Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Analogy, mind and life Vitor Manuel Dinis PereiraLanCog Research Group, Centro de Filosofia, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de LisboaAlameda da Universidade, 1600-214 Lisboa, Portugalvpereira1@campus.ul.pt Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Analogy, mind and life Abstract I'll show that the kind of analogy between life and information [argue for byauthors such as Davies (2000), Walker and Davies (2013), Dyson (1979), Gleick (2011),Kurzweil (2012), Ward (2009)] – that seems to be central to the effect that artificial mindmay represents an expected advance in the life evolution in Universe – is like the designargument and that if the design argument is unfounded and invalid, the argument to theeffect that artificial mind may represents an expected advance in the life evolution inUniverse is also unfounded and invalid. However, if we are prepared to admit (though we should not do) this method ofreasoning as valid, I'll show that the analogy between life and information to the effectthat artificial mind may represents an expected advance in the life evolution in Universeseems suggest some type of reductionism of life to information, but biology respectivelychemistry or physics are not reductionist, contrary to what seems to be suggested by theanalogy between life and information. Keywords Phenomenal consciousness, total Turing test, artificial intelligence, androids,analogy, pattern, recognition, reductionism, life, information. Acknowledgements My mother, Maria Dulce. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 3 Introduction The analogy between life and information - for example, pattern recognition,with hierarchical structure and suitable weightings for constituent features (Kurzweil,2012) - seems to be central to the effect that artificial mind may represents an expectedadvance in the life evolution in Universe, since information (namely, pattern recognition)is supposed to be the essence of mind and all information (namely, pattern recognition)is implemented by the same basic neural mechanisms. And since we can replicated thesemechanisms in a machine, there is nothing to prevent us from set up an artificial mind-we just need to install1 the right pattern recognizers. Artificial mind and cognitive science The landscape of the artificial mind research can be described as follows: machinelearning, reasoning, knowledge representation, restriction fulfilment, search, planning 1 To create a mind, as argue by Kurzweil (2012), we need to create a machine that recognizes patterns, such as letters and words. Consider: translate a paper. In despite the best efforts to develop artificial universal translators, we are still very far from being able to dispense the human correction of what we write in another language. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 4 and scheduling, agents, robotics, philosophical foundations, natural language processing,perception and vision, cognitive modelling, knowledge and applications engineering. Themain core consists of the first three items: machine learning, reasoning, and knowledgerepresentation. Now let's go to the landscape of the cognitive science research.Considered the following items. Perception and action, memory, attention andconsciousness, the so-called nuclear knowledge, classification, lexicon and ontology,learning, language and representation, choice, rationality and decision, culture and socialawareness. The landscape that we can outline with them is the landscape of the cognitivescience research, with the artificial mind research as a it's proper part.Cybernetics, computer sciences, language sciences, neurosciences, brain sciences,psychology, biology, philosophy, mathematics, physics, engineering sciences, in a way allof these sciences contribute to the study of human cognition (the aforementioned items).The artificial mind research is a way of discovering, describing and modellingsome of the main features of consciousness – specifically the cognitive ones. Artificialmind researchers assist cognitive science researchers in explaining how consciousnessemerges or could emerge (be caused) by non-conscious entities and processes (aexplanatory question), or if consciousness makes any difference for the performance (theoperation) of the systems in which consciousness is allegedly present; and ifconsciousness makes any difference, why and how consciousness makes any difference(a functional question).A central notion in artificial mind research is that of agent. The idea of an agent isan ongoing and autonomously operating entity in an environment in which there areother processes and agents. We are interested in knowing how an mind agent is designed.Usual questions are the following: how does it perceive, rationalize, decide, learn, how Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 5 does it perform independently in a mutual environment of problems (specific agents forcertain intervention domains)? Artificial mind researchers are interested in multiplyingthose agents and ask how it works that an enormous