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https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/490380
A short theory of consciousness

Below is an extract from my theory of consciousness. The whole theory can be read here. It tackles the hard problem, so you might find it interesting. Any comments would be appreciated. — Pop

I have read the linked essay, and find that I agree with almost all of it. But I have a theory of my own, that is coming from a different direction to arrive at a similar definition of Consciousness. My one quibble is regarding the too broad & vague conception of "Consciousness" in the popular imagination. In my personal thesis, I propose substituting a technical term with a narrower range of pseudo-scientific implications, and more support from cutting-edge Science. It's not just a theory of Consciousness, but a Theory of Everything --- or as Douglas Adams put it : "God, the Universe, and Everything".

The name of my thesis is Enformationism, which takes as an axiom the novel notion that Generic Information, not Generated (evolved) Consciousness, is in the words of your essay, "ubiquitous in the universe". In my next post, I will quote some lines from your essay, and add a few comments from my own perspective. But first, I'll give my definition of "Generic Information", which goes far beyond Shannon's narrow usage, so you'll have some idea of where I'm coming from.

Generic Information : Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibility -- the Platonic Forms.
https://enformationism.info/phpBB3/view ... p=837#p837

Information :
* A quality of physical patterns and processes that stimulates meaning to emerge in a mind. Since it has few directly perceivable qualities itself, generic information is usually defined in terms of its context or container. Unlike colorless, odorless, and formless water though, Information gives physical form to whatever contains it. In the Enformationism thesis, it is the single Substance of the whole World.
http://enformationism.info/enformationi ... page9.html

Enformationism :
* As a scientific paradigm, the thesis of Enformationism is intended to be an update to the obsolete 19th century paradigm of Materialism. Since the recent advent of Quantum Physics, the materiality of reality has been watered down. Now we know that matter is a form of energy, and that energy is a form of Information.
* As a religious philosophy, the creative power of Enformationism is envisioned as a more realistic version of the antiquated religious notions of Spiritualism. Since our world had a beginning, it's hard to deny the concept of creation. So, an infinite deity is proposed to serve as both the energetic Enformer and the malleable substance of the enformed world.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/

Below is an extract from my theory of consciousness. The whole theory can be read here. It tackles the hard problem, so you might find it interesting. Any comments would be appreciated. — Pop

Here are my comments (C.) on a "few" quotes (Q.) from your essay : What is consciousness?. I hope they will illustrate the many points on which we agree, and why I prefer to use the more precise term "Information" in place of the vague popular concept of "Consciousness" :

Q. "The force is fundamental and as such is ubiquitous in the universe"
C. In my thesis, I call that universal causal force "EnFormAction" : energy + intention ; the power to enform ; to create. It is indeed "ubiquitous" in our evolving world, in which new forms emerge from older things, as the effects of prior causation.

Q. "Consciousness can be described as a process of self organisation"
C. Actually, human consciousness is the current state-of-the-art of the evolutionary process of enforming that has been going-on for billions of years. Consciousness is not the process itself, but an expression of that process. "To Enform" is to create a new organization of an older pattern.

Q. "Consciousness and life arose together, as without consciousness there can be no life"
C. In my thesis, Life arose from non-conscious in-organic matter, and consciousness emerged much later in evolution. So the "force" that caused Life & Mind to evolve was not Consciousness, but the power of EnFormAction --- one phase of which is Shannon's meaningless data, and another form is the meaningful contents of highly-evolved minds.
If you assume that only living organisms are sentient, Life must emerge prior to Consciousness. Your life-giving notion of Consciousness seems to be something like a Vital Force, or Chi, or Prana. And I agree that EnFormAction is similar, but I prefer to avoid those ancient pre-scientific terms based on the assumption of Spiritualism.

Q. "There is no reasonable way to separate consciousness from life."
C. Yes. That's what I meant by the comment above, that Life had to evolve prior to Consciousness. But Information, as I'll show later, is ubiquitous in both living and non-living things.

Q. "Consciousness is an evolving process of self-organisation that has at its root a bias to resist the zero point energy state."
C. Yes. I call that "bias" a ratio -- as in the definition of "energy" as a thermodynamic ratio between polarized states, such as Hot / Cold or Positive / Negative. The bias flows from excess to deficit.

