Defining sentient cells: Cell receptors (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 10, 2018, 12:57 (2419 days ago) @ David Turell

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.
DAVID: 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.

Of course you will. And you will ignore any research which suggests that bacteria are capable of autonomous self-modification, cooperation, problem-solving, decision-making and any other attribute that we associate with intelligence, even though you admit that you have no way of distinguishing between automatic and autonomously intelligent behaviour.

DAVID (under “plant automatic breathing”): Plants open and close breathing pores by automatic molecular reactions:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180409103942.htm
DAVID’s comment: A great example of automaticity.

So is our own breathing. That doesn’t mean all our actions are 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.
DAVID: 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.

For those of us who believe in common descent, evolution did (why “had to”?) proceed from that point until now. I don’t see how that proves that every bacterial adaptation in the history of life has been preprogrammed or dabbled by your God in order to produce the complexity of our brain. He could have given bacteria the means to do their own adapting. And he could have been pleasantly surprised by the unexpected outcome, or he could have experimented to get the outcome he desired, or he could suddenly have thought of a great new idea and done a dabble. All of these are far more logical and no more "humanizing" than his having a desire right from the beginning to create something that would recognize him and have a relationship with him, but first having to build the weaverbird’s nest (plus a few million other examples) in order to keep life going before he could do what he wanted to do.