This is a great video on the interplay between the ideas of Gödel and Turing on what Gödel’s incompleteness means for the mind. This is of great importance to ID, because it indicates what it means for “design” as opposed to “mechanism”, and the limitations of any mechanistic/physicalist model of reality and humanity.
Kurt Gödel: Incompleteness Theorem and Human Intuition
Someone pointed me to this video a while ago, but I don’t remember who – thanks to whoever it was – it was certainly worthwhile! Also, does anyone know what video this is taken from?
For those interested in more modern advances on the subject, you might check out these talks on the subject from the recent Engineering and Metaphysics conference:
johnnyb, The video clip comes from this BBC documentary:
As to the Godel’s incompleteness of mathematics, Turing’s halting problem of computers, and, as Godel pointed out, the necessity of ‘human intuition’ to overcome the limitations imposed on material processes to ‘figure out’ greater levels of computational complexity, I believe this following paper drives the point firmly home about how all this relates to Intelligent Design in molecular biology:
Of course, much more could be said, but for now, I think the paper pretty much says it all.
I’ll suggest that you are barking up the wrong tree.
As a mathematician, my assessment is that most mathematicians think that Gödel is important in mathematical logic, but has little or no relevance to their own primary field within mathematics.
Roger Penrose has written several books, attempting to show a problem with AI (roughly, the thesis that cognition is computation). Penrose bases his argument on Gödel’s and Turing’s work. In my opinion, Penrose’s arguments are a complete failure. Personally, I disagree with computationism, so if anything I should be biased toward favoring Penrose’s argument. However, the problem is that the argument simply does not work.
The Gödel proof does not actually show a limitation of logic. Rather, it shows problems with how we have attempted to extend logic to cover infinite realms. Any reasonable assessment would be that a cognitive agent’s interactions with the world are finitistic, and thus problems with extending logic into the infinite have no persuasive force, as applied to a cognitive agent.
The only relevance that I can see to ID, is that this supports the view that ID is philosophy, not science.
Neil:
In my opinion, Penrose’s arguments are a complete failure. Personally, I disagree with computationism, so if anything I should be biased toward favoring Penrose’s argument. However, the problem is that the argument simply does not work.
I’m sure you’re talking about the The Emperor’s New Mind. I’m curious why you think his argument fails. I found it convincing. We’ll probably not change the other’s view, but I am curious what you found lacking.
To my knowledge, Penrose actually has three books on the topic. In addition to the one you mentioned, there are “Shadows of the Mind” and “The Large, the Small and the Human Mind.” My memory of the last of those is hazy – I didn’t spend as much time on it as on the other two. In “Shadows”, Penrose recasts his argument from “Emperor’s New Mind” so as to base it on Turing rather than on Gödel.
Here are two problems that I have with Turing’s argument:
1: The Gödel proof and Turing’s Halting problem are for infinite systems (the Peano axioms for Gödel, the Turing machine for Turing). However, any plausible account of the mind as a computer would be a finitistic one. That is, the mind would have to be seen as a finite automaton, not as an infinite Turing machine. And the halting problem does not apply to finite automata.
2: The claim that humans can do better than the Turing machine, with respect to the halting problem, is an illusion. The Turing machine is a solipsistic system. It begins with data on its tape, but thereafter has no access to any data that might come from the real world. By contrast, real mathematicians are constantly visiting libraries, reading journals, having discussions with colleagues. And that gives the real mathematician a stream of new information that is not available to the solipsistic Turing machine.
In short, the argument that Penrose uses does not work because it does not fit the actual problem.
Neil snorted:
Neil, if you really believe Darwinian evolution is ‘science’ and ID is merely philosophy, then why did you just provide further empirical evidence for ID by writing your post? You see Neil if you could get purely material processes to generate just a few sentences of the functional information, which you just ‘effortlessly’ did (‘effortlessly’ because it is evident you were not really thinking very hard when you wrote it 🙂 ) ,,,when you wrote your post then you could actually provide a basis for Darwinism within science and forever silence the critics of Darwinism who maintain Darwinism is, in reality, nothing but a pseudo-science with no real empirical basis to appeal to to silence the accusation of fraud against it!
Notes:
the materialistic/Darwinian argument essentially appears to be like this:
On the other hand, Stephen Meyer describes the intelligent design argument as follows:
To clarify as to how the 500 bit universal limit is found for ‘structured, functional information’:
ba77:
Quite simply, I didn’t.
If you want ID to be taken seriously, then you need to get away from ridiculous mischaracterization of what others say, and actually start working on real evidence.
If a Darwinist actually presented such an argument, they would be ridiculed, and rightly so.
If ID is all about attacking a strawman, then I concede. The strawman that ID proponents attack really is as ridiculous as you say it is. But your victory is hollow, for it only serves to show how little there is in ID.
