How children pick up a language: new review of Wolfe (Humans)

by dhw, Thursday, November 10, 2016, 13:01 (2716 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You are proposing a magical kind of intelligence in your cell communities which is God-like. News species require very involved mental planning. Hard to avoid the need for intense planning for a new species, isn't it. Your argument sounds like a struggle to escape God.
dhw: I offer an alternative. You agree that organisms have the ability to adapt and that some are intelligent (though not humanly intelligent). Some scientists tell us that microorganisms are also intelligent.
DAVID: Invoking the word 'intelligent' doesn't support any portion of your argument. The degree of intelligence shown by Shapiro is limited to the ability to recode their DNA to alter their adaptations to variable stress, no more. Epigenetics has been explored in larger animals like Reznick's guppies showing once again adaptability, not speciation.

Over and over and over again, we have agreed that NOBODY has yet explained speciation and that is why we theorize. It’s fair enough for you to disagree with Shapiro, but not fair that you totally ignore the quotes I have offered you in the past to show his unequivocal view that bacteria are intelligent in their own right:

Exeter meeting: "...we have a great deal to learn about chemistry, physics and evolution from our small, but very intelligent, prokaryotic relatives."

Shapiro: Evolution: A view from the 21st century (p. 143): “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess corresponding sensory, communication, information-processing, and decision-making capabilities.”

You could hardly have a clearer rejection of your theory that bacteria are automatons, and when asked why people reject his view, he responded “Large organisms chauvinism”. He may be wrong, but please don’t make out that he is not a proponent of cellular intelligence.

DAVID: Let's explore this article:
https://aeon.co/essays/on-epigenetics-we-need-both-darwin-s-and-lamarck-s-theories?utm_...

QUOTE: "One problem with Darwin’s theory is that, while species do evolve more adaptive traits (called phenotypes by biologists), the rate of random DNA sequence mutation turns out to be too slow to explain many of the changes observed.

DAVID’S comment: ...the whole article describes epigenetic research and is worth reading. But it never answers the question of how speciation works. No one knows!

Over and over and over again, we have agreed that NOBODY has yet explained speciation and that is why we theorize. (Haven’t I said that before?) And rejecting random mutations (which we have done over and over and over again) has absolutely nothing to do with the hypothesis that organisms might be intelligent enough to design their own genetic engineering.

dhw: None of this means that saltations have to take place in large numbers of organisms all at the same time, as opposed to one or just a few individuals.

DAVID: Refuted in Wistar.

dhw: Please give me a reference to Wistar refuting the idea that speciation occurred through a few individuals who passed on their innovations to future generations. (In any case, what possible evidence could you and they have?)

DAVID: Wistar is entirely a mathematical look at generational time scales and mutation rates and concludes Darwin style evolution is impossible. Never refuted! Note the quote above.

Thank you. Absolutely nothing to do with your claim that speciation must take place in large numbers right from the start. Simply the same old attack on gradualism and chance, agreed on over and over and over again.

DAVID: All of our conclusions can only be speculations. Relationship involves His consciousness and our consciousness.
dhw: Obviously you can’t have a relationship without consciousness meeting consciousness. Why does that make your view of an emotionless God more likely than any other?
DAVID: It doesn't. I treat God as emotionless, because it is not fair for me to try to imagine his emotions.

Not fair? On whom? Speculating on God’s purpose means attempting to read his mind. Your reading is that he wants relations with us, mine is that maybe he enjoys watching us. I really can’t see why yours is “fair” and mine is “unfair”.

dhw: In a nutshell, I do not believe for one second that God specially designed the weaverbird’s nest, let alone specially designed it in order to balance nature so that organisms could be fed in order for humans to appear.

DAVID: My only answer is lots of believers think exactly that. The profusion of life forms needs an explanation which you do not offer. God MUST have a reason. Not weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Balance makes perfect sense.

I have offered you a very clear hypothesis explaining the profusion of life forms: namely that organisms have the intelligence (perhaps God-given) to pursue their own course of life. That accounts for every weirdness, since they all have different ways of using the environment. Balance makes no sense when 90%+ organisms disappear and the balance never stays the same.