*Terrence W. Deacon* writes beautifully about this conundrum:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2022.0282#d7508913e1
I have a somewhat different position on his second statement, however.
I think there **is** a self that determines **how** the system responds to an external perturbation.
What is a better approach in your opinion?
I don't think you can evade talking about work and energy in general if you want to understand how life and the "self" came to be.
@Kihbernetics We may never know it. I can provide a pointer to hypotheses involving self-organized catalytic processes. Non-testable hypotheses, that is. Complexity is just that: non-formalizable.
@Kihbernetics I believe that theorizing about self-organization (especially in terms of thermodynamics) only in rare cases leads to an understanding of what happens.