Bacterial Intelligence? (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, January 25, 2015, 01:20 (3369 days ago) @ dhw
edited by dhw, Sunday, January 25, 2015, 09:41

dhw: I have found a very long but revealing discussion on this subject: 
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> The secret life of bacteria - small, smart and thoughtful! - All In ... - ABC
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> http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-secret-life-of-bacteria--... website find! Of course you and I differ in our view of the comments
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> dhw: Below are a few quotes concerning some of the controversial topics we have been covering. -I like this quoteamela Lyon: Microbiologists use words like 'memory', 'decision making' you know they even talk about bacteria 'talking' to one another. Now press an individual microbiologist, they might say it's just a manner of speaking. But others find it very, very useful to describe behaviour in these terms.-Those terms make is easy to understand, because that is the way we react and we think and it is chemistry in action, controlled by intelligent information in the DNA of the bacteria. You and I differ on the source of the information.-> 
> Natasha Mitchell: I mean many would argue that even a basic nervous system is a prerequisite for cognition, and it's been a controversial suggestion, hasn't it, that bacteria are somehow cognitive. -Of course cognitive, in its broadest sense.
 
> Jeffry Stock: They behave intelligently with respect to their environment and change themselves in response to environmental stimuli. What else is intelligence?
> Natasha Mitchell: Couldn't it be argued that this sort of behaviour that you've spent a career measuring in bacteria is simply a case of chemistry in action, > Jeffry Stock: Absolutely, that's what they do.-Yes!-> [Reading]:
> We must assume that there was something corresponding to mind in the first living creatures, ... Therefore, as we are sure that there is mind in the end, we may also, as evolutionists say -- In the beginning was mind.
> 1926 Professor J Arthur Thomson: The Gospel of Evolution.-Without question!-> James Shapiro: You know I think the concept of self awareness is probably essential to life [...] So the cell has sensory systems to pick up information about when mistakes are made and transmit that information so the cell can then undertake the appropriate action to continue its growth or to survive And if that isn't self awareness I don't know what is.-Just fine with me.-I prefer this version of the quote you limited:- "they all have the same apparatus for processing information. And that apparatus consists of thousands of protein fibres so the structure of the protein is similar to hair, and I originally called it a hairbrain -- but the fibres are made in E coli there are about 10,000 of these fibres and at one end of each fibre is a little glob of protein that binds a spectrum of chemicals in the environment. And at the other end is a glob of protein that produces a signal that controls the motor and in between there's this bundle of interacting hairs, sort of, that do the information processing. The amount of information encoded in that fibre network is impossibly complex to actually work out for any particular network. One of the reasons I thought it was like a brain was because you'll never really figure out how one works.-"Natasha Mitchell: You suggest that these nano brains can process up to 10 to the 8, that's 10 with eight zeros after it bits of information per second. Information like temperature and the nutrients in the environment; salts, Ph, measure the Ph, that sort of thing. But should we be calling it a brain, isn't that going one step too far? (my Bold)-"Jeffry Stock: Maybe. Well it's a brain in that it functions like a brain, it takes information like our brains do from our various sensory inputs and then it makes decisions that control motor activity. So that's what a brain does, if you don't move, you're a plant and you don't have a brain. And bacteria that don't move don't have this apparatus. It's specialised for bacteria that move, which is what brains do. What do we mean by intelligence? It isn't really all about another organism communicating with us, that's not what intelligence is about. Intelligence is about taking information in the environment and making decisions that are advantageous to the organism. -We are seeing the participants discuss the intelligent handling of enormous amounts of information through bacterial genome controls, which per force, must contain huge amounts of intelligent information to do the interpretations.- 
> dhw: Jeffry Stock: Most of the major universities in the United States at Harvard, at Yale, at Berkeley, at Princeton have really begun to delve into these organisms as models for understanding cognition without all the trappings that come with our human-centric view of intelligence...... People have a lot of problems imagining that bacteria have intelligence, that you know germs are thinking, cognizant, sentient organisms. -I have always viewed bacteria as intelligently designed. Please consider the origin of life and recognize that the first cells had to be close to this level of complexity. This is one of the major reasons I believe in God. The information involved in a bacteria running its life is beyond belief. That information cannot have been developed by chance or any unguided process.