The Human Question

Dawkins speaks of our reading personal agency into nature as the source of the delusion of a personal God. But earlier in this blog I pointed out that the very basic notions used by science, such as causality, are not perceived in nature but interpreted on the basis of an analogy with our experience of our own agency. In other words, the interpretive pattern that leads us to think of nature as involving causality also leads us to regard a personal Being as its source. And one who attacks the latter as Dawkins has done may well undermine the former.

In a debate that now escapes my memory, one of the contra ID guys said that Behe's book on the Edge of Evolution, while arguing about the limits of mutation, doesn't take into consideration sexual recombination, gene duplication, and lateral gene transfer. Some day I hope to understand what all this means...

Peter Clarke (in a July 2009 lecture on brains and machines) points out that one can change the lower level without changing the higher level, comparing it to how different spellings of the same word can convey the same meaning (e.g., color, colour). The only problem with this analogy is the fact that the same word can have different meanings: this facet of language makes the analogy limp rather awkwardly...

Baars talks about higher symmetries in the less-apparent components being the foundation for more apparent but lower symmetries in the whole. As in marbles (higher but less apparent) being the components of hexagonal patterns (lower but more apparent). I think I've heard of group behaviors and fractile patterns being described as if a kind of emergence. Maybe the two are related. Maybe some forms of so-called higher-level emergence are really manifestations of the previously-hidden higher-symmetry in the component parts. Perhaps, Plato has something like this in mind when he says that the city is the soul writ large. Cities are orderly only because the human soul is.

Would an emergentist (uh, awkward word of my own creation that'll have to do for now) say that there is no human being until distinctively human activities occur? The reason why I suspect that the answer might be yes is because, it seems likely to me that for emergentism (why not make up new words?), ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (old fallacy by Haeckel). Why do I think that is likely? Because otherwise one would have to give an Aristotelian priority of being over action (as in the Medieval adage "action follows being"). But emergentism, as I see it now (i.e., as of December 19th 2009) seems to see higher-level properties as arising from complexa of lower-level properties. If so then emergentism lacks a sense of being as a kind of springboard for operation. Resolved: to learn more about how emergence is understood before I criticize/praise it any more.

I am not sure that I get Penrose's argument, but it goes something like this. If one thinks that the mind IS a kind of algorithm (sounds like functionalism), then one cannot maintain that all algorithms exist only in minds. Otherwise, one would have to agree that any algorithm necessarily exists in an algorithm, which necessarily exists in an algorithm, etc. Something circular here... or maybe an infinite regress. Penrose's solution is to posit Platonic mathematical entities, including algorithms. But to get this right, I suppose I need to read this argument instead of just listening to an audio version of the book.

Assuming for the moment that Dawkin's idea is correct, then maybe it should be called the altruistic gene, for it seeks to generate another. If one insists that no, it is selfish because it helps only its own kind, then "gene" here would not be a concrete thing but an abstract pattern that is striving to instantiate itself in concrete individuals. In such a case Dawkin's reductionism would be somewhat Platonic, for gene-forms would be abstract entities striving to be instantiated in matter. Ockham's Razor, anyone? Another interesting thing is the fact that if the gene, qua selfish, "could have its way," then it would duplicate itself exactly : no mutation would occur. Mutation is, from the anthropomorphic perspective that allows us to call the gene "selfish," an accident that frustrates the achievement of the gene's only goal.

Roger Penrose says that thought can occur without language, and he points to flashes of insights as examples. You might, in an instant, "see" something that would take hours to explain. Maybe he's right: maybe language is what reneders intelligibility communicable.

http://markshea.blogspot.com/2009/12/scholars-aim-to-disprove-darwin.html

Once or twice I've heard a scientist talk about the greater complexity of the human brain as if the complexity itself were sufficient to explain why it can think of things that lower animals cannot consider. Penrose points out the irony that the cerebellum is very highly complex yet not even conscious. This at least makes one pause before expressing confidence in the thesis that greater physiological complexity suffices to explain the capacity for subtler thought.

Roger Penrose talks about an experiment, reported by scientist Donald Wilson, with a split-brain patient (one w/ two hemispheres of their brain cut off from each other at the corpus collosum), in which both hemishperes learned to speak, but expressed different preferences (one side expressed the desire to be a draftsman, the other, to be a racing driver). This is troubling, but not entirely Certainly, if both hemispheres are generating two different expressions at the same time (I suppose that they would have to engage in handwriting rather than using the mouth at the same time), then the very concept of the unity of the soul becomes problematic or meaningless. But to express different preferences at different times would not be all that problematic, for it wouldn't be much different from the way we experience having even mutually inconsistent desires (to exercise, to diet, to work, to goof off, etc.) . A study of the brain as it expresses these desires might find that they origi...

