Doesn't darwinian theory fall apart on ontological grounds?

[jeeprs]

Actually I am not inclined to dispute the nuts and bolts of evolutionary theory or the empirical findings of biology. As I have said many times before, I don't dispute the facts, only the meaning which is imputed to them. (Although it wouldn't surprise me if something came along which threw biology into upheaval in the same way the quantum theory and cosmology have done with physics. I mean, why shouldn't it? Darwin's theory is not, after all, a religion, is it?)

I grew up on Time Life books about Evolution, Early Man, Dinosaurs and so on. So I have always accepted the scientific account of the evolution of man. But I think it is impossible to deny that there is conflict between the religious and scientific accounts of the nature of the human and their implications for our lives and attitudes. That is the context for this debate, as I see it.

In fact, I was not even that interested in the issue until these hardline naturalist attack dogs (of which there are probably none on this Forum) began to try and demolish the entire spiritual foundation of Western civlization. Then I felt called to action. Also it was necessary for me to integrate some spiritual experiences that I have had and to find some kind of analog for them in various areas of Western and Eastern philosophy, which I have begun to do. I don't think many modern people are really aware of the 'sapiential dimension' in traditional Western philosophy and that is something I have begun to discover.

I am interested in the middle ground in which the spiritual and scientific perspectives on the matter can find something in common even though each perspectives will have to change to accomodate the other (via a dialectical process). I am against religious fundamentalism on the one side, but also scientific reductionism on the other. And there are great science writers, for example Paul Davies, the previously-quoted Bernard D'espagnet and some of the more spiritually-inclined physicists, and many others, who can accomodate both perspectives in their writing. There are also uncompromising partisans on either side, and I avoid them.

But at the end of the day, I will always challenge anyone who says that science is the only way to knowledge, and that the world really is just a conglomeration of things and forces in which we humans are accidental tourists who just happened to evolve here. I say that understanding the intuitive and spiritual side of the human is indispensable for the development of wisdom. So I guess that puts me on the religious side of the debate, and I am happy to be there. That is why I responded to the OP.

[l0ck]

Originally Posted by Aedes

The difference between science and logic is that in science everyone looks at the same thing. My interpretation of the data I've presented is hardly individual -- in fact it's not even controversial.

You are not employing science. You're not employing logic either -- I'm not even sure what you're arguing. You're making statements about logic that have nothing to do with logic. You're making statements about entropy that have nothing to do with entropy. You're accusing me of "syllogisms" even though my arguments do not contain the form of a syllogism and my are not based on the syntactical relationships that define syllogism.

So what are you actually saying??

We are hardly looking at the 'same thing', once again you apply logical construct, ie syllogism. We are simply creating terms that imply we are looking at the same thing, employing a single form of finite logic, thus limiting perception through syllogism and logic, i.e. paradigm. Everything is of mind, all quality is of mind, i.e individually experienced. Seeing is thinking. The quality of mass exists outside of it's separated state. All proof's are tautological in essence, and we only use a piece of the same thing to explain a part of the same thing, and are therefore, a matter of convenience, due to a limited approach to the magnitudes before you, all truths, all proofs, are essentially deniable. We can form a infinite number of empirical evidences to support any hypothesis. All proposition stems from other proposition, we can start with any proposition, and proceed to the next, as they directly or indirectly form a link to another, and another - You cannot know light without dark. Thus 2 magnitudes, thus paradox, thus duality, thus positive and negative cohered form.

Infinite quality and magnitude exists, and so we as philosophers are to adapt, and thus use a series of tools, instead of just one, to view the environment around us. Existence is of two magnitudes, finite and infinite, in the former finite magnitude, we can measure, and thus employ finite logic, in the latter, or infinite magnitude, a multitude of transfinite logic's must be used. Just as George Cantor has shown us, we cannot measure infinity, only compare it, and since infinite quality exists in our experience (love, compassion, beauty, tolerance, cohesion, ect), and we can compare the infinite set to it's sub-sets and thus match them on a 1vs1 scale, as Bolanzo said, we can then assume that the entire thing is of infinite proportions, and only appears to be separated in our perception.

- If it is physical 'proof' you are looking for, I.E. a way to measure infinity, you are not applying a multitude of logic, and of course you are attempting to square the circle.

Often, what is not said, is indirectly said.

This is not a matter using fallacy. Not-proving something, does in turn not prove something else. "Fish tank" "Aquarium" "Gills" terms that are meant to be taken out of context.

I am saying what I am saying, or indirectly not-saying. That all is self-created. One can have religious faith, and faith in evolution. Text is always interpreted by the individual individually.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by l0ck

once again you apply logical construct, ie syllogism

No, it is not a syllogism, which you apparently do not appreciate is NOT the only form of logical construct. If I say: look, plants die when you don't water them but they live when you water them, then that is science. Not a syllogism. I'm doing nothing different than relating science to you.

Originally Posted by l0ck

Everything is of mind, all quality is of mind, i.e individually experienced.

