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?
I have repeatedly said I don’t care what label you put on things that exist. What is important is how we know that they exist, and what their properties are. The labels are an irrelevance to me.
The labels seem to matter a lot to you and I wonder why, they’re just labels. You can call it natural, or supernatural, or physics, or not-physics. Why should that matter? Ironically you seem to be converging on my position, you’re just obsessed about the particular label. You have an aversion to the word “physical” or “natural”, but want instead to use the word “supernatural”. Yet all your arguments for why could be reversed with the same effect. Is there anything we couldn’t call supernatural, or unnatural?
I want to know what exists, and how to find out, and I don’t give a shit what we label it. You can call it whatever you want. I just want to find out what is, and what the best way of determining that is.
What is the definition of the natural? What is the definition of the supernatural? What is the definition of the physical? What is the definition of the unnatural?
If you don’t first define these concepts, then your ad-hoc labeling of observed phenomena as either of these is meaningless. Just like it would be meaningless to just label everything “physical”, it is equally meaningless to label it “supernatural”.
Are you talking about so-called virtual particles?
What? Where are you getting this nonsense?
What?
Oh? Then you should be able to dream up a reality where your incoherent rants are persuasive. Or at least aren’t incoherent.
The list of what? Your fever dreams? What have you just listed but lunatic rantings? Why do you never answer any questions?
Really? Some things are a dissipating mist that goes in and out of existence, and the past is the future, while and somehow you can make reality into whatever your mind makes it. Or… something!
And those things are as close to a God as one could hope to touch(really, how did you conclude that?).
I don’t claim to know, but that question amounts to an argument from ignorance.
Not a thing. You’re making my point for me.
There is no thing that can’t be named anything that we desire. There is nothing we could observe that we couldn’t call physical, supernatural, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because if we don’t first define those concepts, then we can just apply them to anything we please.
What does it achieve to put the label “supernatural” on stuff? No more than putting the label “physical” on stuff. We have just given another name for “that which we know to exist”. In this case, atoms. We now have another name for atoms: The supernatural. Or The physical. Either way we have accomplished nothing and we are none the wiser.
And you think it’s really important that we replace it with saying “Huh, whattya know, well that’s supernaturalism for ya!”
For sure.
I am going to reply to several of your posts without quoting. Sorry for being a bit lazy and for any errors in paraphrases.
FMM: People have properties that cannot be reduced to the language of fundamental physics.
I agree. That’s one way of expressing the mumbo-jumbo I post on non-reductiveness.
FMM: People can detect things science cannot by using an intuition that involves an oracle.
FMM: People are not algorithmic.
Those are both coherent possibilities. EricMH believes them as I understand him. Penrose bases his philosophy of mind/brain on that possibility.
But I think the current consensus is that there is no reason to believe that people can do things that could not be simulated by a quantum turing machine.
Please note that I am not saying that people ARE quantum turning machines. At least, I don’t the two are the same in important ways that matter to scientific modeling.
Rumraket,
Yes, He’s basically giving a religious argument from ignorance. A God of the gaps. This entire thread fits into that category. It’s obviously extremely important to various groups to be able to insist that this or that religious “belief” (or feeling or whatever) is true. The thing is, it is also important to various groups (folks who take pride in their ” rationality”to insist that such beliefs are just needy fantasies. And the reason they generally give is that religions are inconsistent with…well…science.
So the first group responds to the scientistic attitude with, “OK, then how does your “science” explain this particular weirdness or…that one?” And if there’s no decent answer in response, it’s taken as a victory for “the supernatural.”
But really, it’s just a victory for ignorance. We simply don’t know everything. One can take from that unfortunate truth either that the failure is a result of the fact that “science” covers only part of the universe, or, alternatively, one can infer that it’s because we just don’t know enough science yet.
But, as your post suggests, both sides are somewhat confused here. This argument was balmy from the get-go. Ignorance is just ignorance. Desires for Gods are just desires for Gods. Nice feelings are just nice feelings. “Revelations” are just beliefs we like a lot.
Yes it is interesting the way that the findings of particle physics is beginning to align with the old Eastern religious teachings.
Thanks for posting this Phoodoo.
Some people associate the terms “physical and spiritual” with “natural and supernatural”, and I would like to talk about the above quote in relation to these differences.
Plato associated the four elements with the regular solids. Each had a dual, earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron. Earth tends to contract into gross physical matter and air tends to expand into the cosmos.
