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Author | Topic: bio evolution, light, sound and aroma | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
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 ... It didn't. That's not how natural selection works.
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. Ditto. You need to backtrack and ask a more fundamental question, such as "what is the theory of evolution?" or "what is natural selection?" Now, as you're aware, natural selection doesn't literally 'know' anything, that's why you put 'knew' in quotes. That's a good start. But also even metaphorically it doesn't 'know' much. It certainly doesn't 'know' about the existence of light, the laws of optics, et cetera. All it (metaphorically) 'knows' is which organisms are best-adapted to their environment. It favors good vision over bad without having the faintest idea what vision is or the physical laws underlying it. It doesn't need to. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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If it doesn't literally know anything, how does it know how to select in a natural manner? The phrase "natural selection" is itself a metaphor, formed by analogy with the artificial selection practiced by humans when they breed plants and animals.
Is there one definitive answer to what is 'Natural Selection'? It's the statistical tendency for organisms which are better fitted to survive and reproduce in their environment to actually do so, thus perpetuating their genes. As Darwin put it: "Can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection." Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
My root position is that life is given, and that evolution is a non-starter... Yesterday you didn't know what natural selection was. Might there not still be things you don't know about evolution?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
What is this "disposition" of which you speak?
Does a lump of metal have a "disposition" to be made into a bicycle? Would we be able to take a lump of metal with this "disposition" and make it into a hatstand instead?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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By creating so called "new" things we are really just uncovering dispositions reality has. If we can do something it means that reality allows for that thing to be done. So your point would be that in order for evolution to happen, it would have to be possible? Yeah, I think we can agree on that.
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 ... ?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
A bicycle is designed. If you prefer an undesigned example, consider snowflakes. Is water "brimming with potential and bizarre and plentiful dispositions" to produce forms such as these?
Back 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. 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.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
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, against brown ones. Really I think you could have figured that out for yourself.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I can't see the Polar bear having to compete against anything. How long could a brown bear survive in the Arctic without camouflage? Yeah, a brown bear, being so conspicuous, would soon be killed and eaten by ... er ... you know, those things that eat bears.
Basically a dead bear walking. Back in reality, grizzlies do not immediately die if placed against a white background, do in fact live within the Arctic Circle, have a range overlapping that of the polar bear, and can breed with them. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
The point I made is that mutating genes have no idea what environment they are in so why should any mutation be favourable to the environmental context? Because there's a lot of mutations, and so some of them are bound to be.
And in the case polar bears and other white animals that are camouflaged their genes are totally unaware they are living in a white environment. For a gene to create such a specific, valuable, environment-matching adaptation is indeed rather like magic. Not that much like. Mutations which change the hue of organisms are possible, and also rather common, whereas magic is impossible and much much rarer.
By what strange ... what's the word ... ah yes ... magic ... by what strange magic would such mutations only occur when they're harmful by making the animal conspicuous and never when they're useful by making the animal camouflaged?
And was this alleged transition series observed or is it speculated out of necessity because the theory demands it? We can see a grizzly-polar bear transition in the fossil record, if that's what you mean. But perhaps you'll say that that was made by magic too.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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That relies on the validity of homology claims. It relies on the bones. Which you haven't looked at or, apparently, researched.
Take the case of Ursus minimus And do what with it?
The issue I am raising is how and or why a mutation creates something in synch with the environment at all. Luck, obviously. As in the case of the white animals. Mutations are constantly creating white animals, and normally this is not in the least "in sync with the environment". A white lion, a white dolphin, a white chimp, etc, are not in sync with their environment. But when a similar mutation happens to an animal living in a white environment, then it's in sync. Now, it would be mind-bogglingly weird if such mutations only occurred where they'd be useless, wouldn't it?
So lets look at the retina [...] What we are talking about is exceedingly specific and exceedingly beneficial mutations by genes that are apparently unconscious of themselves and their environment. Which is also apparently what we were talking about when we were discussing polar bears. Mutations occur. Some of them are bound to be beneficial. These are favored by selection. Just as there's no magic in the white coat of the polar bear, so there's no need to see magic in the retina.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I think you are seriously mischaracterizing conscious sensation. There is no reason why any activity in the brain should lead to a conscious experience. And yet apparently it does, which is something you'd have to deal with. For example, consider how electrical stimulation of the brain can cause the experience of memories, sounds, smells, etc. Consider how the loss of parts of the brain cause corresponding losses of conscious experience.
