Cell Memories (Identity)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 02, 2014, 21:37 (3765 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: “Information-based rather than stochastic” means that the cell's work is based on information and not on randomness, which would be a precondition for purposeful invention! What do you mean by “intelligent information” anyway? What would unintelligent information be? The cell obviously uses information intelligently.-The cell uses the information properly because it is told to do so. -> 
 
> dhw:There is no “sneaking up”. The cell communities clearly cooperate, and in order to do so, they use their cognitive faculties to exchange information. Of course they have to work together from the beginning. That is what we mean by cooperation! -My response to you is to ask how do cells cooperate to produce a new species? You have no answer and neither do I. Remember that all the info we currently have is that DNA codes for proteins, and they can be modified. We can isolate genes and relate them to certain processes, but we don't know how that gene guidance of processes really works. We do not know how the phenotype of a human being comes out of the DNA, or the phenotype of any other organism. 
An analogy: wwe see a pile of lumber, stones, wires and pipes. Time passes and we see a house. Another pile, another different house. What happened. Workers built the houses accordilng to plans. At this point in scientific research we cannot see the plans, only the results. We do not know how organisms are planned! Our cells are workmen, following assigned duties. Your theory wants them to invent the plans de novo and then follow the plans to a new form. What I am sticking with is that there is need for the desgning architect, who has somehow inserted a planning code into the genome we haven't discovered as yet, or the architect appears from time to time to offer new plans. One or the other must be true as I think about it. 
You give lip service to the complexity of a living human, but without the training I have had you cannot possibly understand how fine-tuned are all the organs in regard to each other and how exquisitely the cooperation is adjusted. Each organ is at a distance from the others, yet satisfies the others needs. Put yourself in the position of a cooperating intelligent cell (your favorite propsition). How does that cell know, sitting in the liver secreting bile, what a kidney cell needs to know or do for a liver cell? These cells are like the folks who built the houses. They must follow a plan, not invent a highly complex plan a little at a time by some unknown method.-> 
> dhw: [My point]is that we only see the results of the process of innovation, and not the process itself. Therefore we do not know from first-hand observation what innovative potential cells and cell communities have.-We certainly know how cells function and what they are capable of in providing for a living organisms. 
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> dhw; To sum up: Shapiro says cells are intelligent, but you do not believe that cells can be intelligent enough to create new organs. The organs are there, and the cells must have cooperated to produce them, or they would not have worked. You do not have an alternative explanation, since you accept that evolution happened. -Shapiro presents his new approach to the genome but never carries his ideas to your extreme. I accept his ideas, as a great advance. I do have an alternate explanation. There is a designer/planner. Cells coooperate with the plans they are given.-> 
> dhw: Of course I don't know how the cellular mechanisms work, but some experts in the field have told us that cells are “sentient, subjective, cognitive, communicative and intelligent.” -So they are, but to a much smaller degree than you are willing to accept.-> dhw: So are humans, but we don't know HOW our intelligence works. Does that mean humans didn't invent the motor car? -Poor retort. We know full well the capabililties of our intelligence even if we do not understand consciousness.-> dhw: Bearing in mind that cells MUST cooperate to produce successful new organs, my proposed solution to the mystery of punctuated equilibrium, including the Cambrian Explosion, is that intelligent cells (origin unknown, but maybe “God did it”) cooperated to invent the organs. If your God did not preprogramme every single innovation and did not intervene to make each one separately, can you find a better explanation?-Again, the cells are workmen following a plan, given by God, all at once or one part at a time.