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From: Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: The Sciences of the Artificial applied to Biology
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2025 16:25:12 -0000 (UTC)
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john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2025 11:49:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
> <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 2025-07-10 14:04, john larkin wrote:
>>> On Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:38:41 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I forgot to mention that he Sciences of the Artificial digs deep into
>>>> why living things (even microscopic ones) have distinct organs and
>>>> often components within such organs, versus the organism being a mass
>>>> of tissue that somehow does everything.  The driver is efficiency and
>>>> simplicity.
>>>> 
>>>> This assumes that life has already emerged in some unspecified way,
>>>> and goes from there.  This is a different approach than Dawkin's
>>>> Blind-Watchmaker arguments.
>>>> 
>>>> Joe
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Ref:  "Simon_Herbert_A_The_Sciences_of_the_Artificial_3rd_ed" - The
>>>> Architecture of Complexity.  New copies are available from MIT Press.
>>> 
>>> Even single-cell critters have levels of intelligence. Some people
>>> suggest some level of consciousness.
>>> 
>>> The book sounds cool.
>>> 
>>> Dawkin says he is an atheist above anything else. So he naturally
>>> hides from anything that's not primitive neo-Darwinism.
>>> 
>> 
>> That's just moving the goal posts.  One gets people nowadays talking 
>> about different people's gut biomes 'communicating' with each other.  If 
>> all they mean is that there's some poorly-qnantified mauual influence, 
>> okay, but I get the impression they often mean more than that.
>> 
>> I think it's unhelpful to conflate mere mutual influence with 
>> intelligence---even calling it "information exchange" imports the idea 
>> of meaning, which requires actual intelligence.
>> 
>> Cheers
>> 
>> Phil Hobbs
> 
> Even single-cell critters (including our own cells) have
> extraordinarily complex behavior. And nobody understands how our
> brains work.
> 
> What I'm suggesting is that we not exclude thinking about possible
> biological mechanisms for theological reasons.
> 
> What's your definition of "actual intelligence" ?  I know that most of
> what I do (and invent) is done unconsiously.
> 
> Is an oyster intelligent?
> 
> 
> 
> 

An intelligent being, properly speaking, is one with a *nous*.  

Cheers 

Phil Hobbs 

-- 
Dr Philip C D Hobbs  Principal Consultant  ElectroOptical Innovations LLC /
Hobbs ElectroOptics  Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics