My answer to this year’s Edge Question, “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”
Julien de La Mettrie would be classified as a quintessential New Atheist, except for the fact that there’s not much New about him by now. Writing in eighteenth-century France, La Mettrie was brash in his pronouncements, openly disparaging of his opponents, and boisterously assured in his anti-spiritualist convictions. His most influential work, L’homme machine (Man a Machine), derided the idea of a Cartesian non-material soul. A physician by trade, he argued that the workings and diseases of the mind were best understood as features of the body and brain.
As we all know, even today La Mettrie’s ideas aren’t universally accepted, but he was largely on the right track. Modern physics has achieved a complete list of the particles and forces that make up all the matter we directly see around us, both living and non-living, with no room left for extra-physical life forces. Neuroscience, a much more challenging field and correspondingly not nearly as far along as physics, has nevertheless made enormous strides in connecting human thoughts and behaviors with specific actions in our brains. When asked for my thoughts about machines that think, I can’t help but reply: Hey, those are my friends you’re talking about. We are all machines that think, and the distinction between different types of machines is eroding.
We pay a lot of attention these days, with good reason, to “artificial” machines and intelligences — ones constructed by human ingenuity. But the “natural” ones that have evolved through natural selection, like you and me, are still around. And one of the most exciting frontiers in technology and cognition is the increasingly permeable boundary between the two categories.
Artificial intelligence, unsurprisingly in retrospect, is a much more challenging field than many of its pioneers originally supposed. Human programmers naturally think in terms of a conceptual separation between hardware and software, and imagine that conjuring intelligent behavior is a matter of writing the right code. But evolution makes no such distinction. The neurons in our brains, as well as the bodies through which they interact with the world, function as both hardware and software. Roboticists have found that human-seeming behavior is much easier to model in machines when cognition is embodied. Give that computer some arms, legs, and a face, and it starts acting much more like a person.
From the other side, neuroscientists and engineers are getting much better at augmenting human cognition, breaking down the barrier between mind and (artificial) machine. We have primitive brain/computer interfaces, offering the hope that paralyzed patients will be able to speak through computers and operate prosthetic limbs directly.
What’s harder to predict is how connecting human brains with machines and computers will ultimately change the way we actually think. DARPA-sponsored researchers have discovered that the human brain is better than any current computer at quickly analyzing certain kinds of visual data, and developed techniques for extracting the relevant subconscious signals directly from the brain, unmediated by pesky human awareness. Ultimately we’ll want to reverse the process, feeding data (and thoughts) directly to the brain. People, properly augmented, will be able sift through enormous amounts of information, perform mathematical calculations at supercomputer speeds, and visualize virtual directions well beyond our ordinary three dimensions of space.
Where will the breakdown of the human/machine barrier lead us? Julien de La Mettrie, we are told, died at the young age of 41, after attempting to show off his rigorous constitution by eating an enormous quantity of pheasant pâte with truffles. Even leading intellects of the Enlightenment sometimes behaved irrationally. The way we think and act in the world is changing in profound ways, with the help of computers and the way we connect with them. It will be up to us to use our new capabilities wisely.
Seems like there’s a misunderstanding of Godel’s theorem in the discussion here. If a statement is undecidable, this means that there exist models of that theory where the statement is true and models where that statement is false. In the Von Neumann universe and most standard models of set theory, the Godel sentence is most assuredly true. You can prove this, just not within the axiomatic framework of set theory itself, you have to prove it in a modal approach. Then there exist nonstandard models where the sentence is false and this can proven as well.
It seems a bit naive to me to base consciousness on Godel’s incompleteness theorem. It’s clear to me Penrose’s view on Godel’s incompleteness theorem is about 60 years out of date, predating the development of mathematical techniques such as forcing. The human brain seeing that G is true is not due to the brain being a better algorithmic solver than a Turing machine, it’s due to the human brain implicitly evaluating the statement within a specific model and not actually logically deriving it. Again, there are models where G is false, so the human brain is wrong by “successfully computing” undecidable statements.
Jim V
I made the mistake of looking at the email post notifier. Too late now. If the moderator of the blog is tired of ID debates I will stop!
