Unwarranted conclusions in Evolution Theory

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Originally posted by peter borger:
Disappearance of traits over time due to not having functions sounds a lot like de-evolution to me.

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I sometimes wonder if creationists understand the concept of evolution at all: apparently not. The whole point is that evolution is directionless: there can be no de- or re- or para- evolution. Just evolution.[B][QUOTE]Not really interesting to discuss, since I can perfectly understand the loss of characteristics. I think it is not my personal opinion, if I state that the gain of traits/new genes should be the major evolutionists’ concern, not the loss of genes.[/B][/QUOTE]Firstly you would need to demonstrate why their is a qualitative, rather than merely quantitative difference between the two forms of change.[B][QUOTE]However, most vestigial traits have been demonstrated to have unexpected functions, e.g. tonsils, appendix were demonstrated to have an immunological function. It was just a lack of knowledge that these organs were mistakenly thought of as vestiges.[/B][/QUOTE]So you see a sort of "vestiges of the gaps" argument? Interesting. If you reject the concept of vestiges on the basis that they may have functions we do not yet know, you would presumably not object to someone rejecting ID arguments from irreducible complexity on the basis that some organs may have developed by pathways we do not know yet. ID and irreducible complexity are, by your lights, UNWARRANTED CONCLUSIONS based on lack of knowledge of evolutionary pathways.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
With respect, your evoltuionary bias has blinded you from an appreciation of the actual issues of the origin of novelty.

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Hardly: I am just much more interested, as a philosopher, not a scientist, in what constitutes novelty.
[B][QUOTE]The fact that you can't understand that the initial origin of a an enzyme that, for example, glcosylates a protein, is an incredibly harder ask than switching that gene off and letting it drift away to a random sequence over time proves my point.[/B][/QUOTE]Harder? Sounds awfully like a value-laden term to me. Quantitively, what is the difference? Mere probability? And "random sequence" sounds highly unlikely: difficult to see how any chemical sequence could be without constraining facets and thus far from random.
[B][QUOTE]A single base change will switch of a gene. To get a new enzyme from random is a far harder ask which is defineitely qualitatively different.[/B][/QUOTE]Enough with the "harder" already! I think you are being mislead by your own qualitative langauge. For example: "To get a new enzyme from random is an event of less probability" poses the equation you are trying to make in similar terms on both sides and thus is much less attractive to your argument - it demonstrates that the difference is, at base, quantitative rather than qualitative, and therefore, however delightful to behold, not dependent on transcendent interference.
[B][QUOTE]To you an entire new biochemical pathway is dime a dozen so why get excited about a new enzyme. Evoltuion is so systematic it just happens all the time. New genes, new organs.[/B][/QUOTE]Actually I imagine new genes and new organs are extremely rare.
[B][QUOTE]Ha! That is your mistake. You assumed what you thought you were proving.[/B][/QUOTE]What did I assume, and what did you think I thought I was proving?
[B][QUOTE]Utter, utter, complete folly.[/B][/QUOTE]Folly to be wise, perhaps? :-)
[B][QUOTE]You have fallen into the trap of thinking of genes as just lists of letters. They are very, very special lists of letters.[/B][/QUOTE]I should sue!! :-) There are few people who resist the concept of biological information as strongly as I do. Letters indeed! You'll be saying I think there is a genetic code next! To my way of thinking, even the concepts "gene" or "protein" are merely convenient labels which constrain our understanding even as they enable it.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
After millions of lab experiments, let alone simulaitons, we know that switching of a gene is much easier.

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Easier! So can you express this in any way other than with qualitative terms. Define "easier" or "harder" - they both imply agency and volition, so something or somebody has to find it "easier" or "harder." You see, that's why qualitative terms lead you down your own well-worn path. Get rid of the easier and harder, and see how well your concepts stand up.
[B][QUOTE]If there was no qualitative difference betwe nloss and gain of new protein families then any molecular biologist would be able to generate novel orders of life in backyard DNA experiments.[/B][/QUOTE]OK - let's try it your way. If there is a qualitative difference, wherein lies the quality? What is the "quality" that is different. If "easier" or "harder" is the best you can do - what is the goal-directed agency which finds it easier or harder. And what leads you to think that the process is goal-directed anyway?
After all, if the process is not goal-directed, then it cannot be "easier" or "harder", can it? Just more or less probable.[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 09-20-2002]

