Were told that reproducibility is what endows evolution (i.e., NS+RM) with the necessary power for overcoming huge obstacles of complexity.
However, does this same argument apply to the structures that organisms construct? DNA can produce, and then reproduce, an ‘eye,’ but how, exactly, does DNA produce and reproduce an architectural plan?
For example, a group of biologists, engineers and other scientists, led by scientist from Imperical College, London have used 3D X-ray imaging to explore and understand the structure underlying nests built by termites. It’s really quite incredible.
A group of engineers, biologists, chemists and mathematicians lead by Imperial College London, the University of Nottingham, and CNRS-Toulouse have looked closer than ever before at how these nests work using 3-D X-ray imaging. They found small holes, or pores, in the walls of termite mounds which help them stay cool, ventilated, and dry.
Lead author Dr. Kamaljit Singh, from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: “Termite nests are a unique example of architectural perfection by insects. The way they’re designed offers fascinating self-sustaining temperature and ventilation controlling properties throughout the year without using any mechanical or electronic appliances.”
Who would have thought that termites, using random mutations, could turn themselves into master architects!! They’re creators of “architectural perfection”.
In fact, it’s such an outstanding design that the authors tell us this:
Dr. Singh said: “Not only do these remarkable structures self-ventilate and regulate their own temperatures—they also have inbuilt drainage systems. Our research provides deeper insight into how they manage this so well.”
The scientists say the newly found architecture within termite nests could help us improve ventilation, temperature control, and drainage systems in buildings—and hopefully make them more energy efficient.
They’ve out-designed humans! Bravo!
But there is this question: where are we to locate the architectural plans for these nests? IOW, are they found in some kind of organelle in some cell somewhere? Is there some kind of termite boarding school where all this fascinating archticture is taught and learned?
Or, is this “knowledge” contained in their DNA and copied in just the same way as all DNA is copied by the cell and then transmitted? Isn’t this the likely answer?
But this implies, does it not, that DNA can contain–is the respository of, “knowledge” simply as “knowledge”? And isn’t “knowledge” the work of ‘minds’? Isn’t it only the ‘mind’ that can discover, distinguish, appropriate and value “knowledge”? If so, then isn’t the conclusion we should take away from what termites are able to accomplish one of DNA being completely capable of harmonizing itself with the work of a ‘mind’?
I suspect there are a few evolutionary biologists (Darwinists) who might disagree with this notion.
And there is the additional problem/challenge that the mounds are GROUP efforts extending over multiple generations. That is, I can accept that SOMEHOW the information needed for a single bird, or mated pair, to build a similar nest every year is “wired in” to their tiny birdbrains. But a termite mound is like Hoover Dam or something: different “work gangs” are doing apparently unrelated low level tasks that come together, ta-da!, to produce structures large enough for lions to use as observation posts that last, through constant maintenance, for decades.
Who would have thought that termites, using random mutations, could turn themselves into master architects!!
You could as well ask — and how did random mutation and natural selection turn humans into master musicians or mathematicians or programmers or chess players…?
It didn’t. Humans cells construct tissues and organs, with additional, specialized intelligence which in turn build up furthe intelligence and specialized skills as they mature. This is no different than how technological societies (the next higher level system constructed by their building blocks, humans) construct, among others computers and programs which can carry out computations e.g. to solve math problems or play chess, much better than any human.
The same principle of systems at lower scale constructing more intelligent and more specialized systems at larger scale extends to up, to social organisms, and down, all the way as far as we can see. All systems are intelligent in their specialized ways, the so called “live” and “non-live” ones (such as “dead matter), all down to any scale we know of.
Organic molecules which construct cells are live, intelligent systems, and so are atoms which construct molecules, or “elementary” particles and quantum fields which construct atoms, or any the underlying pregeometry (such as Planck scale networks) which construct “elementary” particles & quantum fields. This is plainly evident since we can witness this construction processes, which accumulate intelligence with increasing scale, everywhere and continuously all around us.
It isn’t in the DNA. I will look it up but I remember reading that if the queen dies then the workers stop. It’s as if they are getting direction from her.
Nightlight:
You could as well ask — and how did random mutation and natural selection turn humans into master musicians or mathematicians or programmers or chess players…?
OK. How did random mutation and natural selection turn humans into master musicians or mathematicians or programmers or chess players…?
Also, you seem to be suggesting that all that exists is “intelligent” all the way up to the top. Have I understood you correctly?
ET:
So the ‘blueprint’ is stored somewhere in the queen termite’s belly?
Have you stopped to consider that termites stop building because without a queen there’s no eggs, and without eggs there’s no need for a nest?
Nightlight (2):
The intelligence is in the Designer who made all things do what they do. The Designer gives to both inanimate and living creatures certain attributes and makes them behave certain ways, under different circumstances, according to the original design.
For example, in the so-called “AI” the “I” is really in the human designers, who were given consciousness (with rational understanding of meaning and purpose). However, the human designers can’t make conscious “AI” because that’s beyond the limit for human designers’ knowledge. However, could the human designers make things that would behave like ants or bees? Why not? Obviously it would require a deeper comprehensive knowledge of those insects. Perhaps that’s within the limits for human designers’ knowledge.
Any objections?
Thanks.
OK. How did random mutation and natural selection turn humans into master musicians or mathematicians or programmers or chess players…?
You were a technological project by some cell, a fertilized egg, some decades ago. It set out to make you, which was for its size a galactic scale technological project. So, with the help of its sister cells in mother’s womb, first it built up tens of trillions workers, engineers, designers, … and together they created enormous intelligent robot which helps them get around and do tasks that no cell can do on its own, just like we build gigantic cranes to lift heavy things that none of could do without it. So, they constructed you with all your attributes and talents.
Our current science and technology are not even remotely capable of designing and constructing robots at similar relative scale as that single cell did when it set out to design and build you one winter night long ago.
Also, you seem to be suggesting that all that exists is “intelligent” all the way up to the top. Have I understood you correctly?
