Explaining natural wonders (Animals)

by dhw, Friday, September 23, 2016, 12:32 (2982 days ago) @ David Turell

Again I am telescoping threads, but before taking aim at your interpretation of natural wonders, I would once more like to thank you for all these articles. Some of them are quite breathtaking, and they are a constant source of delight! - Smart fish
QUOTE: "Forming cognitive maps and recalling them weeks later illustrates more than a frillfin goby's prodigious talent for avoiding a leap of faith. It also exposes the human prejudice to underestimate creatures that we don't understand[/b]."[/i] (My bold)
David's comment: There are many more examples, much like the ones I used in my second book, where I presented them as lifestyles provided by God. Read the whole article for amazing observations. - So if we follow your reasoning, God preprogrammed or personally taught the frillfin goby to form and remember cognitive maps so that life could go on until humans appeared. I will never understand why you cannot bear the thought that all these creatures may have the intelligence to work such things out for themselves. - Corvids
QUOTE: “…what's unwarranted is the notion that the neocortex alone is responsible for sophisticated cognition. Because birds lack this structure—the most recently evolved portion of the mammalian brain, crucial to human intelligence—neuroscientists have largely and unfortunately neglected the neural basis of corvid intelligence.” - Further evidence of the general human prejudice that if other organisms are different from us, they can't be capable of "sophisticated cognition". - Trees
QUOTE: “If trees are capable of learning (and you can see they are just by observing them), then the question becomes: Where do they store what they have learned and how do they access this information? After all, they don't have brains to function as databases and manage processes. It's the same for all plants, and that's why some scientists are skeptical and why many of them banish to the realm of fantasy the idea of plants' ability to learn.” - Understandable, but experiments have shown that trees and plants DO learn. And so do bacteria. Thus we have the typical situation in which scientists and others would prefer to ignore the evidence of experiments and first-hand observation and stick to their prejudices because they are convinced that intelligence requires a brain. - DAVID: You have invented cells which invent cell intelligence, while I admit it can exist if given by God.
dhw: I have never claimed that cells invented cell intelligence. I do not know where their (hypothetical) intelligence came from, but I have always explicitly allowed for it to be given by God. I am pleased to see that you now agree to the possibility that cells are intelligent, and that is the central point of my hypothesis that evolution is driven by cellular intelligence and not by chance or by divine preprogramming and/or dabbling (= divine “guidance”). Thank you.
DAVID: I fully understand your point of view. I will stick with mine. - I'm glad you understand mine. Your own continues to change from day to day. You have admitted that cellular intelligence can exist so long as it was given by God. Will you now stop telling us that cells cannot be intelligent?