Paul Davies: new comments on Information and life (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, March 15, 2020, 10:16 (1500 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I've always appreciated Davies clear thinking, but he is trapped by having to protect his scientific career as a materialist. The point you always like to skip is is really where did the operational information come from? If the cells make up their own instructional information and act on it, how did that happen naturally. A designing mind is required to exist. I agree with the bolded statement, but something has to have the ability to translate it into understandable instructions and act on it. How did activity appear naturally? It couldn't have, based on our own mental experience.

dhw: I have not skipped anything, but I reject the term “operational information”, which is what causes half the confusion whenever you talk of information. My name for that is intelligence. There are three factors: 1) information, which is passive and non-creative; 2) the intelligence that uses information; 3) the source of the intelligence that uses the information, or in your terms the something that created the ability to translate information into understandable instructions and act on it. The source may be your God, and I suspect that is what Davies is reluctant to put in writing.

DAVID: I know you don't like the term 'operational information' because our views of how a cell works are totally different. For me the cell is automatic, no intelligence involved and follows onboard instructions to do its work. You have this idea that cells have intelligence and do some sort of thinking or planning without underlying instructions. Your number 3 concedes my approach might exist. As usual we disagree.

That is not what I meant, but I should have made it clearer. Your “onboard instructions” (which I believe you’ve sometimes called “intelligent information”), or what Davies calls the “information processing system”, ARE intelligence. According to you, the intelligent behaviour of cells in “translating information into understandable instructions and action” is God’s intelligence automatically expressed either through preprogramming or through dabbling. According to Shapiro and others (probably including Davies), it is autonomous, not automatic. The point of my terminology is to put an end to the confusion caused by using the term “information” for active and creative functions, whereas it is passive and non-creative. Otherwise, you have information using information.