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Author Topic:   bio evolution, light, sound and aroma
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1435 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 97 of 142 (717409)
01-27-2014 9:02 AM
Reply to: Message 93 by AndrewPD
01-26-2014 8:53 PM


Re: noosphere?
... If a creator merely created the first moment of the universe that would make the whole process dependent on them.
And all of science would describe how the rest of the universe proceeded, including the development of life and its evolution from that point to now.
... But you can't see the mental input by methodically dissecting the car.
Nor do you need to see it in order to understand how the car was made in the way that it was.
You can reverse engineer the construction of the car without incorporating any mental input from the original construct and build a fully functional replicated car.
For instance I am thinking of the colour pink. I am now thinking of a car. I imagine combining the two in my mind and voila! I have an imaginary pink car. If I paint my car pink that is a result of this thought process.
But the car is not painted just by the design, it is implemented by a physical object: you.
You can also imagine that this car has only one horn, so that in your imagination you have an invisible pink unicorn.
Lawrence krauss seems to have implicitly recognized this problem by trying to find away from the universe to come from nothing. He wants to exorcise the need for intervention at any stage in the universe with his pseudo-nothingness which strangely contains the laws of physics somehow.
So? It seems he's just saying that there are emergent properties ...

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 93 by AndrewPD, posted 01-26-2014 8:53 PM AndrewPD has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1435 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 98 of 142 (717410)
01-27-2014 9:36 AM
Reply to: Message 94 by AndrewPD
01-26-2014 9:15 PM


I think you are seriously mischaracterizing conscious sensation. There is no reason why any activity in the brain should lead to a conscious experience.
You want to make it a magical experience you are free to have that opinion, but that isn't going to get you to a point of understanding how it works.
The brain has been under development for millions of years, but this development is an difference in quantities rather than a difference in quality. Each step of development had an advantage for survival and breeding over the previous level of development and it thus enjoyed positive selection pressure to continue. Even in human ancestry we can see this development occurring, even in other animals we can see cognitive properties and even self-awareness, and we can even see simple sense and response systems in some organisms, so there is a whole spectrum of cognitive abilities, all providing their species with sufficient advantage to survive and breed compared to not having those abilities.
Evolution is an arms race, not just between predator and prey, but between different species to survive in an ecology and between breeding individuals in a population to pass on their traits to their offspring. This arms race means that each generation is finding new advantages in the new traits that give them the means to survive and reproduce.
Cognition is one of those traits that is seeing continued selection for greater cognitive ability ... in all organisms.
Touch is by no means straightforward. It involves higher cognitive and learning processes to identify objects. ...
It involves learning, something babies do, you know.
... So for example they have found that blind people who regain their sight can't recognise objects easily that they were familiar with by touch. ...
Surprisingly they need to learn how to interpret new sensations. How surprising ... almost like being a baby again ...
... none of this anyhow makes the experience any less in the conscious sphere. ...
An experience shared by virtually all vertebrates in different degrees of quantity but not in quality. Many species overlap in their cognitive abilities and there is no abrupt shift from one more "primitive" species to one more derived species, but a spectrum of abilities.
... And we haven't got round to language, mental representation and semantics yet.
Which we can observe this in apes and some other animals in different degrees, some of which test out more intelligent and inventive than some humans. This again shows a spectrum of development by evolutionary processes where the increased cognitive ability confers a survival and reproductive advantage to the individual, the breeding population, the species.
Problem solving provides an advantage for survival and reproduction.

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 94 by AndrewPD, posted 01-26-2014 9:15 PM AndrewPD has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1435 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 116 of 142 (717602)
01-29-2014 2:07 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by New Cat's Eye
01-29-2014 12:03 PM


I was thinking along the lines of, if you found an arrowhead in nature, then yeah, you could determine that it was designed.
More likely along the lines of your typical IDologist bait and switch tactic:
You can see that the arrowhead was designed
Therefore when something in nature appears designed that then there must have been a designer.
The problem is still how design is realized: with the arrowhead we can find the cores and hammer stones and we can replicate how they were made, but with apparent design in nature we need a mechanism to realize the design, and the only one in biology is evolution ...