Neil you indignantly claim that I misrepresented the (your) atheistic/Darwinian position,,, a ‘strawman’ you called it. Yet the fact of the matter is that nobody has EVER seen purely material processes generate any non-trivial functional information, and Intelligent agents (humans) routinely, almost as a force of habit, generate non-trivial amounts of functional information (as your very own words testify to every time you write a post). In spite of this glaring deficiency of empirical validation for a (the) basic premise of the atheistic/materialistic/Darwinian position, and despite your seemingly insane denial to the contrary, Darwinists dogmatically cling to this unsubstantiated premise that material processes can create stunning levels of informational complexity (parallel processing) in life that our best computer programmers can only dream of imitating! In fact there is a name for this dogmatic belief atheists have imposed on science, it is called methodological naturalism! You don’t believe me??? Well here is a infamous quote:
Ironically this fear of atheistic materialists that ‘at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen’ is exactly what you get when you insist on methodological naturalism (purely material answers) and you deny God His rightful place as being the author of all reality, especially including, His rightful place being the author of all science!:
Neil –
First of all, I think that either Penrose has changed his mind on this, or you misunderstood his point. I have not read his books, but I did listen to a recent talk of his on the subject. Your criticisms apply much better to my own views on the subject rather than Penrose’s.
Penrose uses Godel/Turing to argue for a different Physics – one which depends on more complex dynamics than is available in a computable system. However, this is not the same as his argument for the mind. Penrose’s argument for the mind is that physics, as such, has nothing in it that contributes to understanding. That is, physics can calculate, but not understand or comprehend. It is very much similar to Searle’s Chinese Room argument.
Now, regarding your arguments – you say that “any plausible account of the mind would be a finitistic one”. Rather than getting around the Godel/Turing result, it rather intensifies it. For the question is not about understanding our own mind, but about how we understand reality. Therefore, to make the mind smaller than a Godel/Turing machine, you actually place greater limitations on the ability of human knowledge than either of them did.
The core of rationality is being able to reason to higher-level verities. If we do not have access to something greater than a Godel/Turing machine, then the ability to reason is itself suspect.
As an example, most of number theory is reducible to Turing machines, and the ability to make progress in number theory is based on human’s ability to surpass the Turing limit.
johnnyb#9:
That’s a long talk, and I have not yet finished listening.
I doubt that Penrose has changed his underlying intuition. I am inclined to agree with that intuition (if I understand it correctly). The problem comes when he tries to turn that intuition into a logical argument. And that always fails (as it did for Searle).
His approach in his books, was to use Gödel to argue that formalistic mathematics is limited, compared to platonist mathematics. I agree with that on the intuitive level. And Gödel might have agreed with that, too. But you cannot turn that into a formal argument, because platonism is not formalized. If we assume that, as an intuitive conclusion, Penrose then argues that an AI system could only be a formalist mathematician but could not be a platonist mathematician. That argument fails, in my opinion. It depends too much on unpersuasive hand-waving.
Let’s suppose that Penrose is correct, even though his argument does not work. That still would not help ID, as best I can tell. It might suggest a problem with a strict mechanistic materialist account of mind. But ID itself would seem to depend on a mechanistic materialist view. How else could a putative intelligent designer carry out an intelligent design process, except by reliance on mechanistic materialistic methods to carry forward the design?
Footnote: I am about 20% through that Penrose video. Thus far he has given some of the reasons that support his intuition against AI. I mostly agree with that. He is now moving on to talk of mathematical truth. It looks as if he is about to argue: An AI system can only do formalist truth, and formalists truth is different from mathematical truth as understood by platonists. Therefore AI is wrong. But why not consider an alternative conclusion, namely our ordinary common sense notion of truth is incoherent and inconsistent. And that’s about my view. Mathematics and science work quite well, because they depend only on a restricted use of truth.
ba77#8:
My own view is that information is not a natural kind; it is a human artifact. It follows that DNA is not information, though when we write down particular gene sequences as sequences of letters, that is information.
The arguments about CSI all seem empty to me, because they critically depend on the dubious assumption that information is a natural kind.
as to:
and yet:
Like you, Rolf Landauer maintained that information in a computer was what he termed ‘physical’. To clarify, he held that information in a computer was merely an ’emergent’ property of the material basis of a computer, and thus he held that the information programmed into a computer was not really ‘real’. Landauer held this ‘materialistic’ position in spite of a objection from Roger Penrose, and others, that information is indeed real and has its own independent existence separate from a computer. Landauer held this (what I find to be absurd) ‘materialistic’ position since he held that ‘it takes energy to erase information from a computer, and therefore, he falsely thought, WA LA information is ‘merely physical’. Yet now the validity of that fairly narrowly focused objection from Landauer, to the reality of ‘transcendent information’ encoded within the computer, has been overturned:
This following research provided solid falsification for Rolf Landauer’s contention that information encoded in a computer is merely physical (merely ’emergent’ from a material basis) since he believed it always required energy to erase it;
The preceding work shows that ‘classical’ information such as is encoded in a computer program, and yes even information as is encoded on DNA is, in fact, a real physical entity and is, in fact, a subset of ‘conserved’ quantum information. i.e. information is real!
Further comments:
But that is not like me. I hold that information is abstract, not physical. We represent information in physical arrangements, but the information is not the same thing as its physical representation.
