Psience Quest

(2021-01-10, 07:07 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Do you mean that there have been peer reviewed papers published regarding evolutionary explanations for other aspects of biology, with the flagellum as among the standout exceptions?

There has been a paucity of such papers to my knowledge giving detailed (and that is essential) step-by-tiny-step accounts of how the natural forces of RM + natural selection produced any irreducibly complex biological mechanisms or systems. Please let me know if you find some. According to the source linked, there haven't been any for the flagellum through 2019. That certainly also applies to other prime examples cited by Behe such as the blood clotting system. The Darwinists simply generally ignore this sore thumb sticking out, testifying to the status of their theory as not science (since it is unfalsifiable and essentially a statement of metaphysical belief). There is even a paucity of speculation, with what is furnished mostly consisting of simplified "just-so" stories prominently featuring wildly speculative stories about "co-option". The researchers mostly concentrate on unravelling the details and mysteries of biological systems and as a practical matter ignoring the Darwinist doctrine.

A new article in Aeon, attempting to cleverly smuggle what is essentially conscious intelligence into New Synthesis Darwinism: Kevin Land and Lynn Chiu, “Evolution’s engineers”. All this talk still doesn't solve the mystery of the origin of irreducibly complex biological systems and machines. It all gets down to the details of each supposed small step of the Darwinist process that is claimed to have formed the finely engineered biological system - whether it is even slightly plausible. Like the poster child of this - the bacterial flagellum. Of course, the Darwinist evolutionary biologists never actually propose a detailed plausible pathway - just fanciful "just so" stories.

For instance, with bird evolution:

Quote:"The (adaptive fitness) landscape is represented by a 3D surface, with the well-adapted birds with good size-and-tail-length combinations living it up on the peaks, while the poorly adapted birds scrape out a living in the valleys. The region with the highest peak represents the creature with the optimal body size and tail, best able to survive. A population of birds will have a range of characteristics, with each combination a different point on the landscape – and through natural selection, the population will gradually converge on the traits best suited to the local habitat, represented on the adaptive landscape as the population climbing a local fitness peak. But there’s more than one way to get to the top of an adaptive peak: you can change your traits to help you reach the summit, or you can move the mountain so that it comes to you …"

This elegant prose cleverly invokes conscious intent (anathema to Darwinists) while carefully avoiding mentioning the fundamental problem pointed out by ID that the genetic differences corresponding to the adaptive mountain tops and hill tops are almost always much too far apart genetically to be bridged by less than some multiple and extremely low probability combination of random with respect to fitness mutations or other genetic changes. Where the great majority of such unplanned by intelligence random with respect to fitness genetic changes are deleterious. The fitness peaks are genetically far too much apart for the species to by random mutations successfully jump across the fitness valleys and chasms without the line dying out. This is the basic random search problem.

These organisms must be pretty smart to be evolution’s engineers. Never mind; keep talking, maybe people will be taken in and believe that Darwinist processes actually can invent complex biological machinery.

(2021-01-10, 06:13 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think this has any chance of revealing a mindless unintelligent mechanism behind evolution. Just an example (paraphrased for brevity):

As exemplified at the 2016 Royal Society conference on the problems of the New Synthesis Darwinist theory, it is not an argument anymore that Darwinist processes can't make complex functional systems; it is an observation that it does not.

I try to avoid the "politics" of the emotional views, so while I am as influenced by politics as anyone, this is in the vain of a strategic analysis to develop talking points for mind in nature.  Any argument seen as in a religious context, is not from a politic, but from pragmatism.  

While mind in nature is not directly supportive for spirituality, it does defeat mindlessness as a sensible context.  Natural mind in evolution is already supplanting RM + NS as the root cause.  (see The Third Way website)  The statement that "living things designed themselves" is just such a declaration of mind in nature.

These changes in scientific outlook are not from belief, but from solid data analysis and computational models of physiology.  While Carter and Willis are exploring the HOW of bio-information transfer, I do not understand why this is not a victory for ID advocates, with their cogent arguments against RM's role?  

