"God"

[Touchstone]

So life is objectively valuable?

Yes. Those living value their lives, manifestly, and this is easily verifiable by objective observation and testing. To live is to value one’s life, transcendentally. Swat at a spider in a crack in the wall, and it will scurry away, in attempts to find a safe place, shelter from the threat, a path toward survival. Living things operate in such a way as to live and propagate, else they wouldn’t be here in the first place, and evolution would have filtered their kind out long, long ago.

Don’t you think it makes a difference to our value whether we are biological machines which exist by Chance or persons with free will who exist by Design?

Well, I think it’s important to understand that as emergent phenomena of nature, our cognitive powers are natural and real, but even if we indulge our “pareidolia urge”, or inclination to see design even where none exists, that kind of confusion doesn’t diminish the value or responsibility of the choices made by those who get confused.

You are plunging even further into your false preconceptions. “a pattern in my posts”, “a* tu quoque*” and “a common meme”! I could devise an explanation for your aggressive statements about religion but I don’t descend to such depths.

Why would that be ‘depths’? Like all explanations, they are only as compelling as they are economical and robust with respect to the evidence. I’m highly critical of much of religion, no question about, hostile even, at times. I’m sure that is detectable for those who read my posts, and it should be – that’s my conviction!

This is a philosophical forum in which I have never even stated that I worship God. As for the allegation that I am interested in making sure atheists are** stained by sin** nothing can be further than the truth.

That was a figure of speech. By “stained by sin”, I meant that the atheist must be similarly saddled with the error of “worshipping something” as a way to “level things out” in efforts to avoid the criticisms aimed at deification and credulous worship. That is, a way to blunt the criticism of worshipping a nebulous god is to “go on offense” with, as you’ve suggested, “you worship science”, or whatever other object of interest you can identify in the critic.

On the contrary I believe it is easier for atheists to be less culpable than Christians because they can do good for its own sake without thinking of the consequences after death. You are merely revealing your own prejudice by making such a preposterous statement.

I’m speaking about the rhetoric being used here, and not at all about actual sin or moral culpability. “You worship science” I identify as a *tu quoque *response, a polemical tactic that has nothing to do with any real sin or culpability, but is just an attempt to evade the criticism that you worship something that is imaginary. It’s much less problematic if the case can be made that “everybody deifies *something” and nothing else is any more respectable as the object of deification than an imaginary god.

                    How can they be substantial if they are incomplete?

Because they have substance! Substantial doesn’t mean complete. I’m working on a large new software project here with my team, and it is far from complete – we are not half-way done yet. But yet, it’s very substantial. Not only are there more than 200,000 lines of code now in the active code repository, but the “structure” and “scaffold” of this new software system is largely in place. There are lots and lots of gaps to fill in a very short number of months, but what exists already is hefty, substantial.

It is far from unified. Naturalism cannot even explain what “a coherent model” is in natural terms nor can it explain the rationality which produces the coherent model. Nor can it explain the origin of purposeful activity.

Do you mean it cannot in principle, or that it is currently incomplete. We couldn’t explain how heritable traits were conferred from parent to offspring a hundred years ago, right?

Naturalism coheres because all of its parts and pieces are natural. The evidence is natural, the explanations that integrate them are delivered in natural terms. The tests that validate them or falsify them are natural enterprises, producing natural phenomena evaluated in natural terms. This is an epistemology that is all rendered in the same language.

In any case, naturalism makes no attempt to “explain everything”. That’s a confused concept. More knowledge only pushes back the frontier, and introduces further questions, more subjects for investigation. There will never be and cannot be a point where all explanations are available. Anyone familiar with Gödel will understand that some truths in a system cannot be derived internally to the system. And prior to running into that problem, we are practically limited by the time and resources, and cognitive horsepower we have to dedicate to the task. It was only several generations ago that we had no idea what a neuron was.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

The very basis of all real knowledge is the mind which you dismiss as a complete non-starter!

No, the mind is a natural phenomenon. It starts fine once you understand the mind to be a conceptualization of the activity of the brain, similar to “walking” being a conceptualization of the locomotive actions of the legs and the rest of the body.

Where are ideas and principles located in the brain?

An idea doesn’t have single locus, as far as we can tell, but is a distributed electro-chemical pattern. We can identify regions of the brain that are functional in language processing, for example, and to the extent that an idea depends on language – that area of the brain will “linguage-fortify” the idea. But an idea that has an image as a referent, say, will have the image memory and recall handled by a different part of the network. An ‘idea’ is not an atomic object, in other words, but a distributed collection of its components.

There’s a lot of scientific literature to go through on this subject, if you are genuinely interested to know how this is understood by science. Happy to go through some of that with you, if you’d like.

Even a fact or explanation is not tangible or observable!

Well, your brain is contained in a protective shell. Good for it, bad for simple observation, and it wouldn’t really matter, as the observation obtains through instrumentation, as humans cannot directly observe electrical activity in the neurons and synapses with the naked eyet. But mental activity, be it an explanation given or received, the recounting or recall of a fact, or the visual processing of an image or semantic processing of a spoken sentence, is manifestly observable, if you allow us to attach high-tech instrumentation to your head and brain.

