On consciousness and intentionality in biological species

By Vince Giuliano

Drafted 12-17-19     Published 8/15/22

In the blog entry The Field of Intentionality I characterized intentionality as a physical field, propagated by quantum wave effects,  In my treatise On Being and Creation I describe how Stuart Hameroff and Siir Roger Penrose believe that such quantum effects leading to consciousness are generated by microtubles, structural  elements in every biological cell that also function as very tiny quantum computers.  This current blog entry lays out the hypothesis that intentionality does not require consciousness and that all biological entities that have cells can and do manifest intentionality.  Further, this intentionality profoundly affects what goes on in the universe through the mechanism of Intentional Reality Creation. This hypothesis is the basis for another hypothesis of great relevance to the question of why we have a life-supporting world despite the overwhelming probability that any slight variation of countless physical parameters of our universe and earth in particular would have made life as we know it impossible.  That hypothesis is that All lifeforms on earth, starting with the most primitive shaped those physical parameters via intentional reality creation (IRC) and retrocausality so as to enable life.  This process started wth the first bacteria that existed in super-hot ocean vents, or perhaps even earlier.

Retrocausality is a concept rooted in theories of quantum physics and Information theory, the works of Dirac, Wheeler, Feynman and contemporary people concerned with quantum computing.  For explanations of retrocausality and its relevance to intentional reality creation, please see my blog entries WHAT’S ALREADY DONE ISN’T NECESSARILY DONE YET You can modulate the past to get what you want in the future.  And my 2019 article THE ARROW OF TIME POINTS BOTH WAYS — MORE ON RETROCAUSALITY AND RETROCREATION. 

Herein, I define consciousness as a property of biological organisms, such as a human, to sense properties of its environment, process the information thus derived, perhaps in conjunction with information already stored, and act to enhance its individual and/or its species well-being or survival based on the properties of that information. For a human being, knowing where you want to go while in a bus station, consulting a printed schedule of bus departures, consulting a display of departures and times showing delays, and buying a ticket for a bus ride and walking to the appropriate gate and getting on the bus would be an example of conscious actions derived from an intention to get somewhere. 

Intentionality is a closely related property, having to do with a desired outcome associated with an act or acts of consciousness. In the bus station example for humans, the intentionality could be to get home.

For a squirrel by my house, the conscious actions of seeking food in response to internal sgnals of hunger could include scampering on my deck to see if there is food there, and if there are seeds that have fallen down on the deck from my birdfeeder, finding and eating those seeds. For a caterpillar on a tree next to my house in the Fall, conscious actions could follow from sensing internal signals that it is time for it to prepare for transformation into a moth.  The caterpillar responds by seeking a safe  location to spin a cocoon web, spinning the web, and locating itself safely in the cocoon where it can undergo the transformation process – all this while avoiding predatory birds. 

For a weed in my backyard that I have just cut back with my lawnmower, sensing its injury the response normally is to grow new leaf tendrils rapidly. For a virus particle, the actions pursuant to an intention to reproduce could be to identify a cell and where it can attach itself to the cell membrane, penetrate the cell and reproduce itself there.

For the squirrel intentionality to eat is in the interest of biological survival. For the caterpillar, the intentionality is to propagate the species by the step of transformation into a butterfly.  For the weed, the intentionality is to restore its capability for photosynthesis by creating new leaves. For the virus particle, the intentionality is to utilize the machinery of the cell it is penetrating to create large numbers of new virus particles. So, as is the case for consciousness, I assert that intentionality is expressed over the entire spectrum of biological entities.  Further, given that intentionality is so expressed, the arguments in my treatise On Being and Creation, I suggest that this intentionality can directly impact of what exists through the process of rerocausality.

So, I am clearly identifying intentionality as being manifest throughout the entire domain of biology. And arguably to other domains as well.  Can a rock in my back yard exhibit intentionality or consciousness?  Not by this definition because it cannot act in response to information, at least in any way we know of.

