Brent et alia, I would like to interject my replies in brackets, as if we
were having a conversation, as follows:



I’m having troubles integrating what you are saying into my view of the
world.

[I am not surprised, since mine is a contrarian perspective on evolution,
based on a cellular-molecular approach largely based on an embyologic
developmental approach based on cell-cell communications mediated by
soluble growth factors and receptors, not on reproductive success of the
adults due to Descent with Modification, Natural Selection and Survival of
the Fittest, all of which are metaphors that cannot be tested
experimentally, nor have they been. My approach, on the other hand is
totally based on hard evidence for development of structure and function,
including genetic manipulations showing the causal relationships.]

  Things like “all matter has that Cosmic blueprint baked in to it” doesn’t
seem to fit.  For me, the big problem is that people tend to think of
“Consciousness” (or consciousness?) as a singular thing.  Pan-psychism, at
best talks about elemental matter having “proto-psychism” or something.



To me, Consciousness, free will, self-awareness, intentionality, love...
(and consciousness?) are all composite things composed of lots of stuff.
To me, qualia or physical qualities are elemental things out of which all
these composite things are constructed.  When we are consciously aware of a
strawberry, we have knowledge represented by elemental redness and
greenness physical qualities, representing the strawberry.  Physical
qualities are elemental standalone things, which can be computationally
bound together to become our composite knowledge of the strawberry.



[It only seems like such things can be computed because they are described
synchronically in the same space and time. However, it is only when you
identify the underlying mechanisms involved diachronically across space and
time that the true nature of Nature is revealed. And by the way, the same
is true for chemistry. The genius of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of Elements
was that he  took into account the chemical reactions and products for any
given element in order to position it, offering experimental data that
transcend space and time. I have done the same for evolutionary biology by
invoking experimental evidence for the evolution of physiologic traits]



  The computational binding which provides “situational awareness” of what
we need to do to pick the red things, while avoiding the green things is
also something additional.  Would I be correct in thinking that matter
which has a redness quality, has a “Cosmological blueprint” baked into it?

[Well this is a complicated issue, as we both know. I would like to start
by thanking you for not just dismissing me out of hand because I am coming
from outter space, literally, to understand what Consciousness actually
constitutes. I honestly had no intention of grappling with such questions,
but my research of 50 years duration dragged me down this ‘rabbit hole’.
But in saying that I have to now get up on my soap box and state that we
are at a stage in human knowledge and science when instruments can no
longer provide answers to big questions like *what is evolution?, What is
Consciousness?, What is Free Will?* I think we need to take the huge
volumes of information we are generating and exploit them to understand
such big picture issues. Particularly because Biology remains a *descriptive
science*, unlike Chemistry and Physics, which have central theories and
Laws. All biology has is the dogma of “DNA-RNA-Protein”. As a result, for
example, there is literally no experimental evidence for evolutionary
biology other than the limited examples that I and my colleagues have
provided.



But back to your question about whether  matter which has a redness
quality, has a “Cosmological blueprint” baked into it? I would resoundingly
say ‘YES”. The consensus is that life evolved by endogenizing environmental
factors that historically posed an existential threat, such as heavy
metals, ions, gases, bacteria. Heavy metals are a prime example because
iron, which is a powerful oxidizing agent, was endogenized and made
physiologically useful by incorporating it into heme protein for oxygen
transport in red blood cells. There are classic examples for all of the
others too, but the ‘iron is our friend’ example will suffice, I think. But
of course we’re more interested in multicellular organisms like ourselves
when it comes to choosing red matter over green matter. That happened about
500 million years ago when bacteria and our unicellular forebears,
eukaryotes with true nuclei, evolved. This was due to competition between
bacteria and eukaryotes, the bacteria having devised pseudo-mutlicellular
traits like biofilms and quorum sensing. In order to compete, the
eukaryotes evolved cell-cell communication mechanisms for metabolic
cooperativity. Those cell-cell communications, mediated by soluble growth
factors formed the mechanistic basis for embryologic development. And
because I and my colleagues had generated enough mechanistic data over the
last 50 years for the development of the mammalian lung, and the lungs of
other vertebrates at the cellular-molecular level, it offered the
opportunity to reverse-engineer the phylogenetic history of the lung from
mammals and birds, back to the swim bladder of fish based on experimental
evidence at each step of the way in both the forward and backward
direction. At that point, the process was clearly all about how lipids have
evolved to facilitate oxygen uptake by cells as the principle mechanism
underlying lung evolution. That insight allowed tracing lung evolution all
the way back to the unicellular state when cholesterol began being
synthesized….Conrad Bloch had rationalized that since it takes 11 atoms of
oxygen to make one molecule of cholesterol, that there had to have been
enough oxygen in the atmosphere to do so, which would have been about 500
million years ago, when vertebrate evolution began. The insertion of
cholesterol in the cell membrane of primordial eukaryotes was the
‘catalyst’ for vertebrate evolution because it ‘thinned’ the cell membrane
out, facilitating gas exchange, oxidative metabolism and locomotion
(cytoplasmic streaming). As it happens, these are the three principle
physiologic traits for vertebrate evolution.



