Cell phenomenology: The first phenomenon

Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology xxx (2015) 1e8

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Cell phenomenology: The first phenomenon H.H. Pattee 1611 Cold Spring Road, Williamstown, MA 01267, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

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As a broad academic discipline phenomenology may be summarized as the study from a first person point of view of what appears to subjective human conscious experience. As a historical philosophical movement phenomenology was often motivated by the belief that subjective human experience is the proper foundation of all philosophy. I explore phenomena from a broader evolutionary and physical point of view. I consider a phenomenon as the subjective consequence of a physical interaction with an individual organism. In physical terms, a phenomenon requires some form of detection or measurement. What is detected is determined by the organism, and is potentially functional for the organism as a self or subject. The concept of function has meaning only for living organisms. The classical human mind-body problem is an ill-defined complicated case of the more general epistemic subject-object problem, which at the origin of life I reduce to the primitive symbol-matter problem. I argue that the first memory-based self-replicating unit, like a cell, is the most primitive case of a necessary symbol-matter distinction. The first phenomena, which include all forms or sensing, detection, and measurement, require a subjectobject distinction, called the epistemic cut. It is only because of such a subject-object distinction that populations of individual subjects can selectively adapt to their environment by heritable variations. This basic evolutionary process requires distinguishing the individual's subjective phenomena from the objective events of inexorable physical laws. © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Subject-object problem Symbol-matter problem Mind-body problem Function Complementarity Measurement Epistemic cut Self-replication Origin of life Evolution

“Cells are, in a way, more complex than the embryo itself … However clever you think cells are, they are almost always far cleverer.” Lewis Wolpert

1. Consciousness is not required Most branches of philosophy have an explicit or tacit focus on the human level of thought, language, and behavior. Phenomenology has historically focused explicitly on the subjective conscious experience of the human individual. For many years I have found it instructive to explore phenomena from a broader and more elementary evolutionary and physical law-based point of view, defining it as those subjective events that appear to the simplest individual self as functional. At the cell level function cannot be precisely defined because what is functional ultimately depends on the course of evolution. Functional phenomena occur at all levels in evolution and are not limited to conscious awareness. Following the strategy of physics research, I have found that by

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exploring the meanings of phenomena and the subject-object problem at the most primitive level, their meanings and problems are better understood at the higher levels (Pattee, 1969, 1982). There are several reasons that human consciousness is not the most instructive or dependable level to study phenomena or the fundamental subject-object relation. First, there is very little knowledge, and certainly no agreement, about when or why any level of self-awareness or consciousness first evolved. From an evolutionary perspective consciousness does not appear to have any necessary role in any individual organism being alive.1 Second, the cognitive sciences now provide convincing evidence that the phenomena that appear to our conscious mind are only a small fraction of the brain's unconscious perceptual and cognitive activity. There are many levels of consciousness, and what appears at the conscious level is under the control of the unconscious brain. We have no subjective access to any of the preconscious processing that results in conscious phenomenon (e.g., Churchland, 2002;

1 “It [individuality] depends not on consciousness, but on being; not on thought, but on life; it depends on the individual's empirical development and manifestation of life, which in turn depends on the conditions existing in the world” (Karl Marx, 1845).

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Changeaux and Dehaene, 2011). Many of our basic sensorimotor activities are unconscious, such as balancing, walking, gesturing, etc. There is also good evidence that great discoveries in mathematics and physics and creativity in the arts arise in the unconscious mind by a search and incubation process that appears in consciousness as a sudden epiphany.2 Third, conscious introspection is often deceptive and always reaches a dead end. Fourth, there is no fundamental physical theory that requires a conscious observer. I discuss the reasons for this in the section on The necessity of the epistemic cut. Finally, in terms of the long term evolutionary future of our species, the adaptive value of phenomena appearing to human consciousness is far from clear. The products of conscious thought, that include reason, religion, the arts and sciences, are certainly considered as the species’ greatest accomplishments. On the other hand, they are also responsible for deadly ideological conflicts and Promethean technologies that over evolutionary time scales have no certain survival value. So far, the lower species that lack the human level of consciousness have a far longer record of survival. The phenomenologist's first objection to this approach is to point out that all our knowledge, including theories of evolution, physics, and the neurosciences, is still ultimately derived from subjective human phenomena, which are our only source of experience. This is obviously the case, but it is not the problem. The problem is that any concept of subject or self implies the existence of an object or non-self. For physics the relation of subject to object has always been the fundamental problem. Modern physicists understand that all experience is subjective. Hertz (1891) recognized this fact, and he also recognized the fundamental problem: Outside consciousness there lies the cold and alien world of actual things. Between the two stretches the narrow borderland of the senses. No communication between the two worlds is possible except across this narrow strip. For a proper understanding of ourselves and the world it is of the utmost importance that this borderland be explored. (Hertz, 1891) Hertz (1894) was also clear on the limits of subjective knowledge: “As a matter of fact, we do not know, nor have we any means of knowing, whether our conception of things is in conformity with them,” except by how our subjective images correspond to our experience. And Max Born (1964) said it succinctly, “fundamentally, everything is subjective e everything without exception.” Consequently, the issue has always been the epistemological problem: How do we connect the subjective phenomena with objective existence? Awareness and consciousness are not clear-cut concepts and certainly not measurable observables, but there is no doubt that the subjective self exists. There should also be no doubt that the nonself exists. My argument does not require a new theory. It conforms to established physics, molecular biology, and evolution theory. From the principles and experimental evidence of these fields I develop a view of subjective phenomenon that distinguishes it from all other objective lawful physical processes e processes that have no intrinsic function or meaning. This view requires irreducible complementarity between subjective and objective

