Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 16, 2013, 11:25 (4038 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: This is a lovely post, and an ingenious response. Indeed if my "intelligent energy" or your "conscious energy" existed, they would both solve the problem equally well, but alas they are not one and the same.-DAVID: I think you are trying to 'butter me up'. But I remain alert to pounce. You are right, not the same, your amorphous 'intelligent energy' is a weak sister.-It was a lovely post because of your butter-smooth invitation to pretend that my shapeless panpsychist hypothesis was the same shape as your shapeless God hypothesis. ("You and I are the same in thought. [...] It is obvious your panpsychism is really God by another name".) I'm afraid your pounce feels more like a tickle when you affirm that I am right, they are not the same. Referring to Frank's version of process theology, I wrote: "...my own hypothesis follows the same pattern, except that it doesn't require Frank's God!" You have "pounced" again: "No it doesn't follow Frank, because he starts with the organized energy of God, that can think plan and create." Yes, that is the exception I was referring to. Unconscious particles that "collect together in higher and higher forms" and "become more and more conscious" is, however, precisely the process my hypothesis describes.
 
My turn to pounceAVID: My universal consciousness is not at a material level. Your theory requires God, you just don't realize it. Amorphous energy cannot plan, and cannot organize to reach the thought patterns that Frank describes in his next quote.-I really don't know how your immaterial, universally conscious, first-cause energy can have a shape (tell us what it is), and so your theory requires amorphous energy that CAN plan, but you just don't realize it. Perhaps you meant unconscious energy cannot plan. Very true. But my hypothesis is that the universe and life evolved as consciousness evolved, and there was NO plan. Your version unfolds according to a written score; mine is improvised.-dhw: According to Frank: "As for the origin of consciousness, Griffin has an answer, stemming from Whitehead, that I think is unassailable. Experience "goes all the way down" to the fundamental particles. In the fundamental particles, it is just "minimally there." It is manifest for example when one particle encounters another and there is a mutual reaction or transformation. They are "experiencing" each other. Problems only arise when you assume that experience suddenly emerges at some level of complexity from no precursors."-DAVID: Exactly my thoughts in the bold.-And exactly mine too. Your God, who is so experienced that he has all the information necessary to create a universe and life, suddenly emerges at the highest possible level of complexity from no precursors. And that is a problem.
 
DAVID: Nerve cells are the basis of the consciousness 'receiver' kind of like your home radio, in current quantum theory of consciousness. So to have your pansychic theory, your matter some how or other invented DNA which then had the attributes to figure out how to make a neuron after almost 3 billion years of simple life as life entered the Cambrian era. Sounds like chance and natural selection to me, the part of Darwinism you have left behind.-Chance, no (the "intelligent genome" knows what it's doing); natural selection, yes (if the innovation doesn't work, it doesn't survive - and I've never left that behind). So let us see if we can pin down your God's preprogrammed, planned and unplanned technique of innovation.
 
DAVID: [...] Information in living matter is put into the genome by prior timing from intelligence which I presume to be God. [...] Cells do not think or plan. They can only react according to their pre-set programming. [...] Evolution doesn't have free will but can go off in many different directions as pushed by environmental changes.-So God preprogrammed the first living organisms in such a way that through zillions of generations they would pass on the ability to invent DNA automatically, when millions of years later by sheer good fortune environmental conditions triggered his heritable DNA-inventing programme. Then 3 billion or so years later their descendants were able to invent neurons automatically, when by sheer good fortune the Cambrian era presented environmental conditions that triggered his heritable neuron-inventing programme. In fact, every single innovation was preprogrammed right from the start (um...except for non-preprogrammed byproducts like the flycatcher), to be triggered by a lucky break in the weather. And that, boys and girls, is how God turned bacteria into humans. Sounds like chance and Hans Andersen to me, the parts of Darwinism and fairy tales you have left behind.