A Scientific Hypothesis Of Design – finally.

Upright Biped has announced the launch of his site via this UD post: Writing Biosemiosis-org

All of the unique physical conditions of dimensional semiosis have already been observed and documented in the scientific literature. It is an intractable fact that a dimensional semiotic system is used to encode organic polymers inside the cell. The conclusion of intelligent action is therefore fully supported by the physical evidence, and is subject to falsification only by showing an unguided source capable of creating such a system.

http://biosemiosis.org/index.php/a-scientific-hypothesis-of-design

Discuss!

828 thoughts on “A Scientific Hypothesis Of Design – finally.

  1. Mung:
    Grog stupid. Like floating tree. Grog eat. Grog defecate. Grog sex. Grog happy wife breasts not like flat earth. Grog like man.

    Might need to check your dosages

    Edited for clarity

  2. petrushka: To be fair, the spectrum remains the spectrum.

    How many different spectral colors are there, anyway? I keep forgetting.

    Apparently 16,777,416 colors visible to the present human eye. But as the eye changes the number of colors visible probably changes, so the visible spectrum changes due to biology . Rods and cones. Not sure exactly how many immaterial colors there are

  3. fifthmonarchyman: I would phrase the syllogism like this

    Premise 1) Actual evidence must be given before people are justified in abandoning what they naturally believe.

    Premise 2) People naturally believe that there is a mind(s) behind the universe

    conclusion) Actual evidence must be given before a person is justified in holding to atheism.

    How am I mistaken?

    Before I could attempt to assess this thoroughly, I’d need to know what you mean by “naturally believe”–but I will say now that (2) seems false to me. The fact that lots of kids have imaginary friends (as is suggested by the article you linked) doesn’t provide much support for the claim that they must believe “there’s a mind behind the universe,” anyhow.

    You really do provide a lot of moles to whack!

  4. newton: Not sure exactly how many immaterial colors there are

    12 primary ones: Do Di Re Ri Mi Fa Sol Si La Li Ti and Ta

    There are also the mystical ones without names and Rachel, the color of hatred.

  5. Kantian Naturalist,

    Here’s one view: species are real in the same sense that sports teams are real. Manchester United is real, not fictional.

    Yes, I maybe chose my words a little hastily. I think the difference would be that Manchester United never changes. But a species must eventually change, due to new mutation and extinction of old. Eventually that change would be sufficient to warrant a new name, if the differences are of the same order as those lateral differences between two modern species, or if two forms arise where once there was one. It’s simply not a hard boundary, and renaming not necessary over one or even many human lifetimes.

    Species only stay recognisably the same for a finite, if fuzzy, period of time. At any moment in time, I agree they are ‘real enough’, like a cross-section of a river.
    ‘What do you call the intermediates’ is frustratingly dichotomous thinking. Modern discreteness cannot be simply asserted to translate into temporal discreteness, though even God is supposed to be unable to deal with that subtlety.

  6. Kantian Naturalist,

    By contrast, higher taxa (genera, families, etc.) are probably not (in my view) real — they are convenient labels we attach to indicate degrees of similarity and difference between species.

    Not sure there is quite the categorical distinction there. Consistently-clustered populations are easier to categorise than groupings of such forms – due mainly to interbreeding. But I don’t think that makes that particular level of grouping either more or less ‘real’. We simply have less trouble (though not no trouble) deciding.

  7. Allan Miller: I think the difference would be that Manchester United never changes.

    What?? The characteristics of Manchester United are in constant flux. Sometimes defense is more prominent sometimes offense. Sometimes the team is dominant others not so much. The uniforms change over time and the individual players change as well.

    It’s like the small time museum curator who claims to have the very axe that George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. When pressed he reports that the handle has been replaced 3 times and the axe head has been replaced twice.

    Allan Miller: Species only stay recognisably the same for a finite, if fuzzy, period of time. At any moment in time, I agree they are ‘real enough’, like a cross-section of a river.