[B][QUOTE]Mister Pamboli, you make it too easy for me. How exactly do you conclude that I am a creationist?
So in the first sentence of the first response in the thread "unwarranted conclusions in ET" we observe the first unwarrented conclusion. And assuredly, it will not be the last.[/B][/QUOTE]"Apparently human science is unable to address these questions. So, there is a lot of space left for creation," quoth you in an earlier post. This and your comments on the "nihilism" of NDT being your life-long mission to counter, led to the inference. You may indeed say it was an inference to a stronger position than could be made with reliability, but it was hardly unwarranted.
[B][QUOTE]If you had read what I try to convey for the last couple of months than you would know by now that it is not so indisputable that evolution is without direction.[/B][/QUOTE]Indeed I have read it - and you make a good attempt at rendering an incoherent position tolerably coherent. But you fail to distinguiush between the constraint of potentialities and direction, and are mislead by the ambiguity of the latter term. Direction can be as unintentional as "the relative position to which something tends" such as "the direction North" or something highly intentional suhc as "under the direction of his commander." This ambiguity plagues your entire discussion.
[B][QUOTE]Maybe you should also define "Just evolution".[/B][/QUOTE]Just change. Change which happens to lead to a variation in the numbers of classes under our current, but by no means perfect, definitive or final, means of classification.
[B][QUOTE]Any biologist can tell you that it is associated with the occurence of new genes. In contrast, nobody can tell you where these genes came from. That is the big evolutionary secret.[/B][/QUOTE]You are still floundering around the issue. What is the qualitative difference between a new gene and change? What is the quality that changes that cannot be expressed in mere quantitative terms?
[B][QUOTE]It implicates that both creationism and naturalism have the same validity, since both use the same elusive arguments.[/B][/QUOTE]Actually it doesn't. The particular forms of argument may both have equal formal validity at the point of inferring an unknown, but both have to get there first. Creationism's arguments, especially the ludicrous intelligent design theory, rely on inherently flawed arguments to infer design and "fill the gaps": evolutionists typically work with analogs and extensions of observable processes to do the same thing. The difference is, that while both positions may be wrong, the evolutionist's position will, by correcting itself with future observations, reliably converge on the truth. The inferential strategy of creationists cannot do so. It is not the use of inference (which is our only source of knowledge of the world external to our own consciousness), but the strategy for converging to the truth that is most important.
[B][QUOTE]In another thread I already mentioned that science as we know it will not bring clearance in the origin of genes, since we hit the limit of knowledge in this matter: genetic uncertainty.[/B][/QUOTE]Even were one to accept such a limit to knowledge, which I am far from doing, it still would not change the choice of inferential strategy. No inferential strategy can be based on the certainty of making future observations which could modify the inferences.

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Originally posted by acmhttu001_2006:
I have just gotten into this thread quite recently. I have some questions for you?

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Sure - delighted to answer.
[B][QUOTE]Do you discount the genome? Do you discount that something defines all the chracteristics passed down from generation to generation on a molecular level?[/B][/QUOTE]No. Yes.
I do not discount the genome in the sense that I beleive it plays a significant role in defining characteristics, but not all characteristics, not even all significant characteristics. Further I do not see any evidence that is the only mechanism of passing on characteristics. There is a nice summary of an alternative view of the status of genomics here ... Evolution
[B][QUOTE]What is your theory for the "substance" that defines life? What do you call this "substance"?[/B][/QUOTE]I cannot see that life could be defined in terms of substance. If pushed, I would suggest that "life" is a useful shorthand for particular (difficult to define) processes. I do not see, at the margins, a clear distinction between living and non-living systems. One can identify what is clearly living, but such definitions fail in hard cases.
[B][QUOTE]I will agree with you in saying that the person you are replying to could have brought her langauge to a langauge you could understand. And yes, I am sorry for some of us who resort to higher unfamiliar words to base our arguments off of.[/B][/QUOTE]My concern was not that I could not understand - it was that the writer did not understand the implications of what they were actually saying.
[B][QUOTE]We could label them any way we want, but as gene or protein this is the consensus mathod or name that we label these things. We have explained them the best and this is what modern scientist call them. Everyone across the Magesterium of Science knows what a gene or protein is. They by nature have to be convenient labels, or else there would be confusion.QUESTION: How could something contrain our understanding while at the same time enable it?[/B][/QUOTE]Your point is, of course, valid and gets to the problem nicely. My answer to your question is therefore also applicable to the reason why concepts (not merely terms) such as "gene" or "protein" are both essential and limiting.Let us take the case of the 19th century linguists who began to study the structure of the chinese languages. They came to these languages equipped with linguitic concepts such as Subject, Object, Adverb or Predicate which, however useful in Indo-European languages, did not really apply to their new subjects of study. The concepts of grammar, in other words, enabled their understanding in the sense that they gave them a "library" of concepts without which they could not begin to analyse their subjects at all, but constrained their understanding initially to those aspects of their study which could be described in terms of their "library" of concepts.
"Gene" and "protein" do the same. They enable the scientist to actually conceptualise and bring their understanding to bear on a subject, but they constrain that understanding.
Every now and then in science, along comes a Newton or a Clerk Maxwell who shakes out the old concepts and introduces a new set which enable further understanding, but introduce their own constraints.

