Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

I have criticized Steve001 for thinking or believing that his position is void of metaphysical "causes".  It is only fair that I expose my own metaphysics and how they may have some justification.  A simple statement of my position on biological design is that -- living things designed themselves and we can know this through the natural sciences.

The metaphysical position I hold is - Informational Realism.  It models an ontological stance that information as formal structure for communication and logical order exist as a counterpart of physics.  Further, in my own version it includes a ecological view that meaning in the environment is likewise detectable and objective.  It doesn't replace any laws of physics or standard units of measure (SI), but sees information objects on a separate level of interaction, as that of physical objects.  Information objects are measurable in units associated with Thermodynamics, the MTC and in formal logics.

Science has a methodological basis and a viewpoint that physics is nature bound.  Somehow, mind has been disassociated from natural events.  Informational Realism (IR) heals the fracture - and mind is simply seen as information processing as observed in information science and in linguistics.  Meaning is not an arrangement of neurons and peptides, but a component of all natural environments.  Hence, matter/energy equations hold and further; so do the equations of information science and relations in logical circumstances.  Meaningful behavior is measurable in terms logical affordances, just as much as force is measured from the output of an engine.

Thanks for the exposition which goes some way to clarifying your promotion of information science which is probably poorly understood, certainly by myself. One of the questions I have is this: I think I understand what information is but I am not clear on the part played by mind. In particular, when it comes to the evolutionary process, is it the organising principle? 

In my metaphysics, mind is fundamental; it is the source of meaning and the creative imperative. In a new thread (started yesterday) I posted some video clips of the inner workings of the cell. To me it seems inconceivable that those complex workings have no organising "director" - and for me that "director" is mind.

[Laird]

This is something of a complement to Kamarling's useful questions. As for him, your exposition helped me better understand your position, which until now I'd not understood very well.

mind is simply seen as information processing as observed in information science and in linguistics. Meaning is not an arrangement of neurons and peptides, but a component of all natural environments.

Above, you account for meaning. How, though, do you account for qualia; for the quality and feeling of subjective experience itself, including the quality and feeling of the subjective experience of understanding meaning?

Hence, matter/energy equations hold and further; so do the equations of information science and relations in logical circumstances. Meaningful behavior is measurable in terms logical affordances, just as much as force is measured from the output of an engine.

On this view, does mind have any causal power that is not reducible to a combination of (interactions between) your other two ontological categories: physical and informational objects?

I have criticized Steve001 for thinking or believing that his position is void of metaphysical "causes".  It is only fair that I expose my own metaphysics and how they may have some justification.  A simple statement of my position on biological design is that -- living things designed themselves and we can know this through the natural sciences.

The metaphysical position I hold is - Informational Realism.  It models an ontological stance that information as formal structure for communication and logical order exist as a counterpart of physics.  Further, in my own version it includes a ecological view that meaning in the environment is likewise detectable and objective.  It doesn't replace any laws of physics or standard units of measure (SI), but sees information objects on a separate level of interaction, as that of physical objects.  Information objects are measurable in units associated with Thermodynamics, the MTC and in formal logics.

Science has a methodological basis and a viewpoint that physics is nature bound.  Somehow, mind has been disassociated from natural events.  Informational Realism (IR) heals the fracture - and mind is simply seen as information processing as observed in information science and in linguistics.  Meaning is not an arrangement of neurons and peptides, but a component of all natural environments.  Hence, matter/energy equations hold and further; so do the equations of information science and relations in logical circumstances.  Meaningful behavior is measurable in terms logical affordances, just as much as force is measured from the output of an engine.

If living things 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. 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. Necessary tradeoffs have to be accounted for, balancing pros and cons for each possible solution.
- Choosing the best solution given 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. 

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. As Laird pointed out, this runs into the "hard problem".

This is something of a complement to Kamarling's useful questions. As for him, your exposition helped me better understand your position, which until now I'd not understood very well.


Above, you account for meaning. How, though, do you account for qualia; for the quality and feeling of subjective experience itself, including the quality and feeling of the subjective experience of understanding meaning?


On this view, does mind have any causal power that is not reducible to a combination of (interactions between) your other two ontological categories: physical and informational objects?