If we imagine the cube and the octahedron superimposed on each other within a sphere and the imagine the cube shrinking and the octahedron expanding at the same rate, the cube will tend towards the infinitly small point at the same time as the octahedron tends towards the infinite plane.
Now physicalists only look at this from one side when they talk about the fundamental nature of matter. A fundamental ‘particle’ will be be seen as an extremely small entity with a unique position. But if we take account of both sides and consider the other side of the matter then the ‘particle’ becomes an extremely large plane which tends to occupy a position in common with all other fundamental ‘particles’ On one side we have multiplicity and on the other side a unity. In this way ‘spooky action at a distance’ becomes more understandable. We look closer in and there is matter and we look expansively and there is consciousness. Two sides of the same thing.
Reality is unified. It is only because of the way we see things from our perspective that we divide realty into matter and spirit, natural and supernatural, up and down, culture and nature, me and the world. This is a monism that unifies matter and spirit.
walto,
Oh come on Walto, you can think better than that. Its not about ignorance, its about what we have learned.
And what we have learned does not fit well with a physical things are just physical arrangements and that’s that. QM says otherwise. The transient nature of atoms says otherwise. Don’t accuse the non-materialists of being the one who need a worldview anymore than you do.
If you are going to challenge the belief that the fine tuning of so many forces points to a planned design, then you need to make some other suggestion about just what would you expect to see if the world were designed? What evidence would be enough for you.
Since your side can never answer that, and you can ALWAYS just claim any evidence is just ignorance in disguise, then you have ruled out the possibility for evidence ever. That in itself is a desire for a worldview you require.
OK, We have two positions with a possibility to test them empirically. It seems like we are talking about science.
There are however some things that no algorithm could ever simulate in their entirety.
For example the irrational numbers can not be expressed in full by any machine in our universe with out an oracle.
That is because they are infinite. Their decimal expansion goes on for ever.. They can’t be contained in a finite universe.
We on the other hand can express these things in full by simple naming.
3.14159265359…… is Pi
1.41421356237…… is the square root of two
2.71828182845…… is e
We simply decide to halt the operation and declare “this is that.”
I would say it works something like that when it comes to other persons as well.
The entirety of a particular persons experiences together with any and all necessary physical and “supernatural” components………….is Kirk
peace
I would say that physics at it’s core is computation. If you can’t calculate the answer even in principle then we are not talking about physics.
Physics can be very strange but in the end it’s always “Y is a function of X”.
peace
You are changing the rules for people versus algorithms.
People cannot list the all the digits of PI. In fact, algorithms can list more than people and more quickly.
AI is perfectly capable of recognizing patterns and naming them by classifying them.
AI can do proofs formally.
AI can behave intelligently using processes we do not understand and cannot emulate.
It’s not clear what more you are expecting AI to do in the case of Pi. Some kind of creative math or science perhaps?
You are free to baldly assert that AI could never show creativity the way humans can. But the only reason I know of to justify claims that no future AI could do creative math equal to ours is Godel’s result, as applied to hands of someone like Penrose, who knows what he is talking about to some degree in this area. However, most experts in that area think he is wrong, or at least he has not made his case in any convincing way.
Note that he is a physicalist who relies on idiosyncratic speculation about integrating gravity with QM to make his Godelian position compatible with his naturalism.
But we are now into anti-AI due to the gaps type arguments, so I am going to step away. Have at it.
People don’t need to list all the digits. That is because once they understand PI they can list just the number of digits needed for any task. They can even use AI as a tool in that regard.
Irrational numbers have no pattern by definition
We are not talking about formal proof we are talking about naming. It’s sort of the opposite of formal proof
No I’m expecting it to look at a numeric sequence and declare that it is PI rather than an approximation.
No AI can ever do that. People do it all the time.
You are punting your own responsibility in this regard to experts who you admit disagree on this topic. Truth is not subject to majority vote.
You need to decide (choose) for yourself that is what makes you a person after all.
I will say that Godel’s result is important here though. Things like the value of PI are axioms they can never be decided from inside of the system no matter how fast you calculate but must be imported from some where else.
peace
I don’t know about “my side”–but I can say for myself that I don’t understand it. I mean I see the burden shift (it’s science guys who have the burden of showing that there’s no “planned design”) but other than that, I really don’t know what you’re saying. Scientism says it’s all science. Religion says it’s planned design. I say, who the hell knows. Your group and your adversaries can play burden tennis as long as you enjoy it, but leave me out of it.
It’s not anti-AI due to the gaps.
