Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 26, 2013, 18:52 (4013 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: You seem to think that any mention of chemistry makes the user of that chemistry an automaton!
DAVID: Because all of their responses are chemical and physical reactions according to the plan they follow, a plan within them from the beginning. You keep implying thought when none exists.-As usual, you state this as if it were a fact, although you haven't found a single scientist who backs your claim that "from the very beginning" God planted plans to cope with "millions of individual events" (not to mention billions of innovations, adaptations etc.). I'm not implying anything ... I'm suggesting quite explicitly, along with Shapiro, Margulis, Albrecht-Buehler, Jacob, Becker, Levine et al that cells are intelligent in their own right, and use physics and chemistry to organize themselves and to take and implement their own decisions.
 
dhw: Dembsky writes: "Shapiro believes that cooperative behavior is a fundamental organizing concept for biological activity at all levels of complexity." 
DAVID: [Dembski] is primarily a theologan and is critical of Shapiro coming so close to the ID concepts and then leaving out the attendant theism Dembski requires.-That is clear from the article. I repeated the comment because it mentions Shapiro's claim that cooperation was a key factor in evolution, which I linked to the next quote:
"Cells, according to Shapiro, are intelligent in that they do their own natural genetic engineering, taking existing structures through horizontal DNA transfer or symbiogenesis, say, and reworking them in new contexts for new uses."
DAVID: Exactly what he says. But it is just as easy and plausible to interpret his findings as using intelligent information implanted. -Dembski confirms that Shapiro sees cooperation between intelligent cells as a key factor in evolution. Doing their own engineering, reworking existing structures and all Shapiro's other "smart" examples take us far, far away from your theory of preprogrammed automatons.-DAVID: I followed him regularly on H.Post. I actually follow H. Post daily just to see what the wooly liberals are saying.-You have so far dismissed the findings of all these different scientists as "metaphors", "poppycock", "kooky", and "woolly liberal". Is it not possible that during their many years of research they have seen something you haven't?-DAVID: Of course the cells act intelligently. They are intelligently planned and guided by plans. And he is not thinking about cells as you are. He is championing their epigentic abilities.-More authoritative statements, as if the cells' intelligent behaviour could not possibly be the result of them actually being intelligent. What do you mean by "championing their epigenetic abilities"? Shapiro goes through a whole list of bacterial "smarts" to show how "incredibly sophisticated they are at coordinating processes involving millions of individual events" and at "managing the biosphere's geochemical and thermodynamic transformations". He concludes that they are very intelligent, sentient beings ... and I suspect you are the only person in the world who would take that to be a definition of automatons. As you say, though, your theory is entirely of your own making!