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!
Aww, I missed that from wjm. What bugs me is this stuff is not particularly hard, at least to dabble in. For wjm to go round spouting such nonsense, you’d think he’d consider learning to program and having a go at messing around with ga’s and such. This is the only reason I’ll do the work for fmm’s javascript thingy, least he had a go at it.
All current evidence is that concepts are immaterial. No brain surgery has ever revealed any circles, squares or other forms located in there. Are you claiming that conceptualized forms actually materially exist in the brain?
And again, that’s an awful analogy. and it’s not getting any better in virtue of being repeated a couple hundred times. It’s just terrible.
I’m sure we all do. So?
What does “conceptualized forms” mean?
Why do babies have to learn about the world?
Because, by four dimensional view I mean the view in which we can see every reproductive event. In such a view there are no noticeable transitions. every child is the same species as its parents.
They find a soul, or magical brain happenings?
No, and you don’t need evidence for your particular presuppositions. They never do.
Glen Davidson
http://news.yale.edu/2014/03/25/yale-researchers-reconstruct-facial-images-locked-viewer-s-mind
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811913007994
Linear reconstruction of perceived images from human brain activity
And oddly enough, no microscope can see tiny homunculi in genomes.
No it won’t. That’s your dopey imagination, not a fact.
You’ve obviously never watched a tall ship on the horizon, and equally obviously you’ve never watched a person walking across a “grassland or savanna” until they fade into the distance. Long before the walker reaches the distance where the curvature of the earth would hide their feet, they reach a distance where they’re not clearly visible just because of our eyesight limitations and obstacles such as bushes and tall clumps of grass in the way, not because of the curvature itself. And that’s not including the fact that even open desert and short-grass prairie are rife with little dips and rises which further obscure any sight-line to the person walking away.
Unless you think that you can clearly view a person miles away — in your hypothetical Grog’s stone age — without modern visual aids such as binoculars.
Maybe you should open your eyes to the real world just once Try it! Take a hike!
You keep claiming that you’re interested in the “science” but when a topic comes up that actually includes some science (geometry, optics, cognition, plus human history) all you can come up with is wild speculation based on nothing you’ve ever observed in the real world.
Yeah, yeah, I said I wasn’t going to waste more time trying to educate you, and I was mistaken about myself. What’s amazing about you is how you come up with ever-more dopey defenses of your bizarre claims. And this particular dope about Grog just got me on a subject about which I am an expert witness.
If you don’t have anything serious to reply, maybe you should just shut your mouth. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Well, that ship’s already sailed beyond the horizon.
Glen Davidson
As if the words “material” and “immaterial” really mean anything here more than vague proxies for atheism and theism.
OMagain,
The cause of a thing is not the thing.
Are quantum phenomena “immaterial” to you? To some they are. I think that’s more the problem, it’s not that “material” is a proxy for atheism, it’s that “immaterial” is a proxy for whatever idea someone wants to sell. It can be anything and everything.
Are quantum phenomena “immaterial” to you?
Immaterial denialism? Is the term “immaterial” a divine foot in the door?
🙂 🙂
They function from the theistic perspective as vague proxies for atheism and theism, perhaps. I myself don’t really know what “materialism” is supposed to mean in 2015.
In any event, I don’t expect neuroimaging to show us what concepts are — but only for the exact reason that I don’t expect an fMRI of the quadriceps to show us what walking or cycling are.
You are assuming that you and Grog are on the same level and that you are waiting for him to disappear over the horizon instead of just walk away a long distance
quote:
The higher up you are the farther you will see. Usually, we tend to relate this to Earthly obstacles, like the fact we have houses or other trees obstructing our vision on the ground, and climbing upwards we have a clear view, but that’s not the true reason. Even if you would have a completely clear plateau with no obstacles between you and the horizon, you would see much farther from greater height than you would on the ground.
This phenomena is caused by the curvature of the Earth as well, and would not happen if the Earth was flat:
end quote:
from here
http://www.smarterthanthat.com/astronomy/top-10-ways-to-know-the-earth-is-not-flat/
peace
Neurons are to concepts as genomes are to phenotypes.
