Biological complexity:how toxoplasmosis parasitizes (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 06, 2016, 10:22 (2910 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: As we have said over and over again, science can only study the physical means whereby organisms perform their actions. ... But the question with ALL organisms is how the instructions are given to them in the first place.
DAVID: Exactly the question about the information that runs the processes of life. That information cannot appear de novo by chance. Life originated from a rocky inorganic planet… [etc.]

Your ellipsis (…) leaves out two sentences: ”You complain when neuroscientists try to reduce human activity to the automaticity of cell responses. Human cells and bacteria automatically respond to instructions.” We are not talking about the origin of life, but the origin of the instructions that lead each individual organism to behave the way it does: you say that for humans the origin is our intelligence, but for bacteria every instruction has to come from God. That is the issue here.

dhw: You are convinced that autonomous intelligence is not possible without a brain – and yet you are also convinced that autonomous intelligence IS possible without a brain (NDEs and the afterlife).
DAVID: Quite a mix-up of my theories. YES, no planning for the future without a brain in living organisms wanting to speciate to continue evolution.

You go much further than the ability to speciate, which I keep explaining is a hypothesis. You claim that single cells such as bacteria (which have not advanced evolution through speciation) have no intelligence at all because they do not have a brain, and the same applies to cell communities. I have dealt with “planning for the future” on the other thread.

DAVID: But NDE's involve death, and I believe there is a special arrangement in the living brain to create a quantum- based soul mechanism to survive death, and return to a universal consciousness. You are poo-pooing my theories just as I do yours. Tit-for tat, double standards.

I have never pooh-poohed NDEs or even the concept of life after death. I have even offered you a hypothesis reconciling materialism and dualism, which you applauded, with the brain producing the energy and identity that might possibly survive death (very different from your original claim that the brain is only the receiver and not the producer of consciousness). What I pooh-pooh is your assumption that intelligence is impossible without a brain. The behaviour of cells suggests that this may not be true. 50/50.

DAVID: I have separate theories, not one all-inclusive theory to cover everything which you always seem try to do. I see no need for that all-inconclusiveness. In each area of thought I follow the known research findings.

If your separate theories contradict one another (see the massive gaps in your interpretation of evolutionary history), I think it is only right to question them. I am surprised to hear that “the known research findings” you claim to follow include a 3.8-billion-year computer programme installed by God in the first living cells for every evolutionary innovation and every natural wonder in the history of life (apart from those he dabbled).

DAVID: A brain allows for some integration of received stimuli and responsive alteration. Most of the intelligent planning I refer to is God's in relation to speciation. (dhw: Following which known research findings?) Again 50/50 is an external assessment, with no insight from the inside of organisms where only molecular reactions are found, the guidance from DNA not understood. You want DNA to think!

We can’t even get inside other people – or for that matter, inside ourselves – to find out the source of thought, ideas, decisions etc. All we can see inside are the molecular reactions. We assume some sort of intelligence in ourselves, other people and other organisms by observing their behaviour, not their molecules.

dhw: …I’d like to remind you that apart from a possible divine, overall purpose for life itself, there is also the individual purpose (whether God-given or not) of organisms to survive and/or improve, which I have suggested is the driving force behind evolution.
DAVID: Preservation of life is implanted in all organism that struggle, or don't have to struggle, to survive. That doesn't explain why the original land mammals became whales at great complications to their original physiology. Defies all logic. You are back to Darwin and the concept of competition as the driving force. I reject that idea. It is back to the tautology of survival of the fittest.

As usual you ignore the second drive, which is for improvement. You also ignore the all-important contribution Margulis and others made to the debate by stressing the importance to evolution of cooperation, which of course is absolutely essential to the whole process of improvement and hence innovation.