While we’re on a roll on AI and its import at the hands of evolutionary materialistic scientism dressed in a lab coat, BA77 has linked a comic strip — see here (main site here; cf. twist on The Cave currently top of the heap) — that is at first funny then soberingly serious:
As in, where do you think these issues fit in:
And perhaps Engineer Derek Smith’s model has a few points to ponder as we think about the higher order, supervisory controller in the cybernetic loop:
Food for thought. END
PS: Could I put up for reflection the notion that the human soul is at the interface of spirit and body, including Brain and CNS?
BA77 links on the consequences of mind = brain ideologies
Hm. Does this raise problems with the way organs are actually harvested? My understanding is that this process is allowed once “brain death” has occurred. But if the mind is not purely a function of the brain, then perhaps brain death does not imply mind death, in which case we’re killing and removing organs from people whose minds are still functioning.
DS, we do indeed need to ponder very sobering things about the ethics of current and future medical practice. For one, consider cloning for organ harvesting or even imagined personality transplants as various Sci Fi authors have brought up. Sci Fi of today too often becomes reality of tomorrow. KF
“Sci Fi of today too often becomes reality of tomorrow. ”
I’m going to start stocking up on garlic to ward off those space vampires. 🙂
MB, I particularly had in mind H G Wells’ series of works. War of the Worlds anticipated the Holocaust. Island of Dr Moreau is about ethically dark science and mad scientists. Time Machine projects class war to cannibalism. Where, you may not know he was taught by Darwin’s Bulldog in Uni, Huxley. And of course Brave New World came out of the Huxley family. Where, 1984 and Animal Farm by Orwell come up for honourable mention. More recent Sci Fi has relevant ideas, e.g. Weber’s world of cloning, genetic modifications and more leading to a new form of slavery. Some of what is discussed — and — if word out of China is to be believed (organ harvesting from prisoners condemned under questionable circumstances) — actually done today comes right out of that whole line of thought. I did not have in mind stuff like Star Trek communicators and smart phones or the proposal to mount laser weapons in upcoming fighter jets or the like. KF
daveS @ 2
Leave it to someone who champions the atheistic worldview to try to use objective morality, which can only be rationally grounded within the Theistic worldview, to try to argue against the reality of the mind.
It is absurd that atheists have to continually ‘borrow’ from Theism in order to try to argue against Theism. As Dr. Hunter observed,
That atheists have to continually ‘borrow’ from Theism in order to try to deny Theism is yet more proof that once you have denied the reality of your own mind, you have in fact lost your mind.
PS: Let me excerpt opening remarks from the first chapter of War of the Worlds, 1898:
A grim warning, especially when parallelled with Darwin’s Descent of Man ch 6 and Heine’s warning from the 1830’s..
If human soul is responsible for consciousness, why do we need a brain?
If human soul is responsible for consciousness, why people are unconscious and can’t remember anything under general anaesthetic?
Some people had the majority of their brains removed and they function fine. Some had small parts damaged and they are unconscious. If the soul is responsible for consciousness, why those people are unconscious?
Ponder the PS OP, that we are trans-dimensional hybrids so that the soul is an interface and bridge between spirit and body. In which case, arguably we are here to do good, opening up a world of freely done virtues crowned by love. KF
PS: Depending on what is damaged, break down of physically small or relatively large parts of a smart phone, tablet or PC can have disproportionately large or small effects. Such is the nature of a device that uses interfaces.
PPS: Some deemed unconscious or dismissed as “vegetable” may instead be locked-in. Sleep or sleep-like states also have quite varying effects. BA77 may want to elaborate. He has already spoken to NDE’s.
“A grim warning, especially when parallelled with Darwin’s Descent of Man ch 6 and Heine’s warning from the 1830’s..”
And damned entertaining reading.
Don’t you think that you might be taking the ‘cautions From science fiction’ a little too seriously? I have a friend who is a moderately successful sci fi writer (that is where I got the space vampires from). Good sci fi is always addressing the ‘what if’ question. But there is nothing saying that the ‘what if’ has to be possible.
MB, the track record of H G Wells is there for all to see. KF
KF,
Yes. For that matter, even literal vegetables could conceivably have consciousness, which may not be detectable based on their “behavior”, such as it is.
That notion seems far-fetched, however.
Are we all agreed that some sort of physical “brain” is necessary, but perhaps not sufficient, for consciousness?
Edited: Yes, embodied consciousness. Angels, God, etc, are conscious, but do not have physical bodies.
Embodied consciousness.
Frankly, I have never been able to get too worked up over the material vs non material mind/soul/consciousness. I think even materialist would agree that the mind is more than the sum of the brain’s parts. It seems to me that the big bone of contention is whether or not we have an immortal soul. Obviously, we would all like to exist forever, but with the immortal soul is it not possible, or likely, that we are trying to imposing one of our strongest desires on reality. Does it really matter if our soul is immortal?
MB @ 14:
If we are merely physical instantiations, we can be stored as data. If we aren’t, maybe we can be stored as data in some higher order medium, or we’re actually composed of unique components that can be stuffed in a pocket and are immanently eternal.
I can have a really hard time recreating a desktop environment that I prefer, I’m not worried that my mind/soul isn’t unique or individual if it’s based on a far more complicated device.
I have faith in YHWH’s data storage solution, whatever that may or may not be.
daveS @ 12:
Depends on how you define “physical.” If put in standard terms, I expect not, as I expect the “physical” is incomplete (and am not alone in this); and if mind is modulable via matter, I have little (no) reason to expect it’s not modulable within the complement of the physical with respect to the superset.
To say that life was designed follows reason and all of the available scientific knowledge. In other words, a non-religious person should rationally conclude that life was designed.
But the insistence that consciousness lives outside the brain is a transparent attempt to push religious beliefs into science. It’s not only questionable science – it’s questionable religion. It’s based largely on the premise that God is incapable of creating consciousness within an organ.