2 “It is certain that the combinations which present themselves to the mind in a kind of sudden illumination after a somewhat prolonged period of unconscious work are generally useful and fruitful combinations … all the combinations are formed as a result of the automatic action of the subliminal ego, but those only
, which are interesting find their way into the field of consciousness” (Poincare 1914).

models. I believe this complementarity must be made first at the level of self-replication, where the cell must distinguish symbolic self from material non-self. I call this the symbol-matter problem. This is the same epistemic distinction that must be made in physical theory between subjective measurements and objective physical laws. In physics, this is the distinction between laws and initial conditions. (I interpret boundary conditions and constraints as special initial conditions.) The unresolved interpretation of this distinction in quantum mechanics is called the measurement problem. One should keep in mind that life not only began 4 billion years ago with single cells, but all evolved multicellular organisms, including humans, still develop from a single cell. In whatever sense multicellular life is “in the world” so is the single cell. Multicellular development is a remarkable and exceedingly complex process that requires many levels of coordinated symbolic constraints on lawful physical dynamics (e.g., Pattee, 1971). For the purpose of understanding how human-level subjective concepts like events, awareness, interpretation, function, and meaning arose, I will consider these concepts from the single-cell point of view. Rather than coining new words for these primitive levels, I prefer to generalize the meanings of common words retaining their core meanings. This often causes objections which I address in the section The two-culture problem. The historical concept of a phenomenon assumed the existence of a human subject and conscious self, which implies a non-self environment. Brentano (1995) described one aspect of intentionality as the characteristic by which self conscious phenomena could be distinguished from non-self natural physical processes. There is no clear consensus on what Brentano meant by intentional inexistence, so I will not enter that discussion. However, there is general agreement that human intentionality has indefinitely many levels and interpretations (e.g., Jacob, 2014). To discuss phenomena below the level of human consciousness I generalize intentionality to include functionality, which also distinguishes phenomena from other natural physical processes that are lawful but not functional. There are also many levels of functionality. At the origin of life the essential function of the self was self-replication. Throughout most of evolution function must be associated with adaptation and survival value. Unfortunately, at the human level, cultural selection can appear to evade natural selection by technology. Over evolutionary time scales, this appears unlikely. 2. Life, intentionality, and functionality depend on symbolic informational constraints There is also agreement that all phenomena arise initially from sensory information or from the memory of such information. In the cell this includes all forms of detection or acquisition of information from the environment, and information in genetic memory. In physical terms acquiring sensory information is a type of measurement process. Whatever the physical medium of this information e gravity, forces, particles, molecules, light, heat sound, etc. e the initial detection in all organisms occurs at the cell level. The result of any detection or measurement process is symbolic information. The primary symbol vehicles in cells are genetically dependent special molecules or electronic signals. It is arbitrary symbolic information because there are no physical or chemical laws that determine the relation between what is detected and the resulting symbol vehicle. The structure of symbol vehicles depends on genetic information. I am using the common definition of symbol as an arbitrary local physical structure (the symbol vehicle) that is interpreted by the organism as standing for a separate process, structure, or event. A symbol is a record or carrier of information. What is missing from

