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Winds of change? Humanist deflates popcorn neuroscience

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In “Mind in the Mirror,” Raymond Tallis reflects on V.S. Ramachandran’s The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, “Neuroscience can explain many brain functions, but not the mystery of consciousness”:

The subtitle of V.S. Ramachandran’s latest book prompts a question: Why should “A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human” be of particular interest? The answer is obvious if you believe, as so many do, that humans are essentially their brains. When a brain scientist speaks, we should pay attention, for “What makes us human” then boils down to what makes our brains special, compared with those of other highly evolved creatures.

RaymondTallis

Dr. Ramachandran and many others, including prominent philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Patricia and Paul Churchland, promise that neuroscience will help us understand not only the mechanism of brain functions (such as those that coordinate movement or underpin speech) but also key features of human consciousness. As of yet, though, we have no neural explanation of even the most basic properties of consciousness, such as the unity of self, how it is rooted in an explicit past and explicit future, how experience is owned and referred to a self, and how we are, or feel that we are, voluntary agents. Neuroscience, in short, has no way of accommodating everyday first-person being.

No, and neuroscience is often invoked to explain things it doesn’t:

Here, as elsewhere, the intellectual audit trail connecting the neuroscience to the things he claims to explain is fragile. For a start, mirror neurons have been observed not just in monkeys and humans but also in swamp sparrows, enabling them to learn to sing the songs they hear. They are admirable birds, but their cultural achievements are modest. Moreover, the existence in humans of a distinct mirror neuron system with properties such as “mind-reading” is still contested. At any rate, the claim that mirror neurons are a “specialized circuitry for social cognition” in humans is a death-defying leap beyond the humble “Monkey see, Monkey do” function they were first observed to have.

Tallis describes himself, at his own site, as a humanist.

He is emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester, and will publish Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity, presumably a bash at evolutionary psychology and related pseudosciences.

It’s good to see actual humanists weighing in on these questions. Humanism had a respectable history before it was taken over by Darwin worshippers, at which point, the term might better have become “primatist.” What the new humanists were really interested in of human experience is what a chimpanzee could replicate. And once Apes R’ Us hit pop culture, it did considerable damage. After all, many people do not want to rise to the challenge of being human.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

More stories from The Mindful Hack, my blog on neuroscience and spirituality issues:

Comments
F/N: I have taken up the themes raised by AIG at 76 here.kairosfocus
January 23, 2011
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F/N: Re AIG, 76, Jan 14:
By “counterflow” I assume you mean contra-causal effects, and so by “agency” it appears you mean libertarian free will. That’s fine and dandy, but it is not an assertion that can be empirically tested, at least at the present time. If you meant something else by these terms please tell me, along with some suggestion as to how we might decide if such a thing exists or not.
Quite inadvertently revealing, and painfully self-referential. In steps: 1 --> "Counterflow" generally speaks of going opposite to "time's arrow" [a classic metaphor for the degradation impact of the 2nd law of thermodynamics], by performing constructive work. 2 --> That is, by in effect harnessing an energy-conversion device, a local increase in order -- indeed, in organisation -- can be created, according to a pattern, blueprint, plan, or at least an intention. 3 --> Open systems can indeed readily -- but, alas, temporarily -- increase local organisation by importing energy from a "source," but generally only in a context of guiding information based on an intent or program, and at the expense of exhausting compensating disorder to some "sink" or other. 4 --> Physically, work is done when applied forces impart motion along their lines of action to their points of application, e.g. when we lift a heavy box to put it on a shelf, we do work. 5 --> But, that does not say anything about whether or not the work is constructive -- a tornado ripping off a roof and flying its parts for a mile to land elsewhere has done physical work, but not constructive work.
(Side-bar, constructive work is closely connected to the sort we get paid for: if your work is constructive, desirable and affordable, you get paid for it.)
6 --> Similarly, it says nothing about the origin of the energy conversion device. When that device itself manifests functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information -- FSCO/I (e.g. a gas engine- generator set or a solar PV panel, battery and wind turbine set, as opposed to, e.g. the order exhibited by tornadoes or hurricanes as vortexes), we have good reason to infer that the conversion device was designed. 7 --> ID researcher William Dembski connects the counter-flow, constructive work idea to the concept of the designer as an intentional, active agent who sets a purpose and creates guiding information for constructive work:
. . . (1) A designer conceives a purpose. (2) To accomplish that purpose, the designer forms a plan [I add: which of course includes, a program and/or a reference library of relevant information]. (3) To execute the plan, the designer specifies building materials and assembly instructions. (4) Finally, the designer or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions to the building materials. (No Free Lunch, p. xi. HT: ENV.)
8 --> Clipping an example from the recent design inference post, point 6: ___________________________ >> . . . under some circumstances [e.g. a suspicious die], the highly contingent outcomes are credibly intentionally, intelligently and purposefully directed. Indeed: a: When I type the text of this post by moving fingers and pressing successive keys on my PC’s keyboard, b: I [a self, and arguably: a self-moved designing, intentional, initiating agent and initial cause] successively c: choose alphanumeric characters (according to the symbols and rules of a linguistic code) towards the goal [a purpose, telos or "final" cause] of writing this post, giving effect to that choice by d: using a keyboard etc, as organised mechanisms, ways and means to give a desired and particular functional form to the text string, through e: a process that uses certain materials, energy sources, resources, facilities and forces of nature and technology to achieve my goal. . . . The result is complex, functional towards a goal, specific, information-rich, and beyond the credible reach of chance [the other source of high contingency] on the gamut of our observed cosmos across its credible lifespan. In such cases, when we observe the result, on common sense, or on statistical hypothesis-testing, or other means, we habitually and reliably assign outcomes to design. >> ____________________________ 9 --> In short, AIG's very act of composing, typing and posting a contextually responsive post in English is not only an example of how counterflow comes from self-moved, initiating agent cause -- it is NOT "contra-causal" -- but it also shows how such agents must be free enough and self-moved enough to choose towards a goal, plan and execute messages or instructions using symbols according to rules of meaningful composition [as opposed to blindly and mechanically execute programs], or else their cognitive acts become self-referentially absurd. 10 --> Indeed, unless we can sufficiently freely decide as self-moved, intentional, initiating and reasoning creatures, we cannot reason or "decide" based on rational grounds, as opposed to triggering a branch of some underlying program or subtle controlling cause tracing to our genetics, our nurture as children and our conditioning ever since. 11 --> And so, the very demand for an operational procedure by which " we may decide" if free will exists, itself implicitly assumes the credibility of the self-moved mind. 12 --Namely, one that can follow ground and consequent reasons, weigh up warrant, and DECIDE to accept that which is well-warranted, not just that which it is pre-programmed and pre-determined to do by genes, nurture and indoctrinating conditioning aka "education" -- ultimately tracing to chains of cause-effect driven by blind chance and mechanical necessity. __________________ Reductio ad absurdum having been inadvertently provided by AIG, we may confidently accept that it is credible on experience, reflection on, and observation of human rationality, morality [e.g. acknowledging and carrying out the duties of due diligence to warrant conclusions] and purposefulness are real and are in fact the background presumptions of work in science. Including that branch of Computer Science known by that quaint term: Artificial Intelligence. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
January 23, 2011
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aiguy:
1) The “intelligent cause” that ID posits as the Designer of complex life forms is either itself a complex life form or it is not.
So what? ID is not about the desgner(s). The best we can say is "we don't know".
2) If the Designer is supposed to be a complex life form, then ID’s hypothesis isn’t a very good one.
Again ID is not about the designer(s). We just don't know.
First, we have no evidence that any other life forms existed anywhere in the universe before life appeared on Earth, and second this hypothesis would not explain how life forms appeared in the first place.
Living organisms do appear here on earth and as such had a cause. First we have to figure that out before we can move on.
3) Alternatively, if the Designer is supposed not to be a complex life form, then ID’s hypothesis is even worse,..
Blah, blah, blah- ID does not say anything about the designer(s).