Please explain how the brain functions as an independent, autonomous, conscious, creative entity…

Ok, in 70 words or less? Hah. Here’s a beefy blog post from Peter Singer on just this question which takes this on in depth, has some helpful illustraitons, and is an explanation which I generally endorse:

Materialism, Consciousness, and Descriptions of the Mind

If you want to spin up a thread on this, that might be useful. This seems to be an area where you are the least familiar with sceintific thinking on the subject, and one that is crucial to understanding the coherence and parsimony of naturalist models of consciousness and mind.

What is incoherent is the model of a physical organ which can grasp the meaning of abstract concepts, principles and values… Are you unaware of your thoughts? Don’t you know what you are thinking? The path to “known” reality lies in the thoughts of the one who knows…

I think you are struggling with the concept of ‘levels of description’. Our consciousness is such a pervasive, ubiquitous feature of our existence that it becomes effectively transparent, taken for granted. The fish who only knows water doesn’t understand he’s in the water as a matter of course. And that’s good, as his goals and objectives are organized around higher levels of description – where is my next meal, is that a possible predator way over there, coming this way?

Our natural consciousness is so low-level and pervasive that we effectively ignore it, and aren’t even aware of it as a matter of course, because to do otherwise would just interfere with more pressing and useful practical levels of desciption – where’s my next meal, and is my boss trying to tell me something subtle in that last email he sent?

Which demonstrates that atheism is a claim with a positive basis.

Yes, but a positive basis for denying other positive claims.

Credibility, objectivity and subjectivity are abstract concepts which are beyond the scope of a bioelectrical machine …

Why would you say that? On what grounds is that established? Please don’t say “intution” or “I just know!”

Credibility also presupposes credence - which is hardly associated with mechanistic systems…

But it is. That is the witness of science, and increasingly so as time and investigations unfold!

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

No, the mind is a natural phenomenon. It starts fine once you understand the mind to be a conceptualization of the activity of the brain, similar to “walking” being a conceptualization of the locomotive actions of the legs and the rest of the body.

If the mind is the product of brain activity where is its control centre and what unifies its activity?

Where are ideas and principles located in the brain?
An idea doesn’t have single locus, as far as we can tell, but is a distributed electro-chemical pattern.

So all the intellectual progress of mankind and the achievements of science are derived from electrochemical patterns? Bundles of physical energy which are unaware of what they are doing are transmitted to other bundles of physical energy which are unaware of what they are doing?

We can identify regions of the brain that are functional in language processing, for example, and to the extent that an idea depends on language – that area of the brain will “linguage-fortify” the idea. But an idea that has an image as a referent, say, will have the image memory and recall handled by a different part of the network.

So the identification of regions of the brain is carried out by other regions of the brain?
In other words it is a completely self-regulating system which exists for no ultimate reason?

An ‘idea’ is not an atomic object, in other words, but a distributed collection of its components.

According to you an idea is simply a highly complex collection of components which are themselves composed of atomic particles. This is the fatal flaw in naturalism. It does not explain the integration of atomic particles nor their allegedly fortuitous development into rational, purposeful entities capable of original and autonomous activity.

Even a fact or explanation is not tangible or observable!
But mental activity, be it an explanation given or received, the recounting or recall of a fact, or the visual processing of an image or semantic processing of a spoken sentence, is manifestly observable, if you allow us to attach high- instrumentation to your head and brain.

The instruments detect electrical activity and nothing more. They do not demonstrate that thoughts are produced by electrical activity. We knew long before those instruments were invented that mental activity is related to electrical activity in the brain.

Please explain how the brain functions as an independent, autonomous, conscious, creative entity…
This seems to be an area where you are the least familiar with scientific thinking on the subject, and one that is crucial to understanding the coherence and parsimony of naturalist models of consciousness and mind.

If they were so convincing they would be accepted by most philosophers and scientists but obviously that is not the case. Why?

meal
I think you are struggling with the concept of ‘levels of description’.

I am asking you whether you know that you know that you are having thoughts. The answer is obviously yes. So according to you a set of electro-chemical patterns interprets another set of electrochemical patterns as being related to themselves. Is that correct? You explain all human and animal behaviour in terms of electrical activity?

Our consciousness is such a pervasive, ubiquitous feature of our existence that it becomes effectively transparent, taken for granted.

Precisely. It is the starting point on which all knowledge is based, including knowledge of physical reality. Yet you think it can be disposed of by reducing it to that which is inferred from our perceptions.

Which demonstrates that atheism is a claim with a positive basis.
Yes, but a positive basis for denying other positive claims.

So it is false to maintain, as several atheists have done on this forum, that atheism is entirely negative?

Credibility, objectivity and subjectivity are abstract concepts which are beyond the scope of a bioelectrical machine…
Why would you say that?

You have defined concepts as distributed electro-chemical patterns. So you reduce the understanding of concepts and all creative thought to electrochemical activity which interprets electrochemical patterns. Yet in spite of years of research and experimentation teams of scientists with the most sophisticated equipment have failed to assemble an electrochemical machine which can simulate the intellectual, linguistic and creative activities of a child.

