John Wise and ID
by MikeGeneI previously quoted the first two paragraphs from John Wise's opinion piece, "Intelligent Design is not science: why this matters." He makes an excellent point concerning the limitations of science. He then proceeds as follows:
This actually matters and is important. If we call ID science, we will have to redefine science to include supernatural causes and effects.
Uh oh. Wise immediately goes off track here.
Keep in mind that I agree ID is not science and have said so for years, thus I am not trying to critique Wise in order to defend some "ID is science" position. His problem is that he simply doesn't understand the basic logic of ID. ID is not about detecting supernatural causes and effects. ID is an attempt to detect the fingerprints of intelligent causes and effects. Whether or not the intelligent cause is a supernatural or natural cause is something that can be considered apart from the investigation, as such qualifiers are not necessary to run the investigation nor are they outputs of the investigation.
Wise continues:
The usefulness of science stems from the predictable action of the laws of nature and the strict rules regarding testable hypotheses. If you modify the definition of science to include unpredictable supernatural forces, magic and miracles, the utility of science will be lost because we won't be able to form reasonable predictions from what we observe in the natural world.
ID does not propose unpredictable supernatural forces, magic and miracles. Though there is a problem in that an intelligent agent does not act as a law or regularity.
Wise adds:
For science to progress and maintain its usefulness, it needs to be limited to the laws of nature.
So science limits itself to certain types of causes. Thus, it is not surprising that science focuses only on ways in which the laws of geochemistry might have spawned cells and biochemistry, while not exploring the possibility of life's design. This means that science itself cannot resolve this point of disagreement, since it assumes a resolution to begin with. This is not necessarily bad as it may indeed be the price to pay for science to progress and maintain its usefulness. Luckily, science does not own the patent on inquiry and investigation.
Wise then spends the rest of his essay telling The Dover Story. It's actually quite well-written and provides a nice example of this particular Frame. The main problem is that it is not very thought-provoking. It would have been more interesting if Wise sought to balance his analysis with updates from current events. For example, no where does he mention the emerging New Atheist movement, even though it makes many of the very same basic arguments of the declining ID Movement. Consider that the most popular scientist in the world teaches that "the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis." This very argument clearly contradicts what Wise is saying, as it means supernatural causes can be part of science.
Even though the logic of ID does not entail supernatural causes in science, Wise attacks ID for this very thing (he is able to do this because many people in the ID movement have given him this out). Yet when the New Atheists argue that science can in principle incorporate supernatural causes, Wise ignores it. So like I said, his analysis does not provoke thought.
May 5th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
MikeGene, you are exactly on target regarding the fact that ID neither requires nor excludes a determination on the natural vs. supernatural question. So, unfortunately, Wise joins the company of those who fail to grasp the nature of the inference, and he rejects what he has not yet understood.
But I think there is an additional problem. Suppose we grant for the sake of discussion that science can only deal with those things which have the consistent predictability of mindless, unguided natural processes. Suppose (for the moment) that science cannot cope with the "unpredictability" of intelligent agents (ignoring that science does manage in other contexts).
That still would not warrant making the axiomatic assumption that unguided natural processes can explain all of nature. You might legitimately say (under these assumptions), "When we run into intelligent agency, science has to stop." But that would not justify saying "Therefore natural processes can manage."
It is the error of the key search. One night a policeman finds a man crawling around on the ground under a lamppost. The man explains he is looking for his keys, so the policeman helps him search. After much fruitless effort, the policeman asks "Are you sure this is where you dropped your keys?" The man responds, "Well, no. Actually I dropped them way over there in the dark. But the light is so much better over here."
No amount of difficulty dealing with awkward intelligent agency would justify the unquestionable assumption that natural processes can therefore do it all.
To retain its integrity and its claim to objective truth seeking, science necessarily needs to be able to distinguish between cases where natural processes are a good explanation and cases where they are not and intelligent agency is a better explanation.
Comment by eric — May 5, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Hi eric,
Whether or not science is "objective truth seeking" may depend on the topic. Wise's error is deeply entrenched, as many have been culturally conditioned to equate ID with the supernatural. This cultural conditioning is simply an observation and it is something that is re-affirmed daily on blogs that discuss ID. The scientific question to then ponder the implications of such conditioning. So yes, the key story seems to be rather on-target.
Comment by MikeGene — May 5, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Eric:
You are correct that an "axiomatic assumption that unguided natural processes can explain all of nature" is unwarranted. However, it is still true, it seems to me, that science must study nature as if all observations are explicable by unguided natural processes.
This leaves God out of the lab, if you will, but not out of the picture"”for a believing scientist always sees God in the advancements made by science following this prescription. God's creation is more awesome and more obvious, not less, (to believers) in light of the materialist advancement in the understanding of gravity that took us from epicycles to general relativity.
Mike,
I disagree, I think. While I can accept the point that ID does not identify the designer (even though it really pisses me off) I don't see any meaningful distinction between the supernatural and a super-though-natural designer. If the flagellum was designed, it will resist all attempts to explain it naturally. Regardless of whether it came from God or someone god-like, it will still appear to have come on the scene "out of nowhere". So though perhaps not technically supernatural, what would be the difference?
Now of course if someone could invent a mathematics that could prove something was designed that would change everything. But there's no chance of that happening in the near future, as far as I can tell. (Surely if someone had invented such a mathematics they would spend night and day applying it, barely stopping to eat, since it would change the world.)
Comment by David Heddle — May 5, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Hi David,
You write:
I've read your stuff on this and respect your views. Your interest in ID seems largely a function of cosmology and the origin of the Universe. From this perspective, yes, I think it is really hard to maintain the position that the designer is not something apart from the Universe, and thus God. But my focus is simply on the origin of life and how it might influence evolution. Thus, it only has to be something apart from the Earth. From this perspective, directed panspermy is an entirely reasonable and plausible option.
That's kind of my point. Say we score the flagellum as designed. Is there something about the flagellum that would indicate the intelligent cause is supernatural or natural? Without such a metric, we are simply left with "intelligent cause." And as far as I can see, no one on either side of the aisle has come up with such a metric.
As for explaining things naturally, it depends on the rigor of the explanation. Ken Miller, for example, has taken the mousetrap, something known to be designed, and offered a possible evolutionary explanation for it. If the explanation is simply to hypothesize ways something could have evolved, and support the hypothesis with circumstantial evidence and promissory notes, then I think you can indeed "explain" design through a natural-cause prism. In fact, that's what the OOL may all be about.
Comment by MikeGene — May 5, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
David, that comes across clearly in your writings. I do not understand why you are pissed off. It is not as if IDists deny their belief in God or refuse to identify who they think God is. Mike eloquently stated the case:
Comment by Bradford — May 5, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Bradford,
But that's the point I'm trying to make. Science must proceed expecting no inexplicable discontinuities. We must look at every mystery as if we'll succeed in finding a "materialistic" explanation, otherwise science is a fool's errand. Supernatural or super-natural designer– it makes no difference, I agree–we should ignore either possibility when doing science. Saying the designer might be an alien does not make ID "more scientific." To look at Wise's argument charitably, he simply grouped the two together.
Everything changes, of course, if ID can be put on firm scientific footing. It has not. And until such time it should not be invoked to explain a scientific mystery–it's tantamount to throwing in the towel.
That is why the cosmological argument is so much stronger than the biological argument. The cosmological argument is based on what we know. The biological argument is based on what we don't know–but for which nobody has demonstrated a naturalistic explanation is impossible. No mathematics has demonstrated that a testable naturalistic explanation for any biological structure is now and forever impossible.
Comment by David Heddle — May 5, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
To make sure I am clear, I have never opposed the hypothesis that a natural effect has an unguided natural cause. I would say that it is reasonable to suggest that science should attempt this hypothesis. In fact, you cannot legitimately make an ID inference without considering whether unguided natural causes appear sufficient.
The key difference between a hypothesis and an axiom is that a hypothesis will need to stand on evidence or it will fall. An axiom gets a free pass. It is taken as true and unquestionable, regardless of what the evidence might say.
As an illustration (not a proof), consider the loose analogy of what would happen to science if it were required axiomatically that it explain all earth bound natural effects with earth bound natural causes. Consider explaining tides.
Within this framework, the plain observation that tides correspond with the moon is inadmissable as being "not scientific" under these assumptions. Consequently, science would become obligated to an endless series of failed explanations that try to impute to the wind or water properties or ocean floor movements some ability to explain tides.
I would suggest that is exactly what is happening to origin of life research, given that the universally consistent observation that all language comes from intelligence is considered "non-scientific". Each OOL scenario rides to prominence over the fallen corpse of it's predecessor, and we are encouraged that all these difficulties are just "gaps" in our knowledge of how molecules can move on their own, even to create language. (The fact that we have no observations to support this belief is irrelevant.) The message to us: "Keep the (axiomatic) faith, brethren."
Comment by eric — May 5, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
David:
For all I know, you may be right. But it makes me wonder, if the cosmological argument is so demonstrable, why are there so many doubters? Are they just being stubborn?
David:
True. But so far non-intelligent causes for the OOL and Behe's IC systems seem very improbable. I think that justifies ID hypotheses. The question then becomes, can the ID hypotheses lead to insights about biology that we may otherwise have missed, or not discovered until much later? Perhaps they will. Perhaps they won't. But ruling them out ahead of time is something of a science stopper. Don't you agree?
Comment by Bilbo — May 5, 2007 @ 4:33 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Bilbo,
It's not demonstrable, otherwise it'd be science. Here is the difference:
Cosmological Argument: We understand a great deal about how stars work, and by golly it is a veritable house of cards.
Biological Argument: There presently is no credible/testable pathway showing how [pick your favorite example component that is allegedly irreducibly complex] might have evolved.
Neither is science, but one is based on detailed knowledge, the other based on, well, a gap.
Bring the ID hypothesis in, by all means, as long you describe how to test it.
Or by all means use it to foster insight that might otherwise be missed, but that insight still must lead to something that is testable by standard science. If you do that, then ID critics will have to "take it" when you describe how your insights were motivated by design. But the insights are not science"”what they lead to is science. At some level nobody cares where the insights come from–just where they lead.
Or bring it in without a means to test it, but don't call it science.
Comment by David Heddle — May 5, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Hi David,
No where on the ARN forum (with over 5000 postings), no where on the Brainstorms forum (with close to 1000 postings), no where on my web page (with over 60 essays), no where on my blog(s) (with over 1000 postings), and no where in my book, do I make this biological argument for ID.
If all I had was a gap argument, I would not have wasted so much time on this issue.
Comment by MikeGene — May 5, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Hi David,
For what it is worth, I agree that the Cosmological ID Argument is much stronger, scientifically. That is why I immediately bypassed the biological only option when developing my own ID proposal. It just makes no sense to me to limit design detection only to biological components. At least not scientifically. I can understand why leaders of the ID Movement would want to do it, but I don't understand it from an ID science point of view unconcerned with legal challenges and/or gaining popular acceptance.
I think better arguments can be made that the moon was designed than any biological aspect. And if you want to talk about a "just so" story, consider light. Maxwell's equations explain is how electromagnetic propagation is possible it explains nothing about why light actually occurs.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 5, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Mike,
True, but I thought the irreducible complexity idea still serves as the paradigm for biological ID. Am I wrong about that?
Comment by David Heddle — May 5, 2007 @ 8:23 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
David Heddle writes:
You're right in pointing out the difference between an explanation that is supported by scientific evidence and an explanation that is not. The scientific mystery that best affords opportunities for ID, in my view, is the matter of life's origins. I would note that there is no explanation for the origin of life that is strongly supported by scientific data. Anti-IDists are not about to throw in the towel and IDists should not either. However IDists should be looking for the type of data that is consistent with ID and I believe there already exists this type of evidence.
Existing theoretical frameworks, invoked to explain the origin and diversification of life, center around self-replicating systems. Janos von Neumann's ideas about essential properties for self-replicators provide some guidelines as to minimal requirements for initial life forms. Studies like this one and this one too provide more detailed specifics as to the type of functions and correlating genes needed for life.
The encoding nature of nucleic acids and the mechanisms by which genes are expressed and proteins synthesized has been documented. There is a prima facie case linking the properties of the related systems to a process guided by intelligence and purpose. The question is how to nail this down.
I've long been focused on the importance of genomic information to ID but it did not occur to me until relatively recently that functions ensuring the integrity of genomes might offer opportunities by which to distinguish a process that generates nucleic acids, in the absence of intelligent input, from an intelligent source. The focus would be natural processes namely, those inducing corruption of nucleic acids and their functional sequences. The indicator would a directional flow. Any process that generates life must enable a steady increase in genomic information. Since we know that natural forces inducing decay were present on prebiotic earth this means increments must outpace decay. Whether they would is a matter to be settled experimentally. It would occur at functional boundaries. There is reason to anticipate the outcome with optimism from an ID point of view. Corrupting forces are many and varied. So too is the variation of responses needed to neutralize them.
If a mathematically based demonstration is forthcoming it is likely to be statistically grounded in my view. I believe you err in concluding that our approach is gap based. It is not gaps in our knowledge that indicate current approaches are based on sinking sand. Rather it is our knowledge of the nature of biochemicals composing replicating biological entities and their dependence on functional sequences operating in accordance with a pre-established encoding convention. That, coupled with the knowledge that an intricate network of error detection and repair mechanisms ensure the perpetuation of life, provides a basis for an alternative paradigm.
Comment by Bradford — May 5, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Hi David,
You write:
For most IDers, probably not. I was simply pointing out my own views. For me, IC is simply a useful tool for focusing.
Comment by MikeGene — May 5, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
David:
Not quite sure I followed you. Are you saying the Cosmological Argument is not demonstrable? And the "veritable house of cards" means what, exactly? And if we understand a great deal about how biochemistry works, couldn't we apply the "veritable house of cards" argument, whatever that is?
Comment by Bilbo — May 6, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Hi Bilbo,
You wrote…
While I am sure you would rather hear from the other Dave (my name is Dave too), let me try to offer my insight.
I think Dave and I share a common view of cosmology in that it is very interconnected with most of the connections being very tenuous and "convenient". In a "house of cards", if you disturb any one card that whole structure collapses. I agree this view is more apt for cosmology than for biology. Finding a new species of frog that can't be immediately explained wouldn't be a big deal. Finding a planet that with an unexplainable orbit would be.
The existance cosmological things from light to black holes is one big "just so" story with practically no foundation for any of it.
I expect Dave will correct me if I have misstated his position.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 6, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Comment by stunney — May 6, 2007 @ 4:51 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
John Wise worries that, "If you modify the definition of science to include unpredictable supernatural forces….Terrible Things Will Happen; er, I mean the utility of science will be lost because we won't be able to form reasonable predictions from what we observe in the natural world".
Actually, I'm being facetious there. I agree that would genuinely be, if not quite a terrible consequence of re-defining science that way, then at least a rather bad one.
However, if we suppose for one brief, mad moment that atheism is true, then I'm not at all sure why science couldn't in principle accomodate intelligent causes. After all, do not a great many atheists assert that human beings are:
a) intelligent
and
b) causes
Well of course they do!
And do not a great many atheists also assert that it is quite probable that there are other intelligent and causally efficacious species of life elsewhere in the universe, and quite possibly within our own sweet galaxy? Yeah, they do assert that (Fermi's Paradox notwithstanding).
So isn't it just obvious that ID can be a bona fide scientific enterprise?
I suppose the beef is that it isn't yet. But it's not that long ago there really wasn't any good science of quarks and Higgs bosons, for pete's sake. Or, imagine if the scientific community today was as open to the possibility of developing a science of intelligent causes of design as it is to string theory.
I have to ask, why isn't it? Is it because intelligent causes of design (which we KNOW exist—such causes include at least us for crying out loud), don't lend themselves as easily as, say, water to a reductionistic and materialist analysis? Not that I'm sugesting that any ultra-rational folks like the 'brights' among us would ever allow such nasty things as philosophical biases and prejudices to cloud the pristinely pellucid rationality of their thinking.:roll:
And what's amusingly (though also annoyingly) ironic about all this is the implicit anti-Copernican spirit that seems to waft over much of the scientific establishment at convenient moments: the spirit that implies that designing causes at least as intelligent as humans are of necessity extraordinarily rare and special things that science can't reasonably or even possibly be expected to find evidence for.
My next point is: Wise talks of 'unpredictable supernatural forces'. But what about predictable supernatural forces?
Every single theistic philosopher and theologian I have read in the past 30 years (and I've read a lot, including all the best known ones) would categorically deny that the God they believe in can be properly, helpfully, meaningfully or accurately characterized as an unpredictable force. Every single one.
The God they all believe in and write about is supremely and perfectly and hence predictably good, rational, wise, providential, and loving. It's only imperfect beings that may act in irrationally unpredictable ways. Thus they would all strongly deny that we cannot rationally (I'm not saying infallibly) predict how God, being perfectly rational, will act; because there is some commonality between God's perfect or unlimited rationality and our imperfect or limited rationality. Analogously, scientists can make rational predictions without having a perfect understanding of the physical world.
Anyway, all theists I know of would agree that we can rationally derive from their hypothesis these predictions, among many, many others:
1. God will not ask that everyone in China move to the Bahamas by the end of the year on pain of God destroying Mars.
2. God will not suspend the operation of gravity on one random day per month starting in 2009.
3. God will always disapprove of gang-rape.
4. God will act to cause some people to experience the divine presence in moments of great natural and moral beauty.
5. God will ensure that the way the natural world is will continue to make mathematics an indispensable mental tool for the general progress of science.
Can theists predict everything God might do? No. Do theists claim to be perfect predictors? No. But so what? Would Wise say that there can be no science of human behavior because we can't perfectly predict human behavior?
Though my general argument for theism as an abductive hypothesis with superior predictive power compared to naturalism is logically independent of any specific religion or specific religious text, I note in passing that while the Bible is not a scientific or philosophical series of texts, it would be a perverse way of interpreting those texts as a whole not to see that plausibly a central and underlying theme of Biblical writing is that of God's faithfulness to and wise love for the human race, despite human wrongoing. So we know that an idea of God as enduringly good and wisely loving towards humanity has long been expressed; and such a God cannot be understood as good or loving withou also being understood as sustaining and not frustrating the human capacity for understanding nature and for rational action with regard to nature,
This basic idea, though it took centuries of reflection on the human experience as seen through the eyes of a particular human culture to develop it as thoroughly as it is now (just as it took centuries to develop the idea of science thoroughly), is an idea which has seeds that have been around for a long, long time; an undeniable fact which strongly suggests to me that the basic or standard form of the modern theistic concept of God is hardly arbitrary, and hardly a concept of an arbitrary God. The theistic tradition is that God has an eternal character, one that models, instantiates, and is the ultimate ontological source of what even almost all atheists 'believe in'—namely, Reason and Morality.
Hence every theist I know of thinks a concept of God as wicked, stupid, crazy, irrational, powerless, or tall with a big white beard, could not be even a remotely acceptable usage of the term in philosophy or theology, and it would certainly not be a concept of a being they'd believe existed, or could believe existed, precisely because they're theists.
Comment by stunney — May 6, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
For a moment, try setting the hot topic of biological ID to the side, take a couple slow, deep breaths, and try out this thought experiment.
Suppose we travel to some planet and find an Object of some kind. We know nothing about it intially, but we can quickly see that although it is not based on cellular life as we know it, it is very complex and has an appearance of function to it.
Do you really and truly think it would be a fool's errand for science to try to distinguish whether or not this Something was the result of an alien intelligence rather than the result of natural processes? Would it break science to try to do that? In fact, do you think for a serious moment that anyone could stop scientists from trying to make such evaluations?
If someone said "We should ignore the possibility that this was designed by aliens if we are going to do science.", seriously what would the response be?
Or, if we intercepted some radio waves from space, do you really and truly believe that science should limit itself to natural process explanations? Would it break science to distinguish between static (meaningless random variations), pulsars (meaningless but orderly lawlike repitition), and alien messages (meaningful information expressed in a language), with the possibility of making an intelligent design inference?
If the ID inference is acceptable and reasonable for science to perform in these cases, then it certainly cannot be the case that the true problem is an inability of science in principle to deal with intelligent agency. It doesn't break science to endeavor to distinguish between natural process causes and intelligent design.
Comment by eric — May 6, 2007 @ 9:51 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
It would be more accurate to say that irreducible complexity is the most widely known expression of biological ID, due to the popularity of Dr. Behe's first ID book. (His second, coming out this summer, will examine in more detail what we can observe about the limits of Darwinian varitation+natural selection. This is another step that is based on knowledge, not merely gaps.)
The biological ID case regarding the origin of life is distinct, includes mathematical analysis, and (I would say) is already stronger. But it also tends to be more technical and less accessible to a general audience.
About a decade before Behe's book, The Mystery of Life's Origin (TMoLO) was published in 1984. It surveyed the origin of life research up to that point. Whereas you have said (probably with irreducibly complex machine arguments in mind):
By contrast, even in 1984, TMoLO declared:
As one short illustration from a book's worth of analysis: We do know mathematically that the popular idea of even one protein forming by chance, even given fantastically ideal conditions and billions of years, is not realistic. We are now reaching a similar stage of acknowledgement regarding RNA chance formation, leading to attempts to try to start life without any such macromolecules.
One caution about saying this is "just" a gap in our knowledge. O'Leary has written about promissory materialism. But true and healthy science is not something that takes ideas on faith, year after year. Science is nothing if it does not require evidence.
That is why I say that giving naturalism a free pass is unhealthy, damaging and distorting to science. A naturalistic hypothesis needs to stand on its own legs like any other hypothesis, not taken on blind faith, year after year, while turning a willful blind eye to design, heedless of the evidence.
Where language is concerned, including the language life depends upon, it is a perfectly reasonable inference from uniform observation that languages are always created by and depend upon intelligence. We know of no exceptions. Furthermore we observe the qualities of mind that allow creation and manipulation of languages, we have not observed these attributes in mindless matter, and we have not observed any alternate attributes that create symbolic languages by some other means.
Our observations are altogether consistent on the matter of language. We have no scientific basis (apart from blind promissory faith) that mindless molecules have ever had or ever will have the ability to create a language. It is a blind leap of faith that could not stand if normal evidence were required.
Comment by eric — May 6, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Hi Eric,
Please excuse me for butting in, but here is something that might provoke some thinking…
You wrote…
(emphisis mine)
Here is a link to Paper titled
Dialog with black box: using Information Theory to study animal language behaviour
Here is a link to an article titled
A Bird "Language" Gene Pinpointed
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 6, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Eric,
In a sense, yes, but see below for clarification. That does not mean that we couldn't agree that it was designed, or some of us believe that it was designed, but once again we couldn't prove it just by studying the object itself. (If we have such methodology and I'm not aware of it, then shame on those who know it for not using it on biological structures and publishing their results.)
Seems to me, broadly speaking, one of two things could happen:
1) It could so-obviously be a machine, the proverbial watch, or the 1x4x9 monolith, that everyone would agree it was designed. Nobody would try to use science to prove it was designed; nobody to prove it was natural. It would be proof of design by acclamation, not by science. And science would then turn to the question of who designed it?
2) It could be alive, or appear to have been alive, or to come from something that was alive, or curious and inert but possibly formed by natural forces. In this case some might believe it was natural, and some might believe it was designed. (We'd be right back to the flagellum.)
If you suspected it was natural, you would then use "science done normally" to look for a natural explanation"”which might fail for a number of reasons including the fact that it really was designed.
If you believed it was designed, how would you prove it? You couldn't use Dembski's mathematics. You would have only one hope"”to use science to identify the designer.
So the only way you could prove design using science is to use science to identify the designer"”something that ID as it exists today claims is irrelevant to design detection.
So no, in the global sense you would not ignore the possibility that it was designed"”in fact in the first case the inference of design would be so strong you would agree that using science to prove it was natural would be the fool's errand.
However, in case 2, any time science is brought to bear, it is done assuming no unnatural discontinuity. That is even true when trying to prove design by using science to identify the designer.
If you disagree, tell me how you would use ID to prove the object was designed. And then explain why your technique has not been applied to the flagellum.
As for radio waves, same thing. They would fall into one of the same two categories. Either so obviously designed that nobody would bother looking for a natural explanation, or ambiguous but curious (pulsars) in which case science would look for a natural explanation, and/or science would look for the designer.
Your second post, on OOL, seems to mistake my viewpoint as: naturalism can explain everything. Let me clarify: until ID is put on firm scientific footing, we should approach OOL questions from the perspective of naturalism. There is no other choice. If you believe the first life was designed, all you can do at the moment is work as hard as you can to prove that it wasn't designed, and then to use the failure as circumstantial evidence.
Again, unless you tell me how to prove it was designed, and then explain why that hasn't been done.
An aside, since you mentioned the odds of proteins forming. I feel that among people sympathetic to design, I'm in the extreme minority in my view that the idea that improbability supports design is not manifestly obvious. Suppose the probability that humans arose on earth turned out to be either (a) incalculably small or (b) unity. I would say the latter is a much stronger design signal. Although in the early days I used to use them, I now, for the most part, stay away from arguments based on small probabilities.
Comment by David Heddle — May 7, 2007 @ 6:44 am
May 7th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Hi David,
How would science do this?
Comment by MikeGene — May 7, 2007 @ 7:23 am
May 7th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Hi Thought Provoker,
Eric is really arguing that the universal genetic code is a language, and that languages are always the product of intelligence. Therefore life is based on a designed code, meaning there must be a designer.
This is a less sweeping version of the claim, Ã la Dembski, that natural processes cannot produce novel information of any sort. In Dembski's view, any appearance of new information in our world signals the intervention of an immaterial intelligence (Dembski unsurprisingly holds that human intelligence is not materially based). I don't know how eric feels about this larger claim.
Side note: an interesting question for Dembski would be to ask if he thinks that animal intelligence is also immaterial. I know that conventional Christian theology holds that animals don't have souls, and so it would be interesting to see how Dembski resolves this dilemma.
In any case, your examples of linguistic or proto-linguistic abilities in animals don't really address eric's point, since the mere existence of modern living creatures, whether they communicate or not, depends on the prior existence of the genetic code.
The key to convincing eric of the truth of naturalism, besides lesioning his temporal lobes
, would be to show how a coding system can arise from purely natural causes.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 7:26 am
May 7th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Maybe similarly to the way they discovered the designers of bowers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... )
Comment by Raevmo — May 7, 2007 @ 7:30 am
May 7th, 2007 at 8:07 am
eric
There are two uses of the words "natural" which you seem to have conflated.
Science is generally considered the study of natural phenomena (not supernatural). There is nothing that says science can't study artifice. Artifice is well within natural science. Science can study not only the artifact, but the artisan and the art.
If you were to find a suspected alien artifact, no scientist of merit would claim it couldn't be studied to determine whether or not it was manufactured by an intelligent agent.
Mike Gene (a bit out of context)
The standard methodology would be to determine the causal linkage between the artifact, the art, and the artisan, and the characteristic traits of each of those aspects. The more evidence of each collected, and a more thorough knowledge of their characteristics, the deeper the scientific understanding, the more powerful the predictive hypotheses, will be.
–
On Wise's general point, the problem is the term, "supernatural". If we mean spectral spirits that are only seen by one person in a room, well, they were rejected as legal evidence after the Salem Trials.
But let's say last Thursday afternoon, Zeus appeared on Mount Olympus and threw lightning bolts at people in the Vale of Tempe below. Science could certainly study the witness reports, the purported images, the footprints. That's because each of these constitutes a repeatable scientific observation. (Any hypothesis would have to have empirical implications that could be tested, so it is doubtful a claim of an actual Greek God would withstand scientific scrutiny.)
What we can't do is stick in a supernatural entity to explain a Gap in scientific knowledge. We don't know what causes lightning: it must be an angry sky-god. We don't know why planets trace complex orbits: it must be angels pushing planets on crystal spheres. We don't know how snowflakes form: it must be pixies weaving tiny tapestries. We can't explain why the universe exhibits regularities: it must be God. These are not valid scientific assertions because they do not have empirical implications that distinguish them from the null or competing hypotheses.
Comment by Zachriel — May 7, 2007 @ 8:07 am
May 7th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Hi Keith,
You wrote…
Why are people coming to Eric's rescue? First Onething, now you. This doesn't help Eric think through his own logic. I may be being "unfair" to Eric but I really doubt I am anywhere close to chasing him away. If I am, I wholly underestimated his stubbornness.
I have to run to work now. I will address this further at a later time. Meanwhile, what you have highlighted is why Dembski is better at prestidigitation than Eric. Eric's "less sweeping version" is easier to grasp and question.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 8:15 am
May 7th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Hi David,
You wrote…
Ok, I am intrigued. An ID advocate that isn't afraid to readily discard the party line?!? I do have to run to work now. But when I get more time, I will be looking for more on your thoughts and idea.
BTW, was most earlier comments in line with your thinking?
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 8:29 am
May 7th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Thought Provoker wrote:
Hi TP,
I'm not trying to "rescue" Eric. I just wanted to correct your apparent misunderstanding of his position.
I guess I don't see how it's constructive to question a position he didn't take. That usually just leads to frustration.
I don't think you're chasing Eric away, nor being unfair to him. I just think you've misunderstood his position.
One of the interesting unacknowledged implications of Dembski's version of ID is that there must be a supernatural designer. While the proximate designer of life might not be God, and while there might even be a chain of designers, each designing the next, there has to be a supernatural designer at the end of the chain to impart information to the universe (assuming you buy Dembski's axioms).
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 8:41 am
May 7th, 2007 at 9:24 am
TP,
If you are referring to the "house of cards" explanation, I don't know if you captured my thoughts"”so I'll just clarify.
We know a great deal about stellar evolution"”enough to know that it is a house of cards in the sense that if you tweak the fundamental forces, it won't proceed. This is just one of the fine tuning examples"”so in that sense "house of cards" is just a synonym for fine tuning. But we wouldn't know stellar evolution was a house of cards unless we knew a great deal about the subject. It is not a "gap" argument.
To put it in the form of a challenge: there is no gap, at least none recognized, that could be filled in such a way that fine tuning goes away. All naturalism can hope to do is explain it, typically via multiple universes.
I think there are others on here. Mike Gene, for one, agrees that ID isn't science.
Comment by David Heddle — May 7, 2007 @ 9:24 am
May 7th, 2007 at 9:35 am
David Heddle wrote:
and subsequently:
.
This brings up some questions about origins of both life and the universe itself. If we find an object thought to be a recent meteorite we are able to assess unnatural discontinuities by reference to variables representing familiar natural entities. We could estimate the size of the meteor when it entered the earth's atmosphere. We know earth's atmospheric density and if we knew the entry point and angle of entry we could calculate trajectory. We can analyze the chemical make up of the meteorite and construct a hypothesis as to its history based on our knowledge of the solar system. Were we to discover that the mass of the object stayed essentially constant during its journey through earth's atmosphere this unexpected information would reveal a logical discontinuity making us question whether the object was a meteor or really a designed flight object.
Our knowledge of natural forces enables us to assess natural discontinuities. David, your technical knowledge of physics surpasses mine but are forces, we understand in terms of laws, comprehensible during a trail of events involving the birth of the universe and that which preceeded it? Is it possible to specify a standard by which unnatural discontinuities are discerned with respect to the origin of the universe? What preceeded the Big Bang and how is natural causality evaluated at that point?
Concerning the origin of life it appears to me that we lack a theoretical natural process by which unnatural discontinuities can be determined. The origin of life is a study that takes place within the field of chemistry. The biological paradigm focusing on self-replication and natural selection is inapplicable at initial conditions. I do not take issue with the assumption of no natural discontinuity but believe there is no standard by which this can be reasonably assessed.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 9:35 am
May 7th, 2007 at 9:40 am
And the alternative to a design chain of events is a chain of natural causes that began with an eternally existing "natural condition"
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 9:40 am
May 7th, 2007 at 9:57 am
ID critics seem pretty confused about ID and the supernatural. Behe, being Catholic, comes from a long intellectual tradition of making distinctions between kinds of causes and inferences (Aquinas once wrote a book called The Division and Methods of the Sciences). It comes easy for him to both consider ID as a biologist and also to believe that the agent is supernatural. The critics, on the other hand, seem confused about this. If they see someone who personally believes that the source of design in biology is God, they think this proves that ID is just about religion and the supernatural.
The big bang theory is a good analogy. Nearly all scientists consider the theory to be scientific, despite the fact that many people believe that the big-bang implies a supernatural cause. Some people even use it in proofs for the existence of God, such as the kalam cosmological argument. It doesn't have to be either science or religion. It has implications for both. So why is ID not the same?
You could think of it like this: there is a long inference chain, and one part of this chain is where ID works. Further down the inference chain is where metaphysical or supernatural implications are deduced. ID belongs to one inference set, and the supernatural deductions belong to a different inference set further down the inference chain. Why won't the critics allow ID to define its set? Why do they want to define the whole inference chain by only one of its sets down at the end of the line? It looks like a double-standard.
Comment by Brian Killian — May 7, 2007 @ 9:57 am
May 7th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Bradford, addressing David Heddle:
Hi Bradford,
What "unnatural discontinuities" are you referring to? The laws of chemistry did not change at life's origin.
As for self-replication and natural selection being "inapplicable at initial conditions", surely you're not claiming that self-replicating molecules were a chemical impossibility prior to life's existence, are you?
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 10:05 am
May 7th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Alchemists believe that too. What chemistry process are you referencing?
Not a chemical impossibility. How is selection applicable given one?
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 10:09 am
May 7th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Bradford wrote:
Brian Killian wrote:
Bradford, Brian –
The difference is that evolution works regardless of how life got started, and Big Bang cosmology works regardless of whether the Big Bang had a natural or supernatural cause. Dembski's version of ID, however, demands a supernatural designer to start the ball rolling, for reasons I described above. This puts IDers in an uncomfortable position if they accept Dembski's ideas but wish to deny that ID is about God.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 11:08 am
May 7th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Keiths, the origin of life is not an evolution issue. This is relevant for IDists (most of us) who impute ID at point of origins. In addition the cause of the BB is very much related to the case for cosmological ID. Why are you attempting to truncate the larger picture?
It does nothing of the kind. ID is linked to the detection of physical evidence implicating purposeful and intelligent design. I'll become concerned about a supernatural designer when you are able to trace a series of natural causes and effects beyond the BB. If you cannot or will not then you are acknowledging or imposing boundaries on inquisitiveness.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 11:19 am
May 7th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I asked Bradford:
Bradford responded:
I'm not sure why you've mentioned alchemy. I'm referring to chemical laws, which are after all just the higher-level implications of physical laws.
The rate of replication must exceed the rate at which the environment breaks down the molecule, or it will go "extinct." If there are two or more types of self-replicating molecule competing for precursor molecules, the one with the highest net replication rate will tend to outnumber the others. If the precursors are exhausted, the number of molecules of each type, along with their breakdown rates, will determine the likelihood of a type's "survival" until more precursors become available.
Those are just some of the possibilities. The key point is that the physical environment and any other self-replicating molecules (if present) create selective pressures.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 11:55 am
May 7th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Bradford,
As far as we know the laws of physics work back until the time of the big bang. (That is, forces were unified, but quantum mechanics worked"”we don't see different physics now, we see the same physics operating in a different phase.)
For the sake of argument, suppose the big bang s now and forever a discontinuity. That is, for the moment we ignore the possibility that cosmology and high energy physics will ever make testable claims about what happened before the big bang.
This is a very big feather in the design cap"”but does it prove supernatural creation? It does not. It just says we have reached a limit of science. I would (and do) use it in apologetics"”and scientists of the time certainly recognized its apologetic value, but I could not say it proved design.
Again, I would never claim that you can't use design arguments to motivate research"”indeed any anthropic argument, such as Weinberg's cosmological constant argument, can be recast as a design argument. (Many scientists are uncomfortable with anthropic arguments for that reason: they correctly recognize that arguing "if it wern't so, we wouldn't be here, therefore I predict that the cosmological constant must be incredibly small" is no more scientific that saying "God intended us to be so, so I predict that he must have made the CC very small.") And I would never claim that you can't invoke design in your explanation"”but when you do you step out of the domain of science. What I dispute is the hard-core IDer argument that there presently exists ID methods that can be applied in lieu of garden-variety naturalism.
Comment by David Heddle — May 7, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Keiths this does nothing more than provide an idea as to how SRMs might become perpetual.
Any "selective pressures" not directed toward a cellular outcome are worthless.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
This is the response I was hoping to see. Limits to science has significance for those who have made science an idol.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 12:15 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Hi David,
You wrote…
I can understand and somewhat agree with the fine tuning argument. However, I thought you implied a little more by comparing it to a house of cards as opposed to a pencil balancing on its point. A pencil can be artificially propped up, "a veritable house of cards" can't, at least not without a whole lot of glue and/or chewing gum.
I suspect our visions are more alike than not since you said "This is just one of…" implying many interconnecting fine-tuning arguments keeping the whole structure from falling to pieces.
At any rate, I thought your explainations were apt and struck a familiar chord with me so I had hoped my response to Bilbo's question was close enough. If it wasn't, please note Bilbo asked you "Are you saying the Cosmological Argument is not demonstrable? And the 'veritable house of cards' means what, exactly?" in an earlier comment.
You also wrote…
I was aware of that. Joy also has some pretty interesting, and independent, opinions on the subject too. That is why I like Telic Thoughts. Whether or not Telic Thoughts likes me is another question.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 12:32 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Hi Keiths,
You wrote…
You are presuming a lot based on a comment that basically contained only a quote of Eric's own words and two links to scientific articles/papers without asking any questions or voicing an argument.
I think it would be appropriate to give Eric time to reply to my comment if he wishes to. If he hasn't by this evening, I will try (not promise) to explain my position on the matter then.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 12:43 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
David Heddle asked
Do you think it's fair to demand proof from ID? Science has never been about proving things, so why should ID have to meet a strict mathematical standard?
Also, why characterize ID as a "belief" ID'ers don't "believe" things are designed, they make inferences based on evidenciary findings.
Comment by chunkdz — May 7, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Bradford wrote:
True, but you only asked how selection was applicable to self-replicating molecules. You didn't ask how evolution would work in that context.
Besides replication and selection, the other ingredient of a Darwinian process is heritable variation. As you said, an SRM that never varied could do no more than perpetuate itself. An SRM that varies (but not too rapidly) and passes the variations on to its copies is needed to kickstart the process of evolution.
At any given time, the selective pressures only have to favor the next step. But sure, if the process doesn't lead eventually to cells, it can't explain life as we know it.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Keiths this does nothing more than provide an idea as to how SRMs might become perpetual.
There is nothing selected. You start with SRMs and end there.
What you are imagining (as opposed to demonstrating) are varietals of SRMs. So what?
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Chunkdz:
In that case, and I don't disagree, the modern version of ID brings nothing new to the table. Design inferences have been with us forever, and not incompatible with science. We all agree that the watch in the forest was designed. If ID has not progressed beyond "I can't prove it, but I know it when I see it" then what exactly have been the scientific contributions of Behe and Dembski?
On second thought, I simply don't understand your comment. You argue that IDers make inferences based on evidentiary findings. Yet you say that IDers don't "believe" things are designed, nor should there be a burden of proof placed on ID. So if the evidentiary findings do not constitute a proof, and they don't make you "believe" design, exactly what do they accomplish?
Comment by David Heddle — May 7, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
On the "Kill the Wabbit" thread, Thought Provoker wrote:
TP,
Are you actually angry about that? If I misconstrued your point, I apologize, but I think my surmise was quite reasonable given what you wrote.
