Doing what we can to decrease our carbon footprints, the Gene family has put the family rabbit to work.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under The Rabbit.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. The trackback link is: http://telicthoughts.com/our-sub/trackback/
This is the short version, the longer version can be found HERE
I have been working on an ID proposal I could embrace. Here is what I have so far…
ID's information theory argument boils down to a general statement that only intelligence can create intelligence.
Being an electrical engineer, I start thinking about a feedback loop. How do you create a sine wave output? Use a sine wave input and amplify it. Where do you get the input? From the output. It is called an oscillator circuit. Nothing magical or supernatural about it (except, maybe, the AA battery).
One of Joy's pet peeves is that she feels Evolution Biologists don't look outside their own discipline enough. Whether or not that is true, the physicist Steven Hawking's work is freely available via the web here. Hawking explains the concept of time as just another dimension like North/South directions on a globe with the South Pole being the beginning of time and the North Pole being the end of time. Questions about events before the beginning of time are like questions about locations South of the South Pole. Both are paradoxical, but neither requires the supernatural.
I realize some people don't accept this explanation as the Truth (capital "T"). This is where NOMA (Non-Overlapping_Magisteria) comes in. What I have come to realize in my TT travels is that NOMA is probably at the root of the Culture War. I also noticed NOMA transcends the religious/atheist divide. A standard four-quadrant map comes to mind, with the x-axis ranging from active atheist to devout fundamentalist and the y-axis ranging from no separation (OMA) to absolute separation (NOMA), making the quadrants religious-OMA, atheist-OMA, religious-NOMA and atheist-NOMA. A dot for individuals could be placed on the map to review which quadrant each fell into. Previously, I would have placed myself in the atheist-NOMA quadrant. Now, I am not sure for reasons I'm about to explain. There is a lot more to discuss about NOMA, but that would take too much space.
The passion in the ID/Evolution debate comes when someone (from either side) tries to claim the one and only OMA Truth. This is the elephant-in-the-livingroom that has to be addressed. So, without further ado, I boldly use the Hawking Model as my starting point for a proposed, OMA Truth that meets the various claims and goals of both sides of the issue. I am sure that some will not like this choice. To these people, I suggest they write a beginning to end proposal like this one and allow it to also be vetted publicly.
The Hawking Model includes the multiverse paradigm. A complaint to this is that the multiverse still doesn't solve the improbability problem. In other words, why is this universe so lucky. I suggest changing Hawking's bubbles analogy to lightening strikes. The only universes that get beyond the recollapse stage are those that can complete the circuit from the beginning to the end of time. Think of the improbability of a lighting striking hitting a specific, small piece of metal out of acres of other targets. However, when that piece of metal is a lighting rod that completes a circuit, the improbable becomes very probable.
This proposed model may help explain why this universe is finely tuned. It had to be, or it wouldn't have even started. It may also explain why historical events appear too fortuitous (retrocausality). But why life? Why intelligent life?
There are a few Billion people out there who are predisposed to believe at least some kind of intelligence will exist at the end of time. Let's call this intelligence an "Intelligent Designer". This has the effect of elevating the problem. The purpose of intelligent life is to eventually grow into the Intelligent Designer. Now, what is the purpose of the Intelligent Designer? Well, for one, the designer could use retrocausality to create intelligent life. This is the oscillator circuit mentioned earlier. Beyond that, I will just assume an Intelligent Designer would be useful in completing the consistency circuit of the Universe in other ways too.
There are many, many details left out of this presentation. For example, several people at TT insist a lack of progress in the origin of life research and certain features at the molecular level (DNA, proteins, etc) posit some kind of outside intervention like an Intelligent Designer. As I said, any illusion that this resolves the Culture War is for naught. I would hope this broad brush outline will be used as a framework to add details like OOL. Alternatively, I hope it provokes others into offering counter proposals to the same level of logical closure (even if lacking detail).
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 12:57 am
In your proposal, you propose that purpose is sufficient. Someone asked you earlier, how you define purpose as opposed to intelligence. Perhaps you answered at some point. But I would say that NDE already has use of purpose, in that the prime directive is to survive, and that is purpose right there. So have you said anything new? Your use of purpose does not seem sufficient to answer the challenges to ID theory coming from information and irredicible complexity.
I don't think my "purpose is sufficient" statement is in the proposal. But it is something I have said before. My viewpoint has changed slightly since then. However, I still wish someone would make a stronger argument for the need of an Intelligent Designer, instead of just a purposeful one. Notice I stated "I will just assume an Intelligent Designer would be useful in completing the consistency circuit of the Universe in other ways too." It would be more fufilling to make this stronger, but I haven't heard of any convincing need for intelligence other than to create intelligence.
I wrote… The passion in the ID/Evolution debate comes when someone (from either side) tries to claim the one and only OMA Truth.
I'm not sure where anyone has claimed that, if I understand you correctly. It is quite one thing to claim to know the one and only OMA truth, versus what I claim, which is that NOMA is incoherent, and ultimately impossible. Even if it is so that we do not know the metaphysical details that underlie or are interwoven with what we choose to call 'physical reality' yet
1) IF there is any metaphysical/unknown aspect to reality, then
2) it most certainly overlaps.
There is ONE REALITY, NOT TWO
Bravo.
This indeed is a valid point even though I am tempted to laugh at your denial of knowing anyone trying to claim the one OMA Truth. How about Richard Dawkins?
I agree, the burden of justification is on those claiming NOMA, and the only justification I can think of is sanity control and generally keeping the peace.
BUT (it is a big one) you can't use a NOMA privilege to claim an OMA right.
Under NOMA, all beliefs are generally given a benefit of the doubt privilege. After all, who I am I to force my beliefs on you? What is a Truth for me might not be a Truth for you. OMA changes that.
Now you need to demonstrate and defend your proposals. Individual wishes and beliefs are meaningless. Ideally, majority opinion should be meaningless too.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 2:22 am
BUT (it is a big one) you can't use a NOMA privilege to claim an OMA right.
But if that applies to everybody, we're not really talking about something that can be true for one and not for another are we? Yet, I use IPOMA all the time (Indistinguishable-Possibly/Potentially…)
That said, some people use NOMA like Religion and Science are the only spheres that do not overlap. Yet, I propose that we don't find much success in using the reductionist model in a Social sphere. Talking about somebody's genetic defects, family diseases, how many people in the family "kilt themselves off", how appropriately, what synapse in their head fired for them to say that–or what they ate, survival advantages… etc., has not been seen to bring us success.
In fact, we can determine peers from "others" by how much we engage in a reductionistic analysis. "Evolution in action" is not something we say at a family funeral–well much. It's something said out of the side of our mouths to the in-group.
Being an electrical engineer, I start thinking about a feedback loop. How do you create a sine wave output? Use a sine wave input and amplify it. Where do you get the input? From the output. It is called an oscillator circuit. Nothing magical or supernatural about it (except, maybe, the AA battery).
Not magical, but simply the source that initializes the circuit. In any electronic or electromechanical loop, there will be an external signal that initializes the loop. I think you should look back on your opening analogy, and rethink the last sentence in the opening paragraph. As stated, it does imply magic at the root of the process. Perhaps your inner Freud might be telling you something.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 12, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
Working with biologists James Brown of the University of New Mexico and Brian Enquist of the Santa Fe Institute, West has put together a set of seemingly simple principles to form a theory that explains the universal scaling laws of biology. With applications from cells to whales, these scaling laws have the potential of placing life on earth in a mathematical context. Simply put, the universal scaling laws of biology are a set of workable constraints that mathematically explain the amazing structure, function and variety of living things
[... *snip* ...]
In particular, their theory explains the origins and ubiquity of a set of mathematical laws known as the quarter-power scaling laws, observed to link traits of plants and animals.
[... *snip* ...]
The model proposed by West and his collaborators is based on the idea that a common mechanism underlies life  the transportation of materials though linear networks that supply all parts of an organism. These transport systems, whether mammalian blood vessels or plant vascular systems, are, in turn, based on three unifying principles.
West explains, "first, in order for the network to supply the entire volume of the organism the network system needs to have a space-filling, fractal-like branching pattern. Second, the final branch of the network, such as a capillary in the circulatory system, must be size-invariant, which means it is the same size in every organism. For example, the capillary in a mouse is the same size as one in a lion. Finally, the energy required to distribute resources is minimized. In other words, the distribution networks that have evolved in living systems must use the minimal amount of energy required to keep it alive."
However, I still wish someone would make a stronger argument for the need of an Intelligent Designer, instead of just a purposeful one.
Hmmm, it seems to me that there have been many, don't know how much you've read around. What do you mean by purposeful designer? An entity? In what way does your 'purpose' differ from the basic divide between the animate and inanimate, i.e., desire/will/purpose?
Systems like the flagellum seem to me to require an intentional type of intelligence, with foresight. It even annoys me a little because I don't necessarily want that intelligence to be God. One possibility is that DNA is a living, conscious, semiimmortal entity that revises itself.
By the way I like your idea about the internal consistency of the universe.
This indeed is a valid point even though I am tempted to laugh at your denial of knowing anyone trying to claim the one OMA Truth.
Oh, I mean in general the reasonable members of the ID crowd, and even most reasonable members of the NDE crowd. Privately, of course, many of them do feel privy to the real truth, but do not expect ID to prove it. That isn't what ID does.
Under NOMA, all beliefs are generally given a benefit of the doubt privilege. After all, who I am I to force my beliefs on you?
I wonder if I have misunderstood NOMA. My argument against it has never been about particular dogmas, but about trying to progress in science while deciding to divide reality up into that which can be studied and understood, and that which can't, even if the one is the cause of the other! I was introduced to the NOMA idea recently when arguing with a person I met at UD, much more educated and articulate than I am. My impression was that it is the idea that science can and should proceed with a materialist bias, because spirituality is in some realm forever inaccessible, and of course therefore not really necessary for a scientific understanding of the world. Yet he said God made the world as a gift of love, but could never admit that this changes everything. If God made the world, we should assume that it could not have therefore made itself, and if it could not have made itself, that fact should be apparent with sufficient study into the depths of the workings of nature. I'm not saying science should proceed differently so far as its method, rather it needs to change its a priori bias, not box itself into a corner where it can't come to certain conclusions.
The problem, as I see it, is that most people are operating on a NOMA principle, whether they are religious or not. Makes little difference. I suppose that is because, for the most part, people are stuck in their simplest perceptions of the world given by their senses, with the occasional flickering of deeply subjective intuitions that seem far removed from solid reality. So it seems reasonable, even to the religious, that there are these two realms, the material and the nonmaterial. Now, I don't really understand that. Perhaps if I understood physics.
The people who are on My Side, like Denyse O'Leary, speak of the nonmaterial, meaning spiritual. I use their terms sometimes, so that I can speak the same language but it really makes no sense to me.
Slowly science has begun to unravel the depths and subtleties. And it's kind of funny because science in a few different areas is already butting up against and even crossing the divide that at one time would surely have been consigned to the supernatural. Now, arguing from the view that spirit is real, I fully expect that phenomena such as ESP or precognition or healing are completely explicible scientifically, and I doubt that time is all that far off, either.
Simply put, if there is a God (or spiritual principle) who can accomplish work, then there is a communication point, a mechanism. Atoms do not 'obey' God because, after all, he's the boss. And if there is a communication point, then there is an unbroken continuum. There really can't be any breaks within the one reality.
So on the one hand I am a God-besotted mystic, and on the other hand I do not believe the spiritual realm is any other than a far more subtle form of the physical which includes the so-called supernatural and miracles. It's all science.
If it's all about the ideas, and not about the character of those holding them, then why are you constantly stooping to tactics like quote-mining Darwin in order to portray him as a puppy-beater?
Because I'm competing with TheBrites as to who can stoop lower.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 12, 2007 @ 2:13 pm
IN CONCLUSION
Why do so many scholars have to retract their statements made on this film? Several factors affect the way the statements of scholars appear on film.
1. First of all, when the interviewer asks a question, the scholar often does not have any idea as to the direction that the discussion is headed.
2. The interview is often presented in the form of a request for an authoritative expert's opinion. However the expert has often not been able to digest the results of his initial observations, (to check his results further with his peers and additional data) in order to provided a more exact or guarded statement. Initial observations are just that. Final conclusions can be achieved with the passage of time and more time in the lab and in the library.
3. There is always further editing of the interviews, in which editing and re-contextualization of the statements of the scholars by the filmmakers will at times create a misleading impression.
2. Genetic Entropy suggests special creation. Solexa technology may give clues as to when the event took place.
3. ID is only a component in my hypothesis, not the whole thing. ID refutes that Darwinism is a plausible mechanism in OOL and Organic Evolution. ID speaks nothing of #1 and #2. Where you'd like to discuss the specifics you may mention, since this thread is not about my ideas, but rather Joys topic.
4. I argue for a Young Cosmos based on the work of Walter Brown, Barry Setterfield, and John Sanford.
I will elaborate on part 1 of my specific hypothesis, namely, the identity of the designer. The identity of the designer is not part of ID proper, but I think it is the most interesting question, and thus I will address it.
ID merely asks the question, "is something designed?" If one concludes it is designed, then the question is whether design can happen apart from intelligence.
Dembki's early writings make a distinction between:
1. Theories of labeling things as designs
2. Theories of intelligence being necessary for design
The principal advantage of characterizing design as the complement of regularity and chance is that it avoids committing itself to a doctrine of intelligent agency
Bill Dembski
I bolded the portion of interest to show a decoupling of theories of design identification with theories of design causation. That distinction is somewhat important. Dembski uses the word "detection" and I think a more neutral word is "identification".
Even in colloquial terms, biologists who assume mindless evolution use the word "design", and that is mostly consistent with Dembski's conception of design. A biologist would probably not have any indigestion in saying he is looking to identify designs within biology. Dembski uses the word "detection", but that suggests intelligent causation. So I prefer the word "identification". In systems engineering and electrical engineering we have the notion of "systems identification". Systems biology is steeped with the goal of systems identification.
What dembski demonstrates is that the common notions of design and Darwinian evolution are mathematically incompatible.
Formally speaking, pure design theory says it is possible consider design without an intelligent cause. See No Free Lunch preface.
However, what Dembski does is to mathematcially demonstrate the following proof-by-contradiction :
1. Assume Darwinian evolution is the cause of life
2. If Darwinian evolution is the cause of life, then it can be shown mathematically that Darwinian evolution must also be improbable!
3. Becasue it is impossible that Darwinian evolution is simultaneously the cause of life and simultaneosly the improbable cause of life, Darwinian evolution cannot be true, much like square circles cannot be exist
This proof was detailed in Dembski's writings.
One solution then to the origin of life's design is intelligence. There are other possibilities like self organization. I'm not aware of any ID theorist formally saying Intelligence is the ONLY possibility. The ID Net uses the phrase, "best explained " rather than "ONLY explained".
The notion that intelligence as essential is offered as a falsifiable claim that designed object can only come about through intelligent agencies. This is not a proof of ID, but like Popperian hypotheses, it is framed in a falsifiable manner…
It is easy to think of Stonehenge as a product of ID because we see designers capable of building things like Stonehenge. It would of course be easy to accept ID for biology and the cosmos if we saw the Intelligent Designer in action doing things in our every day life in ways we could only attribute to him. Since that generally doesn't happen for the average person, we are left to making inferences.
