stephenw Wrote:Its a matter of context and applied logic. If you believe in the mythos of blind evolution and like Paul, believe that there is no natural design before humans invented design, new add-ons to the base of bio-evolution like epigenentics - are fine and the theory is just gaining in complexity.
Whether there is natural design depends entirely on your definition of design.
Quote:However, if you have data about how information from the environment is converted to adaptation, then the idea that evolution is proceeding by random events is nonsensical. If living things adapt in a way that is correlated to changing information in their environment - then mind becomes the driver for change. As said before - Darwin thought this to be the case.
The idea that it is proceeding entirely by random events is nonsensical anyway. Why is mind required for living things to evolve to adapt to the environment?
Quote:If true - and is surely is - then the day-to-day work of minds of all living things (including single cell) are densely packed with mutual information stored up over billions of years. Information drives functionality via instructions. The genomes of living things are packed with the history of the intent to survive and from them design becomes apparent in the natural languages used in cells, organs and whole living beings.
I have no idea what you're talking about here.
~~ Paul
(2017-12-13, 10:29 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Its a matter of context and applied logic. If you believe in the mythos of blind evolution and like Paul, believe that there is no natural design before humans invented design, new add-ons to the base of bio-evolution like epigenentics - are fine and the theory is just gaining in complexity.
However, if you have data about how information from the environment is converted to adaptation, then the idea that evolution is proceeding by random events is nonsensical. If living things adapt in a way that is correlated to changing information in their environment - then mind becomes the driver for change. As said before - Darwin thought this to be the case.
Function, including bio-functionality requires processes to have mutual information between a living thing and its environment. Mutual information is measurable - not in terms of meaning, but in structure. There is "some group of encoded bits" that is a solid match for another group of bits.
What makes functionality work is that the meaning of the groups of bits is available for organizing processes. There is no doubt that living things sense their environment. There is no doubt that the sensation event gains mutual information for use by any living thing. The next step is to say that living things use this information to adapt at subconscious and also conscious levels.
If true - and is surely is - then the day-to-day work of minds of all living things (including single cell) are densely packed with mutual information stored up over billions of years. Information drives functionality via instructions. The genomes of living things are packed with the history of the intent to survive and from them design becomes apparent in the natural languages used in cells, organs and whole living beings.
Not a magical dispensation of qualities, not a blind watch assembly from luck - but adapted living things consuming and processing information into useful responses. Our genomes express strategy in how they handle the information. The data about about the genome and its ability to communicate is pouring in. Let the myth die.
To say its all chemistry is like saying its all matter -- and energy is not that important. There is no life without sign-based communication, no matter how simple. Life didn't come from a bag of chemicals alone - it came when the bag of chemicals started asking - "what going on out there and how can I get me some of it in here?"
How does "mind" come in to this? I can agree with much of what you say (assuming I've understood it correctly), and I doubt most biologists would disagree with the idea that life involves a mutual, sometimes sign-based exchange of information. But none of that needs "mind". The production and reading of these "frozen-accident" signals is biochemical, not intelligent.
Linda
(2017-12-14, 12:14 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]How does "mind" come in to this? I can agree with much of what you say (assuming I've understood it correctly), and I doubt most biologists would disagree with the idea that life involves a mutual, sometimes sign-based exchange of information. But none of that needs "mind". The production and reading of these "frozen-accident" signals is biochemical, not intelligent.
Linda
Their is no awareness in chemicals. It is not a property of materials. Awareness of signals with a motive to decode them is mental work. The amount of work, as gains in order, organization and specific facts can be charted and measured.
After exchange of information - such as a sensation of reflected light from the immediate environment - one would say the the organism gained information. The organism now has mutual information in common with the environment, such as the approach of another organism. This situation is expressed as the organism knows the presence of the other organism. If the organism knows whether the approach is friend or foe - then the organism is said to understand.
Knowing, recognizing and understanding are not the process called mind?
(oh come on now)
(2017-12-13, 11:48 PM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: [ -> ]Whether there is natural design depends entirely on your definition of design.
The idea that it is proceeding entirely by random events is nonsensical anyway. Why is mind required for living things to evolve to adapt to the environment?
~~ Paul
I have posted a definition of design, you seemed to have had no objection at the time. Not understanding what happens during the design process is hampering your view. After design, measurable decreases in entropy of the state of a system must be in evidence.
The idea that entropy - and its opposite (negentropy) information- are not real and measurable seems to be a surprise each time we talk. It is nonsensical to think if you start a chem reaction and exclude oxygen - that the result with have oxidized molecules.
Likewise, if you start a thing, event or process and exclude order and mutual information - that you will get results that are more organized then when you started is just as ridiculous, in terms of quantifiable science.