We encounter intelligence at every level we can look at. As noted above, one cell can accomplish a feat of designing and constructing comparatively galactic scale intelligent robotic technology in nine months. Such feat dwarfs anything we can do or will be able to do from our scale up, for centuries ahead.
Similarly, molecules, atoms and elementary particles are smart enough to design and build what we call life, as another galactic scale technology from their scale up. The boundary between so called life and dumb dead matter is a temporary misconception we currently have. There is no dumb dead matter. It’s all live and intelligent at all levels that we can see. There was a long thread at UD few years ago where I described and discussed this perspective at greater length (TOC with links is at the end of this message here ).
nightlight claims that
nightlight forgot the qualifying statement at the beginning of his claim that puts it in its correct context,,,
There all better. The context for nightlight’s evidence free claim is correct now.
nightlight also claims that
So basically nightlight claims that all the intelligence necessary to construct life is ultimately contained within “dumb dead matter’ itself. According to nightlight’s evidence free fairy tale apparently the fact that ‘dumb dead matter’ acts like, well err, ‘dumb dead matter’ today and never creates anything, much less ever creating ‘another galactic scale technology from their scale up’, is simply “a temporary misconception we currently have.”
Given that this “temporary misconception we currently have”, i.e. that molecules, atoms and elementary particles are NOT smart enough to design and build what we call life’, is based on ALL the empirical evidence that we currently have, you think that it might behoove nightlight to at least move beyond his fairy tale story telling and provide some, ANY, empirical evidence that inanimate matter can create life???
But alas, nightlight’s fantasy of god-like intelligence contained within ‘dumb dead matter’ is brought crashing down by what we find in the real world via empirical evidence.
PAV:
That doesn’t follow from anything that I have said.
Have you read the book “Why is A Fly Not a Horse?” by geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti? He talks about this.
As to the main question in the OP:
And herein lies the irresolvable dilemma for reductive materialists such as nightlight, the architectural plans and/or blueprints for how any given organism might achieve its basic biological form simply is not reducible to DNA or to any other material particulars within a cell that they might wish to invoke.
In the following article, Michael Denton remarks that,’to date the form of no individual cell has been shown to be specified in detail in a genomic blueprint.’
And in the following article entitled ‘how do rod-like bacteria control their geometry?’, in the concluding paragraph, the authors conceded that, ‘We are still far from unravelling the fundamental “engineering” challenges that biology has to overcome in shaping single cells as well as multi-cellular tissues.,,,’
The failure of reductive materialism to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself.
In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
Moreover, at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, information must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method.
As well, this ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, is found to be enormous. As Dr. Doug Axe states in the following video at the 1 hour 16 minute mark, “there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.”
In the following video, it is noted that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
The following video states that “There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer, that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe.”
Moreover, this enormous amount of ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, is also found to be optimal,,
“Optimal” is not just some word that they are carelessly tossing around. When they describe a biological system as being ‘optimal’, they mean exactly what they are saying. As the following article states, “the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants.”
To provide empirical evidence for the claim that this ‘optimal positional information’ is somehow coming into the developing embryo ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, it is first important to note that, via quantum non-locality, quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,,,
And these quantum correlations which somehow arise from outside spacetime, are now found in molecular biology on a massive scale. In every DNA and Protein molecule as well as “in a wide range of important biomolecules”,,,
As a Christian, I have a beyond space and time cause that I can appeal to in order to explain these beyond space and time quantum correlations. Whereas, reductive materialists, i.e. Darwinists, (as nightlight himself made clear in his post at 7 where he attributed god-like intelligence to ‘dumb dead matter’), don’t have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to in order to explain these quantum correlations.
Of final note, besides quantum information providing direct empirical falsification of neo-Darwinian claims that say information is emergent from a material basis, the implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, or course, being the fact that we now have direct physical evidence strongly indicating that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies.
As Stuart Hameroff notes in this following video, “the quantum information,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Thus in conclusion, the ‘bottom up’ reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution is found to be grossly inadequate for explaining how any particular organism might achieve its basic form.
Whereas, on the other hand, Theism, especially with these recent breakthroughs in quantum biology,,,
,,,is found to be very well supported in its claim that God has formed each of us in our mother’s womb.
Verses:
provide some, ANY, empirical evidence that inanimate matter can create life???
The “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence. Namely, thousands of new “live” cells were created from “non-live dumb matter” (from food molecules) while you were reading previous sentence. The live, intelligent agents (molecules) have utilized for this task their galactic scale technology, their previously constructed intelligent robots (parent cells) in your body.
Your blindness to nature of this process is result of common misunderstanding of physical laws obeyed by the so-called dumb molecules. What we currently call physical laws are merely an outer, crude pattern of a far more sophisticated underlying computation that present science does not understand, classifying these currently unknown aspects as the “initial and boundary conditions” (IBC, these are the numbers put in by hand into the current physics algorithm).
Hence our present “physics algorithm” (or program) consists of the physical laws, which is the known part of the underlying computations, plus additional numbers (comparatively much larger portion of the entire physics program) representing the aspects of the underlying computations which are presently not understood.
When applying our present ‘physics algorithm’ to multiparticle systems or very small systems (where the Quantum Theory is the pertinent physical law), the IBCs are not known or controllable by experimenters, hence they are treated statistically — they are assumed to satisfy some simple random distribution, and then the expected behavior of the system over such distribution is computed using the known aspects of the underlying computation. The full underlying computation of a system is what generates the actual behavior of the system. The physical laws are merely the presently understood aspect of this underlying computation.
Note that as science has advanced, the boundary between “physical laws” and IBCs has shifted, moving some of the numbers previously called IBCs in the older theory, into a much more compact form, the new physical laws of the newer, improved theory. This is in effect a reclassification of some previously unknown elements of the underlying computation into the “physical law” category, the realm of the known elements of the underlying algorithm.