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 115 by New Cat's Eye, posted 01-29-2014 12:03 PM New Cat's Eye has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 117 by AndrewPD, posted 02-01-2014 12:18 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1435 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 125 of 142 (717808)
02-01-2014 7:37 PM
Reply to: Message 117 by AndrewPD
02-01-2014 12:18 PM


I don't see how evolution or natural selection are actually mechanisms. I thought a mechanism was a physical structure like a mill.
Then you are confusing a mechanism with a mechanical device (for making flour). A mechanism is the means by which a design goes from the drawing board to production -- the "black box" that does the necessary work to transform raw ingredients into new product.
I have been discussing dispositions at length here and pointing out that things can only emerge if reality has the disposition to allow them. ...
Wishful thinking, not reality. Sorry ... just because you have been discussing it that doesn't make it a valid argument -- you need to show (a) that "dispositions" exist in reality outside your mind, and (b) that organisms are limited by these purported "dispositions" -- where in the DNA does this occur?
Or is this just another retread of the old creationist "limit" to evolution that claims macroevolution cannot occur? Again -- show where that limitation is enacted\engaged in determining what can or cannot evolve.
... The posited mechanism in transforming organism is mutating DNA I thought.
And selection. Evolution's a two step process. Studies have shown that mutations are sufficiently random that any intended design\disposition\whatever can be reasonably ruled out in forming a new trait\feature. It is selection of new mutations that begins the development of new traits\features.
New features can only be created by mutations if reality has the disposition to allow them.
And so you will claim that any new features that evolve are due to these mysterious magical "dispositions" ... without any empirical objective evidence that they actually exist?
Seems like circular reasoning to me. Of course there are the E.coli experiments where a new feature evolved in one cloned population but not in another cloned from the same source.
Curiously this means that either there is no such thing as a disposition or that having a disposition does not predict a new feature and thus is irrelevant to the study of actual new features.
We don't say consciousness doesn't exist because we don't see it in the brain. It is in a private realm of subjectivity
And yet we can map the consciousness and see the patterns that conscious thoughts make. Nothing subjective there.
It is easy to say you have a sufficient explanation for something after the fact more without having to genuinely replicate the totality of events. It is like someone feeling they have a compelling lone suspect for the Jack The ripper murders
That's rather confused linguistically. Let's see if we can break it down ...
It is easy to say you have a sufficient explanation for something after the fact ...
Only when that explanation covers all the known facts in a reasonable manner (ie in concurrence with the known behavior of the elements). For instance we can say that the behavior of planets orbiting the sun is explained by the theory of gravity ... and then check all those orbital facts against the theoretical outputs.
Then we can use that theory to predict the location of those planets in the future, and when those planets just happen to be in those places at the times predicted we can say that we have high confidence in the theory explaining the behavior of planets in orbiting the sun.
It is easy to say you have a sufficient explanation ... more particularly without having to genuinely replicate the totality of events. ...
And again, using the planet\sun example, we don't need to model the beginning of the universe or even of the solar system in order to model the current behavior of the planets and make testable predictions of future locations ... or to have high confidence in the repeatability of making those predictions and tests. Nor do we need to know where gravity comes from to make these high confidence predictions. We just need to know that it exists in a measurable quantity for determining the explanations and predictions.
... It is like someone feeling they have a compelling lone suspect for the Jack The ripper murders.
But it's not one person and it's not one line of inquiry when we are dealing with science. It is several different lines of inquiry and many people doing the investigations ... and they have to be peer reviewed and those discoveries need to be independently replicated.
Your analogy fails to adequately describe science and thus leads you to false conclusions. Straw man arguments are like that.
Edited by RAZD, : ..

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 117 by AndrewPD, posted 02-01-2014 12:18 PM AndrewPD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 128 by AndrewPD, posted 02-02-2014 3:10 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1435 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 129 of 142 (717889)
02-02-2014 5:05 PM
Reply to: Message 128 by AndrewPD
02-02-2014 3:10 PM


