Evolution without accidents and also no intelligence?

Where is the consciousness line for you?  Are chickens conscious?  Are paramecia?   Shapiro specifically says cognitive (thinking) processes have outcomes on evolution, just as did Charles Darwin and George Romanes.  Darwin observed it studying instincts.  

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/mental-evolution-in-animals/78D5893C115A437DAEFDCB3572B40E4F

I live near Beaver College - but they changed the name to Arcadia, trying to escape old jokes.

I am sure chickens are conscious, and I'm fairly sure paramecia are too.

Unfortunately there seems to be a subtle sleight of hand going on in all the pronouncements from the Third Way. I mean an animal's penis has outcomes in terms of evolution - so do its legs, and its stomach! So it isn't just its cognitive ability or its instincts.

Is he saying something utterly trite, or something more profound?

Well, at the trite level he is saying that brains and instincts make an enormous difference to the success of every organism.

At the profound level he is trying to sell a different idea on the back an obvious truth. He is trying to imply that cognitive or instinctual forces operate directly on evolution - changing genes as needed to achieve a result. However, to achieve a useful result, that would mean that the mind of the organism contained some effective model of how a gene operates and all the detailed biochemistry involved. (Incidentally, this is what I assume the real designer must have in his mind or maybe in something equivalent to a computer.)

Can minds evolve in some way other than changing DNA? Only really if they step outside of the standard biological model. For example, Rupert Sheldrake postulates a variety of morphic fields that might achieve this. However in that case the morphic field is evolving via mechanisms that clearly have nothing to do with mutations of DNA because the fields are not considered to be physical at all.

Science isn't poetry, and shouldn't proceed by veiled hints and statements that might be true or false.

Sorry end of rant!

David

I am sure chickens are conscious, and I'm fairly sure paramecia are too.

Can minds evolve in some way other than changing DNA? Only really if they step outside of the standard biological model. For example, Rupert Sheldrake postulates a variety of morphic fields that might achieve this. However in that case the morphic field is evolving via mechanisms that clearly have nothing to do with mutations of DNA because the fields are not considered to be physical at all.

My position, which I believe is in step with at least some of the 75+ scholars members of the The Third Way of Evolution, is minds change DNA /RNA/Ribosome communication systems, as much or more than their spelling changes minds.  They all are accomplished thinkers who are pragmatically changing the field of biology and reconstructing the science behind bio-evolution.

Do you agree that TTW of Evolution is outside of the metaphysics of "standard biological model".
https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/

 Even today, the general public, and many scientists, are not aware of decades of research in evolutionary science, molecular biology and genome sequencing which provide alternative answers to how novel organisms have originated in the long history of life on earth. This web site is dedicated to making the results of that research available and to offering a forum to expose novel scientific thinking about the evolutionary process. The DNA record does not support the assertion that small random mutations are the main source of new and useful variations. We now know that the many different processes of variation involve well regulated cell action on DNA molecules.

Genomes merge, shrink and grow, acquire new DNA components, and modify their structures by well-documented cellular and biochemical processes. Most of the scientists referenced on this web site have come to a wide range of conclusions about different aspects of evolutionary change. Many see evolution as a complex process with distinct mechanisms and stages rather than a phenomenon explainable by a small number of principles. The divergences and multiplicity of ideas, opinions and theories on this website are necessary since many fields of evolutionary biology remain relatively unexplored.

I strongly support the ideas of R. Sheldrake.  However, from what you said there is a misunderstanding.  A field is a physical object.  It is only to be considered as a part of physical theory.  It is almost like you imply that Sheldrake is woo, so his theory is non-physical.

 In physics, a field is a physical quantity, represented by a scalar, vector, or tensor, that has a value for each point in space and time.

That the spelling of DNA alone is "special" is only in chemistry, where the molecular structures and forces are measured without grey areas.  DNA/RNA/Ribosome communication systems are measured in messages communicated.  It's a probabilistic environment of measurement standards.

I am completely sure a paramecium processes measurable information.  I do not think it is self-aware to any degree.  I lived in the country for a little while.  My personal experience of the self-awareness of chickens, is pretty near zero, with an occasional individual who stands out.  But, if you mean that chickens have experience, yes, they are detecting their sensations.

Do you think that Shapiro and Noble experienced no backlash during their careers?  The just emerged because they are leaders in their fields of research.
from Wiki

 Noble's research focuses on using computer models of biological organs and organ systems to interpret function from the molecular level to the whole organism. Together with international collaborators, his team has used supercomputers to create the first virtual organ, the virtual heart.[17][18]

As secretary-general of the International Union of Physiological Sciences 1993–2001, he played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, an international project to use computer simulations to create the quantitative physiological models necessary to interpret the genome, and he was elected president of the IUPS at its world congress in Kyoto in 2009.[19]

Noble is also a philosopher of biology, with many publications in journals and books of philosophy.[20][21][22]
His books The Music of Life, Dance to the Tune of Life and Understanding Living Systems challenge the foundations of current biological sciences, question the central dogma, its unidirectional view of information flow, and its imposition of a bottom-up methodology for research in the life sciences.