There are many different notions of information. In my view, Shannon information is the appropriate one for computing/information processing, and that’s what this topic and the Penrose argument are about. Landauer’s work in physics was about a differerent notion of information.
I would guess that my view of information is closer to that of Penrose, if I presume that by “real” he means in a platonic sense.
I take Landauer’s work to be about the energy required for physical representation of information, rather than about what I refer to as information.
Neil you state:
same difference as to what he meant by physical, he was a materialist at heart just as you are,,, and then you state:
and you, and Penrose if he holds strictly to that view, would both be wrong,, i.e. Classical Information is clearly having a causal influence in DNA and in computer programs, thus it is absurd to hold it as merely ‘abstract’. Moreover I showed the proof that shows classical information to be a subset of quantum information. This proof is of no small importance since quantum information is the primary entity from which material reality initial came and is presently sustained. i.e. quantum information is about as far away from a ‘mere’ Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions as can be had,,,
Notes to that effect:
Quantum Evidence for a Theistic Universe
From the best scientific evidence we now have, from multiple intersecting lines of evidence, we now have very good reason to believe that the entire universe came instantaneously into origination at the Big Bang. Not only was all mass-energy brought into being, but space-time itself was also instantaneously brought into being at the Big Bang!!!
Thus it logically follows that whatever brought the universe into being had to be transcendent of space-time, mass-energy. Yet the only thing that we know of that is completely transcendent of space-time, matter-energy is information. Thus the question becomes did information bring space-time, mass-energy into being?,,, simple enough question, but how do we prove it? It turns out that quantum teleportation breakthroughs have shed light directly on this question!,,, Here are a few experiments establishing the ‘beyond space and time’ ‘information theoretic’ origin, and sustaining, of this universe,;
Quantum Mechanics has now been extended by Anton Zeilinger, and team, to falsify local realism (reductive materialism) without even using quantum entanglement to do it. i.e. one must now appeal to a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause to explain the continued existence of photons within spacetime:
The following experiments demonstrate that energy and mass both reduce to quantum information;
,,,The following articles show that even atoms are subject to ‘instantaneous’ teleportation:,,,
,,,These following experiments show that the teleportation of information is indeed ‘instantaneous’, thus demonstrating transcendence, and even dominion, of space and time;,,,
Here is another experiment which demonstrated quantum information’s dominion over space and time (specifically time);
and this experiment:
Here’s a variation of Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment, which highlights quantum information’s transcendence of time so as to effect ‘spooky action into the past’;
,,,Whereas these following experiment shows that quantum information is ‘conserved’,,,
,,Moreover, when the quantum wave state (superposition), which is defined as a infinite dimensional state, and which can be theoretically be encoded with infinite information, collapses to its particle state, the collapsed state of the photon yields only a single bit of information:,,,
The ‘information theoretic’ single bit state solved some mysteries
,,,moreover, encoded information, such as we find encoded in computers, and yes, such as we find encoded in DNA, is found to be a subset of ‘conserved’ quantum information:,,,
,,,The following logical deduction and evidence shows that consciousness precedes the collapse of the ‘infinite information’ of the quantum wave state to the single bit of the ‘uncertain’ particle state,,,
,,,It is important to note that the following experiment actually encoded information into a photon while it was in its quantum wave state, thus destroying the notion, held by many, that the wave function was not ‘physically real’ but was merely ‘abstract’. i.e. How can information possibly be encoded into something that is not physically real but merely abstract?,,,
Here is a more rigorous measurement of the wave function which establishes it as ‘physically real’ not abstract;
,,,The following paper mathematically corroborated the preceding experiment and cleaned up some pretty nasty probabilistic incongruities that arose from a purely statistical interpretation, i.e. it seems that stacking a ‘random infinity’, (parallel universes to explain quantum wave collapse), on top of another ‘random infinity’, to explain quantum entanglement, leads to irreconcilable mathematical absurdities within quantum mechanics:,,,
Now, I find the preceding to be absolutely fascinating! A photon, in its quantum wave state, is found to be mathematically defined as a ‘infinite-dimensional’ state, which ‘requires an infinite amount of information’ to describe it properly, can be encoded with information in its ‘infinite dimensional’ state, and this ‘infinite dimensional’ photon is found to collapse, instantaneously, and thus ‘non-locally’, to just a ’1 or 0? state, out of a infinite number of possibilities that the photon could have collapsed to instead! Moreover, consciousness is found to precede the collapse of the wavefunction to its particle state. Now my question to materialistic atheists is this, “Exactly what ’cause’ has been postulated throughout history to be completely independent of any space-time constraints, as well as possessing infinite knowledge, so as to be the ‘sufficient cause’ to explain what we see in the quantum wave collapse of a photon???
,,,In my personal opinion, even though not hashed out in exhaustive detail yet, all this evidence is about as sweet as it can get in experimental science as to providing proof that Almighty God created and sustains this universe.,,,
ba77#14
I am not a materialist.
I’m not sure what you mean by “classical information.” Everything has causal influences. Does that mean that everything is information?
This thread is about the kind of argument used by Penrose. So what Penrose means by “information” should be exactly what this thread is about.
