Some closing comments.

 Dear FIS colleagues:

 Let me join you in thanking Pedro for the wonderful effort of keeping the
virtual conference going. I am personnaly pleased with the results, which
appear to be unveil many important issues and questions in this
fascinating field.

 The issue of conciousness seems to lie in the confluence of many
viewpoints and ideas. An important thread, in my opinion, seeks to answer
questions concerning the differences between the types of information
processing, or computation, as it occurs at different scales (i.e. M.
Conrad's micro-, meso-, and macro-scales), as well as at different levels
of biological organization (i.e. sub-atomic, atomic, molecular, organ,
organism, population, community).

 The issue of consciousness could be studied not only from the standpoint
of humans, but that of animal behavior as well, as Morris proposes. Allan
Combs idea of the brain as a system at the boundary between
information-driven dynamics and energetically-driven dynamics is
intriguing. A broad notion of computation that includes as such the action
of physical processes, would consider both one and the same, although
would allow for both to coexist, for example, in artificial "brains".
Would they coexist also in the human brain, or a biological brain? I
really do not know.

 Are human groups and societies conscious as such? Are only their human
elements conscious, individually? Rafael Cappurro's reference to
Heidegger's view that being-in-the-world means not only to be in this
planet, but to be part of an open network of relationships between
"things," followed by his fascinating question of how far other living
beings also live in such networks I think is very much to the point.

 In answering these questions, or in attempting to answer them, we could
find definite ways of relating artificial computing and natural computing
so that the former complements the latter effectively, as I suggest it
can be done in the FIS96 issue of BioSystems.

 Well, this is just a thread. M. Conrad's principle of philosophical
relativity may help us to relate different viewpoints to each other and,
as he says: still maintaining the essence of empirical or logical result.

 Regards,

 Roberto R. Kampfner
Received on Wed Jul 1 21:21:23 1998