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

by David Turell , Thursday, November 10, 2016, 21:16 (2933 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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.”

It is still my impression from reading Shapiro's book that he has shown that bacteria have the ability to modify DNA, based on the stimuli they receive. These are purposeful modifications, and do fit the definition of clever intelligent planning, which can be interpreted by me as clever implanted automatic responses, just as reasonably interpreted by Shapiro as an active process.

dhw: 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.

Of course he is. He has shown the cells' abilities.

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.

dhw: 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.

Of course it refutes, if the math never works. It shows a few similar new mutations can't do it.

DAVID: I treat God as emotionless, because it is not fair for me to try to imagine his emotions.

dhw: 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”.

I did not imply your view is unfair. I use the word fair to confer my feeling that His emotional state is not a fair consideration, since He is such a different personage.

dhw: 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.

99% of all species are gone, and balance is always present. Balance must be important.