In the absence of a physical theory suggesting a capable Designer of life, a reasonable position about Design might be that of Trevors and Yockey, namely, to say the question of the origin of life is like the origin of matter, beyond the reach of emprical science. Though I disagree with that view, I think it a very reasonable one….. "I don't know" is a good answer. However, I personally am willing to speculate a little farther than "I don't know" but rather suggest, "maybe it's ID". Here is why….
From physical theory alone, namely quantum theory, we have a suggestion that there may be an Intelligent Agency with the power to create life and the universe.
Starting from physical first principles, I survey the theories and physical experiments related to establishing the possible existence of such an Intelligent Designer in If the universe is a computer, who is the computer maker?.
I made reference to a feed-back loop cosmology of Wheeler that is remotely akin to TP's where the Intelligent Designer is basically the physical universe itself which produces life, and life produces the universe via a feedback loop. Such a feed back loop is vaguley related to another ID cosmology known as Langan's Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) :shock:. But the feedback loop cosmology has some serious world-class physics knowledge behind it in the person of John Archibald Wheeler. This feedback loop is arguably an Intelligent Designer of sorts, with the Designer being the universe itself…
The other option (in contrast to a feedback loop) is some Intelligent Designer whose substance is outside of the universe. Let's at least consider the scientific reasons why this solution should be considered.
Nobel Laureate Wigner deduced that the idea of purley physical systems would lead to an irreconcilable inconsistency. That inconsistency could be resolved if non-material entities were admitted. This dualism is of course uncomfortable to materialists.
To understand why I think Wigner is correct, consider the proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2. We first assume all numbers are rational. In doing so, this leads to a proof by contradiction of exactly the opposite, namely, we discover that not all numbers are rational. A proof by contradiction also can be made on the claim: "the material unverse is all there is". This leads to a contradiction, which suggests pure materialism cannot possibly be true. Of all people, Ken Miller used a similar line of argumentation for the existence of God! KEN MILLER! More on Wigner's solution can be found at Philosophy of Physics. Please refer to that link, I don't have the space to discuss Wigner suggestion in detail here….
The feedback loop cosmology would still require a meta system to support it. Consider the fact that in the practice of human electrical engineering, one still needs to manufacture feedback loops. Feedback loops don't manufacture themselves. One still needs an engineer tinkering with materials and applying Mason's gain rule to make them work right….
Thus, even in engineering practice we see Wigner regress issue prevailing. Some meta system is needed to create a feed back loop in the first place, thus, a pure feed back loop cosmology does not really close the loop [pun intended] in terms of causal explanations. One still needs an entitity outside of a feed back loop universe to build a feed-back loop universe!
Barrow and Tipler extended Wigner's thesis to not just local quantum events but to the entire cosmos. The mathematical extension was eminently logical. An atom is quantum system, and so are two,….thus the whole universe is a quantum system. Quantum systems are brought out of indeterminacy through observation, thus there must be an Ultimate Observer for the universe to exist! It is a very straight forward and elegant deduction.
Hence, Tipler declared that by almost anyone's definition, the Ultimate Observer (the Intelligent Designer) could be properly referred to as God since the Ultimate Observer in the scientific sense had all the skill sets of God in the religious sense.
Can that meta-system (or God) which created the universe be fundamentally of the same substance as the universe? According to the problems of paradoxes that Wigner outlined, the answer is no. Thus from physical theory alone, the properties suggested for the Ulitmate Observer in quantum theory correspond to religious notions of God. However, this God discovered by physics does not have his other possible attributes described by physics. i.e.
1. Is He benevolent
2. Is He loving
3. Is He personal
Rather, phsyics is silent on this. But like a mathematical equation, physics ascribes to Him power and Knowledge and Intelligence. Nobel Laureat Wigner argue only conscious non-physcal systems can be the root cause of quantum collapse. Barrow and Tipler by staightforward deduction argue quantum collapse at the cosmological level, and pretty much by definition, an entity whcih does this at the end of Time could be called God.
But for the sake of argument, let's say we have at least two proposed possibilities for ID at the cosmological scale:
1. feedback loop cosmology as the source of intelligence where the Universe is the Intelligence. Hoyle's term "Intelligent Universe" is appropo
2. Tipler's Ultimate Observer as the intelligence outside the space time universe
I have argued #2 is the correct interpretation, but either way, from physical law alone we have at least an Intelligent Designer with sufficient skill set to create life. Whether this Designer was involved in the creation of life is another story, but it seems to make the notion of biological ID a bit more plausible given the Intelligent Designer of the Universe is at least a viable possibility from physics alone.
The next post (if I get around to it ) deals with the plasibility of special creation of a few ancestral forms over Darwinian evolution from a single ancestor.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 12, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
Now, even people who believe in God don't necessarily believe God is directly involved in the design of life. God may have made gravity, but we don't invoke God every time an object obeys gravity. Theists rather describe something like planetary orbits in terms of the laws which He made, not as some miracle of God. For example, a theist won't say "God's hand is moving the moon around the earth in orbit." No, he would say gravity is what causes the moon to orbit….
I mentioned gravity, but how about life? Does there exist a law of physics such that we don't need to invoke God directly? I argue, there can never be a law that can create life. That's what Trevors, Abel, and Yockey also concluded. Therefore the cause of life is outside of physics as well, much like the origin of the universe.
I suggest, the origin of life better explained via a direct act of special creation rather than a secondary physical principle like gravity or electromagnetism or thermodynamics. Even Darwin accepted the special creation of the first life.
But lets proceed from empirical facts.
1. Life exists
2. It got started at some point
What was the initial condition for life. Can non-life beget life under mindless conditions? Since the answer is no according to empirical data, one can suggest the initial condition of life was life, not non-life, therefore there was at least some event indistinguishable from special creation. I point out again, even Darwin maintained a specially created first life form.
But was there a specially created first life (Darwin's view) or many lives (creationist view). I have my personal views on the issue, but suffice to say, one would have a defensible position to argue the first life or lives were specially created. Beyond that, is minutia.
It's is possible in principle the special creation of life on Earth was not by God, but by another life form. This however merely shoves the problem elsewhere. But for the sake of completeness, in theory God could make aliens and aliens make us.
But let me suggests, John Sanford's work will lead to falsifiable hypotheses about the PRESENT evolution of genomes. If Solexa and other technologies mature, we'll have an opportunity to see if Sanford's characterization of the evolutionary pathway of life is correct. If Solexa reveals an inordinately high mutation rate in mammalian species, we must deal with Nachman's Uparadox which would almost surely force a conclusion of recent special creation. If Sanford's theory is vindicated (maybe in 20 years), it would favor recent special creation of life.
Such a recent special creation does not necessarily imply the world is young, it merely implies life is young. Aging correlates to genomic decay in somatic cells. There is postulated aging in terms of the collective age of a species genome. Solexa technology can confirm if there is aging at the population level in addition to the organismal level. If so, we will see that special creation is at least more consistent with the data and thus a viable hypothesis. Whether creation is actually true is another story. We can only, from a scientific standpoint, make judgements as to who well a theory matches empirical reality. But it seems to me some scenarios would be more plausible than others.
I am friendly to front-loading, but I think it would be hard to argue front-loading from ONLY a single organism. Maybe front loading for major ancestral forms, etc. At the least, plants must come from plants, vertebrates from vertebrates, etc. etc…..Thus there can be special creation followed by the unfolding of front-loading.
The question is, how recent are we talking about. The work of geneticist Bryan Sykes at Oxford suggests no more than 100,000 for man. He doesn't give humanity more than 100,000 years based on genomic deterioration. He does accept Darwinian evolution, but he unwittingly demonstrates that maybe there is no way we could be alive today if humans appeared more than 100,000 years ago!
Solexa technology will give us an empircal bound for how recently life was created. I'd bet we will get numbers that suggest something not greater than a few million years from mammalian life. That is a falsifiable prediction about empirical data. We will see.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 12, 2007 @ 6:21 pm
With regard to physics and its extrapolation into metaphysics you might want to check out Ulrich Mohrhoff's quantum interpretations. He was one of the participants in the Wheeler conference "Science and Ultimate Reality" Although he apparently is of German descent, he has moved to India to pursue his research.
He rejects reification of the state equation and instead claims that it is just an algorithm of probabilities, no more. As such space-time is not infinitely differentiated as we seem to preceive but actually created "on the fly" as "measurements" are taken. One key component of his arguments is that the dual slit experiment shows that there is in reality only one "thing" and that is Brahman. (Schrodinger came to the same conclusion in his "What is Life" book, drawing from the Upanishads). However, Brahman can have different properties as it differentiates itself into different internal relationships and relata. This follows very closely with the qualified monism of Ramanuja found in Hindu philosophy. The metaphysics Mohrhoff follows after his quantum interpretation is that of Sri Aurobindo which has many concepts very close to panentheism, a term that many in the West are familar with.
With this approach the Western notion of a dualism between the material world and the immaterial dissolves into what I call an aspect monism or what Ramanuja calls a qualified monism. There is no need even to use terms like "natural" and "supernatural" in this context. The interesting thing about this approach is that it fits the data from quantum physics perfectly as some intepretations do, but avoids many of the paradoxes that seem in the offing.
I mention this for two reasons. First, just to point out that physics in the West is so steeped in the tradition of atomism that even prominent physcists, unlike Mohrhoff, can be unnecessarily tainted by it. Secondly, that physics can fully support the idea of a personal God without falling into the "god of the gaps" pitfalls.
The other thing about the East that can be helpful therapeutic for the West is that there doesn't seem to be a strong resistance to combining science and religious thought. Mohrhoff flows seamlessly from the physics to the metaphysics. With over 600 million adherents to Vishishtadvaitan Hindu theism (amenable to these interpretations) one has to wonder if, in the future, the East will become a powerful force for some type of ID thinking.
That said, some people use NOMA like Religion and Science are the only spheres that do not overlap. Yet, I propose that we don't find much success in using the reductionist model in a Social sphere.
I agree that NOMA isn't limited to just two magisteria. The difficulty in determining common, Ultimate Truths in a Social sphere is a good example. Can it be scientifically quantified whether or not I am a jerk? ("jerk" being the polite alternative for the "a" word).
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
Not magical, but simply the source that initializes the circuit. In any electronic or electromechanical loop, there will be an external signal that initializes the loop. I think you should look back on your opening analogy, and rethink the last sentence in the opening paragraph. As stated, it does imply magic at the root of the process. Perhaps your inner Freud might be telling you something.
It wasn't a slip (Freudian or otherwise). I intentionally put it in there to provoke the discussion you appear to be trying to start. However, DC batteries don't provide an AC "signal", it is simply power that allows the signal to exist. The equivalent for the subject at hand would be natural forces allowing for the existence of intelligence. IMO, our universe demonstrates a quality that if it can happen, it does.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
Hmmm, it seems to me that there have been many, don't know how much you've read around. What do you mean by purposeful designer? An entity? In what way does your 'purpose' differ from the basic divide between the animate and inanimate, i.e., desire/will/purpose?
Systems like the flagellum seem to me to require an intentional type of intelligence, with foresight.
The disconnect is that my definition of intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt. Something that knows all and can see into the future has no need for such an ability.
There are plenty of logical arguments for a purposeful designer.
There are plenty of logical arguments for a precognitive designer.
How does a learn-from-experience designer logically fit in the big picture?
I wonder if I have misunderstood NOMA.
It is more likely that I am the one who is misusing and abusing the term. If that turns out to be the case, I will just use another one instead. It is the thought, not the words that is important, IMO.
The problem, as I see it, is that most people are operating on a NOMA principle, whether they are religious or not. Makes little difference. I suppose that is because, for the most part, people are stuck in their simplest perceptions of the world given by their senses, with the occasional flickering of deeply subjective intuitions that seem far removed from solid reality. So it seems reasonable, even to the religious, that there are these two realms, the material and the nonmaterial. Now, I don't really understand that.
I think you are showing true wisdom. A magnificent example of employing critical analysis in independent thought. BTW, this mirrors my thinking.
Don't get too hung up on not understanding. It is the wise man that knows he doesn't know.
Provoking Wisdom
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
While there is quite a lot to talk about, I would like to focus on a few key points (at least to start with).
You wrote…
But for the sake of argument, let's say we have at least two proposed possibilities for ID at the cosmological scale:
1. feedback loop cosmology as the source of intelligence where the Universe is the Intelligence. Hoyle's term "Intelligent Universe" is appropo
2. Tipler's Ultimate Observer as the intelligence outside the space time universe
I have argued #2 is the correct interpretation, but either way, from physical law alone we have at least an Intelligent Designer…
Obviously I am arguing for #1. Hopefully you would agree that #2 doesn't proclude #1. An outside observer could be observing an intelligence feedback loop.
Hopefully, you would also agree that it appears that the universe we live in tends to be internally consistent and internally sufficient. It is for this reason that I suggest a intelligence feedback loop (or some other internally consistent mechanism) exists regardless of whether an Ultimate Observer exists or not.
I can understand the argument that an Observer forces the existance of the observed. It is consistent with the retrocausality concept. But why does the observer need the ability to learn. IOW, why does he/she/it need to be intelligent?
The Observer is a force, much like the DC power source in an oscillator circuit.
True, the DC power souce is needed for the AC signal to exist, but it isn'r the souce of the signal, it is just enables it.
Excuse the short response, but I really want to hear your reply to this before continuing on the all the other interesting subtopics.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 13, 2007 @ 12:35 am
For some reason you seem reluctant to elucidate your use of the word purpose. Anyway…
The disconnect is that my definition of intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt. Something that knows all and can see into the future has no need for such an ability.
There are plenty of logical arguments for a purposeful designer.
There are plenty of logical arguments for a precognitive designer.
How does a learn-from-experience designer logically fit in the big picture?
I was not arguing for a precognitive designer. Not necessarily arguing against it either…my idea of the DNA being an intelligent entity does not mean I think DNA is God. It would definitely be a learning and adapting entity. But Darwinists might use the phrase 'learn and adapt' when referring to just willy-nilly random and unplanned successes and that is not what I mean.
Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to reconcile the omniscient aspect of God with the learning and evolving one. I have no problem with a learning designer, but I doubt the learning started from scratch on this planet. Probably it's far older.
With this approach the Western notion of a dualism between the material world and the immaterial dissolves into what I call an aspect monism or what Ramanuja calls a qualified monism. There is no need even to use terms like "natural" and "supernatural" in this context. The interesting thing about this approach is that it fits the data from quantum physics perfectly as some intepretations do, but avoids many of the paradoxes that seem in the offing.
Greetings Steve. You make many good points, so much so that I must confess that can feel my personal beliefs being challenged.
In my time on the net, I have rarely felt that my religious beliefs could be overturned by Darwinian evolution or abiogenesis as Darwinists argue their case so poorly.
However, the possibility that Eastern Religion is correct does feel threatening to my world view. I will admit, one ID proponent, Jeffrey Schwartz who is a bhuddist, has been very influential in my life. His book on brainlock was very helpful to me personally.
