Re: Life without evolution/evolution without life?

[Howard Pattee <***>]

John,

Here are some further thoughts on your long post. I can?t follow all of it.

>[Howard] Imagining such a subject-object distinction before life existed would be 
>entirely gratuitous,

[John K] OK, certainly it would be a leap of faith (i.e., assumption) and
gratuity to a certain point of view; but it is not at all different from
the opposite leap of faith that we have all made, that material reality
existed before matter.

HP: I do not know what material reality means as distinct from matter as we observe and 
measure and model it. Is it kind of a Platonic reality?

JK: That particular gratuity to a particular way of looking at the world has run into 
problems now that we have investigated it very thoroughly; so it makes sense now to try 
the other one and investigate it.

HP: What is a particular problem you have in mind, and how does the other way look like 
it might help?

JK: This sort of dismissal is the most frustrating thing to combat, because it presumes 
to need no justification other than habit and group consensus, which the paper does a 
great job of transcending otherwise. Why close this door?

HP: Who is dismissing what? I?m all in favor of new ways of thinking and modeling. All we 
ask for a scientific model is that there must be some consensus on how to tell what is 
real and what is imaginary.

HP: A distinction is made by a subject that is not a distinction derivable
from the object. In physical language this means a subject must create
some form of distinction or classification between physical states that
is not made by the laws themselves (i.e., measuring a particular initial
condition, removing a degeneracy or breaking a symmetry).

JK: Yes - form-function complementarity does that, but does it go too far???
I first thought it must be too radical, but have since found the
necessity. If I changed no other words in your paper, this could be an
alternative conclusion. Being the big taboo, have you given it serious
thought?

HP: I don?t know what you mean here. Have I given serious thought to what exactly?

>HP: Where does a new distinction first occur?

JK: I would say the first distinction occurs in the most primitive physical
interaction, as we can observe at the quantum level or in conscious decision making.

HP: I?ve lost the context here. What ?new distinction? was I talking about?
In any case, I don?t think of physical interactions as primitive. They just exist as 
inexorable laws of nature. On the other hand, I think of consciousness as a very slowly 
evolved emergent, but very short-lived, property of individual organisms.

Howard


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