Living organisms as decision-making systems

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleЖивые организмы как системы принятия решений
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Saprykin, Dmitry
5. lemma category Various approaches to the problem of correlation between science and theology - Scientific theories and disciplines > Biology
6. Publication date 21-10-2014
7. lemma work Селенский Евгений [Author]. Living organisms as decision-making systems
8. lemma manifestations Православие.ру
9. Keywords naturalism - Information theory
10. Citations
    1. http://www.pravoslavie.ru/74476.html
11. Lemma body

    1. In this article the author criticizes methodological naturalism which a priori excludes from consideration the category of volitional choice, and is not able to explain the emergence of program as it is, since program as a sequence of prescriptions for achieving a target state characterized by an optimum according to pragmatic criteria can appear only as a result of decisions made by an intellectual agent in planning. Program automatically implements the developer solutions in selection of the dynamic systems equilibrium positions indifferent from the physics’ point of view. Consequently, in general the algorithm can not be reduced to the physical laws of the matter motion.

       On the other hand, the author notes, all the biota known to science has an algorithmic basis. There are no other methods for the appearance of algorithms except for intellectual creation. Physical environment that realizes only passive selection can not create any non-trivial new program because inanimate nature is deprived of decision-making centers and is inert towards semantics and pragmatics of sign systems and towards goal function optimization. At the same time, biological novelty requires the existence of an appropriate program implementing this or that new function. Consequently, naturalism is not capable of correctly describing not only the emergence of life, but also the generation of fundamentally of new biological forms.

       In the living, multiple decision algorithms are implemented in the form of instincts. Biosystems have properties common to artificial intelligence systems. All of the above can not be explained only by the action of factors of a regular or accidental nature without involving intellectual decision-making in the planning process, the author concludes.