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How Darwinian Logic Works

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In this post we discover: According to Darwinian theory, new species emerge when mutations produce individuals who can outperform the stock they came from…

This statement, and so many like them, reveal how Darwinian “logic” is based primarily upon hyper-imaginative speculation, and not anything that could be described as science. Here’s how Darwinian logic works:

Given #1: A certain feature of a living system exists. (Let’s try a trivial example, like Mozart’s ability to write symphonies.)
Given #2: Since this feature exists, it must have a survival advantage.
Given #3: Since it is known (scientifically) that Darwinian mechanisms can explain everything about the history of life, there must have been a gradual pathway such that random mutations and natural selection could turn a microbe into Mozart. How could this not be obvious?

The ID proponent challenges the Darwinist with some obvious questions:

Which random mutations would be required to turn a microbe into Mozart? How long would this take? What is the probability that these beneficial mutations could take place, and what is the probability that they could be fixed in the population with the available reproductive and probabilistic resources? What about the fact that the simplest living cell is the most sophisticated and functionally-integrated information-processing system ever discovered?

The universal and entirely predictable Darwinist response to such challenges:

Are you a religious fanatic who wants to destroy science?

Comments
Joseph
Sorry markF evolutionary biology lacks all detail. For example pertaining to universal common descent no one knows if the transformations required are even possible- that is because there isn’t any detail- none whatsoever.
The paper I linked to in 13 above describes exactly which mutations lead to the development of one type of haemoglobin from another and the associated adaptive advantage.  This is just one of thousands of papers describing hypothesised evolutionary paths for various proteins in similar levels of detail.  You may disagree with them – but if you think they lack detail then what kind of level of detail are you asking for? Your position cannot muster a testable hypothesis.
That said the way to falsify any design inference is by demonstrating chance and necessity can produce it. Tat is how it has been throughout history. That conforms with Newton’s first rule.
Not sure what you mean by Newton’s first rule but I am glad you confirm my point that the only way to disprove a design hypothesis is demonstrating a non-design alternative.  Design hypotheses get a free pass from the kind of scrutiny that a scientific hypothesis is subject to.
And in the absence of direct observation or designer input the only possible way to make any scientific determination about the design or the designer(s), is by studying the design in question.
That is how it is done in forensics and archaeology.
That is just not true.  In forensics and archaeology you reconstruct how it might have happened and test the plausibility of the reconstruction.markf
October 18, 2011
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Sorry markF evolutionary biology lacks all detail. For example pertaining to universal common descent no one knows if the transformations required are even possible- that is because there isn't any detail- none whatsoever. Your position cannot muster a testable hypothesis. That said the way to falsify any design inference is by demonstrating chance and necessity can produce it. Tat is how it has been throughout history. That conforms with Newton's first rule. And in the absence of direct observation or designer input the only possible way to make any scientific determination about the design or the designer(s), is by studying the design in question. That is how it is done in forensics and archaeology.Joseph
October 18, 2011
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Elizabeth, Unfortunately for you it happens to be true and is not faulty.Joseph
October 18, 2011
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reliable design detection is not detection of designer’s methods.
And this is at the heart of the whole disagreement. I think this premise is itself faulty.Elizabeth Liddle
October 18, 2011
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Joseph Right at the moment I am not concerned whether an explanation is true. I am just considering the possibility of making a hypothesis about how an evolutionary event happened. Whether you think they are plausible or not you cannot deny that biologists offer many hypotheses of how evolutionary events happened in varying levels of detail. ID has not offered a single hypothesis about how a specific thing evolved. You may argue that is not what ID is about. But the trouble is without an explanation of "how" there is no way of falsifying ID except by demonstrating an alternative explanation is true. If you can think of another way please tell me.markf
October 17, 2011
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So here's what the rate of new domains looks like: 4 per million years in the first half billion years. 1 per 3 million years in microbes 1 per 2.5 million years in eukaryotes Looking at the rate change, it seems likely that the rate was high at first and tapered off pre-LUCA. Give me a reason why this isn't likely. Then give us proof that the new domains were poofed into existence without precursors.Petrushka
October 17, 2011
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Because it produced almost 2000 basic protein domains in a few hundred million years
One thing is obvious. The rate of invention has declined. The rate of invention is always higher in new, unexploited niches. It's true of human designs. How many new auto companies are starting up compared to the first few decades of automobiles. How many phone companies? there is nothing mysterious about a declining rate of invention. But you have simply fabricated an entity with no physical existence, no basis at all in any kind of experience no philosophical support for its mode of interaction with the physical world, no known specific instances, no specific instances of action, no actual need. And you expect to be taken seriously. How about you actually prove that protein domains sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus and have no precursors?Petrushka
October 17, 2011
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First, reliable design detection is not detection of designer's methods. Judge a theory by what it sets out to do. Besides, design methods are not lacking, in general and in the world of life; ranging from genetic engineering, to breeding.kairosfocus
October 17, 2011
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Try, Cosmological ID.kairosfocus
October 17, 2011
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Gpuccio
An intelligent non physical being is a viable hypothesis. You may not believe that intelligent non physical beings do exist, but you will admit that the issue has always been controversial in the history of human thought.
It is a hypothesis.  Whether it is open to scientific study depends on its properties (as Lizzie has often pointed out). My point is simply that we have no observable evidence of anything with the ability to do something so extraordinary as create the first prokaryotic life form.
And however, as I have said, the events are there. We must certainly look for the details. I am not repeating the genral principle. I have suggested many fields of research whose results are very likely to be heavily significant for a design – non design debate. OOL is one example. I have given others.
If researchers gave at least part of the resources which are given to speculating about imaginary RNA worlds to other fields of research, such a serious exploration of the functional protein space, without any prejudice, and a serious definition of minimal life requirements, without any prejudice, the scenario of informational biology could expand.
Regarding new protein domains which appeared more recently, it could be easier to try to determine with more precision tehir distribution in the genome and the time of their first appearance, and to verify or falsify explicit models for their possible gradual evolution. Or try to understand, in a design perspective, which functional implementations really required the new protein information.
There may be less resources going into ID but there is the discovery centre with several full-time fellows working there. There is at least one qualified ID bio-chemist.  And yet not one single paper on how a specific evolutionary event happened.  But what would such a paper look like?  Evolutionary biologists form hypotheses based on mutations, insertions, gene duplications, endo-symbiosis, even epigenetics.  They describe what they think actually happened at varying levels of detail.  Because they make the details explicit the hypotheses can be assessed (as we see repeatedly on this very forum). Suppose you come up with a detailed description of how protein domains appeared over time – and even find that they are almost instantaneous.  All this does is raise a question.  How could this have happened? It is not a hypothesis about how they appeared.  There is no hypothesis to be assessed as there is for biologists.  The only way such a hypothesis can be “falsified” is by providing an alternative explanation.
A design analysis needs not do that: it can try to explain things in terms of pure functional requirements, without having to pass through the irrational limitiaiton of reproductiove advantage.
But the functional requirements are requirements for reproductive advantage!  How does this ID analysis differ from a list of evolutionary developments and how they help with reproductive advantage?  markf
October 17, 2011
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Petrushka: Don't go on changing subject. I am interested in facts. Or in the lack of them. In the paper I quoted there were facts, such as the application of some metrics to protein domains to establish a cronology of the. Facts and theories quantitatively applied to those facts. theories that can be right or wrong, but are anyway interesting, because they are derived from observable facts and try to analyze and explain them. But if the same paper, as Acipenser suggests (but I am not sure what part he is referring to), "suggests that there were likely precursors to the domains found in LUCA", that is a speculation, which is not founded on the data and type of analysis presented in the paper. In biological papers we often find those tww things mixed up: interesting data, and ofte interesting analysis, and then completely unwarranted suggestions that all that strngthens darwinist theory. As I am really interested in the facts and the realistic analysis of them, I always try to keep the two things separated. Darwinists often object: but if you quote that paper, why don't you accept also the conclusions of the authors? The reason is simple: because I don't agree with the conclusion. Still, I am free, like anybody else, to use the facts, and those parts of the analysis that I find correct, in my reasons and in my discussions. That's called critical thinking, and it is the basis of science. You ask: "What facts support your assertion that there are no precursors? " It's simple: the absolute absence of facts pointing to precursors. And some simple logic. The absence of facts is a fact in itself.gpuccio
October 17, 2011
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Petrushka: As I said, it's controversial. I really like when you abandon any pretence at resonable discussion, and just express your blind faith. That's true passion!gpuccio
October 17, 2011
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markf:
My point is that ID has not provided a detailed explanation of a single specific evolutionary event (and this impossible without specifying who, why and how).
Neither has your position. And we don't have to know who, why nor how before determining design. We figure out those by studying the design. But anyway ALL of your objections about ID apply to your position. Strange that you don't realize that...Joseph
October 17, 2011
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Just show us those precursors then. And no one has ever witnessed a living thing arising spontaneously- THAT is the whole problem- no evidence for it. BTW you do realize that "spontaneously" means without agency involvement...Joseph
October 17, 2011
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You may not believe that intelligent non physical beings do exist, but you will admit that the issue has always been controversial in the history of human thought.
Let's just say that non-physicality has been extensively searched for, as in decades of research on ESP, and centuries of attempts to communicate with the dead. Aside from occasional anecdotes and vast quantities of fraud, there is not positive evidence and huge quantities of negative evidence. Nor is there any conceptual basis for the interaction of physical and non-physical. But there is evidence that the physical world accessible to science has unexpected features, such as entanglement, that make it silly to talk about materialism as somehow limited compared to the wholly imaginary spiritual world. You have no basis for arguing that mere materialism can't account for anything. You have no way of setting limits to what science can or cannot study. Even (Judeo-Christian) religions implicitly acknowledge the requirement for a physical body in its scripture and creeds, which promise the Resurrection of the body. If find it risible that you think you can make claims for the existence of things without evidence, that you can assert that things are inaccessible to evolution, all mathematical evidence to the contrary, and that you assert you know the detailed history of the beginning of protein domains, also without evidence. What a joke. If ID supporters want to argue about the mathematical ability of programs like Avida to model evolution, how about they make their own programs that better model the math. Publish them for open discussion.Petrushka
October 17, 2011
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LOL. You are interested in facts. What facts support your assertion that there are no precursors? What facts support your assertion that some part of a living thing arose spontaneously? You have witnessed a living thing arising spontaneously. You have some precedent?Petrushka
October 17, 2011
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Mark: we do not know of any intelligent being that is remotely capable of creating a prokaryotic cell – particularly 4 bilion years ago. An intelligent non physical being is a viable hypothesis. You may not believe that intelligent non physical beings do exist, but you will admit that the issue has always been controversial in the history of human thought. And however, as I have said, the events are there. We must certainly look for the details. I am not repeating the genral principle. I have suggested many fields of research whose results are very likely to be heavily significant for a design - non design debate. OOL is one example. I have given others. If researchers gave at least part of the resources which are given to speculating about imaginary RNA worlds to other fields of research, such a serious exploration of the functional protein space, without any prejudice, and a serious definition of minimal life requirements, without any prejudice, the scenario of informational biology could expand. Regarding new protein domains which appeared more recently, it could be easier to try to determine with more precision tehir distribution in the genome and the time of their first appearance, and to verify or falsify explicit models for their possible gradual evolution. Or try to understand, in a design perspective, which functional implementations really required the new protein information. There is a big differemce even in the approach to the functional study of natural history: darwinists always try to explain things (if and when they try) in terms of reproductiove advantage, because that is the only accepted model. A design analysis needs not do that: it can try to explain things in terms of pure functional requirements, without having to pass through the irrational limitiaiton of reproductiove advantage. That means that we can try to build a hyerarchy of fucntion expression and informational content, and try to explain natural history, and the history of protien information, in those terms.gpuccio
October 17, 2011
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Acipenser: I quote myself: "Why do I believe that you will not agree?" And the answer is not the one you suggest. Try again.gpuccio
October 17, 2011
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Acipenser: because I am interested in the facts of the papers, not in the speculations unsupported by facts.gpuccio
October 17, 2011
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Gpuccio
It’s strange that you still miss the point.
That is because we are talking about different points. I am well aware of the argument (A) Life contains huge amounts of information and that only intelligent agents can produce information. I don't think it is true but I am not seeking to cover that ground again. My point is that ID has not provided a detailed explanation of a single specific evolutionary event (and this impossible without specifying who, why and how). That you have still failed to do. All you have done is repeat A. It is important - because without this level of detail we cannot assess wether the ID hypothesis is credible. We know that humans can create things full of information but we do not know of any intelligent being that is remotely capable of creating a prokaryotic cell - particularly 4 bilion years ago.markf
October 16, 2011
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The paper gpuccio cites certainly suggests that there were likely precursors to the domains found in LUCA. I don't know why he doesn't acknowledge that portion of the paper.Acipenser
October 16, 2011
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Explain again exactly how you know that protein domain sequences have no precursors. Show me the evidence.Petrushka
October 16, 2011
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"I think I have supported it. Why do I believe that you will not agree?" Likely because you recognize the weakness of your support in comparison to the magnitude of the claim. "Behe, Axe, and others have published. Let’s make a deal: give us the resources and money, and we in ID will publish much more." A much better deal is for the IDists to respond to requests for grant proposals by submitting proposals that outline their proposed methodology for researching some aspect of design. There are ample resources available but the IDists need to submit the proposals in order to get the funding. "But the details will follow." When? The academic world doesn't have to accept anything that is as lacking in rigor and cannot produce on it's promises of producing results using the methods they consider robust and appropriate to the task. The only example I know of is Dembski's attempt at the calculation for the flagella and that went terribly bad. No wonder so great a period of time has passed with no one else even making the attempt.Acipenser
October 16, 2011
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Acipenser: How do you know that the design process was intense? Because it produced almost 2000 basic protein domains in a few hundred million years, plus all the higher information necessary to structure prokaryotes. That is intense, compared to the following natural history, at least in terms of basic protein information, as Petrushka correctly reminds us every day. For higher levels of information, we cannot really say, because we lack most of the molecular basis for them. What exactly led you to the conclusion that the design process was intense versus say trivial or perhaps even serendipitous from another of the designer(s) research projects? The information in prokaryotes in certainly not trivial or serendipitous. If you have any personal information that it came from other research projects (probably intense in themselves too), please let us know. Otherwise, I will stick to what we know: prokaryotes did not exist at the beginning of our planet's life, and they were designed in the first few hundred million years (maybe much less). That’s quite a claim you make and we are all assuming that you can support it I think I have supported it. Why do I believe that you will not agree?gpuccio
October 16, 2011
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Mark: It is the product of chance combination of chemicals, that allows the biggest leap in natural history, that from inanimate matter to life. It's strange that you still miss the point. Let's try again: a) A chance combination of chemicals cannot generate that kind of functional information. That can be demonstrated, and is at the core of ID theory. b) An input of outer information from a conscious intelligent being, in any form, can generate huge amounts of comlex functional information. Human artifacts, including all GAs, and huma protein engineering, are an obvious demonstration of that. So, a design scenario can explain complex functional information. Obviosuly, many questions remain, as you correctly say: how, when, with what purpose, in what times was the information inputted? Those are all legitimate questions, and in time they will be answered, if we really look for the answers including the design hypothesis in our interpretational framework. But there is no doubt that the design hypothesis has the explanatory power to explain dFSCI. While neo darwinism has not that explanatory power.gpuccio
October 16, 2011
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Petrushka: Using the numbers supplied by gpuccio, there’s a sudden appearance of a new protein domain, on average, every 12 million years. Mostly in pre-eukaryotic microbes. Correct. And so? I’m not sure how one determines that a three billion year old event was sudden, or that it had no incremental precursors. That seems to be a mystery. It is not a mystery that LUCA has left traces in the proteome, and is a supported scientific hypothesis. It is not a mystery that there is no trace at all of precursors for LUCA, neither in proteome or fossils, or simply in credible lab models. Life as we can observe it requires the prokaryotic design, with all its basic functions. That is a fact. The rest is unsupported speculation. Science can certainly speculate, but it has the duty to reason primarily on existing facts.gpuccio
October 16, 2011
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Guys, I find some of our questions rather strange, but I will try to answer just the same. Kellyhomes: And therefore design? Hardly. I really don't follow here. We have a full proteome that appears evidently to be designed (even Dawkins admits that concept). We have no model or evidence for a non designed origin of that information. The only existing model, neo darwinism, comnpletely fails, and can find no support both in logic and evidence. Of course design is a very goos explanation, in this context. Why shouldn't it be? Of course we have the cognitive and moral duty, as scientists, to try to interpret existing data in a design perspective. It is really obvious. It si only the dogmatism of the new reductionist religion that evokes such fiery objections from all of you. Good for you, it's your choice, but I am certainly not impressed by your "arguments". I suppose that the "and therefore design" objection expresses again a very common mistake: the design inference is not a logicl deduction, but an empirical inference. I have already discussed that many times. And by “sudden” you mean what? I mean at most a few hundred million years for the generation of about 1984 new independent basic protein domains out of 3464, acoording to this paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008378 in a context where lvining and reproducing prokaryotes did not yet exist, and the mechanism of DNA storage for biological information, transcription, translation and protein synthesis could not exist, because they need exactly many of those domains. While, in the remaining 3 billion years, and with a full prokaryotic world alredy in existence, only about 1500 new domains have been added. That is a really sudden accumulation of complex functional information. So, why don’t you and KF get together and work out your differences with regard to what can and cannot be investigated KF is a friend and a great contributor to this blog. I sgare with him a lot of views. But, obviously, each of us responds for himself. So, please be kind and ask him your questions about what he says, and ask me your questions about what I say. Perhaps you could even publish a paper between you, if the Darwinist police are busy with OWS… The darwinist police is busy enough. But the simple fact is, I am a MD, i am not going to publish or do research in the lab about these things. Am I allowed to discuss on a blog such as this? Or do I need your permission? Behe, Axe, and others have published. Let's make a deal: give us the resources and money, and we in ID will publish much more. Well, even I know the answer to that one! “It was designed!” Now you are reasoning! with no actual detail following But the details will follow. If the academic world just accepts the design scenario as a legit scientific hypothesis, and if a serious effort is done by the biological community to interpret existing data in a design framework, you will see...gpuccio
October 16, 2011
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OOL. Design scenario: In a relatively short span of time, at most a few million years adtre the planet becomes physically apt for life, LUCA appears on earth. It is probably a wholly functional prokaryote, with more than half the basic protein information necessary for life as it has always been observed. It is the product of a very intense design process, that allows the biggest leap in natural history, that from inanimate matter to life.
This is a design event in detail! Suppose I were to speculate: In a relatively short span of time, at most a few million years adtre the planet becomes physically apt for life, LUCA appears on earth. It is probably a wholly functional prokaryote, with more than half the basic protein information necessary for life as it has always been observed. It is the product of chance combination of chemicals, that allows the biggest leap in natural history, that from inanimate matter to life. Would you not think I had failed to explain anything?markf
October 16, 2011
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For the sake of argument I’ll grant the Darwinist his unassailable belief in spontaneous generation (although I thought this notion was disqualified by Pasteur in the 19th century).
No, it was not disqualified by Pasteur in the 19th century. What was falsified by Pasteur in the 19th century was the hypothesis that maggots were spontaneously generated in decaying meat. That has nothing to do with the hypothesis that simple Darwinian-capable self-replicators emerged spontaneously in an environment of non-replicators. But let's accept your the point hypothetically, as you graciously offer :)
There has been no forthcoming evidence that such a process has taken place, or could have taken place, even given the most optimistic assumptions.
Yes, there is quite a lot of good evidence in recent OOL research.
Given the assumption that a self-replicating primordial cell actually did spontaneously generate from inanimate matter through chance and necessity, one must logically ask how the proposed Darwinian mechanism could create the incredible results that are attributed to it.
Sure.
The reason I used the microbe-to-Mozart example was not just for purposes of alliteration; it was to plant seeds of doubt (an apparently hopelessly futile endeavor) in the Darwinist mind, which is still frozen in the 19th century.
OK, but let's drop the rhetoric and address your direct question about how Darwinian evolution can generate complexity. That is fairly straightforward, and is well-illustrated by evolutionary algorithms - you start with a population of simple self-replicators that replicate with heritable variance and place them in an environment in which their probability of reproducing is dependent on being able to exploit that environment in that way, or avoid its hazards, and very rapidly you find yourself with a population of individuals that can perform more functions and exhibit more complexity than the population you started with. Go a little further, and provide a rich enough environment, and speciation will tend to occur. One lineage may evolve the ability to exploit an resource not exploited by another lineage. Now take that up a level, and think in terms of lineage survival as well. Lineages in which the self-replication system generates an optimal rate of variance production - not too much, not too little, will tend to adapt to more environments, and this speciate more readily, as well as adapting longitudinally to environmental changes more readily. Those lineages are less likely to go extinct than other lineages, and even if some lineages are wiped out by catastrophe, some descendent lineages have a chance of surviving. Now keep going, and lineages that hit on some method of swapping and recombining during reproduction, so that instead of cloning themselves, they "mate" in some way, exchanging genetic material. Now evolution can speed up, because beneficial sequences can be propagated independently of deletious ones, resulting in the concentration of beneficial alleles in individual organisms, as well as the maintenance of a pool of variance that enables the population to adapt to changing environmental conditions, and to speciate to exploit new niches. Now consider lineages that have evolved some basic motility, and resource/hazard detection mechanism, perhaps initially a mere reflexive response to chemical signals, but hugely enhancing survival. We have the beginnings of predictive ability, with survival-enhancing behavioural responses to threat and promise. Also the beginnings of the capacity to respond to chemical signals from organisms of their own species, laying the foundations for multi-cellular organisms. Keep going, and you start to get predation behaviour, and simple behavioural planning. We've come along way towards Mozart already! I think I'll stop there, and say "the rest is history".
In my opinion, microbe-to-Mozart materialistic philosophy requires a helluva lot of blind faith.
No, just straightforward logic and an unimaginably large number of generations and organisms.
I mention Mozart because human life is obviously so much more than just survival and passing on one’s selfish genes. It’s about purpose, meaning, ethics, values, art, music, mathematics, creativity of all sorts, and yes, science, which should be about pursuing the evidence wherever it leads.
Of course. With forward modelling and the ability to select actions based on remote goals, organisms started to free themselves from what I call "the tyranny of the immediate". And with language capacity came the opportunity to bootstrap ourselves into a state where those goals could be represented symbolically, and not only were we free from the "tyranny of the immediate" but could command a representation of time itself, with abstract learning, abstract planning, understanding of consequences, theory of mind capacity, andn with it, the ability to understand the minds of others, and their feelings, and the capacity for compassion. And the capacity to reify beauty, and create it for sheer pleasure.
There is an obviously huge discontinuity between humans and all other life forms, which Darwinists seem to have a pathological obsession denying.
Not at all. There is certainly a very obvious point of deflection, I wouldn't call it a discontinuity, and we know, from the skulls of our forbears, that our brain evolution was incremental, if not linear. But I'd say that the huge non-linearity was the ability to transmit culture, and especially by way of language. Once you have cultural transmission, you have a whole new vector for inheritance. And once you have language you not only have a whole new vector for culture, but an environment in which language capacity itself will be hugely beneficial, in terms of reproduction. That's what I mean by "bootstrap". Yes, I think humans are qualitatively different from all other animals, in that the magnitude of the quantitative difference between our cognitive capacity and that of our nearest primate relatives is colossal. And specifically, allows us to do supremely well some things that the smartest of them can only do to very slighlty degree, namely represent events in time symbolically, and abstract concepts including the theory that minds exist and are possessed by others ("Theory of Mind capacity") Those are the capabilities that gave us Mozart, IMO, and Gil :) It was a long journey, but worth it:)Elizabeth Liddle
October 16, 2011
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I'm not sure how one determines that a three billion year old event was sudden, or that it had no incremental precursors. That seems to be a mystery.Petrushka
October 16, 2011
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