Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 05, 2013, 15:10 (3824 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You assume that chemical is synonymous with automatic, but you take seriously the suggestion that human intelligence emerges from chemical interactions between billions of cells.-DAVID: Because you have invented a nebulous intelligence so as to avoid choosing between chance and design.
 
A non sequitur. You believe that human intelligence can emerge from cooperation between human brain cells, but you are unwilling even to consider the possibility that other forms of intelligence might emerge from cooperation between other cells.-dhw: Maybe there is an unknown control mechanism (Albrecht-Buehler's "centrosome") in all cells and cell communities. 
DAVID: I'm sure there are based on plans in DNA-Good for you with your certainty, but I doubt if science supports you in your belief that God inserted plans into DNA.-dhw: Biochemists frequently talk of bacterial/microbial intelligence, and collective intelligence, but they don't know its source, any more than they know the source of our own. According to you, however, 90% of them are atheists, which leaves 90% presumably believing that cells have some form of intelligence that is not preprogrammed by your God. And who knows what the other 10% would think of your theory? -DAVID: That is the worst stretch or reasoning I've ever seen. I don't presume that atheists would think cells have intelligence.-My fault for not phrasing it better. "90% of them..." refers back to those biochemists that talk of bacterial/microbial intelligence but don't know its source. Perhaps it would have been clearer if I'd said: "Many biochemists talk..." (See below for references.) However, it's always worth remembering that 90% of biochemists in general reject your theory of divine preprogramming!-dhw: Your speculations have no more basis in reality than mine. Still level pegging!
DAVID: Because I start with biochemical reality and look at the results of evolution and extrapolate from there to reach a reasonable explanation. At least I choose a resaonble answer. With you it is all picket fence.-I have considered three hypotheses, all of which start with biochemical reality (cells must cooperate in the production of new organs), look at the results of evolution, and extrapolate a reasonable but unsubstantiated explanation. Since neither the God, the chance nor the panpsychist hypothesis has any backing from science, I cannot consider your willingness to choose one unscientific hypothesis over the others as a reason for your claiming that your God hypothesis is based in reality.-*****-If you google bacterial/microbial intelligence, you will find 191,000 references. I have chosen three quotes just from the first page which are unequivocal ... one of them being from my favourite expert in the field. -"While the number of bacteria in a colony can be more than 100 times the number of people on Earth, bacteria are twittering (" bacterial twittering" or "chemical tweeting") to make sure they all know what they all doing (by exchanging "chemical tweets"); each cell is both an actor and a spectator in the bacterial Game of Life. Acting jointly, these tiny organisms can sense the environment, process information, solve problems and make decisions so as to thrive in harsh environments. In better times, when exposed to an environment containing abundant nutrients, instead of rushing to exhaust the available resources, as human communities often do, bacteria save for the future and make sure to be prepared for hard times that might befall them in the future."
www.tamar.tau.ac.il/~eshel/html/intelligence_of_Bacteria-html
(I've had trouble getting back to this one.)-"So how does a colony of bacteria decide which genetic mutations afford the greatest chance of survival and expansion? Jacob, Becker, Shapira, and Levine, hold that bacteria communicate among themselves, writing, "It is clearly essential to figure out how the bacteria can obtain semantic meaning, so as to initiate, for example, the proper context-dependent transitions between different operating states of the genome (370-371)." Though the researchers do not understand the process(es) by which bacteria code messages and send them, Jacob, Becker, Shapira, and Levine do conceive that bacteria have shared social communicative abilities, which, because of the nature of language, implies a shared knowledge of the semantic meanings of their codes (371). Based on these speculations, it would indeed appear that not only are bacteria sentient (by choosing), and intelligent (by communicating), but that they are also socially organized (but civilized?)."-www.justburrus.blogspot.com/2010/03/bacterial-sentience-intelligence.html-MARGULIS: People think that if you can't talk, you can't be intelligent. But you know that's not true if you have a dog. You can communicate with them without talking. If you define intelligence as speaking American English, well maybe they're not. But if you define it in the much more broad sense of behaviors that are modified on the individual level, that involve choice and change and response to the environment, there's every bit of evidence that intelligence is a property of life from the very beginning. It's been modified, of course, and changed and amplified, even, but it's an intrinsic property of cells.
www.astrobio.net/interview/211/bacterial-intelligence