We’re quick to point out when Darwinists make arguments that are more religious then scientific. This is no different.
Worse, it siphons away ID’s deserved credibility by placing it side-by-side with religious beliefs. ID is credible but faces massive skepticism and opposition. Why are some so desperate to sabotage it and go out of their way to ensure that it’s never viewed as legitimate science?
Follow the evidence wherever it leads, consequences be damned. But at the same time, certain ideas have to be rejected because if you accept them you become literally Hitler!
Ridiculous. You can’t have it both ways.
“In other words, a non-religious person should rationally conclude that life was designed.”
Yet few do.
“But the insistence that consciousness lives outside the brain is a transparent attempt to push religious beliefs into science. It’s not only questionable science – it’s questionable religion. It’s based largely on the premise that God is incapable of creating consciousness within an organ.”
Agreed.
“Worse, it siphons away ID’s deserved credibility by placing it side-by-side with religious beliefs. ID is credible but faces massive skepticism and opposition. Why are some so desperate to sabotage it and go out of their way to ensure that it’s never viewed as legitimate science?”
Again, I fully agree. ID proponents are not doing ID any good by repeatedly talking about religion, or the soul, or consciousness outside the brain. Or about objective morality. These types of arguments from fellow ID supporters just makes it easy for those on the fence about ID to lump it in as a religious belief and not a legitimate science. And for those opposed to ID to ridicule it as pseudoscience.
Jul3s,
utterly irrelevant reference to Hitler.
OA,
We have long observation of what mechanical (including electrical/electronic) computational substrates do: process input signals and generate outputs mechanically.
Perhaps, with room for noise and for butterfly effect unpredictability on which small initial differences lead to large shifts on a strange attractor.
There is zero evidence of such processes acting with understanding of meaning or drawing out a rational inference from premises to conclusions.
It’s signal processing all the way down.
Here is a useful outline on what would be implied on such a basis for reasoning:
That’s essentially why the famous geneticist and evolutionary biologist (as well as Socialist) J. B. S. Haldane made much the same point in a famous 1932 remark:
At the same time, the first fact of our experience is that we are conscious and freely, commonly make rational, insightful judgements including reasoning through chains of warrant. Indeed, it is through that responsible, rational freedom that we have worked with computational substrates to design computing machines and use them: mechanical, electro-mechanical and electronic calculators, analogue computers, digital computers and neural network systems, blends of these.
If we argue or imply that that self-awareness is fundamentally in error, is fundamentally a delusion floating on the wetware of our brains and associated neural networks with electrochemistry of neuronal triggering and firing, we become utterly self-referential. In effect, we would have reduced mindedness to grand, self-referential delusion.
This becomes an absurdity which undermines our own rationality.
It is self-falsifying and self-refuting, a reduction to absurdity.
An excellent illustration is the assertions of Sir Francis Crick in his 1994 The Astonishing Hypothesis and Philip Johnson’s reply in Reason in the Balance the next year. Crick:
Philip Johnson aptly replied that Sir Francis should have therefore been willing to preface his works thusly: “I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and even the thoughts expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
Johnson then acidly commented: “[t]he plausibility of materialistic determinism requires that an implicit exception be made for the theorist.”
In short, it is at least arguable that self-referential absurdity is the dagger pointing to the heart of evolutionary materialistic models of mind and its origin.
For, there is a very good reason we are cautioned about how easily self-referential statements can become self-refuting, like a snake attacking and swallowing itself tail-first. Any human scheme of thought that undermines responsible [thus, morally governed] rational freedom undermines itself fatally. We thus see inadvertent, inherent self-falsification of evolutionary materialism.
But, “inadvertent” counts: it can be hard to recognise and acknowledge the logically fatal nature of the result.
Of course, that subjective challenge does not change the objective result: self-referential incoherence and irretrievable self-falsification.
So, we need to start afresh, on a different basis.
That’s why the two-tier controller approach Derek Smith raised (cf. OP) is a useful point of reference. For, here we see a cybernetic architecture that has a way for shared memory and an in the loop i/o front-end processor backed by a supervisory processor that interacts with it but is not wholly dependent on it.
That can be effected in principle in many ways, but it shows that we are not locked up to an in the loop signal processing computational only view. There is room for meaning and significance, self-awareness, freedom of choice and action. Indeed, for what Plato highlighted as a self-moved, initiating cause or self.
In that broad context, Harald Atmanspacher, writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, observes:
Going further we may not only use the above noted indeterminacy of particle behaviour as is found in Quantum theory; but also, we apply Einstein’s energy-time form of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. For, at microscopic level force-based interactions between bodies can be viewed in terms of exchanges of so-called “virtual particles.” That is, once the product of the energy and time involved in a particle being exchanged between two interacting bodies falls below the value of Planck’s constant h (suitably multiplied or divided by a small constant), bodies may interact through exchanging undetected — so, “virtual” — particles. We can in effect have a situation crudely similar to two people tugging or pushing on opposite ends of a stick: they interact through the means of the intervening stick; which we then see as attractions or repulsions between the bodies.
It may help to add a quick outline from Wikipedia as a point of reference:
Thus, we can open the doorway to a model of the workings of the brain-mind interface. As Scott Calef therefore observes:
We don’t know, we must be open, but that is the point: neither mechanical determinism nor randomness rise to the level of rational, responsible contemplation. Something else is credibly at work.
KF
MB, what people do and what they should do on warrant are categorically different things. This is one reason why subjectivism and relativism fail. Yet another form of the crooked yardstick standard. KF
OA, the design inference on functionally specific complex organisation and associated information starts with the living cell. KF
Molson Bleu:
But “consciousness outside the brain” is a scientific problem. Consciousness is observable, and the brain is observable too. The relationship between the two is definitely relevant to science.
