Back At Special Agent ERV’s Blog…

_{April 12, 2008

Intelligent Design}

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DMS, with an as yet undetermined appendage writes:

Might I suggest that “someone” (perhaps a group effort) work up a brief flyer to hand out to people going to see Expelled. It should be non-snarky, non-confrontational, with some simple points and web addresses to go to for more information

Great idea! I think they should shave their heads, wear togas, and chant ziiiiiiii-enzzzzzz ziiiiii-enzzzzz ziiiiii-enzzzzz. People will wonder if the Hare Krishnas are making a comeback and be naturally curious.

Now boys and girls at Ms. ERV’s website please, no applause for this awesome marketing strategy. Just send me money to show your appreciation. Y’all have paypal, right? Of course you do.

Comments

Bingo. Yes, I don't know. And there's no way to know the answers to those questions by means of scientific testing. And so any answers I reach on those questions will be metaphysical speculation. Meanwhile, science gets by fine non-metaphysically and without the need for such abstractions.evo_materialist_{April 19, 2008
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Of course, any question that you cant answer you say "thats not scientific." Where do the laws come from? Not scientific. Where did matter come from? Not scientific. Which came first? Not scientific? Why are the laws the way they are and not other wise? Not sceintific. The only thing not sceintific in this discussion is your preferred ignorance. But let me give you the proper answer to my questions above. "You. Don't. Know." That's because you have an unfounded bias against intelligent design a priori.Frost122585_{April 19, 2008
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That's because the question is not scientific.evo_materialist_{April 19, 2008
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Ah but again you did not answer the question.Frost122585_{April 19, 2008
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Frost, it seems much more plausible that the *mind comes from the actions of nature lrather than the other way round.evo_materialist_{April 19, 2008
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Evo- you keep dodging my question. Where do the laws of nature come from if not from mind. What is there origin?Frost122585_{April 19, 2008
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Frost, the term "Kalam argument" was unknown to me until this thread. In 119 you did not identify it as such. Retrospectively, in 132, you said you had given that argument. I looked for earlier reference to it by name and found none. Anyway, I went back to 119 and read the post again (only now identified as the Kalam argument). To me, 119 looks like a lot of woo-woo, and the later version looks like a restatement of Aristotle's "unmoved mover." Good for those who buy it, but entirely unnecessary to my life: I have no need of that hypothesis. Moreover, I have no evidence of such action beyond the physical universe affecting anything now. Finally, such actions are incapable of being scientifically tested -- only conjectured where science ceases to be science and becomes metaphysics. I would have hoped that Ernst Mach and his tradition nailed down that coffin, but, zombie-like, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo keeps getting up and making trouble at the mall. This week it's invading the multiplex in the ghoulish form of a Nixon speechwriter and eyedrop spokesman. As for inconsistency, it is this: you claimed that the only consciousness we can truly know is our own. If that is the case, then you can't deny consciousness to others should they warrant it, even if those others are things like computers. I know no computers warrant it: but I'm saying you shouldn't even deny it in principle, given the limitations of your direct experience of consciousness to your own case. StephenB [141], contra your assertions, materialist science does not assume that the universe is irrational. Rather, it asserts that the same material natural laws operate everywhere. The existence of free will is indeed a fascinating subject. Here again I tend to think we're entering metaphysical territory and leaving science, and that the language used to frame the issue tends to be constraining. Of course, I could simply give up at the power of your logic. Think about it: thousands upon thousands of practicing scientists think that, by restricting their investigations to the material world, without recourse to metaphysics, they're simply doing good science. Yet in a single blog comment you've shown the hollowness of their practice and reduced their work to absurdity. It's a wonder anybody goes back to the lab.evo_materialist_{April 19, 2008