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this common definition is the distinction between a passive symbol and an active symbol. A passive symbol is the result of input information, like a measurement, that is stored in a memory. An active symbol is an instruction or the use of information to control an active process, like protein synthesis. Monod's (1971) “Principle of Chemical Gratuity” illustrates what I mean by arbitrary. For example, the genetic code is not chemically necessary or predictable from physical or chemical laws, and the relation between the enzyme's catalytic reaction and the structure of its substrate binding site is not chemically necessary, but is constrained by genetic information. In all organisms the initial symbolic information is detected at the cell level and then, as symbols, it is coded, translated, integrated, and communicated by other cells, the nervous system, and the brain to form the higher levels of imagery that eventually appear in conscious awareness as phenomena. Why and how these conscious images actually appear to the human subject is not understood (e.g.,Nigel, 2014) although the neurosciences are acquiring vast amounts of information about details. At present many scientists and philosophers believe that between this objective empirical information about brains and the human's conscious qualia there is an unbridgeable gulf. I believe this is still an empirical issue and should be studies as such. Introspection is both confusing and unreliable. My claim is only that understanding the self and the non-self requires at least two irreducible complementary models. In any case, there is no question that symbol vehicles are physical structures that must conform to physical laws and the laws of communication theory (Pattee, 2001). The advantage of studying symbols at the level of the cell is that the essential requirements for symbolic memory, communication, and control are much clearer than they are in brains. The dependence of both function and intentionality on symbolic information exists at all levels from the origin of life to human thought. For many years I have argued that the origin of the subjectobject distinction must begin with the origin of symbolic representation that is necessary for self-replication and evolution (e.g., Pattee, 1972a). Self-replication is also where the self first appears as empirically identifiable as separate from the non-self e a separation that must occur if self-replication is to have any sensible or empirical meaning. My interest in the nature of symbols began with von Neumann's (1966) logical theory of self-replication that first explained the requirements for heritable systems that possessed unlimited evolvability. The motivation for his argument was to understand the “threshold of complication” that would allow systems to evolve increasing complexity rather than wearing out or decaying. Von Neumann's theory requires separating a memory-stored selfdescription from the construction it controls. His evolvable selfreplication requires separate “quiescent” symbolic description of the self or subject as distinct from the material object physically constructed under the control of the symbolic description (Pattee, 2008). If you understand his argument you will find it hard to think of how evolvable self-replicating units could work any other way. His logic is all the more persuasive because it explained why there must be a genotype and phenotype, and it correctly predicted how cells actually replicate before the discovery of the mechanisms of genetic copying, coding and protein synthesis. 3. The necessity of symbolic information My view of symbols is also the same as that of physicists who understood the functional necessity of arbitrary symbol systems. The concept of symbol seldom occurs explicitly in physics because it has nothing directly to do with laws. Symbols act as special boundary conditions (Polanyi, 1968) serving as a memory structure

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or as a constraint on the lawful dynamics (Pattee, 1972a). All fundamental laws are expressed in mathematical symbols, and the result of measurements is symbolic information. All functional information is stored, communicated and interpreted as symbols. We cannot store or communicate “events-in-themselves.” Here is this view expressed by four well-known physicists: Science aims at constructing a world which shall be symbolic of the world of commonplace experience. It is not at all necessary that every individual symbol that is used should represent something in common experience or even something explicable in terms of common experience. The man in the street is always making this demand for concrete explanations of the things referred to in science; but of necessity he must be disappointed (Eddington, 1927). It is not therefore the case, as is sometimes stated, that the physical world image can or should contain only directly observable magnitudes. The contrary is the fact. The world image contains no observable magnitudes at all; all that it contains is symbols. More than this: It invariably contains certain components having no immediate meaning as applied to the world of the senses nor indeed any meaning at all, e.g., ether waves, partial oscillations, reference coordinates, etc. (Planck, 1936). However, the only decisive feature of all measurements is, it seems, symbolic representation; even numbers are in no way the only useable symbols (Weyl, 1949). Symbols are the carriers of communication between individuals and thus decisive for the possibility of objective knowledge (Born, 1964, p. 139). The primary limitation of a phenomenology that restricts itself to the level of human conscious awareness is that it hides all the lower levels of symbolic activity that produce consciousness. All higher levels arise from the processing of the information first acquired at the cell level. Visual imagery is a good example. We directly perceive patterns and images that we experience as having iconic similarity to the object. The eye is commonly pictured as an optical system with an iconic retinal image like the object. But this iconic image is not what is constructing the visual phenomenon. We experience only the consequence of complex, as yet unknown, neural codes in the optic nerve and visual cortex, which at the molecular and electronic level are processing only symbolic information. At all levels, arbitrary symbols record and convey what finally appears as phenomenal images at the conscious awareness level. 4. The necessity of the epistemic cut Hertz's “narrow strip” between subject and object was called €dinger, and later the “shifty the Schnitt by Heisenberg and Schro split” by John Bell (1990) because of its arbitrariness. I have named all forms of separation between subject and object the epistemic cut to emphasize that it is not a Cartesian ontological cut. An ancient well-known description of the epistemic cut was Plato's allegory of the cave, where the prisoners were shackled so they could see only the shadow side of the cut. However, Plato thought that the slaves could be freed from their shackles and turn to see the other side of the cut where real events were creating the shadows. This possibility of escape from subjectivism was a common idea of many scholastics until Leibniz and Kant persuasively argued that there is an inaccessible world of actual things that we cannot know except by their shadows. Modern physics agrees that all experience is subjective. A

