Biological complexity: how we smell odors (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 31, 2016, 13:16 (3098 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: What I cannot accept is in innate ' bacterial intelligence' as a concept, when I can see a logical series of chemical reactions making the proper responses occur.-I don't have a problem when you agree - as you frequently do - that there is a 50/50 chance that you are wrong. Under “Denton” you have acknowledged that “lesser” organisms are able to recognize beneficial relationships, and again you agree that nobody knows the extent to which individual cells (bacteria) can think. But all too often you state your negative view as fact, and this has major ramifications for the concept of an autonomous, intelligent, inventive, “complexification” mechanism. For further discussion, please see under “protozoa”. -DAVID: A set of molecular reactions that accomplish a purposeful response are a neural network look-alike. Intelligence plans it. Your use of the word 'intelligence' is ethereal. What creates it; where does it come from? Sourceless.-dhw: Yes indeed, a purposeful response is a sign of intelligence. As for the source, see above. However, I must point out that your use of “God” or a “Universal Intelligence” is ethereal. What created it? Where did it come from? Sourceless. And please don't mention First Cause, which explains absolutely nothing.-DAVID: If one believes, as I do in cause and effect, there must be a first cause.
-Once more, I also believe in cause and effect, but that does not mean the first cause has to be a conscious mind. I can ask how “pure energy” could always have been conscious (and what was there for it to be conscious of), and you can ask how an unconscious first cause acquired consciousness. Impossible to answer. The term is a philosophical dead end.