Goedel's theorum may be good for more than AI-bashing: we may be able to apply it to emergence (understood broadly enough to include my Aristotelian or rather neo -Platonic conception of higher/lower levels of being/operation). Think of how we can posit a set of mathematical operations and terms and use these operations and terms to formulate rules/algorithms that can be used in term to determine the truth values of the expressions that use those terms. Goedel showed that the set of all possible rules that we might formulate will be able can determine the truth values of SOME BUT NOT ALL of the expressions that could be created using those terms and operations (I'm not sure I said the Goedel thing 100% right but hopefully closely enough)... If you keep the above in mind, then you might consider how all of that math stuff might have the following analogy in nature: i.e., the laws or properties that attend a lower level of being can somewhat determine many but not all of the...

He makes a lot of points on the basis of Goedel's theorum (which implies that are knowledge of the truth of mathematical propositions is not algorthmic). His points make me think: doesn't belief in a deterministic universe come from thinking that the necessity found in math exists in nature? And isn't that necessity found in math oh, so ... algorthmic? Uh, I haven't figured out how to put this all together, but it's as if there has to be something not governed by a rule in our brain that enables us to figure out how rules govern. Weird (ever notice that "wired" can be constructed from "weird": hmm).

Couldn't God have made a world in which evolution of bodily forms takes place through random variation? (followed by questions about whether really believes that God is omnipotent)

Actually, he doesn't mention zombies at all, but he does talk about the possibility that we could have evolved so as to be able to interact but without having evolved consciousness of those movements: our brains would be a cerebella without a cerebra. Another thought: Aristotle thought that even clams had rudimentary sensation and imagination. Nowadays, scientists doubt whether fish have any awareness whatsoever. Zombie fishes: rather fishy, don't you think?

Ignorance or near ignorance should never stop a blogger's blathering (what I am about to say is clearly consistent with the above principle): The emergent property of a whole is not merely the sum of the interactions of its parts according to their individual, pre-emergent properties. Something more is going on: something new. If sentience is regarded as an emergent property, then no machine could be sentient, for the product of a machine's operations is nothing other than the result of the interactions its parts. Someone might object, however, that under certain circumstances new properties might emerge from from the interactions of the machine's parts. One can respond to this objection in either of two ways. First: definitionaly (sp?). If a machine IS a machine then it has no emergent operations. Period. Or (call this 1b) one might recast the same point in the form of a modem tollens argument: if machines can have emergent properties, then there is no reason ...

Now I've seen everything: Franciso Ayala: a devout Christian who criticizes ID not onl as false, but as having very harmful theological implications: http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2134 Bradley Monton: an atheist who defends ID as worthy of serious consideration (even if it is false): https://www.broadviewpress.com/product.php?productid=952&cat=0&page=1 The former debated William Lane Craig with the latter served as the moderator.

What if Behe (IDer who accepts common descent and doesn't posit anything like progressive creation) and Miller (a very theo-friendly natural selectionist) travelled in a time-machine, giving them an incredibly precise perspective of past biology, so that they could observe all phenotypes, even at the cellular level w/o being able to observe the genotypes (they couldn't see DNA, etc.) ? What if they both saw what they expected to see? In such a case, the only thing they would disagree about would be the precise mechanisms and probabilities of what had actually happened.

http://www.discovery.org/a/2848 http://www.discovery.org/a/3003 Yeah. I wouldn't want to take credit for something that stupid either... Another thing: Eugenia Scott points out how Dembski was going to testify in Dover but declined once the plaintiffs threatened to subpoena the draft of a book that he was working on with a creationist think tank called The Foundation for Thought and Ethics. Uh this is inconsistent with what Discovery says in one of the above links. So either I understood Scott incorrectly or Discovery is leaving out important details.

Apparently Ken Miller applies a principle first articulated by Herman Miller (are they related?): http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/clot/Clotting.html

Scientists, inasmuch as they are focused on the observable/measurable, are concerned with actions, with dispositions to action, and with characteristics that distinguish things with one kind of disposition from those with other characteristics. This range of concerns is narrower than a philosopher might have: it tends to exclude concern with that in virtue of which a thing having many characteristic parts is one being rather than a composite of those parts. This narrow focus likewise bears upon our knowledge of a thing's substantial form, i.e. that in virtue of which it is one whole being rather than a composite of many beings. In the case of living things it bears upon the soul, for it is the form that gives unity to the parts, duration through time and a kind of impetus to life acts. The substantial form can be defined as the first act of a body, in virtue of which it acts as it does, while the soul gets a more specific definition the first act of a body disposed toward life...