But that still begged the question as to what the pre-adaptation for the
formation of cells was as the origin of life, serial pre-adaptations or
exaptations being the underlying principle behind evolution. In my
reduction, the only existing prototype for a ‘singularity’ like the
primordial cell, which formed from the lipids embedded in the snowball-like
asteroids that pelted the atmosphereless earth to form the oceans (accepted
scenario for the origins of life based on empiric data), was the
Singularity that is hypothesized to have existed prior to the Big Bang. And
by the way, lipids immersed in water will spontaneously form what are
called micelles, spheroids formed from semi-permeable lipid membranes. When
such micelles were heated by the Sun they liquified and deformed, but at
night they cooled and reformed due to hysteresis, or ‘molecular memory’
unique to lipids. That memory was essential for evolution because in order
to do so you have to remember where you came from in order to evolve new
traits under environmental constraints.



So the picture I have painted is one in which the origins of the Cosmos are
the building blocks of life as one continuum. And as such, biology must
comply with the Laws of Nature because they are innate to life- there are
strong homologies between Quantum Mechanics and the First Principles of
Physiology. So our physiology is derived from Cosmology.

So back to eating red v green strawberries, our ancestors learned the hard
way that green fruit made them ill, which became an epigenetically
inherited trait due to the damage of acid reflux to the esophagus and
lungs. So either environmentally being told by parents not to eat green
strawberries or learning the hard way, selecting the red strawberries was a
survival advantage. But the ability to digest ripe vs unripe fruit is a
function of gut enzymes that evolved in support of metabolic success that
refers all the way back to land adaptation when numerous genes mutated and
replicated, mitigating against the physiologic stress of transitioning from
water to land because the Greenhouse effect due to accumulation of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere caused drying up of water, forcing boney fish
onto land.



So yes, the proclivity for red strawberries can be traced all the way back
to the Big Bang, certainly allowing for baking in.]



You also said: “all matter has that Cosmic blueprint baked in to it, we
just happen to take that blueprint and animate it (like Chalmer’s ‘hard
problem’…)".  I also can’t find a way to integrate statements like that
into the way I see the world.  To me, Chalmers struggles defining what is
and isn’t part of the hard problem.  But to me, it is only what Joseph
Levine calls the “explanatory gap”.  The normal scientific methods is
constructing models of various parts of reality that appear to have
utility, then working to falsify them.  If you can do that, then it is part
of the easy problem.  It seems we can conceive of how we might test such
models as animating cosmic blueprints, but perhaps this is just more
evidence that I don’t know what you mean by that.  Whatever it is, if we
can conceive of ways to verify or falsify such, it is, to me, just an easy
problem.



Even Joseph Levine has troubles defining exactly what he means by the
“explanatory gap”.  To me, it becomes clear if you provide an example.  If
you could make a statement like: “my redness is like your greenness” this
would be an example of bridging the explanatory gap.  The reason this is
“hard”, is because we don’t really know what qualia are, and everyone
considers qualia to be ineffable.  We have no idea how would could falsify
a statement like: “My redness is like your greenness” This lack of any
ideas of how such might be falsified is the ONLY so-called hard problem.
To me, everything else is easy, and we know how to approach it,
scientifically.



If you google for solutions to the hard problem, there is an unending
supply that will show up.  But, to me, all these so-called solutions are
all easily falsifiable, and hence easy problems – having nothing to do with
the real “hard problem” – the qualitative nature of consciousness.  To me,
this is a clear symptom of the failure to clearly state what is and isn’t a
hard problem and why.



If a redness quale is simply a physical quality of some particular matter,
we can be directly aware of, you can now finally falsify a “My redness is
like your greenness” statement, by discovering which matter has a redness
quality, and which matter does not.  No more “hard” problems.  At least
that is the way I think about the world.