variety of those agents canarticulate coherently in a multi-agent system (interaction and organization). Thecombination of these questions (and their answers) can be designated by the term"Distributed Artificial Intelligence" (DAI). Consciousness With respect to consciousness, it can be classified in the following three ways(Block 2002).1. Access consciousness: we have access consciousness of something if we have itsrepresentation, it can be transmitted to each part of the brain and in this way it can beused in our reasoning and (rational) control of our actions. It is likely that this is the typeof consciousness that can be implemented in a machine. But we have the problem ofdebating whether the machine "actually" experiences something or not (and in this case,"actually" is not clearly defined).2. Phenomenal consciousness: x is in a phenomenal conscious state if xexperiences something that characterizes that state. The criterion widely used to talkabout phenomenal consciousness is that of "there is something it is like to be in thatstate". For example, if we are phenomenally conscious of a bright blue sky, then it isbecause we are experiencing something that makes that mental state a phenomenalconscious state. This experience is the key concept of phenomenal consciousness. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 6 Block identifies the following three differences between access consciousness andphenomenal consciousness.2.1. Access consciousness is completely defined by a representation (such as alogical agent clause that represents a concept or a fact). Phenomenal consciousness canalso have a representational component, but what identifies it is the experience of x (anagent) so that if x were not in this phenomenal conscious state it would not have theexperience that it de facto has.2.2. Access consciousness characterizes a mental state as a conscious state becausetheir relations with other modules (in other words, access consciousness uses afunctional way of classifying mental states as a conscious states). Being aware is beingcapable of reasoning and acting, of being stimulated and responding to those stimuli.2.3. Phenomenal consciousness identifies types of conscious states. For example,all the sensations of pain are phenomenal conscious states of the same type, pain. But ifwe consider each pain from the perspective of access consciousness, each pain is adifferent conscious state because it causes different reactions, memories and inferences.To better illustrate the difference between access and phenomenal consciousness,Block describes cases of the first without the second and vice-versa, of access withoutphenomenal (a) and phenomenal without access (b) . Those cases are, for example, thefollowing.(a) An individual can have his visual cortex damaged (have suffered an injury inthe V1 area), there are things in his field of vision that he cannot see, the so-called blindspots, and even so respond with elevated exactness to questions concerning theproperties of those visual stimuli. This pathology, called blind-sight (Holt, 2003),exemplifies the case of access consciousness without phenomenal consciousness. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 7 Phenomenologically, the individual is not aware of anything, but his visual cortexdamaged does not preclude this individual from representing those stimuli. His V1 areahas been injury, but his representations enable the individual to respond to such visualstimuli. Are their representations that enable it to respond to such visual stimuli.However, we can still give another example. The one from the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agent (Bratman, 1987), which does not have experiences: he ispresumably "aware" of everything in front of him but does not experience any of it [adiscussion related to this example is the thought experiment of the Chinese Room bySearle (1980)]. His alleged "consciousness" is presumably "access", not phenomenalconsciousness.(b) One case of phenomenal consciousness without access consciousness is, forexample, in which we experience the environmental city sound, because of being so usedto living with it, we do not represent it. Perhaps a friend of yours, used to the silence ofthe countryside, could find it strange how we are able to live in the environmental citysound. The reason is that we are not access conscious even though we are phenomenalconscious of it.3. Self-awareness: is the state of something when there is an internalrepresentation of oneself. For example, a chimpanzee or a baby (baby around two years,two and one-half years old) is capable of recognizing itself in the mirror but a dog is not.It is likely when a dog looks at the reflected image (of itself) in the mirror, it is consciousof the phenomenal but it interprets the representation to which it has conscious accessas another dog.Coelho (2008) asserts the need of a theory of subjectivity and a theory of the body.The difficulty of the subjectivity theory can be illustrated in the following way: we are Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 8 not capable of