Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, October 06, 2013, 19:30 (4066 days ago) @ David Turell

David quoted me as saying that all organisms are automatons except humans.-dhw: The bit you have left out is: "According to your definition all organisms are automatons except humans."
 
DAVID: That is your misinterpretation of my definition, and why I deleted it.-Your response was that your dog was intelligent. On 2 Oct. at 2.10 you wrote: "My definition of intelligence is not just the use of information but being able to analyze concepts presented by that information, formulate new theories from those concepts. In other words what we humans do with our brains and our consciousness." Unless your dog analyses concepts, formulates new theories, and does what we do with our brains, he is not intelligent according to your definition. Please explain what I have misinterpreted.
 
dhw: We are not talking about single cells being able to do what multicellular organisms are able to do. That may well be why multicellularity evolved in the first place ... because cells found they could accomplish more by cooperating with one another and forming communities. -DAVID: I agree your theory implies that single cells invented multicellularity. You will need to read the recent entry on biological information to realize how unlikely that is.-I've read the article but its focus seems to be on proving the existence of Universal Information, via umpteen definitions and classifications. I'll read it again before commenting. However, I'm quite happy with "unlikely". I regard all three hypotheses (divine preprogramming, random mutations, intelligent cells) as unlikely but not impossible. I am an agnostic.-dhw: All communication involves some kind of biochemical process....... I am suggesting (as does Guenter Albrecht-Buehler, Professor of Cell Biology) that even individual cells have an intelligent control centre: he calls it the centrosome. You keep focusing on the method of communication, and "you shut your mind to" what composes the particular message in the first place.-DAVID: I know about the centrosome. It is composed of very large protein molecules doing a job by the same series of inter-molecular signals I've been talking about. One molecule activating another to do its job. All automatic. The intelligence is in the instructions (information) in the genome. Even choices in the centrosome are automatic. Please don't throw professors who use metaphores at me.-Please don't make out that professors who do not share your belief in divinely preprogrammed automation are only using metaphors. There's nothing metaphorical about Margulis's claim that bacteria are "conscious" (though not in the human sense). Albrecht-Buehler's book is based on the concept of cell intelligence, and he even refutes the idea of detailed preprogramming: "The cell as a whole is capable of immensely complex migration patterns for which their genome cannot contain a detailed program as they are responses to unforeseeable encounters." This is not a metaphor. Quevli, who coined the term "cell intelligence" wrote: "the cell is a conscious intelligent being, and, by reason thereof, plans and builds all plants and animals in the same manner that man constructs houses, railroads and other structures." This is not a metaphor.
 
dhw; The majority of scientists would say you are still indulging in your childhood tooth fairy fantasy. Your theory is that there is an unknown power (the tooth fairy) that preprogrammed the earliest forms of life to automatically produce every new organ that would lead from eukaryotes to humans, and humans were his ultimate goal. I have offered an alternative: that there is no ultimate goal, but only constant adaptation and invention to fit in with the demands and opportunities presented by changing environmental conditions. This is indeed "philosophizing", but no more so than your God hypothesis.-DAVID: More unadulterated twists on Darwinism. Yes, we both philosophize. We have agreed that evolution occurred. Your proposal doesn't fit our current knowledge of cellular biochemistry. -Our current knowledge of cellular biochemistry has no explanation for evolutionary innovation, and of course it cannot provide any evidence of a "tooth fairy" preprogramming the first cells with lungs, legs and livers.-DAVID: The evolution we see is a staccato series of species, all arriving full blown. You are reviving the itty bitty advance theory of Charles that is not seen in the fossil record. Cellular discussion and advances would perforce have to be itty bitty.-Another distortion of my argument. I've repeated ad nauseam that I do not accept gradualism, and that the "intelligent cell" explains the gaps in the fossil record on the grounds that there are no gaps. A new invention (organ) must work or it will not survive. How many non-moving cars, non-flying airplanes, non-firing guns are on the market? I have suggested that the Cambrian Explosion may have come about because a dramatic change in the environment allowed existing cell communities to produce innovations that would not have been possible under earlier conditions. We both propose a form of Intelligent Design, but my hypothesis only explains the "punctuated equilibrium" of evolution. Yours goes beyond evolution to a possible designer of the (cellular) designer.