The Grayness of the Origin of Life

A few offshoots from this line of thinking…

Where do viruses sit on this scale of grayness?

Yes, viruses have organic molecules, information storage systems, and compartmentalization. No, viruses do not have metal catalysis (correct me if I’m wrong) nor do they have energy currencies (they rely on hosts for energy). Viruses appear rather gray indeed.

Can the grayness framework be modified/extended to describe superorganisms?

Superorganisms like bee colonies are only mentioned in passing and the authors do not try to apply their grayness framework. Organic molecules and metal catalysis aren’t as relevant beyond the molecular scale, but information storage systems, energy currencies, and compartmentalization apply just as well to superorganisms. Perhaps those are the more generalizable attributes of life.

I’m reminded of concepts from Schrödinger’s What Is Life?. Schrödinger describes local reduction of entropy to be a key feature — combining energy currencies with compartmentalization is one way to achieve that. Separately, he discusses the hereditary mechanism and suggests an “aperiodic crystal” could encode heritable information.

What would be the contents of a sister article titled “The Grayness of the Origin of Consciousness”?

I would love to see an outline.

> If the line between life and non-life is blurry, that means there isn't a clear place for souls to fit in

If "souls" aren't defined precisely enough that there's an experiment that give different results depending on whether they exist, then the statement "souls exist" is meaningless, and anyone saying it is not even wrong.

> This isn't a big deal for science, but it's a moral victory for atheists.

Theists won't care, although I suppose some will mutter something about separate magisteria.

> No, viruses do not have metal catalysis (correct me if I’m wrong)

RNA viruses would generally have an RdRp polymerase which requires a metal ion.

> despite arguably being a physical state change and not chemistry per se.

It remove salt from the water but more importantly move it to the top of mountains, which adds energy into the system. Chemistry happens when the water disolves sediments and carry them back to the oceans.

Yeah the heart can beat according to its internal pace maker and a CNC machine can move about and cut a work piece according to its internal program. We have no reason to believe that either is sentient. Maybe a thousand or so years ago when people did not fully understand that the brain is where consciousness takes place. Nowadays there is no excuse. Autonomy is not sentience. Your heart does not have feelings or a sense of self. Evolution did not require that to build a somewhat self regulating muscular pump. The rock vs. cpu example was a little hyperbolic I guess.

My point is simply the presence of interconnected neurons running a certain program is not sufficient to give rise to sentience or conciousness. I believe what we call sentience or conciousness is not an accident or even really an "emergent" phenomenon but rather the direct, purposeful result of specific structure that was selected for by evolution.

The phrase "level of complexity" is inartful because it implies there is one axis or dimension to complexity when that is not the case. If you make a random soup of 100 billion interconnected neurons and teach it to classify images it is highly unlikely that you will get a sentient being by accident although you may have a very efficient neural network at the task it was designed for. If however you take a 100 billion neurons and subject them to the selective pressures of evolution in the real world, where a sentient or self aware self may have advantage then it is not unlikely perhaps that you end up with a sentient or counscious being. Thus sentience is the result of specific selected for structure not the random outcome of a certain level of complexity. I don't see why this is even contraversial.

General intelligence does not exist divorced from the real world and it does not just happen as the side effect of a certian "level" of complexity.

With regard to the question is the heart of a cow smarter than a planiar (worm) whole organism I do not see this as a meaningful question because the starting premise is wrong. The starting premise assumes that there is some abstract quality "sentience" or "intelligence" that exists on a single axis, a continuum of "levels." I'd say the axis does not exist, there are no levels, what matters are functions and it is not meaningful to argue whether or not the planarian or the heart is at a higher level of intelligence because the preform different functions. Notably one is a free living creature while another is an organ inside another creater. I think they are incomparable. Neither has the specific brain structure that gives humans and other higher animals sentience so it does not make sense to argue whether one or the other is at a higher level when neither is at any level at all in terms of a structural or functional comparison with a brain. A worm is not further ahead or behind a heart when compared to a brain because neither is anything like a brain. Maybe a plannarian can learn. I doubt a heart can learn but maybe it can. But overall the idea of levels of sentience or sentience simply emerging from complexity that does not intentionally provide for it is silly in my opinion.