having the sensations of a bat (Nagel, 1974) because we are not bats. Andthe difficult thing about the theory of the body, in the following way: robotic "organs" arenot organs from natural selection, but our brain is an organ of natural selection(Edelman, 2006).The main difficulty is the so-called phenomenal consciousness. The so-called hardproblem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995). There is nothing we know more intimatelythan the conscious experience, but there is nothing more difficult to explain. However,this difficult is far from being exclusive to the artificial mind research. For example, inneuroscience the farthest one gets are the neural correlates of access consciousness.In other words, "access consciousness" refers to the possibility of a mental state tobe available to the rest of the cognitive system (to be available, for example, to ourproduction system language like when we try to describe the stinging sharpness of apinprick, the taste of chocolate or the vibrant red of a fire truck). The access isrepresentational in a way that phenomenology is not: the contrast is between feeling thatsting, savoring that chocolate or seeing that red and associated representations such thatwe may not access these representations (not being in possession of relevant concepts)but, if we experience, we have the experience that in fact we have (for example, see thered of the truck in contrast with see that this truck is red).In artificial mind research the alleged "consciousness" one gets are alsopresumably "access", agents have "representations of" their "own internal states", theso-called "self-awareness". Examples of these agents are Homer – implemented by Vereand Bickmore (1990) – and "Conscious Machine" (COMA) – project by Schubert et al.(1993).Architectures such as State, Operator And Result (SOAR), Intelligent Distribution Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 9 Agent (IDA) and Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) are computationalmodels of human cognition (for example, real processing time). However, researchersworking in those areas do not explicitly attempt to build an agent with "accessconsciousness".Other research projects involve the construction of androids. These have providedan empirical device for various debates: the debate about the relationship between themind and the body (unifying the psychological and biological), the relationship of thesocial interaction with internal mechanisms (unifying social sciences and cognitivepsychology), the alleged reductionism in neurosciences (the so-called "theories ofcreation of artificial intelligence"), connectionism versus modularity in cognitive science(the architectures which produce responses similar to human ones), nature versuscreation (the relative importance of innateness and learning in social interaction). Theconstruction of androids could very well provide empirical data to the study ofsubjectivity.Here, we must note the following: missing a theory of subjectivity is not missinginformation about subjectivity; rather, this information about subjectivity may beavailable (presumably provided by researchers in artificial mind) but still lack a theoryof subjectivity.For example, consider what happens when you look at a Necker (1832) cube:suddenly it flips, and although the retinal image and visible two-dimensional (2-D)structure are unchanged, the three-dimensional (3-D) interpretation is different. Lines,or rather cube-edges, that once sloped down away from the viewer now slope up awayfrom the viewer, and the vertical square cube face that was previously farther away isnow nearer. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 10 The Necker flip in what it's like to see the pattern of lines as a cube is likely tooccur in visually sophisticated robots, under appropriate conditions. There can be noreason for which that variation in what it is like to see these lines as a cube could nottake place in robots visually sophisticated (in appropriate conditions).However, be or not be well informed about this x it is a epistemological problem,not a ontological problem and in this sense, of information not being a ontologicalproblem, Sloman (1996) can say that here - subjectivity - there is none philosophicalproblem.We have information about, but not a theory of, subjectivity because here, we areconfusing two things: epistemology and ontology. One thing is how we know; anotherwhat things are.Artificial mind research contributes to the study of human cognition and also tothe study of subjectivity: contributes not exhausted the study of subjectivity.The so-called Turing (1950) Test assumed, in its evaluation of intelligence, that themental does not have to be embodied. However, Turing was wrong regarding the natureof the mental. The so-called Total Turing Test (TTT) preserves the idea that the mentalhas to be embodied (Harnad, 1991). The candidate to the TTT has to be capable of doing,in the world of objects and persons, all they can do, and do them in a way that isindistinguishable (to people) from their workings. The environment and the set design(Coelho 2008).So, arguably, we have experimental grounds to build androids. By studyingneuron-cognitive mechanisms with the additional and subsidiary help of androids,evaluating their interactions with human beings, researchers can hope to build a bridge,for example, between Neuroscience and the Behavioural Sciences. