Dynamics without Boundary Conditions
Material Dynamics from the Internalist Perspective
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ABSTRACT
The role of boundary conditions within physics is seen to be analogous to that of “context” within human perception. Moreover, the human mind is able to create its own context by focusing attention on an object in the foreground, while simultaneously filtering out other objects in the background. We propose that a physical system may have the capacity to establish its own boundary conditions – in other words, to “create its own context”. To describe this process, we introduce the concept “dynamics without boundary conditions” and explore the subtle question of how boundary conditions or constraints might arise in self-organizing physical systems such as exist within the biological realm.
We argue that robust macroscopic data (physical measurements) as described using the third-person present tense are underpinned by a microscopic context which is accessible only in first- and second-person descriptions using the present progressive tense. The use of first- and second-person descriptions in dynamics, that is referred to as the internalist perspective in short, is analogous to the process of self-measurement inherent in any physical system from within.
A major issue of dynamics without boundary conditions is to form and to transform interfaces between those movements in different grammatical tenses exclusively on material grounds. Any physical system can be seen as the robust interface between the present progressive and the present perfect tense.
Keywords: Awareness, Chemical evolution, Consciousness, Muscle contraction, Quale, Quantum Biology}