Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Logic, Math & Morality

This is an expansion of a post of mine from another thread. Hat tip to HeKS for bringing the debate around to Ontology vs Epistemology. In another thread, Seversky rejects the objective nature of morality based on the fact you cannot prove its existence or specific values like you can, say, the speed of light or the gravitational constant. Seversky is making a claim that since there is no satisfying epistemological methodology for establishing – precisely – the good or evil value of a moral proposition, then it must be the case that good and evil, ontologically speaking, are completely subjective commodities. This is not, of course, a logically valid inference. Just because a commodity has no satisfying or precise, Read More ›

Pop science: Scientific expertise = universal truths

Science historian Darin Hayton eloquently fumes, Once again the internet is all excited by some scientists’ findings that solve a historical mystery. In this case, “UTA scientists use Planetarium’s advanced astronomical software to accurately date 2500 year-old lyric poem” (as the University of Texas at Arlington press announcement puts it). Unsurprisingly, UTA’s “press release” (by which I mean “propaganda”) misrepresents the article. Despite the link to the article in the “press release,” nobody at UTA—either in media relations or in the planetarium—apparently could be bothered to read the article. I shouldn’t, therefore, be surprised that most other people trafficking in this story have likewise ignored the article. While not surprised, I am disheartened to see that even purportedly reputable, pro-science Read More ›

Orca evolution driven by culture?

Amazing! Human evolution is driven by Darwinism, right? Well, maybe not. From Colin Barras at New Scientist: Essentially, a few individuals can colonise new habitats and ecological niches thanks to their behavioural flexibility. Group culture then transmits the know-how of surviving on new resources and sets the group on a separate evolutionary track. “This is an extremely important piece of research,” says Hal Whitehead at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. “The results are fascinating. We now see how in killer whales, as in humans, culture is not only an important factor in the lives of the whales, but also [helps drive] genetic evolution.” “One of the main conclusions is that variation within killer whales, humans and likely many other species arises Read More ›

This is a case study in Darwinism beyond ridiculous

On monogamy and sibling co-operation, from ScienceDaily: In their paper, Professor David Westneat and his graduate student Jacqueline Dillard–both at the University of Kentucky–present three alternative explanations: Monogamy and sibling cooperation co-evolved, so that one trait increased the benefits of the other. Ecological pressures selected for both monogamy and sibling cooperation simultaneously, so that one trait does not depend on the other. The evolution of monogamy created new physiological and behavioral adaptations that may also be useful in sibling cooperation. “This is a case study demonstrating the importance of not boiling organisms down to simple traits,” says Dillard, who studies a socially monogamous group of Bess Beetles. She notes that the classic monogamy hypothesis considers a single link between the Read More ›

Can we create minds from machines?

Erik Larson asks. Erik J. Larson is a Fellow of the Technology & Democracy Project at Discovery Institute, and he is Science and Technology Editor at The Best Schools.org. He works on issues in computational technology and intelligence (AI). He is presently writing a book critiquing the overselling of AI. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from The University of Texas at Austin in 2009. His dissertation was a hybrid that combined work in analytic philosophy, computer science, and linguistics and included faculty from all three departments. Larson’s Ph.D. dissertation served as the basis for the writing of a provisional patent on using hierarchical classification techniques to locate specific event mentions in free text. His work on supervised machine learning Read More ›

Evolutionary convergence of butterflies

From Royal Society: Mid-Mesozoic kalligrammatid lacewings (Neuroptera) entered the fossil record 165 million years ago (Ma) and disappeared 45 Ma later. Extant papilionoid butterflies (Lepidoptera) probably originated 80–70 Ma, long after kalligrammatids became extinct. Although poor preservation of kalligrammatid fossils previously prevented their detailed morphological and ecological characterization, we examine new, well-preserved, kalligrammatid fossils from Middle Jurassic and Early Cretaceous sites in northeastern China to unravel a surprising array of similar morphological and ecological features in these two, unrelated clades. We used polarized light and epifluorescence photography, SEM imaging, energy dispersive spectrometry and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry to examine kalligrammatid fossils and their environment. We mapped the evolution of specific traits onto a kalligrammatid phylogeny and discovered that these Read More ›

Chemical system: Is it alive?

From Kathryn Gempf at Chemistry World: They crawl. They eat. They excrete. So you’d be forgiven for thinking these globules created by a team Japan were alive – but they’re not. … Together, DDAB, oleate and calcium, form globules, called vesicles, with intriguing life-like movement. The vesicles crawl around on a glass slide by reacting with iodide ions, ingest smaller vesicles to maintain their size and energy, and leave behind waste; just like a living system. More. Hot phone: Coming to life? Origin of life? Um… However, Pier Luigi Luisi, a specialist in synthetic biology at Roma Tre University, warns that phenomena like this mechanical motion are generally ‘due to a very particular context of environmental conditions.’ Therefore, changing any Read More ›