[I was not familiar with Levine’s ‘explanatory gap’, with apologies for my
lack of knowledge in this regard, but I am not a psychologist, so I am
learning myself, on the job as it were. At any rate I think I can provide a
reasonable explanation for the ‘explanatory gap’ based on the concept of
‘Terminal Addition’. But before I do, I would like to state that this kind
of confusion in biology about causation is due to  what I stated at the
outset, that biology remains descriptive, non-mechanistic, and as a result
is built on associations and correlations, so of course the association of
pain with injury is a disconnect because the ontology and epistemology are
inconsistent.



Terminal Addition (
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__reader.elsevier.com_reader_sd_pii_S0079610717302304-3Ftoken-3D8A42C40E500DA9AD1AD71F73CE09548DB524532789A37C44A54DCDE23193BB6C5B19391278867863D771991885CD4FFF&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=0V5c_q9VtR34908rGK9WTgGae4Pk9Nt-RLF6zXwSpqk&s=VSRAYtzAa7q5wn5yjOauNQi3tVT1flVrjbVVH-mmswE&e=
) is the observation that as traits evolve they appear at the end of a
series of evolutionary changes, not at the beginning or somewhere in the
middle. When seen as cell-cell interactions, mediated by growth factors and
their cell-surface receptors, it is understandable that to insert a new
trait other than at the terminus would be highly inefficient, forcing other
collateral changes that have evolved over the course of evolution because
the downstream intracellular signaling is complex. And it is this ‘wiring’
that interconnects mechanisms of cellular damage with the feeling of pain,
for example. The classic example is ‘phantom pain’, which I explained as
the way in which the organism may have lost some trait, but must retain the
‘upstream’ signaling mechanism in order to sustain the other evolved traits
and remain as ‘normal’ as possible in order to pass on its genetics
reproductively.]



I genuinely hope that you will understand my explanations because they do
resolve many dogmas in biology due to the descriptive nature of the
discipline, which must change if we are to make progress in biology and
medicine.  I welcome criticism, further comments and queries.

[image: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__ssl.gstatic.com_ui_v1_icons_mail_images_cleardot.gif&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=0V5c_q9VtR34908rGK9WTgGae4Pk9Nt-RLF6zXwSpqk&s=oLfWvM_smgrMRpAUBRRFReJD29GTmAzxZSWvKh3s4kY&e=]