Given my personal beliefs, I am personally biased toward a dualistic view and not monism. That of course is not scientific objectivity, but it must, for the sake of open inquiry be put on the table.
What you have offered is certainly worthy of consideration. Fundamental to QM are principles of uncertainty. It may even mean, to some extent correct view might not be accessible to science.
That said, it does seem Quantum theory will be central to many of the discussions about MINDs role in the universe.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 13, 2007 @ 2:28 am
Obviously I am arguing for #1. Hopefully you would agree that #2 doesn't proclude #1. An outside observer could be observing an intelligence feedback loop.
Hopefully, you would also agree that it appears that the universe we live in tends to be internally consistent and internally sufficient. It is for this reason that I suggest a intelligence feedback loop (or some other internally consistent mechanism) exists regardless of whether an Ultimate Observer exists or not.
I agree. In principle, the feedback could be a secondary mechanism (like gravity is a secondary mechanism) via which the Ultimate Observer works to create all sorts of things.
I think it is reasonable organisms have some degree of premonition. In fact, the fuzziness of time can be theoretically defined by Quantum Mechanics. What physcists determined however, was that the window of this fuzzy premonition was too small (on the order of nano-seconds) to be of much use to biological evolution. I've mentioned before, that this issue of retrocausality put constraints on the architectures of nano-computers. There had to be sufficient delay and macroscopic size in order to prevent retrocausality from destroying deterministic computations in the next generation nano-computers! This is a real phenomena which can be investigated via accepted laws of physics.
However, I seem to recall that critics of McFadden argued the time scales involved for retrocausality in biology were too small (on the order of nano, if not femto seconds) for quantum retrocausality to directly work for evolution, maybe for some other bio function, but not evolution in the traditional sense. We'll see, I suppose….
Regarding feedback at the cosmological scale, at the beginning of the universe, a lot of things were permissible before the laws of physics got "hardened" so to speak. It's very possible the universe can self-tune. But, again, I would be careful to say, that if it is self-tuning, one will find the open question of how self-tuning arose. I have studied adaptive feedback control in Electrical Engineering, and self-tuning happens according to the teleology the Engineer imposes on the system. Rarely does any meaning self-tuning happen by accident. Physicist Paul Davies offered the same consideration, and my thoughts on this are certainly not original.
Sal
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 13, 2007 @ 2:47 am
There is no need even to use terms like "natural" and "supernatural" in this context.
for my part, I use the word "natural" to refer to ID science and the word "subnatural" to refer to materialist science. As a scientist I don't believe in the supernatural.
In another thread I had expressed my belief that you think for yourself. Your actions in this discussion go to strengthening that belief. I may not agree with everything people like you and Mike Gene say, but I recognize the conviction and critical thinking from your comments.
However, at the risk of being "Truly Insulting" again, it appears to me that you being conveniently selective about when to vacillate. Steven Hawking and others provide a mathematical model for features of multidimensional space-time. Quantum Mechanics provides evidence that some of these feature match reality. Yet you hesitate to embrace an explanation (feedback loop) because it might be impossible in the multidimensional space-time realm. Instead, you embrace one that is impossible in the multidimensional space-time realm by definition.
That being said, I am willing to compromise and stipulate that an exception to multidimensional space-time self sufficiency may be a requirement in determining a single, common OMA truth
What I ask for in return is an acknowledgement that any such exception must be limited to the absolute minimum needed to satisfy the requirement. Otherwise we are back to NOMA where any and all supernatural explanations have equal rights for consideration (e.g. Last Thursdayism). If you don't like the term "supernatural" feel free to replace it with "exceptions to the internal consistency and self sufficiency of the multidimensional space-time continuum."
Which brings me back to my nagging question"¦
Why does the Universal Observer need to be intelligent?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 13, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
Thought Provoker: The disconnect is that my definition of intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt. …
Ah, but when you try to communicate with and understand what other people mean by what they say, its best not to substitute your own definitions in place of theirs.
When proponents of intelligent design advocate for an intelligent cause, its for them to define what they mean by "intelligence". Typically "learn and adapt" is no necessary part of why ID proponents talk about "intelligence".
Now you might think it would be so much better to say Purposeful Design and change the whole discussion to switch out ID for PD, but that simply is not going to happen. So it won't pay to beat yourself against a wall over nomenclature.
Instead, R & R: relax and realize that when ID says "intelligent", that is not pointing to "learning and adapting", but rather to abilities to design, to create languge, using it to store and apply information, and in general to intentionally pursue construction of functional but highly improbably arrangements and sequences.
In short, the inference is all about what the designer can do to/with the designed, and not about whether or not the designer is changing.
If you think through carefully how one arrives at the inference to design, I think you will be able to see that no claim is made about whether the designer is learning. Indeed, what would be the basis of that claim, given the nature of the inference?
Hope that helps put the "learning" designer concern to rest. If you were to persist in trying to carry on a conversation with different definitions, it would only get in the way of communication. "Intelligent" does not imply "learning/adapting" in this context.
About your proposal, your sine wave analogy has a mind stretching quality that makes me think of the wiring within a flip-flop circuit, which also has an output-to-input quality to it. That said, I see a fundamental problem with trying to spark life out of a looped universe, even with retrocausality.
When it comes to "completing the consistency circuit of the Universe", a permanently dead universe is still consistent from end to end. No matter what point you view it from and regardless of the direction of the arrow of change, matter and energy operating due to law and chance can consistently give rise to order and randomness … and never need to generate anything else at all — a languageless, information free, dead universe.
To look at the problem from another angle, consider your circuits. Assume it is possible to produce a wide variety of waveforms, such as sine, square, sawtooth and so on. Should we also expect that it might produce waves corresponding to the spoken message "Mr. Watson. Come Here. I need you." without the participation of any intelligent agent?
What you need to tackle is not sine waves, but rather language. It is a fundamentally different problem.
I was reviewing past comments and I noticed that somehow I missed several of yours addressed to me. I try not to do that. Please feel free to call my attention to comments I appear to be ignoring (that goes for everyone).
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I will try to do them justice.
You wrote…
Now you might think it would be so much better to say Purposeful Design and change the whole discussion to switch out ID for PD, but that simply is not going to happen. So it won't pay to beat yourself against a wall over nomenclature.
Instead, R & R: relax and realize that when ID says "intelligent", that is not pointing to "learning and adapting", but rather to abilities to design, to create languge, using it to store and apply information, and in general to intentionally pursue construction of functional but highly improbably arrangements and sequences.
I am impressed. It is not that I haven't had similar realizations but that you explained yourself clearly and without reservations. Of course "Intelligent Design" doesn't follow the dictionary definition (especially a medical dictionary). I suggest the term is more of a very clever marketing slogan than a descriptive title of a scientific proposal.
One of the features of using flexible nomenclature is that it facilitates other people making default connections without questioning them. For example, human language is a direct result of human's ability to learn. This allows ID proponents to simply assume the existence of language is some kind of evidence without explaining how or why. It becomes "common sense", which is the antithesis of critical thinking. This is why I attempt to provoke others into thinking about it.
Please note that in my proposal I was not hung up on the definition of "intelligence". The logic remains the same even if we use your definition.
About your proposal, your sine wave analogy has a mind stretching quality that makes me think of the wiring within a flip-flop circuit, which also has an output-to-input quality to it. That said, I see a fundamental problem with trying to spark life out of a looped universe, even with retrocausality.
We are back to definitions. According to Dawkins, "Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." Somehow, I think you might disagree so…
What is your definition of "life".
What is the "life" status of the following…
- moss
- virus
- rust
- stars
For extra-credit, explain your answers.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 1:22 pm
In the context of biological ID, when I refer to "life" I am typically referring to protein based life as we know it. ID does not exclude the possibility that there could be other processes that some might also wish to label as "life". Whether there exists or could exist other kinds of life is an independent question.
The question that is relevant to ID is whether or not unguided/non-telic natural processes could produce the protein based living organisms that we do observe, the origin of which science is attempting to understand.
In the book The Origins of Life, Dr. L. Orgel presented the perspective of an unguided origin for life. When it came to distinguishing living organisms from rust, stars, etc, he coined the term "specified complexity".
"In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity." - Leslie Orgel (1973). The Origins of Life, p. 189.
Proteins and DNA have specified complexity. They are neither regularly ordered (like crystals) nor random. It works because it is language and information based, with meaning encoded into long symbolic sequences that must be decoded to become realized. Notice that the symbol sequences do not themselves have the properties of what they describe. A cookbook recipe for apple pie is not itself sweet.
This is no obstacle for language-capable intelligence, but it is not evident how natural processes could ever make the leap to symbolic language and information (regardless of which direction causality flows).
[BTW, you wrote "human language is a direct result of human's ability to learn." As an aside, there seems to be more to it than that. Even where language is not taught, humans can and will reinvent language. There is something going on with humans and language that is more than generic learning ability. However that may be, ID does not imply that the designer needed to "learn" language, only that the designer of protein-life obviously must understand and be able to use language. Think through the inference from observations.]
As to definitions, dictionaries give the full range of meanings that a word might carry, but in actual context, a particular use is never obligated to carry all those meanings simultaneously, whether for "intelligence" or any other rich word.
So, if those in ID want to convey "the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)", then as you know, Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary would say "intelligence" is an appropriate term. That doesn't imply that the same use of the word is required to also claim all other meanings of the word as well.
Here is the full entry of your choice for a dictionary definition…
Main Entry: in·tel·li·gence
Pronunciation: in-tel--jn(t)s
Function: noun
1 a : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations b : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)
2 : mental acuteness
- in·tel·li·gent /in-tel--jnt/ adjective
- in·tel·li·gent·ly adverb
As far as being "at ease" with terminology, I don't believe we can ever be at ease. Different people have different thoughts that change constantly. As you pointed out, the question is what is meant not the words used.
For example, Dembski's use of the Orgel's term "specified complexity" bordered on marketing genius. To the average person "specified complexity" implies a "specifier" which implies a "creator" regardless of what Orgel meant. But due to an unfortunate Supreme Court ruling "creator" wouldn't do, so "Intelligent Designer" is the new choice.
In a lot of ways "Intelligent Designer" is a better suited for its purpose. It is more vague.
Hope that sets you at ease on terminology.
Ditto
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 4:08 pm
"Here is the full entry of your choice for a dictionary definition"¦"
It would be a bit more accurate to say that that is the full entry for the word, which includes multiple different definitions, one of which (1b) is applicable to the ID use.
The reason the 1b definition is applicable rather than the other meanings for intelligence is that the inference being made by ID is from the effects (i.e. from the manipulated environment and the objective criteria of making functional living organisms) to the best available explanatory cause (i.e. an agency that has "the ability" to do this, namely "intelligent" agency).
I know of no way to infer knowledge about the mental history or mental processes of the designer(s) in question from the data available. So those other definitions aren't supported by the inference.
Similarly, an inference specifically to a supernatural "creator" isn't warranted either, and that fact has nothing to do with legal decisions. If you doubt this at all, please, please take the Mike Gene challege and show us all how to infer "creator" and not merely an "intelligent designer", given the data. You might be the first to succeed.
Another problem for the "just a legal dodge" meme is that Dr. Orgel raised the problem of specified complexity in the 1973 and it was addressed again at length in The Mystery of Life's Origin in 1984, long before the popularizations of ID in the 1990s.
The troublesome fact is that the problem not only remains for finding an unguided alternative explanation, it has become more daunting with the increase of our understanding.
1) For starters, nature never needs to be symbolic. It could be perpetually fulfilled with actions and reactions that require no symbolic language at all. How does mindless matter get the idea of going to a symbolic language, let alone the need?
Here are a few of the other chicken and egg dilemmas:
2) Information/language driven processing doesn't come cheap. To implement such a system, one needs an information store (e.g. DNA), one needs conversion machinery to decode the information from its symbolic form to realized proteins (RNA, etc.), and one needs to be able to fill up the information store in the first place by converting from actual proteins to their stored, retrievable symbolic representations.
No one believes this all could accidentally pop into existence at once. But finding a sequence of development is also problematic. What is the function of an information store if there is no information because there is no mechanism for coding or decoding? But why build a decoding mechanism for information when no information yet exists? Why build a CD player before CDs exist? Or, why build a tape recorder before there is tape or a use for tape? Why encode with no store or decoder?
Keep in mind that as encoded information, information does not have the properties of the realized machines described.
3) For one more point, its not feasible for a mindless process to create information about the construction of protein machines prior to their existence. No mind - no imagination of distant goals - no pursuit of distant goals. Yet it is severely problematic how protein machines could have become established without the ability to create and replicate them by an information driven process. Compare trying to duplicate any machine while it is running with being able to copy a symbolic instruction manual and make a new one from instructions and parts.
THE CONTEST: If anyone thinks they can solve the origin of information problem, there is a million dollars waiting. — http://lifeorigin.org/
As matters stand, the only material objects in the known universe that exhibit specified complexity are
1) objects that result from intelligent design
2) living organisms
So the question is whether or not the second is just another subcategory of the first. ID infers that intelligent design is uniformly the source for specified complexity.
Now that we have had our fun with word games, let's get back to the issue at hand.
I have presented a proposal. It includes an Intelligent Designer with flexibility as to the word "intelligent". It addresses the chicken and egg problem with retrocausality and a feedback loop.
You responded by telling me life is too complicated.
I give four examples to determine what you consider "life".
Your responses could be four single sentences starting with "This is life because…" or "This is not life because…"
Again, what is the "life" status of the following"¦
- moss
- virus
- rust
- stars
Please explain your answers.
Alternatively, could you please provide your counter-proposal to what I have proposed.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 15, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
However, at the risk of being "Truly Insulting" again, it appears to me that you being conveniently selective about when to vacillate. Steven Hawking and others provide a mathematical model for features of multidimensional space-time. Quantum Mechanics provides evidence that some of these feature match reality. Yet you hesitate to embrace an explanation (feedback loop) because it might be impossible in the multidimensional space-time realm. Instead, you embrace one that is impossible in the multidimensional space-time realm by definition.
It's not conduscive to civil discussion to presume the other party is willfully trying to evade a difficult point. I'm simply unfamiliar and relatively uninterested in Hawkings ideas. Besides, irrespective of motivations, we were hopefully going to discuss ideas. You could have simply said, the "multidimesions allow ….." rather than taking a swipe at me personally…
Possible does not imply probable. I did however indicate a self-tuning universe is possible. If multi-dimensionality is comparable to many-worlds, or multiverses, I pointed out why this could still be acceptable within an ID framework: Many Worlds, One God? Shift Happens
For biology, I don't think undirected abiogenesis is possible.
I seriously doubt Darwinian evolution.
There is some evidence for common anscestry, some evidence against it.
To Hawkings credit he at least has good math, which is more than I can say for what I see being passed off as science in evolutionary biology. But Hawkings ideas don't negate biological ID. Even Hawking admits to an anthropic principle, and some anthropic principles can be interpreted as a form of ID (though not necessarily theistic).