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phenomenon is a classical subjective concept. “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon” (J. A. Wheeler). It is also the subjective observer that decides what to observe and that designs instruments to extend the senses. The physicists’ condition for objective theories is that they must appear to be independent of all conceivable observers. This subjectindependence condition is defined mathematically by principles of invariance and symmetry (e.g.,Wigner, 1964). As a strategy this definition has worked unreasonably well for discovering predictive models from the smallest to the largest parts of the universe. But there is a problem. The problem is that physics does not have a theory of the observer-subject. The concept of the subject remains physically ambiguous. In the classical Newtonian world the observer was assumed to act like a passive bystander experiencing the phenomena, but not interfering with its cause in any way. This is generally not a quantitative problem as long as the system being observed was large enough, and as long as the results are explicit and not based on subjective statistics assumptions. Maxwell's demon was one of the first indications that there was a serious problem with this ambiguous observer-subject. The demon is nearly 150 years old and it is still a good model for understanding the informational and control aspects of the subject-object relation. For many years the anthropomorphic image of the demon as an intelligent being made the problem more confusing than necessary (e.g., Leff and Rex, 1990). More recently, with simpler non-intelligent models of demons, it has provided insight into the foundations of statistical mechanics, control systems, and the thermodynamics of classical and quantum computation (e.g., Leff and Rex, 2003). For many years the assumption of consciousness of an observer also confused the quantum measurement problem of when a measurement occurs e that is, when the wave function collapses to a classical phenomenon. Many of the founders of quantum theory could not find a basis for the subjective epistemic cut without the consciousness of the observer. This led to the famous paradoxes of €dinger's cat and Wigner's friend. As late as 1950, Schro €dinger, Schro Wigner, Pauli, and others considered the consciousness of the human observer as the ultimate cause of the transition to classical observables. In 1950 Pauli wrote the following: The concept of consciousness in fact demands a cut between subject and object, the existence of which is a logical necessity, while the position of the cut is to a certain extent arbitrary. Failure to recognize this state of affairs gives rise to two different kinds of metaphysical extrapolation, which may themselves be described as mutually complementary. One of these is that of the material, or more generally, physical object whose nature is supposed to be independent of the manner in which it is observed. We have seen that modern physics, compelled by facts, has had to abandon this abstraction as too restrictive. The complementary abstraction is that of Hindu metaphysics, with its pure apprehending subject, without any object standing opposed to it. Personally, I have no doubt that this idea must also be recognized as an untenable extrapolation. The western mind cannot accept such a conception of a supra-personal cosmic consciousness without a corresponding object, and must hold to the middle course prescribed by the idea of complementarity. Regarded from this point of view a duality of subject and object is already postulated by the concept of consciousness. (Pauli, 1994). Wigner was a strong proponent of consciousness as a necessity for measurement. He believed it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without

reference to the consciousness of the observer (Wigner, 1965). Later d'Espagnat (1979) wrote: “The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment.” Bohr and others did not accept this concept of measurement. In speaking of performing a measurement Bohr meant only the interaction of a quantum system with a classical apparatus that in no way presupposed the presence of a conscious observer. However, Bohr did believe that it was the arbitrariness of choosing the epistemic cut that allowed room for conscious phenomena: In this respect, it must be emphasized that the distinction between subject and object, necessary for unambiguous description, is retained in the way that in every communication containing reference to ourselves we, so-to-speak, introduce a new subject which does not appear as the content of the communication. It need hardly be stressed that it is just this freedom of choosing the subject-object distinction which provides room for the multifariousness of conscious phenomena and the richness of human life (Bohr, 1958) My argument (Pattee, 1971) was that a measurement type of transition from quantum to classical events must occur at the level of self-replication where evolution and function begin. Phenomena and functions are classical concepts. If self-replication is considered as a phenomenon it must be a classical process. There is no phenomenon until it is a classical observed phenomenon. On the other hand, at the physical level, the chemical bond that holds molecules together is only explained by quantum mechanics. This was why Wigner claimed that according to quantum theory exact selfreplication was virtually impossible (Wigner, 1967). I argued that if self-replication occurs it must require an epistemic cut and a measurement process. If this is the case, then the first measurement and epistemic cut must occur long before human consciousness. This argument finally changed Wigner's mind. He wrote: “I believe I understand your arguments in this regard and concur with you. The reason for my arguing on the basis of consciousness was indeed that in this case I could adduce evidence for the incompleteness [of quantum theory], whereas I could not do this at a lower level.” (Pattee, 1972a, 1972b). Wigner's argument was correct that a quantum state cannot be exactly replicated. This was proved later by the No cloning theorem (Wootters and Zurek, 1982). However, the issue is still not entirely clear because selfreplication is not exact e this is fortunate because otherwise there could be no variation and no evolution. This is also an illustration of the fundamental irreducible complementarity between deterministic and probabilistic models. All quantum mechanical laws are expressed by mathematical systems that, on the one hand, as formal mathematical symbol systems, are written and interpreted as strictly deterministic; while on the other hand, as a physical model, they are interpreted as representing an irreducibly probabilistic reality. This complementarity exists for all formal mathematical operations that are also interpreted as representing probabilities.3 Dirac and von Neumann fully understood that measurement was a problem, but they were primarily concerned with the consistency of the mathematics of the theory. After the 1980s with the development of spontaneous decoherence theories

3 “In other words, we admit: Probability logics cannot be reduced to strict logics, but constitute an essentially wider system than the latter, and statements of the form P(a, b) ¼ q(0 < q < 1) are perfectly new and sui generis aspects of physical reality” (von Neumann (1955).

