Information as the source of life; Davies current opinion (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, October 02, 2020, 13:02 (1304 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: A word is needed for this. Fortunately, one is on hand, which has been in use since the time of Aristotle. It is teleology. The process is rather like shuffling a pack of cards. By chance, many different new arrangements will occur. The operative unit—whether a multicellular organism or a single-cell organism—then selects the arrangement best suited to cope with the environmental challenge. What holds for the cell, holds as well for evolution itself. […] These arguments serve to weaken the common neo-Darwinian assumption that evolution is completely blind, and they suggest, if they do not imply, that life is not simply an unlikely occurrence in a universe without purpose.

This paragraph contains many of the issues I’d like to comment on: 1) The influence of the “environment challenge” on evolution; 2) it is the organism (i.e. the community of cell communities) itself that decides how to respond; 3) the purpose of all this cellular activity is to enable organisms to live, reproduce, evolve into different species. The word “teleology” is used ambiguously here. No neo-Darwinist would deny that the cells themselves act purposefully. The question is how the cells themselves originated. The “arguments” may suggest or even imply that life and evolution are the products of a designer, in which case he/she/it must have had a purpose (e.g. enjoyment of the unfolding spectacle of evolution). Alternatively, the origin of the cells is an “unlikely occurrence” (chance), in which case the cells themselves still have their purpose, but there is no overall purpose in the universe.

QUOTE: Organisms steer their own evolutionary course, a process made possible by Davies’s molecular demons. As he makes clear, this is not a sufficient explanation. What enables organisms to control their genes and other molecular mechanisms? Not the demons themselves. […] A gap needs to be filled to connect high-level decisions with low-level molecular machinery.

This paragraph can be interpreted as support for the theory that the high level decisions are taken by the intelligent cell/cell communities themselves, and the molecular mechanisms carry out the decisions. But….
QUOTE: The modern synthesis gives too small a role to chance at the molecular level.

QUOTE: This process must be high-level. The immune system as a whole must work out what will meet the new challenge. That cannot be done at the molecular level. The demons do not themselves know what they are doing.

The molecular system sometimes fails to obey the instructions of the decision-making compartment of the cell/cell community. These are what David calls the “errors”. I myself do not believe these chance errors by non-intelligent molecules are responsible for evolution in the sense of speciation, though they are responsible for certain diseases. I would opt for the intelligent responses of cell communities to the demands and opportunities arising from “environmental challenges”, as in the first quote. Not just the immune system - the WHOLE system!

QUOTE: My view is consistent with Davies’s exposition of molecular demons and what they do in the human body—and with the conclusion that organisms are purposive.

I agree.

QUOTE: I, for one, find a universe that naturally gives rise to purposive and creative organisms more plausible, and more reassuring, than one that is completely purposeless.

Ambiguous. What does he mean by “naturally”? The organisms (not just humans) are purposive and creative. It’s only if you think there is a God who designed them that you can talk of “teleology”, i.e. a purpose behind the existence of purposive, creative organisms. What does reassurance have to do with it?

QUOTE: The view that the universe is ruled by just blind chance, flies in the face of all that we experience as sentient, creative, and intentional beings. To believe this, we have to swallow the view that evolution, in creating the human nervous system, endowed it with an extraordinarily powerful illusion that forces us to act as though we have purpose, while really we only reflect the blind determination of our genes and other molecules. (David’s bold)

DAVID: The bold is exactly my point. Our arrival is highly significant.[…] Information must be used but how so is still hidden from us. Where did all that definitive and necessary information come from? Smells of God for me but they carefully try to stay away.

Suddenly we jump from organisms in general to humans. But yes, of course, our arrival is highly significant - to us! And we have devised countless purposes for ourselves, independently of the purpose of our genes and molecules (which enable us to live and reproduce until we die). But it requires just as great a leap of faith to believe in a sourceless supreme intelligence that simply exists and designs as the leap of faith that the source of our existence and intelligence is “blind chance”.

QUOTE: We would then also have to live with an incoherent view of ourselves. We cannot, at one and the same time, deny that we have purpose and also write an article like this one […] Articles and books are necessarily written by purposive agents, not by random typewriting machines.

We make our own purposes! The author’s purpose was to write an article proclaiming that we have purpose. That does not mean that there is a universal purpose for his existence!