You quoted Eric:
Since you bolded the sentence "We know of no exceptions", and since you then linked to two papers dealing with animal communication, I reasonably concluded that you saw animal communication as being an exception to eric's stated rule.
If that's not true, then what did you mean?
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Hi Keith,
You asked…
Not even close.
I was using it as an excuse to get into the middle of your conversation.
You made a reasonable assumption about my point, but I think you may have misconstrued my purpose. I will explain my point and purpose after Eric has had a chance to respond.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 2:54 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
David Heddle
No more of a burden than science has placed on itself. Science functions fine without having to ever generate a proof for anything.
As for your question about what ID has contributed, I'd say it's made the first steps toward quantifying the characteristics of design.
If a Hemingway novel can reliably be inferred as "designed", what's wrong with trying to quantify the contained information in that novel and specify the attributes that allow us to reliably infer design? Sure it's not as rigorous yet as it could be, but it's a very innovative approach to the question of whether design can be detected. I don't think every contribution needs to be Einsteinian to be valuable.
Comment by chunkdz — May 7, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
eric writes:
Typically the counter is something along this line: 'well if we saw them producing offspring… that'd be different.' Atleast that's always what I hear in response to the '747 in a junkyard' analogy.
So what if I add:
These "Objects" do not appear to be sentient in any measurable way. They pay no mind to us at all, they just sit there working on the next generation of "Objects." There's no biology or chemistry invloved in anything they do, but they do 'replicate' themselves. Would an ID inference be scientific in this context?
Seems, and I'm as lay as they come, it's only when we discuss biology/life that people take issue.
That and:
They want a designer in the equation. Even if it's only a theoretical one. Given ID were true: The fact that God fits the bill is a logical (although philosophical) conclusion. I assume most people know that too. Assume that tomorrow morning "scienceTM" declares: "design is the best explantion for the origins of life" … apologies to Drs. Behe, Dembski, Meyer, et al, we didn't mean any of it." What might the religious implications be, from say e.g., an apologetics stand-point? Whether or not its true, whether or not its "scienceTM" isn't really an issue. Dawkins and Co. are way too mad at God to even consider ID. They spend as much time arguing how He is such a jerk, as they do arguing He doesn't not exist; or the limp wristed "most probably does not exist."
Sans our alien creators showing up tomorrow and saying, 'Um, yeah guys it's right there on GeneX: "made in andromeda." "We're awful sorry about all the confusion, and, no, we have no idea where we came from." At this point, because we can add a designer to the mix, it'd be science for the critics, I think?
Of course, some One is already claiming credit for the design. I figure (being dumber'n a boxarocks, that is) that's where the real problem lays. TEs, I think, believe ID (BioChem) is trying to define God, or ignore Him out-right, in a way that id (physics/cosmology/TE) does not. It's blasphemous to do so[define(read: limit) or defy(read: falsify)], so I can understand their concerns (assuming I got 'em correct of course) TE beliefs are a tough nut for me to crack. Ultimately, imo, the fact that God as the designer makes sense, to most everybody on the planet (if the polls are to be believed) is the problem.
I believe that He is what he said he is. So with that as a given, even if only to me, it's a [T]ruth that, by defintion, cannot be scientific. Its why EAs try so hard to make the ID arguments about the nature/identity of the designer. 'It's not scientific (i.e., testable, repeatable, falsifiable) therefore it's not true,' if I may be so bold as to put words in their mouths. It's why you see all these strawmen and discussions about Scripture. Creation science, and Christianity in particular, are very specific things i.e., understandings of our world based on Scripture. ID is not that, obviously. But, and this is why there's all this smoke and little fire, imo, everybody knows what a great tool for apologetics ID can be. Just imagine if it enjoyed the consensus opinion of scientists. That's the fear or origin of the so called "threatiness" that critics have wrt ID. That whole 'wedge' thing didn't help either.
Mainstream acceptance (or even getting the TEs on board) may indeed be climbing mount improbable. Impassable, maybe? The issues for critics, to me, have always been about theology and philosophy. Its not the science (e.g., design detection) but the implications of the inference. It's easy to use "scienceTM" to hides oneself form such truths as purpose and meaning. Just the delusion of the unscientifically minded mind, they might say. Your undetectable [f]ather is some poly-verse/dimension/thingamajig. Lucky you, other then the whole dying when your brain does thing… which is a pretty dismal outcome for such lucky beginings. Now that's "scienceTM" your BronzeAgian mythologists!
:shrug:
Same as it ever was.
PS to any theistic evolutionists whom are readin this, and feel so inclined:
How do you differentiate between gaps in MolBio knowledge and understandings in physics/cosmology. If the ID of the gaps (strawman) is, "they're just saying we don't know how it may have evolved, therefore, *poof* it was designed." How is that any different than saying, "TEs are saying we don't understand how it was fine-tuned, therefore *poof* it was purposefully done." TEs, as much as any atheist, seem so vehemently opposed to ID, yet use similar arguments and observations. I may be being dense here, but the distictintion, apart from the 'yay Darwin' rhetoric, has always been blurry for me. IE, a blind watchmaker for life but a purposeful design for the cosmos at large seems counter intuitive.
In short, is this an issue/disagreement over methodology or philosophy/theology?
Thanks.
Comment by Rob R. — May 7, 2007 @ 3:10 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
Well, it worked.
OK.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 3:11 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
It is one thing to ask if information can arise from non-information. It is entirely another to ask if coded information, or 'codes' for short, can arise from non-codes by unintentional processes.
Think about the first question. Let's say the correct answer is no. This answer would be perfectly compatible with naturalism for a reason that I myself have stated and have had some from the atheist camp fully and explicitly accept: namely, the notion of 'matter all the way down' is either incoherent, or else makes matter at its most basic level simply unintelligible (in rather like the way atheists accuse God of being. But then, by parity of reasoning, this allows anti-materialists, most famously Berkeley, to deny the reality of matter.)
Hence, it is much more plausible both on a priori grounds and on empirical grounds, to hold that matter always 'comes with', in Aristotelian idiom, intelligible form; or, in the modern idiom, information. Thus there is simply no such thing as 'informationless stuff'. And a naturalist can readily acknowledge both that point and an additional point I've often made, namely that information is irreducible to its material medium. Thus many in the atheist camp do fully accept that mathematical information is irreducibly fundamental to physical reality, and is irreducible to its material medium.
Hence they will say, yes, information cannot arise from non-information, but it doesn't have to; because there's always information—-it necessarily exists and structures the world at every level. But that's simply a fundamental but also purely natural fact about reality. That's the essence of what the atheistic answer will be.
So, the underivability of information from non-information per se doesn't faze an atheist, nor should it. And of course its derivability from non-information wouldn't faze her either. (***But see below how a theist can still mount an argument from the natural fact of the universe being, er, universally saturated with information.)
Note, however, that I think the argument from information does refute very reductive versions of materialist naturalism, analogously to YEC versions of theism being refutable by science. But there are other versions, of course, in both cases.
But now consider the second question: can coded information (I'll just call it 'codes') arise from non-codes by unintentional processes? A 'yes' answer to this question, I think, is a much, much, much tougher sell, for reasons I'm about to explain.
There are two obvious and fundamental codes: DNA, and human language; and the first is of course deeply implicated in the second, because you need a human brain to speak English, Greek, Urdu, etc. If animals also have quasi-linguistic abilities, that just adds to the data set that one is trying to explain—positing the existence of a bunch of additional codes merely poses the question in a less anthropocentric way. So all evolutionist/common descent evidence is really not to the point, because whatever else naturalists say, they will admit that life requires or is based on codes.
Now, I prefer not to treat this question as, or in the form of, the OOL question, because that is a thicket that I believe is liable to distract our attention from the real force of the question when presented in the form in which I've stated it, as I hope now to show.
So… can codes arise from non-codes by unintentional processes?
Well, let's be good scientific naturalists and use observation and induction. Do we ever see any cases of codes arising from non-codes by unintentional processes? Ever? Anywhere? At any time? The correct answer, I believe, is: No we do not. Let's forget about OOL, let's forget about things like trees and cows and anything that's already got a code. Let's focus only on everything that lacks code, because we must in order to answer the question as I have posed it. We're only interested in stuff that lacks a code—not, "lacks informational content that maybe could become codified by an intelligent code-designer"; because, as already stipulated, there isn't any such thing as 'information-lacking stuff, (and almost certainly there cannot be). So, no, not 'lacks info content'; but rather, 'lacks the property of having its info content in code form'; or simply 'is non-code stuff'. Remember the question:
Can Code-Stuff Arise From Non-Code Stuff By Unintentional Natural Process?
Okay now, focus on the question,… When we observe all the things that are in the set of code-lacking entities or 'codeless stuff', do we EVER observe ANY of them ACQUIRING a CODE by UNINTENTIONAL processes? I believe the intuitive, and factually correct answer is unequivocally and resoundingly….
NO.
This gives friends of ID a very powerful inductively justified position. And that's even before we get to a priori arguments against the possibility of a code arising from non-code stuff by unintentional processes.
For instance, a code can only BE a code if it is INTENDED for that purpose. Illustrating, a Colombian peasant can light a fire in order to make a clearing in a forest. If he does, the fire won't be a code. But he could light exactly the same fire intending it as a codeword meaning, "The coca is ready. It's safe to land your airplane to pick it up. Oh, and don't forget to bring my money with you or you might find yourself having a very nasty accident involving a machete". And what we can say about the fire in the forest example, is true of anything and everything else that's codeless, from sound waves to lumps of manure. In themselves, none of them is code-stuff. But any of them can be used by code-stuff (such as anything with DNA code) as a code. Yet they can't acquire code-stuff status by themselves, spontaneously, without the intervention of a code-stuffy agent.
What is the atheist going to say in reply? Well, it depends on how intelligent and stubborn she is. If highly intelligent and highly non-stuborn, the atheist will say: "You are right; I now believe in ID.:smile:
But the less clever and more stubborn ones will headscratch for a bit and then wave their hands before saying something like this: "Just as is the case with information, there are proto-codes all the way down the scale of matter; and eventually, and with enough time, and enough universes or universe subregions, and enough luck, this universal but invisible but definitely not magical proto-code property of matter will naturally and unintentionally generate a code."
That is what is known as an FBSPN or 'Faith-Based Statement by a Promissory Naturalist'; or, as 'a belief in magic', to use the technical expression. The slighter smarter ones will also attempt to avoid the problem by inventing novel, non-standard, and implausibe definitions of 'code'. Et cetera. But I think this is, in essence, the only tack they can take.
But that's fine. It's good for the friends of ID to be in the position of saying: "The inductive evidence for codes arising from non-codes by unintentional processes is zero. The a priori arguments against even the possibility of it happening are strong. So you, the atheists, not us, are the ones resorting to faith in a philosophically woolly, empirically untested and probably untestable, prejudice. Come and embrace reason with us, over here on this side. No? Okaaaaay then, suit yoooouurselves…… Da dee dedee da dum, da dee ratooloo, dee dumb…":roll:
***Let's assume everyone agrees there can be no informationless stuff, and agrees that information is not reducible to any of its material mediums. The theist can still use these facts about information to argue for theism. Briefly stated: it is very plausible that an essential property of all information is that it is intrinsically understandable by a rational mind. So theism has non-arbitrary reasons for not taking matter as the ultimate; but for taking, instead, something intrinsically and necessarily endowed with rational understanding (and, of course, value), as the most plausible candidate for being the Ontologically and Explanatorily Ultimate Thing. Why? Because it's extremely unlikely, if not impossible due to incoherence, that information-bearing matter has the property of 'understandability by rational minds' as one of its intrinsic and essential properties, merely 'by accident' as it were. This idea was notably suggested by Wigner's well known essay, and is basically a variant or component of the generic fine-tuning argument.
We can go on to wonder about the nature of the 'accident'; was it of the 'amazingly lucky coincidence' or 'fluke' kind; or was it an accident of this kind:… "Well, it just happens to be the case that the basic nature of the universe/multiverse necessitates the emergent mental properties of matter and hence a fit between matter and matter's emergent mental properties—such as being able to solve Fermat's Last Theorem or to discover quarks—-is to be, um, er, ummm, expected; but, um, the universe/multiverse necessitates this fact in a wholly non-conscious, non-purposeful, unintentional, and essentially meaningless way"…….
Yeah, that kind of, ahem, 'necessary accident'…:wink:
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 3:50 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Bradford wrote:
Bradford,
I'm surprised that you want to bring up cosmological ID, given that you deny that ID involves a supernatural designer. After all, who besides God is capable of creating the universe and fine-tuning it?
Regarding OOL: Like evolutionary theory and cosmology, naturalistic OOL assumes a starting point — in this case the prebiotic Earth — without specifying how it got there. Darwinian theory operates when replication, selection and heritable variation are in place, but doesn't say how those processes got started. If we ever create artificial life, it will evolve just as natural life does. Big Bang cosmology, by itself, doesn't tell us whether the universe is designed, as David Heddle points out.
Yet Dembski's version of ID, if correct, logically demands the existence of a supernatural designer. Here is a comment I posted on Uncommon Descent:
Here are a couple of quotes that show Dembski openly acknowledging that ID involves a supernatural designer:
He couldn't be much clearer than that.
Even Michael Behe acknowledges that ID requires the suspension of methodological naturalism. Here Behe responds to Robert Pennock:
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 4:38 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
stunney wrote:
stunney,
Applying your logic:
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 5:01 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Hi Stunney,
You used a lot of words to explain that anything that uses coded information is life and visa-versa. But you also said…
And then you ask….
Instead of getting us coming and going, this time you aren't even letting us start.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I earlier wrote:
And now we employ the same logic:
When we look around, do we EVER observe ANYONE designing a CODE? I believe the factually correct answer is unequivocally and resoundingly"¦ YES
This give friends of ID a very powerful inductively justified position.:cool:
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Hi Keith,
Sorry, I saw that one coming, but couldn't warn you. But now I bet we get to see how Stunney starts redefining things.
Regards,
TP
p.s. Or maybe we get to see him repost essentially the same comment twice
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 5:18 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I earlier wrote:
And now we employ the same logic to ask :
When we look around, do we EVER observe ANYTHING generating a CODE by means of an INTENTIONAL PROCESS?
I believe the intuitive and factually correct answer is unequivocally and resoundingly"¦ YES
This gives friends of ID an even more powerful inductively justified position.:cool:
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 5:21 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
So your logic enables us to conclude powerfully that ID is and is not true. Cool — both sides were right all along; we just didn't know it.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 5:21 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
Did you see this one coming?
Btw, I've been searching for the comment of yours that provoked my reply about the difficulties in practically applying the OMA/NOMA idea, but I can't find either one, and wanted to in order to prepare for continuing the discussion, as you so graciously invited me to do, but on the Wabbit thread.
Can you give the relevant urls? Much obliged.
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Hi Stunney,
Your comment has me confused on both fronts. Assuming this is what you are looking for, it is my OMA challenge.
As to your comment. Let me try to make it clearer. You have essentially equated the definition of "life" with "coded information" and visa-versa.
You then ask us to argue for the origin of "coded information", while not allowing us to talk about the origin of "life".
neat trick.
Provoking Thought
P.S. to Raevmo, No you fool! Get him to commit to a definition first!
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Um, aren't scientists in the business of decoding patterns of nature? You know, like decoding the information contained in ice cores to obtain information about climatological time series. Did the ice acquire the code by intentional processes?
Comment by Raevmo — May 7, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Keiths, that is not pertinent to making the best inference based on scientific evidence. If God is an inescapable inference from the data then so be it but the opposite is true as well. If not God flows from scientific data then that's the way it is. Philosophical side arguments and their implications need to be set aside in assessing empirical claims.
The only thing that concerns me is the direct relationship of data to the claim the data is linked to. A secondary inference from the claim is not the basis for debunking or affording plausibility to the data/claim linkage. If the evidence points to data or purpose that's where the empirical claim ends. An extending supernatural argument could be logical and philosophical but it would not be empirically grounded.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
There is a distinction to be made between properties of matter and encoded symbolic systems. A unique feature of the latter is an encoding convention. A true code involves sequencing and an inability to determine sequence based on forces of nature alone. This message is encoded. Crystals in my home are not.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 5:57 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Hmmm… I think I just saw something from The Department of Huh?
Talk about ROTFLMAO!:smile:
Anyway, now let's ask:
When we look around, do we EVER observe ANYTHING generating a novel lifeform INTENTIONALLY?
I believe the intuitive and factually correct answer is unequivocally and resoundingly"¦ YES.
For instance, botanists, animal breeders, and agriculturalists. Maybe bacteriologists too, though I must admit I'm not very au courant of the latest research in biological weaponry aimed at mass destruction.
So this gives friends of ID a yet more powerful inductively justified position.
Looks like friends of ID have hit a triple!:cool:
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
stunney,
Breeding is not designing.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Bradford:
Wikipedia definition of code:
Nothing about sequencing there.
Comment by Raevmo — May 7, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I'm not sure I buy the Cosmological Argument. How do we test what would happen if we alter the various constants? Further, how do we know that some form of life wouldn't occur, even though we didn't have stars? It's not clear to me that the Cosmological Argument is any stronger than the Biological Argument. In fact, it might be weaker. We are beginning to design biological features: proteins, RNA, etc. Which means we are beginning to build an inductive argument for ID in biology, which may become a very strong inductive argument someday. And this is besides the Code Argument of Stunney's. How close are we to designing a universe?
Comment by Bilbo — May 7, 2007 @ 6:16 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
That's why a crystal would not be used to convey or store adaptive information like this alphanumeric code enabling me to precisely phrase that which I wish to express and change it depending on the need. Similarly biological organisms need a sequential code affording similar adaptive options.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 6:35 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Bradford, you should read "The Andromeda Strain" by Micheal Crichton.
Comment by Raevmo — May 7, 2007 @ 6:43 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Bilbo,
We test what would happen by simply varying them and recalculating.
Without stars, the universe is just hydrogen and helium. No complex molecules to store information. Life, at a minimum, requires a way to store information"”it requires complex chemistry. No stars means we have only simple chemistry. If just hydrogen and helium can produce life, then intergalactic space ought to be teeming with it.
I suppose that's a matter of opinion. The fact that physicists are invoking multiple universes to solve the fine tuning problem is pretty telling, I would say.
Comment by David Heddle — May 7, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Bradford wrote:
Bradford,
If the fine-tuning argument is true, as you claim, then what escape is there? Who else could be the fine-tuner?
Looks to me like you pretty much have four choices:
1. Admit the designer is supernatural, and stop claiming that ID is agnostic on the issue; or
2. Reject the fine-tuning argument; or
3. Admit that cosmological ID requires a supernatural designer, but insist that biological ID is still agnostic on the issue (that might be your best bet); or
4. Pretend there isn't a problem.
You wrote this about Dembski's version of ID, but the funny thing is that you've undermined the fine-tuning argument. After all, what is the fine-tuning argument if not a secondary (tertiary? quaternary?) inference?
Look at it:
Fact: The constants of nature have certain values a, b, c…
Fact: Life exists.
Inference: Hypothetically vary the parameters, and observe that life is only possible when the parameters are within a small range of the actual values.
Inference: Examine current physical theory, and determine that there is no apparent reason that the parameters have to have the values they do.
Inference: Assuming the parameters vary randomly, assess the odds that all of them will hit the critical range.
Inference: Decide that the probability is too low, and infer a Fine-Tuner.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 6:56 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
There is no scientific problem. There is only a problem for someone who wishes to avoid metaphysical side issues linked to natural phenomenon. So focus on the physics; not the metaphysics.
The only thing that concerns me is the direct relationship of data to the claim the data is linked to. A secondary inference from the claim is not the basis for debunking or affording plausibility to the data/claim linkage.
These links all relate to phenomenon we can observe and measure: laws of nature and environmental conditions within which life exists. That is, after all, what science should be about.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 7:33 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Regarding Dembski's version of ID, Bradford wrote:
Unfortunately, the problem is built into Dembski's "theory".
Dembski says CSI is a reliable indicator of design, that CSI exists in our world (in many things, including the bacterial flagellum), that CSI cannot be produced by natural processes, but that it can be produced by intelligence. That leaves only one place for CSI to come from.
How to get around this? You can't, without gutting the theory.
1. If you assume that CSI can come from inside the universe, you solve the God problem. But then you've admitted that natural processes can produce CSI, which means it's no longer a valid indicator of design.
2. If you assert that natural processes can't produce CSI, and that supernatural importation of CSI isn't required by the theory, then you have no way of explaining where the CSI in the world came from.
Either way, you're stuck. You can't accept Dembski's version of ID without accepting that there must be a supernatural designer at the end of the chain.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 7:48 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Hi Thought Provoker.
I had essentially asked the question, whether non-code stuff can generate code stuff by means of unintentional stuff.
Let's assume something which I don't believe for the sake of argument. Let's assume that there is no non-code stuff, and even that there cannot be. Let's assume for the sake of argument that a grain of sand is code-stuff. Let's assume for the sake of argument that a gluon is code-stuff. Let's assume for the sake of argument that anything you care to mention is code-stuff.
The first conclusion to be drawn is that non-code stuff cannot generate code stuff by means of unintentional stuff for the very simple reason—-now pay attention, 'cos this is going to be important later—that there IS no non-code stuff.
I take it you agree? Good. Because now you've lost the argument. Let me explain why.
If there is really no non-code stuff, then the concept of a code is vacuous; because if we use the term to apply to a grain of sand as well as to, say, the codey stuff involved in Enigma and Venona, then the term 'code' is having any useful meaning ripped out of it, and must suffer the fate of being retired to the Hospice for Concepts Rendered Meaningless Due To Vacuous Non-Contrast Disease.
Now you might say you're glad if that's the case. But if you are, then you're pissing in the wind.
The kind of code-stuff involved in and necessary for life—the code-stuff needed to implement the computer process algebra and computational logical circuits life displays—cannot really be, when you get right down to it, in just the same fundamental ontological sorting box as everything else without voiding the term of conceptual and scientific significance. No useful sense can be given to it if we really ought to think along the lines your side must adopt if it is to avoid the consequence of the inductive evidence and a priori considerations I've already adduced. For then the set of codes would have to be co-extensive with the universal set.
And as a very wise man once said, you've got to be shitting me.
Remember we're talking about the real, non-imaginary code-stuff that had Sir Fred Hoyle comparing it to a functioning Boeing 747 being put together by winds sweeping through a junkyard… ….and your side is seriously going to suggest that DNA's code-stuff is not essentially or fundamentally different in basic kind from sandy 'code-stuff'?
You realize that such a view has rather absurd consequences, don't you; and that most biologists would think people espousing it must have gone off their rockers? Don't you?
Well, although I think such an position is indeed not merely highly implausible, but preposterous and intellectually indefensible, and that it positively reeks of magical thinking, it is in essence the predictable response I forecast when I said:
But the less clever and more stubborn ones will headscratch for a bit and then wave their hands before saying something like this: "Just as is the case with information, there are proto-codes all the way down the scale of matter; and eventually, and with enough time, and enough universes or universe subregions, and enough luck, this universal but invisible but definitely not magical proto-code property of matter will naturally and unintentionally generate a code."
That is what is known as an FBSPN or 'Faith-Based Statement by a Promissory Naturalist'; or, as 'a belief in magic', to use the technical expression. The slighter smarter ones will also attempt to avoid the problem by inventing novel, non-standard, and implausibe definitions of 'code'. Et cetera. But I think this is, in essence, the only tack they can take.
But that's fine. It's good for the friends of ID to be in the position of saying: "The inductive evidence for codes arising from non-codes by unintentional processes is zero. The a priori arguments against even the possibility of it happening are strong. So you, the atheists, not us, are the ones resorting to faith in a philosophically woolly, empirically untested and probably untestable, prejudice.
—-
[emphasis added]
Take care. I'll be busy this evening…
….laughing, mostly.
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I wrote:
Bradford wrote:
Looks like you've chosen option #4.
Actually, there is a fifth option: assert that our universe might have been created by a smart alien, sort of like Thought Provoker's "supernatural kid with a chemistry set", but not supernatural.
Of course, pleading the fifth will generate a certain amount of eye-rolling in your audience.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Hi Stunney,
You wrote…
One sure sign that you have won an blog argument is when your opponent writes a response and claims victory and then writes a much longer response and then claims victory again without you saying a thing.
I am not even sure you won an argument with yourself much less one with me.
I will tell you what, I am going to post an argument mainly addressed to Eric. I will include you too since it somewhat relates to how you wanted to frame the debate. Feel free to respond to that. It appears people around here seem to think Eric needs help. You might as well help too.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
There is no scientific problem. There is only a problem for someone who wishes to avoid metaphysical side issues linked to natural phenomenon. So focus on the physics; not the metaphysics.
Keiths, an inference favorable to the existence of God is a problem only for those determined to be atheists.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
This is not a scientific objection. What you are doing is attempting to disallow a conclusion, not because it is faulty, but merely because you dislike where the logic leads you. If the shoe were on the other foot and the data favored a "not God" conclusion you would be all for it. Your view is political and out of bounds.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 9:20 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
raevmo wrote:
Lousy try, and no cigar either, I'm afraid.
Patterns are not equivalent to codes, Raevmo.
A carpet pattern isn't code. At a very abstract level of analysis, patterns necessarily exhibit or contain information; and vice versa. But if you read my original post on the subject, I stated the problem by beginning with my acceptance that unintentional processes can generate information (for the simple reason that all processes are information-bearing—informationless states being at best an unintelligible notion); and then asking whether those same unintentional processes can generate codes from non-codes.
And, like a good scientist, I proposed examining every thing we can think of that doesn't already fall clearly, like DNA, into the code-stuff category (since if we did otherwise, our observations wouldn't be germane; that is, they wouldn't tell us if non-code could unintentionally generate code—–i.e it would not answer the question posed.
What you need to make your case is an example of some information that's clearly not codified, actually then unintentionally generating code information. I suggested there aren't any examples of such a thing. We never see that happening. Coded info generating coded info? Sure, all the time, every time we type or speak. Every time cells reproduce. But non-code info producing code info? Nope.
It might help if you grasp and understand a very important consideration: that a code, like a computer program, is essentially a non-material object—akin to mathematical objects in general, or to things like rules and laws, or ordered sets of propositions, etc.
Now I'm not talking about what may or may not have happened on Earth billions of years ago, because none of us knows what happened then. I'm talking about now. I'm talking about any time in recorded history—we just don't see such a thing happening. There are just no observations of codes being generated unintentionally by non-code material stuff. And once you grasp the main point in the previous paragraph, you'll be able to understand why.
The naturalist has the 'option' of emptying the concept of code of useful meaning in an obviously desperate attempt to salvage a philosophical prejudice, as I've already indicated to TP, and indeed predicted in my original post would happen—one could call this option, Universal Code Baptism By Naturalist Fiat.
Apart from that very ridiculous and hence unpalatable option, the naturalist has two other escape routes, or other horns of this trilemma as they should more accurately be termed. Here they are and take your pick:
1. Posit one universe, and declare that there are no known cases of non-code producing code unintentionally ever anywhere. But there might —-sorry, MUST have been one billions of years ago on Earth, because we're here, and we must simply save naturalism's bacon, however implausible some of the things we have to say are in order to do so, because we're dogmatic true believing fundamentalists when it comes to our holy religion.
or
2. Break out into the appropriate song. I suggest that's obviously got to be this one:
Here comes the multiverse, do do do do
Here comes the multiverse, and I say
It's all right
Little darling
It's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling
It feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the multiverse, do do do do
Here comes the multiverse, and I say
It's all right
Little darling
The smiles returning to the faces
Little darling
I seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the multiverse, do do do do
Here comes the multiverse, and I say
It's all right
Multiverse, multiverse, multiverse, here it comes
Multiverse, multiverse, multiverse, here it comes
Multiverse, multiverse, multiverse, here it comes
Multiverse, multiverse, multiverse, here it comes
Little darling
I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling
It seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the multiverse, do do do do
Here comes the multiverse, and I say
It's all right
Here comes the multiverse, do do do do
Here comes the multiverse
It's all right
It's all right
—–
Hmmm, I think that needs a lot more work. It's crying out for a key lyric with a lot fewer syllables than 'multiverse'—that's just a ridiculously, extravagantly atrocious monstrosity of a lyric.
Oh, I've got it—how about 'sun' instead of 'multiverse'? I think that might work. It's just a suggestion.
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 9:27 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Responses to many. keithS, Bravo! Your description of my position was quite accurate, but even more I highly commend your desire to attend to someone's actual position, whether you agree with it or not. I think discussion can only benefit as we follow that example.
To David Heddle, please consider this hypothesis:
The ID inference depends on the truth of this statement. If unguided natural processes could produce any effect that intelligent agency could, no inference to intelligent agency would be possible. However, if there are identifiable differences, then the presence of one of those differences becomes the reasonable basis for inferring intelligent agency as the best explanation.
Since you acknowledge that there can be cases where the inference to design is obvious, you are affirming the hypothesis. Therefore, it is not a matter of whether the ID inference is justified, but rather a matter of identifying when it is justified. The aim of ID is to make that formerly intuitive distinction more well-defined using observations and data accessible to science, but the distinction itself exists undeniably.
Notice also that this hypothesis shows that it is not necessary to identify the designer to make the inference. What matters is the recognizable difference in the possible effects.
My point exactly. It doesn't break science at all to consider this question. What we should want to do is to try to improve our ability to make this distinction. Arguments suggesting science would fall apart and cease to work if we were to ask "Is the living cell the product of an intelligent agent." do not hold up. Yet some still argue that for the case of the cell this would be "non-scientific" in principle (as distinct from questions about the strength of the evidence).
keithS is right on several points. This is a more specific case than considering specified complexity in general, but I choose it because it is both more clear cut and more accessible. The falsification of this hypothesis "would be to show how a coding system can arise from purely natural causes."
keithS is also correct in pointing out that this does not mean intelligence is limitted to humans. If animal intelligence is sufficient to create language, the principle remains true. A more interesting case is machine intelligence. How do we decide when softare has become "intelligent" The famous answer is the Turing Test proposed by Alan Turing in the 1950 paper "Computing machinery and intelligence". It tests for intelligence by testing for command of language. Note also that this was proposed before we learned that life depends on language and before the ID inference from language and information became an issue.
Likewise, without language, storage of information is not possible. But an important distinction needs to be seen. Although it includes chemistry issues regarding the construction of complex molecules to bear information, this is not merely a chemistry issue.
Consider: If we new Everything there is to know about the physics and chemistry of paper and ink, that knowledge would not enable us to determine the information in a book. The information cannot be a property of the chemistry or physics of the medium. The medium only receives and stores information. Its properties cannot determine the information. (Dave Heddle, please note) There is no gap here that could ever be filled in such a way that the chemistry of the medium could determine the information. This is a fundamental fact that contributes to the barrier for information creation.
What is required to create and implement a language that stores information for living organisms? Any implementation would need mechanisms for encoding, for storage, for retrieval, and for decoding. A mind can create these intentionally, even though the separated parts are useless and meaningless.
In what order could a mindless process create these mechanisms unintentionally? Retrieval and decoding are useless before information exists. Why build a CD or DVD player before there exists any type of CD or DVD? Storage is useless without encoding. Encoding without the other parts is also useless and meaningless. Why construct CDs or DVDs if there is nothing that can read them?
Another problematic fact that is not a gap: The information itself does not have the properties it describes. The blueprint of a fast car is not fast.
Plus, retrieval mechanisms must be accurately matched to storage mechanisms. Likewise, it is crucial that the code used for decoding is identical to the code used for encoding. This is complicated by the fact that there are fundamental mathematical problems with encoding into the genetic code, since it is not a one-for-one code. Each amino acid can map to multiple encodings (not one), which must all map back to the original amino acid.
Furthermore, it is impossible in principle for a mindless process to encode information when the realized objects do not yet exist. (Yet another barrier in principle that cannot be removed by future knowledge — not just a gap.) So one cannot hope to capture protein information before the proteins to be encoded exist. Therefore the target proteins need to exist first and so require an explanation that is prior to the information system.
As I said before, we have no scientific basis for believing that mindless matter has ever had or ever will have the ability to create and use language. It is a blind leap of unsupported faith that could not stand on its own legs apart from giving a free pass to enslaving assumption that natural causes must be the answer.
I submit that enslavement to that assumption forces science into a fool's errand.
Comment by eric — May 7, 2007 @ 9:42 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Hi Eric (and Stunney),
I would have like to have waited until after you had a chance to respond to my previous comment but it is getting too late, so I will have to proceed without your input. I hope you don't mind, but I offered to let Stunney in on this conversation.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you are younger that I am. I am going to jump up and down on the limb by being condescending in saying you remind me of a younger me. Actually, I am surprised you aren't over at Panda's Thumb trying to pick fights there. I wouldn't recommend it. They will be more than "dismissively insulting".
My intent in the last couple exchanges was to try to get your attention. Do I have it yet?
I suggest that while you are a pretty good debater, you are so busy trying to win that you aren't fully comprehending the other side of the argument. Oh sure, you are quick enough to figure out the general arguments being made and smart enough to present the right counter-arguments to rebut them. I used to participate in college debates. We had thousands of index cards with all kinds of pieces of information. That way we could quickly assemble a handful of ready-made arguments to be delivered in a smooth-sounding speech. This is the way your comments come across to me.
BTW, we all have precanned arguments to some extent, including me. However, I think you are capable of much higher level of understanding. I will do my part to help you in that respect. For example…
You wrote…
The significance of this hinges on the word "intelligence".
Why do intelligent things need language? Because they can LEARN!
Of course there are no exceptions. Things that can't learn have no use for language.
Coded information (language) is of no use to things that can't remember and use the information.
The moons of Jupiter provide coded information that can be used for determining the time of day. That information can be passed on from person to person. Is this an example of creation of "coded information" maybe. It depends on your definitions.
However, you have to be careful with your definitions. They often end up having you assuming your conclusions. A term like "specified complexity" could end up being defined in such a way that it can only originate from sources with memory and a learning ability while simultaneously using it as evidence for an "Intelligent Designer".
I'm not going to convince you that God doesn't exist. I don't want to.
However, I do want you to think for yourself instead of letting your debate cards think for you. If you are interested in joining a think-for-yourself exercise, let me know so we can work out the debate rules.
Provoking Thought
P.S. Feel free to express as much indignation about my arrogance as you wish. Trust me, I deserve it.
P.P.S. Of course we cross post, oh well, let me read what you wrote while you read mine.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 9:44 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
There is nothing "coded" about information obtained by studying moons of Jupiter.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 9:55 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
Nothing "specified" about it either, then. Like I said, it depends on you definition.
Would you care to provide a hypothetical example that would meet the criteria you are asking of us. Not a real one, of course, since most ID proponents tell us it doesn't exist. Just a hypothetical one.
If you can't, I think it would be safe to conclude your definitions are such that you are assuming your conclusions. If you can, it would end up making for an interesting conclusion.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Encoded is not a mysterious concept. Neither is symbolic representation. You're obfuscating.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Hi Bradford,
You're stalling. A hypothetical example please.
Provoking
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
DNA
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Bradford wrote:
Um, Bradford, you have things a little backward here. I'm arguing that if the fine-tuning argument is correct, then the inference is not only favorable to the existence of God, but demands it.
You are the one in the odd position of wanting the fine-tuning argument to succeed, but resisting its implications because they belie your assertion of ID's non-theistic nature.
What I'm doing is taking Dembski's ideas as axioms and showing that if they are true, they lead inexorably to the necessary existence of a supernatural designer. If you think they don't, you need to show where my logic is wrong.
My argument is based on Dembski's own ideas. If there's anything political about it, it comes straight from Dembski himself.
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
Really? I always thought it had more to do with your opponent using substantively pointless delaying tactics, such as this:
Well, no longer—it was my birthday last week. HaHa!
Oh,… wait…:idea:
And, er, such as this:
I look forward to reading your more substantive remarks a bit later, or more probably tomorrow.
Comment by stunney — May 7, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
Cute.
DNA is your "hypothetical example" of coded information orginating naturally as a counter example of DNA being coded information that doesn't occur naturally.
And you believe you aren't assuming your conclusions?
I think we both know why you won't give an honest hypothetical answer, don't we?
It is a lose-lose game. ID wins either way.
Excuse me for not playing.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 10:19 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I'm not resisting anything. The resistance comes from you who would stifle the truth to protect your atheism.
This is not a scientific objection. What you are doing is attempting to disallow a conclusion, not because it is faulty, but merely because you dislike where the logic leads you.
If Dembski is right then strong evidence for God would exist. That might be a personal problem for you but then you've got to make an adjustment.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Sorry TP. I misunderstood and thought you wanted an example of an encoded system. There are no symbolic codes that arise through chemical necessity. At least none that I know of.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Hi Bradford,
I suspect you are still stalling. But I will ask again.
Please give us a hypothetical example of what you expect us to present to you (or stunney) in earnest.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
stunney
Your argument is just a long version of pointing to a Gap in scientific knowledge and filling it with your preferred metaphysics. You simply restate the problem of abiogenesis using "coded information". I suppose it is a type of Irreducible Complexity Argument. Like all such arguments, they take place along the very edges of empirical science "” where the Abyss of the Gap lies.
Beyond thar be dragons! Arrr!As you know, there is no complete and valid theory of abiogenesis. But
thar be someahem, there are several facts that are known with reasonable scientific certainty.* Life on Earth did not always exist.
* Life on Earth diverged through a process of evolution from a common ancestral population.
* Biological processes are consistent with physical and chemical laws.
* Random RNA sequences often have organic function.
* Some RNA molecules can self-replicate; that is, they act as sequence and enzyme.
And there is some evidence that the genetic code evolved through a process of specialization of sequence and enzyme, with aminoacylation of transfer RNAs making template-directed protein synthesis possible.
But there are still Gaps. You can fill them anyway you want, but why you would want to put your god in the ever-shrinking Gap in human knowledge, me dear ol mum, bless 'er black soul, tol' me not.
Comment by Zachriel — May 7, 2007 @ 10:29 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
There is nothing "coded" about information obtained by studying moons of Jupiter.
TP, the TT blog is full of encoded information. You're looking at it. The symbolic notation is specified too with respect to words and their meaning. You wrote:
But this is imprecise. Language is needed to communicate. Learning is one of several subsets that fall within the purview of communication.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Hi Bradford,
You are still stalling. Please provide a hypothetical example of what you expect us to present to you in earnest.
After that, I will gladly work with you to make my definition of language be less "imprecise".
Provoking
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 10:54 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
I do not understand your question TP. Why would I expect you to present something? What's that about?
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Hi Bradford,
I suspect you are still stalling to the point of being unethical.
Stunney asked us to provide him a real example of coded information that met his criteria. He appears to have left now. You took up where he left off.
That was a mistake.
I am now asking for a simple, hypothetical example of what you and stunney were asking us to provide in earnest.
You could easily give it, but you haven,t. Why?
I think we both know why.
It will expose Stunney's question as being bogus.
You got yourself into this. What are you going to do now?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 11:07 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
eric:
Well said Eric. How does an unguided process generate information rich nucleic acids before the existence of protein synthesis mechanisms? It's more than a chicken-egg dilemna. The information is meaninglessness until the whole system is functional.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 11:14 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
stunney:
I agree. We do not see it happening because of Eric's explanation which is noted in my previous comment. That which is coded for must already exist to provide meaningful function to the information yet its existence is in turn information dependent.
