Biological Creativity

Gregory,

How delightful to see you drop in! I cited your new book in my FQXi essay ("The Perfect First Question"). A great read, and as I've found with all your books, chock full of bold, challenging and and stimulating ideas!

Best,

Tom

Gregory,

The title "Proving Darwin" may be a little strong. After all, macroevolution was never proven to be simply the smooth result of microevolution that Darwin envisioned. Even today there is plenty of room for another process existing in concert with Darwinian microevolution. Reverse causality, i.e., causality running backwards in time, is the logical candidate. Physics, both classical and quantum may be written with causality running both ways. Celtic philosophy had it running both ways before being suppressed by the Roman Empire and David Hume's empiricism.

The development of the ribosome and the development of animals at the base of the Cambrian Explosion are the best candidates for retrocausal explanation. This would undermine the arguments for Intelligent Design and a return to traditional scripture as an explanation. The timing of these evolutionary events and the current size of ribosomes have some interesting connections with elementary number theory, so there is already a known starting point for building the retrocausal explanations.

"If K is a set such that:

* 0 is in K, and

* for every natural number n, if n is in K, then S(n) is in K,

then K contains every natural number." What does EVERY mean?

Isn't this ambiguous use of EVERY at odds with Galileo Galilei's ignored insight that being infinite is an absolute property, not a set. IIrc, Galileo wrote: "The properties smaller than, equal to, and larger than don't apply to infinite, just to finite quantities."

Gregory, I don't blame you. I rather would like to accept any sound foundation of Hilbert's first and second problem. See my essays.

Eckard

EMERGENCE: BY COSMOS OR BY LIFE?

There are many emergent properties we associate with the emergence of life, and often intelligent life, like thought or even abstract thinking; decision making, affection, etc. Yet upon closer examination many of these kinds of emergent attributes can also be attributed as properties of the Universe at large, maybe not all, but still a goodly number, leading to the ultimate question of is the Universe alive?

In the most general sort of way, as one makes progress from simplicity to complexity, more and more properties seem to emerge, sometimes seeming out of thin air. This is also oft noted as a bottom-up development of the complexity hierarchy or where the whole becomes more than the sum of its collective parts. One termite can't accomplish very much; ten termites just a little; but a colony of termites can build mighty termite mounds and destroy buildings. One brick doesn't do very much, but a million can build all manner of interesting and useful constructions. One electron and one neutron and one proton can't do very much either, but a million of each can produce all of the elements we know of in the Periodic Table and all of the compounds we know as well.

Increasing and decreasing levels of complexity are all well and good and having a structural hierarchy makes comprehension and understanding easier - it's more visual. But ultimately top-down and bottom-up reasoning are inadequate to explain life, the Universe and everything. It would be improbable, IMHO, to predict sociology from an understanding of chemistry, so bottom-up has limits, but then sociology can't come up with chemistry so the top-down approach isn't all that crash hot either.

For example, from the bottom-up, you couldn't predict from either the Big Bang event or quantum physics the emergence and existence of an ecosystem or even the bunny rabbit. And from the top-down, knowing about the workings of an ecosystem or even just the bunny rabbit doesn't predict either quantum physics or the Big Bang event.

On a simpler note, I'm not convinced a physical chemist could predict in a bottom-up fashion, given the properties of chlorine and sodium, including details of their atomic structure and make-up, that the chemical union of the two would produce a solid, translucent, crystalline, substance with a salty taste, which was an essential ingredient for life's biochemistry to flourish. Only an actual experiment would do that. Conversely, from the top-down, I'm not convinced that a physical chemist examining a bit of table salt, even knowing its atomic structure, could predict that hidden within that structure lay a yellow poisonous gas and a volatile metallic solid. That too takes an experiment to discover. I may be wrong about those deductions - I'm not a physical chemist - but gut feeling says no.

Some scientists suggest that from the knowledge of the atomic structure and properties of oxygen and hydrogen one should be able to bottom-up predict the existence of oceans, waves, even surfing! I disagree since you'd need to predict or envision a very large bowl that would contain all of those molecules of water, but the bowl isn't a logical emergent property of oxygen and hydrogen. (You'd also need to bottom-up predict not just water but liquid water and thus a temperature and pressure range, wind, and all the properties that go into making up a surfboard rider, and that's a pretty big ask just knowing about oxygen and hydrogen.)

Regardless, sociology does emerge out of chemistry; ecosystems and bunny rabbits emerge from the Big Bang event and quantum physics; table salt emerges out of sodium and chlorine; and the ocean emerges out of hydrogen and oxygen.

Take for example the simulation game of "Life". Start with just a few 'life forms' that will obey a few simple laws, principles and relationships - the rules of the game - then hit 'enter' and see what happens. More likely as not complexity will spontaneously emerge. That said, it must be stressed that in the real world, while there has been an overall increase in the complexity of the myriad forms of life over geologic time, cumulating in the most complex structure of all, the human brain, natural evolution or natural selection hasn't ever had a goal, an ultimate design or purpose in mind. In the biological world, complexity can revert to something simpler, if the need (survival of the fittest) so arises. It goes against the general grain, but it happens from time to time.

In the context of this little essay, it doesn't really matter if we are talking about emerging properties 'in the beginning' and in and of the cosmos and before the emergence of life, or 'once upon a time' which is the emergence of life, body and mind, on Planet Earth. It's probably more relevant to take the cosmic view since Planet Earth is a subset of that.

SCIENCE BEGATS MORE COMPLEX SCIENCE

In the cosmic beginning was the physics, but has any more complex physics emerged from that distant time since presumably all of the laws, principles and relationships of physics were present and accounted for at that beginning? Well presumably you couldn't have had any radioactive decay until such time as there were atomic nuclei and the binding together of neutrons and protons (plus the associated outer electron cloud). But some might argue that the formation of atoms out of the original cosmic soup of particles is chemistry, not physics, but I don't see it that way. Chemistry doesn't start until atoms start combining with other atoms to form molecules. But clearly, no matter how you slice and dice and define things, chemistry emerged from physics and complex (multi-atom) chemistry emerged from simple chemistry and very complex organic chemistry and hence eventually biochemistry emerged out of that mess. But the mention of biochemistry notes that biology emerged out of complex chemistries and from that emerged the mind and all of the facets (like intelligence, awareness, etc.) we associate with a mind (and not just a human mind either as we are often inclined to associate the mind with just the human mind). All sorts of other 'sciences' then emerge from having a mind like psychology to sociology to conflicts to more traditionally human ones like economics, culture and a sense of history.

