Defining sentient cells: Cell receptors (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, April 09, 2018, 17:43 (2420 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Are you saying bacteria were invented? I can't believe it.

dhw: I have no idea how the first living cells came into being, but one possibility is that your God invented them. My argument above is a response to your claim that bacteria and cell communities are automatons. It would have been interesting for me to learn how else you think we can judge whether organisms are intelligent or not.

DAVID: If research can show a series of molecular reactions that respond to a specific stimulus and those reactions lead to a response result that is automatic, and research does this over and over, then. I've presented many examples of this. Intelligent action/ design does not mean intelligence is present, but intelligent information is at work implanted into the actions of complex organic molecules, expressed in part (coded) by their 3-D shapes.

dhw: There is no question that many reactions are automatic, in ourselves as well as in bacteria. However, invention, modification, cooperation, problem-solving, decision-making are all actions that research cannot restrict to automaticity. Research can only study their physical manifestations. And you have agreed that there is no way one can tell the difference between automaticity and autonomous intelligence.

If a particular stimulus to a bacterium results in a series of molecular reactions leading to a molecular response, as research shows, it must be inferred that it is automatic. I'll stick to that interpretation as a strong inference.

dhw: I am not comparing the bacterial level of decision-making and intelligence to that of humans! I have listed attributes that we normally associate with intelligence. You have failed to come up with any other criteria, and are left with nothing but your belief that these “can be” automatic, which means you yourself “can be” a robot. Maybe you are not. And maybe they are not. Meanwhile, we are left with the fact that you consider it more likely that your God has preprogrammed or personally dabbled every single bacterial adaptation in the history of life than that he gave them the means to make their own decisions.

DAVID: God did give bacteria that ability, but as in my comment above it is all automatic.

dhw: As in my two comments above, you ignore all the attributes of intelligence, and insist that every bacterial adaptation – both nice and nasty – in the history of life has been preprogrammed or personally dabbled by your God, whose one and only purpose, let us remember, was to produce the brain of Homo sapiens. And you think this is logical.

Inventing bacteria is only the beginning of evolution of the brain. Evolution had to proceed from that point to now. The brain is the most complex unexpected outcome one could imagine.