Below is an image of the developmental path from human conception to adult in comparison with evolutionary path from prokaryote to human.
Unlike Haeckel’s biogenetic law with its focus on physical forms, the comparison above also concerns activity, lifestyle and behaviour. Comparative stages may be vastly different in detail, but the similarity of general lifestyles and consecutive stages are there to be observed.
Human life begins in an aquatic environment. Toddlers gradually learn to walk upright from a previous state of crawling and moving around on all fours. The brains of children develop through daily interactions and experiences. This brain development accompanies the child’s increasing ability to achieve complex manipulation skills using hands that have been released from the task of providing support and locomotion, and also the practice of producing sounds using the various muscles of the mouth. Well developed brains allow for rational thinking and the creative use of language.
Human minds have brought about technological advances which have allowed human activities to engulf the planet. Signs of intelligent human activity are evident a good distance beyond the earth spreading ever further out into space.
The various forms of extant animals and all other life forms have evolved as an integral component of the living earth and the whole forms a dynamic system.
The various animal forms should be studied in the context of the complete system in both time and space. Conditions would have been very different prior to the terrestrial colonization of earthly life In all probability none of the present aquatic animals would bear any resemblance to the aquatic ancestors of humans and other higher vertebrates save that at some stage they all require an aquatic environment for their continued existence.
From a point of view which regards physical organisms as the individual expressions of overarching general forms, the evolution of cetaceans need not have involved moving to the land only to return to the water at a later time. They may have reached the mammalian stage of evolution but in a way that was suitable for an aquatic lifestyle. They adopted the archetypal mammalian form in a way that suited an animal living in an aquatic environment and there would be no need to posit a terrestrial stage in their evolution.
It’s my belief that higher consciousness is ever present. Evolution is the process whereby higher forms of consciousness descend from the group level to the individual level. The most fully developed individual consciousness which I am aware of on earth can be found in humans but it is still rudimentary compared to the higher level group consciousness.
Plasticity is a fundamental feature of living systems at all levels from human brain development to the radiation of multicellular life. Paths are formed by branching out and becoming fixed along certain lines. It would be impossible to forecast specific paths but, nonetheless, there is a general overall direction.
Now that biological life has reached the stage where social organisms have become individually creative and rational, the all encompassing Word is reflected in single beings. This could not have come about without preparation and the evolution of earthly life is the evidence of this preparation. We, as individuals, are only able to use language and engage in rational thinking because our individual development has prepared us to do so. Likewise humanity could not arrive at the present state of culture without the evolutionary preparation in its entirety.
Focussing in at the lower level gives a picture of ruthless competition, of nature “red in tooth and claw”. But from a higher vantage point life benefits from this apparent brutality. For instance if a sparrowhawk makes regular hunting visits to a suitable habitat in your neighbourhood it signifies that this environment supports a healthy songbird population. In the case of the continued evolution of physical forms, survival of the breeding population is more important than any individual’s survival. In the evolution of consciousness the individual is the important unit.
I think it is a mistake to see biological evolution as a blind random groping towards an unknown and unknowable future.
Alan Fox,
The whole underlying point is that I don’t believe for a second that you believe that. In fact I don’t think anyone believes that. You don’t believe that your breathing or you going for a walk is the same thing as your hair growing.
Because ultimately the materialist view is preposterous-and even materialists realize it-even though they hate to admit it.
Yeah, trachea/esophagus is quite the hack, but the winner is still, as the old joke notes, running a sewer through a recreational area.
Yes, I was catching that drift. And thanks for that link. I missed reading that, not sure why as I’m an avid Guardian reader.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/27/the-clockwork-universe-is-free-will-an-illusion
I’m strongly doubtful this universe is deterministic though I am a physicalist, in that I think any explanation of how this universe is will involve physics and not apologetics. And we are stuck (at least I am) with the limit to our capability to understand.
It seems more a visceral prejudice. Hard to take seriously.