Hence, the “dumb matter” is merely our euphemism for our present lack of knowledge of the full underlying computation that actual “dumb matter” carries out to do anything. In other words we project our own dumbness about the full computations systems do onto the systems themselves, and call them “dumb matter.” As described in this post, there is already a seed for the explicitly algorithmic physics (NKS by Stephen Wolfram and others at Santa Fe institute for Complexity Science). Our present physics is only implicitly algorithmic with the formulas of physical laws being algorithms for the old style computers (paper and pencil + human brains) to carry them out.
Once the physics undergoes full transition to explicitly algorithmic NKS-style formulation (the revolution comparable to discovery of computational & algorithmic nature of cells in 1950s), the euphemistic projection of our ignorance of the real physics algorithms to “dumb matter” will become plainly evident and will fade out.
In the case of “dumb, inanimate matter” creating “life” thousands of times in your own body at this very moment, the “dumb matter” (the molecules) is utilizing their most advanced large scale technology, the cells it has built previously. This is analogous to humans utilizing already built metal trucks to transport iron ore in order to build new metal trucks.
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nightlight:
Cells do what they were intelligently designed to do- and in the case of metazoans that means create new cells from food molecules.
Cells do what they were intelligently designed to do- and in the case of metazoans that means create new cells from food molecules.
Cells build new cells to the same degree that you build new human by having a sex. That’s your contribution, minor as it is, being the ‘galactic’ scale (relative to cellular scale) AI robot built by the intelligent agents (your cells) to serve their needs, which includes a help in building new robots similar to you. The contribution of cells in building new large scale robots like us is vastly greater than our own.
But, just as your contribution to this technological project (of building new gigantic robots similar to you) is trivial compared to the contribution of the intelligent agents (your cells) that have built you (and which run you), this cellular contribution to the project is equally trivial to that of the underlying, trillions of times smaller intelligent agents (the so-called “dumb matter” i.e. the molecules) that have built those cells from the food molecules. For the latter agents, molecules, this is a vastly larger technological project — they build galactic scale intelligent robots (cells) capable of helping them build even larger robots such as humans.
nightlight:
Intelligent Design it is, then, all the way down.
ET:
Yes, I read Sermonti’s book some time back. Refresh my memory.
However, note this: if it is proteins from the queen that determines what the workers do, nonetheless this information has to be stored somewhere in the genome. That was the upshot of what I wrote.
NightLight:
Let’s ‘cut to the chase’: is intelligence material, or not?
nightlight claimed that
To which I pointed out the obvious fact that no one has ever seen “dumb dead matter” create life. In other words, nightlight has exactly zero empirical evidence that ‘dumb dead matter’ can create life. In fact I asked nightlight,
To which nightlight responded with this non-sequitur
Yet the claim from nightlight was that,,,
The claim from nightlight was not that,,,
Perhaps nightlight just does not know the difference between inanimate matter and a living organism???
As pointed out in post 8 via James Tour, no one has a clue how life arose. For nightlight to point to life and say that proves “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence” is to completely miss the point. In fact it is get it completely backwards. It is claim that life explains where life came from instead of claiming that ‘dumb dead matter’ explains where life came from, which was nightlight’s original claim.
Moreover, even if I did grant nightlight’s huge non-sequitur, i.e. that “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence”, even if I granted that huge non-sequitur, as I pointed put in post 10 and 11, ‘quantum biology’, due to quantum non-locality, requires a cause that is beyond space and time,,,
nightlight may adamantly believe that the elementary particles themselves are somehow causing these quantum correlations within molecular biology, but he simply has no empirical evidence whatsoever that what are termed ‘hidden variables’ are real.
Besides multiple mathematical theorems that have all but proven that hidden variables between particles do not exist, it has now also been experimentally confirmed that “entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do.”
So again, empirical evidence establishes that material particles cannot explain quantum correlations within molecular biology and thus a beyond space and time cause must be appealed to in order to explain what we are seeing in quantum mechanics generally and quantum biology specifically.
In short, nightlight’s model of “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence” does not have the causal adequacy within itself to explain what we are seeing in quantum biology.
Another interesting thing in nightlight’s non-sequitur argument is that he, (unlike most reductive materialists who hold matter to indeed be dead as a door nail and dumb as a rock), is holding to panpsychism
Just how smart the elementary particle may be in nightlight’s model nightlight does not say. Although he does insinuate that they are way smarter than we may fancy ourselves to be since, obviously, they can create life and we can’t,,,
I know that listening to what I may have to say in critique of his non-conventional views is not a very big concern on nightlight’s part, but none-the-less if I were given a chance to give him a piece of advice in ascertaining exactly how smart his elementary particles may be in his model, I would suggest that he go for full blown omniscience within each elementary particle! Such as they have previously done within Everett’s many world’s interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. In the MWI, not only are the elementary particles smart enough to create life, but by golly they are so smart that they can create entire universes! Now THAT is a smart elementary particle! 🙂
Many Worlds truly exposes reductive materialism in all its full blown absurdity. i.e. The material particle is given so much unmerited power in the many worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that every time someone observes a particle, instead of the wave function merely collapsing, the particle instead creates a virtual infinity of parallel universes.
i.e. Many worlds is basically saying that, instead of God, the material particle has somehow bestowed within itself the omniscient power to create as many universes as it wants or needs to in order to ‘explain away’ wave function collapse!
In short, atheistic materialist, (whether they are professing panpsychism or not), have tried to turn elementary particles into God,,
The overriding trouble with nightlight’s view in particular, i.e. that elementary particles ‘may’ be omniscient is that, in quantum mechanics, omniscience precedes the collapse of the wave function to its finite state of being an elementary particle. That is to say, a preexistent, and necessarily existing, omniscient Mind explains why the contingent elementary particle(s) exists in the first place.
Thus nightlight’s model fails on many different empirical and logical levels.
And again, I’m fairly certain that nightlight is not concerned in the least with my criticism that his model is based on pure fantasy, and that it has no real logical or empirical basis. Nightlight, like all ‘true believers’ in atheistic materialism, will in all likelihood continue to ignore me and everyone else who challenges his worldview and continue to spout his baseless nonsense as if it were not the complete and utter insanity that it actually is.