She makes some good points about the underlying motives of some of those who call themselves IDers, as well as some systematic points about the inappropriateness of trying to infer beyond the limits of a natural science. These points I accept, but the following arguments made by her don't prove as much as she would hope: 1. While she makes an excellent point about how the bogus faux-science textbook used in Dover was really a slightly modified creationist book, she never addresses whether Discovery was involved in this deception. One gets the impression that the other entity was. Needs clarification. 2. She makes a very good point that all hard core creationists naturally love the arguments they find in ID manuals, as they offer support for creationist conclusions, and they are all found in Creationism. My reply: she is committing a kind of invalid conversion. Just because everything in ID is acceptable to Creationism doesn't mean the converse is true. Consider how all c...

What if someone belonged to a religion whose scriptures taught evolution from a common ancestor: Would the attempt to use science to defend this belief be anti-scientific?

Creationism's Trojan Horse, by Forrest and Gross Why ID Fails, by Young and Eddis ID, Creationism, and its Critics, by Robert Pennock God, the Devil and Darwin, by Niel Shanks The Counter Creationism Handbook, by Mark Isaac Finding Darwin's God, by Ken Miller Defending Evolution...? Evolution and Creationism, by Eugenia Scott Theologians against ID See John Haught Perspectives on an Evolving Creation by Keith Miller

A genuine God of the gaps argument would itself have a big gap... it would fail to recognize that the greatest evidence of God is in the non-gaps. But still, a God of the gaps argument is not in principle utterly without value.... as long as the gaps are infinite or are getting wider.

In one of these lectures I learned that Gould referred to Dawkins as a fundamentalist.... what type? I need to look up that quote!

During Q & A in his talk "Biology, the Anthropic Principle and Natuarl Theology," given at the Faraday Institute on Science and Religion, a couple of questioners asked questions that AM did not meet head-on. They were (paraphrased): 1. Isn't saying that the universe is fine tuned so that humans can exist like saying that my nose is fine tuned so that glasses can be placed on them? 2. If we can reasonably say that the universe is fine-tuned so that we might exist, then wouldn't it be even more reasonable to say that it is fine tuned so that The Wheel of Fortune might play on television? Alister's answer was very non-confrontational (and I misquote): "I just think that the possible fine-tuning of the universe is something that we should think about." A better response to the first question would have been to point out how inapt the comparison was: the nose/glasses comparison relates one item in nature to something else that in no way arose as a re...

Augustine's seminal reasons as an example of an evolution-compatible understanding of the origin of life forms evolution. My response: what is marvelous about this example is that it shows that the Christian understanding of Genesis is by no means married to the fixity of the species, etc. JH Newman, paraphrased: I believe in design because I believe in God, rather than vice versa. This quote captures a central point in the essay, is that the calibration of the universe to the conditions necessary for life is a fact that a Christian is able to make sense of...not about proving but about how fruitful, coherent the Christian worldview is. He criticizes Carter for coining the term "anthropic principle" when his arguments show how the universe is fine tuned so that life generaliter may arise. Hence he proposes that "biocentric principle" would have been a more suitable term than "anthropic."

In its fledgling phase Marxism may not have been a science, but its proposals were at least genuinely scientific, for they offered both an account and predictions that allowed the account to be tested. Once these predictions had not been fulfilled, however, Marxists had to offer decide whether to tweak their model or abandon it. These failures happened repeatedly. And as they continued to occur, it became more and more apparent that the model should be abandoned rather than tweaked, and Marxism became an ideology rather than a science. Somehow this is relevant to the ID debate, but I forget why (perhaps it's b/c my son is singing "The Sound of Music").

Newtonian physics being characterized as supporting deism Freud's speculative remarks about the origin of religion being paraded as scientific insight; also the dogmatic use of the ego/superego/id division Steady-state theory Lamarkian version of evolution used to justify eugenics, racism Marxism inasmuch as it aspired to be a scientific explanation. Not exactly belonging to the same category as the above but closely related examples of scientists who saw themselves as disproving folk theism/morality/etc but later shown to be flawed: Margaret Mead B F Skinner Kinsley Haeckel

The mere point that something like only one scholarly journal has published one article in any way positive about ID is not sufficient to show that it is utterly without merit. Once he became a leader in the study of the origin of life, Miller of Miller-Yuri fame worked hard to suppress all views of the origin of life at variance with his own. This sort of thing sometimes happens...in the short term.

