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Hi Jerry,
I meant to reply to your original post and the day got away from me
yesterday. The questions you have raised are ones that I've given a lot of
thought to, myself. Here are a few of my own tentative conclusions on these
subjects:
Coming at this from a lifetime spent looking at the world alongside
Robert Rosen, I view living organisms in terms of his notion of Complexity. In
fact, since nearly all of my childhood to adult "Why?" questions were
asked of him, my entire way of looking at the world is a combination of his
answers and my own mind (which is somewhat like his although diluted, sad to
say, but I compensate as best I can with a few talents he didn't have).
Anyway, I say all that by way of explanation for what follows.
The way I evaluate "dimensions" has to do with complexity. So,
living systems are already far greater than three dimensions. As such, any
living system is four-dimensional because of the integration of multiple aspects
of time and context into the organization. All living systems are
"Anticipatory Systems". So a single celled plant is every bit as
"four-dimensional" as a single-celled bacterium or a protozoan... It's
true, though, that multi-cellular organisms have "more complexity" to their
organization than single-cellular ones do. (I still haven't come up with a
better way to phrase that; using the word "more" is not really appropriate.)
Organisms with a central nervous system and brain are another step,
allowing for an ability we refer to as "instinct". Organisms with a
central nervous system and intelligence are another step beyond that. And what
is special about humans (and I leave the door open to the possibility that we
are not the only species on this planet with these attributes) is consciousness.
The way I look at these things, intelligence is merely an ability to learn and
encode memory (the ability to "think" and problem-solve.) Consciousness is far
more than intelligence; it's the ability to think about thinking.
Consciousness gives us an ability to think outside of time, to think in abstract
ways, to imagine, to question-- in ways very different from simple
problem-solving... I regard consciousness as an emergent property every bit as
significant as "life" (and consciousness likewise is the collective effect of a
certain kind of extremely complex organization). Consciousness involves time in
ways that life doesn't, even though living systems are already extremely complex
systems with multiple aspects of time co-organized into them.
So I think consciousness gives us access to a fifth-dimension. Each
dimension is infinite and can also interact with other dimensions to some
unknown degree. I don't have any idea how many dimensions there are, and it
really doesn't matter to me. I do believe there are more than five, and I
believe life and consciousness are the means by which to approach such
matters. We know so little about consciousness itself that the subject is wide
open to interpretation. I agree with George Harrison, for example, that "there
are more aspects to consciousness than just waking, sleeping, dreaming..."
About your other comment:
Jerry Zhu wrote: Look like
management and social science are not current thread of discussion. But enjoy everything here. If you have never read the substantial preliminary and
conclusionary material in my father's book, "Anticipatory Systems", I urge you
to do so. He wrote at length about social systems and other human collective
systems like economics and politics. He felt that biology was the only place to
derive our approach to these kinds of systems because they are complex systems
generated by the effects of life and of consciousness (which are also
complex). Because he wrote about these subjects, I would venture that Tim
wouldn't consider such discussions off-topic, so if you have questions about
this, go ahead and post them.
Cheers,
Judith Rosen
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