Brain complexity: whole brain vision mechanisms (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 09, 2015, 12:54 (3302 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Monday, November 09, 2015, 13:20

dhw: The concept involves absorbing information from the environment, processing it, and figuring out how it might be exploited. 
DAVID: Your "figuring out" is where I have the most problem. If evolution is punctuated, and it is, and if species arise full-blown, and they are, how do committees of cells plan to make the jump? From horse drawn carriage to auto is such a jump. Even you offer the possibility of a God-given planning mechanism. Frankly, that is what is required. I don't care if it is God directly or through His mechanism. God is still the author.-Thank you for dropping the expression “ponder their future”. It is essential that we should not try to equate cellular intelligence with human intelligence. You have quite rightly pinpointed the two major problems with my hypothesis. What is the source of this mechanism (if it exists), and how would it work? These are the same major problems arising from all the hypotheses. What is the source of your God and his intelligence? “First cause” is the flabbiest of answers, as it simply means no cause. You might as well say “I don't know”. (I am happy to accept energy and matter as first cause, but not intelligence.) How does intelligence work in any organism? Same answer. Nobody knows. Scientists can only pin-point the biochemical, material processes that are linked to thought in humans and animals. They do the same with single cell organisms, but only in the latter do you insist that there is no thought involved. You are right to point out the gaps in my hypothesis. And I think I am also right to point out the gaps in yours.
 
dhw: Why are you now specifying “ordinary somatic cells”? Are you saying that maybe germ cells do have an intelligence of their own? Once a cell community is formed, I am suggesting that, just as with an ant colony, there is some kind of mind directing operations.
DAVID: Yes, germ cells are the likely spot for future planning. That is where the Pluripotential code lies.-Then perhaps we can say the “brain” of the cell community is likely to reside within the germ cells, and the somatic cells carry out its instructions? The “brain” being your 3.8-billion-year computer programme for all innovations, or my autonomous intelligence which works out what instructions to give them. 
 
DAVID: And the source of the instructions in the 'autonomous brain' is?-No, the autonomous "brain" IS the source of the instructions. Or would you say that when you write these posts, your own brain is GIVEN instructions what to write. If so, what is the source of those instructions? (I am not comparing cellular thought to human thought here. The analogy is with the process, not the substance.)