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Evo-M, nothing in your response to my postings is even reminiscent of an argument. The quotes work together fine and are logically sound. You need to go take logic. The first quote says only the individual can experience his or her own consciousness and therefore on by self reference can we know of it. I see no consciousness in a robot or computer I simply see pre programmed form. Human being's form comes from Design, creation, the big bang or w/e but the ultimate form of the human being is not conceived of by us yet the robot or machine is. Therefore I see no evidence of consciousness and can only know consciousness by self reference and therefore think the machine does not have it. Can I be totally sure? Nothing is 100%, this is the problem of induction, but I have no reason to suspect other wise. Your claim that I did not give you the Kalam argument for transcendence is wrong as I did at the end of post 119. Here it is again in its modern form. Premise 1: Every event man has ever experienced has a preceding cause. Premise 2: Modern cosmology shows that there most likely was a first cause. Premise 3: Because we cannot conceive nor have experienced a first cause ever, one can infer that the first cause may have some nonmaterial cause or property which allows it to be the only exception to the rule. Since matter has laws and form related to it, and since complex form and laws are known to be arranged by intelligent minds the unique property of intelligence may have a role in the first cause of the big bang which then accounts for much of the form found din the universe. This is an obvious argument. Everything has a cause there was a first cause therefore it must have a cause, yet there is no evidence for a material one- so we postulate a nonmaterial one. It's an argument. Its very convincing to me- if not to you I don’t really care. Reject it if you like- you have no proof for materialism accounting for all things and I admit I have no proof for consciousness transcending matter. Gödel showed you cant really prove anything anyways. You will respond to my cosmic transcendence argument by asking “what evidence do I have for there being a cause for the first known one?” And I will say “what evidence do you have against it?”- You will hen say that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence“- and I will say that “you have merely argued from the gaps by saying “we don’t know how this is so, so it must be only this”- the ONLY part is the fallacy and it can be applied to any mystery. Where did energy come from? It is must have just been there is not a good answer. We do know that it is a good theory that every other thing in the universe has a preceding cause and so the first cause is the one and only extreme exception. Statistically it is 1 out of what every number quantifies all events ever (ie the largest possible real number). So I ask you this “give me a materialistic explanation for how the first cause is isolated from all other events in the universe.” Jus to say that “it is” is not an explanation but merely repeating the fact- this doesn’t exclude the possibility that there is one of the reality of that fact that I have offered one- There is no explanation for this but I ask it anyway. On the other hand we could assume mind played a role in the shape and form of the universes construction but if so it would however have to be non materialistically interlinked with the physical first cause. Believe whatever reductionism or materialism you like- I will stick to experience; my own personal self referential ones and the others revealed by good ethical moral science which is the result of a comic order that can only be attributed to a cosmic nonmaterial mind. As regards uncertainty principle I assume neither of us is prepared to battle over that issue mathematically anyways. It wouldn’t get us anywhere either. The bottom line is that it proved that you will never be able to know the exact characteristic of any given event. There is no simultaneity in the universe and this when coupled with Einstein’s relativity proved a universe in constant flux. Dawkins and other types like him too have admitted as much. Therefore even materialism is at the mercy of cosmic uncertainty and order (ie form). Yes we can predict things and get better and closer at such - but in the end there is no hope for ultimate determinism- the universe is just simply not deterministic in its deepest core nature. Bottom line, science is ultimately about discovery in an orderly, moral and ethical process and ID will amount to this is fine magnitudes. In fact it has already done more for science then DE materialism ever will. Isaac Newton was an obsessed theist and produced the fundamentals of modern physicist and contributed much to arithmetic. Science stands on the shoulders of his work which he viewed as reading the mind of God. That is, he looked at physics from the stand perspective of trying to discover the “real” processes of “design” in nature. There will be more great things out of ID to come. Newton will forever live on but Darwin will one day be replaced and forgotten, his contributions to natural history left in the dust of obscurity replaced by a statistical quantum law like understanding of organization and complexity in nature which will reduce his mechanisms to insufficient, archaic and tribal like interpretations of life‘s development.-- something which to people like myself, they all ready are.Frost122585_{April 19, 2008