On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 10:09 AM Brent Allsop <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Hi John,
>
>
>
> I’m having troubles integrating what you are saying into my view of the
> world.  Things like “all matter has that Cosmic blueprint baked in to it”
> doesn’t seem to fit.  For me, the big problem is that people tend to think
> of “Consciousness” (or consciousness?) as a singular thing.  Pan-psychism,
> at best talks about elemental matter having “proto-psychism” or something.
>
>
>
> To me, Consciousness, free will, self-awareness, intentionality, love...
> (and consciousness?) are all composite things composed of lots of stuff.
> To me, qualia or physical qualities are elemental things out of which all
> these composite things are constructed.  When we are consciously aware of a
> strawberry, we have knowledge represented by elemental redness and
> greenness physical qualities, representing the strawberry.  Physical
> qualities are elemental standalone things, which can be computationally
> bound together to become our composite knowledge of the strawberry.  The
> computational binding which provides “situational awareness” of what we
> need to do to pick the red things, while avoiding the green things is also
> something additional.  Would I be correct in thinking that matter which has
> a redness quality, has a “Cosmological blueprint” baked into it?
>
>
>
> You also said: “all matter has that Cosmic blueprint baked in to it, we
> just happen to take that blueprint and animate it (like Chalmer’s ‘hard
> problem’…)".  I also can’t find a way to integrate statements like that
> into the way I see the world.  To me, Chalmers struggles defining what is
> and isn’t part of the hard problem.  But to me, it is only what Joseph
> Levine calls the “explanatory gap”.  The normal scientific methods is
> constructing models of various parts of reality that appear to have
> utility, then working to falsify them.  If you can do that, then it is part
> of the easy problem.  It seems we can conceive of how we might test such
> models as animating cosmic blueprints, but perhaps this is just more
> evidence that I don’t know what you mean by that.  Whatever it is, if we
> can conceive of ways to verify or falsify such, it is, to me, just an easy
> problem.
>
>
>
> Even Joseph Levine has troubles defining exactly what he means by the
> “explanatory gap”.  To me, it becomes clear if you provide an example.  If
> you could make a statement like: “my redness is like your greenness” this
> would be an example of bridging the explanatory gap.  The reason this is
> “hard”, is because we don’t really know what qualia are, and everyone
> considers qualia to be ineffable.  We have no idea how would could falsify
> a statement like: “My redness is like your greenness” This lack of any
> ideas of how such might be falsified is the ONLY so-called hard problem.
> To me, everything else is easy, and we know how to approach it,
> scientifically.
>
>
>
> If you google for solutions to the hard problem, there is an unending
> supply that will show up.  But, to me, all these so-called solutions are
> all easily falsifiable, and hence easy problems – having nothing to do with
> the real “hard problem” – the qualitative nature of consciousness.  To me,
> this is a clear symptom of the failure to clearly state what is and isn’t a
> hard problem and why.
>
>
>
> If a redness quale is simply a physical quality of some particular matter,
> we can be directly aware of, you can now finally falsify a “My redness is
> like your greenness” statement, by discovering which matter has a redness
> quality, and which matter does not.  No more “hard” problems.  At least
> that is the way I think about the world.
>
>
>
> Brent
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 10:48 AM JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the clarification. I like what Skinner said personally. If
>> only it included the diachronic 'across space-time' component we'd be all
>> set.....any thoughts? Maybe it's more like 'mindfulness'? jst
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 9:18 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> John,
>>>
>>>   Just for clarity, my definition of “Mind” is the way the word has
>>> emerged in radical behavioral and cognitive neuroscience circles. This is
>>> perhaps most clearly captured in B. F. Skinner’s (1987) comment, as follows:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Cognitive psychologists like to say that "the mind is what the brain
>>> does," but surely the rest of the body plays a part. The mind is what the
>>> body does. It is what the person does. In other words, it  is behavior, and
>>> that is what behaviorists have been saying for more than half a century.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ‘Beingness’ is another term that comes to mind as potentially
>>> referencing the Implicate Order (as in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness)
>>>
>>> G
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* tree of knowledge system discussion <
>>> [log in to unmask]> *On Behalf Of *JOHN TORDAY
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 23, 2019 10:54 AM
>>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>>> *Subject:* Re: + True Good Beautiful Self-States
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It's unfortunate that Mind already has a definition for you Gregg,
>>> because it would have been a good term, to my way of thinking, for the
>>> intersection of the Cosmological 'blueprint' and how our physiology
>>> complies with it, like an computer operating system and the software that
>>> utilizes it. Maybe a new term is needed? jst
