Different in degree or kind (Introduction)
by David Turell 
, Monday, October 28, 2013, 17:10 (3831 days ago)
A book explores the issue:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mind-reviews-the-gap&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20131028
Different in degree or kind
DAVID: A book explores the issue:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mind-reviews-the-gap&WT.mc_id=SA_D...-QUOTE: Although he presents both "romantic" and "killjoy" interpretations of animal ability, his sure-handed, fascinating book aims neither to exaggerate the wisdom of animals nor to promote the exceptionalism of human beings.-This sounds well balanced, but the next quote requires close attention. QUOTE: Instead Suddendorf distills the gap into two overarching capacities: the ability to imagine different scenarios beyond what our senses perceive and a strong drive to link our minds together, by looking to one another for information or understanding. These two capacities transform common animal traits into distinctly human ones: communication into language, memory into planning, and empathy into morality. Suddendorf reminds us that many extinct hominins shared both capacities, making them more similar to us than to the great apes.-There is scarcely anything in the above paragraph that can't be applied to our fellow creatures. They can certainly think beyond what their senses perceive, because they plan for the future, remember the past, and can work out strategies for coping with their enemies. Our own imagination of course stretches way beyond our needs, but I would say that our art, philosophy, literature, music etc. are the result of our self-awareness, which is unquestionably a degree of consciousness far, far beyond that of other beings. However, I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions from this ... I still see no reason to assume that we are anything but descendants from earlier primates. As for the rest: many animals, birds, insects, micro-organisms have a strong drive towards cooperation, and look to one another for information, which would be no use without understanding or communication! If we take language to be a means of communication, then we can say that ours is far more complex than those of our fellow creatures ... but that means degree, not kind. It could only be kind if we insisted on a definition of language that restricted it to human language! Memory into planning is essential if non-humans are to survive. Does anyone seriously think that adults don't teach their young in the animal world? Empathy into morality is tricky, since it's difficult to separate morality from what is deemed to be good for society ... whether human or animal. But there are many cases of "love" and sacrifice between members of the same species, and even between domestic animals and their owners. In my view we take far too much for granted, and the approach that emphasizes difference in kind risks engendering the same insensitivity (lack of empathy) towards our fellow animals as towards fellow humans who are also in some way "different" from ourselves.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Friday, November 01, 2013, 04:39 (3827 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw;There is scarcely anything in the above paragraph that can't be applied to our fellow creatures. They can certainly think beyond what their senses perceive, because they plan for the future, remember the past, and can work out strategies for coping with their enemies. Our own imagination of course stretches way beyond our needs, but I would say that our art, philosophy, literature, music etc. are the result of our self-awareness, which is unquestionably a degree of consciousness far, far beyond that of other beings.-I cannot understand that your statement has any depth of understanding. You must be trying to needle me. What a preposterous argument. Sure squirrels plan instinctively for the future by storing nuts. My horses remember the past because they have learned their training. Who trained them? Not themselves. And then to propose that selfawareness leads to aesthetics and artistic presentation is based on what reearch?- > dhw: However, I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions from this ... I still see no reason to assume that we are anything but descendants from earlier primates. -There is no conclusion you can draw. We are similar to the earlier hominins, but they are light years in advance from the apes and monkeys. In tool use we may be closer to corvids.- > dhw: If we take language to be a means of communication, then we can say that ours is far more complex than those of our fellow creatures ... but that means degree, not kind. It could only be kind if we insisted on a definition of language that restricted it to human language!-Our language capacity is not duplicated in any way by animals. It allows us the complicated thought and philosophy we practice. And to what language of animals do your refer that in any way is like ours? Horses nicker, neigh and snort. Please interpret. I can interpret nicker. It means notice me, I'm noticing you. That thought is really deep isn't it?-> dhw: Memory into planning is essential if non-humans are to survive. Does anyone seriously think that adults don't teach their young in the animal world?-Of course they do. We call it instinct. Very rudimentary-> dhw: Empathy into morality is tricky, since it's difficult to separate morality from what is deemed to be good for society ... whether human or animal. But there are many cases of "love" and sacrifice between members of the same species, and even between domestic animals and their owners.-Of course there is. I don't see where that thought goes. -> dhw: In my view we take far too much for granted, and the approach that emphasizes difference in kind risks engendering the same insensitivity (lack of empathy) towards our fellow animals as towards fellow humans who are also in some way "different" from ourselves.-I always knew you were a bleeding heart liberal. I am very sensitive toward all animals even though, perish the thought, I know I am different in kind. The Bible carefully tells me I have a responsibility having dominion over all animals and plants. I never kill lightly, but I must kill all copperheads around the ranch to protect my dog. I kill hornet nests. Susan is very sensitive to their sting. I kill scorpions. Their sting is 24 hours of hurt. I have the human ability to undertstnd and make those choices. I imagine you do also, but that makes you a killer like I am.-You are not an african ape like Dawkins proclaimed, but you are sounding like Dawkins, and your real brain deserves better than that.
Different in degree or kind
Dhw: There is scarcely anything in the above paragraph that can't be applied to our fellow creatures. They can certainly think beyond what their senses perceive, because they plan for the future, remember the past, and can work out strategies for coping with their enemies. Our own imagination of course stretches way beyond our needs, but I would say that our art, philosophy, literature, music etc. are the result of our self-awareness, which is unquestionably a degree of consciousness far, far beyond that of other beings.-DAVID: I cannot understand that your statement has any depth of understanding. You must be trying to needle me. What a preposterous argument. Sure squirrels plan instinctively for the future by storing nuts. My horses remember the past because they have learned their training. Who trained them? Not themselves. And then to propose that selfawareness leads to aesthetics and artistic presentation is based on what reearch?-Not trying to needle you, but trying to point out that virtually all our activities are sophisticated developments of the basic instincts we've inherited from the animals we're descended from. Non-humans would not be able to survive if they didn't plan for the future, train their young, protect and feed themselves etc. We have institutionalized all these instinctive activities: we have schools to train our young, we have industries to provide food and shelter. Degree, not kind.-As for the self-awareness which exceeds by far the consciousness of other animals, we ask questions they don't ask, and we seek to express ourselves and our reactions to the world we live in. One important aspect of this is religion, which arises from our self-aware ability to ask questions about how we got here and what makes our world tick. So-called "primitive" art was linked to religion, as an attempt to communicate with the powers that created us. Today religion has lost its influence, but humans still need to express themselves and their personal vision, and to share their vision with others. All the arts grow from the self-awareness of the artist/writer/sculptor/composer, whose first point of contact is himself, since he has to dig the work out of his own mind before being able to present it to others.-DAVID: Our language capacity is not duplicated in any way by animals. It allows us the complicated thought and philosophy we practice. And to what language of animals do your refer that in any way is like ours? Horses nicker, neigh and snort. Please interpret. I can interpret nicker. It means notice me, I'm noticing you. That thought is really deep isn't it?-We're not talking about deep thought but about language as a means of communication. Each species has its own "language", which depends entirely on the physical means at its disposal. Our fellow mammals have voices, as we do, and they communicate by sound, as we did before we invented writing. But somehow our own mechanisms evolved (through changes in the respective cell communities) to allow for a greater variety. And so our sound language, as I see it, developed an infinitely greater degree of sophistication than the sound language of our fellow mammals. "Infinitely greater" ... degree, not kind.-DAVID: I always knew you were a bleeding heart liberal. I am very sensitive toward all animals even though, perish the thought, I know I am different in kind. [...]. I never kill lightly, but I must kill all copperheads around the ranch to protect my dog. [...] I have the human ability to undertstnd and make those choices. I imagine you do also, but that makes you a killer like I am.-This was in no way meant as an attack on you! I have no doubt that you treat your animals with the utmost kindness. And yes, I too am a killer. But you are as aware as I am of the suffering humans inflict on animals and on one another, justifying their cruelty with the argument that their victims are different from them.-I do, however, have a philosophical as well as a "bleeding heart liberal" argument. You "know" you are different in kind, and you believe your God's purpose in starting life and evolution was to produce us humans. I agree that our degree of consciousness and our mastery of the environment are almost infinitely greater than those of our animal forebears. However, I do not see that as evidence (a) that there is a God, or (b) that if there is, he geared evolution to the production of humans, or (c) that in our basic needs we are so far apart from our animal ancestors that we can claim to have no kinship (= to be of a different kind). I see our sophistication as a huge extension to but not a departure from our animal origins.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Friday, November 01, 2013, 15:10 (3827 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Not trying to needle you, but trying to point out that virtually all our activities are sophisticated developments of the basic instincts we've inherited from the animals we're descended from. Non-humans would not be able to survive if they didn't plan for the future, train their young, protect and feed themselves etc. We have institutionalized all these instinctive activities: we have schools to train our young, we have industries to provide food and shelter. Degree, not kind.-The jump in out abilities is enormous, but you don't seem to notice the size of the gap. > > dhw: As for the self-awareness which exceeds by far the consciousness of other animals, we ask questions they don't ask, and we seek to express ourselves and our reactions to the world we live in.......All the arts grow from the self-awareness of the artist/writer/sculptor/composer, whose first point of contact is himself, since he has to dig the work out of his own mind before being able to present it to others.-We don't have to dig, as we have been given the where-with-all tov easily conjure up all sorts of artisitic production and thought if so inclined. You really are agreeing with me > > We're not talking about deep thought but about language as a means of communication. Each species has its own "language", which depends entirely on the physical means at its disposal. Our fellow mammals have voices, as we do, and they communicate by sound, as we did before we invented writing......"Infinitely greater" ... degree, not kind.-Still helping my argument. We have true complex language, with syntax built-in. We speak and we write. All animals do is grunt, meow, bark, nicker, all onomatopoeia words we use to imitate their poor method of communication.- > > dhw: I do, however, have a philosophical as well as a "bleeding heart liberal" argument. You "know" you are different in kind, and you believe your God's purpose in starting life and evolution was to produce us humans. I agree that our degree of consciousness and our mastery of the environment are almost infinitely greater than those of our animal forebears. However, I do not see that as evidence (a) that there is a God, or (b) that if there is, he geared evolution to the production of humans, or (c) that in our basic needs we are so far apart from our animal ancestors that we can claim to have no kinship (= to be of a different kind). I see our sophistication as a huge extension to but not a departure from our animal origins.-We interpret those facts entirely differently. We have a kinship and a love for other animals. We have animal bodies, but God-like minds, excluding theodicy.
Different in degree or kind
DAVID: The jump in out abilities is enormous, but you don't seem to notice the size of the gap. -Our degree of consciousness is "far, far beyond that of other beings", our language has "an infinitely greater degree of sophistication than theirs", our sophistication as a "huge extension", and "Our degree of consciousness and our mastery of the environment are almost infinitely greater than those of our animal forebears." Not big enough for you? -dhw: ...All the arts grow from the self-awareness of the artist/writer/sculptor/ composer, whose first point of contact is himself, since he has to dig the work out of his own mind before being able to present it to others.-DAVID: We don't have to dig, as we have been given the where-with-all tov easily conjure up all sorts of artisitic production and thought if so inclined. You really are agreeing with me-If God exists, he must have given us and all other cell communities the wherewithal to do whatever we do. So he has given us our self-awareness and our ability to dig inside ourselves to produce all sorts of artistic production. I'm afraid your suggestion that artists don't have to dig, however, would only make sense if you thought your God dictated every word, note and brushstroke, and the artist was a mere automaton obeying instructions. I am emphatically disagreeing with you.-Dhw: We're not talking about deep thought but about language as a means of communication. Each species has its own "language", which depends entirely on the physical means at its disposal. Our fellow mammals have voices, as we do, and they communicate by sound, as we did before we invented writing......"Infinitely greater" ... degree, not kind.-DAVID: Still helping my argument. We have true complex language, with syntax built-in. We speak and we write. All animals do is grunt, meow, bark, nicker, all onomatopoeia words we use to imitate their poor method of communication.-What do you mean by "true complex language"? Since you talk of syntax and writing, clearly what you mean by language is human language, and so of course it's different from animal language. But animal, bird, insect and even bacterial languages as means of communication (which in this context is my understanding of language) have definite and varied meanings, and have proved perfectly adequate for their purposes over hundreds of millions of years. We have infinitely more complex messages to convey, and so our sounds are infinitely more complex than theirs. More complex = degree. Dhw: I do not see that [the huge gap] as evidence (a) that there is a God, or (b) that if there is, he geared evolution to the production of humans, or (c) that in our basic needs we are so far apart from our animal ancestors that we can claim to have no kinship (= to be of a different kind). I see our sophistication as a huge extension to but not a departure from our animal origins.-DAVID: We interpret those facts entirely differently. We have a kinship and a love for other animals. We have animal bodies, but God-like minds, excluding theodicy.-We are not far apart in our philosophy. Kinship and animal bodies, definitely. But I would say our minds are a mixture of animal and "godlike" (by which I mean far beyond the limitations of our animal mentality). I'm very happy with that, and I don't really care whether people count it as different in degree or in kind. The only reason why the distinction has any value at all for me is that I have a strong antipathy towards a totally anthropocentric view of the world we live in, because of the havoc it has caused and is still causing to other forms of life. That is why I prefer to dwell on the similarities, though it doesn't stop me from killing flies and mosquitoes in my bedroom! May I ask you now why the distinction is so important to you?
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Sunday, November 03, 2013, 01:17 (3826 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw:If God exists, he must have given us and all other cell communities the wherewithal to do whatever we do. So he has given us our self-awareness and our ability to dig inside ourselves to produce all sorts of artistic production. I'm afraid your suggestion that artists don't have to dig, however, would only make sense if you thought your God dictated every word, note and brushstroke, and the artist was a mere automaton obeying instructions. I am emphatically disagreeing with you.-I'm only suggesting that your writing ability is a gift of your brain. I know I don't have it. Each of us has different abilities, far in advance of poor chimps.-> > dhw; What do you mean by "true complex language"? Since you talk of syntax and writing, clearly what you mean by language is human language, and so of course it's different from animal language. But animal, bird, insect and even bacterial languages as means of communication (which in this context is my understanding of language) have definite and varied meanings, and have proved perfectly adequate for their purposes over hundreds of millions of years. We have infinitely more complex messages to convey, and so our sounds are infinitely more complex than theirs. More complex = degree.-If it is a huge gulf, which you admit, it is different in kind. How many degrees do iI need? It is a matter of opinion.- > > We are not far apart in our philosophy. Kinship and animal bodies, definitely. But I would say our minds are a mixture of animal and "godlike" (by which I mean far beyond the limitations of our animal mentality). I'm very happy with that, and I don't really care whether people count it as different in degree or in kind. The only reason why the distinction has any value at all for me is that I have a strong antipathy towards a totally anthropocentric view of the world we live in, because of the havoc it has caused and is still causing to other forms of life. ... May I ask you now why the distinction is so important to you?-Because, if we are different in kind, then evolution is not a chance unguided process. The point Adler made.
Different in degree or kind
Dhw: May I ask you now why the distinction is so important to you?-DAVID: Because, if we are different in kind, then evolution is not a chance unguided process. The point Adler made.-Thank you. Could you not believe this if it were put to you that, despite our many similarities to our animal forebears, our level of consciousness is so much more advanced than theirs that God must have deliberately designed it, as he did their and our complex organs? This would give you all the advantages of the ID argument without the irrelevance of degree versus kind.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Sunday, November 03, 2013, 19:00 (3825 days ago) @ dhw
Dhw: May I ask you now why the distinction is so important to you? > > DAVID: Because, if we are different in kind, then evolution is not a chance unguided process. The point Adler made. > > dhw: Thank you. Could you not believe this if it were put to you that, despite our many similarities to our animal forebears, our level of consciousness is so much more advanced than theirs that God must have deliberately designed it, as he did their and our complex organs? This would give you all the advantages of the ID argument without the irrelevance of degree versus kind.-But that is exactly the point Adler made. By showing it is obviously difference in kind, then the gap is huge and not bridged by simple evolutionary processes, requiring an intervention by God. Quite clear to me. Just as the Cambrian Gap suggests an intervention. The origin of life requires an intervention. The big bang looks like an intervention. Thus the evidence points to God.
Different in degree or kind
Dhw: May I ask you now why the distinction is so important to you?-DAVID: Because, if we are different in kind, then evolution is not a chance unguided process. The point Adler made.-dhw: Thank you. Could you not believe this if it were put to you that, despite our many similarities to our animal forebears, our level of consciousness is so much more advanced than theirs that God must have deliberately designed it, as he did their and our complex organs? This would give you all the advantages of the ID argument without the irrelevance of degree versus kind.-DAVID: But that is exactly the point Adler made. By showing it is obviously difference in kind, then the gap is huge and not bridged by simple evolutionary processes, requiring an intervention by God. Quite clear to me. Just as the Cambrian Gap suggests an intervention. The origin of life requires an intervention. The big bang looks like an intervention. Thus the evidence points to God.-The gap is huge whether you call it degree or kind. I agree that none of the gaps are bridged by simple evolutionary processes. That's why we have rejected Darwin's random mutations and gradualism, and have opted for Gould's punctuated equilibrium. There have clearly been jumps, but that is no reason to suppose that they were caused by the intervention of a mysterious, unknowable, hidden, self-aware whatever-it-may-be. We don't know the cause of the Big Bang, the origin of life, the cause of the Cambrian explosion, or the cause of human consciousness. They are a mystery which is not solved by substituting another mystery. Atheists have offered an equally mysterious alternative, and my panpsychist "third way" is subject to the same criticism. The evidence does not point to any of them. We don't know, we may never know, so it's all a matter of faith, and much as the various parties hate to admit it, none of these faiths has any scientific basis. They do, however, provide us with endless material for discussion!
Chosen to be Different in kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 05, 2013, 00:32 (3824 days ago) @ dhw
A philosophic look at our unusual descent:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38008/title/Dating-the-Origin-of-Us/-We didn't cross breed much and only we survived into the present.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 05, 2013, 01:24 (3824 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: The gap is huge whether you call it degree or kind. I agree that none of the gaps are bridged by simple evolutionary processes. That's why we have rejected Darwin's random mutations and gradualism, and have opted for Gould's punctuated equilibrium. There have clearly been jumps, but that is no reason to suppose that they were caused by the intervention of a mysterious, unknowable, hidden, self-aware whatever-it-may-be. We don't know the cause of the Big Bang, the origin of life, the cause of the Cambrian explosion, or the cause of human consciousness. They are a mystery which is not solved by substituting another mystery. Atheists have offered an equally mysterious alternative, and my panpsychist "third way" is subject to the same criticism. The evidence does not point to any of them. We don't know, we may never know, so it's all a matter of faith, and much as the various parties hate to admit it, none of these faiths has any scientific basis. They do, however, provide us with endless material for discussion!-But here is where I disagree. I think the facts you listed really do point to a mysterious, unknown, hidden, etc.,etc., etc. You have left out the issue of agency. There must be a first cause. Can you answer the most important question of all, 'why is there anything?', with panpsychism? Is that the first cause? Talk about mysterious!!
Different in degree or kind
dhw: We don't know the cause of the Big Bang, the origin of life, the cause of the Cambrian explosion, or the cause of human consciousness. They are a mystery which is not solved by substituting another mystery. Atheists have offered an equally mysterious alternative, and my panpsychist "third way" is subject to the same criticism. The evidence does not point to any of them. We don't know, we may never know, so it's all a matter of faith, and much as the various parties hate to admit it, none of these faiths has any scientific basis. They do, however, provide us with endless material for discussion!-DAVID: But here is where I disagree. I think the facts you listed really do point to a mysterious, unknown, hidden, etc.,etc., etc. You have left out the issue of agency. There must be a first cause. Can you answer the most important question of all, 'why is there anything?', with panpsychism? Is that the first cause? Talk about mysterious!!-We have discussed this ad nauseam. We have agreed that the first cause must be energy. You insist that this has always been self-aware. How come? That is one insoluble mystery. My panpsychist hypothesis is that unconscious energy evolved individual awarenesses within (and because of) the changing forms of matter that it produced. How come? That is another insoluble mystery. How chance can assemble the ingredients for life and consciousness is another insoluble mystery. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what first cause atheists suggest ... maybe they'd settle for unconscious energy too. You're right, though ... all three point to a mysterious, unknowable, hidden whatever. But yours is a single, self-aware whatever ... no more and no less mysterious than the others.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 05, 2013, 17:45 (3823 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: We have discussed this ad nauseam. We have agreed that the first cause must be energy. You insist that this has always been self-aware. How come? That is one insoluble mystery. My panpsychist hypothesis is that unconscious energy evolved individual awarenesses within (and because of) the changing forms of matter that it produced. How come? That is another insoluble mystery. How chance can assemble the ingredients for life and consciousness is another insoluble mystery. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what first cause atheists suggest ... maybe they'd settle for unconscious energy too. You're right, though ... all three point to a mysterious, unknowable, hidden whatever. But yours is a single, self-aware whatever ... no more and no less mysterious than the others.-We don't even know how the genome makes a phenotype. Talk about mysterious. There has to be a plan. Using our reality as a guide, plans come from intelligence. Unfortunately our brains eem to conjure up consciousness through changing DNA within the neuron, and all of it is probably acting at a quantum mechanical level, which we don't understand either. Amorphous disorganized energy is not a candidate for a reasonable theory, but a reasonable theory forces you to choose between chance and design.
Different in degree or kind
DAVID: We don't even know how the genome makes a phenotype. Talk about mysterious. There has to be a plan. Using our reality as a guide, plans come from intelligence. Unfortunately our brains eem to conjure up consciousness through changing DNA within the neuron, and all of it is probably acting at a quantum mechanical level, which we don't understand either. Amorphous disorganized energy is not a candidate for a reasonable theory, but a reasonable theory forces you to choose between chance and design.-As usual, you see clearly with one eye and keep the other firmly closed. You agree that the whole saga is one great mystery, and we understand nothing. You quite rightly pick holes in the hypotheses of chance and of unconscious energy, and yet you claim that some self-aware being of which you have not the slightest evidence or understanding must be responsible. What is reasonable about that? If order simply exists in the form of your God, how do you know that order does not exist in the form of a universe without a God? What we see is a non-stop sequence of comings and goings, so maybe that is the natural orderly/disorderly course taken by energy and matter, and has been so for ever and ever. You may cry: How do you explain life and consciousness? To which, alas, I must reply as Dawkins does: "How do you explain God?" That does not make either of you right or wrong. It merely makes a mockery of the claim that one hypothesis is more "reasonable" than the other.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Thursday, November 07, 2013, 02:31 (3822 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:If order simply exists in the form of your God, how do you know that order does not exist in the form of a universe without a God? -You are proposing an orderly form of quantum particles all arranged by an orderly set of natural laws, that just happened to arrange themselves into a universe by chance?-> dhw;What we see is a non-stop sequence of comings and goings,-No we don't. We see a Big Bang creating a very orderly universe which has the characteristics of allowing life that results in sentient humans who now are gaining a partial understanding how it all works. All by chance comings and goings. Read Nagel and see how unhappy he is and how he fights to retain his atheism which is now going down the drain as we discover more. Advancing science will destroy atheism.-> dhw: so maybe that is the natural orderly/disorderly course taken by energy and matter, and has been so for ever and ever. You may cry: How do you explain life and consciousness? To which, alas, I must reply as Dawkins does: "How do you explain God?" That does not make either of you right or wrong. It merely makes a mockery of the claim that one hypothesis is more "reasonable" than the other.-My last comment brings a very strong odor of teleology. And you remain stochastically inclined. Dawkins off hand remark is the usual example of his shallow thinking. I'd rather try to explain why there is anything.
Different in degree or kind
dhw: If order simply exists in the form of your God, how do you know that order does not exist in the form of a universe without a God? DAVID: You are proposing an orderly form of quantum particles all arranged by an orderly set of natural laws, that just happened to arrange themselves into a universe by chance?-I am not proposing, only offering alternatives. You are proposing an orderly form of quantum particles arranged by an orderly set of natural laws created by a single self-aware mind that just happens to have come from nowhere, been around for ever, and has the physical and mental powers to create anything from a universe to an amoeba. dhw; What we see is a non-stop sequence of comings and goings... DAVID: No we don't. We see a Big Bang creating a very orderly universe which has the characteristics of allowing life that results in sentient humans who now are gaining a partial understanding how it all works. [...]-What do you see in the universe that is not part of the non-stop sequence of comings and goings? Yes, there is order. And there is also disorder. And the orderly elements of the universe have resulted in life. That is as far as any of us can go ... the rest is speculation.-dhw: ...so maybe that is the natural orderly/disorderly course taken by energy and matter, and has been so for ever and ever. You may cry: How do you explain life and consciousness? To which, alas, I must reply as Dawkins does: "How do you explain God?" That does not make either of you right or wrong. It merely makes a mockery of the claim that one hypothesis is more "reasonable" than the other.-DAVID: My last comment brings a very strong odor of teleology. And you remain stochastically inclined. Dawkins off hand remark is the usual example of his shallow thinking. I'd rather try to explain why there is anything.-I do not remain stochastically inclined. I am an agnostic. This website is a direct result of my opposition to Dawkins' dogmatism, but if the question "How do you explain life and consciousness?" is not shallow, then nor is the question "How do you explain God?"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Friday, November 08, 2013, 01:51 (3821 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw; What do you see in the universe that is not part of the non-stop sequence of comings and goings? Yes, there is order. And there is also disorder. And the orderly elements of the universe have resulted in life. That is as far as any of us can go ... the rest is speculation.-Agreed. I just want speculation that has some founding in the current reality we have scientifically explored.-> > dhw: I do not remain stochastically inclined. I am an agnostic. This website is a direct result of my opposition to Dawkins' dogmatism, but if the question "How do you explain life and consciousness?" is not shallow, then nor is the question "How do you explain God?"-The website is excellent, the discussions civil, and we have a tentative conclusion that chance mutation and natural selection are not the answer to how evolution worked. Nor can we explain the appearance of the universe, of life, and of consciousness. All of these appear to require planning. Planning requires thought and therefore a mind to perform the planning. Why that mind is there for eternity is the only mystery. Something has to be eternal. There is no alternative to that statement. We do not obtain something from nothing. We can stop at this point in the discussion. I am satisfied not to go further than the thoughts in this paragraph. Remember I do not accept all of religions statements about the attributes of God. How can they know them. When Abraham asked God who he was, He said "I am who I am." Perfect reply. And I am immensely happy with that stopping point.
Different in degree or kind
dhw; What do you see in the universe that is not part of the non-stop sequence of comings and goings? Yes, there is order. And there is also disorder. And the orderly elements of the universe have resulted in life. That is as far as any of us can go ... the rest is speculation.-DAVID: Agreed. I just want speculation that has some founding in the current reality we have scientifically explored.-And you have kindly told us roughly how many scientific explorers (90%) of current reality support your speculation that a universal intelligence preprogrammed the first living cells to produce all the innovations leading to human beings.-dhw: I do not remain stochastically inclined. I am an agnostic. This website is a direct result of my opposition to Dawkins' dogmatism, but if the question "How do you explain life and consciousness?" is not shallow, then nor is the question "How do you explain God?"-DAVID: The website is excellent, the discussions civil, and we have a tentative conclusion that chance mutation and natural selection are not the answer to how evolution worked. -I have no problem with natural selection, but of course it does not explain innovation ... only why some innovations survive and others don't. Chance mutation and gradualism are the two aspects we have agreed to jettison. DAVID: Nor can we explain the appearance of the universe, of life, and of consciousness. All of these appear to require planning. Planning requires thought and therefore a mind to perform the planning. Why that mind is there for eternity is the only mystery. Something has to be eternal. There is no alternative to that statement.-Your "only mystery" is how eternal energy could have acquired consciousness. The atheist could also say that the "only mystery" is the appearance of life and consciousness on Earth. In both cases, wow, some mystery! Either of those is enough to make anybody sit on a picket fence.-DAVID: We do not obtain something from nothing. We can stop at this point in the discussion. I am satisfied not to go further than the thoughts in this paragraph. Remember I do not accept all of religions statements about the attributes of God. How can they know them. When Abraham asked God who he was, He said "I am who I am." Perfect reply. And I am immensely happy with that stopping point.-And of course I want you to be happy. BBella calls it The All That Is. Same idea. Only I don't think she gets it to talk.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, November 09, 2013, 00:44 (3820 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Your "only mystery" is how eternal energy could have acquired consciousness. The atheist could also say that the "only mystery" is the appearance of life and consciousness on Earth. In both cases, wow, some mystery! Either of those is enough to make anybody sit on a picket fence.-You make it sound as if the atheist doesn't recognize a first cause. And of course that is why they wsnt a cyclical universe or an eternal universe. Anything to get around a big bang. > > DAVID: We do not obtain something from nothing. We can stop at this point in the discussion. I am satisfied not to go further than the thoughts in this paragraph. Remember I do not accept all of religions statements about the attributes of God. How can they know them. When Abraham asked God who he was, He said "I am who I am." Perfect reply. And I am immensely happy with that stopping point. > > dhw: And of course I want you to be happy. BBella calls it The All That Is. Same idea. Only I don't think she gets it to talk.-But the religions give God all sorts of thoughts we somehow are to accept are real.
Different in degree or kind
dhw: Your "only mystery" is how eternal energy could have acquired consciousness. The atheist could also say that the "only mystery" is the appearance of life and consciousness on Earth. In both cases, wow, some mystery! Either of those is enough to make anybody sit on a picket fence.-DAVID: You make it sound as if the atheist doesn't recognize a first cause. And of course that is why they wsnt a cyclical universe or an eternal universe. Anything to get around a big bang.-I can't speak for all atheists, but since no-one knows what preceded the big bang (if it did indeed happen), and since you and I agree that the first cause is eternal energy, I see absolutely no reason why the big bang should be seen as supporting the God theory. It doesn't make the slightest difference to the argument whether our universe began with a bang, is one of a big-crunch cycle, is one in an existing multiverse, or has been here forever. We don't know what else exists or existed outside or before our universe, and eternity allows for whatever scenario you care to conjure up.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, November 09, 2013, 15:28 (3819 days ago) @ dhw
To return to the original debate please read the first part of three essays on the gap itself, human vs. animal mental capacity. Self-awaeness still remains the key in all its aspects:- http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-myth-of-the-continuum-of-creatures-a-reply-to-john-jeremiah-sullivan-part-one/
Different in degree or kind
PART ONE-DAVID: To return to the original debate please read the first part of three essays on the gap itself, human vs. animal mental capacity. Self-awareness still remains the key in all its aspects:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-myth-of-the-continuum-of-creature...-I began reading, then skimmed, and am now commenting on this muddled argument only out of respect for you, David. Not having read Sullivan, I can only go by what Dr Tovey tells us, but he explicitly condemns Sullivan for his "scientific failings", produces no scientific evidence that Sullivan is wrong, and repeatedly points out himself that nobody actually knows the truth about this subject! First Sullivan:-SULLIVAN: "All of this work and discovery appeared to reach a kind of crescendo last summer, when an international group of prominent neuroscientists meeting at the University of Cambridge issued "The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non-Human Animals," a document stating that "humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness." It goes further to conclude that numerous documented animal behaviors must be considered "consistent with experienced feeling states."-QUOTE: "Sullivan argues that each sentient animal has its own unique kind of subjectivity, and that each "kind of mind" occupies its own special space on a continuum of consciousness." TOVEY: The view that there is something special about the human mind is nowadays referred to as "human exceptionalism" ... a term recently coined by lawyer Wesley Smith. It remains a highly controversial but tenable position, among scientists who study animal cognition. As such, it deserves a proper scientific hearing.-Yes it deserves a proper scientific hearing (and a proper scientific definition), and good for the lawyer who gave it a scientific term, but it's still highly controversial. Does that mean that Sullivan and the dozen prominent neuroscientists are guilty of "scientific failings"? TOVEY: Second, Sullivan fails to address the vast literature on the neurological requirements for consciousness, which contradicts his thesis [...] Instead of a continuum, we see discontinuities: neuroscientists customarily distinguish between two distinct kinds of consciousness: primary consciousness (or the moment-to-moment awareness of sensory experiences and internal feelings such as emotions) and higher-order consciousness (also called "self-awareness") ...] His "discontinuity" is two extreme levels. We humans operate on both, but that doesn't mean there's nothing in between! Even Tovey later admits that some organisms (he restricts them to mammals and birds) have a degree of "higher order consciousness".-He quotes Suddendorf, whom we have already discussed. But Suddendorf "aims neither to exaggerate the wisdom of animals nor to promote the exceptionalism of human beings." -TOVEY: It is unwise to be too dogmatic about what animals can and can't do. Systematic research in the field of animal cognition has been going on for a little over a century, which makes it a relatively new field, in which scientists still have a lot to discover. Consequently, any scientific claim that the human mind is uniquely different from that of other animals must be regarded as provisional: future research may force us to change our minds. Nevertheless, a good case can be made for the view that mentally speaking, the human being is an animal like no other. -Yes of course, and a good case can be made for the view that mentally speaking the human being has many degrees more consciousness than the organisms from which he is descended, and that is what makes him an animal like no other. We are getting nowhere.
Different in degree or kind
PART TWO-TOVEY: In a nutshell: the view that self-awareness is a uniquely human trait is a scientifically respectable one.-It boils down to whether you think self-awareness is utterly lacking in every other species, which it has to be to qualify as "unique". If you think your dog yelping when kicked doesn't know he's in pain, won't remember you kicked him, and won't cower away from you tomorrow, then you think your dog has no self-awareness. He's not going to write articles about primary and higher order consciousness ... because although he has a DEGREE of self-awareness, it's nothing like as great as ours. But "nothing like as great" doesn't make "higher-order consciousness" UNIQUE to humans. Only the degree is unique.-TOVEY: I would like to preface my remarks on higher-order consciousness with a disclaimer. Researchers in the field of animal cognition are continually making new discoveries. It is impossible to foretell with any confidence what scientists will have to say about higher-order consciousness in animals, fifty years from now. What we can say is that judging from the evidence presently available to us, higher-order consciousness is likely to be confined to only a few species of mammals, and perhaps corvids (crows and their relatives) as well. It may even be unique to human beings. Perhaps he should have issued his disclaimer "preface" before attacking Sullivan and the twelve prominent neuroscientists for their "scientific failings". They MAY even be right. To add insult to his self-inflicted injury, he even agrees that higher order consciousness is likely to be present in mammals and corvids, so human uniqueness ... essential to "human exceptionalism" ... is only an unlikely maybe. Tovey quotes a remarkable set of figures based on the number of cortical neurons and synapses as a guide to consciousness: "The normalized complexity figures are now as follows: humans 45.5, dolphins 43.2, chimpanzees 41.8, elephant 41.8, gorilla 40.0, rhesus (monkey) 36.5, horse 34.8, dog 34.4, cat 32.7, rat 25.4, opossum 24.9, mouse 23.2."-I have no idea what this is meant to prove, but such figures look to me like gradations, or degrees, not difference in kind. Tovey cites Poole: elephants use more than 70 kinds of vocal sounds and 160 different visual and tactile signals, expressions, and gestures in their day-to-day interactions...Tovey speculates on the meanings, and asks: "Is this communication? Of course it is. But is it language? That is a different question altogether."-If by language you mean written and spoken use of words, it isn't. If you mean the use of sounds, smells, chemicals, movements, touch for the purpose of communication, it is. Most dictionaries will offer you both definitions.-Tovey answers a post from a reader, and his response contains the following: "...life-long monogamy (which of course presupposes a capacity for mental time travel and long-term planning) became the only practical way of rearing large-brained children. However, physical matter in and of itself is incapable of having the abstract thoughts required to make such a commitment, so in the absence of an immaterial human soul, Heidelberg man would have swiftly perished as a non-viable life-form. It was at this point that God endowed our ancestors with immaterial rational souls, enabling them to think rationally and support infants whose energy requirements would have made them impossible to feed otherwise. That was the point when I believe our ancestors became human beings."-Even if we disregard the birds and animals that practise monogamy, and the millions of humans that practise polygamy, the theory that the need for monogamy was the spur for God to endow our ancestors with immaterial rational souls suggests to me that Dr Tovey has an agenda that even you, David, might find hard to swallow.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Sunday, November 10, 2013, 19:49 (3818 days ago) @ dhw
PART TWO > > dhw: TOVEY: In a nutshell: the view that self-awareness is a uniquely human trait is a scientifically respectable one. > > dhw: It boils down to whether you think self-awareness is utterly lacking in every other species, which it has to be to qualify as "unique". If you think your dog yelping when kicked doesn't know he's in pain, won't remember you kicked him, and won't cower away from you tomorrow, then you think your dog has no self-awareness. He's not going to write articles about primary and higher order consciousness ... because although he has a DEGREE of self-awareness, it's nothing like as great as ours. But "nothing like as great" doesn't make "higher-order consciousness" UNIQUE to humans. Only the degree is unique.-I think that is a totally specious argument. You know darn well that feeling pain is not the type of self-awareness we should be discussing. The term self-awareness as used in philosophic discussion is tuned to only those higher mental capacities that we alone have. That was Adler's level of discussion.- > dhw: TOVEY: I would like to preface my remarks on higher-order consciousness with a disclaimer. Researchers in the field of animal cognition are continually making new discoveries. It is impossible to foretell with any confidence what scientists will have to say about higher-order consciousness in animals, fifty years from now. What we can say is that judging from the evidence presently available to us, higher-order consciousness is likely to be confined to only a few species of mammals, and perhaps corvids (crows and their relatives) as well. It may even be unique to human beings. > > dhw: Perhaps he should have issued his disclaimer "preface" before attacking Sullivan and the twelve prominent neuroscientists for their "scientific failings". They MAY even be right. To add insult to his self-inflicted injury, he even agrees that higher order consciousness is likely to be present in mammals and corvids, so human uniqueness ... essential to "human exceptionalism" ... is only an unlikely maybe. -What Torley is debating honestly, in my opinion, are levels of awareness that may in corvids involve that ability to do some future (for us) simple planning. Corvids are not at the level of self-analysis of their own actions. That is what you are not willing to think about, or recognize, because your position is so tenuous. > > dhw: Tovey quotes a remarkable set of figures based on the number of cortical neurons and synapses as a guide to consciousness: > I have no idea what this is meant to prove, but such figures look to me like gradations, or degrees, not difference in kind.-I had no idea what that really proved either.-> > > dhw; Even if we disregard the birds and animals that practise monogamy, and the millions of humans that practise polygamy, the theory that the need for monogamy was the spur for God to endow our ancestors with immaterial rational souls suggests to me that Dr Tovey has an agenda that even you, David, might find hard to swallow.-I should have warned you Dr Torley is a very committed Christian. He is quoted in my book in another context. I am sure he has a slant and this is what I do: I keep sorting out information on all sides, but I've reached my conclusions coming from an agnostic position. I had no idea in the beginnng where my reading would leave me.
Different in degree or kind
dhw: Does that mean that Sullivan and the dozen prominent neuroscientists are guilty of "scientific failings"? DAVID: We must interpret Torley as a theist. He is on my side of the debate, but as I analyze his interpretations they made me see the possible way of interpretating animal behavior in a 'less mental' way.-You have misunderstood virtually the whole of my post. I have painstakingly pointed out the contradictions and vacuousness of Dr Torley's attack on Sullivan. (Apologies for misreading his name.) He begins by accusing him of "scientific failings". It's hardly a scientific failing not to mention the term "human exceptionalism", which even Torley himself calls a highly controversial position.-dhw: His "discontinuity" is two extreme levels. We humans operate on both, but that doesn't mean there's nothing in between! Even Tovey later admits that some organisms (he restricts them to mammals and birds) have a degree of "higher order consciousness".-DAVID: The key is not the discontinuity but the emphasis on self-awareness, something you have continuously heard from me. That intrapective aspect of humans, the animals do not have at all. That alone is a major gap. Adler makes much of it.-Read Torley. There is a colon after "discontinuities", which he explains as being the two kinds of consciousness. I have pointed out that this does not mean discontinuity. You are substituting your own argument for his. Of course I accept our self-awareness as a "major gap", just as I would accept that there is a major gap between a student who gets 90% in an exam and a student who gets 10% in the same exam. I am answering Torley, not Adler.-DAVID: How many degrees of difference do you need before 'man is an animal like no other' to then iterpret as a difference in kind? Since we know the vast degrees of difference, I think your position is untenable.-I've never disputed that man is an animal like no other. An elephant is also an animal like no other. As I keep pointing out, the question of degree versus kind seems totally pointless to me, but your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution demands special treatment by God, and that is why it's important to you. If God guided evolution to the specialness of man, he also guided it to the specialness of elephants (or dogs ... see my post under "Intelligence"). If you believe evolution happened, but somehow humans are to be set apart from their animal ancestors, you are arguing for separate creation, as Torley does with his God suddenly endowing post Heidelberg homo with a soul. DAVID: You know darn well that feeling pain is not the type of self-awareness we should be discussing. The term self-awareness as used in philosophic discussion is tuned to only those higher mental capacities that we alone have. That was Adler's level of discussion.-Once again you are defending your own position and Adler's, but you directed me to Torley. Torley himself argues that mammals and corvids share in "higher-order consciousness". I am pointing out that his arguments are confused.-DAVID: What Torley is debating honestly, in my opinion, are levels of awareness that may in corvids involve that ability to do some future (for us) simple planning. Corvids are not at the level of self-analysis of their own actions. That is what you are not willing to think about, or recognize, because your position is so tenuous.-That is you and not Torley speaking. I hope you won't insult me by pretending that I don't know the difference between human and corvid intelligence. That is not my point, and you know it. I have made my point (yet again) in the paragraph referring to elephants. dhw: Tovey quotes a remarkable set of figures based on the number of cortical neurons and synapses as a guide to consciousness. I have no idea what this is meant to prove, but such figures look to me like gradations, or degrees, not difference in kind. DAVID: I had no idea what that really proved either.-If you read Torley instead of substituting your own (far clearer) arguments, and you read my criticisms of what he has written, perhaps you will recognize that this is only one example of the confusion.-dhw; Even if we disregard the birds and animals that practise monogamy, and the millions of humans that practise polygamy, the theory that the need for monogamy was the spur for God to endow our ancestors with immaterial rational souls suggests to me that Dr Tovey has an agenda that even you, David, might find hard to swallow. DAVID: I should have warned you Dr Torley is a very committed Christian. -I'd like to hear your own views on his theory that the need for monogamy led God to provide post-Heidelberg humans with a soul.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Monday, November 11, 2013, 21:45 (3817 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Read Torley. There is a colon after "discontinuities", which he explains as being the two kinds of consciousness. I have pointed out that this does not mean discontinuity. You are substituting your own argument for his. Of course I accept our self-awareness as a "major gap", just as I would accept that there is a major gap between a student who gets 90% in an exam and a student who gets 10% in the same exam. I am answering Torley, not Adler.- My problem is I've read Adler and understand the import of his argument, as we both do. Difference in kind means God exists. > > I've never disputed that man is an animal like no other. An elephant is also an animal like no other. As I keep pointing out, the question of degree versus kind seems totally pointless to me, but your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution demands special treatment by God, and that is why it's important to you. If God guided evolution to the specialness of man, he also guided it to the specialness of elephants (or dogs ... see my post under "Intelligence"). If you believe evolution happened, but somehow humans are to be set apart from their animal ancestors, you are arguing for separate creation, as Torley does with his God suddenly endowing post Heidelberg homo with a soul.-Yes, I'm on Torley's side. The ancient Hebrews (our ancestors) gave a different soul, but a soul, to animals.-> DAVID: I should have warned you Dr Torley is a very committed Christian. > > dhw: I'd like to hear your own views on his theory that the need for monogamy led God to provide post-Heidelberg humans with a soul.-I won't fall for that bait. I don't buy it either. As above, he is a very commited Christian. I don't know when ensoulment happened, but I equate it with the arrival of the very advanced human consciousness, whenever that happened. We don't even know if it was a gradual or a sudden event. If we could identify which type of event it would push the argument one way or the other toward degree or kind.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 00:56 (3817 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by unknown, Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 01:10
Here is a research scientist in animal behaviour, that Torley quotes from in his next article:-"Secondly, it struck me that, from a scientific view, we understand so little about animal consciousness (and indeed our own consciousness) that to make the claim that we do understand it, and that we now know which animals experience emotions, may not be the best way to make the case for animal welfare. Anthropomorphism (seeing animals as just like humans) and anecdote were assuming a place in the study of animal consciousness that, it seemed to me, leaves the whole area very vulnerable to being completely demolished by logical argument. A particular threat is posed by the so-called "kill-joy" explanations that are increasingly appearing in the philosophical and scientific literature. Kill-joy explanations are simple explanations for what have previously been thought to be examples of complex achievements by animals. A classic example is where the exciting claim that a horse or dog can count and do sums is replaced by the kill-joy explanation that all that the animal is doing is taking cues from a human, who is really doing the sums. Kill-joy explanations are now everywhere, "explaining away" many of the clever things animals were supposed to do, such as reading each other's minds, deceiving each other, and insightfully anticipating their futures."-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-stamp-dawkins/animal-welfare_b_1581615.html-It suggests that we have to be careful about how much consciousness we infer into studies of animal cleverness. It infers that we do not know if animals have any degree of phenomenal consciousness, defined as
henomenal consciousness: The subjective, feeling part of any conscious sensation-Taken from the same website is access consciousness, the consciousness of observation:-"Access consciousness The philosopher Ned Block distinguishes, on conceptual grounds, access consciousness from phenomenal consciousness (Block, 1999, 2005). Phenomenal consciousness corresponds to the subjective feeling of seeing red (as compared to the feeling of seeing green), while access consciousness is what is made accessible to multiple cognitive processes, including memory, language, and other behaviors. Phenomenal consciousness in isolation may correspond to consciousness without top-down attention, while the confluence of access and phenomenal consciousness occurs when the subject is attending to an object or event and is consciousness of it. Access consciousness is usually what is studied in the laboratory, while phenomenal consciousness encompasses experiences difficult to quantify."-http://www.klab.caltech.edu/koch/glossary.html-Torley makes much of the problems in research on animals and these terms they use make it clear to me why he does.
Different in degree or kind
DAVID: Here is a research scientist in animal behavior, that Torley quotes from in his next article:-"Secondly, it struck me that, from a scientific view, we understand so little about animal consciousness (and indeed our own consciousness) that to make the claim that we do understand it, and that we now know which animals experience emotions, may not be the best way to make the case for animal welfare. Anthropomorphism (seeing animals as just like humans) and anecdote were assuming a place in the study of animal consciousness that, it seemed to me, leaves the whole area very vulnerable to being completely demolished by logical argument. A particular threat is posed by the so-called "kill-joy" explanations that are increasingly appearing in the philosophical and scientific literature. Kill-joy explanations are simple explanations for what have previously been thought to be examples of complex achievements by animals. A classic example is where the exciting claim that a horse or dog can count and do sums is replaced by the kill-joy explanation that all that the animal is doing is taking cues from a human, who is really doing the sums. Kill-joy explanations are now everywhere, "explaining away" many of the clever things animals were supposed to do, such as reading each other's minds, deceiving each other, and insightfully anticipating their futures."-vhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-stamp-dawkins/animal-welfare_b_1581615.html-DAVID: It suggests that we have to be careful about how much consciousness we infer into studies of animal cleverness.-True, but her next paragraph suggests that we have to be careful about how LITTLE consciousness we infer into studies of animal cleverness:-"But kill-joy explanations do not kill off claims of animal consciousness, at least not if we continue to acknowledge how little we actually know about what animals subjectively experience. If we acknowledge that we don't really know whether a particular behavior implies conscious awareness or not, then all the kill-joy explanations in the world will have no effect. For all we know, a horse that takes its cues from its owner's body language is just as emotional and just as conscious as a mathematical genius. I personally see no reason at all why only clever animals should be conscious or have emotions, given that it does not take a great intellect to feel hunger or to experience pain. A very wide range of different animals are potentially part of my "consciousness club," membership of which is still undetermined and therefore unaffected by kill-joy explanations."-DAVID: It infers that we do not know if animals have any degree of phenomenal consciousness, defined as: Phenomenal consciousness: The subjective, feeling part of any conscious sensation.-Since Marian Stamp Hawkins is apparently concerned about animal welfare, I doubt if she would go along with that. In her conclusion she writes: "It is this search for real evidence that the Colorado biologist Marc Bekoff has wrongly interpreted as my "dismissing" many current studies. What I hope he will come to understand is that my concern is to make the case for animal emotions as watertight as possible and thereby to strengthen it." Marc Bekoff, another expert in the field, is far more insistent on the reality of animal conciousness. Perhaps you should read his article too, which is accessible through hers.-As for anthropomorphism, as I have said repeatedly, this approach puts carts before horses. Social animals came before social humans, and they laid the ground rules. If they hadn't felt pain and fear, cherished and trained their offspring, shared with one another, learned from mistakes, planned for the future etc., they wouldn't have survived. We are not imposing human values on them ... we inherited those values from them.-DAVID: Taken from the same website is access consciousness, the consciousness of observation: "Access consciousness The philosopher Ned Block distinguishes, on conceptual grounds, access consciousness from phenomenal consciousness (Block, 1999, 2005). Phenomenal consciousness corresponds to the subjective feeling of seeing red (as compared to the feeling of seeing green), while access consciousness is what is made accessible to multiple cognitive processes, including memory, language, and other behaviors. Phenomenal consciousness in isolation may correspond to consciousness without top-down attention, while the confluence of access and phenomenal consciousness occurs when the subject is attending to an object or event and is consciousness of it. Access consciousness is usually what is studied in the laboratory, while phenomenal consciousness encompasses experiences difficult to quantify."-http://www.klab.caltech.edu/koch/glossary.html-DAVID: Torley makes much of the problems in research on animals and these terms they use make it clear to me why he does.-I much prefer Torley's own distinction between primary consciousness (or the moment-to-moment awareness of sensory experiences and internal feelings such as emotions) and higher-order consciousness (also called self-awareness)...We can really do without the highfalutin terminology, but I'm glad something is clear to you.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 20:00 (3816 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: It infers that we do not know if animals have any degree of phenomenal consciousness, defined as: Phenomenal consciousness: The subjective, feeling part of any conscious sensation. > > dhw: Since Marian Stamp Hawkins is apparently concerned about animal welfare, I doubt if she would go along with that. In her conclusion she writes: "It is this search for real evidence that the Colorado biologist Marc Bekoff has wrongly interpreted as my "dismissing" many current studies. What I hope he will come to understand is that my concern is to make the case for animal emotions as watertight as possible and thereby to strengthen it." Marc Bekoff, another expert in the field, is far more insistent on the reality of animal conciousness. Perhaps you should read his article too, which is accessible through hers.-I read it, as I assumed you would. What is apparent is that the research is inconclusive, and we don't know how much phenomenal consciousness they have. We have two experts arguing with no decision, but you and I are broadening our knowledge of how animal research is approaching the problem. > > dhw: As for anthropomorphism, as I have said repeatedly, this approach puts carts before horses. Social animals came before social humans, and they laid the ground rules. ..... We are not imposing human values on them ... we inherited those values from them.-That is a huge leap of faith on your part. From our horses I know that they do not experience pain like we do, from the injuries we have cared for, but they can tell us when they hurt by their movements or posture. Horses herd together by instinct and have pecking orders, but they don't act like ant colonies. Ant colonies are a whole different ball of wax. Our inheritence from them is nil, judging by the social inventions of organisms at our level. Talk about anthropomorphising!!! > > DAVID: Torley makes much of the problems in research on animals and these terms they use make it clear to me why he does. > > dhw: I much prefer Torley's own distinction between primary consciousness (or the moment-to-moment awareness of sensory experiences and internal feelings such as emotions) and higher-order consciousness (also called self-awareness)...We can really do without the highfalutin terminology, but I'm glad something is clear to you.-These distinctions are important because they help us "mind the gap' as in London subways. You want to close the gap as something that simply happened in evolution for no reason. I am trying to explain the sudden appearance of the human intellect/consciousness. Your approach can't, nor do you seem to want an explanation.
Different in degree or kind
dhw: As for anthropomorphism, as I have said repeatedly, this approach puts carts before horses. Social animals came before social humans, and they laid the ground rules. ..... We are not imposing human values on them ... we inherited those values from them.-DAVID: That is a huge leap of faith on your part. From our horses I know that they do not experience pain like we do, from the injuries we have cared for, but they can tell us when they hurt by their movements or posture. Horses herd together by instinct and have pecking orders, but they don't act like ant colonies. Ant colonies are a whole different ball of wax. Our inheritence from them is nil, judging by the social inventions of organisms at our level. Talk about anthropomorphizing!!!-You are dodging around like a cat on a hot tin roof. Evolution doesn't jump from bacteria to horses to ants to humans! There is no huge leap of faith here either, but a hypothesis based on what we know ... or think we know ... about evolution. The first cooperation occurred when single cells merged to form multicellular organisms. Experts in the field have noted the way bacteria form communities, so that is not exactly science fiction. We know that all organs and organisms consist of cellular communities that cooperate. As evolution has proceeded, so cooperating communities have diverged. The more complex the community, the greater the degree of cooperation necessary. Ants are believed to have evolved about 120 million years ago from some kind of wasp ... so the history goes back many millions of years. You may be surprised to hear that I do not believe we are directly descended from ants. I believe we are descended from earlier forms of primate. But I believe ALL societies descended from those earlier cell communities, and ALL societies have had to follow certain basic principles in order to survive. I will now restore the crucial lines which you unfortunately omitted from my paragraph above: if social animals (among which I am happy to include ants) hadn't "felt pain and fear, cherished and trained their offspring, shared with one another, learned from mistakes, planned for the future etc., they wouldn't have survived." I am not saying all organisms and societies feel or act in the same way, but I am saying the ground rules have been inherited. In our case, directly from our primate ancestors, in the case of the ants I presume directly from their wasp ancestors, but in all cases organisms build on what came before them, right back to the first communities. Do you really believe that humans invented even the brief list I've offered above?
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Wednesday, November 13, 2013, 23:48 (3815 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw; You are dodging around like a cat on a hot tin roof.-Great play by a wonderful playwright, and she wasn't dodging.-> dhw: The first cooperation occurred when single cells merged to form multicellular organisms. Experts in the field have noted the way bacteria form communities, so that is not exactly science fiction. We know that all organs and organisms consist of cellular communities that cooperate.-Agreed. What we are arguing is that we do not know whether, with the passage of time, the cells learned on their own to cooperate or were made to cooperate by an injected force or an external force. I am convinced it is one of the two latter options. What is your option, since your intelligent cells seem to arrive out of nowhere?-> dhw> As evolution has proceeded, so cooperating communities have diverged. The more complex the community, the greater the degree of cooperation necessary. ..... I will now restore the crucial lines which you unfortunately omitted from my paragraph above: if social animals (among which I am happy to include ants) hadn't "felt pain and fear, cherished and trained their offspring, shared with one another, learned from mistakes, planned for the future etc., they wouldn't have survived." -That is the most anthropomorphic rendition I've ever heard. Ants are divided into queens, workers, soldiers, etc. by instinct. We have no idea how that developed, but I don't see the queen patting a baby ant on the head and saying, "be a good little soldier". They automatically enter their roles.->dhw: I am not saying all organisms and societies feel or act in the same way, but I am saying the ground rules have been inherited. In our case, directly from our primate ancestors, in the case of the ants I presume directly from their wasp ancestors, but in all cases organisms build on what came before them, right back to the first communities. Do you really believe that humans invented even the brief list I've offered above?-Having read books on hunter-gatherers and quoted that material in my last book, evolutionary psychologists definitely describe how humans had to invent their societal rules. It was ape-eat-ape before hominin groups began to form with some degree of cooperation and a developing morality. One of the current theories about the natural formation of religions was the necessity to codify some rules for human with human conduct. Of course, theologans like to claim that without God we wouldn't be moral, but I don't accept that. We had to learn tit-for-tat, and zero-sum games the hard way.
Different in degree or kind
dhw: The first cooperation occurred when single cells merged to form multicellular organisms. Experts in the field have noted the way bacteria form communities, so that is not exactly science fiction. We know that all organs and organisms consist of cellular communities that cooperate.-DAVID: Agreed. What we are arguing is that we do not know whether, with the passage of time, the cells learned on their own to cooperate or were made to cooperate by an injected force or an external force. I am convinced it is one of the two latter options. What is your option, since your intelligent cells seem to arrive out of nowhere?-A good and accurate summary. I am well aware of how convinced you are. Yes, cells and intelligence arrived out of nowhere. Life began, and nobody knows its origin. We have discussed three options: God, chance, panpsychist evolution. Dhw: As evolution has proceeded, so cooperating communities have diverged. The more complex the community, the greater the degree of cooperation necessary. ..... I will now restore the crucial lines which you unfortunately omitted from my paragraph above: if social animals (among which I am happy to include ants) hadn't "felt pain and fear, cherished and trained their offspring, shared with one another, learned from mistakes, planned for the future etc., they wouldn't have survived." -DAVID: That is the most anthropomorphic rendition I've ever heard. Ants are divided into queens, workers, soldiers, etc. by instinct. We have no idea how that developed, but I don't see the queen patting a baby ant on the head and saying, "be a good little soldier". They automatically enter their roles.-You agree that "we have no idea how that developed", just as we have no idea how any innovation occurred, but you refuse to consider the possibility that it developed through the intelligence of the organisms that started it. Yes, ants slot into their roles. So do we, though we now have infinitely more of them. You talk later of the hunter-gatherers. Were they automatons? Just like us, ants have adapted their lifestyle to almost every environment on earth, creating different habitats, exploiting different resources etc. They have developed communal methods for nurturing their young, they have their own educational system ... even one-to-one tuition ... they build cities, they farm, they have formed symbiotic relationships with other organisms, they plan military strategies. All of this had to begin somewhere. Your explanation is that God preprogrammed it all into the first cells, along with billions of other innovations and lifestyles, or occasionally dabbled (so did he push the big ant into the mantis' jaws?) because ants are automatons and can't think for themselves. I'm suggesting that ants worked out their own (highly successful) social systems, and they did so over a hundred million years before us. In what way is that anthropomorphic? dhw: I am not saying all organisms and societies feel or act in the same way, but I am saying the ground rules have been inherited. In our case, directly from our primate ancestors, in the case of the ants I presume directly from their wasp ancestors, but in all cases organisms build on what came before them, right back to the first communities. Do you really believe that humans invented even the brief list I've offered above?-DAVID: Having read books on hunter-gatherers and quoted that material in my last book, evolutionary psychologists definitely describe how humans had to invent their societal rules. It was ape-eat-ape before hominin groups began to form with some degree of cooperation and a developing morality.-Ants and other social animals had to do the same. Each society has to invent its own methods of survival, but the ground rules are always the same: self-protection, acquiring food, bringing up the young, cooperating with one another etc. However, according to you God had to preprogramme all our predecessors, and only homo sapiens started from scratch and invented architecture, cooperation, education etc. all by himself. It's a marvel that all our primate ancestors and all their ancestors didn't gobble each other up before we were able to branch off. Incidentally, it's still ape-eat-ape, or hadn't you noticed that just like ants, humans go to war with one another? The "tribal instinct" is yet another trait that we have inherited, though as in most other facets of social life, we have carried it to extremes.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Friday, November 15, 2013, 01:52 (3814 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw:A good and accurate summary. I am well aware of how convinced you are. Yes, cells and intelligence arrived out of nowhere. Life began, and nobody knows its origin. We have discussed three options: God, chance, panpsychist evolution.-Ah, then it is settled. Nowhere and nohow and nowhy are all stopping points in human thought? But I guess you are willing to be satisfied with that stopping point > > dhw; You agree that "we have no idea how that developed", just as we have no idea how any innovation occurred, but you refuse to consider the possibility that it developed through the intelligence of the organisms that started it.-Is the presence of intelligence a given? Where did it come from, how did it arise?-> dhw: Yes, ants slot into their roles. So do we, though we now have infinitely more of them. Just like us, ants have adapted their lifestyle to almost every environment on earth, creating different habitats, exploiting different resources etc. They have developed communal methods for nurturing their young, they have their own educational system ... even one-to-one tuition ... they build cities, they farm, they have formed symbiotic relationships with other organisms, they plan military strategies. All of this had to begin somewhere. .... I'm suggesting that ants worked out their own (highly successful) social systems, and they did so over a hundred million years before us. In what way is that anthropomorphic?-Because I have the impression that your description requires mental decisions on the part of ant committees. Do you propose ant thought? > > dhw: I am not saying all organisms and societies feel or act in the same way, but I am saying the ground rules have been inherited. In our case, directly from our primate ancestors, in the case of the ants I presume directly from their wasp ancestors, but in all cases organisms build on what came before them, right back to the first communities. Do you really believe that humans invented even the brief list I've offered above?-Simply, yes. Early humanoids developed their olwn societal rules. > > dhw; Ants and other social animals had to do the same. Each society has to invent its own methods of survival, but the ground rules are always the same: self-protection, acquiring food, bringing up the young, cooperating with one another etc. -Yes, we did not inherit ant societal rules. Humans invented tsir own rules-> dhw;However, according to you God had to preprogramme all our predecessors, and only homo sapiens started from scratch and invented architecture, cooperation, education etc. all by himself. ... The "tribal instinct" is yet another trait that we have inherited, though as in most other facets of social life, we have carried it to extremes. -No, I suspect we have some built-in stuff also at basic moral levels, in parent child relationships, in monogamy, etc.
Different in degree or kind
dhw: [...] cells and intelligence arrived out of nowhere. Life began, and nobody knows its origin. We have discussed three options: God, chance, panpsychist evolution. DAVID: Ah, then it is settled. Nowhere and nohow and nowhy are all stopping points in human thought? But I guess you are willing to be satisfied with that stopping point.-If I was satisfied, I would not have started up this website. But that doesn't mean I should embrace Dawkins' blind faith in chance or your blind faith in a nebulous UI. -dhw; You agree that "we have no idea how that [ant society] developed", just as we have no idea how any innovation occurred, but you refuse to consider the possibility that it developed through the intelligence of the organisms that started it. DAVID: Is the presence of intelligence a given? Where did it come from, how did it arise? -You keep asking the same question, and I give you the same reply: the three equally unbelievable hypotheses of 1) God, 2) chance, 3) panpsychist evolution. Why do you refuse to consider the possibility that ant society developed through the intelligence of the organisms themselves? -Dhw: In what way is that anthropomorphic? DAVID: Because I have the impression that your description requires mental decisions on the part of ant committees. Do you propose ant thought?-We do not have words to describe the mental processes of organisms other than ourselves, and you refuse to accept terms like thought, decision and consciousness unless they are human. You even try to ridicule "cooperation" by substituting "committee". The answer to your question is yes, my description requires thought and decisions ... but not the self-aware, self-analytical thought and decisions of humans. Dhw: Each society has to invent its own methods of survival, but the ground rules are always the same: self-protection, acquiring food, bringing up the young, cooperating with one another etc. DAVID: Yes, we did not inherit ant societal rules. Humans invented tsir own rules.-I did not say we inherited our social rules from ants! You dismissed my list of formic attributes as "the most anthropomorphic rendition I have ever heard". It is not anthropomorphic to say that ant or any other animal society is built on the same ground rules as above ... i.e. those needs which are the reason for all societies, including ours, to form in the first place (even though modern "civilization" has greatly expanded our range). "Anthropomorphic" is a back-to-front denial of our descent from the animal kingdom.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, November 16, 2013, 02:41 (3812 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw; If I was satisfied, I would not have started up this website. But that doesn't mean I should embrace Dawkins' blind faith in chance or your blind faith in a nebulous UI. -But I have watched as I have moved you off your loving embrace of Darwin theory. Chance is one of the things you now can't accept.-> > dhw; You keep asking the same question, and I give you the same reply: the three equally unbelievable hypotheses of 1) God, 2) chance, 3) panpsychist evolution. Why do you refuse to consider the possibility that ant society developed through the intelligence of the organisms themselves?-Because intelligence is something that is developed by learning from information that is then collated into concepts and ideas. You have left out the origin of initial information in all of your formulations. Information is part of a first cause.- > dhw: The answer to your question is yes, my description requires thought and decisions ... but not the self-aware, self-analytical thought and decisions of humans.-I savour the picture of cogitating ants.-> > dhw: I did not say we inherited our social rules from ants! You dismissed my list of formic attributes as "the most anthropomorphic rendition I have ever heard". It is not anthropomorphic to say that ant or any other animal society is built on the same ground rules as above ... i.e. those needs which are the reason for all societies, including ours, to form in the first place (even though modern "civilization" has greatly expanded our range). -No, you are right, ground rules are ground rules for formation of societal rules. They will generally follow the same path by necessity. But you come across with an anthropormorphic twist to the whole story when you decribe ants. I think they develop their societal habits by trying different reactions automatically and find solutions that way. DNA is then epigenetically modified to different habit patterns. That is the best explanation of instinct I can up with.->dhw: "Anthropomorphic" is a back-to-front denial of our descent from the animal kingdom.-No, equating animal activity in human terms is to be avoided.
Different in degree or kind
Dhw: If I was satisfied, I would not have started up this website. But that doesn't mean I should embrace Dawkins' blind faith in chance or your blind faith in a nebulous UI. DAVID: But I have watched as I have moved you off your loving embrace of Darwin theory. Chance is one of the things you now can't accept.-I never could. It has always been a major factor in my agnosticism. Perhaps one day you should read the "brief guide", which was my response to Dawkins' The God Delusion. But I don't wish to downplay the role you have played in my education, for which I am profoundly grateful. I am ten times better informed about the scientific background to these arguments, you have clarified many points for me, and by pointing me in the direction of Margulis (much though you may regret it), you have opened up a fascinating new approach to my understanding of how evolution might work. These factors alone would have made the site worthwhile for me, and that's without mentioning the further insights I have gained from contributors like George, BBella, Matt, Tony and many others.-Dhw: You keep asking the same question, and I give you the same reply: the three equally unbelievable hypotheses of 1) God, 2) chance, 3) panpsychist evolution. Why do you refuse to consider the possibility that ant society developed through the intelligence of the organisms themselves?-DAVID: Because intelligence is something that is developed by learning from information that is then collated into concepts and ideas. You have left out the origin of initial information in all of your formulations. Information is part of a first cause.-I agree completely that intelligence evolves with experience and with the continued influx of information. "Concepts and ideas" sounds too abstract for my taste. Generally, animal intelligence is more of the practical "hands/paws/jaws/beaks-on" variety, and I doubt if even new born human babes are bothered about your first cause. For most organisms, information begins with their immediate environment, which is ever changing, and their intelligence requires direct contact with it. It's not the origin of information (i.e. everything in the world around us) that is at issue here, but the origin of the intelligence which uses the information (see my post under "Different..."). dhw: The answer to your question is yes, my description requires thought and decisions ... but not the self-aware, self-analytical thought and decisions of humans. DAVID: I savour the picture of cogitating ants.-Of course you do, because you enjoy ridiculing the idea of ants having intelligence by anthropomorphizing them and then accusing me of anthropomorphizing them. dhw: I did not say we inherited our social rules from ants! You dismissed my list of formic attributes as "the most anthropomorphic rendition I have ever heard". It is not anthropomorphic to say that ant or any other animal society is built on the same ground rules as above ... i.e. those needs which are the reason for all societies, including ours, to form in the first place (even though modern "civilization" has greatly expanded our range). -DAVID: No, you are right, ground rules are ground rules for formation of societal rules. They will generally follow the same path by necessity. But you come across with an anthropormorphic twist to the whole story when you decribe ants. I think they develop their societal habits by trying different reactions automatically and find solutions that way.-How do you experiment and find solutions to countless problems if you are merely an automaton obeying instructions? That would mean that your God preprogrammed the first cells to pass on not only plans for the complex habitats, organization of food supply, education of the young, military strategies etc., but also the errors our ants made along the way! Doesn't this strike you as a little bit far-fetched?-dhw: "Anthropomorphic" is a back-to-front denial of our descent from the animal kingdom. DAVID: No, equating animal activity in human terms is to be avoided.-Why, when the activities are the same as human activities? What terms would you suggest we use for the above list?
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, November 16, 2013, 21:55 (3812 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: I never could. It has always been a major factor in my agnosticism. Perhaps one day you should read the "brief guide", which was my response to Dawkins' The God Delusion. But I don't wish to downplay the role you have played in my education, for which I am profoundly grateful. I am ten times better informed about the scientific background to these arguments, you have clarified many points for me, and by pointing me in the direction of Margulis (much though you may regret it), you have opened up a fascinating new approach to my understanding of how evolution might work.-I don't regret introducing Margulis. Her contributions are monumental in regard to mitochondria. The rest is simply not the way I intrepret things. - > > dhw: I agree completely that intelligence evolves with experience and with the continued influx of information. ...... It's not the origin of information (i.e. everything in the world around us) that is at issue here, but the origin of the intelligence which uses the information. -You are still avoiding the chicken/egg issue. Information has to be present for intelligence to learn and use. where did the informaton in DNA come from?- > DAVID: I savour the picture of cogitating ants. > > dhw: Of course you do, because you enjoy ridiculing the idea of ants having intelligence by anthropomorphizing them and then accusing me of anthropomorphizing them.-Ridicule is not anthropomorphosis.- > > dhw: How do you experiment and find solutions to countless problems if you are merely an automaton obeying instructions? That would mean that your God preprogrammed the first cells to pass on not only plans for the complex habitats, organization of food supply, education of the young, military strategies etc., but also the errors our ants made along the way! Doesn't this strike you as a little bit far-fetched? -Not the errors. Error-prone ants died. Those who survived used the right responses. Just as tautological as survival of the fittest.-> > dhw: Why, when the activities are the same as human activities? What terms would you suggest we use for the above list?-These are parallel events. Same terms is fine.
Different in degree or kind: book review
by David Turell , Saturday, November 16, 2013, 22:16 (3812 days ago) @ David Turell
Unforunately the author concentrates on biologic differences and gives little time to consciousness and the huge human brain: -http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579169670682265630
Different in degree or kind
DAVID: I don't regret introducing Margulis. Her contributions are monumental in regard to mitochondria. The rest is simply not the way I intrepret things.-This is an important statement. The concept of the intelligent cell is not poppycock or kooky, but is simply a matter of how one interprets the scientific facts.-dhw: I agree completely that intelligence evolves with experience and with the continued influx of information. ...... It's not the origin of information (i.e. everything in the world around us) that is at issue here, but the origin of the intelligence which uses the information. DAVID: You are still avoiding the chicken/egg issue. Information has to be present for intelligence to learn and use. where did the informaton in DNA come from?-We seem to be talking about two different kinds of information. I am talking about the information from the outside world which is processed by the intelligence of the organism. If by "information in DNA" you mean all the factors that allow for reproduction and heredity and for maintenance of cells and cell communities, your question is tantamount to asking what is the origin of life. Do you really expect me to answer that? (See also my post under "Intelligence..." in which you ask the same question.)-DAVID: I savour the picture of cogitating ants. dhw: Of course you do, because you enjoy ridiculing the idea of ants having intelligence by anthropomorphizing them and then accusing me of anthropomorphizing them. DAVID: Ridicule is not anthropomorphosis.-You use terms like "committee" and "cogitating", which are anthropomorphic. No-one imagines ants sitting round a boardroom table, or imitating Rodin's 'Thinker'.-dhw: How do you experiment and find solutions to countless problems if you are merely an automaton obeying instructions? That would mean that your God preprogrammed the first cells to pass on not only plans for the complex habitats, organization of food supply, education of the young, military strategies etc., but also the errors our ants made along the way! Doesn't this strike you as a little bit far-fetched? DAVID: Not the errors. Error-prone ants died. Those who survived used the right responses. Just as tautological as survival of the fittest.-You have missed the point. If ants are automatons, they can only obey instructions. If they make errors it can only be because they were given the wrong instructions or they had the freedom to make their own decisions. Automatons do not make their own decisions. Therefore the errors must also have been preprogrammed, which even you will surely admit is a bit daft. DAVID: Equating animal activity in human terms is to be avoided. dhw: Why, when the activities are the same as human activities? What terms would you suggest we use for the above list? DAVID: These are parallel events. Same terms is fine.-Thank you. In that case, I am not anthropomorphizing ants.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Sunday, November 17, 2013, 15:51 (3811 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The concept of the intelligent cell is not poppycock or kooky, but is simply a matter of how one interprets the scientific facts.-> > dhw; We seem to be talking about two different kinds of information. I am talking about the information from the outside world which is processed by the intelligence of the organism. If by "information in DNA" you mean all the factors that allow for reproduction and heredity and for maintenance of cells and cell communities, your question is tantamount to asking what is the origin of life. Do you really expect me to answer that? -Yes, because St. Thomas did it in a very logical way. He logically took that concept of the information the universe and life use back to a source. Information must have a source, or it somehow agglomerated by chance into a library of some sort, available to construct the universe and allow for life.- > DAVID: Not the errors. Error-prone ants died. Those who survived used the right responses. Just as tautological as survival of the fittest. > > dhw; You have missed the point. If ants are automatons, they can only obey instructions. If they make errors it can only be because they were given the wrong instructions or they had the freedom to make their own decisions. Automatons do not make their own decisions. Therefore the errors must also have been preprogrammed, which even you will surely admit is a bit daft.-Not daft. Again I am trying to balance how much God dabbles against full pre-programming. If some ants from an available list of two or three responses to stimuli make an inappropriate fatal choice, those ants taking those choices disappear from evoluiton and the existing ants have refined survival choices. This is pure Darwinian thinking applied to theistic evolution. If Chuck could do it, why can't I?
Different in degree or kind
Dhw: If by "information in DNA" you mean all the factors that allow for reproduction and heredity and for maintenance of cells and cell communities, your question is tantamount to asking what is the origin of life. Do you really expect me to answer that? DAVID: Yes, because St. Thomas did it in a very logical way. He logically took that concept of the information the universe and life use back to a source. Information must have a source, or it somehow agglomerated by chance into a library of some sort, available to construct the universe and allow for life.-First cause. See my reponse under "Intelligence..."-dhw; You have missed the point. If ants are automatons, they can only obey instructions. If they make errors it can only be because they were given the wrong instructions or they had the freedom to make their own decisions. Automatons do not make their own decisions. Therefore the errors must also have been preprogrammed, which even you will surely admit is a bit daft.-DAVID: Not daft. Again I am trying to balance how much God dabbles against full pre-programming. If some ants from an available list of two or three responses to stimuli make an inappropriate fatal choice, those ants taking those choices disappear from evoluiton and the existing ants have refined survival choices. This is pure Darwinian thinking applied to theistic evolution. If Chuck could do it, why can't I?-So everything formic is either preprogrammed or divinely dabbled. Let's confine ourselves to ants, then, and forget about the other billions of species and all their problems. There are believed to be about 20,000 species of ant, which live in all kinds of environments, in all kinds of nests, in tiny colonies, in vast colonies, all presumably facing a variety of problems. According to you, God preprogrammed the first living cells with plans for each of these 20,000 species to evolve, and to cope with every different environment and every kind of problem. But not only did he preprogramme every response to every eventuality ... he even programmed two or three choices of response! And what's more, because ants are automatons, they don't even have the wherewithal to make a choice. It just sort of happens. And the ones which just sort of happen to make the wrong choice die. If he didn't preprogramme all the species and all the means of coping with all the different environments and all the different problems, and coming up with one out of all the different choices, he actually intervened personally. You can almost hear Chuck chuckling.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 19, 2013, 12:33 (3809 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: So everything formic is either preprogrammed or divinely dabbled. Let's confine ourselves to ants, then, and forget about the other billions of species and all their problems. There are believed to be about 20,000 species of ant, which live in all kinds of environments, in all kinds of nests, in tiny colonies, in vast colonies, all presumably facing a variety of problems. According to you, God preprogrammed the first living cells with plans for each of these 20,000 species to evolve, and to cope with every different environment and every kind of problem. But not only did he preprogramme every response to every eventuality ... he even programmed two or three choices of response! And what's more, because ants are automatons, they don't even have the wherewithal to make a choice. It just sort of happens. And the ones which just sort of happen to make the wrong choice die. If he didn't preprogramme all the species and all the means of coping with all the different environments and all the different problems, and coming up with one out of all the different choices, he actually intervened personally. You can almost hear Chuck chuckling.-That is a fairly accurate statement of my suppositions. The reason Chuck would chuckle is he invented a supposition that is falling apart, because he didn't have the knowledge to know any better. Completely eliminate him from your thinking, start fresh and you will end up like I am, accepting the fact that we evolved, but we are still learning how it was done and we are discovering amazing complexity and an intricate coding system filled with enormous amounts of information, the source of which we must guess at. Some of us finally make a choice even if our knowledge is incomplete, but the trend is toward the discovery of even more complex complexity, and further and further from Darwin. The trend will destroy Darwinism
Different in degree or kind
DHW: Read Torley. There is a colon after "discontinuities", which he explains as being the two kinds of consciousness. I have pointed out that this does not mean discontinuity. You are substituting your own argument for his. Of course I accept our self-awareness as a "major gap", just as I would accept that there is a major gap between a student who gets 90% in an exam and a student who gets 10% in the same exam. I am answering Torley, not Adler.-DAVID: My problem is I've read Adler and understand the import of his argument, as we both do. Difference in kind means God exists. -That is indeed your problem. If only you could prove that God specially made man, you'd be able to say God exists. Mind you, if anyone could prove that God made all forms of life by inventing an intelligent mechanism that enabled cells to...ah well...-Dhw: If you believe evolution happened, but somehow humans are to be set apart from their animal ancestors, you are arguing for separate creation, as Torley does with his God suddenly endowing post Heidelberg homo with a soul.-DAVID: Yes, I'm on Torley's side. The ancient Hebrews (our ancestors) gave a different soul, but a soul, to animals. [...] I don't know when ensoulment happened, but I equate it with the arrival of the very advanced human consciousness, whenever that happened. We don't even know if it was a gradual or a sudden event. If we could identify which type of event it would push the argument one way or the other toward degree or kind.-Interesting. If you wish to limit the soul to humans, you certainly have to believe in your "difference in kind". Following my pet panpsychist hypothesis, and if I believed in a soul, I would argue that energy is contained within all organisms, and as life forms become more complex, so the individualized energies become more complex too (i.e. evolve). This would mean that all organisms have their own form of "soul", which survives the death of the material container, from amoeba to Archie Optrex, to tortoise, to tiger, to Turell. All individualized energies. That might be the source of your species consciousness too. I don't suppose you'll like the idea, though. Not anthropocentric enough, eh?
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 20:09 (3816 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: If only you could prove that God specially made man, you'd be able to say God exists. Mind you, if anyone could prove that God made all forms of life by inventing an intelligent mechanism that enabled cells to...ah well...-Agreed. I have to move at some point to faith. the evidence for me reaches that point. > > dhw:Interesting. If you wish to limit the soul to humans, you certainly have to believe in your "difference in kind".-I believe animals have one kind of soul and we another. Another gap.-> dhw:Following my pet panpsychist hypothesis, and if I believed in a soul, I would argue that energy is contained within all organisms, and as life forms become more complex, so the individualized energies become more complex too (i.e. evolve). All individualized energies. That might be the source of your species consciousness too. I don't suppose you'll like the idea, though. Not anthropocentric enough, eh?-Fits the ideas of many of the thinking quantum theorists:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/physics/what-great-physicists-have-said-about-immateriality-and-consciousness/-I have aware of this philosophic approach to QM for many years. QM works through consciousness.Read David Bohm for an even more mystical approach.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Sunday, November 10, 2013, 19:31 (3818 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw:I began reading, then skimmed, and am now commenting on this muddled argument only out of respect for you, David. Not having read Sullivan, I can only go by what Dr Tovey tells us, but he explicitly condemns Sullivan for his "scientific failings", -I wanted you to see his discussion to see how problematic the animal studies are. I should have warned you to skim. I admit I skimmed alot also. I think some of his reinterpretation of studies I have seen such as orangutan travel warnings shows how much anthropomorphizing thought goes into the analyses by the scientists who have trouble clearing our their humanizing tendencies in there analyses. This consideration is key in determining 'degree or kind'. -We both know the gap is vast. Torley's (correct spelling) analyses try to correct the overly optimistic interpretations of mental capacity.-> > dhw: Does that mean that Sullivan and the dozen prominent neuroscientists are guilty of "scientific failings"?-We must interpret Torley as a theist. He is on my side of the debate, but as I analyze his interpretations they made me see the possible way of interpretating animal behavior in a 'less mental' way. > > dhw: TOVEY: neuroscientists customarily distinguish between two distinct kinds of consciousness: primary consciousness (or the moment-to-moment awareness of sensory experiences and internal feelings such as emotions) and higher-order consciousness (also called "self-awareness")[/i] ...] > > dhw: His "discontinuity" is two extreme levels. We humans operate on both, but that doesn't mean there's nothing in between! Even Tovey later admits that some organisms (he restricts them to mammals and birds) have a degree of "higher order consciousness".-The key is not the discontinuity but the emphasis on self-awareness, something you have continuously heard from me. That intrapective aspect of humans, the animals do not have at all. That alone is a major gap. Adler makes much of it.-> dhw: Torley: Nevertheless, a good case can be made for the view that mentally speaking, the human being is an animal like no other. [/i] > > dhw: Yes of course, and a good case can be made for the view that mentally speaking the human being has many degrees more consciousness than the organisms from which he is descended, and that is what makes him an animal like no other. We are getting nowhere.-We are somewhere. How many degrees of difference do you need before 'man is an animal like no other' to then iterpret as a difference in kind? Since we know the vast degrees of difference, I think your position is untenable.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, December 07, 2013, 14:36 (3791 days ago) @ David Turell
> David: We are somewhere. How many degrees of difference do you need before 'man is an animal like no other' to then interpret as a difference in kind? Since we know the vast degrees of difference, I think your position is untenable.-Here is another degree of difference. In my new book I discuss a monkey over 20 million years ago that started to change its lumbar spine region on the way to true upright bipedalism. We didn't descend from chimps. We all split apart and took our own roads. This from an article discussing the new Denisovan DNA findings I presented a few days ago:-"'Living apes—chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—have long and independent evolutionary histories of their own, and their modern anatomies should not be assumed to represent the ancestral condition for our human lineage," study coauthor Sergio Almécija told the Agence France-Presse (AFP). "To understand the origins of human bipedalism, scientists should stop assuming a 'chimpanzee starting point,'" he added."-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38554/title/Bipedal-Beginnings/
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Sunday, December 08, 2013, 02:17 (3791 days ago) @ David Turell
More findings on an pre-hominin ancestor:-" Researchers found a partial skeleton -- including arm, hand, leg and foot fragments -- dated to 1.34 million years old and belonging to Paranthropus boisei at the Olduvai Gorge World Heritage fossil site in Tanzania. The find, published in the latest edition of the scientific journal PLOS ONE, represents one of the most recent occurrences of P. boisei before its extinction in East Africa."-http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/Skeleton-discovery-suggests-rugged-tree-climbing-ancestor.aspx
Different in degree or kind: human bush
by David Turell , Monday, December 09, 2013, 15:03 (3789 days ago) @ David Turell
Human evolution is really a bush of many kinds, mixing and not mixing, and certainly not a direct line from chimps.:-"They were complicated. Their relationships cannot be described by drawing straight lines between fossil samples. There were multiple lines of influence among them, small degrees of mixture and large-scale migrations. Europe was far from a slowly evolving population "accreting" Neandertal features over time. The Neandertals we know did not lumber into their doom; they expanded rapidly, multiple times, from non-European origins. They were as dynamic as the Middle Stone Age Africans who would later mix with them and expand across the world. -So I don't find the Sima mtDNA to be the least bit surprising. It's refreshing!"- http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_dna/sima-de-los-huesos-dna-meyer-2013.html
Different in degree or kind: human memory
by David Turell , Monday, December 09, 2013, 15:39 (3789 days ago) @ David Turell
Very complex changes in synapses mediate memory:-"More than a century ago, scientists generally recognized that the number of neurons in the adult brain did not increase significantly with age. That gave neurobiologists good reason to believe that memories were not formed by new neuron production, but rather by a strengthening of the connections between existing neurons to improve the effectiveness of their communication. The strength of two connected neural pathways is thought to result in the storage of information. This process of synaptic strengthening is known as long-term potentiation (LTP). "LTP is one of several phenomena underlying synaptic plasticity, the ability of chemical synapses to change their strength. Memories are thought to be created, or encoded, by modifications in synaptic strength. It is known that LTP and memory formation requires gene transcription at cell nucleus. Yasuda's team has been looking at the behaviours of proteins involved in synaptic plasticity within dendritic spines ... small bristles on the surface of neurons that receive synaptic signals. There are roughly 10,000 spines on the dendritic branches of each neuron (and roughly 100 billion neurons in the adult brain). His team's most surprising and unexpected finding, he said, was that induction of LTP in as few as three of these spines was sufficient to exert profound effects on activity of proteins that control gene transcription in the cell nucleus. The team also discovered that these spines needed to be distributed over at least two dendritic branches for this process to be triggered. Interestingly, efficiency of gene transcription was higher with a more geographically distributed pattern of spines."-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-12-biochemical-mechanisms-memory.html
Different in degree or kind: hands
by David Turell , Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 14:34 (3781 days ago) @ David Turell
Human hands are capable of complex actions that apes cannot do. Our hand motor area in the brain is many times larger than the ape area. that type of hand seesm to go back 1.4 million years:-Humans have a distinctive hand anatomy that allows them to make and use tools. Apes and other nonhuman primates do not have these distinctive anatomical features in their hands, and the point in time at which these features first appeared in human evolution is unknown. Now, a University of Missouri researcher and her international team of colleagues have found a new hand bone from a human ancestor who roamed the earth in East Africa approximately 1.42 million years ago. They suspect the bone belonged to the early human species, Homo erectus. The discovery of this bone is the earliest evidence of a modern human-like hand, indicating that this anatomical feature existed more than half a million years earlier than previously known. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-discovery-million-year-old-fossil-human-bone.html#jCp
Different in degree or kind: hands
by David Turell , Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 15:41 (3781 days ago) @ David Turell
Here is another version of the relationship of hand and brain, a major difference between apes and humans:- http://www.amazon.com/The-Hand-Shapes-Language-Culture/dp/0679740473
Different in degree or kind: more about Ardi
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 07, 2014, 18:59 (3760 days ago) @ David Turell
Part ape and definitely on the way to being human:-"New research led by Arizona State University paleoanthropologist William Kimbel confirms Ardi's close evolutionary relationship to humans. Kimbel and his collaborators turned to the underside (or base) of a beautifully preserved partial cranium of Ardi. Their study revealed a pattern of similarity that links Ardi to Australopithecus and modern humans, but not to apes."-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140106160041.htm
Different in degree or kind
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 21:57 (3781 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: A book explores the issue: > > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mind-reviews-the-gap&WT.mc_id=SA_D... > QUOTE: Although he presents both "romantic" and "killjoy" interpretations of animal ability, his sure-handed, fascinating book aims neither to exaggerate the wisdom of animals nor to promote the exceptionalism of human beings. > > This sounds well balanced, but the next quote requires close attention. > > QUOTE: Instead Suddendorf distills the gap into two overarching capacities: the ability to imagine different scenarios beyond what our senses perceive and a strong drive to link our minds together, by looking to one another for information or understanding. These two capacities transform common animal traits into distinctly human ones: communication into language, memory into planning, and empathy into morality. Suddendorf reminds us that many extinct hominins shared both capacities, making them more similar to us than to the great apes. > > There is scarcely anything in the above paragraph that can't be applied to our fellow creatures. They can certainly think beyond what their senses perceive, because they plan for the future, remember the past, and can work out strategies for coping with their enemies. Our own imagination of course stretches way beyond our needs, but I would say that our art, philosophy, literature, music etc. are the result of our self-awareness, which is unquestionably a degree of consciousness far, far beyond that of other beings. However, I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions from this ... I still see no reason to assume that we are anything but descendants from earlier primates. - I'm with you on this. I often ask myself the thought-experiment question, what would we be if we never developed language? -I think that a significant part of our rapid appearance and development has to do with the fact that we developed language, and we figured out how to abstract it, and that level of abstraction allowed us first, to gain a foothold in our own individual consciousnesses. -I can't put down the idea that by first learning a few words, we started altering our brains, and this alteration rapidly fed back into our genome.
--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 18, 2013, 02:17 (3781 days ago) @ xeno6696
. > > > >Matt: QUOTE: Instead Suddendorf distills the gap into two overarching capacities: the ability to imagine different scenarios beyond what our senses perceive and a strong drive to link our minds together, by looking to one another for information or understanding. These two capacities transform common animal traits into distinctly human ones: communication into language, memory into planning, and empathy into morality. Suddendorf reminds us that many extinct hominins shared both capacities, making them more similar to us than to the great apes.-I'll bet the hominins came with those capacities, which is a tremendous jump in mentation. > > > > Matt: There is scarcely anything in the above paragraph that can't be applied to our fellow creatures. They can certainly think beyond what their senses perceive, because they plan for the future, remember the past, and can work out strategies for coping with their enemies. Our own imagination of course stretches way beyond our needs, but I would say that our art, philosophy, literature, music etc. are the result of our self-awareness, which is unquestionably a degree of consciousness far, far beyond that of other beings. However, I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions from this ... I still see no reason to assume that we are anything but descendants from earlier primates.-And that is where we differ. We have discussed hands and brain motor areas. Our skeletons are really quite different in regards our upright posture, which appears to have started developing along that track about 20+ million years ago.Huge brain, totally different posture and style of locomotion. And why should the hominins drop from the safety of trees? It required more plastic brains to think their way out of trouble. And what was the driving need in nature to make them adapt that way. We know of none > > > Matt: I'm with you on this. I often ask myself the thought-experiment question, what would we be if we never developed language? > > I think that a significant part of our rapid appearance and development has to do with the fact that we developed language, and we figured out how to abstract it, and that level of abstraction allowed us first, to gain a foothold in our own individual consciousnesses. > > I can't put down the idea that by first learning a few words, we started altering our brains, and this alteration rapidly fed back into our genome.-You are onto a key issue, especially since we now know how plastic the brain really is. And how the DNA of neurons is modified all the time to handle memory and new knowledge.-The key point comes down to how different does one have to be to be different in kind. Of course we came from monkeys with tails, but the apes are still in the trees and look at us. And for no good reason I can see, so it must become a philosophical debate of how many degrees difference do you need to conclude that we are part of a most unusual development, Paul Davies key point in his essays on that subject.
Different in degree or kind
DAVID: ...And why should the hominins drop from the safety of the trees? It required more plastic brains to think their way out of trouble. And what was the driving need in nature to make them adapt that way. We know of none.-The post you were replying to was mine, not Matt's, and we covered this in great detail earlier. We can only speculate, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that in different local areas, tree-living became difficult or impractical (down came the hominins), while the chimps stayed up elsewhere. You don't need a global catastrophe to change the environment. You seem to be implying that suddenly God stepped in to do one of his dabbles, or he'd fixed a hominin-here-you-go programme in the very first cells, which they passed on through a few billion years and species until something triggered the programme (and you still don't know any more than the rest of us what that trigger was). DAVID: The key point comes down to how different does one have to be to be different in kind.-I really cannot see this as a key point except for someone who is desperate to prove that God's ultimate purpose was to create humans (a hypothesis that comes strangely from someone who claims that he doesn't try to read God's mind.) As a human, I proudly claim that my species can question its origins, extend its influence all over the planet and beyond, write books and symphonies, and make chocolate ... wonderful talents I believe to be unavailable to any other species. I admit that I can't do half the things that dogs, crows and ants do, but who cares? We are all different in one respect or another. And this would be so whether God exists or not. Why, then, is it a problem for you if we say that humans are simply different from the other primates, just as chimps are different from gorillas, and primates are different from dogs, crows and ants?-Matt, I agree with you that our form of language was a prime influence in our development, though I wonder which came first: the thoughts or the mechanisms involved in our sound making, without which we could not have expressed the thoughts to others. The origin of human language remains as mysterious as the origin of life and the origin of consciousness. Perhaps David thinks that all languages were preprogrammed into the very first cells, along with the billions of other innovations, lifestyles etc. that God crammed in there. We do know, however, that cells communicate, and cell communities communicate, and our fellow animals communicate, so perhaps it was a matter of intelligent cell communities coming up with innovations to meet the new requirements of the ground-dwelling primate. Convergence would see to it that different cell communities in different environments would devise similar solutions.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Thursday, December 19, 2013, 02:08 (3780 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that in different local areas, tree-living became difficult or impractical (down came the hominins), while the chimps stayed up elsewhere. You don't need a global catastrophe to change the environment. You seem to be implying that suddenly God stepped in to do one of his dabbles, or he'd fixed a hominin-here-you-go programme in the very first cells, which they passed on through a few billion years and species until something triggered the programme (and you still don't know any more than the rest of us what that trigger was).-We don't know why hominins left the trees, or what pushed them to do it, but transitional hominin forms have been recently found to have heavy arms for tree work, but also more upright postural changes and better walking ability. This is highly suggsetive that they weren't forced to leave the trees as they prepared to descent. Looks for all the world as preplanning! > > dhw: I admit that I can't do half the things that dogs, crows and ants do, but who cares? We are all different in one respect or another. And this would be so whether God exists or not. Why, then, is it a problem for you if we say that humans are simply different from the other primates, just as chimps are different from gorillas, and primates are different from dogs, crows and ants?-But, they are not 'simply different'. They are vastly different. You are minimizing the difference. You can do lots better stuff than sniffing other dogs butts, flying, or tunnelling underground. > > dhw: The origin of human language remains as mysterious as the origin of life and the origin of consciousness. Perhaps David thinks that all languages were preprogrammed into the very first cells, along with the billions of other innovations, lifestyles etc. that God crammed in there. -What is wrong with preplanning?
Different in degree or kind
DAVID: We don't know why hominins left the trees [...] but transitional hominin forms have been recently found to have heavy arms for tree work, but also more upright postural changes and better walking ability. This is highly suggestive that they weren't forced to leave the trees as they prepared to descend. Looks for all the world as preplanning!-Only to those who like to think it was all preplanned. I can see no reason at all why the first generation of primates to leave the trees should immediately have developed human-type arms. Refinements would have taken generations, and we can hardly expect to find fossils covering all the generations in between the first primate descenders and the first proper hominins. The higgledy-piggledy line of transitional forms looks for all the world like nature taking its own evolutionary course, as cell communities gradually found more efficient and more sophisticated ways of mastering the environment.-Dhw: Why, then, is it a problem for you if we say that humans are simply different from the other primates, just as chimps are different from gorillas, and primates are different from dogs, crows and ants? DAVID: But, they are not 'simply different'. They are vastly different. You are minimizing the difference. You can do lots better stuff than sniffing other dogs butts, flying, or tunneling underground.-A misunderstanding. I meant simply 'different', as opposed to 'different in kind'. Of course all these organisms are vastly different. You can hardly begin to compare a dog to a crow to an ant to a human. But that's all we need to say. "Degree" versus "kind" is a non-issue, except for anthropocentrists trying to prove an unprovable point.-Dhw: Perhaps David thinks that all languages were preprogrammed into the very first cells, along with billions of other innovations, lifestyles etc. that God crammed in there. DAVID: What's wrong with preplanning?-Despite the conclusions of many scientists in the field, you find it incredible that cells should be regarded as intelligent beings. And yet despite the lack of any evidence or support from the scientific community, you are prepared to believe that your God inserted into the first few living cells billions of programmes that had to be passed down through billions of generations of cells and cell communities to cover virtually every innovation, lifestyle, strategy throughout the history of evolution ... from kidneys to fire-ant rafts to Swahili. (The only alternative you are prepared to consider is that your God popped in to teach cells how to make kidneys, fire ants to make themselves into rafts, and various African tribes to speak Swahili.) I just find the scale and the inconsistencies of your divine preplanning hypothesis beyond the bounds of credibility ... but I guess that's faith for you.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Friday, December 20, 2013, 01:04 (3779 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw; The higgledy-piggledy line of transitional forms looks for all the world like nature taking its own evolutionary course, as cell communities gradually found more efficient and more sophisticated ways of mastering the environment.-I view it as the genome built to create a variety of forms as convergence shows.- > > dhw; "Degree" versus "kind" is a non-issue, except for anthropocentrists trying to prove an unprovable point.-Remember, I use proof beyond a reasonalbe doubt > > dhw:Despite the conclusions of many scientists in the field, you find it incredible that cells should be regarded as intelligent beings.....I just find the scale and the inconsistencies of your divine preplanning hypothesis beyond the bounds of credibility ... but I guess that's faith for you.-Since you have never experienced faith, I'm sure it is new territory for you to try to understand.
Different in degree or kind
Dhw: The higgledy-piggledy line of transitional forms looks for all the world like nature taking its own evolutionary course, as cell communities gradually found more efficient and more sophisticated ways of mastering the environment. DAVID: I view it as the genome built to create a variety of forms as convergence shows.-But convergence entails variations on the same form ... which means genomes in different places respond in similar but often NOT identical ways to similar environmental demands. Doesn't this suggest individual responses rather than a universal programme handed down by the first living cells?-Dhw: "Degree" versus "kind" is a non-issue, except for anthropocentrists trying to prove an unprovable point. DAVID: Remember, I use proof beyond a reasonable doubt.-As our next exchange clearly demonstrates, you cannot find proof beyond a reasonable doubt
hw: I just find the scale and the inconsistencies of your divine preplanning hypothesis beyond the bounds of credibility ... but I guess that's faith for you. DAVID: Since you have never experienced faith, I'm sure it is new territory for you to try and understand.-Your faith in your anthropocentric,preprogramming hypothesis has nothing to do with proof. One could just as reasonably have faith in the theistic version of the "intelligent cell" hypothesis. See also your comment under "Cellular intelligence derailed?": DAVID: I don't know God's exact plan when it seems he started evolution and it turned out like a confusing bush of organisms.-So maybe his plan was not what you thought it was. In response to my repeated doubts about the scale and details of this anthropocentric plan, you say: "The thought comes from the evidence of the evolutionary process we see". But the evidence we see is a "confusing bush of organisms", which makes it impossible for you to fit the plan and the process together. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt?-You must know that science takes you nowhere near your conclusion that evolution was anthropocentrically planned and preprogrammed from the start by your God. The very fact that most scientists don't even believe in your God has to cast a degree of doubt on the "reasonableness" of your hypothesis. I love the way you use science to illuminate the huge complexities of living systems, and to undermine the case for chance and hence for Dawkins-type atheism. This is scientific thinking at its best. But when you extrapolate nebulous hypotheses about God's intentions, and you impose your own system on a history that so often refuses to conform, I feel you have left science behind, and have entered a field of more than reasonable doubt. Perhaps what is needed is a clearer division between what constitutes science and what constitutes faith ... a need which I think is equally applicable to those scientists who like to believe that science favours atheism.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, December 21, 2013, 00:58 (3778 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: But convergence entails variations on the same form ... which means genomes in different places respond in similar but often NOT identical ways to similar environmental demands. Doesn't this suggest individual responses rather than a universal programme handed down by the first living cells?- Wrong interpretation. You need to look up the term convergence as used in evolution-speak lingo and jargon: The development of an organ with the same purpose but with an entirely different design. I.e., six types of eyes. > > dhw: As our next exchange clearly demonstrates, you cannot find proof beyond a reasonable doubt: > > Dhw: I just find the scale and the inconsistencies of your divine preplanning hypothesis beyond the bounds of credibility ... but I guess that's faith for you. > DAVID: Since you have never experienced faith, I'm sure it is new territory for you to try and understand.-I have found proof beyond reasonable doubt for me. Adler found it for him. And there are many others. > > dhw:Your faith in your anthropocentric,preprogramming hypothesis has nothing to do with proof. -Of course not. My proof is the enormous number of scientific findings which offer me a proof I accept. Then faith appears. > dhw: So maybe his plan was not what you thought it was.-Your problem is your misinterpretation of convergence, a major point Conway Morris makes. There are many organs life invents for one purpose but they are all different in design, making the point that life as designed in the beginning is very inventive, which is why the higgledy-piggeldy bush appeared. Accept that life is very experimental and much of my reasoning falls into plae.- > dhw: You must know that science takes you nowhere near your conclusion that evolution was anthropocentrically planned and preprogrammed from the start by your God. The very fact that most scientists don't even believe in your God has to cast a degree of doubt on the "reasonableness" of your hypothesis. I love the way you use science to illuminate the huge complexities of living systems, and to undermine the case for chance and hence for Dawkins-type atheism. This is scientific thinking at its best.-I've told you I have the right to my own conclusions about science findings-> dhw: But when you extrapolate nebulous hypotheses about God's intentions, and you impose your own system on a history that so often refuses to conform, I feel you have left science behind, and have entered a field of more than reasonable doubt. -It is just my own philosphy of science. That is the field to which you refer.
Different in degree or kind
dhw: But convergence entails variations on the same form ... which means genomes in different places respond in similar but often NOT identical ways to similar environmental demands. Doesn't this suggest individual responses rather than a universal programme handed down by the first living cells? DAVID: Wrong interpretation. You need to look up the term convergence as used in evolution-speak lingo and jargon: The development of an organ with the same purpose but with an entirely different design. I.e., six types of eyes.-There is no contradiction here, except that the distinction between convergent and parallel evolution is sometimes blurred (unrelated desert plants on different continents often have similar forms of leaf, and that is also called convergence). If organisms respond to similar environmental conditions with six different types of eyes, I would suggest that this points to individual responses rather than a universal programme handed down from the first cells.-dhw: As our next exchange clearly demonstrates, you cannot find proof beyond a reasonable doubt. DAVID: I have found proof beyond reasonable doubt for me. Adler found it for him. And there are many others.-The expression is normally used in a legal context, where the quest is for some kind of objective truth, and so of course that is the impression arising from your claim ... especially when you say it's based on science, which is supposed to be our most objective approach to truth. -DAVID: I don't know God's exact plan when it seems he started evolution and it turned out like a confusing bush of organisms. dhw: So maybe his plan was not what you thought it was. DAVID: Your problem is your misinterpretation of convergence, a major point Conway Morris makes. There are many organs life invents for one purpose but they are all different in design, making the point that life as designed in the beginning is very inventive, which is why the higgledy-piggeldy bush appeared. Accept that life is very experimental and much of my reasoning falls into plae. I am all in favour of the view that evolution is a history of experimentation. That is why, in my opinion, your hypothesis that all innovations were preprogrammed in the very first cells (apart from when God dabbled) makes your reasoning fall out of place. Experimentation and what you call "a confusing bush of organisms" do not fit in with the precise planning advocated by your anthropocentric view of evolution, or with your insistence that cells and cell communities are mere automatons obeying your God's pre-given instructions. You can't have it both ways.
