[HN Gopher] The philosophical and spiritual views of Barbara McC...
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The philosophical and spiritual views of Barbara McClintock
Author : superb-owl
Score : 42 points
Date : 2023-02-26 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (superbowl.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (superbowl.substack.com)
| jalk wrote:
| I have said it for many years: At some point there will be people
| who will only eat synthetic food, because they don't want to harm
| plants/fungus etc. - working title is "Syntheanians"
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| So... rather than eating food made from plants they'd eat food
| made in a plant?
| jacquesm wrote:
| The machinery used to create that food will be just as
| conscious as the plants we're eating today.
| modzu wrote:
| for a deeper dive into this sort of idea i recommend reading
| "mind in life" by evan thompson
| superkuh wrote:
| Conciousness and language in animals is a form of abstracted
| motor action planning*. If it turns out some plants are sentient
| (or even sapient) their "consciousness" will likely be different
| enough to deserve a new word.
|
| * see the book Rodolfo R Llinas wrote, "I of the Vortex: From
| Neurons to Self". Llinas was the discoverer of the mechanism by
| which myelinated axons conduct action potentials among a dozen
| other fundemental neural processes or neuroscience techniques.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodolfo_Llin%C3%A1s
| edgyquant wrote:
| Language is sure, but consciousness itself is a big [citation
| needed]. I also don't think it needs a new word. If trees are
| aware of themselves and their surrounding then they are
| consciousness even if they aren't sentient.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| Try missing to water your plants for a week or two and then spend
| some quiet time around them, as an experiment.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| With the intuition I have built up over decades of caring for
| plants, I can "feel" them crying out for water. But that
| feeling is more a combination of observation and learned
| outcomes. A dry plant shows, through its color and appearance,
| that it is thirsty. The same goes for many plant ailments.
|
| As a side note, I live in a rainforest. Just after a rain when
| the clouds break, the forest is the "happiest". I am sure part
| of that feeling is happiness I myself feel at the beauty of
| glittering raindrops on plants and crepuscular rays in the
| mist. But, the forest feels happy too. The birds are singing
| and the animals emerge to play in the sun. Truly an amazing
| feeling.
| slibhb wrote:
| > I found that the more I worked with [the chromosomes] the
| bigger and bigger [they] got, and when I was really working with
| them I wasn't outside, I was down there. I was part of the
| system. I was right down there with them, and everything got big.
| I even was able to see the internal parts of the chromosomes--
| actually everything was there. It surprised me because I actually
| felt as if I were right down there and these were my friends.
|
| Sounds remarkably similar to controversial Canadian pyschologist
| Jordan Peterson talking to Richard Dawkins about how a mushroom
| trip allowed him to experience DNA:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbGoUwmqIEQ&t=2473s
| resource0x wrote:
| If plants are conscious, then it stands to reason to assume every
| life form is conscious -> a bacterium is conscious -> any cell in
| our body is conscious. I tried to google "single cell
| consciousness" and found a few articles that briefly touch on the
| idea. But then it doesn't take a leap of imagination to
| conjecture that my own consciousness is in fact the consciousness
| of a single "special" cell. It might be located in the brain, but
| not necessarily.
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems awfully fragile. What happens if that cell dies? Do
| you turn into a p-zombie? :)
|
| Scientists have been studying brain damage for a long time, and
| it seems pretty clear that minds are more distributed than
| that. Oliver Sacks wrote a lot about this sort of thing.
| resource0x wrote:
| I don't know what happens if that cell dies. The person may
| die. Or another neuron may take over (e.g. after coma). But
| under the new management, the person won't be the same as
| before. This is not something unheard-of. There are
| precedents. There are some neurons that control muscles. If
| the neuron dies, the brain loses control over this muscle.
| There's no regeneration, and no other neuron takes over.
| broast wrote:
| I'm a fan of the thousand brain theory of consciousness.
| Something like our consciousness is the experience of a
| democratic voting process involving all the cells in our body.
| [deleted]
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yea cells probably do know they are a thing but is that really
| consciousness or should we call it "awareness." Your own
| consciousness is likely a combination of this or even what you
| experience as sentience is the swapping of attention between
| these different cells that point to trees of thought.
|
| This is at least what I've come to believe after meditation.
| resource0x wrote:
| Suppose my consciousness is localized in a single neuron.
| This neuron is connected to thousands of other neurons, each
| of which is connected to... etc, so the "me"-cell indirectly
| receives inputs from the entire body. The swapping of
| attention, as well as any other effect you can think of,
| could conceivably be implemented by a "me"-cell alone, just
| based on the interplay of inputs.
| superb-owl wrote:
| I've never fully understood his thinking, but I think that's
| basically Daniel Dennett's argument in From Bacteria to Bach
| and Back [1]. He makes it while somehow simultaneously denying
| panpsychism and the reality of consciousness itself.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Bacteria_to_Bach_and_Back
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| If you find this fascinating then [1] Panpsychis may be a fun
| hole for you to go down.
|
| Basically consciousness is a fundamental property of the
| universe.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
| edgyquant wrote:
| I think that scientifically speaking this is a step too far.
| It makes sense for a cell to have developed awareness, it
| doesn't make sense for a rock to be consciousness
| fundamentally speaking; or at least doesn't seem falsifiable
| ever.
| resource0x wrote:
| I know, panpsychism is a logical next step, but we are very
| far away from being able to study the consciousness of the
| atom. A bacterium could be a simpler target of practical
| research. There's a lot of "intelligence" in the living
| organisms, which potentially can be utilized and eventually
| lead to a real AGI.
| akomtu wrote:
| Today, the science practices double-think: on the one hand
| it claims that the entire universe is one big wave function
| that evolves as one and can't be split into parts, but on
| the other hand it would call you a heretic if you use this
| wave function reasoning to claim a connection to a plant
| or, worse, to a rock.
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