Comment by Bradford — May 7, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
I obviously cannot answer for Dembski and I do not claim he would agree with the following, but I do not believe the essential points of his axioms lead inexorably to a supernatural designer. You actually made an observation about humans that touches on the key point.
I suspect we are both inclined to make the reasonable interpretation that he intends to include human intelligence as a source of CSI. How does that fit with the other axioms? I believe it is here:
I would understand the intended meaning of "closed system of natural causes" to refer to a system composed only of unguided natural processes. If intelligence (human or otherwise) is included as part of the system, then it no longer qualifies as a "closed system of natural causes".
The pivotal question then becomes this: Can intelligence arise from a "closed system of natural processes." What he has ruled out is that CSI cannot increase in such a closed system. However, if it is possible for intelligence to appear first, the system is no longer closed and so that restriction does not apply.
I grant that many would suppose that intelligence would depend upon CSI, but usually those that suppose this are assuming an embodied life form such as we are. While our expression of intelligence is in the form of a body rich with CSI, the unanswered question is whether that is inherently and essentially true for any type of intelligence.
As an aside, any theist will grant that intelligence does not require physical embodiment, and it is also recognized by many that God is not the only non-human intelligence. The proposition that there can be non-physical intelligence is not excluded by anything that I am aware of (other than preconceived expectations). So the possibilitiy of the appearance of a non-physical intelligence that could give rise to CSI is not ruled out.
I fully expect that those who want a natural/material explanation for intelligence and language will move into this sort of explanation, just as they will tend toward a multiple-universes response to the fine-tuning issue.
The idea of natural processes leading directly to language and symbolic information will not hold up. There is nothing there to support it. In its day, the proposition of alchemy was more defensible than the present idea that natural processes could produce language and symbolic information.
Comment by eric — May 7, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Thought Provoker: I see that we posted about the same time, so you didn't have a chance to read mine before posting yours. I'll be interested to hear what you think after you have thought my note through.
I just want to say that I'm not intentionally trying to ignore your recent posts, but honestly I'm understanding what you are saying less rather than more with each post. Perhaps I will understand better after you have responded to mine.
I'm out of time (which has been short lately). Have a good night's sleep all.
Comment by eric — May 7, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
I've already shown that the fine-tuning argument and Dembski's version of ID demand a supernatural designer. The bad news for Bradford is that I think the same is true of Behe's concept of irreducible complexity.
Here's the argument:
1) If irreducible complexity can only be produced by intelligence, and
2) if natural intelligences are always irreducibly complex, then
3) each instance of irreducible complexity is the result of one or more prior intelligences, which might be either natural or supernatural.
4) If we trace back far enough through the chain, we will find one or more instances of irreducible complexity which do not have any natural antecedents.
5) Since Behe tells us they could not have been produced by natural causes, and since there are no earlier instances of irreducible complexity which could have created them, we are forced to conclude that…
6) irreducible complexity must have originally been created in the universe by a supernatural agent.
Can anyone see a problem with this argument?
One thing I considered was that Behe might believe, like Dembski, that intelligence cannot be produced by natural causes. If so, the argument becomes simpler, but the conclusion is the same.
A different gambit would be to assert that there are natural intelligences which are not irreducibly complex, but then the problem is that you've admitted that natural causes can produce irreducible complexity.
Can anyone find and point out a flaw in my logic or in my premises?
Comment by keiths — May 7, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Hi Bradford,
Ok, I am going to bed now.
For the record, you should know by now I am not your run-of-the-mill Troll.
I will drop this.
MikeGene, appropriately, suspects me of hidden motives. My secret is that I don't have any hidden motives. I am for real. These are my sincere thoughts.
That is why I use an alias. I couldn't be "real" otherwise.
Bradford, I think you are an alright guy. However, I don't like how you appear to rationalize your unethical behavior towards us low-life Athiests. It's not good for you.
Good Night.
Tomorrow is another day.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 11:33 pm
May 7th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Hi Eric,
You wrote…
If you didn't understand my last comment to you, you aren't as good as I thought you were. I could accept you telling me you disagreed with it or that my definitions were "imprecise". Telling me you don't understand is an indication that you a pretty obtuse (which I don't believe) or you don't want to admit that you will only debate things on your terms.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 7, 2007 @ 11:42 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Thought Provoker addressing eric:
TP,
Now you are being unfair to Eric.
I don't see any evidence that he's stonewalling you by pretending not to understand you. Your last comment to him and Stunney was hard to understand and a bit unfocused. He has certainly taken the time to understand my argument re: Dembski and to respond intelligently. Take a look at his last response to me and you'll see what I mean.
Comment by keiths — May 8, 2007 @ 12:55 am
May 8th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Keith
Not only does TP seem incapable of understanding Eric's posts, but in this case I think Bradford has missed your point as well. I have not decided whether I agree with you, since I didn't have time to go through all your quotes, but you may be right.
Comment by onething — May 8, 2007 @ 1:04 am
May 8th, 2007 at 1:33 am
onething wrote:
Hi onething,
Once you do decide, let me know. I'd be interested in hearing your reasons, yea or nay.
Comment by keiths — May 8, 2007 @ 1:33 am
May 8th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Thought Provoker wrote:
I suggest that while you are a pretty bad debater, you are so busy trying to win that you aren't fully comprehending the other side of the argument.
Especially when it's staring you in the face, up close as in up-close-and-personal, and you don't like that it's doing that to you, and you wish it wasn't so, well, so darn threaty. Which is the same basic motivation, I'm sure, behind this disgraceful post.
But let's cut to right to the bone…
You wrote:
Bizarrely, you have not chosen to expose it as being bogus all by yourself.
So, let me ask you to so expose it. Take the credit. Don't be bashful.
If you think it's so obviously bogus that it calls for vocabulary of National Inquirer proportions, then I'd say it was your ethical duty (out of respect for your worldview I hesitate to use the term 'sacred' duty–though it may rise to that level even in your eyes) not to shirk the pomposity—sorry, the gravity of your responsibility in this matter, not to try to get unwilling bystanders to do the solemn deed for you.
At any rate, I don't think anyone's stopping you.
I'll check back tomorrow after an all-night vigil during which I'll pray for the light to come to my own understanding of my question's bogusity, if that's a word (or code, to use the technical expression).
Night all.
Oh, shit, I've still got that vigil to do…:shock: Here, let me get my shades.
There, that's better….
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Comment by stunney — May 8, 2007 @ 1:55 am
May 8th, 2007 at 2:40 am
PS: Crossbreed.:wink:
PPS: Btw, does anyone know why 'brights' are so called?
Or, as we say in Glasgow, "Och, they're just as warm as embdy else!"
That joke always cracks me up for some reason; but mibbe ye'd huv tae be fae Glasgow tae get it.:cool:
Comment by stunney — May 8, 2007 @ 2:40 am
May 8th, 2007 at 7:54 am
You follow that statement by quoting me thusly:
But I had immediately followed that quote with,
Which is contrary to your statement that "it is not necessary to identify the designer to make the inference". I'm not sure why you quoted me out of context to support exactly the contrary view to the one I hold.
Artifacts exist in the natural world. The artisan that created the artifact had to interact with the natural world, so the art can be studied. And if the artisan reached into the natural world to interact with it, then the artisan can be studied too.
As I'm sure has been pointed out to you, science doesn't deal in 'proof', but evidence. We should be very cautious about drawing any firm conclusions of 'design' without evidence of all three aspects of the inference; artifact, art and artisan; and the characteristic traits of each.
We can ask that question. The answer is that there is no evidence of intelligent agency in biology. Where science would fail is exactly when you point to Gaps in human knowledge and insert your favored metaphysics.
Possibly. But your so-called design inference assumes its conclusions. You would have to know every possible alternative solution, even those you haven't imagined yet. Universal negatives are very weak arguments in science, and it certainly fails in this case. As with all God-of-the-Gaps arguments, the bigger the Gaps"”the more ignorant we are"”the more certain we are of intelligent agency. Don't know why planets trace complex orbits in the sky: must be angels.
This is a standard Irreducible Complexity Argument. This is not a new argument, and Darwin states the argument in Origin of Species. "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." But this is a peculiar form of proof. Notice that you would have to *demonstrate* that is was not possible; typically, by showing there is no *possible* step-wise evolutionary path. What happens is that this is conflated with the simpler argument that there is no *known* step-wise evolutionary path. To counter this claim, it only requires showing some *plausible* step-wise path, or simply pointing out that the condition of the argument has not been met.
In any case, once replication begins, the specialization of the functions can result in a separation of coding and decoding functions. The problem remains that no one know how the first replicator came about. But the argument about the irreducible nature of code and decode functions is not valid.
Beyond thar be dragons! Arrr!Comment by Zachriel — May 8, 2007 @ 7:54 am
May 8th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Hi Keiths, Onething and Stunney,
Keiths wrote…
Of course you don't see any evidence of that. I think he is too clever for that.
Now, I could be wrong and he has no idea what I am talking about. If that is the case, then I look pretty foolish standing out on this limb jumping up and down.
Onething wrote…
If you wish to assume that I am obtuse and/or stupid, you are welcome to do so. Have you decided on whether or not to take me up on my OMA debate challenge yet? I would like nothing more than to have MikeGene start a thread with the purpose of "exposing" this particular Athiest as being too stupid to understand the ID Argument. He could title it the "OMA challenge". By the way, did you get a chance to read my ID proposal or happen to catch me arguing the ID side over at Panda's Thumb?
Stunney wrote…
The reason I feel that Bradford wouldn't give the hypothetical example and the reason you won't give a hypothetical example is that that hypothetical examples would be something like what was described in the book Contact. The book described a search for coded information in natural properties like the number PI. At the end of the book, they found it (a picture of a circle).
Another hypothetical example would be to find encoded information in the universe's or galaxy's electromagnetic background noise.
Now these are two hypothetical examples I offer. I suspect that you could offer more. And I urge you to do so. It would be the ethical thing to do, considering that you were the one doing the asking. I would be interested to see if you could come up with an example that doesn't exposure your challenge for what it is, an assumption of the conclusion you wish to make.
That depends, of course, on you having any sense of fair play when engaged in a debate with a low-life Atheist that is too obtuse and/or stupid to understand your side of the argument.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 8:13 am
May 8th, 2007 at 8:32 am
(It took a bit of back-reading and removal of excess verbiage, but this seems to be the kernel of the question.)
In fact, the moons of Jupiter were used to regulate clocks (as originally proposed by Galileo). Maybe the gods are helping us synchronize our timepieces. I would be interested in a more precise answer to this question. It would help us to understand exactly what is meant by "coded information" with regards to this discussion.
Beyond thar be dragons! Arrr!Comment by Zachriel — May 8, 2007 @ 8:32 am
May 8th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Keith,
I've said it before – it would be a lot easier if the posts were numbered.
Hmmm, well, it looks like you are right that their thoughts on these matters leads pretty conclusively to God. On the other hand, does that invalidate the design inference? As Eric pointed out, is it realistic to suppose that both intelligence, (using all the will, purpose, desire and intent it can muster) and random chemical interactions can produce the same kind of results, with at this point the random forces being in the lead?
I think not. So the design inference simply says we can look for, and begin to explore as a valid line of knowledge, what the effects of intelligent input are, and what the limits of random forces are.
And there is a logical break between making a design inference, and discovering the identity of the designer. I suppose everyone knows there's a good possibility the designer is God. (Although I am personally doubtful of that, I think you're quite right that the chain of causes leads to God.) So what is the purpose of the design inference that comes to a full stop? Simply, that it sticks to the facts better that way. And also, it stands on its own. One need not inquire further unless one is minded that way, just as the atheist does not feel the need to inquire too deeply into the cause of existence itself.
The sticking to the facts thing is interesting all by itself. Despite there being several lines of inquiry that may be leading toward a spiritual universe, such as consciousness studies, and quantum weirdness, and fine-tuning and such, I don't see them ever coming close to validating any of the little faith-details of the various religions. There's so much baggage with the word God. Perhaps science will help humanity deanthropomorphise the God idea.
However, I don't think God is supernatural. Don't think it is any more fair to call God's actions a miracle than for a dog to call our actions miracles. All animals interfere in the random workings of inanimate nature. Without intention and a plan, a nest would not appear in a tree. So that's the only kind of divide between natural forces and intentional forces that I can understand.
TP,
I'm certainly willing to participate. Not sure if I understand what you think could happen. All my posts are an attempt to present the OMA truth as I see it, but others won't agree, and even if they did, their are huge gaps so we can't really get at the truth right now.
Or use a rabbit thread.
Yes, I read your ID proposal and I responded to it a while back. I had the same criticism as someone else did, namely that the causal loop just doesn't compute for me. There's something missing. But there were parts of it that I liked.
No, I didn't see the panda stuff. It probably would be amusing.
Comment by onething — May 8, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
TP, if you are an intelligent and ethical debater, why are you requesting of me to come up with hypothetical examples of non-code unintentionally generating code—–I can and shall momentarily (it's very easy to do)——when all I have said is that the present state of my inductive evidence and, as far as I know, that of every human living on this planet (naturally I don't know if that includes you )—-evidence for even one such event is still stuck at zero?
Perhaps you can identify the famous author of this statement, and also understand it:
"In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity."
Or is it possibly to deflect attention away from the fact that if there had been a recorded observation of any such thing happening, you would have presented it long before now, long before my arrival on the TT scene, only leaving you to get fitted out for a formal evening suit with tails and catch a flight to Oslo, and Mike Gene to shut up shop, don a tricivara and move to Tibet to meditate for the rest of his life on your profound discovery and on why it was so secret for so long?
Don't forget, I had not been born 3.5 billion years ago, so I wasn't around when life first came on the scene. Obviously. But perhaps you were, which would make your guess that you're older than me a reasonable one. And if so, did you happen to spot any DNA getting its act together?
Let me start with a series of small, silly questions; and by all means feel free to consider them as rhetorical ones, rather than as indicating a desperate craving on my part to know facts about what your propositional attitudes are.
1. Is the Empire State building a code?
2. Is the carpet on the floor of the room I'm sitting in a code?
3. Is intergalactic space a code?
4. Is the total number of subatomic particles in the universe a code?
5. Is what this represents a code?
6. If the universe as a whole is a code, what's it for, and who/what are the senders and recipients?
7. Is everything a code?
8. Have you ever read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll?
Okay, that's enough questions from me.
Here are a couple of hypothetical cases that, if actually observed to occur, would be very convincing evidence, to me at least, in favor of the proposition that codes can be generated by non-codes via unintentional processes…
A. If Richard Dawkins' urine was preserved for posterity, and on the 100th anniversary of his death, it was taken on a spacecraft as a gift to the alien race who had taught us the knack of interstellar travel and had showed us how to vaccinate against religious imaginings—-which had been proven by over 10,000 alien civilizations to be due to a common type of gene mutation occurring in the earliest stages of a species' rise to culture; and if this race had taken us to visit the planet Quantumamalia to watch how tiny quantum computers formed spontaneously there, roughly every 13 years for a period of anything up to six months, before the favorable cluster of environmental prerequisites faded again: this phenomenon being due to very unusual soil, atmospheric, and volcanic conditions, as well as a rare type of solar radiation from Quantumamalia's star. (Is it ok if I don't invent a name for the star?; but with this added and very hilarious quirk: that every so often, in between performing cryptanalysis functions for other planetary civilizations, the little quantum computers would suddenly start spitting out reams and reams of dirty jokes, before going back to their decoding drudgery.
B. If it was discovered that in Japan (and only there), a list of footwear variables (color, material, shoe size, cost, style, how many years worn, frequency of wear, etc) had started slowly over the years to form an increasingly interpretable code, though known only to a small number of researchers, that once de-crypted provided more and more accurate forecasts concerning the bond market in Frankfurt, Germany. All of the researchers were Japanese. None had any connection with Germany whatsoever. They formed, as one would expect, a close-knit, secretive group. They did not want their discovery to be publicized for fear of being deemed as Mad as a Hatter, and because they hoped for pecuniary gain, while being actually extraordinarily cautious about investing in that market. The initial clues came as a totally unexpected result of an office joke, when, just to try out and practice their new data analysis techniques, they decided to pick the most unrelated data sets they could think of over an excellent sushi luncheon, and came up with Japanese Shoe Variables versus Bavarian and Niedersachsen Bond Market Variables.
They did leave their offspring large inheritances, to be sure, but they all took the secret of the magical code with them to their graves, partly out of a sense of guilt over not telling the last few materialists left in the world who were by now dying off with a rapidly despairing sense that no evidence of unintentional generation of codes from non-codes would ever be found, and that fine-tuning evidence was now at the completely overwhelming stage; and also partly because the researchers did not want their kids to become as addicted to watching the code emerge, and develop as it did, and using it somewhat dishonorably to make money, as they themselves had been.
Years later, one of the grandkids found one partially undestroyed manuscript in an attic, that described the existence of the magical code, but it was missing key sections, and the code itself couldn't be reconstructed. It did state that the researchers could find no explanation for the code, hard as they tried to, and attributed it pure chance, despite the staggering odds aganst it. However, the grandkid got some statisticians to see if there was any way they could still correlate Japanese footwear data with bond market data from Frankfurt. But the found none–the code had vanished as mysteriously and as inexplicably as it had appeared years previously. And so they too concluded that if there really had been a usable code, its emergence must have been a statistical fluke of mindboggling improbability, especially since it had apparently not endured.
But then, having come into the world by chance, there was no reason it would stick around forevermore, and no reason to suppose it would not vanish from the world. That's the trouble with chance—what's that old saying? Ah yes: Easy Come…., Easy Go.
There were some skeptics among them, who never said it openly, but suspected that the partial manuscript was really damaging evidence theoriginal researchers had actually been attempting to practise magic…
——————————-
Okay, I hope that's good enough for you. And I hope others notice just how outlandish scenarios describing just-so stories about generation of codes by unintentional non-codes, can be.
Still, I guess they're fun….:smile:
Comment by stunney — May 8, 2007 @ 4:28 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Hello, TP and stunney,
Here is an idea on how the first codes may have arrived within our universe. This article seems to be written by someone who disagrees with ID theory, and hears "localized God" when "Intelligent Design" is spoken, although his whole idea requires the universe itself to be intelligent. Furthermore, if I understand it correctly, this idea is quite similar to Dembski's idea of information being imputed into our universe through quantum processes.
As an aside, Dr. Isaacson doesn't seem to realize that God is eternal and as such can not be localized; and that ID theorists have never attempted to "localize" the "Intelligent Designer." In providing the idea that the universe itself is intelligent and the cause of information within the universe, Dr. Isaacson is unknowingly providing research ideas for ID theory. Or it could just be that he is a closet IDer, yet must provide the necessary disclaimer in order to fly beneath the radar. There are really only two options here. He either doesn't understand ID or he is a closet IDer, since his idea takes on ID theory's fundamental assumption (from inference) that intelligence always precedes information.
It is an intriquing read. Read the whole thing, especially where he briefly puts in his disclaimer about ID theory near the end and "implies" that ID is (although possibly true) theistic and unscientific.
Comment by CJYman — May 8, 2007 @ 5:17 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Hi CJYman,
What a coincidence. I just noticed your comment on your blog to me. I don't know how long it has been there, but answering it is now on my list of things to do.
As you probably suspected, your linked article intrigues me. My knee-jerk reaction is that it seems more complicated than it needs to be. I also didn't like how Isaacson defined and used Occam's razor (even if I were to agree with the results). I will need to digest the article further before I can give it a thumbs up or down. But it looks like an OMA model possibility.
Thanks for the link.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
stunney, thanks for the highly entertaining albeit not terribly enlightening stories. Maybe it would benefit the debate if you would give your definition of "code" and use that definition to inform us what the simplest possible code is that you can think of.
Comment by Raevmo — May 8, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
What's wrong with consulting dictionaries, encyclopedias and textbooks? They tend to be both more exact and more objective.
Comment by Bradford — May 8, 2007 @ 5:58 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Zachriel wrote:
Zachriel, knowledge of exactly what a code is, is not necessary to answer the question posed in my first post in this thread. In that post, you will see that I declare yet again that there is no such thing as an informationless physical state. So the question of how information gets generated from non-information does not even arise, since nothing in the world is informationless. So that's a red herring right from the get-go. The question is about how a particular set of physical states goes from including the property of 'not possessing a code' to a subsequent set of physical states which includes the contrary property. We don't need to know exactly what a code is any more than we need to know exactly what matter is, or what energy is, or what time is, or what causation is. The question asks: do we ever observe code-lacking stuff acquiring code-stuff by nonintentional processes? Do rocks, for instance, when they get to 21, receive a Morse code set for their birthday, or the latest offering from Billy Gates' Fabulous Code Factory? Or receive anything at all that looks like a duck, talks like a duck, walks, and also IS a duck. I meant code, dammit. I always get ducks and codes mixed up. onceding Dammit.
Now you could just insinuate that it's codes all the way down. That's fine. That's what I predicted your side would end having to do. That's ok. Because, a) it will mean conceding my thesis of no codes from non-codes; "Hell, everything's a damn code!" and b) having to send poor old Code to you know where, suffering from a terminal case of Vacuous Non-Contrast Disease, with complications brought on Save Naturalism's Bacon At All Costs Syndrome.
Are you suggesting that Jupiter's moons non-intentionally generated an informational state M starting from a state N
where M is defined as including a code c1, and N is defined as including no member of the set of all codes C?
Watch out for that flying chunk of Magicmatter! Oh no! It's getting its Magically Generated Code out. Holy smokes! That thing's acting like it knows where we are!
Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgghhh!:shock:
Raevmo—I was asked to provide hypothetical stories of a certain specified kind by TP. I obliged him.
So if you don't find them enlightening, why don't you take it up with him?
Maybe he can enlighten you.
Then again, maybe that's asking too much of the pair of you.
Comment by stunney — May 8, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Nothing wrong with that. But they vary in their definitions, and it would be nice to know which one stunney has in mind, just so we're clear. Perhaps you would like to answer the second question I asked in my previous post?
Comment by Raevmo — May 8, 2007 @ 6:04 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
This is hopefully a more typo-free version.
Zachriel wrote:
Zachriel, knowledge of exactly what a code is, is not necessary to answer the question posed in my first post in this thread. In that post, you will see that I declare yet again that there is no such thing as an informationless physical state. So the question of how information gets generated from non-information does not even arise, since nothing in the world is informationless. So that's a red herring right from the get-go. The question is about how a particular set of physical states goes from including the property of 'not possessing a code' to a subsequent set of physical states which includes the contrary property. We don't need to know exactly what a code is any more than we need to know exactly what matter is, or what energy is, or what time is, or what causation is. The question asks: do we ever observe code-lacking stuff acquiring code-stuff by nonintentional processes? Do rocks, for instance, when they get to 21, receive a Morse code set for their birthday, or the latest offering from Billy Gates' Fabulous Code Factory? Or receive anything at all that looks like a duck, talks like a duck, walks like a duck, and also IS a duck. I meant code, dammit. I always get ducks and codes mixed up. Dammit.
Now you could just insinuate that it's codes all the way down. That's fine. That's what I predicted your side would end up having to do. That's ok. Because, a) it will mean conceding my thesis of no codes from non-codes; "Hell, everything's a damn code!" and b) having to send poor old Code to you know where, suffering from a terminal case of Vacuous Non-Contrast Disease, with complications brought on Save Naturalism's Bacon At All Costs Syndrome.
Are you suggesting that Jupiter's moons non-intentionally generated an informational state M starting from a state N
where M is defined as including a code c1, and N is defined as including no member of the set of all codes C?
Watch out for that flying chunk of Magicmatter! Oh no! It's getting its Magically Generated Code out. Holy smokes! That thing's acting like it knows where we are!
Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgghhh!:shock:
Raevmo—I was asked to provide hypothetical stories of a certain specified kind by TP. I obliged him.
So if you don't find them enlightening, why don't you take it up with him?
Maybe he can enlighten you.
Then again, maybe that's asking too much of the pair of you.
Comment by stunney — May 8, 2007 @ 6:32 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
stunney, your code argument has finally convinced me. I am now a theist. OK, maybe not. I studied a year at the university of Edinburgh during which I got acquainted with the ghost of Hume who made me an atheist.
Comment by Raevmo — May 8, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
The request wasn't to provide "knowledge of exactly what a code is", but to provide a suitable scientific definition. In my own reply, I accepted the intuitive definition (even providing a plausible evolutionary pathway), but others have reasonably asked for more specificity.
Comment by Zachriel — May 8, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Hi Stunney, Bradford and all the ships at sea (everyone else listening in),
Stunney, are you having fun yet?
I am sorry that we didn't accommodate you by arguing that everything is a code. Ok, I'm not really sorry, but I thought you deserved some sympathy. Oops, strike that too. I give up, let's just get on with it…
While I am not expecting this to help you very much, it might provoke some thinking in others listening in. My choice of Jupiter's moon was intentional. Since we are basically talking about a modified watchmaker's argument. When does "information" become "coded information"
I will stick with timepieces to explore this question. We have pretty much established that Bradford does not consider Jupiter's moon a timepiece that is a source of coded information. Your take on the subject appears to be somewhere between undecipherable and bizarre. Therefore, I will focus on Bradford's position that it simply is not "coded information". That is one end of the spectrum. Let's go to the other end. The proverbial watch in the middle of nowhere. I suspect rational ID proponents would agree that it does provide coded information (if not, we can go to digitized time signals from GPS satellites). Between these two extremes there is a non-coded/coded threshold. I will now explore where and why the threshold exists.
Let's bring in the extremes a little bit from Jupiter and GPS satellites to a pile of rocks and an ornate sundial. About now the rational ID proponent will undoubtedly see where this is going, but on the off chance someone in the listening audience needs it explained… A pile of rocks can be used to tell time via the same mechanism the man-made device does. At what threshold does an unintentional arrangement of rocks providing non-coded information become an intentional arrangement of sundial parts providing coded information? I suggest it happens the moment an intelligent being moves a single rock because the definition of "coded information" is such that it assumes a conclusion.
Provoking Thought
P.S. I forgot to add that I do not offer my thoughts as "absolute claims", but just the ramblings of an obtuse, stupid, low-life Atheist who sounds damn arrogant.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 6:56 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I was going to go with reading the future in camel spleens, goat livers or the entrails of chickens. Your example is more pertinent (but mine's more er colorful).
Carry on.
Comment by Zachriel — May 8, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
What is a code? For the purposes of the ID inference, codes such as the genetic code fall into the more general category of
Merriam-Webster code: 3a : a system of signals or symbols for communication b : a system of symbols (as letters or numbers) used to represent assigned and often secret meanings
noting, however, that the conotation of "secret" codes (e.g. to avoid deciphering) can be omitted for our purposes.
Notice in particular that these are assigned meanings, i.e. the assignment is an arbitrary association. In Morse code, dot dot dot means "S" while dash dash dash means "O", but it didn't need to be that way. Other assignments could have been made.
Likewise, the so-called "universal" genetic code is not universal. We now know there are several other non-standard (or non-canonical) codes that some species use to encode their genetic information. The particular assignments are not necessary.
For the purposes of the context of an ID inference from language and information, living organisms are the only part of nature that is known to contain coded information expressed in a symbolic language. This is not true (so far as we know) of any other part of nature.
The only other instances in the known universe of this kind of coded information expressed in a symbolic language are the creations of intelligent agents, e.g. humans.
Comment by eric — May 8, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
p.s. The fact that we don't find symbolic languages and coded information anywhere else in nature is one point against the idea that natural processes naturally produce language. There are far stronger points to be made in that regard (as I tried to indicate earlier), but I find it worth recognizing that on the bare face of it, living organisms are fundamentally like the artifacts of intelligence in a way that is not shared by anything else produced in nature.
Comment by eric — May 8, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
I believe the problem is at the same place as it was for the Dembski argument. You also state that Dembski believes "that intelligence cannot be produced by natural causes". However, does he say that or does he say that CSI cannot be produced by natural causes? See my post above about this.
Irreducible complexity refers to a system of synchronized parts that perform a function, which would fail if any of the parts were not present.
Where is the proof that intelligence is
a) a system of parts, or
b) (even for intelligence made of parts) that it is irreducibly complex?
To be honest, I am not very concerned about this issue either way. I'm responding because you were interested in where there might be a hole in the argument.
We have good reasons for inferring that certain effects require intelligence, but when it comes to what forms intelligence itself could take, we would be speculating.
As before, the pivotal question is whether an intelligence could arise within the universe as a result of natural processes. If so, your arguments miss that point. If not, then your arguments would then seem to imply intelligence from outside the universe (though not necessarily a particular conception of God).
In particular, the question of whether a non-physical intelligence could arise is where the CSI argument is, I believe, silent and not applicable. I believe the same would be true for trying to apply Behe's arguments about molecular machinery and synchronized parts.
I should say, though, that while that might fall within "naturalism" the above escape from God would still punch a big gaping hole in the idea that intelligence is reducible to matter. So that idea looks doomed either way.
Comment by eric — May 8, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Hi Eric,
Not bad, but I think you can do better or are you going to claim you didn't understand my sundial comment either?
Oh well, let's see what you wrote…
This is good. stunney should be hiding his head in shame.
You also wrote…
This is good and bad. It is good because it is clear and accurate. It is bad because it plays into my suggestion the "coded information" threshold occurs when an intelligent being assigns meaning.
At best, this is a side issue. A less kind interpretation would be that it is blowing smoke to try to sneak in the subject of genetics, Of course you want to get there eventually, but not as part of the lead up.
And from the redundant department of redundancy we have coded information, that is symbolic by definition, expressed in a symbolic "language". Is there any other way for coded information to express itself? What about "markers" Oops, that sounds like rocks "assigned" to be sundial parts.
And what is the phrase "For the purposes of the context of an ID inference…" supposed to do? Do you mean we should ignore things that aren't for the purpose of promoting your argument? Are we surprised that "This is not true (so far as we know) of any other part of nature…" constrained by a limited definition?
"e.g." is a nice touch "i.e." would have being problematic. So, what are you going to do about the sundial? Define it out of existence? Claim I don't understand your arguments?
BTW, it would have been a lot better not to post your P.S. It didn't add to your argument. If anything it detracted from it.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Hi Zachriel,
You wrote…
Thanks for your comment. Colorful may have been the way to go.
It looks like I am being the Bad Cop to your Good Cop.
I was hoping your last attempt to get to the definition reasonably was going to work. Too bad Eric wasn't here earlier.
At any rate, I am glad you liked my Jupiter moons example.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Hi All,
I am going to go away from about an hour now.
So you can resume your normal posting activities.
See you later.
Regards,
TP
P.S. to Doug, you're right, I do sound arrogant.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 9:11 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
TP, it is indeed good that Eric is clear and accurate. What is too bad is your resistance to the obvious. What natural force can you identify that assigns meaning to shapes be they Xs and Os or molecular ones like AUG.
Methionine (the meaning of the message) has no interaction with DNA's stored information sequence adenine-thymine-guanine. It actually can be more revealing to regard the message in terms of function. If five sequences of amino acids in an active site bind a substrate then the message can be viewed in those terms in which case each aa would be more like an individual letter in a word.
Comment by Bradford — May 8, 2007 @ 9:31 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
To Zachriel, if my post misrepresented you in any way, I apologize. It was not intentional. I don't disagree that it is fine for science to learn as much as it can about "the artifact, the art, and the artisan" and the more we can infer within the limits of science, the better.
What I probably missed on my original (too) quick read was that you apparently believe that if we cannot identify the designer, then we cannot make a design inference at all. On that point, I would disagree.
We already have collections of writings that we can and do identify as the products of intelligence even though we don't know their history, their designers, or even their translation. Yet we still make the inference to intelligent design. Likewise we have collections of tools for which we do not know either their origin or their function. Yet we still infer they are tools created by intelligent agents. That is the very same sense in which I say identifying the designer is not necessary to inferring intelligent design. It is a fact that science already operates this way.
Sounds like you are requiring from me a level of "proof" that you indicate science itself does not require.
However that may be, I believe you are missing a key point about the burden of proof. By normal expectations for a scientific hypothesis, it is for those who suggest that mindless matter can create language to provide at least some evidence that this is so — at least some would be a nice beginning. (NOTE: I did not say "replicate". I'm specifically talking about the leap to an abstract symbolic representation of coded information.)
As matters stand, the evidence available to us is entirely on the side that language only comes from intelligence. There is no evidence yet that contradicts this. In addition, there are reasons in principle, reasons that are not merely gaps in knowledge but facts about coded information that will not change, that indicate that we should not expect mindless matter to be able to perform this feat.
Consequently, as a scientific inference (not a "proof"), the best inference we can tentatively make at this time based on the evidence available is that language comes from intelligence.
Prior to the appearance of coded language, there are no coding and decoding functions to separate. Part of the problem is to explain the appearance of any symbolic coding at all, without assuming life already has it. Hand waving leaps not allowed.
As an aside, there are problems with regard to replication and the RNA scenario. For starters, what you called "self" replication is typically a misnomer. The molecule does not copy itself. One needs a sufficient density of duplicates so that one copy can facilitate the duplication of another copy. (But where did all of these come from without the scientist's help?)
There are other problems. Consequently "Many chemists, confronted with these difficulties, have fled the RNA-first hypothesis as if it were a building on fire." SCIENCE NEWS, February 12, 2007
But ignore all that for now. Let's suppose you have replication "for free". The big problem is the leap to symbolic meaning and coded information processing. The one restriction is that you are limited to structures that can be replicated without benefitting from coded information — IOW, no question begging assumptions.
If you think someone has a defensible case for the appearance of a symbolic information processing system, please provide some links. (And you might want to let them know that they could be eligible for the million dollar prize in the origin of life contest.)
Comment by eric — May 8, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Eric's point is the main issue. If chemical properties of bases determined sequence order then we would not expect a code or the resulting relationship between codons and amino acids. If the reason for GUA was based on an exclusive chemical bonding relationship then we could specify U follows G. But that destroys the encoding properties of sequences and that in turn makes information impossible. Nothing is "sneaked in." The question is why EAs resist scientifically based interpretations to protect atheism?
Comment by Bradford — May 8, 2007 @ 10:00 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
I am going to say that I don't understand your arguments.
I didn't understand why you made such a deal about animal intelligence, as that doesn't change anything at issue.
I don't understand the emphatic insistence on speculating about codes in nature, when (other than living organisms) we don't know of any such cases. And then you spoke condescendingly to Bradford when he gave a reasonable answer. What's up with that?
I don't understand what the significance of bringing in sundials would be. There are any number of examples of intelligent agents creating objects with assigned symbolic meanings. We all know this. How was this supposed to pertain to the topic?
I don't know if this meets your interest or not, but as an attempted response, you will recall that I pointed out that any information processing system needs encoding (from actual meaning to symbolic meaning), storage (for persistance), retrieval (for access and use), and decoding (to recreate the intended meaning). So to work you not only need intended meaning (e.g. lighting a signal fire) but also a capacity to comprehend the meaning (e.g. someone who can understand what the signal means).
(I will add that the information could have a brief lifespan, so for something like spoken communication the role of storage is taken by sound waves in the air and retrieval by hearing them.)
I don't understand the point of condescending posts that hint and imply some nefarious subtrefuge of definitions (yet without backing that up with support or a clear reasoned argument), especially when the definitions used are standard ones taken from a dictionary. (Maybe Merriam-Webster is part of the ID conspiracy?
)
I do not understand cat and mouse games such that you will or won't say something depending on whether Bradford or I or someone else says something the way you want it so that it fits into your boxes.
When I write, I try to say what I mean and mean what I say, because I believe it is true. I also want to listen and understand, because that is how I can learn. (See also keithS posing arguments, but then also inviting scrutiny. He listens to understand, even though he may not agree.)
I've told you as plain as I can what I believe about science in relation to philosophy. I'd be happy to clarify anything that is not clear. If a different thread were set up, my answer wouldn't become a different answer. Would yours?
So, I do not understand your cat and mouse games, such as about NOMA/OMA. My recommendation: decide what you believe is true, if you have a contribution say what you believe as clearly as you can, and support what you believe, being open to recondsidering if warranted by new understanding.
Comment by eric — May 8, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Hi Bradford,
Et tu?
I guess I was wrong about Eric. He isn't like a younger me. There would be little chance of me allowing other people to make my arguments.
I should have known better. On the internet, eric could be anyone, even your alter ego, Bradford. But you wouldn't do anything that unethical, would you?
Oops, "eric" is posting a comment.
Talk to you later.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 10:32 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Dear TP, Zachriel, and Raevmo,
TP wrote:
I've highlighted the pertinent words. They mean, of course, 'can be intentionally used for a purpose'. They do not mean, 'simply by their intrinsic nature inevitably or probably or possibly will arrive at the point of unintentionally generating coded information by themselves without intentional agents having to be involved at all'.
You bet.
That's because I overestimated you guys. You see, not only did you not provide an argument that everything is a code, but to my disappointment and surprise you provided no argument at all. Idiotic bluster, check; gibberish, check. But an argument? Huh!
As a very wise man once said, you are shitting me!
TP, you asked that I provide you with hypothetical scenarios that would, if actually observed, be strong evidence that non-codes can and do generate codes by unintentional processes. You implied that my question would be revealed as bogus.
I provided a couple, but so far I've not seen as much as a comment about them from you, even if only to say you reject them as satisfying your request, let alone any such revelation of my question's bogusity, as you confidently predicted would ensue.
May I ask, why the silence?
Zachriel wrote:
And I, even more reasonably, proposed that, using whatever scientific definition you prefer of 'code', and, indeed, using whatever definition you prefer of every word in every language known to humankind, you answer the question that I posed.
Please be assured that my breath is baited in hopeful expectation that you or your co-religionists, er, will do so. At some point. Maybe.
That sounds even immoderately reasonable to me. Let's say you define 'code' to mean 'Zachriel's sweet-smelling manure', and will accept no other definition as being scientific. Okay. Has Zachriel's sweet-smelling manure ever been observed to have arisen from anything that is not Zachriel's sweet-smelling manure, by means of unintentional processes?
Seems like a simple enough task to answer that question. I'd guess the answer is perhaps 'Yes'; and if so, I'd look forward to reading this finding in a peer reviewed journal in the near future. Given its momentous implications, I believe it would be incumbent on you to reveal to the world that, yes, just as naturalists had predicted all along, code can and does arise from non-code by unintentional processes!
Zachriel's sweet-smelling manure proves it!
Raevmo wrote:
I congratulate you. I don't think I've ever seen a more devastating and substantive refutation of my views. Well done.
Comment by stunney — May 8, 2007 @ 10:53 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
No problem. I'm not sure you did. But I would like you to reread my original post concerning the conflation of the two meanings of the word "natural". Just so we're clear.
Still not a correct reading of my views. Rather we would consider any such claim to be very tentative, perhaps even suspect, if you claim there is 'design', but there is no evidence of a 'designer'.
Consider Stonehenge. Might be designed. But planetary orbits, pixie rings, lightning bolts, volcanoes, seasons, were also once thought to be 'designed' by anthropomorphic beings. So, let's try to form a valid scientific hypothesis. Lithic monuments are not unknown. Probably built by humans, maybe stone age. Look for evidence of the manufacturing process (chisel or dragging marks). Look for evidence of how it was used (perhaps sacrifice or astrology). Look for evidence of the source of the stone (mine or local outcropping). Look for evidence of the culture (Druid or Beaker Folk). Look for evidence of when it was built (not Druid). And so on. Sometimes we will reach the limits of what we can know; but each new bit of evidence inevitably leads to new questions, firming up the overall picture.
