Clever Corvids: using tools (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, September 03, 2015, 22:32 (3369 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You keep referring to an established community in which cells must stick to their assigned role or there will be disruption (here, disease). I have focused on bacterial intelligence in order to find an explanation for the INNOVATIONS that drive evolution. The cells of the kidney community won't invent something new.-It appears you have missed the point I am making. I am comparing single kidney cells (there are several types), which can do prodigious very complex functions all automatically, with the tasks of single cell bacteria, to point out that bacterial life can easily proceed automatically. And kidney cells do it with no evidence of thought. The fact that bacteria seem to react thoughtfully to stimuli in no way suggests they can thoughtfully plan an innovation. -> 
> dhw: But we have agreed that evolution is not a continuum. There are jumps, because innovations break the continuum.-A continuum can have jumps. You are back to touting itty-bitty Darwin steps.-> dhw: However, perhaps it is vital for you to believe that cells/cell communities are automatons, because that would mean they couldn't change themselves, and so only God could change them. Might it be, then, that you are so firmly opposed to Shapiro and Co because cellular intelligence (even if it was created by your God) would put paid to your particular theory of divinely planned and preprogrammed anthropocentric evolution?-Of course God is a component of my thought. And of course, if God put semi-autonomous inventive intelligence into single cells, I'm fine with that.