“However, in this paper we argue that biological systems present fine-tuning at different levels, e.g. functional proteins, complex biochemical machines in living cells, and cellular networks. This paper describes molecular fine-tuning, how it can be used in biology, and how it challenges conventional Darwinian thinking. We also discuss the statistical methods underpinning finetuning and present a framework for such analysis.”
https://evolutionnews.org/2020/10/breako...nt-design/
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(2020-10-05, 10:38 PM)Stan Woolley Wrote: [ -> ]“However, in this paper we argue that biological systems present fine-tuning at different levels, e.g. functional proteins, complex biochemical machines in living cells, and cellular networks. This paper describes molecular fine-tuning, how it can be used in biology, and how it challenges conventional Darwinian thinking. We also discuss the statistical methods underpinning finetuning and present a framework for such analysis.”
https://evolutionnews.org/2020/10/breako...nt-design/
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
The need to want a future state and before a developing a design to actualize the goal.
Once there is a biological target state, such as eating, breathing, drinking, reproduction and social goals -- designed bio-plans follow. The source of the will to live is outside of the sciences of materials science, physics, and information sciences, imho.
However, once the drive to live is working on the environment, organization of bio-functions will begin. Coupled with the idea that information processing on real-world probabilities, life can take a billion years to manifest from probability observing materials and energy states - to enforcing its will in the physical.
In this way a process designer can generate a coded single cell organism and grow its mental evolution toward survival and experience.
(2020-10-06, 06:22 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]The need to want a future state and before a developing a design to actualize the goal.
Once there is a biological target state, such as eating, breathing, drinking, reproduction and social goals -- designed bio-plans follow. The source of the will to live is outside of the sciences of materials science, physics, and information sciences, imho.
However, once the drive to live is working on the environment, organization of bio-functions will begin. Coupled with the idea that information processing on real-world probabilities, life can take a billion years to manifest from probability observing materials and energy states - to enforcing its will in the physical.
In this way a process designer can generate a coded single cell organism and grow its mental evolution toward survival and experience.
I'm not sure whether this bears any relationship with your "will to live" but I'm assuming that's the same as the survival instinct which is undeniable. My problem with the strictly materialist/naturalist acceptance of this instinct is that I don't understand how they explain how such an instinct is passed from generation to generation.
I've made the point before in numerous posts but I keep coming back to it - the survival instinct (or any instinct) is a behavioural pattern. I just don't see how behaviour can be transferred via proteins because, from my understanding, behaviour is a function of mind. A will to live is a desire, a feeling, a wish, a feeling of need. How does that develop in an embryo?
(2020-10-06, 10:57 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not sure whether this bears any relationship with your "will to live" but I'm assuming that's the same as the survival instinct which is undeniable. My problem with the strictly materialist/naturalist acceptance of this instinct is that I don't understand how they explain how such an instinct is passed from generation to generation.
I've made the point before in numerous posts but I keep coming back to it - the survival instinct (or any instinct) is a behavioural pattern. I just don't see how behaviour can be transferred via proteins because, from my understanding, behaviour is a function of mind. A will to live is a desire, a feeling, a wish, a feeling of need. How does that develop in an embryo?
The theory I am promoting handles this as an obvious conclusion. Behavioral patterns come from "catalytic" information objects. They are structured information that generate physical patterns in ecological environments.
In their formation, these conceptual objects are both in the inner information processing structures of a living being, AND as well, in the informational environment. They transmit the active information processing of ancestors. Emotions, feelings, wants and decisions are all REAL structures developed by evolution in the past. They influence detection of beneficial future states. Messaging molecules (RNA/DNA/Ribosomes/Proteins) are not random configurations, but have their structures and related functions generated by unconscious and conscious information processing. They are manifestation of actual probabilities for solving problems.
D. Dennett - whose conclusions I strongly reject - turns to the same "objects" I do - to address the question. Recently he has acknowledged
affordances as critical. In the past he has endorsed
memes. Both of these are pragmatic examples of the influence of actualized information objects. They have the explanatory focus to address the problem, hence Dennett's need to promote them. All the while denying the science that supports their actual state of activity.
Please consider my quotation of Darwin's version of how they work. (Post 1290)
(2020-10-06, 10:57 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not sure whether this bears any relationship with your "will to live" but I'm assuming that's the same as the survival instinct which is undeniable. My problem with the strictly materialist/naturalist acceptance of this instinct is that I don't understand how they explain how such an instinct is passed from generation to generation.
I've made the point before in numerous posts but I keep coming back to it - the survival instinct (or any instinct) is a behavioural pattern. I just don't see how behaviour can be transferred via proteins because, from my understanding, behaviour is a function of mind. A will to live is a desire, a feeling, a wish, a feeling of need. How does that develop in an embryo?
Also, what we simplistically refer to as
the survival instinct is actually a whole range of very complex behaviours, many of which require equally complex complementary physical mechanisms in order to function. Sexual intercourse is one such - the compulsion to find a partner of the opposite gender and to do the things we do has to be coupled with the right complementary body parts and all the right chemicals and intricate bodily mechanisms. If evolution were a chance process, all life would have come to an end at the amoeba stage, if it even got that far.
While the article is old I thought this was a good critique of materialistic Darwinism's attempts to explain form:
Can the New Science of Evo–Devo Explain the Form of Organisms?