    Correct, This is what you would expect to see if species existed in a four dimensional grid in the mind of a timeless God

    Allan Miller: Modern discreteness cannot be simply asserted to translate into temporal discreteness,

    Once again you are thinking from a perspective of a temporal being existing inside the universe If God existed outside the universe the discreteness of any particular time would carry through to all times in a four dimensional grid.

    It’s really quite simple if you abandon your temporal perspective.

    Allan Miller: God is supposed to be unable to deal with that subtlety.

    Hang on there partner, The Christian God is a Trinity.
    Ever hear of the incarnation? The second person of the Godhead entered into the temporal universe (The word became flesh).

    God is fully able to deal with temporal subtlety.
    It’s just that unlike you he is not in any way constrained temporally.
    He is uniquely able to see discreetness and continuum at the very same time

    Omniscience and omnipotence are nothing to sneeze at.

    peace

  8. fifthmonarchyman: Allan Miller: Species only stay recognisably the same for a finite, if fuzzy, period of time. At any moment in time, I agree they are ‘real enough’, like a cross-section of a river.

    Correct, This is what you would expect to see if species existed in a four dimensional grid in the mind of a timeless God

    Really? Why is that? (Sorry if you’ve already explained this.) And if it’s true, why are species different from anything else in this “four-dimensional” grid, (e.g., logs, farts, giggles, rocks, planets, lagoons, triangles, bad comedians, sonnets, whatever)? What’s special about how species would “exist in the mind of a timeless God”?

  9. walto: I’d need to know what you mean by “naturally believe”

    By “naturally believe” I only mean that the preponderance of humanity believe that there are mind/minds behind the universe and that this belief is in a sense innate as witnessed by multiple scientific studies.

    walto: The fact that lots of kids have imaginary friends (as is suggested by the article you linked) doesn’t provide much support for the claim that they must believe “there’s a mind behind the universe,” anyhow.

    The “imaginary friends” angle is only the tip of the iceberg there is much more where it came from.

    check it out

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16687-humans-may-be-primed-to-believe-in-creation/

    peace

  10. Allan Miller: If you were genuinely interested in the question, rather than simply trying to assert your position come Hell or high water, no matter what ridiculous notions it entails…

    The irony.

  11. fifthmonarchyman: By “naturally believe” I only mean that the preponderance of humanity believe that there are mind/minds behind the universe and that this belief is in a sense innate as witnessed by multiple scientific studies.

    The “imaginary friends” angle is only the tip of the iceberg there is much more where it came from.

    check it out

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16687-humans-may-be-primed-to-believe-in-creation/

    peace

    I looked at it and read this (emphasis added):

    Religion might not be the only reason people buy into creationism and intelligent design, psychological experiments suggest.

    No matter what their religious beliefs, college-educated adults frequently agree with purpose-seeking yet false explanations of natural phenomena – finches diversified in order to survive, for instance.

    So I thought it was amusing that you were posting it.

    But anyhow, college students frequently making false and sometimes silly assumptions regarding the explanation of various natural phenomena doesn’t seem the same to me as a preponderance of humanity believ[ing] that there are mind/minds behind the universe. Furthermore, if they WERE the same, it ought to make one more skeptical and suspicious of what you call “natural” beliefs, not less.

    BTW, if you see mung, please tell him that my own meltdown regarding codes hasn’t been “full.” What HAS been full has been his unwillingess to define any of the terms he uses. Thanks in advance.

  12. walto: college students frequently making false and sometimes silly assumptions regarding the explanation of various natural phenomena doesn’t seem the same to me as a preponderance of humanity believ[ing] that there are mind/minds behind the universe. Furthermore, if they WERE the same, it ought to make one more skeptical and suspicious of what you call “natural” beliefs, not less.

    What is at issue in my syllogism is not the truth of theism but it’s innateness. This study is but one in a long line of studies that demonstrate that we humans are hardwired to infer the existence of mind(s) behind all sorts of “natural” phenomena.

    Do you really dispute this?

    peace

  13. walto: What’s special about how species would “exist in the mind of a timeless God”?

    Biological species are not particularly special as far as I can tell. Anything that can be categorized would be categorized in the infinite mind of God.

