Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Saturday, October 12, 2013, 14:45 (4059 days ago) @ David Turell

http://perdurabo10.tripod.com/id470.html-dhw (to David): As usual you are more interested in HOW cells communicate than in WHAT they communicate. The stories in this article [...]tell us that memories, experiences and characteristics are contained within the cells, and when the cells are moved into another person, they can change that person's identity. In other words, our cells ARE us. Your belief in an afterlife requires the survival of identity after the death of the cells. But if these are the actual containers of identity, and can even change a person's character by independently communicating with one another, it becomes difficult if not impossible to conceive how the identity itself can survive their death... -I raised this issue because it has powerful repercussions on our concepts of identity. However, in your reply, David, you returned to the intelligent cell. I'm quite happy to continue that discussion, and will touch on it again here in response to BBella, but it's a separate issue, since identity is linked to your concept of an afterlife, and the intelligent cell is a hypothesis offered mainly to explain the course of evolution. I'm therefore restructuring your response to keep the two issues apart, and I will put the intelligent cell on a separate thread.
 
DAVID: This article points out the sugestion that consciousness is somehow carried by transplanted cells to influence the recipient's consciousness. I'm fine with that observation, for it may well be true if van Lommel's theory that the brain is a receiver for consciousness is true. van Lommel's is a reasonable hypothesis for which we have no inkling of proof. I am willing to shift gears when we are at this level of supposition. After all I believe there is universal consciousness and species consciousness.-But you also believe that consciousness is a product of biochemical processes, and that is why I'm struggling to reconcile your different beliefs. If the brain is the receiver (which you regard as a reasonable hypothesis) and not the producer of consciousness, how can consciousness be the product of biochemical processes? If the brain is the producer, as you believe at the moment, how can consciousness survive the death of the brain?
 
dhw: If the stories are to be believed (and why shouldn't they be?), memories and characteristics are stored in the cells. So do they "escape" from the dead cells, in some form of non-material energy? This would mean that the identity which emerges from the cells, even when we are alive, is non-material (= substance dualism). Is this what you believe?
 
DAVID: With universal consciousness pervading everything, yes I can believe.-Let me get this straight: God pervades everything, which means he pervades our cells, and so although according to you our consciousness (which with all its manifestations constitutes most of our identity) is produced by biochemistry, what is produced is an entity that can live independently of our biochemistry because...because...biochemistry has produced...what? A new piece of the universal consciousness which was already inside the producer? Do you not find this confusing?-BBELLA: This is getting near to how I view the intelligent cell. As you say above, David, "with universal consciousness pervading everything", it is understandable that the will of the ALL is carried out within and without all things, albeit the Quantum level. As for cell memory, it also makes sense to me that if certain cells never die because they were transplanted from one person to another that the first persons cells would holographically carry the memories of that person...-You and David like the idea of a "universal consciousness pervading everything", but David objects vehemently to the concept of panpsychism, which also promotes the idea of some form of consciousness pervading everything. What is anathema to David ... but perhaps not to you ... is the suggestion that this consciousness is not one supreme being who has planned and designed the universe and everything in it. The "intelligent" cell concept can be linked atheistically (it can also be theistic, though) with the idea of there being different forms and levels of intelligence, which can evolve into new forms as they combine and cooperate. Life, like the universe itself, would therefore be the product of an evolutionary process guided from within materials by intelligences of ever increasing complexity. Intelligence itself would be a form of energy (not the same as energy being intelligence), and the holograph would be the individualized intelligent energy of the person concerned. This might even be capable of surviving the death of the body's materials. In short, "universal consciousness" would not be one being, but the separate energies of all things and all beings. Pretty way out, perhaps, but no more so than chance creating the universe and life, or than a readymade superintelligence that came from nowhere.