Doesn't darwinian theory fall apart on ontological grounds?

[Dave Allen]

My problem with the outlook of evolutionary biology is that it is being asked to do double duty as a 'philosophy of life'.

The apparent fact of the theory provides a number of interesting possible answers to questions usually earmarked for philosophical or theological debate.

Whilst this might cause some alarm in those who require or desire a more traditional veiw, it doesn't in itself reveal any sort of weakness about the theory (in fact, it's the profound nature of the theory that it leads some on a philosophical exercise that isn't inspired by, say, the theory of relativity...)

But I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Evolution isn't doing double duty in and of itself - it's just that science potentially ousts traditional methods of enquiry.

So the science advocates all say, with a tone of righteous umbrage, but this is a scientific question.

What a lovely generalising of the attitude of science advocates.

In fact, the origin and purpose of life is a much larger question than a merely scientific one.

The origin and purpose of life might be a much larger question than a merely scientific one.

The question is - what can those who assume the origin and purpose of life needs further expanation say to those of us who feel no such need, and recognise no inadequacy in their position?

I think it is impossible to dispute that live evolves from less to more intelligent life forms. If all that was required was to set up a self-sustaining reaction how come it didn't stop at blue-green algae, or insects, or reptiles, or some other type of creature or organism, which could spread all over the earth?

Again, you're starting with an assumption that needn't be taken. What side of the debate stands for there being a requirement for a self-sustaining reaction leading to a certain degree of complexity?

More complicated forms are not necessarily the end result of evolutionary processes. if you think about it most of the stuff alive today is - per capita - pretty simple stuff, plankton, bacteria, algea, etc.

But all life today is modern life - the algea alive today isn't necessarily the same as the algea alive in the cambrian.

Added complexity was just one of many survival/propagation strategies adopted by many different lifeforms.

It's a human tendancy to assume we are at the top of the tree, and something even many biologists indulge in. But that's only because of our perspective. We are the end of a line that stretches back and encompasses everything else.

But so is everything else alive today (with a few possible exceptions of living fossils, though they are very rare).

So it is possible to dispute that live evolves from less to more intelligent life forms, because the vast majority of life hasn't done that.

[Emil]

I don't see why you bother, Dave. But it's good that you do. I would not. I promised myself years ago not to discuss evolution with creationists/IDists again.

[jeeprs]

Emil, I am not advancing either ID or Creationsism, unless you believe neo-platonism is creationism. There are spiritual interpretations of the evolutionairy process that go back before written history. So - don't be prejudiced.

Dave, thanks very much for a well reasoned response, I shall take that on ponder that some more. My partial answer, is, however, I don't find neo-darwinism intellectually satisfying as philosophy.

---------- Post added 11-23-2009 at 10:01 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Dave Allen

It's a human tendancy to assume we are at the top of the tree, and something even many biologists indulge in. But that's only because of our perspective. We are the end of a line that stretches back and encompasses everything else..

That is because we are, in fact, humans, and alone, as far as we can see, in all of life on earth, in being able to take exactly this perspective, and see how it evolved. And that, I believe, is not solely the outcome of chance and necessity, nor just the exigencies of survival. I don't think it is meaningful to explain human capacities in terms of adaptive capacity any more; this might have been the engine, but what of the payload?

[jeeprs]

Originally Posted by Krumple

Life could have easily been a fluke but lets go a little further. If you enjoy math and physics, why not allow for an unlimited amount of possibilities? Eventually given enough time the statistics of probability would suggest the strangest, most bizarre or perhaps even improbable event would eventually happen.

I really don't know about that. I am working through this Simon Conway Morris book. He is a theist, but also a Professor of Paleontology at Cambridge, and no creationist. The section I am up to discusses the number of possible combinations of the various primitive elements of the cell, including DNA and RNA. It shows pretty convincingly that the number of possible, non-working combinations of the various elements amount to quite astronomically large numbers - 10 to the power of a hundred, I seem to recall. There are an unfathomably enormous number of ways that elements can combine in such a way that nothing further occurs, and very few ways that lead to self-sustaining reactions.

