• MikeL
    644
    It seems odd to me that the one thing we all take for granted is the one thing whose explanations crumble when we turn to the torch to it. Take life for example, what is it, exactly? They say life begins with the cell. The cell performs functions that are characteristic of life. They replicate, they grow, they consume their environment, build some internal stuff and then excrete what they can't use, and they respond to their environment.This may be a good test to determine if something is alive or not, but it does not explain what life is. In fact, it strikes me as very much a rigid 1950's type of definition. I think life must be in the atom and subatomic particles yardy-yarda-ya and so on. I will try to explain this contention here.

    I'll tell you one thing that all living things do that fascinates me, and that is they act to preserve themselves. Bacteria when engaged by the immune system will fire off a ton of antigens to intercept antibodies, much like trying to intercept heat seeker missiles. They will change the antigens on their coats so that the antibodies made to kill them suddenly have no target. They will hide in parts of the body to evade the immune system. They will play with the bodies chemical messenger systems to confuse the hell out of the immune response. This is one tiny example in a massive sea of like behaviours. Do you think it's fair to say, that even at a cellular level, there is not just self-preservation, but also a degree of sentience that defines life? I don't expect that one clumsy example to convince you too much of anything and certainly not of sentience in atoms.

    Let me change channel on you and jump to plants. I love those big dumb plants. I love how, just as one of many examples, they can create a flower, that for all intents and purposes seems like the female mate of a bee or wasp or something. It looks like and smells like and is convincing enough to trick the insect into believing it is the other sex. Now these insects try and mate with the flower. They crawl all over it, getting up to their elbows in pollen as they procreate with it. And so the pollen is carried away to do what pollen does.

    But hold on, what the hell? A blind tree creates a flower that looks and smells like another insect to such an extent that the insect mates with it, all for the purpose of sticking pollen onto it? Darwin says Natural Selection? Somehow that seems a little feeble. Let's look at this process again. Firstly, the plant, in order to create the flower must know that the pollen it is creating is being taken by insects. It must know that those insects are then going to go to another flower far away and that the pollen will fall off there. It must know the shape, size and smell of the insect, in order to attract that insect. It must in fact know this to such an extent that the insect is fooled. And it must understand the ploy that by getting the insect to hump the flowers brains out, pollen will stick all over it.

    That all of these factors in this combination occur randomly is a little doubtful. You would have more chance of randomly firing a pebble into outerspace and hitting a target on Pluto the size of a ping-pong ball. No, the tree is sentient. It knows. How it knows, I don't know, but it must know.

    Here's some more weird stuff. There's a parasite that infects rats. It makes the rats unafraid of cats. The cats eat the rats, which is just as well, as the cat is also a vector of the parasite. Hmmm. Sentience, but how? Is it a handy coincidence? You may argue so, but there is also a different parasite that affects snails. It gets inside the snail and changes the snail's behaviour and appearance. The snail begins pulsing in bright fluro colours and climbs to the highest branches of a shrub in the middle of the day (as opposed to hanging out on the underside of leaves in the darker hours). The result is that birds see the snail, think these pulsing snails are caterpillars and eat them, which is just as well because the birds are also a vector for the parasite. How the hell does the parasite know how to take over the internal machinery of the snail, change it's behaviour to climb to the top of the tree during daylight, and that by doing making these changes it will then look from the outside like a caterpillar which will increase its changes of being eaten by a bird, which is its next host? Lucky twist of Darwin's tumbler? I doubt it, it has to be sentience. But how?

    But, let's back up again. I know you must be getting a bit bored of my examples, but I'm nearly there. Please be just a bit more patient with me. Life begins at the cellular level. What is a cell? It is nothing more than a fatty membrane with some proteins in it and a bunch of carbohydrate and protein molecules tumbling around inside, catalysing reactions that can be replicated in the test tube. In multicellular organisms the cell membrane is little more than a partition to separate chemical reactions. When I search the cell, I can't find life. Even DNA or RNA is just being turned on or off or transcribed as a result of a chemical messenger system. Their is no sentience.

    And yet, as I just explained, there is sentience at a level that doesn't make sense- that can't be accounted for except through invoking a series of consecutive Darwinian lotteries. It is an awareness by the cell or cells of what is happening around them and an ability to adapt to counter it or manipulate it- to preserve its existence. Now, you could argue that this is also just a series of increasing elaborate chemical cascades that evolved over billions of years to preserve the cell, but my question is why? Why does a cell want to preserve itself? Does it have a higher purpose? It is just a bunch of chemical reactions. Why would chemical reactions once you wrap a cell membrane around them suddenly want to preserve themselves in the here and now, and furthermore through the arrow of time? Why do they want to replicate themselves and live forever? Is there a pot of gold at the end of time? Just be chopped up already, who cares? But using ourselves as examples, we know how strong the urges for self-preservation and offspring are. The cell, it seems, has these same imperative urges.

