Nutrition as a process of information absorption - exploitation of the (broadly defined) cognitive structure of other organisms
If the ideas of the chapter "brain" were continued, it follows on a meta level in the diet to a different image:
that of an information absorption process via diet between species.
Each (at this point in time existing) species is a successful phylogenetic development from an initially single cell.
The hypothesis here presents, contains that they recieve (inter alia) information through nutrition about other successful species of other lines
of development.
Each development line lives out a different aspect of the same life-world as a whole, rated within their own organism the living environment
differently. Any species experiences actually not independent, but lives out one aspect of the origin of the world, the biological Earth
(e.g. animals with flight instinct, animals with hunting instincts, plants with special protections).
Here all species are interrelated to each other in the competition and exchange with each other. Each species thrives in her part-world
experience of the total world. Regarding from outside, the man is also a part of this total (earth) world. He does not act objectively
superior above the wildlife, but his senses and his internal organs are directed to the perception of the other species.
In a broader sense, hence each species has its specific cognitive structure.
Each species has its own, species-specific algorhythms, which evaluate the environmental variables and integrate them into their own
development. All together, from the single-cell to the multicellular organism, complement one another in a total habitat,
the greatest unity of which is the earth itself. Possibly, including current research to amino acids on comets and the survival power
of certain single cells, there is within the universe an even greater unity on a meta level.
In my opinion the diet works in transcendental perspective like communication: just as man develops his personality through communicative
exchange and differentiated, the physical body strengthens through diet its species-specific structure. In each food therefore is not only
building materials or energy, but also including species-specific information, the cognitive structure. Here, each species is in a certain
proximity and distance relative to the other species.
The fact that every larger multicellular individual harbors a confusing and enormous variety of unicellulars, raises special questions:
Are microorganisms destroyed by ingestion, or are they still preserved in whole, in parts, or within their informations? If so,
does an integration process take place?
The above can also describe enactive:
Stabilization of the individual cognitive production by inclusion of visceral information about other cognitive structures of
the biosphere
For VARELA et al (1995, p 27), there are different worlds of experience, depending on the structure of individual living creature. The
producing as "embodied cognition" (p 205), primarily based on human beings, is different within the species, so that an evolutionary
biodiversity means a pursuit of a variety of worlds of experience within the biosphere.
Given the fact that every living being operates a majority of his time with digestive processes, usually referring to a differentiated range
of other species of the biosphere, can survive no (higher) living creature without strange species.
In addition to physical substances or to constructs like "energy" it is just an exchange of information of their own cognitive structure
in relation to other structures. Ostensibly only in one direction (one creature takes, the other is taken), but in all of these operations
within the biosphere all organisms are affected; as a result the own structure will be strengthened individually.
Feeding as a reference point on a near / distance scale
Food can be regard differentiable. It is first of all distinguish in quantity of optimal amount ingested. There is food that can be consumed
daily in large quantities, foods that can be eaten occasionally and, at the other end, substances that produce only in very small amounts
(homeopathic) a beneficial exposition. In an aspect of this hypothesis homeopathy would be a special case of the diet.
With food and substances here means the types of the diet underlying species in a holistic aspect, e.g. (in the above order by quantity
tolerance) wheat, cress, belladonna.
Sure each person has an individual optimal dietary pattern according to the constitution and the context of the environment,
including phases of illness and recovery. Each animal also has a largely species-specific dietary pattern, in a figurative sense also
plants and other life forms.
I would find interesting, to put the species in a relationship on the basis of dietary patterns using statistical methods in a near-distance
proportion. Any resulting graph would make clear, that any species has a specific, balanced place in the whole "world".
Any distance from the original, optimal location (e.g. breeding, genetic modification) requires additional work, or energy use,
the further away from the species-specific localized place.
Intraindividual versus interindividual intelligence
Here should be emphasized the relativity of the viewpoint from the individual by example of intelligence. In traditional,
non-reflective science the observer tends from his own species-specific heading out to an attribution of intelligence as increasing
its own species-specific, especially cognitive, singular performance. Intraindividual intelligence refers to the intelligence of the particular individual, often defined in absolute or relative
brain weight relative to the total weight. Interindividual intelligence here refers to the ability to reach more conspicuous
performance in the sense of accumulation in a group of several individuals of the same species.
If both types of intelligence compared in a graphic, it is noticeable, that on one pole animals exist with high intraindividual
intelligence but which can be used only for themselves, learned only rudimentary can pass on to other members of the same species,
usually through instinct. At the other pole are located animals (such as ants and bees), that accomplish as a group special achievements,
but as individuals are hardly able to survive alone. Which in comparison to the other pole act as a group like a single individual.
Human beings attract attention in this graph because it is the only species that is on both branches of the scale "up" and cultural
achievements are based cumulatively.
STARZAK (2015) for example, called this "cumulative cultural evolution" and sees its origin in a cycle of innovation and standardization:
"Unsere Lebenssituation ist das Produkt der kumulativen kulturellen Evolution ... des Menschen, des Kreislaufs von Innovation und
Standardisierung" (p.161).
Nevertheless, the human is not at the optimal endpoint of this scale: the fictional maximum intra-individual intelligence can only
be achieved through a permanent self-regulation regarding the use of optimal conducive lifestyles - ie a health conscious, exercising lifestyle;
the maximum inter-individual intelligence by encouraging all individuals by the Community - i.e. no wars, there are no people (refugees),
for which there is no social space in a community, because ultimately the experience of all single individuals means the maximum accumulation
of cultural achievements.
A totalitarian form of government would correspond to a kind of state, which suppresses the power of individuals.
Therefore it is not a form of government, which emphasizing both the development of the individual as well as the creativity of the community.
Also less successful should be the opposite pole, a for the whole of society destructive individualism. The most successful is therefore a
form of government which promotes both the individual and the company.
Hence it is the presumption, that human evolutionary development goes toward holistic development of the individual
with a simultaneous total involvement of all individual experience in an active, as a whole acting community.
That is the experience of each individual under the greatest possible interindividual variance represents the optimal development
for the entirety.
Relative intelligence of the species
Intelligence as an arbitrary construct can also be described as the level of ability, to maintain as a species in the microstructure
of the overall system in the environmental space (biosphere of the Earth). In such a scale all species tend, including human,
in the medium probably with a certain variance by the same value (for example 100), because all living organisms are in a balanced
"give and take" - ratio (ie foraging versus avoiding self to become food) to each other, which nevertheless from a phylogenetic development
exist out there at the moment.
Humans take in this view no special position: cognitive skills constitute merely a species-specific particularity in the interaction
with the other species as a "niche capability", as well as many animals have developed special features in the phylogeny.
Mental cognitions are not superior in terms of conservation per se other phylogenetic features, certainly not when it is attribute out
of the position of the species who owns it. This egocentric perspective is probably adopt to all animals above on unconscious way,
so that the human being does not occupy a special position with his cognitive ability here. The advantages of human cognition are "balanced"
by the destruction of their own habitat, as well as military conflicts, where from this point of view human beings remains as a species
under its theoretically possible cognitive performance and consequently must be classified rather below the average intelligence of all
living creatures, since a (lower) animal ever acts according to its predetermined options.