    Putting things into mental buckets based on their characteristics is just what intelligent agents do.

    peace

  14. walto: BTW, if you see mung, please tell him that my own meltdown regarding codes hasn’t been “full.” What HAS been full has been his unwillingess to define any of the terms he uses.

    You’re better than that walto.

    What A Code Is

  15. Still awaiting your answer, ID Mung.

    Mung:

    Symbols, like codes, require brains.

    keiths:

    The genetic code required a brain?

  16. fifthmonarchyman,

    Putting things into mental buckets based on their characteristics is just what intelligent agents do.

    Even hyper-intelligent atemporal ones that can do or imagine anything.

  17. Allan Miller:

    Putting things into mental buckets based on their characteristics is just what intelligent agents do.

    Even hyper-intelligent atemporal ones that can do or imagine anything.

    Yeah. ASSUMING that “putting things into mental buckets” is what an omniscient god would do is just what stupid-human agents do.

    Stupid-human agents can’t help projecting their own parochial prejudices onto their supposed divinity. They’re all ” I love to categorize things because it makes me feel smart, and god is smarter than I am, so god MUST love to categorize things even MORE THAN I DO”.

    God has an unlimited supply of mental buckets and god uses every single one of ’em. Can’t beat that. Checkmate, atheists.

  18. fifthmonarchyman,

    What?? The characteristics of Manchester United are in constant flux.

    But the appellation ‘Manchester United’ isn’t based upon its characteristics. If you did a wholesale player-by-player swap with Chelsea, it would still be Manchester United. Ever and ever, amen.

    fmm: Correct, This is what you would expect to see if species existed in a four dimensional grid in the mind of a timeless God

    No it isn’t. As soon as you abandon a current-moment view, you have the problem of incremental shading – chronospecies. Pretending time does not exist introduces that issue, it does not solve it.

    If God existed outside the universe the discreteness of any particular time would carry through to all times in a four dimensional grid.

    That does not mean that discreteness is saved. The ‘grid’ must contain indistinguishable neighbours, however you slice it. Because parents and offspring, and longer lineages thereof, exist on it.

    It’s really quite simple if you abandon your temporal perspective.

    If you abandon the temporal perspective you have the problem of chronospecies and shading. Buckets start to lose traction. Buckets are actually a temporal artefact – we categorise because of the current discreteness, because we see the buds but not the supporting branches. It becomes less apparent in an atemporal view. You want to impose your current perception of discreteness upon the entire continuum. Doesn’t work. Because it’s a continuum.

    [eta – I realise I’ve just said the same thing 3 times! Maybe 3 is a charm]

    Allan Miller: God is supposed to be unable to deal with that subtlety.

    fmm: Hang on there partner, The Christian God is a Trinity.
    Ever hear of the incarnation? The second person of the Godhead entered into the temporal universe (The word became flesh).

    So fooking what?

    God is fully able to deal with temporal subtlety.
    It’s just that unlike you he is not in any way constrained temporally.
    He is uniquely able to see discreetness and continuum at the very same time

    He can see the difficulty you have with a continuum and history vs the present. That does not mean he has an equivalent difficulty. He’s actually a lot more like me.

  19. fifthmonarchyman: Correct, This is what you would expect to see if species existed in a four dimensional grid in the mind of a timeless God

    Or perhaps a timeless Unicorn that has had this job passed to it by god. You’ve no way to say. Or perhaps god does not care and has no such grid, letting what happens happen.

    You just don’t know. But you dearly want everyone else to treat you as if you know, don’t you? Wanabe priest I think. Seen to be special because of their special insight.

    Tell me, did your god specifically reveal it keeps a four dimensional grid of species or did you make that up yourself.

    Be honest now.

  20. fmm,
    How close can two species be in the mind of god and still be separate?

    How do you know?

  21. Alan Miller said:

    Do hallucinogens interact with the soul or the physical brain?

    The cause of a thing is not the thing.

    Who said anything about a soul?

  22. William J. Murray: The cause of a thing is not the thing.

    Channelling fmm? He also drops comments in like that that he thinks “explains” something but in fact it just shows the point at which his curiosity stops.