Not all engineering is terribly rigorous, I agree, there is a lot of ‘suck it and see’. My analogy breaks down a little, depending on the sphere of engineering activity. My late father moved from aerospace to automotive and he said that people now just say ‘it needs to be about this big’ whereas in aerospace you did a calculation. Digital Application Specific ICs are something I was involved with and you specify a schematic (or now often also use VHDL high level descriptors because of the complexity), get a chip back, and it works if you specified it right. Never heard of one where it didn’t but someone probably has. Steam turbines are more multi-faceted.
There is one important difference between ToE scenarios and product engineering I wish to highlight here. You do not throw turbine generators into the marketplace with no testing (I assume). The British Motor Industry used to do this sort of thing but that is another story. Testing for ToE is primarily the environment. For engineering, if the analogy were complete, it would be the marketplace. But you shelter your design from the marketplace/environment and iron out the bugs. And if you do not do that, your species/product fails to survive in the marketplace. That is one big difference in my view. ToE does not get an in-house test facility. Without one, close to zero complex engineered products would work or be marketable. Now someone will say that there are sequential mutations, your species designs and tests itself in stages, so you don’t need to, and they are not looking at my previous posts and have not read ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ by Behe carefully and with an open mind. In house testing guarantees the ‘intermediate mutations’ ‘survive’. Nature does not.
A strong underlying faith can blind whether that faith is in ID or ToE.
I have never said, or believed, that ToE is not a viable mechanism for mutation selection. What people like Behe (I think) and myself doubt is whether the overall big picture ToE show would have stayed on the road in practice given accurately modeled statistical outcomes. I would say that I personally have no real doubt that it would not, unless biochemistry was designed to elaborate and diversify in the first place. Which, obviously, is back to an ID position of sorts.
The ultimate outcome of scientific (or logical) reductionism seems to me to be that everything made itself out of nothing by mistake. How fundamental do you want to be in your rejection of any specified, and therefore designed, starting points? If there are none, then there are no absolute realities to our conscious concepts and experience and everyone is talking round in meaningless circles. So those people who want to enforce their ToE orthodoxy on everyone are actually ultimately implying that there is no meaningful solid reality anyway. There are only subjective sensations and evaluations within the illusion of consciousness. Why get so ‘passionate’ about it when ‘reality’ (and passion and conviction for that matter) are just chemical ToE by-products and mean nothing definite anyway? Life is meaningless, so why not let the memes be.
ID proponents like me generally refer to external (to our current physical environment) absolutes.
JimV: wrote: “‘Any mathematical statement which is truly undecidable (as opposed to merely as yet unknown whether it is true or false) must be true’ seems to me to be easily provable by the simple algorithm of considering all possible cases, one by one:
1) A counterexample to the statement exists: then it is not undecideable.
2) a counterexample doesn’t exist: then it is true.”
That is wrong on two counts.
First of all, the argument would only apply to statements of the form, “For every integer x, p(x)”. The Goldbach conjecture is just such a statement. If a counterexample exists, then the GC is decidable and false. If no counterexample exists, GC is true (and possibly undecidable).
Now consider the negation of GC. This is of the form, “There exists an integer x for which not p(x)”. To prove “not GC”, we only need an example of such an x. (Of course there is no counterexample.) If there is an example, then “not GC” is decidable and true. If there is no example, then “not GC” is false (and possibly undecidable).
So for every statement S for which your argument holds, there is a statement “not S” for which the argument is exactly backwards.
Now consider the Twin Prime Conjecture. This can be written as “For every integer x, there exists an integer y for which y > x and y is a member of a twin prime.” If the TPC is false, then there is a counterexample, some number x for which there is no y > x that is a member of a twin prime. If we find the first counterexample, then TPC is decidable and false, right? The trouble with this is, it may be the case that TPC is false, and for any integer m greater than the largest twin prime (all such m are counterexamples), it might be unprovable that there is no twin prime pair greater than m. That would make TPC undecidable and false. TPC could also be undecidable and true, since no counterexamples exist if it is true. So premise (1) is incorrect, as the presence of a counterexample does not always guarantee decidability; the statement “m is a counterexample” needs to be decidable as well (for some m that is in fact a counterexample).
