Cell Memories (Identity)

by David Turell , Thursday, October 17, 2013, 16:02 (3844 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw; One is a noun and the other is an adjective, and the noun consciousness means the state of being conscious. This is a non-argument. Self-awareness is a heightened state of consciousness.-Not true and I've just checked my dictionary. Conscious is awarenss with some degree of thought; consciousness is awareness and self-awareness. -> 
> dhw: I have never said that animal or plant or cell consciousness is like ours. I am suggesting ... yet again ... that when billions of "intelligent" organisms (cells) combine their intelligence, they are able to produce astonishing inventions. -Your only proof is that it happened. The only logical explanation is that they were provided with a plan.-
> 
> dhw: I'm a little surprised that you have not yet commented on the anecdotes I have posted on this thread, indicating that cell communities (particularly the heart) have memories of incidents, tastes, forms of behaviour, and are able to transfer all of these to other cell communities, even teaching them new forms of behaviour as well as historical facts.-Because the websites presenting these anecdotal stories are not presenting analyzed science, but stuff that is fun to think about. Transplants have a placebo effect like all treatments. You can't double-blind this stuff. But some of the anecdotal NDE's are vericidal, which makes those person's statements have validity.-> 
> dhw: Shapiro: 40 years experience as a bacterial geneticist have taught me that bacteria possess many cognitive, computational and evolutionary capabilities unimaginable in the first six decades of the 20th Century. Analysis of cellular processes such as metabolism, regulation of protein synthesis, and DNA repair established that bacteria continually monitor their external and internal environments and compute functional outputs based on information provided by their sensory apparatus. Studies of genetic recombination, lysogeny, antibiotic resistance and my own work on transposable elements revealed multiple widespread bacterial systems for mobilizing and engineering DNA molecules. Examination of colony development and organization led me to appreciate how extensive multicellular collaboration is among the majority of bacterial species. Contemporary research in many laboratories on cell-cell signaling, symbiosis and pathogenesis show that bacteria utilize sophisticated mechanisms for intercellular communication and even have the ability to commandeer the basic cell biology of "higher" plants and animals to
 meet their own needs. This remarkable series of observations requires us to revise basic ideas about biological information processing and recognize that even the smallest cells are sentient beings.
> http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/2006.ExeterMeeting.pdf
> http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/bacteria.html-I am acutely aware of Shapiro's statement above, having read it in the past. I am also aware that Shapiro describes the automatic biochemical reactions that produce baacterial awareness. I have always concluded that he is using the word sentient not with its underlying suggestion of thought, but as its strict dictionary definition: "responsive to or conscious of sense impressions." Sentience is "feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought". I think you are trying to stretch his meaning.