Can an Atheist Answer These?

[Touchstone]

Okay, this gets to the heart of what I’m talking about. I’ve asked how the aforementioned conscious will could be switched on, and you’ve essentially explained that you understand that it is actually many different things that were switched on over time. But explaining that something happens gradually, over time, only explains “how fast.”

I’m looking for the discussion to shift to the mechanism that can cause an individual trait to appear where it had previously never appeared. Saying it happens gradually doesn’t address the cause, nor the mechanism, by which it happens gradually. Which genes are switched to “on” from “off” and make up conscious will as we know it? (I realize that, like the rocks, the on/off switch is merely an imaginative device for ease of discussion).

Ok, I think understand the difficulty you are wrestling with, here. Consciousness isn’t a “trait” in the sense you are using it here. It’s not “switched on” by this gene or that, or some ensemble of genes we might flip on, or off. Consciousness is the term we apply to a “symphony” of processes working together. Consciousness isn’t just contained in the brain, as a brain without sensory faculties isn’t conscious – consciousness entails awareness of extramental surroundings. So consciousness is an emergent property that integrates, for example, the (name removed by moderator)uts from the eyes, and the tactile nerves, coalescing them in the brain through the connections of the nervous system.

A useful analogy a professor once used on this question was “walking”. “Walking” is not a trait, there’s no gene for “walking”. It’s a behavior, a description of a coordinated and related ensemble of behaviors that coheres into a logical group. Where walking involves the various parts and motions (muscle movements, bones acting as levers, signals to flex and unflex muscles, visual stimuli as feedback to calibrate progress/balance, etc.) involved in animal locomotion, “consciousness” is a term we use to describe all the integrated sub-systems and progress that power active congnition – (name removed by moderator)uts from our eye and ears, etc., memory recall, visual processing and pattern recognition in the brain, emotional reactions via neuropeptide and receptor activity, signals from the brain to various parts of the body to effect some action or change, etc.

In the sense that “what is the ‘walking gene’?” is a confused question, so is “where is the ‘consciousness’ gene (or genes)?”.

And I don’t see that breaking the “heap” into “grains of sand” helps that much. What individual “smaller” traits make up conscious will to live? If we’re still going to have to explain how each grain of “sand” was first exhibited, then we’re really at the same problem. If the question were “how fast”, you’d have answered it. But I’m saying the real question is “how.”

Here’s a small example that may help illustrate “building the heap”. If a beetle has a tiny, rudimentary brain that in now way supports anything we would call “conscious will”, it still has patterns and reactions baked into its wet ware that are both functional and subject to change. For example, if the beetle has a natural “flee reaction” to light – when a light is switched on, it freaks and tries to scurry to some place dark, which is ostensibly safe – successive generations and future populations of that beetle may produce improvements (or regressions) in both the sensitivity to light, and the speed/efficacy of its reaction to any “light threats”. Over time, a population of beetles may adapt to being much more sensitive to light and quick to flee than previous populations, because the beetles with lower sensitivity and slower reactions tended to get picked off by light-using birds and other predators.

Now, that is not “turning on consciousness”. It’s just a small, incremental step toward more fine grained sensory integration, and more sophisticated processing of available (name removed by moderator)ut.

It’s just one grain of sand in the pile.

Later, maybe millions of generations later, populations with just slightly more brain matter and raw wiring will adapt those variations to the environment in even more productive ways, say pegging the “flee factor” to the abruptness of new light, allowing the beetle to save energy and remain in “eat mode” when statistically less threatening, gradual changes in the lighting conditions occur.

Sunrise is probably OK, and a waste of energy to flee from in a panic (maybe move nearer to a safe, dark place slowly), where a sudden flash of light signals mortal danger (the bear has ripped open the log, and you are now exposed – run!).

This is just another grain of sand on the pile.

So, it seems to me that the activation of genes is the only useful way to talk about the emergence of a trait. We need to talk about genes and their sequence and coding if we’re going to discuss the emergence of a trait, as opposed to its heredity. That’s all I’m saying.