It’s an AI of the gaps argument that you are making.
I am making a positive argument and the other side is forced into an eternal retreat as the gap keeps getting smaller forever with each new digit of the decimal expansion.
That is fine of course but you don’t have to do that. All you have to do is be willing to choose and declare that
3.14159265359…… is in fact Pi
peace
Ah the vaunted indifference of the agnostic. Where Happiness means never having to get your hands dirty.
In the words of the great philosopher Geddy Lee.
“If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.”
peace
Jesus fucking christ. Is this supposed to show how supernatural, non algorithmic persons do better than machines at solving the halting problem?
-Dude, this shit is taking forever
-Bah, just stop right there and call it PI
-Wow! great idea you supernatural halting oracle!
hahahahaha
I appreciate that this shows an intent to provide something beyond phoodoo’s intuitive ‘weirdness standard.’ But of course “computation” is fuzzy too, certainly to me. Perhaps a mathematician–Neil maybe–can flesh that out a bit. I remember seeing somewhere in Wittgenstein where he says whatever group of numbers you set down, there are always an infinite number of ways one can “go on” Take, for example.
2, 4, 6, 8….
we could “go on” with
10, 12, 14, 16….
or with
2, 4, 6, 8, 2, 4, 6, 8…..
or with
22, 44, 66, 88….
or with
3, 5, 7, 9….
etc.
When are we “computing”?
But what you are suggesting is that scientism is saying that it can only ever be science, no matter what.
If you are deciding beforehand that the only answer will always be science, then I don’t think that is very scientific.
We are computing when the operation can be accomplished with out a personal choice.
peace
I do wish you could find that quote.
I think that deciding which of the infinite number of ways is the correct one is what makes us persons and persons “supernatural” (ie not reducible to physics).
peace
dazz,
Thank you for being you 😉
peace
I’d be careful about taking anything Wittgenstein says about computability seriously. I mean he is a smart guy and all. And maybe he had some deep philosophical point to do make on pohkisolophy of math or on how rule following has to bottom out some where. But I don’t think those are relevant to what AI could do.
It is a well known and mundane fact that you can fit many curves to any finite set of points. So going beyond that finite set will yield different results for other numbers according to the curve you happen to use
Now, if you want to project sequences as part of doing an IQ test, you do have to meet the IQ testers standards to get a good score. But that is more an issue for Gregory (ideology of IQ testing).
There are plenty of philosophical attempts to define computing in a neutral way; a way which avoids building in representationalism (as did Fodor) and also avoids making the notion so general one ends up with a definition such that everything is a computer from some perspective. The Piccinini stuff I have linked to in the past is good if you want to follow up.
Computability is a well studied and formalized field as well. That’s the source, eg, for the P-NP problem.
However, there is a philosophically open issue on whether there is anything beyond the effective computability ast Turing machines do; that effective computing corresponds to work of the human computers that Turing based his ideas on before he both invented automated computers and won WW2 single handedly (or so say some movies).
Bonus mysterious holism at TSZ content:
Jeff Shallitt, who post at TSZ form time to time and has had a thing or two to say about ID, researches integer sequences, including patterness in them.
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Talks/sloane5.pdf
ETA: typos
fifthmonarchyman,
You’re welcome. Thank you for the laughs 😀
Interesting, you are saying that for certain “philosophers” the problem has yet to halt!!!
I wonder if we could get an AI to solve the problem for them 😉
peace
I’m not a big believer in the prospects for science fiction kinds of AI, but I do watch the actual progress of commercial AI.
Computers have mastered chess and go, have made a good wack at poker, and now, online role playing games.
I expect them to be the final arbiter of medical diagnoses within ten years. Doctors will be divided into surgeons and counselors. Surgeons will be replaced by mid century.
I cannot think of a single human activity that will not be replace or augmented by machines.
Much like manual labor. I still have a shovel, but serious digging is done by machines. They extend and amplify our muscles. They are beginning to amplify our minds.
My personal favorite science fiction fantasy is that computers will “equalize” human intelligence in a way analogous to the way the six-gun “equalized” fighting ability. Which is to say, with mixed results.
I agree. The question is will all human activities be replaced or will some never be replaced but only augmented.
It truly is an AI of the gaps argument.
I say that AI can’t choose and you say but it can play chess.
I say OK but it can’t choose and you say but it can play GO.
I say that an AI can’t determine from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running (i.e., halt) or continue to run forever and you say but it can play poker.
