bio evolution, light, sound and aroma

I know a way that it could:imperfect self-replication Not necessarily; if a thing can self-replicate itself, but its not perfect, then the copy will have some aspect that is new.The imperfection does not have to be a disposition.

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?

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.

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

The Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory. When doing science, you apply methodological naturalism. That involves looking for a purely natural explanation. Explaining how species originate has been accomplished without needing to include anything mental or intelligent.If it makes you feel better, you can just assume that this explains how God did it, and realize that God isn't going to be a part of a scientific explanation.

I think that's part of your problem, in that you see those things as being "ruled out". Its not so much as ruling other things out as it is leaving our explanations as simple as they have to be. If we can explain something without having to resort to those entities, then that is how the explanation will lay.A pin that has been dropped and fell to the ground can be explained with the theory of gravity. It could be that it fell because of all the angels that are dancing on the head of the pin, but since we can explain the phenomenon without having to include those angels, then that is the scientific explanation that we will go with. But that scientific explanation isn't really "ruling out" the angels, it just has no cause to mention them at all.The same goes with evolution. We can explain how species arise without having to invoke god, so that's the explanation we'll currently use. But that's not saying that god didn't have anything to do with it at all. We just don't need to include him to explain our observations. Oh, but it does.You can tell that a rock was intelligently designed when it contains features that do not occur naturally, like a bulb of percussion, striking platform, bulbar scar, and percussion ripples.There's even a guide for it.Take a look at the images on the bottom of page 2. There's two flakes of rock that, at first glance, don't look any different at all. It only after you apply the methodology for discerning design and intelligence that you can determine that the one on the left was made by a human and the one on the right naturally occurred.

The way he want from talking about things "in reality" and then ended with "in nature", I didn't think he was using nature as a distinction from being artificially made by humans.I was thinking along the lines of, if you found an arrowhead in nature, then yeah, you could determine that it was designed.But maybe that's not what he was talking about.

How is a disposition different from a "possibility"?

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Added by edit:Seriously, check it out, I used the Find and Replace function in Word to replace your word 'disposition' with the word 'possibility':

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When you know the possibilitys of glass you know that it wouldn't be a suitable material for making certain things with because of its possibility to shatter.

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Also you you would not expect a bird to evolve glass wings because they wouldn't function adequately. As in the case of the pig and wings you can rule out lots of things evolving (the predictive value) because they don't have the adequate possibility to be selected or survive. And the same in the case of pink and green polar bears. These don't need to be selected to against if they aren't likely to emerge even as defunct forms.

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Synergy and Emergence don't displace possibilitys. Something won't emerge without a possibility to do so you need the correct chemicals and context and forces for something to emerge it is not the magic creation of something new.

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Such as the example with pure water it has an impressive but limited set of possibilitys on its own without the addition of new chemicals or forces.

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The meaning hasn't changed at all, it just sounds less pretentious.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

Thanks for the link!

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A glass has certain dispositions, for example the disposition to shatter when struck.

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Okay, I'm getting it.

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But what is this disposition? It seems on the one hand to be a perfectly real property, a genuine respect of similarity common to glasses, china cups, and anything else fragile. Yet on the other hand, the glass's disposition seems mysterious, ‘ethereal’ (as Goodman (1954) put it) in a way that, say, its size and shape are not.

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What is so mysterious about it? Its an amorphous solid that lacks a proper crystalline structure that would allow for dislocations to absorb any damages to the structure. So when it is damaged, it just propagates throughout the entire structure.It seems like "disposition" is just a place-holder for a lack of understanding of the underlying physics.

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For its disposition, it seems, has to do only with its possibly shattering in certain conditions.

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So is it different from a possibility or not?

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In general, it seems that nothing about the actual behavior of an object is ever necessary for it to have the dispositions it has.

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Yeah, its not about the behavior of an object, its about its physical properties, no? Okay, now, if it is if-and-only-if, then that makes a little more sense to me.In that way, it seems like disposition is a bit stronger of a claim than possibility. That is, when something is disposed to whatever given such-n-such, then the whatever happens, no matter what, if such-n-such does. Conversely, if it is just a possibility, then it may or may not happen... it could, but it doesn't have too.Does that sound right?Because if it is, then Andrew isn't really using the word properly. That sounds just like "possibility" to me. Again, I'm not seeing how that is different from a "possibility".

Now I see, that's perfectly clear.Thank you for your time, Mod.