Off topic: For all who think the fossil evidence for human evolution is cut and dried, this video series that Dr. Paul Giem is currently doing may shock you
“MB, what people do and what they should do on warrant are categorically different things. This is one reason why subjectivism and relativism fail.”
You won’t hear me disagree with you about this. But how does arguing about the nature of morality, or what end of the political spectrum Nazis fall, or the abortion issue, or homosexuality, or some of the other subjects repeatedly discussed here, advance the acceptance of ID?
From the little I have seen on this site, it is almost always an ID opponent who first brings up these subjects. And, far too predictably, we fall right into their trap and get drawn into long winded discussions, often covering multiple threads, about things that have more to do with religious views than the science of ID. I just wish that we would stop falling for this obvious ploy.
as to 19:
Actually, even many leading atheists themselves readily admit that life and nature appear to be designed:
Yet, atheist try to explain away this appearance of the design, which they themselves readily admit is apparent for all to see, by reference to ‘natural selection, i.e. the supposed ‘designer substitute’:
Yet, the mathematics of population genetics has now cast the supposed ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection to the wayside: For instance:
Thus, as Dr. Richard Sternberg states, “if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.”
MB, Currently, there are four active OP’s by the undersigned on technical topics. A major theme in those topics is state space search challenge and its implications for the implied capability of blind needle in haystack search. One in particular directly responds to claims made about search by highlighting the reality of state space search [an AI and statistical thermodynamics connected approach]. This responds in part to challenges made at an objector site. In addition, I just counted something like thirteen other OP’s on the opening page on technically related topics. So, there is significant discussion on such matters. Right now, there seems to be studious silence from objectors in the face of the corrective aspect of OP’s on state space search, where strong claims were made in apparent ignorance of that approach on its own merits as a statistical thermodynamics anchored view and the fact of its extension to computing. That said, UD is not only about technical ID matters but addresses concerns tied to science, worldviews, society and policy i/l/o the history of our civilisation. The themes you just complained about are therefore within the ambit of the discussion. Indeed, this very thread has in it a direct implication on the meaning of conscious intelligent agency, connection to debates over explaining responsible, rational freedom [thus also rights and responsibilities] on computational substrates, and the ethical implications. Though the cartoon cited on fair use is simplistic, dehumanisation tied to mind-brain or genetics claims etc is a known issue; indeed, it is there in the opening passage of H G Wells’ War of the Worlds — a well known Sci Fi novel, that, had its warning been heeded, would have made a difference to C20 history. (Yes, a popular novel can serve as a warning to a civilisation, as Uncle Tom’s Cabin did in mid C19 in the USA.) You will see that from the OP on, I have raised relevant technical research including the Smith cybernetic model and issues of quantum interfaces. Currently, this is the most active discussion thread at UD. So, there is no neat and simple line of partition on the issues at stake. KF
KF,
If you believe that some animals such as dogs are conscious, does that mean that they too are transdimensional hybrids? Possibly with souls? 🤔
“MB, Currently, there are four active OP’s by the undersigned on technical topics.“
With a total of five comments by people other than you amongst all four. While the top five threads in the last thirty days are about morality x 2, climate change, methodological naturalism and a thread about where UD stands amongst web sites on the internet. And even the one on methodological naturalism had a good helping of religion and God in the comments.
I don’t mean to be rude, because I quite enjoy threads on religion, morality and the like, but I just don’t think that a site that claims to be about ID is the place for them. Doing so just provides further ammunition for our opposition.
PS: Note BA77 in another thread as was picked up in the OP:
MB, we do not control comments; people choose what they want to talk about. I am a bit surprised this thread popped up as actively as it did, but this is where you and others have chosen to focus. KF
DS, I would not be surprised to meet Max on the other side, maybe Prince too. But I don’t know. KF
@
What is this infatuation with these Jack Chick-style cartoons? They might at least try to get things right rather than just parroting the prejudices of their intended audience.
Leaving aside the fact there is no such machine, there is not thought to be a single “part of the brain that causes consciousness”. Pretty much the whole brain seems to be involved to some extent
Zombies and Turing tests notwithstanding, there is no way to know what another individual is actually experiencing and no machine that can tell us.
Where to start.
One, you don’t need to be conscious to be entitled to basic human rights. Doctors do not have the right to harvest your organs just because you are unconscious, not even if you are in a persistent vegetative state or coma.
Two, organs can only be harvested after the death of the donor has been verified multiple times.
Three, organs can only be harvested in ‘opt-in’ systems with the explicit consent of the donor, their next-of-kin or legal guardians. In ‘opt-out’ systems, the individual must explicitly refuse to allow their organs to be used, otherwise they are presumed or deemed to have assented.
KF,
Yes, that would be a good thing, IMO.
Seversky, I think the history of Eugenics and beyond speaks for itself. Do I need to call Dr Mengele or others by name? Then, there is China on unfortunately very recent organ harvesting. KF
Molson Bleu-
How many times can we talk about flagella, cilia, ATP synthase, spliceosomes, ribosomes, the genetic code, etc.? You do realize that the evidence for ID is finite and has been discussed to death. So to fill in the gaps there has to be other topics that are of interest and also pertain to the overall argument/ culture war.
“So to fill in the gaps there has to be other topics that are of interest and also pertain to the overall argument/ culture war.”
But why is it that many of the most active tangent threads are on subjects initially brought up by those opposed to ID? Am I the only one who has noticed this? Am I the only one who sees this as an intentional tactic used by evolutionists to distract us so that they can sneer and make fun of ‘those religious fundies’ who can’t keep on topic or on message? So that they can point out to others how easy those ‘IDists’ are to manipulate and lead by the nose. Surely we are smart enough not to be led down these rabbit holes.
Because they clearly cannot deal with the science and have to form some sort of distraction.
