Do you believe the Cosmos could or would learn from experiment, or that permissive and restrictive laws were already present causing the failures and successes of the trials? It's strange, sometimes everyone is in agreement in principle but disagree on the philosophical contexts.Is the cosmos alive and conscious, or is it just an inert collection of matter that is unaware of it's own existence. Are humans the conscious awareness of the cosmos? The cosmos might not learn from experience, but humans are capable of learning, even if they don't always do so.
Do you believe the Cosmos could or would learn from experiment, or that permissive and restrictive laws were already present causing the failures and successes of the trials? It's strange, sometimes everyone is in agreement in principle but disagree on the philosophical contexts.Is the cosmos alive and conscious, or is it just an inert collection of matter that is unaware of it's own existence. Are humans the conscious awareness of the cosmos? The cosmos might not learn from experience, but humans are capable of learning, even if they don't always do so. IMO, I would say the cosmos is dynamic and there are only forms of energy changing from one state into another. This happens in accordance with about 32 constant mathematical equations or functions (universal constants). While it is active and reactive, it is not self-aware or aware of us. IOW it is non-contemplative. It is a metaphysical permissive and restrictive environment, or "condition" The most that can be said of the cosmos is that it functions mathematically and that it has no choice but to function mathematically. This may be of interest.
Decoding the Universe: The Great Math Mystery - NEW 2015 Documentary , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm7OBEz7JR0OTOH, awareness, self-awareness or hive-awareness, mathematical recognition, and intentional communication in living things may be already present in very simple organisms, mainly as naturally selected survival techniques, resulting in the evolution of complexity and refinement in functional systems and eventually "homo sapiens sapiens". Humans are self-contemplative, but IMO, we are almost certainly not the only species capable of abstract thought.
Do you believe the Cosmos could or would learn from experiment, or that permissive and restrictive laws were already present causing the failures and successes of the trials? It's strange, sometimes everyone is in agreement in principle but disagree on the philosophical contexts.Is the cosmos alive and conscious, or is it just an inert collection of matter that is unaware of it's own existence. Are humans the conscious awareness of the cosmos? The cosmos might not learn from experience, but humans are capable of learning, even if they don't always do so. IMO, I would say the cosmos is dynamic and there are only forms of energy changing from one state into another. This happens in accordance with about 32 constant mathematical equations or functions (universal constants). While it is active and reactive, it is not self-aware or aware of us. IOW it is non-contemplative. It is a metaphysical permissive and restrictive environment, or "condition" The most that can be said of the cosmos is that it functions mathematically and that it has no choice but to function mathematically. This may be of interest.
Decoding the Universe: The Great Math Mystery - NEW 2015 Documentary , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm7OBEz7JR0OTOH, awareness, self-awareness or hive-awareness, mathematical recognition, and intentional communication in living things may be already present in very simple organisms, mainly as naturally selected survival techniques, resulting in the evolution of complexity and refinement in functional systems and eventually "homo sapiens sapiens". Humans are self-contemplative, but IMO, we are almost certainly not the only species capable of abstract thought.You make the same basic mistake everyone does. You say the cosmos isn't self-aware. And that implies we humans are not part of the natural world, that we're somehow different. I think that's a holdover from religious thinking that treats humans as different from nature, as in supernatural in that we were created by a supernatural being, i.e. god talk. We're not. We are just a complex and interesting arrangement of matter. And that arrangement just so happens to be able to think about itself. In other words, we are just one small way the cosmos contemplates itself.
