Biological complexity: managing cellular oxygen levels (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 01, 2019, 10:34 (1637 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Humans are taught to march and have introspection about it. Ants march spaced, simply because they 'know' not to touch each other, no thought involved.

dhw: I am not claiming that ants have introspection, which we have agreed may well be unique to humans. I suggest that both ants and humans “know” from experience that bumping into one another is not a good idea, and both species have therefore knowingly devised a method to avoid bumping. This method has been passed down to succeeding generations. Since you acknowledge the impossibility of judging from the outside whether behaviour has been preprogrammed or is the result of autonomous thought, the very least you can offer my suggestion is a 50/50 chance of being right.

DAVID: Sorry. I was taught to march. it required understanding and responding to teaching instructions. Ants don't like to bump into each other. They simply follow the leader with spacing[

Humans don’t like to bump into each other. They therefore devised a system of marching to prevent bumping, and passed on the method to later generations. Ants don’t like to bump into each other. They therefore devised a system of marching to prevent bumping, and passed on the method to later generations. Humans follow the leader with spacing. Ants follow the leader with spacing. You believe that 3.8 billion years ago, your God provided the first cells with a programme for the creation of ants (plus millions of other life forms) and for the strategies of marching and bridge-building (plus billions of other strategies, lifestyles and natural wonders for all the other life forms) which ants would automatically and unconsciously switch on when needed. Humans, on the other hand, were given the ability to devise the same strategies without any such programme. My purely subjective opinion is that a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for ant-marching and bridge-building and every other life form, strategy etc. in the history of life is more than a teeny bit harder to believe in than the ability of ants and other life forms to work out their own strategies. But of course you are entitled to believe whatever you want.