METAZOA, Animal life and the birth of the mind, Peter Godfey-Smith

Philosophy
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W4U Have you ever read, or listened to:

METAZOA

BY PETER GODFREY-SMITH ‧ RELEASE DATE: NOV. 10, 2020

ANIMAL LIFE AND THE BIRTH OF THE MIND

A philosophical investigation of how animals, from the bottom up, experience the world.

In this follow-up to his previous book, the highly acclaimed Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2016), Godfrey-Smith, professor of history and the philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, rewinds the clock to recount the evolution of consciousness from the time life first appeared 4 billion years ago.

Long before nervous systems or even nerves evolved, there was sentience. No living cell is oblivious to what is going on around it, but animals take it to a new level. “Single-celled organisms can track touches, chemicals, light, and even Earth’s magnetic field,” writes the author. “But in animals, sensing saw a transition—it saw several, in fact.”

I think Peter does a good job of explaining the situation in a way I can never hope to. Of course, he’s a real professor with a depth of learning beyond my comprehension. The impressive thing for me is that he discusses it from a genuinely evolutionary perspective, which mean getting into the nitty gritty of wet squishy biology. Philosophers prefer to keep their hands clean in a way that irritates and increasing draws my scorn.

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:8495”]

W4U Have you ever read, **[or listened to]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVt6hPj1Ck4 :

BY [PETER GODFREY-SMITH

ANIMAL LIFE AND THE BIRTH OF THE MIND

A philosophical investigation of how animals, from the bottom up, experience the world.

In this follow-up to his previous book, the highly acclaimed *[Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness] Godfrey-Smith, professor of history and the philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, rewinds the clock to recount the evolution of consciousness from the time life first appeared 4 billion years ago.

Long before nervous systems or even nerves evolved, there was sentience. No living cell is oblivious to what is going on around it, but animals take it to a new level. “Single-celled organisms can track touches, chemicals, light, and even Earth’s magnetic field,” writes the author. “But in animals, sensing saw a transition—it saw several, in fact.”

No I haven’t and I shall!

But I have been talking about this exact chronology for a long time now, complete with examples of the single-celled paramecium ability to navigate, the ability of bacteria to communicate via “quorum sensing”, for the slime mold to solve mazes by a process of eliminating dead-ends.

I have described the evolution of the mind, from the biochemical processing of light waves by light sensitive chemical patches to the incredible accuracy of eagle-eyes, to the evolution of neural networks and the functional utility of microtubules which is are a COMMON DENOMINATOR in all Eukaryotic life, and are the actual electrochemical data processors throughout the body (cytoskeleton) and especially in the brain and that is IMO, the best candidate for the physical base of emergent and continuously evolution and refinement of sensory abilities and the self-awareness in relation to that external data, and the extraordinary leap of intelligence in humans from a rare beneficial mutation of the fusion of two chromosomes, which allowed for expansion of the cranial space to and the increased size and complexity of the human brain.

Mind that there are many animals that have specially evolved survival mechanisms that far outstrip humans in sensitivity, such as sonar in bats and whales, electric eels that are able to generate 500 volts as a defensive and predatory mechanism, the shape-shifting abilities of octopi and cuttlefish, the sense of smell in bloodhounds that are able to track trails of single day old molecules. The sense of smell in the male Mayfly that can detect female pheromone for up to 10 miles away.

The ability of photosynthesis and heliotropism in many plants. Predatory plants that feed on insects. The macrobiome of Coral reefs and the symbiosis of all living organisms and beneficial bacteria.

The list of evolved organisms from the three elementary particles is what we see when we look around us from mud to the stars.

Evolution has bestowed many living organisms with an extraordinary emergent survival techniques, and in humans that is the ability to make range long plans and then the ability to construct the objects in accordance to the planned blue-prints.

But that extraordinary ability of humans to manipulate natural sources and forces is a double edged sword and apparently unlike all other ordinary animals our moral decision making rests primarily on greed and instant gratification, which has made humans into an “invasive species” instead of a contributor to the natural balance required for stability and symmetry of evolutionary processes.

