Biological mechanisms contradict AI consciousness: The spaces between the notes.

The presumption that experiential consciousness requires a nervous system and brain has been central to the debate on the possibility of developing a conscious form of artificial intelligence (AI). The likelihood of future AI consciousness or devising tools to assess its presence has focused on how AI might mimic brain-centered activities. Currently, dual general assumptions prevail: AI consciousness is primarily an issue of functional information density and integration, and no substantive technical barriers exist to prevent its achievement.

Biology in the 21st century: Natural selection is cognitive selection.

Natural selection has a formal definition as the natural process that results in the survival and reproductive success of individuals or groups best adjusted to their environment, leading to the perpetuation of those genetic qualities best suited to that organism's environmental niche. Within conventional Neo-Darwinism, the largest source of those variations that can be selected is presumed to be secondary to random genetic mutations. As these arise, natural selection sustains adaptive traits in the context of a 'struggle for existence'.

The sensual cell: Feeling and affect in unicellular species.

Our previous efforts to probe the complex, rich experiential lives of unicellular species have focused on the origins of consciousness (Reber, 2019) and the biomolecular processes that underlie sentience (Reber et al., 2023). Implied, but unexplored, was the assumption that these cognitive functions and associated unicellular organismal behaviors were linked with and often driven by affect, feelings, sensual experiences.

Why death and aging ? All memories are imperfect.

Recent papers have emphasized the primary role of cellular information management in biological and evolutionary development. In this framework, intelligent cells collectively measure environmental cues to improve informational validity to support natural cellular engineering as collaborative decision-making and problem-solving in confrontation with environmental stresses. These collective actions are crucially dependent on cell-based memories as acquired patterns of response to environmental stressors.

The CBC theory and its entailments : Why current models of the origin of consciousness fail.

The Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model of biological consciousness is based on the assumption that life and conscious sentience are coterminus. All living organisms, are conscious, self-aware, and have valenced sensory and perceptual experiences. [Image: see text]

Sentient cells as basic units of tissues, organs and organismal physiology.

Cells evolved some 4 billion years ago, and since then the integrity of the structural and functional continuity of cellular life has been maintained via highly conserved and ancient processes of cell reproduction and division. The plasma membrane as well as all the cytoplasmic structures are reproduced and inherited uninterruptedly by each of the two daughter cells resulting from every cell division. Although our understanding of the evolutionary emergence of the very first cells is obscured by the extremely long timeline since that revolutionary event, the generally accepted position is that the de novo formation of cells is not possible; all present cells are products of other prior cells.

Postharvest bacterial succession on cut flowers and vase water.

In cut flowers, xylem occlusion or blockage by bacteria negatively affects water balance and postharvest quality. Many studies have used culture-based methods to examine bacterial populations in vase water and their effects on flower longevity. It is still unclear if and how bacterial communities at the 16S rRNA gene (16S) level change during the vase period and how such change might correlate with postharvest longevity.

A revised central dogma for the 21st century: All biology is cognitive information processing.

Crick's Central Dogma has been a foundational aspect of 20th century biology, describing an implicit relationship governing the flow of information in biological systems in biomolecular terms. Accumulating scientific discoveries support the need for a revised Central Dogma to buttress evolutionary biology's still-fledgling migration from a Neodarwinian canon. A reformulated Central Dogma to meet contemporary biology is proposed: all biology is cognitive information processing.

A scale-free universal relational information matrix (N-space) reconciles the information problem: N-space as the fabric of reality.

Cellular measurement is a crucial faculty in living systems, and exaptations are acknowledged as a significant source of evolutionary innovation. However, the possibility that the origin of biological order is predicated on an exaptation of the measurement of information from the abiotic realm has not been previously explored. To support this hypothesis, the existence of a universal holographic relational information space-time matrix is proposed as a scale-free unification of abiotic and biotic information systems.

Cellular sentience as the primary source of biological order and evolution.

All life is cellular, starting some 4 billion years ago with the emergence of the first cells. In order to survive their early evolution in the face of an extremely challenging environment, the very first cells invented cellular sentience and cognition, allowing them to make relevant decisions to survive through creative adaptations in a continuously running evolutionary narrative. We propose that the success of cellular life has crucially depended on a biological version of Maxwell's demons which permits the extraction of relevant sensory information and energy from the cellular environment, allowing cells to sustain anti-entropic actions.

Developmental Morphology and Anatomy Shed Light on Both Parallel and Convergent Evolution of the Umbellate Inflorescence in Monocots, Underlain by a New Variant of Metatopy.

Inflorescence structure is very diverse and homoplasious, yet the developmental basis of their homoplasy is poorly understood. To gain an understanding of the degree of homology that these diverse structures share, we characterize the developmental morphology and anatomy of various umbellate inflorescences across the monocots and analyzed them in an evolutionary context. To characterize branching order, we characterized the developmental morphology of multiple inflorescences with epi-illumination, and vascular anatomy with Laser Ablation Tomography, a novel high-throughput method to reconstruct three-dimensional vasculature.

Non-Random Genome Editing and Natural Cellular Engineering in Cognition-Based Evolution.

Neo-Darwinism presumes that biological variation is a product of random genetic replication errors and natural selection. Cognition-Based Evolution (CBE) asserts a comprehensive alternative approach to phenotypic variation and the generation of biological novelty. In CBE, evolutionary variation is the product of natural cellular engineering that permits purposive genetic adjustments as cellular problem-solving.