And so it goes forever.
peace
There are alternatives to theology to explain that cosmological fine tuning. I have posted links to popularization earlier which cover them.
This is not a scientific issue, at least not ultimately. Rather it is philosophy of some sort, including theology, I would say.
I personally am agnostic about the various proposed solutions (including certain theological explanations).
You never make choices during a game of chess or GO? I bet you lose a lot.
I make choices but an AI does not. It merely follows it’s program which may or may not incorporate randomness.
You are doing the same thing you did in the animal conversation you are assuming that similar observable outcomes imply similar mental processes are going on.
You have no warrant for ever making that assumption but especially not when the entities are as different me and a pile of silicone encased in plastic.
peace
Games like poker and go, which cannot be completely analyzed by actual computers, involve making guesses about the future. That’s what making choices means.
Nah, he can simply declare he’s won at any time he chooses. That’s the beauty of being supernatural.
I do like that definition but I think that “guesses” might be a little misleading.
What we do when we choose is stronger than guessing, our choices actually influence the future in some way.
I’m not sure exactly how to unpack that. But its interesting and gets to the heart of what we are talking about.
peace
One way to look at it might be consider the collapse of the wave-function in QM.
Depending on your interpretation either the future becomes actual when you choose or the world itself splits in two and you follow one particular path rather than the other.
peace
Yes, I agree completely.
I believe that in games where bluffing is an option, computers still regularly lose to humans.
I’m not an agnostic. I’m an atheist–at least for all species of Gods like the one you favor. I just don’t take any position on the burden tennis game. I don’t know or care if everything in the world is part of physics or not. But it ain’t due to your God.
Right. I feel just the same on those issues. But it doesn’t prevent me from being a confirmed atheist.
Don’t worry. I have no opinions on these matters, either stemming from Witt. or from anywhere else.
So you are agnostic when it comes to who has the burden of proof. ……..That is what I said 😉
peace
No doubt it’s in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. He says the same sorts of things elsewhere too.
Well, it doesn’t make sense to take a position unless you’ve got the definitions firmed up. As I said above, I appreciate the fact that you’re at least trying to do this, and not just settling for a “weirdness means I win” argument, as phoodoo seems to be doing. I’m not competent to judge the adequacy of any definitions involving computability, however, so me being agnostic on the tennis match seems only appropriate, no?
At least you are now admitting your view is not in any way scientific.
I would say that that one choice. Will eventually influence all the others you may or not make in your life.
peace
Yeah, it’s not scientific. These sorts of opinions are philosophical not scientific, and in my view, nobody should be too confident in their views regarding any heavyweight philosophical claim. If they WERE scientific, I’d be on the scientists’ side though: they’ve got a lot more successes to point to than the theologians.
But, as indicated, I’m not agnostic about there not being an xtian God. I think the burden is firmly on the xtian there.
Oh I agree,
According to your worldview who is responsible ultimately to firm up definitions? And exactly how did you come to that conclusion?
Hint: it has everything to do with that other choice you already made
peace
I hope so. I wouldn’t like to be like Lord Marchmain in Brideshead.
The parties to the dispute need to agree on them. Neither can just decide on them and expect to convince anybody else.
Two people with apposing viewpoints will often go to their grave with out ever agreeing.
Does that really mean that it’s an open question and neither is right?
peace
See this is the problem that you and Rumraket seem to be avoiding.
You have ruled out, a priori, any success at estimating the existence of God. Because any success, you simply call ignorance of cause.
Thus, its a pointless claim that the materialist make, when they say, I would believe in a God if you would just show me evidence. Then when you say, Ok, well, what would qualify as evidence, your reply is nothing, because I have already decided no evidence would suffice.
So what you have really done is remove any burden of evidence for the theist, because you refute evidence before it is given. And we know that throughout the atheist community they pretend they want evidence.
You are making clear that that tactic is really just a ruse. A bluff.
Not true. It’s just that your camp has failed to produce jackshit in the way of knowledge in the many centuries of theological history. Science OTOH has earned its stripes through a history of amazing success, and all of a sudden some religious wingnuts that call themselves IDists pretend they can support their religious beliefs scientifically, while attacking scientism. Hilarious.
If you think QM, or the universal constants of the laws of physics or all that other stuff counts as evidence for your imaginary friend, how come no one of the eminent “scientists” on your camp, with no damning commitment to materialism, could predict any of those findings? How do you reason your way from God to QM for instance?
I am an atheist regarding the everyday conceptions of a God that is personally involved in or caring about human affairs. .