Animal Minds; termite automatic class recognition (Animals)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 14, 2018, 09:36 (2292 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Matt, your comments fit intelligent design. Ants have been shown to act automatically as individuals in nest activities. Recently posted here.

Sadly, David has omitted a crucial part of the discussion:

dhw: I used ants as an analogy to how cell communities work. The article tells us how leader groups of ants make collective decisions, and the ants at the back follow. That is how I propose cell communities also work: the “leaders” work out what is to be done, and the rest put the decision into operation. If there is a choice, a collective decision is a decision, it is not automatic behaviour.

DAVID: The automatic behavior is in the followers. A leader does make a decision of this way or that way. (dhw's bold)

And that is the whole point. My proposal is that organisms consist of cell communities, and just as the ants have their leaders who take intelligent decisions while the rest automatically follow, the cell communities do the same. Decision-making is a sign of intelligence, and this applies from bacteria through to humans.