Evolution was using bioelectric signaling long before neurons and muscles appeared, to solve the problem of creating and repairing complex bodies. 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. 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. 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.

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.

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