Wallace’s Problem and Darwin’s Doubt: Still Unresolved?

I would like to begin by congratulating Kantian Naturalist on his recent post, Solving Wallace’s Problem and Resolving Darwin’s Doubt, which squarely faces the epistemological issues raised by Darwin and Wallace, regarding the reliability of human knowledge. In this post, I’d like to explain why I don’t think Kantian Naturalist’s statement of the problem quite gets it right, and why I believe the solution he puts forward is a flawed one.

Wallace’s problem

Let’s begin with Wallace’s difficulty, which he discussed towards the end of his review of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology and Elements of Geology, which was published in the April 1869 issue of the Quarterly Review. On page 392 of the review, Wallace expresses his astonishment at the fact that people in all ethnic groups have brains with virtually identical capacities, regardless of their level of intellectual development: “Natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape, whereas he actually possesses one but very little inferior to that of the average members of our learned societies.” Wallace rhetorically asked: “How, then, was an organ developed so far beyond the needs of its possessor?” Wallace applied the same argument to the organs of speech, remarking that “among the lowest savages with the least copious vocabularies, the capacity of uttering a variety of distinct articulate sounds, and of applying to them an almost infinite amount of modulation and inflection, is not in any way inferior to that of the higher races.” Once again, the level of development struck Wallace as biologically superfluous: “An instrument has been developed in advance of the needs of its possessor.” Wallace proposed that just as man has “directed the action of the laws of variation, multiplication, and survival, for his own purposes” when artificially breeding crops and domestic animals, so too, a Higher Intelligence has “guided the same laws for nobler ends… in the development of the human race.”

It is worth noting that the foregoing argument of Wallace’s is a purely biological argument: natural selection lacks foresight, and is therefore unable to account for the development of an organ which will be biologically advantageous in the future, but which (he believed) confers no advantage at present, in many human societies. This argument is quite distinct from Wallace’s philosophical argument, made in the same review: “Neither natural selection nor the more general theory of evolution can give any account whatever of the origin of sensational or conscious life.” The laws of Nature could generate complex bodies through the process of natural selection, but these laws “cannot even be conceived as endowing the newly-arranged atoms with consciousness.” (I am reminded here of Thomas Nagel’s claim, in his now-famous paper, What is it like to be a bat?, that “Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.”) Nor can any law of evolution account for “the moral and higher intellectual nature of man,” in Wallace’s view.

If we examine Wallace’s biological argument, we find that it was answered fairly comprehensively by Thomas Henry Huxley in his 1871 essay, Mr. Darwin’s Critics. First, Huxley pointed out that the so-called “savage” races faced cognitive challenges far more formidable than those faced by people living in “advanced” societies:

…[C]onsider that even an Australian [Aborigine] can make excellent baskets and nets, and neatly fitted and beautifully balanced spears, that he learns to use these so as to be able to transfix a quartern loaf at sixty yards; and that very often, as in the case of the American Indians, the language of a savage exhibits complexities which a well-trained European finds it difficult to master: consider that every time a savage tracks [176] his game he employs a minuteness of observation, and an accuracy of inductive and deductive reasoning which, applied to other matters, would assure some reputation to a man of science, and I think we need ask no further why he possesses such a fair supply of brains. In complexity and difficulty, I should say that the intellectual labour of a “good hunter or warrior” considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman.

Additionally, Huxley contended that there was a strong selective effect favoring individuals possessing “intellectual or aesthetic excellence,” even in the most technologically backward societies:

The savage who can amuse his fellows by telling a good story over the nightly fire, is held by them in esteem and rewarded, in one way or another, for so doing–in other words, it is an advantage to him to possess this power. He who can carve a paddle, or the figure-head of a canoe better, similarly profits beyond his duller neighbour. He who counts a little better than others, gets most yams when barter is going on, and forms the shrewdest estimate of the numbers of an opposing tribe… If we admit, as Mr. Wallace does, that the lowest savages are not raised “many grades above the elephant and the ape;” and if we further admit, as I contend must be admitted, that the conditions of social life tend, powerfully, to [179] give an advantage to those individuals who vary in the direction of intellectual or aesthetic excellence, what is there to interfere with the belief that these higher faculties, like the rest, owe their development to natural selection?

In my humble opinion, Huxley got the better of Wallace in this exchange, leaving Wallace’s argument from the alleged surplus capacity of the human brain in tatters. I am therefore utterly mystified at Kantian Naturalist’s assertion, in his post, that the answer to “Wallace’s problem,” as he calls it, required not only a philosophical revolution (viz. the notion that language is logically prior to thought, and not merely the vehicle by which thoughts are communicated), but additionally, scientific developments in the fields of “niche construction theory, embodied-embedded cognitive science, comparative primatology, and paleoanthropology (none of which were available to Wallace or Darwin).”

As we saw above, Wallace’s philosophical argument against the mind being a product of natural selection rested on the claim that there was a sharp discontinuity between conscious and unconscious creatures, and between humans, with their moral and intellectual capacities, and other animals, which lacked these capacities. Once again, we find that replies were forthcoming from the scientific community, even back in Wallace’s day. In his work, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 1st edition, 1871), Charles Darwin argued that the difference between man and the apes was one of degree rather than kind, and that it was dwarfed by the far greater differences in mental capacities between apes and the “lower” animals:

If no organic being excepting man had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, then we should never have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But it can be clearly shewn that there is no fundamental difference of this kind. We must also admit that there is a much wider interval in mental power between one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and one of the higher apes, than between an ape and man; yet this immense interval is filled up by numberless gradations. (Chapter II, p. 35)

Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind. (Chapter III, p. 105)

