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Fred Reed on Wade’s Troublesome (Darwinian racism) Inheritance

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An opinion to respect here:

How did we get where we are? Through natural selection, says Wade. It is indisputable that selection can alter a species or subspecies. The unnatural selection which we call selective breeding produces animals of different sizes, shapes, and temperaments. Why would we think that human animals are different? If flu regularly killed those susceptible to it, presumably those genetically resistant would come to predominate. This is both reasonable and observable.

However, the thoughtful may be uneasy with some of this. Boilerplate evolutionary theory holds that when a beneficial mutation accidentally arises, its possessor has an advantage in the struggle for survival, has more children, and thus passes on the new trait. This makes sense, at least if the mutation does something really desirable.

But …

Wade points out that certain Asians, due to a mutation, have hair with thicker hair shafts. One is hard pressed to see how slightly coarser hair would promote survival so efficaciously as to result in having more children. It is not clear why it would be an advantage at all. In the absence of reason or evidence, various solutions may be adduced: thick hair cushioned the blows of clubs, or girls thought it was sexy and said yes, or … something. It smacks of desperation. More.

The problem is, no one knows exactly what we mean by “intelligence.” Until there is a scientific theory of intelligence (it will not be Darwinian, for sure), we actually do not really know what we are talking about.

For one thing, whatever survives, survives. It is easy to make up explanations after the fact.

Only predictions count. And predictions are only of value for what they can predict for behaviour, not for outcome. Some people might be more likely to fight injustice than others, but does that mean they will succeed? Or be smitten from the face of the Earth, their names lost to memory?

Then were they more fit, or less? Is that even the right way to look at it?

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (human evolution) — when you look at how little they have to go on, you can see why it ended up being about popular buzz like “race.”

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Comments
Joe: And yet ID doesn’t say anything about the divine. That's right. "ID" won't let a Divine Foot in the door.Daniel King
June 13, 2014
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It makes me very happy that RDFish is not an investigator and has no say about science.Joe
June 13, 2014
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Daniel King spews:
No, RDFish, ID isn’t properly religious, it’s idolatrous in its conflation of human design with divine creation.
And yet ID doesn't say anything about the divine. Daniel must be an ignorant jerk.Joe
June 13, 2014
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So CLAVDIVS conflates what some IDists say for what ID says. Unbelievable.
How about *you* define science and show how it doesn’t involve explaining phenomena in terms of regularities.
So again CLAV spews nonsense, gets called on it and tries to turn the onus onto me. OK CLAV:
The 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica says science is “any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation. In general, a science involves a pursuit of knowledge covering general truths or the operations of fundamental laws.” “A healthy science is a science that seeks the truth.” Paul Nelson, Ph. D., philosophy of biology. Linus Pauling, winner of 2 Nobel prizes wrote, “Science is the search for the truth.” “But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding.” Albert Einstein The truth need not be an absolute truth. Truth in the sense that Drs. Pauling, Einstein & Nelson are speaking is the reality in which we find ourselves. We exist. Science is to help us understand that existence and how it came to be. As I like to say- science is our search for the truth, i.e. the reality, to our existence and the existence of whatever is being investigated, via our never-ending quest for knowledge.
Ooops, nothing about "regularities in any of that.
It’s been generally agreed on this thread that its impossible to demonstrate whether or not the mind arises from law/chance
That means that materialism and evolutionism are untestable and therefor unscientific. Talk about an own goal.Joe
June 13, 2014
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Hi Timmy,
But consider: if I reject cognitive closure in material matters (as I tend to do), then the fact that our investigations into the mind, or the fundamental cause of CSI, have been unfruitful (in stark contrast to our other investigations) would seem to suggest that the mind is immaterial. Because otherwise we would be able to explain it, or at least have some inkling that of the road forward.
But modern physics is so divorced from our intuitive understanding of the so-called "material" world that terms like "material" and "immaterial" don't really make sense any more. Is a quantum waveform "material"? Subatomic particles are not little pieces of matter; they can act like a wave or a particle but they are neither of those. Are they "material"? Is quantum entanglement a "material" process? We have some mathematical constructs that we call "dark" matter and energy in order to try and account for cosmological observations, but nobody has any clue what those things are supposed to be. Are they "material"? We had no inkling of these issues before the 20th century, despite millennia of smart thinkers pondering these questions. So it doesn't follow that we ought to have understood all "material" processes by now, and anything we don't yet understand must be "immaterial". Likewise the distinction between the "natural" and the "supernatural". In the end, there is only a distinction between things we currently know about and things we don't know about.
Because in reality, all thought and consciousness and high level decision-making is outsourced to the Remote Controller.
How can this view be reconciled with the evidence? If all conscious thought and high-level decision-making takes place outside the brain, why do specific changes to the brain result in specific changes in conscious thought and decision-making? Imagine I didn't know what a radio was, and heard human voices on it. I discovered that if I messed around with the circuits and components the radio might stop working, or get louder or softer, or get distorted, but there was nothing in the radio that seemed to be involved in the content of the radio show. I couldn't change the circuits and make a comedy into a drama. So that would indicate that the content of the radio show comes from outside the radio. But that's not the case with the brain. There is nothing - not consciousness, not decision-making, not personality, not thinking - that cannot be altered by changes to the brain. Anything that alters different parts of the brain - drugs, injury, disease, or artificial stimulation/inhibition - can have all sorts of effects. They can make a nice person mean, or a mean person nice. They can change an atheist into a theist, or a risk-avoider into a gambler, or vice-versa; they can confer or destroy musical and artistic abilities, and so on. We cannot just go in and choose to make these changes (yet), but all of these sorts of changes have been well documented as a result of changes to the brain. This indicates that brains are involved in every aspect of mentality, and not just as a receiver. And it is clear that memories are stored in the brain, and it appears that thought and memory are intimately linked (memory really is a creative process rather than a simple retrieval). And there's this: In the radio analogy, which part is supposed to map to our conscious awareness? Is the radio transmission supposed to correspond to our conscious thought, and the radio corresponds to the brain? That doesn't work, because if I turn off the radio, the radio station is still transmitting, but if I turn off the brain (with some anesthetic, say), I lose consciousness.
At any rate the real question is what is meant by “critically involved”. In the case of the android, the radio receiver and CPU are absolutely critical. The android cannot think without them. (You might be able dispense some or most of the hard drive, like a person whose brain stops recording memories.) But here, “critically involved” just means ”interface”. The android’s “brain” isn’t involved with any of that. So how do you define “critically involved”?
First, as my questions reveal, I think the transmission hypothesis is extremely problematic (yes, all theories of mind are problematic). But even if it were true, we would have no reason to believe that anything could ever act in the world without the physical mechanism (android, brain) we invariably observe. In our analogy, the brain is as "critically involved" in outputting designs as the radio is "critically involved" in outputting music.
And that is why we attempt to distinguish between aspects of mentality that are clearly derived from the human body (e.g., most emotions) and aspects of mentality that have apparently no relationship (or no logical relationship) to the body (consciousness, reason, choice, etc.).