Well I enjoy a bit of wordgaming myself. Breaks the boredom of lockdown. Fingers crossed that’s light at the end of the tunnel.
From that Guardian article:
Smilansky is an advocate of what he calls “illusionism”, the idea that although free will as conventionally defined is unreal, it’s crucial people go on believing otherwise – from which it follows that an article like this one might be actively dangerous. (Twenty years ago, he said, he might have refused to speak to me, but these days free will scepticism was so widely discussed that “the horse has left the barn”.) “On the deepest level, if people really understood what’s going on – and I don’t think I’ve fully internalised the implications myself, even after all these years – it’s just too frightening and difficult,” Smilansky said. “For anyone who’s morally and emotionally deep, it’s really depressing and destructive. It would really threaten our sense of self, our sense of personal value. The truth is just too awful here.”
Or, don’t worry, be happy!
In my book, evolution does not rule out intelligent design nor does it require materialism to be true. I am guessing your beef is with something else though and that something else is free will:
Then there is no point in getting angry with him 😆.
That bit cleared things up for me, so thanks for that. To clarify my position: if I were to say “the earth CAN revolve around the sun”, I’d mean this is a physical possibility; Not that this involves some conscious choice. So since the earth actually revolves around the sun, it obviously can.
What powerful rhetorical skill Jock.
“He is wrong because…well, well, because…Oh shit …let me see if I can find an article about free will..wait here is one. Maybe it means something about this..not sure what. You are wrong!”
Materialist have never found a way out of their free will conundrum, dufus. The article doesn’t help you one bit.
Angry? Failure to entertain fools is not anger.
Dismissive.
I love how you think you need to ride in on your big white horse and save us from ourselves.
Since you are an immaterialist, your arguments are entirely appropriate – they seem immaterial to anything useful.
Flint,
If it wasn’t a problem for materialists, they would not have been pondering over it for centuries. Why don’t people who say they believe in biological robots just say, “Oh , yea, although it seems like we actually do things we can choose, that is just this weird illusion-nothing matters and nothing is what it seems, we can’t choose anything.” Shouldn’t every materialist also be a nihilist? Or if not a nihilist, just a completely detached from any judgements of value.
The problem with materialists is they never live according to the beliefs they claim to have. All your choices are illusions-why contemplate it any further if that is your real belief?
If this issue has been not only solved by materialists centuries ago, but in fact been made even more clear by the latest brain studies as they claim, why even think about it any more? You control nothing-there done.
You believe that?
Why is that a problem for you? How are you affected by someone else’s worldview?
And it’s not as if you are offering more than a foam-flecked critique. I mean where is your high ground? You have nothing to offer.
Perhaps we should start calling it a pinball universe: even if everything is predetermined you still have no clue where the ball will be ending up. Sounds like much more fun, no?
So, phoodoo, care to provide your explanations of how decisions are actually made?
I asked that 5 years ago. And today phoodoo is still doing exactly the same, not sharing how he believes decisions are actually made but happy to tell everyone else why they are wrong about everything.
How are decisions made in phoodoo world? Or, rather, how do you believe they are made? Define ‘free will’, I dare you.
I suppose the question comes down to if decisions are made by non-materialists in non-materialist ways, do they follow non-materialist rules that are internally consistent?
If so, then it’s just another causal system just like the one they are trying to get away from in the first place.
If not, well, what is it then and how do you know that and how come it does not seem to produce results that we can differentiate from the “materialist” way of doing it? And if this way does not follow rules, then it’s just arbitrary and non-materialist decisions are basically random? Is that it?
Free free to remove my ignorance phoodoo. I know that I’m wrong, you’ve said that, but I’m unsure how to become correct? Perhaps you could help and actually explain?
Mainstream evolutionary theory is itself evolving at a fair pace. It has had to in order to accommodate the wealth of new discoveries about what is actually going on within cells. Shapiro may not have diverged that much from conventional thinking but in my opinion he is taking it in the right direction. There are highly sophisticated control systems governing how development and evolution proceeds.