So I argue that whatever was responsible for the origin of life, we have no evidential reason to think it had a mind like human beings do; rather, it is likely that it was something very different.
OK fine- so what?Joseph
January 22, 2011
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"In particular, we have no evidential warrant to conclude that the cause of complex life experienced what we call “consciousness”, nor other mental characteristics like beliefs, desires, emotions, sensations, perceptions and so on." Hmmmm. Not so fast. We immediately get to the epistemological issues. What does "evidential warrant" mean?tgpeeler
January 22, 2011
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tgpeeler, I assume your two questions are "what exists?" and "how do we know?". Sorry but I haven't solved the problems of epistemology any more successfully than anyone else. Fortunately scientists manage to agree on a huge number of observations even without a definitive epistemological solution. I'm happy to use whatever particular epistemological approach you'd like to settle on for argument's sake.
Whatever was responsible for the origin of life is VERY different from human beings. On that we can agree.
Good! In particular, we have no evidential warrant to conclude that the cause of complex life experienced what we call "consciousness", nor other mental characteristics like beliefs, desires, emotions, sensations, perceptions and so on.aiguy
January 20, 2011
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Thanks for the clarification. My two questions still stand. By the way, Whatever was responsible for the origin of life is VERY different from human beings. On that we can agree.tgpeeler
January 20, 2011
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tgpeeler, Let me make my position clear, then: 1) The "intelligent cause" that ID posits as the Designer of complex life forms is either itself a complex life form or it is not. 2) If the Designer is supposed to be a complex life form, then ID's hypothesis isn't a very good one. First, we have no evidence that any other life forms existed anywhere in the universe before life appeared on Earth, and second this hypothesis would not explain how life forms appeared in the first place. 3) Alternatively, if the Designer is supposed not to be a complex life form, then ID's hypothesis is even worse, because it is positing something that is unknown to our uniform and repeated experience, viz an intelligent agent that is not a complex life form. Of course it is possible that something could have designing abilities like a human (or superior to a human) without the benefit of a complex brain and body, but we have no good reason to think such a thing exists, and some reason to think it cannot (e.g. results in the physics of information that I've discussed above). Note that I am not assuming or arguing that materialism is true; I am not arguing for any particular position on the mind/body problem. Even if I granted for the sake of argument that dualism was true, my argument would not be affected. So I argue that whatever was responsible for the origin of life, we have no evidential reason to think it had a mind like human beings do; rather, it is likely that it was something very different.aiguy
January 20, 2011
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I read this thread over a couple of days and I'm still confused about what positions aiguy is taking. To above, VJT, BA77, CH, joseph and others, you have been trying to grab smoke. I thought markf and others were evasive. Good grief, I have seen the master now... If I were so inclined, I would ask aiguy what exists and how does he know?tgpeeler
January 19, 2011
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aiguy,
I gave you a long list of assumptions that appeal to everybody’s common sense but science has shown to be false; you have ignored this. All right then, we disagree
Do you think science is conducted outside of humans doing it, and using the power of inference, thus common sense, when doing it? Science is a tool for descriptions of nature, not real explanations behind the curtain of why nature is the way it is. We can't get behind the curtain, we can only use our powers of inference and describe nature, we cannot explain our descriptions as we can explain the logic behind driving on the right side of the road or the necessary usage of a notary public. The only knowledge we uncover about the world through is inductive descriptions, not real explanations of the ideas behind nature. What science is in itself, which is nothing but a consensual agreement of a methodology, is not the same as the thing studied. You seem to equate natural occurrences with the methodology used to describe the occurrences. The methodology is a convention, what it hits up against, what everyone encounters everyday, that is, the natural world, is not science, it is the natural world. The methodology to describe the natural world is absolutely a convention, and we call that conventional methodology science. The thing studied is not the thing you use to study it. Science is a consensual methodology of the best way to describe nature, which is itself a value judgment, and value judgments, like methodologies, don't physically exist. You shouldn't equate the thing worked on with the methodology with which you work. If science discovers a tree, the tree is not science, and science is not the tree.Clive Hayden
January 19, 2011
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clive,
It is only with our ability of common sense that we can determine when our assumptions were mistaken.
I gave you a long list of assumptions that appeal to everybody's common sense but science has shown to be false; you have ignored this. All right then, we disagree :-)
No, I was designed by two intelligent agents, my parents, and they were designed by four, etc., until you get back to an intelligent agent that can imbue life like itself
Really? Your parents designed you? They must be brilliant biogengineers! My parents didn't know a thing about designing biological organisms, yet here I am. Hmmm. Anyway, Clive, you seem to have a very unconventional notion about what it means to "design". Most people would say you are the product of your parents' reproductive abilities rather than their designing abilities. So I guess we disagree about this too. And finally we disagree about science being merely a convention rather than a system for uncovering knowledge about the world. In your view, the prediction that nuclear fission would yield an explosion was nothing but a social convention which one could choose to believe or not (perhaps on the basis of common sense). In my view, a nuclear bomb will kill you whether or not you believe that Einstein was right. Nice chatting with you, Clive! Please take the last word.aiguy
January 19, 2011
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aiguy,
Actually that’s a very bad suggestion for two different reasons. The first is most obvious, which is that “common sense” is so often proven wrong by scientific research. Common sense tells us that heavy things fall faster than light things even in a vacuum… wrong. Common sense tells us that time itself can’t be affected by gravity… wrong. Common sense tells us that particles can’t pop into existence in empty space, and that matter and energy are fundamentally different things, and that space can’t be curved… wrong, wrong, wrong.
It is only with our ability of common sense that we can determine when our assumptions were mistaken. The whole endeavor of anything in science relies on human logic because anything whatsoever described about the external world, even that there is an external world, is an inference. There is no dichotomy between scientific thinking and any other kind of thinking, if you remove logic and inference, science itself disappears. So yes, we can use inference, reason, logic, etc., to determine when something is wrong logically, and determinism without the one determining being determined itself is not logical. It doesn't matter about uses of the word "know". You may as well say a broken clock knows what time it is twice a day, or anytime of day, maybe it just decides to appear broken and not cooperate out of stubbornness.
There are lots of characteristics that may distinguish humans from all other complex things, but the fact that we are built of partcular carbon-based (i.e. organic) materials seems like a poor candidate for drawing critical distinctions.
There you are appealing to your common sense again. It seems like a good candidate to me.
You object to saying that a computer is intelligent on the grounds that the computer has been designed by an intelligent agent. So you argue that we shouldn’t credit the abilities of the computer to the computer itself, but rather to the computer designer. However, I believe you are convinced that you, Clive, have also been designed by an intelligent agent! If ID is true, then not only are computers designed by human beings, but human beings are designed by the Intelligent Designer of Life. But I presume you would still consider yourself to be a bona-fide intelligent agent, even though you were in turn designed by another intelligent agent, right? So your argument that computers can’t be bond-fide intelligent agents just because they were designed doesn’t hold up. I believe the only response you’ll be able to offer to my argument is simply to reiterate that while a computer is a deterministic tool of its human designer, humans have been endowed by their Designer with True Minds and Free Will. But beyond the fact that computers are not deterministic (they can learn from unpredictable environments and even incorporate truly random input into their reasoning), ultimately your argument gains nothing at all by pointing out that computers (or humans) are designed.
No, I was designed by two intelligent agents, my parents, and they were designed by four, etc., until you get back to an intelligent agent that can imbue life like itself, not machines like itself. Top down, not bottom-up. The evolutionary scheme is bottom-up, producing things that have never existed prior. This is what causes the problem of materialistic determinations, when things are determined by their material only, and determinations of free will and a mind that comes from being begotten by something like an intelligent designer. It depends on what is designed, qualitatively, not mere designation. I don't see how your argument has any force. I never argued that mere design invalidates knowledge by virtue of being designed. But within the designed universe, we can use our ability of knowledge to determine what knowledge is and what else is capable of knowing as we are, top-down. Being produced by the universe, where all events (even thoughts) are necessitated and determined by the universe getting itself into certain states of complexity, means that we are just that, a part of the universe, and have no privileged position to determine anything, but rather we are determined.
