Intelligence in Evolution

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

If the rock changes its shape to avoid falling down the hill...that's an intelligent response.

My car detects whether or not it's dark and turns on the headlights accordingly. Is it therefore "intelligent" according to you definition?

Also by the way do you now understand why the vast number of events necessary for humans to exist no more indicates "obvious intelligence" in the evolutionary process than someone winning a game of heads & tails with the same number of starting participants indicates obvious intelligence in directing the result of the game?

[Sriram]

The car is programmed to turn on the lights.  There is software and hardware built by intelligent humans. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

The car is programmed to turn on the lights.  There is software and hardware built by intelligent humans.

Irrelevant. Is the car itself "intelligent" according to your definition of that term?

[Nearly Sane]

Survival is the obvious intent....

So you are saying the chameleon deliberately with intent changes colour in order to survive?

[Sriram]

The car and the chameleon are driven by intelligent intent and intelligent programming. Neither is by chance.

[torridon]

The car and the chameleon are driven by intelligent intent and intelligent programming. Neither is by chance.

We may usefully observe that a car is a product of (human) intelligent design.  However both cars and chameleons are ultimately products of chance.  For example, the asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs was a 'chance' event on the evolutionary pathway to today's world.  Without that big rock falling out of the sky, there would be no humans designing cars or argueing about teleology.

[Nearly Sane]

The car and the chameleon are driven by intelligent intent and intelligent programming. Neither is by chance.

Is child leukemia 'programmed'?

[jeremyp]

So you are saying the chameleon deliberately with intent changes colour in order to survive?

That's an interesting question that I hadn't ever thought about before. Do chameleons have any conscious control over their colour changing ability or is it entirely reflex?

[Nearly Sane]

That's an interesting question that I hadn't ever thought about bexcitrd efore. Do chameleons have any conscious control over their colour changing ability or is it entirely reflex?

My understanding is that it's like a fight or flight response. The chameleon isn't choosing the colours, the colours change in response to its mood. If it's threatened, or excited then it changes due to that, not in response to colour.

[Sriram]

A chameleon can be half green and half brown depending on where it is moving. Certainly not depending on its moods!

[Nearly Sane]

A chameleon can be half green and half brown depending on where it is moving. Certainly not depending on its moods!

It's a process. Here's an article on it.

https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/revealed-why-and-how-chameleon-change-its-colour.html

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

A chameleon can be half green and half brown depending on where it is moving. Certainly not depending on its moods!

Wrong again. To be changing colour "intelligently" in any usual sense of the term the chameleon would have to decide consciously whether or not to change colour. Similarly the car would have to "think" about whether or not to switch on the lights on any given evening.

So far as I can tell your entire assertion about intelligence guiding evolution or some such rests on your incredulity about the vast number of events necessary for your existence without it. This is bad reasoning for the reason I have given to you - sometimes known as the lottery winner's fallacy, it relies on the a priori assumption that the universe intended all along to produce you, so must then have engineered matters so that it happened.

A moment's rational thought though would tell you that there's nothing more special about your existence than there is about the identity of the individual who wins the lottery. Sadly, a moment's rational thought seems however to be beyond you.         

[Outrider]

The car and the chameleon are driven by intelligent intent and intelligent programming.

No.

Neither is by chance.

Yes.

Longer version:

If you want to suggest that there's some sort of deliberate intelligence behind the chameleon's capacity for changing colour you need to explain that, not just assert it. All of your contentions so far have either relied on false analogies wedged into gaps in other, more reliable, explanations, or just outright assertions.

Evolution by the action of natural selection on various means, including spontaneous variation, is not 'chance'. It's a natural mechanism for sorting by fitness from natural variation. That the range of variation is, at least at the macroscopic level, random, does not meant that evolution is random. As an analogy, shuffling a pack of cards produces, at the macroscopic level, a random order to the cards, but then playing a game of cards 'sorts' them to an extent - that the shuffle is random doesn't mean which cards I have in the tricks I've won at the end of the game is random. That remains the case whether the game is reliant on my input or not, it works for 'Clock Patience', for instance, which is entirely dependent upon the initial sequencing.

O.