This article is a bit dated but it gives a short summary of Shapiro’s ideas. They conclude:
Instead of single source local control, what is being found is control through cooperative networks. Various entities working in harmony to further development and evolution.
You ask that question while having all kinds of objections, and attempts to censor intelligent design discourse Alan.
Are you lacking self-awareness or being hypocritical?
Not really. It depends on the specific example. They can be useful, but we all know that they have limits.
It’s not.
Crick was using “information” in a precise way. Protein complexes do transfer information into DNA, not information about their own sequence, but information they gather from other sources.
The transcription of DNA into RNA is the first step in the causal process. Life is not a series of chemicals, it is a dynamic process.
They are not wrong. The dogma as it stands is correct and I have no problem with that. What I am saying is there is more to information exchange than is contained in the dogma.
Fer’instance?
Well, I don’t think “Intelligent Design” is genuine, let alone a scientific endeavour. But the ID movement has lost momentum and credibility because it is a sham, not because I point that out. What influence does this quiet blog have on the fortunes of ID?
And I repeat, what does it matter if others disagree with you on philosophy? Why not live and let live?
My social life is still curtailed due to lockdown restrictions. Hopefully that will change soon.
This rather esoteric “debate” smells strongly of the debate over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. FIRST, just to enter the debate, one must buy into a whole bunch of assumptions, presumptions, and definitions. We’d have to agree what “free” actually means, and what “will” means. etc. THEN, we could come to meaningless conclusions that would have no impact on anything, so that we could call one another names and mock them. Great fun, right?
I’ve made some lucky decisions in my life, and some good ones, and some poor ones, and some decisions haven’t made much difference and some have directed my life in major and irreversible ways. If my strings are always being pulled, I wish the puller would be more consistent. If not, if I have to take responsibility for my decisions, then by and large I think I’ve done all right. In some very small and local ways, I think I’ve made the world a tiny bit better place than I found it. If I “actually” had no choice in the matter, I think the course I had no choice but to follow was generally one I approve of. How about you?
You just made my point for me. You BELIEVE that you have made decisions. You believe if you go for a walk that is fundamentally different than your hair growing.
Its not a question of a debate Flint-there should be no reason for a debate for materialists. They already claim that everything is just the physical body-thus of course there are no decisions, just reactions. So the fact that you don’t accept that what you chose to do is different than your body digesting food, or your heart beating shows that the problem for materialists has not been solved.
Its not a debate, the materialists acknowledge it the same as the immaterialists do.
Oh, why does it matter if others disagree with you Alan. How does this little blog effect the world. Why do you care what others think. Why not live and let live…
Oh, shut up.
Well, exactly.
That doesn’t make any sense, phoodoo. Even if we accept that materialism entails a clockwork universe, if Alan decides to go for a run in the morning, that still counts as a decision. It doesn’t matter whether that was predetermined by the state of the material universe. If it had been raining, he might have decided differently.
The only possible difference I see is that if we would wind back time then Alan makes the exact same decision every time, while free-will-phoodoo does … what? I don’t know. What do you do?
Corneel,
Indeed, we’re all in the same boat, or universe. Unless phoodoo gets special privileges.
No, that’s not what I meant. phoodoo insists that materialism somehow renders all choices and decisions meaningless. But if we as inhabitants cannot even tell the difference between a clockwork materialistic universe and a libertarian free will universe, then why is the one without meaning or purpose and the other not?
One wonders how the concept of “choice” or “free will” works under the gaze of an all knowing deity that presumably knows what you are going to do before you do it.
I realize that there are indeed “answers” to this, via “theology” but I’d be interested to hear how phoodoo squares that circle.
Of course, he’s not interested in explaining anything. I only ask so that the contrast between asking reasonable questions and his unreasonable responses is that much starker.
And likewise how is phoodoo aware which one he lives in? It’s just a belief as you can’t tell, and if he’s living in the “wrong” one his belief is just a consequence of physics and inescapable.
