What Distinguishes Abiotic Matter from Living Matter?

There is a new research paper published (preprint only) by the Resonance Science Foundation Research Team. In this publication a key characteristic that distinguishes a living system from abiotic matter is discussed, and is identified as the primary criterion by which any arrangement of space-matter-energy can be unambiguously defined as alive. In addition to elucidating the nature of living systems, and what it means for an organization of matter and energy to be alive, the criterion serves as a methodology to unambiguously and positively identify a system as (1) alive, and (2) as conscious. In regards to the latter (2), the methodology outlined in the study is a significant advancement  over the Turing test, which does not distinguish a programmed automaton from a system with true stand-alone volition and consciousness, and hence is a substandard method to identify a system as conscious.

By: William Brown, scientist at the Resonance Science Foundation

What is life? What is consciousness? How does one define life and consciousness? What is the nature of life and consciousness in regard to the larger macroscopic Universe? What are the underlying physics of these states? One of the greatest challenges in modern science has been to identify or define where life begins— the supposed transition from abiotic matter to a living organism— and similarly, to postulate a physical theory for consciousness— a state that exists within lifeforms—or even to ascertain under what criteria a system can be empirically identified as conscious. Since both states are technically undefined, there are no clear criteria for identifying when they are present. Without a unified theory and criterion for identification, there will be as many definitions of life and consciousness as there are people defining them. Here, a technical definition is given based on what is postulated as the fundamental quality of the living state and therefore provides a clear and unambiguous evaluation criterion to establish when a system is technically alive. Also, this definition extends to the unambiguous determination of when a system is conscious.

The utility of a clear and measurable criterion for when a system is alive and / or conscious is becoming increasingly imperative as human capabilities in synthetic engineering and generation of artificial life-like systems are rapidly increasing and nearing a demarcation point where synthetic living systems and artificial systems with sentience will be generated.

Universality of Life and Consciousness

The results of this analysis show that, as defined, life is not restricted only to what we identify as biological organisms, but instead can be extant in any system with the proper structural arrangement and control of energy processes, which is to say ordering-functions of information processing as well as feedback-feedforward hypercyclic processing, from which intelligence and goal-oriented behavior is manifest.

Since these information processes are largely recursive in nature, such that information processed by the subsystem is fed-back into the larger global system— it suggests that life and consciousness are not merely trivial emergent phenomena of underlying “blind” processes of a non-living non-sentient universe, but instead are integral factors of physical processes at all scales of evolution of the Universe.

The full paper can be accessed via the open-source online journal Qeios. Download the full paper by clicking the link below. 

Note, this is a preprint article, and not the final manuscript, which may incorporate revisions and updates when prepared for final publishing.