There is not a thought of a metaphysical agency in my mind, other than the orderly logic (mathematical) essence of nature that we have learned to put to our use and allows us to manipulate it to our advantage.

No mystery, no magic. Just evolutionary processes, by means of natural selection from beginning to end.

The universe itself is an astounding expression of the interactions of natural values and functions.

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:+1:

I have the perfect soundtrack to go with that:

(if you’ll excuse the caboose that comes with it)

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Trying to find a good place to park this wasn’t easy.
For a moment I even thought of going to the humanism board, but the I figured Godfey-Smith deserves another bump to the top.

Octopus intelligent along with a hint of humanity, at least to these eyes of mine.

Fascinating.

I was just on a walk with Maddy and asked myself, why “humanity”?

Because I see a desire to share a discovery, precursor to gossip the foundation of humanity.

Even joy, pride, satisfaction with the sharing of information and watching the reaction of others.

It’s also an example of other creature bodies creating their own unique minds -
The same divide between physical reality, the ocean and some monuments and a picture of a human, - and what was going on between those two evolved Earthly creatures, belongs within the realm of their individual and collective mindscape(s).

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One of the mind-boggling things about coming to grips with Evolution on a viseral level is taking on the notion that the creature body, that is you, is the result of millions, and billions of absolutely uninterrupted generations of one particular creature that was successful enough to produce thriving child(ren), without fail, generation after generation. One miss, and you wouldn’t be here.

And at each turn of the cycle, the germ-seed that creates the next generation carries with it internalized lessons to help it get through the next round in the Evolution Sweepstakes.

Understanding this allows one to appreciate the levels of internal awareness and intention - totally beyond those voices in your head that are always playing keep up with the body moving through its life.

Be honest with yourself, whose imperatives have you followed throughout your life?
How many idealistic resolutions, become life long habits?
How often do your lofty ideals win over your gut level cravings of the moment?
How do you battle & balance the two conflicting internal imperatives?
… and that sort of stuff.

What makes the Earth Centrist perspective special is that it’s the result of internalizing the reality our physical bodies (body/brain) are the cumulative product of billions of years worth of uninterrupted survival and evolution. A learning adventure for physical reality and such cosmic poetry.

As opposed to the superficial postcard evolution attitude of all those who’ve never had the curiousity to learn about it. Folks who remain fixated within the universe of human expectations and limitations, who only seem to see this planet and other creatures as resources to exploit. And we ourselves as God’s VIP visitors to Earth.

Appreciating that our “selves,” is the internal dialogue of our body in action, known as our "mind,"and that it is the cumulative product of all the days that my body/brain and mind have experienced. Provide a foundation, benchmark from which all sorts of other human “mysteries” start making more and more sense.

Then as with a candle that runs out of wax, my internal flame (soul/mind) will extinguish from our physical realm, with my afterlife belonging within the minds of others, and the thing I leave behind like so many decomposing relics.

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Interestingly, what we call humanity, goes both ways depending on the degree of domestication.

Watch these incredible examples of inter-species bonding. It seems to make little difference what species offers comfort to a vulnerable other.

These clips are heart-rending

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Hmmm, interesting sentence, I’ve been chewing on it.

There’s a lot to unpack there, starting with defining “domestication.”

Mammals and family units, that’s beginning of domestication for sure, but I’m sure some would consider that there are even earlier examples such a hive behavior of bees, ants, termites and such, heck there are even some fish (or is it frogs?) who nurture their young by sucking 'em into their mouths for protection from predation.

