Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 16, 2022, 17:46 (677 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, June 16, 2022, 18:26

dhw: All materials, whether animate or inanimate, contain information. That explains absolutely nothing.

DAVID: Stones carry static descriptive information we assign to them. Cells operate by interpreting instructional information to make them alive.

dhw: Why do you call it “instructional information” and not instructions? It is absurd to say they are “made alive” by interpreting instructions, since they cannot perform the mental activity of interpreting UNTIL they are alive!

They do become alive by interpreting their instructions they're are given. That had to happen when life was started. Just to emphasize it, insructions are always information.

dhw: No need for informational blather. We are back to discussing the theory of cellular intelligence and your refusal to distinguish between automatic repetition when conditions remain normal, and the need for new interpretations and decisions when conditions change.

DAVID: Cells respond to new conditions with automatic answers following instructions they carry and by adding methylation for epigenetic responses.

dhw: Exit information theory (thank heavens), and back we go to your definitive rejection of a 50/50 possibility of cellular intelligence. I find it hard to believe that 3.8 billion years ago your God provided cells with instructions on how to deal with every single new problem/condition/ opportunity that would arise for the rest of the future, or that he popped/pops in to issue instructions ad hoc.

You find it hard to believe in God, so I'm not surprised at your view. Living one-celled Archaea started knowing exactly how to handle themselves or nothing would have evolved. Do you have any thoughts about first life's capabilities? I've given it lots of thought.

Missing a part doesn’t matter

DAVID: Yes, brain plasticity processes take on new tasks.

dhw: The “plastic” cells of the brain make the necessary changes to conduct new processes to deal with new tasks. Why are you so reluctant to acknowledge that the brain is composed of cells?

DAVID: I never inferred the brain had no cells?

dhw: But you scrupulously avoid using the word, as you have done above: plasticity doesn’t take on new tasks. Plasticity is a quality of the cells. It is the cells that take on the tasks, i.e. I propose that they use their plasticity intelligently in order to initiate new processes in response to new requirements.

And I view the neurons as programmed to handle all new tasks given to them..

Entropy
dhw: […] Incidentally, the far-sighted Lynn Margulis was also a champion of the theory that cells are intelligent.

DAVID: Yes, they appear to be that way.

dhw: And what appears to be intelligent might actually be intelligent.

DAVID: So tell how they developed that intelligence, by chance?

dhw: Do I have to keep repeating that your God may have been the designer?

DAVID: I know that, but that doesn't tell me how it happens without God, which you seem to prefer.

dhw: How what happens without God?

Cell intellence, which is the present subject. How do cells become intelligent without God's help?

dhw: You claim that your God preprogrammed or dabbled every change in every organ and every organism, and I suggest he may have designed a mechanism which makes its own changes. I certainly find the latter more believable than the former, but I have also offered alternatives to explain how the former might be made to fit in with the history – unlike your own theory, which is so muddled that apparently only God can understand it. (See the thread on your theory.)

God always does what He wihes for His own reasons, which you cannot know, as much as you analyze God's actions. I have asked you to explain the intelligence of cells without a God existing? You are either or. That is the other side of your agnosticism I'd like to hear about.