causation (Introduction)

by GateKeeper , Thursday, June 12, 2014, 23:58 (3817 days ago) @ dhw

Dhw: What we think we know (nothing is absolute) is that all forms of life have descended from earlier forms, apart from the very first, whose origin is unknown. If common descent is true (it seems logical to me), then there has to be some kind of mechanism ... origin also unknown ... that has enabled organisms to adapt and innovate in accordance with environmental change. Otherwise life would not have progressed beyond the level of bacteria. How do you think it "works"? 
> 
> GATEKEEPER: I don't know how it works.
> use what you know, don't describe it with what you don't know. I mean look at the paper we read on baryon number. Did you read the axioms? We do not have to accept them. But they worked for that paper. 
> Start at what we do know. Look around you and see what is working. Use that. I can tell that you know enough already. The stuff you do not know isn't holding you back.
> 
> Once again, I'm sorry, but I thought I had done just that ... other than the caveat about our "knowledge" not being absolute. Everything I think I know about evolution points to there being a mechanism that enables organisms to adapt and innovate in accordance with environmental change, and I've explained why. The fact that I do not know the origin of that mechanism has not held me back from offering my hypothesis, which in my view explains the higgledy-piggledy bush far more coherently than David's divine preplanning and Darwin's random mutations. Perhaps you could just tell me what it is you object to.-I don't object to anything you have done. I think you are doing a great job actually. What notion can tie your's and david's notions together so that most people learning about it can at least say it is reasonable. Even if they don't want to follow it.