Endogenous Adaptive Mutagenesis
by JoyThought Provoker mentioned EAM while talking about FLE in another thread.
Alan Fox requested answers from an EAM point of view to determine if it is just another variation of FLE. As the only resident EAMer, I described it here and expanded here.
That thread has more than 100 comments, meaning I won't be able to keep following if that discussion wants to go anywhere. So this thread will serve that purpose if anyone's got anything they want to discuss about Endogenous Adaptive Mutation.
Please bear in mind that I know a total of three EAMers in the world. Mike Turner, who developed the general framework, and Bertvan, a friend who mostly posts at ARN but does occasionally appear here as 'bert'. I haven't heard from Mike for a couple of years (could be longer, I forget), don't know if he's developed it any further than what he gave me (which I've been tweaking here and there as evidence comes in). I'm not a working biologist or biological theorist, though I do know a bit, I follow the incoming research when I can, and I've learned a lot more by participating in these debates from Mike Gene and so many others here. Fascinating subject, and it just keeps getting more fascinating.
The EAM framework is gappy and unfleshed in many places, mechanistically undetailed, and created from a metaphysical philosophy I don't subscribe to – panentheism. Sort of like chasing rabbits around duck ponds, it's mostly a way of looking at things, of fitting information into the framework, trying to figure out where to look for the next pieces. It's not really about front loading, though front loading (and supporting, incoming evidence) does fill a hole in the lower right quadrant of the scaffolding. It's consistent.
EAM may not even be the 'correct' label for what's been building, as mutagenesis is an afterthought in this view. What happens when creative, adaptive expression suites prove worthy of being hardwired into the genome. But that's what it was when I got hold of it, so that's what it still is. As a lay-theory it can be called whatever its inventer wants to call it, fine with me. It's a fuzzy but fair description, but not could earn a better label at some point. Who knows?
It's not just consistent with FLE, it also relies upon the Orchestrated Objective Reduction [Orch-OR] physical model developed by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose in the 1990s and under testing and refinement to the current time in various places. The primary endogenous facilitator for the process is consciousness, all the way down to Shapiro's "Cellular Intelligence" – the vital impetus of life's struggles and experience in this world. While recognizable consciousness is still a ways off (needs a certain number of specialized neural cells to enable), even microbes act and react in the world. All life does, and all life seems to use the basic equipment (more or less) to interact with the world and organize its own interior functions. Thus consciousness is a gradient spectrum across all beings great and small, a concentrated physical expression of a fundamental universal parameter.
Because the impetus and the often creative "experiments" of stressed organisms can sometimes be disastrous for the organism, it also allows for a sort of "fallibility factor" that readily admits organisms won't all pick the same solutions, and that the solutions they do pick using endogenous organizational means will vary greatly in relative 'success' on evolutionary terms.
Only after these endogenous adaptation "experiments" in organisms (and populations) undergoing stress prove useful enough to propagate and adaptive enough to do the trick, do they get written-in the genome and its expression-related attachments. If it's successful enough, it may design a whole adjunct informational region complete with gene copies or slightly engineered variants of copies, RNA attendants, expression enhancers, etc.
I do not know the precise mechanisms, epigenetic or genetic. But in approaching from this angle, places to look for them do come up quite often. For me, the original philosophy is irrelevant, it is consistent within any or no philosophy other than determinstic materialism. It's a version of ID that grants to life the intent and the means to design itself over deep time – to shape the future over generational time. How, Who and Why for there to be life at all, and its actual nature, remains a philosophical question beyond science's (or EAM's) charter or ability to say.
Anyway, that's the general gist of it.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Hi Joy,
Thank you for your interesting comments regarding EAM here and on the earlier thread. I personally think that EAM (or something like it) is going to turn out to be true of the world — and that this "something" will be the future of ID. I have also wondered here (a few years ago at TT) whatever happened to Mturner given that he was such an active contributer at the ARN forum.
Comment by William Brookfield — September 4, 2008 @ 11:09 pm
September 4th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
William Brookfield:
Wow, William. That sounds almost exactly like what I've been saying ever since I first encountered EAM. I've taken it further on some levels in my own mind than MTurner did when he offered it, but I too suspect that where science ends up on "Modern Evolutionary Theory" once they dump Darwin is going to look an awful lot like what EAM is describing.
It's a system serving a process, so things are pretty fuzzy to begin with. There may always be fuzziness, given the 'fallibility factor' and such, but let's face it. Life is designed. I think we'd do much better for ourselves to examine its designs and learn how things work, and not just because it'll tell us a lot about how things don't work.
This is where the incoming evidence is pointing. I don't care what they call it in the end. I just wanted to offer (because I was asked) the point of view. The means of approach. I think it could prove immensely more useful to our practical purposes than 'random' ever could. That's a label you apply to something that baffles you so badly you're willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have better tools, better technology and better ideas now than we ever had before. Why be so scared of what they're finding?
These inane culture wars and witch-hunts and turf guarding goon squads are a complete distraction. I am so sick of being called a 'Creationist' and having my whole view labeled on religious terms I've several times considered just leaving the die-hards to die on their own time. Then, occasionally, I find those who aren't so unreasonable. You and TP come to mind.
Thanks.
Comment by Joy — September 4, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Hi Joy
I have only recently developed an interest in ID, but have had a longstanding interest in panexperientialism (the philosophical position that experience is a fundamental and ubiquitous natural property). I recently put a post on my blog re ID and panexperientialism, which touched on adaptive mutation.
I think there is a plausible possibility that a cosmic 'drive to differntiation' is a factor in evolution, but think this is something that would be difficult to approach from a scientific point of view.
Comment by justin — September 5, 2008 @ 6:40 am
September 5th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Hi Joy,
You wrote…
Guarding against throwing out babies due to oversimplification is one of the key things I learned during my engineering training.
Thanks for the notation. I am also trying something new. I am restraining from trying inject my spin on this very interesting thread.
Just wanted to let you know that my lack of comments isn't a lack of interest.
Comment by Thought Provoker — September 5, 2008 @ 9:48 am
September 5th, 2008 at 10:21 am
justin:
Hi, justin. Thanks for your comment and link. I found your post very interesting, tugging at all the 'pan'whatevers I encountered with Hameroff, et al. at UA. I actually rather liked panprotopsychism because it allows for the universal 'urge' toward experience without giving it specific agency in its fundamental, diffuse state. It's nice to see those working in the nether regions between science and philosophy are still at formalization. It's not the easiest task humans ever assigned themselves!
While I agree that things may remain philosophically fuzzy at this end of the causal chain, it seems to me that science and naturalism can work with fuzz pretty well. FAPP. We don't have a clear physical description of what mass *is* (possibly to be rectified soon at CERN), but we observe that some elements have more mass than others. We don't have a clear physical description of what gravity *is* either, but we observe that it orders the universe.
These evolutionary culture wars are all about metaphysics, not science. It should be a sideshow somewhere over by the tattooed lady and the rubber man, but it's played on the actual main stage of biological science and education. Corruption, pure and simple. The turf guardians have a sociopolitical agenda to disabuse us all of our traditional and non-traditional belief systems so they can impose their own metaphysically bankrupt faith. As always, it's the entirely predictable resort to authoritarianism if you can't convince others of the superior value of your ideas.
The 'darwinian' paradigm (in all its guises ruled by metaphysical materialism) has been around for many generations, and has not won in the free marketplace of ideas. It simply cannot satisfactorily explain what we see and experience and know of life and death on planet earth. There is 'More' going on, it's about time science acknowledged it (and got out of the religion/anti-religion business).
I've bookmarked your blog, hope you'll participate here too.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 10:21 am
September 5th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Thanks for taking the trouble to write those comments, Joy.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Yes, Joy, thanks for starting this very interesting EAM thread. I will add some comments about the ideas later, if you don't mind. Have to do some cooking first (a delicious Indian curry if you must know).
Too bad about the last two paragraphs of your last post though. It's the same old tired rant that I've seen dozens of times by now. I suspect you have it stored as a macro (crtl-R perhaps).
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 1:22 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Hi Joy,
I too wonder whatever happened to the inimitable mturner. My very few thoughts on EAM:
1. The problem of the Origin of Life (OOL). Was there consciousness before cellular life, as we know it, first appeared? If so, did it just experiment around until it found what worked best? If so, shouldn't we find remnants of the prototypes, still functioning in their own little niches? Or was this consciousness a very advanced bio-nano-engineer, that figured out the best type of cells to design before it designed them and placed them in the environment? If the latter, then this "consciousness" seems to be more like an independent mind, instead of a consciousness inherent in the physical world.
2. The problem of evolution after the OOL. Mike Gene seems to be working on the hypothesis that if the original cells were front-loaded with enough information, then Darwinian evolution (RM + NS) could accomplish the rest — no need for further consciousness. This seems to be antithetical to EAM. I'm wondering what might falsify the one and verify the other?
Comment by Bilbo — September 5, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Bilbo:
Hi, Bilbo. Good questions! Don't know where MTurner disappeared to. He was notoriously grumpy in debate, maybe he's relaxing in the Carribean on a nice beach or something. §;o)
All I can do is tell you how I see it. And obviously that's not in any way authoritative – I just see what fits into the framework, look around for more. On question 1, I haven't gotten to OOL yet, maybe never will. I don't think it can be known from within an EAM view any more than from within NDS. Possibly a forever-mystery.
In the "consciousness as universal fundamental" view, consciousness is something I could only liken to other such fundamentals we already know of, but obviously something different and 'More'. Like something that arises from a whole other reality, even though it's intimately known to us all. Weird, I know, but isn't gravity like that? Isaac Newton didn't invent gravity when he formalized the calculus that can describe its action precisely enough to let us fly to other planets and moons using planets and moons along the way to slingshot our probes.
I don't know its nature. We haven't yet figured out the nature of matter or energy or space or time, so this one's on the back burner.
