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.
Not being either a determinist or a philosopher, my understanding may be incorrect but under strict determinism, outcomes from identical scenarios will always be the same. Choice is predetermined.
It is a free choice. I think strict determinism is wrong in its conception.
Exercising their free choice to philosophise elsewhere.
Atheism isn’t a consideration when I choose (!) to maintain friendships. And “free will” is not a hot topic of conversation.
The nucleus does not significantly affect the migratory trajectories of amoeba in two-dimensional environments
If the DNA is running the show how is this possible?
Corneel,
No wonder you ,a d Alan and Rumraket and the like are materialists-you don’t even know what it means.
Its like someone saying they believe in social justice and equal rights for all. That’s why they belong to the Nazi party and support the ideas of Hitler. They also support Sharia law.
I perceive my decisions to be as freely made as you perceive them to be. Whether materialism (actually determinism) is true does not change that. Why does the concept of materialism give you the idea that you are not free to make decisions?
Alan Fox,
Well, surely you know some who can explain it to you.
Sure, but why does that make it not free? You want to go on that morning run, do you not?
Not being a philosopher, I honestly would not know. But if strict determinism were shown to be true it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.
I miss having walto around. Perhaps KN will show up and enlighten us.
Oh my goodness.
Maybe you should research why virtually every famous atheist on the planet understands the implications of materialism. Its like descibing a swimming pool to people who don’t even know what water is.
Stunning.
I know someone who can’t.
This is a favourite posture of yours beyond which you never progress.
Why not?
Free choice is constrained. Arthritic knees constrain me from running these days, much as I want to. 🥺
Perhaps, but you seem to be unable to explain why materialism implies that choices and decisions do not exist.
Let me turn the tables: if your decisions and choices can be completely different, even opposite, in completely identical situations (as they must be under libertarian free will), then what relevance do they have? Will your decisions not be completely inconsistent, as they are independent of external factors?
I miss walto too. Fingers crossed on a KN fly-by.
That sucks. Hope you still have other ways to get around. How’s biking?
Corneel,
Do you know of any contemporary well known atheists who advocate this free will concept you believe exists?
You know, one reason why they are well known is because other atheists believe them.
I do not closely follow atheist writings, phoodoo. I do not care: being an atheist really is not a part of my identity.
But I do believe I have free will. When you tell me this is an illusion, I expect you to tell me why.
So you don’t know anything about the topic, you don’t care about the topic, but you think it is my fault that I have not explained to you what these concepts mean?
Can still enjoy a good walk and can swim when it’s too hot. Cycling is a bit of an art-form here. Everyone on a bike has the right clothing and physique, plus the terrain is demandingly hilly.
Butting in. It’s that you exude some kind of superiority. I’m curious how you justify it and how “materialism” and “atheism” are so triggering for you.
Corneel,
If someone told you they use their mind to decide if their fingernails will grow or not, would you believe them?
What about if someone said they can use the power of their mind to cure other people of homosexuality-would you believe this? Why not, its possible right? Because if you rewinded the tape, the next time they might not use their mind to do this.
You have been attempting to have all kinds of influence on what people write here for quite some time Alan, that is one reason I have no problem being critical of you. the same goes for Jock. Your actions have been repugnant in my estimation. You have a long history of this.
If anyone is triggered it is you. I am just telling you the facts of what philisophical stances imply. If you don’t understand that, or are unwilling to accept those implications, that is not really my problem. If you have a problem with it, I suggested you could take it up with almost every influential person who has ever studied the topic.
To say, I believe in complete materialism, but I also believe in immaterial control of physical entities, then your position is simply logically nonsensical. Of course you can have all the nonsensical beliefs you want (I don’t care at all)-but don’t expect people to refrain from pointing out to you that its entirely illogical.
That’s what I was hoping you might do. Whenever you are ready.
He doesn’t. Attempts to do that would expose him to criticism, and phoodoo is not about actual thinking and argument, he’s only about this butthurt feeling he has that compels him to keep coming back out of some sense of pride because someone somewhere insulted him somehow. Free will is part of it, but mostly all of this has to do with fitness. Free will must exist because, to phoodoo, if it does not then his life is meaningless and total moral and existential nihilism inexorably follows.
Now all that said, phoodoo hates the concept of fitness and it’s relation to natural selection most of all, because he himself can’t help but interpret a sort of ethical or moral value-judgement into the idea that one thing might have lower reproductive fitness than another.
