The Intelligence Behind Evolution?

If we specify that the dead are still human, I feel that is stretching language somewhat. It is suggesting that creativity in the 'afterlife' ( I dislike that term ) originates in physical humans. Perhaps that has things the wrong way around?

This creativity probably originated in physical human lives - why else the great resemblance to human literature? There apparently are two main theories proposed to explain Patience Worth. One is that she was a subconscious sub-personality utilizing some sort of genius-level literary creativity. The other is that she was a spirit entity probably having lived as human and having strong connections to these past lives. In both cases her creativity was closely associated with the human.

Well I think the amount of complexity in the information is itself up for debate? And how far the organism has to go in the levels of information.

For example if we assume ID is right about CSI, then perhaps in the long history of the universe some entities elsewhere achieved this in a time-span that did not require intervention. If that information is stored in, say, a Morphic Field then each subsequent evolutionary chain in the universe might have less distance to travel between forms. At least if they can access the Morphic record.

OTOH maybe spirits were goofing off or doing a[n] art show and thus caused the Cambrian Explosion. Or the evolutionary path hit a trigger in the Simulation program, or maybe the Fine Tuner(s?) intervened and made the adjustements...

I don't think so. With the cell even the Darwinist evolutionists grudgingly admit that with ongoing research the known complexity of the cell has inexorably gotten more and more incredible. The researchers for the most part just unravel layer after layer of new complexity without even attempting to give some sort of Darwinist account of their development. 

With animal complexity this is also the case. With both the complexity of the cell and especially of the human animal body designing these interlocked systems of systems is far beyond any present or projected human capabilities. Continued Darwinist belief that they are due to some sort of RM + NS mechanisms is purely a sort of religious faith without much foundation. 

Neo-Darwinistic evolution indeed has been prevalent in evolution. It's inherent in the nature of DNA and the genetic code. But if Behe is right about the inherently genetically devolving nature of Darwinistic RM + NS, he has discovered yet another reason in addition to the probabilistic calculations why it could not possibly be responsible for the great amount of CSI in living organisms, especially the intricate irreducibly complex biological systems so abundant in life.

As I mentioned, I think continued belief in neo-Darwinism as the creative force in evolution is today mainly a matter of faith rather than science. It's a cultural paradigm or icon that is not allowed to be successfully attacked in the educated public belief system.

I know this is a bit of a rabbit hole in this discussion (which I am enjoying!), but this line of thinking always brings up an issue of curiosity that I've raised before:

How do we account for the apparent anomaly of human intelligence with neo-Darwinism?  It seems to me that the massive delta between human intelligence and any other known intelligence is the biggest "evolutionary" anomaly in nature.  Does any other organism have such a unique and extreme feature?  Perhaps someone can respond with an explanation that makes this observation unremarkable (wouldn't be the first time I've been corrected!), but if not.... how are we to account for this?

This creativity probably originated in physical human lives - why else the great resemblance to human literature? There apparently are two main theories proposed to explain Patience Worth. One is that she was a subconscious sub-personality utilizing some sort of genius-level literary creativity. The other is that she was a spirit entity probably having lived as human and having strong connections to these past lives. In both cases her creativity was closely associated with the human.

I was thinking in more general terms than the specific case of Patience Worth. The question I was considering was this: from whence comes human creativity? And where does genius come from? It often seems to involve 'altered states', whether a dreamworld or occasionally through drug use, or just intense focus on something, while the everyday world falls away, neglected and the creative force takes over.

My suggestion is that it is the non-physical part of us which supplies the creativity, rather than the chemistry of the brain. Even when drug-assisted, this seems to be primarily to leave the everyday world behind temporarily and go on a journey of the mind. Hence I tend towards the idea of all creativity having an origin, though within ourselves, it is achieved by entering into a non-physical reality. Thus we label it as 'human' since the physical human manipulated the tools, be they pen and paper or a musical instrument or paintbrush and colours. It is often as though the finished art-work is an attempt at crystallising in this world something which was found in another.

I know this is a bit of a rabbit hole in this discussion (which I am enjoying!), but this line of thinking always brings up an issue of curiosity that I've raised before:

How do we account for the apparent anomaly of human intelligence with neo-Darwinism?  It seems to me that the massive delta between human intelligence and any other known intelligence is the biggest "evolutionary" anomaly in nature.  Does any other organism have such a unique and extreme feature?  Perhaps someone can respond with an explanation that makes this observation unremarkable (wouldn't be the first time I've been corrected!), but if not.... how are we to account for this?