Now he is not arguing for a 'designer god' and I don't believe in a designer god either. What interests him is that certain outcomes seem to have a much greater likelihood of occuring. Things are inclined to turn out a certain way. His evidence for this is convergent evolution - that the eye evolved by a number of different pathways, as did photosynthesis, and many other examples.

The picture that is forming is that the emergence of intelligent life is really the manifestation of principles, patterns, or potentialities, implicit in the fabric of the universe from the moment of creation - that life is somehow lawful, in a way much deeper than that descibed by the selfish gene/blind watchmaker scenarios of Dawkins et al. In this scenario, the principles are not being imposed from without, but are imprinted in the very fabric.

Now of course this is heresy to materialism. But the reasons have nothing to do, directly, with science, but with the so-called 'scientific outlook' which is historically conditioned to only consider phenomena of a particular type. I found this interesting philosophical analysis by a little-known German philosopher:

Darwin broke with a fundamental dogma of Christianity–that God created man in his own image. At the same time he struck at metaphysical concepts of evolution, as they had prevailed from Aristotle to Hegel. He conceived of evolution as a blind sequence of events, in which survival depends upon adaptation to the conditions of life, rather than as the unfolding of organic entities in accordance with their entelechies.

Thus his name has come to represent the idea of man’s domination of nature in terms of common sense. One may even go so far as to say that the concept of the survival of the fittest is merely the translation of the concepts of formalized reason into the vernacular of natural history. In popular Darwinism, reason is purely an organ; spirit or mind, a thing of nature. According to a current interpretation of Darwin, the struggle for life must necessarily, step by step, through natural selection, produce the reasonable out of the unreasonable. In other words, reason, while serving the function of dominating nature, is whittled down to being a part of nature; it is not an independent faculty but something organic, like tentacles or hands, developed through adaptation to natural conditions and surviving because it proves to be an adequate means of mastering them, especially in relation to acquiring food and averting danger. As a part of nature, reason is at the same time set against nature–the competitor and enemy of all life that is not its own.

The idea inherent in all idealistic metaphysics–that the world is in some sense a product of the mind–is thus turned into its opposite: the mind is a product of the world, of the processes of nature. Hence, according to popular Darwinism, nature does not need philosophy to speak for her: nature, a powerful and venerable deity, is ruler rather than ruled. Darwinism ultimately comes to the aid of rebellious nature in undermining any doctrine, theological or philosophical, that regards nature itself as expressing a truth that reason must try to recognize. The equating of reason with nature, by which reason is debased and raw nature exalted, is a typical fallacy of the era of rationalization. Instrumentalized subjective reason either eulogizes nature as pure vitality or disparages it as brute force, instead of treating it as a text to be interpreted by philosophy that, if rightly read, will unfold a tale of infinite suffering. Without committing the fallacy of equating nature and reason, mankind must try to reconcile the two.

In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature–even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man–frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity.

(Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (1947; new edition New York: Continuum, 1974), p. vii

In all of this, and in the OP, I don't think we are defending creationism or intelligent design. I think we are defending Western philosophy from it assault by materialism. It is a different thing altogether.

[prothero]

Originally Posted by jeeprs

In all of this, and in the OP, I don't think we are defending creationism or intelligent design. I think we are defending Western philosophy from it assault by materialism. It is a different thing altogether.

In some sense, I think we are defending Plato's notions of transcendent forms or ideals against Aristotle's unrelenting empiricism.
I think the problem goes back to the very beginning of philosophy.

[richard_mcnair]

Originally Posted by Dave Allen

Firstly, can we do without the strawman argument?

No qualified biologist claims we evolved from ameoba - you are lying when you claim that's what the theory says. What they claim is that animals share a common descent and that at one point ameoba and man shared a common ancestor.

This common ancestor was probably more like ameoba than man, but no one claims it actually was ameoba.