These sorts of agreements cannot be tested against our shared experience, but the results of science must be.
The results of driving on the right side of the road most certainly can be determined by our shared experience, and so can being a notary public.
If we decide “People ought to drive on the right side of the road”, nobody can suggest any way to decide if that statement is true or false, because it is not a statement of fact (or as philosophers would say, it is not a proposition).
The material world is only a fact of description, not a fact of explanation. Science can only describe it, and we can agree that driving on the right side of the road or being a notary public is also a description, but with this added benefit; we can understand why it should be that way, why it should be that we do not hurt each other in car accidents, and why we should have human validation for signatures, we can see why the proposition that people ought not to be hurt can lead to a physical event of driving on the right side of the road, and why other people's validation of a document ought to be trusted from the physical act of seeing the notary stamp. One thing leads to another and makes explanatory sense. Why a bird would fly and also must only lay eggs, does not have the same sort of explanation in the world of connecting the ideas. Why any two things we can describe that are connected physically doesn't mean that we understand and can explain why they are connected philosophically. It is not a mental contradiction that a bird would give live birth, it is a mental contradiction that people ought not to get into car accidents--therefore we should drive in one direction on both sides of the road. When it comes to real knowledge, not mere description of connected physical events, driving on the right side of the road and being a notary public make much more sense to our shared common experience than science, because we can see the "why" in the question, not just the "how is this described" question as in science.Clive Hayden
January 19, 2011
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clive,
AIGUY: Well that’s the thing. You say it doesn’t, and I say it does, but you can’t tell us how we might ever decide the question by appeal to our shared experience. How can we decide who is right? CLIVE: Common sense would be a good place to start.
Actually that's a very bad suggestion for two different reasons. The first is most obvious, which is that "common sense" is so often proven wrong by scientific research. Common sense tells us that heavy things fall faster than light things even in a vacuum... wrong. Common sense tells us that time itself can't be affected by gravity... wrong. Common sense tells us that particles can't pop into existence in empty space, and that matter and energy are fundamentally different things, and that space can't be curved... wrong, wrong, wrong. The second problem with applying common sense to the question of "Does a phone know what time it is?" is that this question isn't a question about facts. We all know what phones do and don't do, and we know how phones work (at least the engineers who build them know this quite well). So when we ask if a phone can know something, we aren't really asking anything about the phone; instead, we are simply asking what it is we mean by the word "know". In other words we aren't arguing about propositions, but rather about definitions. According to my definition, it is clear that phones and computers and various other devices are capable of knowing things, by virtue of their ability to store information in their memories are recall it when the situation demands (e.g. when I say to my phone "What time is it?"). According to other definitions of the word "know", we would agree that phones cannot know things; for example, if we decided that the definition of to know entailed a conscious awareness of knowledge.
Whatever abilities machines may have, they owe to us, us who are not machines; ...
You say that we "are not machines". But whether or not we are "machines" depends on two things. First, it depends on exactly how we decide to define the word "machine". Second, it depends on how human beings fundamentally operate; in particular whether or not our mental abilities demonstrate powers that go beyond physical cause. Nobody knows if human minds operate according to the principles of classical physics, or require certain quantum phenomena, or some unknown physical effects, or require something else (a mental substance or property) which is entirely distinct from the rest of nature.
...and machines are not organic material as we are,...
There are lots of characteristics that may distinguish humans from all other complex things, but the fact that we are built of partcular carbon-based (i.e. organic) materials seems like a poor candidate for drawing critical distinctions.
... there is no comparison to a first thing from a derivative of that first thing. You may as well say that the pan knows to get hot and not credit the stove maker, or that the actual radio knows the news and then broadcasts it out of some duty to it’s organic machine friends.
I've heard this argument many times of course, but nobody has ever responded to my counter-argument. See if you can: You object to saying that a computer is intelligent on the grounds that the computer has been designed by an intelligent agent. So you argue that we shouldn't credit the abilities of the computer to the computer itself, but rather to the computer designer. However, I believe you are convinced that you, Clive, have also been designed by an intelligent agent! If ID is true, then not only are computers designed by human beings, but human beings are designed by the Intelligent Designer of Life. But I presume you would still consider yourself to be a bona-fide intelligent agent, even though you were in turn designed by another intelligent agent, right? So your argument that computers can't be bond-fide intelligent agents just because they were designed doesn't hold up. I believe the only response you'll be able to offer to my argument is simply to reiterate that while a computer is a deterministic tool of its human designer, humans have been endowed by their Designer with True Minds and Free Will. But beyond the fact that computers are not deterministic (they can learn from unpredictable environments and even incorporate truly random input into their reasoning), ultimately your argument gains nothing at all by pointing out that computers (or humans) are designed.
You have three options, either the ability to know is separate from the collection and arrangements of particles, or it comes from the particles and their arrangements, or you remove the ability to know altogether.
There are many options you don't seem familiar with. Again we need a specific definition of "to know" in order to debate the point; let's say that "knowing" implies that the knower is conscious of its knowledge, OK? In that case, we are talking about the various solutions to the mind/body problem. One might believe that consciousness emerges from sufficiently complex physical information processing, or that consciousness results from certain interactions in the realm of quantum gravity, or that only consciousness exists and matter is illusory, or that irreducible res cogitans interacts with matter to produce consciousness, or that res cogitans itself exhibits conscious awareness even absent interaction with matter, or that all consciousness is a facet of a single universal consciousness, or that all matter has a consciousness property, or that consciousness is a semantic confusion, or that consciousness results from particular biochemical reactions, and so on and so on. What is my position you may wonder? My position is that we do not know what the necessary and sufficient conditions for conscious experience are. I think there is a "hard problem" of consciousness, which means that I consider consciousness to be mysterious and currently unexplained. I tend to think (with Colin McGinn) that our minds are not capable of understanding what consciousness is.
AIGUY: I disagree that science is merely an arbitrary convention like deciding to drive on the right side of the road, and I actually don’t believe that you think that either (or wouldn’t if you thought about for a while). CLIVE: What am I supposed to think it is then?
Science is a social process for generating knowledge (justified true beliefs). It is fraught with error, can provide only provisional results, is incapable of evaluating many types of questions entirely, and is even beset with fraud and prejudice. The only reason we use science at all is because it is so much better than any other system to try and find out what is true about the world.
Is it a physical object? Is it golden plates that Joseph Smith saw in the hat, decreed from Heaven and given to scientists?
No, and no.
What is it, if not a consensual agreement of convention like driving on the right side of the road or being a notary public?
These sorts of agreements cannot be tested against our shared experience, but the results of science must be. If we decide "People ought to drive on the right side of the road", nobody can suggest any way to decide if that statement is true or false, because it is not a statement of fact (or as philosophers would say, it is not a proposition). So no, consensual agreements are vastly different from science. When Einstein said that E=mc2 and that a nuclear fission chain reaction can release tremendous amounts of energy, that was science. The fact that Japan did not consent to agree with him did not change the fact that atom bombs exploded over their cities.aiguy
January 18, 2011
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aiguy,
Well that’s the thing. You say it doesn’t, and I say it does, but you can’t tell us how we might ever decide the question by appeal to our shared experience. How can we decide who is right?
Common sense would be a good place to start.
You seem to equate the ability to know with intelligence in general. That’s fine, so we’re basically debating machine intelligence. You ridicule the idea by suggesting I should chastise my phone and see if will start to behave better… but of course there could be a phone that did exactly that (and the popular electronic AI toys in Japan all respond to displays of affection or punishment appropriately). We could keep this up forever, you coming up with things that a machine “could never do” and me either explaining that yes they could of course do such things or finding examples of other “intelligent agents” (people or animals) who also couldn’t do these things.
Whatever abilities machines may have, they owe to us, us who are not machines; and machines are not organic material as we are, there is no comparison to a first thing from a derivative of that first thing. You may as well say that the pan knows to get hot and not credit the stove maker, or that the actual radio knows the news and then broadcasts it out of some duty to it's organic machine friends.
