Howard, thanks, this helps to explain some of your terminology. And I think brings out some of the conceptual problems with your genocentric approach to the definition/origin of life. Specific concepts inserted.
From: Howard Pattee [mailto:hpat...@roadrunner.com] Sent: April 28, 2015 3:54 PM At 10:59 AM 4/28/2015,Gary F.wrote: Howard, interesting definition! [A phenomenon is information resulting from an individual subject's detection of a physical interaction.] HP: This definition is just an extension of the classic definition to subhuman organisms. [gf} ] “Classic”? I think “modern” might fit better, given your Kantian usage of the term “subjective” and your vaguely Husserlian take on “phenomenology”. But even in modern philosophy, I think very few use the term “phenomenon” as referring only to a subject’s experience and not to the object experienced (or semiotically, referring to the sign and not its object). As a broad academic discipline phenomenology may be summarized as the study from a first person point of view of what appears to subjective human conscious experience. As a historical philosophical movement phenomenology was often motivated by the belief that subjective human experience is the proper foundation of all philosophy. I am exploring phenomena from a broader physical and evolutionary point of view. I consider a phenomenon as the subjective result of a physical interaction with an individual organism. That is what human senses do. Physically a phenomenon is equivalent to a detection or measurement. What is detected is determined by the organism as a self or subject. [gf} ] And is not at all determined by the other, the object with which the self is physically interacting? Or by the interaction? GF: Applying this to your proposition, then, I have to ask: Who or what was the individual subject who detected the first self-replication, so that the information resulting from that detection thus qualifies as the first phenomenon? HP: The cell that is replicated. It must detect the information that defines the self that is self-replicated. Most of this information is in the gene. [gf} ] This scenario raises more questions than it answers. First of all, you have a cell prior to the first-ever replication. Is that original cell not alive? Next, after the replication, you have two individuals, the original cell and the replica. Which of them is the individual subject of this first-ever subjective experience? Originally you said that information resulted from the detection. Now you say that the information is what is detected. Is this consistent, in your view? You say the information is in the gene. But the gene is in the cell. So the detection is an event (or more likely a process) internal to the cell. It’s not plausible for any cell that gene-reading is its only internal process. Why then is it the only one that has a “subjective” (experiential) aspect or result? Or are you saying that the first self-replication was not a physical occurrence or interaction, but was the information resulting from detection of some other process? HP: It was obviously a physical occurrence but is was a phenomenon only for the cell that interpreted it, just like a physical occurrence that is a phenomenon for the human that interprets it. [gf} But most physical occurrences internal to my body are not phenomena for me. When I am aware of a physical occurrence, it’s mostly my brain that does the interpreting, and the “interpreting” is itself a physical occurrence in my brain -- which occurrence is never a phenomenon for me. It’s only a phenomenon for a third-person observer who happens to be measuring my brain activity somehow. Either way, I have a hard time imagining the first detector. HP: I agree it takes a little imagination to see the correspondence if you believe that only humans experience phenomena. [gf} ] I doubt that anyone on either of these lists believes that. No, the problem is that you are projecting human subjectivity down to a microscopic scale. This is highly implausible if the neuroscientists such as Damasio are correct that animal experiencing requires a nervous system far more complex than a single cell could ever be. On the other hand, there’s no conceptual problem with imagining semiosis at the cellular level. That’s why I think Peirce was right to identify semiosis as far more essential to life (and thought) than “subjectivity.” I put that word in quotes because Peirce avoided that Kantian usage whenever possible, considering it a source of much that was wrong with modern philosophy. John Deely has written whole books about this, but I’ll stop here. Gary f } Shatter your ideals on the rock of truth. [Hazrat Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan] { http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm
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