Is that semiotic biology? I hope not.
We do know that the Greeks were offering various proof of the sphericity of the earth, just a few thousand years ago.
So although the non-flatness of the earth was known as far back as recorded history goes, it was not obvious to anyone. it required mathematical and empirical reasoning.
Ah, very zen.
Yet Occam’s razor my dear fellow.
You’ll be stood there shouting “but you are not finished” in a few hundred years (perhaps) when we have an absolute understanding of biological consciousness.
But what value could you possibly add to a continued investigation? What is it that you will say to convince the council of elders that resources should be made available, taken from the galactic exodus no less, to investigate your claims?
The organic brain seems to be a likely candidate for the seat of our conscious experience. In that sense we have moved on from those who thought it was the heart. As and when it becomes necessary to call upon your services, I’m sure that’ll be done.
I’m aware of your claims re: consciousness and free will etc.
What I’m not aware of is any actual added value those have brought to the world, apart from the obvious value in their discussion.
So sure, the cause of a thing is not the thing. But last time I head someone say something like that, the “cause” was (co-incidentally) exempt from such types of law, laws like cause and effect for example. As such, could I trouble you for a little more detail now? As, after all, we don’t want to derail the expansion more then absolutely necessarly, do we old chap?
The cause of a thing is not the thing. I’m sold. I’m with you. I have my $5 ready. What’s step 2?
Fifth, I’m still waiting for an adult response to the fact that life is continuous, at least in the sense that offspring are always of the same kind or species as their parents.
There is never a point in which a wombat ancestor is unlike its parent, right back to single celled bacteria.
So what is the point of saying there is an ideal wombat?
I would agree. Though we might argue as to when this happened.
The point is that reasons mathematical and empirical were offered. And the belief was modified accordingly at that time but not before hand
Do you have mathematical or empirical reasons for abandoning the idea that there is a mind behind the universe?
Of course not
peace
It is a completely vacuous claim. I have no interest in refuting or discussing vacuous claims.
The claim about the history of life is not vacuous. Have you abandoned that line of discussion, or are you interesting in accepting or refuting common descent?
I agree from a finite temporal perspective there would be no reason to think that the first wombat was the founding member of a new species.
Not sure why that is important.
The first wombat was indeed the founding member of a new species whether we could recognize it or not.
Because there is. and that is how we tell the difference between a wombat and a koala. That sort of information is important.
Didn’t we already cover this?
peace
Do you have mathematical or empirical reasons for abandoning the idea that there is a mind in a tree?
Of course not.
You should be an animist. You couldn’t be more wrong through that than you are now.
Glen Davidson
To be fair, I think the way atheists react to rather ordinary words like immaterial and code and mind, the proxy war goes both ways. To challenge that forms are immaterial seems to me to be a pretty indicative of an ideological investment – “no foot in the door”.
No, we didn’t “cover” this. You are still babbling about the “first” of a species. there is no such thing as the first of a species.
Discuss.
There’s no requirement to have a reason of any kind for “abandoning” some idea for which there’s was no reason in the first place. This is just a flagrant attempt at a burden shift. You’ve got that burden, FMM, nobody else. Your attempts to meet it have been “It’s been revealed to me.”
You receive no additional points for saying stuff like “Well you don’t have a knock-down drag out proof of other minds” or “What proof do you have of the absence of cartoonism? (or whatever).”
Belief in other minds is pretty much universal because of the similarity to us of the other apparently thinking phenomena. Yes it’s not a proof, but it’s also nothing (AT ALL) like finding design in nature. And nobody has to prove that there’s no design in nature. Sorry.
Maybe I put that a little too strongly. I suppose one might, like Paley, claim that there are some similarities between intelligent design and nature. But Darwin et al have given a reasonable explanation for this, one that has received a ton of confirmations. And so the burden is back with you.
You realize that this is as stupid as flat-earthism, don’t you?
Since we have been talking about geometry, can you define the center of the surface of the earth?
This is equivalent to trying to pinpoint the first wombat.
