Trilobite eyes (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 01, 2013, 18:58 (4255 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The bacteria are chemical reactors. No nerve cells to create any kind of mental state or panpsychism. The chemicals around them cause a series of events to make their flagella react to move either toward, away, or stay still. This is all automatic behavior. No intentionality implied. The only way panpsychism can be present here is if we propose that a 'mind' invented this system of run or tumble. I'll accept that!-I'm not going to anthropomorphize bacteria, and in my version of panpsychism I use the word "intelligence" as nebulously as you use the word "god". The only clue that we have is different levels of intelligence which we know exist, moving from our own highly sophisticated variety downwards, and the picture I've tried to draw at all levels is of some form of "intelligent energy" directing operations within matter. You believe that free will is part of our "mental state". Has this been "created" by the nerve cells? You also believe in an afterlife which, unlike Tony's, does not involve a resurrection of the physical body. So will our surviving 'soul' be without a "mental state", since there will no longer be nerve cells to "create" it? Has the "mental state" of the God you and Tony believe in been "created" out of nerve cells?-You have quoted a passage from near the end of Stephen J. Talbott's fourth essay: "Overlooking all this, we are supposed to see ... somewhere ... blind, mindless, random, purposeless AUTOMATISMS at the ultimate explanatory root of all genetic variation leading to evolutionary change." Of course he means that the cells are anything but automatons. He sees them as working "from within", with the intelligence the ancients called the logos. Might this not be applied to our friend the bacterium? You also quoted Barbara McClintock, for whom a future goal "would be to determine the extent of knowledge the cell has of itself, and how it utilizes the knowledge in a 'thoughtful' manner when challenged." Might not this too be applied to our friend the bacterium? When you say with such authority, "This is all automatic behaviour," what do you know that Talbott doesn't and that McClintock didn't?-DAVID: Wish for a third way, and keep wishing. It isn't there.-Not me, David. Like dear old Satchmo I have
"Gone fishin' instead of just a-wishin'."-*******-dhw: [Tony] wrote: "The Genome is a chunk of code that reacts the way that it is programmed to react." Does this mean your God individually programmes cells, ants, wolves, citizens, flowers and bumble bees to cooperate? Or are you saying that he invented a mechanism which would enable them all to work out their own particular designs?-DAVID: See my entry: Sunday, March 31, 2013, 16:13 @ David Turell. The cooperation at the cellular level is all automatic reactions by molecules, which have no idea of what they are doing. There is no mental state involved. All physico-chemical reactivity. Beautifully planned. Animals have some consciousness and that cooperation is partially instinct and partially mental planning. You cannot take cooperation at a mental level to cells!-Tell that to Talbott and McClintock (see above). This comment does not answer the questions you have quoted. Individual programming? Or a mechanism that enables them to work out their own particular designs? If you think it's the mechanism, you are back to a mental level, of whatever kind.
 
dhw: You do a wonderful job of defending your own faith, but you have always admitted that ultimately reason is not enough ... one must take a gigantic leap. If you then criticize others for leaping in a different direction, or for not leaping at all, you simply enter the realm of pots and kettles.-DAVID: My problem is I think the 'leap in another direction' is not a leap at all but a nebulous hope that there is some weird sort of 'third way' to get around the requirement of a leap across the chasm. There is still only chance or design. If you reject chance only design is left. But inventing a third way hasn't happened. All of the scientists who point out the problem stop after they have pointed it out. There is nothing suggested after the stop, except to say 'we have a problem'. 'We' don't, they do because the next logical step is not allowed in their minds. I see nothing wrong with faith.-I see nothing wrong with faith either, except when the faithful accuse others of having the wrong faith, or criticize others because they have no faith. Chance and God are equally irrational hypotheses. I see nothing wrong with exploring other possibilities.