I'm not pantheistic or panentheistic. Such a view would see what we call 'divinity' as sort of a universal consciousness. All things and all the spacetime they manifest in as holding some degree of actual consciousness. I'm a little more Platonic than that, all things physical being reflections or shadows on the cave walls. Real enough to define the physical nature and conditions of our own lives and deaths (and all experience and consciousness in between), but mere second-hand goods compared to what's really going on.
Think about it for a moment. What if there are 10 real dimensions of space (plus 1 of time) in the totality of reality affecting us here. We observe and experience our entire lives in only 3+1 of them, even if in truth we exist in all. All we can do is our best to understand FAPP the 3+1 we've got to work with, based on our physically evolved equipment for sensory input and creative conscious ability to go farther. The very fact that our creative consciousness DOES allow us to go farther than space and time tends to support the idea that consciousness is way ahead of our evolved physical equipment.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 3:04 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Bilbo:
That life has evolved is entirely evident. Nobody but hard core YECs and Last Tuesday-ists deny the evidence. Yes, accidents happen – organic molecules and living systems are heartbreakingly fragile, subject to the damaging winds of fickle fate in a not-so friendly universe. But I do not believe evolution has proceeded primarily – or even predominantly – by accident and fateful happenstance.
There are probably a few interesting traits in this species or that one that could be traced to random genomic accidents that beat the odds and added something useful to the system. But this cannot explain life or evolution as we observe the results. There's simply not enough time, not enough genomic instability, not enough organismic ability to control the chaotic results. Such a model makes no sense, which is why most people don't buy it. One thing we did earn from evolution is a pretty good bullshit detection sensor network. The NDS dog won't hunt, and increasing numbers of trained biologists are agreeing.
Front Loading is becoming entirely evident as well. We don't have the LCA right here in front of us to examine, so we have to look at what *is* here. It's looking more and more like the actual LCA was front loaded with all the necessary toolkit information to create everything we see now and in the rocks. Some gained information, some lost information. The Super-Shrub of evolution allows all kinds of trajectories, and most have probably been taken at some point or other. Some dies out, some keeps going, some are regular changelings adept at form-hopping and accumulating informational tools and trinkets.
Here we are, asking these kind of questions. That holds the crown for "most advanced" life form we know of here on earth, anyway. And what makes us so "advanced?" The fact that we're here asking these kinds of questions. Consciousness, like gravity, asserts itself whether we recognize it or not. After all, we're still matter-bound. Subject to its bottom-up processes and the fickle finger of fate. Yet by golly, we're conscious enough to resent it!
Even if the information was front-loaded, RM-NS can't account for us. Nor can it account for where we choose to take our own species' evolution from here by intelligent design. IMO.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 3:09 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
TP and Alan, thank you both as well. It's all pretty much floating around in the flotsam and jetsam of some hidden portion of my brain overloaded with information and way behind in organizing it. I've been on this quest for just over a decade and a half, and I got a very late start. Haven't done the scientific work myself, have relied on seeking out what others think they know. It's good to be motivated occasionally to take it all out, dust it off, and try again to fit it into the puzzle's frame.
But because it's me, there was never any real chance I'd buy into someone else's total worldview whole hog. I just take whatever information they've got to offer and file it in the 'sift for possible value' box, then move on to the next idea. What value my own stores and confusions could offer someone else is completely questionable. But it is what is is, for whatever it's worth. §;o)
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Hi Joy,
I really recommend anyone interested in FLE an EAM to look into any research about Trichoplaxa adherensis, the most simple metazooa known to date. This little creature is so simple, it has only two cell types. The most likely object of research, if your pet-theory relyes on front-loading (I hope I did not get that completely wrong). It is just a suggestion and a proposal for developing a research programm based on a design paradigme.
all the best
Karla
Comment by Karla — September 5, 2008 @ 3:24 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Raevmo:
Mmmmm… I may have to go curry tonight too, now that you mention it! Of course, I've gotta finish sewing my "holder-uppers" to the fouton cover first. Daughter fixed the wooden couch frame awhile back, put it in total upright position and locked it with wood screws, but gravity just keeps on winning anyway. The fouton ends up on the floor even if nobody's sitting on the couch and I'm not strong enough to lift it. I tried to tie it to the frame, the stitches just popped. So now I'm doing heavy duty upholstery stuff to defeat gravity. Just stubborn, I guess.
My view of the culture war is inescapable if I'm going to be me. It just irks me no end, and I can genuinely say I'm sick to death of it. I injected it to get it out of the way right up front. You're welcome to contribute, I'd like to hear your thoughts. And I think I am more familiar with the sarcastic side of your persona than some others here, since it's given me some delighted giggles on occasion. And you're still here, aren't you? §;o)
Just keep it civil and everything will be copascetic. I've opened a can of worms, I know. But it's time for annual mind-cleaning anyway, so it should work out fine.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 3:44 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Karla:
Thanks, Karla. I've been keeping tabs on Mike Gene's explanations of the several incoming evidences of front loading, including this beastie. It's all really interesting to me, but I am honestly not qualified to speak much to it on a serious biological level. My background is physics, with a bit of biophysics thrown in. And even that was a long, long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away…). §;o)
EAM doesn't rely on front loading, but front loading is consistent with it. To tell the truth, I don't think genes and genomes are all they've been cracked up to be. Instead of being the 'selfish' determinators of all things living, life does sometimes manage to do some spectacular things without "genes for this, genes for that" sort of imposition. Heck, voles are the fastest evolving mammals we know of, and their genome(s) are a regular case study in HUH!!!??? They all look just alike, but have such genetic chaos in their cells that the males and females of one species have different numbers of chromosomes! Explain that one with RM-NS if you dare…
Again, EAM isn't gene-centric. DNA is just information available to the system, which can make what it will of it. Or try really hard. Or fail spectacularly. Just life doing life things. Fun with Clay!
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Hi Joy,
thanks for clarifing the point, that m. gene is keeping a tap on this little critter. I could not find a referernce through the search funktion. Anyway, I do understand, that you are follwing up a different path, but to my mind, it has to ty up with the known data to bee consistient with the rest of the data. I merely suggested, that this simple organism is realy something that is worth looking into – no mater what your background is. My main prupose in this forum is, to distinguish between what scientifich papers realy say, and what people interpret into them.
Anyway, the organism should be monitored.
All the best
Karla
Comment by Karla — September 5, 2008 @ 4:22 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Karla:
Mike's "Design Matrix" blog is here, and he talks about Trichoplax adhaerens here. There are other significant clues leading to a front loading theory, and he's doing a great job of following. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if he were hitting the paper-waves himself here and there on this subject… (we'd never know, since 'Mike Gene' is just a pseudonym, after all).
But if you know of findings in addition to what's available here or there, please do add your links and thoughts in open threads when you can (we need a new one anyway), and there is always the possibility of a Guest Post where one of us can host your topic on the main page. If you've some material to contribute, you can click on one of our names on the "Pages" list on the right side of the main page below the featured books. Our email addys are there, you can use them to communicate. It's all important information, and it's all quite fascinating! §;o)
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Hi Joy,
Interesting thread. I think the immune system would be a perfect example of a possible EAM system. The first "rule" of evolution seems to be "complexity is your destiny". Maybe the second one should be "diversify or die".
A working immune system is crucial for survival and antibody diversification is central to a working immune system. The process of antibody diversification depends on the efficacy of activation-induced cytosine deaminases (AIDs) and the subsequent processing of the induced mutation (U:G lesion). AID initiates Ig gene-conversion, class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation. All of these processes contribute to diversification. Somatic hypermutaion depends on the efficacy of the repair processes. Usually the repair mechanisms result in error-free DNA repair, however during antibody diversification, a mutagenic resolution of the U:G lesion is triggered.
The type of mutation during a mutagenic resolution of the U:G lesion is largely dependent on the repair mechanism that is employed to resolve the lesion. For e.g.:
1) Simple replication results in a C:G→T:A transition
2) Recruitment of error-prone translesion polymerases during SP-BER results in transversions (e.g. REV1; C:G→G:C)
3) Recruitment of low-fidelity polymerases (e.g. Polymerase eta) during long-patch BER and and mismatch repair mechanisms are a major cause of A:T transitions.
These mechanisms play a part in antibody diversification. Activity of the AID is regulated by protein interactions, post-translational modifications and research is ongoing to see if epigenetics also play apart.
Even though this is not an example of a "foresighted mechanism" whereby a cell "designs" an antibody for a specific antigen, it is still an active process whereby the optimal properties of the genetic code are exploited by random variation and selection for controlled variability.
Two specific optimal properties of the genetic code are worth mentioning:
1) The effect of cytosine deamination on a random pool of amino acids.
2)
So maybe a part of the EAM framework can be to look for similar systems in other primitive organisms. Thus, instead of viewing organisms as passive entities as a result of selection of random mutations that happen for no reason, take the view that cells are active entities that search "randomness" through active induction of random mutations and then use intrinsic quality control systems as a selection mechanism.
Evidence for this?
1) Cytosine deaminases are present in bacteria
2) High and low fidelity repair systems are present in bacteria
3) RecA and LexA might play an active part?
4) Quality control mechanisms for proteins are present (see DNAJ genes)
5) Programmed cell death in unicellular organisms might be an EAM-related mechanism.
6) Optimized genetic code might facilitate such a process (see above)
All that is needed is to combine these properties and see if bacteria actively induce variation through mutation, and let the quality control mechanisms do the selecting.
EAM = Controlled variability achieved by an active search of "random space" utilizing the optimal properties of the genetic code and quality control mechanisms?
And maybe rule 1 exists because of rule 2.
Comment by Telicmeme — September 5, 2008 @ 5:09 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I've been spending a little time looking back over old ARN threads. Guts is a pale shadow of Mike Turner
. Anyway Bertha Jane posting at ARN states this is a good explanation of EAM:
Frankly, does this make any sense to anyone?
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 5:14 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
EAM is a non technical alternative to materialism. It is compatible with any theory that recognizes the reality of intelligent, purposeful choice. Whether the purposeful organizing intelligence of nature emanates from a deity or is an innate force of nature is immaterial to an agnostic like me, someone very different from the evangelical atheists touting “natural selection”. EAM wouldn’t seek a theory about the origin of life. The universe is (and always has been) intelligent. The individual choices by which the inanimate universe designed itself were too miniscule to be detected by contemporary science.
