Metabiology: Non-standard Models, General Semantics and Natural Evolution

177 Pages·2020·2.247 MB·English

by  Arturo Carsetti

Studies in Applied Philosophy,
Epistemology and Rational Ethics
Arturo Carsetti
Metabiology
Non-standard Models, General
Semantics and Natural Evolution
Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology
and Rational Ethics
Volume 50
Editor-in-Chief
Lorenzo Magnani, Department of Humanities, Philosophy Section, University of
Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Editorial Board
Atocha Aliseda
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico, Mexico
Giuseppe Longo
CNRS - Ecole Normale Supérieure, Centre Cavailles, Paris, France
Chris Sinha
School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha, China
Paul Thagard
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
John Woods
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics (SAPERE)
publishes new developments and advances in all the fields of philosophy,
epistemology, and ethics, bringing them together with a cluster of scientific
disciplines and technological outcomes: ranging from computer science to life
sciences, from economics, law, and education to engineering, logic, and mathe-
matics, from medicine to physics, human sciences, and politics. The series aims at
covering all the challenging philosophical and ethical themes of contemporary
society, making them appropriately applicable to contemporary theoretical and
practical problems, impasses, controversies, and conflicts. Our scientific and
technologicalerahasoffered“new”topicstoallareasofphilosophyandethics–for
instance concerning scientific rationality, creativity, human and artificial intelli-
gence, social and folk epistemology, ordinary reasoning, cognitive niches and
culturalevolution,ecologicalcrisis,ecologicallysituatedrationality,consciousness,
freedom and responsibility, human identity and uniqueness, cooperation, altruism,
intersubjectivity and empathy, spirituality, violence. The impact of such topics has
been mainly undermined by contemporary cultural settings, whereas they should
increase the demand of interdisciplinary applied knowledge and fresh and original
understanding. In turn, traditional philosophical and ethical themes have been
profoundly affected and transformed as well: they should be further examined as
embedded and applied within their scientific and technological environments so to
update their received and often old-fashioned disciplinary treatment and appeal.
Applying philosophy individuates therefore a new research commitment for the
21st century, focused on the main problems of recent methodological, logical,
epistemological, and cognitive aspects of modeling activities employed both in
intellectual and scientific discovery, and in technological innovation, including the
computational tools intertwined with such practices, to understand them in a wide
and integrated perspective.
Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics means to
demonstrate the contemporary practical relevance of this novel philosophical
approach and thus to provide a home for monographs, lecture notes, selected
contributionsfromspecializedconferences andworkshopsaswell asselectedPhD
theses. The series welcomes contributions from philosophers as well as from
scientists, engineers, and intellectuals interested in showing how applying
philosophy can increase knowledge about our current world. Initial proposals can
be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Lorenzo Magnani, [email protected]:
(cid:129) A short synopsis of the work or the introduction chapter
(cid:129) The proposed Table of Contents
(cid:129) The CV of the lead author(s)
Formoreinformation,[email protected]
bySCOPUS,ISIandSpringerlink.Thebooksoftheseriesaresubmittedforindexingto
Web of Science.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10087
Arturo Carsetti
Metabiology
Non-standard Models, General Semantics
and Natural Evolution
123
ArturoCarsetti
LaNuova Critica
V.Lariana 7,Rome
Italy
ISSN 2192-6255 ISSN 2192-6263 (electronic)
Studies in AppliedPhilosophy,Epistemology and Rational Ethics
ISBN978-3-030-32717-0 ISBN978-3-030-32718-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32718-7
©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2020
Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar
methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfrom
therelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
hereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregard
tojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations.
ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG
Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland
To Gregory Chaitin, a great scholar and a
gentle teacher
Acknowledgements
Thisvolumecouldnothavetakenplacewithoutaconsiderableamountofhelp.My
gratitude goes first to Werner and Elizabeth Leinfellner who died in recent years
and whose teaching is still very much alive in me. I am also very grateful to
Lorenzo Magnani for agreeing to include the volume in the prestigious series
“SAPERE” of which he is the Editor. I am equally grateful to Leontina Di Cecco
whoexaminedandapprovedthemanuscriptattheeditoriallevelwithrareskilland
professionalism. I have also been helped enormously by conversations with Franz
Wuketits who died recently, Gregory Chaitin, Stephen Grossberg, Henri Atlan,
Julian Nida Ruemelin, Giuseppe Longo, Johann Goetschl, Felix Costa, Jean-Paul
Delahaye, Dirk van Dalen, Jean Petitot and the late Barry Cooper and Francisco
Varela. In particular, I have greatly benefited from discussions with them on the
occasion of some specific International Colloquia of La Nuova Critica that once
again turned out to be the conceptual “skeleton” of the volume. I would like to
mention, in particular, the teaching of the friend and Maestro Gaetano Kanizsa
which is present albeit subtly in so many parts of the volume.
IamindebtedtomycollaboratorsAndreaCataldiandPia’tLamfortheirhelpat
the editorial level. I would like, in particular, to thank Anita Weston for her
invaluable advice and suggestions which contributed to the quality of the presen-
tation of the book. Special thanks to Ms. Priyadharshini Subramani, a project
