Introducing the brain: how odors are interpreted (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 18, 2020, 18:18 (1495 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "Our brains evolved from our bodies, after all, not the other way around."

DAVID: Amazing problem. It must involve memory of new odors. The newborn baby comes into the world with its memory system not yet formed. So the memory recognition process has to develop as the child grows older and we obviously learn how to identify odors. It is so complex, as this article shows, we still do not yet understand how the brain does its recognition job. Not by chnce. Only design will create this.

dhw: Bearing in mind that the body and the brain are composed of cell communities, the above quote certainly gives food for thought. But I'm only commenting here simply to thank you for yet another wonderfully revealing article on the complexities of all the cell communities - each one a miracle in itself, whether designed by your God or not.

DAVID: Do you know of another designer?

dhw: Do you “know” of ANY designer? One proposal is that all these complexities have been designed over millions and millions of years by intelligent cell communities. I thought I’d mentioned that before. And who/what designed them? Maybe some kind of god (but how does his intelligence simply exist without a source?), maybe chance (hard to believe), maybe some sort of panpsychism (equally hard to believe)…I seem to remember also saying all this before.

DAVID: You've covered all the possibilities, while ignoring the theory of the necessity for a first cause from the logic of causation.

dhw: Those ARE the three hypothetical first causes! 1) an eternal, superintelligent, sourceless, immaterial being (top down evolution); 2) eternal energy and matter forming endless random combinations until one of them comes up trumps (chance - bottom up evolution); 3) eternal energy and matter with a rudimentary form of intelligence (pansychist, bottom up evolution).

I'll stick with (1). (2) is against all odds, with chance ending up with information and intelligence. (3) has some form of intelligence appearing at the beginning of matter's origin, and I view it as a bastard form of pantheism.