It is almost — almost — amusing but then quite sad to see how objectors to design theory play with logic and worldviews issues, then run away when the substantial issues are taken up.
Let me clip from the FFT, AJ vs Charles thread to pick up these matters, but to avoid making this utterly too long, let me point here on for the underlying questions of worldviews, first plausibles and self-evident plumb-line truths such as the first principles of right reason.
While we are at it, let us observe from the diagram on the right, how worldviews issues influence everything we do as a civilisation, and how the issue arises, on whether business as usual is a march of folly and needs to be turned from to move to a more sustainable, more sound alternative.
In our day, it is pretty clear that evolutionary materialistic scientism and its fellow travellers rule the roost, but that such is inescapably incoherent, self-refuting, self-falsifying and amoral, opening the door to ruthless nihilist factionalism.
So, it is a service not only to the ID community but the civilisation to say what is not politically corrupt today, the unmentionable fact that A is A.
So, now, let us proceed by clipping some posts in the relevant thread:
FFT5: The implications of the familiar extraordinary.
In this thread, there are arguments [posted] that . . . as an observable phenomenon . . . show that we are capable of significant choice and reasoning, i.e. we are responsibly, rationally, significantly free, conscious, en-conscienced, morally governed, communicating creatures. (Indeed, those trying to object are operating on the implicit premise that we are urged by conscience toward the truth and the right; and if we were not, this world would descend into a dark, chaotic ruin in short order. It is a good thing that something urges us on to the truth and the right.)
Locke, in Sec 5 of his essay on human understanding (and yes, I add scriptural references i/l/o his cites and allusions), aptly comments:
Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them, since he hath given them (as St. Peter says [NB: i.e. 2 Pet 1:2 – 4]) pana pros zoen kaieusebeian, whatsoever is necessary for the conveniences of life and information of virtue; and has put within the reach of their discovery, the comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. How short soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect comprehension of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments [Prov 1: 1 – 7], that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own duties [cf Rom 1 – 2 & 13, Ac 17, Jn 3:19 – 21, Eph 4:17 – 24, Isaiah 5:18 & 20 – 21, Jer. 2:13, Titus 2:11 – 14 etc, etc]. Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough to grasp everything . . . It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant [Matt 24:42 – 51], who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us [Prov 20:27] shines bright enough for all our purposes . . . If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly. [Text references added to document the sources of Locke’s allusions and citations.]
All of that is in the context of rebuking a lazy, sneeringly supercilious selective hyperskepticism that will scorn more than adequate warrant for ethical theism, because it shuns the premise of moral government: accountability on plainly recognisable duty, before our Maker, Lord, Governor and utterly just Judge.
But, that is a bit quick off the mark.
Let’s start with computational substrates, whether mechanically or electrically analogue or digital or neural network. For instance a ball and disk integrator as was used in tide table machines or naval gunlaying computers is clearly a cause-effect, blindly mechanical system. If it has a fault or is badly programmed, it will err, and it cares not, it is just like Monadology’s Mill-Wheels grinding away blindly. Leibniz:
[P]erception, and that which depends upon it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is to say, by figures and motions. Supposing that there were a machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perception, we could conceive of it as increased in size with the same proportions until one was able to enter into its interior, as he would into a mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would he find anything to explain perception.
There is no recognition of meaning, no perception, no purpose, just blind cause-effect chains externally arranged to yield the solution to certain differential equations. GIGO, and all that. Likewise, the old Pentium chip neither knew nor understood nor cared about the wired in errors that led to the early recall. And, a neural network is not in principle any different. (BTW this points to serious design inferences on the relevant hardware and software in bio-cybernetics systems, but that is a secondary point.)
The primary point has been highlighted by Reppert:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as [C S] Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
In short, a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)>>
So, we have to first face mindedness and the limitations of computational substrates.
FFT6A: Last evening, in FFT5, we looked at the familiar extraordinary; it is almost amusing to see how this has been almost studiously pushed aside. One hopes that the latest focus for hyperskeptical dismissiveness, heptades, will now settle down.
At this point, we have to deal with a key conclusion in 153:
. . . a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)
What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
That’s rather like a point R W Hamming made in addressing a thought exercise that counter-balances one of the mythical paradigm cases of empirical investigation, the dropping of a musket-ball and a cannon-ball from the famous leaning tower of Pisa. And yes, the very same News who so many hyperskeptics sneer at brought this to attention:
Let us next consider Galileo. Not too long ago I was trying to put myself in Galileo’s shoes, as it were, so that I might feel how he came to discover the law of falling bodies. I try to do this kind of thing so that I can learn to think like the masters did-I deliberately try to think as they might have done.
Well, Galileo was a well-educated man and a master of scholastic arguments. He well knew how to argue the number of angels on the head of a pin [–> which is actually about location vs extension], how to argue both sides of any question. He was trained in these arts far better than any of us these days. I picture him sitting one day with a light and a heavy ball, one in each hand, and tossing them gently. He says, hefting them, “It is obvious to anyone that heavy objects fall faster than light ones-and, anyway, Aristotle says so.” “But suppose,” he says to himself, having that kind of a mind, “that in falling the body broke into two pieces. Of course the two pieces would immediately slow down to their appropriate speeds. But suppose further that one piece happened to touch the other one. Would they now be one piece and both speed up? Suppose I tied the two pieces together. How tightly must I do it to make them one piece? A light string? A rope? Glue? When are two pieces one?”
The more he thought about it-and the more you think about it-the more unreasonable becomes the question of when two bodies are one. There is simply no reasonable answer to the question of how a body knows how heavy it is-if it is one piece, or two, or many. Since falling bodies do something, the only possible thing is that they all fall at the same speed-unless interfered with by other forces. There’s nothing else they can do. He may have later made some experiments, but I strongly suspect that something like what I imagined actually happened. I later found a similar story in a book by Polya [7. G. Polya, Mathematical Methods in Science, MAA, 1963, pp. 83-85.]. Galileo found his law not by experimenting but by simple, plain thinking, by scholastic reasoning.
I know that the textbooks often present the falling body law as an experimental observation; I am claiming that it is a logical law, a consequence of how we tend to think . . .
This ties back to the view that mathematics is substantially the logic of structure and quantity, which we may freely explore because we are responsibly and rationally significantly free.>>
Again: What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
This surfaces a key issue, that two truths x and y must be such that we never have y = NOT-x; that is in a coherent world all true statements — those that accurately describe facets of reality — will be mutually compatible. I note this, fully recognising that for many, this is actually quite a difficult point today; as, various ideologies have led to a conflation of truth with perception or opinion. Hence, a conversation I had today that turned on the concept, “my truth.” Language decay is an old problem, and Orwell pointed out what could be done through new-speak and double-talk. How many are two plus two, Mr Smith?
My answer was and is, that we already have perfectly adequate words for opinions and perceptions; so, there is no need to corrupt the meaning of the precious or even vital word, truth. The truth — as Ari noted long ago in Metaphysics 1011b — says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.
This in turn brings us to the question of being and non-being, of possible and impossible being, of contingent and necessary being. Thus, of causal roots of the world, of reality. And it points to the issue of possible worlds: comprehensive enough descriptions of how things could be or are.
Impossible beings such as a square circle cannot exist in any possible world. As, core characteristics stand in mutual contradiction and cannot hold of the same thing, X, under the same circumstances. Here, squarishness and circularity.
By contrast, possible beings could exist in at least one possible world. Contingent ones would not do so in all possible worlds but would exist in at least one. I think, in 100 years there will be unicorns, as biotech will be there and people will be willing to pay to have one. Just as we seem to be seeing ever more miniature sized horses already.
Necessary beings must exist in any possible world, as they are frameworking requisites of a world existing. For instance, two-ness or distinct identity (equivalent) must be there for a distinct world to be. This is non-trivial, as distinct identity has three immediate corollaries: Law of Identity, Law of Excluded Middle, Law of Non-Contradiction.
That is, core logic is built into any possible world; including of course the logic of structure and quantity, i.e. mathematical realities. (NB: We already see here, a key reason for the awesome power of Mathematics in our world and especially in scientific work. [So much for the sneer that this thread has little or no relevance to Science.])
Back to us, as being able to significantly freely discuss our concerns responsibly and rationally, and having an inner compass-sense that insistently points to the truth and the right — conscience.
What sort of world must this be to allow such. and what must be in its frameworking structure?
First, we already saw that the denial of responsible, rational, significant freedom lets grand delusion loose and instantly ends in absurdity. Self-evidently, this is a world in which responsibly rational and significantly free, morally governed creatures are possible and in fact actual.