posted by CuthbertG, You make the same basic mistake everyone does. You say the cosmos isn’t self-aware. And that implies we humans are not part of the natural world, that we’re somehow different. I think that’s a holdover from religious thinking that treats humans as different from nature, as in supernatural in that we were created by a supernatural being, i.e. god talk. We’re not. We are just a complex and interesting arrangement of matter. And that arrangement just so happens to be able to think about itself. In other words, we are just one small way the cosmos contemplates itself.a) if I am making the same mistake everyone makes, perhaps it is you who is wrong. At least in assigning motivated intelligence to the wholeness of the universe, on the basis that the universe contains a few species with intelligent brains. Is a fishtank sentient because it has a goldfish swimming in it? Is a house sentient because humans were born there and living in it? I do not deny that the universe is a wholeness (Bohm), and it may even have holographic aspects to it, but the universe does not act purposefully. It is a dynamic system that functions mathematically. From the infinite variety of mathematical possibilities, we know that a these mathematical potentials resulted in the development of brains and neural networks in a relatively few species on a small cinderella planet which offered the right conditions for such mathematical evolution. Is the earth itself sentient because it is host to living things of all kinds? Gaia? The evolution of sentient brains does not imply any purpose or extra-special universal knowledge or favoritism of our existence.. Humans are but a tiny part of life on earth and a mere blip in the wholeness of the universe. The fact that billions of living species alive or extinct evolved alongside humans, speaks of the relative unimportance of mankind' s exstence. The earth may well be destroyed by a comet at any given time. In fact, this may be an already existing mathematical probability. The mistake you make is to equate infinite potential and the mathematical ability to manifest those potentials in infinite variety when the proper cpnditions are present, with motivated sentient action. But 2 + 2 = 4 is not a sentient equation, it is a mathematical equation. Ask yourself, did the universe say "oooops" when a meteor wiped out most of life on earth? Did the universe consider this an unfortunate loss to its existence? For that matter, is the cosmos aware of its own existence at all, or is it just a natural phenomenon, starting as a violent and chaotic event giving rise to fundamental particles which ordered themselves through the inherent mathematical functions which govern matter and structure. As Lois observed, loss and gain are human emotions and quite apart from the functions of the cosmos. In the universe there is only change from one state into another state. If billions of years of mathematical functions produce a new state (humans) which has extraordinary properties, that does not in any way give sentience to the universe itself. It only means that sentience was a latent universal potential which became expressed in reality, in accordance with existing primal conditions on earth. Don't forget, this took some 14 billion years of natural cosmic evolution. There never was a plan or intelligent design to begin with.
You miss the point entirely... you said "but the universe does not act purposefully". That implies there's some difference between us and the universe. There isn't. (And by us I mean any living thing anywhere in the universe.) Are you saying living things, like humans who have consciousness, are made of something different from the rest of the things in the universe? Like rocks and water and stars are made of atoms and forces between them and so on, and humans are made of something different from that, like what? Not-atoms, special spooky spirit-forces? No. We're star stuff arranged in a way such that this thing we call consciousness arises. I know that's a difficult concept, I guess, seems almost too obvious to me. And that's NOT to say the universe didn't evolve, etc. It obviously did, in such away that a very interesting "rock" formed somewhere in its history. And we call that rock living conscious things.posted by CuthbertG, You make the same basic mistake everyone does. You say the cosmos isn’t self-aware. And that implies we humans are not part of the natural world, that we’re somehow different. I think that’s a holdover from religious thinking that treats humans as different from nature, as in supernatural in that we were created by a supernatural being, i.e. god talk. We’re not. We are just a complex and interesting arrangement of matter. And that arrangement just so happens to be able to think about itself. In other words, we are just one small way the cosmos contemplates itself.a) if I am making the same mistake everyone makes, perhaps it is you who is wrong. At least in assigning motivated intelligence to the wholeness of the universe, on the basis that the universe contains a few species with intelligent brains. Is a fishtank sentient because it has a goldfish swimming in it? Is a house sentient because humans were born there and living in it? I do not deny that the universe is a wholeness (Bohm), and it may even have holographic aspects to it, but the universe does not act purposefully. It is a dynamic system that functions mathematically. From the infinite variety