On 8/14/24 9:30 AM, Prof David West wrote:
glen: " ... it's fundamental to biology for organisms to seek ecstatic states ...
the oneness of the universe, the dissolution of the self, etc."
There is a lot of evidence that this is true, and perhaps it is a behavior that
could contribute to the, apparently, abandoned discussion of consciousness.
It a creature actively seeks to get high, it is conscious.
I believe it is "yet another" example of CAS seeking to "surf the edge
of chaos" with what we ascribe as "consciousness" to life forms (or all
forms if pan-conscioussness) being an (or the) highest level (meta)
expression of such? Collective emergent consciousness of the
noosphere/biosphere being meta over that of each individual... is
collective humanity struggling to "get high" while the individuals
variously "take care of business" and/or "get high" themselves? Does
the collective flirt with decoherence better when the constituent parts
avoid it altogether or is there an "upwards/downwards" chaining of this
"getting high" that is the magic dust?
in my recent response to Glen I think this is the "seeking mutual
coherence" I was referring to, deferring I think to the sheer
impossibility of actually doing so... "approaching coherence" is the
"getting high"?
We normally associate "getting high" with deliberately *decohering* but
I think that is because we take implicit coherence/rationality as the
natural/default state. Is it possible that seeking coherence and
breaking coherence are two modes of seeking Herb Simon's "nearly
decoupled systems"? Coupled enough to share mutual interests but not so
coupled as to be predictable/boring? Aka "the edge of chaos"?
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