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by David Turell , Saturday, December 21, 2013, 17:54 (3777 days ago) @ dhw
> > dhw: There is no contradiction here, except that the distinction between convergent and parallel evolution is sometimes blurred (unrelated desert plants on different continents often have similar forms of leaf, and that is also called convergence).-Yees, but that is a softer interpretation.-> dhw; If organisms respond to similar environmental conditions with six different types of eyes, I would suggest that this points to individual responses rather than a universal programme handed down from the first cells.-That is your individual interpretation. Conway Morris would disagree.-> > dhw: The expression is normally used in a legal context, where the quest is for some kind of objective truth, and so of course that is the impression arising from your claim ... especially when you say it's based on science, which is supposed to be our most objective approach to truth. -God and his processes are not susceptable to absolute truth, which is why Adler chose his definition.- > dhw: I am all in favour of the view that evolution is a history of experimentation. That is why, in my opinion, your hypothesis that all innovations were preprogrammed in the very first cells (apart from when God dabbled) makes your reasoning fall out of place.-What I have said is that God made life very inventive which is why we see the bush and convergence (C-M definition). Life has some programs, apparently, to allow it inventive variations. He did not program every variation in evolution.-> dhw: Experimentation and what you call "a confusing bush of organisms" do not fit in with the precise planning advocated by your anthropocentric view of evolution, or with your insistence that cells and cell communities are mere automatons obeying your God's pre-given instructions. You can't have it both ways.-Not both ways if you follow my reasoning.I have never said that it was precise planning. We have a bush of life and a bush of hominins. But the bush of hominins, which appears for no good reason in challenges of nature provids me evidence for a final thrust to humans, planned from the beginning. I have no idea why God chose such a strange way of getting there, except the 'balance of nature' concept where if you disturb it, bad things happen, i.e., rabbits in Australia.
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dhw: There is no contradiction here, except that the distinction between convergent and parallel evolution is sometimes blurred (unrelated desert plants on different continents often have similar forms of leaf, and that is also called convergence). DAVID: Yees, but that is a softer interpretation.-So please don't tell me my interpretation is "wrong" and I need to look the term up! In any case it makes no difference to the argument. -dhw: I am all in favour of the view that evolution is a history of experimentation. That is why, in my opinion, your hypothesis that all innovations were preprogrammed in the very first cells (apart from when God dabbled) makes your reasoning fall out of place. David: What I have said is that God made life very inventive which is why we see the bush and convergence (C-M definition). Life has some programs, apparently, to allow it inventive variations. He did not program every variation in evolution.-Life does not invent anything. There is no such organism as life. You have a choice here: either the organisms (cells and cell communities) do the inventing, which means they have an inventive intelligence of their own, or your God does it. Since you insist that cells are automatons that can only obey instructions, and we've agreed to jettison random mutations, this can only mean that according to you God does all the inventing (preprogramming or dabbling). -dhw: If organisms respond to similar environmental conditions with six different types of eyes, I would suggest that this points to individual responses rather than a universal programme handed down from the first cells. DAVID: That is your individual interpretation. Conway Morris would disagree.-But you should not claim that it is a "misinterpretation". Please explain why you or Conway Morris believe that a few billion years ago your God preprogrammed six different types of eyes (or dabbled to make them), when only one type is needed for what you say was the purpose of evolution: humans. -dhw: Experimentation and what you call "a confusing bush of organisms" do not fit in with the precise planning advocated by your anthropocentric view of evolution, or with your insistence that cells and cell communities are mere automatons obeying your God's pre-given instructions. You can't have it both ways. DAVID: Not both ways if you follow my reasoning.I have never said that it was precise planning. We have a bush of life and a bush of hominins. But the bush of hominins, which appears for no good reason in challenges of nature provids me evidence for a final thrust to humans, planned from the beginning. I have no idea why God chose such a strange way of getting there...-I can only repeat that if you insist God planned humans from the beginning, the first cells must have been chock-a-block with programmes for the billions of innovations necessary to lead from single cells to us. And if you find this a strange way of getting there, you should at least be prepared to consider an alternative explanation.
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by David Turell , Sunday, December 22, 2013, 15:44 (3776 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: There is no contradiction here, except that the distinction between convergent and parallel evolution is sometimes blurred (unrelated desert plants on different continents often have similar forms of leaf, and that is also called convergence). > DAVID: Yees, but that is a softer interpretation. > > dhw: So please don't tell me my interpretation is "wrong" and I need to look the term up! In any case it makes no difference to the argument. -Because a leaf is a leaf is a leaf. I am describing totally diffferent forms of an eye organ, that we call eyes because of their function, not their very different form. > > dhw: Life does not invent anything. There is no such organism as life. You have a choice here: either the organisms (cells and cell communities) do the inventing, which means they have an inventive intelligence of their own, or your God does it. Since you insist that cells are automatons that can only obey instructions, and we've agreed to jettison random mutations, this can only mean that according to you God does all the inventing (preprogramming or dabbling).-I use the word life to refer to living matter, an emergent state. Living matter creates divergent forms or variations. Our argument is 'how'. You have clearly defined my answer. And cells do have an inventive intelligence, implanted in genetic code. I have given a source for the code, you have not. Your answers seem to be 'it is just there', but no 'how' is presented.- > > dhw: But you should not claim that it is a "misinterpretation". Please explain why you or Conway Morris believe that a few billion years ago your God preprogrammed six different types of eyes (or dabbled to make them), when only one type is needed for what you say was the purpose of evolution: humans.-What I am saying is the living material is given enough inventive techniques that convergence can occur in many ways. > > dhw: I can only repeat that if you insist God planned humans from the beginning, the first cells must have been chock-a-block with programmes for the billions of innovations necessary to lead from single cells to us. And if you find this a strange way of getting there, you should at least be prepared to consider an alternative explanation.-I am prepared, always have been. Theistic evolution provides fur early inventiveness that progresses much as we see human invention: the Wright brothers motorized kite to Boeing 747s. One inventive change builds on the next. I really doubt much dabbling.
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dhw: Life does not invent anything. There is no such organism as life. You have a choice here: either the organisms (cells and cell communities) do the inventing, which means they have an inventive intelligence of their own, or your God does it. Since you insist that cells are automatons that can only obey instructions, and we've agreed to jettison random mutations, this can only mean that according to you God does all the inventing (preprogramming or dabbling).-DAVID: I use the word life to refer to living matter, an emergent state. Living matter creates divergent forms or variations. Our argument is 'how'. You have clearly defined my answer. And cells do have an inventive intelligence, implanted in genetic code. I have given a source for the code, you have not. Your answers seem to be 'it is just there', but no 'how' is presented.-My clear definition of your answer is that cells are preprogrammed automatons, and so God does all the inventing. How, then, according to you can cells have an inventive intelligence? What is "implanted in genetic code"? If you mean independent cellular intelligence, I have always accepted the possibility that your God may have created it. My focus is on how evolution works. But I suspect you are again referring to an implanted programme (i.e. for all the innovations from single cell to humans), in which case the inventive intelligence is God's, not that of the cells. Too much obfuscation here.-dhw: Please explain why you or Conway Morris believe that a few billion years ago your God preprogrammed six different types of eyes (or dabbled to make them), when only one type is needed for what you say was the purpose of evolution: humans. DAVID: What I am saying is the living material is given enough inventive techniques that convergence can occur in many ways. -More obfuscation. Once more, why would God design six different types of eyes if he only needed one to fulfil his purpose of producing humans? Are you now saying that you and Conway Morris do not after all believe in your divine preprogramming of the first cells with all innovations leading to humans? dhw: I can only repeat that if you insist God planned humans from the beginning, the first cells must have been chock-a-block with programmes for the billions of innovations necessary to lead from single cells to us. And if you find this a strange way of getting there, you should at least be prepared to consider an alternative explanation.-DAVID: I am prepared, always have been. Theistic evolution provides fur early inventiveness that progresses much as we see human invention: the Wright brothers motorized kite to Boeing 747s. One inventive change builds on the next. I really doubt much dabbling.-That is precisely how I see evolution working, theistic or not. And I would point out that the Wright brothers' motorized kite did not contain a programme for all the innovations needed to build a Boeing 747. Each innovation required an additional act of invention by a new team of intelligent inventors. A good analogy for evolution through the inventiveness of the "intelligent cell". Thank you.
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by David Turell , Tuesday, December 24, 2013, 01:34 (3775 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: My clear definition of your answer is that cells are preprogrammed automatons, and so God does all the inventing. How, then, according to you can cells have an inventive intelligence? What is "implanted in genetic code"? If you mean independent cellular intelligence, I have always accepted the possibility that your God may have created it. My focus is on how evolution works. But I suspect you are again referring to an implanted programme (i.e. for all the innovations from single cell to humans), in which case the inventive intelligence is God's, not that of the cells.-It is hard for me to understand your confusion. The genome works on implanted information, period. That information allows the genome to try out variations in response to various stimuli and challenges from nature. Natural selection helps pick out the winners. Partly the information pushes complexity. That is why we see convergence everywhere, and a bush of life. - > dhw: Once more, why would God design six different types of eyes if he only needed one to fulfil his purpose of producing humans? Are you now saying that you and Conway Morris do not after all believe in your divine preprogramming of the first cells with all innovations leading to humans?-I have described above the technique I believe God used in setting up evolution as He did. You refuse to recognize that the key is implantd information which runs the program. It allows for a bush to develop, which includes a half dozen eye types. > > dhw: I can only repeat that if you insist God planned humans from the beginning, the first cells must have been chock-a-block with programmes for the billions of innovations necessary to lead from single cells to us.-No, Information on how to proceed forward with a variety of adaptive inventions, allowing natural selection to work on choices.There has never appeared to be an attempt at a direct line to human process. i don't know why. It would seem easier. Perhaps God could not do it that way based on the rules of biology in this universe.-> > dhw: That is precisely how I see evolution working, theistic or not. Each innovation required an additional act of invention by a new team of intelligent inventors. A good analogy for evolution through the inventiveness of the "intelligent cell". Thank you.-No thank you. Your intelligent cell is not the same conception I have. My cell has two parts: a complex coded genome first with an access to a library of information programs to then proceed as I have described, bit by bit, from one improvement to another mediated by competition between varieties of organisms, but with the best adapted not always winning, resulting in convergence creating the bush.
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dhw: My clear definition of your answer is that cells are preprogrammed automatons, and so God does all the inventing. How, then, according to you can cells have an inventive intelligence? What is "implanted in genetic code"? If you mean independent cellular intelligence, I have always accepted the possibility that your God may have created it. My focus is on how evolution works. But I suspect you are again referring to an implanted programme (i.e. for all the innovations from single cell to humans), in which case the inventive intelligence is God's, not that of the cells.-DAVID: It is hard for me to understand your confusion. The genome works on implanted information, period. That information allows the genome to try out variations in response to various stimuli and challenges from nature. Natural selection helps pick out the winners. Partly the information pushes complexity. That is why we see convergence everywhere, and a bush of life. -You have agreed that cells have an "inventive intelligence", and are able to "try out variations", and yet you insist that they are "automatons". I consider these terms to be contradictory, and that is where the confusion arises. If "implanted information" means the ability to make their own decisions and to innovate, then it's the same as saying God gave cells an intelligence of their own. If you mean God implanted the programme for the different adaptations and innovations, i.e. that cells are merely obeying God's instructions, we are back where you started. -dhw: Once more, why would God design six different types of eyes if he only needed one to fulfil his purpose of producing humans? Are you now saying that you and Conway Morris do not after all believe in your divine preprogramming of the first cells with all innovations leading to humans?-DAVID: I have described above the technique I believe God used in setting up evolution as He did. You refuse to recognize that the key is implantd information which runs the program. It allows for a bush to develop, which includes a half dozen eye types.-Implanted information which gives cells the intelligence to do their own inventing, or implanted information which tells cells what to produce? The rest of your post circles round the same question.
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by David Turell , Tuesday, December 24, 2013, 15:25 (3774 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:If "implanted information" means the ability to make their own decisions and to innovate, then it's the same as saying God gave cells an intelligence of their own. If you mean God implanted the programme for the different adaptations and innovations, i.e. that cells are merely obeying God's instructions, we are back where you started. -That is where I start. Cell information had to come from somewhere. God is the best choice.-> > dhw: Implanted information which gives cells the intelligence to do their own inventing, or implanted information which tells cells what to produce? The rest of your post circles round the same question.-I think the information gives them the ability to modify and produce variation. The process does not appear to me to be totally guided, which is why we see so many forms of life, so many life processes, six eyes, etc. But the obvious thrust is to get to conscious humans. Darwin's theory of evolution requires need for change produced though competition in variation. I have never seen the need for us. We were not required by the environment to appear. We were not required by necessity.
Different in degree or kind
dhw:If "implanted information" means the ability to make their own decisions and to innovate, then it's the same as saying God gave cells an intelligence of their own. If you mean God implanted the programme for the different adaptations and innovations, i.e. that cells are merely obeying God's instructions, we are back where you started. DAVID: That is where I start. Cell information had to come from somewhere. God is the best choice.-Once again you are scuttling off to hide behind the flexible term "information". Let us say, then, that God gave cells the internal information that enables them to gather information from outside, process it, communicate with one another, make decisions and implement their decisions. These latter abilities are what I understand by intelligence, and by that definition, cells are intelligent.-DAVID: But the obvious thrust is to get to conscious humans. Darwin's theory of evolution requires need for change produced though competition in variation. I have never seen the need for us. We were not required by the environment to appear. We were not required by necessity.-We have long since agreed that humans were not "necessary" and indeed nothing was "necessary" once bacteria appeared on earth. There is no reason to suppose that the trilobite, the Venus flytrap, the raft-making fire-ant, or Tyrannosaurus Rex were "necessary" either. The fact that so many organisms have survived on Earth so much longer than us hardly makes us into an "obvious thrust", let alone something that was preprogrammed right from the very first cells.
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by David Turell , Thursday, December 26, 2013, 15:35 (3772 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Once again you are scuttling off to hide behind the flexible term "information". Let us say, then, that God gave cells the internal information that enables them to gather information from outside, process it, communicate with one another, make decisions and implement their decisions. These latter abilities are what I understand by intelligence, and by that definition, cells are intelligent.-Please remember, for bacteria these attributes of intelligence are for very simple processes. They are using intelligently supplied information. In a kidney cell, it is not cooperating with its neighbor. They both are set to judge the level of sodium to leave behind or send off to the bladder. But it takes millions of individual cells doing their own thing to make an intelligently designed kidney. All cells operate from information. thre is no way around that statement. > > dhw: We have long since agreed that humans were not "necessary" and indeed nothing was "necessary" once bacteria appeared on earth. There is no reason to suppose that the trilobite, the Venus flytrap, the raft-making fire-ant, or Tyrannosaurus Rex were "necessary" either. The fact that so many organisms have survived on Earth so much longer than us hardly makes us into an "obvious thrust", let alone something that was preprogrammed right from the very first cells.-The big philosophic "BUT" is still if we cannot invoke necessity, why did life appear and why did it arrive at humans? Agnosticism cannot explain that issue, nor seems to want to. I feel I have a reasonable explanation. All you have is chance. In equating chance against a supernatural source, which is the entire battle in a fews words, I've chosen the latter because it is the better explanation, since some of the steps taken are truly miraculous, and the whole process reeks of teleology.
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by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, December 21, 2013, 19:50 (3777 days ago) @ dhw
I am all in favour of the view that evolution is a history of experimentation. That is why, in my opinion, your hypothesis that all innovations were preprogrammed in the very first cells (apart from when God dabbled) makes your reasoning fall out of place. Experimentation and what you call "a confusing bush of organisms" do not fit in with the precise planning advocated by your anthropocentric view of evolution, or with your insistence that cells and cell communities are mere automatons obeying your God's pre-given instructions. You can't have it both ways.-Here here! That's a more concise version of what I originally tried to say.
--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, December 21, 2013, 20:07 (3777 days ago) @ xeno6696
dhw: I am all in favour of the view that evolution is a history of experimentation. That is why, in my opinion, your hypothesis that all innovations were preprogrammed in the very first cells (apart from when God dabbled) makes your reasoning fall out of place. Experimentation and what you call "a confusing bush of organisms" do not fit in with the precise planning advocated by your anthropocentric view of evolution, or with your insistence that cells and cell communities are mere automatons obeying your God's pre-given instructions. You can't have it both ways. > > Matt: Here here! That's a more concise version of what I originally tried to say.-My answer in a different entry today:-> David: What I have said is that God made life very inventive which is why we see the bush and convergence (C-M definition). Life has some programs, apparently, to allow it inventive variations. He did not program every variation in evolution. -dhw: Experimentation and what you call "a confusing bush of organisms" do not fit in with the precise planning advocated by your anthropocentric view of evolution, or with your insistence that cells and cell communities are mere automatons obeying your God's pre-given instructions. You can't have it both ways. > David: Not both ways if you follow my reasoning.I have never said that it was precise planning. We have a bush of life and a bush of hominins. But the bush of hominins, which appears for no good reason in challenges of nature provides me evidence for a final thrust to humans, planned from the beginning. I have no idea why God chose such a strange way of getting there, except the 'balance of nature' concept where if you disturb it, bad things happen, i.e., rabbits in Australia.
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by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, December 21, 2013, 19:36 (3777 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: What's wrong with preplanning? > > Despite the conclusions of many scientists in the field, you find it incredible that cells should be regarded as intelligent beings. And yet despite the lack of any evidence or support from the scientific community, you are prepared to believe that your God inserted into the first few living cells billions of programmes that had to be passed down through billions of generations of cells and cell communities to cover virtually every innovation, lifestyle, strategy throughout the history of evolution ... from kidneys to fire-ant rafts to Swahili. (The only alternative you are prepared to consider is that your God popped in to teach cells how to make kidneys, fire ants to make themselves into rafts, and various African tribes to speak Swahili.) I just find the scale and the inconsistencies of your divine preplanning hypothesis beyond the bounds of credibility ... but I guess that's faith for you.-To add to this, it seems to me that David is arguing that the very first cells in existence, had within them the genetic coding that would eventually become human intelligence. To me... this stretches credibility as well. Why did only some of those original cells eventually become human, and not all? This hypothesis begs the question, why we haven't seen humanlike intelligence arise in other kinds of creatures then--or even plants! (Remember, we ultimately share a single common ancestor.) -We have witnessed the seeds of human capability in our nearest ape neighbors. We haven't witnessed these seeds everywhere we would look, which if life was designed with human intelligence in mind from the beginning, we would expect to see it manifested in many more creatures than we do. No... our luck is too specific. Mathematics dictates that a common factor be present in everything. -I think evolution alone is sufficient, and that the rapid advances we've seen in humanity is perhaps that we were the first ones to exhibit behaviors that allowed advantages that were written right back into our genome. Once social behavior began to develop, it created an evolutionary paradigm shift. The only intelligence necessary to explain man's jump is his own: an intelligent being can sidestep the automata of nature and begin to quite literally select on himself and his kin. (In the evolutionary sense.) -I haven't started it yet, but E.O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth" argues that the dominance of humans as well as the dominance of ants and bees is precisely due to our similar adoption of social behaviors.
--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, December 21, 2013, 20:16 (3777 days ago) @ xeno6696
Matt: I think evolution alone is sufficient, and that the rapid advances we've seen in humanity is perhaps that we were the first ones to exhibit behaviors that allowed advantages that were written right back into our genome. Once social behavior began to develop, it created an evolutionary paradigm shift. The only intelligence necessary to explain man's jump is his own: an intelligent being can sidestep the automata of nature and begin to quite literally select on himself and his kin. (In the evolutionary sense.) > > I haven't started it yet, but E.O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth" argues that the dominance of humans as well as the dominance of ants and bees is precisely due to our similar adoption of social behaviors.-We have no way to understand why our brain grew as it did but as we became upright and our hands developed the dexterity apes don't have there is obviously a feedback loop where the use of the hands drove the brain motor development. The development of speech with alteration of our throat, palate, tongue muscles and larynx drove the brain speech areas to develop, another feedback loop, and so on. A plethora of beneficial changes, none of which were required by the challenges of nature. All serendipity?-I agree with your comment about socialization as a major factor.
Different in degree or kind
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, December 23, 2013, 04:34 (3775 days ago) @ David Turell
Matt: I think evolution alone is sufficient, and that the rapid advances we've seen in humanity is perhaps that we were the first ones to exhibit behaviors that allowed advantages that were written right back into our genome. Once social behavior began to develop, it created an evolutionary paradigm shift. The only intelligence necessary to explain man's jump is his own: an intelligent being can sidestep the automata of nature and begin to quite literally select on himself and his kin. (In the evolutionary sense.) > > > > I haven't started it yet, but E.O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth" argues that the dominance of humans as well as the dominance of ants and bees is precisely due to our similar adoption of social behaviors. > > We have no way to understand why our brain grew as it did but as we became upright and our hands developed the dexterity apes don't have there is obviously a feedback loop where the use of the hands drove the brain motor development. The development of speech with alteration of our throat, palate, tongue muscles and larynx drove the brain speech areas to develop, another feedback loop, and so on. A plethora of beneficial changes, none of which were required by the challenges of nature. All serendipity? > -If you understand the LONG feud between Wilson and Dawkins you'll understand that Wilson states that instead of the "selfish gene" that the primary driver of evolution in humans is the demands placed on us by social circumstances. That's based on a summary of his work, and not a detailed reading, but you should be able to see immediately the primary difference: Dawkins takes the traditional "geological" approach to evolution, and E.O. Wilson takes an approach that directly states that evolution can make rapid advances in species that become reliant on social circumsntaces. In my mind, I think that the evolution of hands, language and motor skills are all interdependetly related on the fact that we're social creatures and that mutual survival of the group tends to dominate selection for traits we pass to our offspring. -> I agree with your comment about socialization as a major factor.-And I think that a retroactive look at socialization both at the cellular level and the macro level will address many of the supposed "gaps" we see in the record.
--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Monday, December 23, 2013, 15:02 (3775 days ago) @ xeno6696
> > Matt; If you understand the LONG feud between Wilson and Dawkins you'll understand that Wilson states that instead of the "selfish gene" that the primary driver of evolution in humans is the demands placed on us by social circumstances........ In my mind, I think that the evolution of hands, language and motor skills are all interdependetly related on the fact that we're social creatures and that mutual survival of the group tends to dominate selection for traits we pass to our offspring. > > > David I agree with your comment about socialization as a major factor. > > Matt: And I think that a retroactive look at socialization both at the cellular level and the macro level will address many of the supposed "gaps" we see in the record.-Robert Wright's books, "Non-zero" and "The Moral Animal" follow this line of reasoning in exploring the probable evolutionary psychology behind these developments. Still doesn't explain why we dropped from the trees.
Different in degree or kind
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, December 21, 2013, 19:13 (3777 days ago) @ dhw
Matt, I agree with you that our form of language was a prime influence in our development, though I wonder which came first: the thoughts or the mechanisms involved in our sound making, without which we could not have expressed the thoughts to others. The origin of human language remains as mysterious as the origin of life and the origin of consciousness. Perhaps David thinks that all languages were preprogrammed into the very first cells, along with the billions of other innovations, lifestyles etc. that God crammed in there. We do know, however, that cells communicate, and cell communities communicate, and our fellow animals communicate, so perhaps it was a matter of intelligent cell communities coming up with innovations to meet the new requirements of the ground-dwelling primate. Convergence would see to it that different cell communities in different environments would devise similar solutions.-We obviously don't know how language originated, but if we note that captive gorillas, (koko, in particular) were able to develop a vocabulary of about 2000 words, we have some kind of an idea that the ability to learn language isn't unique. What makes us unique is quite simply (to me) an issue of instinct. Other ape communities don't rely on other members quite as intricately as we do--we're more social, not less. -It isn't a stretch to say that we have an instinct for language, and that I think it was this instinct, this desire to more effectively communicate that allowed us to develop constant word-symbols over time, passed on via music and culture.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Saturday, December 21, 2013, 20:02 (3777 days ago) @ xeno6696
> Matt: We obviously don't know how language originated, but if we note that captive gorillas, (koko, in particular) were able to develop a vocabulary of about 2000 words, we have some kind of an idea that the ability to learn language isn't unique. -I've thought it was 200 words, which she used in simple declarative sentences about her needs, a three-year-old human level. Not real language in our sense. -> Matt: It isn't a stretch to say that we have an instinct for language, and that I think it was this instinct, this desire to more effectively communicate that allowed us to develop constant word-symbols over time, passed on via music and culture.-Pinker says we have an instinct for syntax which is the same in all languages. The rest is from our intellect. Our throat and larnyx and tongue muscles had to have major modificaitons for the speech we employ, compared to ape anatomy.
Different in degree or kind
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, December 23, 2013, 17:19 (3775 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Matt: We obviously don't know how language originated, but if we note that captive gorillas, (koko, in particular) were able to develop a vocabulary of about 2000 words, we have some kind of an idea that the ability to learn language isn't unique. > > I've thought it was 200 words, which she used in simple declarative sentences about her needs, a three-year-old human level. Not real language in our sense. > -We're both wrong:-http://www.koko.org/world/signlanguage.html-She had a vocabulary of 1000 words. - > > Matt: It isn't a stretch to say that we have an instinct for language, and that I think it was this instinct, this desire to more effectively communicate that allowed us to develop constant word-symbols over time, passed on via music and culture. > > Pinker says we have an instinct for syntax which is the same in all languages. The rest is from our intellect. Our throat and larnyx and tongue muscles had to have major modificaitons for the speech we employ, compared to ape anatomy.-Which I argue can be explained that as we shifted from living in trees to living on the plains, walking upright, hand gestures (which are used extensively by gorillas in the wild) no longer worked for nomadic hunters that had to spread out in order to catch large prey. The driver for translating hand gestures into sounds created a selective pressure based on the survival demands of hunting.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, December 24, 2013, 01:16 (3775 days ago) @ xeno6696
> Matt: Which I argue can be explained that as we shifted from living in trees to living on the plains, walking upright, hand gestures (which are used extensively by gorillas in the wild) no longer worked for nomadic hunters that had to spread out in order to catch large prey. The driver for translating hand gestures into sounds created a selective pressure based on the survival demands of hunting.-Your suppositions are only a small part of the underlying story.I don't expect you to remember a bit from my book (pg. 128) that the physical adaptations for speech arrived with H. erectus 1.5 million years ago, long before real speech is thought to have begun. One of Ian Tattersall's exaptations. The changes involved arching the palate, dropping the larynx and developing an epiglottis to prevent trachea blockages, and better tongue muscles to wrap around word pronunciation, well before speech appeared..
Different in degree or kind
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, December 24, 2013, 18:16 (3774 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Matt: Which I argue can be explained that as we shifted from living in trees to living on the plains, walking upright, hand gestures (which are used extensively by gorillas in the wild) no longer worked for nomadic hunters that had to spread out in order to catch large prey. The driver for translating hand gestures into sounds created a selective pressure based on the survival demands of hunting. > > Your suppositions are only a small part of the underlying story.I don't expect you to remember a bit from my book (pg. 128) that the physical adaptations for speech arrived with H. erectus 1.5 million years ago, long before real speech is thought to have begun. One of Ian Tattersall's exaptations. The changes involved arching the palate, dropping the larynx and developing an epiglottis to prevent trachea blockages, and better tongue muscles to wrap around word pronunciation, well before speech appeared..-But that just tells the story of how selective pressure of hunting resulted in driving humans towards language. We were on the ground before H. Erectus fossils were created.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, December 24, 2013, 18:47 (3774 days ago) @ xeno6696
> Matt:But that just tells the story of how selective pressure of hunting resulted in driving humans towards language. We were on the ground before H. Erectus fossils were created.-I understand that, but the anatomic changes had to occur before speech could be realized. How did selective pressure create the anatomic changes unless guided by a plan? After all it involved the possibility of choking, and offered no physical survival advantage at the time.
Different in degree or kind
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, December 24, 2013, 20:01 (3774 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Matt:But that just tells the story of how selective pressure of hunting resulted in driving humans towards language. We were on the ground before H. Erectus fossils were created. > > I understand that, but the anatomic changes had to occur before speech could be realized. How did selective pressure create the anatomic changes unless guided by a plan? After all it involved the possibility of choking, and offered no physical survival advantage at the time.-The same way economics works: New circumstances placed new demands. As I posted on the "Origin of Language" thread, once we made the move to large game, for the first time in our history, we had the luxury of free time. What are you going to fill the time with? Its no coincidence that modern humans get bored easily. -Song, dance, all of which would put selective pressure (within the groups) towards those individuals that were capable of making different noises than the rest. Maybe they were touched by angels, but I think genes and luck, and good old-fashioned situational demand. Like I said in the Origin of Language thread, big game meant free time, nomadic lifestyle meant trade, and a drive towards understanding different groups. The anatomic changes could have been a mix of traditional genetic luck (maybe 1:10000 women were really good natural singers) mixed with your epigenetics. Like economics, I see no need for planning here.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 25, 2013, 00:20 (3774 days ago) @ xeno6696
> > > Matt:But that just tells the story of how selective pressure of hunting resulted in driving humans towards language. We were on the ground before H. Erectus fossils were created. > > > > David: I understand that, but the anatomic changes had to occur before speech could be realized. How did selective pressure create the anatomic changes unless guided by a plan? After all it involved the possibility of choking, and offered no physical survival advantage at the time. > > Matt: The same way economics works: New circumstances placed new demands. As I posted on the "Origin of Language" thread, once we made the move to large game, for the first time in our history, we had the luxury of free time. What are you going to fill the time with? Its no coincidence that modern humans get bored easily. -I've discussed 'selective pressure' elsewhre as a seductive term that obscures reality. dhw and I both have put Natural Selection into its proper perspective, a minor passive player and we both are doubtful about the important of chance mututions.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 25, 2013, 00:08 (3774 days ago) @ xeno6696
> Matt: But that just tells the story of how selective pressure of hunting resulted in driving humans towards language. We were on the ground before H. Erectus fossils were created.- But, believe me, those early guys couldn't talk any better than a chimp.You are using the fancy Darwin term selective pressure to glorify natural selection which is a really passive factor, only capable of choosing between variable forms. Seeting up the ability to speak took a long, long time. The H. erectus palate was only slightly arched and the other changes of tongue muscles, dropped larynx, and the epiglottis protection, based on fossil evidence,is thought to have taken thousands of generations with the full ability to modern speech appearing about 100,000+ years ago. I'm quoting McCrone's book The Ape that spoke. I just don't buy your theory of lucky mutations.
Different in degree or kind
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, December 25, 2013, 19:08 (3773 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Matt: But that just tells the story of how selective pressure of hunting resulted in driving humans towards language. We were on the ground before H. Erectus fossils were created. > > But, believe me, those early guys couldn't talk any better than a chimp.You are using the fancy Darwin term selective pressure to glorify natural selection which is a really passive factor, only capable of choosing between variable forms. Seeting up the ability to speak took a long, long time. The H. erectus palate was only slightly arched and the other changes of tongue muscles, dropped larynx, and the epiglottis protection, based on fossil evidence,is thought to have taken thousands of generations with the full ability to modern speech appearing about 100,000+ years ago. I'm quoting McCrone's book The Ape that spoke. I just don't buy your theory of lucky mutations.-Then you better not buy the fact that all breeds of dog came from a common wolf ancestor selected for specific traits by human intelligence. If we can do it to dogs, we can do it to ourselves. And I argue we have. -My scenario is infinitely more plausible than magic hoodoo concocting a more suitable larynx.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 25, 2013, 22:00 (3773 days ago) @ xeno6696
> Matt: Then you better not buy the fact that all breeds of dog came from a common wolf ancestor selected for specific traits by human intelligence. If we can do it to dogs, we can do it to ourselves. And I argue we have. > > My scenario is infinitely more plausible than magic hoodoo concocting a more suitable larynx.-Dogs were adopted by humans 18-30,000 years ago, and by careful breeding we have 200 plus types. Do you think H. Erectus was planning his breeding before screwing? "Talk to me,baby, and if it is robust enough I'll give you kids."
Different in degree or kind
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, January 07, 2014, 13:58 (3760 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Matt: Then you better not buy the fact that all breeds of dog came from a common wolf ancestor selected for specific traits by human intelligence. If we can do it to dogs, we can do it to ourselves. And I argue we have. > > > > My scenario is infinitely more plausible than magic hoodoo concocting a more suitable larynx. > > Dogs were adopted by humans 18-30,000 years ago, and by careful breeding we have 200 plus types. Do you think H. Erectus was planning his breeding before screwing? "Talk to me,baby, and if it is robust enough I'll give you kids."-There is only one necessary preadaptation for eusocial behavior: nesting. For bees and wasps, its obvious, but for humans, it was the creation of fire. Even nomads stop and build a nightly "nest" based around fire. -When we see two beautiful people, we instinctually think "those will be beautiful kids." Do you really think that kind of thought could never occur to our ancestors--even if they could barely put it into words? I'm surprised daily by my daughter's intelligence, and I think you're unfairly discrediting H. Erectus's abilities. I think its entirely plausible that early bands of H. Erectus exercised deliberate selection on their kin. (Good joke, though) H. Erectus was capable of creating fire and was therefore capable of building nests which is the required adaptation for social behavior, which springs an organism into dizzying heights of evolution by creating a whole new plateau of selection. -The combination of nesting behavior coupled with the necessary labor division coupled with the ability to quite literally walk into completely new environments created an evolutionary whirlwind. This is backed up by the way, by the fact that genetic diversity on the motherland of Africa is higher than it is everywhere else.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 07, 2014, 15:16 (3760 days ago) @ xeno6696
Matt: There is only one necessary preadaptation for eusocial behavior: nesting. For bees and wasps, its obvious, but for humans, it was the creation of fire. Even nomads stop and build a nightly "nest" based around fire. > > The combination of nesting behavior coupled with the necessary labor division coupled with the ability to quite literally walk into completely new environments created an evolutionary whirlwind. This is backed up by the way, by the fact that genetic diversity on the motherland of Africa is higher than it is everywhere else.-You make an excellent point. Robert Wright's books on evolutionary psychology of earlier humans makes the same points.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Wednesday, February 05, 2014, 15:57 (3731 days ago) @ David Turell
Human brain development depends upon thyroid hormone:-"A combination of ECM and thyroid hormones thus appears necessary for basal progenitors to proliferate and produce enough neurons for brain development. Human brain stem cells produce the suitable environment naturally. "That is probably how, in the course of evolution, we humans developed larger brains", says Wieland Huttner, summing up the study. The research produced another important finding: "We were able to explain the role of iodine in embryonic brain development at the cellular level", says Denise Stenzel. Iodine is essential for the production of thyroid hormones, and an iodine deficiency in pregnant women is known to have adverse effects on the brain development of the unborn child."-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-02-pivotal-role-stem-cell-environment.html
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Thursday, February 06, 2014, 22:24 (3730 days ago) @ David Turell
Our brains are wired like monkeys, but we have neuronal areas they don't have:-http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2014/140128_1.html-http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/28/grass-greener-brain-research-lateral-frontal-pole-We are anatomically different in kind.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Tuesday, April 15, 2014, 00:56 (3663 days ago) @ David Turell
This list says we are different in kind:-http://www.newscientist.com/special/evolution-puzzle-More questions about the time line:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38008/title/Dating-the-Origin-of-Us/
Different in degree or kind
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 00:56 (3662 days ago) @ David Turell
I would like to point out the irony of posting this on the same day as you posted:->We still have no good definition of "species". Wolves and dogs mate easily, because dogs are really a sub-branch of the wolves they came from by human interferences in breeding:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140414092144.htm-yet this article:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38008/title/Dating-the-Origin-of-Us/-Clearly points to the interbreeding between the lineages. Which would suggest either that A.) They are all sub-species of a single parent species and hence different in degrees, or B) They are all the same species. -From a biblical perspective, consider for a moment the story of Babel(even if you don't believe the story, consider the principle). Humans were all consolidated, then they were separated and dispersed. One can only assume that SOME of them would have tried to find their way back, and that some of them would have slowly adapted to their environments over time, changing on a physical level (Asians vs. AFricans vs. Europeans vs. Arabs anyone?).
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 01:25 (3662 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
tony: I would like to point out the irony of posting this on the same day as you posted: > > > David: We still have no good definition of "species". > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140414092144.htm > > Tony: yet this article: > > http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38008/title/Dating-the-Origin-of-... > Tony: Clearly points to the interbreeding between the lineages. Which would suggest either that A.) They are all sub-species of a single parent species and hence different in degrees, or B) They are all the same species. -You are right about the irony, but, we have to work with some sort of concept of species, even if there is not a clear dividing line: Tigrons and ligers as excamples.
Different in degree or kind
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Thursday, April 17, 2014, 05:53 (3660 days ago) @ David Turell
Tony: Clearly points to the interbreeding between the lineages. Which would suggest either that A.) They are all sub-species of a single parent species and hence different in degrees, or B) They are all the same species. > > You are right about the irony, but, we have to work with some sort of concept of species, even if there is not a clear dividing line: Tigrons and ligers as excamples.-Yes we do, and in your example, they are called cats, or felines.Any successful cross breeding between canines and felines?
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Thursday, April 17, 2014, 16:48 (3660 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
tony:in your example, they are called cats, or felines.Any successful cross breeding between canines and felines?-Never. Must be subsets of the same family. Horse, donkey, mule, zebra crosses as examples. Zorse, of course!
Different in degree or kind
by David Turell , Wednesday, May 28, 2014, 15:14 (3619 days ago) @ David Turell
We are very different than chimps in our metabolism of various parts of our bodies. Less strength but much more energy burned by the brain.-http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/05/did-big-brains-sap-our-strength-And of course, why did 'our' brains change so quickly? And their's didn't.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Saturday, December 20, 2014, 14:42 (3413 days ago) @ David Turell
A group of experts despairs of every finding evolutionary reasons for human language. There is no evidence of how it appeared or evolved. Animals communicate but not anything close to our level. we are different in kind.-http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00401/full#h9-Abstract:-"Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; (2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; (3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; (4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language's origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses. We conclude by presenting some suggestions about possible paths forward."-Final conclusion:-"Should such discoveries from comparative animal behavior, paleontology, neurobiology, and archaeology be made, along with greater depth of understanding of gene-phenotype mapping, it would open the door to more relevant genomics and modeling. These are all big IFs about the nature and possibility of future evidence. Until such evidence is brought forward, understanding of language evolution will remain one of the great mysteries of our species."
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, December 20, 2014, 16:46 (3413 days ago) @ David Turell
Well, at least from a biblical perspective, language is part of how we were designed. Apparently "let us make them in our image" included the ability to communicate and speak in a common language with our designer, because, as the story goes, humans communicated with him directly via spoken word in the beginning.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Saturday, December 20, 2014, 17:58 (3413 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
Tony: Well, at least from a biblical perspective, language is part of how we were designed. Apparently "let us make them in our image" included the ability to communicate and speak in a common language with our designer, because, as the story goes, humans communicated with him directly via spoken word in the beginning.-understood. At least we know that babies come with a built-in ability to learn any language they are born to. All languages have the same pattern of syntax and tenses. The ability lessens after about 8 years of age.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, December 20, 2014, 19:12 (3413 days ago) @ David Turell
Tony: Well, at least from a biblical perspective, language is part of how we were designed. Apparently "let us make them in our image" included the ability to communicate and speak in a common language with our designer, because, as the story goes, humans communicated with him directly via spoken word in the beginning. > > understood. At least we know that babies come with a built-in ability to learn any language they are born to. All languages have the same pattern of syntax and tenses. The ability lessens after about 8 years of age.-Also explained, from a biblical perspective. From a biblical perspective, all of the original languages were developed by the same designer that designed us. (Tower of Babel incident). So it is no small wonder that they would all be common.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
DAVID: A group of experts despairs of every finding evolutionary reasons for human language. There is no evidence of how it appeared or evolved. Animals communicate but not anything close to our level. we are different in kind.-http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00401/full#h9-We build houses, and birds build nests. We build planes, and birds fly. We build schools, and birds give one-to-one tuition. We build farms and abattoirs and shops, and birds hunt. We use words, and birds whistle and sing. All organisms use the tools at their disposal, and because we have extraordinary brains, we have created enormously complex means of fulfilling our needs (which in themselves, I agree, have become increasingly complex, far in excess of those of our fellow animals). Language is one of them. If you define it as words and syntax, then yes we are unique. If you take it as means of communication, then most species are unique. Bacteria, ants, crows, snakes and elephants all have their own languages, but what does that prove? That 3.7 billion years ago your God preprogrammed all the different bird, insect and animal languages into the first cells, but inserted extra special programmes just for us humans? Or do you think your God stepped in later to give extra special language lessons to us? Ah, no, because in your latest theory, God doesn't dabble. Perhaps you could just briefly explain once more why it is so important for you to make this distinction between degree and kind. TONY: Well, at least from a biblical perspective, language is part of how we were designed. Apparently "let us make them in our image" included the ability to communicate and speak in a common language with our designer, because, as the story goes, humans communicated with him directly via spoken word in the beginning.-I'm not quite sure what “in the beginning” implies. According to Genesis there was only one human language to begin with, but now there are estimated to be well over 6000 in use. So either God understands people's prayers in 6000-plus different languages, or we can no longer communicate with him directly. You seem to be implying the latter, which would make a mockery of most church services, let alone those individuals who believe they have direct access. Or have I misunderstood?
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, December 21, 2014, 15:43 (3412 days ago) @ dhw
DHW: Perhaps you could just briefly explain once more why it is so important for you to make this distinction between degree and kind. > -Because one of the root issues in evolution is precisely about the difference between degrees and kind. Adaptation is differences of degrees, speciation is differences of kind.- > TONY: Well, at least from a biblical perspective, language is part of how we were designed. Apparently "let us make them in our image" included the ability to communicate and speak in a common language with our designer, because, as the story goes, humans communicated with him directly via spoken word in the beginning. > > I'm not quite sure what “in the beginning” implies. According to Genesis there was only one human language to begin with, but now there are estimated to be well over 6000 in use. So either God understands people's prayers in 6000-plus different languages, or we can no longer communicate with him directly. You seem to be implying the latter, which would make a mockery of most church services, let alone those individuals who believe they have direct access. Or have I misunderstood?-Yes, you misunderstood. There was only one human language initially. God directly 'dabbled' to confuse the languages (i.e. that implies that he created the initial other root languages as well). Your statement that we can not communicate directly to him is illogical. There are translators that can speak a dozen languages. Does that mean that if you speak one of the languages that they know, that you can not communicate with them, or does it instead mean that they know more languages than you?
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
TONY: Well, at least from a biblical perspective, language is part of how we were designed. Apparently "let us make them in our image" included the ability to communicate and speak in a common language with our designer, because, as the story goes, humans communicated with him directly via spoken word in the beginning.Dhw: I'm not quite sure what “in the beginning” implies. According to Genesis there was only one human language to begin with, but now there are estimated to be well over 6000 in use. So either God understands people's prayers in 6000-plus different languages, or we can no longer communicate with him directly. You seem to be implying the latter, which would make a mockery of most church services, let alone those individuals who believe they have direct access. Or have I misunderstood? TONY: Yes, you misunderstood. There was only one human language initially. God directly 'dabbled' to confuse the languages (i.e. that implies that he created the initial other root languages as well). Your statement that we can not communicate directly to him is illogical. There are translators that can speak a dozen languages. Does that mean that if you speak one of the languages that they know, that you can not communicate with them, or does it instead mean that they know more languages than you?-I was not making a statement but was puzzled by your syntax. You wrote, in relation to there being a common language, that humans communicated with God “directly via spoken word in the beginning”, which suggests they no longer communicate with him directly. Judging by your response, however, may I assume that God now communicates with people in 6000-plus languages?
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, December 22, 2014, 17:53 (3411 days ago) @ dhw
TONY: Well, at least from a biblical perspective, language is part of how we were designed. Apparently "let us make them in our image" included the ability to communicate and speak in a common language with our designer, because, as the story goes, humans communicated with him directly via spoken word in the beginning.Dhw: I'm not quite sure what “in the beginning” implies. According to Genesis there was only one human language to begin with, but now there are estimated to be well over 6000 in use. So either God understands people's prayers in 6000-plus different languages, or we can no longer communicate with him directly. You seem to be implying the latter, which would make a mockery of most church services, let alone those individuals who believe they have direct access. Or have I misunderstood? > > TONY: Yes, you misunderstood. There was only one human language initially. God directly 'dabbled' to confuse the languages (i.e. that implies that he created the initial other root languages as well). Your statement that we can not communicate directly to him is illogical. There are translators that can speak a dozen languages. Does that mean that if you speak one of the languages that they know, that you can not communicate with them, or does it instead mean that they know more languages than you? > > I was not making a statement but was puzzled by your syntax. You wrote, in relation to there being a common language, that humans communicated with God “directly via spoken word in the beginning”, which suggests they no longer communicate with him directly. Judging by your response, however, may I assume that God now communicates with people in 6000-plus languages?-2,883, at last count, actually, which is the number of languages that the bible has been translated in whole or in part to. People communicate to him, these days, directly through prayer. He needs no interpreter to understand them. In ancient times it is claimed that the communication was much more direct, as in the cases of Adam, Cain, Abram, Noah, and others. As for his communication back to us, to my knowledge there has been no witnessed spoken communication directly from God since Christ was baptized. Though that, and several other divine incidences had dozens to upwards of hundreds of witnesses.-“God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son” (Heb. 1:1).-God does not speak directly to people any more. He speaks through his word the bible, and through the witness of his son. Probably not what you want to hear, but that is what the Bible says about it.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
Dhw: May I assume that God now communicates with people in 6000-plus languages TONY: 2,883, at last count, which is the number of languages that the bible has been translated in whole or in part to. -On the assumption that the criterion for what constitutes a language is not whether the bible has been translated into it, all the specialist websites I looked at gave figures in excess of 6000. It doesn't matter, though, because you have clarified your earlier statement, and your answer is interesting, though still not clear: “People communicate to him, these days, directly through prayer. He needs no interpreter to understand them. [...] God does not speak directly to people any more. He speaks through his word the bible, and through the witness of his son.” So people can talk TO God in their 2,883 - 6000-plus different languages, and he understands but doesn't respond. They can only find answers in the bible. That won't help much if people pray to him to help them, so may I assume that you believe he also listens to prayers and responds - perhaps with a thumbs up or down? I don't understand what you mean by “through the witness of his son”. The sentence itself makes no sense to me. Do you mean Christ speaks directly to the supplicant in the relevant language? But why “witness”? Apologies for my obtuseness, but do please explain in plain English.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 00:42 (3410 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: So people can talk TO God in their 2,883 - 6000-plus different languages, and he understands but doesn't respond. They can only find answers in the bible. That won't help much if people pray to him to help them, so may I assume that you believe he also listens to prayers and responds.-The problem with all of this discussion is that less than 50% believe in 'our' monotheistic God
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 08:21 (3409 days ago) @ David Turell
dhw: So people can talk TO God in their 2,883 - 6000-plus different languages, and he understands but doesn't respond. They can only find answers in the bible. That won't help much if people pray to him to help them, so may I assume that you believe he also listens to prayers and responds. > > David: The problem with all of this discussion is that less than 50% believe in 'our' monotheistic God- Why is that a problem? If something is real, does your belief or disbelief make it more or less real? Or does it simply make you more or less wrong?
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 14:35 (3409 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> > Tony: Why is that a problem? If something is real, does your belief or disbelief make it more or less real? Or does it simply make you more or less wrong?-No, I still believe what I believe. The fact that humans have so many varied beliefs simply means that there are varied ways to approach the Devine level of reality.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 15:01 (3409 days ago) @ David Turell
> > > > Tony: Why is that a problem? If something is real, does your belief or disbelief make it more or less real? Or does it simply make you more or less wrong? > > David: No, I still believe what I believe. The fact that humans have so many varied beliefs simply means that there are varied ways to approach the Devine level of reality.-Perhaps it means that real is real and all people are varying degrees of wrong.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 21:07 (3409 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: Perhaps it means that real is real and all people are varying degrees of wrong.-All a matter of point of view.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 08:09 (3409 days ago) @ dhw
You seem to expect to be able to just sit down and have a chat, a two way conversation with God, perhaps over tea, where you ask questions directly and he responds directly, in spoken words in your given language. Yet, that is not the end all be all of communication. You would recognize communication in the written word if it were written by anyone else, but you fail to set that same criteria for him.-Jehovah (YHWH) is described as "the hearer of prayers". The question then is, how does he answer. In terms of language, you would be surprised at the answers that are indeed received through the bible. Depsite its age, there have been many times when I have personally been struggling with something, prayed about it, and then subsequently found a fairly specific answer within its pages whether I was looking for it or not. However, other times they are answered through actions, and often not in the manner we would expect. -The reason I quoted that passage is that it specifically states that YHWH does not speak directly to humans, voice to voice, any longer. Despite that, the example of his son, when thoroughly examined does in fact provide a lot of answers to a lot of questions, and more importantly builds faith and assurance in what is to come. You may not agree, and that is certainly your right as a human with free will.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
TONY: People communicate to him, these days, directly through prayer. He needs no interpreter to understand them. [...] God does not speak directly to people any more. He speaks through his word the bible, and through the witness of his son.-Dhw: So people can talk TO God in their 2,883 - 6000-plus different languages, and he understands but doesn't respond. They can only find answers in the bible. That won't help much if people pray to him to help them, so may I assume that you believe he also listens to prayers and responds - perhaps with a thumbs up or down? I don't understand what you mean by “through the witness of his son”? The sentence itself makes no sense to me. Do you mean Christ speaks directly to the supplicant in the relevant language? But why “witness”? Apologies for my obtuseness, but do please explain in plain English.-TONY: You seem to expect to be able to just sit down and have a chat, a two way conversation with God, perhaps over tea, where you ask questions directly and he responds directly, in spoken words in your given language. -No, I am talking specifically about prayer.-TONY: Yet, that is not the end all be all of communication. You would recognize communication in the written word if it were written by anyone else, but you fail to set that same criteria for him. Jehovah (YHWH) is described as "the hearer of prayers". The question then is, how does he answer.-That is indeed the question. If I address someone directly, yes, I expect an answer. If I consult an instruction manual, I hope to find the answers. I accept the latter as a parallel to your bible but if, for instance, someone prays to God to cure their child of an illness, I would not expect to find the answer in the bible. My guess is that sometimes such prayers are answered, and sometimes they are not. And my next guess would be that the outcome would depend on the nature of the illness rather than the direct response of God. In any case, no matter whether it's thumbs up or down, the faithful can always respond, “It's God's will.” TONY: Depsite its age, there have been many times when I have personally been struggling with something, prayed about it, and then subsequently found a fairly specific answer within its pages whether I was looking for it or not. However, other times they are answered through actions, and often not in the manner we would expect.-That doesn't surprise me in the least. -TONY: The reason I quoted that passage is that it specifically states that YHWH does not speak directly to humans, voice to voice, any longer. Despite that, the example of his son, when thoroughly examined does in fact provide a lot of answers to a lot of questions, and more importantly builds faith and assurance in what is to come. You may not agree, and that is certainly your right as a human with free will. -So “through the witness of his son” = the stories told and advice given in the New Testament. Thank you.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 14:05 (3409 days ago) @ dhw
TONY: You seem to expect to be able to just sit down and have a chat, a two way conversation with God, perhaps over tea, where you ask questions directly and he responds directly, in spoken words in your given language. > > No, I am talking specifically about prayer. > -I personally think of prayer as a mental letter, more than a direct conversation. I trust the the intended recipient reads it and acts appropriately.- > TONY: Yet, that is not the end all be all of communication. You would recognize communication in the written word if it were written by anyone else, but you fail to set that same criteria for him. Jehovah (YHWH) is described as "the hearer of prayers". The question then is, how does he answer. > > That is indeed the question. If I address someone directly, yes, I expect an answer. If I consult an instruction manual, I hope to find the answers. I accept the latter as a parallel to your bible but if, for instance, someone prays to God to cure their child of an illness, I would not expect to find the answer in the bible. My guess is that sometimes such prayers are answered, and sometimes they are not. And my next guess would be that the outcome would depend on the nature of the illness rather than the direct response of God. In any case, no matter whether it's thumbs up or down, the faithful can always respond, “It's God's will.”-They could respond that way, but they would be wrong, and it would demonstrate a lack of biblical knowledge on their part. (Ecc 9:11) "I have seen something further under the sun, that the swift do not always win the race, nor do the mighty win the battle,+ nor do the wise always have the food, nor do the intelligent always have the riches,+ nor do those with knowledge always have success,+ because time and unexpected events* overtake them all."-God does not promise (at this time at least, though he does promise to do so at a future date) to cure every ill, rescue every victim, or spare every life from the effects of sin, illness, or "time and unexpected events", or that we would be wealthy, powerful, influential, or anything else. Quite the opposite, actually. We are told that his followers would be hated, reviled, persecuted, and possibly even murdered on his account.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
TONY: You seem to expect to be able to just sit down and have a chat, a two way conversation with God, perhaps over tea, where you ask questions directly and he responds directly, in spoken words in your given language. dhw: No, I am talking specifically about prayer. TONY: I personally think of prayer as a mental letter, more than a direct conversation. I trust the the intended recipient reads it and acts appropriately.-I continue to question the point of prayer. By appropriately, do you mean what YOU consider to be appropriate, or what God considers to be appropriate? If you pray for help (e.g. with a sick child), do you initially assume God doesn't know the child is sick? If you think he knows, and if you think he will act “appropriately”, what is the point in praying to him for help?-TONY: ... Jehovah (YHWH) is described as "the hearer of prayers". The question then is, how does he answer. dhw: That is indeed the question. If I address someone directly, yes, I expect an answer. If I consult an instruction manual, I hope to find the answers. I accept the latter as a parallel to your bible but if, for instance, someone prays to God to cure their child of an illness, I would not expect to find the answer in the bible. My guess is that sometimes such prayers are answered, and sometimes they are not. And my next guess would be that the outcome would depend on the nature of the illness rather than the direct response of God. In any case, no matter whether it's thumbs up or down, the faithful can always respond, “It's God's will.”-TONY: They could respond that way, but they would be wrong, and it would demonstrate a lack of biblical knowledge on their part. (Ecc 9:11) "I have seen something further under the sun, that the swift do not always win the race, nor do the mighty win the battle,+ nor do the wise always have the food, nor do the intelligent always have the riches,+ nor do those with knowledge always have success,+ because time and unexpected events* overtake them all."-So if the child dies, it's NOT God's will? The quote appears to be telling us that sometimes we do and sometimes we don't get what we want/deserve/think we deserve. Very true, whether God exists or not. But if, as you say, the outcome does NOT depend on God's will, and if it doesn't depend on our own efforts and qualities, I can only conclude that the outcome is a matter of chance. The same applies if we pray for others (I deliberately chose the example of a sick child and not one of self-aggrandisement). God's will, or chance? Either way, your response suggests that apart from pleasing God by telling him how wonderful he is, prayer as a means of communicating with God is a futile activity.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Friday, December 26, 2014, 14:35 (3407 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The same applies if we pray for others (I deliberately chose the example of a sick child and not one of self-aggrandisement). God's will, or chance? Either way, your response suggests that apart from pleasing God by telling him how wonderful he is, prayer as a means of communicating with God is a futile activity.-A number of years ago I brought to this forum a number of double-blind prayer studies which seemed to show that group prayer did positively affect medical outcomes for the sick. Then came several studies which pointed out weaknesses in the first studies. The whole effort ended up in the 'suggestive' category where I think it still sits.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, December 27, 2014, 07:58 (3406 days ago) @ David Turell
dhw: The same applies if we pray for others (I deliberately chose the example of a sick child and not one of self-aggrandisement). God's will, or chance? Either way, your response suggests that apart from pleasing God by telling him how wonderful he is, prayer as a means of communicating with God is a futile activity. > > A number of years ago I brought to this forum a number of double-blind prayer studies which seemed to show that group prayer did positively affect medical outcomes for the sick. Then came several studies which pointed out weaknesses in the first studies. The whole effort ended up in the 'suggestive' category where I think it still sits.- When you were a kid, and you asked your parent for something, did you get what you wanted ever time you asked? Of those times you didn't, was every one of them a case of your parent not wanting to give what you asked for, or were there generally reasons beyond your understanding (at the time)? Some prayers get answered, the way we want, some don't. Most often, for me at least, they have been answered in far better ways than I could have ever imagined.-As has become fairly typical, at the end of the day you have resorted to the old trope of "what about the children?" to try and disprove god, as if it would be some kind of merciful kindness to prolong someones life if that life would have been filled with pain, misery, and suffering for both them and those they loved, or as if whats in store here and now is so much better than what is in store later. -Now, please don't get me wrong. I love life, and I love my family, and I certainly would not want to see any harm befall any of them. Yet, that is part of what faith is about. If you Follow the historical facts, follow the fulfilled prophecies (promises), and see that everything else that he has said has come true, you trust that the other things he said will also come true.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
DAVID: A number of years ago I brought to this forum a number of double-blind prayer studies which seemed to show that group prayer did positively affect medical outcomes for the sick. Then came several studies which pointed out weaknesses in the first studies. The whole effort ended up in the 'suggestive' category where I think it still sits. TONY: When you were a kid, and you asked your parent for something, did you get what you wanted ever time you asked? Of those times you didn't, was every one of them a case of your parent not wanting to give what you asked for, or were there generally reasons beyond your understanding (at the time)? Some prayers get answered, the way we want, some don't. Most often, for me at least, they have been answered in far better ways than I could have ever imagined.-Doesn't this suggest that God will only answer your prayers if what you want is what he wants? (See below, re God's will.)-TONY: As has become fairly typical, at the end of the day you have resorted to the old trope of "what about the children?" to try and disprove god, as if it would be some kind of merciful kindness to prolong someones life if that life would have been filled with pain, misery, and suffering for both them and those they loved, or as if whats in store here and now is so much better than what is in store later.-I presume this answer is meant for both David and myself, but I'll venture to speak for David too here by saying that neither of us is using this argument to disprove God! Nor are we claiming that praying for the life of a child means a desire for the child to live on in pain and suffering! I am questioning the purpose and usefulness of prayer. I pointed out that no matter whether it's thumbs up or down, the faithful can always respond, “It's God's will”, which you categorically denied. You have quoted but not responded to this part of my post, which contains the basis of my querying the point of prayer. TONY: They could respond that way, but they would be wrong, and it would demonstrate a lack of biblical knowledge on their part. (Ecc 9:11) "I have seen something further under the sun, that the swift do not always win the race, nor do the mighty win the battle,+ nor do the wise always have the food, nor do the intelligent always have the riches,+ nor do those with knowledge always have success,+ because time and unexpected events* overtake them all."-Dhw: So if the child dies, it's NOT God's will? The quote appears to be telling us that sometimes we do and sometimes we don't get what we want/deserve/think we deserve. Very true, whether God exists or not. But if, as you say, the outcome does NOT depend on God's will, and if it doesn't depend on our own efforts and qualities, I can only conclude that the outcome is a matter of chance. The same applies if we pray for others (I deliberately chose the example of a sick child and not one of self-aggrandisement). God's will, or chance? Either way, your response suggests that apart from pleasing God by telling him how wonderful he is, prayer as a means of communicating with God is a futile activity.-So let me ask you directly: what do you see as the point of prayer?
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, December 27, 2014, 18:54 (3406 days ago) @ dhw
TONY: When you were a kid, and you asked your parent for something, did you get what you wanted ever time you asked? Of those times you didn't, was every one of them a case of your parent not wanting to give what you asked for, or were there generally reasons beyond your understanding (at the time)? Some prayers get answered, the way we want, some don't. Most often, for me at least, they have been answered in far better ways than I could have ever imagined. > > Doesn't this suggest that God will only answer your prayers if what you want is what he wants? (See below, re God's will.) > -As a parent, did you ever WANT bad things to happen to your children? Could you, or should you, prevent every bad thing from happening to them? Did your children ever see something positive that you did as something negative, or something negative as something positive? -Consider this: Your kid asks for sweets. They have not had dinner yet, and are diabetic. You do not give them sweets. Your kid screams "I hate you, you never give me what I want!" You send them to their room for punishment for talking back. Who was right, who was wrong? Did you, as the parent WANT to with hold sweets, or was it in their best interest? Did you WANT to punish them, or was it in their best interest? -Your argument here is that of the child begging for sweets. You want what you want when you want it, assuming that you know what is best for you at all times. Yet, the bible says, "it does not belong to man even to direct the way in which he walks". Not that we don't have free will, but that we will always manage to screw it up somehow. We walk as children walk, all full of energy and tripping all over ourselves. --> TONY: As has become fairly typical, at the end of the day you have resorted to the old trope of "what about the children?" to try and disprove god... > >..I am questioning the purpose and usefulness of prayer. I pointed out that no matter whether it's thumbs up or down, the faithful can always respond, “It's God's will”, which you categorically denied...-The faithful could also respond with "One cross each, line on the left", but that wouldn't make them right. I actually DID respond to this. Specifically
Ecc 9:11) "I have seen something further under the sun, that the swift do not always win the race, nor do the mighty win the battle,+ nor do the wise always have the food, nor do the intelligent always have the riches,+ nor do those with knowledge always have success,+ because time and unexpected events* overtake them all."[/i]-You are again making the argument of a child wanting sweets. Why doesn't daddy give me what I ask for? If he doesn't give me what I want all the time, why bother asking? Obviously, because daddy doesn't give me my every desire than he is not real, doesn't hear me, or doesn't care.- > > Dhw: So if the child dies, it's NOT God's will? The quote appears to be telling us that sometimes we do and sometimes we don't get what we want/deserve/think we deserve. Very true, whether God exists or not. But if, as you say, the outcome does NOT depend on God's will, and if it doesn't depend on our own efforts and qualities, I can only conclude that the outcome is a matter of chance. The same applies if we pray for others (I deliberately chose the example of a sick child and not one of self-aggrandisement). God's will, or chance? Either way, your response suggests that apart from pleasing God by telling him how wonderful he is, prayer as a means of communicating with God is a futile activity. > > So let me ask you directly: what do you see as the point of prayer?-True, there is an element of chance. That is what the "..because time and unexpected events* overtake them all" means. That does not mean that every single thing is chance. There is also an element of pleasing God, so that is also true. -But to go back to my analogy of the child, is there any benefit to the child if they tell their parents "Thank you"? What about when they say "I'm sorry"? What about when they say "please"? -I am not speaking here of how those words affect the relationship with the parent, or whether or not it gets the child what they want. Rather, I am specifically talking about the direct benefit to the child of even using those words on a regular basis, the direct, immediate, positive benefit to the child. Doesn't the child benefit directly from developing a humble, thankful, attitude? Doesn't benefit them by making them aware of all the effort that has been spent on their behalf and of all the precious things in their life? And with that awareness, doesn't there come a form of responsibility, appreciation, perhaps even the desire to do the right thing so as not to hurt the parent that they love? And in developing that desire not to hurt their parent, don't they also develop the desire not to do the things which would displease their parents, thus protecting them from many, many injurious things? What about the benefit of the conversation. Isn't there some benefit to just being able to talk to someone that you know is listening, someone that loves you and cares? It is most certainly NOT a futile activity.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Saturday, December 27, 2014, 15:24 (3406 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: As has become fairly typical, at the end of the day you have resorted to the old trope of "what about the children?" to try and disprove god, as if it would be some kind of merciful kindness to prolong someones life if that life would have been filled with pain, misery, and suffering for both them and those they loved, or as if whats in store here and now is so much better than what is in store later.-I don't get the point of this statement of yours. I have reached a faith in God from a totally different viewpoint than yours. I see no difference in the endpoint for the two of us. You prefer our approach, I prefer mine. The God/prayer studies were an interesting attempt, but in the long run God remains concealed.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, December 27, 2014, 19:03 (3406 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Tony: As has become fairly typical, at the end of the day you have resorted to the old trope of "what about the children?" to try and disprove god, as if it would be some kind of merciful kindness to prolong someones life if that life would have been filled with pain, misery, and suffering for both them and those they loved, or as if whats in store here and now is so much better than what is in store later. > >David: I don't get the point of this statement of yours. I have reached a faith in God from a totally different viewpoint than yours. I see no difference in the endpoint for the two of us. You prefer our approach, I prefer mine. The God/prayer studies were an interesting attempt, but in the long run God remains concealed.--The "What about the death of a child?" argument is so old and so often used that becomes something of a sore spot. Even DHW has used it in the past. It's used so often the witnesses even published literature about it. That is what I mean that it is a trope, overdone, cliche. "For the children..."-http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThinkOfTheChildren http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WouldHurtAChild
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Monday, December 29, 2014, 01:32 (3405 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: Jehovah (YHWH) is described as "the hearer of prayers". The question then is, how does he answer.-My own view is that one never asks for favors, such as a football team praying for a win. One asks for strength to solve problems by oneself.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, December 29, 2014, 11:10 (3404 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Tony: Jehovah (YHWH) is described as "the hearer of prayers". The question then is, how does he answer. > >David: My own view is that one never asks for favors, such as a football team praying for a win. One asks for strength to solve problems by oneself.-And that is certainly in line with the biblical view as well. (Matt 6:9-13) Other places also instruct us to ask for things like wisdom, strength, and patience.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
In the context of the relationship between human beings and our fellow animals, I asked David why it was so important for him to make the distinction between degree and kind.-TONY: Because one of the root issues in evolution is precisely about the difference between degrees and kind. Adaptation is difference of degree, speciation is difference of kind. -This is indeed a crucial and still unresolved problem in evolution, but the background to my question is not actually one of classification. It concerns David's interpretation of the purpose and the process of evolution. David has answered under “Yellowstone & Catastrophe”AVID: A long time ago it seemed logical to me that humans were God's end point. I have seen no evidence or argument since then to change my mind. WE are different in kind, against all odds.-All life is against all odds. But your particular hypothesis has led you to the belief that God preprogrammed the first cells with all the innovations and complex lifestyles leading from bacteria to humans, with a question mark over the randomness of environmental conditions, and that the extinction of 99% of all species was essential for the “balance of life” that would lead to humans. You have recently also excluded divine dabbling from your evolutionary scenario. My question, though, was WHY the distinction is so important to you. Even if humans were different in degree and not kind, you could still say we were the “end point”, since we are so much more conscious/intelligent/ technically advanced than other species. -So what exactly is the reason for your insistence on the distinction? What is it meant to prove?
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 00:50 (3410 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:My question, though, was WHY the distinction is so important to you. Even if humans were different in degree and not kind, you could still say we were the “end point”, since we are so much more conscious/intelligent/ technically advanced than other species. > > So what exactly is the reason for your insistence on the distinction? What is it meant to prove?-You total miss the import of Adler's book. You need to read it. It was still in print just a few years ago. "Difference in kind" means that humans did not evolve by any form of Darwinian evolution. Our animal bodies did change very divergently from apes, but that part of us appears as evolved, or helped directly by God to evolve. On the other hand our intellect and consciousness are currently totally unexplained (See Nagel) and represent to me direct help from God.
Different in degree or kind; language
dhw: My question, though, was WHY the distinction is so important to you. Even if humans were different in degree and not kind, you could still say we were the “end point”, since we are so much more conscious/intelligent/ technically advanced than other species. So what exactly is the reason for your insistence on the distinction? What is it meant to prove?-DAVID: You total miss the import of Adler's book. You need to read it. It was still in print just a few years ago. "Difference in kind" means that humans did not evolve by any form of Darwinian evolution. Our animal bodies did change very divergently from apes, but that part of us appears as evolved, or helped directly by God to evolve. On the other hand our intellect and consciousness are currently totally unexplained (See Nagel) and represent to me direct help from God.-Thank you for this direct, but slightly confusing answer. If our animal bodies appear to have evolved from apes, it's difficult to see how you can argue that humans did not evolve “by any form of Darwinian evolution”. Presumably you would accept that our brains are part of our animal bodies, and although we don't know the source of consciousness, there would seem to be some sort of tie-up between the two. “Direct help” from God means dabbling, which only a few days ago you told us you had now discounted. -I have full confidence in your ability to explain your own thoughts rather than my having to understand them through Adler. Do you now think your God created humans entirely separately, dabbled with their brains and other distinguishing features, or preprogrammed them 3.7 billion years ago, along with all the other millions of organisms and lifestyles, extinct and extant, that he preprogrammed in those first living cells?
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Saturday, December 27, 2014, 15:49 (3406 days ago) @ dhw
David: "Difference in kind" means that humans did not evolve by any form of Darwinian evolution. Our animal bodies did change very divergently from apes, but that part of us appears as evolved, or helped directly by God to evolve. On the other hand our intellect and consciousness are currently totally unexplained (See Nagel) and represent to me direct help from God.[/i] > > dhw: Thank you for this direct, but slightly confusing answer. If our animal bodies appear to have evolved from apes, it's difficult to see how you can argue that humans did not evolve “by any form of Darwinian evolution”. -You are correct. I didn't make that answer of mine clear enough. Our physical bodies appear to have been evolved as with all other animals. I still don't know, for I cannot see any definitive evidence to decide whether it was all coded from the beginning, or assisted along the way. BUT, following Adler, our brain development and the resultant intellect and consciousness is light year apart from the true animal without that attribute. We are different in kind for that reason.
Different in degree or kind; language
dhw: My question, though, was WHY the distinction is so important to you. Even if humans were different in degree and not kind, you could still say we were the “end point”, since we are so much more conscious/intelligent/ technically advanced than other species [...] DAVID: "Difference in kind" means that humans did not evolve by any form of Darwinian evolution. Our animal bodies did change very divergently from apes, but that part of us appears as evolved, or helped directly by God to evolve. On the other hand our intellect and consciousness are currently totally unexplained (See Nagel) and represent to me direct help from God.-dhw: Thank you for this direct, but slightly confusing answer. If our animal bodies appear to have evolved from apes, it's difficult to see how you can argue that humans did not evolve “by any form of Darwinian evolution”. DAVID: You are correct. I didn't make that answer of mine clear enough. Our physical bodies appear to have been evolved as with all other animals. I still don't know, for I cannot see any definitive evidence to decide whether it was all coded from the beginning, or assisted along the way. BUT, following Adler, our brain development and the resultant intellect and consciousness is light year apart from the true animal without that attribute. We are different in kind for that reason.-I certainly shan't disagree with you as regards our intellect and consciousness being vastly superior to those of our fellow animals, but the question remains as to why it is so important for you to distinguish between degree and kind. You now seem unsure whether our bodies and brains (which can hardly be separated from intellect and consciousness, even if the source of these remains a mystery) did or didn't evolve by Darwinian evolution. If God didn't create us separately, according to you he either preprogrammed us into the very first cells along with a few million other extinct and extant organisms and lifestyles, or he dabbled. If he dabbled, one might well conclude that either we were not planned from the beginning, or the plans weren't working out. Your dilemma still seems to be unresolved, though it would disappear completely if you weren't so determined to impose your personal patterns on your God, i.e. by making humans the initial purpose of evolution, and insisting he had everything worked out in advance, right down to the flight of the plover and the monarch butterfly.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Monday, December 29, 2014, 00:29 (3405 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I certainly shan't disagree with you as regards our intellect and consciousness being vastly superior to those of our fellow animals, but the question remains as to why it is so important for you to distinguish between degree and kind. You now seem unsure whether our bodies and brains (which can hardly be separated from intellect and consciousness, even if the source of these remains a mystery) did or didn't evolve by Darwinian evolution. -I'm not unsure. Very simple. 'Degree' means that we humans evolved with our giant brain by some form of evolution. "Kind" means that our giant brain and consciousness were created by a special purposeful directed process separate from the evolution of our animal bodies. Strictly from Adler, and it represents the Thomist philosophical view of dualism. This is a major key to my thinking.-From vj Torley, the theistic philosopher:-"On the Thomistic account, every human being is a unity. An organism's soul is simply its underlying principle of unity. The human soul, with its ability to reason, does not distinguish us from animals; it distinguishes us as animals. The unity of a human being's actions is actually deeper and stronger than that underlying the acts of a non-rational animal: rationality allows us to bring together our past, present and future acts, when we formulate plans. When Aquinas argues that the act of intellect is not the act of a bodily organ, he is not showing that there is a non-animal act engaged in by human beings. He is showing, rather, that not every act of an animal is a bodily act. The human animal is capable of non-bodily acts in addition to bodily ones." -http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/remembering-rameses/
Different in degree or kind; language
dhw: You now seem unsure whether our bodies and brains (which can hardly be separated from intellect and consciousness, even if the source of these remains a mystery) did or didn't evolve by Darwinian evolution. DAVID: I'm not unsure. Very simple. 'Degree' means that we humans evolved with our giant brain by some form of evolution. "Kind" means that our giant brain and consciousness were created by a special purposeful directed process separate from the evolution of our animal bodies... -Thank you for this clarification. Earlier, you dismissed the divine dabble in favour of preprogramming, but you now have God inserting a totally different brain and form of awareness (kind, not degree) to those of the animals from which our bodies evolved. I have difficulty separating the brain from consciousness (see below on ‘dualism'), and consciousness from the phenomena of which we and our fellow animals are conscious. They would scarcely be able to survive if they didn't perceive phenomena and process their perceptions as we do. I agree that we do this in a far more complex manner, to the point of being aware of our awareness and able to question ourselves and our perceptions, but does that mean our brains are totally different as opposed to being similar but more complex? You say you identify with the following: DAVID: From vj Torley, the theistic philosopher: "On the Thomistic account, every human being is a unity. An organism's soul is simply its underlying principle of unity. The human soul, with its ability to reason, does not distinguish us from animals; it distinguishes us as animals. The unity of a human being's actions is actually deeper and stronger than that underlying the acts of a non-rational animal: -If we are animals whose souls have a deeper, stronger “unity” than those of our fellow animals, it sounds as if he's talking about difference in degree, not kind. May I assume you believe that animals have souls?-QUOTE: “...rationality allows us to bring together our past, present and future acts, when we formulate plans. When Aquinas argues that the act of intellect is not the act of a bodily organ, he is not showing that there is a non-animal act engaged in by human beings. He is showing, rather, that not every act of an animal is a bodily act. The human animal is capable of non-bodily acts in addition to bodily ones."-I find this very confusing. If not every act of an animal is a bodily act, then animals are also capable of non-bodily acts, and indeed we know they have the ability to plan and to reason, as proven by multiple experiments on animals, birds and even insects. Of course this is on a much shorter timescale (degree) and on a vastly smaller scale (degree) than our own. It might perhaps be better if you explain your line of thought in your own words. Perhaps I could start by asking if you are a substance dualist (= the mind/soul is separate from the body/brain and can exist independently of it) or a property dualist (= mind/soul and body/brain are one, though they produce two “properties” - mental and physical)? The latter precludes survival of the “soul” after death. This discussion may help both of us to clarify ideas on the nature of consciousness, even if we don't see eye to eye on its implications for evolution!
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 31, 2014, 00:38 (3403 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: From vj Torley, the theistic philosopher: > "On the Thomistic account, every human being is a unity. An organism's soul is simply its underlying principle of unity. The human soul, with its ability to reason, does not distinguish us from animals; it distinguishes us as animals. The unity of a human being's actions is actually deeper and stronger than that underlying the acts of a non-rational animal: > > If we are animals whose souls have a deeper, stronger “unity” than those of our fellow animals, it sounds as if he's talking about difference in degree, not kind. May I assume you believe that animals have souls?-Yes, animals in the Jewish religion have souls, in Hebrew 'Nefesh'-> dhw: It might perhaps be better if you explain your line of thought in your own words. Perhaps I could start by asking if you are a substance dualist (= the mind/soul is separate from the body/brain and can exist independently of it) or a property dualist (= mind/soul and body/brain are one, though they produce two “properties” - mental and physical)? The latter precludes survival of the “soul” after death.-I am a substance dualist. The NDE's prove that for me. I feel I have soul, in Hebrew a 'Neshama'. The Jewish religion depicts the human soul at a much higher plane than the animal soul, simple versus very complex. And I believe in an afterlife.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, December 31, 2014, 14:14 (3402 days ago) @ David Turell
DHW: If we are animals whose souls have a deeper, stronger “unity” than those of our fellow animals, it sounds as if he's talking about difference in degree, not kind. May I assume you believe that animals have souls? > > David: Yes, animals in the Jewish religion have souls, in Hebrew 'Nefesh' > -This is one of those areas that we differ. I believe we ARE souls, not that we HAVE souls. Same with animals. - > > dhw: It might perhaps be better if you explain your line of thought in your own words. Perhaps I could start by asking if you are a substance dualist (= the mind/soul is separate from the body/brain and can exist independently of it) or a property dualist (= mind/soul and body/brain are one, though they produce two “properties” - mental and physical)? The latter precludes survival of the “soul” after death. > >David: I am a substance dualist. The NDE's prove that for me. I feel I have soul, in Hebrew a 'Neshama'. The Jewish religion depicts the human soul at a much higher plane than the animal soul, simple versus very complex. And I believe in an afterlife.-Another small difference. I don't believe in an 'afterlife' in the traditional sense, i.e. that when you die something departs from your physical form and continues to live on in a conscious state. I do believe that when we die, the energy that we live by is returned to god, but not in a conscious form. There are some really vague areas in this for me though. I often wonder if the energy that is returned back to him contains all of our 'information'. If energy and information are equivalent, then it is essentially a snap shot of who we are. That snap shot could then be used during the Resurrection process, and could also explain, at least in part, how someone could be transformed from a material being into a spirit being. Like copying a CD to a hard drive. The medium is different but the data is the same.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 31, 2014, 14:31 (3402 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: Another small difference. I don't believe in an 'afterlife' in the traditional sense, i.e. that when you die something departs from your physical form and continues to live on in a conscious state. I do believe that when we die, the energy that we live by is returned to god, but not in a conscious form. There are some really vague areas in this for me though. I often wonder if the energy that is returned back to him contains all of our 'information'. If energy and information are equivalent, then it is essentially a snap shot of who we are. That snap shot could then be used during the Resurrection process, and could also explain, at least in part, how someone could be transformed from a material being into a spirit being. Like copying a CD to a hard drive. The medium is different but the data is the same.-Very interesting concept. I've based my thoughts on the NDE and death bed descriptions: souls that are recognized by an appearance that is similar to one's earthly form, communication by telepathy, so I have assumed consciousness. I agree that we are souls encased in a material form.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, December 31, 2014, 15:20 (3402 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Tony: Another small difference. I don't believe in an 'afterlife' in the traditional sense, i.e. that when you die something departs from your physical form and continues to live on in a conscious state. I do believe that when we die, the energy that we live by is returned to god, but not in a conscious form. There are some really vague areas in this for me though. I often wonder if the energy that is returned back to him contains all of our 'information'. If energy and information are equivalent, then it is essentially a snap shot of who we are. That snap shot could then be used during the Resurrection process, and could also explain, at least in part, how someone could be transformed from a material being into a spirit being. Like copying a CD to a hard drive. The medium is different but the data is the same. > >David: Very interesting concept. I've based my thoughts on the NDE and death bed descriptions: souls that are recognized by an appearance that is similar to one's earthly form, communication by telepathy, so I have assumed consciousness. I agree that we are souls encased in a material form.-The difference being that you believe in some form of eternally conscious soul, where as I don't. If a hard drive crashes and dies, it is still possible to recover the information off of the hard drive, but that in and of itself does not make the data active again. It simply means that the information is conserved.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 31, 2014, 17:48 (3402 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: The difference being that you believe in some form of eternally conscious soul, where as I don't. If a hard drive crashes and dies, it is still possible to recover the information off of the hard drive, but that in and of itself does not make the data active again. It simply means that the information is conserved.-You are using computer programming analogies, but our consciousness is far more than any computer will ever generate. van Lommel, the cardiologist from the Netherlands, in his book Consciousness Beyond Life, 2007, and Chris Carter in Science and the Near Death Experience /i], 2010, both think the brain acts as a radio receiver for consciousness, which in part is why I think of God as the universal consciousness. One can conceive of the soul as being a loan from God and returns to Him with death. The NDE's suggest the souls retain their identity. and are functional.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, December 31, 2014, 19:24 (3402 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Tony: The difference being that you believe in some form of eternally conscious soul, where as I don't. If a hard drive crashes and dies, it is still possible to recover the information off of the hard drive, but that in and of itself does not make the data active again. It simply means that the information is conserved. > >David: You are using computer programming analogies, but our consciousness is far more than any computer will ever generate. van Lommel, the cardiologist from the Netherlands, in his book Consciousness Beyond Life, 2007, and Chris Carter in Science and the Near Death Experience /i], 2010, both think the brain acts as a radio receiver for consciousness, which in part is why I think of God as the universal consciousness. One can conceive of the soul as being a loan from God and returns to Him with death. The NDE's suggest the souls retain their identity. and are functional.-Yes, because the analogies fit, even if they are grossly simplified. The fact that DNA is a million times more complex than anything humans have written doesn't make it any less of a programming language. The fact that our consciousness is even more complex than that does not break the analogy either. Consciousness is a beautiful program with massive data storage and the whole nine yards, but a program, no matter how awe inspiring or complex, without a computer to run it is just a bunch of information, and that is my point.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 31, 2014, 20:04 (3402 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: Yes, because the analogies fit, even if they are grossly simplified. The fact that DNA is a million times more complex than anything humans have written doesn't make it any less of a programming language. The fact that our consciousness is even more complex than that does not break the analogy either. Consciousness is a beautiful program with massive data storage and the whole nine yards, but a program, no matter how awe inspiring or complex, without a computer to run it is just a bunch of information, and that is my point.-Yes, but, how do you explain the events of the NDE while the brain is shown to be totally inactive? Eben Alexander, the academic neurosurgeon was in coma with flat line EEG for 7 days. (Proof of Heaven, 2012) His is a veridical experience, finding a sister in Heaven he did not know about. All the books I have mentioned strongly suggest that consciousness functionally survives clinical death.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Thursday, January 01, 2015, 08:27 (3401 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Tony: Yes, because the analogies fit, even if they are grossly simplified. The fact that DNA is a million times more complex than anything humans have written doesn't make it any less of a programming language. The fact that our consciousness is even more complex than that does not break the analogy either. Consciousness is a beautiful program with massive data storage and the whole nine yards, but a program, no matter how awe inspiring or complex, without a computer to run it is just a bunch of information, and that is my point. > >DHW: Yes, but, how do you explain the events of the NDE while the brain is shown to be totally inactive? Eben Alexander, the academic neurosurgeon was in coma with flat line EEG for 7 days. (Proof of Heaven, 2012) His is a veridical experience, finding a sister in Heaven he did not know about. All the books I have mentioned strongly suggest that consciousness functionally survives clinical death.-Are you saying that all sensory and extra-sensory data processing occurs in the brain? That is quite an assumption. Cellular Memory would show that assumption to be erroneous as well. The brain is the focus of scientist because it is big, and obvious, and there, and because their reductionist worldview demands that there be one, and only one, central organ for handling our consciousness, despite the fact that after centuries of study we are no closer to finding consciousness than we ever were. People have lived quite normal lives, even absent 1/2 of their brain. -I suppose that what I am saying is, the concept that death occurs at the moment of the loss of brain function is not a sound theory.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Thursday, January 01, 2015, 15:14 (3401 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> >David: Yes, but, how do you explain the events of the NDE while the brain is shown to be totally inactive? Eben Alexander, the academic neurosurgeon was in coma with flat line EEG for 7 days. (Proof of Heaven, 2012) His is a veridical experience, finding a sister in Heaven he did not know about. All the books I have mentioned strongly suggest that consciousness functionally survives clinical death. > > Tony: Are you saying that all sensory and extra-sensory data processing occurs in the brain? That is quite an assumption. Cellular Memory would show that assumption to be erroneous as well. > Tony: I suppose that what I am saying is, the concept that death occurs at the moment of the loss of brain function is not a sound theory.-The article itself indicates very little support for your use of the cellular memory theory. Anecdotal and Six percent evidence, and not widely accepted:-"The cell memory phenomenon, while still not considered 100 percent scientifically-validated, is still supported by several scientists and physicians. The behaviors and emotions acquired by the recipient from the original donor are due to the combinatorial memories stored in the neurons of the organ donated. Heart transplants are said to be the most susceptible to cell memory where organ transplant recipients experienced a change of heart. In a study published in the journal of Quality of Life Research, researchers interviewed 47 patients who received a heart transplant over a period of two years in Vienna, Austria. Researchers found that 79 percent of patients did not feel that their personality changed post-surgery, 15 percent experienced a change in personality due to the life-threatening event, and six percent did confirm a drastic change in their personality due to their new heart. While the percentage of personality changes as a result of an organ transplant hints to be insignificant, further research has been done to validate the existence of this concept."
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, January 02, 2015, 08:03 (3400 days ago) @ David Turell
David: The article itself indicates very little support for your use of the cellular memory theory. Anecdotal and Six percent evidence, and not widely accepted: > - *sigh* I wasn't actually trying to find scholarly articles when I posted that, just a quick reference to the phenomenon. Here, try these on for size. -http://www.aaets.org/article30.htm http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.genet.38.072902.091907 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7039/abs/nature03524.html http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0896627395903046- That better?
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Friday, January 02, 2015, 15:47 (3400 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: http://www.aaets.org/article30.htm > http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.genet.38.072902.091907 &am... http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7039/abs/nature03524.html > http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0896627395903046 > > > Tony: That better?-Yes, whole different level of memory discussion
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, January 03, 2015, 09:32 (3399 days ago) @ David Turell
> > Tony: http://www.aaets.org/article30.htm > > http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.genet.38.072902.091907 &am... > http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7039/abs/nature03524.html > > http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0896627395903046 > > > > > > Tony: That better? > > Yes, whole different level of memory discussion-But, we have no real idea of how much they can remember, and no good way to test. To revert back to my computer analogy, most people think that all of the processing is handled and all of the data stored in the computer itself. Yet, most peripherals have their own limited storage and processing abilities. Sometimes these are very limited, such as in the case of a mouse which is almost purely limited to the circuit pathways that check which way it is moving before sending that to the brain. Others, such as some keyboards, also save information regarding their current status, contain more complex signalling pathways, and generally some form of very limited buffer (memory storage) which is used as a way to manage data flow to the computer. -The simplest cell on the planet is a million times more complex than our computer peripherals. We know that they are both transmitters and receivers, just like peripherals, but we also know for a fact that they contain the ability to act semi-autonomously, which suggest that they have some limited capacity for data processing, which in turn implies they have a limited ability for information storage. To this extent, I definitely agree with DHW regarding cellular "intelligence".-As it applies to this discussion, however, the first question is about senses. Do the peripherals which comprise our five senses operate independently, and if so, to what extent? Is there a built in bypass that allows our to process our senses, at least temporarily and in a limited fashion, independent of brain function? -The last question starts with an observation. We know for a fact that when deprived of one of your 5 senses, the other sense heighten in order to compensate for the loss of the one, sometimes to a truly astonishing degree. (I'm thinking here of blind people that see with echo-location, for instance.) If, however, we have a built in receiver, what reason do we have for believing it to be solely within the province of the brain. Could this receiver, like our other 5 senses, not act independently of the brain and simply transmit the data to the brain? If so, could it not also be true that the signal for this receiver, like the other 5 senses, becomes so much clearer absent the noise from the other senses that it too appears heightened to an astonishing degree?
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, January 03, 2015, 12:46 (3399 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
Tony: The last question starts with an observation. We know for a fact that when deprived of one of your 5 senses, the other sense heighten in order to compensate for the loss of the one, sometimes to a truly astonishing degree. (I'm thinking here of blind people that see with echo-location, for instance.) If, however, we have a built in receiver, what reason do we have for believing it to be solely within the province of the brain. Could this receiver, like our other 5 senses, not act independently of the brain and simply transmit the data to the brain? If so, could it not also be true that the signal for this receiver, like the other 5 senses, becomes so much clearer absent the noise from the other senses that it too appears heightened to an astonishing degree?-Just so there is some documentation to back up this assertion:-http://phys.org/news175504269.html->"One of the researchers, psychologist Oliver Mason, said the results of the experiment support the idea that hallucinations are produced through what the scientists call faulty source monitoring: the brain misidentifies the source of its own thoughts as arising from outside the body. Mason was not surprised by the rather dramatic results after such a short time, saying the psychosis-inducing effect of sensory deprivation is analogous to the effect of drugs such as cannabis and ketamine, especially in those prone to psychoses. The findings may be important because they suggest that mental illness and normality occur on a continuum."-There theory completely ignores the possibility that the brain acts as a receiver and that the thoughts very well could be originating from outside the body.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Saturday, January 03, 2015, 15:41 (3399 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: There theory completely ignores the possibility that the brain acts as a receiver and that the thoughts very well could be originating from outside the body.-I have a different concept, which is a human species consciousness, of which each of us has a part, which our brain receives and uses to create thoughts within the brain for us to appreciate, but those thoughts are under our specific control, unless brain function is garbled by drugs.
Different in degree or kind; language
by David Turell , Saturday, January 03, 2015, 15:27 (3399 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
> Tony: The simplest cell on the planet is a million times more complex than our computer peripherals. We know that they are both transmitters and receivers, just like peripherals, but we also know for a fact that they contain the ability to act semi-autonomously, which suggest that they have some limited capacity for data processing, which in turn implies they have a limited ability for information storage. To this extent, I definitely agree with DHW regarding cellular "intelligence".-In this version of cell intelligence, I agree. But I also understand that there are molecular processes which are programmed to accomplish this, as shown by Shapiro in his recent book, which he refers to as read/ write programming. Take a look at the book.-> > Tony: The last question starts with an observation. We know for a fact that when deprived of one of your 5 senses, the other sense heighten in order to compensate for the loss of the one, sometimes to a truly astonishing degree.... If so, could it not also be true that the signal for this receiver, like the other 5 senses, becomes so much clearer absent the noise from the other senses that it too appears heightened to an astonishing degree?-To me, this shows the amazing plasticity of the brain, shifting functions quickly to accommodate the changes.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
This discussion links up with the very interesting one you are having with Tony, but I'm heading in a different direction, so I've added the EVOLUTION tag to keep them separate. If you intend to pursue the discussion on the nature of the soul, perhaps you could add the tag SOUL?-TORLEY: “The unity of a human being's actions is actually deeper and stronger than that underlying the acts of a non-rational animal...” DHW: If we are animals whose souls have a deeper, stronger “unity” than those of our fellow animals, it sounds as if he's talking about difference in degree, not kind. May I assume you believe that animals have souls?-David: Yes, animals in the Jewish religion have souls.-All the more reason for “degree” rather than “kind.”-Dhw: Are you a substance dualist (= the mind/soul is separate from the body/brain and can exist independently of it) or a property dualist (= mind/soul and body/brain are one, though they produce two “properties” - mental and physical)? The latter precludes survival of the “soul” after death.-DAVID: I am a substance dualist. [...] The Jewish religion depicts the human soul at a much higher plane than the animal soul, simple versus very complex. And I believe in an afterlife.-A “much higher plane” clearly indicates degree and not kind. If the human soul is separate from the human body, and is responsible for thought, it seems only logical to assume that the souls of all other organisms are also separate and responsible for their particular forms of thought. This would be what you call a “pattern”. Perhaps then, just for the moment we could forget about humans, and confine ourselves to other organisms. Two questions: -1) Do you believe ALL organisms have souls, and if not, where do souls start to appear?-2) Do you believe there are gradations of soul complexity among other organisms, e.g. from a chimpanzee to a duck to a worm to a bacterium (or wherever you think souls start to appear)? -You will probably guess what questions are coming next, but we should take this exploration one step at a time!
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Thursday, January 01, 2015, 15:34 (3401 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: I am a substance dualist. [...] The Jewish religion depicts the human soul at a much higher plane than the animal soul, simple versus very complex. And I believe in an afterlife. > > dhw: A “much higher plane” clearly indicates degree and not kind.-You are playing with words. The degree of difference in human and animal thought is so vast as to indicate a difference in kind.- dhw: If the human soul is separate from the human body, and is responsible for thought, it seems only logical to assume that the souls of all other organisms are also separate and responsible for their particular forms of thought. This would be what you call a “pattern”.-Probably true. The body acts as a carrier or container for the soul. That is about as far as my thoughts have every gone. I equate 'self' and soul. -> dhw:Two questions: > > dhw: 1) Do you believe ALL organisms have souls, and if not, where do souls start to appear?-I have accepted Jewish teachings that animals have souls, and I have assumed they appear at birth. > > dhw: 2) Do you believe there are gradations of soul complexity among other organisms, e.g. from a chimpanzee to a duck to a worm to a bacterium (or wherever you think souls start to appear)?-I only know of consciousness complexity. I have no idea about single-celled souls. Sounds ridiculous to me. Worm story from college philosophy: Eastern thought is that worms have souls. But worms will recreate if cut into ten parts. Are ten souls recreated? Question was never answered by he Eastern priest, subject of the interview quoted. > > dhw: You will probably guess what questions are coming next, but we should take this exploration one step at a time!-Have no idea where you are going. My knowledge here is very weak religiously.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
DAVID: I am a substance dualist. [...] The Jewish religion depicts the human soul at a much higher plane than the animal soul, simple versus very complex. And I believe in an afterlife. dhw: A “much higher plane” clearly indicates degree and not kind.-DAVID: You are playing with words. The degree of difference in human and animal thought is so vast as to indicate a difference in kind.-I am simply pointing out the implications of your own words.-dhw: If the human soul is separate from the human body, and is responsible for thought, it seems only logical to assume that the souls of all other organisms are also separate and responsible for their particular forms of thought. This would be what you call a “pattern”. DAVID: Probably true. The body acts as a carrier or container for the soul. That is about as far as my thoughts have every gone. I equate 'self' and soul.-The point of all our discussions is to extend the range of our thoughts. Here we are trying to understand the ramifications of your beliefs, and this may be of benefit to both of us. dhw:Two questions: 1) Do you believe ALL organisms have souls, and if not, where do souls start to appear? DAVID: I have accepted Jewish teachings that animals have souls, and I have assumed they appear at birth.-Sorry, my question obviously wasn't clear. I meant which organisms do you think have souls? I'll assume that “animals have souls” = cats, dogs, horses, but what about worms and bacteria? Where do you think the borderline starts between organisms with souls and organisms without?-dhw: 2) Do you believe there are gradations of soul complexity among other organisms, e.g. from a chimpanzee to a duck to a worm to a bacterium (or wherever you think souls start to appear)? DAVID: I only know of consciousness complexity. I have no idea about single-celled souls. Sounds ridiculous to me. Worm story from college philosophy: Eastern thought is that worms have souls. But worms will recreate if cut into ten parts. Are ten souls recreated? Question was never answered by he Eastern priest, subject of the interview quoted. -This goes back to my previous question. Once you establish your personal borderline between animals with and without souls, please tell me if you believe there are gradations of consciousness/soul complexity between, say, the chimpanzee and the duck?-dhw: You will probably guess what questions are coming next, but we should take this exploration one step at a time! DAVID: Have no idea where you are going. My knowledge here is very weak religiously.-I am not talking religiously, and I am not talking about knowledge. I am talking about your own beliefs, which have led you to a very precise (though sometimes changing) view of evolution. My next question(s) will depend on your answer to those about borderlines and gradations, and take it from me that this is leading somewhere. Have faith, dear friend!
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Friday, January 02, 2015, 16:03 (3400 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Sorry, my question obviously wasn't clear. I meant which organisms do you think have souls? I'll assume that “animals have souls” = cats, dogs, horses, but what about worms and bacteria? Where do you think the borderline starts between organisms with souls and organisms without?..... Once you establish your personal borderline between animals with and without souls, please tell me if you believe there are gradations of consciousness/soul complexity between, say, the chimpanzee and the duck?-Hadn't thought much about this, so you are helping me in developing a concept. Since I think the brain is a receiver for consciousness and is the interpreter of the soul, animals with brains have souls.-> dhw: Have faith, dear friend!-I do, in you, and in more than you.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
DAVID: Since I think the brain is a receiver for consciousnesss and is the interpreter of the soul, animals with brains have souls.-The second question, which is indispensable to the point I am trying to develop, was whether you believe there are gradations of consciousness/soul complexity between different organisms. My example was the chimpanzee and the duck.-However, I'll take this a little further in the light of the important discussion going on between yourself and Tony. Cells are sentient, and regardless of degrees of autonomy, you have agreed that within the genome there must be a mechanism that acts LIKE a brain, processing the information provided by the “senses”. As a substance dualist, you believe that there is some separate form of energy which controls our use of information, and this is what you mean by “soul”. Can you think of any reason why even the simplest organism should not have the same form of control, i.e. through some separate form of energy? (Obviously, this ties in with my question concerning gradations of consciousness/soul.)
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Saturday, January 03, 2015, 15:50 (3399 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: As a substance dualist, you believe that there is some separate form of energy which controls our use of information, and this is what you mean by “soul”. Can you think of any reason why even the simplest organism should not have the same form of control, i.e. through some separate form of energy? (Obviously, this ties in with my question concerning gradations of consciousness/soul.)-My thoughts go only so far as accepting that the brain is a receiver of consciousness and soul, and when I think if the soul leaving the body, as in death, I conceive of it as a bundle of my own consciousness joining the universal consciousness. Therefore, there must be a brain for an organism to have a soul. Simply, the soul is a piece of universal consciousness.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
dhw: As a substance dualist, you believe that there is some separate form of energy which controls our use of information, and this is what you mean by “soul”. Can you think of any reason why even the simplest organism should not have the same form of control, i.e. through some separate form of energy? (Obviously, this ties in with my question concerning gradations of consciousness/soul.)-DAVID: My thoughts go only so far as accepting that the brain is a receiver of consciousness and soul, and when I think if the soul leaving the body, as in death, I conceive of it as a bundle of my own consciousness joining the universal consciousness. Therefore, there must be a brain for an organism to have a soul. Simply, the soul is a piece of universal consciousness.-I'm still pursuing the question of gradations, so for the moment let's forget about survival after death. I'm focusing on the evolutionary implications of your beliefs. Assuming that the “soul” is the form of energy that transmits its messages to the brain, do you believe that when ants / rats / crows / chimpanzees take decisions, devise strategies, solve problems etc. it is also their “souls” that send messages to their brains? And do you believe that the “soul” of, say, a chimpanzee is capable of a greater degree of decision-making, problem-solving etc. than an ant's?-I appreciate that you haven't thought this far. But since you claim that humans are different in kind from other animals, I don't think it's unreasonable for us to examine differences in general.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Monday, January 05, 2015, 00:45 (3398 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:Assuming that the “soul” is the form of energy that transmits its messages to the brain, do you believe that when ants / rats / crows / chimpanzees take decisions, devise strategies, solve problems etc. it is also their “souls” that send messages to their brains? And do you believe that the “soul” of, say, a chimpanzee is capable of a greater degree of decision-making, problem-solving etc. than an ant's?-It is your assumption that the soul transmits to the brain, not mine. I have no idea how it works. I'll stick just with brains. We know that chimps can problem solve to a small degree. So do crows, but only humans have a very special ability to solve problems. I'm not avoiding you, I've never thought about this to reach any conclusions. I think therefore I am is as far as I have gone. My consciousness represents my soul. Are they one and the same? I think so. > > dhw: I appreciate that you haven't thought this far. But since you claim that humans are different in kind from other animals, I don't think it's unreasonable for us to examine differences in general.-I don't think I've gone to where you want me in thought, but my answer is above.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
dhw:Assuming that the “soul” is the form of energy that transmits its messages to the brain, do you believe that when ants / rats / crows / chimpanzees take decisions, devise strategies, solve problems etc. it is also their “souls” that send messages to their brains? And do you believe that the “soul” of, say, a chimpanzee is capable of a greater degree of decision-making, problem-solving etc. than an ant's?-DAVID: It is your assumption that the soul transmits to the brain, not mine. I have no idea how it works. I'll stick just with brains. -It's not my assumption (I don't even know if we have a “soul”). You wrote: “My thoughts go only so far as accepting that the brain is a receiver of consciousness and soul.” I'm trying to unravel the implications of your professed beliefs, and if you believe that the brain is a receiver of consciousness and soul, that can only mean you believe the soul transmits its messages to the brain. What else could the brain “receive” from the soul?-DAVID: We know that chimps can problem solve to a small degree. So do crows, but only humans have a very special ability to solve problems. I'm not avoiding you, I've never thought about this to reach any conclusions. I think therefore I am is as far as I have gone. My consciousness represents my soul. Are they one and the same? I think so. Maybe you are not consciously avoiding me, but there is a built-in resistance to the direction in which this discussion is heading. If other animals can problem-solve to a small degree, you are already on the way to saying that only humans can solve problems to a greater degree. The focus at the moment, though, is on the mechanism for problem-solving. If, as you believe, animals have souls, the soul and consciousness are one and the same, and the brain is a receiver of consciousness, is it not reasonable to conclude that animals will have the same soul-to-brain problem-solving mechanism as humans?