I watched the first few minutes of the video, looks interesting and fun, will put it on tomorrow evening menu for watching with my wife. The weird cross species interactions that have been observed and videos, is really amazing.

thanks :+1:

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15 or so years ago I had a 6 month discussion on intelligence with a neurologist. It was prompted by my argument that all life is intelligent. In fact when I was a kid 60 years ago it was part of the definition of life to distinguish between say viruses and prions and organism that are alive. His argument, and it’s not a bad one, is that intelligence in lower animals is an illusion. Now this was in a science forum and philosophy wasn’t allowed. That basically meant you had to find research to support your argument. I offered him dozens of research papers that demonstrated the complexity of even the simplest organism. What was weird about the conversation was that he was arguing that intelligence is an emergent property. The idea that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. I never could convince him that if that is true for complex organism it must be true for simpler organism. Emergence is not an explanation of anything it is just a place holder for ignorance. As I have pointed out in another thread here it becomes a philosophical problem. It has to do with the limitations of language.

I’m not opposed to the use of the idea of emergence as a thinking tool. It doesn’t have to be “real” to be useful. You don’t need to know how a car works to drive it. Primitive people when first exposed to airplanes thought they were magic. But you could take one of them and teach them to fly a plane without them understanding anything much about how a plane works. I knew a creationist who was an oil field geologist. He didn’t need to believe in evolution to put paleontology to work. The opposite is also true, a car mechanic could understand exactly how a car works and still not be proficient at driving it. My neurologist friend was like the mechanic. He knew in some detail how intelligence works but he wasn’t necessarily proficient at driving it to a simple conclusion. It’s almost as if the science got in the way. The irony, as I pointed out earlier, is that emergence is not a scientific concept. Of course I could be wrong and intelligence could be a matter of kind not degree. The article in the above post however lends some credence to idea of it being a matter of degree not kind. In any case it reminded me of the many hours I spent trying to sort it out.

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Watch this example of Bullfrog intelligence.

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Okay, I looked it up, and I can see that there is debate on this topic, but to state it like a fact, like you often state things, without much explanation or reasoning provided, is not helpful, or even really correct. There are macroscopic properties in systems that don’t result directly from the microscopic properties of the parts in that system. What would you call that?

I can see why you couldn’t convince the neurologist that intelligence must be true for simple organisms if it is true for complex ones. Because, it just doesn’t follow. You can play with the terms “simple” and “complex” and find papers showing behaviors of tiny organisms without much chemistry to them that are similar to behaviors of complex organisms, but that doesn’t make that tiny organism a complex one in the full sense of “complex”.

You claim emergence is an explanation for ignorance, but you do nothing to fill in the gaps of our ignorance. You don’t even define intelligence so we can discuss what you mean by “all life is intelligent”.

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The definition of an emergent property is an ability that the whole acquires, which the individual parts do not posses ;

i.e. The elements of H (hydrogen) and O (oxgen) are dry particles. Nothing can be simpler.

But.

Put a mixture H and O together in the correct ratio of 2 to 1 in sufficient numbers and the mixture takes on a liquid (wet) form of water. Expose the exact same mixture to a cold environment the mixture becomes solid (ice) form of water. OTOH if you heat up the same mixture it becomes gaseous.
The 3 states are the emergent properties of the very same chemical mixture, depending on the environmental conditions.

These emergent evolutionary advantages results in “best adapted” among same species. In pure chemistry one emergent property of combining several lower bonding particle into a stronger pattern results in stability.

One emergent property of many individual interactions is “stability” and “durability”.
A stable pattern tends to be more resistant to environmental pressures.

Consciousness is almost surely an emergent excellence and can be demonstrated in several stages of sophistication all along the biological ladder.

There are some animals that are smarter than humans are in certain respects.

Those are the observational devices we invent to artificially copy what emerged from natural evolutionary processes.

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Like I said we discussed it for 6 months :slight_smile:

The definition of intelligence when I was a kid that biologists used was the ability to respond to the environment. I think we can start there an asked why that definition is no longer used. Has the science changed that much or has the culture changed? I’m just guessing but I suspect it has to do with the strange idea that computing represents something artificial. It turns out that human intelligence itself is “artificial” because it is dependent on cultural evolution and transmission. A kind of swarm intelligence. Computers in a way are swarm intelligence but so is the way the brain works. DNA doesn’t so much tell the brain how to evolve but it sets the environment for the re-evolution of a brain. The brain properly understood is a kind of colony of cells that go through an extensive selection process called culling.