If you spend some time trying to discuss this with him you discover that it is as if phoodoo, at least implicitly, actually believes that differences in reproductive fitness would morally justify mistreatment and discrimination of others. He will never explicitly state this, but he often argues as if he agrees that we should sterilize or exterminate the handicapped, or people of other ethnicities.
Now it is ironic that because of phoodoo’s entirely understandable rejection of mistreatment and discrimination(they are of course the boogey man he will pull out and try to tarnish evolution with), it leads him to attack the concept of fitness, instead of just attacking the mistreatment and discrimination. He does not appear to understand that one thing being real (variations in reproductive fitness) does not make it morally justified to mistreat people on that basis.
He will cry and whinge that evolution is supposedly responsible for things like eugenics and nazis until the end of time, but if you ask him how carriers of different alleles having differences in reproductive fitness justifies mistreatment or discrimination, you will not get any answer, because he doesn’t like admitting that it does not. Because if he were to admit that, he would also then have to admit that Nazism and eugenics aren’t actually entailments of evolution, and thus their historical occurrences cannot be laid at the feet of evolution, nor do they actually affect whether evolution is true or not.
He will always be arguing under the pretension that it does, thus effectively appearing to agree with the very concepts he rail against.
You’re not. You keep dodging on facts.
No, you are asserting that they imply it, but you never show it to be a fact that they imply it. It’s just something YOU imply.
Rumraket,
@ phoodoo:
Rumraket is saying it more eloquently. Surprise us with a positive, coherent argument.
Haha…right I made it up. Then I taught it to Hawking, Krauss, Dawkins, Sagan, Sapolsky, Harris, Pinker, Dennett, Greene, Coyne, Shermer, ….
phoodoo,
Only Dennett is a philosopher of note and he does not advocate determinism.
None of whom are nihilists, or have shown that moral or existential nihilism follows from materialism.
So, please give the argument. You think nihilism follows from materialism. Show it.
So, to be clear, materialism leads to existential nihilism because all our choices are illusions and there is no such thing as free will whereas theism, where all our choices are also illusions as they known in advance to a deity before we make them, does not?
Is that about the size of it?
That deserves it’s own thread. If phoodoo actually makes an argument for something that’d be quite something indeed.
Phoodoo is of course welcome to post one. I’m tempted, on discovering that Arthur Eddington was an advocate of indeterminism, to put up an OP.
The illusion that elections have consequences is a hard one to ignore or doubletalk away.
Only if you play word games.
I made it up. Ha.
I wonder if you guys have read any books that were written in, say, the past 2000 years.
And
You should like Dennett, Alan, since you don’t understand what he is saying:
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/dennett-wrong-freewill/
I just made it up…..
https://www.greghickeywrites.com/daniel-dennett-free-will/
Free Will Skepticism.
Hmmm, maybe I will make that the name of a new blog, since it appears I just invented the phrase. At least to the scholars here it appears that way.
phoodoo,
That’s not Dennett. It’s a hostile reviewer.
phoodoo,
Cashmore is entitled to his opinion.
phoodoo,
Again, not Dennett but someone talking about Dennett.
phoodoo,
And again. Not Dennett. Is there a problem with finding a quote of Dennett himself? I have a few of his popular books on Kindle. I’ll have a look when I have time.
Dennett himself:
And still nothing about how nihilism is supposedly an entailment of materialism from phoodoo. He’d deliberately ignoring it because he knows he can’t show that it does.
You really should stop revelling in your own confusion. We were discussing materialism. It is you who conflates that with atheism (and evolutionism).
Instead of pasting large swathes of text, why don’t you try to distill the arguments you believe are being made into a few sentences of your own? That would be more instructive to both you and me.
I really like that fragment. If a car comes at you at high speed and you step aside saving your own life, it is irrelevant that this chain of events was already determined. What matters is that you chose to step aside. That is free will.
I also like the comment about how INdeterminism renders the concept of free will vacuous. If your decisions are not predictably informed by the external factors they are supposed to be a response to, then they are just whims.
Isn’t it a bit weird to tell other people they ought to be nihilists? If I were proselytizing, I’d use a different tack.
Corneel,
Indeed. It seems some theoretical physicists want to claim biology reduces to physics. I think they are mistaken before they start in that fundamentally physics is indeterminate (anyway it’s non-disprovable) whereas Dennett says it doesn’t matter if they’re right.
Nope
Nope. Also: what’s to cure? Homosexuality is not a disease.
Sorry, but I do not see the point of your thought experiment. If we assume strict determinism, then if you rewind the tape than events will unfold identically. If we assume people have libertarian free will, then I still do not see why I should be dealing with alternative timelines whenever someone makes a nonsensical claim.