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Monday, January 05, 2015, 16:30 (3397 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:If, as you believe, animals have souls, the soul and consciousness are one and the same, and the brain is a receiver of consciousness, is it not reasonable to conclude that animals will have the same soul-to-brain problem-solving mechanism as humans?-We're back to the debate over degree or kind. You know my position. Animals have some problem solving ability. Ours is enormous. Analogy: Model T ford vs. Rolls Royce. Both are autos. That is, we come with an animal body but the brain is so far superior as to be different in kind. We've settled our positions before. I see nothing new.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
DAVID: We're back to the debate over degree or kind. You know my position. Animals have some problem solving ability. Ours is enormous. Analogy: Model T ford vs. Rolls Royce. Both are autos. That is, we come with an animal body but the brain is so far superior as to be different in kind. We've settled our positions before. I see nothing new.-We have never left the debate over degree and kind and its relevance to evolution - see the heading of this thread - and we've been moving step by step through your beliefs. These, in your own words, are that: 1) animals with brains have souls; 2) “our giant brain and consciousness were created by a special purposeful directed process separate from the evolution of our animal bodies” (my bold), and 3) the mind/soul and body/brain are separate, with the brain being “a receiver of consciousness and soul.” The obvious implication is that animals and humans have the same basic mechanism with which to do their thinking (soul transmitting to brain), but suddenly when the possible implications become clear to you, you run a mile: “It is your assumption that the soul transmits to the brain, not mine. I have no idea how it works. I'll stick with just brains.” You haven't stuck with just brains. Materialists stick with brains, but you are a substance dualist and posit a mind/soul independent of the brain, for our fellow animals as well as ourselves. -It is clear that whether you believe in a soul or not, animals and humans share the same mechanism for their modes of thinking, which inevitably leads to the question of just what you think your God created separately. If animal bodies evolved and human bodies evolved, why would the animal soul-brain mechanism evolve but the human soul-brain mechanism have to be separately created? -I didn't actually ask how it all works, but whenever I raise alternative hypotheses to your own, that is the sort of question you ask, as if not knowing invalidated the hypothesis in all cases but your own. I like your analogy of Model T Ford and Rolls Royce. They are basically constructed the same way to perform the same functions, but one is vastly superior to the other. A space rocket would be different in kind.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Wednesday, January 07, 2015, 00:16 (3396 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: It is clear that whether you believe in a soul or not, animals and humans share the same mechanism for their modes of thinking, which inevitably leads to the question of just what you think your God created separately. If animal bodies evolved and human bodies evolved, why would the animal soul-brain mechanism evolve but the human soul-brain mechanism have to be separately created? -I think you are correct as far as you have gone. Upon reflection I have told you that I equate soul and consciousness. I do think the brain acts as a receiver especially because of the evidence from NDE's. I am sure that animal consciousness/soul complexes are not the same as human and the human is different in kind not degree. I think special evolution by God created the very specialized and different upright body posture, specialized use of the arms and hands, and a very superior and different brain and consciousness. I do not see continuity but special creation. The basic reason is I see apes the same as 10 million years ago. Unchanged and vastly left behind when the human development is compared. I see no natural cause for this, or natural impetus that would drive it as a challenge to be overcome. If we assume animal improvements are evolved to improve survivorship, there is no evidence of that need in the animals we seem to have arisen from. We changed. They didn't. It is not a 'how' question to be solved. It is a 'why' question and all I see is purpose. > > dhw: I didn't actually ask how it all works, but whenever I raise alternative hypotheses to your own, that is the sort of question you ask, as if not knowing invalidated the hypothesis in all cases but your own. > > I try to work only from what I already know or can be learned, and then try to work to the best solution to what problem or theory is presented.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
dhw: It is clear that whether you believe in a soul or not, animals and humans share the same mechanism for their modes of thinking, which inevitably leads to the question of just what you think your God created separately. If animal bodies evolved and human bodies evolved, why would the animal soul-brain mechanism evolve but the human soul-brain mechanism have to be separately created? -DAVID: I think you are correct as far as you have gone. Upon reflection I have told you that I equate soul and consciousness. I do think the brain acts as a receiver especially because of the evidence from NDE's. I am sure that animal consciousness/soul complexes are not the same as human and the human is different in kind not degree. I think special evolution by God created the very specialized and different upright body posture, specialized use of the arms and hands, and a very superior and different brain and consciousness. I do not see continuity but special creation. -So far, this is simply a reiteration of your beliefs. You may be right, but the purpose of our discussions is to probe the rationale underlying beliefs (and disbeliefs), even though we always come back to faith. DAVID: The basic reason is I see apes the same as 10 million years ago. Unchanged and vastly left behind when the human development is compared. I see no natural cause for this, or natural impetus that would drive it as a challenge to be overcome. If we assume animal improvements are evolved to improve survivorship, there is no evidence of that need in the animals we seem to have arisen from. We changed. They didn't. It is not a 'how' question to be solved. It is a 'why' question and all I see is purpose.-The key to this is common descent. As you yourself have repeatedly pointed out, bacteria remain unchanged, and so multicellularity and evolution itself could not have been a matter simply of improving “survivorship”. There must be some kind of drive towards improvement for its own sake, and that - as reflected in our own human culture - is a purpose in itself. Multicellularity, sex, the senses - all these improvements would in turn have led to greater competition and even more innovation. Once a life form is established and able to survive, it will remain the same until some individuals hit on new improvements. It's not unreasonable to assume that as with every other innovation, apes survived perfectly well unchanged, but a particular group eventually came up with something new and branched out. (Every innovation must take place within existing organisms if you believe in common descent.) We don't know how it started. We don't know how any innovations started. Tony might argue that this is grounds for not believing in common descent - but you do believe in it. And so the history of startling improvements is not from apes to humans but from bacteria to humans, and NONE of these changes were “needed”.-That is not an argument against God, as it doesn't explain the source of the mechanisms for improvement, but it seems to me to invalidate the claim that humans are “special creations” because their abilities were not needed for survival. If humans weren't “needed”, nor were any of the organs and organisms that evolved from the first cells, and all species remain unchanged until they go extinct, or branch out following innovations! -dhw: I didn't actually ask how it all works, but whenever I raise alternative hypotheses to your own, that is the sort of question you ask, as if not knowing invalidated the hypothesis in all cases but your own.-DAVID: I try to work only from what I already know or can be learned, and then try to work to the best solution to what problem or theory is presented.-So do all honest truth-seekers of whatever persuasion.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Wednesday, January 07, 2015, 19:37 (3395 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: The key to this is common descent. As you yourself have repeatedly pointed out, bacteria remain unchanged, and so multicellularity and evolution itself could not have been a matter simply of improving “survivorship”. There must be some kind of drive towards improvement for its own sake, and that - as reflected in our own human culture - is a purpose in itself. ....And so the history of startling improvements is not from apes to humans but from bacteria to humans, and NONE of these changes were “needed”.-You have drawn out all the reasons for seeing purpose, and then stop short. I see no reason for the developments following a set of naturalist thoughts. Life appeared against all probability, bacteria have lived unchanged forever, multicellularity was not needed, but sexual reproduction introduced a better way to change and/ or improve DNA. Again, all I can see is purpose, purpose, purpose. Everything I've listed is against enormous odds. I still see underlying this only chance or design. > > dhw: That is not an argument against God, as it doesn't explain the source of the mechanisms for improvement, but it seems to me to invalidate the claim that humans are “special creations” because their abilities were not needed for survival.-Here we strongly differ. Humans developed without any reason. They appeared against all odds.-> dhw: If humans weren't “needed”, nor were any of the organs and organisms that evolved from the first cells, and all species remain unchanged until they go extinct, or branch out following innovations! -Exactly!!! There is obviously a drive for improvement as you have stated. Because the successful bacteria didn't have to improve. We know that. You simply bring up improvement for its own sake, whatever that means. > > dhw: I didn't actually ask how it all works, but whenever I raise alternative hypotheses to your own, that is the sort of question you ask, as if not knowing invalidated the hypothesis in all cases but your own. > > DAVID: I try to work only from what I already know or can be learned, and then try to work to the best solution to what problem or theory is presented. > > dhw: So do all honest truth-seekers of whatever persuasion.-To me you seem to stop thinking when the obvious issue of purpose is presented. Do you deny the marked impression of purpose in the course of evolution?
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
dhw: The key to this is common descent. As you yourself have repeatedly pointed out, bacteria remain unchanged, and so multicellularity and evolution itself could not have been a matter simply of improving “survivorship”. There must be some kind of drive towards improvement for its own sake, and that - as reflected in our own human culture - is a purpose in itself. ....And so the history of startling improvements is not from apes to humans but from bacteria to humans, and NONE of these changes were “needed”.-DAVID: You have drawn out all the reasons for seeing purpose, and then stop short. I see no reason for the developments following a set of naturalist thoughts. Life appeared against all probability, bacteria have lived unchanged forever, multicellularity was not needed, but sexual reproduction introduced a better way to change and/ or improve DNA. Again, all I can see is purpose, purpose, purpose. Everything I've listed is against enormous odds. I still see underlying this only chance or design.-You are repeating my own arguments! You said that human intelligence was not necessary for the survival of the apes, and I pointed out that NO evolution was “necessary”, since bacteria have survived unchanged. And so humans can't be special just because they were not needed! You cry purpose, purpose, purpose, but the only purpose you can think of is the creation of humans. I point to survival and improvement, but you can't see that these constitute purposes - even though you are confronted with them every day of your life. -dhw: That is not an argument against God, as it doesn't explain the source of the mechanisms for improvement, but it seems to me to invalidate the claim that humans are “special creations” because their abilities were not needed for survival. DAVID: Here we strongly differ. Humans developed without any reason. They appeared against all odds.-Same again: all life appeared against all odds. If humans developed without any reason, so did all multicellular forms, since bacteria have survived without evolving. But if we accept improvement as a reason for evolution, it applies to all multicellular forms, including humans.-dhw: If humans weren't “needed”, nor were any of the organs and organisms that evolved from the first cells, and all species remain unchanged until they go extinct, or branch out following innovations! DAVID: Exactly!!! There is obviously a drive for improvement as you have stated. Because the successful bacteria didn't have to improve. We know that. You simply bring up improvement for its own sake, whatever that means.-Every organism tries to survive. That is one purpose. I'm suggesting that when the opportunity arises, organisms also try to improve. At one time or another there was no sex, there were no legs, no eyes, no ears, no brains, no teeth, no fins, no wings....They were not needed for survival. But if you believe in common descent, every single innovation must have taken place within existing organisms, and whether your God started the whole process off or not, these innovations improved the organism's ability to cope with its environment. That is a purpose! Other organisms still survived without them, and so in that sense they were not “necessary”. DAVID: To me you seem to stop thinking when the obvious issue of purpose is presented. Do you deny the marked impression of purpose in the course of evolution? -On the contrary, I have emphasized the twofold purposefulness of its developments: survival and improvement. What you are so desperately looking for is an overall purpose, and you insist that this is the production of humans. Organisms had to produce wings and fins and trunks and humps and rattles and compound eyes and strange migratory patterns and other weird and wonderful lifestyles, and go extinct by the billions, just so that we humans could walk the Earth. The issue between us is not whether evolution is purpose-driven, but the fact that you are only prepared to consider ONE possible purpose.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Friday, January 09, 2015, 00:23 (3394 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: You are repeating my own arguments! You said that human intelligence was not necessary for the survival of the apes, and I pointed out that NO evolution was “necessary”, since bacteria have survived unchanged. And so humans can't be special just because they were not needed!... I point to survival and improvement, but you can't see that these constitute purposes - even though you are confronted with them every day of your life.-You are attempting to turn the argument back onto me. You want survival and improvement to constitute purpose, and I agree partially. However, I'm not sure you have read Gould closely. There is more than one way to look at the phenomenon of advancing complexity in evolution, which provides survival thru improvement. Gould looks at humans as a 'glorious accident'. To quote him "if the tape of evolution were to be run again, it is extremely unlikely humans would appear". (slightly paraphrased) Note he views evolution as a series of chance contingent events with complexity building on previous contingent events. So what he describes makes the alternatives as either chance or design. I see no third way. Therefore I see guided purpose in survival thru improvement. And your sentence: " humans can't be special just because they were not needed!" is exactly my point turned on its head. Because there was no special natural threat that required the advances which made humans, they were created despite lack of need, therefore they are a special creation. This has always been my line of thought. > > dhw: Same again: all life appeared against all odds. If humans developed without any reason, so did all multicellular forms, since bacteria have survived without evolving. But if we accept improvement as a reason for evolution, it applies to all multicellular forms, including humans.-Exactly my point with the opposite conclusion. Why life, why advancement beyond bacteria? None of this was needed. Therefore there was a designed drive to complexity. Stated clearly in my first book. > > dhw:Every organism tries to survive. That is one purpose. I'm suggesting that when the opportunity arises, organisms also try to improve.... But if you believe in common descent, every single innovation must have taken place within existing organisms, and whether your God started the whole process off or not, these innovations improved the organism's ability to cope with its environment. That is a purpose!-I am trying to discuss with you an overriding purpose, not individual animal purpose. What you are presenting is all true, but lacks the proper conclusion as I view it. Evolution is driven by information supplied. DNA could not have made its own information.- > > dhw: On the contrary, I have emphasized the twofold purposefulness of its developments: survival and improvement. What you are so desperately looking for is an overall purpose, and you insist that this is the production of humans..... The issue between us is not whether evolution is purpose-driven, but the fact that you are only prepared to consider ONE possible purpose.-Exactly. Your 'purpose' is at the individual animal level and is correct. But that is small 'purpose'. My 'purpose' tries to answer why is there life and evolution at all. Same question as 'why is there anything?'.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
dhw: I point to survival and improvement, but you can't see that these constitute purposes - even though you are confronted with them every day of your life.-DAVID: You want survival and improvement to constitute purpose, and I agree partially.-Thank you.-DAVID: However, I'm not sure you have read Gould closely. There is more than one way to look at the phenomenon of advancing complexity in evolution, which provides survival thru improvement. Gould looks at humans as a 'glorious accident'. To quote him "if the tape of evolution were to be run again, it is extremely unlikely humans would appear". (slightly paraphrased) Note he views evolution as a series of chance contingent events with complexity building on previous contingent events. So what he describes makes the alternatives as either chance or design. -We are not talking about Gould's theory but about your contention that humans must be special because they were not needed, and that there has to be an overall purpose, which is to create humans. You now agree that design (not chance) underlies the innovations as they occur, because they all serve the purpose of improvement or survival. Let's hold onto that.-DAVID: I see no third way. Therefore I see guided purpose in survival thru improvement. And your sentence: " humans can't be special just because they were not needed!" is exactly my point turned on its head. Because there was no special natural threat that required the advances which made humans, they were created despite lack of need, therefore they are a special creation. This has always been my line of thought. -Perhaps that is why you find it so difficult to think along another line. There was no special threat that required ANY advances beyond bacteria, and so according to your argument, ALL multicellular organisms are special!-DAVID: Exactly my point with the opposite conclusion. Why life, why advancement beyond bacteria? None of this was needed. Therefore there was a designed drive to complexity. Stated clearly in my first book.-We agree that there was a drive to complexity - evolution proves it. But that doesn't mean the drive was designed specially to create humans! The drive led to an enormous higgledy-piggledy bush! dhw: Every organism tries to survive. That is one purpose. I'm suggesting that when the opportunity arises, organisms also try to improve.... But if you believe in common descent, every single innovation must have taken place within existing organisms, and whether your God started the whole process off or not, these innovations improved the organism's ability to cope with its environment. That is a purpose!-DAVID: I am trying to discuss with you an overriding purpose, not individual animal purpose. What you are presenting is all true, but lacks the proper conclusion as I view it. Evolution is driven by information supplied. DNA could not have made its own information.-You are shifting ground again. I have allowed for the possibility that God provided the mechanism that led to life and evolution. The issue here is your insistence that you know God's purpose. I pointed this out, together with its illogicality: "What you are so desperately looking for is an overall purpose, and you insist that this is the production of humans. Organisms had to produce wings and fins and trunks and humps and rattles and compound eyes and strange migratory patterns and other weird and wonderful lifestyles, and go extinct by the billions, just so that we humans could walk the Earth..."-DAVID: ...Your 'purpose' is at the individual animal level and is correct. But that is small 'purpose'. My 'purpose' tries to answer why is there life and evolution at all. Same question as 'why is there anything?'.-We can only conjecture, but to say the purpose of life and evolution was to produce humans inevitably leads to the question what was the purpose of producing humans. I offered God's boredom as a motive, and you took it up but then hurriedly dropped it because that made God too human. If there is no God, or a deist God who doesn't care, there is no purpose beyond the “individual animal level”, which is all the more reason to treasure our moments here on Earth. If your cry of “purpose, purpose, purpose” denotes some grand plan, do please tell us what you think it is.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Friday, January 09, 2015, 22:27 (3393 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:You now agree that design (not chance) underlies the innovations as they occur, because they all serve the purpose of improvement or survival. Let's hold onto that......-> > dhw: Perhaps that is why you find it so difficult to think along another line. There was no special threat that required ANY advances beyond bacteria, and so according to your argument, ALL multicellular organisms are special!-Exactly. I accept that evolution was designed, because I believe in evolution guided by God: > > DAVID: Exactly my point with the opposite conclusion. Why life, why advancement beyond bacteria? None of this was needed. Therefore there was a designed drive to complexity. Stated clearly in my first book. > > dhw: We agree that there was a drive to complexity - evolution proves it. But that doesn't mean the drive was designed specially to create humans! The drive led to an enormous higgledy-piggledy bush!-I think it led to both. You accept design and a drive to complexity. And if I remember correctly, you want 'intelligent cells' to come up with plans and you can't give a source or the information needed:-"These ideas suggest that evolvability and openness to innovation are features not just of life but of information itself. That is a view long championed by Schuster's sometime collaborator, Nobel laureate chemist Manfred Eigen, who insists that Darwinian evolution is not merely the organizing principle of biology but a “law of physics,” an inevitable result of how information is organized in complex systems. And if that's right, it would seem that the appearance of life was not a fantastic fluke but almost a mathematical inevitability." (From my recent post today re' Wagner's book) -> dhw: I have allowed for the possibility that God provided the mechanism that led to life and evolution. The issue here is your insistence that you know God's purpose. I pointed this out, together with its illogicality: > > "What you are so desperately looking for is an overall purpose, and you insist that this is the production of humans. Organisms had to produce wings and fins and trunks and humps and rattles and compound eyes and strange migratory patterns and other weird and wonderful lifestyles, and go extinct by the billions, just so that we humans could walk the Earth..."-Why not. we are back to arguing about the necessary balance of nature, as part of the evolutionary process. > > DAVID: ...Your 'purpose' is at the individual animal level and is correct. But that is small 'purpose'. My 'purpose' tries to answer why is there life and evolution at all. Same question as 'why is there anything?'. > > dhw: We can only conjecture, but to say the purpose of life and evolution was to produce humans inevitably leads to the question what was the purpose of producing humans. I offered God's boredom as a motive, and you took it up but then hurriedly dropped it because that made God too human. .... If your cry of “purpose, purpose, purpose” denotes some grand plan, do please tell us what you think it is.-To produce humans. I view our existence is reason enough. And as I reflected, (you noted) I cannot give God human reasons for his actions.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
dhw: There was no special threat that required ANY advances beyond bacteria, and so according to your argument, ALL multicellular organisms are special! DAVID: Exactly. I accept that evolution was designed, because I believe in evolution guided by God.-Your argument was that humans were not needed, and so they must be special. I have pointed out that in that case ALL multicellular organisms are special. And you agree. We can end the discussion here. Your God (a Turellian theistic version of evolution) therefore specially created (or planned) unnecessary humans,trilobites, triceratops, monarch butterflies and the duck-billed platypus, and all of them are (in some cases were) the purpose of evolution. Later you refuse to speculate why humans should have been specially created, and since - like all multicellular organisms - the duck-billed platypus is also special, there is no point in speculating about its purpose either. The next point makes everything abundantly clear: dhw: We agree that there was a drive to complexity - evolution proves it. But that doesn't mean the drive was designed specially to create humans! The drive led to an enormous higgledy-piggledy bush! DAVID: I think it led to both. -Precisely. It led to a higgledy-piggledy bush of special, unnecessary organisms, which included humans and the duck-billed platypus plus all the other multicellular wonders, extinct and extant. Your God may have made/planned ‘em all, but we don't know why. You “cannot give God human reasons for his actions”.-DAVID: You accept design and a drive to complexity. And if I remember correctly, you want 'intelligent cells' to come up with plans and you can't give a source or the information needed:-Nobody can give a source, but it might be your God. He might have created an intelligent mechanism with all the information necessary for evolution. Or he might have specially created the duck-billed platypus. Or there might be some strange way in which matter generated its own intelligence, with the same result. As you have pointed out yourself, no source is mentioned in the passage you've quoted from the Wagner reviewAVID: QUOTE: "These ideas suggest that evolvability and openness to innovation are features not just of life but of information itself. That is a view long championed by Schuster's sometime collaborator, Nobel laureate chemist Manfred Eigen, who insists that Darwinian evolution is not merely the organizing principle of biology but a “law of physics,” an inevitable result of how information is organized in complex systems. And if that's right, it would seem that the appearance of life was not a fantastic fluke but almost a mathematical inevitability." (From my recent post today re' Wagner's book) -I'm surprised you feel able to accept the argument that life was almost a mathematical inevitability resulting from a Darwinian evolutionary law of physics. No source or organizer here. Or does Wagner go on to say God did it?-I think I have now covered the rest of your post.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Sunday, January 11, 2015, 00:23 (3392 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: You accept design and a drive to complexity. And if I remember correctly, you want 'intelligent cells' to come up with plans and you can't give a source or the information needed: > > dhw: Nobody can give a source, but it might be your God. He might have created an intelligent mechanism with all the information necessary for evolution.-We are again back at the key point, information. Life runs on information, without question. It is my point that DNA cannot have invented the information by itself. Information which plans and runs the complexity of the universe and live must come from intellect, or blossoms by chance. For the source I say God. Do you have an alternative?-> DAVID: QUOTE: "These ideas suggest that evolvability and openness to innovation are features not just of life but of information itself. That is a view long championed by Schuster's sometime collaborator, Nobel laureate chemist Manfred Eigen, who insists that Darwinian evolution is not merely the organizing principle of biology but a “law of physics,” an inevitable result of how information is organized in complex systems. And if that's right, it would seem that the appearance of life was not a fantastic fluke but almost a mathematical inevitability." (From my recent post today re' Wagner's book) > > dhw: I'm surprised you feel able to accept the argument that life was almost a mathematical inevitability resulting from a Darwinian evolutionary law of physics. No source or organizer here. Or does Wagner go on to say God did it?-No Wagner doesn't say God did it. And you are inferring more from the paragraph than I do. The point I accept is that Life was inevitable because the information required was supplied. Once the concept is accepted that information is required for life to exist then it follows that I can live with the way the paragraph is stated. What I look for is the fact that a non-theist admits the requirement for initial information.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
dhw: Nobody can give a source, but it might be your God. He might have created an intelligent mechanism with all the information necessary for evolution.-DAVID: We are again back at the key point, information. Life runs on information, without question. It is my point that DNA cannot have invented the information by itself. Information which plans and runs the complexity of the universe and live must come from intellect, or blossoms by chance. For the source I say God. Do you have an alternative? -You have cut out the alternative which followed the quote: “...Or he might have specially created the duck-billed platypus. Or there might be some strange way in which matter generated its own intelligence, with the same result.” You seem to have decided to abandon the “key point” which forms the subject of this thread, but perhaps you feel you are on safer ground with your old friends information, and chance v. design.-dhw: I'm surprised you feel able to accept the argument that life was almost a mathematical inevitability resulting from a Darwinian evolutionary law of physics. No source or organizer here. Or does Wagner go on to say God did it?-DAVID: No Wagner doesn't say God did it. And you are inferring more from the paragraph than I do. The point I accept is that Life was inevitable because the information required was supplied. Once the concept is accepted that information is required for life to exist then it follows that I can live with the way the paragraph is stated. What I look for is the fact that a non-theist admits the requirement for initial information.-Of course he doesn't say God did it. And I have never said initial information was not required. Nor have I ever said that God did not provide it (or did provide it - I'm an agnostic!). Nobody knows where it came from. That is the great mystery which you think you have solved through conjuring up another great mystery: an infinite and eternal mind from nowhere.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Sunday, January 11, 2015, 22:42 (3391 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: You have cut out the alternative which followed the quote: “...Or he might have specially created the duck-billed platypus. Or there might be some strange way in which matter generated its own intelligence, with the same result.”-We've covered strange life forms before. I've explained that as a need for balance in nature since everyone has to eat someone. Also I've told you that life is obviously very inventive, from the information it works with. As for matter generating information in a strange way, yes, that is enormously strange. No one can point to information generated by matter in our reality. You are being very inventive to avoid the issue of the origin of information. Only a mental state, an originating intellect can do this.-> dhw: You seem to have decided to abandon the “key point” which forms the subject of this thread, but perhaps you feel you are on safer ground with your old friends information, and chance v. design.- The key point is I maintain humans are obviously different in kind, and only guidance by God can help evolution to do that. > > dhw: Of course he doesn't say God did it. And I have never said initial information was not required. Nor have I ever said that God did not provide it (or did provide it - I'm an agnostic!). Nobody knows where it came from. That is the great mystery which you think you have solved through conjuring up another great mystery: an infinite and eternal mind from nowhere.-I understand your objections, but only an intellect can create information. So I am left with the only logical choice I see, an eternal mind.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
dhw: You have cut out the alternative which followed the quote: “...Or he might have specially created the duck-billed platypus. Or there might be some strange way in which matter generated its own intelligence, with the same result.”-DAVID: We've covered strange life forms before. I've explained that as a need for balance in nature since everyone has to eat someone. -No they don't. Plenty of life forms are vegetarian. I remain unconvinced that the duck-billed platypus is essential to fulfilling your God's purpose of creating humans.-DAVID: Also I've told you that life is obviously very inventive, from the information it works with. -And I've told you that life is not inventive. Only living things can invent, which means only organisms can contain and work with information, and that in turn means that they must also contain a mechanism (God-given or not) which enables them to innovate. It therefore remains a mystery why your God should have preprogrammed or specially created the duck-billed platypus when what he really wanted apparently was human beings. DAVID: As for matter generating information in a strange way, yes, that is enormously strange. No one can point to information generated by matter in our reality. You are being very inventive to avoid the issue of the origin of information. Only a mental state, an originating intellect can do this.-If a mental state (God) can have no origin, you can hardly argue that mental states have to be originated by a mental state. No-one can “point to information” generated by an eternal mind. The fact of the matter is that the information is there and we do not know its source. All hypotheses are therefore “enormously strange”. dhw: You seem to have decided to abandon the “key point” which forms the subject of this thread, but perhaps you feel you are on safer ground with your old friends information, and chance v. design. DAVID: The key point is I maintain humans are obviously different in kind, and only guidance by God can help evolution to do that.-Words like “obviously” carry no weight when the statement itself is so open to question. dhw: Of course he doesn't say God did it. And I have never said initial information was not required. Nor have I ever said that God did not provide it (or did provide it - I'm an agnostic!). Nobody knows where it came from. That is the great mystery which you think you have solved through conjuring up another great mystery: an infinite and eternal mind from nowhere. DAVID: I understand your objections, but only an intellect can create information. So I am left with the only logical choice I see, an eternal mind.-I'm glad you understand my objections. I also understand why you have reached your conclusions.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by George Jelliss 
, Crewe, Monday, January 12, 2015, 20:46 (3390 days ago) @ dhw
"only an intellect can create information"?-http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2014/12/life-and-information/-Not so according to this blog.
--
GPJ
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Monday, January 12, 2015, 21:51 (3390 days ago) @ George Jelliss
"only an intellect can create information"? > > http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2014/12/life-and-information/ &#... > George: Not so according to this blog.-But the article doesn't really say that. It is lots of wishful thinking based on Shannon information theory.:-"However, this insight does not tell us where the first self-replicating piece of information came from. Did it arise spontaneously? Now we find ourselves faced with the question that some have called “The hardest question in science.”"-"So while we can be more confident that spontaneous emergence is a possibility, the likelihood that the early Earth harbored just such environments is impossible to ascertain."-"It turns out that scientists have been able to construct self-replicating molecules (based on RNA enzymes) that encode just 84 bits of information, but even such a seemingly small piece of information is still extremely unlikely to emerge by chance (about one chance in 1024)."-"Unfortunately, while given any particular environment we can estimate what the probability of spontaneous emergence might be, we have very little knowledge about the specifics of these environments on the ancient Earth. So while we can be more confident that spontaneous emergence is a possibility, the likelihood that the early Earth harbored just such environments is impossible to ascertain."-All the debate must start with the issue of where and how did the first information- containing self-replicating molecule come from, and how did a bunch of different molecules get together so that the information contained could plan total organisms. And just because an organic RNAzyme can self-replicated doesn't mean it contains useful information for living organisms.
Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION
by David Turell , Monday, January 12, 2015, 21:55 (3390 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I understand your objections, but only an intellect can create information. So I am left with the only logical choice I see, an eternal mind. > > Dhw: I'm glad you understand my objections. I also understand why you have reached your conclusions.-I think we have concluded our debate, as usual as far apart as we were in the beginning. Note my reply to George about information, the source of which is totally unknown.
Different in degree or kind: brain structure
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 13, 2015, 13:59 (3389 days ago) @ David Turell
Obviously there are structural differences to underlie the rnormous intellectual differences:-"To learn more about the STAP, the researchers looked at brain scans of 177 people and 73 chimpanzees—analyses revealed that while clearly present in all the human scans, it was barely present in any of chimps. The team notes that in the right hemisphere, the groove is in a part of the brain involved in facial recognition and in figuring out the motives or feelings of other people. In the left hemisphere, the groove runs through a part of the brain very clearly associated with language skills.-"The human brain is approximately three times as big as a chimp's, yet finding functional differences in brain structure has been difficult to pinpoint. One structure that has been seen to be different is Broca's area, which is known to be important to speech. It is smaller in chimps which would seem to make sense as their speech capabilities are far less complex."-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-brain-groove-unique-humans.html
Different in degree or kind: Chimp vs. kids
by David Turell , Saturday, January 17, 2015, 21:25 (3385 days ago) @ David Turell
Not the same response to a study of cooperation:-http://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/299.extract-"Chimpanzees, it turns out, do not share, unless the food reward is split equally into two piles (See Fig. 2). Otherwise, the dominant chimpanzee takes it all (2)."
Different in degree or kind: Chimp vs. kids
DAVID: Not the same response to a study of cooperation: - http://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/299.extract "Chimpanzees, it turns out, do not share, unless the food reward is split equally into two piles (See Fig. 2). Otherwise, the dominant chimpanzee takes it all (2)."-The quote continues: "This is one example of differing social-cognitive skills—cooperative skills in this case—between humans and other animals. “And you can see that humans are adapted for that in a way other apes are not,” says Michael Tomasello, codirector of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who oversaw both experiments."-It really makes you wonder how other social organisms manage to survive, doesn't it? Only humans apparently know how to cooperate and to share.
Different in degree or kind: Chimp vs. kids
by David Turell , Sunday, January 18, 2015, 15:49 (3384 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: It really makes you wonder how other social organisms manage to survive, doesn't it? Only humans apparently know how to cooperate and to share.-One of the small ways we are different in kind.
Different in degree or kind: Chimp vs. kids
by David Turell , Tuesday, February 10, 2015, 19:17 (3361 days ago) @ David Turell
At 13 months old kids recognize social interactions. I doubt chimps can even as adults.-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-02-babies-complex-social-situations-react.html-"'These scenarios are a bit like adults witnessing their friends behaving badly," said Luo. "If you were to witness your friend hitting another person, you'd tend to avoid him or her. If you had not witnessed the hit, you still would hang out with the friend. If the hit were an accident, then you may or may not spend time with them. Our results showed that babies reacted to these scenarios in similar ways.'-"These results suggest that young children are developing skills that enable them to assess social situations, Luo said."
Different in degree or kind: 15 differences
by David Turell , Friday, March 20, 2015, 13:52 (3323 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Friday, March 20, 2015, 14:08
From the BBC, a list of topics:-http://www.bbc.com/earth/bespoke/story/20150311-the-15-tweaks-that-made-us-human/index.html-"Humans are possibly the weirdest species to have ever lived. We have freakishly big brains that allow us to build complicated gadgets, understand abstract concepts and communicate using language. We are also almost hairless with weak jaws, and struggle to give birth. How did such a bizarre creature evolve?"-And remember, close relatives have stayed the same over the past 3.5 million years.
Different in degree or kind: 15 differences
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, March 20, 2015, 20:00 (3323 days ago) @ David Turell
Anyone else notice how much pure speculation was on that page, including our undiscovered missing common ancestor.
--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind: 15 differences
by David Turell , Friday, March 20, 2015, 20:49 (3323 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
Tony: Anyone else notice how much pure speculation was on that page, including our undiscovered missing common ancestor.-More than that, think of all the very specialized mutations that had to appear in such a short time period. It looks purposeful to me.
Different in degree or kind: Chimp vs. cooking
by David Turell , Monday, June 08, 2015, 01:14 (3244 days ago) @ David Turell
This twisted experiment tries to tell us chimps might really have some idea about cooking. Quite a stretch as they describe it.:-http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27644-chimps-with-magic-stove-show-evolutionary-capacity-for-cooking.html#.VXTivGDbK1s-"Do chimpanzees have the abilities required for cooking? Cooking requires a lot more than just access to a fire. It takes a lot of patience. You have to resist the urge to eat the raw food, you have to understand the transformation process and you have to hold on to the food and transport it so it can be cooked in the future.-"It is a more complex skill set than you might think - and requires a good bit of inhibiting impulses. So we tested all of those cognitive skills across nine experiments and found that chimpanzees had many of the cognitive and behavioural abilities required for cooking, although not a fully sufficient set.-****-"You discovered that the chimpanzees could transport raw food for cooking. Can you tell me more about that? In the wild, chimpanzees tend to forage - they just snack while they go. But cooking requires you to take the food back to somewhere to do the cooking. And it's not that easy. Even we humans sometimes can't resist the urge to nibble as we are cooking our own dinners. But many of the animals were able to do it. We saw one chimp try very admirably to carry the food 4 metres to the cooking device.-"But unfortunately, he tried to carry it with his lips, so he kept "accidentally" eating it. Another chimpanzee would run over to the cooking site very quickly, holding the piece of potato as far away from himself as possible, seemingly so he wouldn't be tempted. It was challenging for them, but many of the chimps were still able to anticipate cooking in the future and therefore save food for that future use. It was remarkable."-If the cooked food tastes better, of course they would try to attain it. Doesn't show much intelligence to me, just using food for training as we do with dogs.
Different in degree or kind: Chimp vs. cooking
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, June 08, 2015, 09:02 (3243 days ago) @ David Turell
We saw one chimp try very admirably to carry the food 4 metres to the cooking device."But unfortunately, he tried to carry it with his lips, so he kept "accidentally" eating it. - I loved this line. Got a good chuckle out of it. This study was a lark. It doesn't prove anything.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.
Different in degree or kind: Chimp metacognition
by David Turell , Monday, June 08, 2015, 22:08 (3243 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
Three chimps are tested to see if they recognize when they have answered a question successfully. They head for the food reward earlier if they think they are correct. But this is only three subjects, totally statistically invalid:-"Metacognition occurs when individuals monitor what they know and don't know, when they seek information they need to know and when they respond to a question with high confidence or low confidence. Confidence measures are one clear means of looking at how humans monitor their own knowledge states. Humans can orally report confidence or lack of confidence or even use numerical ratings scales. They also can give confidence ratings through non-verbal behaviors such as shoulder shrugs, hesitations in responses and similar behaviors.- *** "The team concluded that these results, along with others, touch on the idea that chimpanzees share with humans the capacity for metacognitive monitoring. Although this capacity does not mean chimpanzees have the same conscious experiences humans can have when they act metacognitively, it does reflect a form of cognitive control that underlies intelligent decision-making across species."- Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-chimpanzees.html#jCp
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Saturday, November 14, 2015, 00:28 (3085 days ago) @ David Turell
In Adler's book he made very sharp distinctions between human mental capacities, how immaterial they are, compared to the feeble mental attempts by animals.- http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/the_fundamental_2100661.html-"Regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of the evolutionary argument that humans are descended from apes, the differences between humans and apes are so profound as to render the view that humans are apes abject nonsense.-"It is important to understand the fundamental difference between humans and nonhuman animals. Nonhuman animals such as apes have material mental powers. By material I mean powers that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation. These powers include sensation, perception, imagination (the ability to form mental images), memory (of perceptions and images), and appetite. Nonhuman animals have a mental capacity to perceive and respond to particulars, which are specific material objects such as other animals, food, obstacles, and predators.-"Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals but in addition entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not. Human beings have the power to contemplate universals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts. Human beings are rational animals. -***- "A human being is material and immaterial -- a composite being. We have material bodies, and our perceptions and imaginations and appetites are material powers, instantiated in our brains. But our intellect -- our ability to think abstractly -- is a wholly immaterial power, and our will that acts in accordance with our intellect is an immaterial power. Our intellect and our will depend on matter for their ordinary function, in the sense that they depend upon perception and imagination and memory, but they are not themselves made of matter. It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference -- an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. -"We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. Our difference is a metaphysical chasm. It is obvious and manifest in our biological nature. We are rational animals, and our rationality is all the difference. Systems of taxonomy that emphasize physical and genetic similarities and ignore the fact that human beings are partly immaterial beings who are capable of abstract thought and contemplation of moral law and eternity are pitifully inadequate to describe man.-"The assertion that man is an ape is self-refuting. We could not express such a concept, misguided as it is, if we were apes and not men."-Comment: A great summary of Adler's thought by someone who does not quote Adler.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
DAVID: In Adler's book he made very sharp distinctions between human mental capacities, how immaterial they are, compared to the feeble mental attempts by animals.-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/the_fundamental_2100661.html-QUOTE: "Regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of the evolutionary argument that humans are descended from apes, the differences between humans and apes are so profound as to render the view that humans are apes abject nonsense.”-Before commenting, I'd like to include the introductory passage which you did not quote: QUOTE: “Marks accepts the theory of common ancestry, and believes that we are descended from apes. He points out that evolutionary relationships are not the same thing as identities. Descent from apes does not mean we are apes. Taxonomy is not the same thing as identity.”-Agreed. Belief in common ancestry ultimately means we are all descended from single-celled organisms, but that doesn't mean we are bacteria. I am certainly not going to dispute the enormous gulf between our intellect and that of an orang-utan or of any other organism. However, hidden in this account is an assumption which is absolutely wide open to dispute and ultimately leads to far more questions than it answers: QUOTE: "A human being is material and immaterial -- a composite being. We have material bodies, and our perceptions and imaginations and appetites are material powers, instantiated in our brains. But our intellect -- our ability to think abstractly -- is a wholly immaterial power, and our will that acts in accordance with our intellect is an immaterial power. Our intellect and our will depend on matter for their ordinary function, in the sense that they depend upon perception and imagination and memory, but they are not themselves made of matter. It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference -- an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference.”-I agree again about abstract thinking, but what grounds does he have for claiming that our intellect and will are wholly immaterial? Has he magically stumbled upon the source of consciousness? Strangely, he includes imagination among the material attributes. The imagination is as “abstract” a faculty as the will and the intellect, so why can't abstract reasoning also be a "material power"? I'm not saying it is - I'm saying nobody knows the source. But this article treats dualism as a fact, and it is not.-What, then, is the point of it? Let us all agree that we are humans and not apes. But do we therefore have an immaterial identity whereas apes do not? Is this hypothetical immaterial identity meant to direct us towards some special process of creation that is independent of the evolution the author believes in? Or towards some future that apes cannot aspire to (e.g. an afterlife, which presumably depends on an immaterial identity)? Perhaps I am doing the author an injustice, but belief in dualism is usually connected to some kind of religious agenda, and if so we should hear it together with all its unproven and unprovable assumptions. In the meantime, and in the absence of any explanation for any degree of consciousness - human or otherwise - I would argue that our mental superiority denotes absolutely nothing except that we are mentally superior.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Saturday, November 14, 2015, 15:32 (3084 days ago) @ dhw
> Agreed. ....However, hidden in this account is an assumption which is absolutely wide open to dispute and ultimately leads to far more questions than it answers:-Only if you allow yourself to get tied up in knots over the presence of consciousness and free will. > > dhw: I agree again about abstract thinking, but what grounds does he have for claiming that our intellect and will are wholly immaterial? Has he magically stumbled upon the source of consciousness?-Consciousness and abstract thought are not immaterial? Really? Then what are they?-> dhw Strangely, he includes imagination among the material attributes. The imagination is as “abstract” a faculty as the will and the intellect, so why can't abstract reasoning also be a "material power"? I'm not saying it is - I'm saying nobody knows the source. But this article treats dualism as a fact, and it is not.-It is to me. The brain is the substrate for consciousness. I still accept: 'I think therefore I am'. > > dhw: What, then, is the point of it? Let us all agree that we are humans and not apes. But do we therefore have an immaterial identity whereas apes do not? ..... Perhaps I am doing the author an injustice, but belief in dualism is usually connected to some kind of religious agenda, and if so we should hear it together with all its unproven and unprovable assumptions.... I would argue that our mental superiority denotes absolutely nothing except that we are mentally superior.-Spoken like a true agnostic. Egnor and I are both physicians and view humans from a different perspective than you do. And Adler obviously accepted dualism
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
dhw: I agree again about abstract thinking, but what grounds does he have for claiming that our intellect and will are wholly immaterial? Has he magically stumbled upon the source of consciousness?-DAVID: Consciousness and abstract thought are not immaterial? Really? Then what are they?-That is not what I wrote. As you know very well, the question is whether the SOURCE is material or not.-dhw Strangely, he includes imagination among the material attributes. The imagination is as “abstract” a faculty as the will and the intellect, so why can't abstract reasoning also be a "material power"? I'm not saying it is - I'm saying nobody knows the source. But this article treats dualism as a fact, and it is not. DAVID: It is to me. The brain is the substrate for consciousness. I still accept: 'I think therefore I am'.-But even you do not claim that dualism is a fact, whereas your author states his case as if it is. A materialist response to the dead Descartes might be: ‘You are not, and therefore you do not think.' dhw: What, then, is the point of it? Let us all agree that we are humans and not apes. But do we therefore have an immaterial identity whereas apes do not? ..... Perhaps I am doing the author an injustice, but belief in dualism is usually connected to some kind of religious agenda, and if so we should hear it together with all its unproven and unprovable assumptions.... I would argue that our mental superiority denotes absolutely nothing except that we are mentally superior.-DAVID: Spoken like a true agnostic. Egnor and I are both physicians and view humans from a different perspective than you do. And Adler obviously accepted dualism.-And lots of philosophers do not accept dualism, and I'd be very surprised if all your fellow physicians accepted it. Nobody has a clue. Anyone who states categorically that the mind (intellect, will etc.) is immaterial is offering subjective opinion as if it were fact. This is precisely the kind of distorted logic criticized with much ado by the lawyer (“Is Darwinian Evolution a ‘fact'?”) in his discussion of materialist evolution: “...it is very often the case that materialist evolutionists [substitute dualists] not only fail to acknowledge an unstated assumption that is absolutely critical to their argument; but also they fail to even know that they've made that assumption in the first place and that that assumption might possibly be false.” Incidentally, it's a great shame the lawyer does not acknowledge that evolution is not in itself a materialistic theory - an omission that you have rectified in your comment. But perhaps he has an agenda of his own.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Sunday, November 15, 2015, 15:39 (3083 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: Consciousness and abstract thought are not immaterial? Really? Then what are they? > > dhw: That is not what I wrote. As you know very well, the question is whether the SOURCE is material or not.-The brain is material. Each human controls his brain and he is the source of its produced thoughts. Material under controls. Dualism, I think. > > DAVID: Spoken like a true agnostic. Egnor and I are both physicians and view humans from a different perspective than you do. And Adler obviously accepted dualism. > > dhw: And lots of philosophers do not accept dualism, and I'd be very surprised if all your fellow physicians accepted it. Nobody has a clue. Anyone who states categorically that the mind (intellect, will etc.) is immaterial is offering subjective opinion as if it were fact.-Frankly, it is fact to me. Our ideas here are presented in written material, BUT they are ideas. Touch one and show me that you did. You can't. The content and meanings of thought are totally immaterial.-> dhw: Incidentally, it's a great shame the lawyer does not acknowledge that evolution is not in itself a materialistic theory - an omission that you have rectified in your comment. But perhaps he has an agenda of his own.-I think he does have an agenda. Evolution is a process (material). The theory as to how it works is immaterial, an obvious difference. I don't think you confuse the two ways of approaching thought about evolution.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by romansh , Sunday, November 15, 2015, 18:05 (3083 days ago) @ David Turell
David BUT they are ideas. Touch one and show me that you did. You can't. The content and meanings of thought are totally immaterial.-This I would argue is false ... We can find these "ideas" in moving patterns of material and energy flow in the brain.-We are just beginning to scratch this particular aspect of our physiology.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Sunday, November 15, 2015, 20:43 (3083 days ago) @ romansh
David BUT they are ideas. Touch one and show me that you did. You can't. The content and meanings of thought are totally immaterial. > > Romansh: This I would argue is false ... We can find these "ideas" in moving patterns of material and energy flow in the brain. > > We are just beginning to scratch this particular aspect of our physiology.-fMRI's measure blood flows to the regions being used by the brain, nothing more. All overhyped. The ideas, themselves, are still immaterial. Consciousness is still unexplained by all the research we know how to do.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by romansh , Monday, November 16, 2015, 03:13 (3082 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by romansh, Monday, November 16, 2015, 03:22
David fMRI's measure blood flows to the regions being used by the brain, nothing more. All overhyped. The ideas, themselves, are still immaterial. Consciousness is still unexplained by all the research we know how to do.-A technicality-fMRIs do not measure blood flow ... regardless of what you might have read.-fMRIs measure the nuclear magnetic resonance of protons which depends on the chemical environment of the protons. The fMRI can distinguish an oxygenated and deoxygenated environment. This is used for a proxy of blood flow. Higher the blood flow the more oxygenated the blood.-Now of course this is a pretty crude measure of what is going on in the brain. This makes it all the more amazing that such a crude device could actually determine anything going on in the brain.-So if such a crude method can "read" what an observer can see albeit far from perfectly this is a huge step forward and does support the concept that these ideas are patterns in the brain.-That you say it is overhyped is amazing.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Monday, November 16, 2015, 05:35 (3082 days ago) @ romansh
edited by David Turell, Monday, November 16, 2015, 06:06
David fMRI's measure blood flows to the regions being used by the brain, nothing more. All overhyped. The ideas, themselves, are still immaterial. Consciousness is still unexplained by all the research we know how to do. > > Romansh: A technicality > > fMRIs do not measure blood flow ... regardless of what you might have read. > > fMRIs measure the nuclear magnetic resonance of protons which depends on the chemical environment of the protons. The fMRI can distinguish an oxygenated and deoxygenated environment. This is used for a proxy of blood flow. Higher the blood flow the more oxygenated the blood.-You have simply restated what I said in a more technical way. MRI means magnetic resonance imaging. Yes the protons line up in one direction due to magnetism and when they rotate back computer images are created in slices thinner than those in Cat scans. And yes, oxygenation is what is measured due to increased blood flow. Surprise, all of us physicians know that. But perhaps your superior attitude is surprised by that. I keep it simple for those who are following the discussion but who don't care about the highly nuanced details.-I also know the history of MRI's. They were first invented to study defects in metal products and the adapted to human medical studies, with much of the initial work done in Israel. All beside the point. Why do you presume to know what I do not to know? > > Romansh: Now of course this is a pretty crude measure of what is going on in the brain. This makes it all the more amazing that such a crude device could actually determine anything going on in the brain.-Thank you for the word crude. It is not amazing because previous research has told us what areas of the brain are roughly in control of what actions and thought processes. When they light up in the fMRI we know they are more active since they are receiving more oxygenated blood. > > Romansh So if such a crude method can "read" what an observer can see albeit far from perfectly this is a huge step forward and does support the concept that these ideas are patterns in the brain.-Of course they are, but it tells us very little about the real intrinsic mechanisms of the brain and how consciousness arises. Nagel's Mind and Cosmos is something you should read. > > Romansh: That you say it is overhyped is amazing.-I would remind you of your own commentary: on this entry I presented:-http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029390.600-hidden-depths-brain-science-is-drowning-in-uncertainty.html?full=true#.VLWxFWA5C1s->fMRI: a very critical review (Introduction)->by romansh ? @, Wednesday, January 14, 2015, 03:28 (306 days ago) @ David Turell-> While I would agree that there is much hyperbolae in some fMRI studies, but I would argue videos like this show there also a great deal of promise in this type of study.-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsjDnYxJ0bo-> And bear in mind all this is simply a proxy for blood flow in the brain.-Yes, a proxy for blood flow. Just like I said in my last entry.-To me you are amazing. You jump into this arcane garbage and skip the real issue; ideas, thoughts, and concepts are immaterial, aren't they?
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by romansh , Thursday, November 19, 2015, 02:38 (3079 days ago) @ David Turell
To me you are amazing. You jump into this arcane garbage and skip the real issue; ideas, thoughts, and concepts are immaterial, aren't they?-Note - you said: > David BUT they are ideas. Touch one and show me that you did. You can't. The content and meanings of thought are totally immaterial.-So my brain patterns would say "No!"-Our blood flow is a reflection of what's going on in the brain ... admittedly a very poor one. But that we can get anything out of the blood flow proxy is incredible. You might not think so; but it is way of touching what we perceive as consciousness.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Thursday, November 19, 2015, 05:29 (3079 days ago) @ romansh
Romansh: Note - you said: > > David BUT they are ideas. Touch one and show me that you did. You can't. The content and meanings of thought are totally immaterial. > > Romansh: So my brain patterns would say "No!"-Really? they don't say much, and those thoughts are still immaterial. See below: > > Romansh: Our blood flow is a reflection of what's going on in the brain ... admittedly a very poor one. But that we can get anything out of the blood flow proxy is incredible. You might not think so; but it is way of touching what we perceive as consciousness.-I totally agree with you in this analysis, except, the blood flow tells us what region in active, but of course, it does not tell us exactly what that region is doing. So exactly what have we learned? Geography. How does consciousness work? We've found nada. The entire process is overhyped, but it is a tiny step on the way to trying to figure out consciousness. My attitude is simply cautious: don't expect or promise to much for the lay public at this time. Keep plugging.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by romansh , Saturday, November 21, 2015, 04:36 (3077 days ago) @ David Turell
David Really? they don't say much, and those thoughts are still immaterial. See below: Yes really ... and I don't need to say much. No thoughts are not immaterial.-> David I totally agree with you in this analysis, except, the blood flow tells us what region in active, but of course, it does not tell us exactly what that region is doing. So exactly what have we learned? Geography. How does consciousness work? We've found nada. The entire process is overhyped, but it is a tiny step on the way to trying to figure out consciousness. My attitude is simply cautious: don't expect or promise to much for the lay public at this time. Keep plugging.-Actually there is a bit more fidelity than "regions". What we have learned is that blood flow patterns can be a crude proxy for the brain function that humans describe as consciousness (at least the visual).-So what evidence would persuade that consciousness is material?
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Saturday, November 21, 2015, 05:50 (3077 days ago) @ romansh
David Really? they don't say much, and those thoughts are still immaterial. See below: > romansh: Yes really ... and I don't need to say much. > No thoughts are not immaterial.-By what definition are they not immaterial. Can you touch a thought?-> Romansh: Actually there is a bit more fidelity than "regions". What we have learned is that blood flow patterns can be a crude proxy for the brain function that humans describe as consciousness (at least the visual). -What fidelity more than regions? Yes, a very crude proxy. > > Romansh: So what evidence would persuade that consciousness is material?-Please tell me.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by romansh , Sunday, November 22, 2015, 21:08 (3076 days ago) @ David Turell
David Really? they don't say much, and those thoughts are still immaterial. See below: > > romansh: Yes really ... and I don't need to say much. > > No thoughts are not immaterial. > > By what definition are they not immaterial. Can you touch a thought? As much as I can touch light. In fact "touch" is short hand for how fields interact. Are you saying fields don't interact in your brain? > > Romansh: Actually there is a bit more fidelity than "regions". What we have learned is that blood flow patterns can be a crude proxy for the brain function that humans describe as consciousness (at least the visual). > > What fidelity more than regions? Yes, a very crude proxy. And that makes it even more amazing that we can get anything from an fMRI. > > > > Romansh: So what evidence would persuade [you] that consciousness is material? > > Please tell me. Actually I meant to ask you.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Sunday, November 22, 2015, 21:23 (3076 days ago) @ romansh
> > David: By what definition are they not immaterial. Can you touch a thought?-> Romansh: As much as I can touch light. In fact "touch" is short hand for how fields interact. Are you saying fields don't interact in your brain? -Yes they do. So?-> > > > David: What fidelity more than regions? Yes, a very crude proxy. -> And that makes it even more amazing that we can get anything from an fMRI.-We are getting regions. Not amazing. > > > > > > Romansh: So what evidence would persuade [you] that consciousness is material? > > > > David: Please tell me.-> Romansh: Actually I meant to ask you.-Now concept ping pong? I have no evidence that consciousness is material, nor do I expect any. Like I suggested, try Nagel.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by romansh , Sunday, November 22, 2015, 22:02 (3076 days ago) @ David Turell
Yes they do. So? So if I were to poke my finger in your brain, presumably where thoughts reside, the "fields" interact.-> We are getting regions. Not amazing. Well being a bear of simple mind, I am amazed. > Now concept ping pong? I have no evidence that consciousness is material, nor do I expect any. Like I suggested, try Nagel.-So what evidence would convince you that you are wrong?-I did not ask you if you had evidence.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Sunday, November 22, 2015, 23:01 (3076 days ago) @ romansh
David: Yes they do. So?-> Romansh: So if I were to poke my finger in your brain, presumably where thoughts reside, the "fields" interact.-I know the brain has no pain fibers so your finger won't hurt. What is your point about fields? > > > David; We are getting regions. Not amazing.-> Romansh: Well being a bear of simple mind, I am amazed.-OK. > > > David: Now concept ping pong? I have no evidence that consciousness is material, nor do I expect any. Like I suggested, try Nagel. > > Romansh: So what evidence would convince you that you are wrong? > > I did not ask you if you had evidence.-Tell me your evidence. The light beam you offered has photons, but your sense of touch is incapable of feeling them. They are a real 'something'. What do thoughts have that are material/energy in form?
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
DAVID: Consciousness and abstract thought are not immaterial? Really? Then what are they? -dhw: That is not what I wrote. As you know very well, the question is whether the SOURCE is material or not.-DAVID: The brain is material. Each human controls his brain and he is the source of its produced thoughts. Material under controls. Dualism, I think.-What part of each human controls the brain is a mystery. It's the usual business of pots and kettles. You object (in my view quite rightly) when someone assumes a material source for thought, or a material control mechanism for the brain, but I must repeat: “Anyone who states categorically that the mind (intellect, will etc.) is immaterial is offering subjective opinion as if it were fact.” -DAVID: Frankly, it is fact to me. Our ideas here are presented in written material, BUT they are ideas. Touch one and show me that you did. You can't. The content and meanings of thought are totally immaterial.-Of course thought itself is not tangible, but we are talking about the SOURCE of thought. The author categorically states that the intellect is “wholly immaterial”. If he only meant the products of the intellect, he should have said so. But he tells us that “a human being is material and immaterial - a composite being.” Apes “have material powers...that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation.” That is precisely what materialists believe is the case with the human intellect. Nobody knows the source of thought, and so although I would agree that our intellectual powers set us apart from other organisms, we cannot claim that we have an immaterial faculty whereas all other organisms are wholly material. That is a purely subjective opinion masquerading as fact, and so once again I would argue that our mental superiority denotes nothing except our mental superiority.-dhw: Incidentally, it's a great shame the lawyer does not acknowledge that evolution is not in itself a materialistic theory - an omission that you have rectified in your comment. But perhaps he has an agenda of his own. DAVID: I think he does have an agenda. Evolution is a process (material). The theory as to how it works is immaterial, an obvious difference. I don't think you confuse the two ways of approaching thought about evolution.-That is not what I meant. My point is simply regret that the lawyer's diatribe against materialistic (which I suspect means atheistic) evolution did not make it clear that the theory itself is neither materialistic (atheistic) nor immaterialistic (theistic). The provocative question “Is Darwinian Evolution a fact?” makes it difficult to separate the attack on materialism from an attack on the theory. That is why I suspect that his legalistic verbosity is a cover for a personal agenda. Regardless of your reservations about aspects of the theory, your own belief in some form of “theistic evolution” restores the balance that is strikingly absent from his article.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Monday, November 16, 2015, 15:16 (3082 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: What part of each human controls the brain is a mystery. It's the usual business of pots and kettles. You object (in my view quite rightly) when someone assumes a material source for thought, or a material control mechanism for the brain, but I must repeat: “Anyone who states categorically that the mind (intellect, will etc.) is immaterial is offering subjective opinion as if it were fact.” -It seems to me that I control my own brain with my brain. It responds to my habits and learning issues with the proper plasticity to mold itself to my wishes. It is a perfect seamless feedback system between immaterial and material. We just don't know how it all works, since we don't understand the source of consciousness. > > DAVID: Frankly, it is fact to me. Our ideas here are presented in written material, BUT they are ideas. Touch one and show me that you did. You can't. The content and meanings of thought are totally immaterial. > > dhw: Of course thought itself is not tangible,.... Nobody knows the source of thought, and so although I would agree that our intellectual powers set us apart from other organisms, we cannot claim that we have an immaterial faculty whereas all other organisms are wholly material. ...so once again I would argue that our mental superiority denotes nothing except our mental superiority.-Here I agree with you. Animals obviously have a degree immaterial thought. They act on desires, as an example.-> dhw: Regardless of your reservations about aspects of the theory, your own belief in some form of “theistic evolution” restores the balance that is strikingly absent from his article.-Thank you.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
dhw: What part of each human controls the brain is a mystery. It's the usual business of pots and kettles. You object (in my view quite rightly) when someone assumes a material source for thought, or a material control mechanism for the brain, but I must repeat: “Anyone who states categorically that the mind (intellect, will etc.) is immaterial is offering subjective opinion as if it were fact.” -DAVID: It seems to me that I control my own brain with my brain. It responds to my habits and learning issues with the proper plasticity to mold itself to my wishes. It is a perfect seamless feedback system between immaterial and material. We just don't know how it all works, since we don't understand the source of consciousness. -What is the “you” that uses your brain to control your brain? Materialists will argue that the “you” IS the brain. But since we don't know the source of consciousness, nobody can tell us that “you” are wholly material or partly immaterial. It's not just a matter of knowing how it all works, but of knowing WHAT is at work: the brain, or an immaterial identity that controls the brain? -DAVID: A new study shows our brain is much more plastic than the chimp's: -http://phys.org/news/2015-11-nature-nurture-human-brains-evolved.html-The rest of the article contains numerous comparatives: “more plasticity, propensity to be modeled by the environment, than chimpanzee brains”; “the chimpanzee brain is more strongly controlled by genes than that of human brains”; “the human brain appears to be much more responsive to environmental influences”. This is degree and not kind, and the materialist would argue that this difference in degree has led to our ability to think in a greater (I have to use another comparative) variety of ways than the chimp. No-one will deny the vast difference in range and depth, but since you acknowledge that our fellow animals “obviously have a degree of immaterial thought”, even your dualistic approach points to greater degree rather than different kind. Perhaps, after all this discussion, you could remind us just why “kind” rather than “degree” is so important to you.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by BBella , Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 18:08 (3081 days ago) @ dhw
Sorry to post here, but I lost the last discussion we (dhw & I) were having. When I cant get back to the discussion right away, if I don't remember the heading, I seem to lose my place since the forum discussion headings move so fast. Not sure if there is a way to find our own personal discussions with our name only?
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 18:20 (3081 days ago) @ BBella
Bbella: Sorry to post here, but I lost the last discussion we (dhw & I) were having. When I cant get back to the discussion right away, if I don't remember the heading, I seem to lose my place since the forum discussion headings move so fast. Not sure if there is a way to find our own personal discussions with our name only?-I posted your name in the search box and this came up:-Monday, October 26, 2015, 05:42
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
BBELLA: Sorry to post here, but I lost the last discussion we (dhw & I) were having. When I cant get back to the discussion right away, if I don't remember the heading, I seem to lose my place since the forum discussion headings move so fast. Not sure if there is a way to find our own personal discussions with our name only?-I've hunted through the various posts, and you and I were discussing "Brain complexity: whole brain vision mechanism" - and the last exchange I can find was my reply on 12 November to your post of 11 November. I'll have to consult with Neil about personal identification of posts. Or maybe we can increase the number of recent posts displayed. I'm not very good on the technology!
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 18:45 (3081 days ago) @ dhw
BBELLA: Sorry to post here, but I lost the last discussion we (dhw & I) were having.i] > > dhw: I've hunted through the various posts, and you and I were discussing "Brain complexity: whole brain vision mechanism" - and the last exchange I can find was my reply on 12 November to your post of 11 November. -I've found the same one:-Brain complexity: whole brain vision mechanisms (Introduction)-by BBella @, Wednesday, November 11, 2015, 21:12 (6 days ago) @ dhw- dhw: You left out my next sentence, which was that “I am happy to accept energy and matter as first cause, but not intelligence.” My objection is to your claim that somehow the magic formula of “first cause” is enough to explain intelligence.-DAVID: I don't view it that way. First cause must have intelligence to explain the invention of the reality in which we live.-First cause need not have intelligence if the reality in which we live (including intelligence) evolved as opposed to being invented.-dhw: And since we have no idea how/why ANY thought processes in ANY organism appear or work - as per all of us, not just Nagel - my answer to your original question is that the source of the instructions is “intelligence” itself (whose source is unknown), both for you and for bacteria. DAVID: But at least we can say that the intelligence must have a source. -BBELLA: I'm not sure I understand why intelligence (or energy or matter for that matter) "must have a source". Wouldn't it be equivalent or at least more clear (for me anyway) to say - energy, matter and intelligence is source? I could agree to that. There may have never been a source, origin or ground zero for anything that IS but what IS. The reason we can find no 'source" of all that IS "out there" is because there is nothing other than what IS.-The problem, as I see it, is that what IS includes life on Earth and us, and we want to know how that started. I think David will go along with energy, matter and intelligence as source - intelligence being the mind of the God he believes invented life on Earth. He may be right. But it is equally possible that intelligence has not always been part of what IS: -For me, they are entangled and cannot be separated. Intelligence, for me is like glue that holds all that IS together. Take away intelligence and you have nothing, just free floating dry dust - if that!- i.e. that there is not one eternal mind governing the universe, -I can agree with this. In the sense there is not a one mind cosmic god as in one point of awareness, similar to a human.- but minds have evolved out of an infinite and eternal mixing of mindless energy and matter (i.e. intelligence does have a source). -It seems to me, without intelligence there would be nothing to cause anything to ever be. So intelligence had to have always been. Just not a one minded intelligence. Just intelligence.- I find both hypotheses equally incredible, but one of them must be closer to the truth.-I find it too incredible to even imagine intelligence to have never been.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 18:33 (3081 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: What is the “you” that uses your brain to control your brain? Materialists will argue that the “you” IS the brain. But since we don't know the source of consciousness, nobody can tell us that “you” are wholly material or partly immaterial. It's not just a matter of knowing how it all works, but of knowing WHAT is at work: the brain, or an immaterial identity that controls the brain?-I use my brain to know 'me'. The brain is a tool I can command. My concept of me is immaterial, as it involves my thinking about myself, using the brain as a tool. Granted we do not know how it works, but this view of how I know 'me' is very obvious. In the rest of my body I don't have that capability. My digestion proceeds without my intervention. I can speed up my heart by exercise, but that is a secondary type of intervention, not direct. The brain is directly responsive to me. As a kid when I learned to play the piano, areas of my brain grew. As I grew up my brain grew grey mater to help me. > > dhw: Perhaps, after all this discussion, you could remind us just why “kind” rather than “degree” is so important to you.-Just following Adler's approach: Difference in Kind means we are specially created. His book explains all of this.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
dhw: What is the “you” that uses your brain to control your brain? Materialists will argue that the “you” IS the brain. But since we don't know the source of consciousness, nobody can tell us that “you” are wholly material or partly immaterial. It's not just a matter of knowing how it all works, but of knowing WHAT is at work: the brain, or an immaterial identity that controls the brain?-DAVID: I use my brain to know 'me'. The brain is a tool I can command. My concept of me is immaterial, as it involves my thinking about myself, using the brain as a tool. Granted we do not know how it works, but this view of how I know 'me' is very obvious. In the rest of my body I don't have that capability. My digestion proceeds without my intervention. I can speed up my heart by exercise, but that is a secondary type of intervention, not direct. The brain is directly responsive to me. As a kid when I learned to play the piano, areas of my brain grew. As I grew up my brain grew grey matter to help me.-Your concept of you, then, is of an immaterial David who occupies your body. This of course fits in with NDEs and a range of other psychic phenomena which appear to defy physical explanation. The starting point of our discussion was an essay that presented the dualist concept as a fact, and it was this presumption that I objected to, just as I object to the presumption of materialists who claim that there is nothing beyond the physical. Your last sentence, however, causes me problems. You say the brain helps “you”, but the brain is just as capable of hindering “you” - through age, disease, drugs. If it can help, hinder or change “you”, how can we be sure that it does not actually make “you”? Do "you" command it, or does it command “you”? Materialists will claim it's the latter. And so once again your admission that “we do not know how it works” may be turned into “we do not know what is at work.” -dhw: Perhaps, after all this discussion, you could remind us just why “kind” rather than “degree” is so important to you.-DAVID: Just following Adler's approach: Difference in Kind means we are specially created. His book explains all of this.-I am sure you are perfectly capable of defending your own beliefs without constantly referring to Adler. What you have said seems to me to indicate that this is an agenda-based notion essential for an anthropocentric theory of special creation which involves some weird convolutions for those who accept that we and our ape cousins are descended from a common ancestor. In the rest of my last post, while acknowledging the huge superiority of our mental capacity over theirs, I emphasized the comparatives that highlight degree not kind, and your own acknowledgement that our fellow animals have “a degree of immaterial thought” simply reinforces the argument that we have a greater degree of it than they do.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Thursday, November 19, 2015, 00:57 (3080 days ago) @ dhw
David The brain is directly responsive to me. As a kid when I learned to play the piano, areas of my brain grew. As I grew up my brain grew grey matter to help me.[/i] > > dhw: Your last sentence, however, causes me problems. You say the brain helps “you”, but the brain is just as capable of hindering “you” - through age, disease, drugs.-Of course we age and have diseases. it is not the brain's fault, as you imply. We are built to age, just as the brain is built to adapt itself to my mental demands on it as I learn new things to do or remember.. -> dhw:If it can help, hinder or change “you”, how can we be sure that it does not actually make “you”? Do "you" command it, or does it command “you”? Materialists will claim it's the latter.-And they are fools. I never sense the brain is controlling me and I feel fully in control, but I am normal. The schizophrenic cannot say that, and it is here the materialist has a point. Again, a normally functional brain is controlled by the person.-> dhw: And so once again your admission that “we do not know how it works” may be turned into “we do not know what is at work.” -Here I agree > > dhw: Perhaps, after all this discussion, you could remind us just why “kind” rather than “degree” is so important to you. > > DAVID: Just following Adler's approach: Difference in Kind means we are specially created. His book explains all of this. > > dhw: I am sure you are perfectly capable of defending your own beliefs without constantly referring to Adler. .....your own acknowledgement that our fellow animals have “a degree of immaterial thought” simply reinforces the argument that we have a greater degree of it than they do.-His point which I have fully accepted, is the gulf between animals and us is so vast that we are different in kind. I use his name with you as you use Shapiro and others with me. Have you read their books for a full interpretive understanding of their positions?
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
dhw: You say the brain helps “you”, but the brain is just as capable of hindering “you” - through age, disease, drugs. DAVID: Of course we age and have diseases. it is not the brain's fault, as you imply. We are built to age, just as the brain is built to adapt itself to my mental demands on it as I learn new things to do or remember.-I am not blaming the brain! I am saying that the condition of the brain clearly affects the condition of what you call “you”. The point lies in the next observation: dhw: If it can help, hinder or change “you”, how can we be sure that it does not actually make “you”? Do "you" command it, or does it command “you”? Materialists will claim it's the latter.-DAVID: And they are fools. I never sense the brain is controlling me and I feel fully in control, but I am normal. The schizophrenic cannot say that, and it is here the materialist has a point. Again, a normally functional brain is controlled by the person.-And that is my point. If an aged, diseased or drugged brain can change “you”, how can we say with any conviction that the “you” is an immaterial being that controls the brain? If the brain is “normal”, it may control the person “normally”. -dhw: And so once again your admission that “we do not know how it works” may be turned into “we do not know what is at work.” DAVID: Here I agree.-Thank you. This means that neither you nor materialists are fools. We simply do not know what makes “you”, regardless of the fact that you “feel” fully in control. dhw: Perhaps, after all this discussion, you could remind us just why “kind” rather than “degree” is so important to you. DAVID: Just following Adler's approach: Difference in Kind means we are specially created. His book explains all of this. dhw: I am sure you are perfectly capable of defending your own beliefs without constantly referring to Adler. .....- DAVID: His point which I have fully accepted, is the gulf between animals and us is so vast that we are different in kind. I use his name with you as you use Shapiro and others with me. Have you read their books for a full interpretive understanding of their positions?-The original post and your comment that our fellow animals have “a degree of immaterial thought” make it plain that our degree is (vastly) greater than theirs, and if you believe that we and apes had a common ancestor, “specially created” sounds like a contradiction in terms. As for reading the books, when scientists state in interviews quite categorically that cells are sentient, cognitive, decision-making beings, and that those who believe the contrary do so out of “large organisms chauvinism”, I can't believe that they really mean cells are automatons. I then feel free to speculate on the possible implications of their observations.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Friday, November 20, 2015, 01:11 (3079 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: And that is my point. If an aged, diseased or drugged brain can change “you”, how can we say with any conviction that the “you” is an immaterial being that controls the brain? If the brain is “normal”, it may control the person “normally”. -Just the other way 'round. It is only when the brain is sick that the person loses control. Just when does your brain control you? Does it write your plays?-> dhw: We simply do not know what makes “you”, regardless of the fact that you “feel” fully in control.-True. But our ignorance of the mechanism does not mean that anything goes. My impression is I run my brain. No one can prove the opposite, since we don't understand the mechanism. I'll take my viewpoint, as anything else is unprovable.-> > dhw: The original post and your comment that our fellow animals have “a degree of immaterial thought” make it plain that our degree is (vastly) greater than theirs, and if you believe that we and apes had a common ancestor, “specially created” sounds like a contradiction in terms.-I don't see your contradiction. It is the vastness of the difference that makes us different in kind. And he doesn't mention the anatomical changes which are also vast. -> dhw: I can't believe that they really mean cells are automatons. I then feel free to speculate on the possible implications of their observations.-Shapiro says that the bacteria's genome is a 'read/write code' mechanism. How do you interpret that?
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
dhw: And that is my point. If an aged, diseased or drugged brain can change “you”, how can we say with any conviction that the “you” is an immaterial being that controls the brain? If the brain is “normal”, it may control the person “normally”. DAVID: Just the other way 'round. It is only when the brain is sick that the person loses control. Just when does your brain control you? Does it write your plays?-We have no way of knowing it's ‘the other way round' except for a gut feeling. I truly haven't a clue where my ideas come from. They come to me. I don't consciously hunt for them. dhw: We simply do not know what makes “you”, regardless of the fact that you “feel” fully in control. DAVID: True. But our ignorance of the mechanism does not mean that anything goes. My impression is I run my brain. No one can prove the opposite, since we don't understand the mechanism. I'll take my viewpoint, as anything else is unprovable. -Our ignorance of the mechanism means that no-one can prove your version or the materialist version. A materialist would dismiss your theory of the immaterial self as “anything goes”.-dhw: The original post and your comment that our fellow animals have “a degree of immaterial thought” make it plain that our degree is (vastly) greater than theirs, and if you believe that we and apes had a common ancestor, “specially created” sounds like a contradiction in terms. DAVID: I don't see your contradiction. It is the vastness of the difference that makes us different in kind. And he doesn't mention the anatomical changes which are also vast.-The contradiction lies in your belief that we share a common ancestry (= we evolved) and yet you think we were specially created. dhw: I can't believe that they really mean cells are automatons. I then feel free to speculate on the possible implications of their observations. DAVID: Shapiro says that the bacteria's genome is a 'read/write code' mechanism. How do you interpret that?-In precisely the same way as Shapiro does - that the genome is an active and not just a passive mechanism. On the James Barham thread, I reproduced a quote from Shapiro: “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess corresponding sensory, communication, information-processing, and decision-making capabilities.” If you take this in conjunction with the quote below, and in particular with the McClintock footnote. which he endorses so wholeheartedly, I really don't see how you can claim he is on your side:- The_Read_Write_genome_Physics_of_life_James_A_Shapiro_2013 	jeffreydachmd.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/The_Read_Write_geno… • PDF file-SHAPIRO: “As we begin the second decade of the 21st century, accumulating empirical evidence has thus shifted the perspective on genome variation to that of an active inscription process changing the information passed on to future generations.2 In other words, we now have to reconsider the genome as a “read-write” (RW) information storage system highly sensitive to biological inputs.”-Footnote 2: "Barbara McClintock most vividly expressed this view in her 1983 Nobel Prize lecture when she described her work analyzing the mutagenic effects of X-rays in maize: “The conclusion seems inescapable that cells are able to sense the presence in their nuclei of ruptured ends of chromosomes and then to activate a mechanism that will bring together and then unite these ends, one with another... The ability of a cell to sense these broken ends, to direct them toward each other, and then to unite them so that the union of the two DNA strands is correctly oriented, is a particularly revealing example of the sensitivity of cells to all that is going on within them... There must be numerous homeostatic adjustments required of cells. The sensing devices and the signals that initiate these adjustments are beyond our presentability to fathom. A goal for the future would be to determine the extent of knowledge the cell has of itself and how it utilizes this knowledge in a “thoughtful” manner when challenged... In the future, attention undoubtedly will be centered on the genome, with greater appreciation of its significance as a highly sensitive organ of the cell that monitors genomic activities and corrects common errors, senses unusual and unexpected events, and responds to them, often by restructuring the genome.”[7]. (My bold)
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Friday, November 20, 2015, 22:10 (3078 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:In other words, we now have to reconsider the genome as a “read-write” (RW) information storage system highly sensitive to biological inputs.” > > Footnote 2: "Barbara McClintock most vividly expressed this view in her 1983 Nobel Prize lecture when she described her work analyzing the mutagenic effects of X-rays in maize: “The conclusion seems inescapable that cells are able to sense the presence in their nuclei of ruptured ends of chromosomes and then to activate a mechanism that will bring together and then unite these ends, one with another... The ability of a cell to sense these broken ends, to direct them toward each other, and then to unite them so that the union of the two DNA strands is correctly oriented, is a particularly revealing example of the sensitivity of cells to all that is going on within them... There must be numerous homeostatic adjustments required of cells. The sensing devices and the signals that initiate these adjustments are beyond our presentability to fathom. A goal for the future would be to determine the extent of knowledge the cell has of itself and how it utilizes this knowledge in a “thoughtful” manner when challenged... In the future, attention undoubtedly will be centered on the genome, with greater appreciation of its significance as a highly sensitive organ of the cell that monitors genomic activities and corrects common errors, senses unusual and unexpected events, and responds to them, often by restructuring the genome.”[7]. (My bold)-What you present is all correct. It is the interpretation that is wrong. A computer does read/write automatically. So can the cell and does. This is why the ID folks adopted Shapiro, much to his discomfort.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
DAVID: Shapiro says that the bacteria's genome is a 'read/write code' mechanism. How do you interpret that?-SHAPIRO: “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess corresponding sensory, communication, information-processing, and decision-making capabilities.”-McClintock (enthusiastically endorsed by Shapiro): A goal for the future would be to determine the extent of knowledge the cell has of itself and how it utilizes this knowledge in a “thoughtful” manner when challenged... In the future, attention undoubtedly will be centered on the genome, with greater appreciation of its significance as a highly sensitive organ of the cell that monitors genomic activities and corrects common errors, senses unusual and unexpected events, and responds to them, often by restructuring the genome.”[7]. (My bold)-SHAPIRO: (on being asked why the idea of the intelligent cell is controversial): “Large organisms chauvinism.”-DAVID: What you present is all correct. It is the interpretation that is wrong. A computer does read/write automatically. So can the cell and does. This is why the ID folks adopted Shapiro, much to his discomfort.-Whose interpretation is wrong? If you are claiming that MY interpretation of his computer image is wrong, the above quotes prove that it is YOU who are wrong. Ah, wait! "So can the cell and does." Those are YOUR words, not Shapiro's. You are trying to tell me that it's Shapiro's interpretation of his own words that is wrong. There I was, thinking you thought you'd found something in Shapiro that contradicted his explicit statements about cellular intelligence, but all the time it was just you disagreeing with him yet again! So why on earth did you ask for my interpretation of his computer image in the first place?
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Saturday, November 21, 2015, 15:38 (3077 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: What you present is all correct. It is the interpretation that is wrong. A computer does read/write automatically. So can the cell and does. This is why the ID folks adopted Shapiro, much to his discomfort. > > dhw: There I was, thinking you thought you'd found something in Shapiro that contradicted his explicit statements about cellular intelligence, but all the time it was just you disagreeing with him yet again! So why on earth did you ask for my interpretation of his computer image in the first place?-I brought up the computer image because Shapiro is telling us that the genome acts like a computer. Computers work automatically. The inference is that the genome of each cell works automatically, and does.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
DAVID: What you present is all correct. It is the interpretation that is wrong. A computer does read/write automatically. So can the cell and does. This is why the ID folks adopted Shapiro, much to his discomfort.-dhw: There I was, thinking you thought you'd found something in Shapiro that contradicted his explicit statements about cellular intelligence, but all the time it was just you disagreeing with him yet again! So why on earth did you ask for my interpretation of his computer image in the first place?-DAVID: I brought up the computer image because Shapiro is telling us that the genome acts like a computer. Computers work automatically. The inference is that the genome of each cell works automatically, and does.-So Shapiro tells us explicitly and repeatedly that the cell is a sentient, cognitive, decision-making being, but because he uses an image taken from computerspeak, he really means that the cell is an automaton. Some people act like gods. That doesn't mean they are gods.
Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler
by David Turell , Sunday, November 22, 2015, 15:31 (3076 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I brought up the computer image because Shapiro is telling us that the genome acts like a computer. Computers work automatically. The inference is that the genome of each cell works automatically, and does. > > dhw:So Shapiro tells us explicitly and repeatedly that the cell is a sentient, cognitive, decision-making being, but because he uses an image taken from computerspeak, he really means that the cell is an automaton. Some people act like gods. That doesn't mean they are gods.-We go round and round. Let's stop here.
Different in degree or kind: Moe plasticity
by David Turell , Wednesday, November 25, 2015, 15:47 (3073 days ago) @ David Turell
Our brains do a lots more plasticity changes from birth than chimps. Their brains are more fixed in place:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-our-brains-special/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20151124-"Plasticity may be what underlies the specific differences in our brain that lead to our unique cognitive abilities. A study published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that human brains may be less genetically inheritable, and therefore more plastic, than those of chimpanzees, our closest ancestors.-"Aida Gómez-Robles, an anthropologist at The George Washington University, and her colleagues compared the effect of genes on brain size and organization in 218 human and 206 chimpanzee brains. They found that although brain size was highly heritable in both species, the organization of the cerebral cortex—especially in areas involved in higher-order cognition functions—was much less genetically controlled in humans than in chimps. One potential explanation for this difference, according to the researchers, is that because our brains are less developed than those of our primate cousins at birth, it creates a longer period during which we can be molded by our surroundings."-Comment: As I have been saying, our brains are built to cooperate with us as we develop from infancy. Baby brains are small having to travel a narrow birth canal. They are 1/4 of the body size at birth and become 1/8 body size as an adult.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Thursday, December 24, 2015, 01:54 (3045 days ago) @ David Turell
This article agrees that humans are a different kind, but presents a very interesting review of animal minds:-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/furry_feathery101801.html-"How then does the male weaverbird know how to build a nest? That's apparently not simply a genetic program either; the birds must learn some of the techniques by experience.-"Genetics, neural networks, and experience all make animal learning much more complex and information-rich than the concept of "instinct" implied. But we are not yet in the realm of "intelligence." The migrating and nest-building birds access existing solutions to longstanding problems; they do not come up with new ones. -Comment: A long article worth reviewing. I agree with her thoughts about weaver birds in current times. My issue is with the original nest plans for development. Note the bold. The weavers don't present anything new. It is all a fixed process.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
DAVID: This article agrees that humans are a different kind, but presents a very interesting review of animal minds:http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/furry_feathery101801.html QUOTE: "How then does the male weaverbird know how to build a nest? That's apparently not simply a genetic program either; the birds must learn some of the techniques by experience. "Genetics, neural networks, and experience all make animal learning much more complex and information-rich than the concept of "instinct" implied. But we are not yet in the realm of "intelligence." The migrating and nest-building birds access existing solutions to longstanding problems; they do not come up with new ones.-It is hardly surprising that the birds learn by experience, but it's nice to hear that your God didn't actually preprogramme the first living cells with the complete nest. We are not yet in the realm of “intelligence” depends on how you define intelligence. Birds do not need to come up with new solutions if they already have solutions that work. And finally, how the heck do they think the birds came up with these “existing solutions” in the first place? Here are some more quotes:-QUOTE: “Both birds and mammals can learn to solve new problems presented to them. Let's look at some recent finds in mammals first, bearing in mind that we have only really begun to look at their intelligence seriously. It is early days yet, so some sketchiness is inevitable.”-If they can solve new problems, maybe they solved old problems as well, and passed on the solutions. It's about time people started taking animal intelligence seriously. And it's about time evolutionists started to recognize that vast areas of animal intelligence are not anthropomorphic projections, but are traits inherited from our animal ancestors. QUOTE: “Alex the parrot (1976-2007), possibly the most famous "intelligent bird" personality, could use human language to communicate needs. However, he had only typical parrot needs. Alex was not achieving more human-like intelligence--as his researcher and patron Irene Pepperberg acknowledged:”-A dazzling discovery: parrots think like parrots, and their intelligence is different from ours. I suggest that applies to all organisms, and following the likes of Shapiro & Co, I would suggest that bacterial intelligence is also different from ours.-QUOTE: “So we come to a culturally unexpected conclusion: Bird intelligence is a respectable competitor on a continuum with primate intelligence. But, like theirs, it is on a different track from that of humans.”-All intelligence must be on a continuum if we believe in common descent. If they mean “on a par”, I can't say I'm surprised, but I would have been shatteringly surprised if they had found that animal/bird/insect/bacterial intelligence was on the same track as that of humans. Furthermore, animal/cellular intelligence should not be measured against human intelligence. Every organism will use its intelligence for its own particular purposes. QUOTE: “So there are rough general trends in intelligence, as in evolution, but they appear to be patterns, not laws.” “Do the patterns relate in some way to anatomy? Can we say, for example, that intelligence requires a multicellular life form that has a spinal column and a brain? What can the vast world of invertebrates tell us about that?”-Those are important questions, and I look forward to the answers. My guess, of course, is that the researchers will discover that intelligence does not depend on a spinal column and brain.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Thursday, December 24, 2015, 20:48 (3044 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: It is hardly surprising that the birds learn by experience, but it's nice to hear that your God didn't actually preprogramme the first living cells with the complete nest.-You neatly sidestepped my comment
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: It is hardly surprising that the birds learn by experience, but it's nice to hear that your God didn't actually preprogramme the first living cells with the complete nest. DAVID: You neatly sidestepped my comment: DAVID'S COMMENT: A long article worth reviewing. I agree with her thoughts about weaver birds in current times. My issue is with the original nest plans for development. Note the bold. The weavers don't present anything new. It is all a fixed process.The article gives no hint as to how the first nest was arranged for, God-given or by trial and error. I don't see trial and error, which is your approach.-I wrote: "Birds do not need to come up with new solutions if they already have solutions that work. And finally, how the heck do they think the birds came up with these “existing solutions” in the first place?" I thought this had covered your comment. You see the finished product, so why would you also have seen trial and error? (You're not that old, David!) Once the nest existed, there may have been modifications, but all initial ”problems” required solutions by the original builders. You say God implanted the first living cells with instructions (or gave the birds private tuition), because the nest was essential for the production or feeding of humans. I suggest the birds already had the intelligence (possibly God-given) to work it out for themselves. dhw: I would have been shatteringly surprised if they had found that animal/bird/ insect/bacterial intelligence was on the same track as that of humans. DAVID: Wow! You've just said humans are different in kind! -I have said all along that you should stop equating animal/bird/insect/bacterial intelligence with human intelligence. I would not expect a parrot to think like a human or a tiger or an ant or a bacterium. In that sense, they are ALL “different in kind”, which might be a definition of phyla. But they all use similar methods to achieve similar ends: e.g. perception, processing information, communication, decision-making - the purposes being to survive, to reproduce, to make optimum use of the environment, to improve.... However, you use the expression “different in kind” to buttress your argument that humans were God's purpose all along, in which case ALL extant phyla and their wonders and lifestyles must have been God's purpose all along, since they are all different in kind, all were unnecessary (as bacteria have survived), and all are here now. -dhw: Those are important questions, and I look forward to the answers. My guess, of course, is that the researchers will discover that intelligence does not depend on a spinal column and brain. DAVID: All organisms need is intelligently prepared instructions which is placed in their genomes for interpretation.-I would say all organisms need is information both internal and external, plus the intelligence with which to interpret and use it.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, December 29, 2015, 00:15 (3040 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I thought this had covered your comment. You see the finished product, so why would you also have seen trial and error? Once the nest existed, there may have been modifications, but all initial ”problems” required solutions by the original builders.-Again, you are denying the initial complexity of the nest. Generations of birds would have had dabbled with design to get the knots just right. That is trial and error. Was that type of nest so important that they had to keep pursuing it? . No bird brain could have planned it from the beginning.-> dhw: I would have been shatteringly surprised if they had found that animal/bird/ insect/bacterial intelligence was on the same track as that of humans. > DAVID: Wow! You've just said humans are different in kind! > > dhw: I have said all along that you should stop equating animal/bird/insect/bacterial intelligence with human intelligence. I would not expect a parrot to think like a human or a tiger or an ant or a bacterium. In that sense, they are ALL “different in kind”, which might be a definition of phyla. But they all use similar methods to achieve similar ends: e.g. perception, processing information, communication, decision-making - the purposes being to survive, to reproduce, to make optimum use of the environment, to improve.... -Yes they do, to a much lesser degree. Our consciousness is so far superior and different in kind, n o degree. > > dhw: I would say all organisms need is information both internal and external, plus the intelligence with which to interpret and use it.-Exactly correct.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: I thought this had covered your comment. You see the finished product, so why would you also have seen trial and error? Once the nest existed, there may have been modifications, but all initial ”problems” required solutions by the original builders. DAVID: Again, you are denying the initial complexity of the nest. Generations of birds would have had dabbled with design to get the knots just right. That is trial and error. Was that type of nest so important that they had to keep pursuing it? No bird brain could have planned it from the beginning.-I have no idea how much trial and error was involved (nor do you), but I don't see a problem with the idea of the original perfectly habitable nest being improved on by later generations without prior planning from the beginning. Was that type of nest so important for the production of humans that your God had to preprogramme it in the first living cells, or had to give weaverbirds private tuition?-dhw: I would have been shatteringly surprised if they had found that animal/bird/ insect/bacterial intelligence was on the same track as that of humans. DAVID: Wow! You've just said humans are different in kind! -dhw: I have said all along that you should stop equating animal/bird/insect/bacterial intelligence with human intelligence. I would not expect a parrot to think like a human or a tiger or an ant or a bacterium. In that sense, they are ALL “different in kind”, which might be a definition of phyla. But they all use similar methods to achieve similar ends: e.g. perception, processing information, communication, decision-making - the purposes being to survive, to reproduce, to make optimum use of the environment, to improve.... DAVID: Yes they do, to a much lesser degree. Our consciousness is so far superior and different in kind, not degree.-Yes indeed, our intelligence has enabled us to expand our use of the environment to a far greater degree, and I agree that our consciousness is superior in the sense that we appear to have a far greater degree of awareness than that of our fellow animals. But all phyla are different in kind, and use their species intelligence to pursue their species ends. -DAVID: All organisms need is intelligently prepared instructions which is placed in their genomes for interpretation. dhw: I would say all organisms need is information both internal and external, plus the intelligence with which to interpret and use it. DAVID: Exactly correct.-I have replaced your “intelligently prepared instructions”, which clearly entails a fixed programme planted (presumably by your God) in every organism, with “information both internal and external”, which removes the prescriptive element from the process. I'm glad you approve of the change.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, December 29, 2015, 23:48 (3039 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: I have no idea how much trial and error was involved (nor do you), but I don't see a problem with the idea of the original perfectly habitable nest being improved on by later generations without prior planning from the beginning. -Your proposed story of the nest must assume a simple nest at the beginning, and then for some reason the Weaver family decided they must have a complex-knotted mansion and instructed countless subsequent generations to gradually improve the initial nest plans. Not at all reasonable to me. Did the birds have to do that? I've not seen that the complex nest has any advantages over the average nest.-> > dhw: Yes indeed, our intelligence has enabled us to expand our use of the environment to a far greater degree, and I agree that our consciousness is superior .... But all phyla are different in kind, and use their species intelligence to pursue their species ends. -You are just hedging. Previous phyla are different in 'kind', but by minor degrees. We are different by such a major differences in consciousness and mental power, that we are a major leap for evolution. We don't fit the pattern of evolution of small changes in kind. We are a giant change.-> dhw: I would say all organisms need is information both internal and external, plus the intelligence with which to interpret and use it. > DAVID: Exactly correct. > > dhw: I have replaced your “intelligently prepared instructions”, which clearly entails a fixed programme planted (presumably by your God) in every organism, with “information both internal and external”, which removes the prescriptive element from the process. I'm glad you approve of the change.-I'm afraid I interpreted your statement differently. Intelligent interpretation can be implanted for the organisms to use, and that can act as the intelligence you love.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: I have no idea how much trial and error was involved (nor do you), but I don't see a problem with the idea of the original perfectly habitable nest being improved on by later generations without prior planning from the beginning. DAVID: Your proposed story of the nest must assume a simple nest at the beginning, and then for some reason the Weaver family decided they must have a complex-knotted mansion and instructed countless subsequent generations to gradually improve the initial nest plans. Not at all reasonable to me. Did the birds have to do that[/i[i]]? I've not seen that the complex nest has any advantages over the average nest.-We have no idea what the original nest was like, but why on earth would one generation have to pass on instructions for gradual improvements? You seem to think that only large organisms are individuals with varying degrees of intelligence. In my hypothesis, it is individual intelligences that come up with new ideas and pass them on, and “geniuses” are not confined to a single generation. Did the birds have to do that? No, they chose to do it, for whatever reasons. I asked whether God had to do it in order to produce humans, but you have not responded.-dhw: Yes indeed, our intelligence has enabled us to expand our use of the environment to a far greater degree, and I agree that our consciousness is superior .... But all phyla are different in kind, and use their species intelligence to pursue their species ends. DAVID: You are just hedging. Previous phyla are different in 'kind', but by minor degrees. We are different by such a major differences in consciousness and mental power, that we are a major leap for evolution. We don't fit the pattern of evolution of small changes in kind. We are a giant change.-Maybe I've misused the word ”phyla”. I would not say the differences between elephants, eagles, haddock and ants are minor. I see giant changes from bacteria to all of them, and one such giant change is the colossal gap between our (current) mental powers and those of our fellow creatures. (I don't know about the earliest hominins.)But regardless of degree versus kind, what I cannot accept is that every other form of life throughout the history of evolution existed or exists for the benefit of humans. The higgledy-piggledy bush of varieties, extinctions and survivals seems to me to favour a free for all, though if there is a God, he could always do a dabble. dhw: I would say all organisms need is information both internal and external, plus the intelligence with which to interpret and use it. DAVID: Exactly correct. dhw: I have replaced your “intelligently prepared instructions”, which clearly entails a fixed programme planted (presumably by your God) in every organism, with “information both internal and external”, which removes the prescriptive element from the process. I'm glad you approve of the change.-DAVID: I'm afraid I interpreted your statement differently. Intelligent interpretation can be implanted for the organisms to use, and that can act as the intelligence you love.-A rather strange interpretation of my "exactly correct" statement. It's the first time I've seen intelligence defined as implanted intelligent interpretation, but if that is what you understand by intelligence, clearly your God has preprogrammed you to respond in this way. I'll stick to my own idea of what the word means.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 30, 2015, 22:38 (3038 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Did the birds have to do that? No, they chose to do it, for whatever reasons. I asked whether God had to do it in order to produce humans, but you have not responded.-I've seen all sorts of animals making choices of action, but choices of planning, I doubt it. As for God's intentions, I've answered that over and over. I really don't know how the nest relates to human arrival. It may have nothing to do with it at all. You seem to require God to plan every little detail of everything. Did He is a good question. You've seen my reasoning as to why He planned for humans.-> > dhw:I see giant changes from bacteria to all of them, and one such giant change is the colossal gap between our (current) mental powers and those of our fellow creatures. (I don't know about the earliest hominins.)But regardless of degree versus kind, what I cannot accept is that every other form of life throughout the history of evolution existed or exists for the benefit of humans.-I don't know that everything exists for humans. You have extrapolated to that postulate question. All I contend is that humans were the goal and that diversity of animals and plants was required for the balance of nature for everyone..-> dhw: The higgledy-piggledy bush of varieties, extinctions and survivals seems to me to favour a free for all, though if there is a God, he could always do a dabble.-A weird bush, yes, but my answer above accepts that reality, i.e., so what! Must every detail be logical, with everything tied up in a neat package of explanations?
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: Did the birds have to do that? No, they chose to do it, for whatever reasons. I asked whether God had to do it in order to produce humans, but you have not responded. DAVID: I've seen all sorts of animals making choices of action, but choices of planning, I doubt it. -I don't know why you insist on ”planning”. Adaptation is not planned. Why can't improvements take place without prior planning? An organism can have an idea and if it works, it is retained. You seem to exclude trial and success from your evolutionary thinking.-DAVID: As for God's intentions, I've answered that over and over. I really don't know how the nest relates to human arrival. It may have nothing to do with it at all. You seem to require God to plan every little detail of everything. Did He is a good question. You've seen my reasoning as to why He planned for humans.-This is precisely the reason why I have constantly nagged you over the weaverbird's nest. See below.-dhw: I see giant changes from bacteria to all of them, and one such giant change is the colossal gap between our (current) mental powers and those of our fellow creatures. (I don't know about the earliest hominins.)But regardless of degree versus kind, what I cannot accept is that every other form of life throughout the history of evolution existed or exists for the benefit of humans.-DAVID: I don't know that everything exists for humans. You have extrapolated to that postulate question. All I contend is that humans were the goal and that diversity of animals and plants was required for the balance of nature for everyone. -This is what I find so confusing. If God personally designed the weaverbird's nest, it is clearly absurd to say that humans were “THE goal”, unless you think God personally designed all of nature's wonders in his sleep, or they were all geared to THE goal. The balance of nature “for everyone” is also clearly absurd, because 99% of species have disappeared, so the balance of nature didn't work for “everyone”, did it? If humans were “THE goal”, you might say the 99% were not necessary for humans, in which case why design them in the first place? The weaverbird's nest presumably is necessary, but you don't know why. And here comes the crunch: You say to me: “You seem to require God to plan every little detail of everything.” It's not me, it's you who insist that God planned every little detail, like the weaverbird's nest! My proposal is that God, if he exists, did NOT plan every little detail of everything. He left it to the organisms to do their own thing. (If he does not exist, they did their own thing anyway.) As far as humans are concerned, the above scenario (a free for all) would not prevent your God from dabbling in order to get to humans, but it removes the claim that humans were “THE goal”.-dhw: The higgledy-piggledy bush of varieties, extinctions and survivals seems to me to favour a free for all, though if there is a God, he could always do a dabble. DAVID: A weird bush, yes, but my answer above accepts that reality, i.e., so what! Must every detail be logical, with everything tied up in a neat package of explanations?-It is you who want a neat package, because you are so resolutely opposed to the concept of organisms having the ability to do their own thing. Your God “coded DNA for all of evolution from the beginning of life” and humans were ”THE goal” (my bold). I am proposing the exact opposite of your neat package: that from the beginning of life, organisms had the ability (possibly God-given) to work out their own evolution. They were not predetermined to pursue any goal other than their own survival and possible improvement, and this explains why evolution is NOT a neat package preprogrammed from the beginning, but a higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings and constant shifts in the balance of nature.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Thursday, December 31, 2015, 20:10 (3037 days ago) @ dhw
> I don't know why you insist on ”planning”. Adaptation is not planned. Why can't improvements take place without prior planning? An organism can have an idea and if it works, it is retained. You seem to exclude trial and success from your evolutionary thinking.-How do minimally conscious organisms like a weaver bird have an idea and try it out? Do we see animals doing that now? All bird nests are static and the same for each species as far as we know.-> > dhw: This is what I find so confusing. If God personally designed the weaverbird's nest, it is clearly absurd to say that humans were “THE goal”, unless you think God personally designed all of nature's wonders in his sleep, or they were all geared to THE goal. The balance of nature “for everyone” is also clearly absurd, because 99% of species have disappeared, so the balance of nature didn't work for “everyone”, did it? -More than likely God guided the weaver. As for the balance, as organisms disappear, the balance always adjusts and is present.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: I don't know why you insist on ”planning”. Adaptation is not planned. Why can't improvements take place without prior planning? An organism can have an idea and if it works, it is retained. You seem to exclude trial and success from your evolutionary thinking. DAVID: How do minimally conscious organisms like a weaver bird have an idea and try it out? Do we see animals doing that now? All bird nests are static and the same for each species as far as we know.-We see it all the time, in the way animals, birds, insects solve problems, adjust to new environments, work out strategies. Every time they do this (and you have offered us hundreds of examples down through the years), you are forced to comment on the ingenuity of your God's thinking, because you don't believe these organisms have the intelligence to work things out for themselves. That is why you keep tying yourself in knots trying to reconcile God's special designs for birds and spiders and wasps and jellyfish with the higgledy-piggledy bush and your anthropocentric vision of evolution. -dhw: This is what I find so confusing. If God personally designed the weaverbird's nest, it is clearly absurd to say that humans were “THE goal”, unless you think God personally designed all of nature's wonders in his sleep, or they were all geared to THE goal. The balance of nature “for everyone” is also clearly absurd, because 99% of species have disappeared, so the balance of nature didn't work for “everyone”, did it? DAVID: More than likely God guided the weaver. As for the balance, as organisms disappear, the balance always adjusts and is present.-“Guided” can only involve specific implanted instructions or personal tuition, which makes the weaverbird as worthy of your God's attentions as us humans. Unless...as above. Each extinction runs counter to your idea that the balance of nature is “for everyone”. It‘s obviously not for the organisms that go extinct. So who is the “everyone” that the ever changing balance is “for”? If you say it's for humans, I shall have to ask you again how the weaverbird's nest balances nature for our sake, and when you then complain that I want a detailed explanation for everything, I shall have to point out that I am simply challenging your own explanation for the complexities of the nest, in the context of your explanation for the whole of evolution.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Friday, January 01, 2016, 22:50 (3036 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: We see it all the time, in the way animals, birds, insects solve problems, adjust to new environments, work out strategies. Every time they do this (and you have offered us hundreds of examples down through the years), you are forced to comment on the ingenuity of your God's thinking, because you don't believe these organisms have the intelligence to work things out for themselves. -I have not reported major animal adjustments as you state. As an example, the Reznick guppies changed size, but the species stayed the same. These are epigenetic adaptations, nothing more. You are overstating problem solving. Clever corvids use tools, but are still crows. So do chimps, and they remain chimps. These animals have a minor degree of consciousness for these events to happen.-> dhw: That is why you keep tying yourself in knots trying to reconcile God's special designs for birds and spiders and wasps and jellyfish with the higgledy-piggledy bush and your anthropocentric vision of evolution.-I am not in knots, as the authors of "Nature's IQ" point out. > > dhw: “Guided” can only involve specific implanted instructions or personal tuition, which makes the weaverbird as worthy of your God's attentions as us humans. Unless...as above. Each extinction runs counter to your idea that the balance of nature is “for everyone”. It‘s obviously not for the organisms that go extinct.-When the dinosaurs were wiped out, the balance of nature kept going and, mirabile dictu, little mammals, who had been hanging around developed into all the mammals we have today, including us. Nature's balance shifted but stayed balanced. Only humans have tend to unbalance it by interfering with its automatic adjustments.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
DAVID: How do minimally conscious organisms like a weaver bird have an idea and try it out? Do we see animals doing that now? All bird nests are static and the same for each species as far as we know. dhw: We see it all the time, in the way animals, birds, insects solve problems, adjust to new environments, work out strategies. Every time they do this (and you have offered us hundreds of examples down through the years), you are forced to comment on the ingenuity of your God's thinking, because you don't believe these organisms have the intelligence to work things out for themselves. David: I have not reported major animal adjustments as you state.-No, because nobody has yet found a satisfactory explanation for the major innovations that have driven evolution. That is why I have suggested autonomous intelligence as an alternative hypothesis (not an assumption, not a fact, not even a belief) to your divine 3.8-billion-year computer programme and/or dabbling, and have pointed out that the natural wonders and adaptations you have reported offer us evidence that organisms are capable of autonomous thought. DAVID: As an example, the Reznick guppies changed size, but the species stayed the same. These are epigenetic adaptations, nothing more. You are overstating problem solving. Clever corvids use tools, but are still crows. So do chimps, and they remain chimps. These animals have a minor degree of consciousness for these events to happen.-Same again. We do not know how innovations and hence speciation took place. Nor can we say with any certainty that the “minor degree of consciousness” is incapable of creating the first weaverbird nest and then improving it until it reaches its final form. Ditto all other innovations throughout the history of evolution. If we had observable proof, it would be a fact not a hypothesis. dhw: That is why you keep tying yourself in knots trying to reconcile God's special designs for birds and spiders and wasps and jellyfish with the higgledy-piggledy bush and your anthropocentric vision of evolution. DAVID: I am not in knots, as the authors of "Nature's IQ" point out. -I am pleased to hear that you have some support for your hypothesis that your God “coded DNA for all of evolution from the beginning of life” and humans were “the goal”. Do the authors also explain why the weaverbird's nest was so important to God?-dhw: “Guided” can only involve specific implanted instructions or personal tuition, which makes the weaverbird as worthy of your God's attentions as us humans. Unless...as above. Each extinction runs counter to your idea that the balance of nature is “for everyone”. It‘s obviously not for the organisms that go extinct. DAVID: When the dinosaurs were wiped out, the balance of nature kept going and, mirabile dictu, little mammals, who had been hanging around developed into all the mammals we have today, including us. Nature's balance shifted but stayed balanced. Only humans have tend to unbalance it by interfering with its automatic adjustments.-When the dinosaurs died out, other organisms flourished. If the human race dies out, other organisms will flourish. All you are saying is that life on Earth goes on. Whatever survives, survives. Until eventually life on Earth will cease, so what is this "balance for everyone"?