Verse:
Let’s ‘cut to the chase’: is intelligence material, or not?
Yes, the “dumb matter” is intelligent. Of course you need something to create the initial system. Science is never complete, it needs to postulate that initial system and its properties which are taken for granted. The difference in economy of assumtions between different proposed sets of postulates is what makes the difference in their value — the more economical assumptions are preferable.
The hypothesis of NKS approach (see post #7 for links to earlier much longer description & discussion) is the most economical assumption, since it starts with simple, dumb automata (which could be 2 state, on/off, automatons) at Planck scale that can replicate and connect to other simple automata, forming thus random networks. Such system, described mathematically as neural network, then builds up intelligence automatically as it runs, provided it has some global objective, such as maximizing harmony (i.e. minimizing surprise or maximizing predictability) between different parts of such network (sub-networks). The target state is similar to that of Leibniz monads, except that latter already have pre-established harmony, while the networks here seek to establish such harmony.
Note that no further intelligence needs to be postulated/added at larger scale — the intelligence builds up automatically from small to large, from inside out, as each layer constructs technology to achieve greater harmony at the next larger scale. For example humans create network at their ‘next larger scale’, technological societies, that allows harmonizing of previously non-harmonized/independent systems, e.g. internet and computers allow multiple humans to harmonize mutual actions at much farther distances and more quickly than it was possible before computers and internet. E.g. this forum harmonizes (some) actions of humans spread around the world.
Note also that the creator of the postulated initial Planck scale network has no idea what solution (of maximized harmony of the creation) the network will compute i.e. the creator is not omniscient. It delegates, as it were, the computation that seeks to maximize harmony of the creation to the creation itself. The creator only needs to be able to create neural network and provide it an objective. This is far more economical creator than the omniscient creator of conventional deism or theism i.e. this approach leaves much less outside of science than those alternatives which leave outside of science a super-intelligent creator who precomputes creation in advance and in full detail. The creator in NKS approach can be much simpler and dumber.
For nightlight to point to life and say that proves “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence” is to completely miss the point.
You miss the point of my post. The molecules presently create live cells from food molecules using their best current technology for that task, the parent cells they constructed earlier. This is no different than metal trucks and metal machinery being presently used to create more metal trucks and metal machinery. There is noting puzzling or self-contradictory in observation that creation of the first metal truck didn’t use metal truck. In that case we understand how the first metal truck was built without having metal truck, what chain of technologies led to such first metal truck.
But in case of cells, the present science doesn’t know yet what chain of technologies created by molecules led to their more advanced technology, the “live cell”. Molecules are smarter than us for that kind of problems. We are after all, their large scale robots they designed and built (using intermediary scale technologies, such as cells, they also designed and built before that), to carry out a specialized subset of tasks, kind of idiot savants. This is analogous to us building computers, which are savants for certain specialized problems/tasks, while being idiots for the rest of the problems/tasks.
and right on cue:
Like I said at the end of post 20:
Nightlight, like all ‘true believers’ in atheistic materialism
Being individualist & libertarian I don’t resonate well with churchianism (the so called organized religions i.e. the parasitic layer infesting spiritual aspects of humans in most, perhaps all, social organisms, analogous to scientism parasite infesting sciences). But not everyone unafflicted by the churchianism is atheist (this is one among cognitively enfeebling delusions that the parasite injects into the brains of its victims).
continue to spout his baseless nonsense as if it were not the complete and utter insanity that it actually is.
I see that Dunning–Kruger effect is well and alive here.
Who knew a ‘large scale robot’ could be so easily offended? 🙂
PaV- It seemed that Dr. Sermonti was saying that the queen “talks” to her colony and provides the instructions via communication. He seems to be saying that the queen and queen alone can tap into the Creator’s information stream for termites. And then, in turn, transmit that to her team. That is why they stop when she dies- the transmission stops.
Nightlight, if a bunch of elementary particles and atoms consciously decided to build me (and everybody else) as some type of ‘large scale robot’ project (for whatever reason they may have decided to take up such a large ‘super colossal’ scale project), that would mean that elementary particles would take precedence over whatever conscious observation I may make of them. Yet, that is not science reveals. In no uncertain terms, quantum mechanics reveals that my decision whether, and how, to consciously observe elementary particles or not takes precedence over the existence and even the state of elementary particles:
“It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott ,,,, to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness,”
Bottom line Nightlight, your model, (a model which would make science fiction writers blush in embarrassment), is, as far as hard science itself is concerned, irredeemably false.
We are not just passive observers!
Yet, that is not science reveals. In no uncertain terms, quantum mechanics reveals that my decision whether, and how, to consciously observe elementary particles or not takes precedence over the existence and even the state of elementary particles:
Quantum mechanics reveals nothing of the sort. There is no “consciousness” attribute or quantity in present natural science. It symply doesn’t exist as far as natural science knows. Hence QM, which is a field of natural science, doesn’t and can’t say anything about consciousness. You are confusing free style philosophical speculations by some physicists or by pseudo-scientific hucksters or by new age gurus … with natural science.
if a bunch of elementary particles and atoms consciously decided to build me (and everybody else) as some type of ‘large scale robot’ project
Well, who built you? Cells? But cells are built by atoms & molecules (presently via the most advanced technology for that task that atoms have created — the parent cells), which in turn are built by elementary particles/quantum fields.
There is no “dumb matter” at any level. How does electron know how to detect fields and particles around it and calculate how to act with incredible precision? There is underlying computational substratum (of neural network type) that computes all that. The part of these underlying algorithms that present science understands is called “natural law”, while the much larger part of these algorithms that is not understood/known is euphemistically called “initial and boundary conditions” (IBC, the free parameters, numbers, hand put into the physics algorithm [formulas + IBCs] of present physics). There are no such holes filled in by hand put numbers or random distributions, in the real physics algorithm, the one that makes Universe go.