Whether Hawking is right may have to be borne out through more research.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 16, 2007 @ 2:42 am
It's not conduscive to civil discussion to presume the other party is willfully trying to evade a difficult point. I'm simply unfamiliar and relatively uninterested in Hawkings ideas. Besides, irrespective of motivations, we were hopefully going to discuss ideas. You could have simply said, the "multidimesions allow "¦.." rather than taking a swipe at me personally"¦
Recently someone asked the interesting question… "If we discounted ideas because they were promoted mean-spirited opportunists like Isaac Newton, where would we be today?"
BTW, that "someone" was you. While I am not claiming the right to be as arrogent as Isaac Newton, I feel the practice of pulling punches is counter-productive to open and honest discussions. Why say "I don't understand how….", when other methods are more effective?
I fully expect and request that you not pull any punches in your discussions with me. But to show that I can be flexible, allow me to reword…
Salvador, I don't understand how I am failing to communicate my humble thought. Hypothesis for empirical presumptions can eventually be shown to be impossible. Hypothesis for philosophical presumptions can only be shown to be required (or desirable). You have identified a philosophical presumption that an Ultimate Observer must exist (is required).
I thought the intent of this discussion was an exploration of a single, common OMA Truth as opposed to separate, individual NOMA Truths. This exploration started with a compare and contrast of our OMA proposals. A basic difference is that my proposal is lacking an Ultimate Observer and your proposal doesn't include an empirical explanation for the existence of intelligence. I offered to consider the addition of an Ultimate Observer for the sake of establishing commonality. I am confused as to your reluctance to include an empirical presumption for the existence of intelligence since you agree it is "possible".
I humbly suggest that if we don't limit our philosophical presumptions to only that which is required, then for all practical purposes, Truth will remain personal (NOMA). If this is the case, science continues to be limited to the study of empirical hypotheses and properly disregards philosophical hypotheses.
I eagerly wait for being enlightened as to the fallacies of my thinking.
Politely Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 16, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
I feel the practice of pulling punches is counter-productive to open and honest discussions.
You are invited to point out you think you have a better position, but to make suggestions that I'm avoiding issues to save face suggest something negative about me personally. You are of course free to say that, but then I'm of course free to decline invitations at dialogue….
You asked the following question:
But why does the observer need the ability to learn. IOW, why does he/she/it need to be intelligent?
I didn't answer immediately
1. But for one I was far more disturbed and pensive over what Steve Peterman wrote that I was totally pre-occupied with it. He really stymied something deep within me.
2. I left for the weekend after responding to steve and did not return till 3am to be greeted with accusation that I was dodging. I simply did not have time to respond. You could always politely ask again.
3. I knew the answer would be deeply involved, and I was rushing to file taxes as well.
4. I'm also preparing for a talk this week among many other commitments.
Thus, I took exception to being accused, since I felt I was making an effort and taking time to enlighten you. If my efforts are met with disdain and dismissiveness, why should I argue on friendly terms. I would like to dialogue with you on friendly terms because you have earned my respect.
I eagerly wait for being enlightened as to the fallacies of my thinking.
Politely Provoking Thought
That said I will try to answer your question.
I have suggested to the readers, both you and Steve have viable positions which are different than my position. Let the reader decide. No need to indirect take swipes at my person. I never said your position on feedback loop cosmology was untennable nor impossible nor unlikely. I offered my reasons why it would not negate the need for an Ultimate Observer, and why I thought the Ultimate Observer must be outside the universe. You can take it or leave it.
I think the regress problem I outlined in the link to Philosophy of Physics outlines why the Ulitmate Observer must be non-material, and non-materiality leads to a dualism which permits consciousness.
Now onto the question of a consciousness intelligent observer. The argument is one of methodological equivalence, not absolute proof. What do I mean? Can you or anyone formally prove there are other conscious beings in the universe aside from yourself.
Seriously, how do you absolutely know that they experience what you experience. They could be mindless automatons for all we know. Of course we don't PROVE that other beings are conscious intelligent agents, we presume if they act like us, they are conscious intelligent beings. If they leave artifacts behind like ours, we presume they are conscious intelligent beings, be they aliens or possibly beavers who build and engineer dams or birds who build and engineer nests, and possibly spiders who engineer webs, and maybe (if Shapiro is right) bacteria who adapt almost with purposeful intelligence. Think about it, do insects understand pain, or they non-conscious automatos just going through the motions?
The reason intelligence is suggested to collapse wave functions [look at wikepedia for Quantum Interpretations and you'll see "consciousness collapse" interpretation] is that:
1. choice seems and essential component of collapse. A photon will behave as a wave or a particle based on an observer's choice.
2. choice seems tied to consciousness
3. if choice is made by mechanical surrogate, we still have the problem of regress to perhaps some ultimate choice making device. Since our lab experience suggests regress to our choices on small scale quantum systems, by way of extension, the Ultimate Observer who collapses the universal wave function is conscious and intelligent.
4. Penrose [Hawkings colleague] suggests Real Intelligence must be conscious, it cannot be a mechanical algorithm, therefore Strong AI doesn't exits.
4. But even if Strong AI exits, if a computer is a non-conscious entity but capable of Strong AI (Artificial Intelligence) through pure computation versus conscious thought, then the presumption of intelligence is still not negated. AI is still intelligence. Tipler's Ulitmate Observer may or may not be a conscious being, but is at least Intelligent as one would deem a computer intelligent. If one accepts mechanical strong AI, then the prerequisite for intelligence is lots of complexity. Via the 4th law of thermodynamics, it would seem reasonable the complexity of the Ultimate Observer must exceed that of the universe, He is thus infinitely intelligent, or at least intelligent enough to have more complexity than the universe. Whether he is truly personal with feelings and emotions is matter of faith, I suppose. But if one accepts strong AI (non-conscious mechanical intelligence) then the Ultimate Observer is intelligent, for that matter, one could also argue the feed back loop Universe is Intelligent. Hoyle even used the phrase Intelligent Universe. So I said, your scenario is possible, I don't recall that I vigorosly opposed it except to say I thought feedback loops still require design.
At some point one assumes another intelligent creature is not a lifeless automaton merely mimicking your feelings. Is child crying merely a replaying of pre-programmed responses? Is a person saying he's conscious merely a replaying of pre-programmed responses when the reality is only YOU are the only conscious being, but you've just been fooled by pre-programming. There is no way to prove such a fundamental postulate, one can only make arguments of methodological equivalence. By way of extension, I would think something that could generate the universe, that if the universe is a compupter, then there is a computer maker. If one thinks computing machines or things that make computing machines are intelligent, then there is evidence of ID in cosmology. Whether the intelligence is conscious and personal is a matter of personal philosophy, and is probably outside science, except for the considerations which Penrose offered in Emperor's new mind.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 16, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
I pondered why I had such a strong reaction to the Monist view of reality. I don't recall that a pastor or priest or work of theology ever told me it was an especially evil viewpoint, and I had to ponder why it was I felt so disturbed by the suggestion. I realized why:
1. It is deep within many theists hearts that God is different and above the muck and mire and evil things in the world. The dualist position offers a picture of a God that's better than the dismal things we see in the known universe. If God is of the same substance as Osama bin Laden, the Columbine killers, Moa Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, or PZ Myers then my hope that God is better than the dismal reality of this world will be in vain. Of course, this is a subjective feeling, not a logical argument for or against monism.
2. Monism is inherently consistent with the reductionism that has made science so successful. We find matter and energy to be of the same substance. It stands to reason to try to extrapolate one substance to all things. There is an elegance to monism that, from the stand point of Occam, gives it the force of plausibility.
That is fundamentally the personal side of my difficulty in facing a monist view. But that is only a statement of the way I would not hope things to be (a monist reality), not a logical argument. I think you have a reasonable position, and my only alternative is that Wigner suggest that quantum regress suggests reality is dualistic, not monistic. It seems to me there is not yet enough data, but hopefully in time the truth will be evident.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 16, 2007 @ 6:35 pm
I agree that Steve's comment was very relevant to a single, common OMA discussion. I have been aware of the alleged observer influences on double slit experiments and the implications of Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. That is why I am receptive to the Ultimate Observer presumption.
Steve said…
The other thing about the East that can be helpful therapeutic for the West is that there doesn't seem to be a strong resistance to combining science and religious thought. Mohrhoff flows seamlessly from the physics to the metaphysics.
Religious monks doing science was/is worthy of praise. What better way to glorify God's (BrahmÄ?'s?) creation than to fully understand it.
I am still interested in trying to form the foundation of a workable, mutual OMA Truth. Could each of you please explain how and why you deviate from this concept…
The empirical realm is internally consistent and self sufficient except for one thing. That is, there is a conscious Ultimate Observer that may have created the universe and observes it but otherwise is uninvolved.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 16, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
Sorry you missed my choice given above for defining life / living organisms. For the purposes of ID discussion, I am using the one by Orgel based on the specified complexity of protein based life. You'll note that I did allude to the fact that other non-protein parts of nature (e.g. rust, stars) are not living organisms in this sense because they lack specified complexity. [I don't exclude that one can use the word "life" in other ways. Those other ways are simply not relevant to the profound issue created by the existence of specified complexity.]
I also responded to your proposal, indicating that retrocausality does not help. Perhaps I was not clear enough about why. My response is not simply "life is too complicated". If it were just that, one might be tempted to just change the definition of "life" and call the problem of "life" solved. That, of course, wouldn't work either.
I assume by retrocausality you are not trying to smuggle in "no causality". The easiest dodge would be to simply assert that protein life does not require any cause — problem solved. I assume you reject "no causality".
Supposing retrocausality is not "no causality" in disguise, it does not help much. All it gives one is the ability to have causal chains that flow backward in time as well as chains that flow forward. But everything still must have causes — no event simply happens with "no cause".
Consequently, even within retrocausality, one can still consider the chain of causes to an event. The only change is that some may be later in time.
If you are proposing a contingent Intelligent Designer at the end of time that creates intelligent life sometime earlier in time, then even invoking retrocausality does not give you a free pass to disregard the origin of — i.e. the causes of specified complexity, language and information.
In other words, why is this not always a universe (even if finely tuned) that never has specified complexity or protein life and always only has stars, rust, crystals, granite, etc.? That would be consistent througout all time.
If you are merely proposing a causal self-supported circle (the causal equivalent of circular reasoning, and similar to a perpetual motion machine in nature), you are in essence appealing underneath it all to "no causality", i.e. that the self-supporting circle simply came to be, without any explanatory cause outside itself. Supposedly, the circle simply floats causally in mid air, even though it is floating within time (and so Hawking does not help either).
This is a serious problem for anything that has not always existed, which appears to be the case with your proposed Intelligent Designer.
So I'll ask you to please be clear on whether you are droping into uncaused, causal loops that you propose without causal support?
If so, it is not any more persuasive than "it just happened". If not, you have to actually deal with how a universe without specified compexity (as language and information) anywhere in itself causally crosses the grand divide and becomes one that has this feature.
Which route will your proposal take? Thanks in advance for clarifying this key point.
Regarding OMA, I am one who considers that there is Total Truth. Furthermore, I'm not one to try to insist we look through the Bible to see truth. Something is either true or it's not. The Bible promises the empirical evidence is eventually sufficient on it's own merits. That said, I'm willing to begin with non-Biblical premises, and see where the mode of inquiry leads. This is a perfectly acceptable methodology to begin with the hypothesis opposite the one you wish to prove.
I am interested in seeing if what I hope to be true has corroborating physical evidence. That is all. What someone else believes is their business, but for me there is nothing more exciting than the possibility that God lives and has spoken to men in ages past.
My specific OMA which I am exploring is the Young Cosmos. Walter Brown and Barry Setterfield articulate the reasons the physical evidence suggests this.
I will say, I was raised an Old-Earth Darwinist in a Catholic home, and had nothing from my upbringing that ever insisted I be a YEC. Nothing in my denomination, the PCA says I should be a YEC. Most of my Christian life, no one told me I should be a YEC. I have come to entertain the hypothesis seriously because I think the evidence suggests it.
I had studied under Old Earth Darwinist two professors who debated ID proponents. Robert Ehrlich debated Behe, and James Trefil debated Dembski and Sisson. I have no inherent animosity toward mainstream cosmology. And I was delighted to learn from the gentleman.
I just now suspect the mainstream views are deeply flawed. Debating with those of the opposite view of mine has only reinforced my conviction that my hope has a better chance of being true, more so than I ever dreamed.
4 years ago my leaning was 1%YEC 99%OEC, today it's 85%YEC 15%OEC. I'm not involved in getting YEC or Christianity in the public schools. I'm simply a human being hoping that God is interested in our plight. I would be inclined to believe that more fervently if the world is young.
That is my hypothesis. 50% of it's most important features lie outside ID proper, but I'm eager to see how well future empirical discoveries confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis.
If the universe is young, the issue of feedback loops or non feedback loops would be mostly moot, IMHO. So that is why that hypothesis occupies more of my interest.
At least for biology, I stake my claim on the outcome of Solexa technology which hopefully will mature in 20 years. We could have measurable answers for or against a recent special creation through Solexa technolgy. What little empirical measurement have been made corroborate this.
Regarding cosmology, more evidence of variable speed of light would be good.
Regarding geology, the demise of Mantle Plumes is an important step.
My views will put me at intense variance with the majority of the ID community which are by and large:
1. Old Earth Front Loaded Evolutionists
2. Old Earth Creationists
3. Pro Cosmological ID (like Gonzalez or Gingerich or Francis Collins or possibly Dave Heddle)
Thus I'm part of the fringe even on the fringe. However, there specific empirical predictions being formulated. The details are nerdy, but I have great expectation they will be affirmed.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 16, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
1. It is deep within many theists hearts that God is different and above the muck and mire and evil things in the world. The dualist position offers a picture of a God that's better than the dismal things we see in the known universe. If God is of the same substance as Osama bin Laden, the Columbine killers, Moa Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, or PZ Myers then my hope that God is better than the dismal reality of this world will be in vain.
I understand this position completely because at one time it was mine. However, as I have pondered theodicy I came to the conclusion that none of the classic theodicies inevitably could divorce God from the evils of the world. Instead I drew from the Jewish and Christian idea that God is a living God. As such God chooses to live. But life entails the potential for great good and great evil. If one looks at the structure of life what we see is that the very same structure affords the possibility of great love, beauty and meaning as well as the great evils that are present. The fine tuning of the cosmos is such that the potential for both is present. Change the structure of life and the glorious aspects of life (and the glory of God ) are no longer possible.
This does not, however, diminish God's ultimacy and loving nature. It is out of love that God creates the cosmos, as it is, where love, beauty, and meaning can be manifest. The only other possibility is something static and dead. A monistic and theistic view is one that affirms God as a living God but also one where God is also ultimately good and loving. Obviously this is a complex issue that can't be addressed in a few sentences.
I eventually came to this view point when I had to reject anything that led to a god of the gaps problem. In a theistic, monistic view our cosmos is an aspect of the One (God, Brahman, or whatever symbol one chooses). But this reality is only one aspect of God. There is a divine depth that is beyond the kin of this reality and has been represented throughout time as God's aseity. This remains in a qualified monism and does honor to the sentiment that is found in classic theism of God's "otherness" while at the same time placing God intimately in the mix of the nuts and bolts of reality as we know it. It also completely defuses all the problems of a dualistic ontology.