Look our opponents and critics are not rational nor are they reasonable. I definitely don’t care what they think as it is all but proven that they are intellectual cowards who couldn’t support the claims of their position if their lives depended on it.
@ Kairosfocus
Don’t be obtuse.
Either tell people to follow the evidence wherever it leads (an idea this site has always promoted) OR tell them that the social consequences of an opposing belief are terrible and therefore it should be rejected on those grounds. You cannot do both without being a hypocrite.
@ ET
The evidence for ID is not limited to the topics you mention. Have you heard of the science paper “clade age and species richness are decoupled across the tree of life”? Or have you heard of the Wow! signal of the terrestrial genetic code? These papers unintentionally destroy key arguments in favor of evolution and yet I have NEVER seen them discussed here. Because falling for the distractions of skeptics is more important apparently.
MB
If you “took time” to look at the UD OP’s and threads on AI and state/configuration space search, you will notice that in part they are responsive to objectors.
Currently, one of the better class of objectors challenged the concept of search. Dembski et al failed to give a neat little mathematically flavoured definition acceptable to one and all, failed to state the problem just so, failed to summarise a neat little framework for algorithms. Much was made of differences from a long list of approaches.
Now, I came to ID by way of informational implications of statistical thermodynamics, as the briefing that is always linked through my handle will testify. A copy of Dembski’s No Free Lunch is within arm’s length as I type (and a good part is accessible through Google Books). So, I know the significance of clusters of possibilities in zones of interest, and of a wider space symbolised traditionally as omega, sometimes [see Boltzmann’s tomb] W. Including the significance of relative statistical weight and that of fluctuations. These are in fact foundational to the second law of thermodynamics, statistically understood. And indeed, I had up another recent technical thread on that which will be followed up in due course.
As a result, search as sample based on blind walk or hop driven by chance and/or mechanical necessity and consuming resources leading to a constraint on what is plausible i/l/o sol system or observed cosmos has long been on my mind and to my certain knowledge it has long been in the discussion. Cf. my examples here and before that here.
These and many other similar things will bring out a shocker: the design inference on FSCO/I etc as empirically tested, reliable sign is NOT dependent on sophisticated mathematics or exotic, rare, highly technical exercises in observation or experiment. Relatively speaking, its empirical and analytical basis is obvious.
With a trillion member base all around us.
Indeed, the following is a good example from so commonplace and so hostile a source as Wikipedia, on the futility of getting to strings at FSCO/I-relevant threshold [500 – 1,000 bits, i.e. 72 – 143 7-bit ASCII characters] by randomness-driven processes. Where, such meaningful or configuration-sensitive functional strings (vs gibberish strings) are deeply embedded in the heart of the living cell . . . D/RNA, Protein-linked AA chains etc. Let’s clip the article in current form — it has repeatedly featured here at UD over the years as a striking case of compelled testimony against known interest:
This particular type of example is old. Legend has it, it came up in Victorian-era debates on evolution though documentation at that level seems missing. Cicero raised it, in a classic design inference c. 50 BC. For sure it was in early C20 discussions of statistical thermodynamics — monkeys at keyboards vs futility. Crick et al identified that DNA strings had coded textual character [as von Neumann predicted in discussing kinematic self-replicators in the late ’40’s] across the 1950’s.
Denton, 1985 raised it. Thaxton et al did so in the foundational ID technical work, TMLO.
Dawkins tried to blunt it with the notorious but rhetorically effective Weasel and several successors have tried to make a less blatantly flawed attack on the blind watchmaker evolutionary search challenge. Which, is where Dembski came in.
And, it has repeatedly come up since.
So, the sort of objections currently being raised cannot be seriously grounded on the merits of the case.
Indeed, the cumulative case is clear, and decisively in favour of the conclusion that FSCO/I is a strong, tested, reliable sign of design.
So, why hasn’t the case been settled and agreed long since in ID’s favour?
Because of established institutional power and dominant ideology, with Lewontin, US NAS and US NSTA as the clearest documentation. This points instantly to the relevance of worldviews, cultural/ policy/ legal/ political/ educational agendas tied to worldviews, also to the power of rhetoric and agit prop backed by lawfare. Indeed, c 2005, the first big move against ID was a lawfare gambit by which an ill-advised judge was induced to make rulings against ID including patently false findings that were textually 90+% copied from post-trial submissions of evolutionary materialistic scientism advocacy groups.
So, though it is likely our most important single focus, pure science cannot be our only focus if we are to soundly address the matter at hand. If it were, that would have been settled over a decade ago and this blog would be likely an archive.
This forces us to argue at multiple levels in multiple ways, and to deal with emerging objections found in the wild.
The latest round of which happens to be ongoing: on one front, oh you IDiots didn’t properly define search and search problems and search algorithms. (The subtext is quite clear, certainly in the discussion threads in the objecting penumbra.)
On another, oh you don’t focus enough on science. (When, on this, the issue is NOT evidence or inductive reasoning [and yes there is perpetual objection to that too] but epistemology and core principles of reasoning, even the worldviews level issues on minds vs brains and computational substrates. Which, under the focal themes of AI, is an emerging front.)
So, there is a multi-front struggle, one that faces diehard, dyed in the wool objection that — apart from obviously personal animus in too many cases — is rooted in ideological and institutional dominance with implications for our whole civilisation. One of which BTW happens to be brought to a focus in the cartoon in the OP. Much is at stake.
Where, a big part of the challenge is that if one makes a crooked yardstick his or her standard of straightness [being “true”], accuracy and uprightness, then what is really straight, accurate and upright cannot ever pass the demanded test of conformity with crookedness. This means that plumbline, self-evident or factually extremely hard to deny cases have to be brought to bear, exposing the root folly or absurdity. And even so, many in diehard mode will cling to their crooked yardsticks. But eventually, cumulatively, they will pay a price as more and more bystanders then just ordinary people become aware of the gap between the plumbline and the crooked yardstick.
