I am not a molecular biologist, but the basics are founded in Amino Acids and the fact that these basic chemical compounds can be formed completely unrelated to concerns for life; yet once formed, can begin cellular excitement under circumstance.
Abiogenesis is a field of studying this fractional threshold between life and non-life.
At our point today, however, the complex reactions are primarily due to the markup of cells. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology#Functions
You can see a cell outlined there.
It is quite as you said, “there is a mental stimulus all the way down the line, and perhaps the whole experience is being realised continuously.”
The why of that being there loops back to the Abiogenesis and how Amino Acids produce into proteins and from there, the rest.
This isn’t to say we have a solid answer, because we don’t.
It was so long ago that we don’t know exactly how it happened, but we can recreate models in labs today of cellular genesis.
In a way, what you are asking is similar to asking why a computer opponent in a shooting game wants to avoid being shot by you.
If you drill down the amazing quantity of components, even in just Amino Acid formations and functions (not even counting RNA and the rest), the possible algorithmic outcomes for reactions to variable inputs of interactions is quite simply mind blowing.
In another way, it is something akin to asking why the skin on water wants to reform when there is a hole.
Answer that, and then multiply the complexity by at least a googol of variable outputs and you might have a hazy concept to grasp in the mind as to how this all works.
But like I said, I’m not a molecular biologist; I grasp the concepts, but I can’t spell them out in finite detail (though I do enjoy them doing so!)
Indeed the variety and amounts are mind-blowing, and the information involved equally or more so. If all of that is like a computer program, that simply acts like it doesn’t want to be shot due to its programming, then I don’t see why it would be any different in us or other creatures. yet we know from our own experience that there is something there [an experiencer] which does not want to be killed or suffer injury.
We could as easily say that going into shock when being attacked is biological, the cells react to such stimuli, then on a personal and subjective level such things may be induced by fear ~ even when illusory, and so is purely mental. On one level and in origins there may not be a need [as like a computer program], but later there is a need which the origins fulfil. Funny how it works out like that eh.
Think on those definitions for a moment, though.
What is “killed” or “injured”? To what molecular cell structure?
The basic reaction that we observe on the cellular level is akin to a desire for boundary, containment, and solidarity within its unit.
Cells typically only appear to break this conservation if there is potential of gain in some nutrient in the exchange.
Cells work like Bronze Age city-states, essentially.
A wall surrounding, a network of exchanges and conversions within that produce the gain of nutrients cyclically between components within, and the transfer between it and other cells should the right product arrive without threat to the integrity of the “cell-city-state”.
If anything, I would flip your quandary around and state that humanity reflects our smallest biological components rather than examining how our smallest components have what appears to be a concept we have at high levels of cognition.
Take, for example, globalization: what happens in a dish with multiple cultures of bacteria?
At first? Nothing. They all develop rather independent of each other.
Then little by little they near each other from growth.
Then they begin touching, possibly moving away where needed, or attempting to combine in part.
Eventually, space is removed as a liberty and all cultures of bacteria are forced to an ultimatum of lacking space for continued growth mostly independently.
Either they all die, all but one dies and it is the successor, some die and some combine into a new culture that survives, or they all combine into one “globalized” culture.
The question, then, is regarding when looking at a cell; is it regarding death?
Or, possibly, instead is it regarding retention and not death?
Instead of “knowing” anything, the cell is running on a program of instructions that are saved and permeated into it (rna, dna, protein) which determine the type of reaction to have to alterations to its components.
This then, brings your question down to the subject of why dna has storage capacity at all.
But this is empty, because truly, it actually leads down to the simpler form: rna.
So the question becomes primarily: how does rna work, how did it come to be this way, and why?
Well It certainly matters to masses of cells lol [e.g. humans animals etc]. see also below…
Ah so they wish to keep integrity. that’s interesting because when the first life-forms emerged [so i am told] one single cell contained another and gained a nucleus [the undamaged ‘consumed’ cell]. So it would seem that integrity is fundamental rather than harm ~ at least at this level. There is though as you say an effort to move away from the potential of loosing integrity.
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Its eidos [info set] keeps it intact, so it aims to keep its integrity such that its eidos network is kept. That is; the relationships are kind of bound together [are in relationships], and something which would break that set of connections is rejected.
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Well info is a kind of knowing, but anyways I agree that external chemical stimuli interacting and the electrical signals which are usually emitted in such an exchange, would cause the eidos to react. In simpler terms different relationships are formed or not formed according to their compatibility to one another.
I suppose then that shock [even when induced from an illusory source] in the subjective mind would create a universal bodily effect, such that the cells all react at once in a kind of chain reaction of information exchanges. electrical impulses etc are the same or similar as on the macroscopic as on the cellular level and I’d expect in some way on the RNA level.
I assume that RNA is bound by its eidos? Otherwise you’d never arrive at it from random chemicals mixing, certainly not the complexity we see in DNA.