…[T]he mental faculties of man and the lower animals do not differ in kind, although immensely in degree. A difference in degree, however great, does not justify us in placing man in a distinct kingdom, as will perhaps be best illustrated by comparing the mental powers of two insects, namely, a coccus or scale-insect and an ant, which undoubtedly belong to the same class. The difference is here greater than, though of a somewhat different kind from, that between man and the highest mammal. (Chapter VI, p. 186)

On the whole, the difference in mental power between an ant and a coccus is immense; yet no one has ever dreamed of placing them in distinct classes, much less in distinct kingdoms. No doubt this interval is bridged over by the intermediate mental powers of many other insects; and this is not the case with man and the higher apes. (Chapter VI, p. 187)

I therefore cannot concur with Kantian Naturalist’s assessment that “[w]hereas Darwin thought there was continuity between humans and non-human animals, his evidence is primarily about emotional displays, rather than the genuinely cognitive discontinuity.” Indeed, chapters II and III of Darwin’s Descent of Man can be described as a systematic attempt to prove that the moral and intellectual difference in capacity between man and the other animals is merely one of degree, rather than kind. As a dualist, I am not at all persuaded that the attempt works. But if I were asked who got the better of the exchange between Darwin and Wallace on this point, I would have to say: Darwin.

Notwithstanding this admission on my part, I would like to point out that oft-repeated claims of a cognitive continuum between man and the other animals rest on faulty science. Unfortunately, in Darwin and Wallace’s day, the scientific experiments lending support to the hypothesis of human uniqueness had not yet been performed. Three years ago, I presented the evidence for human uniqueness in a series of essays on Uncommon Descent, which readers are welcome to peruse at their own leisure:

The Myth of the Continuum of Creatures: A Reply to John Jeremiah Sullivan (Part One)
The Myth of the Continuum of Creatures: A Reply to John Jeremiah Sullivan (Part Two)
The Myth of the Continuum of Creatures: A Reply to John Jeremiah Sullivan (Part 3(a))
The Myth of the Continuum of Creatures: A Reply to John Jeremiah Sullivan (Part 3(b))

As Kantian Naturalist correctly points out, Wallace wasn’t the only one with doubts. It turns out that Darwin had doubts of his own about the reliability of human cognition, and it is to these that I now turn.

Darwin’s Doubt

Here’s how Kantian Naturalist summarizes Darwin’s “horrid doubt”:

A closely related problem, however, was squarely faced by Darwin: the question, nicely phrased in his famous letter to Asa Gray, as to whether it is plausible to think that natural selection can have equipped a creature with a capacity for arriving at any objective truths about the world. (It is not often noted that in that letter, Darwin says that he believes in an intelligent creator — what is in doubt is whether natural selection gives him reasons to trust in his cognitive abilities.)

These two questions, Wallace’s Problem and Darwin’s Doubt, are two sides of the same coin: if natural selection (along with other biological processes) cannot account for the uniquely human ability to grasp objective truths about reality, then we must either reject naturalism (as Wallace did) or question our ability to grasp objective truths about reality (as Darwin did).

Call this the Cognitive Dilemma for Naturalism. Can it be solved? If so, how?

It appears that Kantian Naturalist is referring to Darwin’s letter of May 22, 1860 to the American botanist Asa Gray (1810-1888), in which Darwin affirms that, although he does not believe in the necessity of a design in nature, he finds it difficult to believe that everything is the result of “brute force.” After tentatively suggesting that everything results from “designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance,” Darwin concludes by saying that the whole subject of God’s existence and nature is “too profound for the human intellect.”

However, the phrase “Darwin’s horrid doubt” comes from Darwin’s 1881 letter to William Graham, in which he wrote:

…I have had no practice in abstract reasoning, and I may be all astray. Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

As the Australian philosopher John S. Wilkins points out in a 2010 essay titled, You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals on his blog, Evolving Thoughts, Darwin’s doubt had nothing to do with how we are able to grasp objective truths about the world:

First, let’s dispose of one point: Darwin’s Monkey Mind Puzzle was not aimed at debunking our knowledge of the natural world. He did not admit a fatal flaw in his own metaphysics or epistemology…

Darwin’s “horrid doubt” is whether we can know anything about God, not the world…

The same remarks apply to Darwin’s 1860 letter to Asa Gray: here, once again, Darwin suggests that the human mind is liable to err when it engages in abstruse theological reasoning. Nowhere, however, does he express doubts about the reliability of our reasoning processes, when applied to the natural world.

Our knowledge of the external world: problem solved?

In his 2010 essay, You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals, philosopher John S. Wilkins addresses the question of whether Darwin’s theory supplies sufficient warrant for our belief that our scientific theories (including the theory of evolution) truly describe the world. He concludes that it does, because our theories are carefully constructed on the basis of our observations of not only near objects, but also increasingly distant ones, enabling us to gradually extend the scope of our generalizations:

So to the main point: if evolutionary theory is true, then are we blocked from thinking that it is true? Clearly not. If it is true then there is no contradiction with our beliefs being formed on the basis of evolutionary processes also being true…

When true beliefs are causally relevant to fitness, then we might expect organisms, including those endowed with monkey minds, to be able to track truth. Species that have nervous systems respond to environmental cues that are highly relevant to their fitness: von Uexküll called this the Umwelt. The world of primate common sense is our Umwelt.

Scientific theories bootstrap on this Umwelt; we begin by testing distal claims by ordinary observation, and then extend our theoretical reach by increasingly theoretical, but tested and grounded in our Umwelt, observations, as Ian Hacking argued in Representing and Intervening. Science tracks truth because it is able to rely on some degree of truthlikeness for the observational reports that we can generate in our protoscience.

