Teleology & evolution: Stephen Talbott's take (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, June 10, 2016, 12:44 (2883 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 'Apparently automatic' behaviour of organs is not 'apparently'; it is absolutely automatic in our bodies.-dhw: The invention of the organ clearly cannot have been automatic unless you wish to return to your earlier hypothesis that all innovations are preprogrammed or the result of divine dabbling (which you admit is less compatible with the bush of life). If the cellular communities possess an autonomous inventive mechanism that enables them to design a new organ, we can hardly expect this form of intelligence to disappear, and so it is quite logical that the same intelligence will also apply itself when there are new problems to solve. Otherwise, it will repeat the behaviour that has enabled the new organ to function, which it will do automatically until the next problem arises. -DAVID: Where we continue to have a wide gulf of understanding is my point that complex organs that currently exist in even the least advanced animals with organ systems, require exquisite planning to create. Darwin tiny steps are not seen in the fossil record. Therefore these organs are saltations, and the result of very complex mentation, not available in cell communities. All we are aware of currently are minor epigenetic adaptations.-No gulf, except for your usual dogma about cell communities. We have agreed umpteeen times that these complex organs are saltations, and you have now agreed (under “Autonomy and Balance”) that “If we believe in common descent, speciation may have taken place through an autonomous inventive mechanism (AIM) or complexification mechanism (CM) within the cell communities.” If you agree to the possibility of an AIM or CM within the cell communities, how can you now inform us that the autonomous inventive mechanism or complexification mechanism is incapable of the mentation required for inventing or complexifying? And if your CM produces complex organs without designing them, you might as well believe in random mutations. Yes, the AIM is a hypothesis not a proven fact, because nobody has observed innovations and we only know of minor adaptations, but your alternative is to abandon the AIM and the CM and go back to your 3.8-billion year computer programme or divine dabble for every innovation in the history of evolution.
 
dhw: (under “Lucy”) I am saying the evidence shows that if he exists, he left the organisms to work out their own solutions, with natural selection being the final arbiter of which will survive. This “scattergun approach” is NOT “guidance”. Alternatively, you might believe that God dabbled in order to ensure that homo sapiens came out on top, but that is very different from “God's guidance of evolution” to the endpoint of humans.
DAVID: Good point. This is why I like the complexification approach. The human bush is an h-p bush like everything else, with the cream rising to the top.-Once again: if organisms (cell communities) work out their own solutions through an AIM or CM (but see above for the problem of a non-designing CM), thereby producing the h-p bush, with natural selection deciding which ones come out on top, how can you argue that cell communities are incapable of working out their own solutions?