The incredible thing about Physarum polycephalum is that whilst being completely devoid of any nervous system whatsoever (not possessing a single neuron) it exhibits intelligent behaviours. Does its ability to intelligently solve problems suggest it must also be conscious? If you think, yes, then please describe if-and-how its consciousness may differ {physically or qualitatively ... rather than quantitatively} from the consciousness of brained organisms (e.g., humans)? Does this intelligent behaviour (sans neurons) suggest that consciousness may be a universal fundamental related more to the physical transfer or flow of information rather than being (as supposed by most psychological researchers) an emergent property of processes in brain matter?
General background information:
"Physarum polycephalum has been shown to exhibit characteristics similar to those seen in single-celled creatures and eusocial insects. For example, a team of Japanese and Hungarian researchers have shown P. polycephalum can solve the Shortest path problem. When grown in a maze with oatmeal at two spots, P. polycephalum retracts from everywhere in the maze, except the shortest route connecting the two food sources.[3] When presented with more than two food sources, P. polycephalum apparently solves a more complicated transportation problem. With more than two sources, the amoeba also produces efficient networks.[4] In a 2010 paper, oatflakes were dispersed to represent Tokyo and 36 surrounding towns.[5][6] P. polycephalum created a network similar to the existing train system, and "with comparable efficiency, fault tolerance, and cost". Similar results have been shown based on road networks in the United Kingdom[7] and the Iberian peninsula (i.e., Spain and Portugal).[8] Some researchers claim that P. polycephalum is even able to solve the NP-hard Steiner minimum treeproblem.[9]
P. polycephalum can not only solve these computational problems, but also exhibits some form of memory. By repeatedly making the test environment of a specimen of P. polycephalum cold and dry for 60-minute intervals, Hokkaido University biophysicists discovered that the slime mould appears to anticipate the pattern by reacting to the conditions when they did not repeat the conditions for the next interval. Upon repeating the conditions, it would react to expect the 60-minute intervals, as well as testing with 30- and 90-minute intervals.[10][11]
P. polycephalum has also been shown to dynamically re-allocate to apparently maintain constant levels of different nutrients simultaneously.[12][13] In particular, specimen placed at the center of a Petri dish spatially re-allocated over combinations of food sources that each had different protein–carbohydrate ratios. After 60 hours, the slime mould area over each food source was measured. For each specimen, the results were consistent with the hypothesis that the amoeba would balance total protein and carbohydrate intake to reach particular levels that were invariant to the actual ratios presented to the slime mould.
As the slime mould does not have any nervous system that could explain these intelligent behaviours, there has been considerable interdisciplinary interest in understanding the rules that govern its behaviour [emphasis added]. Scientists are trying to model the slime mold using a number of simple, distributed rules. For example, P. polycephalum has been modeled as a set of differential equations inspired by electrical networks. This model can be shown to be able to compute shortest paths.[14] A very similar model can be shown to solve the Steiner tree problem.[9]"
source of quotation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum
Woah! Hold your horses! Please, @Richard Poznanski, elaborate on your forms of matter because i think I smell major disagreement. There is ONE form of matter as physics is concerned. Now, it can be in equilibrium or out of equilibrium. Active matter, i.e., matter driven by (bio)-chemical reaction is still matter just in another physical state. A living cell has an active cytoskeleton which exhibits structure formation due to being driven. Now human (!) conscious will in my view turn out to be information processing in between special highly correlated neural state to paraphrase Max Tegmarks views on consciousness. There will be no special kind of matter needed. But it will need Physics of Patterns. What is the definition of Panexperiential Matter? Are we talking about Panpsychism? MY view on that is: Mathematically nice. Everything has two components. However I STRONGLY reject that idea. In any case a statement, Panexperiential Matter is needed for consciousness is invalid without physical proof of the theory.
Finally, what is an atomic microfeel? Can we also define that for the sake of naive physicist. And commenting already on that expression: The problem is the use of technical terms in cloudy ill-defined ways. The answer to the brain will not be found on the atomic level. A feeling is the result of a complex interplay between at the very least perception, memory and the cortex. It is so to speak a qualia. In what sense can we speak about micro? Smaller lenght? Shorter thought? Less intense? In my view this expressions is ill-defined at best to put it diplomatically.
With all due respect, but I would ask all authors to explain their technical terms. This seems to be an interdisciplinary thread!
Kindly see this useful RG link.
Article Slime mould: The fundamental mechanisms of biological cognition
@ Arvind Singh
Thank you for pointing-out this informative and extremely pertinent research.
True Physarum polycephalum does not have a nervous system. All the cells act in synchronous fashion and they sense and respond to volatile chemicals (pheromones?). In absence of nutriments they all form fructification bodies.
