I suspect both of these positions might be correct, but they are focussing on systems that exist on different spatial (and temporal?) scales. Living systems, like individual organisms, participate as components of larger systems, such as social and ecological systems. Not only do they participate in these larger systems, but species have evolved to be utterly dependent on that participation. Social and ecological systems likely emerged after the origin of life in the form of single-celled organisms, so I think existential bottom-up dependence must be an evolved condition. On the other hand, individual organisms themselves are composed of smaller systems, which are also dependent on support from the relatively large-scale organism. Of course, the persistence of life for an organism depends on the functioning of their component sub-systems, in addition to some of the large systems for which they are components. Failure of infodynamic systems at any scale that an organism depends upon can result in organismal death. It is certainly possible that the smaller component systems, like the lives of individual cells, can persist for a while after the death of the individual organism. Other systems, like the larger social and ecological systems, are not likely to depend so strongly on the life of a single organisms that they may persist indefinitely.
I think this perspective of hierarchically embedded systems resolves the apparent discrepancy between the two posts copied below. If not, I am curious what aspect of this discrepancy remains unresolved. Cheers, Guy Guy Hoelzer, Associate Professor Department of Biology University of Nevada Reno Phone: 775-784-4860 Fax: 775-784-1302 hoel...@unr.edu<mailto:hoel...@unr.edu> On Feb 15, 2017, at 3:35 PM, howlbl...@aol.com<mailto:howlbl...@aol.com> wrote: your suggestion that life ceases when informational systems break down is intriguing and made me stop and think. hard. but i suspect it's the other way around. when life ceases, communications systems, informational systems, slowly break down. some of the cells continue to function after death. and almost everything that happens within cells and between them is conversational, communicative, and informational. but i suspect that this vast system of communication and information storage depends on life--whatever life is--to function. in other words, life is an indispensable process built on informational systems, but beyond and above information. as the taj mahal is above and beyond the bricks of which it's made. with warmth and oomph--howard In a message dated 2/15/2017 4:08:51 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, migod...@wanadoo.fr<mailto:migod...@wanadoo.fr> writes: About the difference between death and life, it is possible to tell that life persists as long as the information which controls the regulations which give resistance of the living system to perturbations are efficient. Do you agree ? M. Godron Le 15/02/2017 à 01:04, howlbl...@aol.com<mailto:howlbl...@aol.com> a écrit : brilliant summation, Pedro. we are missing the metaphors with which to explain the difference between death and life or between smart communities like bacterial colonies and consciousness. in The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates, i tell the tale of the origin of the term "emergent property." But, alas, over 140 years after the concept's introduction, we still lack the tools that would help us understand life and consciousness in scientific ways. i suspect the key will come from adding to the bottom up vocabulary of reductionism by looking at top down approaches. and i suspect that certain emergent properties are possibilities of the cosmos waiting for matter to find them. very a la wagner in his Arrival of the Fittest. but if emergent properties exist in an implicit future, in possibility space, how did they get there? a hint: god is not the answer. god is a way of dodging the question. i've hit all these issues in The God Problem. and i ache for the new metaphors. with warmth and oomph--howard ---------- Howard Bloom Howardbloom.net<http://howardbloom.net/> author of : The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable."James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich), How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (“a monumental,epic, glorious literary achievement.” Timothy Leary), and The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Gave You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram--or How Muhammad Invented Jihad (“a terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam,” David Swindle, PJ Media). Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting Scholar—Graduate Psychology Department, NewYork University Founder: International PaleopsychologyProject; founder and chair, Space Development Steering Committee; Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project; Board Of Governors, National Space Society; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation. In a message dated 2/13/2017 10:32:36 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es<mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> writes: Dear Howard, In any extent, your beautiful questions are beyond my reach. I think that the physical characterization of life cannot even provide a whim on your demands; but something of the informational might provide some limited inroads: prokaryots could not achieve any significant progress in morphological or differentiation capabilities within their "colonies". Conversely, eukaryotes developed multicellularity due to their far higher information content (genome), their far improved signaling resources, their endless energy supply in support of the general combinatoric problem-solving tools (mitochondria), and the incorporation of a new locus (cytoskeleton) capable of feeling the force field and reacting to it. A chain of amazing inventions is behind any of the existing branches of complex life... can do they admit a general explanation, not just based on natural selection, but on the improved evolvability that has been obtained by being able to explore any molecular-recognition contraption (within partially collapsed solution state-spaces, a la Wagner?). Otherwise we are lead to admit a deep enigma, still uncharted, or to look for external "intelligence" solutions outside the limits of current scientific paradigms. What is your own opinion?? Best wishes--Pedro El 09/02/2017 a las 22:44, howlbl...@aol.com<mailto:howlbl...