I am not sure what your problem with dispositions is. ...
Simple: they don't add to our knowledge of how things work, they fail to show up in one group when appear to occur in another, and they don't appear to explain anything.
That makes them a waste of time.
... I am not sure how anything could come to exist without dispositions.
If it has no predictive value then it isn't necessary to discuss it when using science to understand and predict things.
Ever heard of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy?
You look at all the dogs in the world and claim that they evolved from wolves because they had a "disposition" to become dogs ... but that doesn't predict what the dogs look like, it's an after the fact assessment for a fantasy.
If there were no limits on reality then anything could happen so there must be limits and constraining forces. ...
We call those natural laws: gravity is one.
... Pigs don't develop wings because that is not a viable option for them. ...
And evolution doesn't occur to provide wanted traits, just traits occur by random mutation and that are selected because they provide an advantage. Pigs and bats come from a common mammalian ancestor ... so did bats evolve wings because of a disposition in that ancestor while pigs did not develop wings because of a disposition in that same ancestor?
Evolution explains wings in bats but not in pigs ... your "disposition" fantasy doesn't.
I am not sure what your stance on emergent properties is but I don't see how they could emerge without dispositions. ...
Your lack of imagination and critical thinking is noted.
Emergence
quote:
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems.
Biology can be viewed as an emergent property of the laws of chemistry which, in turn, can be viewed as an emergent property of particle physics. Similarly, psychology could be understood as an emergent property of neurobiological dynamics, and free-market theories understand economy as an emergent feature of psychology.
See also Synergy
quote:
Synergy is the interaction of multiple elements in a system to produce an effect different from or greater than the sum of their individual effects. ...
In the natural world, synergistic phenomena are ubiquitous, ranging from physics (for example, the different combinations of quarks that produce protons and neutrons) to chemistry (a popular example is water, a compound of hydrogen and oxygen), to the cooperative interactions among the genes in genomes, the division of labor in bacterial colonies, the synergies of scale in multi-cellular organisms, as well as the many different kinds of synergies produced by socially-organized groups, from honeybee colonies to wolf packs and human societies. Even the tools and technologies that are widespread in the natural world represent important sources of synergistic effects. The tools that enabled early hominins to become systematic big-game hunters is a primordial human example. ...
Synergies don't need dispositions to explain them.
... Are you saying that if consciousness emerges from the brain theee is non lawful causal reason for that?
Gibberish.
The growth of the brain from the reptilian beginning is an increase in kind, but it reaches a synergistic point where added brain function allows different uses. This is classic emergent behavior.
We see this in many organisms that reach a certain point in brain development.
An example of a lack of disposition is the inability of A to be come B. Such as the inability of pure water to transform into sugar.
An example of a latent disposition is the ability of glass to shatter whether it does over its lifetime. If you make a glass and then melt it down years later and it never shattered it still had the disposition to do so under the right circumstances.
It seems you want to deny reality of having these dispositions and to have evolution creating new things from scratch simply to make the only creative force blind evolution. A biased stance.
A lack of the carbon molecules needed to make sugar in water is a disposition? Really?
The fact that glass is brittle is not a disposition of glass to break, it is a characteristic of the material.
Again I don't need to invent a word usage to explain these aspects of the materials, I can just use existing words, without the incredulity.
From a dispositions stance you can posit evolution and a creator of the dispositions. ...
You can posit all you want, but that still does not mean that the theory of evolution can be derived from "dispositions" nor that "dispositions" predict the path evolution takes in any way.
... The ultimate disposition is that of the universe or reality in which evolution is purported to happen. ...
Which again is not something you can derive from "dispositions" nor that "dispositions" predict the path the universe development takes in any way or its behavior.
... That is why the likes of Krauss would like to exorcise the need for a creator here and try desperately to have an unitelligent creation of physical laws from quasi nothingness.
Do you think soap bubbles need to be explained by godly imposed dispositions? Are sand grains tumbling down a sand dune driven by godly dispositions? At what point do you say "dispositions" are not involved? If everything has "dispositions" then it becomes as meaningless as the luminiferous cosmic ether fantasy.
Curiously I don't need "dispositions" in order to posit creator god/s in any way, nor do I need to "exorcise the need for a creator" to see that science explains how things are done, how that creation is being continually effected\realized\developed.
When god/s create the laws of gravity they don't need to be included in every explanation of how gravity works.
You are no more entitled to your claims than me.
True, you are free to have whatever opinion strikes your fancy ... I prefer ones based on objective evidence, tested science and consilience with observations of reality as much as possible, then I allow speculation ... but it "lives" in a world constrained by what we do know.