Q. "A bias is an emotion."
C. Yes. In highly-evolved beings the low-level Positive / Negative bias is felt as the emotions Pleasure / Pain and rationalized as the concepts of Good / Evil.

Q. "These feelings are basic to our consciousness, and dominate it."
C. Yes. Emotions evolved early as a way to keep single-cell organisms alive, by causing them to move toward Positive sensations and away from Negative sensations. Hence, they are the foundation upon which our human Consciousness was built. And as David Hume asserted : "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions". Although his own reams of reasoning indicate that he rebelled against that enslavement, as do most rational people.

To avoid the Qualia of Too-Much-Information, I'll end this commentary here and pick it up again in the next post.

Below is an extract from my theory of consciousness. The whole theory can be read here. It tackles the hard problem, so you might find it interesting. Any comments would be appreciated. — Pop

This is a continuation of my comments on your essay : What is consciousness? :

Q. "Everything external to consciousness can be reduced to information, and it is information that consciousness entangles, integrates, and unifies. All information has a quality, so it is always emotional information."
C. Even human consciousness can be reduced to quantitative Information via the scientific method of Reductionism. But we tend to feel that human Consciousness is much more than just mathematical information. It has holistic implications of higher values. such as morality.
* External to human consciousness though, we can no longer have two-way dialogues. We still can't read the minds of single-celled organisms, except to infer automatic responses to inputs via behavior. Yet, Information is still functional in inorganic matter as a chain of Cause & Effect.

Q. "A mind empty of integrated information is unconscious and ineffable"
C. I agree that Consciousness is a form of Integrated Information, in the sense that it arises as a function of the Whole, not the Part --- of the Mind not the Neurons.

Q. "consciousness nevertheless joins the dots and creates something – filling in the blanks, with our beliefs, hopes, and faith."
C. Yes. Presumably, only human Consciousness can connect-the-dots and fill-in-the-blanks with rational inferences and personal subjective feelings. Although, some animals may have some degree of such pattern-recognition.

Q. "Experience and consciousness are often misunderstood."
C. Yes. Some New Agers attribute conscious experiences to all things in the universe. But, I make a distinction between meaningful experiences and mechanical energy exchanges. Atoms exchange Information in the form of energy. But do atoms have emotions and experiences that are meaningful to them? We may imagine so, but we can never know, until they communicate their feelings to us.

Q. "There is no reasonable way to separate consciousness from life. They are two aspects of the
one thing."
C. Again, I would agree with this assertion, if "Information" was substituted for "Consciousness". Non-conscious-matter and Life & Mind are different aspects of Generic Information. But not all living organisms are conscious in the same sense as humans : i.e. Self-conscious ; aware of being conscious. That awareness carries with it moral responsibilities.
So, I do separate all things into two basic categories : A- Universal Information (energy), and B- the special forms of Information that we know as Life & Mind. And only the top level of the information hierarchy has moral implications.

Q. "A bias is an emotion."
C. Yes. Human consciousness is experienced in part via pre-verbal emotions, and expressed via verbal concepts.
However, by assuming that such Consciousness is fundamental, some New Agers believe that inorganic and non-living Crystals are Conscious in some sense. If so, then we should be able to communicate with them, if not in words, then in feelings. I can only say, I'm skeptical.
https://www.findhorn.org/blog/conscious ... burlinson/

Q. " [Cells] have a simple emotional consciousness. No brain is required as reason is not present."
C. Yes, but. The New Age notion of "Consciousness" implies that electrons & protons are like little people, with memories, feelings, & biases of their own. If so, then when we cause an electron to "die" (e.g. to lose its charge) we are guilty of murder. Just as "fur is murder", and "meat is murder", then "a discharge of energy is murder". I think that goes to an unwarranted extreme.

Q. "Consciousness is composed of emotional - information . . . We have no experience of unemotional information"
C. Yes. We are only conscious of our feelings. Even our reasons are ultimately reducible to emotions.

Q. "6: A feeling is located as a point on a pain / pleasure spectrum ( PPS)"
C. Yes but, some people -- such as followers of the Jain religion -- carry that notion too far. For example, if I inadvertently step on an ant, does it feel the (human) emotion of Pain? If so, am I guilty of causing pain to a sentient organism? At what "point" can we draw a line on the "spectrum" between Living Beings and Moral Agents?

