>Bertvan:
>Someone recently suggest that perhaps "intelligence" might be the basic
>component of life - as energy is the basic component of matter. Reason to
>believe the design is not pre-determined? That's a hard one. Life's
obvious
>ability to adapt to changing conditions? An intuition that intelligence is
>never static? The fact that pre-designed wouldn't be very interesting? And
>life is definitely interesting!
You're saying that it's hard to believe that design is not
pre-determined. I agree. Design seems to inherently imply
planning, unless you want to explore the idea of design
"on the fly", so to speak. If you bring intelligence of
almost any sort into the picture, I think the issue of
pre-determination seems to ride in on its coattails.
The problem with sorting out pre-determination from
non-determination, if we can call it that, is that once
you grant anything the power to pre-determine, then
*anything* can be declared pre-determined. Life is
adaptable? Yes, it was pre-determined to be that way.
Intelligence is never static? Yes, it was pre-determined
that intelligence would work that way.
>Ralph:
>>OK. Your version of the Intelligence in ID is an intrinsic part of all
>>life but does not pre-determine the form or type of life. Yet it is
>>"responsible for the design in nature". How does this work? Does your
>>"life intelligence" wait for a mutation to occur and then decide, somehow,
>>on some criteria, whether or not to allow that mutation to continue? Or
>>does the "life intelligence" intervene somehow to help certain mutations
>>to occur? If so, why isn't that "pre-determining the form or type of life"?
>>If the "life intelligence" doesn't pre-determine how life will develop,
>>then it seems like it would have to take pot-luck. If this is going to
>>be distinguished from "chance and random mutation", then your "life
>>intelligence" is going to have to "guide" the available mutations somehow
>>so some are preferentially selected. On what basis does it do this if it
>>does not pre-determine how life develops?
>
>Bertvan:
>How does it work? I doubt we'll ever know the complete answer, but some of
>the details might become apparent. Intelligence is detected from the fact
>that it makes choices.
OK. Does the quality of those choices enter into the picture? Does the
presence of life intelligence guarantee life-preserving decisions? If
not, why not? If it does, how do you account for extinctions?
>If the choices were predetermined, that would no
>longer involve either choice or intelligence.
I can see why you say it would no longer involve choice but how
do you rule out intelligence? Intelligence would be required for
the pre-determination, wouldn't it? Or are you saying the creature
whose "choice" is predetermined also loses its intelligence?
>If the intelligence contained
>within a single cell is sufficient to organize that cell's maturation into a
>complex, multi-celled organism, I see no reason to doubt that same
>intelligence might occasionally be capable of creating a mutation "needed"
by
>the organism to adjust to its environment.
If a single cell has intelligence, what would that intelligence need to
be able to do to create a mutation beneficial to the organism under changing
environmental conditions? It would have to be aware of the changes in the
environment. It would have to determine that those changes either require
a favorable mutation for the organism's survival or that those environmental
changes have created a new niche that a particular mutation would allow
the organism to profitably occupy.
Then the intelligence would have to determine what type of mutation will be
most beneficial under the new conditions. It would have to know, ahead
of time, that the mutation under consideration will be beneficial and
not deadly to the organism. It would have to know which changes to make
in the DNA to make that mutation occur. It would have to know how the new
mutation will affect the other parts of the organism.
>Mutations intelligently designed
>by DNA, for instance, would be a more efficient system than "taking pot
>luck".
Only if you assume that the intelligence doing the designing knows
which mutation will be the most optimal mutation to fit the current
conditions. If it doesn't then it might not come up with the most
optimal mutation whereas there's nothing that says chance couldn't
stumble across the best solution.
Mutations created and "preferentially selected by life" would be
>quite different from Darwin's "natural selection" where death of the
>organism, or inability to produce sufficient viable offspring, does the
>selecting and the creating. (The latter would be a pretty clumsy,
>inefficient design for a system as complex as life, IMHO.)
Well, certainly if "natural selection" is a system designed by some
intelligence as a way to produce life, it's so loosey-goosey I have
to question the IQ of that intelligence. Any of us (you, for instance)
could come up with a better, more efficient way. But we are making a
lot of assumptions. We value efficiency but the intelligence in life may
not give a rip. We tend to value life but the intelligence in life
may not. We find pre-planning to be helpful. The life intelligence
may opt for complete spontaneity.
ralph
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