Singular vs. Universal

Choice (Individual)

Organisms do something quite unique and which cannot be reduced to law - they choose.  And with that first choice, the prime selection of A over B, the new 'thing' did something Singular and not Universal, THIS was the moment when a new type of law came to be.  It would have been the birth of a law based on Autonomy.  To act in accordance with but not be motivated by Universal law. To become:

A law unto one’s self.

Logical Behavior and Individual Purpose cannot be the functions of universally applicable law.   In its personal pursuit, no cell can be said to behave identically in certain conditions to another.  This variability is in fact the basis of intelligence, to opt or select between two potential behaviors.  To opt for either or requires that both be possible – in which case, the Law must allow for both, and cannot therefore be said to mandate either. 

Often, material scientists insist that cellular behavior is not ‘actually’ intelligent, that it is merely an illusion.  ^(Sources) But it is no illusion that intelligence is required to pursue goals.  It is simply a fact, unless a baseball thrown can be said to pursue goals of its own – or even ‘appear’ to do so.

LAW (Universal)

Chemical Behaviors describe the world of effects.   For this reason, we speak of chemical ‘reactions’.  To re-act, means to exhibit behavior as a consequence of a local, prior, force coming into contact.  As a basic fact, living things do not simply react, they also Pro-act, i.e. are proactive, predictive, deliberative and intelligent.  Any exhibition of an intelligent choice is positive evidence against the so called ‘reactive’ nature of living systems.

Laws refer to regularities; the behaviors we can observe that are cyclical, repetitive, and reliably found in nature.

No Law can exist independently of events that are witnessed, or events that may be witnessed potentially.  Laws first and foremost unify regularities in the observable universe – these cycles, forms and patterns are expressed in the language of Mathematics, and distilled in a single or series of principles. 

A physical law or scientific law is, according to the Oxford English dictionary, "a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present."[1]

The key phrase is “always occurs if conditions are present.”  There is NO living thing, in any class, that MUST or ALWAYS behave a specific way under specific conditions.  Place two ants in the exact same starting point and see what happens.  Place two birds in the same cage and open the door, see what happens.  LIVING things act above the law, and this is fact.  We can prove it time and time again, down to the level of bacteria which also have sophisticated intelligence --- not entailed or controlled by physical necessity. Also, something which we’ll discuss at greater length later on, the argument that “well, if we knew all the precise conditions of the organism’s state, we could predict what it would do and how it would behave” is absolutely false.  This would require knowledge of the state of the entire universe – as any one photon, from anywhere IN the universe can affect the biological organism in a way amplified by chaos; actually unpredictable.

Let us suppose that prior to the first living thing – as defined by our earthly examples of life -- that the entire universe behaved exactly as it had to according to law. With the first choice made by the first cell – this law ceased to be Absolute.  A new force acting in accordance with, but above or in an additive capacity to, the law was now manifest.

[A] precise point of transition from non-life to life may actually be undecidable in the logical sense. This would likely have very important philosophical implications, particularly in our interpretation of life as a predictable outcome of physical law.

Control Principle: Concept Formation

An event that occurs by chance, or without the aid of a prior intention, is by definition an irregular event.  Irregular events produce irregular outcomes – asteroids, broken glass, asymmetry.  They are punctuations amidst a baseline of order or regularity.  Cars driving on the freeway, in an orderly fashion, constitutes a regularity – a ‘chance’ event (otherwise called, incidental, or accidental) would be if a tree fell down onto the off-ramp, and caused a disruption.

Now, a tree may fall once in a blue moon on any given freeway or off-ramp, but if a tree falls precisely on the third day of the third month of every third year, this is no longer a chance event.  It is a systematic event – an event that requires some explanation which sufficiently explains how or why the trees fall in a regular and precise way, when chance says there should be no such pattern. 

We cannot simultaneously a) recognize this obvious pattern, and b) also say that the events are random; in other words, that the trees are randomly falling in a systematic way.  This is a contradiction. 

Life, as a whole, is a system of regularities – regular behaviors, functions and patterns that are in no way the product of physical laws.  These regularities are first and foremost based upon information, functional mechanics, and behavior.  Information can never be generated by chance, because it must always be read by something.  Neither the decoder nor the information can precede one another – in this way, both must be generated at the same time.  This is the secret behind life, concept formation, and why artificial intelligence will never be.  They are a duality begotten from a singularity.  Concept and Framework, Information and Decoder, DNA and CELL produced at once.