The question that I study right now is if the Physarum polycephalum has proprioceptive sentience. To talk about consciousness is beautiful. But we need a new cognition process taxonomy that allows non-neural organisms. My thesis (PhD and next papers) ask about minimal cognition principles exchanges with other kinds of myxomycetes and other protists firstly. But the next step is talking about other kingdoms of non-neural organisms. Bacteria and Plants are studying now, but we need more (e.g. Archaea's adaptive behaviour and others)
In order to answer the question whether Physarum polycephalum is conscious, we need to define consciousness first. A beautiful physically minded definition is given in Max Tegmarks book Life 3.0: He defines intelligence as being able to perform certain complex tasks. He identifies three necessary tasks an intelligent system needs to be able to perform: First, it must remember. Second, it must compute, and third, it must learn. Consciousness is reached via a fourth requirement, subjective experience (qualia). Tegmarks central idea is that consciousness emerges when we feel information processed in certain ways. He argues that intelligence is a substrate independent pattern which is processed by mechanisms independent of the substrate. Non-physical twice over! He goes on to define four principles of consciousness concerning Information (P1), Dynamics (P2), Independence (P3), and Integration (P4). Instead of asking the (currently) impossible questions of How do physical properties determine qualia or even Why is anything conscious at all, we might content ourselves for now with the still pretty hard question of what physical properties distinguish conscious & unconscious systems. These properties need to be describable in physically measurable quantities in order to confirm to the scientific method. From the twice-over higher level of consciousness, he concludes that general artificial intelligence can exist in and as a pattern. Thus, any sufficiently complex machine can in principle emerge to be conscious. Taking this view to the very extreme, even an abstract physically-not connected system, like cyberspace or the universe itself, can become conscious. There are however strong physical limits on the number of thoughts per time.
Now, do I think Physarum is conscious? No, I do not think Physarum has subjective experiences. However, it certainly has obvious cognitive abilities. Indeed, it emerges as a model system of basal or minimal cognition. There are currently a number of special issues on that topic and cotaining papers on Physarum either published, in the press, or in the making. Check out Liquid Brains /Solid Brain https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2019.0040 as well as Adaptive Behavior, Approaching Minimal Cognition containing the article Article Who needs a brain? Slime moulds, behavioural ecology and min...
Tegmarks argument that intelligence is caused by substrate independent mechanisms is analogous to the line of thought we re following in Bremen were we investigate Universal Mechanisms of Decision-Making across disciplines, see http://www.decisions.uni-bremen.de/en/decisions/.
Information processing in Physarum oscillating tubular network leads to pattern formation in various ways. Some of these dynamic patterns will be identifiable with cognitive processes but quite likely not with a pattern corresponding to consciousness as we experience.
Having said that, I do emphasize that we still need to do our homework and work out basic physics, cell biology, and genetics for Physarum before we can pin down mechanisms and talk about cognition in Physarum in a really quantitative way. For simple information processing in phyarum see Christina Oettmeier on
Article A lumped parameter model of endoplasm flow in Physarum polyc...
Finally, I point out in this respect our recent special issue on Physics of Physarum polycephalum, see https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0022-3727/page/Physics_of_Physarum_Polycephalum
Watch out for the editorial closing the issue. Its coming soon!
The behaviour of “slime mold” Physarum polycephalum is determined by the reaction-diffusion waves. They are the main organizing factor that allows the colony to expand in a way that mimics the actions of the conscious system. This topic, although in a much more general context, was discussed by A. Turing in the seminal paper on chemical basis for morphogenesis. The simple combination of chemical reactions and diffusion leads to self-organizing behaviour. Some additional aspects of this problem have been discussed by I. Prigogine in the highly recommended book: From Being to Becoming. In summary, the system described in the question is not yet conscious, but it shows the elements which are used to create the consciousness in the unconscious matter.
Dear Janusz,
Thank you for this most cogent answer. IMO it is the best analysis I have heard, to date.
My best regards,
Bob
Accepting that aspects of the human immune system (e.g. a white blood cell responding to a changing environment Inside the biological body) is self-organized does this imply that these aspects of the human immune system are conscious?
More general, how to know that Something is 'conscious' besides yourself?
If I remember well, 'consciousness' could not be described with words and therefore cannot be defined?
Janusz, physarum is not a classical reaction diffusion system! There is pronounced shuttle streaming! More importantly, it is an oscillating network. Further, a plasmodium is not a colony but one giant cell!
Dear Hans-Günther Döbereiner
The reaction reaction-diffusion system can exhibit both the pattern forming and the oscillatory behavior.
As far as the term “colony” is concerned please consider the following statement from Wikipedia:
“Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to several kinds of unrelated eukaryotic organisms that can live freely as single cells, but can aggregate together to form multicellular reproductive structures ...”