However, I don’t think this answer will do. The problem with this view is that it assumes that as we refine our observations, we will eventually be left with a single theory which leaps out at us, as it were. In reality, this never happens. Scientists have no way of showing that a given theory is the only way of explaining our observational data. There are always choices to be made between rival theories that can account for the same data, and quite often they are made on aesthetic grounds: we tend to prefer simple, elegant theories. But as Oscar Wilde wittily observed, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Our preference for simplicity, elegance and ease of comprehension is a human projection on Nature – one which would make no sense unless we assumed that Nature was designed to be comprehensible, as many theists do. If an atheist wishes to refrain from making this assumption, then it seems to me that an anti-realist view of scientific truth is the only logical alternative. On this view, we should not say that unobservable or theoretical entities actually exist, but merely that they are useful constructs for helping us to make predictions about future observations. But if that’s correct, then is macroevolution real? Hmmm.

To sum up: it seems to me that Darwin’s theory of evolution gives us good reason to believe in the predictions made by our scientific theories, but little reason to believe that those theories are objectively true, insofar as they postulate theoretical entities which go beyond the limit of our observations. All we can say is that science works.

So, what about Kantian Naturalist’s solution to the Cognitive Dilemma for Naturalism?

Kantian Naturalist thinks he can solve what he refers to as the Cognitive Dilemma for Naturalism, by a two-step process, which he helpfully explains in a comment on his post:

There are two distinct moves here.

The first is a philosophical move, in which we see language as underpinning and making possible, both in evolution and in development, abstract thought, symbolic communication, self-consciousness, and objectivity. (That’s what I’m calling ’embodied discursive pragmatism’.)

The second is a scientific move, in which we understand how language is a result of evolution (more precisely: the co-evolution of language and human cognition).

Kantian Naturalist’s philosophical claim that language is logically prior to abstract thought has attracted a lot of criticism, most of which I think this is unjustifiably harsh. Having studied Wittgenstein’s thinking in some depth at university, I can appreciate Kantian Naturalist’s insistence that language and thought are inter-twined. While I would not say that the former precedes the latter, I would wholeheartedly agree with Kantian Naturalist’s rejection of the naive view that language is merely a vehicle or tool for expressing our thoughts.

Instead, my criticisms will be directed at Kantian Naturalist’s scientific claim that the origin of language can be understood in evolutionary terms: in particular, that niche construction theory may have driven the evolution of language and shared intentionality.

…[T]he construction of a uniquely hominid niche involved obligate cooperative extractive foraging. While extractive foraging is common in primates, and many great apes use tools to extract foods from their environments, humans are cooperative in extractive foraging (and must be so). Adequate provisioning requires that everyone in the group who is able to contribute will in fact contribute to the provisioning of everyone else, through division of labor that involves hunting and scavenging; setting traps for small animals; gathering nuts, seeds, berries and herbs for foods and medicines; cleaning and cooking food, making clothing, weapons; transmitting to future generations the knowledge of how to do all these things through active teaching.

Obligate cooperative foraging involves two important cognitive transformations: displaced reference and joint intentionality. Displaced reference, which put hominids on the road to language, is the capacity to communicate about objects and events that are not perceptually present to (at least) the hearer. Joint intentionality is the ability for two creatures to take an object as their shared object of attention, to know of the other creature that it is also attending to that object and to want them to do so, so that the two creatures can coordinate their actions in order to succeed at a task that neither of them could accomplish alone (or which would take much more time or energy to do so).

Frankly, I don’t buy this story, for several reasons.

First, arguing that language would have been beneficial to human survival, if it arose, fails to explain how it arose. “Why” is not the same thing as “how.” I was shocked to see so many commenters fall into this teleological mode of explanation. Here’s a case in point:

Social groups need to communicate. In a forest niche, vocal communication has advantages over visual communication and signalling.

I could just as well argue that telepathy has great advantages over vocal communication, but that wouldn’t explain how it evolved. In fact, it wouldn’t even tell us whether telepathy could have evolved. We need a mechanism.

Second, there are plenty of animals which engage in niche construction (e.g. beavers), co-operative hunting (e.g. lions) and extractive foraging (e.g. chimps), without the benefit of language. I’m not at all convinced that a lifestyle combining these various behaviors (such as that of our hominin ancestors) would have necessitated the use of language, either. I don’t see why we need language for “gathering nuts, seeds, berries and herbs for foods and medicines,” or for “cleaning and cooking food.” As for cultural transmission of skills to future generations, this is something we observe in non-human animals as well. Making clothing is unlikely to be what necessitated the use of language, as clothing is a relatively recent invention, probably coinciding with the appearance of anatomically modern humans in Africa, around 200,000 years ago. Language, on the other hand, probably goes back at least to the common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthal man, as Dan Dediu and Steven Levinson have argued at length in their article, On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences (in Frontiers in Psychology, 4:397. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00397):

The Neandertals had a complex stone tool technology (the Mousterian) that required considerable skill and training, with many variants and elaborations (see Klein, 2009: 485ff). They sometimes mined the raw materials at up to 2 meters depth (Verri et al., 2004). Their stone tools show wear indicating usage on wood, suggesting the existence of a wooden material culture with poor preservation, such as the carefully shaped javelins made ~400 kya [about 400,000 years ago – VJT] from Germany (Thieme, 1997). Tools were hafted with pitch extracted by fire (Roebroeks and Villa, 2011). Complex tool making of the Mousterian kind involves hierarchical planning with recursive sub-stages (Stout, 2011) which activates Broca’s area just as in analogous linguistic tasks (Stout and Chaminade, 2012). The chain of fifty or so actions and the motor control required to master it are not dissimilar to the complex cognition and motor control involved in language (and similarly takes months of learning to replicate by modern students).