of mathematical possibilities, we know that a these mathematical potentials resulted in the development of brains and neural networks in a relatively few species on a small cinderella planet which offered the right conditions for such mathematical evolution. Is the earth itself sentient because it is host to living things of all kinds? Gaia? The evolution of sentient brains does not imply any purpose or extra-special universal knowledge or favoritism of our existence.. Humans are but a tiny part of life on earth and a mere blip in the wholeness of the universe. The fact that billions of living species alive or extinct evolved alongside humans, speaks of the relative unimportance of mankind' s exstence. The earth may well be destroyed by a comet at any given time. In fact, this may be an already existing mathematical probability. The mistake you make is to equate infinite potential and the mathematical ability to manifest those potentials in infinite variety when the proper cpnditions are present, with motivated sentient action. But 2 + 2 = 4 is not a sentient equation, it is a mathematical equation. Ask yourself, did the universe say "oooops" when a meteor wiped out most of life on earth? Did the universe consider this an unfortunate loss to its existence? For that matter, is the cosmos aware of its own existence at all, or is it just a natural phenomenon, starting as a violent and chaotic event giving rise to fundamental particles which ordered themselves through the inherent mathematical functions which govern matter and structure. As Lois observed, loss and gain are human emotions and quite apart from the functions of the cosmos. In the universe there is only change from one state into another state. If billions of years of mathematical functions produce a new state (humans) which has extraordinary properties, that does not in any way give sentience to the universe itself. It only means that sentience was a latent universal potential which became expressed in reality, in accordance with existing primal conditions on earth. Don't forget, this took some 14 billion years of natural cosmic evolution. There never was a plan or intelligent design to begin with.
author CuthbertJ, You miss the point entirely... you said "but the universe does not act purposefully". That implies there's some difference between us and the universe. There isn't. (And by us I mean any living thing anywhere in the universe.) Are you saying living things, like humans who have consciousness, are made of something different from the rest of the things in the universe? Like rocks and water and stars are made of atoms and forces between them and so on, and humans are made of something different from that, like what? Not-atoms, special spooky spirit-forces? No. We're star stuff arranged in a way such that this thing we call consciousness arises. I know that's a difficult concept, I guess, seems almost too obvious to me. And that's NOT to say the universe didn't evolve, etc. It obviously did, in such away that a very interesting "rock" formed somewhere in its history. And we call that rock living conscious things.Your argument is flawed. So at what point did the universe itself become conscious? By your own words (red) consciousness arose from unconscious matter, which sounds to me that consciousness is an emergent property and did not exist before consciousness arose somewhere (anywhere). Are you proposing that the universe was conscious before there was consciousness anywhere? I clearly understand your position that if there is consciousness anywhere in the universe, it can be said that the universe is consciousness in and of itself. But the proper statement would be that while the universe itself is not conscious, it gave rise to conscious organisms where conditions mathematically allowed for the development of sensory abilities and later to complex neural networks and consciousness (awareness of its surroundings). But you are confusing "spooky action at a distance" with consciousness (self-awareness). There is no evidence of that. Entanglement may just be a mirror function, a universal constant. From my own viewpoint an evolving consciousness (in animate matter) would be much simpler to accept than the presumption that the universe was conscious (and purposefully motivated) from the very beginning, which is demonstrably untrue. Consciousness evolved as a fundamental survival technique in animate organisms which require external energy to remain functional. The universe has no such requirement. You may want to look up the definitions of "animate" and "inanimate"
Examples of ANIMATE; The lecture was about ancient worship of animate and inanimate objects.Examples of INANIMATE;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inanimate