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 128 by AndrewPD, posted 02-02-2014 3:10 PM AndrewPD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 130 by AndrewPD, posted 02-04-2014 8:56 AM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1435 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 133 of 142 (718092)
02-04-2014 11:25 AM
Reply to: Message 132 by New Cat's Eye
02-04-2014 10:08 AM


How is a disposition different from a "possibility"?
Because that's not sufficiently "deified" ...

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 132 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-04-2014 10:08 AM New Cat's Eye has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1435 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(2)
Message 135 of 142 (718101)
02-04-2014 11:58 AM
Reply to: Message 130 by AndrewPD
02-04-2014 8:56 AM


I am not sure what your problem with dispositions is. ..
Simple: they don't add to our knowledge of how things work
Yes they do.
No they don't -- every thing you mention can be just as easily described as the properties of the objects. I can discuss things endlessly without having to refer to any "disposition" but just using common words properly.
When you know the dispositions of glass you know that it wouldn't be a suitable material for making certain things with because of its disposition to shatter.
When you know the properties of glass, you know that it wouldn't be a suitable material for making certain things with, because of its propensity to shatter.
And as a designer I know that all materials have different degrees of brittleness and strength. A pure glass thread can hold more weight than a steel thread of the same diameter. Steel will also fracture when it's cold and the brittleness modulus is exceeded. Aluminum will have brittle fatigue cracks propagating over time until failure occurs. I also know that glass flows over time such that ancient panes of glass are thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top than when first installed. Heated it can flow instead of fracture, and so it can be blown into many artistic shapes.
Reference to "disposition" not required.
Also you you would not expect a bird to evolve glass wings because they wouldn't function adequately. ...
Or because we would not expect organisms to be able to fashion glass from melting sand ... without burning themselves up in the process.
Reference to "disposition" not required.
... 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 disposition to be selected or survive. ...
Curiously I don't find this argument persuasive in the slightest - I could only rule them out in the short term. Meanwhile we can observe squirrels and marsupials with evolved wings, flying snakes and frogs to say nothing of all the insects ... so it is not inconceivable that some species of pig could evolve wings if the ecological conditions were available.
What you can rule out is evolution that makes any organism unfit to live in their ecology because they will not pass selection for breeding and survival.
Reference to "disposition" not required.
... And the same in the case of pink and green polar bears. ...
Again only if you can establish that these would not provide a selective advantage. If we looked at brown or black bears the question is not so unimaginable ... so it is only a matter of degree of advantage, not a matter of a difference in the kind of advantage.
Reference to "disposition" not required.
... These don't need to be selected to against if they aren't likely to emerge even as defunct forms.
Bass Ackwards thinking again. If there is no disadvantage there will be no negative selection.
Curiously we could look at bird plummage if we want to really eviscerate your argument.
Reference to "disposition" not required.
Synergy and Emergence don't displace dispositions. Something won't emerge without a disposition 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.
Synergy and Emergence don't displace (?affect?) properties. Something won't emerge without a propensity 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.
Reference to "disposition" not required.
Such as the example with pure water it has an impressive but limited set of dispositions on its own without the addition of new chemicals or forces.
Such as the example with pure water it has an impressive but limited set of properties on its own without the addition of new chemicals or forces.
Reference to "disposition" not required.
Further the properties of materials are due to what they are, not to any "mystical disposition" of the components. Sand does not have the property of being fragile, and nor does it have tensile strength to hang weights of any amount.
Glass does not have the properties of fragility and tensile strength because these were "dispositions" in sand, rather it is a function of the structure and molecules of the material.
Reference to "disposition" not required.
If I can discuss anything with the relevant properties without "disposition" being mentioned or needed, then it doesn't add to our knowledge of how things work. QED.
Furthermore, the normal connotations of disposition are based on the primary definitions
disposition
noun
1. the predominant or prevailing tendency of one's spirits; natural mental and emotional outlook or mood; characteristic attitude: a girl with a pleasant disposition.
2. state of mind regarding something; inclination: a disposition to gamble.
So implying these for inanimate objects is confusing and contrary to succinct discussions.
Sadly I don't need to personify or deify materials for you.
Edited by RAZD, : +
Edited by RAZD, : +

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 130 by AndrewPD, posted 02-04-2014 8:56 AM AndrewPD has not replied

  
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