These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
Brains, Lives,
Universes Let's take a
closer look at Life. We have organisms. Each organism is defined by its genome.
An organism's genome does not vary during its lifetime. The genome of its offspring varies. The
variation is the result of random processes. Each organism interacts with the
environment and may or may not survive such interactions. Indirectly,
interactions with the environment determine how genomes evolve over many
generations. Then we have
neural networks. The behavior of each thinking organism is controlled by a
neural network. The principle of a neural network is that of interacting with
the environment, propagating the information received from the environment
through its neurons and thereby generating behavior. Each neuron has influence
over many neurons and what determines the behavior are the connections between
neurons. A neural network changes continuously during the life of an organism,
especially at the very beginning. Within neural
networks a selection process also applies. Connections survive or die depending
on how useful they are. Connections are stronger or weaker depending on how
useful they are. Usefulness is defined by interaction with the
environment. Genomes and
neural networks are systems that have in common the principle of propagating
information about the environment within itself through a process of a)
interaction with the environment, b) feedback from the environment, c)
selection. Neural networks,
genetic algorithms and chaotic inflationary universes seem to obey very similar
principles. They "expand" in order to · Propagate
information within the individual, so as to determine behavior · Propagate
information within the population, so as to determine evolution Back to the beginning of the chapter "The New Physics" | Back to the index of all chapters |