3][

So...ID is top down and @stephenw is advocating something more...bottom up?

I fear the debate has entered territory that possibly exceeds my grasp of biology, but ideally some clarification - please & thanks! - will help me keep pace...

There also has to be something which adds up future patterns, biasing past and present evolutionary development towards future patterns which are more successful (because there are more of the successful pattern). The translations necessary to move towards a future pattern, would be limited by for example, energy, so that changes are naturally limited to small/low-energy translations. We have to have bias from the future, otherwise we can't explain the speed of some adaptions.

So for a simplistic example - because what I've written above is pretty dense to understand...

Lets say we spray Round-up on a weed pattern A in the present. In the future Weed pattern A declines in numbers, and Weed pattern B increases in numbers. The greater numbers of Weed pattern B vs A in the future, biases the development of Weed pattern A in the present towards translations that evolve towards weed pattern B in the future. Obviously past patterns have a much greater effect on the future, but we still need a mechanism to bias future movements... which I like to explain as the ring in a bulls nose... you can pull the bull around by the ring in it's nose... and it will follow the ring... the ring is not the bull itself, but the rest of the bull will follow the ring to some degree... it's just a bit of bias on the system.

That said... I'm completely convinced we're only experiencing the result of some type of process here where we live... what is actually happening within the process is hidden by the result... so that's all we can say about things... but we have to understand things the best way we can from this perspective... from within the system.

We can see this bias quite straight-forwardly in nature... Another simplistic example... people who live in very old homes often have old fashioned perspectives and opinions. I understand this increased probability by claiming that these people are biased by their environmental patterns towards adding up past patterns... 'dragging' them towards the past. Whereas new modern cities with new architecture and new homes, biases people towards adding up future patterns... dragging them into the future. We see that modern architectural developments often go hand in hand with modernising successful societies (but not always) - I think they are connected future to past, as well as past to future (it's actually pattern to pattern). Again, it's just a bit of bias on the system.

So...ID is top down and @stephenw is advocating something more...bottom up?

I fear the debate has entered territory that possibly exceeds my grasp of biology, but ideally some clarification - please & thanks! - will help me keep pace...

Top down and bottom up - why not both? 

What I am sure about is that information about the past and future states are useful to evolution.  My term would be a "Lamarckian Leak".  I was inspired by the book Lamarck's Signature, by Ted Steele decades ago.  He suffered his University job, due to backlash.  Today his work mainstream.  Things have changed.

A few years after Steele getting roasted for his Larmackian claims -- C. Spadafora and Shapiro came out in his defense with hard data that addressed some of the same questions about communication by somatic cells to the genetic material.  From then on - till now - Dawkins and others are back on their heels.  The genetic activity of living things is versatile and strategic.  The idea of spelling mistakes driving evolution is replaced with many information pathways for species to adapt to their living environments.  Besides epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer, there is stealing useful genes as part of sex. Maybe its bad-boy biology?

https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/p...-spadafora

 Spadafora has contributed three chapters to the book. Below is the abstract to one of his contributing chapters.

The concept of Sperm-Mediated Gene Transfer (SMGT) describes the ability of spermatozoa to deliver to embryos not only their own genome during fertilization, but also foreign genetic information with which they may come in contact.

StevenW,

@stephenw

Why don't we start from my post above, which highlighted the deliberate obfuscations in TTW-speak?

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-e...1#pid53921

Remember, you liked it, but never explicitly replied to it.

I feel I pinpointed what frustrates me about the TTW - even though I do understand the reasons why they need to write the way they do. I put quite a bit of thought into that post, and if you don't want to respond, I don't see much point in continuing our discussion. I don't mind you disagreeing with what I wrote, I just want to hear your response.

David

StevenW,

@stephenw

Why don't we start from my post above, which highlighted the deliberate obfuscations in TTW-speak?

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-e...1#pid53921

Remember, you liked it, but never explicitly replied to it.

I feel I pinpointed what frustrates me about the TTW - even though I do understand the reasons why they need to write the way they do. I put quite a bit of thought into that post, and if you don't want to respond, I don't see much point in continuing our discussion. I don't mind you disagreeing with what I wrote, I just want to hear your response.

David

I did try to respond.  I have no idea what TTW speak is - but maybe I speak it too.  Is this what you meant?

However, to achieve a useful result, that would mean that the mind of the organism contained some effective model of how a gene operates and all the detailed biochemistry involved. (Incidentally, this is what I assume the real designer must have in his mind or maybe in something equivalent to a computer.)

If so - I would try again.

Top down and bottom up - why not both? 

What I am sure about is that information about the past and future states are useful to evolution.  My term would be a "Lamarckian Leak".  I was inspired by the book Lamarck's Signature, by Ted Steele decades ago.  He suffered his University job, due to backlash.  Today his work mainstream.  Things have changed.

