Psience Quest

(2021-06-10, 04:10 PM)Stan Woolley Wrote: [ -> ]https://twitter.com/discoverycsc/status/...36910?s=21

Quote:  the miniaturized intricacy of the data-processing machinery in the living cell.- Dawkins

I agree that communication and information processing at the cellular level is amazing.  Unlike Dawkins, its not the electro-chemical mechanisms that grab my attention, its the applied logic and practical cunning!!!

Do language and code come before a design?

(2021-06-10, 08:26 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Do language and code come before a design?

When I used to write code, it was quite usual to expect to design it first. Language may have been immaterial. However on occasion I've used computer code as a kind of sketchpad, feeling my way towards a possible solution, and then drawing a diagram of the design afterwards.

Design was still involved, but sometimes producing a design first (what we were supposed to do) was a tedious task, while just writing the code and seeing whether it worked was fun. I'm tempted to see the world as an expression of joyfulness, so perhaps I favour the latter.

(2021-06-09, 01:31 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Surely, my rambling leave a vague pathway.  But, the fact that recent literature is strongly tracking the search for direct perception and for the detection of meaning by the minds of organisms.  Evolution means change and the change that counts is adaptation.  New ways of dealing with both inner and outer environments are promoted as functional abilities.  The interface between learning and heritable instincts is being carefully observed and measurable process models are being discovered.  Mind is at the heart of creativity.

The issue is not a metaphysical or philosophical one.  The nuts and bolts of how design processes work are not magical.

The chemistry for how bio-information molecules has made incredible progress in recent decades.  The newly discovered bio-informational objects are still being discovered.  The transition of DNA and genes- from being magic chemicals - is fast fading and research on the logical operations of biological communication are in full swing.

The research is methodically following the creation of information structures, just like a chemist creates useful reagents.  Please note that these papers are all current.

 https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/21/4/365


https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691619868207

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0025203

We have gone over this before.

I just don't see how bacteria or any other non-human living organisms that we know of either collectively or individually have the cognitive and creative resources to invent biological engineering solutions to problems. 

To examine how likely it is that living things actually designed themselves then it would be instructive to examine the design process. The objective is to solve a problem and design a solution for something. From an earlier post, the steps of the engineering design process can be summarized as:

- Defining the problem.
- Doing background research.
- Determining requirements and specifications.
- Brainstorming multiple possible solutions.This requires insight, creativity, and a toolkit or bag of tricks of already successful previously designed and used modules, subsystems, mechanisms or principles that can be considered as part of the solution. These are previous designs that have been developed and applied in the past. 
- Doing tradeoff studies comparing the advantages and disadvantages of different possible design solutions. With any complex set of requirements and constraints, necessary and inevitable tradeoffs have to be accounted for, balancing pros against cons for each possible solution.
- Choosing the best solution given all the requirements and specifications.
- Doing development work to implement this solution- build a prototype.
- Testing to determine if the solution actually works.
- Iterating the process.

Some of these steps may be abbreviated depending on the magnitude of the intelligence and creativity involved.

The end result, an intricate irreducibly complex biological machine, represents a large amount of complex specified information which cannot form by itself. It necessarily requires focused conscious intelligence. If you disagree and contend that this end result can somehow come about by nonconscious processes in primitive life, it is required to show exactly how, starting with how insight and creative visualization can come about "bottom up" in primitive organisms.

None of the material you have furnished comes anywhere close to explaining how nonconscious processes can go through these essential steps in creative design engineering. I don't think the words "perception", "meaning", and "mind" can apply much to primitive organisms in any way applicable to the essential steps of the design process for an intricate biological machine. 

This process can only be carried out by sentient, conscious, intelligent minds capable of ideation and conceptualization. In the context of evolution, please explain how the "information objects" of the structures and processes of living cells can constitute such minds. At the very least, it has been pointed out that this runs into the "hard problem".

I have not received any responses to my last post on the design process in engineering of intricate machines, whether human-made or biological. I don't know if that is because of lack of interest, or lack of any cogent arguments showing errors in my reasoning. I would really like to see any such arguments since I have an open mind on the subject. Any comments?

