Detecting design or intent in nature

[bennyboy]

Can emergent self-order occur without intellect? Yes. But that is not the same question as "Can flocking occur without intellect".

You must have a strong mind. Don't those goalposts get heavy?

I predict that you are going to play the question-begging game: you will only allow organization which involves sentient beings to be called flocking, and then you will spend 20 pages proving that everything that does what you've called flocking must be sentient. Then you'll use an equivocation to use that "proof" as evidence for every organized system, whether it is flocking or something entirely different, also being a product of sentience.

Is it your position that all emergent self-order can happen without intellect? If so I would encourage you to examine this position.

Absolutely. If it is self-ordered, then how could it have emerged from its own intellect? That would be. . . oh wait, nevermind.

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Iron particles arranging themselves around a magnet is not flocking. The iron particles gather around the magnet because of the electromagnetic force. Birds flock because they follow a set of rules:.

Iron particles are not going to move off into another direction if rust inducing water particles show up the way birds do if a predator shows up. A better example of "flocking without brains" would be swarms of jellyfish but this too isn't flocking.

Why are you telling me this? Did I say that iron filings around a magnet are flocking? No. I used iron filings as an example of things which show a high level of organization, without the involvement of intellect. Unless, that is, you want to insist that the Hand of God is guiding those filings into position.

Here's your process: someone gives an example filling your criteria, and then you make up a no rule to show why that example doesn't belong. Then someone else gives an example filling your new criteria, and whoops! guess what? There's another new definition of things to make that new example inapplicable.

And after all this song and dance, you still haven't provided any evidence that anything in the universe not created on Earth demonstrates design or intent. . . or intellect.