Dear Janusz Pudykiewicz
your quote refers, e.g., to Dicty. Physarum grows or fuses into a SINGLE CELL. It is not a colony of separate cells forming whatever structure. A plasmodium is multi nucleated and typically organized into a network with growth fronts. The fronts advance by flow coupled to the oscillatory peristaltic motion of the tubular network. See Article Form follows function: Ultrastructure of different morphotyp...
for an overview on morphotypes.
I´m not saying that there are no reactions and diffusion in Physarum but the topological dynamics of its network is to a large extent coupled to the cytosolic flow inside the tubules forming the network. We are working right now on the pattern formation visible in the phases of the dominant frequency.
Dear Bob,
Thanks for your comment. In the search for the building blocks of consciousness, we usually observe interconnected physical processes. It is not easy to determine which of them are essential, even in Physarum Polycephalum.
My best regards
Janusz
Dear Marcel M. Lambrechts
The human immune system has the cognitive ability to identify "healthy and non-healthy biological structures" (cells and viruses). This ability is certainly not synonymous with consciousness.
More difficult is the question of the definition of consciousness. Obviously, we do not have a generally accepted theory. Good discussions are presented in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
Personally I like the approach proposed by David Bohm:
“Our brain mathematically constructs objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately from another dimensionion, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time”
My best regards,
Janusz
Dear Hans-Günther Döbereiner
Thank you for the valuable insights. The problem is indeed very complicated and maybe the new theory will be proposed shortly. My original comment was based on the model described by Adamatzky in
“Physarum machine: implementation of a Kolmogorov-Uspensky machine on a biological substrate”, Parallel Processing Letters 17 (04), 2007, pp 455-467.
I wonder if this model is still acceptable given your experiments.
My best regards,
Janusz
Dera Janusz,
With the definition of David Bohm you admit you Don't know how to define consciousness given you refer to phenomena beyond space/time.
Perhaps a very simple definition is: Consciousness is self-experienced change in body activity
Dear Marcel M. Lambrechts
what do you mean with phenomena beyond space/time with respect to consciousness? It happens in the brain. It mus be a state of self-awarness and self-interaction of our neural networks. It is a pattern formed and dynamically altered by universal mechanisms. Qualia are patterns in the brain.
Dear Hans-Günther Döbereiner and all,
It is true that what predominates in the motility of Plasmodium are oscillators coupled by peristaltic movements. Here the network of filaments (actin-myosin) and microtubules have sensorimotor functions. So the transmission of cytonuclear information goes to the outside depending on the receptions of the environment significant for the Physarum (what in biosemiótica we denominate Umwelt). All the signals that it perceives do not cease to be gradients (chemotactic, thermotactic, pH, humidity, etc.), so reception in accordance with R-D equations predominates in the ectoplasm. So also with the choice of short paths, Adamatzky talks about what a Kolmogorov-Uspenskii biologic machine is. [Adamatzky, A., Jones, J. (2011) On electrical correlates of Physarum polycephalum spatial activity; Can we see Physarum machine in the dark. Biophysical Reviews and Letters. Vol. 6, No. 1 & 2, 29-57]
However, it is also able to discriminate a given light spectrum (red and blue if the switch is on and only red if it is off) [Adamatzky, A. (2013) Towards slime mold color sensor. Recognition of colors by Physarum polycephalum. ArXiv 2013. DOI: 10.1016 / j.orgel.2013.10.004]
I am particularly interested in your work on the percolation of the plasmodium [Fessel, A. et al. (2012) Physarum polycephalum Percolation as a Paradigm for Topological Phase Transitions in Transportation Networks. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109,078103; Fessel, A., Oettmeier, C., Döbereiner, H-G. (2014) An Analytical Model for Percolation in Small Link Degree Transportation Networks. BICT '14 Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Bioinspired Information and Communications Technologies, pp. 81-86] because this activity is so simple mechanically, it is a fundamental activity for allorecognition, as well as for the activity of retraction of the organism in the labyrinth, where there is no food, to build the tube of the path chosen for foraging. The issue that I am thinking about is that, we can see how a simple recollection mechanism allows us to minimize its dimension to better metabolize nutrients. But it is not a reflex retraction (which is what I expose in my PhD and successive papers) but there is a decision-making due to a sense-making. This is very well observed in the Nakagaki maze experiment, although we can perceive it in allorecognition activities. It is for this reason that we must take seriously a cognitive reading that generates short-term memory, or recognition of the environment and destinations, as well as learning and habituation, among other minimum cognitive principles.
