Cambrian Explosion: mutation rate (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, September 20, 2013, 19:51 (4061 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID describes the theory of the intelligent cell as "a nebulous theory with no basis in biochemistry."-dhw:I wonder how you would describe the God theory.-DAVID: It doesn't involve biochemistry.-Not much of a description, is it? But please note, I do not dismiss your God Theory. I respect it. I simply challenge your right to dismiss a serious hypothesis as poppycock when your own serious hypothesis is no less nebulous and no less unscientific. 
 
dhw: You agree that there is "conscious intelligence" in the cell and in cell communities, and yet you keep disagreeing!
 
DAVID: Because I'm not gettng across my concepts to you, and I think in part it is because you have pre-ceceived ideas about how cells work. Cells are automatic machines run by information in DNA and their responses are automatic. They have some degree of latitude by having alternate routes of epigenetic response when under stress. The overall animal is more than the sum of its parts. there is a minimal degree of consciousness, but not to the point of being self-aware, not aesthetically. This minimal consciousness is what pervades the cells. (My bold)-And this is the nub of our disagreement. You constantly ignore the point that I constantly emphasize. On 18 September at 15.44 I wrote: "I prefer "intelligent" to Margulis's "conscious", which is too readily mistaken for human-type self-awareness." On 19 September at 19.43 I wrote: "Margulis is careful to avoid anthropomorphizing her bacteria / cells." (She wrote: "Of course bacterial awareness is more limited than that of a human mind.") No-one is claiming that ants, bacteria and cells think and plan self-consciously or "aesthetically" in the same manner as humans. The whole point is that they have a degree of intelligence that enables them to link up and create something new. The sum is indeed greater than the parts ... as with a colony of ants. Each individual ant is not an Einstein or even a Turell, but they have sufficient "intelligence" between them to plan and to invent within the parameters of their ant-ness. Cells have no such parameters, because they are capable of an almost infinite variety of combinations. They are the interactive building blocks. Your alternative, as I keep repeating, is for your God to have preprogrammed every innovation, and even you have rejected that.-Dhw: Perhaps because they are possessed of an independent, intelligent decision-making mechanism, which may or may not have been invented by your God.-DAVID: And you want it invented by chance? Add the word automatic and you've got it.-Another distortion. I do not want it invented by chance. I have no idea how it was invented. I keep repeating that I am only trying to figure out how evolution works. "Automatic" is a denial of independence, and again involves preprogramming.
 
dhw: How can information be used for innovation without the user being possessed of intelligence?-DAVID: Explained in my last post. Basically intelligent processes as responses to stress are available to be chosen for use, with the characteristics of the stress guiding the choice. -I don't think innovation is caused solely by stress. If it were, there would be no reason for evolution to have gone beyond bacteria. I think that changes in the environment may also have offered opportunities for cell communities to experiment intelligently with different forms, as in the Cambrian Explosion. I would suggest that stress is more liable to lead to adaptation than innovation. But in both cases, cells must combine in new ways, and unless they are preprogrammed for all innovations, these can only be the result of their innate intelligence. You have agreed that conscious intelligence (but not human self-awareness) is present in cells and cell communities, and that cells are capable of independent invention and self-perpetuation. That is what I mean by the intelligent cell.