Johannes Kepler's belief in cosmic intelligent design made him want to study the mathematical beauty of the movement of heavenly bodies, for he took this beauty as a sign of an even greater beauty. This interpretation didn't at all get in the way of his research, in part because he wasn't out to prove that his faith was true. He was only looking for ways in which the truths of science might resonate with his faith in a rational, free and good cause of the being of the world. Of course, it is dangerous to use the same term--ID--for this as theses that are ambiguous in their acceptance of the conclusions of modern science regarding evolution. Call it what you want, Ken Miller believes in it... so it ain't bad ID (you know: good chlorestrol/bad chlorestrol...).

I just can't stop myself from posting these thoughts about freedom... Before one can find what it is in human will that is free one must first find what it is in human understanding that is necessary. That is, what is it that constraints us to judge that 2 plus 2 equals 4, etc.? The only satisfactory answer must be "what we know," but what is it that we know? What kind of objective reality. How is it that it constrains our thought? And by "thought" I mean to include not only anything that transcends material limitations but also the biological processes associated with thought: these two are in a sense constrained. But how if the object is not itself a physical individual or process?

During a talk sponsored by the Veritas Forum, where he is the principle speaker in opposition to Hugh Ross and another creationist, Tom McKnight points out that intelligent design has its origin in a theory called" interlocking complexity," developed by Herman Miller (a Noble prize winner at Rice University). According to this theory, things evolve together independently until they form a complexus, which then performs a function that no part could do alone. McKnight also gives a funny comparison of ID: a four-legged horse, says McKnight, is irreducibly complex because, should you remove one of its legs, it won't be able to go anywhere, or at least it won't be able to go fast. The same fellow also quoted Augustine's criticism of the misuse of Genesis AND cited the source of the idea of ID... must find that talk and get his name! p.s.: I contacted McKnight and he sent me some interesting links. One is to a website that also contains information about Herman M...

In the Winter of 2006 she gave an extremely interesting presentation on "Intelligent Design and the Creationism/Evolution Controversy"( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE3Qvfm8jU0&feature=player_embedded ). The main value of this presentation is that it narrates how some folks who were personally committed to creationism (not sure whether it was young earth or progressive creationism) basically dressed up their theory in a new suit, called intelligent design. My concern here is to report what she said, not to affirm or deny every detail of the history that she provides. Let me say that the overall impression is that the Dover case (i.e., the case that condemned ID as a version of creationism) was well-decided against the teaching of (at least one version of) intelligent design. She gives the following case as important background: Edwards v. Aguilar, in which the USSC decided that creationism violates the religious clause(s) in the US Constitution... ...or was it anot...

... does not discredit everything thing they have to say about science. When Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation (did I blogpost this before?), his motivation might have been to undermine Lamarkian evolution, which he (as a believing Catholic) saw as opposed to revelation. But Pasteur went about this by producing a repeatable experiment, so that even those who did not share his faith could verify his claim.

... is not sufficient to discredit all future possible attempts to argue for an intelligent source of natural life forms. Behe/Dembski/Meyer/etc. may be like the author of the Vestiges of Creation... offering the wrong evidence for a conclusion that is both correct and capable of at least partial empirical verification.

Ken Miller, one of the most important critics of ID, mentioned in passing that he believes in the fine tuning of the universe for life forms and considers this a kind of evidence of the Creator. He even described this as a kind of ID. The talk is " Chance, Necessity and Evolution," given July 31st 2007. S ee http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Multimedia.php

Having listened to some very worthwhile arguments against ID in its present incarnation, I am anxious to write down a record of these objections here, lest I forget. But before I do so let me see if I can find my way through a controversial One opponent said that teaching ID will harm our schoolchildren's ability to do science. If ID is insidiously creationist then that criticism of the teaching of ID would certainly be correct, for creationism is false and teaching falsity harms one's ability to know truth. But if by the label ID one means something that presupposes the evidence of evolution found in the fossil record, etc., that we are all descended from a common ancestor, then ID is not creationism (neither instant nor progressive). Some day, something like ID may or may not become a serious scientific proposal. But to teach it in grade schools before it has been validated by a significant part of the scientific community would be to put the cart before the horse----un...

Alasdair Coles, at the end of the Q&A of his talk on brains and religious experience, points out that temporal lobe is the source of numinous awareness, closely associated with erotic experience, which in some is reported as the calm, peaceful awareness that God is with them (he specifies that PET studies show that this is mediated through the 5HT system). He adds that drugs affecting the same area can make an event that seems boring to one person seem to another to be full of deep significance for their life, for the world, for the universe. So religious experience and the sense of how everything fits together are related, even physiologically.