TIME & SPACE

Time is an emergent concept when change occurs in the cosmos and there is an awareness of that change by something - presumably a living thing that responds to that change in a manner that can't be predicted by the laws, relationships and principles of physics. That's actually my definition of what life is. Anyway, if there is no change there is no time. Space is an emergent concept that comes into play the nanosecond there exists matter and energy within, a something that fills that space and gives meaning to the concept of space. If there is no matter and energy, there is no such thing as space.

INFORMATION

Many hold the view that information is fundamental to the cosmos, in fact is the fundamental construction behind the cosmos. Everything in and of the cosmos is bits and bytes - information. 'Information' may have existed before life came into being, but I fail to see what good information was until such time as there was a mind to recognize information for what it was and to make use of it.

PERSONALITY

Personality is an emerging property of life. It's difficult to think of an electron or an atom of carbon as having a personality since their substance and structure never changes. Of course one could argue that if an electron absorbs a photon or meets a positron (anti-electron) change will occur. Then too more complex structures like the weather or a star might be said to have a personality. A warm sunny day is differing in 'personality' to that of a raging hurricane. Our Sun's temperament changes over a regular cycle - sometimes sunspot free and tranquillity reins; sometimes emitting massive coronal ejections and solar flares.

EMOTIONS

Surely emotions are an emergent property of life. My cats may hiss and spit or softly purr but I can't image any rock doing that. However, as noted directly above, complex systems can display differing 'personalities' from time to time. It's probably a bit far-fetched however to suggest that an exploding stick of dynamite is angry or that a tranquil pond is contented. Emotions tend to suggest intent and it's difficult to think of any non-life form having any sort of intention towards you regardless of how nice it might be to bask in the sun at the beach, or conversely get the fertilizer knocked out of you by a huge wave! Neither the sun nor the wave had any deliberate intention to either warm you up or knock you senseless.

LANGUAGE

Language is an emergent property of life. Life can communicate with life, or at least the same sort of life like an ant colony. Birds communicate; cats communicate; humans communicate sometimes by sound, sometimes via body language, sometimes via smell, etc. But the Universe too has a universal language, at least according to some theorists: Mathematics. One can certainly 'speak' and understand the language of mathematics. The Universe operates according to precise mathematical relationships. In order for one part of the Universe to understand and respond to another part of the Universe, it needs to understand the language of mathematics. For example, gravity understands the mathematical language of the inverse square law. As an aside, if we exist in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, then that Universe too is in the language of mathematics - software.

CONSCIOUSNESS

If there was nothing rather than something, there could be no consciousness.

Consciousness is rooted in matter and energy - no matter and energy, no consciousness.

Consciousness is an emergent property of life that only emerged when life itself emerged - or is it? Consider quantum physics as the exception.

Every living thing from humble microbes to plants, jellyfish to frogs, birds to cats to primates have consciousness because all respond to external stimuli in ways that are not predictable by classical physics (unlike a rock expanding and contracting as the temperature rises and falls). From conception to brain death you feel and respond to stimuli 60/60/24/7/52, like gravity and temperature, etc. If you respond, in un-rock like ways, you have consciousness.

Consciousness is a synonym for your state of awareness or being aware. If you are in a state of consciousness, you are aware of your surroundings, both external (it's hot outside) and internal to the body (as I have a tummy ache) and internal to the mind (thoughts, ideas, emotions, creativity, and other mentally generated perceptions). Once conscious or aware, you then respond to that awareness.

Consciousness is not a fundamental property of the cosmos. There was a time before life existed and the cosmos got on quite well without being aware that it actually even existed.

The best way to come to terms with consciousness is to distinguish that state from when you are not conscious - being asleep; under anaesthesia; drugged into an unconscious state; being passed out; having fainted; being knocked out (as in boxing), etc.

You'd say you're conscious right now and probably say you were conscious ten minutes ago, but how do you know that? You know that because you remember being conscious ten minutes ago. But, you're remembering that something you're remembering in the present now, not ten minutes ago, so that's not a reliable indicator.

FREE WILL

Free Will would appear to be an emergent property of life. Okay, maybe a plant doesn't decide to do, or not do, something, but in the animal kingdom animals make choices many times a day, even the invertebrates decide to do, or not to do, and one could argue even unicellular critters make decisions. It would be difficult to think that inanimate objects, all of that non-living cosmos, from the fundamental particles on up the line, have free will. Well, anyone who is conversant with quantum physics knows full well that elementary particles have some sort of awareness and can make decisions, albeit under some quite considerable restrictions, but choices nevertheless. Such free will straight-jackets applies to life forms as well (I can't flap my arms and fly; my cats can't decide to learn algebra).

For example say you have one light source. Let's make it the Sun. You have one normal everyday clear and clean pane of glass. Some of the light (photons) from the light source will pass clear through the clear glass, but some of those identical photons will reflect off the clear surface of the pane of glass. One set of circumstances yields two differing but simultaneous outcomes. That violates cause-and-effect. That's crazy, but it happens as you can verify for yourself. Or, the photons are aware of the pane of glass and are deciding of their own free will whether to pass through, or reflect.

MEMORY

Memory is an emergent property of life - or is it? Memory isn't really memory if... When an electron meets a positron (an anti-electron) does reach 'remember' what it must do? What about the 'spooky action at a distance' - quantum entanglement.

We all know about working memory, short-term memory and long-term memory and how we seem to remember unique one-offs, things that happen that are out of the ordinary, like when you get into your car but slip and fall back out in front of 20 other people - that's you'd remember. But you also have a collective memory of the generality of you getting into your car that's not specific to any one car entering event - all of which you have individually forgotten. But all those individual car entering events have merged together to form a general collective memory of entering your car. Most of our memories seem to be of this collective kind. You might have a collective memory of enjoyable evenings spent in front of a warm fireplace with a glass of wine, even though each specific occurrence has been sent to your mind's waste-paper basket.

