What makes life vital (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 04, 2015, 19:56 (3334 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: The same old escape route. Once more, there are TWO issues: 1) Do organisms think for themselves? (This underlies my hypothesis concerning an autonomous inventive mechanism that drives evolution.) 2) If they do think for themselves, what is the source of the mechanism? You persist in conflating the two issues. Autonomous intelligence does not in any way preclude the existence of God ...-Not an escape route. The problem is quite clear. You and I nor anyone else can distinguish between automatic bacterial cell responses and sentient responses. There is no denying bacteria appear to make decisions; the issue is whether those decisions are automatic based on genomic information or are the result of a sentient response. No one can give a provable answer. it is all a matter of opinion. I simply have concluded my opinion and will stick with it. Obviously you are free to stick with yours.-> 
> DAVID: One cannot tell from the outside of a bacterium whether it acts intelligently or whether it is run by intelligent information given to it. That is our difference. 
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> dhw: Our difference is that you insist they do not act intelligently. I insist that we must keep an open mind, although the more I read, the more inclined I am to believe that other organisms, including bacteria, DO think for themselves. But I remain as neutral as ever on the source of the thinking mechanism.-There is no proof of a thinking mechanism, just the appearance of thoughtful response. I've explained my view of why bacteria appear to have thoughtful responses. 
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> DAVID: Only those two possibilities exist. I view my kidney cells automaticity equal to the bacterial cell's automaticity. We multicellular types come from single cells in evolution. What changed the single cell in the transition? The multiple cells took on different cooperative functions, no more than that, and represent a shift in the content of the managing information for different cells. This is my different view of evolution from yours.
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> dhw: No difference whatsoever. The difference lies in our view of how this cooperation and innovation (= a shift in the content of the information) might have happened: for you, divine preprogramming or dabbling; for atheists through random mutations; in my alternative, through the individual intelligences (source unknown) of cells/cell communities themselves.-I can see why you remain neutral on the source of a thinking mechanism. It is still 'thinking' or the appearance of thinking. Information can not appear de novo for conceptual thought is not material. It is based on information to be analyzed and information to do the analysis.