Evolution of Intelligence (Origins)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, March 29, 2013, 08:31 (4255 days ago) @ dhw

My whole argument goes back to your response to my disagreement with chunking original intelligence into separate intelligences. ->DHW: ....life and evolution are an ongoing mixture of chaos and organization, of harmony and discord, of creation and destruction. Stars come and go, just as species have come and gone; humans and their fellow animals work together in communities, or fight and kill one another (humans more so than other animals!); cells join together in a symbiotic relationship, or they reject one another to cause disease. ... Supposing Jack has cash and John has brains, together they can create a successful business. That, I suggest to you, is the cooperative principle that has enabled multiple intelligences to join together and create harmony. Meanwhile, Bob and Bill either ignore each other or fight, in which case multiple intelligences will lead to nothing happening, mutual destruction, or the survival of the fittest ... which is another way in which unity can be established! There is no need at all for a single unified purpose, if by that you mean a universal intelligence binding everything together. Individual intelligences can bind themselves together, and create their own order. Indeed, the fact that the world is a mixture of order and disorder could even be taken as evidence against the concept of a single unifying purpose.-
Simply put, you have a few very basic levels of existence, and some very basic rules governing all of them. The rules are a couple of hundred universal constants that MUST be true in order for life to exist, and the laws of physics. These underlying rules have to be in existence prior to anything that has a material, physical existence having any agency. These levels of existence have a very stable heirarchy: Energy >Inorganic matter> Life-Energy can change states very easily, at the speed of thought, and those states can affect change in other energy. -Inorganic matter can change states, but only under certain conditions and only with the application of external force in the form of some kind of energy. -Living matter can change states, but does so through changing the states of its underlying inorganic material(down at the molecular level), so by necessity it requires an external form of energy that it can internalize and convert to something usable to do the work required. -We have never observed life else where, so we can not assume that the third tier of existence played any part in the formation of anything. We have never observed life coming from non-life, so we have no basis for speculating that it could. That takes us down one level to inorganic material. -Inorganic material(elementary particles) are incapable of free agency, i.e. thoughtful activity. They can and do affect change, but only under very strict circumstances such as chemical reactions or radioactive decay, neither of which shows any hint of intention or intelligence. Which regresses us further down to energy. -Energy is capable of carrying information, easily mutable, easily organized, can convert to from energy to physical states, and can induce change on inorganic material and therefore life as well. -So it is reasonable to assume that the original prime mover was energy. Now, as to whether or not it was a single entity acting alone, or multiple entities acting either with or against each other, you claim it is impossible to tell, which I disagree with. -You see competition between species, I see a self-righting system that maintains not only homeostasis, but also encourages personal growth. Not only do the living organisms play a part in this, but also the inorganic, as any changes in the inorganic composition or structure of the Universe at any scale would obliterate life. It is not random competition, but a carefully orchestrated balancing act infinitely more difficult than anything mankind has ever achieved. Orchestrated, concerted effort implies singular purpose. -If ANY element, from the first to the last, energy to life and everything in between, were to not act in harmony with this higher order it would cause wide spread devastation and the ultimate collapse of the system. Look how much devastation humanity causes in the ecosystem, and how far-reaching the consequences of our actions are. Consider the lowly bumble, without which all life on planet earth would likely die. We are not even a drop in the cosmic bucket, yet our actions have dramatic impact. How much more so if a single element, say hydrogen or zinc, were not in complete harmony with the system. Nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing would function right. -How you manage to know all of this(because I have told you nothing new) and still think for a second that randomness and competition could have come even remotely close to making this work is beyond my imagining. -Yes, there is a unified purpose. It is written there for anyone to see as plainly as the words on this page. The problem is not in the clarity of the message, it is in the implications of the message. If purpose exists in all of creation, it implies a creator. If a creator exists, it implies that he might get sick and tired of our crap and do something about it, and that scares the hell out of people.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.