@ursula
Active 5 years, 6 months agoForum Replies Created
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Well, the physicist’s question to the cell biologist doesn’t have a disconnect in that cells operate via molecules and molecules operate via chemistry and chemistry operates via physics, so there’s lots to be said about building cells, and about their molecule-mediated interactions, that builds on physics.
I’m not getting how one can have a conversation about consciousness without a definition of it. If I define it differently than another person does, then my answer to the question will likely be different from the other person’s answer, and then where are we?
For example, given the definition of consciousness that I hold, which is that it is a property of biological organisms, I wouldn’t be able to come up with any examples that suggest that both the Universe and earth seem to manifest consciousness. I guess I wouldn’t be a good conversation partner!
I regard the Berry quote as breathtakingly wonderful poetry.
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The IIT proposal was first published by Tononi in 2008 so it’s been around a while.
For readers who’d like to read a direct, and accessible, paper by Tononi and Koch, rather than the hype of the HuffPo piece, here’s an open-access paper from 2015: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1668/20140167
For readers interested in a critique, this is a good place to start (also open-access): http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004286
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Jim — It would be appreciated if you would hit return twice between paragraphs so your message isn’t a huge wall of words. Thanks!
You wrote: That would be a scenario reminiscent of the so-called Modern Synthesis which had evolution produced by the accumulation of beneficial random mutations (the odds against random mutation producing the human genome is 1 x 10 to the 70,000th. Considereing that the number of atoms in the known Universe is 1 x 10 to the 80th, I think it is fair to say random mutation (which does happen) is not the driving force of evolution.
Not understanding. Mutation is random but natural selection is very choosey. That changes all such “odds” calculations as I understand things.
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My first post in this conversation, back in April, ended as follows. Seems time for a re-post.
Here’s where I come out in general. I’ve not been resonant with any Gaia-premised understandings of nature from the get-go, where Duane’s expansion of the concept to the universe is even less appealing to me. To my ears, those proposing Gaia-like worldviews are motivated, whether consciously or not, by the premise that to call something alive, or some process a living process, is to enhance its value, to increase our affinity towards it. This is the outcome, I would say, of our negative view of matter (Loyal Rue makes this point in some of his books as well, calling it the “grunge theory of matter”). So we hear such phrases as “only matter” or “mere matter” or “just matter,” whereas we don’t hear only/mere/just life.
I would say that the project to helping humans feel at home in the universe needs to include a celebration of all the wondrous things that matter does and can do when it’s not included in a life process, using the nouns and verbs we have for these things, rather than according them life-process nouns and verbs.
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Meant to add that such a conversation would be off-topic for a DTJN blog, so if interested, please email me at goodenough@wustl.edu
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Mike Bell — I would love to exchange thoughts with you about interweaving your perspectives into our Religious Naturalist Association (RNA) sphere and perhaps also vice-versa. I cut my ecomorality teeth with Thomas Mary Evelyn and Brian — in fact, Mary Evelyn, Brian and I co-chaired a week-long summer conference on Star Island called Ecomorality a while back.
Also, are you following the campaign of Lynne Quarmby, a Green Party candidate in Burnaby? She’s a long-time friend and on the Advisory Board of RNA.
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Davidson — As you lucidly summarize, the practice of medicine has been plagued with ignorance and charlatans capitalizing on that ignorance. I’ve just read the excellent The Emperor of All Maladies, which will furnish you with additional examples of disinformation and hubris in the cancer field. You’ll find in the last chapters that mechanistic science (I’m not sure what you intend to mean by positivist science), if the analysis of cancer at the molecular/cellular level is so categorized in your thinking, has been pushing back the envelope, if only to document how complex and inhomogenous the disease is. I’m not suggesting that scientists working at this level are free of hubris, but as you note, hubris is a swamp that can entrap persons in all manner of endeavor.