You would have to be specific, but I suspect we would have strong evidence of the 'designers'. Let me venture that they are humans. We can probably even determine an approximate date, related culture, and geographic region. Human languages evolve, and we can use knowledge of the relationships between languages to make reasonable inferences about the text under study. (And the best inferences lead to new testable hypotheses.)
That's why I called it a "peculiar form of proof". Darwin proposed it rhetorically, and then proceeded to provide ample evidence of intermediates in structures found in extant organisms. But Behe proposed it literally, "An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." Note the keyword "cannot". But Behe is wrong. Do you see why?
The events under discussion occurred billions of years ago and left precious little evidence. It's amazing we can discover anything at all.
There is some evidence which I mentioned previously. Most scientists consider the evolution of "coding" to be the much simpler problem than abiogenesis, though not without its own twists. In any case, no one claims to have a complete theory of abiogenesis or of how life Exited the RNA World.
Ok. Let's ignore all the work in abiogenetic research. Heh, just luck finding those self-replicating molecules.
So now where are we? You point to a perceived similarity between coded information in genomes and in human languages. Fine. That has the makings of a speculation. So speculate!
But now try to form a valid scientific hypothesis. What are the empirical implications of that idea? What do we test for? I have my magnifying glass and notepad at the ready.
Comment by Zachriel — May 8, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
I wish I could write as well as Eric. Eric, my alter ego huh:???: Well, I'll take that as a complement TP.
Comment by Bradford — May 8, 2007 @ 11:03 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Incidentally, Ed Brayton (who is neither a scientist or a lawyer) posted his talk to the Michigan Freethought Association here.
I dispute Ed's characterization of Bill Dembski's statement re: the Logos and information theory as "gibberish." (Ed does not know the first thing about either.)
Comment by obrienr — May 8, 2007 @ 11:06 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
It is actually difficult to provide a valid definition of "code". Thought Provoker was indeed provoking you to think. In this case, you can resolve the problem by defining "code" in terms of transcription; a source, a key, and a result. A sundial, whether artificial or just a pile of rocks, is transcribed by an intelligent agent.
Comment by Zachriel — May 8, 2007 @ 11:21 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Hi Eric,
You wrote…
If you didn't understand the sundial explaination, then there is no hope.
Yes and no. If we cross paths again, it will be interesting to see how consistent you are in defining the term "intelligence" to include things like snails (yes, snails pass coded information).
If you are talking about our exchange last night, I would suggest you drop it, especially if you are in any way associated with Bradford. If Bradford, as Bradford, wants to bring it up again, I will gladly explain myself.
That is exactly why it is significant. You have defined things so that ONLY intelligent agents can assign symbolic meaning to anything. ALL symbolic meaning must originate from intelligent agents by fiat, not argument.
Of course you know it. It only pertains to the topic if it bothers you that you are assuming your conclusions.
BTW, do you understand what I mean by "assuming your conclusions" It is also known as "begging the question" or just "circular reasoning". If you make an assumption that forces a conclusion, I call it assuming your conclusion.
Hopefully by now, you understand that I see this as discussing different shades of black. You have already made your "truth" through circular reasoning. It matters liittle if the black paint is latex or enamal, it is all the same color, by fiat.
Great, black spray paint.
There is nothing nefarious about using a dictionary to define black as black. Ok, it is black. No problem.
Ok, wait for it….
We are building up, "because I believe it is true" and adding other-people-play-nice aspect…
More "what I believe about…" plus an non-acceptance of a previous challenge
There she blows! NOMA. Let's all hide behind the NOMA walls.
I have no right you challenge your beliefs, your definitions, your logic.
I have no right to ask you to look for a mutual, OMA truth.
I have no right to make you consider how piles of rocks and Jupiter's moons are the same thing as man-made timepieces except for personal beliefs. NOMA beliefs.
Eric (or whoever you are), whenever you decide to quit hiding behind your NOMA wall, let me know and we might be able to actually communicate.
Provoking Thought
P.S. Previously you asked "Gee, do we have any actual defenders of standard NOMA, per se, here?" It was a good question then. It is a good question now. Do we have actual defenders of NOMA or just people who like to use it and hope no one notices.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 11:30 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Hi Zachriel,
You wrote…
Thank you for pointing this out. Between the two of us, do you think we have manage to explain the "so what?" aspect of this, yet?
It looks like stunney still thinks he won an argument. I will look once again to see which shades of black he wants me to compare now. How do you explain white to someone who sees only black?
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 11:56 pm
May 8th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
Good.
Is there anything you wish to discuss after I am done talking to stunney?
If there is, please let me know.
Thanks,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 8, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 12:00 am
And a clock has symbols arranged sequentially and representing specific meanings. The source of that kind of arrangement is intelligence too.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 12:00 am
May 9th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Hi Stunney,
You wrote…
Are you willing to concede, in simple english, that your definition of "coded information" inherently depends on the existance of intentional agents?
Exactly. You were using circular logic. Of course black is black. We were only asking if white could even exist in your universe. There was no argument to make.
It was. You did an excellent job.
I find it amusing that you would accuse me of being too silent. I guess I will have to work harder on that tomorrow.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 9, 2007 @ 12:12 am
May 9th, 2007 at 1:58 am
Hi Tp,
I have been following this thread and I have read and reread your posts from the last few days. Frankly I think I see your point then it gets foggy then the fog lifts so on and so forth. All this to say that I sort of agree with you within certain caveats. What they are I am still trying to clarify in my own mimd LOL
Why is black black? To say black is black because it is black is not much help…in a way thats what I think you were trying to show with your sundial/rock example butI could be wrong about that.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — May 9, 2007 @ 1:58 am
May 9th, 2007 at 3:21 am
Stunney,
Wait, I think you missed it – it's easy to miss – but I think he did argue a variant of everything is code. It's your anthropocentric and definitional bias that prevents you from seeing the coded systems so frequently found in nature. To wit:
Comment by onething — May 9, 2007 @ 3:21 am
May 9th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Dembski:
eric:
Hi eric,
Yes, Dembski's axioms seem to lead to that conclusion.
If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that we could create CSI without violating Dembski's axioms if:
1) the closed natural system could produce a disembodied intelligence, with no initial CSI required; and
2) the existence of this intelligent agent would change the system from closed to open; and
3) the intelligent agent could then pump gobs of CSI into the natural system.
It's a clever idea, and it does manage to avoid invoking God, but I do see some problems with it:
1. It invokes a completely unknown and unobserved process to create disembodied intelligence via natural causes. It thus pays a heavy price in plausibility.
2. In your proposal, natural causes still effectively generate CSI, though they do so indirectly via a disembodied intelligence. When Dembski claims that undirected natural causes cannot produce CSI, I would take that to mean that it can't happen either directly or indirectly.
3. Your proposal, even if it avoids invoking God, still invokes a disembodied intelligence, which to most scientists (and judges) would put ID squarely in the realm of religion. But this is what ID proponents are trying to avoid in the first place by claiming that ID is free of religious content, if not religious implications.
I think you're right that the multiverse idea is gaining currency, because forms of it seem to solve not only the fine-tuning problem but the problem of quantum gravity as well. About the mind, I think you're wrong. Dualism has never been weaker than it is today, a trend that is continuing with further advances in neuroscience. Dualism is very much a gap argument. As neuroscience progresses, it leaves less and less for a soul or immaterial mind to do.
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 3:46 am
May 9th, 2007 at 6:49 am
Keiths, I've seen you make this arument repeatedly. Noone doubts an association between brain matter and intelligence. If that is all you have you do not have a case.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 6:49 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:09 am
It's a clever idea, and it does manage to avoid invoking God, but I do see some problems with it:
1. It invokes a completely unknown and unobserved process to create disembodied intelligence via natural causes. It thus pays a heavy price in plausibility.
It is a causal elimination model. Who said the intelligence is disembodied? If multiple universes could exist, none of them directly detectable, then an intelligence outside the universe is a reasonable possibility. Unknown and unobserved process? Surely you are referring to abiogenesis.
2. In your proposal, natural causes still effectively generate CSI, though they do so indirectly via a disembodied intelligence. When Dembski claims that undirected natural causes cannot produce CSI, I would take that to mean that it can't happen either directly or indirectly.
Natural forces, directed by intelligence, are no longer undirected natural forces.
3. Your proposal, even if it avoids invoking God, still invokes a disembodied intelligence, which to most scientists (and judges) would put ID squarely in the realm of religion. But this is what ID proponents are trying to avoid in the first place by claiming that ID is free of religious content, if not religious implications.
His proposal invokes a set of logical alternatives. You are making a theological arument when you begin speculating about whether intelligence would be embodied or disembodied. If the intelligence lies outside the universe it is the intelligence that is relevant not the relationship between it and a body. Shame on you for invoking religious concepts into this. Disembodied intelligence is a derivative of Judeo-Christian theological concepts.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 7:09 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Bradford wrote:
Bradford,
It's not just an association between brain and intelligence. It's an association between brain and perception, brain and emotion, brain and memory, brain and will, brain and decision-making ability, brain and language, brain and personality, brain and consciousness, and more.
Damage to the brain can radically alter or impair each of these things. This shows that if there is an immaterial soul, it is not carrying out any of these functions on its own. What is it doing, then? How is it meaningful to talk about such a soul separating from the body at death but retaining the person's personality, memories, and so on?
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 7:14 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Bradford wrote:
Um, Bradford, it was Eric who suggested a disembodied intelligence.
Hey, wait a minute. I see what's going on here. You're trying to convince TP that you and Eric aren't the same person by pretending not to understand Eric's argument.
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 7:22 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:29 am
I understand EAs very well. I grew up with one. EAs like Keiths will contend that there is no evidence in the natural world for the existence of God. Then when they run into arguments, based on natural conditions, that implicate a deity, they cry foul. Rather than dealing with the argument itself they attempt to circumvent it by invoking theological arguments which are eventually linked to an American church/state legal concept to put the final kobosh on it. If Keiths were a lawyer he would ask Judge Jones for an injunction based on a theological argument he invoked. He would then walk out of court proclaiming to his atheist buddies- "see I told you there is no evidence for God." Add hubris to the mix with the comment that "The bad news for Bradford is that I think the same is true of Behe's concept of irreducible complexity." As if what Keiths thinks is a determining factor in judging reality.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 7:29 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Keiths, all you're doing is going beyond an empirical reality in an attempt to make an empirical point. When you can construct an experiment that indicates one way or the other what occurs after death, with respect to the above issue, then get back to us.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 7:33 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Bradford,
How about telling us what the non-material portion of a person's mind does?
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 7:39 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:41 am
He did stress the point that intelligence does not require physical embodiment. In other words exact nature of the link is speculative. So what?
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 7:41 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:43 am
When you set up the experimental conditions, testing your after death claims, I'll give it a go.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 7:43 am
May 9th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Two quotes from somewhat different contexts:
Well, clearly eric has built the intelligence into his definition. You need "someone who can understand what the signal means"; hence, your sundial"”which could just be a pile of rocks that someone notices casts a changing shadow.
According to eric's definition, the level of abstraction does not apply to genomes. There is no "meaning" and no "understanding" in DNA transcription. So his definition applies to a pile of rocks that someone notices, but not to a genome. I proposed a variant definition that requires only source, key and result.
To answer stunney (again), it is plausible for self-replicating molecules to learn how to separate into these functions. For instance, RNA might occasionally code for 'helper' enzymes. Trying to reconstruct the historical process by which this may have happened billions of years ago is problematic. However, there doesn't seem to be any specific barrier to its occurrence as you would suggest.
Touché! Goethe would be proud. Which definition would you prefer? Science or sensation?
Comment by Zachriel — May 9, 2007 @ 7:54 am
May 9th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Hi Vividbleau,
Thank you for your comment and your questions.
You wrote…
Fantastic. Sounds like you are thinking for yourself.
Because humans define the symbol, markings, word, label, etc b-l-a-c-k to mean something. It often means the opposite of the what is meant when we scribble "white" in the dust on the ground. In context, Eric, Stunney, Bradford and others use the term "Coded Information" to mean something. With much noise and back-and-forth debate Zachriel and I have attempted understand what they mean by this term. Based on this, at least in Eric's mind, "Coded Information" conveys the fuzzy idea of intelligence assigning meaning to symbols. Which is fine. He is allowed to define his term. However, it gets interesting when Eric tries to indicate some significance to the concept that "Coded Information" can only come from intelligence. At this point, I say fine, "black is black" in an attempt to provoke understanding that Eric defined his way to a conclusion that doesn't provide evidence of anything other than that Eric is an intelligence assigning meaning to symbols.
I used my sundial/rock example as a tool to try and force this issue. In your case, it looks like the tool may have worked. Unfortunately, others use NOMA to dismiss it as simply my "belief". If you earnestly try to work out the puzzle, I think you end up seeing how you define your way to a solution.
I see two ways to solve the puzzle (there are probably more)"¦
This first way is to define the Sundial/Rock threshold as requiring direct involvement by an intelligent agent. If we borrow some ID terms, the Sundial/Rock threshold could be called "Specified Complexity" and the intelligent agent could be called an "Intelligent Designer". The use of these definitions provides a clear answer to the puzzle. A pile of rocks becomes a sundial the moment an Intelligent Designer walks up and moves a single rock.
A second way to solve the sundial/rock puzzle is to define it "in terms of transcription" (Zachriel tried to explain this). The pile of rocks becomes a sundial the moment an intelligence looks at it and decodes the information it provides. In this case, the "Intelligent Designer" need only be an observer who can decode information (does not need to manipulate anything). And "Specified Complexity" becomes a concept based on the eye of the beholder.
Unfortunately, whenever there is more than one way to look at things there is a tendency for these multiple ideas to get mixed up, especially when the terms used to describe them are identical. All too often, exceptionally preceptive people who can understand these types of subtle distinctions will purposely use words that promote confusion in others, thus giving an illusion they are saying something profound when they are not.
When you add NOMA to the mix, it makes for a very powerful combination. When do definitions and terms become "personal beliefs" I suggest that all the terms we use are personal beliefs. We are constantly adjusting the minor beliefs in an attempt to make them consistent with the more closely-held ones.
That is why I felt the OMA/NOMA concept was so important to get out on the table. Not to resolve it, but the think about it and understand it exists.
Wasn't all of this obvious from my "Black is black" statement?
(I try to avoid being sarcastic, I hope you will forgive this transgression)
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 9, 2007 @ 8:08 am
May 9th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Bradford,
Okay, leave death out of it if you want. What does the non-material portion of a person's mind, the existence of which you so adamantly aver, do while a person is alive?
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 8:31 am
May 9th, 2007 at 8:43 am
I've mentioned this before. A non-material reference could include thought itself and the test for whether there could be a distinction between thought and brain matter involves a timing issue. We are aware of specific biochemical events associated with thought processes. We are also aware that thought processes themselves can entail distinct thoughts or thought patterns. One can introspectively examine his own thought processes with respect to a complex, abstract matter and realize how sequential and different are separate thoughts and thought patterns. A case study would be inherently difficult as it would depend, at least in part, on feedback from the tested individual but if transitions between distinct thoughts preceed the biochemical reactions associated with them then one would have a basis for subsequent hypotheses on thinking and brain biochemistry.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 8:43 am
May 9th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Bradford wrote:
We're all alike to Bradford.
Bradford, do you have a hard time telling Mexicans apart, too?
If you could get past your prejudice, you'd notice that I'm not crying foul because Dembski and Behe's ideas demand the existence of a supernatural designer. I'm crying foul because:
1. Both have publicly acknowledged that ID as science depends on the fall of methodological naturalism.
2. The scientific ideas of both, if true, are not only compatible with the existence of a supernatural designer, but demand it.
3. Yet both of these men, once they realized it was politically expedient, began claiming that ID was agnostic on the issue.
ID critics, including me, deal with Dembski and Behe's arguments all the time. It's not difficult. If you want to start a thread to discuss them, I'll be happy to contribute.
Meanwhile, the argument I am making is that ID proponents who embrace Dembski's and Behe's versions of ID cannot honestly claim that ID is not about the supernatural.
Church/state separation only became an issue when proponents tried to push ID into the public schools, bypassing the process that legitimate scientific ideas go through before being taught at that level.
What IDers should be doing — and what they should have done in the first place — is to develop the theory, do some research, and show the scientific community that the ID paradigm produces useful and valuable scientific results. Once they've done so, they can set about trying to convince the scientific community to relax methodological naturalism and to allow for limited forms of the supernatural. The time to teach ID in the public schools is when the scientific consensus holds that it is good, well-supported science.
And if Bradford were an honest man he would admit that he simply doesn't know what KeithS would do if he were a lawyer.
I backed it up with an argument. If you think it's wrong, show us the flaw. Can you?
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 8:43 am
May 9th, 2007 at 9:01 am
If you could get past your prejudice, you'd notice that I'm not crying foul because Dembski and Behe's ideas demand the existence of a supernatural designer. I'm crying foul because:
1. Both have publicly acknowledged that ID as science depends on the fall of methodological naturalism.
2. The scientific ideas of both, if true, are not only compatible with the existence of a supernatural designer, but demand it.
(I'm glad you are "not crying foul because Dembski and Behe's ideas demand the existence of a supernatural designer.")
The ideas you refer to link intelligence as a causal factor to specific physical phenomenon. This claim, and nothing more, needs to be documented empirically. You make a claim that intelligence invokes a supernatural designer as a set up for subsequent exclusionary American legal arguments. From this point on you are engaged in a theological argument. One can document intelligent causality and not go further. Why? Because intelligence is testable. It is an empirical matter. We don't test for supernatural qualities.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 9:01 am
May 9th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Bradford,
You should read about Benjamin Libet's work, which showed that neural activity associated with a voluntary act precedes conscious awareness of the will to act by hundreds of milliseconds.
As for abstract thought, take a look at this study showing that stroke damage to a particular area impaired the ability of patients to interpret proverbs and metaphors.
Also, see this paper:
Disruption of Right Prefrontal Cortex by Low-Frequency
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Induces
Risk-Taking Behavior
The will to act, abstract thinking, impulse control — all functions of the brain.
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 9:19 am
May 9th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Bradford,
Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know what you see with your "mind's eye" when you talk about the immaterial part (IP) of the mind. If the IP can process and store information, it must have some kind of structure and "moving parts" in a sense, right? Do you imagine some kind of "field"
Perhaps you also believe that "out-of-body" experiences represent observations by the IP while it temporarily "left" the body (whatever it means to say that something immaterial leaves something material). In that case, I wonder how the IP can "see" things. The material kind of seeing involves photons interacting with light-sensitive molecules in the retina (and much more after that of course). How can the IP see if it cannot interact with photons? Well, I assume that it can't because if it could, wouldn't that make it material?
I'd be grateful for any answers you might care to share here.
Comment by Raevmo — May 9, 2007 @ 9:44 am
May 9th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
raevmo wrote:
Raevmo, quite contrary to your implication, it doesn't matter if I do not suggest a definition.
Also, you never know, someone might accuse me of defining it in a way that suited my views if I did. And so I chose not to, so that no-one could accuse me of biasing the case in my favor by carefully choosing a preferred definition. So it's good to see you attacking me for not providing a definition. That way I can also get attacked for biasing the case in my favor by carefully choosing a preferred definition anyway, despite not having given any definition. And hence no matter what I say, your side's manure will still smell of roses.
Isn't that wonderful for your team? You must all be proud of a fantastic achievement. I refer of course to the fact that despite being 'brights' for years, you're still managing to do those superb 'dumb as hell' impressions. They are just so, so convincing.
What matters is this: on your definition of code, have you observed such a thing being generated from a prior non-code via wholly unintentional processes?
Do I need to give you my definitions of certain terms before you know what your definitions of the same terms are, er, going to be? But why, Raevmo?
Again, it would be pointless for me to suggest my own definition, because some delusional nutjobs might wish to say contradictory things about that:
1. I am defining code in my question to mean something that rules out the possibility of codes evolving unintentionally
2. I am not defining code at all, and hence that I should be 'ashamed of myself'.
That's the standard of intellectual honesty and rigor pouring in from your side. It must make you so, so proud of being a 'bright'.
Another example of your side's magnificent talent is when someone requests, while implying that I am reluctant or unable to do so, that I specify hypothetical scenarios which, if observed, I would count as falsifying my belief that codes cannot evolve naturalistically. I then provide two such scenarios. And this draws no comment, until I specifically ask why no comment. Which elicits the comment from your side that in doing as I was asked to, I've shown that my question—–which asked for just one example from your side in recorded history of a code being observed naturalistically evolving from something that was not a code—-was, to coin a phrase, bogus.
Religious believers, being so illogical, might ask, "If it's so bogus, why not cite just one example?" ; Can you imagine a 'bright' asking such a 'silly' question? Heck, those addled-head theists would probably say it's your side's embarrassingly blatant obfuscations that are bogus.
Oh yes, I forgot—the moons of Jupiter can be used by people to set clocks. Is that it? So can Uncle Eddie's first drink of the day.
Raevmo, is your side saying that Smirnov vodka's wave-function is a code for telling the time? I don't mind–and I've said this repeatedly–if your side wants to say moonbeams, or vodka, or the average mass of grains of sand in the Sahara desert are examples of a code. That is perfectly ok. I just want to be clear what are your side's examples actually are. Because what I asked for was an example of an actually observed case of a code unintentionally evolving from a non-code starting point, and if you are citing cases like these, then that's perfectly ok. That would answer my question.
Raevmo, since I know you take great care only to base your beliefs on scientifically sound principles of empirical observtion, I know that you can tell me what you think counts as such a case without that depending in any way on anything I think about anything. Pretend it's Richard Dawkins who's asking you. Pretend it's an 11-year-old who's eager to learn more about the world.
What is your example of an observed case of code evolving unintentionally from non-code,?
Surely you can't be worried about what I might think of your example? Surely the possibility that I might think the example you come up with will reveal you to be irrational, isn't stopping you? You are proud of your atheistic naturalism, not ashamed of it. So of course you're not worried that I might laugh at your answer. But I promise not to anyway. Honest. Well, even if I giggle just a wee bit, I promise not to call any journalists to tell them I did.
So, come on. You don't need my definitions of code. Yours will do just fine.
Oh, hold on…. hold on—-someone wrote this… . Oh no! Apparently I have defined 'things' after all..
I wonder where and when I defined code in that way or in any way at all. Does anybody know? Looks like I've gone and got the 'bright' camp coming and going again, not to mention to-ing and fro-ing, and I've been causing them to perform their superb impression of being intellectual bankrupts who will invent any lie, make up any bullshit, and adopt any contradiction in order to hide the fact that they are, in reality, actually 'brights'. Sorry, guys. I am truly sorry about that.
Here are some definitions anyway, which you can use or reject as you please. You can use any definition you like, or leave the key terms undefined, if you prefer.
But always remember, words mean whatever you wish. That way, you will always be a spendid example of a 'bright'.
Comment by stunney — May 9, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Hey Keith,
Yesterday at 12:50 pm I answered a bit on my thoughts re your argument.
Good questions although you will mostly ask them insincerely. It seems doubtful that the personality is identical with the soul, or that the personality really survives death. Obviously, while we are embodied, there is a different set of processes going on than when not. When you're in the body, most of your perceptions are filtered through the brain. That's what it's for.
A lot of your questions would make more sense if you considered that the soul is not immaterial, and God is not supernatural.
Generally, the line of questioning about these matters from those of your mindset hinges on why are they so hard to pin down, and why so elusive, and so inconsistent, and so generally not just like the rest of solid matter that fits easily within the purview of your 5 bodily senses. But it's simple really. There are aspects of reality that do NOT easily fit within the perceptive range of your 5 bodily senses. In this day and age, that should seem like the next logical step. We have already discovered so much, such as the electromagnetic spectrum and one-celled organsms, and atoms, and quantum events, which are outside the purview of the 5 bodily senses. Do you assume that we have in this year of our Lord 2007, gotten to the bottom of the subtleties of our universe?
ESP, but it's not immaterial.
i can easily agree that if an object is coming toward my face, my autonomous nervous system will begin the process of blinking or lifting my arms before I am consciously aware. But are you suggesting that if I say, Oh, I think I'd like to rent a movie tonight, that it was my neural activity that made the decision without my will?
Bradford,
No doubt, but in this case you responded as if Keith were arguing about ID versus NDE, whereas he was arguing that the logical implications of Dembski's ideas lead only to God and not to anything less.
Comment by onething — May 9, 2007 @ 1:55 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Hi Stunney,
By any reasonable code of ethics, including American Contract Law, you relinquished any negotiated offers that occured prior to you stating…
You rejected my offer by making a counter-offer that I accepted with…
"The book [Contact] described a search for coded information in natural properties like the number PI. At the end of the book, they found it (a picture of a circle).
Another hypothetical example would be to find encoded information in the universe's or galaxy's electromagnetic background noise.
Now these are two hypothetical examples I offer. I suspect that you could offer more. And I urge you to do so. It would be the ethical thing to do, considering that you were the one doing the asking. I would be interested to see if you could come up with an example that doesn't exposure your challenge for what it is, an assumption of the conclusion you wish to make."
No promises made. No counter offer on my part. I am satisfied that any implied contract has been fulfilled and am quite pleased with the results.
I am not surprised that you are unhappy and are now trying to renegotiate.
Excuse me for not being sympathetic.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 9, 2007 @ 2:00 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
onething wrote:
Hi onething,
Thanks for the response.
No, but as I explained to Bradford, the validity of the design inference is a separate argument. Here I am just arguing about ID's relation to the supernatural.
Not random chemical interactions. Structured chemical reactions in an intricate brain. Don't confuse random with undirected.
Assume Dembski's axioms are true, apply nothing but logic, and you arrive at the conclusion that if Dembski is right, there must be a supernatural designer. To deliberately ignore that conclusion is to act contrarily to the spirit of science. It's also just a little too obvious why, after insisting that we all "follow the evidence, wherever it leads," politically-minded ID supporters suddenly become incurious about identifying the designer(s).
That depends on your definitions of 'natural' and 'supernatural', of course. But for most people, the name 'God' refers to an infinitely powerful, unembodied intelligence which created the natural world. You can easily see why they consider 'natural' and 'supernatural' to be separate categories, and why they place God in the latter.
Again, you're using 'random' when I think you really mean 'undirected.'
I would argue that when an animal "interferes" with nature, what's really happening is that one collection of atoms (the animal) is interacting with another collection of atoms (the environment), with the atoms in both collections strictly following the laws of physics at all times.
If you mean that I'm not expecting anyone to come up with good answers for what an immaterial soul might be doing, you're right. If you think that means I'm not going to carefully consider any answers I get, you're wrong.
I agree that if there is an immaterial soul, the evidence strongly suggests that it is not the seat of personality (or emotion, or consciousness, etc.). But those are fighting words to most people who believe in the soul. They want to believe that all of these things survive death intact.
But I don't think personality, for example, is elusive. We all have a strong idea of what it is and how it differs from person to person. We can recognize it when it changes drastically, as it did for Phineas Gage after his accident.
Of course not. But the evidence we have in 2007 is enough to show that an immaterial soul, if it exists at all, does not carry out the functions that have been traditionally ascribed to it for centuries.
It's more accurate to say that your brain had already made the decision before you became consciously aware of it. But it was still your will making the decision.
Libet's experiment is a classic, and worth discussing at length. I'll do so in a later comment.
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
stunney:
That's a clever rhetorical trick. Not defining your premises, so no-one can detect a non-sequitur. Which of your philosophy professors taught you this ingenious technique?
Let's stick with this definition you gave, which I also gave above:
Let's try this: the genetic code is a set of rules that says how triplets of nucleotides correspond to unique amino acids. More abstractly: chemical A-B catalyzes the production of chemical C-D, where A and B are nucleotide triplets, C and D amino acids, and "-" the "covalent bond operator". Even more abstractly: chemistry is a code that tells us how atomical arrangement X is converted to atomical arrangement Y. Where is the intentionality in that? Of course one could reason all the way down to the fundamental constants and claim that this is an intentional code. But assertions that are offered without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
Comment by Raevmo — May 9, 2007 @ 4:08 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
All,
Here is Susan Blackmore's description of Benjamin Libet's classic study Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. It shows that the decision to perform an action precedes conscious awareness of the decision by hundreds of milliseconds.
The account is taken from Blackmore's wonderful book, Consciousness: An Introduction.
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Bradford,
If every human has a single immaterial soul, how do you explain the following phenomena?
A thick bundle of fibers known as the corpus callosum connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Certain epileptic patients, known as split-brain patients, have had the corpus callosum surgically severed in order to control their seizures (although I believe there are better treatments now, so that the operation is no longer practiced).
While they seem, at least superficially, to be normal, these patients exhibit some bizarre characteristics when tested.
Recall that the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right half of the body, and vice-versa. Also recall that the left hemisphere receives visual input from the right half of the visual field and the right nostril; for the right hemisphere, it is reversed. Finally, remember that the left hemisphere dominates speech.
These facts allow certain very interesting tests to be performed on split-brain patients. A word or image flashed in the left half of the visual field is only visible to the right hemisphere, and vice-versa. In the same way, a smell directed into the left nostril will be perceived only by the right hemisphere.
In a normal person, this matters very little, because the hemispheres constantly share information via the intact corpus callosum. In a split-brain patient, however, there is no way for the information to get from one hemisphere to the other. The left hemisphere literally does not know what the right hemisphere is thinking, and vice-versa.
Torin Alter describes some split-brain phenomena:
Susan Blackmore describes "anarchic hand" syndrome:
Bradford, what is the immaterial soul doing in all of these cases? Does the soul smell the garlic or not? Does it see a pen or a knife? Does it want to undo the button, or to do it up?
Folks, if this issue matters to you, you need to get out and familiarize yourself with what modern neuroscience has learned, and what it continues to learn at a breakneck pace. It's startling, amazing, and sometimes unsettling.
The case for an immaterial soul has never been weaker.
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
A double standard and selective pursuit of evidence trails aptly describes the appproach of EAs to science and religion. For years prominent atheists like Sagan, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett have used selective scientific data to advance a non-scientific agenda. And they get away with it. There are many times more their number of non-celebrity EAs who follow in their wake. The "not God" position is every bit as religious as the position that God exists and should be subject to the same legal remedies.
As Heddle pointed out in this same thread although cosmological arguments for God are strong and have apologetic value he would not use them as scientific supports. I agree. While I personally consider them evidence for non-scientific religious and philosophical views I make a distinction between what scientific data actually says and my extrapolations beyond the data. I have no problem stating who I believe the designer to be but at the same time do not present my view in the name of science. That is not a political move but rather one that affirms the integrity of differing fields of discipline.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Keiths and Raevmo, I'll respond to issues raised by you after I have had a chance to read the references supplied.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Hi Thought Provoker. Hi Raevmo.
TP, we both came up with hypothetical examples of codes evolving from non-codes naturalistically. You came up with yours. I came up with mine.
But here's the thing: my question asked, not whether anyone can, or has come up, with hypothetical examples of codes evolving unintentionally from non–codes; but rather, whether anyone actually has observed an actual code actually evolving unintentionally from a non-code.
Do you see the difference?
So, let me suggest it's your self-satisfaction that's bogus, not my question.
Raevmo wrote:
I called attention to the blatant contradiction in your side's complaints that I was both defining and not defining codes–and you accuse me of perpetrating a rhetorical trick?
Wow. Wow, Raevmo. Wow.
What science professor taught you that there's no depth of rational inconsistency, rank intellectual hypocrisy, nor gratuitously fabricated allegation to which you should not sink if you need to shore up your position?
I asked a question, Raevmo. I asked for an actually observed—not merely hypothesized—but actually observed example (you know–the kind of observation that inductive inference uses) of a code forming unintentionally from a prior non-code basis.
This was your answer when you finally gave one:
Ok, so may I take it that you observed the formation of DNA code? Just how old are you, because I would have guessed you are much younger than the DNA code. But perhaps I am mistaken.
Oh, by the way, how DNA code came to be; in particular whether it happened with or without intentional agency is one of the things at issue. So one shouldn't beg the question, since to do so is a logical fallacy. I don't ever claim that I observed God or any other intelligent designer intentionally producing the DNA code. So how can you claim that you observed it being produced unintentionally?
Still, let's pretend for a moment that I am Richard Dawkins, and I ask: "Raevmo, can you tell me if you think codes will evolve from non-codes in the future?" Suppose you answer yes. Would that be because lots of codes have been observed to have unintentionally evolved from non-codes in the past?
In other words, would your reasoning be inductive?
I ask because in my first post in this thread, this was what I asked:
————
When we observe all the things that are in the set of code-lacking entities or 'codeless stuff', do we EVER observe ANY of them ACQUIRING a CODE by UNINTENTIONAL processes? I believe the intuitive, and factually correct answer is unequivocally and resoundingly"¦. NO. This gives friends of ID a very powerful inductively justified position.
Then I wrote:
When we look around, do we EVER observe ANYTHING generating a CODE by means of an INTENTIONAL PROCESS?
I believe the intuitive and factually correct answer is unequivocally and resoundingly"¦ YES
Then I wrote
When we look around, do we EVER observe ANYTHING generating a novel lifeform INTENTIONALLY?
I believe the intuitive and factually correct answer is unequivocally and resoundingly"¦ YES.
For instance, botanists, animal breeders, and agriculturalists. Maybe bacteriologists too, though I must admit I'm not very au courant of the latest research in biological weaponry aimed at mass destruction.
So this gives friends of ID a yet more powerful inductively justified position.
———–
In other words, I argued on inductive grounds:
that we see intentional processes frequently producing codes from non-codes, and unintentional processes never doing so, unless we happen to be even older than the DNA code itself, which may well be the case if you are an alien from another planet or a human time-traveler, but less likely if you are neither of these.
So, Raevmo, are you:
a) an alien
b) a human time-traveler
or
c) none of the above
Oh, and by the way, my question did ask for examples of code arising from non-code unintentionally. In your answer you referred to chemistry code as being what DNA code arose out of. So, that's not strictly an answer to the question I posed.
However, I will hereby stipulate that prebiotic Earth chemistry = non-code for the purposes of answering my question. It is indeed the kind of thing I predicted would happen—that you would start calling prebiotic stuff codestuff: that's the 'It's magicmatter because it's got magiccode all the way down" kind of answer I presumed would be forthcoming.
But, unless you are an alien or human time-traveler, may I take it that you personally, Raevmo, do not know of any code evolving unintentionally from any non-code, again stipulating that a 'non-code' here means anthing that is neither chemistry code nor DNA code; but that, by contrast, you do know of cases of intentionally generated codes?
No need to answer if you find the question intellectually discomfiting in any way. Mainly because I don't think I could live with myself knowing that I had given any mental discomfort for a 'bright'.
Truly, you 'brights' are a very special breed, fully deserving of special treatment.
Comment by stunney — May 9, 2007 @ 5:56 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Keith,
No, I was referring to results of undirected forces as in biological evolution. IOW, can we expect a code like DNA to form without intelligent input. Speaking to the ID inference. As to random versus undirected, no I have not considered them very different.
You speak as though there was some historic moment when ths occurred. When the "ID movement" had a strategy meeting. But Behe and Dembski, as Christians, ought to have a series of thoughts that lead to theism in their worldview and to have written about it. However, they don't own ID, and there are agnostics as well as people who have rather far-out or just rather blank notions of what sort of bizarreness might underlie this reality we find ourselves in.
No one ever said the implications might not be theological. But nonetheless, as Eric pointed out, can we legitimately engage in a line in inquiry as to what can and cannot be expected from random and/or undirected forces versus intelligent and intentional ones? The question stands, and it would be really, really weird for the answer to be: the same sorts of results can be expected.
No doubt then, his axioms cannot be true, oh what interesting times we live in! Things are heatin' up.
Yeah, I know, but if you really think about it, God must be the source of all existence, and no matter how it happens the natural world is an emanation of God. No real separation. The religious suffer from the same delusion as the atheists – at least in the west. It matters not how powerful or unembodied He-She is.
I would argue that if God creates or alters something within what I call the Totality that collections of atoms are being rearranged within the laws of physics at all times.
Oh, I hope so; it's pretty hard to do though.
Yes, the personality is very much engaged with the body, its digestion, hormones, health, personal memories, and of course brain integrity.
Oh?
Certainly this shows that all is not as it seems, something the Hindus have been telling us for millenia. I don't find this study all that surprising! What it tells me is that our conscious minds are the tip of the iceberg, and we really know that already. I'm not so good at googling up references, but I've certainly read enough about how the brain filters reality down to a small and manageable portion. Just how and what kind of filtering gets done is alterable with, well, mind altering substances. Where the soul and the subconscious intereact may be here. So the person thinks they made a conscious decision, and really it was below the level of awareness, which really makes sense, since we are qutie slow up here on the surface of reality where our 5 senses live.
Comment by onething — May 9, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Correct. Going from natural processes to intelligence to CSI in that order would not violate his axioms.
I will reemphasize that I am not bringing this up as an advocate. I make no claims as to its truth or plausibility. I only point it out because you were interested in looking for holes in your two arguments, and I believe this is a logical hole in both of them.
Thanks, but I wouldn't say its clever. Its just a matter of checking the picky details of what each claim in the chain actually claims/requires, and observing a hole.
Something "completely unknown and unobserved" — exactly like invoking fantastically huge numbers of sibling universes. Or a mindless, natural process that invents symbolic codes such as the genetic code. Hmm, "a heavy price in plausibility", you say. Definitely a point worth considering seriously.
I would take his math to only mean that "directly" is excluded. I don't see any way to get an exclusion of natural processes to intelligence from his axioms or his math. As far as I can see, it's just not there. How could it do so? It requires an "Intelligence requires CSI" premise, but where would that come from? If you see it, please point it out.
I leave as an open question whether "most scientists (and judges)" are able to think clearly about such matters rather than to rely on unscrutinized stereotypes.
Suppose for a moment, just for the sake of discussion, that humans do continue to exist after death as a disembodied intelligence. Does that imply we must worship such persons? Does that in itself require that God exists?
An uncareful analysis might say "Religion talks about spirits, therefore the idea of a spirit or anything like it is inherently religious." But that is faulty logic. "Religion talks about X" does not require "To talk about X one must invoke (or even believe) a religion." Religion does not Only discuss things that can Only be understood via religion.
In particular, the hypothetical disembodied intelligence(s) is/are postulated as the result of unguided natural processes. So by definition, they do not have a supernatural origin in this hypothesis.
Let me clarify my point. I'm sure that Denyse O'Leary would say your assessment is incorrect, but really it doesn't matter at all how strong or weak the case is for Dualism or whether our intelligence is in any sense non-physical. It is not our intelligence that preceded the genetic code.
My point is that the realization that the genetic code required intelligence will become inescapable. The more we learn about how matter really behaves, the more evident it becomes that mindless matter cannot implement a symbolic code.
The question will inevitably become "What intelligence?", with the main options being
a) Intelligence from beyond the universe, or
b) Intelligence from within the universe (i.e. the above).*
BTW, even the original book The Mystery of Life's Origin acknowledged both of those two possibilities in the Epilogue discussion of the possible scenarios (along with others that attempted answers without intelligence). So besides not requiring being especially "clever" on my part, I did not come up with the idea. It is quite old.
*p.s. Consequently, those who prefer to reject (a) will be forced into (b).
Comment by eric — May 9, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Hi Stunney,
You wrote…
I believe it is quite clear to anyone following this thread that you asking a question that can't be answered (i.e. bogus).
