Re: The difference between organism and ecosystem...

[David Macy <***>]

Hey Judith, Dan, and all,

    More than anything at this point I desire to be as honest and
forthcoming as I am able, maybe despite being a bit of a chicken hawk.
Perhaps as parttime detectives you know that getting to the truth can often
entail spotting evasion and self-contradiction.  I don't want to be
misunderstood here, but of course I have no control over that and wouldn't
want it even if it were possible.  I don't now, nor do I believe I have ever
claimed to know, all the details of how.

I do believe that it is possible to manifest an organism from 'scratch' as
organism (e.g. as a single cellular autotroph).  But I believe that doing so
would entail a -huge- amount of explicit/implicit embodied knowledge,
capability, understanding, and what have you.  The organism would still be
'systemic', it just would have been manifested absent community/ecology
(except for perhaps the community/ecology implicit in those who manifested
it). If people like Dr. Venter were asked, he might readily admit that he is
relying heavily upon borrowed understanding (e.g. not starting from
scratch).  We lend it, justly or not, a perjorative flavor by calling it a
Frankensteinnean aproach.

Perhaps a 'soft science' way to approach it would be thusly:  Buddha has
said, "If any man should say that one thing is disconnected from another he
is mistaken."  This statement seems to me to at once imply a
discerment/distinction between mistaken and correct and at once provides a
doorway or connection between them.

In a universe where everything is connected how do we account for
discernment and seperation?  Cognito ergo sum.  Say we look at an organism
such as a leapord.  We too are hunters and don't particularly care if we are
accused of anthropomorphizing.  So many of us look at the leopard and are
struck by the raw cognition that the leapord engages in while doing
something dramatic such as hunting (though we could have picked child
rearing, grooming, den selection and preperation, etc).  Anticipation,
implicit/embodied modeling, control, focus, distractions, mistakes, etc are
all on vivid display.

I assert that though an organism such as a single cellular autotroph may
lack what we would label as consciousness, it still cognitates.  I would
unfold the hows and whys of induced emergence by in effect asking something
like, "What entails mind?  What does mind entail... and why?"

Further, I personally would approach  induced emergence from a
'community/ecology' direction as an admission of a lack of understanding.
That is, emergence for dummies.  Pedagogy for me.


David