How is Natural selection a mechanism?

Message 136 of 191 (816290) 08-02-2017 12:00 PM

Reply to: Message 135 by NoNukes 07-31-2017 1:40 PM

I don't know what you mean by that. You can scan a brain and have brain surgery. peoples brain can be exposed and stimulated whilst they are awake. There are lots of ways to directly access a brain.

Message 137 of 191 (816292) 08-02-2017 12:07 PM

Reply to: Message 136 by AndrewPD 08-02-2017 12:00 PM

How are you feeling today?

Message 138 of 191 (816294) 08-02-2017 12:14 PM

Reply to: Message 131 by ringo 07-30-2017 2:08 PM

It is not what I expect it is what we see.

There are elaborate process taking many steps for reproduction to happen. Whereas Object .A. hitting Object .B. is instantaneous.

Humans express and enact numerous motivations But humans aside there are such elaborate ways of reproducing including elaborate mating rituals, long pregnancies etc all just to preserve and insensate piece of genetic material.

This is beyond a basic picture of instant deterministic causation. It is also serious entropy reversal (which I think has been a valid criticism of the theory)

Nevertheless I don't see how science can comment of purpose in nature using the language and method they do. Science uses model and other constructs to attempt to describe phenomena.

One of the big problems for studying the mind is whether you can ever coherently reduce reason-giving explanations or semantics to mechanical descriptions.

Reason giving explanations can be highly explanatory and to convert these to the behaviour of atoms or neurons would not only be incoherent but be I credibly complex. So for example if someone says "I crossed the road to buy some milk because my fridge is empty" That explains all we need to know about their action but to translate that into what each atom and neuron was doing would be insane. For examples neurons and atoms don't know that my fridge is empty and we don't see beliefs like this in neuronal activity.

Message 139 of 191 (816295) 08-02-2017 12:21 PM

Reply to: Message 137 by New Cat's Eye 08-02-2017 12:07 PM

People see colours differently and people experience things differently so for instance a vivid red sensation can make some people repulsed.

A famous case is Knut Nordby who had achromatopsia

"Knut studied at the University of Oslo, receiving a BS in Human Physiology (the Faculty of Medicine), an MA in Philosophy of Sciences (the Faculty of History and Philosophy) and a Magister Artium (the equivalent of a Ph.D.) in Psychology (Faculty of Social Sciences)."

He studied colour vision but said ...he had no idea.. what it was like to see colour. No amount of theory could replace the experience. That was a part of what constitutes "The Knowledge Argument" or "Mary's room" about the nature of experience.

http://www.achromatopsia.info/knut-nordby-achromatopsia-p/

Message 140 of 191 (816298) 08-02-2017 12:48 PM

Reply to: Message 139 by AndrewPD 08-02-2017 12:21 PM

However, we can ask someone what their favorite color is and then measure the wavelength of light for that color. This gives us an objective measure of what they say is their favorite color.

We also know that the experience of color is governed by the physical brain.

Message 141 of 191 (816303) 08-02-2017 3:07 PM

Reply to: Message 125 by AndrewPD 07-29-2017 12:17 PM

quote:

---

"The essential questions being: Why do organisms create increasingly bizarre and incredibly elaborate schemes to reproduce?

Why do things attempt to survive? Why do genes have a survival motive?

Why the need for survival at all? (Including what does actually survive?)"

---

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Because if the opposite were the status quo there would be no question.

imo the universe exist because it wants to. life exist because it wants to exist. Living things go through all they do to carry on existence because that is what living things do. Well am I guilty of anthropomorphizing the universe? Where is the line in a continuum?

I get a chuckle out of people who go around saying things like:
We are nothing more than a collection of molecules that make up a organic machine that has a complex processor called the brain that gives us the illusion that we are special and have choices.
We are no more important than a bacterium on the surface of a piece of shit. Every emotion and feeling we have is nothing more than biomechanics and chemistry.

While all this may be true it harshes my buzz.

Message 142 of 191 (816305) 08-02-2017 3:22 PM

Reply to: Message 139 by AndrewPD 08-02-2017 12:21 PM

Why does it matter that your access to my favorite color was indirect?