Then I guess you'd find it an entirely random coincidence that all humans would think of fire as hotter than ice, or elephants as larger than rabbits. There can never be collective agreement. Right...

Originally Posted by l0ck

All proof's are tautological in essence

I didn't give you a proof. I gave you evidence.

Originally Posted by l0ck

We can form a infinite number of empirical evidences to support any hypothesis.

Interesting then that the unsupported hypotheses seem to just go away -- like that world is flat hypothesis, or that earth is the center of the universe hypothesis...

Originally Posted by l0ck

If it is physical 'proof' you are looking for, I.E. a way to measure infinity, you are not applying a multitude of logic, and of course you are attempting to square the circle.

YOU are the one dwelling on proof. But you've got to get your terminology straight...

[l0ck]

Originally Posted by Aedes

No, it is not a syllogism, which you apparently do not appreciate is NOT the only form of logical construct. If I say: look, plants die when you don't water them but they live when you water them, then that is science. Not a syllogism. I'm doing nothing different than relating science to you.

Paradigm, requires logic, language, and syllogism. Just as Finite Existence, requires mass, space, time. Implications of each other are inevitable.

Then I guess you'd find it an entirely random coincidence that all humans would think of fire as hotter than ice, or elephants as larger than rabbits. There can never be collective agreement. Right...

There can be collective agreement. There is collective agreement. The agreement is mutual, between 2 sovereign beings, but it is still an agreement.

I didn't give you a proof. I gave you evidence.

I already answered this in my previous attempts. Empirical evidence is of infinite quantity.

Interesting then that the unsupported hypotheses seem to just go away -- like that world is flat hypothesis, or that earth is the center of the universe hypothesis...

One proposition has lead to the next, in order to move us forward though time, by creative means. We have created these obstacles, and then created means around them, and thus destroyed them, and thus their purpose, absorbing their quality and becoming aware, and thus their finite existence is lost, as its infinite quality is gained, and we are free to re-express, thus re-create using our new awareness, and discover more and thus become more aware. If you agree things disappear as you appear, then why do you keep responding as if to say they don't? I never implied I don't include your logic in my network model, the finite approach is apart of it, as all has purpose.

YOU are the one dwelling on proof. But you've got to get your terminology straight...

Quantity does not increase content. I never proved anything, and either does your fallacy disprove anything. We agree on the same things, it is only a matter of terminology that separates everyone.

[richard_mcnair]

Originally Posted by Dave Allen

You assume such a machine is impossible, and you assume that that assumption points to a mystical answer as to why a biological machine capable of what you assume is impossible exists.

But such assumptions are just based on preferences for a mystical answer - not any readily apparent truth.

Oh dear.

How exactly can you create a machine that subjectively experiences? I don't even think you have really understood what subjective experience is. Exactly how would it be possible for anything purely mechanical to subjectively experience?

I always find it amusing how people who are antithetical to religion always assume religious people believe what they believe because 'they want it to be true'.
I'm tremendously widely read, I've lead a tremendously diverse and eventful life, and the sum of everything I've read and experienced leads me to this conclusion, not a 'preference'.

[Inquisition]

I must say dave, you ARE very knowledgeable on the subject. Kudos to you, you do glorious work!

It has been a pleasure to read your ingenious responses to this post. Very deep and intense stuff.

[jeeprs]

It is possible that life is not reducible to anything else. Yes, 'life', the difference between a living thing, and a dead thing. Nobody knows what it is or where it comes from, yet it is obviously intrinsic to all of us and indeed might ubiquitous throughout the entire universe, for all we know. But what is it, exactly? Until you have an answer to that question, I suggest we have buckley's chance of creating it ourselves. To believe we could is the ultimate vanity.

---------- Post added 11-26-2009 at 04:12 PM ----------

¶1 Charles Darwin began the last paragraph of The Origin of Species (1859) with a famous metaphor about life's diversity and ecological complexity:

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

He then begins the final sentence of the book with an equally famous statement: "There is grandeur in this view of life...."

¶2 For Darwin, as for any scientist, a kind of ultimate satisfaction (Darwin's "grandeur") must reside in the prospect that so much variety and complexity might be generated from natural regularities--the "laws acting around us"--accessible to our intellect and empirical probing. But what is the proper relationship between underlying laws and explicit results? The "fundamentalists" among evolutionary theorists revel in the belief that one overarching law--Darwin's central principle of natural selection--can render the full complexity of outcomes (by working in conjunction with auxiliary principles, like sexual reproduction, that enhance its rate and power).

¶3 The "pluralists," on the other hand--a long line of thinkers including Darwin himself, however ironic this may seem since the fundamentalists use the cloak of his name for their distortion of his position--accept natural selection as a paramount principle (truly primus inter pares), but then argue that a set of additional laws, as well as a large role for history's unpredictable contingencies, must also be invoked to explain the basic patterns and regularities of the evolutionary pathways of life. Both sides locate the "grandeur" of "this view of life" in the explanation of complex and particular outcomes by general principles, but ultra-Darwinian fundamentalists pursue one true way, while pluralists seek to identify a set of interacting explanatory modes, all fully intelligible, although not reducible to a single grand principle like natural selection.

