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Author | Topic: Questioning The Evolutionary Process | |||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22392 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Elmer writes: quote: That's fine. Let's not talk about genes and other chemical molecules either, then, since in this sense they are no different from rocks. Interesting. So in a discussion about transportation you would rule out mention of transmissions, engines and headlights?
You do not utterly change a word meaning by putting a modifier in front of it--you only qualify it. Word meanings are not fixed, they change over time. I would question your etymology for the word "selection", but whether you're right or wrong, today the word "selection" has a very clear meaning within biology. If you want to debate past heists of word meanings you should go to another site, this one is for discussing creation/evolution. Even if you were correct about the original meaning of "selection" and Darwin committed the crime of the century in co-opting it for his own use, it is now a fait accompli, and the current definition of selection in biology is just something you'll have to accept.
quote: By which I take you to mean, 'darwinism'. Darwinism is not synonymous with modern biology. It is isn't even synonymous with the modern theory of evolution, more properly known as the modern synthesis because it combined (synthesized) Darwin's theory with genetics.
quote: Actually you are using the old, 'fifty million frenchmen can't be wrong' fallacy. The belief that truth is a function of popularity. I am discussing the reality, the truth of evolution, which is not necessarily what darwinists think it is. There is no acceptable reason to accept the lingo that they have devised to support their dubious notion. Whether you accept the terminology of modern biology or not, in order to understand what we're saying and what biology books and websites are saying you have to use the proper definitions of that terminology. You can't take a sentence out of a biology book and interpret it using different definitions than the author originally used to compose the sentence, because obviously the result will be nonsense.
What Darwin said in his analogy entailed, (as analogies must if they are to be the least bit accurate), the chief aspects of the subject of that analogy, in his case, 'artificial selection', meaning human selection; meaning intelligent, aware, intentional choice-making according to a pre-set and universally applied criterion. That is what 'selection', as an act, entails. Therefore, if his analogy was valid, his "NS" had to possess these same characteristics. You've misunderstood the analogy, in fact, misunderstood analogies in general. An analogy is employed to illustrate unfamiliar principles using a familiar example that in some way shares some of those principles. So you would say to someone who never saw a pedal car, "A pedal car is like a real car, only instead of an engine you have to pedal it yourself." So in Darwin's analogy he was saying, "Natural selection is like the artificial selection of breeders, only instead of the breeder making reproductive decisions, the environment influences those choices." --Percy Edited by Percy, : Minor grammar fix.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
Elmer writes: Which is why when I demonstrate, logically and linguistically, that I am right and you are wrong, only to have you repeat the same wrong opinions on the subject, willy-nilly, it can get quite depressing. You've demonstrated nothing logically or linguistically. In the English language, words like select and choose do not automatically mean sentience on the part of the selector or chooser. A stream can choose its course, and nature can select, love, hate, abhor, instruct and do many other things, in English. On this site, we use English, not Elmerish. Whether you know it or not, the reason you're playing word games is that there's no evidence for this "theory" that you call neo-Lamarkism. You haven't presented any, and you won't, will you? Show me I'm wrong.
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Wounded King Member Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
Is anyone else getting flashbacks to Syamsu with Elmer's weird approach based on using totally inappropriate interpretations of terms?
TTFN, WK
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Wow, RAZD, yours has got to be the longest post I have ever seen on a debating bulletin board!! I'll work my way through it, but you will have to temporarily confine your posts to other people until I can catch up, and that might take all week!! Well that is what happens when you post a lot of stuff that is just wrong, and full of logical errors, misrepresentations, and then -- rather than learn from your mistakes -- you repeat them. You also need to reply to Message 134 - the second part of my response to your Message 82, and Message 148 - my response to Message 145, the third of your replies to my Message 128. What you may want to do is sit down with all those responses and glean from them what you consider to be the critical elements for your argument, and then restate your argument in as clear and concise a manner as possible -- short and to the point eh? Support it with evidence and provide clarification on points where your assertions have been refuted. The other alternative is for you to blunder on with the false assumption that what you are saying is still valid. This has been your approach so far, and it fails to deal with the evidence that you are -- to put it kindly -- wrong.
That's fine. Let's not talk about genes and other chemical molecules either, then, since in this sense they are no different from rocks. Red herring fallacy. The topic of discussion is biological evolution, so of necessity it involves biological life, not rocks or molecules or any other things that don't replicate and change.
Irrelevant?!?! You have got to be kidding. Not at all. When a new term is defined in science - say punctuated equilibrium or the big bang - the definition used in science is the one given to it. This applies to Lamarck's definition of acquired traits and to Darwin's definition of natural selection. Failure to understand this has led you to waste a lot of bandwidth railing against something that is really irrelevant to evolutionary biology.