For instance, above in this comment, I put up the significance of strings and search-challenge to blindly discover FSCO/I rich strings.
I challenge you to respond to this technical point.
Explain to us why you accept or reject it, why.
Explain why Crick was wrong to identify DNA as complex coded text, if you reject it.
Or else, how plausible blind watchmaker search across a relevant configuration space will “easily” stumble upon such strings amidst the sea of non-functional, meaningless gibberish.
A dodge away will itself tell us a lot.
So, the ball is now in your court.
KF
PS: An unusually high hit per comment ratio suggests scrutiny, especially hostile scrutiny. The threads on the AI-agents-search space front show that pattern. In that context, the bad dog that is ever willing to pounce but now stays sullenly silent is itself suggestive.
Jul3s, kindly cf the just above to MB. And allusion to IDiots who are ignorant, stupid insane or wicked is duly noted with the implications for your attitude and likely “sock[puppet]” status. KF
PS: The Wow signal has come up several times here over the years and more broadly SETI has come up, even Sagan’s “Contact.” The point has repeatedly been made that, following Crick et al confirming von Neumann’s prediction on requisites of kinematic self replication, the most relevant signals are in D/RNA and in linked proteins, backed by the associated information system that processes such. Clinging to a crooked yardstick continues even in the face of what the plumbline reveals. As for the other case, kindly feel free to outline and link documentation.
@ Kairosfocus
I’m not sure what your first point is. I’m not calling IDists idiots, I’m saying that you are using arguments that are based on opposing principles.
Claiming that we need to follow the evidence wherever it leads means we can’t reject an idea simply because it has bad consequences. It means we accept the evidence.
But UD also uses “this idea has awful consequences so we need to reject it” to argue against opposing ideas. But this way of arguing completely contradicts and undermines the first principle ID is based on, that of following the evidence.
Also, the wow! signal paper I’m talking about has nothing to do with any of the arguments for ID that you mention. It strengthens ID in a way I have never seen before.
See here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103513000791
The other paper is here:
http://journals.plos.org/plosb.....io.1001381
Jul3s, there is such a thing as reduction to moral absurdity. There is also such a thing as the often bitterly costly example of history. In the case of minds and brains, reduction to grand delusion undermines the very possibility of responsible rational reflection much less discussion. Thus, it is absurd on the grounds that to arrive at such a “conclusion” as reducing mind to computational substrate one depends on exactly the validity of reasoning that is being undermined. Self-referential absurdity (and thus incoherence) on steroids. Which, BTW, is brought out in substantial detail above. KF
PS: Mere links are not substantial, a money shot excerpt is advisable.
The first of your urls links an abstract, beyond which is an apparently evasive paywall. I clip the excerpt:
This is of course the same point made already above.
The second case is an open access, PLOS article. Its abstract is:
This is indeed a new point in itself, though there will be the usual objections. For example, the radiation in the Cambrian era would be seen as in a window of time of perhaps as narrow as 5 – 10 MY or at most a few dozen MY, and it was at root level. So, it would not be a surprise on that to see that once a deep level body plan forms, it diversifies fairly rapidly on the timeline so the resulting levelling off of diversity suppresses an age signal. Where, too, morphological stasis is there as an issue . . . one that has been debated at UD time and again, with the usual exchanges.
Remember, this is a field where on good chemical and biological as well as thermodynamic grounds, it was long since expected that we would not find soft tissues from the dinosaur era. Along comes Mary Schweitzer and suddenly we see a dismissing or a reworking and a ho-hum nothing there to see move along smartly.
That, is what we are up against.
The issue of root-level diversification first and linked morphological stasis is related, and this more or less the point made by Meyer in Darwin’s Dilemma [c. 2013], by Loennig in his Dynamic genomes paper [2004] and by others in remarking on things like the Cambrian revolution. The basic points by these men are valid, and the matter is addressed in my briefing note here, and as usual it runs into the crooked yardstick standard challenge. [This note is linked through my handle and is therefore an implicit part of every comment I have ever made at UD. OP’s don’t link to the chosen link page for some reason.]
Let me clip Loennig, late of the Max Planck Institute — one of the earliest peer-reviewed world of life ID papers, one that was not subjected tot he hot controversy and personal attacks that Meyer and Sternberg faced:
UD doesn’t only complain about the consequences of beliefs that make rationality impossible. Criticizing this kind of idea is valid but UD attacks many other ideas with a weaker basis. I was talking about social or political consequences, like organ harvesting as mentioned in the OP.
You glossed over the meat of the wow signal paper. The part that you claim has already been discussed is just the first part of the abstract and has nothing to do with their findings. If you don’t want to check for yourself, I’ll quote the relevant parts:
“Simple arrangements of the code reveal an ensemble of arithmetical and ideographical patterns of the same symbolic language. Accurate and systematic, these underlying patterns appear as a product of precision logic and nontrivial computing rather than of stochastic processes (the null hypothesis that they are due to chance coupled with presumable evolutionary pathways is rejected with P-value < 10^–13). The patterns are profound to the extent that the code mapping itself is uniquely deduced from their algebraic representation. The signal displays readily recognizable hallmarks of artificiality, among which are the symbol of zero, the privileged decimal syntax and semantical symmetries. Besides, extraction of the signal involves logically straightforward but abstract operations, making the patterns essentially irreducible to any natural origin. Plausible ways of embedding the signal into the code and possible interpretation of its content are discussed. Overall, while the code is nearly optimized biologically, its limited capacity is used extremely efficiently to pass non-biological information.
This is profound and goes way beyond what you were talking about.
I don’t live in the US so I can’t buy the paper but I’d love to read it.
Molson Bleu:
“I don’t mean to be rude, because I quite enjoy threads on religion, morality and the like, but I just don’t think that a site that claims to be about ID is the place for them. Doing so just provides further ammunition for our opposition.”
