Biological complexity: Feedback loop importance (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, April 25, 2016, 15:14 (3134 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: First of all, I cannot repeat too often how much I appreciate the trouble you take in presenting us with all this material...... My hypothesis is that it ceases to be automatic when problems arise (the need for adaptation), or when innovations take place (exploitation of changed conditions). That is when we have processes of problem-solving and decision-making that demand intelligence. You continue to have faith that these have all been preprogrammed or personally “guided” by your God and that your God (theistic version of my hypothesis) did not give cells/cell communities the autonomy to make their own decisions. The rest of your post once again shifts attention from the problem of what directs cellular behaviour to the behaviour itself.-
Thank you, and we are back at it. The cells do have the 'autonomy to make their own decisions'. It is a series of built-in chemical reactions using feed-back loops that work automatically. We agree to that point. Where we disagree is you want the cell to self-apply some decision making point which implies a sense of mental decision making that sets their response in motion. I think it is all automatically triggered chemical responses. Shapiro is exactly correct. The cells make decisions. His more important point is cells, with seeming initiative, make epigenetic changes, but we know that does not seem to lead to speciation.