That’s already a huge result and it sweeps away all worldviews — their name is legion — that are incompatible with such creatures. This of course includes evolutionary materialistic scientism, its fellow travellers, radical subjectivism and radical relativism. (Cf. the chain of comments here on, above.)
Next, we face the implication of the IS-OUGHT gap, on many levels. A world with moral government has to be such that OUGHT is well-rooted in the fabric and framework of reality. Post Hume et al and post Euthyphro et al, that can only be in the very root of reality, i.e. there must be a necessary being that so fuses IS-ness and OUGHT-ness, that they are inextricably entangled in the roots of reality.
What sort of being is capable of such?
The answer is utterly challenging, and I have long thought it is best posed in light of comparative difficulties and worldview level inference to the best candidate explanation.
We need to look at serious candidates (as opposed to something like a flying spaghetti monster, which will not be a necessary being — made up from bits and pieces, i.e. composite.)
There is just one serious candidate, after centuries of debate: the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of loyalty and the responsible, reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature (thus, the law of our nature).
This is not an arbitrary imposition, if you doubt, simply put up a viable alternative: ________ (this is after all comparative difficulties analysis).
Prediction: hard to do.
This also has a further highly relevant implication. For a serious candidate necessary being will either be impossible as a square circle is, or else it will be possible thus would exist in at least one world. And, as it would be a frameworking reality, it would be present in every possible world, including our own — an actual world. (And yes, I am not saying THE actual world.)
The God of ethical theism as described, is a serious candidate [e.g. NB’s have no beginning or end, are eternal]. This means that God is either impossible as a square circle is impossible, or he is actual. And decades ago, the problem of evils used to be trotted out to make that argument, but that option is effectively dead post-Plantinga and in fact post Boethius.
Then, too, if one claims to be an atheist or agnostic, s/he implies knowing good reason to doubt or dismiss the God of ethical theism as impossible even as a square circle is impossible. It would be interesting to hear what such a reason is: _______ (esp. post, problem of evils as a serious view as opposed to a handy piece of intimidatory rhetoric).
So, now, we are at a very important threshold, the God of ethical theism is on the table as a serious candidate necessary being, root of reality that grounds a world in which responsibly and rationally free creatures such as ourselves are possible and indeed actual.
That is a momentous turning-point, and it would be interesting to see if we will hear of the viable alternatives, including reasons why such a God is an impossible being.>>
Of course, these two blanks were never ever filled in cogently. So:
FFT6C: It is worth noting the unresponsiveness to 219 and 178 above, especially at the points where objectors were directly invited to put up alternatives.
We can take it to the bank that UD is obsessively monitored by denizens of a penumbra of hostile sites. Denizens, more than willing to pounce when they see opportunity.
In short, the above blanks left unanswered speak to yet another hovering ghost or three in the room.
Here, first, the point that there is no necessary appeal to design inferences and debates to build a case for ethical theism adequate to ground commitment to such.
Second, that the atheistical objectors and their fellow travellers have no cogent answer to the need for a necessary being root to reality, nor to the point that the God of ethical theism is a serious candidate to be such (by utter contrast with the cartoonish flying spaghetti monster etc), nor to the onward point that such a serious candidate will be either ontologically impossible [as a square circle is impossible] or else will be actual.
Third, they have no cogent answer to the significance of the point that just to have a real discussion, we must implicitly accept that we are responsible, reasonable, significantly free and intelligent beings under moral government. Not least, conscience is the compass within pointing to the truth, the right and our duties of care towards such. Undermining this dimension of conscious mindedness by implying it is delusional lets grand delusion loose in our minds, ending in shipwreck.
So, we can see that the evo mat scientism picture of the world falls apart, and that there is no need to go out of our way to accommodate it. It is self-referentially incoherent and so self-falsifying.
Nor, should we yield to the trend to corrupt the concept, truth. (That, too, is part of the benumbing and warping of conscience, as say Orwell brought out so forcefully in his 1984.)
The astute onlooker will also note that we have had a worldviews discussion, not one pivoting on parsing Bible texts. Though, I have noted that this analysis is compatible with at least one key summary argument in Scripture, one that points to this sort of analysis as valid on the whole if soundly done.
Let me clip:
Rom 1:18 For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them.
20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense.
21 For even though [d]they knew God [as the Creator], they did not [e]honor Him as God or give thanks [for His wondrous creation]. On the contrary, they became worthless in their thinking [godless, with pointless reasonings, and silly speculations], and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory and majesty and excellence of the immortal God for [f]an image [worthless idols] in the shape of mortal man and birds and four-footed animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their own hearts to [sexual] impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin], 25 because [by choice] they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen . . . .
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or consider Him worth knowing [as their Creator], God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are improper and repulsive, 29 until they were filled (permeated, saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice and mean-spiritedness. They are gossips [spreading rumors], 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors [of new forms] of evil, disobedient and disrespectful to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful [without pity]. [AMP]
The passage goes on to highlight how the warping of mind and conscience ends up in a topsy-turvy world that approves evil and by implication disapproves the good. That alludes subtly to another text, from the prophet Isaiah:
Isa 5:18 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who drag along wickedness with cords of falsehood,
And sin as if with cart ropes [towing their own punishment];
19 Who say, “Let Him move speedily, let Him expedite His work [His promised vengeance], so that we may see it;
And let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel approach
And come to pass, so that we may know it!”
20 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
21 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who are wise in their own eyes
And clever and shrewd in their own sight! [AMP]
This summary rings all too sadly true as we look out across the moral wasteland of our largely apostate civilisation that has so often deliberately turned its back on the truth and has refused to endure sound instruction. Instead, we have ever so often chosen to go out in the ways of cleverly constructed errors, leading many astray into ruin.
Given an onward exchange, I think I should note from Eta Linnemann on the undermining of theology:
Theology as it is taught in universities all over the world . . . is based on the historical-critical method . . . . [which] is not just the foundation for the exegetical disciplines. It also decides what the systematician can say . . . It determines procedure in Christian education, homiletics and ethics . . . . Research is conducted ut si Deus non daretur (“as if there were no God”). That means the reality of God is excluded from consideration from the start . . . Statements in Scripture regarding place, time, sequences of events and persons are accepted only insofar as they fit in with established assumptions and theories . . . .
Since other religions have their scriptures, one cannot assume the Bible is somehow unique and superior to them . . . . It is taken for granted that the words of the Bible and God’s word are not identical . . . the New Testament is pitted against the Old Testament, assuming that the God of the New Testament is different from that of the Old, since Jesus is said to have introduced a new concept of God . . . . Since the inspiration of Scripture is not accepted, neither can it be assumed that the individual books of Scripture complement each other. Using this procedure one finds in the Bible only a handful of unrelated literary creations . . . . Since the content of biblical writings is seen as merely the creation of theological writers, any given verse is nothing more than a non-binding, human theological utterance.
For historical-critical theology, critical reason decides what is reality in the Bible and what cannot be reality; and this decision is made on the basis of the everyday experience accessible to every person [i.e. the miraculous aspect of Scripture, and modern reports of miracles — regardless of claimed attestation — are dismissed as essentially impossible to verify and/or as merely “popular religious drivel”] . . . . . Due to the presuppositions that are adopted, critical reason loses sight of the fact that the Lord, our God, the Almighty, reigns. [Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), pp. 83 – 88 as excerpted.]
There is nothing in historical-critical theology that has not already made its appearance in philosophy. Bacon (1561 – 1626), Hobbes (1588 – 1679), Descartes (1596 – 1650), and Hume (1711 – 1776) laid the foundations: inductive thought as the only source of knowledge; denial of revelation; monistic worldview; separation of faith and reason; doubt as the foundation of knowledge. Hobbes and Hume established a thoroughgoing criticism of miracles; Spinoza (1632 – 1677) also helped lay the basis for biblical criticism of both Old and New Testaments. Lessing (1729 – 1781) invented the synoptic problem. Kant’s (1724 – 1804) critique of reason became the basic norm for historical-critical theology. Hegel (1770 – 1831) furnished the means for the process of demythologizing that Rudolph Bultmann (1884 – 1976) would effectively implement a century later – after the way had been prepared by Martin Kähler (1835 – 1912).
Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) . . . reduced faith to a leap that left rationality behind. He cemented the separation of faith and reason and laid the groundwork for theology’s departure from biblical moorings . . . . by writing such criticism off as benign . . . .