Two important examples are relevant to the question of whether faith can adversely/positively affect attempts at scientific reasoning. Pasteur came up with a valid way of disproving spontaneous generation. His motivation for coming up with argument might well have been the desire to disprove Lemarkian evolution, and he have objected to that because of Pasteur's convictions as a Catholic. Yet he came up with a repeatable experiment (placed a piece of meat under a glass with a twisted opening so that air could circulate in and out of the area around the meat but flies could not figure out how to enter that area and hence could not deposit larvae or whatever on the meat) Kepler saw the universe as a divinely instituted mathematical harmony. Looking at it this way was sufficient (but not necessary) to cause him to look for mathematical symmetries where others saw complex patterns. As a result he replaced the complex explanations of the oribts offered by Copernicans (a combination o...

Many or all so-called absolute laws of nature involve the word "unless": take inertia for example. Something to look into: whether laws describing particles use "unless"; whether one can infer from the scientific description of the behavior of these particles in a non-atomic state (e.g., before atoms and molecues were formed)... whether one can infer from that description the way these particles will interact as parts of the wholes that we call atoms, etc. In other words, the question of whether atoms have emergent properties, the necessary conditions of which are the pre-atomic properties of their respective particles, but with properties that exceed the sum of the properties of their parts. If my hunch about the latter is correct, then "unless" might be used to describe particles at a level of generality that includes both the non-atomic and atomic state (i.e., they behave the way they do in the non-atomic state unless...in the atomic state). My furth...

It seems that one or both of these is not a picture, but is rather a statistical composite.... which one?That's something I need to look into. Meanwhile, here's a quote from Wikipedia, the Wild West of learning, about pet scans: The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide (tracer), which is introduced into the body on a biologically active molecule. Images of tracer concentration in 3-dimensional space within the body are then reconstructed by computer analysis. In modern scanners, this reconstruction is often accomplished with the aid of a CT X-ray scanperformed on the patient during the same session, in the same machine.If the biologically active molecule chosen for PET is FDG, an analogue of glucose, the concentrations of tracer imaged then give tissue metabolic activity, in terms of regional glucose uptake. Although use of this tracer results in the most common type of PET scan, other tracer molecules are used in PET to imag...

I've been listening to a talk by Eugenie _?_?_?__ of the Research Council and was convinced by her that it is kinda stupid of those ID folks to complain about "Darwinism." Well, not exactly for the reasons that she gave (even though hers weren't bad). Then I read something in Touchstone about Alfred Russell Wallace, who discovered natural selection at the same time as Darwin (their papers were presented at the same meeting). The author mentions approvingly that Alfred Russell Wallace believed in something called "intelligent evolution." I approve too. In fact, I think that this name shows more "intelligent design" than the name intelligent design. For if the heretofore ID folks have anything worthwhile to say (which I think is possible), then they can only be heard by distinguishing themselves from the creationists: they need to put the word "evolution" in their name (this may dry up funding for the Discovery Institute). Back to E...

...the more the explanans looks unlike our lifeworld. Yet it can be understood only in terms of our life world. Hence the need for paradox: e.g., photon as wave/particle. And we will never dissolve these paradoxes with something more familiar. We will be left with a degree of mystery. Similarly with God-talk.

One can (fecetiously?) take the law of action/reaction as indicating that there is "nothing new under the sun": when I push a bike (with a kid on it) the sum of force that I and the bike exert on each other are equal. And so it is with the mechanical forces within my body as I move while floating in space. There is no such thing as an individual efficient cause, no starting point of motion. Merely the transfer of movements already there. But to interpret movement in this way would be to take a mathematical abstraction as the complete story. Something was left out at the beginning, something given in the common sense regard for the situation. And in this case, common sense is no mere "folk physics" to be overturned. On the other hand, if common sense is correct, then the way in which there is more to this situation than is recognized by Newtonian consideration of the forces, and this "more" does not contradict the abstraction.... just as the "mor...

Sometimes the debater focuses on the political dimension to the question of ID and argues that it will hurt science education in the US if ID is taught. This argument is sound only if ID is faux-science. And I certainly would grant both that creationism is faux-science and that teaching it if it were better than that would be harmful to education. But ID, at least in its most evolution-friendly incarnation, may not deserve such a harsh judgment. And to argue against ID w/o having already offered a sound argument against ID's being a genuinely scientific proposal is an example of begging the question... kind of like a prosecutor arguing before the jury that they should convict the defendant of rape because murder is such an evil crime and murderers must not be allowed to go to kill new victims.... arguing in this manner without ever offering support of the claim that the person on the stand is in fact a murderer. To argue in such a way would both be a distraction and a circular...