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 11 With androids we have an experimental apparatus for tests of subjectivity, thephenomenological properties of human bodies being allegedly the same as thephenomenological properties of androids' bodies. Even if androids have not subjectivity,we put our subjectivity - confused by androids' bodies - in androids experimentally, atleast by the two seconds (Ishiguro, 2005) of our confusion between androids' bodies andhuman bodies because of the phenomenological properties of the bodies of the androids.We need both working hypothesis about the study of the human mind, a theory ofsubjectivity and a theory of the body. Human beings have the mind that has because theyhave the body that have, there are no disembodied mind, outside the environment (asinstantiated by humans). The mind, even if the mind is a distinct substance from thebody, gets most of its stimulation from the body. Furthermore, the mind acts through thebody. Given that so much of mental activity arises from bodily stimulation and so muchof it is designed to contribute to bodily movement, the human mind is radically unlike,say, the mind of a pure intellect as God (if exist). Taking this seriously, it seems that thehuman mind could not exist without a body.The consciousness of human beings is both of access and phenomenal.Our problem is that there is no place for a necessary connection with physiology inthe space of possible development defined by the concept of the mind. Although suchconceptual expansion does not imply a contradiction with the essential nature of thesubjective experience, nothing precludes a expanded concept of mind from preservingthe features of the former concept and allowing the discovery of this connection (Nagel1998, 2002).Homer and COMA (only to return to the examples given above), as a workinghypothesis about the study of the human cognition, presumably have "access Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 12 consciousness" ("representations of") but not phenomenal consciousness (subjectivity).Presumably "access consciousness" of agents as Homer and COMA cannot beseparated from a body (Total Turing Test).However, this body cannot be any aggregate of matter; rather, a body must beindistinguishable from humans to humans: human beings looking at these bodies andconfuse us, to "process" (Ishiguro, 2005) them as to other humans.The phenomenological properties of the bodies of these agents - that is, the waythey appear to us - are indistinguishable from the phenomenological properties ofhuman bodies. Our brain "processes" (Ishiguro, 2005) androids (note that thesophisticated robots Sloman 1996 talks about have a body very different from ours) ashuman for two seconds. There are studies, as Ishiguro 2005, showing that in 70% ofparticipants this is the case. It is for this that we need a theory of subjectivity and atheory of the body as working hypothesis about the study of the human mind.Notwithstanding, the kind of analogy between life and information [argue for byauthors such as Davies (2000), Walker and Davies (2013), Dyson (1979), Gleick (2011),Kurzweil (2012), Ward (2009)] – that seems to be central to the effect that artificial mindmay represents an expected advance in the life evolution in Universe – is like the designargument and that if the design argument is unfounded and invalid, the argument to theeffect that artificial mind may represents an expected advance in the life evolution inUniverse is also unfounded and invalid. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 13 The classic watchmaker analogy The design argument presented and criticized, for example, by Hume in hisDialogues concerning natural religion (1779), can be formulated as the classicwatchmaker analogy as follows.1. The clock, for its complexity and the way is ordered, is a machine that has tohave an intelligent author and builder, with proportional capacities to his work - ahuman watchmaker.2. The world, for its complexity and the way is ordered, it is like a clock.3. Therefore, the world also has to have a smart author and builder, withproportional capacities to his work - the divine watchmaker (God).Succinctly, this argument holds that given the allegedly similarities between aclock and the world, just as we can assume that an intelligent entity built a clock in aspecific way and for a specific purpose, presumably we can do the same for the world.While in the first case, the most plausible hypothesis for the builder of the clock would bea human watchmaker, in the second case, the most plausible hypothesis for the builder ofthe world would be a "divine watchmaker" because, presumably, only such a being couldbe capable of such a work.This argument is an analogy, but, as we shall see next, it raises several problems.Consider this: it is obvious that the world is complex, has an order and naturalevents have a regularity, yet the analogy with the watch is fragile, remote and reductive. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 14 The classic watchmaker analogy is fragile, remote and reductive Firstly, it is fragile, because while the clock is a perfect machine, the world is a"machine" full of imperfections and irregularities that go beyond their usual order orregularity.Secondly, it is remote, because any similarities between the watch and the worldcan only be regarded as very distant similarities, only in some aspects. That is, onecannot say with certainty that the world order is similar to the order of the clock,because while we are sure, by experience, that the clock and their order were createdaccording to an end, we have no certainty (not having had any experience of this) thatthe world and its order were even created, much less that it occurred in accordance withan end (that would be divine) and not just the natural accident (the latter explanation is,moreover, the scientific explanation).Thirdly, it is a reductive analogy, because while the clock is a machine with alimited complexity to its small dimensions, the world is a "machine" not comparable tothe dimensions of the watch, so its complexity cannot be compared with that of the clock.Now, an analogy can be established from an example that is similar in a relevantaspect - in the case of the watchmaker analogy, the example would be the clock and therelevant aspect would be the complexity of the clock comparable to the complexity of theworld. And we have seen that the watchmaker analogy does not fulfil these conditions, sowe conclude that the analogy is neither founded nor valid. Therefore, the argument isunfounded and invalid and should not be considered as a good proof of the existence of Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 15 God. The analogy between mental life and information is of the same kind of analogyinvolved in the argument from design.From the fact that there are mental operations as thought and intention in someparts of nature, particularly in humans and other animals, it does not follow that thismay be the rule of the whole that is the nature (that farther exceeds parts as humans andother animals).The analogy between life and information takes a part (information) by the whole(life). The idea that a natural biological function of the brain is processing informationhas not been established empirically by cognitive neuroscience, is a metaphor. Theconcepts of "processing" and "information" are concepts of folk psychology that seemsscientifically rigorous, but are not scientifically rigorous. Concepts as "patternrecognition" does not exhaust all mental activity: if any mental activity falls under theconcept of "pattern recognition", is only part of the activity of the mind.In what way does thinking co-occur with a stimulus and categorizing it? When Iam thinking about Waltham (Massachusetts, USA) while in Lisbon (Portugal), I am notrecognizing any presented stimulus as Waltham (Massachusetts, USA) - since I am notperceiving Waltham (Massachusetts, USA) with my senses. There is no perceptualrecognition going on at all in thinking about an absent object. So concepts as "patternrecognition", although some part of what there is to say about the nature of thought -such as when I am perceiving Waltham (Massachusetts, USA) with my senses - is farfrom all there is to say about the nature of thought.Contrast with Pereira (2015), in which the relevant computation to the effect of Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 16 the occipital and left temporal correlates of the distinction between access andphenomenology is the computation of the high degree of visibility 4-5 assigned by theparticipants in both experiments to the correctly identified stimuli (and what there aremore in the second experiment is more incorrect answers than in the first experiment),because to distinguish electrophysiologically the access from phenomenology we needthat access and phenomenology will be cognitively consciousness of something and weneed that access be the same for all participants in the two experiments. In allexperiments (Pereira, 2015), not only are targets always shown, they must always beingshown.Reach to the explanation of the whole [nature, as in the discussion of the argumentfrom design by Hume; life, as in the discussion of the analogy between life andinformation by authors such as Davies (2000), Walker and Davies (2013), Dyson (1979),Gleick (2011), Kurzweil (2012), Ward (2009)] starting with just one part (humans andother animals, as in the discussion of the argument from design by Hume; information, asin the discussion of the analogy between life and information), without more, makesthese arguments very weak: to the effect of the existence of God (criticized by Hume); tothe effect of the analogy between life and information [argue for by authors such asDavies (2000), Walker and Davies (2013), Dyson (1979), Gleick (2011), Kurzweil (2012),Ward (2009)].At the same time, as Hume