(2018-08-25, 05:22 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]But that shouldn't be a reason to object to my answer - it should be a reason to endorse it! Why? Because:
Exactly! One can assert "Words might be reducible to cheese" or "Numbers might be reducible to visual impressions" or "Subjective experiences might be reducible to matter and energy" but simply asserting any of these things doesn't somehow make them true - in fact, we know from their meanings that the possible reductions they suggest are strictly nonsensical.
But that wasn't what he claimed to know. He claimed simply that the former couldn't be reduced to the latter.
[Edit: Admittedly, in rereading his post, I may be reading his claim a little too narrowly and out of context, because in context it may be seen to be denying the "idealistically compatible" suggestion that Paul makes and which I've quoted and responded to below.
Edit2: But then again, viewed through the lens of the coin analogy (below), both he and Paul are correct: his reasonable position would seem to be that the one side of the coin is not identical with the other, even as Paul could reasonably assert that it is nevertheless the same coin.]
I think it was Neil who pointed out on Skeptiko some years back that this sort of theory of mind is essentially compatible with idealism. In other words, with respect to it, one can make the same sort of suggestion that Bernardo Kastrup makes with respect to idealism: that the brain (i.e. "matter and energy and their interactions") is the external appearance of "mind" or "consciousness", which involves a corresponding internal, subjective experience. It's sort of a "two sides of the same coin" thing - the one side being the external appearance and the other being the internal experience. But in my view one couldn't then say that "one side of the coin reduces to the other". This would imply that "one side of the coin" is more fundamental than, and gives rise to, the other, which is not the case.
Quote:Steve001: My objection to this is one can assert till the cows come home.
Quote:Laird: But that shouldn't be a reason to object to my answer - it should be a reason to endorse it! Why? Because:
Quote:Steve001 Wrote: [A]sserting something doesn't somehow make it truth.
[Laird]Exactly! One can assert "Words might be reducible to cheese" or "Numbers might be reducible to visual impressions" or "Subjective experiences might be reducible to matter and energy" but simply asserting any of these things doesn't somehow make them true - in fact, we know from their meanings that the possible reductions they suggest are strictly nonsensical.
I agree to them being non-sensical. So are asserted beliefs without evidence.
Quote:Steve001: How does nbtruthman know there is subjective experience without matter and energy?
Quote:But that wasn't what he claimed to know. He claimed simply that the former couldn't be reduced to the latter.
Quote:Admittedly, in rereading his post, I may be reading his claim a little too narrowly and out of context, because in context it may be seen to be denying the "idealistically compatible" suggestion that Paul makes and which I've quoted and responded to below.
But then again, viewed through the lens of the coin analogy (below), both he and Paul are correct: his reasonable position would seem to be that the one side of the coin is not identical with the other, even as Paul could reasonably assert that it is nevertheless the same coin.
In the total context it is strongly implied subjective experience does happen without matter and energy.
Quote:Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: I believe that consciousness is brain function
Quote:Laird: I think it was Neil who pointed out on Skeptiko some years back that this sort of theory of mind is essentially compatible with idealism. In other words, with respect to it, one can make the same sort of suggestion that Bernardo Kastrup makes with respect to idealism: that the brain (i.e. "matter and energy and their interactions") is the external appearance of "mind" or "consciousness", which involves a corresponding internal, subjective experience. It's sort of a "two sides of the same coin" thing - the one side being the external appearance and the other being the internal experience. But in my view one couldn't then say that "one side of the coin reduces to the other". This would imply that "one side of the coin" is more fundamental than, and gives rise to, the other, which is not the case.
Invoking philosphy is why I did not reply to Brian's post.
I think there's serious mathematical problems with the idea of brain = mind in teh form of individuation. If you're going to say everythintg comes from matter and energy you're going to have to explain how individuation occurred. Becfause as it stands, with current understanding, it simply shouldn't. Ther should either be zero consciousness or one consciousness due to all matter and energy in teh universe being intertwined.
Arguoin that somehow you can have individuation via matter and energy is like me pointing at a swimming pool and declaring that it's not all made of water but is instead made of water A and water B and water C and so on and then continuing to assert that even when it'd demonstrated that it's all just the same hydrogen and oxygen molecules throughout the whole thing.
Differences in neural connectiveness do not account for this phenomena as they too are made of the same matter and energy as everything else. You could very easily have all the functions and behaviours of the human body or any other living thing without a person being there observing it. So why don't you see that? Why can't I just jump to another persons viewpoint if I'm just part of the same interconnected system as everything else? Why am I even here observing at all? It makes zero mathematical sense and is something the materialists would need to answer. By Occams Razor, the reason you don't see it, is because that other thing is necessary because these things aren't interconnected in the top down/self contained way that is typically argued for. Whereas a bottom up, emergent system would have more explanatory power.