Actual code could be actually evolving unintentionally every minute of every day, but without a common set of OMA definitions we can't say one way or another.
Let's try a test you won't take…
Jupiter's moons indicating the time of day – Coded Information?
Rocks casting shadows indicating the time of day – Coded Information?
Shadows decoded by a human for the time of day – Coded Information?
Rocks arranged by a human wanting the time of day – Coded Information?
Sundial created by a human wanting the time of day – Coded Information?
Watch created by a human wanting the time of day – Coded Information?
GPS satellites broadcasting time of day binary data – Coded Information?
Thank you for the opportunaty to review the reason for my self-satisfaction.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 9, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Bradford wrote:
James Randi wrote:
Comment by keiths — May 9, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
The "not God" position is every bit as religious as the position that God exists and should be subject to the same legal remedies.
A better analogy relates to a belief rather than an activity. The negation of the belief that non-coding DNA is junk or without value as well as the affirmative position are both encompassed by virology and genetics among other things. The opposite of attention to the existence of God question is indifference. There are many in this category who could care less about either a belief in God or atheism.
Comment by Bradford — May 9, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Hi TP.
You wrote:
Then how on earth was it possible for Raevmo to answer it?
Yes, it could very well be doing that, TP—for all we know, as you point out with such blinding brilliance. But my question was: had it actually doing so…. ever been…. you know…. actually observed?
Do you see the difference?
I thought you 'brights' prided yourself on tying yourself to theories that made falsifiable observational predictions the number one commandment of epistemology.
Were you lying? Or were you confused? Or were you wrong?
Or were you just steeping your collective self in an egregious display of rank and blatant intellectual (and moral) hypocrisy?
Wrong! I bloody well will take it!
Here goes:
No.
No.
No.
Yes.
Yes.
You forgot to ask me about the wave-equation of Smirnov vodka and Uncle Eddie's first drink of the day.
The answer to that one is: No.
TP, You are confusing two different things, as I have already explained more than once.
One is information. The other is codified information.
A human mind can observe Jupiter's moons, and garner information they provide about what time it is. But Jupiter's moons do not codify the information nor transmit it using a code. Likewise, a pile of cow dung in a field provides information to a cowboy that there may very well have been a cow at that location in the recent past. A pile of cow dung however, is not codified information. It's information alright–but it is not transmitted using a code.
Now, remember, I predicted that the answer from your camp would render the concept of code meaningless by simply declaring that everything was code-stuff because everything was information.
And by golly, how right I was.
I've asserted many times at TT that there's no informationless stuff. But unless you are going to collapse the concepts of information and codes into each other, then you can't answer the question I posed because the question distinguishes codes from non-codes.
If you think we can't or shouldn't distinguish codes from non-codes, just say so, instead of making a foolish spectacle of yourself. That's no way for a 'bright' to behave. Just say: "It's all codes all the way down", for pete's sake. If it's what you really believe, proclaim it without shame, and without worrying that there may be a theist who's rolling on the floor laughing his ass off at you.
I'll be delighted to read of your forthcoming article demonstrating cow dung, Smirnov vodka, Jupiter's moons and DNA are all examples of codified information—with which you will certainly earn your Nobel prize.
And please accept my congratulations on both the Nobel award and your self-satisfaction, however premature in both cases.
That a mind of such embarrassing mediocrity as yours can be so successful in achieving public recognition and personal self-esteem gives hope, I'm sure, to many, many people.
So, score another one for the 'brights', everyone.
Comment by stunney — May 9, 2007 @ 8:34 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
What is a code? – revisited. Earlier I provided a definition of a code based on the most applicable definitions in Merriam-Webster. (The word is still out on whether Merriam-Webster is secretly a co-conspirator in the ID movement.)
I made a point of clarifying that an assigned meaning for a symbol is "an arbitrary association" and I specifically illustrated how this definition does apply to the particular case of the genetic code, including the key fact that the assignments of symbolic codes to meanings is arbitrary, not essential.
In spite of this, Zachriel later complains "According to eric's definition, the level of abstraction does not apply to genomes. … So his definition applies to a pile of rocks that someone notices, but not to a genome." while Thought Provoker initially complained about my discussion of the genetic code instance that "At best, this is a side issue." So it seems my illustration was simultaneously insufficiently explicit for Zachriel, while being unnecessarily excessive for Thought Provoker. Meanwhile, both are claiming that the definition builds an assumption of intelligent origins for the code into the definition, which would indeed be question-begging and illegitimate, if it were true.
Nevertheless, the definition does not assume the source of the code must be intelligent — not at any point. Note that the definition says "A code assigns meanings to sequences…". The code itself is this arbitrary matching between symbols and meanings. By its nature, that is what a code is. The definition does not say "an intelligent agent assigns meanings…". If Zachriel is correct concerning the future of abiogensis, then we may yet discover that unguided natural processes formed the various assignments between symbolic codes and meanings (e.g. between codons and amino acids).
Zachriel was also troubled by another statement of mine (to Thought Provoker):
My repeated point is that you need all those aspects to implement symbolic information processing, including decoding as well as encoding. Zachriel seized upon the fact that I referred back to the example [Zachriel, please note the "e.g."] of the signal fire:
While the signal fire example does indeed involve humans with intelligence (as will be true for most examples of codes), I included it specifically because it had been previously touched upon by stunney as an example.
Zachriel missed the fact that I never made "understanding" in the conscious conceptual sense any part of the definition of a code. Check the definition I gave. It is part of this particular example of decoding because people are understanding a signal fire. The decoding mechanism in my list does not require conceptual understanding as a necessary attribute.
Meanwhile, the idea that "There is no "meaning" … in DNA transcription." is incorrect. The codons certainly do have meaning. If they did not, it would not be a code and decoding would be impossible. Recall that it was Zachriel who also wrote:
If symbols did not have a meaning, then decoding would be impossible. The code (in this case the genetic codes) associates the meanings with the symbols. That is what a code is.
To avoid even a subtle appearance of an improper assumption of purposeful intelligence as the source of a code, I will revise my previous definition to replace "purpose" with "function".
Whether unguided natural resources are the source of the genetic code and the associated symbolic information is an open question, as far as the definition of a symbolic code goes. The answer to that question should be determined by the evidence. There is no question begging involved in the definition.
Finally, as for a sundial or a watch, the gears of a watch are not a code, no matter how intricate. They are merely a mechanism. Likewise, a shadow on a sundial is not a code. But the markings on the faces of either are indeed codes. X may means 10:00 or 10 may mean the same, but neither is required. Those are conventions of a code that associates meanings with symbols.
Comment by eric — May 9, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Zachriel wrote:
Wow. What an astonishing revelation.
Who knew?
Did anyone know that?
Still, let's just assume, like good 'brights', that it's not problematic for naturalism, even without the benefit of any observational inductive evidence for the proposition that every time you get long past Earth-like chemistry, DNA code will form via unintentional processes.
Because 'brights' only ever go by repeated observational evidence. You see, that's what makes them, ahem, 'brights'.
I think any rational person will agree that 'brights' are the 'brightest' lumps of meat ever observed.
Comment by stunney — May 9, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Hi Stunney and Eric,
Thank you both for your reasoned and reasonable responses. I am somewhat surprised and impressed.
It looks like I have a bit of a dilema, Stunney appears to be embracing the concept that coded information is dependent on an intelligent agent, whereas Eric has rejected it.
Stunney says that rocks arranged by a human wanting the time of day creates coded information.
Eric appears to indicate that not even watches do that. He was silent on GPS satellites.
It is interesting that Stunney has settled into what I think of as the standard Intelligent Designer mindset with Eric having the non-standard opinion. I would have expected the opposite.
Stunney, I don't think we have much left to argue about. My two hypothetical examples of "naturally" occuring coded information is the type of thing you are looking for and, no, I don't have any actual examples. You appear to believe DNA is the result of an intelligent agent. I wish you the best of luck in your scientific efforts to find evidence supporting that. If and when you put together an OMA model, let me know and we can compare your model against my ID proposal.
Eric,
Your new "code" definition is…
And you have provided some clarification. Specifically
I meant to say something about that. I guess in 20/20 hindsight I should have. Using the word you are defining in your definition leads to the type of problem you ran into. Dictionaries don't do that for a reason. And, BTW, I don't mind dictionaries at all.
Merriam-Webstercode: 3a : a system of signals or symbols for communication
b : a system of symbols (as letters or numbers) used to represent assigned and often secret meanings
Something else I noted earlier and didn't say anything about was the subtle downplay of the signals aspect of the definition. But I don't mind a little tailoring as long as it is above board.
Let's change the definition to…
Thought Provoker
code:
1 : a system of symbols used to represent assigned meanings
2 : a system of symbols or markers used for storing, conveying or communicating meaning.
I trust this meets with your approval since you made a rather large deal about basing things on dictionary definitions, twice.
You still have the problem of who or what assigned the meaning. Saying the code does is circular definition along with circular logic. Zachriel and I were being kind and assuming you were committing only one fallacy, not two.
You have clarified that…
Ok to a point. But something or someone must assign meaning. For now, let's label that the Assigning Agent (which could also be a process).
I am going to pause here and let you comment on things so far because I really don't want to continue until I see if you are going to disagree with these basic foundations. I have one question at this point (if you would be so kind as to answer it).
Are GPS satellites broadcasting "code" or not in your opinion?
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 9, 2007 @ 10:48 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
I pointed to the precise statement I took issue with. It concerns *any* information processing system.
I'm rather surprised by your comments. Let me point to an even more specific word in your statement, "someone". Not just anyone, but "someone who can understand". Not just "comprehend the meaning", but the "intended meaning".
There is no way to read your statement except that you have included intentional agency in your description of *any* information processing system.
Let's look at your most recent statement.
Simply, a code is a rule for converting information. We have a source, a key, and a result. The source and the result may or may not be semantically "meaningful". If by "communicate", you mean in the sense of transmission or replication, that's ok.
Please keep in mind that my other general comments were based on the intuitive notion of code. Others had requested a more precise definition. I hope you found the exercise to be of some value.
Anyway, I have already agreed that there are no *such* coding systems that are directly observed to spontaneously assemble. (Of course, there are no direct observations of a living T. Rex either.) However, as I previously stated "there is some evidence that the genetic code evolved through a process of specialization of sequence and enzyme". While "no one claims to have a complete theory of abiogenesis or of how life Exited the RNA World."
–
Meanwhile, I note you didn't attempt to answer my questions.
You point to a perceived similarity between coded information in genomes and in human languages. Fine. That has the makings of a speculation. So speculate!
But now try to form a valid scientific hypothesis. What are the empirical implications of that idea? What do we test for? I have my magnifying glass and notepad at the ready.
Comment by Zachriel — May 9, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
May 9th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Some google on the DNA code–
That DNA contained at least one code was realized as soon as the molecule's structure was discovered. That code, cracked in the 1950s and 1960s, parses passages of DNA into threeletter combinations that correspond to particular amino acids. This is a code in the strictest sense; input determines output. But researchers now know that there are numerous other layers of biological information in DNA, interspersed between, or superimposed on, the passages written in the triplet code. … These are the codes that computer buffs such as Shepherd want to crack with raw processing power "¦ [M]any stretches of DNA in humans and other organisms manage to multi task: a sequence can code for a protein and still manage to guide the position of a nucleosome.
(Helen Pearson, "Genetic information Codes and enigmas," Nature, 444:259 (Nov. 16, 2006).)
There is abundant evidence that most DNA sequences are poly-functional…For example, most human coding sequences encode for two different RNAs, read in opposite direction s(i.e. Both DNA strands are transcribed…Some sequences encode for different proteins depending on where translation is initiated and where the reading frame begins (i.e. read-through proteins). Some sequences encode for different proteins based upon alternate mRNA splicing. Some sequences serve simultaneously for protein-encoding and also serve as internal transcriptional promoters. Some sequences encode for both a protein coding, and a protein-binding region.
Basically all DNA sequences are constrained by isochore requirements (regional GC content), "word" content (species-specific profiles of di-, tri-, and tetra-nucleotide frequencies), and nucleosome binding sites (i.e. All DNA must condense). Selective condensation is clearly implicated in gene regulation, and selective nucleosome binding is controlled by specific DNA sequence patterns – which must permeate the entire genome. Lastly, probably all sequences do what they do, even as they also affect general spacing and DNA-folding/architecture – which is clearly sequence dependent. To explain the incredible amount of information which must somehow be packed into the genome (given that extreme complexity of life), we really have to assume that there are even higher levels of organization and information encrypted within the genome. For example, there is another whole level of organization at the epigenetic level (Gibbs 2003). There also appears to be extensive sequence dependent three-dimensional organization within chromosomes and the whole nucleus (Manuelides, 1990; Gardiner, 1995; Flam, 1994). Trifonov (1989), has shown that probably all DNA sequences in the genome encrypt multiple "codes" (up to 12 codes).
Comment by onething — May 9, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 12:32 am
James Randi supposedly said,
If atheism is a lack of belief in God, then baldness is a lack of belief in hair.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 10, 2007 @ 12:32 am
May 10th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Susan Blackmore wrote:
I'm familiar with this argument and its obvious logical defects.
Let's say there is no Cartesian soul. (NB–This is consistent with my own belief that a human being is probably just one substance, which has both mental and nonmental properties, with some at least of the mental properties being irreducible to the nonmental properties.)
Let's say Libet's data are accurate.
The purported evidence is that brain does A before consciouness does B.
But….
1) If brain activity is the cause of a different action from the action caused by the activity of consciousness, Libet's data are irrelevant to the question of which thing—-brain activity or conscious activity—had temporal priority with respect to being potential candidates for causing the same action.
Let's say a hangover headache yesterday causally contributed to my thinking today that I would deliberately delay following Libet's instructions. How would Libet's experiment detect this?
2) But let's waive that and stipulate that brain state A definitely precedes conscious state B in a way that is relevant to explaining the same action. How could we know this except by the reports of conscious subjects? Let's assume we have those reports and they are honest. But why assume that the actual timing of a conscious state entails any ability to report or signal its timing accurately? If I'm drinking a bottle of great wine and love how it tastes, there's no reason to assume that I will therefore have the ability to signal or otherwise report that it tastes great at any time after I have the experience of how great it tastes, let alone a very short time.
It may take me years to become able to signal accurately how wonderful it tasted.
Comment by stunney — May 10, 2007 @ 12:54 am
May 10th, 2007 at 6:42 am
I wrote:
onething replied:
I don't know if there was any particular meeting or moment when Behe, Dembski et al. decided to begin pretending that ID was not about religion. What is clear is that they earlier acknowledged that ID, as science, was about the supernatural; that they later started denying this; and that the denials seemed to coincide with attempts to get ID into public school curricula.
But notions that are merely far-out or blank don't qualify as science. However unsuccessfully, Dembski and Behe were at least trying to present something that would be acceptable to the scientific community.
If you ditch Behe and Dembski, what does ID have left? Only the fine-tuning argument, as far as I can tell.
I'm afraid you'll have to get used to the weirdness. All the latest evidence suggests that intelligence and intentionality are based fundamentally on undirected natural processes.
I wrote:
onething:
As I showed above, if you reject any of his axioms, you eviscerate the theory. Sounds like things are coolin' down in that case.
Somehow, given your moniker, I'm not surprised to hear you say that.
If there is a God, then it may be possible to speak of a unified reality encompassing him and his creation. However, it is still useful to distinguish between natural and supernatural. Emanations are not identical to the Emanator.
Yet all of the studies I cited are extremely threatening to the standard Christian worldview, which posits a single immaterial soul per body as a vehicle for personhood.
The problem is not so easy. What about the split-brain cases I described? Does the soul cleave to match the bifurcated brain?
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 6:42 am
May 10th, 2007 at 7:01 am
A handful of municipal school districts in a nation of 300 million? So I was right. Criticism of empirical attempts to establish intelligent design, by conflating it with the supernatural, are strategies to exploit the church/state doctrine of the American legal system.
Spoken like one who does not bother to read the views of other IDists. Do all Mexicans look alike to you?
Only if you truncate the evidence trail. If not intelligence and intentionality, like all other traits linked to biological organisms, are the end product of what took place at life's origin
Only in your own mind. A spirit can be distinct from a body it is linked to. Unless you have that after death experiment prepared you are in no position to empirically refute this.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 7:01 am
May 10th, 2007 at 7:50 am
If you think you can teach an idea that requires the existence of disembodied intelligences in public school science classrooms, you're welcome to try. My point is that most scientists hold to methodological naturalism, so they will reject such a view as unscientific — which means that most judges will as well.
ID supporters know this, which is why people like Dembski and Behe have reversed themselves and now deny any necessary link between ID and the supernatural.
The question isn't whether they have a supernatural origin; it's whether they're supernatural.
You are underestimating the potential of "mindless matter" when it is engaged in a Darwinian process.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 7:50 am
May 10th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Source, key, result. However, the key doesn't have to be a naive cypher. More properly it is an algorithm.
Now, there is something peculiar we observe concerning genetic codes compared to human codes. A human code has a source. Using a key, there is a result. The result is then communicated. A reverse key (and if it is not a naive cipher, then the reverse key may not be the same as the original key) is used to revert the resultant back into the original source.
In the genetic code, we have processes that decode the genotype into the resultant phenotype. But there is no process to turn that process around. There is no encoding process observed. In fact, genomes are typically replicated without change, or with very little change called mutations. And these mutations can be shown to be largely similar to random copying errors. It is known that these mutations can create significant and occasionally beneficial change in the phenotype, and when this happens, it may be passed on through the lineage. It can be shown through investigation of the genome that the "encoding" process was an historical process of ad hoc evolutionary change"”including Common Descent. There are some clues as to how the code itself evolved from even more primitive replicators; such as that the genetic code is not random, but due to chemical affinities and optimization for transcription reliability.
* An analysis of the metabolic theory of the origin of the genetic code
* The case for an error minimizing standard genetic code.
* Exiting an RNA world
* Evolution of Amino Acid Frequencies in Proteins Over Deep Time
Comment by Zachriel — May 10, 2007 @ 7:51 am
May 10th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
What about me? I have an ID proposal, here. I don't even speak Spanish or Mexican or whatever language "IDsts" are supposed to speak.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 10, 2007 @ 7:53 am
May 10th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Hi Vladimir Krondan,
You wrote…
This is either incredably poor come back or you have one interesting definition of "atheism" Atheism means God's abandonment causes disbelief?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 10, 2007 @ 8:29 am
May 10th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Regarding Libet's results, stunney wrote:
Apparently not. Your critique is inapplicable. See below.
That was the point of averaging the EEG data over 40 tries. Averaging brings out the data associated with the action; the rest washes out.
Delaying wouldn't affect the results. Remember, the instructions were for the subject to flex her wrist when she wanted to.
The only way the subjects could screw up the experiment would be for all of them to deliberately lie about the position of the spot of light on the screen. But to make the lie "stick", they would have to
1) misreport the position using the same offset each time;
2) report the position accurately for the control trials.
Unless you can show that there was a secret conspiracy among all of the experimental subjects, all of whom were skilled enough to cheat using a consistent offset, then your objection carries no weight.
We don't. The key is that we don't judge the time of B by the time we receive the report from the subject; the subject reports the time of B relative to the position of the light spot on the clock dial.
It doesn't matter how long it takes for the subject to respond. He could wait five minutes if he wanted to. What matters is the perceived position of the light spot at the time of B, when the subject made the conscious decision to act.
Because humans are accurate judges of simultaneity. If someone next to you hits a nail with a hammer, you see and hear the impact at the same time.
Again, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to report it. What matters is what else you were perceiving at the moment you decide the wine tastes great.
You might want to go back and reread Blackmore's description of the experiment, perhaps drawing some diagrams this time to help you understand exactly what is going on.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 8:46 am
May 10th, 2007 at 9:00 am
The encoding process occurred at the outset of life. It has been passed on through countless generations since then.
Correct. This is a consequence of extensive DNA damage detection and repair mechanisms which are good evidence of design.
Some are. Others can be attributed to radiation and environmental chemical exposure, oxidation effects of cellular metabolism, alkylation, deamination and methylation break downs.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 9:00 am
May 10th, 2007 at 9:14 am
The evidence strongly indicates that while the code itself is ancient, the 'message was encoded' over a long period of time by ad hoc evolutionary processes, and that this process is on-going.
They are generally random with respect to environmental needs. Most mutations are neutral, some are detrimental, a few are beneficial. It depends on the environment the organism finds itself in.
Comment by Zachriel — May 10, 2007 @ 9:14 am
May 10th, 2007 at 9:51 am
I wrote:
Bradford responded:
Guess what, Bradford — Stephen Meyer and David DeWolf of the Discovery Institute published a guidebook in 1999 which advocated and encouraged the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.
There is no conflation. Dembski's version of ID, Behe's version of ID, and the fine-tuning argument all demand the existence of the supernatural. Even if you didn't believe this, the motivations of those trying to get ID into the public schools are clearly religious, as the Dover trial transcripts make absolutely clear.
I wrote:
Bradford:
Bradford, who else has a proposal for a scientific means of design detection?
I wrote:
Bradford:
You mean, like the experiment you have which empirically demonstrates that a spirit can be distinct from a body it is linked to? LOL.
I've presented scientific studies which show
1) conscious awareness of a decision coming after the brain initiates the associated action;
2) brain damage to a particular region disrupting abstract thought;
3) magnetic stimulation of the prefrontal cortex changing subjects' willingness to take risks;
4) split brain patients possessing two separate minds in the same skull.
Other studies show that language, will, emotion, decision making, humor, personality, memory, impulsivity, and even the sense of "owning" one's own limbs can all be completely disrupted by brain damage or stimulation in certain areas.
You have refuted none of this, and you have cited no studies which support the existence of a soul, yet you're now demanding that I produce a scientific experiment which proves what happens after death. Doesn't that sound a little lopsided to you?
Your desperation is showing.
You told us:
Now that you've read them, can you refute them? If not, how do you answer the questions I already raised:
If every human has a single immaterial soul, how do you explain all of these observations? What is left for the soul to do?
Look, Bradford, I understand that the prospect of having no soul is unsettling to you. I myself had to go through the process of giving up on the idea, and I know it's not easy. But as some wise person said, you have to follow the evidence where it leads, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 9:51 am
May 10th, 2007 at 11:02 am
keiths to Bradford:
Words like "supernatural" are primarily used to designate phenomena that do not follow the expected cause-effect scenarios for regular events thus far established by the methodology of science. Singular events happen all the time. And while scientists can empirically observe or experience them just like everyone else, their inability to rationally explain them by self-imposed 'rules' means precisely zip.
Scientists these days have little black boxes into which their deliberately limited versions of reality are fit. That which doesn't fit is simply rejected or rationalized away for the psychological comfort of the person who doesn't want to accept that there are things out there in reality that don't fit into neatly labeled scientific knowledge-boxes. Most others are quite easily able to accept singular events because their worldview is not so artificially restricted and they encounter such events fairly regularly.
The educational situation is one where the artificially restricted black-boxers have been granted the power to impose their reality restrictions on children, even if they don't fit most people's experience of reality. They've insisted on teaching – as fact – that these human-imposed restrictions on reality are absolute, that nothing outside the little black boxes can exist.
Thus it's not the least bit surprising that any arguably scientific approach to life that avoids these black box restrictions is preferable to people who aren't convinced that such restrictions apply universally to all events at all times. Those people may indeed have religious motivations, and those will rightly be challenged on Constitutional grounds.
That has of course never prevented people from observing and/or experiencing non-black box events and fitting them to their own world views. No scientist or teacher or school administrator can control the minds and life experiences of individuals. It's long past time the absolutists of scientism got used to it.
No one here is denying the functional dependency of physical action in the world on the physical equipment that enables it. Such dependencies are not required to be refuted by anyone. Nor need anyone here explain the time lag between input and processing of information with conscious output based on that processed information.
The fact that people's earthly experience is tied intimately to the physical equipment of their earthly bodies is not in dispute. The separability of consciousness from the physical equipment – even during life – does raise legitimate questions about what happens to consciousness after death, whether that's a scientific question or merely an esoteric one. Here you can believe as you choose. So can everybody else.
Science is not qualified to adjudicate such questions. Neither are you.
Comment by Joy — May 10, 2007 @ 11:02 am
May 10th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Keith,
I'd like to know when they acknowledged that. Did they at one time advocate getting ID into public schools? I'm not aware of that. I'm not against it, either. I think there are and have been for the entire 150 years reams and reams of very strong refutations of Darwinian evolution, and it is a travesty that it gets taught as though it were fact. I'm not sure it should be taught much at all. We just don't know enough.
I was simply saying that certain notions of God or religion are not necessary to ID. One could believe in an impersonal and all pervading consciousness, for example, that is self-learning.
Whose talking about ditching them? I think that IC and CSI are the two strongest arguments for ID. So what we are left with is that their ID arguments necessarily point to a non materialist reductionist universe. That's not new.
To what are you referring? That all the latest evidence shows that NDE is true?
I wish I understood the hole that Eric says he found in your reasoning. Basically, it got a little abstruse. But you should also acknowldge that no one denies the implications for ID may be theological or at least anti-material-reductionist, without using the R word. Religions have names. I have no religion for example. Religions have stories and dogmas.
I disagree, but I can't speak to what role the mind of God has in all this, as I'm not sure. I do not believe there is a distinction between natural and supernatural, material and spiritual.
I only saw that one study you cited. It was not threatening at all. I am not sure how Christianity thinks of the soul as it interacts with the personality. I have seen very little on that, really. Sometimes they believe that there is a soul and a spirit, which I think may be true. The spirit is a universal life force, the soul is the individual. Generally, I think that reality is going to turn out to be a lot more complex than we have supposed, and that will include the person.
Where?
Well that's a shame, Keith. Contrary to what you say, there are many lines of study that show disturbing possibilities re consciousness, and I think the evidence strongly shows already, and will become all but undeniable, that intelligent input was required. No, there's no reason that can't be taught in classrooms, at least so far as discussion of trends of evidence. There is no a priori reason why disembodied intelligence can't be part of the curriculum, and it has nothing to do with separation of church and state. Good God, this is such a hard point to get across. If science leads us to find out that our material world is not quite the material world we thought it was, then it would be a science stopper to let dogma and arbitrary rules of fashion prohobit that. You say that you will consider arguments on their merit, but if you think the way you are now expressing, you pretty much can't.
Keith, you are fixated on the fact that the study shows that impulses arise slightly before conscious awareness. But did you notice that the conscious mind is still making the decisions here, because the conscious mind is the one who was given the instructions and agreed to the parameters of the test. Having done so, the impulses arise neurologically before conscious awareness. Yet, if the person started to feel that their wrist was tired, and thought they would just slow down a little, no doubt this would happen. You seem to forget that the conscious mind is still in the driver's seat. Nonetheless, I can't understand why you find this test so pivotal, or why you seem to think it means the autonomous nervous system is the only aspect of the person involved. Or why this says something about the soul.
Comment by onething — May 10, 2007 @ 11:58 am
May 10th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
onething to keiths:
This thread is long and full of odd assertions, I have been away and haven't read carefully. Yet it seems clear enough that the GD [genomic determinist] nay-sayers are still playing the same old game. They are obviously more concerned about their own metaphysical investments than anything else, as comes through so clearly in the 'New Atheists' abandonment of actual scientific authority at this point in time in favor of pure proselytizing and attempts to legislate against the practice of religion.
Or, as keiths said to Bradford:
This is pure projection, the oldest psychological trick in the book. Religious people have never needed the approval of science in order to hold to their beliefs – the history of public education in Neodarwinism highlights this very graphically. It was elective 4 decades ago but has since become a requirement for graduation – all must demonstrate that evolution proceeds by RM-NS. Yet polls show that half or more of high school graduates don't believe it. We keep being told it's because kids are too dumb to understand it, but then that would tend to indict all the textbook writers and science teachers over the past half-century. There's no point requiring mastery of pablum that doesn't impart any usable knowledge, is there?
So the complaint isn't really that what is taught in high school doesn't impart the basics of RM-NS (how hard can that be?). It's that imparting the basics of RM-NS has not served to defeat people's belief that there's more going on. And this threatens metaphysical materialists because… well, there could be a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is that their belief is insecure and needs all knees to bend before they can be confident of its big-t Truth value.
Insecurity of belief isn't limited to religion. It appears to apply universally to all metaphysical belief systems that seek general acceptance in order to make themselves seem more true than they'd otherwise be. The evidence that keiths says is so hard to accept (that he has no soul) isn't convincing to those who have souls. Simple as that.
I for one don't care if keiths has a soul, since he's gone to all the trouble to renounce his. Far be it from me to suggest he won't get precisely the meaningless life and nothingness death he desires. His choice, he's welcome to it. What he cannot do is insist that everyone believe the same way he does, and claim science somehow "proves" that his belief is Truth. Science "proves" no such thing, never will.
The entire argument is moot. There is no point.
Comment by Joy — May 10, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Hi Joy,
It is nice to hear your beautiful voice of reason again.
You wrote…
I have been struggling with this issue lately. I have been exploring the OMA/NOMA aspects of "world views". Of course my exploration has been as subtle as the proverbial Bull in a China Shop, but my re-evaluation of world views (my own, and other's) has been in earnest.
Prior to this re-evaluation I would have firmly stated my belief that the Oracle of Delphi was profoundly accurate and prophetic when it indicated no one was wiser than Socrates. In fact, I have made several such statements in my early posts to Telic Thoughts. Now I am not so sure the prophecy will continue to hold forever.
We can all argue the merits of different scientific arguments but it is becoming harder to dismiss the differences by suggesting that multiple world views can be equally valid.
Please understand, I do not wish this to be the case. I would be quite happy to accept the possibility that the Ultimate Truth is that our universe is a supernatural science fair project or contained in a gem on the collar of a cat named "Orion" or any number of multiple, interesting and satisfying explanations.
I can understand why not everyone has the same comfort level I have that it is possible for multiple and conflicting truths to be equally valid. So whether I like it or not, whether anyone likes it of not, it appears that science and religion are being forced to come together and resolve this OMA issue once and for all.
It doesn't matter if Dawkin's and the Atheists started it or Well's and the IDists started it, the battle appears to be joined and I am not sure there is any backing out of it.
What do you think?
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 10, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
The encoding process occurred at the outset of life. It has been passed on through countless generations since then.
The evidence does not suggest this.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Wow. Two individuals. Do you have a copy of the marching orders for the rest of us?
A number of them have appeared on this blogsite.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Joy: This is pure projection, the oldest psychological trick in the book. Religious people have never needed the approval of science in order to hold to their beliefs – the history of public education in Neodarwinism highlights this very graphically. It was elective 4 decades ago but has since become a requirement for graduation – all must demonstrate that evolution proceeds by RM-NS. Yet polls show that half or more of high school graduates don't believe it. We keep being told it's because kids are too dumb to understand it, but then that would tend to indict all the textbook writers and science teachers over the past half-century. There's no point requiring mastery of pablum that doesn't impart any usable knowledge, is there?
Welcome back Joy. The comment section has become richer since your return.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Since when have chemical processes become Darwinian? If you think they are specify the direction an SRM evolves in and why.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Me too. Where is the evidence for that assertion?
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 2:06 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
It's good to see Joy's tirades again.
Who keeps on telling you that?
Comment by Raevmo — May 10, 2007 @ 2:11 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
I was once told something like that when I suggested including basic molecular biology concepts into a local curriculum. It was said to be too "advanced." It is not so for my own kids.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Since I'm from Old Europe, I'm not too familiar with the US educational system for children, but as I understand it there's a one-size-fits-all highschool system. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Where I'm from, at the age of 12 children are "selected" (based on tests) and split up between at least 4 different types of "highschool" with very different levels of education. Switching between levels is possible based on performance. At the highest levels, children do get educated about molecular biology quite a bit. And about "creation science" if their parents so desire. Over here, religious schools (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, you name it) are 100% financed by the tax-payer. Pretty unique in the world.
Comment by Raevmo — May 10, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
There is considerable variation in the US where local school boards exert influence over how subjects are taught and with what teaching materials.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
TP:
then…
Is it possible or is it not? Are you arguing for a postmodernist view, or one where There Is One Truth and Darwin Is Its Prophet?
You want to know what I think, when I've probably iterated it a thousand times in at least a few different approaches. Science is not in the business of metaphysics, nor is it chartered to adjudicate metaphysical philosophies among human beings. That doesn't seem difficult to understand, whether you like it or not.
The naturalistic mechanisms through which life forms change over generational time are at issue in these debates, not whether gods/God exists and who's got the best handle on what gods/God intended for us to understand [or not] about life and death on planet earth.
The materialist camp accepts no metaphysic beyond its assertion that their restrictive metaphysics is the only metaphysics that counts. In that they are all Popes and Cardinals of their own authoritative wannabe orthodoxy, same as all others. In the realm of dueling metaphysics, nobody's claims hold more weight than anyone else's – that's simply a fact. Just as we'll never know while alive whether religious leader has ever had it right, nothing science says about gods/God determines what is true on metaphysical levels of reality.
So whether life is accidental or designed may be ultimately a scientific concern, science is in no position to rule on the matter for purely metaphysical reasons. And it never will be in such a position so long as it remains science and not metaphysics.
If I say the world is 6,000 years old, science can authoritatively say not so based on its interpretation of physical evidence. But deal is, there are entire areas of discrimination between what is real and what is only potentially (or wishfully, or evidentially) true, which haven't yet been examined closely at all by science. Like time and space, for instance. Here's where your retrocausality or possible extra dimensions come in.
In the end, science can't be absolute about its pronouncements either. Since it's designed to be provisional on best-current guess per evidence, that's fine. Or, it was fine until some scientistic wannabe mind-tyrants decided they'd claim science "proves" their metaphysics. And science didn't complain loudly about the corruption.
Everything else is just muck in the works ever since. Religion's been around a lot longer than science. So religion didn't start it.
Comment by Joy — May 10, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I earlier said regarding Libet, "assume we have those reports and they are honest. But why assume that the actual timing of a conscious state entails any ability to report or signal its timing accurately?"
One answer might be that human judgements of simultaneity are accurate. But that begs the question enormously. For suppose that humans are accurate judges of simultaneity only of two external events like lightning and thunder; and not if, of two events, at least one is essentially an internal mental event such as a conscious decision to move a hand, or a conscious assessment of the character of a quale, such as whether some wine-taste quale is delicious.
Compare these four events: a lightning strike, a thunderclap, a decision-quale, and a wine-quale. Why on earth assume that humans are equally competent judges of the time-of-occurrence for all four types of event? The first two are obviously obective events for which time-of-occurrence can be independently tested. The latter two are, equally obviously, subjective events for which time-of-occurrence cannot be independently tested. So why assume that humans' level of competence of temporal judgements regarding the latter will be just as high as for the former?
If I ask a man, did she turn to look at you before or after you noticed her how lovely she was, I would not particularly assume his answer is almost certainly accurate, no matter how honestly given. And if I'm drinking a bottle of great wine and love how it tastes, there's no reason to assume that I will therefore have the ability to signal or otherwise report accurately the time of the onset of that quale at any subsequent time, let alone be able accurately to compare the time of its onset with the time of a dot's appearance on a screen at any subsequent time.
Since Libet's results crucially depend on the accuracy of such reports, we have to assume that accurate reporting extends to reports concerning our own internal mental events, such as decision-qualia or taste-qualia. But this is a highly dubious assumption. Let's say the time of any given conscious event E is really t, the time of a related brain event B is t+1, and the earliest time at which the subject would be able to place E as having occurred is t+2. Then the assumption falls to the ground; for if we are systematically inaccurate judges of when our own mental states occurred, then Libet's data will also be systematically inaccurate.
Comment by stunney — May 10, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Joy wrote:
Joy, anyone here can believe what they want, attempt to refute what they want, ignore what they want, turn off the computer and watch TV if they want. None of that is an issue. Why do you bring this up, over and over and over, as if someone's rights were being challenged by their participation on this blog?
Here we go again. Of course anyone can believe whatever they want. If you want to believe that Boxcar Willie is one of our reptilian overlords, be my guest. If you think that George W. is the greatest president of all time, have at it (but please don't vote
). If you want to believe that epilepsy is caused by evil demons, you're absolutely free to do so.
This discussion is intended for people who care about the evidence, who are glad to know what epilepsy is and what its treatments are, who are interested in how the brain works, what functions it carries out, and what its limitations are. It's for people who actually want to know what neuroscience can tell us about ourselves.
By the way, your statement mischaracterizes the Libet experiment. If you care about the evidence, you might want to review the description.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Hi Joy,
You asked…
Yes.
That's the struggle I am having.
I am arguing that the postmodernist view encapsulated in Gould's NOMA is probably false because "…it is becoming harder to dismiss the differences [between religion and science] by suggesting that multiple world views can be equally valid." Even though I, personally, am comfortable with the idea "…that it is possible for multiple and conflicting truths to be equally valid."
I hesitated in deciding whether or not to make things clearer by asking you "Do you think that [something-i-think]?" or to leaving it open-ended. The choice I made was meant to be an implied compliment.
You wrote…
I think this is good.
I was arguing around this point in Panda's Thumb. So what would be your reaction to the idea that the definition of science may need to change to in order to explore the possibility of a single, mutual, OMA Truth?
Thank you for recognizing my efforts ala retrocausality. It was this effort that went into making my ID outline/proposal that has allowed me to see the possibility of merging multiple truths. This has led my to my OMA/NOMA exploration. From a political point of view, I thought the NOMA thread brought out some very interesting interplay. People on different sides of the Culture War were were in agreement in the OMA/NOMA divide. It made for interesting reading.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 10, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Raevmo:
Literally dozens of atheist apologists through the years, on this and other fora. Whenever I call the RM-NS taught in school "pablum," they tell me how important it is that kids be taught that evolution works by RM-NS. They must all pass a test on it, and regurgitate the pablum. Then, whenever I mention that science doesn't really know that variation is entirely random or that selection shapes life in the strict eliminative fashion described – and new evidence is discussed – they tell me that I (and all those poor, ignorant high school graduates who reject NDE) just "don't understand" the complexities of it all.
If we did, they say, we'd all believe in RM-NS just like they do. This is of course manifestly untrue, as reflected in the fact that half or more of those taught RM-NS in school don't believe in it. All we have to do now, they say, is prevent kids from coming in contact with the idea that life might be intentionally, intelligently designed. THEN they'll believe in RM-NS!!! Also manifestly untrue, since mention in public classrooms of these ideas has been forbidden for a long time. People still choose what they'll believe about who and what they are, how they got here, and what their purpose is.
All very hopeful evangelization, none of it very convincing. It wasn't us dissidents who came up with the pablum, so blaming it on us won't change anything.
When I was in high school 40 some odd years ago, American schools were like this. Kids got funneled into "academic" or vocational programs depending upon their interests and aptitudes. I was college-bound in science, that meant a program of intense mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry and such. These courses were considered "elective," and there were other programs for vocation, business, arts, etc. We went where we had the most future.
That died when education was "equalized" by judicial decree and everyone was expected to perform within a range on all subjects. No longer were the bright, college-bound kids aiming for science, technology, medicine or business put into a track with others of like aims and abilities that expected them to keep up. Everyone of all abilities and interests were in the same classes, teachers spent their frustration on those of lesser ability, the rest got bored, and that eventually got pared down to rote test answers teachers could require the kids to memorize. The scores looked good. Everybody loses.