Well, let’s say that people can certainly discuss those topics here, but I agree that more specific ID topics should be prevailing.
However, KF is certainly one who often debates fundamental ID topics, and not only more general issues.
As for me, I try to do my part, and I stick to biological ID discussions most of the time.
Many others here regularly contribute to specific ID debates.
The problem is that specific ID topics do not always attract a lot of discussants, especially from the other side. The lack of “enemies” in the discussion, especially the more serious enemies, is not of help, because in the end the discussion becomes some form of monologue.
You can see something like that in my last OPs, for example:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-spliceosome-a-molecular-machine-that-defies-any-non-design-explanation/
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-are-the-limits-of-random-variation-a-simple-evaluation-of-the-probabilistic-resources-of-our-biological-world/
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-are-the-limits-of-natural-selection-an-interesting-open-discussion-with-gordon-davisson/
It’s not clear why our more valid interlocutors should be so shy as soon as important biological ID topics are discussed, while they are often so ready to intervene about religion, morals, politics, and so on.
However, as I have already said in my comment #23, discussions about AI, the nature of consciousness and its relation to brain and matter are certainly very scientific issues, and they are also strictly linked to ID theory. For example, all my basic definitions about ID depend strictly on a merely empirical approach to consciousness, which must avoid any pre-defined ideology about it.
GP, perhaps its completely clear why. 🙂
Jul3s:
Kindly read this:
. . . and Johnson’s response:
. . . then tell me that we ought not to engage all the various fronts? Where, too, do or do not ideas have consequences?
(And, all of this exchange, dear stander-by, is happening when a whole new front of technical discussion is emerging and is seeing the pattern of the “bad dogs” who are ever so prone to pounce being mysteriously silent and absent, even though many things have been confidently said elsewhere that have fallen to the ground once it is shown that such a thing as state space search exists.)
KF
PS: I should note on worldviews using Wiki as handy source:
it should be obvious why this is pivotal to UD’s work, especially given that part of what we see is ideological redefinition of science imposed through agit-prop and lawfare. We also see disputes that boil down to challenging warrant of scientific findings or even knowledge itself. Further to these, we find those who challenge first principles of right reason. That is there are huge crooked yardstick problems that require dealing with plumbline tests.
“However, KF is certainly one who often debates fundamental ID topics, and not only more general issues.”
Very true. And I commend him for that. But he is also one of the first to be led off on hundred comment tangents by ID opponents. I have gone back over many of the recent long threads and he has been drawn into long arguments over things like abortion, pedophile rings, subjective morality, radical Islam, homosexuality, to just name a few. I’m sure that I am not the only one to have noticed this. I am certain that our opponents have. My friendly advice to him would simply be to refrain from taking the bait. And I don’t want to centre KF out because there are several others also guilty of readily taking the bait.
“It’s not clear why our more valid interlocutors should be so shy as soon as important biological ID topics are discussed, while they are often so ready to intervene about religion, morals, politics, and so on.”
I think that it is obvious. They take pleasure in seeing what types of non ID discussions they can draw ID proponents into. And given the fact that the majority of ID proponents are religious, they stick to the tried and true religious hot button topics. Things like abortion, morality, homosexuality, and the like.
The solution to this problem is simple. Don’t participate in every tangent or every provocation instigated by our opponents. Make them address ID on its merits rather than play into their distraction tactics. Sadly, I am not confident that this advice will be heeded.
Molson Bleu- Yes, people with low IQs and who are also proven to be scientifically illiterate are the type of people who “take pleasure in seeing the types of non-ID discussions they can draw us into. So again, why should we care as it exposes THEM for what they really are. That you can’t see that reflects on you and not kairosfocus.
Jul3s @ 39- Do you understand what “etc.” means? It means my list continues and is not limited to what came before the “etc.”.
MB,
I think there is a fundamental difference of view on issue drivers and what is pivotal.
As I explained already, even the science issues are not driven by science but by things that impose crooked yardsticks which then make what is straight, accurate and upright seem absurd and even threatening. If that were not so, the matter would have been cleared up in ID’s favour maybe twenty years ago as– for just one instance — the mere fact of coded text and linked information processing systems in the heart of cell based life is already decisive. Obvious fact, it hasn’t happened.
We have a bewitched civilisation that has become very warped and locked into ultimately suicidal agendas, a march of ruinous folly . . . as has happened over and over historically.
Let me clip the UD About page, as that gives you a good overview:
Sobering and sound.
That march of folly lock-in I mentioned is why we have to deal at adequate length with plumb-line tests that expose crooked yardsticks; knowing that we are dealing with many who will cling to absurdities but that eventually more and more will see the point so there will be a tipping point. Ask Wilberforce if you doubt me.
My hope is, the tip-point will be before the cliff’s edge crumbles underfoot.
I am also (for all my sins I suppose) experienced with agit-prop, deceitful street theatre, false fronts of manipulated dupes, low level guerrilla warfare tactics, media amplifier games and linked lawfare . . . and, sadly, THAT is what we are facing at civilisation level, where as you can see from Lewontin et al, evolutionary materialistic scientism is part of the framework being advanced by various agendas as it opens room for where they wish to take our civilisation.
On 2400 years of history, over the cliff.
In this context, what will work is a cumulative case across the board, and guess what: few others are making it, especially i/l/o the design evidence and linked issues.
KF
PS: Also looking forward to your thoughts on the technical threads, especially as we open up the AI- agent action-intelligence- front. In progress as we speak.
PPS: Let the ghost of Socrates speak from 2400 years ago:
Why doesn’t a rock experience consciousness? How do we know it doesn’t?
If conscious beings are not conscious because they are well adapted for that purpose, then couldn’t a rock be consciousness?
