MikeL

That was a good post. Looking further into entropy and living systems I see there is no net positive gradient toward life afterall. I must have misund...

You realise of course that trees don't have a nervous system, and people commonly assume that means they don't have a sentience (although the root tip...

I always equate emotions with hormones: slower acting, longer lasting. As opposed to those sharp cognitive pulses that arrive in a milisecond and evap...

It''s an interesting comparison. It is an incredibly integrated neural net of sorts. I don't believe it is alive but it forces to wonder about the dif...

At face value there appears to be some support for the idea of a thermodynamic gradient that favours the direction of life. If the logic of this holds...

You're not invoking a sentience I hope T Clark. Talk to you later.

But why bother?

I look forward to talking more tomorrow T Clark, but before I go, if it's just living, why bother with all the meiosis and sex organs and gestation an...

But a very tough seedlike organism, without a need to evolve into anything else could hunker down in the soil and just count to a billion.

Thanks Wayfarer, I will give it a solid read tomorrow. I tend to agree with you in the main. I have to say though I've been reading up on Apokrisis's ...

But its my condition that the other side has no conditions. Even so, it's not really even my condition. It's just nice if it happens.

Interesting. I think I would like to reach that.

There you go, I knew there was a reason. The anti-entropic gradient of dedication. I don't have too many problems eliminating the mind though. I can e...

Until I read the book though, I have a lot of problems with the theory.

I can see how it all just happened Rich, I can't explain the why with such massive entropic gradients against it, life not only held its own, but flou...

Haha, fair enough. I'll put it on my list of books to read. It's a long list though, that's why I thought you might be able to help me out.

Thanks Apokrisis, I can see why you're drawn to this idea, particularly that the removal of the product that allows the reactants to continue to flow,...

Hi John Days, It might be that the idea exists because it is what people wish to receive, rather than are able to give.

What's the evolutionary benefit?

But what's the point of evolution, evolutionary speaking of course.

Why are we built that way? I understand why animals have eyes and legs and stuff, but reproduction seems a bit silly, don't you think? A bit wasteful ...

So why do animals get the urge to do it so badly? It seems like a lot of work and effort has gone into the process. But for no reason? Not even a scie...

So how does evolution and the passing on of the genes fit into the picture? Why not just be and then be stamped out of existence? Why bother passing o...

Are you an Aussie too?

Truth, justice and the American way. Cool, me too, and I'm not even an American! - Aussie. Bring it :)

Hey, speak for yourself.

The chicken and the egg? It's an interesting way of thinking about it. I hadn't considered the possibility that the network came first and then the co...

Sure to simulate the brain would be great. The problem is we still don't really understand it. We thought we almost had it for a while, but it just ke...

I disagree with that statement. Philosophy itself might have some dull books on the shelf, but this is a great place to be. We on the Philosophy Forum...

I might put the boundary breach idea of consciousness in a new thread. Or does everyone want to discuss it here? It's getting a bit off topic. -- Actu...

Yes, thank you both. I can see the similarity in concept now that you have pointed it out.

You know it could be argued that 'life' as a disparate entity from chemistry doesn't really exist at all and everything is in an unbroken continuum fr...

Hi MadFool, what type of hardware do you think we are lacking that might help the situation? More RAM?

If you only wanted the answers to empirical questions, I think you would not be in the Philosophy Forum. That either leaves one of two options, the fi...

A difference of opinion leaves everything to talk about unless one is closed minded.

Thanks for responding to the post and taking the time to find the image. I don't really think these represent the boundary breaches I had in mind alth...

From this conclusion we can actually formulate an anti-entropic equation of sorts: That any system cannot be truly closed or balanced, but will always...

I like these implicate and explicate order definitions. I can use these. It's good they disagree. Let's go get 'em. :)

Hello, hello, the holographic model.

That sounds like a good thing. Why hasn't it been embraced and become an area of research? Or has it?

Do you know if there's any that point to life? Some constant you need to keep invoking in QM say, so the equations hold?

Did the equations hold?

You know what I think would make life so much easier for people on both sides? To invoke a new force called the life force and give it some Greek lett...

So you're saying that probability is really a knowledge gap, rather than actual probability. Is that right?

I'm assuming that the lack of response is because I have, at first attempt to convince you, met with overwhelming success. Perhaps even stated the obv...

Hi Ddarko, you sound like a thorough thinker. You will probably like this site a lot. My advice is to jump into a thread and don't worry if your logic...

You forgot about time Rich. That's the key to the solution. Enough time to work through every conceivable combination. Of course that fact that it has...

It was a thousand monkey typing of typewriters that inevitably created Shakespeare. The successful combinations of atoms, molecules, cycles, systems, ...

It sounds like you already know. Atoms self-organised into molecules, molecules self-organised into cycles, cycles self-organised into systems, comple...

Life is a symphony.