Could life exist in a form of pure energy?

[cronxeh]

As 'unnati D' stated, in the now locked thread, "i believe the concept of a separate life force, existing without d support of an atomic body is worth exploring."

This caught my interest, and even if his views may seem misguided and somewhat chaotic, there is an interesting concept worth discussing.

Is it possible for a life form to exist in a form of pure energy? If you consider that consciousness probably arises from a network of biochemical electrical networks, then would it not be plausible that such consciousness could arise from a network of electrons or positrons, or any particles that are capable of interacting with each other in a lattice.

Given that entire consciousness can fit in a brain with only 100 billion neurons, and each neuron is a sort of a directed edge from one vertex (dendrite) to another (axon), would it not be plausible that such arrangement of a directed graph can give rise to consciousness?

If this was simplified and instead of the brain there was a network of electrons traveling through quantum wells in a particular direction, and photons interacting with them creating a dynamical network of electron-photon consciousness?

Photons have no charge, or so we think. It is not conclusive, and if plausible is not deniable, then perhaps photons could be charged, which would lead the way to massless consciousness made up of light

Discuss.

 

[apeiron]

Is it possible for a life form to exist in a form of pure energy?

I would say not because life and mind require some kind of memory structure. Indeed, a whole hierarchy of memory structure. And that would seem impossible to implement artificially in naked energy, let alone evolve naturally.

You get that yourself perhaps as you then mix in some speculation about material structure - a network of quantum wells or some such.

But it is the complexity of the structure that is crucial here. The flow of energy would always be "simple" without it.

Some other points. Brain activity is not about a flow of electricity but about the integration and propagation of change. A single neuron integrates information from many thousands of dendrites. It then changes its state and communicates that very fast across a history-structured network.

And why is it plausible that photons might carry charge?

But anyway, the brain, as a device, is richly structured in space and time. Through fine-grained control over its constraints, its internal dimensionality, it can access an unparalleled variety of states. This complexity is its essence.

And you are thinking in the other direction - towards the most simple and memoryless kind of infodynamics. A simple dynamical system of this kind can access a lot of chaos . But it cannot access a variety of highly structured internal states.

 

[cronxeh]

I can understand the need for evolution, but consciousness is an emergent property of complexity. There are other ways by which complexity arises in the universe, its not a tendency to succumb to entropy and decay thay governs us. I am sure there is a process that works against disorder and gives rise to spontaneous complexity.

And what about people with anterograde amnesia? They can't form new memories but still have consciousness and are self aware, based on prior information stored in their brain. Such information is of random permutation and is still basis for all their thoughts. Do they say the same thing and do exactly same things when they wake up each new day? No. So their consciousness is capable of working without ability to store new data, so why would a system of pure energy not be self aware if it was complex enough? Perhaps it would think of questions beyond the edge of chaos, things a mere human or ordered mind would never comprehend.

Size is not everything. Even an ant colony has emergent properties and order. How is ant's brain more unique than a network of interacting charges or energies?

 

[apeiron]

I can understand the need for evolution, but consciousness is an emergent property of complexity.

Having studied consciousness, emergence and complexity, I don't agree with such a simple substance ontology based view of the matter. Consciousness is not a "property" in the usual sense of the word.

There are other ways by which complexity arises in the universe, its not a tendency to succumb to entropy and decay thay governs us. I am sure there is a process that works against disorder and gives rise to spontaneous complexity.

Yes, it's called dissipative structure.

And what about people with anterograde amnesia? They can't form new memories but still have consciousness and are self aware, based on prior information stored in their brain.

Yes, they have preserved structure. Which is what pure energy would find difficult to replicate.

Size is not everything. Even an ant colony has emergent properties and order. How is ant's brain more unique than a network of interacting charges or energies?

A group mind depends on genetic information. Again, it comes back to the need for richly structured (ie: nested hierarchical) memory.

I think your basic problem here is that you are imagining consciousness as a projection or single level field of activity. It is a glowing layer of "experiencing" painted over some rustle of neurochemical activity.

But neurology and psychophysics soon tells us that consciousness is complexly structured. Even visual processing is broken up into 30-plus processing chores, like edge enhancing and depth placement.

It may all seem like one thing, a property, but actually it is a construction made of many activities happening at many rates in many places.

So an ant colony is a genuine form of "consciousness" in my view. Collectively, and over genetic timescales, ants form a cognitive organ that knows and remembers (models) a colony's world - its http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umwelt" .

But I'm waiting to hear anything convincing about how a pure energy field could have any kind of complex organisation. And then I would also want to know what its unwelt might be, because minds of any kind are always about something. They are world models shaped by their evolved purpose - again, not a "property of complexity".

 

[Pythagorean]

cronxeh:

There's no such thing as "pure energy" even in the context of non-living things. Energy is property of things, not a thing itself.

 

[Pythagorean]

One of the guesses about alternative life forms that's grounded more in the physical sciences is that silicon could be a base for a life form, because like carbon, it has four valence electrons, which gives it a high degree of versatility (ultimately allowing for the complex interactions with other molecules that lead to life on Earth).

No that I particularly agree with the conclusion, but it's at least based in the actual physics of life forms and is reasonable enough to motivate.

 

[cronxeh]

Lets consider radioactive decay as pure energy in this context. Suppose there is a huge abundance of radioactive material in a cluster somewhere, emitting alpha, beta, gamma particles. This would be an example of pure energy.

Or something closer to home, the Sun. It emits across the electromagnetic spectrum, and also neutrinos and electrons. So you have a source of 'pure energy' for the context of this discussion.

