Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 09, 2013, 19:02 (4042 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: The major difference between us is your insistence on abstract thinking, which again confines your definition to humans. ... Even your intelligent dog cannot think abstractly as Higgs did. You go on to argue that cells react "according to instructions in their genome", so did your God give them instructions to cope with every possible situation as well as produce every possible innovation? (Bacteria can adapt to virtually whatever you throw at them.)-Yes they can, and I believe the massive informtion in the genome lets them handle it well.--> dhw: I wonder how they "know" which sets of instructions to obey. Is it not conceivable that he simply gave them the ability "to reason out solutions to changes or challenges" as they arose? It's worth quoting A-B again: "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."-Won't buy it. They have a set of automatic reactions, and their lives are really not very complicated. Sense nutrients, eat them. Sense danger, avoid it, etc. -
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> dhw: It is silly because you insist on equating "intelligence" with human consciousness, as if human intelligence is the only possible kind. Cells and cell communities solve problems, and have come together to create innovations. None of us know how. -We know that cells have been developed into complex organs and organisms. You are right, the 'how' is the issue. You are still confusing information supplied to the cells as intelligence. Intelligence supplied information to the cellular genome for the cells to use. This is a stepwise concept on my part. the cells are not intelligent. They automatically use intelligent information implanted within them..