More Denton: Reply to Tony (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, August 14, 2015, 18:32 (3389 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw; Who needs preprogramming and dabbling? Either the particular “cellular intelligence” can work things out, or it can't. -Are there gradations of your cellular intelligence depending upon the complexity of the organism. After all, some forms have brains and some do not.
> 
> dhw: You acknowledge autonomous intelligence in wolves figuring out their own strategies, but ants apparently can't, and bacteria can't either. Their strategies have to be preprogrammed. All organisms can only respond in “limited ways” - a wolf can't suddenly decide to fly. But within the limitations of their own nature, even you can't tell if they are using a form of intelligence, and yet somehow you know the wolf does and the ant and the bacterium don't.-I know the wolf has a useful degree of consciousness, and the ant may. I strongly doubt the bacterium, but then again, you like pan-psychism.