I found a paper that includes the complete exposition of the Penrose example that Aleksandar was referring to:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcogprints.org%2F553%2F3%2Fpen.sel8.pdf&ei=5RjDVIThCoG0sASp9oGgDA&usg=AFQjCNFWN_pgC9xkZpp-7iRMV4nj_i2QsQ&sig2=jtVNku8ZfTGxbWWsTqB1LQ&bvm=bv.84349003,d.cWc
It looks to me like the argument is very much as I expected it to be, from the shorter synopsis I found earlier. The authors refute the argument on several grounds. First, they refute it on the grounds of two formal technicalities in the diagonalization step that amount to “It doesn’t really support the result that Penrose says it does, but perhaps these difficulties can be corrected somehow.” Second, they determine that the philosophical conclusion doesn’t follow from the argument even if the technicalities are corrected. They argue that reaching the philosophical conclusion requires either a route that involves the fallacy of denying the antecedent, or an alternate route that amounts to petitio principii. I am not certain of these refutations but they seem feasible.
Then the authors write: “But what of the final moves in Penrose’s argument? That is, what of [quoting Penrose] ‘Moreover, if we know that A is sound, then we know that Ck(k) does not stop. Thus, we know something that A is unable to ascertain. It follows that A cannot encapsulate our undertanding.’…All that remains now is to cash out the final two sentences in the previous quote. These two sentences seem to suggest that ‘our understanding’ is capable of ascertaining whether or not Γ |- ψ, where Γ is some set of first-order formulas, and ψ is one such formula. But of course ascertaining whether or not Γ |- ψ is provably equivalent to ascertaining whether or not a given Turing machine halts (e.g., see the elegant proof in (Boolos and Jeffrey 1989)). Hence, A obviously cannot solve the problem of ascertaining whether or not such implications hold. Moreover, to assume that [our understanding] can, is to beg the question in the manner discussed above (since [our understanding] would here be capable of solving the halting problem). The other horn, again, is that if Penrose retreats to the circumspect view he started with, that A simply cannot yield a verdict [on halting] (because A is only a sound procedure, in the sense that if A says “Yes” then [the subject Turing machine does not halt], and nothing more), he needs to invoke the fallacious rule [denying the antecedent] in order to get the contradiction [he needs].”
I believe this paragraph is a more roundabout way of stating my own objection (given above), that A must reverse-engineer each program it analyzes (including itself, if given that task) to decide if that program will halt on a particular input, whereas humans can “see” the conclusion only because they are given the cheat of having the specification in advance.
I maintain that Godel’s theorem has nothing to say about whether minds can be simulated. Penrose hasn’t given a compelling reason for changing that position.
For the record, one of the authors is described as a skeptic of strong AI. I did not notice whether the other author’s position on the matter was given.
Richard: Yes, you’re right. I thought of this on a walk much later. That was probably what some of my neurons were trying to tell me about my 2) because you had already covered this point in a previous comment. In way that illustrates my overall point better. Humans do have an algorithmic process for thinking (at least I do), and it is not a magical, infallible one that no machine could possibly do. Thanks for your excellent comments.
Simon Packer: I consider prototypes, finite-element models, testing, etc. as a meta-form of survival for designs. Those that don’t survive that process must evolve further before even making it to the marketplace. An analogous natural process might be the way some animals have larger litters than they can feed so that the weaker offspring don’t survive childhood. (See also human sperm – or not if you’re squeamish.) Probably whole books could be written on the evolutionary nature of engineering design (I could write at least a long article) but those who would do a great and thorough job, such as our host if he took the time to research it, have much more useful things to do. One might think that a research organization that promotes something called “intelligent design” might be doing that research but as far as I can tell, none of them seem to have a detailed understanding of how thinking and design work is done, and none plan to study those processes scientifically because they consider them magical.
Jim V
The parallels between ToE and product design will never have an exact nature partly for the very reason that a reductionist is usually aligned with ToE and is therefore not promoting the concept of a conscious design authority. Strategic planning by a long-term successful engineering company would usually include conscious activities such as long term speculative research, market research and product planning as well as the pre-prototype design stage including whatever modelling we have available. If the design is sufficiently adventurous then extensive post prototype test and re-design is probably needed, think F-35. Your product can then fight for survival, fairly literally in this case.
Regarding ‘magic’, if defined as ‘supernatural input’, you are assuming that you, or another human being, would understand the means by which a being of an altogether higher order would originate or ‘tweak’ the design.
