Cellular intelligence: Animal Algorithms reviewed (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, November 12, 2021, 16:04 (1105 days ago) @ dhw

Sensing autonomic activity
QUOTE: Rolls’ study shows “there is a driver,” he said. “There is someone who decides whether to hit the brake or the gas pedal.”

DAVID: […] each stimulus has an automatic response. That is the way living biochemistry works.

dhw: In the course of evolution, there is virtually no limit to stimuli, and different organisms have learned to cope with every kind of environment.

DAVID: If you list possible stimuli they are limited in number.

dhw: Well, OK, I’ll let you compile the list, starting on Monday, 1st January, 3.8 thousand million years ago…

In immediate time external stimuli are limited: environmental changes, dangerous events, in water or on land, etc.

Control of differentiation
DAVID: Lots of mindless activity occurs with living organisms.

dhw: Of course it does. Conscious intelligence only comes into play with the invention of new processes and/or when things go wrong.

No reply.

Where are you placing conscious intelligence?

Animal algorithms

DAVID: You completely miss the point of the neural complexity that this AI expert denies that natural evolution could have designed it.

dhw: No he doesn’t. He asks if animals have minds, and says the question is unanswered! (See bold above)

The complete quote:

Do animals exhibiting CPBs have themselves “minds” in some sense? That question is unanswered. We do know from logic and experience, however, that goal-directed action supported by hardware and software systems must originate from the design efforts of intelligent agents, that is, from conscious minds. Jonathan Bartlett’s June 15, 2021, article here concisely summarized this conclusion:

Intelligent Design … says that agency is a distinct causal category in the world. That is, when I code a computer program, write a book, invent a formula, write a poem, etc., I am doing something that is distinctively beyond the operation of pure physics. There is something distinct about the way that causation works for beings with minds compared to how it works for beings without minds.

JONATHAN BARTLETT, “INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK IT IS” AT MIND MATTERS NEWS

Picking a minor point of a quote of context is what you do.

DAVID: 'Complexity' in living biochemistry and in neural circuits can only be fully appreciated if educated in the subjects. The opinions cannot be sluffed off. Believe me the complexity requires a designing mind.

dhw:I believe you. And I believe Cassell when he says that the question whether animals have minds is unanswered.

Repeating an honest observation out of context of the whole book.