Biomolecular Basis of Cellular Consciousness via Subcellular Nanobrains.

Cells emerged at the very beginning of life on Earth and, in fact, are coterminous with life. They are enclosed within an excitable plasma membrane, which defines the outside and inside domains via their specific biophysical properties. Unicellular organisms, such as diverse protists and algae, still live a cellular life.

Cellular senomic measurements in Cognition-Based Evolution.

All living entities are cognitive and dependent on ambiguous information. Any assessment of that imprecision is necessarily a measuring function. Individual cells measure information to sustain self-referential homeostatic equipoise (self-identity) in juxtaposition to the external environment.

The N-space Episenome unifies cellular information space-time within cognition-based evolution.

Self-referential cellular homeostasis is maintained by the measured assessment of both internal status and external conditions based within an integrated cellular information field. This cellular field attachment to biologic information space-time coordinates environmental inputs by connecting the cellular senome, as the sum of the sensory experiences of the cell, with its genome and epigenome. In multicellular organisms, individual cellular information fields aggregate into a collective information architectural matrix, termed a N-space Episenome, that enables mutualized organism-wide information management.

Reappraising the exteriorization of the mammalian testes through evolutionary physiology.

A number of theories have been proposed to explain the exteriorization of the testicles in most mammalian species. None of these provide a consistent account for the wide variety of testicular locations found across the animal kingdom. It is proposed that testicular location is the result of coordinate action of testicular tissue ecologies to sustain preferential states of homeostatic equipoise throughout evolutionary development in response to the advent of endothermy.

Biological evolution as defense of 'self'.

Although the origin of self-referential consciousness is unknown, it can be argued that the instantiation of self-reference was the commencement of the living state as phenomenal experientiality. As self-referential cognition is demonstrated by all living organisms, life can be equated with the sustenance of cellular homeostasis in the continuous defense of 'self'. It is proposed that the epicenter of 'self' is perpetually embodied within the basic cellular form in which it was instantiated.

Senomic view of the cell: Senome Genome.

In the legacy of Thomas Henry Huxley, and his 'epigenetic' philosophy of biology, cells are proposed to represent a trinity of three memory-storing media: Senome, Epigenome, and Genome that together comprise a cell-wide informational architecture. Our current preferential focus on the Genome needs to be complemented by a similar focus on the Epigenome and a here proposed Senome, representing the sum of all the sensory experiences of the cognitive cell and its sensing apparatus. Only then will biology be in a position to embrace the whole complexity of the eukaryotic cell, understanding its true nature which allows the communicative assembly of cells in the form of sentient multicellular organisms.

The Cosmologic continuum from physics to consciousness.

Reduction of developmental biology to self-referential cell-cell communication offers a portal for understanding fundamental mechanisms of physiology as derived from physics through quantum mechanics. It is argued that self-referential organization is implicit to the Big Bang and its further expression is a recoil reaction to that Singularity. When such a frame is considered, in combination with experimental evidence for the importance of epigenetic inheritance, the unicellular state can be reappraised as the primary object of selection.

Unitary Physiology.

The common relationships among a great variety of biological phenomena seem enigmatic when considered solely at the level of the phenotype. The deep connections in physiology, for example, between the effects of maternal food restriction in utero and the subsequent incidence of metabolic syndrome in offspring, the effects of microgravity on cell polarity and reproduction in yeast, stress effects on jellyfish, and their endless longevity, or the relationship between nutrient abundance and the colonial form in slime molds, are not apparent by phenotypic observation. Yet all of these phenomena are ultimately determined by the Target of Rapamycin (TOR) gene and its associated signaling complexes.

Four domains: The fundamental unicell and Post-Darwinian Cognition-Based Evolution.

Contemporary research supports the viewpoint that self-referential cognition is the proper definition of life. From that initiating platform, a cohesive alternative evolutionary narrative distinct from standard Neodarwinism can be presented. Cognition-Based Evolution contends that biological variation is a product of a self-reinforcing information cycle that derives from self-referential attachment to biological information space-time with its attendant ambiguities.

Terminal addition in a cellular world.

Recent advances in our understanding of evolutionary development permit a reframed appraisal of Terminal Addition as a continuous historical process of cellular-environmental complementarity. Within this frame of reference, evolutionary terminal additions can be identified as environmental induction of episodic adjustments to cell-cell signaling patterns that yield the cellular-molecular pathways that lead to differing developmental forms. Phenotypes derive, thereby, through cellular mutualistic/competitive niche constructions in reciprocating responsiveness to environmental stresses and epigenetic impacts.

Biological information systems: Evolution as cognition-based information management.

An alternative biological synthesis is presented that conceptualizes evolutionary biology as an epiphenomenon of integrated self-referential information management. Since all biological information has inherent ambiguity, the systematic assessment of information is required by living organisms to maintain self-identity and homeostatic equipoise in confrontation with environmental challenges. Through their self-referential attachment to information space, cells are the cornerstone of biological action.

The resolution of ambiguity as the basis for life: A cellular bridge between Western reductionism and Eastern holism.

Boundary conditions enable cellular life through negentropy, chemiosmosis, and homeostasis as identifiable First Principles of Physiology. Self-referential awareness of status arises from this organized state to sustain homeostatic imperatives. Preferred homeostatic status is dependent upon the appraisal of information and its communication.