    Out of the inanimate and uncaring, has life been born? I don't believe it has, and this is where this little discussion starts to go down the rabbit hole. To postulate that wrapping a plasma membrane around a bunch of complex chemical reactions suddenly creates life and sentience is preposterous. I believe in the curves you learnt about in high school maths that approach zero, but never hit it, always getting closer and closer for infinity but never crossing the zero threshold. Out of nothing comes something? No. Out of the infinitesimally small comes the observable.

    What I am proposing is that the sentience must be there all along. For us to have sentience, and I'm pretty sure you'll agree we do, and for our cells to have sentience, sentience must also be present in the molecules that make those cells and it must be in the atoms that make those molecules. What that looks like when we get down to that level is anybody's guess, but it should be something we can test. There is certainly a sentience above us, that we have created, just like cells create the organism. We call that sentience the economy or society, and it acts to preserve itself too. When I win the next billion dollar Powerball, which according to my calculations should be in the next couple of weeks, I will be setting up Sentient Laboratories to investigate this very theory. Come and join me. I'd love to hear your comments and all the reasons you think I'm wrong.
  • Rich
    3.2k
    What I am proposing is that the sentience must be there all alongMikeL

    Yes, life (mind) had to be fundamental unless one believes that it is possible to mix some lifeless chemicals together and magically life springs from the gloop.
  • Galuchat
    808
    For us to have sentience, and I'm pretty sure you'll agree we do, and for our cells to have sentience, sentience must also be present in the molecules that make those cells and it must be in the atoms that make those molecules. — MikeL

    Psychophysical unity makes sense to me; some might call it dual aspect monism.

    But what is sentience? A capacity for sensation? And what is sensation? A localised corporeal feeling? In other words, can plants have sentience in the same way that animals have sentience?

    Also, sentience is a psychological function, so why try to reduce psychology to physiology, chemistry, and physics? Doesn't emergence preclude lower level explanations?

    There is certainly a sentience above us, that we have created, just like cells create the organism. We call that sentience the economy or society, and it acts to preserve itself too. — MikeL

    Again, it is reductionist to apply lower level explanations to emergent phenomena. In other words, isn't it a category error to attribute sentience to atoms, chemicals, molecules, cells, organs, human social groups, and human cultures? Beings have sentience.
  • Jake Tarragon
    341
    Why does a cell want to preserve itself?MikeL

    It doesn't "want" to. It just so happens that the behavior it engages in DOES so. Such complex things could not exist without a longish term survival ability and then replication. So it's a logic thing. No other set of behaviors would do it (allow a complex thing to exist). Once something can mutate and reproduce, with mutations having an effect on survivability ("memes" they are called in general) you get complex behaviors evolving. It applies to memes in general, not just the genes of life-forms. Dawkins explains it rather well in his books.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    There's big hole in our knowledge bank when it comes to consciousness. People just don't know what consciousness or how it works.

    This situation provides ample room for myriad theories e.g. yours. Notice however that, without any concrete basis for your theory, it's just play - a daydreaming episode.
  • BC
    13.1k
    Why does a cell want to preserve itself?MikeL

    As Jake Tarragon said, "It just so happens that the behavior it engages in DOES so." But sometimes a cell doesn't preserve itself. Apoptosis (a Greek word meaning 'falling off'. applied to a cell process in the 1970s) occurs when a cell's coded instructions tell it to die. Deliberate cell death is essential to healthy organisms. Warn out cells need to go, as do cells that have become abnormal. One of the ways organisms avoid disease is through programmed cell death, aka apoptosis.

    This isn't conscious; it's more like a mousetrap that has been set to snap shut when its bait has been nibbled.

    Does it have a higher purpose?MikeL

    In a sense, yes. Physical, chemical, and biological principles make organisms possible. The complex organism (a paramecium, a plant, an insect, an animal, a human person) is, in a sense, a fulfillment of more basic rules that hold everything together over space and time. But... "only in a sense".

    The cell performs functions that are characteristic of life. They replicate, they grow, they consume their environment, build some internal stuff and then excrete what they can't use, and they respond to their environment.This may be a good test to determine if something is alive or not, but it does not explain what life is.MikeL

    It's not just a test; life IS what life DOES. Take away what life does, and life disappears. Life is a process, not a fixed definition.
  • BC
    13.1k
    It looks like and smells like and is convincing enough to trick the insect into believing it is the other sex.MikeL

    That's an interesting view of sex you have, there.

    There are a few flowers (one is an orchid, if I remember correctly) that resemble an insect's mate. For the most part, though, flowers attract pollinators for their own devious vegetative purposes. And insects look to flowers not for mates, but for food. It's a quid pro quo. Pollen and nectar are nutritious bait for the buzzing bees to spread plant pollen from the stamens to the stigmas.



    Yes, I did remember correctly
  • Rich
    3.2k
    It just so happens that the behavior it engages in DOES soJake Tarragon

    The all encompassing "it just happens" theory for everything.