Here comes my question with this somewhat abstract, albeit poorly worded argument on my part:

Over billions of years, this energy evolved into life. What would prevent the same process to occur somewhere else, that would not use a carbon based biological entity to convert this energy into a conscious life form, but would rather use something else to either store it or channel it or somehow just 'use' it? Suppose on a distant galaxy in time not so far away, there is an energy source, and this energy is being channeled through various wells and little nooks and crannies and eventually it recombined into a complex structure, that was capable of conscious thought.

Remember that gift the Soviets gave the ambassador of America? They had a passive listening device in the Great Seal, that would activate and transmit whenever energy was applied to it (It was called passive cavity resonator). If this simple thing was not so simple but rather a complex entity that was shaped very 'complexly' and capable of resonating, vibrating, shaking and dancing and channeling and heating up and bubbling over whenever sun shone on it, and even capable of thinking in the process, would you not call that consciousness?Also I don't see why you bring DNA of ants into this discussion? Clearly the DNA has nothing to do with everyday workings of the ant. It already has a formed infospatial network that it uses, and if a node was to break down the DNA would be used to duplicate it, or if there was a stimulus to erase a node or add a node, then a gene would be suppressed or otherwise. So its not in his DNA to react to something on a daily basis, the DNA is merely a blueprint that governs how to build the network. The network governs the behavior and response to the external stimuli, and hence governs consciousness of an ant colony. But it is the network that changes, remembers, and adapts, not his genetic material.

 

[Pythagorean]

Lets consider radioactive decay as pure energy in this context. Suppose there is a huge abundance of radioactive material in a cluster somewhere, emitting alpha, beta, gamma particles. This would be an example of pure energy.

Or something closer to home, the Sun. It emits across the electromagnetic spectrum, and also neutrinos and electrons. So you have a source of 'pure energy' for the context of this discussion.

Ah, you mean photons. Force carriers are not energy: they have an energy associated with them, which describe one aspect of their state.

Over billions of years, this energy evolved into life.

Photons didn't evolve into life, though they obviously play a very important role. Photons are rather boring alone. It's in their interactions with matter that complexity occurs.

What would prevent the same process to occur somewhere else, that would not use a carbon based biological entity to convert this energy into a conscious life form, but would rather use something else to either store it or channel it or somehow just 'use' it?

Nothing, prevents it as far as we know. But the chances of the same "energy landscape" occurring in a different set of molecules is quite low in terms of probability.

Suppose on a distant galaxy in time not so far away, there is an energy source, and this energy is being channeled through various wells and little nooks and crannies and eventually it recombined into a complex structure, that was capable of conscious thought.

Well it seems to have already happened once...

Remember that gift the Soviets gave the ambassador of America? They had a passive listening device in the Great Seal, that would activate and transmit whenever energy was applied to it (It was called passive cavity resonator). If this simple thing was not so simple but rather a complex entity that was shaped very 'complexly' and capable of resonating, vibrating, shaking and dancing and channeling and heating up and bubbling over whenever sun shone on it, and even capable of thinking in the process, would you not call that consciousness?

I highly doubt consciousness would emerge from such an electronic device. We can't even make something comparable to a single cell (which is basically a little society of molecular machines all working in amazing tandem). A lot of information is packed very densely in lifeforms. They have very complex spatio-temporal features.

Also I don't see why you bring DNA of ants into this discussion? Clearly the DNA has nothing to do with everyday workings of the ant. It already has a formed infospatial network that it uses, and if a node was to break down the DNA would used to duplicate it, or if there was a stimulus to erase a node or add a node, then a gene would be suppressed or otherwise. So its not in his DNA to react to something on a daily basis, the DNA is merely a blueprint that governs how to build the network. The network governs the behavior and response to the external stimuli, and hence governs consciousness of an colony.

I think you trivialize the role of the "blue print" (jeez, what a demeaning term, you don't think epigenetics makes this a little more complicated than "blue print"?). Oh yeah... and you only access blueprints once. Once the house is built, you're done with them. This blueprint is repeatedly accessed as the house doesn't "get built", it's always building. Not to mention the blueprints change with time.

Yes, of course DNA plays an important role in every day behavior (it's code is constantly being referred to throughout many neural processes) but that's not to trivialize the role of perturbations on the network (stimuli... the environment).

Anyway, the network is still being built throughout the life of the colony. DNA is a very long-term memory for the colony and provides important constraints from a better sample-size: the wisdom of your ancestors that have better weighed averages than any individual in the network does.

 

[apeiron]

Lets consider radioactive decay as pure energy in this context. Suppose there is a huge abundance of radioactive material in a cluster somewhere, emitting alpha, beta, gamma particles. This would be an example of pure energy..

Google these particles and discover they are not pure energy. You seem to be starting from an awful lot of faulty information here. And that makes further discussion a little pointless.

 

[waht]

Have you been watching Stargate lately? Well, there is a lot of episodes where highly evolved humans ascended to a higher plain of existence by getting rid of their physical bodies and turning into "pure energy" quoting the show. But that's just sci-fi, and has absolutely no bearing on reality.

The complexity of life and the consciousness is only sustained by a constant flow of energy far from equilibrium which forms dissipative structures as mentioned above. Cut the flow of energy, and the higher organization immediately dies and returns to random noise of disorder.

You cannot possibly emulate that with photons. For one, photons don't interact with one another. Two, photons always travel at a constant speed. Three, at velocities close to the speed of light, the effects of relativity take place, like the time dilation, so you couldn't even interact with the universe anyway.