Re: [Fis] Concluding the Lecture? - In Praise of Teleodynamics
Dear FiSers - I am glad that Pedro has allowed this discussion to continue for a a couple of more days so I can share two items of my work that relate to Terry's teleodynamic-based project. 1. One item is a paper I co-authored with Stuart Kauffman and others entitled The Propagation of Organization: An Enquiry that posits a link between constraints and information. Here is the abstract of that paper. I would be happy to share it off line with any interested parties: Propagating Organization: An Enquiry - Stuart Kauffman, Robert K. Logan, Robert Este, Randy Goebel, David Hobill and Ilya Smulevich. 2007. Propagating Organization: An Inquiry. Published in Biology and Philosophy 23: 27-45. Abstract: Our aim in this article is to attempt to discuss propagating organization of process, a poorly articulated union of matter, energy, work, constraints and that vexed concept, “information”, which unite in far from equilibrium living physical systems. Our hope is to stimulate discussions by philosophers of biology and biologists to further clarify the concepts we discuss here. We place our discussion in the broad context of a “general biology”, properties that might well be found in life anywhere in the cosmos, freed from the specific examples of terrestrial life after 3.8 billion years of evolution. By placing the discussion in this wider, if still hypothetical, context, we also try to place in context some of the extant discussion of information as intimately related to DNA, RNA and protein transcription and translation processes. While characteristic of current terrestrial life, there are no compelling grounds to suppose the same mechanisms would be involved in any life form able to evolve by heritable variation and natural selection. In turn, this allows us to discuss at least briefly, the focus of much of the philosophy of biology on population genetics, which, of course, assumes DNA, RNA, proteins, and other features of terrestrial life. Presumably, evolution by natural selection – and perhaps self-organization - could occur on many worlds via different causal mechanisms. Here we seek a non-reductionist explanation for the synthesis, accumulation, and propagation of information, work, and constraint, which we hope will provide some insight into both the biotic and abiotic universe, in terms of both molecular self reproduction and the basic work energy cycle where work is the constrained release of energy into a few degrees of freedom. The typical requirement for work itself is to construct those very constraints on the release of energy that then constitute further work. Information creation, we argue, arises in two ways: first information as natural selection assembling the very constraints on the release of energy that then constitutes work and the propagation of organization. Second, information in a more extended sense is “semiotic”, that is about the world or internal state of the organism and requires appropriate response. The idea is to combine ideas from biology, physics, and computer science, to formulate explanatory hypotheses on how information can be captured and rendered in the expected physical manifestation, which can then participate in the propagation of the organization of process in the expected biological work cycles to create the diversity in our observable biosphere. Our conclusions, to date, of this enquiry suggest a foundation which views information as the construction of constraints, which, in their physical manifestation, partially underlie the processes of evolution to dynamically determine the fitness of organisms within the context of a biotic universe. A key line from the paper and one that Terry quotes in Incomplete Nature as private communication from Kauffman is: The first surprise is that it takes constraints on the release of energy to perform work, but it takes work to create constraints. The second surprise is that constraints are information and information is constraint. 2. The second item, which is highly speculative and for which I take sole responsibility, is my extension of Terry's notion of teleodynamics beyond the domain of biology to culture, language, organization, science, economics and technology. I share with you the abstract and would be happy to share the whole article off line with any interested parties. This paper was inspired from the following line in Incomplete Nature: Although [teleodynamics] is the distinguishing characteristic of living processes, it is not necessarily limited to the biological. – Deacon (2012, 275) The Teleodynamics of Culture, Language, Organization, Science, Economics and Technology (CLOSET) Published in Systema: connecting matter, life, culture and technology Vol. 2, Issue 3, 2014. Abstract: Logan (2007) in his book The Extended Mind developed the hypothesis that language, culture, and technology can be construed as organisms that evolve and reproduce
Re: [Fis] Concluding the Lecture? - In Praise of Teleodynamics
No problem Bob, we can prolong the NY Lecture some extra days. My concern was the overload that these final messages ---more intense and argumentative-- could be causing on Terry's time budget. It is upon him whether he wants to continue responding in the current regime for instance until February the 15th (it means 12 extra days) or if he prefers to finalize right now and afterwards behave as a common participant, limited to two responding messages per week. We would start the next discussion session some weeks later, so there might be room for continuing the debate, but as an aftermath of the finalized Lecture. In my experience, putting limits to things clarifies the panorama and favors the debate. Very rarely we have had moderation conflicts in this list--what I personally thank to the general good mood of FISers. Nevertheless as a moderator I have to take care that we are not invaded by a cacophony of messages that block interesting exchanges, as happened in the first years of this list (18 years old!), and that our lecturing invitees do not get into unnecessary burdens... Navigating in between Scylla and Charibdis is not always easy! best--Pedro Bob Logan wrote: Dear Pedro, Terry and Fellow FISers - I was composing the email below when your email appeared asking us not to respond any further to Terry's final remarks. I disagree with this arbitrary cutoff as I was about to send out what follows below. It also seems an abridgement of free speech to ask us not to discuss an issue we might be interested in. Perhaps I am unfamiliar with the ground rules of the FIS list but the other listservs I belong to have never attempted to cutoff a topic. There have been occasions where they have asked an individual who posts too often to not turn the list into their own bully pulpit. Anyway as the guy who suggested that we ask Terry to lead a FIS conversation I will exercise the perogative to share my thoughts one more time. I would also be prepared to accept your restriction if you had given us advanced notice with an exact deadline of shutting down this thread. Here is what I had written when you sounded the bell as a death knell to this discussion which is submitted with respect and the undertaking to abide by the referee's decision and not comment on Terry's final remarks although I would love to hear from my colleagues their final thoughts on Terry's teleodynamic approach - Bob In order to respect the only 2 per