As you know in Christianity even the Hitler's and Stalin's of the world are claimed to have God within them. The evils of the world are not external to God but occur because of the potential for evil that is inherent in life. What one has to ask is, are the wonders and glories of life worth having this potential exist? I say yes. As such the evils are eternally battled within the Divine life and there is often victory.
2. Monism is inherently consistent with the reductionism that has made science so successful. We find matter and energy to be of the same substance. It stands to reason to try to extrapolate one substance to all things. There is an elegance to monism that, from the stand point of Occam, gives it the force of plausibility.
To the contrary a monistic, theistic view is absolutely non-reductionist because instead it points to a top-down causation. Reality is not constituted by the little "things" at the bottom but by the teleological ground from the top. Ulrich Mohrhoff's quantum interpretation supports this completely. We are also seeing this sort of scientific interpretation from the likes of Nobel laureates like Robert Laughlin (although not the religious part). We in the West are so indoctrinated with the atomistic view of reality that it is hard for us to envision a more holistic, organic view. Physics on the other hand is pointing to this. Certainly nothing has been definitively decided yet but the evidence is there to be evaluated.
In my view, all this is not divorced completely from Christian theology. The incarnation is a perfect metaphor for God as a living God. God takes on a living aspect in Jesus, self limiting (kenosis), accepting the limitations of life and the potential for evil but struggling and being victorious over the evil forces that are a necessary component of what it means to live.
In the final analysis of a monistic view there is a dimension of depth that human's sense that is God in God's depth. There is no dualistic chasm to cross to embrace this depth as in classic theism. Instead there is a depth to be probed by each of us where the struggles of good and evil can be embraced and love, beauty, and meaning eternally created.
Now, I know I have rambled on about this but I think there is some truth to it and that if there is to be an OMA as Thought Provoker seeks it must come from an ontology where God is both intimately present in the cosmos but also a continuous depth that can be sought and embraced.
P.S. For anyone who is interested, I'm trying to flesh all this out here and here. I welcome and comments and criticisms.
There is absolutely no need to explain a delay in replying to my posts. I spend too much time doing this myself. Real life takes priority.
I took exception to being accused, since I felt I was making an effort and taking time to enlighten you. If my efforts are met with disdain and dismissiveness, why should I argue on friendly terms. I would like to dialogue with you on friendly terms because you have earned my respect.
Thank you for the compliment. I will try to keep my claws in but please forgive me for any sarcasm that slips throught. Feel free to call me on anything you think I am being less than honest about. I would rather address it openly than let it undercut our conversation.
I have suggested to the readers, both you and Steve have viable positions which are different than my position. Let the reader decide. No need to indirect take swipes at my person. I never said your position on feedback loop cosmology was untennable nor impossible nor unlikely. I offered my reasons why it would not negate the need for an Ultimate Observer, and why I thought the Ultimate Observer must be outside the universe. You can take it or leave it.
Please don't take this wrong. I can't "leave it". I have to either take it or refute it. Normally I would agree that you are entitled to your beliefs as I am entitled to mine. That is NOMA. We are searching for a common OMA truth. If you want to simply appeal to the "readers", I will readily concede. You have home court advantage.
I don't expect us to be able to agree on all the details. At best we will walk out of here with vague boundaries. To that end, you made a case for the need of an Ultimate Observer, I grant that.
I think the regress problem I outlined in the link to Philosophy of Physics outlines why the Ultimate Observer must be non-material, and non-materiality leads to a dualism which permits consciousness.
April 12th, 2007 at 12:57 am
Thank you again Mike for the Open Thread
This is the short version, the longer version can be found HERE
I have been working on an ID proposal I could embrace. Here is what I have so far…
ID's information theory argument boils down to a general statement that only intelligence can create intelligence.
Being an electrical engineer, I start thinking about a feedback loop. How do you create a sine wave output? Use a sine wave input and amplify it. Where do you get the input? From the output. It is called an oscillator circuit. Nothing magical or supernatural about it (except, maybe, the AA battery).
One of Joy's pet peeves is that she feels Evolution Biologists don't look outside their own discipline enough. Whether or not that is true, the physicist Steven Hawking's work is freely available via the web here. Hawking explains the concept of time as just another dimension like North/South directions on a globe with the South Pole being the beginning of time and the North Pole being the end of time. Questions about events before the beginning of time are like questions about locations South of the South Pole. Both are paradoxical, but neither requires the supernatural.
I realize some people don't accept this explanation as the Truth (capital "T"). This is where NOMA (Non-Overlapping_Magisteria) comes in. What I have come to realize in my TT travels is that NOMA is probably at the root of the Culture War. I also noticed NOMA transcends the religious/atheist divide. A standard four-quadrant map comes to mind, with the x-axis ranging from active atheist to devout fundamentalist and the y-axis ranging from no separation (OMA) to absolute separation (NOMA), making the quadrants religious-OMA, atheist-OMA, religious-NOMA and atheist-NOMA. A dot for individuals could be placed on the map to review which quadrant each fell into. Previously, I would have placed myself in the atheist-NOMA quadrant. Now, I am not sure for reasons I'm about to explain. There is a lot more to discuss about NOMA, but that would take too much space.
The passion in the ID/Evolution debate comes when someone (from either side) tries to claim the one and only OMA Truth. This is the elephant-in-the-livingroom that has to be addressed. So, without further ado, I boldly use the Hawking Model as my starting point for a proposed, OMA Truth that meets the various claims and goals of both sides of the issue. I am sure that some will not like this choice. To these people, I suggest they write a beginning to end proposal like this one and allow it to also be vetted publicly.
The Hawking Model includes the multiverse paradigm. A complaint to this is that the multiverse still doesn't solve the improbability problem. In other words, why is this universe so lucky. I suggest changing Hawking's bubbles analogy to lightening strikes. The only universes that get beyond the recollapse stage are those that can complete the circuit from the beginning to the end of time. Think of the improbability of a lighting striking hitting a specific, small piece of metal out of acres of other targets. However, when that piece of metal is a lighting rod that completes a circuit, the improbable becomes very probable.
This proposed model may help explain why this universe is finely tuned. It had to be, or it wouldn't have even started. It may also explain why historical events appear too fortuitous (retrocausality). But why life? Why intelligent life?
There are a few Billion people out there who are predisposed to believe at least some kind of intelligence will exist at the end of time. Let's call this intelligence an "Intelligent Designer". This has the effect of elevating the problem. The purpose of intelligent life is to eventually grow into the Intelligent Designer. Now, what is the purpose of the Intelligent Designer? Well, for one, the designer could use retrocausality to create intelligent life. This is the oscillator circuit mentioned earlier. Beyond that, I will just assume an Intelligent Designer would be useful in completing the consistency circuit of the Universe in other ways too.
There are many, many details left out of this presentation. For example, several people at TT insist a lack of progress in the origin of life research and certain features at the molecular level (DNA, proteins, etc) posit some kind of outside intervention like an Intelligent Designer. As I said, any illusion that this resolves the Culture War is for naught. I would hope this broad brush outline will be used as a framework to add details like OOL. Alternatively, I hope it provokes others into offering counter proposals to the same level of logical closure (even if lacking detail).
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 12:57 am
April 12th, 2007 at 1:03 am
We wabbits aim to please.
Comment by MikeGene — April 12, 2007 @ 1:03 am
April 12th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Hi onething,
I hope you see my response in this Open Thread.
You wrote…
I don't think my "purpose is sufficient" statement is in the proposal. But it is something I have said before. My viewpoint has changed slightly since then. However, I still wish someone would make a stronger argument for the need of an Intelligent Designer, instead of just a purposeful one. Notice I stated "I will just assume an Intelligent Designer would be useful in completing the consistency circuit of the Universe in other ways too." It would be more fufilling to make this stronger, but I haven't heard of any convincing need for intelligence other than to create intelligence.
I wrote…
The passion in the ID/Evolution debate comes when someone (from either side) tries to claim the one and only OMA Truth.
Bravo.
This indeed is a valid point even though I am tempted to laugh at your denial of knowing anyone trying to claim the one OMA Truth. How about Richard Dawkins?
I agree, the burden of justification is on those claiming NOMA, and the only justification I can think of is sanity control and generally keeping the peace.
BUT (it is a big one) you can't use a NOMA privilege to claim an OMA right.
Under NOMA, all beliefs are generally given a benefit of the doubt privilege. After all, who I am I to force my beliefs on you? What is a Truth for me might not be a Truth for you. OMA changes that.
Now you need to demonstrate and defend your proposals. Individual wishes and beliefs are meaningless. Ideally, majority opinion should be meaningless too.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 2:22 am
April 12th, 2007 at 3:56 am
TP wrote:
But if that applies to everybody, we're not really talking about something that can be true for one and not for another are we? Yet, I use IPOMA all the time (Indistinguishable-Possibly/Potentially…)
That said, some people use NOMA like Religion and Science are the only spheres that do not overlap. Yet, I propose that we don't find much success in using the reductionist model in a Social sphere. Talking about somebody's genetic defects, family diseases, how many people in the family "kilt themselves off", how appropriately, what synapse in their head fired for them to say that–or what they ate, survival advantages… etc., has not been seen to bring us success.
In fact, we can determine peers from "others" by how much we engage in a reductionistic analysis. "Evolution in action" is not something we say at a family funeral–well much. It's something said out of the side of our mouths to the in-group.
Comment by Axeman — April 12, 2007 @ 3:56 am
April 12th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Hi, Thought Provoker,
Not magical, but simply the source that initializes the circuit. In any electronic or electromechanical loop, there will be an external signal that initializes the loop. I think you should look back on your opening analogy, and rethink the last sentence in the opening paragraph. As stated, it does imply magic at the root of the process. Perhaps your inner Freud might be telling you something.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 12, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Re: universal scaling laws of biology
I found this: http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
Google search: "universal scaling laws of biology"
Regards.
Comment by Rob R. — April 12, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Rob, you're in the wrong thread
Comment by Raevmo — April 12, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Oops…
Just noticed that too
That was supposed to go over here
Blimey!
Comment by Rob R. — April 12, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Hello TP,
Hmmm, it seems to me that there have been many, don't know how much you've read around. What do you mean by purposeful designer? An entity? In what way does your 'purpose' differ from the basic divide between the animate and inanimate, i.e., desire/will/purpose?
Systems like the flagellum seem to me to require an intentional type of intelligence, with foresight. It even annoys me a little because I don't necessarily want that intelligence to be God. One possibility is that DNA is a living, conscious, semiimmortal entity that revises itself.
By the way I like your idea about the internal consistency of the universe.
Oh, I mean in general the reasonable members of the ID crowd, and even most reasonable members of the NDE crowd. Privately, of course, many of them do feel privy to the real truth, but do not expect ID to prove it. That isn't what ID does.
I wonder if I have misunderstood NOMA. My argument against it has never been about particular dogmas, but about trying to progress in science while deciding to divide reality up into that which can be studied and understood, and that which can't, even if the one is the cause of the other! I was introduced to the NOMA idea recently when arguing with a person I met at UD, much more educated and articulate than I am. My impression was that it is the idea that science can and should proceed with a materialist bias, because spirituality is in some realm forever inaccessible, and of course therefore not really necessary for a scientific understanding of the world. Yet he said God made the world as a gift of love, but could never admit that this changes everything. If God made the world, we should assume that it could not have therefore made itself, and if it could not have made itself, that fact should be apparent with sufficient study into the depths of the workings of nature. I'm not saying science should proceed differently so far as its method, rather it needs to change its a priori bias, not box itself into a corner where it can't come to certain conclusions.
The problem, as I see it, is that most people are operating on a NOMA principle, whether they are religious or not. Makes little difference. I suppose that is because, for the most part, people are stuck in their simplest perceptions of the world given by their senses, with the occasional flickering of deeply subjective intuitions that seem far removed from solid reality. So it seems reasonable, even to the religious, that there are these two realms, the material and the nonmaterial. Now, I don't really understand that. Perhaps if I understood physics.
The people who are on My Side, like Denyse O'Leary, speak of the nonmaterial, meaning spiritual. I use their terms sometimes, so that I can speak the same language but it really makes no sense to me.
Slowly science has begun to unravel the depths and subtleties. And it's kind of funny because science in a few different areas is already butting up against and even crossing the divide that at one time would surely have been consigned to the supernatural. Now, arguing from the view that spirit is real, I fully expect that phenomena such as ESP or precognition or healing are completely explicible scientifically, and I doubt that time is all that far off, either.
Simply put, if there is a God (or spiritual principle) who can accomplish work, then there is a communication point, a mechanism. Atoms do not 'obey' God because, after all, he's the boss. And if there is a communication point, then there is an unbroken continuum. There really can't be any breaks within the one reality.
So on the one hand I am a God-besotted mystic, and on the other hand I do not believe the spiritual realm is any other than a far more subtle form of the physical which includes the so-called supernatural and miracles. It's all science.
Comment by onething — April 12, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
In response to Keiths question on another thread:
Because I'm competing with TheBrites as to who can stoop lower.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 12, 2007 @ 2:13 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
My money's on you, Sal. Self-parody trumps parody any time.
Comment by keiths — April 12, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Way off topic; for anybody interested in the 'Tomb of Jesus' controvercy:
The Jerusalem Post: Jesus tomb film scholars backtrack
The paper cited in the article:
Cracks in the Foundation: The Jesus Family Tomb Story
Comment by Rob R. — April 12, 2007 @ 2:57 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Thank you Mike ant TT as well.
I was invited by TP to offer my hypothesis about origins and its relationship to ID. I responded in another thread:
I will elaborate on part 1 of my specific hypothesis, namely, the identity of the designer. The identity of the designer is not part of ID proper, but I think it is the most interesting question, and thus I will address it.
ID merely asks the question, "is something designed?" If one concludes it is designed, then the question is whether design can happen apart from intelligence.
Dembki's early writings make a distinction between:
1. Theories of labeling things as designs
2. Theories of intelligence being necessary for design
I bolded the portion of interest to show a decoupling of theories of design identification with theories of design causation. That distinction is somewhat important. Dembski uses the word "detection" and I think a more neutral word is "identification".
Even in colloquial terms, biologists who assume mindless evolution use the word "design", and that is mostly consistent with Dembski's conception of design. A biologist would probably not have any indigestion in saying he is looking to identify designs within biology. Dembski uses the word "detection", but that suggests intelligent causation. So I prefer the word "identification". In systems engineering and electrical engineering we have the notion of "systems identification". Systems biology is steeped with the goal of systems identification.
What dembski demonstrates is that the common notions of design and Darwinian evolution are mathematically incompatible.
Formally speaking, pure design theory says it is possible consider design without an intelligent cause. See No Free Lunch preface.
However, what Dembski does is to mathematcially demonstrate the following proof-by-contradiction :
This proof was detailed in Dembski's writings.
One solution then to the origin of life's design is intelligence. There are other possibilities like self organization. I'm not aware of any ID theorist formally saying Intelligence is the ONLY possibility. The ID Net uses the phrase, "best explained " rather than "ONLY explained".