The OP seems to argue that, since rocks doesn’t have any material way of receiving input, they are not conscious. But God is supposedly non-material, and is therefore not well adapted for the purpose of receiving input, either. Does that mean that mean thesis think God doesn’t have a way to receive input? If not, then why can’t rocks receive input as well?
Again, if we exist in a bubble of explicably that exists in a sea of inexplicability, the best explanation we can possibility have in that sea is that “Zeus rules there”. However, it doesn’t stop there as our bubble supposedly depends on that inexplicable sea, as well. As such, the best explanation we can have here is that “Zeus rules here” as well. It only seems explicable unless you avoid asking specific questions, like the one I just asked above.
IOW, the best explanation we can have as to why rocks are not conscious is because “Zeus rules here.”, “That’s just what Zeus must have wanted”, etc.
It isn’t alive.
It isn’t alive
CR, you are unaware that rocks have neither life nor contemplations, much less dreams? Thanks for letting us know just how absurd your views are collectively. KF
I wouldn’t say we are “aware” that rocks do not experience consciousness. It’s more like an educated guess, or even an assumption. Certainly we have no evidence indicating that rocks are conscious. The people I hang out with don’t, anyway.
CR, along with consciousness, do you believe rocks also have the ‘illusion of free will’? Einstein believed that.
The main problem for atheists with their denying the reality of their free will, and claiming that free will is just an illusion, is that it renders all their claims that they are making logically coherent arguments null and void:
As Dr Egnor makes clear in the following article, “logic — is neither material nor natural.” Therefore, any attempt to reduce logic to purely natural explanations will forever be in vain.
Moreover, as Steven Weinberg points out, in quantum mechanics free will is ‘built into’ the equations of quantum mechanics. That is to say in quantum mechanics, instead of humans being the result of the laws of nature as Darwinists hold, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.
Another devastating problem with your claim that rocks are conscious is that material reality does not even exist until someone consciously observes it. Here is a delayed choice experiment that was done with atoms:
A few more notes:
Quote, Verse and Video
Basically, denying the reality of free will and/or consciousness, runs straight into denying the reality of our very own agent causality, which is insane:
Even leading Atheists admit that it is impossible for them to live as if they really had no free will:
Dawkins himself admitted that it would be ‘intolerable’ for him to live his life as if atheistic materialism were actually true
In what should be needless to say, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.
CR, are you going to exercise your free will and choose to stop living in a delusion as you currently are?
@KF & BA77
It seems you have both confused me actually holding a belief personally with attempting to take your position seriously, as if it were true in reality, and that all of your concisions should follow from it, for the purpose of criticism.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, I’ll ask again:…
@ET
If being alive has nothing to do with being materially well adapted, then why can’t a rock be alive? What does its composition have to do with anything at all?
Is God well adapted for any purpose, let alone being alive? Is he yet somehow alive?
Again, apparently, the best explanation we can possibility have for why rocks are not alive is because “Zeus rules” here. If he wanted rocks to be alive, they would be. But, apparently, that’s just wasn’t in the cards for rocks. Then again, I guess they don’t know what they’re missing.
Notice all the following quotes are from men who believe that evolution is a mindless and purposeless process. (from #26 above.)
If something appears to be designed isn’t it logically possible it really could be designed?
The main argument for the design then can be stated very simply:
Furthermore, if it’s logically possible that something could be designed then it’s not illegitimate to consider the possibility that it really might be designed. Indeed, it would be foolish not to.
CR, you did not answer my question directly, nor did you address the empirical evidence presented against your position (which you can’t address). So again, you seem to be arguing that rocks are conscious and, by extension, are also arguing that they have the ‘illusion of free will’.
Again, Einstein also held this position, for instance:
Please note that Einstein, like other leading Atheists, freely admits that it is impossible for him to live as if free will did not actually exist. And again I repeat, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.
Now you may say to yourself, “Hey. I’m in the same boat with Einstein therefore it can’t be all that bad.” But regardless of all that, being wrong is still being wrong. And Einstein was wrong not only in regards to free will, but Einstein was also famously shown to be wrong in his opposition to Quantum Mechanics.
In fact, the main evidence that I presented for the reality of free will is the fact that free will is ‘built into’ the equations of quantum mechanics.
In fact, Einstein was also shown, by advances in quantum mechanics, to be wrong in his purely ‘physical’ definition of time. A ‘relativistic’ definition of ‘physical’ time which was suppose to be his main claim to fame. In fact, Einstein was denied a Nobel prize for relativity precisely because his physical definition of time did not mesh with the philosophical, i.e. ‘mental’, definition of time that had been well elucidated at that time
Of interest to the undermining of the space-time of General Relativity as a ‘complete’ description of reality, Einstein was once asked by Rudolf Carnap (a philosopher):
Einstein’s answer was categorical, he said:
Moreover, the statement Einstein made to Carnap on the train, ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement’, was an interesting statement for Einstein to make to the philosopher since ‘the now of the mind’ has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, now undermined the space-time of Einstein’s General Relativity as to being the ‘complete’ frame of reference for reality.
Contrary to what Einstein thought was possible for experimental physics, ‘the experience of the now’ is very much a part of physical measurement, As the following researcher in Quantum Mechanics stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
Now CR, I don’t expect you to be honest with any of the experimental evidence I presented, especially after your fiasco of claiming that GR and QM ‘completely disagree with experimental results’, but for the sake of others reading, I hope it is clear that CR’s (and Einstein’s) position regarding the ‘illusion of free will’, is directly undermined by advances in quantum mechanics.
CR, attempted hyperskeptical evasion duly noted. BTW, my 20-tonne friend rocky in my backyard says hi. KF
KF,
Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of light mockery, but are you sure that you’re engaging in good faith with CR’s stated position?
daveS, an internet atheist complaining about ‘engaging in good faith’ is the height of hypocrisy.
