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Author Topic:   bio evolution, light, sound and aroma
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 7 of 142 (716536)
01-18-2014 6:30 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Col2v8
01-18-2014 2:42 PM


Hi Col2v8 (cultivate?) and welcome to the fray
Are there any scientific papers/studies by evolutionist, that give any explanation as to how biological evolution (natural selection) first 'knew' that there was such a thing as light in the universe, in order to go on an develop 'light-sensitivity' in such a manner as to manipulate that light? I'm not on about evolution of the eye, but how light was even known to exist in the first place?
Let's start with some basics:
(1) The process of evolution involves changes in the composition of hereditary traits, and changes to the frequency of their distributions within breeding populations from generation to generation, in response to ecological challenges and opportunities.
(you can also read evolution 101)
So it is a feed-back response to the environment, where one set of traits exhibits an advantage to survival or reproduction over other traits. Organisms that are better at survival and reproduction become the parents of a greater proportion of the next generation.
Thus we ask the question: what would be the advantage of sensing solar output?
For plants it would seem obvious, but plants are a later development. We need to look at algae first: single cell organisms that utilize the energy of sunlight to perform biological functions. When the sun is out they can grow more. Those at the surface will "see" more sunlight than those below, so it becomes an advantage to be at the surface.
Then next step then is to be able to stay at the surface, and to do that it would help to know where that surface is located. Just being able to differentiate light from dark would be a step up from just the ability to float, especially if there are "predators" that also float.
Sinking during darkness and rising during light periods would offer some advantage over static existence, particularly if there were more nutrients in the depths while light was needed to convert those nutrients into growth (survival and reproduction).
This initial sensation of light can be very rudimentary compared to the eyes we know that have developed from 3.5 million years of refinement: just stand outside with skin exposed and see if you can determine if you are in sunshine or shade, and if in sunshine what direction it is coming from. The sense from your skin is like the most primitive "eye" ...
The same can be said of sound. When did natural selection first 'know' that vibrations through a planets atmosphere could also be manipulated in such a manner as to allow the 'emerging creature' to hear sound.
Again, we ask the question: what would be the advantage of sensing vibrational output?
If you are a "predator" being able to sense the location of "prey" would be more advantageous than blindly blundering about.
If you are "prey" then being able to sense the location of "predators" would be more advantageous than just bobbing up and down in response to light.
And again, the initial sensation of vibration can be very rudimentary compared to the ears we know that have developed from 3.5 million years of refinement: just stand outside with skin exposed and see if you can determine the source of sounds The sense from your skin is like the most primitive "ear" ...
And finally, also of aroma, sense of smell, same applies, how?
Again we ask: what is the advantage to finding prey, to escaping predators, to finding mates ...
And again we find that skin can have different reactions to different materials\compunds that are in contact with the skin.
Hope this helps
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This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 17 of 142 (716572)
01-19-2014 9:39 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Col2v8
01-18-2014 10:24 PM


Is there one definitive answer to what is 'Natural Selection'?
Those that are able to survive and breed become parents to the next generation. Sometimes characterized by "the survival of the fit enough" ... Again I recommend you read the Berkeley Evolution 101 site; there is a page there on natural selection:
Natural Selection - Understanding Evolution
If it doesn't literally know anything, how does it know how to select in a natural manner?
Perhaps the question has to be what is Natural? What is Selection?
Good questions to ask.
Darwin observed that more offspring were produced than were necessary to maintain the population, but that the populations did not increase in proportion, so therefore some survived and some did not survive.
Darwin also observed that some were better adapted to survive and reproduce than others.
As Dr A notes these observations lead to the conclusion that any advantage, no matter how slight, gives a higher probability of survival and breeding, and that over generations would lead to those traits that provide more advantage becoming common in the population.
The next question is where those variations in traits come from: what is the (natural) process that creates variation in breeding populations?
Edited by RAZD, : more

we are limited in our ability to understand
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 21 of 142 (716579)
01-19-2014 10:22 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by Col2v8
01-19-2014 9:44 AM


