are ignorant in both our metaphysics and our science.

A fourth answer is that both are true, there is an outside intelligence integrated with natural processes contributing at separate levels.  The rise of bio-information as a system comes because there is active - "wanting for life".  That part of mind may have been evolving before the chemistry afforded it manifest physical means.  Active in an informational space of probabilities.

Finding mind in natural processes will help to the depth of its activity.  If both are true, then it makes sense to continue to develop how mind is at the core of evolution.  What is mind in a natural sense but the ability to know and execute response?  These do not directly interact with the physical, but minds actions are informational.  Minds can change from sensing reality and minds change realty by changing the probability of environmental information.

Isn't that exactly what quantum experiments have taught us, probability waves?

It boils down to you're not having the slightest idea of how conscious intelligent self aware mind (that is required for the designer/engineer of evolution) can have come about as a property or function of matter or even of simple living organisms. In fact as science of mind researchers have painfully discovered over many years, no one whatsoever has the slightest idea what such mind really is and how it works; in essence they have reached an impenetrable wall of ignorance when it comes to trying to solve Chalmers' "hard problem". Accordingly, I think your words above are for the most part wishful and wordy speculation.

At the very beginning, a process needs to cause changes to the probable outcomes of chemical interactions. 

Circularity enters into all your explanations almost instantly. "Needs" implies something with an intention.

If you want to say that matter has an inbuilt intention then OK - but what put it there - obviously not something material!

Circularity enters into all your explanations almost instantly. "Needs" implies something with an intention.

If you want to say that matter has an inbuilt intention then OK - but what put it there - obviously not something material!

I have no idea why an implication of intentional behavior would send you off in a circle.  Information sciences have huge commercial applications in just that - measuring intentions, votes, shoppers favorites....

I do not support anything like a panpsychist position.  Mind - defined as activity that changes ongoing circumstances by changing the informational structures in the environment - is needed to effect outcomes.   That a action within a group of ions would be organized in such a way that a future target state (just a fancy term for an intention) is raised in potential manifestation takes active MIND.

Chemicals don't organized themselves beyond thermodynamic bounds.  Pretending that there is "magic sauce" inside is to conceptualize the answer without a model.  It is a modern answer given by well-respected researchers and philosophers.

Mental evolution is broken-out and ignored in the neo-Darwinian version of evolution.  Darwin believed in mind and its role.  Breaking apart science tracks, so that the computational aspects are split between the physical units of measure and the informational units of measure - mental evolution can be explored.  The insect mind is outstanding, but its evidence ignored until recently.

Considering "it from bit"  doesn't it make sense that evolving mind came before the organization of chemistry to be dissipative structures that activate non-equilibrium thermodynamic events.  As soon as there is an environment - that is not physical, an informational environment - there can be a model for active changes in probabilities that happens before a physical change happens.

Mind before cell signaling.