Q. "This cognizes the instance of consciousness - the point on the pain / pleasure spectrum tells
you what this instance of consciousness means for you."
C. Perhaps we can draw a meaningful & moral distinction between a> Rational Consciousness (humans) and b> Emotional Consciousness (animals) and c> Mechanical Information exchange (atoms).

Q. "In a sense we posses two consciousnesses, one is cellular and emotional, the other is of the
brain and reasonable,"
C. The line between a moral agent and a non-moral entity may be drawn between the cellular-emotional and brain-reasonable types of organisms. If we can't make that obvious distinction, then our ethic would have to give equal value to all organisms & entities.

Q. "What does it feel like to be conscious?"
C. Feeling is the subjective emotional experience that can't be expressed in words or in terms of neurons.

Q. "I have hardly mentioned the brain, as I believe, neuroscience is doing a great job of mapping
the brain, and computational theories of consciousness explain brain functioning very well.
They however do not describe a human being, rather a philosophical zombie."
C. Amen!

NOTE : If the point of my quibbles is not clear : it is an attempt to avoid such satirical comments as "How does a computer sense when I hit the space bar?" and "It hears the space bar's screaming of pain." Hopefully, the technical term "Information" will not be amenable to such puerile ridicule. But then, this is an open philosophical forum. :joke:

Yes originally I also began with information as the first step, and it still figures prominently in there, but now I understand self organization is the overriding process. — Pop

Hold-on now. You were on a reasonable path. So don't go off on an irrational tangent. :joke:


Information assumes a big bang / beginning, whilst self organization dose not need it. — Pop

Self-organization is indeed a function of the ubiquity of Information. Yet I doubt that spontaneous organization can occur prior to the existence of a "Self" with the power to "organize" (to create order). The physical universe is indeed in the midst of a process of self-organization. It's like a computer program that runs on the system's inherent energy, and is guided by an operating system of rules for self-organization. In the terms of my thesis, the universal program is described as a process of En-Form-Action. But nothing in our real world experience is completely spontaneous, without precedent. Instead, just as every program has a Programmer, every causal process has a First Cause. Unless it is Self-Existent of course, which is a necessary quality of a First Cause, or Creator. So, I question the conclusion to the quote above.

Recent theories of Cosmology have proposed that our universe did not begin with a "bang", but with a spontaneous (un-caused) Fluctuation in a pre-existing energy field. I assume that this was another attempt to avoid the inadvertent religious implications of the Big Bang as a creation event, requiring some kind of "external agent". Yes, in the real rational world, "spontaneous events" may appear out-of-nowhere, like an "immaculate conception", but logically & physically, there is always some necessary-but-unknown prior Cause -- perhaps an absentee baby-daddy, or maybe the Initial Link in the unbroken chain of causation that can be inferentially tracked back to a First Cause, or at least a Higher Context.

Whatever it is, the Prime Cause must provide "sufficient energy" for the evolutionary process of building a universe from scratch. And, in this constructive scenario, the random raw power of Cosmic Energy must also be ordered & channeled by logical rules of organization (natural laws), or else the result would be a destructive explosion that goes nowhere. What I'm saying here is that the hypothetical Original Cause, of apparently-spontaneous-organization, is necessarily an "external agent" combining explosive Power with teleological Direction (energy + order). Even Hawking's "No Boundary" theory was based on the hypothetical assumption of an eternal realm of unlimited Possibility : The Wave-Function. Yet even that unlimited Potential would contain nothing Actual, until it was triggered by some internal or external "Perturbation".

Therefore, a process without a beginning just doesn't make sense, logically or physically. And Hawking's retort to "what came before the Big Bang" was open-ended and ambiguous. From the perspective of his isolated (no context) mathematical model, he said, "it's like asking what's north of the North Pole". But in our real world, what's north of the North Pole, is a whole universe in the process of becoming. My thesis did not begin with the assumption of a particular First Cause. But as the concept of Creative Information evolved, it became obvious that some kind of Enformer was logically unavoidable.

Self-organization : Self-organization, also called (in the social sciences) spontaneous order, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when sufficient energy is available, not needing control by any external agent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

Spontaneous : happening, especially in a living thing, without being caused by something outside, or without the organism's control

Perturbation : 2. a deviation of a system, moving object, or process from its regular or normal state or path, caused by an outside influence.

Agency : 2. action or intervention, especially such as to produce a particular effect.

