Daniel,

A very interest, well written, well informed, unique and ambitious essay. I think you pulled it off well. I'm no expert in biology to judge those parts but I do have very similar biology to everyone else so think I'm qualify to give you a good score!

You mention the importance of feedback loops, which also identify as the key to cognitive decisions forming aims and intentions (but I then slip down to the more fundamental quantum scale architecture).

I think this certainly deserves to be a finalist.

Very best

Peter

    Daniel - Thank you for an excellent essay. You are the only author I have read so far that defines "intention" correctly - as a direction or movement that is independent of agency. This is a critical distinction in any discussion of emergence that avoids the muddy waters of panpsychism.

    I am curious if you have an opinion as to whether intention as you describe it in the biological realm may also apply to the chemical and the physical?

    You may find some compatible themes in my essay The How and The Why of Emergence and Intention!

    Cheers - George Gantz

      Dear Peter Jackson,

      I really think you view of spin interaction as something interesting. The spin of the electron, as described by the Dirac equation, belongs to the group su(2), which is a double cover of so(3). That is, we need 2 rotations of a sphere. But people forget that these are different things and end up trying to talk about an electron as it were merely ONE very small sphere, tending to radius 0, mysteriously shifting its position up and down. Stephen Hawking did this confusion in his famous book brief history of time. People confuse the algebra if the group with the actual rotation of the electron. So, an electron is a 4 dimensional entity, since the Dirac equation obeys Lorentz transformations. So, people visualize the wrong situation, where the actual situation should be a hyperbolic sphere SO(3,1). And SO(3,1) is isomorphic so SU(2)XSU(2). This is why you needed 2 spheres to correctly explain the spin phenomena. I think you clarified a great deal of things, even for me.

      Plus, you have added some great stuff along the way, which may help understand intelligence. Look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eas2zOSKIaQ

      What is happening here it is that the slime molde, when it expands and pulsates, it is mimicking a non perturbation integral of a path integral. When you do non perturbative, you appeal to combinatoric methods, which are very compute intensive for usual computer architectures. I think our brains works in a way analogous to a slime mold, but it needs its parts more fixed, and not too fall apart, like it would happen to a slime mold. So, I think the brain works by expanding "pseudopods", and tries to find the food (the idea), and when it finds, it creates a synapse. As you can deduce from the slime mold examples, things will be stored like loops in the brain (indeed this is the case, and this is more clear in the relation ship between brain cortex and thalamus)

      Daniel,

      Thank you for the essay on intentions and living organisms. I was especially interested in your discussion of control and stability, which are fundamental aspects of not only individual organisms, but also the generational changes (evolution) that eventually lead to new species.

      Your conclusion states, '...we can say that any society of organisms is, to a large extent, an organism itself. It may vary in complexity from a spectrum that includes parasitism, cooperation, colony up to a multicellular being (from the perspective of individual cells). Human societies can be seen as a type of organism and as such, it can be ascribed aims and intentions.'

      Therefore, you may be interested in my essay, The Cosmic Odyssey of Matter, which formally defines and quantifies precise structures that include chemical elements, molecules, living organisms, and social groups. This formal definition shows how the whole human population is a precise structure, systematically assembled from smaller components.

      link to The Cosmic Odyssey of Matter

      Regards, Ed Kneller

        Dear Daniel,

        Forgive my delay in acknowledging your answers to my questions, and thank you for them. It is difficult to manage reading all the fine essays in this contest and time is short. I have read your essay twice and consider it an excellent contribution.

        Good luck in the contest and my best wishes for you,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear George,

        Thank you for the comment on my essay. Indeed there is a resemblance between your topic and mine. But I think while I went to a more evolutionary point of view, you went to a very beautiful poetic route. It indeed touched my heart seeing how, indeed, everything seem to self organized, despite the aparent lack of purpose in the universe, and that there is a sense of flow in all of that. This gives a reason to see purpose and not chaos to those who wishes to find a reason to exist, that our life has some value.

        When you gave your grandsone as an example of the huge flow of love, as part of the universe's purpose in minimizing entropy, while exploring the environment, did made me a drop a couple of tears. It made me see through your eyes how something so simple can be an atom of the huge large scale principles of the universe.

