Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 30, 2014, 21:02 (3551 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: .... you are effectively saying that the genome provides the intelligence that makes the cell intelligent. I'll settle for that!
DAVID: Thank you. Agreed. All that is left is to agree on the source of the intelligent information in the genome.
dhw: Hallelujah! Or are you playing games with me? Let me repeat: you are saying that the genome provides the intelligence that makes the cell intelligent, i.e. the cell is an intelligent being. It is not an automaton. [...]-DAVID: ...There is no hallelujah. You are deliberately skipping over my concept of layered control. The genome contains information (intelligence) which allows the cells to make educated controlled responses to stimuli.-So you ARE playing games with me! The expression “intelligent cell” refers to intelligence as the faculty that enables organisms to perceive, learn, process information, communicate with one another, take decisions etc.
 
DAVID: The cells are given this intelligence and mechanisms to use it. The cells are organized to respond to each other and in unison.-The mechanisms to use information, as listed above (perceive, learn etc.), are what I mean by intelligence. You say they “are given" these mechanisms. By that, you clearly mean God gave them the mechanisms which I call intelligence. That means they have them. That means cells are intelligent. That means they are not automata. No more games, please.
 
DAVID: .... And none of our discussion explains the giant leaps in the fossil record, the punctualted equilibium we see. Your theory fits tiny steps only, and my description of cell activity also does not explain the leaps. We are talking in circles about a tiny aspect of the problem. -As I keep pointing out, the concept of the intelligent cell DOES explain the giant leaps, and punctuated equilibrium, and it eliminates tiny steps, and it is anything but a tiny aspect of the problem. Environmental change would not only demand adaptation but it would also present new opportunities for experimentation. While many organisms fail to meet the challenge (= extinction), others succeed because intelligent cell communities cooperate to come up with different solutions to the new problems. These solutions have to work swiftly if the problem is life-threatening (= adaptation), and even innovations (exploiting new possibilities) would need to work relatively quickly if they were to survive.-DAVID: What bothers me about your panpsychism approach is it offers no solution, nor does what I have describe to you. Therefore something is missing, and I come back to another yet-to-be-discovered code pushing evolution toward the obvious complexity of humans. We still don't know 'how cells...create almost unlimited life forms'-No, we don't know how it works, but the possibility that the cell, as the basis of all life, has an inventive, cooperative, sentient intelligence of its own (perhaps designed by your God) seems to me to offer a far more convincing explanation of the evolutionary bush than random mutations or divine preplanning of every single variation, both of which theories you have rejected. I am still at a loss as to why you are so determined to rubbish the research done by Margulis, Shapiro and others.