Credibility also presupposes credence - which is hardly associated with mechanistic systems…
That is the witness of science, and increasingly so as time and investigations unfold!

Science cannot even explain the principles on which it is based. Do you really believe you could live solely according to what science has discovered? Do you tell your family and friends they are essentially just biological machines?

 

[tonyrey]

So life is objectively valuable?

In that case valuable lives have emerged from processes you regard as valueless and purposeless.

Don’t you think it makes a difference to our value whether we are biological machines which exist by Chance or persons with free will who exist by Design?
Well, I think it’s important to understand that as emergent phenomena of nature, our cognitive powers are natural and real, but even if we indulge our “pareidolia urge”, or inclination to see design even where none exists, that kind of confusion doesn’t diminish the value or responsibility of the choices made by those who get confused.

So you believe the power to design has emerged from that which lacks the power to design? That really design is only an illusion? That it is only a pattern of electrochemical activity?

I’m highly critical of much of religion, no question about, hostile even, at times.

In other words you cease to be objective…

By “stained by sin”, I meant that the atheist must be similarly saddled with the error of “worshipping something” as a way to “level things out” in efforts to avoid the criticisms aimed at deification and credulous worship. That is, a way to blunt the criticism of worshipping a nebulous god is to “go on offense” with, as you’ve suggested, “you worship science”, or whatever other object of interest you can identify in the critic.

I explained that I used worship in the sense of that which you consider more precious than anything else. You obviously read into it an ulterior motive which did not exist. I have also used the term “faith” with regard to scientism because it does entail belief and trust in the power of science to explain everything. Do you regard that as pejorative? I respect the opinions of others and do not believe in introducing irrelevant remarks which do nothing to further the discussion.

How can they be substantial if they are incomplete?
Because they have substance! Substantial doesn’t mean complete. I’m working on a large new software project here with my team, and it is far from complete – we are not half-way done yet.

A software project is not the same as a metaphysical explanation.

It is far from unified. Naturalism cannot even explain what “a coherent model” is in natural terms nor can it explain the rationality which produces the coherent model. Nor can it explain the origin of purposeful activity.
Do you mean it cannot in principle, or that it is currently incomplete.

It cannot in principle - as you point out in a subsequent remark

Naturalism coheres because all of its parts and pieces are natural… This is an epistemology that is all rendered in the same language.

Coherence is to be expected if you assume at the outset that naturalism is a potentially exhaustive explanation of reality and view everything from that perspective.

In any case, naturalism makes no attempt to “explain everything”. There will never be and cannot be a point where all explanations are available.

Then the theory that everything can be reduced to atomic particles can never be verified or falsified…

 

[Touchstone]

If the mind is the product of brain activity where is its control centre and what unifies its activity?

The brain is the control center. Think about asking this question: *where is the center of ‘walking’? *It’s a distributed phenomenon of the brain. There is no “location” for this monolithic thought or that. Maybe you need to be specific what you mean be “control center” if “the brain” isn’t satisfying. The brains is the identified seat of all cognition, and the patterns of the brain, the “brain-states” that we would identify as thoughts or concepts are complex, distributed activity in the neural network, it’s all internal to the brain.

So all the intellectual progress of mankind and the achievements of science are derived from electrochemical patterns?

That is what the evidence indicates.

Bundles of physical energy which are unaware of what they are doing are transmitted to other bundles of physical energy which are unaware of what they are doing?

Yes. Does a knee “know” that it is ‘walking’? No. it’s just responding to signals and forces working upon it. How can ‘walking’ exist, then??? The answer is that ‘walking’ is a concept that obtains at a higher level of description. Lower levels of description can’t capture it. Same things go with neurons. A neuron, analyzed on its own, cannot capture or describe a ‘thought’. Thoughts are only coherent conceptually at higher levels of description, levels where we have enormous and intricate patterns of neuronal activity across the whole network. One cannot comprehend an “internet fad” by looking at the ethernet frame activity on your wireless adapter. Comprehension of that only obtains at higher levels of description.

So the identification of regions of the brain is carried out by other regions of the brain?
In other words it is a completely self-regulating system which exists for no ultimate reason?

It’s all geared toward the most visceral and compelling of reasons – survival and propagation. We can do a lot of cool stuff with the equipment besides just propagation and basic survival, but that is its biological *raison d’être. *

According to you an idea is simply a highly complex collection of components which are themselves composed of atomic particles. This is the fatal flaw in naturalism. It does not explain the integration of atomic particles nor their allegedly fortuitous development into rational, purposeful entities capable of original and autonomous activity.

How so? Do you suppose the composition of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom accounts for the ‘wetness’ of water? Do you see that as a similar fatal flaw in physics, that “wetness” is an emergent property of hydrogen and oxygen atoms being combined into a stable molecule?

How can something “wet” be simply composed of two kinds of atoms, neither of which are “wet”???

If you can answer that question, than you have your answer to how rationality obtains. It just obtains at much higher levels of abstraction than water, a matter of degree only.

