Teleology & evolution: Stephen Talbott's take (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, June 11, 2016, 09:15 (3088 days ago) @ David Turell

Once again, I am telescoping threads as they all deal with the same subject.-dhw (under “slime mold”): Why look for cellular intelligence? Because if organisms have an autonomous inventive or complexification mechanism, it can ONLY be run by the intelligence of the cell communities! And so if unicellular organisms are shown to be intelligent, this would add powerful support to the AIM hypothesis.
DAVID: The mechanisms don't need intelligence to run them. They are not driving an automobile but sitting in a driverless automobile.-How can an autonomous inventive or complexification mechanism create new organs, lifestyles, ”natural wonders” without being intelligent? The word “autonomous” means able to determine one's own actions, take one's own decisions, and in this case do one's own inventing/complexifying.
 
dhw: We have agreed umpteeen times that these complex organs are saltations, and you have now agreed (under “Autonomy and Balance”) that “If we believe in common descent, speciation may have taken place through an autonomous inventive mechanism (AIM) or complexification mechanism (CM) within the cell communities.” If you agree to the possibility of an AIM or CM within the cell communities, how can you now inform us that the autonomous inventive mechanism or complexification mechanism is incapable of the mentation required for inventing or complexifying?-DAVID: Because I envision the AIM or CM as following patterns with on-board instructions in the evolutionary scheme.-We are back to square one! On Thursday 9 June you agreed that an autonomous inventive mechanism was possible, and that your God would have provided it and may have dabbled “to correct problems” (i.e. after the innovation had been autonomously created). Now you are excluding that possibility and reverting to the hypothesis that all the innovations were preprogrammed, and the cellular communities have no autonomy but merely follow instructions!-dhw: Yes, the AIM is a hypothesis not a proven fact, because nobody has observed innovations and we only know of minor adaptations, but your alternative is to abandon the AIM and the CM and go back to your 3.8-billion year computer programme or divine dabble for every innovation in the history of evolution.
DAVID: I'm not abandoning. They best explain the h=p bush.-The reason why the AIM or CM best explains the bush is it makes its own decisions and is NOT preprogrammed. If you insist that it only follows instructions, of course you are abandoning that hypothesis.-Dhw (under “Lucy”): I am saying the evidence shows that if he exists, he left the organisms to work out their own solutions, with natural selection being the final arbiter of which will survive. This “scattergun approach” is NOT “guidance”. Alternatively, you might believe that God dabbled in order to ensure that homo sapiens came out on top, but that is very different from “God's guidance of evolution” to the endpoint of humans.
DAVID: Good point. This is why I like the complexification approach. The human bush is an h-p bush like everything else, with the cream rising to the top.-dhw: Once again: if organisms (cell communities) work out their own solutions through an AIM or CM (but see above for the problem of a non-designing CM), thereby producing the h-p bush, with natural selection deciding which ones come out on top, how can you argue that cell communities are incapable of working out their own solutions?
DAVID: Because all the cell communities have to do is decide to trigger the mechanisms which they contain and the mechanisms do their thing.-So I made the “good point” that organisms were left to work out their own solutions, which meant that your God's “scattergun approach” was NOT guidance - though he might have dabbled afterwards - but now apparently the organisms do not work out their own solutions because all they do is follow “patterns with on-board instructions”. -On Thursday 9 June the sun shone brightly, and my friend David finally agreed to the possibility that his God had provided cells/cell communities with an autonomous inventive or complexification mechanism, which best explained the higgledy-piggledy evolutionary bush. On Friday 10 June, he withdrew his agreement, and the sun disappeared behind the clouds, leaving us all in darkness. Woe is me. But let us not despair: he who can do a backward somersault on a Friday may do a forward somersault on a Saturday.