Additionally, a 2011 essay by Dietrich Stout and Thierry Chaminade, titled, Stone tools, language and the brain in human evolution (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 12 January 2012, vol. 367, no. 1585, pp. 75-87) lends support to the view that the Late Acheulean tools made by Heidelberg man required a high level of cognitive sophistication to produce, in addition to long hours of training for novices. This training would have included the use of intentional communication, which the authors characterize as “purposeful communication through demonstrations intended to impart generalizable (i.e. semantic) knowledge about technological means and goals, without necessarily involving pantomime.”

Third, I should point out that the evidence for the extractive foraging hypothesis is not terribly strong. Another popular theory is the social brain hypothesis, but that seems to have problems, too, as does the recent theory that cooking helped big brains evolve.

Finally, I’d like to draw readers’ attention to a quote from writer and columnist A. N. Wilson, a convert from atheism, who argued that materialist accounts of the origin of language are inherently inadequate, in a hard-hitting article titled, Why I believe again (New Statesman, 2 April 2009):

Do materialists really think that language just “evolved”, like finches’ beaks, or have they simply never thought about the matter rationally? Where’s the evidence? How could it come about that human beings all agreed that particular grunts carried particular connotations? How could it have come about that groups of anthropoid apes developed the amazing morphological complexity of a single sentence, let alone the whole grammatical mystery which has engaged Chomsky and others in our lifetime and linguists for time out of mind? No, the existence of language is one of the many phenomena – of which love and music are the two strongest – which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat.

It seems to me that Wilson’s remarks contain a lot of good sense. Language really is a miracle, which cannot be explained from the bottom up, naturally.

What do readers think?

382 thoughts on “Wallace’s Problem and Darwin’s Doubt: Still Unresolved?

  1. Erik:
    Emphasis mine.

    Wikipedia says, “Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.”

    Question: What else besides the concept of natural selection has Darwin’s theory of evolution contributed to biology? The Wikipedia article implies – absolutely nothing. Everything else was already there prior to Darwin.*

    Maybe you can do better and show how, minus natural selection, we still have Darwin’s theory of evolution.

    * Even natural selection was there prior to Darwin. For example, it underlies Mendel’s second law.

    I have no idea either what you’re asking or what you’re talking about. I do hear angry bleating about something you seem to take to threaten your religious views, but that’s about it.

    You have no clear obections to evolutionary biology, apparently. But the idea offends you for some reason which you associate with the phrase ‘survival of the fittest.” OK

  2. walto: You have no clear obections to evolutionary biology, apparently. But the idea offends you for some reason which you associate with the phrase ‘survival of the fittest.” OK

    So, when there is a clear objection to “survival of the fittest”, then the objection is not clear? And you don’t acknowledge that when “survival of the fittest” is taken away, there is no (Darwinian) evolutionary biology left whatsoever. OK.

    ETA: Everybody acknowledges variation. Everybody knows that the strong have the capacity to beat up or kill off the weaker. The innovation of Darwinism consists in assuming that this constitutes “natural selection”, through which the world becomes a better place (assuming we are better than apes). Everybody, apart from Darwinists, recognizes that “better” is radically disconnected from survival and reproduction.

  3. phoodoo:
    walto,

    Oh, so evolution is NOT survival of the fittest?

    Very interesting.Do tell.

    Ditto. Saying evolution is ‘survival of the fittest’ is akin to saying physics is ‘heavy items fall down.’ You don’t like the slogan? Put it on your bucket list to have a better one ready by close of business, March 31, 2017.

  4. Erik: So, when there is a clear objection to “survival of the fittest”, then the objection is not clear? And you don’t acknowledge that when “survival of the fittest” is taken away, there is no (Darwinian) evolutionary biology left whatsoever. OK.

    I acknowledge that the slogan is a pretty good one for the darwinian approach, and that your objections to darwinism are nothing but intentional mischaracterization of that (nice) slogan. I also feel your pain at having some religious views you enjoy threatened by the march of science. If I had a fluffy tissue and you were near, I’d hand it to you (although I’d ask you to share it with phoodoo.) I think that’s more than enough. Nobody should be asked to do more than sympathize with your plight.

  5. Kantian Naturalist: Are you asking for a general theory of what brains are good for?

    No. Is “having a brain” something that is as “obviously adaptive” as is having a large brain? Some organisms have brains, therefore brains must be adaptive.

    No organisms can [fill in the blank] or no organisms have [fill in the blank], therefore [fill in the blank] must not be adaptive.

    We can tell stories all day about how this or that may have been or may not have been adaptive, but it doesn’t follow that this or that actually is or was or must have been or must not have been adaptive. Much less that it is obvious.

    Personally I believe brains evolved to fill the empty space inside the skull because nature abhors a vacuum.

  6. GlenDavidson:

    vjtorley: Crows are incapable by nature of debating and discussing. They cannot criticize each other’s arguments. That’s why I see no point in imputing reason to them.

    Then you’re just defining them as unreasoning.

    Considering that reasoning often is imputed to humans who figure out what crows figure out, it seems that you’re just narrowing the definition of “reasoning” in order not to include crows.The interesting thing to do is to study how reasoning in humans occurs, and how it differs (or doesn’t) from how crows appear to reason.

    If you don’t call what crows do ‘reasoning’ it’s still the case that many people would, unless something other than the fact that they are not conversant is found that means that it is not similar enough to be called reasoning.In other words, you can’t just define away faculties that appear to underlie speech, they’re still there even if you don’t like them to be called “reasoning.”

    Glen Davidson

    I was just about to post something similar. If crows, for example, demonstrate the capability to create mental models of the world and predict behavior based on those models with enough accuracy to determine how to use simple tools, that looks like reasoning to me. Not calling it reasoning solely because they lack rich communication seems to be simply defining oneself to be correct.

