Extended Evolutionary Synthesis; another view (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, August 09, 2015, 11:32 (3182 days ago) @ David Turell

SHAPIRO: “But the signals are not the agents. There are living agents that use signals and generate signals to transport meaning and content and information.” -TONY: Flowers and bees anyone? How did they communicate to organize their communication?-DHW: If we bear in mind that Shapiro, a bacterial geneticist, firmly believes that bacteria are sentient, cognitive, intelligent beings, the answer to your question, Tony, might be that all organisms are possessed of an intelligence different from ours. They have their own ways of thinking and communicating. I don't have a problem if theists argue that God created this intelligence (and you might possibly even lean towards this idea yourself - I'm not quite sure of your views on this question.) I only have a problem if folk of all creeds insist that other organisms, apart from ourselves and to a lesser degree some of our fellow animals, are mere automatons. -DAVID: But I will continue to make the point: from outside the organism one cannot tell the difference between some type of mental action or automatism. I have my choice.-Indeed you do, but if one cannot tell the difference from outside, and one can't get inside, the only means of access is through testing and observing. I don't know how many years of your life you have devoted to testing and observing the behaviour of bacteria, but I doubt if they extend long enough for you to reject outright the findings of Shapiro and the many other experts who share his conclusions. Are you really so convinced that they are all deluded? -TONY: I don't doubt that organism have intelligence. I doubt the degree of that intelligence. Some intelligence is obviously needed for survival, but interspecies communication, planning, and coordination all take a level of communication that I've seen no evidence for.-The evidence is in the symbiosis itself. What evidence have you seen that God preprogrammed the various prototypes so that certain descendants (ah, common descent again!) would automatically communicate, plan and coordinate?