Comment by Joy — May 10, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Hello keiths,
Can supernatural, as you use it here, be defined as "outside and/or ancendant of the universe"
Pehaps I might better understand the issue here if you'd answer this question for me: What here (in the above quoted text/or link or ID argumentation anywhere) would disprove atheism? Dembski (above) is not arguing for a non-contingent first cause necessarily, but a non-contingent supply of information. Can I get away with that interpretation? Isn't this how atheists (like Thought_Provoker, for example) can use ID to support their ideas (for example, multiverses or causality/arrow time issues as the mechanism?) Ultimately ID is rather agnostic. In the 'can't know' moreso than the 'don't know' meaning of agnostic, is it not?
Couldn't, "[the search be]supplemented with additional information" via some infinite number of universes or whatever other 'natural' idea you've got? Is a multiverse a stochastic mechanism? How was/can that be determined? What's the counter argument here besides, 'he just wrong 'cause he's really just talking about God?' Not being facetious here, keiths(or anyone else), but I don't get the relevancy of the issues over the supernaturalerness of the design.
What's the scientific defintion for God or model for his behaviour? How about the mutilverse's? You're (me too) choosing a metaphysical side, not arriving at one via the scientific method. Gould, Joy (Scripture even) are correct(imho), you can't. Is anybody arguing that we're a lucky-one-off-shot anymore?
I'll take Aquinas over Dawkins any day of the week, but it aint science. That's cool though 'cause I'm not a scientist. . Dembski, Behe et al are not taking the extra steps those other guys do, as I see it. Alas, however I'm not a philosopher either so that may explain my confusion over the issue. My tripping over the basics and all that.
You guys need some help doing long division, I'm your guy. Everything else, not so much.
Joy's back
Comment by Rob R. — May 10, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
And if you wish to believe that cells spring out of prebiotic mud, seas… you're free to do that too.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
I wrote:
onething responded:
See the end of my earlier comment for the quotes.
Dembski did. I don't know about Behe.
I wrote:
onething:
I thought you were, when you wrote this:
Yet Dembski and Behe deny it.
It boils down to this: Dembski's rules say that natural processes can't generate CSI. Eric was suggesting a loophole where natural processes somehow generate a disembodied intelligence, and this intelligence turns around and injects CSI into the natural world. You get your CSI, even though you start with a wholly natural system.
I pointed out some problems with this idea in an earlier comment. Even Eric is not particularly advocating it; he simply offered it in response to my request for criticism.
The definition of 'religion' is slippery. The point here is that like it or not, if ID invokes the supernatural, it will run afoul of methodological naturalism, which is the prevailing standard for determining whether something is scientific. You're not going to get ID into public school classrooms until one of the following happens:
1) The Lemon test is ruled unconstitutional;
2) A form of ID is proposed that does not demand the existence of the supernatural; or
3) Methodological naturalism is replaced by something which allows, at minimum, some forms of the supernatural.
In any case, why the rush to get ID into public schools? Shouldn't we wait to find out if it's true or not, as we do with other theories?
If you don't know how Christianity thinks of the soul, how can you judge whether the study was threatening to it? By the way, if you only saw one study, you missed some very important ones.
I wrote:
onething:
Here.
It's not dogma that keeps neuroscientists from embracing the idea of disembodied intelligences or personalities, it's the evidence. Those experiments could have come out the opposite way: Scientists could have found that conscious decisions preceded action; brain stimulation could have had no effect on risk-taking; the split-brain patients could have manifested a single, unified mind; strokes could have had no impact on the capacity for abstract thought. It didn't turn out that way, so neuroscientists followed the evidence.
Examples?
But agreeing to the parameters of the test does not determine when the wrist flexions will occur. That decision is made freely by the subjects. So the fact that impulses begin before the subject is consciously aware of making the decision to act is very significant.
Is it? The impulses started before the conscious decision. The tail is wagging the dog.
The conventional conception of the soul is that it is the seat of the will. Our soul decides, and it causes the body to act.
Libet's experiment shows the body acting before the conscious decision to act is made. In other words, the conscious decision is not the cause of the action. The action is initiated by the brain, and the brain later interprets this and presents it as a conscious decision.
Daniel Wegner has written a book, The Illusion of Conscious Will, which addresses this and similar phenomena at length. The jacket blurb begins "Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us?"
By the way, Libet's study is not, by any stretch, the only piece of evidence for this idea. This is why I encourage people to become acquainted with the neuroscientific evidence. There is a huge disconnect between the neuroscientific community and the public at large, because neuroscientists are aware of evidence that the average citizen has never heard of nor seen. As Steven Pinker put it,
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
keiths:
You were the one who posted the data about split brains and brain damage and such to demonstrate a point I parsed as being that because the brain is involved, the brain is ALL that is involved. Sorry if you meant something else, I wasn't reading very carefully in this overly long thread.
Wow. When my daughter developed epilepsy we were at first a little confused about whether it was the electric shock she received trying to wire lights at a shoulda-been condemned years ago theatre at her college, or if it was a reaction to an over the counter cold medication she took that was subsequently recalled for causing strokes and seizures in 30-something women. Got X-rays, CT scans, the whole works to try and figure it out. The doctor told us they flat out don't know what causes it. They control it with drugs. Here, he said, take these for the rest of your life… if they kill you, let me know and we'll try to work you in three months from now.
Eventually she met a neurologist who had her try to focus and control her own mind. She's been off medication for over a year now, no more seizures. Hope it lasts, so does the neurologist.
Did I mention that I'm synesthetic? Been working with neuroscientists for years. It's all about mechanics. That's what they do. What they do does not explain everything people experience of life and death on planet earth.
Comment by Joy — May 10, 2007 @ 5:38 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
You reference a link that contains this Dembski quote:
Your claim is that Dembski "acknowledged that ID, as science, was about the supernatural." Yet the quote indicates that ID "is also a fully scientific claim and follows directly from the complexity-specification criterion." There is no mention of the supernatural because Dembski knows supernatural effects are not tested in labs. Keiths is the one adding the term supernatural to the mix and in doing so is misleading readers into thinking it is Dembski.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
TP:
The definition of science doesn't need to change at all unless it's aiming to expand its territory. Some scientists are claiming that it already encompasses territory reserved to other disciplines right now, but they're wrong. They simply don't understand much about what science *is* and have formed a mistaken impression about it in their minds.
Unless science wants to become official metaphysics, it's science and not metaphysics. And unless religion (which one?) wants to become science, it will remain theology (metaphysics) and not science.
I have long argued NOMA because I think that science and metaphysics are indeed non-overlapping magisteria. I get positively offended when they try to cross over while pretending they arbitrated Absolute big-t Truth all along, in all magisteria. I pick a 'side' in the debate based wholly on who's the junkyard dog and who's the underdog, based on my understanding of science, religions, and politics. I don't like anyone's rights to be trampled, on either side. It's usually the side with the power who does the trampling whenever it can.
Well, I'm dim on retrocausality because thus far it has only been postulated to work at sub-atomic levels and time scales. If that could be sent sideways in time generally, it might apply on a larger scale. That is still highly speculative, but intriguing nonetheless.
But be forewarned: The more open the scientific speculations are about space and time, the less authoritative any particular interpretation of it becomes. Science's power has thus far been established on its power to quantify and control nature. When it steps into realms that can neither be quantified nor controlled, it blurs distinctions. Maybe hopelessly.
This is true in QM per the counter-interpretations of Copenhagen and Many Worlds. Physicists work with the assumption that reality is real (Copenhagen) because that's the only way real science can be done. Individual physicists may believe in multiverses or reality as they choose, it's a metaphysical question science doesn't answer.
The distinctions are blurred right now, physics finding its predictions of "the end of science" all for naught. So they're grasping metaphysical straws, and these should always be taken as mere hypotheticals for discussion's sake. That discussion is metaphysical, not scientific.
Comment by Joy — May 10, 2007 @ 6:01 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Joy wrote:
Joy, you're a hoot. Genetic determinism hasn't come up at all in this discussion. When you said you "haven't read carefully", you weren't kidding.
Nobody on this thread has stated that people need science's approval to hold to their beliefs. They can believe whatever they want. If this is news to you, I'm glad you've learned it. But now that you've caught up with the rest of us, could you please stop mentioning it? It's obvious, and it's irrelevant to the discussion.
We are talking about what neuroscience does and does not explain. This has nothing to do with what people are or are not allowed to believe.
And the evidence that the earth is round isn't convincing to those who know that the earth is flat. Simple as that.
It's not so much that I don't believe in the soul; it's that I believe that the mind and the soul are functions of the brain. We have souls; they're just not the eternal, immaterial ones we thought they were.
You think life becomes meaningless if we don't have an eternal soul?
You're doing it again, Joy. And although science never proves anything, it makes sense to believe something when the evidence is heavily in its favor.
I've noticed that when the evidence is against your position, you start pretending that someone is trying to force you to believe something. Often, you go on to claim that the argument is irrelevant. What's up with that?
There are plenty of people on this thread who want to have this discussion. If it frightens you, you are free to withdraw and find a safer thread, but the argument is not moot, and it is certainly not pointless to those of us who are interested in neuroscience and its implications.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
LOL. That's why you have blind faith in a materialistic version of origins. Sure, the evidence is overwhelming.:roll:
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 6:09 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I wrote:
Bradford:
Who said anything about marching orders? The question was why Dembski and Behe, after acknowledging that ID as science depends on the abrogation of methodological naturalism, would turn around and claim that it doesn't. What is your explanation of their reversal?
I asked:
Bradford:
How about pointing to them? I know Mike Gene isn't one of them, because he doesn't believe that ID is science.
If you have replication, heritable variation, and selection, you have a Darwinian process.
There is no specified direction of evolution for self-replicating molecules. It depends on the selective pressures applied by the environment. Darwinian processes are not teleological.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 6:39 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
My understanding of their position is that it the stranglehold of philosophical materialistism that they oppose. Are you contending that they would do away with research methods?
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Becoming science involves more than proposing ways of testing design. After a proposal there follows testing and more testing and the linkage of data to theory. Mike can speak for himself but I would not assume he believes there are no ways to test ID.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Keiths:
Exactly my point. Where is the evidence for selection as applied to SRMs?
But you are wrong. Selection favors traits that enhance reproductive fitness and disfavors the opposite. Tending toward a goal or purpose which in this case centers on fitness. The question is why would Darwinian selection concepts favor the replication of more SRMs? Before you answer explore those sequential traits of RNA self-replicators and explain why their mutation would lead to anything but destruction of replicating capacity.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
keiths:
I see you conveniently didn't address the whole brain damage/epilepsy thing, when your assertion was that:
Since I have some experience with epilepsy, and know that neuroscience doesn't know any more about it than medicine – which is basically zip – you're not impressing me and your metaphysical extrapolations are entirely without warrant. They do those tests to rule out brain tumors or serious (but treatable) issues. Once those are ruled out, you're stuck with "we don't know. Here, take these drugs."
You pretend to way more knowledge than you own, and claim way more knowledge for your heroes than they've got. I call bullshit, and am done with this thread because it takes too long to load. I'm sure I'll meet the same bullshit elsewhere. See ya.
Comment by Joy — May 10, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I asked:
Bradford:
Me:
Bradford:
Bradford,
You're evading the question. You said there were other proposals for the scientific detection of design on this blogsite. Where are they?
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 7:03 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Joy,
Read this, and then tell me that science knows nothing about epilepsy.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
keiths:
Oooohhh! Wikipedia and "…transient signs and/or symptoms due to abnormal, excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain" !!! By golly, THAT sure explains precisely nothing! Not all signs are the same, not all symptoms are the same, not all indications are the same, not all prognoses are the same. You have seizures. If it's not a tumor, here's some drugs. Literally, that's how it works.
So unless you tell me YOU (or one of your close relatives) has epilepsy, that you've been through all the tests and poking and prodding, you've taken all the drugs and you've gotten the better of it in spite of 'em, don't tell me "epilepsy is a seizure disorder of unknown and multiple cause and treatment" as if that's not something I already know very well. Translation: we don't know, but this seems to work for some people!
I know from some brain damage too – been working with neurosci-guys for decades on that as well. Wanna talk about aphasias and excessive bilateral connections and anomalous blood flows and re-routing by sheer will power? I can do that til the cows come home too, and tell you they know precisely zip about most of that too.
Watta maroon.
Comment by Joy — May 10, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
To Zachriel and to keiths, who Says:
After a comment by Bradford, I decided to take a peek at the two quotes, and found that they have a couple problems when placed back into context. Starting with this one (which also pertains to a point Zachriel asked me about), the immediately preceding two sentences read:
So, whether one agrees with this definition or not, Dembski made it explicitly clear what definition he was using when he made the above quote. By that definition, his quote cannot be used to "show Dembski openly acknowledging that ID involves a supernatural designer" because that definition excludes any kind of designer, natural or supernatural. Only "undirected natural processes" are allowed.
As Zachriel alluded to, there are at least some contexts where science may study the obviously artificial and designed artifacts. However, in regard to any aspect of nature (e.g. the origin of life), I believe Dembski is correct that the suggestion of design is not considered scientific and is not permissible even as a hypothesis, even if one were to hold that the intelligence can have a natural origin.
But that is a separate question. The main point here is that this quotation is taken out of context in a way that hides the fact that he is talking about the exclusion of any design, not simply supernatural design.
In this case, the immediately preceding sentence says:
And earlier in the same paragraph he says:
Viewed in context, it becomes clear that his claims about the pervasive design of the universe are explicitly in light of the fine tuning argument, i.e. cosmological ID. The obvious reason why this requires an intelligence from beyond the universe is that the intelligence is needed to fine tune the "origin of the universe".
So in this case, a fair representation needs to make clear that he was not claiming that biological ID leads invariably to intelligence outside the universe. Regarding biological ID and the (original) origin of life, he does say that an "intelligent agent who is strictly physical" is excluded. However, this does not in itself exclude a non-physical intelligence from within the universe.
I have never doubted that Dembski personally believes that the designer of life is also the designer of the fine-tuned universe, which is an intelligence outside the universe. However, the thrust of the argument that was being made (with the two quotes above given in support) was whether ID itself requires that conclusion.
If we are speaking of biological ID (not cosmological ID), the case of non-physical intelligence from within the universe (so far as I can see) is not yet ruled out by his math or his axioms.
I believe it would be a misrepresentation to use these quotes to imply that Dembski's ID position requires that biological ID implies a supernatural designer.
Comment by eric — May 10, 2007 @ 9:00 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Hi Joy,
I am mindful of the length this thread is getting, but I didn't know where else to respond.
You wrote…
Thank you for your direct answer. As you are no doubt aware, I don't consider the side with over 2 Billion faithful followers to be an "underdog" especially since those followers make up the bulk of all three branches of government.
Now don't go waking up poor Charley. With NOMA, we are actually talking about religion as religion. I believe in previous threads you indicated that you actively fought against teaching religion in public schools and you may believe this is a "post wedge world". However, I think this is the pause before a big push, possibly the "final battle". You can drag out old Charlie if you want to but, IMO, the Discovery Institute only changes it's banners and tactics, not its mission. If you are counting on the masses being aware of anything; the masses voted Rodney King's violent arrest as the most significant event in the same year of the first Gulf War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. At the end of 1991, the Rodney King tape was playing on TV along with the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings overshadowing all earlier events.
Heisenberg was the nose of the camel. We are passing the "hopelessly" point as we speak, IMO. This isn't a matter of choice or wishes. Many may want Einstein's declaration that "God doesn't play dice" to be true, but it isn't.
What do you think of Penrose's premise in the book Shadows of the mind : A search for the missing science of consciousness and his quantum consciousness model? (Note to listening audience: As a physicist, Penrose is a peer of Hawking)
"The quantum consciousness model…could in principle help lead the way to a new theory of physics that could repair a serious hole (to some) in quantum mechanics. Penrose believes such a theory will come to light sooner or later, whether or not he is right about consciousness–but it could happen sooner if the model proves correct.
What a great practical joke nature will have played on us if all the thinking that has gone into uncovering the ultimate laws of the universe turns out to reveal that one of the biggest clues was woven all along into the very fabric of thought itself." link (closing paragraph)
That sounds like a blending of science and metaphysics to me.
This is why I am struggling with NOT seeing that science and religion are on a major collision course. Like a lot of other quaint customs, NOMA is doomed regardless of how pleasant it was to have around, in my opinion.
What do you think?
Provoking Thought
P.S. A suggestion. This could be a subject of a new thread, since this one is getting way too long.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 10, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Mike Gene, Krauze et. al. have advanced the concept of front loading which is an alternative to Behe's irreducible complexity and Dembski's CSI. I pointed out recently in a comment that since Darwinian natural selection has been used as the means of arguing for non-design outcomes logic would indicate that selection anomalies could be indicators of design.
There is another Darwinian postulate that has long gone unchallenged. A selection process is indicated as the means by which biological information and its associated phenotypic complexity accumulated over time. Yet for this process to occur the measure of added information must exceed its loss. That is theoretically possible because genomes of all species contain mechanisms by which they eliminate most genetic mistakes before they (mutations) become fixed. However this also suggests an experimental basis by which to assess whether the rate of information exceeds the loss of the same. DNA repair mechanisms would have had to evolve like all else. However, their uniqueness lies in the fact that their function safeguards genomic integrity; in effect making adaptive responses possible. If we trace natural history back in time we come to a point at which there would have been few or even no repair mechanisms in place. That is a critical juncture for it is there that the adaquacy of a selection process can be assessed. An experiment would need to test whether an ordered genome could survive in the absence of some or all genomic repair mechanisms.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 10:00 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Bradford,
The question was "…who else [besides Dembski, Behe, and the fine-tuning advocates] has a proposal for a scientific means of design detection?"
You still haven't answered it.
Mike Gene and Krauze know that ID is not science, and openly say so. In any case, front-loading is a hypothesis for how design could be compatible with evolution, not a method of detecting design.
Your statement that "selection anomalies could be indicators of design" is hardly a scientific proposal for detecting design. Nor is your speculation about genetic error correction.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Bradford wrote:
Bradford,
What part of this quote did you miss?
Bill Dembski, 1999:
He's saying that unless science encompasses the supernatural, ID has no chance of success.
[To eric: if Dembski were referring only to cosmological ID, he wouldn't have said this. Also, see a forthcoming comment for more on your point about Dembski's definition of methodological naturalism.]
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 10:39 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Front loading could also be uniquely compatible with design. That was the point.
Just go on assuming those sacred cows. Very rational of you. BTW, without DNA repair mechanisms you would not make it out of the month of May. But keep the faith. We know that selection favored their evolution from those SRMs you like to speculate about.:roll:
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Keiths: He's saying that unless science encompasses the supernatural, ID has no chance of success.
Eric addressed this mistaken notion of yours.
Exactly. As long as only undirected natural causes are allowed there can be no possible alternatives. The need to consider directed causes also allows for the possibility that the undirected paradigm would be falsifed.
Comment by Bradford — May 10, 2007 @ 10:50 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Somebunny is going to have to do something about that.
Comment by MikeGene — May 10, 2007 @ 10:55 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Mike wrote:
Mike,
Good. Behe and Dembski are dropping the ball. It's up to you to rescue ID.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 10:59 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
No. Naturalism is inherently a contradictory formulation of reality. Even critics Mark Perakh and Ken Miller see that all causal explanations of the natural world cannot be restricted to naturalism. Naturalism is illogical because it cannot be described in a non self-defeating way.
Let's say hypothetically God does not exist. Try defining what a naturalistic explanation is in mathematical terms.
You'll see the word naturalism only has meaning when contrasted with the notion of something non-natural. Well then if the non-natural doesn't exist, naturalism has lost its meaning.
Naturalism fails as a convention for science because:
1. if God exists then naturalism is false
2. if God does not exist, then the notion of "naturalism" becomes practically meaningless scientifically
Thus, naturalism is not how science should be framed. It is a worthless add on.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — May 10, 2007 @ 11:02 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
According to theism, the most natural reaiity there could possibly be is God, for God exists necessarily; anything else exists contingently, if at all.
Let's assume someone says:
"Unless science encompasses the supernatural, ID has no chance of success"
Two observations may be in order.
1. Actual science may not be identical with ideal science; if not, then ideal science may, in fact, encompass the supernatural.
2. If, as theism can be easily interpreted as asserting, God is the most natural reality there is, then even if science cannot encompass the supernatural, it may still be able to encompass God.
My own view is this: science is not able to encompass God even though God is pre-eminently natural, for two reasons:
1) because God is infinite, and even a natural infinite reality cannot be observed as such by finite observers
and
2) because the methodology of science is incapable of ascertaining and explaining normative facts; whereas, if theism is true, God is the source and explanation of normative facts, i.e, facts about rational, moral, emotional and aesthetic value. Such facts are facts whose essence, though natural in an expanded sense of 'natural', cannot be analyzed in terms lending themselves to quantitative or physicalist reductions.
Comment by stunney — May 10, 2007 @ 11:18 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 2:10 am
Keith,
Hmm, I see that Dembski, maybe Behe, are against methodological naturalism as the only acceptable approach in science. You equate this with the supernatural. The ID inference certainly leads to something: even if a natural intelligence such as aliens who terraformed earth and all life within it, that is still not methodological naturalism for the evolution of life. We obviously cannot stick to a priori assumptions about what science can and cannot find because that would be unscientific. We can't insist that what you call supernatural is excluded. At a later point you ask why I express doubt about your ability to assess arguments on their own merits. You also said it was difficult for you to let go of the idea of a soul. Perhaps it was, but I don't get that impression. I get the feeling that your position is hardened, and that you gain some sort of satisfaction from proofs that there is no spirit. I think it's some kind of macho thing.
The things my kids were taught about evolution were metaphysical beliefs and have no more right to be taught as fact than any other religious ideas.
When I said no doubt Dembski's axioms could not be true, it was tongue in cheek. I meant that for you, you would have to reject them.
Do they? While at the same time at Uncommon Descent they say methodological naturalism must be overcome? What I am sure they do say is that we cannot refuse to come to an ID inference if the data warrant it.
OK, that's what I thought. Seems a little strained. The only way I can envision that is if the supreme unspeakable existence devolves itself down to a personal mind level and from there generates a universe and then life forms – but you would consider that supernatural anyway.
Personally, that's pretty much how I interpret the Trinity.
It's all supernatural Keith. All.
Well of course ID already openly states it wants to release science from MN. Now, just to see if we're on the same page, according to Wiki, MN makes the "assumption that observable events in nature are explained only by natural causes, without assuming the existence or non-existence of the supernatural," and so considers supernatural explanations to be outside science.
I found that incoherent.
I looked it up, and I see nothing about advocating ID, even with the admitted possible theistic implications (but not delving into opinions about same) that violates the lemon test.
If the ID inference becomes more widely accepted, then teaching it in the schools would have a legitimate secular purpose, advance no religion nor have excess entanglement with religion.
What if God creates astral intelligences, something like angels, who then figure out, all by themselves and with much thought about physics and chemistry, how to make the life forms on earth. Trial and error, too. Would you consider that a natural source of ID?
Likewise with Darwinism.
Well, I went to church for 35 years, and read as much as the next person, yet I never remember coming across the sorts of details you seem to ascribe to exactly how the soul really interacts with the mind, the brain, the personality and the will. No doubt, there may be such, but probably they don't agree.
And it's not a bad thing at all that these things are up for grabs right now and being rethought. But I meant it was not threatening to me.
OK, yes, I had missed that although I've read similar. Gee, it never occurred to me that this has anything to do with the soul. Really, these are good questions, and I don't think most people are very attuned to their souls, but I certainly never equated my soul with much of what goes on in my mind and brain. There is a connection, yes, but I don't think it is my soul which sees a red light, or decides to move my foot. I think of the soul as a kind of rudder. I think I was told by a priest that the soul is the voice of your conscience. That seems fairly close.
Yes some neuroscientists are studying out of body experiences.
I think you failed to note what I said. The conscious mind of the person in that experiment was told the parameters of the experiment and made a decision to comply. If you had sat a person down and given them no instructions whatsoever, I doubt they would have flicked their wrists, (unless very good ESP talent). All this experiment means is that we have brains in which more is going on than we can keep track of, consciously.
I missed this one as well, but of course brain stimulation could result in all sorts of behaviors! so could hormones! You could inject your lady love with a jolt of testosterone and enjoy! You could inject a bunch of little boys with testosterone and watch them become highly aggressive – oh wait, nature already did that.
I mean, what you are asking for is absurd. We are not disembodied beings, we have these bodies with all these processes and influences and a big brain center. Yet you seem to think that we should go on just as if we had no body. Why do you expect we can cut someone's brain in half and somehow the soul is going to just take over and it won't matter? How in hell do you demand that a stroke not impact functioning?
Our brains do more filtering than revealing. And why do you not suppose that it is the soul down there giving the prompting?
There! You said it, not me.
The action was initiated by the two conscious brains of the expermentor/ee. Without that, the brain would never have bothered to initiate the action. Nor is there any reason that a simple instruction like that can't be taken over by the brain as a semiautomatic thing.
There's really tremendous amounts of evidence for ESP, out of body experiences, precognition, and more.
Yes, and I await that glorious day. But, I guess this belongs on the new thread.
Comment by onething — May 11, 2007 @ 2:10 am
May 11th, 2007 at 2:35 am
onething,
That last quote is from Thought Provoker, not me.
Comment by keiths — May 11, 2007 @ 2:35 am
May 11th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Bill Dembski (Intelligent Design, section 4.6):
eric writes:
Hi Eric,
A few things:
1. As I mentioned above, if Dembski were merely saying that cosomological ID could not live with methodological naturalism, he would have specified that he was talking about cosmological ID, especially since he deals primarily with, and is known for, biological ID/anti-Darwinism.
2. Plantinga and Johnson don't complain about MN excluding intelligence, they complain about it excluding God. Dembski says that both of them are making the same point he is. He is thus not depending on his own idiosyncratic definition of MN.
3. Dembski's definition actually does not exclude designers of all kinds, unless you also accept Dembski's personal opinion that human intelligence is immaterial. You don't have to accept that opinion to be an IDer, so for Dembski to say that ID cannot succeed until MN falls is to admit that he thinks it demands a supernatural designer.
If one held that the intelligence did have a natural origin, I think it would be considered scientific. Leaving open the possibility that it is supernatural is what gets you into trouble with the methodological naturalists.
Again, this is only true for those who also accept his ideas about human intelligence. He is the one excluding human design by insisting that human intelligence cannot be produced by undirected natural causes.
Comment by keiths — May 11, 2007 @ 2:54 am
May 11th, 2007 at 3:29 am
Salvador wrote:
Salvador,
You've muddled things a bit. Let me try to sort it out:
1. If God exists, then philosophical naturalism is false. Methodological naturalism works, as long as the supernatural doesn't intervene in the natural (or at least not in the things being studied).
2. If God does not exist, philosophical naturalism may be true. Methodological naturalism works, as long as the supernatural doesn't intervene in the natural.
3. If the supernatural doesn't exist, then philosophical naturalism is true, and methodological naturalism will work fine.
You claim that naturalism is inherently nonsensical if the non-natural doesn't exist. Not true. Each of the sets below is perfectly sensible, even if the things being excluded don't exist:
1. The set of all animals, except for the mythical ones.
2. The set of all odd integers, except for those that are evenly divisible by 2.
3. All of reality, excluding anything outside nature.
Comment by keiths — May 11, 2007 @ 3:29 am
May 11th, 2007 at 10:22 am
I have a few quick questions concerning the notion of the supernatural.
1. Are moral obligations supernatural?
2. Assuming moral obligations exist in some sense, are they something science could detect?
3. If science doesn't or can't detect any moral obligations, would that be evidence that they don't exist; or evidence that there are supernatural entities on the grounds that we are aware of entities—moral obligations—which science systematically fails to detect?
One may repeat these questions, replacing 'moral obligations' with various other ideas such as 'rational norms' 'conscious choices', 'sensations of green', 'feelings of peace', 'intentions', etc, which prima face are not like objects found in the visible, natural world such as gold, rivers, rocks, snakes, stars, electrical charges, etc.
Comment by stunney — May 11, 2007 @ 10:22 am
May 11th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Moral obligations can be defined either as a matter of individual conscience or can be considered as philosophical abstractions.
Ethics is a branch of philosophy whose axioms are derived from agreed moral values. So, if we mutually agree that unnecessarily killing people is "wrong", then we can use this axiom to derive corollaries, e.g. punishments for murder, justifiable self-defense.
There is some evidence that human values derive from biology, such as the near universal desire of mothers to nurse and nurture their children. But once accepting these precepts"”whatever the source"”whether universally accepted or not"”then philosophical reasoning allows consideration of the implications of these values.
Comment by Zachriel — May 11, 2007 @ 11:31 am
May 11th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Zachriel wrote:
Well, are consciences or philosophical abstractions supernatural entities?
Are desires supernatural? They're not like objects found in the visible, natural world such as gold, rivers, rocks, snakes, stars, electrical charges, etc, either .
I'm trying to determine whether 'being natural' is equivalent to 'being a scientifically detectable entity'. If it's not, then God could be natural but not detectable by science.
Comment by stunney — May 11, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Abstractions are not concrete objects.
Desires are subjective experiences. (Science can only study subjective experiences indirectly, such as by motivated behavior, or through the reporting of those experiences.)
No one directly 'detects' Caesar. We observe evidence of Caesar.
Comment by Zachriel — May 11, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Zachriel wrote:
Yes, I know they're not. But my question wasn't, 'Are abstractions concrete objects?'
Yes, I know that. But my question was whether subjective experiences such as desires are supernatural.
You mention 'motivated behavior'. How would we know or tell whether a behavior was motivated by a subjective experience, as against simply being unconscious bodily behavior? For example, you mention reports. But how would we know that the bodily behavior of speech was motivated by a subjective experience, as against simply being unconscious bodily behavior?
I am aware of the fact that no-one today directly observes Caesar. I wasn't equating detection with direct observation. However, observing evidence of Caesar, in my book, is just a way of saying the fact of Caesar's existence is a scientifically detectable fact.
I'm still trying to determine the relation between 'being natural' and 'being scientifically detectable'. Unless that relation is made clearer, then it's not clear whether God is natural, or supernatural, and whether, in either case, God is scientifically detectable.
Comment by stunney — May 11, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Whoa! I'm gone a couple of days; I come back and there are 256 comments. Do I really want to wade through all of those? Nah.
Comment by Bilbo — May 11, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Abstractions are neither natural or supernatural, rather "natural" and "supernatural" are abstractions. Abstractions are conceptual categorizations.
There is empirical evidence that desires are biological.
By reasonable inference. (It is possible that everyone other than yourself is a Zombie and the universe was created Last Thursday complete with your own memories"”but the evidence indicates otherwise.)
The question of natural vs. supernatural is ancient, and consequently is subject to confusion due to the historically malleable definition. Generally, ghosts and spirits have been considered supernatural, as has the Creator of the Universe. Telic entities from another plane of existence, as it were.
I put forth a methodological definition that avoids many of the problems of demarcating science. We observe some aspect of the natural world. We form a generalization concerning those observations. We then deduce from that generalization a new observation. We then verify this prediction with new observations. We modify or discard our generalization as necessary. We communicate our results so that other observers can replicate and extend our findings. We continue this process and eventually build confidence in our model.
I don't find the natural – supernatural dichotomy to be particularly useful, especially in scientific discussions. Science is as science does.
Many people use the term "natural" to refer to those aspects of the world that are amenable to scientific investigation; geology, evolutionary biology, astronomy. Then there are philosophical topics, such as aethetics or ethics, which can be informed by related scientific fields such as cognition and evolutionary psychology. The supernatural is usually considered within the context of metaphysics or theology.
People often invoke God-of-the-Gaps to fill areas of human ignorance, and incorrectly claim that they have reached a valid scientific or philosophical conclusion.
Beyond thar be dragons! Arrr!Comment by Zachriel — May 11, 2007 @ 6:16 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I want to mention that this seems more than just a little bit question-begging. For instance, what constitutes evidence? Are you presupposing that human noetic devices are capable of presenting data accurately? I'm not saying (like some) that these are questions that only the naturalist must ask, but it seemed like you were making this statement so matter-of-factly when in fact it is part of the presumption of scientific inquiry that accurate empirical knowledge is possible. Never take presumptions for granted, says I.
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 11, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
keiths again quoted Dembski (again leaving out the immediately preceding sentences where Dembski explicitly defines what he means by "methodological naturalism"), and then Says
You are confusing two different quotes and two different issues. Check my post again. The significance of cosmological ID concerns the quote taken out of context from section 8.5 where he talks about how "transcendent design pervades the universe" (i.e. because of cosmological ID, not biological ID — NOTE: biology does not pervade the universe).
Regarding the quote in section 4.6, Dembski is not here "merely saying that cosomological ID could not live with methodological naturalism" (more on this below). Therefore, your argument here falls completely.
Just because all three agree, for example, on the point that "if one accepts methodological naturalism then naturalistic evolution is the only game in town", that does not entitle you to quietly omit "his own idiosyncratic definition of MN" and substitute your own, even if you believe he is "not depending" on it. Sorry, that is not legit.
In the previous point, you tried to claim that Dembski was "not depending on his own idiosyncratic definition of MN." — the one he included just before the quote.
Here you are essentially attempting to argue that even if one did depend upon Dembski's definition, it wouldn't make a difference. One can still arrive at the conclusion that "he thinks it demands a supernatural designer." In so doing, you are implicitly acknowledging that he has provided his own definition — one that you omitted.
But your argument doesn't hold up. By Dembski's definition, the restriction is "solely to undirected natural processes" so any type of intelligent design is immediately excluded whereever this restriction is applied.
This fact also undercuts your previous argument. If one depends upon the definition that he bothered to provide, one does indeed reach the conclusion he shares with Johnson and Platinga, namely that "if one accepts methodological naturalism then naturalistic evolution is the only game in town".
Dembski has claimed that they agree with him about this conclusion that they all reach. That does not logically justify saying that Dembski was not using the definition he supplied, since the definition he supplied also reaches that conclusion.
Bottom line:
Dembski is explicit about the definition of MN. It is an empirically verifiable fact that you are taking this quote out of the context where his explanatory definition immediately precedes the portion you quote. Taking it out of context is inappropriate, especially because you attribute to it a meaning that is different than the one he gives.
In short, you have been found to be putting words into his mouth by changing the meanings of the terms. Why try to defend doing it? Just let it go and make better points instead — ones that don't require quoting out of context.
If you want to insist that your use is not twisting his words, then you should at least have the courage of your convictions to include his own definitions when you quote him, and then take on the explicit burden of proving he doesn't really mean what he just actually said.
Comment by eric — May 11, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
p.s. Eric said about Dembski:
One can even go further. If one didn't use Dembski's definition that excludes both natural and supernatural design, then one wouldn't be able to actually reach his conclusion.
If natural intelligent agency were not also excluded, then there would be another game in town besides the evolutionary story we have now. There would be something else to consider besides unguided natural processes, namely guided/designed/telic causes.
So, whether one agrees with Dembski or not, it would seem that Dembski's definition (which excludes all design, not just supernatural design) is essential to understanding his point. The fact that others share this conclusion would be a strong indication that they also concur that natural intelligent agency is excluded as true and acceptable science under the current MN paradigm.
Comment by eric — May 11, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
onething: As keiths also mentioned, I was pointing out a hole in the biological-ID-necessarily-implies-supernatural arguments, specifically the pivotal question of whether natural processes can somehow generate a disembodied intelligence. You responded
"OK, that's what I thought. Seems a little strained. …"
keiths was also correct that I'm not advocating that these ideas are true. But I think it only fair to acknowledge that they are genuine proposals that have been out there for decades now.
In 1984, The Mystery of Life's Origin said
They also quote multiple times from those authors, including this point made by H and W in 1981:
So they plainly are aware of the futility of an infinite regress of E.T.s. Nevertheless, they are not appealing to an outside-the-cosmos intelligence.
It is not my view. I don't claim that such a thing could happen.
However, I do not see that anything in Dembski's math or axioms excludes this. To do so, one would need a math that covers the appearance of intelligence, not merely an analysis of Complex Specified Information.
Comment by eric — May 11, 2007 @ 9:20 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Zachriel wrote:
Would you say conceptual categorizations, or thoughts in general, are natural and/or scientifically detectable entities?
I'm not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean something like this ridiculous idea? A sample:
Moving on…
Are reasonable inferences natural and/or scientifically detectable entities?
When you say 'evidence', do you mean observational data concerning bodily behavior? Isn't that to commit the logical fallacy of petitio principii? We want to know if bodily behavior is motivated by subjective conscious experience. And you offer, as evidence that it is so motivated… er, observational data concerning bodily behavior. But hold on; it's that behavior whose motivation we're inquiring about.
This is an important question in the context of ID. One could observe all the bodily behavior involved in the Empire State building being designed and built. One would have lots of scientifically intelligible observational data of material motions of considerable complexity, and one could explain the entire process in terms of physical laws. But few people (eliminative materialists being among the few) would conclude on that basis that no conscious choices, thoughts, desires etc were involved in how the Empire State building came to be. Sure, we could just map the trajectories of every particle involved in the process of designing and building the thing, and say, "Aha! That explains it–no need to invoke intelligent designers. Consign that notion to the scrapyard, along with dragons, unicorns, fairies, and gods!" But few people would be inclined to think that. And, of course, a single living cell is more complex than any Manhattan skyscraper.
So what is it precisely that licenses an inference to intelligent design in the Empire State building case but not the cell case? (A side issue is, why do so many atheists rabbit on and on about how rational they are, while all the time insisting that the agency of rational minds is essentially irrelevant to explaining how the world works? Could they be guilty of logical incoherence?)
One question might be, why consider them any more supernatural than the inhabitants (if such there are) of Andromeda, or of other universes in the multiverse? Many people claim to have had more contact with spiritual beings than with any inhabitants of Andromeda, or of other physical universes.
Even scientists are positing loads of higher dimensions and other weird notions as part of theories about the real world. For example, brane cosmology. So what counts as another 'plane of existence' may be coming up for grabs again.
This is fine as far as it goes. But I see one rather pervasive problem. Minds don't seem to be either observable or, even more importantly, lawfully predictable the way matter is.
This may be true. But that still leaves the question of whether 'being natural' and 'being scientifically detectable' are equivalent. I can easily see, for example, that it might well be the case that minds are natural but not scientifically detectable. And that this statement might well include the mind of God within its scope. If science can't really detect minds, then it can't detect the minds of intelligent designers, including the minds of scientists. But of course, most scientists believe that, say, Einstein had a mind. And of course it's a reasonable belief. But what is it precisely that licenses inferences to the existence of minds? Until we know the answer to that question, we don't know if the the data concerning living species licenses an inference to a designing mind. (And see again my comment about what should or shouldn't be inferred from the evidence of common descent.)
As far as I can see, materialists are far more guilty on this score, often positing an unknown Material-Process-of-the-Gaps; the gaps being everything that is more plausibly explained by the intentional actions of minds (which, ironically, science presupposes all the time under the guise of 'observers' and rational inference makers).
Examples of Material-Process-of-the-Gaps?
Explaining the existence of the universe; or the multiverse; the origin of laws of nature; the origin of physical constants; the initial conditions; life; consciousness; reason; morality; the emotional qualia associated with music; language; codes; how thought represents the world; the difference between what physical facts constitute something's being intelligently designed and what physical facts constitute something's not being intelligently designed.
The spirit of eliminative materialism (see quoted text above) haunts science like some dreadful specter.