It’s perfectly possible to believe you are an immateralist in a material reality. So, phoodoo, seems you have the worst of both possible words.
That is indeed another issue. I have been indulging phoodoo in assuming that materialism entails determinism (which it does not) whereas “immaterialism” is free from determinism (while certain versions of it clearly suffer from the same issue).
I don’t think phoodoo is comfortable defending his own castle though, so just let him have a go at explaining what’s so bad about what he considers to be materialism.
OK
That is what I thought you were saying. Whatever pertains, it pertains for all of us. What we think and believe and whether we are deluded about the universe are separate issues.
As my point to phoodoo was meant to convey; that belief, however strong, cannot displace reality. And phoodoo lives in that same reality.
I wonder why you get that impression?
[/sarcasm]
No.
What do you mean it is a decision?
Did you decide to let your fingernails grow today? Did you decide to let your heart beat?
phoodoo,
Did phoodoo decide to post a comment here? If he did, what is different for phoodoo? If he didn’t, what is different for phoodoo?
Did phoodoo’s god decide that he was going to comment or did phoodoo?
phoodoo, how long in advance did your god know you were going to write that comment?
Wrong. Completely wrong interpreation.
Not meaningless. They don’t exist. That is the neccesary consequence of the materialist biological robot paradigm. You can ignore or or pretend it is not so-but that is the only logical conclusion. Did you even read Jock’s helpful little article? All of the great materialist thinkers admit it-Steven Pinker, Jerry Coyne, Stephen Hawking, Sam Harris, Paul Bloom, Lawrence Krauss, Robert Sapolsky, Richard Dawkins,…Virtually any atheist you ever heard of will tell you this.
Sorry, if Rumraket doesn’t understand this.
Determinism is what you are railing against. If strict determinism applies in this universe, nobody can make free choices. But if strict determinism does not apply, then everyone can. What you or anyone else choose to believe has no bearing on whether determinism pertains and whether the impression that we can make choices is illusory or not. What’s the point of worrying about it?
That’s a question worth pursuing to see where it leads.
DNA methylation and histone modification are processes of equal importance as copying DNA sequences into mRNA. DNA conformation is just as important as DNA sequence. The sequence remains the same whether or not a gene is expressed. The difference lies in the activity of the molecular complexes involved.
I mean that Alan after some deliberation made a resolution. Whether the outcome was ultimately fixed seems irrelevant to me; it’s still a decision.
Yes they do. Why would they not be decisions?
One of the perks of being an atheist is that I do not have to worry about church dogma. But if you like you can tell me what arguments they advanced to the effect that a materialist decision is not really a decision.
CharlieM,
Sort of. Genes are switched on or off. And the switches are proteins. And the proteins are encoded in DNA.
Not true for DNA that is encoding functional sequences.
Nobody has suggested otherwise.
I do not understand that. Why not?
You get up in the morning and you decide to go for a run. It’s true that if we rewind time and start again from the exact same situation you will be making identical decisions. But if the external factors were different (for example, it is raining now) you may decide to stay at home. Is that not a free choice? Why not?
Where are the bleedin’ philosophers when you need them BTW?
Corneel,
You didn’t asnwer, why do you think going for a walk is different than your fingernails growing?
If you are only your body, then they are the same thing, except in one scenario you have the delusion that you can choose.
Nope, because only the latter is stably inherited.
Tell all your atheists friends how wrong they are Alan.
You don’t seem to understand the topic at all.
Do you ever read?
Why not?
Corneel,
I am not as dismissive of you as I am of Alan, but it has nothing to do with rewinding anything, and it being the same or different. That is totally beside the point. It is about what you perceive vs. what materialism implies.
Because they are … not the same thing. Growing your fingernails is not the same thing as having your heart beating. Neither are the same thing as going for a walk. The latter may involve you making a decision. The former two do not.
But my fingernails are not my heart, though both are part of my body. And neither fingernails nor heart are my brain, which I use in the process of making deliberate choices. Real choices. Why would they not be real choices?