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Saturday, January 02, 2016, 18:54 (3035 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: No, because nobody has yet found a satisfactory explanation for the major innovations that have driven evolution. That is why I have suggested autonomous intelligence as an alternative hypothesis .... and have pointed out that the natural wonders and adaptations you have reported offer us evidence that organisms are capable of autonomous thought.-I've pointed out that it is most likely automatic reactions, not primitive animals thoughts. > > dhw: That is why you keep tying yourself in knots trying to reconcile God's special designs for birds and spiders and wasps and jellyfish with the higgledy-piggledy bush and your anthropocentric vision of evolution. > DAVID: I am not in knots, as the authors of "Nature's IQ" point out. > > I am pleased to hear that you have some support for your hypothesis that your God “coded DNA for all of evolution from the beginning of life” and humans were “the goal”. Do the authors also explain why the weaverbird's nest was so important to God?-No, they just say, as I do, God must have helped. The weaver nest is one of their prime examples. And they offer hundreds of examples, and they are not concerned about the importance to God. You want a logical God, but He may not fit your requirements. Is the universe logical, if we assume its enormous expanse is just for life on Earth? If we are the only life, then God exists, is the viewpoint I follow. > > dhw: When the dinosaurs died out, other organisms flourished. If the human race dies out, other organisms will flourish. All you are saying is that life on Earth goes on. Whatever survives, survives. Until eventually life on Earth will cease, so what is this "balance for everyone"?-You have just agreed with me and then questioned the concept! Life goes on because it is balanced in nature. It is the consumable energy requirement plant or animal you keep ignoring.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
Dhw: I am pleased to hear that you have some support for your hypothesis that your God “coded DNA for all of evolution from the beginning of life” and humans were “the goal”. Do the authors also explain why the weaverbird's nest was so important to God? DAVID: No, they just say, as I do, God must have helped. The weaver nest is one of their prime examples. And they offer hundreds of examples, and they are not concerned about the importance to God. You want a logical God, but He may not fit your requirements. Is the universe logical, if we assume its enormous expanse is just for life on Earth?-No, it is not logical. That is another very good reason for doubting your assumption that the universe was specially created for our sake. I do not “want” a logical God. I want a logical explanation for life and evolution, whether it entails a God or no God. Your logic in putting the theistic case for design against atheistic chance has always seemed to me impeccable. However, when it comes to reading your God's mind in relation to the history of the universe and evolution, suddenly logic doesn't matter.-DAVID: If we are the only life, then God exists, is the viewpoint I follow.-Strangely enough, my theistic self could easily accommodate extraterrestrial life within the picture. Why would God confine his experiments to a single planet? -dhw: When the dinosaurs died out, other organisms flourished. If the human race dies out, other organisms will flourish. All you are saying is that life on Earth goes on. Whatever survives, survives. Until eventually life on Earth will cease, so what is this "balance for everyone"? DAVID: You have just agreed with me and then questioned the concept! Life goes on because it is balanced in nature. It is the consumable energy requirement plant or animal you keep ignoring.-The balance will continue to change and life will go on until it stops. The balance was/is not “for everyone” if 99% of species disappeared, and although I appreciate your attempt to use logic in explaining your anthropocentric evolutionary hypothesis, I still don't understand how the specially, divinely designed weaverbird's nest (plus the parasitic wasp and jellyfish and the ”hundreds of other examples”) provides “consumable energy requirement plant or animal” for humans. However, you have agreed that this whole higgledy-piggledy history could logically be explained by your God having engineered a free-for-all and hit on the idea of humans later on, or having wanted humans right from the start and just messing things up until he finally hit the jackpot. The trouble is, we must only use logic if we are discussing the odds for and against chance, or if it coincides with ID and anthropocentrism!
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Sunday, January 03, 2016, 15:43 (3034 days ago) @ dhw
David You want a logical God, but He may not fit your requirements. Is the universe logical, if we assume its enormous expanse is just for life on Earth?[/i] > > dhw: No, it is not logical. That is another very good reason for doubting your assumption that the universe was specially created for our sake. I do not “want” a logical God. I want a logical explanation for life and evolution, whether it entails a God or no God.-But you are asking for human logic. Must that be the same as God's logic?-> dhw: Your logic in putting the theistic case for design against atheistic chance has always seemed to me impeccable. However, when it comes to reading your God's mind in relation to the history of the universe and evolution, suddenly logic doesn't matter.-I start with what we see and work backwards. There is no other way to approach an understanding of the history. Humans are here, but obviously not required. They are obviously a special advance in complexity (different in kind, not degree). > > DAVID: If we are the only life, then God exists, is the viewpoint I follow. > > dhw: Strangely enough, my theistic self could easily accommodate extraterrestrial life within the picture. Why would God confine his experiments to a single planet? -Why not?-> dhw: I still don't understand how the specially, divinely designed weaverbird's nest (plus the parasitic wasp and jellyfish and the ”hundreds of other examples”) provides “consumable energy requirement plant or animal” for humans.-I admit I don't know either, but my method of analysis, described above, doesn't require it.-> dhw: However, you have agreed that this whole higgledy-piggledy history could logically be explained by your God having engineered a free-for-all and hit on the idea of humans later on, or having wanted humans right from the start and just messing things up until he finally hit the jackpot.-I've agreed this theory is possible, not probable, since we have no way of knowing, looking back at what resulted-> dhw: The trouble is, we must only use logic if we are discussing the odds for and against chance, or if it coincides with ID and anthropocentrism!-Again, whose logic? Is God's logic the same as ours? My logical view is certainly not yours.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
David: You want a logical God, but He may not fit your requirements. Is the universe logical, if we assume its enormous expanse is just for life on Earth? dhw: No, it is not logical. That is another very good reason for doubting your assumption that the universe was specially created for our sake. I do not “want” a logical God. I want a logical explanation for life and evolution, whether it entails a God or no God. DAVID: But you are asking for human logic. Must that be the same as God's logic? So your arguments don't make logical sense to you, but you reckon your God thinks as you do. dhw: Your logic in putting the theistic case for design against atheistic chance has always seemed to me impeccable. However, when it comes to reading your God's mind in relation to the history of the universe and evolution, suddenly logic doesn't matter. DAVID: I start with what we see and work backwards. There is no other way to approach an understanding of the history. Humans are here, but obviously not required. They are obviously a special advance in complexity (different in kind, not degree).-The duckbilled platypus is here but obviously not required. All organisms subsequent to bacteria are obviously a special advance in complexity, as indeed is the weaverbird's nest (why else, according to you, would God need to design it himself?), and by definition all species are different in kind. -DAVID: If we are the only life, then God exists, is the viewpoint I follow. dhw: Strangely enough, my theistic self could easily accommodate extraterrestrial life within the picture. Why would God confine his experiments to a single planet? DAVID: Why not?-You have missed the point. If we are not the only life, that does not mean God does not exist. He could easily have experimented elsewhere.-dhw: I still don't understand how the specially, divinely designed weaverbird's nest (plus the parasitic wasp and jellyfish and the ”hundreds of other examples”) provides “consumable energy requirement plant or animal” for humans. DAVID: I admit I don't know either, but my method of analysis, described above, doesn't require it.-Perhaps the reason why you don't know is that it doesn't make sense and so there has to be another explanation. -dhw: However, you have agreed that this whole higgledy-piggledy history could logically be explained by your God having engineered a free-for-all and hit on the idea of humans later on, or having wanted humans right from the start and just messing things up until he finally hit the jackpot. DAVID: I've agreed this theory is possible, not probable, since we have no way of knowing, looking back at what resulted.-As a mere human being, may I suggest it is more logical than the suggestion that the weaverbird's nest is essential for the production and feeding of humans though you haven't a clue why. dhw: The trouble is, we must only use logic if we are discussing the odds for and against chance, or if it coincides with ID and anthropocentrism! DAVID: Again, whose logic? Is God's logic the same as ours? My logical view is certainly not yours.-You have admitted that your ”logical view” concerning the weaverbird's nest is not logical (how can it be if you can't fit it into your hypothesis?) but you don't care. And indeed why should you? Human logic and science have so far failed to solve all the mysteries we have been discussing, and so you must either join me on the fence or, like the materialist atheist, dispense with logic and commit yourself to faith until the answers are known - which may never happen.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 05, 2016, 01:15 (3033 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: So your arguments don't make logical sense to you, but you reckon your God thinks as you do.-That is not what I said. My arguments are logical to me, but you keep probing God's logic and I don't think we humans can.-> > dhw: The duckbilled platypus is here but obviously not required.-And why isn't it? I've seen a wild one in Australia. They are cute and part of the balance of nature.-> dhw: and by definition all species are different in kind. -I thought you believed in evolution. Adler considered all animals different by degree due to evolution, except humans who are different in kind. > > dhw: You have missed the point. If we are not the only life, that does not mean God does not exist. He could easily have experimented elsewhere.-I can accept that point, but if we are the only life, it is more likely that God exists. > > dhw: I still don't understand how the specially, divinely designed weaverbird's nest (plus the parasitic wasp and jellyfish and the ”hundreds of other examples”) provides “consumable energy requirement plant or animal” for humans. > DAVID: I admit I don't know either, but my method of analysis, described above, doesn't require it. > > dhw: Perhaps the reason why you don't know is that it doesn't make sense and so there has to be another explanation.-I can't give an exact reason for each odd lifestyle, but still go back to a necessary balance of nature. > > dhw: As a mere human being, may I suggest it is more logical than the suggestion that the weaverbird's nest is essential for the production and feeding of humans though you haven't a clue why.-As a mere human, let me note that weavers alone are never essential for us to exist. the whole wild bush is as a balance of nature. If you don't believe in a balance, as I've suggested before, ask the Australians how they messed up their continent with foreign animals being brought in. > > dhw:You have admitted that your ”logical view” concerning the weaverbird's nest is not logical (how can it be if you can't fit it into your hypothesis?)-Back to balance of nature.-> dhw: Human logic and science have so far failed to solve all the mysteries we have been discussing, and so you must either join me on the fence or, like the materialist atheist, dispense with logic and commit yourself to faith until the answers are known - which may never happen.-It will come with scientific discovery. when we finally recognize how complex life is, then the chance appearance will not be an option for consideration. You and I may not live that long.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: So your arguments don't make logical sense to you, but you reckon your God thinks as you do. DAVID: That is not what I said. My arguments are logical to me, but you keep probing God's logic and I don't think we humans can.-You admitted that you didn't know how the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp, the parasitic jellyfish and the hundreds of other examples provide “consumable energy requirement plant” for humans. How, then, can your anthropocentric concept of evolution seem logical to you? I am not probing God's logic. I am probing yours. -dhw: The duckbilled platypus is here but obviously not required. DAVID: And why isn't it? I've seen a wild one in Australia. They are cute and part of the balance of nature.-You keep arguing that humans were not required, and must therefore be the purpose of evolution. I keep pointing out that NOTHING beyond bacteria was “required”, since they have survived from the year dot. You might as well say that many humans are also cute and part of the balance of nature, and therefore they were also “required”. It's a non-argument. A much more convincing theistic argument in my view would be that with their unique levels of consciousness, humans alone appear capable of communing with God, and so they have a special place in his universe. However, this still won't explain how the weaverbird's nest feeds humans, so a free-for-all, perhaps with divine dabbling, still seems to me a far more logical explanation.-dhw: ...and by definition all species are different in kind. DAVID: I thought you believed in evolution. Adler considered all animals different by degree due to evolution, except humans who are different in kind.-Yes I believe in evolution. I believe that animals (including humans), birds, insects, fish etc. are “different in kind”, although they all descended from Darwin's few forms or one. I also believe that even allowing for our vastly superior intelligence, evolution has produced a far greater degree of “difference in kind” between elephants, sparrows, ants, gudgeon and my beloved duckbilled platypus than that between humans and chimpanzees. But if you and Adler think otherwise, you are entitled to your opinion.-dhw: You have missed the point. If we are not the only life, that does not mean God does not exist. He could easily have experimented elsewhere. DAVID: I can accept that point, but if we are the only life, it is more likely that God exists.-You wrote: “If we are the only life, then God exists”...I am merely pointing out that if you believe in God, he will still exist for you even if we are not the only life.-dhw: As a mere human being, may I suggest it [free-for-all with possible dabbling] is more logical than the suggestion that the weaverbird's nest is essential for the production and feeding of humans though you haven't a clue why.-DAVID: As a mere human, let me note that weavers alone are never essential for us to exist. the whole wild bush is as a balance of nature. If you don't believe in a balance, as I've suggested before, ask the Australians how they messed up their continent with foreign animals being brought in.-As I keep saying, the balance of nature is constantly shifting. Before humans arrived, nature “messed up” the balance far more catastrophically than the Aussies. But you don't see those changes and mass extinctions as “messing up”.Those “messings up” of the balance were apparently all part of the “balance for everyone”, though everyone presumably didn't include the 99% of extinct species. dhw: Human logic and science have so far failed to solve all the mysteries we have been discussing, and so you must either join me on the fence or, like the materialist atheist, dispense with logic and commit yourself to faith until the answers are known - which may never happen. DAVID: It will come with scientific discovery. when we finally recognize how complex life is, then the chance appearance will not be an option for consideration. You and I may not live that long.-I would say that the complexity of life is already so apparent that belief in chance appearance requires a leap of faith just as great as that needed to believe in an eternal mind that encompasses the unfathomable vastness of the universe, which it created all for the sake of you, me, the weaverbird's nest and the duckbilled platypus.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 05, 2016, 18:31 (3032 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: You admitted that you didn't know how the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp, the parasitic jellyfish and the hundreds of other examples provide “consumable energy requirement plant” for humans. How, then, can your anthropocentric concept of evolution seem logical to you? -Because you may not have recognized the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to human consumption of foods. Remember Malthus and is worries? Inventiveness keeps the world's population fed. > > dhw:You keep arguing that humans were not required, and must therefore be the purpose of evolution. I keep pointing out that NOTHING beyond bacteria was “required”, since they have survived from the year dot.-But, since you are using my original arguments, remember something had to drive evolution to complexity. Each illogical step up the complexity ladder drives that conclusion. What is more complex than the consciousness of humans. And I don't see further complexity beyond that. Humans are the endpoint.-> dhw: A much more convincing theistic argument in my view would be that with their unique levels of consciousness, humans alone appear capable of communing with God, and so they have a special place in his universe. However, this still won't explain how the weaverbird's nest feeds humans, so a free-for-all, perhaps with divine dabbling, still seems to me a far more logical explanation.-Your theistic thought fits my point above. And I've explained the weaver over and over. You seem to gloss over nature's balance as vital to the process. > > dhw: Yes I believe in evolution. -By what reasonable mechanism?-> DAVID: I can accept that point, but if we are the only life, it is more likely that God exists. > > dhw: You wrote: “If we are the only life, then God exists”...I am merely pointing out that if you believe in God, he will still exist for you even if we are not the only life.-But with a very special planet, as the only life it strongly appears human life was planned for and protected.- > dhw: As I keep saying, the balance of nature is constantly shifting. Before humans arrived, nature “messed up” the balance far more catastrophically than the Aussies. But you don't see those changes and mass extinctions as “messing up”.Those “messings up” of the balance were apparently all part of the “balance for everyone”, though everyone presumably didn't include the 99% of extinct species.-Your statement is exactly on point. If evolution is a progress in complexity, then 99% were less complex, served their purpose and are gone. Balance is here to stay. > > dhw: I would say that the complexity of life is already so apparent that belief in chance appearance requires a leap of faith just as great as that needed to believe in an eternal mind that encompasses the unfathomable vastness of the universe, which it created all for the sake of you, me, the weaverbird's nest and the duckbilled platypus.-Still back to chance or design or the picket fence. Only design offers a valid conclusion. Of course, like Nagel you could be wishing for a third way.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: You admitted that you didn't know how the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp, the parasitic jellyfish and the hundreds of other examples provide “consumable energy requirement plant” for humans. How, then, can your anthropocentric concept of evolution seem logical to you? DAVID: Because you may not have recognized the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to human consumption of foods. Remember Malthus and is worries? Inventiveness keeps the world's population fed.-No, I do not recognize a food chain leading through some nebulous “balance of nature” (see below) from the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp, the parasitic jellyfish and “hundreds of other examples” to the human consumption of foods. And you have said that you don't either. dhw: You keep arguing that humans were not required, and must therefore be the purpose of evolution. I keep pointing out that NOTHING beyond bacteria was “required”, since they have survived from the year dot. DAVID: But, since you are using my original arguments, remember something had to drive evolution to complexity. Each illogical step up the complexity ladder drives that conclusion. What is more complex than the consciousness of humans. And I don't see further complexity beyond that. Humans are the endpoint.-And so we shift from the non-argument of “requirement”, which I hope we shall never hear again, back to the complexity argument, which we have also covered many times. The complexity of human consciousness is only one form of complexity, and it does not explain why so many non-human complexities (such as the dear old weaverbird's nest) have come and gone. (For “balance”, again see below). Nobody knows what “something” drives evolution, but you believe in divine preprogramming and/or dabbling, all for the sake of humans, and I suggest an autonomous inventive intelligence (possibly God-given) for a free-for-all. You left out the following exchange, in which you once more advanced the “different in kind” non-argument: -DAVID: Adler considered all animals different by degree due to evolution, except humans who are different in kind. Dhw: I believe that animals (including humans), birds, insects, fish etc. are “different in kind”, although they all descended from Darwin's few forms or one. I also believe that even allowing for our vastly superior intelligence, evolution has produced a far greater degree of “difference in kind” between elephants, sparrows, ants, gudgeon and my beloved duckbilled platypus than that between humans and chimpanzees. But if you and Adler think otherwise, you are entitled to your opinion.-dhw: As I keep saying, the balance of nature is constantly shifting. Before humans arrived, nature “messed up” the balance far more catastrophically than the Aussies. But you don't see those changes and mass extinctions as “messing up”.Those “messings up” of the balance were apparently all part of the “balance for everyone”, though everyone presumably didn't include the 99% of extinct species. DAVID: Your statement is exactly on point. If evolution is a progress in complexity, then 99% were less complex, served their purpose and are gone. Balance is here to stay.-Your argument is all about humans being “here to stay”, not balance. Species are dying off by the dozens even now. There is no balance for them. According to you, 3.8 billion years of innovations, lifestyles and wonders extinct and extant have been preprogrammed just for us, and Nature is and always was “balanced” because here we are. “Balance for everyone” only means “for humans”. The Australians are apparently “messing it up”, but perhaps you have forgotten that the Australians are still here, so how can they be messing it up?-dhw: I would say that the complexity of life is already so apparent that belief in chance appearance requires a leap of faith just as great as that needed to believe in an eternal mind that encompasses the unfathomable vastness of the universe, which it created all for the sake of you, me, the weaverbird's nest and the duckbilled platypus. DAVID: Still back to chance or design or the picket fence. Only design offers a valid conclusion. Of course, like Nagel you could be wishing for a third way.-No wishing. Simply continuing the search for a convincing explanation, and enjoying the company of those who are still searching or who think they have found the answer.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Thursday, January 07, 2016, 00:20 (3031 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your statement is exactly on point. If evolution is a progress in complexity, then 99% were less complex, served their purpose and are gone. Balance is here to stay. > > dhw: Your argument is all about humans being “here to stay”, not balance. Species are dying off by the dozens even now. There is no balance for them. According to you, 3.8 billion years of innovations, lifestyles and wonders extinct and extant have been preprogrammed just for us, and Nature is and always was “balanced” because here we are. “Balance for everyone” only means “for humans”.-That is not what I have said. Our existence has nothing to do with balance of nature. The balance is required to provide energy for the living. The balance keeps changing as species disappear. All animals have natural predators. In Africa for the lion it is man.->dhw: The Australians are apparently “messing it up”, but perhaps you have forgotten that the Australians are still here, so how can they be messing it up? Ask them about the animals they brought in from other places killing off the natural native species. As a result they are having constant problems to protect endangered animals. Aussies themselves are doing just fine, as we saw when we visited.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
DAVID: Your statement is exactly on point. If evolution is a progress in complexity, then 99% were less complex, served their purpose and are gone. Balance is here to stay.-dhw: Your argument is all about humans being “here to stay”, not balance. Species are dying off by the dozens even now. There is no balance for them. According to you, 3.8 billion years of innovations, lifestyles and wonders extinct and extant have been preprogrammed just for us, and Nature is and always was “balanced” because here we are. “Balance for everyone” only means “for humans”.-DAVID : That is not what I have said. Our existence has nothing to do with balance of nature. The balance is required to provide energy for the living. The balance keeps changing as species disappear. All animals have natural predators. In Africa for the lion it is man.-In answer to my question how the weaverbird's nest etc. etc., fitted in with your anthropocentric concept of evolution, you wrote: “... you may not have recognized the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to the human consumption of foods.” (Tuesday, 5 January). Your usual reply, though, is that you don't know and I shouldn't question your God's logic. (Of course it's your logic I'm questioning.) However, if you are now going to argue that the balance of nature is required to provide energy for the living, and not just for humans, nature will be “balanced” so long as there is one organism left alive - probably bacteria. And so we have now effectively disposed of all the arguments you have used to defend your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution's history: 1) no forms of life beyond bacteria were “required”; 2) all species (broad sense) are “different in kind”; 3) the weaverbird's nest plus a million other innovations, lifestyles and wonders do not and did not serve the purpose of producing/feeding humans through the balance of nature. This does not mean your God didn't start the process of evolution, and it doesn't even mean that humans aren't special. It just means your divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme (and/or personal divine intervention) for all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders, specially designed for the purpose of “balancing nature” in order to produce/feed humans, makes no sense. Time for a rethink...
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Thursday, January 07, 2016, 15:23 (3030 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: if you are now going to argue that the balance of nature is required to provide energy for the living, and not just for humans, nature will be “balanced” so long as there is one organism left alive - probably bacteria.-Yes, nature had balance all the way back to Archaea.-> dhw: And so we have now effectively disposed of all the arguments you have used to defend your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution's history: 1) no forms of life beyond bacteria were “required”-True-> dhw: 2) all species (broad sense) are “different in kind”-To some degree if one follows Darwin theory. The giant jump is with human consciousness and intellect.-> dhw: 3) the weaverbird's nest plus a million other innovations, lifestyles and wonders do not and did not serve the purpose of producing/feeding humans through the balance of nature. -No, the balance of nature through all of these contributions supported living organisms with a food supply.-> dhw:This does not mean your God didn't start the process of evolution, and it doesn't even mean that humans aren't special. It just means your divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme (and/or personal divine intervention) for all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders, specially designed for the purpose of “balancing nature” in order to produce/feed humans, makes no sense.-Sorry it makes no sense to you. The induced pain in the nether regions from the picket fence may dull your thought processes.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: ...if you are now going to argue that the balance of nature is required to provide energy for the living, and not just for humans, nature will be “balanced” so long as there is one organism left alive - probably bacteria. DAVID: Yes, nature had balance all the way back to Archaea.-I was looking forward, not back. According to you, nature will still be balanced if there is nothing left but bacteria. So why all the fuss about Australians and foreign animals “messing up” the balance? You will still have your balance if the foreign animals eat up all the native animals, including the Australians. -dhw: And so we have now effectively disposed of all the arguments you have used to defend your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution's history: 1) no forms of life beyond bacteria were “required”. DAVID: True-Thank you. One down and two to go.-dhw: 2) all species (broad sense) are “different in kind”. DAVID: To some degree if one follows Darwin theory. The giant jump is with human consciousness and intellect.-I don't think even Darwin would deny that we are vastly more intelligent than our fellow animals. However, do you truly believe that the “difference in kind” (it's your phrase, not mine) between chimps and humans is greater than that between elephants, ants, sparrows and gudgeon? dhw: 3) the weaverbird's nest plus a million other innovations, lifestyles and wonders do not and did not serve the purpose of producing/feeding humans through the balance of nature. DAVID: No, the balance of nature through all of these contributions supported living organisms with a food supply.-So since human existence “has nothing to do with balance of nature”, we can forget all this stuff about “the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to the human consumption of foods”. Now it appears that your God designed the weaverbird's nest and 3.8 billion years' worth of natural wonders so that whatever had enough to eat survived, and the rest died. Nothing to do with humans, and yet according to you humans were what God set out to produce and feed! Sorry, but if the “balance of nature” had nothing to do with the existence of humans, and everything to do with survival, you are left with the evolutionary free-for-all that I and most evolutionists have been advocating all along. dhw: This does not mean your God didn't start the process of evolution, and it doesn't even mean that humans aren't special. It just means your divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme (and/or personal divine intervention) for all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders, specially designed for the purpose of “balancing nature” in order to produce/feed humans, makes no sense. DAVID: Sorry it makes no sense to you. The induced pain in the nether regions from the picket fence may dull your thought processes.-The pain in my nether regions has nothing to do with the picket fence, since I am simply challenging your logic. So do please apply some intellectual balm by explaining how God's special design of the weaverbird's nest (by computer or personal tuition) provides a balance in nature for the human consumption of foods, although the balance of nature has nothing to do with human existence. Alternatively, have a rethink...
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Friday, January 08, 2016, 16:36 (3029 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:I was looking forward, not back. According to you, nature will still be balanced if there is nothing left but bacteria. So why all the fuss about Australians and foreign animals “messing up” the balance? You will still have your balance if the foreign animals eat up all the native animals, including the Australians. -No, the 'natural' balance of nature is the point. Balance of nature to supply food, if undisturbed, is necessary for life to continue. Nature will naturally balance if left to have its own natural adjustments. > > dhw: I don't think even Darwin would deny that we are vastly more intelligent than our fellow animals. However, do you truly believe that the “difference in kind” (it's your phrase, not mine) between chimps and humans is greater than that between elephants, ants, sparrows and gudgeon?-I am absolutely convinced that we humans are different in kind, not degree, chimps included with all other animals.-> DAVID: No, the balance of nature through all of these contributions supported living organisms with a food supply. > > dhw: So since human existence “has nothing to do with balance of nature”, we can forget all this stuff about “the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to the human consumption of foods”. Now it appears that your God designed the weaverbird's nest and 3.8 billion years' worth of natural wonders so that whatever had enough to eat survived, and the rest died. Nothing to do with humans, and yet according to you humans were what God set out to produce and feed! Sorry, but if the “balance of nature” had nothing to do with the existence of humans, and everything to do with survival, you are left with the evolutionary free-for-all that I and most evolutionists have been advocating all along.-I view it totally differently: I assume God used an evolutionary process to finally produce humans. The only way the whole process could survive is if a balance of nature provided a food source for the various stages of life to survive as evolution proceeded. > > dhw: This does not mean your God didn't start the process of evolution, and it doesn't even mean that humans aren't special. It just means your divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme (and/or personal divine intervention) for all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders, specially designed for the purpose of “balancing nature” in order to produce/feed humans, makes no sense. > DAVID: Sorry it makes no sense to you. The induced pain in the nether regions from the picket fence may dull your thought processes. > > dhw: So do please apply some intellectual balm by explaining how God's special design of the weaverbird's nest (by computer or personal tuition) provides a balance in nature for the human consumption of foods, although the balance of nature has nothing to do with human existence. Alternatively, have a rethink...-Already explained. The food chain is the same as the balance of nature, as the bush of life. Someone is eating weaver birds who is eaten by someone else. The weird nest is actually beside this point of discussion. The weirdness is a different discussion which raises a different point, that we have gone over and over and I present regularly as "NATURES WONDERS'. Weirdness is everywhere in life and so must be considered the normal or standard pattern not unusual. We view it as 'unusual' because it seems more complex or inefficient than it should be. That is our human analytic approach, which is more than likely wrong. Evolution worked to produce humans and advanced consciousness, which I do not see as anything necessary.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Saturday, January 09, 2016, 00:19 (3029 days ago) @ David Turell
A review of many observations:-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/01/does_intelligen_3102141.html-"All life forms participate in some kind of intelligence and intentionality, in the sense that for billions of years they have sought to live and have adapted for that purpose. Nonetheless, animals that also demonstrate individual intelligence are orders of magnitude less intelligent than humans -- whether they are closely related to us physically (apes) or not (bird species).-***-"Brain imaging tests show that animals "treat sticks, hooks, and other tools as extensions of their bodies." If so, they probably do not abstract the concept of "tool" (that is, not-self), which limits their ability to envision other possible uses for a tool.-***-"No matter how it is spun, the difference between the bent stick and the New Horizons satellite mapping Pluto is not merely one of degree. The crow is interested in rooting for grubs, and even if it develops other uses for the stick, it will never be interested in mapping Pluto. That isn't a "shared culture" at all, and we are back with the same conundrum of animal vs. human minds.-*** "Reptiles and fish sometimes show signs of intelligence despite having quite different brains from mammals. But, being exothermic, they don't do much of anything very often. For example, turtles may rescue each other, but can also spend months in a state of icy torpor with little adverse effect. At one time, it was assumed that the intelligence to rescue would not co-exist with lengthy inertia (the reptilian or triune brain hypothesis). Actually, the two qualities can co-exist, though they wouldn't be simultaneous.-"Invertebrate just means "not a vertebrate," so there is no single type of invertebrate brain:-***-"U.S. researcher Dr. Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago, said: "The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities."-"It also has an unusually large genome, with more protein-coding genes than humans have (33,000 vs., 25, 000)-***-"Counter-intuitively, years of bottom-up research has revealed that ants do not integrate all this information into a unified representation of the world, a so-called cognitive map. Instead they possess different and distinct modules dedicated to different navigational tasks. ... These results demonstrate that the navigational intelligence of ants is not in an ability to build a unified representation of the world, but in the way different strategies cleverly interact to produce robust navigation.-***-" But consciousness is the central conundrum in philosophy even for humans. And, as Clever Hans and similar co-operative animals have shown, the ability to count, like tool use, is not necessarily reliable evidence of intelligence. The count may be driven by metabolism, prompting, or simply the fact that a given number of efforts succeeds (without the number being abstracted in any way)."-Comment: Different in kind not degree.
ID commentary on animal minds
DAVID: A review of many observations: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/01/does_intelligen_3102141.html-My thanks once more for this and other interesting articles. As usual, I will cherry-pick:-QUOTE: All life forms participate in some kind of intelligence and intentionality, in the sense that for billions of years they have sought to live and have adapted for that purpose. Nonetheless, animals that also demonstrate individual intelligence are orders of magnitude less intelligent than humans -- whether they are closely related to us physically (apes) or not (bird species).-A clear statement that other animals have a lesser degree of intelligence than humans, though that is not exactly news.-*** QUOTE:Brain imaging tests show that animals "treat sticks, hooks, and other tools as extensions of their bodies." If so, they probably do not abstract the concept of "tool" (that is, not-self), which limits their ability to envision other possible uses for a tool.-“Probably” - but how did they hit on the idea of using a tool in the first place? I'd say they “probably” looked at the problem and worked out how to solve it. Maybe: “ant...small hole...stick...poke...” But no, they wouldn't have started writing manuals about the general use of tools. They do not have that DEGREE of intelligence.-*** QUOTE: "No matter how it is spun, the difference between the bent stick and the New Horizons satellite mapping Pluto is not merely one of degree. The crow is interested in rooting for grubs, and even if it develops other uses for the stick, it will never be interested in mapping Pluto. That isn't a "shared culture" at all, and we are back with the same conundrum of animal vs. human minds.”-Our superior intelligence has given us an infinitely broader “culture” than that of our fellow animals. But we also use the equivalent of bent sticks to root for the equivalent of grubs. For example, we use fishing rods to catch fish. THAT is the shared culture. But we have expanded our technology to such a degree in so many fields that we no longer even recognize its purposes as being part of that shared culture. Think food, housing, education, warfare etc., and you will see what I mean.-*** QUOTE: "Counter-intuitively, years of bottom-up research has revealed that ants do not integrate all this information into a unified representation of the world, a so-called cognitive map. Instead they possess different and distinct modules dedicated to different navigational tasks. ... These results demonstrate that the navigational intelligence of ants is not in an ability to build a unified representation of the world, but in the way different strategies cleverly interact to produce robust navigation.”-Does anyone seriously argue that ants create cognitive maps of the world? Their “culture” is geared to their survival, whereas our superior intelligence, while sharing that same culture, goes far beyond it.-*** QUOTE: He adds, "We need to keep in mind that this is only our current level of understanding. Even insect brains are far too complex to be fully understood in the near future. "-Good to hear of an open-minded researcher.-*** QUOTE: If the current description proves accurate, the ant may show considerable intelligence, but not have a unified sense of self, in the same way that a dog or raven probably does (all these sensations are happening to me). Other researchers are less cautious, claiming that insects may have consciousness and "could even be able to count."-I don't think it is possible to have intelligence without consciousness (e.g. awareness of one's surroundings), but that is some degrees below self-awareness. As everyone on this website knows, some researchers also claim that bacteria are sentient, cognitive beings. And they may well be right!-*** QUOTE: Intelligence is today's unknown country. But some animal intelligences do encourage a sense of self, as anyone who has lived with a group of domestic animals will attest. Can there be a sort of minimal self?-Good question, which has direct relevance to our understanding of evolution. A minimal sense of self, individual autonomous intelligence, problem-solving, inventive thinking....But not human thinking. Each organism will think in its own way, and will find its own way to survive and - who knows? - maybe also to improve.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Saturday, January 09, 2016, 16:03 (3028 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: If the current description proves accurate, the ant may show considerable intelligence, but not have a unified sense of self, in the same way that a dog or raven probably does (all these sensations are happening to me). Other researchers are less cautious, claiming that insects may have consciousness and "could even be able to count." > > dhw: I don't think it is possible to have intelligence without consciousness (e.g. awareness of one's surroundings), but that is some degrees below self-awareness. As everyone on this website knows, some researchers also claim that bacteria are sentient, cognitive beings. And they may well be right!-It is reasonable to consider a hierarchy of consciousness as this article appears to suggest. Very simple consciousness in ants for example. Human consciousness vastly different and really of a different kind. I think we both agree consciousness seems to pervade the universe, and certainly is a part of quantum mechanics. > > *** > QUOTE: Intelligence is today's unknown country. But some animal intelligences do encourage a sense of self, as anyone who has lived with a group of domestic animals will attest. Can there be a sort of minimal self? > > dhw: Good question, which has direct relevance to our understanding of evolution. A minimal sense of self, individual autonomous intelligence, problem-solving, inventive thinking....But not human thinking. Each organism will think in its own way, and will find its own way to survive and - who knows? - maybe also to improve.-Our dog and the horses show us this. Feral animals survive in the wild just fine, taking care of themselves. Only a few well-trained humans can. We are totally interdependent because we are so advanced in our societies. However the 'lost tribes' of the Amazon, protected by the Brazilian government do just fine at a feral level.
ID commentary on animal minds
QUOTE: If the current description proves accurate, the ant may show considerable intelligence, but not have a unified sense of self, in the same way that a dog or raven probably does (all these sensations are happening to me). Other researchers are less cautious, claiming that insects may have consciousness and "could even be able to count."-dhw: I don't think it is possible to have intelligence without consciousness (e.g. awareness of one's surroundings), but that is some degrees below self-awareness. As everyone on this website knows, some researchers also claim that bacteria are sentient, cognitive beings. And they may well be right!-DAVID: It is reasonable to consider a hierarchy of consciousness as this article appears to suggest. Very simple consciousness in ants for example. Human consciousness vastly different and really of a different kind. I think we both agree consciousness seems to pervade the universe, and certainly is a part of quantum mechanics.-I'm not sure about the universe, though that is part of panpsychist thinking and may offer an alternative to the hypothesis that the universe was created by a single sourceless mind. I feel more confident about the consciousness of living organisms. I agree that there are different degrees, and that human levels of consciousness are almost certainly unique, but I don't see any point in using consciousness to distinguish between degree and kind (see my post on that thread). I would not expect a sparrow to think in the same way as an elephant, a gudgeon or, for that matter, a bacterium, all of which in my view are “different in kind”.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Sunday, January 10, 2016, 21:43 (3027 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: It is reasonable to consider a hierarchy of consciousness as this article appears to suggest. Very simple consciousness in ants for example. Human consciousness vastly different and really of a different kind. I think we both agree consciousness seems to pervade the universe, and certainly is a part of quantum mechanics. > > dhw: I'm not sure about the universe, though that is part of panpsychist thinking and may offer an alternative to the hypothesis that the universe was created by a single sourceless mind. I feel more confident about the consciousness of living organisms. -And I don't accept that any degree of consciousness developed from an inorganic universe, unless by purpose. It is a giant step. Note the following:-"Physicist Vlatko Vedral explains to Aleks Krotoski why he believes the fundamental stuff of the universe is information and how he hopes that one day everything will be explained in this way."-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfQ2r0zvyoA-Watch the video. Information can only come from a mind, the universal consciousness.-Summary of book review:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/cosmology/physicist-information-is-basis-of-everything/-"In Decoding Reality, Vlatko Vedral offers a mind-stretching look at the deepest questions about the universe-where everything comes from, why things are as they are, what everything is.-"The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, he writes, but information-and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena. This view allows Vedral to address a host of seemingly unrelated questions: Why does DNA bind like it does? What is the ideal diet for longevity? How do you make your first million dollars? We can unify all through the understanding that everything consists of bits of information, he writes, though that raises the question of where these bits come from. To find the answer, he takes us on a guided tour through the bizarre realm of quantum physics. At this sub-sub-subatomic level, we find such things as the interaction of separated quantum particles-what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” In fact, Vedral notes, recent evidence suggests that quantum weirdness, once thought to be limited to the tiniest scale, may actually reach into the macro world and make teleportation a real possibility. It is in quantum physics, he writes, that we really can find the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.- "Vlatko Vedral is one of the key researchers in quantum science. In this book, he offers a mind-bending account of this leading-edge field."
ID commentary on animal minds
DAVID: It is reasonable to consider a hierarchy of consciousness as this article appears to suggest. Very simple consciousness in ants for example. Human consciousness vastly different and really of a different kind. I think we both agree consciousness seems to pervade the universe, and certainly is a part of quantum mechanics.-dhw: I'm not sure about the universe, though that is part of panpsychist thinking and may offer an alternative to the hypothesis that the universe was created by a single sourceless mind. I feel more confident about the consciousness of living organisms. -DAVID: And I don't accept that any degree of consciousness developed from an inorganic universe, unless by purpose. It is a giant step. Note the following: "Physicist Vlatko Vedral explains to Aleks Krotoski why he believes the fundamental stuff of the universe is information and how he hopes that one day everything will be explained in this way." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfQ2r0zvyoA Watch the video. Information can only come from a mind, the universal consciousness.-I watched it and admired the interviewer, who asked all the right questions and got no answers, though Vedral does not endorse your conclusion, so I don't know why you have recommended the video. Perhaps it's unfair to make judgements without reading the book, but these are the notes I made as I struggled to listen:- “Probability is the only concept you need to define information.” Meaning? Where do the laws/information come from? You can only be speculative. If you talk of God, you get back to infinite regression and ask what are the origins of God. We'll never get there. It's all open-ended. The scientific method is conjecture, we try to refute it, and the conjecture that survives the longest = the laws of nature (until another conjecture comes along to replace it). Concepts like emotion and aesthetics are too complicated, but one day we'll probably be able to explain love. We need randomness...not caused by anything...everything out of nothing...lack of knowing...The interviewer asks: “How are we information?” Answer: “This is not fully understood.” On and on it goes...And yet at one stage he says it's all very simple. We don't know where the information comes from, emotions etc. are too complicated to explain, we don't know if the genome or social factors explain humans, but it's all very simple. Just call everything information, and you have a theory. Call it energy and you have a theory. Call it God and you have a theory.-Vedral is of course entitled to his belief that the fundamental stuff of the universe is information, however nebulous that concept may be, and his hope that one day everything will be explained in this way is on a par with every other hope expressed by every other scientist and non-scientist who thinks he has hit on the magic formula. As Hamlet put it: “Words, words, words.”
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 01:07 (3026 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: “Probability is the only concept you need to define information.” Meaning? Where do the laws/information come from? You can only be speculative. If you talk of God, you get back to infinite regression and ask what are the origins of God. We'll never get there.-You do if you accept first cause. -> dhw: And yet at one stage he says it's all very simple. We don't know where the information comes from, emotions etc. are too complicated to explain, we don't know if the genome or social factors explain humans, but it's all very simple. Just call everything information, and you have a theory. Call it energy and you have a theory. Call it God and you have a theory.-He is trapped. He doesn't dare say God is the source, but he accepts that information is at the basis of reality. The bible says, first there is the WORD, Hmmmm, same concept. > > dhw: Vedral is of course entitled to his belief that the fundamental stuff of the universe is information, however nebulous that concept may be, and his hope that one day everything will be explained in this way is on a par with every other hope expressed by every other scientist and non-scientist who thinks he has hit on the magic formula. As Hamlet put it: “Words, words, words.”-See bBella's comment on quantum mechanics article from today. I accept that the quantum level of reality, 'all that is', contains the information that creates reality. DNA is coded information, isn't it?
ID commentary on animal minds
dhw: “Probability is the only concept you need to define information.” Meaning? Where do the laws/information come from? You can only be speculative. If you talk of God, you get back to infinite regression and ask what are the origins of God. We'll never get there.-DAVID: You do if you accept first cause. -I simply noted down Vedral's responses, which seem to me to lead absolutely nowhere.-dhw: And yet at one stage he says it's all very simple. We don't know where the information comes from, emotions etc. are too complicated to explain, we don't know if the genome or social factors explain humans, but it's all very simple. Just call everything information, and you have a theory. Call it energy and you have a theory. Call it God and you have a theory.-DAVID: He is trapped. He doesn't dare say God is the source, but he accepts that information is at the basis of reality. The bible says, first there is the WORD, Hmmmm, same concept.-He says “everything is information”, just as you wrote earlier that information is “the source of life”. We spent a long time discussing this indiscriminate and confusing use of the word, and we agreed that we must distinguish between matter, information and the mechanism that extracts and processes the information. No need to go over all that again, is there?
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 21:48 (3025 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: He says “everything is information”, just as you wrote earlier that information is “the source of life”. We spent a long time discussing this indiscriminate and confusing use of the word, and we agreed that we must distinguish between matter, information and the mechanism that extracts and processes the information. No need to go over all that again, is there?-You left out the maker or the source of the information as part of your list, while I agree that the interpretation mechanism is important also. Matter is not planning or informative information, as it contains static descriptive information. The main point of presenting the video is that quite a group of thinking folks feel the recognition of the role of information at the basis if reality is very important. But you are correct, he was evasive.
ID commentary on animal minds
dhw: He says “everything is information”, just as you wrote earlier that information is “the source of life”. We spent a long time discussing this indiscriminate and confusing use of the word, and we agreed that we must distinguish between matter, information and the mechanism that extracts and processes the information. No need to go over all that again, is there?-DAVID: You left out the maker or the source of the information as part of your list, while I agree that the interpretation mechanism is important also. Matter is not planning or informative information, as it contains static descriptive information. The main point of presenting the video is that quite a group of thinking folks feel the recognition of the role of information at the basis if reality is very important. But you are correct, he was evasive.-Vedral says “everything is information”, in which case the source of information could only be information. This is in line with the thread you called “Information as the source of life”, though I would like to think you would phrase it differently now. Yes, information is very important. Matter is also very important (is there any form of information that could not be called “informative”?). And the mechanism that interprets information is also very important. Consequently, the statement that “everything is information” is a typical example of the indiscriminate and confusing use of this word that I keep complaining about and will continue to complain about whenever it crops up.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Wednesday, January 13, 2016, 15:26 (3024 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Vedral says “everything is information”, in which case the source of information could only be information. This is in line with the thread you called “Information as the source of life”, though I would like to think you would phrase it differently now. Yes, information is very important. Matter is also very important (is there any form of information that could not be called “informative”?). And the mechanism that interprets information is also very important. Consequently, the statement that “everything is information” is a typical example of the indiscriminate and confusing use of this word that I keep complaining about and will continue to complain about whenever it crops up.-What you keep avoiding by complaining about the way 'information as the basis of everything' is presented, is that it carries the implication that a mind carried or development this information that started creation of the universe and the start of life. The information, as you note, cannot come from itself. Someone made the plans.
ID commentary on animal minds
dhw: Vedral says “everything is information”, in which case the source of information could only be information. This is in line with the thread you called “Information as the source of life”, though I would like to think you would phrase it differently now. Yes, information is very important. Matter is also very important (is there any form of information that could not be called “informative”?). And the mechanism that interprets information is also very important. Consequently, the statement that “everything is information” is a typical example of the indiscriminate and confusing use of this word that I keep complaining about and will continue to complain about whenever it crops up.-DAVID: What you keep avoiding by complaining about the way 'information as the basis of everything' is presented, is that it carries the implication that a mind carried or development this information that started creation of the universe and the start of life. The information, as you note, cannot come from itself. Someone made the plans.-You might just as well claim that whatever exists “carries the implication” that a mind created it. Theists will agree, and atheists will not. Such statements are as groundless and pointless as “everything is information”. The existence or non-existence of God is the basic question we come back to in nearly all our discussions, and it will not be resolved by the continued misleading and confusing use of the word “information”, which was the point I wished to reiterate in these posts.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Friday, January 15, 2016, 01:53 (3023 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: What you keep avoiding by complaining about the way 'information as the basis of everything' is presented, is that it carries the implication that a mind carried or development this information that started creation of the universe and the start of life. The information, as you note, cannot come from itself. Someone made the plans. > > dhw: You might just as well claim that whatever exists “carries the implication” that a mind created it. Theists will agree, and atheists will not. Such statements are as groundless and pointless as “everything is information”. The existence or non-existence of God is the basic question we come back to in nearly all our discussions, and it will not be resolved by the continued misleading and confusing use of the word “information”, which was the point I wished to reiterate in these posts.-You keep resisting the issue of information like it is poison. If you will note in my entry on Free Will , Top Down or Bottom Up, George Ellis demonstrates that Top down is a valid concept. I've always found my thinking consistent with his. This is a key issue that separates me from Romansh and his sense that self and consciousness is an illusion. Romansh is obviously a bottom up believer, who thinks that everything magically-created started with the tiniest particle in the Quantum zoo and built up by some chance process into what we have today. And I see it as part of top Down Planning to make it all work.-My thinking starts with the recognition that there are types of information, descriptive; advanced planning as in designing a building; instructional as in guiding the formation of a building or an embryo; or running a living cell's processes in a properly coordinated fashion to sustain life. -DNA provides a code with instructions that first makes the organism from the zygote, and then conducts the processes of life through many layers of modifiers all running on informational instructions. All codes known to us, come from mental activity. Put all the chemicals know to exist in life a membrane, and there will not be life until you add the instructions (information).-Your complaint that there must be an interpretive mechanism is understood from the beginning by everyone who discusses the issue of the need for basic information at all levels of life. It comes with the concept, so the discussion of information uses a shorthand that assumes all you desire. -The striking thing is that the basis of our reality is the quantum layer of reality, where everything starts in development, and quanta are not fixed but potentialities and averages of possibilities. It is as if the edifice of the evolution of the universe and the appearance of life is standing quicksand, but amazingly it all illogically works. So to me the Top Down is the mental process that plans and organizes the reality we have from all of the potentialities of the quantum energy that is eternal, since there must be something that always exists and there must be a first cause. And there must be planning which is information. All else is chance.-How do you explain the code in DNA?
ID commentary on animal minds
dhw: The existence or non-existence of God is the basic question we come back to in nearly all our discussions, and it will not be resolved by the continued misleading and confusing use of the word “information”, which was the point I wished to reiterate in these posts. DAVID: You keep resisting the issue of information like it is poison. -No, no, no, no, no, no. How often do I have to repeat that my issue is with the misleading and confusing use of the term, as if somehow it provides an explanation: “everything is information”, information “as the source of life”. This is on a par with Dawkins' “natural selection...explains the whole of life”. It isn't/doesn't, and such vague generalizations should never be uttered.-DAVID: If you will note in my entry on Free Will , Top Down or Bottom Up, George Ellis demonstrates that Top down is a valid concept. I've always found my thinking consistent with his.-That does not mean information is everything, or information is the source of life. -DAVID: My thinking starts with the recognition that there are types of information, descriptive; advanced planning as in designing a building; instructional as in guiding the formation of a building or an embryo; or running a living cell's processes in a properly coordinated fashion to sustain life. -Of course there are different types, though your earlier “informative information” was not very helpful! DAVID: Your complaint that there must be an interpretive mechanism is understood from the beginning by everyone who discusses the issue of the need for basic information at all levels of life. It comes with the concept, so the discussion of information uses a shorthand that assumes all you desire. -No, it is not shorthand. It is woolly thinking and misleading use of language. In article after article, I have pointed out the problems when the author fails to distinguish between matter, information, and the interpretive mechanism. You have eventually in each case agreed. The result of such thinking is absurd statements like those above, and your own “information runs life”, which you hastily changed to “life runs on information” when I pointed it out. Everyone will agree that information exists, but on its own it achieves and creates nothing. The crucial issues are what uses it, how it is used and, ultimately, where it comes from. Please do not try to defend silly statements which you have already acknowledged to be misleading and confusing, and when you yourself have agreed to take more care in future. -DAVID: So to me the Top Down is the mental process that plans and organizes the reality we have from all of the potentialities of the quantum energy that is eternal, since there must be something that always exists and there must be a first cause. And there must be planning which is information. All else is chance. How do you explain the code in DNA?-And so back we go to chance v. design, and you know perfectly well that I do not believe in chance any more than I believe in an infinite sourceless mind, which is why I am an agnostic. My post was in response to the video you recommended, and I pointed out that “everything is information” is misleading and confusing, and Vedral's various pronouncements are so vague that they tell us absolutely nothing.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Friday, January 15, 2016, 20:01 (3022 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You keep resisting the issue of information like it is poison. > > dhw: No, no, no, no, no, no. How often do I have to repeat that my issue is with the misleading and confusing use of the term, as if somehow it provides an explanation: “everything is information”, information “as the source of life”. This is on a par with Dawkins' “natural selection...explains the whole of life”. It isn't/doesn't, and such vague generalizations should never be uttered.-Again, you have discussed all around the issue without coming to terms with the concept of 'information'. Does it exist as a background in DNA codes and modifiers? What do you think is its importance in our attempting to analyze the appearance of life and evolution? > > DAVID: If you will note in my entry on Free Will , Top Down or Bottom Up, George Ellis demonstrates that Top down is a valid concept. I've always found my thinking consistent with his. > > dhw: That does not mean information is everything, or information is the source of life.-Have you read Ellis' essay? What is the function of DNA, if not to carry information? -> dhw: Everyone will agree that information exists, but on its own it achieves and creates nothing. The crucial issues are what uses it, how it is used and, ultimately, where it comes from.-Your statement is correct in part. The information exists. It is not 'crucial to discuss what uses it'. That is obviously all the cells which respond to their instructions in their DNA. Where it comes from is what I am trying to propose, which for me is top-down mental planning.
John Archibald Wheeler
by David Turell , Saturday, January 16, 2016, 15:01 (3021 days ago) @ David Turell
He is a giant among quantum theorists. This article discusses him and briefly mentions his thoughts about information:-https://plus.maths.org/content/it-bit-"Wheeler categorised his long and productive life in physics into three periods: "Everything is Particles", "Everything is Fields", and "Everything is Information". (You can read more about his life and work in his autobiography, Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam.) The driving idea behind the third period was spurred by his contemplation of the age-old question: "How come existence?" And his answer, first published in a brilliantly written (and very entertaining) paper in 1989, was it from bit: -"'It from bit symbolises the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe."-***-"Anton Zeilinger, Director of the Institue for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, explains: "My interpretation [of "it from bit"] is that in order to define reality, one has to take into account the role of information: mainly the fact that whatever we do in science is based on information which we receive by whatever means." -"But can we go one step further? Can we say reality is information, that they are one and the same? Zeilinger thinks not: "No, we [need] both concepts. But the distinction between the two is very difficult on a rigorous basis, and maybe that tells us something." Instead, we need to think of reality and information together, with one influencing the other, both remaining consistent with each other."-Comment: Also read the article for its discussion of quantum mechanics and the role of the observer.
ID commentary on animal minds
DAVID: You keep resisting the issue of information like it is poison. dhw: No, no, no, no, no, no. How often do I have to repeat that my issue is with the misleading and confusing use of the term, as if somehow it provides an explanation... DAVID: Again, you have discussed all around the issue without coming to terms with the concept of 'information'. Does it exist as a background in DNA codes and modifiers? What do you think is its importance in our attempting to analyze the appearance of life and evolution?-The issue I raised in response to the Vedral video which you recommended was that “everything is information” is yet another example of the misleading and confusing use of the word, and even you agreed that his answers were evasive. I have no problem accepting the concept of ‘information', and I would say information exists in any code, material or subject that I can think of. In attempting to analyse the appearance of life and evolution, we are confronted with all kinds of information; our problem is to understand how that information arose, what used it, and how it was used. See below. DAVID: If you will note in my entry on Free Will , Top Down or Bottom Up, George Ellis demonstrates that Top down is a valid concept. I've always found my thinking consistent with his. dhw: That does not mean information is everything, or information is the source of life. DAVID: Have you read Ellis' essay? What is the function of DNA, if not to carry information? -I'm afraid the essay is far too long and technical for me. I have read your extracts, have already expressed my ambivalent views (with reasons) concerning free will, don't know what this has to do the misuse of the term “information” (or with animal minds!), and have no difficulty accepting that top down may in some cases be as valid as bottom up, but don't expect me to go into details about its application to physics etc. Nor do I have any problem accepting that DNA carries information. My problem is with such misleading and confusing claims as “everything is information”, “information as the source of life”, “information runs life” etc. dhw: Everyone will agree that information exists, but on its own it achieves and creates nothing. The crucial issues are what uses it, how it is used and, ultimately, where it comes from. DAVID: Your statement is correct in part. The information exists. It is not 'crucial to discuss what uses it'. That is obviously all the cells which respond to their instructions in their DNA. Where it comes from is what I am trying to propose, which for me is top-down mental planning.-I am fully aware of your conviction that God (the top-down planner) planned everything. This means that it is God's computer programme or himself in person (dabbling) that both provides and uses the information, since the cells automatically obey his instructions. Many scientists and philosophers would disagree that your God has provided the instructions. And so what provides and uses the information and how it is used then becomes crucial. Indeed, that is the subject we have been discussing for eight years.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Saturday, January 16, 2016, 20:07 (3021 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I have no problem accepting the concept of ‘information', and I would say information exists in any code, material or subject that I can think of. In attempting to analyse the appearance of life and evolution, we are confronted with all kinds of information; our problem is to understand how that information arose, what used it, and how it was used. -The source of the information is the primary thrust of my presentations. I think the process of using it is at an entirely different level. In life we know that cells use information in DNA and its modifying layers. We know that the universe follows 'laws' which we have described. We disagree on the source.-> dhw: Nor do I have any problem accepting that DNA carries information. My problem is with such misleading and confusing claims as “everything is information”, “information as the source of life”, “information runs life” etc.-If you note in my entry on Wheeler, information is discussed in much the same way to which you object. Again there is an understood shorthand: first information, and then some process uses it. Two steps in thought. > > dhw: I am fully aware of your conviction that God (the top-down planner) planned everything. This means that it is God's computer programme or himself in person (dabbling) that both provides and uses the information, since the cells automatically obey his instructions. Many scientists and philosophers would disagree that your God has provided the instructions. And so what provides and uses the information and how it is used then becomes crucial. Indeed, that is the subject we have been discussing for eight years.-If the information is well-planned, in appearance, and is highly-complex, as it is, I'll stick with my contention that a mind planned and created it. The degree of complexity is discovered to increase year by year. Is there a point at which you might accept the origination through a mind? There will never be absolute proof.
ID commentary on animal minds
Dhw: My problem is with such misleading and confusing claims as “everything is information”, “information as the source of life”, “information runs life” etc. DAVID: If you note in my entry on Wheeler, information is discussed in much the same way to which you object. Again there is an understood shorthand: first information, and then some process uses it. Two steps in thought.-Wheeler's three phases were: “Everything is Particles”, “Everything is Fields” and “Everything is Information”. Perhaps the next one would have been “Everything is Energy”, and I know of some folk who would claim that “Everything is God”. We need clear explanations if such claims are to make any sense, but thankfully this article is actually quite explicit in making a distinction between information and reality and the indispensable role of the observer: QUOTE: Can we say reality is information, that they are one and the same? Zeilinger thinks not: "No, we [need] both concepts. But the distinction between the two is very difficult on a rigorous basis, and maybe that tells us something." Instead, we need to think of reality and information together, with one influencing the other, both remaining consistent with each other. (I wish he'd expounded on the something we are told, but still...) QUOTE: “Quantum physics doesn't describe reality as it is, but as it is perceived by an observer. It simply can't answer questions such as "what was the particle doing while no observation was being made?" -No clear definitions, but in the various articles and the interview I have objected to, these distinctions have not been made at all. You may remember that George C. Williams (another of your references) made a similar complaint: “Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter.” And in relation to DNA, “Maintaining this distinction between the medium and the message is absolutely indispensable to clarity of thought about evolution” (which you yourself put in bold).To this I added “the something that collects, processes and uses that information”, and you have added the source of the information. My little campaign is a simply an appeal for clarity of thought, which is the issue in many of our discussions.-DAVID: If the information is well-planned, in appearance, and is highly-complex, as it is, I'll stick with my contention that a mind planned and created it. The degree of complexity is discovered to increase year by year. Is there a point at which you might accept the origination through a mind? There will never be absolute proof.-I long ago lost faith in chance, and the discussions I have had especially with you have not only strengthened my scepticism, but have also given me the scientific background to justify it. However, even before that, I had already lost faith in the concept of an eternal mind that created, encompassed and guided the universe and life. (See my post today on “The Immensity of the Universe”). I have criticized your opinions for their logical inconsistency, but am fully aware that there is no logical consistency in this aspect of my thinking. It's either chance or design. But the case for and against each hypothesis is so riddled with question marks that I cannot currently visualize making a decision either way. Absolute proof is indeed impossible, but for me there is not even any convincing evidence.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Monday, January 18, 2016, 01:57 (3020 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Monday, January 18, 2016, 02:29
> dhw: I have criticized your opinions for their logical inconsistency, but am fully aware that there is no logical consistency in this aspect of my thinking. It's either chance or design. But the case for and against each hypothesis is so riddled with question marks that I cannot currently visualize making a decision either way. Absolute proof is indeed impossible, but for me there is not even any convincing evidence.-Thank you for this explanation, which is what I knew about your thinking all along. If chance can't work, given the complexity of what has been created especially in life, which I consider much more complex than the cosmos, then I feel design must be accepted. You just can't bring yourself to seek a source.-Have a look at a Christian explanation for design from a former atheist:-http://coldcasechristianity.com/2015/does-the-cumulative-case-for-design-point-to-a-divine-designer/-Note his two objects, a bird's nest and a bacterial flagellum. Both certainly look designed.
ID commentary on animal minds
dhw: I have criticized your opinions for their logical inconsistency, but am fully aware that there is no logical consistency in this aspect of my thinking. It's either chance or design. But the case for and against each hypothesis is so riddled with question marks that I cannot currently visualize making a decision either way. Absolute proof is indeed impossible, but for me there is not even any convincing evidence. DAVID: Thank you for this explanation, which is what I knew about your thinking all along. If chance can't work, given the complexity of what has been created especially in life, which I consider much more complex than the cosmos, then I feel design must be accepted. You just can't bring yourself to seek a source.-The search for the source was the major impetus that gave rise to this website and drives most of our discussions. What I can't bring myself to do is accept hypotheses that are “so riddled with question marks” that ultimately they can only rely on faith (e.g. in chance, or in a sourceless mind that created and encompasses billions of solar systems). DAVID: Have a look at a Christian explanation for design from a former atheist: http://coldcasechristianity.com/2015/does-the-cumulative-case-for-design-point-to-a-div... Note his two objects, a bird's nest and a bacterial flagellum. Both certainly look designed.-An excellent summary of a case which I have never disputed. As he says, even Dawkins doesn't dispute it. Living organisms “look designed”. That is why (unlike Dawkins) I do not believe in chance. As for the bird's nest, please note: QUOTE: “Let's take a look, for example, at something with which we are all familiar: a bird's nest. We know intelligent agents (birds) are responsible for the design of the nest because, like the garrote, the nest displays some (but not all) of the aforementioned attributes of design.”-In contrast to yourself, he attributes the design of the nest to the intelligent bird, not to God. This is a sort of halfway point between human design (the garrotte) and the bacterial flagellum, for the design of which we do not know the intelligent agent (unlike the bird's nest). I accept, and have always accepted, his and your argument that life forms fulfil the criteria for design. That is one reason why I am not an atheist. However, that does not fill the many gaps in the hypothesis of the unknowable mind described above.
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Monday, January 18, 2016, 18:43 (3019 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: In contrast to yourself, he attributes the design of the nest to the intelligent bird, not to God. This is a sort of halfway point between human design (the garrotte) and the bacterial flagellum, for the design of which we do not know the intelligent agent (unlike the bird's nest). I accept, and have always accepted, his and your argument that life forms fulfil the criteria for design. That is one reason why I am not an atheist. However, that does not fill the many gaps in the hypothesis of the unknowable mind described above.-We can presume the birds did the inventing, but God could have helped. At least we agree on the design issue.
ID commentary on animal minds
dhw: In contrast to yourself, he attributes the design of the nest to the intelligent bird, not to God. This is a sort of halfway point between human design (the garrotte) and the bacterial flagellum, for the design of which we do not know the intelligent agent (unlike the bird's nest). I accept, and have always accepted, his and your argument that life forms fulfil the criteria for design. That is one reason why I am not an atheist. However, that does not fill the many gaps in the hypothesis of the unknowable mind described above.-DAVID: We can presume the birds did the inventing, but God could have helped. At least we agree on the design issue.-We have always agreed on the design issue. Where we disagree is on your insistence that only God and humans can design things, though “could have helped” suggests a slight softening in your approach! “No, no, not on the left,” said God to the weaverbird. “Put it on the right, or you'll upset the balance of nature."
ID commentary on animal minds
by David Turell , Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 01:40 (3018 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: We have always agreed on the design issue. Where we disagree is on your insistence that only God and humans can design things, though “could have helped” suggests a slight softening in your approach! “No, no, not on the left,” said God to the weaverbird. “Put it on the right, or you'll upset the balance of nature."-Planned designs require a mind. There is purpose. Weaver birds must have tried this and that over eons of time to achieve their current nest. Hunt and peck is not likely.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: According to you, nature will still be balanced if there is nothing left but bacteria. So why all the fuss about Australians and foreign animals “messing up” the balance? You will still have your balance if the foreign animals eat up all the native animals, including the Australians. DAVID: No, the 'natural' balance of nature is the point. Balance of nature to supply food, if undisturbed, is necessary for life to continue. Nature will naturally balance if left to have its own natural adjustments.-Whaddayamean ”NO”? Your criterion for balance of nature is that there is enough food for life to continue. Are you now saying it doesn't count if Australians change the balance? OK, then, if a comet wipes out all life except bacteria, there will still be life, so according to you there will still be balance of nature. Another non-argument, which started out as an attempt to justify your anthropocentrism but then lost its way.-dhw: I don't think even Darwin would deny that we are vastly more intelligent than our fellow animals. However, do you truly believe that the “difference in kind” (it's your phrase, not mine) between chimps and humans is greater than that between elephants, ants, sparrows and gudgeon? DAVID: I am absolutely convinced that we humans are different in kind, not degree, chimps included with all other animals.-I know you are. But that doesn't answer my question. ALL species (broad sense, as illustrated above) are “different in kind”, so what is your point?-DAVID: I assume God used an evolutionary process to finally produce humans. The only way the whole process could survive is if a balance of nature provided a food source for the various stages of life to survive as evolution proceeded. -I expect we'd all agree that if life had been wiped out before the arrival of humans, there would have been no humans. There would have been no weaverbird's nest either. That doesn't explain why your God had to design the nest. [...] DAVID: Already explained. The food chain is the same as the balance of nature, as the bush of life. Someone is eating weaver birds who is eaten by someone else. The weird nest is actually beside this point of discussion.-The weird nest would indeed be beside the point if you didn't keep insisting that only your God could have designed it. But like human consciousness, its complexities were not “required”, and were not part of “the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to the human consumption of foods”, and in any case “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature.” If you can't explain why the nest was so important that God had to design it, maybe he DIDN'T, but the weaverbird did. And the same with all the other weird wonders extinct and extant in a free-for-all that provides a simple explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. But for some reason, you'd rather not consider a free-for-all (even if set in motion by your God).
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Saturday, January 09, 2016, 15:50 (3028 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: No, the 'natural' balance of nature is the point. Balance of nature to supply food, if undisturbed, is necessary for life to continue. Nature will naturally balance if left to have its own natural adjustments. > > dhw: Whaddayamean ”NO”? Your criterion for balance of nature is that there is enough food for life to continue. Are you now saying it doesn't count if Australians change the balance?-The Aussies changed the balance and are trying to get it back. It does count!-> dhw: if a comet wipes out all life except bacteria, there will still be life, so according to you there will still be balance of nature. Another non-argument, which started out as an attempt to justify your anthropocentrism but then lost its way.-Your confusion surprises me. If we are back to bacteria, evolution will start all over again with nature in balance, as it was 3.6+ billion years ago.-> DAVID: I am absolutely convinced that we humans are different in kind, not degree, chimps included with all other animals. > > dhw: I know you are. But that doesn't answer my question. ALL species (broad sense, as illustrated above) are “different in kind”, so what is your point?-All advances in evolution created differences in degree until humans, who because of their vast advance in consciousness are truly different in kind. That is Adler's point > > dhw: I expect we'd all agree that if life had been wiped out before the arrival of humans, there would have been no humans. There would have been no weaverbird's nest either. That doesn't explain why your God had to design the nest.-I don't know when the weaver's nest appeared; could be before any hominins. The theory is the nest is too complex for the birds to do it alone so God helped.-> dhw: And the same with all the other weird wonders extinct and extant in a free-for-all that provides a simple explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. But for some reason, you'd rather not consider a free-for-all (even if set in motion by your God).-Simply because I think God ran the process of evolution. See my today's article on the control of mitotic spindles. Darwinian chance could not do that.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: ... if a comet wipes out all life except bacteria, there will still be life, so according to you there will still be balance of nature. Another non-argument, which started out as an attempt to justify your anthropocentrism but then lost its way. DAVID: Your confusion surprises me. If we are back to bacteria, evolution will start all over again with nature in balance, as it was 3.6+ billion years ago.-The reason you first came up with this notion was to explain why God had to design all of nature's wonders: namely, to produce and/or feed humans, because humans were God's purpose. But now that you have told us that “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature”, I am at a complete loss as to why we are discussing the balance of nature anyway! All we are left with is that God designed the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp and jellyfish, and every other natural wonder so that life could continue, except for those organisms for which life could not continue.-DAVID: I am absolutely convinced that we humans are different in kind, not degree, chimps included with all other animals. dhw: I know you are. But that doesn't answer my question. ALL species (broad sense, as illustrated above) are “different in kind”, so what is your point? DAVID: All advances in evolution created differences in degree until humans, who because of their vast advance in consciousness are truly different in kind. That is Adler's point.-Ah, so the elephant and the sparrow are only different in degree, and humans and chimps are “truly” different in kind, though you believe they both descended from a common anthropoid ancestor. The only way you can possibly defend this stance is to say that the definition of “kind” is the degree of consciousness. And since humans have a degree of consciousness that is a “vast advance” on that of other organisms, they are different in degree AND kind. Sorry, but when I compare the elephant and the sparrow, I see far more “true” differences than those between humans and chimps. Please explain again why the distinction matters so much to you. dhw: I expect we'd all agree that if life had been wiped out before the arrival of humans, there would have been no humans. There would have been no weaverbird's nest either. That doesn't explain why your God had to design the nest. DAVID: I don't know when the weaver's nest appeared; could be before any hominins. The theory is the nest is too complex for the birds to do it alone so God helped.-I know that is your theory. And I really can't believe your God would go to so much trouble without any reason. We agree that the nest is not part of “the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to the human consumption of foods”, and in any case “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature.” If you don't know why God had to “help” (private tuition, presumably), might that not be because he didn't?-dhw: And the same with all the other weird wonders extinct and extant in a free-for-all that provides a simple explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. But for some reason, you'd rather not consider a free-for-all (even if set in motion by your God). DAVID: Simply because I think God ran the process of evolution. See my today's article on the control of mitotic spindles. Darwinian chance could not do that.-Chance is not an issue between us, so you needn't keep flogging it in discussions with me. Your hypothesis now seems to be that God wanted to create humans, so he designed lots of organisms (99% of which died out) that did lots of weird and wonderful things - all designed by him - so that life could go on through a balance in nature, though that had nothing to do with humans. Then he...what?...did something or the other to produce humans (his real purpose), who are “truly different in kind” although they actually descended from earlier anthropoids. But even if they all died and nothing was left except bacteria, we would still have a balance in nature. I hope you can see that there is no logical pattern in this collection of non sequiturs, but perhaps you will correct it so that it makes sense. Otherwise, I suggest you might as well tell us that whatever happens, happens because that's how God wants it to happen, and we don't understand why.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Sunday, January 10, 2016, 21:37 (3027 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I am at a complete loss as to why we are discussing the balance of nature anyway! All we are left with is that God designed the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp and jellyfish, and every other natural wonder so that life could continue, except for those organisms for which life could not continue.-The reason is you doubted the importance of the balance of nature as a food chain supply issue. It supports the energy needs as evolution proceeds to its end point, humans. > > Ah, so the elephant and the sparrow are only different in degree, and humans and chimps are “truly” different in kind, though you believe they both descended from a common anthropoid ancestor. The only way you can possibly defend this stance is to say that the definition of “kind” is the degree of consciousness. And since humans have a degree of consciousness that is a “vast advance” on that of other organisms, they are different in degree AND kind. -Exactly. no other being has consciousness of the magnitude we have. Adler's reasoning. > > dhw: I expect we'd all agree that if life had been wiped out before the arrival of humans, there would have been no humans. There would have been no weaverbird's nest either. That doesn't explain why your God had to design the nest. > DAVID: I don't know when the weaver's nest appeared; could be before any hominins. The theory is the nest is too complex for the birds to do it alone so God helped. > > dhw: I know that is your theory. And I really can't believe your God would go to so much trouble without any reason. We agree that the nest is not part of “the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to the human consumption of foods”, and in any case “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature.” If you don't know why God had to “help” (private tuition, presumably), might that not be because he didn't?-Again, you are back to God's reasons. I think he wanted humans, based on our arrival with our vast consciousness.- > dhw:Chance is not an issue between us, so you needn't keep flogging it in discussions with me. Your hypothesis now seems to be that God wanted to create humans, so he designed lots of organisms (99% of which died out) that did lots of weird and wonderful things - all designed by him - so that life could go on through a balance in nature, though that had nothing to do with humans.-I keep flogging chance because the only other alternative is design. Nature's balance doles not have a direct relationship to humans. It supports the process of evolution so humans could evolve.-> dhw: But even if they all died and nothing was left except bacteria, we would still have a balance in nature. I hope you can see that there is no logical pattern in this collection of non sequiturs, but perhaps you will correct it so that it makes sense. Otherwise, I suggest you might as well tell us that whatever happens, happens because that's how God wants it to happen, and we don't understand why.-I can accept your final sentence. I think I see what God wanted, humans. The other issue is, is God logical? Perhaps not by our logic. But you want Him that way.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: I am at a complete loss as to why we are discussing the balance of nature anyway! DAVID: The reason is you doubted the importance of the balance of nature as a food chain supply issue. It supports the energy needs as evolution proceeds to its end point, humans.-I do not doubt that organisms need food to survive, and I do not doubt that if life had been wiped out before humans arrived, humans would not have arrived. This does not explain why God had to design the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp and jellyfish, especially since “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature”.-Dhw: Ah, so the elephant and the sparrow are only different in degree, and humans and chimps are “truly” different in kind, though you believe they both descended from a common anthropoid ancestor. The only way you can possibly defend this stance is to say that the definition of “kind” is the degree of consciousness. And since humans have a degree of consciousness that is a “vast advance” on that of other organisms, they are different in degree AND kind. DAVID: Exactly. no other being has consciousness of the magnitude we have. Adler's reasoning.-I don't think any of us would disagree that the degree (“magnitude”) of our consciousness makes us vastly more conscious than an elephant and a sparrow. So what exactly is your point? Dhw: If you don't know why God had to “help” (private tuition, presumably), might that not be because he didn't? DAVID: Again, you are back to God's reasons. I think he wanted humans, based on our arrival with our vast consciousness.-Yet again, if he wanted humans, why did he have to “help” the weaverbird design its nest? Please don't say the balance of nature, because (again!) you tell us “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature”. (Just to remind you, that is because you believe nature is balanced so long as there is enough food for any sort of life to continue, human or other.) dhw: Chance is not an issue between us, so you needn't keep flogging it in discussions with me. DAVID: I keep flogging chance because the only other alternative is design. Nature's balance doles not have a direct relationship to humans. It supports the process of evolution so humans could evolve.-So the weaverbird's nest (plus hundreds of other such wonders) had to be specially designed so that humans could evolve? It doesn't make sense, unless you believe humans would NOT have evolved without the nest! dhw: Your hypothesis now seems to be that God wanted to create humans, so he designed lots of organisms (99% of which died out) that did lots of weird and wonderful things - all designed by him - so that life could go on through a balance in nature, though that had nothing to do with humans. Then he...what?...did something or the other to produce humans (his real purpose), who are “truly different in kind” although they actually descended from earlier anthropoids. But even if they all died and nothing was left except bacteria, we would still have a balance in nature. I hope you can see that there is no logical pattern in this collection of non sequiturs, but perhaps you will correct it so that it makes sense. Otherwise, I suggest you might as well tell us that whatever happens, happens because that's how God wants it to happen, and we don't understand why.-DAVID: I can accept your final sentence. I think I see what God wanted, humans. The other issue is, is God logical? Perhaps not by our logic. But you want Him that way.-No, I want YOU to be logical. Since you have not corrected my version of your illogical hypothesis, I assume you accept it. My point is that your lack of logic can easily be overcome if you stop insisting your God designed every step and wonder throughout evolution in order to produce/feed humans. If he exists, he could still have produced humans while our dear old friend the weaverbird designed its own nest in an evolutionary free-for-all that saves you from all the intellectual contortions I summarized above.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 00:53 (3026 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 01:00
dhw: I do not doubt that organisms need food to survive, and I do not doubt that if life had been wiped out before humans arrived, humans would not have arrived. This does not explain why God had to design the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp and jellyfish, especially since “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature”.-I don't know why you have to have those events explained. They are simply a part of the balance of nature, which is required. > DAVID: Exactly. no other being has consciousness of the magnitude we have. Adler's reasoning. > > dhw: I don't think any of us would disagree that the degree (“magnitude”) of our consciousness makes us vastly more conscious than an elephant and a sparrow. So what exactly is your point?-The appearance of our amazing consciousness makes us special, something not expected in the stepwise advance of complexity in evolution. All other creatures follow patterns of shape and form (which I have mentioned before) as shown in college courses like comparative anatomy. In college I studied a frog, dog fish, and a cat anatomy to see the similarities. Brains also followed a pattern, but the jump from Chimps to us is like n o other advance. Adler's point. We Are different in kind. Therefore here is a God guiding the process. -> > dhw: Yet again, if he wanted humans, why did he have to “help” the weaverbird design its nest? Please don't say the balance of nature, because (again!) you tell us “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature”. (Just to remind you, that is because you believe nature is balanced so long as there is enough food for any sort of life to continue, human or other.)-You've stated the point yourself: to get to humans everyone has to eat to survive. Evolution produced humans, with food supply providing part of the mechanism. Humans are related primarily to evolutionary processes; balance is a secondary issue. > > dhw: So the weaverbird's nest (plus hundreds of other such wonders) had to be specially designed so that humans could evolve? It doesn't make sense, unless you believe humans would NOT have evolved without the nest!- Of course not. You are the one who wants to tie all of this together. It doesn't have to be other than the balance of nature is required. -> DAVID: I can accept your final sentence. I think I see what God wanted, humans. The other issue is, is God logical? Perhaps not by our logic. But you want Him that way.-> > dhw: No, I want YOU to be logical. ... My point is that your lack of logic can easily be overcome if you stop insisting your God designed every step and wonder throughout evolution in order to produce/feed humans. If he exists, he could still have produced humans while our dear old friend the weaverbird designed its own nest in an evolutionary free-for-all that saves you from all the intellectual contortions I summarized above.-I am not contorted. You keep trying to tie everything together according to your sense of logic, while judging God's. God could certainly have designed everything if He had the power to create the universe and guide evolution. I believe He did. Faith does not require an explanation of every jot and tittle of reality.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: I don't think any of us would disagree that the degree (“magnitude”) of our consciousness makes us vastly more conscious than an elephant and a sparrow. So what exactly is your point? DAVID: The appearance of our amazing consciousness makes us special, something not expected in the stepwise advance of complexity in evolution. All other creatures follow patterns of shape and form (which I have mentioned before) as shown in college courses like comparative anatomy. In college I studied a frog, dog fish, and a cat anatomy to see the similarities. Brains also followed a pattern, but the jump from Chimps to us is like no other advance. Adler's point. We Are different in kind. Therefore here is a God guiding the process. -As far as patterns of form and shape are concerned, I would suggest there are greater differences in kind between an ant and an elephant than there are between a chimp and a human. But according to you, every innovation, lifestyle and wonder indicates that there is a God guiding the process, because all organisms are too dumb to work these out for themselves. Hence our discussion of the weaverbird's nest. So you don't need humans for your “therefore” anyway. You just have a problem figuring out how the rest fit in with humans being God's purpose.-DAVID: You've stated the point yourself: to get to humans everyone has to eat to survive. Evolution produced humans, with food supply providing part of the mechanism. Humans are related primarily to evolutionary processes; balance is a secondary issue.-To get to the duckbilled platypus everyone has to eat to survive. Evolution produced the duckbilled platypus. The duckbilled platypus is related primarily to evolutionary processes. The balance of nature is a secondary issue because according to you it exists so long as there is any organism alive, which makes it irrelevant as an explanation of anything. DAVID: You keep trying to tie everything together according to your sense of logic, while judging God's. God could certainly have designed everything if He had the power to create the universe and guide evolution. I believe He did. Faith does not require an explanation of every jot and tittle of reality.-I am not questioning your God's logic or his potential powers; I am questioning your logic and your interpretation of his thinking, which entails a 3.8-billion-year computer programme for, or personal supervision of, every innovation, lifestyle or wonder, regardless of its relevance to humans, even though humans were his purpose. I am surprised that you should dismiss as “every jot and tittle” the burning question of how evolution works. Over and over again, with excellent human logic, you attack Darwin's concept of random mutations (I agree with you), but once your own hypothesis comes under attack, suddenly human logic goes out of the window.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 21:13 (3025 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: As far as patterns of form and shape are concerned, I would suggest there are greater differences in kind between an ant and an elephant than there are between a chimp and a human. You just have a problem figuring out how the rest fit in with humans being God's purpose.-Phenotype differences are just different body form developments in the branches of the bush of life. All cells work about the same whether as single-celled organisms or multicellular. The chimp human difference is consciousness, and you know it. Again, if you have time read Nagel, Mind and Cosmos. He says we have not explained human consciousness as a result of evolution.-> > dhw: To get to the duckbilled platypus everyone has to eat to survive. Evolution produced the duckbilled platypus. The duckbilled platypus is related primarily to evolutionary processes. The balance of nature is a secondary issue because according to you it exists so long as there is any organism alive, which makes it irrelevant as an explanation of anything.-Total non-sequitor. Evolution can only continue as long as there is a proper food supply. > > DAVID: You keep trying to tie everything together according to your sense of logic, while judging God's. God could certainly have designed everything if He had the power to create the universe and guide evolution. I believe He did. Faith does not require an explanation of every jot and tittle of reality. > > dhw: I am not questioning your God's logic or his potential powers; I am questioning your logic and your interpretation of his thinking, which entails a 3.8-billion-year computer programme for, or personal supervision of, every innovation, lifestyle or wonder, regardless of its relevance to humans, even though humans were his purpose. I am surprised that you should dismiss as “every jot and tittle” the burning question of how evolution works. Over and over again, with excellent human logic, you attack Darwin's concept of random mutations (I agree with you), but once your own hypothesis comes under attack, suddenly human logic goes out of the window.-Simply, what we see in the evolutionary bush is what happened through the ages. I think God guided evolution to get to us. I can't explain His reasons, so why try and use human logic on it?
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
Once more I'll telescope the arguments:-dhw: As far as patterns of form and shape are concerned, I would suggest there are greater differences in kind between an ant and an elephant than there are between a chimp and a human. You just have a problem figuring out how the rest fit in with humans being God's purpose.-DAVID: Phenotype differences are just different body form developments in the branches of the bush of life. All cells work about the same whether as single-celled organisms or multicellular. The chimp human difference is consciousness, and you know it. Again, if you have time read Nagel, Mind and Cosmos. He says we have not explained human consciousness as a result of evolution.-Nobody has explained consciousness at any level, and I trust nobody would claim that only humans have consciousness (which is not to be equated with self-awareness). No organism could survive without a degree of awareness of its environment. We agree, though, that human consciousness is vastly more developed than that of any other creature, but you always want to emphasize this in order to justify your belief that humans were God's purpose. Maybe they were, and there are logical reasons why they could be, but according to you God specially preprogrammed or personally designed every other natural wonder, and so I am left wondering why what you call “every jot and tittle” is so specially important for God when all he wanted was humans. Maybe - if he exists - God did dabble to give us our special brain. But I am proposing that no dabbling or preprogramming was necessary for every single form of life and lifestyle if we recognize that cell communities have their own (possibly God-given) inventive intelligence. Then you would not need to come up with all your non sequiturs (“not required”, “different in kind”, “balance of nature”) as you try to find - and ultimately say we shouldn't try to find - some logical reason for God's special personal interest in the weaverbird's nest and every other natural wonder and lifestyle, though they are clearly dispensable so long as he gets to us. It appears that you would rather jettison logic than acknowledge the mere possibility that cell communities (organisms) have the intelligence (possibly God-given) to conduct their own affairs.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Wednesday, January 13, 2016, 15:11 (3024 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Maybe - if he exists - God did dabble to give us our special brain. But I am proposing that no dabbling or preprogramming was necessary for every single form of life and lifestyle if we recognize that cell communities have their own (possibly God-given) inventive intelligence.-You can't have it both ways. Since you accept the possibility that God might have given cell communities inventive intelligence, that must mean He gave them instructions on how to plan for improvements. That is really quite close to my thinking. We've discussed on-board inventive mechanisms before. We've agreed that such could exist. I've admitted I don't know how natures wonders came about, but they offer several different interpretations of God's role in them, and no one will ever know exactly what is correct.- > dhw: It appears that you would rather jettison logic than acknowledge the mere possibility that cell communities (organisms) have the intelligence (possibly God-given) to conduct their own affairs.-Not so, as you see above, but not interpreted the way you do, which is an attempt to recognize the possibility of God, but diminish his role, which fits your discomfort about accepting an all powerful Being.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: Maybe - if he exists - God did dabble to give us our special brain. But I am proposing that no dabbling or preprogramming was necessary for every single form of life and lifestyle if we recognize that cell communities have their own (possibly God-given) inventive intelligence. DAVID: You can't have it both ways. Since you accept the possibility that God might have given cell communities inventive intelligence, that must mean He gave them instructions on how to plan for improvements. That is really quite close to my thinking.-Absolutely not. Once again, this boils down to your reluctance to acknowledge the possibility that organisms other than humans can think for themselves. You are a firm believer in human free will: since you also believe in God, presumably you believe that God gave humans the means to make their own decisions. That is the scenario I am proposing for all organisms: that they do their own thinking - not on anything like the scale of us humans, but within the parameters of their own particular nature. Not under instruction, but using their own autonomous intelligence (possibly God-given). I'm afraid this is nowhere near to your thinking. DAVID: We've discussed on-board inventive mechanisms before. We've agreed that such could exist. I've admitted I don't know how natures wonders came about, but they offer several different interpretations of God's role in them, and no one will ever know exactly what is correct.-Agreed. All we can do is look at the history and come up with hypotheses that might explain it. Your own hypothesis entails a dislocation between your anthropocentrism and God's personal planning of all the wonders. Mine offers an all-embracing explanation with room both for your God and even for special attention to humans. dhw: It appears that you would rather jettison logic than acknowledge the mere possibility that cell communities (organisms) have the intelligence (possibly God-given) to conduct their own affairs. DAVID: Not so, as you see above, but not interpreted the way you do, which is an attempt to recognize the possibility of God, but diminish his role, which fits your discomfort about accepting an all powerful Being.-There is no diminution of his role - if he exists - since it just as feasible for an all-powerful God to entertain himself with an unpredictable spectacle as it is for him to create a predictable array of clockwork robots. Besides, I seem to remember you occasionally granting the possibility that God is neither all-powerful nor all-knowing, and that he may be capable of learning from experience, or “becoming”, as in process theology.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Friday, January 15, 2016, 01:20 (3023 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: That is the scenario I am proposing for all organisms: that they do their own thinking - not on anything like the scale of us humans, but within the parameters of their own particular nature. Not under instruction, but using their own autonomous intelligence (possibly God-given). I'm afraid this is nowhere near to your thinking.-Once you say possibly 'God-given', it implies that these 'thinking' organisms can plan some advance that works. No hunt and peck, for that is chance, which you don't accept. I don't accept that lower organisms can do advanced planning.-> dhw: All we can do is look at the history and come up with hypotheses that might explain it. Your own hypothesis entails a dislocation between your anthropocentrism and God's personal planning of all the wonders. Mine offers an all-embracing explanation with room both for your God and even for special attention to humans.-I don't view my approach as a dislocation. That is your interpretation of the evolution we see.. > > dhw: I seem to remember you occasionally granting the possibility that God is neither all-powerful nor all-knowing, and that he may be capable of learning from experience, or “becoming”, as in process theology.-That is true, but doesn't change my view hat his ultimate goal was humans.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: That is the scenario I am proposing for all organisms: that they do their own thinking - not on anything like the scale of us humans, but within the parameters of their own particular nature. Not under instruction, but using their own autonomous intelligence (possibly God-given). I'm afraid this is nowhere near to your thinking. DAVID: Once you say possibly 'God-given', it implies that these 'thinking' organisms can plan some advance that works. No hunt and peck, for that is chance, which you don't accept. I don't accept that lower organisms can do advanced planning. We have had this discussion many times. I do NOT claim that organisms plan in advance. The whole hypothesis depends on them responding to new conditions and opportunities. Over and over again I have offered the example of water-based organisms suddenly being confronted by the emergence of land. Some venturesome cell communities (organisms) will then make the changes that you attribute to divine preprogramming 3.?? billion years beforehand or your God personally dabbling with their genome. Not chance, but an inventive response to a new environment. Yes, it is a hypothesis. No, no one has ever seen the innovations that have led from bacteria to humans. The mechanism is unknown. But the fact that some eminent scientists believe cells to be intelligent gives the hypothesis a degree of credibility, as does the known ability of some organisms to change themselves adaptively (though not innovatively), which cannot entail advance planning.-dhw: All we can do is look at the history and come up with hypotheses that might explain it. Your own hypothesis entails a dislocation between your anthropocentrism and God's personal planning of all the wonders. Mine offers an all-embracing explanation with room both for your God and even for special attention to humans. DAVID: I don't view my approach as a dislocation. That is your interpretation of the evolution we see.-Acccording to you, your God's purpose was to produce humans, but he specifically preprogrammed or personally gave instructions for the building of the weaverbird's nest and you do not know what that has to do with the production of humans. (Remember “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature.”) That is the dislocation. -dhw: I seem to remember you occasionally granting the possibility that God is neither all-powerful nor all-knowing, and that he may be capable of learning from experience, or “becoming”, as in process theology. DAVID: That is true, but doesn't change my view that his ultimate goal was humans. -It doesn't have to. That would be the scenario in which God didn't know how to achieve his ultimate goal but learnt as he went along, with a few million experiments before he hit on the magic formula. Or he gave organisms a free evolutionary hand and later hit on the idea of humans and did a dabble.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Friday, January 15, 2016, 19:48 (3022 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Not chance, but an inventive response to a new environment. Yes, it is a hypothesis. No, no one has ever seen the innovations that have led from bacteria to humans. The mechanism is unknown. But the fact that some eminent scientists believe cells to be intelligent gives the hypothesis a degree of credibility, as does the known ability of some organisms to change themselves adaptively (though not innovatively), which cannot entail advance planning.-You are proposing stepwise epigenetic adaptations. This is not fish to land animals which is discussed n your opening sentence. Fish to land requires planning. > > dhw: Acccording to you, your God's purpose was to produce humans, but he specifically preprogrammed or personally gave instructions for the building of the weaverbird's nest and you do not know what that has to do with the production of humans. (Remember “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature.”) That is the dislocation. -I don't know how many times I must repeat: Human existence is the result of God's direction of evolution to produce them. Balance of nature ensures the food supply so evolution can progress. The human relationship to balance is indirect, not direct which is the intent of my quote you use. I should have been more clear. > > dhw: I seem to remember you occasionally granting the possibility that God is neither all-powerful nor all-knowing, and that he may be capable of learning from experience, or “becoming”, as in process theology. > DAVID: That is true, but doesn't change my view that his ultimate goal was humans. > > > dhw: It doesn't have to. That would be the scenario in which God didn't know how to achieve his ultimate goal but learnt as he went along, with a few million experiments before he hit on the magic formula. Or he gave organisms a free evolutionary hand and later hit on the idea of humans and did a dabble.-You don't like my assigning a goal to God's intentions, but you dabble with all sorts of God=driven scenarios to get to my goal. I don't feel it is necessary to do that. My balance of nature approach is enough for me.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: ...the fact that some eminent scientists believe cells to be intelligent gives the hypothesis [that organisms work out their own evolutionary changes] a degree of credibility, as does the known ability of some organisms to change themselves adaptively (though not innovatively), which cannot entail advance planning. DAVID: You are proposing stepwise epigenetic adaptations. This is not fish to land animals which is discussed in your opening sentence. Fish to land requires planning.-I explicitly referred to adaptation to illustrate the fact that organisms must have a mechanism enabling them to change themselves without prior planning. Nobody knows how innovations took place, but I doubt if there is a consensus among evolutionary scientists that the only possible methods are divine preprogramming and divine dabbling. I am offering an alternative to these and to random mutations.-dhw: Acccording to you, your God's purpose was to produce humans, but he specifically preprogrammed or personally gave instructions for the building of the weaverbird's nest and you do not know what that has to do with the production of humans. (Remember “human existence has nothing to do with the balance of nature.”) That is the dislocation. DAVID: I don't know how many times I must repeat: Human existence is the result of God's direction of evolution to produce them. Balance of nature ensures the food supply so evolution can progress. The human relationship to balance is indirect, not direct which is the intent of my quote you use. I should have been more clear.-I know you think God directed evolution in order to produce humans, and of course if there had not been food to sustain all the life forms and lifestyles during the 3.7? thousand million years before humans appeared, humans would not have appeared. But you have acknowledged many times that you don't know why God personally designed all the weird wonders. It is this gap that I am trying to fill. However, please see below. dhw: I seem to remember you occasionally granting the possibility that God is neither all-powerful nor all-knowing, and that he may be capable of learning from experience, or “becoming”, as in process theology. DAVID: That is true, but doesn't change my view that his ultimate goal was humans. dhw: It doesn't have to. That would be the scenario in which God didn't know how to achieve his ultimate goal but learnt as he went along, with a few million experiments before he hit on the magic formula. Or he gave organisms a free evolutionary hand and later hit on the idea of humans and did a dabble. DAVID: You don't like my assigning a goal to God's intentions, but you dabble with all sorts of God=driven scenarios to get to my goal. I don't feel it is necessary to do that. My balance of nature approach is enough for me.-Ever since humans became aware of God or invented him, they have tried to understand his thinking. Our discussions are part of a long tradition, but of course if you are satisfied that your scenario answers all the questions I have raised, we should move on.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Saturday, January 16, 2016, 19:54 (3021 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You don't like my assigning a goal to God's intentions, but you dabble with all sorts of God=driven scenarios to get to my goal. I don't feel it is necessary to do that. My balance of nature approach is enough for me. > > dhw: Ever since humans became aware of God or invented him, they have tried to understand his thinking. Our discussions are part of a long tradition, but of course if you are satisfied that your scenario answers all the questions I have raised, we should move on.-Yes, let us. Subject is exhausted.
Different in degree or kind: we sleep less
by David Turell , Monday, January 25, 2016, 15:38 (3012 days ago) @ David Turell
We get less, but deeper sleep than all other animals:-http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160121-the-strangest-thing-about-human-sleep-is-that-we-need-so-little-"Most of us sleep between six to nine hours a night, meaning we spend about a third of our lives asleep. This may seem like a long time, but we actually sleep the least among all the primates - the group that includes monkeys, apes and us.-"So says a new analysis looking at the impact sleep has had on our evolution. The new research suggests that humans have evolved to sleep less, but also to sleep very deeply. This may help explain our success as a species.-***-"The theory goes that although we sleep for fewer hours than other primates, the sleep that we have is of high quality so we do not need as much.-***-"To understand whether human sleep is unique, Samson and Nunn compared the sleep patterns of 21 primates, whose slumber patterns had already been analysed.-"As well as noting how long the animals slept for, they looked at how much time they spent in rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep. This is when we dream, and when our brain consolidates our memories into long-term storage.-"Humans slept the least. The sleepiest primates were grey mouse lemurs and night monkeys, which slept for 15 and 17 hours respectively.-"But in contrast, humans spent the highest proportion of their sleep in an REM state: almost 25%. "Humans therefore have the deepest sleep of any primate," says Samson.-"Humans therefore have the deepest sleep of any primate"-Comment: We are very different in every way.
Different in degree or kind: split off 6.6 myo?
by David Turell , Wednesday, February 03, 2016, 19:32 (3003 days ago) @ David Turell
If we split off from chimps 6.6 million years ago, is that enough time for random mutations to make the marked differences in skeletal structure and brain capacity we exhibit?-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160128155012.htm-"Based on this model, and using what we know about life history traits in apes, they revisit the question of when humans and other apes split. Accounting for changes to life history on the ape phylogeny suggests that mutation rates have declined toward the present, supporting the notion of a mutational slowdown. The resulting split time estimates reconcile the genetic and paleontological data, and in particular, they suggest that the human-chimp split may have occurred as recently as 6.6 MYA."-Comment: Eight myo ago is the usual estimate. This shorter time is more evidence against random mutations.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Sunday, February 07, 2016, 19:24 (2999 days ago) @ David Turell
A philosophy professor who sounds just like Adler:-http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Evolution-Nature-Evolutionary-Explanation/dp/0198250045/ref=la_B001H6KLPU_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454872458&sr=1-5-Abstract:-"In this controversial new book O'Hear takes a stand against the fashion for explaining human behavior in terms of evolution. He contends that while the theory of evolution is successful in explaining the development of the natural world in general, it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and our rationality we take on goals and ideals which cannot be justified in terms of survival-promotion or reproductive advantage. O'Hear examines the nature of human self-consciousness, and argues that evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty; in these we transcend our biological origins. It is our rationality that allows each of us to go beyond not only our biological but also our cultural inheritance: as the author says in the Preface, “we are prisoners neither of our genes nor of the ideas we encounter as we each make our personal and individual way through life.”.-***-Comment by a reviewer:-"O'Hear argues the contrary with respect to three aspects of human achievement: epistemology, morality, and beauty. His epistemological argument is the most cogent, I believe. Why do human being seek truth? The evolutionary epistemologist will say that truth-seeking is adaptive. But, no other species seeks truth. Why is truth-seeking adaptive for us alone? An evolutionary approach to knowledge suggests that an organism will seek truth only insofar as the fitness gains outweigh the search costs. Humans, on the other hand, appear to have an incessant, unquenchable, insistent, drive to understand the world around them. This drive cannot be deduced from evolutionary theory. Indeed, evolutionary theory shows that very often being deluded has a fitness advantage over knowing the truth.-***-"Despite the fact that O'Hear could have made a better argument for beauty had he dealt with the sensory exploitation of neural circuitry, I found myself in basic agreement with his thesis that the sense of beauty goes immeasurably beyond the survival requirements of our species, and obeys a natural dynamic that cannot be captured by survival of the fittest."-Comment: Smells of Adler's thinking. The difference in humans is enormous, and NOT required for survival. Ask both how and why!