HUH??? I don’t know what a “soul” is, I do not believe in “deterministic necessity”, and I do not believe in animism or that the ability to reason comes from parts and particles. I don’t think you’ve mapped out the conceptual space of the mind-body problem very carefully here, Clive.
You have three options, either the ability to know is separate from the collection and arrangements of particles, or it comes from the particles and their arrangements, or you remove the ability to know altogether.
I disagree that science is merely an arbitrary convention like deciding to drive on the right side of the road, and I actually don’t believe that you think that either (or wouldn’t if you thought about for a while).
What am I supposed to think it is then? Is it a physical object? Is it golden plates that Joseph Smith saw in the hat, decreed from Heaven and given to scientists? What is it, if not a consensual agreement of convention like driving on the right side of the road or being a notary public?Clive Hayden
January 18, 2011
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@aiguy Since most of your response was just to ignore the arguments I raised I will respond to whatever I could salvage from your response that warrants a comment. -“First, if dualism defeated my argument then we would be in the same situation, because we do not know if dualism is true or not. But dualism does not defeat my argument, because dualism per se does not hold that res extensa is superfluous to mental function – it only holds that res cogitans is necessary.” The correct response would be that dualism per se does not hold that res extensa is NECESSARILY superfluous to mental function. In other words, it could or it could not. If it’s superfluous your argument is refuted. Plain and simple. -“ What I have said is that every intelligent agent in our experience requires complex mechanism in order to exhibit intelligent behaviors. Since you have no response to this simple, undeniable, perfectly true observation, you sweep it under the rug” Nonsense. The dualism example as explained above refutes it and idealism annihilates it completely. In fact, given idealism it is a non-issue. I think you overestimate yourself and then pat yourself in the back regardless of the fact that your argument fails. In addition I’ve also explained in the past that the inability to directly observe a non-physical intelligence might simply be (and most probably is) as result of human epistemological limits. So your argument in effect hinges on that epistemic limitation. Once it’s abandoned your argument fails again. The reason I refuted all those underlying assumptions I thought (and still think you make) is to point to the certain presuppositions you seems unwilling to confess. But if that’s not the case then fine. -“ I have said that scientific explanatory constructs need to be operationalized and verified against experience, but that is obviously not the same as verificationism. If you disagree, can you tell us what (if anything) you believe might distinguish scientific results from any other type of belief?” The point made here by ID supporters is that design itself can be verified and operationalized and that’s all ID needs. You simply refuse to acknowledge that. Also, verifying something might not be identical to verificationism but it’s close enough. After all, it’s the same underlying principle just not dogmatized. Also, where did you get the idea that my response was in regards to scientific statements? I think you got lost somewhere. Scientific demarcation is a huge issue that I don’t think even you want to get into given how much trouble philosophers of science have face in the last century. -“ If theism were “blatantly obvious” then everybody would agree about it.” So your criterion of truthfulness of a proposition is how many people agree with it? LOL! -“My position (as I’ve made clear many times in this thread and many others) is probably best described as “mysterianism”, but specifically the point I make here is that there is no good reason to think that whatever created these features of the universe and life had the sort of mental characteristics that we know subjectively as embodied human beings.” There are plenty of good reasons for suggesting that actually as myself and other posters have explained. The problem is that you’re simply that you are unwilling to acknowledge them. But if skepticism is your game, I can simply rephrase your entire argument and say “that there is no good reason to think that whatever created these features of the universe and life DID NOT have at minimum the sort of mental characteristics that we know subjectively as intelligent agents. Two can play this game. :) PS. I was just about to post this and run into the following statement of yours: -“ By “counterflow” I assume you mean contra-causal effects, and so by “agency” it appears you mean libertarian free will. That’s fine and dandy, but it is not an assertion that can be empirically tested, at least at the present time.” If that’s not verificationism then I don’t know what is. I think I was right in deconstructing all those presuppositions after all! PPS. I also should inform you that the whole computers have intentionality nonsense was refuted by Searle and several others. Not that it made any sense whatsoever in the first place.above
January 16, 2011
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aiguy:
Philosophers refer to this as contra-causal or libertarian free will, meaning that somehow mind is supposed to have the power to transcend physical causation.
That is just nuts. When I build something it is via physical causation and I do not transcend it. Things that happen or happened have a cause- ie something or someone did something to cause the effect we are observing or have observed. Also called causality- and one of the basic questions science asks is “how did it ome to be this way?” Forensics, archaeology and SETI are three venues that require an answer to that question. aiguy:
Forensics and archaeology study the results of human behavior.
Actually they don't know if it is human or not until they do their full investigation. What they have to first determine is that was some agency involved or not. Have you ever done any investigating?
SETI looks for signs of the existence of alien life forms (“life as we know it” as the SETI folks say).
SETI looks for a signal that nature, operating freely could not have produced. 1- How do you define science? aiguy:
My position is that some questions (like whether the flu is caused by viruses, or whether the sun is powered by nuclear fusion) can be resolved by appeal to our shared experience, and so they are considered to be scientific.
ID is based on observations and shared experiences. It can be resolved via parsimony. aiguy:
First, there is nothing that “intelligent cause” can be assumed to be incapable of, and so no particular phenomenon is inherently inconsistent with the hypothesis of intelligent cause.
Again it all comes down to parsimony- as in what is required. If nature, operating freely can account for it we don't infer design. That is why not all rocks are considered to be artfacts nor all deaths considered to be homicides. Shared experiences.
The second problem is that ID uses a specious argument when it says that intelligence is something we are all aquainted with because of our familiarity with human beings and other animals.
And more shared experiences! Ya see aiguy we have shared experiences with agencies doing things with nature that nature, operating freely could never do. If every time we observe X and know the cause is always via agency involvement, when we observe X but not the agency our shared experience tells us some agency was involved.
This is the portion of ID that I say is unscientific, because it implicitly assumes that intelligence is a thing that can exist independently of the complex physical organisms that we observe.
But ID doesn't say anything about the designer- we don't know if the designer(s) are independent of complex physical organisms.
If ID is positing an alien life form as the designer of life on Earth, then I think ID is a pretty bad theory, because while we do obviously know that intelligent life forms exist, we have no evidence that they exist anywhere but Earth.
Actually that would make it a good theory because it doesn't deal with ultimate cause, just proximate. IOW we have to go with what we can observe. That said we know that living organisms exist on Earth. And again one of the basic questions science asks is "How did it come to be this way?"- are you reading that part? So we have an obligation to answer that question because is does matter.
Moreover, such a theory would not explain how first life arose, but only how life on Earth arose.
We go with what we have and it is best to stick with proximate rather than ultimte causes. Living organisms on Earth exist and therefor had a cause. Exactly what do you think the options are?Joseph
January 15, 2011
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vjtorley,
You believe that the intentional stance is indispensable for explaining what some computers do, and you are agnostic as to whether intelligent agency is compatible with determinism. So according to you, there are no knock-down arguments against computers being intelligent agents.
I think the part about the intentional stance is not germane, but yes I think there are no knock-down arguments against strong AI.
OK. Let’s suppose you’re right, for argument’s sake. If you are, then the hypothesis that this universe was designed by an embodied, intelligent computer in another, higher-level “mother universe” would constitute a form of ID, would it not? In which case you have no problems with the massive inductive evidence against a disembodied Designer. That makes you an ID-ist of sorts – just not one who believes the Designer is a spirit. Right?
You are here not actually supposing for argument's sake that I am right - you are supposing for argument's sake that computers can be intelligent (I am in fact not proposing this but am agnostic about it). So let's say computers can be intelligent... but of course now you must tell me what that is supposed to mean! Let's assume you mean that it can generate plans to solve novel problems. OK, now we assume that this problem-solving computer exists and creates universes. Yes, this would be a form of ID, and would not suffer the problem of being unlikely because intelligence requires mechanism. However, it still wouldn't be a very good hypothesis. First, we don't know of the existence of any such thing (a "computer" that isn't actually based on integrated circuits, etc). Second, a simpler hypothesis would be that rather than a general problem-solving computer, the cause would have been a simpler special-purpose computer that produces universes but couldn't do anything else (like play Jeopardy).