manager at Scientific Publishing Services of Springer and her team for their
excellent work in handling the editorial production of the book.
Finally,Iwouldliketorecallthatthebeginningofthisbookcametotakeshape
starting from some notes I wrote in 1970 when Vittorio Somenzi asked me to
present to his students at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” the book just
released by Monod: Chance and Necessity. Once again, I can only express my
gratitude to the great (and humble) Master.
vii
Contents
1 On the Verge of Life: Looking for a New Scientific Paradigm . . . . . 1
1.1 Meaning and Incompressibility in the Evolutionary Landscape . . . 1
1.2 DNA Regulation and Control: The Interface Between Ruler
and Coder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 SimulationProceduresandtheEvolutionoftheInnerMembrane
Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.4 The Unraveling of Meaning in the Sky of Abstraction . . . . . . . . . 21
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2 Drawing a Software Space for Natural Evolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.1 Autopoiesis and Self-organization. The Operational Closure
of Nervous System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2 Reflexivity and Imagination at Work: The Role
of Eigenforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.3 The Birth of a New Wittgensteinian Paradigm: A World
of Capacities in a Computational Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.4 Beyond Pure Reflexivity: Meaning as a Trigger for the
Incarnation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.5 Natural Evolution Is the Necessary Landscape:
Life as Evolving Software. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.6 Limitation Procedures and Non-standard Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.7 The Dialectic Between Meaning and Creativity and Post’s
Machines in Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3 Non-standard Models and the “Construction” of Life . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.1 Non-standard Models and Skolem’s Paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.2 What Does the Universe of a Non-standard Model Look like? . . . 73
3.3 TennenbaunTheorem: EveryNon-standardModel of Arithmetic
Contains Non-algorithmic Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
ix
x Contents
3.4 The Structural Approach Versus the Wittgensteinian Approach . . . 77
3.5 Computational Structuralism and Putnam’s “Non-realist”
Semantics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.6 Meaning, Conceptual Complexity and Intentionality. . . . . . . . . . . 87
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4 Regulatory Logic, Algorithmic Information and General
Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.1 Regulatory Logic and Self-organization in Biological Complex
Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.2 General Semantics, Algorithmic Information and Second-Order
Logic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.3 Shannonian Information Versus Instructional Information . . . . . . . 113
4.4 Omega World: Incompressibility and Purity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
5 The Metamorphoses of the Revisable Thought and the Evolution
of Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.1 Husserl and Goedel: Categorial Intuition and Meaning
Clarification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.2 The “Thinking I” and the Nesting of the Original Meaning. . . . . . 133
5.3 The Journey of the Blind in the Underworld of Language. . . . . . . 140
5.4 The Metamorphoses of the Revisable Thought
and the Eurydice’s Dream. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Bibliography .. .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 159
Author Index.. .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 163
Subject Index.. .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 167
Chapter 1
On the Verge of Life: Looking for a New
Scientific Paradigm
Abstract Fromageneralpointofview,attheleveloflifeweareconstantlyfaced
withaninnerself-modulationofaverypeculiarcoupledsystem:thealternativesplic-
ingrepresentsonlyoneoftheessentialtoolsrelativetotheself-organizationofthe
channel. Inthis sense,thedialectics between coder and rulerreally plays afunda-
mentalrole:itisinviewofacontinuoussynthesisofnewproteinsandnewstructures
aswellasoftheaccomplishment,eachtime,ofacorrectassimilationprocess.Inany
case,theproblemistoestablish,everytime,acorrectrelationshipbetweeninvariance
andmorphogenesis.Lifeishidinginthecreativeequilibriumatstake,abalancethat
must be constantly renewed on pain of dissipating life itself.Meaning and incom-
pressibilityarethetwoactorswhotreadthesceneoflifedeterminingeachtimethe
due balance in accordance with an evolution which concerns the surfacing of the
naturalworldbutintheconditionsofacontinuous(and“intended”)metamorphosis.
1.1 MeaningandIncompressibilityintheEvolutionary
Landscape
WhenwelookatNatureasacraftsman,i.e.asaninventorwhoworksundercondi-
tionsofconstanttinkeringand,ingeneral,asmorphogenesisinaction,weseethatthe
molecular systems that rearrange DNA normally process molecules in accordance
withthepresentationofagridofsignals.Asiswellknown,retroviralrecombination
isoneofthegeneticmechanismsthatutilizesuchgrids;atthislevelwecaninspect,
inparticular,thesynthesisofasingleDNAmoleculefromtwoormoremolecules
ofviralRNA.Thistaskiscarriedoutbyanenzyme,theretroviralreversetranscrip-
tasewhichis“guided”byamultiplicityofsignalgridsintheoriginalRNA.Asthe
transcriptase synthesizes the replica from its template it may fall under the action
ofparticulargridsthattriggerspecifictemplateswitchesthatpresentthemselvesas
thekeyeventofretroviralrecombination.Ifwegeneralizetheseresultstakinginto
considerationmorecomplextechniquesas,forinstance,DNAshuffling,wecango
moredeeplyintothesecretreasonsofthiskindofrecombination.Asiswellknown,
thosestretchesofDNAthatdocodeforaminoacidsintheproteinsarecalledexons.
Exonshufflingisaprocessinwhichanewexonisinsertedintoanexistinggeneoran
©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2020 1
A.Carsetti,Metabiology,StudiesinAppliedPhilosophy,Epistemology
andRationalEthics50,https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32718-7_1