Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 04, 2016, 13:41 (2760 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We know that need results in epigenetic changes. At this level need drives alterations, some of which are carried over but without much dynamic change in species phenotype. Vocal anatomy changes are all major alterations of anatomy in new species. Your theory requires an explanation of how new species appear, which we don't have. You accept it is not gradual, but jumps. I accept saltation from God. How does your 'need' approach make the jumps? There is no answer, just your desire that it can happen.-I am suggesting that major alterations may be caused by precisely the same process as minor alterations. We know the latter take place, and that means there is a mechanism by which organisms can change their structure. Nobody knows just what that same mechanism is capable of, or how it works, because nobody has observed innovations that result in new species. The analogous evolution of fish fins to legs, which you continue to ignore, suggests that major changes CAN take place in response to need, or do you think your God gave fish readymade legs before they ventured onto dry land? Sorry to keep repeating this question, but I am anxious to get an answer.
 
On a theistic level, if your God gave organisms the power to alter their own structure, why do you assume he limited it to minor alterations? What evidence do you have for your own hypothesis of divine programming and/or dabbling? How did he do it? There is no answer, just your desire that your God should control every innovation and every natural wonder in the history of evolution.-dhw: How itty bitty are itty bitty changes? We know that the cell communities cooperate very quickly to enable organisms to cope with new conditions (adaptation). If they don't, they perish. And the adaptations then become the norm. That's all we have to go by. (Even a human weed can transform himself into a muscle man with the “effort” of a few exercises.) In the case of the vocal organs, they already existed, and the fossil record suggests much the same process (saltation, not itty-bitty).
DAVID: Please re-read this contorted paragraph. That is my argument.-Where is the contortion? I have supported saltation against Darwin's gradualism throughout our discussions. It is you who try to make out that cellular intelligence could only work through itty bitty gradualism.-dhw: If the brain received consciousness, which came first: consciousness or the brain? And are you now saying that it was the enlarged brain that engendered self-consciousness, or that the brain had to grow in order to receive self-consciousness?

DAVID: It is my theory that apes are conscious, but not really self-aware as we are. 
I don't think anyone would disagree that the human level of consciousness and self-awareness is far beyond that of the apes.-DAVID: Our consciousness appeared as the brain grew larger frontal lobes and received it.-If - in accordance with your belief in dualism - our brain received it, which came first, our consciousness or the brain?