Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

At the north pole, all directions are south …

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Further to kairosfocus’ “Self-aware mindedness and the problem of trying to get North by going West . . .”, where he writes,

There is a fundamental distinction between blind, signal processing based computation and insightful, self aware rational reasoning.

So, the fact that self-aware mindedness exists is pointing to something that an a priori materialism influenced age has great difficulty acknowledging. Namely, that it is at least possible that the material world we experience as self aware conscious persons may not be the only world we experience.

In a world dominated by evolutionary materialism dressed up in a lab coat, that may be very hard to recognise or allow in the door.

It is a delusion of a naturalist age that machines can have consciousness. Whatever machines have, that isn’t it.

Essentially, the computer does not care if it is on or off. But even an intelligent animal needs some stimulation, and a human being deteriorates rapidly without it.

Now that naturalism (materialism) rules, it can only head south because it actually has no answers, only explanations why there shouldn’t be any or that we haven’t evolved so as to understand them, or … some similar explanation will jostle the others.

Prediction: It will get crazier, but naturalists will be less able to recognize that.

See also: Naturalism only ever really had one strong idea: Ban ideas

Comments
PS: If you were to see functional, code based tapes driving an NC machine, what would you conclude about the causal source? So, what do you conclude when you see . . . read and scroll down . . . a tape based NC machine implemented with molecular nanotech making proteins in the living cell, and why?kairosfocus
June 28, 2014
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I-T: >> On one side, they say science needs to consider information as real.>> 1 --> As real as propositions, implication and numbers, or truths like 2 + 3 = 5. >>On the other side (as year), computers are despised as inadequate.>> 2 --> This reads like a caricature of things I have been pointing out, e.g. here. 3 --> To point out, on decades of working with computers, analogue and digital, and studying their nature, even designing a modest case in point, that computers compute as opposed to contemplate, is not to despise computers, it is to have a realistic estimate of strengths and limitations. (Remember, system development is in a multiple hard- and soft- ware fault environment, it is of a different order from ordinary debugging. It is a triumph when you get the first lines of a sanity check machine coded program to run. I cannot forget the day when I just said, forget it, let me try a silvered mica cap instead of cer-disc and walked next door to requisition from the "you better have a good reason . . . " section of the lab stocks. Worked like magic on decoupling a particularly stubborn glitch. About 100:1 on cost at the time, I justified it as, this is one-off.) 4 --> Perhaps, you were not around for the flaw in the original Pentiums, or maybe you are unfamiliar with the GIGO principle. Wiki:
Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) in the field of computer science or information and communications technology refers to the fact that computers, since they operate by logical processes --> instantiated by blind cause-effect hard and soft ware chains], will unquestioningly process unintended, even nonsensical, input data ("garbage in") and produce undesired, often nonsensical, output ("garbage out").
>>On the third side, designed machines (such as computers) are taken as evidence for intelligent design.>> 5 --> Strawman. 6 --> Computers, which are highly complex, functionally specific organised entities, are manifestations of FSCO/I. 7 --> As manifestations of FSCO/I, they fall under the principle that per vera causa [cf Newton's rules of reasoning], we ought to explain based on reliably observed sufficient causes for phenomena. 8 --> As in, there is but one empirically substantiated, reliably and even routinely observed, analytically plausible cause of FSCO/I. Design. 9 --> If you have a response that overturns this, feel free to show it here, in the presence of the argument as summarised yet again here at UD. >>Does any one ID advocate hold all three sides simultaneously? Is that possible? What is really going on?>> 10 --> You have set up and knocked over a strawman caricature. KFkairosfocus
June 28, 2014
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PS: Ever pondered the force of the idea that a point has location but not size? This is a consequence . . .kairosfocus
June 28, 2014
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Mung, you have aptly captured the difference between ground-consequent and cause-effect chains, or inductive inferences. Once we understand what a pole is on a roughly spherical rotating planet, we will see as rational creatures, that at the North Pole all directions away from it MUST be Southwards, and that we have to have divergence in space for E-W to emerge. As a consequence also, before any expeditions are launched, the logic of the 3-d geometry implies that all expeditions towards the Pole must originate to the S, and must move northwards, to reach the pole. Sleds and dogs and parkas have nothing to do with it. Sheer, brute deductive logic. Rooted in the first principles of right reason that so many objectors seem to find ever so unpalatable. KFkairosfocus
June 28, 2014