If you want to insist that Penrose is wrong, then you should at least be saying that the base post of this thread is nonsense because it depends on Penrose’s wrong notion of “information.” Can we at least have a little consistency within a single thread?
Neil:
Very interesting subject. I have not looked at the video yet, but I have read carefully most of Penrose’s books. So, I would like to offer some comments here, and I hope we can deepen the discussion tomorrow.
First of all, I think that Penrose’s argument about Godel’s theorem does work, but that it means something slightly different from what you suggest (and, maybe, even form what Penrose strictly affirms).
Essentially, what Penrose is arguing is that human cognition is not wholly algotithmic. While that could be a general intuition shared by many, Penrose takes on the difficult task to show that for the most “algorithmic” field of human thougt, that is mathemathical knowledge.
I have read many arguments against Penrose’s theorem, but I do believe that it remains valid. What it really means, IMO, is that all human knowledge is vastly intuitive, in the sense that it requires and depends on conscious representation. It is conscious representations, and only conscious representation, that allows the conscious perceiver to be in a “meta” position versus the things he is representing. Consciousness is essentially defined by the existence of a subject that is “meta” versus the objects, and therefore can perceive, represent and understand them. The same meaning of meaning rests on that.
That is the essence of Penrose’s meaning: Godel’s theorem shows that even mathemathical knowledgge, the most “deductive” of all forms of human knowledge, heavily and completely relies on conscious intuition. It’s the fact that the conscious observer can always detach itself from its observed contents that allows the observer to know some truths about the observed system that a mere algorithmic approach cannot understand.
For the concept of information, I essentially agree with you: essentially, it is a platonic concept, in the sense Penrose gives. But that does not mean that it has no “physical” counterpart that can be defined.
In another recent post I wrote:
“Well, let’s say that we are discussing objective information, that is information that is embedded in a material system, and can be “read” and understood by some conscious agent.”
IOWs, even if information is a platonic concept, and “is not the same thing as its physical representation” (and I fully agree about that), still another concept, that I call here “objective information”, is a definite property of some material systems and arrangements, and can be defined according to the ability of those systems or arrangements to evoke specific representations and meanings in a conscious observer. Moreover, some aspects of that “objective information” have objective specific properties, such as complexity (that can be measured in a Shannon context) and complexity related meaning. That is the whole concept of CSI, and the real object of ID. that IMO you really misunderstand.
ID is about objective information, the special form that physical systems need to assume to transmit complex and meaningful (functional) representations to conscious observers. It’s perfectly true that the concept of CSI, and all ID, heavily depends on the concept of conscious observers: but that is simply because all human representation of reality does.
You say:
Let’s suppose that Penrose is correct, even though his argument does not work. That still would not help ID, as best I can tell. It might suggest a problem with a strict mechanistic materialist account of mind. But ID itself would seem to depend on a mechanistic materialist view. How else could a putative intelligent designer carry out an intelligent design process, except by reliance on mechanistic materialistic methods to carry forward the design?
But that makes no sense. Penrose is correct, because all human knowledge, startin form Godel’s theorem, strictly depend on conscious representation and conscious intuition. THat indeed suggests “a problem with a strict mechanistic materialist account of mind”. A very big problem, that can never be solved.
And that does help ID. ID is essentially about that. It is about the fact that not only a putative designer, but any designer, can only design because he has conscious representations and intuitions. That is the difference between designers and unguided (unperceived) algorithmic processes. And even if design certainly relies in part on “mechanistic materialistic methods to carry forward the design” (which is certainly true), it is even more true that the design starts in consciousness, in meaning and intent. And Only design can impress some specific properties, like CSI, to physical systems.
You say:
My own view is that information is not a natural kind; it is a human artifact. It follows that DNA is not information, though when we write down particular gene sequences as sequences of letters, that is information.
That would be correct, if it were expressed avoiding your heavy assumtpions. I will try to reformulate the concept according to my views:
“My own view is that information is not an absolute kind (let’s avoid the word “natural”, that means nothing); it is a consciousness related concept. It follows that DNA is information if it was designed, and woiuld not be information if we could show (that we can’t) that it could arise by non conscious, unguided causes (something that has never been shown, either for DNA or fpr any other material system exhibiting CSI). Obviously, when we write down particular gene sequences as sequences of letters, that is certainly objective information, because we are writing them down from our conscious representations.”
In your statement you make heavy ideological assumption that are not necessarily shared (certainly not by me):
a) That material systems are “natural”, and conscious realities are not.
b) That human artifacts are the only existing outputs of consciousness.
c) That human cosnciousness is the only form of consciousness.
d) That DNA, and biological information in general, was not designed by some conscious agent (which is, I believe, the main controversial issue that keeps us discussing in this place).
You any right to believe those things, but they cannot certainly be assumed. For me, they are simply not true, and I have always been ready to discuss my reasons for that belief.
Responding to gpuccio #18:
I’ll comment on the first part now. I plan to comment on the later part (about information) after I have had some sleep.
Penrose’s argument is not a logically valid argument. It is an appeal to the intuition. I don’t find it persuasive, but I shall take it that you do. That probably reflects our different backgrounds.