Qualia is a sensation and is one of the outcomes of a sense experience.  Some who still believe in the old paradigm might say a sensation is outside of the observations of science, due to its subjectivity.  The ideas of J. J. Gibson sets a different framework, one of direct experience or as Gibson called it direct perception.  My simplistic take on Gibson is he treats mental experience as a detection system, like eyes and ears.  The mind is detecting information objects and qualia - like the other 5 senses - and they are the experiences of knowing and understanding.

There are a lot of other excellent question in the last posts.  Let's just work this one answer and let it sink in; as it is crucial in the methodology I am presenting.  If I am attacking the normative view of mind as an emergent property, Daniel Dennett might be the most considered foe. 

 Much of Gibson's work on perception derives from his time spent in the U.S. Army Air Force. Here, he delved into thoughts on how imperative perception is on daily functions.[9] His work may be the first to show a distinct difference between types of perception. Form perception, on one hand, is a display of two static displays, whereas object perception, involves one of the displays to be in motion.[9] Gibson laid down the base for empirical perception research throughout his lifetime. He did work on adaptation and inspection of curved lines, which became a precursor for perceptual research later.[10] His basic work rejected the perspective that perception in and of itself is meaningless, he instead argued meaning is independent of the perceiver. He claimed that the environment decides perception, and that meaning is in what the environment "affords" the observer.[12] 

 
 from Wiki article and the blue bolding is my emphasis.

In physics - the Transformational View (my own idiom) sees the air and water we ingest as "passing through" and that the chemicals we absorb are integrated for an organic purpose and then let the chems go back to nature.  We are transformers of physicality and we can track the flow of chemicals objectively.  Today, no one would say that they personally generate an organic compound spontaneously.  Living things do biochem from ingested chems and expel the by-products.

Why wouldn't information objects be just the same?  Affordance is a concept that links it all together.  I am sure I am on the right track - when Dennett starting pushing Gibson's affordances in the last couple of years.  Of course, while Dennett wants the obvious benefit of making affordances a model for behavioral outcomes - he mocks Gibson's direct perception model.

He is a brief note by Dennett, as he calls folks like me "a cult", while embracing what the science from Gibson does to explain reality.  https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27002

Qualia is a sensation and is one of the outcomes of a sense experience.  Some who still believe in the old paradigm might say a sensation is outside of the observations of science, due to its subjectivity.  The ideas of J. J. Gibson sets a different framework, one of direct experience or as Gibson called it direct perception.  My simplistic take on Gibson is he treats mental experience as a detection system, like eyes and ears.  The mind is detecting information objects and qualia - like the other 5 senses - and they are the experiences of knowing and understanding.

As far as I can tell you have not really addressed my last post. Your take on Gibson doesn't make sense to me. It looks circular. Sure, one function of mental experience is to act as a sophisticated detection system. But to claim that mental experience, the true nature of it,  is actually nothing but, is one and the same as, a detection system??  This is the old Hard Problem yet again, since a system or mechanism is of an entirely different and lesser order of being than subjective experience. As has been pointed out so many times, the elements of subjective experience simply can't be reduced to matter and energy and their interactions.  

"They" (information objects and qualia) are experiences?? Information objects are objects not experiences. Qualia are by definition experiences not objects. Oh well.

As has been pointed out so many times, the elements of subjective experience simply can't be reduced to matter and energy and their interactions.

How does anyone know this as factual?

As far as I can tell you have not really addressed my last post. Your take on Gibson doesn't make sense to me. It looks circular. Sure, one function of mental experience is to act as a sophisticated detection system. But to claim that mental experience, the true nature of it,  is actually nothing but, is one and the same as, a detection system??  This is the old Hard Problem yet again, since a system or mechanism is of an entirely different and lesser order of being than subjective experience. As has been pointed out so many times, the elements of subjective experience simply can't be reduced to matter and energy and their interactions.  

"They" (information objects and qualia) are experiences?? Information objects are objects not experiences. Qualia are by definition experiences not objects. Oh well.

Your criticism is right.  I misspoke.  Information objects can be seen as the source of a "signal" about the environment not the experience itself of the agent.  I should have said information objects, as (not and) qualia are experience.  My view of mind permits self-reflection on emotional states, as they are experienced instinctively .  How one feels consciously, about ones raw feelings, is a newly structured object of mind.