This just doesn't have any relationship to the findings of neuroscience. Read any popular accounts of what we've learned about brain function - try V.S. Ramachandran or Antonio Damasio or Oliver Sachs. Reason, choice, consciousness, temperment, personality... it all is intimately linked with the brain.
Anger manifests physiologically, so a disembodied mind surely wouldn’t experience anger the way we do.
Damasio in particular explains how the distinction between emotions and thoughts is anything but clear; how our emotions (and our peripheral nervous system, especially the enteric nervous system, that mediate our "gut reactions") are integral to our thought processes.
But the mind might still disagree to the point of concluding that further debate is pointless. On the other hand, maybe God designed our experience of anger to be an analogue of his experience. (Whatever that might mean.)
I have no objection to speculations about people and God. I do object when these sorts of ruminations are mistaken for scientific reasoning.
But I just don’t see how “conscious belief” or “intention” is intimately linked to the human brain, or why we should think it might be. Both of those things are precisely the sort of magic that we invoke the mind (rather than the brain) to explain! And it seems very reasonable to say that they are integral to the creation of CSI.
You've stated what I consider to be the opposite of the truth on both counts. First, the idea that conscious beliefs and intentions are not as dependent upon neural function as anger or perception is just contrary to everything we've learned about neuroscience. Not that we understand how any of these things are actually manifested in the brain, just that neural processes are necessary for these mental/emotional events to take place. Second, it is very unclear whether consciousness itself - the most mysterious aspect of mentality - is causal at all. Some theorists (e.g. Daniel Wegner, http://danwegner.net/) conclude that consciousness is actually perceptual rather than the driver of our bodies; Benjamin Libet was a believer in free will but now only in a limited sense given the results of his own experiments.
So I think we have every bit of justification in claiming that a non-human immaterial mind would have those sorts of characteristics. Lust? Not so much.
In summary: 1) A fully immaterial mind capable of design is unlikely even under dualism - it takes additional assumptions to think no mechanism is required at all 2) Even if an immaterial mind existed, it would be a vastly different sort of thing than a human mind, and I disagree that attributing human-like mentality is warranted.
Now, to be less tedious, I agree that it is impossible to imagine how our minds could think without being attached to some kind of processor/memory unit, since our descriptions of “what thought is” are entangled with the two. But we can ameliorate this problem by recalling that the “general mind” is almost always thought to not just be immaterial, but also atemporal (spirit, soul, whatever)–especially the general mind responsible for life.
Let me be clear here. I am vested in no particular position in philosophy of mind; if I had to label myself I'd say either "neutral monist" or "mysterian". My point of debate is not to defend physicalism, nor is it to say that all knowledge derives from the empirical sciences. My only issue with ID is that it blithley presents clearly philosophical arguments as science. I consider these sorts of claims (general minds, souls that exist outside of time) to be well outside of science. After all, don't you consider untestable claims about multiverses or abiogenesis to be outside of science?
I agree, and this example is very illustrative of what I mean by science. As we hear tediously from Darwinists, science is in a constant state of evolution. When people with limited knowledge draw an analogy between the sun and a candle, why is it impossible to call that science? Insofar as smart, educated people investigated the obvious superficial similarities between the two, what else would you call that, but science? And the same goes for ID.
But ID is much worse than the solar oxidation theory. There, it was understood what chemical oxidation was, and the very same process was hypothesized to be ocurring on the Sun. ID tries to say that it offers a "known cause" for OOL - namely intelligence, but as we've seen what is being hypothesized is something very much outside of our uniform experience: an immaterial mind that exists outside of time. And equally important is the fact that when ID offers "intelligence" as an explanation for the origin of life, the origin of the universe, the values of the physical constants, the relative size of the sun and the moon, and so on, it's clear that there are no limits on what "intelligence" is thought to be able to do. There is nothing (logically possible) that one can think of that cannot be brought about by "intelligence". (Evolutionary just-so stories are just like this too). So no, I don't think ID's hypothesis is scientific.
Yes, but a great many Darwinian demagogues use Darwinism as a weapon against everyone who dissents on origins, and a great many specifically argue that design was not produced by anything remotely like a mind (as I said), and indeed that “design” is illusory and CSI is not real. They would definitely object to your agnostic position, as well.
Yes all that is true. I'm not popular in either camp. My dog likes me, though.
It may well be that we haven’t any arguments, scientific or not, that ”shed light” on origins, but it is clear that Darwinism obfuscates the matter. Once you’ve conceded that design is indeed real, once you take for granted the use of teleological and engineering language when describing the mechanics of life, then yes: the conclusion of ID is not much more than a tautology. But a tautology is infinitely preferable to and infinitely more scientific than a falsehood.
Depending on what you mean by "design is real", I wouldn't argue you're wrong here. I will say that it's completely unscientific for Dawkins et al to say things like "evolution is purposeless" and other such nonsense. And it's false to say that evolution accounts for biological complexity. But seriously: When you say "design is real", I honestly do not know what you mean! Do you mean "it really is CSI"? Or "it really was produced by a conscious mind"? Or "it really was produced by something other than law + chance"? Some combination of these things?
It’s only in the context of the claim that “macroevolution is just as certain as gravity” that we come in and counterclaim that ID (or YEC for that matter) is more scientific than Darwinism.
To the extent this is true (I suspect it is for you but not all that many others here) then I'm sympathetic to that. But even then I'd call it a toss-up for which overstates the strength of their case more egregiously. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
June 13, 2014
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RD As you spit your disdain at ID, it remains clear that your assault fails at step one. The living cell cannot be organized without two sets of physical objects bridging the natural discontinuity between amino acids and the dimensional arrangements within codons. The system must preserve this discontinuity in order to function, thus making the product of the system independent of inexorable law. Additionally, the details of the construction of the system must be simultaneously encoded in the very information that the system makes possible. It's a rather steep entry. The only other universally-verifiable instances of such systems are found in the use of language and mathematics. As we have discussed before, your nauseating assault on ID proponents does nothing whatsoever to alter these observations.Upright BiPed
June 12, 2014
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Timmy @ 250
CLAVDIVS: Science is about explaining phenomena in terms of regularities. ID cannot proffer “intelligence” as an explanation because we have not the slightest notion how intelligence works nor whether it is based on any scientifically measurable regularities. TIMMY: Then you’re just saying that we can’t investigate origins with science. Right?
No, that's not what I said at all. We can investigate the origin of biological complexity with science when we can find regularities that explain things. For example, we know life has existed on Earth for at least 3.4 billion years because of our understanding of microbiology and geochronology.
TIMMY: As long as you understand that the only reason ID needs to talk about “science” is in reaction to the (false) scientific pretensions of atheistic Darwinists, then we are fine.
You have every right to criticise atheistic scientific claims. But you don't have the right to falsely represent ID as science if indeed it's not. Two wrongs don't make a right.
TIMMY: I happen to think that ID is well within the bounds of soft science, since, as it investigates material structures, it is clearly more than mere philosophy. If you want to disagree on definitions, fine–as long as you apply the definition equally. For example you wouldn’t say that archeology is “science”, would you?
