The inherent nature of matter, of all its chemical elements, allows the atoms and molecules to combine into complex and stable structures through the known fields (the electric one mostly). Various chains of molecules, especially those formed around the carbon, are quite common in a place with many energy sources. Their structures were constantly built and broken until some of them became stable and perfectly repeatable. Life is based on such structures and their replication mechanisms, in our case on the RNA and DNA [13] molecules. This is an easy way to transmit the "blueprints"
(information) to future generations, and this also makes possible the change, adaptation and evolution of Life. DNA represents the common factor of every form of life, the key element of life on this planet; it simply allowed the singlecelled organisms to change and evolve into humans.
How can we define life? And more importantly, the intelligent life?
Can we, humans, analyze and understand our own life?
3.1 The general definition of life
Life is a set of mechanisms and processes that characterize the "working state" of a complex material entity, which allows it to grow, evolve and reproduce independently by the continuous exchange of energy and matter with its environment. The fundamental feature of life is its temporary existence, the finite duration of the "operational condition" for the related physical body. In order to survive through time, to create descendants (duplicates) with similar morphological and functional attributes, all types of living organisms must possess a particular division (or breeding) mechanism.
There were major leaps in the natural evolution of life on Earth; all significant changes in the environment were somehow reflected in the living organisms, allowing us to identify several stages in the history of life:
The ready-to-use nutrients from the primordial ocean, the heat and energy from the solar radiation, all of these needed just some time to combine and produce the first viable cell. As the elementary particles did, the matter structured around the carbon atoms also takes a step further on the road of self-organization. A sort of membrane made of lipids, a few amino acids bound into a single structure, a bit of chemical energy [11] and here are the simple ingredients that spontaneously formed the very first cells. The other factors involved are the pure hazard and the energy-rich environment. In conclusion and metaphorically speaking, all the special physico-chemical properties of Carbon have helped the mother nature to build two extremely precious things, diamonds inside the Earth and life on its surface.
First corpuscle was bounded by a filtering membrane, which allowed a selective transfer of substances from the environment toward the interior. Later on, the cell has increased in volume and exceeded a certain dimensional threshold; then, it simply divided into two similar corpuscles, continuing the development process as a unitary body.
The chains of organic molecules found in DNA (adenine A, cytosine C, guanine G and thymine T) form a double helical structure whose molecular groups (genes) encode the genetic information of each individual and of each species. During replication, the DNA strands are separated by an enzyme called helicase [13], while polymerases help forming new copies. This way, all the information and characteristics stored in canonical format may be copied and transmitted to other cells and to the descendants of that organism. It is important to mention that this process may produce different variations (or errors) of those molecular sequences of genes; these changes may be induced by the mutagenic factors of the environment or they may occur naturally. Anyway, this imperfect replication will cause differences between individuals, therefore a certain biodiversity, variability and even the emergence of new, completely different species; more resilient individuals may appear this way among the members of the same species, and they may pass on their special genetic characteristics to the future generations.
Once some primitive bacteria started to produce Oxygen (a process called photosynthesis) and to eliminate it in the atmosphere, the explosion of life and its diversity have just been triggered. This element has easily reached all kinds of organisms, "powering" them chemically in a more effective way.
Cell specialization and differentiation was a major change for life. A new internal structure, namely a network made up of several specialized cells called neurons, has soon taken shape. This nervous system can process efficiently the signals sent by sensory neurons (informing about the external environment) and can provide a rapid and optimal response for that body. The same rapid structure is also involved in the efficient "automation" of some internal systems that are necessary for all the living organisms.
Intelligent life has appeared due to the repetitive actions of the above mechanisms, processes of adaptation and selection in which the complexity of the internal structures of certain organisms increased significantly. And we are talking in particular about the brain, the most important organ of the central nervous system, which has grown and thus has allowed more powerful functions to all animal species. New layers of specialized neurons have been created, opening the road to communication, languages, abstract thinking, intelligence, complex interactions and self-consciousness.
We can mention here the volcanic activity, global temperature changes and the extension of the ice caps, cosmic gamma-ray bursts, solar eruptions, large asteroids etc.