You make a fair point. I’m all in favor of rigorous definitions myself. However, you might not be aware that Professor William Dembski has already stated online that he regards intelligence as incompatible with being a deterministic machine.
I've read the "Conflating Matter and Mind" paper, but not the other one. I've used Dembski's line from the former paper quite a bit: "I fully grant that my theology would crumble with the advent of intelligent machines." So he's betting his entire worldview on the hope that computers cannot become intelligent. This is a perfect statement of why ID (which really is a statement of his theology when you get past the specious equivocation, as I pointed out to joseph above) critically depends on the truth of dualism (or some expanded ontology). So yes, Dembski has written about his metaphysical commitments, but fails to make clear that ID rests squarely upon the truth of them!
You also remark my view that “in order to be an intelligent agent an entity must exhibit ‘dedicated functionality’ and be ‘built from the bottom up’” should have been built into the definition from the start. Well, if I were defining “intelligent agent” then I should certainly have done that; however, I was quoting Dembski’s definition. My added stipulations about dedicated functionality pre-date my involvement in the ID movement. I wrote about them back in 2005, in an online e-book. In this section, I address the problem of defining “life”: http://www.angelfire.com/linux.....inalb.html . I discuss dedicated functionality here: http://www.angelfire.com/linux.....#empirical .
I agree you've likely done a better job at considering the nature of intelligence that Dembski has done (forgive my faint praise).
However, there is no unanimity within the ID community as to what exactly “life” is – and for that matter, there’s no unanimity within any other community that I know of, as the term is notoriously difficult to define. What unites ID-ers is a conviction that life contains a vast amount of FCSI – in particular, prescriptive information – and that unintelligent processes are incapable of generating such a vast quantity of information.
Yes, "life" is as difficult to define as "intelligence" (but of course no theory invokes 'life' as an explanatory concept!). When I argue that all known intelligent agents are life forms, I am using ID's own conception that what distinguishes living things is that they contain lots of FSCI.
Incidentally, your remark to bornagain77 that computers do it all the time is beside the point here, as they have intelligent programmers.
Don't you believe that you also have an intelligent designer? Does that mean you aren't intelligent yourself?
Anyway, let me just say that I applaud your call for greater definitional rigor, regarding “intelligent agency."
So refreshing, thank you!!
OK. I should have added that a computer which is deterministic + random is no freer than a purely deterministic one. What’s critical here is that the operations whereby it arrives at its “answers” are physical processes, rather than formal ones. To be sure, we can say that computers “add,” for instance, but to the extent that we ascribe formal processes to computers, they piggyback on the physical processes that underlie them. There is no top-down causation. When people describe how they arrive at the answer to a problem, they appeal to these formal processes. I’m sure you could program a computer to do the same thing, but it would be “mouthing words” on the basis of instructions implemented at the physical level.
Sometimes people are able to describe how they arrive at answers to problems by formal processes, and sometimes they solve problems and are incapableof describing how. For example, when a robot is programmed to catch a baseball, it requires a great deal of complex mathematical analysis to be accomplished in real time. The robot could describe its reasoning, and you have no justification for claiming that its explanations would be just "mouthing words"; it would actually be generating grammatical sentences corresponding to what particular computations were being performed and reporting them. OK? But when a human catches a baseball, we are unable to explain it in terms of formal processes; all we can say is "I saw the ball and went for it" or something similar. Does that mean that the robot caught the ball using intelligence, but the human didn't?
...The soul doesn’t push neurons, as Eccles appears to think; instead, it selects from one of a large number of quantum possibilities...
Yes, I'm familiar with ideas along these lines.
Each row is still random, but I have imposed a non-random macro-level constraint. That’s how my will works when I make a choice.
I think probably the Penrose/Hammeroff ideas are the most well-developed along these lines. We presently have no way of testing for the sort of will-driven constraints that you posit or those P/H are suggesting, but perhaps someday we'll be able to.
We have theoretical justifications (including implications of Landauer’s princple) for claiming that anything which processes information requires physical mechanism (and that all means-ends analysis requires exactly this sort of information processing, even if it is ultimately non-algorithmic!).
Start here: http://www.cpi.caltech.edu/index.html. There is a lot of research on the physics of information nowadays, for example at http://www.research.ibm.com/physicsofinfo/ Just do a search. Don't forget I'm not offering this work as proof of anything; all I'm saying is that as far as we know intelligent behavior requires the processing of information, and the processing of information requires complex systems of discrete physical states.
It is impossible (even in principle) to explain what certain computer systems are doing at the level of electronics, for the same reason we cannot explain weather systems at the level of atomic interactions. So we use intentional idioms (and other abstractions) to talk about computer systems, and they are utterly indispensible. (Italics mine – VJT.) This is interesting. Do you have some evidence to back up that claim? I’d like to see a link. Re the weather: the sheer number of interactions at the molecular level certainly renders it necessary to use high-level approximations, but computers (unlike the atmosphere) are machines designed to perform certain specific tasks. It would surprise me to discover that for some computers, we cannot predict their operations from an understanding of their components, but we can predict them by taking a higher-level stance.
Weather systems are unpredictable in principle because they are chaotic, where infinitesimal variations in initial conditions or perturbations result in vast changes to the system; likewise some computer systems initialized with various data, or that use random or pseudo-random input. In practice, I cannot predict what any of my programs will do, nor can I describe them at the level of electronics, because of the astronomical amount of data involved (billions of bits and changes happening at billions of times every second during operations lasting for hours). So at no level of abstraction can we predict what many AI programs will do - we just have to run them and find out, but they can (and do) always surprise us, because we can never exercise even a tiny fraction of the possible execution space.
Regarding Landauer’s principle, which you cite: I don’t know much about Landauer’s principle. I just googled the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer‘s_principle . It seems that it applies to information processing. Information processing (when logically irreversible) generates entropy. OK. But there’s an assumption being made on your part, that a disembodied spirit would have to process information if it was thinking. Now I’m quite sure we do that, as embodied beings, but the activity of thinking, or rule-following, is a formal activity which is distinct from the information processing in our brains.
Nobody knows if the activity of thinking proceeds by rule-following or not. I think it probably does not. I think that portions of our brain are good at coming up with and reporting formal descriptions of our behavior, but our behavior itself arises from activity that does not actually map to the formal process we describe. Think of the difference between the way a calculator computes multiplication (by encoded mathematical rules) as opposed to how a slide rule does it (merely by virtue of the physical geometry of the device).
Well, the battle of wits in the past few days has been an interesting one. Let me conclude by saying that I have appreciated the exchange of views, and re-examined some of my own.
VJT, I do sincerely thank you as well. You've clearly given these issues a great deal of thought and are uncommonly open to debate. I hope to discuss these ideas with you in the future, although I am nowadays a pretty sporadic contributor to these boards. Cheers!aiguy
January 15, 2011
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joseph,
I linked to the definition of “counterflow”, did you not click on it and read it? It is from “Nature, Design and science” by Del Ratszch. I have no idea what “contra-causal effects” means.
All right, I see it means this: Counterflow refers to things running contrary to what, in the relevant sense, would (or might) have resulted or occurred had nature operated freely. Philosophers refer to this as contra-causal or libertarian free will, meaning that somehow mind is supposed to have the power to transcend physical causation. In other words, while physical cause (nature, in Del Ratszch's terminology) would result in one state of affairs, some agent exerts its free will and changes what happens (what he calls "counterflow"). People have debated whether or not this sort of power exists for thousands of years. There are a number of different solutions to the so-called problem of free will, and if you ask five contemporary philosophers what the solution is you will likely get ten different answers. In other words, nobody can demonstrate whether or not counterflow ever happens. In the past fifty years or so scientists (like Benjamin Libet) have begun to do experiments intended to shed some empirical light on the matter. The results have been intriguing, but nothing has emerged that is anywhere near definitive.