Of course I would say achaeology is science, because it is based upon regularities in human behaviour. In my view what delineates science is not what is being investigated, but the nature of the explanations that are given, which should be based upon measurable regularities. There is nothing I can see preventing ID proponents from proposing such explanations; it's just that they haven't yet.CLAVDIVS
June 12, 2014
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CLAVDIVS @ 244:
I’m complaining that the ID argument assumes that brainless minds are possible, without empirical warrant, and claims that’s scientific. It’s not: Science is about explaining phenomena in terms of regularities. ID cannot proffer “intelligence” as an explanation because we have not the slightest notion how intelligence works nor whether it is based on any scientifically measurable regularities.
Then you’re just saying that we can’t investigate origins with science. Right? As long as you understand that the only reason ID needs to talk about “science” is in reaction to the (false) scientific pretensions of atheistic Darwinists, then we are fine. Anyway I think it’s okay to use the term “science” to apply to a wide range of investigations. When you are dealing with strict regularities, a lot of people call that hard science. Anything else is soft science. And as you move further and further away, the softer it gets. I happen to think that ID is well within the bounds of soft science, since, as it investigates material structures, it is clearly more than mere philosophy. If you want to disagree on definitions, fine--as long as you apply the definition equally. For example you wouldn’t say that archeology is “science”, would you?Timmy
June 12, 2014
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RDFish @ 237:
Human mental abilities are amazing but obviously not unbounded. [...] cognitive closure...
What I said, which I suspect you agree with, is that humans can produce unbounded CSI, not that humans have unbounded mental abilities, and this was simply meant to draw a distinction between animals and humans. As far as cognitive closure goes, I generally accept the theological arguments that invoke it, even though I am not quite sure what it means to say that we can’t “understand” something. But there’s a big difference between saying that God (for example) who we believe transcends matter, space and time is outside the bounds of our understanding...and saying that the mechanics of matter, space and time are beyond our understanding. I don’t see any reason why I should accept that, given the substantial progress of science. But consider: if I reject cognitive closure in material matters (as I tend to do), then the fact that our investigations into the mind, or the fundamental cause of CSI, have been unfruitful (in stark contrast to our other investigations) would seem to suggest that the mind is immaterial. Because otherwise we would be able to explain it, or at least have some inkling that of the road forward. On the other hand, if I accept cognitive closure in material matters, then we arrive at a functionally indistinguishable position, where we simply blur the distinction between material and supernatural. If, for example, we fundamentally cannot understand some quantum phenomena, then those phenomena are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from magic. And, importantly, it is meaningless to suggest such a phenomena is governed by scientific “law”. Because when we talk about science and laws, we are talking about rules that we can and do understand. Not about phenomena that we, in principle, cannot understand.
Many people think that brains utilize exotic quantum physical properties that we do not yet understand (see for example Roger Penrose). This is one thing I mean when I say we can’t rule out all law + chance for mental processes.
Do you mean mental processes (i.e., of the mind) or brain processes? It may very well be the case that brain mechanics (which we don’t understand anyway) utilize exotic whatever properties that we don’t yet understand. But that is not at all the same thing as saying that the mind (i.e., including the ability to produce human-scale CSI) can be reduced to law + chance…especially if its “mechanics” are cognitively closed.
I do NOT say that the brain creates the mind. What I’m saying is that brains are clearly necessary for human thought, even if they are not sufficient. Maybe some extra-dimensional realm of Platonic logic is tapped into by quantum gravitational effects in the microtubules of our neurons, as Penrose/Hamerhoff believe. I don’t know what they are talking about, really, but my point is that for all we know, consciousness is something that our brains tap into rather than generate. But even the most die-hard Cartesian dualist admits that brains are critically involved in thought, even if they are just half of the story.
So what are we supposed to be disagreeing about? While I’m open to other views in principle, the bold is pretty much my position in a nutshell. Our brain is analogous to the CPU + hard drive + radio receiver in a highly sophisticated remote-controlled android. At any rate the real question is what is meant by “critically involved”. In the case of the android, the radio receiver and CPU are absolutely critical. The android cannot think without them. (You might be able dispense some or most of the hard drive, like a person whose brain stops recording memories.) But here, “critically involved” just means ”interface”. Because in reality, all thought and consciousness and high level decision-making is outsourced to the Remote Controller. The android’s “brain” isn’t involved with any of that. So how do you define “critically involved”?
So while it’s possible that a human-like mind could exist without a human-like brain at all, it certainly is not consistent with our repeated and uniform experience, and can’t simply be accepted as a scientific result without evidence.
And this is precisely why you need a more precise definition of “critically involved”. If the brain is just an interface for the mind, with some (remarkable) processing/memory functions and limited programming for low-level decisions (autonomic functions, instinct), then the brain isn’t really “involved” in creating the mind at all and the objection to brainless minds is removed. As far as I can tell this is pretty much consistent with our repeated/uniform experience. On the other hand, it is also consistent with our experience to say that the brain affects the mind. As a very general example, we know that some people are much dumber than average, others much smarter, and we are quickly accumulating data on how genes correlate to IQ. So it’s fairly clear that the brain has a big influence on what your mind is able to do. I don’t have a problem saying that brains are directly involved in the particular mental experience that humans experience. For that matter, all our sensory organs also directly shape that experience. Indeed, we can imagine an android with a high-end processor/hard drive/receiver vs. one with lower-end equipment. We can also imagine that one android has only audio sensors, and that another android has a sensor which measures magnetic fields. All these androids have significantly different conscious experiences, but are fundamentally linked by what we can only describe as a “general” mind that is ultimately independent of their particular physical limitations.
But my point here is that we cannot then extrapolate to include all of the other aspects of mentality that we know from human experience and say that those things are likely part of whatever mind (producer of CSI) was responsible for CSI in biology. Whatever sort of mind/CSI-producer preceded biological systems was likely very, very different from a human mind (which is intimately linked, somehow, to human brains), and we have no justification to claim that conscious beliefs, desires, and intentions accompanied the production of biological CSI as it would in a human.
Well of course, since human mentality is entangled with the brain and the body. And that is why we attempt to distinguish between aspects of mentality that are clearly derived from the human body (e.g., most emotions) and aspects of mentality that have apparently no relationship (or no logical relationship) to the body (consciousness, reason, choice, etc.). Anger manifests physiologically, so a disembodied mind surely wouldn’t experience anger the way we do. But the mind might still disagree to the point of concluding that further debate is pointless. On the other hand, maybe God designed our experience of anger to be an analogue of his experience. (Whatever that might mean.) But I just don’t see how “conscious belief” or “intention” is intimately linked to the human brain, or why we should think it might be. Both of those things are precisely the sort of magic that we invoke the mind (rather than the brain) to explain! And it seems very reasonable to say that they are integral to the creation of CSI. So I think we have every bit of justification in claiming that a non-human immaterial mind would have those sorts of characteristics. Lust? Not so much.
