dhw: To say that crows are intelligent enough to use tools is not an anthropomorphization! How does any innovation catch on? Do you think your God preprogrammed every Caledonian crow to suddenly start using tools? Organisms can learn from other organisms, and in due course new behaviour may also lead to physical adaptations. Why did it appear? What you call the innate drive to complexity is what I call the drive for survival and improvement. -You haven't answered my point. How does one crow show the others so they all learn the tricks? Is it monkey see monkey do, which works because they live in troops? The crows on my ranch fly around by themselves, unless fighting, which they do regularly. In your evolution-dependent view we probably got to be warlike from them, since you think humans inherited all their emotions from lesser organisms.

BBella: Whether there was/is ONE intelligent being conducting/experiencing this experiment or many - does it really matter when we are ALL together in the midst of this great creative learning curve of transmutation of mind, emotions and matter? Whether it's only ONE mind watching all that IS, or All minds watching - we are all a-changing into the unknown.-I still think you and I are very close together in our thinking. You are 'almost' describing my universal consciousness. At issue is the concept that IT is all knowing or learning, the latter an idea that dhw has brought up also.

dhw: The same applies to all innovations: the cell communities must cooperate, whether programmed to do so by your God or making their own autonomous decisions.
DAVID: Now you are telling me those 'cell communities' 'know' they must cooperate. Really? What instructs them?-BBELLA: Thoughts your question provoked:
"What instructs them?" The intelligence and wisdom gained through millions of years of evolution instructs them! Is that not enough to give one bird the creative, innovative intelligence to tie a knot? Some-thing IS instructing every-thing to be what it is and do what it does. We all agree, the some-thing that instructs/directs all living things has to be very wise and intelligent and must permeate all living entities. So, what ever "It" is has to be quite old (if not eternal) which means "it" has plenty of experience and memory about what works and what doesn't work. It displays itself through an intangible, immutable source we call consciousness that although it may always be intelligent, it shows signs of learning. Does this intelligence radiate from one point or from many? Did this intelligence begin as one or as many?-First of all, thank you for bringing a different dimension to our discussions. There is some dense thought here, which I find very attractive. I am a little queasy about the word “wise”, because it suggests sound judgement, as if ATI were somehow geared solely to goodness and beneficence. I see life very much as a mixture of good and bad, nice and nasty, and feel more at ease with a neutral “intelligence”! As for your two final questions, they are the hub of most of our discussions.-BBELLA: Whether intelligence has always been, or was sparked in one moment in a speck of light and matter connection before time began, or created all that IS or is All that Is, regardless - there should be no doubt, that when we look at what has been created and creations capabilities, that intelligence is definitely on a learning curve. Experience is every-thing. Without the memory of these experiences nothing exists to learn more. Intelligence learns and experiences and every thing benefits from it because everything is connected by intelligence.-I think this is a great approach, as it leaves all questions of origin, purpose and method wide open. Where I struggle a little is with the impression that intelligence or the “intangible, immutable source we call consciousness” somehow has an existence of its own. This straight away conjures up the idea of the single mind people call God (see David's comment), but I don't think that is what you mean, although it is one possible option. Intelligence is everywhere, and it provides a link between All That Is, but there has to be room in this concept for individuality. Individual intelligences have individual characteristics, memories, experiences (I'm not just talking about humans), and in that sense although all things are part of the great oneness, all things are also separate from it.
 
BBELLA: Whether there was/is ONE intelligent being conducting/experiencing this experiment or many - does it really matter when we are ALL together in the midst of this great creative learning curve of transmutation of mind, emotions and matter? Whether it's only ONE mind watching all that IS, or All minds watching - we are all a-changing into the unknown.-For religious people of course the alternatives matter enormously, and when I was very young they mattered enormously to me too. If there is a God, what is he like, and what does he want? Now, though, I am fascinated by the whole mystery without any of the “Angst” that pervades some religious approaches. Yours for me represents an enlightened form of agnosticism, in which one embraces the mystery and the wonderment of it all, and accepts the impossibility of knowing the answers - at least until “we have shuffled off this mortal coil”!-DAVID (in answer to BBella): I still think you and I are very close together in our thinking. You are 'almost' describing my universal consciousness. At issue is the concept that IT is all knowing or learning, the latter an idea that dhw has brought up also.-That is the danger of making intelligence or consciousness sound like a single mind. You, David, think BBella's concept is close to yours, whereas I see it as completely open - and therefore close to mine! The difference between an all-knowing and a learning “IT” still conjures up the image of intelligence as a single mind (I think process theology favours a learning God). The concept of intelligence being present in all things and linking all things allows for a single mind but, as I understand it, also allows for an infinite number of different minds without - and this is the crucial distinction - any central “authority”. But I hope BBella will clarify this for us.

DAVID: Another take on the same study:-https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076025-ravens-fear-of-unseen-snoopers-hints-they-...-Comments:-"Theory of mind
"Nicola Clayton at the University of Cambridge, UK, says the study is beautifully designed, but so far no single study has shown unequivocally that any animal has theory of mind.
“'It's a case of converging evidence to bear on a problem,” she says. “But this study comes as close as any to showing so.”-"Martin Schmelz at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, says the study refutes a major argument against previous studies and shows exciting social cognitive abilities in ravens for the first time.
“'Ravens in this study are shown to attribute visual access to others, which is certainly one aspect of a theory of mind,” he says. “They don't have a human-like full-fledged theory of mind, but the authors are also not claiming this.'”-David's comment: Cognitive, yes. Inference, possible.-I'm delighted to inform you that I have just finished reading a 10,000-page volume entitled Animal Cognition by Professor Ivor Fatt-Grant from the University of the State of the Bleedinobvious. I wish I could repeat for you some of the thousands of examples he cites, resulting from his 25 years of research studying every known organism on the planet, but I'll just try to sum up his conclusions. Every single organism appears to be aware of its environment and generally to know if the environment is safe or threatening. Of course threats may come in many forms, but I will focus here only on those from other organisms. Professor Fatt-Grant observed that whenever an organism perceived any sort of threat from another organism, it took precautions to protect itself. He inferred from the combination of threat and precaution that the threatened organism was able to gauge the intentions of the threatening organism, and he points out that reading another organism's intentions entails reading the other organism's mind. The reading of intentions as a form of mind-reading is clearly an integral feature of what we call “theory of mind”. However, Professor Fatt-Grant was unable to find a single volume on the subject compiled by any of the non-human organisms or communities he studied, and as they did not speak any language he could understand, he concluded tentatively that only humans have a fully fledged theory (a witty pun used in the chapter on birds). From our point of view, though, the all-important conclusion of his study is that all organisms are cognitive and all organisms are able to draw inferences from their cognitive powers that influence their behaviour. He even goes so far as to claim that if organisms did not have these cognitive powers and the ability to act upon inferences drawn from their readings of and communication with the mental processes of other organisms (there are also long sections on the subjects of cooperation and symbiosis), they would not survive. I understand he is planning a sequel entitled: Why Do Humans Think That Only Humans Can Think?