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evo-materialist: Materialism is irrational. The issue is monism vs. dualism. If we don’t assume metaphysical dualism, the entire rational enterprise collapses. Science is possible only under the following metaphysical conditions: [A] We have rational minds, [B] We live in a rational universe, and [C] There is a correspondence between the two. Without a non-material, rational mind, there is no tool with which to conduct the investigation; without the rational universe, there is nothing to investigate; without correspondence, the logic of the mind would not be synchronized with the logic of the universe. Unless [A] and [B] both exists, and unless the law of non-contradiction applies to both realms, rationality leaves the building. An ID inference occurs when a rational mind apprehends the detectable rational elements in the natural world. Darwinist monists reject the possibility of any such inference even before the investigation begins. Their monism forbids any such enterprise in principle. They insist that there is no such thing as a rational universe and no such thing as a rational mind. Both elements are conflated into one meaningless, monistic, materialistic jumble. The universe is limited to matter and the mind is reduced to “brain.” Why wouldn’t monist/Darwinists argue against a rational inference to the best explanation? They have already renounced the necessary conditions for rationality itself. Rationality requires a subject and an object or, if you like, an investigator and something to be investigated. You can’t reason your way to a destination if there is no place to go. Now all of this is independent from the problem of proving the existence of the mind. It simply points out that IF there are not two realms of existence, there is no rationality. That is why materialism is irrational. In addition to this point, we can, indeed, point out that any semblance of free will requires a mind independent of the brain. Every time you make a mental decision that reverses the brain’s impulses, you prove the existence of the mind. The “placebo” effect alone provides strong evidence of a mind. Conquering a bad habit indicates the existence of the mind. Changing your mind requires the existence of a non-material mind. Matter can’t reverse its own decisions or change its mind or reflect on itself. Like the materialistic realm of which it is a part, the mind is a total slave to the world of physical cause and effect. Only a faculty such as a non-material mind can extricate the individual from this mechanistic world and function as a means for using those very physical laws for its own purposes. Design, rationality, and free will are all part of the same package; take away any one of them, and the entire rational enterprise collapses. Materialism is irrational.StephenB_{April 19, 2008
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Frost122585 [138], what a response! First you conflate materialism with reductionism. You also dismiss experiments out of hand (suggesting that no experiments will convince you), gesture vaguely toward the uncertainty principle (but you don't want to talk about the math), mention somebody named Kalam (but you've given me no argument at all for transcendance), etc. With so much smoke in the room, it's hard to see clearly. Recall that I started posting because people were talking about the mind with no understanding of the current debates. Your response shows that you don't care to understand because they're all the same "side" to you. As a point-by-point rebuttal is a losing proposition in such situations, my response will be selective. As I wrote earlier, there are few truly reductionist materialists among cognitive scientists. But you apparently think this is a weakness, as you earlier accused me of inconsistency [135]: "If you guys on the self declared “materialist side” cannot even come to grips with whether consciousness is reducible to material or not then where does that leave the rest of the nonbias [sic] world?" I'm sorry if such disagreement distresses you, but that's what researchers do when they're serious about working out problems rather than choosing "sides." Speaking of inconsistency, here are two statement from you:
1. "consciousness is something that only the individual can know of. That is we cannot know by looking at the person under the influence of the physical manipulation of the brain whether that person is conscious." 2. "A machine no less operates by outside manipulation but it is not conscious."
If you can only know your own consciousness, then you can not claim that a machine cannot be conscious. That's the essence of the Turing test: if a machine convinces us that it's conscious, we must grant consciousness to the machine. Your claim that "the internal experience of consciousness exists independent from this world" is without foundation, since we have no such experience whatsoever. Further, we have ample evidence that brain will not function "quite fine 'on it's [sic] own accord" -- that's why extended sensory deprivation leads to madness and amounts to torture. I think you're trying to get to what the philosophers call qualia. I would not deny that qualia exist, and certainly it's important to explore how they are known, function, and so forth. But simply insisting that they are transcendent isn't evidence. I can't make head nor tail of your discussion of form. Your final question means what, exactly? What is the referent of "form"? "The form" of what, exactly?evo_materialist_{April 19, 2008
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Frost: we do not CONCEIVE design, we PERCEIVE it. Mortimer J. Adler corrected Kant's egregious epistemological error. Read his articla, "Little Errors In The Beginning." You can find it on the internet.StephenB_{April 19, 2008
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I sent my post above by accident without proof reading or spell checking. I ask that it be removed. Here is a more readable version of the above post. In post 136, I am simply putting "form" in parenthesis for added significance.
Further, there is abundant scientific evidence that intelligence and consciousness (assuming for the take of argument that “consciousness” exists in some fashion) are at the mercy of material forces.
