Epigenetics: Passing the effects (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, February 08, 2015, 19:51 (3577 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If only you could rid yourself of the prejudice that humans alone are possessed of any autonomous inventive intelligence (a prejudice that persists despite the many articles you have posted, demonstrating the reasoning powers of other species) you would see that there is no need for a 3.7-billion-year computer programme to cover every single innovation and lifestyle, or for your God to give personal demonstrations to all his creatures to show them how to build nests and webs and honeycombs and dams, and live wacky lifestyles.-DAVID: We are covering old territory. I agree with Kauffman that life may contain a self-organizing mechanism. We see it in epigenetic changes that are heritable. I just don't see it as fully autonomous. -So what part is not autonomous (other than the obvious fact that organisms cannot do what organisms cannot do)? This is why I have challenged you on your insistence that your God must have given personal demonstrations to the weaverbird, salmon, monarch, plover, spider etc. on how to build their homes or organize their weird lifestyles. I notice you have skipped that passage.-DAVID: Humans and other animals reason. I've never denied that. However you continue to fail to see the enormous difference in capacity humans have, and the fact that there was no necessity in evolution to automatically invent humans. -I am fully aware of the enormous difference, but (a) I tend to see it as a natural development from our less able ancestors, and (b) that is not the point we are discussing here, which is the possible autonomy of the inventive mechanism, as opposed to your 3.7-billion-year programme or your divine interventions. (There was no necessity for evolution to have come up with the duck-billed platypus, so what does that prove?)