Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, February 14, 2022, 16:31 (1011 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Shapiro is not an ID'er but ID liked his work.

dhw: I know. That’s why I asked what you meant by ID-ers “accept so-called intelligence is from God’s design” and why they like Shapiro if they all firmly believe as you do that cells are automatons which only obey your God’s instructions. Why don’t you answer?

I've told you before, Shapiro's elegant work on bacteria was appreciated by ID, but his extrapolation to its application to explain evolution was not.

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The 'manifestation of intelligence" is in the underlying design. Remember odds are 50/50, but only one is correct. I've chosen my side of the issue from my knowledge of how biochemistry has to work.

dhw: And other scientists who know how biochemistry has to work support the concept of cellular intelligence. We don’t need to be reminded of the different viewpoints. I just wish you would respond to the astonishing parallels that we find in the micro world (which you claim is automatic) and the macro world (which you claim is autonomous). This is what Shapiro calls “large organisms chauvinism”, but you don’t seem able to see the parallels.

I see all the parallels. Pure parallelism is an observation, not any offer of proof.