The scientific method applied by humans is inherently limited by our own knowledge and powers of observation and analysis, combined with tools we have made to enhance our abilities here. It is therefore illogical to assume that the scientific method is not limited in scope. I agree that that scope advances, but there is likely to be a limit imposed by our own capacity as organisms. Max Planck realized this, and so do some contemporary scientists. There are strong shades of it in two books I read recently; ‘Farewell to Reality’ by Jim Baggott and ‘A Different Universe’ by Robert B. Laughlin, a Nobel Physics Laureate. Neither writer is a strong theist, as far as I know. The other side is given by triumphalists for science and technology like Michio Kaku.
The human outcomes of extreme devotion to analysis are also neatly mulled over in two recent films; ‘The Giver’ and ‘Transcendence’.
I love science but to worship it (i.e. hold it as being of ultimate veracity) is ultimately to worship (hold as having the highest capability) the logical capacity of the human mind.
Michael Behe says in ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ that there are ‘inferences to design’ in nature. I agree with him. His own department calls ID unscientific, and it is, in several senses. It is unscientific in the sense of not being directly testable. And it is unscientific in the sense that it is not actually a proposed mechanism in the normal sense, i.e. one humans can get a logical handle on and work with. This does not necessarily mean that it is not ultimate reality. I (my consciousness if you like) remain convinced that it is, for a variety of personal and logical reasons.
Simon Packer: you’re not seeing the main point. All the additional layers of “design authority” can come down to random guesses produced by churning neurons (as well as out-right accidents – many cases exist). Sure, humans have evolved ways to evolve ways to evolve ways to evolve designs, but it still comes back to individual needs and drives programmed into designers by biological evolution. So I run the Monte-Carlo “GEnius” program to design the flow path of a jet engine because my boss has assigned it to me and his boss has assigned it to him. Ultimately we all want to eat. Evolution doesn’t need anything more than random trial and error and selection criteria (we eat better or we don’t as a result of all our design activities) and memory to work. This seems obvious to me, and I can trace a lot of current designs back to a log rolling downhill (to rollers under the stones that built the pyramids, to chariot wheels, etc.). I’d like to tell the story of the first (local) motorized farm vehicle designed by Cooper Energy Services in 1854 (it replaced a large team of horses but still used two horses for steering) and a hundred other datums that illustrate and expand upon my point, but this isn’t the place. Designs evolve, dang it. Paley’s watch evolved from that rolling log (gears), among other things. Maybe humans do it faster and better with all their meta-processes – but maybe not. We still haven’t designed a super-computer anywhere near as powerful as our nanotech brains (regardless of how they process ideas and whether algorithmically or not). Of course, biological evolution has had billions of years on a massively-parallel (septillions of cells) system. Imagine the equivalent Monte-Carlo system. (You’ll have to imagine it, we’ll never be able to make one that powerful.)
In all your protests that you have logical reasons, I haven’t seen anything that negates the simple idea of design evolution as I’ve outlined it – nothing to show that it isn’t happening and couldn’t happen except the argument from incredulity/lack of understanding. As you yourself implied, lack of understanding is our problem, not the universe’s problem.
Jim V
I have been arguing from two main points here.
First, evolution by natural selection, if it produced consciousness, would have had to display conscious attributes before it produced them. This is clearly illogical. To say that consciousness was potentially there in the beginning, as someone did here, is true, but not an answer because as a reductionist, you have to hypothesize a developmental pathway in time. I have not heard a convincing answer to this. If you believe there is one, then I am all ears. Faith statements like, ‘at some stage selected reproducing organisms crossed a threshold of sophistication and hosted primitive conscious thought’ are not enough.
Second, ‘Evolution done it’ (Robert Laughlin’s humorous caricature of some of his discussions with biologists) is not enough of an answer on its own. Give me plausible detailed mechanisms and statistical analysis for a lot of significant scenarios. I have not seen them.
So you believe life would make itself on its own and sort itself out eventually, and I don’t.
There is probably little more to be said.
I fail to see how an electronic high or low could ever be perceived in the same way as our brains perceive the world around us, no matter in how complex arrangement they where placed in.
It seems like every day I see something consistent with what I’ve been writing here which adds to my confirmation bias (if that’s what it is). Just now on an economics blog discussing how to improve healthcare services, I read this:
Gall’s Law — A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. – John Gall (1975, p.71) [talking about system software design]
Thanks for listening and that’s my last comment on this thread.