Things that happen or happened have a cause- ie something or someone did something to cause the effect we are observing or have observed. Also called causality- and one of the basic questions science asks is “how did it ome to be this way?” Forensics, archaeology and SETI are three venues that require an answer to that question.
Forensics and archaeology study the results of human behavior. SETI looks for signs of the existence of alien life forms ("life as we know it" as the SETI folks say). These have anything to do with the philosophical questions of free will, or the nature of mind or intelligence in the abstract.
1- How do you define science?
My position is that some questions (like whether the flu is caused by viruses, or whether the sun is powered by nuclear fusion) can be resolved by appeal to our shared experience, and so they are considered to be scientific. Other questions (like if human minds can transcend physical cause) currently cannot, and so they remain in the realm of philosophy. But I won't debate philosophy of science here, or epistemology either. If you see no difference between scientific arguments and philosophical arguments, then we have nothing to debate.
2- Do you also take issue with the theory of evolution being presented as science?
There are certainly things that evolutionary biologists (like Dawkins) say that are unscientific: For example, when they say that evolution is purposeless, I write them letters and ask them how are we to test this claim? (I have not yet received a response). I also think that the central claim of evolutionary biology (viz that the complex form and function (CSI) we observe can be explained by random variation and selection) is false. I do not believe that evolutionary processes could possibly have created the CSI we observe in the time that has passed since the Earth formed. However, evolutionary theory is scientific in the sense that the explanatory constructs it offers - genetic heritability and mutations, differential reproduction based on survival or sexual selection, etc - these are all well-defined and observable things within our shared experience. That is why I can judge that the theory is wrong - because we can judge what evolutionary mechanisms are incapable of doing, and I think they are incapable of producing the CSI we see. In contrast, the explanatory construct that ID offers ("intelligent cause") has two huge problems. First, there is nothing that "intelligent cause" can be assumed to be incapable of, and so no particular phenomenon is inherently inconsistent with the hypothesis of intelligent cause. The second problem is that ID uses a specious argument when it says that intelligence is something we are all aquainted with because of our familiarity with human beings and other animals. The reason I say this is specious is because it reifies intelligence: In other words, it assumes that intelligence is something real and causal apart from the humans and other animals we observe exhibiting intelligent behavior. Now, it might be true that intelligence is something like that - if for example the metaphysical claims of dualism were true. But we don't know if dualism is true or not, and so it is not justified for anyone to imagine that the intelligent behavior we observe is anything but a property of human beings and similar life forms. This is the portion of ID that I say is unscientific, because it implicitly assumes that intelligence is a thing that can exist independently of the complex physical organisms that we observe. ID of course admits that perhaps it was an alien life form responsible for the design of life on Earth; ID simply won't say if it is talking about such a thing or something like a god instead. But obviously ID must be positing either a complex physical life form or not, and so we need to look at these hypotheses independently. If ID is positing an alien life form as the designer of life on Earth, then I think ID is a pretty bad theory, because while we do obviously know that intelligent life forms exist, we have no evidence that they exist anywhere but Earth. Moreover, such a theory would not explain how first life arose, but only how life on Earth arose. And finally, once we posit that alien life forms exist, it becomes far more likely that life on Earth is descended from those life forms rather than being the product of their bio-engineering efforts. Alternatively, if ID posits an intelligent being that was not a complex physical life form, then I think ID is even a worse theory, since not only do we have no evidence that any such thing existed before life on Earth came to exist, but we don't even have any evidence that such a thing could exist at all (since in our experience all intelligent agents are complex physical organisms).aiguy
January 15, 2011
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aiguy (#65): Back again. You write:
You are implying that if something can be explained in terms of deterministic physics, then it cannot be “truly intentional”, and if we use intentional idioms they are metaphorical. Three issues there: First, it’s certainly not clear that determinism is incompatible with intentionality; second, not all computers are deterministic; and third, we do not know if humans transcend deterministic cause (or deterministic + random cause).
OK. I should have added that a computer which is deterministic + random is no freer than a purely deterministic one. What's critical here is that the operations whereby it arrives at its "answers" are physical processes, rather than formal ones. To be sure, we can say that computers "add," for instance, but to the extent that we ascribe formal processes to computers, they piggyback on the physical processes that underlie them. There is no top-down causation. When people describe how they arrive at the answer to a problem, they appeal to these formal processes. I'm sure you could program a computer to do the same thing, but it would be "mouthing words" on the basis of instructions implemented at the physical level. AS for how top-down causation is compatible with physics, here's how I picture it. Reasoning is an immaterial activity. This means that reasoning doesn't happen anywhere - certainly not in some spooky soul hovering 10 centimeters above my head. It has no location. Ditto for choice. However, choices have to be somehow realized on a physical level, otherwise they would have no impact on the world. The soul doesn't push neurons, as Eccles appears to think; instead, it selects from one of a large number of quantum possibilities thrown up at some micro level of the brain (Doyle's micro mind). This doesn't violate quantum randomness, because a selection can be non-random at the macro level but random at the micro level. 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 The above two rows were created by a random number generator. Now suppose I impose the macro requirement: keep the columns whose sum equals 1, and discard the rest. I now have: 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 Each row is still random, but I have imposed a non-random macro-level constraint. That's how my will works when I make a choice. You also write:
e have theoretical justifications (including implications of Landauer’s princple) for claiming that anything which processes information requires physical mechanism (and that all means-ends analysis requires exactly this sort of information processing, even if it is ultimately non-algorithmic!).
You also write:
It is impossible (even in principle) to explain what certain computer systems are doing at the level of electronics, for the same reason we cannot explain weather systems at the level of atomic interactions. So we use intentional idioms (and other abstractions) to talk about computer systems, and they are utterly indispensible. (Italics mine - VJT.)
This is interesting. Do you have some evidence to back up that claim? I'd like to see a link. Re the weather: the sheer number of interactions at the molecular level certainly renders it necessary to use high-level approximations, but computers (unlike the atmosphere) are machines designed to perform certain specific tasks. It would surprise me to discover that for some computers, we cannot predict their operations from an understanding of their components, but we can predict them by taking a higher-level stance. Regarding Landauer's principle, which you cite: I don't know much about Landauer's principle. I just googled the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle . It seems that it applies to information processing. Information processing (when logically irreversible) generates entropy. OK. But there's an assumption being made on your part, that a disembodied spirit would have to process information if it was thinking. Now I'm quite sure we do that, as embodied beings, but the activity of thinking, or rule-following, is a formal activity which is distinct from the information processing in our brains. Well, the battle of wits in the past few days has been an interesting one. Let me conclude by saying that I have appreciated the exchange of views, and re-examined some of my own.vjtorley
January 14, 2011
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aiguy (#65): Hi, back again. I'd like to begin with your comment in bold text:
I would suggest everyone ponder this: ID has had a very long time to come up with a canonical statement of its central theoretical claim. Between Meyer and Dembski and Wells and everyone else who writes and blogs and does "research" in ID, one would think that somebody, somewhere, would have said what "Intelligent Design" actually meant. Here you have chosen the definition that Bill Dembski, a famous and prominent ID theorist if there ever was one, committed to in his book. Yet you have had to immediately correct and amend his definition to account for the simple and obvious objections I’ve raised in a single post. These are not trivial changes; these are not just clarifications. The fact that you now insist that intelligence is incompatible with determinism, and that it can’t be the product of another creator – these are substantive claims. And we have just started!
