Extended Evolutionary Synthesis; another view (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, August 08, 2015, 08:18 (3394 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
edited by dhw, Saturday, August 08, 2015, 08:24

DAVID and TONY: (quoting James Shapiro) "I found that coordination of living agents, whether they are cells or viruses or parts of cells -- coordination of behavior in organisms needs and must have signaling. Without signaling you can't have transport of information and you can't really get coordination of two participating agents. This is the main principal of communication. Communication means sign-mediated interactions or signal-mediated interactions. . . .-"Third is the trans-organismic communication level, which is where organisms communicate, signal other organisms not of the same species as we can find it in symbiotic processes. -TONY: Flowers and bees anyone? How did they communicate to organize their communication?-Once again, David, thank you for a fascinating article. Almost as interesting as the article is the choice of sections we would all choose to highlight. Here's the one that grabs me:-“But the signals are not the agents. There are living agents that use signals and generate signals to transport meaning and content and information.” -If we bear in mind that Shapiro, a bacterial geneticist, firmly believes that bacteria are sentient, cognitive, intelligent beings, the answer to your question, Tony, might be that all organisms are possessed of an intelligence different from ours. They have their own ways of thinking and communicating. I don't have a problem if theists argue that God created this intelligence (and you might possibly even lean towards this idea yourself - I'm not quite sure of your views on this question.) I only have a problem if folk of all creeds insist that other organisms, apart from ourselves and to a lesser degree some of our fellow animals, are mere automatons. 
--