A programmed machine could also satisfy this criterion for consciousness in limited ways.  A Roomba robot vacuum cleaner expresses actions in response to the specific  intention of cleaning rugs, carpets and floors.  The machine can turn itself on, leave its charging station and start cleaning my living room floors, sense furniture legs, navigate around them, avoid falling down stairs, sense its battery is running low and navigate back to its charging station, and plug itself back in.  But I prefer to keep this discussion here in the domain of biological entities.

Note that as I have defined them, neither consciousness nor intentionality require brains or the kinds of awareness we think we have associated with being awake and the use of language and media.  Instructions related to Intentions can be coded and built into DNA, such as instructions for generating a new pussy cat or human being.  Executing those instruction is instinctive as we well know, and does and not require anything at all like human consciousness.

The Roomba vacuum could also be said to have limited intentionality: to clean up dirt, get around in a room full of furniture and range over an entire floor area, and keep itself charged.

I need here to draw another distinction which is that between consciousness and human awareness, the latter only the property human beings insofar as we know. Human awareness is a subset of human consciousness where we can symbolically represent situations and states of being and communicate them via language and mathematics. And store and communicate these symbolic representations to other humans. What we know about science falls in the domain of human awareness. When we talk about understanding, we are usually talking about human awareness.  And for me personally sitting here and writing this. I am experiencing an incredible array of visual, auditory and sensual experiences, ranging from words showing up on my computer screen as I type or dictate them, to my hearing birds in the yard, my feeling like what it is to sit on old uncomfortable office chair in front of my computer, to the experiences of thinking through the words I am writing.  I think other human beings have similar experiences, although I could never know this as a proven fact.

Many other species communicate via quorum sensing mechanisms to form biofilm colonies or take other actions to protect themselves.  The blog entry on plant communications written by Melody Winnig and I illustrates some of the ways plants communicate and manifest intentionality and consciousness.

Our bodies are conscious of many vital things that we humans are not consciously aware of

Wonderful and amazing though it is, my human mind awareness excludes much of what is in my human consciousness that is essential for life. There is all the monitoring and control of our autonomic processes – breathing, heart beats and blood flow, digestive processes, lympathetic processes and many others.  An initial example of this in life is embryogenesis. Although I have studied biology just about every day for over a dozen years now, I understand relatively little about how the steps of human development work. Yet my body as well as that of every other living human has been conscious of them, this having been a necessity for me to exist as I am now.  Embryonic development occurs as a unidirectional progression from a single-cell zygote to an adult organism.   I can’t begin to tell you the biological instructions that were followed in the making of my five children.  I can, however say that whatever those instructions were my body, my wive’s bodies and the bodies of my children knew how to follow them.

Similarly, we have no direct awareness of the processes of aging or death.  During embryogenesis and early stages of life, cells undergo a spatiotemporally orchestrated differentiation process, leading to the generation of all of the cell types that comprise an adult organism. These events take place within a stable environment that minimizes molecular and cellular damage. As an organism ages, however, there is a continuous and progressive decline in the mechanisms responsible for minimizing cellular damage. This eventually results in an organism’s inability to maintain homeostasis (López-Otín et al., 2013; 2016).(reference),”  This is the essence of aging, although I am completely unaware of the aging process as it takes place in me minute-to minute  Almost everything that goes on in biology including all of the internal processes that keep me alive are beyond my normal awareness.  All are excellent examples of biological consciousness.  I need instruments like thermometers, my Oura ring, blood pressure monitors and MRI machines to tell me how well I am doing and what my illnesses might be.  My body knows a great deal about my workings even though I consciously don’t.

At the other end of the life spectrum involving advanced aging there are also multiple processes that cause us to decline as organisms and surely die before the age of 120, but our human awareness of these processes aso remains only fragmentary. As many of my readers may know I have been studying the sciences of aging for more than the last dozen years, and reporting my observations in my blog www,agingsciences.com. Although the blog contains over 500 entries, many of which are treatises on important topics in aging, I can say with comfort that what I  know about the subject now is only a small fraction of what ultimately there is to know.

Helpful videos

The videos on quantum consciousness listed in the right-hand column on this page may help readers comprehend the plausibility of the seemingly implausible hypothyses put forward in this blog entry