Biological complexity: feedback loops are vital (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 24, 2019, 09:03 (1888 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Or to put it a different way, decision-making requires the use of intelligence. Where did that intelligence come from? Maybe from your God. Nobody knows. Materialists believe intelligence comes from the brain, which is a mass of individual cells.

DAVID: Back to the discussion about the baby brain being a blank slate, except for inherited tendencies.

dhw: We are talking about bacterial intelligence.

DAVID: No, intelligent responses requires intelligent information or a brain that creates its own intelligence as babies eventually do.

Please explain how information can be intelligent. Does information think, communicate, make decisions? Intelligent responses demand the ability to process information from outside (e.g. changing conditions) and from inside (e.g. the organism’s possible limitations: the pre-whale would know that it cannot escape from barren land by flying, but taking to the water is a viable proposition). Bacteria appear to be able to use both forms of information, and to take their decisions accordingly. Bacteria do not have a brain as such, but perhaps they have the equivalent of a brain. After all, we don’t even know how brains generate intelligence.

DAVID: Such brainy organelle has never been described.

dhw: Albrecht-Buehler thinks the centrosome and centrioles constitute the “brain” and “eyes” of the cell. Who knows? Nobody has yet succeeded in describing how ANY form of intelligence is generated. We only have theories.

DAVID: A-B is a solo practitioner of his theory. Intelligence is part of consciousness, by learning and thinking. it is consciousness we don't understand. Intelligence involves information, a concept in cells, which you have problems in understanding. I think God supplied it when He started life.

That is precisely the theistic version of my theory: that God supplied the cells with consciousness (not to be confused with human self-awareness), of which intelligence is part, when he started life. Thank you.

DAVID: Comment (under “Genome complexity”): […] Such a system has to be designed, and cannot develop by chance. How does a mindless mechanism recognize the need for such an important backup system?

dhw: […] It is unfortunate that there are no atheists currently contributing to this forum. I do miss George Jelliss! For me, the complexity of the cell alone is sufficient to cast doubt on the chance theory that is the atheist alternative to design. I accept the atheist argument that one mystery (God) doesn’t solve another mystery (life’s complexity), which is why I stay on my agnostic fence, but I would really like to know how an atheist justifies his faith in the ability of chance to create the mechanisms of the cell.

DAVID: What you do not accept is the necessity of a signing mind having to exist.

What you do not accept is that a designing mind (which even you say is “hidden”) is just as great a mystery as the origin of life’s complexities. Hence my agnosticism.