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 7:42 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
>>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks, John.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I am reminded that when I use the term Mind (capitalized) I am referring
>>> to something very different when it is used by Descartes or many others.
>>> Mind on the ToK corresponds to the dimension of animal behavior, versus
>>> mind as human self-conscious reflection in many language games.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So, your capitalizing Consciousness versus consciousness is important as
>>> it does highlight that the terms are referencing two different things in
>>> the universe.
>>>
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Gregg
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* tree of knowledge system discussion <
>>> [log in to unmask]> *On Behalf Of *JOHN TORDAY
>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 22, 2019 1:37 PM
>>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>>> *Subject:* Re: + True Good Beautiful Self-States
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Gregg, I appreciate your point, and I think that it's the same reason
>>> the Damasio took me to task when I met with him last Friday about my use of
>>> the term Consciousness too. You are both clinicians, and to think of
>>> Consciousness as 'one size fits all' is anathema to the way you have to
>>> categorize mental health....BUT what I am addressing when I use the term
>>> Consciousness is like the difference between Truth and Law, the latter
>>> being a derivative of the former. I don't know if this will help, but I
>>> have further refined my way of thinking about Consciousness. I now think
>>> that Consciousness is the 'blueprint' of the Cosmos, animate and inanimate
>>> alike because homeostasis undergirds all of matter as the 'equal and
>>> opposite reaction' to the Big Bang....*without homeostasis there would
>>> be no matter*, *only energy* (and btw this is concordant with Alfred
>>> North Whitehead's 'Process Philosophy' in that he too thought that the
>>> primary state of being is energy, and that matter is merely a transient
>>> state). And the way in which our physiology has evolved, endogenizing the
>>> environment and compartmentalizing it is the way we perceive that
>>> Consciousness 'blueprint' within us, but that's just our idiosyncratic way
>>> of actualizing the Cosmologic for survival as a result of evolving
>>> warm-bloodedness (and being bipedal, etc). Otherwise Consciousness is
>>> pervasive throughout the material world as homeostasis.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Put another way, Consciousness and consciousness are one and the same in
>>> the Implicate Order.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So I don't distinguish non-conscious from conscious in the sense of
>>> Consciousness because non-Consciousness is non-existent.  What you are
>>> referring to is the physiologic mechanism that prevails in REM sleep or
>>> coma, for example. IMHO, this difference between Consicousness and
>>> consciousness is important in deliberating about your TOK because it
>>> addresses the ontology and epistemology of what life constitutes. In terms
>>> of consciousness, the origins and means of knowing are not consistent,
>>> whereas they are in terms of Consciousness.  I hope that made sense because
>>> you have touched on an important distinction between Consciousness and
>>> consciousness, not to be semantic or argumentative, but to be clear. jst
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 9:49 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
>>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Great discussion.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> John, as a psychologist, I need a language game that differentiates
>>> conscious from nonconscious activity. I am curious, how do you
>>> conceptualize the “unconscious” or nonconscious or subconscious? For a
>>> psychologist such as myself who uses consciousness to refer to subjective
>>> experience of being in the world, which, say flickers off each night when I
>>> sleep, I need to have words that refer to that activity beneath
>>> subjective/perceptual awareness. (Note, this is *not *self-conscious
>>> awareness, which is the “knowing that I know” thing).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Gregg
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> PS I refer to what you call consciousness in organisms as “physiological
>>> functional awareness and responsiveness”. That is the kind of awareness I
>>> see in cells and plants.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> PPS. Here is my blog on the meaning and problem of consciousness
>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_201812_10-2Dproblems-2Dconsciousness&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=8eFl7R5jcqdh9GkvxqOVPMwgqGf8KGEIPw307jJf71k&s=oRuW40yCYWYZtjmkZVyfGVDUATGYZwsQumurS6UnRkk&e=>
>>> in case that helps sort out the language game issues we might be having
>>> here.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* tree of knowledge system discussion <
>>> [log in to unmask]> *On Behalf Of *JOHN TORDAY
>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 22, 2019 9:43 AM
>>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>>> *Subject:* Re: + True Good Beautiful Self-States
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Joe et al, thank you for the feed-back. I know that the language
>>> unfortunately tends to get in the way when we talk across disciplines. My
>>> hope is that we can overarch the semantic problem, and your response is
>>> indicative of that. Having said that, the one key idea that I would like to