It just occurred to me that the inertia objection to the first way is especially intuitive if one has a mathematized view of nature. For in such a case "efficient cause" means (if anything) the antecedent event. And the antecedent event most certainly predicts the consequent (unless something interferes). So yes, if that's all you mean by cause and explanation, then if you look on a time/distance x/y Cartesian coordinates that maps out constant motion, then by looking at time x you already have what you are looking for to explain the continued movement at time x+1. The question really is, however, whether a mathematized view of nature is an adequate explanation of nature.

The medievals believed that the spheres were the remote source of change on earth and that the spheres moved continuously because angels caused them to do so. If you want to precise, then you must say that this account is not so much supernaturalist as it is preternaturalist, for angelic causality in the physical world is preternatural rather than supernatural. Furthermore, Aquinas would argue that the activity of such an angel would itself need a cause, even though no physical thing "pushes" the angel into "pushing" the sphere. In positing the need for such a cause, they would be reasoning in a manner similar to Aristotle, who saw it fit to posit a first unmoved mover (i.e., a first cause of the unmoved moving-actions of the intelligences that moved the speres). If we assume that it is no embarrassement to medieval metaphysics to claim that the angels' transitive yet unmoved motion upon the sphere(s) needs a cause, then it is no embarrassment to a post-G...

Here is a reallllllllllllllllllllllllllly difficult ) for an Aristotelian. The Ari dude maintains that the same form that exists in nature comes through perception to exist in us. Okay, but if we examine how, say, the ear works, we see a transfer from mechanical energy to chemical--or should I say electro-chemical? So when we look at the organ(s) of sensation from a material point of view, it seems like something other than the original form comes to be in us. This sort of problem is the meat and potatoes of representationalism. For if the sort of quality that exists inside the animal in the area where cognitions occur is something different from the sorts of qualities that exist outside the animal, then it would seem to some that only a representation can exist in the brain/mind. My reply is to counter by posing another, even more difficult question to the advocate of representationalism: HOW is it that we're aware of sameness? (as in "the same sound", "the sam...

What is the contradictory of the claim that all aspects of all forms of life can be explained as being the result of chance and necessity (henceforth CN)? Teleology. But what kind of teleology? The kind that originates with a First and Ultimate Cause, a being that in some way directs all other beings to their goals? It depends on who is answering the question. Let us suppose what I believe is the case: that one can demonstrate the divine causality of the teleology found in nature. That sort of argumentation belongs to philosophy rather than natural science. If a natural scientist offers the just mentioned demonstration then he would acting as a philosopher rather than a natural scientist. This applies to proponents of ID (intelligent design). When reasoning within the confines of the scientific method, they cannot demonstrate (at least according to the strict sense of the word "demonstrate") that any phenomena or aspects of phenomena are caused by God (nor would som...

An interesting question to pose to a proponent of a multiplicity of universes: what would be worse: to destroy an entire non-living universe or to destroy one human life? Why?

Proponents of ID argue by trying to establish that NS is not sufficient to explain how the many species now extent on the earth have arisen from simpler life forms. Some proponents of NS claim that any such argument is illegitimate unless its proponent also provides a plausible alternative explanation of how evolution has taken place. But if the same proponent of NS should also argue that abiogenesis is the result of chance and necessity (rather than design), then it wouldn't this claim likewise be illegitimate unless its proponent provide a plausible explanation of how abiogenesis has taken place?

Dawkins' Selfish Gene (who is this Gene guy, anyways?) has a DNA molecule instrumentalizing the rest of the body... in a manner analogous to how Aristotle, in De sensu (I think) has the common sense instrumentalizing the proper senses. In fact, Ari uses the craftsman analogy to convey this. Dawkins' use of this metaphor amazing because of how it inverts the higher and the lower.

Strawson is a compatibilist. I am not; nevertheless, I believe that he has the most marvelous thesis about [what in his opinion merely "seem" to be] choices. It is based upon the distinction between first order and second order desires. First order are what I would call non-reflective: e.g., chocolate: yum! Second order are reflective: e.g., "I wish I didn't like chocolate so much." Free choice is, for Strawson, being able to try to act according to your second order desires. What seems to be freedom is at most the sucessful carrying out of the desires that you desire to have. Strawson sees these so-called choices as being at best the unfolding of our character. I propose the following: Let's assume, provisionally, that he is correct. I propose first of all that we have the kind of 2nd order desires mentioned by Strawson only because we have a more global desire for happiness or fulfillment. This desire involves not just the satisfaction of one privil...