says, if we are prepared to admit (though we should notdo) this method of reasoning as valid, why then choose the part of nature that says moreabout us, and not choose another part of nature?Or, as I says, why then choose the part of mental life that says more aboutperceptual cases and not emotion, imagination, reasoning, willing, intending, calculating, Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 17 silently talking to oneself, feeling pain and pleasure, itches, and moods-the full life ofthe mind? Certainly, they are nothing like the perceptual cases on which the analogybetween life and information rest.Why then choose specifically some of the access features of consciousness and notthe phenomenology features of consciousness (Pereira, 2015)? Namely, why then choosethe part of mental life that says more about access features of consciousness and not thephenomenology features of consciousness as, for example, Pereira, 2015? Certainly,phenomenology features of consciousness are nothing like (see Pereira, 2015) theinformation about phenomenology features of consciousness on which the analogybetween life and information rest.According to science, were natural events that, in a succession of chances (withoutany special or divine plan), although according to the "laws of nature", led to the creationof the world and its existence as we know it.Thus, even before being able to dream even with Darwinian theories and how theyrevolutionized scientific knowledge, Hume, through his character Philo, already had anobjection to the argument from design that he could not imagine be one of scientific basisagainst the most devastating effects of such an argument from design - namely thewatchmaker analogy.Indeed, the hypothesis of Hume of a succession of chances, besides being morelogical and plausible than the theistic hypothesis, is one that most closely matchesDarwinian theories of evolution by natural selection, which would arise a century later(in the 19th century), as well as approaches all subsequent scientific discoveries, notonly of biology, but also of chemistry, and physics, regarding the possible certainties wecan have about the creation of the Universe. Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 18 The analogy between life and information seems suggest some type ofreductionism The analogy between life and information, if we are prepared to admit (supposeyou do not agree that the kind of analogy between life and information is like the designargument) this method of reasoning as valid (though we should not do), seems suggestsome type of reductionism of life to information.However, biology respectively chemistry or physics are not reductionist, contraryto what seems to be suggested by the analogy between life and information.On the biological level, for example, molecular genetics cannot provide aderivation base for evolutionary biology (Lewontin, 1983; Levins, 1968) or even forclassical genetics (Kitcher, 1984). Particularly, Kitcher (1984: 350) writes: ''themolecular derivation forfeits something important. [...] The molecular accountobjectively fails to explain because it cannot bring out that feature of the situation whichis highlighted in the [biological] cytological story''. Richard Lewontin (quoted inCallebaut, 1993: 261), in its turn, claim: "Any textbook or popular lecture on genetics willsay: 'The gene is a self-reproducing unit that determines a particular trait in an organism'.That description of genes as self-reproducing units which determine the organism Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 19 contains two fundamental biological untruths: The gene is not self-replicating and it doesnot determine anything. I heard an eminent biologist at an important meeting ofevolutionists say that if he had a large enough computer and could put the DNA sequenceof an organism into the computer, the computer could 'compute' the organism. Now thatsimply is not true. Organisms don't even compute themselves from their own DNA. Theorganism is the consequence of the unique interaction between what it has inherited andthe environment in which it is developing [cf. Changeux (1985), Edelman (1988a,1988b)], which is even more complex because the environment is itself changed in theconsequence of the development of the organism". So, as exemplified by these twoquotes from people working in the field, biology is not reductionist.Neither chemistry nor physics is reductionist. On the chemical level, for example,the reduction of chemistry to quantum mechanics [Cartwright (1997), Primas (1983)] isa case of failed or incomplete reduction.And the presumed reductionism in physics is also not more successful thanbiology or chemistry, on physical level, for example, it is not always possible to combinemodels of gravitation and electromagnetic forces in a coherent way: they generateinconsistent or incoherent results when applied, for example, to dense matter. This is themain problem currently driving people searching for a unified field theory. Conclusion Things in the world are not representational, intentional mental states about themis that they