I suggest that it renders the need for ideas supporting disbelief in random mutations to refocus on a positive belief in the tracking of how mutations are guided by environmental feedback.  The acceptance that mental states influence phenotype traits - as adaptations - is breaking thru with scientific evidence.  There is no need of a negative disbelief, when a positive answer is the best science of the day.  Maybe the need to reject any physical answer is in place?  In terms of talking points, it is better to say that - sure their is a physical way to describe what happened.  BUT there is still causation from living minds changing real-world probabilities.

Living things exert cunning and strategic responses at all levels and it is now being documented at the level of virus propagation as they adapt at accelerated rates.  The ability to regulate the rate of change and adaptation' in the face of changing circumstance, is the hallmark of mind.  Papers that explain the actual workings of nature can only lead to overall better models of life and nature.  Models that include information science processes are leading the way to the reality of mind in evolution.

(2021-01-14, 04:31 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]I try to avoid the "politics" of the emotional views, so while I am as influenced by politics as anyone, this is in the vain of a strategic analysis to develop talking points for mind in nature.  Any argument seen as in a religious context, is not from a politic, but from pragmatism.  

While mind in nature is not directly supportive for spirituality, it does defeat mindlessness as a sensible context.  Natural mind in evolution is already supplanting RM + NS as the root cause.  (see The Third Way website)  The statement that "living things designed themselves" is just such a declaration of mind in nature.

These changes in scientific outlook are not from belief, but from solid data analysis and computational models of physiology.  While Carter and Willis are exploring the HOW of bio-information transfer, I do not understand why this is not a victory for ID advocates, with their cogent arguments against RM's role?  

I suggest that it renders the need for ideas supporting disbelief in random mutations to refocus on a positive belief in the tracking of how mutations are guided by environmental feedback.  The acceptance that mental states influence phenotype traits - as adaptations - is breaking thru with scientific evidence.  There is no need of a negative disbelief, when a positive answer is the best science of the day.  Maybe the need to reject any physical answer is in place?  In terms of talking points, it is better to say that - sure their is a physical way to describe what happened.  BUT there is still causation from living minds changing real-world probabilities.

Living things exert cunning and strategic responses at all levels and it is now being documented at the level of virus propagation as they adapt at accelerated rates.  The ability to regulate the rate of change and adaptation' in the face of changing circumstance, is the hallmark of mind.  Papers that explain the actual workings of nature can only lead to overall better models of life and nature.  Models that include information science processes are leading the way to the reality of mind in evolution.

My basic sticking point is the contention that over evolution living organisms designed themselves via utilizing some sort of mind(s) in conjunction with environmental feedback. This essentially is the contention that organisms as lowly as bacteria somehow have minds capable of designing complex systems such as the flagellum and its developmental system. The term "mind" in this context clearly implies all the capabilities and qualities of conscious human minds such as foresight, imagination, visualization ability of a high order, computation ability, the list goes on. I find this extremely implausible for many reasons starting with the clear observation that individual organisms like this only have very rudimentary capabilities of intelligence. 

It goes on. "The (demonstrated) ability of simple organisms to regulate the rate of change and adaptation in the face of changing circumstance" still must utilize the demonstratedly impotent Darwinian RM + NS mechanism since there is not the slightest understanding of any other way the necessary specific coordinated mutations could appear. 

The nature of mind itself is a total mystery still being studied but not solved by anyone and therefore is not something that can be plausibly imbued to relatively simple organisms or any living things at all including humans. 

And (since its basic nature is a mystery) there is no plausible way to somehow derive mind by emergence from large congregations of such individually simple organisms in conjunction with natural environmental forces (the latter totally absent of mind). And even the very concept of "emergence" is very controversial as a plausible mechanism when looked at philosophically.

(2021-01-12, 10:41 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]A new article in Aeon, attempting to cleverly smuggle what is essentially conscious intelligence into New Synthesis Darwinism: Kevin Land and Lynn Chiu, “Evolution’s engineers”.

So the article is saying some animals alter the environment and other animals have to then adapt to those changes?

I didn't even realize that would be controversial to Darwinists?

That said I would quickly agree that trying to compare our general rational adaptability with mutations by earthworms seems like a non-starter.

