John M.,
This post of yours was quite thought provoking. Comments mixed in, below:
> John M. wrote: Pan-sensitivity I substituted for the noumenon used by
> different people for different things - called ubiquitously 'consciousness'.
> It came from my proposal from the early 90s to regard Ccness as something
> like "acknowledgement of and response to information" (Info in common sense
> terms). Now these concepts ('life' included) are connected. Within the
> overall complexity it is hard to specify partial meanings.
"Pan-sensitivity" describes something I would attribute to the abilities of all living systems but I think consciousness is different. "Responding to information" is something all organisms do, even single celled organisms. My own view of the definition of consciousness has to do with the mind. Deliberation is something that consciousness makes possible and it goes beyond responding to information. Consciousness includes the ability to deliberately use and create "information".
One of the differences between living and non-living systems is that living systems have an organization based on functions. Functions imply putting information to use. In fact, one of the crucial definitions of information is phenomena that means something. So, information is "in the eye of the beholder". Life exploits opportunity, which is a functional potential. Opportunity implies use of information. As an example; something like ambient temperature change... isn't information in and of itself. It becomes information when it is incorporated into the models of a plant species. To that organism, it means something. The first frost of the season here in New York triggers all sorts of changes in living organisms and most of these changes are not on a conscious level. So information is what life creates out of inanimate and all other processes in the universe. To an ice crystal, the temperature isn't information. The
freeze/melt cycle was one of my father's examples of a simple reaction, induced by temperature.
Again, this bears on my father's work on Anticipation. Anticipatory systems, a term which applies to living systems, are not simply reacting but responding-- and the response is rooted in time. It was the response by organisms to phenomena that hadn't happened yet-- something that was still to come, which made such an impression on my father's thinking. He often spoke of biological systems being a marvelous classroom and teacher.
> I was just scolded on another list by a smart sage that my rigid rejection
> of reductionism makes me a reductionist in my holistic exaggeration. I ask
> you
> if you happen to catch how I think, tell it to me so I shall know it myself.
>
I think maybe I'm beginning to understand: Having recognized your own scientific tunnel vision of the past, it seems to me that you are trying to help others avoid even starting down that path. Once you start, it becomes very easy to forget the preliminary words "In Science..." in the sentence: "In science, we must make arbitrary distinctions in order to study aspects of the universe around us."
> Our definitions and identifications are restricted to our present
> mindcontent and so I am suspicious of our capability of understanding
> unlimited things.
> This is why I am proudly vague and agnostic (sounds better than ignorant).
> Do we know more today than 50 years ago about life etc.? Of course. What and
> how much are we going to know 50 (or300) years hence about nature?
I agree. In a recent discussion with a group of people about the nature of the universe being infinite, one person nodded solemnly and then said, "Yes, of course, but... what's outside of it?"
Judith