Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, November 14, 2013, 19:17 (3806 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: That is a complete non sequitur. The whole point of the intelligent cell scenario is that chance does not take over. Each cell community with its combined intelligences takes its own decisions according to prevailing conditions.We are dealing with how evolution works, not with the origin of intelligence (we have discussed the God, chance, and panpsychist hypotheses many times). -DAVID: Not a non sequitor. That is exactly my point you are avoiding. Explain to me where the intelligence comes from. -There are two different points at issue here: 1) How does evolution work? 2) How did it all begin? We don't like Darwin's random mutations and gradualism. You think your God crammed the very first cells with programmes for umpteen billion innovations, adaptations, strategies and lifestyles, and those he didn't preprogramme were the result of his dabbling. I'm proposing that cell communities pool their intelligences, and natural selection decides which innovations will survive. Where the intelligence comes from is point 2) ... three hypotheses: a) God, b) chance, c) panpsychist evolution.
 
DAVID: Either there is existing eternal intelligence or it appears from somewhere by some mechanism. What is your mechanism? -Same three hypotheses, each as nebulous as the other. I'm particularly puzzled, though, by your belief in first cause energy BEING intelligent, and your rejection of the possibility that it might BECOME intelligent.
 
dhw: According to you, the purpose of evolution was to produce humans,...... If I believed in God, I would find an intelligent, infinitely flexible mechanism more convincing as an explanation for the variety of life forms, but you refuse point blank to contemplate this alternative, even if your God invented it.-DAVID: I don't really follow what you are having God invent. Cells are intelligent only through DNA. -So are humans "only intelligent through DNA"? Some scientists tell us that cells are intelligent in their own way. Humans are also intelligent in their own way. Nobody knows how human intelligence arises. Nobody knows how cellular intelligence arises. The intelligence of ants appears to emerge from the cooperating community of individual ants. Human intelligence appears to emerge from the cooperating community of individual brain cells. Maybe cellular intelligence also emerges from cooperating communities of individual cells. You can't explain human, let alone divine intelligence, and yet you want me to explain cellular intelligence!