Heidegger (1889 – 1976) laid the groundwork for reducing Christian faith to a possibility of self-understanding; he also had considerable influence on Bultmann’s theology. From Karl Marx . . . came theology of hope, theology of revolution, theology of liberation. [Biblical Criticism on Trial (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2001), pp. 178 – 9.]
Another text has haunted me for months as I have pondered the path of our all too patently willfully perverse civilisation:
1 John 2:15 Do not love the world [of sin that opposes God and His precepts], nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust and sensual craving of the flesh and the lust and longing of the eyes and the boastful pride of life [pretentious confidence in one’s resources or in the stability of earthly things]—these do not come from the Father, but are from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and with it its lusts [the shameful pursuits and ungodly longings]; but the one who does the will of God and carries out His purposes lives forever.
18 Children, it is the last hour [the end of this age]; and just as you heard that the antichrist is coming [the one who will oppose Christ and attempt to replace Him], even now many antichrists (false teachers) have appeared, which confirms our belief that it is the last hour.
19 They went out from us [seeming at first to be Christians], but they were not really of us [because they were not truly born again and spiritually transformed]; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out [teaching false doctrine], so that it would be clearly shown that none of them are of us.
20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One [you have been set apart, specially gifted and prepared by the Holy Spirit], and all of you know [the truth because He teaches us, illuminates our minds, and guards us from error]. 21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie [nothing false, no deception] is of the truth.
22 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed)?
This is the antichrist [the enemy and antagonist of Christ], the one who denies and consistently refuses to acknowledge the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies and repudiates the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses and acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
24 As for you, let that remain in you [keeping in your hearts that message of salvation] which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you too will remain in the Son and in the Father [forever].
25 This is the promise which He Himself promised us—eternal life.
26 These things I have written to you with reference to those who are trying to deceive you [seducing you and leading you away from the truth and sound doctrine]. 27 As for you, the anointing [the special gift, the preparation] which you received from Him remains [permanently] in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you. But just as His anointing teaches you [giving you insight through the presence of the Holy Spirit] about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as His anointing has taught you, [c]you must remain in Him [being rooted in Him, knit to Him]. [AMP]
In the end, that is the diagnosis, and the answer to the spirit of our age.>>
Now, why should we reject these diagnostic notes, given something like this from Plato 2350+ years past in The Laws, Bk X:
247, >>Plato, on the warping of the moral compass and where it leads a community i/l/o the collapse of Athens:
Ath [in The Laws, Bk X 2,350+ ya]. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical “material” elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [ –> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity] . . . .
[Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-
[ –> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only for morality, ethics and law: accident of personal preference, the ebbs and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by “winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . ” cf a video on Plato’s parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]
These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,
[ –> Evolutionary materialism — having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT — leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for “OUGHT” is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in “spin”) . . . ]
and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [ –> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality “naturally” leads to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ –> such amoral and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, “naturally” tend towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive, manipulate and crush — as the consistent history of radical revolutions over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in legal subjection to them [–> nihilistic will to power not the spirit of justice and lawfulness].>>
But isn’t all this just an excuse to dress up right-wing fundy theocratic Christofascist totalitarianism in a cheap tuxedo?
Of Lemmings, marches of folly and cliffs of self-falsifying absurdity . . .
FFT7: But, isn’t the whole exercise of a pretended ID science an attempt to dress up dubious religion in scientific clothes, with intent to impose onward some sort of right-wing Christofascist theocratic tyranny that for instance robs women of their “rights” to their own bodies — and maybe would gaol them for even a miscarriage? Etc?
I am of course outlining a summary of trends of strawman caricature argument commonly encountered over the years.
A serious-minded glance above will rapidly demonstrate that the main discussion I have made so far under the FFT theme, has been PHILOSOPHICAL, not theological, first and foremost setting the worldviews comparative difficulties context for discussion. It is in that context that I then proceeded to show why evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow travellers have been tried and found wanting as inherently incoherent, self-falsifying, necessarily false views. They cannot get us to a responsibly, rationally free, morally governed, warranting, knowing mind. So they fail the test of our being able to have a rationally guided discussion.
It will be quite evident above, that active objectors and those lurking from the penumbra of attack sites, have no real answer to this. That’s not new, I have seen that for years at UD and for decades elsewhere. Before me, the point traces back to the likes of Plantinga, C S Lewis and even leading evolutionary theorist J B S Haldane.
He aptly says:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
I invite the reasonable onlooker to scan above and see for himself, if there is a cogent answer forthcoming from the usual objectors or their backers across the Internet.
The truth will be evident, there is no non-incoherent evolutionary materialistic account of mindedness.
As for the associated amorality, radical relativism and reduction to nihilistic might and manipulation make ‘truth’ ‘right’ etc, that unanswered problem has been on record for 2350+ years, from Plato’s reflections i/l/o the collapse of Athens. If you want to see an example of the sort of misleadership that that toxic brew spews up, try Alcibiades as case study no. 1.
Resemblance to recent history is no coincidence, try out his parable of the mutinous ship of state.
Look above, to see if you can find a serious-minded grappling with such momentous issues and their implications. Try out the penumbra of attack sites. You will soon see why I have long been concerned about a civilisation-level march of ruinous folly that manipulates the public and democratic institutions only to lead us over the cliff. Luke’s real-world ship of state microcosm in Ac 27 should — should! — give us pause.
As one simple example I note that the right to life is the first, foremost, gateway right and so a civilisation that systematically dehumanises its posterity in the womb and warps medicine, nursing, pharmacy, law, law enforcement, government, education, media and more to promote and protect the holocaust of 800+ millions in 40+ years (and mounting up at a million per week now), is corrupting its soul through blood guilt, is utterly warping conscience to do so, and is wrecking the ability to even simply think straight and live by the truth and the right. It is setting itself up to be a plague upon the earth that morally taints the land, which will vomit us out.
If we do not repent of our bloody, soul-wrecking folly as a civilisation, we will ruin ourselves. And, whatever emerges from the bloody chaos and dark age to follow, will not see freedom as an important value, as liberty turned to libertinism and wicked, blood-guilty licence.
Yes, I am out and out saying we have become the enemies of sustainable liberty under just law that duly balances rights, freedoms and responsibilities.
If you want a personal motive, there it is. I come from a nation that wrecked its prospects for generations through irresponsible, wicked misleadership, agit prop, media shadow shows and blood shed. That includes a murdered auntie.
I know the hard way, that the lessons of sound history wee bought with blood and tears. Those who refuse to heed them doom themselves to pay the same coin over and over again in their futile folly.
(I have said as much, many times, but no. Those hell-bent on folly have to project garish caricatures unto those who dare stand athwart the path heading over the cliff and cry out, no.)
Anyway, the reader will simply not find a sober-minded response to such concerns.
After this, I set about a sounder foundation, several days ago now, which was of course studiously ignored. This was elaborated through pondering what sort of world has to be here for there to be creatures like us, then followed up.
All, studiously ignored in a rush to set up and knock over conveniently loaded straw men.
Let me clip key points from the last, FFT6C:
It is worth noting the unresponsiveness to 219 and 178 above, especially at the points where objectors were directly invited to put up alternatives.
We can take it to the bank that UD is obsessively monitored by denizens of a penumbra of hostile sites. Denizens, more than willing to pounce when they see opportunity.
In short, the above blanks left unanswered speak to yet another hovering ghost or three in the room.
Here, first, the point that there is no necessary appeal to design inferences and debates to build a case for ethical theism adequate to ground commitment to such.
Second, that the atheistical objectors and their fellow travellers have no cogent answer to the need for a necessary being root to reality, nor to the point that the God of ethical theism is a serious candidate to be such (by utter contrast with the cartoonish flying spaghetti monster etc), nor to the onward point that such a serious candidate will be either ontologically impossible [as a square circle is impossible] or else will be actual.
Third, they have no cogent answer to the significance of the point that just to have a real discussion, we must implicitly accept that we are responsible, reasonable, significantly free and intelligent beings under moral government. Not least, conscience is the compass within pointing to the truth, the right and our duties of care towards such. Undermining this dimension of conscious mindedness by implying it is delusional lets grand delusion loose in our minds, ending in shipwreck.
So, we can see that the evo mat scientism picture of the world falls apart, and that there is no need to go out of our way to accommodate it. It is self-referentially incoherent and so self-falsifying.
Nor, should we yield to the trend to corrupt the concept, truth. (That, too, is part of the benumbing and warping of conscience, as say Orwell brought out so forcefully in his 1984.)
The astute onlooker will also note that we have had a worldviews discussion, not one pivoting on parsing Bible texts . . .
