(2021-07-31, 11:54 AM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]You are not talking common sense, but trying to offer an imaginative narrative, about me and the scientists who express themselves on Third Way.
Maybe scientists use language that is obscure to you, but is effective in communicating data based facts. Accusing some of the world's most successful scientists with false accusations is weak argument. Pretending that the DI folks and the Third Way folks are focused on politics is bizarre. I just think your range of your discussion is not in good faith and appears to have an personal agenda.
Here is what the DI actually thinks about the science from Third Way scientists as they have an article by Shapiro on their site.
https://www.discovery.org/a/2552/
I have been answering your questions and you ignore mine. Can you express some comprehension of what Shapiro is saying to the DI audience and how it is connected to my posts?
Unlike the panpsychism and Mamamsa Hinduism issue in metaphysics, philosophy and religion, there certainly can be productive discussion on this. I think Shapiro's explanations are clear, understandable to the layperson and to the point. The way I read this material is that the cell has been found to be in part an extremely complex computing system mechanism that includes certain properties of intelligence including a limited capacity for "responsiveness and decision-making". In a way this could be looked upon as a form of primitive intelligence.
However, computing machinery however complex does not and can not in the end constitute conscious intelligence, mind that has the capacity for abstract thought, creativity, visualization, intentionality (agentness), etc. which by the way are all required to originate the designs of life. For this reason and others it is also very much not expected that advanced AI developed by humans will ever achieve consciousness. This relates to the well-known Hard Problem of consciousness, where it was realized by philosopher Chalmers that there is a fundamental existential gulf between things and thoughts so to speak. The essence of things is physical things and their workings, such as neurons and synapses in the brain and their evoked potentials and other physical properties for instance. Or mechanisms consisting of millions of coordinated logic gates and digital memory units executing programmed instructions.
Whereas the essence of conscious mind involves the fundamental qualities or properties of consciousness and awareness, such as the qualia of perception (i.e. what it is like to experience the perception of the color red, for instance), subjective consciousness, abstract thought, the inherent quality of "aboutness", and so on. These qualities are totally immaterial and are in an entirely different and higher category or realm of existence.
Whatever created the inherently extremely complex and intricate machinery of life, much of which is irreducibly complex, had to be a very high conscious focused intelligence, not mechanical computing machines which no matter how complex are incapable of abstract thought, planning, creativity, intentionality or agentness, etc.
Accordingly, the revelations of the research Shapiro discusses about the inherent levels of complex computing intelligence exhibited by cells and other organisms, cannot be the agents responsible for designing life, certainly including the very biological computing mechanisms essential to the cell that he discusses. And it doesn't look like these lines of research can ever reveal the real source of the designs of life.