brain plasticity: and complexity (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 25, 2013, 17:42 (4170 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The glial cells are more than just supporting. They are active contributors and constantly working:-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/2013/06/24/a-secret-society-of-cell...-DAVID: (Under "Natures Wonders: modulating food supply") Plants manage starch consumption by feedback mechanisms akin to math formulas:-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22991838-I found these two articles fascinating, and once again would like to thank you for this constant stream of information. It's becoming clearer and clearer that organisms of all kinds comprise communities of cells which cooperate with one another to create an overall unit. I always go back to ants and bees as a visible example of such cooperation, because internal communities like brain cells remain invisible to us. (Ditto all our other organs.) These cells are not consciously controlled by us ... they do their work independently, and their work entails some form of inner "intelligence". The same applies to plants, with their intricate maths calculations.
 
Commenting on the plant research, Dr Richard Buggs of Queen Mary, University of London, said: "This is not evidence for plant intelligence. It simply suggests that plants have a mechanism designed to automatically regulate how fast they burn carbohydrates at night. Plants don't do maths voluntarily and with a purpose in mind like we do."-I don't know how Dr Buggs is able to read the mental processes of plants, although I'm sure his statement accords with what most of us believe. It certainly fits in with David's theories of design (Dr Buggs actually uses the word), but it also fits in with panpsychism if we follow the concept I quoted earlier: "there may be varying degrees in which things have inner subjective or quasi-conscious aspects, some very unlike what we experience as consciousness." This is why I prefer to put "intelligence" in inverted commas. Once we accept the idea that every organ and organism is a community or an assembly of communities, the pattern of evolution becomes very clear: a continual process of "intelligent" cells combining in different and increasingly complex ways.
 
The crunch question remains how the mechanism first came into being. No startling revelations here, I'm afraid. It's still our three equally fantastic hypotheses: design (theistic), chance (atheistic), panpsychist evolution (theistic or atheistic).