The instruments detect electrical activity and nothing more. They do not demonstrate that thoughts are produced by electrical activity.

The understanding is that thoughts are electrical activity. There’s nothing “produced” in an existential sense beyond that electrical activity. That activity is the thought.

We knew long before those instruments were invented that mental activity is related to electrical activity in the brain.

And indeed it is, much more tightly than anyone long ago supposed.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

If they were so convincing they would be accepted by most philosophers and scientists but obviously that is not the case. Why?

I believe it is accepted by most scientists, and most philosophers who study the subject. Here’s a paragraph from the Wikipedia article on “philosophy of mind” that resonates with that:

Most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body.[11] These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, especially in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology and the various neurosciences.[12][13][14][15]

Of course, philosophers qua philosophers aren’t accountable to testing or verification of their ideas, so, like theology, anything goes, there. But even so, monism I suggest is the dominant modern view, on the philosophy side of the fence.

As far as science goes, I can’t think of any theory in neurobiology that postulates thoughts as immaterial or “dualist”.

I am asking you whether you know that you know that you are having thoughts. The answer is obviously yes. So according to you a set of electro-chemical patterns interprets another set of electrochemical patterns as being related to themselves. Is that correct? You explain all human and animal behaviour in terms of electrical activity?

Yes. I’m fighting the urge to ask “where have you been?”. So I’ll ask: *where have you been?

*Do you explain a hurricane in terms of atoms and molecules? How can that be??? I’d like to see you explain how to derive a hurrican from atoms and molecules. Maybe there’s something supernatural about hurricanes, then – think of the complexity, yet how structured, yet how chaotic a hurricane is!!! Surely it must be more than molecules in motion.

Precisely. It is the starting point on which all knowledge is based, including knowledge of physical reality. Yet you think it can be disposed of by reducing it to that which is inferred from our perceptions.

Sure. What’s the problem with that explanation?

So it is false to maintain, as several atheists have done on this forum, that atheism is entirely negative?

No. It denies an array of theistic claims, all theistic claims. That’s an exercise in negation.

You have defined concepts as distributed electro-chemical patterns. So you reduce the understanding of concepts and all creative thought to electrochemical activity which interprets electrochemical patterns. Yet in spite of years of research and experimentation teams of scientists with the most sophisticated equipment have failed to assemble an electrochemical machine which can simulate the intellectual, linguistic and creative activities of a child.

We are not even a generation into our investigations of this stuff. Computers themselves are barely 50 years old. At best we are just beginning to realize the complexity and depth of the analysis that must be done to understand cognition. Even when we begin to understand more deeply how things work in terms of network interactions, that does NOT mean we have the associated biological assembly knowledge to build such biological machines. That’s a technology frontier we are even farther back on. But much of our learning can be deployed into computing architectures, and we are just in the next decade or so reaching the scales and cost factors that make “brain-scale” computing, with its ridiculously massive parallelism and redundancy, practical forms of research.

A small child’s brain is a formidably complex and powerful machine. Why you suppose what it took billions of years to develop through cumulative trial an error we would expect to unravel in our first generation of studying the problem, I cannot say.

If you follow this are, though, progress continues apace!

Science cannot even explain the principles on which it is based. Do you really believe you could live solely according to what science has discovered? Do you tell your family and friends they are essentially just biological machines?

They are persons. I don’t say a ‘hurricane’ is 'just a really large number of molecules that has some chaotic elements roiling while at the same time exhibiting a high level structure of a rotating disc with a stable eye in the middle and distinctive convection currents around the edges…", etc.

I call it a hurricane. Lower levels of description do not destroy or diminishness its “hurricane-ness”, even when looking at it at the the levels of molecles and atoms. That’s just losing sight of the forest, lost in the trees.

Same thing with people. A description as “biological machines” just signals a commitment to look up close at the tree bark, and completely lose sight of the forest. We are biological machines, but that’s a crude, low-level description. “Person” points at the salient higher level structures that are meaningful for our purposes.

It’s clear now that “levels of description” is a conceptual barrier you are struggling with. I invite you to investigate that some more, as I think it will be enlightening.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

tonyrey If the mind is the product of brain activity where is its control centre and what unifies its activity?

Do you mean that choices and decisions are made by the entire brain? That the entire brain is conscious, rational and responsible for what it does? :

So all the intellectual progress of mankind and the achievements of science are derived from electrochemical patterns?
That is what the evidence indicates.

So all human thoughts, emotions, values, choices, decisions and ideals have been caused by electrical currents? Including the thought that they have been so caused?

Bundles of physical energy which are unaware of what they are doing are transmitted to other bundles of physical energy which are unaware of what they are doing?
Yes. Thoughts are only coherent conceptually at higher levels of description, levels where we have enormous and intricate patterns of neuronal activity across the whole network.

So consciousness and understanding are solely the result of an increase in complexity?

In other words it is a completely self-regulating system which exists for no ultimate reason?
It’s all geared toward the most visceral and compelling of reasons – survival and propagation.

