Immunity: detecting dangerous bacteria (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 28, 2017, 13:55 (2553 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Boy, are you confused. Show me the bacterial equivalent of a brain! There isn't one neuron in sight. I've explained your afterlife point above. And I've explained my use of 'brain thinking' is shorthand so I don't have to type so much in repeated explainations, and you know it.
dhw: Show me the “soul”. And what neurons would you expect to find in a soul? If your dualistic hypothesis is correct, the soul/consciousness is immaterial, and therefore does not need a brain. So according to you, consciousness can exist without a brain, but it cannot exist without a brain.
DAVID: That is what NDE's show! See my post today on Egner and dualism.

The Egnor article is extremely interesting, but you have missed the point. I am not attacking dualism. (I am not defending it either.) When you say: “Show me the bacterial equivalent of a brain. There isn’t one neuron in sight”, you are clearly referring to the material presence of brain and neuron. If you believe intelligence/the “soul” to be immaterial and independent of the brain, then it cannot be shown as a material presence, and it is therefore a contradiction to say an organism can’t be intelligent if you can't see a brain.

dhw: However, for your information Albrecht-Buehler (who does not subscribe to intelligent design, and therefore presumably does not believe in a soul), offers the following
G. Albrecht-Buehler’s Cell Intelligence Website
www.basic.northwestern.edu/g-buehler/cellint0.htm
"Cell movement is not random.. The cortex consists of autonomous domains ('microplasts') whose movement is controlled by a control center (centrosome). Microtubules mediate between the control center and the autonomous domains."
DAVID: I accept his description and this can be seen as automatic programming.
dhw: Of course you do not take his work any more seriously than that of experts like McClintock, Margulis or Shapiro. Here’s a great quote from McClintock:
“Every component of the organism is as much of an organism as every other part.”

DAVID: I take them all seriously, but reinterpret their conclusions.

Albrecht-Buehler’s book is called Cell Intelligence. He and the others, who have spent a lifetime studying the evidence, have concluded that cells are intelligent. “Reinterpret their conclusions” is a fluffy way of saying you think you know more than they do, and their conclusions are wrong. You are of course fully entitled to your opinion, but a little grain of open-mindedness would be welcome.

dhw: And here's another hypothesis: if something learns by experience, alters its own DNA in order to cope with changing conditions, looks intelligent, and acts intelligently, then maybe it is intelligent.
DAVID: And we know it can be programmed to look intelligent.
dhw: Please tell us what organisms we "know" your God has programmed to look intelligent without their being intelligent.
DAVID: As part of my body my kidneys act intelligently. Why can't bacteria be seen that way?

Here you have missed the point of the McClintock quote above. And you yourself wrote that immune cells learn by experience and change themselves to fit their discoveries. That is a hallmark of autonomous intelligence.