Re: [asa] Guided evolution mechanism?

Christine Smith wrote:
> This is what I was trying to understand better, and this is what I think the original article was getting at as well...to put it simply, who are "they"... "they seek out" "they" are "not passive participants", "they" "take control of [their] fate". If this is really true at the cellular, or even more basically, at the chemical level (individual proteins, molecules, etc.)...then *who* or *what* are "they"? Does this imply some of consciousness resides at this level? Or are they merely machines, like the machines in the cruise control examples given by others? Are they somewhere in between?
Christine

While Mike Gene and others more knowledgeable in biology need to respond I very strongly doubt that either "sentience" or "conscious" is involved. In computer systems the programmers usually use such anthropomorphic language to describe what is going on but the programmers know that their is no "they" to take "take control". Consider a computerized traffic control system. A traffic control analyst may be reviewing yesterdays traffic flows ie counts and speeds at various locations, plus likely recorded video and finding that the traffic lights were not sequenced in a reasonable fashion for that situation. The traffic analyst might talk to the programmer responsible for the system and point out how the lights should have been controlled. The programmer could respond to the effect that the system "knows" how to recognize the appropriate traffic flow pattern and should produce the appropriate signal light settings. Of course the programmer does not think that the program i!
 s sentient but is just using shorthand to enable quicker and easier communication. Now and again, as a programmer this kind of speech has bothered me and I have tried not to appear to attribute sentience to the computer system by my manner of speaking. However, speaking in a way that could imply sentience was deeply ingrained and considerably less verbose.

Dave W

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Received on Tue Nov 18 09:54:23 2008