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It may in fact be the case that at the north pole, all directions are south, but if this is in fact the case, what are the paths to reach this conclusion? Logic and Reason. Experiment How many expeditions to reach the North Pole must be launched for it to become a scientific fact that all expeditions to reach the North Pole originate from the South? Epiphany, anyone?Mung
June 27, 2014
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F/N: Information, in my considered opinion, is at least as real as numbers and similar entities, and is encoded or impressed into signals and codes which are expressed in glyphs and/or signals. Where, the very technology you are using to read this reflects that reality and its value. KFkairosfocus
June 23, 2014
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Correction: Thank you- I CAN'T address what you say until what you said is verified as meaningful.Joe
June 23, 2014
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Ian Thompson:
ID people seem to be slightly conflicted, or some of them at least. On one side, they say science needs to consider information as real. On the other side (as year), computers are despised as inadequate. On the third side, designed machines (such as computers) are taken as evidence for intelligent design. Does any one ID advocate hold all three sides simultaneously? Is that possible? What is really going on?
Please provide a reference to support what you are saying about IDists. Thank you- I can address what you said until what you said is verified as meaningful.Joe
June 23, 2014
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PS: Perhaps, in your reflections, you may need to ponder the way that abductive inference to best, empirically anchored explanation works as a firm of induction in the modern sense. Inductive reasoning infers that certain evident premises support and make more likely a conclusion to a reasonable degree, perhaps up to moral certainty, often up to a favourable balance of likelihoods. Abduction works by considering a cluster of evident but puzzling facts F = {F1, F2, . . . Fn}. Candidate explanations are examined and compared in light of strengths and limitations. The one which is superior to an adequate degree to meet the inductive test is preferred as best current explanation. If the explanation then predicts further facts, and these are found, this deepens confidence. (Predicts, here, includes new facts about the past etc.) That open-ended comparative process secures abductive reasoning and its provisional [but empirically reliable] conclusions from vicious circularity. In exploring the deep past of origins, we can only examine traces in the present and abductively infer to the best explanation. In that context, as Newton, Lyell and Darwin alike noted, it is important that candidate causal explanations of objects or circumstances that we cannot directly inspect, should meet the test that they are reliably and uniquely able to causally generate key features of the traces we can access -- the vera causa test.kairosfocus
June 23, 2014
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IT: Whoever said that we "despise . . ." computers? We are just aware of their nature and limitations. Namely, however important and useful it is in its own right, GIGO-limited computation is not contemplation. Similarly, that invariably computational entities are FSCO/I rich points to their being designed. The point there is that functionally specific complex organisation and associated information has been tested and found an empirically reliable and analytically plausible characteristic signature of design as cause, and so where we see the sign we infer to the cause. That we know the causal history of say a Pentium chip makes that a part of the process of evaluating the reliability of FSCO/I as a sign. Per the vera causa principle, as we see that invariably where FSCO/I exists, we have design, and as the other suggested sources of high contingency, chance and/or mechanical necessity cannot credibly account for it, we are entitled inductively to conclude that with high reliability other entities we did not see the actual cause of are designed if they exhibit FSCO/I. This BTW, includes the nanomachine technologies in the cell involving D/RNA and the protein manufacturing process, and it involves the neural network systems we find in brains. Such inference in light of vera causa, on reliable sign, is not the circular reasoning you are suggesting. Please, take due note, pause, and think again. KFkairosfocus
June 23, 2014
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(In the above post, I should have added to 'the other side' that: computers are generally held to embody and process information, but without consciousness or love or intention.Ian Thompson
June 22, 2014
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ID people seem to be slightly conflicted, or some of them at least. On one side, they say science needs to consider information as real. On the other side (as year), computers are despised as inadequate. On the third side, designed machines (such as computers) are taken as evidence for intelligent design. Does any one ID advocate hold all three sides simultaneously? Is that possible? What is really going on?Ian Thompson
June 22, 2014
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Unlike men, computers stop to ask for directions all the time (sort of).Mung
June 22, 2014
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I have a spare computer here that I've just dropped into a sensory deprivation chamber. Stay tuned for the results. http://floatseattle.com/ Altered States anyone?Mung
June 22, 2014
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