Animal Minds; termite automatic class recognition (Animals)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 11:08 (2291 days ago) @ David Turell

I am combining lots of posts here, as they all illustrate the same point. But thank you as always for these interesting insights into Nature's Wonders.

Under “Injured plants invite birds for protection”

DAVID: The injury draws insects, which attack the plants. The plants emit volatile attractants to birds which can to come and eat the insects.
DAVID: How did the plants learn what would attract birds? Not by chance.

Your God’s 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme passed on by the first cells? God’s direct tuition? Or organismal intelligence? Any alternative explanations?

Under “Endosymbiosis”

QUOTE: "The ancestor of today’s Pilostyles rejected life as a green plant living in sunlight, instead worming its way into the body of another plant. Over evolutionary time, Pilostyles has survived ice ages and tectonic plate movements and now exists as ten described species living on five continents. The mysterious Pilostyles reminds us of the incredible tenacity and adaptability of life."

DAVID: Another example of how weird life can be.

And of how organisms autonomously develop their own ways of life – unless you think this behaviour was specially preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

Under "Bacterial intelligence?"

DAVID’s comment: This is an editorial description of her work, and describes how highly organized and controlled are the systems in any bacteria. It reeks of intelligent design.

dhw: I don’t know why you headed this: “Bacterial intelligence?” The article has nothing to do with the decision-making capabilities of bacteria. All organisms have highly organized and controlled systems that work automatically, and that “reek of intelligent design”. That doesn’t mean they are not intelligent.

DAVID: Headed that way because we are in constant discussion about bacterial intelligence. If all of their activity is automatic, they are no innately intelligent.

But the article has nothing to do with bacterial intelligence. Your “if” is countered by the equally pointless response that if some of their activities are not automatic, then they are innately intelligent! I have reproduced a long list of activities in support of the argument for intelligence, but of course this has been ignored.

On this thread:

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The experimental design made a fork in the road, this or that. Picking one is not much decision making.

Decision-making is decision-making, even if it’s “not much”, and it is the opposite of automatic preprogramming. In any case you know as well as I do that there have been numerous tests to illustrate the intelligence of ants. And the very idea that your God provided the first cells with programmes for ants’ astonishingly complex cities and social structures 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to give them lessons in architecture and sociology, snaps the elastic of my personal credulity. Especially when there is a much more straightforward theistic alternative which even you recognize as fitting in logically with the history of life on Earth.