If Darwinism fails then supernatural causes are back on the table and should be included in science.
I do not think there can be a science of the supernatural.
I do not think that if Darwinism fails that supernatural causes will become acceptable.
If the hope of ID is that supernatural causes will be allowed back into science if they can only just get rid of Darwinism, ID is doomed.
The tools and methods of ID cannot differentiate a supernatural cause from a natural cause anyways.
Thoughts?
Fifth, this is a bad habit of yours. Quote me or ask what I think. I don’t exactly understand the process of run and tumble and I don’t understand how human brains work. What I can say is both processes are physical.
You do love your non sequiturs.
fifthmonarchyman,
Remind me. What’s your definition?
True, your use of the word feeling does confuse me. Feelings without conscious perception do not make sense to me. What do you mean exactly when you say feeling? Just processing of stimuli, sort like?
People who are asleep wake up again, and people in a vegetative state walked around in the past. We don’t just forget who people were when they (temporarily) left the land of the wakeful.
It’s here
You’ll remember that there was also some stuff about supernatural dogs and spheres of influence, but I can’t say I really understood that part.
You are robbing the word ‘supernatural’ of any meaning beyond ‘of unknown origin’.
Corneel,
Thanks, Corneel. Looks like a case of “I know it when I (don’t) see it”!
faded_Glory,
Exactly!
BruceS,
How typical it is of the science community to have a conference about emergence, a phenomenon which not a single person living can explain why it is so, and they only people invited to the conference are a group of all like minded atheists.
What immense curiosity their echo chamber must contain.
Watch the video.
In detail, this relates to reducible as used in phil of science. In particular, the starting point is that reducibility involves
1. Logically deducing biology from theoretical physics using formal logic.
2. Part of logical deduction means that only the terms of physics can be used in the deduced version of the theory. But how can mechanisms like NS and population genetic models be expressed only using quantum fields, in particular in a way that human beings consider it an explanation
Explanation is epistemology. What about what exists — ontology. This is trickier. As KN as emphasized, and as SEP also mentions, it is difficult to separate the two. In particular this is true for Dennett, whose approach to realism is based on “Real Patterns”. These are part of explanation ie epistemology.
So for Dennett, ontology follows from explanation, explanation is not reducible to physics, so reality is not reducible to physics.
The context of the question was why Dennett thinks evolution cannot be reduced to physics, not why Dennett is a naturalist.
I could send you other videos where Dennett is part of a group that includes Goff (a philosophical dualist at times although perhaps now a Russellian monist) and Chalmers (a panpsychist). The group discuss qualia and consciousness.
But I don’t find exchanges with you interesting, so I will leave the last word/insult to you.
BruceS,
Then you probably also don’t find it interesting, or ironic or even hypocritical that Dennett has none of that “expertise” in biology, that you find so important when deciding who to listen to.
In that case I am sure you found those videos extremely interesting, with all of their talk about things they have no expertise in.
phoodoo,
One wonders exactly what the qualifications were for inviting participants to the conference was.
Or rather there is no wonder at all. Just be someone some people have heard of before, and also be sure that there are no Gods. Then, please feel free to come expound on physics, biology, chemistry, whatever your heart desires. The world is dying to know the views of the Godless on all matters living or dead. No experience required.
Even Bruce won’t criticize you. You are the Godless, preach on!
Quite so. That’s why you can have meaningful conversations immediately after birth. </sarcasm>
No, not at all. Rather, my view is that other animals have some sort of meaning. But most don’t attach words to that meaning.
Language requires social conventions — so that we all talk the same language.
Quite right — so-called-revelation can never be more than subjective personal opinion.
I suppose that depends on what you mean by “reduced to”.
You’re speaking of hard emergence here, right?
In any case, isn’t big unsolved questions exactly one of those things you’d want to hold a conference about and invite scholars from a diversity of academic fields to consider?
Right. Absolutely. A diversity. Like maybe even people who don’t agree that emergence HAS to be fundamentally of a naturalistic origin. But no, no, we don’t want THAT kind of diversity, oh Lord no.
The first prerequisite, in fact the ONLY prerequisite for these almighty scholars to get together and discuss hard topics, just don’t believe in God for heavens sake!
I mean, I guess Dean Radin could have been invited to weigh in. It would be simple. All he would have to do is say, you know , I have all this evidence for quantum entanglement having some connection to conscious thought, but let me rest assure you, the reason for that, whatever it is, it all comes down to atoms, somehow. I promise I won’t consider any other source. Its atoms.
Oh, then by all means Mr. Radin, you are insisting on materialism, please please, right this way, your seat is over here! Have you met Mr. Dawkins? How about Mr. Coyne? They also reject God. That’s why they are here!
BruceS,
I find Dennett on ontology terribly frustrating, since he’s frustratingly vague on what “real patterns” are. I think he’s onto something interesting with the idea that the only things that could be ultimately real are real patterns in his sense.
