Review of Spetner's book (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 14:46 (3651 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 14:57

DAVID: How does one hypothesize without a degree of imagination, once chance is removed from consideration?-dhw: One doesn't. But one does not imagine that one's knowledge is such that one can dismiss a hypothesis just because it might conflict with one's preconceptions (e.g. that God planned every innovation in advance).-DAVID: You have side-slipped my point: philosophically there are three ways to explain evolution: chance, requirement under laws of nature, and design. Chance is rejected by both of us; natural law requirements is unreasonable; only design is left to turn to, as far as I am concerned. What can you turn to: the picket fence, the non-answer. your choice. [...] Wagner describes controlling networks of genes, but has no idea how they accomplish their tasks of creating an animal. No one does. We are at a very early stage of knowledge.-I'm not sure what you mean by “natural law requirements”, but otherwise I accept your philosophical point. That hardly justifies your rejecting the hypothesis of an autonomous inventive mechanism while at the same time agreeing that no one knows how genes create animals and we are at a very early stage of knowledge!-DAVID: I agree that your all-inclusive theistic theory is almost reasonable. What I also know is that cells and organisms work at a molecular signaling level. They do not have actual consciousness to invent complex life patterns. Those basic patterns came from the original genomes.-We all know that cells and organisms work at a molecular signalling level, but you assume that is all they can do, even though you also know that human and animal organisms can work at a much higher level. “Consciousness” is a misleading word, as it can imply self-awareness of the human type. Scientists like Margulis, Shapiro, McClintock and Albrecht-Buehler have shown repeatedly that cells have their own kind of “intelligence”. In my hypothesis the original genomes contained the inventive mechanism (“intelligence”) which was passed on and created the basic patterns as and when environmental conditions demanded or allowed.-dhw: ...you are desperate to exclude an autonomous inventive mechanism because you think it would conflict with your belief that God preprogrammed all evolutionary innovations 3.7 billion years ago in order to produce humans. Do you really find one hypothesis more "scientific", more "reasonable" than the other?-DAVID: I exclude it for the reasons given. I don't see how an IM is conscious enough to do that type of planning. At least you seem to have stopped implying that 'sentient cells' are consciously brilliant enough to create all of their own evolution, or is that still your thought?-Again I would avoid “conscious”. I do regard an autonomous inventive mechanism (with the theistic version allowing for dabbling) as a more likely hypothesis than chance or your divine preprogramming of the first cells with all innovations and complex lifestyles, including route maps for every migrating organism, for the next 3.7 billion years (see under DILEMMAS). “All of their own evolution” would include the source of the IM, and there I remain firmly on the fence - the alternatives to your inexplicably conscious first-cause energy being unbelievable chance and an inexplicably evolving panpsychist consciousness.