autonomy v. automaticity (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, January 22, 2018, 15:22 (2283 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You fully know my view of the IM God-given characteristics. Plant awareness is use of automatic molecular mechanisms to pick up signals. The responses are also automatic, as in heliotropism. Your conflation that awareness proves an ability to 'work out' as if plants slowly evolve/suddenly invent/'think' of a response is simply more Darwin-speak. The authors you love to quote are all Darwin-infected scientists, with a slanted objectivity.

dhw: The authors I quote – McClintock, Margulis, Shapiro, Bühler – (have) all spent a lifetime studying cellular behaviour, and I have no idea why you should think their unequivocal conclusions are “infected” by Darwin. I don’t recall Darwin ever mentioning cellular intelligence, let alone proposing my own hypothesis that cellular intelligence was the mechanism that enabled evolution to advance. Perhaps you can give me a reference.

Darwin scientists, like those above, try to squeeze their findings into a preconceived Darwin schemata. You might see my point by reading the following:

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/12/elliott-sober-and-enemy.html

Quoting Elliot Sober: "This last result provides a reminder of how important the contrastive framework is for evaluating evidence. It seems to offend against common sense to say that E is stronger evidence for the common-ancestry hypothesis the lower the value is of [the probability of E given the common-ancestry hypothesis]. This seems tantamount to saying that the evidence better supports a hypothesis the more miraculous the evidence would be if the hypothesis were true. Have we entered a Lewis Carroll world in which down is up? No, the point is that, in the models we have examined, the ratio [the probability of E given the common-ancestry hypothesis divided by the probability of E given the separate-ancestry hypothesis] goes up as [the probability of E given the common-ancestry hypothesis] goes down. … When the likelihoods of the two hypotheses are linked in this way, it is a point in favor of the common-ancestry hypothesis that it says that the evidence is very improbable. [Evidence and Evolution, p. 314]"

dhw: The term “work out” was your own, used in relation to the behaviour of a parasite plant, and was emphatically confirmed by you, as below:

DAVID’s comment (under “parasite controls plants’ defense"): The evolution of this arrangement must have been stepwise with the Dodder partially independent until it worked out a way to silence the plant's defenses and then become totally obligate. Living organisms show purposeful behavior. I think that was programmed into life when life originated. God at work. (dhw’s bold)

You artfully did not bold my italics above: God at work!

dhw: Thank you for another fascinating natural wonder, and also for the long awaited acknowledgement that the Dodder must have worked out a way to silence the plant’s defences. Yes, indeed, living organisms show purposeful behaviour, and it may well be that when life originated, your God gave them the means to behave purposefully and to work out their own solutions to life's problems, as opposed to preprogramming their behaviour and all the solutions. Hallelujah! (David’s bold)

DAVID: Hallelujah ha! The bolded sentence fits my theory perfectly. "Gave them the means" simply implies that God preprogrammed them with an inventive mechanism, as we have discussed before.

dhw: What fitted your theory perfectly on a Friday was rejected on the Saturday.

Only in your interpretation of my written words.