From: jimruttshow8596
Terence Deacon, a professor of anthropology and neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley, explores the intricate relationship between thermodynamics and life processes in his 2011 book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter [00:04:31]. His work combines human evolutionary biology and neuroscience to investigate the evolution of human cognition, focusing on emergent phenomena like the origin of life, the evolution of language, and the generation of conscious experience [00:03:02].
The Problem of Absence
A central idea in Deacon’s argument is the concept of “absence” [00:06:08]. He contends that while absence is implicit in nearly everything we do in the sciences, it has not been fully integrated into physical theories or theories of mental experience [00:06:29]. This includes concepts such as purposes, meanings, values, and teleology (direction and aims) [00:06:51]. For example, the meanings of words are not inherent in their physical sound but refer to something not physically present, a “constitutive absence” [00:07:12].
Deacon parallels this with the historical difficulty in the West with the concept of zero, which marks something that is not there [00:09:03]. Just as the acceptance of Arabic numerals and zero was crucial for developing recursive number systems and calculus (by learning to work with infinitely small divisions), understanding absence is vital for addressing the problems of mind and consciousness [00:09:15]. Life itself is lived with respect to potential absence, as organisms must constantly work to maintain their existence against the universal tendency towards dissipation [00:13:34].
Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
The Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that regularities in the world tend to dissipate and break down, leading to an increase in entropy and a universal tendency towards lukewarm equilibrium [00:14:20]. Life, however, appears to locally reverse this trend by maintaining order [00:14:56]. This involves a paradox: to stave off entropy increase within an organism, physical work must be done, which generates more entropy in the rest of the universe [00:15:41].
Historically, it was believed that explaining life only required demonstrating processes that produce order [00:16:25]. Many self-organizing processes (e.g., whirlpools, convection cells, snow crystals) generate order by consuming energy gradients, but they also dissipate the very gradient that makes them possible, leading to their eventual disappearance [00:17:22]. Deacon argues that life goes a step further: it not only generates order but also prevents that order from disappearing [00:19:01].
Emergence and Constraints
Emergence refers to qualitative changes in systems that cannot be explained solely by continuous quantitative changes [00:23:00]. The origin of life itself is an emergent phenomenon, as life is not an evolutionary process but the process that made evolution possible [00:23:24]. Deacon redefines emergence by emphasizing the role of “constraints” – the absence of certain relationships or variations [00:27:54]. For example, the formation of salt from sodium and chlorine involves new properties emerging due to an ionic bond, which imposes constraints on the individual atoms’ behaviors [00:23:52]. Thus, organization or form is not just something added, but rather defined by what is absent or prevented [00:32:31].
The Three Levels of Dynamics
Deacon proposes three levels of dynamics to describe processes in the universe [00:39:09]:
- Homeodynamics: These are spontaneous processes that do not require external work to occur [00:34:46]. They tend towards homogenization and equilibrium, increasing entropy, or maintaining a constant state like an object moving at a constant velocity [00:39:40]. The vast majority of processes in the universe are homeodynamic [00:46:26].
- Morphodynamics: These are self-organizing processes that generate order by consuming energy gradients [00:42:09]. Examples include whirlpools, convection cells, and snow crystals [00:41:40]. They are “contra-grade” (going against the spontaneous flow) but ultimately dissipate the gradient that sustains them, meaning they are self-destructive over time [00:52:13]. Morphodynamic processes are rarer than homeodynamic ones [00:46:54].
- Teleodynamics: These are processes where systems are oriented towards an “absent end” – their own existence or future state [00:43:40]. Life is the prime example, as organisms maintain and reproduce their order against the tendency to break down [00:44:03]. Teleodynamic systems arise from juxtaposed morphodynamic processes that balance each other out, preventing mutual dissipation and maintaining their relationship [00:44:51]. While incredibly rare in the cosmos, once they occur, they can amplify and spread, like life on Earth [00:47:56].
The Autogen Model: A Concrete Teleodynamic Example
To illustrate teleodynamics, Deacon proposes the “autogen” model, a molecular thought experiment [00:48:47]. An autogen involves two interdependent morphodynamic processes:
- Reciprocal Catalysis: Two catalysts (A and B) mutually generate each other using raw materials, leading to an accelerating chain reaction that rapidly consumes substrates [00:50:53]. This process is self-undermining as it uses up its own raw materials [00:51:52].