Simon Packer,
As for whether consciousness was there from the beginning, I think the answer depends upon what your meaning of “there” is.
I believe the question of consciousness is actually secondary to the question of life itself. Somehow complex carbon molecules gathered enough information to create complex assemblages that can replenish themselves from the environment through metabolism and reproduce themselves. As I have stated a few times elsewhere consciousness is information gathering and processing in real time whereas the evolution of complex organisms is information processing at a slower speed.
From a structural standpoint, we find that motility and sensing capabilities of even the simplest organisms are implemented with tubulin and the cytoskeleton. Tubulin and cytoskelton are critical to neuron operation and is where Penrose and Hameroff believe to be what implements consciousness in higher organisms.
So if by “there from the beginning” we mean cilia and flagella of simple organisms I think you could make a case for it. I prefer to think of consciousness arises originally from the first development of a brain and neurological system in the bilaterians.
Simon Packer: “IMO Behe and others have thrown really major spanners into the works for both the conceptual and statistical logic behind ToE.”
“Behe’s exact terminology is actually ‘two independant, necessary mutations’. He does not say ‘two concurrent necessary mutations’, as his critics seem to assume. The real issue seems to be what Behe is really calculating for, by using 10e20^2. So it is about likelihood.”
“I find it extremely hard to believe Behe is unaware of this sort of thing. I am not even a biologist and it is pretty clear to me.”
Do you follow what Behe was doing or not? If so, why can you not explain his numbers? If not, why do you continue to look to him as a statistical champion, and to claim that he has “thrown really major spanners”?
Simon Packer: “This would be an extremely complex calculation with a lot of approximations for things like the survival advantage of the incomplete mutations. It may be that Behe’s rough estimate may not be that far off, at least close enough to evaluate the dual mutation as pretty unlikely to occur, let alone persist by selection.”
Or it may be that Behe is completely wrong, and that you are wrong to continually give Behe every possible benefit of a doubt. Quoting from Miller:
If Behe was doing his calculations before the experimental work was done, he should have a priori assumed numbers most generous to the position he was trying to discredit. That is the proper way to make your predictions robust.
As another example of Behe’s deficiency in mathematical biology, or if you prefer, biological mathematics, there is Behe & Snoke 2004 (doi 10.1110/ps.04802904)
In which Behe, a biochemist, teamed up with an astrophysicist to write a paper on population genetics and got it published in a journal normally concerned with protein chemistry and structure.
First of all, what was a journal on protein chemistry and structure doing accepting a paper on population genetics? That’s a warning sign to me.
I’m not going to go into the details of a rebuttal, because Michael Lynch has already done so:
Lynch 2005 (doi 10.1110/ps.041171805)
James Cross
Consciousness needs a physical structure of sorts. OK, maybe it can be a simple structure. But if we are buying in to the concept that everything about organisms is there for a survival advantage, then you are back (sorry) to Behe’s basic precept in Darwin’s Black Box; irreducible complexity for an arising mechanism to give a survival advantage, in this case ‘minimum apparatus to host consciousness’.
Reginald
I am not saying Behe has never made mistakes or over-simplifications in his justifications for the ‘ID inference’. I am saying that the patronizing and triumphalist manner of many of his critics is misleading. Presumably you have looked at behe.uncommondescent.com? Regarding the malaria mutation probability, there is a flow chart in the Summers paper I looked at which purports to show the mutational pathways. I am not saying Behe got it right, he did not, it seems, or if he did get it about right, not for the right reason. Neither am I presenting him as a statistical champion. I appealed for a realistic calculation of the probability of the required transport enhancing mutation arising. Has somebody done it? Before I post I just this minute found this: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/01/kenneth_miller092691.html
This is something I even should not write about. But I found trace of rumor about me spread by Chinese girls you admitted in 2013 and 2014. To clarify rumor, I HAVE TO do some trash talk about my personality. If you sense something different, here is my explanation. Otherwise please safely ignore this.
They took my things, they want to substitute me. They are scared that I will revenge them, they got there first, made friends with you, so they spread rumor to everyone that I am a terrorist with a horrible personality, bully people.
They will endanger western scientific culture.