Comment by stunney — May 12, 2007 @ 12:06 am
May 12th, 2007 at 1:58 am
keiths cites Bill Dembski,
keiths adds,
From the point of view of materialistic naturalism, mind, intelligence, morality, goal, meaning, purpose, codes, etc., either simply do not exist, or are illusions (i.e., they do not exist), or supernatural (people say they exist but they do not exist). So, of course intelligent anything cannot be accommodated in materialistic naturalism, whether you are talking about flagella, or Shakespeare, or whatever. We cannot say, for example, that a purposive intelligence carved Mt Rushmore. A good materialistic naturalist must phrase it differently: as perhaps, 'a complex synthesis of skull-localized bio-physico-moleculo-electrochemical effects mechanically interacted with a hammer and chisel, causing unusual erosion of Mt. Rushmore.' Now we're talking science. Intelligence is out of the question.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 12, 2007 @ 1:58 am
May 12th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Sorry. I meant scientific evidence. We can verify the capabilities of others to present data accurately. In fact, publication and replication of results is an important characteristic of science.
We can repeat the experiments of Galileo, build a telescope and see the phases of Venus. Like Faraday, we can make an electric motor to demonstrate the relationship between electricity and magnetism. We can make a microscope, just as Leeuwenhoek did, and rediscover tiny animalcules swimming in a single drop of water. We can see the spectrum of the Sun by using a prism, just as Newton did. Or we can take a hike, examine the geologic column, and verify the maps of geologists, such as those of William Smith "” perhaps even finding a few common fossils.
It is the repeatability of scientific observations that allows us to have confidence in our conclusions.
Comment by Zachriel — May 12, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Abstractions are not scientifically detectable entities. For instance, the number of prime numbers is not a scientific fact, but a mathematical one.
Thoughts can be defined a number of ways, such as a subjective experience, or inferred from the activities and utterances of those who have them. Most evidence points to a biological origin, but there are large gaps in the scientific knowledge of mind.
Um, if you don't eat you may get hungry.
You can make reasonable inferences without a formal scientific method.
Though there is no deductive proof of the utility of induction, we can make comparisons (nowadays statistical analyses) of *relative* levels of confidence. Sure as the Dawn.
Scientific evidence. (Sorry, I usually type it out.) On your other points, scientific knowledge is not individual experience, but a cultural abstraction. But let's start with simple induction and work our way up.
If you are stuck on 1), then just keep in mind that there is no absolute assurance in induction. Rather, we have a level of confidence in our knowledge. Modern science allows us to assign a metric to this level of confidence. Eventually, you can follow the chain of induction right up to the discovery that you are not the only person on the planet.
Except that the definition of a designing intelligence clearly includes humans.
Evidence. We make a reasonable causal connection between the artisan, the art and the artifact.
I already mentioned that I don't find the distinction particularly useful.
I don't see that to be a problem. (Though you do overstate significantly. We don't observe the mind"”leaving aside that mind probably doesn't constitute a unitary entity"”, but infer its existence.)
Well, if you define mind in such a way that it includes characteristics that don't have empirical implications, then of course, those aspects can't be detected. But we know that organisms have memory (e.g. pain avoidance), can model the world (e.g. problem solving), and can even model themselves (self-consciousness). We don't directly observe all sorts of things in science, but we can make reasonable inferences.
Comment by Zachriel — May 12, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Zachriel, first of all, I'm stunney, not eric.
You wrote:
Are you stupid, or are you just pretending to be stupid?
I ask what you mean by saying the subjective conscious experiences we refer to as desires are explainable biologically, and you 'explain' it by referring to… a subjective conscious experience, in this case the subjective conscious experience we call hunger.:roll:
Well, I'm going to make the prediction that your side will continue to resort to a Material-Process-of-the-Gaps argument.
I know. But that wasn't my question. It was whether the thought processes we refer to as 'rational inferences' are natural and/or scientifically detectable entities.
I think it was me who first directed you, in this or a previous thread, to the Humean arguments about the instinctual and essentially non-rational character of our inductive habits.
See my immediately preceding remark.
People can be enormously confident and wrong about a lot of things.
That there are minds other than my own is a fact that cannot be discovered. Small children aren't little scientists; they don't 'discover' that their parents have minds. Rather, they acquire the concept of mind. They learn that it's a presupposition of discovering anything.
If I'm wrong in thinking that there are other minds, then I could very well be wrong about just about anything that I might take myself as discovering about reality. Practically no evidence, in fact, that I might discover for the existence of other minds could be as convincing to me as my belief that there are minds other than my own already is.
I see. So the mind-body problem and the problem of other minds can both be solved by looking up a dictionary?
Please alert the rest of the world to your startling and brilliant solution.
Dear God Almighty.
The problem is how do we know that something like the Empire State building or the Pyramids of Egypt or DNA code is or isn't the result of an intelligent designer or 'artisan', as you put it so quaintly. Is it by looking at the level of complexity? Well, cells don't do too badly on that score. Is it by stipulating that a thing is not intelligently designed unless human bodies were involved in the thing's production? But that can't be right, because it would entail that there are no intelligent designers elsewhere in the universe or multiverse, and no intelligent transcendent creator. And you can't solve substantive scientific or philosophical problems by just giving a definition you happen to like.
It's not to do with definitions, Zachriel, it's to do with the most undeniable fact there is for each thinking human—the fact of their own consciousness, and how different that fact is from, say, the fact that lampshades can be made out of Jewish skin.
Vladimir Kondran:
Precisely; and very well put.
Comment by stunney — May 12, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I originally posted this on another thread where stunney had cross-posted his "truth about minds" comment. Since the relevant discussion appears to be happening here, I'm reposting my comment here.
stunney wrote:
stunney,
There are multiple truths about minds, not just one, and Colin McGinn doesn't doubt science's ability to uncover many of them. It is the "Hard Problem" of consciousness, to use David Chalmers' phrase, that McGinn thinks is insoluble.
I'm not sure it's just a small amount of free will that he argues for; after all, his book The Problem of Evil is largely a free-will defense.
Most materialists (including me) would not see that as a dilemma. To us, the following two statements are compatible:
1) The Empire State Building is the result of many, many particles mindlessly following the laws of physics.
2) Intelligent agents designed and built the Empire State Building.
To a materialist, a collection of mindless particles can, in the aggregate, be intelligent. This is not so mysterious as some believe. Many systems have properties that their individual components do not share. My car, as an assembled system, can carry me twenty miles to work, but we are not surprised that none of the parts are capable of doing so on their own. My pocket calculator can do square roots, even though a single transistor by itself cannot.
The key difference is that the cell's predecessors form a long chain, shaped over millions of years by Darwinian processes. If life did not reproduce and vary, and if it were not subject to selection, then I would strongly suspect it had been designed. Had I lived before Darwin, I am almost certain I would have been a believer.
I think that depends on your definition of 'observable'. I suspect most scientists would say we observe minds the same way we observe protons: by their effects.
Regarding predictability: Computers, viewed at a high level, are not predictable either. Your computer can surprise you when it crashes. Yet this high-level unpredictability does not mean that there is not a lower-level model of the computer that does accurately predict crashes. The problem is that the lower-level model is more complicated and unwieldy; even engineers will stick to the higher-level model until a bug arises, forcing us to use a lower-level representation. Thus there is no reason to regard the unpredictability of minds, viewed at a high level, as an indication that they are not materially based.
The effects of minds are observable. If you observe these effects, and if they cannot be otherwise produced, then haven't you detected a mind?
This, after all, is what ID is trying to do. My disagreement with IDers does not involve the logic of the statement above. Our quarrel is over whether certain things (flagella, for example) meet the criterion of 'cannot be produced other than by intelligence'.
Comment by keiths — May 12, 2007 @ 4:12 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
stunney:
An approach which has been quite succesful. Unlike the Magicmandunnit approach. It is therefore quite rational to keep resorting to it. Perhaps your chum the atheist Hume might object that there is no guarantee that the inductive approach will succeed, but that doesn't make it irrational. The most rational approach is the Bayesian method of updating the plausibility of hypotheses in the face of new information (you might enjoy reading Jaynes' Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Just google jaynes probability, and it's the first hit. I think you will like his not-suffering-fools-gladly style). The experiments that keiths described above tend to increase the plausibility of a completely material mind, at least given my prior.
Comment by Raevmo — May 12, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I wonder what kind of evidence it would take for people like stunney to accept the possibility that purely physical processes are sufficient to account for minds. Even though some claim that they only have evidence for the existence of their own minds, it is also clear that almost no-one seriously thinks he or she is the only individual with a mind. So they must infer the minds of others in some way. And they do this by observing the behavior of others and correlating it to their own behavior and by correlating their own behavior to their own consciousness. If this is true, wouldn't they have to admit that a sufficiently sophisticated robot that has behavior completely indistinguishable from normal human behavior probably has a mind as well?
Comment by Raevmo — May 12, 2007 @ 6:39 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
I apologize for the misattribution. Unfortunately, we can't edit our comments beyond a short period of time.
The statement clearly made a causal connection between a biological fact, and a desire. We can also note that there are changes in the body associated with the lack of food, that there are even changes in the brain due to lack of food; that these changes can be manipulated in a variety of ways, such as showing food to a hungry organism. And with humans, we can actually talk to them.
You could posit a non-biological aspect to this phenomena, but there is no scientific evidence to support the claim and substantial evidence to suggest that biological mechanisms are sufficient to explain the phenomena.
I'm not on a "side". Regardless of your handwaving, there is substantial evidence that thoughts have a biological origin. These include chemical, physical, electrical and mechanical manipulation of the brain. But there are Gaps. Fill it with whatever metaphysical juice you want.
Rational inferences are abstractions. The number two is an abstraction. You can think about the number two. But the thought is not the number two.
And modern science deals with the issue by providing a metric of confidence. You are more than welcome to keep putting your hand in the flame hoping for a different result. Pardon me for thinking that to be foolish.
Sure they can. And in science, all conclusions are considered tentative and subject to revision in the light of new information and methods.
Only by rejecting induction, by rejecting discovery itself.
That's fine. But being personally convinced is not scientific evidence.
I suppose anyone who agrees with you that people are not intelligent agents may be willing accept the rest of your argument.
I would consider evidence of large-brained, learning, problem-solving, plan-producing, hierarchically-organized organisms building the Empire State Building to be evidence that intelligent agency was involved in the process.
Certainly, subjective experience is something worth talking about, but that doesn't justify your other opinions. If you accept induction, even if you attach some sort of metaphysical glow to it, then it is possible to make reasonable inferences, that flames hurt your hand, that the Sun will rise in the East, that other people exist and have similar experiences to your own. You can certainly reject induction, but don't expect others not to think you foolish when you keep burning your hand hoping for a different result.
Comment by Zachriel — May 12, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Raevmo wrote:
It's not clear Hume was an atheist. He may have been; but his published writing is actually more suggestive of his being a deist (as was Voltaire).
Hume thought induction was a non-rational instinct.
Not given mine, however. I replied here about Libet. Pay attention to the highlighted bit in the quote box.
I already accept it's a possibility. And I would even accept it as true if I ever heard a sufficiently convincing argument. But, alas, I haven't.
So I don't think purely physical processes are sufficient to account for all mental phenomena, especially intentionality, and understanding or knowledge of abstract entities and truths (such as the truth of Godel sentences or calculus). This understanding/knowledge is far more than is plausibly necessary for our species on evolutionary hypotheses, given the amount of time modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens, have been around for. And let's not forget that many other species manage to survive just fine without any of it. And none of them seem to give a monkey's fuck about the finer points of Big Bang cosmology or pre-biotic Earth chemistry.
I would say that some qualia might well be accounted for physicalistically, but not all qualia, particularly qualia that do not concern our immediate bodily states or needs. Qualia concerning highly complex apprehensions of moral and aesthetic value seem to me to be way beyond what other primates are capable of. Which is one reason other primates aren't religious, or into Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto, or wondering what to do to save the planet from global warming, or how best to care for other endangered species, or human-on-human gun violence. Et cetera.
Well, I was discussing this with a non-philosopher, retired programmer friend the other day. Robots could be programmed to write code, we agreed, but the programs used to program them are code. But then we agreed that codes cannot ultimately evolve from matter because codes are essentially abstract entities, any more than mathematics can evolve from matter.
Raevmo, I responded to your request on the Provoking Thought About NOMA thread, but it is 'awaiting moderation' as the saying goes. Whatever that saying means.
Comment by stunney — May 12, 2007 @ 11:37 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 12:12 am
stunney wrote:
stunney,
How do you account for the fact that brain damage can alter a person's moral character, as in the case of Phineas Gage? Why does alcohol disrupt our reasoning ability? Why can stroke damage specifically impair a person's ability to understand proverbs and metaphors? How is it that brain damage can disable the will?
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 12:12 am
May 13th, 2007 at 12:59 am
A mistake many materialists often make is to think that if we find evidence that brain-states are causally necessary for some mental states to obtain, it is therefore probably true that such brain-states are either causally sufficient for those mental states to obtain, or even that therefore such brain-states are identical with those mental states.
But it is easy to see why such reasoning is fallacious. Suppose it is causally necessary for my seeing that the grass is green that the sun be shining (at least somewhat). That the sun be shining is not therefore sufficient to cause my seeing that the grass is green, far less is the sun shining identical with my seeing that the grass is green.
Nevertheless, it is probably true that if the sun ceased to be/shine, a great many mental states would cease to be.
Substitute 'brain being in state S' for 'the sun being in a shiny state S*.'
Here, without endorsing all of it, is some general stuff on Kripkean arguments against materialism.
Comment by stunney — May 13, 2007 @ 12:59 am
May 13th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Keith,
You never answered my last post, but it seems to me that you are asking what role the soul has in the person. And as I said here:
A person is a composite of many things. You ask-
Sometimes people die from strokes. If you damage the body or brain sufficiently, the soul departs. I can't understand why you think brain damage shouldn't have an affect.
You may as well ask why a person born with Down's syndrome isn't very smart.
Also, you said we have souls, they're just not eternal. Well, if that is the case, all your questons still apply. Why does our noneternal soul not override any brain damage that occurs?
Comment by onething — May 13, 2007 @ 1:48 am
May 13th, 2007 at 2:20 am
stunney wrote:
A mistake made by many irascible ex-pat Scottish Catholics living in America is to think that certain materialists haven't thought through the subtleties of this.
Suppose a function, say morality, is shared between the brain and some immaterial essence (let's call it a soul). An obvious unanswered question is how the immaterial soul manages to influence the physical brain, but let's set that aside for now.
Another obvious question to ask is about the "division of labor" — which parts of the morality function are carried out by the soul, and which by the brain?
Well, studies show that brain injury can completely change a person's moral behavior. This raises two questions:
1. How can a soul be considered morally responsible if it is not capable of controlling moral behavior?
2. What does the soul do, exactly, if the brain is doing all of the moral heavy lifting?
One common response is that these questions are misguided, because the soul of the brain-damaged person is still operating under the same moral scheme as before. It's just that the brain damage prevents the person's brain from "receiving the signals" from the soul. The person's aberrant behavior is just a symptom of bad reception, and the soul is not responsible for the behavior since it, all the while, is sending out different signals.
There's a problem with this gambit: If the soul is the seat of consciousness as well as moral will, then a person in this scenario should feel completely "hijacked" — choosing to do one thing for moral reasons and finding the body carrying out the opposite, with the soul simply "along for the ride." But a person in this deeply distressing situation would be able to express his distress and describe what was happening. These people don't. They feel that their actions are freely chosen.
So we're back to a soul which is incapable of making and carrying out moral choices. If so, what function does the soul have with respect to morality?
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 2:20 am
May 13th, 2007 at 2:57 am
onething asks:
I don't expect that to happen. What actually happens — two consciousnesses in a single skull — makes a lot of sense to me.
My question is for those people who believe in an immaterial soul. If the soul is the seat of consciousness, and if the person had a single consciousness before the operation, where did the second consciousness come from? Is it a soulless consciousness? And if it can be soulless, what was the soul really contributing to consciousness in the first place? Why does the undivided brain have an associated soul? Or did the soul split in two when the hemispheres were separated? If so, why? Etc.
This is an example of an empirical finding, one of many, that makes far more sense when interpreted from a materialist perspective.
Now, your concept of a soul may differ from the more common view. You may also alter your conception of the soul to accommodate the findings of science. But be wary — if you're not careful, you may end up playing "soul of the gaps", with the soul occupying whatever territory neuroscience has not yet claimed for the brain.
Again, I don't. As a materialist, I expect a stroke to impact functioning, including high-level functions like abstract reasoning.
The question, again, is for those who believe in an immaterial soul and who think it is responsible for some of the functions that are impaired by strokes. Bradford, for example, earlier expressed a belief that complex, abstract thought is a function of the soul alone. If it is, how is it that physical brain damage disrupts this function?
Because the material, non-eternal soul I'm talking about is a function of the brain. If it depends on the brain, why would you expect it to be able to override brain damage?
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 2:57 am
May 13th, 2007 at 3:01 am
Eric,
You've gone off the rails in your eagerness to defend Dembski.
The two main aims of your comment seem to have been
1) to accuse me of quote-mining, and
2) to claim that Dembski's definition of methodological naturalism in the book Intelligent Design somehow means that this statement of his has nothing to do with the supernatural:
You wrote:
Yet you had just quoted the definition in your prior comment, and I explicitly referred to it. Nothing was being hidden. Why would I bother requoting the definition in that case?
And more to the point, why would you tendentiously accuse (and accuse, and accuse) me of quote-mining in that case? I call foul.
Eric:
The funny thing is that as I point out next, the definition he offers doesn't have to be twisted to match the normal definition of MN.
As for omitting Dembski's definition the first time around: I left it out because the wording fit with my own definition of MN, and with that of the MN practiced by the scientific community. Why repeat an obvious definition of a term we already know?
Take a look at Dembski's definition:
Apparently, the fact that this definition would make perfect sense to a naturalist didn't occur to you, so you jumped to the conclusion that the omission was intended to deceive.
Yet it is only when you implicitly add the baggage of Dembski's particular belief regarding the possibility of intelligence in a world of natural causes that MN becomes problematic for his version of ID. And note that this is only a problem for his version of ID, and not for ID in the larger sense. That is why I wrote this:
In other words, a version of ID which does not make Dembski's particular assumption is not threatened by MN unless it demands the supernatural. Thus when Dembski says it cannot succeed unless MN gives way, he is saying that it demands the supernatural.
Some points regarding what you think is Dembski's own definition of MN:
1. Dembski is arguing that science should abandon
methodological naturalism. Given this, why on earth would he argue against his own version of MN, which is not accepted by scientists, instead of the MN actually practiced by the scientific community? Despite his wacky ideas, he's not an idiot. He knows that scientists consider psychology and neuroscience to be genuine sciences. If he intended for his definition to exclude them, then he did so knowing that he would no longer be criticizing actual methodological naturalism. This would defeat his purpose.
2. If Dembski intended for his definition to differ from the standard MN definition, why didn't he word it that way? As I've explained, his wording is compatible with the conventional concept of MN. If he had wanted to tack on his assumption about the possibility of intelligence based on undirected natural processes, he would have made it explicit.
3. On the other hand, if you think that he explicitly intended for his definition to differ from the standard, but didn't word it that way, then he is at best lazy or careless and at worst dishonest.
4. Why would he claim that he, Johnson and Plantinga were all making the same point about MN, if he and they were not using the same concept of MN, and if his criticism depended on MN's exclusion of intelligence, while theirs depended only on MN's rejection of God?
I wrote:
You replied:
Wrong. On the very page from which the quote was taken, Dembski writes:
Are you claiming that Dembski is using the phrase "transcendent design" to describe the work of a designer hatched from undirected, purely natural causes?
But if you're right, they don't mean the same thing as Dembski does by the phrase "methodological naturalism." Plantinga and Johnson object to MN because it excludes God; according to you, Dembski rejects it (scientifically, if not theologically) because it excludes intelligence. They are hardly "making the same point," as Dembski claims, if you are right about Dembski's position.
As I've explained, natural design is only excluded if you tack on an extra assumption which is not part of Dembski's definition.
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 3:01 am
May 13th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Perhaps stunney would consider the following. Provide an account, in terms of "purely physical processes" for the contents of stunney's next post. You must do so without introducing intelligence (your own included), mind (your own included), will, meaning, etc, unless you can account for those as well, by purely physical processes. Also, no appeals to virtus dormitiva style explanations, e.g., stuff like 'will-determining chemical reaction' or 'molecular mental arrangement' or 'intelligence-inducing neural process' etc.
stunney says,
Indeed. It is an odd thing to ask, "Why does alcohol disrupt our reasoning ability?", as if a human person should be presumed wholly immaterial. Perhaps the sad distortion of Descartes leads to such questions – the view that man is pure spirit, who happens to be trapped in a physical body. An angel inhabiting a machine.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 13, 2007 @ 3:15 am
May 13th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Divested of sexy neurological terminology, this is identical to the 'soul as harmony' theory of the Pythagorians. It was was deep-sixed by Socrates, but then, why bother with ancient history when we can repeat the same mistakes and call it progress?
They aren't mistaken. Your questions presuppose some kind of theology about body and soul which is contrary to orthodoxy. Your Catholic friends are not under an obligation to defend whatever weird philosophic mind-body doctrine you happen to be peddling. In this sense they are justified in telling you to go back to the drawing-board. The Catechism of the Catholic Church art.365 says: "The unity of soul and body is so profound that… spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature."
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 13, 2007 @ 6:04 am
May 13th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Science is as science does. Science can investigate aspects of mind and even reports of spiritual experiences. However, it is necessarily limited in its capabilities and domain.
If someone has a personal mystical experience, then unless there are empirical consequences, sustained scientific argument will be of little avail. (Empirical consequences could be that God gave the person winning lottery numbers. The contrary might be that the Great Spirit said to love their neighbors.) That's why Non-Overlapping Magisteria is an important concept.
That is not to say that you might not find the discussion interesting or fun. Have at it.
I have very meager goals. I just don't want people claiming that scientists are lying about the evidence for evolution. And I don't want people falsely claiming that Intelligent Design has a scientific basis in order to effect social and political change.
Comment by Zachriel — May 13, 2007 @ 10:04 am
May 13th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Vladimir Krondan wrote:
It's not at all odd to ask that question of someone like Bradford, who suggests that abstract thought is the function solely of an immaterial soul and therefore not dependent on the brain.
If you recognize that it is at least partly a function of the brain, then I congratulate you; that's a step in the right direction. But don't make the mistake of imagining that Bradford's view is rare simply because it does not happen to accord with your own beliefs.
Many people believe in an immaterial soul which is the seat of will, consciousness, personality, and reasoning, which persists in consciousness after separating from the body at death, and which retains the person's identity, personality, memories, beliefs, emotions, and rationality.
I wrote:
Vladimir:
Not sure what you're talking about here. Pythagoras was a believer in metempsychosis, which bears no resemblance to my belief that the mind and soul are mortal, being functions of the physical brain.
By the way, what "sexy neurological terminology"
Wow — I can't believe you actually quote-mined your own catechism. The very next sentence emphasizes the life of the soul apart from the body after death:
This sounds very similar to what I was taught as a young Lutheran, which was that the believer's soul separates from his body at death, retaining full consciousness, personality, emotions, rationallity, etc., and is eventually reunited with the resurrected body at the Last Judgment.
Anyway, the point to stress here is that my question applies whether the soul can exist as an independent unity or not. In either case, the question is: what is the soul doing, exactly, if all of these functions are so easily disrupted by damaging or perturbing the brain?
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 11:36 am
May 13th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
A mistake many materialists often make is to think all those who aren't like them must believe in a Cartesian soul.
There is no Cartesian soul, in my view. Nor in Aquinas's view, for that matter. Aquinas was not a substance dualist. Nor am I.
If people want a contemporary label for my view about the philosophy of mind, it might be property dualism, though I have problems with that term. I think it false that there's only one ontological category, 'the physical', but also false (or at least unhelpfully misleading) that there are two such categories; 'the physical' and 'the mental'. I prefer something like this schema:
The Divine
The Mathematico-Logical
The Microphysical
The Macrophysical
The Conscious/Phenomenal
The Rational/Intentional
The Abstract Thought-Object
The Aesthetic
The Imaginary/Fictional
The Keithslike
A given thing may fall under more than one of these categories. It needs work, of course, but I think there's something to it"¦
Now consider this possibility:
1. A living human body is causally necessary for all mental states that body has.
2. A living body is causally sufficient for all mental states that body has.
3. Propositions 1 and 2 are not necessary truths, but contingent truths.
4. Some human mental states are neither identical with, nor reducible to, their bodily causes.
5. Some mental states cause some bodily states.
6. A human being is one substance, which has physical and non-physical properties.
I wrote on a different thread the following, which elaborates on how I see the human mind's history and nature:
And a little more on immaterial causation for those who like doing that sort of thing.
Comment by stunney — May 13, 2007 @ 12:23 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Most naturalists believe that brain states fully explain mental states in some sense of 'fully explain'. They admit that we don't currently have all the explanatory details. And some, such as the New Mysterians, predict that we'll never have them all.
I say 'most naturalists', because there are some naturalists who are dualists—either substance dualists or property dualists—but hold that both material and non-material substances or properties are perfectly natural, and also hold that nothing is supernatural.
But let's just stick with anti-dualist naturalists. I'll call their position 'materialism' for the purpose of this post.
The materialist position is thus that living human bodies fully explain human minds. 'Fully explain', for my present purpose, includes both eliminative forms of materialist explanation, and epiphenomenalist accounts.
Eliminative explanations don't so much explain as puzzle. For, mental states don't exist on this view, and that entails the mental state of thinking that mental states do exist, er, doesn't exist. Eliminativists somtimes say mental states are illusions. But, illusions are mental states if anything is. At any rate it is hard to make sense of eliminativism.:roll:
But now consider non-eliminativist versions of materialism. Those versions hold that bodily states cause mental states, in some sense of 'cause'—either 'cause by being the same thing as'; or 'cause by some material process'.
It is trivially true that mental states cause brain-states if mind-brain identity is true, since on that view, mental states just are brain-states. But even if true, the identity thesis is not obviously enlightening. We feel no wiser, because if it's true that minds=brains, why did anyone ever think otherwise? X=X is a necessary truth, so how could we have missed that minds=brains, if it's true that minds=brains? Well, a vast amount of philosophical labor has been expended on that question, and I don't wish to add to it here. I merely note the fact of the question.
The more interesting kind of materialism is the non-identity+epiphenomenalist kind. This basically says that:
M) All mental states are caused by brain-states; and no brain-state is caused by a mental state; and brain-states are not identical to the mental states they cause.
Now think about that for a second. If M is true, a mental state ms* is caused by a brain state bs*, and ms*=bs* is false. Notice that this idea takes two distinct states and asserts a causal relation exists between them. But if ms* is itself a brain-state (albeit, not the brain-state bs*, but rather, bs**), then we're just saying that one brain state bs* causes another brain state, bs**. So we are again stuck with the intellectually unsatisfying or unenlightening 'solution' that the identity theory leaves us with: how could we have missed, not this time that minds=brains, but that when a brain-state causes a mental state, what it's causing is just another distinct brain state.
Now suppose we interpret materialism as saying M, but also denying that mental states are reducible to brain states. Then we have: brain states cause mental states, but some or all of the mental states so caused are irreducible to any brain state. I will call this thesis non-reductive materialism:
Non-RM) All mental states are caused by brain-states; and no brain-state is caused by a mental state; and brain-states are not identical to the mental states they cause; and some or all mental states are irreducible to any brain state.
But notice now, a believer in Non-RM is faced with the same problem that dualists are supposed to face: how there can exist causal relations between brain-states and irreducible mental states. And, whatever the believer in Non-RM may say about that, she will have to say why causal relations between brain states and mental states cannot run in either direction, but only and always in the one way direction from brain-state as cause to mental state as effect.
I'll leave you with that thought (aka by some as 'that brain state'), and also this one, expressed in Dubyaspeak:
The mind-body problem is hard; it's hard work.:idea:
Comment by stunney — May 13, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Keith, and Stunney too
I debated about responding on the other thread, as they are nearly overlapping in topic.
The questions you are asking are good, some of them seem simplistic or way off base, but not all of them.
And Stunney said,
I'm afraid I am one of those morons. Which is to say that I have thought about this immaterial idea, and I am fairly sure that it is, at least to a degree, wrong. Putting together in my own head the various things I have read, (and remember I am just a layperson) about quantum physics, and books like Ervin Lazslo's "Science and the Akashic Field", and even books by some IDists like Behe and Denton, I have come to the conclusion that what we humans are calling reality is a small slice, and there seems to be a progression right now toward the smaller and the smaller. Also, the bigger is built upon the smaller. So the question becomes, how small can it get? Quite small, it would seem. At the same time I ponder how could a deity, for example, and not only a deity but the many, many reports throughout history of mind over matter, bring about the results that they do? I absolutely believe that if God created the cosmos, that there were mechanisms to do it, that all atoms followed laws and every atom can be accounted for. That is what I meant when I said I don't believe in magic. It's all well and good to speak of the nonmaterial realm, and we have done so historically precisely because it appears to us, for all intents and purposes, to be magical. Yet it can't be. If God can cause things to happen to matter, then there is a point of contact. I truly cannot see it any other way. So what I believe, is that we are erroniously referring to certain phenomena as nonmaterial, when in fact they are extremely subtle. Indeed, I've come to the conclusion that this is how things work. The gross material is controlled and initiated in a very subtle level of reality, but it is contiguous nonetheless.
To reiterate, if there is a way to influence, then there is a mode of contact. If there is possible contact, then it is a continuum.
At the same time, I do see the logic in not allowing it to be machanism all the way down. This is why God and existence are such a mind-stopping problem for me. And this is truly why God is God. God is that being which beyond any and all comprehension manages to exist, where the buck stops. It cannot stop and yet it must. All I can say is that we can posit progressions from the Godhead down to our reality, but at some point in the rarified atmosphere or the depths of the inner dimensions, we enter something beyond all name and form and mental conception. What is the nature of it's existence I cannot imagine, and I do try.
Keith, I tend to see the soul in a somewhat more limited role, as something more in the back seat. The post I made last night on the NOMA thread shows that I find that what I refer to as the spiritual faculty, perhaps it's the soul, is dormant in us. And this is our problem. It can be quickened. Jesus refers to being born again, and he means spiritually. So one person may be walking around having not had this spiritual birth, and this will obviously make a difference. I find questions of will very difficult. I believe in free will, yet have problems with it. It certainly seems that a person struggles with their conscience a lot, and often loses. What does this tell us? A person is a composite of many aspects, and they are not operating smoothly. It seems to me that the soul is subsumed by many of them, and there is a conflict. I personally believe in reincarnation and I think that souls are works in progress.
I didn't see where Bradford said the soul is responsible for abstract thought, but I certainly can't agree. Because a person with a low IQ has rather little ability for abstract thought, whereas a very intelligent person is good at it. This would mean a person of low intelligence or Down's syndrome almost lacks a soul.
I don't think a person whose brain is damaged is responsible in the same way, yet I don't think it's true the brain is doing the moral heavy lifting. Rather, with a damaged brain, the whole setup just can't really function. The brain is an integral part of the composite, at least while we are in the body.
Yet out of the body, memory seems to be intact. Based on my readings of outof body and near death experiences, it seems the mind takes over without a hitch once outside the body, but when it is inside it's a whole other story.
But Keith, this distress is expressed by a lot of regular people who don't have brain damage! If there's just a brain, why the conflict?
I can only reiterate that these are very interesting questions. But you make a lot of assumptions that I don't. I doubt that consciousness and the soul are the same thing!
What you are describing is an altered ability to perceive. Let us say I drive a car, but second gear doesn't work. I go kinda fast in first gear and shift to 3rd. Or the battery won't work so I pop the clutch. Or the headlights are out so I creep along very slowly at night. I can only work with what I've got. But I wouldn't call that altered ability to perceive as meaning their are two consciousneses.
Just because people have had a lot of incorrect ideas is no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I didn't.
Stunney, I'm not quite sure what you mean about their being no Cartesian soul. I think you mean that body and soul are integral to one another.
Comment by onething — May 13, 2007 @ 4:57 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
onething wrote:
Are laws made of atoms?
Or do laws consist of, not atoms, but energy? If so, what about E=mc^2?
The morons I was referring to are eliminative materialists. Do you really consider yourself to be an eliminative materialist?
I don't have enough time right now for a longer response to other things you said.
Comment by stunney — May 13, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Comment by Zachriel — May 13, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Hi, Zachriel –
You wrote:
Indeed, and neuroscience is actively revealing the neural basis of many abilities and phenomena which were traditionally ascribed to the soul.
I'd be interested in hearing whether you think modern neuroscience is transgressing those limits.
Of course, many religious experiences do have empirical consequences, this being one of my favorites. But we are not helpless to judge the validity of those that don't. We can ask whether religious experiences occur among people of different cultures and belief systems. We can ask whether the content of these experiences is consistent from person to person. We can gather information on how convincing the experiences are to those who have them. We can ask whether there is a correlation between brain "wiring" and religious experiences, as in the case of temporal lobe epilepsy. We can investigate whether it is possible to produce religious experiences artificially, for example by transcranial magnetic stimulation.
In considering these factors and others, I've come to the conclusion that at the very least, most religious experiences, no matter how meaningful and convincing to those experiencing them, are not valid.
Are you a NOMAd? I didn't realize that.
My objection to NOMA as a prescription for how to divvy up the territory between science and religion is this: Under NOMA, parts of the disputed territory are handed to science when science demonstrates competence in dealing with them. Religion seems to get everything else by default. Given religion's lousy track record at coming to consensus on morals, the meaning of life, the nature of God, etc., I don't see why we should trust it to adjudicate these things.
Hear, hear. Those are worthy goals which I share. I have an additional goal, which is to work toward the elimination of the societal taboo that exempts religion from the same kind of critical scrutiny that is (usefully) directed toward politics, science, economics, etc.
And I guess I have one more goal, which is to have fun arguing with irascible ex-pat Scottish Catholics living in America.
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Moderators,
My last comment is caught in the spam filter. Could one of you fish it out?
Thanks,
Keith S.
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
stunney wrote:
Invoking "non-material higher mental states" is a classic instance of "multiplying entities without necessity". I strongly suspect that if it weren't for your prior religious commitment, you wouldn't be hypothesizing an immaterial soul, or whatever you want to call it, until the evidence demanded it. As it is you're assuming its existence, and then shrinking it in an attempt to fit it into whatever gap is left by neuroscience.
Question: Are you not an orthodox Catholic? If the functions you cite cannot be carried out by an immaterial soul in isolation, then what do you think happens to the soul between the death and resurrection of a believer? Conventional Catholic dogma holds that the soul is a conscious, thinking, emotional entity during that time, does it not? Do you accept that, or are you a heretic?
Your "explanation" amounts to saying that immaterial causation is magic. You claim that although the material requires causal mechanisms, the immaterial does not, and so immaterial causation just happens.
But you've simply defined your way to your conclusion by declaring that mechanism is an inherently material concept which is not applicable to the immaterial domain. Says who?
And don't forget, for the immaterial to affect the material, it has to "reach into" the material world. The material world demands mechanism, by your own admission, so there should be a mechanism at the interface between the immaterial and the material in order for causation to take place. You have supplied no such mechanism.
Regarding identity theory, materialism, and dualism: To me, the pertinent question when dealing with the concept of a soul is not so much whether dualism or materialism is correct, but whether an immaterial soul can be causally potent. The evidence allows the soul only a very limited causal role, if any at all, but that does not rule out some versions of dualism, such as Chalmers'.
I have a certain sympathy for epiphenomenalism, in which brain states are causally potent, but mental states are just "along for the ride." Under such a view, it is easy to see how mental states would appear to be causally potent when they actually are not.
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 9:16 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Hi Zachriel,
I responded to you here, in case you missed it (it was stuck in the spam filter for a while).
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
I believe, as per the ancient Catholic creed, in the resurrection of the body.
Aquinas, God bless him, thought that the persistence of the soul between death and the general resurrection required a miracle. Since I do not believe that this interval is meaningfully characterized as temporal, I do not agree with Aquinas's view that a miracle is even called for.
But now consider the possibility that yarramaroon.
Or even that yerroffyerrocka.
Comment by stunney — May 13, 2007 @ 10:20 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Stunney,
Noooo…I'm not sure of your objection. I don't know what laws consist of. I guess they consist of the inherent properties of things. E=mc^2 is just how things work.
Zach,
Gee, I'm really striking out here. I don't see what your point is. Maybe you're saying the text doesn't sound very scientific?
Keith,
Wow. I don't have a problem with the leader. Typical psychotic scenario. But 150 followers! Relocating from China!
I made the mistake of talking about my experience once and was told I had temporal lobe epilepsy. So I actually read the article and contacted the author, who said he thought my experience was genuine andhad nothing to do with TLE. Furthermore, I have witnessed enough seizures and they are not positive events. I have never had any such symptoms. I think that certain epileptics, and apparently Dostoevsky was one, have their seizures in a part of the brain that is so close to the temporal lobe "God spot" region that it does have an intense mystical aura preceding it. Lucky them.
Since that time, I've given the matter a lot of thought and I now think that the brain is a key element in living the spiritual life, and it is just one more example of where people have been misunderstanding all along. Meditation for example, is an attempt to force the brain to open up its spiritual centers. And people who have had near death experiences often have permanent changes, which I think are due to activation of this weak brain area. Even being born again, as I mentioned on the other thread, probably means that this area of the brain is activated. Once activated, it is never quite going to go back to what it was. A lot of people might recoil at this, but there's no need.
I think it is.
Comment by onething — May 13, 2007 @ 11:08 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Suppose stunney were hooked up to an apparatus that would severely shock him every time he insulted someone. How long do you think he would last before going completely insane?
P.S. Stunney, it's been funny to see you post a comment, have second thoughts, and then completely replace your comment with something else, as you did with your last comment.
Be advised, however, that it's considered extremely bad form in the blogosphere to do this, because someone may already be composing a reply to your comment. It's best to think before hitting "Post".
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 11:12 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
onething, quoting stunney:
Hi onething,
Stunney has an amusing tendency to mistake the shortcomings of his own imagination for the stupidity of others.
The issue is not whether we, in descending the hierarchy of causes, can find some ultimate causal explanation for everything.
The issue, as you suggested to stunney, is whether the immaterial can affect the material realm by overriding the laws of physics.
The brain is a collection of particles. There isn't the slightest evidence that these particles "know" that they are part of a brain. They follow the same laws of physics inside the brain as they would outside.
If stunney is correct that the immaterial soul (or whatever he calls it) is able to causally influence the brain, it means that one of the following must hold:
Either
1) The laws of physics are violated in the brain, and we should be able to detect these violations scientifically; or
2) The soul is able to influence the brain without violating the laws of physics, by exploiting the leeway allowed by quantum indeterminacy (this is what lies behind Penrose's ideas about consciousness). There are many problems with this idea, not the least of which is the fact that neuron does not act like a quantum system in any meaningful sense.
The question for stunney, then, is whether he really believes that the laws of physics are violated inside brains, and if not, how is it that the immaterial soul can alter the behavior of the material brain?
That's a good point, and one that I would like to see Bradford address. This comment is where he makes his assertion.
You're assuming that the mind is actually separate from the body during OBEs. The evidence suggests that this does not happen. See this comment.