The No-Boundary Universe : "Hartle and Hawking derived a formula describing the whole shuttlecock — the so-called “wave function of the universe” that encompasses the entire past, present and future at once — making moot all contemplation of seeds of creation, a creator, or any transition from a time before."
“It was just not possible quantum mechanically for a universe to start in the way they imagined.”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicis ... -20190606/
NOTE : " encompasses the entire past, present and future at once" -- to me that sounds like an eternal world-creating deity. "A rose by any other name . . . ."

The Enformer :
* AKA, the Creator. The presumed eternal source of all information, as encoded in the Big Bang Sing-ularity. That ability to convert conceptual Forms into actual Things, to transform infinite possibilities into finite actualities, and to create space & time, matter & energy from essentially no-thing is called the power of EnFormAction. Due to our ignorance of anything beyond space-time though, the postulated enforming agent remains undefined. I simply label it "G*D".
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Yes I thought this would be a problem for you, but it may also be a solution. I find you have an intelligent conception of God, not an anthropocentric biblical God, but a creative force like element, and " self organization " is just such an element? God would have to self create? No. So god may have arose from self organization? — Pop

Self-organization, in the real world, is not a problem for me. We see it happen all around us. I once saw a time-lapse video -- to illustrate Rupert Sheldrake's theory of Morphogenesis -- of a seedling growing into a plant. The various elements of the plant somehow found their way to their final location as-if they knew where to go. Most scientists assumed the necessary "knowledge" was encoded in the DNA of the original seed. But Sheldrake postulated a Morphogenetic Field that guides each element to its correct place in the whole system. I don't think a literal external field is necessary though. That's because each element of the growing plant "communicates" with other elements via chemical signals (information). That exchange of self-organizing information is internal to the system, not an outside force.

The causal "creative force" of my thesis (EnFormAction) does indeed result in Self-Organization. But the S-O is an effect, not the cause. Likewise, the Enformer of our world is assumed to be eternal, hence self-existent, not self-organized. All of the scientific theories proposed to explain the contingent existence of our world, assume the prior existence of eternal Energy & Laws. And that's what EnFormAction is : the raw power to create, and the design criteria (blueprint ; program) necessary to guide the energy as it constructs a world of many forms.

Morphogenetic Field : https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morp ... troduction

EnFormAction :
* Metaphorically, it's the Will-power of G*D, which is the First Cause of everything in creation. Aquinas called the Omnipotence of God the "Primary Cause", so EFA is the general cause of everything in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application.
* All are also forms of Information, the "difference that makes a difference". It works by directing causation from negative to positive, cold to hot, ignorance to knowledge. That's the basis of mathematical ratios (Greek "Logos", Latin "Ratio" = reason). A : B :: C : D. By interpreting those ratios we get meaning and reasons.
* The concept of a river of causation running through the world in various streams has been interpreted in materialistic terms as Momentum, Impetus, Force, Energy, etc, and in spiritualistic idioms as Will, Love, Conatus, and so forth. EnFormAction is all of those.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

I am only beginning to understand self organization, but my first impression is that it is organization that causes a self. — Pop

I suspect that your definition of "Organization" might be similar to my notion of EnFormAction. EFA is the causal force in the world. It causes random matter to become ordered into organisms. So, EFA is the power to organize.

Yes I agree, as far as I can logically figure it, there has to be an external cause. — Pop

Yes. Even Hawking's atheistic "No-Boundary" hypothesis of world creation assumes the eternal existence of Energy & Natural Laws (Organization or Information). Logically, those prerequisites must be external to the world system that began, either with a bang, or from a fluctuation. :chin:

Creative information : Yes, but I think the creativity results from a bias ( emotional information ) towards order. — Pop

Yes. I think what you call "Organization" is the same thing that I call "Information" or "EnFormAction". They all have a bias or inclination toward order rather than disorder. I like Plato's story of how our Cosmos (organized matter) emerged from primordial Chaos (unformed potential). We seem to be talking about the same concept, but using different terminology.

Chaos :
In ancient Greek creation myths Chaos was the void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos. It literally means "emptiness", but can also refer to a random undefined unformed state that was changed into the orderly law-defined enformed Cosmos. In modern Cosmology, Chaos can represent the eternal/infinite state from which the Big Bang created space/time. In that sense of infinite Potential, it is an attribute of G*D, whose power of EnFormAction converts possibilities (Platonic Forms) into actualities (physical things).
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page12.html

Have you thought about hyperlinking the texts on the side of the pages to the main document? — Pop

In the Enformationism thesis, side-notes are mostly quotes from the Bibliography listed under the "Information" tab.

