Interactions of consciousness and matter

🌱 Living organisms differ from non-living matter in that evolution, through consciousness, becomes partially self-directed — guided by experienced value rather than by chance alone.

Living organisms transform energy into organized persistence, information into meaning, and experience into evolutionary direction. Through consciousness, life evaluates states as better or worse; through free will, it selects among alternatives; and through the production of information, it leaves lasting records that shape future evolution.

Matter follows laws, but life — guided by experience — uses those laws to explore, learn, and choose.

🔥 Thermodynamic Agency

Living organisms are open systems that actively maintain themselves far from equilibrium by channeling energy through organized processes.

Matter dissipates energy passively
Life regulates energy flow to persist
Death marks the loss of this active regulation

Distinction:

👉 Matter decays toward equilibrium; life works against it.

🔍 Information with Meaning

Living systems do not merely contain structure; they generate, store, interpret, and act upon information.

DNA, epigenetics, neural activity, memory
Signals are meaningful to the system itself
Information is used to predict, adapt, and learn

Distinction:

👉 Matter has structure; life has information that matters.

⚡ Consciousness as an Evolutionary Director

With life, evolution gains a new internal variable: subjective experience.

Consciousness introduces:

Valuation (good vs. bad)
Pain as constraint
Joy/pleasure as expansion
Learning from lived experience

These do not replace natural selection, but bias evolutionary trajectories by steering behavior in real time.

Distinction:

👉 Evolution is blind at the molecular level; consciousness makes it directionally sensitive.

⭐ ‘Free Will’ (Degrees of Choice)

Living organisms — especially conscious ones — are not limited to a single deterministic response.

They exhibit:

Behavioral flexibility
Choice among alternatives
Novel responses not pre-scripted by immediate conditions

‘Free will’ need not be absolute to be meaningful; even partial freedom vastly expands evolutionary possibility space.

Distinction:

👉 Matter follows necessity; life explores alternatives.

⭐ Production of Data (Information as a Lasting Entity)

Living systems are producers of data:

Genetic records
Neural memories
Cultural knowledge
Symbolic meaning

This information:

Accumulates across time
Is shared between individuals
Persists beyond individual lifespans
Is not reducible to the matter that temporarily carries it

In this sense, life generates something that is not material, yet causally powerful.

Information is treated in modern physics as something that is not destroyed, even in extreme conditions.

Distinction:

👉 Matter exists – life leaves records.

🎨 Evolution Becomes Partially Self-Directed

When consciousness, valuation, free will, and information production converge, evolution changes character.

It becomes:

Experiential
Cumulative
Historically informed
Increasingly self-referential

Distinction:

👉 Evolution no longer explores blindly—it remembers, prefers, and chooses.

✨ One-paragraph synthesis (clean and strong)

Living organisms differ from non-living matter in that they transform energy into organized persistence, information into meaning, and experience into evolutionary direction. Through consciousness, life evaluates states as better or worse; through free will, it selects among alternatives; and through the production of information, it leaves lasting records that shape future evolution. Matter follows laws, but life—guided by experience—uses those laws to explore, learn, and choose.

🍇 Life is hosted in matter that has learned to feel, choose, and remember — and in doing so, to guide its own evolution.

😊 Joy is not the reward at the end of understanding —

it is the energy that allows understanding to unfold.

See more details here - 11 pages

Disclaimer: These reflections on joy, pain, and evolution were shaped through conversations between human intuition and machine intelligence. ChatGPT and Perplexity served as a companion in organizing thoughts, illuminating connections, and identifying relevant scholarly paths. The vision, meaning, and philosophical direction remain entirely mine (M.S.), while the clarity of expression owes much to this unique and joyful collaboration. Please help me correct mistakes, which human and machines do.