Sensory Awareness Sequence

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Summary
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Once control has been initiated and turned into physical action, the governance mechanism needs feedback to determine whether the results meet expectations. This third of three parts shows how feedback is accomplished through collective sensory actions that begin with receptor biomolecules and proceed upward through the hierarchy.
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There are situations where ongoing governance-initiated actions are interrupted by events in a living system's external environment. Within this three-part framework, such new sensory inputs can be viewed as "unexpected results" from currently running scenarios which require the initiation of new scenarios.
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Relevant Sensory Information
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At every level of human living system, superorganism, organism and cell, the sustaining of life functions involves a centralized governance mechanism that performs control initiation to produce directed action. This is a homeostatic process that requires feedback through sensory awareness. At each living system level, it involves this general sequence:
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    •  Initiate and Perform Action
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    •  Sense Results and Compare with Expectations.
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    •  <if match> Initiate and Perform Next Action.
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    •  <if no match> Find and Initiate Appropriate Action Sequence.
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                  (see Scenario Control Unit diagram for details)
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At the cell level, many sensor control mechanisms are hard-wired to respond directly to inputs with immediate sensory action. In contrast, organisms and superorganisms have an additional decision-making step that evaluates certain kinds of sensory inputs to determine what action (if any) should be taken. In human organisms, the autonomic nervous system is essentially hard-wired in this regard, while many parts of the somatic nervous system are subject to the decision making process that is involved in learned, self-directed, voluntary behavior.
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Out of the myriad of sensory inputs, how does a governance mechanism focus on those inputs that are relevant to carrying out its self-directed scenario? Part of this selection is accomplished through structural specialization of lower-level organization units and their living system components, and part takes place as selection within the governance mechanism itself.
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Structural specialization for sensory information processing occurs at both the organization unit and living system levels. For example, the system that provides sensory input for an organism's visual awareness involves a hierarchy of specialized structure and action, from biomolecule (opsin protein), to organelle (retinal membrane), to cell (photoreceptor), and finally to organ (eye).
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Selection occurs within the governance mechanism where temporary linkage systems are established to recognize relevant sensory patterns. In superorganisms, these linkages come in the form of "indicators" that define relevant statistical patterns. In organisms, the linkages are manifested within the brain's neural network in the form of temporary subnetworks. In cells the decision step is missing, because actual response to incoming sensory patterns is hard-wired.
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Sensory Awareness Sequence Chart
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In this model, key differences in capability among hierarchy levels are indicated by extra rows in the table. At the 0rganism level and above, additional decision making steps are added to show where determination of relevance is interjected into the upward sensory flow.
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This chart shows the sequence of sensory events, working from bottom to top.

Sensory Awareness Sequence
Hierarchy Level	Control Unit	Sensory Action

Superorganism:	Administrator	emergent superorganism action plan
Superorganism:	Administrator	decide how to react
Superorganism:	Administrator	compare with expected sensory pattern
Superorganism:	Implementor	select relevant pattern
Superorganism:	Implementor	aggregate organization sensory patterns
Conveyance:	situation indicators	↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
Organization:	sensory activator	transmit organization sensory pattern
Organization:	evaluator	decide how to react
Organization:	comparator	compare with expected sensory pattern
Organization:	selector	select relevant pattern
Organization:	information aggregator	aggregate organism sensory patterns
Conveyance:	status reports	↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
Organism:	Administrator	transmit organism sensory pattern
Organism:	Administrator	decide how to react
Organism:	Administrator	compare with expected sensory pattern
Organism:	Implementor	select relevant pattern
Organism:	Implementor	aggregate organ sensory patterns
Conveyance:	sensory patterns	↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
Organ:	sensory activator	transmit organ sensory pattern
Organ:	information aggregator	aggregate cell sensory patterns
Conveyance:	sensory patterns	↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
Cell:	Administrator	transmit cell sensory pattern
Cell:	Implementor	aggregate organelle sensory patterns
Conveyance:	chemical patterns	↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
Organelle:	sensory activator	transmit organelle sensory pattern
Organelle:	information aggregator	aggregate biomolecule sensory patterns
Conveyance:	chemical patterns	↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
Biomolecule:	receptor biomolecule	transmit biomolecule sensory pattern

The next section on Living Systems Development shifts the focus from the operational view of living systems to an explanation of how they are created and developed. It begins with Life Cycle Framework.