I disagree with the brain localization assertion. That is merely a case of stimulating “the effects” of consciousness not consciousness itself. Once again consciousness is something that only the individual can know of. That is we cannot know by looking at the person under the influence of the physical manipulation of the brain whether that person is conscious. A machine no less operates by outside manipulation but it is not conscious. The person being manipulated is conscious of their own actions/feelings but your example does nothing to reduce the experience of consciousness to material processes. All that example does is show that the hardware can be manipulated in such a way that conscious effects can be altered. But we don’t find or get to know consciousness by its effects- we know intelligence by its effects. All the brain experiments show is that human free will in the physical world is limited and can be manipulated. This is nothing of surprise if you ever played football you know that people’s bodies can be controlled and influenced by other bodies. This is the nature of the physical world but the internal experience of consciousness exists independent from this world. We have the ability to understand things that are nonexistent and reject things that are. The mind of Kurt Gödel pointed out that the human mind is more than machine because it can always move outside of any system or set when it is not being held under duress by other physical means. Leave the brain alone and it will function quite fine “on it’s own accord” without the physical interference. I never said that the mind could not be manipulated I said it wasn’t reducible to material. You can only witness this from our ability to mentally move around physical processes. We can, when not under physical duress, use the nonmaterial mind through the material brain to produce intelligent effects. On the contrary there is no evidence that purely material processes can do what the mind can. Once again you pretend not to understand what I mean by “form” but anyone with a brain knows the meaning of the world. Conciseness has a certain form (that is shape, quality, outline, significance, feeling, structure, teleology, feeling attached to it, uniqueness, symbolism that makes it’s definable etc) - in some senses it is quantitative in that it’s effects can be manipulated by varying degrees “in the physical” but in other cases it has a qualitative form which allows for the internal experiences we have that we don’t assume computers have. And so mind is not machine on any universally functional level, at least not in a logical, mathematical or physical sense. What the experiment you listed tries to call into doubt is free will but free will as the Heisenberg principle shows is a necessary ubiquitous law of nature and the fundamental back bone of QM. To argue against the uncertainty principle is nothing but to argue against the sky being blue. Any debate of this kind is pointless and one that I refuse to partake in for a multitude of reasons- one because the math and physics of the argument are too complex and don’t allow themselves for demonstration on a limited forum like this one. So yes all things have form of course- but it is the nature of that form that is always in question. We write in words but that is nothing unless we understanding the form of their meaning. I gave you the Kalam argument for transcendence I can also give you the negative argument against materialism as well… If form comes from “only” matter and laws and assuming that laws themselves count as material processes (which they don’t but we will give them too you anyway) than I ask you simply where do the secular laws come from? This is of course no different than the question I ask of the pitiful theory of DE regarding the fitness landscape which is somehow magically responsible for the evolution of species through NS and adaptation etc- “Where do we go to find the fitness landscape for the fitness landscape?” What evolved and facilitated the apparent design of the fitness landscape that you place all of the faith and mechanical explication of the theory? Eventually you are going to have to go outside the system to answer these questions even though we have already gone outside of materialism by implying the most needed and mysterious “laws of nature” to account for matter’s form. So please instead of dodging my question lets pick one topic and try to resolve it. I ask you again where does the form come form? Now in regards to post 137, You made a couple of "assertions" that were not nearly as well articulated or interrelated to the subject matter at hand as the conclusions I drew from my inductive "arguments." I'm sure you love Freud- too bad he was wrong. I think that psychology does play a roll here though; namely yours, in that I wrote you several well thought out posts of decent length and the best you could do was to respond to them with 2 and a half nonsensical assertions that don’t apparently fallow from any existent premises. My quote that you used above points to the essence of ALL reasoning (“all” includes scientific) which begins with the nature of human condition- something I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume we both share. :) If design exists, and it does, it will by our own experiences with it and in particular its effects, that will have to form the template whereby we infer design in cases where a designer is not immediately evident. This works quite amazingly well. If you had ever taken a statistics class you would know this. But back to my point about psychology, that is yours, who's choice to ignore the obvious thrust of my arguments says something about your aim and disposition in this little back and forth; namely, to dismiss the argument and repeat the mantra "ID is not science." This is politics not science and certainly not rational debate. I wont continue wasting my time if you insist on posting any more lazy nonsense posts like your last. You'll have to take your game up with some armature closer to your own level.Frost122585_{April 18, 2008
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Back from dinner, and continuing with Frost122585 [133]. Here you say:
On the contrary it is our own experience and self reference that leads us to our nature of the possible being and it is OUR design in the world that makes possible the design inference. We have very good philosophical grounding to suspect that the designer if we can detect it by its works- is to some extent “human like.” Otherwise our inference wouldn’t work.