Message 144 of 191 (816314) 08-02-2017 4:18 PM

Reply to: Message 138 by AndrewPD 08-02-2017 12:14 PM

If energy is added to a system then you can have entropy reversal (i.e. negative entropy). This is why we are able to use things like refrigerators which produce negative entropy. If refrigerators don't violate the laws of physics, then neither does life.

Message 145 of 191 (816319) 08-02-2017 5:32 PM

Reply to: Message 140 by Taq 08-02-2017 12:48 PM

I agree that the brain processes the signals from the eye and constructs the sensations that we experience as sight, but the color component is primarily determined by the opsins in the cone photoreceptor cells of the eye activating wavelength specific nerves.

People with a common type of color blindness have told me that often they cannot differentiate between red and green. They are missing or have a mutation in the gene that produces one of the opsin photopigments. There are also people who have trouble with blue and yellow perception. I try to imagine what the world looks like to them.

My boss in the insect lab was red/green color blind and occasionally would forget and tell me to shoot a specific colored part of an insect that didn't look to me like it did to him. What a shame that he could not see some of the extraordinarily beautiful patterns on the insects that he studies. I was able to show some of them to him by replacing the original color in an image with one he could see.

I found a really interesting paper: The genetics of normal and defective color vision, by Jay Neitz and Maureen Neitz, 2012, PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

It will take me a while to read this one.

Message 146 of 191 (816329) 08-02-2017 10:17 PM

Reply to: Message 136 by AndrewPD 08-02-2017 12:00 PM

1) Generally we don't have such access.
2) You have not made the case that gaining such access does not provide clues to your mental state. We know that the opposite is the case. It is entirely possible that limitations on exploring the activity of the mind given access to the brain are strictly technological.

Get a better argument.

Message 147 of 191 (816330) 08-02-2017 10:24 PM

Reply to: Message 144 by Taq 08-02-2017 4:18 PM

Exactly. Why do creationists forget about the existence of the sun when they pursue their 2nd law of thermodynamics arguments?

Maybe the refrigerator example is too esoteric. How do they think babies develop from a small clump of cells? How do they think new borns can grow and develop into small infants just by drinking milk? Just where do skin cells come from?

Non-thinking, idiotic, grasping at straws, no logic, grrr.

Message 148 of 191 (816331) 08-02-2017 10:32 PM

Reply to: Message 145 by Tanypteryx 08-02-2017 5:32 PM

One might legitimately, ask "where do the eyes end and the brain begin?" The eye does some processing, but it generates electrical signals that the brain interprets. It is the brain that decides who we identify signals from those receptors.

Perhaps the distinction is just not meaningful.

Message 149 of 191 (816332) 08-03-2017 12:23 AM

Reply to: Message 148 by NoNukes 08-02-2017 10:32 PM

I think the eyes are an extension of the brain and to a lesser extent, our other senses are also. We have this wonderful sensation of our body in space that results from a high-resolution neural net. An easy way to test the sensitivity to stimulus is in water of varying temperature. What is amazing is the sense of self that the brain creates from all this sensory input.

Message 150 of 191 (816360) 08-03-2017 10:46 AM

Reply to: Message 149 by Tanypteryx 08-03-2017 12:23 AM

My take on this is that most of the sensory information that is being processed is running in the back ground. Like on some 3rd of 4th tier.

The brain seems to filter all sorts of shit it doesn't think is necessary to pay attention to. Which is why we can navigate our way to work and practically not remember the drive. Your in the zone so to speak. Zen driving.

When I was learning to drive my school driving instructor told me that a when you are a good driver your passengers will not remember your commute. But if you suck as a driver you they will remember every close call, jamming their foot on a imaginary brake etc.. ha ha.

It is the part of the brain that is responsible for taking the steering wheel in cases of perceived emergency where consciousness lives. The thinker behind the thought. The one who must react NOW.

Much of our other decisions are mediated through our subconscious, endocrine system and biome. We can of course override their decisions but for the most part they just convince us it was OUR decision in the first place.
Brain experiments have borne out that some decisions we think we are consciously making are already a second or so prior, generated and implemented in our subconscious. "Inception" anyone? The thinker behind the thought may just be a puppet. Frighting thought to be sure.
Oh I by pass any angst created by this thought by just saying its all a symbiotic relationship that make me, ME.