Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, December 01, 2013, 16:31 (3791 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As you can see from the pdf the biochemical processes are very complex molecular reactions. True neurons are a requirement for the emergence of true consciousness. The cells are not conscious, they are automaticaly reactive as shown by the diagrams. Shapiro says cells are sentient, not a word that gives you a conscious result. He describes automatic response mechanisms. My interpretation has as much weight as his.
 
1) No-one is denying the complexity of the biochemical processes involved in reactions. The issue is whether decisions are preprogrammed/dabbled with by your God, or worked out by the cells/cell communities themselves. 2) As usual, you prefer to use "conscious" instead of "intelligent", which enables you to equivocate over the meaning of "conscious". What is "true" consciousness? There are different levels of consciousness. 3) The diagrams CAN only show reactions. They can't show whether cellular decisions are taken automatically or intelligently. 4) You cling to "sentient" and ignore "very intelligent". Note that Shapiro calls them sentient beings, not sentient automatons. 5) I have no problem with your claim that your interpretation has as much weight as his. My problem is your denial that his interpretation (and that of several others in this specialized field) has as much weight as yours.-DAVID: Bias is as bias does. I've approached this with an open mind and my current bias is doe to honest conclusions. Popular science literature requires 'humanized' simplification.
 
I have never doubted the honesty of your conclusions. Nor do I doubt the honesty of Margulis, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler and the rest, and I find it surprising that your open-mindedness should permit you to dismiss their many years of research as merely an attempt to gain popularity. They are all unequivocal in their conclusion that cells are intelligent.-dhw: The pdf explains how cells use chemistry to talk to each other, sense their environment, change their behaviour by exchanging data and coordinating, and make different decisions. It is purely a matter of interpretation whether these actions are controlled by an autonomous intelligence or an implanted programme.
DAVID: Autonomous intelligence requires a source mechanism. Please supply one. I think out of thin air is appropriate and acceptable.-Certainly in the case of your God, "out of thin air" seems to be appropriate and acceptable. If intelligence "emerges" from interaction between cells, perhaps it can also emerge from interaction between the components of individual cells. "Intelligence is a fractal property or/and an emergent property: ...Intelligent ecologies contain intelligent populations, which contain intelligent organisms, which contain intelligent cells, which contain intelligent compartments, which contain...and so forth." (Albrecht-Buehler). He thinks the source mechanism or "brain" is the centrosome.
 
dhw: I have offered three equally unlikely possibilities: God, chance and panpsychist evolution. The "intelligent cell" hypothesis can be applied to all three, and remember I have suggested it in order to explain the process of evolution.
DAVID: Admirable effort, but no basis is research. Philosophy equal to the uselessness of the zeno paradox, but defended with the zeal of Dr. Henry.-You say it has no basis in research because you are not prepared to take Margulis, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler and all the other researchers seriously. And yet you have failed to provide one single researcher who backs your zealous defence of your theory of billions of innovative, adaptive, strategic programmes divinely inserted into the first cells.-dhw: And do please tell us whether you think God preprogrammed the raft strategy in the very first living cells, or did a dabble to save the ants, Noah-like, from the flood?
DAVID: Stop flogging. I have admitted I have no way of telling. My point from Natures wonders is the inventiveness of living things. It doesn't tell us how the inventions are created.-But you keep telling us how you think the inventions were created: you insist that they were either preprogrammed billions of years ago, or God dabbled. And you refuse point blank to consider the possibility that your God might have created an intelligent mechanism that did its own inventing.-DHW: This would certainly explain Darwin-style evolution, although the process is very different from what he envisaged ... mutations intelligently engineered from within the cells themselves, and not random. The origin of the "intelligent cell" - if the hypothesis is true - remains a mystery (see the three options above), but Darwin's theory also avoids speculation on the origin of life itself.
DAVID: OK, to avoid speculations, life arrives miraculously, cells are miraculously intelligently self-inventive, and it all started from a miraculous big bang. What is the formula for faith: x-times miracles = faith? Parsimony tells us only one First cause is needed.-Once again, you prefer to ignore the fact that I am offering a hypothesis to explain the course of evolution. One possible explanation of the "intelligent cell" is that God created it, so that gives you your one First Cause.