    If there is something in communication that is essential to reasoning, that would be interesting.

  7. walto: I also feel your pain at having some religious views you enjoy threatened by the march of science.

    The morality at large is threatened. And everybody, who remembers for example Nazi “science” and eugenics, knows this. Those experiments had Darwinian underpinnings and were later curtailed for reasons that Darwinism cannot endorse or incorporate.

  8. walto,

    So evolution IS survival of the fittest or it IS NOT survival of the fittest?

    You seem to be equivocating. I doubt I am the only one having trouble understanding you.

  9. Patrick: If there is something in communication that is essential to reasoning, that would be interesting.

    KN has a lot to say about this. Something along the lines “language is prior to thought” and this assumption is supposed to reconcile everything with pretty much everything.

    Dr. Torley and KN have some odd things in common, but not sure if it means much.

  10. Erik,

    Evolutionary theory is true. If the world needs to find new moral theories without heinous consequences that are consistent with it, so be it. (No more was Lamarckianism false because Stalin was a shithead.) As Moore said, everything is what it is and not some other thing.

    Go, thou and work on that new theory rather than tilting at windmills. You can’t make evolution false because you fear what it portends for the world.

    Amen.

  11. walto,

    From the sound of it, your fluffy tissues are already all soaked I am afraid.

    I don’t think it is Erik that is all emotional.

  12. phoodoo:
    walto,

    From the sound of it, your fluffy tissues are already all soaked I am afraid.

    I don’t think it is Erik that is all emotional.

    No worries. I’m laying in a big box of new ones this afternoon!

  13. phoodoo: ….He preached

    I try ti make sure my sermons are based on the best available science. When I screw up, I depend on Joe, Allan, Jock and others to correct me. They’re not shy.

  14. walto: Evolutionary theory is true.

    Neil Rickert: I hold that scientific theories are neither true nor false.

    Take your time to make up your minds.

    If “survival of the fittest” is not as central as Darwinism insists, then there simply is no Darwinism. And then, instead of survival, we have emphasis on flourishing, like it used to be prior to Darwin.

  15. Erik: Take your time to make up your minds.

    If “survival of the fittest” is not as central as Darwinism insists, then there simply is no Darwinism. And then, instead of survival, we have emphasis on flourishing, like it used to be prior to Darwin.

    I’m not sure neil thinks ANY statement–including math ones– is strictly true or false. But this is just another quibble. Suppose we both say that it’s as true as E=MC^2. Maybe each will be refined with time. So neither is strictly true, but damned close. Will that make you happy?

    It’s quibbles posing as real objections as far as the eye can see. Is it Hitler or a poor slogan choice, or the fact that there are ugly people or what? Put your objections to evolutionary theory on the table for all to see: I say they’re entirely religious–stoked by fear. Show everyone I’m wrong.

  16. Erik: Take your time to make up your minds.

    LOL.

    That’s pretty much a point where I disagree with philosophers.

    We choose scientific theories on a pragmatic basis — how well they work. There are no criteria, other than pragmatics, whereby we can judge theories.

    Most philosophers, by contrast, want to describe decisions in terms of truth and logic. So we disagree over that.

    This isn’t particularly relevant to whatever point you think you are arguing.

  17. walto: I’m not sure neil thinks ANY statement–including math ones– is strictly true or false.

    Not quite right.

    I don’t think there is such a thing as absolute truth (or metaphysical truth). Statements can be true or false, depending on the criteria we use to judge them. The criteria are typically part of a conceptual framework.

    For mathematics, the axioms provide a suitable framework for judging truth. But axioms themselves, are neither true nor false.

    In science, a theory provides the framework. And that sets the criteria as to whether observation statements are true or false. But there usually isn’t a framework by which we can judge whether the theory itself is true or false. So we adopt theories on a pragmatic basis.

  18. walto: Is it Hitler or a poor slogan choice, or the fact that there are ugly people or what?

    It’s that it’s not true. Darwinian evolution assumes that advantageous features get passed on to form new species, that natural selection accounts for variability, that microevolution translates to macroevolution. All wrong.

    In reality, all features get passed on without any regard to any sort of advantage, but with rather close regard to being specific to the species; abundance of resources contributes to proliferation of variability (such as the same boring savannah landscape to the wealth of species of grazing animals all together) better than selection (like Darwin’s finches on separate Galapagos islands or dog breeding, which only accounts for microevolution); and nobody has ever seen macroevolution in action, for example human species are invariable despite and throughout all the radical cultural transformation since stone age.

    walto: Put your objections to evolutionary theory on the table for all to see: I say they’re entirely religious–stoked by fear. Show everyone I’m wrong.

    I’ve already put my objections on the table.

    Mendel’s, von Baer’s and Linné’s biology was just fine. Nothing needed to be added. The assumption that Darwin contributed something of value is false.

    Neil Rickert: We choose scientific theories on a pragmatic basis — how well they work. There are no criteria, other than pragmatics, whereby we can judge theories.

    My objections include pragmatic objections. See this very post.

  19. Erik,

    OK, I appreciate you putting forth some actual objections. I leave responses to those with much more knowledge of the subject than I have. (I fear, though, that they’ve responded to those same complaints so many times in so many places and for so long that they’re too (let’s say) jaded at this point to bother with it again.) But thanks.

  20. walto,

    Evolutionary theory is true. If the world needs to find new moral theories without heinous consequences that are consistent with it, so be it. (No more was Lamarckianism false because Stalin was a shithead.) As Moore said, everything is what it is and not some other thing.

    Why do you believe its true? Do you believe that it explains life’s diversity?

