Cambrian Explosion: mutation rate (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 17, 2013, 23:21 (4063 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You have no idea how they decided, but you know they did not decide. They must coordinate their functions, but you know there is no kind of thought process involved even during innovation.-The DNA tells them what to do. it contains the information
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> dhw: Ant colonies must have developed their different engineering works, military strategies, farming techniques etc. from scratch, and each invention required new roles. Ditto the formation of new organs by the cells. I simply do not believe that innovation can be the product of instinct. (That is why your foal is irrelevant.)-Instinct is there from the beginning. That is my point. It comes from the built-in informaton in DNA.-
> dhw: One might argue that instincts are examples of cell (or cell communities) exercising intelligence independently of overall conscious control by the organism (hence suckling).-I wouldn't argue that at all. Instincts are the property of brain neurons coordinated in their action by exisdting information in their DNA.-> dhw: My question, though, is how de novo forms are produced in the first place, if not through new types and combinations of cells. -That is a truism, but I don't know how the de novo forms appear, and neither does Darwin.-
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> dhw: What was coded? You can't plant a code in an abstract process ... it can only have been planted in the physical mechanism, which is the cell. -Codes are the property of intelligence. Codes do not appear by chance.-> dhw: You yourself drew attention to the work of Lynn Margulis, who observed similar "conscious" activities among bacteria. She also wrote: "In my description of the origin of the eukaryotic cell via bacterial cell merger, the components fused via symbiogenesis are already "conscious" entities." As an agnostic, I naturally sympathize with sceptical responses, but I would not dare to call Margulis's research poppycock.-Those comments of hers are philosophical and surmises. She is supporting the idea that intelligence pervades life. I take the view that intelligence provides the information for life's functions.-> dhw: [your god] created cells in such a way that they were capable of independent invention as well as self-perpetuation.-That I can accept in my context.-> dhw: Margulis's "conscious", cooperating entities offer an explanation of this evolutionary process (whether theistic or not) which surely deserves to be taken seriously by someone who otherwise has "no idea how [cells] individually decided to adapt their DNA to differing expressions to become each type".-I take her point seriously, but she is no more an authority on exactly how it all worked than I am. Conscious intelligence is at the basis of life. In a way back to your panpsychism approach, but I won't drag that thought so far into the underbrush of avoidance of recognizing that without chance there is only one other road to understanding, a pervading intelligence runs the show.