An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 08, 2014, 13:12 (3480 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Wednesday, October 08, 2014, 13:20

dhw: One expression stands between us: “innovation instructions”. The question is whether the genome-architect itself designs the new house, or your God drew up all the plans 3.7 billion years ago and the genome automatically switches onto that particular programme. You cannot get round this alternative.-DAVID: Of course I can. Either you are not thinking it through or I'm not explaining it well enough. There is the third way I am trying to put across. Sticking with the architecture analogy: imagine a suspension bridge to be built across a river in a deep valley. The structural engineer must account for the weight of the bridge [etc....] I view the genome the same way. It knows from the past what works, and with a new challenge, looks for guidelines for a way to answer it. The genome must contain similar guidelines from the past to create a truly modified new species, not exact instructions, because that might not cover new unexpected environmental issues (Chicxulub), but suggestive solutions. If a program can write a program (and they can) the genome should be able to take cellular information and propose solutions. This is where natural selection steps in the arbitrate.-You are putting across to me what I have been trying to put across to you ever since this discussion began. You started out with two hypotheses: 1) God preprogrammed all innovations and “Nature's Wonders” 3.7 billion years ago; 2) God dabbled. My “third way” is an inventive mechanism within the cells, which initially you rejected outright. You have now agreed that there is such a mechanism and have placed it in the genome, which is fine with me (so long as we don't lose sight of the fact that the genome is part of the cell), because I am only concerned with the existence of the mechanism, not with its location. Yes, it has to know its own past - though that does not have to stretch back over 3.7 billion years! - since it needs to know what, as an individual organism, it can and can't do, and relate that to the new conditions which demand or allow new structures or modes of behaviour. Those factors constitute “guidelines” for the genome, just as they do for the bridge-builder. And if the solution is not preprogrammed, the genome has the same autonomy as the bridge builder.-DAVID: The cell recognizes stimuli and simply reports them to the genome. Just how 'cognitive' is that? I still view the genome as the brains of the cell.-As I have said many times, I am quite happy with this. In the past you have vehemently denied that the cell had the equivalent of a brain (my bold): “You want your cell communities to gain intelligence from experience and then use that intelligence to make changes. Just where is any of that ‘intelligence' stored? Cells don't have brains (as humans do)...” (1 Sep. at 18.39 on this thread). That was in the days when you only gave yourself a choice between a 3.7-billion-year programme and your God dabbling. -DAVID: And the genomic solutions are semi-autonomous, as I have proposed. Remember I look at teleology not chance. Do you have a third alternative? Design of living things has the purpose of surviving. Since the time of Darwin and Wallace, only two choices have existed. Darwin chose chance and Wallace chose design.1) -1) Re “semi-autonomy”, as I said above, if the solutions are not preprogrammed, the inventive mechanism has the same degree of autonomy as the bridge-builder, who also has to follow guidelines as to what he can and can't do. 2) As for teleology, Darwin chose survival as the purpose of evolution. Previously you have always insisted that its purpose was the production of humans, which ran counter to the higgledy-piggledy nature of the evolutionary bush. 3) Our discussion is not about chance v. design, since we are now debating the nature of the mechanism your God may have designed. -dhw: You are now talking in terms of the inventive mechanism creating as opposed to being preprogrammed. This is very much in line with Talbott's argument as well as my own.
DAVID: Yes, that is what i've tried to find.-That is what I have been proposing to you throughout this discussion. On 1 September you wrote (my bold): “I initially misused the concept of inventive mechanism as I was thinking out loud. I have defined it now as a set of pre-planned instructions for a new species in some still hidden area of the genome. I expect it to be found.” Perhaps you will now accept my definition of inventive as “creating new things and performing new actions without being preprogrammed.”