Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 16, 2013, 12:47 (3844 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If chemical transactions are insufficient to produce real intelligence in ants (because chemical transactions between automatons do not produce real intelligence/consciousness), then chemical transactions between the automaton cells in the human brain cannot produce real intelligence/consciousness either. But according to you, they do! Therefore, either automatons CAN produce real intelligence, or cells (and ants) are not automatons. I find Matt's reasoning totally logical.-DAVID: Still very illogical. We still must keep separate intelligently supplied information in cells or ants and the development of analytically developed intelligence for planning purposes. That is a major component of consciousness. Brain neurons and their connections develop both analytic intelligence and consciousness, the former a part of consciousness. We just don't understand how it is done. Ants do not have consciousness, but they are conscious. -I'm sorry, but first of all, I don't see how you can be conscious without having consciousness. Secondly, all you have been saying up until now is that ant automaton cells can't make ants intelligent/conscious, because cells and ants are automatons, but human brain automaton cells can make humans intelligent/conscious, only we don't know how.
 
DAVID: They can spot remembered landmarks to get back to the nest. -So can humans. (Not too well, in my case!) You persist in ignoring the examples which show ants' "analytically developed intelligence for planning purposes". Some ants build underground cities to house millions of inhabitants: these nests have precisely regulated ventilation shafts, defence against intruders, chambers for brood rearing, food storage, even farming facilities. Are you telling me that your God preprogrammed the first living organisms to produce ants, and the first ants inherited a programme for automatic nest-building? What about the mantis? Did God also preprogramme the first organisms to produce ants which when attacked by a mantis would have one large individual sacrifice itself by getting into the mantis's jaws to block them while the rest climbed aboard and bit off its head? Was each of these ants preprogrammed to deal with every imaginable type of attack? And ants are just one of the billions of species whose behavioural patterns your God must have preprogrammed into those first few cells. And this, you say, is a belief based on your knowledge of biochemistry.