@aol.com> escribió: fascinating thinking, pedro. it triggers this: The stages of development are far more than real-world problem solvers. They set artificial challenges, then achieve them. Making a caterpillar that works is an enormously complex challenge. Making a working butterfly is also immensely more complex than any simple challenge mounted by the environment. Changing from caterpillar to butterfly in one lifetime is unachievable beyond all belief. And these grotesquely artificial goals can’t be accounted for by a simple goal of survival. The goal, if anything, seems to be to accomplish the ornate, the unnecessary, the flamboyant, and the impossible. How does a drive toward impossible flamboyance get built into life? How does it get built into the cosmos? with warmth and oomph--howard ---------- Howard Bloom Howardbloom.net<http://Howardbloom.net> author of : The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable."James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich), How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (“a monumental,epic, glorious literary achievement.” Timothy Leary), and The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Gave You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram--or How Muhammad Invented Jihad (“a terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam,” David Swindle, PJ Media). Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting Scholar—Graduate Psychology Department, NewYork University Founder: International PaleopsychologyProject; founder and chair, Space Development Steering Committee; Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project; Board Of Governors, National Space Society; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation. In a message dated 2/9/2017 3:22:55 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es<mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> writes: Dear Marcus and Colleagues, Thanks for your interest. The Chengdu's Conference represented for me an occasion to return to my beginnings, in the 80's, when I prepared a PhD Thesis: "Natural Intelligence: On the evolution of biological information processing". It was mostly following a top down approach. But in some of the discussions outdoors of the conference (a suggestion for the next one in Shanghai: plenary discussion sessions should also be organized) I realized that biomolecular things have changed quite a lot. One could go nowadays the other way around: from the molecular-informational organization of cellular life, to intelligence of the cell's behavior withing the environment. The life cycle es essential. It provides the source of "meaning" (as I have often argued in discussions in the list) but it is also the reference for "intelligence". Communicating with the environment and self-producing by means of the environmental affordances have to be smoothly organized so that the stages of the life cycle may be advanced, and that the "problems" arising from the internal or the external may be adequately solved. It means signalling and self-modifying in front of the open-ended environmental problems, sensing and acting coherently... It strangely connects with the notion of human "story" and the communication cycle in the humanities. Relating intelligence to goal accomplishment or to an architecture of goals as usually done in computational realms implies that the real life course (or the surrogate) is reduced to a very narrow segment. True intelligence evaporates. These were some of my brute reflections that I have to keep musing around (I saw interesting repercussions for cellular signaling "narratives" too). Maybe this is also a good opportunity for other parties of that conference to expostulate their own impressions --very exciting presentations both from Chinese and Western colleagues there. Thanks again, --Pedro El 08/02/2017 a las 14:14, Marcus Abundis escribió: > In next weeks some further discussion might be started, but at the time > being, the slot is empty (any ideas?)< Hi Pedro, For my part I would appreciate a chance to hear more about the thoughts you have been developing (even if they are very rough) as related to the talk you gave in China last summer. Alternatively, further thoughts on Gordana's talk would be nice to hear. For both of these talks, you both shared your presentation stack . . . but there was so much information in both of those talks, it would be nice to have some of "unpacked." Marcus _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis[listas.unizar.es]<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listas.unizar.es_cgi-2Dbin_mailman_listinfo_fis&d=DwMFaQ&c=jifKnBYnyVBhk1h9O3AIXsy5wsgdpA1H51b0r9C8Lig&r=WWj6u_HZ1KhHL3nPIUsokA&m=aqz_-LJSKGr03c-fXGi90AUR2U7YerieDktWObTOk7k&s=XqUV6T76c182-MpG_qWDkRy7jhOyWLr7X877rUsJW1A&e=> -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es<mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/[sites.google.com]<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__sites.google.com_site_pedrocmarijuan_&d=DwMFaQ&c=jifKnBYnyVBhk1h9O3AIXsy5wsgdpA1H51b0r9C8Lig&r=WWj6u_HZ1KhHL3nPIUsokA&m=aqz_-LJSKGr03c-fXGi90AUR2U7YerieDktWObTOk7k&s=DAmbVDI7vjEihwyObrn1wkR0fTRImOCCHtWMCMNLMMw&e=> ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis[listas.unizar.es]<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listas.unizar.es_cgi-2Dbin_mailman_listinfo_fis&d=DwMFaQ&c=jifKnBYnyVBhk1h9O3AIXsy5wsgdpA1H51b0r9C8Lig&r=WWj6u_HZ1KhHL3nPIUsokA&m=aqz_-LJSKGr03c-fXGi90AUR2U7YerieDktWObTOk7k&s=XqUV6T76c182-MpG_qWDkRy7jhOyWLr7X877rUsJW1A&e=> -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es<mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/[sites.google.com]<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__sites.google.com_site_pedrocmarijuan_&d=DwMFaQ&c=jifKnBYnyVBhk1h9O3AIXsy5wsgdpA1H51b0r9C8Lig&r=WWj6u_HZ1KhHL3nPIUsokA&m=aqz_-LJSKGr03c-fXGi90AUR2U7YerieDktWObTOk7k&s=DAmbVDI7vjEihwyObrn1wkR0fTRImOCCHtWMCMNLMMw&e=> ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis[listas.unizar.es]<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listas.unizar.es_cgi-2Dbin_mailman_listinfo_fis&d=DwMFaQ&c=jifKnBYnyVBhk1h9O3AIXsy5wsgdpA1H51b0r9C8Lig&r=WWj6u_HZ1KhHL3nPIUsokA&m=aqz_-LJSKGr03c-fXGi90AUR2U7YerieDktWObTOk7k&s=XqUV6T76c182-MpG_qWDkRy7jhOyWLr7X877rUsJW1A&e=> _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis[listas.unizar.es]<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listas.unizar.es_cgi-2Dbin_mailman_listinfo_fis&d=DwMFaQ&c=jifKnBYnyVBhk1h9O3AIXsy5wsgdpA1H51b0r9C8Lig&r=WWj6u_HZ1KhHL3nPIUsokA&m=aqz_-LJSKGr03c-fXGi90AUR2U7YerieDktWObTOk7k&s=XqUV6T76c182-MpG_qWDkRy7jhOyWLr7X877rUsJW1A&e=> ---------- Howard Bloom Howardbloom.net<http://howardbloom.net/> author of : The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable."James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich), How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (“a monumental,epic, glorious literary achievement.” Timothy Leary), and The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Gave You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram--or How Muhammad Invented Jihad (“a terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam,” David Swindle, PJ Media). Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting Scholar—Graduate Psychology Department, NewYork University Founder: International PaleopsychologyProject; founder and chair, Space Development Steering Committee; Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project; Board Of Governors, National Space Society; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation. _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
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