James Cross – I believe the question of consciousness is actually secondary to the question of life itself. Somehow complex carbon molecules gathered enough information to create complex assemblages that can replenish themselves from the environment through metabolism and reproduce themselves. As I have stated a few times elsewhere consciousness is information gathering and processing in real time whereas the evolution of complex organisms is information processing at a slower speed.
I agree to some extent, but the relation is the subject of much speculation in evolutionary psychology. I have a book about man as machine called The Human Design, referring to the design for a machine rather than by God. You are welcome to read in from skydrive at http://1drv.ms/1tnKM6f
A summary of the issue is on page 56 of my book –
“Neurons represent all sites in an experience that integrates in one brain for “thoughts about feelings”. This is correlated, and I correlate chemistry to physics rather than by causation. Action-reaction in each of the four rigors has an intact mutuality of mass and charge, as causation securely in each rigor. Physics is a Big Bang of particles, and chemistry is landscapes of compounds. They are bridged by supernovae to build heat as a Periodic Table, for landscapes to use that heat. Correlation is direct, but known as it plays out by chemistry. Biology is cells, and psychology is neuron cells. They are bridged by plant cells to store heat for use by animal cells. Their correlation is direct, but known as it plays out by safely observing neuron cells representing cell biology in vivo.”
This points to the proper level of explanation, which is not, as currently supposed, “random mutation selected by being able to survive”. In fact, DNA merely promotes the bonding of atoms in a landscape in which it evolves, and it merely uses regular chemicals for anatomies. Life is basically an embodiment of a landscape of gasses lifting (lungs), solids falling (gut), minerals twisting (spine), and liquids flowing (heart).
DNA just uses what is already there, and it is inevitable that such an embodiment will survive not only within a environment, but as a part of it, being comprised of it in an intact biological form. All very simple and mechanical, to match the human embodiment, which is a machine to range across landscapes.
Another way of explaining it in terms of physics, to get to root machine level, is by lower orbital bonding by atoms to compound. That is the driver, across regular seasons with regular gravitation, and regular chemicals in regular layers of gasses, minerals, liquids and solids. A machine made from basics in proper order to range across the landscape “of which it is composed”.
All atoms seek lower orbitals in boding, and on Earth under a Sun they store heat in plants and lose it in animals. That is a real driver, not merely an overarching notion of random mutation that is inevitably selected if it survives. Mutation has a context of chemical landscapes available to construct anatomies in the first place.
“First, evolution by natural selection, if it produced consciousness, would have had to display conscious attributes before it produced them. This is clearly illogical.”
If “this” refers to the preceding sentence, then I agree. It makes as much sense to me as saying that in order to evolve eyes, evolution would itself have to have eyes.
On the other hand, if you mean simpler precursors among biological species, of course they exist. As my Gall’s Law quote suggested, a characteristic of evolution is to start with a simple system and add features to arrive at a complex system. Thus you have flat worms that can memorize a maze, monkeys that can count, add, and subtract numbers up to about eight, dogs that will recognize their spoken names and other words, apes that can learn sign language, and many other stages between those.
I promised myself I wouldn’t derail this thread with my explanation of consciousness, and I’ll keep that promise, although I failed my promise to stop commenting. I broke that because you keep making statements that I disagree with, and I feel I should be able to make you see why. For instance, I don’t see how lack of understanding of consciousness entitles you to dismiss the evidence which any engineer can see from their own experience, that designs evolve – just as the counter-intuitiveness of Quantum Mechanics doesn’t mean you can dismiss the Stern-Gerlach experiments. So when Paley imagined seeing a watch in the middle of a forest and saying, aha, the watch was designed and so were the trees, he could have as well said, the trees evolved and so did the watch. Because if you watch closely, that’s all you see happening in design work. There is nothing magical about it and no evidence from it which would justify the huge leap to an unknown magical designer using some non-evolutionary process which no one has ever seen or can explain. That step to me is the illogical one. The fact that you and I don’t understand everything evolution has produced over the last three billion years and never will doesn’t seem illogical to me at all. Biological evolution and engineering design don’t make perfect products – once a product is good enough to survive in the marketplace, it ships.
You dismiss the statement, “Evolution did it”, although you must know all the hard and ongoing work that scientists have done and are doing that support that statement. (Something like 20,000 peer-reviewed, published papers on it per year, the last time I checked.) Whereas, among those who say something else did it, where is their research on that something else? Where is their positive evidence of it? Where is their research on how brains work and how the design process has worked historically?