It is the IBCs that distinguish “intelligent” systems/actions from “dumb” ones. E.g. when a basketball player throws a ball, the IBCs for the ball yield a trajectory into the hoop, while a random/aimless throw will likely miss the hoop. The first one is classified as intelligent action, while the latter a “dumb” action. In physics, whenever we deal with more than few particles, since we lack techniques/smarts/technologies to measure IBCs or compute them or control them, we simply hand put random (dumb) distribution for IBCs and at best calculate only some statistical aspects of the system behavior.
That is why the origin of life is such a major puzzle for the present science — one cannot create complex, well coordinated system such as cell, by assuming random/dumb IBCs for atoms (as we have to do now, due to our limitations) — the odds for creation of such system are much too small. On the other hand, cells are created all the time from food molecues and that is no mystery, since the IBCs for the process in that case are set by the parent cell, not as random/dumb distribution but as very specialized IBCs computed to yield the new live cell.
Hence we have dumb/random IBCs (put by hand as random distribution into the present physics algorithm) which can’t create live cell from food molecules, and intelligent IBCs (set by parent cell), which can create live cell from food molecules. Unlike our present physics algorithm (laws + fudge factor/IBCs), the real physics algorithm of molecules (that doesn’t have fudge numbers/IBCs) can create live cell from molecules — that is perfectly evident (e.g. they are doing it now in every organism).
In computational/NKS perspective of Universe and natural sciences describing it, the origin of life problem is not whether “dumb molecules” can create live cell (it is plainly evident that they can, they are doing it right now in you and me), but what was the hierarchy of technologies the molecules used to create the first live cell. We know that one technology to create live cells from food molecules exists (the parent live cells, i.e. the latest technology molecules created for such production). But for the first live cell, we need to find what was the more primitive technology than parent cell, that molecules used for the first one.
This is analogous to us using metal machinery to mine and transport ores, then to smelt them and build such metal tools. We don’t jump to conclusion here that there is paradox or impenetrable probabilistic wall in question “how did ores became the first metal machinery for mining & processing ores into metals”. The answer is obvious — more primitive technology than metal machinery was used before the first metal machinery was created. The same goes for creating the first live cell — more primitive technology than parent cell was used for that one. We just don’t know yet what that more primitive technology was (it was likely not a single one, but a hierarchy of technologies, each one used to build the next, more advanced technology e.g. a hierarchy of increasingly more complex replicators).
Nightlight states:
Well, that is the first and primary place, out of a myriad of other places, that you are completely wrong in your base assumptions.
But there is no reason for you to feel too bad, Einstein himself also falsely believed that “There is no “consciousness” attribute or quantity in present natural science.”
But before we get into the specifics of that particular belief of Einstein, let’s make a few things about consciousness clear.
Dr. Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon as well as professor of neurosurgery at SUNY, Stony Brook, states the irreconcilable properties of mind compared to the material brain as such:
Likewise, J. Warner Wallace has a similar list, (but not exact match to Dr. Egnor’s list), of the irreconcilable properties of mind compared to the material brain:
For our purposes of demonstrating that certain properties of our immaterial mind and/or consciousness are irreconcilable with materialism and are yet consistent with quantum mechanics, I will focus on three primary, even defining, attributes of consciousness, i.e. Qualia, Persistence of Self-Identity through time (and/or ‘the experience of ‘the Now”), and free will, respectfully.
It is often pointed out to atheistic materialists, in “the hard problem” of consciousness, that the specific mental attribute of qualia,,
,,, that the specific mental attribute of qualia will forever be beyond any possible materialistic explanation and/or to any possible physical examination. That is to say that qualia will never be reducible to physical ‘brain states’.
In fact, the specific mental attribute of qualia is such a hard problem of consciousness for materialistic scientists to try to explain, that many materialistic scientists, (and philosophers), will often claim that ‘consciousness is an illusion’ and that it does not really exist.
But the claim from materialistic scientists that ‘consciousness is an illusion’ is a blatantly self-refuting claim. As David Bentley Hart states, “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.”
And whereas the mental attribute of qualia absolutely refuses to be reducible to any possible materialistic explanation, or physical measurement, the other mental attributes I listed of ‘Persistence of Self-Identity through time’ (and/or ‘the experience of ‘the Now”), and ‘free will’, both of those mental attributes, unlike qualia, do lend themselves to physical measurement.
As to the mental attribute of the ‘Persistence of Self-Identity through time’ (and/or ‘the experience of ‘the Now”), Stanley Jaki states that “There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.”
And ‘the experience of ‘the now” happens to be exactly where Einstein got into trouble with philosophers and also with quantum mechanics. Einstein was once asked by Rudolf Carnap (a philosopher):
Einstein’s answer was categorical, he said:
Quote was taken from the last few minutes of this following video.
And here is an article that goes into bit more detail of that encounter between Einstein and Rudolf Carnap:
Prior to his encounter with Carnap, Einstein had another encounter with another famous philosopher, Henri Bergson, over the proper definition of time (Bergson was well versed in ‘the now’ of the mind). In fact, that encounter with Bergson over the proper definition of time was one of the primary reasons that Einstein failed to receive a Nobel prize for relativity:
Moreover, the statement Einstein made to Carnap on the train, ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement’, was an interesting statement for Einstein to make to the philosopher since ‘the now of the mind’ has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, established itself as very much being a defining part of physical measurement in quantum mechanics.
As the following researcher stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
The Theistic implications of (delayed choice) experiments such as this are fairly obvious. As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
Moreover, besides that direct experimental refutation of Einstein’s claim that ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement’, Quantum Mechanics also now confirms Stanley Jaki’s contention that “There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. ”
Specifically, the ability of the mind to extend to past moments and imagine its future are reflected in recent experiments verifying the ‘spooky’ actions of quantum mechanics.
As leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following article entitled “Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past”, “quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events”
And as the following article states, “Not only can two events be correlated, linking the earlier one to the later one, but two events can become correlated such that it becomes impossible to say which is earlier and which is later.,,,”
And as Professor Crull states in the following article “entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted,,, it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
It is also interesting to point out that this experiment for ‘quantum entanglement in time’ is very friendly to Dr. Michael Egnor’s (Theistic) contention (via Aristotle) that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance.”
And it is also interesting to note that this finding or ‘quantum entanglement in time’ also refutes Dr Vincent Torley’s strenuous objection against Dr Egnor. Dr. Torley objected that perception cannot possibly occur ‘at a distance’ since the Supernova “ceased to exist nearly 200 millennia ago, long before the dawn of human history.”
Yet, despite Dr. Torley’s strenuous objection against Dr. Egnor’s claim that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance.” and to repeat Professor Crull’s statement, the findings of quantum entanglement in time “implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
In further confirmation of Stanley Jaki’s contention that, “There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future.”, in further confirmation of that contention, not only does “quantum mechanics,, mimic an influence of future actions on past events”, but quantum mechanics even shows us that out present conscious choices determine what future will be presented to us. As leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
As well, with contextuality we find, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation”
And as this recent experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established, “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Thus, Stanley Jaki’s contention that “There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future.”, is now experimentally established by the fact that “quantum mechanics,, can mimic an influence of future actions on past events” and is also established by the fact that, “We are not just passive observers,,, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure”. In other words, besides ‘the experience of the now’ being empirically confirmed as being true by the fact that “reality does not exist if you are not looking at it”, the mental attribute of the ‘the experience of the now’ is also confirmed as being true by showing that quantum mechanics influences on both the past and future.
Thus, to sum this section of this post up, recent experiments in quantum mechanics, contrary to what Einstein himself thought was possible for experimental physics, have shown that ‘the experience of the now’ is very much a part of experimental physics. In fact, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it would now be much more appropriate to rephrase Einstein’s answer to the philosopher, Rudolph Carnap, in this way:
To continue on, Einstein, besides falsely believing that “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics”, Einstein also denied the reality of his own free will.
And again, contrary to Einstein’s logically self refuting belief that he had no free will, quantum mechanics itself falsifies Einstein’s contention that he had no free will.
As Steven Weinberg, an atheist, states in the following article, (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
Although there have been several loop holes in quantum mechanics in the past that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years those loop holes have all been closed one by one. The last major loop hole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or ‘free-will’ loop-hole:
And Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, in 2018, now closed the last remaining ‘free will loophole’ in quantum mechanics, thereby establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are not determined by any causal influences from the past, and that experimenter is therefore free to choose whatever measurement settings that may desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may find interesting.
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of measurement settings in a Bell test by using the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a super fast randomizer determine measurement settings (as is usually done in these quantum experiments).
Moreover, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loop hole by Zeilinger and company), provides a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the quote unquote ‘Theory of Everything”
To give a glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ resurrection from the dead, as the following article states, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Besides the empirical verification of ‘free will’ and/or Agent causality within quantum theory bringing that rather startling solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’, there, to put it mildly, is also another fairly drastic implication for individual people being “brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” as well.
Although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. Lewis states the situation as such:
In support of C.S. Lewis’s contention that “Without that self-choice there could be no Hell”, I only have to point to the people who are fanatically ‘pro-choice’ as far as abortion in concerned, demanding the unrestricted right to choose death for their unborn baby no matter what stage of development the baby may be at. Shoot, infanticide itself, unthinkable just a few short years ago, is now being demanded by many on the ‘pro-choice’ side.
Moreover, exactly as would be a priorily expected on the Christian view of reality, and via two of our most precisely tested theories in science, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Again, the implications for individual humans, to put it mildly, are fairly drastic,
i.e. you, with either your acceptance or rejection God and what he has done through Jesus Christ, are literally choosing between eternal life with God or eternal death separated from God:
Because of such dire consequences for our eternal souls, I can only plead for atheists to seriously reconsider their choice to reject God, and to now choose life, even eternal life with God, instead of eternal death separated from God.
Of related note:
“It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott…
It/QM proves nothing of the sort. That is one interpretation of phenomena covered by QM. There are other interpretations or formulation of the same set of empirically known phenomena, predicting exactly the same behaviors (those we know of so far) as the mystical interpretations/formulations of QM, in which measurement (let alone consciousness) plays no special role, such as Self-Field Electrodynamics (SFED, by Asim Barut), Bohmian mechanics, etc.
In the case of former, the Barut’s SFED, it becomes very clear why the measurement appears strange in conventional formulation of QM — the conventional QM turns out to be piecewise-linear approximation (PLA) of the nonlinear SFED equations and the QM measurent problem is an artifact of the approximation.
An elementary example of PLA is numerical integration used to calculate an area under some curve y=f(x) by tiling that area via rectangles as shown by image below:
Unlike the real/exact curve y=f(x), its PLA is the top outline of the rectangles, with odd looking jumps instead of the smooth curve y=f(x) it approximates. In Barut’s SFED the QM measurement mystery/problem doesn’t exist, being equivalent to “jump mystery/problem” in the PL approximation of y=f(x) area by rectangles — the apparent strangeness is merely an artifact of approximation, it’s not how the system (or curve) actually is. Hence, the QM measurement problem is like asking in the rectangles approximation of curve y=f(x), “what causes those jumps? The SFED answer is — nothing, they don’t actually exist in the real curve y=f(x).
This the second problem with your argument, in addition to not understanding that “consciousness” quantity doesn’t exist in present natural science (it’s not in any formula or prediction or postulate or definition). In the latter case, you have failed to discern between scientific theory and philosophical speculations about it.
In the fault of your “refutation” explained here, ironically you have fallen into the trap of scientism (which you usually rail against in biology regarding Darwinism) i.e. taking one (dominant/mainstream/most popular) formulation of a theory of some phenomena as the final truth, or the only possible truth, not being aware of empirically equivalent alternatives in which nothing special happens in measurement and where magic observers are superfluous.