It seems clear at the outset that anything that can generate a plan (or design) needs to store and process information, and as far as we know, complex physical mechanism is required to do that. We can’t even imagine how information could be stored and processed without physical state machines of some sort. Again – not sufficient for thought, but quite evidently necessary.
Not to be tedious, but I have to protest. We are not in any kind of position to say that this is “clear at the outset”, because we can build machines that store/process information, but these machines do not generate plans/designs/CSI except as per their front-loaded programming. As I have been saying, we have no idea why anything should be able to generate plans/designs/CSI. Claiming that the memory/processor mechanism is “not sufficient for thought” directly undermines the statement that it is “evidently necessary”. How is that evident? If we are genuinely declaring thought to be “mysterious”, it’s not evident. Now, to be less tedious, I agree that it is impossible to imagine how our minds could think without being attached to some kind of processor/memory unit, since our descriptions of “what thought is” are entangled with the two. But we can ameliorate this problem by recalling that the “general mind” is almost always thought to not just be immaterial, but also atemporal (spirit, soul, whatever)--especially the general mind responsible for life. And while it is fairly obvious that a mind limited by the constraints of time and space would need a memory/processor unit, it is a lot less obvious than an un-limited general mind would need one, because memory and processing are temporal things.
There are a number of instances in science when unifications like this have been made. Energy was found to be the same thing as matter. The weak nuclear force was found to be the same thing as the electro-magnetic force. And so on. Other times, things that appeared to be the same thing were found to be different. The process providing light and heat from the Sun was thought to be the same thing as the process providing light and heat from a candle, until it was discovered that it was a very different process (the Sun would have burned out long ago were it not). So is whatever creates CSI in us humans the same thing as that which produced the CSI in biology? Nobody knows, nor does anyone have any idea how to go about figuring it out.
I agree, and this example is very illustrative of what I mean by science. As we hear tediously from Darwinists, science is in a constant state of evolution. When people with limited knowledge draw an analogy between the sun and a candle, why is it impossible to call that science? Insofar as smart, educated people investigated the obvious superficial similarities between the two, what else would you call that, but science? And the same goes for ID.
That’s not the Darwinian claim; the Darwinian claim is that random variation and selection accounts for the CSI we observe. Neither of us believe that, period.
Yes, but a great many Darwinian demagogues use Darwinism as a weapon against everyone who dissents on origins, and a great many specifically argue that design was not produced by anything remotely like a mind (as I said), and indeed that “design” is illusory and CSI is not real. They would definitely object to your agnostic position, as well. You cannot react to ID (or modern YEC for that matter) without considering the circumstances in which it emerged; namely, as a reaction to the specifically atheistic excesses of Darwinism.
ID doesn’t claim that, it just claims that it is (a lot) more scientific than Darwinism.
That’s not true either. There just aren’t any scientific results that shed light on the matter.
It may well be that we haven’t any arguments, scientific or not, that ”shed light” on origins, but it is clear that Darwinism obfuscates the matter. Once you’ve conceded that design is indeed real, once you take for granted the use of teleological and engineering language when describing the mechanics of life, then yes: the conclusion of ID is not much more than a tautology. But a tautology is infinitely preferable to and infinitely more scientific than a falsehood. Again, consider the context: ID is reacting against people who are embarrassed to use engineering analogies, who don’t believe that design is real, who object to existence of CSI, who believe that Darwinism is as “certain as gravity”. And most of what ID people do is 1) argue the case that design is real and 2) argue from the evidence that Darwinism is wrong. I’m sure that if Darwinism did not exist, or if it existed only as crackpot fringe, or if it existed as merely one questionable possibility among many, ID people would be a lot tamer in their language. For example, just to repeat myself, basically everyone thinks that origins “science” is at best soft science. It’s only in the context of the claim that “macroevolution is just as certain as gravity” that we come in and counterclaim that ID (or YEC for that matter) is more scientific than Darwinism. So given the academic landscape, surely you cannot be surprised that people get polemic.
Again, thanks for the sincere responses. I enjoy this sort of discussion so much more than trading insults!!
Well, it’s hard to get out of the polemic mindset.Timmy
June 12, 2014
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No, RDFish, ID isn't properly religious, it's idolatrous in its conflation of human design with divine creation.Daniel King
June 12, 2014
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Hi All, Well, it looks like this one is winding down. Here's where we leave it: As Denyse herself pointed out, the term "intelligence" is so ill-defined that unless one provides a specific meaning for the context in which it's being used, the term doesn't mean anything at all. That means that ID theory, which fails to make clear what the technical meaning of their sole explanatory is supposed to be, actually means nothing at all. But when pressed, ID folks come up with all sorts of ideas about what "intelligence" is supposed to mean in their theory. Here are some of them, and why they all make ID theory either a) unscientific or b) empirically unsupportable. 1) VJTorley (@181) suggested that intelligence means "the ability to select appropriate means for attaining particular goals, and to give reasons for your selection." That is a clear definition, but how could ID ever hope to show that whatever caused the origin of life would be able to explain its reasons? There is no way, so ID using this definition can't be considered to have any evidence behind it whatsoever. 2) Stephen Meyer often defines "intelligence" as "conscious rational deliberation". That's also a perfectly meaningful definition, but like VJTorley's definition, there is no way we can test to see if the cause of living systems experienced conscious awareness. Since it appears that well-functioning brains are required in order to experience consciousness (any number of things that can happen to our brain can make our consciousness go away), it appears a priori that something without a brain would not experience consciousness at all. 3) Bill Dembski (at times) and StephenB here want to define intelligence as that which is "beyond any combination of law and chance" or "is neither random nor determined" or "able to make free choices from among possibilities". Anyone familiar with philosophy will recognize these definitions as libertarian free will. Of course most philosophers and scientists have concluded that this sort of contra-causal volition does not exist, and even philosophers who do believe in it agree that there is no way to demonstrate the truth of this metaphysical conjecture empirically. StephenB argues that our failure to explain various phenomena somehow means contra-causality is real, but this argument fails immediately: It is nothing but a "free-will-of-the-gaps" argument. 4) Another definition that has been offered here (by Timmy, from the dictionary) is "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills". Under this definition, ID would have to demonstrate that the cause of life is able to acquire new knowledge. But since there is no way to present this hypothetical being with a novel problem or to test its learning ability, ID is unable to demonstrate that this definition can be empirically supported either. In fact, an omniscient being (likely the candidate most ID folks have in mind) would be logically incapable of learning anything new, and so under this definition of "intelligence" God would not even qualify as "intelligent"! 5) StephenB has also suggested that "able to produce novelty" be considered a viable definition for ID, but fails to realize that the meterological processes that create snowflakes, each being novel, would meet that criterion. 6) Another definition of "intelligence" that is often put forth by fans of ID is "that which is able to produce CSI". The problem with this definition is simply that it turns ID into a vacuous tautology: According to ID, the cause of the CSI we observe in biology is that which can produce CSI! What is generally unspoken in these discussions is what ID folks actually think they are talking about when they refer to an "intelligent agent". Of course they are talking about something with a conscious mind like their own, with perceptions and sensations and conscious beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions. So this thing is supposed to be able to think, feel, and build things like human beings do, without the benefit of being a complex physical organism. It's supposed brainy without a having brain, to have a heart without having a heart, to be handy without having hands, and so on. Well, anyone can hypothesize whatever they'd like to of course, but we have no experience of anything like this in our uniform and repeated experience. This thinking - and ID in general - is strictly religious, and has nothing at all to do with science. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
June 12, 2014
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Joe @ 245
CLAVDIVS: I’m complaining that the ID argument assumes that brainless minds are possible, JOE: There isn’t any such ID argument.