- Capsid Formation: The catalytic process also generates a molecule (G) that forms a self-assembling, crystal-like container (a capsid) [00:55:34]. This is analogous to how viruses form their protein shells [00:53:43]. Capsid growth consumes molecules from the environment and slows down as materials deplete [00:54:24].
In the autogen, the catalytic process provides the materials for capsid growth, while the capsid contains the catalysts, preventing them from diffusing away [00:55:01]. This mutual support creates a system that can self-repair and reproduce [00:57:12]. The autogen demonstrates how constraints (absences) can reproduce themselves, transmitting “information” about how to maintain the ability to generate that information [00:59:19]. This is a simple form of teleology, oriented towards its own continued existence [01:00:01].
Information, Sentience, and Consciousness
Deacon distinguishes three concepts of information [01:03:15]:
- Shannon Information: Measures how much message can be transmitted over a medium, based on the comparison between possible variation and constrained variety [01:04:22]. It does not refer to meaning or usefulness [01:05:04].
- Boltzmann Entropy (as noise): Physical entropy acts as noise in information transmission, degrading constraints in the medium over time [01:09:01]. However, the distinction between “noise” and “signal” is not intrinsic; what is noise to one system can be information to another (e.g., computer errors are noise to a user but a signal to a repairman) [01:09:25].
- Bateson’s “Difference that Makes a Difference”: Gregory Bateson defined information as “a difference that makes a difference” [01:13:48]. Deacon interprets this as a difference that matters [01:14:01]. Something matters if it is necessary for a system to continue existing [01:14:14].
Living systems (teleodynamic systems) distinguish the world into self and other, supportive and non-supportive, useful and dangerous, introducing a “normative character” to chemistry [01:14:40]. This ability to discern what matters is a form of sentience [01:19:55]. Deacon defines sentience broadly, from simple differential reactivity (like the autogen’s sensitivity to its environment) to more complex forms seen in plants (roots growing towards nutrients) [01:18:28].
Consciousness emerges as a higher level of sentience [01:23:28]. It is not an illusion or panpsychic attribute, but rather a “nested teleodynamic process” [01:31:36]. Brains, which develop in motile animals for prediction, are teleodynamic processes (maintaining themselves and their bodies) made up of micro-teleodynamic processes (neurons) [01:31:13]. This multi-layered teleodynamics allows for the creation of models of the world and discernment of alternatives, leading to “subjective sentience” [01:26:22].
Attention, a core aspect of consciousness, always involves “work” [01:39:05]. It’s a contra-grade process where a spontaneous tendency is disturbed or directed [01:37:29]. Mental phenomena, like thinking and feeling, are not static states but dynamic processes [01:42:30]. A representation is a “dynamical form” in the brain, a constrained morphodynamic activity [01:45:05]. Consciousness constantly tries to make things unconscious, reducing high-bandwidth conscious processing to automatic, unconscious processes, only becoming active when there’s a novel difference that needs resolution [01:49:04].
Reframing the Hard Problem of Consciousness
The “hard problem” of consciousness, as articulated by David Chalmers, questions why subjective experience arises from physical processes, suggesting that increasing knowledge of brain details doesn’t explain the subjective feeling of being [01:51:21]. Deacon views this as analogous to Zeno’s paradox, where infinite subdivisions never reach the target [01:52:27].
Deacon argues that the hard problem persists because we’ve been “looking at the wrong side of the story” [01:55:02]. Instead of focusing solely on “stuff” (physical matter and energy), we need to recognize that “absences matter” [01:55:37]. Consciousness, like life, is an emergent process of “constraints” and their dynamic interplay [01:57:45]. Our identity is not the physical stuff (which constantly changes), but the dynamical system of constraints that maintains itself in existence [01:56:44]. New absences (constraints) can be generated from old ones, enabling new kinds of work and leading to new emergent phenomena like human cognition and morality, which were not predictable or “hidden” a million years ago, but had to emerge [01:58:37]. This inversion of thinking, recognizing the generative power of absence, is key to understanding the emergence of mind from matter [01:55:37].