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
DAVID: A philosophy professor who sounds just like Adler:-http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Evolution-Nature-Evolutionary-Explanation/dp/0198250045/re...-David's comment: Smells of Adler's thinking. The difference in humans is enormous, and NOT required for survival. Ask both how and why!-I shall only reproduce one quote, as it sums everything else up:-“O'Hear examines the nature of human self-consciousness, and argues that evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty; in these we transcend our biological origins.”-I am not going to minimize the gulf between our consciousness and that of our fellow animals, but I simply cannot accept the basic premises of this argument. All organisms are embarked on a quest for knowledge (a) of their environment, and (b) of how to cope with it and with any problems that might arise in the course of their existence, because if they were not, they would not survive. It is the scale of their search that marks the difference, but in the context of evolution, yet again it seems to me essential to point out that survival is not the only driving force: without the quest for IMPROVEMENT, life would not have needed to go beyond bacteria. Darwinian evolution attributes improvement to random mutations, followed by natural selection, but if we attribute it to a conscious quest (survival and improvement would probably have been very closely linked in the early days of homo), our own expansion of knowledge can be seen as an extension of that driving force. As regards morality, it always pains me to hear the subject even mentioned in this way. It's as if the writer has never heard of social organisms, which could not survive if they did not have clear rules to live by. Human societies down through the ages have also had different moral codes, but so long as those codes held society together or were not replaced by those of conquering nations, they survived. Social efficiency is the basis of morality, and I would argue that our morality is an extension of all the codes that have enabled other social organisms to survive. -I agree that in both cases - the quest for knowledge and the moral sense - our self-awareness has driven us far beyond our immediate needs, and that may also be the case with aesthetics. I don't know why Henry Hippo prefers Helen Hippo's looks to those of Hillary Hippo, or why Lily Lark prefers Larry's song to that of Leslie, any more than I know why some people prefer Monet to Magritte, or Bach to Beethoven, or blondes to brunettes, but although I accept that there is a difference here between the pragmatic and the aesthetic, they need not be unconnected. In brief, for all the gulf in scale, I don't see why anyone should believe that our quest for knowledge and our moral and aesthetic sense are not an evolutionary extension of the same characteristics to be found in our animal ancestors.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Monday, February 08, 2016, 21:18 (2998 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:In brief, for all the gulf in scale, I don't see why anyone should believe that our quest for knowledge and our moral and aesthetic sense are not an evolutionary extension of the same characteristics to be found in our animal ancestors.-Of course it is an evolutionary extension, just the magnitude is extremely surprising. Animals don't need the aesthetics we have, but it is nice we have them. Adler ascendant! Difference in kind, without question.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
Dhw: In brief, for all the gulf in scale, I don't see why anyone should believe that our quest for knowledge and our moral and aesthetic sense are not an evolutionary extension of the same characteristics to be found in our animal ancestors.-DAVID: Of course it is an evolutionary extension, just the magnitude is extremely surprising. Animals don't need the aesthetics we have, but it is nice we have them. Adler ascendant! Difference in kind, without question.-Since you agree with me that the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty are an evolutionary extension, you can hardly agree with O'Hear that “evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty”! Yes, the magnitude is surprising, but magnitude is a matter of degree, not kind.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 23:36 (2997 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Since you agree with me that the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty are an evolutionary extension, you can hardly agree with O'Hear that “evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty”! Yes, the magnitude is surprising, but magnitude is a matter of degree, not kind.-Perhaps I wasn't clear: I don't know how you are interpreting the above quote, but I fully believe evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account. There is no natural demand for aesthetics, as that was implication in my last response. We evolved from an ape group, but why did our brain end up with all of its extraneous value judgments that are not necessary for survival? It enriches our life which again is a value, not a necessity. We are very special.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
dhw: Since you agree with me that the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty are an evolutionary extension, you can hardly agree with O'Hear that “evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty”! Yes, the magnitude is surprising, but magnitude is a matter of degree, not kind.-DAVID: Perhaps I wasn't clear: I don't know how you are interpreting the above quote, but I fully believe evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account. There is no natural demand for aesthetics, as that was implication in my last response. We evolved from an ape group, but why did our brain end up with all of its extraneous value judgments that are not necessary for survival? It enriches our life which again is a value, not a necessity. We are very special.-You keep on about survival and you ignore the drive for improvement, which has to be integral to evolution since we have agreed that if survival was the only criterion, NOTHING was necessary beyond bacteria. You have also ignored O'Hear's references to the quest for knowledge and moral sense - both of which are clear extensions of the animal need for knowledge of the environment, and the need for individual social organisms to fit in with the requirements of the group. Even with aesthetics, I have offered a pretty obvious evolutionary link: there has to be some inbuilt aesthetic sense for individual males and females to choose their mates. The fact that we have developed these attributes on such a massive scale is indisputable, and yes indeed we are special. We are animals with special gifts. So are dogs and camels and whales...According to you, God gave them their special gifts too, so we are all special. And if God doesn't exist, we are still all special. Either way, you and I believe evolution is the process that has taken organisms far beyond what was necessary for life and survival. Improvement is therefore the driving force that offers a satisfactory evolutionary explanation for ALL the special qualities, including our own.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 14:45 (2996 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: You keep on about survival and you ignore the drive for improvement, which has to be integral to evolution since we have agreed that if survival was the only criterion, NOTHING was necessary beyond bacteria.-Correct. But where did that drive come from? Simply stating it exists does not explain it. A point for design.-> dhw: You have also ignored O'Hear's references to the quest for knowledge and moral sense - both of which are clear extensions of the animal need for knowledge of the environment, and the need for individual social organisms to fit in with the requirements of the group.-I deal with animals all the time, and you are vastly overstating and romanticizing animal need for knowledge. I have seen domesticated cats and pigs turn feral easily based on their built-in instincts rather automatically. Almost no animals have a moral sense, although it is noted here and there, but never at the human level.-> dhw: Even with aesthetics, I have offered a pretty obvious evolutionary link: there has to be some inbuilt aesthetic sense for individual males and females to choose their mates.-Come on, mainly pure sexual lust, all built-in just as we have it.-> dhw: The fact that we have developed these attributes on such a massive scale is indisputable, and yes indeed we are special. We are animals with special gifts. So are dogs and camels and whales...According to you, God gave them their special gifts too, so we are all special.-Yes we are all special, but your word 'special' does not imply the degrees of 'specialness' we see in humans. Your word 'special' does not recognize the gap as you glibly glide past the gap.-> dhw: And if God doesn't exist, we are still all special. Either way, you and I believe evolution is the process that has taken organisms far beyond what was necessary for life and survival. Improvement is therefore the driving force that offers a satisfactory evolutionary explanation for ALL the special qualities, including our own.-Yes, something drives evolution past where it should have gone. I have an answer, you won't accept any as to why improvement through evolution occurs.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
dhw: You keep on about survival and you ignore the drive for improvement, which has to be integral to evolution since we have agreed that if survival was the only criterion, NOTHING was necessary beyond bacteria. DAVID: Correct. But where did that drive come from? Simply stating it exists does not explain it. A point for design.-The point in dispute was your support for O'Hear that there is no evolutionary explanation for the quest for knowledge, a moral sense etc. The moment I offer you the evolutionary drive for improvement as an explanation, you scurry back to origins. My answer, as usual, is: origin unknown - possibly your God. DAVID: I deal with animals all the time, and you are vastly overstating and romanticizing animal need for knowledge. I have seen domesticated cats and pigs turn feral easily based on their built-in instincts rather automatically. Almost no animals have a moral sense, although it is noted here and there, but never at the human level.-None of these attributes are at the human level. I am neither overstating nor romanticizing, but simply pointing out that animals have to get to know their environment in order to survive, and social animals have to subordinate the interests of the individual to those of the community. These mark the early stages of a quest for knowledge and a moral sense.-dhw: Even with aesthetics, I have offered a pretty obvious evolutionary link: there has to be some inbuilt aesthetic sense for individual males and females to choose their mates. DAVID: Come on, mainly pure sexual lust, all built-in just as we have it.-Do you lust after every woman you see? In the animal kingdom, as in the human kingdom, individuals choose individuals. They won't tell you their choice depends on appearance, song, smell etc., but it does, and there you have the beginnings of what O'Hear calls “appreciation of beauty”. dhw: The fact that we have developed these attributes on such a massive scale is indisputable, and yes indeed we are special. We are animals with special gifts. So are dogs and camels and whales...According to you, God gave them their special gifts too, so we are all special. DAVID: Yes we are all special, but your word 'special' does not imply the degrees of 'specialness' we see in humans. Your word 'special' does not recognize the gap as you glibly glide past the gap.-On the contrary, over and over again I have emphasized the DEGREE of specialness and the size of the gap. See above my comment on the massiveness of the scale, and my response to the same accusation under “human consciousness”. But I also emphasize the logic of the evolutionary development from lesser to greater, as opposed to O'Hear's claim (with your support) that there is no evolutionary explanation. dhw: Improvement is therefore the driving force that offers a satisfactory evolutionary explanation for ALL the special qualities, including our own. DAVID: Yes, something drives evolution past where it should have gone. I have an answer, you won't accept any as to why improvement through evolution occurs.-I am pleased to see you now including improvement instead of emphasizing survival, and as usual I leave open the question of origins. But once organisms have a degree of awareness and the capability to improve (perhaps God-given), I would see improvement as inevitable.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Thursday, February 11, 2016, 18:30 (2995 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: None of these attributes are at the human level. I am neither overstating nor romanticizing, but simply pointing out that animals have to get to know their environment in order to survive, and social animals have to subordinate the interests of the individual to those of the community. These mark the early stages of a quest for knowledge and a moral sense.-The 'moral sense' is romanticizing! > > dhw: Do you lust after every woman you see? In the animal kingdom, as in the human kingdom, individuals choose individuals. They won't tell you their choice depends on appearance, song, smell etc., but it does, and there you have the beginnings of what O'Hear calls “appreciation of beauty”.-Only some species are monogamous.-> > dhw: On the contrary, over and over again I have emphasized the DEGREE of specialness and the size of the gap. See above my comment on the massiveness of the scale, and my response to the same accusation under “human consciousness”. But I also emphasize the logic of the evolutionary development from lesser to greater, as opposed to O'Hear's claim (with your support) that there is no evolutionary explanation.-Tell that to Thomas Nagel!-> DAVID: Yes, something drives evolution past where it should have gone. I have an answer, you won't accept any as to why improvement through evolution occurs. > > dhw: I am pleased to see you now including improvement instead of emphasizing survival, and as usual I leave open the question of origins. But once organisms have a degree of awareness and the capability to improve (perhaps God-given), I would see improvement as inevitable.-We know complexification occurred by the history we see. We do not know why or how, or based on bacteria, that it was even needed by the stresses of nature. It had to be a given process.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
dhw: None of these attributes are at the human level. I am neither overstating nor romanticizing, but simply pointing out that animals have to get to know their environment in order to survive, and social animals have to subordinate the interests of the individual to those of the community. These mark the early stages of a quest for knowledge and a moral sense. DAVID: The 'moral sense' is romanticizing!-The moral “sense” comes with self-awareness. You wouldn't have a moral sense if you did not have to weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the community. dhw: Do you lust after every woman you see? In the animal kingdom, as in the human kingdom, individuals choose individuals. They won't tell you their choice depends on appearance, song, smell etc., but it does, and there you have the beginnings of what O'Hear calls “appreciation of beauty”. DAVID: Only some species are monogamous.-Every act of mating is individual. Monogamy is irrelevant. Do you or do you not agree that “appreciation of beauty” in the form of appearance, song, smell etc. has a role in the animal kingdom? If you do, then there you have the evolutionary beginnings of aesthetics.-dhw: On the contrary, over and over again I have emphasized the DEGREE of specialness and the size of the gap. See above my comment on the massiveness of the scale, and my response to the same accusation under “human consciousness”. But I also emphasize the logic of the evolutionary development from lesser to greater, as opposed to O'Hear's claim (with your support) that there is no evolutionary explanation. DAVID: Tell that to Thomas Nagel!-I am pointing it out to you, in response to your support for O'Hear and your complaint that I understate the gap. Why bring in Nagel? DAVID: Yes, something drives evolution past where it should have gone. I have an answer, you won't accept any as to why improvement through evolution occurs. dhw: I am pleased to see you now including improvement instead of emphasizing survival, and as usual I leave open the question of origins. But once organisms have a degree of awareness and the capability to improve (perhaps God-given), I would see improvement as inevitable. DAVID: We know complexification occurred by the history we see. We do not know why or how, or based on bacteria, that it was even needed by the stresses of nature. It had to be a given process.-“Needed” is not the point, as that = survival. I don't know the origin of organic awareness and the ability to improve, but those would be the “given” factors. How they are used would then depend on the nature of the organism and of the environment. That is Chapter 2, entitled Evolution, in the Book of Life.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Friday, February 12, 2016, 18:46 (2994 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: The moral “sense” comes with self-awareness. You wouldn't have a moral sense if you did not have to weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the community.- You are applying lots of self-awareness to animals. Doesn't work.-> DAVID: Only some species are monogamous. > > dhw: Every act of mating is individual. Monogamy is irrelevant. Do you or do you not agree that “appreciation of beauty” in the form of appearance, song, smell etc. has a role in the animal kingdom? If you do, then there you have the evolutionary beginnings of aesthetics.-Yes there is sexual play and dances with animals. Note the displays are always the same like the peacock's tail, or the polar bears playing until exhausted, resting and then mating. The key is the romantic play doesn't vary. For my view of you, you are still attributing too much to original animal action rather than recognizing instinctual behavior. > DAVID: Tell that to Thomas Nagel! > > I am pointing it out to you, in response to your support for O'Hear and your complaint that I understate the gap. Why bring in Nagel?-Because Nagel raises the same questions as Adler. -> DAVID: We know complexification occurred by the history we see. We do not know why or how, or based on bacteria, that it was even needed by the stresses of nature. It had to be a given process. > > dhw: “Needed” is not the point, as that = survival. I don't know the origin of organic awareness and the ability to improve, but those would be the “given” factors. How they are used would then depend on the nature of the organism and of the environment. That is Chapter 2, entitled Evolution, in the Book of Life.-This is the point of Denton's new book: Is functional need important or is everything built into structural types created by natural law which then evolve by the patterns set in the beginning? This is thinking that pre-dated Darwin, and Denton feels it is making a comeback. Remember I recognized patterns a long time ago. Denton is teaching me another approach to the whole problem of why things complexify if they are surviving in a truly satisfactory fashion.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
dhw: The moral “sense” comes with self-awareness. You wouldn't have a moral sense if you did not have to weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the community. DAVID: You are applying lots of self-awareness to animals. Doesn't work.-No, the self-awareness is ours! My point is that morality has its evolutionary roots in the individual organism's relation to society, but our human self-awareness leads us to consciously articulate and question codes of behaviour to a degree far beyond animal “morality”. DAVID: Only some species are monogamous. dhw: Every act of mating is individual. Monogamy is irrelevant. Do you or do you not agree that “appreciation of beauty” in the form of appearance, song, smell etc. has a role in the animal kingdom? If you do, then there you have the evolutionary beginnings of aesthetics. DAVID: Yes there is sexual play and dances with animals. Note the displays are always the same like the peacock's tail, or the polar bears playing until exhausted, resting and then mating. The key is the romantic play doesn't vary. For my view of you, you are still attributing too much to original animal action rather than recognizing instinctual behavior. I am arguing that what you call instinctual behaviour is the basis of all three attributes singled out by O-Hear as inexplicable through evolution. Every peacock display is different. That is why individual females will choose one male in preference to another. Ditto throughout the animal and human kingdom. I am not saying that our fellow creatures have the same “appreciation of beauty” as us, but like everything else, through our self-awareness we have developed what you call instincts (the same instincts) far beyond the scope of their origins.-DAVID: We know complexification occurred by the history we see. We do not know why or how, or based on bacteria, that it was even needed by the stresses of nature. It had to be a given process. dhw: “Needed” is not the point, as that = survival. I don't know the origin of organic awareness and the ability to improve, but those would be the “given” factors. How they are used would then depend on the nature of the organism and of the environment. That is Chapter 2, entitled Evolution, in the Book of Life.-DAVID: This is the point of Denton's new book: Is functional need important or is everything built into structural types created by natural law which then evolve by the patterns set in the beginning? This is thinking that pre-dated Darwin, and Denton feels it is making a comeback. Remember I recognized patterns a long time ago. Denton is teaching me another approach to the whole problem of why things complexify if they are surviving in a truly satisfactory fashion.-It will be interesting to hear what he means by “patterns”. Since he is an agnostic, I can hardly believe he means a computer programme for all innovations set out by your God 3.8 billion years ago. I have suggested that his “telic law” is the drive for survival and improvement, and that this law is implemented by an in-built, autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism (origin unknown) within the cell/cell communities. I eagerly wait to hear his alternative.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Saturday, February 13, 2016, 15:22 (2993 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The moral “sense” comes with self-awareness. You wouldn't have a moral sense if you did not have to weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the community. > DAVID: You are applying lots of self-awareness to animals. Doesn't work. > > dhw: No, the self-awareness is ours! My point is that morality has its evolutionary roots in the individual organism's relation to society, but our human self-awareness leads us to consciously articulate and question codes of behaviour to a degree far beyond animal “morality”.-Exactly. You are supporting Adler.- > dhw: I am not saying that our fellow creatures have the same “appreciation of beauty” as us, but like everything else, through our self-awareness we have developed what you call instincts (the same instincts) far beyond the scope of their origins.-Exactly. Different in kind.-> DAVID: This is the point of Denton's new book: Is functional need important or is everything built into structural types created by natural law which then evolve by the patterns set in the beginning? This is thinking that pre-dated Darwin, and Denton feels it is making a comeback. Remember I recognized patterns a long time ago. Denton is teaching me another approach to the whole problem of why things complexify if they are surviving in a truly satisfactory fashion. > > dhw:It will be interesting to hear what he means by “patterns”. Since he is an agnostic, I can hardly believe he means a computer programme for all innovations set out by your God 3.8 billion years ago. I have suggested that his “telic law” is the drive for survival and improvement, and that this law is implemented by an in-built, autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism (origin unknown) within the cell/cell communities. I eagerly wait to hear his alternative.-His basic point is Darwin doesn't work at all. He is looking for a third way, not chance or design, but something that follows natural laws. Like Nagel. This is the hope of non-believers.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
dhw: The moral “sense” comes with self-awareness. You wouldn't have a moral sense if you did not have to weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the community. DAVID: You are applying lots of self-awareness to animals. Doesn't work.-dhw: No, the self-awareness is ours! My point is that morality has its evolutionary roots in the individual organism's relation to society, but our human self-awareness leads us to consciously articulate and question codes of behaviour to a degree far beyond animal “morality”. DAVID: Exactly. You are supporting Adler.-I didn't know Adler agreed that morality has its evolutionary roots in the individual organism's relation to society. Good. As with the quest for knowledge and aesthetics, this has developed to a degree far beyond the original roots. Degree = degree. The rest of the non-argument is covered in the thread on human consciousness. DAVID: This is the point of Denton's new book: Is functional need important or is everything built into structural types created by natural law which then evolve by the patterns set in the beginning? This is thinking that pre-dated Darwin, and Denton feels it is making a comeback. Remember I recognized patterns a long time ago. Denton is teaching me another approach to the whole problem of why things complexify if they are surviving in a truly satisfactory fashion. dhw:It will be interesting to hear what he means by “patterns”. Since he is an agnostic, I can hardly believe he means a computer programme for all innovations set out by your God 3.8 billion years ago. I have suggested that his “telic law” is the drive for survival and improvement, and that this law is implemented by an in-built, autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism (origin unknown) within the cell/cell communities. I eagerly wait to hear his alternative.-DAVID: His basic point is Darwin doesn't work at all. He is looking for a third way, not chance or design, but something that follows natural laws. Like Nagel. This is the hope of non-believers.-When you say Darwin doesn't work, I presume you mean random mutations (nothing new there), or does he dismiss common descent? The hypothesis I have suggested above has absolutely nothing to do with belief or non-belief in God. It is an explanation of how evolution works, whether set up by God or not.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Sunday, February 14, 2016, 15:26 (2992 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: His basic point is Darwin doesn't work at all. He is looking for a third way, not chance or design, but something that follows natural laws. Like Nagel. This is the hope of non-believers. > > dhw: When you say Darwin doesn't work, I presume you mean random mutations (nothing new there), or does he dismiss common descent? -He accepts that life evolved. Just starting his third book, it appears to me he totally rejects Darwin's mechanisms.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
DAVID: His [Denton's] basic point is Darwin doesn't work at all. He is looking for a third way, not chance or design, but something that follows natural laws. Like Nagel. This is the hope of non-believers.-dhw: When you say Darwin doesn't work, I presume you mean random mutations (nothing new there), or does he dismiss common descent? -DAVID: He accepts that life evolved. Just starting his third book, it appears to me he totally rejects Darwin's mechanisms.-Darwin's mechanisms are random mutations followed by natural selection. You and I have long since rejected random mutations, and have agreed that natural selection only preserves changes that have already taken place. I'll be very interested to know what new ideas he brings to the table.
Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Monday, February 15, 2016, 18:58 (2991 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Darwin's mechanisms are random mutations followed by natural selection. You and I have long since rejected random mutations, and have agreed that natural selection only preserves changes that have already taken place. I'll be very interested to know what new ideas he brings to the table.-Denton in my current reading points out that Darwin's theory requires that natural stress is required for tiny adaptations to appear, so natural selection can act on them. I'm not to new ideas yet as he is simply picking Darwin apart, and quoting others (i.e. Gould) who have done the same. Macroevolution is a huge problem for Darwin.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Monday, February 15, 2016, 21:05 (2991 days ago) @ David Turell
A new column by Denton on fine tuning:-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/02/natural_life_fi102566.html-"In the Darwinian view, life is an artifactual thing, something apart from nature, its constituent bio-forms mere "contingent assemblages," artifacts of deep time and chance. This view is surely one of the strangest inferences in the history of human thought, and an inference for which there never was the slightest rational justification. ***-"The 20th-century cosmological evidence that the universe is fine-tuned for life is based on the observation that if the various fundamental forces and constants which determine the structure of the cosmos and the properties of its constituents did not have precisely the values they do, there would be no stars, no supernovae, no planets, no atoms, and certainly no life. -"If the laws of nature are, for whatever reason, fine-tuned to generate environmental conditions ideally suited to the forms of life that exist on earth, so fine-tuned that, as Davies confesses, "the impression of design is over-whelming,"1 it certainly is not so outrageous to envisage that they might be also biologically fine-tuned to generate the grand hierarchy of forms themselves.-"Lawrence Henderson implies in his 1913 classic The Fitness of the Environment that at least the basic biochemical design of life is immanent in the properties of matter and not an artifact of time and chance as Darwinism implies. Further confirmation of the unique chemical fitness of the cosmos for carbon-based life has come from the recent discovery of a vast and growing inventory of organic compounds in space, including some of the key monomers used in the building of the proteins and nucleic acid polymers in extant life on earth. The evidence that the cosmos is uniquely fit for carbon-based life as it exists on earth (including advanced forms utilizing oxidation as an energy source) is now so compelling that in searching for extraterrestrial life, scientists at NASA "follow the water"2 and look for oxygen in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets as a signature of life.3-"The discovery that the cosmos is fine-tuned in this way provides powerful circumstantial support for the "laws of form" biology and the notion that life's basic designs -- the taxa-defining novelties, Bauplans, etc. -- are immanent in the world-order. If nature is so fine-tuned for life's environment, might the fine-tuning not also extend to the generative arena and include a set of laws of form, geared to actualize the forms of life on earth? The extrapolation is intriguing and very hard to resist. It is particularly hard to resist considering that the fitness of the cosmic, chemical, and physiological environment for life as it exists on earth does not stop with simple microbial life. It extends even to higher organisms like ourselves. -"There is no doubt this cosmological fine-tuning provides a very powerful line of circumstantial evidence, drawn ironically from outside the biological sciences, for a return to a structuralist biology and the notion that life's origin and evolution were built into the order of nature from the moment of the Big Bang."-Comment: Again he refers back to patterns of form that are built into the order of nature. Note the paragraph in bold. Evolution is not caused by the forces and processes in Darwin's theory. I do not deny that common descent is reasonable from what we see.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
dhw: Darwin's mechanisms are random mutations followed by natural selection. You and I have long since rejected random mutations, and have agreed that natural selection only preserves changes that have already taken place. I'll be very interested to know what new ideas he brings to the table.-DAVID: Denton in my current reading points out that Darwin's theory requires that natural stress is required for tiny adaptations to appear, so natural selection can act on them. I'm not to new ideas yet as he is simply picking Darwin apart, and quoting others (i.e. Gould) who have done the same. Macroevolution is a huge problem for Darwin.-Macroevolution is a huge problem for all of us! Thank you for the latest post on Denton's thinking. It begins with the following:-“Cosmological fine-tuning has long been a staple of the argument for intelligent design. It is, perhaps, not a mere coincidence that the laws of physics must be exactly as they are for life to exist in the cosmos and that, if they were different, life would be impossible. But there is another application of this argument that strongly supports the structuralist understanding of biology that says life is a natural part of the world order.”-You have also quoted: ”If the laws of nature are, for whatever reason, fine-tuned to generate environmental conditions ideally suited to the forms of life that exist on earth....etc.)-I can see why the ID folk love Denton, but these quotes sound alarm bells for me. The moment someone starts talking about the laws of nature, we have fudge. So far, all the argument amounts to is: we have life; we wouldn't have life if we didn't have conditions suitable for life; therefore it all looks designed; therefore God (your view)/natural laws (the atheist view) produced the conditions suitable for life and then produced life. That's fudge. But this may be grossly unfair and my misgivings may be unfounded, so let's wait and see what else he comes up with. Thank you for keeping us posted.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 19:02 (2990 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: I can see why the ID folk love Denton,....so let's wait and see what else he comes up with. Thank you for keeping us posted.-Please note the following quote from a Christian ID'er:-"To understand more fully why Christian Theism is on a totally different pathway than Darwinian evolution, we can subject the two models to a sequential analysis:-"In the case of Teleological Theism, the design precedes and shapes the process. In the case of Darwinian Evolution-the process precedes and shapes the design (appearance of). Notice that there can be no reconciliation. To affirm one perspective is to negate the other. Either God's real design precedes and shapes the process (Teleological Theism) or, the evolutionary process precedes and shapes the appearance of design (Neo-Darwinism). It must be one or the other. It cannot be both." -http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/god-and-darwin-why-they-simply-cannot-co-exist/-A view of God running evolution, to which I agree. Both Denton and Nagel are looking for a third way, as are you. Good luck in finding it among all the natural law fudges.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 20:02 (2990 days ago) @ David Turell
In chapter 3 of his book Denton's describes the accepted fact that once multicellularity appears there are primordial 'types' of structures that simply appear with no precursors, equivalent to what I call patterns, the one type of limbs an example. Darwin does not explain this. He only explains the modifications that occur afterward. Denton offers a cladogram which I cannot reproduce here, but it offers: jaws appear with fish; limbs appear with amphibians; amniotic eggs appear with reptiles; hair appears with marsupials; placenta appears primates. In each case there are no precursors. It is all saltation! He believes in natural processes with the result " that the entire pattern of evolution was prefigured into the order of things from the beginning."
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 21:25 (2990 days ago) @ David Turell
A summary of chapter 2 from the ID site: - http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/denton-still-a-theory-in-crisis-part-2/ - Conclusion of chapter 2: - "It is ironic that the very evidence for believing that microevolution has indeed occurred in cases like the finches—an empirically known or readily envisaged continuum of forms leading from an ancestral form A to descendant form B—is precisely the evidence that is lacking when attempting to account for macroevolution and the origin of the defining features (feathers, hands, mammary glands, hair, the placenta, flowers, body plan, etc.) of the major taxa." - Comment: It is a nice article which quotes biologists, like Gould, who point out the gaps.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
dhw: I can see why the ID folk love Denton,....so let's wait and see what else he comes up with. Thank you for keeping us posted. DAVID: Please note the following quote from a Christian ID'er: -http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/god-and-darwin-why-they-simply-cannot...-The article begins: "As UD readers know, Charles Darwin changed history when he argued that naturalistic processes, acting alone, can drive the macro-evolutionary process from beginning to end. His earth-shattering message was that nature's pseudo-creative mechanism can mimic the work of a designing Creator. That he could not support his claim with empirical evidence did not seem to bother him very much."-And it doesn't seem to bother the author very much that Darwin was an agnostic who in later editions of his Origin frequently referred to the Creator as the maker of this so-called “pseudo-creative mechanism”, and repeatedly pointed out that his theory did not conflict with religious belief. QUOTE: "In the case of Teleological Theism, the design precedes and shapes the process. In the case of Darwinian Evolution-the process precedes and shapes the design (appearance of). Notice that there can be no reconciliation. To affirm one perspective is to negate the other. Either God's real design precedes and shapes the process (Teleological Theism) or, the evolutionary process precedes and shapes the appearance of design (Neo-Darwinism). It must be one or the other. It cannot be both." -Of course it can be both. Once again we are confronted with someone who insists that he knows God's purpose. All the criteria for teleological theism would be satisfied by a God who designed a process that would shape its own course in order to satisfy his purpose of seeing what his invention might produce. Even in terms of Christianity, you can find an analogy by arguing that God gave humans free will to shape their own course: the design of humans thus precedes and shapes the process of exercising free will, and free will precedes and shapes the individual's evolution.-David's comment: A view of God running evolution, to which I agree. Both Denton and Nagel are looking for a third way, as are you. Good luck in finding it among all the natural law fudges.-I'm glad you agree with my scepticism concerning natural law, which matches my scepticism concerning a sourceless mind creating and controlling billions of solar systems in order to create humans.-xxx-DAVID: A summary of chapter 2 from the ID site:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/denton-still-a-theory-in-crisis-part-2/-Conclusion of chapter 2: "It is ironic that the very evidence for believing that microevolution has indeed occurred in cases like the finches—an empirically known or readily envisaged continuum of forms leading from an ancestral form A to descendant form B—is precisely the evidence that is lacking when attempting to account for macroevolution and the origin of the defining features (feathers, hands, mammary glands, hair, the placenta, flowers, body plan, etc.) of the major taxa." David's comment: It is a nice article which quotes biologists, like Gould, who point out the gaps.-Of course we accept microevolution, and of course we all know that macroevolution or innovation is the problem, and Darwin raised it himself, and no one has solved it. How often does this point have to be made?-DAVID: In chapter 3 of his book Denton's describes the accepted fact that once multicellularity appears there are primordial 'types' of structures that simply appear with no precursors, equivalent to what I call patterns, the one type of limbs an example. Darwin does not explain this. He only explains the modifications that occur afterward. Denton offers a cladogram which I cannot reproduce here, but it offers: jaws appear with fish; limbs appear with amphibians; amniotic eggs appear with reptiles; hair appears with marsupials; placenta appears primates. In each case there are no precursors. It is all saltation! He believes in natural processes with the result "that the entire pattern of evolution was prefigured into the order of things from the beginning."-It all started by chance and carried on via random mutations (Dawkinism), God prefigured it (Turellism), and now nature prefigured it (Dentonism). We simply haven't a clue. Admirably, we keep searching...but so far, I fear, this search has only provided us with more fudge.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Thursday, February 18, 2016, 01:08 (2989 days ago) @ dhw
> QUOTE: "In the case of Teleological Theism, the design precedes and shapes the process. In the case of Darwinian Evolution-the process precedes and shapes the design (appearance of). Notice that there can be no reconciliation. To affirm one perspective is to negate the other. Either God's real design precedes and shapes the process (Teleological Theism) or, the evolutionary process precedes and shapes the appearance of design (Neo-Darwinism). It must be one or the other. It cannot be both." > > dhw: Of course it can be both. Once again we are confronted with someone who insists that he knows God's purpose. All the criteria for teleological theism would be satisfied by a God who designed a process that would shape its own course in order to satisfy his purpose of seeing what his invention might produce.-I think you have mis-read what he wrote. We see evolution. Either it is a natural process based on a materialist origin or it is a created process in which the designer, either set it up to run on its own or guided it. There is no third choice, just a second option with two methods.-> xxx > > dhw: It all started by chance and carried on via random mutations (Dawkinism), God prefigured it (Turellism), and now nature prefigured it (Dentonism). We simply haven't a clue. Admirably, we keep searching...but so far, I fear, this search has only provided us with more fudge.-I know you like chocolate, and no one is fudging. I'll present more of Denton as I have time to read him. I do think the wish for a third way is very wishful thinking.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
QUOTE (from ID website): "In the case of Teleological Theism, the design precedes and shapes the process. In the case of Darwinian Evolution-the process precedes and shapes the design (appearance of). Notice that there can be no reconciliation. To affirm one perspective is to negate the other. Either God's real design precedes and shapes the process (Teleological Theism) or, the evolutionary process precedes and shapes the appearance of design (Neo-Darwinism). It must be one or the other. It cannot be both." -dhw: Of course it can be both. Once again we are confronted with someone who insists that he knows God's purpose. All the criteria for teleological theism would be satisfied by a God who designed a process that would shape its own course in order to satisfy his purpose of seeing what his invention might produce.-DAVID: I think you have mis-read what he wrote. We see evolution. Either it is a natural process based on a materialist origin or it is a created process in which the designer, either set it up to run on its own or guided it. There is no third choice, just a second option with two methods.-Darwinian evolution does not cover the ORIGIN of the mechanisms that run evolution. That is why - in contrast to your author's claims - Darwin's theory is perfectly compatible with teleological theism. In the scenario I have suggested, your God's design in the form of an inventive evolutionary mechanism precedes and shapes the free-running process of evolution, and the inventive evolutionary mechanism precedes and shapes each design it comes up with. Your author has misrepresented Darwin (as I pointed out in the earlier section of my post), and you have mis-read your author. Your own account is exactly right, and within evolution itself the incompatibility lies between free-running and preprogramming (which you prefer to call “guided”), which hinges not on teleology as such but on one's interpretation of your God's purpose. Even this can be “reconciled”, however, if you allow for free running and occasional dabbling (another form of “guidance”).-xxx-dhw: It all started by chance and carried on via random mutations (Dawkinism), God prefigured it (Turellism), and now nature prefigured it (Dentonism). We simply haven't a clue. Admirably, we keep searching...but so far, I fear, this search has only provided us with more fudge.-DAVID: I know you like chocolate, and no one is fudging. I'll present more of Denton as I have time to read him. I do think the wish for a third way is very wishful thinking.-If Denton's third way is the laws of nature, I would rank it alongside the other two ways as “fudging”, but by all means call all three "wishful thinking" instead. By fudge, I simply mean the avoidance of awkward questions, or of giving precise details, and let's face it, no one can give us precise details concerning how life and consciousness arose. That is why it is a never-ending subject of research and discussion. But again, all this may be unfair on Denton. I can only comment on what you tell us.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Thursday, February 18, 2016, 14:18 (2988 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw; Darwinian evolution does not cover the ORIGIN of the mechanisms that run evolution. That is why - in contrast to your author's claims - Darwin's theory is perfectly compatible with teleological theism. - Whoa! What Darwin says is the mechanism of evolution just IS. Darwin says RM/NS does it all, no planning, just natural process. For Darwin origin is not n issue. - > dhw: Your own account is exactly right, - And is in direct agreement with the author, who is simply saying there are two possibilities. More Denton to come. Briefly in his next chapter he lists innumerable patterns or types that simply ARE for no functionally obvious reason. For example most insects have eleven joints in their antennae.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
dhw; Darwinian evolution does not cover the ORIGIN of the mechanisms that run evolution. That is why - in contrast to your author's claims - Darwin's theory is perfectly compatible with teleological theism. - DAVID: Whoa! What Darwin says is the mechanism of evolution just IS. Darwin says RM/NS does it all, no planning, just natural process. For Darwin origin is not an issue. - And that is how your author misrepresents Darwin. He wrote that Darwin's “earth-shattering message was that nature's pseudo-creative mechanism can mimic the work of a designing Creator”. But if the Creator created the mechanism (= origin) - and with all his references to the Creator, Darwin clearly allows for that to be the case - his mechanism “precedes and shapes the process (Teleological Theism)” which “precedes and shapes the appearance of design (Neo-Darwinism)”! No either/or. My inventive mechanism hypothesis could be seen as God's invention of something deliberately mimicking his own work, but even Darwin's mechanism of random mutations and natural selection has still produced “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful” (Origin of Species) - as your God might have known it would - so why should an open-ended experiment, God's own let's see-what-will-happen mechanism, not be regarded as his purpose? Once more, evolutionary theory and teleological theism are not incompatible if God invented the mechanism that runs evolution - but they may of course be incompatible if individual humans insist that God's purpose corresponds to their own personal religious or anthropocentric readings of his mind.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Saturday, February 20, 2016, 01:02 (2987 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:Once more, evolutionary theory and teleological theism are not incompatible if God invented the mechanism that runs evolution - but they may of course be incompatible if individual humans insist that God's purpose corresponds to their own personal religious or anthropocentric readings of his mind. - If God is inventing and/or running the process, he must have purposes in mind. Why not look at end products to interpret the purpose?
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
dhw: Once more, evolutionary theory and teleological theism are not incompatible if God invented the mechanism that runs evolution - but they may of course be incompatible if individual humans insist that God's purpose corresponds to their own personal religious or anthropocentric readings of his mind.-DAVID: If God is inventing and/or running the process, he must have purposes in mind. Why not look at end products to interpret the purpose?-The discussion was not about purpose as such but about the ID author's insistence that Darwinism and teleological theism were incompatible. I have gone to great lengths to explain why this argument is based on a false premise, because Darwinism allows for God creating the mechanism for evolution. I will assume you now accept that your author got it wrong. In response to your comment above, firstly, we don't know what the “end product” will be, unless you think Earth and evolution are about to disappear. But if you mean the products that exist now, we have a remarkable variety of them, including bacteria, ants, humans, elephants, mosquitoes, dogs....I needn't go on. If I believed in God, I would assume that this variety is what he wanted when he invented the process. Part of the fun may have been watching evolution come up with the unexpected (who wants to watch a show in which every development is known beforehand?). The more higgledy-piggledy, the more entertaining. Even if you think humans are special (and of course I can see why you do), I can imagine him saying: “Oh, look what my random mutations / my inventive mechanisms have come up with now!” Or he may have wanted humans and not known how to make them, so he occasionally intervened in the evolutionary process (“Let's get rid of those damned dinosaurs for a start.”) Or he may suddenly have had a wonderful idea a few million years ago and thought: “I know, let's make humans” and fiddled around with the mechanisms inside a group of apes (we can't tell if the IM did it, random mutations did it, or God fiddled - it's still common descent)....Unlike you, I do not claim to be able to read God's mind, but when I look at the products that exist now, and at the higgledy-piggledy history of life on Earth, any one of the above explanations seems to me to fit in perfectly with both teleological theism and evolutionary theory. But they may not fit in with your own personal reading of your God's mind, purpose and character.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Saturday, February 20, 2016, 14:47 (2986 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw:The discussion was not about purpose as such but about the ID author's insistence that Darwinism and teleological theism were incompatible. I have gone to great lengths to explain why this argument is based on a false premise, because Darwinism allows for God creating the mechanism for evolution. I will assume you now accept that your author got it wrong.-Of course theistic evolution and Darwin theory are not compatible. Evolution appears the same in both but the driving ofrces aree totally different. > > dhw: If I believed in God, I would assume that this variety is what he wanted when he invented the process. Part of the fun may have been watching evolution come up with the unexpected (who wants to watch a show in which every development is known beforehand?). The more higgledy-piggledy, the more entertaining.-Why does it have to be entertaining? God giggling is your form of anthropomorphizing Him.-> dhw: Unlike you, I do not claim to be able to read God's mind, but when I look at the products that exist now, and at the higgledy-piggledy history of life on Earth, any one of the above explanations seems to me to fit in perfectly with both teleological theism and evolutionary theory. But they may not fit in with your own personal reading of your God's mind, purpose and character.-They fit perfectly because on the surface they both look exactly alike.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
dhw: The discussion was not about purpose as such but about the ID author's insistence that Darwinism and teleological theism were incompatible. I have gone to great lengths to explain why this argument is based on a false premise, because Darwinism allows for God creating the mechanism for evolution. I will assume you now accept that your author got it wrong. DAVID: Of course theistic evolution and Darwin theory are not compatible. Evolution appears the same in both but the driving ofrces aree totally different.-You still haven't latched onto the fact that there are TWO driving forces: one that set the process in motion, and one that actually drives the process itself. Darwin does not deal with the one that set the process in motion. His theory allows for this to be your God. From then on, we are dealing with the second driving force, and I gave you various scenarios in which your God's mechanism fits in with the history of evolution.-dhw: If I believed in God, I would assume that this variety is what he wanted when he invented the process. Part of the fun may have been watching evolution come up with the unexpected (who wants to watch a show in which every development is known beforehand?). The more higgledy-piggledy, the more entertaining. DAVID: Why does it have to be entertaining? God giggling is your form of anthropomorphizing Him.-It doesn't “have to be” anything. The above scenario explains the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution in terms of God's possible purpose. You believe that humans were the purpose, so I have also offered you scenarios in which humans are special. I'm not asking you to believe any of these different options. I am merely explaining how teleological theism can be perfectly compatible with Darwinian evolution.-dhw: Unlike you, I do not claim to be able to read God's mind, but when I look at the products that exist now, and at the higgledy-piggledy history of life on Earth, any one of the above explanations seems to me to fit in perfectly with both teleological theism and evolutionary theory. But they may not fit in with your own personal reading of your God's mind, purpose and character.-DAVID: They fit perfectly because on the surface they both look exactly alike.-Thank you. Yes, evolution will look the same whether your God planned it all or set it up to run its own free course through random mutations or an autonomous inventive mechanism. Which of them is correct we have no way of knowing, but if God exists, we can argue that whatever may have been his purpose, he set up the mechanism, the mechanism produced the history of evolution as we know it, and that history is what he intended. Therefore, since Darwin did not discount the existence of God as the prime mover, teleological theism and Darwinian evolution are compatible.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Sunday, February 21, 2016, 15:55 (2985 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Of course theistic evolution and Darwin theory are not compatible. Evolution appears the same in both but the driving forces are totally different. > > dhw: You still haven't latched onto the fact that there are TWO driving forces: one that set the process in motion, and one that actually drives the process itself. Darwin does not deal with the one that set the process in motion. His theory allows for this to be your God. From then on, we are dealing with the second driving force, and I gave you various scenarios in which your God's mechanism fits in with the history of evolution.-Of course I know there are two parts to this. I'm not discussing the first part when I say that evolution will look alike either with Darwin chance or theistic guidance, but those two processes are totally different in driving force. For the original 'force' here must be planning and planning demands mentation. See my other entry today. > > dhw: Unlike you, I do not claim to be able to read God's mind, but when I look at the products that exist now, and at the higgledy-piggledy history of life on Earth, any one of the above explanations seems to me to fit in perfectly with both teleological theism and evolutionary theory. -> DAVID: They fit perfectly because on the surface they both look exactly alike. > > Thank you. Yes, evolution will look the same whether your God planned it all or set it up to run its own free course through random mutations or an autonomous inventive mechanism.... Therefore, since Darwin did not discount the existence of God as the prime mover, teleological theism and Darwinian evolution are compatible.-No! Darwin's mechanism is chance, theological evolution is mental planning, but they look the same! That Darwin accepted the possibility of God is beside the point. I'm looking at mechanism only.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
dhw: Unlike you, I do not claim to be able to read God's mind, but when I look at the products that exist now, and at the higgledy-piggledy history of life on Earth, any one of the above explanations seems to me to fit in perfectly with both teleological theism and evolutionary theory. DAVID: They fit perfectly because on the surface they both look exactly alike. Dhw: Thank you. Yes, evolution will look the same whether your God planned it all or set it up to run its own free course through random mutations or an autonomous inventive mechanism.... Therefore, since Darwin did not discount the existence of God as the prime mover, teleological theism and Darwinian evolution are compatible. DAVID: No! Darwin's mechanism is chance, theological evolution is mental planning, but they look the same! That Darwin accepted the possibility of God is beside the point. I'm looking at mechanism only.-Perhaps I should have been more precise. The question of compatibility depends on two interrelated subjective factors. Your basic assumption is that God's purpose was the creation of humans, and he preprogrammed or directly “guided” evolution in order to fulfil it. Here is an ALTERNATIVE reading of evolution and God's purpose: evolution is a higgledy-piggledy history of RANDOM comings and goings, and what we now see is a variety of living forms which may one day be replaced by different living forms. So that must be what God intended, which is why he deliberately created a mechanism that would provide a RANDOMLY changing array of life forms. And what God intended is what we mean by theistic teleology. -The scenarios that I gave you in my earlier post even allow for humans to have a special place through God's intervention (maybe he tweaked a few apes so that they could become humans), but they also allow for Darwin's random mutations as well as for my inventive mechanism. All of them illustrate the compatibility between Darwinian evolution and theistic teleology, based on a purpose derived from the history of evolution. What they do not allow for, however, is God's preplanning of every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sake of producing humans, i.e. his control of the whole process. The alternative is that he did not WANT control of the whole process. Your personal, subjective version of how evolution works is based on your personal, subjective interpretation of God's purpose, and so the claim that Darwinian evolution is not compatible with theistic teleology depends on a purely subjective interpretation of God's purpose. Conversely it can also depend on a subjective atheistic interpretation of Darwin's theory, all too frequent on both sides of the fence, ignoring Darwin's own statements about it.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Monday, February 22, 2016, 15:11 (2984 days ago) @ dhw
[/i] > DAVID: No! Darwin's mechanism is chance, theological evolution is mental planning, but they look the same! That Darwin accepted the possibility of God is beside the point. I'm looking at mechanism only. > > dhw: Here is an ALTERNATIVE reading of evolution and God's purpose: evolution is a higgledy-piggledy history of RANDOM comings and goings, and what we now see is a variety of living forms which may one day be replaced by different living forms.... And what God intended is what we mean by theistic teleology.-Once again you do not see the implications of your theory: 'Random comings and goings' are another way of saying chance mutations, which you reject. Various parts of your comings and goings just don't fit together. > > dhw: The scenarios that I gave you in my earlier post even allow for humans to have a special place through God's intervention (maybe he tweaked a few apes so that they could become humans), but they also allow for Darwin's random mutations as well as for my inventive mechanism.-See my objection above.-> dhw: The alternative is that he did not WANT control of the whole process.-If God is the creator of the universe and life, it is against all reason that he would invent and start evolution and then give up control, when he obviously controlled everything else.-> dhw: Your personal, subjective version of how evolution works is based on your personal, subjective interpretation of God's purpose, and so the claim that Darwinian evolution is not compatible with theistic teleology depends on a purely subjective interpretation of God's purpose.-Your reasoning doesn't follow at all. With Darwin's chance progress of evolution, there is no way of knowing what will ever appear. That we appeared must be recognized as a high significant event, that to any open mind must suggest at least the appearance of intent.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
dhw: Your basic assumption is that God's purpose was the creation of humans, and he preprogrammed or directly “guided” evolution in order to fulfil it. Here is an ALTERNATIVE reading of evolution and God's purpose: evolution is a higgledy-piggledy history of RANDOM comings and goings, and what we now see is a variety of living forms which may one day be replaced by different living forms. So that must be what God intended, which is why he deliberately created a mechanism that would provide a RANDOMLY changing array of life forms. And what God intended is what we mean by theistic teleology. -DAVID: Once again you do not see the implications of your theory: 'Random comings and goings' are another way of saying chance mutations, which you reject. Various parts of your comings and goings just don't fit together.-You omitted the sentence I have put in bold, and have missed the whole point of my post. I am explaining how Darwin's theory can be compatible with teleological theism: i.e. how “God's real design precedes and shapes the process” (by creating the mechanism that runs the process) and how the “evolutionary process precedes and shapes the appearance of design” (the mechanism produces the life forms which appear to be designed). God's ALTERNATIVE PURPOSE (teleology) was NOT to produce humans, but to see what random mutations or an autonomous mechanism would bring forth - much as you can say that an automatic lottery machine is designed to produce random results. (NB The results are still meaningful, but they are not preprogrammed.) What you and I accept or reject has nothing to do with it. This ALTERNATIVE PURPOSE explains the random comings and goings of life forms for the last 3.8 billion years. (The random comings and goings would be the result of random changes in the environment - still allowing for my IM - and/or Darwin's random mutations.) In other words, as I wrote, “he did not WANT control of the whole process”. Why? Perhaps because he created life as an experiment or entertainment, just to see what would happen. -DAVID: If God is the creator of the universe and life, it is against all reason that he would invent and start evolution and then give up control, when he obviously controlled everything else.-The attraction of the experiment or entertainment would be NOT to have control. It is more interesting to watch a spectacle if you do NOT know what is going to happen next. (Free will would be another example of God deliberately giving up control.) Perhaps you will object that such a purpose anthropomorphizes God, but I'm afraid you do not have the authority to limit teleology to what you want it to be, as I'm sure you would be told by the Christian ID-er whose arguments you are supporting. Of course you have every right to reject the deliberately random scenario and to stick to your 3.8-billion-year computer programme for the purpose of producing humans, but this only proves that “the claim that Darwinian evolution is not compatible with theistic teleology depends on a purely subjective interpretation of God's purpose.”
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Wednesday, February 24, 2016, 20:05 (2982 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: So that must be what God intended, which is why he deliberately created a mechanism that would provide a RANDOMLY changing array of life forms. And what God intended is what we mean by theistic teleology. [/i]-That is what you mean by theistic evolution. My definition is that God invented the mechanism of evolution and controls its outcome. And the final evidence in human beings, not the bush of organisms on the way, which are necessary for a balance in nature so everyone gets energy for life to survive. > > DAVID: Once again you do not see the implications of your theory: 'Random comings and goings' are another way of saying chance mutations, which you reject. Various parts of your comings and goings just don't fit together. > > dhw: You omitted the sentence I have put in bold, and have missed the whole point of my post. I am explaining how Darwin's theory can be compatible with teleological theism: i.e. how “God's real design precedes and shapes the process” (by creating the mechanism that runs the process) and how the “evolutionary process precedes and shapes the appearance of design” (the mechanism produces the life forms which appear to be designed).-Darwin's evolutionary process is chance. Theistic evolution shows purpose and is directed. Not similar. but can look alike.-> dhw:In other words, as I wrote, “he did not WANT control of the whole process”. Why? Perhaps because he created life as an experiment or entertainment, just to see what would happen. -You are back into God's mind, with no evidence of real purpose. I don't think He plays around.-> > dhw; The attraction of the experiment or entertainment would be NOT to have control. It is more interesting to watch a spectacle if you do NOT know what is going to happen next. Again you are anthropomorphizing. That is why, if you were God, you'd have fun, just like writing plays and inventing interesting characters.-> dhw: Of course you have every right to reject the deliberately random scenario and to stick to your 3.8-billion-year computer programme for the purpose of producing humans, but this only proves that “the claim that Darwinian evolution is not compatible with theistic teleology depends on a purely subjective interpretation of God's purpose.”-Darwin has no purpose. But God's type of evolution can look like Darwin but has purpose.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
dhw: So that must be what God intended, which is why he deliberately created a mechanism that would provide a RANDOMLY changing array of life forms. And what God intended is what we mean by theistic teleology. - DAVID: That is what you mean by theistic evolution. My definition is that God invented the mechanism of evolution and controls its outcome. And the final evidence in human beings, not the bush of organisms on the way, which are necessary for a balance in nature so everyone gets energy for life to survive. - Theistic evolution can be ANY interpretation of evolution that incorporates God. Theistic teleology is whatever purpose we ascribe to God. Since YOUR interpretation of evolution and God's purpose rejects any role for chance and makes humans the goal from the very beginning, it does indeed make Darwinian evolution incompatible with theistic teleology. But sadly, neither David Turell nor dhw nor your Christian ID-er has a monopoly on how to interpret evolution or on how to read God's mind, and I have offered you an ALTERNATIVE reading of both which makes Darwinian evolution perfectly compatible with theistic teleology. That is why “the claim that Darwinian evolution is not compatible with theistic teleology depends on a purely subjective interpretation of God's purpose.” The remainder of your post bypasses the issue we are dealing with, which is the Christian ID-er's attempt to draw a definitive line between evolution and theistic teleology.
Different in degree or kind: more Denton:
by David Turell , Thursday, February 25, 2016, 14:46 (2981 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Theistic evolution can be ANY interpretation of evolution that incorporates God. - True, but we each have our own definition of how it works. - - > dhw: Theistic teleology is whatever purpose we ascribe to God. Since YOUR interpretation of evolution and God's purpose rejects any role for chance and makes humans the goal from the very beginning, it does indeed make Darwinian evolution incompatible with theistic teleology. ... That is why “the claim that Darwinian evolution is not compatible with theistic teleology depends on a purely subjective interpretation of God's purpose.” - Agreed. Chance vs. purpose. - > dhw:The remainder of your post bypasses the issue we are dealing with, which is the Christian ID-er's attempt to draw a definitive line between evolution and theistic teleology. - By the same reasoning as above.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 15:46 (2990 days ago) @ David Turell
A thorough discussion of animal emotions, their possible quality and the fact that probably can be nothing like our emotions:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45330/title/Opinion--On-Animal-Emotions/&utm_campaign=NEWSLETTER_TS_The-Scientist-Daily_2016&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=26285056&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9dOrCTmnk-xx5qc3ENjrwDgddzP5sHYIGgVIf_vMVAbxf0lWiwoWshird3WjFit_0_pdNiqHRsfcZSdBGfJPViwPkHeg&_hsmi=26285057/-"Virtually every human emotion has been attributed to animals, and assertions that nonhuman animals have emotions “just like people” are frequent. Evidence to suggest animals have emotions comes from two sources: observations of animal behavior and inference from evolutionary theory.-***-"The most compelling observations are those made on wild animals, either in the field or in captivity, usually by researchers who have long interacted with the species. A researcher observes an animal behaving in a way similar to the way humans might behave under similar circumstances and posits they must be experiencing the same emotions. If a female chimpanzee cradles her dead offspring and exhibits facial expressions similar to a human mother who recently lost her child, she must be grieving.-"A less scientific but more influential source of belief about animal emotions comes from owners of domestic animals, especially companion animals like dogs and cats. These relationships are often close and enduring. If a dog jumps up and down, dashes back and forth, wags its tail wildly and barks loudly when his owner returns home, the dog is “joyful.” If a cat twines itself around its returning owner's legs, it is “loving.”-***-"Beliefs about animal emotions are shaped by anthropomorphism and language.-***-"Yet we have not been able to give up anthropomorphizing living things, because while the second-order approach is robust when it comes to things that can be observed and measured, such as cognitive abilities, it is at sea when it comes to things that cannot be observed or measured absolutely, such as emotions. We know what motivates us and how we feel when we behave in a certain way, so why not apply this knowledge to similar behaviors in other beings?-***-"To say, for example, “my dog loves me” connotes that my dog loves me in a human way. But this cannot be, if for no other reason than that a dog has no apparent knowledge of the ephemerality of existence, knowledge that is embedded in every human emotion. And if a dog loves me in a canine way, how that love may be similar to and different from human love is beyond objective resolution.-***-"It is quite possible, therefore, that dogs have evolved a capacity to “read” humans' expectations and have adapted pre-existing behaviours or evolved new ones that fulfill them. A dog doesn't have to love you; it just has to behave as if it does. In recent times especially, dogs, possibly more than any other animal, are purchased with an expectation of an emotional relationship— and we all want our investments to succeed.-"The inescapable truth is that, even if some animals are emotional beings, we will never know how those emotions are experienced. The philosopher, Thomas Nagel, sign-posted this epistemological dead-end concisely in 1974, when he pointed out we can never know what it is like to be a bat. Hanging upside down in the dark in a batman suit just won't cut it."-Comment: This answers dhw's opinions about animal emotions and that we evolved ours from them. Read the full article for the full flavor. Adler would be pleased!
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
DAVID: A thorough discussion of animal emotions, their possible quality and the fact that probably can be nothing like our emotions: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45330/title/Opinion--On-Animal-Em... -QUOTE: "Virtually every human emotion has been attributed to animals, and assertions that nonhuman animals have emotions “just like people” are frequent. Evidence to suggest animals have emotions comes from two sources: observations of animal behavior and inference from evolutionary theory".-QUOTE: "Beliefs about animal emotions are shaped by anthropomorphism and language.”-QUOTE: "The inescapable truth is that, even if some animals are emotional beings, we will never know how those emotions are experienced. The philosopher, Thomas Nagel, sign-posted this epistemological dead-end concisely in 1974, when he pointed out we can never know what it is like to be a bat. Hanging upside down in the dark in a batman suit just won't cut it."-David's comment: This answers dhw's opinions about animal emotions and that we evolved ours from them. Read the full article for the full flavor. Adler would be pleased!-These quotes will suffice. If the evidence comes from observation and evolutionary theory, why is belief about animal emotions shaped by anthropomorphism and language? If someone threatens me with a gun, I will show all the symptoms of what we call fear. If you kick a dog, the dog will show all the symptoms of what we call fear. Fear is an emotion. Or the dog might even show anger - another emotion - and bite you back (serves you right!). But hey ho, your author has embraced epistemology, so let's look at the implications of the dead end.-Clearly he has failed to notice the inescapable truth that we can never know what it is like to be another human being. Just as I do not know whether the red that I see is the red that you see, I can never know whether what you feel is what I feel. What evidence do I have that you do? Observation of your behaviour, perhaps? (Ring a bell?) Your author should carry his thesis even further. Not so long ago, the epistemological dead-end enabled slave traders to convince themselves that people with black skin did not feel what white-skinned people felt. But your author is right, we cannot KNOW what any creature (human or otherwise) outside ourselves actually feels, so that is apparently good reason to ignore the findings and conclusions of experts, not to mention billions of lay people, who have spent their lives living with and observing animal behaviour. Ah well, go ahead and kick your dog and see how joyfully he greets you.-As for evolutionary theory, I would suggest that very few species would survive without the emotion of fear, many animal species would certainly die out without a form of love (above all, parental), and I don't think animals of the same species would fight without some kind of emotional motivation (ambition, envy, greed, anger)...but yes, these are all human words, and we can never KNOW if animal behaviour is a put-up job just to kid us that they feel what we feel. (“A dog doesn't have to love you; it just has to behave as if it does.”) If we can't KNOW it, let's ignore the evidence and let's not even keep an open mind. Let's just tell people animals don't feel emotions, because nobody can know whether they do or don't. Wonderful logic. -However, Adler would have been happy, and you are happy too, and why should you take any notice of dhw when Allen Greer, a biologist, agrees with you? But here's another surprise for you. I am not alone. Try this - a declaration made on 7 July 2012: 	 	Scientists Declare Animals Are as Conscious as Humans (and ... www.positivelypositive.com/2012/09/06/scientists-declare-animals...-"Last week, an international group of scientists signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, proclaiming their belief—based on decades of research—that animals are indeed conscious and capable of experiencing human emotions. While that may sound like a “duh” kind of declaration to animal-lovers, it's actually a big deal for such a prominent group of scientists to openly acknowledge that they believe nonhuman animals possess conscious states similar to humans. Much of the research done in the medical and biological sciences relies on animal test subjects, so this statement could have significant implications in coming years. “Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states,” write the scientists. The list of animals named in their declaration includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus."-But perhaps we should ignore their decades of research, as they presumably haven't studied epistemology or read Adler.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Thursday, February 18, 2016, 00:52 (2989 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: These quotes will suffice. If the evidence comes from observation and evolutionary theory, why is belief about animal emotions shaped by anthropomorphism and language? If someone threatens me with a gun, I will show all the symptoms of what we call fear. If you kick a dog, the dog will show all the symptoms of what we call fear. Fear is an emotion. Or the dog might even show anger - another emotion - and bite you back (serves you right!). -Of course animals, just as we do show raw emotion. But they do not conceptualize about it as we do. Or sit around discussing it as we do.-> > Clearly he has failed to notice the inescapable truth that we can never know what it is like to be another human being.-Solipsism! You are right.-> > dhw;If we can't KNOW it, let's ignore the evidence and let's not even keep an open mind. Let's just tell people animals don't feel emotions, because nobody can know whether they do or don't. Wonderful logic.- I believe you are twisting the intent of his article. Again he cited Nagel and bats. That is the point. What they show may not be what we think they show. > 	 > dhw:	Scientists Declare Animals Are as Conscious as Humans (and ... > www.positivelypositive.com/2012/09/06/scientists-declare-animals... > > "Last week, an international group of scientists signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, proclaiming their belief—based on decades of research—that animals are indeed conscious and capable of experiencing human emotions.-Of course animals are conscious. No on denies that. How much self-awareness do they have? A tiny amount. How much self-judgment? And I've agreed to basic emotions of their kind. > > dhw: But perhaps we should ignore their decades of research, as they presumably haven't studied epistemology or read Adler.-Note, I'm not ignoring any of it. I'm just not romanticizing it, and I love my dog and horses and my barn cat who gets her daily petting.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: These quotes will suffice. If the evidence comes from observation and evolutionary theory, why is belief about animal emotions shaped by anthropomorphism and language? If someone threatens me with a gun, I will show all the symptoms of what we call fear. If you kick a dog, the dog will show all the symptoms of what we call fear. Fear is an emotion. Or the dog might even show anger - another emotion - and bite you back (serves you right!). DAVID: Of course animals, just as we do show raw emotion. But they do not conceptualize about it as we do. Or sit around discussing it as we do.-Why “show”? Your author has argued that animals do not HAVE these human-type emotions. Conceptualizing and discussing emotions is not the same as having them. I keep emphasizing that our self-awareness is what has enabled us to develop ALL the attributes we have inherited from our animal ancestors, and these include emotions. -dhw: Clearly he has failed to notice the inescapable truth that we can never know what it is like to be another human being. DAVID: Solipsism! You are right.-Thank you.-dhw:If we can't KNOW it, let's ignore the evidence and let's not even keep an open mind. Let's just tell people animals don't feel emotions, because nobody can know whether they do or don't. Wonderful logic. DAVID: I believe you are twisting the intent of his article. Again he cited Nagel and bats. That is the point. What they show may not be what we think they show.-The intent of Allen Greer's article is to persuade us that animals do not HAVE the same emotions that we have, and we are "anthropomorphizing" them. That is his word, not mine. I myself believe, as do the Cambridge scientists, that they HAVE the same emotions. You are of course welcome to join Greer in believing that animals do not HAVE these emotions and what they SHOW is not the fear, love, anger etc. that we feel, but I'd be very surprised if that was your belief.-dhw: Scientists Declare Animals Are as Conscious as Humans (and ... www.positivelypositive.com/2012/09/06/scientists-declare-animals... "Last week, an international group of scientists signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, proclaiming their belief—based on decades of research—that animals are indeed conscious and capable of experiencing human emotions."-DAVID: Of course animals are conscious. No on denies that. How much self-awareness do they have? A tiny amount. How much self-judgment? And I've agreed to basic emotions of their kind.-If you agree that they HAVE the emotions they show, it is absurd for you to try and defend an article which denies that they have them. The Cambridge Declaration was made because so many people, including some scientists, believe that animals are not conscious and do not share these basic emotions. The degree of self-awareness is not the issue here - no one will deny that ours is vastly in excess of that possessed by our fellow animals. I had better repeat my claim for clarity's sake: our self-awareness is what has enabled us to develop ALL the attributes we have inherited from our animal ancestors, and these include emotions. These feelings existed long before we did! dhw: But perhaps we should ignore their decades of research, as they presumably haven't studied epistemology or read Adler. DAVID: Note, I'm not ignoring any of it. I'm just not romanticizing it, and I love my dog and horses and my barn cat who gets her daily petting.-And I'm sure they appreciate it. It is Greer who is prepared to ignore the research because he has latched onto a fragment of epistemology. Acknowledging that animals have emotions is not a matter of romanticizing them.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Thursday, February 18, 2016, 13:59 (2988 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I believe you are twisting the intent of his article. Again he cited Nagel and bats. That is the point. What they show may not be what we think they show. > > dhw: The intent of Allen Greer's article is to persuade us that animals do not HAVE the same emotions that we have, and we are "anthropomorphizing" them. That is his word, not mine. I myself believe, as do the Cambridge scientists, that they HAVE the same emotions. You are of course welcome to join Greer in believing that animals do not HAVE these emotions and what they SHOW is not the fear, love, anger etc. that we feel, but I'd be very surprised if that was your belief.-I have clearly said animals shows basic emotional reactions that we interpret as being similar to ours. However, per Nagel, whose book is key to this discussion, we have no idea what they are accurately internally feeling. Is it superficial, is it deep? We are at a different level. Yes, our brains have the same physiology as animal brains, but so much more complex, our emotional reactions can be very different and be convergent compared to animal reactions.-> >dhw: I had better repeat my claim for clarity's sake: our self-awareness is what has enabled us to develop ALL the attributes we have inherited from our animal ancestors, and these include emotions. These feelings existed long before we did!-I'm glad you know that statement is totally true. that animals show raw emotion is true, beyond that not like us.-> DAVID: Note, I'm not ignoring any of it. I'm just not romanticizing it, and I love my dog and horses and my barn cat who gets her daily petting. > > dhw: And I'm sure they appreciate it. It is Greer who is prepared to ignore the research because he has latched onto a fragment of epistemology. Acknowledging that animals have emotions is not a matter of romanticizing them.-The depth of emotion you are trying to give animals is romanticizing.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
DAVID: I believe you are twisting the intent of his article. Again he cited Nagel and bats. That is the point. What they show may not be what we think they show.dhw: The intent of Allen Greer's article is to persuade us that animals do not HAVE the same emotions that we have, and we are "anthropomorphizing" them. That is his word, not mine. I myself believe, as do the Cambridge scientists, that they HAVE the same emotions. You are of course welcome to join Greer in believing that animals do not HAVE these emotions and what they SHOW is not the fear, love, anger etc. that we feel, but I'd be very surprised if that was your belief.-DAVID: I have clearly said animals shows basic emotional reactions that we interpret as being similar to ours. However, per Nagel, whose book is key to this discussion, we have no idea what they are accurately internally feeling. Is it superficial, is it deep? -You are back to the implications of Greer's epistemology, and I can only repeat that I can't know how superficial or deep even YOUR emotions are by my standards. “Show reactions...we interpret as being...” is not my idea of clarity. Sticking to my original example, and regardless of degrees, superficiality, depth etc., do you or do you not agree that fear is a feeling that something bad is going to happen, and do you or do you not believe that animals HAVE (not just “SHOW”) this feeling? If you believe it, then there is no disagreement between us on this issue.-DAVID: We are at a different level. Yes, our brains have the same physiology as animal brains, but so much more complex, our emotional reactions can be very different and be convergent compared to animal reactions.-I have agreed over and over again that our brains and thoughts and awareness and reactions are more complex. See the next comment.-dhw: I had better repeat my claim for clarity's sake: our self-awareness is what has enabled us to develop ALL the attributes we have inherited from our animal ancestors, and these include emotions. These feelings existed long before we did! DAVID: I'm glad you know that statement is totally true. that animals show raw emotion is true, beyond that not like us.-I do not know that anything is totally true. I said it was my claim. I believe that the emotion of fear as defined above is experienced by humans and by our fellow animals. And I believe such “raw emotions” are the basis of what you yourself have called our “evolutionary extensions”. What is being extended if the emotion that is “shown” is not real?-DAVID: The depth of emotion you are trying to give animals is romanticizing.-I do not recall discussing depth of emotion. Once again, we cannot know the depth of emotion experienced by our fellow animals or our fellow humans. We can only identify the emotion itself by our observation of behaviour, i.e. when animals “show” what looks like fear (as defined earlier) in situations that would engender fear, I believe that fear is what they feel. Do you or do you not agree?
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Saturday, February 20, 2016, 00:47 (2987 days ago) @ dhw
dhw; do you or do you not agree that fear is a feeling that something bad is going to happen, and do you or do you not believe that animals HAVE (not just “SHOW”) this feeling? If you believe it, then there is no disagreement between us on this issue. - They do show it. But they cannot study their reaction as we do, debating flight or fight, or negotiating, or questioning why we feel afraid. > > DAVID: The depth of emotion you are trying to give animals is romanticizing. > > I do not recall discussing depth of emotion. Once again, we cannot know the depth of emotion experienced by our fellow animals or our fellow humans. We can only identify the emotion itself by our observation of behaviour, i.e. when animals “show” what looks like fear (as defined earlier) in situations that would engender fear, I believe that fear is what they feel. Do you or do you not agree? - Yes, review above the difference between animals and humans..
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
Dhw: ...do you or do you not agree that fear is a feeling that something bad is going to happen, and do you or do you not believe that animals HAVE (not just “SHOW”) this feeling? If you believe it, then there is no disagreement between us on this issue. DAVID: They do show it. But they cannot study their reaction as we do, debating flight or fight, or negotiating, or questioning why we feel afraid.-DAVID: The depth of emotion you are trying to give animals is romanticizing. dhw: I do not recall discussing depth of emotion. Once again, we cannot know the depth of emotion experienced by our fellow animals or our fellow humans. We can only identify the emotion itself by our observation of behaviour, i.e. when animals “show” what looks like fear (as defined earlier) in situations that would engender fear, I believe that fear is what they feel. Do you or do you not agree? DAVID: Yes, review above the difference between animals and humans.. -There are two points at issue here, arising from articles by Greer and O'Hear which you quoted as support for your beliefs. Firstly, Greer denies that animals have these emotions. You have now agreed that they have them. Secondly, my argument is that our own complexities, which you keep repeating and which I have already accepted a thousand times, are the result of our self-awareness working on these basic characteristics inherited from our animal ancestors. In other words our quest for knowledge, our moral sense, our appreciation of beauty - the three examples chosen by O'Hear - are not human inventions that take us out of the evolutionary process. We still explore, we still have to weigh the needs of the individual against those of the community, we still admire the peacock's tail, we still fear something bad, we still love our young, we still fight because we are angry....We are hugely sophisticated animals, the “raw emotions” are not anthropomorphizations but inherited characteristics, and these and other common characteristics are the basis of what you have so aptly described as our “evolutionary extensions”.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Saturday, February 20, 2016, 14:33 (2986 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: There are two points at issue here, arising from articles by Greer and O'Hear which you quoted as support for your beliefs. Firstly, Greer denies that animals have these emotions. -You keep missing what was to me the key point of the article point. Nagel's thoughtful book, What it is like to be a bat. We do not know what an animal feels when he shows fear, other than the simple statement, he is obviously afraid'-> dhw:We are hugely sophisticated animals, the “raw emotions” are not anthropomorphizations but inherited characteristics, and these and other common characteristics are the basis of what you have so aptly described as our “evolutionary extensions”.-This sentence shows me that we are beginning to come to a meeting point of opinion. We are vastly different from animals with some of the same basic emotions in our reactions to events.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
dhw: There are two points at issue here, arising from articles by Greer and O'Hear which you quoted as support for your beliefs. Firstly, Greer denies that animals have these emotions. DAVID: You keep missing what was to me the key point of the article point. Nagel's thoughtful book, What it is like to be a bat. We do not know what an animal feels when he shows fear, other than the simple statement, he is obviously afraid'-Greer made a brief passing reference to Nagel in support of his epistemological discovery that we can't know what it is like to be an animal (in this case, a bat). I pointed out - and you agreed - that we can't know what it is like to be another human being either. The “key point” of the article was Greer's contention that attributing emotions to animals was an anthropomorphization. You have now agreed that animals have the same basic emotions as ourselves, and that is the foundation for the argument below: dhw:We are hugely sophisticated animals, the “raw emotions” are not anthropomorphizations but inherited characteristics, and these and other common characteristics are the basis of what you have so aptly described as our “evolutionary extensions”. DAVID: This sentence shows me that we are beginning to come to a meeting point of opinion. We are vastly different from animals with some of the same basic emotions in our reactions to events.-O'Hear argued that there was no evolutionary explanation for our quest for knowledge, our moral sense, and our appreciation of beauty. I have argued that there is a clear evolutionary progression from the animal basics (exploring the environment, the needs of the individual subordinated to those of the community, aesthetics as part of the mating process) to our own vastly more complex developments, resulting from our self-awareness. You agreed that all of these were an “evolutionary extension”. I have tried to explain why I disagree with Greer and O'Hear. Since you accept that animals have basic emotions, and there is also an evolutionary progression from all of these other basic characteristics to our own vastly more sophisticated forms, it seems we are indeed at one.
Different in degree or kind: animal minds
by David Turell , Sunday, February 21, 2016, 15:07 (2985 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I have tried to explain why I disagree with Greer and O'Hear. Since you accept that animals have basic emotions, and there is also an evolutionary progression from all of these other basic characteristics to our own vastly more sophisticated forms, it seems we are indeed at one. - We are. It is our interpretive differences that keep us debating. I always manage to see other interpretations in the material presented.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Friday, March 04, 2016, 21:37 (2973 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Friday, March 04, 2016, 21:43
We are the only organism with hands like ours. Imagine an ape playing the violin. They can't even hammer:-http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146193-"Abstract-"Hand coordination can allow humans to have dexterous control with many degrees of freedom to perform various tasks in daily living. An important contributing factor to this important ability is the complex biomechanical architecture of the human hand. However, drawing a clear functional link between biomechanical architecture and hand coordination is challenging. It is not understood which biomechanical characteristics are responsible for hand coordination and what specific effect each biomechanical characteristic has. To explore this link, we first inspected the characteristics of hand coordination during daily tasks through a statistical analysis of the kinematic data, which were collected from thirty right-handed subjects during a multitude of grasping tasks. Then, the functional link between biomechanical architecture and hand coordination was drawn by establishing the clear corresponding causality between the tendinous connective characteristics of the human hand and the coordinated characteristics during daily grasping activities. The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way. The clear link between the structure and the function of the human hand also suggests that the design of a multifunctional robotic hand should be able to better imitate such basic architecture."-Comment: Article will be retracted because of the use of the word 'Creator'. The authors have apologized. But it still says we are extremely different. A million monkeys at typewriters trying to reproduce a sentence from Shakespeare just won't work on an anatomic basis!:-http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment?id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F423788e9-2a6d-4ccd-9aeb-c46b594a07aa-"We are sorry for drawing the debates about creationism. Our study has no relationship with creationism. English is not our native language. Our understanding of the word ?Creator? was not actually as a native English speaker expected. Now we realized that we had misunderstood the word ?Creator?. What we would like to express is that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is a proper ?design? by the '"nature"' (result of evolution) to perform a multitude of daily grasping tasks. We will change the ?Creator? to ?nature? in the revised manuscript. We apologize for any troubles may have caused by this misunderstanding."
Different in degree or kind: our hands
DAVID: We are the only organism with hands like ours. Imagine an ape playing the violin. They can't even hammer:-http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146193-Yeah, yeah, our variations enable us to do things other organisms can't do. Now try and pick up a log with your nose, or walk through the desert for a week without any water, or flap your arms and fly 6000 miles without stopping.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Saturday, March 05, 2016, 14:31 (2972 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: We are the only organism with hands like ours. Imagine an ape playing the violin. They can't even hammer: > > http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146193 &#... > dhw:Yeah, yeah, our variations enable us to do things other organisms can't do. Now try and pick up a log with your nose, or walk through the desert for a week without any water, or flap your arms and fly 6000 miles without stopping.-Brute force wins over aesthetic nuance? Come on, be reasonable. No comparison.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
DAVID: We are the only organism with hands like ours. Imagine an ape playing the violin. They can't even hammer: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146193 dhw:Yeah, yeah, our variations enable us to do things other organisms can't do. Now try and pick up a log with your nose, or walk through the desert for a week without any water, or flap your arms and fly 6000 miles without stopping.-DAVID: Brute force wins over aesthetic nuance? Come on, be reasonable. No comparison.-Who is talking about “winning” and “aesthetic nuances”? You drew attention to the special abilities of human hands. I agree they are special. So are elephants' trunks. All species (broad sense) have special qualities of one sort or another. They are all different in kind. And according to you, your God specially made or preprogrammed them all. Perhaps you want me to say that although your God specially made or preprogrammed them all, he specially, specially, SPECIALLY made or preprogrammed humans and their hands, because the elephant's trunk and the weaverbird's nest and the amoeba community and all the dead dinosaurs and trilobites were specially made for the purpose of feeding and/or producing humans. But I'm afraid I could never say such a thing.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Monday, March 07, 2016, 14:52 (2970 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: You drew attention to the special abilities of human hands. I agree they are special. So are elephants' trunks. All species (broad sense) have special qualities of one sort or another. They are all different in kind.....-You refuse to see or admit that 'differences in kind' have remarkable degrees of difference. An elephants trunk cannot play a Beethoven piano concerto. Yes birds fly, with their given ability but we fly also all together with other folks in marvelous inventions.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
dhw: Who is talking about “winning” and “aesthetic nuances”? You drew attention to the special abilities of human hands. I agree they are special. So are elephants' trunks. All species (broad sense) have special qualities of one sort or another. They are all different in kind. And according to you, your God specially made or preprogrammed them all. Perhaps you want me to say that although your God specially made or preprogrammed them all, he specially, specially, SPECIALLY made or preprogrammed humans and their hands, because the elephant's trunk and the weaverbird's nest and the amoeba community and all the dead dinosaurs and trilobites were specially made for the purpose of feeding and/or producing humans. But I'm afraid I could never say such a thing. -DAVID: You refuse to see or admit that 'differences in kind' have remarkable degrees of difference. An elephants trunk cannot play a Beethoven piano concerto. Yes birds fly, with their given ability but we fly also all together with other folks in marvelous inventions.-I have reproduced the whole comment to which you have replied, since your response is shooting at the wrong target. I have always acknowledged the degrees of difference, most notably in the context of the human mind being vastly more complex than the minds of our fellow animals. And I keep pointing out that all species (broad sense) are different in kind. But you believe ALL the special differences were specially preprogrammed or specially created by your God, so if they are all so special to your God that he must specially preprogramme them or specially create them, what are you trying to prove by insisting that he specially preprogrammed or specially created human hands?
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Tuesday, March 08, 2016, 20:52 (2969 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: I have reproduced the whole comment to which you have replied, since your response is shooting at the wrong target. I have always acknowledged the degrees of difference, most notably in the context of the human mind being vastly more complex than the minds of our fellow animals. And I keep pointing out that all species (broad sense) are different in kind. But you believe ALL the special differences were specially preprogrammed or specially created by your God, so if they are all so special to your God that he must specially preprogramme them or specially create them, what are you trying to prove by insisting that he specially preprogrammed or specially created human hands?-You missed the entire point of my presentation, purposely?. You will accept that evolution is a form of common descent, with modifications going from the simple (relatively, as single cells care highly complex to begin with) to very complex multicellular organisms, us. Isn't evolution descent with modification? That is descent by small to moderate degree. In descent by kind, it is meant that the final step, humans, are much more than descent by a series of modification and are an unexpected truly different modification of enormous proportions, suggesting strongly a mammoth saltation.-Both elephants and I are mammals. We are related and we are different kinds of mammals. But we are so different in kind from elephants in a very different sense of the word 'kind'. Let's stop playing word games. You know what I mean.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
DAVID: ...You will accept that evolution is a form of common descent, with modifications going from the simple (relatively, as single cells care highly complex to begin with) to very complex multicellular organisms, us. Isn't evolution descent with modification? That is descent by small to moderate degree. In descent by kind, it is meant that the final step, humans, are much more than descent by a series of modification and are an unexpected truly different modification of enormous proportions, suggesting strongly a mammoth saltation. Both elephants and I are mammals. We are related and we are different kinds of mammals. But we are so different in kind from elephants in a very different sense of the word 'kind'. Let's stop playing word games. You know what I mean.-I know what you mean, and I challenge you most of the way. Evolution goes from the (relatively) simple to very complex multicellular organisms, INCLUDING us. Long before us there were mammoth saltations - not small to moderate, but huge, as you keep pointing out with reference to the Cambrian. I agree with you 100% that our brains are extraordinary, and because of our brains we have been able to achieve feats far, far beyond the reach of our fellow animals. But the enormous gap between your thinking and mine lies in your anthropocentric interpretation of evolutionary history as having been preprogrammed into a few minute cells, with every subsequent species, lifestyle and natural wonder, extant and extinct,somehow geared to humans. Whether we are indeed the “final step” is open to question, but even if we are, your theory leads to all the anomalies we have discussed down through the years. I have taken as a prime example your belief that your God preprogrammed or personally organized the building of the weaverbird's nest as part of his plan to “balance nature” in order to produce or feed humans. You can multiply this example a few billion times over. I could even allow for your special focus on humans by accepting that your God might have intervened to tweak the brains of a few apes, but the claim that all of life on Earth - not to mention all the environmental changes, plus the universe with its billions of solar systems - revolved and revolves round us seems to me to lack all reason, let alone what you call “reasoning to the best solution”. Yet you won't even consider the possibility that your God gave the weaverbird the intelligence to design its own nest!
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Wednesday, March 09, 2016, 23:48 (2968 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:..... Yet you won't even consider the possibility that your God gave the weaverbird the intelligence to design its own nest!-I always admitted that He might have left the weaver birds with instructions they could follow to do it on their own but you won't accept an IM with guidelines. You want the bird (brains) to do it own their own, which implies advanced planning to achieve the design. I thought you had abandoned the Darwinian hunt-and-peck advances.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
Dhw...Yet you won't even consider the possibility that your God gave the weaverbird the intelligence to design its own nest!-DAVID: I always admitted that He might have left the weaver birds with instructions they could follow to do it on their own but you won't accept an IM with guidelines. You want the bird (brains) to do it own their own, which implies advanced planning to achieve the design. I thought you had abandoned the Darwinian hunt-and-peck advances.-I realize attack is the best method of defence, but my post questioned the logic behind your belief that your God provided the first cells with instructions or programmes to be passed down, through billions of years and organisms, for every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct (or alternatively he personally supervised each one), organized all his programmes to fit in with every environmental change (or organized the environmental changes himself), and created billions of solar systems (also extant and extinct), all for the sake of producing or feeding humans. You call this “reasoning to the best solution”, and do not even regard it as questionable. Your reasoning seems to be that humans are so unique - even though they did descend from earlier organisms, with which they share the majority of their characteristics - that your God could not have had any other purpose for creating all the above. You yourself sometimes admit you don't really understand why he had to go through such a rigmarole in order to produce us but, as with most beliefs and disbeliefs in this context, it doesn't matter if the facts don't seem to fit the theory: the basic premise must stand, and everything else is just a matter of “loose ends”. I can understand why you prefer to ignore the rest of my post and take a snipe at Darwin instead.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Friday, March 11, 2016, 15:26 (2966 days ago) @ dhw
Dhw...Yet you won't even consider the possibility that your God gave the weaverbird the intelligence to design its own nest! > > DAVID: I always admitted that He might have left the weaver birds with instructions they could follow to do it on their own but you won't accept an IM with guidelines. You want the bird (brains) to do it own their own, which implies advanced planning to achieve the design. I thought you had abandoned the Darwinian hunt-and-peck advances. > > dhw: I realize attack is the best method of defence,-But you really haven't answered me and explained how weaver birds invent their nest on their own, considering its complexity. You use the birds as a key point, but we know crows seem brighter according to Corvid research. And you follow below with your usual lists of things you do not understand the purpose of, on the way to the creation of humans, which is the most significant fact to try to explain.-> dhw: but my post questioned the logic behind your belief that your God provided the first cells with instructions or programmes to be passed down, ..... all for the sake of producing or feeding humans. You call this “reasoning to the best solution”, and do not even regard it as questionable.-If one looks at the process as purposeful, my 'best solution' is reasonable. I see purpose, you don't-> dhw: Your reasoning seems to be that humans are so unique - even though they did descend from earlier organisms, with which they share the majority of their characteristics - that your God could not have had any other purpose for creating all the above. -Right!!!-> dhw:You yourself sometimes admit you don't really understand why he had to go through such a rigmarole in order to produce us but, as with most beliefs and disbeliefs in this context, it doesn't matter if the facts don't seem to fit the theory: the basic premise must stand, and everything else is just a matter of “loose ends”. -I don't see your facts that don't fit. I've explained balance of nature to you, which I think is the source of much of your confusion.- > dhw: I can understand why you prefer to ignore the rest of my post and take a snipe at Darwin instead.-I repeat, under your scheme of things how did the birds invent the nest? It seems hunt and peck is all you can offer, or what is your otherwise nebulous theory?
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by BBella , Friday, March 11, 2016, 21:46 (2966 days ago) @ David Turell
I repeat, under your scheme of things how did the birds invent the nest? It seems hunt and peck is all you can offer, or what is your otherwise nebulous theory?-If God created humans with just a touch (tiny amount) of consciousness which gave us a bit of intellectual ingenuity of his (albeit making sure we aren't anywhere as gifted as he), why couldnt he also impart even less, a minuscule bit, of this ingredient to all of his living creation, therefore making every living thing innovative in their own way?
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Saturday, March 12, 2016, 00:35 (2966 days ago) @ BBella
David I repeat, under your scheme of things how did the birds invent the nest? It seems hunt and peck is all you can offer, or what is your otherwise nebulous theory? > > BBella: If God created humans with just a touch (tiny amount) of consciousness which gave us a bit of intellectual ingenuity of his (albeit making sure we aren't anywhere as gifted as he), why couldnt he also impart even less, a minuscule bit, of this ingredient to all of his living creation, therefore making every living thing innovative in their own way?-Certainly crows show this and I'm sure many others do too. But with the weaver birds, they live in a very complex structure, which I seen in Africa. Look up a picture.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
DAVID: I repeat, under your scheme of things how did the birds invent the nest? It seems hunt and peck is all you can offer, or what is your otherwise nebulous theory? BBella: If God created humans with just a touch (tiny amount) of consciousness which gave us a bit of intellectual ingenuity of his (albeit making sure we aren't anywhere as gifted as he), why couldnt he also impart even less, a minuscule bit, of this ingredient to all of his living creation, therefore making every living thing innovative in their own way? DAVID: Certainly crows show this and I'm sure many others do too. But with the weaver birds, they live in a very complex structure, which I seen in Africa. Look up a picture.-My thanks to BBella for hitting the proverbial nail on the head. Termites, wasps, bees, beavers, spiders, rabbits, badgers etc. - they all create complex structures, and even the simplest bird's nest requires intelligent use of materials. As with every innovation you can think of, each structure must have had an originator/originators, and each structure may have been improved on by subsequent generations. So where are you going to draw the line? God gave some organisms innovative intelligence but others had to be preprogrammed or personally tutored? And according to you, all of them, extant and extinct, only serve/served the purpose of balancing nature in order to produce and feed us humans. Ah, where would we have been without the weaverbird's nest?-DAVID: But you really haven't answered me and explained how weaver birds invent their nest on their own, considering its complexity. You use the birds as a key point, but we know crows seem brighter according to Corvid research. And you follow below with your usual lists of things you do not understand the purpose of, on the way to the creation of humans, which is the most significant fact to try to explain.-Some species may be “brighter” than others, and within species some individuals may be brighter than others, but that doesn't mean the bright ones have to be preprogrammed or tutored by your God. The very concept of the original intelligent cell could and maybe did lead to all the degrees and all the manifestations of intelligence we see in the history of evolution, including the weaverbird's nest and ourselves. No, I do not understand why millions of solar systems extant and extinct, millions of organisms extant and extinct, millions of natural wonders extant and extant, were/are in existence purely for the creation and/or sustenance of humans. But I do understand why the drive for survival and/or improvement might provide a purpose for organisms to develop their own particular lifestyles and “wonders”. And if your God exists, I have no problem assuming he could have given them all the degree of autonomous consciousness that would, as BBella puts it so succinctly, “make every living thing innovative in their own way”.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Saturday, March 12, 2016, 14:59 (2965 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Saturday, March 12, 2016, 15:51
dhw:So where are you going to draw the line? God gave some organisms innovative intelligence but others had to be preprogrammed or personally tutored? And according to you, all of them, extant and extinct, only serve/served the purpose of balancing nature in order to produce and feed us humans. Ah, where would we have been without the weaverbird's nest?-I wish I knew why and how the nest exists. It can be interpreted, as it is in a book by believers that God is the guide. On page 110 of Nature's I.Q. nine knots are displayed, and seven of which are highly complex and would make a sailor proud , all from these nests. BBella and dhw have not seen these knots ( I assume) yet they think the birds invented them in their theoretical discussions. Look at the knots!!!. Seeing is believing. Remember, I'm presenting my active research, not theory. I cannot accept this as bird inventiveness. - > dhw: And if your God exists, I have no problem assuming he could have given them all the degree of autonomous consciousness that would, as BBella puts it so succinctly, “make every living thing innovative in their own way”.-Look up the knots in the nest!-I cannot find the knots on the internet but this article describes how they do the tieing of knots:-http://www.wonderwhizkids.com/weaver-birds
Different in degree or kind: weaver bird knots
by David Turell , Saturday, March 12, 2016, 18:28 (2965 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Saturday, March 12, 2016, 18:47
Found them. Note 32-37 in the illustration:-https://books.google.com/books?id=BTbvCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=weaver+bird+knots&source=bl&ots=DwIHOjEjk_&sig=94hRXqxpgyidm0THVQLOKiZffWk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiSqdax4bvLAhUC3mMKHUHYBgY4ChDoAQg-MAY#v=onepage&q=weaver%20bird%20knots&f=false-Comment: Same question. Did they learn to do this bit by bit or all at once? Or were they given the instructions? It is beyond my belief that they figured this out on their own. I'll continue to do the research to support my point of view, while everyone else seems to rely on their imagination.
Different in degree or kind: moral animals?
by David Turell , Saturday, March 12, 2016, 19:02 (2965 days ago) @ David Turell
We have seen all sorts of stories and videos of animals acting in a moral way, helping other animals or rescuing people. Do the animals understand what they are doing is the point of this essay, in the same or different sense than we recognize the morality of the act:-https://books.google.com/books?id=BTbvCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=weaver+bird+knots&source=bl&ots=DwIHOjEjk_&sig=94hRXqxpgyidm0THVQLOKiZffWk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiSqdax4bvLAhUC3mMKHUHYBgY4ChDoAQg-MAY#v=onepage&q=weaver%20bird%20knots&f=false-"While the evidence of apparently moral behaviour in animals is no longer in dispute — and cannot be restricted to mere anthropomorphic outpourings — how to interpret this evidence still is. Most scientists and philosophers are still sceptical of the idea that there is ‘real' or ‘genuine' morality at work here. This scepticism comes in two forms, one associated with scientists, the other with philosophers.-"Underlying scientific opposition is what has become known as Lloyd Morgan's Canon, after the 19th-century British ethologist Conwy Lloyd Morgan. The basic idea is reasonable: when we explain animal behaviour, we should not postulate any more than we absolutely have to. In other words, we should not explain the behaviour of animals in complex, moral terms when another — non-moral — explanation is available. But are there other, non-moral, explanations for the sorts of cases described above?-***-"Perhaps Lloyd Morgan's Canon itself is wrong. We might think of the Canon as akin to a game with a set of arbitrary rules: don't give animals anything more than you absolutely have to. Assume only the bare minimum of cognitive abilities required to explain their behaviour. Ditto emotional sensibilities. Moral emotions — kindness, sympathy? Certainly don't give them those unless there is no other choice. We know that we have cognitive and emotional capacities aplenty, and we know that we can, and often do, act for moral reasons. But don't assume other animals are like us unless there is no other option.-"Here, courtesy of de Waal, is another possible game. We know that animals are like us in many ways — in terms of their evolution, their genetic structure, the structure of their brains, and their behaviour. Given these known similarities, when we see animals behaving in ways that seem to be similar to the ways we behave, then do not assume a difference in motivation unless there is some evidence that supports this difference. When a chimpanzee gives what appears to be a consoling hug to its fellow who has just received a savage beating from the alpha male then, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the working hypothesis should be that the chimpanzee is motivated by the same sorts of emotions as a human would be in the same sort of situation. If, in the human case, we take this to be an expression of sympathy, then we should assume the same for the ape unless there is positive evidence to suppose otherwise.-***-"The scepticism of philosophers towards the idea that animals can behave morally is subtly different from that of scientists. Scientists question whether there is enough evidence to support the claim that animals can be motivated by emotions such as kindness or compassion, or by negative counterparts such as malice or cruelty. Philosophers argue that, even if animals were to be motivated by these sorts of states, this is still not moral motivation.-***-"In a nutshell, this is the philosopher's worry: moral action seems to imply moral responsibility. If I act morally, then I am, it seems, morally responsible for what I do. But do we really want to hold animals responsible for what they do? -***-"Most philosophers have been united in their reasons for thinking that animals cannot be responsible for what they do. To be responsible requires an ability that animals do not have — the ability to scrutinise their motivations critically......What is crucial is that it cannot do this — it does not have the ability to scrutinise its motivations.-***-"But there is another tradition, associated with the philosopher David Hume and developed later by Charles Darwin, that understands morality as a far more basic part of our nature — a part of us that is as much animal as it is intellectual..... Our morality is rooted in our biology rather than our intellect.-Comment: The gap of 'different in kind' makes the argument difficult to resolve.
Different in degree or kind: moral animals?
DAVID: We have seen all sorts of stories and videos of animals acting in a moral way, helping other animals or rescuing people. Do the animals understand what they are doing is the point of this essay, in the same or different sense than we recognize the morality of the act:-https://books.google.com/books?id=BTbvCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=weaver+b...-QUOTE: "Most philosophers have been united in their reasons for thinking that animals cannot be responsible for what they do. To be responsible requires an ability that animals do not have — the ability to scrutinise their motivations critically......What is crucial is that it cannot do this — it does not have the ability to scrutinise its motivations."-*** QUOTE: "But there is another tradition, associated with the philosopher David Hume and developed later by Charles Darwin, that understands morality as a far more basic part of our nature — a part of us that is as much animal as it is intellectual..... Our morality is rooted in our biology rather than our intellect."-David's comment: The gap of 'different in kind' makes the argument difficult to resolve.-As I see it, there is no conflict between these views. Because of our self-consciousness, we theorize about and give fancy names to everything we do and feel. The word “morality” is an irrelevance in this context, as is the word “responsible”. Not translating concepts into human language does not make the concepts themselves any less real, and in any case lack of what we call moral responsibility does not mean the non-existence of morality. Animals could not survive without caring for their young, without individuals making sacrifices for the community, without helping and sharing with one another; at the same time, there are often individuals within an animal community that are more selfish than others - sometimes they are even driven out for what humans would call “immoral” behaviour. But the name doesn't matter. Animals, in my opinion and in that of many who have lived with and studied them, have both the feelings and the social codes that underlie what we call “morality”, and both of these are essential to their survival. So I would say, in response to the above, that “morality” is rooted in the nature of all living things, including ourselves, but only humans through their extra degrees of consciousness theorize about it, with questions concerning comparative values and responsibility. It's my usual argument: the basics are the same, but humans have a broader, deeper view because of their enhanced self-awareness.
Different in degree or kind: moral animals?
by David Turell , Sunday, February 12, 2017, 01:03 (2629 days ago) @ dhw
Support for animal sense of fairness in monkeys and dogs:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120909-monkeys-and-dogs-judge-humans-by-how-they-...
"Be nice – or your dog may judge you. Both pets and monkeys show a preference for people who help others, and this might explain the origins of our sense of morality.
"Studies involving babies have previously shown that by the age of one, humans are already starting to judge people by how they interact. This has led to suggestions that children have a kind of innate morality that predates their being taught how to behave.
"Comparative psychologist James Anderson at Kyoto University and his colleagues wondered whether other species make social evaluations in a similar way.
***
"When the companion was helpful, the monkey showed no preference between accepting the reward from the struggler or the helper. But when the companion refused to help, the monkey more often took food from the struggler.
"The team also investigated capuchins’ attitude to fairness. In this test, two actors began with three balls each. Actor A requested balls from actor B, who handed over three balls.
"Then actor B requested balls from A, and A either gave three balls back or no balls. Lastly, both actors offered the monkeys a reward as before.
"The monkeys had no preference when actor A gave back three balls, but chose actor B more often when A had not returned the balls.
"Finally, the researchers tested whether dogs preferred people who helped their owner. Each owner tried to open a container then presented it to one of two actors.
"This actor either helped or refused to do so, while the other actor was passive. Then the two actors offered the dog a reward and it chose between them.
"The dogs had no preference when the first actor had helped their owner, but were more likely to choose the passive actor if the first one had refused to help.
"Anderson thinks the results show that monkeys and dogs make social evaluations in a somewhat similar way to human infants. “If somebody is behaving antisocially, they probably end up with some sort of emotional reaction to it,” he says.
"Monkeys in the wild are likely to use similar processes to decide which members of their group they can cooperate with, says primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University, Georgia, who has written about the origins of morality.
“'Chances are that if these animals can detect cooperative tendencies in human actors, they also can in their fellow primates,” he says.
"Dogs’ long relationship with humans means they’ve evolved to be extremely sensitive to our behaviour – not just to the dog, but also to other humans.
***
"The capacity to make evaluations of others could help to stabilise complex social systems by enabling individuals to exclude bad social partners, says Kiley Hamlin at the University of British Columbia, Canada. “This exclusion not only means that individuals who make social evaluations can themselves avoid harmful social interactions, but it also could serve to discourage individuals from behaving badly in the first place, as presumably they do not wish to be excluded from the social system,” she says.
"De Waal sees a strong link between morality and reputation. “Human morality is very much based on reputation building, because why would you try to be good if no one cares?” he says. “I don’t think you can conclude that it makes the monkeys moral beings, but ‘image scoring’, as reputation building is sometimes called, provides an important key mechanism.'”
Comment: There has to be a sense of fairness built in to conscious animals whop are social.
Different in degree or kind: moral animals?
DAVID: Support for animal sense of fairness in monkeys and dogs:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120909-monkeys-and-dogs-judge-humans-by-how-they-...
DAVID’s comment: There has to be a sense of fairness built in to conscious animals who are social.
Thank you for this highly perceptive comment. No society can function without fairness, and our fellow creatures worked out their own systems long before we came on the scene. Why anyone should think that our fellow animals do NOT know the difference between fair and unfair, sharing and not sharing, good and bad treatment is quite beyond me. But it’s always reassuring when experts provide us with evidence of the blindingly obvious.
Different in degree or kind: emotional animals?
by David Turell , Sunday, February 12, 2017, 21:50 (2628 days ago) @ dhw
This essay discusses the emotions of animals, but does under the idea that the author is describing their souls. One is not the other:
https://aeon.co/ideas/do-only-humans-have-souls-or-do-animals-have-them-too?utm_source=...
"In common parlance, the word ‘soul’ pops up everywhere. We may speak of a vast, soulless corporation or describe an athlete as the ‘heart and soul’ of his team. Soul music gets us swaying. We want our lover, body and soul. In each case, ‘soul’ connotes deep feeling and core values. ‘Feelings form the basis for what humans have described for millennia as the … soul or spirit,’ the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio eloquently expounds in his groundbreaking book Descartes’ Error (1994).
"Today, studies increasingly show that many non-human beings feel. Elephants appear to feel grief, while dolphins and whales express joy, or something much like it. Parrots can become cranky, pigs and cows terrified, chickens saddened, monkeys seemingly embarrassed. Experiments have shown that rats become agitated when seeing surgery performed on other rats and that, when presented with a trapped lab-mate and a piece of chocolate, they will free their caged brethren before eating. There’s even evidence that rats take pleasure in being tickled.
***
"One might even argue that other creatures are more cognisant of feelings than humans are, because they possess a primary form of consciousness: they are aware of themselves and their environment but are less burdened by complexities such as reflection and rumination that typify human consciousness. They live closer to the bone, so to speak. Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep (1995), has remarked that animals possess feelings of ‘undiluted purity and clarity’ compared to the ‘seeming opacity and inaccessibility of human feelings.’ Furthermore, we should consider that humans may not experience the full range of feelings found in the animal kingdom. As Humane Society ethologist Jonathan Balcombe points out: ‘In light of their sometimes vastly different living circumstances and sensory capabilities, other species may experience some emotional states that we do not.’
"Sentience – the capacity of an organism to feel – is fundamental to being alive. If human beings have souls, they must be more about sentience than consciousness. We are motivated far more by passion than by intellect – what we feel deeply is what drives us, for good and ill.
***
"African elephants belonging to the same family or group will greet one another after a separation with a loud chorus of rumbles and roars as they rush together, flapping their ears and spinning in circles.
"Thanks to the internet, there’s a steady stream of examples of animals demonstrating compassion, from an ape saving a crow to a gorilla protecting a 3-year-old boy when he fell into her enclosure. A particularly striking case of animal gratitude occurred in 2005 off the California coast, where a female humpback whale was found entangled in nylon ropes used by fishermen. As recounted by Frans de Waal in The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (2009): ‘The ropes were digging into the blubber, leaving cuts. The only way to free the whale was to dive under the surface to cut away the ropes.’ The divers spent an hour at the task, an especially risky one given the sheer strength of the animal’s tail. ‘The most remarkable part came when the whale realised it was free. Instead of leaving the scene, she hung around. The huge animal swam in a large circle, carefully approaching every diver separately. She nuzzled one, then moved on to the next, until she had touched them all.’
"Animals that express gratitude, play, contemplate nature, act to save a fellow creature, or react mournfully to the loss of family members or other close companions, are all, in my view, demonstrating aspects of connectedness. Such connectedness is the root of spirituality – with the capacity to feel and emote being central.
"In the end, soul may be a profound matter of fellow feeling. The stronger the capability of a given species for fellow feeling, the more that species can be said to exhibit soulfulness. To view things in this way offers another important step in humanity’s progression towards understanding its place in creation – and to appreciate the inheritance we hold in common with other sentient beings on this increasingly small, restive, and fragile planet."
Comment: He is certainly discussing emotions, not religious Ensoulment. I've seen the video of the grateful whale. Very touching and an impressive evidence of animal feelings of gratitude emotions.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by BBella , Saturday, March 12, 2016, 21:47 (2965 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by BBella, Saturday, March 12, 2016, 22:17
dhw:So where are you going to draw the line? God gave some organisms innovative intelligence but others had to be preprogrammed or personally tutored? And according to you, all of them, extant and extinct, only serve/served the purpose of balancing nature in order to produce and feed us humans. Ah, where would we have been without the weaverbird's nest? > > I wish I knew why and how the nest exists. It can be interpreted, as it is in a book by believers that God is the guide. On page 110 of Nature's I.Q. nine knots are displayed, and seven of which are highly complex and would make a sailor proud , all from these nests. BBella and dhw have not seen these knots ( I assume) yet they think the birds invented them in their theoretical discussions. Look at the knots!!!. Seeing is believing. Remember, I'm presenting my active research, not theory. I cannot accept this as bird inventiveness. > -David, I have not only seen the knots, I've watched videos of the birds weaving them, and many more wondrous creative beings at work. If you accept (by faith and/or research) that ALL living beings have been imbued by an all powerful God, with any quantity - ANY!!!!, even a speck! of God's consciousness, how do you find it difficult to believe in the inventive nature of nature itself to create whatever is created? -The ingredient: God, God consciousness, universal consciousness, or intelligence (whatever we might want to call "IT"), moves/uses the fabric of all that is, from a state of potential to a what IS state (entelechy). This ingredient of intelligence is connected to all intelligence that IS within the quantum field of reality and so has access to ALL intelligence that is or has every been, so is alive and well within the weaver bird creating that nest, don't you think?
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Sunday, March 13, 2016, 00:30 (2965 days ago) @ BBella
> > BBella: David, I have not only seen the knots, I've watched videos of the birds weaving them, and many more wondrous creative beings at work. If you accept (by faith and/or research) that ALL living beings have been imbued by an all powerful God, with any quantity - ANY!!!!, even a speck! of God's consciousness, how do you find it difficult to believe in the inventive nature of nature itself to create whatever is created? > > The ingredient: God, God consciousness, universal consciousness, or intelligence (whatever we might want to call "IT"), moves/uses the fabric of all that is, from a state of potential to a what IS state (entelechy). This ingredient of intelligence is connected to all intelligence that IS within the quantum field of reality and so has access to ALL intelligence that is or has every been, so is alive and well within the weaver bird creating that nest, don't you think?-I think you are really agreeing with me. If God's intelligence is within the birds, He is showing them how to do it through that mechanism. They are not doing it independently.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
dhw: So where are you going to draw the line? God gave some organisms innovative intelligence but others had to be preprogrammed or personally tutored? And according to you, all of them, extant and extinct, only serve/served the purpose of balancing nature in order to produce and feed us humans. Ah, where would we have been without the weaverbird's nest? DAVID: I wish I knew why and how the nest exists. -Thank you for your honesty. I wish your awareness of these huge gaps in your theory would leave you open to other possible explanations (see below).-DAVID: It can be interpreted, as it is in a book by believers that God is the guide. On page 110 of Nature's I.Q. nine knots are displayed, and seven of which are highly complex and would make a sailor proud , all from these nests. BBella and dhw have not seen these knots ( I assume) yet they think the birds invented them in their theoretical discussions. Look at the knots!!!. Seeing is believing. Remember, I'm presenting my active research, not theory. I cannot accept this as bird inventiveness. -BBELLA: David, I have not only seen the knots, I've watched videos of the birds weaving them, and many more wondrous creative beings at work. If you accept (by faith and/or research) that ALL living beings have been imbued by an all powerful God, with any quantity - ANY!!!!, even a speck! of God's consciousness, how do you find it difficult to believe in the inventive nature of nature itself to create whatever is created? The ingredient: God, God consciousness, universal consciousness, or intelligence (whatever we might want to call "IT"), moves/uses the fabric of all that is, from a state of potential to a what IS state (entelechy). This ingredient of intelligence is connected to all intelligence that IS within the quantum field of reality and so has access to ALL intelligence that is or has every been, so is alive and well within the weaver bird creating that nest, don't you think? DAVID: I think you are really agreeing with me. If God's intelligence is within the birds, He is showing them how to do it through that mechanism. They are not doing it independently.-BBella will no doubt answer for herself, but I really can't see how you can interpret “making every living thing innovative in their own way” and “the inventive nature of nature itself to create whatever is created” as meaning preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or personally instructed by the individual mind you call God. There is a stark theistic choice here: either God gave organisms the intelligence to do their own inventing, or he did it for them. You admit that you can't see how or why he might have done it for the weaverbird's nest (not to mention the millions of other natural wonders, lifestyles etc. you think are too complex for insects, birds and animals to devise for themselves), and yet you won't consider the possibility that he might have given organisms the intelligence (BBella's “speck” of his consciousness) to invent them independently for their own benefit, as opposed to the benefit of humans. You are as stubborn as...as...me!
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Sunday, March 13, 2016, 18:12 (2964 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I think you are really agreeing with me. If God's intelligence is within the birds, He is showing them how to do it through that mechanism. They are not doing it independently. > > dhw: BBella will no doubt answer for herself, but I really can't see how you can interpret “making every living thing innovative in their own way” and “the inventive nature of nature itself to create whatever is created” as meaning preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or personally instructed by the individual mind you call God. There is a stark theistic choice here: either God gave organisms the intelligence to do their own inventing, or he did it for them.-If you have looked at the knots, which I have supplied, I cannot believe the birds invented them. Yes an argument from incredulity. It involved complex knots using beak and feet in coordination. The authors of Nature's IQ agree with me, so I have backing from those who see purpose and guidance in evolution.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
DAVID: I think you are really agreeing with me. If God's intelligence is within the birds, He is showing them how to do it through that mechanism. They are not doing it independently.-dhw: BBella will no doubt answer for herself, but I really can't see how you can interpret “making every living thing innovative in their own way” and “the inventive nature of nature itself to create whatever is created” as meaning preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or personally instructed by the individual mind you call God. There is a stark theistic choice here: either God gave organisms the intelligence to do their own inventing, or he did it for them.-DAVID: If you have looked at the knots, which I have supplied, I cannot believe the birds invented them. Yes an argument from incredulity. It involved complex knots using beak and feet in coordination. The authors of Nature's IQ agree with me, so I have backing from those who see purpose and guidance in evolution.-I have looked at them, just as I have looked at pictures of termites' nests and beavers' dams, and have learned about the astonishing feats of other birds, animals and insects, so many of which you have described to us on your marvellous thread of Nature's Wonders. They truly are wonderful, and I can only admire the intelligence of all these creatures that use whatever means they have at their disposal to devise such intricate structures and lifestyles. I see purpose in all of this, as each organism finds its own way to survive and to make life as comfortable as possible for itself. And just like you, I can find no reason why their feats should be tied to the creation or feeding of humans. As for guidance, it wouldn't be necessary if they had the intelligence (perhaps God-given) and the tools (like beaks and feet) with which to do their own inventing.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Monday, March 14, 2016, 14:14 (2963 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: As for guidance, it wouldn't be necessary if they had the intelligence (perhaps God-given) and the tools (like beaks and feet) with which to do their own inventing.-Sums up the discussion completely: a giant IF. Your side would have some credence if we could see current modifications or variations of Nature's Wonders. They stay very static as if permanently imprinted within the particular animal.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
dhw: As for guidance, it wouldn't be necessary if they had the intelligence (perhaps God-given) and the tools (like beaks and feet) with which to do their own inventing.-DAVID: Sums up the discussion completely: a giant IF. Your side would have some credence if we could see current modifications or variations of Nature's Wonders.They stay very static as if permanently imprinted within the particular animal.-Once again: if a structure or lifestyle proves successful, there is no need for it to be varied. The question is how it originated. Different organisms may simply have created different structures and lifestyles to suit themselves. Also once again: we do not know of any current innovations - evolution appears to be going through a period of stasis. That is why we can only theorize about origins. All hypotheses would have more credence if we could see God/chance/the IM at work!