Most universities require courses in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and at least at my university, complaints about such “distribution requirements” are louder from the humanities majors than from the natural science majors. I’d be interested in the basis for your understanding that “the humanities become an endangered species, omitted from a lot of science education because students need to have more hard sciences courses to remain competitive in finding jobs.” Perhaps my university is an anomaly?
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I guess I’ve been living in a bubble where science is done correctly.
If you were a subject and not a researcher, then it would help me, and probably others in this conversation, if you would let us know on what basis it is the case that you are confident that the full dataset includes significant findings. Is this what the researchers themselves claimed in their non-public analysis, or is this your own inference?
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Duane — Are you saying that the published SRI reports, which I gather indicate that the results of the 20-year study are inconclusive, would have instead be deemed conclusive had the full data been released? In my 50 years of being a scientist I’ve never heard of such a thing. Had the CIA wanted to keep the work secret, which may be their prerogative, then why didn’t they keep the whole study secret rather than authorizing publication of a subset of the results that indicate inconclusive findings? Have YOU, as a member of the researchteam, ever asked the CIA why this route was taken?
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Ed — I wouldn’t claim that we mostly understand the processes of life — happily, since otherwise I’d be out of a job! I would claim, however, that everything we’ve figured out thus far points to the kinds of processes that Terry and I describe in our essay and not to “something else… hitherto invisible dimensions, forces or influences.” This is not, as you note, to claim that they don’t exist — such a claim would not be in a scientist’s vocabulary. A scientist would want to see the data, and while most would agree that first-person experiences are “real,” their interpretation is another matter.
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Jennifer wrote:
“Epi-genes, the environment, the microbiome all appear to have a huge impact on what gets turned on/off . . . and therefore . . . what gets thought/not thought . . . and hence acted upon/not acted upon.
How does this affect our understanding of consciousness as being only a brain function?”
I’d respond that the concept of consciousness as being only a brain function is inherently incorrect, and not sure who would buy it. The whole point of all awareness systems, be they in single-celled organisms or human brains, is to detect, process, and elicit appropriate responses to relevant environmental stimuli. The microbiome indeed generates numerous environmental stimuli — a sea of extrinsic non-human influences — but so do everything we see, hear, touch etc.
Epi-genes. A long story, but readers at this site are urged to be skeptical of many of the claims made for inheritance of epigenetically modified genes. To the extent that certain examples may turn out to be valid, they won’t be exceptions to the above, since the modifications are, in all cases I’m aware of, made in response to environmental stimuli — they are just longer-lasting than other on-off modalities. The most robust examples are only heritable for 1-2 generations, so this isn’t a long-term evolutionary phenomenon.
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Duane — just re-read the article you note above, and I’m not finding Dr. Leander quoted as saying “it remains a mystery.” But even if he did, it would be a figure of speech — scientists routinely say in conversation that the answer to the research question they’re pursuing remains a mystery because they haven’t yet figured it out. When a scientist is doing an interview with a fine science-popularizing magazine like New Scientist, s/he’s eager to convey how interesting his/her organism is. Looks like one of the reasons they’re having a hard time figuring out how it works is that it dies after 2 days in the lab. Also interesting to me is that this occelid organelle is a modified chloroplast.
But back to the heart of the matter. You write “It is not simply responding to a stimulus, it is actively searching for food utilizing its polarizing vision. I don’t see this as activity of a “molecular machine” without any awareness.” That’s not how dinoflagellates work. They don’t seek out their prey. They live in an ocean where they and their prey are coexisting, and the job of the predator is to capture prey that are within target distance — typically a few microns. When such prey is perceived — whether by occelid or by the numerous other modes of prey recognition that have evolved in marine micro-predators (some entailing direct “touch,” some entailing “smell” — perception of a prey’s chemical signature) — a signal transduction cascade is triggered that activates the capture behavior. Should it turn out in this case that the trigger that “prey is nearby” is e.g. some diffraction pattern generated by something moving in the vicinity of the occelid, that’d be classy, but it’s the same awareness game as all the others. Sure hope this article stimulates more labs to study it!
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