It will then be no surprise to see that the grounding of ethical theism as a responsible worldview (by utter contrast with the radically self-falsifying and amoral evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow travellers) does not turn on design inferences on empirical signs such as FSCO/I.
Evo mat scientism and fellow travellers are utterly incompatible with the responsible, rational freedom required to have a serious, fact and logic guided discussion seeking understanding of the truth. It rules itself out so soon as we must have a serious discussion.
We then address on comparative difficulties, how can we have a world with beings such as we are.
That takes us through the IS-OUGHT gap to issues of being and non-being and rootedness of a world with moral government. Which, repeat, is a condition of serious discussion.
That points to the only serious candidate for such a root, after centuries of debate. Candidate X was duly laid out, and the open invitation was given to put forth a comparable candidate Y that does not instantly collapse.
Silence.
Silence, for good reason: something like the flying spaghetti monster is simply not serious, never mind its appallingly common rhetorical use by those who should know a lot better.
Then, a second invitation to comparative difficulties discussion was given: part of X’s bill of requisites is necessary being. A serious candidate NB either is impossible (as a square circle is impossible) or it is actual.
The challenge was given, break X’s candidacy.
Silence, again.
So — as X = the inherently good creator God of ethical theism, a necessary and maximally great being worthy of loyalty and the reasonable, responsible service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature — it is clear that there is a very good warrant to adhere to ethical theism as a worldview.
Without even engaging design theory debates.
A point that needed to be put up on the table and warranted.
Which, it has.
That’s why at 220 and henceforth, I could freely write:
you will see the stage of argument in FFT6B just above. I wonder what our well-informed skeptical interlocutors will put up as alternatives? Especially, noting that THERE IS NO DESIGN INFERENCE in the argument to date, i.e. the design inference as such is demonstrably not an inherent, inextricable part of an argument to God as root of reality. Where, note, the case I am arguing here is not based in Scripture though it is compatible with it — truths will be compatible the one with the other. And of course, contrary to the talking points I heard today, the God of ethical theism is not automatically the devil, the author of evils and confusions.
Why then has there been such a hot debate over design, and why has it been laced with accusations about creationism in a cheap tuxedo and the like?
Simple: evolutionary materialistic scientism, from the outset in modern times [this is demonstrable historic fact], has tried to come up with a designer substitute that would plausibly put the creator-God out of a job. The idea is that if the world of life and onward the physical cosmos can be explained on naturalistic grounds, the perception of design can be dismissed while wearing the holy lab coat, and belief in God can eventually be made to seem to be the resort of the ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.
That rhetorical stratagem has worked and has become institutionalised.
But at a terrible price.
First, it is ill-founded and credibly false, erecting falsity as the yardstick for judging truth. Where, science first and foremost must seek to discover the empirically grounded truth about our world.
Ill-founded, as there are credible, empirically warranted signs of design, which are copiously found in the world of life and in the structure of the cosmos.
Design theory is the empirically and analytically grounded scientific investigation of such signs, which in fact are not too hard to find. Start with the algorithmically functional text in DNA and the execution machinery of the cell that puts it to work. (This points to OOL and OO body plans. Design is evident in the tree of life from the roots up.)
Likewise, the corruption of science from definitions and outlines of its methods on up makes blatant falsity into the yardstick to judge truth by. Truth cannot pass the test of agreement with relevant falsity, and so the ideological imposition of evolutionary materialistic scientism inherently corrupts a pivotal institution of our civilisation.
So, those who hope to build a sound future will be found on the side of needed reformation of tainted science.
In that context, freed science can then return to its true path.
Such is being ruthlessly resisted because it threatens entrenched worldviews and power interests in many institutions. But, the only way to defend institutionalised and fairly obvious falsity is by means that cannot stand the cold light of truth, facts and logic. That is why we find the distortions, strawman tactics, stalking, stereotyping and scapegoating.
All of which are utterly corrosive to liberty, not just academic freedom.
And so, the time has come to find where one stands, why, even as our civilisation descends into chaos, confusion, folly, bizarre agendas and outright blood guilt all around us.
We stand at kairos.>>
We are at kairos, in the face of a civilisation hell-bent on a march of folly. It is time to think again, soberly. END
Comments
HeKS makes the distinction:
1) Is it LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE that SOME personal world-root could produce SOME world that did not contain moral OUGHTs?
2) If such a thing happens to be logically possible under some particular scenario, does that scenario serve as a coherent and plausible description of the world we actually observe.
To the first, he says "maybe", but then seems to add the qualifier such a world would be "void of any life." I don't see how this disclaimer is significant.
Suppose, at some time, the only life-forms in the universee were approximately like amoebas here on earth. Do any OUGHTs bear upon amoebas? If the root-level of reality has created a universe, with the ability, through either its structure or through some active presence of that root-level, to instigate life somewhat as we know it, why would that necessarily entail any expectation, any OUGHT, about how amoebas should behave? They would just be amoebas, and manifesting their amoeba nature would be no different than water manifesting its nature, from the point of IS but no OUGHT.
Going further, if life later developed so that free, rational creatures existed (in whatever way consciousness and rationality might slowly or suddenly come into being), then the argument I made in 193 would apply:
Given that the universe being posited can produce free, rational beings, the intent or “desire” might be that such beings are truly free: it’s up to us to figure out whatever we can about the world, including how to live with our fellow living creatures and the planet we are on, and create whatever meaning, including moral meaning, we want to. To be flippant, the attitude could be, “Here you go guys. Here’s an opportunity – see what you do with it.” This would make all the “oughts” human creations, but not anything embedded in the basic root-level of the world.
I see no logical impossibility in the root-level of reality creating a universe in which free, rational life-forms exists, and exercise that freedom and rationality with true freedom, without any superimposition of OUGHT upon their behavior.
To the second question, HeKS says,
That said, that kind of world is quite clearly not the kind of world we find ourselves in.
Now I am not arguing that the world we live in is definitely one in which OUGHT does not exist, but I also disagree that the world we live in is clearly not that kind of world. I am arguing that for this world, it is not logically impossible that OUGHT might not exists.
HeKS then says,
Instead, we see many empirical indicators that the scenario described above does not describe our reality, and that the world-root DOES hold essential positions that we would consider morally relevant, and if THAT’S the case then it seems to become logically impossible that THIS world doesn’t have moral OUGHTs woven into its fabric.
First, I continue to want to hear about these "many empirical indicators".
The only such indicator that I believe you have offered was back at 178:
We also find that these minds not only have thoughts about moral issues, but a sense that these thoughts are connected to a deeper reality, and perhaps most telling, that we feel a deep-seated compulsion that we OUGHT to do what we BELIEVE is good, whether or not we happen to be correct in discerning the moral status of some particular behavior.
I replied then that
You describe the sense of a theist, but the fact that some people feel this way is not evidence that what they feel is true. Other people (me, for instance) understand the nature of moral and other normative structures in people and society in a different way: one that does not posit their being connected to a deeper reality.
I don't believe that "many people feel" is empirical evidence for the metaphysical truth of what they feel. More broadly, if you look at religious and philosophical belief cross-culturally, both now in the world's major religions, and anthropologically over time, the empirical evidence is that people believe strongly in the truth of an extremely wide range of beliefs. I think this empirical evidence much more strongly supports the view that "oughts" are human creations, not reflections of root-level OUGHTS.
What other empirical evidence might you suggest to support your view that in this world there is an IS-OUGHT connection at the root-level?
Second, the quote above continues "that the world-root DOES hold essential positions that we would consider morally relevant."
How do we know what "essential positions" that the world root holds? A main point of this discussion is that is not logically impossible that the world-root has no "essential positions" on what we consider moral matters. Supporting this statement is what the discussion is about.
And last, the quote ends with, "it seems to become logically impossible that THIS world doesn’t have moral OUGHTs woven into its fabric."
This statement also doesn't follow, as the sentence preceding it is not supported.
"Logically impossible" means that some purely logical argument exists that the world we live in must have an IS-OUGHT connection. Empirical evidence, even if supportive (and I have argued against what has been presented so far), would not of itself be an argument for logical impossibility.
Again, I have looked back at previous posts, and found this argument in 178:
But if whatever this necessary being IS forms the basis for what reality is, then the nature of the necessary being would be properly normative for reality. Because the necessary being provides an absolute context for all of reality, it stands as the absolute standard for how reality OUGHT to be in order to be consistent with its ultimate nature and source.
This argument is much more general than the one we are really discussing. It says that everything is under a normative ought to be itself as it was created to be: everything is meant to manifest its own nature. I agree with this.
