[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for both of your replies and for sharing your insights! And, of course, thank you for your encouragements!

Excellent point- I fulyl agree- and even brought up a possible coutner argument- but wasn’t sure if it was a feasible argument- I suspect strongly that it wasn’t, but it seems that TOE supporters might possibly be able to posit that amino acids were formed from chemicals, and therefore, it showed that a ‘higher form’ was created from a ‘lower form’- of course this doesn’t take into account that we’re only up to level (ii) at htis point, and that there is nothign to suggest level (ii) could evovle into level (iii) via a natural process, because the metainfo wouldn’t be available to the level (ii) creation in order to facilitate further evolving, but again, the TOE supporter ;might’ be able to mount a remotely possible argument that a great many mutations at level (ii) kept adding their own contributions of ‘info’ by altering the level (ii) info to hte point where it ‘might possibly’ accumulate to a point of a bit higher ‘metainfo’

A poison pill to the RNA world approach to abiogenesis is autonomy v semiosis. On the one hand, it would have to be non-autonomous to gather information and then toggle back to autonomous to give rise to symbols and then toggle back to non-autonomous to gather more information, etc. [Pattee, Rocha]

Or to look at it another way, using Shannon, unexpected messages can be transmitted (broadcast) to the receiver (molecular machine) in the form of noise (e.g. RNA as in virus) in the channel. This would be the mechanism for mutation in evolution theory.

However, a really big however, the channel (autonomy) must pre-exist along with the symbols (encoding and decoding of the message.) And we can't get there (iii) from here (ii).

Also, I very strongly agree with you that this irreducible structure argument has great potential and needs further development.

[betty boop]

...the channel (autonomy) must pre-exist along with the symbols (encoding and decoding of the message.) And we can't get there (iii) from here (ii).

Excellent observation, dearest sister in Christ!

CottShop, you wrote, "the TOE supporter 'might’ be able to mount a remotely possible argument that a great many mutations at level (ii) kept adding their own contributions of ‘info’ by altering the level (ii) info to the point where it ‘might possibly’ accumulate to a point of a bit higher ‘metainfo’."

But "who" or what at level (ii) is "adding" or "accumulating" the info? It seems to me a person making this argument would have to attribute some form of "proto-consciousness" to molecules and/or atoms. Information doesn't just "add itself" so to produce metainformation. Or so it seems to me. (There's a stark difference between "data" and "information.") And as far as I know, the articulation of symbols is not possible for an entity lacking consciousness and some minimal threshold of intelligence.

I'd love to see how the person advancing this gradualisitic piling up of "information" and its conversion to metainformation at level (ii) [from whence it is "passed along" to level (iii)], from the resources of (ii) and/or (i) will deal with this objection.

Well, just my two cents worth FWIW.

Thank you A-G and CS so very much for your excellent essay/posts!