Revisiting convergence (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, June 21, 2015, 12:30 (3229 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But the 'wonders' are so complexly wonderful they strongly suggest design by a powerful inventive mind.-dhw: Or they strongly suggest design by individual minds working out solutions to individual problems and passing those solutions on to subsequent generations.-DAVID: At what level of evolutionary development do you think minds appear?-It depends on your definition of “mind”, which we normally associate with human thought, self-awareness, intellect etc. When experts talk of the intelligent cell, they emphatically do not mean a human form of intelligence, but if, as they tell us, bacteria are individual, cognitive, decision-making beings, I would suggest that a primitive form of mind in the sense of intelligence was present in the very first cells. The next essential evolutionary step was when cells combined, and so rudimentary minds or intelligences began the process of complexification. Since you and I both believe in common descent, you will have to agree that evolution has proceeded through one inventive innovation after another, each one taking place within existing organisms. Clearly, then, inventive intelligence has been at work since the beginning of evolution, and that would be a form of “mind”. It should go without saying - but I will say it all the same - that my answer is neither theistic nor atheistic, since the origin of such “minds” remains an open question.