Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, November 01, 2013, 12:41 (3819 days ago) @ dhw

I am taking this discussion back to the Intelligence & Evolution thread, as it's really separate from Cell Memories and from Species Consciousness.-DAVID (under "Cell Memories"): I don't know what was planned as intermediate species on the way to humans. How do you know in your theistic mode that dinosaurs were planned? I don't. I don't know why you insist on that speculation. These were life's experiments on the way to us...-I'm trying to track your scenario back to its logical beginnings. You believe that evolution happened, which means that all living creatures descended from earlier living creatures. All living creatures are composed of cells/cell communities. Life doesn't experiment or invent. Only the cells from one generation to the next or your God can experiment and invent. You insist that cells and cell communities are automatons which cannot invent anything. Therefore whatever innovations led from pre-dinosaur to dinosaur must, according to your scenario, have been God's invention, i.e. the result of his preprogramming (= planning), unless he directly intervened (= special creation). This is the logical progression of your theistic mode, and it can only mean that he preplanned dinosaurs or created them specially.-Dhw (under "Species Consciousness"): The control lies in the limitation of choice (your a, b, c). But you still have not explained how an automaton can CHOOSE between a, b and c. And of course you can't, because you know as well as I do that an automaton cannot make decisions of its own. That is one reason why your scenario doesn't make sense to me.-DAVID: Please think outside your box. Stimuli have strength differentials. They have type differentials. Automatic responses could be programmed as graded responses depending on the characteristics of the stimuli. Electronic items do it all the time, and DNA is way more complex than the electronic algorithms the electronic boards.-We humans also have automatic responses to stimuli, many of which we are not even aware of. But the moment we wish to invent something new ... a machine, a strategy, a dwelling place, a method of hunting, farming, protecting ourselves ... we are forced to use our consciousness, to weigh up all the factors, and take innovative decisions, which we then pass on to later generations. But according to you, cells are incapable of this ... they cannot invent. So your God has to do the inventing for them. How does this fit in with their choosing between a), b) and c)? Do you mean they are stimulated by a "kidney-time" change in conditions, and then unknowingly choose between God's preprogrammed kidney, non-kidney and nothing-like-a-kidney, and succeed or fail accordingly? I'm afraid I still don't understand how you imagine this process works.
 
DAVID: I don't know the degree of pre-planning for anything. I simply propose that planning is necessary for complexity. The exact level of pre-planning vs, experimentation is anyone's guess.-You are using "experimentation" as if it were somehow separate from the cells and the programmes. What carries out the experiments? It can only be the cells/cell communities. Are they preprogrammed by your God to experiment (and to succeed or fail), does your God directly intervene and experiment by juggling them around because he's not sure what he wants or how to get what he wants, or do they experiment on their own initiative, and succeed or fail?