Related papers: Consciousness: A Direct Link with Life's Origin?
Metabolism displays striking and robust regularities in the forms of modularity and hierarchy, whose composition may be compactly described. This renders metabolic architecture comprehensible as a system, and suggests the order in which…
The hypothesis considered here is that cognition is based on a small set of systems-level computational primitives that are defined at a level higher than single neurons. It is pointed out that for one such set of primitives, whose…
Across the tree of life, populations have evolved the capacity to contend with suboptimal conditions by engaging in dormancy, whereby individuals enter a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity. The resulting seed banks are complex,…
Evolution and its intelligence element present thrill and challenges in its exploration. Yet, how species have memory, retrieve them and maintain continuity are the fundamental questions. Most of the phenomenon can only be hypothesised by…
It is high time to openly and without finalism define the dangerous but needed term 'purposeful information', whose quantity is an Eigen information value. Using the term 'biological information' in its stead forces one into an…
Wright and Bourkes compelling article rightly points out that existing models of embryogenesis fail to explain the mechanisms and functional significance of the dynamic connections among neurons. We pursue their account of Dynamic Logic by…
In previous publications, we have argued that a form of panprotopsychism based on quantum states and events offers a solution to the combination problem. This framework explains the emergence of complex phenomenal qualities and conscious…
We discuss the possibility of world models and active exploration as emergent properties of open-ended behavior optimization in autonomous agents. In discussing the source of the open-endedness of living things, we start from the…
Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an understanding lies well beyond how simple organic molecules…
Several aspects of mathematical astrobiology are discussed. It is argued that around the time of the origin of life the handedness of biomolecules must have established itself through an instability. Possible pathways of producing a certain…
We present a game of interacting agents which mimics the complex dynamics found in many natural and social systems. These agents modify their strategies periodically, depending on their performances using genetic crossover mechanisms,…
The origin of life is often framed primarily as a chemical problem, yet life's defining feature is evolution. Advances in geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and molecular biology have produced diverse scenarios for the emergence of genomes,…
Conscious experience permeates our daily lives, yet general consensus on a theory of consciousness remains elusive. In the face of such difficulty, an alternative strategy is to address a more general (meta-level) version of the problem for…
This article focuses on elucidating the concept of consciousness from a relational and post-phenomenological theory of non-human communication agents (ANHC). Specifically, we explore the contributions of Thomas Metzinger s Self Model…
Life can be viewed as a localized chemical system that sits on, or in the basin of attraction of, a metastable dynamical attractor state that remains out of equilibrium with the environment. Such a view of life allows that new living states…
The hard problem of consciousness is the question how subjective experience arises from brain matter. I suggest exploring the possibility that quantum physics could be part of the answer. The simultaneous unity and complexity of subjective…
We extend the concept that life is an informational phenomenon, at every level of organisation, from molecules to the global ecological system. According to this thesis: (a) living is information processing, in which memory is maintained by…
We adapt an information theory analysis of interacting cognitive biological and social modules to the problem of the global neuronal workspace, the current standard neuroscience picture of consciousness. Tunable punctuation emerges in a…
Research investigating the origins of life usually focuses on exploring possible life-bearing chemistries in the pre-biotic Earth, or else on synthetic approaches. Little work has been done exploring fundamental issues concerning the…
Despite their ubiquity, the origin of cosmic magnetic fields remains unknown. Various mechanisms have been proposed for their existence including primordial fields generated by inflation, or amplification and injection by compact…