The book presents an interdisciplinary overview of the evolution of consciousness in man By Uzi Ben Zvi, The philosophy and science series, the Attic books and Yediot books
Many animals move, experience sensations and emotions, and even think; Man also knows that he does all these, and even knows that he knows. What makes this knowledge possible, and what does it make possible for a person?
Does it bring only benefit, or also harm on the side?
The enigma of consciousness has occupied religious men and philosophers since the dawn of history, and nowadays scientists also join them. The book is based on fields of knowledge such as biology, evolutionary theory, brain research and cognitive science, and offers an evolutionary explanation for the emergence of human consciousness. He re-examines both its involvement in everyday life and its part in the development of human culture, and sheds new light on enigmatic phenomena such as martial arts, meditation and more.
the book Ants, neurons, consciousness Addresses anyone who wonders about the meaning of being human, and offers an innovative, in-depth and convention-breaking look at the nature of human consciousness.
Chapter 1
Following the trail of ants
"Go to an ant," said King Solomon, "see its ways and be wise." The wisest of all men was among the first, but certainly not the last, to use the ant as an image for human behavior. The metaphorical use of different animals to characterize human qualities is a fairly common descriptive tool that appears in many cultures. Among all these animals, ants stand out in particular: their use as a model appears again and again throughout history in different cultures that are distant from each other both in time and space.
In addition to the Bible, the best-known appearances of ants in Western culture are in Aesop, and later in Lafontaine and Krylov, but it turns out that ants also have a metaphorical role in the Islamic tradition, in Chinese culture, in Native American culture, and probably in many others. In all of them, ants are seen As an example of responsibility, adherence to the goal, diligence, Efficiency, organization, and even wisdom.
The reputation of these ants has a fairly solid biological and behavioral basis. On the biological level, ants are undoubtedly an evolutionary success story. They are among the land creatures with the widest geographical distribution, and according to various estimates, they occupy a significant percentage of the total biomass (the total amount of organic matter) on land - more than all non-domesticated vertebrates (amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds) combined , and until a few decades ago - even more than the human race. On the behavioral level, the fact that they live in organized, multi-participant community settings requires a social complexity that amazes everyone who is exposed to it.
However, unlike the romantic point of view, investigation and scientific thought reveal a much more complex reality. A careful examination of the way in which this harmony is achieved challenges the conventional image of perfect organization and efficiency, or more precisely - the simplistic perception of these two.
If we look closely at the behavior of the individual ant, we will find that in many cases it does not move over time continuously and in a straight line to the place it is supposed to reach. Every now and then she stops, deviates from the path, changes direction, and often seems to wander without any visible destination. This behavior, which seems random and without any purpose, does not fit with the image of the ant as an efficient creature, since a significant part of its activity seems like a waste of energy.
Even in the result test the single ant does not seem very efficient. It turns out that only a small part of the ants that "respond to the call" to go get food from a certain source actually end up reaching that source. In various experiments, with various species of ants, quite surprising numbers were obtained: in some cases, only about 20 percent of the recruited ants actually reached the food source; Everyone else set off, but at some point lost their way and continued to wander and forage randomly.
Apparently, this behavior, as well as other characteristics of the ant colony that have been studied in recent years, contradict not only the efficient image of the ant, but also the simplistic view of evolution, which assumes that behaviors that are not immediately useful should not develop and survive. It seems that with the ant, at least in terms of the immediate result, investing a lot of energy in "purposeless" activity not only does not improve its chances of surviving and serving the goals of the entire nest, but even harms it. To an outside observer, it seems as if there is a constant struggle between two opposing forces in the ant: one directs it to the "goal", and the other - confuses it and diverts it from the path.
This dynamic, in which the random movement occasionally escapes the control of the directed mechanism, can be likened to a rider trying to control a wild horse - and the horse tries again and again to break free from his control. Such an image does faithfully describe the final result as it appears to the eye, but the question is whether it also faithfully describes the ant's internal processes. The rider wants to control the horse, but does not always succeed, because the horse is a separate entity that has its own will; Does the ant also have such a separate entity? In man we know the possibility of internal conflicts in which man struggles with himself - not always successfully. But it seems unlikely to attribute such "human" complexity and internal conflicts to the ant. Is it possible that this is also possible with the ant? The fear arises that the image of the horse and rider stems from excessive humanization - attributing human complexity to an ant that is not supposed to debate existential questions.
In my opinion, there is indeed a problem of personification here, but it manifests itself elsewhere. When we try to understand nature, we project the human way of thinking on it, and try to understand it by comparing it to man-made systems. We try to build our machines so that they are as efficient as possible. To this end, we strive for them to be protected as much as possible from unplanned influences, and for all the forces operating in them to be as directed and synchronized as possible to achieve the goal we set for them. All parts of the ideal machine should work in perfect harmony, "like a Swiss watch", and lose as little energy as possible through friction and actions that contradict each other.