are representational, but phenomenological, physical and functional Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 20 characteristics of mental states (certain type of nerve cell activation co-occurring withour looking at the world) also are not representational, are sensations and experiences.Cognitive mental states represent, but sensations not represent anything: if certainthings out there stimulate nerve cells, are not these cells that representing things outthere to being of such and such a manner.Semantics is out there, things out there stimulate nerve cells, but the co-occurringconfiguration of these nerve cells with that stimulation, if claim to be "representationalor informational or coding", is just a misuse and overuse of terms like "representation":neurons, their synapses, neurotransmitters, receptors molecular et al. are cellularorganisms more than we can access because there is no information or representationabout cellular organisms that explain what in fact we felt and experienced.The idea that neurons (their chemistry and physics) "encode" or represent"information" is wrong. If neurons encode or represent, is starting to take for grantedwhat is intended to show: there is no difference between saying that certain BloodOxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) (for example, Ogawa et al., 1992) signal (fMRI) orelectroencephalogram (EEG) signal correlates with certain information and saying thatcertain BOLD (fMRI) or EEG signal is correlated with certain conscious mental states(phenomenal or access). What's there here is question-begging. A fallacy, because theyassume "information", they study "consciousness": but someone already showed thatneurons encode or represent? Neurons neither encode nor represent anything ornothing: what the human voice is encoding or represent? Certain sound waves.Expressions such as "neural code" are not neurons, are us talking about them.They are to be things out there, they are being represented by us, but they themselvesare not representations. Expressions like "information" and "representation" can be Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 21 eliminated, that what the relevant discipline says about neurons (and related) remainsinformative. And if "information" is a certain kind of frequency, the frequency is enough!We telephoned, the listener understands us. But we do not say that the signal betweenthese devices, represent or encode or is information.A book about oceans is not an ocean: we can bathe ourselves in parts of the oceanwithout have any concept of "ocean" or of "part", we can see red things without seeingthat are red (not having the concept of "red ").Having information about living organisms does not make this information livingorganisms – they can be "automata" (Descartes in the second of his Meditations on theFirst Philosophy, 1641). By definition an artificial, for example, plant (information aboutthe way plants look like) is not a living organism, is not a plant. In the same vein, artificialmind is not mind and can not represent an expected advance in the life evolution inUniverse in a way suggest by the analogy between life and information.However, as a tool, pattern recognition (with the additional and subsidiary help ofandroids) can help us to have more information about subcortical brain somatic-visceralactivity co-occurring with "emotional control" such as anger, fear, lust (may contribute tonew treatments and medications for psychiatric disorders and neurobehavioraldisorders, see above Introduction), have more information about humans and otheranimals perceptual cases and have more information about subjectivity. Information,neither unfounded nor invalid analogies as the watchmaker analogy, or fallacies astaking the part by the whole, without some type of reductionism or question-beggingfallacies.For example, given methodological concerns of animal experiments as theproblem of disparate animal species and strains, with a variety of metabolic pathways Pereira, Vitor M. D. (2015), Analogy, Mind and Life. Tran, Q-N. and Arabnia, H.R. (eds.). Emerging Trends inComputational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-802508-6.00020-xThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 22 and drug metabolites, lead to variation in efficacy and toxicity or as the problem of lengthof follow-up before determination of disease outcome varies and may not correspond todisease latency in humans (Pound et al., 2004) and given the third of the four Rs(reduction, refinement, replacement and responsibility) - namely replacement, the useof non-living systems and computer simulation [Schechtman (2002), Hendriksen (2009)and Arora et al. (2011)] - pattern recognition can substitute animals in research(namely, for example, drug research and vaccines). References Arora, T.,Mehta, A. K., Joshi, V., Mehta, K. D., Rathor, N., Mediratta, P. K. and Sharma, K. K.(2011). Substitute of Animals in Drug Research: An Approach Towards Fulfillment of4R's. Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 73(1), 1–6. 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