(2021-06-14, 04:25 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]I have not received any responses to my last post on the design process in engineering of intricate machines, whether human-made or biological. I don't know if that is because of lack of interest, or lack of any cogent arguments showing errors in my reasoning. I would really like to see any such arguments since I have an open mind on the subject. Any comments?

I truly appreciate your open mind.  The argument for design presents as a characterization and metaphor of human engineering.  It's narrow centrism makes it weak.  It is not an anthropic argument, such as I would support, but an anthropomorphic one.  Nature functioned quite well as a in-process design system, a billion years before drawing boards.  Most significant - for me at least - are the adaptations of coded communication.  How did that start!

Biological engineering clearly is amazing, but maybe not miraculous in its physicality.  Typoz gave a great description of the reciprocal nature of design and code.  If we take the ancient wisdom - The Word - (code) came first.  Designs have to be connected to the nature of environments in which they will be used.  A code and active communication can create its own natural environment.  Logically related symbols actualize as design.

My position is: if you have coded communication and a will to live - biological designs will emerge in service to life.  I am not arguing against an ultimate design for Life - just that it is not germane and on a different level of thought than science.

But, there is an extant biological coding system to study as living things function, focused on exploiting its leverage.  Part of the discovery of how mind changes bio-reality -- is to discover how Psi is working.

(2021-06-15, 01:25 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]I truly appreciate your open mind.  The argument for design presents as a characterization and metaphor of human engineering.  It's narrow centrism makes it weak.  It is not an anthropic argument, such as I would support, but an anthropomorphic one.  Nature functioned quite well as a in-process design system, a billion years before drawing boards.  Most significant - for me at least - are the adaptations of coded communication.  How did that start!

Biological engineering clearly is amazing, but maybe not miraculous in its physicality.  Typoz gave a great description of the reciprocal nature of design and code.  If we take the ancient wisdom - The Word - (code) came first.  Designs have to be connected to the nature of environments in which they will be used.  A code and active communication can create its own natural environment.  Logically related symbols actualize as design.

My position is: if you have coded communication and a will to live - biological designs will emerge in service to life.  I am not arguing against an ultimate design for Life - just that it is not germane and on a different level of thought than science.

But, there is an extant biological coding system to study as living things function, focused on exploiting its leverage.  Part of the discovery of how mind changes bio-reality -- is to discover how Psi is working.

That biological designs will simply "emerge" from primitive organisms seems very much like an appeal to magic. In the philosophy of the origin and nature of mind, "emergence" has I think rightly been considered to be this, and is therefore illegitimate as a concept.

From https://www.intechopen.com/books/toward-...e-insights:

Quote:"Insight, often referred to as an “aha moment,” has been defined as a sudden, conscious change in a person’s representation of a stimulus, situation, event, or problem. Recent advances in neuroimaging technology and neurophysiological techniques have allowed researchers an opportunity to hone in on the neural circuitry that governs insight, a phenomenon that has been theorized about by cognitive psychologists for over a century. Studies show that insight is not a sudden flash that comes from nowhere, but in fact is the result of the unconscious mind piecing together loosely connected bits of information stemming from prior knowledge and experiences and forming novel associations among them. This conceptualization of insight naturally gives rise to comparisons between insight and creativity. Creativity, however, involves many cognitive processes, occurring in many regions of the brain and thus cannot be laterally localized as insight can. Thus, creativity is not considered synonymous with insight; however, insight can certainly result in creative solutions during creative problem solving."

Insight and creativity are inherently required for the invention of intricate machines. In the above, notice the use of the terms "conscious change", "mind", "cognitive", and "brain". Insight and creativity, which are capacities of the human mind, inherently require consciousness, mind and the incredibly complex and intricate brain structure which embodies these things. (Human) minds are absolutely the only source of engineering designs that has ever been actually observed. The operative word is "minds". This of course doesn't rule out noncorporeal or alien or some other sort of nonhuman minds.  

If you disagree that insight and creativity and some sort of minds embodying these are absolutely required for engineering design, please explain in at least a little detail how primitive life forms even with no brains or minds can invent intricate biological machines. Like for instance (to enumerate just a few of the total number of major components), the use of the wheel and turbine structures in the bacterial flagellum, the use of ATP as the power source of the "motor", and the need for a manufacturing plan and corresponding biological process. Like the need for precise timing in this developmental process. 