Yes, that is what he is arguing. I agree with his conclusion, but I do not find his argument persuasive.
That’s actually a misunderstanding of mathematics. In fact, mathematicians depend a great deal on intuition.
Starting with axioms, we provide deductive proofs of theorems. But the axioms themselves are not a result of deduction. That is where intuition comes in.
I disagree with that. My view is that our intuitive abilities come from a lot of knowledge we have that we did not gain via conscious activities.
I’ll comment on the information part tomorrow (it is still late Saturday here). But let me add this. I am not driven by any ideology. I try to avoid ideology as much as possible. I’ll grant that I have some non-traditional views. These result from my study of and attempts to understand human cognition.
Neil:
Thank you for your answer. I appreciate your thoughts. While I wait for your further comments, I would like to offer a couple of clarifications on my views, that could be useful in the following discussion.
You say:
Penrose’s argument is not a logically valid argument. It is an appeal to the intuition.
I could agree on that, in the sense that penrose’s argument is not a mere logical argument, and it obviously appeals to intuition, like most (or all) important human cognitions. That does not make it less valid, at least for me. And anyway, even if it appeals to intuition, it is however logically shaped, and I believe that its logical part is OK.
Starting with axioms, we provide deductive proofs of theorems. But the axioms themselves are not a result of deduction. That is where intuition comes in.
That’s certainly true. But every cognition is intuitive, because the concept itself of meaning, of truth, and of causal relationship are not logical deduction, but rather conscious intuitions (more on that later). However, Penrose’s theorem shows that even theorems, such as Godel’s, are fundamentally intuitive, and not merely logical (or at least, their “meaning” can be appreciated only intuitively).
I am not sure what you mean with the following statement. I had written:
“What it really means, IMO, is that all human knowledge is vastly intuitive, in the sense that it requires and depends on conscious representation.”
You comment:
I disagree with that. My view is that our intuitive abilities come from a lot of knowledge we have that we did not gain via conscious activities.”
My idea is that intuitive knowledge is just perceived by consciousness, and not derived by logic or reason. You seem to suggest that intuitive knowledge in unconscious algoritthmic knowledge, if I understand well (please, correct me if I am wrong). If that is your point, I certainly disagree.
I will make my point more clear. We perceive ourselves as conscious beings. That is intuition. In no way it is derived from algorithmic associations.
We perceive the meaning of things. That perception is intuitive. Algorithm know nothing about meaning.
We have a sense of truth and falsity. We cognize and act according to that. Intuition, again.
We accept non contradiction, that foundation of logic. Why? Intuition.
Now, if those cognitions came from unconscious algorithmic processes, we would have to show that non conscious algorithmic processes can generate those realities. Which, IMO, is not possible, for various reasons.
There is no doubt, instead, that we know those cognition in our consciousness. We feel in our consciousness that some statement is true or false. We perceive in our consciousness the meaning of some concept, and always in consciousness we perceive intent.
I have to make an important specification, however. When I speak of cosnciousness, I don’t mean only our usual state of consciousness, let’s call it “waking cosnciousness”. I mean the sum total of the representations of our self, at all levels and in all states of cosnciousness.
So, if you mean that great part of our knowledge and cognitions come from representations that are not at the common level of waking consciousness, and ehat we usually isdentify as the reasoning mind, I certainly agree. But they come from cosncious representations just the same. For me, anything where there is a subject that represents or perceives something is a conscious representation.
On the contrary, I don’t believe that “unconscious mental processes” really exist. If they are “mental”, they are in some way represented. Of course, the mind can become cosncious of previous non conscious processes, that will be completely objective and mechanistics before they are represented. But as soon as a process becomes “mental”, it is in some way, at some level, represented.
Fimnally, I am very happy that you try to avoid ideology. I do that too. My views derive from many sources, and for all of them I am deeply grateful. But they are, by all means, constantly supported and shaped by my study and attempts to understand reality and human condition.
Neil you state:
The only thing I find inconsistent in this thread, especially after reading your ‘I am not a materialist’ post, (all the while being from all I can tell a committed neo-Darwinist), is the way in which you play word games and waffle on definitions and meanings so as to defend your atheism. But at least you are consistent in ignoring the empirical evidence that is presented directly against your claims and, as well, you are consistent in failing to ever present any solid evidence to support your own position.
Since it is already shown that ‘classical information’, such as what is encoded on the material substrates in computers, and even DNA, is a subset of Quantum Information (Vedral), It is now also interesting to point out that this ‘non-local’ Quantum Information/Entanglement has been found in molecular biology on a massive scale. This ‘non-local’ Quantum Information/Entanglement in molecular biology simply crushes any neo-Darwinian presuppositions that have been held up to now:
Moreover this ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, Quantum Information/Entanglement in molecular biology, besides blowing neo-Darwinism presuppositions clean out of the water, actually provides a very viable mechanism for the Theistic contention of a eternal ‘soul’:
This following video interview of a Harvard Neurosurgeon, who had a Near Death Experience (NDE), is very interesting. His NDE was rather unique from typical NDEs in that he had completely lost brain wave function for 7 days while the rest of his body was on life support. As such he had what can be termed a ‘pure consciousness’ NDE that was dramatically different from the ‘typical’ Judeo-Christian NDEs of going through a tunnel to a higher heavenly dimension, seeing departed relatives, and having a life review (of note: though he had a ‘pure consciousness’ NDE, he retained ‘identity of self’ during his NDE and thus stayed within the primary Judeo-Christian framework and did not ‘become one with consciousness’ as is generally held in pantheistic circles).