The conscience I would not dare to touch on this level. First there must be an international scientific consensus to recognize cognitive processes in realms where there is no nervous system; and in which these organisms have physiological activities that allow complex adaptive behaviors. In this phase we can talk about degrees of intelligence, where perception does not require representation and we must delve into both the physiological and morphological developments that are also related to proprioception.
This is my current work both in biosemiotic key and in philosophy of science, and now I am doing direct experiments in this and other lines of development of adaptive behavioral processes.
By the way, very well extract Tegmark's exposition on intelligence. Where I can have some discussion is about the possible or not computation. That is, the decision-making cannot be algorithmic, and the computation attempts are simulacra. Possibly at the moment, but by definition, the randomness of choice requires two or more ways to decide, and this is very complex at present. I abstain from seeing a computable solution, at the moment. We will already talk in quantum computing if Wheeler's theory can be computed, then the principle of the excluded third may be violated. But not now. Apart that there is the problem of nowness in biology (especially in microbiology, and protists that is where we want to address the condition of cognitive processes.)
Dear Hans-Günther,
I would inclined to say I Don't know when I would not have access to phenomena beyond space/time. But then how to know what experiences are beyond space/time? Do lucid dreams represent phenomena beyond space/time accepting that perceived lucid dream experiences are mixing up people you know/Don't know, that people you know can be perceived as Young or old, that people you know can be perceived in novel environments you did not consciously see before, etc.…?
And what about out of body experiences or NDE in circumstances where the brain has been biologically shut down (e.g. à la Eben Alexander III, neuroscientist who had NDE)?
Marcel M. Lambrechts
I want to know what is the relatioship between your write and the question about Slime molds consciousness?
We talking about the levels of cognition in non neural organism like slime mold.
Thank you for your explanation.
Woah! Hold your horses! Please, @Richard Poznanski, elaborate on your forms of matter because i think I smell major disagreement. There is ONE form of matter as physics is concerned. Now, it can be in equilibrium or out of equilibrium. Active matter, i.e., matter driven by (bio)-chemical reaction is still matter just in another physical state. A living cell has an active cytoskeleton which exhibits structure formation due to being driven. Now human (!) conscious will in my view turn out to be information processing in between special highly correlated neural state to paraphrase Max Tegmarks views on consciousness. There will be no special kind of matter needed. But it will need Physics of Patterns. What is the definition of Panexperiential Matter? Are we talking about Panpsychism? MY view on that is: Mathematically nice. Everything has two components. However I STRONGLY reject that idea. In any case a statement, Panexperiential Matter is needed for consciousness is invalid without physical proof of the theory.
Finally, what is an atomic microfeel? Can we also define that for the sake of naive physicist. And commenting already on that expression: The problem is the use of technical terms in cloudy ill-defined ways. The answer to the brain will not be found on the atomic level. A feeling is the result of a complex interplay between at the very least perception, memory and the cortex. It is so to speak a qualia. In what sense can we speak about micro? Smaller lenght? Shorter thought? Less intense? In my view this expressions is ill-defined at best to put it diplomatically.
With all due respect, but I would ask all authors to explain their technical terms. This seems to be an interdisciplinary thread!
According to the dominant physical theories of the last 200 years, there is really only one form of matter. This common belief, however, is not universally accepted when one considers that 85% of the matter in the Universe is dark matter that is not baryonic in nature and has never been studied using standard methods of physics and chemistry. Perhaps the panexperiential matter can also be accepted as a working hypothesis?
Janusz Pudykiewicz I was talking with reference to soft organic matter of course. At very high pressures and/or temperatures as well as on cosmic length scales there are other forms of aggregates of elementary particles.However, we are talking about the micrometer length scale and a temperature of 300 K. In my view, panexperiential matter is an unneccessary construct for the physics of the mind Richard Poznanski
Hans-Günther Döbereiner
The main problem is that we are still unable to propose a unified theory of the different forms of matter. The situation is therefore similar to those summarized in the following quote:
“In spite of the great success in various fields, the present theoretical physics is still far from being able to provide a unified foundation on which the theoretical treatment of all phenomena could be based”
(From Einstein and Rosen (1935), Phys. Rev. Vol. 48, July 1st, p. 73)
Vahid Rakhshan, It is the question. What is the pseudo-science in liquid brains? if there is one desviation in a theoric question about non-brainless cognition.
Dear Vahid Rakhshan
The mathematical modelling of biological systems is a legitimate and fast developing area. I think that it deserves a lot of attention from the traditional disciplines. I have attached a paper with the review of the problem, which contains a clear identification of the main obstacles. It is obvious that we still do not know everything about the "soft organic matter" on the "micrometer length scale and a temperature of 300 K".
Vahid Rakhshan. I ask you about if you have detected pseudoscience in slime moulds cognition studies?
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