Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing: cognition (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, October 25, 2021, 08:43 (1123 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Past food was for past forms of life, and current food is for current forms of life. They are separate, and it is patently absurd to claim that every single past form and food was “part of the goal of evolving [=designing] humans” and their food.

DAVID: Of course they are separate in time, but related by evolution.

You wrote: “Of course the brontosaurus is not directly connected to us.” So are you telling us your God could not have designed us and our food without first designing the brontosaurus and its food?

DAVID: In biochemistry evolution was totally continuous.

dhw: But according to you, we are descended from life forms which your God created without any precursors! […] Yes, all life depends on biological processes, but how does that come to mean that all life was designed specially as part of the goal of designing humans.

DAVID: Wow!!! Life had no precursors either.

How does that prove that humans are descended in a continuous line from bacteria, if we are descended from life forms that had no precursors? Your theory of evolution is riddled with contradictions, and all your answers are attempts to dodge the same questions!

dhw: Nobody knows how God thinks, but since you agree that we (may)mimic your God, and his logic is (may be) like ours, and we probably/possibly have thought patterns and emotions similar to his, and you agree that my theories are logical (only if a very humanized form of God is considered) and are therefore based on the “clues” given to us by life’s history, I would suggest that your own version of a God who designs countless life forms which have no connection with humans, although humans were his one and only goal, does not have a clue to stand on!

DAVID: I have corrected the distortions of my views in bold above.

Your exact words were: “I am sure we mimic him in many ways”, and “we can only know his logic is like ours”, and you later changed probably to possibly. It makes no difference. If you think human attributes are possible, it is absurd to reject logical theories just because they entail possible human attributes.

Immunity system complexity
DAVID: That cognizance is automatic is what I was taught .[…] We who believe we know biochemistry see the automaticity in the protein reactions. […] biochemical professors preach automaticity.

You kindly posted an article which emphasized the fact that nobody knows how the immune process is controlled.

dhw: It appears that you “who know biochemistry” still have a bit to learn about biochemistry. McClintock, Margulis, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler knew/know a bit about biochemistry, and they think cells are intelligent.

DAVID: None in the present literature. All found by you in much earlier entries years ago: "McClintock, Margulis, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler" your favorite go-to's for opinion, not any fact.

I've never said it was a fact, but please stop kidding yourself that cellular intelligence is an outdated theory. You have just posted an essay that demolishes your absurd definition of cognition as automaticity. Here are two clear indications of intelligence:

QUOTES: "Perception, memory, valence, learning, decision-making, anticipation, communication – all once thought the preserve of humankind – are found in a wide variety of living things, including bacteria, unicellular eukaryotes, plants, fungi, non-neuronal animals, and animals with simple nervous systems and brains.”

"Complex behaviours coordinated by thousands of interacting, autonomous cells are well studied […] microbes can illuminate cognitive mechanisms ordinarily associated with complex animals. This finding led to further discoveries of previously unknown collective bacterial behaviours that resemble some types of cognitive brain activity, including memory.

The essay is dated October 21st 2021. Thank you for keeping us up-to-date with the latest thinking!

You then quoted passages about “signalling molecules”, which can be summed up as follows:
QUOTE: […] signalling molecules produced by microbial cells induce changes in behaviour in four ways: 1) in the producing cell; 2) in an immediate neighbour via cell-cell contact; 3) within cell neighbourhoods; and 4) in cells at longer distances. Many unicellular signalling molecules exist but far fewer than in multicellular organisms." (David’s bold)

DAVID: My bolds focus on the fact that molecules alone are in action for this basic form of cognition. This is automaticity of cognition, no real thought involved, not dictionary human definition.

The question is not what molecules do, but what makes them do what they do! If you decide to hit me, your thinking brain will send a message to your arm and fist, and they will automatically respond. What you stubbornly refuse to recognize is that the decision to hit me is what starts the automatic process. The cognitive part off the process is what precedes and leads to the decision. The above quotes make it abundantly clear that even single cells go through all the cognitive processes (e.g. perception, memory, learning, decision-making) that lead to the automatic actions which implement the decisions reached through intelligent thinking. (But of course, the degree of intelligence is not comparable to our own.)