Intelligence (Origins)

by dhw, Sunday, March 03, 2013, 17:09 (4283 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Dhw: But I do believe that at some time cells determined the need for a mechanism...-TONY: And to me, again, this is where it breaks down. When you say 'determine the need' that is implying them making a reasoned judgement based on what could only be called an imaginative situation.-I would not call it an imaginative situation. This whole hypothesis rests on the ability of cells to respond to the environment, either through adaptation or invention, to solve new problems or exploit new conditions.
 
TONY: They would either a)have to be capable of abstract logic and creativity which would make them much more advanced than your description, or b) have to be pre-programmed with a set of criteria and an order of operations.
 
In your first post you wrote: "A cell would have to be self-aware, and to a certain extent self-analytical in order to be able to function. That is, it would have to be aware of its current internal state, its nominal internal state, and the current state of its environment in some limited form. If it wasn't, it would not be able to 'react' to its surroundings in order to develop anything beyond basic chemical reactions. [...] This is the bare minimum requirement necessary for something to adapt." I'd like to avoid "self-aware" for reasons already given, but I'd regard all this as tantamount to "a reasoned judgement", and the description I have given includes perceiving, learning, reasoning, making decisions...We know that cells do function, and that they do adapt. I am going one step further, and suggesting that these qualities also enable them to innovate.-TONY: We take for granted our instincts and those of animals. How did those programs originate?-DHW: "Originate" is the crucial word. Instinct sets in once the new organ or activity has established itself.
 
TONY: That can't work, because without instinct, their can be no drive for life. Reproductive instincts, survival instincts, etc would all have to exist at the cellular level in your framework. So, in a organism whose life can measured in terms of minutes or days, where is the time needed to develop a pattern of behavior solidly enough to become an instinct.-There must have been a "first" for everything. In my scenario, when chemicals first combined to create an hereditary molecule, maybe the process was "intelligently" repeated elsewhere (= convergence), or all life sprang from that single success as the chemical combination automated itself. I have no more idea about how it caught on than you have about where your God got his "intelligence" from. However, all the innovations that have led from single cells to human beings have been the result of new cellular combinations. Each of these innovations must have worked and must have "established itself", though again I have no idea how long or how many generations it takes for an innovation to become an instinct. Your question applies no matter what theory you have about innovations. Or do you believe that your God manufactured each innovation separately (= anti-evolution), and immediately made it instinctive in every individual creature he gave it to? Or that he preprogrammed the very first cells to pass on the blueprint for each innovation that led from single cells to us, again with each individual organism immediately adopting it as an instinct? In this case, perhaps humans were also preprogrammed to invent the wheel, the car, the computer. My hypothesis is that cells of existing organisms have used their "intelligence" to invent sight, sex, flight, just as the cells of humans have used their now self-aware "intelligence" to invent computers. (I regard consciousness culminating in self-awareness as the most extraordinary of all inventions, apart from life itself.)-TONY: One last note. As an experiment, try to come up with something completely new. ANYTHING completely new, that has never been created before. Now, as a second experiment, try doing the same thing WITHOUT using ANY other information that you have ever known. 
If you succeed with either one of those, let me know. At that point, your hypothesis will have entered the realm of possible.-You don't have to convince me that there is a mystery here. That is at the heart of all our discussions! Materialists think they have solved the mystery by attributing life itself to chance and, likewise, innovations to random mutations. Theists think they have solved it by attributing life and innovations to an infinite, unknowable, self-aware, supreme intelligence which has always been there, is capable of whatever they want it to be capable of, and has whatever qualities they want it to have. I am suggesting a process whereby life and innovations are the material products of first-cause, low-level "intelligent" energy, which is incorporated within and evolves with these materials as it brings them together in increasingly complex combinations.