What can we observe to support this view? A number of things including:

1) The fossil record.
2) The taxonomic tree.
3) The phylogenetic tree (comparisons to the taxonomic tree first proposed by Lineaus and the genetic code of animals alive and recently dead).
4) Geographical distribution of animals living and dead.
5) Ring species and other speciation events observed in the here and now.
6) Mutation, atavism, vestigial organs, pretty much all of genetics.
7) Inexplicable bad design - hernias, larangial nerves, hiccups, etc.

In fact, evolution is more complete a theory as Darwin supposed it than gravity was when Newton supposed it. Gravity has so far undergone one major revision - Relativity. Evolution as Darwin supposed still fits most of the apparent facts. There is some quibbling over detail, punctuated equilibrium and the like, but the general idea hasn't been threatened (in serious academic circles by those who actually understand the theory) in 150 years.

Yes, but you see, if you read my OP, I am not disputing evolution as I specifically state. Nor am I disputing the transmutation of species, which is the only thing most of the above points really prove. My only problem is the ontological one mentioned, which so far you have failed to answer.

No.

Philosophically I think assuming the transcendant is in itself significant is a baseless assumption grounded in a metaphysical desire for there to be easily understood answers to the 'big questions' and comforting moral props to accompany them.

Whilst I think there is much to admire about Kant I feel he makes a fundamental error. He is involved in a program of reduction that refuses to take the last logical step.

Being - the assumption that the transcendant must be is no less crass than the assumption that it need not be.

But anyway - what has this to do with Darwin? One can believe in evolution and find the vistas of time and natural history it reveals transcendant. One can even - as the last two Popes have - say that it describes in detail what Genesis describes metaphorically.

No.

Assuming the transcendant is important is quite clearly not a baseless assumption. Thinking that it is not important or 'meaningless' is basically contradicting the empirical evidence of everyday experience, and is equivalent to closing your eyes, putting your fingers in your ears and pretending something right in front of you doesnt exist simply because you find it easier that way.

We are human beings. We have consciousness. We subjectively experience. Basically logical positivism treats a human being as basically a machine and nothing more. But that overlooks the fact that we subjectively experience, and you can build a robot as complex as you like, as complex as the human body even, but you'll never be able to build one that actually subjectively experiences - ie a conscious being. Consciousness, and subjective experience itself cannot be explained with reference to the phenomenal world only - FACT. So any attempt at trying to explain (or rather explain away) life, with reference to the external and objective only, is necessarily flawed.

Well, this is just going to lead to talking in circles.

You are treating the Plato's cave analogy as something holy in and of itself. This is just as crass a philosophical position as stressing that percieved reality is all there is.

To use your preffered tone of debate - it is bullshit.

Looking at the external world only has its uses. But trying to explain the great mysteries as I keep explaining needs more than this. WE are subjective beings. Subjective being itself is not part of the external objective world. Subjective being is something I can be more sure of than anything about the external world, therefore subjective experience is MORE real than the external objective world. Your way of looking at things is upside down.

Yet you have given no good reason as to why it's not evolution's business to describe what it describes.

It is certainly evolutions business to descibe what it describes, but saying that we ALL came from common ancestry, and that was all there was FACT, is not tenable. It is merely current sciences best picture, and treats time and space as thing which exist independatly of any consious being. Answer me what time and space are then, if apparently they existed before a conscious being?

It's not theory - it's a strawman arguement used to persuade people that scientists think and say things they don't actually think or say.


Apart from The fossil record, The taxonomic tree, The phylogenetic tree, geographical distribution of animals living and dead, Ring species and other speciation events observed in the here and now, Mutation, atavism, vestigial organs, pretty much all of genetics, otherwise Inexplicable bad design - hernias, larangial nerves, hiccups, etc. And so on...

Once again I am not actually questioning any evidence, and am completely in agreement with the FACT of the transmutation of species, BUT, I am merely asking the question of how something can evolve in time and space before there was time and space. Care to actually try to answer this?

Another strawman - who said you weren't allowed to enquire?

Well you keep dismissing my original question, basically because apparantly I'm not allowed to look at the accepted story from another angle. Care to actually debate the question rather than just dismiss it?