But I can reply that if the IS did in fact create a world where free, rational creatures are truly free to choose how they wish to live, without the superimposition of any specific OUGHTs at the root-level, then that is the normative ought, of the kind you are describing, that applies to us: we have to live with that freedom.
And then, succeeding this last quote, at 178, you wrote, "Because I and other theists believe it is necessary that this being must be personal ..."
Believing that the root-level being is a personal being of the traditional theistic kind is one thing, but believing it is "necessary" that it be such is another. That necessity, which would preclude the possibility of an IS without OUGHTS, is what I believe does not exist.jdk
April 26, 2017
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CR, I must admit I had a little chuckle at your quote in #208. Your quote comes from a paper entitled A Short History of Biosemiotics written by Marcello Barbieri in 2009, where he describes the struggle to get the various schools of thought on semiosis to come together and become a single and identifiable scientific program. The paper is available on my website in the bibliography.
Barbieri tells us that in order to forge cooperation between the different factions involved in semiotic studies, they had to create two postulates to get the crowd to work together. The first postulate is that “life and semiosis are coextensive”. This was necessary to divide the group from certain anthropocentric ideas about semiosis existing inanimate matter. He goes on to lay out a great deal of reasoning behind this first postulate, and indeed makes his case forcefully. The second postulate is simply that the group would have nothing whatsoever to do with the idea of intelligent design. Would you like to know how much of the paper is spent providing the reasoning behind this second postulate? The answer is none. The second postulate is merely an edict, pushed forward in an academic environment that cannot allow any room for the idea. This is hardly news to anyone even remotely familiar with the debate, and certainly does not constitute reasoning. And even at that, it is a clear mis-characterization of ID. Biological ID does not “maintain that the origin of life on Earth was necessarily the product of a supernatural agency”. That should be clear to you by now.
I find it interesting that you think an authoritative consensus should carry weight against fully documented empirical observations – and I certainly note that you provide no challenge those observations. Perhaps you are hoping to challenge the link between semiosis in the cell and the origin of a general purpose language. Good luck on that.Upright BiPed
April 26, 2017
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CR: All knowledge is variation controlled by criticism. This includes the knowledge in books, brains and even the genome of organisms. These are all variations of the same underlying principle.
Obviously criticism can improve knowledge, but it cannot be primary to knowledge, since it presupposes teleology, intelligence and knowledge. The act of criticizing presupposes a goal (e.g. to improve knowledge), it presupposes understanding of the thing being criticized, it presupposes the knowledge and ability to handle mental tools like logic, reasoning and scientific inquiry. It presupposes the ability to observe. It presupposes a rational person who is doing the criticizing — and so forth.
The same goes for variation. Mindless variation will get you nowhere.
So 'variation' and 'criticism', although they play a role in the formation of knowledge, they cannot be regarded as self-causing isolated starting points for knowledge, they exist contingent on a mental context.Origenes
April 26, 2017
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CR, I see something just now, an attempted idiosyncratic redefinition of knowledge. I simply highlight that knowledge is warranted, credibly true (and by implication credibly reliable) belief. Such involves logic of warrant, but does not commit to your grand apparatus. For one instance, the phrasing I used is so as it embraces common sense soft form knowledge which is of inductive character. Such is what is extended through scientific methods. KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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HeKs [oops, originally, UB], thoughtful points as usual. My basic point is in key part driven by the freedom required for rationality, which leads immediately to responsibility and moral governance -- notice how the very word "rationality" has a clear moral overtone. For example it seems to me there are duties of sound inference and truth. These are also closely tied to being a person. Further to this, the nature of a credible NB candidate world root is constrained by the realities of moral government of responsible, rational creatures in THIS actual world. Where a NB must be framework to all possible worlds -- imagine a world, anyone, without distinct identity and thus two-ness. I would think there is a duty of care of sound world design, rather than creating a chaos also. I note a poss-world is a sufficiently complete, coherent logical description of how a or the world may be. These are factors in my considerations as to why the sort of world being imagined is inherently not a possible world. But obviously the matter is not self-evident. KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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@KF
While you posted a chunk about authoritarianism etc, you did not actually provide a fourth. If you believe there is, kindly give it, explaining the dynamics:
I have, KF. All knowledge is variation controlled by criticism. This includes the knowledge in books, brains and even the genome of organisms. These are all variations of the same underlying principle.
From the same essay...
Relativism, Dogmatism and Critical Preference
In the light of Bartley's ideas we can discern a number of possible attitudes towards positions, notably those of relativism, dogmatism (called “fideism” in the scholarly literature) and critical preference (or in Bartley's unfortunately clumsy language, “pancritical rationalism”.) Relativists tend to be disappointed dogmatists who realise that positive confirmation cannot be achieved. From this correct premise they proceed to the false conclusion that all positions are pretty much the same and none can really claim to be better than any other. There is no such thing as the truth, no way to get nearer to the truth and there is no such thing as a rational position.
Fideists are people who believe that knowledge is based on an act of faith. Consequently they embrace whatever they want to regard as the truth. If they stop to think about it they may accept that there is no logical way to establish a positive justification for their beliefs or any others, so they insist that we make our choice regardless of reason: ”Here I stand!”. Most forms of rationalism up to date have, at rock bottom, shared this attitude with the irrationalists and other fundamentalists because they share the same 'true belief' structure of thought.
According to the stance of critical preference no position can be positively justified but it is quite likely that one, (or some) will turn out to be better than others are in the light of critical discussion and tests. This type of rationality holds all its positions and propositions open to criticism and a standard objection to this stance is that it is empty; just holding our positions open to criticism provides no guidance as to what position we should adopt in any particular situation. This criticism misses its mark for two reasons. First, the stance of critical preference is not a position, it is a metacontext and as such it is not directed at solving the kind of problems that are solved by adopting a position on some issue or other. It is concerned with the way that such positions are adopted, criticised, defended and relinquished. Second, Bartley does provide guidance on adopting positions; we may adopt the position that to this moment has stood up to criticism most effectively. Of course this is no help for dogmatists who seek stronger reasons for belief, but that is a problem for them, not for exponents of critical preference.
critical rationalist
April 26, 2017
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CR, you are still missing in action in the face of a point by point response on Saturday, to a pair of comments you made in a faded thread then tried to use elsewhere to pile on to an accusation. I suggest, that point by point response would help you to sort out many of the more problematic aspects of your arguments such as in this thread and elsewhere at UD over time. KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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TA, did you notice how (a) you had to create an example of FSCO/I in order to make an objection, (b) you have had to appeal to duties to truth, right, prudence etc, and (c) how you left off the most glaring, long-running examples of self-refuting ideologies dominating our civilisation to wit (1) radical secularist evolutionary materialist scientism and (2) the abortion holocaust of 800+ millions and mounting up a million more per week under false colours of rights and law? KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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Quick response to HeKS at 201: thanks for the clarification. I am not arguing for a materialistic view of the root-level of reality. But I am arguing against the notion that "personality is a logically necessary characteristic" if by personality is meant being personally investing in the ways humans, or any life form, OUGHT to behave.
So I'll read over this morning's post and hope to have time to respond.jdk
April 26, 2017
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1) You stated that evolution is responsible for the origin of “knowledge” in the genome. I responded that evolution requires a specific type of organization, which it cannot be the source of. How many times have I said to you “If A requires B to exist, then A cannot be the source of B” ?
2) You stated (ad naseum) that ID must tell you how the intelligence responsible for life on earth acquired the “knowledge” it posited in the genome. I responded that ID is not concerned with any ultimate source of “knowledge”, and that it was only interested in being able to empirically detect an act of intelligence at the origin of life on earth.
I stated that the origin of the features of an organism is the origin of the knowledge of which transformations of matter are necessary to construct it from raw materials. That knowledge is the what needs to be explained. Merely saying some designer “just had it” doesn’t add to the explanation because one could more efficiently state that organisms “just appeared” with it.
This was a criticism of ID as explanation, or lack there of. Namely, because our expectations for what we will experience are based on explanations, not merely induction, which is impossible because the future is unlike the past in a vast number of ways. Nor do the contents of our theories come from observations. In the absence of an explanation for that knowledge, it’s unclear how do you know the explanation of variation and selection behind biological evolution is incompatible with that knowledge.
Furthermore, I initially pointed out that specific organization is necessary for highly-accurate replication. Low fidelity replication does not.
For example, our number systems evolved along with our need to represent numbers we regularly encountered. Even our earliest, primitive ways of representing numbers, such a tallies, were useful despite not being universal. They only had to compete with other non-universal number systems. Even then, some number systems could have been universal, but rules were put into place than prevented it. So, even when brought about by people, universality rarely was the intentional goal. We stumbled upon it. The same can be said for other forms of universality such as computation.
