Shedding Light On How Cells Communicate (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 09, 2012, 12:04 (4375 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: The whole of my post is geared to the possibility that the eternal energy we are BOTH postulating as First Cause may be intelligent in the way we ascribe intelligence to cells, animals, and (as you point out later) plants, without their being self-conscious. They are all creative, but we do not believe they are consciously so. The hypothesis, then, is that eternal energy is NOT a disorganized rogue mass, and that its nature is to organize itself (= George's natural laws). You even go on to ask: "Isn't the entire universe somewhat conscious because of quantum entanglement?" In another post you write: "Richard Feynman admitted no one understands quantum whatever", so the term is not exactly enlightening, but "somewhat conscious" will do for me as a substitute for "intelligent". And that would explain why, like the intelligent cell I never tire of invoking, it keeps on putting itself in different orders. Only a hypothesis, but at least it has two possible advantages over the atheist and theist hypotheses: 1) it doesn't depend on chance, and 2) we don't need an eternally self-conscious god figure to explain life and the universe. -DAVID: What you don't tell us is where does the 'intelligent cell' get its intelligence? By chance? How intelligent is chance? An intelligent cell requires thoughtful construction.-But does it require construction by a self-conscious form of intelligence? Your question bypasses the hypothesis I have proposed above: namely, that the eternal "first cause" is an intelligent, self-organizing, but NOT self-conscious energy, and that lack of self-awareness does not mean a disorganized "rogue mass" (your expression). I'm suggesting that the intelligent cell mirrors this energy, in so far as it is able to create functioning combinations without the level of human self-awareness that we believe is unique to ourselves. We see Nature performing all its miracles without this level (or so we assume), and that may be a mirror image of how eternal energy functions as well.-The distinction between these two "first cause" concepts boils down to the level of self-awareness. The question of where intelligence itself springs from applies to both, but the theist concept requires a superhuman level of awareness, whereas the alternative that I'm trying to formulate brings it down to the impersonal unselfconscious (but not unconscious) level of Nature. It should go without saying that I'm not advocating either!-Interestingly, in your response to BBella you write:
"The comments at the end of the article you presented tried to sneak in a biophoton version of a theory of consciousness. Again, back to a theory of consciousness at the quantum level. Our consciousness makes the universe conscious, or is it the other way around? The universe was always conscious and our brains developed into receivers and participants."-My alternative is that the universe was always intelligent (= one layer of consciousness), but only we are self-conscious.