A few years after Steele getting roasted for his Larmackian claims -- C. Spadafora and Shapiro came out in his defense with hard data that addressed some of the same questions about communication by somatic cells to the genetic material.  From then on - till now - Dawkins and others are back on their heels.  The genetic activity of living things is versatile and strategic.  The idea of spelling mistakes driving evolution is replaced with many information pathways for species to adapt to their living environments.  Besides epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer, there is stealing useful genes as part of sex. Maybe its bad-boy biology?

https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/p...-spadafora

I think this is an example of the "TTW-speak" that David referred to. Deliberately and frustratingly ambiguous.

As I have already brought up several times, the devil is in the details. In the bacterial flagellum example, this is an irreducibly complex biological molecular machine, with a number of essential interacting parts, that will not work (and will probably kill the organism) if any one of those parts is missing or damaged.

We know from experience as designing intelligent conscious beings, that with irreducibly complex machines a conscious mind had at the beginning to visualize the functional requirements (in this case basically to build a paddle and associated motor assembly to propel the bacterium through the water). Then this mind had to come up with (out of several different possible designs) the idea of using an ATP-powered rotary motor to drive a whip-like paddle or propeller. Then this mind had to reason out the other components of the molecular machine that would be necessary to make it work, including a rotary bearing, coupler, and sensors and actuators to adjust the RPM according to environmental conditions. Then this mind had to come up with the necessary ideas covering the design of the subsystem that would manufacture this flagellum from raw materials in the bacterium, based on translating specific DNA code for it, that it also had to design. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the mental task involved.

Because the flagellum is irreducibly complex, it just wouldn't do for the organism to build a primitive "motor" based on some earlier molecular machine and try it out - this would probably kill the organism. A mind with foresight and ingenuity had to realize that also a paddle assembly and bearing assembly and sensors and actuators were necessary.  

Do the "Third Way" people recognize that this level of mind has to be conscious and self-aware, and that what they seem to be proposing is that this level of mind is exhibited by relatively simple bacterial cells? They never get down to brass tacks and call a spade a spade. I know this is probably because they know that to do so would probably terminate their careers. But the result to date is a lot of talk that doesn't make much sense.

I did try to respond.  I have no idea what TTW speak is - but maybe I speak it too.  Is this what you meant?

Well like everyone here, we read ideas and pass ideas on, hopefully with some insight of our own! Thus inevitably you do speak TTW because that is what you read! All I am saying, is you need to think what exactly it means.

I find it fascinating that the science establishment is so invested with the concept of RM+NS, and particularly with the idea of evolution, that it is corrupting the whole logic of science.

I used to 'believe' in evolution by natural selection even while becoming interested in non-materilistic ideas in other contexts. I remember it was Lone Shaman on Skeptiko who converted me when that website was at its best. We had a number of intense discussions that changed my mind.

My earlier post took a tiny bit of TTW speak and challenged you to figure out what exactly it means.

David

I think this is an example of the "TTW-speak" that David referred to. Deliberately and frustratingly ambiguous.

As I have already brought up several times, the devil is in the details. In the bacterial flagellum example, this is an irreducibly complex biological molecular machine, with a number of essential interacting parts, that will not work (and will probably kill the organism) if any one of those parts is missing or damaged.

We know from experience as designing intelligent conscious beings, that with irreducibly complex machines a conscious mind had at the beginning to visualize the functional requirements (in this case basically to build a paddle and associated motor assembly to propel the bacterium through the water). Then this mind had to come up with (out of several different possible designs) the idea of using an ATP-powered rotary motor to drive a whip-like paddle or propeller. Then this mind had to reason out the other components of the molecular machine that would be necessary to make it work, including a rotary bearing, coupler, and sensors and actuators to adjust the RPM according to environmental conditions. Then this mind had to come up with the necessary ideas covering the design of the subsystem that would manufacture this flagellum from raw materials in the bacterium, based on translating specific DNA code for it, that it also had to design. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the mental task involved.

Because the flagellum is irreducibly complex, it just wouldn't do for the organism to build a primitive "motor" based on some earlier molecular machine and try it out - this would probably kill the organism. A mind with foresight and ingenuity had to realize that also a paddle assembly and bearing assembly and sensors and actuators were necessary.  

Do the "Third Way" people recognize that this level of mind has to be conscious and self-aware, and that what they seem to be proposing is that this level of mind is exhibited by relatively simple bacterial cells? They never get down to brass tacks and call a spade a spade. I know this is probably because they know that to do so would probably terminate their careers. But the result to date is a lot of talk that doesn't make much sense.

I also think that a lot of "biological inventions" have the capacity to be lethal if they aren't just right. If we think about the evolution of a gene for just about any enzyme, it would start out as a dangerous disruptive force. The expression of the gene would not be controlled, so that for example, a 'new' protease gene would manufacture a product that would probably chew up bits of the cell that are needed - until a control structure evolved as well. This seems to be the flagellum problem in miniature - until everything is in place, the newly evolved genes are pretty toxic if not lethal. Natural selection would select them out of existence.

David