In contrast to the operation of the man-made machine, which strives for perfection and precision, stands the "harmony of nature", which is much more complex and works in a completely different way. The example of the ant and many other examples indicate that the competition between opposing trends within the organism itself is not an unusual or unique phenomenon for the ant, but rather one of the prominent characteristics of the way of operation of all living systems, a characteristic that appears at all levels of the organization of life. At the lowest level, one can see, for example, that there are two opposing mechanisms, one of which is responsible for the production of proteins and the other for their degradation; At the highest, ecological level, this characteristic is revealed in the balance between different species competing for the same habitat.
In the case before us, it is reasonable to assume that the fact that the ant is exposed to influences that cause it to deviate from the "optimal" pattern of action is not a mistake of nature, but a response to another need, which is contrary to the need to optimize the action. It therefore seems that, contrary to certain romantic concepts, a significant part of the seemingly harmonious functions of the organism are not based on coordination and cooperation between the various systems, but first and foremost on a balance between mechanisms that work in different directions, and even oppose each other.
Even with the ant we see two opposing trends. One is the direction of her actions by the nest, which outlines the walking route for her to the food source and from there back to the nest, and the second is the urge to wander. The intensity of the direction that comes from the nest to the ant, mainly with the help of scent marks, is not uniform. When the initial pattern is formed, it is relatively weak, and therefore, relatively weak opposing influences, both external and internal, are able to overcome it and send the ant on a seemingly aimless wandering. If it turns out that the food source is stable and reliable, the scent marks also become stronger, and they overcome most of the "disruptive" effects, both internal and external, so that most ants will reach the food source almost without deviating from their path.
This description of the ant's behavior brings us together with three key concepts used to describe and understand processes in various fields, including the behavior patterns of many organisms. The first is a behavior of wandering or random exploration (exploration) without a defined goal - a behavior that for the ant is strengthened in situations of uncertainty. The second is a behavior aimed at optimal utilization (exploitation) of the resources available to the organism - a behavior that in the case of the ant is expressed by sticking to the route dictated to it. The third is stabilization of the system, which manifests itself in the ant in the reduction of roaming activity in favor of the ability to effectively utilize the resources, internal and external, available to it.
In a simplistic view of cost versus benefit, the need to tune in to the goal and not deviate from the path to it is self-evident - it should lead to a more efficient utilization of the energy and skills of the individual ant for the benefit of the optimal functioning of the entire nest. From such a point of view, the forces that work against this need are seen as "noise" that disrupts the normal activity of the ant and harms the quality of the functioning of the entire nest. However, the fact that tens of millions of years of evolution have not led the ant to develop a greater immunity to the influences that divert it from its path, indicates that the appearance of noise is not an evolutionary accident or "mishap".
In a broader view, this noise also has a role, and it is just as important. Both the individual ant and the entire nest have to deal with a constantly changing environment. New obstacles may appear on the way to the goal, new sources of food may appear, and old sources may deplete. The ant, as well as the entire nest, should be prepared for these changes, and devote some of the energy available to them in favor of searching for new movement routes and food sources. As far as is known, neither the ant, nor the nest, has the possibility to consider and plan alternative ways, but mainly to search for such ways randomly. Therefore, the noise - the collection of influences that divert the ant from its course and lead to the random movement - is an essential means in dealing with the challenges of the changing environment.
When we use the concept of randomness, or its opposite concept, causality - it is important to clarify what is behind the concepts. To this end, we will examine the following example: if a person drives a car while drunk and collides with another car, it is common to assume that what caused the accident was lack of responsibility. On the other hand, if a person is driving a car and a drunk driver hits him, we will define the case as bad luck. Since it is exactly the same event, at least in this case, the choice whether to define it as irresponsibility (causality) or as bad luck (randomness) derives solely from the perspective of the observer who describes the event.
One of the basic assumptions of scientific thought is that the world is deterministic, that is, every phenomenon must have a concrete cause, and any specified combination of causes will necessarily lead to a specific result, and only to it. This premise leaves no room for randomness, yet even those who advocate absolute determinism sometimes find themselves saying that some phenomenon occurred "by chance". The contradiction can be explained by the fact that the hidden intention behind such a statement is that in certain circumstances we cannot or do not want to know the reasons that caused the phenomenon, or that for the purpose of the specific discussion at least part of the causal chain is seen as irrelevant. On this background, it can be stated that when the ant deviates from the planned path, the action that appears to be random is actually a response to concrete stimuli originating from its (internal and external) environment, and they are random only from the point of view of the observer.
