Penrose contra ///sola complexity\\\

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.

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P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...

Richard Dawkin's problem with God

Beliefnet has published an interview by Laura Sheahan with biologist Richard Dawkins, who employs evolution in support of atheism. In the second part of the interview, Sheahan says to Dawkins: "You criticize intelligent design, saying that 'the theistic answer'--pointing to God as designer--'is deeply unsatisfying'--presumably you mean on a logical, scientific level." Dawkins then replies to the interviewer: "Yes, because it doesn't explain where the designer comes from. If they're going to emphasize the statistical improbability of biological organs—'these are so complicated, how could they have evolved?'--well, if they're so complicated, how could they possibly have been designed? Because the designer would have to be even more complicated." My reply: Dawkins does not explain WHY the designer of biological organs would have to be more complicated than the organs he designs. He does not think that such an explanation is...

The Human Question

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