Re: [jcs-online] JCER 9(3): On Consciousness, Emotion, Artificial Intelligence & Meaning of Life

[Serge Patlavskiy]

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Rosemary Rock-Evans <rrock...@btopenworld.com> on March 28, 2018 wrote:

>Don't forget the Portugeuse man of war, which acts as an entity, 

>has no brain, and can perform the following functions:

> - steer

> - sail

> - navigate

> - fish

>

>Suiperorganism = aggregate

.

[S.P.] When dealing with mind, or, better say, with the exemplar of consciousness, we should attribute its possession to the entity which is formalizable as a whole complex system. Here, by "entity" we may mean as a separate living organism (either unicell or multicellular), a society of kin-organisms (like a hive of bees, a colony of ants, a flock of starlings, etc.), a symbiosis of unlike organisms (like Portuguese man o' war), so biocenosis as a whole.

.

Now then, it is a formalizability as a whole complex system that is a necessary condition for the entity to be possessing its exemplar of consciousness, but not having a brain.

.

Kindly,

Serge Patlavskiy

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From: "Rosemary Rock-Evans rrock...@btopenworld.com [jcs-online]" <jcs-o...@yahoogroups.com>
To: jcs-o...@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2018 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: [jcs-online] JCER 9(3): On Consciousness, Emotion, Artificial Intelligence & Meaning of Life

Don't forget the Portugeuse man of war, which acts as an entity, has no brain, and can perform the following functions:

 - steer

 - sail

 - navigate

 - fish

Suiperorganism = aggregate

rosie

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Lyall Watson – Heaven’s Breath

Five hundred million years before Ferdinand Magellan entered the Pacific in 1520, another Portuguese sailor circumnavigated the world.  It still does.  There is just one species, found in all oceans and known since the 15th century as the ‘Portuguese man of war’……..

It is a jelly fish.  A creature without head, tail, limbs, mouth, gills or body cavity, that looks and behaves like an individual, but is actually a colony of larval and adult animals that cling together and have, between them, contrived to develop a transparent, sky blue, air filled float that acts precisely like a sail and carries this enterprising community wherever the wind blows.

The float is a comparatively simple structure, a membrane surrounding a bladder of air produced by special gas glands.  It is attached, however, to a tangled darker blue tissue mass that is anything but simple.  Part of it is the original polyp, now surrounded by a crowd of daughter buds, some of which are protective and sensory, some of which take in and digest food, some consist entirely of a trailing tentacle which may be up to 50 metres long, and a few are little sexual adults.  These groups of specialists form the sense, digestive, feeding and sex organs of the creature’s body, but it is very difficult to decide just where individuality lies.

… They have the sort of coordination and unity of purpose we normally associate with individuals, but their behaviour is more like a well integrated orchestra…. The actions of the members of the colony are controlled by and subordinate to ‘colonial will’.

Physalia is, in essence, a superorganism

.............................................

Physalia colonies drag their stinging tentacles through the rich plankton layers beneath the ocean currents and they lift another part of their structure up into the air to take direct advantage of the wind …. The man-of war is an accomplished sailor with an astonishing ability to change and trim sail by adjustments in muscular tone which erect or collapse the float and alter its sailing posture.

When there is little or no wind, Physalia’s sails are deflated or lie flat on the water, and if the sun is hot, the colony contracts and starts a rhythmic rolling motion … the result is that the whole float is kept wet and protected from desiccation.

When the wind blows, the man-of-war sets sail.  The float is pumped up to take full advantage of the breeze and the colony works as a well trained crew, trimming the sail by fitting its curvature precisely to the wind.  And the most wonderful thing of all is that Physalia does not just go wherever the wind blows, but sets its own course.

The tentacles stream out behind like a sea anchor, and the rest of the colonial appendages are arranged in a clump or bulge on one side of the sail, which means that the colony, the hull of the vessel is asymmetric.  It floats with its long axis and therefore its sail at an angle of 45 degrees to the wind.  With the result that it travels downwind, but at an angle of about 45 degrees to the wind.  In nautical  terms, it sails on a broad reach.

Posted by: Rosemary Rock-Evans <rrock...@btopenworld.com>

https://allaboutheaven.org/
 

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