  21. walto: OK, I appreciate you putting forth some actual objections.

    The way I see it, the philosophical objections that I brought up first are more weighty (because they are more principled – they go against Darwinism as ideology, which it is). But okay, whichever way it works for you.

  22. colewd:
    walto,

    Why do you believe its true?Do you believe that it explains life’s diversity?

    For roughly the same reason I think the physics and chemistry I find in standard textbooks are true. I defer to the experts. Why wouldn’t I?

    And, frankly, I believe you think it’s false only because it conflicts with some religious positions you’d like to be true, not because it does or does not “explain life’s diversity.” You (not you personally, but the whole anti-evolution gang) don’t substitute your judgement when reading about, say, how internal combustion engines work, but as soon as the science gets perilously close your scriptures or your promise of an afterlife, you start not only taking an interest, but playing expert. I don’t try to find scientific theories that comport with my desires.

    It’s all in Mencken and in “Inherit the Wind.”

  23. walto:
    Erik,

    OK, I appreciate you putting forth some actual objections. I leave responses to those with much more knowledge of the subject than I have.(I fear, though, that they’ve responded to those same complaints so many times in so many places and for so long that they’re too (let’s say) jaded at this point to bother with it again.)But thanks.

    Well, it’s just sheer denialism. Lots of things haven’t been “seen,” but we convict without eyewitnesses, and we come to conclusions in science without eyewitnesses.

    So the “arguments” go back to our ability to know at all, basically, and it’s really too stupid to argue with these ignoramuses about whether or not things can be known–with or without eyewitnesses.

    Glen Davidson

  24. Erik: The way I see it, the philosophical objections that I brought up first are more weighty (because they are more principled – they go against Darwinism as ideology, which it is). But okay, whichever way it works for you.

    Here’s a free tip: on that “philosophy” you shouldn’t depend.

  25. walto: Here’s a free tip: on that “philosophy” you shouldn’t depend.

    So you deny that Darwinism is ideology. You deny its history after Darwin. You deny its central role in e.g. Soviet ideology. You deny its effects on other unrelated sciences in the form of “cognitive” and “behaviorist” theories.

    Here’s a free tip: on that sort of empiricism you shouldn’t depend.

  26. GlenDavidson: Well, it’s just sheer denialism.

    That’s my sense.

    I know you like Nietzsche. Don’t you think he’d feel like this religious anti-evolution gang is all quite needy? My heart kind of goes out to them…but as I said, only to the extent of offering one fluffy tissue.

    I get that FMM says he feels bad for us non-believers too. (Although he says we’re not REALLY non-believers, or whatever the fuck), and he probably does. But, actually, that just makes me feel worse for him. He can have two tissues.

  27. Erik: So you deny that Darwinism is ideology. You deny its history after Darwin. You deny its central role in e.g. Soviet ideology. You deny its effects on other unrelated sciences in the form of “cognitive” and “behaviorist” theories.

    I wouldn’t call any of that stuff “philosophy” (not the kind I do, anyhow) It’s some kind of weird propaganda theory or cultural anthropology or something. I leave you to your worries on that.

    No fluffy tissue.

  28. walto: Don’t you think he’d feel like this religious anti-evolution gang is all quite needy?

    Religion maintaining the “illness,” rather than doing anything to cure it.

    I don’t think that’s necessarily so for religion throughout, whatever Nietzsche wrote, but it’s too evident too often.

    Glen Davidson

  29. walto: I wouldn’t call any of that stuff “philosophy” (not the kind I do, anyhow) It’s some kind of weird propaganda theory or cultural anthropology or something. I leave you to your worries on that.

    You can see it on yourself: When it comes to evolutionism, facts, such as extrapolations from Darwinism in the works of Lenin or its purely ideological spillover to unrelated sciences, don’t matter. The theory of evolution has a powerful propaganda effect.

    How did the theory arise? Darwin observed the varieties of finches close by, assumed a common descent for them, and from there a common descent to all species. An inductive leap, a logical fallacy. And why this belief in all-round ability to transform all life by natural selection? Because Malthusianism (restrict marriage and welfare in lower classes, thus making everybody at least middle class) was hip at the time and Darwin belonged to that party. These are historical facts.

    That’s why I have philosophical objections and I deem them more important than those other objections that you call actual objections. But let’s see if anybody can answer those lesser objections.

  30. walto,

    And, frankly, I believe you think it’s false only because it conflicts with some religious positions you’d like to be true, not because it does or does not “explain life’s diversity.” You (not you personally, but the whole anti-evolution gang) don’t substitute your judgement when reading about, say, how internal combustion engines work, but as soon as the science gets perilously close your scriptures or your promise of an afterlife, you start not only taking an interest, but playing expert. I don’t try to find scientific theories that comport with my desires.

    For 59 years I believed the experts until I had a conversation with my son where I learned a problem with the theory. For 2 years I have been debating the experts and now believe it is an inference with some supporting but more conflicting data. We have no idea how DNA from animal A becomes DNA inside animal B. The mathematics simply don’t add up. I think the theory currently is support for atheistic philosophy. I find it interesting because the most compelling argument for creation is the atom. With only 24 different configurations I can build you. If evolution is true that is an even more spectacular demonstration of the basic components of the universe and evidence for creation.

  31. colewd:
    walto,

    For 59 years I believed the experts until I had a conversation with my son where I learned a problem with the theory.For 2 years I have been debating the experts and now believe it is an inference with some supporting but more conflicting data. We have no idea how DNA from animal A becomes DNA inside animal B.The mathematics simply don’t add up.I think the theory currently is support for atheistic philosophy.I find it interesting because the most compelling argument for creation is the atom.With only 24 different configurations I can build you.If evolution is true that is an even more spectacular demonstration of the basic components of the universe and evidence for creation.

