Defining sentient cells: Cell receptors (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 02, 2018, 10:47 (2427 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Our fellow organisms also include insects, birds, fish, other animals and our fellow human beings. So I wonder how you manage to distinguish between those that merely look intelligent and those that actually are intelligent. Do please tell us your secret.

DAVID: It is analyzing instinctual behavior vs. inventive behavior. Humans are inventive.

dhw: How can you tell the difference between the instinctive and the inventive solution of problems? Every single natural wonder that you have described must have had a first, and that first would have to be called inventive. So how do you know that the very first weaverbird’s nest, beaver dam, monarch migration, chameleon camouflage, ant raft, termite city were NOT the result of inventive behaviour?

DAVID: You have brought the discussion back to where God might have dabbled. The inventive behavior may be God's.

Yes of course, your God – apparently in order to fulfil his prime purpose of producing the sapiens brain – might have given private lessons to weaverbirds, beavers, chameleons, ants, termites and every other naturally wonderful organism. And even now he might personally be teaching bacteria to solve new problems as and when they arise. And indeed he might even be personally pulling the David Turell and dhw strings, as we kid ourselves that we are autonomous thinkers and doers. On the other hand, our behaviour and their behaviour “may be” the result of your God giving us and them the means to do our/their own thinking and doing. So do please tell us the secret method you have discovered for distinguishing between automatic behaviour and autonomous behaviour.