I think the problem is further back; “consciousness” is not a genetic trait. Rather, it’s an emergent property of a whole slew of traits. A description of a large number of traits that have been integrated by evolutionary pressures to produce a process we can identify as a logical grouping, much like “walking”. “Walking” is not a genetic trait, right?

And P.S., please do not take “all of a sudden” to mean that I don’t understand gradual processes. I simply meant it as in “the first instance” of a trait.

Ok. Do you imagine “walking” happened “all of a sudden”, as you’ve used it? I think this is a profitable bit of pedagogy, here. If you can imagine “walking” evolving from the host humble, rudimentary kinds of locomation (slither, wiggle, drag, schlep!) to increasing more articulate and efficient forms, I think you will have a handle on the process I’m trying to convey on consciousness.

If a “fishapod” has forefins it can awkwardly drag itself across land a short ways with, at great difficulty, is it “walking”? No? Ok, how about as those fins get stronger, longer, and more agile? No? Even stronger and more agile, still? Now this “fishapod” is looking a lot more ‘poddish’, but “walking” as a label is problematic, just like calling a “heap” of sand a “heap”.

-TS

 

[SonofMonica]

No, no, no. Not consciousness itself. I’m talking about possessing a conscious (adjective) will to live. Certainly you can agree that one can possess the characteristic or trait of having a conscious will to live. When I use the adjective conscious, I’m not talking about general self-awareness, which admittedly can be broken into smaller pieces to be examined. I mean a will to live beyond mere mechanical bodily functions. A specific conscious desire to maintain one’s own existence, as opposed to instinctually backing away from something hot.

 

[SonofMonica]

Ok. Do you imagine “walking” happened “all of a sudden”, as you’ve used it? I think this is a profitable bit of pedagogy, here. If you can imagine “walking” evolving from the host humble, rudimentary kinds of locomation (slither, wiggle, drag, schlep!) to increasing more articulate and efficient forms, I think you will have a handle on the process I’m trying to convey on consciousness.

No. Walking is a useful term to describe what we (and other animals) do with our pedals, and I understand that the activity is a matter of degree, rather than kind, when compared to other means of locomotion. Walking is a mixture of having the right tools and learned behavior.

However, possessing the will to live (I’ll stop using the modifier “conscious”, as it seems to have added confusion) is not an activity or even a behavior, but a characteristic that at least seems to be coded instruction in genes, and as such is a trait that humans are capable of passing on (if it were not, then the whole discussion of selection would be meaningless).

 

[liquidpele]

No. Walking is a useful term to describe what we (and other animals) do with our pedals, and I understand that the activity is a matter of degree, rather than kind, when compared to other means of locomotion. Walking is a mixture of having the right tools and learned behavior.

However, possessing the will to live (I’ll stop using the modifier “conscious”, as it seems to have added confusion) is not an activity or even a behavior, but a characteristic that at least seems to be coded instruction in genes, and as such is a trait that humans are capable of passing on (if it were not, then the whole discussion of selection would be meaningless).

Okay… so your original question was:

I’m looking for the discussion to shift to the mechanism that can cause an individual trait to appear where it had previously never appeared. Saying it happens gradually doesn’t address the cause, nor the mechanism, by which it happens gradually. Which genes are switched to “on” from “off” and make up conscious will as we know it? (I realize that, like the rocks, the on/off switch is merely an imaginative device for ease of discussion).

So essentially you’re asking how some new trait just appears right? Like, an eyeball for instance? However, you’ve already thrown out the answer as invalid. It happens through small minute changes that are advantageous. People don’t just suddenly get x-men powers. A good example is the eye. Here is a good video on the exact steps:

youtube.com/watch?v=7jEhzAn1hDc

this one talks about current animals that actually have the steps of eye evolution in today’s world:

youtube.com/watch?v=Yj_lNQerUJ4

So then your next question will likely be, how does something suddenly get cells that are sensitive to light, right? Keep in mind, that ALL cells are sensitive to light in some form or another. A change that makes them simply MORE sensitive is all that is needed. Again, animals don’t get X-men powers. We build upon what we already have. Mushrooms will likely never start walking around, and Animals will likely never get the ability to perform photosynthesis.

