It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. However, I recently did a podcast with the Bob Murphy Show that I think many of you will be interested in. Here we discuss Intelligent Design, evolution, Darwinian and non-Darwinian forms of evolution, and causation. I hope you all enjoy it!
I thought some of you might be interested to know that a paper of mine was recently published in BIO-Complexity – “Measuring Active Information in Biological Systems.” The goal of the paper is to provide a way of verifying whether (and how much) a mutational process is directed or undirected. I posted an overview of the paper at UD if you don’t have time to read it, but I thought this crowd might enjoy the details more.
Also, for background of why this is relevant, you might read my earlier paper, “Evolutionary Teleonomy as a Unifying Principle of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis“.
I recently created a video (sorry, it’s a long one) covering what I view as the evidence that cells direct their own evolution. I’m curious what feedback others have on it.
Sorry about the length, but I cover a large number of topics, and try to explain it in light of all of the misunderstandings about the subject which I have seen.
I did a talk recently on a new way of understanding Irreducible Complexity using computability theory. I’m curious to see what you all think about it.
I thought you all might be interested in a book we just released this week – Naturalism and Its Alternatives in Scientific Methodologies. It has been heading up the Amazon charts, and hit the #1 Hot New Release spot today on three lists – Scientific Research, Epistemology, and Psychology.
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I am working on a series of tutorials to cover the basics of Intelligent Design, especially the mathematics of it. This is my tutorial on Specified Complexity, and I would appreciate any thoughtful criticism of it.
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If anyone wants to join us, we are doing an online preview for a conference on Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism. For the preview session, Dr. Sam Rakover is giving a talk on Methodological Dualism in Psychology. Connection information is at the link below.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/am-nat-conference-preview-session-tomorrow/
It has been a while since I posted here about the upcoming Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism online conference, so I thought I would give you all a quick update.
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Cross-posted from UD: The Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism conference is doing a design contest with a cash prize.
I thought some of you might be interested in an online conference April 16, Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism. The goal of the conference is to have a discussion among interested researchers about what other modes of investigation one might employ that were counter to methodological naturalism.
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While many ID proposals are based on introducing teleonomy into evolution, I wanted to ask the question as to whether or not evolution, even by a Darwinian definition (i.e., natural selection and materialism) was already teleonomic.
The reason I ask this is because all sorts of things that Darwinian evolution has trouble explaining gets thrown into the basket of “sexual selection”. Basically, the reason why an organism evolved feature X was because that feature was selected by mating. In other words, the other organisms appreciated feature X, and therefore copulated and reproduced more with organisms showing more and more of feature X.
I find this interesting, because, especially if taken materialistically, this gives a teleonomic direction to selection, something that Mayr attempted to rule out.
Think of it this way. If one is a materialist, then what is determining the desires of the organism? It is the organism’s genetics! If the organism is desiring a mate, that’s because its genetics is telling it to do so. If an organism sees mates with feature X as being more desirable, that means its genetics are telling it to do so. Therefore, the organism’s genes are, in a very direct way, directing the selection process themselves.
Mate selection, under materialism, seems to me to definitely fall under the umbrella of teleonomy. And, since it governs a large component of the evolutionary process, it seems that one must then say that to a large extent the evolutionary process is teleonomic, even under Darwinian terms.
I’m curious to your thoughts on this. I am not aware of this idea being discussed in the literature, but if someone has papers or links to other discussions of this, I would love to see them.