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Tuesday, March 15, 2016, 14:10 (2962 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: That is why we can only theorize about origins. All hypotheses would have more credence if we could see God/chance/the IM at work! - We can see all of this only if modifications appear. Perhaps evolution is over now hat humans dominate the planet.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
DAVID: Your side would have some credence if we could see current modifications or variations of Nature's Wonders.They stay very static as if permanently imprinted within the particular animal.-dhw: Once again: if a structure or lifestyle proves successful, there is no need for it to be varied. The question is how it originated. Different organisms may simply have created different structures and lifestyles to suit themselves. Also once again: we do not know of any current innovations - evolution appears to be going through a period of stasis. That is why we can only theorize about origins. All hypotheses would have more credence if we could see God/chance/the IM at work! DAVID: We can see all of this only if modifications appear. Perhaps evolution is over now hat humans dominate the planet.-Modifications are still appearing, in the form of adaptations. It is innovations that are not appearing. We know from adaptations that the cell communities are able to make changes to themselves, which is the only clue we have as to how the process of innovation might work. Your original comment relates to the fact that currently we can't see the process in operation, and I merely pointed out that the same criticism applies to all the hypotheses. I trust you will drop that line of argument now.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 14:08 (2961 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Modifications are still appearing, in the form of adaptations. It is innovations that are not appearing. We know from adaptations that the cell communities are able to make changes to themselves, which is the only clue we have as to how the process of innovation might work. Your original comment relates to the fact that currently we can't see the process in operation, and I merely pointed out that the same criticism applies to all the hypotheses. I trust you will drop that line of argument now. - Dropped. The minor modifications that appear now are not equal to the major jumps, punctuated equilibrium or saltations that have been the major contributors to evolution in the past. Those are still unexplained unless God is invoked.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
dhw: Modifications are still appearing, in the form of adaptations. It is innovations that are not appearing. We know from adaptations that the cell communities are able to make changes to themselves, which is the only clue we have as to how the process of innovation might work. Your original comment relates to the fact that currently we can't see the process in operation, and I merely pointed out that the same criticism applies to all the hypotheses. I trust you will drop that line of argument now. - DAVID: Dropped. - Thank you. - DAVID: The minor modifications that appear now are not equal to the major jumps, punctuated equilibrium or saltations that have been the major contributors to evolution in the past. - That is why I distinguish between adaptation and innovation. DAVID: Those are still unexplained unless God is invoked. - Invoking God is simply saying that some unknown intelligence caused innovations in an unknown way. Still a fair amount of explaining to do!
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Thursday, March 17, 2016, 14:26 (2960 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: The minor modifications that appear now are not equal to the major jumps, punctuated equilibrium or saltations that have been the major contributors to evolution in the past. > > That is why I distinguish between adaptation and innovation. > > DAVID: Those are still unexplained unless God is invoked. > > dhw: Invoking God is simply saying that some unknown intelligence caused innovations in an unknown way. Still a fair amount of explaining to do!-Species appear fully formed, saltations similarly. Denton proposes structuralism with some sort of internal rearrangement mechanism to explain. I use God, but you are correct, no direct proof of why or how. But it is the only method of advancement of complexity on the record. Adaptation is just minor variation, not an explanation. -With your objection in mind, I've written two books with all the reasons for God, not just His role in evolution. Look at the totality of the arguments.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
DAVID: The minor modifications that appear now are not equal to the major jumps, punctuated equilibrium or saltations that have been the major contributors to evolution in the past. -dhw: That is why I distinguish between adaptation and innovation.-DAVID: Those are still unexplained unless God is invoked.-dhw: Invoking God is simply saying that some unknown intelligence caused innovations in an unknown way. Still a fair amount of explaining to do!-DAVID: Species appear fully formed, saltations similarly. Denton proposes structuralism with some sort of internal rearrangement mechanism to explain. I use God, but you are correct, no direct proof of why or how. But it is the only method of advancement of complexity on the record. Adaptation is just minor variation, not an explanation.-I know what adaptation is! We are trying to find an explanation for innovation, and “some sort of rearrangement mechanism” is the crux of the whole debate. You use a 3.8-billion-year computer programme for every rearrangement, lifestyle and natural wonder. Darwin uses random mutations. I propose the intelligence of cells/cell communities. There is no "direct proof" of any of the explanations, which is why the debate goes on. DAVID: With your objection in mind, I've written two books with all the reasons for God, not just His role in evolution. Look at the totality of the arguments.-I do. And much as I admire your books, the totality of the arguments is precisely why I am an agnostic and not a theist or an atheist. However, this particular discussion concerns how evolution works, and my hypothesis does not exclude your God; it only opposes your hypothesis about how God organized evolution.
Different in degree or kind: our hands
by David Turell , Friday, March 18, 2016, 17:22 (2959 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: With your objection in mind, I've written two books with all the reasons for God, not just His role in evolution. Look at the totality of the arguments. > > dhw: I do. And much as I admire your books, the totality of the arguments is precisely why I am an agnostic and not a theist or an atheist. However, this particular discussion concerns how evolution works, and my hypothesis does not exclude your God; it only opposes your hypothesis about how God organized evolution.-Which may be the correct explanation. 'Nuff said.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Sunday, March 27, 2016, 22:16 (2950 days ago) @ David Turell
A short essay making the same points:-http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo36/our-quantum-leap.php-Marks accepts the theory of common ancestry, and believes that we are descended from apes. He points out that evolutionary relationships are not the same thing as identities. Descent from apes does not mean we are apes. Taxonomy is not the same thing as identity. Or, as Marks says: "Science no more says that I am an ape because my ancestors were, than it says that I am a slave because my ancestors were. The statement that you are your ancestors articulates a bio-political fact, not a biological fact." Indeed, the differences are so profound as to render the view that humans are apes abject nonsense. -***-Animals such as apes have material mental powers. By material, I mean powers that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation. These powers include sensation, perception, imagination (the ability to form mental images), memory (of perceptions and images), and appetite. Nonhuman animals have a mental capacity to perceive and respond to particulars, which are specific material objects such as other animals, food, obstacles, and predators. -Human beings have these powers, too, but they also have mental powers that entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Unlike animals, humans think abstractly, and they have the power to contemplate universals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Humans think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy—an endless array of abstract concepts. They are rational animals. Human rationality is not merely a highly evolved kind of animal perception. It is qualitatively, ontologically different. It is different because it is immaterial. Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter.-***-Representation is the map of a thing; instantiation is the thing itself. Universals can be represented in matter—the words I am writing are representations of concepts—but they cannot be instantiated in matter. I cannot put the concepts themselves on a computer screen or piece of paper, nor can they exist physically in my brain. They are immaterial. -Nonhuman animals are purely material beings. They have no concepts. They experience hunger and pain; they don't contemplate the injustice of suffering. A human being is material and immaterial—a composite being. We have material bodies, and our perceptions and imagination and appetites are material powers, instantiated in our brains. But our intellect—our ability to think abstractly—is a wholly immaterial power, as is our will, which acts in accordance with our intellect. Our intellect and will depend on matter for their ordinary function, but are not themselves made of matter. It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference—an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. There is a metaphysical chasm between us. We are rational animals, and our rationality is all the difference Systems of taxonomy that emphasize physical and genetic similarities and ignore the fact that human beings are partly immaterial beings who are capable of abstract thought and contemplation of moral law and eternity are pitifully inadequate to describe man. The assertion that man is an ape is self-refuting. We could not express such a concept, misguided as it is, if we were apes and not men. (my bold)-Comment: A clear difference to me. Much more than an evolutionary degree of difference, a giant leap.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor agrees with Adler
DAVID: A short essay making the same points:-http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo36/our-quantum-leap.php-QUOTE: Marks accepts the theory of common ancestry, and believes that we are descended from apes. He points out that evolutionary relationships are not the same thing as identities. Descent from apes does not mean we are apes… -QUOTE: It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference—an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. […] The assertion that man is an ape is self-refuting. We could not express such a concept, misguided as it is, if we were apes and not men. (David's bold)-David's comment: A clear difference to me. Much more than an evolutionary degree of difference, a giant leap.-Aw shucks, holy Moses, ‘n' give a sucker an even break, do you think I think humans ARE apes? And have I (or anyone with a grain of intelligence) ever disputed the fact that we think far, far, far more deeply, more widely, more abstractly, more inventively, more scientifically, more artistically, more humanly, less apely than apes? Egnor's only “new” argument is that we are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. If you boldly agree, then fine. I don't, and strictly between ourselves, I don't know if viruses are living, let alone thinking. But so what? Where does it lead us? We have flogged this pointless argument to death and beyond, and just three days ago we agreed to drop it:-dhw: …I am merely pointing out that if Adler was not concerned with the purpose and mechanisms of evolution, then you are on your own when we are discussing your theory, and there is no point in constantly bringing him into the conversation.-DAVID: [/i]I don't misunderstand you. Adler's point is quite clear. Humans are a totally different breed of cat and a natural evolution should not have produced them. He is bedrock support of my thoughts. "Different in kind" speaks to this gap. You persist in using the word 'kind' in a diminished context of difference. If you will stop, I'll stop. (My boldest of bolds)-Dhw: I like the different breed of cat! It is you who persist in emphasizing Adler's “difference in kind” during all our discussions on evolution, and I shall be delighted to put an end to this particular form of tail-chasing.-What is in dispute is not human intelligence but your insistence that the whole of evolution has been geared to the production and/or feeding of humans. And so if you refuse to stop, I shall find myself with no choice but to ask you for the thousandth time why your God had to preprogramme or personally supervise the building of the weaverbird's nest in order to balance nature so that humans could be produced and fed. You really don't want to go down that dry and dusty cul de sac again, do you?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Monday, March 28, 2016, 15:25 (2949 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: We have flogged this pointless argument to death and beyond, and just three days ago we agreed to drop it:-> > What is in dispute is not human intelligence but your insistence that the whole of evolution has been geared to the production and/or feeding of humans. .... You really don't want to go down that dry and dusty cul de sac again, do you?-Sorry: couldn't help myself. Egnor's words spoke powerfully to me.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor agrees with Adler
dhw: We have flogged this pointless argument to death and beyond, and just three days ago we agreed to drop it: What is in dispute is not human intelligence but your insistence that the whole of evolution has been geared to the production and/or feeding of humans. .... You really don't want to go down that dry and dusty cul de sac again, do you?-DAVID: Sorry: couldn't help myself. Egnor's words spoke powerfully to me.-Thank you. As our politicians teach us every day, powerful words should not be confused with powerful minds.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor agrees with Adler
by David Turell , Tuesday, March 29, 2016, 19:52 (2948 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Sorry: couldn't help myself. Egnor's words spoke powerfully to me. > > dhw: Thank you. As our politicians teach us every day, powerful words should not be confused with powerful minds.-Politicians are all words, no meanings. Our current campaign is unbelievable.
Different in degree or kind: our nose
by David Turell , Monday, March 28, 2016, 02:41 (2950 days ago) @ dhw
We are the only primate with a nose like ours:-https://www.newscientist.com/article/2082274-the-evolution-of-the-nose-why-is-the-human-hooter-so-big/-"It's an evolutionary mystery that's literally as plain as the nose on your face. Why did our ancestors develop a prominent protruding nose when most primates have flat nasal openings?-"A new study suggests that our unusual nose may have gained its shape simply as a by-product of other, more important changes in the structure of our face - although other researchers insist that some human noses have been directly shaped by natural selection.-"One of the many functions of the nose and nasal cavity is to act as an “air conditioner”. Together, they make sure that the air an animal breathes in is made warm and humid enough to avoid damaging the delicate lining of the lungs.-"But Takeshi Nishimura at Kyoto University, Japan, and his colleagues argue that the human nose performs this job poorly. "They took scans of the nose and nasal cavity of six human volunteers, four chimpanzees and six macaques. Then, using computers, they modelled the flow of inhaled air through the nasal passages.-"Finally, they calculated how efficiently these flow patterns would condition three different air types: cold and dry, hot and dry, and warm and wet.-"The results suggest that the nasal passages of chimps and macaques condition inhaled air much more effectively than our nasal passages do. In fact, even when the researchers artificially manipulated the computer-generated human noses to look more like the flat ones of chimpanzee, the air-conditioning performance didn't improve.-***-"The hominin skull underwent a dramatic reorganisation with the appearance of true humans from our Homo genus between 2 and 3 million years ago. Brains grew and faces became relatively smaller to make room - and it is possible that the nose and nasal cavity were forced into their current shape to accommodate these changes.-"Fortunately, given that the climate fluctuated in Africa around the time that true humans first appeared, making good air conditioning vital, other parts of the human airways changed too. This may have made up for any inefficiency in the nose and nasal cavity, allowing humans to fully condition the air they inhaled. In particular, the pharyngeal region of the throat - which is much longer in humans than in other primates - may have begun to lengthen at this time.-"Our long pharynx is often linked to our ability to talk, but Nishimura says that it also plays an important role in conditioning inhaled air. (my bold)-"Despite the new findings, Todd Rae at the University of Roehampton, UK, says we shouldn't write off the idea that noses adapted to the climate that their owners inhabited.-“'There is a general trend for people in the tropics to have a wide nasal aperture,” he says. “Europeans, on the other hand, have a narrower aperture, which has been assumed to be an adaptation for living in colder climates.”-"Narrow nostrils, the thinking goes, create more turbulence in the inhaled air, which increases the level of heat and moisture exchange between the air and the tissue covering the wall of the nasal cavity.-"The Neanderthals are an apparently glaring exception to this rule - they lived in cold Europe yet had large wide noses. But Rae and his colleagues have argued that this might be because Neanderthals actually evolved and adapted in relatively warm and humid conditions before later moving into Europe."-“If you don't assume that [Neanderthals] were cold-adapted, the shape of the aperture isn't confusing, because that was simply inherited unchanged from their common ancestor,” Rae says."-Comment: the elongated pharynx, which allowed a dropped larynx, definitely was an arrangement to allow speech. There is no dispute here. Narrow nose seems not entirely clear as to purpose, since it varies from tropics to colder zones.
Different in degree or kind: prefrontal cortex
by David Turell , Friday, April 15, 2016, 01:51 (2932 days ago) @ David Turell
This study of the elephant brain finds that it is three times bigger than ours, and has many more neurons, but most of theirs are in the cerebellum, not the prefrontal cortex: - http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/the-paradox-of-the-elephant-brain?utm_source=front... - "Lo and behold, the African elephant brain had more neurons than the human brain. And not just a few more: a full three times the number of neurons, 257 billion to our 86 billion neurons. But—and this was a huge, immense “but”—a whopping 98 percent of those neurons were located in the cerebellum, at the back of the brain. In every other mammal we had examined so far, the cerebellum concentrated most of the brain neurons, but never much more than 80 percent of them. The exceptional distribution of neurons within the elephant brain left a relatively meager 5.6 billion neurons in the whole cerebral cortex itself. Despite the size of the African elephant cerebral cortex, the 5.6 billion neurons in it paled in comparison to the average 16 billion neurons concentrated in the much smaller human cerebral cortex. - "So here was our answer. No, the human brain does not have more neurons than the much larger elephant brain—but the human cerebral cortex has nearly three times as many neurons as the over twice as large cerebral cortex of the elephant. - *** - "Only the cerebral cortex remained, then. Nature had done the experiment that we needed, dissociating numbers of neurons in the cerebral cortex from the number of neurons in the cerebellum. The superior cognitive capabilities of the human brain over the elephant brain can simply—and only—be attributed to the remarkably large number of neurons in its cerebral cortex. - *** - "As it turns out, there is a simple explanation for how the human brain, and it alone, can be at the same time similar to others in its evolutionary constraints, and yet so different to the point of endowing us with the ability to ponder our own material and metaphysical origins. First, we are primates, and this bestows upon humans the advantage of a large number of neurons packed into a small cerebral cortex. And second, thanks to a technological innovation introduced by our ancestors, we escaped the energetic constraint that limits all other animals to the smaller number of cortical neurons that can be afforded by a raw diet in the wild. - "So what do we have that no other animal has? A remarkable number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, the largest around, attainable by no other species, I say. And what do we do that absolutely no other animal does, and which I believe allowed us to amass that remarkable number of neurons in the first place? We cook our food. The rest—all the technological innovations made possible by that outstanding number of neurons in our cerebral cortex, and the ensuing cultural transmission of those innovations that has kept the spiral that turns capacities into abilities moving upward—is history." - Comment: Still different in kind in the neuron arrangement. And the caloric intake is a significant point. The brain uses up to 20-25% of our metabolism.
Different in degree or kind: Ape theory of mind
by David Turell , Thursday, October 06, 2016, 19:39 (2757 days ago) @ David Turell
A new study looks at an ape's ability to assess what another mind is thinking:-http://phys.org/news/2016-10-apes.html-"This ability to recognize that someone's beliefs may differ from reality has long been seen as unique to humans. -"But new research on chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans suggests our primate relatives may also be able to tell when something is just in your head.-***-"The capacity to tell when others hold mistaken beliefs is seen as a key milestone in human cognitive development. Humans develop this awareness in early childhood, usually before the age of five. It marks the beginning of a young child's ability to fully comprehend the thoughts and emotions of others—what psychologists call theory of mind.-***-"To some extent apes can read minds too. Over the years, studies have shown that apes are remarkably skilled at understanding what others want, what others might know based on what they can see and hear, and other mental states. But when it comes to understanding what someone else is thinking even when those thoughts are false, apes have consistently failed the test.-***-"In the study, the apes watched two short videos. In one, a person in a King Kong suit hides himself in one of two large haystacks while a man watches. Then the man disappears through a door, and while no one is looking the King Kong runs away. In the final scene the man reappears and tries to find King Kong.-***-"To pass the test, the apes must predict that when the man returns, he will mistakenly look for the object where he last saw it, even though they themselves know it is no longer there.-"In both cases, the apes stared first and longest at the location where the man last saw the object, suggesting they expected him to believe it was still hidden in that spot."-"Their results mirror those from similar experiments with human infants under the age of two.-"This is the first time that any nonhuman animals have passed a version of the false belief test," Krupenye said.-"The findings suggest the ability is not unique to humans, but has existed in the primate family tree for at least 13 to 18 million years, since the last common ancestors of chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and humans."-Comment: I'm not surprised. Humans and apes all started at the same place in evolution. But look how far we developed a difference and they are the same. Why? God.
Different in degree or kind: mirror test self awareness
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 12, 2018, 19:33 (1960 days ago) @ David Turell
The mirror has been used with many animals to see if there can be evidence of self-awareness. A few animals pass, and others are debated:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-self-aware-fish-raises-doubts-about-a-cognitive-test-2...
"Alex Jordan, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, thinks this fish — a cleaner wrasse — has just passed a classic test of self-recognition. Scientists have long thought that being able to recognize oneself in a mirror reveals some sort of self-awareness, and perhaps an awareness of others’ perspectives, too. For almost 50 years, they have been using mirrors to test animals for that capacity. After letting an animal get familiar with a mirror, they put a mark someplace on the animal’s body that it can see only in its reflection. If the animal looks in the mirror and then touches or examines the mark on its body, it passes the test.
"Humans don’t usually reach this milestone until we’re toddlers. Very few other species ever pass the test; those that do are mostly or entirely big-brained mammals such as chimpanzees.
***
"The evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup thought up his field-defining experiment while shaving in a mirror one day as a graduate student. When Gallup took a position at Tulane University a little later, he had access to animals at the Delta Regional Primate Research Center he could test his idea on.
***
" In their reflections, aquarium dolphins studied their eyes and mouths, did flips and blew different kinds of bubbles. After being drawn on with black marker, the dolphins spent more time looking at the marked sides of their bodies in the mirror.
"Monkeys, for the most part, have continued to fail mirror tests...But Reiss and her colleagues have found mirror self-recognition in Asian elephants. Orangutans, bonobos and gorillas have all passed the test, too, Reiss said — along with one bird, the magpie.
***
"Jordan wants the world to know how smart fish can be. But, he said, “I am the last to say that fish are as smart as chimpanzees. Or that the cleaner wrasse is equivalent to an 18-month-old baby. It’s not.” Rather, he thinks the main point of his paper has more to do with science than fish: “The mirror test is probably not testing for self-awareness,” he said. The question then is what it is doing, and whether we can do better.
***
"Scientists also have mixed feelings about the phrase “self-awareness,” for which they don’t agree on a definition. Reiss thinks the mirror test shows “one aspect of self-awareness,” as opposed to the whole cognitive package a human has. The biologists Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Paul Sherman of Cornell University have suggested a spectrum of “self-cognizance” that ranges from brainless reflexes to a humanlike understanding of the self.
"Jordan likes the idea of a spectrum, and thinks cleaner wrasse would fall at the lower end of self-cognizance. He points out that moving your tail before it gets stepped on, or scraping a parasite off your scales, isn’t the same as sitting and pondering your place in the universe. Others in the field have supported his contention that the mirror test doesn’t test for self-awareness, he said. “I think the community wants a revision and a reevaluation of how we understand what animals know,” Jordan said.
***
"Dogs are lousy at recognizing themselves in mirrors. But Horowitz recently designed an “olfactory mirror test” for dogs. She found that dogs spent longer sniffing samples of their own urine when it had an extra scent “mark” added to it."
Comment: My dog seems to recognize me in the mirror when I am at the mirror and gaze at him. He appears to look back at me with a fixed gaze toward the mirror. Long interesting article with many examples of other animals in experiments but only a few have very clear awareness of themselves. Many implications, no proof.
Different in degree or kind: mirror test self awareness
by David Turell , Wednesday, February 08, 2023, 18:58 (441 days ago) @ David Turell
Now in fish:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fish-recognize-photo-self-aware
"Some fish can recognize their own faces in photos and mirrors, an ability usually attributed to humans and other animals considered particularly brainy, such as chimpanzees, scientists report. Finding the ability in fish suggests that self-awareness may be far more widespread among animals than scientists once thought.
***
"In a new study, cleaner fish that passed the mirror test were then able to distinguish their own faces from those of other cleaner fish in still photographs. This suggests that the fish identify themselves the same way humans are thought to — by forming a mental image of one’s face, Kohda and colleagues report February 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
***
"De Waal is quick to point out that failing the mirror test should not be considered evidence of a lack of self-awareness. Still, scientists have struggled to understand why some species that are known to have complex cognitive abilities, such as monkeys and ravens, have not passed. Researchers have also questioned whether the test is appropriate for species like dogs that rely more on scent, or like pigs that may not care enough about a mark on their bodies to try to touch it.
"The mixed results in other animals make it all the more astonishing that a small fish can pass. In their first mirror test studies, published in 2019 and 2022, Kohda’s team exposed wild-caught cleaner fish in separate tanks to mirrors for a week. The researchers then injected brown dye just beneath the scales on the fish’s throats, making a mark that resembles the parasites these fish eat off the skin of larger fish in the wild. When the marked fish saw themselves in a mirror, they began striking their throats on rocks or sand in the bottom of the tank, apparently trying to scrape off the marks.
"In the new study, 10 fish that passed the mirror test were then shown a photo of their own face and a photo of an unfamiliar cleaner fish face. All the fish acted aggressively toward the unfamiliar photo, as if it were a stranger, but were not aggressive toward the photo of their own face.
"When another eight fish that had spent a week with a mirror but had not previously been marked were shown a photo of their own face with a brown mark on the throat, six of them began scraping their throats just like the fish that passed the mirror test. But they did not scrape when shown a photo of another fish with a mark."
Comment: another evidence of self-consciousness in other than humans. A minor issue. There is is nothing like us.
animal minds: clever parrots
by David Turell , Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 18:01 (2066 days ago) @ David Turell
In a delayed gratification study parrots are as sharp as chimps:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/who-s-a-clever-bird-parrots-play-the-odds-when-makin...
"When it comes to delaying gratification for greater reward, parrots compare well with chimpanzees and out-perform capuchin monkeys, a new study reveals.
"Delayed gratification experiments were famously performed on children in the 1980s by Walter Mischel – the “marshmallow tests”. Will a child take one marshmallow now, or wait and have two marshmallows as a reward for delaying the joy of eating that one marshmallow straight away?
"Researchers in cognitive science call this economic decision-making. The process is cognitively challenging, because it involves a complex and thorough assessment of the current situation, together with an understanding of future reward as a result of controlling one’s impulses.
***
"The use of symbolic tokens instead of actual food rewards to test economic decision-making overcomes this issue, and has been used previously with chimps (Pan troglodytes) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). This research, published in the journal Nature, is the first to use the token method with parrots.
***
" This new study looks at the Psittacoidea family of parrots, distantly related to the cockatoos, and represented by specialist fruit foragers, the great green macaw (Ara ambiguuus) and blue-throated macaw (Ara glaucogularis), as well as generalist foragers, the blue-headed macaw (Primolius couloni) and African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus).
"When provided with a choice between a food item and a token that could be exchanged for more preferred food, all four species inhibited their impulsive reactions and selected the token significantly more often than chance, thus maximising their pay-off. These results are comparable to those seen in testing with chimpanzees, and surpassed the results of testing with capuchin monkeys.
***
"Parrots using tokens and trading for treats in a controlled laboratory situation tell us a lot about their cognitive abilities, but how does this translate to their lives in the wild?
“Given that wild parrots are so difficult to track, to date we know little about the ecological challenges most parrots encounter in their habitats in the wild, such as deciding where to go and how long to stay in a given feeding site,” says von Bayern.
“'However, in our experimental setting we have found that they are capable of making surprisingly subtle decisions to maximise their payoff while minimising their effort. This is a fascinating indication that such decisions may matter greatly in their natural environment.'”
Comment: At this level of cognitive function it is not the size of the brain that counts.
animal minds: clever parrots
by David Turell , Monday, December 10, 2018, 17:55 (1962 days ago) @ David Turell
Genes that make them smart are like human genes:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2187571-parrots-are-clever-because-their-brains-ev...
"Parrots are intelligent birds capable of complex cognition, and it turns out that the genes that play a role in their brain development are similar to those that evolved to give humans large brains.
“'It’s a surprise in the sense that these animals are so different from humans, but it’s also satisfying in that you might predict that since they evolved similar traits, they have some similar mechanisms,” says Claudio Mello at the Oregon Health & Science University. Parrots can produce complex vocalisations and they’re highly social, a lot like humans.
"To learn more how these birds’ brains develop, Mello and his team compared the genome of the blue-fronted Amazon parrot with that of 30 other birds. They found that regions of the parrot genome that regulate when and how genes for brain development are turned on are the same as those found in humans. These so-called ultra-conserved elements evolved in both species at different times, but with similar results.
“'These define how the brain grows and how many cells are built,” Mello says. “Humans ended up with bigger brains and more brain cells and more cognitive traits – including language – than primates. Parrots have bigger brains than other birds and more communication skills, and they have similar conserved elements that set them apart.”
"Mello says that when these regulatory regions of the genome are disrupted in humans, they are known to be associated with cognitive disabilities such as autism, developmental delays and language deficits.
"The team also found 344 genes associated with parrot lifespan. Parrots live far longer than would be expected based on their body size and metabolism, some even lasting into their 80s. The genes Mello and his team found that are associated with parrot lifespan support DNA damage repair, slow down cell death due to stress, and limit cell overgrowth and cancers.
“'Parrots seem to have taken advantage of a whole range of genes. That may be why they are so long lived,” he says."
Comment: This supports my point that God uses patterns in genes to advance evolution and it also would explain similar convergences that occur.
Animal minds are conscious
by David Turell , Wednesday, April 20, 2016, 02:40 (2927 days ago) @ dhw
A good discussion of conscious animals:-http://phys.org/news/2016-04-insects-consciousness.html- "Do bees like the taste of nectar? Does the ant foraging for your crumbs feel better when she finds one?-"Are insects merely tiny robots? Or, in the phrase popularised by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, is there something it is like to be a bee?-***-"It is worth clarifying what we mean when we talk about insect consciousness, since the term consciousness carries a lot of baggage. Everyone agrees that bees can take in environmental information and perform impressive computations on it.-"We want to know something more: whether insects can feel and sense the environment from a first-person perspective. In philosophical jargon, this is sometimes called "phenomenal consciousness". Each of these feel a certain way to us, and they feel like something for the dog too. If that is right, then dogs are conscious, at least in the minimal sense.-"Consciousness is sometimes used to refer to a much more complicated capacity: the ability to self-reflect. That is a rare achievement. Humans may well be the only animals that can become aware that they are aware. Even then, we are mostly just conscious in the more minimal sense, rarely pausing for true self-reflection. The consciousness of others is a thorny philosophical problem. Our typical handle on consciousness is through observing behaviour. We think babies and dogs feel hungry, in part because they act like we do when we feel hungry.-"Behavioural analogies become harder when we consider animals such as insects, which don't look or act much like us. We might say that a bee is angry when we disturb its hive. But an angry bee doesn't act much like an angry toddler, so it's easy to remain sceptical. Behaviour alone certainly doesn't prove that any animal is conscious.-***-"While insect brains are minute - the largest are far smaller than a grain of rice - new research has shown that they perform the same ancient functions as the human midbrain.-"The insect central complex ties together memory, homeostatic needs and perception in the same integrated way. This integration has the same function as well: to enable effective action selection.-"In the bee, this detailed representation of the animal in space is what allows it to perform remarkable feats of navigation. Thus, while insect brains and human brains could not look more different, they have structures that do the same thing, for the same reason and so support the same kind of first-person perspective.-"That is strong reason to think that insects and other invertebrates are conscious. Their experience of the world is not as rich or as detailed as our experience - our big neocortex adds something to life! But it still feels like something to be a bee.-***-"One important driver of this process is mobility in the environment. Parasitic worms that have lost their ability to freely navigate have also lost the brain structures responsible for the first-person perspective.-"This suggests a close relationship between consciousness and the demands of moving around the world. By clarifying the environmental demands that press animals to evolve the capacity for consciousness, we might thus shed light on the relationship between subjectivity and the external world."-Comment: No question animals have to be aware of their environment and are consciously aware, but they do not have the introspection of humans, the ability to conceptualize. It is a vast difference.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
by David Turell , Friday, December 16, 2016, 20:37 (2686 days ago) @ dhw
This article coves the changes required in metabolism among other issues:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151110-evolution-of-big-brains/?utm_source=Quanta+Maga...
"Starting around 3 million years ago, however, the hominin brain began a massive expansion. By the time our species, Homo sapiens, emerged about 200,000 years ago, the human brain had swelled from about 350 grams to more than 1,300 grams. In that 3-million-year sprint, the human brain almost quadrupled the size its predecessors had attained over the previous 60 million years of primate evolution.
***
"The human brain has 86 billion neurons in all: 69 billion in the cerebellum, a dense lump at the back of the brain that helps orchestrate basic bodily functions and movement; 16 billion in the cerebral cortex, the brain’s thick corona and the seat of our most sophisticated mental talents, such as self-awareness, language, problem solving and abstract thought; and 1 billion in the brain stem and its extensions into the core of the brain.
***
"Of all the great apes, we have the largest brains, so we come out on top with our 16 billion neurons in the cortex. In fact, humans appear to have the most cortical neurons of any species on Earth. “That’s the clearest difference between human and nonhuman brains,” Herculano-Houzel says. It’s all about the architecture, not just size.
"The human brain is also unique in its unsurpassed gluttony. Although it makes up only 2 percent of body weight, the human brain consumes a whopping 20 percent of the body’s total energy at rest. In contrast, the chimpanzee brain needs only half that. Researchers have long wondered how the human body adapted to sustain such a uniquely ravenous organ. In 1995, the anthropologist Leslie Aiello and the evolutionary biologist Peter Wheeler proposed the “expensive tissue hypothesis” as a possible answer. The underlying logic is straightforward: Human brain evolution likely required a metabolic trade-off. In order for the brain to grow, other organs, namely the gut, had to shrink, and energy that would typically have gone to the latter was redirected to the former. For evidence, they pointed to data showing that primates with larger brains have smaller intestines.
***
"Wray’s team extracted mRNA from the tissues and amplified it many times over in the lab in order to measure the relative abundance of different mRNAs. They found that the brain-centric glucose-transporting gene was 3.2 times more active in human brain tissue than in the chimp brain, whereas the muscle-centric gene was 1.6 times more active in chimp muscle than in human muscle. Yet the two genes behaved similarly in the liver of both species.
***
"In humans, but not in chimps, the regulatory sequences for the muscle and brain-focused glucose-transporting genes had accumulated more mutations than would be expected by chance alone, indicating that these regions had undergone accelerated evolution. In other words, there was a strong evolutionary pressure to modify the human regulatory regions in a way that sapped energy from muscle and channeled it to the brain. Genes had corroborated the expensive tissue hypothesis in a way fossils never could.
***
"But the variation between chimp and human brain metabolite levels was four times higher than would be expected based on a typical rate of evolution; muscle metabolites differed from the expected levels by a factor of seven. “A single gene can probably regulate a lot of metabolites,” Bozek said. “So even if the difference is not huge at the gene level, you could get a big difference in the metabolite levels.”
***
"It’s not entirely clear why, but it is possible that our primate cousins get more power out of their muscles than we get out of ours because they feed their muscles more energy. “Compared to other primates, we lost muscle power in favor of sparing energy for our brains,” Bozek said. “It doesn’t mean that our muscles are inherently weaker. We might just have a different metabolism.”
***
The reason we have so many more cortical neurons than our great-ape cousins is not that we have denser brains, but rather that we evolved ways to support brains that are large enough to accommodate all those extra cells.
***
"No matter how large the human brain grew, or how much energy we lavished upon it, it would have been useless without the right body. Three particularly crucial adaptations worked in tandem with our burgeoning brain to dramatically increase our overall intelligence: bipedalism, which freed up our hands for tool making, fire building and hunting; manual dexterity surpassing that of any other animal; and a vocal tract that allowed us to speak and sing. Human intelligence, then, cannot be traced to a single organ, no matter how large; it emerged from a serendipitous confluence of adaptations throughout the body. Despite our ongoing obsession with the size of our noggins, the fact is that our intelligence has always been so much bigger than our brain."
Comment: We are different in so many ways, we are different in kind.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
PART ONE
DAVID: This article covers the changes required in metabolism among other issues:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151110-evolution-of-big-brains/?utm_source=Quanta+Maga...
QUOTE: "No matter how large the human brain grew, or how much energy we lavished upon it, it would have been useless without the right body. Three particularly crucial adaptations worked in tandem with our burgeoning brain to dramatically increase our overall intelligence: bipedalism, which freed up our hands for tool making, fire building and hunting; manual dexterity surpassing that of any other animal; and a vocal tract that allowed us to speak and sing. Human intelligence, then, cannot be traced to a single organ, no matter how large; it emerged from a serendipitous confluence of adaptations throughout the body. Despite our ongoing obsession with the size of our noggins, the fact is that our intelligence has always been so much bigger than our brain."
Thank you again for this fascinating article. It may be that the author is unaware of the research suggesting that some monkeys already have vocal tracts that are flexible enough to make human sounds, and it is the brain that holds them back – but it makes no difference to the overall argument or, ultimately, to the mystery of our intelligence. The “serendipitous confluence of adaptations” is an important phrase. You, David, will assume that all these adaptations were engineered by your God, so I’m surprised you didn’t pounce on the word “serendipitous”! My own focus, though, is on the question to what extent these adaptations (including the brain) were the cause of intelligence or the result of intelligence
For dualists who claim that the brain is the receiver of consciousness and not the producer, the increase in the size of the brain would come from the need to process more and more information. For materialists, the increase would produce a corresponding increase in consciousness and intelligence. Dualism puts intelligence first and receiver (brain) second; materialism reverses the process. In my attempt to reconcile the two approaches (Human consciousness: Penrose: soul survives! 8 November at 12.16), I suggested that – along the lines of Sheldrake’s morphic resonance – the energy, and hence the information, produced by the brain could last indefinitely, but this did not settle the issue whether that energy and information could be added to once its producer had ceased to function (i.e. whether there might be such a thing as the soul that allows us to live on as an individual identity after death).
The related question raised by this article is how and why the brain and our consciousness and intelligence increased on such a massive scale, and it really comes back to how evolution works. Does intelligence change the body, or do changes in the body engender intelligence? The following quote may offer us a clue:
“It’s a mistake to think we can explain brain size with just one or two mutations. I think that is dead wrong. We have probably acquired many little changes that are in some ways coopting the developmental rules.”
Wray concurs: “It wasn’t just a couple mutations and — bam! — you get a bigger brain. As we learn more about the changes between human and chimp brains, we realize there will be lots and lots of genes involved, each contributing a piece to that. The door is now open to get in there and really start understanding. The brain is modified in so many subtle and nonobvious ways.” (Contd. in Part Two)
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
PART TWO
These researchers use mutations in Darwin’s sense of random changes, but if we go back to my hypothesis reconciling dualism and materialism, perhaps there could be an ongoing feedback here. Something triggered a new awareness. Perhaps a forced descent from the trees. One can imagine an isolated group of tree-dwelling apes whose habitat is destroyed by disease. Tree-climbing is a vertical exercise. Maybe verticality proved to be an advantage down on the ground, and the change itself sparked new awareness. (I realize this is pure speculation, but I am not satisfied with serendipity, or with divine preprogramming, or with divine, step-by-step dabbling – if David’s God wanted sapiens, he could have produced sapiens.) The adjustment to permanent life on the ground would have required experimentation. We know that chimps, for instance, use tools, but perhaps with this particular group of our chimp-like ancestors, the intelligence needed to use tools was supplemented by other factors, such as the need to find new ways of protecting themselves against predators, since their trees had disappeared. What I am looking for is the spark that would have enhanced awareness.
Once the spark is lit, the next step is the effect of thought on matter: the brain responds to exercise; new activities demand new connections between brain and muscles, and new forms of communication between members of the group. One thing leads to another in a perfectly logical chain of developments. The brain engenders thought, and thought in turn develops the brain. This ties in with the researchers’ observation that our intelligence is bigger than our brain, and also with the theory of emergence, that the sum is greater than its parts. Add the theory of convergence, and you have similar patterns emerging elsewhere, to explain how different “species” of hominin may have arisen and with migration may even have interbred (as it is now believed that Neanderthals and Sapiens did). Once we have that extra degree of awareness, the whole process is self-advancing, as one observation leads to another, and each observation engenders new needs and actions and physiological adjustments. In brief, the brain engenders thought, and the extraordinary levels of consciousness that distinguish us from our fellow animals are the result of new needs engendering new thoughts which, in turn, engender physiological adaptations, including the expansion of the brain.
What we do not know is the spark that lit the fuse for this chain reaction. That, however, would be the only instance of “serendipity” – productive good luck, in contrast to the bad luck that has left 99% of species extinct. Variability within species is enough to explain why some groups of primates remained the same while others advanced. And there is no exclusion of the God theory, since this is a very late chapter in life’s history, and deals only with the origin of humans, and not with that of life and consciousness.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
by David Turell , Sunday, December 18, 2016, 22:21 (2684 days ago) @ dhw
PART TWO
dhw: These researchers use mutations in Darwin’s sense of random changes, but if we go back to my hypothesis reconciling dualism and materialism, perhaps there could be an ongoing feedback here. Something triggered a new awareness. Perhaps a forced descent from the trees. One can imagine an isolated group of tree-dwelling apes whose habitat is destroyed by disease. Tree-climbing is a vertical exercise. Maybe verticality proved to be an advantage down on the ground, and the change itself sparked new awareness. (I realize this is pure speculation, but I am not satisfied with serendipity, or with divine preprogramming, or with divine, step-by-step dabbling – if David’s God wanted sapiens, he could have produced sapiens.)
He did produce sapiens in His own way.
dhw: The adjustment to permanent life on the ground would have required experimentation. We know that chimps, for instance, use tools, but perhaps with this particular group of our chimp-like ancestors, the intelligence needed to use tools was supplemented by other factors, such as the need to find new ways of protecting themselves against predators, since their trees had disappeared. What I am looking for is the spark that would have enhanced awareness.
A major point of the article is that once somewhat grounded, the safety of the trees was gone and required use of a bigger brain to cleverly survive. The brain developed aa bigger energy supply at the expense of smaller musculature, less strength. Teeth changed for a more general diet so the nasty ones carried by monkeys and apes were lost. This shows how much had to be adapted by the jumps in phenotype to make humans so different from apes.
dhw: Once the spark is lit, the next step is the effect of thought on matter: the brain responds to exercise; new activities demand new connections between brain and muscles, and new forms of communication between members of the group. One thing leads to another in a perfectly logical chain of developments. The brain engenders thought, and thought in turn develops the brain. This ties in with the researchers’ observation that our intelligence is bigger than our brain, and also with the theory of emergence, that the sum is greater than its parts. Add the theory of convergence, and you have similar patterns emerging elsewhere, to explain how different “species” of hominin may have arisen and with migration may even have interbred (as it is now believed that Neanderthals and Sapiens did).
You make it sound simple but the brain had to be given the ability of plasticity. What if the brain didn't have that? I think God supplied that attribute.
dhw: Once we have that extra degree of awareness, the whole process is self-advancing, as one observation leads to another, and each observation engenders new needs and actions and physiological adjustments. In brief, the brain engenders thought, and the extraordinary levels of consciousness that distinguish us from our fellow animals are the result of new needs engendering new thoughts which, in turn, engender physiological adaptations, including the expansion of the brain.
I really doubt that thoughts create new physiology. I can think I want to exercise and enlarge muscles, increase heart strength, but noting more happens.
dhw: What we do not know is the spark that lit the fuse for this chain reaction. That, however, would be the only instance of “serendipity” – productive good luck, in contrast to the bad luck that has left 99% of species extinct. Variability within species is enough to explain why some groups of primates remained the same while others advanced. And there is no exclusion of the God theory, since this is a very late chapter in life’s history, and deals only with the origin of humans, and not with that of life and consciousness.
God lit the spark and guided the development. note, only one group of primates advanced in shotgun style, those that led to H. sapiens.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
dhw: I suggested that – along the lines of Sheldrake’s morphic resonance – the energy, and hence the information, produced by the brain could last indefinitely, but this did not settle the issue whether that energy and information could be added to once its producer had ceased to function (i.e. whether there might be such a thing as the soul that allows us to live on as an individual identity after death).
DAVID: I think the soul is added to universal consciousness, but I think its information is fixed, nothing added.
Although this is a side issue in the present context, it’s important in its own right. If nothing is added, i.e. no new information, there is no individual afterlife. That may well be true, but it goes against all the accounts of NDE patients, who remain themselves and undergo new experiences.
dhw: Does intelligence change the body, or do changes in the body engender intelligence? The following quote may offer us a clue:
“It’s a mistake to think we can explain brain size with just one or two mutations. I think that is dead wrong. We have probably acquired many little changes that are in some ways coopting the developmental rules.”
Wray concurs: “It wasn’t just a couple mutations and — bam! — you get a bigger brain. As we learn more about the changes between human and chimp brains, we realize there will be lots and lots of genes involved, each contributing a piece to that. The door is now open to get in there and really start understanding. The brain is modified in so many subtle and nonobvious ways.”
DAVID: This does not accept the gaps that imply an enormous number of genetic changes between H. habilis and H. erectus and H. sapiens. First big brain ,second more intelligence as that brain is used.
The researchers say lots and lots of genes are involved, and each contributes “a piece”. I think that allows for any number of changes. As regards the brain, what I am trying to describe is a feedback process, as detailed below. (See “In brief”…)
dhw: Once the spark is lit, the next step is the effect of thought on matter: the brain responds to exercise; new activities demand new connections between brain and muscles, and new forms of communication between members of the group. One thing leads to another in a perfectly logical chain of developments.
DAVID: You make it sound simple but the brain had to be given the ability of plasticity. What if the brain didn't have that? I think God supplied that attribute.
Plasticity had to be given to cells from the very beginning of life, or evolution could never have taken place. They only lose their plasticity when they are assigned a particular fixed role (though stem cells remain plastic). No, it’s not simple. It’s miraculously complex, and as I have made clear at the end, my hypothesis leaves plenty of room for your God!
dhw: In brief, the brain engenders thought, and the extraordinary levels of consciousness that distinguish us from our fellow animals are the result of new needs engendering new thoughts which, in turn, engender physiological adaptations, including the expansion of the brain.
DAVID: I really doubt that thoughts create new physiology. I can think I want to exercise and enlarge muscles, increase heart strength, but noting more happens.
What I am proposing is not “new physiology” – it is development of existing physiology. The long line of our animal ancestors all had brains. The human brain was not new. It was enlarged. Vocal tracts and thumbs also existed. On this thread we are tracing the origin of humans, not of organs.
dhw: What we do not know is the spark that lit the fuse for this chain reaction. That, however, would be the only instance of “serendipity” – productive good luck, in contrast to the bad luck that has left 99% of species extinct. Variability within species is enough to explain why some groups of primates remained the same while others advanced. And there is no exclusion of the God theory, since this is a very late chapter in life’s history, and deals only with the origin of humans, and not with that of life and consciousness.
DAVID: God lit the spark and guided the development. note, only one group of primates advanced in shotgun style, those that led to H. sapiens.
You yourself have drawn attention to the fact that there were several groups, and I don’t know what you mean by “shotgun style”. Other groups, including the Neanderthals, eventually became extinct, but I don’t know what point you are trying to make here. Mine is that once the spark of enhanced awareness was lit, it caused a chain reaction which can explain not only the expansion of the brain but also other physiological changes which in turn contributed to the enhancement of our intelligence. The more you can do, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more you want to do. That means making more tools or adapting existing ones.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
by David Turell , Monday, December 19, 2016, 18:59 (2683 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I think the soul is added to universal consciousness, but I think its information is fixed, nothing added.
dhw: Although this is a side issue in the present context, it’s important in its own right. If nothing is added, i.e. no new information, there is no individual afterlife. That may well be true, but it goes against all the accounts of NDE patients, who remain themselves and undergo new experiences.
Your view is confused. If life is truly over no new information is added. NDE folks are not dead in the final sense. They can be given info that they will live and come back later. Afterlife is static, nothing changes, no new experiences other than greeting NDE's.
DAVID: This does not accept the gaps that imply an enormous number of genetic changes between H. habilis and H. erectus and H. sapiens. First big brain ,second more intelligence as that brain is used.dhw: The researchers say lots and lots of genes are involved, and each contributes “a piece”. I think that allows for any number of changes. As regards the brain, what I am trying to describe is a feedback process, as detailed below.
If there is a huge gap in species type, i.e., H. habilis vs. H. erectus, vs. H sapiens of course 'lots of genes' are involved. We don't see stepwise tiny steps so the gaps are huge, the gene changes very multiplied and must be presumed to occur all at once to fit the 'gap' evidence.
DAVID: You make it sound simple but the brain had to be given the ability of plasticity. What if the brain didn't have that? I think God supplied that attribute.
dhw: Plasticity had to be given to cells from the very beginning of life, or evolution could never have taken place. They only lose their plasticity when they are assigned a particular fixed role (though stem cells remain plastic). No, it’s not simple. It’s miraculously complex, and as I have made clear at the end, my hypothesis leaves plenty of room for your God!
Now you are agreeing with me. The original bacteria were loaded with multiple metabolic pathways in order to survive 3.6-8 billion years.
DAVID: I really doubt that thoughts create new physiology. I can think I want to exercise and enlarge muscles, increase heart strength, but noting more happens.
dhw: What I am proposing is not “new physiology” – it is development of existing physiology. The long line of our animal ancestors all had brains. The human brain was not new. It was enlarged. Vocal tracts and thumbs also existed. On this thread we are tracing the origin of humans, not of organs.
Please note the gaps in fossils in your thinking. Our ancestors could only develop what was onboard at the start of a new species.
DAVID: God lit the spark and guided the development. note, only one group of primates advanced in shotgun style, those that led to H. sapiens.dhw: You yourself have drawn attention to the fact that there were several groups, and I don’t know what you mean by “shotgun style”.
Shotgun: Either we are being fooled by species variants or there were a large number of pre-homos that emerged from the apes according to all the types found currently. It resembles the 'bush of life' that all of evolution shows, but just at a specific point in evolution when the drive to complexity worked on producing us.
dhw: M[y point] is that once the spark of enhanced awareness was lit, it caused a chain reaction which can explain not only the expansion of the brain but also other physiological changes which in turn contributed to the enhancement of our intelligence. The more you can do, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more you want to do. That means making more tools or adapting existing ones.
Thought cannot grow the complexity of brain beyond the size of the brain that exists. A newly sized larger brain must appear to do that. Did thought create a new species of brain? I strongly object to that idea. Brain first, new capacities for thought second.
Different in degree or kind: drunken evolution
by David Turell , Monday, December 19, 2016, 19:26 (2683 days ago) @ David Turell
I'm not sure how much serious info is in this article, but it seems our ancestors did use alcohol naturally and it might have affected us today:
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-we-evolved-from-drunken-monkeys-to-boozy-humans?utm_source=Ae...
"The ‘drunken monkey’ hypothesis proposes that alcohol, and primarily the ethanol molecule, is routinely consumed by all animals that eat fruits and nectar.... fermentation is a natural process deriving from the metabolic action of yeasts on sugar molecules. The molecules produce alcohol to kill off their bacterial competitors, and the booze accumulates at low concentrations within fruits and nectar. It also wafts into the environment, producing a downwind vapour trail that reliably indicates the presence of fruits and sugars. Any animal that can sense and follow this odour upwind will come to the source of ethanol and, of course, the sugars within the fruit. In tropical forests, ripe fruit occurs patchily, so any ability to find it over long distances is beneficial.
"Not only does alcohol provide a useful long-distance sensory cue, it can also act as a feeding stimulant via the well-studied ‘apéritif effect’. Today, we often drink when eating, and overall food intake tends to go up as a consequence. The psychoactive and pleasurable features of alcohol certainly make us feel happier, particularly in social contexts, but they also act to increase overall energy gain. For animals searching in a rainforest for scarce nutritional resources, it’s similarly a good idea to consume ripe fruits as quickly as possible before the competition arrives. But do they ever actually get drunk?
***
" Only rarely, however, have these animal boozers ever been scientifically studied, and direct proof of inebriation is rare. Instead, the guts of fruit-eaters typically fill to satiation well before incapacitating blood-alcohol levels can be attained. Even though some animals can eat up to 10 per cent of their body weight a day in ripe fruit, the typical concentrations of alcohol in fruit pulp are only about 0.5-3 per cent. So they never get drunk! And this is a good thing too, especially for flying fruit-eaters such as toucans and fruit bats, given that predators are always on the lookout for the weak and the vulnerable. And most species in the wild (including fruit flies) have really good enzymes to degrade any ingested alcohol.
***
"Based on DNA sequence data and modern-day reconstruction of ancestral enzymes, we now know that the ability of these early apes to metabolise alcohol increased about 20-fold due to a single-point mutation in their genes, consistent with greater dietary exposure to this molecule. These animals were walking about the forest floor and within savannahs, and might have simply been obtaining greater access to fallen fruits that had been fermenting longer, and thus that contained more alcohol. Whatever the initial advantages might have been for this particular mutation, we have retained it into modern times. What once helped to find food more efficiently in the wild has become a major part of human culture, with alcohol both loved and abused worldwide.
"Today, we clearly have a conflicted relationship with the alcohol molecule. Some health benefits accrue to many individuals who engage in low-level drinking, but mostly just a reduction of cardiovascular risk. For those who like high-level, extreme drinking, alcohol poses substantial dangers to themselves and to others (particularly when behind the wheel of an automobile). Can an evolutionary perspective on our relationship to booze help us understand the apparently insoluble problem of addiction to alcohol? At the very least, recognition of an ancient and persistent dietary exposure to the molecule suggests that today’s drinking behaviour is motivated, in part, by deeply rooted reward pathways within our brain. And these responses we share with creatures as diverse as fruit bats, flies and our nearest living relatives, the chimpanzees.
"So the next time you enjoy the fruits of fermentation, think about deep evolutionary time and our ape-like ancestors foraging within tropical rain forests."
Comment: I don't think alcohol helped us evolve. But it might have set us up for addition.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
DAVID: I think the soul is added to universal consciousness, but I think its information is fixed, nothing added.
dhw: Although this is a side issue in the present context, it’s important in its own right. If nothing is added, i.e. no new information, there is no individual afterlife. That may well be true, but it goes against all the accounts of NDE patients, who remain themselves and undergo new experiences.
DAVID: Your view is confused. If life is truly over no new information is added. NDE folks are not dead in the final sense. They can be given info that they will live and come back later. Afterlife is static, nothing changes, no new experiences other than greeting NDE's.
The patients make all kinds of claims, involving new people, new emotions, a different world, being given information they did not have beforehand. I’m not trying to make a case either way. I’m merely pointing out that if nothing can be added, there is no afterlife for the individual. There is only death. And that is not what those patients reported.
DAVID: If there is a huge gap in species type, i.e., H. habilis vs. H. erectus, vs. H sapiens of course 'lots of genes' are involved. We don't see stepwise tiny steps so the gaps are huge, the gene changes very multiplied and must be presumed to occur all at once to fit the 'gap' evidence.
I don’t understand why suddenly you are talking about gaps and tiny steps. These were different species of hominid. Just as there are different species of ape. I thought we were discussing how the human brain grew bigger and human intelligence evolved – not the general, unsolved mystery of speciation.
DAVID: You make it sound simple but the brain had to be given the ability of plasticity. What if the brain didn't have that? I think God supplied that attribute.
dhw: Plasticity had to be given to cells from the very beginning of life, or evolution could never have taken place. They only lose their plasticity when they are assigned a particular fixed role (though stem cells remain plastic).
DAVID: Now you are agreeing with me. The original bacteria were loaded with multiple metabolic pathways in order to survive 3.6-8 billion years.
I said nothing about metabolic pathways. Cells/bacteria had to have the capacity for change, which means plasticity. You think your God programmed them with every solution to every problem for 3.8 billion years and onwards, and I suggest that, if he exists, he gave them the intelligence to work out their own solutions. Plasticity is required for both hypotheses.
DAVID: I really doubt that thoughts create new physiology. I can think I want to exercise and enlarge muscles, increase heart strength, but noting more happens.dhw: What I am proposing is not “new physiology” – it is development of existing physiology.
DAVID: […] Our ancestors could only develop what was onboard at the start of a new species.
You are repeating what I have just said! You doubted “that thoughts create new physiology”, and I pointed out to you that they did not create new physiology but developed existing physiology, i.e. what was already on board.
DAVID: God lit the spark and guided the development. note, only one group of primates advanced in shotgun style, those that led to H. sapiens.
dhw: You yourself have drawn attention to the fact that there were several groups, and I don’t know what you mean by “shotgun style”.
DAVID: Shotgun: Either we are being fooled by species variants or there were a large number of pre-homos that emerged from the apes according to all the types found currently. It resembles the 'bush of life' that all of evolution shows, but just at a specific point in evolution when the drive to complexity worked on producing us.
This is as confusing as your whale scenario. If, as you insist, your God’s purpose was to produce sapiens, did all these other pre-sapiens/pre-whales “freewheel” their way into existence, independently of your God? Or did he specially create each one of them in order to…do what? Balance nature, i.e. keep life going until sapiens arrived? As if he couldn’t have specially created sapiens/whales in the first place?
DAVID: Thought cannot grow the complexity of brain beyond the size of the brain that exists. A newly sized larger brain must appear to do that. Did thought create a new species of brain? I strongly object to that idea. Brain first, new capacities for thought second.
Once again, I am not talking about a new “species of brain”. I am talking about the development of an existing brain. I am not arguing against the brain being the source of thoughts. However, I am suggesting that new circumstances resulted in our ancestors becoming more aware than their ancestors, and therefore having new thoughts which required more capacity and complexity of the brain, leading to a feedback process. The cell communities that form the body respond to new needs by making changes to themselves. We see it all the time in processes of adaptation. So maybe that is also what happened with the cell community of the brain.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
by David Turell , Tuesday, December 20, 2016, 19:42 (2682 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your view is confused. If life is truly over no new information is added. NDE folks are not dead in the final sense. They can be given info that they will live and come back later. Afterlife is static, nothing changes, no new experiences other than greeting NDE's.
dhw: The patients make all kinds of claims, involving new people, new emotions, a different world, being given information they did not have beforehand. I’m not trying to make a case either way. I’m merely pointing out that if nothing can be added, there is no afterlife for the individual. There is only death. And that is not what those patients reported.
The NDE folks are shown heaven in some cases. The NDE only see dead folks they know. The NDE'ers feel emotion because they re not yet dead. Do you think there are tea parties or any other activities in heaven?
DAVID: If there is a huge gap in species type, i.e., H. habilis vs. H. erectus, vs. H sapiens of course 'lots of genes' are involved. We don't see stepwise tiny steps so the gaps are huge, the gene changes very multiplied and must be presumed to occur all at once to fit the 'gap' evidence.dhw: I don’t understand why suddenly you are talking about gaps and tiny steps. These were different species of hominid. Just as there are different species of ape. I thought we were discussing how the human brain grew bigger and human intelligence evolved – not the general, unsolved mystery of speciation.
But we are discussing the gaps in species and brain size, which jumps tremendously with each gap. Size first, more enlarged language second.
I said nothing about metabolic pathways. Cells/bacteria had to have the capacity for change, which means plasticity. You think your God programmed them with every solution to every problem for 3.8 billion years and onwards, and I suggest that, if he exists, he gave them the intelligence to work out their own solutions. Plasticity is required for both hypotheses.>
Plasticity is not required if bacteria have all the alternative pathways they need for any crisis from the beginning, which I think they do have.
DAVID: […] Our ancestors could only develop what was onboard at the start of a new species.
dhw:You are repeating what I have just said! You doubted “that thoughts create new physiology”, and I pointed out to you that they did not create new physiology but developed existing physiology, i.e. what was already on board.
With each new species, after the gap of development, new physiology in the brain is available for development. We agree.
DAVID: Shotgun: Either we are being fooled by species variants or there were a large number of pre-homos that emerged from the apes according to all the types found currently. It resembles the 'bush of life' that all of evolution shows, but just at a specific point in evolution when the drive to complexity worked on producing us.
dhw: This is as confusing as your whale scenario. If, as you insist, your God’s purpose was to produce sapiens, did all these other pre-sapiens/pre-whales “freewheel” their way into existence, independently of your God? Or did he specially create each one of them in order to…do what? Balance nature, i.e. keep life going until sapiens arrived? As if he couldn’t have specially created sapiens/whales in the first place?
It is a simple concept. An inborn drive to complexity moderated by God. I can't be more specific than that since we do not understand speciation.
DAVID: Thought cannot grow the complexity of brain beyond the size of the brain that exists. A newly sized larger brain must appear to do that. Did thought create a new species of brain? I strongly object to that idea. Brain first, new capacities for thought second.dhw: Once again, I am not talking about a new “species of brain”. I am talking about the development of an existing brain. I am not arguing against the brain being the source of thoughts. However, I am suggesting that new circumstances resulted in our ancestors becoming more aware than their ancestors, and therefore having new thoughts which required more capacity and complexity of the brain, leading to a feedback process. The cell communities that form the body respond to new needs by making changes to themselves. We see it all the time in processes of adaptation. So maybe that is also what happened with the cell community of the brain.
We are in general agreement. Brain plasticity changes the brain each Homo species received in speciation.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
DAVID: … Afterlife is static, nothing changes, no new experiences other than greeting NDE's.
dhw: The patients make all kinds of claims, involving new people, new emotions, a different world, being given information they did not have beforehand. I’m not trying to make a case either way. I’m merely pointing out that if nothing can be added, there is no afterlife for the individual. There is only death. And that is not what those patients reported.
DAVID: The NDE folks are shown heaven in some cases. The NDE only see dead folks they know. The NDE'ers feel emotion because they re not yet dead. Do you think there are tea parties or any other activities in heaven?
Seeing heaven, meeting dead people they knew in life, and feeling emotions during and because of the experience (recalled later when they have been resuscitated) all constitute new information. But perhaps I have totally misunderstood your beliefs. I thought you believed in an afterlife in which you retained your identity. If there is no new information of any kind (including the fact that you are still you after the death of your body), you may as well be dead. Please explain your beliefs, and tell us why you use NDEs as evidence for them.
Dhw: Cells/bacteria had to have the capacity for change, which means plasticity. You think your God programmed them with every solution to every problem for 3.8 billion years and onwards, and I suggest that, if he exists, he gave them the intelligence to work out their own solutions. Plasticity is required for both hypotheses.
DAVID: Plasticity is not required if bacteria have all the alternative pathways they need for any crisis from the beginning, which I think they do have.
How can a cell alter its own structure, or have its structure altered by preprogramming, without having a structure that can be altered (which is what I understand by “plasticity”)?
dhw: If, as you insist, your God’s purpose was to produce sapiens, did all these other pre-sapiens/pre-whales “freewheel” their way into existence, independently of your God? Or did he specially create each one of them in order to…do what? Balance nature, i.e. keep life going until sapiens arrived? As if he couldn’t have specially created sapiens/whales in the first place?
DAVID: It is a simple concept. An inborn drive to complexity moderated by God. I can't be more specific than that since we do not understand speciation.
A freewheeling inborn drive that is only “moderated” by God (as opposed to being tightly controlled) offers plenty of scope for an autonomous inventive mechanism to do its work. This is a promising concession. It’s true that we don’t understand how speciation takes place, but here we are discussing your God’s purpose, which you insist was the production of homo sapiens. So perhaps you could just tell us if you think pre-homos and pre-whales “freewheeled” into existence or were specially created by your God, and if it’s the latter, why you think he specially created pre-homos and pre-whales if he only wanted to produce sapiens.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 21, 2016, 21:28 (2681 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The NDE folks are shown heaven in some cases. The NDE only see dead folks they know. The NDE'ers feel emotion because they re not yet dead. Do you think there are tea parties or any other activities in heaven?
dhw: Seeing heaven, meeting dead people they knew in life, and feeling emotions during and because of the experience (recalled later when they have been resuscitated) all constitute new information. But perhaps I have totally misunderstood your beliefs. I thought you believed in an afterlife in which you retained your identity. If there is no new information of any kind (including the fact that you are still you after the death of your body), you may as well be dead. Please explain your beliefs, and tell us why you use NDEs as evidence for them.
I've explained that NDE'ers are not really dead. They can bring back emotions from their experienced. Once really dead my soul goes to heaven but adds nothing to the overall organization of my personality, other than the experience of being in heaven. Loved ones are recognized and there is telepathic communication which adds no new knowledge. I use NDE'ers because I fully believe they have been to heaven and come back.
DAVID: Plasticity is not required if bacteria have all the alternative pathways they need for any crisis from the beginning, which I think they do have.
dhw: How can a cell alter its own structure, or have its structure altered by preprogramming, without having a structure that can be altered (which is what I understand by “plasticity”)?
The plasticity I envision is molecular processes, not fixed structure and scaffolding, which stays the same.
dhw: If, as you insist, your God’s purpose was to produce sapiens, did all these other pre-sapiens/pre-whales “freewheel” their way into existence, independently of your God? Or did he specially create each one of them in order to…do what? Balance nature, i.e. keep life going until sapiens arrived? As if he couldn’t have specially created sapiens/whales in the first place?
DAVID: It is a simple concept. An inborn drive to complexity moderated by God. I can't be more specific than that since we do not understand speciation.
dhw: So perhaps you could just tell us if you think pre-homos and pre-whales “freewheeled” into existence or were specially created by your God, and if it’s the latter, why you think he specially created pre-homos and pre-whales if he only wanted to produce sapiens.
Whales came into existence under God's guidance. That is all I really believe. The rest is theory. I have repeated over and over God used an evolutionary process so pre-whales and pre-humans had to occur first.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
dhw: If there is no new information of any kind (including the fact that you are still you after the death of your body), you may as well be dead. Please explain your beliefs, and tell us why you use NDEs as evidence for them.
DAVID: I've explained that NDE'ers are not really dead. They can bring back emotions from their experienced. Once really dead my soul goes to heaven but adds nothing to the overall organization of my personality, other than the experience of being in heaven. Loved ones are recognized and there is telepathic communication which adds no new knowledge. I use NDE'ers because I fully believe they have been to heaven and come back.
Thank you. I don’t know how one can experience being in heaven after only having experienced Earth, and communicating with others after their bodily death, and yet not acquire new knowledge, but this was all a digression, and perhaps I should not have mentioned it in the first place.
DAVID: Plasticity is not required if bacteria have all the alternative pathways they need for any crisis from the beginning, which I think they do have.
dhw: How can a cell alter its own structure, or have its structure altered by preprogramming, without having a structure that can be altered (which is what I understand by “plasticity”)?
DAVID: The plasticity I envision is molecular processes, not fixed structure and scaffolding, which stays the same.
Then perhaps structure was the wrong word. I don’t know how a cell can alter its own molecular processes without having molecules whose processes can be altered (which is what I understand by “plasticity”).
dhw: [...]perhaps you could just tell us if you think pre-homos and pre-whales “freewheeled” into existence or were specially created by your God, and if it’s the latter, why you think he specially created pre-homos and pre-whales if he only wanted to produce sapiens.
DAVID: Whales came into existence under God's guidance. That is all I really believe. The rest is theory. I have repeated over and over God used an evolutionary process so pre-whales and pre-humans had to occur first.
It is ALL theory, including God’s guidance of whale evolution. We both believe that all organisms except the very first have come into being through an evolutionary process, and so of course pre-whales and pre-humans came before whales and humans. But you cannot explain WHY your God specially designed pre-whales and pre-homos in order to produce sapiens. That is the part of your theory I am questioning. Previously you have admitted that you are puzzled by it. So why not consider the possibility that there is a less puzzling explanation: namely, that he did not specially design them, but that evolution “freewheeled” (your very own expression), apart from when he might occasionally have dabbled? Then the puzzle disappears.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
by David Turell , Thursday, December 22, 2016, 15:59 (2680 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The plasticity I envision is molecular processes, not fixed structure and scaffolding, which stays the same.
dhw:Then perhaps structure was the wrong word. I don’t know how a cell can alter its own molecular processes without having molecules whose processes can be altered (which is what I understand by “plasticity”).
That is correct.
DAVID: Whales came into existence under God's guidance. That is all I really believe. The rest is theory. I have repeated over and over God used an evolutionary process so pre-whales and pre-humans had to occur first.
dhw: But you cannot explain WHY your God specially designed pre-whales and pre-homos in order to produce sapiens. That is the part of your theory I am questioning. Previously you have admitted that you are puzzled by it. So why not consider the possibility that there is a less puzzling explanation: namely, that he did not specially design them, but that evolution “freewheeled” (your very own expression), apart from when he might occasionally have dabbled? Then the puzzle disappears.
You don't like my answer of balance of nature in which the major thrust is the need for energy/food for the evolutionary organisms to cover 3.6 billion years of timer for life to survive. But that is perfectly logical whether humans arrive or not, evolution goes on.
Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution
by David Turell , Sunday, December 18, 2016, 22:02 (2684 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Thank you again for this fascinating article. ... The “serendipitous confluence of adaptations” is an important phrase. You, David, will assume that all these adaptations were engineered by your God, so I’m surprised you didn’t pounce on the word “serendipitous”! My own focus, though, is on the question to what extent these adaptations (including the brain) were the cause of intelligence or the result of intelligence
I was fascinated by the total essay, not the use of 'luck' in discussing coordinated applications. The author is not taking a theistic approach, but no matter, he is supplying fascinating information which we can interpret in alternate ways.
dhw: For dualists who claim that the brain is the receiver of consciousness and not the producer, the increase in the size of the brain would come from the need to process more and more information. For materialists, the increase would produce a corresponding increase in consciousness and intelligence. Dualism puts intelligence first and receiver (brain) second; materialism reverses the process. In my attempt to reconcile the two approaches (Human consciousness: Penrose: soul survives! 8 November at 12.16), I suggested that – along the lines of Sheldrake’s morphic resonance – the energy, and hence the information, produced by the brain could last indefinitely, but this did not settle the issue whether that energy and information could be added to once its producer had ceased to function (i.e. whether there might be such a thing as the soul that allows us to live on as an individual identity after death).
I think the soul is added to universal consciousness, but I think its information is fixed, nothing added.
dhw: The related question raised by this article is how and why the brain and our consciousness and intelligence increased on such a massive scale, and it really comes back to how evolution works. Does intelligence change the body, or do changes in the body engender intelligence? The following quote may offer us a clue:“It’s a mistake to think we can explain brain size with just one or two mutations. I think that is dead wrong. We have probably acquired many little changes that are in some ways coopting the developmental rules.”
Wray concurs: “It wasn’t just a couple mutations and — bam! — you get a bigger brain. As we learn more about the changes between human and chimp brains, we realize there will be lots and lots of genes involved, each contributing a piece to that. The door is now open to get in there and really start understanding. The brain is modified in so many subtle and nonobvious ways.”
This does not accept the gaps that imply an enormous number of genetic changes between H. habilis and H. erectus and H. sapiens. First big brain ,second more intelligence as that brain is used.
Different in degree or kind: chimp 'language'
by David Turell , Thursday, December 06, 2018, 18:17 (1966 days ago) @ David Turell
Mostly grunts and hoots, but they have body language:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2018/11/28/chimps-didnt-evolve-small-talk/#.XAll...
"In chimpanzee societies, a whistle followed by a high-pitched hoot seems to mean, “I’m leaving.” Energetic grunts probably say “good food.” And a hip thrust could signal that chimp is ready to get frisky.
"These rough translations result from decades of research on chimp communication. In addition to revealing what apes are saying (big surprise: food and sex), the results also reflect why and how chimps communicate — and how this compares to human language.
"One of the biggest questions about chimp communication centers around the notion of intentionality. Why do chimps communicate the things that they do? The answer might seem obvious, but there’s actually an important distinction to be made between innate, involuntary reactions to stimuli and calls and gestures that are produced consciously in order to communicate internal things like thoughts and feelings.
"The first type of communication includes things like laughing and crying, and it doesn’t necessarily take consciousness to produce. The second requires something called theory of mind, or, the understanding that other beings have thoughts.
"Possessing an advanced theory of mind indicates a level of consciousness, and it’s helping researchers assess how intelligent and aware animals like chimps really are. Research so far indicates that they do comprehend that others have thoughts — at least to a degree.
***
"Chimps don’t have the vocal anatomy to produce as many sounds as humans. They rely on a limited set of calls, which have been classified into four call types — hoos, grunts, barks and screams — and dozens of subtypes. However, the apes have a much larger repertoire of non-verbal communicative gestures, such as the mouth stroke and exaggerated scratch. Over 70 such gestures have been observed in chimps and bonobos, combined. Together, gestures and calls provide enough substrates for potentially extensive communication.
***
"Recent experiments support chimps having first-order intentionality, by showing wild subjects could control their calls and use them tactically.
***
"But it’s unclear from these studies if chimps possess second-order intentionality, the desire to change the thoughts of others. Obviously we can’t ask the apes, “Did you alarm huu to get your friends to hide or to get your friends to know to hide?” But other experiments suggest chimps have more limited theory of mind than humans. Based on how they behave when food is hidden from group members, chimps seem to grasp that others can be uninformed, but not misinformed (probably).
"Differing degrees of theory of mind might contribute to differences between ape communication and human language. With high-order intentionality, people talk to bond, gossip and make agreements. Somewhere around first or second-order, most chimp messages are declarative imperatives like “good food” and “sex now.” They communicate the essentials — food, sex and imminent danger — but skip the small talk."
Comment: We may resemble them in body form but the minds are a million miles apart.
Different in degree or kind: higher metabolism
by David Turell , Wednesday, May 04, 2016, 20:37 (2912 days ago) @ David Turell
We burn many more calories than apes, monkeys, etc. part of it is caused by the big brain which burns about 25% of our daily basal metabolism:-http://phys.org/news/2016-05-humans-faster-metabolism-primates-enabling.html-"Loyola University Chicago researchers are among the co-authors of a groundbreaking study that found humans have a higher metabolism rate than closely related primates, which enabled humans to evolve larger brains.-***-"The study found that, adjusted for body size, on a daily basis humans consume 400 more calories than chimpanzees and bonobos (closely related to chimps), 635 more calories than gorillas and 820 more calories than orangutans.-***-"The study found that the percentage of body fat was markedly higher in humans, and only humans showed a significant gender difference - 22.9 percent body fat in men, 41.7 percent body fat in women-***-"'Humans exhibit an evolved predisposition to deposit fat whereas other hominoids remain relatively lean, even in captivity where activity levels are modest," researchers wrote. "Untangling the evolutionary pressures and physiological mechanisms shaping the diversity of metabolic strategies among living hominoids may aid efforts to promote and repair metabolic health for humans in industrialized populations and apes in captivity.'"-Comment: The physical differences are as vast as the issues of consciousness
Different in degree or kind: higher metabolism
by George Jelliss , Crewe, Wednesday, May 04, 2016, 22:29 (2912 days ago) @ David Turell
Thought this might interest you, but I see you got there already!-http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/humans-are-highest-energy-apes-making-us-smarter-also-fatter-I haven't been looking in Agnostic Web for a long while, but I see you are still nattering on about the same old things.
--
GPJ
Different in degree or kind: higher metabolism
by David Turell , Thursday, May 05, 2016, 23:54 (2911 days ago) @ George Jelliss
George: Thought this might interest you, but I see you got there already! > > http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/humans-are-highest-energy-apes-making-us-smarter... - An other version of the same research: - http://www.nature.com/news/fat-lot-of-good-1.19845?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160505&spMaili... - "We humans are a conundrum to physiologists when it comes to our energy use, because we seem to have evolved an ability to have our cake and eat it, too. Compared with our primate cousins, we breed more and have larger brains — both of which should sap our energy — and yet we live for longer. - "In experiments described online on 4 May, scientists took direct measurements of daily energy use in more than a hundred people and in all other known species of great ape (H. Pontzer et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature17654; 2016). Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans all failed to keep up. Every human expended hundreds of kilocalories a day more than any other ape, and the difference is down to greater metabolic activity in our organs. - "In other words, humans have evolved to use more energy. We are the original consumer society: our increased demand for physiological energy is driven by our more efficient way of walking, the energy-dense foods such as meat and tubers we have found, and the methods of cooking we have invented and adopted. - "The unusually large energy budget of humans presents both an opportunity and a threat. For a start, it helps to power — and to explain the development of — our unusually large and concomitantly energy-hungry brains....But how we found the fuel to maintain such an expensive cognitive prize, where other primates have not, has long been a puzzle. - "Then there is the risk. To have a body that needs to be fed more just to exist is a dangerous strategy in lean times, just as use of gas-guzzling motor vehicles is considered antisocial in a resource-constrained world. - "The human culture of food sharing helps us to keep the tank filled. So too does what seems to be a uniquely human trait among the primates: the ability to maintain significant fat reserves as a contingency. .... We may curse its effects today, but human fat tissue seems to have evolved to protect us from ourselves and our unquenchable thirst for energy. It's true: those who struggle to keep those fat reserves under control really can blame their metabolism." - Comment: we re physically very different than apes to support that big brain and our upright posture.
Different in degree or kind: toddlers best apes
by David Turell , Wednesday, May 18, 2016, 21:25 (2898 days ago) @ David Turell
Young toddlers use ape-like tools with quick mental response:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/toddlers-instinctually-know-how-to-use-a-wild-ape-s-tools/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20160518-"Deep in the lush Mahale Mountains of Tanzania, a chimpanzee strips a twig of its leaves and then plunges it into the ground. When she yanks it out, the twig is crawling with tasty termites. The chimp slurps the insects off the stick before fishing for more six-legged snacks.-"Halfway around the world, a three-year-old British child sits before a cardboard box. A small hole reveals three sponges inside. If he can get the sponges out, he will earn a sticker. Without being instructed, the child decides to pick up a nearby Velcro-covered wood rod. He reasons that the sponges might stick to the Velcro, and he is right. In short order, he wins his prize.-" The research sought to compare the cognitive abilities of humans with those of our great ape relatives by relying on tool-related behaviors recorded in wild chimps and orangutans as a model for tests of young children. In a sample of 50 toddlers between two and three and a half years old, the researchers observed a similar frequency of tool-related behaviors as seen among wild chimps and orangutans. Common ape behaviors, such as fishing for termites, were observed often in the children engaged in analogous scenarios. And behaviors that were more rare in wild ape communities, such as using a rock to break open a nut, were also more infrequently used by the toddlers. In all, the children solved 11 of 12 tests. Psychologist Eva Reindl, who led the study, says the fact that the toddlers displayed the appropriate behaviors is evidence of the children's instinctual ability to use these simple tools.-"The results, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, undermine the prevailing notion that children need to learn to use tools in all cases—an idea that goes back to Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who wrote in 1930 that spontaneous tool use by human children was “practically zero.'” -Comment: Is anyone surprised? I'm not.
Different in degree or kind: toddlers best apes
DAVID: Young toddlers use ape-like tools with quick mental response:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/toddlers-instinctually-know-how-to-use-a-wild...-QUOTE: "The results, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, undermine the prevailing notion that children need to learn to use tools in all cases—an idea that goes back to Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who wrote in 1930 that spontaneous tool use by human children was “practically zero.'” -David's comment: Is anyone surprised? I'm not.-Nor am I. But I'm slightly surprised that you have included this under “Difference in degree or kind” and have left out the rest of the conclusion:-“The findings also suggest that humans and other great apes share a common, innate cognitive apparatus for understanding and manipulating the physical world.”-Not exactly difference in kind, then.
Different in degree or kind: toddlers best apes
by David Turell , Thursday, May 19, 2016, 23:32 (2897 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Nor am I. But I'm slightly surprised that you have included this under “Difference in degree or kind” and have left out the rest of the conclusion: > > “The findings also suggest that humans and other great apes share a common, innate cognitive apparatus for understanding and manipulating the physical world.” > > Not exactly difference in kind, then. - Of course we have the same apparatus which recognizes reality. It is like saying we both have cameras. There is nothing in that sentence which describes anything of the degree of thought each species puts into its recognition of reality. If we both accept common descent, we started with the same basic facilities the ape still has, and advanced so far beyond it we are different in kind..
Different in degree or kind: toddlers best apes
dhw: … I'm slightly surprised that you have included this under “Difference in degree or kind” and have left out the rest of the conclusion: “The findings also suggest that humans and other great apes share a common, innate cognitive apparatus for understanding and manipulating the physical world.” Not exactly difference in kind, then. - DAVID: Of course we have the same apparatus which recognizes reality. It is like saying we both have cameras. There is nothing in that sentence which describes anything of the degree of thought each species puts into its recognition of reality. If we both accept common descent, we started with the same basic facilities the ape still has, and advanced so far beyond it we are different in kind. - Recognizing reality is not the same as understanding and manipulating it. The article does not describe the senses (your camera analogy) but the intelligence that uses the information provided by the senses. However, you have made the point quite admirably yourself: there is nothing which describes “anything of the degree of thought…” Quite right. The article only shows that apes and humans understand and manipulate reality, but not the degree to which they do this. Ape tools are very, very, VERY primitive compared to our vast array of HUGELY complex machines. But our HUGELY complex machines are still tools. - We have certainly done this discussion to death now, but I presume you were goading me by including it on the “different in kind” thread!
Different in degree or kind: toddlers best apes
by David Turell , Friday, May 20, 2016, 20:33 (2896 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: We have certainly done this discussion to death now, but I presume you were goading me by including it on the “different in kind” thread! - Yes, tools are tools. To move earth I use a shovel. Construction companies will have giant bulldozers. Still under the tool heading, but different in kind.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Thursday, September 22, 2016, 21:31 (2771 days ago) @ David Turell
This neurosurgeon has been heard from before:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/human-evolution/neurosurgeon-we-are-more-different-from-apes-than-apes-are-from-viruses/-He discusses Wolfe's new book on language at first and then comments:-"And yet, as Wolfe points out, Darwinists are at an utter loss to explain how language -- the salient characteristic of man -- "evolved." None of the deep drawer of evolutionary just-so stories come anywhere close to explaining how man might have acquired the astonishing ability to craft unlimited propositions and concepts and subtleties within subtleties using a system of grammar and abstract designators (i.e. words) that are utterly lacking anywhere else in the animal kingdom. -***-"I have argued before that the human mind is qualitatively different from the animal mind. The human mind has immaterial abilities -- the intellect's ability to grasp abstract universal concepts divorced from any particular thing -- and that this ability makes us more different from apes than apes are from viruses. We are ontologically different. We are a different kind of being from animals. We are not just animals who talk. Although we share much in our bodies with animals, our language -- a simulacrum of our abstract minds -- has no root in the animal world. Language is the tool by which we think abstractly. It is sui generis. It is a gift, a window into the human soul, something we are made with, and it did not evolve. Language is a rock against which evolutionary theory wrecks, one of the many rocks -- the uncooperative fossil record, the jumbled molecular evolutionary tree, irreducible complexity, intricate intracellular design, the genetic code, the collapsing myth of junk DNA, the immaterial human mind -- that comprise the shoal that is sinking Darwin's Victorian fable."-Comment: No question the ability to speak and read language is part of the enormous gap between all animals and humans.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
DAVID: This neurosurgeon has been heard from before:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/human-evolution/neurosurgeon-we-are-more-different-from-...-He discusses Wolfe's new book on language at first and then comments: "And yet, as Wolfe points out, Darwinists are at an utter loss to explain how language -- the salient characteristic of man -- "evolved." -Try this: many of our animal predecessors communicate by sound. We know that their different sounds carry different meanings, though the range is probably limited to the fulfilment of their immediate requirements. Human levels of consciousness have resulted in an ever expanding range of requirements, which in turn demands an ever expanding range of sounds. Just as our modern languages have expanded on a colossal scale from the languages of long ago, the languages of long ago would have been a colossal expansion on the first forms of communication among our distant ancestors. It is possible that the physical transformations needed for our forms of language were brought about by the need for new sounds - evolution as a response to changing requirements. And so just as our animal needs for shelter, food, self-defence, training have been expanded to almost unrecognizable proportions in the form of cities, the food industry, armies, navies and air forces, schools and universities, our languages have been expanded from the animal sounds with which human communication began to their present almost unrecognizable complexity. A shining example of evolution at work.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Friday, September 23, 2016, 15:53 (2770 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: This neurosurgeon has been heard from before: > > http://www.uncommondescent.com/human-evolution/neurosurgeon-we-are-more-different-from-... > He discusses Wolfe's new book on language at first and then comments: > "And yet, as Wolfe points out, Darwinists are at an utter loss to explain how language -- the salient characteristic of man -- "evolved." > > dhw: It is possible that the physical transformations needed for our forms of language were brought about by the need for new sounds - evolution as a response to changing requirements.-Sorry, but the anatomic changes for spoken language, which I have described in the past were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens skeletal remains before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago. The evidence is strong that anatomy preceded language suggesting pre-planning in evolution by God.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: It is possible that the physical transformations needed for our forms of language were brought about by the need for new sounds - evolution as a response to changing requirements. - DAVID: Sorry, but the anatomic changes for spoken language, which I have described in the past were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens skeletal remains before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago. The evidence is strong that anatomy preceded language suggesting pre-planning in evolution by God. - Sorry, but has it not occurred to anyone that if the anatomic changes were present 200,000 years ago, maybe that might be construed as evidence that human language appeared 200,000 years ago? Nobody knows when human language started, and as far as I know, nobody was around with a tape recorder to enable us to distinguish between the sounds being made at the time. As regards your own theory, can you think of any reason why God would give humans the means to create new sounds but they would not make any new sounds for 150,000 years?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Saturday, September 24, 2016, 15:57 (2769 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: It is possible that the physical transformations needed for our forms of language were brought about by the need for new sounds - evolution as a response to changing requirements. > > DAVID: Sorry, but the anatomic changes for spoken language, which I have described in the past were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens skeletal remains before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago. The evidence is strong that anatomy preceded language suggesting pre-planning in evolution by God. > > dhw: Sorry, but has it not occurred to anyone that if the anatomic changes were present 200,000 years ago, maybe that might be construed as evidence that human language appeared 200,000 years ago? Nobody knows when human language started, and as far as I know, nobody was around with a tape recorder to enable us to distinguish between the sounds being made at the time. As regards your own theory, can you think of any reason why God would give humans the means to create new sounds but they would not make any new sounds for 150,000 years?-Just because your house has a piano, doesn't mean you can sit down and immediately play a Beethoven concerto. First the anatomy, then learn how to use it. Of course it was used 200,000 years ago and gradually organized language and its rules developed. Anatomy first, then speech and language follows. Quite clear in the book The Ape That Spoke. Our current abilities require very clipped breath/tongue controls created by the anatomic changes.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: It is possible that the physical transformations needed for our forms of language were brought about by the need for new sounds - evolution as a response to changing requirements.-DAVID: Sorry, but the anatomic changes for spoken language, which I have described in the past were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens skeletal remains before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago. The evidence is strong that anatomy preceded language suggesting pre-planning in evolution by God.-dhw: Sorry, but has it not occurred to anyone that if the anatomic changes were present 200,000 years ago, maybe that might be construed as evidence that human language appeared 200,000 years ago? Nobody knows when human language started, and as far as I know, nobody was around with a tape recorder to enable us to distinguish between the sounds being made at the time. As regards your own theory, can you think of any reason why God would give humans the means to create new sounds but they would not make any new sounds for 150,000 years?-DAVID: Just because your house has a piano, doesn't mean you can sit down and immediately play a Beethoven concerto. First the anatomy, then learn how to use it. Of course it was used 200,000 years ago and gradually organized language and its rules developed. Anatomy first, then speech and language follows. Quite clear in the book The Ape That Spoke. Our current abilities require very clipped breath/tongue controls created by the anatomic changes.-Please reread your own comment above, as regards human language not appearing until 50,000 years ago, though the anatomical changes were present 200,000 years ago. Now you are simply repeating what I said in my response above and in my initial response to the article you posted (new sounds gradually evolving into the complexities we know today), except that in the first quote above I suggested that the anatomical changes were the result of the need for new sounds - i.e. the organism responding to new requirements, as we see in the less complex process of adaptation.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Sunday, September 25, 2016, 15:18 (2768 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Please reread your own comment above, as regards human language not appearing until 50,000 years ago, though the anatomical changes were present 200,000 years ago. Now you are simply repeating what I said in my response above and in my initial response to the article you posted (new sounds gradually evolving into the complexities we know today), except that in the first quote above I suggested that the anatomical changes were the result of the need for new sounds - i.e. the organism responding to new requirements, as we see in the less complex process of adaptation.-'Needing new sounds' is fine, but the anatomic changes which occurred and are required for precise sounds, are a complex mix which require advanced planning to put together requiring many different mutations. But all we have from the fossils is punctuated equilibrium, which means saltation.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: Please reread your own comment above, as regards human language not appearing until 50,000 years ago, though the anatomical changes were present 200,000 years ago. Now you are simply repeating what I said in my response above and in my initial response to the article you posted (new sounds gradually evolving into the complexities we know today), except that in the first quote above I suggested that the anatomical changes were the result of the need for new sounds - i.e. the organism responding to new requirements, as we see in the less complex process of adaptation.-DAVID: 'Needing new sounds' is fine, but the anatomic changes which occurred and are required for precise sounds, are a complex mix which require advanced planning to put together requiring many different mutations. But all we have from the fossils is punctuated equilibrium, which means saltation.-Back to your advanced planning. In most cases of innovation, I have suggested that the new structures are formed as a response to changes in the environment (new needs or opportunities) - not to advance planning. (“Advanced” is a little ambiguous: do you mean in advance, or do you mean highly sophisticated? Of course, I accept the latter.) In the case of language, my suggestion is that the pressure came from inside, in so far as early humans needed new sounds. Every innovation has to be complex, as it has to fit in with the structure of the rest of the organism. In that sense the eye, the leg, the liver, the kidney, the sex organs all required many different “mutations”, and we have long since agreed that Darwin's gradualism doesn't work, because they would be no use if they didn't function. They might be improved with time, but the original change would have to be a saltation. And so I suggest that early humans rapidly responded to the need/desire for new sounds by imposing the anatomical changes on themselves (major adjustments to existing organs), just as organisms rapidly impose changes on themselves when they adapt to new conditions. And I would also suggest that if these anatomical changes took place 200,000 years ago, it is possible that human language began 200,000 years ago and not 50,000 years ago.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Monday, September 26, 2016, 15:19 (2767 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Back to your advanced planning. In most cases of innovation, I have suggested that the new structures are formed as a response to changes in the environment (new needs or opportunities) - not to advance planning. (“Advanced” is a little ambiguous: do you mean in advance, or do you mean highly sophisticated? Of course, I accept the latter.) In the case of language, my suggestion is that the pressure came from inside, in so far as early humans needed new sounds.-Of course they needed the best communication they could develop. Mc Crone describes the probable vocal abilities of pre sapiens. But he states that proper speech required the prior development of the anatomy.-> dhw: And I would also suggest that if these anatomical changes took place 200,000 years ago, it is possible that human language began 200,000 years ago and not 50,000 years ago.-You've repeated yourself. Of course H. erectus was speaking in a very limited way and they had simple spoken communication, not our sophisticated language, which required our brain and our sapiens anatomy. McCrone's book is quite specific.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: Back to your advanced planning. In most cases of innovation, I have suggested that the new structures are formed as a response to changes in the environment (new needs or opportunities) - not to advance planning. (“Advanced” is a little ambiguous: do you mean in advance, or do you mean highly sophisticated? Of course, I accept the latter.) In the case of language, my suggestion is that the pressure came from inside, in so far as early humans needed new sounds.-DAVID: Of course they needed the best communication they could develop. Mc Crone describes the probable vocal abilities of pre sapiens. But he states that proper speech required the prior development of the anatomy.-If the changes resulted from the need to make new sounds, the speech and the anatomy would have developed simultaneously, just as exercise and muscular development go together in a single process. dhw: And I would also suggest that if these anatomical changes took place 200,000 years ago, it is possible that human language began 200,000 years ago and not 50,000 years ago.-DAVID: You've repeated yourself. Of course H. erectus was speaking in a very limited way and they had simple spoken communication, not our sophisticated language, which required our brain and our sapiens anatomy. McCrone's book is quite specific.-I repeated myself because you did not acknowledge the obvious flaw in your statement: “the anatomic changes for spoken language, which I have described in the past were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens skeletal remains before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago.” Now you are agreeing that language (albeit limited) must have appeared when the anatomy appeared, and must have evolved from the comparatively simple to the current levels of sophistication. All of this makes nonsense of the claim that evolution cannot explain language: it is a perfect example of evolution at work: in this case, the physical form adapts itself to new requirements as part of the drive to improvement.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Tuesday, September 27, 2016, 16:00 (2766 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: Of course they needed the best communication they could develop. Mc Crone describes the probable vocal abilities of pre sapiens. But he states that proper speech required the prior development of the anatomy. > > dhw: If the changes resulted from the need to make new sounds, the speech and the anatomy would have developed simultaneously, just as exercise and muscular development go together in a single process. - No, species had to appear with the anatomic changes first. All the fossils we have show jumps in the changes from earlier to later forms. With the new modifications the new species would then learn to use them. First anatomy, then more advanced speech. > > dhw: All of this makes nonsense of the claim that evolution cannot explain language: it is a perfect example of evolution at work: in this case, the physical form adapts itself to new requirements as part of the drive to improvement. - Our advanced language did not require just the anatomic changes of our oral parts, but the development of a brain large enough to handle the complexities of spoken, written and read language. H. sapiens had the big brain 200,000 years ago and the oral parts, and then had to learn how to use them to reach the sophisticated language we have now. Tools first, application second.
Different in degree or kind: Neanderthal hearing
by David Turell , Tuesday, September 27, 2016, 19:16 (2766 days ago) @ David Turell
This study looks at the Neanderthal inner ear, much advanced from the apes and although slightly different than H. sapiens will hear speech as well as us: - http://phys.org/news/2016-09-neanderthal-middle-ear-closer-modern.html - A team of researchers with members from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Jena University Hospital and University College London has taken a very close look at the middle ear structure of Neanderthals and has found that while there were some obvious differences, they appeared to be closer in structure to modern humans than apes. - *** - To learn more about the aural abilities of Neanderthals, the researchers gained access to ear bones from 14 Neanderthals that have been unearthed and then performed micro-CT scans on the ossicle (inner ear parts) to create 3-D digital models—this allowed the team to recreate the means by which the human sub-species would have responded to sound. In studying the models, the researchers discovered that there were obvious structural differences between Neanderthal and modern human inner ear workings, but they performed in functionally similar ways—more so than was seen in comparing ape inner ear workings with modern humans. This suggests that human and Neanderthal hearing got its start in our common ancestors. - When combined with genetic research a decade ago that found the FOXP2 gene in Neanderthals associated with vocal communications and speech, these new findings suggest that Neanderthals were likely able to communicate with one another in ways that were far more advanced and sophisticated than apes or other animals. The researchers suggest that the differences in ear bone structure between modern humans and Neanderthals appears likely due to differences in brain size. - Comment: This is part of the complexity of anatomic changes that allow speech and language to develop to its current sophisticated level.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
DAVID: No, species had to appear with the anatomic changes first. All the fossils we have show jumps in the changes from earlier to later forms. With the new modifications the new species would then learn to use them. First anatomy, then more advanced speech. - You say this great authority, but I do not follow your logic. Why should the anatomy not have changed as early humans strove to find new sounds with which to express new observations and thoughts? Would you claim that your God turned fins into legs and THEN legged fish stepped out of the water and learned how to walk? Is it not possible that finned fish explored dry land, and THEN their fins evolved into legs? I see no reason at all why you should reject the possibility that the need for something (or the quest for improvement) can generate change, as opposed to your God making the changes in advance and then the organism learning how to use them. dhw: All of this makes nonsense of the claim that evolution cannot explain language: it is a perfect example of evolution at work: in this case, the physical form adapts itself to new requirements as part of the drive to improvement. DAVID: Our advanced language did not require just the anatomic changes of our oral parts, but the development of a brain large enough to handle the complexities of spoken, written and read language. H. sapiens had the big brain 200,000 years ago and the oral parts, and then had to learn how to use them to reach the sophisticated language we have now. Tools first, application second. - Exercise can change the body and the brain. You have no evidence whatsoever that the tools did not come into being as a response to a need for change - as opposed to preparation for something your God wanted to postpone for 150,000 years (though you have now conceded that human language must have started in much simpler form 200,000 years ago). Of course it has grown more and more sophisticated as more and more phenomena required more and more sounds. That's evolution for you.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Thursday, September 29, 2016, 00:37 (2765 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: No, species had to appear with the anatomic changes first. All the fossils we have show jumps in the changes from earlier to later forms. With the new modifications the new species would then learn to use them. First anatomy, then more advanced speech. > > You say this great authority, but I do not follow your logic. Why should the anatomy not have changed as early humans strove to find new sounds with which to express new observations and thoughts? -You are missing the point of punctuated equilibrium. If the gaps are true and we have no other evidence, the new species arrives with the new speech apparatus and the new species then learns to use it. You are still accepting the gradualism of Darwin ,while I don't.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
DAVID: No, species had to appear with the anatomic changes first. All the fossils we have show jumps in the changes from earlier to later forms. With the new modifications the new species would then learn to use them. First anatomy, then more advanced speech.-dhw: You say this great authority, but I do not follow your logic. Why should the anatomy not have changed as early humans strove to find new sounds with which to express new observations and thoughts? -DAVID: You are missing the point of punctuated equilibrium. If the gaps are true and we have no other evidence, the new species arrives with the new speech apparatus and the new species then learns to use it. You are still accepting the gradualism of Darwin, while I don't.-How gradual is gradual, and how sudden is saltation? How many generations count as sudden? For all we know, once humans found the need to make new sounds, the anatomical changes could have perfected themselves within what, three, four, five generations? Peanuts in geological time. I would call that saltation. You have ignored my analogy of fins evolving into legs and the question I raised: do you think God equipped fish with fully developed legs before they ventured out onto dry land? Or is it possible that first they ventured forth, and then over just a few generations the fins became legs? As I said before, I see no reason why you should reject the possibility that the need for something (or the quest for improvement) can generate change, as opposed to your God making the changes in advance and then the organism learning how to use them.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Friday, September 30, 2016, 02:38 (2764 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: How gradual is gradual, and how sudden is saltation? How many generations count as sudden? For all we know, once humans found the need to make new sounds, the anatomical changes could have perfected themselves within what, three, four, five generations? - For anatomic changes the saltations are results of larger jumps in phenotype. You are again suggesting slight changes in fossils; not found! This article discusses development of brain usage, that is the brain of 200,000 years ago, the same size as yours or mine, through the property of plasticity, had to learn how to be used: - http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/the-modern-mind-may-be-100000-years-old - "So by around 200,000 years ago, people were living in Africa who were just like us: anatomically modern humans. Physically they looked the same as we do, and their brains were identical in size to ours. What we don't know is if they were already thinking like us—or when they started to. They don't appear to have been burying their dead, or wearing jewelry, or making decorative marks on their tools, or anywhere else for that matter. We don't find evidence for any of these practices for another 80,000 years. - "In other words, they were us, but at the same time maybe not quite us. I often wonder what it must have been like to be one of the first modern humans to walk this earth. Frankly, even as a paleoanthropologist, I find it hard to wrap my head around what that question actually means: If they didn't yet know how to use their imaginations, or make art, or use symbols, then what did they think about? Did they experience self-awareness? How did they interact with each other? Could they tell jokes? Did they believe in worlds beyond what they could see?" - Comment: Brain use is no different than speech development. Great very long article, worth a read.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: How gradual is gradual, and how sudden is saltation? How many generations count as sudden? For all we know, once humans found the need to make new sounds, the anatomical changes could have perfected themselves within what, three, four, five generations? DAVID: For anatomic changes the saltations are results of larger jumps in phenotype. You are again suggesting slight changes in fossils; not found! - It is you who have said the changes were major, but it makes no difference to the argument. Bearing in mind the fact that we know organisms can respond very swiftly to need by changing their own structure (as in adaptation), it seems to me more likely that the changes resulted from the need for new sounds, to express the expanding range of subject-matter arising from enhanced consciousness, than from your God changing human anatomy tens of thousands of years in advance, and humans later on finding that they could make new sounds, and consequently inventing language. Meanwhile, I do wish you would let me know whether you think your God provided fish with fully formed legs before they stepped out onto dry land, and if not, whether you think fins changed to legs within a single generation. DAVID: This article discusses development of brain usage, that is the brain of 200,000 years ago, the same size as yours or mine, through the property of plasticity, had to learn how to be used: http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/the-modern-mind-may-be-100000-years-old - David's comment: Brain use is no different than speech development. Great very long article, worth a read. - Agreed on all counts. If only we knew the origin of consciousness, we might find out whether consciousness enlarged the brain, or the enlarged brain caused consciousness. With your belief in dualism, I'd have thought it would be the former (since the brain is only a receiver). If so, enhanced consciousness required changes in the brain, just as it required changes in the larynx, uvula etc. to allow for new sounds. And of course brain use and language have evolved as each generation builds on the progress of its predecessors. It is indeed a great article, for which many thanks. The author clearly thinks that the origins of modern human culture go back much further than was previously thought. Probably no need to imagine that 200,000 years ago the great brain hung around doing nothing. Simple beginnings, growing complexity - just like language. I really like his conclusion: - Now it's not so much a question of if the date of the “creative explosion” should be pushed back as a question of how far it should be pushed back. It is starting to look more as if this suite of symbolic practices from the “fully modern checklist” developed slowly, in Africa and the Near East, over a long period of time, rather than in a sudden burst. Here in the present, we've been building on the mental achievements of those who came before us for so long that we rather assume that certain capacities, or ways of thinking, have always existed. That's one of the things I find most compelling about researching our deep history. If you study the time period when many of the cognitive skills we take for granted—communication, art, and abstract thinking—came into being, you realize that these people didn't have the shoulders of any giants to stand on: They were the original shoulders.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Friday, September 30, 2016, 19:23 (2763 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: For anatomic changes the saltations are results of larger jumps in phenotype. You are again suggesting slight changes in fossils; not found! > > dhw:It is you who have said the changes were major, but it makes no difference to the argument. Bearing in mind the fact that we know organisms can respond very swiftly to need by changing their own structure (as in adaptation), it seems to me more likely that the changes resulted from the need for new sounds, to express the expanding range of subject-matter arising from enhanced consciousness, than from your God changing human anatomy tens of thousands of years in advance, and humans later on finding that they could make new sounds, and consequently inventing language. - You are using a false narrative: Epigenetic alterations are minor, not major. I am discussing major jumps in phenotypes. The guppies took two years to change size. That is the brief adaptations you are offering, without phenotypic change of any importance. The changes we are discussing are gaps like H. Erectus to H. habilis to H. Sapiens. > > dhw: Meanwhile, I do wish you would let me know whether you think your God provided fish with fully formed legs before they stepped out onto dry land, and if not, whether you think fins changed to legs within a single generation. - Here again you are stretching. The transitional forms show large gaps in phenotype in the before and after fossils. - Look at this article on walking fish. Large skeletal changes. Again a gap. - http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/14/262464764/first-land-walking-fish-loo... > dhw: It is indeed a great article, for which many thanks. The author clearly thinks that the origins of modern human culture go back much further than was previously thought. Probably no need to imagine that 200,000 years ago the great brain hung around doing nothing. Simple beginnings, growing complexity - just like language. - The big brain arrived as a tabula rasa and then was developed to its current state by humans learning to use it. Speech is the same. Anatomy first!