>>> get across is that all 'material' existence is the product of the 'equal
>>> and opposite reaction' to the Big Bang due to Newton's Third Law of Motion.
>>> Without that, there would be no matter in the Cosmos, only energy (So for
>>> example, Alfred North Whitehead theorized that the predominant 'process' is
>>> energetic interactions, and that the material state is merely a transient
>>> state of being). That 'equal and opposite reaction' is the origin of
>>> homeostasis for both the biologic and non-biologic realms. In physics,
>>> homeostasis is what produces balanced chemical reactions that form the
>>> rocks and dirt that we live on. So all of the material Cosmos originates
>>> from the same fundamental process. The core difference is that chemical
>>> homeostasis leads to stasis or stability, whereas biologic homeostasis
>>> allows for an on-going interactive 'dialogue' with the Cosmos, forming and
>>> reforming in order to cope with the ever-changing environment through
>>> direct epigenetic inheritance from the environment, or what we refer to as
>>> Evolution. And to be clear, I think that it is the combination of evolution
>>> as the endogenization of the external environment (see Lynn Margulis's
>>> 'Endosymbiosis Theory') that forms our internal physiologic 'knowledge' of
>>> the Cosmos/Natural Laws by compartmentalizing it and making it useful for
>>> survival and perpetuation of the species. When that construct is combined
>>> with our active dialogue with the environment, it generates what we think
>>> of anthropomorphically as Consciousness. But to reiterate, all matter has
>>> that Cosmic blueprint baked in to it, we just happen to take that blueprint
>>> and animate it (like Chalmer's "hard problem", or the concept of
>>> disembodied consciousness expressed by Andy Clark), but that's just who and
>>> what we are as a species, no more, no less. Unfortunately, it also makes us
>>> extremely Narcissistic because we are the only species that 'knows that we
>>> know', which tends to innately strike fear of death into us, BUT that is
>>> mitigated by the perpetual gaining of knowledge through the scientific
>>> method. So in terms of David Bohm's expression of this in his book
>>> "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" as The Explicate Order, which is the
>>> way we see things through our subjective senses, versus the Implicate
>>> Order, which is the absolute true order of things, scientific knowledge
>>> moves us ever further away from the Explicate Order, and toward the
>>> Implicate Order. I hope that was helpful, and I welcome any and all
>>> comments, criticisms, etc, etc in the spirit of constructive dialogue.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 5:27 AM Joseph Michalski <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Greetings from the frozen north John (et al.). Thank you for your latest
>>> contributions. As ever, I find your work tremendously fascinating. I think
>>> I largely agree with your argument. Maybe I'm just struggling with the
>>> semantics in some ways. I fully agree with the linkage of energy to the
>>> homeostatic processes and the various "survival" mechanisms in nature
>>> across all forms of life. And I entirely agree with your argument about
>>> cellular efforts to maintain information distinctiveness and energy
>>> efficiencies, at least at the theoretical level (I have no applied
>>> experience in the field beyond my novice attempts to study life through
>>> microscopes as an undergraduate!). Perhaps it's just the fact that, apart
>>> from our anthropomorphism, we have just conventionally used the term
>>> "consciousness" in conjunction with the presence of the "mind" and mental
>>> behavior. But if you're main argument, as I get used to the more complex
>>> language you use to describe the biological processes, is that everything
>>> biological - from the cellular to the organismic levels - responds to their
>>> environments by deploying energy and processing information to maintain
>>> organizational continuity (my wording) or homeostasis, then I agree fully.
>>> And then, as you've indicated, you can define consciousness & intelligence
>>> as linked to these processes as opposed to our usual link to the Mind or
>>> "mental behavior." Or maybe I'm must over(under?)-thinking the argument!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks again for sharing some of your latest work. I do think that you
>>> and your colleagues have offered a fascinating argument about how to
>>> conceptualize the "self" in an even grander fashion. With kind regards, -Joe
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dr. Joseph H. Michalski
>>>
>>> Associate Academic Dean
>>>
>>> King’s University College at Western University
>>>
>>> 266 Epworth Avenue
>>>
>>> London, Ontario, Canada  N6A 2M3
>>>
>>> Tel: (519) 433-3491
>>>
>>> Fax: (519) 963-1263
>>>
>>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> ______________________
>>>
>>> *ei*π + 1 = 0
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> *From:* tree of knowledge system discussion <
>>> [log in to unmask]> on behalf of JOHN TORDAY <
>>> [log in to unmask]>
>>> *Sent:* Monday, January 21, 2019 1:54 PM
>>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>>> *Subject:* Re: + True Good Beautiful Self-States
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Gregg and Joe, thanks for sharing that clip from Amadeus. Based on
>>> my own reduction of 'self' with Bill Miller (see attached; ideally to be
>>> read in the context of 'The Singularity of Nature' (see attached), I think
>>> that the transactional process between Salieri and Mozart required that
>>> both had a strong sense of who they were, because if not, one would have