In the Knut Nordby example it shows that he doesn't know what it is like to experience colour and no amount of theories about it will replace the direct qualitative lived experience. That shows the primacy of experience. There is something Knut couldn't know about reality because he was unconscious of it. Now, is this to be attributed to a physical deficit (in his retina, for example) or a defect in his immaterial soul? Which way would you bet?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I posted brain images earlier showing people with normal mental states but large loss of brain region. Brain plasticity is a wonderful thing. Nonetheless, brain damage does in fact impair mental function. Stroke victims, for example, really aren't just putting it on.
How could these missing regions be causally necessary for conscious states if these states and functions exist in their absence? Apparently the remaining regions are sufficient for conscious states. Show me someone who's conscious without a brain, then we'll talk.
There are also phantom pains in the absence of limbs and hallucination and dreams with the absence of external perceptual input. But not in the absence of a brain. And look what LSD can do "with the absence of external perceptual input". Why would this material substance so profoundly mess with the immaterial?
Also as is emphasized in the Majorek article brain stimulation is not sufficient too produce "normal" mental experiences that are isomorphic with everyday experiences rather they manifest tingling, simple shapes and colours but not of faces or elaborate percepts. But it does produce mental experiences, yes? It would be surprising from my point of view if the crude expedient of zapping the surface of the brain could cause every conscious experience. But that it produces some conscious experiences refutes the contention that "There is no reason why any activity in the brain should lead to a conscious experience." 'Cos this is a physical activity that does.
Also brain lesion cases are often exaggerated and the areas to large to specify a clearly delineated functional role for an area. And often they aren't. Perhaps we should look at the most informative cases rather than the least. If we can draw no conclusions from Phineas Gage, whom I never mentioned, let's look at someone else. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
The case is used to illustrate how a lack of consciousness leads to a lack of knowledge. It is saying that there are things that can only be known about through consciousness. Certainly. Does it mean that we can know things without a brain? I can make little of the rest of your post.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Correlation is not causation. Oh, right, I was forgetting. Of course. When a man receives a traumatic injury to (for example) his visual cortex, and goes blind, those silly "neuronal reductionists" go about saying that the visual cortex is in some way responsible for the experience of seeing. But correlation is not causation. Obviously what's really happened is that his immaterial soul was injured, maybe by an invisible demon flying into it, and this caused him both to go blind and to bang just that part of his head in which erring neuroscientists locate his visual cortex.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I can show you someone who is unconscious with a brain. Unfortunately for you, that's not the same thing.
Neural plasticity is problem for a causal correlations and functional correlations in neuroscience. In the cases I have illustrated it rules out the necessity of any of the missing or damaged areas in consciousness or cognition. But not the necessity of the brain.
If someones brain was missing entirely they would not be able to control their body their body to indicate they were still conscious. Why not? They'd still have a body. They just wouldn't be able to control their brain in doing ... wait, what is it the brain does, according to you?
A wide range of complex issues arise in the study of consciousness such as a the binding problem where we have coherent unified, multifaceted experiences but activity spread across the brain. There is not a simple step form one brain region to a conscious experience. You seem to be aiming for the crudest form of correlation. Sometimes "the crudest form of correlation" is exactly what we observe. Calling it crude doesn't make it go away. The inability to identify living things, for example, really is correlated with damage to the superior temporal sulcus and the lateral fusiform gyrus. You may call that "crude" all you wish, it's also a fact.
The biggest puzzle for me is how we become conscious of being ourselves as opposed to all the other billions of consciousnesses that exist and have existed. That is the problem of arriving at a particular conscious location. Consciousness has a location where one has a unique portal to reality from a self perspective. Specifically, the location of my consciousness appears to be inside my head. Say, what's inside my head? My brain, you say? Hmm, could be worth looking into.
These twins Abigail and Brittany are an example of a united body but two separate conscious locations to occupy. Two brains, then. That would fit in with them having two heads.
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