New Miscellany 2: birds, chimps, snails, corvids (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 27, 2025, 11:43 (6 days ago) @ dhw

Bird migration

DAVID: How does a bird conceptualize the preparatory needs of such a trip? You have no answer.

dhw: From past experience which has been handed down through generations of birds and their intelligent cells that have learned what is needed. We follow the same process. All explained below, but you have ignored it.

DAVID: How did they 'learn what is needed'? No answer. What did the birds do to 'learn'?

What does anyone do to learn? Either they are taught, or they learn from experience, or they inherit successful physical changes. It would have taken many generations of exploration, accumulated experiences and adaptations before they established their routes and before their cells made the final necessary adjustments triggered by the signs of approaching winter.

dhw: Do you really believe that one autumn day, your God popped in to give birds their “mighty microchondria” de novo, plus a map to guide them to summer 10,000 miles away? Please answer.'

DAVID: The answer is God, the designer, speciates as I've said before.

dhw: We are not talking about speciation! We are talking about how our fellow animals adapt to or even prepare for changing conditions. Now please answer my bolded question.

DAVID: Speciation provides all that is necessary for preparation and routes.

How?

Chimps ‘r’ not us

dhw: Oh well, why stick to muscular activity? A dog’s sense of smell is at least 10,000 times more powerful than ours, and a cheetah can run at twice our speed, and a camel can go without water for 15 days compared to our three. So does that make dogs, cheetahs and camels superior to us?

DAVID: No, but you abhor our exceptionality as just demonstrated.

dhw: I have just pointed out (now bolded) that it is our brain power that makes us so exceptional. Where is the abhorrence? You, however, leapt in to say we were also exceptional because of our muscle power. I don’t agree, but if you regard muscle power as a reason for claiming superiority, you might as well claim that dogs, cheetahs and camels are also exceptional. Do you or do you not agree that it is the power of our brains that make us exceptional?

DAVID: Yes brain, but our exceptional bodies allow exceptional movements formalized in gymnastics.

And dogs’ noses allow exceptional sensitivity to smell. What is your point, other than to accuse me of “abhorring” our exceptionality because I say it is our brain power that makes us exceptional.

Armored deep-sea snails

DAVID: this could just as well be listed under extremophiles, as they show life survives by using whatever materials are available as well as using symbiotic bacteria for food.

dhw: Astonishing! Thank you, as always, for these wonders. I am in total agreement with your comment, which seems to me to encapsulate two of our favourite themes: yours of design and mine of a free-for-all. No matter what the conditions, the cells of which all organisms are made will find a way to survive. But I cannot believe for one second that they and every extremophile that ever existed, extant or extinct, were specially designed for the use of us humans. The design argument would apply to the origin of every species, which is the cell and its ability to “use whatever materials are available”.

DAVID: I see whole organisms responding to new conditions.

Of course. So do I. And whole organisms are composed of cells, and we know that the cells change in response to new conditions. But you believe they only do so when God preprogrammes them or fiddles with them or gives them lessons.

Clever corvids

dhw: I for one am convinced that the researchers are right. It’s not just corvids that share so many traits with us. Our “large organs chauvinism” (Shapiro) makes us forget that we are descended from earlier cell communities, all of which could only have survived through a degree of conscious intelligence that enabled them to “use whatever materials are available” in order to survive.

DAVID: Do you think our cells are conscious?

Yes, in the sense that Shapiro believes they are “cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities.” These are all attributes of consciousness. But of course that does not mean they have the same DEGREE of consciousness, let alone self-consciousness, that we have. It is our DEGREE of consciousness and self-consciousness that makes us exceptional.