kairosfocus

Below, is a picture of Einstein’s chalkboard at Princeton as he left it — and you should see his bookshelves and desk, too! What does this have to do with the now so commonly dismissed laws of thought, especially the law of non-contradiction? A lot. AKA, one cannot wisely saw off the branch on which s/he is sitting. What does that mean? We can start from the proverbial main tools of the great theoretical physicists of 100 years ago when quantum physics was emerging: chalk-boards, chalk, and — of course — what they had between their ears. So, they used distinct scratch marks with definite meanings, to clarify, analyse and communicate what they were thinking. (Some, proverbially, had “chalkboards in Read More ›

This morning, on opening up my email acount, I encountered a comment from one of UD’s critics, LT, in which he pointed to this post at his blog, which begins: I am starting to come around to the way of thinking espoused by Kairosfocus [–>NB: I can claim no originality on this],  who has argued that we must build our worldviews from first principles and compare how different worldviews address various difficulties. The comparative aspect is important. If we have proper grasp of a fact–as in, for instance, an apple falling to earth–we should be able to reconcile the fact and the worldview. A worldview in which apples do not fall to earth (yes, I understand that “fall” is a Read More ›

In reply to a personal email I saw this morning, I have done a point by point markup of LT’s reply to my comment at no 10 in the current UD atheism and tolerance thread, here on. Let it be further understood that I am on record that the proper response to the now common dismissal of first principles of right reason, is that therapy is what is needed. Banning and moderation should be reserved for specifically disorderly behaviour. Finally, since there is an open thread as just linked, replies should be made there. END

Last time around, last May, the heart of the answer was: . . . if clever but willfully deceptive rhetors — Ms Forrest, B, with all due respect; sadly,  this means you — can get away with strawmannising and dismissing design thinkers as “Creationists in cheap tuxedos,” where it has already been firmly fixed in the public mind by other clever rhetors — Mr Dawkins, CR, with all due respect; sadly, this means you — that Creationists are “ignorant, stupid, insane and/or wicked,” and that such are fighting “a war against science” and want to impose “a right-wing theocracy” (presumably  complete with Inquisitions and burnings at the stake) then we can be distracted from the issues on the merits and Read More ›

For some time now, LYO has been a fairly frequent critic in UD’s comment threads. Overnight, he has challenged EA:

I challenge you to give me a fact, real or hypothetical, any fact at all about the world which would falsify ID.

There were prompt short answers that immediately followed the just linked:

UB: A demonstration that inanimate matter can physically establish the relationships required for information to be recorded and transferred.

Joe: Demonstrate that blind and undirected chemical processes can produce a living organism from non-living matter- ie demonstrate that a living organism is reducible to matter, energy, necessity and chance.

A little later, responding to the wider point being raised by LYO, EA said: Read More ›

As we continue to look at the issue of first principles of right reason, one of the key steps being taken by critics of the Law of Non-Contradiction [LNC] is to assert that we are here dealing with axioms unconnected to the real world, at least in relevant cases.

First, let us clip a recent comment to refresh our recollection of the why behind the classical laws of thought, which can here be seen as self-evident and thus “natural,” rather than arbitrary projections unto reality conditioned by genes and memes: Read More ›

The latest flare-ups in the debates over design theory in and around UD have pivoted on the Law of non-contradiction; one of the most debated classical principles of logic. Why on earth is that so? The simple short answer is: if we are to make progress in debates and discussions, we must be at minimum agreed on being reasonable and rational. In more details, LNC is one of a cluster of first principles of right reason that are pivotal to core rationality, and for years now, debates over design theory issues have often tracked back to a peculiar characteristic of the evolutionary materialist worldview: it tends strongly to reject the key laws of thought, especially, identity, excluded middle and non-contradiction, Read More ›

I have of course put in my own overall rebuttal to ES’s reply to SB’s challenge, but I feel a commentary on points will also be helpful. U/D, Feb 20: I have taken up the general LNC issue, here.) Such is best done using a full post, so, I clip from EL’s own post. My comments will be on numbered arrow points, and will be OLIVE GREEN: +++++++++++++ [EL:] On Uncommon Descent, Barry Arrington asks: [BA:] Let’s clear up this law of noncontradiction issue between StephenB and eigenstate once and for all. StephenB asks eigenstate: “Can the planet Jupiter exist and not exist at the same time in the same sense? That’s a “yes or no” question eigenstate. How do Read More ›