You do not utterly change a word meaning by putting a modifier in front of it--you only qualify it. A natural fountain and an artificial fountain are both still fountains. The meaning of fountain is not changed. It still means water jetting out of the ground. A 'natural' child and a 'legitimate' child are both still babies, the one defined as a baby in exactly the same way as the other. The natural electricity of lightning from the clouds and the 'artificial' electricity from a generator are both the same physical thing. Whereas changing 'selection' from an activity 'performed by' a sentient being into something 'done to' a sentient being is changing the word's meaning entirely, and creating equivocation by giving it two antithetical meanings at once. And that is exactly what darwinists have done to 'selection'. The same applies to "acquired traits" and "punctuated equilibrium" nor does the use of "natural" completely change the meaning of "selection" -- there is still selection going on, not some other process -- rather the meaning is modified to mean only the selection that occurs naturally.
quote:By which I take you to mean, 'darwinism'. No, I mean modern biology, the field of study that has continued to develop since before the time of Darwin. If you don't want to be painted with the same brush as ignorant creationists, then you would be advised to stop using the terminology of ignorant creationists. "Darwinism" -- if the term means anything in the science of biology -- is a subset of evolution which is a part of biology. Modern biology includes genetics, which is not a part of Darwin's work.
quote:Well, there you are then. It's just as I've been telling you. I rest my case. QED. Nowhere do those definitions require a selector. Again your poor logic fails you. From Message 147:
quote: There is no selector being or entity or consciousness that selects the lottery numbers, yet they are selected, and they are selected according to the definitions 1.a. and 1.b. you listed. Note that this simple example completely invalidates your claim of a special meaning to selection, and that continuing to make such a claim is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong.
Please note the difference between using 'selection' as an act of choice, contrasted with referring to 'a selection' as a thing chosen. The first sense is active, the second passive. Note that the first sense refers to an act, the second sense to a thing. If "natural Selection" is to take the first sense of the word, it has to take the active, dynamic sense of 'making a choice', and that is the only sense in which it can be considered a causal mechanism. The passive sense refers only to a thing chosen, that is, an effect brought about by a chooser. Now a book may be the 'selection of the month', but it did not 'select' itself. If Darwin meant 'natural selection' to mean the effects, (i.e.,the traits/organisms) we find in the biosphere after the passge of time, then he did no more than point at what is there, he offered no explanationas to how it came to there, i.e., its origins. But I do not think that Darwin was using 'selection' in the passive sense, the sense that might apply to a cat or a dog at a show, or a tie on a rack, or an entree. I think that Darwin fully intended his "Natural Selection" to mean exactly the same kind of active, dynamic selection as that practiced by stockbreeders like himself, show judges, and restaurant patrons. All of whom are sentient beings actively making choices based upon their personal goals and the criteria established for arriving at those goals. I do not know of any earthquakes, floods, inanimate objects, or abstract notions that can make choices. So either admit that "Natural Selection" is a corruption of the word 'selection', by which an intentional and intelligence-based act, choice, is attributed to a non-sentient abstraction,'nature', [personification], or show that your "Natural Selection" is the causal behaviour of some specific, concrete and empirical entity that is just like us human 'selectors', 'judges', 'inspectors', and the like. Or adopt the later, neo-darwinist, corruption of its meaning. Note that this whole rant is invalidated by the lottery example. In addition "natural selection" existed before Darwin's use. SeeEdward Blyth - Wikipedia quote: Or another sourceGenNet.org quote: Again, you keep repeating nonsense instead of dealing with reality, and this is counterproductive.
Actually you are using the old, 'fifty million frenchmen can't be wrong' fallacy. The belief that truth is a function of popularity. Not at all, I am saying that the terms are defined in scientific publications, and that to use different definitions is to equivocate. http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/equiv.htm
quote: You either use the terminology as defined in the science in question or you are equivocating, which leads to meaningless statements not founded on facts or reality.
I am discussing the reality, the truth of evolution, which is not necessarily what darwinists think it is. There is no acceptable reason to accept the lingo that they have devised to support their dubious notion. The only equivocation in evolutionary terminology-- "equivocation ... --originates entirely with them, not me, as I have very clearly demonstrated. Please refer to the definition used by logic, as this was noted as "the logical fallacy of equivocation" -- see above. You want to use a definition of selection that is different from the definition used by science and this necessarily is "the logical fallacy of equivocation." Once again your poor logic fails you and you are illogical, foolhardy, silly and just plain wrong to insist otherwise.