week constraint here are my comments to the flurry of recent posts in this thread. There is one caveat with which I wish to preface my remarks and it is this: I am a member of Terry research team and therefore I am biased, but I would like to share with my FIS colleagues why I believe the teleodynamic approach that Terry has developed is the best game in town for understanding the origin of life and the nature of information. Pedro wrote on Jan 30: At your convenience, during the first week of February or so we may put an end to the ongoing New Year Lecture --discussants willing to enter their late comments should hurry up. Your own final or concluding comment will be appreciated. Bob's reply: Since Pedro issued the above call for the end of the discussion of Terry's provocative paper there has been a flurry of activity. As The English author Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) once wrote: Nothing so concentrates the mind as the hangman's noose! I hope we can carry on a week or two more as some of us are just warming up. The first of the year is a logical starting point for a new discussion thread but it also corresponds to the beginning of a new semester here in Canada and other places in North America. I for one was focussed on launching the new semester and my courses so I respectfully request that we keep the conversation going for awhile longer before we start a new one. Now I have a few comments to support Terry's teleodynamic approach which I present: Joe Brenner wrote later on Jan 30: we can all easily understand and agree that the incorporation of ‘homunculi’, that is, unproven mechanisms, as explanatory, should be avoided. In my view, however, Terry has a small army of homunculi at work (sic!) who insure that his processes of self-organization, self-reconstitution and ‘spontaneous’ self-assembly can take place! The finality of using his simulated autogenic systems is “a rigorous physical foundation upon which” future complex theories of information may be based. If, as I contend, Terry’s approach has failed to take into account the fundamentally dualistic physical properties of real systems, it is hard to see how it could do so. Bob's reply: As much as it pains me to disagree with my friend Joe who is in general in support of Deacon's approach I have to counter his accuasation that Terry has a small army of homunculi at work: There are no homunculi in the autogen model. According to Deacon's approach an incredible
Re: [Fis] Concluding the Lecture? - In Praise of Teleodynamics
Dear Pedro, Terry and Fellow FISers - I was composing the email below when your email appeared asking us not to respond any further to Terry's final remarks. I disagree with this arbitrary cutoff as I was about to send out what follows below. It also seems an abridgement of free speech to ask us not to discuss an issue we might be interested in. Perhaps I am unfamiliar with the ground rules of the FIS list but the other listservs I belong to have never attempted to cutoff a topic. There have been occasions where they have asked an individual who posts too often to not turn the list into their own bully pulpit. Anyway as the guy who suggested that we ask Terry to lead a FIS conversation I will exercise the perogative to share my thoughts one more time. I would also be prepared to accept your restriction if you had given us advanced notice with an exact deadline of shutting down this thread. Here is what I had written when you sounded the bell as a death knell to this discussion which is submitted with respect and the undertaking to abide by the referee's decision and not comment on Terry's final remarks although I would love to hear from my colleagues their final thoughts on Terry's teleodynamic approach - Bob In order to respect the only 2 per week constraint here are my comments to the flurry of recent posts in this thread. There is one caveat with which I wish to preface my remarks and it is this: I am a member of Terry research team and therefore I am biased, but I would like to share with my FIS colleagues why I believe the teleodynamic approach that Terry has developed is the best game in town for understanding the origin of life and the nature of information. Pedro wrote on Jan 30: At your convenience, during the first week of February or so we may put an end to the ongoing New Year Lecture --discussants willing to enter their late comments should hurry up. Your own final or concluding comment will be appreciated. Bob's reply: Since Pedro issued the above call for the end of the discussion of Terry's provocative paper there has been a flurry of activity. As The English author Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) once wrote: Nothing so concentrates the mind as the hangman's noose! I hope we can carry on a week or two more as some of us are just warming up. The first of the year is a logical starting point for a new discussion thread but it also corresponds to the beginning of a new semester here in Canada and other places in North America. I for one was focussed on launching the new semester and my courses so I respectfully request that we keep the conversation going for awhile longer before we start a new one. Now I have a few comments to support Terry's teleodynamic approach which I present: Joe Brenner wrote later on Jan 30: we can all easily understand and agree that the incorporation of ‘homunculi’, that is, unproven mechanisms, as explanatory, should be avoided. In my view, however, Terry has a small army of homunculi at work (sic!) who insure that his processes of self-organization, self-reconstitution and ‘spontaneous’ self-assembly can take place! The finality of using his simulated autogenic systems is “a rigorous physical foundation upon which” future complex theories of information may be based. If, as I contend, Terry’s approach has failed to take into account the fundamentally dualistic physical properties of real systems, it is hard to see how it could do so. Bob's reply: As much as it pains me to disagree with my friend Joe who is in general in support of Deacon's approach I have to counter his accuasation that Terry has a small army of homunculi at work: There are no homunculi in the autogen model. According to Deacon's approach an incredible co-incidence has occurred in which the two self organizing processes of auto-catalysis and the self assembly of the crystal-like membranes became self-supporting. It is only by a chance event that one can explain how an organization of molecules with properties so different from abiotic matter suddenly became alive, able to propagate its organization and emerge as a self that acts teleonomically in its own interest. That co-incidence is the one in a billion or more chance that the by product of a particular autocatalytic set were also the ingredients for the self assembly of a bi-lipid membrane that could encase the autocatalytic set in a protective membrane and that the by products of that self-assembly process provided the raw materials for the very same autocatalysis. This is not a homunucli but just plain dumb luck or to give it a fancy name an aleatoric event, a one in a trillion event, but given the billion year (or multi-trillion second) time scale it becomes inevitable that such a rare event will occur. The two self-organizing processes that combined to form the purported autogen are due to first order extrinsic constraints. That these two constraints could be mutually