    You seem satisfied with that answer. You “know” there is an extra-dimensional world out there where your “causes” are free to cause unfettered by causality. Just like I know there is a teapot out there in space. Utterly unprovable, utterly satisfying for the incurious.

  23. Omagain,

    You asked what kind of form was immaterial. I answered you – conceptual. You then responded with some information about how certain brain processes are used to generate imagery with machinery, to which I replied that the (proposed) cause of a thing is not the thing. A concept is not what causes the concept, whether the cause is material or not. An envisioned circle is not what causes the envisioned circle, whether what causes it is material or not.

    Can you point out the circle I envision anywhere? You cannot find it in my brain. At best, you can only find what is causing it. But where is the circle I am imagining? Does it actually exist?

    See – I’m not talking about god or soul here – I’m talking only about things we all experience. I’m not trying to put a foot in the door – I’m asking you, where is the circle I am conceptualizing? What is the circle made of? In what space does it exist?

  24. Mung: You’re better than that walto.

    What A Code Is

    I’ve seen that thread, of course. And yes, it opens with several definitions. But is there some particular one you are endorsing? The different definitions of “code” to which you have linked often say different things. That’s not how philosophy works.

    So, could you please put your own definition or say exactly which one of those to which you have linked you actually endorse (or at least like best)? Then, when somebody asks what you mean by “code” you could link to a particular definition, rather than a thread that talks about various (sometimes conflicting) definitions that you have either repeated or provided links to? And of “denialism” too. Thanks.

    This isn’t just for me, you know. It would be a great way for you to put this rather pervasive criticism of your posts behind you once and for all. I’d think you’d want to do that. I take evasion to be generally more in Erik’s line.

    It’s really unfair of you to make triumphant remarks at UD when no one can get you to say exactly what you mean here.

  25. William J. Murray: I’m asking you, where is the circle I am conceptualizing? What is the circle made of? In what space does it exist?

    In the connections between the neurons in your brain. It does not exist outside of your brain. I can find it in your brain, insofar as if I remove your brain or cause it to stop functioning you cannot contemplate a circle. This is not under dispute.

    The circle you are contemplating is “made of” thoughts, which themselves exist as relationships between neurons. That it is currently an unknown problem as to how we got from “meat” to “conciousness” does not mean that your idea that concepts exist outside of the brain gets a free pass.

    I don’t believe that ideas or concepts are in any way immaterial, in any meaningful way. Therefore the question of “where” they are is not relevant or meaningful. They are “in your brain” or they are in “many peoples brains” or they are nowhere at all.

    While I cannot “find” a circle in your mind, that does not mean it does not exist there. It just means that my tools are poor and crude currently. Ask me again in 1000 years when a complete model of the brain and it’s functioning will be well developed and I’ll tell you then. In the meanwhile you’ve still given no evidence that concepts exist outside of the brain other then to repeat your refrain that they do.

    William J. Murray: You asked what kind of form was immaterial. I answered you – conceptual.

    Yet I can find nobody who can talk about these immaterial concepts without a material brain. The two seem inextricably linked.

  26. If the cause of a thought about a circle is not the thought about the circle, what is the cause William?

    Show your working. If the cause of a thought about a circle is external input that mentions circles, there is your answer. Cause and effect. No need for any immaterial free will magic brain world.

  27. fifthmonarchyman: What is at issue in my syllogism is not the truth of theism but it’s innateness. This study is but one in a long line of studies that demonstrate that we humans are hardwired to infer the existence of mind(s) behind all sorts of “natural” phenomena.

    Do you really dispute this?

    peace

    Again, I like to know what I’m disputing. What is it for a “mind” to be “behind” things? Are you saying that some kind of pan-psychism has been definitely demonstrated to be “innate” and “hard-wired” into human consciousness? Has the wiring been found? Have we tested one-year old Hottentots? Four year old Finns? {I’m reminded here of the Piaget study according to which a bunch of French toddlers all believed we think with our mouths.}

    What is natural, (or “innate”) in my own view is the view that there is a world out there, that thought is intentional, i.e., refers to stuff outside itself. I think it is also natural to take this position with respect to values. These can be inferred not so much from any particular beliefs–commonsensical or not, but from the way in which we believe, the forms of thought as Kant put it. Nothing but such generalities can be inferred from someone’s belief that fairies exist, or the world is flat, or that these are two hands, or that the sun’ll come up tomorrow.