Now you may be asking yourself, how does such a mutation happen.

ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/mutationsanddisorders/possiblemutations

Keep in mind that genes are not like light switches, it’s a tangle of wires that you can snip and re-arrange. For instance, we usually have the same gene more than once in our DNA, and disabling one of them will have no effect in some cases and dramatic effects in others. It just depends on how the proteins involved react to the changes and how the changes effect protein building.

 

[SonofMonica]

So essentially you’re asking how some new trait just appears right? Like, an eyeball for instance? However, you’ve already thrown out the answer as invalid. It happens through small minute changes that are advantageous.

No, I’m essentially not asking anything except that the conversation shift gears to genetics. If I needed to re-ask the question about how an eye could develop, I could simply consult one of the books on my bookshelf, say “The Blind Watchmaker.” Thanks for the quick dose of basic evolutionary theory, though. But what I’m saying is that to get from point A to point B in the conversation of how one can have a conscious will to live, we need to be able to talk coherently about how potentiality can become actuality, whether it’s an extra cell or enough to be called a “trait.” This is impossible without discussion of genetics.

Keep in mind that genes are not like light switches, it’s a tangle of wires that you can snip and re-arrange. For instance, we usually have the same gene more than once in our DNA, and disabling one of them will have no effect in some cases and dramatic effects in others. It just depends on how the proteins involved react to the changes and how the changes effect protein building.

Now we’re talking. From how I understand it, though, a gene can be “activated”, hence the on/off talk. When it’s “on”, a RNA copy is made, the code of which can tell the proteins to constitute themselves. So I would say that genes are both like like switches and a tangle of wire–they have the attribute of both activation and sequence.

So in DNA, individual genes may be really short or really long (1000s of base pairs). The interesting field of study to me would be figuring out which genes are necessary to have a conscious will to live, and knowing whether we can rearrange (switch on) this in a creature that doesn’t currently have it. By pass random mutation, if you will.

 

[Touchstone]

No. Walking is a useful term to describe what we (and other animals) do with our pedals, and I understand that the activity is a matter of degree, rather than kind, when compared to other means of locomotion. Walking is a mixture of having the right tools and learned behavior.

However, possessing the will to live (I’ll stop using the modifier “conscious”, as it seems to have added confusion) is not an activity or even a behavior, but a characteristic that at least seems to be coded instruction in genes, and as such is a trait that humans are capable of passing on (if it were not, then the whole discussion of selection would be meaningless).

OK, in this last paragraph I think you are wholly mistaken. There is no “will to live” as such that gets passed down as a trait, so far as science can tell. The “will to live” is just a descriptive term we apply to the ensemble of traits that have been honed by natural selection as “reproduction-quality” traits when working together. There is no “there” there in what you looking for. It’s classic mistake in thinking about emergence, as I read this now – where does the “wetness” in water come from? Neither hydrogen nor oxygen is “wet”, and yet water has this property we would call “wet”. It’s a new feature that emerges from the interaction of the componentry. It’s not magical, but neither is it concrete – wetness is not a fundamental attribute, per se, but a description of the interactions of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in certain contexts.

Neither is “the will to live” an attribute. It’s just an artifact of the ensemble of traits organisms that have survived to the present day have. You can scan your chromosomes nucleotide by nucleotide to find “will to live” information, and you will not find it per se, any more than you will find the “walking” trait. “Will to live” is simply descriptive against the parts of the system working together, just as “walking” is.

-TS

 

[SonofMonica]

OK, in this last paragraph I think you are wholly mistaken. There is no “will to live” as such that gets passed down as a trait, so far as science can tell. The “will to live” is just a descriptive term we apply to the ensemble of traits that have been honed by natural selection as “reproduction-quality” traits when working together. There is no “there” there in what you looking for. It’s classic mistake in thinking about emergence, as I read this now – where does the “wetness” in water come from? Neither hydrogen nor oxygen is “wet”, and yet water has this property we would call “wet”. It’s a new feature that emerges from the interaction of the componentry. It’s not magical, but neither is it concrete – wetness is not a fundamental attribute, per se, but a description of the interactions of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in certain contexts.