... who might point out that things go on in the brain at the pre conscious level before we are aware of ourselves as "deciding" whether to have vanilla or chocolate, and do so in a manner that predicts with perfect accuracy the consequent expression of a decision. My reply(ies): 1. It may well be the case that such deliberations and choices are not free when no particular significance is attached to the two choices other than direct desire for a tastier flavor. 2. But what if one asks a person who is fasting from chocolate for religious reasons about their preference? Does the same neural process take place prior to the expression of a preference? 3. And what about deliberation about what Strawson calls second-order desires (i.e., which desires are desirable to have)? Isn't that more pertinent to what freedom is all about? What type of neural activity precedes these sorts of decisions? 4. If the mere fact that some preconscious activity predicts our conscious "c...

I am just getting a handle on this 'ism. It seems to me if mental activity is something other physical activity, then you have (in the opinion of a consistent materialist) dualism all over again. So epiphenomenalism (henceforth 'E') can't be that. Perhaps mental activity is, in the opinion of an E-ist, a kind of higher order material property. Like the hexagon formed by pressing a bunch of marbles together in a compact fashion. This sort of higher order would be an effect of the lower order, just as the hexagonal pattern is an effect of the many marbles. Or rather, the hex pattern is a kind of abstract summation of the particular order in which the many marbles are arranged. But this sort of higher order activity could not be a cause of the lower. Yup. That's precisely what E-ism maintains. So this version of E-ism is non-dualistic. Perhaps it's the only version that there is. Certainly the inconsistency of dualistic e-ism is pretty obvious.

The theist who takes the prima via (Thomas Aquinas's first way of demonstrating the existence of God) as being about movers that push other things (i.e., an approach that leaves final causality out consideration) is taking nature in mechanistic terms. One who thinks in this manner would be more than a little puzzled by the question, "But don't things just move without being pushed? After all, isn't that what electrons do? And isn't that what things do on their own once they have been pushed (i.e., momentum/inertia)?" One response would be to restrict the types of movement to which the prima via applies to acceleration/deceleration (perhaps one should rename it the "first Accelerator" argument!). This approach grants that physics since Galileo has marginalized the "all" in "all motion needs a physical cause" to "some" (i.e., to cases acceleration and deceleration). But then again it might not marginalize that claim...

Consider the following four postulates: 1. The affirmation of physicalism (if by this term we mean the thesis that every physical state corresponds to only one mental state), and 2. The denial of the converse of postulate 1 (i.e., the denial that every mental state corresponds to only one physical state) (to put this in other words, the same mental state can be instantiated by more than one physical state). 3. The affirmation of the claim that the relation between truths 1/2 vis-a-vis mental physical states is but an instance of a patter occurring in all cases between a lower order property and a higher one. 4. The affirmation of the claim that emergent properties can be sources of action rather than merely epiphenomenal (something discussed in an earlier post) If we grant the above four posulates, then there is room for freedom in human beings. Below: an elaboration on a couple of the postulates made above: (As I noted in an earlier post) I affirm with the physicalist that every phy...

This concerns the thing I wrote long, long agoabout structure and process. I now realize that what I wrote back then has to do with Aristotle's distinction between energeia and kinesis. Only the energeia here is the most basic one, what Aristotle would call the first energeia. It is the source of identity of a material being. In a living thing it is called the "soul," although it does not have to be spiritual at all (for Aristotle, all living things have souls, b/c "soul" means only "principle of life activities." But non-living things have a source of identity or form as wll. That in virtue of which it is one being. I have the hunch that the connection between structure/movement and energeia/kinesis is supported by the way relativity renders problematic our everyday notion of simultaneity. How? Well, if we take that critique of the common sense notion of our everyday notion of simultaneity very, very seriously, then we see that a problem--a pote...

Just for the record, here is Behe's defense against a recently published criticism of his irreducible complexity arguement as it pertains to bacterial flagella: http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A3DGRQ0IO7KYQ2

If an atheist can use natural selection as a story that establishes the materialistic understanding of human nature; then a theist can use the big-bang as a story to establish the creation of the universe in time. If! There's a way for the atheist to avoid the theist's argument: posit a multiverse or some other presently unprovable entity. Or say that the universe's origin is necessarily a mystery about which we can make no warranted claim (after all, says this neophyte mystery-monger, we can make such claims only about what a scientist can measure or observe). And there's a way out for the theist too: point out how humans beings are able use their minds. That is, we can know universal and necessary truths, such as the truths of logic, mathematics, metaphysics and of nature. These are truths encompass our universe, and some of them encompass even our multiverse (if there is one, of course). They transcend material limitations in a way that undercuts materialism. ...

