Natures wonders: ants and other insects farm (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, May 01, 2020, 12:02 (1665 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: See other discussions re' how God works. He may be hands on all the time. It is all guess work, nothing concrete, as you always try to make it.

dhw: The guess that your God gave ants the wherewithal to devise their own farming system is no more concrete than your changing guesses that your God preprogrammed ant farming or dabbled it (= hands on).

DAVID: Same example: I'm not concrete.

How is dabbling not concrete?

DAVID: As I've written elsewhere today, the design you accept which keeps you agnostic, logically requires a very powerful mind.

Of course if God exists, he has a powerful mind. How does that make dabbling less concrete than inventing autonomous intelligence?

DAVID: all I am doing is theorizing on how that mind works, trying to ignore religious teachings which just get in the way. My theories are no more concrete or substantiated than your woolly idea 'hard thought blew up ancient brains', when their artifacts are so simple, and even our giant brain couldn't invent much and was at a stone age level until 10,000 years ago. Can't you see we had a great brain we had to learn to use? Therefore thought didn't blow it up!!!

You said you were not concrete. What could be more concrete than saying your God directly dabbled each brain expansion? The rest of your comment is no defence of your concrete version of events, and is dealt with under “Brain Expansion”.

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Under "bacterial memory":

DAVID: Usual twist. The article shows exactly what happens physically in the ant membranes, a form of chemical memory, nothing more.

dhw: There are only two ways you can study any living being: 1) the material workings, and 2) the behavioural. How do you know that human memory, storage of information, communication, ability to change behaviour are not “nothing more” than chemical?

DAVID: At the basis they are chemical also, but the use of charged ions is directed into complex networks of axons and changeable dendrites to create human n=mental capacities. The bacterial memory is extremely simple arrangement of ions.

dhw: So bacterial intelligence is not as advanced as human intelligence. I think most of us can accept that.

DAVID: Good.

Thank you for agreeing that bacterial intelligence is not as advanced as human intelligence. This can only mean that you have agreed that bacteria are intelligent. Progress at last!

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Under "Negative memory controls"
QUOTE: "'Our findings in worms are a good starting point for further research into the cognitive functions of other animals. We know that Neuromedin U is also found in many other organisms and in the human brain," says Professor Liliane Schoofs. "A good knowledge of these basic mechanisms is, therefore, crucial to better understand the complex processes in the human brain.'"

DAVID:It seems all brains have the same basic properties, but vary greatly in thought capacity as the human brain shows. Communication by ion electric currents is basic to brain processes, but the neurons are also influenced by many different neuropeptides.

dhw: Both of the above posts emphasize the material sources of cognition, as indeed do you with your constant references to the thought capacity of the human brain. And all the articles seem to suggest that other life forms have a degree of cognition.

DAVID: They do. Animals and plants must have protective sensors to recognize problems.

As do we. The cognitive part is how they use these sensors to solve the problems – as do we. More progress: animals and plants have their own forms of cognition, memory, communication, information-processing, decision-making etc. – all elements of what we call intelligence.