(2018-08-25, 05:22 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]I think it was Neil who pointed out on Skeptiko some years back that this sort of theory of mind is essentially compatible with idealism. In other words, with respect to it, one can make the same sort of suggestion that Bernardo Kastrup makes with respect to idealism: that the brain (i.e. "matter and energy and their interactions") is the external appearance of "mind" or "consciousness", which involves a corresponding internal, subjective experience. It's sort of a "two sides of the same coin" thing - the one side being the external appearance and the other being the internal experience. But in my view one couldn't then say that "one side of the coin reduces to the other". This would imply that "one side of the coin" is more fundamental than, and gives rise to, the other, which is not the case.
Sounds like Kastrup is going for some form of dualism. Or perhaps it's a form of neutral monism, although I don't think that would be described as two sides of the same coin.
~~ Paul
(2018-08-26, 12:26 AM)Mediochre Wrote: [ -> ]I think there's serious mathematical problems with the idea of brain = mind in teh form of individuation. If you're going to say everythintg comes from matter and energy you're going to have to explain how individuation occurred. Becfause as it stands, with current understanding, it simply shouldn't. Ther should either be zero consciousness or one consciousness due to all matter and energy in teh universe being intertwined.
Why do you think all matter and energy is "intertwined"?
If that would prevent individuation of consciousness, why wouldn't it also prevent individuation of objects?
~~ Paul
(2018-08-26, 01:05 AM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: [ -> ]Sounds like Kastrup is going for some form of dualism.
He's a non-dualist, but a duality of
some sort is unavoidable no matter what your theory of mind, right? Even for a non-dualist, the internal (subjective experience) simply
is of a different semantic category to the external (the "appearance" of the "physical" brain) even if ultimately they are one and the same thing considered from different perspectives.
(2018-08-26, 01:05 AM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: [ -> ]Or perhaps it's a form of neutral monism, although I don't think that would be described as two sides of the same coin.
As far as I remember, he doesn't use the coin analogy - that's original to me - but I may be misremembering. He's a self-declared idealist though, not a neutral monist. I would have thought you'd have known that, as I seem to recall you've had discussions with him on Skeptiko.
(2018-08-26, 01:06 AM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: [ -> ]Why do you think all matter and energy is "intertwined"?
If that would prevent individuation of consciousness, why wouldn't it also prevent individuation of objects?
~~ Paul
It would, I'm glad you noticed that
Examples of amazing mimicry
A moth’s wings feature two flies picking at a pile of bird droppings, Macrocilix maia/Alexey Yakovlev:
[Image: flypoopmoth.jpg]
Video of the larva of a sphinx hawk moth (Hemeroplanes triptolemus).
Of course, this just somehow happened: information transmitted by nobody at all to somebody (a moth predator). Information that happens to be false, which probably increases the complexity. An accident of natural selection, right?
Video of an orchid with a monkey face.
Has anyone established that these impostures “fool” any life form into avoiding the plant?
Concerning all these extraordinary examples of mimicry, has anyone done probability calculations (not rhetoric or theorizing) for purely random evolution for this, via natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism)?
An interesting
new article lays out how new advances in biology have now discredited the common Darwinian argument that attempts to debunk Michael Behe and claim that "cooption" can explain irreducible complexity, in particular the bacterial flagellum. The new research undermines virtually all possibility for neo-Darwinian RM + NS evolution to generate complex adaptations.
Some excerpts:
Quote:"Some of the most relevant research related to evolutionary timescales was conducted through Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and IST Austria. They published a key article (The Time Scale of Evolutionary Innovation, at https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a...bi.1003818 ) which lays out two crucial findings:
(1) The expected time required for a random search to find one member of a set of target sequences (e.g., nucleotide sequences corresponding to a functional gene) of length L increases exponentially with L.
(2) The expected time required to find a target from a starting sequence that is only a “few steps away from the target set” is the same as from a starting sequence that is randomly chosen.
(Analyzing the results of this study) the chances of any organism evolving a new protein of comparable length (500 amino acids) (that is, comparable to just one of the unique structural or assembly proteins of the flagellum rod or filament or other parts) in all of Earth’s history is much less than 1 chance in a trillion trillion. In addition, the numerical data on the exponential growth of the timescales can be interpolated to demonstrate that the chance of any novel protein much longer than 250 amino acids appearing would be miniscule.
....the single evolutionary step of building just one part of the flagellum - the flagellar filament - requires the creation of the genes for the filament (FliC), the assembly cap (FliD), and the two joint-proteins (FlgK and FlgL) along with the genes’ regulatory regions. ...The number of amino acids associated with each protein are as follows: FliC — 498, FliD — 468, FlgK — 547, FlgL — 317. Their lengths all exceed the limit for a target that could ever be found in the entire history of the Earth, and most exceed the limit significantly. Compounding the challenge, all of the proteins are required before the filament can properly assemble, which dramatically increases the disparity between the available and the required waiting time.