    You seem not to know what evidence is.

    Glen Davidson

  32. colewd: For 59 years I believed the experts until I had a conversation with my son where I learned a problem with the theory. For 2 years I have been debating the experts and now believe it is an inference with some supporting but more conflicting data. We have no idea how DNA from animal A becomes DNA inside animal B. The mathematics simply don’t add up.

    But why do you think that you are in a position to “debate the experts” or correct their math. Why do you think your criticisms have never been considered by those who hold the consensus view? If they have been discarded as incorrect, do you think that it’s because some crass conspiracy is hiding the truth to keep their jobs? I mean, it all seems ridiculous to me. Just a function of religious upbringing and fear.

    colewd: I think the theory currently is support for atheistic philosophy. I find it interesting because the most compelling argument for creation is the atom. With only 24 different configurations I can build you. If evolution is true that is an even more spectacular demonstration of the basic components of the universe and evidence for creation.

    I’m much more sympathetic with that position. As I said earlier, I think there’s complexity all the way down. It’s not just human beings that are complex. Cells are complex, atoms are complex, the quantum vaccuum is complex. Nobody knows why there is something rather than nothing. If you want God, stick him there. No need whatever to muck around in evolutionary biology.

  33. Mung: Is a large brain evidence that a large brain is obviously adaptive?

    The assumption among evolutionary theorists is that if a feature takes up a large percentage of an organism’s total energy expenditure, and that feature has gone to fixation in a population, then that feature is adaptive.

    Let us know which aspect of that assumption you think is unreasonable.

  34. Kantian Naturalist: Let us know which aspect of that assumption you think is unreasonable.

    First, a feature can go to fixation in a population without being adaptive.

    Do you agree? Did I get the theory right?

  35. walto: What is this “problem” you are referring to?

    It’s not a problem it’s an observation. Evolution is supposed to explain why humans are smart but dumb folks have more kids than is wise

    walto: What are you calling “intelligence” (that you claim is not declining)? Is this something we measure at childbirth?

    What I would call intelligence is something like the property described in this and KN’s thread.

    I would say it’s an irreducibly complex system that involves language and cognition and consciousness and exists only in minds AFAIK .

    The problem is that for most of the Darwinist’s here intelligence is not like that at all it’s something that all “higher” animals share to differing degrees. For these folks intelligence is what a chimpanzee exhibits when it negotiates a maze faster than a rat.

    It’s that kind of intelligence that should be declining if Darwinism were true because the folks who are faster at mazes and puzzles have fewer babies.

    walto: In a word, what, exactly, is the argument you have in mind here?

    If I had an argument it would be that

    1) the kind of intelligence that makes humans special is ontologically different than the stuff that you all think that evolution explains

    and

    2) that even that humdrum “intelligence” has not been explained by Darwinian evolution.

    So I guess it’s really an observation and an argument.

    The problem is that it seems you all dismiss the argument (1) out of hand and demand that the impossibility of (2) be demonstrated before the observation can even be considered as evidence against Darwinism

    peace

  36. Hi Glen Davidson,

    In response to my comment:

    Crows are incapable by nature of debating and discussing. They cannot criticize each other’s arguments. That’s why I see no point in imputing reason to them.

    you wrote:

    Then you’re just defining them as unreasoning.

    No, I’m not. What I’m saying is that reasoning is by its very nature the sort of thing you can do rightly or wrongly, as shown by the fact that people can reason fallaciously. What’s more, it’s the sort of activity that requires language in order to explain why someone is doing it wrongly. You can’t, as it were, teach yourself the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent: someone has to show it to you, and to do that, they need language. Reasoning is therefore an essentially public activity. That is why the notion of an entire species of individuals who reason silently in their heads and who never teach one another how to reason correctly makes no sense.

    In this respect, reasoning is quite unlike the sensory capacities we possess, which don’t need to be taught.

  37. walto: But why do you think that you are in a position to “debate the experts” or correct their math…………. I mean, it all seems ridiculous to me. Just a function of religious upbringing and fear.

    Why do you feel the need to defend the experts to those who find their claims unconvincing? I mean, it all seems ridiculous to me. Just a function of atheist indoctrination and fear.

    Perhaps we should spend less time trying to understand the motives of those who we disagree with. Maybe we just disagree.

    Peace

  38. vjtorley: What I’m saying is that reasoning is by its very nature the sort of thing you can do rightly or wrongly, as shown by the fact that people can reason fallaciously. What’s more, it’s the sort of activity that requires language in order to explain why someone is doing it wrongly.

    amen

    peace

  39. vjtorley:
    Hi Glen Davidson,

    In response to my comment:

    you wrote:

    No, I’m not. What I’m saying is that reasoning is by its very nature the sort of thing you can do rightly or wrongly, as shown by the fact that people can reason fallaciously. What’s more, it’s the sort of activity that requires language in order to explain why someone is doing it wrongly. You can’t, as it were, teach yourself the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent: someone has to show it to you, and to do that, they need language. Reasoning is therefore an essentially public activity. That is why the notion of an entire species of individuals who reason silently in their heads and who never teach one another how to reason correctly makes no sense.

    In this respect, reasoning is quite unlike the sensory capacities we possess, which don’t need to be taught.

    I was not aware that one needed to know formal logic in order to reason. Especially spatial reasoning seems often to be attained via play, from building blocks to computer games.

    Sensory capabilities do not have to be taught, but they certainly require practice, much as spatial reasoning does. Nor do I understand any reasoning, save formal logic or any other reasoning requiring language, to actually require teaching, even if it is informal teaching.

