cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 14, 2020, 18:24 (1281 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: Thanks to Charles Darwin, biology doesn’t ever have to invoke an ‘intelligent designer’ who created all those mechanisms. Evolution by natural selection has done – and is still doing – all that refining and focusing and differentiating work.

dhw: Thank you, as always, for presenting material that runs counter to your own beliefs. Delighted though I am to find yet more support for the concept of cellular intelligence, I do not welcome this silly approach to the subject. Natural selection does not create any mechanism at all. It does what it says: it naturally selects useful mechanisms that already exist, and rejects those that are not useful. And the authors should perhaps bear in mind that Darwin was an agnostic, and he went out of his way to emphasize that this theory was neither theistic nor atheistic.

QUOTE: We’re all just physical mechanisms made of physical mechanisms obeying the laws of physics and chemistry. But there is a profound difference between the ingenious mechanisms designed by human intelligent designers – clocks and motors and computers, for instance – and the mechanisms designed and assembled by natural selection.

dhw: The authoritative statement that we are “just physical mechanisms” is on a par with similar blinkered statements from theists that we are not “just physical mechanisms” or – to stick to this particular subject – “cells are not intelligent”. The absurdity of the argument here is apparent from the claim that natural selection designs mechanisms. It designs nothing. But the commonsense truth of the argument is that there is indeed a profound difference between our human inventions and biological inventions: the source of the latter is unknown. The fact that the latter are of inimitable complexity suggests intelligence at work, and since all biological inventions require the cooperation of cells, it suggests that the cells themselves cooperate intelligently. The source of their intelligence remains unknown – hence David’s faith in God, presumably Dennett’s faith in chance, and my own lack of faith in either.

Well stated

DAVID: The article is a philosophic phantasy in my view. Natural selection is suddenly an active designer. Information is assumed, just appeared somehow, not explained, nor are the mechanisms that interpret it.

dhw: For once we are in total agreement.

Yes

DAVID: The article is huge. I suggest reading all of it as it is an exact fit for dhw's wishes about intelligent cells.

dhw: It is not a “wish”. I am looking for ideas that will explain the mysteries of our existence. When scientists who have spent a lifetime studying cellular behaviour conclude that cells are intelligent, I take them seriously. I find the theory of evolution very convincing, and as regards the mechanism that drives it, I find the intelligent cell theory more convincing than chance or a divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every undabbled development. As regards the origin of the mechanism itself, I do “wish” I could find one of the explanations (chance, a top-down God, some sort of bottom-up panpsychism) convincing, but I can’t.

You won't. Which is why I think increasing discovery of design complexity will finally reach a belief in a dsigner.

dhw: I’m again delighted to see you acknowledging that they “work it out” using a mechanism designed by your God. The mechanism would have to be what I call “cellular intelligence” – how else can any organism happily work anything out, if not by using its intelligence?

DAVID: […] Answered above. See the Dennett discussion.

dhw: You didn’t answer it “above”, and the Dennett discussion doesn’t answer it either. You used the term “working it out”. Please tell me how an organism can work something out if it does not have any intelligence?

Or intelligently designed instructions to follow.>

Under: “First multicellularity”

"Surprisingly, we found that the development of bacterial biofilms is comparable to animal embryogenesis. This means that bacteria are true multicellular organisms just like we are. Considering that the oldest known fossils are bacterial biofilms, it is quite likely that the first life was also multicellular, and not a single-celled creature as considered so far," says Prof Tomislav

QUOTE: "microbiologists have recognized that bacterial cells live a rich social life in biofilms.

DAVID: There is no question here is an imitation of multicellular organisms. Perhaps a step to multicellularity. We know amoeba can form colonies that create stalks and spores. but I think they are straining too much to see this as true multicellularity.

dhw: In my view not an “imitation” but probably the first step to multicellularity. If Shapiro & Co are right, bacteria are intelligent organisms, and just like later multicellular organisms, they found that forming a community in which they pool their intelligence cooperatively had certain advantages. This would be the blueprint for the whole of evolution, as intelligent cells find more and more ways of pooling their intelligence to cope with or exploit ever changing conditions and what you call “challenges”.

Yes, it appears to be a step toward multicellularity, but still leaves a huge gap.