No, you just assume they do - but you haven't given any reason to justify such an assumption beyond "Kant said so".

Ok, explain to me how subjective experience itself can be understood in relation to the phenomenal world only? If you can even give me a hypothosis, you may have a point. Until then, I'll go with the natural, and most logical assumtion that the actual fact of subjective experience can only be understood with reference to the transcendental.

---------- Post added 11-23-2009 at 06:09 AM ----------

The origin and purpose of life might be a much larger question than a merely scientific one.

The question is - what can those who assume the origin and purpose of life needs further expanation say to those of us who feel no such need, and recognise no inadequacy in their position?

Simple - consciousness - ie the actual fact of subjective experience. This necessarily cannot be explained with reference to the phenomenal world only.

[Krumple]

Originally Posted by jeeprs

I really don't know about that. I am working through this Simon Conway Morris book. He is a theist, but also a Professor of Paleontology at Cambridge, and no creationist. The section I am up to discusses the number of possible combinations of the various primitive elements of the cell, including DNA and RNA. It shows pretty convincingly that the number of possible, non-working combinations of the various elements amount to quite astronomically large numbers - 10 to the power of a hundred, I seem to recall. There are an unfathomably enormous number of ways that elements can combine in such a way that nothing further occurs, and very few ways that lead to self-sustaining reactions.

Yeah I agree from the onset it seems improbable. But lets change the context a little. You have a phone with nine buttons, each button pertaining to a number. You don't know my phone number but you are trying to guess it. Given enough time you will eventually get my seven digit phone number, why? because it is part of the puzzle.

Why is dna and rna so specific? They might not be, they might be only a small fraction of what is actually possible. We have in my opinion too narrow of a knowledge base to know if there are any other forms of chains which support biological processes.

[jeeprs]

Well there are 10,000,000 (10 million) combinations available for 9 digits. My maths is pretty poor, but this is an exponential equation, is it not? So the difference between all possible 9-digit numbers and all possible 18-digit numbers is not arithmetical but exponential. But what if there are 90 digits? or 900? Again, I can't 'do the math' but I think the numbers quickly become completely unimaginable.

As for 'alternative versions' to RNA and DNA, it sounds plausible enough, but this Conway Morris book describes what is called 'the protein hyperspace' which shows there are huge numbers of ways that proteins could be formed, however certain forms predominate. It is a pretty dense argument to read (let alone summarize) but it seems pretty solid to me. I am still reading it however.

[Dave Allen]

Richard said:

It is certainly evolutions business to descibe what it describes, but saying that we ALL came from common ancestry, and that was all there was FACT, is not tenable.

That simply is not true.

Your whole argument is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. It points to common descent through changes in allele frequency - it does not say "that's ALL there was".

No scientific theory would exclude the possibility that there is more to be learned.

Well you keep dismissing my original question, basically because apparantly I'm not allowed to look at the accepted story from another angle. Care to actually debate the question rather than just dismiss it?

You can look at it whatever way you want. I haven't been stopping you, as far as I can see no one has.

In fact, as far as I can see, I have been engaging with you.

The reason I have not bothered to answer your original question is that I struggle to see it's relevence given that scientific enquiry takes as read that the phenomenal world can be the subject of greater understanding through observation.

If it doesn't make that foundational step - a line of enquiry is not science.

So choosing a particular branch of science and suggesting it take such a line of enquiry is rather bewildering to me.

What you are doing is conflating the theory of evolution with a sort of philosophical materialism that states all we can potentially about the material universe is all there is to know.

Evolution - changes in allele frequency leading to a theory regarding the relatedness of all organisms on earth.

Is not...

Philosophical materialism - there is nothing supernatural.

They are two rather different things, and whilst philosophical materialists might often cite evolution because it provides answers to questions such as "how did we get here" and "why are we the way we are".

Using evolution in that way is certainly fraught with problems, because a scientific theory is being applied to a natural history we aren't certain of.

I myself would tend toward philosophical materialism - but I am careful to distinguish between the fact of evolution and its possible (highly plausible in my opinion) application to natural history.

