Do cells have cognition?

[Diane]

http://www.enolagaia.com/M70-80BoC.html#I.

In reference to an earlier discussion over at noi about whether or not cells had cognition, I wanted to post this piece where Maturana lays out his logic. His thinking and that of Francisco Varela (now deceased) combined to form the Santiago theory.

The Santiago theory is based on systems theory, which in biology falls under the catagory of "organismic" biology, which I gather in living systems means that the 'whole is greater than the sum of the parts' by virtue of selforganizing principles that lead to ever more intricate interrelating layers of complexity that in us anyway, finally result in what we commonly think of as cognition. And the whole doesn't work without its parts. This would be in contrast to a "vitalistic" theory, which would place cognition into the realm of something coming into us from outside (religious). It's all about memes, isn't it?
Diane

[nari]

Diane, I love this topic's implications and am trying to find an article which goes into a lot of surmising and study on the cell's 'behaviour' origins, but cannot remember where I read it or who was the author....still looking for it as it was great.

It makes so much sense for cells to have this ability - I guess it was part of the dualism thinking which assumed there could be no cognition if there was no visible 'brain'.


Nari

[Diane]

I think this link that came from Eric needs to go right here.. it has tied a lot of things sensibly together.
http://www.psy.cmu.edu:16080/~davia/mbc/index.html

This is a link I could spend days studying.
Diane

[bernard]

Hi All,

I saw the topic on NOI and these links are very interesting but my lifetime will be not sufficient to apprehend all the material that members of forums bring to our minds.

I may be called a vitalistic systemiser/systematist because I love to de construct systems in subsystems to their minimal parts and then try to understand the behaviours and new property which are coming at each step of association.

Knowing properties of a minimal component is almost necessary to understand those which are a consequence of association of components.

Actually, our job/practice is once at the sub level and the other time at the whole place but without any chance to understand the subtle processes that take place between the two endings.

The main chance to understand a complex system is knowing and applying these quotes:

Divide and conquer

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not a bit simpler.

Once you get these ones, then it is possible to ride on concepts like inheritance, overriding properties...

[bernard]

First lesson about cells-systems.

1/ a single cell has properties but it is already a complex system.
To simplify, we can divide it in some subsystems =>
a/ membrane
b/ nucleus
c/ mitochondria
d/ water
e/ minerals and peptides...=> material
f/...add your favourites.

Each part does not function but the whole does. A cell is then a collection of subsystems. It may be called an object and this object has some objects in it...

[bernard]

Hello All,

The previous posts were a bit off topic but I liked to show you a way to resolve some complex problems.

Does really the two theories are incompatible? I don't think so because the two are intricate so far. If the reason of an unicellular being is surviving then it must embark some strategies to do the purpose.

1/ if one try to kill them in a hard way, the hardest will survive and give this ability to its children. It is possible to say that is adaptation and adaptation is based on mutations of DNA code. It knows that it is the best way for survive. A single cell is able to produce some very good defences when the situation needs them. We are losing some battles against bacteria because we thought in an unique direction => Kill. Wrong, Man! A better way would be => Kiss.

2/ Does that mean that a single cell is conscious at its level or it needs a collection to bring the property? If I do not know how function a component, is there a chance that I'll understand the system?

[fapt]

i think the cell has no cognition yet. :)
Cognition is came from the nerves activities.

[Diane]

Hi Lin,
I think the issue is really about how to define "cognition."
If we accept that the body is made of cells, and that cells evolved according to self-organization principles, then there would have been some sort of "learning" that went on prior to multicell oganisms with specialized nervous systems coming along.

Single cell organisms can "learn".... they sample their environment and develop strategies to survive, to reproduce. How do they do that? Self organizing principles and theories allow for small animals like single cell organisms to do that effortlessly through natural mechanisms. Then at every level of further complexity, these strategies are enhanced beyond the sum of the parts until voila, we have creatures that "learn" in the ways with which we are more familiar.

At least that's my understanding,
Diane

[bernard]

Hi All,

A misunderstanding may be carried with terms cognition and consciousness?
Is a cell conscious? Difficult answer for now!
Is a cell has cognition? Certainly, and as Diane said it, a cell is already a complete living being.
She knows its environment, she has strategies to bring a better survival to its children but one may say that its all instincts genetically programmed.

I may reply, yes, but in a sacred way of adaptation! Some scientists have tried to reproduce the behaviours of adaptation concerning the ability of walking of insects. Six limbs and the computer tried to find the best solution for walking. In all cases, computer found the solution adopted by Nature. It was the most economic and the simplest. So we may conclude that a cell is so complex as a computer and with a similar cognition/consciousness.

I may reply simply: NO. We programmed the computer but we didn't tell anything to the cell. It is able to self-programming and it must be a kind of microchip which knows, inside... :roll:

[nari]

Here's a bit of nonsense that I dreamed up some years ago as a supervisor who was going quietly nutty with 16 overworked staff members who were all swimming in different directions and beating different drums....

I thought naively to myself that it would be nice to be a unicellular creature, swimming around in a medium, thinking whatever, and when I came to an obstruction, I would simply swim around it instead of butting up against it like Sisyphus and his mountain.

I then figured that if this little organism had enough sense to swim around an obstruction, why couldn't I???
So I did. I learned to avoid confrontations thrown at me and still keep swimming. As soon as that filtered through my brain, strategies for impossible problems seemed easier to faciltiate...

I reckon that little guy behaved more intelligently than I had!!


Nari

[bernard]

Some conclusions at the moment!

1/ Nari is a single cell belonging to humanity's body!
2/ Nari is pretty close to embrace the Buddhist philosophy?
3/ I'm a cell, too.

[nari]

Am I a cell?

Most likely, especially when the physicists are talking happily about the entire bloomin' (Aussie slang) universe being neatly packaged up into one entity with a few million other parallel entities.

It is rather like a huge tower of Russian dolls - except they can't quite work out where the largest doll is, and inside, where the smallest is.....

I do not know much at all about Buddhism, and intend to find out one day.
It sounds, the little I know about it, a most sensible way of looking at the world outside of science.


Nari

[bernard]

Am I a cell?

Nari is a single cell belonging to humanity's body!

[Diane]

Nari wrote,
It is rather like a huge tower of Russian dolls - except they can't quite work out where the largest doll is, and inside, where the smallest is..

I am often struck by how the body is like that too: It is comprised of stretchy bundles of useful function packaged in layers, that while in most places slip over each other, remain interconnected and permit only so much motion. Sort of like layers of bandaging. So our bodies are like Russian dolls too, just not as big as the universe, to us. But from the point of view of one of our cells, (if cells could grasp and puzzle over such things) it might see the body it belongs to as something as big as a small planet, perhaps...
Diane