Practical Consequences (Humans)

by dhw, Friday, November 06, 2009, 13:35 (5495 days ago) @ xeno6696

Although the subject of transitional forms in evolution is a sidetrack, it's relevant to our overall discussion. Newman's reference is specifically to fossils proving innovation, but you rightly point out that "deficient" means "not enough", i.e. there are some. A rapid Google on the subject suggests that the very few examples are controversial, but we need expert guidance on this. If you're right, I will have to agree that my parallel was inaccurate. I hope you got the general message, though, which is that people demand evidence for theories they don't believe in, but argue that the evidence hasn't been found yet when it's a theory they do believe in. That is precisely the situation with Greta Christian's consciousness thesis on which you've challenged me.-First, though we need to clear up our usual problem: when I say I don't believe X, you generally insist that I have to believe Y! We don't know how consciousness works, where it comes from, or even what it is, and so I say the assertion that it is ENTIRELY biological is no more than a subjective belief. Your 'challenge' is that we have no evidence that rocks etc. are conscious, the "claim of a universal consciousness has the burden of proof of how this consciousness operates", and it's not enough to say, "We don't know what causes consciousness, therefore we can consider that the cosmos is conscious." I agree.-Greta Christian's belief that consciousness is ENTIRELY biological is subjective, because there's no scientific evidence to support it. The claim that there is a universal intelligence is also subjective, because there's no scientific evidence to support it. My own post doesn't even go so far as to propose a universal intelligence. I wrote that from what we actually know, "I could...[not I do]...infer that it stems from a source beyond our comprehension." And I could also infer that the long history of visions etc. constitutes evidence. This does not mean that I now believe in the paranormal and in a UI. The point of my post was to show that GC's beliefs are no less subjective than those which she's criticizing. The much pilloried "God-of-the-gaps" is a way of filling the gaps in our knowledge by belief in a power beyond our comprehension. GC fills the gaps in her knowledge by the belief that science will one day come up with a material, biological explanation. If we go back to the start of this post, then, the argument runs: 1) there's no evidence for an outside power, so we should reject the theory; 2) there's no evidence for an entirely biological explanation, but one day we believe it will be found, so we should accept the theory. -From my position on the fence, I can understand very well why some people believe the gap-filled evidence points to there being nothing beyond the material world, while others believe it points to some sort of intelligent power that set things in motion, but neither group can fill the gaps convincingly enough to make me jump down on their side. However, I have no quarrel with those that have jumped, providing they acknowledge the subjectivity of their beliefs, and don't insist that anyone who disagrees is an idiot or deserves to be assassinated.-This will be my last post for three or four days, but I'll try to fill the gaps when I get back. As always, my thanks to everyone for these stimulating discussions, and let's all keep our fingers crossed for Matt's acceptance to grad school.