Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, October 04, 2013, 20:11 (4047 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw; I have pointed out that single cells exchange information, communicate and cooperate (more manifestations of intelligence) to form communities.... all organisms are automatons except humans -You know full well that many animals communicate with a degree of intelligence. My dog often communicates with me and I understand what he wants and he understands me. Single cells, no way.-> 
> dhw; As I've emphasized over and over again, this hypothesis is meant only to explain the course of evolution, and it leaves open the question of how the original cell acquired its intelligence. You are confusing the hypothesis of the intelligent cell with the hypothesis of panpsychism. The conference speakers repeatedly talk of cooperation, cell-cell communication, signalling. When you stated "bluntly" that cells do not exchange information, BBella drew your attention to a lecture entitled "How do cells talk to each other and what do they say?" -Cells do communicate and I have agreed to that. It is the method of communication that you have shut your mind to. Look again at the famous lecture. The cells send each other biochemical moleculer signals in a series. The signals are responded to molecularly. The molecules do not think. All the actions and reactions are biochemically coded. There is a passage of information and appropriate reactions occur. No thought or intelligence is involved unless you invoke the meaning of 'information' as intelligence in an M1 or CIA context.-As for the cells acquiring intelligence, their guidance is in the information contained in DNA. Since we have no answer as to how life started, we have no proof of how that information got into DNA.-
> dhw; In your examples, you continually focus on the automatic means by which information is acquired (analogous to the manner in which we humans acquire information through the automatic mechanisms of our senses), and prefer to gloss over the communications, cooperation and decision-making that are the hallmark of intelligence as I define it.-And you keep ignoring the diagrams in the lecture of molecular reactions imparting the necessary information in the form of molecular stimuli.-
> dhw; Some scientists, however, inform us that cells communicate, cooperate, take decisions, combine etc., and I'm suggesting that the cell communities themselves invented new combinations as and when conditions either demanded or allowed them. No "goal", no "plan" of any kind, other than survival and continuation, leading to the higgledy-piggledy course of evolution, from one invention and historical phase to another, just like the course of human inventions and human history.-You have taken scientists' philosophizing out of context. Talk to any biochemist and you will find that I am correct in my descriptions of how it all works. Your proposition reminds me of my childhood tooth fairy fantasy. As I have described the requirements to create a liver or a kidney require specified complexity and detailed information. Since you have given up on chance you need to study the lecture in detail and recognize what I am defending.-> dhw: Let me repeat, this leaves wide open the question of where the "intelligence" came from. It is an attempt to explain the course of evolution, and as more and more discoveries are made about the complex nature of the cell, I still don't see it as any more unbelievable than your divine preprogramming of all innovations, or Darwin's random mutations.-I'm glad you picket fence is so comfortable. Things will become much more complex asd resaerch advances. The formula applies: more complexity =s less possibilty for chance. The unbelievable becomes possible.