[B][QUOTE]Somewhere along the line quantitative turns into qualitative. Factors of trillions differnt in probabilty would be a pretty good way to distinguish.[/B][/QUOTE]Well this is progress: the hard task isn't hard, just much more unlikely to occur at random. [B][QUOTE]If you don't like that then on the other hand you have to ask yourself what good a new protein by itself will do.[/B][/QUOTE]Value terms again: there is no requirement for a protein to do good, or to have anything to do with benefit. They are just proteins.
[B][QUOTE]Proteins exist in pathways containing anywhere from three or four to dozens of proteins. Getting a new pathway is undeniably qualitatively different than switching a gene off.[/B][/QUOTE]I deny it. Unless you can clarify when different probabilities becomes different qualities. The questions are straightforward enough:
:: if the differences are qualitative, what is the quality which differs?
:: if the qualititative difference is merely a certain quantitative difference, how do you decide between one and the other?I suspect the answer to the latter is "when it suits my argument" but would be interested if you could show otherwise. [B][QUOTE]Evolution has simply assumed that the hard ask is possible. That is fine - there is no law of physics that says it isn't - but I think that requires incredible faith.[/B][/QUOTE]So you admit it is possible and simply very unlikely - that is a quantitative argument. To make this work, you now have to show the probability of a designed or God-created answer so we can compare them.Of course, you will perhaps want to retreat into your qualitative language: resist the temptation. You admit evolution is possible, now show us that your answer is possible. Otherwise, anyone reading this is best advised to stick with the evolutionary answer, don't you think?

Peter, you use the phrase "unwarranted conclusion" a lot: it has become quite your catchphrase. I am interested in it, as your use of it suggests that you hold to some definable standard of inference.I have read your posts which use this term in some detail and can find no consistent application of a standard, yet the continued and systematic use of the term suggests that you regard it as in some way a significant thing to say, and also that its significance derives from some manner of objective standard.Could you more explicit on this? What "warrants" a conclusion for you?

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Originally posted by peter borger:
... an 'unwarranted conclusion' is a conlusion that goes way beyond the evidence.

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Whoa! You lost in me technicalities there. "Way beyond?" What's all that about then?

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So, in fact it is speculation. There is nothing inherently wrong with speculation but do not bring it as fact. Often even the speculation are based upon assumptions. Presenting speculations as facts, that's what I object to as a scientist. It has nothing in common with science.

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So what is the difference between speculation and warranted inference? What is way beyond the evidence?I suspect it means little more than "that which Peter B will not accept" and the whole parading of the phrase as some meaningful insight into logical is no more than a pose.But perhaps I'm wrong? Perhaps you have some carefully worked out understanding of where the limits of inference lie? Care to share it?Seriously, it's an important question, and if you are going to point out fallacies and "unwarranted" inferences you have to be a bit whiter than white yourself. Otherwise one reasonably hold that in many cases your cries of "unwarranted" are - how could one put it - unwarranted?

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Originally posted by peter borger:
Imagine, you find two tracks of footprints next to each other printed in the sand.

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I don't want to imagine anything, thank you very much. I want some information on the systemics of your inferential strategy, not fairytales about footprints.You wave the phrase "unwarranted" around like some banner of logic to which your fellow creationists should rally: but in reality, you appear to have no substance to back it up. It's all just a question of what Peter thinks isn't it? [B][QUOTE]One track comprises small footprints, the other track are footprints twice as large. The conclusion would be that the tracks were left behind by two bipedal organisms.[/B][/QUOTE]This is your standard of argument? Seriously?So what information have you provided that tells me I could infer bipedalism? From the details you give they could could be two sets of millipede tracks!From that point on, naturally, the post is utterly meaningless as an illustration. Not that an illustration was required, simply an explanation of your view of the limits of inference.Working in the field of molecular biology, as you do with such success, surely you have given a great deal of thought to the limits of inference, as much of your study is required to infer structures from indirect observations?I trust your published work is to a considerably higher standard.[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 09-24-2002]

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Originally posted by peter borger:
You helped me demonstrating that data are usually subject to a paradigm and interpreted accordingly.
As mentioned before, there is nothing inherently wrong with interpretations of data as long as these interpretations are NOT presented as fact. ONLY THE DATA ARE FACT.