Moreover the following video shows that Dr. Alexander has a ‘unique mechanism’ of quantum entanglement/information within the brain to appeal to in order to provide solid support for his claim of a ‘pure consciousness’ NDE
Here is an few more interesting pieces of evidence on consciousness:
etc.. etc.. etc..
A note to johnnyb, perhaps not in the right thread, just to say that I checked out several of the videos from the Engineering and Metaphysics conference a few weeks back and quite enjoyed them.
Here’s a link to a short article I wrote on Adrian Bejan’s ‘constructal law’ and his theory of ‘design in nature,’ since it was also addressed at that conference.
Whose notion of ‘design in nature’ do you accept?
It might be interesting especially to Mike Holcumbrink here. Others are of course welcome to comment or contact me about it. Bejan’s focus on ‘flow’ makes his DiN theory/’law’ seem more ‘fluid’ than ‘mechanical.’ In any case, I wouldn’t trust Turing (British), Goedel (Austro-Hungarian-American) or Bejan (Romanian-American) for, as you say above johnnyb, a “model of (reality and) humanity,” which is not what Intelligent Design theory is about either.
@Neil: “The only relevance that I can see to ID, is that this supports the view that ID is philosophy, not science.”
“the view” which is the view of whom? “the view” which goes like “oh yes philosophy and science have nothing to do with one another”. The view that there is some kind of heavily guarded wall between compartments in which “science” and “philosophy” reside in some fashion? Never to interact? Am I seeing things?
ba77#21:
No, I am not a neo-Darwinist.
Neil states:
Right, not in real life, you just play one on TV 🙂
Your actions are what I go by, i.e. basically in assessing your philosophical basis in the matter, I use the walks like a duck, talks like a duck, probably is a duck, method of deDUCKtion 🙂
Of note: It might surprise some to learn that Godel’s incompleteness theorem actually supports the resurrection of Christ:
first a little background:
The centrality of expansion for every 3D point in the universe (4-D space-time of General Relativity), and the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe to each point of conscious observation in the universe, is obviously a very interesting congruence in science between the very large (relativity) and the very small (quantum mechanics). A congruence that Physicists, and Mathematicians, seem to be having a extremely difficult time ‘unifying’ into a ‘theory of everything’.(Einstein, Penrose).
The conflict of reconciling General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics into the ‘holy grail’ of the ‘theory of everything’ appears to arise from the inability of either theory to successfully deal with the Zero/Infinity problem that crops up in different places of each theory:
Moreover, this extreme ‘mathematical’ difficulty, of reconciling General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything’, was actually somewhat foreseeable from previous work, earlier in the 20th century, in mathematics by Godel:
Yet, the unification, into a ‘theory of everything’, between what is, for all practical purposes, the ‘infinite Theistic world of Quantum Mechanics’ and the ‘finite Materialistic world of the entropic 4-D space-time of General Relativity’ seems to be directly related to what Jesus apparently joined together with His resurrection, i.e. related to the unification of infinite God with finite man. Dr. William Dembski in this following comment, though not directly addressing the Zero/Infinity conflict in General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, offers insight into this ‘unification’ of the infinite and the finite:
Thus, when one allows God into math, as Godel clearly indicated must ultimately be done to keep math from being ‘incomplete’, then there actually exists a very credible reconciliation between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into a the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything’ with the resurrection of Christ! As a footnote; Godel, who proved you cannot have a mathematical ‘Theory of Everything’, without allowing God to bring completeness to the ‘Theory of Everything’, also had this to this very interesting thing to say
further note on Godel’s incompleteness:
Music:
gpuccio#18:
What is objective about what you call “objective information” is the physical arrangement of material that is used to represent information. But the same physical arrangement could be used to represent part of a rock music performance at one instant, and part of a digital picture at another instant. The physical arrangement is objective, but the abstract information being represented by that physical arrangement is a matter of intentions, not a matter of objective physical structure.
No, we cannot measure the complexity or information content, based only on the physical structure. We need the protocol that encodes information in that physical structuring, before we can determine the information carrying capacity (or content).
But what you are calling “objective information” is not information at all. It is just physical structure. And whether and how that physical structure is being used to carry information depends on the intentions of those using it.
So I look at DNA, and I can divide it into discrete elements. But photons are also discrete elements. The cogs on a gear wheel are also discrete elements. Discreteness is not enough to say that it is information. The cogs on a gear wheel are important for their causal effects. The components of DNA are important for their causal effects. We should not conflate mechanical causation with information processing. They are not the same. I find the arguments about CSI completely unpersuasive, because they are based on the conflating of mechanical causation with information processing. Maybe ID will one day be able to make a CSI case. But right now, their arguments only look like bad philosophy.