.Do you think survival is an adequate explanation of the development of the human mind and its creativity - which far exceed the needs of survival?

This is the fatal flaw in naturalism. It does not explain the integration of atomic particles nor their allegedly fortuitous development into rational, purposeful entities capable of original and autonomous activity.
Do you see that as a similar fatal flaw in physics, that “wetness” is an emergent property of hydrogen and oxygen atoms being combined into a stable molecule?

You equate a physical property like wetness with a psychological power like rationality. You also take it for granted that emergence has occurred for no reason

The understanding is that thoughts are electrical activity. There’s nothing “produced” in an existential sense beyond that electrical activity. That activity is the thought.

So electrical activity has happened to become rational, conscious, autonomous and purposeful? Electrical activity now understands itself for no reason!

We knew long before those instruments were invented that mental activity is related to electrical activity in the brain.
And indeed it is, much more tightly than anyone long ago supposed.

According to you there is nothing to relate because mental activity** is** electrical activity. They are one and the same thing! Nothing else exists…and you have reached the summit of simplicity and economy. There is only one thing wrong: your hypothesis is absurd…

 

[gearhead]

How do atheists define a “god”?

I let the theists do that.

For me, a god is a perfect being. A being has life, so a god has a perfect life. As such, the god would be perfectly happy, perfectly alive, and perfectly self-sustaining and -existent. Perfection is absolutely good, so the god would be absolutely good. In him would be every good quality: power, knowledge, morality, glory, etc. For such a level of perfection, though, it would require infinity: infinite perfection. So the god would be infinitly and perfectly happy, infinitely and perfectly alive, infinitely and perfectly self-sustaining and -existent. As such, the being is perfectly infinite. But such a level of infinity and perfection could not be possible unless the god was the source and summit of all perfection and infinity; that is, perfection and infinity itself. In light of that, and because the qualities of the god would be the sources and summits of that which they are, and because perfection is absolutely simple, the god would be his own qualities, whereby, he would be life itself, existent itself, goodness itself, happiness itself. However, with such a god in existent, and being the source and summit of every good quality, there could not be any god in existent, because, if any other god existed, it would mean that the god was lacking in some perfection and there would be a confusing source of good qualities, since a god is a perfect being. As such, multiple gods is a contradiction of what a god is, and hence, impossible. Therefore, I believe there can be only one god. And that is God.

You do realize that you just defined away the bulk of the god-concepts that humanity has ever had, right?

 

[tonyrey]

A small child’s brain is a formidably complex and powerful machine. Why you suppose what it took billions of years to develop through cumulative trial and error we would expect to unravel in our first generation of studying the problem, I cannot say.

And you suppose that this formidably complex and powerful machine developed through cumulative trial and error solely in order to survive without even knowing what it was doing! A set of electrical currents preoccupied with self-preservation and nothing more than that. What is the mechanism which underlies this survival function?

If you follow this though, progress continues apace!

Progress towards the elimination of reason, free will, values and purpose!

Do you tell your family and friends they are essentially just biological machines?
They are persons. I don’t say a ‘hurricane’ is 'just a really large number of molecules that has some chaotic elements roiling while at the same time exhibiting a high level structure of a rotating disc with a stable eye in the middle and distinctive convection currents around the edges…", etc.

Do they share your interpretation of human beings as highly sophisticated biological machines? Science cannot even explain the principles on which it is based. Do you really believe you could live solely according to what science has discovered?

Same thing with people. A description as “biological machines” just signals a commitment to look up close at the tree bark, and completely lose sight of the forest. We are biological machines, but that’s a crude, low-level description. “Person” points at the salient higher level structures that are meaningful for our purposes.

You mean purposes we have invented because in your scheme of things purposes do not really exist. They are just concepts. By “higher” do you mean “more complex”?

It denies an array of theistic claims, all theistic claims. That’s an exercise in negation.

Atheism is a negation based on positive beliefs and assumptions.

It’s clear now that “levels of description” is a conceptual barrier you are struggling with.

Your levels of description suggest hierarchies of entities which have appeared like imposing pyramids in the desert rising up miraculously with their apices pointing to an empty sky which reflects the pointlessness and futility of their existence. Fortunately you still accept the basic beliefs, values and ideals of all civilised human beings in spite of their humble origin in the empty sands of time and space.

I invite you to investigate that some more, as I think it will be enlightening.

One set of electrical currents confronts another set of electrical currents inducing it to change its pattern…

 

[Touchstone]

And you suppose that this formidably complex and powerful machine developed through cumulative trial and error solely in order to survive without even knowing what it was doing!

Yes, that is what a strong consilience of the evidence indicates. Natural selection is a tautology of sorts. What survives is what is most able, and by what is “most able” we define by looking at what survives. That is just a definition that reflects the effects of efficacy of the environment in constraining what happens, and what continues on. In exploring the “search landscape” via impersonal, undirected means, what moves on is just that which was not prevented by the environmental constraints.