In connection with that, I find it intriguing that two of Dennett’s former students — Huebner and Zawidzki, both in Philosophy of Daniel Dennett — have gone on to develop serious interest in Buddhism. I don’t think that’s a mere coincidence; I think that Dennett is much closer to Buddhism than he’s able to recognize, because he doesn’t have the right background.
This is particularly clear when one compares Dennett’s multiple drafts theory of consciousness and the “self as center of narrative gravity” with Buddhist teachings about the skandhas and the teaching of no-self (anatman).
Ahh I see now. Your issue is that people who’s answer is going to amount to nothing more than “Consciousness is inexplicably created by an omniponent but already conscious mind” were not invited to explain how consciousness emerges.
Carry on.
That’s probably because there are no such things as “real patterns”.
The Red Lion Inn discussion? Need to watch again but not sure whether there was really disagreement or misunderstanding. I’ll watch again. I wonder whether emergence and reductionism are just different emphasis on the same model.
Yes on Dennett. In fact, find much of his prose not as closely argued as I think it should be. Wallace builds on the idea for emergence from QM ontology, but he relies on L&R for formalities.
L&R depends on complexity theory as I recall; something for EricMH to get his EE chops into if he prefers to continue to avoid biology. But I am not aware of any conservation of real patterns unless they are related to structures in OSR as theory of continuity in scientific realism, which I need to look into at some point.
I think there are many world philosophers who have expressed similar ideas. But just it is wrong to read too much into Ancient atomic theory, I tend to be leary of Buddhism over cognitive science when it comes to doing philosophy of eg self.
I take multiple drafts as Dennett not doing Buddhism but rather making philosophical hay from computer daemons/threads, which I think he may admit at some point. Or maybe his robotics friends told him about subsumption architectures (multiple voting deciders rather than central planner). In any event, I suspect it is not easily made compatible with Global Workspace which does bring everything together broadcast. So it seems obsolete.
There was disagreement between the arch-reductionists like Rosenberg and maybe Weinberg and Dennett/Carroll. And Massimo was confused at one point. But most of them agreed with non-reductive philosophy of science, as is the overall consensus in philosophy, I believe.
Drive-by philosophy is superior to drive-by insults, I guess. Unless the two can somehow be combined.
BruceS,
but we’d be wrong! 🙂
That’s a research program I could totally get into!
I checked. And, indeed, I didn’t write it. Faded_Glory did. FMM should have acknowledged his error after I mentioned it.
That’s from the video, is it? I don’t recall saying it.
I agree it is poor wording (although common). I’d be leary about the bit referring to past and future, since I prefer block universe where determinism works both ways (and so causation is emergent).
In other words, saying “the current state of universe with laws giving dynamics allows one to predict future state” works just as well if you replace t by -t in equations so that “future” predicts “past”.
Schrodinger’s equation is time reversible. The collapse of the wave function idea is not. It is instead a bad-philosophy extension of the science, which is why few QM foundations researchers accept wave-function collapse as a description of reality.
Speaking of Buddhism and philosophy, Owen Flanagan’s latest brings anthropology and world philosophy to morality. It got an OK review in NDPR (unlike his previously edited tome on neuroscience and existentialism; his contribution to it got panned at NDPR).
I have not tried the morals book as I like his style of philosophical argument even less than I like Dennett’s. But I do agree with what I understand the thrust of Flanagan’s arguments to be, as based on NDPR review.
The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility
Review
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-geography-of-morals-varieties-of-moral-possibility/
That review of Neuroexistentialism was a disgrace. NDPR should never have asked Gabriel to write it. That was a bad call on the part of the NDPR editors, and they should have reserved the right to refuse to publish it. There’s a much better review (better = no gratuitous hostility) in Neuroethics.
I’ve admired Flanagan’s work for a long time. His book Consciousness Reconsidered was one of the best responses to Dennett that I read, and I use selections from his The Problem of the Soul and The Boddhisatva’s Brain in my philosophy of mind course. I haven’t read Varieties yet but I do plan on including some of the neuroexistentialism in my existentialism and phenomenology course this semester.
Thanks for the neuroethics link and the feedback on the reviewer at NDPR. I got a copy of the Neuroexistentialism book and your recommended review through Russkie collusion. I will read the review and may give Flanagan’s essay a try.
I do agree with much of Flanagan on naturalism in morality (another Dewey follower, I think); it’s how he says it that I dislike. Probably my math training.
I’ve commented on this (whether there are real patterns) in the past. However, intuition seems to be very persuasive that there are real patterns.
The easy example is that of cycles and epicycles vs ellipses. Which of those is real? And I cannot see any reason for saying that either is real.
Which pattern depends on how we parametrize reality. The Ptolemaic parametrization gives different patterns from the Kepler parametrization. It is because of this dependence on parametrization, that I say the patterns are not real.