The challenges for evolving the flagellar filament are actually far greater than described. The addition of any combination of the needed proteins to the genome results in a selective disadvantage until all four arrive with properly coordinated regulatory control regions. For instance, if the filament, joint, or assembly cap proteins were not all available precisely when needed, the filament structure would fail to assemble. Moreover, any protein not manufactured at the correct time would either fail to enter the transport gate, or it would enter at the wrong time and interfere with the assembly of other parts.
All evidence points to the conclusion that the formation of the flagellum requires vast quantities of new genetic information (e.g., new functional genes) to appear in a geological instant while the time required for any undirected process to generate the needed amount would exceed the age of the universe by hundreds of orders of magnitude. Similar insurmountable hurdles face the vast majority of attempts to invoke cooption to explain other irreducibly complex innovations. As biology research advances, the challenges faced by the cooption explanation appear increasingly intractable."
(2018-12-20, 09:58 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]An interesting new article lays out how new advances in biology have now discredited the common Darwinian argument that attempts to debunk Michael Behe and claim that "cooption" can explain irreducible complexity, in particular the bacterial flagellum. The new research undermines virtually all possibility for neo-Darwinian RM + NS evolution to generate complex adaptations.
Some excerpts:
Did you look at the research article which is quoted? It explored a way to estimate exponential time scales for evolution, and it showed how a regeneration process enables evolution to work in polynomial time. Rather than discrediting the idea that evolution can generate complex adaptations, it showed a reasonable process whereby complex adaptations can be produced in reasonable time scales. Also, if Evolution News was jumping on this as proof that evolution follows exponential time scales, it wasn't a "finding" of the research that evolution does this, but rather a starting assumption built into their models. That claim is questionable, rather a given.
Linda
(2018-12-21, 11:38 AM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]Did you look at the research article which is quoted? It explored a way to estimate exponential time scales for evolution, and it showed how a regeneration process enables evolution to work in polynomial time. Rather than discrediting the idea that evolution can generate complex adaptations, it showed a reasonable process whereby complex adaptations can be produced in reasonable time scales. Also, if Evolution News was jumping on this as proof that evolution follows exponential time scales, it wasn't a "finding" of the research that evolution does this, but rather a starting assumption built into their models. That claim is questionable, rather a given.
Linda
It depends on what you mean by "reasonable" and by "complex adaptations".
The research paper is theoretical - and it comes up with very unrealistic estimates of the probability of a random search finding in any realistic time period an actual real-world amino acid target sequence for a target protein, as explained by Brian Miller in his Evolution News article. As he explains, the new study is unrealistic for several reasons, for instance because its assumptions disagree with experimental studies with mutating bacterial strains and Drosophila mutation studies. And most critically, the theoretical claims of the research study to have found a mechanism for evolution of new function in realistic time scales completely ignore the actual (non-theoretical) problem of target complexity in an actual real-world example such as the bacterial flagellum.
As Miller explains,
Quote:"As alluded to already, the single evolutionary step of adding the flagellar filament requires the creation of the genes for the filament (FliC), the assembly cap (FliD), and the two joint-proteins (FlgK and FlgL) along with the genes’ regulatory regions. The cap is not essential in one special group of bacteria, but it is believed to have been essential in the hypothetical common ancestor to all flagella. Each of these proteins is so highly specialized for its role in filament construction that it could not possibly serve any other cellular purpose.
One can now assess for the addition of the filament a minimum required timescale. The number of amino acids associated with each protein are as follows: FliC — 498, FliD — 468, FlgK — 547, FlgL — 317. Their lengths all exceed the limit for a target that could ever be found in the entire history of the Earth, and most exceed the limit significantly. Compounding the challenge, all of the proteins are required before the filament can properly assemble, which dramatically increases the disparity between the available and the required waiting time.
Conversely, one might start by assuming that all four proteins could form within a few billion years. The fact that timescales grow exponentially with the number of coordinated proteins would then constrain the average time for the appearance of an individual protein in standard laboratory studies of microorganisms to less than a decade and in nature to less than a day. This result clearly does not match reality since no evidence exists that any new protein has recently appeared in any species."
Of course, you could claim that for this real-world example the target sequences were actually much more achievable. That somehow for each of these four or more long target flagellar proteins there exists a long developmental chain of similar intermediate amino acid sequences, where the protein of each had some other function or enough of the target flagellar function to make it advantageous or selectable over drift, and also which didn't significantly interfere with cellular function, and didn't interfere with each other especially if they came in out of the needed flagellar sequence. This is the assumption of a "fitness seascape" consisting of an expanse of closely-spaced little islands, completely contrary to actual research results. Then there is also the crucial time factor on getting all of this done in a long series of little steps. A lot of assumptions, that would have to be backed up by verifiable specifics. I don't think that is going to happen any time soon. Of course, the good Darwinian absolutely must make this assumption (the usual "just-so" story), since to him his belief system is the absolute truth.