(2021-01-14, 05:44 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]This essentially is the contention that organisms as lowly as bacteria somehow have minds capable of designing complex systems such as the flagellum and its developmental system. The term "mind" in this context clearly implies all the capabilities and qualities of conscious human minds such as foresight, imagination, visualization ability of a high order, computation ability, the list goes on. 

It is firmly asserted that any living thing , which can exhibit the power to intend or detect information objects has the ability to change local entropy and to enforce active behavior in its own interests.

Quote: A tiny obstacle course for bacteria has shown researchers how E. coli changes its behavior to rapidly clear obstructions to food. The work holds implications for biology and medicine, and for robotic search-and-rescue tactics.

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the University of Pittsburgh and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the "swim and tumble" behavior bacteria use to move toward food or away from poisons changes when the bacteria encounter obstacles.

https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_sum...88&org=NSF

Information science has destroyed the myth of bacteria as without effective capabilities.  Information processing research, at that level, is astonishing and growing in scope.

Bacteria can detect information, as affordances, in their environment and predict future states so as to solve problems is kinda new, but firmly backed by data.

(2021-01-14, 06:46 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]It is firmly asserted that any living thing , which can exhibit the power to intend or detect information objects has the ability to change local entropy and to enforce active behavior in its own interests.


https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_sum...88&org=NSF

Information science has destroyed the myth of bacteria as without effective capabilities.  Information processing research, at that level, is astonishing and growing in scope.

Bacteria can detect information, as affordances, in their environment and predict future states so as to solve problems is kinda new, but firmly backed by data.

Yes, the physical ability. But for the bacterium to know what is in its interests and to form a corresponding intention? Intentionality implies all the attributes of sentient consciousness, mind, including knowing something, creative imagination, and foresight. All this in a bacterium?

"...E. coli changes its behavior to rapidly clear obstructions to food."

This appears to be instinctual behavior developed in order to survive in the here and now. No mind required.

Such rudimentarily intelligent behavior doesn't even touch the basic problem. To really look at this problem boils down to actually examining the details of the existing biological system, rather than positing vague generalities and existing simple behaviors. 

This basic problem can be exemplified by examining the nitty gritty details of our old friend, the bacterial flagellum, in determining what really must have been required to design or otherwise come up with the intricate irreducibly complex machine and its assembly system.

We presumably started with bacterial organisms without the ability to move. In order to move away from noxious substances and objects, and move towards food, they needed to be able to directedly move through a very viscous "noisy" watery environment (with Brownian motion agitation). 

The existing flagellum we are trying to explain the origin of consists of several major components: the whiplike "propeller", hub assembly, ATP-powered rotary motor, and the system that manufactures and assembles this previous complex machine. All of these subsystems need to be present and work very closely together (be highly integrated and compatible mechanically and otherwise) in order to accomplish their overall purpose - to move.

How did the bacterium foresee that in order to fulfill it's need to move, it needed a complicated system to be added to it's structure? And without there being a sentient conscious and creative mind, how did the bacteria foresee that the aforementioned basic components would be needed? How did it specify that this overall new machinery had to separately incorporate in a finely coordinated way a propeller, hub, and motor, and that first of all it had to have an assembly subsystem (another complicated machine) to build the overall propelling machine itself? When even having just a propeller or a hub assembly or motor by itself would be useless unless a conscious mind could use reasoning and foresee that having a propeller-like component could accomplish the required end by accompanying it with a motor and hub/bearing assembly. 

It appears that according to the new wave evolutionists we are supposed to believe that this obviously mental conscious process was accomplished by a conglomeration of bacteria in conjunction with environmental feedback. Pardon my skepticism.

(2021-01-15, 12:54 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]"...E. coli changes its behavior to rapidly clear obstructions to food."

This appears to be instinctual behavior developed in order to survive in the here and now. No mind required.

Such rudimentarily intelligent behavior doesn't even touch the basic problem. To really look at this problem boils down to actually examining the details of the existing biological system, rather than positing vague generalities and existing simple behaviors. 

 Pardon my skepticism.

Your skepticism is appreciated, as is your sincere answer.