I think it goes deeper than that. For example, does a dog have the concept of "meat" vs "vegetable" in the way a child looking at their school lunch does?

Another example in philosophy is a gazelle's legs don't give the ability to understand speed, they just confer the advantage of speed. As noted by Hilary Putnam ["intentionality" referring to the ability to have thoughts about the world and one's self] ->

Dogs which tended to eat meat rather than vegetables when both were available produced more offspring (gazelles which ran faster than lions escaped the lions and were thus able to produce more offspring). Just as we aren't tempted to say that gazelles have a proto-concept of running fast, so dogs don't have a proto-concept of meat. Indeed, in the case of the dog, there are a variety of different descriptions of the adaptive behavior: that certain dogs recognize meat better, or that certain dogs recognize food with a certain appearance and taste better, or just that certain dogs just recognize stuff with a certain appearance and taste better. The "reference" we get out of this bit of hypothetical natural selection will be just the reference we put in our choice of a description.

Evolution won't give you more intentionality than you pack into it.

Hilary Putnam. Renewing Philosophy (Kindle Locations 379-384). Kindle Edition.

So even the basic necessity for intelligence, the grasping of concepts, doesn't have a proper account in the evolutionary chain.

Same with memory, as noted by the neuroscientist Raymond Tallis ->

Those who imagine that experiments with Aplysia [see here] cast light on memory betray the origin of the erroneous belief that memory is inscribed in matter. The belief is based on a slither from memory as you and I understand it, to learning; from learning to altered behaviour; from altered behaviour to altered properties of the organism; and viola! – the materialisation of memory! However, with Einstein’s help, we can see that sincere materialists must acknowledge that they have no explanation of memory. Instead of thinking that memories can be located in the brain (or even more outrageously, captured in a dish), they ought to hold, along with Bergson, that “memory [cannot] settle within matter” even though (alas), “materiality begets oblivion.” In short, they should take off their dull materialist blinkers and acknowledge the wonderful mystery of memory.

edit: I do think all of this mental capacity is present, in some fashion, in the animal/plant kingdoms though not in the same way as it is in humans. This could mean many things, for example some posit animals are portions of souls that are addressing that entity's need for karmic balance.

I think it goes deeper than that.

That's the point.  Is there any trait in any other living thing that stands apart so far from all other living things?  (the human mind)

I certainly can't think of anything.  While there are exceptional traits in all sorts of life forms, I can't think of one that is so extremely pronounced (or potentially beyond that: unique) than the human mind.  If one is a RM/NS physicalist/materialist, how is this accounted for?  I find the "given enough time a toaster could appear in space" argument to be less than unsatisfactory.

I understand the anthropomorphic arrogance here (humans are special!), but it does seem objectively so.  Again, why is that?

That's the point.  Is there any trait in any other living thing that stands apart so far from all other living things?  (the human mind)

I certainly can't think of anything.  While there are exceptional traits in all sorts of life forms, I can't think of one that is so extremely pronounced (or potentially beyond that: unique) than the human mind.  If one is a RM/NS physicalist/materialist, how is this accounted for?  I find the "given enough time a toaster could appear in space" argument to be less than unsatisfactory.

I understand the anthropomorphic arrogance here (humans are special!), but it does seem objectively so.  Again, why is that?

Well one guess I like borrows from Jainism, that souls go up and down on the Ladder of Being from gods to bacteria. So these capacities are always present but perhaps the consciousness is too close to a kind of sleepiness to make proper use of them.

This would account for both experiments suggestive - possibly confirmation - of things like bees comprehending the concept of Zero and for those instances where animals speak - in voice or telepathically - to humans.

All to say I'm not 100% sure the human mind is so vastly different in kind from other animals though it is at the least the "best" observed mind in a variety of categories as far as we can experimentally determine.

And, at the same time, those qualities of mind - [Rationality, Conceptual Thought, Subjectivity, Memories beyond Instincts] - even if they are found in animals remain mysterious as to their origin if materialist evolution is all we have to work with.

This relates to my last post above as well re: Jain Ladder of Being ->

So there seem to be at least three stages -> The Mythic that precedes "Enlightenment", The Magical where the "Enlightenment" begins its intrusions, and the Modern where the "Enlightenment" has spread across the Earth.

Of course it gets [a bit] tricky [to say the least], as even the ancient Greeks say the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was the last time the gods appeared directly. ("Once mortals and gods drank together in the Visible, now they drink together in the Invisible")

But the Mythic would seem to correspond to Eden, Atlantis, the Golden Age, etc...