Regular people believing that they have firmly decided not to do something, and finding that their limbs are carrying it out, controlled by an alien will? I don't think so.
Don't confuse the hijacking phenomenon I described with run-of-the-mill inner conflict. In the case of inner conflict, part of us may want to do something, and part of us may not, but a decision is eventually made, and we find ourselves intentionally moving our bodies in accordance with the decision. That is why we find Dr. Strangelove's arm so amusing.
I don't assume that. Remember, I don't believe in an immaterial soul, so it would be silly for me to assert that it is the seat of consciousness. But in arguing against the existence of the soul, I'm using the common conception of a soul, which does regard it as the seat of consciousness.
Regarding split-brain patients, you wrote:
But it's not simply an altered ability to perceive. In the experiments, you have one hemisphere writing the word 'pen', and the other hemisphere crossing that out and writing the word 'knife'. Each hemisphere has a different object in mind. You have one hemisphere undoing a button, and the other hemisphere simultaneously trying to button it back up. Each hemisphere has a different intention in mind.
We are at the very least talking about two minds here, if not two full-blown consciousnesses.
I'm only discarding those ideas that seem to be incompatible with the evidence.
Comment by keiths — May 13, 2007 @ 11:22 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Science is as science does (though sometimes scientists affirm a greater confidence in their speculations than is warranted by the evidence).
NOMA may be an important concept, but still not have universal applicability.
If you researched my name, you would discover that Zachriel is the angel in charge of Jupiter"”pushing planets on crystal spheres and whatnot, that sort of thing. Now if someone were to claim they have scientific evidence of angels pushing planets, I would be very disappointed, as if I wasn't doing my job. (During busy times, e.g. Jovian conjunctions, my posting schedule can be very erratic!) This is not a Angel-of-the-Gaps situation, because if everything is working like it should, then planetary orbits should look exactly as if they were acting under the influence of the mystical force you call "gravity".
If you need a rational justification, remember that much of what is important to people is learned not with science, but philosophy. While science might inform aesthetics, it is a very clumsy tool for that purpose. We still learn far more about beauty by associating with artists than with scientists.
And most people aren't that rational anyway, and interpret life in a non-rational framework. When we say "Romeo and Juliet", the evocation is powerful and meaningful, at least to most people. For many, the discussion of events in the Bible is the source of their inspiration and their wisdom about human nature. The passions of humanity haven't changed much since the time of Abraham, and it is quite possible to understand and explore these issues using the language and stories of the Bible.
And who wouldn't rather listen to his hairdresser than Hercules? Gossip informs much of what we know about human nature. You don't learn to seduce a woman by reading a science text.
Not necessarily. Belief in a Universal Spirit that pervades reality doesn't have this problem. What you describe is God-of-the-Gaps. But why anyone would want to worship a god that hides in the ever-shrinking gaps in human knowledge, I wouldn't know.
I'm not sure what you mean here by adjudicate. But values are personal and subjective. There is empirical evidence that suggests the reason people share so many values is due to their shared biological heritage. Mammals are nurturing organisms, after all. But regardless of the source of these values, they do exist. So what we learn, and the tool we use to learn, depends on whether we want to cure disease, seek justice, seduce a woman, or find spiritual peace.
Comment by Zachriel — May 13, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
May 13th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
The contrary. Unlike Intelligent Design which avoids making any statement about the Creator, the Bible describes God's Nature and gives us a mechanism. (It may not be a plausible scientific description, but it is far and away more specific than anything posited by most in the ID community.)
Comment by Zachriel — May 13, 2007 @ 11:33 pm
May 14th, 2007 at 12:51 am
I wrote:
Zachriel responded:
If "science is as science does", then there are no limits to transgress, and anything scientists attempt is automatically scientific. So much for NOMA in that case.
And I, for one, am grateful to you for keeping Earth on track. One small favor — could you edge it outward, if needed, to counteract global warming?
This is one reason why humans will never obtain certainty about the mechanism behind any scientific theory. We rule you out (via Ockham's Razor) not because we know you don't exist, but because modern physics is a simpler (hence more convenient) model of reality.
Me neither.
Zachriel:
The mere fact that science has limits doesn't justify NOMA, nor does it justify assigning normative morality to religion's magisterium.
Comment by keiths — May 14, 2007 @ 12:51 am
May 14th, 2007 at 1:09 am
onething wrote:
It's a pretty sad story. After the failed prophecy only 30 of his followers stayed with him. He moved them to Lockport, NY a year later, where they faded into obscurity.
The lesson of these observations is not that every religious experience is the result of brain pathology — far from it — but that TLE, by stimulating a region of the brain involved in religious experiences, can bring them about.
Comment by keiths — May 14, 2007 @ 1:09 am
May 14th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Onething wrote:
That's what I suspected.
However, you had earlier stated:
So just on the off chance that you knew what laws were made of, I thought I'd ask you.
Comment by stunney — May 14, 2007 @ 1:26 am
May 14th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Keith,
I don't think God can, wants to or needs to circumvent or break the laws of physics to accomplish things. It's a downright weird idea. Why set things up if you can't work with the setup? There's just no such thing as violating the laws of physics.
I had a good book on this which was largely over my head and which I loaned out and never got back…but you seem to be suggesting that the soul cannot influence the brain, and what is it that makes you able to decide what to focus on or think about? Are you saying our thoughts are completely on some sort of autopilot due to physics? All those trillions of thoughts of every person determined?
But I have said that I do think that there is a continuum from the subtle to the more solid, and that those subtle regions have traditionally been called supernatural, immaterial, and spiritual. Influence yes, but no breaks in the laws of physics needed.
I didn't read it quite that way. He was proposing that maybe we could investigate whether thoughts leap to the next thought in a series and precede the biochemical reactions. It's an interesting proposal; I'm not sure what to predict. Certainly, they would be extremely close, temporally. It's interesting, too, that Bradford and Stunney seem to be equating the highest intellect with their souls, whereas I tend to think of the soul as something closer to the feelings. It could be a gender bias, but on close inspection one finds that pure intellect without emotion is an impossibility (though I've seen some people fool themselves) and also that pure intellect is largely devoid of morality. At the same time, emotion devoid of logic is a horror. A well developed soul is an informed, wise, intuitive faculty. The reason I consider it closer to the feelings is that I consier the conscience to be paramount, and it is a kind of weighing faculty, that takes all things into consideration.
She is one researcher. I've read plenty others.
OK, it's different, but the question still stands. If it's all just the brain, why do people seem to have such a composite of parts, not working all that well together? Whence inner conflict?
As to your example, they only think they have decided something, but the other half of their brain is on its own. I never attributed to the soul those kinds of decisions, and it does not surprise me that the soul can't work with something that is broken. If a person is in a coma, it would seem the soul has to hang around until the body dies, (twiddling its immaterial thumbs).
Perhaps I've been going to yoga too long, but I think consciouness inhabits all living things.
It's two brains. Small tasks write the word that you see. One side of the brain sees something, but the other side gets to do the writing, and writes the wrong thing. I don't know what other result you could get, given the way the wiring works.
Stunney,
I wonder if you're going somewhere with this. Perhaps you've a trap set. That's alright. I'll walk into it. Does anyone know what the laws of nature consist of? Is there a better answer than that they arise out of the inherent properties of things? Is there any reason to suppose that anything would ever not have its own inherent properties? Does God accomplish his work by making A=not-A?
Anyway, that was my point.
Comment by onething — May 14, 2007 @ 2:40 am
May 14th, 2007 at 2:41 am
But you were asking stunney. As for Bradford's views, it is best to let Bradford elaborate on them.
The Pythagoreans were in the habit of salting their theories with mumbo-jumbo about numbers and music, but Simmias of Thebes relates the basic Pythagorean theory of the soul in Phaedo. Divested of mumbo-jumbo, it is then buried by Socrates. "Sexy neurological terminology" is whatever mumbo-jumbo you have in mind behind such statements as "neuroscience is actively revealing the neural basis of many abilities and phenomena which were traditionally ascribed to the soul". Divested of virtus dormitiva mumbo-jumbo, your theory is the Pythagorean theory.
The ingenuity of materialists is Astonishing! Why, in this very thread they grind out one revelation after another: Catholics believe in the immortality of the soul! Alcohol affects reasoning! Impaired moral agents are not imputable! Who ever knew these things, or pondered them, before materialists made us aware?
Perhaps this is the source of your problem with "ex-pat Scottish Catholics living in America". If you insist that they must believe whatever you believed as a "young Lutheran", distortions and all, it is only natural that they should tell you to go away and refine your premises.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 14, 2007 @ 2:41 am
May 14th, 2007 at 4:29 am
Ever since chemists switched to DGP Darwinian GermPlasm!. Yes sir, Jim, with DGP Darwinian GermPlasm, sodium and chlorine evolve into salt by natural selection! No more messing with thermochemistry or molecular orbitals and all that mind-bending junk, Jim! DGP gives you Effortless Understanding ™ of any chemical process, especially the really, really complicated ones! Get your can of DGP today!
DGP – the GermPlasm Darwinians believe in.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 14, 2007 @ 4:29 am
May 14th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Not everything scientists do is science.
Somersaults come to mind.Mathematics and philosophy come to mind.That decision lies outside my lawful domains, but I'll make the request. Gaia is considering several projects, such as eliminating the offending species in a great flood (but Someone *promised* not to do that again). Vulcan has suggested a giant volcano spewing dust and poisonous gases into the atmosphere"”but Vulcan is always suggesting volcanoes.
"Simpler" is not the proper adjective, but "extraneous". Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Science can investigate the biological roots of morality, but the discussion of what is right and wrong stems from shared human values. Science can only describe, not proscribe. Ethics stems from these values. Science can inform ethics, but not define them.
No one can intellectually command you to accept any particular set of human values, religious or otherwise. They do not stem from induction, logic or the scientific method. They stem from who you are. (Though who you are may have a biological aspect, that does not *justify* an ethical valuation. Being a mammal means organisms like to nurture their young, but that doesn't make it right or wrong. Some mammals will eat their young on occasion. Is that wrong?) Hence any philosophical system of ethics must start with agreed axioms, and reasoned from there, usually by assigning a relative valuation to various parameters; children important, dirt less so.
Comment by Zachriel — May 14, 2007 @ 7:38 am
May 14th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Zachriel:
As if the context didn't make the implied qualifier — scientists qua scientists — obvious.
Four fundamental forces versus a squadron of angels for every planetary system in the universe. Ockham's Razor is not adequate to prune such a monstrosity — he'll have to wield the broadsword. Don't worry; it may hurt for a while, but angels are immortal.
I agree with your last two paragraphs, but I'm left wondering what they have to do with what I wrote, which was
Comment by keiths — May 14, 2007 @ 8:06 am
May 14th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Onething, what I had in mind was whether or not you would agree with the last three paragraphs of what I wrote here.
I also wonder if you think that God's relation to the universe bears any analogy to our minds' relation to our bodies. In that connection, I wonder if you're familiar at all with Grace Jantzen's work, particularly her first book, God's World, God's Body.
Comment by stunney — May 14, 2007 @ 8:23 am
May 14th, 2007 at 8:26 am
A religious person may believe that people are the apple of God's Eye. You agree, for whatever reason, that humans should be held in great esteem. From that agreed premise, you can jointly derive a reasonable system of ethics. There is no science involved in this very important process"”the tentative beginnings of justice.
Now, science might be able to observe this process. Hmm. People seems to like people. Very interesting. Probably has an evolutionary benefit. Etc. But we can't derive our morality from science. Rather, we are repulsed by senseless death, and love our children. Then we talk (philosophize).
Gravity AND God. Or Gravity. God is scientifically extraneous. That doesn't mean God does not exist. Only that He is an entity beyond (scientific) necessity.
Ockham's Razor is a perfectly fine tool. Zachriel is scientifically extraneous (as He intends it to be). No need in your righteous exuberance to lop off more than required. I did quote the Latin and quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
There is no justification in induction, logic or the scientific method for morality. If people are repulsed by senseless death, they will say it is immoral. If they like to watch gladiator fights, they might not.
Comment by Zachriel — May 14, 2007 @ 8:26 am
May 14th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Vladimir Krondan wrote:
Vladimir, materialists are even more astonishing than that!
X=X is a necessary truth. And so materialists have revealed what the rest of us missed completely for millenia, namely that minds—now get this—-are brains. How could we have missed that necessary truth for so long? Well actually, it might not be quite that simple, since there might be minds in Andromeda that aren't identical with our brains. But even if that's so, materialists assure us, they're identical with something material. Well, actually it might not be that simple either; materialists, giving themselves a hugely deserved round of applause for their intellectual sophistication, can reveal what no-one had ever suspected: that bodily states are—-now get this—–in some sort of causal relation with mental states!
Did you know that?
What you also did not know is that none of your mental states have any causal effect whatsoever unless they are identical with one of your brain states. But now you do know. Sorry, I mean, now your brain is in a certain state.
How could our brain states have missed the fact that when a brain-state causes a mental state, what it's causing is just another, distinct brain state? And now that we know that, sorry, I mean, now that our brains are in a certain state, it's so illuminating. Sorry, I mean, it's so, er, in that type of brain state.
Oh, but wait a minute. What am I saying? How can I say 'our' brain states or 'your' brain states or 'my' brain states? How can I say 'I'?
Hmmmm.
Previously I had said that a believer in non-reductive materialism is faced with the same problem that dualists are supposed to face: how there can exist causal relations between brain-states and irreducibly mental states. (There's not much point to being an epiphenomalist if one thinks mental states reduce to bodily states.) And, whatever a non-reductive materialist may say about that, she will have to say why causal relations between brain states and mental states cannot run in either direction, but only and always in the one-way direction from brain-state as cause to mental state as effect.
One argument for one-way causal direction the materialist is liable to proffer is that if you take away a brain state, you'll take away the mental state it causes. But hold on: a non-reductive materialist is one who thinks that at least some mental states are irreducible to brain-states. Sure, if you take away something that's causally necessary for a mental state to obtain, you'll take away that mental state. But this applies to lots of objects outside a person's body; if you take away a house a person was sitting in and replace it with a completely black room, that will get rid of a lot of mental states too. And no-one is denying that if your formerly living body is now a corpse, it's a corpse, or that if it's still alive, the brain will be causally active.
But equally, if you take away literally all of someone's mental states (both conscious and unconscious ones), then that person won't have a living brain either, for the simple reason that if you take away literally all of a person's mental states, you will have taken away that person, the person whose brain it is. That is, you will have rendered that brain ownerless. And an ownerless brain can't be a living brain. So that argument for only one-way causation doesn't work, since removing enough brain states or enough mental states will have ultimately the same result.
Vladimir, it's amazing how quickly one forgets the Reformation, is it not?
And other stuff too. Why, the other day I had to remind someone here at TT who was singing a paean to progress and the achievements of science-based civilization and how much better the world has become as a result, that there were two world wars in the 20th century, that some Jews were killed, some religious believers were locked up in the gulag archipelago and/or treated as being mentally ill, and a couple of nuclear weapons dropped, and chemical and biological weapons were developed, gas and napalm were used on civilians, to mention but a few things of that sort. If only our progress in science had been matched by our moral progress.
I've read atheists demanding to know why God didn't put useful knowledge like germ theory in the Bible. I think that's why. We would have wiped ourselves out much quicker using biological weapons instead of swords and spears.
Comment by stunney — May 14, 2007 @ 10:09 am
May 14th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Some fascinating excerpts from an article dealing with split-brain patients. Read these and let the implications sink in:
Comment by keiths — May 14, 2007 @ 10:43 am
May 14th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Stunney,
Basically, yes. As to the laws of physics, I choose door number 2:
But my argument is not really that immaterial causation never occurs, but rather that that which appears to us to be immaterial causation is not truly nonmaterial. For practical, communication purposes, I may refer to something as nonmaterial or spiritual, but that is just a concession to the entrenched worldviews of others.
Now, you go on to argue that if Jesus turns water into wine it necessarily means that it can be done,
So we have this bowl of water that turns to wine, and I say that all the atoms and molecules can be accounted for, no laws need be violated – but where is the point of contact between the mental will of Jesus and the molecules of water? There has to be one. You call it immaterial, I say we have entered a world of subtle forces. Our world up here on the surface looks smooth and simple, so that a cell was once thought of as a blob-like thing. Who woulda thunk it contains ten million million atoms, that if blown up to twenty kilometers would look like a huge automated factory integrating the activities of tens of thousands of different proteins, and if built one component (atom) per minute would take fifty million years to construct?
Yea, I've certainly thought of that. It's probably a book I'd like.
Keith,
You didn't quite answer my previous question: Are you saying our thoughts are completely on some sort of autopilot due to physics? All those trillions of thoughts of every person determined? Because that's what you seem to be saying.
You know, the person whose right hand puts out the cigarette and left hand lights one, isn't perhaps all that different from the regular person, who wants to quit but doesn't. It's the same war. Perhaps the two warring factions were given more equal power by splitting the brain.
Anyway,
What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I'm like a bird from another continent,
sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear
who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes?
I have no idea.
I didn't come here of my own accord,
and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here
will have to take me home.
Comment by onething — May 14, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
May 14th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Onething wrote:
Well, I don't find it any easier to talk about how my will can cause me to type these words than to talk about Jesus did what he is reported as having done a couple of millenia at Cana in Galilee.
How do I do it? I do it by doing what wills are designed to do, namely willing it. I feel I can move the particles that make up my fingers without any particles being unaccounted for in the process and with no violation of physics. Those particles are significantly under my control. They do what I want them to do. To me at least, that's almost a God-like ability. The paperweight lying on my desk right now can't decide where to send its particles. By contrast I can decide what to do with some of my particles. Which I find pretty amazing, if where and how every particle in my hands is really governed by cosmic laws over which I have no control.
So something's got to give somewhere. Am I a plaything of the laws of nature? I don't believe so. What ought to go instead is the notion that bodily states can cause mental states but not vice-versa (I mean here to exclude the trivial case where mental causes = bodily causes). That is, I think that some mental states exist which are neither identical with nor reducible to any bodily state, and that they are sometimes causes of bodily behaviors. The alternative is denying that I am really the agent who is causally and morally responsible for my own actions, since if there are no independently causal mental events, every particle of my body does what its wave-function dictates that it do, not what I choose that it do. As Schopenhauer put it, "…materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself."
So I'm basically a property dualist. One substance, but with fundamentally different kinds of property—my bodily properties, and my spiritual properties, among which are my capacities for understanding and willing. Both types of property are mutually causally active—-my beliefs and choices are able to affect my bodily behavior, and my bodily states are able to afffect my thoughts and decisions.
One might be tempted to identify my substance with my body. But my body is a different body from the one I had when I was 12. I am still me, though. And if I have just died, the substance that is me is not my corpse.
Zachriel wrote:
That belief is not really rationally warranted unless you have as part of your theory of gravity a rationally warranted scientific explanation for why the law of gravity obtains that does not make reference to God.
If you don't have such an explanation, then you're not in the proper epistemic position to assert that God is scientifically extraneous to an explanation of gravity. 'Gravity exists' is true but it's not a scientific explanation of gravity. And most physicists believe that we do not yet have a way of reconciling gravitational theory with the theory that has the best track record for precise empirical prediction in the history of science, namely quantum mechanics. So we know we're missing something about gravity that's scientifically needed.
Maybe it will turn out be an infinite brane that has some key divine properties—like being a spaceless timeless field of infinite information, and causally responsible for our universe.
You never know…
Comment by stunney — May 14, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
May 14th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
There are always in infinitude of equivalent theories. Parsimony is an essential scientific methodology for paring down these choices. So Gravity and an Infinitude of Angels is *logically* equivalent to Gravity, but is not parsimonious. I think you often confuse your notion of "rationally warranted" with the utilitarian process of scientific investigation.
Comment by Zachriel — May 14, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
May 15th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Indeed they are. Just today I learned from an atheist that God is not a US citizen. I know that sounds surprising and, frankly, impossible, but Don Baker says so: "The real purpose of the Christian promotion of the Ten Commandments is as a symbol of the supremacy of the Judeo-Christian god over U.S.law."
And the brain disappears when we die. For the materialist, there are not many options: (a) there is no mind, (b) mind is an illusion, (c) mind is a [pick one: harmony, function, emergent property, musical tuning of violin-strings] of the body. (b) is a little strange: your mind tricks you into believing there is mind. (a) is the most crass and ignorant, which is why it is gaining ground. (c) is what Socrates buried.
It's also amazing how quickly materialists forget what they said yesterday. But a careful analysis of history shows that the bunk they peddle today is no different from the bunk they peddled in former times, modulo mumbo-jumbo factors. A materialist will object 'all that's in the past, the deity called Science progresses, blah blah.' But is it really true that today's materialist psycho-bunk is superior to or even different from yesterday's?
George Romanes was widely considered to be the successor to Darwin. Even Darwin thought so. The Times, in 1886, said ""Mr. George Romanes appears to be the biological investigator on whom the mantle of Mr. Darwin has most conspicuously descended". From his lofty apex of Darwinism, Romanes wasted no time getting right into the meatiest aspect of Darwinian science, which is writing about religion: e.g., A Candid Examination of theism (1878), Christian prayer and general laws (1873), The physical efficacy of prayer (1874), Thoughts on religion (1895), Mind, Motion, and Monism (1895). The last book is a full-blown scientific treatment of mind. It is a difficult read, because with every page you will involuntarily burst out laughing – and this is distracting.
Romanes's explanation for mind is a mixture of (a), (b), (c), but mostly (c). It must be pointed out that on their own, (a), (b), and (c) are a hard sell to sensible readers. It is necessary to embed (a), (b), and (c) into a matrix of ridiculous mumbo-jumbo, quackery, charlatanism, posturing, and fraud. And Romanes, being an evolutionary psychologist who heavily relied on DGP Darwinian GermPlasm, was, like many other Darwinians, a charlatan and a quack.
Romanes begins with a homage to – of all people – Hobbes. "THE earliest writer who deserves to be called a psychologist is Hobbes", he says. After quoting some drivel Hobbes wrote about "strings and membranes of the body", and "counterpressure in the brain", Romanes exclaims, "These quotations are sufficient to show that the system of Hobbes was prophetic of a revelation afterwards declared by two centuries of scientific research". Concerning other drivel Hobbes wrote about "motion, agitation, or alteration, which worketh in the brain", Romanes heaps on the Darwinian back-patting,
There follows an large quantity of blather about nerves, gray matter, galvanometers, stimuli, hemispheres, "neural waves" and so on. After some agony over causality, spiritism, and "conscious automatism", Romanes unveils the Pythagorean violin-strings and concludes that Hobbes was right, mind is literally "motion, agitation, or alteration, which worketh in the brain",
And there you have it: Mind, version (c). What does Romanes do with this theory? Why, what possible use can it be put to, besides lambasting those people too sensible to believe it? So Romanes embarks on a lengthy critique of theism, etc. And how, by the way, does Romanes explain consciousness? Quite simply like so,
Quackery + mumbo-jumbo + Darwinian GermPlasm + (a) + (b) + a lot of (c) = ganglionic friction. Darwinians have been investigating the rich field of possibilities laid open by the discovery of this important formula.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 15, 2007 @ 3:47 am
May 15th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Vladimir Kondran wrote:
Materialism does seem to have a rather, well, Orwellian character to it, doesn't it?
War Is Peace
(because they are both just unintentional material processes and states)
Freedom Is Slavery
(because it is just the grip of an illusion)
Ignorance Is Strength
(because we're stronger when we rest content with the gaps and holes in the materialist worldview)
To these brave, emancipating slogans the materialist boldly, nay, cheerfully adds two more:
The Cause of Life Is Its Opposite
and
The Mind Is Something Else
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
* THE CAUSE OF LIFE IS ITS OPPOSITE
*THE MIND IS SOMETHING ELSE
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
* THE CAUSE OF LIFE IS ITS OPPOSITE
*THE MIND IS SOMETHING ELSE
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
* THE CAUSE OF LIFE IS ITS OPPOSITE
*THE MIND IS SOMETHING ELSE
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
* THE CAUSE OF LIFE IS ITS OPPOSITE
*THE MIND IS SOMETHING ELSE
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
* THE CAUSE OF LIFE IS ITS OPPOSITE
*THE MIND IS SOMETHING ELSE
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
* THE CAUSE OF LIFE IS ITS OPPOSITE
*THE MIND IS SOMETHING ELSE
Yes, I'd say the materialist cast of mind (which they say is something else) has more than a touch of sinisterly Orwellian overtones to it.
Comment by stunney — May 15, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
May 15th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
stunney invents Orwellian slogans to mock materialism, conveniently overlooking a prime example of doublethink in his "back yard":
Besides the doublethink, note that the "rational soul" is consistently treated as distinct from the body.
Comment by keiths — May 15, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
May 15th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Is that somehow a problem?
Comment by mcromer — May 15, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
May 15th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
mcromer,
I'm just pointing out the difference between stunney's position (property dualism) and the official dogma of his Church as revealed by the catechism and the Athanasian Creed. As the creed shows, the Church believes in a rational soul which continues to function after death until reunited with the resurrected body.
Stunney recognizes that there is a discrepancy. Here is how he tried to paper it over earlier in the thread:
Notice how he tries to define away the interval between death and resurrection.
Comment by keiths — May 15, 2007 @ 11:49 pm
May 16th, 2007 at 12:20 am
onething asked:
Those are actually two different questions. Let's take the second one first.
Are our thoughts determined?
Well, if the laws of physics, as they affect neurons, are deterministic, and if the "soul" (or whatever you want to call it) cannot reach into the brain and cause the laws of physics to be violated, then yes, our thoughts are determined. All of them.
It's an either/or proposition: either the laws of physics are violated in the brain, or our thoughts are determined.
Are the laws of physics actually deterministic? Certainly not at the quantum level, where they have a purely random component. But in large systems the quantum effects tend to cancel out, unless they are amplified somehow, and most neuroscientists see no possible mechanism for this amplification and no evidence that such amplification is taking place. If they're right, then our thoughts are determined.
You ask if that means that our thoughts are "completely on some sort of autopilot due to physics". I would say no.
Let's look at your metaphor of the autopilot. An autopilot is something separate, a machine, to which the pilot gives control. While the autopilot is engaged, the pilot is not in control of the airplane.
Your question presupposes that there is some "real you", apart from your body, which has permanently and forever handed control over to the autopilot — your body and brain, acting strictly according to the laws of physics.
But what if you are your body? Then what you want is what your brain wants. What you think is what your brain thinks. What you feel is what your brain feels. There is no autopilot to hand control over to. So there is no conflict, and the laws of physics aren't forcing you to do anything against your will in any way.
Even if our thoughts are determined, it is still we who are thinking them. No autopilots involved.
Comment by keiths — May 16, 2007 @ 12:20 am
May 16th, 2007 at 12:23 am
'For as the rational soul and body are one person…'
Hmmm, that's weird—-I don't see there the words '…are two substances'.
I can consistently assert both the Athanasian creed and the philosophical proposition that a human being is one substance with two irreducible kinds of essential property: bodily properties and spiritual properties, regardless of whether an Orwellian materialist insists on reading it as:
One Person Is Two Substances
Comment by stunney — May 16, 2007 @ 12:23 am
May 16th, 2007 at 1:08 am
stunney quotes:
The Catholic Catechism:
Comment by keiths — May 16, 2007 @ 1:08 am
May 16th, 2007 at 1:40 am
I don't know why keiths is unable to understand what he is reading. It's as if some lens is in front of his face, distorting the words as they make their way to his brain. The Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, and pretty much all the other orthodox say the same thing: man – a human person – is spirit and body in one nature. But keiths reads this as 'a person is the soul' or maybe as 'a soul is a complete person', and adds to the Athanasian creed 'which continues to function after death' and who knows what keiths means by 'continues to function'. It is the soul's nature to be joined to the body; separation from the body is an unnatural state. What can the soul do in this state? Well who knows, but Aquinas thought that the powers of intellection and will remain either fixed on God or away from God, and the other powers exist potentially. But final judgment is the judgment of man, and this is why the Anthanasian creed says "At his coming all people shall rise bodily to give an account of their own deeds".
So what are you going to do? Lecture him on theology?
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 16, 2007 @ 1:40 am
May 16th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Vladimir Krondan wrote:
VK,
I don't know how you are able to ignore what you are reading.
Well, Athanasius (or whoever wrote the creed attributed to him) thought that the soul was rational. If he was right, that means it is capable of reasoning.
Roman Catholics believe in purgatory, which is a place of suffering for souls immediately after death. If they're right, that means the soul is capable of suffering despite being separated from the body.
Sadly, it may have come to that.
Comment by keiths — May 16, 2007 @ 2:20 am
May 16th, 2007 at 2:24 am
I did not perish when I separated from the last particle that formed my body at age 14. I read somewhere that the average time it takes for all particles (or maybe it was cells) in a human body to be replaced is seven years. If so, then my body at 14 was wholly gone by my early twenties.
The Catholic Church teaches that I shall not perish at death. Instead I shall separate from the body I have at death and continue thereafter to exist. The Church is agnostic on the precise mechanics of post-mortem existence. There are usually three possibilities touted by theologians, none of which is definitively upheld or rejected by the magisterium:
1) The final Resurrection will be experienced 'on the other side' as occurring immediately, heavenly time and Earthly time not being comparable (as St Peter says explicitly in the N.T.)
2) The dead will 'sleep' in the sense of not experiencing or undergoing any change and not exercising any agency, corporeal or spiritual, until the final Resurrection at which point they will be clothed with an appropriate body (perhaps somewhat similar to a person being re-constituted as per the sci-fi scenario of building a new body using perfectly recorded and complete computerized data taken from a prior body). As noted above, getting new bodies even happens regularly 'on this side' of death. The important point is that my spiritual properties will be exercized via a new body, not separately or in a bodiless manner. Experientially, this option may be no different from option 1.
3) There will be a temporary post-mortem body in which the person undergoes appropriate salutary experiences, bringing the person to a state of perfection needed to experience God to the limit of each person's capacity (cf. the Catholic doctrine of purgatory). At that point the person either receives a new glorified body, or the temporary one is transformed into such a body, using the suitably transformed energy contained in the person's earthly remains.
One can mix and match elements of each option, though I am certain that the reality will be seen to have been greatly beyond our present powers of conception.
The essential point here, however, is that the official, or definitive Catholic position is not the one personally held by Aquinas, which was that God miraculously sustains our soul while being bodiless. For Aquinas, this had to be a miraculous act, because it was his opinion, taken from his Aristotelianism, that naturally there can't be a bodiless human soul.
Descartes' much later substance dualism has never been the official teaching of the Catholic Church. A version of property dualism was the more common theological view within Catholicism, and remains so.
Comment by stunney — May 16, 2007 @ 2:24 am
May 16th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Hi mcromer,
It's always worth remembering something which is quite easy to forget, which is that the actual wavefunctions of all the particles of all actual human brains are actually not all, er, known.
So, it may be the case, for all we know, that there is a significant number of occasions in which the probability of the particle trajectories occurring which are required for a particular brain (mine, let's say) to be in state A ('choosing vanilla ice-cream soon'), and the probability of the particle trajectories occurring which are required for it to be in state B ("choosing mint chocolate chip ice-cream soon') are each significanty less than, but jointly equal to 1. If I then choose vanilla ice cream, no known law of physics will have been 'violated', even though we cannot identify a physical cause of the wavefunction collapsing.
So why not assume what appears obvious to consciousness–that on a significant number of occasions, what collapses the wavefunction is an irreducibly mental state, such as 'freely deciding to eat vanilla ice cream soon'?
It might be different if we knew that the probability of state A occurring was always 1 and the probability of state B occurring was always 0, such as might be the case if I hated mint chocolate chip inordinately and loved vanilla inordinately. But let's say I like both and don't have any strong preference for one over the other, and the probabilities are 55 for A to 45 for B. Consciously I feel quite open to choosing one or the other. No prior mental state is determining my choice, no prior material state is determining my choice. Nothing is determining my choice except my free will at that moment. It would be silly to say 'chance' chose vanilla. No, chance didn't. I did.
Comment by stunney — May 16, 2007 @ 2:27 am
May 16th, 2007 at 7:38 am
I think you are replying to keiths.
I disagree wholeheartedly with keiths about how deterministic the brain is. It completely flies in the face of everything we know about neural firing, which is that it is very probabalistic and not deterministic at all. That's something he could have discovered with five minutes of digging. The mechanisms for the amplification of quantum probabilistic behavior are extremely obvious and straightforward (quantum-scale ion transport in the synaptic cleft). You have to deliberately put on ideological blinders to somehow imagine a deterministic system within the brain.
I also disagree with his characterization of quantum events as "random". There is every possibility that quantum events may be influenced by the mind, which indeed is what the research which has studied this question shows. It also fits in with your day-to-day experience where your own thoughts and decisions allow you to influence the probabalistic quantum systems in your synaptic cleft and cause your brain and body to act deliberately.
Comment by mcromer — May 16, 2007 @ 7:38 am
May 16th, 2007 at 8:04 am
It doesn't really matter. However you or anyone else chooses to phrase it, keiths will substitute 'man' or 'bodiless man' for 'soul' in whatever is said. And so 'man is a union of soul and body' becomes 'man is a bodiless man in a body'. And 'rational soul' becomes 'rational man'. A human baby is a union of rational soul and body – we understand this: potential intellect, not necessarily actual intellect, is what makes the baby human. But it will be understood by keiths in this way: 'a baby is a bodiless rational man (say, a philosopher) living in a baby body'. And there will be surprise expressed that babies are not philosophers. How to reconcile that fact with the 'bodiless philosopher living in a baby body'? Is this not disturbing? And from this error also comes the shocking surprise at 'alcohol affecting reason'. Why should it, if man is but a bodiless rational man living in a body? Pouring alcohol into the body shouldn't affect the bodiless rational man inside, no? Alas, there is nothing that can be done about this: he is probably not even aware that his cogitation automatically substitutes 'man' for 'soul' everywhere.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 16, 2007 @ 8:04 am
May 16th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Hi Vladimir Krondan and others,
Even though this thread has passed 300 comments and heading towards 400, I thought it appropriate to recite the Scientific Statement of Being I was taught when I was growing up…
"There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter.
All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.
Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error.
Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal.
Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness.
Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual."
link
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 16, 2007 @ 11:13 am
May 16th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Vladimir and mcromer,
Very nicely put, both of you.
TP, that Scientific Statement of Being almost looks like a Statement of Manichaeism.
Comment by stunney — May 16, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
June 4th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Loose ends: Back on May 13th keiths responded to my posts concerning two quotes he used that were taken from Dembski's book Intelligent Design. I was pointing out that the quotes did not include important relevant information from each context. (Sorry to be so slow in getting back to replying about this.)
Regarding the quote from section 4.6, which ironically has the title The Importance of Definitions, the problem is that the quotation is about methodological naturalism, but it left out the definition given by Dembski for methodological naturalism, which immediately preceded the quotation.
In your response, you seem to be reasoning from false assumptions or false antecedants on multiple points.
First, although I certainly have thought that the quotations left out important points of context, I did not assume that there was an intentional deception. In such situations, it is far more likely that there was no intent to deceive (as you also have confirmed).
I accept that you did not intend to deceive. I apologize if anything I've said creates the impression that you were intending to deceive.
Second, I've made no claim that Dembski's definition would not make perfect sense to or be unacceptable to a naturalist. On the contrary, I would say that Dembski's definition accurately captures the imposed limits on scientific explanations for effects in nature.
I don't claim that Dembski is offering an alternative "version" of MN. He is describing the actual current imposed limitation on explaining effects in nature. Also, applying the definition he provided doesn't exclude psychology or neuroscience from science, and abandoning MN as a restriction doesn't exclude them either. MN restricts explanations, not subjects.
I've claimed no intention by Dembski for his definition to differ from a standard one, so those points fall. Nor is it any part of the definition he gave that one needs to "tack on" extra assumptions regarding independent questions such as whether intelligence can arise from undirected natural processes. So that point falls as well.
This is incorrect.
If one were considering a definition of MN that simply required a "natural" explanation, then it would be correct to say that such a definition would not be a problem for ID, unless the intelligence went beyond the natural. You reason at multiple points as though Dembski had provided such a definition. If he had, the points that assume this might have held up.
However, all of your arguments to the contrary are trumped by one unavoidable fact.
According to the definition Dembski actually uses, a scientific explanation for a natural effect must be limited to appealing to "undirected natural processes" (emphasis added). In other words, appeals to any directed (i.e. guided, teleological) causes are excluded.
There is no getting around it. He says "undirected". It is in the text. The exclusion of all directed causes is explicit. Else what does the word "undirected" mean in Dembski's definition, or in the other passages where he explicitly says "undirected natural processes"
Consequently, whether natural or supernatural, all intelligent cause explanations for natural effects are excluded by the definition of MN that Dembski quotes. If there is any doubt that this is what Dembski is saying, we need only consider the context of other statements in the same section. For example:
Dembski consistently places all intelligent causation in distinction to undirected natural processes. He presents these two categories as mutually exclusive and exhaustive, and asks whether there is evidence, any marks of intelligence, that would point to any intelligent causation. He then argues that currently only the undirected natural process explanations are acceptable as "science".
There is no place in the discussion where "undirected natural processes" could be taken to include natural designers, or where marks of intelligence would exclude natural designers.
Thus, it would not be appropriate to leave out his definition, which explicitly states "undirected", and then use that quotation as evidence to suggest that Dembski is saying MN allows natural ID and only excludes supernatural ID.
I'll say again that I do not question that Dembski believes that the intelligence behind life is supernatural, but that would not justify leaving out his definition for MN.
I'll cover the second quote from section 8.5 in my next post.
Comment by eric — June 4, 2007 @ 8:31 pm
June 4th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Loose ends (part two): Regarding the quote from section 8.5 of Dembski's book Intelligent Design, the problem is not about methodological naturalism, and no reference to MN is made there. Rather the issue is about the fact that the quotation does not make clear that both cosmological ID and biological ID are referenced in that section, and the former has implications that the latter does not have.
Nevertheless, I believe there is much that keiths and I have both agreed about all along.
Does cosmological ID imply an intelligence that transcends the universe? Yes. As I mentioned, I believe this is correct and that Dembski would agree.
Does applying Dembski's theorems to biological ID imply an intelligence that transcends the physical (though not necessarily transcending the universe)? Yes. As I have independently maintained, and as Dembski also states, I believe you are correct to infer a non-physical intelligence follows from Dembski's take on biological ID.
Does applying Dembski's theorems to biological ID imply an intelligence that transcends the universe? No. His theorems only cover the origin of CSI. None cover the origin of non-physical intelligence. So they cannot exclude "arguing that carbonaceous life was invented by a noncarbonaceous intelligence, which by no means need be God, however." as Hoyle and Wickramasinghe have done, predating even The Mystery of Life's Origin in 1984.
Is it appropriate to say that Dembski's theorems applied to biological ID imply a "supernatural" intelligence? Is it appropriate to say that a quantum field is "supernatural" (If so, we have scientific evidence of the supernatural!!
)
Many would agree that a quantum field is immaterial. (Some even call it "nothing" as in "Quantum fluctuations can create matter out of nothing.") But I believe to be consistent, most would recognize that "supernatural" carries additional connotations that go beyond immaterial or non-physical.
What we can say is that Dembski's analysis applied to biological ID does imply non-physical intelligence, though not necessarily an intelligence beyond the universe.
Comment by eric — June 4, 2007 @ 8:42 pm