When a meteorite crosses the sky, I’m satisfied to say that gravity did it, because the properties of gravity have been studied in simpler situations. I don’t demand a statistical analysis of where it came from and what path it followed before I decide that the notion of intelligent falling doesn’t explain things as well.
Jim V – “You dismiss the statement, “Evolution did it”, although you must know all the hard and ongoing work that scientists have done and are doing that support that statement. (Something like 20,000 peer-reviewed, published papers on it per year, the last time I checked.) Whereas, among those who say something else did it, where is their research on that something else? Where is their positive evidence of it? Where is their research on how brains work and how the design process has worked historically? ”
I cover this quite well in my book. Its true that the prevailing “evolution by natural selection” is de rigeur, and will probably be universally accepted in the many papers. Let’s leave random mutation for the moment, as epigenetics and immunology might have something to say about that, but in general those are the prevailing views. I accept natural selection and a modified version of mutation, but its still a superficial level. Correct enough, but stifling in its superficiality.
You will see from the simple scheme I outline how lower orbital bonding across pre existing chemistry is the way to progress, and how that would be regular on calm landscapes with the proportions of heavy elements created in supernovae. Our mantle as a rocky inner planet has the approximate proportions created in supernovae. DNA, once formed uses that chemistry for anatomies as embodiments.
You won’t read that in any of the 20,000 paper last year, but you may find it difficult to overturn, and once on that reliable track, it follows through to areas way beyond current analyses in biology (or physics). I am not a scientist, just a lawyer who likes to dabble and apply my own skills at evaluating facts & logic. It can be done. There is much progress to be made by introduce NEW analyses and approaches.
John Barrett
Neither do I
Jim V
You are kind of right, with eyes, except consciousness is harder to define and analyse into components. it also represent s a step change in the evolution of life, and one we still see absent in most life on earth (measured by mass anyway). Personally I struggle with eyes and trees evolving by naturalisti means only anyway; back to Behe and books like ‘In Six Days’. (I am not a young earther btw).
My ‘evolution done it’ is a quote. Robert B. Laughlin is quite humorous here. ‘(ToE) has come to function as an antitheory, called on to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimise questionable findings. Your protein defies the laws of mass action. ‘Evolution did it’. Your complicated mess of chemical reactions turned into a chicken. Same answer. The human brain works on principles no computer can emulate. Same answer. (Laughlin ‘A Different Universe’ pp168-169.) Anyway I digress for light relief/emotional support. As I said, I don’t even think the guy is a theist. (I am , in case you hadn’t worked it out).
Marcus
I cannot pretend to follow you at every point and obviously have not read your book. I see a few points.
1) You propose mechanisms rooted in physical science. Again, you would need statistical proof, not just mechanisms. And where you cannot realistically derive these, you need to hand off to representative real world experiments. Thought experiments are wonderful, but especially so when verified (Einstein/Eddington/General Relativity comes to mind).
2) Your scenarios are even more complex than traditional ToE an therefore even harder to model and verify.
3) Oddly enough, Laughlin’s book I mentioned centres largely on a property he calls ’emergence’. Although he is a high calibre physicist, this book (‘A Different Universe’) is one of subjective impressions about science and life; more, if I may say, the domain of a lawyer. Anyway, ’emergence’ he sees as the tendency of matter to display surprising order for no obvious or well understood reason. He gives the simple example of crystals of some element which display a periodic, fixed, irregularity every few (n) atoms. I can’t find the page, but n is say ‘2317’. No one knows why. Life could be seen as an inevitable emergent outcome of basic matter. Now we don’t understand basic matter that well, as Sean would tell us, so it remains a speculation. Your arguments seem to be more associated with entropy. (Boltzmann’s Law of entropy on a wall is as at the top of the page here!)
3) I believe microbiology/biochemistry is headed in the direction that genes, understood simply as DNA/RNA sequences, are only part of the phenotype defining story, as you say.
Simon Packer “I cannot pretend to follow you at every point and obviously have not read your book.”
Not a good start.
” I see a few points.
1) You propose mechanisms rooted in physical science. Again, you would need statistical proof, not just mechanisms. And where you cannot realistically derive these, you need to hand off to representative real world experiments. Thought experiments are wonderful, but especially so when verified (Einstein/Eddington/General Relativity comes to mind).”
