cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, October 22, 2020, 12:09 (1491 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Neither I nor Talbott equates bacterial intelligence with human intelligence, and you know it. Talbott: "It would, of course, be a fatal error to collapse all distinctions and talk about those early cells in the same way we talk about conscious human cognition and behavior". You agree that bacteria are autonomous organisms responsible for their own decisions. So are we, and it makes sense to assume that the same applies to all organisms in between.

DAVID: Bacteria are free to adapt and simply react but humans can invent immaterial plans. Still a non-comparable comparison.

You are merely repeating what Talbott and I keep telling you. We are NOT comparing the levels of intelligence. We are pointing out that bacteria are intelligent, and it is a perfectly logical sequence that just as multicellularity led to increasing physical complexity, it also led to increasing levels of intelligence.

DAVID: We each interpret Talbott differently. He is questioning the source of that cellular intelligence without answering.

dhw: Originally you tried to make out that “Talbott is telling us evolution has produced us as direct decedent relatives of bacteria” and you ignored the fact that he was promoting the idea of cellular intelligence. The fact that nobody knows the source does not alter the fact that he supports the concept of cellular intelligence, so thank you again for bringing this supportive article to our attention.

DAVID: Talbott raised the question and does not give an answer.

True. That has nothing to do with the question of whether cells are or are not intelligent. Thank you again for quoting an article which so clearly supports the concept of cellular intelligence.

QUOTE: "Sifers and others dug deeper into how cells dispose of misfolded proteins. They discovered that cells shuttle defective proteins from their place of synthesis, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), to the cytosol, where they are degraded in a cellular structure called a proteasome. Key to this process is to tag the proteins for destruction."

DAVID: (from “error corrections III") All of this comes from studying rare genetic deficiency diseases and finds obscure God's editing mechanisms, showing He recognized/anticipated genetic errors as well as metabolic errors.

dhw: Or just possibly all of this shows how intelligent cells work out how to handle errors in the system.

DAVID: With no explanation from you where the intelligence came from. Grudgingly you offer God as possibly the cause because you have no other answer.

Thank you for again acknowledging the possibility that cells are intelligent. And no, in common with every other human being on this planet, I do not know where life itself came from, let alone what might be the cause of cellular intelligence, if the theory is true. But we know life exists, and so maybe the cause of life would be the same cause of cellular intelligence: 1) God, 2) chance, 3) some form of panpsychism – all equally difficult to believe in.That is why some of us are agnostics. I may have said this before.