In the BothAnd Blog, many sidebar notes have links at the bottom. Some also have pop-ups to longer notes. Just click on the "http:" URL at the end of the notes. More important links are indicated with an arrow, indicating that you can click on the note to see more on that topic. I also have a Glossary of special terminology with unique definitions as they apply to my personal thesis.

http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/

What I don't understand is why do you need to postulate a theory when you have a belief in God? — Pop

I no longer have a religious belief in the Bible God. So, I had to re-construct my personal worldview from scratch. My current notion of a Nature G*D is the "god of the philosophers", which is always debatable. It's also not a matter of faith, but merely an unprovable Axiom for my thesis. Unfortunately, that Deist axiom is not accepted by Theists or Atheists. :naughty:

The God of the Philosophers :
Of course, their god is not a father in the sky they say, but rather the ground of being or fine-tuner of the universe or something even more esoteric. What my reader wondered was what such theoretical deities have to do with the beliefs of typical religious believers? In other words, how does a proof of an abstract god square with the god most of the faithful profess to believe? . . . . Little did my reader know that he has stumbled upon a problem that had baffled Christian thinkers from Pascal to Kierkegaard right up to the present time.
https://reasonandmeaning.com/2015/06/05/jb-sci-and-rel/

Axiom : (Math) a statement or proposition on which an abstractly defined structure is based.

The reason I ask is because " self organization" is looking to be a God like concept to me. — Pop

Since my thesis is primarily based on the cutting-edge concept of Information as the "substance" of both Mind & Matter, I followed that logic to conclude that a First Cause or Enformer was necessary for the thesis to make sense. Speaking of Logic, one of the philosophical terms I use to characterize my non-traditional notion of G*D is "LOGOS". According to Plato, it was the rational self-organizing force permeating the universe. But, he distinguished Logos from Mythos, which was his name for the anthro-morphic gods of the common people. :halo:

Logos :
In Enformationism, it is the driving force of Evolution, Logos is the cause of all organization, and of all meaningful patterns in the world. It’s not a physical force though, but a metaphysical cause that can only be perceived by Reason, not senses or instruments.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

Energy is Information : Aristotle used the term “energeia” (action) to describe the primal force that imparted momentum (energy of motion) to the physical universe. And his action principle was borrowed by modern scientists as their label for what we now call “energy”, which is the power to cause change. But the Greek usage also implied that the aboriginal Actor (Logos) was sentient in some sense. However, that imputation of consciousness was omitted by the pragmatic scientists, who had no need for the idealistic aspect of the hypothesis. As a result, their mechanical definition of “Energy” as a “scalar physical quantity” contrasts with the phenomenal definition as an attribute of matter (the ability to do work) . That mysterious property (qualia) of matter turns out to be a metaphysical, mathematical abstraction for which they had no explanation other than it just is. Energy is never observed as a physical thing unto itself, apart from matter–-just like Information .
http://enformationism.info/enformationi ... age15.html

The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794

Do you have a definition of God? The reason I ask is because " self organization" is looking to be a God like concept to me. — Pop

I don't normally define G*D as "self-organization", because I view Logos as the eternal power to organize, which was imparted to the temporal world in the Big Bang act of creation. Hence, the specific instances of self-organization we observe in the world are secondary to the universal power to create organized organisms.

G*D :
* An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a supernatural deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D. This eternal deity is not imagined in a physical human body, but in a meta-physical mathematical form, equivalent to Logos. Other names : ALL, BEING, Creator, Enformer, MIND, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. The eternal Whole of which all temporal things are a part is not to be feared or worshiped, but merely appreciated as the designer/organizer of the marvelous evolving system we know as Nature.
* I refer to the logically necessary and philosophically essential First & Final Cause as G*D, rather than merely "X" the Unknown, partly out of respect. That’s because the ancients were not stupid, to infer purposeful agencies, but merely shooting in the dark. We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why". That inscrutable agent of Entention is what I mean by G*D.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

Or put another way; the synergy is a function of self organization. — Pop

In Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory, phi (ф) is a measure of the system's integrated information, its degree of wholeness. And "wholeness" is another name for Synergy, as in "the whole is more than the sum of its parts". On that basis, neuroscientist Christof Koch now equates Consciousness with Synergy. Going out on a professional limb, he says, "So consciousness is a property not only of brains, but of all matter". However, as usual, I prefer to save the term "consciousness" for the most highly-evolved forms of Generic Information.