  28. fifthmonarchyman: What is at issue in my syllogism is not the truth of theism but it’s innateness. This study is but one in a long line of studies that demonstrate that we humans are hardwired to infer the existence of mind(s) behind all sorts of “natural” phenomena.

    Do you really dispute this?

    Dispute what? The study? The study stands and falls on it’s quality.

    Do you dispute the fact that things that we previously thought had intent behind them (e.g. lightning) were seen to have no intent once their actual cause was discovered?

    Do you dispute that? If not, they do you accept that what people think is often not the actuality of the situation? And if you accept that, what value does such a study have as “evidence” for your position?

  29. fifthmonarchyman,

    That species are real is the universal default consensus of humanity. Any four year old can tell you that a lion is not the same as a tiger.

    The usual tripe. Pick something whose distinctness is unquestionable and apply it throughout the continuum.

    What does the four year old have to say about Spotted and Common Sandpipers? Are we getting four year olds to do cladistics now? Perhaps you ought to view things through the eyes of a grown up.

  30. fifthmonarchyman: Biological species are not particularly special as far as I can tell. Anything that can be categorized would be categorized in the infinite mind of God.

    As all the category types I put in my post (logs, farts, bad comedians, sonnets, species, etc.) are basically the same on your conception, it seems kind of strange to me that you have such a detailed theory regarding God’s take on the “four-dimensional gridding” of species only. My suspicion is that your take on species is result-oriented. In any case, as you believe there’s nothing special about species in the God’s Eye view you project, I think it would be illustrative to see if your theory would work just as well for several of the others I mentioned.

  31. fifthmonarchyman,

    again species are not bounded sets they are centered sets. There is no shading there are those organisms that approximate a particular form and those that don’t.

    There is no such thing as a ‘centred set’ – not, at least, in the way you think. It is a bizarre invention of Christian apologists. If you end up at some remove from the ‘ideal centre’, you must of necessity put something in one set and its parents in another, which means there is a boundary which you are doing your damnedest to avoid seeing. At that boundary you have the transitional Pre-Wombat/Wombat issue, regardless of the name you give to this made-up construct.

  32. fifthmonarchyman,

    It’s a little like looking at a pile of rocks and picking out all the spheres. There is no impercepible shading and no intermediates there are only spheres and non-spheres.

    If you choose to categorise that way. Equally, every shape could be placed in a set on its own. What’s special about spheres, apart from the simplicity of their mathematical description? What’s the mathematical description of the Ideal Wombat?

  33. Allan Miller: He can see the difficulty you have with a continuum and history vs the present. That does not mean he has an equivalent difficulty. He’s actually a lot more like me.

    You’re both close, IMHO. I think FMM looks a little more like Him. Especially when he gets dressed up.

  34. fifthmonarchyman,

    No, there is a new niche and a new species is arising to fill it. The three way genetic ancestry of the coywolf are pretty much beside the point.

    So, even hypothetically in the mind of God, is there any way in which the coywolf can be one of coyote-essence, wolf-essence, dog-essence or coywolf-essence? You are doing everything to agree that life is continuous, not discrete, in vertical descent, other than actually agreeing with it.

    “Modern Lions and tigers are discrete therefore everything is in God’s mind. Now, to support my contention, here’s an example of something that is not discrete! But it is in God’s Mind.”

  35. Allan Miller: Even hyper-intelligent atemporal ones that can do or imagine anything.

    Yes categorization is just another way of saying choice

    Allan Miller: The ‘grid’ must contain indistinguishable neighbours, however you slice it. Because parents and offspring, and longer lineages thereof, exist on it.

    There is no such thing as indistinguishable, any two individuals will have distinguishable differences (and similarities). Categorization is simply the act of deciding which differences are important and which are not.

    deciding is what intelligent agents do.

    peace

  36. OMagain: In the connections between the neurons in your brain. It does not exist outside of your brain. I can find it in your brain, insofar as if I remove your brain or cause it to stop functioning you cannot contemplate a circle. This is not under dispute.