opinion and reality
Well, if I were one who could see, then the survivors would be as many blind people as I could feed, and myself.
So you have a primary advantage and those close to you have a secondary advantage.
Is your logic here deeply disturbing or what? I may have missed your point; but my point is that the very reason we humans want to help is evidence against the blind-non-forward-thinking-planning, very nature, of evolution!
But that too is an evolved trait that improves the survival of the breeding population. There are species that would not do this, yes?
By feeding others you have more potential mates, and those mates are more likely to want to breed with you over others that don't feed them.
If evolution is completely indifferent to morality (indeed, it doesn't care that it doesn't even care) then why has it gone on produce creatures (us at least) that do!
Because it is an advantage for the breeding population as a whole.
What is morality? Is it different for a tiger than for a human?
Where would I (a machine for gene survival) ever get a notion in the first place to help, if the very giving of that help might infringe on my own gene survival. ...
Enlightened self-interest: helping others when they are at a disadvantage means there are more to take care of you when you are disadvantaged. Helping potential mates gives you and advantage for access to reproduction. Game theory also shows that cooperation works. See John Nash who shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi.
John Forbes Nash Jr. - Wikipedia
quote:
Nash earned a doctorate in 1950 with a 28-page dissertation on non-cooperative games.[7][8] The thesis, which was written under the supervision of doctoral advisor Albert W. Tucker, contained the definition and properties of what would later be called the "Nash equilibrium". It's a crucial concept in non-cooperative games, and won Nash the Nobel prize in economics in 1994.
Nash's major publications relating to this concept are in the following papers:
  • Nash, JF (1950). "Equilibrium Points in N-person Games". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 36 (36): 48—9. doi:10.1073/pnas.36.1.48. PMC 1063129. PMID 16588946., MR 0031701.
  • "The Bargaining Problem". Econometrica (18): 155—62. 1950.. MR 0035977.
  • Nash, J. (1951). "Non-cooperative Games". Annals of Mathematics 54 (54): 286—95. doi:10.2307/1969529. JSTOR 1969529..
  • "Two-person Cooperative Games". Econometrica (21): 128—40. 1953., MR 0053471.

Evolution is like a giant trial and error computer, and it tries out many scenarios over and over, and those that provide breeding populations for the next generation are used for the next cycle of trial and error experiments.
This natural trial and error computer comes to the same conclusion as Nash's game theory. What a surprise.
... Maybe helping is a bad trait that will be worked out of human evolution, what a despicable thought! But evolutionary theory allows this to be a reasonable possibility!!!
Curiously it is "despicable" because your view is based on a social animal "morality" rather than an antisocial animal "morality" ... your view is based on your culture\learning.
Sharing behavior is not exclusive to humans, but to many animals. There is an experiment with capucin monkeys
There are others showing how selfish behavior is punished.
... Maybe helping is a bad trait that will be worked out of human evolution, what a despicable thought! But evolutionary theory allows this to be a reasonable possibility!!!
It is only reasonable if it provides an advantage to the individuals
It is only a "bad" trait if it interferes with survival or reproduction success for the breeding population.
My root position, is that life is given, and that evolution is a non-starter!
You are welcome to your opinion, however opinion has been demonstrated to be remarkably incapable of altering reality in any way. All you are affecting is your ability to learn about reality.
Do you have any evidence "that evolution is a non-starter" or just opinion?
If you come here questioning science based on a poor and incomplete understanding of what you are questioning, and you are unwilling to learn or change your opinion then what is your purpose here?
Do you think you will convince anyone that your opinion is a wonderful thing?

