Trashing natural selection as a special case.

I strongly agree that "information of the non-Shannon type only makes sense with reference to a mind".  Think of mind doing things just like a body.

Let's agree to refer to information of the non-Shannon type, NS-information to help us move forward.

I would describe mind as an abstraction referring to information processing.

I view of your agreed on definition of NS-information, the above explanation of mind produces a circular definition.

Stephen, I am not trying to deliberately trip you up for the fun of it, I know that you idolise Prof Noble and his group and that you get your ideas from them. The TTW want to expose the shortcomings of neo-Darwinism without explaining what alternative there is within materialism!

Outside of Materialism, there is plenty of scope to explain evolution because you can then invoke some sort of design energy wherever you like.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the TTW likes to debate among themselves, rather than open the debate up to others. Do they have any videos where they open themselves up to potential critics? If there are not, you must surely admit that that doesn't look good for them!

David

Stephen, I am not trying to deliberately trip you up for the fun of it, I know that you idolise Prof Noble and his group and that you get your ideas from them. The TTW want to expose the shortcomings of neo-Darwinism without explaining what alternative there is within materialism!

I am not sure all the Third Way people are materialists?

Even some of the people @stephenw has posted aren't by necessity materialists?

A person can be non-materialist and still not believe in discarnate entities.

OTOH, there are people like me who do believe in discarnate entities not just in the past but existing now...yet I am still not sure there is a knock out argument for Intelligent Design?

Today modern science has developed a deep understanding of "Bodies" and the abstract term physical.  There is no magic in Physiology (note Dr. Noble).  Physical substances are defined and quantified.  The basic processes that are behind bodily functions, equally so.  The term "body" is fully characterized by physical processes.  The idea that there is any "perfect" magic substance is lost and people understand that their bodies are made only of known elements that were assimilated from the physical environment.  They understand that complex compounds are made creatively from only these elements, as functions of electrochemical regulation and development.  This is the transformational view of modern science.  The chemistry of bodies is a subset of basic chemicals in the environment.

I don't think this assessment of the physical is accurate, given the perpetual mystery of what matter is and - as per Feynman - the circularity in trying to define "forces". [See Chomsky's critiques of the "body" in the mind-body problem.]

There's also a few other issues such as the way the study of the physical ends up opening up the door back to mind as a possibility and the under-to-non explanation of Causality in the sciences. [Referring to QM interpretations and Cosmic Tuning, and to a degree the possibility of Intelligent Design which does seem to be gaining some traction.]

The abstract term mind has the same trajectory, but developed more recently.  It still includes, in the public worldview, magical experiences.  While I think these are very valid experiences, in science fields these are not part of the whole.  Many scientists and theorists are happy for these experiences to be part of spiritual phenomena and leave mind to science.  I am one of those.

Given the above shortfalls in the hard sciences mentioned above, I would say it isn't clear mind as the same trajectory unless we're talking about the failures of the hard sciences to genuinely grasp what the phenomena under study actually are.

There isn't really a way to quantify Subjectivity/Intentionality/Reason, which only deepens the mystery of Causation given that even *if* the hard sciences had a genuine explanation of causality the way Mental Causes and supposedly Non-mental causes relate would remain mysterious.

However, I do think the ability to model some aspects of the mental and whatever the "physical" is supposed to be has had obvious successes. And I think, in terms of actual long term prospects of acceptance of Psi, that Information Science will be an important role.

When reading your responses, you don't seem to understand my points, yet feel free to try to dictate my choices of explanations.  Darwin included Lamarckian adaptation in his theory.   That is when an organism is adapting purposefully to identifiable challenges in their environment.  That was explained well - by Dr. Noble, if you listened to the link from David.  I, in no uncertain terms, reiterate that I reject undirected bio-evolution!!!!  Why do you keep saying things like I am promoting it???

Your post that I responded to is quite ambiguous and hard to interpret, which is why I tried to boil it down to a concrete question. I did so, but to no avail. I guess I'll have to dissect and examine at least your beginning statement at length to try to explain why I asked my question.

The beginning of your statement was as follows: 

"My stance is that living things perform information processing that exhibits intelligence.  I may endorse a designer that designs top-level systems that support and promote intelligence in living things.  This removes the need for (most) direct interaction at the physical level, but focuses on evolution at deeply spiritual levels.  To accept this, one loses the magical and embraces Heavenly Design beyond human thought." 

I would interpret these words as meaning that first, living things perform intelligent information processing. This is obvious for certain living things, namely conscious human beings via their brains and intellects. It is not obvious and probably not the case for most lower forms of life in particular single celled organisms.

Then you say that you may (or evidently may not) promote some sort of designer that designs top-level systems that support and promote intelligence in living organisms. Since this statement is qualified it is kind of meaningless. Either you do or you don't. Also with this statement, what these "top-level systems" are is left unexplained, and it beats me. A "system" top level or not does not constitute consciousness, as revealed by the well-known Hard Problem of consciousness. And it is quite evident from the manifold failures of materialist RM+NS neo-Darwinism that conscious intelligence is needed to design living organisms. So these "top-level systems" can't even in principle remove the necessity for a conscious intelligence in the design of life.

I suppose the meaning here was to propose that somehow the complex irreducibly complex designs of living organisms are supposed to have naturally "emerged" from the basic laws of physics laid down by the Deity, not requiring intermediate conscious intelligent designer(s). If this is what was meant, it would have been good to have clarified the statement. In any case, such a suggestion has flaws too numerous to mention here.

Since the nature of this designer and these "top-level systems" is left unexplained, how this eliminates the need for the magical and embraces Heavenly Design is not apparent at all. What do you mean by "the magical"? I might imagine that this is supposed to be the usually proposed by ID advocates Intelligent Design by some undefined conscious highly intelligent agent(s). Is this the case? If so, then you mean that the only required intelligence is the ultimate Divine act creating everything in the beginning. But wait a minute, this actually requires a sort of magic: the magical creation out of no organized information of the vast amounts of functional complex specified information constituting the structures of living organisms. As I previously mentioned, this would amount to a vast amount of organized information somehow spontaneously appearing out of essentially nothing information-wise. 

You see how difficult it is to understand your post.