I used “natural kind” as a two-word name for a single concept. It makes no sense to object to the word “natural” there, as if it could be separated from the full name for that concept.
By “natural kind”, I means something that should be detectable by any observer, whether an ant or a Martian alien. That is, it should stand out from everything else, independent of particular human knowledge. My point was that what we call “information” does not meet that requirement.
gpuccio#20:
I was not suggesting anything about algorithms.
It is my assumption that the type of knowledge we have and use via intuition, is likely also present in some form as knowledge of ants, bees, etc. It is very hard to say whether we should ascribe consciousness to ants and bees. So I want to avoid connecting that kind of knowledge with consciousness. And that was the point that I was trying to make.
footnote to 27:
Analogy between Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, and Godel’s Incompleteness (Page 2)
http://www.univ-nancy2.fr/poin.....Nagata.pdf
Neil:
What is objective about what you call “objective information” is the physical arrangement of material that is used to represent information. But the same physical arrangement could be used to represent part of a rock music performance at one instant, and part of a digital picture at another instant. The physical arrangement is objective, but the abstract information being represented by that physical arrangement is a matter of intentions, not a matter of objective physical structure.
I agree. That’s why a conscious perceiver is necessary to detect “objective information”. And so?
No, we cannot measure the complexity or information content, based only on the physical structure.
Correct. We also need the conscious perceiver who can recognize the information. And so?
We need the protocol that encodes information in that physical structuring, before we can determine the information carrying capacity (or content).
Exactly my point. We need a conscious perceiver. One who undertsands the protocol and the code, and the meaning and function of the coded information. And so?
But what you are calling “objective information” is not information at all.
That’s why I call it “objective information”. I used that as a two-word name for a single concept. 🙂
What I mean is, the objective property of that material system to evoke information in a conscious perceiver. I never said it is information in itself.
And whether and how that physical structure is being used to carry information depends on the intentions of those using it.
Correct. And so?
So I look at DNA, and I can divide it into discrete elements. But photons are also discrete elements.
But DNA codes for the information of a functional protein. In what sense do photons do something like that? The point is not just being digital but being digital and encoding useful information digitally and symbolically.
The cogs on a gear wheel are also discrete elements. Discreteness is not enough to say that it is information.
Exactly my point.
The cogs on a gear wheel are important for their causal effects. The components of DNA are important for their causal effects.
Correct. And the effect of DNA is to provide the correct information to the translation system, and to ensure the output of a functional protein.
We should not conflate mechanical causation with information processing.
Certainly not. Where have I done such a thing?
They are not the same.
Certainly not. Where have I said such a thing?
I find the arguments about CSI completely unpersuasive, because they are based on the conflating of mechanical causation with information processing.
In no way they are based on that.
ID starts from the recognition of information from the material system through a specific process of racognition, which implies obviously information processing. That is the recognition of specification.
Then ID evaluates the objective complexity in the material system (in the Shannon sense) that is necessary for that information processing to work correctly. That is the evaluation of the complexity required by the specification .
A very simple empirical frame allows to use specified complexity as a marker of design, that is of a precious information processing that took place when the material system was shaped by the designer.
There is no conflating at all. Each concept is clear and powerful.
Maybe ID will one day be able to make a CSI case. But right now, their arguments only look like bad philosophy.
No. You are simply wrong. And in no way you have explained or supported such a view.
By “natural kind”, I means something that should be detectable by any observer, whether an ant or a Martian alien.
Well, thanks for the clarification. In that sense, neither information nor objective information are a “natural kind”. Objective information requires, as you say, a specific process to be understood. A book written in english means nothing if the reader soed not understand english. No information is so universal that any observer can undertsand its informational content. And so?
That is, it should stand out from everything else, independent of particular human knowledge.
Well, information certainly does not do that. And so?
My point was that what we call “information” does not meet that requirement.
Agreed. And so?
Neil (#29):
I was not suggesting anything about algorithms.
That’s good.
It is my assumption that the type of knowledge we have and use via intuition, is likely also present in some form as knowledge of ants, bees, etc.
Maybe. This is a difficult subject. But, in general, I can agree. But it is also possible that some behaviours by living beings are performed without any conscious intuition. For instance, our body builds functional proteins, but we seem not to know that by intuition. Instead, we know by intuition that we exist as consciouis perceivers, or that something can be false or true, and so on. There is no reason why bees or ants should be different. Mayve some of the things they are and they do imply intuition, and others don’t. But intuition, if present, always requires some form of consciousness.
It is very hard to say whether we should ascribe consciousness to ants and bees.
It is hard. But it is interesting, and important.
So I want to avoid connecting that kind of knowledge with consciousness.
Your choice. But IMO intuitive knowledge is always connected to consciousness. At various levels, and in various forms. I always refer to intuition in human cosnciousness, because that is the only consciousness we perceive and know directly (that is, intuitively). So I stick to things we know well.
OT:
Neil Rickert @19:
*scratches head*
gpuccio:
Music to my ears.
