Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, April 06, 2013, 18:05 (4048 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Although this is a red letter day, with David and George actually joining forces, I must stress that I've never used the word "mind", as it has far too many human associations. "Intelligence" in inverted commas is the best I can do, and this is NOT to be equated with human thought or self-awareness. -DAVID: OK, what do you mean by the word "intelligence"? There are millions of molecules in a single cell. They are stimulated by various modalities including chemical and electrical. They are built to automatically respond. The planning for this activity is coded into DNA, RNA and the rest of the genome. Is this your 'intelligence'? [...] Unfortunately for your position, molecules are built to react, not have any type of 'mental' charcteristic. They are simply a form of cog wheel. 
[I've slightly rejigged your post, for the sake of coherence.]-The original heading was "the intelligent cell", which we agreed to rename "the intelligent genome". It was never "the intelligent molecule", and you will hardly expect me to know how the intelligent cell/genome gets its millions of molecules to act, react and interact.-DAVID: Your automobile engine responds intelligently to your commands. What is the difference?-The difference, as I keep stressing, lies first and foremost in innovation. My automobile engine does not come up with new forms of ignition, locomotion, fuel. It takes inventive intelligence to do that, and evolution depends on innovative processes. You can either attribute them to random mutations, to your God creating or preprogramming each one separately, or to an inbuilt mechanism which comes up with its own inventions (sex, legs, livers, eyes, wings etc.). That is what we agreed to call "the intelligent genome". Once the innovation functions, the cells will preserve it, and act like automatons, although even then they may have to take their own decisions. The ability to use information and create something new with it is the kind of "intelligence" I mean here.-DAVID: The 'mental' planning that created the code is a different issue. It is where we bog down in the debate. That code could not have created itelf by chance, as we have agreed. Conjuring up a vague 'intelligence' really begs the question, as I have repeatedly pointed out.
 
This is indeed our major issue. The intelligence you conjure up is your God, whose ineffable vagueness presents all sorts of problems for me, which you prefer to gloss over under the banner of "first cause" (which can just as easily be applied to mindless, evolving energy as to an eternal mind). And so I'm prepared to consider an equally vague "panpsychist" hypothesis. You rightly oppose that with all the arguments used to oppose your own God theory ... where did the information, the awareness, the inventiveness come from? Define it, explain it. I can't, any more than you can define or explain your hidden God. But that doesn't mean I should exclude it.
 
Meanwhile, what is our own "intelligence"? Materialists will tell you it's dependent on the cells and the chemical and electrical "modalities". They may be right. But you think there's more besides, because you believe in an afterlife in which our intelligence survives the death of the cells (and in a God whose intelligence never did depend on cells). Is energy the key? If our own cell combinations are guided by some kind of inner intelligent energy, then who's to say that some kind of intelligent energy does not reside in all cells?-DAVID: Nagel simply defines the problem, and gives no answer, and you are imitating him.-I haven't read Nagel's book, so I don't know if he has an answer. I am proposing a possible alternative to God and chance (though it needn't exclude either), so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be imitating. Talbott believes in some kind of inner intelligence which he calls logos (perhaps we shall learn more from later essays); McClintock wanted to investigate the degree to which cells had knowledge of themselves. BBella has drawn our attention to the manner in which cells communicate, as observed by experts in the field. Lynn Margulis (an agnostic by the way) saw cooperation between cells as a key element in evolution. No-one can claim to have THE answer, so why not consider all possibilities?