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So nice to meet a fellow skeptic, but you seem hopelessly confused. If only the data are fact, how did you warrant the conclusion that the observed phenomena were footprints, even more so "tracks" which suggests an inferred sequence of footprints?How do you warrant any statement of observation you have ever posted on the forum?If, indeed, you hold to the extreme position that science is incapable of inferring anyhting about an external world (as was held to an extent by Wittgenstein and Russell) it is no wonder your letter to Nature was rejected, as you cannot have anything to say.Remember - there is no data, only inferences. Saying that something is data is to conclude something about it? How do you warrant that conclusion?I don't think you have followed this through at all. I still get the impression that all this "unwarranted" stuff is little more than special pleading for those cases that Peter doesn't like.

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Originally posted by peter borger:
I will stick to the scientific facts (data). I know what data are when I see data (yes, I know I can doubt on what I see). Sorry, but I am not going into idle discussions about words.

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The subject is neither idle nor about words. You accuse others of inferential errors but show no ability to actually determine what constitutes an inferential error.[B][QUOTE]My objective is to demonstrate that there is something seriously wrong with the current hypothesis of evolution.[/B][/QUOTE]You cannot do so. You would need to demonstrate that the inferences are unwarranted and this requires an understanding of what "unwarranted conclusions" entail.All you can demonstrate - indeed, all you have demonstrated is that there are conclusions that Peter Borger does not agree with. This is not science, merely personal prejudice parading itself in ill-fitting clothes as logic.
[B][QUOTE]I will not allow myself to be distracted.[/B][/QUOTE]That is good news. Your lack of understanding of the nature of inferential logic and your insistence on parading it is of great benefit to those of us who regard creationism as dangerous nonsense.[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 09-24-2002]

[B][QUOTE]Okay, if you like you may set up the rules. Then we stick to your rules. I will stick to your definition of an inferrential error and/or unwarranted conclusion.[/B][/QUOTE]The point, Peter, is not what I think is an inferential error: you are the one claiming inferential errors in others, and making rather a point of it - yet you cannot say what constitutes such an error. You are right: I am a sceptic. And like you I am sceptical about facts - because facts can be, and indeed often seriously mistaken. So, were I to propose a hypothesis - which I have no interest in doing - my emphasis would be on my system of inference firstly. Most serious theoretical scientists - as contrasted with empirical scientists - consider these issues very seriously indeed.My point, by the way, was that YOU cannot prove or disprove anything by YOUR methods. You have made some interesting observations in previous posts, but they are entirely worthless without a consistent logical framework within which to set them. [B][QUOTE]All that matters me is the truth,[/B][/QUOTE]I see no evidence of this as you show no particualr interest in how the truth may be determined. [B][QUOTE]I already met several obstacles in getting my unconventional ideas heard.[/B][/QUOTE]Seriously, I think the only substantial obstacle is your own lack of logical consistency and inability to demonstrate any form of objective reasoning. Unconventional ideas abound in science. I attend many brainstorming and future-scoping seminars with scientists, and they are never short of unconventional ideas to promote. Indeed they revel in it.Finally, it is not for me to set the rules. I merely observe. You are claiming there are rules which others break - when you do, please be good enough to detail what the rules are and wherein lies the breach.

[B][QUOTE]It may well be that the hype is the best scientific theory regarding the origin, but I am not interested in the best scientific theory. I am interested in what truth is, and based on what I know it may well include creation.[/B][/QUOTE]I think this little nugget sums up Peter's position pretty accurately. He seems to think he can shortcut to the truth based on his own intuition. Science, for him, seems to be little more than a multiple choice test, with the answers to be looked up in the afterlife. Science as a self-correcting process - as a method for converging to the truth - would appear to be of no interest to him.Like others here, I suspect he is no scientist at all, but rather a flaneur on its byways. He does rather a good job of discrediting himself, rather than relying on others to do it for him.