    Glen Davidson

  40. walto,

    But why do you think that you are in a position to “debate the experts” or correct their math. Why do you think your criticisms have never been considered by those who hold the consensus view? If they have been discarded as incorrect, do you think that it’s because some crass conspiracy is hiding the truth to keep their jobs? I mean, it all seems ridiculous to me. Just a function of religious upbringing and fear.

    Good question. The reality is the theory of universal common descent was postulated by Darwin against creationism.

    This is where the anti ID guys have a valid point. It was intelligently designed so what. How was it intelligently designed.

    Darwin’s theory had a hypothesis that random variation and natural selection can produce life’s diversity from a single cell. He offers a explanation that creation cannot therefor the theory is the only game in town and its only competing theory has no explanatory power.

    When I started looking this I would review debates between the ID guys and the evolutionary biologists and there was a issue where EB’s always got stuck. Where did the order of DNA that codes for proteins come from?

    This was not part of Darwin’s analysis since DNA was a 1950 discovery. In 1967 at a conference called Wistar several Mit math guys including Murry Eden challenged the evolutionary biologist that their story is not valid based on the enormous sequential space of the genome. In 1977 physicist Herbert Yockey wrote a paper with a similar claim.

    Whey I have looked at the papers that try to mathematically reconcile how new features evolve it takes large populations and millions of years to fix only a few helpful mutations.

    In a few weeks there is a major conference in England to potentially re write the theory. Dr Larry Moran is over there now. This shows a lack of consensus on how evolution works.

    I have not seen a reasonable case made that explains how new animals evolve thus I am highly skeptical of universal common descent. I think the stories in the biology books are garbage and should be modified. I see similar issues with the second law of thermodynamics.

  41. fifthmonarchyman: Why do you feel the need to defend the experts to those who find their claims unconvincing? I mean, it all seems ridiculous to me. Just a function of atheist indoctrination and fear.

    There’s a big difference between a lay person assuming that acknowledged experts in some specialized field are probably right, and thinking that he can refute consensus views from his armchair.

    I don’t ‘defend’ the experts: they don’t need my defense–and don’t need ANY defense from anybody from the sort of objections one can find here.

    I render unto Darwin and Einstein: you’re sure you know better. You’re not alone in this, however. There’s very little humility to be found among a number of the pundits here.

  42. colewd: I have not seen a reasonable case made that explains how new animals evolve thus I am highly skeptical of universal common descent. I think the stories in the biology books are garbage and should be modified. I see similar issues with the second law of thermodynamics.

    Animals evolve because of the second law of thermodynamics.

  43. Hi walto,

    If biology can be reduced to chemistry, isn’t it the chemists who ought to be the experts?

    😉

  44. colewd: In a few weeks there is a major conference in England to potentially re write the theory. Dr Larry Moran is over there now. This shows a lack of consensus on how evolution works.

    Can you post a link to the conference schedule and participants? Thanks.

  45. Mung:
    Hi walto,

    If biology can be reduced to chemistry, isn’t it the chemists who ought to be the experts?

    😉

    From what i’ve heard they’re both reducible to physics, which, in turn, is reducible to the Bible. So the trick is to find a really good Biblical scholar. 😉

  46. colewd:
    walto,

    Good question.The reality is the theory of universal common descent was postulated by Darwin against creationism.

    And Copernicus opposed geocentrism.

    What else could he do?

    This is where the anti ID guys have a valid point.It was intelligently designed so what.How was it intelligently designed.

    What was intelligently designed? And what valid point do ID guys have? I’ve only seen anti-evolutionary drivel and completely ungrounded claims that ID is the default. How could it be?

    Darwin’s theory had a hypothesis that random variation and natural selection can produce life’s diversity from a single cell.He offers a explanation that creation cannot therefor the theory is the only game in town and its only competing theory has no explanatory power.

    Where’d you come up with that tripe? True, he took shots at the main anti-evolutionary creationist claims of his time, as Galileo did geocentrism in his book, but he neither showed that random variation and natural selection were all that there is nor claimed that it was. He had to, and did, make an evidentiary case for evolution, and although he did take potshots at Paley’s claims, few today care much about that.

    When I started looking this I would review debates between the ID guys and the evolutionary biologists and there was a issue where EB’s always got stuck.Where did the order of DNA that codes for proteins come from?

    And you thought that an unevidenced being was just a natural choice? Why?

    This was not part of Darwin’s analysis since DNA was a 1950 discovery.In 1967 at a conference called Wistar several Mit math guys including Murry Eden challenged the evolutionary biologist that their story is not valid based on the enormous sequential space of the genome.In 1977 physicist Herbert Yockey wrote a paper with a similar claim.

    Yes, people who don’t know the field often step into it and claim to know. You, for instance.

    Whey I have looked at the papers that try to mathematically reconcile how new features evolve it takes large populations and millions of years to fix only a few helpful mutations.

    And you fail to question baseless ID claims. Why that?

    In a few weeks there is a major conference in England to potentially re write the theory. Dr Larry Moran is over there now.This shows a lack of consensus on how evolution works.

    Wow, experts have disagreements over details. Learn science for once, it happens all of the time.

    I have not seen a reasonable case made that explains how new animals evolve thus I am highly skeptical of universal common descent.I think the stories in the biology books are garbage and should be modified.I see similar issues with the second law of thermodynamics.

    Oh good, you who have a chip on your shoulder against the scientific theory over some atheists making wild claims about God due to evolution, think that the stories in the biology books are garbage. You who demand no credible evidence from ID, nor have any explanation for the succession of life or the extremely derivative nature of life that is entailed by evolution and is unexpected in design. Such extreme one-sidedness has no place in science.

    Glen Davidson

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