Sure there is, on this very thread: - Timmy @ 233: "brains can exist without minds" - StephenB @ 240: "minds operating independently of the brain"
CLAVDIVS: Science is about explaining phenomena in terms of regularities. JOE: Reference please. Methinks you made that up.
How about *you* define science and show how it doesn't involve explaining phenomena in terms of regularities.
CLAVDIVS: ID cannot proffer “intelligence” as an explanation because we have not the slightest notion how intelligence works nor whether it is based on any scientifically measurable regularities. JOE: And more bluster.
If so, then it's bluster from the ID side of the discussion; please try to keep up or you'll keep on kicking own goals: - Timmy @ 233: "Do you have the slightest notion how the brain creates/effects/whatever human consciousness/intelligence, or how it creates CSI? No."
JOE: And BTW, if someone can demonstrate that the brain/ mind can arise by necessity and chance, ID would be falsified.
LOL! Another own goal! It's been generally agreed on this thread that its impossible to demonstrate whether or not the mind arises from law/chance - so by your standards it's impossible to falsify ID, which makes it an unscientific notion ... which is what I've been saying all along.CLAVDIVS
June 12, 2014
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CLAVDIVS:
I’m complaining that the ID argument assumes that brainless minds are possible,
There isn't any such ID argument.
It’s not: Science is about explaining phenomena in terms of regularities.
Reference please. Methinks you made that up.
ID cannot proffer “intelligence” as an explanation because we have not the slightest notion how intelligence works nor whether it is based on any scientifically measurable regularities.
And more bluster.
In other words, the profound mystery of the origin of biological complexity is not scientifically explained by saying it is caused by another profound mystery, namely, intelligence.
Unguided/ blind watchmaker evolution is a profound mystery. As I said our existence cannot be explained, scientifically. And BTW, if someone can demonstrate that the brain/ mind can arise by necessity and chance, ID would be falsified. RDFish's ignorant rantings against ID won't do it- only evidence matters.Joe
June 12, 2014
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Timmy @ 233
CLAVDIVS: In our vast experience we have never encountered anything that can create CSI other than a human (or animal) with a mind and a brain. You want to treat the mind as separable from the brain in order to reach your conclusion that a mind can exist without a human (or animal) brain. TIMMY: Do you have the slightest notion how the brain creates/effects/whatever human consciousness/intelligence, or how it creates CSI? No. You are not even absolutely claiming that it does, you are open to alternatives. ... Given that, how can you possibly complain about a distinction between the brain and the mind?
Yes, I'm open to alternatives. I'm complaining that the ID argument assumes that brainless minds are possible, without empirical warrant, and claims that's scientific. It's not: Science is about explaining phenomena in terms of regularities. ID cannot proffer "intelligence" as an explanation because we have not the slightest notion how intelligence works nor whether it is based on any scientifically measurable regularities. In other words, the profound mystery of the origin of biological complexity is not scientifically explained by saying it is caused by another profound mystery, namely, intelligence.CLAVDIVS
June 12, 2014
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Hi StephenB,
There is a more recent study by Dr. Jeffrey Long, entitled “Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near Death Experiences. From what I have read, the new study covers that ground.
We've been down this path a number of times. After we tussle over definitions (let's say "mind" now means "conscious beliefs, desires, and intentions") I point out that in order for ID to be a viable theory, it must be true that minds are independent of brains. You first deny that ID is actually dependent upon this claim, then you concede but insist the truth of this mind/body dualism is obvious, then you claim that there is scientific evidence of dualism, and then I say rather than debate the strength of the evidence for minds operating outside of bodies, let's just agree that the truth of ID is fully independent on the claim that minds operate independently of brains... and then you revert back to your original claim that ID is completely independent of any issues regarding the independence of minds on brains. Is that what's going to happen here again? Without debating the strength of the evidence for minds operating outside of bodies, can we agree that if it turns out that minds are in fact completely dependent upon brains, ID is no longer a viable theory (since "intelligence" would be just a proper subset of law + chance)?
Intelligent Design studies only the effects of intelligence...
Assuming your conclusion. ID studies biological systems and assumes they are the effects of intelligence.
You may think that more tools “should” be available, or that ID should make some effort to penetrate the mind of the designer, but that would simply be an exercise in fantasy.
No, again, what I've suggested is that Intelligent Design Theory ought to study intelligent design. Doesn't that make sense to you? ID should research how human beings produce CSI, and find the necessary and sufficient conditions for that. Perhaps research whether people can design things when their brains are not functioning. Then ID might be able to make an actual scientific case regarding how CSI in biology got started. But ID doesn't do any of that research - it just makes metaphysical assumptions that minds are contra-causal and independent of brains. You are so steeped in these assumptions that it seems implausible that perhaps minds are critically dependent upon brains. But unless there is evidence to the contrary, what appears to our uniform experience is that nothing can design anything without a well-functioning brain.
So even if we could perform the impossible and get inside the mind of the one who creates, we could still not solve the riddle because each individual thinks, feels, and perceives differently.
Uh, this is rather poetic, but you can't mean it literally. If the process resulting in CSI is completely different in each instance, there is no way of telling what was responsible for the designs we observe in living things.
There is simply no way to know “how” Mozart wrote his musical pieces or how Michaelangelo sculpted is angel.
I would fully agree that nobody knows this currently. Which means ID doesn't really know what it is referring to when it says "intelligence" is responsible for flagella.
If it was a creative, purposeful, artistic act, as appears to be the case, ...
Ok, let's stop there. I know that you know I am only interested in debating ID Theory as science. I'm not interested in hearing you wax lyrical about the creative act.
We know (yes know) that it cannot be the produce of a physical law because physical laws do not have the power to create something that is original in a fundamental way....Obviously, such an act is out of range for a physical law.
Ok, actually let's stop here entirely. You have reverted back to arguing by divine fiat: "We know (yes know)..." and "Obviously..." are not arguments, and it's perfectly clear that you have no arguments to support ID's reliance on metaphysical assumptions. You are not interested in supporting ID by evidence. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
June 12, 2014
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RDF:
There is one well-publicized study called AWARE that I have been following with interest that would help verify that conscious thought can proceed even absent brain function.
There is a more recent study by Dr. Jeffrey Long, entitled "Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near Death Experiences.
this study (AWARE) has yet to provide evidence that NDE experiences gave any indication of thought or perception occurring without brain function.
From what I have read, the new study covers that ground.