Onlookers, Geno concludes for the moment with FAQ’s: ____________________ Geno: >> A Testable ID Hypothesis: Front-loading, part C In the last two articles on front-loading, I explained what the front-loading hypothesis is all about and some research questions we can ask from a front-loading perspective. This article will be an FAQ about the front-loading hypothesis. So, without further introduction, let’s begin (note: some of the content of this FAQ can be found in the previous two articles). What is front-loading? “Front-loading is the investment of a significant amount of information at the initial stage of evolution (the first life forms) whereby this information shapes and constrains subsequent evolution through its dissipation. This is not to say that every aspect of Read More ›

Sometimes, comments at UD can be quite revealing. Jan 25, AIG objected in the Shermer/Flannery Wallace debate thread in an inadvertently revealing way, which I have picked up: ___________ >>AIG: Re: questions of how, why, and “who” (the names of people involved [at Stonehenge etc]?) are secondary. We know that human beings were present at the time these were built, so everybody agrees that human beings were responsible . . . . “Agency” is a term from philosophy (mainly moral philosophy and philosophy of mind). It is also used in sociology, where it refers to people (human beings) in social systems. It is not a term used in biology, physics, or the cognitive sciences . . . This is utterly, Read More ›

Genomicus continues his presentation of the front-loading hypothesis: ___________ Geno: >>In my previous article on the subject of front-loading, I described the front-loading hypothesis and what it proposes. I outlined three testable predictions generated by the front-loading hypothesis. In this article, we’ll see how the front-loading hypothesis can lead us to numerous research questions, and this, in turn, will allow us to establish a better picture about the history of the origin and development of biological complexity. There are probably dozens of research questions that we can ask as a result of the front-loading hypothesis, so I’ll only cover some of them here. How could molecular machines and systems be front-loaded? An interesting question from a front-loading perspective is how Read More ›

For some months now, I have been having a behind the scenes correspondence with a regular viewer of UD, whom we shall call EP. He works with industrial robots, and has been fascinated by the way the ribosome works as a nano-scale automated machine cell. Accordingly, a process sequence diagram (‘map”) has been developed, based on accessible descriptions of the ribosome in action. The result is a fascinating look at the ribosome as industrial robot work-cell. (The tRNA’s are molecular scale position-arm devices with a universal CCA coupler — yup, the AA bond is universal, it is the loading enzyme that sets up which tRNA gets what AA — to load and click AAs to a protein chain.) So, enough Read More ›

A few months back, we looked at the story of Wallace’s views here and again here. Now, thanks to an online premiere, here’s the movie (HT: ENV): Relax, enjoy, and discuss. END _____________ F/N: to understand Wallace, have a read of his major book published in 1910 ff, The World of Life (cf. here, here, here and here at Amazon — republished, of course, by Forgotten Books).

(Series on Front-loading continues, here) As we continue the ID Foundations series, it will be necessary to reflect on a fairly wide range of topics, more than any one person can cover. So, when the opportunity came up to put Front-Loading on the table from a knowledgeable advocate of it, Genomicus, I asked him if he would be so kind as to submit  such a post. He graciously agreed, and so, please find the below for our initial reflections; with parts B and C (and maybe, more? please, please, sir . . . 😆 ) to follow shortly, DV: ____________________ >> Critics of intelligent design (ID) often argue that ID does not offer any testable biological hypotheses. Indeed, often times Read More ›

(NOTICE: Dr Larry Moran, the response to your assertions is here.) I see where UD’s News has let us know that the Eugenics Society’s papers will shortly be digitised and made available to the public. It is therefore appropriate to highlight again the Logo for the 2nd International Congress on Eugenics, with Alexander Graham Bell as honorary president and Major Leonard Darwin (son of Sir Charles) as major speaker, so we can see how leading people all across the world from North Carolina, California and Canada to Britain,  India, Japan and — sadly tellingly — Germany, were thinking about “the self-direction of human evolution”: It is worth noting — from Wiki testifying against interest as usual — that Major Darwin’s Read More ›