Psience Quest

Scientists uncover a trove of genes that could hold key to how humans evolved
Researchers at the Donnelly Centre in Toronto have found that dozens of genes, previously thought to have similar roles across different organisms, are in fact unique to humans and could help explain how our species came to exist. These genes code for a class of proteins known as transcription factors, or TFs, which control gene activity. TFs recognize specific snippets of the DNA code called motifs, and use them as landing sites to bind the DNA and turn genes on or off.https://m.phys.org/news/2019-05-scientis...s-key.html

(2019-05-27, 08:58 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]TFs recognize specific snippets of the DNA code called motifs, and use them as landing sites to bind the DNA and turn genes on or off.https://m.phys.org/news/2019-05-scientis...s-key.html

Transcription factors are proteins with specific chemistry and physical structure.  When the author of the article says that that proteins "recognize" code, please understand that it is metaphorical expression.  Maybe there are allosteric aspects to the physical structure, enabling lock&key molecular attachment.  BUT

The patterns of coded instructions have not evolved around a magical robotic chemical reaction.  The coded instructions have evolved in accordance with information science, where coherent and telenomic mental aspects of life are functional in survival.  There are no natural coded instructions measured in chemicals.

 

(2019-07-13, 06:16 PM)Stan Woolley Wrote: [ -> ]

I absolutely admire Dr. James Tour! What I find hilarious about this video and others pertaining to him is that the arguments in the comments try their best to refute him, but they can not do it. They instead argue that he is a second-rate scientist who doesn’t know chemistry, despite the fact the he is one of the most referenced scientists in the world pertaining to his field. He is not second-rate, he knows his stuff.

Interesting point from Why I am not a Physicalist: Four Reasons for Rejecting the Faith

Quote:The Evolutionary Argument against Physicalism

The physicalism of today accepts four fundamental interactions: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. It does not accept mental force. The ultimate, counter-intuitive and thus mostly unwanted implication of this is epiphenomenalism: that mentality is completely useless, like the steam from a locomotive engine.[9] As well as the British idealist F. H. Bradley,[10] the influential philosopher of science Karl Popper[11] argues that such a belief is anti-evolutionary because were mentality impotent it would not have evolved. To suggest that one’s beliefs, desires, ambitions, calculations, perceptions, investigations, subconscious drives, emotions, plans, rationalizations, have absolutely no effect upon one’s body and thus upon the world is not only anathema to common sense, to the science of psychology, and to the power of reason, but is also a mockery of evolutionary theory (not to mention the Eleatic Principle).[12]

Not only does mentality exist in humans, but also presumably in the myriad other species of this world. For mentality to evolve and to maintain itself therein, without any purpose or power, runs against our notions of evolution, of selection. For instance, have we not evolved our intelligence, our reasoning powers? Did they not aid our survival and development? Very few will deny this premise, but a physicalist will deny mental force, mental causation: the power of the mind, as it is not a known fundamental force. Thus physicalism conflicts with evolutionary theory. To try to overcome this by identifying the mind with the physical will not work because: (1) psychoneural identity theory has failed, and (2) if mental powers are actually physical powers, one thereby returns to the predicament of having to explain why mentality exists if it has no powers of its own. The final outcome is that if one accepts evolution one must deny physicalism.

(2019-07-14, 02:18 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Interesting point from Why I am not a Physicalist: Four Reasons for Rejecting the Faith

Perhaps it is more appropriate for the Philosophy forum, but I think it is interesting to glance at all four of the "four reasons for rejecting the (physicalist) faith":

Quote:1. - Hempel’s Dilemma

...(For) physicalism, a reason for rejecting the position is the fact that it cannot be properly defined. ....The dilemma: it seems that the meaning of physicalism can be grasped through either of two horns:

The first horn is exclusive belief in the phenomena of current physics, such as matter-energy, space-time, the fundamental interactions, and so on. The problem with this is that such a belief is highly unlikely to be true. This is in part because we can witness the constant change of physics through history...Secondly, as is well known, the current state of physics cannot be final due, in particular, to the inconsistency between general relativity and quantum mechanics. Thirdly, as will be seen below, the role of the mind in current physics is undetermined.

The second horn of the dilemma: belief in the phenomena of a future, ideal physics. There are two chief problems with this alternative. Firstly, how could one believe in physicalism if one did not know what that was?...Secondly, it may turn out that a future physics would include mentality amongst its fundamental elements. This contradicts the materialist premise.


2. - Irreducible Mentality

Current physical properties cannot describe nor explain mentality, therefore reality must be more than that which such physicalism presents. I cannot describe mental states such as hunger, despair, pain, or curiosity using physical properties alone—it would be an unintelligible category mistake to describe my hunger as comprised of a certain mass, gravity, volume, charge, and shape.


3. - The Evolutionary Argument against Physicalism

The physicalism of today accepts four fundamental interactions: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. It does not accept mental force. The ultimate, counter-intuitive and thus mostly unwanted implication of this is epiphenomenalism: that mentality is completely useless, like the steam from a locomotive engine.
.....................
(However,) not only does mentality exist in humans, but also presumably in the myriad other species of this world. For mentality to evolve and to maintain itself therein, without any purpose or power, runs against our notions of evolution, of selection. For instance, have we not evolved our intelligence, our reasoning powers? Did they not aid our survival and development?