author CuthbertJ, You miss the point entirely... you said "but the universe does not act purposefully". That implies there's some difference between us and the universe. There isn't. (And by us I mean any living thing anywhere in the universe.) Are you saying living things, like humans who have consciousness, are made of something different from the rest of the things in the universe? Like rocks and water and stars are made of atoms and forces between them and so on, and humans are made of something different from that, like what? Not-atoms, special spooky spirit-forces? No. We're star stuff arranged in a way such that this thing we call consciousness arises. I know that's a difficult concept, I guess, seems almost too obvious to me. And that's NOT to say the universe didn't evolve, etc. It obviously did, in such away that a very interesting "rock" formed somewhere in its history. And we call that rock living conscious things.Your argument is flawed. So at what point did the universe itself become conscious? By your own words (red) consciousness arose from unconscious matter, which sounds to me that consciousness is an emergent property and did not exist before consciousness arose somewhere (anywhere). Are you proposing that the universe was conscious before there was consciousness anywhere? I clearly understand your position that if there is consciousness anywhere in the universe, it can be said that the universe is consciousness in and of itself. But the proper statement would be that while the universe itself is not conscious, it gave rise to conscious organisms where conditions mathematically allowed for the development of sensory abilities and later to complex neural networks and consciousness (awareness of its surroundings). But you are confusing "spooky action at a distance" with consciousness (self-awareness). There is no evidence of that. Entanglement may just be a mirror function, a universal constant. From my own viewpoint an evolving consciousness (in animate matter) would be much simpler to accept than the presumption that the universe was conscious (and purposefully motivated) from the very beginning, which is demonstrably untrue. Consciousness evolved as a fundamental survival technique in animate organisms which require external energy to remain functional. The universe has no such requirement. You may want to look up the definitions of "animate" and "inanimate"Examples of ANIMATE; The lecture was about ancient worship of animate and inanimate objects.I never said the universe was always conscious. I mean exactly what you described...consciousness emerged, not unlike other properties emerged (continue to emerge), for example the nuclear furnaces inside stars, which themselves emerged/coallesced out of the same stuff as us. As for animate vs inanimate, that's just a false distinction started long ago when we didn't have the sophistication to consider that we are essentially star stuff. It's definitely hard to mentally overcome those false dichotomies. You might want to google "false dichotomy" ;)Examples of INANIMATE;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inanimate
You might want to google “false dichotomy" winkYou may want to read up on "critical thinking"
The title of the thread is: All cellular functions are irreducibly complexThat is a meaningless statement to begin with. You cannot reduce a function without disassembling the required reducible components that provide the function. You may want to look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohd5uqzlwsU There are only 31 fundamental and irreducible functions in the universe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuGI6pQFZC0 Get the question correct and perhaps we can have a intelligent discussion about irreducible complexity of things, not functions.
To this non-specialist’s understanding, the only thing that could be called truly statistically random as far as biological evolution’s concerned would be point-mutations (i.e., in nucleic acid materials) that are caused by covalent bond-breaking radiations (e.g., cosmic rays); am not certain that mutations wrought by mutagenic chemicals could be called completely random, given the interactions between molecules’ surrounding fields on their approaching one another.
The premature claims of ‘irreducibility’ will eventually have to yield before a rational prebiotic chemical theory for an origin of life.
I seriously wish god would return and tell these intelligent design nuts “Why do you crap all over my handiwork? I worked long and hard to create physical laws that created evolution that created you. And if you think you’re all that and a bag of chips you’re nuts. Compared to a few of my worlds you’re barely better than bed bugs. Oh and by the way, I’m female, and I’m not a peeping Tom. Geeze you so-called christians are creeps.”
Thanks for your kind welcome. Am very glad to have stumbled across this forum, & am hoping to learn from the Membership, as well as to contribute usefully.
All I do now is present the list of biochemicals which the universe has managed to assemble. Then the question of irreducible complexity goes away real quick.
Glossary of chemical formulae. Just have a peek!
This complements alternative listing at inorganic compounds by element. There is no complete list of chemical compounds since by nature the list would be infinite.
Does this look nature has a problem forming compound molecules?
Thought you were going to go into a Louis C.K. routine there. God, “what have you done to my bears? I made them white and now they are all covered in crap. Why are they brown?”
Lets start at the beginning.
Merry post Solstice, long live the sun.
The Aspen InstituteThe McCloskey Speaker Series features Dr. Eric Smith, professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo and the Santa Fe Institute.
For most of the 20th century, complex biological views of evolution have been central to the way scientists think about the origin of life. But progress over the past 40 years in such fields as ocean exploration, microbiology, and planetary science has come together to suggest that life’s origin may have been built on a core chemical blueprint.