I don’t know what happened to mturner. As an anti-war, anti-imperialism, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, political liberal, I wouldn’t consider voting for McCain even if his VP might advocate ID, so my interests lie elsewhere these days. Besides, I have no desire proselytize anyone. So long as everyone is aware of all the options, I’m content for everyone to formulate their own concepts.
http://30145.myauthorsite.com/
Comment by Bert — September 5, 2008 @ 5:14 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hi, Berthajane! Hope your life is going fine and dandy. Thanks for weighing in (and to Alan Fox for pulling a previous well done point of view of yours). Yeah, I'm still in here swinging away at bats aiming for my hair, but even I get sick of it sometimes. I take a break, then can't help peeking in, and then I'm off again. Weird addiction.
Thanks again!
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 5:34 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Joy,
Some thoughts on your comment that:
I am not convinced that the Dawinian paradigm and metaphysical materialism cannot account for the evolution of life. However, I do think that it cannot account for the existence of subjective experience (’the hard problem of consciousness’). The intractability of the problem of consciousness then opens up the plausibility of other metaphysical frameworks which, in turn, may then make ID as a factor in evolution more plausible.
For example, if we take experience as a fundamental property of nature, two possible ways we can go are:
- Micropsychism: Posit that events at the micro level of fundamental particles are associated with experiential or proto-experiential events (this has some similarities to Hameroff’s views).
- Cosmopsychism: Posit that the entire universe is a subject of experience, with the physical laws and events of the universe being the outward manifestation of its inner subjective dynamic (similar to a Spinozistic view). This sounds like pantheism, but I think that Occam’s principle needs to be applied here to keep the cosmic subject as simple and unintelligent as possible, so theism is best kept out of the argument.
I think either of these views could produce plausible hypotheses of ID and EAM (though whether they could ever be testable is another matter). But I think the macro view of viewing the universe as a cosmic subject could also have application to the issue of the “fine tuning” of the universe for life, so may be the more preferable position.
Comment by justin — September 5, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Joy:
This view is not entirely at odds with MET. Here’s from Mary Jane West-Eberhard’s 2003 book "Developmental Plasticity and Evolution" (p 29):
A little later she writes:
In MJW-E’s view, then, a lot of new “phenotypic space” is “searched” by developmental plasticity, not necessarily induced by mutations, and not very endogenous either given the prominent role of environmentally induced (plastic) variation. But in this view it is still selection that keeps the good stuff in the population and favors the genetic variants that tend to express the good stuff. It’s my impression that in your extreme and, excusez les mots, a bit silly, dislike of Darwinism you throw away the baby with the bathwater.
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
He appears to have become obsessed with the politics of the Middle East and was expelled!
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 6:00 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Bertajane (alias of Bert?):
How do you measure those non-mechanical non-physical phenomena?
I'm afraid that as long as people associate EAM with this kind of new-age mumbo-jumbo it will never be taken seriously by the scientific community.
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Just to remind folkq of the couple of questions that occured to me that I hope someone can respond to:
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 6:16 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
DaveScot commenting on front loading. at UD. I'd like to respond but, somehow, I am unable to log in or regoiister
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Oops, thinking out loud. Clicked "post comment" instead of "preview" but no edit option. Never mind. S/B "register" And >a href="http://www.uncommondescent.com/education/agnostic-pro-id-vs-theist-anti-id/#comment-295200">this is the link.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 6:28 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Raevmo
I agree that there could be difficulties in EAM ever being taken seriously by the scientific community.
To show that adaptive mutation was a result of an anticipative evolutionary drive (or cellular intelligence or other aspects of ’mind’) it would be first necessary to eliminate other possible causes. These could be Darwinian (such as selection acting on a generalised increase in mutation rate in response to environmental stress), or some as yet undiscovered physical Lamarkian mechanism that provides relevant phenotype to genome feedback.
If such physical explanations had been eliminated then perhaps it could be said there was some support for the influence of an intentional drive in the evolutionary process. The next question would then be what is the actual mechanism by which the anticipative drive effects evolutionary change. That is, how are mutations 'directed' without violating natural law. I think there are two options here. Firstly, the directed mutations could be effected through exploiting indeterminacy at the quantum level. Secondly, one could take a different metaphysical view of the character of physical law, adopting the perspective of Alfred North Whitehead that laws are the 'habits' of nature which on rare occasions may be broken.
It could be objected here that explaining directed mutation on the basis of quantum events or temporary alterations in nature's habits does not suffice as an explanation at all, because it does not explain the actual mechanism of how ‘mind’ or an evolutionary drive 'causes' the copying errors that lead to the required mutations in nucleotide sequences . But it may be the case that to ask this question is like asking why fundamental laws and properties are the way they are, and that no further physical explanation can be given.
So it seem to me the scientific investigation of EAM would work on a fundamentally negative heuristic – other possibilities are eliminated and we are left with nonrandom directed mutation without a more fundamental physical cause which can be pointed to. In this regard, explanation of direct mechanisms of biological changes, evolution and development are always going to yield a more productive science than that which operates on a negative heuristic of eliminating other possible causes.
Nevertheless, although ID may never be a productive research program in terms of helping us to learn more specifically about how the natural world works this is not to say it may not, after all other physical explanations have been exhausted, be shown to be the best explanation of some evolutionary changes. Of course, even then some might say that deferring to an as yet undiscovered explanation by normal physical means is preferable to postulating an ID mechanism which includes unobservable features. Here we are in the borderlands where philosophy of science meets metaphysics, the issue being whether methodological naturalism needs to be modified to incorporate inferences derived from the natural phenomena of subjective experience.
(BTW I cut most of that from a previous blog post of mine, but think it directly pertains to the topic at hand)
Comment by justin — September 5, 2008 @ 6:28 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
This is the link.
(Apologies)
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 6:32 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Ahah!
DaveScot refers to Professor John Davison! Is he restricted from contributing here?
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 6:37 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
justin:
Well, I'd have to disagree, given that I strongly suspect there is no actual "Hard Problem" of consciousness. It's just that we haven't invented the proper definitions yet. If there are physical and neural correlates of consciousness – and you probably know as well as I do that if it's manifest in life, it's got a physical biological mechanism that enables that manifestation – then there shouldn't be that much trouble entailed in delineating its attributes while we're out there seeking its nature. I mean, it's not like it's something we don't know perfectly well by our own direct, empirical (but subjective) experience exists and is causally effective.
Honestly, sometimes I wonder if the paid-to-argue 'experts' who never have the same opinions might all be the REAL zombies, just trying to pull one over on all us actually alive and conscious people. They spend years and years spinning fanciful yarns of advocacy and denial that nobody follows, because we're all busy living real life in the real world with whatever real equipment we have to work with. They should all get some honest work for a change. I bet it would change the tone of the whole debate.
Actually, I'm not talking about experience as a fundamental property. Not in terms of either qualia or the experiences themselves (i.e., "Hmmm… think I'll have my only son bleed to death in my arms in the middle of the night. THAT would be an experiential rush!" then leafing through the rolodex for that experience and plugging it into the hardware).
Experience is always unique to the individual that does the experiencing. Colored and flavored by that person's sum of histories and mental/emotional proclivities and peculiarities. I have this same sort of issue with qualia. The debaters too often assume there is some actual agreement about what it "feels like" to see red. Heck, we aren't even sure that "red" is the same color to you as it is to me!
"Feels" aren't something within science's purview, nor are the sensory-stimulated 'moments of consciousness' associated with them. The most they could ever hope for is to see some little portion of your brain light up when you "feel" green. It might even match everybody else who volunteered for the measurement. But that doesn't mean you all "felt" the exact same thing, and none of you would necessarily match my brain-map on green! (I'm a synesthete, btw).
I think that whole diversion is just a diversion. Good for a few dozen research papers and associated funding, but that's about it. In the end, we'll be no wiser. Consciousness (or proto-consciousness) as a fundamental of nature is a whole other beastie. IMO.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 7:12 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
justin:
It's not possible, in principle let alone in practice, to eliminate all other possible causes of adaptive mutation. Dembski's method of design detection suffers from the same flaw. But more importantly, I think, is that there is no way of disproving that those other possible causes (including Darwinian ones) are also the result of some anticipative mind somehow interfering.
Are there any distinguishing (I'm starting to sound like Zachriel) EAM predictions that have been derived in a logically rigorous way from a model that have since been verified?
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Raevmo:
It's not so erroneous to offer a "Devo-Evo" turn-around, I guess. Since I'm not a Darwinian Die-HardTM, they'd be responsible for lodging their own objections. Nor am I particularly surprised or dismayed that there are Darwinian Die-HardsTM out there who could interpret anything and everything to their own governing uber-theoretic. That's just business as usual.
But that's not how I interpret the same phenomena. You'll have this, it's best to just let it be than to attempt to impose somebody's idea of a damned 'orthodoxy'. We already know from human history that it won't work, so there's no point.
Gee, I certainly wouldn't want my "extreme" and "silly" views to be responsible for anybody's baby's life! Who's baby was it?
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 7:27 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Raevmo to justin:
Just an aside to the subject for you, Raevmo. EAM is not about exterior forces. If you are really unable to consider life itself as a possible suspect for the agency of directed evolution, then you won't understand a word that's likely to be said in this thread.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 7:33 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Is this humour?
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Joy:
Doesn't the A in EAM represent Adaptive? As in adaptation to the environment? Environment being (mostly) exterior to the organism?
I am happy to accept that some mutations are almost entirely "endogenous", but where's your evidence that this is the rule rather than the exception?
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Alan:
I'm afraid not. Joy apparently wants to share the dramatic and miraculous moments of her life with us. Haven't you noticed?
