Hi John Clark Are you perhaps looking for a way to create order (biological structure) out of chaos ? That is what life does. It reverses time's arrow to extract the energy necessary to live and grow from a disorderd environment. This means creating ordered structure out of a chaotic enivironment. It produces energy from emtropy.
So it is reasonable to define life as that which can produce order out of chaos" *. Since at least higher living beings also possess consciousness, my "grand" hypothesis is that life = consciousness = awareness = producing order out of chaos. * I am not referring here to chaos theory, as it only seems to work with nonlinear mathematical functions, not real entities. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/5/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-04, 15:18:48 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > When you say "Random mutation can wire together a small number of cells such > that if there is a sudden change in the light levels in the environment, like > a shadow covering it, a snail will retreat into its shell", you have assumed > sense and awareness to begin with. I can reproduce the same rudimentary behavior with a few dozen transistors, or vacuum tubes, or mechanical relays; if you assume that simple snail has awareness then my machines do too. ? > in theory, random mutation can't wire together anything. Huh? ? > Nothing can be wired together in a universe which is devoid of any capacity > for detections, responses, and their meta-consequences. I don't know what you're talking about, a toy robot can and does detect things and makes responses that are determined by what it detects.? > This is already awareness. If particle X coming into contact with particle Y is awareness then everything is aware, which is equivalent to nothing is aware. For a concept to have meaning you need contrast. ? > You are already assuming a mechanism in which one thing can have something to > do with another thing I'm not assuming machines exist, I know for a fact that they do.? ?> where there can be a such thing as 'light levels' or other experiences of coherent sensation/detection. You are already assuming participatory efficacy in the perception event Photoelectric detectors have existed for a long time and Einstein explained how they work in 1905, I'm not sure I'd say these machines "perceive"? the light but if you want to use that word I won't argue the point. ? > the snail will retreat into its shell means that something is able to detect > the external condition and causally effect the behavior of the cells of the > snail to the point that they physically contract and move into a different > position within the shell. And a high school kid for his science fair project could make a robot snail that does the exact same thing, and he probably wouldn't even win first place. ? John K Clark ? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