Well, that is exactly what I have just said that he said. Where is this "false" assertion that you claim ?!?! Nobody denies that Darwin created an analogy between human stock breeding and plant cultivation with what happened to organisms in the wild. Unless you deny it that. Do you? What Darwin said in his analogy entailed, (as analogies must if they are to be the least bit accurate), the chief aspects of the subject of that analogy, in his case, 'artificial selection', meaning human selection; meaning intelligent, aware, intentional choice-making according to a pre-set and universally applied criterion. That is what 'selection', as an act, entails. Therefore, if his analogy was valid, his "NS" had to possess these same characteristics. Now "Nature", meaning the biosphere as such, does not in fact, as an abstraction, possess those features. But "Nature", figuratively or superstitiolusly taken to be some sort of semi-divine spirit entity, could.But 'spirit entities' didn't go over well in Darwin's set, and by the time of his death his "Natural Selection" was headed for the scientific rubbish heap; although it remained popular among those who embraced it for religious and political reasons. Eventually it was saved from scientific oblivion by Mendelian inheritance theory, genetics, and the metaphysical speculation that genetic mistakes and accidents could originate and determine the adaptations, novel bioforms, and added complexity and productivity found in the biosphere. Origin by accident. But that's another issue. Oh please, RAZD. The personification is there. It's undeniable. Darwin drew an analogy between the works of nature and the works of man. An analogy is a comparison based upon finding similarities between different things. Such as stock breeding and evolution. When the comparison/analogy seeks to establish a similarity between something non-human and that which is human, that effort is called personification. That's a plain fact. You cannot "read into something" that which is a plain fact. It is there, whether you like it or not. This nonsense has already been refuted, and repeating falsehoods is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong.
That's true. Which is why when I demonstrate, logically and linguistically, that I am right and you are wrong, only to have you repeat the same wrong opinions on the subject, willy-nilly, it can get quite depressing. Except that you have not provided any evidence that what you say is correct. None. Not one whit. Zero. Nada. Zilch. You have also used poor logic that has failed you every time, logic that has been shown to be false and misleading. You say:
Message 82 I've proved that facts and logic can change my mind. So bring on your facts and logic. Yet all you have proved is that you ignore evidence, facts and logic whenever and wherever it contradicts what you want to believe. This in reality is delusion:
What level of delusion is yet to be determined.
Not true. Darwin simply asserted that he believed that not all 'selection' is directed. He was wrong to do that, because it just isn't true. By definition. All acts of 'selection' are directed by goals, values, awareness, and intention. There is no other kind, except in the notional world of Darwin and his disciples. Now, if you want to talk 'mechanical sorting'-- (as in wind and water distribution of stone particles)-- instead of 'selection', that's another matter. Non-sentient agencies can do that. Do you mean "natural sorting" as opposed to "artificial sorting"? Again, just to belabor the point one more time, from Message 147:
quote: There is no selector being or entity or consciousness that selects the lottery numbers, yet they are selected, and they are selected according to the definitions 1.a. and 1.b. you listed. Note that this simple example completely invalidates your claim of a special meaning to selection, and that continuing to make such a claim is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong. Note further that this is NOT an example of "sorting" in any way, and to make such a claim would be foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong.
You simply do not understand the concept of 'personification', for some reason. Just as soon as you attribute a human property to a non-human entity, such as the biosphere, (here refering to the biosphere as 'nature'), and then assign a human ability [selection] to it, here via the word, 'natural', you have made up a personification. Go back and re-read the definition of the word that I supplied you earlier on, and then justify how you can continue to deny that Darwin personified, anthropomorphised the biosphere, with his "Natural Selection". And then you'll see why that didn't go over, and why the word 'selection' then had to be given a totally new meaning by the neo-darwinists, going from 'the act of selecting' to 'the experience of being selected'. Except that this whole premise is STILL FALSE. "Natural" does not mean "nature did it, ... and btw, 'nature' is some kind of supernatural boogyman" - that you keep repeating this falsified claim means you are not learning.
Therebye propping up the materialist notion that live organisms are essentially no different from dust in the wind, and that everything that happens, 'just happens, that's all'. Very metaphysical stuff. But at least you finally admit that the meaning of 'selection' was altered in order to suit a metaphysical assumption. Except that conclusions based on false premises are false conclusions. Very ordinary logical stuff.
