Cellular intelligence: cellular cognition (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 13, 2023, 17:49 (319 days ago) @ David Turell

A new paper on the subject:

https://evolutionnews.org/2023/06/cognitive-cells-a-newer-challenge-to-neo-darwinism/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0079610723000573?via%3Dihub

"Crick's Central Dogma has been a foundational aspect of 20th century biology, describing an implicit relationship governing the flow of information in biological systems in biomolecular terms. Accumulating scientific discoveries support the need for a revised Central Dogma to buttress evolutionary biology's still-fledgling migration from a Neodarwinian canon. A reformulated Central Dogma to meet contemporary biology is proposed: all biology is cognitive information processing. Central to this contention is the recognition that life is the self-referential state, instantiated within the cellular form. Self-referential cells act to sustain themselves and to do so, cells must be in consistent harmony with their environment. That consonance is achieved by the continuous assimilation of environmental cues and stresses as information to self-referential observers. All received cellular information must be analyzed to be deployed as cellular problem-solving to maintain homeorhetic equipoise. However, the effective implementation of information is definitively a function of orderly information management. Consequently, effective cellular problem-solving is information processing and management. The epicenter of that cellular information processing is its self-referential internal measurement. All further biological self-organization initiates from this obligate activity. As the internal measurement by cells of information is self-referential by definition, self-reference is biological self-organization, underpinning 21st century Cognition-Based Biology.

A comment from ID:

"So cells are smarter than we thought… ? They offer a brief look at the many bewilderingly complex feedback loops in typical cells. In their view, how should biology change? Here are some snippets from their Conclusion:

"When biology is framed as an informational interactome, all forms of biological expression interact productively in a continuous, seamless feedback loop. In that reciprocating living cycle, there is no privileged level of causation since all aspects of the cell as an organized whole participate in cellular problem-solving…

"So the cell acts on itself (self-organization) instead of merely being acted upon by the neo-Darwinian genes. But also, they write,

"The origin of self-referential cognition is unknown. Indeed, it can now be declared biology’s most profound enigma. Yet, that instantiation can be properly accredited as equating with the origin of life.

“'Self-Referential Cognition”
In short, we have no idea how cells, which have been around for billions of years, could become so complex that they can be compared to intelligent beings (“self-referential cognition”) without any design in nature at all. Well, maybe they couldn’t have. Maybe the main thing to take away here, whether the authors intend it or not, is this: If biologists don’t want intelligent design, they will surely need to come up with something more convincing than Crick’s materialism.

***

"...conundrums like this help us understand why panpsychism (all life forms/cells are conscious) is beginning to replace materialism in science.

"Here’s the Problem
In a nutshell: The only really satisfactory form of materialism is eliminative materialism, meaning that minds are merely what brains do and human consciousness is simply an evolved illusion. You are indeed nothing but a pack of neurons. But if so, that very theory is an illusion like all the others.

"In a world of awe-inspiringly complex life forms, it probably makes more sense for the materialist to adopt panpsychism. Thus words like “cognitive” and “self-referential” can be attached to cells without risk. I am not claiming that the authors are panpsychists, of course. My point is that their approach should be welcome to panpsychists.

"Anyway, there is a definite nudge in that direction. University of Chicago biochemist James Shapiro titled a 2021 journal paper “All living cells are cognitive.” The same year, prominent neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, said in a book excerpt at The Scientist, that we cannot deny viruses “some fraction” of intelligence, based on the way their strategies resemble those of insects.

***

"From a panpsychist perspective, human consciousness is not a mere illusion generated by a pack of neurons. It is the most highly developed known form of consciousness among life forms, all of which are conscious to some extent. That is, it is real in the same way that cell cognition and self-organization are real. So humans can learn about cells and propound theories about them that are not necessarily illusions but rather a meta level of consciousness.

"Of course, panpsychism doesn’t do much to resolve the “profound enigma” of how such a world of life could come to exist without any intelligent intention or design. But that’s not what the materialist most needs right now anyway. He most needs to believe that his own findings are not just a user illusion. He can admit the profound enigma and leave the matter there."

Comment: right on point for our discussion of life's use of information and to recognize design when we see it. And welcome back James Shapiro.