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 7:49 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
The blackest of black humor, Alan. It's one of my more notable experiences of life and death on planet earth, always readily available off the top of my head. AND it's everyone's worst nightmare – something all can relate to. A way of separating the actual terminology – "feels" – from the broader and hopelessly complex term "experience."
I can use it because… I can. As a professional fool, all of life's absurdities are available for examination, parody, satire, and ridicule. All of 'em.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 7:50 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
I have noticed that Joy's posts can be somewhat eclectic. It would be nice if she found time to address the two questions I have posted about front loading.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I suppose I must be humour-challenged. I have always found clown faces mildly disturbing and not at all funny. But, if you have time to address my queries about front loading, that would be great.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Raevmo
I am not aware of any instances of adaptive mutation for which plausible Darwninian explanations have not been proposed (but then again i haven't read all that much in the area)
Re:
I agree that possible physical causes can never be eliminated – it is always possible to postulate an ad hoc physical explanation which has not yet been discovered. Better wording on my part would have been to say that physical explanations which are less plausible than those incorporating explanations invoking mind or consciousness had been eliminated.
Of course, then there is the problem that methodological naturalism does not allow such factors, which is why I agree that ID may never be taken seriously by the scientific community (unless its parameters are broadended).
BTW Joy, I use the word experience pretty much synonymously with consciousness.
Comment by justin — September 5, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Alan:
You know very well that adding real and imaginary yields complex stuff.
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Revmo:
I have mentioned repeatedly that any theory that pretends to explain everything we see, must also explain the anomalous manifestations. This really isn't hard to grasp. Experiences of the anomalous occur to people all over the world every day, you just don't often hear about them. When those anomalies point directly toward something a whole lot 'More' than what anyone's little worldview can handle, tough titty.
But this example isn't particularly anomalous. Someone somewhere loses their child every hour of every day and night, all the time. It may "feel" unnatural, but it's not and there's plenty of factual history to demonstrate how 'normal' it really is. Where do you suppose human beings came up with the idea that the death of children is somehow 'wrong' or some sort of cosmic 'injustice'? It certainly can't be gleaned from actual biological facts and human history, at any time in the entire existence on this planet, in any form.
I just used it to inform justin that the "feel" of red isn't the same thing as "experience" which has a much, much broader frame. Hell, I'd be willing to entertain the idea that "experience" is the whole point – the goal of the manifestation game. If it's the goal, it cannot *be* and subvenient attribute.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Fly, my meme, fly!
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
justin:
OK, but to do this in a rigorously scientific way you must be able to assign, quantitatively, a degree of plausibility to the competing hypotheses. This requires explicit models, with parameters that can be estimated from the data. Then we can use some criterion of model fit (such as AIC) to decide which model explains the data best. Do you think that is possible, or better yet do you know of any examples, for explanations invoking mind or consciousness?
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Alan Fox:
"The clown remains a mysterious figure, a medieval character in the razzle-dazzle age of the atom. He's a crazy-house mirror into which men and women as individuals can look to see themselves, their friends, enemies and neighbors, and beyond them the forces that influence and sometimes threaten everyone's life. Clowning can be that serious."
Bill Ballantine, Founding Director of Ringling Clown College. From whence I earned my only pertinent-to-these-debates credentials. Or, I suppose, I could cite the tag line on our first business cards after stepping off the train…
"If any man among you seems wise in the ways of this world, let him become a fool, that he may be truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. He will entrap the wise men in the web of their own deceits."
I Corinthians, 3: 18-20
But yes, SkyPup was really my son, he really did bleed to death in my arms in the middle of the night at the ripe old age of 21. He was a clown too, the best you can imagine. It launched my quest. That was 16 years ago.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Joy:
But you also mention FAPP a lot. So which is it?
Yet I'm not sure what you mean by anomalous. Does the appearance of Jesus' face on a tortilla qualify? Science just isn't very good in dealing with phenomena that can't be repeated. But I suppose if enough anomalous phenomena occur and a pattern can be detected in them, then we're in business.
It feels bad to lose a loved one. One tries to prevent feeling bad. This tendency to avoid feeling bad has obvious survival value, either directly (avoid feeling pain) or indirectly (avoid the suffering or death of relatives). To me, it makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary point of view.
Comment by Raevmo — September 5, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Well, I am sorry for your loss. I find it difficult to to comprehend having to face such tragedy.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
justin:
Thanks for the clarification, justin. Just wait a few hours, someone will chime in about 'intelligence' to try and hopelessly entangle the whole subject in semantic nit-picking.
Guess I just see the term "experience" as too broad, and too liable to stream-braiding complications for it to be the word-concept of choice to describe what I think you're describing. But I also see the narrowed definition of "qualia" to lack specificity. As a synesthete who 'normally' perceives more and/or different informational input from my sensors, the notion of qualia has always seemed imprecise as well. I think I grok what they're aiming at, but to tell the truth, I don't have a better word for it.
I'd call it a "Know," but the formal definition would be complicated and controversial.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 9:16 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Alan Fox:
Thanks, Alan. There's been time to lock up the "feels." But I do know where I've stashed them.
It was just an "extreme" example that popped readily to mind when I wanted to insert an "extreme" example, because Raevmo was doing his "extremist" dance. He knew it was coming, we've danced this dance before.
Comment by Joy — September 5, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
September 5th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Raevmo
As I said, I think possibly the best that could be hoped for in terms of supporting a consciousness related hypothesis re EAM lies in eliminating other plausible physical explanations of apparent directed mutation and then relying on inference to the best explanation.
Of course, this does not suffice as much of a scientific explanation, which is why I think that the parameters of what a valid scientific explanation would need to be broadened in order to accommodate ID explanations (and I’m not saying that this broadening is something that should occur at the present time).
On the subject of the physical effects of experience, you mentioned that you think that feeling bad has survival value. This implies that subjective feelings have physical effects rather than being mere epiphenomena. This seems to me to be problematic in the same sense that consciousness-related EAM explanations are, as it requires somewhere in the chain of physical causes and effects for one's feelings to intervene and ‘bump’ one's atoms in the appropriate way.
Comment by justin — September 5, 2008 @ 10:06 pm
September 6th, 2008 at 4:44 am
justin:
Broadening them to encompass, say, astrology, as Behe suggested? Those "parameters" have been arrived at by a long process of trial-and-error resulting in a system that works pretty well. To broaden them would make science less reliable and mostly serves a political agenda.
A great deal is known about the physiology (perhaps you prefer to say the atom-bumping) and even genetics of pain. Precisely because we want to avoid it, even at considerable cost, a great of deal of research has been devoted to it. We can infer that animals other than humans have pain under very similar conditions and we see that they actively avoid such conditions. Such behavior clearly has survival value because it prevents bodily harm. Can this be in any way controversial?
Comment by Raevmo — September 6, 2008 @ 4:44 am
September 6th, 2008 at 5:48 am
Raevmo
This is getting off topic, but my point was that from a standard Darwinian point of view, it does not matter if, for example, when you put your hand on a hot stove, whether you experience ecstatic pleasure or excruciating pain, as long as the physiological response of removing your hand ensues.
As evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker puts it in this interview:
“Since we can imagine a robot that, behaviour-for-behaviour and state-for-state, is identical to a human, but in which there's "no one home" — no one actually feeling the pain or seeing the red — there can't be an adaptive explanation of sentience, because we've defined it as something that can have no external consequences”
Incidentally, the fact that feelings do seem to be appropriately pleasurable or painful in ways which enhance survival, led chemist Jim Cairns Smith in his fascinating book Evolving The Mind to propose a Quantum Mechanics based model that posits that subjective consciousness does have physical effects.
Comment by justin — September 6, 2008 @ 5:48 am
September 6th, 2008 at 10:41 am
It can be shown that sharp pains can cause a physical response *before* the conscious mind is aware. The pain is a special function of consciousness so that you *learn* not to put your hand on a hot stove.
Comment by Zachriel — September 6, 2008 @ 10:41 am
September 6th, 2008 at 11:30 am
justin to Raevmo:
Science can handle the idea of causally effective consciousness just fine. The detail work – pinning down the working definition so that physical mechanisms can be identified and their activities explained – will take awhile longer. There are already working definitions for various attributes of consciousness and cognitive scientists are actively investigating them.
All things biological and biochemical ultimately reduce to quantum mechanics in the substrate, and QM already accepts that observation directly affects the state of the system. This is a little mind-spinning when you first encounter it, but it's not scientifically controversial at all. Thus science can accept the causal efficacy of consciousness as a 'given', just like it accepts the causal efficacy of electromagnetic fields and gravity. It's all well within the current parameters of what a valid scientific explanation must include.
Basic awareness is a hallmark of life. The organism interacts with its environment – obtains information, processes the information, and responds to the information. We observe this all the time, so it isn't controversial. There's no need to add the baggage of emotion to the situation because emotion appears quite late in the course of evolution. There's no problem here.
It's only professionals in the game of dueling metaphysics who like to pretend consciousness is not a 'real' phenomenon. Philosophers arguing philosophical fine points is just another sideshow, a pastime having no particular impact on scientific examination of consciousness and no authority to prevent scientists from including consciousness and/or awareness in their list of causal factors for life's operations and behaviors at various levels of complexity.
Comment by Joy — September 6, 2008 @ 11:30 am
September 6th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
RAEVMO:
(self-awareness, cellular intellignece, memory, intention and other aspects of 'mind')
Such forces are non deterministic and I doubt they will ever be reduced to mathematical formulas. Life is unpredictable and produces surprise solutions, something mathematics can't handle.
If self-awareness, cellular intellignece, memory, intention and other aspects of 'mind are real aspects of living systems, and "science" feels it cannot deal with such forces, I suppose people will turn to some other discipline than materialistic science to explore their understanding of life. "The scientific community" will continue to produce their just-so stories of how random mutation and natural selection created biological structures, but fewer and fewer people will pay attention to them. More and more people will explore concepts such as EAM.
Comment by Bert — September 6, 2008 @ 12:17 pm
September 6th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Hi Joy,
Thankyou for your kind words at the top of the thread. Unfortunately this has been a very busy working weekend for me. I will be able comment more when this weekend is over.