we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 26 of 142 (716624)
01-19-2014 6:45 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Col2v8
01-19-2014 9:16 AM


no dice?
...dice never go on to produce creatures, (us at least) who do know? So its moot what they don't know.
But the example shows you how natural selection over generations can develop something that would be improbable without it. Curiously that is all the example was intended to, or needed to, convey.
I honestly don't understand your logic here, but what I do grasp makes for a cold chill at what life is being reduced to... namely, that life is something that has happened, but which also might not have happened.
Your personal like or dislike of reality is irrelevant.
It may also be that the universe it primed to form life under a variety of conditions of which earth just happened to be one. See Panspermic Pre-Biotic Molecules - Life's Building Blocks (Part I) for evidence that supports this view.
What we do know is that life does exist on this planet and that it did not exist when the earth was first formed, 4.5 + billion years ago, as the first evidence of life is at ~3.7 billion years ago ... and we know that we do not know how that life began, as this first evidence of life was already developed as a simple single cell algae.
My root position is that life is given, ...
How do you define life? One cannot discuss origins without being able to define what life is.
My definition is "something capable of the process of evolution" -- again from Message 7
quote:
(1) The process of evolution involves changes in the composition of hereditary traits, and changes to the frequency of their distributions within breeding populations from generation to generation, in response to ecological challenges and opportunities.
(you can also read evolution 101)
So all you need for life is a reproducing population, a mechanism to inherit traits and a mechanism to add variation/s.
If you have any questions from reading the Berkeley site, feel free to ask.
... and that evolution is a non-starter...
And yet the process of evolution is an observed fact and it occurs in every living species alive today and we can see evidence that it has occurred in all records of life as we know it.
Denial of facts is foolish, not rational logical objective thought.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 31 of 142 (716676)
01-20-2014 9:19 AM
Reply to: Message 27 by Col2v8
01-19-2014 10:39 PM


There is a way to track replies
I have discovered something much worse than going around in cycles in debates about Evolution v Creation - keeping track of replies to an original post -- !!!
There are ways to track replies to messages. One is a link just to the left of the word "Message" at the top usually with this symbol:
(but the image can be changed)
If you click on the symbol then it sends you to a page that documents the posts and replies on the thread.
Another is to click on your name (Col2v8) and it sends you to a page that lists all the threads you are participating and tells you when there are unanswered replies. This currently shows at least 2 replies are not answered.
But you don't NEED to reply to each and every response, especially as a lot of them duplicate information or questions: pick one that suits you best and follow that.
I am very new to forums, and this is not for me, after just one day, I cannot keep track of who to respond to, who replied to what, just don't have the time for one thing!
Try out some others and you will find that there tracking is worse ... this is one of the best forums for tracking replies, you just need to learn how it works.
Its a shame, but I cannot commit to this, and will be cancelling my membership.
It will be waiting when you return.
thank you to all who made a reply, that I did read!
Thank you for all the good questions.
Edited by RAZD, : ..

we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 36 of 142 (716971)
01-22-2014 8:42 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by AndrewPD
01-22-2014 7:29 PM


I think perception does raise serious issues.
Why?
There are many different kinds of eyes in many different species, and the evidence is that sight evolved independently several times due to the differences in vision systems.
For instance the mammal (human) eye has the nerves on the vision side of the retina (so they have to collect into a central nerve than pierces the retina causing a blind spot) and sensors on the back side of the retina so light photons have to penetrate the retina ...
... while the octopus has the nerves on the backside with sensors on the vision side -- why is that?
The nautilus has no lens but still has a iris formation to control a "pin-hole" effect lens.
Both the octopus and the nautilus focus the images by moving the retina towards and away from the lens ... but the mammal (human) uses muscles to change the focus of the lens and has a fixed distance retina -- why is that?
If you were to combine those two systems you could have an eye that can go from microscopic to telescopic view -- why do no organisms have this ability?
Why do bugs have multiple fixed eyes? -- Why is that?
Flat worms have light sensing "eyes" but cannot see images -- why is that?
It all comes down to a simply metric: does any stage of development of any trait have an advantage over a previous stage of development? If there is an advantage then there will be positive selection pressure.

we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Replies to this message:
 Message 37 by AndrewPD, posted 01-22-2014 9:02 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 41 of 142 (716988)
01-22-2014 11:02 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by Dr Adequate
01-22-2014 10:22 PM