And very importantly, where each of the many separate components of the system have to be precisely in place in order for it to work and not be detrimental or lethal to the bacterium (the quality of irreducible complexity).  This last characteristic of the biological machine must mean that the concept of the total biological machine must have existed in some sort of mind in its beginning. If you contend that this is not the case, then explain how the irreducibly complex machine came about. "Emergence" (an appeal to magic) won't do. And slow undirected iterative RM + NS Darwinistic processes won't do either, for reasons well explained by researchers like Michael Behe.

Surely engineering insight is required. It goes on. Focused conscious intelligent minds very much seem to be an absolute requirement in engineering creativity and insight.

(2021-06-15, 11:12 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]That biological designs will simply "emerge" from primitive organisms seems very much like an appeal to magic. In the philosophy of the origin and nature of mind, "emergence" has I think rightly been considered to be this, and is therefore illegitimate as a concept.

From https://www.intechopen.com/books/toward-...e-insights:



Insight and creativity are inherently required for the invention of intricate machines. In the above, notice the use of the terms "conscious change", "mind", "cognitive", and "brain". Insight and creativity, which are capacities of the human mind, inherently require consciousness, mind and the incredibly complex and intricate brain structure which embodies these things. (Human) minds are absolutely the only source of engineering designs that has ever been actually observed. The operative word is "minds". This of course doesn't rule out noncorporeal or alien or some other sort of nonhuman minds.  

If you disagree that insight and creativity and some sort of minds embodying these are absolutely required for engineering design, please explain in at least a little detail how primitive life forms even with no brains or minds can invent intricate biological machines. Like for instance (to enumerate just a few of the total number of major components), the use of the wheel and turbine structures in the bacterial flagellum, the use of ATP as the power source of the "motor", and the need for a manufacturing plan and corresponding biological process. Like the need for precise timing in this developmental process. 

And very importantly, where each of the many separate components of the system have to be precisely in place in order for it to work and not be detrimental or lethal to the bacterium (the quality of irreducible complexity).  This last characteristic of the biological machine must mean that the concept of the total biological machine must have existed in some sort of mind in its beginning. If you contend that this is not the case, then explain how the irreducibly complex machine came about. "Emergence" (an appeal to magic) won't do. And slow undirected iterative RM + NS Darwinistic processes won't do either, for reasons well explained by researchers like Michael Behe.

Surely engineering insight is required. It goes on. Focused conscious intelligent minds very much seem to be an absolute requirement in engineering creativity and insight.

There is a lot of interesting things to talk about in the above.  I agree that the term "emergence" can be used to support magical concepts that typically make physics concepts do -- what are informational processes.

I would defend my use of the term "emerge" as scientific and not magical, because it is based on a bridging methodology. (1)  I assert a method where mental outcomes are shown to effect physical reality.  The functionality is not tied up with brains.  Brains evolved from living things who were processing information, just fine.  Super-abundant trial and error gains data, as each outcome can be a useful bit; and while bacteria may not be at the opera to listen, they do process trillions of bits on an on-going basis.

The "missing link" is how does a living organism turn exposure to bits of information, into a separate cell with the ability to copy and store some bits as structured objects that can be active in further bio-information work.  This is what is happening that is caused by the mind. 

Your idea of engineering as "white man magic" doesn't evoke any sympathy from me.  Where is the root understanding for a bridge - at MIT or buried deep in our subconscious?  Our innate grasp of "bridge" comes from a natural process of absorbing the structured information of affordances.  Organisms gain measurable mutual information with their environments.  This inner environment of mutual information enables single cell organisms, like those that dominated earth for billions of years, to act with an inner logical behavior.

No brains needed.  My point is to look at a new way - for the evidence of mind.  Single cell organisms don't have a reflected sense of their own mental workings, but surely can will  what to eat and what to run from.

As far back as insects, living things learned of bridges, as fallen plants and trees.  These crossings are found by random search.  It only takes a few bits of memory and a will to live to generate an information object (a plan).  A plan, existing as an instinct, can be aimed at causing a tree or plant to be felled at a crossing, proactively.  Bridges were designed and executed long before mankind, from the simplest of understandings of the real world.