4. - The Universal Cracking of Causal Closure

If one accepts....that there exists what the logician Frege called “the third realm” (beyond physicality and mentality) of objective truths—such as the truth of modus ponens, the properties of Pi, the Pythagorean theorem, or the Form of Beauty—truths that exist whether or not they are discovered, meaning that they are in essence neither mental nor physical (as there can be no neural correlates of non-existent mental events), then it implies that their existence has an effect upon the physical through their discovery.
.....Thus the existence of such universal truths implies the falsity of one of physicalism’s key tenets: the causal closure of the physical.

I'm sure there are philosophical rejoinders to all of them. I am personally more impressed by the great accumulation of empirical evidence.

(2019-07-14, 06:24 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]I'm sure there are philosophical rejoinders to all of them. I am personally more impressed by the great accumulation of empirical evidence.

What evidence could disprove the idea that everything that is can be described by a current or future physics where all fundamental entities are non-mental?

(2019-07-14, 09:59 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]What evidence could disprove the idea that everything that is can be described by a current or future physics where all fundamental entities are non-mental?

Absolutely no evidence, in this twisted sort of reasoning. "Everything that is" obviously includes any evidence against the theory, so this imagined theory can explain absolutely anything including evidence against itself. That sounds a little analogous to Darwinism, which is unfalsifiable and with some just-so stories can explain anything in biology. It seems to me that this is essentially appealing to speculation, to magic, especially to the almost religious faith in scientism and physicalism. Sure, we can always imagine that somehow, someday, there will be some way to reconcile the stark logical conflicts between physicalism and the obvious existence of mentality and its productions. Someday, over the rainbow. The same category as imagining that there are 1000 invisible angels dancing on the eraser of that pencil over there. Maybe so, maybe someday we'll be able to see them.

This reminds me of Reber and Alcock's response to Etzel Cardeña's paper, "The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review".    

Quote:"Our position is straightforward. Claims made by parapsychologists cannot be true. The effects reported can have no ontological status; the data have no existential value. We examine a variety of reasons for this conclusion based on well-understood scientific principles. In the classic English adynaton, “pigs cannot fly.” Hence, data that suggest that they can are necessarily flawed and result from weak methodology or improper data analyses or are Type I errors. So it must be with psi effects."

(From the psiencequest thread)  

Alcock and Reber are claiming that psi effects violate the current laws of physics, are simply impossible, and accordingly they simply cannot really exist. In their absolute faith in scientism and materialism all empirical evidence for psi effects no matter how good it is, is a priori invalid, no examination required. Of course it doesn't need to be investigated - we already know there is nothing there. They simply throw any and all conflicting data out the window as a matter of principle.

This is essentially saying that all empirical evidence that conflicts with the current consensus scientific theory is invalid. In this poor excuse for a scientific method, having what appears to be a good theory totally trumps absolutely any evidence to the contrary. Any and all such evidence must a priori be mistaken or fraudulent, regardless of quality and amount. Regardless of the strength of the data. 

This incredibly rigid closed-minded position totally throws the tried and true, real, scientific method out the window. Look at it in the light of the history of science. If this methodology had been followed most of the current laws of physics and the rest of the edifice of modern science would never have been developed. We would still believe phlogiston explains combustion, and electromagnetic waves travel in the ether medium. After all, all the evidence to the contrary is impossible and must be invalid, in the current consensus theories of phlogiston and the luminiferous ether.

(2019-07-14, 11:58 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Sure, we can always imagine that somehow, someday, there will be some way to reconcile the stark logical conflicts between physicalism and the obvious existence of mentality and its productions. Someday, over the rainbow.

Aren't the logical conflicts based in philosophical argument?

Regarding parapsychology, there are materialist explanations for Psi?

(2019-07-15, 12:24 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Aren't the logical conflicts based in philosophical argument?

Good point - they are. But my main point has been that philosophical argumentation appears to be able to go on indefinitely; I prefer to anchor myself in these disputes on the more solid ground of empirical evidence. With the existence of a mass of good hard empirical evidence, the only resort of the physicalists is attacking its actual validity through self-defeating and very questionable strategems like Reber and Alcock's denial of the ontological validity of any and all evidence for parapsychological phenomena because they supposedly conflict with current established laws of physics. At least, this boils the endless philosophical debate down a lot, to this one issue of the ontological status of empirical evidence. 

Quote:Regarding parapsychology, there are materialist explanations for Psi?

Of course, numerous theories have been proposed. They seem to be in two categories, communicational theories and observational theories. The former are based on the conjecture that there exists some hypothetical radiation, field of force or whatever, which could transmit signals from one brain to another brain, using the analogy with radio, radar or other known forms of telecommunication, and the latter are based on or inspired by, special interpretations of quantum theory. But there have been so many problems with them none have been really viable. These objections have been based both on empirical data (like with communicational theories there not being any inverse-square fading of psi with distance as would be expected with some sort of EM field-like effect), and philosophical (like pointing out that communicational theories gloss over what is the key problem, namely how the information is encoded and decoded (and that this inevitably involves mind which is unacceptable to physicalism). While with the observational theories, pointing out that they succeed only by dint of the fact that they also surreptitiously import mentalistic concepts; which disqualifies them as physical theories.

There is an interesting discussion of this in this article.        

Again, I prefer to ground myself on the empirical evidence that bears on the question rather than endless philosophical argumentation. In this area the argumentation then boils down to the relatively simple issue of the ontological status of empirical evidence. Physicalists are reduced to attacking its basic validity, which is a very double-edged sword.