Proof of ID (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 26, 2013, 08:45 (3986 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You say you know your intelligence because you have it (I prefer "intelligence" to consciousness)...
DAVID: Major problem here: intelligence is not consciousness. Intelligence can develop in a conscious being, but is not there in the beginning. Intelligence must be earned by study, experience, even introspection. -Another diversion along a well-worn track! Of course intelligence is not consciousness, especially when you try to equate consciousness with self-awareness and introspection. (None of the "intelligent cell" scientists claim that cells are self-aware.) Throughout this correspondence, I have repeatedly explained that by intelligence I mean the ABILITY to perceive, process data, communicate, cooperate, make decisions etc., as bacteria and ants do.
 
dhw: ...but you have no way of knowing whether cells and cell communities have their own form of 'emergent' intelligence. 
DAVID: Of course they have intelligent information. We are arguing from two different viewpoints. You refuse to separate out the issue that the cell must contain information that is available to the genome. How did the genome gather or develop that information. Information does not come free. It must be acquired. As a professor, you imparted information to your students and they acquired it. Who or what taught the cells their information?-As always, you escape into the ambiguity of "information". Under "Different in kind...", however, I asked you directly what you meant: "Implanted information which gives cells the intelligence to do their own inventing, or implanted information which tells cells what to produce?" You replied: "I think the information gives them the ability to modify and produce variation. The process does not appear to me to be totally guided..." Half a thank you. If they can independently (= not guided) modify and vary, perhaps they can also independently innovate! It is clear even from your concession that this form of information gives them the ability to perceive and process data, communicate, cooperate, make decisions etc. And that, according to conventional definitions, makes them intelligent. By all means argue, if you wish, that their ABILITY to do the above is God's creation, but please recognize the fact that automatons do not have what you yourself called "an inventive intelligence". -dhw: When they examine the biochemistry of human brain cells, you say there's more than biochemistry. 
DAVID: No. It is all biochecical reactions even the modification of synapse connections as the brain exhibits its plasticity.-You have left out the preceding clause: "...you have no way of knowing whether cells and cell communities have their own form of 'emergent' intelligence." Of course biochemical reactions are all biochemistry, but we are talking about intelligence, and if that can "emerge" from human biochemistry, or ... as you claim ... mix with the added ingredient of "quantum energy", why should the same not apply to cells, bacteria, ants? An alternative, of course, is to argue (as some folk do) that humans are automatons.-dhw: I understand your thinking about the latter, but cannot understand your rigid insistence on the former. 
DAVID: Because you are just as rigid in not recognizing the specific importantce of underlying information. DNA is a double code. Codes impart information. Again, how did the cells acquire that.-Possibly through your God, as I keep acknowledging. My argument is not against design as such but against your continued insistence that cells are automatons, and that right from the start God preprogrammed the billions of innovations (or dabbled) leading from single cell to humans.