bio evolution, light, sound and aroma

This element of competition seems totally unnecessary.A Polar bear would struggle to survive without a thick white coat. Are you suggesting that it needed to compete against yellow, purple and green bears?Something has to survive before it could be selected even if just for five minutes. The process of survival doesn't completely explain its existence.Different models of cars are more successful than others but they have to exist on the market before being rejected. Pain is a mental sensation. A qualitative experience it can occur without signs of bodily injury. There is no lawful reason why any bodily stimulation should come with a conscious experience. You would have to have an explanation as to why some kind of bodily activity would inevitably lead to felt/experienced mental sensations.If random mutation caused the emergence of conscious pain sensations then why? You would need an explanation of why a biochemical set up would lead to a mental emergent property and why that property was available in the structure of reality from a basic physics standpoint.

But you don't seem to fathom what this entails.You therefore cannot reduce everything in reality to some simple starting place because that deceptively simple first moment was brimming with potential and bizarre and plentiful dispositions. Like a witches brew.That raises the question of why would reality have these dispositions That would be an equally serious puzzle to anything despite having stretched the emergence of these properties out over billions of years. A bicycle is designed. If you found a bicycle in the jungle and were from a primitive society you would have trouble explaining its origin. Bikes and other artefacts exist because of creative mental processes and an accumulation of social-cultural-historical events.This is an interesting example of intelligent design. We have made mental deductions about how to make a useful vehicle to propel ourselves around.... and fulfil our goals. It is a case of our mental dispositions interacting with metals dispositions. Indeed metals flexibility for a wide range of uses in combination with other materials properties.If you were going to try and explain the origin of a human artefact scientifically it would be quite hard because you would have to take account of the mental, historical, necessities and social activity that causally led to its existence. You could not apply a crude theory of reverse engineering as appears to happen in evolution
scienceBack to the dispositions issue. Can you turn water to wine? If not why not? Is it because perchance water does not have the disposition to create wine no matter how long you leave it. Essential ingredients are missing.

Well, you were talking about the primordial soup, so we're a long ways away from eyes yet. I was thinking along the lines of very simple self-replicating molecules.But, we can look at DNA replication if you want. Let's use a really simple example.Given a DNA strand of:ATCGWhen it replicates, it'll go:ATCG --> ATCG --> ATCGBut, this replication process is imperfect. That is, it doesn't always copy everything exactly and sometimes errors are introduced. So you could get something like:ATCG --> ATCG --> AATCGThat would be a duplication error, the A got copied twice before the T got copied.So now we have a new strand of DNA, AATCG, that didn't exist before. But that original strand, ATCG, did not have to have the disposition to create the AATCG, because it was the result of an accident. The replication process is imperfect and introduces errors. But you're looking at it with respect to the environment. Within the cell, looking at the DNA, we don't know what the environment is like yet. All we see is that the DNA got changed, we don't know what the result will be nor how it will react to the environment. That's the sense that mutations are random: with respect to the environment. They are random, with respect to the environment, because the envorment doesn't reach down to that level, it has an effect on the phenotype, not the genotype. No, that's what I'm disputing. When you're dealing with self-replication, if that replication is imperfect, then you can get novel things that the original did not have the disposition for. Does the DNA example above help at all?How about this:Let's say you're using a photocopier to make copies of an image. You put the picture in, hit the button, and a copy of that image comes out. Now, let's say that the copying process is imperfect: the copy machine occationally adds a blob of black toner in the picture that it wasn't supposed to.Now you put an image in the copier, hit the button, and out comes a copy of the image with a big black spot on it. That original image did not have to have the disposition for a big black spot on it in order for the imperfect copying process to introduce it.Does that make sense?

You are ignoring all other pertinent factors.I don't see why the replication factor has to be perfect? In reality it takes place within a complex environmental interaction. So if you abstract away from all the other detail you will see simply a seemingly faulty replication completely divorced from context which seems highly ecologically invalid.The result of these replication "differences" is to create new unique emergent properties.If I mix three chemicals together but accidentally knock a fourth chemical into the mix and the resultant substance is incidentally a cure for cancer, the fact that the incident was accidental does not take anything away from the fact that this mixture of chemicals has the disposition to cure cancer. The emergent property is still suprisingThe description people are using here is loaded to try and exorcise anything that requires non mechanical entities.I find it suspicious that the language to describe evolution is supposed to dampen any claims of meaningful properties. It is like trying to describe a painting be mentioning individual dots of paint but ignoring the "gestalt." (the thing as a whole)It seems implicitly fuelled by atheism and the desire not to give a creator type thing any credit for any process in creating organisms. But if reality has prior dispositions then that is a role for a creator. And you can't use the evolution model to explain why something exists in the first place only how it might work on a pre-existing universe of surprising amazing dispositions such as consciousness.

