A white blood cell chases and engulfs this bacteria.
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kennyc wrote:Cells 'feel' their surroundings using finger-like structures
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 165433.htm
Exactly the same can be said about the human brain. Apparently, something being "just chemical" does not conflict with it being conscious.DavidMcC wrote:kennyc wrote:Cells 'feel' their surroundings using finger-like structures
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 165433.htm
Yes, but the "feeling" isn't a conscious process, is it? It's just automatic chemical and physical responses.
pl0bs wrote:Exactly the same can be said about the human brain. Apparently, something being "just chemical" does not conflict with it being conscious.DavidMcC wrote:kennyc wrote:Cells 'feel' their surroundings using finger-like structures
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 165433.htm
Yes, but the "feeling" isn't a conscious process, is it? It's just automatic chemical and physical responses.
igorfrankensteen wrote:Makes one ponder the possibility that all of the details which we like to think of as the richness of our civilisation, are really just our own self-delusional gingerbread Victoriana, so to speak, all designed to make us think there's more to all this, than
React to sensory trail;
Pursue and [kill, or acquire, or impregnate] that which leaves the trail;
Thereby trigger more of the same in resulting generations. All the intention, consciousness and awareness is just accidental mutations of the mechanism, carried forward because they haven't sufficiently impeded the mechanism, such that it died out.
Or, it could be that there are microscopic dogs or cats built in to every white blood cell. Ever seen one of them hot after a mouse or some other prey? Looks exactly the same, save I haven't owned any translucent cats or dogs.
If the processes are simpler, why wouldnt the intelligence be simpler also?DavidMcC wrote:You have been deceived by appearances, Igor. The processes inside the microbe that are responsible for its movement are a great deal simpler than those responsible for the movement (and other interactions, such as verbal ones) of an intelligent animal.
Still, the brain is a physical system, and this does not preclude it from being conscious/intelligent. Why would this be different for other organisms, like these white bloodcells?DavidMcC wrote:pl0bs wrote:Exactly the same can be said about the human brain. Apparently, something being "just chemical" does not conflict with it being conscious.DavidMcC wrote:kennyc wrote:Cells 'feel' their surroundings using finger-like structures
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 165433.htm
Yes, but the "feeling" isn't a conscious process, is it? It's just automatic chemical and physical responses.
Ha ha! The "just chemical" was a reference to that fact that there was no involvement of electro-chemical signalling (via a brain) in the case of the microbe, but is in the case of animals with brains.
pl0bs wrote:Still, the brain is a physical system, and this does not preclude it from being conscious/intelligent. Why would this be different for other organisms, like these white bloodcells?DavidMcC wrote:
Ha ha! The "just chemical" was a reference to that fact that there was no involvement of electro-chemical signalling (via a brain) in the case of the microbe, but is in the case of animals with brains.
pl0bs wrote:If the processes are simpler, why wouldnt the intelligence be simpler also?DavidMcC wrote:You have been deceived by appearances, Igor. The processes inside the microbe that are responsible for its movement are a great deal simpler than those responsible for the movement (and other interactions, such as verbal ones) of an intelligent animal.
Fine, they operate inside an organism.DavidMcC wrote:Firstly, white blood cells aren't organisms, they are cells within an organism. There are no wild populations of white blood cells, roaming free!
You can say the same thing about brains: they do what their cellular machinery makes them do. Yet we know brains are conscious. Clearly, one does not exclude the other.Secondly, white blood cells never have ideas of their own about what top chase and what to flee. They just do what their cellular machinery makes them do. They don't have opinions or feelings about it. Some animals do have them.
You can say the same thing about brains: they do what their cellular machinery makes them do. Yet we know brains are conscious. Clearly, one does not exclude the other.[/quote]pl0bs wrote:...
My bs-detector always lights up when ppl start talking about feedback loops. Its a telltale sign that one is using the complexity of the brain as a scapegoat to hide metaphysical assumptions under. But complexity does not offer a safe haven for conjectures about intelligence/consciousness, because any complex system in any organism always stems from a simpler system in its ancestor. Try and focus on the very "first" instances of "networks" and "loops" on the evolutionary timeline and you will find that the fence around the safe haven has collapsed and now spans across many more species than just ones with brains.DavidMcC wrote:There is a difference between a brain and a brain cell, pl0bs, and between a brain and other organs. Only the brain has a complex network of electrochemical signallers (neurons), some of which are in loop circuits that allow them to briefly hold information electrochemically (conscious awareness), and store that in memory (unconscious). Individual brain cells do not have these functions, but enable brain circuits to carry them out. AFAIK, there is no analogy elsewhere in biology to these brain circuits.
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