Panpsychism Makes a Comeback (General)

by dhw, Monday, January 26, 2015, 17:35 (3587 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...there can scarcely be any justification for excluding bacteria from the ranks of the “intelligent”.
DAVID: But as I view it. they use intelligent information in their genomes and they are relatively automatic in their responses under that type of guidance.-See under “Bacterial Intelligence” for your use of woolly terms like “relatively automatic”.-dhw: ...in other words the mechanism for adaptation is autonomous (self-modification does not go beyond the original form).-DAVID: Yes it does. Back to the fish flipper. It follows the pattern of bones already set in the flipper. The same with the bat wing. Bones are modified from the basic pattern that we clearly see in comparative anatomy. I feel an IM can accomplish this under a semi-automatic mechanism as I have described allowing limited changes. What is not explained is multicellularity and the Cambrian Explosion. Those enormous jumps in complexity are way beyond organismal capacity to transform themselves. Multicellularity brought neurons! How did that happen? No one knows.-I deliberately chose examples in which existing organisms might change their existing structures which in turn would lead further and further away from the original species. Later you leap on the transition from paws to hands, but my point is that if organisms are capable of adapting autonomously, and since no-one can explain the major jumps, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the SAME mechanism is responsible when conditions allow for or demand even greater changes.-dhw: The IM can only go “so far” in its self-modification. If we believe in common descent, ALL innovations must take place in existing organisms, and since even single cells are believed by some experts to be “intelligent”, the inventive mechanism MAY go “so far” as to produce its own innovations.-DAVID: Not multicellularity all by themselves. Amoebas do form some multicellular structures with some differences in function in different areas, but they are not sponges, sea anemones, hydras, etc. with some neural functions.-Once again, nobody knows. We are talking about an ongoing process whereby intelligent cell communities form an endless variety of combinations, with new generations building on the developments of their predecessors. That is how evolution has proceeded, whether it is powered by random mutations, your God's preprogramming or dabbling, or my intelligent inventive mechanism. If you don't know how it works, how can you claim you know how it DOESN'T work?-dhw: A finned organism may decide to go on land, and its fins may become legs. A legged organism may decide to climb trees, and its top pair of limbs may become arms. An armed organism may decide to pick fruit, and its paws may become hands. These changes will happen quickly, because otherwise they won't be effective,-DAVID: No you don't! That is exactly the problem with Darwinism. Paws to hands is a huge jump. Ape hands to human hands is an enormous gulf of change. Try to teach an ape how to play the piano. I'm not talking brain here, just the dexterity they don't have. The hands may have some overall resemblance but the fine movements are light-years apart. Darwin appealed to gradualism, but the fossils don't show that.-Yet again, we don't know how ANY innovations happened, but they did, and if you believe in common descent, they must have taken place in existing organisms, from one generation to the next, though with the following proviso:-dhw: they can be improved on and varied by the intelligent mechanisms of succeeding generations. Does this sound too magical? 
DAVID: Enormously magical. Mental sleight of hand.-As magical as a single eternal mind from nowhere that can encompass and create universes and manipulate the genome of a bacterium?
 
dhw: What are the alternatives? Random mutations; God preprogramming the first living cells with every single mutation to be passed down through billions of organisms; God intervening to manipulate each change in each individual organism. [...] As an explanation of the events in Chapter 2 of life's history, I don't see an autonomous IM as being any more "magical" than those alternatives.-DAVID: And that is your problem just as it encapsulates my dilemma. Since it looks so magical it brings me to accept God guiding the whole process. He may well have given the organisms some ability to modify, but the giant leaps can only be explained by God doing it. It is the 'how' that I can only guess at. Darwin fudges over the problems. They are hidden in his assumptions and they depend on chance.-We are not arguing over Darwin, and while I accept the POSSIBILITY of your God's existence, I'm surprised that despite not knowing 'how' he could have done it, you feel able to dismiss the POSSIBILITY of his designing an autonomous inventive mechanism, instead of having to preprogramme every single innovation from the very beginning, or handle each one personally.