The science and philosophical implications of bioelectric fields

I added time stamps to the Talk in the OP, not sure if Essentia added it later or I just had a glitch in my own Matrix heh and forgot to post it...Apologies!

@Laird : Tried to jump around and find the timestamp regarding Levin speaking about the egg, but didn't find it.

However this *might* clarify things ->

[Laird]

However this *might* clarify things ->

Kinda-sorta but not really.

In different places he refers to "bioelectric pattern memory" and "bioelectric code". Another way of asking my question then is: we know where "genetic code" is stored (in DNA), but where is "bioelectric code" stored? At 5:09 Michael says that "these are literally held in the electrical circuits across large tissues", but of course this presupposes large tissues, which are obviously not present at the start in a fertilised egg.

I'm thinking, then, that your comment at the start of post #2 in this thread might be very meaningful:

the relation to Sheldrake's work on Morphic Fields is rather obvious

Could it be that Michael's discovery, this "bioelectric code", is in fact stored in what Rupert refers to as a morphogenetic field and transmitted via what he refers to as morphic resonance?:

How are these fields inherited? I propose that that they are transmitted from past members of the species through a kind of non-local resonance, called morphic resonance.

Could it be that Michael would agree with the need for "non-local resonance" given that he doesn't seem to supply any other "location" in which the bioelectric code is stored right at the start of foetal development, as we have for the genetic code via DNA?

Kinda-sorta but not really.

In different places he refers to "bioelectric pattern memory" and "bioelectric code". Another way of asking my question then is: we know where "genetic code" is stored (in DNA), but where is "bioelectric code" stored? At 5:09 Michael says that "these are literally held in the electrical circuits across large tissues", but of course this presupposes large tissues, which are obviously not present at the start in a fertilised egg.

I'm thinking, then, that your comment at the start of post #2 in this thread might be very meaningful:


Could it be that Michael's discovery, this "bioelectric code", is in fact stored in what Rupert refers to as a morphogenetic field and transmitted via what he refers to as morphic resonance?:


Could it be that Michael would agree with the need for "non-local resonance" given that he doesn't seem to supply any other "location" in which the bioelectric code is stored right at the start of foetal development, as we have for the genetic code via DNA?

Hmm I honestly don't know. He does mention in a few places that he believes in some kind of Platonism, and that evolution is trying to utilize pointers to the Platonic Space.

Perhaps he believe that the field draws upon the Platonic Space to orient itself, and then this in turn allows for top down causation?

[Laird]

Perhaps he believe that the field draws upon the Platonic Space to orient itself, and then this in turn allows for top down causation?

Perhaps, but that's only a partial explanation: what ties the organism (and in particular the initial fertilised cell) to a particular "Platonic form" by which it orients itself?

[Laird]

I should add that your suggestion is perhaps anyway compatible with Rupert's paradigm too - they're perhaps simply two different ways of framing or conceptualising roughly the same idea.

[Laird]

Hmm I honestly don't know.

Based on one of the videos you shared in another thread, Rupert Sheldrake doesn't think Michael knows either.

Based on one of the videos you shared in another thread, Rupert Sheldrake doesn't think Michael knows either.

Yeah I'd personally lean toward Sheldrake, but Levin is definitely closer to mainstream academia.

I think ultimately it will come down to some STEM academics who are at least open to non-materialist ideas like Platonism to enact change across time.

Elusive but everywhere

Daniel W McShea

A new theory argues that unseen ‘fields’ guide all goal-directed things in the Universe, from falling rocks to voyaging turtles

So, caught between modern science and our intuitions about teleology, we seem to have only two ways of explaining the apparent goal directedness in some systems: teleology or mechanism. Both are troublesome. Both are inadequate. In recognition of this problem, philosophers of biology and others have, in recent decades, been struggling to find an alternative. We believe we have found it: a third way that reconciles Aristotelian thinking about goal directedness with the mechanistic view of a Newtonian universe. This alternative explains the apparent seeking of all goal-directed entities, from developing acorns and migrating sea turtles to self-driving cars and human intentions. It proposes that a hidden architecture connects these entities. It even explains falling rocks.

We call it ‘field theory’.

Guidance is external, but not in the way you might think. It is not external to the entire embryo, but external to each body part. Guidance comes from ‘morphogenetic fields’ that are set up by the embryo itself. It is these fields that supply the cells contained within them with guidance about what to do: where to move, what to secrete, when to divide. These fields are composed of molecules, produced by genes deep inside an embryo’s cells, but the genes are not the source of guidance. They are just factories. And the molecules they manufacture combine to produce a chemical field around the growing body parts, directing their behaviour. This is where the notion of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ becomes trickier. This field is inside the embryo, of course, but is present over a broad area, outside the target cells and tissues, omnipresent and ready to correct them when they inevitably deviate.

We acknowledge there are problems to resolve. Fields are often elusive, invisible and intangible. In particular, the fields that guide us as people, the wants our consciousness is bathed in, are poorly understood. We see them only vaguely, from inside. Like gravitational fields, they seem to be everywhere and nowhere in particular. And like gravitational fields, they wield a mysterious power we have yet to fully understand.

[Laird]

Guidance comes from ‘morphogenetic fields’ that are set up by the embryo itself.

Similarly as with Michael Levin's idea, this doesn't explain where the field originally "is". From where does the embryo pull it? Is it curled up, nascent, inside the first fertilised cell, unfurling as cell division occurs? Or...?...

It still seems that Rupert Sheldrake's idea - or something like it - that morphic fields are nonlocal is necessary here.

The authors of this article do acknowledge the need for nonlocal fields in the context of human wants and social norms, so, presumably, they'd be open to that idea in the case of the morphogenetic fields that guide embryos, even though they don't say so explicitly.

They ‘told’ cancer to stop, and it did: The science and philosophical implications of bioelectric fields

Hans Busstra, MA
Prof. Michael Levin, PhD

"...Levin regards evolution as the process whereby nature explores a Platonic realm of possibilities, ‘hardware configurations’ that, in a sense, are pre-existing and waiting to be discovered. And when it comes to intelligence, Levin sees only collective intelligence, in the sense that all intelligent lifeforms we know of are structured as sets of cells. Therefore, we ourselves could also very well be part of a larger intelligence."

I find this interview problematical and somewhat confused. Most of the material in this interview doesn't relate to our at least partial understanding as proponents, of the issues of what is consciousness and what really is evolution. It's as if Levin is deliberately ignoring this area.

In a little more detail, the above quote and the later remarks on the nature of consciousness at the end of the interview seem to be hard to get my mind around. These supposed implications of the existence of bioelectric fields seem to not be relevant to the concensus of paranormal/spiritual and Intelligent Design proponents here. The remarks about the nature of consciousness don't relate to our partial at present understanding as proponents of the nature of consciousness as immaterial soul and spirit and in physical life intricately interpenetrating and inhabiting the brain's neural structure, and as a mobile center of consciousness temporarily separating from the brain during veridical NDE OBEs. The interview doesn't account for the large amount of empirical evidence for an afterlife associated with NDEs and also with CORTs.

Concerning the scientific findings regarding bioelectric fields, these fields by being electrical appear to be understandable by existing physics theory, and I think should be interpreted as just one more type of complexity of living organisms that ID research has discovered to be irreducibly complex and of necessity designed by a high intelligence or intelligences. If as he says Levin considers evolution as a process of nature, then he directly claims that evolution is no more than nature, and denies the manifold evidence for intelligent outside intervention in evolution.

Overall, the interview ignores the whole field of the paranormal and spiritual and as such seems to ignore this vast field of knowledge and philosophy, and comes across as some strange sort of quasi-physicalism.