Genome complexity: stem cell controls (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 04, 2015, 08:37 (3096 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: No, species consciousness would be the product of evolution, as different cell communities over thousands of millions of years combined to create new cellular combinations (i.e. evolutionary innovations leading to new species).
DAVID: With no explanation as to how those cellular communities can plan for the future giant gaps in complexity.-The explanation would be intelligent thought - the same as your own, except that yours was incorporated into a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme for every single innovation by a supernatural intelligence with no explanation as to how it came into being or acquired its knowledge.
 
DAVID: The picket fence allows you to propose everything in every direction and feel comfortable. I also feel comfortable, but I have answers to the nagging questions that feel comfortable.]-Everything in every direction? I have proposed that evolution takes place through the autonomous intelligence of organisms - an intelligence possibly invented by your God. You propose that your God preprogrammed it all or intervened personally. But yes, we are both comfortable.-dhw: You have agreed that there is a 50/50 chance of bacteria being individual, sentient, intelligent beings, so you should allow a 50/50 chance that we have inherited the same characteristics and are not anthropomorphizing them. Neurons and a brain may not be the only tools for “thought”.
DAVID: So what else can 'think' and plan for complexity?-Well, according to you, there's a God and he ain't got neurons or a brain. And according to you, NDEs show that humans can ‘think' even when the brain is dead. According to many eminent scientists, single cells are intelligent, and the 50/50 chance that they are right would mean that intelligence (which would include the ability to think and plan) does not depend on neurons and a brain.
 
dhw: What is “well-planned information”? We're off again! Your hypothesis: cells contain an incredibly well-planned 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme which automatically processes information. My hypothesis: cells contain an autonomous intelligence which processes information.
DAVID: Right. You are recognizing that cells have a mechanism to interpret the information which is onboard and uses that information appropriately to run the processes of life. -Right. You are recognizing that the cellular mechanism to interpret information is not to be conflated with the information. But I would add that it also interprets information from outside.-DAVID: For me reading a code should be automatic if a code reader is present, as you say it is.-If the cell is intelligent, I would envisage the processing mechanism in the same terms as the human brain: some actions are automatic, and some are not. In your hypothesis, of course, all its actions are automatic.