Immunity system complexity: neutrophiles and heavy traffic (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, June 08, 2020, 15:37 (1629 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Designed intelligent responses to traffic flow. dhw will say each cell knows what it is doing and thinks about what to do.

dhw: Daft! How often do I have to explain to you that in cell communities there are cells that give instructions and cells that obey instructions. The vast majority of our actions and those of our fellow organisms are automatic, but the ORIGIN of those actions will have been the intelligent response of the cell communities to changing conditions. (See "brain expansion" on origins).I wrote a parenthesis two days ago on the brain expansion thread precisely in order to stop you making such silly statements: “NB please note the distinction between the autonomous power of thought and the automatic mechanism for implementation of thought” to which I added information-gathering yesterday.

DAVID: Note my bold. With neutophiles responding a call to action they are responding to an automatic chemical signals from automatically responding immune cells to come to a certain spot where injury or infection have appeared. They carefully do not traffic jam. Where is thought involved?

dhw: Note my own bold. For those of us who believe in evolution, EVERY system must have originated from new forms of cooperation between cells/cell communities. Once a system is established, it will work automatically. If it doesn’t, we could be in trouble, though just like bacteria, the intelligent cell communities may then find a way of adapting themselves, as with the example of high altitude readjustments. There is no point in your picking on individual examples of automatism and then claiming that they disprove cellular intelligence! And I have NEVER claimed that “each cell knows what it is doing and thinks what to do.”

Our only difference then is the source of intelligent activity by cells. I have God as the source, and you don't know of a source, but God is possible.