(1)

Quote:Michael Berry (1980; 1990; 1994a; 1994b) has done much research on this and other asymptotic domains. He has found that in the asymptotic borderlands between such theories there emerge phenomena whose explanation requires in some sense appeal to a third intermediate theory. This is a claim (Batterman 2002) that when taken literally, has raised a number of hackles in the literature. However, understood in terms of the mathematics of characteristics and wavefronts, as was originally intended, the current author believes some of the debates are misdirected. The emergent structures (the rainbow itself is one of them) are not fully explainable either in terms of the finer wave theory or in terms of the ray theory alone. Instead, aspects of both theories (through asymptotic investigation of the wave equations) are required for a full understanding of these emergent phenomena. - R. Batterman

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-interrelate/

(2021-06-16, 01:53 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]There is a lot of interesting things to talk about in the above.  I agree that the term "emergence" can be used to support magical concepts that typically make physics concepts do -- what are informational processes.

I would defend my use of the term "emerge" as scientific and not magical, because it is based on a bridging methodology. (1)  I assert a method where mental outcomes are shown to effect physical reality.  The functionality is not tied up with brains.  Brains evolved from living things who were processing information, just fine.  Super-abundant trial and error gains data, as each outcome can be a useful bit; and while bacteria may not be at the opera to listen, they do process trillions of bits on an on-going basis.

The "missing link" is how does a living organism turn exposure to bits of information, into a separate cell with the ability to copy and store some bits as structured objects that can be active in further bio-information work.  This is what is happening that is caused by the mind. 

Your idea of engineering as "white man magic" doesn't evoke any sympathy from me.  Where is the root understanding for a bridge - at MIT or buried deep in our subconscious?  Our innate grasp of "bridge" comes from a natural process of absorbing the structured information of affordances.  Organisms gain measurable mutual information with their environments.  This inner environment of mutual information enables single cell organisms, like those that dominated earth for billions of years, to act with an inner logical behavior.

No brains needed.  My point is to look at a new way - for the evidence of mind.  Single cell organisms don't have a reflected sense of their own mental workings, but surely can will  what to eat and what to run from.

As far back as insects, living things learned of bridges, as fallen plants and trees.  These crossings are found by random search.  It only takes a few bits of memory and a will to live to generate an information object (a plan).  A plan, existing as an instinct, can be aimed at causing a tree or plant to be felled at a crossing, proactively.  Bridges were designed and executed long before mankind, from the simplest of understandings of the real world.

(1)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-interrelate/

I simply repeat my earlier challenge:

 "And very importantly, where each of the many separate components of the system have to be precisely in place in order for it to work and not be detrimental or lethal to the bacterium (the quality of irreducible complexity).  This last characteristic of the biological machine must mean that the concept of the total biological machine must have existed in some sort of mind in its beginning. If you contend that this is not the case, then explain how the irreducibly complex machine came about. "Emergence" (an appeal to magic) won't do. And slow undirected iterative RM + NS Darwinistic processes won't do either, for reasons well explained by researchers like Michael Behe."

A simple bridge does not constitute an irreducibly complex, intricate biological machine. If, as you contend, the concept of such a machine didn't have to exist in some sort of mind in the beginning, you don't address my request to explain how simple cognitive processes in single celled life forms can generate it from nothing, or from a slow undirected iterative process of building it up step by simple step from from some simple "seed" where each of the many iterative intermediate steps doesn't work and even acts as a detriment to the normal life of the cell (if not being actually lethal). Where each of these simple steps (or an original act of invention) requires engineering insight and creativity and the ability to envision results of the new design. Where this latter gradualistic approach has been debunked by Behe and others. 

None of the interesting material you just covered addresses this as far as I can tell. It does address how relatively simple unicellular organisms can carry out very simple stimulus/processes dictated by immediately occuring inner survival needs/response patterns of action. This simply doesn't constitute design of an irreducibly complex machine - a process which I contend requires a complex and creative mind of some sort. A mind that can envision the need for each of the many parts or components, and how they must work together to accomplish what the overall design is required to do, and judge whether the overall design meets the requirements (which include not interfering with the other existing functions of the cell). A mind that can realize, for example, that a whip-like "propeller" requires a hub and bearing assembly and also a "motor", and a system to respond to environmental stimuli, and also a system to manufacture the overall system of subsystems. This is just the tip of an iceberg of complexity.   

