What is "Mind?"

Finally, proponents of the (hopeful) idea that "chemical reactions" somehow produced life are not recognizing the real problem of information. There is a profound chicken/egg problem in DNA, RNA, or even any "information" that might exist in amino acids.

At present, there is no solid empirical evidence for genuine speciation

We get a lot of letters from people insisting that we ought to makes holes in our guesses. You see, you make a hole, to make room for a new guess. Somebody says, 'You know, you people always say that space is continuous. How do you know when you get to a small enough dimension that there really are enough points in between, that it isn't just a lot of dots separated by little distances?'

Or they say, 'You know those quantum mechanical amplitudes you told me about, they're so complicated and absurd, what makes you think those are right? Maybe they aren't right'.

Such remarks are obvious and are perfectly clear to anybody who is working on this problem. It does not do any good to point this out. The problem is not only what might be wrong but what, precisely, might be substituted in place of it.

In the case of the continuous space, suppose the precise proposition is that space really consists of a series of dots, and that the space between them does not mean anything, and that the dots are in a cubic array. Then we can prove immediately that this is wrong. It does not work. The problem is not just to say something might be wrong, but to replace it by something - and that is not so easy. As soon as any really definite idea is substituted it becomes almost immediately apparent that it does not work.

In some ways you can view life on Earth as a 4.1 billion year chemical reaction (even though Jan objects to this characterization.

"Natural selection" doesn't have intentionality AT ALL. That is core evolutionary doctrine! Give up that doctrine, and you are then doing something like (at least) Lamarckism and at worst some sort of deism/theism.

There is a vast difference between the simple utterances of, say, chimps or dolphins, and language as we know it; and you there's no known "pathway" from "there to here." Language as we know it depends upon a panoply of "deep structures" that seem to be "all or nothing." And basic utterances are not "language," any more than disparate notes are music.

Researchers investigating the link between coffee and heart health found caffeine helps a special regulatory protein move into the powerhouse of our cells known as the mitochondria. Regulatory proteins bind to specific parts of the DNA and play a role in how genes are expressed. This involves helping to protect cardiovascular cells from damage.

The team based in Germany investigated how caffeine affects a protein called p27 found in mitochondria in the major cells of the heart. They found the equivalent of four or more espresso shots was enough to help to protect from cell death, and boost processes that help the organ to recover after a heart attack.

HFCS: . . . my favorite "postmodern" "sympathizer”….

eeyonkee: The “intention” is to survive. 

Could you show me this scientifically? I don’t think so. It could just as easily be a myth as anything else. (I see nothing wrong with myths imo, but to claim that as some kind of undeniable fact or rule of the universe is speculative and anthropomorphic in a modern sense.)

"Natural selection" doesn't have intentionality AT ALL. That is core evolutionary doctrine!

Hmm, as I expected, anybody even suggesting the evolutionary theory is not a fully adequate account of all that we observe in biology is totally dogpiled, albeit respectfully, which I very much appreciate.

What a strange commentary. -hfcs

Like your attitude, MB1! You are up against a lot more than the posters on this thread if you are going to take on evolution:)

I could well be entirely wrong in my perspectives. I don't say that tritely. But if I'm wrong, I'm not ignorantly or stupidly wrong.

3 or 4 responses = dog pile.

But information is not nearly as simple and “common-sense” as it seems to us at first glance, and our everyday activities that employ information are actually profoundly involved and complicated. Just as empiricists oversimplify the processes that underlie experience and life itself, they radically oversimplify what information is.