    The circle you are contemplating is “made of” thoughts, which themselves exist as relationships between neurons. That it is currently an unknown problem as to how we got from “meat” to “conciousness” does not mean that your idea that concepts exist outside of the brain gets a free pass.

    I don’t believe that ideas or concepts are in any way immaterial, in any meaningful way. Therefore the question of “where” they are is not relevant or meaningful. They are “in your brain” or they are in “many peoples brains” or they are nowhere at all.

    I would sound a note of caution here. There are two different distinctions we want to keep track of: the distinction between concept and mental image, and the distinction between mental image and (correlated) neural activity.

    There are philosophical reasons for making the first distinction, which go into the failures of traditional empiricism. Briefly, concepts are normative and public and mental images are neither.

    The second distinction is both conceptual and empirical: from what I understand (and please correct me if I’m wrong), one cannot infer, from a PET scan of someone performing a mental rotation task, the size and shape of the mental image being rotated. We can determine correlations between reported mental imagery and observed brain activity, but we can’t determine identity.

    In fact, as I was turning over these and related questions in mind yesterday while walking home from my neighborhood cafe, it struck me that even if all the embodied cognition folks are correct (as I think they are), that still leaves open a modified version of what Chalmers calls “naturalistic dualism”: even if consciousness and intentionality are necessarily embodied, that does not eliminate the “explanatory gap” between subjectively experienced embodied mindedness and objectively known causal explanations.

  37. Omagain said:

    In the connections between the neurons in your brain.

    It’s baffling to me that even after being corrected and admitting that the cause is not the effect, you reiterate this as an answer. I doubt you are claiming that there is a an actual, material circle floating around “in the connections between the neurons” that we could cut open the brain and find.

    It does not exist outside of your brain.

    I didn’t ask you where it does not exist.

    I can find it in your brain, insofar as if I remove your brain or cause it to stop functioning you cannot contemplate a circle.

    Being able to stop me from conceptualizing a circle is not the same thing as locating the circle I am conceptualizing. It would just mean you’ve located the machinery that generates the concept.

    This is not under dispute.

    Well, I’m not disputing it at this time, but this is all an evasion. Unless you are saying that you can actually cut open my brain and find a physical circle, then the circle I envision doesn’t physically exist, even if what produces it actually exists and can be shut down – but, I didn’t ask you about the causal equipment, did I? You are evading the actual challenge because, as we both know, the conceptualized circle is immaterial. There is no actual, real, physical circle.

    The circle you are contemplating is “made of” thoughts, which themselves exist as relationships between neurons.

    You are again conflating cause and effect. Relationships between neurons are not circles, although they may cause the experience of an envisioned circle.

    That it is currently an unknown problem as to how we got from “meat” to “conciousness” does not mean that your idea that concepts exist outside of the brain gets a free pass.

    I didn’t claim here that concepts exist outside of the brain. I said they are immaterial. You are the one apparently terrified of the term “immaterial” and trying to pass off “relationships of neurons” as “circles”. When I can see a circle in my mind’s eye, I do not see “relationships of neurons”. A relationship of neurons is not a conceived, envisioned circle. The cause is not the effect.

    I don’t believe that ideas or concepts are in any way immaterial, in any meaningful way.

    And yet, there is no physical circle when I envision one. Hmm.

    Therefore the question of “where” they are is not relevant or meaningful. They are “in your brain” or they are in “many peoples brains” or they are nowhere at all.

    Yet, you cannot find the circle in the brain, even while I am imagining it.

    While I cannot “find” a circle in your mind, that does not mean it does not exist there. It just means that my tools are poor and crude currently.

    Will you also find tiny little unicorns and imagined teapots in between neurons?

    Ask me again in 1000 years when a complete model of the brain and it’s functioning will be well developed and I’ll tell you then. In the meanwhile you’ve still given no evidence that concepts exist outside of the brain other then to repeat your refrain that they do.