3.2 The definition of intelligent life
Any form of life that is equipped with an advanced nervous system can adapt better and faster. He acquires more information through his dedicated sensory subsystems, processes them more quickly and provides a more appropriate response (automatic or not) to these stimuli. The increase in brain volume allows the existence of a greater number of neurons (the fundamental cell of the nervous system) and implicitly a greater number of neuronal connections (synapses). The basic functions of the nervous system (sensory perceptions, learning, memorization and responses to stimuli) are all improving, facilitating a better adaptation to the environment and better relationships between the individuals of the same species. As the individuals may now communicate through various means, their survival skills are developing and their reproduction chances are increasing, practically their level of intelligence (seen as that superior capacity to adapt and to offer an optimal response to stimuli) significantly improves. This "quantity" has led over time, inevitably, to a "quality" leap; the species called Humans gets at a given moment an additional brain feature - the self-consciousness - a particular thing that may be seen as the supreme, maximal form of adaptation of an intelligent being to its environment.
The intelligent life (and we are talking here about the contemporary humans) implies supplemental functions and superior capabilities as consciousness, reason, free will; it also presumes the complete conversion of the primary instincts in evolved thinking based on knowledge, understanding, logic and morality - all operating at individual level, yet having a significant interference with the group. The social connection was very useful to most of the evolved beings, representing an important development factor for their species.
We may assimilate the intelligent life with a complex set of procedures implemented and executed by an artificial automatic system (a sort of robot), which, while "operates", exchanges information, matter and energy with its environment; as a result, this system may take some decisions beneficial to itself. Moreover, it may learn from its past experiences and may initiate and execute various actions towards personal preservation and development, using its "intelligence" to better adapt to the external environment.
These are well-known things and we should neither reinvent nor tell them again; however, as they are presented in a causal manner, more light could be shed on the natural phenomena related to life and its emergence. Once we understand all of these mechanisms and processes, a major change in human mentality is very likely to happen. Moreover, a new evolutionary and adaptive process could be triggered, leading us to a higher intellectual level; in this way, all humans may get closer to their cosmic position - that place where our species should continue to evolve as quickly as possible.
3.3. Consciousness and intelligence
Consciousness is a direct result of the increased complexity of the brain structure, a natural consequence of the perfect adaptation of humans to their environment. Obviously, it may also be seen as an evolutionary extension of the instinct. At the same time, consciousness is a means through which a sentient being realizes his existence and his connection to nature - using the information received from the sensory organs - and produces a much more "intelligent" reaction, above instinct and imitation, which is in fact a resultant of his previous experiences, of his reasoning and understanding abilities.
Clearly, our consciousness, as our intelligence, is located inside the central nervous system. There is the place where our brain matter, a highly organized and interconnected matter, has changed quantitatively (increased in volume) and suddenly experienced a qualitative leap. And this is not a simple economic truism that could be used everywhere, it is just the result of human evolution across millions of years.
If an evolved living organism receives certain information (stimuli from the environment) through the sensory system, he could respond and act according to some "hard-wired" rules, instinctively, as such:
- to preserve his own life and integrity (and of the entire social group).
- to maximize the volume and quality of the food, to access it easily.
- to defend or extend his territory, to remove the invasive species.
- to ensure the best partner for breeding, to eliminate the rivals.
- to provide comfort/safety/resources for himself and for the other members of his social group.
These responses, more complex as the organism is more evolved, are all memorized, forming a sum of old experiences that may provide a useful mechanism to improve the future decisions. However, this mechanism is linear and relatively slow, yet it may provide all the necessary means for a species to prosper and for its most suitable members to survive and reproduce. Obviously, there are exceptions from this mechanism, namely the
"evolutionary leaps". Even the DNA, one basic molecule that allows the perpetuation and evolution of all living organisms through gene propagation, sometimes leads to qualitative leaps due to those "duplication errors". The human genes may be naturally modified by various factors (as it was already mentioned: chemical mutagenic agents, radioactivity sources, electromagnetic waves, ionizing radiations, etc.) that cause errors in the accurate replication process of the DNA spiral. In this way, some of the descendants may have many different, even superior features. Anyway, this evolutionary road enabled the number of brain neurons and of their connections to significantly increase. It is obvious that a better adaptation requires a larger amount of stimuli to be processed at once and a growing number of previous experiences to be memorized. As more signals from the sensory systems invade the brain, new dedicated areas are being created there to process, memorize or respond them in a better way. And all of these zones must be completely interconnected in order to generate the optimal solution as fast as possible. This improved accuracy of the senses is automatically leading to a pack of evolved brain functions; a whole new level of thinking emerged this way, allowing superior strategies and tactics (for hunting, defense, etc.) to develop.