Dr. Smith argues that we need a new understanding of the nature of life, in which the dominant, Darwinian view of a “struggle for existence” comes second, and life at its core came about as a necessary layer of our maturing planet. Eric Smith began scientific work in high-energy physics, with Bachelor degrees in math and physics from Caltech, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1993.
His work moved increasingly into topics in complex systems, during appointments in the University of Texas and the Los Alamos National Laboratories, culminating in eleven years spent at the Santa Fe Institute. At SFI he began parallel threads of work in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, economics and finance, and the history of human languages, and began studying the geochemistry, biochemistry, and evolution of the earliest life.
He is currently a professor and Principle Investigator of the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo, and external professor at SFI. His goal is to understand the origin and nature of the living state through the many windows that science provides on it: the physical, geochemical, biochemical, ecological, and evolutionary.
While there are no surviving old fossils due to time, there is evidence of current cell formation. There is no reason why evolutionary processes 3.5 billion years should have been different than what they are today.
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Proteinoid <h4>Proteinoids, or thermal proteins, are protein-like, often cross-linked molecules formed abiotically from amino acids.[1] Sidney W. Fox initially proposed that they may have been precursors to the first living cells (protocells)</h4> History In trying to uncover the intermediate stages of abiogenesis, scientist Sidney W. Fox in the 1950s and 1960s, studied the spontaneous formation of peptide structures under conditions that might plausibly have existed early in Earth's history. He demonstrated that amino acids could spontaneously form small chains called peptides. In one of his experiments, he allowed amino acids to dry out as if puddled in a warm, dry spot in prebiotic conditions. He found that, as they dried, the amino acids formed long, often cross-linked, thread-like microscopic polypeptide globules, he named "proteinoid microspheres".[3]Polymerization
The abiotic polymerization of amino acids into proteins through the formation of peptide bonds was thought to occur only at temperatures over 140 °C. However, the biochemist Sidney Walter Fox and his co-workers discovered that phosphoric acid acted as a catalyst for this reaction.[citation needed] They were able to form protein-like chains from a mixture of 18 common amino acids at 70 °C in the presence of phosphoric acid, and dubbed these protein-like chains proteinoids. Fox later found naturally occurring proteinoids similar to those he had created in his laboratory in lava and cinders from Hawaiian volcanic vents and determined that the amino acids present polymerized due to the heat of escaping gases and lava.[citation needed] Other catalysts have since been found; one of them, amidinium carbodiimide, is formed in primitive Earth experiments and is effective in dilute aqueous solutions.When present in certain concentrations in aqueous solutions, proteinoids form small microspheres. This is because some of the amino acids incorporated into proteinoid chains are more hydrophobic than others, and so proteinoids cluster together like droplets of oil in water. These structures exhibit a few characteristics of living cells:
An outer wall.
Osmotic swelling and shrinking.
Budding.
Binary fission (dividing into two daughter microspheres).
Streaming movement of internal particles.
Fox thought that the microspheres may have provided a cell compartment within which organic molecules could have become concentrated and protected from the outside environment during the process of chemical evolution.[1]Proteinoid microspheres are today being considered for use in pharmaceuticals, providing microscopic biodegradable capsules in which to package and deliver oral drugs.
We’re star stuff arranged in a way such that this thing we call sentient consciousness arises.@cuthbertj, on revisiting this interesting thread I wish to retract my initial kneejerk response and agree with you on that point which is of paramount importance. You are correct that WE and every biological organisms is indeed star stuff arranged in a way that not only life, but also consciousness arise.
This is actually one of Max Tegmark’s results of his hypothesis of a “Mathematical Universe”. This result does not necessarily make the universe conscious, but it makes biological organisms conscious in a varied range and types of sentiences dependent on what their survival needs are.
Tegmark poses the question what is the difference between a live beetle and a dead beetle. Atomically their isn’t any difference at all. Life depends on the patterns the atoms and molecules are arranged in. Using the very same quantity of beetle ingredients one pattern results in life and another results in death. Decay sets in later which makes the process irreversible.