Sure, but biologists weren’t especially impressed by Paley even before Darwin. There are just too many things that don’t really fit design, like making pathogens (the designer is malevolent, says Sal–so why don’t we have organisms using nerve agents on us? Or a balance of continued misery is desired? Well, why?), or Paley’s claim that birds’ reproduction is suited like they were designed to fit their need for flight, since they lay eggs rather than carrying young around internally. OK, Paley, what about bats?
To be sure, that evolutionary opportunism explains pathogens wonderfully, and bats are constrained by heredity, makes design rather less tenable than it was. It just wasn’t very good even before decent evolutionary explanations existed.
Glen Davidson
The interesting thing is that Paley presented the first and best argument for ID 200 years ago, and it has neither been expanded no improved upon since.
It has been re-clothed in the emperor’s best finery countless times, but never improved.
Thank you for that link!
Have you visited this one yet? Do you see anything there that invokes a designer?
Do you see anything inconsistent with evolution?
Evolution is not entailed and has no entailments. Is that a problem?
No. But that doesn’t scare me. I don’t have to go into denial mode.
Evolution. the gradual development of something.
“the forms of written languages undergo constant evolution”
I find your obsession with word games to be boring. There’s lots of biology I don’t know and never will know. No one knows it all.
When we play games on forums like this we are usually interested in things that would alter our understanding of the history of life. Or alter our understanding of how populations change.
You mean like the research program that led to the elucidation of the genetic code?
Are you referring to anybody in particular? Why not just name them? Or is the fact that opinions differ (some people say and argue that it’s not a code!) enough for you to negatively characterize the straw-person you are pretending represents “evilutionist-god-code-deniers”?
Yes, thanks–I’ll buy that. But until there was a halfway decent evolutionary theory, Paleyites could say, “At least we’ve got SOMETHING to explain those similarities that we DO find. Y’all got nuttin.”
The biologists’ position now is not only as good as Paley’s was back then, but, as you point out, much much better. To give a wrestling analogy, not just a reversal but a pin.
I’m trying to figure out what is new in this that warrants special attention.
Is there some secret non-physical evolution going on? Something outside chemistry?
And so soon after I had decided to stop ignoring your posts. Oh well. My mistake.
More specifically, is there some violation of Crick’s dictum?
Sigh, yes yes all research supports your point of view. According to fmm, that’s because all truth is revealed truth and scientists are doing gods work. According to Frankie scientists and others use the methods of ID every day.
What point of view are you implying here? That scientists do science? No, I doubt it. You responded to
So you must mean that the people who elucidated the genetic code were Intelligent Design supporters? Is that what you mean? Why don’t you just say what you mean, is that some problem for you? It’s like you set traps and wait for people to assume the wrong thing from your badly written half sentences. How tedious.
Shrug. I think I prefered it when you did, to be honest. Do continue to do so.
What a bunch of marshmallow-minded bullshit. You just got through claiming that Grog was walking on a “savanna or grassland” and now, all of a sudden, you think you can get away with claiming that you’re on some kind of higher level than Grog to watch him walk away — just exactly where do you imagine this high plateau or mountaintop is in relation to the savanna you first imagined?
Note also that your example of seeing farther from a high plateau (in your link) specifies getting out your binoculars to see the effect. Grog didn’t have binoculars, remember.
Yes, we can now educate each other all about reasons why we should be able to tell that the earth is not flat. 1 reason, 10 reasons, doesn’t matter: not one of them contradicts every child’s innate sense that the earth is indeed flat — which it is, for all practical purposes, on a human scale. Even educated adults who know the earth is round can’t actually perceive the curvature when they’re looking out over the short-grass prairie. Not I, nor you.
That’s why you were wrong and Allan was correct. You can try, but you will always fail. A common human sense of god’s existence is no more evidence for god’s actual existence than the common human sense of flat earth is evidence for an actual flat earth.
Again, I repeat, you’re supposedly interested in the “science”. Go do the experiment yourself. Drop the binoculars and go look as someone hikes out over a natural “flat-land” somewhere. Don’t just regurgitate stuff you don’t comprehend from a context you’ve never experienced.