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
DAVID: For anatomic changes the saltations are results of larger jumps in phenotype. You are again suggesting slight changes in fossils; not found! -dhw:It is you who have said the changes were major, but it makes no difference to the argument. Bearing in mind the fact that we know organisms can respond very swiftly to need by changing their own structure (as in adaptation), it seems to me more likely that the changes resulted from the need for new sounds, to express the expanding range of subject-matter arising from enhanced consciousness, than from your God changing human anatomy tens of thousands of years in advance, and humans later on finding that they could make new sounds, and consequently inventing language.-DAVID: You are using a false narrative: Epigenetic alterations are minor, not major. I am discussing major jumps in phenotypes. The guppies took two years to change size. That is the brief adaptations you are offering, without phenotypic change of any importance. The changes we are discussing are gaps like H. Erectus to H. habilis to H. Sapiens.-The changes we are discussing are to lips, tongue, larynx, respiration - i.e. to organs that already existed and which would have worked together cooperatively to create the system enabling new sounds. According to your hypothesis, God dipped in and made precisely those changes, and then for some reason humans waited tens of thousands of years before finding out what to do with them. According to me, humans found they needed new sounds, and probably within a comparatively short period, the restructuring took place in much the same way as fins turned into legs. See the next revelation, which totally supports my hypothesis although for some reason you seem to think it supports your own: -DAVID: Look at this article on walking fish. Large skeletal changes. Again a gap. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/14/262464764/first-land-walking-fish-loo... QUOTE: " 'It's what we've all been waiting for,' said Jennifer Clack, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology in the United Kingdom. 'Until this discovery, we weren't able to see the changes by which the pelvic fins of the fish became much larger and more robust, and gradually turned into the tetrapod hind limb.' " (My bold)-So apparently your God did not provide fish with fully formed legs before they stepped onto dry land. As fish responded to the need for new movements, the anatomy changed: trying to walk first, anatomy second. As humans responded to the need for new sounds, the anatomy changed: trying to talk first, anatomy second.-dhw: It is indeed a great article, for which many thanks. The author clearly thinks that the origins of modern human culture go back much further than was previously thought. Probably no need to imagine that 200,000 years ago the great brain hung around doing nothing. Simple beginnings, growing complexity - just like language. -DAVID: The big brain arrived as a tabula rasa and then was developed to its current state by humans learning to use it. Speech is the same. Anatomy first!-For a dualist like yourself, this is a complete contradiction. The receiver would have to develop to meet the demands of the transmitter - enhanced consciousness. And enhanced consciousness requires enhanced expression: thought first, speech organs second.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Saturday, October 01, 2016, 15:30 (2762 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: You are using a false narrative: Epigenetic alterations are minor, not major. I am discussing major jumps in phenotypes. The guppies took two years to change size. That is the brief adaptations you are offering, without phenotypic change of any importance. The changes we are discussing are gaps like H. Erectus to H. habilis to H. Sapiens. > > dhw: The changes we are discussing are to lips, tongue, larynx, respiration - i.e. to organs that already existed and which would have worked together cooperatively to create the system enabling new sounds. According to your hypothesis, God dipped in and made precisely those changes, and then for some reason humans waited tens of thousands of years before finding out what to do with them.-Not true and I've said so. McCrone's book discusses how H. habilis spoke. Of course they used a new anatomy right at the beginning and learned how to use it to the best advantage.- > dhw: QUOTE: " 'It's what we've all been waiting for,' said Jennifer Clack, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology in the United Kingdom. 'Until this discovery, we weren't able to see the changes by which the pelvic fins of the fish became much larger and more robust, and gradually turned into the tetrapod hind limb.' " (My bold) > > dhw: So apparently your God did not provide fish with fully formed legs before they stepped onto dry land. As fish responded to the need for new movements, the anatomy changed: trying to walk first, anatomy second. As humans responded to the need for new sounds, the anatomy changed: trying to talk first, anatomy second.-Again, blithely skipping the gaps in phenotype in human fossils which include the vocal tracts. One can only speak with what is provided. Habilis speach not the same as Erectus speech. > > DAVID: The big brain arrived as a tabula rasa and then was developed to its current state by humans learning to use it. Speech is the same. Anatomy first! > > dhw: For a dualist like yourself, this is a complete contradiction. The receiver would have to develop to meet the demands of the transmitter - enhanced consciousness. And enhanced consciousness requires enhanced expression: thought first, speech organs second.-Did you forget brain plasticity. Just like having to tune a radio to a station, humans had to develop the ability in their new-sized brain to receive consciousness. Both habilis and erectus did part of the job. And vocal tract changes developed along with the larger brain changes.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: The changes we are discussing are to lips, tongue, larynx, respiration - i.e. to organs that already existed and which would have worked together cooperatively to create the system enabling new sounds. According to your hypothesis, God dipped in and made precisely those changes, and then for some reason humans waited tens of thousands of years before finding out what to do with them.-DAVID: Not true and I've said so. McCrone's book discusses how H. habilis spoke. Of course they used a new anatomy right at the beginning and learned how to use it to the best advantage.-Originally you wrote: “the anatomic changes…were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago. The evidence is strong that anatomy preceded language suggesting pre-planning in evolution by God.” I pointed out the illogicality of such thinking and you then changed your tune: “Of course it was used 200,000 years ago and gradually organized language and its rules developed.” That was and is MY argument! Where is the "strong" evidence of pre-planning if there is no such time lag? But I say the changes resulted from and did not cause the need, just like fins turning into legs:-dhw: QUOTE: " 'Until this discovery, we weren't able to see the changes by which the pelvic fins of the fish became much larger and more robust, and gradually turned into the tetrapod hind limb.' " (My bold)-DAVID: Again, blithely skipping the gaps in phenotype in human fossils which include the vocal tracts. One can only speak with what is provided. Habilis speach not the same as Erectus speech.-Again blithely skipping the evidence that new conditions lead to organisms' developing new structures, as beautifully illustrated in the fin example. Why are you now talking about habilis and erectus? The oldest known sapiens fossils are about 200,000 years old, in keeping with your first post. It may well be that other human species spoke differently. So what? How does that prove that their efforts to talk did not change the vocal tracts, just as fishy efforts to walk changed fins to legs?-DAVID: The big brain arrived as a tabula rasa and then was developed to its current state by humans learning to use it. Speech is the same. Anatomy first!-dhw: For a dualist like yourself, this is a complete contradiction. The receiver would have to develop to meet the demands of the transmitter - enhanced consciousness. And enhanced consciousness requires enhanced expression: thought first, speech organs second. DAVID: Did you forget brain plasticity. Just like having to tune a radio to a station, humans had to develop the ability in their new-sized brain to receive consciousness. Both habilis and erectus did part of the job. And vocal tract changes developed along with the larger brain changes.-Yes indeed, if your dualism is correct: The new-sized brain did not give rise to consciousness or to consciousness's need to express itself. Consciousness gave rise to the new brain and the new tracts. The need changes the anatomy; the changed anatomy does not create the need.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Sunday, October 02, 2016, 21:34 (2761 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Originally you wrote: “the anatomic changes…were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago. The evidence is strong that anatomy preceded language suggesting pre-planning in evolution by God.” I pointed out the illogicality of such thinking and you then changed your tune: “Of course it was used 200,000 years ago and gradually organized language and its rules developed.”-You are harping on the fact that I mistakenly left out the word 'modern' in the sentence re' 50,00 years ago. I just wasn't clear.-> > dhw: So what? How does that prove that their efforts to talk did not change the vocal tracts, just as fishy efforts to walk changed fins to legs?-If constant effort makes progress, where are the itty bitty changes that they should cause. These are giant gaps in anatomy formations, which need exact planning. > > DAVID: The big brain arrived as a tabula rasa and then was developed to its current state by humans learning to use it. Speech is the same. Anatomy first! > > > DAVID: Did you forget brain plasticity. Just like having to tune a radio to a station, humans had to develop the ability in their new-sized brain to receive consciousness. Both habilis and erectus did part of the job. And vocal tract changes developed along with the larger brain changes. > > dhw: Yes indeed, if your dualism is correct: The new-sized brain did not give rise to consciousness or to consciousness's need to express itself. Consciousness gave rise to the new brain and the new tracts. The need changes the anatomy; the changed anatomy does not create the need.-What a twisted view: the series of Homo fossils had to start at the animal level of having conscious behaviour. At some point in the brain enlargement of the frontal lobe, self-aware consciousness had to appear as the brain received consciousness. That is my theory. Brain size first, plasticity second produces advanced function and a better use of the advantage of consciousness.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: Originally you wrote: “the anatomic changes…were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago. The evidence is strong that anatomy preceded language suggesting pre-planning in evolution by God.” I pointed out the illogicality of such thinking and you then changed your tune: “Of course it was used 200,000 years ago and gradually organized language and its rules developed.” DAVID: You are harping on the fact that I mistakenly left out the word 'modern' in the sentence re' 50,000 years ago. I just wasn't clear.-Where do you draw the line between the language that was used 200,000 years ago (which nobody knows) and the language which was used 50,000 years ago (which nobody knows). Language evolves word (sound) by word (sound). So how many words (sounds) do you want before you decide that ancient language has become modern language? The fact that it has evolved from simple to enormously complex mirrors most facets of human life, all stemming from enhanced consciousness. And so I don't know exactly what it is that you consider to be strong evidence of divine pre-planning, other than your own assumption that God dabbled changes to the vocal organs as opposed to changes to the vocal organs resulting from human need, which would be like God giving fish legs before they stepped onto dry land, as opposed to fish fins changing to limbs when conditions demanded the change. DAVID: If constant effort makes progress, where are the itty bitty changes that they should cause. These are giant gaps in anatomy formations, which need exact planning.-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: Did you forget brain plasticity. Just like having to tune a radio to a station, humans had to develop the ability in their new-sized brain to receive consciousness. Both habilis and erectus did part of the job. And vocal tract changes developed along with the larger brain changes. dhw: Yes indeed, if your dualism is correct: The new-sized brain did not give rise to consciousness or to consciousness's need to express itself. Consciousness gave rise to the new brain and the new tracts. The need changes the anatomy; the changed anatomy does not create the need.-DAVID: What a twisted view: the series of Homo fossils had to start at the animal level of having conscious behaviour. At some point in the brain enlargement of the frontal lobe, self-aware consciousness had to appear as the brain received consciousness. -Stop there! 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?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Monday, October 03, 2016, 15:35 (2760 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: And so I don't know exactly what it is that you consider to be strong evidence of divine pre-planning, other than your own assumption that God dabbled changes to the vocal organs as opposed to changes to the vocal organs resulting from human need, which would be like God giving fish legs before they stepped onto dry land, as opposed to fish fins changing to limbs when conditions demanded the change.-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. > > 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).-Please re-read this contorted paragraph. That is my argument. > > dhw: Stop there! 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?-It is my theory that apes are conscious, but not really self-aware as we are. Our consciousness appeared as the brain grew larger frontal lobes and received it.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
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?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Tuesday, October 04, 2016, 16:54 (2759 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: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.-You had answer several days ago
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: 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.-DAVID: You had answer several days ago: Look at this article on walking fish. Large skeletal changes. Again a gap.-http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/14/262464764/first-land-walking-fish-loo... The gap is on both sides of the transitional fish.-I read the article and quoted the following from it: " 'It's what we've all been waiting for,' said Jennifer Clack, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology in the United Kingdom. 'Until this discovery, we weren't able to see the changes by which the pelvic fins of the fish became much larger and more robust, and gradually turned into the tetrapod hind limb.' " (My bold)-You could scarcely ask for more positive evidence that the change in conditions (moving from water to dry land) created a need, and the body (cell communities) responded to the need by making changes to the structure. So did God change the pelvic fins into the tetrapod hind limb, and THEN fish found they could walk, or did fish attempt to walk and the RESULT was the hind limb? Did God lower the larynx etc. and THEN humans found they could talk, or did humans attempt to talk and the RESULT was the lowered larynx etc.? dhw: 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. DAVID: God just DOES IT, is my answer. by pre-planning or dabbling. I can't know which from the evidence we have.-So why do you ask me: “How does your 'need' approach make the jumps? There is no answer, just your desire that it can happen”. I can't know how from the evidence we have.-DAVID: You are assuming that unproven cellular intelligence can do all the complex planning for the complicated gap jumps. All we know is epigenetic minor adaptations, never species change. I know it is your theory, but it doesn't recognize the degree of mental planning involved to make the jumps.-As we keep repeating, NOBODY knows what causes innovations. I'm not assuming anything: the ability of cells to do all this complex work IS the hypothesis! It's a hypothesis, not an assumption. It is based on the fact that many scientists believe that microorganisms are intelligent, and on the fact that what you call epigenetic minor adaptations prove to us that there IS an autonomous mechanism by which organisms can change their structures (unless you are now going to tell us that God also preprogrammes or dabbles adaptations). DAVID: Our consciousness appeared as the brain grew larger frontal lobes and received it. dhw: If - in accordance with your belief in dualism - our brain received it, which came first, our consciousness or the brain?-DAVID: Remember I believe in species consciousness (Sheldrake) and universal consciousness with the brain as a receiver. Consciousness first. God-I don't know why you think you have to remind me when I am the one who keeps reminding you. Consciousness first: the brain changes AS A RESULT of having to accommodate enhanced needs. Consciousness first: the larynx changes AS A RESULT of having to accommodate enhanced needs (a wider range of sounds to express the wider range of experiences).
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Wednesday, October 05, 2016, 15:48 (2758 days ago) @ dhw
> David: The gap is on both sides of the transitional fish. > > dhw: I read the article and quoted the following from it: > " 'It's what we've all been waiting for,' said Jennifer Clack, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology in the United Kingdom. 'Until this discovery, we weren't able to see the changes by which the pelvic fins of the fish became much larger and more robust, and gradually turned into the tetrapod hind limb.' " (My bold)-Your bold is the same Darwinian drivel: just tell me where the article demonstrates 'gradually turned'. All they have is a transitional form with big gaps in the fossil from on either side. The gradual is Darwinian assumptions! You have accepted all new species come with gaps!- > > dhw: You could scarcely ask for more positive evidence that the change in conditions (moving from water to dry land) created a need, and the body (cell communities) responded to the need by making changes to the structure. So did God change the pelvic fins into the tetrapod hind limb, and THEN fish found they could walk, or did fish attempt to walk and the RESULT was the hind limb? Did God lower the larynx etc. and THEN humans found they could talk, or did humans attempt to talk and the RESULT was the lowered larynx etc.?-All reasoning from an assumption of gradual change, not found in the fossil records- > > dhw: So why do you ask me: “How does your 'need' approach make the jumps? There is no answer, just your desire that it can happen”. I can't know how from the evidence we have.-But we have evidence. Gaps. Organisms can only use what they have to work with. New forms appear and they learn to use them > > dhw: I'm not assuming anything: the ability of cells to do all this complex work IS the hypothesis! It's a hypothesis, not an assumption. It is based on the fact that many scientists believe that microorganisms are intelligent, and on the fact that what you call epigenetic minor adaptations prove to us that there IS an autonomous mechanism by which organisms can change their structures'-You use the observations of microorganisms' ability to respond to assume that complex multicellular organisms are equal. Not so. In the Homo series complex planning has to be part of each gap. The vocal tract had a complex number of changes I've previously listed. Not equivalent to bacterial responses to change. Epigenetics are only adaptations of existing species. You are stretching epigenetics by discussing structure.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: I read the article and quoted the following from it: " 'It's what we've all been waiting for,' said Jennifer Clack, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology in the United Kingdom. 'Until this discovery, we weren't able to see the changes by which the pelvic fins of the fish became much larger and more robust, and gradually turned into the tetrapod hind limb.' " (My bold)-DAVID: Your bold is the same Darwinian drivel: just tell me where the article demonstrates 'gradually turned'. All they have is a transitional form with big gaps in the fossil from on either side. The gradual is Darwinian assumptions! You have accepted all new species come with gaps!-Agreed. We have no idea how long it took or how many other saltations and species may have occurred before legs were legs as we know them and land animals finally diverged totally from fish. However, I quoted this to demonstrate that fins became legs, which leads to the question you are so keen to avoid: dhw: So did God change the pelvic fins into the tetrapod hind limb, and THEN fish found they could walk, or did fish attempt to walk and the RESULT was the hind limb? -DAVID: All reasoning from an assumption of gradual change, not found in the fossil records.-So in your opinion a) did God change fins into legs before fish stepped onto dry land, or b) did fins turn into legs as a result of fish trying to walk on dry land? Please answer a) or b).-DAVID: Organisms can only use what they have to work with. New forms appear and they learn to use them.-But I am suggesting that they can change what they have. You say they can't - God must do it for them beforehand. That is why I keep repeating the above question about fins and legs. DAVID: You use the observations of microorganisms' ability to respond to assume that complex multicellular organisms are equal. Not so. In the Homo series complex planning has to be part of each gap. The vocal tract had a complex number of changes I've previously listed. Not equivalent to bacterial responses to change. Epigenetics are only adaptations of existing species. You are stretching epigenetics by discussing structure.-You are telling me what I keep telling you. The hypothesis (not an assumption - a theory, a suggestion) is that the (perhaps God-given) intelligence observed by some scientists in single-celled organisms might also be the driving force that enables complex multicellular organisms to do the “planning” necessary to produce new structures in response to new conditions (or, just as you say, to “stretch” their already known ability to adapt existing structures to new conditions). I offer this as an alternative to random mutations, and to a divine 3.7-billion-year computer programme plus divine dabbling. There is no evidence for any of these hypotheses.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Thursday, October 06, 2016, 15:56 (2757 days ago) @ dhw
Agreed. We have no idea how long it took or how many other saltations and species may have occurred before legs were legs as we know them and land animals finally diverged totally from fish. However, I quoted this to demonstrate that fins became legs, which leads to the question you are so keen to avoid: > > dhw: So did God change the pelvic fins into the tetrapod hind limb, and THEN fish found they could walk, or did fish attempt to walk and the RESULT was the hind limb? > > DAVID: All reasoning from an assumption of gradual change, not found in the fossil records. > > dhw:So in your opinion a) did God change fins into legs before fish stepped onto dry land, or b) did fins turn into legs as a result of fish trying to walk on dry land? Please answer a) or b).-Sorry, not a 'gotcha' question: I keep pointing to gaps in the fossil records. We know fins became legs. The comparative anatomy of bones tells us that. Because of the gaps we have no idea how or when the changes occur. For God dabbling or pre-planning. > > DAVID: Organisms can only use what they have to work with. New forms appear and they learn to use them. > > dhw: But I am suggesting that they can change what they have. You say they can't - God must do it for them beforehand. That is why I keep repeating the above question about fins and legs.-Saying 'they can change' is your figment of imagination, providing no substance to your hypothesis. My 'gap' approach requires a recognition of the need for complex planning to jump each gap. I know you recognize the gaps. > > dhw: You are telling me what I keep telling you. The hypothesis (not an assumption - a theory, a suggestion) is that the (perhaps God-given) intelligence observed by some scientists in single-celled organisms might also be the driving force that enables complex multicellular organisms to do the “planning” necessary to produce new structures in response to new conditions (or, just as you say, to “stretch” their already known ability to adapt existing structures to new conditions). I offer this as an alternative to random mutations, and to a divine 3.7-billion-year computer programme plus divine dabbling. There is no evidence for any of these hypotheses.-Answered above.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: So in your opinion a) did God change fins into legs before fish stepped onto dry land, or b) did fins turn into legs as a result of fish trying to walk on dry land? Please answer a) or b).-DAVID: Sorry, not a 'gotcha' question: I keep pointing to gaps in the fossil records. We know fins became legs. The comparative anatomy of bones tells us that. Because of the gaps we have no idea how or when the changes occur. For God dabbling or pre-planning.-And still you refuse to answer. You are right. Fins became legs, and we have no idea how or when the changes occurred. But I will be open with you: I consider it far more likely that fins became legs as a result of fish venturing onto dry land. I consider it far less likely that they already had legs before they stepped onto dry land or - another possibility that occurs to me - that they stepped onto dry land and God immediately provided them with fully formed legs. I have given you my opinion. I would love to know yours, and wonder why you are so reticent to give it. DAVID: Organisms can only use what they have to work with. New forms appear and they learn to use them. dhw: But I am suggesting that they can change what they have. You say they can't - God must do it for them beforehand. That is why I keep repeating the above question about fins and legs. DAVID: Saying 'they can change' is your figment of imagination, providing no substance to your hypothesis. -Not saying but suggesting, and that they can change IS my hypothesis, and it may be a figment of my imagination. Saying ‘God dabbling or pre-planning' provides no substance for your hypothesis because that IS your hypothesis, and it may be a figment of your imagination.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Friday, October 07, 2016, 21:52 (2756 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: I consider it far more likely that fins became legs as a result of fish venturing onto dry land. I consider it far less likely that they already had legs before they stepped onto dry land or - another possibility that occurs to me - that they stepped onto dry land and God immediately provided them with fully formed legs. I have given you my opinion. I would love to know yours, and wonder why you are so reticent to give it.-My firm view is that form appears before function. Look at today's comments about infant brain development and its relation to the evolutionary process. Development from attempted function, your view, implies tiny experimental changes, not the gaps in phenotype which is the only evidence we have to consider.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: I consider it far more likely that fins became legs as a result of fish venturing onto dry land. I consider it far less likely that they already had legs before they stepped onto dry land or - another possibility that occurs to me - that they stepped onto dry land and God immediately provided them with fully formed legs. I have given you my opinion. I would love to know yours, and wonder why you are so reticent to give it.-DAVID: My firm view is that form appears before function. Look at today's comments about infant brain development and its relation to the evolutionary process. Development from attempted function, your view, implies tiny experimental changes, not the gaps in phenotype which is the only evidence we have to consider. -See my response on the infant brain thread. Since you still resolutely refuse to answer my very straightforward question, let me ask you if you believe your God must either have preprogrammed or personally dabbled the transitional limbs, organs and skeletal changes of the tiktaalik roseae.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Saturday, October 08, 2016, 15:25 (2755 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: See my response on the infant brain thread. Since you still resolutely refuse to answer my very straightforward question, let me ask you if you believe your God must either have preprogrammed or personally dabbled the transitional limbs, organs and skeletal changes of the tiktaalik roseae. - Yes, or provided an on-board inventive mechanism with guidelines
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: See my response on the infant brain thread. Since you still resolutely refuse to answer my very straightforward question, let me ask you if you believe your God must either have preprogrammed or personally dabbled the transitional limbs, organs and skeletal changes of the tiktaalik roseae. - DAVID: Yes, or provided an on-board inventive mechanism with guidelines. - Earlier you mentioned the gaps between the tiktaalik and the species on either side, leading from fish to land animals: “All they have is a transitional form with big gaps in the fossil from on either side. The gradual is Darwinian assumptions! You have accepted all new species come with gaps!” And: “We know fins became legs. The comparative anatomy of bones tells us that. Because of the gaps we have no idea how or when the changes occur.” - We agree that nobody knows how many different gradations there were before fins finally became fully formed legs, or how gradual the process was. But here we do actually have a transitional form, which you think was specially designed by your God (guidelines are just another way of saying preprogrammed, the alternative being that the organism designed itself, which you refuse to consider). My hypothesis is that when fish first stepped onto dry land, they set in motion a process whereby fins turned into legs. I have no idea how long it took, or how many transitional forms there were. So far, your hypothesis is that God specially designed the one transitional form we know. Do you think he specially designed more transitional forms? Or, since we haven't found any other transitional fossils, do you think the tikki's rudimentary legs were a divinely preprogrammed/dabbled saltation from fin to rudimentary leg, and then God preprogrammed/dabbled another saltation from rudimentary to fully formed?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Sunday, October 09, 2016, 21:37 (2754 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: We agree that nobody knows how many different gradations there were before fins finally became fully formed legs, or how gradual the process was. But here we do actually have a transitional form, which you think was specially designed by your God (guidelines are just another way of saying preprogrammed, the alternative being that the organism designed itself, which you refuse to consider). My hypothesis is that when fish first stepped onto dry land, they set in motion a process whereby fins turned into legs. I have no idea how long it took, or how many transitional forms there were. So far, your hypothesis is that God specially designed the one transitional form we know. Do you think he specially designed more transitional forms? Or, since we haven't found any other transitional fossils, do you think the tikki's rudimentary legs were a divinely preprogrammed/dabbled saltation from fin to rudimentary leg, and then God preprogrammed/dabbled another saltation from rudimentary to fully formed? - Either there were tiny steps in transition or there were not. Fossils have been collected for two centuries or more, and all we have are big gaps in form. That is the only evidence we have to work with and allow hypothesis to be developed. Your approach is to wish for more transitional forms to fill the gaps: dhw:I have no idea how long it took, or how many transitional forms there were. Wishful thinking, not any substantial points for evidence to support hpyothetical speciation.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: We agree that nobody knows how many different gradations there were before fins finally became fully formed legs, or how gradual the process was. But here we do actually have a transitional form, which you think was specially designed by your God (guidelines are just another way of saying preprogrammed, the alternative being that the organism designed itself, which you refuse to consider). My hypothesis is that when fish first stepped onto dry land, they set in motion a process whereby fins turned into legs. I have no idea how long it took, or how many transitional forms there were. So far, your hypothesis is that God specially designed the one transitional form we know. Do you think he specially designed more transitional forms? Or, since we haven't found any other transitional fossils, do you think the tikki's rudimentary legs were a divinely preprogrammed/dabbled saltation from fin to rudimentary leg, and then God preprogrammed/dabbled another saltation from rudimentary to fully formed? - DAVID: Either there were tiny steps in transition or there were not. Fossils have been collected for two centuries or more, and all we have are big gaps in form. That is the only evidence we have to work with and allow hypothesis to be developed. Your approach is to wish for more transitional forms to fill the gaps: dhw:I have no idea how long it took, or how many transitional forms there were. Wishful thinking, not any substantial points for evidence to support hypothetical speciation. - How “tiny” is “tiny”? But yes indeed, either there were transitions or there were not, and once again you are dodging my question. First you refuse to tell us whether you think your God provided fish with legs before they stepped onto dry land, and now you refuse to tell us whether, apart from your God specially designing the one transitional form we know of, he might have specially designed more transitional forms. I am not wishing for anything. I am asking you if you think your God's preprogramming/dabbling went straight from fin to tikki-“leg” to fully formed leg or also filled what you have called the gaps with more transitional forms of his own.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Monday, October 10, 2016, 17:52 (2753 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: We agree that nobody knows how many different gradations there were before fins finally became fully formed legs, or how gradual the process was. But here we do actually have a transitional form, which you think was specially designed by your God (guidelines are just another way of saying preprogrammed, the alternative being that the organism designed itself, which you refuse to consider). My hypothesis is that when fish first stepped onto dry land, they set in motion a process whereby fins turned into legs. I have no idea how long it took, or how many transitional forms there were. So far, your hypothesis is that God specially designed the one transitional form we know. Do you think he specially designed more transitional forms? Or, since we haven't found any other transitional fossils, do you think the tikki's rudimentary legs were a divinely preprogrammed/dabbled saltation from fin to rudimentary leg, and then God preprogrammed/dabbled another saltation from rudimentary to fully formed?-> DAVID: Either there were tiny steps in transition or there were not. Fossils have been collected for two centuries or more, and all we have are big gaps in form. That is the only evidence we have to work with and allow hypothesis to be developed. Your approach is to wish for more transitional forms to fill the gaps: dhw:I have no idea how long it took, or how many transitional forms there were. Wishful thinking, not any substantial points for evidence to support hypothetical speciation.-> dhw: - How “tiny” is “tiny”? But yes indeed, either there were transitions or there were not, and once again you are dodging my question. First you refuse to tell us whether you think your God provided fish with legs before they stepped onto dry land, and now you refuse to tell us whether, apart from your God specially designing the one transitional form we know of, he might have specially designed more transitional forms. I am not wishing for anything. I am asking you if you think your God's preprogramming/dabbling went straight from fin to tikki-“leg” to fully formed leg or also filled what you have called the gaps with more transitional forms of his own.-I keep stating the same thing and you keep misunderstanding. Clearly there are only large gaps, with great changes with fish from sea to land, fins to legs, gills to lungs. With large gaps as our only evidence, God had to manage the evolutionary advances.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: I am asking you if you think your God’s preprogramming/dabbling went straight from fin to tikki-“leg” to fully formed leg or also filled what you have called the gaps with more transitional forms of his own.
DAVID: I keep stating the same thing and you keep misunderstanding. Clearly there are only large gaps, with great changes with fish from sea to land, fins to legs, gills to lungs. With large gaps as our only evidence, God had to manage the evolutionary advances.
Once again: our starting point on this thread was the origin of human language, which entailed the range of animal sounds being vastly expanded by a readjustment of all the vocal organs. You insist that God did this with a dabble, and THEN humans learned how to use it. I suggest that with their enhanced awareness (= exploring new territory), they needed new sounds and, in trying to make them, they initiated the changes. By analogy, when fish first explored dry land, they needed an improved method of locomotion and in trying to walk they initiated the changes. In both cases, we do not know how long the processes of change took, and how many (if any) transitional stages there were.
Now to answer your post: Since we have great changes and large gaps, what exactly were the “evolutionary advances” your God managed, if they were not transitional forms? As you have said yourself, either there were transitional forms, or there weren’t, in which case there was a giant leap (saltation) from fin to tikki leg to fully formed leg. What difference does either scenario make to my proposal that the switch from fins to legs was the result of need arising out of new conditions, as opposed to the prior provision of new structures which organisms must learn how to use?
My hypothesis, however, depends on organisms being able to change their own structures (using perhaps God-given cellular intelligence). Several of your posts today deal with the same topic, so I’ll bring them all together:
Dhw (under “smart animals”): And according to your concept of evolution, the same very first cells were also provided with every single innovation and natural wonder in the history of life on Earth (apart from those that were dabbled). THAT is what I find so hard to believe, not to mention that it is a totally unnecessary strain on credulity when there is the far simpler option of God providing the first cells with a form of evolvable intelligence.
DAVID: Your 'form of evolvable intelligence' is the original provision of alternative pathways. Bacteria can solve problems of survivability on their own.
Alternative pathways are simply all the potential solutions to all the problems. It takes intelligence to work out which one fits. You appear to accept this, unless your second sentence is a misprint.
David’s comment (under “viper”): It certainly does raise questions as to how it evolved. Did this snake watch real vipers and learned how to change pupil shape? Not likely. When they evolved did they share common genes from a common ancestor? But this is a separate species, and this commonality is not mentioned in the article. Back to God stepping in? No clear explanation.
Unless of course what you consider unlikely is in fact likely: namely, that as well as changing in order to adapt to new conditions, organisms can change in order to protect themselves against predators. No need for God to keep stepping in if he simply gives organisms the ability to organize their own ways of survival.
David’s comment (“Underwater caterpillars”): Again it is difficult to see how this developed in step by step evolution unless there was enough initial variation in the insects and the longest breath holders in floods survived and bit by bit descendent survivors developed the capacity.
Yes, all variations and innovations must take place in individuals, and it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that each “improvement” originates in a few and is then perpetuated “bit by bit” as the few become the many. No need for God to keep stepping in if...(as above).
David’s comment (under “engulfing photosynthesis”: The same process that resulted in mitochondria being made from engulfed bacteria. Could God have provided this mechanism to help evolution advance. Less dabbling for Him as a result.
It was precisely this process of endosymbiosis that formed the basis of Margulis’s theory of evolution, and the further we take the concept of intelligent cooperation, the less dabbling and preprogramming your God has to do. Like Shapiro and others, Margulis had no doubt that microorganisms are intelligent.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Tuesday, October 11, 2016, 19:46 (2752 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Once again: our starting point on this thread was the origin of human language, which entailed the range of animal sounds being vastly expanded by a readjustment of all the vocal organs. You insist that God did this with a dabble, and THEN humans learned how to use it. I suggest that with their enhanced awareness (= exploring new territory), they needed new sounds and, in trying to make them, they initiated the changes.
You can't make the new sounds unless the apparatus is present. The human desire made it happen? We cannot think improvements. They have to appear in new biologic forms, which must be created with planning to organize the new component parts. I'm still pointing out the gaps in form.
Now to answer your post: Since we have great changes and large gaps, what exactly were the “evolutionary advances” your God managed, if they were not transitional forms? As you have said yourself, either there were transitional forms, or there weren’t, in which case there was a giant leap (saltation) from fin to tikki leg to fully formed leg. What difference does either scenario make to my proposal that the switch from fins to legs was the result of need arising out of new conditions, as opposed to the prior provision of new structures which organisms must learn how to use?
I'll repeat. We only have large gaps between the transitional forms we have found. Your process only fits tiny steps, unless you want to claim that organisms themselves can create saltational-equivalent gaps in the record and solve the complex issues of coordinating new functional parts.
dhw: My hypothesis, however, depends on organisms being able to change their own structures (using perhaps God-given cellular intelligence).
I know that.
DAVID: Your 'form of evolvable intelligence' is the original provision of alternative pathways. Bacteria can solve problems of survivability on their own.
dhw: Alternative pathways are simply all the potential solutions to all the problems. It takes intelligence to work out which one fits. You appear to accept this, unless your second sentence is a misprint.
Not a misprint. You miss the point that bacteria have the ability to use alternative pathways if a primary pathway is no longer useful. All built in.
David’s comment (under “viper”): It certainly does raise questions as to how it evolved. Did this snake watch real vipers and learned how to change pupil shape? Not likely. When they evolved did they share common genes from a common ancestor? But this is a separate species, and this commonality is not mentioned in the article. Back to God stepping in? No clear explanation.dhw: Unless of course what you consider unlikely is in fact likely: namely, that as well as changing in order to adapt to new conditions, organisms can change in order to protect themselves against predators. No need for God to keep stepping in if he simply gives organisms the ability to organize their own ways of survival.
The false viper had to watch the real viper and then say to itself, I need to change my eye pupils for safety. It is easy for you to say adaptation which we see happen, but in this circumstance it is not easy to imagine a way it might happen. Just as it is not easy to imagine how butterflies have fake eye camouflage. All mimicry might be saltations!
David’s comment (“Underwater caterpillars”): Again it is difficult to see how this developed in step by step evolution unless there was enough initial variation in the insects and the longest breath holders in floods survived and bit by bit descendent survivors developed the capacity.dhw: Yes, all variations and innovations must take place in individuals, and it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that each “improvement” originates in a few and is then perpetuated “bit by bit” as the few become the many. No need for God to keep stepping in if...(as above).
All I am pointing out is individual variation ( a 'la Darwin) provided by the way God had life develop in bell shaped curves of variety permits certain adaptive developments, which are lifestyle changes but not speciation.
David’s comment (under “engulfing photosynthesis”: The same process that resulted in mitochondria being made from engulfed bacteria. Could God have provided this mechanism to help evolution advance. Less dabbling for Him as a result.dhw: It was precisely this process of endosymbiosis that formed the basis of Margulis’s theory of evolution, and the further we take the concept of intelligent cooperation, the less dabbling and preprogramming your God has to do. Like Shapiro and others, Margulis had no doubt that microorganisms are intelligent.
Yes they are built to act as if intelligent, but other than the editing of their DNA for adaptation without speciation they are automatic.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: Once again: our starting point on this thread was the origin of human language, which entailed the range of animal sounds being vastly expanded by a readjustment of all the vocal organs. You insist that God did this with a dabble, and THEN humans learned how to use it. I suggest that with their enhanced awareness (= exploring new territory), they needed new sounds and, in trying to make them, they initiated the changes.
DAVID: You can't make the new sounds unless the apparatus is present. The human desire made it happen? We cannot think improvements. They have to appear in new biologic forms, which must be created with planning to organize the new component parts. I'm still pointing out the gaps in form.
Back we go to the fact that nobody knows how these changes took place. But they did take place. The issue between us on this thread is your theory that God made the equipment and the organisms then learned how to use it. I offer the alternative: that under new conditions, organisms needed new equipment and (theistic version) God gave them the means to make it, i.e. God did not give fish legs and then they learned how to walk, and God did not reorganize the vocal organs and then humans learned how to talk; instead fish needed to walk and therefore changed their fins to legs, and humans needed to talk and therefore reorganized their vocal organs. An extension of the processes by which organisms are known to adapt themselves to changing conditions. This is not a matter of fish/humans thinking to themselves: “Change!” It is the individual cell communities responding cooperatively and intelligently to the overall requirements of the organism.
DAVID: I'll repeat. We only have large gaps between the transitional forms we have found. Your process only fits tiny steps, unless you want to claim that organisms themselves can create saltational-equivalent gaps in the record and solve the complex issues of coordinating new functional parts.
We don’t know how many transitional forms your God or my organisms needed. I’m mystified that your God should have needed to dabble/preprogramme any transitional forms at all since he is supposed to know precisely what he’s doing. That was why I asked you originally if you thought he had given fish fully formed legs before they left the water – but you declined to answer. However, yes, my hypothesis allows both for transitional forms and saltations, because it does indeed depend on cell communities having the intelligence (perhaps God-given) to solve all the complex issues of coordinating new functional parts.
DAVID: Your 'form of evolvable intelligence' is the original provision of alternative pathways. Bacteria can solve problems of survivability on their own.dhw: Alternative pathways are simply all the potential solutions to all the problems. It takes intelligence to work out which one fits. You appear to accept this, unless your second sentence is a misprint.
DAVID: Not a misprint. You miss the point that bacteria have the ability to use alternative pathways if a primary pathway is no longer useful. All built in.
The ability to find the right solution out of countless possibilities is what I would call intelligence, and yes, it is built in.
dhw: (re the viper): No need for God to keep stepping in if he simply gives organisms the ability to organize their own ways of survival.
DAVID: The false viper had to watch the real viper and then say to itself, I need to change my eye pupils for safety. It is easy for you to say adaptation which we see happen, but in this circumstance it is not easy to imagine a way it might happen. Just as it is not easy to imagine how butterflies have fake eye camouflage. All mimicry might be saltations!
I agree that it is not easy to imagine. Nor is it easy to imagine your God stepping in and giving the false viper a lesson, or providing the first living cells with a programme for fake eye camouflage to pass down through billions of years to false vipers and butterflies once they have come into existence.
David’s comment (under “engulfing photosynthesis”): The same process that resulted in mitochondria being made from engulfed bacteria. Could God have provided this mechanism to help evolution advance. Less dabbling for Him as a result.
dhw: It was precisely this process of endosymbiosis that formed the basis of Margulis’s theory of evolution, and the further we take the concept of intelligent cooperation, the less dabbling and preprogramming your God has to do. Like Shapiro and others, Margulis had no doubt that microorganisms are intelligent.
DAVID: Yes they are built to act as if intelligent, but other than the editing of their DNA for adaptation without speciation they are automatic.
I’ll settle for their being intelligent enough to edit their own DNA. Nobody knows how speciation took place, but if single cells can intelligently edit their own DNA, it is clearly possible that multicellular organs can also be intelligent enough to edit their own DNA, which means that potentially they can also be intelligent enough to create new structures. Hence evolution. Bingo.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Wednesday, October 12, 2016, 15:19 (2751 days ago) @ dhw
The issue between us on this thread is your theory that God made the equipment and the organisms then learned how to use it. I offer the alternative: that under new conditions, organisms needed new equipment and (theistic version) God gave them the means to make it, i.e. God did not give fish legs and then they learned how to walk, and God did not reorganize the vocal organs and then humans learned how to talk; instead fish needed to walk and therefore changed their fins to legs, and humans needed to talk and therefore reorganized their vocal organs......It is the individual cell communities responding cooperatively and intelligently to the overall requirements of the organism.
I will stick to my point, that single celled organisms do not have the planning capacity to become multicellular, and multicellular organisms do not have he planning capacity for the gaps we see in evolution.
DAVID: I'll repeat. We only have large gaps between the transitional forms we have found. Your process only fits tiny steps, unless you want to claim that organisms themselves can create saltational-equivalent gaps in the record and solve the complex issues of coordinating new functional parts.dhw: We don’t know how many transitional forms your God or my organisms needed..... However, yes, my hypothesis allows both for transitional forms and saltations, because it does indeed depend on cell communities having the intelligence (perhaps God-given) to solve all the complex issues of coordinating new functional parts.
I repeat, all we see is gaps around the few transitional forms in the fossil library. Your reliance on transitional forms suggests you are imagining a series of tiny step transitions. They don't exist! The gaps strongly imply saltation.
DAVID: Not a misprint. You miss the point that bacteria have the ability to use alternative pathways if a primary pathway is no longer useful. All built in.
dhw: The ability to find the right solution out of countless possibilities is what I would call intelligence, and yes, it is built in.
Yes, it looks like intelligence, but shifting from one pathway to another is the same as coming to a 'Y' on a walkway and trying to take preferred right not left, and choosing left because right is blocked. It is doing what you are able to do.
dhw; I agree that it is not easy to imagine. Nor is it easy to imagine your God stepping in and giving the false viper a lesson, or providing the first living cells with a programme for fake eye camouflage to pass down through billions of years to false vipers and butterflies once they have come into existence.
You can't imagine God stepping in. I can. He bothered to start a universe with life.
DAVID: Yes they are built to act as if intelligent, but other than the editing of their DNA for adaptation without speciation they are automatic.dhw: I’ll settle for their being intelligent enough to edit their own DNA. Nobody knows how speciation took place, but if single cells can intelligently edit their own DNA, it is clearly possible that multicellular organs can also be intelligent enough to edit their own DNA, which means that potentially they can also be intelligent enough to create new structures. Hence evolution. Bingo.
Bacteria have to take care of themselves and are equipped to do it, 3.6 billion years after they started. Multicellular beings are to complex to make the jumps across gaps without careful planning which requires mentation. No Bingo.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: The issue between us on this thread is your theory that God made the equipment and the organisms then learned how to use it. I offer the alternative: that under new conditions, organisms needed new equipment and (theistic version) God gave them the means to make it......It is the individual cell communities responding cooperatively and intelligently to the overall requirements of the organism.
DAVID: I will stick to my point, that single celled organisms do not have the planning capacity to become multicellular, and multicellular organisms do not have he planning capacity for the gaps we see in evolution.
That is the nub of the matter. I will stick to my point that we don’t know how much planning capacity they have. However, you wrote: “Yes they are built to act as if intelligent, but other than the editing of their DNA for adaptation without speciation they are automatic.” I pointed out that the non-automatic ability to edit DNA might enable multicellular organisms to create new structures, to which your response was the same as above. Subjective opinion dogmatically asserted as fact.
DAVID: I repeat, all we see is gaps around the few transitional forms in the fossil library. Your reliance on transitional forms suggests you are imagining a series of tiny step transitions. They don't exist! The gaps strongly imply saltation.
It is you who keep talking of tiny steps. But maybe there were. Maybe Tikki Jr had slightly more leggy legs than Tikki Sr. Who knows? Your own theory requires changes from fins to tikkilegs to fully formed legs. Do you believe your God preprogrammed/dabbled more transitional forms or a straight saltation? Whichever it is, I can hypothetically ascribe to my intelligent cells. Hypothetically, anything your God can do, his (theistic version) inventive mechanism can do. Once again, your assertion that cells/cell communities do not have the intelligence – though you could hardly argue that your God is incapable of inventing such a mechanism – is opinion, not fact.
DAVID: …bacteria have the ability to use alternative pathways if a primary pathway is no longer useful. All built in.
dhw: The ability to find the right solution out of countless possibilities is what I would call intelligence, and yes, it is built in.
DAVID: Yes, it looks like intelligence, but shifting from one pathway to another is the same as coming to a 'Y' on a walkway and trying to take preferred right not left, and choosing left because right is blocked. It is doing what you are able to do.
You make it sound as if the millions of problems bacteria have solved are a simple choice between right and left. You know as well as I do that they have mastered virtually every environment, solving nearly every survival problem thrown at them. Human beings have also mastered many environments. Do we do it automatically by walking left or right? Yes indeed, organisms do what they are able to do. That also applies to you and me, but it doesn’t make us automatons.
dhw: I agree that it is not easy to imagine. Nor is it easy to imagine your God stepping in and giving the false viper a lesson, or providing the first living cells with a programme for fake eye camouflage to pass down through billions of years to false vipers and butterflies once they have come into existence.
DAVID: You can't imagine God stepping in. I can. He bothered to start a universe with life.
That is not what I said. If he exists, then of course he stepped in. But I can’t imagine him stepping in to give false vipers and butterflies lessons in how to camouflage themselves. Nor, frankly, can I imagine that he believed the false viper’s eye camouflage essential to preserve the balance of nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could appear.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Friday, October 14, 2016, 02:09 (2750 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: That is the nub of the matter. I will stick to my point that we don’t know how much planning capacity they have. However, you wrote: “Yes they are built to act as if intelligent, but other than the editing of their DNA for adaptation without speciation they are automatic.” I pointed out that the non-automatic ability to edit DNA might enable multicellular organisms to create new structures, to which your response was the same as above. Subjective opinion dogmatically asserted as fact.
Not fact, but my firm opinion, to which I am joined by others.
DAVID: I repeat, all we see is gaps around the few transitional forms in the fossil library. Your reliance on transitional forms suggests you are imagining a series of tiny step transitions. They don't exist! The gaps strongly imply saltation.
dhw: It is you who keep talking of tiny steps. But maybe there were. Maybe Tikki Jr had slightly more leggy legs than Tikki Sr. Who knows?
Once again, the evidence is huge gaps, no tiny steps. We must work with the evidence we have and then hypothesize.
dhw: Your own theory requires changes from fins to tikkilegs to fully formed legs. Do you believe your God preprogrammed/dabbled more transitional forms or a straight saltation? Whichever it is, I can hypothetically ascribe to my intelligent cells. Hypothetically, anything your God can do, his (theistic version) inventive mechanism can do.
And your theory, sans your theistic nod to God, requires intense accurate planning to jump the gaps. Requires a mind to plan the new complex form across he gap.
dhw: You make it sound as if the millions of problems bacteria have solved are a simple choice between right and left. You know as well as I do that they have mastered virtually every environment, solving nearly every survival problem thrown at them.
Yes they have evolved into every extreme environment. As God created life, He may well have set them up to all types of survival
dhw: Human beings have also mastered many environments. Do we do it automatically by walking left or right?
No, no, it was our mental capacities, I agree.
dhw: Yes indeed, organisms do what they are able to do. That also applies to you and me, but it doesn’t make us automatons.
Neat flip of straw men. Bacteria can conquer all environments. They evolved to do that from the first simple forms. And automatically function in all the places they live. Isn't God's control of evolution amazing?
DAVID: You can't imagine God stepping in. I can. He bothered to start a universe with life.
dhw: That is not what I said. If he exists, then of course he stepped in. But I can’t imagine him stepping in to give false vipers and butterflies lessons in how to camouflage themselves. Nor, frankly, can I imagine that he believed the false viper’s eye camouflage essential to preserve the balance of nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could appear.
The bold above is what I believe. I know you don't.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Friday, October 14, 2016, 05:12 (2749 days ago) @ David Turell
dhw: You make it sound as if the millions of problems bacteria have solved are a simple choice between right and left. You know as well as I do that they have mastered virtually every environment, solving nearly every survival problem thrown at them.
David: Yes they have evolved into every extreme environment. As God created life, He may well have set them up to all types of survival
Look at this article about gene swapping to survive:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2108972-cheese-making-led-to-gene-swapping-orgy-of...
"A study of 165 of the diverse bacterial species present in cheeses has found that 130 of them – 80 per cent – have shared genes with other species. Altogether nearly 5000 genes have been swapped. The study does not reveal when this happened, but the process probably began when people started making cheeses, and continues to this day.
And if anything, this is probably an underestimate, Kevin Bonham of the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues think. Cheese not only contains many other species of bacteria, but also many fungi. There could be gene-swapping going on between fungi and bacteria, and between fungi.
"It has become clear that gene-swapping is much more common than we thought, especially among bacteria. “So if you think about it, it’s not that surprising,” says cheese microbiologist Tom Beresford of the Teagasc Food Research Centre in Fermoy, Ireland. “But I had never thought about whether it occurs in the cheese environment.”
***
"These specialised microbes have evolved to thrive in cheese by, for instance, picking up new genes. “There’s been evolution going on for millennia,” says Paul Kindstedt of the University of Vermont in Burlington, who studies cheese and has also written about its history.
"Although the functions of most of the 5000 swapped genes are unknown, many are involved in scavenging iron. That makes perfect sense: one way animals try to limit bacterial growth is by depriving them of iron. Milk, for example, contains an antibacterial substance called lactoferrin that mops up any free iron.
Comment: Put in a new cheese making environment the bacteria adapt. Did God provide this ability?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
DAVID (under “molecules”): That they conclude cells are intelligent is not proof of intelligence. It is only opinion and I have mine.
Agreed at last. It is all a matter of opinion, and therefore your usual blanket dismissal of my hypothesis is based entirely on opinion and not on any scientific fact.
dhw: It is you who keep talking of tiny steps. But maybe there were. Maybe Tikki Jr had slightly more leggy legs than Tikki Sr. Who knows?
DAVID: Once again, the evidence is huge gaps, no tiny steps. We must work with the evidence we have and then hypothesize.
Tikki is new evidence of transitional forms. My hypothesis allows for all eventualities: tiny steps (improvements, as above, not changes of species), transitional forms and saltations leading to new species.
dhw: Your own theory requires changes from fins to tikkilegs to fully formed legs.
DAVID: And your theory, sans your theistic nod to God, requires intense accurate planning to jump the gaps. Requires a mind to plan the new complex form across he gap.
Yes, my hypothesis depends on cellular intelligence (minds) to plan complex forms. You keep harping on about tiny steps and transitions and gaps, but as usual, you avoid my direct question: Do you believe your God preprogrammed/dabbled more transitional forms or a straight saltation?
dhw: You make it sound as if the millions of problems bacteria have solved are a simple choice between right and left. You know as well as I do that they have mastered virtually every environment...
DAVID: Yes they have evolved into every extreme environment. As God created life, He may well have set them up to all types of survival.
So please stop pretending it’s a simple matter of choosing between left and right. “Set them up” is yet another euphemism for preprogrammed.
DAVID: Look at this article about gene swapping to survive:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2108972-cheese-making-led-to-gene-swapping-orgy-of...
DAVID’s comment: Put in a new cheese making environment the bacteria adapt. Did God provide this ability?
Well yes, he may have provided the first cells with a programme to pass on for bacterial cheese-making-environment adaptation (or stepped in when those pesky humans invented cheese). Alternatively, he may have given bacteria the intelligence to work out ways of gene-swapping that would enable them to adapt to all sort of environments.
dhw: Human beings have also mastered many environments. Do we do it automatically by walking left or right?
DAVID: No, no, it was our mental capacities, I agree.
Of course you do. But you cannot conceive of the possibility that your God might have given mental capacities to bacteria to do the same. Or can you? Under “molecules” you wrote, concerning the apparently intelligent behaviour of bacteria, “It may look that way to you but to me it can all be automatic.” I accepted “can be” – I am not dogmatic in my defence of my hypothesis. “Can be”, however, does allow for intelligence.
dhw: Yes indeed, organisms do what they are able to do. That also applies to you and me, but it doesn’t make us automatons.
DAVID: Neat flip of straw men. Bacteria can conquer all environments. They evolved to do that from the first simple forms. And automatically function in all the places they live. Isn't God's control of evolution amazing?
Neat return to dogmatism (no “can be” here) – statement of fact: they automatically function, i.e. God preprogrammed them all right from the start to cover every single environmental condition for the next 3.7 billion years. The theistic alternative: isn’t God’s gift of intelligence, enabling organisms to control evolution, amazing?
DAVID: You can't imagine God stepping in. I can. He bothered to start a universe with life.
dhw: That is not what I said. If he exists, then of course he stepped in.
DAVID: The bold above is what I believe. I know you don't.
I neither believe nor disbelieve. I am an agnostic. Meanwhile, do you seriously believe God stepped in to give false vipers camouflage in order to preserve the balance of nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could appear?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Friday, October 14, 2016, 15:28 (2749 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: It is you who keep talking of tiny steps. But maybe there were. Maybe Tikki Jr had slightly more leggy legs than Tikki Sr. Who knows?
DAVID: Once again, the evidence is huge gaps, no tiny steps. We must work with the evidence we have and then hypothesize.Tikki is new evidence of transitional forms. My hypothesis allows for all eventualities: tiny steps (improvements, as above, not changes of species), transitional forms and saltations leading to new species.
You are hypothesizing tiny steps. Fine. There is no evidence. My gaps are the evidence we have, and so I hypothesize from the only evidence we have. That is how jury trials work or logic should work.
DAVID: And your theory, sans your theistic nod to God, requires intense accurate planning to jump the gaps. Requires a mind to plan the new complex form across he gap.
dhw: Yes, my hypothesis depends on cellular intelligence (minds) to plan complex forms. You keep harping on about tiny steps and transitions and gaps, but as usual, you avoid my direct question: Do you believe your God preprogrammed/dabbled more transitional forms or a straight saltation?
Based on all the gaps, straight saltation.
DAVID: Yes they have evolved into every extreme environment. As God created life, He may well have set them up to all types of survival.
So please stop pretending it’s a simple matter of choosing between left and right. “Set them up” is yet another euphemism for preprogrammed.
Yes. I think early bacterial life came with most abilities on board.
DAVID’s comment: Put in a new cheese making environment the bacteria adapt. Did God provide this ability?dhw: Well yes, he may have provided the first cells with a programme to pass on for bacterial cheese-making-environment adaptation (or stepped in when those pesky humans invented cheese). Alternatively, he may have given bacteria the intelligence to work out ways of gene-swapping that would enable them to adapt to all sort of environments.
The ability to gene swap required no intelligence and is an automatic ability in my view. Example: Bacteria A receives a response from Bacteria B that differs from A's inherent abilities and asks for a cooperative swap and they do it. God built it in.
dhw: Human beings have also mastered many environments. Do we do it automatically by walking left or right?
DAVID: No, no, it was our mental capacities, I agree.dhw: Of course you do. But you cannot conceive of the possibility that your God might have given mental capacities to bacteria to do the same. Or can you?
Not cannot, but don't accept it. All bacterial responses are a molecular series of reactions to stimuli from God given capacities.
dhw: Under “molecules” you wrote, concerning the apparently intelligent behaviour of bacteria, “It may look that way to you but to me it can all be automatic.” I accepted “can be” – I am not dogmatic in my defence of my hypothesis. “Can be”, however, does allow for intelligence.
My strange use of English, 'Can be' allows one to make a choice, which I do in viewing it as automatic.
dhw: Neat return to dogmatism (no “can be” here) – statement of fact: they automatically function, i.e. God preprogrammed them all right from the start to cover every single environmental condition for the next 3.7 billion years. The theistic alternative: isn’t God’s gift of intelligence, enabling organisms to control evolution, amazing?
Simply illustrates my thought patterns.
i]
DAVID: The bold above is what I believe. I know you don't.
dhw: I neither believe nor disbelieve. I am an agnostic. Meanwhile, do you seriously believe God stepped in to give false vipers camouflage in order to preserve the balance of nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could appear?
God used evolutionary processes to create humans. How is conjecture, but your question is entirely a possible way He worked. I don't believe God follows human logic in what He does.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
by David Turell , Friday, October 14, 2016, 19:46 (2749 days ago) @ David Turell
dhw: It is you who keep talking of tiny steps. But maybe there were. Maybe Tikki Jr had slightly more leggy legs than Tikki Sr. Who knows?
DAVID: Once again, the evidence is huge gaps, no tiny steps. We must work with the evidence we have and then hypothesize.Tikki is new evidence of transitional forms. My hypothesis allows for all eventualities: tiny steps (improvements, as above, not changes of species), transitional forms and saltations leading to new species.
David: You are hypothesizing tiny steps. Fine. There is no evidence. My gaps are the evidence we have, and so I hypothesize from the only evidence we have. That is how jury trials work or logic should work.
Look at this article which discusses Tiktaalik:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/fish-out-of-water-are-actually-prett...
"The new findings suggest that though the transition from water to land seems extreme, it does not seem particularly hard. Something else must prevent fish from evolving into full-fledged land-dwellers, as seems to have happened only once, giving rise to terrestrial vertebrates like ourselves. But what?
***
"To that end, they sought to see how often the move from water to land has occurred among fish, an iconic transition that seems like it should be hard and rare. To do so, fish must confront many challenges. Breathing, moving, and metabolizing all have to be modified in ways that make them possible in an environment of radically increased gravity and decreased wetness.
***
"Most of the family-level examples, however, were fish out of the water for only a few seconds or minutes, which may not meet the expectations of some regular “amphibious” behavior. Four of the families did have species that spend hours or days out of water: mudskippers, rockskippers, eels, and four-eyed blennies each come from separate families, implying that at least four times, significant amphibious behavior has evolved on Earth, not including, of course, the crucial fifth instance that resulted in us. The closest living relatives of the lobe-finned fish that made this particular transition also include many species today that make at least occasional forays onto land.
***
"What traits do modern amphibious fish share? More than anything, the scientist found that living in the intertidal zone promotes forays onto land. Fish living in the intertidal zone were amphibious much more frequently than would be expected given their overall numbers. With the twice-daily advance and retreat of the sea, and the ubiquity of tide pools that heat up in the sun, starving them of oxygen and forcing fish onto land, the zone seems to be particularly good at making fish terrestrial.
"On the other hand, the tropics seemed to be no better than the polar regions, proportionately, at producing amphibious fish. Nor did freshwater systems produce more amphibious fish than would be expected.
***
"..the authors theorize, drying out is the real challenge: specifically, the problems posed by the dessication of gills, which must remain moist for most fish to breathe. Our ancestors, such as the early tetrapod Tiktaalik, seemed to have been pre-adapted to overcome this obstacle because they possessed, in addition to gills, a primitive lung. (my bold)
"Without this trait or something like it, the forays of fish onto land seem destined to remain a flirtation. Though free to frolic, they must ultimately remain tethered to the water whence they came." (my bold)
Comment: In regard to jumping gaps, note the bolds above. The Tiktaalik come with a pre-adaptive primative lung. It looks like a God saltation to me, allowing the ability to breathe on land while real legs are added in a further gap jump. Walking bass in Florida don't have any type of lung. Hypothesized tiny steps are not in the fossil record. Lets work from what we see in that record to derive a theory of evolution.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
DAVID: Look at this article which discusses Tiktaalik:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/fish-out-of-water-are-actually-prett...
This is a real eye-opener. Thank you. Here again are the quotes you have highlighted:
"..the authors theorize, drying out is the real challenge: specifically, the problems posed by the dessication of gills, which must remain moist for most fish to breathe. Our ancestors, such as the early tetrapod Tiktaalik, seemed to have been pre-adapted to overcome this obstacle because they possessed, in addition to gills, a primitive lung. (David’s bold)
"Without this trait or something like it, the forays of fish onto land seem destined to remain a flirtation. Though free to frolic, they must ultimately remain tethered to the water whence they came." (David’s bold)
David’s comment: In regard to jumping gaps, note the bolds above. The Tiktaalik come with a pre-adaptive primative lung. It looks like a God saltation to me, allowing the ability to breathe on land while real legs are added in a further gap jump. Walking bass in Florida don't have any type of lung. Hypothesized tiny steps are not in the fossil record. Lets work from what we see in that record to derive a theory of evolution.
Here are two more quotes (my bold) that open up new insights, especially since no less than 33 “families” are known to have made the transition from water to land, albeit only briefly in most cases:
“Fish that live in water that is prone to heating also have been known to leave it because warmer water loses oxygen and may become suffocating. In such cases, air may present the better option[.” [/b]
And especially this one:
“Fish that live on the bottom of their body of water seem like they would also be better candidates for land-dwelling, because they already have adaptations that favor life on the ground. [These adaptations include a rounder, less vertically flattened body that makes walking easier and drying out less likely, and sometimes fins that are limb-like already.”
Plus one that you quoted: “Four of the families did have species that spent hours or days out of water: mudskippers, rockskippers, eels, and four-eyed blennies each come from separate families, implying that at least four times, significant amphibious behaviour has evolved on Earth, not including, of course, the crucial fifth instance that resulted in us.”
The reference to pre-adaptation becomes very clear once we realize that there have been so many instances of fish venturing out onto dry land, and being able to cope with the problems of movement and of breathing. Fish that live at the bottom of the sea or lake have fins that are “limb-like already”. We are not even talking of innovations here but of adaptations. I’m not going to downgrade the difficulty of explaining how all of this led to us (i.e. “the fifth instance that resulted in us”) but if the researchers say the transition from water to land “does not seem particularly hard” in the light of these adaptations, I’m not going to argue. We are left with the information that many water-based organisms have made the transition, and crucially the article makes it abundantly clear that the move was made for environmental reasons. Any “pre-adaptations” would have taken place for those same reasons: loss of oxygen, moving along the seabed, habitat alternating between wet and dry, or drying up altogether. The pattern is clear: need gives rise to change. It’s not change in preparation for need. Or do you think all the environmental changes as well as all these different family responses were dabbled or preprogrammed 3.7 billion years ago? Why so many if God only needed one? Ah, but you “don't believe God follows human logic in what He does.”
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
by David Turell , Saturday, October 15, 2016, 15:56 (2748 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The reference to pre-adaptation becomes very clear once we realize that there have been so many instances of fish venturing out onto dry land, and being able to cope with the problems of movement and of breathing. Fish that live at the bottom of the sea or lake have fins that are “limb-like already”. We are not even talking of innovations here but of adaptations.
Yes, comparatively the anatomy is similar but the fin function is different, although there are walking fish I've mentioned. But they stay fish! And of the instances of brief on land excursions, all but one all stayed fish. That is the proper interpretation of this article. And where did the primitive lung come from while still in the water? That is a key point. The authors are Darwinists who are trying to make it sound easy.
dhw I’m not going to downgrade the difficulty of explaining how all of this led to us (i.e. “the fifth instance that resulted in us”) but if the researchers say the transition from water to land “does not seem particularly hard” in the light of these adaptations, I’m not going to argue.
From my viewpoint I argue. Remember my right to reinterpret!
dhw: We are left with the information that many water-based organisms have made the transition, and crucially the article makes it abundantly clear that the move was made for environmental reasons.
Transient transitions only. Environmental stresses, yes.
dhw: Any “pre-adaptations” would have taken place for those same reasons: loss of oxygen, moving along the seabed, habitat alternating between wet and dry, or drying up altogether. The pattern is clear: need gives rise to change. It’s not change in preparation for need.
Agreed. At times of demonstrated need, organisms adapt. Reznick's guppies with wrong size and wrong place epigenetically adapt to survive. But I still see no need for human brain enlargement. Their ape forbears did just fine until the humans crowded the Earth.
dhw:Or do you think all the environmental changes as well as all these different family responses were dabbled or preprogrammed 3.7 billion years ago? Why so many if God only needed one? Ah, but you “don't believe God follows human logic in what He does.”
No need for your suppositions about God from my expressed viewpoint. From the overall view of all the evidence, God ran evolution by some means and His logic may not follow ours.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
dhw: The reference to pre-adaptation becomes very clear once we realize that there have been so many instances of fish venturing out onto dry land, and being able to cope with the problems of movement and of breathing. Fish that live at the bottom of the sea or lake have fins that are “limb-like already”. We are not even talking of innovations here but of adaptations.
DAVID: Yes, comparatively the anatomy is similar but the fin function is different, although there are walking fish I've mentioned. But they stay fish! And of the instances of brief on land excursions, all but one all stayed fish. That is the proper interpretation of this article. And where did the primitive lung come from while still in the water? That is a key point. The authors are Darwinists who are trying to make it sound easy.
The authors acknowledge the mystery of the fifth type that did not stay fish and led to us. As regards primitive lungs, they drew attention to conditions in which water lost oxygen and air proved a better option, and there were different families of fish that spent days on land. It would be interesting to google the history and different forms of primitive lungs, but I’m afraid I don’t have time.
Dhw: We are left with the information that many water-based organisms have made the transition, and crucially the article makes it abundantly clear that the move was made for environmental reasons.
DAVID: Transient transitions only. Environmental stresses, yes.
Again, this is such a logical process that one really can’t dismiss the idea that it
was the starting-point for the all-important permanent switch from water to land.
dhw: Any “pre-adaptations” would have taken place for those same reasons: loss of oxygen, moving along the seabed, habitat alternating between wet and dry, or drying up altogether. The pattern is clear: need gives rise to change. It’s not change in preparation for need.
DAVID: Agreed. At times of demonstrated need, organisms adapt. ..But I still see no need for human brain enlargement. Their ape forbears did just fine until the humans crowded the Earth.
As we have said over and over again, there was no need for any advance beyond bacteria. Hence, my hypothesis that evolution progresses through a (perhaps God-given) drive not only for survival but also for improvement. In the case of humans, somewhere along the line, pre-humans developed an enhanced consciousness of the world around them. The source of consciousness generally remains the great barrier to all of our hypotheses. But in the context of your dualism (see the sapiens thread), for this awareness to be of any use, our pre-sapiens ancestors needed a larger brain to improve means of expression and of materially carrying out the instructions issued by consciousness. Hence the need gives rise to physical change, as opposed to physical change creating the need.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
by David Turell , Monday, October 17, 2016, 15:03 (2746 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The authors acknowledge the mystery of the fifth type that did not stay fish and led to us. As regards primitive lungs, they drew attention to conditions in which water lost oxygen and air proved a better option, and there were different families of fish that spent days on land. It would be interesting to google the history and different forms of primitive lungs, but I’m afraid I don’t have time.
To my knowledge we have only one example of fish with primitive lung that made he transition as the authors careful analysis of walking fish tells us. Their point was to attempt to make it sound easy, which they admitted in the article.
dhw: Again, this is such a logical process that one really can’t dismiss the idea that it was the starting-point for the all-important permanent switch from water to land.
Of course a lung had to appear. We should be discussing the actuating cause of the lung
DAVID: Agreed. At times of demonstrated need, organisms adapt. ..But I still see no need for human brain enlargement. Their ape forbears did just fine until the humans crowded the Earth.
dhw: As we have said over and over again, there was no need for any advance beyond bacteria. Hence, my hypothesis that evolution progresses through a (perhaps God-given) drive not only for survival but also for improvement. In the case of humans, somewhere along the line, pre-humans developed an enhanced consciousness of the world around them. The source of consciousness generally remains the great barrier to all of our hypotheses. But in the context of your dualism (see the sapiens thread), for this awareness to be of any use, our pre-sapiens ancestors needed a larger brain to improve means of expression and of materially carrying out the instructions issued by consciousness. Hence the need gives rise to physical change, as opposed to physical change creating the need.
And again I look at the physical gap you lightly jump across. Each brain is much bigger as we go from 400 cc to 1,200 cc. Requires complex planning of bone skull shape, brain interconnections building a bigger frontal lobe, blood circulation pathways, lymphatics pathways, larynx dropping, etc.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
DAVID: To my knowledge we have only one example of fish with primitive lung that made the transition as the authors careful analysis of walking fish tells us. Their point was to attempt to make it sound easy, which they admitted in the article.
I think they do refer to the only one that made the PERMANENT transition. For me the crucial point is that primitive lungs and legs already existed as organisms tried to cope with different environmental conditions.
dhw: Again, this is such a logical process that one really can’t dismiss the idea that it was the starting-point for the all-important permanent switch from water to land.
DAVID: Of course a lung had to appear. We should be discussing the actuating cause of the lung.
We are. My hypothesis, in line with the cases we know of, is that environmental conditions caused organisms to make the changes. Here’s a website explaining the advantages of primitive lungs, which obviously have a long history.
1. How did fish evolve lungs? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/How-did-fish-evolve-lungs
dhw: The source of consciousness generally remains the great barrier to all of our hypotheses. But in the context of your dualism (see the sapiens thread), for this awareness to be of any use, our pre-sapiens ancestors needed a larger brain to improve means of expression and of materially carrying out the instructions issued by consciousness. Hence the need gives rise to physical change, as opposed to physical change creating the need.
DAVID: And again I look at the physical gap you lightly jump across. Each brain is much bigger as we go from 400 cc to 1,200 cc. Requires complex planning of bone skull shape, brain interconnections building a bigger frontal lobe, blood circulation pathways, lymphatics pathways, larynx dropping, etc.
Same argument as usual: just like the weaverbird. It’s all too complex for organisms (cell communities) to have organized, so God must have preprogrammed it 3.7 billion years ago or he dabbled. Occasional dabbling is, however, an option in the theistic version of my hypothesis. It is the sheer scale of your own that beggars my belief, in which you claim that every individual innovation and natural wonder is only possible through your God’s personal planning.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
by David Turell , Thursday, October 20, 2016, 15:13 (2743 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I think they do refer to the only one that made the PERMANENT transition. For me the crucial point is that primitive lungs and legs already existed as organisms tried to cope with different environmental conditions.
DAVID: Of course a lung had to appear. We should be discussing the actuating cause of the lung.
dhw: My hypothesis, in line with the cases we know of, is that environmental conditions caused organisms to make the changes. Here’s a website explaining the advantages of primitive lungs, which obviously have a long history.
1. How did fish evolve lungs? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/How-did-fish-evolve-lungs
Sorry, but I've read your article, which is filled with Darwin-speak. A swim bladder is a swim bladder, not a lung. Evolution to lung is assumed. Where is the provable research? Not in fossil evidence.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
dhw: My hypothesis, in line with the cases we know of, is that environmental conditions caused organisms to make the changes. Here’s a website explaining the advantages of primitive lungs, which obviously have a long history.
1. How did fish evolve lungs? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/How-did-fish-evolve-lungs
DAVID: Sorry, but I've read your article, which is filled with Darwin-speak. A swim bladder is a swim bladder, not a lung. Evolution to lung is assumed. Where is the provable research? Not in fossil evidence.
They categorically inform us that the swim bladder evolved FROM (not to) a primitive lung. It is the primitive lung that is my focus, not the swim bladder.
QUOTES: Lungs are homologous to the swim bladder of bony fish. However, it's not that lungs simply evolved from the swim bladders of fish; in fact, the reverse is true.
The swim bladders of bony fishes living today, like the lungs of terrestrial vertebrates, are both exapted from primitive lungs.
(To put it another way, terrestrial vertebrates specialized in using these primitive lungs for breathing, while sea-bound bony fish specialized in using it for buoyancy, but the original organ probably served both purposes, to different degrees.)
But I am only quoting this to show that the primitive lung has a history which is always associated with environmental needs. Among the functions listed are enhancing stablility in the water, filtering carbon dioxide out of the bloodstream, oxygenating the blood in hypoxic environments, I don’t know why this should be dismissed as Darwin-speak (whatever that means). I find the link with environmental needs at least as convincing as the hypothesis that your God gave a particular fish a set of almost readymade lungs (just one transitional phase apparently) before it stepped onto the land.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
by David Turell , Sunday, October 23, 2016, 20:11 (2740 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: My hypothesis, in line with the cases we know of, is that environmental conditions caused organisms to make the changes. Here’s a website explaining the advantages of primitive lungs, which obviously have a long history.
1. How did fish evolve lungs? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/How-did-fish-evolve-lungsDAVID: Sorry, but I've read your article, which is filled with Darwin-speak.
Look at the supposed uses. to me that is Darwin-speak, all suppositions, no proof stated.
I admit I was unaware of current theory re fish lungs and swim bladders. From Berkeley:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/fishtree_09
The available evidence suggests that gills were present in the very earliest fishes — the common ancestor of hagfish and ray-finned fishes. However, lungs — gas-filled organs that serve the function of respiration — also evolved very early on. The common ancestor of the lobe- and ray-finned fishes had lungs as well as gills. So what happened to these lungs and gills? In the lobefins, lungs stuck around, and tetrapods, coelacanths, and (duh) lungfish, all inherited them and use them to obtain oxygen. Coelacanths and lungfish also retained their gills. Modern tetrapods, on the other hand, bear evidence indicating that we once had gills but that these were lost in the course of our early evolution. The ray-finned fishes retained gills, and some of them (e.g., the bichirs, BYK-heerz) also retained lungs for the long haul. But in the lineage that wound up spawning most ray-fins (and in at least one other lineage), lungs evolved into the swimbladder — a gas-filled organ that helps the fish control its buoyancy.
dhw: They categorically inform us that the swim bladder evolved FROM (not to) a primitive lung. It is the primitive lung that is my focus, not the swim bladder.
Note that the lung came first. God anticipating land creatures.
dhw: But I am only quoting this to show that the primitive lung has a history which is always associated with environmental needs. Among the functions listed are enhancing stablility in the water, filtering carbon dioxide out of the bloodstream, oxygenating the blood in hypoxic environments, I don’t know why this should be dismissed as Darwin-speak (whatever that means). I find the link with environmental needs at least as convincing as the hypothesis that your God gave a particular fish a set of almost readymade lungs (just one transitional phase apparently) before it stepped onto the land. (my bold)
The functions are theoretical possible functions, all reasonable. But there is no getting around the primitive lungs came long before stepping on land. To me Darwin-speak.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
dhw: My hypothesis, in line with the cases we know of, is that environmental conditions caused organisms to make the changes. Here’s a website explaining the advantages of primitive lungs, which obviously have a long history.
1. How did fish evolve lungs? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/How-did-fish-evolve-lungs
DAVID: Sorry, but I've read your article, which is filled with Darwin-speak. A swim bladder is a swim bladder, not a lung. Evolution to lung is assumed. Where is the provable research? Not in fossil evidence
dhw: They categorically inform us that the swim bladder evolved FROM (not to) a primitive lung. It is the primitive lung that is my focus, not the swim bladder.
DAVID: I admit I was unaware of current theory re fish lungs and swim bladders. From Berkeley:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/fishtree_09
DAVID: Note that the lung came first. God anticipating land creatures.
The article I referred you to stated categorically that the lung came first, you said the opposite, and now you are telling me that the lung came first! My point is that primitive lungs clearly existed in different organisms that lived in water and used them in water.
DAVID: Look at the supposed uses. to me that is Darwin-speak, all suppositions, no proof stated.
I’m sorry, but it seems to me that enhancing stability in the water, filtering carbon dioxide out of the bloodstream, oxygenating the blood in hypoxic environments, all represent a far more rational supposition than “God anticipating land creatures”. Do you think your God gave them primitive lungs for no reason at all except to reduce the work he needed to do when they stepped onto land?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
by David Turell , Monday, October 24, 2016, 15:37 (2739 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Look at the supposed uses. to me that is Darwin-speak, all suppositions, no proof stated.dhw: I’m sorry, but it seems to me that enhancing stability in the water, filtering carbon dioxide out of the bloodstream, oxygenating the blood in hypoxic environments, all represent a far more rational supposition than “God anticipating land creatures”. Do you think your God gave them primitive lungs for no reason at all except to reduce the work he needed to do when they stepped onto land?
God anticipated land creatures, and preplanned for their development. Swim bladders and lungs may have diverged from the same beginnings, but have vastly different functions. No swim bladders on land, but lungs are.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
DAVID: Look at the supposed uses. to me that is Darwin-speak, all suppositions, no proof stated.
dhw: I’m sorry, but it seems to me that enhancing stability in the water, filtering carbon dioxide out of the bloodstream, oxygenating the blood in hypoxic environments, all represent a far more rational supposition than “God anticipating land creatures”. Do you think your God gave them primitive lungs for no reason at all except to reduce the work he needed to do when they stepped onto land?
DAVID: God anticipated land creatures, and preplanned for their development. Swim bladders and lungs may have diverged from the same beginnings, but have vastly different functions. No swim bladders on land, but lungs are.
It was you who raised the subject of swim bladders. They are irrelevant. Lungs apparently came first. And since you are so sceptical about the uses attributed to these primitive lungs, may I ask again: are you saying that your God gave the fish primitive lungs for no reason at all except to reduce the work he needed to do when they stepped onto land?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
by David Turell , Tuesday, October 25, 2016, 15:04 (2738 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: It was you who raised the subject of swim bladders. They are irrelevant. Lungs apparently came first. And since you are so sceptical about the uses attributed to these primitive lungs, may I ask again: are you saying that your God gave the fish primitive lungs for no reason at all except to reduce the work he needed to do when they stepped onto land?
Just an example of pre-planning.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's reasoning God exists
by David Turell , Wednesday, March 25, 2020, 22:12 (1491 days ago) @ David Turell
A philosophic approach from Aristotle to St. Thomas:
https://mindmatters.ai/2020/03/gods-existence-is-proven-by-science/
"Proof of God’s existence is and must be the same: it must be inferential—it must come from evidence. Natural science uses exactly the same inferential structure: evidence-logic-inference
***
"natural theology, which is the science of demonstrating God’s existence using evidence and logic. Natural theology may be contrasted with revealed theology, which is the study of God via revelation in Scripture.
"Natural theology has a massive history—it goes back at least to the ancient philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) (the Prime Mover argument). A high point in natural theology was Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways, which are scientific (i.e. evidence-based) arguments for God’s existence. In fact, the cornerstone of Aquinas’ metaphysics is that essence (what a thing is) is utterly distinct from existence (that a thing is).
***
"Here’s Aquinas’ First Way:
1) Change exists in nature (evidence)
2) Change is the actuation of potentiality and an essential chain of actuations cannot go to infinite regress. A fully actual Prime Mover is necessary (logic)
3) That Prime Mover is what all men call God (conclusion)
***
"There are four (explicit and implicit) components to Aquinas’ First Way (Aquinas at right).
First the evidence:
1) Evidence for change in nature. This is obvious. Things change all the time—atoms vibrate, water flows, leaves turn yellow, men get older. Change is everywhere, and the evidence part of Aquinas’ First Way is ubiquitous and more extensive than the evidence for any other scientific theory.
"Then the logic:
2) Change is actuation of potency.
3) Instrumental (essential) causal chains exist in nature, and they cannot go to infinite regress.
4) The law of the Excluded Middle: a thing cannot be, and be its contrary, in the same respect at the same time. Something is either A, or not A, but not both simultaneously.
***
"2) Change is actuation of potency: This is perhaps Aristotle’s most fundamental metaphysical insight. Aristotle observed that there are three ways of describing existence: there is non-existence, there is actuality, and there is an intermediate state he called potency. ...When Aristotle and Aquinas say that change is actuation of potency, all they mean is that when something changes in nature, it goes from potentially something to actually something. A green leaf goes from potentially yellow to actually yellow in the fall. An acorn goes from potentially an oak tree to actually an oak tree when it grows.
***
"3) Instrumental (essential) causal chains exist in nature, and they cannot go to infinite regress: This is the part that is most subtle but it is true and vital. Causal chains exist in nature—things cause other things. Causal chains mean that potency is elevated so that it acts sequentially in things. A thing is in potency to be something, and it actually becomes that something because something else acts on it.
***
"An instrumental (essential) causal chain is different. In an instrumental causal chain, each cause must continue to exist for the effect to continue to exist.
***
"Infinite regress is impossible for instrumental (essential) causal chains. The reason is that an instrumental chain of causes (a chain of sticks used to push a rock) can’t get started by itself. Causation entails elevation of potency to act, but potency is not something that fully exists so it must be caused by something that does actually exist.
***
"To cause itself, the universe must potentially exist and actually exist at the same time. The universe can potentially exist, or actually exist, but it cannot simultaneously potentially and actually exist. It is logically and metaphysically impossible for something to cause itself. It is logically impossible for a chain of instrumentally ordered causes to cause itself.
***
"His Third Way—the proof from Necessary Existence—has a similar structure.
***
"The cosmological arguments follow the same formal structure as any theory in science. They invoke evidence from nature (things change, things are caused, things exist), analyze the evidence on a logical framework, and arrive at an inductive conclusion.
The evidence for the cosmological arguments is massive, the logic is impeccable, and the conclusion is inescapable. God exists, with more certainly than we know of the existence of anything in science."
Comments: Read in entirety for real understanding. Very long.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's reasoning God exists
QUOTE: "The cosmological arguments follow the same formal structure as any theory in science. They invoke evidence from nature (things change, things are caused, things exist), analyze the evidence on a logical framework, and arrive at an inductive conclusion.
The evidence for the cosmological arguments is massive, the logic is impeccable, and the conclusion is inescapable. God exists, with more certainty than we know of the existence of anything in science."
DAVID: Read in entirety for real understanding. Very long.
Then thank you for editing it. The whole thing would have been even more unbearable.
I can see absolutely no logical link between the known facts of change, causation and existence and the conclusion that God must exist. You might just as well say impersonal nature consists of materials and energy which are constantly changing and each change has a cause, and there is an infinite number of potential combinations. I much prefer your own logical analysis of the complexities of living organisms as evidence of a designer.
We had a similar exchange under “Revisiting language”:
DAVID: …how did cells find that intelligence which implies the ability for abstract thought?
dhw: […] in the context of the source of the intelligent cell….nobody knows, and we can only guess. One guess is a mysterious, unknown being you call God. How did God find that intelligence which implies the ability for abstract thought, not to mention the knowledge and power to create a whole universe and life itself? Oh, “first cause” – intelligent cells must have a source, but an unknown and almighty intelligence doesn’t have to have a source.
DAVID: Same old response. We exist. There is something. It cannot have come from nothing. Something has to be first cause which is eternal ..
And the same old response to your same old response: of course there has to be a first cause. And the alternative to God is eternal matter and energy forever forming new combinations until eventually they hit the jackpot. No more and no less unlikely than the God theory.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's reasoning God exists
by David Turell , Thursday, March 26, 2020, 22:46 (1490 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: "The cosmological arguments follow the same formal structure as any theory in science. They invoke evidence from nature (things change, things are caused, things exist), analyze the evidence on a logical framework, and arrive at an inductive conclusion.
The evidence for the cosmological arguments is massive, the logic is impeccable, and the conclusion is inescapable. God exists, with more certainty than we know of the existence of anything in science."DAVID: Read in entirety for real understanding. Very long.
dhw: Then thank you for editing it. The whole thing would have been even more unbearable.
dhw: I can see absolutely no logical link between the known facts of change, causation and existence and the conclusion that God must exist. You might just as well say impersonal nature consists of materials and energy which are constantly changing and each change has a cause, and there is an infinite number of potential combinations. I much prefer your own logical analysis of the complexities of living organisms as evidence of a designer.
Deeply thoughtful folks like Ed Feser agree with all of this. He started his adult life as an agnostic/atheist!!! Is now Catholic. Website:
https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fedwardfeser.blogspot.com%2F
dhw: We had a similar exchange under “Revisiting language”:
DAVID: …how did cells find that intelligence which implies the ability for abstract thought?
dhw: […] in the context of the source of the intelligent cell….nobody knows, and we can only guess. One guess is a mysterious, unknown being you call God. How did God find that intelligence which implies the ability for abstract thought, not to mention the knowledge and power to create a whole universe and life itself? Oh, “first cause” – intelligent cells must have a source, but an unknown and almighty intelligence doesn’t have to have a source.
DAVID: Same old response. We exist. There is something. It cannot have come from nothing. Something has to be first cause which is eternal ..
dhw: And the same old response to your same old response: of course there has to be a first cause. And the alternative to God is eternal matter and energy forever forming new combinations until eventually they hit the jackpot. No more and no less unlikely than the God theory.
I like Feser and some of his St. Thomas discussions. They make sense to me.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take; more on gaps
by David Turell , Wednesday, July 20, 2022, 23:23 (644 days ago) @ dhw
Another fish similar to tiktaalik:
http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/qikiqtania-wakei-11017.html?utm_source=feedburner&...
"Qikiqtania wakei closely resembles Tiktaalik roseae — the important transitional animal considered a missing link between fish and the earliest limbed animals — but has features that made it more suited to life in the water than its famous cousin.
"Qikiqtania wakei lived in what is now the Canadian Arctic some 380 million years ago (Devonian period).
***
“'Mostly importantly, it also features a complete pectoral fin with a distinct humerus bone that lacks the ridges that would indicate where muscles and joints would be on a limb geared toward walking on land.”
“'Instead, Qikiqtania wakei’s upper arm was smooth and curved, more suited for a life paddling underwater.”
"The uniqueness of its arm bones suggest that Qikiqtania wakei returned to paddling the water after its ancestors began to use their appendages for walking.
“'At first we thought it could be a juvenile Tiktaalik, because it was smaller and maybe some of those processes hadn’t developed yet,” Dr. Shubin said.
“'But the humerus is smooth and boomerang shaped, and it doesn’t have the elements that would support it pushing up on land. It’s remarkably different and suggests something new.”
***
"Their analysis of where it sits on the tree of life places it, like Tiktaalik roseae, adjacent to the earliest creatures known to have finger-like digits.
"But even though Qikiqtania wakei’s distinct pectoral fin was more suited for swimming, it wasn’t entirely fish-like either.
"Its curved paddle shape was a distinct adaptation, different from the jointed, muscled legs or fan-shaped fins we see in tetrapods and fish today.
“'Tiktaalik is often treated as a transitional animal because it’s easy to see the stepwise pattern of changes from life in the water to life on land,” said Dr. Tom Stewart, a paleontologist in the Department of Biology at the Pennsylvania State University.
“'But we know that in evolution things aren’t always so simple.”
“'We don’t often get glimpses into this part of vertebrate history. Now we’re starting to uncover that diversity and to get a sense of the ecology and unique adaptations of these animals. It’s more than simple transformation with just a limited number of species.'”
Comment: another transitional fish form, which tells us some gaps are quite small.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
Dhw: Tikki is new evidence of transitional forms. My hypothesis allows for all eventualities: tiny steps (improvements, as above, not changes of species), transitional forms and saltations leading to new species.
DAVID: You are hypothesizing tiny steps. Fine. There is no evidence. My gaps are the evidence we have, and so I hypothesize from the only evidence we have. That is how jury trials work or logic should work.
I am not hypothesizing tiny steps. My hypothesis allows for all eventualities. You are right, jury trials and logic work according to the evidence, and if there is not enough evidence for a verdict beyond reasonable doubt, they leave the verdict open. There is no evidence whatsoever for your hypothesis that God pre-planned/dabbled every innovation and natural wonder. However, I’m delighted by your appeal to logic. Please see my closing comments.
DAVID: And your theory, sans your theistic nod to God, requires intense accurate planning to jump the gaps. Requires a mind to plan the new complex form across he gap.
dhw: Yes, my hypothesis depends on cellular intelligence (minds) to plan complex forms. You keep harping on about tiny steps and transitions and gaps, but as usual, you avoid my direct question: Do you believe your God preprogrammed/dabbled more transitional forms or a straight saltation?
DAVID: Based on all the gaps, straight saltation.
Thank you: that means from fin to tikkileg to fully formed leg. I would deduce from this that before the discovery of tikki, you would have opted for saltation from fin to fully formed leg, and I’ll repeat my surprise that your God should have needed to organize even one transitional form. But this part of the discussion has been somewhat superseded by your second extremely illuminating post, which I’ll reply to separately.
DAVID: Yes they have evolved into every extreme environment. As God created life, He may well have set them up to all types of survival.
Dhw: So please stop pretending it’s a simple matter of choosing between left and right. “Set them up” is yet another euphemism for preprogrammed.
DAVID: Yes. I think early bacterial life came with most abilities on board.
I must say I prefer “abilities” to programmes. The ability to solve countless problems (= intelligence) must indeed have been there from the start.
DAVID’s comment: Put in a new cheese making environment the bacteria adapt. Did God provide this ability?
dhw: Well yes, he may have provided the first cells with a programme to pass on for bacterial cheese-making-environment adaptation (or stepped in when those pesky humans invented cheese). Alternatively, he may have given bacteria the intelligence to work out ways of gene-swapping that would enable them to adapt to all sort of environments.
DAVID: The ability to gene swap required no intelligence and is an automatic ability in my view. Example: Bacteria A receives a response from Bacteria B that differs from A's inherent abilities and asks for a cooperative swap and they do it. God built it in.
Why on earth would they need to talk to each other if God had already built it in? First A is aware that B has something he hasn’t got, then he and B have a chat about it, and the two of them reach agreement to do a swap. You could hardly have come up with a better illustration of intelligent, sentient, cognitive, cooperative, decision-making behaviour. Thank you.
The remainder of your post simply repeats your beliefs, apart from one delightful final comment:
dhw: I neither believe nor disbelieve. I am an agnostic. Meanwhile, do you seriously believe God stepped in to give false vipers camouflage in order to preserve the balance of nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could appear?
DAVID: God used evolutionary processes to create humans. How is conjecture, but your question is entirely a possible way He worked. I don't believe God follows human logic in what He does.
But you seem to believe that he follows YOUR human logic. This sounds to me as if you accept the logicality of my arguments, realize that your own are illogical, but reckon God prefers your illogical way of thinking to mine.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Saturday, October 15, 2016, 15:31 (2748 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Yes. I think early bacterial life came with most abilities on board.
dhw: I must say I prefer “abilities” to programmes. The ability to solve countless problems (= intelligence) must indeed have been there from the start.
Parallel pathways are the 'abilities' I have in mind as responses to stimuli or problems. Are you really agreeing to pre-planning?
Why on earth would they need to talk to each other if God had already built it in? First A is aware that B has something he hasn’t got, then he and B have a chat about it, and the two of them reach agreement to do a swap. You could hardly have come up with a better illustration of intelligent, sentient, cognitive, cooperative, decision-making behaviour. Thank you.
By 'talk to each other' I meant molecular signaling stimuli. They have to communicate in some way for the swaps to occur.
DAVID: God used evolutionary processes to create humans. How is conjecture, but your question is entirely a possible way He worked. I don't believe God follows human logic in what He does.
dhw: But you seem to believe that he follows YOUR human logic. This sounds to me as if you accept the logicality of my arguments, realize that your own are illogical, but reckon God prefers your illogical way of thinking to mine.
No. I admit I'm using my logic to try to discern His, but I've always admitted in the past that He has His own reasons for actions we see.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
DAVID: Yes. I think early bacterial life came with most abilities on board.
dhw: I must say I prefer “abilities” to programmes. The ability to solve countless problems (= intelligence) must indeed have been there from the start.DAVID: Parallel pathways are the 'abilities' I have in mind as responses to stimuli or problems. Are you really agreeing to pre-planning?
Pathways are not abilities. Pathways are choices. Intelligence is the cognitive ability to choose or even invent pathways. As regards pre-planning, God (if he exists) would certainly have been the inventor of cellular intelligence (if it exists), and it is perfectly logical to assume that he would have had a reason for inventing it. The higgledy-piggledy history of evolution suggests that he would have planned for the history of evolution to be higgledy-piggledy through the autonomous intelligence he invented! (But he may have occasionally dabbled, which might explain the extra degrees of human consciousness.) That is the theistic “pre-planning” that I would extrapolate logically from all the evidence available to us.
Dhw: Why on earth would they need to talk to each other if God had already built it in? First A is aware that B has something he hasn’t got, then he and B have a chat about it, and the two of them reach agreement to do a swap. You could hardly have come up with a better illustration of intelligent, sentient, cognitive, cooperative, decision-making behaviour. Thank you.
DAVID: By 'talk to each other' I meant molecular signaling stimuli. They have to communicate in some way for the swaps to occur.
Precisely. Molecular signalling is their way of communicating. They have to be aware of their differences, communicate what they are each aware of, and reach agreement to do the swap. A great example of intelligent behaviour.
DAVID: I don't believe God follows human logic in what He does.
dhw: But you seem to believe that he follows YOUR human logic. This sounds to me as if you accept the logicality of my arguments, realize that your own are illogical, but reckon God prefers your illogical way of thinking to mine.
DAVID: No. I admit I'm using my logic to try to discern His, but I've always admitted in the past that He has His own reasons for actions we see.
Yes of course he does (if he exists). But since your interpretation of his reasons is so palpably illogical, and since the alternative I offer is so much more logical, why discount mine?
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Monday, October 17, 2016, 14:51 (2746 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Yes. I think early bacterial life came with most abilities on board.
dhw: I must say I prefer “abilities” to programmes. The ability to solve countless problems (= intelligence) must indeed have been there from the start.
DAVID: Parallel pathways are the 'abilities' I have in mind as responses to stimuli or problems. Are you really agreeing to pre-planning?
dhw: Pathways are not abilities. Pathways are choices. Intelligence is the cognitive ability to choose or even invent pathways.
In the antibiotic experiment, the drug blocks a pathway, but like any algorithm the surviving bacteria simply and automatically shift to pathway 2. There may be a pathway 3 to shift to next.
dhw: As regards pre-planning, God (if he exists) would certainly have been the inventor of cellular intelligence (if it exists), and it is perfectly logical to assume that he would have had a reason for inventing it. The higgledy-piggledy history of evolution suggests that he would have planned for the history of evolution to be higgledy-piggledy through the autonomous intelligence he invented! (But he may have occasionally dabbled, which might explain the extra degrees of human consciousness.) That is the theistic “pre-planning” that I would extrapolate logically from all the evidence available to us.
And I point to the need for a balance of nature to supply the food energy for life to persist.
DAVID: By 'talk to each other' I meant molecular signaling stimuli. They have to communicate in some way for the swaps to occur.
dhw: Precisely. Molecular signalling is their way of communicating. They have to be aware of their differences, communicate what they are each aware of, and reach agreement to do the swap. A great example of intelligent behaviour.
All done automatically with set molecular reactions.
dhw: Yes of course he does (if he exists). But since your interpretation of his reasons is so palpably illogical, and since the alternative I offer is so much more logical, why discount mine?
Illogical to you, just as yours are to mine.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: Pathways are not abilities. Pathways are choices. Intelligence is the cognitive ability to choose or even invent pathways.
DAVID: In the antibiotic experiment, the drug blocks a pathway, but like any algorithm the surviving bacteria simply and automatically shift to pathway 2. There may be a pathway 3 to shift to next.
In the great big world, there are millions of problems, all of different kinds. Bacteria have found solutions to them all. Did God give them millions of automatic “shifts” to counter every single one of them? Or does he do a dabble whenever there’s a new one? Or did he give them the means to find their own solutions? That is the theistic choice.
dhw: The higgledy-piggledy history of evolution suggests that he would have planned for the history of evolution to be higgledy-piggledy through the autonomous intelligence he invented! (But he may have occasionally dabbled, which might explain the extra degrees of human consciousness.) That is the theistic “pre-planning” that I would extrapolate logically from all the evidence available to us.
DAVID: And I point to the need for a balance of nature to supply the food energy for life to persist.
Don’t forget “in order to produce humans”. So God taught or preprogrammed false vipers, butterflies and cuttlefish to camouflage themselves. Life couldn’t have gone on if he hadn’t, and so there would have been no humans.
DAVID: He has his own reasons for actions we see.
dhw: Yes of course he does (if he exists). But since your interpretation of his reasons is so palpably illogical, and since the alternative I offer is so much more logical, why discount mine?
DAVID: Illogical to you, just as yours are to mine.
I can only quote your marvellous comment a few days ago: “I don’t believe God follows human logic in what he does.” Since you believe that God preprogrammes or dabbles, you clearly believe that these hypotheses are NOT compatible with human logic. And so on the assumption that you are human (though in my admiration for you, I sometimes wonder if you aren’t superhuman), you find them illogical.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Thursday, October 20, 2016, 15:04 (2743 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: In the great big world, there are millions of problems, all of different kinds. Bacteria have found solutions to them all. Did God give them millions of automatic “shifts” to counter every single one of them? Or does he do a dabble whenever there’s a new one? Or did he give them the means to find their own solutions? That is the theistic choice.
I know, and bacteria are capable of living in any extreme environment, and God helped, and I do not have the answer of exactly how He did it.
dhw: I can only quote your marvellous comment a few days ago: “I don’t believe God follows human logic in what he does.” Since you believe that God preprogrammes or dabbles, you clearly believe that these hypotheses are NOT compatible with human logic. And so on the assumption that you are human (though in my admiration for you, I sometimes wonder if you aren’t superhuman), you find them illogical.
Logically, God is required, and I admit I cannot follow His logic at times.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
dhw: In the great big world, there are millions of problems, all of different kinds. Bacteria have found solutions to them all. Did God give them millions of automatic “shifts” to counter every single one of them? Or does he do a dabble whenever there’s a new one? Or did he give them the means to find their own solutions? That is the theistic choice.
DAVID: I know, and bacteria are capable of living in any extreme environment, and God helped, and I do not have the answer of exactly how He did it.
Nobody has, but you have said repeatedly that you believe only in preprogramming or dabbling (or a multiple choice guessing game). And you reject even the possibility of autonomous intelligence.
dhw: I can only quote your marvellous comment a few days ago: “I don’t believe God follows human logic in what he does.” Since you believe that God preprogrammes or dabbles, you clearly believe that these hypotheses are NOT compatible with human logic. And so on the assumption that you are human (though in my admiration for you, I sometimes wonder if you aren’t superhuman), you find them illogical.
DAVID: Logically, God is required, and I admit I cannot follow His logic at times.
Wearing my theist hat, I suggest you cannot follow your interpretation of his logic, which clearly you find illogical. But you are unwilling to admit that your interpretation of his logic might be wrong.
David’s comment Under “Explaining Crispr”: Note these are man-made modifications of bacterial defense enzymes. What is always striking to me is that bacteria in evolving these huge molecules had to invent them. Enzymes are giant in size and have loci which will grab both sides of a reaction, hold the molecules together and force a reaction that would otherwise take years to occur. Chance logically cannot create this. Saltation is logical.
A very striking comment. First of all, saltation is not the opposite of chance, but simply lengthens the odds against chance. However, we have always been in agreement (a) that chance is not an option, and (b) that Darwin was wrong to dismiss saltation in favour of gradualism. Far more important is your acknowledgement at last that bacteria may have invented the huge molecules. So much more logical than insisting that your God preprogrammed the first cells with every single innovation, or even with a collection of right and wrong pathways from which each bacterium could make its choice.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Sunday, October 23, 2016, 19:25 (2740 days ago) @ dhw
David’s comment Under “Explaining Crispr”: Note these are man-made modifications of bacterial defense enzymes. What is always striking to me is that bacteria in evolving these huge molecules had to invent them. Enzymes are giant in size and have loci which will grab both sides of a reaction, hold the molecules together and force a reaction that would otherwise take years to occur. Chance logically cannot create this. Saltation is logical.dhw: A very striking comment. First of all, saltation is not the opposite of chance, but simply lengthens the odds against chance.
Saltation means a giant change, not Darwinian evolution.
dhw: So much more logical than insisting that your God preprogrammed the first cells with every single innovation, or even with a collection of right and wrong pathways from which each bacterium could make its choice.
Alternative pathways, not right or wrong, but at times inadequate for the stress encountered
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
David’s comment Under “Explaining Crispr”: Note these are man-made modifications of bacterial defense enzymes. What is always striking to me is that bacteria in evolving these huge molecules had to invent them. Enzymes are giant in size and have loci which will grab both sides of a reaction, hold the molecules together and force a reaction that would otherwise take years to occur. Chance logically cannot create this. Saltation is logical.
dhw: A very striking comment. First of all, saltation is not the opposite of chance, but simply lengthens the odds against chance.
DAVID: Saltation means a giant change, not Darwinian evolution.
We have agreed a hundred times that we do not accept chance or Darwin’s gradualism, and we do accept saltation, which means a leap but does not necessarily preclude chance. However, my focus was on your excellent observation that bacteria had to INVENT the huge molecules – a hypothesis which seems more likely to me than your God intervening or preprogramming the huge molecules, along with everything else bacteria come up with.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
by David Turell , Monday, October 24, 2016, 15:33 (2739 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: We have agreed a hundred times that we do not accept chance or Darwin’s gradualism, and we do accept saltation, which means a leap but does not necessarily preclude chance. However, my focus was on your excellent observation that bacteria had to INVENT the huge molecules – a hypothesis which seems more likely to me than your God intervening or preprogramming the huge molecules, along with everything else bacteria come up with.
You are having bacteria work out the giant jigsaw puzzle of putting together huge organic molecules using thousands of amino acids, with the correct sequences, proper folds required for function, key-lock positions in the right spots, the necessary traces of metals of different kinds, when all the pieces are not given in a box, and even the pieces have to be made! I do not think you have any concept of the biochemistry of enzymes, the engines that make life run in the instant. Every different bio molecular reaction requires a distinct enzyme. My inference is that bacteria cannot invent at this level of complexity.
Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take
DAVID: Note these are man-made modifications of bacterial defense enzymes. What is always striking to me is that bacteria in evolving these huge molecules had to invent them. Enzymes are giant in size and have loci which will grab both sides of a reaction, hold the molecules together and force a reaction that would otherwise take years to occur. Chance logically cannot create this. Saltation is logical. [My bold]
dhw: We have agreed a hundred times that we do not accept chance or Darwin’s gradualism, and we do accept saltation, which means a leap but does not necessarily preclude chance. However, my focus was on your excellent observation that bacteria had to INVENT the huge molecules – a hypothesis which seems more likely to me than your God intervening or preprogramming the huge molecules, along with everything else bacteria come up with.
DAVID: You are having bacteria work out the giant jigsaw puzzle of putting together huge organic molecules using thousands of amino acids, with the correct sequences, proper folds required for function, key-lock positions in the right spots, the necessary traces of metals of different kinds, when all the pieces are not given in a box, and even the pieces have to be made! I do not think you have any concept of the biochemistry of enzymes, the engines that make life run in the instant. Every different bio molecular reaction requires a distinct enzyme. My inference is that bacteria cannot invent at this level of complexity.