Really, I can’t just point to the undeniable fact that atoms seek lower orbitals in bonding, and use heat exchange on earth’s surface to evolve anatomies? I think indeed I can. I do not think that a completely unbroken thread of bonding by heat gain in plants and loss in animals on Earth’s surface requires anything except pointing out that fact and using it effectively. You haven’t read the book so explaining this further is a bit futile. Just look at Diagram 2 & 3 on pages 9 & 10 and the surrounding discussion – its dead basic – no need for analyses which you say are necessary but I say are not.
” 2) Your scenarios are even more complex than traditional ToE an therefore even harder to model and verify.”
Which ones? Name them. How is that so, if you cant say you understand it and haven’t read it? I’ll take that as an empty comment
“3) Oddly enough, Laughlin’s book I mentioned centres largely on a property he calls ‘emergence’. Although he is a high calibre physicist, this book (‘A Different Universe’) is one of subjective impressions about science and life; more, if I may say, the domain of a lawyer. Anyway, ‘emergence’ he sees as the tendency of matter to display surprising order for no obvious or well understood reason. He gives the simple example of crystals of some element which display a periodic, fixed, irregularity every few (n) atoms. I can’t find the page, but n is say ‘2317’. No one knows why. Life could be seen as an inevitable emergent outcome of basic matter. Now we don’t understand basic matter that well, as Sean would tell us, so it remains a speculation. Your arguments seem to be more associated with entropy. (Boltzmann’s Law of entropy on a wall is as at the top of the page here!)”
Emergence is ignorance, sorry. The idea that a whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts, or that wholes have parts that can be compared is a bad logical error. By definition a whole has no distinguishable parts because it is one whole.
For example, chemistry has little idea of atomic potential to bond, in cell biology, or neuron cells. The same neutrons, protons & electrons change markedly and in ways that science doesn’t know how to predict from “the neutron”. All we can do is wait and see how it plays out from supernovae to Earth’s surface, and use retrospect to see what “the neutron” can create when compressed in a supernova – a Periodic Table. Did that emerge from aggregated neutrons decaying at a Big Bang? Is all change now called emergence, or is emergence just an obfuscation? The latter.
The properties do not emerge from the neutron. they are initially crushed and smashed into new atoms with different properties, then they bond on Earth for example, to create interesting compounds. Use retrospect to discover for the PRE EXISTING potential of the neutron when it plays out. Nothing emerges, that’s ignorant. All is preset potential known only in retrospect.
Simon, I cant say I got anything from that except pointing out error. You gave no recognition or coverage to my work because you gave it cursory consideration and didn’t look into it, presumably for the sake of making “pet points”. I can’t say you have persuaded me to look at the book your refer to, on that basis. Chances are, from what I just read, it may be over your head, although I hope not.
Marcus
Yes I am making pet points, because to me they do not seem to have lost their validity.
Yes, emergence is a high level description, and acknowledgement, of areas of ignorance. No more. Neither Laughlin or I pretend any different. Perhaps we are better at admitting defeat, or as you imply, just too thick.
Marcus
‘Nothing emerges, that’s ignorant. All is preset potential known only in retrospect.’
Good phrase, the second sentence. Preset by whom, how? Known by…us, presumably.
Simon,
No, I haven’t spent time looking at Behe. Perhaps I will and write something on it.
At any rate, ID has something of a point but has it backwards.
Intelligence itself is a physical process and does not require consciousness. So there doesn’t need to be a design.
http://broadspeculations.com/2015/01/19/thinking-about-thinking/
James Cross
I think it all depends on the underlying paradigm which has taken deep root in you (or me). It colours everything else. It is a foundational ‘meme’, to borrow from Dawkins, if you are familiar with his writing. Random process or design. (Memes are transferable mental concepts. Memes are also a meme, if you want to be pedantic. Which I obviously do).
Incidentally, what rings our reality bell anyway? Everybody forms an inner picture of reality. For many, ToE never gets past this evaluation for prior religious reasons. For many people, truth is more in the relational and emotional and not just abstract logic concerning matter. For the ToE/reductionsist hard liner these people are just deceived by their brains.
We are looking at how we can objectively know reality at all. The problem with Dawkins and his idea of memes is that he destroyed all human analysis with his argument including his own.