In days past, I worked developing genetic algorithms for fraud detection and pattern detection in huge transactions over large networks. The code we wrote did not know anything about the fraud patterns it would eventually detect, by spawning a zillion offspring with slight mutations, culling the best performers (even if they were terrible performers yet in absolute terms), and repeating the process over and over and over…

The result of that was detection systems that had no idea what they were doing – it’s just software running on a computer – but yet were able to identify fraud and other interesting patterns that none of us humans could find using our own manual methods of analysis. Trial and error, if applied at huge scales over long periods of time, is fiercely creative and astonishing shrewd. Even knowing it’s just software we wrote, seeing it work and “create” via evolution is a little bit creepy to behold.

It seems magical in a way, but we wrote all the code ourselves. It just shows that human intuition and common sense on this question aren’t very useful or reliable.

A set of electrical currents preoccupied with self-preservation and nothing more than that. What is the mechanism which underlies this survival function?

The environment, of course. The dyamics of the environment are the “fitness function” for the “landscape search” of evolution.

Progress towards the elimination of reason, free will, values and purpose!

I don’t think those are necessary or preferable ramifications, of course. But again, let’s think clearly. If such a realization does lead to those consequences, it doesn’t change the facts, it doesn’t alter the reality we are exploring. A strong “I don’t like the ramifications of that, so I refuse to believe it’s true” vibe is emerging in your words here.

If the facts are that there is no free will, no basis for values or purpose (I repeat I reject that interpretation, but for the purposes of argument…) do those facts not still stand as facts?

Do they share your interpretation of human beings as highly sophisticated biological machines? Science cannot even explain the principles on which it is based. Do you really believe you could live solely according to what science has discovered?

I have many friends who do share that interpretation, and I have many who don’t. There’s no problem organizing a free society, predicated on liberty and human rights and dignity, on the naturalist view. You are just grossly mistaken about what that view entails in terms of human priorities and goals at the personal or social/community level. To hear my Swedish colleagues tell it, their culture is now widely accepting of the naturalist view – humans as thoroughly natural, mind and body. And things seem to working just fine. The implications you fear do not obtain. People look at the evidence, and choose what they find the most rewarding and satisfying in light of that of that, or even in spite of it. And those choices are overwhelmingly ones that eschew fatalism and nihilism.

You mean purposes we have invented because in your scheme of things purposes do not really exist. They are just concepts.

To say they are concepts is to say they exist!

By “higher” do you mean “more complex”?

No, higher in terms of abstraction and levels of organization. Abstraction is a great way to reduce complexity – it filters out details aren’t essential for the context being developed.

Atheism is a negation based on positive beliefs and assumptions.

Right, as background to the negation of the existence of God or gods.

Your levels of description suggest hierarchies of entities which have appeared like imposing pyramids in the desert rising up miraculously with their apices pointing to an empty sky which reflects the pointlessness and futility of their existence. Fortunately you still accept the basic beliefs, values and ideals of all civilised human beings in spite of their humble origin in the empty sands of time and space.

A “level of description” is not an “animal”, a being of its own. It’s a conceptualization. It’s real in that is a concept in the brain, but it’s just descriptive, a way of thinking and understanding phenomena. If I’m working on web software, it’s useful for me sometimes to think of “posts” and “URL requests” and “pages”. These are higher level descriptions of network events than “frames”, “packets” and “bits”.

It’s all the same reality, the network traffic is what it is. But I have multiple levels of description available to me, and each is useful for different purposes. They all describe the same phenomena, just in different ways.

One set of electrical currents confronts another set of electrical currents inducing it to change its pattern…

Yes, if you want to commit to viewing it from a highly-reduced, lower level of description. Maybe you are getting the hang of it!

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

…1…

tonyrey

You are taking it for granted that there is no reason or purpose for the efficacy of the environment. That the environment is ultimately produced by random combinations of particles. There is no evidence that this is the case and it is highly improbable that progressive evolution is intrinsically purposeless.

In days past, I worked developing genetic algorithms for fraud detection and pattern detection in huge transactions over large networks. The code we wrote did not know anything about the fraud patterns it would eventually detect, by spawning a zillion offspring with slight mutations, culling the best performers (even if they were terrible performers yet in absolute terms), and repeating the process over and over and over

…
The genetic algorithms were created by intelligent design!

The result of that was detection systems that had no idea what they were doing – it’s just software running on a computer – but yet were able to identify fraud and other interesting patterns that none of us humans could find using our own manual methods of analysis. Trial and error, if applied at huge scales over long periods of time, is fiercely creative and astonishing shrewd. Even knowing it’s just software we wrote, seeing it work and “create” via evolution is a little bit creepy to behold.

The unconscious creativity of trial and error is a reflection of your own conscious creativity. It made you aware of the amazing power of your mind - which we all take for granted. Not only your mind of course.

It seems magical in a way, but we wrote all the code ourselves. It just shows that human intuition and common sense on this question aren’t very useful or reliable.

It shows the limitations of intuition and common sense but it demonstrates that our intellectual ability to harness even chance in our pursuit of knowledge.

A set of electrical currents preoccupied with self-preservation and nothing more than that. What is the mechanism which underlies this survival function?
The environment, of course. The dynamics of the environment are the “fitness function” for the “landscape search” of evolution.