The notion that intelligence as essential is offered as a falsifiable claim that designed object can only come about through intelligent agencies. This is not a proof of ID, but like Popperian hypotheses, it is framed in a falsifiable manner…
It is easy to think of Stonehenge as a product of ID because we see designers capable of building things like Stonehenge. It would of course be easy to accept ID for biology and the cosmos if we saw the Intelligent Designer in action doing things in our every day life in ways we could only attribute to him. Since that generally doesn't happen for the average person, we are left to making inferences.
In the absence of a physical theory suggesting a capable Designer of life, a reasonable position about Design might be that of Trevors and Yockey, namely, to say the question of the origin of life is like the origin of matter, beyond the reach of emprical science. Though I disagree with that view, I think it a very reasonable one….. "I don't know" is a good answer. However, I personally am willing to speculate a little farther than "I don't know" but rather suggest, "maybe it's ID". Here is why….
From physical theory alone, namely quantum theory, we have a suggestion that there may be an Intelligent Agency with the power to create life and the universe.
Starting from physical first principles, I survey the theories and physical experiments related to establishing the possible existence of such an Intelligent Designer in If the universe is a computer, who is the computer maker?.
I made reference to a feed-back loop cosmology of Wheeler that is remotely akin to TP's where the Intelligent Designer is basically the physical universe itself which produces life, and life produces the universe via a feedback loop. Such a feed back loop is vaguley related to another ID cosmology known as Langan's Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) :shock:. But the feedback loop cosmology has some serious world-class physics knowledge behind it in the person of John Archibald Wheeler. This feedback loop is arguably an Intelligent Designer of sorts, with the Designer being the universe itself…
The other option (in contrast to a feedback loop) is some Intelligent Designer whose substance is outside of the universe. Let's at least consider the scientific reasons why this solution should be considered.
Nobel Laureate Wigner deduced that the idea of purley physical systems would lead to an irreconcilable inconsistency. That inconsistency could be resolved if non-material entities were admitted. This dualism is of course uncomfortable to materialists.
To understand why I think Wigner is correct, consider the proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2. We first assume all numbers are rational. In doing so, this leads to a proof by contradiction of exactly the opposite, namely, we discover that not all numbers are rational. A proof by contradiction also can be made on the claim: "the material unverse is all there is". This leads to a contradiction, which suggests pure materialism cannot possibly be true. Of all people, Ken Miller used a similar line of argumentation for the existence of God! KEN MILLER! More on Wigner's solution can be found at Philosophy of Physics. Please refer to that link, I don't have the space to discuss Wigner suggestion in detail here….
The feedback loop cosmology would still require a meta system to support it. Consider the fact that in the practice of human electrical engineering, one still needs to manufacture feedback loops. Feedback loops don't manufacture themselves. One still needs an engineer tinkering with materials and applying Mason's gain rule to make them work right….
Thus, even in engineering practice we see Wigner regress issue prevailing. Some meta system is needed to create a feed back loop in the first place, thus, a pure feed back loop cosmology does not really close the loop [pun intended] in terms of causal explanations. One still needs an entitity outside of a feed back loop universe to build a feed-back loop universe!
Barrow and Tipler extended Wigner's thesis to not just local quantum events but to the entire cosmos. The mathematical extension was eminently logical. An atom is quantum system, and so are two,….thus the whole universe is a quantum system. Quantum systems are brought out of indeterminacy through observation, thus there must be an Ultimate Observer for the universe to exist! It is a very straight forward and elegant deduction.
Hence, Tipler declared that by almost anyone's definition, the Ultimate Observer (the Intelligent Designer) could be properly referred to as God since the Ultimate Observer in the scientific sense had all the skill sets of God in the religious sense.
Can that meta-system (or God) which created the universe be fundamentally of the same substance as the universe? According to the problems of paradoxes that Wigner outlined, the answer is no. Thus from physical theory alone, the properties suggested for the Ulitmate Observer in quantum theory correspond to religious notions of God. However, this God discovered by physics does not have his other possible attributes described by physics. i.e.
1. Is He benevolent
2. Is He loving
3. Is He personal
Rather, phsyics is silent on this. But like a mathematical equation, physics ascribes to Him power and Knowledge and Intelligence. Nobel Laureat Wigner argue only conscious non-physcal systems can be the root cause of quantum collapse. Barrow and Tipler by staightforward deduction argue quantum collapse at the cosmological level, and pretty much by definition, an entity whcih does this at the end of Time could be called God.
But for the sake of argument, let's say we have at least two proposed possibilities for ID at the cosmological scale:
1. feedback loop cosmology as the source of intelligence where the Universe is the Intelligence. Hoyle's term "Intelligent Universe" is appropo
2. Tipler's Ultimate Observer as the intelligence outside the space time universe
I have argued #2 is the correct interpretation, but either way, from physical law alone we have at least an Intelligent Designer with sufficient skill set to create life. Whether this Designer was involved in the creation of life is another story, but it seems to make the notion of biological ID a bit more plausible given the Intelligent Designer of the Universe is at least a viable possibility from physics alone.
The next post (if I get around to it ) deals with the plasibility of special creation of a few ancestral forms over Darwinian evolution from a single ancestor.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 12, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Now, even people who believe in God don't necessarily believe God is directly involved in the design of life. God may have made gravity, but we don't invoke God every time an object obeys gravity. Theists rather describe something like planetary orbits in terms of the laws which He made, not as some miracle of God. For example, a theist won't say "God's hand is moving the moon around the earth in orbit." No, he would say gravity is what causes the moon to orbit….
I mentioned gravity, but how about life? Does there exist a law of physics such that we don't need to invoke God directly? I argue, there can never be a law that can create life. That's what Trevors, Abel, and Yockey also concluded. Therefore the cause of life is outside of physics as well, much like the origin of the universe.
I suggest, the origin of life better explained via a direct act of special creation rather than a secondary physical principle like gravity or electromagnetism or thermodynamics. Even Darwin accepted the special creation of the first life.
But lets proceed from empirical facts.
1. Life exists
2. It got started at some point
What was the initial condition for life. Can non-life beget life under mindless conditions? Since the answer is no according to empirical data, one can suggest the initial condition of life was life, not non-life, therefore there was at least some event indistinguishable from special creation. I point out again, even Darwin maintained a specially created first life form.
But was there a specially created first life (Darwin's view) or many lives (creationist view). I have my personal views on the issue, but suffice to say, one would have a defensible position to argue the first life or lives were specially created. Beyond that, is minutia.
It's is possible in principle the special creation of life on Earth was not by God, but by another life form. This however merely shoves the problem elsewhere. But for the sake of completeness, in theory God could make aliens and aliens make us.
But let me suggests, John Sanford's work will lead to falsifiable hypotheses about the PRESENT evolution of genomes. If Solexa and other technologies mature, we'll have an opportunity to see if Sanford's characterization of the evolutionary pathway of life is correct. If Solexa reveals an inordinately high mutation rate in mammalian species, we must deal with Nachman's Uparadox which would almost surely force a conclusion of recent special creation. If Sanford's theory is vindicated (maybe in 20 years), it would favor recent special creation of life.
Such a recent special creation does not necessarily imply the world is young, it merely implies life is young. Aging correlates to genomic decay in somatic cells. There is postulated aging in terms of the collective age of a species genome. Solexa technology can confirm if there is aging at the population level in addition to the organismal level. If so, we will see that special creation is at least more consistent with the data and thus a viable hypothesis. Whether creation is actually true is another story. We can only, from a scientific standpoint, make judgements as to who well a theory matches empirical reality. But it seems to me some scenarios would be more plausible than others.
I am friendly to front-loading, but I think it would be hard to argue front-loading from ONLY a single organism. Maybe front loading for major ancestral forms, etc. At the least, plants must come from plants, vertebrates from vertebrates, etc. etc…..Thus there can be special creation followed by the unfolding of front-loading.
The question is, how recent are we talking about. The work of geneticist Bryan Sykes at Oxford suggests no more than 100,000 for man. He doesn't give humanity more than 100,000 years based on genomic deterioration. He does accept Darwinian evolution, but he unwittingly demonstrates that maybe there is no way we could be alive today if humans appeared more than 100,000 years ago!
Solexa technology will give us an empircal bound for how recently life was created. I'd bet we will get numbers that suggest something not greater than a few million years from mammalian life. That is a falsifiable prediction about empirical data. We will see.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 12, 2007 @ 6:21 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Hey Sal,
With regard to physics and its extrapolation into metaphysics you might want to check out Ulrich Mohrhoff's quantum interpretations. He was one of the participants in the Wheeler conference "Science and Ultimate Reality" Although he apparently is of German descent, he has moved to India to pursue his research.
Here's a link to some of his papers.
He rejects reification of the state equation and instead claims that it is just an algorithm of probabilities, no more. As such space-time is not infinitely differentiated as we seem to preceive but actually created "on the fly" as "measurements" are taken. One key component of his arguments is that the dual slit experiment shows that there is in reality only one "thing" and that is Brahman. (Schrodinger came to the same conclusion in his "What is Life" book, drawing from the Upanishads). However, Brahman can have different properties as it differentiates itself into different internal relationships and relata. This follows very closely with the qualified monism of Ramanuja found in Hindu philosophy. The metaphysics Mohrhoff follows after his quantum interpretation is that of Sri Aurobindo which has many concepts very close to panentheism, a term that many in the West are familar with.
With this approach the Western notion of a dualism between the material world and the immaterial dissolves into what I call an aspect monism or what Ramanuja calls a qualified monism. There is no need even to use terms like "natural" and "supernatural" in this context. The interesting thing about this approach is that it fits the data from quantum physics perfectly as some intepretations do, but avoids many of the paradoxes that seem in the offing.
I mention this for two reasons. First, just to point out that physics in the West is so steeped in the tradition of atomism that even prominent physcists, unlike Mohrhoff, can be unnecessarily tainted by it. Secondly, that physics can fully support the idea of a personal God without falling into the "god of the gaps" pitfalls.
The other thing about the East that can be helpful therapeutic for the West is that there doesn't seem to be a strong resistance to combining science and religious thought. Mohrhoff flows seamlessly from the physics to the metaphysics. With over 600 million adherents to Vishishtadvaitan Hindu theism (amenable to these interpretations) one has to wonder if, in the future, the East will become a powerful force for some type of ID thinking.
Comment by Steve Petermann — April 12, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Hi Axeman
You wrote…
I agree that NOMA isn't limited to just two magisteria. The difficulty in determining common, Ultimate Truths in a Social sphere is a good example. Can it be scientifically quantified whether or not I am a jerk? ("jerk" being the polite alternative for the "a" word).
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
AnaxagorasRules wrote…
It wasn't a slip (Freudian or otherwise). I intentionally put it in there to provoke the discussion you appear to be trying to start. However, DC batteries don't provide an AC "signal", it is simply power that allows the signal to exist. The equivalent for the subject at hand would be natural forces allowing for the existence of intelligence. IMO, our universe demonstrates a quality that if it can happen, it does.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Hi onething…
You wrote…
The disconnect is that my definition of intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt. Something that knows all and can see into the future has no need for such an ability.
There are plenty of logical arguments for a purposeful designer.
There are plenty of logical arguments for a precognitive designer.
How does a learn-from-experience designer logically fit in the big picture?
It is more likely that I am the one who is misusing and abusing the term. If that turns out to be the case, I will just use another one instead. It is the thought, not the words that is important, IMO.
I think you are showing true wisdom. A magnificent example of employing critical analysis in independent thought. BTW, this mirrors my thinking.
Don't get too hung up on not understanding. It is the wise man that knows he doesn't know.
Provoking Wisdom
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Hi Salvador,
Thank you for your explainations.
While there is quite a lot to talk about, I would like to focus on a few key points (at least to start with).
You wrote…
Obviously I am arguing for #1. Hopefully you would agree that #2 doesn't proclude #1. An outside observer could be observing an intelligence feedback loop.
Hopefully, you would also agree that it appears that the universe we live in tends to be internally consistent and internally sufficient. It is for this reason that I suggest a intelligence feedback loop (or some other internally consistent mechanism) exists regardless of whether an Ultimate Observer exists or not.
I can understand the argument that an Observer forces the existance of the observed. It is consistent with the retrocausality concept. But why does the observer need the ability to learn. IOW, why does he/she/it need to be intelligent?
The Observer is a force, much like the DC power source in an oscillator circuit.
True, the DC power souce is needed for the AC signal to exist, but it isn'r the souce of the signal, it is just enables it.
Excuse the short response, but I really want to hear your reply to this before continuing on the all the other interesting subtopics.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 13, 2007 @ 12:35 am
April 13th, 2007 at 12:56 am
TP,
For some reason you seem reluctant to elucidate your use of the word purpose. Anyway…
I was not arguing for a precognitive designer. Not necessarily arguing against it either…my idea of the DNA being an intelligent entity does not mean I think DNA is God. It would definitely be a learning and adapting entity. But Darwinists might use the phrase 'learn and adapt' when referring to just willy-nilly random and unplanned successes and that is not what I mean.
Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to reconcile the omniscient aspect of God with the learning and evolving one. I have no problem with a learning designer, but I doubt the learning started from scratch on this planet. Probably it's far older.
Comment by onething — April 13, 2007 @ 12:56 am
April 13th, 2007 at 12:59 am
I'm not really much of a man.
Comment by onething — April 13, 2007 @ 12:59 am
April 13th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Hi onething,
You wrote…
I honestly don't have a reason to avoid the subject, especially in a blog titled Telic Thoughts.
"Telic: adj., Directed or tending toward a goal…"
Please feel free to ask me pointed questions if you think I am trying to keep something hidden.
I suggest you are biased by that forward flowing time concept.
What do you think of my retrocausality feedback loop as an explaination for the existance of intelligence?
Provoking Thought
P.S. Ok, I should have said "It is a wise person that knows she/he doesn't know."
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 13, 2007 @ 1:19 am
April 13th, 2007 at 2:11 am
Ok, Eowyn…
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — April 13, 2007 @ 2:11 am
April 13th, 2007 at 2:28 am
Greetings Steve. You make many good points, so much so that I must confess that can feel my personal beliefs being challenged.
In my time on the net, I have rarely felt that my religious beliefs could be overturned by Darwinian evolution or abiogenesis as Darwinists argue their case so poorly.
However, the possibility that Eastern Religion is correct does feel threatening to my world view. I will admit, one ID proponent, Jeffrey Schwartz who is a bhuddist, has been very influential in my life. His book on brainlock was very helpful to me personally.
Given my personal beliefs, I am personally biased toward a dualistic view and not monism. That of course is not scientific objectivity, but it must, for the sake of open inquiry be put on the table.
What you have offered is certainly worthy of consideration. Fundamental to QM are principles of uncertainty. It may even mean, to some extent correct view might not be accessible to science.
That said, it does seem Quantum theory will be central to many of the discussions about MINDs role in the universe.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 13, 2007 @ 2:28 am
April 13th, 2007 at 2:47 am
I agree. In principle, the feedback could be a secondary mechanism (like gravity is a secondary mechanism) via which the Ultimate Observer works to create all sorts of things.
Regarding life, geneticist and physicst John McFadden suggested retrocausal mechanisms are instrumental in evolution. See: Quantum Evolution: The New Science of Life .
