Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 29, 2022, 15:41 (1027 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: … existing cells complexify in the same sized brain. They are there waiting to be used. […]

dhw: They complexify in the same brain until a new requirement exceeds their complexification capacity, and then they need additional cells. Only when sapiens arrived did existing cells increase their ABILITY to complexify, thus making expansion unnecessary, and this was so efficient that the brain shrank.

DAVID: They enlarge after full use. Each new size and neuron complexity comes large in preparation for new uses. Illogical??

dhw: Yes, they enlarge when their existing complexification capability cannot cope with new requirements. Yes, the new size will contain enough cells to deal with requirements until it’s used up its complexification capacity. But no, the complexity doesn’t “come large” in preparation. The mechanism for complexification remains the same, and the complexity increases as the brain meets new requirements.

We agree and you misread my comment now bolded. New brains with more complex neuron networks in preparation for new uses. Complexification is a process, not a size change.

dhw: Only in sapiens has the mechanism for complexification “improved” sufficiently to make expansion unnecessary. To sum it up: early brains increased in size when the mechanism for complexification in existing cells could no longer RESPOND to new requirements, and so more cells were needed. In sapiens, the complexification capacity of existing cells became great enough to meet all new requirements, and so our brains became increasingly complex instead of increasingly large.

Agreed.

dhw: All this has been discussed before, and you have only raised it because it seems to be your last defence of your theory that all evolutionary changes- except for plants and in the Cambrian! - take place BEFORE conditions change rather than in RESPONSE to changing conditions.

It isn't the only example but the simplest to use as we have discussed it. You favor a non-God approach with natural expansion.

Molecular binding controls.
DAVID: In cancer there are new responses which are distortions of what normal cells do automatically.

dhw: Agreed. But cancer cells unfortunately find their own means of survival, and they process and communicate information just as normal cells do. If you believe in common descent, then every evolutionary innovation will entail a change from what some cells “normally” do automatically.

DAVID: Agreed. New automatic processes appear.

dhw: They only become automatic when they are established. You keep refusing to acknowledge that every system must have a beginning, and if you believe in common descent, then that beginning will take place because of cells that do NOT automatically follow an existing pattern. Intelligence manifests itself when cells are confronted with new problems, conditions, requirements, opportunities.

All in the eye of the beholders prejudice. All I see is intelligent design.

Light sensing proteins
DAVID: Simply, God is the active designing intelligence.

dhw: I find it difficult to envisage as “simple” a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every single evolutionary development in life’s history, to be switched on at every appropriate moment with all the appropriate instructions. And the image of God popping in to perform operations on all these micro and macro organisms in all sorts of conditions doesn’t sound simple to me either. One invention would save him all that trouble: the good old intelligent cell.

Or the good old God actively designing as He produced evolution as we see it.