Evolution of multicellularity (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, October 29, 2012, 17:47 (4409 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: Of course I find dhw's ideas that cells have minds or consciousness in some form rather too fanciful.-I don't know at what point you linked up with this discussion. I presume you would not disagree that our bodies comprise huge communities of cells with different functions, and that these communities work together, and do so quite independently of any conscious control by ourselves: breathing, digesting, fighting disease etc. If you believe as I do that all forms of life descended from earlier forms, you need to find an explanation for how single-celled life became multicellular, and how all the organs we now take for granted actually originated. Since they all comprise communities of cells, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that initially individual cells combined with other cells to form such communities. I don't see how anyone can deny that these working communities demonstrate some form of intelligence. David traces this back to his first cause UI, whereas I presume you trace it back to a lucky mix of ingredients in the primordial soup. I am not focusing on a first cause, because I still think it's unknowable and I find both theories incredible. I'm focusing solely on how evolution works, and I'm suggesting that its necessary innovations take place not through Darwin's series of random mutations (= sheer chance), but through deliberate interaction and cooperation between cells and cell communities ... in precisely the same way as cells and cell communities now interact and cooperate within our own bodies. Perhaps you could explain why this is more fanciful than the theory that innovations are caused initially by sheer chance?