We must not neglect the social aspects; the group and the family play a fundamental role in the global development of their members. A group ensures the success and facilitates a better protection and a good care for the offspring, also an easy exchange of information between members. The pace of evolution appears to be faster on this road. The nervous system of the superior mammals has seriously evolved through the mechanisms described above, giving rise to new and decisive abilities: communication and interaction skills, group working and fighting for food/territory, tool manufacturing. All these activities developed the nervous system of the primates continuously, helping each individual to become aware of his role and position in their groups. The new communication skills were very important in triggering the process of self and social awareness. Once this embryonic consciousness has formed, the journey to the actual level of complexity got significantly shorter (it only took about two hundred thousand years). And as for today, this biological kind of adaptation seems complete. The modern human faced all of the basic challenges of the environment, he is now fully adapted. This primordial level of human consciousness - as a result of the maximal evolutionary adaptation - seems to be quite stable and might remain essentially unchanged for a long period of time. Only a major change in the environment, of high intensity and long duration, could lead to some other modifications in the human nervous system.
Human came to understand his natural environment, his own biology, his own evolution. However, his evolution is not yet complete, and there are three different ways to follow. The first one, genetic manipulation - this is a complicated thing, currently with no certain results, and seen by many as immoral. Secondly, using technology and imagination, human may create a machine similar to his own brain, but faster and more powerful. This advanced machine will learn and progress, eventually reaching into a zone of simulated or real consciousness; therefore, the artificial could become the new natural one day. My optimism relative to this future moment is not changed. Contrary to Stephen Hawking's opinion, this Artificial Intelligence will not be fundamentally dangerous; AI is created and controlled by humans, being in principle as "good" or "bad" as its designers are. The third way involves the man-machine hybrids, but this is more an extension of the human's natural power and capacity than a new and innovative progress.
Important features of the consciousness
- As a higher function of the brain, consciousness helps us to better perceive and understand the reality. It represents the means by which we can represent the abstract, those things without concrete references; using the consciousness, interestingly, we can even understand our consciousness! It seems to be a paradox, but this rather shows there are no limits to human knowledge. Humans, through their mind and intelligence, are deeply connected and integrated into the natural environment at this moment. The power of abstraction and the scientific knowledge allow this species to progress, to conquer the outer space and to continue its existence. Consciousness, as well as reason, also allows these things to happen. The certainty, however, can only be provided by each and all of us.
- Consciousness is personal, but it also has social aspects. It is important to take into consideration here the intrinsic capacity of this material support of consciousness - the human brain. Thus, the parallel processing and differential analysis (data from the sensory organs are simultaneously compared with the stored patterns) had significantly accelerated the development of human's ability to sense his environment and interact with it. Any object or event generates a corresponding mental model, and these data may be reinforced, learned and stored through repetition. The parallel processing on large areas of the cerebral cortex, on billions of interconnected neurons, allowed this new higher function named consciousness to arise. As social being, human had to improve his communication skills, and this thing happened simultaneously with the "explosion" of his consciousness. The language and the verbal communication have facilitated the rapid connection of large groups of individuals. After a transitory period, the modern human can therefore communicate, understand, reason, analyze; he can now make conscious decisions that are no longer dominated by instinct. He has his own will, also his own character; some defining features are inherited from the parents, some others are formed by education, while others simply resulted from the personal experiences. The human individual is relatively autonomous, can make it by himself, but he also realized the advantages offered by the group - as being the best solution for personal and global protection. As his decisions are no longer only instinctual, the modern human achieved a conscious willingness, becoming "responsible" for the consequences of his actions; his free will may now show all of its sides, good and less good as well.