In the time of the Great Raven even the invisible was visible. And it continually transformed itself. Animals, at that time, were not necessarily animals. They might happen to be animals, but sometimes they were humans, gods, lords of a species, demons, ancestors. And humans weren’t necessarily humans but could also be the transient form of something else. There were no tricks for recognizing those that appeared. They had to be already known, as one knows a friend or an adversary. Everything, from spiders to the dead, occurred within a single flow of forms. It was the realm of metamorphosis.

The change was continual, as later happened only in the cavity of the mind. Things, animals, humans: distinctions never clear cut, always temporary. When a vast part of what existed withdrew into the invisible, this didn’t mean it stopped happening. But it became easier to think it wasn’t happening.

How could the invisible return to being visible? By animating the drum. The stretched skin of a dead animal was the steed, it was the journey, the gilded whirlwind. It led to the place where the grasses roar, where the rushes moan, where not even a needle could pierce the gray thickness.


Calasso, Roberto. The Celestial Hunter (p. 3). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

That's the point.  Is there any trait in any other living thing that stands apart so far from all other living things?  (the human mind)

I certainly can't think of anything.  While there are exceptional traits in all sorts of life forms, I can't think of one that is so extremely pronounced (or potentially beyond that: unique) than the human mind.  If one is a RM/NS physicalist/materialist, how is this accounted for?  I find the "given enough time a toaster could appear in space" argument to be less than unsatisfactory.

I understand the anthropomorphic arrogance here (humans are special!), but it does seem objectively so.  Again, why is that?

In my opinion there is a lot of guesswork involved here. It is not really possible to know the mind of another, at least ordinarily. Do I know what someone is thinking, their fears, their desires, their hopes as well ass their current state of perception and experiencing of the world? I don't think this is possible - normally.

Of course we can find such things in cases such as Near-Death Experiences, to give one example, where it may be possible to know the mind of another, at least to some extent.


Having conceded that there are exceptions, I will return to my original assertion that it is not possible to know the mind of another. Following on from that, I'm not able to reach any assessment of whether (for example) a horse or an elephant or an octopus has a mind which is somehow lacking or less special than our own. I've even considered that perhaps great trees might also possess mind and experience the world too. Just where do we draw the line? My boundary on this matter has quite soft edges, a gentle transition so that perhaps a large rock is just on the outside and a tree, along with many other lifeforms large and small, are towards that fuzzy edge. But equally, I'd include a huge swathe of lifeforms on the inside and stand side-by side with them.

Our 'human exceptionalism' seems to be to be a kind of belief system, one which enables us to happily destroy our own home planet as we don't recognise anything of value in it except for ourselves. As such, it is a belief I'd prefer not to embrace.

Having conceded that there are exceptions, I will return to my original assertion that it is not possible to know the mind of another. Following on from that, I'm not able to reach any assessment of whether (for example) a horse or an elephant or an octopus has a mind which is somehow lacking or less special than our own. I've even considered that perhaps great trees might also possess mind and experience the world too. Just where do we draw the line? My boundary on this matter has quite soft edges, a gentle transition so that perhaps a large rock is just on the outside and a tree, along with many other lifeforms large and small, are towards that fuzzy edge. But equally, I'd include a huge swathe of lifeforms on the inside and stand side-by side with them.

On the other hand, perhaps we have lost - or rather - let wither the innate ability to share our thoughts and feelings? I am not talking about mind reading in the sense of knowing verbatim the thoughts of another but of some deep level of communication between minds that ensures empathy and indicates intent.

I've mentioned before the constantly surprising ability of my son's dog to know when I have decided to take him for a walk without any action on my part to indicate my decision. His back end starts wagging furiously and he gets all excited and I'm just sitting there thinking. This is a feat demonstrated by Rupert Sheldrakes experiments with Jaytee, the dog who knew when its owner is coming home. Almost any dog owner will agree with that anecdotally. I've seen it in action many times with dogs and cats. And the classic with cats is how they disappear when a visit to the vet is scheduled. Or animals that are drawn to comfort the dying. I'm reminded of the amazing story about how a herd of elephants marched many miles back to the dying man who had previously cared for them.

I think that these abilities are available to humans but we have suppressed them over time. Perhaps this is a consequence of developing spoken and written language. Perhaps it is the obsession with objectivity over subjectivity. I don't know but I think that there are people who are more sensitive than others even now.