CREATIVITY

Creativity would appear to be an emerging property of life, but then the Universe creates things like galaxies, stars, planets and of course life. Perhaps creativity is not creativity if there is one and only one way to create something. There's not too many ways Mother Nature can create water; there are numerous ways a human can create a chair. However, one could ague that Mother Nature took the basic fundamental particles and from that, using the laws, relationships and principles of physics created all of the diversity we see in the cosmos. There's 92 natural elements (not counting isotopes) and as close to infinity as makes no odds, molecules, all constructed or created from just that trilogy of basic fundamental particles - electrons, neutrons and protons (albeit neutrons and protons are in turn composed of a trilogy of quarks). There might be only one way to create a star, but there are many varieties of stars, just like there are many varieties of chairs. There's not just one variety of galaxy, but many types of galaxies. There's not just one type of planet, but a huge diversity of planets both in our solar system and as we've discovered as exo-planets forming around other star systems.

ABSTRACTIONS

One emerging property that must be confined to having arisen from the human mind is the concept of concepts, or abstractions, things which have no real independent reality outside of the human mind. There are concepts like Wednesday, time & space, love, theology, freedom, architecture, probability and a whole host of ism's - theism, sexism, racism, feminism, etc. There are also the concepts of things that exist in themselves which isn't the same thing as the actual thing itself. One can have the mental concept of a wheel which is separate and apart from an actual wheel; one can imagine a manned landing on the moon which isn't the same thing as an actual landing on the lunar surface.

MEANING AND PURPOSE

Humans at least of the life forms we know assign a meaning or a purpose to their existence and to their finite time on this abode - that Third Rock from the Sun - which is all well and good as long as they themselves do the assigning and not pass the buck up the line to an alleged deity or deities or even other mortal authority figures. But does the cosmos at large have a meaning and a purpose? The strong Anthropic Principle says that the Universe exists, and has the properties it has, in order to bring forth life, intelligent life, and even more specifically human beings into the Universe. Human beings are the Universe's way of the Universe understanding the Universe. The strong Anthropic Principle isn't flavour of the month with most scientists. The weak Anthropic Principle on the other hand says the Universe is fine-tuned or is a bio-friendly Universe or a Goldilocks Universe that enables life, intelligent life and human beings to exist, but such fine-tuning is not a deliberate, purposely designed, or meaningful construct on the part of the Universe. It's just the way the cards were dealt and if the cards had been dealt some other way the Universe wouldn't be a fine-tuned or is a bio-friendly Universe or a Goldilocks Universe that enables life, intelligent life and human beings to exist. We wouldn't exist in order to ponder any sort of meaning and purpose on the part of anything and everything.

REPRODUCTION

Now you may think it ridiculous that the Universe at large can reproduce itself. Reproduction is considered one of those properties of life. However, there are two theoretical ways and means by which this could happen. The first is via Black Holes. Some theory suggests that all the stuff that goes down a Black Hole's gurgler gets budded off to become a new universe, not our universe, but a universe in its own right, which will in turn produce Black Holes which will in turn bud off another generation of universes, etc.

The second way is via Runaway Inflation. Inflation is a concept that's been tacked on to the Big Bang event itself in order to iron out several cosmological problems if the Big Bang was left by itself to explain the origin and evolution of our Universe. Inflation is a super-ultra-rapid burst of expansion that stars and stops in just nanoseconds just after the Big Bang itself. Now the central problem is not how Inflation starts, but how it stops. Some theory suggests that Inflation doesn't stop in all places at precisely the same instant. It some part of our Universe keeps on super-ultra-rapidly stretching while another part has stopped that Inflationary phase, then the part that's still undergoing Inflation will bud off from our Universe to form a universe in its own right. But Inflation in that universe might not all stop at the same time and place leading to another budding off, another universe, and another and another.

AGEING

One of your emergent properties that started virtually at the moment of your conception was your ageing process began. There appears to be nothing you can do about this or its inevitable conclusion. Your health will decline with ageing until you die (see next section). Even if you spent your existence in some sort of 'safe house' free from accidents and deliberate acts of malice against you; even if all the air you breathed was filtered free from harmful bacteria and viruses and pollutants; even if you ate a perfectly balanced diet of three meals a day with all foods free of artificial colours, flavours and ingredients and everything was 100% 'organic' with lots of fruits and vegetables; even if your water was distilled and absolutely pure; even if you took no drugs like caffeine or nicotine or alcohol; even if every moment of every day was absolutely stress free; even if you got your eight hours of sleep a day; even if you got lots of exercise, both mental and physical, you will still age and go downhill towards that bucket which you will kick. You cannot prevent that complex biochemical ageing time bomb that's inherently inside you and which emerged from the simplicity of your conception.

You age, but it is hard to imagine the Universe ageing in a biological sense. The Universe is evolving, it is changing, it is spreading further apart with each passing second (the expanding Universe), but is it ageing? At the most fundamental level, those elementary particles like electrons and neutrinos and photons, don't age. A 13.7 billion year old electron doesn't look a day over 3 billion years, or days or nanoseconds for that matter. You could imagine a rock in the middle of intergalactic space, unchanging as the millennia passed on by. Stars 'die' as they run out of fuel, but once that last flicker of energy dissipates, the star doesn't continue to age. Maybe things that are dead can't undergo an ageing process although things that are dead (like a star or a radioactive rock) can still change, but the change isn't an ageing process - or is it? Perhaps this is a case of splitting hairs.

DEATH

If life is an emergent property of the cosmos, then death is an emergent property of life, since there is no theoretical reason why a living organism has to die a natural death providing the body continually receives an adequate supply of all resources required for life (food, oxygen or carbon dioxide (if a plant), water, etc.). However, entropy will not be denied and there is nothing you can do (at least in the here and now) about it no matter how well you follow doctor's orders. But death too is an emergent property of 'non-living' things. Stars are born; stars run out of fuel; stars die. Stuff gets sucked down a Black Hole presumably not with previous substance and structure. Even a Black Hole itself will ultimately die, evaporating into a sea of elementary particles via Hawking Radiation. An electron meets a positron and both die and get turned into pure energy. Even the entire Universe can die. One way would be if the expansion rate slowed, stopped, reversed, contracted, and ended up in a Big Brunch (the death of the Universe, the opposite the Big Bang, the birth of the Universe). The second, and apparently more likely way, is the Heat Death of the Universe, a state reached when all available energy is uniformly distributed across the entire cosmos. The third way is that Dark Energy, which allegedly is driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe, keeps on increasing over time, and it's anti- gravitational properties will eventually rip apart the galaxies, the stars, all the planets and related debris, all the molecules into atoms, all the atoms into electrons, neutrons and protons, and all the protons and neutrons into quarks. Naturally enough, this death of the Universe is called the Big Rip.

SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS

It's clear the cosmos has a lot of the emergent properties we associate with life. Whether it's a sufficient number to conclude that the cosmos itself is alive I'll leave up to you. But in summary:

1) Emergence has happened, is still happening and will continue to happen at all times in the future, or at least until the cosmos itself kicks the bucket. .

2) Something more complex (up or top) cannot break the simpler laws, relationships and principles of physics (down or bottom) that comprise that complex something but that complex something must be compatible with those simpler laws, relationships and principles of physics. What that complex something is and how it behaves doesn't dictate or influence (top-down) how the laws, relationships and principles of physics that make it what it is, behave. So something simple puts constraints around that which is complex, but what's complex doesn't restrain the overall properties of what's simple.

3) Bottom influences or determines up, but up isn't predictable. You can't predict a Wagnerian opera based on the Periodic Table of the elements.

4) Top doesn't determine down. One might be able to figure out down by reverse engineering up.

5) If one accepts that the above concepts are emergent with and only with life, then one just might have to conclude that the cosmos is alive!

I make that conclusion just based on how elementary particles show awareness and a limited or restricted degree or range of free will. It's sufficient to conclude that the cosmos (made up entirely of these elementary bits and pieces) is aware and can react and is therefore alive and kickin' - or perhaps simulated to reflect being alive and kickin'!

FREE WILL: YOUR REALITY OR YOUR ILLUSION?

"You have to believe in free will. You have no choice". Seriously, if our Universe is a clockwork Universe, where causality rules absolutely (as both Newton and Einstein believed), then you do not have free will, only the illusion of having free will.

I will argue that if causality means anything, then everything is predetermined and therefore there is no free will. Causality rules - a cause causes an effect which in turn becomes the cause for a later effect which is hence the cause for an even later effect, and so on down the line. It's an unbroken causality chain starting from an initial set of fixed conditions. The past determines the present which determines the future. If you knew the past to an absolute infinite amount of detail, then you know the future to that same degree of infinite detail, and free will doesn't enter into things.

Our Universe could be a reflection, albeit on a far grander scale, of those computer-generated simulations, like "Life". Start with a simple set of initial conditions and relationships, add several rules to the mix, press 'enter' or 'go' and see what happens. Such simulations can evolve into immense complexity, but the outcome - as far up the track as you wish to extrapolate - is 100% predetermined.

You can download and run "Life" on your home computer - in fact I understand some come automatically equipped with the software. In a similar way, cosmologists run simulations where they vary the various parameters thought to have existed close on the heels of the Big Bang event or era, along with the laws and constants of physics and see if the simulation evolves into something approaching the large scale structure of our actual, observed, Universe. Their fundamental assumption is of course that causality is absolute. If you start with ABC, you end up with XYZ - the first time, the last time, and all the in-between times.

If causality however is a sometime thing (like a woman is - sorry, I didn't write the song, Gershwin did, so complain to him when you get to the afterlife part of your existence), then there must be (or probably is) such a thing as free will.

Now quantum physics as we currently understand it, is in-deterministic - it's all based around probabilities, not certainties. Einstein never accepted that, believing to his dying day that there was some undiscovered deterministic or certainty principle or hidden factors that would restore or reaffirm causality in the realm of the quantum. If Einstein were alive today, he's still be waiting. However, the indeterminacy and lack of causality in the realm of the quantum has nothing to do with free will.

Free will, if it exists, is a function of the mind; it's all in the mind - the ways and means of consciousness to achieve a conscious choice. Free will, if it exists, is ultimately then a function of brain biochemistry or neurochemistry. Chemistry is deterministic and causality driven. Chemistry is an atomic process, but chemistry is still macro compared with the micro of the quantum realm. If you combine sodium and chlorine in equal parts and only probably get table salt and thus every now and again you get quartz or stainless steel instead, well that's just not the way the Universe works. That's not the way chemistry, any chemistry including brain biochemistry or neurochemistry works.

Let's explore the issue further.

Firstly, free will means making decisions that have no predetermined outcome. Free will is coming to that metaphorical fork in the road and having the ways and means or ability to choose one path or the other. Even choosing neither, doing nothing, is in itself a decision.

Decisions require conscious thought - well, maybe not. There's something more fundamental at work here - physics and chemistry.

Let's start with simple life forms, say microbes and plants.

Plants and microbes make decisions but clearly they do not have free will. They respond to external influences. Plant roots 'decide' to grow downwards with gravity; the plant 'decides' to grow upwards, against gravity. Phytoplankton 'decide' to move up and down in the ocean with respect to light intensity, and plants can 'follow' the Sun as it moves across the sky. Unicellular organisms 'decide' to reproduce when the environmental conditions are right.

Even more complex organisms that we don't normal associate with free will make decisions. A snail will decide to tuck into its shell with threatened. We may call it instinct, but its still decision making, albeit somewhat involuntary.

At what point does instinct or blind response to environmental stimuli morph into the appearance (real or illusionary) of free will?

And so we have, slightly higher up the evolutionary chain, a threatened organism will decide to fight or flee or hide or go into its shell. The response is not 100% instinctive; not apparently 100% predetermined. The organism chooses, and if it is not instinctive, then the decision required thought.

Decision making, instinctive or otherwise, has an awful lot to do with chemistry, and ultimately physics, because organisms are chemical structures, and chemistry is ultimately based on physics.

So, thought processes are ultimately chemical processes, ultimately routed in physics - we're back to that micro world again!

Faced with a non-instinctive decision - fight or flee; red dress or green dress; scrambled eggs or boiled eggs - you have to think about it. That thought process sets into motion a chain of chemical and physical processes. It's like you've pulled the handle on a slot machine - when everything stops and the numbers (or symbols) come up, that's it bingo - decision made. But you had no actual control between setting the wheels in motion and the result. Your decision making was only an illusion of free will.

I repeat - once those chemical and physical processes are set into motion, you have no control over them - no say-so. You have no say-so in the reactions that happen, in the energies required to see those processes through to completion, what pathways electrons travel over your neural circuits.

Should that be surprising? Setting your brain aside for a moment, the rest of your body does not answer to what you want. In the exact same way you have no control over the natural chemical reactions that take place in your stomach when you dump a load of food into it, or for that matter any of the biochemistry that makes you tick. You don't dictate to your body what pathways electrical impulses take when they blink your eyelids or control your heartbeat or make you twitch or even when you put one foot in front of the other.