The fittingness of the environment requires explanation, nor does it explain the urge to survive.

Progress towards the elimination of reason, free will, values and purpose!
I don’t think those are necessary or preferable ramifications, of course.

You have already explained them away as brain patterns.

But again, let’s think clearly. If such a realization does lead to those consequences, it doesn’t change the facts, it doesn’t alter the reality we are exploring.

I entirely agree.

A strong “I don’t like the ramifications of that, so I refuse to believe it’s true” vibe is emerging in your words here.

An argument ad hominem. I could equally well attribute your reluctance to accept reason, free will, values and purpose as objective realities to a desire to avoid the implications.

If the facts are that there is no free will, no basis for values or purpose (I repeat I reject that interpretation, but for the purposes of argument…) do those facts not still stand as facts?

Of course they do but your interpretation of their nature diminishes their significance.

Do you really believe you could live solely according to what science has discovered?
There’s no problem organizing a free society, predicated on liberty and human rights and dignity, on the naturalist view.

Because they are accepted as facts regardless of their origin. Science cannot even explain the principles on which it is based.

 

[tonyrey]

…2…

You are just grossly mistaken about what that view entails in terms of human priorities and goals at the personal or social/community level. To hear my Swedish colleagues tell it, their culture is now widely accepting of the naturalist view – humans as thoroughly natural, mind and body. And things seem to working just fine. The implications you fear do not obtain. People look at the evidence, and choose what they find the most rewarding and satisfying in light of that of that, or even in spite of it. And those choices are overwhelmingly ones that eschew fatalism and nihilism.

 

[tonyrey]

The code we wrote **did not know anything **about the fraud patterns it would eventually detect… The result of that was detection systems that had no idea what they were doing… Trial and error, if applied at huge scales over long periods of time, is **fiercely creative **and astonishingly shrewd. Even knowing it’s just software we wrote, seeing it work and “create” via evolution is a little bit creepy to behold. It seems magical in a way, but we wrote all the code ourselves.

One set of electrical currents confronts another set of electrical currents inducing it to change its pattern…

I’m hanged if I find it credible! The words I have highlighted emphasize the need to personify a process which is indeed magical if, with no idea of what it is doing, it has achieved the most resounding success ever encountered in the history of scientific investigation. The materialist views reality as a pyramid with a foundation of atomic particles rising to the apex of the most rational being that exists. The theist shares that view - but regards the most rational being in existence as not only the summit but also the infinite Creator and Architect of finite reality…

 

[Touchstone]

You are taking it for granted that there is no reason or purpose for the efficacy of the environment. That the environment is ultimately produced by random combinations of particles. There is no evidence that this is the case and it is highly improbable that progressive evolution is intrinsically purposeless.

Well, let’s assume for the moment, arguendo, that the environment is efficacious here, by design, God’s design. Given the results of the software I wrote – solutions that arise through a blind search filtered by a fitness function – this should suggest that emergent properties of a system like that can exhibit enormous amounts of complexity, and more importantly, “designedness” in a way my code allowed but didn’t foresee or predict.

That is, if God set up natural laws in an analogous way, life, man, and even mind may emerge from the cumulative results of the landscape search and fitness function that is the environment.

That said, it’s important to realize in these programs, I set up the operating environment, but it’s an enabling environement. Nowhere are the solutions found by the system encoded by my code. The system generates them on its own, based on the constraints and dynamics of what we wrote. Even so, it’s not magic, it’s just that humans have really bad intuitions as to the efficacy of brute force searches and lots of interations/time.

The genetic algorithms were created by intelligent design!

Yes, that’s what simulations do. I’ve written sims for simple physics, too – modeling gravity, inertia, mass, friction, etc. Those sims for simple tests – falling objects, a rolling ball, etc. – produce results that match experimentation in the real world. But that’s not smuggling “intelligence” into the ball. The “ball” just behaves according to the constraints in the system. A simulation is by its nature a directed design, but that does not mean the constraints and dynamics coded in are endowing any objects within the system with “intelligence” or any “cheats” – it’s just rules and iteration.

The unconscious creativity of trial and error is a reflection of your own conscious creativity. It made you aware of the amazing power of your mind - which we all take for granted. Not only your mind of course.

Well, I’m the sim-writer. I’m trying to duplicate (if roughly) the natural environment. Duplication like that does take intelligent efforts. But that does not show the origin of the original, the source of the real world environment. You are mistaking the intelligence needed for “simulating” for some intelligence required to bring about natural law and physical processes.

It shows the limitations of intuition and common sense but it demonstrates that our intellectual ability to harness even chance in our pursuit of knowledge.

Sure, but again, my smarts there are applied in simulation. I’ve “stolen from nature”, which I agree is shrewd, but which doesn’t show nature is intelligent. Nature is shrewd, but shrewd the “non-intelligent way”, by the brute force mechanisms of deep time and massive numbers of interactions of resources, some of which are random.

You have already explained them away as brain patterns.

