Cambrian Explosion: mutation rate (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, September 21, 2013, 14:16 (4081 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My problem with discussing cell activity is you don't understand the biochemistry.- You may understand the biochemistry of cells, but do you understand the nature and source of conscious intelligence? If cell communities are incapable of any kind of thought, where does human intelligence come from? Nobody knows. You acknowledge that our fellow animals also have a degree of conscious intelligence. Where does that come from? Nobody knows. All organisms depend on their biochemistry, but if you believe that "higher" animals have a form of conscious intelligence that does not depend on biochemistry, you can't assume it's confined to them. However, if you believe that biochemistry is the sole source of intelligence, you will have to accept that your knowledge of biochemistry doesn't encompass it, and you will also have to reconsider your beliefs about free will, psychic experiences, and especially an afterlife.-DAVID: Your hypothesis and my God theory are horses of different colors. I am trying to follow the philosophic approach of 'theory to the best explanation' for what we see. You have invented your panpsychic cell theory that makes no sense in the biochemistry of cells. I admit my God theory explains everything, but it is an extrapolation to best explanation, with no basis of proof.-See above for biochemistry. Most forms of panpsychism are theistic. You yourself believe your intelligent God is within and without everything, which means he's within every cell. That is a form of panpsychism. I've offered an atheistic alternative, in which intelligences evolve individually from within. Needless to say, I don't subscribe to either form ... I'm merely lining up options. Your objection is not to panpsychism as such, but to any nebulous unscientific hypothetical alternative to your own nebulous unscientific hypothesis.-DAVID: In the cells and in the ants there is preprogrammed intelligent information that the cells and the ants can use, but as relatively automatic responses to their stresses or other changes. Chance did not invent the kidney. The odds are enormously against it. Pre-programming is the only conceivable way.-"Relatively" is a flexible term. Relatively to what? -Innovations are the exception to the rule ... most of the time, organisms remain the same, and the cell communities don't change their behaviour. My suggestion is that mutations were not random ... i.e. chance did not invent the kidney ... but that the invention of the kidney marks an intelligent, non-automatic response by cell communities to changes in the environment. And this is where your own argument becomes so contradictory. At one moment you agree that God did not preprogramme every innovation, and now you say preprogramming is the only conceivable way.
 
dhw: How can information be used for innovation without the user being possessed of intelligence?
DAVID: Basically intelligent processes as responses to stress are available to be chosen for use, with the characteristics of the stress guiding the choice. 
dhw: 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 ...
DAVID: I am using 'stress' to mean any change that requires the organism to respond in phenotype change.-I know you are. And I'm pointing out that environmental change may not necessarily require the organism to change. It may also give the organism the opportunity to create something new. -DAVID: Yes, the cell is intelligent in that it has intelligent information available to use. You admit cells don't think. That means their responses are relatively automatic.-I do not admit that at all. I wrote: "No-one is claiming that ants, bacteria and cells think and plan self-consciously or "aesthetically" in the same manner as humans." I have no idea what mental processes are like at any level of existence other than our own. Like you, "I am trying to follow the philosophic approach of 'theory to the best explanation' for what we see." I suggest that the intelligent cell theory (whether God designed it or not) explains all the mysteries of evolution, but "it is an extrapolation to best explanation, with no basis of proof."-Under "Review: Darwin's Doubt", I gave you four options to choose from, as explanations of the Cambrian innovations. You chose 2: God designing the intelligent mechanism that designed every new organ. And so yet again you agree that the cell is intelligent, but you also believe it is not intelligent; you agree that it designed every organ, but you do not agree that it designed every organ, because God preprogrammed the design of every organ. And you have agreed that your God invented cells in such a way that they were capable of independent invention, but you do not agree that they are capable of independent invention because they were preprogrammed to come up with every invention. Surely you should have chosen option 1): God himself designing every new organ. What's more, since you believe evolution happened, he built the design of the liver, the kidney, the eye, the lungs, the brain, the penis, the wing etc. into the very first forms of life, and presumably also preprogrammed the environmental changes without which they could not have been produced. Is this your best explanation?