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it is now generally accepted that consciousness has no necessary role in the measurement process (e.g., Bacciagaluppi, 2012). 5. Levels of phenomena and the arbitrariness of the epistemic cut Phenomena for philosophers begin with the natural senses, but the world view of modern science begins with the extension of the senses by instruments. Instruments have not only extended the natural senses by many orders of magnitude, but have added many new artificial senses. This enormous range of scales is one reason we need hierarchic levels and complementarity of models. The levels of phenomena depend on choice of observing scales, typically scales of number, space, time, and energy, or levels depending on ordering, set inclusion, or causal sequences. For example, if you want to explain enzyme catalysis, you will probably not find it useful to start with quarks and gluons. And as Bohr remarked, “You do not explain a tea party with quantum mechanics.” In his discussion of measurement von Neumann (1955) gives an example showing why the position of the epistemic cut is arbitrary and therefore why there are levels of subjective phenomenon that must be distinguished from physical processes. In this example, von Neumann was thinking of a human observer whose objective physical models were mathematical. But that is not his essential point. What von Neumann is pointing out is that the mathematical model can follow up the physical process in as much detail as possible, but for measurement this is not possible. At some point a measurement event must result in an arbitrary symbol that can be entered into the mathematical model as an initial or final predicted condition to test the mathematical model. Physical models could not exist without the complementarity of initial conditions and laws. Wigner called this epistemic distinction “Newton's greatest discovery” because it is a subject-object distinction that goes beyond Newton's laws. It is a necessary condition for any empirically testable law. First, it is inherently entirely correct that the measurement or the related process of the subjective perception is a new entity relative to the physical environment and is not reducible to the latter. Indeed, subjective perception leads us to the intellectual inner life of the individual, which is extraobservational by its very nature (since it must be taken for granted by any conceivable observation or measurement). Nevertheless, it is a fundamental requirement of the scientific viewpoint e the so-called psycho-physical parallelism e that it must be possible so to describe the extra-physical process of the subjective perception as if it were in reality in the physical world e i.e., to assign to its parts equivalent physical processes in the objective environment, in ordinary space. In a simple example, these concepts might be applied about as follows: We wish to measure a temperature. If we want, we can pursue this process numerically [using a mercury thermometer] and then say: this temperature is measured by the thermometer. But we can carry the calculation further, and from the properties of the mercury, which can be explained in kinetic and molecular terms, we can calculate its heating, expansion, and the resultant length of the mercury column, and then say: this length is seen by the observer. Going still further, and taking the light source into consideration, we could find out the reflection of the light quanta on the opaque mercury column, and the path of the remaining light quanta into the eye of the observer, their refraction in the eye lens, and the formation of an image on the retina, and then we would say: this image is registered by the retina of the observer. And were our physiological knowledge more precise

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than it is today, we could go still further, tracing the chemical reactions which produce the impression of this image on the retina, in the optic nerve tract and in the brain, and then in the end say: these chemical changes in the brain cells are perceived by the observer. But in any case, no matter how far we calculate e to the mercury vessel, to the scale of the thermometer, to the retina, or into the brain, at some time we must say: and this is perceived by the observer. That is, we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer. In the former, we can follow up all physical processes (in principle at least) arbitrarily precisely. In the latter, this is meaningless. The boundary between the two is arbitrary to a very large extent. In particular we saw in the four different possibilities in the example above, that the observer in this sense needs not to become identified with the body of the actual observer: In one instance in the above example, we included even the thermometer in it, while in another instance, even the eyes and optic nerve tract were not included. That this boundary can be pushed arbitrarily deeply into the interior of the body of the actual observer is the content of the principle of the psychophysical parallelism e but this does not change the fact that in each method of description the boundary must be placed somewhere, if the method is not to proceed vacuously, i.e., if a comparison with experiment is to be possible. (von Neumann, 1955) Historically there have been many attempts to eliminate the subject-object duality and the epistemic cut, such as solipsism, subjective idealism, and mysticism, Today there is the concept of the embodied or extended mind (e.g., Clark, 2008), which has spread rapidly based largely on developments in psychology, neuroscience and robotics. There have been claims that this view does not allow a sharp subject-object separation and that the epistemic cut (as described above) is only an artificial nominalist division. This may be the case, but the problem remains that no matter how extended the mind and body, a measurement event takes place at a definite place and time, as von Neumann explained. One often does observe an action over an extended period of time and space, as in sensorimotor control, but even in that case perception and action must depend on information that is spatially and temporally localized and coherent. At the physical level John Bell (1990) has argued that because the measurement apparatus is nothing special materially, it must ultimately be describable by the same theory as all other matter (if it is a good theory). That is, he thinks that quantum theory is not a good theory because it does not describe measurement. Here, I agree with von Neumann. The problem is not quantum laws. Bell is correct that any symbol vehicle is nothing special materially and therefore in principle it has a complete physical description. However, no matter what laws describe the system and no matter how exact or microscopic the description, there is no indication in the lawful description that would indicate whether or not a measurement or a phenomenon has occurred. Whether or not a material structure described by physical laws functions as a symbol or has intentionality is entirely up to the subjective interpretation of the observer-subject. Descriptions of systems in terms of physical laws cannot determine what to measure or when to measure it. Scientists, and physicists in particular, must be aware of lower levels of phenomena because today instruments and computer data processing have largely replaced the natural senses. Astronomers often sit at computer screen thousands of miles from a telescope that detects light with charge-coupled devices (CCDs) that

