Free Will: Excellent discussion (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, February 20, 2015, 14:36 (3564 days ago) @ dhw

Shapiro has stated categorically that bacteria are sentient beings. Shermer defines sentient as emotive, perceptive, sensitive, responsive, conscious and therefore able to feel and to suffer. My thanks to David for his detailed analysis of how bacteria respond. I shan't reproduce the quote in full, because the summary shows the crossed wires in this discussion: -Using a 'crossed wires' comment won't let you escape from an obvious avoidance of my viewpoint. Repeating Shapiro (scientist) and Shermer (non-scientist) quotes also avoids recognizing my contention. No one can differentiate looking at bacteria from the outside ( as we do) whether they are truly sentient (implying independent action) or whether they are automatically acting on intelligent information in their DNA which guides all of their molecular reactions to stimuli. Shapiro's read/write computer comparison to DNA and how life handles it exactly fits my view. I repeat, computers don't develop new ideas or actions.-As for crossed wires, the whole issue of how innovation appears is knotted together
with the concept of information in DNA running the show: supporting life's reactions and its ability to invent. It must be obvious that the information is highly complex, and therefore unlikely to be dependent on chance formation. the issue really is does innovation require the addition of new complex innovation or is that innovative information already present in the existing DNA. You cannot separate these considerations.
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> DAVID: In summary, bacteria know what to do because they have been told what to do. There is no way that bacteria could have invented this information before the first primordial cells began. Hunt and peck would only lead to lifeless attempts. 
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> As for bacterial autonomous invention, as you know, that must be done within bacterial DNA. I'm back to recognizing the original information in DNA, trying to answer the question about the source of that information and the further question of the source of added information for evolution to occur. Chance won't work. I'm back to God. You want a third way. If it is there it also must be God-given IMHO.
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> dhw: There are different hypotheses to explain evolutionary innovation, but nobody knows the truth... However, the hypothesis depends entirely on individual organisms having some kind of conscious intelligence that will enable them to change their own form, and you continue to challenge this part of the concept. The findings of Shapiro and many other experts in the field concerning the sentience of even the smallest organisms seem to me to provide a rational basis for it.-My approach emphasizes information as providing the appearance of sentience, as above. You imply bacteria can think. They don't. -
> dhw: The mechanism for evolutionary innovation is what I am hypothesizing about, and not the source. And so if you are now prepared to acknowledge that sentient organisms (as defined above) possessed of an autonomous inventive mechanism may be the key to solving the mystery of evolutionary innovation, I am of course happy to go along with the possibility that the source of that mechanism may be your God. What you call the “third way”, as an alternative to God and chance, is a different subject.-What you want is what I call the 'third way', sentient bacteria in the same sense as sentient humans.