Clas Blomberg - Physics of life-Elsevier Science (2007)

392 Part IX. Going further
means that it is important for us to see ourselves as independent individuals. It is important to
see our actions as our own, and it is important in our society to apprehend all personal actions
as their own. We are single individuals that act together. This is important. What may influence
our decisions is important for our appearance in the society, and it then doesn’t matter
how they are formed by the atoms and electrons that form the biological molecules and
direct the nerve impulses that determine our actions. It is important for us to be responsible
for our actions, but that has nothing to do with the electrons and ions in our neural network.
35E
Final words
I end this section with the question whether it matters, in principle, that biological fluctuations
are generated by indeterministic or, by deterministic processes. In most cases, probably
not. For phenomena such as stochastic resonance, the distinction between chaos and
noise is most likely irrelevant. But it may in philosophical contexts be all-important. To
judge such problems properly, one has to consider the meaning of reductionism in physics,
and grasp the differences between concepts on different levels, from fundamental laws of
nature at the lowest level, to properties of life at a higher level, from quantum mechanical
wave functions to classical mechanical objects, from atomic motion to large-scale behaviour.
Then, the idea of emergent properties is crucial. These are unpredictable from the lowest level,
and there they are not necessarily well defined. Irreversibility is not well defined in terms
of basic, time-reversible basic laws at the lowest level, and classical properties are not well
defined at a quantum level. The phenomenon of life needs irreversibility and cannot be meaningful
at a low level. By the lack of a sharp definition, emergent properties introduce what
we can apprehend as irreducible elements at higher levels. This view is seemingly similar
to that of Popper (1982), whose ideas centre about a basic indeterminism, while my main point
rather means that the randomness and seemingly irreducibility are due to lack of knowledge
and the enormous reduction in information when going from a low to a high level. Any mathematical
description of high-level properties should only be meaningful within a certain range
that does not conflict with this basic incompleteness. This means strictly that there is no possibility,
not even model-dependent, to decide whether the underlying processes are deterministic
or indeterministic for high-level properties. One way to interpret this is to say that
the irreducibility introduces a fundamental indeterminacy at higher levels, a claim which again
agrees with that of Popper (1982). Whether this leads to an indeterministic or a deterministic
universe is controversial and beyond the scope of this chapter.
§ 36 HIGHER FUNCTIONS OF LIFE
36A
Thinking, memory and the mind
What still may be challenged is whether these ideas also work for the functions of the brain,
in particular its higher functions: learning, thinking and ultimately, what is referred to as
consciousness or awareness.