    I haven’t argued that concepts exist outside the brain. I’ve merely asserted that they are immaterial, and have from that point watched as you’ve furiously waved your hands and reiterate conflations already corrected in your ideological need to deny the immaterial.

  38. OMagain: fmm,
    How close can two species be in the mind of god and still be separate?

    As close as he likes, That is how categorizing and choice in general work

    OMagain: How do you know?

    The same way I know anything at all
    wait for it ……………..revelation

    peace

  39. fifthmonarchyman,

    As close as he likes, That is how categorizing and choice in general work

    So, God has revealed to me that he can’t be arsed with classification. Instead, he puts every individual in a set on its own. Problem solved. I win.

  40. Kantian Naturalist:

    The second distinction is both conceptual and empirical: from what I understand (and please correct me if I’m wrong), one cannot infer, from a PET scan of someone performing a mental rotation task, the size and shape of the mental image being rotated. We can determine correlations between reported mental imagery and observed brain activity, but we can’t determine identity.

    In fact, as I was turning over these and related questions in mind yesterday while walking home from my neighborhood cafe, it struck me that even if all the embodied cognition folks are correct (as I think they are), that still leaves open a modified version of what Chalmers calls “naturalistic dualism”: even if consciousness and intentionality are necessarily embodied, that does not eliminate the “explanatory gap” between subjectively experienced embodied mindedness and objectively known causal explanations.

    Two considerations:

    1. There are standard techniques in science to move beyond correlation to cause, eg via manipulation. TMS has been used to maniplate the neural configuration and thereby cause correlated experience.

    2. There have been experiments (reported in Clark section 3.8) which can be interpreted as having had some success in reading contents of thoughts from fMRI patterns.

  41. fifthmonarchyman,

    There is no such thing as indistinguishable, any two individuals will have distinguishable differences (and similarities). Categorization is simply the act of deciding which differences are important and which are not.

    The differences between a parent and a child in an obligate sexual population never lead us to declare them different species. Never. There are no characteristics that are sufficiently different. So you still have the Wombat/Pre-Wombat problem. They are indistinguishable for the purposes of taxonomic classification at the boundary. Therefore they do not belong in different sets (ie there is no boundary).

  42. I don’t think that our experience of concepts shows that they are immaterial or material, because neither “material” nor “immaterial” are notions ‘at home’ in phenomenological description.

    What is right is this: the experience of a mathematical or logical object is quite different from the experience of a perceptible object. When I am imagining a perfect circle, it feels different than imagining my uncle’s dog or looking out at the trees in the park.

    But the difference in the felt quality of those experiences tells us nothing at all about which one is “material” or “immaterial”, because “material” and “immaterial” are (I suggest) terms used when we try to explain our experiences, not when we try to describe our experiences.

  43. walto: Are you saying that some kind of pan-psychism has been definitely demonstrated to be “innate” and “hard-wired” into human consciousness?

    I’m pretty sure that it would be impossible to ever show this sort of thing “definitely”. And there is probably a spectrum that in some ways corresponds to the spectrum between schizophrenia and autism with some folks less likely to accept other minds at all and others seeing mind behind every phenomena whatsoever.

    What I’m saying is that in general humans are predisposed to see mind(s) behind various “natural” phenomena.

    OMagain: Do you dispute the fact that things that we previously thought had intent behind them (e.g. lightning) were seen to have no intent once their actual cause was discovered?

    Not at all, in fact that is my point
    Innate beliefs can be modified but only in response to evidence. The burden of proof in these cases is always on those who would deny intention.

    What empirical evidence do you have that there is no mind behind the universe?

    please be specific

    peace

  44. Allan Miller: Choice is a temporal activity.

    Of course and the second person of the Godhead (The Logos) exists temporally in the universe. I am not appealing to some sort of generic deity but specifically to the Christian God.

    peace

  45. Kantian Naturalist: Sure. I mean, cladistics does describe real patterns! There are objective facts about which phenotypic traits and genetic sequences are more similar to others.

    So, the patterns are real and can be objectively determined, yet at some point the similarities (the higher taxa) become unreal, mere “convenient labels”? Can this point be objectively determined?

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