Neither is “the will to live” an attribute. It’s just an artifact of the ensemble of traits organisms that have survived to the present day have. You can scan your chromosomes nucleotide by nucleotide to find “will to live” information, and you will not find it per se, any more than you will find the “walking” trait. “Will to live” is simply descriptive against the parts of the system working together, just as “walking” is.

-TS

You guys keep addressing me as though I’m denying evolution occurs or that I am one of these folks who thinks that evolution involves all of a sudden morphing into another creature.

I truly see what you’re saying about the will to live being the product of its circumstances, but that sort of logic can go on ad infineum. Every trait could be broken down and down and down, but that doesn’t really help much. Proteins are really nothing but artifacts of RNA which are nothing but artifacts of genes which are really just a part of DNA, and so on… Saying that the will to live is a product of other traits doesn’t really change the fact that it is hereditary. Merely because we have to break it into parts doesn’t mean that the parts don’t make a whole. I don’t cease to be human, in an ontological or genomic sense, merely because we might say that I am just the sum of several organs and so on. And calling something the mere byproduct of something else does not change*whether it exists.

But let’s address the issue, not what we call it. Even if we limit ourselves to saying that the will to live is just the effect of other traits, it is still an exhibited characteristic that we possess. If it helps you to say “the group of inherited (copied/transmitted) traits that together give rise to the will to live in humans” then knock yourself out.

 

[Touchstone]

I truly see what you’re saying, but that sort of logic can go on ad infineum. Every trait could be broken down and down and down, but that doesn’t really help much. Proteins are really nothing but artifacts of RNA which are nothing but artifacts of genes which are really just a part of DNA, and so on… Saying that the will to live is a product of other traits doesn’t really change the fact that it is hereditary. Merely because we have to break it into parts doesn’t mean that the parts don’t make a whole. I don’t cease to be human, in an ontological or genomic sense, merely because we might say that I am just the sum of several organs and so on. And calling something the mere byproduct of something else does not change*whether it exists.

But let’s address the issue, not what we call it. Even if we limit ourselves to saying that the will to live is just the effect of other traits, it is still an exhibited characteristic that we possess. If it helps you to say “the group of inherited (copied/transmitted) traits that together give rise to the will to live in humans” then knock yourself out.

Ok, fair enough. What does your question mean in light of that, then?

Are you asking where the various traits come from that when viewed in concert, give meaning to the term “will to live”?

As I mentioned above regarding beetles, perhaps we just look at one small part of that as an example: light sensitivity. The “will to live” is in part manifest in the beetle’s “light management”, the facilities it has to sense light and proces that (name removed by moderator)ut toward action. If some individuals are produced that have greater sensitivity to light than the mean, that brute fact of genetics – photosensitive cells that are more reactive than previous norms, even if just by a small margin – is the “grain of sand” that builds the “heap” of the “will to live”.

When the beetle population becomes better at living, reproducing, by virtue of improved light sensitivity, we correspondingly understand that it’s “will to live” has increased somewhat as well, as a description of the beetle’s behavior and capabilities.

Or is this really a restatement of the pervasive question: where do novel traits come from? It seems to me if you understand the “emergent” concept here, your question is thus reduced to “whence these traits, then?” If so, it seems like we’re back at the fundamentals of evolution – reproduction with variation.

-TS

 

[SonofMonica]

Ok, fair enough. What does your question mean in light of that, then?

Are you asking where the various traits come from that when viewed in concert, give meaning to the term “will to live”?

As I mentioned above regarding beetles, perhaps we just look at one small part of that as an example: light sensitivity. The “will to live” is in part manifest in the beetle’s “light management”, the facilities it has to sense light and proces that (name removed by moderator)ut toward action. If some individuals are produced that have greater sensitivity to light than the mean, that brute fact of genetics – photosensitive cells that are more reactive than previous norms, even if just by a small margin – is the “grain of sand” that builds the “heap” of the “will to live”.