Sheldrake (whom I most admire) is a scientiific maverick whose views are almost universally rejected by mainstream science. John Maddox, editor of Nature magazine, famously titled his scornful review of Sheldrake's first book 'A Book for Burning', saying it should be scorned by scientists for the same reason Galileo was scorned by the Church - that it was heresy, and magical thinking. — Wayfarer

Yes. I think Sheldrake was on the right track in his theory of Morphogenesis. But his presentation of the ideas sounds a lot like New Age mysticism. That's why I prefer to use the more prosaic terminology of Enformationism. Of course, for those not familiar with the cutting-edge physics that equates Information with both Mass and Energy, my own theory is often dismissed as Mysticism -- despite my assertion that no Magic is required beyond that of Quantum queerness. However, I can't deny that it is heretical to the outdated paradigm of Materialism.

I do wonder if your notion of 'synergy' actually accounts for anything. It simply says - 'look, all these things work together' - which is what 'synegy' means.
What is lacking is a sense of telos, of purpose - that things work together for a common goal or end. — Wayfarer

Synergy does imply a direction, if not a specific goal, that a multi-part machine works toward. But it does not necessarily imply a self-conscious Purpose. For example, a thermostat is composed of several different components that, when working in cooperation, produce a specific result. But we can't say that the thermostat "wants" to keep warm. That purpose must be supplied from outside the system, by a conscious programmer. Likewise, our evolving world seems to be working toward producing sub-systems of greater complexity and synergy. But, for what purpose?

The Bible implies that the reason for God to create intelligent creatures was to provide an egoistic deity with worshipers who are able to appreciate the power & benevolence of their creator. As long as those creatures are sufficiently pious, they will be rewarded with blessings & bounty of a "land flowing with milk and honey". But after a while, some of those creatures noticed that God's benevolence was also distributed to the impious and unjust. So, they concluded that their true reward would be postponed indefinitely until a new world was created only for the pious. But then, what was the point (purpose) of this present life full of pain & suffering?

Believers then revised their notion of the purpose of this imperfect world to that of a temporary device for sorting out the chosen people (saints) from the sinners. That still didn't make sense to me, so I came to doubt that the telos of our world was focused on slavish piety. Instead, the teleology of the evolving world seems to focused more on the process than on some unspecified future product. Hence, the purpose of each life is to Live a unique story. Beyond that, I can't say. I could, like Teilhard deChardin, speculate on some ultimate teleological Omega Point. But that would be an un-educated guess.

Therefore, although I see signs of Synergy & Teleology in the world, I can't predict how the story ends, whether in "fire or in ice". Instead, I can only exercise what little FreeWill I have, over my own Synergy & Teleology & Purpose. Then, the final outcome of zillions of free choices may add-up to something wonderful or awful. But, I don't expect to be around to appreciate it. Instead, I'll just try to enjoy the ride -- bumps and all.

Divine Justice :
Father which is in heaven: for he maketh. his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, ... his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and. sends rain on the just and the unjust.
___Matthew 5:45

Ecclesiastes :
1 To every thing there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven . . .
18 I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. 19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[c]; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” 22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?

PS___ Tononi's theory of Integrated Information, and its inherent Synergy or Holism, implies that its "cause--effect power is completely reducible to that of its parts", with no overriding divine purpose. But my thesis of Enformationism implies that there must be some Intention motivating such a cosmic creation. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to divine what that holistic function might be. So, I'll just have to take it on faith, that "all's well that end's well".


Oh, you're at least as New Age as Sheldrake. — Wayfarer

Oh no! I'm not a New Ager, but a New Paradigmer.

The effect of "self organization" is inherently to create a self from elements entirely outside of self. So there is no need for external causation ( creator ) at all. — Pop

I think your concept of nature's ability to organize new systems from local interactions -- as the route to consciousness -- is on the right track. But I still maintain that the system we call Nature could not organize itself from nothing. And that talent for creating order from chaos is not an accident. It's what I call EnFormAction. Both the local elements and the causal force originate outside the Self.