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send symbolic information (usually bit sequences) to a computer that transmits results by satellite to another computer with a display viewed by the astronomer. Other forms of remote and indirect sensing and data processing are common in high energy physics, molecular biology, and the neurosciences. In many cases more information is detected and processed artificially than the brain can handle. In all cases, where to place the epistemic cut so as to interpret a physical interaction as a detected or measured functional symbol is still physically arbitrary, and is determined by the observer whether it is a cell or a human. In the simplest case of a single cell it is the information in the genes that determines the placement of the epistemic cut that separates (for the cell) the function from the innumerable other physical interactions with the cell. These heritable functional interactions are cell phenomena. All higher level sensory mechanisms in multicellular organisms including smell, vision, sound, and touch begin with detection of cell phenomena, which are then integrated by nervous systems and brains into many higher levels of awareness. I have been focusing on the passive function of symbols that are the result of detection or measurement. This is a case of a dynamic physical interaction resulting in a symbol that is a non-dynamic structure usually stored in a memory. One can think of measurement as a crossing of the epistemic cut from dynamic matter to a passive symbol. One can think of control and construction as an active symbol crossing the epistemic cut in the other direction constraining dynamic matter. It is this active function of genetic symbols that controls self-replication and protein synthesis. Many of the details are known and they are unbelievably complex. 6. The two-culture problem During the years I have been discussing the physical basis of symbolic representation, hierarchic levels, and complementarity of models, I have heard many criticisms. These criticisms are worth reviewing because they apply to this discussion of cell phenomena. Few of these objections have to do directly with physics or evolution theory. The objections are usually the result of the different cultures and use of language. For example, concepts like awareness function and meaning, as well as classical phenomenological terms, such as time, existence, nothingness, being, self, and individual, have acquired other meanings in the context of physics, biology, and cognitive science. My generalized meanings are sometimes rejected because applying words describing human thought to 4-billionyear-old primitive cells is, for some, simply a misuse of words. That may indeed be a problem if the limits of metaphor are not recognized, that is, if the differences between cell phenomena and human phenomena are not also made clear. I discuss some of these differences in a later section. Of course there is the philosopher's generic complaint that discussing human philosophical issues in physical or molecular terms is “reductionist.” Physicists have a wide variety of epistemic views, but generally they are not philosophical reductionists. Trying to understand the simplest cases of complex systems is not reductionism. Physics creates models at all levels of complexity. Physicists generally agree that life, evolution, and philosophy are not reducible to physical laws. However, they do believe that life, evolution and philosophy cannot violate physical laws. When I use words describing human systems to describe primitive life, such as “genetic language,” “symbol interpretation,” and “cell phenomena,” I am focusing on the less obvious, but significant similarities that exist over evolutionary time spans. The differences are usually quite obvious. Nevertheless, the most common objection is: “That is only a metaphor.” In my view, this is not an objection to the issue e it is only a dismissal of the use of

metaphor. I think this objection is irrelevant given the fact that metaphor is pervasive in all thought and language. Modern physical theories depend on metaphor e e.g., the big bang, waves, particles, spin, potentials, gradients, vectors, and many other concepts. Metaphors reveal hidden relations. The only relevant question in physics, as in all language, is whether the metaphor is useful or instructive in revealing a truth. It is also difficult for some logic-trained philosophers to accept the physicist's use of complementary models that are formally incompatible. Complementarity in theories and models is essential in physics. Logically and conceptually incompatible oppositions like reversible and irreversible, continuous and discrete, wave and particle, deterministic and stochastic, are often necessary to fully describe one and the same material system. As I mentioned earlier, different hierarchical levels often form irreducibly complementary models. Also, formal mathematical structures can be interpreted as having complementary literal and metaphorical meanings. There is no consensus on the foundation of mathematics for a good reason: there are many complementary foundations. The same complementarity principle applies to epistemologies. Philosophers have aggressively fought over epistemologies like realism. nominalism, idealism, and many others, as if one were right and all the others were wrong. What can we conclude from over two thousand years of these disputations? So far, every claim of exclusivity for any stance has remained empirically unverifiable while also remaining logically irrefutable. I raise this issue because my distinctions between phenomena and lawful physical processes, between subject and object, and between symbol and matter have instructive complementary epistemic interpretations. Einstein tried to explain the physicist's attitude toward epistemology this way: Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology isdinsofar as it is thinkable at alldprimitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research (Einstein, 1949). Of course, individual physicists still have their favorite epistemologies. Quantum theory currently has at least six interpretations (e.g., Schlosshauer, 2011) and cosmology and particle theory may need more. There is indeed cognitive dissonance trying to hold two logically incompatible images or models at the same time, but this has nothing to do with the validity of the models. All brains have evolved to quickly resolve such differences in order to choose a