Comment by William Brookfield — September 6, 2008 @ 12:55 pm
September 6th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Joy
I'm all for the commonsense view that our feelings affect our behaviour. However, if all behaviour is ultimately explainable by objective, observable physiological processes, then there is no room for one's private, subjective feelings to do any work.
Thus under MET as it stands, feelings cannot have any adaptive consequences. This I think is one of MET's shortcomings, because feelings seem to be adaptively appropriate, as Raevmo says.
Comment by justin — September 6, 2008 @ 5:36 pm
September 6th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
justin:
There is genetic variation for the capacity to feel pain. Those who cannot feel pain are at a disadvantage because they do not learn to avoid bodily harm.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain:
This seems to strongly suggest that feelings can have adaptive consequences. How do you read this?
Comment by Raevmo — September 6, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
September 6th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Bert:
A lot of unsubstantiated assertions there. How do you know those (undefined) "forces" are non deterministic? Some aspects of life are unpredictable, others are very predictable. There's quite a bit of solid mathematics dedicated to stochastic processes. Please give some arguments instead of blowing smoke.
Comment by Raevmo — September 6, 2008 @ 6:45 pm
September 6th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Raevmo
I agree that article supports the view that feelings have adaptive consequences (as does common sense). But if you want to broaden what a valid scientific explanation is to incorporate unobservable subjective feelings, how does this differ from:
Comment by justin — September 6, 2008 @ 8:34 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 9:54 am
A couple of thoughts on the thread:
Alan asks:
Kind of an odd question for a Darwinist. If RM&NS can explain it all, some extra information floating out there doesn't really need any guarantee on any specific appropriate environment. It may help, or not. We sometimes plant seeds (metaphorically speaking) without knowing that they will prove fruitful, or fruitful in the same manner we intended.
But I'm not an EAMer for an FLEer specifically.
Raevmo Says:
I understand that whole exchange from Dover is just too juicy for some to pass up. But Behe's point was a valid one. The whole demarcation issue is more complex than the typical Darwinian will admit. Take what follows, that I think Behe, amongst others, addresses:
If those "parameters" have an empirical source, then they can't be demarcation criteria. They may be useful on some problems, but not on others. They may be useful till they no longer are.
Behe gets the better of this exchange. But the Raevmos of this world can't seem to see it.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 7, 2008 @ 9:54 am
September 7th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Thank you for noticing. I was beginning to wonder if anyone would help with answers to my (originally two, now three) queries. The point I am making is NS (for those convinced of its explanatory power), by definition, results in organisms matched to their niche. Golden moles in the desert, blue whales in the ocean, Riftia tube worms at thermal vents. E in EAM stands for endogenous, so no input from the environment. So what guarantees organisms match their environment?
Sort of like natural selection?
Obviously not!!!
Comment by Alan Fox — September 7, 2008 @ 10:33 am
September 7th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Alan says:
The good news is that I think I NOW understand why you asked the question. The bad news is I think you misunderstand at least generic FLE. NS isn't getting replaced. RM is being supplemented. Since Joy is the one explaining EAM, I'll her answer explicitely, but from her words:
I assumed "adaptive" and "successful" are meant to convey the idea of NS.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 7, 2008 @ 11:33 am
September 7th, 2008 at 11:51 am
So there is no difference from natural selection as originally proposed by Darwin? That takes care of one query.
My other query was the source of new information. ToE posits mutations plus HGT, etc. Front loading posits what?
Third query:
EAM seems to propose organisms being able to transfer information gained from the environment into its germ cell DNA. There is no biological pathway I know of that perorms this function, or does this happen in the complex plane?
Comment by Alan Fox — September 7, 2008 @ 11:51 am
September 7th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
justin:
However, if all behaviour is ultimately explainable by objective, observable physiological processes, then there is no room for one's private, subjective feelings to do any work.
? Why must all behavior ultimately be explainable by objective, observable physiological processes? Is that some Big-Pharma propaganda? We know that thoughts and mood alters brain chem-physics. We know that whole regions of active brain chem-physics serve to monitor and control cellular and organ processes 24-7. Quite the impressive construct, a brain.
Identifying the NCCs – Neural Correlates of Consciousness – and following their trail back through life, we will just be assured that it's real. It is, everybody knows it, might as well accept it. I am intrigued by the Orch-OR model because it so specifically relies on a quantum computational basis for information processing. It's really the only thing that makes sense, given the stupifying complexity of our amazing organ of consciousness. I'm even more intrigued by the likelihood that the actual nature of the computational capacity is greater by exponential factors than the simplistic quantum computers they're trying so hard to build.
But even if we were to demonstrate those NCCs objectively 'real', the question of "who" is running the computations, receiving and meta-analyzing the conclusions, and acting on them, remains. That question, far as I can tell, is metaphysics' purview, not science's. That could change someday on some kind of evidence, but it's philosophy now.
We know that mere intent can determine what emerges as 'real' from the intermediate quantum state. Our 'aware present' thinking consciousness can influence the time-independent superpositions, thus the results of the time-independent computations in the MTs. These trigger biochemical cascade and biophysical events in neurons, dendrites and synapses. These in turn affect the whole organism to a greater or lesser degree. It's perfectly okay to have physical equipment, it's how we live in this world.
Comment by Joy — September 7, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Alan says:
ID generally, and FLE as a subset, posits that genetic changes random with respect to fitness don't seem to explain the tremendous variations we see upon which NS can operate.
The recent conference in Europe, which seemed focus on supplementing current explanations, and the book that used to be featured here (can't remember the title – maybe somebody can help), which admits that the source of variations is a weak point of MET.
I'm surprised that you are that unfamiliar with the basic ID position.
FLE says, as far as I know, that it preceded its usefulness via non-Darwinian means. The designer, or some innate feature of nature, or what have you.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 7, 2008 @ 12:17 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Alan Fox:
You may have to ask the first two again, Alan. I can't seem to find them. On this one, the communication between the environment, the organism's sensors and the organism's information processing and bioevent initiation equipment helps to shape adaptations responsive to the selective stress that triggers the process of adaptation.
Again, not all organisms in a population exposed to the same selective stress will respond in the same way, or find the same adaptive solutions. Some won't even try, may get 'selected out' by the stressor (die young). Some will come up with not very effective response, some will come up with better responses, some may come up with something novel (white hair in winter! Cool!) that everybody finds attractive and wants for their own progeny.
The standard wheel of karma differentials related to long-term evolution take things from there, having no preference among adaptations the real-time experiencing individuals are sporting. Those are always in play for the march of life, whether life is changing and adapting or not.
We don't insist that time or length (or breadth or volume) imposes on matter its shapes and interactions with energy or other matter. Spacetime is just the milieu in which what exists (matter and energy) manifests, delimiting its range of possible forms, actions and interactions. The same is true for ecosystems and that broad 'environment' in which life exists. Life's forms, actions and interactions are delimited by its existential milieu – that to which it must adapt dynamically if it is to exist at all.
NDS has always tried to remove the dynamics of the process from life itself and gift it to the milieu as if it were somehow the sunshine and the salinity of the water and the strength of the wind that imposes upon hapless clay (life) its forms and peculiar adaptations. That's quite simply backwards, and grants agency to raw circumstances while removing it from vital life forms striving to survive and reproduce. EAM puts the dynamics back where they belong.
Comment by Joy — September 7, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
OK, the book I couldn't remember is The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 7, 2008 @ 12:34 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Joy:
How is this different from the standard decades-old evolutionary concepts of phenotypic plasticity and reaction norms? (look the terms up on Wiki if necessary)
Comment by Raevmo — September 7, 2008 @ 12:39 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
So, just to be clear, natural selection is not disputed by ID proponents? Just the source of variation.
Mutations happen. HGT happens. The point is , then, that this is insufficient to provide enought variation for selection to produce the diversity of life we see. So ToE claims RM + NS; ID agrees RM+ NS is happening/has happened but is insufficient? So the additional source of variation that ID proposes is?
Sorry about that. I am trying to rectify that now. I am surprised that ID proponents accept RM +NS and their difficulty is only with its sufficiency, but that certainly reduces the area of disagreement.
I am sure I have seen discussion of estimated mutation rates and the amount of time needed for terrestrial organisms. I will see what Google comes up with.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 7, 2008 @ 12:43 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Alan Fox:
I've never met anyone who disputes that individual organisms (any kind) have varying levels of 'success' in staying alive long enough to reproduce, and in producing more offspring than their neighbors. This is a total "Duh." What is disputed is the assignment of design agency to the exterior environment (which creates nothing) rather than to the organism (which *does* create and manifest the adaptive solutions to stress).
The organism's struggle to adapt and survive, and/or improve its chances in the reproduction game. EAM postulates that these creative (as opposed to imposed-and-accidental) adaptations come from self-organization using epigenetic mechanisms for changing developmental details and gene expression suites. If they work out well and are adaptive to conditions that will pertain long-term, they get written-in to the genomic and epigenetic library of available traits to express. The tools for doing the expressing look increasingly to have been front loaded from the beginning.
Comment by Joy — September 7, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Joy:
Could you give a specific example? Does it also apply to unicellular organisms?
How do they get written into the genome?
Comment by Raevmo — September 7, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Alan says:
Correct. And we are talking specifically about ID as generally understood, and not necessarily Biblical literalists, who could be said to be a subset of ID. We're talking Behe and Dembski and their like. Eeven then, I'm not gonna guarantee 100% acceptance of any concept.
But let's take a little detour, shall we. Remember the requests to define intelligence and design, and folks talking about those concepts and others that are difficult to measure?
NS falls in that same category, IMO. I don't demand folks define it for me, because I think I understand generally what is meant by the term. But if that's the game others want to play, understand that the tables can be turned. Now, NS can be defined tautologically in terms of survival, and reproduction and Allele frequencies. We can certainly measure the latter, but they lack an important component of the former. That there is some objective fitness that is rewarded or unfitness that is penalized. But we can't measure fitnesses directly. We can create a story about a characteristic that makes sense, and measure the characteristic in specific circumstances, and weave a tale, but we don't have an objective all encompassign defintion of NS or fitness, except in the tautological sense.