Clown Fish, Subjectivism, and the Great Moral Gap

As we know, subjectivists labor endlessly to convince us that their morality is on a par with the natural law. Clown Fish, for example, insists that, like objectivists, he follows rules and is governed by “oughtness.” My moral values are very strongly held. They govern many of the things I do. I believe that others OUGHT to comply with my moral values. He further states that, like objectivists, he believes that the state should also be governed by “oughtness.” You (kairosfocus) really have to work on your reading comprehension. Your continuing insistence on disagreeing with me about our government by OUGHTness when I have repeatedly stated that I agree with you on our government by OUGHTness suggests that some unhealthy Read More ›

Body plan organizer “much more ancient than previously thought”

600 mya. From ScienceDaily: Cells need to ‘know’ where they are in relation to all other cells in order to give rise into the correct cell types and tissues. The so-called ‘organizer’ is responsible for the formation of these body axes. Developmental biologists have shown that the molecular principles of the organizer are much more ancient than previously thought. The same signals were used already in the common ancestor of sea anemones and vertebrates 600 million years ago. … In vertebrate early development, an “organizer” forms in the region of the primitive mouth (the blastopore) of the embryo. This organizer is responsible for guiding axis formation of the organism. Its discovery won Hans Spemann a Nobel Prize in 1935. The Read More ›

Meeting the scientific outcasts and mavericks

Mathematicians and scientists who study evidence for design in nature are hardly the only ones! Alex Berezow at American Council on Science and Health offers some others, including Mark Davis. In an editorial for Nature, Davis and 18 of his colleagues made the case to stop vilifying invasive species. They argue that invasive species are not a threat to biodiversity, and the notion that these species are little more than barbarian invaders leads to bad policy. They write, “this perspective has led many conservation and restoration efforts down paths that make little ecological or economic sense.” More. Here: “Conservationists should assess organisms on environmental impact rather than on whether they are natives, argue Mark Davis and 18 other ecologists.” (paywall) Read More ›

Millennials’ low commitment to intellectual freedom

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of millennials believe it would be appropriate for the government to restrict speech that offends minority groups. This mindset is manifesting itself on college campuses across the country, from the disinvitation of controversial speakers to top comedians refusing to perform at universities. What you’ve never had, you don’t miss. Strange, it should happen in the home of the First Amendment to the Constitution. (“Congress shall make no law respecting”) See also: Nicholas Kristof: More self-deceptive blather on academic freedom and Dawkins: Social justice warriors are dim, just dim … (And our future ruling class.) Follow UD News at Twitter!

More rapidly expanding universe than expected

From ScienceDaily: Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have discovered that the universe is expanding 5-9% percent faster than expected. They made the discovery by refining the universe’s current expansion rate to unprecedented accuracy, reducing the uncertainty to only 2.4%. The team made the refinements by developing innovative techniques that improved the precision of distance measurements to faraway galaxies. These measurements are fundamental to making more precise calculations of how fast the universe expands with time, a value called the Hubble constant. … There are a few possible explanations for the universe’s excessive speed. One possibility is that dark energy, already known to be accelerating the universe, may be shoving galaxies away from each other with even greater — or growing — Read More ›

Are we symbiotic multitudes?

From Kirkus Reviews, on science writer Ed Yong’s new book, I contain multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life: Prepare to meet some weird animals and weirder microbes, as Yong guides us through the animal kingdom to explain how microbes facilitate digestion, reproduction, and other functions integral to the survival of a species. In humans, microbes have been shown to regulate inflammation, an immune response linked to dozens of chronic conditions. In fact, in the absence of symbiotic microbes, life as we know it would quickly collapse—and yet it was only recently that microbes were understood to be more than disease-carrying bugs and more recently still that scientists have begun to understand their potential medicinal power. Read More ›

Neuroscience challenged by Donkey Kong

Let alone the human brain. From Ed Yong at Atlantic: The human brain contains 86 billion neurons, underlies all of humanity’s scientific and artistic endeavours, and has been repeatedly described as the most complex object in the known universe. By contrast, the MOS 6502 microchip contains 3510 transistors, runs Space Invaders, and wouldn’t even be the most complex object in my pocket. We know very little about how the brain works, but we understand the chip completely. So, Eric Jonas and Konrad Kording wondered, what would happen if they studied the chip in the style of neuroscientists? How would the approaches that are being used to study the complex squishy brain fare when used on a far simpler artificial processor? Read More ›

Clown Fish Shows WJM a Thing or Two

WJM challenges the moral subjectivists: I challenge CF and zeroseven to explain, from logically consistent moral subjectivism, how any of their moral views do not depend entirely upon personal preference, and how that principle cannot be used to make anything moral – even cruelty. Clown Fish rises to the challenge: Morals, regardless of their origin, span the gamut from deeply entrenched to weakly held. I assume that you would agree with this. It was “beat” into me from an early age by my parents that I must hold the door open for women and the elderly. I think that you would agree that this is not an objective moral value, yet I feel very uncomfortable if I don’t get to a Read More ›