But as far as I can tell, Intelligent Design theorists conduct no research at all into anything related to intelligence or design (use any particular meaning of those terms). Instead, they write books about why Darwinism is false.
Intelligent Design studies only the effects of intelligence because that is the only thing that can be studied with the current tools available. You may think that more tools "should" be available, or that ID should make some effort to penetrate the mind of the designer, but that would simply be an exercise in fantasy. For my part, I have probably read a hundred books and articles on the subject of design and creativity either in the context of business or aesthetics. I have also been a part of a design team. The one thing I have learned is that there is no science for "how" someone designs anything. A true designer throws all the "hows" out the window in an act of creative destruction. Whether in business or in the arts, or some other genre, creativity is, by its very nature, an act that has never been previously attempted or achieved. It may be a response to a new problem that never existed or it may be a new way of expressing one's artistic sensibilities. The person who tries to replicate it is simply drawing with trace paper and is not really creating or designing anything. So even if we could perform the impossible and get inside the mind of the one who creates, we could still not solve the riddle because each individual thinks, feels, and perceives differently. The creative act is a one time thing. Yes, there are books that promise to help one stimulate the imagination, but in the final analysis, the act of conceiving something original is unique to the individual. Equally important, there is no way of knowing what inspires the artist to work the way he does or to even begin such an undertaking. These things are mysteries and are not approachable by science. It would be an even greater follow to try to penetrate the mind that designed the universe. There is simply no way to know "how" Mozart wrote his musical pieces or how Michaelangelo sculpted is angel. The very word "how" indicates a mechanical, step by step process that does not lend itself to the creative act. This is all the more true with respect to the artist that designed the universe. If it was a creative, purposeful, artistic act, as appears to be the case, the best we can do is recognize the fact that it is the work of an artist. It would be folly to ask "how" the artist did it. We know (yes know) that it cannot be the produce of a physical law because physical laws do not have the power to create something that is original in a fundamental way. That power is reserved for intelligent agents who can can choose from among multiple alternatives and settle on the one that seems to be the most pleasing. Obviously, such an act is out of range for a physical law.StephenB
June 11, 2014
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Hi StephenB,
RDF: I can only guess you refer to ghosts, poltergeists, microencephalitics who think without a fully-formed brain, patients whose brains have ceased to function but can still think, cases of demonic possession, and so on. (emphasis added) SB: No, that is not what I am referring to. We have evidence for minds operating independently of the brain via near-death experiences.
Yes, that is what I was referring to in the bolded phrase above.
The indications are that these experiences as not the product of the brain’s activity, especially when occurring out of the body or under general anesthesia.
This is exactly what I was referring to when I said the evidence is very sketchy, and in order to be considered as scientific evidence, there need to be studies that provide reliable, replicable evidence. After all, we have a huge amount of evidence that a brain injury, brain disease, a dose of anesthetic, too much alcohol, or even a knock on the head can incapacitate our brain and make us lose consciousness - and along with it the ability to design things. That would indicate that a well-functioning brain is required for thought. Any claim to the contrary really does require some well-done study that would control for more usual explanations for these things. In particular, it's well known that patients can generate a set of memories while they are recuperating from brain trauma and misremember when the events took place. There is one well-publicized study called AWARE that I have been following with interest that would help verify that conscious thought can proceed even absent brain function. This study intends to control for the possibility that reported memories do not actually reflect conscious experience during periods without brain activity. As far as I can tell from the AWARE site and other reviews, after six years, this study has yet to provide evidence that NDE experiences gave any indication of thought or perception occurring without brain function. The AWARE website said there there is a peer-reviewed paper going through the publication process currently - I look forward to reading those results.
There is no reason for ID to become an entirely different kind of research program.
But as far as I can tell, Intelligent Design theorists conduct no research at all into anything related to intelligence or design (use any particular meaning of those terms). Instead, they write books about why Darwinism is false. I agree Darwinism is false, and like many others would like to know what might account for our observations. Since ID does no research in that area, I continue to look elsewhere (James Shapiro, for example).
Those, who for ideological reasons, refuse to accept the scientific evidence for design will, for the same reason, refuse to accept the scientific evidence for a mind.
You keep claiming there is scientific evidence for immaterial (independent of the brain) mind, and for the claim that a conscious mind (or a contra-causal mind?) was responsible for the design of biological organisms. But the only evidence is that which eliminates Darwinian theory, which is in no way evidence for your particular hypotheses. You can complain about persecution and ideological bias, but until someone bothers to actually do some work and attempt to study how minds might have preceded organisms, ID will have nothing to say regarding how life began. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
June 11, 2014
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RDFish
I can only guess you refer to ghosts, poltergeists, microencephalitics who think without a fully-formed brain, patients whose brains have ceased to function but can still think, cases of demonic possession, and so on.
No, that is not what I am referring to. We have evidence for minds operating independently of the brain via near-death experiences. The indications are that these experiences as not the product of the brain's activity, especially when occurring out of the body or under general anesthesia.
If ID is a serious scientific program (which I do not believe) then it would investigate these phenomena and demonstrate that something without a brain can still solve novel problems and generate plans and designs for complex mechanisms.
There is no reason for ID to become an entirely different kind of research program. Those, who for ideological reasons, refuse to accept the scientific evidence for design will, for the same reason, refuse to accept the scientific evidence for a mind.StephenB
June 11, 2014
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Hi StephenB,
RDF: So just as our experience indicates that all complex functional mechanisms arise only by means of thought, our experience indicates that all thought depends critically on complex functional mechanisms. SB: Why is this supposed to matter? What you have described is neither an irony nor a bi-conditional relationship.
It matters because my position is that there is no known cause that can account for the origin of biological organisms. One could say that the complex mechanisms we observe arose without any involvement of conscious mind, but that would contradict our experience that complex mechanisms never appear without the action of a conscious mind. One could say that a conscious mind was responsible for the first complex organisms, but that would contradict our experience that conscious thought never appears without the action of complex brains.
[b] according to our experience, thought DOES NOT arise only by means of complex functional mechanisms.
To what do you refer here? What experience do we have of thought apart from complex brains? I can only guess you refer to ghosts, poltergeists, microencephalitics who think without a fully-formed brain, patients whose brains have ceased to function but can still think, cases of demonic possession, and so on. If that is what you are talking about, here is my position on that: The evidence for such things is very sketchy, and efforts to provide replicable scientifically sound evidence for them have yet to succeed. If ID is a serious scientific program (which I do not believe) then it would investigate these phenomena and demonstrate that something without a brain can still solve novel problems and generate plans and designs for complex mechanisms. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
June 11, 2014
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RDFish:
So just as our experience indicates that all complex functional mechanisms arise only by means of thought, our experience indicates that all thought depends critically on complex functional mechanisms.
Why is this supposed to matter? What you have described is neither an irony nor a bi-conditional relationship. [a] according to our experience, functional mechanisms DO arise only by means of thought. [b] according to our experience, thought DOES NOT arise only by means of complex functional mechanisms. There is, therefore, no reason shuffle words around in order to make it appear as there is some kind of reciprocity going in.StephenB
June 11, 2014
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Hi Timmy,
RDF: Actually, human beings produce CSI. And I have no idea what you mean by “unbounded” here. TIMMY: Meant to contrast with the limited ability of some animals to produce CSI.
