PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Each of us made the remarkable journey from mere matter to mind: starting life as a quiescent oocyte (\"just chemistry and physics\"), and slowly, gradually, becoming an adult human with complex metacognitive processes, hopes, and dreams. In addition, even though we feel ourselves to be a unified, single Self, distinct from the emergent dynamics of termite mounds and other swarms, the reality is that all intelligence is collective intelligence: each of us consists of a huge number of cells working together to generate a coherent cognitive being with goals, preferences, and memories that belong to the whole and not to its parts. Basal cognition is the quest to understand how Mind scales-how large numbers of competent subunits can work together to become intelligences that expand the scale of their possible goals. Crucially, the remarkable trick of turning homeostatic, cell-level physiological competencies into large-scale behavioral intelligences is not limited to the electrical dynamics of the brain. Evolution was using bioelectric signaling long before neurons and muscles appeared, to solve the problem of creating and repairing complex bodies. In this Perspective, I review the deep symmetry between the intelligence of developmental morphogenesis and that of classical behavior. I describe the highly conserved mechanisms that enable the collective intelligence of cells to implement regulative embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer suppression. I sketch the story of an evolutionary pivot that repurposed the algorithms and cellular machinery that enable navigation of morphospace into the behavioral navigation of the 3D world which we so readily recognize as intelligence. Understanding the bioelectric dynamics that underlie construction of complex bodies and brains provides an essential path to understanding the natural evolution, and bioengineered design, of diverse intelligences within and beyond the phylogenetic history of Earth.
摘要：
我们每个人都完成了从物质到心灵的非凡旅程：以静止的卵母细胞开始生命（“只是化学和物理”），慢慢地，逐渐,成为具有复杂元认知过程的成年人，希望,和梦想。此外,即使我们觉得自己是一个统一的人，单一的自我,与白蚁丘和其他群体的新兴动力学不同，现实情况是，所有的智慧都是集体智慧：我们每个人都由大量的细胞组成，一起工作以产生具有目标的连贯认知存在，preferences,和属于整体而不是部分的记忆。基础认知是对如何理解心智尺度的追求，即大量有能力的子单元如何协同工作，成为扩大其可能目标规模的智能体。至关重要的是，让人变得平衡的非凡技巧，大规模行为智能的细胞水平生理能力不仅限于大脑的电动力学。在神经元和肌肉出现之前，进化就使用了生物电信号，解决制造和修复复杂物体的问题。从这个角度来看,我回顾了发育形态发生智力与经典行为智力之间的深层对称性。我描述了高度保守的机制，使细胞的集体智慧能够实现调节性胚胎发生，再生,和癌症抑制。我勾勒出一个进化支点的故事，它重新利用了算法和细胞机制，使形态空间导航成为3D世界的行为导航，我们很容易将其识别为智能。理解构成复杂身体和大脑结构的生物电动力学为理解自然进化提供了重要的途径，和生物工程设计，地球系统发育史内外的不同智能。