    Now, is this any better than the biblical explanation? It's actually nothing. We're simply told to take this vapid explanation on faith. As for me, I don't waste my time on the magical emergence of everything.
  • Jake Tarragon
    341
    The all encompassing "it just happens" theory for everything.Rich

    I think you are making a rather shallow rhetoric argument based on the word "happens" rather than a genuine discourse of engagement with ideas. I am not saying that the behaviour" just happens" - far from it. It just so happens NOW this behavior neatly satisfies a certain effect [apparently a "goal" to human psychology]. That achievement has taken billions of years to errmmm ... happen.
    And I should add that the behavior has developed gradually in intensity (generally speaking).
  • Rich
    3.2k
    Oh, I forgot, it just happened over a very, very long period of time. That makes it infinitely more scientific as opposed to the seven day Biblical version. When in doubt, give more time. It makes it far more digestible. Big mistake of Genesis was that it limited the magic to only seven days. Science got it right (from a marketing perspective). Whatever, it still remains vapid, yet a good story for those you are satisfied with "it just happens".

    Everyone should spend an hour looking around and observing everything "that just happened". Heaven forbid we entertain the possibility of an Intelligence that we all experience. It has to be "It Just Happened" that did it all.
  • Jake Tarragon
    341
    I think you ought to at least be able to demonstrate that you understand the argument that science proposes regarding the story of life before you can hope to rubbish it.
  • Rich
    3.2k
    What you think I don't understand? I think you did a beautiful job of articulating the scientific explanation: "It all just happened over a very, very long time". Ok, thanks for the insight. It's incredible how science has an answer for "everything".
  • MikeL
    644

    Thanks for your comments guys. Like you guys, I love to debate too. So let's get into it. Galuchat, my first response to your comment about reductionism
    Again, it is reductionist to apply lower level explanations to emergent phenomena.Galuchat
    Maybe I didn't quite understand what you were saying, but the fact that there are emergent phenomenon suggests a lower level explanation does it not? After all, what is it emerging out of? I don't buy that it comes out of nothing. I think you trace the curve back towards the infinitely small until it becomes immeasurable. At that point people say, there's nothing there.
    I will grant that sentience, which I will define as an awareness of self contrasted against ones environment that is greater than what we currently know of the sum of the parts of that organism (which is kind of like you were saying when you said it was psychological rather than physiological), will look very different at different levels of investigation, but should share the same characteristics of self-preservation so as to survive through time.
    So, I don't think it's a category error to apply sentience to big business, societies or atoms, what I am saying is that the category exists there and with investigation we should be able to find it. As a loose example, the world bemoans huge corporations that seem to tread on the rights and freedoms of ordinary people, ripping them off left right and centre (take banks), and yet they are nothing more than entities created by people. They consume each other, merge with each other, battle for survival through time against each other - a category operating almost independently of the very individuals that are creating it yet with the same base instincts. Just as we create the society, are we not in turn created by cells with the same base instincts as ourselves? This is an example of three consecutive level categories with different MOs but the same characteristics of sentience and survival instincts. It has to keep going back along the curve, which implies molecules and atoms and so on.
  • MikeL
    644

    Jake, you are right. "Want to" is a very leading term (or misleading term if you like) as it sneakily puts sentience into the sentence without thorough argument and therefore biases the reader. I understand your argument that complex reactions give rise to more complex reactions, and that a reaction set that has the offspin of increasing survivability therefore survives and that of those that do it, the ones that do it better survive better.

    This idea is very hard to counter because it is logical, but it's only logical on this level. You don't need to invoke sentience to explain it, but that doesn't mean its not there. My counter to this argument is through the necessary probability combinations that are required beyond this level (or even at this level) for the success of an organism through time.

    Take the parasite that affects the snail. You can YouTube Zombie Snails if you want to learn more. That a parasite can infect a snail I can accept, but that through Natural Selection of this parasite it has randomly fluked a take over of the physiology and behaviour of the snail that causes it's probability of being eaten by the bird to increase markedly just seems far fetched to me. And when we multiply this out through all the observable interactions such as between plants and insects (and even plants and animals) etc it becomes even more far fetched.

    People are so God shy these days that anything that even smells of the metaphysical is quickly dispelled as non-scientific, and yet suggesting the tree or insect or parasite has a sentience, an awareness of what is happening around it in a way that we cannot explain at the moment is much more logical than random luck and honestly does open up the door on the God question. But don't worry, I'm not using that Get of Jail Free Card, it's just an interesting observation.

    I hope that addresses what you were saying squarely and I didn't go off on too much of a tangent.
  • MikeL
    644

    Hi Bitter Crank, thanks for your response. Just a quick note on your comments of apoptosis, you are right that the organism will shed those parts of itself it doesn't need. I've heard it said that without apoptosis a baby would be twice the size of the moon by the time it was born given the rapid growth phase it goes through.
    But this doesn't really cruel the idea of sentience. Even though it is the cell that is dying, it is an example of the organism controlling its own growth and survivability rather than the cell. It's part of the package the cell signed up for when it became multicellular (much like a State may rid itself of a killer). When the apoptotic signals don't work, cancer thrives.
    It does also usher in the conversation on altruism to a degree if you want to go there, as altruism has fascinated many throughout history simply because it appears to go against the principles of self-preservation and survival - although I will grant that the mechanism of apoptosis is very much a lock-step mechanical process.
    I'm a little unclear of the point of your second post, so I can't offer comment. Thanks for reading though.
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