But there is no reason for you to feel too bad, Einstein himself also falsely believed that “There is no “consciousness” attribute or quantity in present natural science.”
That is plainly evident to anyone familiar with natural science. Show me formula with “consciousness” in any natural science before you can make such proclamations. There is none.
Note that here you confusing map with the territory and that non/existence of consciousness quantity in natural science (the map) is the not the same as non/existence of “consciousness” in real world which natural science only seeks to describe. While present natural science doesn’t have consciousness quantity, my position is that consciousness does exist in real world, that it is fundamental and causally effective.
All your QM and consciousness based arguments and “refutations” are flawed, either by being crude examples of scientism or by failing to discern between statements of natural science and philosophical speculations about the phenomena of natural science, as explained in my two previous posts. All that sprinkled with a generous dose of failure to distinguish between map and territory. These flaws are a perfect example of Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
Nightlight, simply put, I have empirical evidence for my claim and you do not. Science works by reference to empirical evidence.
Moreover, if you deny that consciousness and free will have any role in quantum mechanics and in how you yourself are making your own personal and supposedly logical decisions, despite the fact that the free will loop hole itself has now been closed in quantum mechanics, (as I showed you by reference to empirical evidence in my post at 32) , and if you opt for one of your supposedly rational ‘alternate interpretations’ (of note: all ‘alternate interpretations’ are each fatally flawed in their own right), for instance you mentioned Bohmian mechanics
,,, if you deny that consciousness and free will have any role in QM and in your own thought process, then you undermine any claim that you are making a logically coherent argument in the first place.
“The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.”
This fundamental failure within the atheist’s worldview, in their denial of free will, is laid bare in the ‘argument from reason’. The following quote and videos, flesh out C.S. Lewis’s ‘argument from reason’ in more detail,,,
Bottom line NL, if you want to claim you are being reasonable in your arguments, then you must believe in free will and even also ultimately believe in God. If you want to continue to deny free will, then I am also free to ignore your arguments as being irrational in their foundational basis.
LOL
NL asks: “Show me formula with “consciousness” in any natural science before you can make such proclamations. There is none.”
LOL,,, You are one confused little puppy! 🙂 Mathematics comes from Mind and mind is certainly not the result of mathematics:
Nightlight:
You wrote:
This doesn’t really respond to my question, so I’ll rephrase it a little for clarification:
is matter, per se, intelligent?
I’ll presuppose that you’ll answer, “yes, matter is the wellspring of intelligence.”
Where did matter come from? You wrote that “something [is needed] to create the initial system.” Please clarify, if you will, what this “something” is.
is matter, per se, intelligent?
As you anticipated, yes, the “real” matter is intelligent.
This is not apparent in the present “official” physics which formulates fundamental theory (quantum field theory & standard model) via physical laws (the known part of real physics algorithm, the algorithm that runs Universe) + initial and boundary conditions (IBCs, fudge input to cover for the unknown parts of the real physics algorithm).
The IBCs for systems that have more than few particles, are assumed “random” i.e. when running present physics algorithm, the unknown/unconctrolalbe actual IBCs are replaced by hand picked simple random distributions and only statistical aspects of the system behavior are computed. Hence our current fundamental theory is only statistical and its predictions of system behavior are probabilistic, and within its concpet of matter, the matter is dumb by definition. Clearly, that is not the intelligent matter I was referring to.
But there are budding new theories, explicitly algorithmic (such as NKS, with networks at Planck scale, mentioned earlier) which could make the intelligence of real “matter” (not the “matter” of present theory, which is dumb by definition) plainly evident. In that approach, the fundamental level is a self-programming computer which accumulates and builds up intelligence as it runs.
The basic building blocks of this network, nodes and links, can be very simple and dumb on initial creation, but in the more mature state, after it has run long enough, it can be arbitrary intelligent/smart. We know this about neural networks, which are mathematical model for such networked systems.
For example, Google has recently demonstrated a fairly small neural network (few thousand nodes) Alpha Zero, which learned to play chess (also Go and Shogi, as well as other games) with only rules of chess (how pieces move or promote and what is the win/draw/loss) provided as its initial knowledge. After playing games against itself for about 4 hours, Alpha Zero became far better at chess than the best conventional chess programs, which are the result of decades of hard work by the the best and brightest mathematicians, programmers and chess players. For those unfamiliar with computer chess, these conventional chess programs are far better at chess than the best human chess grandmasters.
Yet the small neural network which started as blank slate, as a complete chess novice, increased its intelligence (in domain of chess) by just playing chess with itself (this is the so-called unsupervised learning) beyond the cream of the crop that decades of human intelligence has been able to achieve (the conventional chess programs) after playing against itself for only 4 hours.
Hence, the intelligence initially put into the system by the creator can be a lot lower than what we see in the present Universe. Of course, the creator in this perspective, need not be omniscient or even “merely” super-intelligent or know in advance what solution for the problem assigned the computer/Universe it built, the Universe will come up with. This is analogous to us building computer and programming it to compute complex motions of interacting planets, comets and asteroids. Once the program runs, it can answer quantitative questions about these motions, even though that data was not part of the program (it only knows about Newton laws, plus numeric input for specific problem — the initial positions, velocities and masses of celestial bodes we are interested in). Hence, the programmer/creator doesn’t know the answers that the program will compute.
The main difference of this (conventional) kind of computer from Neural Network based computer is that the latter is self programming. It only needs to run from blank slate initial knowledge, except for problem definition, and adjust the weights of the network links according to punishments/rewards it experiences/detects (such as those from rules of the chess, the win/draw/loss definitions in Alpha Zero).
We don’t know yet what is the problem that was given to Universe as self-programming computer (that started as initially dumb Planck scale network), what are its punishments and rewards, what are the rules of the underlying game, or what is the is full set of intermediate algorithms/sub-programs/technologies it developed while running. We only know some of its technologies and only partially, at scales from elementary particles and larger. And of course, we don’t know, and may never know, who/what is the creator, how it works and what is it trying to do with Universe computer.