I don't think I said that the detection system is all that is active with mind and believe strongly there is more.  Minds have a strong say in creating personalized information objects from their outlook as an agent.   Environmental info objects enter via the 5 senses and (according to my conjecture) another sense that detects real-world probabilities.  Further this sense has a proactive ability to effect these actual probabilities.

The bio-agent has a personal database of prior experience that has information objects that most-likely will connect to ongoing behavior.  The integration of the new objects from the current environment - with the memory of old situations - is what mind does instinctively.  

Food objects in = residual bio-energy and bio-materials + crap/pee out.
Information objects in = residual integrated information and memory configurations + ignored shit out.

Your criticism is right.  I misspoke.  Information objects can be seen as the source of a "signal" about the environment not the experience itself of the agent.  I should have said information objects, as (not and) qualia are experience.  My view of mind permits self-reflection on emotional states, as they are experienced instinctively .  How one feels consciously, about ones raw feelings, is a newly structured object of mind.
...

Information objects in = residual integrated information and memory configurations + ignored shit out.

Perhaps I'm misreading or misunderstanding your language, which seems to be specific to the science in which you are immersed. However, it seems to me that, as with most physical sciences, you are attempting to objectify the subjective. To package subjective experience into neat little parcels you term information objects. That allows the information theorist a means of measurement. 

So, again for clarification, when Nagel asks what it's like to be a bat, are you saying that there are degrees of batness? And what of the measured "objects"? Can they be isolated, their content analysed and perhaps recreated? So that eventually some future information technician could package the bat experience to be re-experienced by a non-bat?

I'm really not being flippant, I'm trying to understand how far this objectification of the subjective goes.

If anyone is interested, more by mathematician Granville Sewell on Winston Ewert’s “Dependency Graph of Life” study, at https://evolutionnews.org/2018/08/more-o...new-paper/ :

"...when Ford automobiles and Boeing jets evolve similar new GPS systems, or when bats and whales develop sonar echolocation independently, they are converging and becoming more alike, at least in one attribute, rather than diverging and becoming more distinct.

This phenomenon of convergence is so ubiquitous that it has become a major problem for evolutionists. As Cornelius Hunter points out in “The Real Problem with Convergence,” the problem is not only that it is hard to believe that very different species would develop similar new features independently: anyone who is able to believe that eyes developed though random processes once will find a way to believe they developed multiple times by chance, as Hunter says. The problem is it destroys the tree of life! Contrary to what the textbooks tell us, the similarities among species do not really point to a strict tree structure of common descent. They look more like the way a designer creates new software or technology products: a designer is free to reuse software modules or pieces of engineering technology from multiple previous products, not just from direct “ancestors” of the new product. New species and new products do, nevertheless, often inherit much of their “technology” from one ancestor."

Perhaps I'm misreading or misunderstanding your language, which seems to be specific to the science in which you are immersed. However, it seems to me that, as with most physical sciences, you are attempting to objectify the subjective. To package subjective experience into neat little parcels you term information objects. That allows the information theorist a means of measurement. 

So, again for clarification, when Nagel asks what it's like to be a bat, are you saying that there are degrees of batness? And what of the measured "objects"? Can they be isolated, their content analysed and perhaps recreated? So that eventually some future information technician could package the bat experience to be re-experienced by a non-bat?

I'm really not being flippant, I'm trying to understand how far this objectification of the subjective goes.

Yes - the goal is to have a scientific model of mental events that includes mind effecting the environment through changing real-world probabilities.  Hence, why I am trying to sell a methodological view to model mind that is not trapped in organic chem.  But measures - if only indirectly - factors like will-power and creativity.

What is conjectured by me; is a process model for simple interaction of bio-information processing leading to natural processes of purposeful behavior.  How living things understand their environment is addressed.  This model is just a (useful) map.

On the other hand - this map based on direct perception - is not the territory of actual feelings.  One can read a communication that is brilliant and full of deep meaning - and not "get it".  Another may read the same message, in a moment of trouble, and be greatly inspired.  And further - act in a creative and inspired way based on the meaning to them personally.  

I am not espousing a dualism of physics and information science.  I am just noting both a well-developed and that they measure different levels of what is real.  There can be many more levels of analysis that just 2.  Some may produce better outcomes for life.  I am just saying there is more than one (materialism).  Information science has been very productive in the last 50 years.  But, it literally lacks meaning in its equations.