Life Originally Arose via. Abiogenesis

Semiotic InformationCon’s argument is essentially this: 1. Life contains semiotic information 2. Semiotic information is impossible via. natural processes C. Life is impossible via natural processes Con probably has his own formulation of this, but this is essentially contains all the content of Con’s opening round and his desired conclusion. I will tackle these assumptions independantly.Life contains semiotic informationBy far the biggest problem here lies in the definitions Con has provided for “Semantics” & “Meaning”:“Semantics:the study of the meaning of words and phrasesMeaning:The idea that is represented by a word, phrase, etc.”Con is going to have a hard time demonstrating that the systems of life contain “ideas” in any objective manner. Words and strings only have “meaning” to us because we attach concepts to these words, or “labels”, however such a thing is absent in life, since there is nothing to have a “concept” in life. To life the string AAAAA has just as much “meaning” as TAGTC etc. since these strings do not convey ideas. It is very true that life has mechanisms by which polypeptide chains can be mapped onto genetic strings to give a corresponding polypeptide, and subsequent mechanisms yield proteins, but that is no closer to establishing an “idea” represented since polypeptides can be mapped onto *any* random section of DNA in life.Also, if we take all the words I have typed here, they are simply letters on a screen, and do not inherently “contain” any meaning or semiotic information. They only represent semiotic information to another conscious agent who share the same understanding of semantics, etc. with an application of those to these string of words on the screen. The most Con hope to demonstrate is that life contains strings, which map onto corresponding codons, which lead to polypeptide and hence protein synthesis. You can *describe* such a system with labels such as “code, syntax, semiotics”, but we would not be talking about an objective “property” of the system.One crucial difference between DNA and language as we know it is that while random strings in the English language convey no utility, the same is not the case for DNA. The reasoning for this is that DNA is first and foremost a molecule, and the very presence of nucleotides allows for all sorts of interactions to take place, such as hydrogen bonding, dipole-dipole interactions etc.[15] The exact same applies to any random string of amino acids in a polypeptide, each of which will have its own set of chemical properties, of which catalysis can be included etc. Ergo virtually any random string of amino acids has “meaning” in the superficial chemical sense.Semiotic information is impossible via. natural processesI have yet to see Con to seriously attempt to affirm this assumption. Con has only asserted there is “no physical explanation”, and I presume his assertion that it is “abstract and immaterial” is supposed to support this conclusion. However we can attach concepts to anything we like, which themselves would be “abstract and immaterial”. For example a knife is sharp, where “sharpness” is not a physical entity in itself, it’s just a description for a state of affairs. It would be dubious to say the least to argue that a knife cannot be sharp due to natural processes because “sharpness” is abstract and immaterial. Con seems to be advocating for some Platonic “essence” of semiotic information (which I argued is already a question-begging concept) but has not demonstrated this is the case.Natural ExplanationI have already argued how evolving systems can arise in my opening, so our spectrum of explanations are significantly more powerful than otherwise expected. We are not limited to “chance”.First, there is no reason to expect that the existing codon mechanism is irreducible, and numerous hypotheses exist for reducing the existing system into a doublet and further still to a singlet system, where amino acids are “encoded” by just a single nucleotide.[16] While singlet encoding system would have performed nowhere near as a triplet system, it would have a tremendous advantage over an no system at all since it opens a whole new dimension of controlled versatile organic structures.Moreover, such systems would not necessarily have required the transcriptional element of protein systems ubiquitous today, and would have been accessible from such an RNA world. The evolution of doublet, and then triplet systems from singlet systems is easy to envisage, since it allows for differentiation of significantly more amino acids than a singlet (4 acids) or a doublet (16 acids) systems.[16,17] Moreover while today’s systems are highly specific (formal), an ancestral version of it does not need to be, as ambiguous systems still allow for an incremental “jump” from no coding system to the highly specific system we see today. An ambiguous system is better than no system.There are important reasons to believe this really happened. First is the ribozyme, which facilitates the important translation process, is approximately 60% RNA by weight and functions much like a ribozyme.[18] The second piece is the transfer RNA, which maps amino acids onto the genome. Such structures are also entirely RNA based. Thus the two most crucial structures for polypeptide synthesis are already (and unusually) largely RNA-based, and hence easily accessible from an RNA-only environment. Unlike virtually all other ubiquitous structures, these primitive systems are not based on polypeptides.[19]Transfer RNA[19] Ribosome [18] Mathematical ArgumentsCon’s entire set of arguments here is based on the “prosecutor’s fallacy”.[21]Look at your social security number or telephone number and one will realise the chances of them obtaining THAT number are astonishingly small. We could also extend this to my opponent’s existence. For Joepalscak to exist a specific sperm would have to meet a specific egg, generation after generation. Not to mention the environmental facts of the parent’s meeting and copulating at just the right time. No matter which way you work the numbers, the chances are going to be infinitesimally small. However nobody makes the claim your social security number, or Joepalscak’s existence is anything but the result of chance, simply because we are not “privileging the result”.The reason this counter-intuitive observation is made is because it assumes only one result is assumed to be meaningful, and made in ignorance of all the possible ways in which viable results can arise. Moreover we aren’t limited to chance in evolution, as structures that arise from self-organisational processes such as life are more favoured over others.[20]Hence, the statistics for a chance formation of a bacterium are irrelevant, since it is a system favoured by thermodynamics and self-organisation. Similarly Con’s protein calculations can be dismissed out of hand as it assumes only a specific sequence of amino acids is functional. We already know there is tremendous plasticity in the amino acid sequences of proteins, a cursory search of one of the most highly conserved proteins ubiquitous in life, the cytochrome C protein is 100 AA long, and has a massive ~40 amino acid variation (40%) between human and yeast cytochrome C, one of the most important structures in life today.[22]For Con’s arguments to work, he actually needs to actually address the search-space of all possible amino acid sequences that would work, factor in the non-random aspect of nature and then come to an answer. I wish Con the best of luck with that!ChiralityCon makes numerous claims about amino acids. First we can rule most of these irrelevant as they are evolutionary issues, rather than ones of abiogenesis. Secondly I don’t know how Con can make the claim “AAs in protein chains must be bound by peptide bonds, but other bonds are every bit as likely.” Since peptide bonds (-CONH-) are essentially the only covalent bonds that can form between amines & carboxylic acids at ambient conditions.[23] Other reactions overcoming large unfavourable energy barriers, and hence generally do not happen.If Con wants to propose alternative chemistry occurs with basic amino acids then he is welcome to present it (he has only asserted it, not supported it).The fact there are other available amino acids to what is ubiquitous in life is not an argument against abiogenesis, especially since chance is clearly not the only mechanism that exists. Furthermore, Con merely asserts that “A single non biologically relevant AA” renders a chain of any length worthless, but does nothing to substantiate this. Moreover homochirality has a thermodynamic drive to arise in systems, with autocatalytic systems (such as that of life) capable of chiral amplification, which resolves near-racemic mixtures to near homochirality.[24]Furthermore, a racemic mixture contains both left and right handed molecules, each of which will have a kinetic bias towards reacting with one isomer over another, which leads to a positive-feedback bias on sequential reactions. For example take the following simple system:The chirality of menthol here has a directing effect on which isomer of mandelic acid it reacts with. The same principle of chiral resolution applies to amino acids in peptide chains and a plethora of other optical resolution mechanisms exist in nature.[25,26]Con would need to demonstrate either there is no “drive” to form these structures, or demonstrate there is no mechanism by which these structures can arise. He has failed to even attempt to do either. 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