Nightlight:
Two things;
(1) Who is this “creator”?
And, (2) it would appear that ‘intelligence’ can be “poured into” the material order.
You’re not very far away from ID.
This is a lot to not know. So, let’s turn it around: what do we ‘know’? We know that life exists, that it changed over time, and that we are self-conscious, intelligent beings.
If we’re not intelligent, then we can’t make sense of anything. But we do. If we’re not self-conscious, then we wouldn’t be aware that we are aware, so that the fruit of intelligence would principally be wasted. So, then, only because we are self-conscious, intelligent beings are we able to know that life exists and (with discovery over time) that it has changed.
But the correlation is between ‘consciousness’ and ‘intelligence,’ not some form of matter and intelligence.
(1) Who is this “creator”?
The science is always incomplete since it must assume without proof some starting system and its properties, the way it works. There is no way around that. Hence, natural science cannot answer the ‘first cause’ question.
But the natural science which has the fewest assumptions that must be taken for granted, is better than alternatives that explain the same phenomena with more assumptions. The computational approach (NKS) I am describing is the most economical, since except for the initial Planck scale network and its task/objective (punishments/rewards) everything at all larger scales is computed by the network as it pursues that task/objective.
Since it is known that even a simple cellular automata, on/off (2 states) in 1-dimension (each automaton has 2 neighbors in a ring) are for some automaton state change rules universal computers i.e. they can compute anything that is computable, the initial network can be very simple (two states on/off or 1/0, and just two neighbors for each node).
Note that there are only 256 different rules possible for 1-dimensional 2 state automata, thus one byte (8 bits) suffices to specify rules of state change of any possible automate system (the ‘natural laws’ for the fundamental initial universe that must be taken for granted).
And, (2) it would appear that ‘intelligence’ can be “poured into” the material order.
The advantage of the Planck scale network approach is that intelligence (for seeking the initially set objectives) accumulates as network runs, and no further intelligence needs to be added by the creator later. This approach, in addition to requiring the least front-loading, requires also the least capable creator that has to be left outside of natural science i.e. the creator need not be omniscient or omnipotent or super-intelligent. The intelligence we observe in the present universe is computed by the initially dumb network while pursuing the objective it was given.
This is similar to AlphaZero chess program which was a network given initially only the rules of the chess and objective (to maximize number of game points, with 1 point for win, 1/2 for draw and 0 for loss), but no chess knowledge (openings, endgames, strategy and tactics/combinations or useful maneuvers) or programming algorithms. After starting as complete chess novice, in 4 hours of playing chess games by itself (before it learned much, its games consisted of completely random legal moves), it exceeded the best conventional chess programs, the crowning achievements of human intelligence and creativity (the fruits of the decades of human programming of accumulated human chess knowledge, and the best search and other algorithms).
In summary, these types of systems are not given much of front-loaded intelligence. Instead they are given capability to increase their intelligence (or improve their problem solving skills and capabilities). This is analogous to giving a man a fishing net and teaching him how to fish with it, instead of giving him and all his progeny fish every day for eternity. Teaching him how to fish is a vastly more economical solution to the problem getting food than providing him food every step of the way.
This is a lot to not know.
Among those open problems, only the question “who/what is creator” is potentially outside of natural science (unless the creator left the answer encoded in the creation; I would certainly do that if I were a creator). The answers to the rest of listed problems can in principle be discovered as science advances.
Note that regarding theology of this kind of Universe, there is an unknown, possibly unknowable, first mover or creator which, unlike the God of deism, doesn’t need much intelligence or knowledge or input into creation after creating it (it’s not omniscient or omnipotent). The creator also doesn’t need to intervene in or muck with the creation after it brought it into existence.
There is also a knowable, super-intelligent, super-powerfull, all-knowing deity, equivalent to God of theism, which corresponds to fundamental Planck scale network after its ~14 billion years of perfecting itself. That is the deity that upholds and runs Universe at all scales and at all times, that knows everything that everyone does or thinks at all scales and at every moment, i.e. everything that is in principle knowable in our Universe. This deity also gets smarter moment by moment as Universe evolves. It is from computational poerspective10^80 times more powerful computer (assuming ground level of creation is at Planck scale, which is the smallest scale our present science knows, but more if it goes beyond that) than human brain or any computer of any size we can ever build.
But the correlation is between ‘consciousness’ and ‘intelligence,’ not some form of matter and intelligence.
I have discussed in several posts how the consciousness can coherently and economically fit into the computational (algorithmic/NKS) approach in that long thread mentioned earlier (hyperlinked TOC is of my posts there is at the end of this post).
as to: “Hence, natural science cannot answer the ‘first cause’ question.
But the natural science which has the fewest assumptions that must be taken for granted,”
Aside from your a-priori assumption that science must be ‘natural’, can you tell me exactly what it is that you think is ‘natural’ about science? Are intelligently designed test tubes, microscopes, telescopes, spectroscopes, computers, etc.. all ‘natural’ for you? Is setting up elaborate experiments according to the predictions of highly abstract mathematical theories ‘natural’ for you? Is analyzing the results of those elaborate experiments with extremely powerful computers to see if they match those abstract mathematical predictions ‘natural’ for you?
Exactly where does ‘nature’ come into your picture other than being the end object of study for the Scientists using instruments that they themselves intelligently designed and mathematical formalisms that they themselves intelligently envisioned in their immaterial minds?
The term ‘natural science’ is an oxymoron! Science certainly is NOT ‘natural’!
Clearly science is not the result of ‘nature’ but is the result of the intelligent design of men. Therefore for you and others to a-priorily assume that all science must be ‘natural’ beforehand is for you to artificially impose your own philosophical bias of naturalism onto science before any investigation has even begun. In short, you are sneaking you very own desired conclusion into your premises when you insist that all science must be ‘natural.’ In fact, man’s very ‘unnatural’ practice of science itself refutes your claim that all science must be ‘natural’.