Why Imagining "Cognition All the Way Down" Does Nothing to Explain Morphogenesis

About two years ago biologist Michael Levin authored (with philosopher Daniel C. Dennett) an essay with the title "Cognition All the Way Down." In the essay Levin and Dennett start out by following some of the worst speech customs of materialist biologists.  But then the two start pushing something sounding different from the usual materialist claptrap: a novel-sounding idea of "cognition all the way down."  Suddenly, out of the blue, we read the following: "Thinking of parts of organisms as agents, detecting opportunities and trying to accomplish missions is risky, but the payoff in insight can be large."

Were Levin and Dennett actually trying to suggest that cells are agents? It's hard to tell, because we then read them write as if what they're talking about are agents that aren't really agents. It's just the kind of language misuse we would expect from the kind of guys who frequently talk about the "selection that isn't really selection": so-called natural selection, which isn't really selection at all. Selection means an act of choice by a conscious agent, but proponents of so-called natural selection are not talking about any such thing when they refer to "natural selection." 

The paragraph below makes rather clear that what Levin and Dennett are talking about are "agents that aren't really agents," and "selves that aren't really selves," namely unconscious things that will be misleadingly referred to as agents or selves:

"Notice how ‘you’ can be a single cell or a multicellular organism – or an organ or tissue in a multicellular organism – and still be gifted with informational competences composed out of the basic ‘nuts and bolts’ of information-processing structures. Agents, in this carefully limited perspective, need not be conscious, need not understand, need not have minds, but they do need to be structured to exploit physical regularities that enable them to use information (following the laws of computation) to perform tasks, beginning with the fundamental task of self-preservation, which involves not just providing themselves with the energy needed to wield their tools, but the ability to adjust to their local environments in ways that advance their prospects."

The title "Cognition All the Way Down" refers to cognition, but what Levin and Dennett refer to in the article is not really cognition at all. When I do a Google search for "cognition" the first result I get is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses." Levin and Dennett are not referring to any such thing in this article. When they refer to cognition, they seem to refer to some "cognition that isn't really cognition," and when they use the word "know" they seem to refer to some "knowing that isn't really knowing."  And when the two refer to cells as "cognitive systems," they seem to mean "cognitive systems that are not really cognitive systems." 

In a later essay by Michael Levin co-authored with Rafael Yuste entitled "Modular Cognition," there is the obtuse claim that evolution hacked its way to intelligence. Because hacking is an activity carried out by intelligent agents, you cannot explain the origin of intelligence by claiming that before it existed there was hacking.  In the essay Michael Levin continues to use weird language in which words such as "agent" and "cognition" and "know" are abused and distorted.  We have a very strange diagram entitled "Tiers of Biological Cognition," in which cells and protein networks are included.  "Cognition" is a useful word in the English language, and it is an abuse of language to start using it to refer to microscopic low-level things that the vast majority of scientists believe to be no more cognitive than a stone. It is also an abuse of language when the authors state that "networks of cells began to work as a society" during the morphogenesis leading from a single cell to a full-grown baby.  A society is a group of conscious, understanding minds, which cells are not. 

In the last paragraph of the essay, Levin and Yuste make what seems to be a claim that they're not just being metaphorical. They state, "With that in mind, we call on biologists to embrace the intentional stance: treating circuits, cells and cellular processes as competent problem-solving agents with agendas, and the capacity to detect and store information – no longer a metaphor, but a serious hypothesis made plausible by the emergence of intelligent behaviour in phylogenetic history."  But this seems like a quarterback's pump-fake, because they seem very much to be using terms such as "problem-solving agents" and "agendas" in a purely metaphorical sense.  They seem to be referring to agents that aren't really agents, agendas that aren't really agendas, and intentions that aren't really intentions. 