[qs]Let's say you're using a photocopier to make copies of an image. You put the picture in, hit the button, and a copy of that image comes out. Now, let's say that the copying process is imperfect: the copy machine occasionally adds a blob of black toner in the picture that it wasn't supposed to.Now you put an image in the copier, hit the button, and out comes a copy of the image with a big black spot on it. That original image did not have to have the disposition for a big black spot on it in order for the imperfect copying process to introduce it[./qs[]I am not referring to dispositions in one isolated entity. I am talking about dispositions in the whole not in unrealistically isolated individuals.The disposition of something on its own is different then its disposition in a context interacting with other things in its environs.I have the disposition to get cut and bleed if I rub my finger on a knife blade. However that disposition won't manifest if I am locked naked in a padded cell. That is the issue in my prior post of decontextualising evolution from its context

Well I'm a Christian, so you can forget about being fueled by atheism. Sure, but your chemistry skills did not have the disposition for curing cancer, you stumbled across the cure by accident.We could say that your education did not have the disposition for curing cancer, because you didn't find the cure from something you learned.But still, your education and chemistry skills ultimately lead to the curing of cancer even though they didn't have the disposition for it.Similiarly, novel features can arrise in organisms that don't have the disposition for them. Dispositions in the whole what?I'm trying to explain to you how "new" things can arrise from something that does not have the disposition for them. You'll probably always be able to zoom out and find a disposition somewhere, but that isn't what you came off as talking about.You said that you couldn't see how the primordial soup could be creative without a disposition for it. I offer that it could if it contained molecules that self-replicated imperfectly. If you want to maintain your whole disposition thing, then all you'd have to say is that the Earth had the disposition for developing the primordial soup's self-replicating molecules. But, that is beside the point that the primordial soup could have been creative without the disposition for the things that arise from it. Heck, you could even go further back and say that the solar system had the disposition for the formation of the Earth, which had the disposition for the formation of the self-replicating molecules, and so on.But that still doesn't address the fact that some things can yield new things that they did not have the disposition for. And the impression I got from you was that you didn't accept that.

A disposition isn't isolated from context "the rest of reality" however you choose to define that is the context.That is what I was referring to in relation to a dot of paint versus the whole painting. It is a false reduction. The whole of reality could be the mind of a deity or magic ether stuff or an artificial simulation etc.The dispositions are that available rules from activity allowable within that sphere.

Then what was the point about talking about the disposition of primordial soup specifically? You're getting really confusing. What are you talking about?

If you prefer an undesigned example, consider snowflakes. Is water "brimming with potential and bizarre and plentiful dispositions" to produce forms such as these? But again, I can make little of your example except that again you seem to be saying no more than that in order for something to happen, it must be possible. That is "Water does not have the disposition to turn into wine" = "water can't turn into wine"; and "water has the disposition to form snowflakes" = "water can form snowflakes". I don't see what, besides obscurity, you're adding by introducing (and reifying) these "dispositions" whereof you speak.

Cars don't reproduce. And you would be completely wrong. No, all it needs to compete against is bears with thicker coats, and in a cold environment it would be at a disadvantage compared to bears with thicker coats.If the thin coat bear moved south to where the thinner coat was an advantage over the thick coat, then that is an advantage that enables it to occupy an ecology the other bears are less successful in. Again, it is a two step process: (1) mutation (now the trait exists), (2) selection (is it an advantage or disadvantage or is it neutral).Those that survive and reproduce provide the next generation: if the trait survived it will be part of the breeding population, and the spread of the trait within the population will be a result of the degree of advantage provided to survive and breed. That next generation will then have offspring that carry the traits of the breeding population and new mutations (the initial trait can be modified) followed by selection of those offspring. Pain is a nerve discharge, and it's advantage lies in sensing the environment so the organism can react in a manner beneficial to the organism. Pain is just an extreme level of sensation. Correct, there is no reason behind any development coming with any aspect of organic function. The organic function follows the development what ever that is. You have it backwards. Nope.The felt/experienced mental sensations are a result of the development that has occurred: if that had not occurred there would not be the felt/experienced mental sensations.You are committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. Because there was an advantage to it. Nope. All that is needed is a biochemical set up that provides traits that are selected to provide an advantage -- what that advantage is ... is irrelevant.You have the means to walk down the street into town. The path you take and the destination you arrive at do not need to be built into the process of being able to walk.You are confusing a result that happens with a caused functionality. The functionality becomes available but it is not the destination.

No, against brown ones.Really I think you could have figured that out for yourself.

There is no disposition in the way you use this here: it is a false concept that is leading you to form false ideas.It is wrong for the same reason that anthropomorphism is wrong:

quote:

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... Examples include depicting deities with human form and ascribing human emotions or motives to forces of nature, such as hurricanes or earthquakes.

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In this case it seems you are desperate to attribute some motive to evolutionary steps, probably some divine motive if I read you right (and don't attack me as an atheist either).Try some other word or phrase. See if you can word it or explain it to more clearly express what you really mean.And if you think that your "disposition" is a means to insert divine motive into the process, then explain all the failures: must be a pretty inadequate divinity, imho.Explain the development of spandrells.Explain the development of agonizing death.

So the common ancestor must have had a disposition to be both brown and white ... did the brown bear lose the disposition to be white and the polar bear lose the disposition to be brown?They do interbreed after all.

No its fuelled by facts, You cant put things you dont observe or test in a theory no matter how you want to. So we cant put god in the mix even if god is the guy that is causing the mutations if we cant see him or test for his effect we cant include him. But if you can design a test that would prove or disprove the hand of god is causing say mutations, then we can include him in the theory of evolution. The fact of evolution is that living organisms changed over time there is no denying that unless you banged your head with the bible too many times.The theory of evolution explains how these changes came to be. it does not deal with the creation of the universe, the creation of the planet, even the beginning of life. The same way the theory of gravity does not deal with electromagnetism.It makes no sense for it to do so.If you want to attack the big bang theory or M theory then we can deal with why the universe came to be and why is it the way it is.

We cannot reduce things to a starting point because that starting point has potential?You stringing these words together thinking they actually mean something. What a crock-o-crap.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.