There is nothing wrong with your response so I didn’t address it directly. I’m actually suggesting there is something wrong with the culture or the swarm intelligence.

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Well again I really like what you had to say.

You may have missed the part where I said I didn’t mind the idea of emergence as a thinking tool :slight_smile:

What I mind is it is overused. It isn’t really an explanation. Keep in mind I don’t really believe in “ultimate” explanations. What I believe in is accuracy and precision. I’m also a fan of extreme determinism in science. Life and thus intelligence was not an accident. It was an unavoidable consequence of initial conditions. What I maintain is that randomness is incomprehensible. The problem with that is life doesn’t exist without random events. What we call random mutations. The idea is that all properties are a result of initial conditions. The big bang theory of everything if you like.

The argument I have run into before is that it doesn’t require true randomness to get random mutations. I agree with that. But like the concept of emergence it really isn’t an explanation. The question of whether randomness is an illusion or a reality is central to the modern debate in science. When that question is answered maybe I can offer a better explanation of what I’m getting at. It will not be an ultimate explanation but it will be more accurate and precise.

As a side note philosophically I’m a compatibilist. If you ask me how a determinist can be a compatibilist I can’t answer that question any more than people can explain to me what randomness is. It could be that the answers are just hidden in complexity as I think Dennett is suggesting. Again however is complexity an explanation? The reason people don’t like Dennett is that admitting ignorance seems to them like a cop out. I would argue that admitting ignorance is the road to discovery. As you may have noticed I have a different philosophy of science than many other people. Genius is a product of random thoughts or mental mutations, what we call imagination, not high intelligence alone. This randomness thing seems to me to be central to everything.

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IMO emergence is an evolutionary process of an uncountable number of chronological number of interactions.

If gravity is as described then Gravity was an emergent product of the formation of massive objects. There must have been a time whence gravity did not exist, but emerged along with the cooling and formation massive objects at all scales.

All of reality is an emergent phenomenon that can be observed from a 3 dimensional perspective and relativity.
I see Life as an ultimately emergent and evolved expression of natural Dynamics ( natural motions).
I see Consciousness as an ultimately emergent expression of natural Affinity and Separation (bio-chemical relations).

I have cited it in the past but IMO, the evolution of the eye and the optical system that started as a light sensitive patch is but one example of an emergent evolving and beneficial survival advantage of optical abilities, at all levels.

Evolution of the eye
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Major stages in the evolution of the eye in vertebrates

image
image525×733 106 KB

Major stages in the evolution of the eye in [vertebrates](Vertebrate - Wikipedia)

Many scientists have found the evolution of the eye attractive to study because the eye distinctively exemplifies an analogous organ found in many animal forms. Simple light detection is found in bacteria, single-celled organisms, plants and animals. Complex, image-forming eyes have evolved independently several times.[1]

This proto-intelligent ability to observe the environment was most probably the most effective in the quest for survival and the continued evolution up the scale among all species .
Imagine that light itself will feed plants via photosynthesis, that in turn feeds some 70 % of all mammals, and proto-butterflies (caterpillars)
Bonnie Bassler has a very informative and entertaining lecture on “quorum sensing” among bacteria among them light generating bacteria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXWurAmtf78.

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I don’t know how to respond to most of what you say, because you say things that I’ve never heard anywhere else, and can’t confirm, like that definition that you say is no longer used, yet comes up as the first hit, or the above quote. DNA doesn’t tell things anything, and doesn’t set environments, and what is “re-evolution of a brain”? Other than my social life during my college years, I don’t think my brain cells go through any culling.

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Definitions and our understanding gets so slippery, plus we keep learning new complexities.

