Biological complexity: homeostasis (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, October 26, 2018, 11:25 (2003 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We can agree that the complexity demands a designing mind, but that won't budge dhw whose thinking is stuck in mid-air..

dhw: Your thinking is stuck on the concept of a single "designing mind”. I agree that the complexity demands intelligence.

DAVID: Intelligence implies the ability to plan and design, being able to view future needs theoretically. Cells can't do this, but they can be designed to act intelligently, which is exactly what we see, nothing more.

Intelligence does NOT imply the ability to view future needs theoretically! You keep giving us examples of organisms solving problems (think of the corvids). Human intelligence – vastly superior to that of our fellow animals – can theorize about the future, but other life forms RESPOND intelligently to changing conditions. Hence adaptation, problem-solving, decision-making. You are “stuck” not only on the concept of a single designing mind, but on an astonishingly narrow view of what constitutes intelligence. But to anticipate your stock reply, I agree that we do not know whether cellular intelligence can extend so far as to innovate, which is why my hypothesis is a hypothesis.

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dhw: As I keep pointing out, your "balance of nature" changes with every success and every failure. I really don't know why you are so desperate to tout it.

DAVID: Not desperate, but insistent to reverse each time you downplay as again here. Each econiche is carefully balanced naturally as long as as top predator is not displaced. It is a form of natural homeostasis.

dhw: Yes, each econiche is balanced so long as it is balanced, and when it is not balanced it is replaced by another econiche. And the new econiche is balanced until it is not balanced...And you moan about the tautology of “natural selection”!

DAVID: Not a tautology, but a continuum of balance as you have stated.

dhw: It is NOT a continuum. It constantly changes!

DAVID: The concept is the requirement for balance is the constant continuum, not the individual parts of each balanced system.

Of course life REQUIRES balance to survive, and of course econiches REQUIRE balance to survive. It’s you who stated that there IS a continuum of balance, but now that you have changed that to there being a continuous REQUIREMENT for balance if organisms and econiches are to survive, we can drop the subject once and for all. No one is going to disagree with such an obvious statement.

DAVID: Back to humanizing God as being bored.

dhw: Back to your purposeful God whose possible purpose we mustn’t discuss, although he is like us but is not like us.

DAVID: The problem is He is not as human as you would like to propose.

dhw: And may I ask how you know this?

DAVID: I could ask you the same question: how do you know God has a human side?

I don’t even know if your God exists, but since you make great play of his purposefulness, I keep asking you what that purpose might be. You have offered several “human” purposes (a relationship with us, our recognition of his work, getting us to puzzle out how he did it, and even the pleasure of creation), and you have acknowledged many times that he may well be like us – i.e. have a human side. However, although he may well have a human side, when I offer a different HYPOTHESIS (not a statement of knowledge) from your own, you state that “He is not as human as you propose.” How do you know the degree of his humanity?