Cell Memories (Identity)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 02, 2014, 02:30 (3548 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: May I therefore take it that you now agree that the cell is sentient, subjective, cognitive, communicative and intelligent? (If not, what exactly do you agree with him about?)-I agree with all but the last word intelligent. The cell uses intelligent information. which is just what he indicates. Again from page 146: 'information-based rather than stochastic'.
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> DAVID: [...] It is a giant leap to conclude that this explains or even points a way to explaining punctuated equilibrium. All it does is offer the possibility that somehow epigentics causes speciation. It only results in small changes. -The above repeated for emphasis. He does not carry his findings into making any suggestion like yours. He simply describes what cells can do, and severely reduces the role of RM & NS in his thinking. -> dhw: Evolution can only progress through innovation, and since all life is composed of cells and cellular communities, it stands to reason that all successful innovations have to entail cooperation between the cell communities. -Agreed that the cells must work together in new organs. Creating a kidney which controls acid/base balance, electrolyte levels, waste removal, fluid volumes controls, blood pressure control, etc. requires a knowledge of what conditions the other cells in the body must have to function. It all has to work together from the beginning. I see no way to sneak up on it. -> dhw:.... And so instead of arguing that neither automata nor random mutations could have produced such complexities, we can now argue - far more convincingly if Margulis, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler & Co are correct - that intelligent beings, working in collaboration with one another, could and did do it in the time shown by the fossil record.-Same problem. Cells use intelligent information to make tiny adaptations. Whole beings adapt to circumstances of nature, and small eppienetic changes appear. Not the way to fill the gaps in the fossil record, or develop a kidney.
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> dhw: It might be pertinent to ask why innovation as such appears to have stopped now. The potential for change has to be there still (as we know from continued adaptation), but for the time being, perhaps the cells have no incentive to invent, or have reached their inventive capacity given current conditions. Perhaps it requires dramatic environmental changes to bring forth dramatic new developments. That is why you focus all the time on apparently automatic activities - the innovations have already taken place, and what we see is the outcome and never the process that led to the outcome.-Whoa! We have been thinking about this issue of evolution for 180+ years. Not enough time to see the process in action, unless you think punc-equil might show us a pop-up new species any time now. We see results but we still really don't know how the process works. You and I have debated vigorously and I don't see an answer hanging around.
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> dhw; To sum up: Shapiro says cells are intelligent, but you do not believe that cells can be intelligent enough to create new organs. The organs are there, and the cells must have cooperated to produce them, or they would not have worked. You do not have an alternative explanation, since you accept that evolution happened. -Yes I do. God did it, I just don't know how. Darwin's proposal is based on no knowledge of genetics, no knowledge of cellular biochemistry (cells were blobs of plasma!), and studies of breeding in tiny steps. No wonder it looks so weak. His fears of the fossil gaps and of the Cambrian Explosion have een born out. The gaps won't go away and the Cambrian is more of an explosion than ever. Those animals appeared with cooperating complete organ systems. Your proposal does not tell me how.