Species consciousness and instinct. (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 29, 2013, 20:02 (4043 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: How can an automaton have "leeway in choice"? With what faculty does it make its choice?-DAVID: No problem. the intelligent info in the DNA offeres A,b, or c as responses to varying stimuli.-A, b and c are the alternatives. You have not indicated the faculty that enables the automaton to make its choice between the three of them. If the choice itself is preprogrammed, there is no leeway.-dhw: Therefore according to your automaton theory ALL individual innovations and ALL species were divinely preprogrammed into the very first cells.-DAVID: That is not what I have written to you. The cells have limited choices, so there is an outcome of some variation.-And that is what I'm trying to clarify. There are usually limited choices, even when humans are placed in a certain situation. The question is the extent to which the organism makes its own decisions. An automaton has no freedom of choice. Even if the cells have "limited choices", they still can't be automatons!-dhw: If they were not all automatons preprogrammed to do so, and were not specially created, they must have had an internal mechanism that enabled them to work out their own individual, independent ways of coping with or exploiting the environment. Or, to quote a man whose opinions and learning I greatly respect: "the ability to respond with unique answers and [...] some degree of "epigenetic" decision-making." This applies all the way along the line from eukaryotes to trilobites to tyrannosauruses to Turells.-DAVID: Of course. that is why life is so inventive. Six pairs of eyes. I don't know why it is so difficult to understand, until I remember you don't want to make choices. Only proof solid of every step from amoeba to humans. Good luck.-Once again, you are shifting the focus. I am weighing one theistic concept of evolution against another: 1) God preprogrammed everything from the start except for what he didn't preprogramme, and you ain't gonna tell me which you think is which, or how automatons are able to make their own (limited) decisions; 2) God created a mechanism that would enable organisms to cooperate intelligently and invent an almost limitless variety of living things. (The latter version need not be theistic, but this discussion is not about the existence of God, it's only about the process of evolution.) I do not need to make a choice ... there is no gun to my head. But without a more detailed explanation of the first, I find the second much easier to understand and visualize.