Stephen Jay Gould, review of Dennett's 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea'

[Dave Allen]

Originally Posted by richard_mcnair

Oh dear.

How exactly can you create a machine that subjectively experiences?

I don't know.

But I don't know how to build a plane either, and 500 years ago I might well have thought mechanically powered flight a total impossibility.

But it would have been hubris to state that that was a given thing.

As the Wright Brothers proved.

I don't even think you have really understood what subjective experience is. Exactly how would it be possible for anything purely mechanical to subjectively experience?

I don't know.


But until you can exhaustively prove it cannot be done - requiring:

• a definition of consciousness and subjectivity we can all agree on
• arguments to show that all the philosophical arguments that doubt such things even truely exist are comprehensively invalidated
• proof that a healthy human mind is truely capable of such a thing
• proof to show no mechanical mind could ever be capable of such a thing despite the exponential increase of complexity and sophistication of computer minds and AI as recently as the last decade.

... then to be emphatic about it just not being possible is hubris too. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

• It might be impossible.
• It might be possible but we never find out how.
• It might occur soon that there is no way to distinguish between the sensitivity, decision making power, learning power and all other aspects of what gets labelled 'conciousness' apparent in a biological system such as the human brain (with working sense organs and nervous system) and the software and hardware setup of a powerful computer.

Hence you ASSUME it can't be done.

I'm not saying that such an assumption isn't a safe bet - but an assumption it remains.

I always find it amusing how people who are antithetical to religion always assume religious people believe what they believe because 'they want it to be true'.

Many a true word spoken in jest, insofar as I see it.

But you're right, it's an assumption, I'm big enough to admit it. I assume basic wish-fulfilment fantasies lie at the heart of most religious belief.

For the record, I think basic wish-fulfilment fantasies lie at the heart of a lot of atheism too. C'est la vie.

I'm tremendously widely read, I've lead a tremendously diverse and eventful life, and the sum of everything I've read and experienced leads me to this conclusion, not a 'preference'.

But there are people better read, and more experienced than you who think differently.

And they might be utterly wrong.

Have you read Turing?

[jeeprs]

Let's look again at the idea of 'random mutations resulting in change from natural selection'. If this is said to be the only principle involved in the development of life, it reduces the whole engine of existence to chance. Now as Stephen J Gould comments above, it is not necessary to draw this conclusion from Darwin's theory, but this is exactly what 'Darwinian fundamentalists' such as Jacques Monod, Dawkins and Dennett ('Darwin's Dangerous Idea') have done. It is actually they who are making a religion out of Darwinism, by insisting on a model of the Universe which is imputed on the basis that evolutionary change is by definition purposeless and 'blind'. This is also why they can be described as 'secular fundamentalists' in that they wish to replace the idea of a 'creative intelligence' (however you want to name it) with 'blind chance'.

As remarked before, there are many non-creationist and non-fundamentalist philosophical and religious models which accomodate a creative intelligence either as 'God' or as 'One Mind' (i.e. Neo-Platonism).

This is critiqued fairly thoroughly in a book called Evolution as Religion by philosopher Mary Midgely (one of Dawkin's favourite authors.....NOT).

---------- Post added 11-27-2009 at 09:31 AM ----------

In regards to the problems many have with any idea of religion whatever:

Thomas Nagel, "The Last Word: A Cosmic Authority Problem":

...fear of religion...has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world"

[emphasis added]

Quoted in Subversive Thinking: Search results for nagel



Also some support for Platonic principles in biochemistry from observation of the formation of amino acids:

Before the Darwinian revolution many biologists considered organic forms to be determined by natural law like atoms or crystals and therefore necessary, intrinsic and immutable features of the world order, which will occur throughout the cosmos wherever there is life. The search for the natural determinants of organic form-the celebrated "Laws of Form"-was seen as one of the major tasks of biology. After Darwin, this Platonic conception of form was abandoned and natural selection, not natural law, was increasingly seen to be the main, if not the exclusive, determinant of organic form. However, in the case of one class of very important organic forms-the basic protein folds-advances in protein chemistry since the early 1970s have revealed that they represent a finite set of natural forms, determined by a number of generative constructional rules, like those which govern the formation of atoms or crystals, in which functional adaptations are clearly secondary modifications of primary "givens of physics." The folds are evidently determined by natural law, not natural selection, and are "lawful forms" in the Platonic and pre-Darwinian sense of the word, which are bound to occur everywhere in the universe where the same 20 amino acids are used for their construction. We argue that this is a major discovery which has many important implications regarding the origin of proteins, the origin of life and the fundamental nature of organic form. We speculate that it is unlikely that the folds will prove to be the only case in nature where a set of complex organic forms is determined by natural law, and suggest that natural law may have played a far greater role in the origin and evolution of life than is currently assumed.

From The Protein Folds as Platonic Forms.

[jeeprs]

Incidentally if anyone is a Medline subscriber they will be able to get access to the full article of which this is the abstract. Looks very interesting to me.