Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 25, 2022, 07:49 (1031 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: How do women's pelvic bone cells communicate with baby skull cells? Telepathy? Your theory is beyond weird.

dhw: So now you are even telling us that cells don’t communicate! When your brain tells your hand to lift your pen, how’s it done? Telepathy? The pregnant woman’s birth canal had to respond to the size of the baby, and all the connected muscles and bones had to respond at the same time. The term I’d use for this process is “adaptation”. […] The size of the baby would therefore have been the trigger that set in motion the communication and cooperation between all these cell communities. […]

DAVID: Such just-so fairytales! Neuron communication is not the issue.

I am pointing out that every organ in our bodies requires cell connection and communication. No point in your sneering: “Telepathy?” unless you believe cells do not communicate. Do you?

DAVID: The Mother's DNA, the Father's DNA and the baby DNA all contribute to the size changes and are all unrelated in actions. How does the Mother's pelvis anticipate the baby skull size based on the Father's DNA contribution? Without anticipatory design change every baby skull would be squashed, and Habilis would not become Erectus. So proudly use the term adaptation, which tells us nothing about how it must happen.

You have forgotten that we are talking about the ORIGIN of the process! Your “just-so fairy tale" is that overnight, a group of women woke up with new birth canals and pelvises to accommodate bigger brained babies which had not yet even been conceived. God had been and gone and done it.
My proposal is that new requirements (e.g. new tools, ideas, discoveries, environments) resulted in general brain expansion, which was heritable (as it must have been after your God's overnight operations), and which meant that over generations, brains grew bigger and so did babies. Bigger brained babies required bigger birth canals etc., i.e. birth canals etc. RESPONDED to the new baby size. They did not expand in anticipation of conception! In due course (no doubt after many deaths in childbirth, which even today causes problems) the changes in brain, birth canal and pelvis became the heritable norm. Please explain why you find this less credible than your fairy tale.

dhw: […] I propose that whether God designs [all species] or not, the conditions must change before the species come into existence. You have now conceded that this is true of “major gaps”. […]

DAVID: Still forgetting our huge brain 315,000 years before the uses in modern civilization, as you admitted is my great example of design.

dhw: It is your favourite example, which I have categorically opposed […]

DAVID: The new brain that already exists is the only one that can respond to new uses. You answer doesn't solve that point.

The new brain responds to new requirements by autonomously complexifying, just as in earlier times it would have responded by autonomous complexification until it needed greater capacity, which I propose meant autonomous expansion (as opposed to your God’s overnight operations). The sapiens expansion (not "huge" compared to late erectus) would also have been a response to new requirements, and from then on it responded through complexification (which was so efficient that the brain shrank). The process is always requirement first, and you have never offered a single reason for rejecting this logical theory.

Camels' noses
dhw: I’m delighted to see your flexibility. A couple of days ago, the camel’s nose was so complex that it was “far beyond dhw’s wishes for cellular intelligence”, but now it is nothing major. […]

DAVID: I originally proposed both ways: "Comment: Great design, as usual better than the ones we make. Did this come with the original camelids? One can propose starting close to a desert and by slowly venturing out the design develops. But the complexity is precise and effective and I believe far beyond dhw's wishes for cellular intelligence. Cells just ain't that smart…” As you see I can imagine either way it came.

dhw: No you can’t.[…] You tell us there are two theories, and you categorically reject one! You can’t imagine cells being “that smart”!

DAVID: With further evolved thought about camel noses I can go either way and accept epigenetics, a God-given mechanism, as the cause.

dhw: So you have changed your mind (beautifully disguised as “further evolved thought”) because you now realize that you contradicted yourself. Epigenetics does not rule out cellular intelligence. Any change in the response of genes to their environment can still entail the “sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities” (Shapiro) that denote intelligence. But I’m delighted at your conversion to the idea that your God may have created a mechanism that enables cells to act autonomously, even in cases of precise and effective complexity.

DAVID: I've admitted some epigenetic may be quite complex. The exquisite camel nose may or may not be designed, but here I am agnostic like someone I know.

I would argue that it is clearly designed, and since epigenetics = a mechanism which apparently does not require your God’s direct intervention, I am more than happy to accept your belief that such complexities can be designed by cells independently of your God.