The postulated primordial soup couldn't be creative if it didn't have complex dispositions.
Like the "complex dispositions" of a shapeless homogeneous lump of metal to become a bicycle, a hatstand, an internal combustion engine, a statue ... ?
Or like the "complex dispositions" of prebionic molecules to form replicating molecules?
Seems to be a bit anthropomorphizing to me, a bit post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy as well.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 43 of 142 (716991)
01-22-2014 11:26 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by AndrewPD
01-22-2014 9:02 PM


This seems like a facile theory to me. All you have to invoke is that a trait gives an advantage and neglect what is going on at other levels. A property had to emerge prior to it having an advantage.
Indeed. Evolution is a two step process: mutation adds variation, selection winnows variations, repeat:
But a trait doesn't have to arrive fully developed. It just needs to have an incremental advantage at each incremental step. The eye is a perfect example.
So in reality you are explaining the benefit of a trait after it has emerged.
Among others without such benefit that also emerged but failed the selection test.
The properties I have mentioned like pain are difficult because they are only found in the conscious sphere which means reality had an accessible property which is pain (the actual hard to mechanical or linguistically describe hurting/sore/hot feeling.)
Curiously on discussions of the properties of life (see Definition of Life) one that is often listed is response to stimulus. That is all that pain is, yes?
Whatever emerges through evolution has to be a prior disposition available in reality.
A bit backwards. Among the many variations that are available at any time in a breeding population, some will have an advantage, some will have a disadvantage, some will be neutral. Those with advantage are more likely to become inherited by having more offspring.
Where it ends does not drive where it begins, rather where it begins drives where it ends.
Again the eyes are a perfect example of this: the mammal eye has a backward facing retina, not because it ended that way, but because it began that way and cannot flip over to a better orientation. The octopus eye has a forward facing retina, not because it ended that way, but because it began that way.
Whatever emerges through evolution has to be a prior disposition available in reality.
When you use words not normally used in sciences you can end up confusing yourself by what these words mean rather than what the science says.
What is the "prior disposition" of a mutation that changes a gene sequence? Death? Disadvantage? Neutral? Advantage? There is no destiny inherent in any change.
You don't know until tested by selection whether a mutation will affect an organism one way or the other, or lie dormant (neutral) until selection pressure changes.

we are limited in our ability to understand
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This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by AndrewPD, posted 01-24-2014 11:30 AM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 55 of 142 (717152)
01-24-2014 3:59 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by AndrewPD
01-24-2014 11:30 AM


Different models of cars are more successful than others but they have to exist on the market before being rejected.
Cars don't reproduce.
Among others without such benefit that also emerged but failed the selection test.
This element of competition seems totally unnecessary.
And you would be completely wrong.
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?
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.
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.
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 mental sensation. A qualitative experience it can occur without signs of bodily injury. ...
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.
... There is no lawful reason why any bodily stimulation should come with a conscious experience. ...
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.
... You would have to have an explanation as to why some kind of bodily activity would inevitably lead to felt/experienced mental sensations.
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.
If random mutation caused the emergence of conscious pain sensations then why? ...
Because there was an advantage to it.
... You would need an explanation of why a biochemical set up would lead to a mental emergent property ...
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.

we are limited in our ability to understand
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Replies to this message:
 Message 62 by AndrewPD, posted 01-25-2014 11:55 AM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 57 of 142 (717160)
01-24-2014 5:14 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by AndrewPD
01-24-2014 2:35 PM


"disposition" what is it?
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.
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:
... Examples include depicting deities with human form and ascribing human emotions or motives to forces of nature, such as hurricanes or earthquakes.
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.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 58 of 142 (717164)
01-24-2014 5:32 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by Dr Adequate
01-24-2014 4:54 PM


No, against brown ones.
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.

we are limited in our ability to understand
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 61 of 142 (717227)
01-25-2014 9:43 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by AndrewPD
01-24-2014 1:26 PM


