.....Oh, and just for 'comfort level', Gregg was insightful enough (as
usual) to point me to Arthur W. Staats's "The Marvelous Learning Animal"
when he saw where I was going with my bottom-up cellular-molecular take. I
can transpose 'learning' with "phenotype as agent", just to put a point on
my point. I would like to suggest that learning is the organism's purpose
or biological imperative based on the relationships I have pointed out in
my previous post. This insight speaks volumes about our need for knowledge,
curiosity, creativity. I would also throw in that if there's a connection
between all of this and the Singularity, Artificial Intelligence cannot and
will not usurp Native Intelligence! lest we give up our 'birthright'....jst

On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 1:23 PM, JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I am supportive of the idea of starting with the most basic of organisms
> when considering these issues. For starters, I found this link regarding
> habituation in the slime mold (https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.sciencedaily.com_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=VueV9RRj2uWggvIkcExKwb1jOmDplV8WWOBiPFRnkaM&s=yojlnZ-GNcOSh5X-w6ASYOchG45SZz66-Ou6mwpBAhA&e= 
> releases/2016/04/160427081533.htm
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.sciencedaily.com_releases_2016_04_160427081533.htm&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=sPgIM_SyKN6WedZyXCsOZzLO1btRTND2WddDCqmqqSo&s=tYQMv9zzth8JI3D_7N5X7OvbyBPctoK3PEwIiXFR2GE&e=>).
>
>
>
>
> In my discussions with Gregg over the past several months, I have
> explained my 'epiphany' regarding the centrality of thinking about how the
> protocell resolved the relationship between the internal and external
> environments. In a number of publications, I have outlined a view called
> “The First Principles of Physiology”, which orients the reader to thinking
> about many of the issues that Jason refers to, particularly those where
> he reduces the problem to the unicellular state, which is where I ended up
> biologically by reverse-engineering the mammalian lung a decade ago. The
> First Pinciples are composed of 1) negentropy, or negative entropy (free
> energy, Schrodinger, 'What is Life', 1944); 2) Chemiosmosis, which is Peter
> Mitchell's explanation for how bioenergy originated (1961); 3) homeostasis,
> or the maintenance of energetic balance biologically, but more so how the
> cell(s) recognizes the stress of being out of balance, and then correcting
> the imbalance by 'autoengineering' itself based on the principles of
> self-referential self-organization. (BTW, this is not metaphysics.....when
> the cell senses physiologic stress it generates Radical Oxygen Species that
> cause mutations and gene duplications).
>
> Up until 2017 there was no experimental evidence for this phenomenology,
> but then two independent labs showed that Yttrium atoms self-align
> spontaneously. Theoretically, I have hypothesized that the origin of
> self-referential self-organization came about as a result of the Big Bang,
> for which there must have been and 'equal and opposite reaction' based on
> Newton's Third Law of Motion. The 'reaction' was balanced chemical
> reactions, black holes and stellar evolution on the physical side, and
> 'life' as we know it on the biologic side. In combination with the
> realization that evolution is serial pre-adaptations or exaptations or
> co-options (depending upon who you read), and the concept of Niche
> Construction (the organism forming its own environment), particularly when
> the cell is considered the first Niche Construction (Torday JS. The Cell as
> the First Niche Construction. Biology (Basel). 2016 Apr28;5(2)), offers
> insight to the continuum from the unicell to Gaia (the theory that the
> Earth is an organic whole). More importantly, it offers the opportunity to
> trace what we think of as consciousness all the way from the
> Singularity/Big Bang to complex physiology and mind as an integral whole.
> This, coupled with the emerging understanding of epigenetics, the active
> obtaining of information from the environment in the form of what are
> referred to as epigenetic 'marks', provides even greater insight into the
> basic nature of evolution. That is to say, if the organism is a vehicle for
> collecting epigenetic marks, the phenotype can be seen to have active
> 'agency'. To restate that, the epigenetic marks are assimilated by the egg
> and sperm of the organism. The epigenetic marks are subsequently acquired
> by the zygote after fertilization, leading to new genetic traits in the
> offspring. So if the 'Phenotype as Agent' is thought of in psychological
> terms as 'behavior', then there is a merging of evolution, physiology,
> consciousness and mind into one holistic psychological entity. By seeing
> the processes involved in 'self' from this perspective many aspects of the
> organism can be understood causally, beginning from the origins of life as
> a continuum rather than as anecdotes, dogmas, teleology or tautology. This
> is particularly true because development is the only mechanism we know of
> in biology that is non-teleologic, and non-tautologic. When combined with
> phylogeny, evolution can be seen objectively.
>
>
> One of the most interesting connections between the cell and the
> mind/brain is the idea that there is a connection between the cell
> membrane, the skin and the brain. A big breakthrough in understanding brain
> evolution was the paper on skin-brain (Holland ND. Early central nervous
> system evolution: an era of skin brains? Nat Rev Neurosci. 2003
> Aug;4(8):617-27). *This gives rise to the idea that the brain is almost
> the skin turned inward*. (OR PUT IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE).
>
>
>
> There is a lot more to say, but I think I will end it here for now with a
> point that the questions of physiological organization that Jason is
> seeing from animals into cells actually goes very deep. In fact, I trace
> the organization all the way into physics and quantum mechanics and back to
> the Big Bang. More on those pieces later.
>
>

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