You make a fair point. I'm all in favor of rigorous definitions myself. However, you might not be aware that Professor William Dembski has already stated online that he regards intelligence as incompatible with being a deterministic machine. When did he do that? Twenty years ago! Would you like a reference? I'll give you two. Here you are: Converting Matter into Mind: Alchemy and the Philosopher's Stone in Cognitive Science by Professor William Dembski. In PSCF 12, December 1990. Conflating Matter and Mind by Professor Willim Dembski. From PSCF 43 (June 1991), p. 107. Here's an excerpt from the first article (which is well worth reading, by the way):
Matter by itself, notwithstanding how well it is dressed up with talk of holism, emergence, or supervenience, notwithstanding with what complexity it is organized, is still matter and cannot be transmuted into spirit. Earlier I described three approaches to the mind-body problem: the substance dualism of Descartes, the monism of Spinoza, and the historic Judeo-Christian position. I want now to focus on a fourth option which has of late been gaining currency in theistic circles. I shall refer to this view as semi-materialism. By semi-materialism I mean a philosophical position which on the one hand acknowledges the God of Scripture, but on the other denies that man's soul and spirit have an ontology distinct from (i.e., not derivative from) the body. Semi-materialism is a melding of traditional theology and supervenience. God is still creator, sovereign, and transcendent, but man is now fully realized in his human body.... The problems of trying to reconcile a supervenient anthropology with a traditional theology invade the whole of theology. Thus much of what MacKay calls the "traditional imagery" associated with death has to be discarded or reinterpreted. What are we to make of the incarnation of Christ? Do Jesus' soul and spirit fit into the semi-materialist's hierarchy of levels? What about miracles? If we accept that God can interact causally with the material universe, why should it be inconceivable that a human spirit can interact causally with a human body? I am, however, committed to viewing computers and the programs they run as tools for my intellect, much as hammers are tools for my hands, and not as my peers. (Emphases mine - VJT.)
Here's an excerpt from the second article:
When a materialist or physicalist claims that mind supervenes on brain he is saying that the brain fully determines the mind. If you will, the mind can do nothing without the brain's approval. Now my point in Converting Matter Into Mind was that the claim that mind supervenes on brain (which is the position of such diverse figures as Jerry Fodor, Willard Quine, and Donald MacKay) is not a substantive or empirical claim, but rather a bald assertion which rests solely on materialist presuppositions.... The key theological question for me is not a matter of dogmatic or systematic theology. The key question is a personal one and might even appear impudent. It is this: What must be true about myself and about God for me to want to worship him? To put it more crassly, What's so great about God that I should want to serve him? Why should I want to be with him in eternity? ... Frankly, when I consider the way God is frequently portrayed, even in Christian circles widely regarded as non-heretical, I have no desire to spend eternity with him. One God in particular I have no desire to spend eternity with is the God of the semi-materialists (cf. Converting Matter Into Mind, pp. 215-219). Let us recall Donald MacKay's recommendation to all good semi-materialists that they "not hunt for gaps in the scientific picture into which entities like 'the soul' might fit." For the purposes of this discussion, semi-materialists are those Christians who hold that mind supervenes on brain. Why is this bad? If God decides to create us as physical systems whose consciousness and intelligence flow strictly from the constitution and dynamics of those physical systems, what's wrong with that? Is our value diminished because semi-materialism deprives us of a spirit or soul (spirit and soul being conceived as aspects of our person whose ontology transcends the physical organism)? To this last question I answer, Yes. Nevertheless, by diminished value I'm referring primarily to my own, personal valuations, not necessarily to God's. I know my mind and I know what I value. I frankly know very little of God's mind, and I'm loath to attribute valuations to God except in cases where the valuations I attribute to God are crucial to my valuation of God himself. If humans are no more than carbon-based machines (and here by machines I include any physical system of arbitrary complexity), if God loves and values such machines, if Christ died for such machines, so much the worse for God - I'll look for another religion. I cannot worship any old God and I cannot worship God while maintaining a warped view of myself. A great God can properly be worshipped only by a great creature. Machines are wholly inadequate for the task. (Emphasis mine - VJT.)
Pretty strong wording, would you not agree? At any rate, I agree with your assertion that the definition of intelligence could have been sharpened in The Design of Life to reflect Professor Dembski's views. You also remark my view that "in order to be an intelligent agent an entity must exhibit 'dedicated functionality' and be 'built from the bottom up'" should have been built into the definition from the start. Well, if I were defining "intelligent agent" then I should certainly have done that; however, I was quoting Dembski's definition. My added stipulations about dedicated functionality pre-date my involvement in the ID movement. I wrote about them back in 2005, in an online e-book. In this section, I address the problem of defining "life": http://www.angelfire.com/linux/vjtorley/chapter1finalb.html . I discuss dedicated functionality here: http://www.angelfire.com/linux/vjtorley/chapter1finalb.html#empirical . However, there is no unanimity within the ID community as to what exactly "life" is - and for that matter, there's no unanimity within any other community that I know of, as the term is notoriously difficult to define. What unites ID-ers is a conviction that life contains a vast amount of FCSI - in particular, prescriptive information - and that unintelligent processes are incapable of generating such a vast quantity of information. Incidentally, your remark to bornagain77 that computers do it all the time is beside the point here, as they have intelligent programmers. Anyway, let me just say that I applaud your call for greater definitional rigor, regarding "intelligent agency." More in a moment...vjtorley
January 14, 2011
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aiguy Just a quick comment for now, as I'm a little busy. You believe that the intentional stance is indispensable for explaining what some computers do, and you are agnostic as to whether intelligent agency is compatible with determinism. So according to you, there are no knock-down arguments against computers being intelligent agents. OK. Let's suppose you're right, for argument's sake. If you are, then the hypothesis that this universe was designed by an embodied, intelligent computer in another, higher-level "mother universe" would constitute a form of ID, would it not? In which case you have no problems with the massive inductive evidence against a disembodied Designer. That makes you an ID-ist of sorts - just not one who believes the Designer is a spirit. Right?vjtorley
January 14, 2011
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aiguy:
It is the fact that ID is presented as scentific that I take issue with.
Two quetions: 1- How do you define science? 2- Do you also take issue with the theory of evolution being presented as science?Joseph
January 14, 2011
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aiguy:
By “counterflow” I assume you mean contra-causal effects, and so by “agency” it appears you mean libertarian free will. That’s fine and dandy, but it is not an assertion that can be empirically tested, at least at the present time. If you meant something else by these terms please tell me, along with some suggestion as to how we might decide if such a thing exists or not.
I linked to the definition of "counterflow", did you not click on it and read it? It is from "Nature, Design and science" by Del Ratszch. I have no idea what "contra-causal effects" means. As for agency = libertarian free will, not necessarily. Perhaps the following will help: intelligent design is not optimal design IOW it is all about cause and effect relationships. aiguy:
I have no idea what you mean by this.
Things that happen or happened have a cause- ie something or someone did something to cause the effect we are observing or have observed. Also called causality- and one of the basic questions science asks is "how did it ome to be this way?" So we are investigating X, and we ask "what is X? what does X do? and how did X come to be this way?" For example does X require agency involvement or is nature, operating freely enough to account for X? Forensics, archaeology and SETI are three venues that require an answer to that question.Joseph
January 14, 2011
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aiguy,
I disagree that science is merely an arbitrary convention like deciding to drive on the right side of the road, and I actually don’t believe that you think that either (or wouldn’t if you thought about for a while).
This is what science is: You don’t see a physical object in your yard and say that you have finally found science. Science is a consensual reality of convention, like driving on the right side of the road or being a notary public.Clive Hayden
January 14, 2011
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Clive,
The phone doesn’t know anything about time...
Well that's the thing. You say it doesn't, and I say it does, but you can't tell us how we might ever decide the question by appeal to our shared experience. How can we decide who is right? You seem to equate the ability to know with intelligence in general. That's fine, so we're basically debating machine intelligence. You ridicule the idea by suggesting I should chastise my phone and see if will start to behave better... but of course there could be a phone that did exactly that (and the popular electronic AI toys in Japan all respond to displays of affection or punishment appropriately). We could keep this up forever, you coming up with things that a machine "could never do" and me either explaining that yes they could of course do such things or finding examples of other "intelligent agents" (people or animals) who also couldn't do these things. If the question of machine intelligence was that easy to answer it would have been answered long ago. It is not that easy.