But it certainly could be possible for some thinker to propose some theory similar to "cognition all the way down" without using metaphorical or tricky language that fools us and confuses us by talking about agents that aren't really agents and intentions that aren't really intentions and cognition that isn't really cognition.  Sticking his neck out and proposing an idea that would seem very heretical to the average biologist, a thinker could maintain that protein molecules are literally conscious agents with real lives and minds of their own, and that cells are literally conscious agents with real lives and minds of their own. Would such a radical proposal help explain the great mystery of morphogenesis, the mystery of how a newly fertilized speck-sized ovum is able to progress to become a full-sized human body (something a billion times more organized than that ovum)?  No, it would not. 

Let us first consider how great is the mystery of morphogenesis. To explain the magnitude of the mystery,  I must first explain why a common conception of the origin of a full human body is very much mythical.  That mythical conception (deplorably promoted by many biologists for ideological reasons) is the idea that a human body arises because a body blueprint is read from DNA. DNA contains no such blueprint for building human bodies, nor does it contain any recipe or program for building any of the organs or cells of a human body.  The only information in DNA is very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids belong in particular protein molecules. DNA does not specify how to make a human body, and does not even specify how to make any organ or any cell of a human body.  Humans have about 200 types of cells, and DNA does not specify how to make any one of these cells. DNA does not even specify how to make one of the organelles that are the building blocks of cells. 

So the idea that a human body arises from a blueprint for such a body found in DNA is purely mythical.  At the end of the post here, you can read quotes by more than 20 distinguished science authorities (mostly biologists) stating that DNA is neither a blueprint nor a recipe nor a program for building a human.  If such quotes do not convince you, you need merely consider the elementary fact that blueprints don't build things. Complex things get built with the help of blueprints only because there are conscious blueprint readers that read blueprints and get ideas about how to act to construct things.  Within the womb of a human being, there is nothing like any conscious agent capable of reading and acting on incredibly complex instructions for building a human body if they existed.  So even if there was a blueprint for making a human in DNA, that would not explain the origin of a full human body; for there would be nothing below the neck capable of reading and understanding such instructions for the incredibly complex job of building the hierarchically organized and immensely dynamic reality of a human body.  Blueprints don't build things. 

So the mystery of morphogenesis is one that is currently a thousand miles over the heads of today's biologists.  When a biologist mutters something about DNA to try to make it sound like he understands the progression from a speck-sized ovum to the vast organization of a full-grown human body,  he is like some elementary school student trying to persuade you that he understands the Second World War because he has memorized the year it started and the year it ended. 

The organization of a human body is profoundly hierarchical. Subatomic particles are organized into atoms, which are organized into molecules such as amino acids, which are organized into peptides and polypeptide chains, which are organized into protein molecules with elaborate three-dimensional structures, which are organized into organelles, which are organized into cells, which are organized into tissues, which are organized into organs, which are organized into organ systems, with organ systems and a skeletal system being organized into a full human body.  We certainly cannot explain such a marvel of hierarchical organization by referring to DNA (or its component genes), one reason being that DNA does not contain any information structured in a very hierarchical way. 

Would it lessen this great mystery if we imagined conscious protein molecules and conscious cells? No, it would not.  The first reason it would not is that we would not explain the origin of cells by imagining "cognition all the way down." A cell cannot be imagined as merely some random merging of protein molecules that clung to each other. A cell is a fantastically complex orderly arrangement of protein molecules, one that is specialized for some particular task in the body, and one that is often somehow capable of the wondrous feat of self-replication.  Cells are so complex that they have been compared to factories. Each cell type requires a specific and extremely complex organization of millions of protein molecules, in order for the cell to do its job in the human body, and in order for the cell to be able to reproduce. 

Let us imagine conscious protein molecules. Could such molecules somehow know or figure out how to make a cell? No, this would be like thinking that building materials in a Home Depot (such as bricks and pipes and wood planks) could somehow figure out how to make a ten-story building suitable for housing humans.  If you were a protein molecule floating about in a body,  you would know nothing about the incredibly complex task of building a functional cell, one capable of self-reproduction.  Living your "protein molecule life" you would also know nothing about any such complex topics as cells or the human body or the type of cells that humans need to function on planet Earth.  If you and some other protein molecules were to join together for companionship or mutual self-preservation, the resulting agglomeration would never be a functional human cell.  The chance of such random combination of protein molecules leading to a functional or self-reproducing human cell (of a type that would be useful in a human body)  would be like the chance of a million random keystrokes producing a brilliant book that would make the best-seller lists. 

