Free Will: Excellent discussion (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, February 21, 2015, 17:52 (3563 days ago) @ David Turell

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. 
DAVID: 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. -You are right. Many eminent scientists telling us that bacteria are sentient beings does not prove that they are sentient. But how do you know that what looks sentient is not? A Martian observer studying human beings would have the same problem, and many humans also argue that although we may believe we think our own thoughts and make our own decisions, our thoughts and decisions are actually made for us by factors beyond our control. Perhaps we should keep an open mind.
 
DAVID: ...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. [...] My approach emphasizes information as providing the appearance of sentience, as above. You imply bacteria can think. They don't.-“Already present” = preprogrammed, which is indeed the issue. Did God preprogramme the wheel and the computer? You grant inventive autonomy to humans because they are sentient, conscious, decision-making beings. My “favourite” scientists claim that other organisms have the same attributes - I have quoted, not implied - but somehow you know they haven't. It is their clear statements that have led to my hypothesis, not the other way round.-dhw: What you call the “third way”, as an alternative to God and chance, is a different subject.
DAVID: What you want is what I call the 'third way', sentient bacteria in the same sense as sentient humans.-Nobody is saying that bacteria, worms, or your dog have the same level or kind of intelligence, sentience, consciousness as humans. We are all different, but as Shapiro (a microbiologist) says in his discussion of bacteria, “our status as the only sentient beings on the planet is dissolving as we learn about how smart even the smallest living cells can be.” I don't "want" it. He says it.-Nobody knows how innovation works or why it isn't happening now. But you have acknowledged the possibility of some kind of inventive mechanism, which would depend on the sentience (conscious, cognitive, communicative etc. faculties.) of individual organisms. We assume that life began with single cells, but evolution proper began when cells combined. Even within your own hypothesis there has to be a borderline between the automatic and the sentient, since you acknowledge sentience in our fellow animals. According to my “favourite” scientists, it goes as far back as bacteria. Would you perhaps be prepared to accept it as from the advent of multicellularity?