My mistake. When you wrote “What is always striking to me is that bacteria in evolving these huge molecules had to invent them,” I was celebrating, because when you said bacteria had to invent them, I thought you meant that bacteria had to invent them.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Sunday, October 09, 2016, 15:51 (2754 days ago) @ David Turell
> david; My firm view is that form appears before function. Look at today's comments about infant brain development and its relation to the evolutionary process. Development from attempted function, your view, implies tiny experimental changes, not the gaps in phenotype which is the only evidence we have to consider.-Example:-The author, a paleontologist, muses about when humans started to use their brains in partial and then toward full capacity using ornamental jewelry artifacts to judge when there were advances:-http://nautil.us//issue/40/learning/the-modern-mind-may-be-100000-years-old-"Homo sapiens first emerged as a distinct species in Africa somewhere around 200,000 years ago. Of course, this doesn't mean that one day our ancestors were one species, and by the next day—or year, or even generation—they suddenly became modern humans. Evolution is a slow process. But geneticists and anthropologists have, nevertheless, been able to pinpoint a time frame in which most of the distinct genetic traits that make us human appeared—that made us different enough from other existing species that we became a species of our own.-"So by around 200,000 years ago, people were living in Africa who were just like us: anatomically modern humans. Physically they looked the same as we do, and their brains were identical in size to ours. What we don't know is if they were already thinking like us—or when they started to. They don't appear to have been burying their dead, or wearing jewelry, or making decorative marks on their tools, or anywhere else for that matter. We don't find evidence for any of these practices for another 80,000 years. (my bold)-"In other words, they were us, but at the same time maybe not quite us. I often wonder what it must have been like to be one of the first modern humans to walk this earth. Frankly, even as a paleoanthropologist, I find it hard to wrap my head around what that question actually means: If they didn't yet know how to use their imaginations, or make art, or use symbols, then what did they think about? Did they experience self-awareness? How did they interact with each other? Could they tell jokes? Did they believe in worlds beyond what they could see?-"In a very log interesting essay the author describes early jewelry and burial sites looking or the earliest evidence of societal mentation. His final paragraph:-"Within the last 15 years, several sites have been identified in North Africa that contain artifacts similar to those found at Skhul and Qafzeh. The first is Sai Island, in Sudan, located in the Nubian region of the Nile River. This is the very earliest site with evidence of ochre use by modern humans. Occupied off and on by people throughout the Paleolithic, this island has many archaeological layers. The period we are most interested in dates from about 180,000 to 200,000 years ago, and excavation of this layer yielded large quantities of both red and yellow ochre. While red is almost always the dominant color at early human sites, the inhabitants of Sai Island seem to have preferred yellow pigment. To me this suggests that these people already had some sort of culture that was influencing their choice of ochre. Sai Island also yielded an even more intriguing artifact: a rectangular sandstone slab with a depression carefully hollowed out in its center. The slab appears to have been a grinding stone, with evidence of ochre powder within the depression. Two small pieces of chert stone with fragments of ochre still attached were found nearby. The pieces of chert were used to crush the ochre into a fine powder on the slab, like an early mortar and pestle. This could very well be the earliest example in the world of an ochre-processing kit."-Comment: Of course these folks had thought and culture. So did the previous Homo species, so findings, if available, should date back to 200,000 years ago. My point is simple. Sapiens had the biggest brain, given 200,000 years ago and had to learn how to use it. Like being given a piano and learning to ten finger play with both hands. My bolded sentence above makes the point. Gaps, then form, then function. Requires intense, accurate planning
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: The author, a paleontologist, muses about when humans started to use their brains in partial and then toward full capacity using ornamental jewelry artifacts to judge when there were advances: - http://nautil.us//issue/40/learning/the-modern-mind-may-be-100000-years-old - This particular discussion began with the subject of language. You insisted that God had dabbled with (or preprogrammed) the larynx, the uvula etc., and after that, humans were able to speak. I suggested that with their enhanced consciousness, humans needed new sounds, and the attempt to create new sounds would have caused the restructuring of the voice organs. After that the new sounds evolved into language as we know it today. The physical evolution would have mirrored the way fish would have stepped onto dry land (exploring new territory), which would have created a need for the restructuring of their fins into legs as we know them today. - The great unsolved mystery here, though, is the source of consciousness. If the source is material (i.e. the brain or other material combinations), you can argue that the mechanisms are too complex to have arisen by chance, and so your God must have created them. And you can argue that human consciousness is so advanced that perhaps your God dabbled with existing brains in order to create new complexities that would enable consciousness to develop new degrees of self-awareness. But that is not your argument. You are a dualist. You claim that the brain is only a RECEIVER of consciousness. And so over and over again I point out to you that a receiver receives, it responds, it is not the generator. You have even agreed that “the brain complexifies in order to contain and process the ever increasing amount of information provided by consciousness”. It is YOUR argument that consciousness came first (and you even believe that consciousness can exist with all its attributes independently of the brain), but for some reason you refuse to recognize the dislocation between your two beliefs: 1) conscious thought is not produced by the brain, and 2) the brain had to change before conscious thought could evolve. That is why I suggested that materialism would give you a more logical case. - As for this fascinating article, it has nothing to do with how the modern brain came into being. Its speculations start when the brain is already there, and the subject is the evolution of human culture. Of course culture, technology and society evolve as one generation builds on the thoughts of its predecessors. Once again, you have a reasonable argument if you claim that God changed the brain and the RESULTANT new layers of consciousness produced an ever growing chain of new thoughts; but if you claim that immaterial consciousness PROVIDES thought which the material brain RESPONDS to, I would say you haven't a leg or fin to stand on. - Please note: I am not pretending I have any answers. I am totally mystified by consciousness. I can only point out why I find other people's answers unconvincing. But perhaps the key lies somewhere within Sheldrake's “morphic fields” and the interplay between matter and energy - a possibility I hope we shall continue to explore on that thread.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Monday, October 10, 2016, 17:47 (2753 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The author, a paleontologist, muses about when humans started to use their brains in partial and then toward full capacity using ornamental jewelry artifacts to judge when there were advances: -- http://nautil.us//issue/40/learning/the-modern-mind-may-be-100000-years-old
dhw: - The great unsolved mystery here, though, is the source of consciousness. If the source is material (i.e. the brain or other material combinations), you can argue that the mechanisms are too complex to have arisen by chance, and so your God must have created them. And you can argue that human consciousness is so advanced that perhaps your God dabbled with existing brains in order to create new complexities that would enable consciousness to develop new degrees of self-awareness. But that is not your argument. You are a dualist. You claim that the brain is only a RECEIVER of consciousness. And so over and over again I point out to you that a receiver receives, it responds, it is not the generator.-My concept is not clear to you. I believe the brain is a receiver of the ability to have consciousness from a universal consciousness, and mold that personal consciousness as one develops from an infant to adult. Since that consciousness can exist without a brain in NDE's it can rejoin the universal consciousness for short periods in clinical death or at real death in afterlife.
dhw: You have even agreed that 'the brain complexifies in order to contain and process the ever increasing amount of information provided by consciousness';. It is YOUR argument that consciousness came first (and you even believe that consciousness can exist with all its attributes independently of the brain), but for some reason you refuse to recognize the dislocation between your two beliefs: 1) conscious thought is not produced by the brain, and 2) the brain had to change before conscious thought could evolve. That is why I suggested that materialism would give you a more logical case. --Explained above-> dhw: As for this fascinating article, it has nothing to do with how the modern brain came into being. Its speculations start when the brain is already there, and the subject is the evolution of human culture.-My point exactly. We are given a large frontal lobe H. sapiens brain first and then learn how to use it, exactly as the article describes. Form first, use second.
dhw: - Please note: I am not pretending I have any answers. ...But perhaps the key lies somewhere within Sheldrake's 'morphic fields' and the interplay between matter and energy - a possibility I hope we shall continue to explore on that thread.-Yes, lets continue.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: The author, a paleontologist, muses about when humans started to use their brains in partial and then toward full capacity using ornamental jewelry artifacts to judge when there were advances: -
http://nautil.us//issue/40/learning/the-modern-mind-may-be-100000-years-old -
dhw: - The great unsolved mystery here, though, is the source of consciousness. If the source is material (i.e. the brain or other material combinations), you can argue that the mechanisms are too complex to have arisen by chance, and so your God must have created them. And you can argue that human consciousness is so advanced that perhaps your God dabbled with existing brains in order to create new complexities that would enable consciousness to develop new degrees of self-awareness. But that is not your argument. You are a dualist. You claim that the brain is only a RECEIVER of consciousness. And so over and over again I point out to you that a receiver receives, it responds, it is not the generator.
DAVID: My concept is not clear to you. I believe the brain is a receiver of the ability to have consciousness from a universal consciousness, and mold that personal consciousness as one develops from an infant to adult. Since that consciousness can exist without a brain in NDE's it can rejoin the universal consciousness for short periods in clinical death or at real death in afterlife.
You can dress it up in as many ways as you like, but your dualism means that your God has given humans consciousness, and the brain to receive consciousness. Culture derives from thought, thought derives from consciousness, and the receiver of consciousness (the brain) is the material organ that translates thoughts into action. According to your dualism, it does not generate the thoughts, in which case it must develop materially in order to cope with the new demands – just as a weightlifter develops his muscles in order to increase his lifting capacity: first the need, then the development. (As in fins to legs.)
dhw: ...for some reason you refuse to recognize the dislocation between your two beliefs: 1) conscious thought is not produced by the brain, and 2) the brain had to change before conscious thought could evolve. That is why I suggested that materialism would give you a more logical case. -
DAVID: Explained above
Not explained above.
dhw: As for this fascinating article, it has nothing to do with how the modern brain came into being. Its speculations start when the brain is already there, and the subject is the evolution of human culture.
DAVID: My point exactly. We are given a large frontal lobe H. sapiens brain first and then learn how to use it, exactly as the article describes. Form first, use second.
The article does not say God gave us a large frontal lobe. It doesn’t give us any clue as to how the frontal lobe got there. It simply speculates on when and how cultures evolved, and the author seems to think the first signs occurred 180,000-200,000 years ago, i.e. at the time when it is believed that the brain changed.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Tuesday, October 11, 2016, 19:16 (2752 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: You can dress it up in as many ways as you like, but your dualism means that your God has given humans consciousness, and the brain to receive consciousness. Culture derives from thought, thought derives from consciousness, and the receiver of consciousness (the brain) is the material organ that translates thoughts into action. According to your dualism, it does not generate the thoughts, in which case it must develop materially in order to cope with the new demands.
I accept your analysis of my thinking if it is clear that I am born to use and develop my consciousness. I control it and drive the plasticity of my brain by using it. I see nothing wrong with that approach.
DAVID: My point exactly. We are given a large frontal lobe H. sapiens brain first and then learn how to use it, exactly as the article describes. Form first, use second.
dhw: The article does not say God gave us a large frontal lobe. It doesn’t give us any clue as to how the frontal lobe got there. It simply speculates on when and how cultures evolved, and the author seems to think the first signs occurred 180,000-200,000 years ago, i.e. at the time when it is believed that the brain changed.
I didn't mention God. Why do you? I just made a very strong point that form came first and then we learned how to use it by changing it by its provided plasticity.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
dhw: You can dress it up in as many ways as you like, but your dualism means that your God has given humans consciousness, and the brain to receive consciousness. Culture derives from thought, thought derives from consciousness, and the receiver of consciousness (the brain) is the material organ that translates thoughts into action. According to your dualism, it does not generate the thoughts, in which case it must develop materially in order to cope with the new demands.
DAVID: I accept your analysis of my thinking if it is clear that I am born to use and develop my consciousness. I control it and drive the plasticity of my brain by using it. I see nothing wrong with that approach.
Nor do I. The plasticity of the brain is indeed all-important, because if your dualistic beliefs are correct, it is your consciousness that changes your brain, not the other way round. This means that it was not the big brain that gave rise to thoughts of culture, but thoughts of culture that gave rise to the big brain.
DAVID: My point exactly. We are given a large frontal lobe H. sapiens brain first and then learn how to use it, exactly as the article describes. Form first, use second.
dhw: The article does not say God gave us a large frontal lobe. It doesn’t give us any clue as to how the frontal lobe got there. It simply speculates on when and how cultures evolved, and the author seems to think the first signs occurred 180,000-200,000 years ago, i.e. at the time when it is believed that the brain changed.
DAVID: I didn't mention God. Why do you? I just made a very strong point that form came first and then we learned how to use it by changing it by its provided plasticity.
Because when you say ”we are given”, there has to be a giver, and I know you well enough to assume that the giver is God. The "very strong point" I am making is that the article traces the beginnings of culture back to the time when we believe the brain complexified. According to your dualistic beliefs, this would mean thoughts of culture first, plastic brain complexification second. (See the Egnor thread for further development.)
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Wednesday, October 12, 2016, 14:54 (2751 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I accept your analysis of my thinking if it is clear that I am born to use and develop my consciousness. I control it and drive the plasticity of my brain by using it. I see nothing wrong with that approach.dhw: Nor do I. The plasticity of the brain is indeed all-important, because if your dualistic beliefs are correct, it is your consciousness that changes your brain, not the other way round. This means that it was not the big brain that gave rise to thoughts of culture, but thoughts of culture that gave rise to the big brain.
You again skip the point that the brain size jumped in big gaps in each successive Homo species as they appeared. Size gap first, plasticity, advanced and expanded use of consciousness second.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: I accept your analysis of my thinking if it is clear that I am born to use and develop my consciousness. I control it and drive the plasticity of my brain by using it. I see nothing wrong with that approach.
dhw: Nor do I. The plasticity of the brain is indeed all-important, because if your dualistic beliefs are correct, it is your consciousness that changes your brain, not the other way round. This means that it was not the big brain that gave rise to thoughts of culture, but thoughts of culture that gave rise to the big brain.
DAVID: You again skip the point that the brain size jumped in big gaps in each successive Homo species as they appeared. Size gap first, plasticity, advanced and expanded use of consciousness second.
That would only be true if the size of the brain engendered and/or expanded consciousness as opposed to merely receiving it. It may well do so, but then you will have to abandon your dualism. You simply cannot have it both ways. I am currently struggling with an idea to reconcile dualism and materialism, but I need time and I don’t have it at the moment!
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Friday, October 14, 2016, 01:53 (2750 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You again skip the point that the brain size jumped in big gaps in each successive Homo species as they appeared. Size gap first, plasticity, advanced and expanded use of consciousness second.
dhw: That would only be true if the size of the brain engendered and/or expanded consciousness as opposed to merely receiving it. It may well do so, but then you will have to abandon your dualism. You simply cannot have it both ways. I am currently struggling with an idea to reconcile dualism and materialism, but I need time and I don’t have it at the moment!
The larger brain allows better use of the consciousness it receives, not making a larger consciousness. The enlarged use is learned throughout life as we develop our own personalities and experiences. Plasticity is part of the process. Each step in human evolution developed more and more use of consciousness as the brain expanded.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: You again skip the point that the brain size jumped in big gaps in each successive Homo species as they appeared. Size gap first, plasticity, advanced and expanded use of consciousness second.
dhw: That would only be true if the size of the brain engendered and/or expanded consciousness as opposed to merely receiving it. It may well do so, but then you will have to abandon your dualism. You simply cannot have it both ways. I am currently struggling with an idea to reconcile dualism and materialism, but I need time and I don’t have it at the moment!
DAVID: The larger brain allows better use of the consciousness it receives, not making a larger consciousness. The enlarged use is learned throughout life as we develop our own personalities and experiences. Plasticity is part of the process. Each step in human evolution developed more and more use of consciousness as the brain expanded.
Generally agreed, except that if you are a dualist, I think you need to reconstruct your last sentence. The brain expanded as more and more use of consciousness developed each step in human evolution.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Friday, October 14, 2016, 15:08 (2749 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The larger brain allows better use of the consciousness it receives, not making a larger consciousness. The enlarged use is learned throughout life as we develop our own personalities and experiences. Plasticity is part of the process. Each step in human evolution developed more and more use of consciousness as the brain expanded.
dhw: Generally agreed, except that if you are a dualist, I think you need to reconstruct your last sentence. The brain expanded as more and more use of consciousness developed each step in human evolution.
No. Size first, use second. The need for more complex use of consciousness required the next evolved species to have a larger brain, (mainly frontal lobe)to fit that requirement. I say God changed the genome and you want intelligence in the genome to do it.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: The larger brain allows better use of the consciousness it receives, not making a larger consciousness. The enlarged use is learned throughout life as we develop our own personalities and experiences. Plasticity is part of the process. Each step in human evolution developed more and more use of consciousness as the brain expanded.
dhw: Generally agreed, except that if you are a dualist, I think you need to reconstruct your last sentence. The brain expanded as more and more use of consciousness developed each step in human evolution.
DAVID: No. Size first, use second. The need for more complex use of consciousness required the next evolved species to have a larger brain, (mainly frontal lobe)to fit that requirement. I say God changed the genome and you want intelligence in the genome to do it.
What do you mean by “use of consciousness”? I have tried to point out the implications of your dualism, according to which the brain does not give rise to consciousness but implements instructions given by consciousness. For a dualist the brain has to be the tool used by consciousness, not the tool that uses consciousness. And yes, I am suggesting the cell communities respond to the demands made by consciousness. You say God changed the genome in advance and that gave rise to new needs and opportunities (= humans learned how to use the new structure); I suggest (theistic version) that God gave organisms the means to change their genome in response to new needs and opportunities.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Saturday, October 15, 2016, 15:18 (2748 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: What do you mean by “use of consciousness”? I have tried to point out the implications of your dualism, according to which the brain does not give rise to consciousness but implements instructions given by consciousness.
In my view, with no strict training in the philosophy of dualism, consciousness is an instrument our brain receives to use as we will through our ability to use our brain. This implies my belief in free will. Plasticity of our brain magnifies the individuality of our personal consciousness. Our brain is material but consciousness remains immaterial, but a part of human consciousness (Sheldrake), and a part of universal consciousness (God).
dhw:For a dualist the brain has to be the tool used by consciousness, not the tool that uses consciousness.
For me as above, the other way round.
dhw: And yes, I am suggesting the cell communities respond to the demands made by consciousness.
And I agree that we consciously modify our brains through plasticity.
dhw: You say God changed the genome in advance and that gave rise to new needs and opportunities (= humans learned how to use the new structure); I suggest (theistic version) that God gave organisms the means to change their genome in response to new needs and opportunities.
And we have agreed there might be an inventive mechanism given by God, mine with guidelines, yours entirely autonomous.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
dhw: What do you mean by “use of consciousness”? I have tried to point out the implications of your dualism, according to which the brain does not give rise to consciousness but implements instructions given by consciousness.
DAVID: In my view, with no strict training in the philosophy of dualism, consciousness is an instrument our brain receives to use as we will through our ability to use our brain. (dhw’s bold) This implies my belief in free will. Plasticity of our brain magnifies the individuality of our personal consciousness. Our brain is material but consciousness remains immaterial, but a part of human consciousness (Sheldrake), and a part of universal consciousness (God).
I am not a philosopher either, but I am basing my arguments on YOUR concept of dualism: namely, that consciousness has no material source and all its attributes that make up our personal identity (knowledge, memories, characteristics, emotions etc.) survive the death of the brain and body.
What you call “our ability to use our brain” IS our consciousness. Your belief in free will is precisely your belief that your consciousness controls your brain, not the other way round. Your consciousness, with all its attributes, IS you, if the immaterial mind can be independent of the material body. That can only mean that consciousness uses the brain to give itself physical expression in the material world.
dhw: And yes, I am suggesting the cell communities respond to the demands made by consciousness.
DAVID: And I agree that we consciously modify our brains through plasticity.
A very important factor in this discussion. The plasticity responds, it does not initiate.
dhw: You say God changed the genome in advance and that gave rise to new needs and opportunities (= humans learned how to use the new structure); I suggest (theistic version) that God gave organisms the means to change their genome in response to new needs and opportunities.
DAVID: And we have agreed there might be an inventive mechanism given by God, mine with guidelines, yours entirely autonomous.
We have dealt with “guidelines” under “Wikileaks":
dhw: The only guidelines would then have to be limitations. If we equate autonomy with free will in humans, we can only take decisions within the limitations imposed on us by our nature and our environment. If I am in a prison cell, I cannot decide to fly away into the forest.
DAVID: Yes, my concept of guidelines includes the limitations or boundaries of invention.
No disagreement here. Autonomy does not mean that you can do anything you like! It means that when an organism takes a decision, camouflages itself, builds a nest, it is not preprogrammed or dabbled with or guided. And so either the organism does the inventing or your God does it. No wishy-washy in-betweens.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Monday, October 17, 2016, 14:41 (2746 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I am not a philosopher either, but I am basing my arguments on YOUR concept of dualism: namely, that consciousness has no material source and all its attributes that make up our personal identity (knowledge, memories, characteristics, emotions etc.) survive the death of the brain and body.
What you call “our ability to use our brain” IS our consciousness. Your belief in free will is precisely your belief that your consciousness controls your brain, not the other way round.
Not my concept. I view my brain like a radio receiver, which I can turn it on by my free will as I do my own individual thinking and mold my personality through experience and analysis of my thoughts. I decide what to think and what to conclude. Consciousness is an non-material instrument I use
dhw: Your consciousness, with all its attributes, IS you, if the immaterial mind can be independent of the material body. That can only mean that consciousness uses the brain to give itself physical expression in the material world.
I would turn it around. My brain accepts consciousness for my use.
dhw: And yes, I am suggesting the cell communities respond to the demands made by consciousness.
DAVID: And I agree that we consciously modify our brains through plasticity.dhw:A very important factor in this discussion. The plasticity responds, it does not initiate.
Yes.
DAVID: Yes, my concept of guidelines includes the limitations or boundaries of invention.
dhw: No disagreement here. Autonomy does not mean that you can do anything you like! It means that when an organism takes a decision, camouflages itself, builds a nest, it is not preprogrammed or dabbled with or guided. And so either the organism does the inventing or your God does it. No wishy-washy in-betweens.
Not sure of your exact meaning. I start with the concept that God guides evolution, but my concept of His method has more than one possibililty as previously explained.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
dhw: What you call “our ability to use our brain” IS our consciousness. Your belief in free will is precisely your belief that your consciousness controls your brain, not the other way round.
DAVID: Not my concept. I view my brain like a radio receiver, which I can turn it on by my free will as I do my own individual thinking and mold my personality through experience and analysis of my thoughts. I decide what to think and what to conclude. Consciousness is an non-material instrument I use
What do you think your ”I” consists of? If you believe it will survive the death of your body, you can’t separate it from your consciousness, unless you think you are going to be “you” without knowing who “you” are. Every immaterial attribute of your identity – your thoughts, emotions, memories, experiences, free will, personal characteristics – must be bound up with your consciousness.
You have summed it up perfectly in your response to the article on self and soul: “What is continuous is our consciousness in which our 'self' develops.” Exactly. But you go on: “we have a continuous self which maintains itself from birth to death.” This is the point at which you disagree with yourself, because according to your dualistic beliefs, the self – or the consciousness in which your self develops – continues after death. And yet you conclude: “This is what consciousness does for us, a mighty tool managed by the brain.” How can consciousness be managed by the brain if the consciousness that contains your “self” survives the death of the brain?
DAVID: Yes, my concept of guidelines includes the limitations or boundaries of invention.
dhw: No disagreement here. Autonomy does not mean that you can do anything you like! It means that when an organism takes a decision, camouflages itself, builds a nest, it is not preprogrammed or dabbled with or guided. And so either the organism does the inventing or your God does it. No wishy-washy in-betweens.
DAVID: Not sure of your exact meaning. I start with the concept that God guides evolution, but my concept of His method has more than one possibililty as previously explained.
You have only given us two possible methods: preprogramming and dabbling. Each of these precludes autonomy. The only guidelines you have come up with are limitations, but these do not explain what an organism CAN do; they only tell us what an organism can’t do. You have previously mentioned God giving organisms a multichoice list, with the organism free to choose, and bad luck if it got the answer wrong. That would mean that God not only provided the first cells with programmes for every innovation and natural wonder in life’s history, but also got them to pass on multiple wrong programmes as well. I hope that idea has gone into the bin now. What other guidelines can you think of that might enable us to call the inventive mechanism inventive as opposed to automatic?
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Thursday, October 20, 2016, 14:55 (2743 days ago) @ dhw
David: Consciousness is an non-material instrument I use[/i]
dhw: What do you think your ”I” consists of? If you believe it will survive the death of your body, you can’t separate it from your consciousness, unless you think you are going to be “you” without knowing who “you” are. Every immaterial attribute of your identity – your thoughts, emotions, memories, experiences, free will, personal characteristics – must be bound up with your consciousness.
I agree, my 'I' and my consciousness are inseparable.
dhw:This is the point at which you disagree with yourself, because according to your dualistic beliefs, the self – or the consciousness in which your self develops – continues after death. And yet you conclude: “This is what consciousness does for us, a mighty tool managed by the brain.” How can consciousness be managed by the brain if the consciousness that contains your “self” survives the death of the brain?
Why not? Our brain is an instrument under our control which receives and manages the consciousness, shapes its knowledge and experiences and sense of self, and when the brain dies, the consciousness returns to the universal consciousness.
dhw: You have only given us two possible methods: preprogramming and dabbling. Each of these precludes autonomy. The only guidelines you have come up with are limitations, but these do not explain what an organism CAN do; they only tell us what an organism can’t do. You have previously mentioned God giving organisms a multichoice list, with the organism free to choose, and bad luck if it got the answer wrong. That would mean that God not only provided the first cells with programmes for every innovation and natural wonder in life’s history, but also got them to pass on multiple wrong programmes as well.
You have forgotten that 'bad luck' (per Raup) was truly just that. The organisms that went extinct were the results of catastrophic events not poor design.
dhw: I hope that idea has gone into the bin now. What other guidelines can you think of that might enable us to call the inventive mechanism inventive as opposed to automatic?
That is your hope, not mine.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: I agree, my 'I' and my consciousness are inseparable.
dhw: How can consciousness be managed by the brain if the consciousness that contains your “self” survives the death of the brain?
DAVID: Why not? Our brain is an instrument under our control which receives and manages the consciousness, shapes its knowledge and experiences and sense of self, and when the brain dies, the consciousness returns to the universal consciousness.
I always thought you believed you would retain your identity in your afterlife, as NDE patients do. If you do not, and your consciousness is merely a blank blob of God’s with no identity of its own, and if you believe your brain actually manages your consciousness instead of the other way round, and shapes your whole identity (what else does this comprise if not your knowledge, experiences and sense of self?), you might just as well call yourself a materialist.
dhw: The only guidelines you have come up with are limitations, but these do not explain what an organism CAN do; they only tell us what an organism can’t do. You have previously mentioned God giving organisms a multichoice list, with the organism free to choose, and bad luck if it got the answer wrong. That would mean that God not only provided the first cells with programmes for every innovation and natural wonder in life’s history, but also got them to pass on multiple wrong programmes as well.
DAVID: You have forgotten that 'bad luck' (per Raup) was truly just that. The organisms that went extinct were the results of catastrophic events not poor design.
My point is not ”bad luck” but the sheer pointlessness of your God giving organisms a load of wrong programmes plus one right one to choose from.
dhw: I hope that idea has gone into the bin now. What other guidelines can you think of that might enable us to call the inventive mechanism inventive as opposed to automatic?
DAVID:That is your hope, not mine.
Any idea WHY your God would provide all these wrong choices, then? And what other guidelines can you think of?
The two “Revisiting convergence” posts (thank you for both) raise the same problem:
David’s comment: A clear example of plant convergence. Might this come from guidelines in an inventive mechanism.
Convergent evolution suggests that different organisms find similar solutions to similar problems. Again: what guidelines other than those listed above?
David’s comment: What is missing from our knowledge of genetics is how a code change translates to actual phenotype. The gene is identified as cause, we see the effect, but none of the process inbetween. It is a huge black box. This indicates that the code has several pathways to a successful result, which makes it easier for evolution to progress to better adaptations. This is an equivalent finding that fits dhw's thought about organism's ability to invent.
I would drop your “several pathways” and settle for a “variable” (as below) or “flexible” code. And I would suggest that in the countless millions of convergences and divergences, resulting in the countless millions of varieties, species and natural wonders, the code is changed by the cell community itself, instead of every single right and wrong programme having been placed in the very first cells, or personally changed by God’s dabbling.
DAVID: I think God made the code with this variability which lead to comparable but not exactly the same results of adaptation.
I am happy to acknowledge the possibility that your God made the variable code and the (hypothetical) intelligence that is able to change the code.
DAVID: It is the same concept as individual variability allowing for adaptation and survival in the bacteria/ antibiotic challenge study previously discussed. Less rigid constraints in the mechanisms. With similar effective results, this is how I view my concept of guidelines may work.
Again, what guidelines, apart from the limitations of what an organism can/can’t do and every organism being given a list of right and wrong things to try?
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Sunday, October 23, 2016, 19:18 (2740 days ago) @ dhw
.
dhw: I always thought you believed you would retain your identity in your afterlife, as NDE patients do. If you do not, and your consciousness is merely a blank blob of God’s with no identity of its own,
No, my soul joins the universal consciousness in afterlife as an entity representing me. After all in NDE's God is in heaven with the souls, so I assume the UC/ heaven are the same.
dhw:and if you believe your brain actually manages your consciousness instead of the other way round, and shapes your whole identity (what else does this comprise if not your knowledge, experiences and sense of self?), you might just as well call yourself a materialist.
No, I manage my consciousness through the instrument of my brain, which receives consciousness for me to mold as myself. My brain is material managing a non-material consciousness
dhw: My point is not ”bad luck” but the sheer pointlessness of your God giving organisms a load of wrong programmes plus one right one to choose from.
They are not wrong programs, but alternatives to use if necessary. Nothing pointless, but just like the gear shift on your car which allows you options for hills, speed, etc.
dhw; Any idea WHY your God would provide all these wrong choices, then? And what other guidelines can you think of?
Not wrong, but inadequate for the stress.
Convergent evolution suggests that different organisms find similar solutions to similar problems. Again: what guidelines other than those listed above?
I have read articles on alternative programs for change built into DNA with patterns that allow for mutations to more easily jump the gaps. Here is my previous entry:
Thursday, April 21, 2016, 01:52 (186 days ago) @ David Turell
This article takes from Andreas Wagner's work to show that evolution has amazing biochemical patterns to follow and this affects genes, and the search for new proteins in the landscape to fit new structures and functions, and it limits the number of functional RNA molecules to smaller number to be found in a search. It never wonders why this might be, and assumes it is all natural, while I see planning patterns to help evolution flow:
http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/the-strange-inevitability-of-evolution
David’s comment: What is missing from our knowledge of genetics is how a code change translates to actual phenotype. The gene is identified as cause, we see the effect, but none of the process inbetween. It is a huge black box. This indicates that the code has several pathways to a successful result,dhw: I would drop your “several pathways” and settle for a “variable” (as below) or “flexible” code. And I would suggest that in the countless millions of convergences and divergences, resulting in the countless millions of varieties, species and natural wonders, the code is changed by the cell community itself, instead of every single right and wrong programme having been placed in the very first cells, or personally changed by God’s dabbling.
DAVID: It is the same concept as individual variability allowing for adaptation and survival in the bacteria/ antibiotic challenge study previously discussed. Less rigid constraints in the mechanisms. With similar effective results, this is how I view my concept of guidelines may work.
dhw: Again, what guidelines, apart from the limitations of what an organism can/can’t do and every organism being given a list of right and wrong things to try?
I don't view guidelines as a list, but boundary constraints with nothing right or wrong, assuming patterns of change exist.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: I manage my consciousness through the instrument of my brain, which receives consciousness for me to mold as myself. My brain is material managing a non-material consciousness.
“I” = your self. But if your brain “manages the consciousness, shapes its knowledge and experiences and sense of self”, it is the brain that fashions your self! It should be the other way round if you believe in a disembodied self (your “soul”): your immaterial soul should manage your brain, which would then be the material instrument that implements the soul’s instructions.
dhw; Any idea WHY your God would provide all these wrong choices, then? And what other guidelines can you think of?
DAVID: Not wrong, but inadequate for the stress.
So your God provides choices to solve every single problem for the next 3.7 billion years, and those that are inadequate for a particular problem are not wrong. That'll be a nice consolation for those who have to say goodbye.
It doesn’t matter to me whether you call these choices patterns, pathways, programmes, or guidelines - they all amount to the same thing: a flexible code which can be adapted to or can exploit changing environmental conditions. The ultimate questions are how the code came into existence, and how organisms use it.
DAVID: I have read articles on alternative programs for change built into DNA with patterns that allow for mutations to more easily jump the gaps. Here is my previous entry:
Thursday, April 21, 2016, 01:52 (186 days ago) @ David Turell
This article takes from Andreas Wagner's work to show that evolution has amazing biochemical patterns to follow…
Wagner thinks life itself and the evolutionary mechanism were the result of a “happy accident” and “innovative solutions to selective pressures… are there for the taking when the circumstances compel it.” As you say, all “natural”, whereas you see every innovative solution as the result of planning. We both disagreed with Wagner, so I don’t know why you have brought him up again. If I wear my theist’s hat, our own disagreement is over how organisms use the flexible code (elsewhere you called it variable), and I see cellular intelligence as a more likely answer than an almost infinite number of innovative solutions packed by your God into the first cells to be handed down through billions of years for organisms to take a lucky dip when the time and conditions are right.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Monday, October 24, 2016, 15:21 (2739 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I manage my consciousness through the instrument of my brain, which receives consciousness for me to mold as myself. My brain is material managing a non-material consciousness.
“I” = your self. But if your brain “manages the consciousness, shapes its knowledge and experiences and sense of self”, it is the brain that fashions your self! It should be the other way round if you believe in a disembodied self (your “soul”): your immaterial soul should manage your brain, which would then be the material instrument that implements the soul’s instructions.
Ensoulment requires a living body, which becomes disembodied at death. I control my brain and its functions, one of which is to provide for management of consciousness which I shape in my image during life.
dhw: So your God provides choices to solve every single problem for the next 3.7 billion years, and those that are inadequate for a particular problem are not wrong. That'll be a nice consolation for those who have to say goodbye.
Evolution only advances with the passage of less adequate and less complex species. Death makes room for the living. Nothing 'wrong' about evolution. It produced us.
dhw: Wagner thinks life itself and the evolutionary mechanism were the result of a “happy accident” and “innovative solutions to selective pressures… are there for the taking when the circumstances compel it.” As you say, all “natural”, whereas you see every innovative solution as the result of planning. We both disagreed with Wagner, so I don’t know why you have brought him up again.
Because I take bits and pieces from other folk's ideas and I see in his approach to patterns a possible path to understanding how God did His engineering of evolution through genetic codes and patterns in codes.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: Ensoulment requires a living body, which becomes disembodied at death. I control my brain and its functions, one of which is to provide for management of consciousness which I shape in my image during life.
Ensoulment means endowing the body with a soul, so of course it requires a body. You have agreed that your consciousness and your self are inseparable. According to you, your self is not your brain but your conscious soul, since that apparently will survive when your body dies. You now have your conscious soul controlling your brain and its functions, but one of your brain’s functions is to manage your conscious soul. Unless managing differs from controlling, this does not make sense to me.
However, if we drop “manage”, I think I can see a way forward. If your dualism is true, your brain and senses provide “you” (your consciousness/soul/self) with information, which “you” process and then “you” instruct the brain to take any necessary actions. The information itself will have ongoing influence on “you”/ your consciousness etc., and in that sense we can say the brain provides experiences that may shape “you”. But it is not the brain “managing” consciousness.
This whole discussion began with your claim that your God created the larger brain, and then consciousness/the soul/the self learned how to use it – as opposed to the brain expanding in response to the demands of consciousness. I hope eventually to delve deeper into this with an approach that will reconcile dualism and materialism, but I need time!
dhw: So your God provides choices to solve every single problem for the next 3.7 billion years, and those that are inadequate for a particular problem are not wrong. That'll be a nice consolation for those who have to say goodbye.
DAVID: Evolution only advances with the passage of less adequate and less complex species. Death makes room for the living. Nothing 'wrong' about evolution. It produced us.
What do you mean by “passage”? As we both keep repeating, evolution advances perfectly well without the death of the least complex species (single-celled). “Less adequate” ones dying out merely confirms the Darwinian process of natural selection. It doesn’t explain why your God preprogrammes “inadequate” solutions in the first place. What we now have is your God preprogramming or dabbling all the successes and all the failures. I did not say there was anything right or wrong about evolution – I’m trying to understand how it works, and why it produced the great higgledy-piggledy of extinct organisms and the extant duckbilled platypus, mosquito, weaverbird with its nest, and humans.
dhw: We both disagreed with Wagner, so I don’t know why you have brought him up again.
DAVID: Because I take bits and pieces from other folk's ideas and I see in his approach to patterns a possible path to understanding how God did His engineering of evolution through genetic codes and patterns in codes.
I doubt if many evolutionists would oppose the view that evolution takes place through the use of flexible genetic codes which can produce a vast variety of patterns. We don’t need Wagner to tell us that, do we? He thinks it’s all laid on by Nature, and you think it’s all laid on by God.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Tuesday, October 25, 2016, 15:45 (2738 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: According to you, your self is not your brain but your conscious soul, since that apparently will survive when your body dies. You now have your conscious soul controlling your brain and its functions, but one of your brain’s functions is to manage your conscious soul. Unless managing differs from controlling, this does not make sense to me.
I control my brain, though which I use and control my consciousness/soul. My brain does not manage my c/s, I do through the instrument of my brain. I believe in free will which I view the same as 'control' or management. I am the pilot of my ship and all its parts.
dhw: However, if we drop “manage”, I think I can see a way forward. If your dualism is true, your brain and senses provide “you” (your consciousness/soul/self) with information, which “you” process and then “you” instruct the brain to take any necessary actions. The information itself will have ongoing influence on “you”/ your consciousness etc., and in that sense we can say the brain provides experiences that may shape “you”. But it is not the brain “managing” consciousness.
We are fussing over definitions, which is important. As I process info and experiences I form my self/soul. This is management. I do this through the instrument of my brain, through which I receive and control my use of consciousness.
dhw: This whole discussion began with your claim that your God created the larger brain, and then consciousness/the soul/the self learned how to use it – as opposed to the brain expanding in response to the demands of consciousness. I hope eventually to delve deeper into this with an approach that will reconcile dualism and materialism, but I need time!
I view it as size first, and with brain plasticity, new learned use second. Consciousness is an instrument which has to be learned to be used to full extent. Developed language greatly expands the use of conscious thought and the continuous buzz in one's head.
DAVID: Evolution only advances with the passage of less adequate and less complex species. Death makes room for the living. Nothing 'wrong' about evolution. It produced us.
What do you mean by “passage”? As we both keep repeating, evolution advances perfectly well without the death of the least complex species (single-celled). “Less adequate” ones dying out merely confirms the Darwinian process of natural selection. It doesn’t explain why your God preprogrammes “inadequate” solutions in the first place.
And I keep repeating David Raup: extinction are 'bad luck' from extreme environmental changes, not inadequate organisms. Adequate organisms live in adequate comfortable environments. The dinos weren't prepared for Chicxulub. Should God have prepared them? Your comment makes no sense.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
dhw: According to you, your self is not your brain but your conscious soul, since that apparently will survive when your body dies. You now have your conscious soul controlling your brain and its functions, but one of your brain’s functions is to manage your conscious soul. Unless managing differs from controlling, this does not make sense to me.
DAVID: I control my brain, though which I use and control my consciousness/soul. My brain does not manage my c/s, I do through the instrument of my brain. I believe in free will which I view the same as 'control' or management. I am the pilot of my ship and all its parts.
Here, and in the comment that follows (which I shan’t repeat) you are separating your self (“I”) from your consciousness, which earlier you agreed you could not do. If your dualist's controlling “I” is not your conscious self/soul, what is it? Your dualist’s free will is also part of your conscious self and not of your brain. Earlier you said “my brain is material managing a non-material consciousness”. I’m glad you now agree that your brain does NOT manage your consciousness. If you believe in dualism, your conscious self is the pilot of your ship, and the brain is part of the ship. The ship does not “manage” the pilot.
dhw: This whole discussion began with your claim that your God created the larger brain, and then consciousness/the soul/the self learned how to use it – as opposed to the brain expanding in response to the demands of consciousness.
DAVID: I view it as size first, and with brain plasticity, new learned use second. Consciousness is an instrument which has to be learned to be used to full extent. Developed language greatly expands the use of conscious thought and the continuous buzz in one's head.
I agree that language expands the use of conscious thought, but would add that conscious thought greatly expands language, which initially is the result of the buzz, not the cause: hence the invention of new words. I would also say that consciousness is learning all the time, if by consciousness we mean that part of ourselves which processes information, takes decisions, accesses memories, learns from experiences, interprets, invents etc. And if I were a dualist, I would argue that the brain needed to expand in order to cope with the expansion of human awareness.
DAVID: Evolution only advances with the passage of less adequate and less complex species. Death makes room for the living. Nothing 'wrong' about evolution. It produced us.
Dhw: What do you mean by “passage”? As we both keep repeating, evolution advances perfectly well without the death of the least complex species (single-celled). “Less adequate” ones dying out merely confirms the Darwinian process of natural selection. It doesn’t explain why your God preprogrammes “inadequate” solutions in the first place.
DAVID: And I keep repeating David Raup: extinction are 'bad luck' from extreme environmental changes, not inadequate organisms. Adequate organisms live in adequate comfortable environments. The dinos weren't prepared for Chicxulub. Should God have prepared them? Your comment makes no sense.
I am happy with your acknowledgement that evolution is not meticulously planned by your God but actually depends to an enormous extent on luck. The apparently unplanned environmental changes have been accompanied by extinctions and/or innovations in a history I keep describing as higgledy-piggledy. This suggests to me that your God wanted higgledy-piggledy, and what better way than to leave organisms to work out (or fail to work out) their own ways of survival and improvement in the face of ever changing conditions? Meanwhile, all the complexities of dinosaurs, which according to you only your God could have planned, were wiped out by bad luck. That’s it: luck clearly plays a crucial role in the process of natural selection which determines survival and extinction. Lucky for us that chance didn’t send along a Chicxulub times 50, or all God’s meticulous plans would have been pulverized. A strange way for an almighty power to pursue his fixed “goal” (producing us humans) – but I suppose you will say that you can’t always understand your version of your God’s logic.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Wednesday, October 26, 2016, 15:31 (2737 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, October 26, 2016, 15:53
dhw: If you believe in dualism, your conscious self is the pilot of your ship, and the brain is part of the ship. The ship does not “manage” the pilot.
I must not have been clear in the past. This is how I view it.
dhw: This whole discussion began with your claim that your God created the larger brain, and then consciousness/the soul/the self learned how to use it – as opposed to the brain expanding in response to the demands of consciousness.
dhw: And if I were a dualist, I would argue that the brain needed to expand in order to cope with the expansion of human awareness.
I agree that our present frontal lobe required brain pan expansion. Bone is very hard, brain is Jello. Enlargement first, brain complexity through plasticity later.
DAVID: And I keep repeating David Raup: extinction are 'bad luck' from extreme environmental changes, not inadequate organisms. Adequate organisms live in adequate comfortable environments. The dinos weren't prepared for Chicxulub. Should God have prepared them? Your comment makes no sense.dhw: I am happy with your acknowledgement that evolution is not meticulously planned by your God but actually depends to an enormous extent on luck. The apparently unplanned environmental changes have been accompanied by extinctions and/or innovations in a history I keep describing as higgledy-piggledy. This suggests to me that your God wanted higgledy-piggledy, and what better way than to leave organisms to work out (or fail to work out) their own ways of survival and improvement in the face of ever changing conditions? Meanwhile, all the complexities of dinosaurs, which according to you only your God could have planned, were wiped out by bad luck. That’s it: luck clearly plays a crucial role in the process of natural selection which determines survival and extinction. Lucky for us that chance didn’t send along a Chicxulub times 50, or all God’s meticulous plans would have been pulverized. A strange way for an almighty power to pursue his fixed “goal” (producing us humans) – but I suppose you will say that you can’t always understand your version of your God’s logic.
And it is reasonable to assume God sized Chicxulub perfectly as part of the plan. Schroeder makes that assertion. Organisms do have epigenetic adaptive abilities. God makes it all work properly to reach the evolution of current humans.
This previous post explains how God might do it:
The real IM?; horizontal gene transfer (Introduction)
by David Turell , Tuesday, October 11, 2016, 19:06
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
DAVID: And I keep repeating David Raup: extinction are 'bad luck' from extreme environmental changes, not inadequate organisms. Adequate organisms live in adequate comfortable environments. The dinos weren't prepared for Chicxulub. Should God have prepared them?
dhw: [..] luck clearly plays a crucial role in the process of natural selection which determines survival and extinction. Lucky for us that chance didn’t send along a Chicxulub times 50, or all God’s meticulous plans would have been pulverized. A strange way for an almighty power to pursue his fixed “goal” (producing us humans) – but I suppose you will say that you can’t always understand your version of your God’s logic.
DAVID: And it is reasonable to assume God sized Chicxulub perfectly as part of the plan.
One moment your God leaves survival and extinction to chance via environmental changes, and the next he’s deliberately “sizing” Chixclulub so that…what? It would knock out the dinosaurs but not affect pre-pre-pre-pre-humans? That’s not bad luck, then, it’s your God’s planning. We now have evolution perfectly planned and depending on bad luck, but who am I to question your version of God’s logic?
DAVID: God makes it all work properly to reach the evolution of current humans.
This previous post explains how God might do it:
The real IM?; horizontal gene transfer (Introduction)
by David Turell , Tuesday, October 11, 2016, 19:06
It explains one method by which organisms evolve.
Your comment: It is obvious that evolution can advance with the phenomenon of HGT. It can be debated whether the first cells had this ability or whether it developed later,which brings us back to pre-programming or dabbling by God.
The fact that evolution can advance through horizontal gene transfer has absolutely no bearing on whether your God pre-programmed/dabbled organisms or endowed them with the ability to negotiate their own gene swapping. Our exchange then was as follows:
DAVID: I do agree with you that the abilities bacteria have in HGT and in the presence of alternative metabolic pathways many ways to respond to stimuli and environmental changes. I don't see how that implies they have innate intelligence. It may look that way to you but to me it can all be automatic.
Dhw: I am happy to concede that it “can be” automatic. What I don’t like is your constant insistence that it IS automatic. Your posts are riddled with this dogmatic assertion. If behaviour looks intelligent, and if scientists do tests and conclude that it is intelligent, I am prepared to believe that at the very least it might be intelligent.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep going back to earlier posts, as these will only lead us back to the same arguments. However, it’s a good way of distracting attention from the latest unfathomable logic by which your God meticulously plans luck.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Thursday, October 27, 2016, 19:27 (2736 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The fact that evolution can advance through horizontal gene transfer has absolutely no bearing on whether your God pre-programmed/dabbled organisms or endowed them with the ability to negotiate their own gene swapping.
Did organisms learn to gene swap, or did God give them the ability from the beginnng? That is my point.
dhw:I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep going back to earlier posts, as these will only lead us back to the same arguments. However, it’s a good way of distracting attention from the latest unfathomable logic by which your God meticulously plans luck.
Raup used 'luck' to make his point about accidental extinctions, by which happenstance most of them occurred that way. He never discussed God, but God managing environment is possible in the theistic world.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
dhw: The fact that evolution can advance through horizontal gene transfer has absolutely no bearing on whether your God pre-programmed/dabbled organisms or endowed them with the ability to negotiate their own gene swapping.
DAVID: Did organisms learn to gene swap, or did God give them the ability from the beginnng? That is my point.
Maybe once the process had started, organisms learned from one another – as no doubt they do when any process or “natural wonder” has proved useful. How did it start? Your God setting it up, a lucky break, a couple of bright little critters having a bright idea? Who knows?
dhw:I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep going back to earlier posts, as these will only lead us back to the same arguments. However, it’s a good way of distracting attention from the latest unfathomable logic by which your God meticulously plans luck.
DAVID: Raup used 'luck' to make his point about accidental extinctions, by which happenstance most of them occurred that way. He never discussed God, but God managing environment is possible in the theistic world.
When I pointed out that the extinction of “less adequate” species did not explain why your God had preprogrammed them in the first place, you quoted Raup’s “bad luck” as the reason for their extinction. When I pointed out that bad luck does not sound like meticulous planning, you suggested God had “sized” Chicxulub, which = God’s meticulous planning and not bad luck. This is always the problem when you impose an illogical pattern on evolution: it just doesn’t fit, and so you are forced into illogicality, the upshot of which is that you say you can’t always follow God’s logic – whereas it is your own logic you can’t follow!
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Friday, October 28, 2016, 14:48 (2735 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Raup used 'luck' to make his point about accidental extinctions, by which happenstance most of them occurred that way. He never discussed God, but God managing environment is possible in the theistic world.dhw:When I pointed out that the extinction of “less adequate” species did not explain why your God had preprogrammed them in the first place, you quoted Raup’s “bad luck” as the reason for their extinction. When I pointed out that bad luck does not sound like meticulous planning, you suggested God had “sized” Chicxulub, which = God’s meticulous planning and not bad luck. This is always the problem when you impose an illogical pattern on evolution: it just doesn’t fit, and so you are forced into illogicality, the upshot of which is that you say you can’t always follow God’s logic – whereas it is your own logic you can’t follow!
'Less adequate' is your term for extinct species. They were perfectly adequate until the environment changed. You seize on a term that is not correct and then follow the illogicality of that concept to the wrong end. And admit if God exists He could control the environment. You deny God so everything He might do is illogical to you. Remember faith involves belief.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
dhw: When I pointed out that the extinction of “less adequate” species did not explain why your God had preprogrammed them in the first place, you quoted Raup’s “bad luck” as the reason for their extinction. When I pointed out that bad luck does not sound like meticulous planning, you suggested God had “sized” Chicxulub, which = God’s meticulous planning and not bad luck. This is always the problem when you impose an illogical pattern on evolution: it just doesn’t fit…
DAVID: 'Less adequate' is your term for extinct species. They were perfectly adequate until the environment changed. You seize on a term that is not correct and then follow the illogicality of that concept to the wrong end.
I’m sorry, David, but you are getting confused. It was you who introduced the whole concept of inadequacy on Sunday 23 October at 19.18 (my bold):
Dhw: Any idea WHY your God would provide all these wrong choices, then? And what other guidelines can you think of?
DAVID: Not wrong, but inadequate for the stress.
The discussion continued as follows:
Dhw: So your God provides choices to solve every single problem for the next 3.7 billion years, and those that are inadequate for a particular problem are not wrong. That'll be a nice consolation for those who have to say goodbye.
DAVID: Evolution only advances with the passage of less adequate and less complex species. Death makes room for the living. Nothing 'wrong' about evolution. It produced us.
dhw: “Less adequate” ones dying out merely confirms the Darwinian process of natural selection. It doesn’t explain why your God preprogrammes “inadequate” solutions in the first place.
This led you to the first about-turn:
DAVID: And I keep repeating David Raup: extinction are 'bad luck' from extreme environmental changes, not inadequate organisms. Adequate organisms live in adequate comfortable environments. The dinos weren't prepared for Chicxulub. Should God have prepared them? Your comment makes no sense.
Initially what God had preprogrammed was “inadequate for the stress”, which raised the problem of why God designed organisms that way. So then it was not a matter of inadequacy – it was bad luck, and extinctions were accidental. However, when that turned out to mean God relied on luck for the progress of evolution, you switched to suggesting that God may even have ”sized” Chixculub (to ensure the survival of pre-pre-pre-pre humans). This U-turn takes over in your latest comment:
DAVID: And admit if God exists He could control the environment.
Extinction was due to “bad luck”, because organisms were “inadequate for the stress” of accidental environmental changes, and now we come full circle to God’s control of the environment with extinction being part of the great plan.
DAVID: You deny God so everything He might do is illogical to you. Remember faith involves belief.
As an agnostic I always allow for God’s existence, but I question the logic of your interpretation of God’s evolutionary purpose and method, which even you seem to find baffling. Compare this to the powerful logic you apply to the complexity of life’s mechanisms as a counter to atheistic faith in chance. Would you accept an atheist dismissing your argument by telling you to remember that faith involves belief?
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Sunday, October 30, 2016, 00:47 (2734 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Extinction was due to “bad luck”, because organisms were “inadequate for the stress” of accidental environmental changes, and now we come full circle to God’s control of the environment with extinction being part of the great plan.
I remind you I am using Raup's terms. These animals were perfectly adequate until a new stress did them in. It is your point, and I agree it, that new circumstances engender new advances in evolution. I get the implication in your statements that you are inferring God made inadequate animals. He did not. They were adequate before the new changes that caused their demise
DAVID: You deny God so everything He might do is illogical to you. Remember faith involves belief.dhw: As an agnostic I always allow for God’s existence, but I question the logic of your interpretation of God’s evolutionary purpose and method, which even you seem to find baffling. Compare this to the powerful logic you apply to the complexity of life’s mechanisms as a counter to atheistic faith in chance. Would you accept an atheist dismissing your argument by telling you to remember that faith involves belief?
I am not baffled at all. He had a goal of humans appearing and they did.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
dhw: Extinction was due to “bad luck”, because organisms were “inadequate for the stress” of accidental environmental changes, and now we come full circle to God’s control of the environment with extinction being part of the great plan.
DAVID: I remind you I am using Raup's terms. These animals were perfectly adequate until a new stress did them in. It is your point, and I agree it, that new circumstances engender new advances in evolution.
Thank you.
DAVID: I get the implication in your statements that you are inferring God made inadequate animals. He did not. They were adequate before the new changes that caused their demise.
It was YOUR argument that the organisms were “inadequate for the stress” of accidental environmental changes! Yes of course they were adequate until they proved inadequate. Your dilemma is whether your God created the new environmental changes - in which case extinction was not “bad luck” - or the environmental changes were the result of chance, in which case God relied on luck to allow evolution to progress the way he wanted it to. You cannot have meticulous planning that relies on luck, but either way (deliberately or accidentally) you are left with your God having designed organisms that were, as you so rightly put it, “inadequate for the stress”.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Sunday, October 30, 2016, 14:12 (2733 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: It was YOUR argument that the organisms were “inadequate for the stress” of accidental environmental changes! Yes of course they were adequate until they proved inadequate. Your dilemma is whether your God created the new environmental changes - in which case extinction was not “bad luck” - or the environmental changes were the result of chance, in which case God relied on luck to allow evolution to progress the way he wanted it to. You cannot have meticulous planning that relies on luck, but either way (deliberately or accidentally) you are left with your God having designed organisms that were, as you so rightly put it, “inadequate for the stress”.
Agreed. if God made the universe, then He could manage the environment as He wished.
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
dhw: It was YOUR argument that the organisms were “inadequate for the stress” of accidental environmental changes! Yes of course they were adequate until they proved inadequate. Your dilemma is whether your God created the new environmental changes - in which case extinction was not “bad luck” - or the environmental changes were the result of chance, in which case God relied on luck to allow evolution to progress the way he wanted it to. You cannot have meticulous planning that relies on luck, but either way (deliberately or accidentally) you are left with your God having designed organisms that were, as you so rightly put it, “inadequate for the stress”.
DAVID: Agreed. if God made the universe, then He could manage the environment as He wished.
Of course. Therefore if God made the universe, all we have to do is decide how much he planned, how much he left to chance, and how much he left to the organisms themselves. And on that decision depends our theistic interpretation of how evolution works!
Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use
by David Turell , Monday, October 31, 2016, 17:04 (2732 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Agreed. if God made the universe, then He could manage the environment as He wished.dhw: Of course. Therefore if God made the universe, all we have to do is decide how much he planned, how much he left to chance, and how much he left to the organisms themselves. And on that decision depends our theistic interpretation of how evolution works!
Good review of possibilities. I come down on the side of God under tight control.
Different in degree or kind: Monkeys don't use sharp stones
by David Turell , Wednesday, October 19, 2016, 19:56 (2744 days ago) @ David Turell
Types of monkeys break stones making very sharp pieces but don't use them as ancient Homos did, but it creates an archeologic problems as monkeys leave these pieces of stone lying around which can confuse the interpretations:
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-monkeys-stone-flakes-humans-unique.html
"Researchers have observed wild-bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil deliberately break stones, unintentionally creating flakes that share many of the characteristics of those produced by early Stone Age hominins. The difference is that the capuchins' flakes are not intentional tools for cutting and scraping, but seem to be the by-product of hammering or 'percussive behaviour' that the monkeys engage in to extract minerals or lichen from the stones.
"In a paper, published in Nature, the research team says this finding is significant because archaeologists had always understood that the production of multiple stone flakes with characteristics such as conchoidal fractures and sharp cutting edges was a behaviour unique to hominins. The paper suggests that scholars may have to refine their criteria for identifying intentionally produced early stone flakes made by hominins, given capuchins have been observed unintentionally making similar tools.
"The research is authored by researchers from the University of Oxford, University College London and University of São Paulo in Brazil. The team observed individual monkeys in Serra da Capivara National Park unintentionally creating fractured flakes and cores. While hominins made stone flake tools for cutting and butchery tasks, the researchers admit that it is unclear why monkeys perform this behaviour. They suggest that the capuchins may be trying to extract powdered silicon (known to be an essential trace nutrient) or to remove lichen for some as yet unknown medicinal purpose. At no point did the monkeys try to cut or scrape using the flakes, says the study.
***
"'This does not mean that the earliest archaeological material in East Africa was not made by hominins. It does, however, raise interesting questions about the possible ways this stone tool technology developed before the earliest examples in the archaeological record appeared. It also tells us what this stone tool technology might look like. There are important questions too about the uniqueness of early hominin behaviour. These findings challenge previous ideas about the minimum level of cognitive and morphological complexity required to produce numerous conchoidal flakes.'"
***
Bearded capuchins and some Japanese macaques are known to pound stones directly against each other, but the paper remarks that the capuchins in Serra da Capivara National Park are the only wild primates to be observed doing this for the purpose of damaging the stones.
"Co-author and leader of the Primate Archaeology (Primarch) project Michael Haslam, from the University of Oxford, says: 'Our understanding of the new technologies adopted by our early ancestors helps shape our view of human evolution. The emergence of sharp-edged stone tools that were fashioned and hammered to create a cutting tool was a big part of that story. The fact that we have discovered monkeys can produce the same result does throw a bit of a spanner in the works in our thinking on evolutionary behaviour and how we attribute such artefacts. While humans are not unique in making this technology, the manner in which they used them is still very different to what the monkeys seem capable of.'"
Comment: Still a giant difference in how early humans could see a great use for stones in scrapping hides, as an example.
Different in degree or kind: Cognition forcasting
by David Turell , Friday, November 11, 2016, 00:47 (2722 days ago) @ David Turell
Mental anticipation is called affective forecasting. We humans do it. Now an orangutan has shown he can do it. But why not? As you will see he knew some of the tastes in juice in advance:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/orangutan-picks-cocktail-by-seeing-i...
"An orangutan matched researchers' predictions about which mixed beverage he would choose based on his relative fondness for the separate ingredients.
Imagine you had never tasted lemonade. You would still probably assume that lemon juice mixed with sugar tastes better than lemon juice alone. Because you know what lemons taste like, and you know what sugar tastes like.
"You can recall those past experiences, and make a prediction about your response to something new. Researchers call the ability to predict our future emotional state "affective forecasting." And some have suggested that the skill is unique to humans. But is it?
"'We combined different liquids and asked participants, the orangutan and the humans, to predict how such novel liquid combinations taste like, and whether they prefer one or the other." Lund University cognitive scientist Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc.
She and her colleagues offered their cocktails to a 21-year-old male Sumatran orangutan named Naong, who lives in Sweden's Furuvik Zoo. They used four ingredients—cherry juice, rhubarb juice, lemon juice, and diluted apple cider vinegar—which they combined into six unfamiliar mixtures. Altogether, that made for 24 possible comparisons of one drink against another.
"Naong watched the researchers mix his drinks. Then he got to choose from the two set before him. And in 21 of the 24 trials, Naong matched the researchers’ predictions: that his choice would be based on his relative fondness for the separate ingredients. [Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc, et al., Affective forecasting in an orangutan: predicting the hedonic outcome of novel juice mixes, in Animal Cognition]
"For example, since he liked rhubarb juice better than lemon juice, he also preferred rhubarb-cherry juice to lemon-cherry juice—despite having had no experience with either.
"'We were impressed with Naong's ability to be so consistent in his choices."
From a statistical perspective, the orangutan data was indistinguishable from human data. Both species seemed to make consistent choices about future events even if they had no prior experience to guide their decision-making.
"'An ability which was previously thought to be uniquely human presumably has evolved earlier, so that it's shared with orangutans and presumably with chimpanzees as well."
"It’s a single study with a single orangutan. But it may be that we will soon mark yet another skill off the list of things that were once thought to be the sole domain of our species. Perhaps what's truly unique about us is our ongoing quest to find something unique about us."
Comment: I have no idea why these researchers are so surprised. They have assumed in advance that he did not have this capacity. The animal knows what juices he likes. He has freedom of choice. My poodle is a picky eater, but when I prepare his meals I know how to pick things out for him so he finishes his meals. I know this isn't exactly the same as the experiment, but even a lesser mental animal like a dog has preferences. The usual point is the research folks are trying to disprove how different we are. They failed.
Different in degree or kind: Ape gestures
by David Turell , Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 00:16 (2718 days ago) @ David Turell
A fascinating article in which the author describes her studies of bonobo and chimp 'language gestures:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/not-bad-science/how-do-bonobos-and-chimpanzees-tal...
"Bonobos raise their arms, flap their legs, shake their heads, thrust their hips, just to name a few gestures. There are silent-visual gestures like waving, audible gestures like clapping, and contact gestures like slapping someone on the back. A gesture should be directed towards another individual (no random arm flailing while sitting on your own); the signaller should check that the recipient is paying attention (what’s the point in waving at you if you’re facing the other way?) and select an appropriate gesture (e.g. a tap on the shoulder if the recipient is looking away); and if the recipient doesn’t respond to the gesture, the signaller should persist or elaborate. These criteria show that the signaller has a goal in mind, something that they want to communicate, and are using gestures to achieve that goal.
***
"Chimpanzees use around seventy gesture types in the wild, and they produce gestures intentionally, aiming to affect the behaviour of the recipient.
***
"We found that the bonobos at Wamba have a vocabulary of 68 gesture types. The overlap with published data for chimpanzees (at Budongo research site in Uganda) was roughly 90%. Such a large overlap points toward a genetically channelled repertoire of gestures – if the gestures were all individually learned, we would expect more differences between species and even between populations and individuals. The chimpanzee repertoire overlaps around 80% with orangutans and 60% with gorillas, and so it is likely that our last common ancestor used many of these gestures.
***
"This is also how I figure out what a gesture means – if Bonobo A does an “arm raise” gesture and Bonobo B responds by starting to groom the signaller, and Bonobo A seems satisfied with that response (i.e. they don’t keep gesturing), then the meaning of “arm raise” in this instance was “please groom me”. In that case, “arm raise” would be in Bonobo A’s expressed repertoire and Bonobo B’s understood repertoire.
***
"For bonobos and chimpanzees, these activities include play, grooming, feeding, travelling together, and sex. At some point, it became necessary for our human ancestors to communicate about more than these immediate goals, and therein lies the mystery of language evolution.
***
"By the time infants are old enough to start using gestures, they are also learning words and conventional gestures of the culture that they’re growing up in. Observation of humans is therefore inadequate for seeing which gestures are shared with other apes.
***
"Our findings tell us that given the overlap of all great ape gestures, early humans likely also shared this gestural repertoire. Gestures are an important way for great apes to communicate, they use them to request food, grooming, and sex. But there are other aspects to communication as well, such as vocalisations and facial expressions. New research that looks at how great ape communication works across all of these modalities is necessary before we can start to answer the difficult questions of how language evolved. If these other forms of communication are sufficient for other species of great apes, then why language?
Comment: Yes, why language? The apes have never changed and we grew a great brain and the proper anatomy which could handle language. That reduced the need for trying to understand gestures, which are good only for immediate needs. We are different, not in degree but in kind. We can discuss anything, any concept!
Different in degree or kind:our speech has pitch control
by David Turell , Thursday, June 28, 2018, 18:30 (2127 days ago) @ David Turell
It is built into the human brain. No other primate brain has this:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-music-speech-linked-brain-area.html
"We humans are the only primates that can flexibly control the pitch of our voices. This melodic control is not just important for our singing abilities: Fluctuating pitch also conveys critical information during speech—including the speaker's mood, words of emphasis, or whether a sentence is a statement or a question. Some tonal languages, like Mandarin Chinese, even use pitch to give different meanings to otherwise identical words.
"Now, new research by UC San Francisco scientists reveals what area of the human brain controls the vocal folds of the larynx, or voice box, to let us control the pitch of our speech. Insights into pitch control could pave the way for advanced brain prosthetics that could allow people who can't speak to express themselves in a naturalistic way.
"Chang's lab recently showed how one part of the brain controls the lip, tongue, and throat muscles to produce the fluid combinations of vowels and consonants that make up the principal phonetic sounds of speech. Their new study shows that a different region of the brain independently governs the "music" of speech.
"When you push air through the larynx, you can control how quickly your vocal cords vibrate based on the tension you place on them. Much like tightening a guitar string, increasing tension in those folds by flexing your larynx muscles causes them to vibrate faster, and results in sound or speech with a different pitch. But only a few species are capable of learning to flexibly control vocal pitch. "Control of the larynx is a key step in the evolution of spoken language," said Dichter.
***
"They found that activation of neurons in one brain area, called the dorsal laryngeal motor cortex, was linked with quick changes in pitch, such as when different words are emphasized in a sentence. The more active that area of the cortex was, the higher the speaker's pitch on individual words. This was true both during speech as well as when the patients were singing a simple melody. Neurons in a nearby brain area activated when a speaker changed the overall pitch of her or his voice, as we sometimes do when we speak in a higher pitch to pets or children.
***
"What's more, the researchers found that dorsal laryngeal motor cortex also responds to pitch when the patients silently listened to their own speech played back. According to Dichter, this brain area does not appear to be used in the same way in other primates, and the finding that it takes part in perceiving as well as producing pitch changes might yield clues about how our brains allow us to mimic one another's speech, and to intentionally change the pitch of our voice."
Comment: I've described how complex the voice mechanism is in humans, involving tongue, lips, throat, laryngeal muscles. The only interpretation [possible is when humans arrived all of this was present to be activated when humans learned how to do it. The big brain allowed all sorts of new mental activity, including that initiated by the soul.
Different in degree or kind:our speech has pitch control
DAVID’s comment: I've described how complex the voice mechanism is in humans, involving tongue, lips, throat, laryngeal muscles. The only interpretation [possible is when humans arrived all of this was present to be activated when humans learned how to do it. The big brain allowed all sorts of new mental activity, including that initiated by the soul.
There is another possible interpretation: as new thoughts – which you as a dualist believe to be initiated by the soul and not the brain – demanded new material actions and abilities, the brain had to expand in order to provide the means of realizing the concepts. Thought first, brain change second - as proven by modern science. Each generation builds on the discoveries of its predecessors, and the more new ideas there are, the more complex must be the means of communication. Pre-sapiens would no doubt have had to refine their own means of communicating new thoughts to one another, and eventually the more primitive sounds made by our fellow primates would not have sufficed to keep up with the advances being made by our ancestors. Just as the bigger brain and indeed most major innovations require adjustments to the rest of the body, it is perfectly possible that the need for more flexible means of communication resulted in changes throughout the network of material mechanisms that implement vocal communication. In other words, the changes involving tongue, lips, throat and laryngeal muscles were not made in advance of human speech, but were the RESULT of humans trying to develop their own means of speech.
Different in degree or kind:our speech has pitch control
by David Turell , Friday, June 29, 2018, 19:30 (2126 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID’s comment: I've described how complex the voice mechanism is in humans, involving tongue, lips, throat, laryngeal muscles. The only interpretation [possible is when humans arrived all of this was present to be activated when humans learned how to do it. The big brain allowed all sorts of new mental activity, including that initiated by the soul.
dhw: There is another possible interpretation: as new thoughts – which you as a dualist believe to be initiated by the soul and not the brain – demanded new material actions and abilities, the brain had to expand in order to provide the means of realizing the concepts. Thought first, brain change second - as proven by modern science.
The 'science' referred to is about H. sapiens already enlarged brains, which only complexifies and shrinks.
dhw: Each generation builds on the discoveries of its predecessors, and the more new ideas there are, the more complex must be the means of communication. Pre-sapiens would no doubt have had to refine their own means of communicating new thoughts to one another, and eventually the more primitive sounds made by our fellow primates would not have sufficed to keep up with the advances being made by our ancestors. Just as the bigger brain and indeed most major innovations require adjustments to the rest of the body, it is perfectly possible that the need for more flexible means of communication resulted in changes throughout the network of material mechanisms that implement vocal communication. In other words, the changes involving tongue, lips, throat and laryngeal muscles were not made in advance of human speech, but were the RESULT of humans trying to develop their own means of speech.
Bottom up evolution with all the complicated parts designed by brainless committees of cells. Hard to believe in view of our beautifully designed vocal system with proper control areas in the brain.
Different in degree or kind:our speech has pitch control
DAVID’s comment: I've described how complex the voice mechanism is in humans, involving tongue, lips, throat, laryngeal muscles. The only interpretation possible is when humans arrived all of this was present to be activated when humans learned how to do it. The big brain allowed all sorts of new mental activity, including that initiated by the soul.
dhw: There is another possible interpretation: as new thoughts – which you as a dualist believe to be initiated by the soul and not the brain – demanded new material actions and abilities, the brain had to expand in order to provide the means of realizing the concepts. Thought first, brain change second - as proven by modern science.
DAVID: The 'science' referred to is about H. sapiens already enlarged brains, which only complexifies and shrinks.
Modern science proves that changes to the brain are caused by the implementation of thought. We have discussed (and even sometimes agreed on) the reason for sapiens non-expansion and shrinkage over and over again. Nobody knows why the pre-sapiens brain expanded, but there is no evidence that brains change in anticipation of new thoughts. (But see my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE for a means of welding your unwitting materialism together with your professed dualism.)
dhw: Each generation builds on the discoveries of its predecessors, and the more new ideas there are, the more complex must be the means of communication. Pre-sapiens would no doubt have had to refine their own means of communicating new thoughts to one another, and eventually the more primitive sounds made by our fellow primates would not have sufficed to keep up with the advances being made by our ancestors. Just as the bigger brain and indeed most major innovations require adjustments to the rest of the body, it is perfectly possible that the need for more flexible means of communication resulted in changes throughout the network of material mechanisms that implement vocal communication. In other words, the changes involving tongue, lips, throat and laryngeal muscles were not made in advance of human speech, but were the RESULT of humans trying to develop their own means of speech.
DAVID: Bottom up evolution with all the complicated parts designed by brainless committees of cells. Hard to believe in view of our beautifully designed vocal system with proper control areas in the brain.
It is no harder than believing that there is an unknown, unknowable, sourceless mind that preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder 3.8 billion years ago, or dabbled them individually, which you claim is the "only interpetation possible". And it is no harder than believing that if such a mind does exist, it could have endowed brainless cells with an intelligence of their own (some prominent experts in the field have no doubt that cells are intelligent), and that these cells pool their intelligence to create all the innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders that constitute the history of evolution, rather than the unknown mind designing them all individually (including the 99% that are extinct) to keep life going until it could design sapiens’ brain and vocal chords.
Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control
by David Turell , Saturday, June 30, 2018, 15:18 (2125 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Each generation builds on the discoveries of its predecessors, and the more new ideas there are, the more complex must be the means of communication. Pre-sapiens would no doubt have had to refine their own means of communicating new thoughts to one another, and eventually the more primitive sounds made by our fellow primates would not have sufficed to keep up with the advances being made by our ancestors. Just as the bigger brain and indeed most major innovations require adjustments to the rest of the body, it is perfectly possible that the need for more flexible means of communication resulted in changes throughout the network of material mechanisms that implement vocal communication. In other words, the changes involving tongue, lips, throat and laryngeal muscles were not made in advance of human speech, but were the RESULT of humans trying to develop their own means of speech.DAVID: Bottom up evolution with all the complicated parts designed by brainless committees of cells. Hard to believe in view of our beautifully designed vocal system with proper control areas in the brain.
dhw: It is no harder than believing that there is an unknown, unknowable, sourceless mind that preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder 3.8 billion years ago, or dabbled them individually, which you claim is the "only interpetation possible". And it is no harder than believing that if such a mind does exist, it could have endowed brainless cells with an intelligence of their own (some prominent experts in the field have no doubt that cells are intelligent), and that these cells pool their intelligence to create all the innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders that constitute the history of evolution, rather than the unknown mind designing them all individually (including the 99% that are extinct) to keep life going until it could design sapiens’ brain and vocal chords.
The whole debate comes down to the evidence of design in life. Is there a causal designer or not? Despite dhw's denials, there are only two choices, designer or chance. And if there is a designer why would he delegate future design to brainless cells when it is simpler to set in and just do the designs when needed instead of hoping the cells can figure it out. Of course he could give them design parameters, but then what he designs into their planning modules gets very complicated. It is simpler to do it directly.
The next step is to study the biochemistry of life. The complexity is mind blowing. It cannot have happened without a chemical designer. Ask any organic chemist who tries to make useful molecules. Their comments have been presented here. Very difficult in the controlled atmosphere of the lab, and we are asked to accept they appeared by chance.
Conclusion: A designing mind is obviously required.
Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control
DAVID: The whole debate comes down to the evidence of design in life. Is there a causal designer or not? Despite dhw's denials, there are only two choices, designer or chance.
The third option is design by multiple designers (bottom up evolution) and not one. But I have absolutely no problem putting on my theist’s hat in discussions with you on these topics, so let us confine ourselves to the theistic option of one causal designer.[/i]
DAVID: And if there is a designer why would he delegate future design to brainless cells when it is simpler to set in and just do the designs when needed instead of hoping the cells can figure it out. Of course he could give them design parameters, but then what he designs into their planning modules gets very complicated. It is simpler to do it directly.
Why on earth is it simpler? The simplest thing of all would be to set up the mechanism and then do nothing! “Figure it out”? Figure what out? Why does he have to figure out how to build a knotty nest, give zebrafish 360 degree vision, get the monarch butterfly from A to Z? This is where your logic flails around: he must apparently design them all individually so that there is a balance of nature and life can continue until he can produce the brain of Homo sapiens. It’s all part of the one great plan, which also involves getting 99% of his specially figured-out designs to disappear. If simplicity is what you’re after, why not consider the idea that he just wanted to create the on-going spectacle of ever changing life forms that has actually happened? Done by the invention of a single mechanism. And you can still allow for the odd dabble, the odd experiment now and then if he feels like it.
DAVID: The next step is to study the biochemistry of life. The complexity is mind blowing. It cannot have happened without a chemical designer. Ask any organic chemist who tries to make useful molecules. Their comments have been presented here. Very difficult in the controlled atmosphere of the lab, and we are asked to accept they appeared by chance.
I do not ask you to accept that they appeared by chance. And I accept the mind-blowing complexity. What I do not accept is your insistence that if your God exists, he could not possibly have designed the mechanism that has given rise to the mind-blowing complexity in all its different forms.
DAVID: Conclusion: A designing mind is obviously required.
It depends what subject you are referring to. In the context of evolutionary complexity, and since we both reject the theory of random mutations, the mind-blowing complexity requires design but not necessarily by ONE designing mind. There could be billions of designing minds, in the form of individual cells combining into a vast variety of communities. As you perhaps inadvertently phrase it elsewhere, it is “only living matter that can ultimately make the decision to evolve.”
In the context of the origin of life itself (and hence of the intelligent cell), I find the case for design far too strong to be able to reject it. But as you well know, I find the case for an unknown, sourceless, universal “consciousness” just as unbelievable as the case for chance building those first intelligent cells. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.
Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control
by David Turell , Sunday, July 01, 2018, 18:03 (2124 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: And if there is a designer why would he delegate future design to brainless cells when it is simpler to set in and just do the designs when needed instead of hoping the cells can figure it out. Of course he could give them design parameters, but then what he designs into their planning modules gets very complicated. It is simpler to do it directly.
dhw: Why on earth is it simpler? The simplest thing of all would be to set up the mechanism and then do nothing! “Figure it out”? Figure what out? Why does he have to figure out how to build a knotty nest, give zebrafish 360 degree vision, get the monarch butterfly from A to Z? This is where your logic flails around: he must apparently design them all individually so that there is a balance of nature and life can continue until he can produce the brain of Homo sapiens. It’s all part of the one great plan, which also involves getting 99% of his specially figured-out designs to disappear. If simplicity is what you’re after, why not consider the idea that he just wanted to create the on-going spectacle of ever changing life forms that has actually happened? Done by the invention of a single mechanism. And you can still allow for the odd dabble, the odd experiment now and then if he feels like it.
Your usual approach. Simple without direction. Sounds like Darwin. I see God's purpose in producing humans. And to set up your mechanism without the guidelines to achieve that purpose is fruitless. A free inventive mechanism to produce evolution would dash off in many directions, which is way you consider the bush of life. I don't, I see purpose everywhere.
DAVID: The next step is to study the biochemistry of life. The complexity is mind blowing. It cannot have happened without a chemical designer. Ask any organic chemist who tries to make useful molecules. Their comments have been presented here. Very difficult in the controlled atmosphere of the lab, and we are asked to accept they appeared by chance.dhw:I do not ask you to accept that they appeared by chance. And I accept the mind-blowing complexity. What I do not accept is your insistence that if your God exists, he could not possibly have designed the mechanism that has given rise to the mind-blowing complexity in all its different forms.
That mechanism could go off in many directions. I see directionality
DAVID: Conclusion: A designing mind is obviously required.dhw: It depends what subject you are referring to. In the context of evolutionary complexity, and since we both reject the theory of random mutations, the mind-blowing complexity requires design but not necessarily by ONE designing mind. There could be billions of designing minds, in the form of individual cells combining into a vast variety of communities. As you perhaps inadvertently phrase it elsewhere, it is “only living matter that can ultimately make the decision to evolve.”
Billions of designing minds do not produce directionality or purpose. You never see the purpose.
dhw: In the context of the origin of life itself (and hence of the intelligent cell), I find the case for design far too strong to be able to reject it. But as you well know, I find the case for an unknown, sourceless, universal “consciousness” just as unbelievable as the case for chance building those first intelligent cells. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.
The case for a universal mind is clear.
Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control
dhw: If simplicity is what you’re after, why not consider the idea that he just wanted to create the on-going spectacle of ever changing life forms that has actually happened? Done by the invention of a single mechanism. And you can still allow for the odd dabble, the odd experiment now and then if he feels like it.
DAVID: Your usual approach. Simple without direction. Sounds like Darwin. I see God's purpose in producing humans. And to set up your mechanism without the guidelines to achieve that purpose is fruitless. A free inventive mechanism to produce evolution would dash off in many directions, which is way you consider the bush of life. I don't, I see purpose everywhere.
I am surprised that you cannot see that evolution has dashed off in many directions (99% of which have led to obliteration). And I am surprised that you cannot see that every organism has its own purpose of survival (Darwinian is not a synonym for wrong) and/or improvement. And I am surprised that the one purpose you see everywhere – in the 99% of extinct species, lifestyles and natural wonders, and in the still existing knotty nest, 360-degree eye, fishy camouflage, butterfly migration, parasitic egg-laying etc. – is the production of the sapiens brain. And I am surprised that you refuse to contemplate the possibility that your God might have created a mechanism to produce the ever changing bush of life because he wanted to produce an ever changing bush of life.
DAVID: That mechanism could go off in many directions. I see directionality.
The mechanism did go off in many directions. Maybe that was what your God wanted,
dhw: In the context of the origin of life itself (and hence of the intelligent cell), I find the case for design far too strong to be able to reject it. But as you well know, I find the case for an unknown, sourceless, universal “consciousness” just as unbelievable as the case for chance building those first intelligent cells. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.
DAVID: The case for a universal mind is clear.
I do not find any clarity in the concept of a single conscious mind that has no possible source, is vast enough to create and encompass a universe, and remains hidden.
Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control
by David Turell , Monday, July 02, 2018, 15:04 (2123 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your usual approach. Simple without direction. Sounds like Darwin. I see God's purpose in producing humans. And to set up your mechanism without the guidelines to achieve that purpose is fruitless. A free inventive mechanism to produce evolution would dash off in many directions, which is way you consider the bush of life. I don't, I see purpose everywhere.dhw: I am surprised that you cannot see that evolution has dashed off in many directions (99% of which have led to obliteration). And I am surprised that you cannot see that every organism has its own purpose of survival (Darwinian is not a synonym for wrong) and/or improvement. And I am surprised that the one purpose you see everywhere – in the 99% of extinct species, lifestyles and natural wonders, and in the still existing knotty nest, 360-degree eye, fishy camouflage, butterfly migration, parasitic egg-laying etc. – is the production of the sapiens brain. And I am surprised that you refuse to contemplate the possibility that your God might have created a mechanism to produce the ever changing bush of life because he wanted to produce an ever changing bush of life.
I'm not surprised at your answer, and your blinkered view of God who plays at no purpose. Why can't God have serious purposes?
DAVID: That mechanism could go off in many directions. I see directionality.
The mechanism did go off in many directions. Maybe that was what your God wanted,dhw: In the context of the origin of life itself (and hence of the intelligent cell), I find the case for design far too strong to be able to reject it. But as you well know, I find the case for an unknown, sourceless, universal “consciousness” just as unbelievable as the case for chance building those first intelligent cells. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.
DAVID: The case for a universal mind is clear.
dhw: I do not find any clarity in the concept of a single conscious mind that has no possible source, is vast enough to create and encompass a universe, and remains hidden.
So why/how did all of this organized purposeful reality appear? Back to chance!
Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control
dhw: I am surprised that you cannot see that evolution has dashed off in many directions (99% of which have led to obliteration). And I am surprised that you cannot see that every organism has its own purpose of survival (Darwinian is not a synonym for wrong) and/or improvement. And I am surprised that the one purpose you see everywhere – in the 99% of extinct species, lifestyles and natural wonders, and in the still existing knotty nest, 360-degree eye, fishy camouflage, butterfly migration, parasitic egg-laying etc. – is the production of the sapiens brain. And I am surprised that you refuse to contemplate the possibility that your God might have created a mechanism to produce the ever changing bush of life because he wanted to produce an ever changing bush of life.
DAVID: I'm not surprised at your answer, and your blinkered view of God who plays at no purpose. Why can't God have serious purposes?
The only serious purpose you have mentioned is his desire to have a relationship with humans, although he keeps himself hidden. What other serious purpose do you have in mind? And before you revert to your reluctance to “humanize” God, if he is human enough to want a relationship with humans, why can’t he be human enough to want to create a great changing spectacle of life that will fill the void? And finally, why is the latter view more blinkered and less serious than the view that all he wanted to produce was humans?
DAVID: That mechanism could go off in many directions. I see directionality.
dhw : The mechanism did go off in many directions. Maybe that was what your God wanted.
dhw: In the context of the origin of life itself (and hence of the intelligent cell), I find the case for design far too strong to be able to reject it. But as you well know, I find the case for an unknown, sourceless, universal “consciousness” just as unbelievable as the case for chance building those first intelligent cells. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.
DAVID: The case for a universal mind is clear.
dhw: I do not find any clarity in the concept of a single conscious mind that has no possible source, is vast enough to create and encompass a universe, and remains hidden.
DAVID: So why/how did all of this organized purposeful reality appear? Back to chance!
As above, there are two theories (chance and God) that I find equally hard to swallow, and that is why I remain an agnostic.
Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control
by David Turell , Tuesday, July 03, 2018, 17:28 (2122 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I'm not surprised at your answer, and your blinkered view of God who plays at no purpose. Why can't God have serious purposes?
dhw: The only serious purpose you have mentioned is his desire to have a relationship with humans, although he keeps himself hidden. What other serious purpose do you have in mind? And before you revert to your reluctance to “humanize” God, if he is human enough to want a relationship with humans, why can’t he be human enough to want to create a great changing spectacle of life that will fill the void? And finally, why is the latter view more blinkered and less serious than the view that all he wanted to produce was humans?
Humans are His main purpose, And filling a void He created shows purpose in the void, which allows for balance of nature, and you know the reason for balance. As for humans, don't you regard your existence as an important result of His activities?
dhw: I do not find any clarity in the concept of a single conscious mind that has no possible source, is vast enough to create and encompass a universe, and remains hidden.DAVID: So why/how did all of this organized purposeful reality appear? Back to chance!
dhw: As above, there are two theories (chance and God) that I find equally hard to swallow, and that is why I remain an agnostic.
Back to the picket fence.
Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control
DAVID: I'm not surprised at your answer, and your blinkered view of God who plays at no purpose. Why can't God have serious purposes?
dhw: The only serious purpose you have mentioned is his desire to have a relationship with humans, although he keeps himself hidden. What other serious purpose do you have in mind? And before you revert to your reluctance to “humanize” God, if he is human enough to want a relationship with humans, why can’t he be human enough to want to create a great changing spectacle of life that will fill the void? And finally, why is the latter view more blinkered and less serious than the view that all he wanted to produce was humans?
DAVID: Humans are His main purpose, And filling a void He created shows purpose in the void, which allows for balance of nature, and you know the reason for balance. As for humans, don't you regard your existence as an important result of His activities?
To answer your question, yes, my existence is important to me. Now perhaps you will answer the questions I have asked you.
Different in degree or kind: only humans have menopause
by David Turell , Thursday, February 14, 2019, 01:34 (1897 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, February 14, 2019, 01:41
The so-called Grandma theory in Darwinism is challenged:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/grandmothers-survival-evolution
"Grandmothers are great — generally speaking. But evolutionarily speaking, it’s puzzling why women past their reproductive years live so long.
"Grandma’s age and how close she lives to her grandchildren can affect those children’s survival, suggest two new studies published February 7 in Current Biology. One found that, among Finnish families in the 1700s–1800s, the survival rate of young grandchildren increased 30 percent when their maternal grandmothers lived nearby and were 50 to 75 years old. The second study looked at whether that benefit to survival persists even when grandma lives far away. (Spoiler: It doesn’t.)
"The studies are part of a broader effort to explain the existence of menopause, a rarity in the animal kingdom. The so-called “grandmother hypothesis” stipulates that, from an evolution standpoint, women’s longevity is due to their contributions to their grandkids’ survival, thus extending their own lineage. (my bold)
***
"The team found that when maternal grandmothers living nearby were aged 50 to 75, their 2- to 5-year-old grandchildren had a 30 percent higher likelihood of survival than children whose maternal grandmothers were deceased. Similarly aged paternal grandmothers and maternal grandmothers aged past 75 did not affect children’s overall survival.
"But when paternal grandmothers lived past age 75, their grandchildren’s odds of dying before age 2 was 37 percent higher than a child with a deceased paternal grandmother.
***
"In the second study, researchers wanted to know if the grandmother boost persisted even when families lived far apart. The team used data from 1608 to 1799, encompassing 3,382 maternal grandmothers and 56,767 grandchildren in Canada’s St. Lawrence Valley. As with the Finnish population, those early French settlers had large families and high child mortality, but they also moved around a lot.
"For every 100 kilometers of distance between mothers and daughters, the daughters had 0.5 fewer children, the researchers found. Older sisters whose moms were alive when the women started having children had more children, and those children were more likely to survive to age 15, compared with younger sisters who started having children after their mother’s death.
"Mathematically speaking, as grandma moved farther away, those survival and reproduction rates began to resemble those of the younger sisters with deceased moms. Once a maternal grandmother moved 350 kilometers away or more, her benefits ceased, says study coauthor Patrick Bergeron, an evolutionary biologist at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Canada.
***
"Both studies provide an interesting peek at life in these North American and European communities, says Melissa Melby, a medical anthropologist at the University of Delaware in Newark. But she remains skeptical about the grandmother hypothesis because menopause may well have come about by accident. Maybe, she says, women live past their reproductive years because evolution favored men who could reproduce into old age, who then passed on those longevity genes to their sons and daughters. "
Comment: Followers of Darwin can make up all sorts of just-so stories. There is no clear evidence that grand motherhood evolved to keep another generation alive. Note my bold. Menopause in another big way that humans differ from all other animals.
Different in degree or kind: only humans have menopause
QUOTE: "The studies are part of a broader effort to explain the existence of menopause, a rarity in the animal kingdom. The so-called “grandmother hypothesis” stipulates that, from an evolution standpoint, women’s longevity is due to their contributions to their grandkids’ survival, thus extending their own lineage. (David's bold)
DAVID’s comment: Followers of Darwin can make up all sorts of just-so stories. There is no clear evidence that grand motherhood evolved to keep another generation alive. Note my bold.
Menopause in another big way that humans differ from all other animals.
So why do you think your God specially designed the menopause?
Different in degree or kind: only humans have menopause
by David Turell , Thursday, February 14, 2019, 16:24 (1896 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: "The studies are part of a broader effort to explain the existence of menopause, a rarity in the animal kingdom. The so-called “grandmother hypothesis” stipulates that, from an evolution standpoint, women’s longevity is due to their contributions to their grandkids’ survival, thus extending their own lineage. (David's bold)
DAVID’s comment: Followers of Darwin can make up all sorts of just-so stories. There is no clear evidence that grand motherhood evolved to keep another generation alive. Note my bold.
Menopause in another big way that humans differ from all other animals.dhw: So why do you think your God specially designed the menopause?
The theory in the past was early humans didn't live much longer than when the eggs disappeared. Menopause just a century ago was late 30's to early 40's and now is late 40's into mid 50's, which raises the interesting thought, do women have more eggs now? Sexual development starts earlier also. Why? Better nutrition? These are all modern changes.
As for God's reasons, all I can point to is God wanted humans as very different.
Different in degree or kind: only humans have menopause
QUOTE: "The studies are part of a broader effort to explain the existence of menopause, a rarity in the animal kingdom. The so-called “grandmother hypothesis” stipulates that, from an evolution standpoint, women’s longevity is due to their contributions to their grandkids’ survival, thus extending their own lineage. (David's bold)
DAVID’s comment: Followers of Darwin can make up all sorts of just-so stories. There is no clear evidence that grand motherhood evolved to keep another generation alive. Note my bold.
Menopause in another big way that humans differ from all other animals.
dhw: So why do you think your God specially designed the menopause?
DAVID: The theory in the past was early humans didn't live much longer than when the eggs disappeared. Menopause just a century ago was late 30's to early 40's and now is late 40's into mid 50's, which raises the interesting thought, do women have more eggs now? Sexual development starts earlier also. Why? Better nutrition? These are all modern changes.
As for God's reasons, all I can point to is God wanted humans as very different.
“Followers of Darwin can make up all sorts of just-so stories” for which there is “no clear evidence”. Do you not realize that folk like Dawkins can say exactly the same about you and your God and your fixed belief that you know what your God wants? There is no “clear evidence” for ANY of the hypotheses put forward by theists and atheists alike. If there was, they would no longer be hypotheses but facts.
Different in degree or kind: only humans have menopause
by David Turell , Friday, February 15, 2019, 15:05 (1895 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: "The studies are part of a broader effort to explain the existence of menopause, a rarity in the animal kingdom. The so-called “grandmother hypothesis” stipulates that, from an evolution standpoint, women’s longevity is due to their contributions to their grandkids’ survival, thus extending their own lineage. (David's bold)
DAVID’s comment: Followers of Darwin can make up all sorts of just-so stories. There is no clear evidence that grand motherhood evolved to keep another generation alive. Note my bold.
Menopause in another big way that humans differ from all other animals.dhw: So why do you think your God specially designed the menopause?
DAVID: The theory in the past was early humans didn't live much longer than when the eggs disappeared. Menopause just a century ago was late 30's to early 40's and now is late 40's into mid 50's, which raises the interesting thought, do women have more eggs now? Sexual development starts earlier also. Why? Better nutrition? These are all modern changes.
As for God's reasons, all I can point to is God wanted humans as very different.
dhw: “Followers of Darwin can make up all sorts of just-so stories” for which there is “no clear evidence”. Do you not realize that folk like Dawkins can say exactly the same about you and your God and your fixed belief that you know what your God wants? There is no “clear evidence” for ANY of the hypotheses put forward by theists and atheists alike. If there was, they would no longer be hypotheses but facts.
As my books show, there is much more evidence for God and evolution than for natural evolution.
Different in degree or kind: only humans have big breasts
by David Turell , Saturday, March 09, 2019, 01:28 (1874 days ago) @ David Turell
Another nutty difference in kind. We are the only mammals that develop larger breasts long before having a pregnancy to stimulate breast enlargement for lactation as in all other mammals. Human breasts also maintain their larger volume after breasts feeding is over. In all others they shrink back to roughly former size.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2019/03/06/why-do-humans-have-breasts/#.XIMPgHdFyze
"In other primate species, only pregnant or lactating females have bosoms. The animals stay flat-chested for the rest of their lives. In humans, pubescent girls accumulate fat around their milk glands, which stays for life and seems to hold sex appeal in every culture. Those permanent, alluring mounds of fat on women’s chests are indeed an evolutionary anomaly, begging for an explanation.
***
"Whether or not breasts first served as energy banks or handle bars for mothers and infants, they eventually caught the attention of males. This is why most researchers assume sexual selection has been at work: They argue that over the course of human evolution, permanent breasts helped females attract mates. Like the ostentatious feathers of male peacocks, breasts served as a message to the opposite sex, “Hey, look at these! Reproduce with me!”
"And in the case of peacock feathers, and potentially breasts, there’s truth in advertising. The more spectacular the feathers, the healthier the bird, and therefore this trait is what evolutionary biologists call an honest signal: a reliable indicator of an animal’s quality as a mate or parent. It’s a feature potential suitors can assess before deciding, “Oh yeah, I want to make babies with this individual.” As for breasts, some hypotheses in the sexual selection camp contend the fat mounds are an honest signal of a woman’s mate-worthiness.
:In Western populations, some studies have shown that most men prefer women with narrow waists and large breasts
***
"The researchers measured two female sex hormones — progesterone and a form of estrogen (E2) — from spit samples, collected from 119 healthy Polish women every morning for the duration of one menstrual cycle, or roughly one month. Not considering waists, breast size alone related only to E2 levels. Because estrogen plays a crucial role in girls developing their womanly figures, this may suggest that breasts are just a side effect of gaining healthy voluptuous fat overall.
"But the study also found that women with large breasts and narrow waists had higher values for both hormones — and the combo of these hormones predicts pregnancy success. This led the researchers to conclude that at least among these Polish women, “the cultural icon of Barbie as a symbol of female beauty seems to have some biological grounding.”
***
"As for men’s taste in breasts, numerous studies have tried to uncover universal preferences, which may be biologically programmed.
***
"Men’s preferences seem influenced by number of factors, including: culture (says one study, “Brazilians preferred larger breasts and buttocks than Czechs”), socio-economic status (larger breasts for lower status men), sexual habits, (larger for men in short-term, non-committal relationships), body image, (larger for men who rated themselves more attractive), sexist attitudes (larger for men hostile toward women) and even hunger (hungry British men liked bigger breasts than fed participants). And some experiments focused on other qualities than size, such as how perky or symmetrical breasts are.
"Suffice to say, if there are underlying, biologically evolved preferences for certain breast qualities, cultural and individual factors can override them. More research is certainly needed. "
Comment: Biologically speaking, human breasts are modified sweat glands surrounded by fat. Flat or full they all give enough milk when required. In this country padded bras and breast enhancement surgery attest to the visual importance of size, both for men, but also for women who want to improve their personal self image. As a physician I have been asked by female patients for a good plastic surgeon, and in one instance a patient was so grateful for the result, she made an appointment just to undress and show me! Black men here are well known to watch for big buttocks on first look. Therefore, we need a great just-so story to answer the issue of 'why' in each sub-culture..
Different in degree or kind: only humans have big breasts
Thank you for this delightful post, which had me chuckling all through. If the authors would produce an illustrated book on the subject, I reckon they’d earn enough not to need grants for at least another ten years.
Different in degree or kind: only humans have big breasts
by David Turell , Saturday, March 09, 2019, 15:20 (1873 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Thank you for this delightful post, which had me chuckling all through. If the authors would produce an illustrated book on the subject, I reckon they’d earn enough not to need grants for at least another ten years.
And it is drawing viewers!
Different in degree or kind: essay is updated Adler
by David Turell , Tuesday, April 09, 2019, 18:49 (1842 days ago) @ David Turell
A new statement of the obvious view of human capacities:
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/04/transhumanism-the-lazy-way-to-human-improvement/
"Transhumanism would shatter human exceptionalism. The moral philosophy of the West holds that each human being is possessed of natural rights that adhere solely and merely because we are human. But transhumanists yearn to remake humanity in their own image — including as cyborgs, group personalities residing in the Internet Cloud, or AI-controlled machines.
***
"If the distinction between us and fauna is just a matter of degree — which I dispute, it is also of kind — then that difference is akin to the Matterhorn versus a small hill in the flatlands of Kansas.
"After all, what other species in the known history of life has attained the wondrous capacities of human beings? What other species has transcended the tooth-and-claw world of naked natural selection to the point that, at least to some degree, we now control nature instead of being controlled by it?
"What other species builds civilizations, records history, creates art, makes music, thinks abstractly, communicates in language, envisions and fabricates machinery, improves life through science and engineering, or explores the deeper truths found in philosophy and religion? What other species can ponder “seizing control” of its own evolution, as transhumanists do? Which has true freedom? Not a one.
"It seems to me that human exceptionalism is as close to a self-evident truth as one can find.
"Transhumanism goes so badly wrong by hubristically claiming that we have the ability — not to mention, the wisdom — to remake ourselves into something “better,” that we can somehow “improve” on what evolution, intelligent design, or Creation — take your pick — produced.
"That is eugenics, plain and simple. The movement’s fatal flaw can be found in its rigid mechanistic beliefs, that sees us basically as the sum of our materialistic parts.
"The movement swoons over increasing intelligence. If I had to choose between increasing the intelligence of the human race to beyond Mensa levels versus enhancing our capacity to love, I can say unequivocally that the human race would be far better off embracing the latter than the former.
"There is no brain implant for that. There is no pill. It is a virtue toward which we have to consciously strive–in the way we behave toward others, in the charity we exhibit, in the humility we attain. Only human beings have the capacity to pursue virtues. It is part of what makes us exceptional."
Comment: In answering the philosophy of Transhumanism he is echoing Adler's main point .
Different in degree or kind: we have less vertebrae
by David Turell , Monday, May 13, 2019, 18:44 (1808 days ago) @ David Turell
Ours total 24 while most mammals who give live birth have 26-27:
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-evolutionary-analysis-mammalian-vertebrae.html
"'The classic body plan of many mammals is built on a mobile back and this body plan is conserved regardless of running speed," explains New York University anthropologist Scott Williams, the paper's senior author. "More specifically, we find that a particular type of locomotor behavior—suspensory locomotion, which involves hanging below tree branches, rather than speed—is associated with increases in variation in numbers of vertebrae across mammals."
"The work centers on an effort to better understand why certain aspects of mammals remain consistent over time—a phenomenon known as evolutionary stasis.
"Despite the diversity evolution has yielded, there remain consistencies across a wide range of distantly related organisms. Of particular note is the number neck (cervical) and back (thoracic and lumbar) vertebrae of mammals.
"'Nearly all mammals have the same number of cervical vertebrae, no matter how long or short their necks are—humans, giraffes, mice, whales, and platypuses all have exactly seven cervical vertebrae," explains co-author Jeff Spear, an NYU doctoral student.
"In fact, the majority of mammals possess 19 or 20 thoracic and lumbar vertebrae, for a total of 26 or 27 "CTL" vertebrae (for "cervical, thoracic, and lumbar" vertebrae). There is little variation in these numbers, either within species or across different species—or even different species separated by over 160 million years of evolution. Humans, with 24 CTL, are one of the exceptions.
***
"In their study, they counted the vertebrae of thousands of individuals for nearly 300 species of mammals. The researchers then compared variation in the number of CTL vertebrae to traits such as speed, habitat, locomotion, spine mobility, posture, and limb use.
"The analyses did not seem to show an association between vertebrae count and running speed. Rather, this trend was primarily driven by animals adapted to suspensory and other "antipronograde" behaviors, where limbs are held in tension during slow climbing, clambering, and suspension.
"This observation led the researchers to hypothesize that the classic body plan of certain mammals—therian mammals, which give birth to live young—is built on a mobile back and that this body plan is conserved regardless of running speed.
***
"Changes in types of vertebrae are determined by Hox genes—the genes that organize animal bodies along the head-tail axis, ensuring that your eyes go on your face and your legs go at the base of your torso," explains Spear. "But changes in Hox gene expression sometimes creates vertebrae that are intermediate in type, which can impinge the mobility of the spine."
"For animals following the ancestral body plan, from possums to tigers, departures from the ancestral types of vertebrae in the back creates a risk of inefficient locomotion and are weeded out by natural selection, he adds.
"'Mammals that depart from this body plan, however, such as apes adapted for antipronograde behaviors, are more free to vary in their number of CTL vertebrae," says Williams. "Our own atypical number of CTL vertebrae, then, may be the consequence of our evolutionary history as antipronograde climbers.'"
Comment: Our running speed is due to pelvic changes, an arched lumbar spine and how our feet are built to propel us. Our long distance running is allowed by the fact that we sweat and lose heat while furred animals cannot do that. We are different in kind for many reasons, not just our giant brain.
Different in degree or kind: not through evolution
by David Turell , Sunday, May 08, 2022, 16:31 (717 days ago) @ David Turell
Marcelo Gleiser's viewpoint:
https://bigthink.com/13-8/humans-universe/
"By life I mean any self-sustaining network of chemical reactions able to metabolize energy from the environment and reproduce, following the rules of Darwinian natural selection. So, no spiritual machines way more advanced than we are; no bizarre, star-dwelling intelligent clouds; and no wormhole-inhabiting swarms of nanobots endowed with some sort of collective self-awareness.
***
"So what can we expect to find as we scan the vast collection of worlds and search for living creatures? While no one can answer that, we can lay down a couple ground rules.
"Rule number one: Life will be carbon-based. Why? Because carbon is the easygoing atom, with a chemical versatility no other element can match. Carbon has four unpaired outer electrons. It can form tight chemical bonds by sharing these electrons with other chemical elements. A potential alternative is silicon, but its biochemistry would be severely limited in comparison, with bonds roughly half as strong as carbon’s. Life needs versatility to thrive.
"Rule number two: Life needs liquid water. Yes, you can find frozen bacteria in the permafrost, but they are not living. Since life is, in essence, a network of complex biochemical reactions that move compounds this way and that, it needs a solvent — a medium where the reactions can unfold.
***
"As a consequence, and despite life’s common carbon-water essence, there will not be identical life forms on different planets. The more complex the life form, the lower the odds that it will be replicated elsewhere, even approximately.
"If the flying spaghetti monster exists, it will exist on only one world. In the same way, we exist on only one world. We are the only humans in this universe. And if we consider what we have learned from the history of life on Earth, chances are that intelligent life is extremely rare. While intelligence is clearly an asset in the struggle for survival among species, it is not a purpose of evolution; evolution has no purpose. (my bold)
"Until it becomes intelligent, life is happy just replicating. With intelligence, it will be unhappy just replicating. This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the human condition.
"Putting all this together, we propose that we are indeed chemically connected to the rest of the cosmos, and that we share the same basis for life as any other hypothetical living thing. At the same time, we are unique, and so are all other living creatures. Life is an amazing force. Starting from a carbon-based code and a common genetic ancestor, it can create a staggering diversity of wonders — in this world, and possibly in others." (my bold)
Comment: the obvious conclusion is natural evolution cannot produce intelligence. We are unique, but it is possible other intelligent being exist elsewhere. Our specialness is we have consciousness with the ability for complex thought
Different in degree or kind: only humans have menopause?
by David Turell , Wednesday, March 13, 2024, 16:45 (42 days ago) @ David Turell
Not true, toothed whales have menopause:
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-menopause-female-whales.html
"The study focused on five whale species that—along with humans—are the only mammals known to go through menopause. The paper, published in the journal Nature, is titled "The evolution of menopause in toothed whales."
"The findings show that females of these whale species that experience menopause live around 40 years longer than other female whales of a similar size.
"By living longer without extending their "reproductive lifespan" (the years in which they breed), these females have more years to help their children and grandchildren, without increasing the "overlap" period when they compete with their daughters by breeding and raising calves at the same time.
"This new research shows that—despite being separated by 90 million years of evolution—whales and humans show remarkably similar life histories, which have evolved independently.
***
"'The process of evolution favors traits and behaviors by which an animal passes its genes to future generations," said lead author Dr. Sam Ellis, from the University of Exeter.
"'The most obvious way for a female to do this is to breed for the entire lifespan—and this is what happens in almost all animal species. There are more than 5,000 mammal species, and only six are known to go through menopause.
***
"Menopause is known to exist in five species of toothed whale: short-finned pilot whales, false killer whales, killer whales, narwhals and beluga whales.
"As well as outliving females of other similar-sized species, females in these five species outlive the males of their own species. For example, female killer whales can live into their 80s, while males are typically dead by 40.
"'The evolution of menopause and a long post-reproductive life could only happen in very specific circumstances," said Professor Darren Croft, of the University of Exeter and Executive Director at the Center for Whale Research
"'Firstly, a species must have a social structure in which females spend their lives in close contact with their offspring and grand-offspring.
"'Secondly, the females must have an opportunity to help in ways that improve the survival chances of their family. For example, female toothed whales are known to share food and use their knowledge to guide the group to find food when it is in short supply."
***
"'This study is the first to cross several species, enabled by the recent discovery of menopause in multiple species of toothed whales.
***
"'Despite these differences, our results show that humans and toothed whales show convergent life history—just like in humans, menopause in toothed whales evolved by selection to increase the total lifespan without also extending their reproductive lifespan.'"
Comment: convergent evolution is two social organisms. It is important to note this correction.