Jim,
Sorry I have not been here for a while and missed this post last week. This article you posted was a great find. These frog cells are being programmed to exhibit the kind of intentionality ("volition") I have been talking about since 2012.
I do not know if anybody else will see it this way. I am just a crazy "tinkerer" when it comes to my "hobby" of consciousness studies.
But, if ...
"We tell the computer what we want the organism to do, and the computer performs a trial and error process, creating and simulating millions of virtual creatures." ... are we also not playing "God" just a little bit here?
I think I have discussed with you before this counterintuitive idea that free will is real but actually requires "determinism" and not the other way around.
In other words if we humans are going to have free will, then we need to have a set of moral values (or preprogrammed personality parameters) first within our programming matrix or else no degrees of freedom could be possible. Randomness (or "fuzzy logic") could never help solve the free will programming Paradox.
Neo-classical Information is Reality Postulatehttp://www.non-virtual.com/Neo.htm
Instead, an external "creator" (in this instance the Universe herself) wants us to become more self aware. She wants us to wake up to a higher level of consciousness so she will no longer be lonely. The universe wants company. But in order to do that She first has to apply the higher level "personality" or moral framework locked into our programming in hope that one day these degrees of freedom will allow us to surpass the sum total of our programming to accomplish something independently that She herself could not have done without us. See e.g. Dennett, Daniel C., Lecture on "Free Will" (Edinburgh University), Enlightenment Lecture Series, Edinburgh University, June 27, 2007.- as published on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLAbWFCh1E ("Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don't know if he wrote it or not, but the headline in Corriere della Sera when it was published was "Si, abbiamo un'anima. Ma e fatta di tanti piccoli robot - "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots." )
