Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Thu 21 Jul 2005 06:28 AM PDT
From: "Jan Maslow" (jmaslow@jps.net>)
Date: July 21, 2005 6:28:27 AM PDT
To: rjon@vzavenue.net
Subject: Re: Question about challenging the materialist view of the evolution of consciousness
Reply-To: postaum2005@sriaurobindocenter-la.com
Hi Ron:
Thanks for this very interesting stuff. I'd like to comment on three points, in the light of recent scientific developments:
1. When did consciousness begin?
There
are still a few behaviorist holdouts who refuse to talk about
consciousness at all. Aside from this, there are some fairly hardline
materialists who grudgingly admit "consciousness" (as no more than a
brain state, of course) but deny it to infants and all animals. It gets
interesting when you get to animals. Many mainstream scientists are
still reluctant to grant consciousness to all but the 'higher animals"
(primates and some mammals) but since the world's leading specialist in
animal consciousness, Donald Griffin, released a new edition of his
book on animal mind (in the 1990s, I think) animal consciousness is
becoming more widely accepted.
So how far down does it go?
Neuropsychologist Merlin Donald, in his book "Mind So Rare", suggests
that members of what he calls the "consciousness club" include
primates, all mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and insects (he
cites the Australian jumping spider, for example, which is able to
maintain a primitive mental map of its environment which it uses quite
cleverly to stalk its prey). Canadian psychologist Harry Hunt, is
willing to consider ameoba as having some kind of incredibly simple
sentience. That's as far down as I could find among scientists.
Panexperientialist philosopher David Ray Griffin, following Whitehead,
extends consciousness to all matter. Pretty far outside mainstream
science, biologist Rupert Sheldrake, and physicist Amit Goswami also
accept consciousness in matter. Somewhere in between the far-out and
the mainstream, the increasingly acceptable parapsychologists like Dean
Radin and Charles Tart also accept consciousness in matter, using
explanations remarkably similar to Sri Aurobindo: psychokinesis (mind
over matter), which has been proven in extremely rigorous scientific
studies and well replicated, would not be possible if there was not a
consciousness in matter which responds to the mind of the individual
attempting to affect that matter. So in regard to bacteria: it is not
entirely unacceptable among mainstream scientists to speak of
consciousness in bacteria. However, Lynn Margulis, the world's leading
expert on bacteria - speaks often of an extraordinary intelligence
working in bacteria. This is certainly not a conscious intelligence,
right? So what is the source of this intelligence? There doesn't seem
to be an answer in the current scientific framework - even within
quantum physics or parapsychology...... See #3 below..... 2. How do
quantum processes get passed on from one generation to the next?
Perhaps McFadden and Hameroff refer to this in their writings; I'd be
curious to know and will certainly look at the sites you suggested.
There's been discussion on the Journal of Consciousness Studies from
time to tim over the years of their theories, but I've never seen this
point discussed. When Jan and I sent our passage on evolution to an
evolutionary biologist, he asserted that Goswami misunderstands both
physics and biology! It turns out - as far as we can understand at this
point - that we neglected to emphasize strongly enough the role of a
'field" of consciousness in carrying the potential mutations that exist
as quantum superpositions across generations. I think it's correct to
say that without this field of consciousness, there is no way within
conventional quantum physics to explain why the quantum possibilities
aren't collapsed once a creature gives birth. Goswami makes use of
Sheldrake's morphogenetic field hypothesis to suggest that a
species-wide field of consciousness (Sri Aurobindo's "group-soul"?)
holds potential mutations over hundreds or even thousand of generations
until the time is ripe (the appropriate karmic moment?) when the new
species "needs" to emerge. 3. Links to Integral Yoga.
You
mention that bacteria "are not conscious" and do not make "choices". We
really struggled with this when we started writing about evolution from
the yogic viewpoint - how to distinguish the simple consciousness of a
primtiive creatures such as bacteria from the evident intelligence at
work in bacteria. There's actually an enormous amount of completely
mainstream scientific literature describing the working of an
astonishing intelligence in bacteria (Harold Bloom, in one of Rich's
favorite books, "Global Brain" has collected quite a bit of this; Lynn
Margulis, Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry have also written about this).
So what is happening here? If we accept Harry Hunt's notion that
consciousness extends at least as far as ameoba, it's not too hard to
imagine that sentience of some kind exists in bacteria. But it's
certainly not the conscious mind that is at work here.
Sri
Aurobindo gives a clue in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad: He
speaks of the mind's 4 major functions of sensing, perceiving,
comprehending and willing. Taking just the mainstream scientific
community's general consensus on consciousness in animals, we find
sensing at work in animals from bacteria up through insects. Perception
- the capacity to bind sensory data into a discrete object - emerges
with amphibians and reptiles. While there is comprehension and will of
some kind implicitly at work throughout evolution, it doesn't seem to
emerge into "consciousness" until the more complex reptiles and in
mammals and birds. You don't see the capacity for selective attention
(conscious volition) until mammals; some birds have it and all primates
do. Many of these same higher animals also have other volitional
capacities like complex problem solving and decision making. But here's
the most interesting part - if it's true that sensing, perceiving,
comprehending and willing - from the yogic perspective - are at work
not only in the most primitive animals but in plants and matter too,
what is responsible for these functions? Sri Aurobindo speaks of a
vaster subliminal functioning - clearly, the inner consciousness which
has not yet evolved to the surface. Among the examples he uses are an
insect's anatomical precision in attacking its prey, and an illiterate
servant girl overhearing her master speaking Hebrew and later under
hypnosis being able to reproduce without error the Hebrew words. The
vaster subliminal intelligence then, is at work in bacteria, which
would also explain how the bacteria seem to function as a kind of
global web - the universal subliminal consciousness is at work guiding
the surface consciosness and behavior of the bacteria. So there
actually is an extraordinary intelligence at work -- it just isn't
available to the surface consciousness of the creature. And of course,
there is the still greater supramental consciousness at work, guiding
the whole process. We found, in writing the chapter on the emergence of
mind in animals, this distinction of the evolved consciousness in
contrast to the yet hidden greater subliminal consciousness at work
resolved many issues which remain obscure in works by various
scientists on the evolution of the mind.
Don Salmon
Greenville, South Carolina
virtreal@jps.net
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