Do Fungi Have Free-Will?
Nicholas P. Money has a bold hypothesis. Money, a professor of mycology at Miami University in Ohio, has argued in a peer-reviewed paper that fungi have minds.
Whenever a new hypothesis like this is published and calmly debated in scientific journals without arousing any furor, your first instinct may be to scoff: “Why is this absurd thesis acceptable, but intelligent design absolutely anathema?”
Given how often ID theorists have been dismissed without a fair hearing, that reaction is quite understandable. However, given that scientific inquiry is in fact in this sad state, I also think that any case of an out-of-the-box theory being debated civilly is a phenomenon that should be encouraged, not discouraged — especially so when the theory runs against the grain of the old scientific-materialist paradigm. We should consider this kind of thing with an open mind, and expect to receive the same courtesy.
So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at Money’s argument. Why does he think that fungi think?
Actual Mind, or a Facsimile?
Before looking at his evidence, we need to clarify something: what does Money mean by mind? Whenever the idea of “mind” come up in a scientific context, I am resigned to expect that mind will be equated with mere computing power — which isn’t really mind at all. The idea of mind is typically thrown around in a very sloppy manner, and its two key elements — experience and will/agency — are vaguely assumed to be emergent properties of physical systems.
Experience is assumed to arise automatically out of computer-like complexity. No coherent explanation for why is given, and what’s forgotten is that we only know that we possess first-person experience because we get the “inside scoop,” so to speak, from our own experience. A computer that gives certain outputs for certain inputs is only imitating the actions that we have learned (due to that inside scoop) to associate with conscious experience. That carefully crafted imitation is the only reason computers seem conscious, and it doesn’t imply that they actually are conscious (see: philosophical zombies).
Likewise, discussions of will or agency in science tend to omit the most important part: that free will cannot arise in a strictly deterministic system, or by definition it would not be free will. That means that if any system is alleged to manifest free will, we should in theory be able to find some element (however small) behaving in a way that is not predictable by fixed and inflexible laws.
Now, to be sure, “fungal mind” would be interesting from an evolutionary perspective either way. If, on one hand, it is a mere computer, with no true mind attached (no experience or will), this would indicate a very high level of complexity and mechanical sophistication; and if, on the other hand, there is a conscious mind involved, then that would strike at the very heart of the pervading scientific-materialist worldview.
Apparently, Actual Mind!
Given how often scientists (and science writers) ignore these key points, I was expecting Money to present some evidence of extreme complexity and computer like behavior, and equate that with “mind.”
I was pleasantly surprised. Money doesn’t address the metaphysics of experience. But, tentatively — without coming out and saying it in so many words — he seems to want to suggest that fungi might have free will, in the robust sense. He writes:
There is a natural tendency to consider an organism conscious if it appears to engage in decision-making that results in a unique behavioral outcome. Whether or not humans have free will, we take actions that seem willful: she finished her coffee, whereas her friend left her cup half full. On a simpler level, fungi express the same kind of individualistic behavior all the time… Although there is a high degree of predictability in the overall time-dependent form of the emerging fungus, it seems likely that its detailed shape is irreproducible.
Do you see what he’s suggesting? He seems to imply that the growth of the fungus might be non-predictable even in theory. This, in turn, would imply that it is non-deterministic — irreducible to the fixed laws of physics, chemistry, genetics, and so forth — which leaves room for the possibility of either (1) true randomness, or (2) true will or agency in the strict philosophical sense.
This is fascinating, and I do believe it has philosophical merit. (Whether it has experimental merit is a question for other mycology labs to answer.) Money is quite right that the standard way humans intuit free will is by detecting action that cannot be fully explained deterministically by outside causes.
For example: Imagine you are a great inventor in the 1890s. You’ve created a marvelous automaton that can mimic human behavior. To a casual observer it seems lifelike — but not to you. You as its creator know that it has no true freedom; certain inputs inviolably result in certain outputs. You know that chain reactions in its internal gears and switches produce each action, so you aren’t fooled by the illusion of mind.
But suppose, one day, the automaton begins to do and say things that you are quite sure you didn’t design it to do (not even by the one-step-removed process of deterministic “machine learning”). How would you react? Most likely, you would be shocked. You would declare (in your 1890s accent), “My creation has come to life!” — and you would be quite justified in your conclusion.
Likewise, a fungus with behavior that cannot be pinned-down and predicted shows every sign of being alive — in the powerful everyday sense of the word, not merely in the sense we learned in biology class. It’s very hard to prove a negative, and I doubt any mycologist has done so yet (you would probably need to involve a physicist) — but if a fungus’s actions genuinely cannot be reduced to any deterministic process, that suggests free will.
Building Blocks of a Mind
Like a human brain, a fungal brain with true free will would need to be founded on some basic unit of action that is not strictly deterministic. Money believes the origin of non-deterministic action is found in the hyphae, root-like structures that collectively form a subterranean web called a mycelium. Working together, the simple decisions of the hyphae could result in more complex decision-making for the fungal brain as a whole.
“If individual hyphae are conscious, what happens when an interconnected colony, or mycelium, of thousands of these cells forms in the soil?” Money asks. “Is a mycelium more than a sum of its parts? Can it be regarded as an integrated conscious entity?”
As support for this hypothesis, he brings in apparent evidence of complex decision-making capabilities in fungi, including an experiment that seemed to show that when fungi are burned with fire they can remember the experience for up to a day after it occurred and behave differently as a result.
Money argues that it does injustice to the fungal brain to compare it to even a sophisticated mechanical system such as the Internet. He writes in his conclusion
In this brief essay I have considered fungal expressions of consciousness, including sensitivity, decision making, learning, and memory. This rich behavioral repertoire allows fungi to adapt in real time to changes in environmental circumstances. Our internet shows none of this inherent flexibility. It is a network of pathways that generates nothing on its own. Life outshines the limitations of this drab technology in every cell.
More Philosophical Work Needed
Money is a biologist, not a philosopher, and he is prone to semantic imprecision. For example, he writes: “There is nothing artificial about this intelligence. The continuous flow of information in the live cell would overwhelm the most complex robot.”
You have to wish he would clarify what he means by “artificial.” Most dictionaries define the word as meaning human-made, but since no one to my knowledge believes that fungi were made by humans, this would be an odd thing to assert. I suspect he means something more like “merely mechanical.” It would be helpful for the interpretation of the experimental evidence if qualified philosophers of science get involved in the discussion.
That said, Money seems to understand the qualitative difference between real mind and mere artifice, and I hope his paper will be the starting point of a deeper inquiry into which kind of “mind” fungi might have.
As things stand, I don’t claim know whether there truly is any sort of immaterial “fungal mind” — and I doubt that anyone else really knows. But outside the constraining box of methodological materialism, there’s no reason to call it implausible prima facie.
Granted, it might offend an old-school Cartesian who holds to a particular interpretation of the Judeo-Christian imago Dei concept. But for my money, it’s probable. After all, we know from direct experience that we have minds. And we can infer that we and fungi share the same designer.