Every molecule, atom and fundamental particle in your body does not answer to what you want, free will or no free will. You do not decide what they do! If you really had free will - willpower or mind-over-matter - you should be able to decide to control your ageing process, or control your hair growth or colour. You can't. You don't really have free will.

You can only hold your breath for so long, or deprive yourself of sleep. While a relatively few can have the willpower to starve themselves to death when food is readily available, few could willingly die of thirst, and astronomer Tycho Brahe* notwithstanding, you can only put off going to the bathroom just so long and no longer. On a less gruesome note, how long can you prevent your eyelids from blinking?

If you have no control over the operations of your own body - its systems, organs, tissues, cells and biochemistry, why is the brain - including the mind, or that inner 'You' within you any different?

Now let's take the case of human conception, through to blastula, embryo and foetus. I think one can agree that a human doesn't need to make any decisions for the first nine months, while still in the womb. Ditto the nine months following birth, and probably another nine months after that. But sooner or later, that baby or infant will make its first decision that's not based on fundamental body needs like 'deciding' to go to sleep or wet it's diaper.

The question is what is fundamentally different about the nature of the infant before it can make its first free will choice or decision and just after? The brain, the brain chemistry, the neural nets and pathways, would be seemingly identical. The only thing I can think of is that the infant and infant's brain/mind is receiving an ever steady input of sensory data, ultimately enough to allow the infant to make decisions - the baby wants scrambled eggs, not soft-boiled eggs.

The ever increasing absorption of external stimuli may provide the ultimate need or desire to make choices, but it doesn't provide the mechanism. Ultimately I don't think there is a free will mechanism as everything is predetermined, like the computer simulation of "Life". But does it really matter whether or not you have actual free will or the illusion of free will? It doesn't alter how you live your life and the expectations of those unknown choices you'll make between now and when Mother Nature makes that final choice on your behalf!

So far I've been muttering on as if you came to a metaphorical fork in the road and had some sort of free will to pick one path, or the other path; maybe neither path - or maybe not, if causality rules the universal roost.

There's no free will solace in the Many Worlds Interpretation of reality; in coming to that fork in the road, because all paths, all possible choices, are enacted as the universe splits to cater for each and every one. You may think you picked one path - the high road, the low road, or the path least travelled, it makes no difference - and thus could pat yourself on the back for having free will and acted upon it, but in actual fact it was, ditto, an illusion. All paths were taken, in one world you took the high road, in another the low road, in a third world the road in-between, so no cigar, you do not pass 'go', you do not collect $200 free will dollars as there was no free will exhibited.

I do have some unanswered questions. Say you have to decide between wearing that green dress or that red dress to - whatever. You set those thought chemical/physical wheels in motion. I'm not quite sure how the chemical/physical processes stay focused on the issue at hand. I mean, what if you hence decide to make scrambled eggs - nothing to do with the original green dress/red dress decision! Perhaps that's a part of the 'disease' we collectively call mental illness.

Then there's the old hairy chestnut of if there is no free will, can people, should people, be held accountable for their behaviour? The fact that people are, obviously suggests that society as a whole has voted for the concept of free will. Whether that has ultimately a religious base (God gave us free will) I know not, but I'd bet - probably.

Quite apart from that deterministic clockwork Universe scenario - what was set in motion at the Big Bang event 13.7 billion years ago, those initial fixed conditions, the set of particles and the laws and relationships that governed their interactions and evolution past to present to future - there are other slightly less plausible scenarios that also limit your free will if they reflect true reality.

For example, if you appear in your dreams as a character, or as a character in someone else's dreams, your (or someone else's) dream world representation of you, if questioned (not that that's possible of course) about your free will, well you would reply that within the dream you were a part of (not that you would know you were a participant in a dream) that you were exhibiting free will. But of course it's actually the dreamer's mind that's pulling the strings, and thus the characters (such as you) in a dream just dance to whatever tune is played out for them. No free will.

Dreams (wetware) aren't the only form of virtual reality. There's software, and computer generated simulations, like, say video games. The characters within, as per the dreams scenario, would tell you if they could that their actions exhibit their own free will. But of course that's not true; the programmer and ultimately the player dictate the action and tell the character what to do. Again, there's no free will actually exhibited by the characters.

Now, ask yourself what if our reality is actually the product of a higher reality wetware or software? That is, we're dreamed or simulated but ultimately generated beings akin to the beings we dream about or we create via our software. We're actually characters in someone else's dream (let's hope they don't have an alarm clock set) or the product of someone (something) else's software (let's hope they don't hit the delete key). If that's so, then, we got no free will. We waltz to their wetware or software tune.

Lastly, although according to legend God gave us free will, let's say for argument's sake that there's an afterlife and that we go to Heaven. Do you have free will in Heaven? That is, could you, of your own free will, commit a sin in Heaven?

Conclusion - Regardless of what society believes, I believe free will is an illusion. Everything is preordained, much like that next scene in the movie you've already seen a half-dozen times before. You know what's coming next and the characters you're observing have no choice in the matter - no free will. Well, maybe that's what life, the Universe, and everything is - something already recorded and set in stone. Or, like that example I gave above, "Life", perhaps we're a computer program or simulation with relationships and rules all set in motion, perhaps for the edification or amusement of that extraterrestrial computer programmer in the sky!

*Because of etiquette or protocol, Tycho Brahe, while in the company of royals so the story goes, apparently couldn't, or wouldn't excuse himself to go to the bathroom. As a result he suffered a ruptured bladder and snuffed it, getting a Darwin Award in the process. That was a hell of a way to die for king and country!

MORE ABOUT FREE WILL: JUST ILLUSION OR ABSOLUTE DELUSION?

Just about every human on Planet Earth holds near and dear to their worldview that they have control over their own lives, or at the very least control over their own mind. Even if you live in a dictatorship or you are a slave or a prisoner you have free will of the mind. You can't go to jail for what you're thinking. But wishing or believing or faith doesn't make it so and there are many scenarios that render your alleged free will to the state of an illusion, if not a delusion.

Here are a few reasons why your alleged 'free will' is in fact an illusion at best; a delusion at worst.

* The ultimate lack of free will associated with you is that you had absolutely no say in being conceived and being popped headlong into this world. You had no choice in your ancestry or in your genetics or your sex or even what historical era you were to make your way in.

Of course in some societies you'd have no choice in schooling or religion or upbringing or even to the person you got hitched to, etc. But all of that really falls under a separate category of sociology and culture and has nothing to do with the metaphysical or usual notion of what it means to have free will.