A few notes on the authenticity of human intuition. As to the lead off video in the OP,,,
,,,It is interesting to note that although Alan Turing believed humans were merely machines, much like the computers he had envisioned, he failed to realize that his idea for computers came to him, as he himself admitted, suddenly, ‘in a vision’, thus directly contradicting his claim and confirming Godel’s contention that humans had access to the ‘divine spark of intuition’. A divine spark which enables humans to transcend the limits he, and Turing, had found in the incompleteness theorem (the halting problem) for computers, mathematics, and even for all material reality generally. Gifted people being able to instantaneously know answers to complex mathematical problems, as Turing himself did with his ‘vision’ of a computer, is something that argues very forcefully against the notion that our minds are merely the ’emergent’ products of molecules in motion in our brain;
In fact, the ability to ‘instantaneously’ know answers to complex problems (to instantly ‘intuit’ answers) has long been a very intriguing characteristic of some autistic savants. Of particular interest is the ‘calculating of primes’ by autistic twins even though prime numbers are notoriously difficult for computers to find by calculation:
This following man ‘saw’ pi as a landscape that he walked through to over 20,000 digits.
The following boy seems to live in a ‘stream of consciousness’:
Quote of note at the 12:00 minute mark of the preceding video;
At the 11:50 minute mark of this following video 21 year old world Chess champion Magnus Carlsen explains that he does not know how he knows his next move of Chess instantaneously, that ‘it just comes natural’ for him to know the answers instantaneouly.
This following man, though he dislikes the autistic label, also has a very ‘spooky’ ability at math that defies materialistic explanation;
This following man recieved a very spooky ability to see to world as mathematical fractals after being mugged in the head;
The boy in this following video is a genius who composes flawless symphonies on the fly without trial and error:
Related notes on Savants;
Also of note:
Sir Isaac Newton stated this:
In fact, contrary to popular belief, almost every founder, if not every founder, of a discipline of modern science was Christian
A very strong piece of suggestive evidence, which persuasively hints at a unique relationship that man has with ‘The Word’ of John 1:1, is found in these following articles which point out the fact that ‘coincidental scientific discoveries’ are far more prevalent than what should be expected from a materialistic perspective,:
Moreover:
The following video is far more direct in establishing the ‘spiritual’ link to man’s ability to learn new information, in that it shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963. Whereas the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained at the top, or near the top, spot in the world:
Related notes:
Moreover it is impossible for Atheistic materialism to ground either morality or science
That atheism cannot ground science (or morality) really should not be that surprising. Indeed why should we ever consider the materialistic process, which is utterly incapable of ever generating any complex functional information at even the most foundational levels of molecular biology, to suddenly, magically, have the ability to generate our brain which can readily understand and generate functional information? No matter how much materialists may protest to the contrary, It is simply completely incoherent (insane?) to believe as such.
Related note:
This following study offers support that Humans are extremely unique in this ‘advanced information capacity’ when compared to animals:
Verses and music:
corrected link:
gpuccio:
You must have missed those arguments here at UD in which people asserted that information can be devoid of meaning.
Yes, it’s true.
Mung:
Yes, I must have missed them 🙂
I suppose much confusion derives from Shannon’s theory, which is not, and never has been, a theory about information, but is often considered as such.
Contemporary thought, in the full splendor of its dogmatic reductionism, has done its best to ignore the obvious connection between information and meaning. Everybody talks about information, but meaning is quite a forbidden word. As if the two things could be separated!
I have discussed for days here with darwinists just trying to have them admit that sucg a thing as “function” does exist. Another forbidden word.
And even IDist often are afraid to admit that meaning and function cannot even be defined if we do not refer to a conscious being. I have challenged evrybody I know to give a definition, any definition, of meaning, function and intent without recurring to conscious experience. How strange, the same concepts on which all our life, and I would say also all our science and knowledge, are based, have become forbidden in modern thought. And consciousness itself, what we are, the final medium that cognizes everything, can scarcely be mentioned, if not to affirm that it is an unscientific concept, or even better a concept completely reducible to non conscious aggregations of things (!!!).
The simple truth is: there is no cognition, no science, no knowledge, without the fundamental intuition of meaning. And that intuition is a conscious event, and nothing else.
There is no understanding of meaning in stones, rivers or computers. Only in conscious beings. And information is only a way to transfer menaing from one conscious being to another. Through material systems, that carry the meaning, but have no understanding of it.
That’s what Shannon considered: what is necessary to transfer information through a material system. In that context, meaning is not relevant, because what we are measuring is only a law of transmission.
The same is true in part for ID. The measure of complexity is a Shannon measure, it has nothing to do with meaning. A random string can be as complex as a meaningful string.
But the concept of specification does relate to meaning, in one of its many aspects, for instance as function. The beautiful simplicity of ID theory is that it measures the complexity necessary to convey a specific meaning. That is simple and beautiful, beacuse it connects the quantitative concept of Shannon complexity to the qualitative aspect of meaning and function.
Simple, isn’t it. Even a child would understand it…
Well, maybe not a darwinist child 🙂