Biological complexity: feedback loops are vital (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 24, 2019, 17:54 (1887 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: 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.

Properly functioning information must be designed by an intelligent mind, which provides meaningful processes in the cell and appropriate responses to challenges. I agree information itself is not intelligent, but its source must be. I was writing a sort of shorthand in my response.

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.

dhw: 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.

I don't think He made bacteria or cells conscious in the usual way we mean. He gave them intelligently drawn information to use in appropriate ways.

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.

dhw: 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.

Of course the designing mind is a mystery, but an obvious requirement to explain the designs in life. Life's designs do not occur by chance.