Neither Ghost nor Machine by Jeremy Sherman

Author:Jeremy Sherman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

20

COUPLED REGULARIZATION PROCESSES

RECIPROCAL MEANS AND ENDS

In 1790, philosopher Immanuel Kant hinted at just such a synergistic coupling as the distinguishing feature of organisms. In his Critique of Judgment, Kant distinguished between a machine’s motive power and life’s formative power (something akin to self-regeneration). Kant argued that with formative power “Every part is thought as owing its presence to the agency of all the remaining parts, and also as existing for the sake of the others and of the whole, that is, as an instrument, or organ.… The part must be an organ producing the other parts—each, consequently, reciprocally producing the others.”1 He goes on to say that “The definition of an organic body is that it is a body, every part of which is there for the sake of the other (reciprocally as end, and at the same time, means).”2 Kant, the ever-skeptical inquirer, acknowledged that his observation of the reciprocal means-and-ends relationship might simply be an eye-of-the-beholder impression. Thus, he left uncertain whether organic bodies truly differ from nonliving systems, or only in the impression that we have of them.

Kant wrote his account long before the discovery of self-organization (emergent regularization). Updating his insight, we can imagine that in a prebiotic universe, Kant’s reciprocal means-and-ends relationship might have resulted from the chance synergetic coupling between two emergent regularization processes, for example, between two autocatalytic processes or between an autocatalytic process and a crystal-forming process.

I’ll call any interaction between emergent regularization processes a coupling, but a coupling by itself is not enough to achieve Kant’s reciprocal means-to-ends relationship. What matters for our exploration is whether the coupling is synergistic, in other words, whether coupled emergent regularization processes constrain one another’s tendencies to peter out, thus achieving synergy (literally, working together), Kant’s reciprocal means-to-ends relationship.

The synergy necessary for the emergence of selves would not be something added, or some top-down whole somehow becoming more than the sum of its parts. Rather, it would be a way that emergent regularization processes would constrain one another, thus reducing the likelihood of both petering out as the other would independently of one another.

You will recall that Deacon turns our intuition about synergy on its head, arguing that the whole is less than the sum of its parts or, more accurately, less than the sum of all possible dynamic paths. That is the definition of synergy that I’ll employ here in seeking a synergistic coupling between regularization processes.

The synergistic coupling that would achieve self-regeneration would be the result of a process of elimination, a reduction in dynamic paths. Thus, emergent self-regeneration would be a higher-order emergent constraint resulting from the synergistic coupling between two lower-order emergent regularization processes, each acting as means to constrain the other’s tendency to peter out. This higher-order emergent constraint would be a further constraint upon the emergent regularization processes’ underlying constraints.

We will visit three candidates for a synergistic coupling, the first a coupling between autocatalytic processes, the second a coupling of autocatalysis and crystal formation, and the third autogenesis, Deacon’s solution to the mystery of how selves and aims can emerge from aimless chemistry.

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