The result of these replication "differences" is to create new unique emergent properties.
Some that work and some that don't, some that provide advantage (faster replication) and some that don't (stop replicating).
Not all are emergent properties, as that term is normally used to denote a combination of elements that is greater than the parts, something happens that is not expected from the combination. Consciousness is an emergent property of nerve development. Vision is an emergent property of light sensors. Brown bears becoming white bears is not an emergent property of having fur.
The description people are using here is loaded to try and exorcise anything that requires non mechanical entities.
Like god/s or spirits?
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)
Science uses what it can measure. Then it develops models to see if it can be reproduced. If you cannot measure the emotional impact of a painting on people then it is difficult to apply that to any scientific model.
Are you faulting science for not including emotion? Do you expect science to explain everything?
It seems implicitly fuelled by atheism and the desire not to give a creator type thing any credit for any process in creating organisms. ...
Ah, so it is about religion. So much for that denial.
No. From my point of view (as a deist) science is not about why "life, the universe and everything" (Douglas Adams) was created but how it was accomplished.
We don't need to include a discussion of the life of Henry Ford to look at how he accomplished building cars, and to model that approach and reproduce it in the manufacturing of cars.
To discuss why Henry Ford developed a method for making cars is not important to discussing how he did it, and it is a different question with a different answer.

we are limited in our ability to understand
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Replies to this message:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 88 of 142 (717364)
01-26-2014 5:32 PM
Reply to: Message 62 by AndrewPD
01-25-2014 11:55 AM


If someone is under anaesthetic they don't experience pain.
Curiously we wouldn't call them anesthetics if they didn't block pain, would we?
There are several known methods to block pain, and they all involve blocking nerve transmissions. Why is that?
Do you know what opiods are and how they work? Have you ever had one? Did they zap your brain or give you an injection\pill? Do you know what an epidural is?
Pain is an experience in subjective personal consciousness. That is its only form. ...
Actually pain can be measured from measuring nerve impulses, which is an objective measurement.
... The correlation with nerve activity is not explanatory. ...
Denial is not refutation. There are different levels of pain and they grade up from the sensation of touch ... why do you suppose that is?
It is hard to imagine what reality would be like without being seen through consciousness with the addition of mental attributes or qualia.
Only if you have a failure of imagination. Reality exists whether you sense it or not, and it kills you just as readily.
There is an explanatory gap as with all conscious experience. The point is that reality contains phenomena only found in consciousness.
Nope.
What kind of objective existence could pain have?
So that the organism can avoid or retreat from painful situations, thus giving it an advantage for survival.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 62 by AndrewPD, posted 01-25-2014 11:55 AM AndrewPD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 89 by AndrewPD, posted 01-26-2014 6:00 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 91 of 142 (717370)
01-26-2014 6:14 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by AndrewPD
01-25-2014 12:07 PM


noosphere?
To truly and honestly understand the causal origin of cars we would have to understand the mental states of of Henry Ford that were involved in him designing the thing and which motivated his actions causally.
And when we look at all the different makers of cars and see that they have different mental states but still make cars then we know that mental states are irrelevant.
Designing cars is an emergent property of developing means of transportation systems. It does not matter who makes the first step.
These kind of mental state type entities seem to be inexplicably ruled out in evolution with the assumption of blind unintelligent mechanical processes. ...
No, it is merely that they are not ruled in -- they are unnecessary to explain how life as we know it develops and with no evidence it is hard to ascertain how they would be effected: design needs to get from the drawing board to the prototype before anything is truly accomplished ... how is that done? By evolution?
... But because humans intelligently and mindfully create and design numerous things I see no reason to characterise the rest of reality as mindless and unintelligent which seems to be an unwarranted bias.
You are free to have your opinion, however I suggest you give some thought to this aspect of design as the immediate results do not show much intelligence imho.
Indeed a theory of consciousness becoming increasing popular among materialists is Panpsychism which posits that consciousness is another layer intrinsic to reality.
Or Noosphere ... curiously I read Taillard de Chardin when I was a child. Philosophy is not science. Science informs philosophy not the other way around. A philosophy that is based on known scientific falsehoods is invalid, being based on a false premise. Thus philosophy must first employ science to find scientific knowledge about reality and then proceed to philosophical musings about such things as why things evolve in the manner that we can observe from determining how they develop.
It is easy to retrospectively strip a process of any intelligence.
Especially when it doesn't exhibit any great observable degree of intelligence. What is observed is a rather haphazard approach to the development of new organisms.
It is easy to assume intelligence on the part of some unknown entity when you are ignorant of the processes that result in new living organisms. It is like looking through a kaleidescope at a random pile of blocks and seeing patterns that are a product of the viewing mechanism\viewpoint rather than reality.
If the process results in a desired result from a design standpoint then evolution is the only known mechanism that could be used to accomplish that goal, by basically employing a trial and error methodology over many generations.
The desired result may be an (or a number of) intelligent organism, but which organism that is becomes, just like the maker of cars, irrelevant to the result, because this is most likely an emergent property of evolutionary life.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 64 by AndrewPD, posted 01-25-2014 12:07 PM AndrewPD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 93 by AndrewPD, posted 01-26-2014 8:53 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 92 of 142 (717371)
01-26-2014 8:47 PM
Reply to: Message 89 by AndrewPD
01-26-2014 6:00 PM