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course of action or make decisions. A simple example is the Necker cube.4 It shows that even if both images are equally valid, the brain will choose one or the other, and fail to see their identity. Furthermore, between these two stable images there is a mental barrier that inhibits a change from one image to the other. A more complex physical example is the wave-particle complementarity e two conceptually incompatible images separated by a serious conceptual barrier e and yet experiments demonstrate that this duality as a universal property of all matter. The subject-object complementarity clearly has such a conceptual barrier. A physicist, or any subject, can confidently believe that the material universe has laws that objectively exist independent of the subject's existence, or in fact independent of life. The subject can also believe with the same confidence that this image of an objective lawful universe must also exists as a construction of the subject's material brain. The complementarity existence of these two models is clear. Trying to eliminate either belief is a useless if not vacuous enterprise. 7. Examples of cellular phenomena How does a cell distinguish subjective phenomena from all the other concurrent physical processes? Phenomenology uses intentionality, or what awareness is about, to make this distinction, but what any physical process is about is only what an individual agent interprets it to be about. In all organisms phenomena must arise from some form of sensory detection or memory. Below the cognitive level of memory with its learning and communication, a cell's interpretation depends on information that must be heritable if it is to self-replicate and evolve. That means the interpretation is determined by the genes. For a primitive example, consider the physical force of gravity that acts uniformly on all matter, and of course on all matter in the cell. The law and force of gravity are physical processes that are not in themselves phenomena. It is only when the force is interpreted by genetically instructed statoliths enmeshed in a web of actin controlling growth that gravity becomes the cellular phenomenon called geotropism. The first step in any interpretation is the detection of a force or event. The second step is the action caused by the event. This relation between detection and action is primarily established by genetic instructions, but it is physically arbitrary. The simplest case is the enzyme that first recognizes its substrate and then catalyzes a reaction. I say the detectioneaction relation is primarily established by the heritable genetic information, because all genetic instruction can be modulated by epigenetic influences. As a second example, consider the effects of light which illuminates the entire cell. It is only the photons that are absorbed by photoreceptor molecules that initiate a phototropic response. Again, the phenomenal information is the result of genetically determined molecular structures. A phenomenon in a cell can be described in detail by physical process, but the physical process itself is not a phenomenon. A phenomenon is information resulting from an individual subject's detection of a physical interaction.
n, et al. (2015) in this issue have described in detail other Marijua examples of such active information flows. Evolution has discovered endless levels of functional phenomena. One deceptive property of high levels of phenomena is that to appear simple, or immediately recognizable, the underlying levels of information processing must be very complex. The naïvely realistic appearance of every-day phenomena is an evolutionary

4 For example, see “Necker cube” in Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:38, March 31, 2015, fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title¼Necker_ cube&oldid¼649368269.