Now I don't see that as a problem, unless the name of the game is to demand those objective definitions abd direct measurement. If that's the game somebody wants to play with me, they ought to have to play by their own rules. Now, I'm not saying you did that Alan, but I've seen it done in these type of discussions. It's just like definitions of science. If somebody is hot on putting forth their own definition to eliminate ID from consideration, they ought to have to live with those demarcation criteria themselves. And it turns out most haven't really thought through said criteria. Not surprising, because many smarter than them have been stumped by the issue.
Something teleological, involving an intelligent agent. Now, there are other possibilities beyond ID that can't be ruled out. It could just be a materialist miracle, but that doesn't make for a good explanation. Could be some kind of self-organization principle in nature, but that begs the question of what is "natural" and where that principle came from, maybe from an intelligent agent. And maybe it is some other kind of natural law or process that we don't yet, if ever, know or understand.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 7, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
RogerRabbit:
Fitnesses can be measured directly. Animal and plant breeders do it routinely to project the effect of their artificial selection on the evolution of the traits they are interested in, according to the breeder equation R=h^2 S. R is the difference in the mean trait value between generations, h^2 is the heritability of a trait, and S the selection differential. The same methodology is applied to wild populations. Does ID have anything comparable?
Comment by Raevmo — September 7, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Raevmo:
I'm not going to pick something like "peacock tails" or "targeted toxins" in either protozoa or metazoa because I don't know of any that I could definitively demonstrate are the result of EAM. Evolution, like life, can be a complex, many-stranded, multi-braided process involving lots of factors. Endogenous and exogenous. EAM speaks to a class of phenotype variation in each generation, not just to accidental point mutations in isolated genetic elements.
EAM does embrace the idea that much of phenotypic variation arises endogenously and is systematic, and considers most of the accidental point mutations caused by environmental mutagens and unrepaired replication errors to be detrimental to the organism. All individuals in all generations carry gene variants and their own peculiar SNPs. Part of the abilities of a sound immune system and an active, creative epigenetic subsystem is to engineer 'work-arounds' that serve to mitigate harm and potential harm to allow the organism's ability to compete in the game of life for as long as possible.
I'm not saying that very rarely some accident or error might not turn out to be useful to the organism in some way. Heck, even harmful accidents with rapidly-cobbled work-arounds could become useful when both the gene accident and the epigenetic work-around construct happen to produce something nifty. I am saying that this isolated and rare type of thing is not the full explanation of how life got from there to here in 3.5 billion years (and everything in between). There is a more active, dynamic real-time system engaged from start to finish in any organism's lifetime to make the best of the conditions of its life and the tools it has to work with.
By all the mechanisms we've thus far identified that serve to alter gene sequences and number, expression-related attachments and RNAs, chromosomal placement and histone coding, somatic-to-germline HGT and probably lots of mechanisms we haven't identified yet.
MET insists that life in all its history and biodiversity is the result of random events and exterior happenstance. EAM claims that life creates designs, has the means and agency ['will'] to use them. This should not be controversial. It's just an approach. Instead of coming from the assumption that NS is sacrosanct as creator/designer, it comes from the acceptance that it's LIFE we're talking about, not hapless blobs of clay. Life comes up with the variations, it *is* that which struggles to survive, it's the *thing* doing the adapting. The weather's just the weather.
Comment by Joy — September 7, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Raevmo says:
So you say, then go on to give me a formula, with nothing in the formula labeled "fitness". We have mean trait value between generations, heritability of a trait, and the selection differential.
Which one is "fitness", and what metric is used to calculate it. Because I think I've already covered that it my post. If fitness equals any of those factors, it loses something important. We can measure characteristics or traits. We can measure outcomes in terms of frequency of traits in populations. and we can come up with formulas to define other concepts. But fitness implies something more to most. But feel free to offer a definition of your own.
Not unless you think there is no difference between NS and intelligent selection. In which case ID is just a subset of MET.
You're kidding, right? You give me a process with intelligent agents heavily influencing the process and therefore the outcome. That is ID.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 7, 2008 @ 4:26 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
RR:
Fair enough. So we have R=h^2 S. S is the selection differential:
S = (1/n) sum x*w/sum w – (1/n) sum x
n is the number of pairs of parents, x is the trait (mean trait value of parents, mid-parent value), and w is fitness: the number of offspring per pair. The sum is taken over all pairs of parents. In other words, S is the difference in mean value before and after selection. Fitness w is the number of offspring contributed to the next generation. That is a commonly used operational definition of fitness: number of offspring contributed to the next generation. Easily measured under controlled conditions, not so easy in the field but it can and has been done, plenty of times.
I mentioned it has been measured in the wild. I hope you're not arguing (as quite a few IDists do) that whatever is measured by an intelligent being (e.g. human scientists) qualifies as ID.
Comment by Raevmo — September 7, 2008 @ 4:56 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Joy,
You use a lot of sciency terms like SNP, but so far you haven't offered any example of EAM in action. Indeed, a lot of what you have said about phenotypic flexibility of organisms is already incorporated into MET (phenotypic plasticity, reaction norms, genetic accomodation). The only thing that we might disagree on is how mutations happen. MET says most mutations are genetic and random wrt function, you claim otherwise but can't come up with a single example. I guess we need to wait for more data.
Comment by Raevmo — September 7, 2008 @ 5:09 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Raevmo says:
Putting aside the difficulties with that (how do we KNOW what trait NS is selecting for?), your question was "Does ID have anything comparable?" when what you gave me was an ID example. As I mentioned in relation to other issues, you apparently didn't give much considered thought before asking that question.
No, I'd have thought it was obvious that the problem is intelligent selection.
Again, this is why I'm on the ID side of the fence. You're clearly a smart enough guy to figure out these points, but you appear not to have, or not to have admitted it. What am I to make of that? At minimum, you are an unreliable witness.
Something else I addressed in the initial post that you appear not to grasp. I have no problem with you defining fitness that way, and it can be directly measured. But, there is no room in that definition for "trait". What we have is that those who are reproductively successful are reproductively successful. A tautology. We've lost the part of fitness that is important to making the concept of MET attractive, but isn't easily measured. We settled for something that was easily measured, but at a cost.
Again, that isn't a game I'm interested in playing. But many Darwinians I encounter do like to play, without seeming to understand that it cuts both ways. Demand strict definitions and measurability at your own peril.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 7, 2008 @ 5:40 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
RR:
Here's how: we measure a bunch of traits and we measure fitness. Traits positively correlated with fitness are selected for.
I gave you a method that was originally devised by breeders and later applied to wild populations. Why do you insist on calling it an ID example?
Perhaps you are not such a great judge of determining whether someone has given considered thought.
You are very quick to judge. I told you how fitness and selection can be measured in the wild, contrary to your original claim. Nevertheless, you insist on calling it intelligent selection. What am I to make of that?
I'm glad you agree now that fitness can be measured. As I said above, the correlation between the trait and fitness, both of which can be measured independently, determines whether and to what extent a trait is under selection. Let's say the trait x is body length, then a positive correlation between x and fitness implies selection for longer bodies.
Therefore this is not true. Fitness and traits can be measured independently. The correlation between the two tells us the direction and strength of selection.
It's fair enough that you insist it cuts both ways. But how does it cut your way?
Comment by Raevmo — September 7, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
September 7th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Raevmo says:
Sorry, but statitical correlation does not equal causation. It does not tell us what NS selected for or against.
What was my initial claim?
I said we could indeed measure reproductive success directly, but now fitness and selection mean nothing more than what successfully reproduces. Sure I judge your inability to report accurately what I said in a prior post. It amazes me that a smart guy like you thinks it will be a successful strategy to deny that which is there in black and white for all to see.
But I guess this is the age of spin. People think they can get away with anything.
The statistical correlation is just that. You infer, not measure, some causative factor.
The point in my first post still stands. Indeed, a perceptive reader understands that I predicted exactly what was needed to retain the "measurable" criteria and that's what you preceeded to do.
So why deny the obvious?
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 7, 2008 @ 7:11 pm
September 8th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Everyone else happy with that?
Comment by Alan Fox — September 8, 2008 @ 6:46 am
September 8th, 2008 at 7:38 am
This would be Behe's version of ID, wouldn't it? ToE's RM + NS with additional "poof!" I don't think Behe denies he believes "an intelligent agent" is God (presumably the RC version). Front-loading differs, in that there is no "poof", but preloaded information instead (still by "an intelligent agent", presumably). And AEM is different again in that "phenome" becomes "genome". But everyone (except fundamentalist Biblical literalists, Oh! and John Davison) is happy with NS as proposed by Darwin, then.
Which means arguments that RM is insufficient do not favour "an intelligent agent" any more than "an unknown cause".
Comment by Alan Fox — September 8, 2008 @ 7:38 am
September 8th, 2008 at 7:45 am
This implies you are a mind-reader of unimagined power, RogerRabbit. Also it is slightly pejorative, with the additional implication that someone who says "I don't understand" is not perceptive, when in fact they are saying "I think your argument is rubbish." but less pejoratively.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 8, 2008 @ 7:45 am
September 8th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Joy , sorry to backtrack (the discussion moves quickly here!), but re your comment:
I agree that there may be more to explaining behaviour than objective physiological processes, but the point I was getting at was that that it is a presupposition of MET that all objective physical events are explainable in terms of other objective physical events.
As a consequence of this MET cannot accept either:
- subjective feelings having adaptive consequences
or
- telic factors being an influence in evolution.
My own position (which admittedly is ambiguous and not something I rigidly hold) is that there is a real possibility that telic factors do play a role in evolution, but that there is so much still to learn about life through conventional fields such as evo devo, molecular biology, embryology and genetics that it would be premature for MET to alter its presuposititions at the present time.