Human mental abilities are amazing but obviously not unbounded. This is important because one of the responses to the Big Mysterious Questions (origin of life, origin of the universe) is that our minds are not actually capable of understanding what underlies these things - it would be like a mouse trying to understand calculus. That notion is called cognitive closure, and I think there may be something to it. (It's true, after all, that many writers in Abrahamic religions stress that God is completely unknowable - it could be that this is true in a very complete sense).
I was simply saying that the brain is subject to the laws of chemistry and physics.
Many people think that brains utilize exotic quantum physical properties that we do not yet understand (see for example Roger Penrose). This is one thing I mean when I say we can't rule out all law + chance for mental processes.
Saying that brains are “clearly necessary”, how is that evidence there isn’t something else? How is that evidence that the brain creates the mind (which is what I think you are saying)?
I do NOT say that the brain creates the mind. What I'm saying is that brains are clearly necessary for human thought, even if they are not sufficient. Maybe some extra-dimensional realm of Platonic logic is tapped into by quantum gravitational effects in the microtubules of our neurons, as Penrose/Hamerhoff believe. I don't know what they are talking about, really, but my point is that for all we know, consciousness is something that our brains tap into rather than generate. But even the most die-hard Cartesian dualist admits that brains are critically involved in thought, even if they are just half of the story. So while it's possible that a human-like mind could exist without a human-like brain at all, it certainly is not consistent with our repeated and uniform experience, and can't simply be accepted as a scientific result without evidence.
You asked for an operational definition, you wanted to know how we can detect a mind. I know how to detect CSI. I don’t know how to detect “conscious intent” or “sentience”, except by way of CSI.
OK, fair enough. That's a perfectly fine operational definition of a mind. But my point here is that we cannot then extrapolate to include all of the other aspects of mentality that we know from human experience and say that those things are likely part of whatever mind (producer of CSI) was responsible for CSI in biology. Whatever sort of mind/CSI-producer preceded biological systems was likely very, very different from a human mind (which is intimately linked, somehow, to human brains), and we have no justification to claim that conscious beliefs, desires, and intentions accompanied the production of biological CSI as it would in a human.
We have no reason to think that the brain is the origin of CSI, we have no reason to think that “anything” should be the origin of CSI. Nevertheless we produce CSI anyway…by magic, as far as we can tell.
Right, except for the part about needing a well-functioning brain. It seems clear at the outset that anything that can generate a plan (or design) needs to store and process information, and as far as we know, complex physical mechanism is required to do that. We can't even imagine how information could be stored and processed without physical state machines of some sort. Again - not sufficient for thought, but quite evidently necessary. So just as our experience indicates that all complex functional mechanisms arise only by means of thought, our experience indicates that all thought depends critically on complex functional mechanisms. How it got started is deeply mysterious, and not at all withing our scientific understanding yet - and perhaps it never will be.
So it is a viable theory to say: You know that thing humans have that is the original cause of the CSI that humans produce? Whatever that thing is (let’s call it a mind), it is the only explanation for CSI we have ever heard of. And since we haven’t the slightest clue how CSI could be created in general, it is fair to say that whatever created life consisted, at least, of a mind.
There are a number of instances in science when unifications like this have been made. Energy was found to be the same thing as matter. The weak nuclear force was found to be the same thing as the electro-magnetic force. And so on. Other times, things that appeared to be the same thing were found to be different. The process providing light and heat from the Sun was thought to be the same thing as the process providing light and heat from a candle, until it was discovered that it was a very different process (the Sun would have burned out long ago were it not). So is whatever creates CSI in us humans the same thing as that which produced the CSI in biology? Nobody knows, nor does anyone have any idea how to go about figuring it out.
Your tautology should be like this: “The CSI was produced by something that is somehow analogous to how humans produce CSI.”
Saying "somehow analogous" is not saying anything until you say what things are the same and what things are not. Is chemical oxidation (fire) analogous to nuclear fusion in the Sun? In some ways yes (they both produce light and heat) but in some ways no (the mechanism is very different). When you say that the cause of life was analogous to human thought, we naturally assume that means that the cause of life had conscious beliefs, desires, and intentions. But there is no way to know if that is true or not, and some reason to doubt it a priori (because of the fact that human brains are involved in our cognition). You may point out that other reasons to believe in a human-like mind of a Life Designer come from religious thought, and I wouldn't challenge that. But I would insist that it is not scientific.
This allows us to contradict the clearly less-reasonable Darwinian-style explanation, which amount to, “The CSI was produced by something that has absolutely nothing to do with anything that humans have.”
That's not the Darwinian claim; the Darwinian claim is that random variation and selection accounts for the CSI we observe. Neither of us believe that, period.
Since we don’t know how CSI is created, we have no idea if anything (e.g., the brain) is “required”, in general, to produce CSI.
Right. We do know, however, that a well-functioning brain is required for humans to produce CSI, and it is also evidently true that some complex physical state machine is required to store and process information at all. Perhaps there is something without any physical state machinery that can store and process information, and produce CSI. But there is simply no scientific evidence of any such thing.
All you’re saying is that “scientific investigation” into the origins of life is currently impossible.
Well, investigation isn't impossible of course. But we don't have any viable theories at the moment.
Except that Darwinists do like to claim that their theories are just as scientific as physics.
Perhaps, but they would be wrong.
ID doesn’t claim that, it just claims that it is (a lot) more scientific than Darwinism.
That's not true either. There just aren't any scientific results that shed light on the matter. I know that is very difficult for most people; for some reason it doesn't bother me. I live my life very well, and I marvel at what we know, and I marvel also at what we do not know! Again, thanks for the sincere responses. I enjoy this sort of discussion so much more than trading insults!! Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
June 11, 2014
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RDFish, Sorry for all the rude stuff I said earlier.Timmy
June 11, 2014
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Hi Timmy, Thanks for your thoughtful and cogent replies - I'll have time to respond later today. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
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RDFish @ 217:
Actually, human beings produce CSI. And I have no idea what you mean by “unbounded” here.
Meant to contrast with the limited ability of some animals to produce CSI.
You denied this earlier, but apparently you now agree that nobody knows how brains work.
When you say "we know what the brain is" (i.e., a lump of flesh composed of a very particular organization of molecules), you are saying what I was saying before. I never said we know the specific details of macro-level brain mechanics. I was simply saying that the brain is subject to the laws of chemistry and physics. Don't flip out, okay?
Brains are clearly necessary, but not sufficient, to produce CSI-rich human artifacts.
How is that a response to my statement? Do you know if CSI is produced by the brain, or by something else? That this "something else" apparently interacts with the brain is irrelevant. Saying that brains are “clearly necessary”, how is that evidence there isn't something else? How is that evidence that the brain creates the mind (which is what I think you are saying)?