Stephen Talbott
Quote:If we are trying to explain form as the result of something other than form — as the result of supposedly formless mechanisms and simple rules — then to say that a pattern of tool kit gene expression prefigures the future pattern of segments, organs, appendages, or color designs doesn’t do the job. We are still explaining pattern by pattern, and therefore are only relocating the form we need to explain. How did the prefiguring pattern arise? And if a still earlier complex pattern of gene expression prefigures that one, how did the earlier pattern arise? And if the entire sequence is rooted in asymmetries of molecular distribution in an egg cell — that is, in the internal form of the cell — well, it seems we never do get the kind of mechanical explanation of form we were looking for. Maybe we were looking for the wrong sort of explanation.
Nothing much changes when we consider the almost unfathomably intricate pattern of the DNA network “programming” to which Carroll appeals. While switches are one thing, perhaps comforting in their mechanical familiarity, the pattern informing the entire network of switches — the almost inconceivably intricate pattern corresponding to and shaping the eventual manifest form of the organism — is quite another. The governing image or idea at work in this organized throwing of switches — the idea that will eventually manifest itself in the visible form of the organism — may be subtle and difficult to trace, but this only makes its reality as pattern and its effective governance all the more impressive.
Our own experience in creating such program logic is unambiguous. You and I could write a computer program to produce the form, say, of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” but in doing so we would be starting with the form of the painting, imposing it upon the computer’s logic with concerted, form-conscious effort. Do we ever see a production of form in a living organism where the developing form does not already inform the manifestation at every stage? Can we even conceive what it might mean to explain the arising of form through an appeal to something inherently formless? And if not, can we safely take it for granted that the artistic language we use for the elucidation of form — the language developed by those who have worked most intimately with form — is irrelevant to the neglected science of form?
Quote:Confusion about the nature of scientific explanation accounts for a great deal of the misdirection in contemporary disputes about evolution. One way to get at this misdirection is to recall a private remark by Darwin, who could at times be touchingly hon-est about his personal doubts and feelings. It happened that during the last year of Darwin’s life the Duke of Argyll mentioned to him “the wonderful contrivances for certain purposes in nature” revealed in Darwin’s own published works, such as his treatises on the fertilization of orchids and on earthworms. As the Duke later described the ensuing exchange, “I said it was impossible to look at these [contrivances] without seeing that they were the effect and the expression of Mind. I shall never forget Mr. Dar-win’s answer. He looked at me very hard and said, ‘Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times,’ and he shook his head vaguely, adding, ‘it seems to go away’.” (Francis Darwin 1902, p. 64)
It’s not the sort of personal openness you’re likely to hear today from battle-tested Darwinian apologists and intelligent design advocates!
It's a bit odd that Talbott continually speaks of respect for Laws of Nature in this essay, given his own IMO very important critique of this being sufficient ->
Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen?
(2020-10-14, 06:47 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]While the article is old I thought this was a good critique of materialistic Darwinism's attempts to explain form:
Can the New Science of Evo–Devo Explain the Form of Organisms?
Stephen Talbott
It's a bit odd that Talbott continually speaks of respect for Laws of Nature in this essay, given his own IMO very important critique of this being sufficient -> Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen?
A more clarified version of Talbott's ideas:
Why We Cannot Explain the Form of Organisms
Quote:...If the effort to explain form is misdirected, does this mean that the idea of explanatory causes has no place in our understanding of biological form? Not at all. Maybe we will be reminded here of the fact that formal causes have long been recognized as essential for our understanding, going back to Aristotle. Perhaps the apprehension of principles of form yields understanding precisely because they themselves are principles of causation, although in a crucial sense differing from our usual understanding of causes.
So now we must look at the relation between form, thought, and causation in biology. But first we need one chapter illustrating in a concrete manner how the qualitative grasp of form can play a fuller role in the science of biology than is yet recognized.
(2020-10-14, 09:52 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]A more clarified version of Talbott's ideas:
Why We Cannot Explain the Form of Organisms
It seems to me that Talbott is carefully dancing around but not daring to touch the central mystery of form - that it is the product of some unknown conscious intelligence. He doesn't dare to actually name it because in the Darwinian ideology this is intensely taboo and never to be mentioned. His remark that there is a relationship between form, thought and causation in biology hints at this mystery, since thought is a basic property of a conscious entity. Be careful - you might get burned (by the scientism thought police).
(2020-10-15, 12:55 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]It seems to me that Talbott is carefully dancing around but not daring to touch the central mystery of form - that it is the product of some unknown conscious intelligence. He doesn't dare to actually name it because in the Darwinian ideology this is intensely taboo and never to be mentioned. His remark that there is a relationship between form, thought and causation in biology hints at this mystery, since thought is a basic property of a conscious entity. Be careful - you might get burned (by the scientism thought police).
Yeah it is a bit odd, though Talbott hasn't been shy criticizing materialism/physicalism in his writings.
Yet he seems to think IDers are also wrong...but if formal causes also bring about the aesthetics that would suggest the beauty in evolution was meant for someone somewhere. Perhaps he thinks there's some primitive mentality that pushed evolution toward some greater awakening of Mind? So the Ur-Consciousness descends into matter and uses evolution to re-emerge?