Re the comment somewhere above re examples of EAM, I think the study of adaptive mutation in bacterial populations is a potential fertile area for real time research, the challenge for IDists being to show that this does not always occur through conventional Darwinian means, such as environmental stresses causing a general and undirected increase in mutation rates.
Comment by justin — September 8, 2008 @ 8:00 am
September 8th, 2008 at 8:19 am
It doesn't have to. We define natural selection as the correlation between heritable traits and differential reproductive success. Nor is demonstrating causation always so difficult. For instance, we can show that certain strains of bacteria are more reproductively successful in antibiotic environments, and that this differential reproductive success is due to specific heritable traits.
Comment by Zachriel — September 8, 2008 @ 8:19 am
September 8th, 2008 at 8:43 am
There is nothing magical about assuming that the brain has certain states that are not currently observable. We can infer the specifics of these states from reports of organisms with language capabilities (humans), and then correlate them to various behaviors. We can then infer similar states in closely related organisms.
Comment by Zachriel — September 8, 2008 @ 8:43 am
September 8th, 2008 at 9:42 am
justin:
Actually, if adaptation requires some 'new' gene sequences to alter the aa order and state configurations of protein, increasing the local mutation rates would be a fine method of generating some 'new' gene sequences to work with. There's no reason to conclude (on ideological bias rather than knowledge or evidence) that all gene alterations are random. Particularly not if after-the-fact gene/genome alterations on an organizational and expression level aren't random. Mutations and mutation rates are not randomly or evenly distributed over the genome. That alone constrains the assertions of randomness to less that the 'central dogma' demands.
"Random" is not a particularly useful concept. It cannot be conclusively established that any genuinely adaptive gene changes pertinent to evolution are in fact randomly caused or randomly ordered. Cause can simply be ignored if the determinatory emphasis is on exterior conditions – NS. So standard NDS ignores cause on the organic end, instead simply asserting the inability to predict any given gene/genome and/or systematic, organizational and expression changes because they appear in a statistically random distribution in the population.
Statistical randomness is not causal randomness. Never has been, never will be. Meanwhile, MET is altering its presuppositions daily in the face of vast amounts of good work and incoming evidence. We have much, much better tools than Charlie Darwin and Gregor Mendel had. We know more, we're learning a lot more than that, and uber-theoretics mostly doesn't enter into the equations at all. The usual ideological corruption gets injected after the fact by people trying to impose their subjective interpretations on everybody's mind as if they were objective facts.
But don't worry. Biology will continue to do the job it's chartered to do, or it will find itself without enough money to fund its 'Culture War'. The public dole could instead go toward more potentially useful researches that come free of a priori metaphysical corruptions. There was never any need for the ideological baggage in the first place, there's no reason to tolerate it at this late date.
Comment by Joy — September 8, 2008 @ 9:42 am
September 8th, 2008 at 10:06 am
RR:
A trait doesn't have to *cause* a change in fitness to be selected. Correlation is sufficient. The reason is that different traits are correlated. If one trait (the trait under direct selection) causes variation in fitness, then the correlated traits will also be under selection (indirect selection).
If you want to know whether a trait causes variation in fitness you can experimentally manipulate the trait, keeping the others constant, and then measuring how that affects reproductive success.
This is the claim I disputed:
Which is not true.
You also said this:
Now you claim this means:
So what did "the latter" refer to in your original statement?
Those people seem to include yourself.
Comment by Raevmo — September 8, 2008 @ 10:06 am
September 8th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Joy:
That would be a fine method, but does it actually happen like this? An even finer method would be to produce the most adaptive mutation directly, but there's no evidence for that either, is there?
There's that embarrassing strawman again. Here's what Jerry Coyne said about that:
Comment by Raevmo — September 8, 2008 @ 10:26 am
September 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Raevmo, it is clear that you don't consider EAM to be worth considering. No one is surprised by that, including me. But since this thread is about EAM and not about your favorite distractions, I think you're done here. Thanks for your input.
Comment by Joy — September 8, 2008 @ 11:57 am
September 8th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Joy:
I do find it worth considering, just lacking in evidence. What's funny is that IMO it is a form of hyperadaptationism which goes a lot further than the "adaptationist program" that was criticized so severely by Gould, Lewontin et al.
I know, when someone disagrees with you, they are "distracting", never mind their entirely on topic comments.
Comment by Raevmo — September 8, 2008 @ 1:22 pm
September 8th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Zachriel said:
I am not talking about states that are currently unobservable, I am referring to states that are unobservable in principle – My private feelings of pain, anger, happines or whatver can never be objectively observed by another (though, of course, all the physiological processes which accompany these states are in principle observable).
For the purposes of MET, it would make no difference if we were all insentient robots.
So I think if the scope of MET is to be widened to include the adaptive consequences of subjective feelings, there needs to be a good reason why it should not also be widened to include possible telic factors.
It is inconsistent to allow one and not the other.
Comment by justin — September 8, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
September 8th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
justin:
It's not like there is some committee that decides on what belongs to MET or not. You want to investigate something, you do it and report it to some journal. If the editors and referees don't like it, too bad. You can always start your own journal. I'm not sure what you mean by telic factors, but organisms are telic agents and this is taken for granted.
Comment by Raevmo — September 8, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Everyone (else) is a zombie. So?
As a scientific matter, we're only considering that organisms have internized mental states (consciousness). We may call these states "pain" and "pleasure" or "memory", but we define them for scientific purposes in terms of their physiological and behaviorial characteristics. And science is more than capable of studying intention.
Though organisms have reflex to pain without consciousness, awareness of pain is adaptive because that's how the the consciousness learns to associate the pain with particular actions (such as touching the stove).
Comment by Zachriel — September 9, 2008 @ 6:07 am
September 9th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Zachriel and Raevmo
From the way I am reading your comments, Zachriel agrees that MET must regard people as robots or zombies, but Raevmo does not. Correct?
Let me give an argument as an example of the ‘dangers’ to MET if it does not regard people as robots:
1. Feelings are correlated with reproductive fitness (eg sex and eating feel good, hunger and injury feel bad).
2. From 1, it is reasonable to infer that feelings play a role in evolution through influencing behaviour. It follows from this that subjective, intentional states affect physical processes.
3. The physical thing we know most closely (our own selves) has subjective, intentional states.
4. From 3, it is reasonable to infer that other physical things, including the universe itself, have subjective, intentional states (obviously a helluva lot more argumentation would be needed to justify this premise, but I’ll keep it brief for the sake of the example).
5. From 4 and 2, it is reasonable to infer that the subjective, intentional states of the universe affect physical processes, possibly including mutations in DNA.
6. From 5, it is reasonable to infer that ID may be a factor in evolution.
Comment by justin — September 9, 2008 @ 6:56 am
September 9th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Raevmo to justin:
This is actually a pertinent distinction. Though if you can't keep yourself civil I've no problem pushing the "ban from thread" button. You can do it if you try.
What is the nature of this agency? What causes it, and how does it work? How do you define "telic?" Does it reduce down to tissues and organs and cellular operations? Does it magically poof into existence at some level of complexity during progressive evolution?
I believe you're the first critic I've seen admit that "organisms are telic agents" out loud, sans qualification about "illusions" and such dismissals of what is self-evident. If you know that already, I don't see what your problem is with EAM. EAM just takes this fact and runs with it in both directions – reduction and extrapolation.
EAM says nothing about God/gods, space aliens, cosmic poofs or magic mudholes. It doesn't address OOL at all, any more than NDS/MET do. It simply views the vital processes of life on planet earth as if they represented feedback-intensive stimulus-response in action, the telic goal of which is survival and reproduction. It grants the organism some control over its own endogenous processes, and grants its subjective desire to live and reproduce with some degree of causal efficacy in the self-organizing of internal mechanisms generated as response to selective stress.
Thus EAM is not "surprised" when evidence supporting front-loading, self-organization and creative expression suiting is reported. It does not insist that organisms are zombies, so it's not forced to 'explain away' evidence of self-awareness and self-organization. EAM rescues the origin end of the simplistic NDS pablum (RM-NS) from its arbitrary qualifier by allowing for life to have a role in its own telic struggles.
I've never figured out why the radical anti-religious POV feels the need to debase itself – to render both the mind and the body to which it's attached entirely stupid and superfluous – in order to justify its own nihilism. And I've never figured out how mindless, random, jiggling bags of random goo got the idea that their self-image is so self-evidently, big-t 'True' that other mindless, random, jiggling bags of goo would CARE what they have to say. About anything!
Makes no sense to me.
Comment by Joy — September 9, 2008 @ 9:57 am
September 9th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Yes?
Comment by Alan Fox — September 9, 2008 @ 11:04 am
September 9th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Hi all,
This is comment 100 (unless someone slipped in before me).
I was planning on injecting my spin on things here, but the Joy/Raevmo/Justin interaction is getting more interesting.
So I will hold off a little longer.
This thread has to be a record-breaker for staying on topic.
Way to go. Good interaction. We should have more threads like this one.
Comment by Thought Provoker — September 9, 2008 @ 11:56 am
September 9th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Though science can't read minds, examples of intention that can be scientifically investigated would be a blueprint that precedes and predicts the structure of a building, an animal that stalks its prey, a criminal conspiracy.
You keep acting as if science can't consider that mental states exist.
Some vague telic-woo can't be scientifically investigated, but I'm quite sure that biologists agree that a cat intentionally chases the mouse and that the mouse intends to get away.
Comment by Zachriel — September 9, 2008 @ 11:58 am
September 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Raevmo says:
ROFL! I'll withhold my comments and just let you think about this for a minute or two….
Comment by chunkdz — September 9, 2008 @ 1:19 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Joy:
I have no problem regarding organisms as having plans and behaving goal-oriented, even single-celled organisms. My problem with EAM is that I haven't seen any compelling evidence that organisms adaptively modify their own DNA. To borrow from Coyne, I don't think bears in a snowy environment are more likely to have mutations for white fur than the same bears in a non-snowy environment. Maybe adaptive mutagenesis happens to some extent, but it doesn't appear to be common at all.
That sounds fine to me.
