Bacteria, God & Double Standards (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, July 06, 2015, 13:15 (3426 days ago)

The consciousness thread is becoming messy as there are two separate discussions going on. Hence the new heading. If anyone is still following this discussion, the question of bacterial intelligence is central to the hypothesis that evolutionary innovation might be driven by the individual, autonomous, inventive intelligence of cells/cell communities responding to changing environments - as opposed to Darwin's random mutations and David's divine preplanning and dabbling.
 
I am going to slightly juggle elements of David's last post to me (under “Consciousness...”), as they seem to me to highlight the double standards that operate when minds are closed.-Dhw: [referring to belief in God]: I would argue that without direct evidence it is perfectly reasonable to have doubts (as with chance, string theory, the multiverse etc.).-1) DAVID: (referring to belief in God) Once again, you want absolute proof before you can believe in anything. 
2) DAVID: We know we can think. Do we really know if bacteria think in any provable sort of way? -As with God, absolute proof is impossible, because we can never enter the “mind” of a bacterium (if it has a mind). However, many experts maintain from close observation and experiments that bacteria can think, whereas your proof of God's existence “beyond a reasonable doubt” consists purely of suppositions (see below), since direct observation and experimentation are impossible. I do not even ask you to believe. I merely ask you to keep an open mind instead of insisting that these experts are in your own words “absolutely wrong”.
 
And so to the details of your last post:
 
dhw: In those other than ourselves, we judge by behaviour, and researchers have observed the behaviour of bacteria and concluded that they can “think”.
DAVID: A conclusion is not a proof, only a supposition.-Quite right. Your conclusion that God exists “beyond a reasonable doubt” is a supposition without proof. In your post dramatically headlined “Cosmologic philosophy: string theory die!” you talk of the “necessity for empirical evidence vs. theories going nowhere”. God theory die? -dhw: You are applying double standards, since you attribute mentation to your dog solely by observing its behaviour. 
DAVID: Yesterday our show horse came in from grazing in a pasture. His hooves were sore from being trimmed the day before. He headed for a door over a large patch of gravel drive, spotted a side door off the grass and immediately changed course for the easier path. Thinking horse?-Yes, thinking horse. It considered information gained from its automatic perceptions and made a deliberate decision to change its normal course. This is exactly the process described in Pfeffer's experiment:-"Experiments in 1883 conducted by Wilhelm Pfeffer showed that bacteria will swim toward good food like chicken soup and away from poisons such as mop disinfectant. 
Pfeffer also learned that bacteria can make decisions. He made sure that his bacteria knew the location of chicken soup. Then he separated them from it with a mild mixture of disinfectant. He found that the little fellows would swim as fast as they could through the disinfectant to get to the soup."-Bacteria normally swim AWAY from poison, but in this instance they had to take a decision that would mean deviating from their normal behaviour. -dhw: You claimed...that your dog was capable of mentation. What sort of ideas does your dog “create”, thereby proving mentation, that bacteria don't “create”?-DAVID: He communicates with us by bringing toys to play, starring at me when he needs to go out, changing direction when we are playing keep away, all requiring some thought and planning.-Experts tell us that bacteria communicate with one another, form communities, work out strategies, take decisions...all of which require some thought and planning. How can you possibly know that the experts are “absolutely wrong”?