* We're all simulated beings living in a virtual reality obeying the commands of the master computer software program. Characters in a video game do what they are programmed to do, no more and no less.

* God lied! All our strings are being pulled by outside evil (satanic, demonic, etc.) vs. good (angelic) forces. Humans are trapped in the middle of this tug-of-war, mere pawns for the larger forces at work. But as someone once told me, "I have free will because I take responsibility for my own actions". Well actually that's just those goody-goody-two-shoes angels pulling your strings. And if you argue in court say that "the devil made me do it", well that's probably spot on the case. The devil should be on trial, not you!

* Make of this what you will, but many people who report having involuntary visitations by otherworldly entities, be they described as aliens, shadow 'people', beings from other dimensions or parallel realities, etc. note that they were compelled against their will to carry out the wishes or instructions of these entities who have complete, total, absolute control over their human victims. If you have free will, it apparently can be overridden, but then that's known from case studies in hypnoses.

* Classical physics rules! Cause and effect rules! Causality rules, OK? All the laws, principles and relationships of classical physics were established and set in motion at the moment of creation (the Big Bang event) and all follows as clockwork (Newton's point of view) from that in a totally deterministic way as far into the future as you care to calculate. The clockwork, causality rules universe of which you are a part, means no free will for you.

* Quantum physics rules too! Quantum physics apparently has no causality (Einstein disagreed) which immediately sets my teeth on edge, but that's another matter. Quantum physics is expressed in probabilities, like either/or. Since your brain which houses your mind isn't exempt from quantum physics (nothing is exempt any time, anywhere, anyhow), all those billions of either/or quantum physics reactions collectively can give rise to all the apparent free will choices you apparently have at your command. It's all one massive superposition of state after another after another as your mind lurches from one decision to the next. But whether it's one either/or or the sum total of billions of either/or probabilities, the possibilities are still finite. You may not do the same thing twice in identical scenarios, but that's not your free will, just the coming to the fore of one of those random probabilities that result from all those either/or possibilities inherent in quantum physics that hold sway over your mind, which, if truth be known, is comprised of the same matter and energy regimes that are the realm of physics, classical or quantum.

* Does free will require you to have an infinite or unlimited number of choices, or a finite number? If the latter, you're still confined in a box, just a slightly larger box than if your box confined you to one and only one choice.

* Your body cells, tissues, organs, organ systems on up the line are all on biochemical autopilot. No free will need apply. So why should your brain, housing your mind, be an exception to the rule? Your mind is not a something which exists independently of your body.

* Your 'conscious' decisions are by-products of what's already happening within your subconscious. Our subconscious mind comes to a decision before we are consciously aware of it as has been demonstrated by actual experimentation.

* If you accept the probability of a Megaverse, a conglomerate of the Multiverse, with each individual universe having associated Parallel Universes and an infinite space (volume) and time (thus eliminating the awkward questions of 'what's beyond' and 'what was before') then every possible timeline and history and scenario has happened - an infinite number of times. An infinite number of you have made every possible decision you can possibly make, compatible with the laws, relationships and principles of physics, an infinite number of times. How do you reconcile free will with that?

* Any competent neuroscientist worthy of their salt and status can stimulate parts of your brain using electromagnetic (EM) energy and get a physiological response, like your fingers twitching, ditto your arms and legs flapping like puppets on a string, your head turns and your posture changes - all grist for the neuroscientist's mill. What you experience under the EM stimulation is the urge to do it (say tap your toe) and then you do it but you do not get the urge to, nor perform the action, voluntarily or willingly. Someone else, in this case the neuroscientist, is in control. That applies equally to your emotions as well as your movements. Stimulate this brainy bit and you cry; here and you laugh; somewhere else will hit your guilt complex, etc. Electromagnetic stimulation of the brain can alter your sense of morality - I've seen that demonstrated. What makes you, you, is just being reduced to the basics of electrical signals.

Conclusion: You are a part of life, the Universe and everything, or, to shorten things, a part of Mother Nature. Mother Nature operates on a select number of non-negotiable laws, principles and relationships, starting with the most basic of elementary particles and forces and working on up the line. No correspondence will be entered into or answered by Mother Nature. As such, you dance to Mother Nature's tune. Do not attempt to change the tune and adjust reality. She controls the horizontal; She controls the vertical; She controls all that you see and do. Mother Nature is a bitch, but there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Myth busted!

But, and there's nearly always a 'but', while 'free will' may well be, and probably is, an illusion (or delusion), it does have practical applications in the real world (like forcing one to be accountable for their actions) and thus is a concept unlikely to bite the dust any time soon. It's akin to the notion that God may not, and probably does not exist, He forms a useful function in society by keeping a lot of people here on Terra Firma employed!

P.S. If there is such a thing as free will, why is there such an obesity epidemic? You'd think one of the last things people would want to look like is blubber personified. Free will there might be, but will power is lacking! But what do I know? Maybe roly-poly is the latest in body fashion statements!

Further Reading:

Gazzaniga, Michael S.; Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain; Ecco, New York; 2011:

Griffith, Meghan; Free Will: The Basics; Routledge, London; 2013:

Harris, Sam; Free Will; Free Press, New York; 2012:

Pink, Thomas; Free Will: A Very Short Introduction; Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K.; 2004:

TELL ME ALL ABOUT YOUR FREE WILL

Quite apart from a Universe which might well be deterministic and clockwork-like in its make-up, or even a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe where you are software, and software rules, (OK?) your free will is limited at best or perhaps lacking in substance entirely. The Universe is the way it is and no amount of wishful (free will) thinking is going to change that.

ORIGINS - No Free Will

You had absolutely no say in your origins. You had no say in what species you became; no say in what your sex was; no say in what time or era you were hatched into; no say in what place either; no say in your genetics; your parents; your race; your family ancestry, even your here and now family. If you had that free will, I'm sure you would have changed in hindsight one or more parameters of your origins.

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT - No Free Will

You can't un-burn your bridges by travelling back in time.

Six Impossible Things (no free will can change): You can't travel south of the South Pole; you can't calculate Pi to the last decimal place; you can't make a spherical cube (or cubical sphere); you can't divide by zero; you can't draw more than one straight line connecting two dots on a flat piece of paper; you can't be in two places at the same time.

You can't travel faster than the speed of light.

If Mother Nature is in a bitchy mood, you're not going to change it. All you can do is duck and cover (and maybe pray).

BODY - Its Body Over Mind, Not Mind Over Body.

