Cambrian Explosion: mutation rate (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 18, 2013, 15:39 (4084 days ago) @ David Turell

David and I are locked in battle over the concept of the intelligent cell. I apologize for the length of this post, but it seems to me that each of the answers below suggests we are finally approaching the grand climax of our debate!-PART ONE-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.-DAVID: The DNA tells them what to do. it contains the information.-That is like saying the DNA is the intelligence within the cell, just as the brain cells tell intelligent humans what to do, because they contain the information.
 
dhw: I simply do not believe that innovation can be the product of instinct. 
DAVID: Instinct is there from the beginning. That is my point. It comes from the built-in informaton in DNA.-Same point, same answer. Our human instincts and innovations both "come from" the brain. You are assuming that cells are capable only of instinct, but that does not account for innovation.-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).-DAVID: I wouldn't argue that at all. Instincts are the property of brain neurons coordinated in their action by exisdting information in their DNA.-The brain is a community of cells. Instincts are the product of coordinating brain cells using information independently of any conscious control. Human invention is also the product of coordinating brain cells, but is controlled by consciousness, the source of which is unknown. So why assume that cells and cell communities are capable only of instinct and not of innovation? -dhw: My question, though, is how de novo forms are produced in the first place, if not through new types and combinations of cells.
 
DAVID: That is a truism, but I don't know how the de novo forms appear, and neither does Darwin.-Nobody does, so why dismiss as poppycock a theory which offers an explanation that covers all the problems thrown up by Darwin's theory?-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. -DAVID: Codes are the property of intelligence. Codes do not appear by chance.-That is not the point here. We are discussing whether or not cells have a degree of consciousness that enables them to innovate. In your context, this would mean God endowing his invention with independent intelligence.-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.-DAVID: 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.-Your own comments are also philosophical surmises, but that, you will agree, is not a reason to dismiss them as poppycock. Her surmises, like your own, were based on her scientific studies, and as far as I can tell they do not preclude your own philosophical surmises (she was an agnostic). -Continued...