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

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 27, 2025, 18:51 (6 days ago) @ dhw

Bird migration

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'?

dhw: 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.

You are proposing the birds say "winter is bad, let's look for a better winter spot." And gradually it becomes long distance. That is conceptualizing more than birds might be capable of, but it might work.

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.'

Might be true:

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.

dhw: How?

Preparing the body for long flights coded into the new DNA.

Chimps ‘r’ not us

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

dhw: 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.

Plus our amazing physical capacities. We are more than you recognize.

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.

dhw: 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.

God speciates.

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?

dhw: 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.

Our cells only look conscious.