Immunity: detecting dangerous bacteria (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 28, 2017, 15:19 (2331 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: That is what NDE's show! See my post today on Egner and dualism.

dhw: The Egnor article is extremely interesting, but you have missed the point. I am not attacking dualism. (I am not defending it either.) When you say: “Show me the bacterial equivalent of a brain. There isn’t one neuron in sight”, you are clearly referring to the material presence of brain and neuron. If you believe intelligence/the “soul” to be immaterial and independent of the brain, then it cannot be shown as a material presence, and it is therefore a contradiction to say an organism can’t be intelligent if you can't see a brain.

You keep skipping over the point that consciousness/soul is received by the brain to be used by the owner of that brain to create the immaterial thoughts and concepts.

dhw: However, for your information Albrecht-Buehler (who does not subscribe to intelligent design, and therefore presumably does not believe in a soul), offers the following
G. Albrecht-Buehler’s Cell Intelligence Website
www.basic.northwestern.edu/g-buehler/cellint0.htm
"Cell movement is not random.. The cortex consists of autonomous domains ('microplasts') whose movement is controlled by a control center (centrosome). Microtubules mediate between the control center and the autonomous domains."
DAVID: I accept his description and this can be seen as automatic programming.
dhw: Of course you do not take his work any more seriously than that of experts like McClintock, Margulis or Shapiro. Here’s a great quote from McClintock:
“Every component of the organism is as much of an organism as every other part.”

DAVID: I take them all seriously, but reinterpret their conclusions.

dhw: Albrecht-Buehler’s book is called Cell Intelligence. He and the others, who have spent a lifetime studying the evidence, have concluded that cells are intelligent. “Reinterpret their conclusions” is a fluffy way of saying you think you know more than they do, and their conclusions are wrong. You are of course fully entitled to your opinion, but a little grain of open-mindedness would be welcome.

We have covered all of this before. From the outside no one can determine whether the cell responds automatically under intelligent instructions or is actually intelligent. Believing in God as I do, I am on the side of intelligent instructions.

DAVID: As part of my body my kidneys act intelligently. Why can't bacteria be seen that way?

dhw: Here you have missed the point of the McClintock quote above. And you yourself wrote that immune cells learn by experience and change themselves to fit their discoveries. That is a hallmark of autonomous intelligence.

Not missed at all. Immune cells can be programmed to respond in the way they do in my body, just like kidney cells.