But philosophical materialism is not evolution in and of itself - it certainly is not "Darwinian" because he never stated that it had any bearing on the supernatural. His own disavowel of a loving god came as a result of questions such as "why is there suffering" based on the death of his daughter - and he never stated he was an atheist or disbeliever in the supernatural. He stopped being a practising Christian - yes - but that in itself is not proof of a worldview.

So to sum up, the reasons I'm not interested in your question:

1) It's based on a false premise (evolution doesn't state that it is "All there is" even if some proponents of evolution do, like Richard Dawkins - a self-proclaimed philosophical materialist).
2) It fails to understand the theory (evolution does not teach that we came from ameoba).
3) Even if it did why would that be anathema to religious belief unless you wish to adhere to a literal reading of a particular creation myth (many proponents of evolution happily supplement it with or to their religious beliefs - see Ken Miller again, a practising Catholic, see what the last two Popes said about the theory).

I am not disputing evolution as I specifically state.

You asked(I paraphrase) what observable facts back up the theory of evolution - hence my list of observable facts.

So it's not to counter any sort of dispute that I give them, but why ask for observables to back it up and then claim you have no dispute?

Originally Posted by jeeprs

Dave, thanks very much for a well reasoned response, I shall take that on ponder that some more. My partial answer, is, however, I don't find neo-darwinism intellectually satisfying as philosophy.

As I say above - "neo-Darwinism" (whatever that is) and the theory of evolution need not be one and the same.

I assume you are talking about philosphical materialsm.

Fine - attack philosophical materialsim. I am sure you'll have a satisfying debate and that most people will agree with you, or cede that no damning evidence exists in support of proving a negative.

But if you want to attack evolution - then you need to have a stronger case than not liking philosophical materialism, because evolution isn't dependent on philosophical materialism.

As a scientific theory it live or dies on whether or not the arguments in favour of it having occurred and still happening are better than those raised by its opponents.

But after 150 years the arguments within biological circles have gotten stronger in its favour - rather than weaker.

That is because we are, in fact, humans, and alone, as far as we can see, in all of life on earth, in being able to take exactly this perspective, and see how it evolved. And that, I believe, is not solely the outcome of chance and necessity, nor just the exigencies of survival. I don't think it is meaningful to explain human capacities in terms of adaptive capacity any more; this might have been the engine, but what of the payload?

Right, but is this because you have looked into the research and hypothoses surrounding the development of sapience (sapience is a biological term for "human-like degree of intelligence), or is it because you just don't much like the idea as a first impression?

Because if it is the latter your dislike is psychological, rather than philosophical or rational, in nature.


Also, from our unique perspective, we are able to see that everything else has been evolving alongside us. We are modern organisms, just like chickens and foxes and salmon and new strains of bacteria and so on and so on.

Living fossils are comparitivly rare. Most organisms are just as "evolved" as humans, it's just that their niche has not required to development of sapience to exploit (or they might have done with it, and are dying out in droves, depending on your point of view).

Again, I can't 'do the math' but I think the numbers quickly become completely unimaginable.

I can't "do the math" - but if you think about how unlikely it is that a particular sperm meets a particular egg, and that the paticular male baby grows up to find a particular girl....

What are the odds that your great-grandfather gave rise to you?

It must be one in trillions, surely.

Plus if we stress detail, we end up in some Koch-like fractal realm, where the odds become infinite (factor in the fact that your great grandfather did the exact things he needed to do to woo your great grandmother, factor in them deciding to sleep together during the window required for your grandfather's genetic material to meet, etc...).

So impossible odds occur all the time.

Originally Posted by Emil

I don't see why you bother, Dave. But it's good that you do. I would not. I promised myself years ago not to discuss evolution with creationists/IDists again.

Yeah, but you learn more as you go along.

[Emil]

Philosophical materialism - there is nothing supernatural.

Careful. That's not materialism, that's (metaphysical) naturalism. (philosophical) Materialism is that there are no non-material things, equivalently all things are material. (Sometimes taken to be synonymous with "physical".)