In years of defending a viewpoint, both personally and professionally, I turn to a mutual understanding of the raw data.  In most cases agreement about the actuality of the data is confirmed, while data analysis is always open to discussion.

We agree that instinct (or subconscious behavior) is observed in bacteria.  Data about instinct are not measured in terms of physical observations, which are measured by SI units.  There is no mass or electrical charge to instinct, there are no molecular bonds to diagram or equal and opposite forces.  What is measured is the meaningful responses to stimulus.

Stimuli are detectable information objects that can communicate with a living organism.  Communication, coding, affordance, meaningful responses and understanding are all the targets of collection as data for information science.

Can we agree that instinct comes from prior information processing by a species and not from configurations of matter/energy?  And further that subconscious mind - is mind - and that actual bio-information processing has structured an instinct?

I think the term "hard-wired", referring to neurology, is wildly deceptive and may be at the bottom of this.

(2021-01-15, 02:19 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Your skepticism is appreciated, as is your sincere answer.

In years of defending a viewpoint, both personally and professionally, I turn to a mutual understanding of the raw data.  In most cases agreement about the actuality of the data is confirmed, while data analysis is always open to discussion.

We agree that instinct (or subconscious behavior) is observed in bacteria.  Data about instinct are not measured in terms of physical observations, which are measured by SI units.  There is no mass or electrical charge to instinct, there are no molecular bonds to diagram or equal and opposite forces.  What is measured is the meaningful responses to stimulus.

Stimuli are detectable information objects that can communicate with a living organism.  Communication, coding, affordance, meaningful responses and understanding are all the targets of collection as data for information science.

Can we agree that instinct comes from prior information processing by a species and not from configurations of matter/energy?  And further that subconscious mind - is mind - and that actual bio-information processing has structured an instinct?

I think the term "hard-wired", referring to neurology, is wildly deceptive and may be at the bottom of this.

Stephen would you be willing to answer questions in a dedicated thread about Information Realism?

I ask because I know you've explained things over and over but I have to admit I have trouble really grasping the concepts and so the same questions come back to me...

(2021-01-15, 02:19 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Your skepticism is appreciated, as is your sincere answer.

In years of defending a viewpoint, both personally and professionally, I turn to a mutual understanding of the raw data.  In most cases agreement about the actuality of the data is confirmed, while data analysis is always open to discussion.

We agree that instinct (or subconscious behavior) is observed in bacteria.  Data about instinct are not measured in terms of physical observations, which are measured by SI units.  There is no mass or electrical charge to instinct, there are no molecular bonds to diagram or equal and opposite forces.  What is measured is the meaningful responses to stimulus.

Stimuli are detectable information objects that can communicate with a living organism.  Communication, coding, affordance, meaningful responses and understanding are all the targets of collection as data for information science.

Can we agree that instinct comes from prior information processing by a species and not from configurations of matter/energy?  And further that subconscious mind - is mind - and that actual bio-information processing has structured an instinct?

I think the term "hard-wired", referring to neurology, is wildly deceptive and may be at the bottom of this.

I find it hard to even begin in response to this, as this writing is so confusing (at least to me).  From the beginning, the word "communication" usually is taken to include transmission of meaning between intelligent agents. On the face of it, bacteria are not intelligent agents. The word understanding  again inherently implies intelligent conscious agents. Decidedly not bacteria. And the word meaning inherently implies something that is apprehended by a conscious agent. Not bacteria.

I used a unfortunate choice of words in describing the simple automatic quasi-intelligent behavior of some bacteria. "Instinct" implies a conscious agent (albeit it could be dim), whereas what I meant was simple automatic behavioral responses to environmental conditions, which it seems to me definitely does not imply consciousness - this behavior is apparently mechanical and based on simple logic. 

Such automatic behavioral responses do not imply in any way that there is a subconscious mind somehow in the bacteria. Anyway, for there to be a subconscious there presumably must also be a consciousness, which of course has not been demonstrated by bacteria. 

Lastly, for "bio-information processing" to structure an instinct (where as mentioned an instinct implies it is held by a conscious agent) runs into the Hard Problem of consciousness. Information processing is in itself in an entirely different and lower existential category than consciousness, and therefore can't possibly be the nature of consciousness.