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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (9135)	9/28/2010 8:10:42 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"I didn't follow the author's arguments to that sort of assertion" She said they jumped and they loved and they felt and they reached with their hands. I think it is a fair question to ask if they loved their enemies as well as whatever else she means for us to infer wrt to their love. "The idea of delighting in or finding artistic enjoyment is an obvious stretch on your part. The author seemed to be refering to the accuracy by which cells are able to calculate complex operations and impliment them. Not by using thought processes of course but where a dynamic sort of ongoing calculation is clearly taking place." Not at all. I know what an artist is and I know what an artist does. If she claims that cells are artists--sensible and inquiring people are entitled to wonder what in the Hell she is talking about. As to the mathematical part which you addressed with "ongoing calculation", it is fair for me to ask what are YOU talking about. What "calculations" does a cell make?? Do you think a snake is "calculating" anything when it moves toward or away from heat?? Seriously..DO YOU?? "Cells do have needs wrt cell operations" Cells have needs from your rational perspective just as a car needs gas to run. But merely stating that a cell needs, thinks, feels, loves, etc. is not evidence that a cell has any awareness whatsoever. "Needs" suggest a personalized interest and nobody here has demonstrated that cells have a personalized interest wrt anything whatsoever. "If you think that is unnecessarily cutesy I can understand but I also see how she is able to make her point that way." The point she made with me was that she had no compelling argument to make using facts and logic so resorted to poetry which is something I am fond of in its place but proves nothing in science. "Some scientists use adaptation as an indicator for intelligence in living things. In plants, the mechanism responsible for adaptation is signal transduction. Plants don't have a brain or neuronal network, but reactions within signalling pathways may provide a biochemical basis for learning and memory." Yes. Nicely put. I don't know if memory and learning are the appropriate words--but they may be. The next decade or two may teach us a great deal. Certainly, I have no argument with considering "information" as residing in each cell. Cells obviously process information. Jumping to term this processing "intelligence" (and always "expert" at that) sounds like an unnecessary rush to judgment based (perhaps) on a peculiar human need. "I did not find her approach so distracting." Oh, don't get me wrong, Less! I can live with it! But I want you to understand my wariness: the disquieting thing about such poetry is it leaves nothing to argue on a rational basis. She would undoubtedly find it annoying to know I scoffed at cabbage cells loving and jumping and all the rest. But that was her "argument". And I have not denied that they love or that they hate or that they are mischievous or jealous. But I am not going to look for examples to prove her profound and provocative points. I simply don't find "Cells are intelligent because they mate and love and feel and jump and gambol" to be evidentiary or to require a profound response. I don't think cute noises make a compelling argument.