Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!hookup!swrinde!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: evolution and entropy
References: <3k2el4$1cnh@tiger1.ocs.lsu.edu> <amdelange.319.2F65309F@gold.up.ac.za>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 12:23:48 +0000
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...yes, but.

A mineral ore represents a thermodynamic diseqilibrium. Nobody suggests
that most of these are biogenic, however, so disequilibrium is not the
hall mark of things which are living, although all living things may be
in thermodynamic equilibrium. They get that way, of course, by tapping a
broader thermodynamic flow so as to reverse it locally: the Prigogine
story, shorn of quantum doodads.

To say that biological entities are ex ante complex is useful when by 
"complex" you mean hard to understand or needing long periods of time and 
highly parallel interactions to get the way that they are. There is, however, 
nothing *innately* more complex about a dead guinea pig than a lump of coal: 
both came from a deep past, both have complex internal structure, both emit no 
properties beyond their physical presence. A *live* guinea pig has two 
additional properties. The first is that it acts, changing its environment 
and stitching together that thing which can only exist when guinea pigs are 
about: their social behaviour. It second is that it can take in food, churn out 
energy, grow and reproduce. God aside, only a pair of guinea pigs and make a 
litter.

My point is not to dwell on rodentine matters but rather the following. We use 
class-defining words such as 'life' to imply states which seem to us to matter: 
we set up boundaries, noting that when we cross them, matters change. On one 
side, we have a system which emits all sort os properties. One the other, we 
have the same system almost exactly: still warm, the properties are not 
emitted, on account of it being a deceased, former guinea pig rather than a 
live one. All the understanding that a machine civilization could bring to bear 
on a dead but otherwise perfectly preserved corpse could not adduce from it 
guinea pig social behaviour. That is a property of the ensemble which does not 
map down to its constituents. 

Boundaries - such as "life" - are drawn by us on cold reality. We do this in 
order to offer ourselves a map as to where these phase shifts occur. We 
impose our sets upon indifferent, cold reality in order to describe the places 
where we do and do not find characteristic patterns of emergent behaviour, such 
as the guinea pigs, doing their fecund stuff. Inside of this set, we find 
those things which have the sets of properties which we call 'life', but the 
set and the concept are just that, concepts which we find helpful. Its 
components are members of the set because we put them in it. Reality 
has complex, hierarchical structures which offer boundaries to those who would 
understand and the things which interact. To ask if a virus - or prion - is 
'alive' is a witless exercise: at best, it will set you on a circular track of 
'it depends what you mean by..' A much more useful exerice is to ask what are 
the determining features of systems which emit emergent properties such that we 
have to treat them as more than their constituent parts. That way lies an 
understanding of awareness.

_________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