Well, in the case of a biological or cosmological design inference, I think you're on to something: namely, it doesn't work. Certainly it doesn't work as science. But your comment points toward a truth of human psychology: that we create God in our own image.evo_materialist_{April 18, 2008
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Hi Frost122585 [132]. Back from work. I don't understand this:
But take the materialist perspective- - you have matter but as consciousness exists it has “form.”
I'm not sure who you're quoting on "form," but it's not me -- I only used the word to refer to different types of materialism. I certainly never described materialism in such a way, and I think it's perplexing and not very helpful. But, ok, let me try to understand it. First, all of nature has form, so I'm not sure what you're saying -- are you suggesting that some kinds of matter are without form? Second, all thinking that we know of seems to take place in and through embodied beings. There is no scientific evidence of intelligences operating outside of bodies. Further, there is abundant scientific evidence that intelligence and consciousness (assuming for the take of argument that "consciousness" exists in some fashion) are at the mercy of material forces. From the first inklings of brain localization (in the case of Phineas Gage) to the tranformation of self under the ravages of Alzheimer's, we have seen people waver, disappear, and reappear as material conditions change. The vast bulk of brain research confirms and elaborates this malleability. I agree that "self referentiality" has something to do with the nature of consciousness. One thinks of children learning to say "I" after they say "Baby" and "Kevin" and to speak of themselves as a subject of understanding. This has been widely investigated by psychologists. But if this produces -- as it seems to in many, though not all children -- a sense of transcendental self-importance, there's no reason to think that such fantasies are true.evo_materialist_{April 18, 2008
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Evo-M says,
"None of this, however, leads to the conclusion that “mind” exists as such or that what we call mind is anything other than the product of material forces. Is it reducible to those forces? Even materialists disagree,..."
I think this illuminates the inconsistency of your side. If you guys on the self declared "materialist side" cannot even come to grips with whether consciousness is reducible to material or not then where does that leave the rest of the nonbias world?- and people like myself who are biased towards a nonmaterial or transcendent reality/cause of/in nature? For your information if you dont think that consciousness can be reduced to material processes then you arent a materialist. Simple as that. A nonmaterial cause for consciousness is a powerful negation of the materialistic wolrd view.Frost122585_{April 18, 2008
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EvoMaterialist: I have engaged the materialists and found them to be non rational. You assume too much. I have taken very complex arguments in favor of a philosophy of mind and distilled them to their bare essence. It is up to you, therefore, do to the same for your point of view. If you think these materialists, many of whom I have read, have something to say, then give me the essence of their argument. If you have something to say in favor of materialism, then say it. I didn't "pound on the table," I made my case. Here it is again: The proof of mind consists in its ability to renounce the brains impulses. If you have a counter case to make, then make it and stop complaining.StephenB_{April 18, 2008
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Evo-M, you clever fox,
non-human-like agents
I sense that you are either dishonestly or carelessly trying to fame this debate on your terms. No one said- nor are there any good reasons to suspect that any non-empirically detectible or corporeal being must be non-human like. On the contrary it is our own experience and self reference that leads us to our nature of the possible being and it is OUR design in the world that makes possible the design inference. We have very good philosophical grounding to suspect that the designer if we can detect it by its works- is to some extent "human like." Otherwise our inference wouldn't work. This is one of the obvious limitations and possible problems with ID. We can ONLY detect intelligence that acts as we ourselves understand intelligence to act. Luckily our experience based inference does turn up evidence for such a "human like" intelligence acting in the cosmos, and in particular biology. Whether its accurate or no we can not say at this time, nonetheless it exists. I have not framed ID in human terms. "I am framed" in human terms.Frost122585_{April 18, 2008
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Evo-M, No, you say that you admit them but you don't accept them in their totality. It doesn't matter how you view nature whether that is reductionism as in all things are merely material matter in different form. I don’t accept this view because I think we have different forces at work that are novel within themselves. But take the materialist perspective- you have matter but as consciousness exists it has "form." What accounts for this form? We say intelligence. Since intelligence requires consciousness to exist - that is we as conscious beings can design computers but they themselves are nothing without or conscious efforts- we can infer that the form of consciousness came from a higher nonmaterial conscious. Now we can say that consciousness in this world can be reduced to material but not without the caveat of appealing to a higher conscious, one that transcends material. I gave you the Kalam argument and the transcendent cause hypothesis or inference above as one way to reach the intuition that self referentiality brings forth about the nature of consciousness which is that it is more than matter. This is a discussion of form. We both have to admit that consciousness exists otherwise we cannot have a discussion on this topic. I have explained that its form requires law like processes that are in my view inextricably linked to a designing intelligence that to must be conscious by logical inferential necessity based upon what i know about the cause and effect structure of the world. The presently acting cause for intelligent systems that is FCSI owes its ultimate manifestation to consciousness via regress. I too am willing to make that claim about my own. You don’t have to but you have no standing to profess your belief system as fact. Ours is a much more powerful and solid employment of pure reason if i do say so myself. And I do.Frost122585_{April 18, 2008
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kairosfocus, I have to run as well for today. I'll just respond to this:
we have no good — non question begging — reason to infer that we are the only possible or actual intelligent agents.
