Further down the rabbit hole of complexity theory.
Scale and perspective.
We see natural phenomena that strike as us interesting and sophisticated, yet mindless. For instance, we see plants grow in the direction of the sun, some of them even turning towards it and tracking the movement of the sun across the sky. Does the plant “want” sunlight? Its reaction to the sun portrays a relationship between the two. The plant reacts to an outside stimulus. It’s taking in information from its environment– the location of the sun– and reacting to it, by repositioning itself to get the most benefits from the rays. This is plant mind, right? What is that?
We can say it’s cause and effect. The phenomenon is called phototropism. It’s quite simple– plant cells on the darker side of the stalk grow faster than on the lighter side and it tilts the whole plant in the opposite direction, in this case the direction of the sun. So is the plant doing anything? Those reactive cells are determining, as a collective, the “behavior” of the plant, in response to information coming from its environment (in this case photons), but he plant, as an entity on its own, isn’t determining any of that. It is that. This is the key point.
We still say the plant has no mind, and that it merely reacts. Similarly we see in the ant colony a mindless reaction that at first look would appear to be incredibly sophisticated: how does an entire colony self-organize, creating and administering different roles and positions and employing actual techniques for colonization and food aquisition and storage? How does that all occur without a brain figuring it all out?
The colony as a “thing” is existing reactively, and much like the plant, is really an entity of entities. Like the cells determining growth direction in the stalk, the individual ants of the colony determine the direction of the trail.
So fuck, keep going little monkeys.
At the scale of the tiny, the sub-atomic, particles are self organizing by matter of their physical properties. Atoms might bond in covalence because of a shared electron, and as now as a molecule they then might then bond or bind with other molecules for the same reasons (of valence). Molecules bind and combine and eventually, with the right combinations, form the simple proteins that eventually combine and become cells. The cell is an entity– but, like all entities, it’s an entity of entities, in this case molecules interacting. Zoom out again, and the ant itself is merely a collection of such cells– the colony is a collection of entities which are in turn individual collections of entities, and this keeps going, down into particles, and up into the universe.
This is all very important. We’ve chosen to define life in a particular way, and that definition might be inhibiting our ability to see a greater reality at play across the universe. At the level of the atoms, we see a true and clear mechanism of behavior. Same at the cellular level. The leap here is that the same applies to the ants as they march in their line. And the same for birds as they flock together. These complex systems are controlled by clearly identifiable properties, and chiefly among them is the negative feedback loop, something regulating behavior to keep it in a zone required for its survival, and that “desire” for survival is the same “desire” within the mind of a plant growing towards the sun. That is, it’s not generating the desire, it’s made of entities obeying basic rules. If members of the flock stray too far, the flock diminishes and the species has a lower chance of survival. If they fly too close, they lose the ability to fly at all and they reach a similar fate. If members of the ant colony go too far away from the line, they’re doomed, and if all members did that, the entire colony would die quickly. But if no members strayed from the line, then they’d never find new food sources and they’d be similarly doomed. The negative feedback loop is like a thermostat. When things get too extreme in one direction, it clicks on and brings things back down. When things get extreme going the other way, it clicks off and things head back in the other direction.
Human behavior is similar. Look at the organization of small human communities, maybe at the household level, then at the village level, the city and eventually the mega-city levels. Those systems are not the same– a family is not a neighborhood is not a city. But the collection of households within a city– families within a giant apartment complex, for example, the are the city. How does one become the other? Scale. Zoom down into the city and you’ll see distinct parts that comprise its existence. Zoom down into those parts and other systems are revealed. Continue zooming in and you’ll get to the complex system of cells operating within a single person. Only 20% of the cells within what we call a person are human at all. It’s an entirely different complex system– a city within, made up of thousands of inhabitants– with behaviors and properties and “desires” and patterns… and on the zoom out, that entire world comprises one single person. Continue down to the city within a cell, and the city within a molecule. There are universes everywhere, and nothing is outside of it.
It is one complex system. It is one mind. Mind doesn’t evolve from the complexity, from the star stuff through evolution. Mind is the complexity. Consciousness doesn’t arise from the building blocks of this questionable thing called life, consciousness is the complex system in which all of everything exists. Our evolved brains are merely transducers, temporarily sensing the system– the consciousness, within which everything exists.
