Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, September 25, 2013, 16:13 (4077 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Wednesday, September 25, 2013, 16:29

dhw: In the last few days you have made statements like the following:
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> 1) "Bluntly cells do not exchange information, only chemical reactions-
Part of the problem between our approaches is definition of words. Cells do exchange data. It is chemical reaction data and that chemical data is new information for the cell receiving it. And example: a sensing kidney cell recognizes that the sodium level in blood is too high. It will transmit that information to a secretory cell, which will dump more sodium into the urine.
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> dhw: 2) Margulis described cooperating cells as "conscious entities". You disagree with a renowned scientist, but you feel she would agree with you.-If she and I agreed to definition of words, we would agree.
 
> dhw: 3) With regard to innovations such as the kidney, you wrote: "Preprogramming is the only conceivable way[/i but what kind of reception do you think you'd get from the scientific community if you told them that divine preprogramming of the kidney was "the only conceivable way"?-[b]You are grasping at straws. 90% of physical scientists are atheists. But among medical doctors surveys range between 40-60% theist![/b]
 
> dhw: 4) If your belief in God's preplanning is correct, yes indeed, cells must be automata, but your support for the idea does not make it a scientific fact.-Of course it is not fact. It is my conclusion based on my analysis to a best explanation-> dhw: The above statement might be seen as an example of belief influencing scientific judgment.-But my belief arose from agnosticism, by educating myself in an area I had not studied before, Darwin evolutionary theory, and cosmologic "Big Bang" theory.
 
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> dhw: 1) " As I envision it, the controlling mechanisms allow for a,b, or c, depending upon the challenge to the organism."-> In the context of innovations (creating a kidney de novo), I don't understand how the user can be given a choice. -
You have put statements of mine in juxtaposition to alter their meanings. "a,b,and c" are my theorizing the alternate epigentic rules that cells and whole organisms might be able to follow to respond to stresses in the environment. Your next statement does not follow the reasoning I presented. Kidney cells must follow a plan given to them. There can be little room for latitude in cell function. It must, as stated above, be very precise.
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> dhw:2) "Intelligence implies consciousness. I will not budge from this point." I agree, with the all-important rider that it does not imply self-awareness.. For me, intelligence implies consciousness of the environment,-
A matter of definition of words: a bacterial sensor on its outer membrane senses nutrient nearby. This is chemical sensing just as your nostril smells the chocolate. the flagellum flicks into action and the bacterium absorbs the chemical nutrient. The bacterium received information and automatically acted on it, by chemical reaction. bBella's lecture shows this. 
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> dhw: 3) "Cells do not accumulate knowledge." BBella's lecture and the article on bacillus subtilis show clearly that cells both acquire and exchange data. -As I have described it is all information exchanged by chemical reaction.The information is a transient phenomenon. I don't believe you can train an amoeba, but you can cut off the head of a planaria, which has been trained, and when it regrows a new head the memory uis still there, but at this level nerve cenns are present to retain hat memory. Unless a cell is a neuron, no memory, and memory takes a fleet of coordinated neurons.
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> dhw; David 4) "To make a kidney or a liver, there has to be a pre-existing plan. -> dhw: Nobody knows how these innovations happened. Darwin thought they came about through an accumulation of chance mutations, and some scientists agree. .. You believe God preprogrammed innovations. I suspect many scientists would be highly sceptical.-I don't do concensus science. Look at the stupidity about global warming. Kuhn warned about scientific paradigms.-> dhw; the concept of conscious/intelligent cells can hardly be called poppycock. -I've explained why it is. Cells are not truly conscious, nor are they intelligent. They are filled with information to use, and they are given processes for using it. As shown above in the kidney one cell tells another what to do. That is information sharing automatically, not intelligence as we define the word. -> dhw: Whether communities of intelligent cells merging, cooperating, exchanging data and making decisions over thousands of millions of years are capable of designing a kidney I really don't know.-No, you don't know. It is your favored conjecture to protect your agnosticsm. But it is not grounded in accepted biochemistry of life.-> dhw: All I do know is that the idea sounds no less feasible than random mutations, or a single, eternal, unknowable intelligence providing the first tiny organisms with billions of multiple-choice programmes. -You have a perfect right not to choose, but the idea of the intelligent cell is not 'feasible' with current biochemical studies of complex interactions mediated by chemical relationships, demonstrating how bacteria do it. Notice how far I have weaned you away from strict Darwin. The more complex life is shown to be at the molecular level, the less likely that the Darwin theory of evolution is valid.