Perhaps not. But to infer the existence of such unknown, non-human and non-human-like agents requires more, much more, than the reasons you've given. In other words, you've given no good reasons for someone to infer design many orders of magnitude different from our experience of design. But all of this is a distraction from the issue I raised above. StephenB can pound the table and cry "the mind is nonmaterial! it is!" as long as he wants, but that won't make the picture of materialist philosophy of mind anything other than a cartoon. Still no engagement with significant people in the field: just a gesture toward the placebo effect.evo_materialist_{April 18, 2008
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KF wrote: In the meanwhile, let’s get back to the main point: . . . echoing Richard Taylor, suppose you were in a train and saw [outside the window] rocks you believe were pushed there by chance + necessity only, spelling out: WELCOME TO WALES. Would you believe the apparent message, why? ------------------ What if you were travelling eastward through northern Louisiana and reached a river over a mile wide. Would you believe you were entering the state of Mississippi and why? Was the Mississippi river intelligently designed? Does it take a nonmaterial mind to decide to make a river the border for a state? What if a government truck were barrelling down the road with the back door inavertently open, and signs were occasionally falling out along the way, and one said "Welcome to Wales". If you encountered this sign along the roadside would you believe it, and why? Is there some sort of inherent connection between intelligent design and the truth? What percentage of human writings are true? Do you believe "The God Delusion" because it was intelligently designed? What if a robot equipped with GPS followed public roadways like a roomba, and when it reached a border, checked the country, and then spelled out "Welcome to..." with rocks adding the appropriate name. Would you say this robot had a nonmaterial mind? Would you say it would take a nonmaterial mind to even conceive of such a robot or build it? Why? Just some random thoughts.JunkyardTornado_{April 18, 2008
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EM: Briefly; before running off to the real world [I have a drive to reconfigure, on techie advice . . .], we have no good -- non question begging -- reason to infer that we are the only possible or actual intelligent agents. On the other hand, the fact that we are such indicates that agents are possible in the cosmos in which we live; and its convergently multidimensionally fine tuned organised complexity points strongly to extra-cosmic agency as the best explanation for the origin of the cosmos. And, as SB has underscored, we act with freedom to think, decide, communicate etc [the point of the WALES example]; we are not under the control of chance + necessity. That speaks strongly to the nature of mind as non-material, as it has such radically different properties and capabilities from matter and energy as moved by chance + necessity. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 18, 2008
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evo_materialist at 125
I have no reason to infer design in the absence of a credible designer.
See Detecting Intelligence in the Movies If shown the monoliths in 2001: A Space Oddessy, how would you respond? With no "credible designer" on the horizon, do you infer law & chance?DLH_{April 18, 2008
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For "no of no" read "know of no," of course.evo_materialist_{April 18, 2008
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evo-materialist: The proof of mind consists in its ability to renounce the brains impulses. The "placebo" effect alone indicates the presence of a non-material mind. Self-control indicates the presence of a non-material mind; goal setting indicates the presence of a non-material mind; free will indicates the presence of a non-material mind. The brain is situated in a mechanistic world of necessary cause and effect, which means that it is a slave to the promptings of that world. Every time you liberate yourself from that world, you prove the existence of the mind. Yes, I know, some materialists think that something like a mind "emerged" from the brain and yet remains "grounded" in matter. This is another variety of the irrational nature of materialism that I have been complaining about. ("Its matter--wait its not matter"]. Straight out materialism, while irrational, is not that irrational.StephenB_{April 18, 2008
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kairosfocus, I only inferred design because I know of human designers who can, and do, make patterns using rocks. I no of no designer or intelligent designing agency that preexists humanity and even, apparently, life on earth, so I have no reason to infer design in the absence of a credible designer. So, Taylor's story has a point all right: to show the limits of his own reasoning.evo_materialist_{April 18, 2008
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EM: First, congratulations on making a design inference based on organised, functional complexity. (Mind that gets you Expelled!) (Think about what such an inference means in relevant cases such as DNA, a code-bearing, algorithmically functional molecule in cell based life that starts at about 300,000 4-state elements, i.e a config space of some 9.94 *10^180,617, i.e it vastly exceeds the search capacity of the whole observed universe.] In the meanwhile, let's get back to the main point:
. . . echoing Richard Taylor, suppose you were in a train and saw [outside the window] rocks you believe were pushed there by chance + necessity only, spelling out: WELCOME TO WALES. Would you believe the apparent message, why?
