On the origin of minds

On the origin of minds

Pamela Lyon

The philosopher Daniel Dennett, among the earliest cognitive philosophers to invoke evolution, dubbed natural selection ‘Darwin’s dangerous idea’ because it showed that the appearance of design in nature requires no designer, divine or otherwise. Like most of his colleagues, philosophical and scientific, Dennett didn’t buy the continuity of mental evolution. However, my view is that this neglected insight of Darwin’s was his most radical idea, one with the potential to induce a full-blown Copernican revolution in the cognitive sciences and to transform the way we see the world and our place in it.

These arrays might be processing more information than imagined. Escherichia coli recently were found to reject the bacterial equivalent of junk food due to sluggish growth. Chemotaxis, movement toward or away from some states of affairs, is one of E coli’s most energetically costly behaviours; it should be puzzling that bacteria will leave available food (the proverbial bird in the hand) and continue foraging for better nutrition elsewhere – except that the strategy often works. Caenorhabditis elegans, a small-brained worm, does this, too. If it has fed on high-quality food in the past, the tiny worm will leave poor-quality food in anticipation of finding something better. This discovery was a stunner at the time because such behaviour was assumed to require a ‘higher-order’ decision-making capacity.

The second challenge to neuroscience arrived when a heroic scientific success disclosed a ‘surprising failure’. The wiring diagram of the C elegans brain, a project started in cognitivism’s heyday, was completed. Connections between the worm’s 302 neurons were mapped, and behaviours associated with most cell types defined. Yet this stunning achievement revealed little about how and why a worm behaves the way it does – the aim of the research. According to the neuroscientist Cori Bargmann, C elegans studies ‘suggest that it will not be possible to read a [neural] wiring diagram as if it were a set of instructions’ for behaviour. This is for two main reasons...

On the origin of minds

Pamela Lyon

OMG

Did you post this for me?  My guess is not, but it is a gift to read.

 Just as we have come to think of our bodies as evolved from simpler forms of body, it is time to embrace Darwin’s radical idea that our minds, too, are evolved from much simpler minds. Body and mind evolved together and will continue to do so.

OMG

Did you post this for me?  My guess is not, but it is a gift to read.

I actually did think of you.

To me there is an interesting movement in biology where cognition goes lower and lower. How low it goes, if it hits some kind of Information-Panpsychism, will be interesting to see.

I actually did think of you.

To me there is an interesting movement in biology where cognition goes lower and lower. How low it goes, if it hits some kind of Information-Panpsychism, will be interesting to see.

thank you the link and for your consideration

I think the search for mind's source will mirror physics in a way - when objects got so small you began to see the effects of information/entropy involved with particles.  Both particles and observations contributing to outcomes in the model.

My guess not is Panpsychism, while enjoying "actual occasions" as a decent perspective.

When it gets down to inert chems moving over to an organized set of signals, usually electro-chemical, to be organized around a purpose - its mind not molecular bonds.   The molecular models are very accurate.  The purpose in a bio-signal - the message of living instruction - has to be modeled as semantic, and capable of copying and appending information objects - specifically affordances.

Down at the bottom its is simple objects interacting, for science to chart.  Physical objects - amazing to behold as both small and huge.  And a world of information objects that the mind of the simplest organisms can process.  

Absorbing food through a cell wall is a physical marvel in chemistry.  Likewise --- it a software programming triumph.  The action of mind is direct, and as you know Sci, I think folks are walking in the track blazed by J. J. Gibson with growing success.  The track where minds interact directly,  with the arrays of information in the environment.

Deeper down - what is behind life and mind?  What inspires health?  Well - that is personal and subjective for all of us.