(2021-06-16, 05:09 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]I simply repeat my earlier challenge:

 "And very importantly, where each of the many separate components of the system have to be precisely in place in order for it to work and not be detrimental or lethal to the bacterium (the quality of irreducible complexity).  This last characteristic of the biological machine must mean that the concept of the total biological machine must have existed in some sort of mind in its beginning. If you contend that this is not the case, then explain how the irreducibly complex machine came about. "Emergence" (an appeal to magic) won't do. And slow undirected iterative RM + NS Darwinistic processes won't do either, for reasons well explained by researchers like Michael Behe."

A simple bridge does not constitute an irreducibly complex, intricate biological machine. If, as you contend, the concept of such a machine didn't have to exist in some sort of mind in the beginning, you don't address my request to explain how simple cognitive processes in single celled life forms can generate it from nothing, or from a slow undirected iterative process of building it up step by simple step from from some simple "seed" where each of the many iterative intermediate steps doesn't work and even acts as a detriment to the normal life of the cell (if not being actually lethal). Where each of these simple steps (or an original act of invention) requires engineering insight and creativity and the ability to envision results of the new design. Where this latter gradualistic approach has been debunked by Behe and others. 

None of the interesting material you just covered addresses this as far as I can tell. It does address how relatively simple unicellular organisms can carry out very simple stimulus/processes dictated by immediately occuring inner survival needs/response patterns of action. This simply doesn't constitute design of an irreducibly complex machine - a process which I contend requires a complex and creative mind of some sort. A mind that can envision the need for each of the many parts or components, and how they must work together to accomplish what the overall design is required to do, and judge whether the overall design meets the requirements (which include not interfering with the other existing functions of the cell). A mind that can realize, for example, that a whip-like "propeller" requires a hub and bearing assembly and also a "motor", and a system to respond to environmental stimuli, and also a system to manufacture the overall system of subsystems. This is just the tip of an iceberg of complexity.   

It is ironic (but maybe fun) to be the one who comes to support the concept of emergence.  My instinct is like yours, as so many use the term in a magical sense.  It does have a place to describe synthesis between science methods and between the models for different levels of interaction.

Quote: In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.

The problem comes from the element of the definition - wider whole - being unspecific.  Batterman and Berry would have science add a specification to emergence, which requires the variable of "wider whole" to be defined by a bridge theory.  It makes emergence very specific, especially if the bridging theory is rigorous.

The Wiki article goes on to say

Quote: Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry, and many psychological phenomena are known to emerge from underlying neurobiological processes.

OK - life (let alone Life) doesn't emerge from material systems with some magic from "complexity" or other "wider wholes".  The bridge theory is not pragmatically backed by the applicable logic and math.  Here we agree.

My assertion is that information science can mine from what we know about integrative levels, complex systems, biological perception and biological regulatory functioning to find a complete level of activity describing the evolution of mind.

Quote: if you have coded communication and a will to live - biological designs will emerge in service to life.

The emergence of mind from the brain is a failed neurobiological philosophy.  My formulation is: brain organization emerges from the action of will (as measurable enforced meaning changing real-world probabilities) driving the bio-information goals that are functional behavior.

There is the well-hewn science of physiology where organic materials are chemically organized into cells and organs.  There is also, the fast developing science of bio-informatics, which is the tools and pattern analysis that track the information processing and functional behaviors of living things.

The bridge theory between physiology and bio-informatics needs to append the information objects of mind, such as perceptions, memory, goals and stimulus responses to their corresponding chemical organizations.  Top-down and bottom-up.

Goals, with an organic will behind them, are active structured information.  Seeing two separate environments, each discrete, we can define one where mind is active.  And know that the information objects generated by living things are real - just as we physically see arms as real.  Hence, informational realism is a framework for parsing how mind changes real-world probabilities.


in the past I did mention that Dembski has espoused some view of Informational Realism?