- The negative effect of the consciousness. Once this new capacity emerged, the primitive humans start to search and discover, being curious about the environment and about their own life; thereby, a lot of fundamental questions were raised at that moment, and no rational answers could be given. The inner conflict arose immediately, generating all the primal fears related to the unexplainable. Humans could not understand many things back then, such as life/death, light/darkness, the fire, the sky and the thunder, etc. Therefore, to invent and to believe in some protective, mighty gods was the normal thing they could do. From that moment on, the human consciousness and subconsciousness have both been dominated by the concept of god, seen as a creator and ruler of everything.
- The materiality of the consciousness. The human brain, as unique depository of the consciousness and personality, of our reason and defining ego, is a complex neuronal structure whose materiality is beyond questioning. We are represented (ignoring the integrality of our body), at a given moment, by all of our neurons and their synapses, by all the electrical impulses that practically generates our thoughts, sensations and our reactions. It is obvious that we are talking here about the structures of neurons, about their organization and interconnection, about chemistry and electricity (very small currents and voltages). There is a discrete matrix of complex structured cells that hosts a dynamic network of electric fields, and these circuits are implementing all functions of the brain, including the higher ones. "Subtle" energies are crossing the multitude of electrical connections and all these continuous informational transfers between neurons ensure our thinking and learning processes. The transfer function of the electric signal that flows between neurons (the synapses) is characterized by a small delay of the output relative to the input and by a variable electrical resistance that depends on the amplitude of the actual and previous impulses. This mechanism of "memorization", along with a repetitive excitation of the nearby inactive neurons, might lead to the creation of new neurons and specialized areas; these new brain zones could be very effective in pattern recognition and correlation detection processes. Therefore, some self-organized and self-taught layers of neurons can generate in this way complex automated responses, quick decisions to certain stimuli - which do not presume energy intensive calculations. We may see here the natural optimization of the brain areas and functions, which is very useful to control the repetitive activities at a lower, subconscious level. As an example, you may consider the walking, an automated process that does not require a conscious control of the numerous muscles involved.
- The structurality of the consciousness. This special organ called human brain, which is made of about one hundred billion neurons, hosts all those things that define us as intelligent beings. Waves of electrical fluxes are continuously passing through its neural circuits; these impulses represent in fact our consciousness, they encode all of our thoughts and feelings. Different neuronal structures from specific areas are encoding our talent, imagination, reasoning, but also the personal response to the external stimuli. Each brain's neuron might be connected with up to ten thousand other neurons, and this simple fact lets us estimate intuitively the hidden "power" of this human organ. Large areas of the brain are dedicated to the senses, to sight in particular, and this ensures a very fast response is case of necessity.
Features of the specialized areas of the brain:
- Consciousness and determinism. Our imagination, our new ideas, even our feelings are deterministically generated, out of the complexity of the neural connections. At a fundamental level, on a certain neural circuit, a simple decision is made as binary response that corresponds to specific information. It may also result from a fast parallel computation, a less conscious processing of some input and stored data. This is in fact the "idea" that comes up suddenly, the intuition we manifest sometimes or that decision we made as an expression of our own free will. All these are very similar to a smart search in a huge database, a process in which only a few records are practically accessed.
- Self-control. Consciousness, as human's supreme form of adaptation to the environment, allows a "self-control" process on several levels, a self-censorship of the reflex actions that are caused by certain stimuli or by our assessments. This adjustment "zone", as a brain function that allows us to be aware simultaneously of the facts, causation and response, is "located" somewhere above our primary instincts and may overcome them in most situations. The overlap of these multilayer areas, the instinctual and the conscious ones, generates internal conflicts that frequently lead to unexpected decisions. The moments of fear or panic, for example. Or the basic needs of a human - if they are not satisfied, some unconscious, irrational actions could be easily triggered.
- Ethics. As social beings, humans created a comprehensive, but quite relative concept of "good" for individuals and groups. Consciousness has helped this concept to improve; in the meantime, we completely realized what is life, what is its purpose, and we understood the ephemerality of all human beings. In conjunction, these things have simply and directly led to the emergence of the moral values and principles - the ethics.
- Levels of consciousness. Depending on the concrete degree of "awareness" involved in our data analysis and decision-making processes, we may identify several levels of consciousness. This improved ability to understand our own thinking mechanisms could represent, in this context, the highest possible level of the actual human consciousness.