Bacterial Intelligence? (General)

by dhw, Saturday, January 24, 2015, 18:39 (3373 days ago)

I have found a very long but revealing discussion on this subject: -
The secret life of bacteria - small, smart and thoughtful! - All In ... - ABC-http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-secret-life-of-bacteria--...25 Oct 2008 ... Controversially, bacteria could even have cognitive talents that rival our own. -Below are a few quotes concerning some of the controversial topics we have been covering. Stock appears to agree that this is chemistry in action, but please note his other comments as well as Pamela Lyon's and the emphasis on “mind”. You will like “In the beginning was mind”. I found one website which suggests that J. Arthur Thomson's beliefs tended towards theistic panpsychism. -Natasha Mitchell: I mean many would argue that even a basic nervous system is a prerequisite for cognition, and it's been a controversial suggestion, hasn't it, that bacteria are somehow cognitive. Why the controversy?
James Shapiro: Large organisms chauvinism, so we like to think that only we can do things in a cognitive way.-xxxxx-Jeffry Stock: They behave intelligently with respect to their environment and change themselves in response to environmental stimuli. What else is intelligence?
Natasha Mitchell: Couldn't it be argued that this sort of behaviour that you've spent a career measuring in bacteria is simply a case of chemistry in action, they detect their chemical environment and act accordingly?
Jeffry Stock: Absolutely, that's what they do.
 
xxxxx-Natasha Mitchell: And yet this idea that bacteria might display cognitive talents, that they might come to know the world as you describe it rather than bump into it, is deeply controversial and for some very kooky.
Pamela Lyon: Absolutely, because of this notion that became extraordinarily powerful in the 20th century that living creatures are essentially machines. We can say it's all chemistry, we are all chemistry too, that hormones can have profound cognitive effects on us.
[Reading]:
We must assume that there was something corresponding to mind in the first living creatures, just as is true of the first stages in the making of the individual man. It was part of the philosophical teaching of Aristotle that there is nothing in the end which was not also in kind in the beginning. Therefore, as we are sure that there is mind in the end, we may also, as evolutionists say -- In the beginning was mind.
1926 Professor J Arthur Thomson: The Gospel of Evolution.-xxxxx-Pamela Lyon: ...On the property list of things that cognition has to include you have perception, decision making, some ability to value states of affairs in the world -- like this is good for me, this is bad for me. [...]
James Shapiro: I think the equation nervous system equals cognition is perhaps confusing us more than it's enlightening us. There are many, many cells which have all kinds of sensory receptors and ways of picking up information and then making use of it. And many of them don't have a differentiated nervous system. [...]
Natasha Mitchell: Certainly though -- could we go as far as to say that a colony of bacteria possess self awareness?
James Shapiro: I find that a hard question to answer, we don't yet know a great deal about self awareness. We know that there are interactions between bacterial colonies, and they can sometimes discriminate self from non-self. Take antagonistic actions from one colony to another. I think we need to investigate that more with an open mind. You know I think the concept of self awareness is probably essential to life [...] So the cell has sensory systems to pick up information about when mistakes are made and transmit that information so the cell can then undertake the appropriate action to continue its growth or to survive or to stop replicating its DNA while it's being repaired. And if that isn't self awareness I don't know what is.-xxxxx-Natasha Mitchell [commenting on Stock's belief that bacteria have a “nanobrain”]: But should we be calling it a brain, isn't that going one step too far?
Jeffry Stock: Maybe. Well it's a brain in that it functions like a brain, it takes information like our brains do from our various sensory inputs and then it makes decisions that control motor activity. [...]Koshland said that there's no question that bacteria are the most intelligent organisms on earth, at least on a per gram weight basis because they are so small.-Xxxxxxxxxxx-Jeffry Stock: Most of the major universities in the United States at Harvard, at Yale, at Berkeley, at Princeton have really begun to delve into these organisms as models for understanding cognition without all the trappings that come with our human-centric view of intelligence.
Natasha Mitchell: [...] I mean what do bacteria give us that the artificial intelligence approach can't?
Jeffry Stock: That's a good point. People have a lot of problems imagining that bacteria have intelligence, that you know germs are thinking, cognizant, sentient organisms. But they have no problem at all in making that leap in terms of machines. But of course we put our brand of intelligence into the machines.-Xxxxxxxxxx-This is a very small, and drastically edited selection. They do not discuss the source or even the nature of consciousness, but the extent to which bacteria can be called cognitive, intelligent beings. Clearly a subject to be taken very seriously.