As we keep finding new details and so our understand takes on new nuances. Here’s the sort of mind bending stuff I’m talking about. My original formative scientific understanding started in the 60s/70s. Half a century ago plus, I’ve notice when I catch up topic that I’ve had flings with in the past. The breakthroughs are amazing, yet I process them in relation to my earlier understanding, questions, and personal predictions,

This video seems quite serious, science based, don’t think I notice any red flags that raise my bristles so I trust and am amazed . . . and will be curious how these notions stand up to the passage of time.

How NOT To Think About Cells

SubAnima

Oct 14, 2022 #cell #veritasium

A few years ago Veritasium posted a video portraying ‘molecular machines’. But is that really the right way to think about the inner workings of our cells? Are we all just running on molecular clockwork?

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The answers are not that hard to find.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010281117

Since write4u was talking about the eye, let’s explore that. DNA does not provide a set of instructions for building a robot. It sets a chemical environment in which those initial conditions produce a predictable outcome. The order in which fetal development follows the evolution of the species is a macro scale example. Note the stages of the fetal development of the eye in this article. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1628748/ The emergence and subsequent pruning of gill slits during fetal development is a more famous example.

Pruning of brain cells continues throughout life so I’m not sure why the first article didn’t mention that. In a way it is the selection of the fittest. The process simply slows down or is suspended after development. The really interesting thing is that if you ask why hair grows longer on the top of your head than on your back the answer is also a reflection of the process. The two types of hair do not have separate instruction sets. Like fetal development it is the chemical environment produced by adjacent cells and competition between cells that are the “instruction set”. Throughout our discussions we have been focused on initial conditions producing patterns. Again I recommend the work of Stephan Wolfram to get a better understanding of how complex chaotic systems work.

Now I’m not going to say that it is completely unlike building a robot. All you really have to understand is the difference between when there is a “builder” and when it is self construction. The absence of a builder complicates the process considerably. Somehow nature had to find a way to do without the builder and still keep the process reasonably simple. It is no coincidence that the process mimics the evolution of species or that there is so much “junk” in DNA.

I think we are so used to top down design that it is hard for us to get used to the idea of bottom up design. We have a good idea of how it works at the macro level but are just now exploring how it works at the micro level.

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Why do I need to understand this? What does it tell me about intelligence?

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Your explanation is more or less the same as Dennett’s which is basically how things are hidden in complexity. Dennett takes it a bit farther to show how the brain fills in a lot of missing pieces as part of his explanation of consciousness. He almost says that consciousness is an illusion. I wouldn’t argue with that. My argument is that you can use the same logic to say that emergence is an illusion. If the initial conditions determine the outcome of the pattern then the whole was contained in the initial part. In less philosophical terms it couldn’t have been otherwise. If you know what the initial conditions were then you know what the outcome would be regardless of complexity. Now I’m sure that Dennett has thought that through but I don’t recall him discussing it. Instead of focusing on complexity I like to focus on randomness.

See my response to lausten to get an idea why.

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We don’t have a good definition of intelligence but we know it when we see it.

I like to say there are no non trivial absolute truths. Once something is “known” it becomes trivial. Intelligence is a non trivial issue. In another thread we discussed “knowing” which is another not trivial issue. There are trivial truth about intelligence such as humans are more intelligent than ants. We call such truths self evident. In the same thread I believe we discussed how the laws of nature is a less popular saying today because the more you know the more you know what you don’t know. What we don’t know about intelligence for example is how it is distinguishable from AI.