Well, you can go on asserting that, but I have clearly shown that it is just not true. Sticking 'natural' in front of 'selection' does not cause that word to legitimately go from 'directed act of choosing' to 'experience of being chosen'. Added to which if "NS" means 'selection' in the orignalsense, then it means 'a directed act of choosing from among alternatives, based upon criteria linked to values and goals'. I defy you to find me any abstraction that is not quasi-religious, or any inanimate object that is not a human artefact, that can do that. Therefore, if you say "NS" can do that, then you make it quasi-religious, a mystical 'spirit' of some kind. But if you opt for the neo-darwinian version of 'selection', i.e., 'the passively received experience of being chosen', then you've just chucked "NS" as a causal mechanism/explanation, religious or scientific, right out the window. Repeating false assertions does not make them true. The fact remains that "Natural Selection" is well defined in the science of evolutionary biology and that no amount of equivocation or outright falsehood on your part will change that fact. The natural world will continue to ignore your opinion as irrelevant and immaterial, and evolution will continue to occur via, among other processes, natural selection.
Message 148 Evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. Natural Selection - the differential success of various phenotypes in a specific population and ecology in passing hereditary traits on to the next generation. No matter what you say these processes will not be affected, nor will their meaning in the science of evolutionary biology change. Enjoy. compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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Elmer Member (Idle past 5904 days) Posts: 82 Joined: |
Hi again;
Only enough time for nibble. You say- quote: Protest away, but the undeniable fact of the matter is that Darwin personified nature by attributing a human quality/property/trait, (the abilty to select from among alternative choices), to an abstraction, "Nature" , and then the neo-darwinsts took it a step further, and changed the meaning of the word, 'selection' altogether. You can assert that you are talking about "different processes that actually happen", but the fact is, I can show you live organisms making individual choices, aka, acts of 'selection', but you cannot show me an abstraction that does that, nor any inanimate, naturally occuring object or system, that does that. So please stop saying that your mystical "Natural Selection", and/or your mystical, "Nature", does that. As for the neo-darwinist corruption of the word 'selection' meaning, wherebye 'to make a choice' is turned into, 'to become one of the chosen', creating total equivocation as neo-darwinists used this as sophists, perpetually sliding from the active, causal verb form [mechanism] to the passive, noun/effect form [observation of fact], often in the same breath, in order to evangelise their metaphysic.
quote: **Something was happening long before Darwin, and human ideas about what was happening were in existence for as long as there were human beings around to think about what was happening, and there were people around thinking about evolution since the ancient greeks, and there were europeans speculating about the causes for evolution for some time before Darwin said a word, and some of those thinkers seemed to have been thinking thoughts very similar to Charles Darwin's [see Erasmus Darwin, et al], but the notion, "Natural Selection", did not actually come into full existence until Chuck put those words together and wrote a book about it. Your problem here is that you cannot see that there is a vast difference between the country and a map of it. Evolution has been going on since the first day of life, and something has been driving it for all that time, and that is 'the country' we are exploring. But Darwin didn't draw his map of it until "OotS", and so "Natural Selection" did not exist before... whatever it was--1859?
quote: Language evolves, and so long as it evolves naturally, nobody complains. However, when language evolves naturally, word meanings do not become their exact opposites and retain both their original meaning and its opposite, setting up ambivalence, confusion, and communication breakdowm. It takes some "Humpty Dumpty" deliberate tampering to do that, and that tampering, that self-serving corruption, is exactly what the neo-darwinists did, and still do, to the word, 'selection'. The least darwinists could do is to alert their listeners to when it is that they are using 'selection' in the active sense, as a 'cause', and when it is that they are using it in their passive sense, as an 'effect'. But they very carefully letting anyone know that.
quote: Good thing thing then that I have never even come close to suggesting that language can never change, isn't it? What I have said is that language can change, and does change, and changes in two very different ways. Legitimately, language changes unintentionally from one sense to another as time marches on, or brand new words [neologisms] are introduced to signify novel things or original concepts. But language can also be changed illegitimately, Humpty Dumpty style, by people who want the word to take on a new sense that is qualitatively different from the sense in common usage. Either way the language ends up changed. Our problem in the present debate is not really about the fact that 'selection' can now mean both a cause and an effect, but the deliberate equivocation of using the 'effect' sense as if it were the 'cause' sense. Make up your minds, is "NS" a causal force, a 'mechanism' that explains observed effects, or is it those effects, the results/effects of some other causal mechanism. (It cannot cause itself, since logically, a cause cannot be its own effect, and vice versa, in one and the same case.) Anyhoo, we've clobbered this one to death, and I cannot think of anything else to add to it, so if you want to believe that it is perfectly legitimate to use the same word, 'selection', in two different senses, interchangeably, that's your prerogative, but, for reasons given and amply explained, I disagree.