>>> subsumed the other for lack of 'character strength' for lack of a better
>>> term. Ideally, they would have struck a homeostatic 'balance' that you are
>>> referring to as the + TGB SS. But ultimately I think we have to understand
>>> the premise of 'how and why' we exist or this is all just sophistry. Why
>>> homeostasis- because it is the mechanism that prevailed post-Big
>>> Bang....the 'equal and opposite reaction that ascribes to Newton's Third
>>> Law of Motion. I say that because without it there would be no matter, just
>>> free, chaotic energy (Alfred North Whitehead's 'Process Philosophy'). So
>>> homeostasis is the universal principle behind all matter, inanimate and
>>> animate alike. So that would suggest pan-psychism, which we agree seems
>>> silly- a rock is not conscious, unless we are defining consciousness as
>>> what we humans think it is, but is not.  Cut to the chase, I think that we
>>> misconstrue consciousness as being aware of ourselves and our surroundings,
>>> but that is an anthropomorphism. All organisms are conscious, it's just a
>>> function of their particular environment/Niche as to what it constitutes,
>>> which is the endogenization of the external environment, forming physiology
>>> by compartmentalizing those features of the Laws of Nature in order to
>>> survive and remain in sync with The First Principles of Physiology, which
>>> reference the Singularity prior to the Big Bang. So in other words
>>> Consciousness is the way in which we and all matter connect with the Cosmos
>>> as the entirety of the product of the Singularity/Big Bang. Only then will
>>> we understand the + TGB SS, IMHO.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 6:02 AM Joseph Michalski <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks for sharing Gregg. Indeed, I had transcribed the words of the
>>> clip and shared these because I thought it represented such an excellent
>>> example of what the pursuit of the TGB looks like when, however fleetingly,
>>> that occurs unfettered by all the trappings of one's ego. It's below zero
>>> here (Fahrenheit), but I already have a warm feeling for the rest of the
>>> day! Peace, -Joe
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dr. Joseph H. Michalski
>>>
>>> Associate Academic Dean
>>>
>>> King’s University College at Western University
>>>
>>> 266 Epworth Avenue
>>>
>>> London, Ontario, Canada  N6A 2M3
>>>
>>> Tel: (519) 433-3491
>>>
>>> Fax: (519) 963-1263
>>>
>>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> ______________________
>>>
>>> *ei*π + 1 = 0
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> *From:* tree of knowledge system discussion <
>>> [log in to unmask]> on behalf of Henriques, Gregg -
>>> henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>
>>> *Sent:* Monday, January 21, 2019 8:15 AM
>>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>>> *Subject:* + True Good Beautiful Self-States
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi List,
>>>
>>>   Joe M and I were talking yesterday about the nature of Positive
>>> True/Good/Beautiful Self-states (+ TGB SS), relative to Negative
>>> False/Bad/Ugly Self-States (- FBU SS). He reminded me of the movie Amadeus,
>>> and explained why it was such a great illustration of these dynamics
>>> (although apparently the movie is not exactly an accurate portrayal of
>>> Salieri’s actual relationship to Mozart). In the movie, Salieri struggles
>>> with feelings of jealousy, envy and inadequacy, and at the same time, loves
>>> the beauty of Mozart.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   Here is a great clip where he makes full contact with that side of the
>>> equation and thus you can see and feel the + TGB SS flow…
>>>
>>>
>>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__video.search.yahoo.com_yhs_search-3Ffr-3Dyhs-2Ditm-2D001-26hsimp-3Dyhs-2D001-26hspart-3Ditm-26p-3Dmozart-2Bsalieri-2Bfavorite-23id-3D1-26vid-3Dec20d8e7c1a0f8481a186b0532e2f150-26action-3Dclick&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=0V5c_q9VtR34908rGK9WTgGae4Pk9Nt-RLF6zXwSpqk&s=N0cTWi7iDbjtIQ-pdOe3nEvvSqV-3TBnuHwEBtVnQ1o&e=
>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__video.search.yahoo.com_yhs_search-3Ffr-3Dyhs-2Ditm-2D001-26hsimp-3Dyhs-2D001-26hspart-3Ditm-26p-3Dmozart-2Bsalieri-2Bfavorite-23id-3D1-26vid-3Dec20d8e7c1a0f8481a186b0532e2f150-26action-3Dclick&d=DwMF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=joZshrnMRKKNH0IZ2n6Sp_XKKxlpaFEIULZwPzqQLyw&s=A8VyhjcugTf7mTdBvnCpsx0F1g304JzMc1WBdDtH2KQ&e=>
>>>
>>> mozart salieri favorite - Yahoo Video Search Results
>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__video.search.yahoo.com_yhs_search-3Ffr-3Dyhs-2Ditm-2D001-26hsimp-3Dyhs-2D001-26hspart-3Ditm-26p-3Dmozart-2Bsalieri-2Bfavorite-23id-3D1-26vid-3Dec20d8e7c1a0f8481a186b0532e2f150-26action-3Dclick&d=DwMF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=joZshrnMRKKNH0IZ2n6Sp_XKKxlpaFEIULZwPzqQLyw&s=A8VyhjcugTf7mTdBvnCpsx0F1g304JzMc1WBdDtH2KQ&e=>
>>>
>>> video.search.yahoo.com
>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__video.search.yahoo.com&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=felM6t-23shozx04zWWYuMYveYgVSLrmBcAdF8HJ0ls&s=41mXkwngbtuHsClipM7egoI1AAGfDEOhjHs9BjlCQwQ&e=>
>>>
>>> The search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for.
>>> Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all
>>> across the Web.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   Thanks to Joe who pointed this out to me yesterday.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> G
>>>
>>> ############################
>>>
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>> ############################
>>
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>

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