Animal Minds; how much can we learn about them? (Animals)

by dhw, Monday, December 14, 2015, 12:15 (3266 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The problem is not what happens once an invention proves successful. We do not seek to revise or modify the programme that runs our heart, eyes, liver, digestion system etc. Once the proto-nest was built and approved of by natural selection (it obviously worked for the weaverbird), there would be no reason for it to change unless it was confronted with new challenges. Why was it built in the first place?-DAVID: To answer your postulates, we only see fully invented nests, with their complex knots. This raises many logical issues: What advantage does such a complex nest offer the weaver? Egg protection? Many other birds do this in simpler ways with simpler nests. Was the entire nest invented before use? What the use of one-quarter a nest, if it was developed in stages? What advantage does it have for a weaver if it takes most of the bird's life? The simplest logical answer is they were given the design.-You are asking some highly pertinent questions. The bottom line is that we do not understand the need for such a complex nest. That is the perfect image for the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. Why is it illogical for the weaverbird to build such an unnecessarily complicated nest, and yet logical if your God designed it (even though his purpose was to produce humans)? The simplest logical answer is that organisms do their own thing, and it is their particular type of intelligence that enables them to do it in their particular (in this case very complicated) way.
 
DAVID: At least we agree intelligence is required. The anthropocentric aspect of evolution was not a point considered in their book.-And so the vital question remains: why would your God design the apparently illogical weaverbird's nest, especially if all he wanted to do was produce humans? If every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder created by living organisms requires intelligence, and if your God did not plan or dabble them all, the intelligence can only be that of the organisms themselves. -DAVID: It is not just weavers, but the book has about 100 examples that make the point, Why do the migrating animals migrate as far as they do, and how did they figure out how to do it? If I see the many examples of design planning the authors describe, it is easy to make the jump that the 'illogical' arrival of humans was also designed.-Same again. If it's illogical for the plover to fly 2000 miles, why did your God make him do it? Once you question the logic of these natural wonders, you are actually questioning your God's logic, and the simplest answer is as above. Every innovation is a designed jump, and if it works, it survives. That would apply to every new species, including the earliest hominins and their successors. If they were specially designed, so was the duckbilled platypus, which according to your logic suggests that God's purpose was to produce the duckbilled platypus. (However, hypotheses 2 and 3 remain as options for special treatment.) 
 
dhw: [Noble] says: “The genome is an 'organ' of the cell not its dictator. Control is distributed.” This runs contrary to your belief that any controlling mechanism has to be in the genome.
DAVID:I'm sorry if I confused you. There are many layers of controls over gene expression which are technically not part of DNA as the genome. I've lumped all the controls together, and that is technically incorrect in my mental shorthand. The histones have controls, the ribosomes have controls, the telomeres have controls to name some of the complexities.-Thank you. That explains why these eminent scientists talk of the intelligent cell rather than the intelligent genome.-dhw:I also noted Noble's admiration for McClintock and Shapiro - two champions of the concept of cellular intelligence.
DAVID: I have the same admiration.-I know you do. That is why it is all the more surprising that you reject their views on cellular intelligence as “absolutely wrong”.