In the same sense, primitive replicators that did not exhibit high-accuracy would be useful without the level of accuracy we see today. This was outlined in the paper on the constructor theory of life, which I originally referenced.
3.3 Natural selection is permitted under no-design laws
These conclusions imply that an accurate self-reproducer - together with an accurate replicator - is permitted under no-design laws that allow for information media. So, under such laws, it can be constructed from generic resources only, given enough knowledge: it could continue to exist, say, had a chemical lab created it.
However, one must also address the question: can accurate self-reproducers arise from generic resources only, under such laws?
Note that what the prevailing conception would aim to prove is that the emergence of accurate self-reproducers follows (with some probability) given certain initial conditions and laws of motion. This approach, informing the search for viable models for the origin of life, [25], is suitable to solve scientific problems such as predicting the existence of life elsewhere in the uni- verse - e.g., by providing bounds to how probable the emergence of those self-reproducers is on an earth-like planet. Here I am addressing a differ- ent problem: whether accurate self-reproducers are possible under no-design laws. This is a theoretical (indeed, constructor-theoretic) question and can be addressed without resorting to predictions. Indeed, the theory of evolution provides a positive answer to that question, provided that two further points are established. I shall argue for them in what follows.
The first point is that the logic of evolution by natural selection is compatible with no-design laws because - in short - selection and variation are non-specific to its end products. This can be seen by modeling the logic of natural selection as an approximate construction, whose substrates are populations of replicators and whose (highly approximate) constructor is the environment. This occurs over a much longer time-scale than that of self- reproduction, whereby replicators - constructors on the shorter scale - become now substrates.
Evolution relies upon populations being changed by variation and selection over the time-scale spanning many generations. Crucially, the mutations in the replicators, caused by the environment, are non-specific, (as in section 3.1), to the “end product” of evolution (as Dawkins put it, not “systematically directed to improvement” [27]). This constructor-theoretic characterisation of mutations replaces the less precise locution “random mutations” (as opposed to non-random selection, [5]). These mutations are all transmitted to the successfully created individuals of the next generation, by heredity - irrespective of their being harmful, neutral or beneficial in that particular environment.
Selection emerges from the interaction between the replicators and the environment with finite resources. It may lead to equilibrium, given enough time and energy. If so, the surviving replicators are near a local maximum of effectiveness at being replicated in that environment.
Thus, the environment is passive and blind in this selection process. Since it retains its ability to cause non-specific variation and passive selection again, it qualifies as a naturally-occuring approximation to a constructor. Crucially, it is a crude approximation to a constructor: crude enough that it could have arisen by chance and requires no explanation. Its actions - variations and selection - require no design in laws of physics, as they proceed by non- specific, elementary steps. So the logic of evolution by natural selection is compatible with no-design laws of physics.
The second point is that natural selection, to get started, does not require accurate self-reproducers with high-fidelity replicators. Indeed, the minimal requirement for natural selection is that each kind of replicator produce at least one viable offspring, on average, per lifetime - so that the different kinds of replicators last long enough to be “selected” by the environment. In challenging environments, a vehicle with many functionalities is needed to meet this requirement. But in unchallenging ones (i.e. sufficiently unchangng and resource-rich), the requirement is easily met by highly inaccurate self-reproducers that not only have no appearance of design, but are so inaccurate that they can have arisen spontaneously from generic resources under no-design laws - as proposed, for instance, by the current theories of the origin of life [11, 31]. For example, template replicators, such as short RNA strands [32], or similar “naked” replicators (replicating with poor copying fidelity without a vehicle) would suffice to get natural selection started. Since they bear no design, they require no further explanation - any more than simple inorganic catalysts do.(11)
I conclude that the theory of evolution is compatible with no-design laws of physics, that allow, in addition to enough time and energy, information media. These requirements do not contain the design of biological adaptations. Hence, under such laws, the theory of evolution fully explains the appearance of design in living organisms, without their being intentionally designed.
Any theory about improvement raises the question: how is the knowledge of how to make that improvement created? This includes the features of organisms and how to more accurately self replicate.
Unless something is prohibited by the laws of physics, the only barrier to achieving it is knowing how. This includes accurate self-replication, because a self replicating cell is created anew during replication by executing the recipe it contains. That knowledge is n
Designers are themselves well adapted to design organisms. A “specific type of organization” represents being well adapted to serve the purpose of accurate replication. Explanations have reach, which extends beyond the knowledge found in organisms in our biosphere. That reach is independent of whatever ID's goals are.critical rationalist
April 26, 2017
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@UB
Apparently, there is something implicit which you have yet to present, as your conclusion is not accepted by the field of biosemiotics as a whole.
From Biosemiotics: a new understanding of life
Today, the differences still exist, but there is also a ‘minimal unity’ in the field because there are two basic principles, or postulates, that are accepted by virtually all biosemioticians.
1. The first postulate is the idea that semiosis is unique to life, i.e., that a real divide exists between life and inanimate matter. This sharply differentiates biosemiotics from ‘pansemiotics’, the doctrine that accepts the existence of semiosis even in the physical world.
2. The second postulate is the idea that semiosis and meaning are natural entities. This sharply divides biosemiotics from the doctrine of ‘intelligent design’ and from all other doctrines that maintain that the origin of life on Earth was necessarily the product of a supernatural agency.
critical rationalist
April 26, 2017
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KF:
"UB, ever noticed how stoutly the selectively hyperskeptical, design inference denying perpetual objectionists resist the patently obvious concept, functionally specific, complex ORGANISATION and associated INFORMATION, FSCO/I? Even, while they have to create cases in point complete with their cause by intelligently directed configuration, just to object here in discussion threads? That is, all their objections are self-referentially incoherent and self falsifying. But ideologies do not need to be even remotely coherent in order to be very effective in seizing power and control of popular discourse, institutions and communities, even civilisations. Of course, if they then lead a march over the cliff [cf. Venezuela currently], that should not be surprising. KF"
Certainly, here are three current examples of the problem you are talking about:
The United States of America
The United Kingdom
The Republic of Francetimothya
April 26, 2017
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KF,
Let me clarify even further.
I think there are two different questions on the table here:
1) Is it LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE that SOME personal world-root could produce SOME world that did not contain moral OUGHTs?
2) If such a thing happens to be logically possible under some particular scenario, does that scenario serve as a coherent and plausible description of the world we actually observe.
To the second question, I would say the answer is a clear 'no'.
To the first question, I would answer at present that I'm not sure, but it seems like it MIGHT be logically possible. For example, it doesn't seem absolutely logically impossible that a personal world-root might not have any essential positions that we would consider morally relevant, and it doesn't seem logically impossible that a world-root might produce a world void of any life, consisting only of atoms bouncing around. Again, we're talking here only about pure logical possibility, and if this scenario is not obviously logically impossible, then it seems it would be logically possible for a world-root to produce a world without moral OUGHTs.
That said, that kind of world is quite clearly not the kind of world we find ourselves in. Instead, we see many empirical indicators that the scenario described above does not describe our reality, and that the world-root DOES hold essential positions that we would consider morally relevant, and if THAT'S the case then it seems to become logically impossible that THIS world doesn't have moral OUGHTs woven into its fabric.
In other words, what we're talking about here are possible worlds that are accessible from particular branching points. A certain set of possible worlds would seem to be accessible from a world-root that holds no morally relevant essential positions. Another set of possible worlds would be accessible from a world root that does hold morally relevant essential positions. As it turns out, we have a number of strong empirical reasons for believing we find ourselves within the latter set of possible worlds.
Take care,
HeKSHeKS
April 26, 2017
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HeKS, how do we -- from the roots -- get to a coherent (thus feasible) world, esp one with creatures such as we are in it who cannot even object to moral government without implicitly appealing to it? Bear in mind the trilemma challenge. KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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Pindi,
I think we would all benefit by pondering Newton in his General Scholium to Principia:
. . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another.