Now, how did you respond? ANS: By inferring that only design -- presumably on overwhelming improbability of chance + necessity making sense much less making true sense out of rocks tumbling down a hill -- could credibly account for such a configuration. In other words, you find it incredible (on overwhelming improbability) that chance + necessity acting without intelligent direction can arrive at functionally specified complex information. (Rightly so, BTW.) BUT "WE" DO THAT ALL THE TIME, WHEN WE WRITE, SPEAK, WORK READ ETC -- even when we arrange rocks to spell out "WELCOME TO WALES." So, just what is that "we" or "I" and just where does it come from? ANS: An intelligent agent, i.e. a mind with capacity to somehow -- just how, admittedly, we know not -- act into the world through our bodies [including brains, tongues and hands] so that one creates meaningful, complex and functional configurations of matter as part of one's exercise of one's mind. And, to know that is not vitiated by failing to know precisely how. At any rate, we have plainly arrived at properties that we experience, and which we know that it is incredible for chance + necessity to generate. So, we have very good reason to infer to an independent order of existence not driven by mechanical necessity + chance acting on matter and energy [the entities held by materialism to constitute reality]; to wit, the mind, as very traditionally understood. Worse, without credibly functioning minds -- i.e minds not originating in, constituted and thus wholly controlled by chance + necessity acting on matter + energy -- one can't even credibly think materialistic thoughts. So, Richard Taylor's little story has a point. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 18, 2008
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A short further point: I posted here originally because materialist views of mind were being caricatured without any reference or, as far as I can tell, understanding of the important figures in the field or the differences among them. So far, the responses have been silent on that point: kairosfocus in fact continues to paint with the broadest possible brush and cycling back to his usual themes.evo_materialist_{April 18, 2008
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Frost122585, I'm wrong how exactly? Every materialist I know fully admits all the things you mention: experience, sense, feeling, etc. (Well, there's some debate about "subconscious" and related terms such "unconscious.") None of this, however, leads to the conclusion that "mind" exists as such or that what we call mind is anything other than the product of material forces. Is it reducible to those forces? Even materialists disagree, with only a few, such as Paul Churchland, offering an unqualified yes.evo_materialist_{April 18, 2008
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Evo-m, You are worng. Totaly anf gloriously worng. How do we know that thinking exists? Because we expierence. How do we know that inteligence exists because we expierence it and because its effects produce improbable novely. We can't aways infer it but a great deal of the time we can. THinking is no differnt from any other material process like water falling or rocks rolling. The thing that gives it its unique quality is th eexpierence we have when we think. Your term "thinking" is just a bluff because thinking is only one part of consciousness. We have sense, feeling, subconscious, a mix of those rpocesses, and expierence that we cant really call thinking or not- they are like half thoughts or just sensous impressions. We have inutions, we have inferences and deductions, we have all of the words in the entire huan language and then many expierences that we have not given a formal word name to.Frost122585_{April 18, 2008
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kairosfocus, What? Would I believe I was in Wales if I also believed the rocks spelled out WELCOME TO WALES by chance? What a silly question! I would have no reason to hold such a belief, because I know that people -- intelligent agents of which I have first-hand knowledge -- arrange rocks all the time. I've seen them do it. I've even done it myself. So as a Gedankenexperiment it's pretty weak. I won't go through all 14 points and the PS because I don't want to waste a lot of time, but I will say this about point 8: No. We do not know that "mind" exists as you describe it. We know that thinking exists, but the existence of that process does not necessarily lead to mind as an ontologically distinct entity.evo_materialist_{April 18, 2008
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