The answer I believe can be found in randomness. The point of my previous post was to show that the development of the brain is a random process that mimics evolution. Everything including baking bread or the mixing of chemical depends on randomness. At this point it is important that to remember that we have no idea what randomness is. Anymore than we know what zero or non existence is. It is impossible to experience non existence. Similarly you cannot experience randomness. I’m going to put aside quantum uncertainty because I don’t believe that level of detail is necessary for the question. You will have to be patient because I’m going to repeat myself a lot :slight_smile:

One of the aspect of intelligence that we are all familiar with is “genius”. We can’t define it but we know what it is when we see it. That brings up a whole epistemological argument but I’m going to skip it just like quantum uncertainty. What distinguishes genius from high intelligence is that while high intelligence is a necessary condition it is insufficient for genius. It is my opinion that the missing ingredient is imagination. It turns out that a genius is someone who can generate a large number of mental mutations and sort through them to find the ones that are “fit”. A process that mimics evolution.

What distinguishes a computer from a microbe is intelligence. On close examination a microbe like our genius has “imagination”. It is randomness that makes it intelligent. I have study the topic and found that even bacteria have what you might call swarm intelligence. (the relevant papers I have lost track of but were part of my original argument with the neurologist) Swarm intelligence like baking a cake takes advantage of randomness. The bacterial example involve a lot of complicated biology but we can look at bees for a macro example. Bees fly off in “random” actual not so random but for our purposes we will call them random) directions. If one bee finds food it communicates that to another bee so on and so forth until the best sources of food are “discovered”. Our brains work in a similar way but at the micro level. You can use the analogy of organs being colonial structures of cells.

We don’t have a good definition of intelligence but we know it when we see it.

I like to say there are no non trivial absolute truths. Once something is “known” it becomes trivial. Intelligence is a non-trivial issue. In another thread we discussed “knowing” which is another not trivial issue. There are trivial truths about intelligence such as humans are more intelligent than ants. We call such truths self-evident. In the same thread I believe we discussed how the laws of nature is a less popular saying today because the more you know the more you know what you don’t know. What we don’t know about intelligence for example is how it is distinguishable from AI.

The answer I believe can be found in randomness. The point of my previous post was to show that the development of the brain is a random process that mimics evolution. Everything including baking bread or the mixing of chemicals depends on randomness. At this point it is important to remember that we have no idea what randomness is. Anymore than we know what zero or non existence is. It is impossible to experience non-existence. Similarly you cannot experience randomness. I’m going to put aside quantum uncertainty because I don’t believe that level of detail is necessary for the question. You will have to be patient because I’m going to repeat myself a lot :slight_smile:

One of the aspects of intelligence that we are all familiar with is “genius”. We can’t define it but we know what it is when we see it. That brings up a whole epistemological argument but I’m going to skip it just like quantum uncertainty. What distinguishes genius from high intelligence is that while high intelligence is a necessary condition it is insufficient for genius. It is my opinion that the missing ingredient is imagination. It turns out that a genius is someone who can generate a large number of mental mutations and sort through them to find the ones that are “fit”. A process that mimics evolution.

What distinguishes a computer from a microbe is intelligence. On close examination a microbe like our genius has “imagination”. It is randomness that makes it intelligent. I have studied the topic and found that even bacteria have what you might call swarm intelligence. (the relevant papers I have lost track of but were part of my original argument with the neurologist) Swarm intelligence like baking a cake takes advantage of randomness. The bacterial example involves a lot of complicated biology but we can look at bees for a macro example. Bees fly off in “random” actual not so random but for our purposes we will call them random) directions. If one bee finds food it communicates that to another bee so on and so forth until the best sources of food are “discovered”. Our brains work in a similar way but at the micro level. You can use the analogy of organs being colonial structures of cells.

I would like to make the argument that it is not just life that wouldn’t exist but that nothing would exist without randomness, perhaps the secret hidden in quantum uncertainty but it is above my pay grade. In any case I’m only interested in biology. Mostly at the macro level.

I have skipped all the supporting evidence because it doesn’t seem to me this format is about that. If all we wanted was information we would have just gone to the original sources ourselves. What we are engaged in is social, looking for a bit of swarm intelligence. None of the ideas I’m presenting are my own but are taken from people more intelligent than I am, I have benefited from swarm intelligence. The point of this last paragraph is that knowing is not intelligence. Knowing as I said is trivial.