[quote]
Well, I don't think we should introduce 'sexual selection', which a/only applies to sexully reproducing organisms andb/ is, in those rare instances in which it is truly present, is a dynamic, intentional activity, as opposed to the passive, accidental experience intrinsic to natural selection, until after we have thoroughly determined the nature of 'natural selection'. So I'm going to skip down a bit." quote: No kidding! Good thing I'm not trying to impress and affect "nature and the universe", isn't it? Merely trying trying to express my opinions to you. Not to them. What made you bring up "nature and the universe", anyway?
quote: Yes, it does, although not in nearly so many cases as darwinists think that it does. But when true 'sexual selection' does take place, it totatally conforms to the pre-darwinian sense of 'selection', i.e., sentient beings make intentional choices between alternatives, based upon their ability to discriminate according to criteria based uipon values, with those values derived from their goals. Picking a sexual partner is 'selection' in exactly the same active sense as is picking out what tie you'll wear to work. It is the act of a sentient being, not an abstraction, such as Darwin's "nature".
quote: Well, that's your opinion, and I'm sure you'll stick to it, and if you are only speaking of it as a particular ideational position, yours, then in that notional sense, you must be right. However, if you are trying to tell me that your notion and empirical reality map to each other in such perfection that you can say 'natural selection' as if it were some real and actual, physical and a tangible part of this universe, then you are equivocating. Like the song says, "It ain't necessarily so."
quote: Sorry, I didn't see that list. I googled 'aspects of natural selection', but couldn't find any.
quote: I did not "limit [natural selection] to passive entities. I expanded the term to include passive entities, as should have been perfectly plain in context. I think that you may may be deliberately throwing up 'non sequitur' objections, just for the sake of having something to say. I hope that that is not the case, since I would like to continue our debate. The point is, does your 'natural selection' apply as appropriately to inanimate objects and immaterial concepts as it does to living organisms, or does it not? Please respond to the point I'm making, and not to some point that I very clearly am not making.
quote: Well, you can call it a "strawman version" if you like. But it is not a 'strawman version', and you cannot demonstrate that it is, so your name-calling gets you nowhere.
[quote]
"Well, aside from absurd truisms, such as,-- the sick are not as healthy as the hale and hearty, the stupid are not as bright as the intelligent, the old are older than the young, the slow are not as fast as the swift, the blind do not see as well as the sighted, the weak are not so powerful as the strong,-- and on and on, just exactly what is it that you are trying to say?" And yet in spite of these truisms you haven't made the connection that this shows that natural selection happens, that it is fact, because that is what these truisms tell us." No, these truisms only tell us that death is a fact of life, something that doesn't require a 'scientific theory' in order to be observed and accepted into our bank of knowledge. You are trying to advance the notion that a fact of life is a scientific theory about a fact of life, and that is absurd.
[quote]
"The race is to the swift, the struggle to the strong--usually. We get that. " Not really, the "race" goes to those that survive and reproduce more, to those who contribute most to following generations - by surviving from year to year and breeding more than others -- they "win" the "race" to provide the genetic material for following generations.[quote]
You are still just listing facts, i.e., effects, and acting as if the existence of these facts explains the existence of these facts. Like I said, that's absurd. Until you give a causal explanation for the fact that some "win" and some "lose", you are not saying anything, you are just talking.
quote: Very true, but the we are not talking about facts, but about your hypothesis, "Natural Selection". You cannot debate facts, by definition--they are what they are, no more, no less. Notions about those facts are a whole other matter, but you repeatedly insist upon conflating the facts and your explanation for them, as if they were one and the same thing. They are not. You'll just have to accept that.
quote: If 'genetic drift' is something that results from 'natural selection', as you say here, then my reading on 'genetic drift'[i.e, Random fluctuations in the frequency of the appearance of a gene in a small isolated population, presumably owing to chance rather than natural selection."], must have been entirely wrong.
quote: Birth defects, like broken legs and meteors dropping from the sky, are facts of life. They are not a theoretical postulate called 'natural selction'. Longevity, mortality, fecundity, and chance are all facts of life. None of them are 'natural selection'. You keep on making the same mistake, i.e., mistaking the actual country for your ideational map of it. It would appear that you would happily point to every aspect of life itself, and call it 'natural selection'. Life = NS? I do not think so.