(2017-12-14, 01:43 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]I have posted a definition of design, you seemed to have had no objection at the time. Not understanding what happens during the design process is hampering your view. After design, measurable decreases in entropy of the state of a system must be in evidence.
The idea that entropy - and its opposite (negentropy) information- are not real and measurable seems to be a surprise each time we talk. It is nonsensical to think if you start a chem reaction and exclude oxygen - that the result with have oxidized molecules.
Likewise, if you start a thing, event or process and exclude order and mutual information - that you will get results that are more organized then when you started is just as ridiculous, in terms of quantifiable science.
You are confused about what I don't understand about your posts. I don't understand why your claims about information require a mind. Fls appears to be asking the same question.
~~ Paul
(2017-12-14, 01:48 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]I was trying to say that the problem-solving of organisms with their environments are encoded as the natural language of living things. Each and every bio-chemical "accident" had to be encoded to keep it useful and functional.
You appear to be using a definition of design that requires a mind. In that case, there is no design in evolution.
~~ Paul
(2017-12-14, 02:49 PM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: [ -> ]You are confused about what I don't understand about your posts. I don't understand why your claims about information require a mind. Fls appears to be asking the same question.
~~ Paul
Information doesn't require minds. Minds require real-world based information to transform into meaning behavior, like lungs require air to get the meaningful O2.
You have - as usual ducked the question of logic gates. Let's close it off with modern science.
Quote: The team realized that they were simply altering an already-existing biological logic. “Organisms must process information encoded via developmental and environmental signals to survive and reproduce,” they said (emphasis added). They recognized, further, that their operations are trivial compared to what living organisms do. “Researchers have also engineered synthetic genetic logic to realize simpler, independent control of biological processes.”
In the same issue of Science, Yaakov Benenson, from the Swiss Institute of Technology, agreed that living organisms use recombinatorial logic...
https://evolutionnews.org/2013/05/bacteria_perfor/
Quote: This work proposes a Markovian memoryless model for the DNA that simplifies enormously the complexity of it. We encode nucleotide sequences into symbolic sequences, called words, from which we establish meaningful length of words and groups of words that share symbolic similarities. Interpreting a node to represent a group of similar words and edges to represent their functional connectivity allows us to construct a network of the grammatical rules governing the appearance of groups of words in the DNA. Our model allows us to predict the transition between groups of words in the DNA with unprecedented accuracy, and to easily calculate many informational quantities to better characterize the DNA. In addition, we reduce the DNA of known bacteria to a network of only tens of nodes, show how our model can be used to detect similar (or dissimilar) genes in different organisms, and which sequences of symbols are responsible for most of the information content of the DNA. Therefore, the DNA can indeed be treated as a language, a Markovian language, where a ‘word’ is an element of a group, and its grammar represents the rules behind the probability of transitions between any two groups.
Quote:Natural language analysis has been a topic of interest in the last decade [3–5]. Natural language written texts can be considered as being composed of a series of letters, syllables, words or phrases. During the nineteenth century, many linguists like Schleicher and Haeckel interpreted language as a living system [6]. Based on this concept, Darwin also proposed that evolution of species and language are similar [7]. Many researchers have introduced the concept of linguistics into biology [8]. Brendel et al. [9] used formal linguistic concepts to define a basic grammar for genes, based on the idea that mutating a piece of genetic information was similar to modifying words. Similar to works that aimed at finding the relevant words, their relationships and their information content in natural languages, many studies have focused on analysing genomic sequences like DNA and proteins as if they were a language, using similar methodological approaches as the one used to model natural languages [8]. Formal linguistic concepts were used by Brendel et al. [9] to define basic grammatical rules that describe how genes can mutate, inspired in the grammatical rules of languages that regulate how and which word follows a previous word. Gramatikoff et al. [10] have used lexical statistics to identify and represent structural, functional and evolutionary relationships for multiple genomic sequences and texts from natural languages.
http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/c...3/1/150527
(2017-12-14, 02:50 PM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: [ -> ]You appear to be using a definition of design that requires a mind. In that case, there is no design in evolution.
~~ Paul
Of course I am, because that is how mind and design are defined.
This kinda like arguing with a flat-earther. You are just sure that you will fall off the edge, if information processing by the mind, is real. And project that on the rest of the world, that they should not "go there".
Darwin believed in Mental Evolution (He wrote an introduction to a book of that name authored by his student G. Romanes.)
(2017-12-14, 03:42 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Information doesn't require minds. Minds require real-world based information to transform into meaning behavior, like lungs require air to get the meaningful O2.
What does that have to do with evolution?
Quote:You have - as usual ducked the question of logic gates. Let's close it off with modern science.
Of course logic gates were designed.
I still don't understand what any of this has to do with evolution. Any chance you could succinctly state your case?
~~ Paul