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator , or Universal Ruler; for God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say, my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of Gods; we do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles which have no respect to servants. The word God usually signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God. And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present. He endures for ever, and is every where present; and by existing always and every where, he constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is every where, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and no where. Every soul that has perception is, though in different times and in different organs of sense and motion, still the same indivisible person. There are given successive parts in duration, co-existent puts in space, but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man, or his thinking principle; and much less can they be found in the thinking substance of God. Every man, so far as he is a thing that has perception, is one and the same man during his whole life, in all and each of his organs of sense. God is the same God, always and every where. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without substance. In him are all things contained and moved [i.e. cites Ac 17, where Paul evidently cites Cleanthes]; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always, and every where. [i.e accepts the cosmological argument to God.] Whence also he is all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner not at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colours, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, or touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. [Cites Exod 20.] We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of any thing is we know not. In bodies, we see only their figures and colours, we hear only the sounds, we touch only their outward surfaces, we smell only the smells, and taste the savours; but their inward substances are not to be known either by our senses, or by any reflex act of our minds: much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final cause [i.e from his designs]: we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. [i.e necessity does not produce contingency] All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. [That is, implicitly rejects chance, Plato's third alternative and explicitly infers to the Designer of the Cosmos.] But, by way of allegory, God is said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give, to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work, to build; for all our notions of God are taken from. the ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has some likeness, however. And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy. [Cf also his Rules of Reasoning.]
KF
PS: If a blind mechanical force acts, its consequence is present by mechanism and shows low contingency. Blind chance causes show stochastic scatter. Neither are good explanations for functionally specific info-rich complex organisation, such as we see for our evidently fine tuned, c-chemistry, aqueous-medium, cell based life facilitating cosmos.kairosfocus
April 25, 2017
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UB, ever noticed how stoutly the selectively hyperskeptical, design inference denying perpetual objectionists resist the patently obvious concept, functionally specific, complex ORGANISATION and associated INFORMATION, FSCO/I? Even, while they have to create cases in point complete with their cause by intelligently directed configuration, just to object here in discussion threads? That is, all their objections are self-referentially incoherent and self falsifying. But ideologies do not need to be even remotely coherent in order to be very effective in seizing power and control of popular discourse, institutions and communities, even civilisations. Of course, if they then lead a march over the cliff [cf. Venezuela currently], that should not be surprising. KFkairosfocus
April 25, 2017
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Nothing in your #198 response addressed criticisms in #184.
CR, the thrust of your criticisms of ID were based on 1) the idea that ID must provide an answer as to where the intelligence (that created life on earth) got its “knowledge”, and 2) that evolution was responsible for the origin of the “knowledge” found in the genome.
Your first criticism is clearly a misconception of ID, and is frankly not even logical. Your second criticism is also a misconception; the specific physical organization that enables evolution to exist is obviously not explained by evolution (i.e. if A requires B for A to exist, then A cannot be the source of B).
The bottom line is that your lead arguments have been answered, yet you will not acknowledge any of it. And having withheld any acknowledgement, you now complain that I haven’t addressed your secondary criticisms.
Would you like me to criticize your appeal to RNA?
RNA is just a molecule. It is known to be fairly unstable and scarce. Most importantly, just like any other arrangement of matter in the cosmos, it doesn’t have the slightest bit of semantic or informational capacity until it’s organized in a system – a very specific system that establishes it as a medium of information, with the physical constraints required to interpret its content.
In other words, the capacity to specify something in a transcribable memory (i.e. the fundamental requirement of biology) is the product of a specific type of organization, not the dynamic properties of its constituents, like RNA.
I encourage you to read and discover for yourself exactly what those physical requirements are, particularly in an autonomous self-replicator – one that must achieve both high capacity (required to describe its system of constraints) as well as semantic closure (required to establish its primeval function).
cheersUpright BiPed
April 25, 2017
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Jdk #199
I wasn't suggesting otherwise. My comment wasn't intended as a criticism. I was merely pointing out that the theistic view of a personal first cause isn't just an add-on to the other characteristics derived from logical analysis. We conclude that personality is a logically necessary characteristic. In other words, it's not just a case of having a theistic view of the first cause and then a workable competing materialistic view of that cause. We're saying that the kind of materialistic version Pindi suggested is not logically viable.HeKS
April 25, 2017
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HeKS,
just being rational entails responsible, reasoning freedom.
Consider the required logic of structure and quantity embedded in a cosmos (by definition, a coherent world) as opposed to a chaos. Actually, it will not be possible to create a fundamentally incoherent world, for simplistic example involving square circles. A world involving unicorns, flying fairies and Giants is evidently feasible (those are contingent beings) but one involving planar figure square circles is not. The framing of a world fine tuned enough to facilitate life will indeed imply valuing life and acting consistently towards it, including care over coherence etc. So, again, from outset, a world free of oughtness from root up is not possible.
Where, world composition and effecting so far as I can see, necessarily involves complex logically driven framing as well as great power, where also a world of relevant form -- with a temporal-causal order, i.e. causally linked successive stages -- will necessarily have a beginning, per the causal form of the trilemma. That is, chicken-egg loops are not effectively explanatory of origin and infinite spans cannot be traversed in successive finite stage causal steps where each must once have been the present -- never mind clever assertions about at any given past point there would have already been a past infinity. (That would just postpone the question of infinite traversal to that point.)
Going further, reasoning creatures in a world implies moral government of same, for a great many reasons, e.g. rationality implies freedom and responsibility including truthfulness and care in soundness to reason "aright." I repeat, GIGO-bound, dynamic-stochastic processing on a computational substrate is not to be confused with responsibly free and reasoned, ground-consequent inference through rational contemplation.
Of course the world we inhabit does contain rational, morally governed creatures, us; where the nature of our biology and need for communicative nurturing society directly leads to many manifest duties of care. Indeed, that is the exact context of the moral self-evident truth used as a yardstick: it is evil to kidnap, bind, gag, sexually assault, torture and murder a young child for one's . . . obviously, demonically sick . . . pleasure.
Much of the exchange above, rhetorically, serves as distractions from and evasions of the direct challenge this case poses to systems that posit subjectivism and relativism. And onward, from the linked challenge, that we need to consider what sort of world must WE inhabit where WE are responsibly and rationally free (just to be able to have a serious discussion, obligations to truth and right etc are manifest and are ALWAYS assumed in the talking points of objectors) thus morally governed creatures.
KFkairosfocus
April 25, 2017
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In response to 197: I am sure that I have never stated, implied, or felt that considering the root-level of reality to have the personal aspects of a tradition personal God was just a frivolous add-on. I believe I've tried to respond to your posts respectfully, and have taken them seriously as thoughtful arguments.
Just saw 198: I am interested in hearing your arguments, and in continuing the discussion.jdk
April 25, 2017
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By the way, I just want to be clear about something.
At this point I'm not arguing that it is logically impossible for there to be a personal world-root and yet no moral OUGHTs. I haven't entirely made up my mind on that point. Rather, what I'm arguing right now is that in order for the existence of moral OUGHTs to become logically necessary, very little is required to be true about the world-root - much less than some seem to think - and that we have a number of empirical reasons to strongly believe that those minimum requirements are met. And again, I'll address those empirical factors more when get a chance.HeKS
April 25, 2017
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jdk and Pindi,
There are a number of logical reasons why the world root must be personal. It is not just a frivolous theistic add-on.
HeKSHeKS
April 25, 2017
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Ok, thanks jdk, that makes sense.Pindi
April 25, 2017
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to Pindi. That is a possibility that some have offered. However it leaves out the "intelligence" element that is fundamental to the design argument, and can easily be considered a purely materialistic proposal.
My posited position for the sake of this discussion accepts an intelligent source of the fine-tuning and the existence of a non-material consciousness, free will, and rationality in at least some life forms (for instance, human beings). I do this in part because I am truly agnostic about these issues, and thus consider them legitimate ideas for speculation. I also, just to repeat myself, am, in this discussion, interested in the idea that a root-level IS without an OUGHT is not a logical impossibility. That is the focus of my participation, although I appreciate that HeKS has broadened the discussion in a productive way.
And I am glad you are enjoying the discussion, and I am also.jdk
April 25, 2017
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I am enjoying the discussion between jdk and HeKs.
But jdk, why couldn't the "being" be a clockwork, mechanical, law driven force? Maybe its a thing that blindly produces universes. Is the objection to that this universe appears finely tuned? If so, I don't get that. The universes that the being blindly produces (or maybe this is the only one it has ever produced) would have laws, constraints etc. No reason why it couldn't have all the ones that our universe has.Pindi
April 25, 2017
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to HeKS at 192:
Yes, understand your confusion. I pointed out that I had not been perfectly consistent in my phrasing, although the phrase "personal being" is itself subject to having various connotations. I am envisioning a "being", whatever that means, that has the intellect and other qualities necessary to create and maintain the universe we are in, including one in which conscious, free, rational creatures such as human beings exist, but doesn't care how we behave: creates and maintains the IS but has no OUGHTS. Whether we call this a personal being because it can act intelligently or whether we call it an impersonal being because it is impersonal in the sense of not caring, is a matter of how we want to phrase things. But I am not positing a clockwork, mechanical, completely law driven force: that is not the sense in which I am using "impersonal".