If the organized complexity that we find in a watch makes it seem somewhat improbable that it would have arrived by chance, then how much greater the complexity and improbability of a machine that makes watches arriving by chance. And how much greater still the complexity and hence improbability of a machine that makes machines that make watches. And how much greater still the complexity and improbability of a machine that makes machines that make machines that make watches. Add to this, the following amazing feature: each of these machines would look and function like a simple watch (i.e., of a watch that does not make other watches). Talk of a mere watchmaker--blind or not--is simplistic. To do justice to the claim, one would have to speak of of a Maker of makers of watchmakers (or perhaps, if one does not get lost, a Maker of watches that are also makers of watches that are also watchmakers). Once we consider the mechanics involved, how much less plausible does it seem that this ...

He points out that an egg made of gold will fall down in water noticeably faster than one made of aluminum (okay, I'm adjusting things here). Why? not because they have noticeably different rates of acceleration (they don't, as Galileo pointed out). Rather because they have different terminal velocities. Tim: is that true? If so, we can try to rid the Aristotelians of the embarrassment caused by Galileo by claiming that Aristotle, in saying that a denser things falls faster, had terminal velocity in mind. Not entirely a joke, as he had in mind the relation between the push exerted by an object and the resistance of its environment. So maybe if there had been a tower as high as the Burj Dubai, the results might have been different. Oh, but the truth is that Aristotle was unaware of terminal velocity. He noted in three places (Twice in the Physics and once in On the Heavens) that things accelerated as they got closer to the earth, giving the impression that they would con...

If what we call "perception" is merely our shorthand for a complex chemical reaction, then it would seem at least at first glance that it can only be (generaically speaking) awareness of that which most immediately caused it. Or rather, one who maintains a reductionist position must explain how this special chemical reaction could be about something other than that which most immediately caused it. For other chemical reactions (in plants and non-living things) don't seem to be "about" anything. They are charcterized merely in terms of that with which they are immediately interacting with. So either one must posit some cosmic awareness (ala Dennett) posit an emergent property (which is as magical as the steady state theory) or admit the reductivist thesis is problematic. Let's expand on that problem: given the restriction of awareness to that which is immediately acting upon the brain, then there could not be two cognitions of the same object. No two pe...

If epiphenomenalism is true, then beliefs are always and only the result of bodily events. That is, they are never the cause of bodily events (put in other words, cognition is always an effect and never a cause of behavior). But if they are never the cause of such events, then they are irrelevant to whether a behavior is or is not adaptive. We could have a wrong belief but act adaptively. We could have a totally wrong belief each time and still act adaptively. That's one of Plantinga's points in his lecture on Evolution vs. Materialism, published by the Veritas Forum. But let's intensify his point in a manner not explored by him: An apparent human being could be a zombie (mindless robot) that behaves quite adaptively. Because belief doesn't cause behavior, which includes both adaptive and maladaptive behavior. One can reply that of course beliefs matter. To which the counter is that either epiphenomenalism is false or reductionism is false or (my favorite) both a...

It's Book 6, chapter 8. It's almost as if Ari's saying that when a thing is moving, it's not right to say that it's here or there... otherwise, one would be saying that this (moving thing) is at rest. Sorta like the scientific discovery that moving things have a certain indeterminacy re their location. I see a parallel...or the mirage of a parallel. Of course, the latter discovery may be thought to be more epistemic than ontological. That is, one may object to my spotting of a parallel by saying that modern science has shown something about the limits of a scientist's knowledge of motion rather than having gotten an insight into the nature of motion itself. Again, one may object that just because we can't determine exactly where a moving thing is, doesn't mean it doesn't have a definite "where." Something to look further into.

Some thoughts on the topic: 1. preliminary examples that serve as a prelude to my first point: 1a) Think of a machine consisting of many parts, each of which pushes another: No one "pusher" in this series can push itself. 1b) Think of devices we use: The bristles of a toothbrush cannot brush the bristles themselves. 1c) Think of our own organs: One's eyes cannot see one's eyes. The point of all of this: if we look at each of these examples as actions directed toward an object, in no case can the action be directed toward the very action itself as its object. You can't brush the brush with the very same brush, etc. To put it more simply: material actions, qua transitive, are non-reflexive. 2. If all human cognition is a machine-like material process (a claim that I am granting for the purpose of a reductio ad absurdam ), then it cannot be reflexive. That is, a cognition-process, to the degree that it is like other processes, would not be able to cognizant of i...