So you’re definition of mind is merely “that which produces CSI”? Is that your final answer? Nothing about conscious intent? Nothing about sentience?
You asked for an operational definition, you wanted to know how we can detect a mind. I know how to detect CSI. I don't know how to detect "conscious intent" or "sentience", except by way of CSI.
All known things that produce CSI are complex living organisms.
Yes…?
We have no reason to think anything besides complex living organisms can produce CSI. Clearly, complex living organisms were not responsible for the original biological CSI. So that leaves us without a viable theory.
We would be left without a "viable theory" if we had a reason to think that complex living human organisms (with brains) should be able to produce CSI! But we have no reason to think they should be able to, because we have no idea how CSI is produced. We have no reason to think that the brain is the origin of CSI, we have no reason to think that “anything” should be the origin of CSI. Nevertheless we produce CSI anyway…by magic, as far as we can tell. So it is a viable theory to say: You know that thing humans have that is the original cause of the CSI that humans produce? Whatever that thing is (let's call it a mind), it is the only explanation for CSI we have ever heard of. And since we haven't the slightest clue how CSI could be created in general, it is fair to say that whatever created life consisted, at least, of a mind. I don't know why you keep calling this tautological, because no matter how much you strip away from the fuzzy definition of "mind" (e.g., consciousness, choices, whatever.) it ultimately remains that humans are the only thing we know of with minds. Your tautology should be like this: "The CSI was produced by something that is somehow analogous to how humans produce CSI." Do we know that CSI can’t be produced by any other means? No, but again: we have no reason to think that anything (let alone brains) should be able to produce CSI. All we have to go on is that humans, apparently by magic, produce CSI. This allows us to contradict the clearly less-reasonable Darwinian-style explanation, which amount to, "The CSI was produced by something that has absolutely nothing to do with anything that humans have."
We know that we use our brains (and other parts of our bodies) to create CSI-rich artifacts. How we do it is mysterious. We also know that we are consciously aware of our plans and actions, but we don’t know if that is required to produce CSI.
Since we don’t know how CSI is created, we have no idea if anything (e.g., the brain) is “required”, in general, to produce CSI.
We can hypothesize whatever we’d like, but in order to have a scientific explanation our hypothesis must be (1) clearly defined and (2) supportable with evidence. ID meets neither of these criteria.
All you’re saying is that “scientific investigation” into the origins of life is currently impossible. Nobody denies that origins science is a lot less scientific than physics; origins scientists do the best they can with what they have to work with. Except that Darwinists do like to claim that their theories are just as scientific as physics. ID doesn’t claim that, it just claims that it is (a lot) more scientific than Darwinism.
What you seem to mean here by “generalized mind” is a conscious, sentient mind in something without a body. That hypothesis is meaningful, but (1) unlikely, given our experience-based knowledge of human minds, and (2) without any evidence.
If you don’t think the ability to produce CSI implies sentience, fine. That would mean humans’ ability to produce CSI has nothing to do with their sentience. Fine. It remains: whatever humans have that allows them to produce CSI, the generalized mind consists of at least that.Timmy
June 11, 2014
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CLAVDIVS @ 219, RDFisH @ 220:
Do I take it that you concede that nobody knows whether the brain/mind transcends law & chance?
I'm conceding that for the purpose of this argument.
In our vast experience we have never encountered anything that can create CSI other than a human (or animal) with a mind and a brain. You want to treat the mind as separable from the brain in order to reach your conclusion that a mind can exist without a human (or animal) brain.
Do you have the slightest notion how the brain creates/effects/whatever human consciousness/intelligence, or how it creates CSI? No. You are not even absolutely claiming that it does, you are open to alternatives. Given that, how can you possibly complain about a distinction between the brain and the mind? If you are willing to concede a distinction, how can you possibly object to the possibility that brains can exist without minds or that minds can exist without brains? The most you can say is that the brain is necessary for humans to have minds, but that is not actually the same thing as saying that the brain creates the mind. For example, imagine a highly sophisticated android that is remote-controlled and is able to write scholarly papers, engineer machines, etc. An observer could point to several of its subsystems as necessary for the android to produce CSI (effect a mind): the radio receiver, the CPU, the hard drive, etc. Take away any of these and the android, operationally, has no mind. But the android's mind still exists even if you destroy the receiver, back inside the human who was controlling it. You’ve just removed the ability of the mind to interface with the meat. Are you totally rejecting the possibility that this happens with humans? Because if it is possible, it puts a major damper on the importance of the “brain is involved/necessary” line.
However, the vast weight of empirical evidence is against the idea of brainless minds.
But the vast weight of empirical evidence does show that brains can exist without minds, which substantiates the distinction. As far as your claim goes, I have no idea what you mean, could you elaborate?
CLAVDIVS @ 228: I was talking about CSI, and the fact that the only empirically verified source of CSI involves brains.
Since you have no idea how or in what sense the brain (or any part of the human body) is involved, it doesn’t make any sense to reference any part of the human body as relevant to the question of how humans create CSI. By this logic the human liver could be said to be “involved” in the creation of CSI. Sure, humans can still create CSI if you remove their liver. So? We never said how the liver is involved, just like we never said how the brain is involved. And it’s an empirically verified fact that humans have livers, just as much as humans have brains.Timmy
June 11, 2014
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CLAVDIVS:
No. How about *you* give your definition of intelligence, law and chance, and show how none of these meet the criteria.
Then your claim is unsupported and therefor meaningless.Joe
June 11, 2014
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CLAVDIVS- Say we accept Intelligent Design and the premise the "intelligence" came from a physical brain. Then say after thousands of years of success under that paradigm we find out, through rigorous research, that the designer(s) didn't have a physical brain after all, but this universe and living organisms were designed regardless of that fact. Do we then have to scrap ID in favor of materialism?Joe
June 11, 2014
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CLAVDIVS:
Yes it does — ID claims the designer is “intelligent”. Just what that means exactly is what this thread has been about.
And I have answered that- comment 14
In any case, so what? I was talking about CSI, and the fact that the only empirically verified source of CSI involves brains.
It also tells us that mother nature was not up to the task.
Therefore, unless ID says the designer has a brain, it is empirically unsupported and unscientific.
And saying mother nature didit is empirically unsupported and unscientific. So perhaps we don't exist, scientifically.Joe
June 11, 2014
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Mung @ 222 Nobody is saying ID proponents deny causality. The discussion has been about whether ID arguments involve causes beyond law/chance (e.g. dualistic or "contra-causal" free will) either as an assumption, or as a conclusion.CLAVDIVS
June 11, 2014
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Joe @ 226
CLAVDIVS: In our vast experience we have never encountered anything that can create CSI other than a human (or animal) with a mind and a brain. JOE: So what? ID doesn’t say anything about the designer.
Yes it does -- ID claims the designer is "intelligent". Just what that means exactly is what this thread has been about. In any case, so what? I was talking about CSI, and the fact that the only empirically verified source of CSI involves brains. Therefore, unless ID says the designer has a brain, it is empirically unsupported and unscientific.CLAVDIVS
June 11, 2014
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