        Dear Edward Kneller,

        I make the words of Prof. Ellis mine. But I would like to to add that you actually uncover a very interesting complexity relation between all scales. It would be interesting to figure out if there is any relation to other scale relations, for example, Kolmogorov microscales.

        Another very interesting thing is to estimate the number of civilizations in our galaxy and the rate of how many of them appear along the eras. Do you think that is possible?

        Daniel - in case you do not have a chance to get back to your comment on my essay, here is my response:

        "Thank you so very much for your kind remarks. I shed a tear writing about my grandson, too. Even better, I now have another grandson - one week old - and have been spending time with him as he slowly wakes to the wide world into which he was born. Yes, one can believe the world is deterministic, or completely random, or that our conscious sense of purpose, appreciation of beauty and experience of love is all epiphenomenal. But what a hollow waste that seems to be when we have the opportunity to embrace with all our hearts and our so very rational minds a delightful and joyous experiential and purposeful wonderland.

        Many thanks - George

        Dear Daniel de França Diniz Rocha

        I appreciate your essay. You spent a lot of effort to write it. If you believed in the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes, then your essay would be even better. There is not movable a geometric space, and is movable physical space. These are different concepts.

        I inform all the participants that use the online translator, therefore, my essay is written badly. I participate in the contest to familiarize English-speaking scientists with New Cartesian Physic, the basis of which the principle of identity of space and matter. Combining space and matter into a single essence, the New Cartesian Physic is able to integrate modern physics into a single theory. Let FQXi will be the starting point of this Association.

        Don't let the New Cartesian Physic disappear! Do not ask for himself, but for Descartes.

        New Cartesian Physic has great potential in understanding the world. To show potential in this essay I risked give "The way of the materialist explanation of the paranormal and the supernatural" - Is the name of my essay.

        Visit my essay and you will find something in it about New Cartesian Physic. After you give a post in my topic, I shall do the same in your theme

        Sincerely,

        Dizhechko Boris

          Dear Daniel de França Diniz Rocha

          You have a wonderful, well-written essay. Your assertion that life originated as a result of the fact that under certain conditions the possibility of its occurrence increases as a geometric progression are very convincing. For me, claiming to be a physicist, stable existence of corpuscles is due to the fact that the rotation at the center reaches the speed of light. As is known from the theory of relativity in this case, the time almost stops.

          I wish you success in the contest.

          Sincerely,

          Dizhechko Boris

          Dear Daniel,

          With great interest I read your essay, which of course is worthy of high rating. Excellently written.

          You wrote

          «I once thought about cognition being derived from closed loops.»

          «And, indeed, the circuitry of our brain is made of small loops, when information is kept stored, and large loops, which pass through the Thalamus several times, being redistributed to several other parts of the brains. So, it is basically a mechanism cortex-thalamus-cortex-thalamus.»

          About how torus loops function from a physical point of view and how they form large loops by which they interact with each other at resonant frequencies, is shown in my essay.

          In addition, it is shown that a gravitational shell always forms on the interfaces between media, which forms turbulence vortices that are the source of energy for activating various processes.

          «But, most likely, evolution began on the limits between these environments, where chemical clocks were on the threshold of survival. The reason is that the circulation within each of these environments tended to be non chaotic, but in the boundary, the difference in speed and dens ity of the solutions, caused the Reynolds number to be high.»

          «In such view, more complex networks of chemical clocks could compensate for the difference in media, with the tendency to stabilize those that keep stable under turbulence.»

          I wish you success in the contest.

          Kind regards,

          Vladimir

          Dear Vladimir,

          due time constrains (besides, the voting ends today), I won't be able to properly comment your essay. It would take me a few more days for that, since right now By "properly", I mean, sharing some ideas and thoughts. I really enjoyed your essay. I hope we can keep in touch.

            Dear Daniel,

            Many thanks for the kind words about my essay and high rating.

            Congratulations on the successful completion of the next stage of the contest.

            I also «hope we can keep in touch.»

            I wish you success in the contest.

            Vladimir