I think it is reasonable organisms have some degree of premonition. In fact, the fuzziness of time can be theoretically defined by Quantum Mechanics. What physcists determined however, was that the window of this fuzzy premonition was too small (on the order of nano-seconds) to be of much use to biological evolution. I've mentioned before, that this issue of retrocausality put constraints on the architectures of nano-computers. There had to be sufficient delay and macroscopic size in order to prevent retrocausality from destroying deterministic computations in the next generation nano-computers! This is a real phenomena which can be investigated via accepted laws of physics.
However, I seem to recall that critics of McFadden argued the time scales involved for retrocausality in biology were too small (on the order of nano, if not femto seconds) for quantum retrocausality to directly work for evolution, maybe for some other bio function, but not evolution in the traditional sense. We'll see, I suppose….
Regarding feedback at the cosmological scale, at the beginning of the universe, a lot of things were permissible before the laws of physics got "hardened" so to speak. It's very possible the universe can self-tune. But, again, I would be careful to say, that if it is self-tuning, one will find the open question of how self-tuning arose. I have studied adaptive feedback control in Electrical Engineering, and self-tuning happens according to the teleology the Engineer imposes on the system. Rarely does any meaning self-tuning happen by accident. Physicist Paul Davies offered the same consideration, and my thoughts on this are certainly not original.
Sal
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 13, 2007 @ 2:47 am
April 13th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Hi Steve
for my part, I use the word "natural" to refer to ID science and the word "subnatural" to refer to materialist science. As a scientist I don't believe in the supernatural.
Comment by William Brookfield — April 13, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Hi Salvador,
In another thread I had expressed my belief that you think for yourself. Your actions in this discussion go to strengthening that belief. I may not agree with everything people like you and Mike Gene say, but I recognize the conviction and critical thinking from your comments.
However, at the risk of being "Truly Insulting" again, it appears to me that you being conveniently selective about when to vacillate. Steven Hawking and others provide a mathematical model for features of multidimensional space-time. Quantum Mechanics provides evidence that some of these feature match reality. Yet you hesitate to embrace an explanation (feedback loop) because it might be impossible in the multidimensional space-time realm. Instead, you embrace one that is impossible in the multidimensional space-time realm by definition.
That being said, I am willing to compromise and stipulate that an exception to multidimensional space-time self sufficiency may be a requirement in determining a single, common OMA truth
What I ask for in return is an acknowledgement that any such exception must be limited to the absolute minimum needed to satisfy the requirement. Otherwise we are back to NOMA where any and all supernatural explanations have equal rights for consideration (e.g. Last Thursdayism). If you don't like the term "supernatural" feel free to replace it with "exceptions to the internal consistency and self sufficiency of the multidimensional space-time continuum."
Which brings me back to my nagging question"¦
Why does the Universal Observer need to be intelligent?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 13, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Ah, but when you try to communicate with and understand what other people mean by what they say, its best not to substitute your own definitions in place of theirs.
When proponents of intelligent design advocate for an intelligent cause, its for them to define what they mean by "intelligence". Typically "learn and adapt" is no necessary part of why ID proponents talk about "intelligence".
Now you might think it would be so much better to say Purposeful Design and change the whole discussion to switch out ID for PD, but that simply is not going to happen. So it won't pay to beat yourself against a wall over nomenclature.
Instead, R & R: relax and realize that when ID says "intelligent", that is not pointing to "learning and adapting", but rather to abilities to design, to create languge, using it to store and apply information, and in general to intentionally pursue construction of functional but highly improbably arrangements and sequences.
In short, the inference is all about what the designer can do to/with the designed, and not about whether or not the designer is changing.
If you think through carefully how one arrives at the inference to design, I think you will be able to see that no claim is made about whether the designer is learning. Indeed, what would be the basis of that claim, given the nature of the inference?
Hope that helps put the "learning" designer concern to rest. If you were to persist in trying to carry on a conversation with different definitions, it would only get in the way of communication. "Intelligent" does not imply "learning/adapting" in this context.
Comment by eric — April 13, 2007 @ 8:31 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Thought Provoker,
About your proposal, your sine wave analogy has a mind stretching quality that makes me think of the wiring within a flip-flop circuit, which also has an output-to-input quality to it. That said, I see a fundamental problem with trying to spark life out of a looped universe, even with retrocausality.
When it comes to "completing the consistency circuit of the Universe", a permanently dead universe is still consistent from end to end. No matter what point you view it from and regardless of the direction of the arrow of change, matter and energy operating due to law and chance can consistently give rise to order and randomness … and never need to generate anything else at all — a languageless, information free, dead universe.
To look at the problem from another angle, consider your circuits. Assume it is possible to produce a wide variety of waveforms, such as sine, square, sawtooth and so on. Should we also expect that it might produce waves corresponding to the spoken message "Mr. Watson. Come Here. I need you." without the participation of any intelligent agent?
What you need to tackle is not sine waves, but rather language. It is a fundamentally different problem.
Comment by eric — April 13, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Hi Eric,
I was reviewing past comments and I noticed that somehow I missed several of yours addressed to me. I try not to do that. Please feel free to call my attention to comments I appear to be ignoring (that goes for everyone).
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I will try to do them justice.
You wrote…
I am impressed. It is not that I haven't had similar realizations but that you explained yourself clearly and without reservations. Of course "Intelligent Design" doesn't follow the dictionary definition (especially a medical dictionary). I suggest the term is more of a very clever marketing slogan than a descriptive title of a scientific proposal.
One of the features of using flexible nomenclature is that it facilitates other people making default connections without questioning them. For example, human language is a direct result of human's ability to learn. This allows ID proponents to simply assume the existence of language is some kind of evidence without explaining how or why. It becomes "common sense", which is the antithesis of critical thinking. This is why I attempt to provoke others into thinking about it.
Please note that in my proposal I was not hung up on the definition of "intelligence". The logic remains the same even if we use your definition.
We are back to definitions. According to Dawkins, "Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." Somehow, I think you might disagree so…
What is your definition of "life".
What is the "life" status of the following…
- moss
- virus
- rust
- stars
For extra-credit, explain your answers.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 1:22 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Thought Provoker,
In the context of biological ID, when I refer to "life" I am typically referring to protein based life as we know it. ID does not exclude the possibility that there could be other processes that some might also wish to label as "life". Whether there exists or could exist other kinds of life is an independent question.
The question that is relevant to ID is whether or not unguided/non-telic natural processes could produce the protein based living organisms that we do observe, the origin of which science is attempting to understand.
In the book The Origins of Life, Dr. L. Orgel presented the perspective of an unguided origin for life. When it came to distinguishing living organisms from rust, stars, etc, he coined the term "specified complexity".
"In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity." - Leslie Orgel (1973). The Origins of Life, p. 189.
Proteins and DNA have specified complexity. They are neither regularly ordered (like crystals) nor random. It works because it is language and information based, with meaning encoded into long symbolic sequences that must be decoded to become realized. Notice that the symbol sequences do not themselves have the properties of what they describe. A cookbook recipe for apple pie is not itself sweet.
This is no obstacle for language-capable intelligence, but it is not evident how natural processes could ever make the leap to symbolic language and information (regardless of which direction causality flows).
[BTW, you wrote "human language is a direct result of human's ability to learn." As an aside, there seems to be more to it than that. Even where language is not taught, humans can and will reinvent language. There is something going on with humans and language that is more than generic learning ability. However that may be, ID does not imply that the designer needed to "learn" language, only that the designer of protein-life obviously must understand and be able to use language. Think through the inference from observations.]
As to definitions, dictionaries give the full range of meanings that a word might carry, but in actual context, a particular use is never obligated to carry all those meanings simultaneously, whether for "intelligence" or any other rich word.
So, if those in ID want to convey "the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)", then as you know, Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary would say "intelligence" is an appropriate term. That doesn't imply that the same use of the word is required to also claim all other meanings of the word as well.
Hope that sets you at ease on terminology.
Best regards,
Eric
Comment by eric — April 14, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Hi Eric,
Here is the full entry of your choice for a dictionary definition…
Main Entry: in·tel·li·gence
Pronunciation: in-tel--jn(t)s
Function: noun
1 a : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations b : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)
2 : mental acuteness
- in·tel·li·gent /in-tel--jnt/ adjective
- in·tel·li·gent·ly adverb
As far as being "at ease" with terminology, I don't believe we can ever be at ease. Different people have different thoughts that change constantly. As you pointed out, the question is what is meant not the words used.
For example, Dembski's use of the Orgel's term "specified complexity" bordered on marketing genius. To the average person "specified complexity" implies a "specifier" which implies a "creator" regardless of what Orgel meant. But due to an unfortunate Supreme Court ruling "creator" wouldn't do, so "Intelligent Designer" is the new choice.
In a lot of ways "Intelligent Designer" is a better suited for its purpose. It is more vague.
Ditto
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 4:08 pm
April 15th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
"Here is the full entry of your choice for a dictionary definition"¦"
It would be a bit more accurate to say that that is the full entry for the word, which includes multiple different definitions, one of which (1b) is applicable to the ID use.
The reason the 1b definition is applicable rather than the other meanings for intelligence is that the inference being made by ID is from the effects (i.e. from the manipulated environment and the objective criteria of making functional living organisms) to the best available explanatory cause (i.e. an agency that has "the ability" to do this, namely "intelligent" agency).
I know of no way to infer knowledge about the mental history or mental processes of the designer(s) in question from the data available. So those other definitions aren't supported by the inference.
Similarly, an inference specifically to a supernatural "creator" isn't warranted either, and that fact has nothing to do with legal decisions. If you doubt this at all, please, please take the Mike Gene challege and show us all how to infer "creator" and not merely an "intelligent designer", given the data. You might be the first to succeed.
The Designer's Identity
Another problem for the "just a legal dodge" meme is that Dr. Orgel raised the problem of specified complexity in the 1973 and it was addressed again at length in The Mystery of Life's Origin in 1984, long before the popularizations of ID in the 1990s.
The troublesome fact is that the problem not only remains for finding an unguided alternative explanation, it has become more daunting with the increase of our understanding.
1) For starters, nature never needs to be symbolic. It could be perpetually fulfilled with actions and reactions that require no symbolic language at all. How does mindless matter get the idea of going to a symbolic language, let alone the need?
Here are a few of the other chicken and egg dilemmas:
2) Information/language driven processing doesn't come cheap. To implement such a system, one needs an information store (e.g. DNA), one needs conversion machinery to decode the information from its symbolic form to realized proteins (RNA, etc.), and one needs to be able to fill up the information store in the first place by converting from actual proteins to their stored, retrievable symbolic representations.
No one believes this all could accidentally pop into existence at once. But finding a sequence of development is also problematic. What is the function of an information store if there is no information because there is no mechanism for coding or decoding? But why build a decoding mechanism for information when no information yet exists? Why build a CD player before CDs exist? Or, why build a tape recorder before there is tape or a use for tape? Why encode with no store or decoder?
Keep in mind that as encoded information, information does not have the properties of the realized machines described.
3) For one more point, its not feasible for a mindless process to create information about the construction of protein machines prior to their existence. No mind - no imagination of distant goals - no pursuit of distant goals. Yet it is severely problematic how protein machines could have become established without the ability to create and replicate them by an information driven process. Compare trying to duplicate any machine while it is running with being able to copy a symbolic instruction manual and make a new one from instructions and parts.
THE CONTEST: If anyone thinks they can solve the origin of information problem, there is a million dollars waiting. — http://lifeorigin.org/
As matters stand, the only material objects in the known universe that exhibit specified complexity are
1) objects that result from intelligent design
2) living organisms
So the question is whether or not the second is just another subcategory of the first. ID infers that intelligent design is uniformly the source for specified complexity.
Comment by eric — April 15, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
April 15th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Hi Eric,
Now that we have had our fun with word games, let's get back to the issue at hand.
I have presented a proposal. It includes an Intelligent Designer with flexibility as to the word "intelligent". It addresses the chicken and egg problem with retrocausality and a feedback loop.
You responded by telling me life is too complicated.
I give four examples to determine what you consider "life".
Your responses could be four single sentences starting with "This is life because…" or "This is not life because…"
Again, what is the "life" status of the following"¦
- moss
- virus
- rust
- stars
Please explain your answers.
Alternatively, could you please provide your counter-proposal to what I have proposed.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 15, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 2:42 am
It's not conduscive to civil discussion to presume the other party is willfully trying to evade a difficult point. I'm simply unfamiliar and relatively uninterested in Hawkings ideas. Besides, irrespective of motivations, we were hopefully going to discuss ideas. You could have simply said, the "multidimesions allow ….." rather than taking a swipe at me personally…
Possible does not imply probable. I did however indicate a self-tuning universe is possible. If multi-dimensionality is comparable to many-worlds, or multiverses, I pointed out why this could still be acceptable within an ID framework: Many Worlds, One God? Shift Happens
For biology, I don't think undirected abiogenesis is possible.
I seriously doubt Darwinian evolution.
There is some evidence for common anscestry, some evidence against it.
To Hawkings credit he at least has good math, which is more than I can say for what I see being passed off as science in evolutionary biology. But Hawkings ideas don't negate biological ID. Even Hawking admits to an anthropic principle, and some anthropic principles can be interpreted as a form of ID (though not necessarily theistic).
Whether Hawking is right may have to be borne out through more research.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 16, 2007 @ 2:42 am
April 16th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Hi Salvador,
Recently someone asked the interesting question…
"If we discounted ideas because they were promoted mean-spirited opportunists like Isaac Newton, where would we be today?"
BTW, that "someone" was you. While I am not claiming the right to be as arrogent as Isaac Newton, I feel the practice of pulling punches is counter-productive to open and honest discussions. Why say "I don't understand how….", when other methods are more effective?
I fully expect and request that you not pull any punches in your discussions with me. But to show that I can be flexible, allow me to reword…
Salvador, I don't understand how I am failing to communicate my humble thought. Hypothesis for empirical presumptions can eventually be shown to be impossible. Hypothesis for philosophical presumptions can only be shown to be required (or desirable). You have identified a philosophical presumption that an Ultimate Observer must exist (is required).
I thought the intent of this discussion was an exploration of a single, common OMA Truth as opposed to separate, individual NOMA Truths. This exploration started with a compare and contrast of our OMA proposals. A basic difference is that my proposal is lacking an Ultimate Observer and your proposal doesn't include an empirical explanation for the existence of intelligence. I offered to consider the addition of an Ultimate Observer for the sake of establishing commonality. I am confused as to your reluctance to include an empirical presumption for the existence of intelligence since you agree it is "possible".
I humbly suggest that if we don't limit our philosophical presumptions to only that which is required, then for all practical purposes, Truth will remain personal (NOMA). If this is the case, science continues to be limited to the study of empirical hypotheses and properly disregards philosophical hypotheses.
I eagerly wait for being enlightened as to the fallacies of my thinking.
Politely Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 16, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
You are invited to point out you think you have a better position, but to make suggestions that I'm avoiding issues to save face suggest something negative about me personally. You are of course free to say that, but then I'm of course free to decline invitations at dialogue….
You asked the following question:
I didn't answer immediately
1. But for one I was far more disturbed and pensive over what Steve Peterman wrote that I was totally pre-occupied with it. He really stymied something deep within me.