I have yet to meet an atheist on the internet who engages the arguments and evidence presented against his position in ‘good faith’. (Please note that even in your appeal to ‘good faith’ that you are appealing to a Theistic presupposition).
Rocks don’t metabolize, they don’t reproduce, they are not biological and they are inanimate.
It has everything to do with it.
Perhaps you should just try to make a case for rock consciousness instead of just fishing. Because your fishing is starting to hurt what little credibility you have left.
BA77,KF,CR,and DS:
CR is not asking a question in good faith. Just because he strung together words and placed a question mark at the end did not make it a question.
Now I have a vague idea of what he’s trying to ask but one cannot meaningfully answer vague. We just go round and round with CR denying that’s his position and demanding an answer to his non-question.
CR, you should instead reformulate the question. It’s a logical, grammatical, and semantic mess. Leave out the snark about God and adapted as if He is part of nature. You know better. If you think that you have a serious question then stick to the proper philosophical definition. It’s not as if KF hasn’t given you one numerous times. I know that’s not what you believe about God but for your question to be taken seriously that’s the definition you will have to use. Otherwise all you have is a strawman. If you use a proper definition of God, I think that you will find that your question no longer hangs together logically.
What does this sentence even mean? Do you read this stuff before you hit post?
LM,
The meaning of that sentence is quite clear to me, although I think there’s a typo at the end. Omitting the parenthetical remark:
DS, take a look at the Smith Model in the OP and especially the two-tier controller with shared memory and access to world perception as well as proprioception. Blend in my clips and comments on quantum influences, especially Calef. Then realise what I have invited by way of a serious discussion; then compare the actual remarks above and come back to us on consciousness of an embodied entity. KF
KF,
If your remark about your friend “rocky” is not meant to suggest that CR actually believes rocks are conscious, then I withdraw my comment in #65.
Latemarch,
Only dogmatic atheists would ever find it logically coherent to presuppose he could ever construct any meaningful sentence within a universe that he insists has no meaning.
Moreover, since the ability to assign meaning must preexist the creation of information, especially must preexist creating a code to be able to encode information in the first place,, ,,,then finding information to be foundational to life (and to the universe) is almost directly equivalent to finding that there must be a far deeper meaning for life
DaveS@69
LM,
I thought that possible but, unlike you, I’m not going to claim to be able to read CR’s mind.
I’ll answer the question if you’ll answer mine first. Is a rock a being?
LM,
I don’t believe rocks are conscious beings. Whether rocks are “beings” in some more general sense, I don’t know.
DaveS@74
I believe you have answered CR’s question.
Then I guess I don’t know whether or not they are conscious in some more ‘general’ sense.
LM,
I don’t believe that my response addresses any of these questions of his:
john_a_designer:
“Furthermore, if it’s logically possible that something could be designed then it’s not illegitimate to consider the possibility that it really might be designed. Indeed, it would be foolish not to.”
Great statement indeed! And a great truth. 🙂
daveS:
I would say that we don’t know if a rock is conscious, but that we have no special reasons to believe that. Science is about reasonable inferences, not about mere imagination.
So, who do we know for certain to be conscious?
The answer is rather simple. Each of us is certain of his own consciousness. Our personal consciousness is perceived intuitively by each of us. That is a fact. That is observable consciousness. On that simple fact we build all our map of reality.
What about other human beings? Indeed, we do not observe their consciousness, but we infer it. It’s an inference by analogy, and whoever has anything against inferences by analogy (good inferences by analogy) should be ready to renounce his belief that other human beings are conscious.
But, of course, almost nobody would do that. Because that simple inference by analogy is so strong, so perfectly reasonable, that we consider it almost an observed fact. Almost.
What about animals? Again, it’s an inference by analogy. Personally, I have no doubts that higher animals (like my three cats) are conscious. But it is still an inference by analogy, and of course the analogy is a little weaker: cats and dogs share a lot of behaviours with us, and many of them are formally correspondent to some of our cosncious representations. But they do not speak, or generate abstract language and concepts, and so on.
What about birds, fish, flies, bacteria? Again, we can only infer. By analogy. The greater the analogy, the stronger the inference. Each of us can make his own choices, but of course, while almost anyone would agree that other human beings are cosncious, only some would say that bacteria are conscious. In the end, we don’t really know.
For non biological matter, an inference of consciousness is not really motivated, IMO. It can still be done, but it would be more some philosophical argument than some real inference from observed facts.
So, I think that any scientific reasoning should at present stick mainly to the widest, and strongest, inference: other human beings are conscious as we are, and we can rely on the shared experience of cosnciousness and of its properties between human beings to build scientific arguments and theories about consciousness itself.
As KF has done here. As I try to do in my biological arguments.
gpuccio,
I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said. But the question I was addressing (prompted by CR’s and KF’s posts) is how do we know when something is not conscious? It seems like such a statement would be unverifiable. And yes, it may be more of a philosophical question rather than a scientific one.
DS, the relevant manifestation of consciousness would be embodied. That’s why I pointed to the Smith model, highlighting the external and internal sensory arrays and networks that allow self-awareness, orientation in the world and awareness of the self in the world. Rocks simply do not have any evidence of such arrays, or of responsiveness generally. Going further, we may for argument ponder a spirit resident in a rock. It would be conscious of itself, but that does not belong to the rock. Going further it is suggested that God is aware of everywhere, every moment, but that is God’s awareness, not the rock. Thus, we have good warrant for concluding that a rock is not a conscious being. KF
KF,
Certainly your argument essentially rules out the possibility that a hypothetical conscious rock could use its physical body to interact with the physical world, like all conscious beings that I’m aware of do.
The scenario of a “spirit resident in a rock” that you described is the only notion of “conscious rock” that I find conceivable. And you are right that it’s totally unclear what connection the immaterial consciousness of the rock would have to the physical rock itself.
daveS:
So, it seems that we all agree on the basic points. That’s good! 🙂