As to your argument, I don't think that the fine-tuning argument implies a judgment of "life is desirable" any more than it implies that any other object in the universe (which all also require some of the fine-tuning you mention) are desirable. . At the most basic, you could say that to the root-level IS this universe as a whole is desirable, but even saying this implies that it has the personal quality of “desire”, which may not be true.
Here is a very different way of thinking about this. Given that the universe being posited can produce free, rational beings, the intent or “desire” might be that such beings are truly free: it’s up to us to figure out whatever we can about the world, including how to live with our fellow living creatures and the planet we are on, and create whatever meaning, including moral meaning, we want to. To be flippant, the attitude could be, “Here you go guys. Here’s an opportunity - see what you do with it.” This would make all the "oughts" human creations, but not anything embedded in the basic root-level of the world.jdk
April 25, 2017
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jdk #190,
I'm a little confused by your last response.
In #185, you said of my argument in #178...
[I]t is based, as you say, on the fact that “I and other theists believe it is necessary that this being must be personal …”
But that right there is the point under contention, because I am offering, as a logical possibility, that the IS of the universe is not a personal being.
In response, I asked:
would you mind telling me how you think an impersonal world-root, having neither intelligence nor free will, might have produced a world (i.e. all of reality) only a finite time ago and done so in a way that its values were finely-tuned to a tiny subset out of all combinatorial space that just so happened to allow for the existence of such a remarkable phenomenon as conscious intelligent life?
Your response to that was:
I am not positing an “impersonal world-root”
And you said you were merely positing one that "has no interest in OUGHT".
If you are not contesting that the world-root is a personal being (i.e. one with intelligence and will) then the logical force of my argument stands (given the conditions I originally stated).
In #178 I pointed out that because of the nature of the causal relationship between the world-root and the world, it would not be necessary for that world-root (I'm just going to call it "God" except in places where other terminology will clarify the argument) to actively care about the moral behavior of humans in order for objective morality to be woven into the fabric of reality. Whether God cares about the moral behavior of humans has more to do with whether or not it is reasonable to expect any ultimate consequences for our moral behavior (i.e reward or punishment). But that care is not a logically necessary precondition for a moral dimension to be written into the fabric of reality. All that is necessary is for God, as the root and foundation of reality and the one who forms the absolute context in which reality exists, to have, for 'himself', any kind of position / thought / value that we might consider as being morally relevant, such as "life is desirable". That would then form part of the contextual background and fabric of reality.
Now, you could try to argue that God, in spite of being a personal being with intelligence, knowledge, power, etc. simply holds no positions or thoughts about anything we might consider morally relevant - even something so simple as "life is desirable" - but given that the proposition on the table involves a God who would have produced a physical reality that is fine-tuned to an unfathomable degree so that intelligent life would be possible (along with a variety of other things mentioned in my earlier post that are necessary to make that outcome possible), it seems highly unlikely to be true that he holds no basic positions at all that we would consider morally relevant. Instead, even just the foundational actions we've been discussing are a powerful testimony to the fact that it considers life to be desirable outcome.
I'll address the empirical side when I have another block of time.
Take care,
HeKSHeKS
April 25, 2017
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@UB
Nothing in your #198 response addressed criticisms in #184.critical rationalist
April 25, 2017
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to HeKS at 188:
HeKS writes,
...would you mind telling me how you think an impersonal world-root, having neither intelligence nor free will, might have produced a world (i.e. all of reality) only a finite time ago and done so in a way that its values were finely-tuned to a tiny subset out of all combinatorial space that just so happened to allow for the existence of such a remarkable phenomenon as conscious intelligent life?
Although I may have not been perfectly consistent in every reply I wrote, I am not positing an "impersonal world-root": I am positing a root-level "being" (which may or may not be an appropriate word) with all the qualities of intelligence, knowledge, and power to create this universe that IS, but which is indifferent to the specific actions and events that happen within it. A being who creates and maintains IS but has no interest in OUGHT.
Back at 83, the very first thing I wrote about this was,
But I can easily imagine a coherent and possible world where a supreme being created our universe, with all the qualities necessary to produce the physics, chemistry, and biology that we see (that is, is the ground of IS), but who is supremely indifferent to the details of how the world goes, including the actions of the life forms within it (that is, is supremely indifferent to OUGHT).
And in 100,
And more broadly, one in which the world-root being takes no specific interest at all the actions of the life forms which it has instigated throughout the universe: that is, a supremely indifferent supreme being who is fully present in the IS of the universe, but has no interest in how it OUGHT to go within the physical, chemical, and biological limits and structures it has created and maintains.
jdk
April 25, 2017
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I don’t recall you actually addressing the above criticisms by either quoting them or stating them back in a way that actually acknowledged the arguments they represent.
Sure I did:
1) You stated that evolution is responsible for the origin of “knowledge” in the genome. I responded that evolution requires a specific type of organization, which it cannot be the source of. How many times have I said to you “If A requires B to exist, then A cannot be the source of B” ?
2) You stated (ad naseum) that ID must tell you how the intelligence responsible for life on earth acquired the “knowledge” it posited in the genome. I responded that ID is not concerned with any ultimate source of “knowledge”, and that it was only interested in being able to empirically detect an act of intelligence at the origin of life on earth.
Let us hope that you now grasp these issues.
- - - - - - - - - - -
The physicist Howard Hunt Pattee (now retired) is fondly known among his peers, students, and faculty to be the first person who presented outright at a major biological conference that “Life is matter controlled by symbols” – tying together Peirce, Turing, von Neumann, Crick, Nirenberg, Zamecnik, etc in a coherent understanding of genetic translation from a laws-of-motion perspective. I believe that was in 1968.
Among other things, he was trying to answer Karl Pearson’s question about being able to distinguish life from non-life (given a growing belief that life was ultimately reducible to mere chemistry). He then wrote very carefully about symbol systems and biology for almost 50 years, with his papers becoming almost foundational to the study of semiosis.
The theme of this symposium is "Communication in Development," and, as an outsider to the field of developmental biology, I am going to begin by asking a question: How do we tell when there is communication in living systems? Most workers in the field probably do not worry too much about defining the idea of communication since so many concrete, experimental questions about developmental control do not depend on what communication means. But I am interested in the origin of life, and I am convinced that the problem of the origin of life cannot even be formulated without a better understanding of how molecules can function symbolically, that is, as records, codes, and signals. Or as I imply in my title, to understand origins, we need to know how a molecule becomes a message.
More specifically, as a physicist, I want to know how to distinguish communication between molecules from the normal physical interactions or forces between molecules which we believe account for all their motions. Furthermore, I need to make this distinction at the simplest possible level, since it does not answer the origin question to look at highly evolved organisms in which communication processes are reasonably clear and distinct. Therefore, I need to know how messages originated.
How Does A Molecule Become A Message?
--H.H. Pattee, 1969
You can find some of Howard Pattee’s papers on my website, bibliography, and many more on academic edu.Upright BiPed
It is almost — almost — amusing but then quite sad to see how objectors to design theory play with logic and worldviews issues, then run away when the substantial issues are taken up.
FFT5: The implications of the familiar extraordinary.
In this thread, there are arguments [posted] that . . . as an observable phenomenon . . . show that we are capable of significant choice and reasoning, i.e. we are responsibly, rationally, significantly free, conscious, en-conscienced, morally governed, communicating creatures. (Indeed, those trying to object are operating on the implicit premise that we are urged by conscience toward the truth and the right; and if we were not, this world would descend into a dark, chaotic ruin in short order. It is a good thing that something urges us on to the truth and the right.)
Locke, in Sec 5 of his essay on human understanding (and yes, I add scriptural references i/l/o his cites and allusions), aptly comments:
All of that is in the context of rebuking a lazy, sneeringly supercilious selective hyperskepticism that will scorn more than adequate warrant for ethical theism, because it shuns the premise of moral government: accountability on plainly recognisable duty, before our Maker, Lord, Governor and utterly just Judge.
But, that is a bit quick off the mark.
There is no recognition of meaning, no perception, no purpose, just blind cause-effect chains externally arranged to yield the solution to certain differential equations. GIGO, and all that. Likewise, the old Pentium chip neither knew nor understood nor cared about the wired in errors that led to the early recall. And, a neural network is not in principle any different. (BTW this points to serious design inferences on the relevant hardware and software in bio-cybernetics systems, but that is a secondary point.)
The primary point has been highlighted by Reppert:
In short, a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)>>