2. I left for the weekend after responding to steve and did not return till 3am to be greeted with accusation that I was dodging. I simply did not have time to respond. You could always politely ask again.
3. I knew the answer would be deeply involved, and I was rushing to file taxes as well.
4. I'm also preparing for a talk this week among many other commitments.
Thus, I took exception to being accused, since I felt I was making an effort and taking time to enlighten you. If my efforts are met with disdain and dismissiveness, why should I argue on friendly terms. I would like to dialogue with you on friendly terms because you have earned my respect.
That said I will try to answer your question.
I have suggested to the readers, both you and Steve have viable positions which are different than my position. Let the reader decide. No need to indirect take swipes at my person. I never said your position on feedback loop cosmology was untennable nor impossible nor unlikely. I offered my reasons why it would not negate the need for an Ultimate Observer, and why I thought the Ultimate Observer must be outside the universe. You can take it or leave it.
I think the regress problem I outlined in the link to Philosophy of Physics outlines why the Ulitmate Observer must be non-material, and non-materiality leads to a dualism which permits consciousness.
Now onto the question of a consciousness intelligent observer. The argument is one of methodological equivalence, not absolute proof. What do I mean? Can you or anyone formally prove there are other conscious beings in the universe aside from yourself.
Seriously, how do you absolutely know that they experience what you experience. They could be mindless automatons for all we know. Of course we don't PROVE that other beings are conscious intelligent agents, we presume if they act like us, they are conscious intelligent beings. If they leave artifacts behind like ours, we presume they are conscious intelligent beings, be they aliens or possibly beavers who build and engineer dams or birds who build and engineer nests, and possibly spiders who engineer webs, and maybe (if Shapiro is right) bacteria who adapt almost with purposeful intelligence. Think about it, do insects understand pain, or they non-conscious automatos just going through the motions?
The reason intelligence is suggested to collapse wave functions [look at wikepedia for Quantum Interpretations and you'll see "consciousness collapse" interpretation] is that:
1. choice seems and essential component of collapse. A photon will behave as a wave or a particle based on an observer's choice.
2. choice seems tied to consciousness
3. if choice is made by mechanical surrogate, we still have the problem of regress to perhaps some ultimate choice making device. Since our lab experience suggests regress to our choices on small scale quantum systems, by way of extension, the Ultimate Observer who collapses the universal wave function is conscious and intelligent.
4. Penrose [Hawkings colleague] suggests Real Intelligence must be conscious, it cannot be a mechanical algorithm, therefore Strong AI doesn't exits.
4. But even if Strong AI exits, if a computer is a non-conscious entity but capable of Strong AI (Artificial Intelligence) through pure computation versus conscious thought, then the presumption of intelligence is still not negated. AI is still intelligence. Tipler's Ulitmate Observer may or may not be a conscious being, but is at least Intelligent as one would deem a computer intelligent. If one accepts mechanical strong AI, then the prerequisite for intelligence is lots of complexity. Via the 4th law of thermodynamics, it would seem reasonable the complexity of the Ultimate Observer must exceed that of the universe, He is thus infinitely intelligent, or at least intelligent enough to have more complexity than the universe. Whether he is truly personal with feelings and emotions is matter of faith, I suppose. But if one accepts strong AI (non-conscious mechanical intelligence) then the Ultimate Observer is intelligent, for that matter, one could also argue the feed back loop Universe is Intelligent. Hoyle even used the phrase Intelligent Universe. So I said, your scenario is possible, I don't recall that I vigorosly opposed it except to say I thought feedback loops still require design.
At some point one assumes another intelligent creature is not a lifeless automaton merely mimicking your feelings. Is child crying merely a replaying of pre-programmed responses? Is a person saying he's conscious merely a replaying of pre-programmed responses when the reality is only YOU are the only conscious being, but you've just been fooled by pre-programming. There is no way to prove such a fundamental postulate, one can only make arguments of methodological equivalence. By way of extension, I would think something that could generate the universe, that if the universe is a compupter, then there is a computer maker. If one thinks computing machines or things that make computing machines are intelligent, then there is evidence of ID in cosmology. Whether the intelligence is conscious and personal is a matter of personal philosophy, and is probably outside science, except for the considerations which Penrose offered in Emperor's new mind.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 16, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Steve,
I pondered why I had such a strong reaction to the Monist view of reality. I don't recall that a pastor or priest or work of theology ever told me it was an especially evil viewpoint, and I had to ponder why it was I felt so disturbed by the suggestion. I realized why:
1. It is deep within many theists hearts that God is different and above the muck and mire and evil things in the world. The dualist position offers a picture of a God that's better than the dismal things we see in the known universe. If God is of the same substance as Osama bin Laden, the Columbine killers, Moa Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, or PZ Myers then my hope that God is better than the dismal reality of this world will be in vain. Of course, this is a subjective feeling, not a logical argument for or against monism.
2. Monism is inherently consistent with the reductionism that has made science so successful. We find matter and energy to be of the same substance. It stands to reason to try to extrapolate one substance to all things. There is an elegance to monism that, from the stand point of Occam, gives it the force of plausibility.
That is fundamentally the personal side of my difficulty in facing a monist view. But that is only a statement of the way I would not hope things to be (a monist reality), not a logical argument. I think you have a reasonable position, and my only alternative is that Wigner suggest that quantum regress suggests reality is dualistic, not monistic. It seems to me there is not yet enough data, but hopefully in time the truth will be evident.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 16, 2007 @ 6:35 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Hi Salvador and Steve,
I agree that Steve's comment was very relevant to a single, common OMA discussion. I have been aware of the alleged observer influences on double slit experiments and the implications of Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. That is why I am receptive to the Ultimate Observer presumption.
Steve said…
Religious monks doing science was/is worthy of praise. What better way to glorify God's (BrahmÄ?'s?) creation than to fully understand it.
I am still interested in trying to form the foundation of a workable, mutual OMA Truth. Could each of you please explain how and why you deviate from this concept…
The empirical realm is internally consistent and self sufficient except for one thing. That is, there is a conscious Ultimate Observer that may have created the universe and observes it but otherwise is uninvolved.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 16, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Thought Provoker,
Sorry you missed my choice given above for defining life / living organisms. For the purposes of ID discussion, I am using the one by Orgel based on the specified complexity of protein based life. You'll note that I did allude to the fact that other non-protein parts of nature (e.g. rust, stars) are not living organisms in this sense because they lack specified complexity. [I don't exclude that one can use the word "life" in other ways. Those other ways are simply not relevant to the profound issue created by the existence of specified complexity.]
I also responded to your proposal, indicating that retrocausality does not help. Perhaps I was not clear enough about why. My response is not simply "life is too complicated". If it were just that, one might be tempted to just change the definition of "life" and call the problem of "life" solved. That, of course, wouldn't work either.
I assume by retrocausality you are not trying to smuggle in "no causality". The easiest dodge would be to simply assert that protein life does not require any cause — problem solved. I assume you reject "no causality".
Supposing retrocausality is not "no causality" in disguise, it does not help much. All it gives one is the ability to have causal chains that flow backward in time as well as chains that flow forward. But everything still must have causes — no event simply happens with "no cause".
Consequently, even within retrocausality, one can still consider the chain of causes to an event. The only change is that some may be later in time.
If you are proposing a contingent Intelligent Designer at the end of time that creates intelligent life sometime earlier in time, then even invoking retrocausality does not give you a free pass to disregard the origin of — i.e. the causes of specified complexity, language and information.
In other words, why is this not always a universe (even if finely tuned) that never has specified complexity or protein life and always only has stars, rust, crystals, granite, etc.? That would be consistent througout all time.
If you are merely proposing a causal self-supported circle (the causal equivalent of circular reasoning, and similar to a perpetual motion machine in nature), you are in essence appealing underneath it all to "no causality", i.e. that the self-supporting circle simply came to be, without any explanatory cause outside itself. Supposedly, the circle simply floats causally in mid air, even though it is floating within time (and so Hawking does not help either).
This is a serious problem for anything that has not always existed, which appears to be the case with your proposed Intelligent Designer.
So I'll ask you to please be clear on whether you are droping into uncaused, causal loops that you propose without causal support?
If so, it is not any more persuasive than "it just happened". If not, you have to actually deal with how a universe without specified compexity (as language and information) anywhere in itself causally crosses the grand divide and becomes one that has this feature.
Which route will your proposal take? Thanks in advance for clarifying this key point.
Comment by eric — April 16, 2007 @ 8:41 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Hi Salvador,
I am creating a longer replay. The previous one was more for Steve than you,
Hi Eric,
I will get to you after I reply to Salvador.
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 16, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Regarding OMA, I am one who considers that there is Total Truth. Furthermore, I'm not one to try to insist we look through the Bible to see truth. Something is either true or it's not. The Bible promises the empirical evidence is eventually sufficient on it's own merits. That said, I'm willing to begin with non-Biblical premises, and see where the mode of inquiry leads. This is a perfectly acceptable methodology to begin with the hypothesis opposite the one you wish to prove.
I am interested in seeing if what I hope to be true has corroborating physical evidence. That is all. What someone else believes is their business, but for me there is nothing more exciting than the possibility that God lives and has spoken to men in ages past.
My specific OMA which I am exploring is the Young Cosmos. Walter Brown and Barry Setterfield articulate the reasons the physical evidence suggests this.
I will say, I was raised an Old-Earth Darwinist in a Catholic home, and had nothing from my upbringing that ever insisted I be a YEC. Nothing in my denomination, the PCA says I should be a YEC. Most of my Christian life, no one told me I should be a YEC. I have come to entertain the hypothesis seriously because I think the evidence suggests it.
I had studied under Old Earth Darwinist two professors who debated ID proponents. Robert Ehrlich debated Behe, and James Trefil debated Dembski and Sisson. I have no inherent animosity toward mainstream cosmology. And I was delighted to learn from the gentleman.
I just now suspect the mainstream views are deeply flawed. Debating with those of the opposite view of mine has only reinforced my conviction that my hope has a better chance of being true, more so than I ever dreamed.
4 years ago my leaning was 1%YEC 99%OEC, today it's 85%YEC 15%OEC. I'm not involved in getting YEC or Christianity in the public schools. I'm simply a human being hoping that God is interested in our plight. I would be inclined to believe that more fervently if the world is young.
That is my hypothesis. 50% of it's most important features lie outside ID proper, but I'm eager to see how well future empirical discoveries confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis.
If the universe is young, the issue of feedback loops or non feedback loops would be mostly moot, IMHO. So that is why that hypothesis occupies more of my interest.
At least for biology, I stake my claim on the outcome of Solexa technology which hopefully will mature in 20 years. We could have measurable answers for or against a recent special creation through Solexa technolgy. What little empirical measurement have been made corroborate this.
Regarding cosmology, more evidence of variable speed of light would be good.
Regarding geology, the demise of Mantle Plumes is an important step.
My views will put me at intense variance with the majority of the ID community which are by and large:
1. Old Earth Front Loaded Evolutionists
2. Old Earth Creationists
3. Pro Cosmological ID (like Gonzalez or Gingerich or Francis Collins or possibly Dave Heddle)
Thus I'm part of the fringe even on the fringe. However, there specific empirical predictions being formulated. The details are nerdy, but I have great expectation they will be affirmed.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 16, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Sal,
I understand this position completely because at one time it was mine. However, as I have pondered theodicy I came to the conclusion that none of the classic theodicies inevitably could divorce God from the evils of the world. Instead I drew from the Jewish and Christian idea that God is a living God. As such God chooses to live. But life entails the potential for great good and great evil. If one looks at the structure of life what we see is that the very same structure affords the possibility of great love, beauty and meaning as well as the great evils that are present. The fine tuning of the cosmos is such that the potential for both is present. Change the structure of life and the glorious aspects of life (and the glory of God ) are no longer possible.
This does not, however, diminish God's ultimacy and loving nature. It is out of love that God creates the cosmos, as it is, where love, beauty, and meaning can be manifest. The only other possibility is something static and dead. A monistic and theistic view is one that affirms God as a living God but also one where God is also ultimately good and loving. Obviously this is a complex issue that can't be addressed in a few sentences.
I eventually came to this view point when I had to reject anything that led to a god of the gaps problem. In a theistic, monistic view our cosmos is an aspect of the One (God, Brahman, or whatever symbol one chooses). But this reality is only one aspect of God. There is a divine depth that is beyond the kin of this reality and has been represented throughout time as God's aseity. This remains in a qualified monism and does honor to the sentiment that is found in classic theism of God's "otherness" while at the same time placing God intimately in the mix of the nuts and bolts of reality as we know it. It also completely defuses all the problems of a dualistic ontology.
As you know in Christianity even the Hitler's and Stalin's of the world are claimed to have God within them. The evils of the world are not external to God but occur because of the potential for evil that is inherent in life. What one has to ask is, are the wonders and glories of life worth having this potential exist? I say yes. As such the evils are eternally battled within the Divine life and there is often victory.
To the contrary a monistic, theistic view is absolutely non-reductionist because instead it points to a top-down causation. Reality is not constituted by the little "things" at the bottom but by the teleological ground from the top. Ulrich Mohrhoff's quantum interpretation supports this completely. We are also seeing this sort of scientific interpretation from the likes of Nobel laureates like Robert Laughlin (although not the religious part). We in the West are so indoctrinated with the atomistic view of reality that it is hard for us to envision a more holistic, organic view. Physics on the other hand is pointing to this. Certainly nothing has been definitively decided yet but the evidence is there to be evaluated.
In my view, all this is not divorced completely from Christian theology. The incarnation is a perfect metaphor for God as a living God. God takes on a living aspect in Jesus, self limiting (kenosis), accepting the limitations of life and the potential for evil but struggling and being victorious over the evil forces that are a necessary component of what it means to live.
In the final analysis of a monistic view there is a dimension of depth that human's sense that is God in God's depth. There is no dualistic chasm to cross to embrace this depth as in classic theism. Instead there is a depth to be probed by each of us where the struggles of good and evil can be embraced and love, beauty, and meaning eternally created.
Now, I know I have rambled on about this but I think there is some truth to it and that if there is to be an OMA as Thought Provoker seeks it must come from an ontology where God is both intimately present in the cosmos but also a continuous depth that can be sought and embraced.
P.S. For anyone who is interested, I'm trying to flesh all this out here and here. I welcome and comments and criticisms.
Comment by Steve Petermann — April 16, 2007 @ 9:39 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Hi Salvador,
You wrote…
There is absolutely no need to explain a delay in replying to my posts. I spend too much time doing this myself. Real life takes priority.
Thank you for the compliment. I will try to keep my claws in but please forgive me for any sarcasm that slips throught. Feel free to call me on anything you think I am being less than honest about. I would rather address it openly than let it undercut our conversation.
Please don't take this wrong. I can't "leave it". I have to either take it or refute it. Normally I would agree that you are entitled to your beliefs as I am entitled to mine. That is NOMA. We are searching for a common OMA truth. If you want to simply appeal to the "readers", I will readily concede. You have home court advantage.
I don't expect us to be able to agree on all the details. At best we will walk out of here with vague boundaries. To that end, you made a case for the need of an Ultimate Observer, I grant that.
I agree with reservation.