Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 25, 2022, 18:27 (1031 days ago) @ dhw

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?

The point vis not all cells connect with all other cells as below:

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.

dhw: 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.

Over what generations? Now no gaps? In your mind they just disappear.

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.

The fossils demonstrate large gaps, which you cannot ignore. Why not use facts to support theories?

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

dhw: 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.

Size change is the issue since complexification comes with each new-sized brain. My reason is the fact example of our brain, much too large for current use when it appeared. What requirements made it so big at its start?

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.

dhw: 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.

And my problem, and really yours is we have no current evidence of epigenetics being capable of this degree of design complexity, which complexity you recognize.