It is still a unique private subjective sensation held subjectively.
By definition any sensing of the external by any one of our senses is "a unique private subjective sensation", and all subjective sensations are "held subjectively" ... you are just playing with words and not saying anything of import.
The comparison with for instance vision is that there may be an object out their causing the visual perception or which the perception represents. ...
As there may be an object out their causing the touch perception or which the perception represents. Pain is just an extreme part of the touch spectrum of sensation.
Not only that but just as one person seeing a specific aspect of reality can be validated by another person seeing the same specific aspect of reality, so too can one person feeling a specific aspect of reality, be it a light touch or pain, this same feeling of the same aspect of reality can be replicated by another person. This is the way children are taught.
Although how that object or representation reaches consciousness is unknown till we explain how consciousness works.
All sensations are transmitted to the brain via nerves with different nerves learning different sensations. The brain is just a construction of nerve cells where self-consciousness is an emergent property, as we can see by observing other organisms with different levels of self-consciousness ... a different of quantity rather than one of quality. Apes overlap humans for instance.
However with pain it is not representing the environment directly. ...
Touch is quite capable of representing the environment directly, pain is a part of the sense of touch.
... We can see tissue damage on our skin and that represents bodily injury ...
And we can touch the damaged area and more. With touch we can observe if a bone is broken when we cannot observe the break with our eyes.
... the pain is just an unpleasant sensation or qualia. Rather like colour or sound.
Curiously I don't find all color or sound unpleasant ... just like I don't find all sensations of touch unpleasant.
... or qualia. ...
You keep saying this but I am not sure you understand what it means ...
If you have heard of the knowledge argument or "Mary's room" then there is a real life equivalent. Knut Nordby was an expert in the science of vision and colour but was achromatic and he said he didn't know what it was like to see colour and couldn't imagine it. Without the direct experience the scientific explanation didn't explicate the missing qualia.
Vision is the sensation of some of the spectrum of photon frequencies, and there are organisms that see into the infrared or ultraviolet ends of the spectrum beyond the sensation of normal\average people. Color sensation is just a refinement of that limited ability to sense photons into subgroups. Being achromatic or color blind just means the person does not have that sorting of vision frequencies.
There are also people that see more colors than the average -- four basic sets of photon frequency sensors rather than three. Being able to measure light frequencies and sort them out into the spectrum band subgroups that people agree to call by the various color terms is not surprising at all.
There are also animals that have six sets of frequency sorting sensors, so they would see 6 "primary" colors ... birds for instance ... and we are just as much at a loss for ability as Knut Nordby to see those colors while being able to measure their frequencies and sort them out into their spectrum band subgroups.
Curiously I find Hellen Keller more of an inspiration in sensing the world around us in spite of limited sensations.
Word games. Presumptuous word games.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 89 by AndrewPD, posted 01-26-2014 6:00 PM AndrewPD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 94 by AndrewPD, posted 01-26-2014 9:15 PM RAZD has replied

  
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