Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, February 13, 2022, 12:22 (1012 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Please explain what you meant by “Many Ph.D folks are in the ID corps. They all accept so-called cell intelligence is from God’s design.” And please tell us if they all believe the theory I have just bolded.

DAVID: What needs explanation? I mentioned Ph.D.'s to show level of education. They believe as I do, a designer created all steps in evolution, by whatever or however He did it.

“However he did it” could include giving cells the intelligence to do their own designing, so what did you mean when you said the Ph.D’s “accepted so-called cell intelligence is from God’s design”. You’ve told us that lots of them like Shapiro, so I don’t know what they like if your statement means they reject Shapiro and accept your theory that all cells behave automatically, following your God’s instructions.

Epithelial repair

QUOTE: Leader cells activate specific migratory pathways and drive directed migration of the remaining epithelial cells, which act as follower cells to enable wound closure. How leader cells arise from a seemingly homogeneous population remains unresolved, particularly because only a few cells at the wound edge develop into leader cells.

DAVID: this shows the automaticity of cell responses to humoral stimulants, which start the process by automatically appearing in a response to injury. This type of rapid response is beautifully programmed to protect life from injuries or possible infections in the wound. The appearance of the stimulating proteins produces the automatic responses. All gives the outward appearance that the cells know what they are doing, which can easily be interpreted as brilliant cells.

dhw: Yet again I am indebted to David for an amazing example of how the micro mirrors the macro. What is difficult for us to grasp is that we ourselves are a huge community of communities, but if we start with the concept of single cell organisms (bacteria) that have the intelligence to work out their own ways of survival in ever changing conditions, and then imagine them joining together in a community to pool their intelligences, it might help us to understand how ants do the same – creating huge and highly efficient cities, farms, armies etc. – and we ourselves do the same, both outwardly and inwardly. The above example lays bare the fact that even if cells all look the same to us (homogeneous), nevertheless a particular community contains potential leaders who direct the rest. If we imagine some giant being looking down on Earth, no doubt we humans too would all look the same, but we are not. We have leaders who direct followers. Sadly in our case, our leaders are often far from giving the outward appearance that they know what they’re doing, but in the micro world inside us – which admittedly tends to allot specialist tasks to specialist leaders – there is absolutely no reason to suppose that the outward appearance of intelligence is anything other than a manifestation of intelligence, i.e. they know what they are doing. But of course that doesn’t mean that their intelligence is such that they philosophize about it.

DAVID: You have expressed your views elegantly, but not challenged my view of automaticity.

Thank you for the compliment. I’ve reproduced the whole passage, because I feel that it all helps to establish a pattern that leads to my conclusion, which is that I see “no reason to suppose that the outward appearance of intelligence is anything other than a manifestation of intelligence”. That is as direct a challenge as I can possibly offer to your view of automaticity.