So we cannot explain how human beings get about 200 types of functional cells by imagining conscious protein molecules inside the body.  "Cognition all the way down" does not explain the origin of cells. But what about the origin of organs and organ systems in a human body? Would we help to explain such things by imagining that cells in the body are conscious?

The answer is no. To help explain why,  let me raise a question: which is it that appears within a human womb during pregnancy:

(1) A child's body that is optimized for survival inside the womb?

(2) Or, a child's body that is optimized for survival outside of the womb, in an environment radically different from the environment of the womb, a body having a whole set of features and appendages that are useless inside the womb, but useful outside of the womb?

The correct answer to this question, of course, is (2).  Consider a male newborn baby. He has the following features:

(1) arms that are very useful outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb;

(2) legs that are useful for walking around outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb;

(3) eyes that are useful for seeing things outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb (where everything is so dark that nothing can be seen even if you have eyes);

(4) ears that are useful for seeing things outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb;

(5) a penis and testicles that will one day be useful for reproducing outside of a womb, but are useless inside a womb;

(6) a mouth that is useful for eating and speaking outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb (where a developing baby gets all nutrients through an umbilical cord); 

(7) a nose and lungs that are useful for smelling and breathing outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb (babies take their first breath after being born).

If we imagine conscious cells inside the womb, we have no explanation as to why such conscious agents would ever band together to make a human body that is optimized for living not within a womb but in the utterly different environment outside of the womb. Such cells would know nothing about existence outside of the womb and would know nothing about the requirements of organisms outside of the womb.  We cannot imagine any leap of creativity or imagination in such cells that would cause such cells to assemble into a human body optimized not for living inside the womb, but for a totally different environment outside of the womb. Similarly, if there were people living on some extraterrestrial planet perpetually covered in very thick clouds, and such people had no knowledge of outer space or any bodies outside of their world, such beings would never build some kind of rocket like the Apollo 11 system, one capable of reaching outer space, traveling through outer space, and also capable of landing a spacecraft on the surface of a body very much smaller than their own planetary body.  

If cells in the human body were conscious, this would not at all explain how cells end up in the right place for there to arise a gigantically organized human body.  Such a cell would also lack any idea of what was the right place for it to go to, for the cell would not understand such grand ideas as human anatomy, and also would not understand what proper role it should play in such a grand scheme.  A conscious cell would also lack any senses, meaning it could never use visual information to navigate to the right place.  The cell would be like a blind, dumb and speechless man stumbling around in New York City, one that didn't know where its house or apartment building was. 

So the fanciful notion of "cognition all the way down" is worthless in explaining morphogenesis. Such an idea is of no value in explaining how inside a mother's womb there occurs the origin of any of the 200 types of cells in the human body, nor is such an idea of any value in explaining how the large-scale organization of a human body happens inside the womb. 

The fact that a biologist (Levin) has proposed an idea to explain morphogenesis that has no value in explaining it reminds us that our biologists are very much lost in the woods trying to explain morphogenesis.  The progression from the tiny speck of a newly fertilized ovum to the vast functional complexity and hierarchical  organization of a human body is a miracle of progression a thousand miles over the heads of our biologists.  Their failure to understand morphogenesis makes a mockery of all claims by biologists that they understand the origin of the human race. He who does not understand morphogenesis cannot credibly claim to understand the origin of the human species.  It makes no sense whatsoever to claim that you understand the origin of a whole species when you cannot even explain the physical origin of a single full-grown organism in that species.  Biologists understand neither the physical origin of any adult body nor the origin of any adult mind.  For reasons discussed at great length in the many posts here, the "it's all just your brain" claim biologists offer to try to explain the mind is as much of an "ivory tower old wives' tale" as the "DNA did it" myth they sometimes advance to explain the origin of a human body. 

The ball is getting bigger every decade