quote: Whether or not you can empirically demonstrate that this assertion is true, let alone demonstrate that it is a common, non-anomalous circumstance, (sufficiently common as to constitute a scientific, universal, causal mechanism for evolution), remains to be seen. But what you have admitted is that your "NS" is a negative, subtractive, non-addditive phenomenon that, as Darwin's peers pointed out to him, cannot account for the addition of novel traits to the variations already existing. Which is why Fisher and co. invented the notion of 'adaptation by genetic accident', usually referred to as "RM+NS".Which reduces everything that your "NS" gets to 'pick'/'eliminate', into a matter of pure chance. Which, logically, reduces your "NS" to an aspect of pure chance, which is what it was to begin with, anyway. "Chance" is not a scientific mechanism. Being, by definition, irregular and unpredictable. So there goes both "RM" and "NS" as scientific mechqanisms. Into the bin of bad ideas. Sorry. quote: Since, according to you, these 'differential varitions' are the end product of pure chance, i.e., "random genetic mutations", then it is logically undeniable that they are chance as much a matter of pure chance as are the randomly mutated genes that produced them. Like it or not, you have reduced evolution, and life itself, to a matter of chance accident. But that's where materialism has its primary postulate, so I do not think that this conclusion is accidental, but is 'pre-determined'. Later.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Looks like you are just going to ignore a lot of comments that refute your position, while you keep stating falsehoods, misrepresentations and the like. That means I will just have to keep repeating the facts that refute your position.
Protest away, but the undeniable fact of the matter is that Darwin personified nature by attributing a human quality/property/trait, (the abilty to select from among alternative choices), to an abstraction, "Nature" , and then the neo-darwinsts took it a step further, and changed the meaning of the word, 'selection' altogether. You can assert that you are talking about "different processes that actually happen", but the fact is, I can show you live organisms making individual choices, aka, acts of 'selection', but you cannot show me an abstraction that does that, nor any inanimate, naturally occuring object or system, that does that. So please stop saying that your mystical "Natural Selection", and/or your mystical, "Nature", does that. As for the neo-darwinist corruption of the word 'selection' meaning, wherebye 'to make a choice' is turned into, 'to become one of the chosen', creating total equivocation as neo-darwinists used this as sophists, perpetually sliding from the active, causal verb form [mechanism] to the passive, noun/effect form [observation of fact], often in the same breath, in order to evangelise their metaphysic. It has already been demonstrated that this is irrelevant refuted nonsense, and continuing to make such claims is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong. Nowhere do the definitions of selection require a selector. Again your poor logic fails you. From Message 147:
quote: There is no selector being or entity or consciousness, metaphysical or otherwise, that selects the lottery numbers, yet they are selected, and they are selected according to the definitions 1.a. and 1.b. you listed. Note that this simple example completely invalidates your claim of a special meaning to selection, and that continuing to make such a claim is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong. Regardless of what you say, claim, assert or espouse, evolution and natural selection are defined by the science and those definitions are used when discussing the science or you are equivocating or worse.
quote: Something was happening long before Darwin, and human ideas about what was happening were in existence for as long as there were human beings around to think about what was happening, and there were people around thinking about evolution since the ancient greeks, and there were europeans speculating about the causes for evolution for some time before Darwin said a word, and some of those thinkers seemed to have been thinking thoughts very similar to Charles Darwin's [see Erasmus Darwin, et al], but the notion, "Natural Selection", did not actually come into full existence until Chuck put those words together and wrote a book about it. Your problem here is that you cannot see that there is a vast difference between the country and a map of it. Evolution has been going on since the first day of life, and something has been driving it for all that time, and that is 'the country' we are exploring. But Darwin didn't draw his map of it until "OotS", and so "Natural Selection" did not exist before... whatever it was--1859? And yet, aside from being false, this is still totally irrelevant to what evolution in general and natural selection in particular mean. As noted in Message 154 quote: The idea of natural selection was around before Darwin used it, nor did Darwin change its meaning, nor did Darwin imbue it with some false mysticism.
Language evolves, and so long as it evolves naturally, nobody complains. However, when language evolves naturally, word meanings do not become their exact opposites and retain both their original meaning and its opposite, setting up ambivalence, confusion, and communication breakdowm. It takes some "Humpty Dumpty" deliberate tampering to do that, and that tampering, that self-serving corruption, is exactly what the neo-darwinists did, and still do, to the word, 'selection'. The least darwinists could do is to alert their listeners to when it is that they are using 'selection' in the active sense, as a 'cause', and when it is that they are using it in their passive sense, as an 'effect'. But they very carefully letting anyone know that. Yet the term is defined and used according to the definition given. Most people use that definition to understand the meaning of it's use in biology. Apparently you seem to think you need a code book. It would appear that only you have a problem, one that you have invented from misrepresenting words, history and facts.