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adaptation that is functional but not explanatory. As I mentioned before, visual phenomena at the level of animals with visual systems like humans are much more complex than phototropism in the cell. Humans are not aware of photons striking the retinal cells until the cells send signals through many millions of neurons and many levels of interpretation that end up in the visual cortex. We cannot be aware of all this complex subsidiary information processing, but we can assume that natural selection has limited human phenomena to a subjective level of focal awareness that is adaptive. There is clearly far more necessary physical information processing at the levels of the nervous systems and the unconscious brain than would be useful for the organism to experience as conscious phenomena. This is the case at all levels. Even within the single cell there are many more physical and chemical processes going on than is genetically interpreted by the cell as relevant for its replication and survival. It is only the heritable genetically based interpreted phenomenal events that distinguish the evolutionary selection of cells from the lawful physical processes that are continually and inexorably acting in all inanimate and living matter. 8. Differences of genetic phenomena and mental phenomena As a generality, a phenomenon is an individual subject's interpreted physical process. However, cells and brains obviously differ greatly in the way they interpret symbolic information. First, there is the enormous difference in speed and capacity of their information processing. More important is the functional difference in how adaptation takes place. Any variation in genetic information must be expressed before selection can begin. This is because natural selection operates only through the phenotype, not directly on the genotype. Cognitive systems, in contrast, have the enormous advantage of being able to acquire, evaluate, and select information before expression. In other words, by using cognitive models, animals can predict before they act. That is why brains evolved. Of course, this distinction is too sharp. Wolpert is right e cells are cleverer than we think. Single cells can also show forms of adaptive learning (e.g., Fernando, et al., 2009). The concepts of choice and purpose acquired their conventional meaning at the cognitive level, but this distinction can no longer be made sharply over the course of evolution. In general, the concept of self or the individual is defined primarily by the contents of its genetic and cognitive memories. The concept of the extended mind is a valid concept, but in fact we can replace almost all the extensions with artificial prostheses without losing the self. At least we can say that genes and brains are the primary memories distinguishing the self. At the same time, it is obvious that the structures of memory and the meanings of self are profoundly different in cells and brains. One final observation I have not emphasized enough in my discussion: Phenomena and symbols do not exist in isolation. There would be no function or meaning in a disjoint symbol or single phenomenon at any level. Phenomena and symbols have function and meaning only if they arise in the context of the memory of the individual self. Individual symbols make sense only by virtue of their interpretation that depends on an organism's genetic and cognitive symbol system. Symbol systems that are expressively open-ended I call a language (e.g., Pattee, 1969). The essential requirement for open-ended self-replication that von Neumann describes is that all the material components that execute description, translation, construction, and control are themselves unambiguously described. Such a descriptive power requires an open-ended language that can describe not only the necessary components for self-replication but unpredictable novel components as well. This self-description condition, that the description must describe the components for reading and interpreting itself I now call semiotic closure (at Luis Rocha's suggestion) because its realization also includes the syntax

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and pragmatic physical control processes (Pattee, 1995). The amazing open-ended expressive power of the genetic language is comparable only to human language. Because of their endless consequences, I have found that the similarities of these two powerful languages are more significant than their differences. The necessary conditions for such powerful open-ended languages are not clear, and the origins of both are still unknown. 9. Summary and conclusion Phenomena have occurred at many levels over the 4 billon years of evolution and over some 100,000 years of human culture. There are enormous differences between these levels, but I have focused on the similarities among levels. Phenomena are subjective events functionally affecting individual selves. Distinguishing a phenomenon from other physical interactions requires a distinction between self and non-self and between subject and object. At the most primitive level a self is first objectively distinguished from non-self by memory based evolvable self-replication. One necessary component of an evolvable self-replicating system is a coded symbolic memory. The origin of such a system remains a mystery. The self and non-self, the subject and object, the symbol and matter, exhibit pair-wise irreducible complementarity. In physics this epistemic dualism is exhibited in the separation of initial conditions and laws where the irreducibility, one to the other, is evident. At all levels an individual self is distinguished and empirically defined by the unique information in its genetic memory or brain memory. Natural phenomena originate from the natural senses that have selectivity and sensitivity determined by genetic and cognitive memory. Before humans, phenomena were strictly limited to the natural senses and consequently the concept of function was intrinsically related to natural selection or adaptability for survival. Present day scientific instruments have extended the senses to such unnatural extremes that only mathematical structures can unambiguously represent objective lawful relations, and the current expression of laws is not complete. Fundamental particle and cosmological structure no longer appear to have sound analogs in natural phenomena. The subsequent technologies have given humans power and control, including the control of genetic information, which also appears to have lost dependence on natural selection. Unfortunately for humans, at the level of evolution this is not the case. References Bell, J., 1990. Against measurement. Phys. World 33e40. http://www. informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/bell/Against_Measurement. pdf. Bacciagaluppi, G., 2012. The role of decoherence in quantum mechanics. In: Zalta, Edward N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2012 Edition. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/qm-decoherence/. Bohr, N., 1958. Physical Science and the Problem of Life. In Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. Wiley, , New York, p. 101. Born, M., 1964, 1969. Chapter title: Symbol and Reality. First published in Universitas. Symbol and Reality. Physics in My Generation, second ed., vol. 7. Springer Verlag, pp. 337e353. (1965) Quote on p. 133. Brentano, F., 1995. In: McAlister, Linda L. (Ed.), Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Routledge, London, pp. 88e89. Changeaux, J.-P., Dehaene, S., 2011. Experimental and theoretical approaches to conscious processing. Neuron 70, 200e227. Churchland, P., 2002. Touching a Nerve. W. W. Norton, New York (Chapter 9). Clark, A., 2008. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford University Press, Oxford. d'Espagnat, B., 1979. The quantum theory and reality. Sci. Am. Nov. 1979, 158e181. Eddington, A., 1927. The Nature of the Physical World. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1929, p. xiii. Einstein, A., 1949. Remarks concerning the essays brought together in this cooperative volume. In: Schilpp, P.A. (Ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-scientist. The Library of Living Philosophers, 7. The Library of Living Philosophers, Evanston, IL, pp. 665e688. Fernando, C., Liekens, A., Bingle, L., Beck, C., Lenser, T., Stekel, D., Rowe, J., 2009.

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