The odd things is, people who don’t believe in a soul or an ability to reason separate from deterministic necessity, end up believing in animism, as if the knowledge and ability to reason comes from the parts and particles themselves, just as Xerxes thought the river intentionally destroyed his bridge. The trade off is this, the ability to really reason that you lose in man, gets transferred to everything else, all of material, thus animism.
HUH??? I don't know what a "soul" is, I do not believe in "deterministic necessity", and I do not believe in animism or that the ability to reason comes from parts and particles. I don't think you've mapped out the conceptual space of the mind-body problem very carefully here, Clive.
AIGUY: I’m not talking about philosophy, Clive. If this board, and ID in general, was presented as a philosophical endeavor, I would argue quite differently. It is the fact that ID is presented as scentific that I take issue with. CLIVE: It’s inescapable. The idea that all things valid should be empirically verifiable is an idea, and therefore a philosophy, and therefore not itself empirically verifiable.
Yes, that is correct. Not only is verificationism itself unverifiable, but it has many other serious problems, and I'm not aware of any contemporary epistemologist who subscribes to that position.
If you take issue with what science is and is not, you’re taking issue with the philosophy of science, i.e. what constitutes science, which is not something physical itself, not empirically verifiable itself.
HUH? Some things are empirically (inter-subjectively) verifiable, and some things are not. Those things that are can be used to make scientific inferences. This is not a controversial point; if you object to that then I'm afraid we've nothing else to discuss.
You don’t see a physical object in your yard and say that you have finally found science. Science is a consensual reality of convention, like driving on the right side of the road or being a notary public.
I disagree that science is merely an arbitrary convention like deciding to drive on the right side of the road, and I actually don't believe that you think that either (or wouldn't if you thought about for a while). But in any event I will not debate the philosophy of science. My position is that some questions (like whether the flu is caused by viruses, or whether the sun is powered by nuclear fusion) can be resolved by appeal to our shared experience, and so they are considered to be scientific. Other questions (like if our minds transcend physical cause) currently cannot, and so they remain in the realm of philosophy. Thanks for the chat; I'll let you have the last word :-)aiguy
January 14, 2011
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aiguy,
I disagree. I just turned to my wife and asked her if her phone knew what time it was, and she reported that yes, indeed it does. This knowledge comes from inside the phone, not apart from it.
The phone doesn't know anything about time, anymore than the radio knows the notes and lyrical meanings to the songs it plays. You may as well listen to static and think that the radio is confused. Xerxes had his troops whip a river that destroyed a bridge he needed to cross. They honestly gave the river a whipping with whips. If your phone ever freezes up, maybe you should consider chastising it and see if it will start to behave better. This seems reasonable to you? The odd things is, people who don't believe in a soul or an ability to reason separate from deterministic necessity, end up believing in animism, as if the knowledge and ability to reason comes from the parts and particles themselves, just as Xerxes thought the river intentionally destroyed his bridge. The trade off is this, the ability to really reason that you lose in man, gets transferred to everything else, all of material, thus animism.
If we were fully determined, we could never know it, for all things we thought we knew would also be determined, there could be no escape, no objective vantage point, no way to “determine” anything at all, you would be the one “determined” instead, every bit of you, from top to bottom, including all thoughts.
I disagree. I don’t know if we are determined or not, and I’m certain that nobody else does either.
You could never know anything if all your thoughts couldn't have been otherwise and are locked-in by a physical necessity. Ask your phone whether you're determined or not, and wait for its answer.
I’m not talking about philosophy, Clive. If this board, and ID in general, was presented as a philosophical endeavor, I would argue quite differently. It is the fact that ID is presented as scentific that I take issue with.
It's inescapable. The idea that all things valid should be empirically verifiable is an idea, and therefore a philosophy, and therefore not itself empirically verifiable. If you take issue with what science is and is not, you're taking issue with the philosophy of science, i.e. what constitutes science, which is not something physical itself, not empirically verifiable itself. You don't see a physical object in your yard and say that you have finally found science. Science is a consensual reality of convention, like driving on the right side of the road or being a notary public. Clive Hayden
January 14, 2011
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Clive,
AIGUY: You assume the burden of proof is to show humans are deterministic. But whether or not humans are deterministic is unknown, and there is no default assumption that ought to be accepted as true just because we can’t demonstrate the case one way or the other. CLIVE: Humans never could be deterministic and act as if that conclusion were known. Knowing something means that the entity that knows it is separate from the thing known. It requires a position outside, looking in.
I disagree. I just turned to my wife and asked her if her phone knew what time it was, and she reported that yes, indeed it does. This knowledge comes from inside the phone, not apart from it.
If we were fully determined, we could never know it, for all things we thought we knew would also be determined, there could be no escape, no objective vantage point, no way to “determine” anything at all, you would be the one “determined” instead, every bit of you, from top to bottom, including all thoughts.
I disagree. I don't know if we are determined or not, and I'm certain that nobody else does either.
AIGUY: By “counterflow” I assume you mean contra-causal effects, and so by “agency” it appears you mean libertarian free will. That’s fine and dandy, but it is not an assertion that can be empirically tested, at least at the present time. CLIVE: The philosophical position that all things valid should be empirically verifiable is not itself empirically verifiable.
I'm not talking about philosophy, Clive. If this board, and ID in general, was presented as a philosophical endeavor, I would argue quite differently. It is the fact that ID is presented as scentific that I take issue with.aiguy
January 14, 2011
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CH: You are right: absent real freedom to think, reason and choose on rational grounds [not merely play out cause-effect chains tracing to accidental initial circumstances and chance or mechanically necessary laws], knowledge -- warranted, credibly true belief -- becomes impossible. For, warrant becomes impossible. For, real reasoning, not just Liebniz's mill wheels mindlessly grinding away, becomes impossible. That error is he reason why evolutionary materialism reduces itself to self-referential incoherence, as we can see explained here. (Not that sufficiently committed evolutionary materialists will be inclined to listen to that unwelcome news. But, the rest of us looking on, can trace out the reduction to absurdity and draw our own conclusions.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus
January 14, 2011
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aiguy,
You don’t seem to have any grasp of the issues or the ability to construct an argument. And copying and pasting text and links from what other people say (or the Bible!) does not constitute your constructing an argument either.
Sure it does.Clive Hayden
January 14, 2011
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aiguy,
By “counterflow” I assume you mean contra-causal effects, and so by “agency” it appears you mean libertarian free will. That’s fine and dandy, but it is not an assertion that can be empirically tested, at least at the present time.
The philosophical position that all things valid should be empirically verifiable is not itself empirically verifiable.Clive Hayden
January 14, 2011
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AIG: I must second Joseph: you [AIG] just refuse to listen.. Repeatedly, including in this thread, you have been offered perfectly adequate definitions of intelligence and other key terms, especially in the context that we ourselves are intelligent and routinely produce objects that exhibit intentionally directed, complex contingency that is often functional towards achieving evident goals, e.g. text in posts in this thread. You have selectively hyperskeptically objected in order to brush aside, using objections that you would never use where you would be inclinded to agree with the direction the argument is trending. Worse, you now pretend that you have not been offered adequate definitions, as though that has made you win the argument:
Yes, I’m very used to this. I ask endlessly for a definition of “intelligence”, and people grumble that everyone knows what it means and there’s no need for a definition.
Sorry, you HAVE been offered a cluster of relevant and consistent definitions, which trace to the known characteristics of known intelligences, and infer that if something else acts like that, it is reasonable on family resemblance, to conclude that it too is intelligent. And, if the only empirically known source of dFSCI is intelligence [and we have an islands of function in config spaces analysis that shows us why that is so], and we see similar dFSCI in the living cell in DNA etc, we have we]every epistemic right to conclude that the cell traces to intelligent cause. In short, you have committed serious misrepresenations amounting to false accusations in the teeth of easily accessible evidence to the contrary. That's not cricket. And, as we look on at your latest performance above, it becomes plain that we are dealing with an ideologised, closed, objecting mind that refuses to be corrected or to respond seriously to serious points. Surely, you can do better than that. A lot better. G'day GEM of TKIkairosfocus
January 14, 2011
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