Perhaps somebody can come up with a non-parametric definition of pattern.
Hmmm. Maybe that’s why I don’t like Boddhisatva’s Brain. Of the dozen or so (I know, not exactly a ton) books I have on Buddhism, that seems to me the dullest/worst/least enlightening. But it may be as much his style as what he is trying to say.
Harry Kincaid (in Scientific Metaphysics) defines it as “the ability of sources of Shannon information to resist entropy”, if that helps at all.
I don’t know enough about it to discuss in detail, but I think L&R is based on complexity theory which seems to me to avoid your concerns. Maybe you still would find such an approach to be problematic because K-complexity is not computable; however, I am sure they are aware of that and I suspect they address it.
To start, real patterns are based on currently successful explanation in a scientific domain, so historical comparisons are not germane.
For currently successful explanation, I say the structure of an explanation tends to be stay the same through reparameterization. So the real pattern persists through the shared structure of the explanation.
Of course, “current” means fallible, but that is an issue that any realist approach to science has to address to make a claim on what does survive theory change. Ontological claims for real patterns do depend on scientific realism
In fundamental physics, general covariance in GR equations is an example of what I am thinking of as a parameterization free real pattern.
It also seems to me that mechanistic explanations as used in higher sciences are parameter free, since they are based on structure first through organization and (usually) causal relationships, not on specific parameterization. But probably I’d need more on what you mean by parameterization of reality to discuss in detail.
Finally, of course, there is the no miracles argument for claiming something in our scientific explanation gets a grip on reality “as-it-is”. I say that something involves real patterns. But you and I have already discussed scientific realism to stalemate.
You are defining supernatural as unreal or observable. A very large chunk of humanity would find that definition to be absurd. It begs the question in the extreme.
You are welcome to any definition you wish but don’t expect the rest of the world to agree with you.
peace
That is OK you don’t need to understand all the minutia of all the implications to understand the definition.
The definition stands on it’s own
peace
Not at all.
Not reducible to physics is not remotely the same thing as “of unknown origin”.
I can have no clue what caused an object and still be confident that it’s cause is reducible to physics
peace
What are you talking about??
It’s not about what you don’t see it’s about what you do see.
peace
I’m sorry I did not acknowledge the cut and paste error and would like to preemptively apologize for any and all errors in spelling grammar or formatting.
peace
I never said that for a materialist explanations need to be expressed using the language of physics. I only said that for the materialist everything is reducible to physics.
Inexplicable is not remotely the same thing as irreducible.
Walto and I discussed this at length earlier in this thread.
peace
Nothing about God being the source of meaning requires his revealing meaning to anyone especially infants.
Come on Neil, you are better than this.
God’s omnipotence entails that if any certain knowledge whatsoever is possible then God can reveal so that I can know for certain.
peace
I am not a cartesian dualist.
I don’t think persons are a combination of physical and nonphysical ingredients.
On the contrary persons are supernatural because they can not be reduced to physics.
peace
I don’t have a problem with that. But I doubt that it helps.
My immediate point was that patterns depend on parametrization. My more important, but unstated point was that choosing methods of parametrization is basically pragmatist. Dennett and many others want to start with real patterns, so that they can give an account based on truth and logic. My point is that talk of patterns is unavoidably pragmatist rather than a matter of truth and logic.
If you want to go with currently successful explanation in a scientific domain — well, that’s also pragmatist.
If you want an account of human cognition, don’t try to make it look like truth and logic, with the pragmatism hidden behind the scenes. Instead, go straight to the pragmatism.
Why is it a bad habit to attribute a view to you that you obviously hold as witnessed by this very comment?
It was Corneel who claimed shared consciousness was the justification for treating animals with compassion.
I only pointed out that you don’t even think humans are conscious as I understand the concept but I’m sure you love puppies.
peace
I’m afraid that the resident philosophers are awakened 😉 and it’s becoming difficult to follow the train of thought.
I apologize if I missed anyone’s comment and failed to respond.
peace
It’s Laplace! 🙂
[ Laplace, Pierre Simon, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, translated into English from the original French 6th ed. by Truscott, F.W. and Emory, F.L., Dover Publications (New York, 1951) p.4]
Some things require apologies, others don’t. I figured you understood that. But your snarky reply makes that assumption of mine doubtful.
I don’t get it
Why is that particular cut and paste error worse than the thousand other errors that I make here?
Do you hate being mistaken for Faded Glory that much? Is there something in his comment that you find abhorrent?
Most of the time a comments author seems pretty much interchangeable to be.
It’s 10 guys throwing fastballs and I’m just trying to bat them off the best I can.
peace
That’s pretty apparent actually.
Anyhow, let me ask you a question that will (even to you, I’m guessing) seem quite different from what you’ve seen so far on this thread. What’s your take on this:
Is that a position that you agree with?