quote: Good thing thing then that I have never even come close to suggesting that language can never change, isn't it? What I have said is that language can change, and does change, and changes in two very different ways. Legitimately, language changes unintentionally from one sense to another as time marches on, or brand new words [neologisms] are introduced to signify novel things or original concepts. But language can also be changed illegitimately, Humpty Dumpty style, by people who want the word to take on a new sense that is qualitatively different from the sense in common usage. Either way the language ends up changed. Our problem in the present debate is not really about the fact that 'selection' can now mean both a cause and an effect, but the deliberate equivocation of using the 'effect' sense as if it were the 'cause' sense. Make up your minds, is "NS" a causal force, a 'mechanism' that explains observed effects, or is it those effects, the results/effects of some other causal mechanism. (It cannot cause itself, since logically, a cause cannot be its own effect, and vice versa, in one and the same case.) Anyhoo, we've clobbered this one to death, and I cannot think of anything else to add to it, so if you want to believe that it is perfectly legitimate to use the same word, 'selection', in two different senses, interchangeably, that's your prerogative, but, for reasons given and amply explained, I disagree. Disagree all you want, you are and still will be wrong. On the other hand reality will still consist of evolution and natural selection.
quote: No kidding! Good thing I'm not trying to impress and affect "nature and the universe", isn't it? Merely trying trying to express my opinions to you. Not to them. What made you bring up "nature and the universe", anyway? You seemed to think you had some earth shattering truth that would overturn reality. Glad you realize it is just an opinion -- one totally at ODDS with reality.
Yes, it does, although not in nearly so many cases as darwinists think that it does. But when true 'sexual selection' does take place, it totatally conforms to the pre-darwinian sense of 'selection', i.e., sentient beings make intentional choices between alternatives, based upon their ability to discriminate according to criteria based uipon values, with those values derived from their goals. Picking a sexual partner is 'selection' in exactly the same active sense as is picking out what tie you'll wear to work. It is the act of a sentient being, not an abstraction, such as Darwin's "nature" Well, that's your opinion, and I'm sure you'll stick to it, and if you are only speaking of it as a particular ideational position, yours, then in that notional sense, you must be right. However, if you are trying to tell me that your notion and empirical reality map to each other in such perfection that you can say 'natural selection' as if it were some real and actual, physical and a tangible part of this universe, then you are equivocating. Like the song says, "It ain't necessarily so." More falsehoods repeated. Sexual selection is still part of natural selection, and results in the same kind of selection of hereditary traits, and there is still no mystical metaphysical selector.
Sorry, I didn't see that list. I googled 'aspects of natural selection', but couldn't find any. And you think that is an argument?
I did not "limit [natural selection] to passive entities. I expanded the term to include passive entities, as should have been perfectly plain in context. I think that you may may be deliberately throwing up 'non sequitur' objections, just for the sake of having something to say. I hope that that is not the case, since I would like to continue our debate. The point is, does your 'natural selection' apply as appropriately to inanimate objects and immaterial concepts as it does to living organisms, or does it not? Please respond to the point I'm making, and not to some point that I very clearly am not making. The point is and has been that natural selection as used in modern biology applies to living organisms.
No, these truisms only tell us that death is a fact of life, something that doesn't require a 'scientific theory' in order to be observed and accepted into our bank of knowledge. You are trying to advance the notion that a fact of life is a scientific theory about a fact of life, and that is absurd. Yet death before reproduction removes the phenotype from the gene pool. A very real effect that occurs to many organisms..
You are still just listing facts, i.e., effects, and acting as if the existence of these facts explains the existence of these facts. Like I said, that's absurd. Until you give a causal explanation for the fact that some "win" and some "lose", you are not saying anything, you are just talking. Oh look -- you found the list.
Very true, but the we are not talking about facts, but about your hypothesis, "Natural Selection". You cannot debate facts, by definition--they are what they are, no more, no less. Notions about those facts are a whole other matter, but you repeatedly insist upon conflating the facts and your explanation for them, as if they were one and the same thing. They are not. You'll just have to accept that. See that list again. Those are facts.
quote: If 'genetic drift' is something that results from 'natural selection', as you say here, then my reading on 'genetic drift'[i.e, Random fluctuations in the frequency of the appearance of a gene in a small isolated population, presumably owing to chance rather than natural selection."], must have been entirely wrong. Nope. Genetic drift and natural selection are two different mechanisms. Genetic drift is the change in hereditary traits due to stochastic processes, not selection.
Birth defects, like broken legs and meteors dropping from the sky, are facts of life. They are not a theoretical postulate called 'natural selction'. Longevity, mortality, fecundity, and chance are all facts of life. None of them are 'natural selection'. You keep on making the same mistake, i.e., mistaking the actual country for your ideational map of it. It would appear that you would happily point to every aspect of life itself, and call it 'natural selection'. Life = NS? I do not think so. Once again what you think is irrelevant. Birth defects are genetic and thus are directly subject to selection, most often resulting in death before reproduction. Broken legs can be a result of stochastic processes or it can be due to weak bones - a hereditary trait subject to selection. Meteors dropping from the sky are stochastic processes not subject to selection. Let me repeat that list of aspects of natural selection:
quote: It is the differential success of various phenotypes - resulting from existing variations between individual phenotypes - in passing on hereditary traits to the next generation within a specific population and ecology that results in natural selection, regardless of what you think.
