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Author Topic:   Help Needed with an argument against ToE
creative-evolutionist
Junior Member (Idle past 5723 days)
Posts: 7
Joined: 03-28-2008


Message 1 of 2 (476250)
07-22-2008 9:12 AM


Hello.
I stumbled over the following text on the internet, of somebody trying to discredit the ToE using several aspects, namely Coherence, Logicality, Applicability and Adequacy.
I have some difficulties with his Coherence-rant:
Coherence
It seems to me that the very absoluteness of the theory's conclusions tends to compromise its "objective" character. It is all very well to speak of the "evidence of evolution," but if the theory is thorough- going, then human consciousness itself is also governed by evolution. This means that the categories that allow observation statements to arise as "facts", categories such as number, space, time, event, measurement, logic, causality, and so forth are mere physiological accidents of random mutation and natural selection in a particular species, Homo sapiens. They have not come from any scientific considerations, but rather have arbitrarily arisen in man by blind and fortuitous evolution for the purpose of preserving the species. They need not reflect external reality, "the way nature is", objectively, but only to the degree useful in preserving the species. That is, nothing guarantees the primacy, the objectivity, of these categories over others that would have presumably have arisen had our consciousness evolved along different lines, such as those of more distant, say, aquatic or subterranean species. The cognitive basis of every statement within the theory thus proceeds from the unreflective, unexamined historical forces that produced "consciousness" in one species, a cognitive basis that the theory nevertheless generalizes to the whole universe of theory statements (the explanation of the origin of species) without explaining what permits this generalization. The pretences of the theory to correspond to an objective order of reality, applicable in an absolute sense to all species, are simply not compatible with the consequences of a thoroughly evolutionary viewpoint, which entails that the human cognitive categories that underpin the theory are purely relative and species-specific. The absolutism of random mutation and natural selection as explanative principles ends in eating the theory. With all its statements simultaneously absolute and relative, objective and subjective, generalizable and ungeneralizable, scientific and species-specific, the theory runs up on a reef of methodological incoherence.
I need some help understanding the authors line of thought. Do I correctly understand, that he says since our perception of the universe is filtered through our senses, the way we perceive it is inherently subjective? Therefore, any theory based upon these subjective observations cannot be valid?
This seems to me to be a rather phony explanation, since what other way is there to perceive our universe than through our senses? If this argument was valid, ANY scientific theory could be discarded at ones leisure, because ALL theories are based on "subjective" observations.
Please, tell me if I interpreted his argumentation correctly and how to counter this type of reasoning (if possible).
Thanks.
Edited by creative-evolutionist, : No reason given.

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Message 2 of 2 (476255)
07-22-2008 10:37 AM


Thread copied to the Help Needed with an argument against ToE thread in the Is It Science? forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

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