Bacterial Intelligence? (General)

by dhw, Thursday, January 29, 2015, 20:30 (3367 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: What anti-free-will theorists think is of no consequence to this discussion. I use a biological computer to run my thoughts and my life. That I have to use living cells which run automatically to develop my thoughts at my bidding has no place in this conversation. I'm not sure why you dragged it in. Bacterial cells and humans are light-years apart. -I dragged it in because the issue between us is degrees of autonomy. Researchers claim that bacteria are cognitive, sentient, intelligent beings, whereas you insist that they are automatons obeying instructions. You say they seem to behave autonomously, but you know they don't. In your next comment, you explain all the chemical and electrical processes that take place when bacteria go into action, and you compare them to an automated factory and a computer - but that is the whole question here. We know that humans programme their machines, but according to some researchers, including Shapiro, bacteria are NOT machines. When asked why the concept of bacterial cognition is controversial, he replied:
“Large organisms chauvinism, so we like to think that only we can do things in a cognitive way.” In response to the same question, Pamela Lyon responded: “...because of this notion that became extraordinarily powerful in the 20th century that living creatures are essentially machines.” Of course it's controversial, but the Shapiros and Margulises and McClintocks and Albrecht-Buehlers, all of whom have devoted themselves to the study of living cells, are not ignoramuses. Why must I take your word against theirs?-DAVID: What you want is to view evolution like a continuum, but the fossil record and the record of neurological development are not continuous. There are obvious huge gaps. IM's can't and don't explain those. All of this is is why we disagree.-It HAS to be a continuum in the sense that changes can only take place in living organisms, unless you think your God created every innovation separately from scratch in brand new organisms. Darwin, we agree, was wrong, and Nature does appear to take leaps. Your explanation of those leaps is that they were preprogrammed from the very beginning of life, or God stepped in to dabble with existing organisms. Either way, you still have a continuum from one living organism to another. If your God could alter the structure of existing organisms in leaps by preprogramming or by dabbling, he could also achieve the same results by endowing organisms with the ability to invent. No-one has witnessed any such invention. Nor has anyone witnessed God dabbling, and no-one has found the 3.7-billion-year-old divine computer programme for turning bacteria into humans. We can only speculate. Or as Charles Townes would say: “The best we can do is try to find answers to those questions.” He might even recommend open-mindedness.