You can't stop of your own free will the ageing process. You can't fight entropy and win in the long term.

You can't cheat death (and probably not even taxes in the long term).

You can't stop catching various diseases.

You can't negate the physiological effects of food, illegal drugs, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, poisons, lack of oxygen, etc.

MIND: THE INVOLUNTARY AUTOMATED NERVOUS SYSTEM

You can', in the long term, of your own free will; negate the need for sleep, breathing, an intake of an energy supply (food) and liquid intake, the elimination of solid, liquid and gaseous waste products.

You have no control over the chemical processes that govern your physiology like digestion, respiration, etc.

You can't control to any great and lasting extent via free will your blood pressure or heart beat.

You naturally fall asleep but you can't will yourself to fall asleep.

When you sleep your body (normally) goes into shut-down mode to prevent you from sleepwalking. You probably cannot free will yourself to walk in your sleep (nor would you want to).

MIND: SUBCONSCIOUS

You apparently have no control over your dreams or nightmares. You are just a passive observer within the passing dream parade and you have no free will about the content or context of that dream parade. So what you dream is beyond your conscious control whether you like it or not (but at least the price of admission is free).

MIND: CONSCIOUSNESS

Okay, let's say for a moment you have conscious free will (though see immediately below). There are still some flies in the ointment. Firstly, you don't have infinite free will since at no time are you ever faced with an infinite number of choices. Your free will choices are often limited to either this or that. Okay, that's free will but perhaps not as free in terms of options as you may like. Secondly, you believe you have free will so you reject determinism. You don't want something or someone determining what you should or shouldn't do. Yet, I'd wager dimes to doughnuts that this is a case of do as I say not as I do. You often wish to impose your determinism on others. You may not say so; you may not actually put in train that which will determine the decision-making of others; but you will damn well think it (and maybe mutter under your breath). You want things to happen; you want people to do, what you want to happen and what you want other people to do. Good luck with that!

Then there are those bits of false 'reality', realities which you know aren't really real, as in optical illusions, where your mind is playing tricks on you and you are aware of that albeit helpless to dispel the illusion. All the free will you can muster won't alter what your mind is telling you even when you know your mind is lying to you!

You would tell me that you have free will to lift your leg up, or not. But if you are paralysed from the waist down, that free will is irrelevant and immaterial.

You have no conscious free will control over the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide when you breathe in and out. The same applies as noted above to the various chemical (blood, liver, or digestive) and biological (cell reproduction) processes that are part of your reality but which you only have theoretical (book learning) awareness of.

So, mind over matter, or free will over matter, cannot be taken seriously

CASE HISTORY

Despite the above, you probably believe you have free will. What you are actually thinking or saying is that you believe your brain has free will since you are your brain. Your brain is what makes you, you. Or, in other words, your brain believes your brain has free will. But your brain is just an interconnected lump, with the consistence of soft butter in a vat of salty water, of neurons, synapses, all firing thither and yon due to neurochemistry and biochemistry. And of course chemistry is just molecules and atoms and therefore electrons, neutrons and protons doing their electron, neutron and proton thing. So how is free will an emergent property of physics and chemistry?

Say you make a decision and then direct your brain to set in train whatever it takes to make that decision so, which is to say your brain decides to do something and then directs itself to make it so. There's something odd about that notion. Your heart doesn't decide to have a heart attack and then proceed to implement that decision.

Say you, or rather your brain, decides to cross the road, and puts in motion what's needed for you to cross the road and so you start to cross the road. You would tell me that you decided to cross the road of your own free will. As you are crossing the road a runaway car heads right at you and so you decide to leap out of the way. But did you really consciously decide, of your own free will to leap out of the way, or did you just do it without any hemming and hawing and pondering whether or not to leap out of the way. You would probably tell me you had no choice in the matter, you just leapt out of the way, yet you (or your brain) still had a choice and still made a decision.

So what is the difference in principle between your decision to cross the street and your decision to leap out of the way of the runaway car? I maintain there isn't any and thus your initial decision to cross the road was predetermined, by your subconscious if nothing else even before you became aware that you had apparently made a free will conscious decision.

Actually it has been experimentally verified that decision-making stems from the subconscious and not the conscious mind. Your perception that at least some of your decision-making is made consciously is an illusion. Therefore, there's no such thing as conscious free will (which makes perfect sense if we live in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe).

SOCIETY

You can't fight city hall. Even if you have some degree of conscious free will, society takes some of that away from you - you can't just do whatever you damn well please (unless of course part of that free will is accepting the consequences).

CONCLUSION

Now tell me all about your free will.

More likely to cheat if told there is no free will:Association for psychological science

Of course there are many things we can not change -

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference."

Reinhold Niebuhr

Adopted by Alcoholics anonymous and other groups.

What if we were to test your hypothesis: telling one group of alcoholics they have no free will and giving the other group the Serenity Prayer- and see which group succeed in having the most abstainers.

Re. my freewill. I can wake myself from sleep deliberately. When a dream becomes too unpleasant I tell myself to scream as loudly as possible in order to wake up, and knowing that will be the outcome.

Daniel Kahneman has written about thinking fast and slow.Public Lecture by Prof. Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow Thinking fast just gives us time to devote to important decisions that require deliberation. We would be overburdened if we had to deliberate every tiny decision the body makes. That does not mean we have no free will but that we have the opportunity to exercise it, if we choose, when it is important or useful to use it.

I chose to reply to your post, because of the subject and its importance to me.

groups.google.com/d/msg/rp-discuss/nQYLO4BbK6o/3xgwYLqdyhgJ

:Happy Easter Dressings#topic/617

~w~

It certainly is true that there are things that we cannot change in the world and therefore must accept. Then there are things that we can change and do change as well as things we can change and choose not to change. Okay.

Free will then simply comes down to determinism. Do we live in a deterministic universe or a probablistic universe? If the universe is deterministic, then initial conditions determine all fate and karma. If the universe is probablistic, then initial conditions result in a universe that is mostly but not absolutely predictable. There is karma, but also free choice.

Our neural computer generates an aware matter packet for each choice that is a superposition of both action and inaction and therefore represents two possible futures. That is a free choice because given the exact same initial conditions, the second trial will only be probablistically related to the first trial because that is how our quantum universe works.

Although many choices that we make in life are fairly predictable, there are many choices that we make that surprise even ourselves when we make them. We are responsible for our choices even when we do not completely understand why we chose what we chose and there is nothing else to call this but free choice. We are of course responsible for our bad choices even though we know when they are bad.