When the beetle population becomes better at living, reproducing, by virtue of improved light sensitivity, we correspondingly understand that it’s “will to live” has increased somewhat as well, as a description of the beetle’s behavior and capabilities.

Or is this really a restatement of the pervasive question: where do novel traits come from? It seems to me if you understand the “emergent” concept here, your question is thus reduced to “whence these traits, then?” If so, it seems like we’re back at the fundamentals of evolution – reproduction with variation.

-TS

No, I’m not asking any of these questions. The question I have asked is “Which genes are switched to ‘on’ from ‘off’ and make up conscious will as we know it?” And I don’t mean in the general sense, like exhibiting a behavior of flight from light. I mean in a specific sense. We live in a post-Mendelian world. We have mapped the genome.

So in some sense I am really also trying to break the “will to live” into smaller components. I am concerned with to what existence science has broken down this particular characteristic (I want to survive) into its necessary building blocks.

The reason I’m trying to get the conversation to this level is, the genetic “code” is nearly the same for each and every organism on the fact of the Earth. So in some sense, the will to live is something that is a potentiality for every organism. And if all traits are the product of genes (fundamentally, DNA/RNA transcription and transmission) then we ought to be able to say what potential sequences must occur for the potential to become a reality.

 

[Touchstone]

No, I’m not asking any of these questions. The question I have asked is “Which genes are switched to ‘on’ from ‘off’ and make up conscious will as we know it?” And I don’t mean in the general sense, like exhibiting a behavior of flight from light. I mean in a specific sense. We live in a post-Mendelian world. We have mapped the genome.

So in some sense I am really also trying to break the “will to live” into smaller components. I am concerned with to what existence science has broken down this particular characteristic (I want to survive) into its necessary building blocks.

The reason I’m trying to get the conversation to this level is, the genetic “code” is nearly the same for each and every organism on the fact of the Earth. So in some sense, the will to live is something that is a potentiality for every organism. And if all traits are the product of genes (fundamentally, DNA/RNA transcription and transmission) then we ought to be able to say what potential sequences must occur for the potential to become a reality.

That’s impossible, I think, as you’ve stated it, as the genome is only half of the picture. The genome evolves in dialog with the environment. So your inquiry only makes sense as a way to identify sets of traits – genes and chromosomes – that are viable in a given environment. Saying “these traits embody the ‘will to live’, or ‘viability’” in a standalone sense is confused. We can only say “these traits, in this environmental context, produce these properties of viability”. Genes are a function of the environment, the constantly changing environment. There is no understanding of genes in terms of survival/reproduction without a particular environmental context for them.

-TS

 

[SonofMonica]

That’s impossible, I think, as you’ve stated it, as the genome is only half of the picture. The genome evolves in dialog with the environment. So your inquiry only makes sense as a way to identify sets of traits – genes and chromosomes – that are viable in a given environment. Saying “these traits embody the ‘will to live’, or ‘viability’” in a standalone sense is confused. We can only say “these traits, in this environmental context, produce these properties of viability”. Genes are a function of the environment, the constantly changing environment. There is no understanding of genes in terms of survival/reproduction without a particular environmental context for them.

-TS

You’re saying gene targeting is not possible? Where have you been for the past 10 years? Or am I misunderstanding you?

 

[Touchstone]

You’re saying gene targeting is not possible? Where have you been for the past 10 years? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Gene targeting only obtains in the context of a target environment. If you knock out 10,000 genes from a mouse via ES techniques (something like 1/3 to 1/2 of the mouse genome, IIRC), what you learn from that process regarding viability is wholly dependent on the environment of the mouse that’s produced experimentally. Better eyesight is no aid if the mouse lives in a completely dark cave, and blindness is no liability, right?

Consider what the “target” in in “gene targeting” refers to. What’s being targeted?

If you make some knock-in or knock-out mice by injecting into blastocysts some embryonic stem cells with specifically altered genetic loci, what does that tell you about the mouse’s “will to live”?

-TS