DNA and the 'Code of Life'

The comment was not directed at you or anyone else in particular

And what do you consider me? If the answer is a hardcore materialist, then you're wrong.

the idea that life is 'self generating' is, according to traditional philosophy, irrational, on the grounds that nothing appears which does not have a cause.

I think that many scientific philosophers say that life began 'without cause' because (1) causality as it is understood in the traditional sense is out-of-scope for science and maybe even for the 'modern outlook', and (2) because the scientific view has been shaped by opposition to the previous religious and mythological accounts which did provide a causal account(namely, the divine will).

the word immaterial is being used a lot and in my history that always meant 'insignificant' which is not its use here at all.

First and foremost I think of you as Scientist.

You don't outright reject the Sentient Authorship presentation, but wisely seem to leave it open as an unnecessary possibility , whereas I push more for the absolute conclusion.

You do argue from the hard materialist position of empirical evidence, but somehow seem to leave it open drawing no hard conclusions either way.

I still think you're an Atheist though.

not made of matter or not physically realas immaterial.

But since you brought it up... I'm always looking for better ways to refine my presentation. Would you suggest I choose another word to illustrate Energy/Matter as Material and Information as Immaterial? Should I say physical and non-physical? Something else?

..so the cogency of the theory rests in hard observational evidence and the most parsimonious story that unites it.

Traditional philosophy has also never been able to tell us what caused the first cause, what created the unmoved mover, and where God came from.

Leave the ultimate cause discussion to people who like unending arguments.

You definitely are black-belt Aedes. No question there. Whenever I make a move I end up on the mat.

You definitely are black-belt Aedes. No question there.

I think it is perfectly true that for many in the modern age, the idea that life is self-generating or 'arose without cause' is a fundamental part of their outlook.

None of this is actually within the purview of the actual science. But plenty of people draw these conclusions from it.

not made of matter or not physically realas immaterial.

But since you brought it up... I'm always looking for better ways to refine my presentation. Would you suggest I choose another word to illustrate Energy/Matter as Material and Information as Immaterial? Should I say physical and non-physical? Something else?

how about incorporeal?

i am not sure myself whether i believe information is not energy

frequency would be what causes the different apparitions we take to be physical or mental etc...then again energy has to be doing something before it is energy, so it is an 'ing' rather than an 'is'.

can information be the same as thought?

otherwise wouldnt it be recorded thought?

does a thought contain information or is a thought actually the information itself?

is a thought an 'ing' or an 'is'?

:flowers:

As you sort of mention there is a string of thinkers (not scientists!) probably starting from Spinoza, but certainly from Hume, extending through Nietzsche and through the Existentialists, who from various influences (some scientific, some anthropological, and some speculative), have devalued the traditional Western conceptions of cause, purpose, morality, etc. I don't neglect authors in this either, like Voltaire and Dostoyevsky. Even Shakespeare was definitely a non-philosophical, non-moral, non-religious writer.

Certain people like Newton and Darwin were incredibly central to inspiring this philosophy, but these guys were scientists and not much into dealing with this idea of which you speak.

I know for a fact that within science, in scientific communications, in scientific environments, in scientific forums, people hardly ever talk about this stuff. They regard it as a personal matter, unanswerable, and in the end a fairly unimportant question.

That's how I feel, to be perfectly honest. I do not think that ultimate cause and ultimate purpose are particularly interesting or important questions. Sure, they may be fundamental, but that's not enough to get my wheels turning.

But I am a very congenial, sympathetic guy and I am fully capable of vicariously appreciating the value of such questions in you and in other people I encounter. It's talking to other humans about it that makes this subject interesting to me.

You're right about the former. But I don't think that people are drawing these conclusions from science, at least not directly. Here's what I think happens: I think that science undermines religion to some degree, simply because it's so damn obvious. It gives us technology and toys. It gives us a new story every day. And it gives more details.

Because people can pick and choose what they believe, since religion does not tower over everything, certain inclinations like "not everything can be explained" and certainly existentialist leanings become popularized. Throw in postmodernism, our extremely cynical self-image, and you see how idealizations of humans, of reason, and of explanations sort of lose traction in our time.

I don't think science rocks people's world enough to get them to change fundamental beliefs. But culture does, and modern culture's attitudes owe a lot more to what humans do than what humans discover.

"Thinking" (thought) can only occur when pure experiential awareness has been codified into a description from mind to brain. The process of doing this produces (authors) Information... to bring something in-to-form.

We don't even realize it. We take it for granted and rarely isolate the different steps of consciousness. This is however a very old idea put forth first by Aristotle (I think it was him). The notion he presents is that thinking cannot occur without a language to think the thought upon. I completely agree with this, but attempt to break it down into individual steps.

All this takes place before a word is ever spoken or written in physicality. It's all in the mind and illustrates the path to the physical brain. Try it out for yourself... can you think about anything without forming words or pictures in your mind? I certainly cannot and I've never met anyone who says they can.

How can a formula form without thought. How can a formula be expressed without code?

Does it follow from this that there is likely to be new ways of 'reading' the genome in the future. By this I mean that the physical form of the dna/rna molecules (eg their twisting folding) will potentially provide information within information.

The process of thinking takes time....There is the instantaneous awareness, and then a very short time later, the thought will form.

This is why people often say when they have been confronted by an emergency 'I didn't think - I just acted'. They also say 'time seemed to stand still'. This is because in a very real way, thought is time.

Thinking is indeed the firing of neurons.

But it is preceded by awareness, which is elusive, because you obviously cannot think about it.

Yogis and meditators are very conscious of this because they have honed their attention skills to a very fine point, and can distinguish between the pure awareness of the moment, and the nexus of reaction that occurs a split second later.

I still dont understand your concept of thought requiring a formula to exist?

There is a formula for life, given the correct mixture and the right conditions life will create itself.

You dont know that formula, the code is not written down, but it still exists.

There is formula that we will discover that exists now , it does not require humanity to exist, for it to be a reality.

Aedes
This is already being done, because genome projects (human and other) have generated a huge amount of genetic data. You're not going to look at a gene sequence and know eyes from nose, of course, but there are data libraries (with oodles of information) that will tell you exactly what protein motifs and functions are predicted from the gene sequence

Yes that's basically what I said. I just continued to explained how the thought forms after what you call "instantaneous awareness" or I call "pure experiential awareness from the senses". Yes, that's how it starts. I see no difference here.



Sure. I get all that.



I explain language description as the mechanism allowing that to happen.



That's what I said.



This is where we split. The "nexus of reaction" is not thought. It is "reaction". A cause/reaction, but not a thought/action.

Prick my skin with a needle, provide cause. My senses will react automatically. No thought necessary. But describing the experience, "That Hurts", codifies my "experience" into "thought" by encoding it into the brain. Once encoded, I can do more than react... I can act. Thought/Action is not the same as Cause/Reaction. Cause/Reaction requires the senses to react to stimuli. Thought/Action requires codified description. Information is born, or as Bhartrihari suggests, Brahman is spoken (invited) into our physical realm.

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The formula is the thought.



That formula (thought) is presented on the physical code of DNA.



It is written on the double helix. It is enacted upon RNA.



I'm talking about life, not the chaos of cosmos. The formula for life is recorded on the code of DNA. I've never seen a formula for the universe, except that Pi link I provided you earlier. Until a code can be found, we cannot say if the universe was or was not determined. Code is what allows us to make the determination.

Paley's watch cannot be determined as designed or a product of chaos until we find a set of codified plans that illustrate the watch before the watch ever existed in reality. Find those plans, and we know the watch was designed. I've never seen a plan for a rock, or a nebula.