Now I have to disagree. There is no evidence, at all, none, for front-loading. Self-organization, fine, I think it is extremely important. Creative expression suiting, OK, no problem with that (as long as it is this vague). Simplistic NDS pablum is just your strawman, it means nothing.
I've never figured out why you insist on such ridiculous caricatures.
Comment by Raevmo — September 9, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Raevmo:
So… turning genes and expression suites on and off is the job of… what? Sunshine? Wind? Snow? Attaching methyl proteins to DNA to accomplish this is the job of… what? Angels? Stray atoms of magnesium? The amount of CO^2 in the air?
Seems awfully silly to me to claim that endogenous processes don't produce endogenous effects. But I guess if you're really, truly scared of the idea of consciousness it must make some kind of sense.
NOTE: In the interests of keeping to the topic (and keeping the thread short enough to follow), your attempted resurrection of his "Poof-Joy" thought experiment has been relegated to the hole. The arguments have been explored in previous threads, the imaginary case study has been rejected as silly and without pertinence to any consideration of mind's causal role in life and evolution.
Comment by Joy — September 9, 2008 @ 3:17 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Alan says:
Not sure where you get the "poof". Could you give me a citation of Behe talking about his "poof"?
Ah, we're gonna play that game too. I think Ken Miller also believes the RC God is behind this all.
I'm confused, cause now you are saying that FLE, completely compatible with Behe's ID, doesn't need a "poof". I'm beginning to think that the "poof" may not be Behe's addition, but yours.
Correct, the mere hypothesising that RM is unsufficient favors neither ID nor UC, but does disfavor MET. There are other conciderations that prompt some IDers to prefer that over UC.
No, it just implies that I've considered the issue before, and put some thought into it. Something that seems to be lacking on your side of the table. Indeed, the proof is Raevmo's tack, which I laid on in my earlier post. Just between you and me, I didn't have to be a genius to figure that out.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 9, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Zachriel Says:
I'm not that is by any means accepted, since most of our data is about reproductive success. But, then you go on to say:
No, we can infer that but we can't measure that.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 9, 2008 @ 6:13 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Zach:
RR:
At this point it would be helpful if you explained your take on the difference between inference and measurement. If I use scales to estimate my weight, do I measure my body mass of do I merely infer it? I could argue either way. How would you argue?
Comment by Raevmo — September 9, 2008 @ 6:26 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Raevmo says:
But you've taken it out of context. Let's look at it again:
The "latter" refers to "survival, and reproduction and Allele frequencies". We can measure those , but then NS and fitness are replaced by reproductive success etc. Something is lost. The "former", the common understanding of fitness and NS, lose something in the re-definition, and what we end up with is that the reproductively successful are reproductively successful.
The point was never that you can't redefine "fitness" in terms of something else measurable, but only that if you do, "they lack an important component of the former [terms].
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 9, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Raevmo,
I'm not sure I quite grasp your example. Let me come up with my own, and see if it clarifies.
I weigh myself on a scale on 08-01-08. I weigh 150 lbs. During August, I eat 2 out of 3 meals at McDonalds, something out of he normal for me. On 09-01-08, I weigh on the scale 155 lbs.
I measure that I weigh 5 lbs more. I infer that it is due to eating at McDonalds,
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 9, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
September 9th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
We can measure it. We take two different strains of bacteria and expose them to different antibiotic environments. We can do this repeatedly, measuring their relative reproductive success. We then say, in accord with everyday as well as scientific usage, that the antibiotic resistant strain is more *fit* in the antibiotic environment.
Knowing that the strains differ in *fitness*, we might then examine the strains to determine not only the genetic, but the phenotypic differences. We can study the exact mechanism to explain why they have differential reproductive success.
Comment by Zachriel — September 9, 2008 @ 10:43 pm
September 10th, 2008 at 7:36 am
Did he use it himself? I thought someone asked him something with the word "poof" included in an interview somewhere and he did not object; The meme has certainly taken off, since. Try googling Behe and poof.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 10, 2008 @ 7:36 am
September 10th, 2008 at 7:46 am
I guess I should have included "apart from the big poof at the beginning".
Comment by Alan Fox — September 10, 2008 @ 7:46 am
September 10th, 2008 at 7:52 am
UC? Well, of course, if there is insufficient RM then ToE is compromised. Scientists would then need to search for additional sources of variability. Presumably, ID adherents could start looking for those additional sources now, as they already believe they exist.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 10, 2008 @ 7:52 am
September 10th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Zachriel said:
I don’t think that. But I do think that the hard sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology don’t consider that subjective mental states (as opposed to information processing in the brain) are causally efficacious. I don’t think there is anything contentious about that being the way in which these sciences operate.
I would be interested in your thoughts ( and Raevmo’s too, if he was allowed back in) on the following argument, which I think poses a dilemma for MET. It’s not something I thought up, but got from Graham Cairns-Smith book, The Evolving Mind:
1. Subjective states (meaning first person, subjective experiences, not internal information processing in the brain) do not influence physical processes.
2. Subjective states seem to be adaptive, in that they seem to lead to behaviours that have survival value (such as not putting one’s hand on the stove).
3. It is inconceivable that natural selection could produce something which seems to be adaptive but which actually has no adaptive consequences.
4 Therefore, either 1 is false and subjective states do influence physical processes, or subjective states are not the product of natural selection.
Comment by justin — September 10, 2008 @ 7:54 am
September 10th, 2008 at 7:57 am
I was wondering how you manage to know what perceptive readers understand. How does considering issues help you to read other peoples' minds?
Comment by Alan Fox — September 10, 2008 @ 7:57 am
September 10th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Well, that was a bit of luck, then.
(Only kidding)
Comment by Alan Fox — September 10, 2008 @ 8:00 am
September 10th, 2008 at 9:50 am
You're making the tacit assumption that "subjective mental states" are distinct from "information processing in the brain".
A cat sees a mouse. The cat chases the mouse. A biologist says she becomes aware of the mouse, and can correlate this awareness with behavior. We call this awareness a "subjective mental state".
awareness, having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge.
subjective, characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind.
As the argument depends on making a valid distinction, the argument ends there.
—
A philosopher observes the cat and notes that she could just be a zombie. The biologist asks, Zen-like, "And you?" The philosopher's head spews sparks and smoke. The biologist, a Vulcan, glances askew at the broken philoso-matic and returns undisturbed to his study of mice and meows.
Comment by Zachriel — September 10, 2008 @ 9:50 am
September 10th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Alan says:
I did. 3000 hits approx. Alan liar produces over 2 million. What conclusion should I therefore draw?
Sorry, I'm not one that buys into google hits as evidence of much other than google hits.
As far as the lack of objection to the use of a term in an interview, I draw no conclusion from that. There is a saying about arguing with an idiot. And choosing one's battles. But I understand you may have lower standards when convenient.
If you were perceptive, you would understand.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 10, 2008 @ 5:04 pm
September 10th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Zachriel
Thanks for the response. Re:
I think a patently obvious distinction can be made between information processing in the brain and the feeling you get if you put your hand on the stove ("ouch!").
From a physiological point of view, it seems to me that the information processing in the brain would be no different if the ouch feeling is subtracted. But on the other hand, it seems inconceivable that natural selection could produce the ouch feelings if it doesn't do anything.
However, I acccept that there are many people who don't recognise there is a distinction between subjective experiences and brain states, and that this point can be argued interminably without resolution.
So I'll leave it there for the time being
(sparks…smoke.. ..clunk)
Comment by justin — September 10, 2008 @ 6:04 pm
September 10th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I already mentioned unconscious reflex, and that is quite different from conscious pain. The consciousness is a mirror of perceptive reality that allows the mind to model the universe in order to extrapolate from experience. Awareness of pain is how the consciousness learns avoidance. That you attach *meaningfulness* to a sensation is also a sensation.
Because those without the awareness of pain don't learn to avoid it, even if their reflexes are adequate. They can't model the problem.
That you don't think it can be resolved implies that your distinction is strictly metaphysical. The parsimonious explanation is that other people are conscious beings.
Comment by Zachriel — September 10, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
September 11th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Just recapping on answers to my queries.
Natural selection is not an issue for ID proponents. Everyone seems OK with this. So we are all Darwinists.
What is the source of variation in front loading? Don't seem to have an answer here. I am assuming information is introduced from the imaginary plane to the real plane. (in which case there should be an observable discontinuity, no?)
And EAM. Information is back-programmed into the germ-line DNA in some undetectable manner, if I have made sense of Joy's posts. Not at all taken with this idea, personally. Does anyone else, apart from Joy, Bertha Jane or Mike Turner find the concept appealing?
Comment by Alan Fox — September 11, 2008 @ 11:49 am
September 12th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Alan says:
I guess were into definitions again. I wouldn't define myself as a Darwinist, because I don't think NS is sufficient for Darwin's theory. From Darwin himself:
His theory depends on gradual changes, but NS doesn't. Indeed, not too many folks were surprised by the concept of NS even in Darwin's time. Just that NS along with small variation and an inhertince mechanism were sufficient to explain life around us.
And certainly most would be "OK" with the minimal definition of NS offered above, "those that survive to reproduce", because there isn't much to object to.
Comment by RogerRabbitt — September 12, 2008 @ 5:24 am
September 24th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Hi Alan,
I find the concept appealing. If you are interested in "who done it" and you are investigating a crime it is logical to start looking for clues at the crime scene. If you are investigating a design and are interested in "who done it" it is logical to start looking for clues at the "design scene" — thus "endogenously." At this point however ID is, for the most part not looking into "who done it" so much as trying to determine whether (or not) a design inference is warranted for certain biological structures. I find EAM significantly more appealing that Darwin's theory of selectively filtered
dustrandomness bunnies.Comment by William Brookfield — September 24, 2008 @ 5:24 pm
September 25th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Er that should be..
I sometimes can't seem to read my own typos.
Comment by William Brookfield — September 25, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
September 25th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
LOL! It works either way, William. §;o)
Comment by Joy — September 25, 2008 @ 6:56 pm