So, here are a couple of quibbles : a> when a sub-system becomes organized as a recognizable “Self” or “holon”, it displays new properties that were not manifest in the local cause. It's a new unique being, not just another isolated particle. That's the basic principle of Holism, and of Arthur Koestler's definition of “holons”, the “whole is more than the sum of its parts”. b> when a row of dominos is tipped over, there is a chain reaction of cause & effect. But, without an “external causation”, nothing happens. So, the need for a First Cause remains, to get the process of on-going organization started. The “falling dominos” are an internal effect of an external cause. And the "more than" is novel properties that were not in the local elements. What you are describing is Morphodynamics, but Life & Mind have properties that are not found in ordinary Energy or Matter.

Your image of a hurricane is apt, though. In his book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, Terrence Deacon uses the apparently spontaneous formation of a whirlpool as an example of natural emergence and self-organization. However, "The disturbances from which the whirlpool emerges are external to it, whereas the dynamics of life are internal and also end-directed. Deacon calls this end-directedness "teleodynamics," which is different from “morphodynamics” (self-organizing or form-producing dynamics). An understanding of how he makes the incredible leap from morphodynamics (a primitive system) to teleodynamics (a complex, autopoietic system) requires reading the book. " https://www.thestranger.com/slog/archiv ... onstraints

The Organizing Force : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html

It is cognizing (via disturbance to its integrity) and reintegrating the disturbance via the bias to self organize. This last sentence describes the mechanism of consciousness as best I can resolve it. — Pop

Your description of the “cognizing” process is correct, as far as it goes. Yet again, it omits the requirement for an external Cognizer or Creator to design the cosmic “mechanism” in such a way that it produces the output we call “Consciousness”. That output is not a physical product, but the ongoing process of Knowing. It's the functional "design" of the machine that imparts the Potential for actualization of Mind from Matter. Like Paley's Watch in a field, our experience with reality makes the spontaneous appearance of such a functional machine unlikely. (Note : Yes, it's the old Intelligent Design argument, which only works for a Deist-god, not a Bible-god)

In my own thesis of how Mind emerged from Matter, which emerged from who-knows-what, I initially tried to avoid the First Cause assumption. But the logic of the whole process of evolution always points back to an otherwise unexplainable beginning. Multiverse theories simply argue that it's turtles-all-the-way-down. But that's not an answer, it's infinite regress. The only plausible answer is Teleology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Yes they originate from the universal Bias to self organize, and from elements external to self. The self is caused initially, and then takes on a momentum of its own. — Pop

Again, we are using different terminology to describe the same phenomenon. What you call "Universal Bias", I call Enformy. It's a natural inclination or tendency toward complexity & progress, which counteracts the disorganizing & destructive effects of Entropy, allowing such highly-organized phenomena as Life & Mind to emerge from the randomized mechanical procedures of Evolution. As described in mathematical terms, it's a ratio or relationship between two things. When that ratio is balanced (1 : 1), nothing happens. When it's biased toward one pole (2 : 1), it tips the balance in a positive direction. But when it's biased toward the opposite pole (1 : 2), it shifts the balance in a negative direction.

Since highly-organized systems in nature seem to be rare and fleeting, Physicists at first didn't pay attention to the positive effects of innate Bias. Moreover, Energy seems to flow both ways. So, they first came up with a name for negative thermodynamic change : "Entropy". Only as an afterthought did they think to label the opposite of Entropy as "negentropy". But I think the more euphonic term "Enformy" better suits the positive aspects of natural evolutionary Bias.

Donald Watson defined Enformy simply as "the capacity to organize". And he viewed Consciousness as the current pinnacle of "enformed systems" in the world. Unfortunately, he seemed to assume that everything in the world is conscious to some degree. Which led him to include all sorts of New Age magic & mysticism in his theory. However, since I reserve the "consciousness" label for only the human sort of self-awareness, all other enformed systems are viewed as merely various forms of mundane Information, otherwise known as "Energy".


Bias : A bias is a tendency, inclination, or prejudice toward or against something or someone.

Entropy : 2. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.

Enformy :
In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce Order & Complexity & Progress.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Theory of Enformed Systems : http://www.vxm.com/link.enformytheory.html

Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html