The quantum uncertainty spills over into the macro world
It is common to assume that the principle of uncertainty is manifested mainly at the micro level, that is, at the level of the individual particle, and that its influence fades as larger systems are concerned. According to this approach, at the intermediate level - the one we live and experience directly - the influence of uncertainty is overridden by the law of large numbers, and in practice, the world we know is completely deterministic. It is possible that in reality, in a significant number of cases, the picture is a little different.
Very complex systems may behave in a so-called chaotic manner. Unlike the original concept of chaos (in Greek mythology - the void that preceded the creation of the cosmos, the Greek "chaos"), chaotic behavior has its own rules and laws, and this is not the place to mention them all, except for one, which is also the most familiar among them - the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect, or in its more formal definition, "sensitive dependence on initial conditions", describes the fact that a minimal change in the initial conditions (butterfly wings in the land of China) can later lead to a change on a huge scale (a hurricane in America). This is still deterministic behavior, even though we have no technical possibility to predict or calculate it. But the initial cause, the flapping of the butterfly's wings, could in principle be a much smaller event, even at the quantum level. That is, in a chaotic system, the quantum uncertainty may seep into the macro world and thus undermine pure determinism.
The stimulus-response mechanism is one of the basic features of living organisms, the cornerstone of any control system. In this respect, there is no real difference between the ant and any other non-social insect, or even between it and much simpler creatures. In relatively complex and sophisticated organisms, including the ant, these mechanisms may be expressed at different levels of organization, and in each of them they can stop, delay and affect the functioning of a lower or equivalent level of organization. When it comes to the individual organism, such as an ant or a person, it is difficult to clearly separate these levels of organization, but in the special case before us the separation is clear: the level of organization that is considered the highest is not part of the ant itself - the individual organism - but the nest, or the entire ant colony, which some consider In it a super-organism (super-organism). The activity of this level of organization is directed beyond the immediate horizon of the stimulus-response mechanism of the individual ant. At the nest level, the task, or the goal, is determined: for example, to follow a certain scent trail to a food source, and bring the food to the nest. The task has to be performed by the single ant, and for that, and in order to enable the coordinated activity with the other ants, it has to inhibit or suspend its response to other stimuli that may divert it from its task. In human terms, it can be said that the stimulus-response mechanism, even in its more complex versions, belongs to the here and now, while the higher level of organization is aimed at a goal located at a point further away in time and/or space.
It can be said that with the ant, the higher level of organization, the level of the nest, "sees" a wider picture, and accordingly - it is appropriate that the ant obey its instructions, but such a statement also stems from a narrow view of the needs and constraints that dictate the behavior of the ant. In an even broader view, precisely the random deviations, which result from a certain degree of freedom that remains for the lower level of organization, serve a more distant purpose: they are the ones that leave an opening to deal with a change in conditions, and thus they make it possible to ensure the existence of the nest and the existence of the entire species.
The picture that emerges is that in the end, the long evolution of the ant has developed a control mechanism that is responsible for the balance between the two opposing directions of action. The survival chances of the nest and of the entire species depend on the ability to reach an optimal balance between the need to efficiently utilize the resources and the ability to keep additional options open in case the environmental conditions change.
The balance between the different levels of control that we discover in the ant is expressed in different ways in each organism, according to the specific challenges it faces. In the case of a distinctly social insect like the ant, the balance is tipped in favor of the higher level of control - the level of the nest. Similar to a non-social insect, the solitary ant is also a system that can function autonomously, respond to its environment and make decisions, but for a significant part of the time, the need to serve the goals of the entire nest outweighs the autonomous behavior. Most of the time, the need for the continuity of the entire nest outweighs the urge to wander, and the individual functions as part or as an organ of a larger system, which has goals that are beyond its narrow horizon. On the other hand, when the known sources of food, the exploitation of which is already managed by the nest, are not sufficient, the urge to wander increases at the expense of the central control of the nest.
This situation, in which the individual loses part of his autonomy for the good of the common good, is not unique to social creatures such as ants or humans. One can see very similar phenomena in a very large variety of biological contexts, which are spread over a wide spectrum of scales. We will discuss some of them in detail later, but for now I will mention only a few of them. In a unicellular organism, the cell is completely autonomous, but when a similar cell is part of a multicellular organism, it loses some of its degrees of freedom for the benefit of the whole organism. This is also true for tissues and organs whose activity is conditioned and directed by the whole organism, and even for complex organisms whose activity depends on or is conditioned by other organisms with which they share their habitat.
One of the most talked about examples in recent years is the dependence of humans on the population of bacteria in their digestive system, a population that affects a wide range of metabolic functions and even behavior. All these systems of relationships, both those that appear hierarchical and those that appear egalitarian, are subject to some type of mutual regulation that maintains the balance between the various parts. And this entire system of relationships is mediated by interfaces, communication systems and control systems, all of which are critical components for the functions of all complex multicellular organisms.
About all of these, and the evolutionary relationship between them, in the next chapter.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