Whether or not you can empirically demonstrate that this assertion is true, let alone demonstrate that it is a common, non-anomalous circumstance, (sufficiently common as to constitute a scientific, universal, causal mechanism for evolution), remains to be seen. But what you have admitted is that your "NS" is a negative, subtractive, non-addditive phenomenon that, as Darwin's peers pointed out to him, cannot account for the addition of novel traits to the variations already existing. Which is why Fisher and co. invented the notion of 'adaptation by genetic accident', usually referred to as "RM+NS". The Galapagos Finches, the Peppered Moths, the Walkingstick insects all demonstrate this fact. You can also look at any population of offspring and compare it to the population of the parents and actually measure the genetic differences. RM+NS means random mutation plus natural selection, and not "adaptation by genetic accident' -- once again you are wrong. The random mutation is the part that adds variation to the population and natural selection is the part that removes the less successful variations for that particular population and ecology. As we saw in the Galapagos Finches, the Peppered Moths, and the Walkingstick insects the supposed (by you) "negative, subtractive, non-additive phenomenon" acts in one way in one generation and then the other way in another generation, and thus cannot be truly "negative, subtractive, non-additive" -- instead it is just change, change that selects the phenotypes for adaptation to the ecology.
Which reduces everything that your "NS" gets to 'pick'/'eliminate', into a matter of pure chance. Which, logically, reduces your "NS" to an aspect of pure chance, which is what it was to begin with, anyway. "Chance" is not a scientific mechanism. Being, by definition, irregular and unpredictable. So there goes both "RM" and "NS" as scientific mechqanisms. Into the bin of bad ideas. Sorry. And again the facts show that you are wrong and your poor logic is false.
Since, according to you, these 'differential varitions' are the end product of pure chance, i.e., "random genetic mutations", then it is logically undeniable that they are chance as much a matter of pure chance as are the randomly mutated genes that produced them. Like it or not, you have reduced evolution, and life itself, to a matter of chance accident. But that's where materialism has its primary postulate, so I do not think that this conclusion is accidental, but is 'pre-determined'. And still false. The "'differential varitions'" (sic) occur anew in each generation from random mutation, and thus are not an end product. Nor is any species or organism an "end product" but one in transition. Like it or not we are left with:
quote: Any time you want to discuss your so far not provided concept of neo-Lamarckism we'll be happy to see how it stacks up. I won't be holding my breath however, seeing as you (a) have not replied to all comments on your opinion and (b) have failed to provide any substantiation for your opinions or (c) been able to refute the invalidations of your opinions by facts and substantiated arguements. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : sp compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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molbiogirl Member (Idle past 2642 days) Posts: 1909 From: MO Joined: |
...at least make sure that proving you a liar isn't one google away.
Sorry, I didn't see that list. I googled 'aspects of natural selection', but couldn't find any. The third hit. Understanding Evolution - Your one-stop source for information on evolution. Seriously, Elmer.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Elmer wants a cookbook ... a list of all possible aspects.
Another site is A Population Genetics Model of Natural Selection:
quote: Although it might be a little too technical for one who can't distinguish between natural and nature ... Enjoy. compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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pumaz Junior Member (Idle past 5885 days) Posts: 4 Joined: |
Yikes this thread is somethin.
My post will be short and sweet. Just a little interesting tidbit on mutation to stir things up. Rates of mutation actually vary throughout areas of the genome. For instance, in the region that codes for your immune system the rate of mutations is much higher. This is because your immune system needs to be highly adaptable in order to continually protect you from new diseases.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
pumaz writes: Just a little interesting tidbit on mutation to stir things up. Rates of mutation actually vary throughout areas of the genome. For instance, in the region that codes for your immune system the rate of mutations is much higher. This is because your immune system needs to be highly adaptable in order to continually protect you from new diseases. I participated in the thread at various points, but can't remember too much about it. I knew at the time that rates of mutation vary on different parts of the genome, and I can't see how that would stir things up. But I hope it does. We don't want to get bored on this site. It certainly makes sense for the rate of mutation to be high in the immune system area, as variety within the population would increase the chances of a species surviving an attack by a new pathogen. The main thing I remember on this thread was someone claiming that the phrase "natural selection" somehow implies sentience behind the process of evolution. It was pretty silly! Welcome to EvC.
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