Steve Agnew,

Could you please explain why your "probablistic" universe gives rise to intelligent choice? A universe that is mechanically "not absolutely predictable" is not descriptive of properties of intelligence nor involved with intelligent choice. Perhaps you know how it is?

"If the universe is probablistic, then initial conditions result in a universe that is mostly but not absolutely predictable. There is karma, but also free choice."

James Putnam

Ah, but now you have changed the rules...now you want intelligent choice, not just free choice. Intelligent choice is all about reason and is a much different apple, but there are intelligent free choices...

If you make a bet based on 50:50 odds as an intelligent choice, where is your bet? This is free choice because given the exact same initial conditions, a probablistic universe will result in a probablistic future no matter what the intelligence. Otherwise, intelligent choices are usually pretty easy to predict...given the same intelligence at work...of course, there are always outlyers, right?

You see, it is not mysterious when people act rationally in their own interests and these choices are usually predictable. But when people act in ways that are difficult to rationalize, which includes zealotry and mental illness, but also creativity and imagining about impossible things and then making them possible. To me, that is the magic elixar of free choice and free will.

Steve Agnew,

"Ah, but now you have changed the rules...now you want intelligent choice, not just free choice."

I haven't changed any rules. Your complete message:

Free will then simply comes down to determinism. Do we live in a deterministic universe or a probablistic universe? If the universe is deterministic, then initial conditions determine all fate and karma. If the universe is probablistic, then initial conditions result in a universe that is mostly but not absolutely predictable. There is karma, but also free choice.

Our neural computer generates an aware matter packet for each choice that is a superposition of both action and inaction and therefore represents two possible futures. That is a free choice because given the exact same initial conditions, the second trial will only be probablistically related to the first trial because that is how our quantum universe works.

Although many choices that we make in life are fairly predictable, there are many choices that we make that surprise even ourselves when we make them. We are responsible for our choices even when we do not completely understand why we chose what we chose and there is nothing else to call this but free choice. We are of course responsible for our bad choices even though we know when they are bad.

What is your paragraph saying about free will? Are you explaining the origin of free will? If so, how does what you call free choice become free will?

James Putnam

Steve Agnew,

I did read your followup message. I didn't respond to it because the meanings of your words needed clarification for me. If you wish to cut this short, please let me know if human free will is an intelligent act? If it is, what does mechanics have to do with explaining an intelligent act. If it is, for you, not an intelligent act and results from unintelligent mechanical activity, then I am requesting the steps that lead from an unintelligent cause to an intelligent result? That cause you may identify. The result in question being human free will.

James Putnam

Steve Agnew,

That wasn't as clear as I intended it to be. I am declaring human free will to be an intelligent act. Are you declaring it to be a mechanical effect and not an intelligent act. Thank you.

James Putnam

Now we are engaged...is free will an intelligent act or is free will a mechanical act? I am surprised that you are still engaged since usually I am thrown out of the bar by now...

Notice that we have moved the free will/free choice argument down the field a little bit further than is typical. Now we are differentiating between an intelligent act, which certainly does not include creativity, and a mechanical act, which is like a machine programmed to make an object, but evidently now also includes all creative action as well.

I am afraid that you have left me to choose neither...but just 50% of the time! The really nice thing about free will is that it is very flexible in a quantum universe. No matter what you do, in a quantum and probablistic universe, the future is never completely certain and that means that both intelligence and mechanics have roles in determining the future.

Suffice it to say that mainstream science is a universe that is mostly empty space with a few objects here and there. The universe of matter time is full of the possibililties of the future with very few empty moments of time. Is your universe full of possibilities or of empty space?

Look...people have been arguing about free will for several millennia and I daresay that those arguments will likely continue in spite of what I or you say. What I do know is that the future it not certain and yet we do have a role in determining that uncertain future. Is that intelligence or is that mechanics?

Free will is really neither intelligence nor mechanics. Although we like to think that all of our choices are rational, it does not take much analysis to show that is certainly not true. It is likewise easy to show that our choices are also not just random chance. Free will is simply not either intelligence and mechanics, rather free will is due to the feelings of our primitive mind. While our rational mind and reason has much to do with choice, it is really by the feelings of our primitive mind that we make choices. The feelings of our primitive minds are what give us free choice and free will, not rational logic.

So it is with both the intelligence of reason as well as the mechanics of belief that we choose a desirable future.

Dear Steve Agnew,

Thank you for sharing your view. Your meanings for 'free' and 'choice' were important for me to understand. I don't see either of those words being applicable to mechanics. But, your words and your meanings make up your view which is what I wanted to understand. I have another question:

"While our rational mind and reason has much to do with choice, it is really by the feelings of our primitive mind that we make choices. The feelings of our primitive minds are what give us free choice and free will, not rational logic."

Does your previous message explain what you mean by 'primitive' mind?

"Our neural computer generates an aware matter packet for each choice that is a superposition of both action and inaction and therefore represents two possible futures. That is a free choice because given the exact same initial conditions, the second trial will only be probablistically related to the first trial because that is how our quantum universe works."

If so, can you please explain an "aware matter packet"? Does your meaning of the word 'aware' refer to an intelligent understanding? I am looking for steps you credit with converting dumbness into intelligence. By dumbness I refer to the mechanical properties put forward by theoretical physics. By intelligence I refer to our ability to discern meaning from the information. By information, I refer to that which photons deliver. If you are interested in my previously stated view, it is expressed in my essay "Lead With Innate Knowledge"

James Putnam

Thanks for the link to your essay. You are very close to my understanding, but of course with different words and terms. Your innate is my primitive mind and your intelligent mind is my aware matter.

I agree that photons do carry a lot of information, but sound, touch, taste and smell also carry information as various forms of matter exchange. Furthermore, photons are what we share with objects along with other matter and are what binds objects and the universe together.

The synapses of neural communication pair up as particles of information that I call aware matter. Aware matter assembles into neural packets that we call thoughts, but intelligence is always a combination of both conscious and unconscious thought.

My understanding of dumbness is that it is an essential part of intelligence. Our intelligence as humans is to me just a more complex form of the same intelligence of other life. So I do not find intelligence that useful of a differentiator. The biggest differentiator for humans seems to be our ability to imagine clearly impossible futures...and yet still survive. We also somehow keep from spending our lives in futile quests and manage to procreate and thrive.