Brain patterns are compatible with purpose and reason, no problem as far as I can see. On free will, brain states are fine, too, with the caveat that the efficacy of our choices obtains from our inability to see or identify the underlying determing factors, which makes the “illusion” plenty effective for what we need out of free will.

An argument ad hominem. I could equally well attribute your reluctance to accept reason, free will, values and purpose as objective realities to a desire to avoid the implications.

Well, I’ve already said this, but I don’t see those implications as objectionable on their face, the way you’ve stated your objections here – fatalism and nihilism as the entailed product of a materialist view. I was a Christian for a very long time, and was quite fine with supernatural implications. I simply don’t have the resistance you show here to outcomes on one side or the other. It’s quite clear that your resistance to a naturalist view obtains from your objection to the implications, rather than the merits of the view on the relevant evidence itself.

Of course they do but your interpretation of their nature diminishes their significance.

Why? I say it enhances it, because the values are now grounded, sourced in the real world! This is the “merely” conceit your offering, that “merely” natural is somehow innately less significant than a supernatural rendering.

Because they are accepted as facts regardless of their origin. Science cannot even explain the principles on which it is based.

Well, facts is facts, right, regardless of origin. And odd that you would say that about science, as it alone has prospects for “justifying itself”, for explaining why the scientific intuition, that reality is real and at least partially intelligible, should bear out. What we do know about why we’re here and how we came to be, and how matter and energy came to complex configurations we call “reasoning” and “consciousness” is certainly incomplete, but comes from science.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

That does not imply that they are logically consistent choices. The vast majority of people are not concerned with the ontological implications of their beliefs. They have neither the time nor the inclination nor the philosophical training to delve into such matters.

That doesn’t matter. Even for the most logically consistent and informed thinker looking at this, the fact our naturalness does not entail any form of fatalism or nihilism. Just like understanding that the male of our species is disposed toward sexual promiscuity, and yet we can choose a monogamous lifestyle in support of other goals that we value more highly, in understanding our nature, we can adopt goals and objectives that exalt achievement, love, beauty, discovery, etc. There is no natural law that commits us to fatalist (non-)goals once we realize we are thoroughly natural beings. Our nature, which has produced our consciousness, has also produced within that the capacity and inclination toward many positive goals – survival, achievement, relationships, creativity, etc. Our good goals are as natural as our bad ones, and as natural as our consciousness and reason.

But you regard their existence as subordinate to, and dependent on, brain processes. You do not believe they can alter the ways in which brain processes function.

Close. Concepts are brain processes, not something else dependent on brain processes. For a human, so far as we can tell, to entertain a concept is to have a brain-state that embodies that. They are two descriptions of the very same phenomenon.

How did the power of abstraction originate?

Don’t know the particulars. One of the things you can see in evolutionary computing, though, is how inevitable abstraction is for a system that explores a search landscape. In my case, looking for patterns of fraudulent transactions, the dumb (but powerful) system just stumbles upon abstractions – transactions with Property A, M, and W all positive are a “pattern” that is statistically odd, for example – that happen to perform better than average, and thus get selected by the fitness function. In other words, abstractions happen by chance there, but they tend to perform well viz. their peers, so they move on to further generations. In those further generations, the abstractions are mutated, and the better ones, including ones that improve on the abstraction itself, keeping progressing through the system, and the loop cycles over and over.

At a basic level, abstractions are “maps” that can and do occur in an evolutionary way, and which enable functions that the system selects for.

So it is not entirely negative - as some atheists contend vigorously.

Atheism is entirely negative in its claims. It bases that negation on other positive claims, but that doesn’t make the atheist proposition any less negative.

But you would agree that these levels of description are not arbitrary. They correspond to objective levels of reality. You regard a concept as real, for example, but “less real” than brain processes…

Levels of description are subjective. The phenomena is what it is. How, and what level of description we choose to address that phenomenon on is up to us. I can look at a human being as ‘particles’, as chemistry, as biological, as psychological, or as intellectual, for example. The person is the same person, regardless. These levels of description are useful to provide meaning and understanding, abstracting out details below so that focus can be put on higher order concepts about the system. If I’m going to think about ‘free will’, for example, I won’t get anywhere thinking in terms of atoms bumping into each other. Thinking about semantic processing of language in the human mind won’t get me anywhere on the question of the atomic make up of a human (what elements and compounds we are made up of).

Yet one way must be more fundamental than the others. Otherwise you would rate concepts as non-physical.

Right. The “levels” in “levels of description” does imply a hierarchy. Physics is the most fundamental layer of description we have available to us. All of our descriptions in science reduce to that as their foundation. Doing so necessarily loses much of the meaning and significance we derive from higher levels of description (if not all of it), but this is a unified epistemology, in which higher level descriptions must be compatible with the lower levels they depend on. That’s how the model coheres.

If this lower level is the **fundamental **level the higher levels cannot alter the nature or aspects of the lower level. Would you agree with that?

Consciousness doesn’t rewire physical law. I’ll certainly agree to that. But a placebo can and does create mental processes that catalyze lower level physical processes – healing ones. What we understand at a higher level affects the configuration and workings of the body at a lower level to produce chemical changes that promote wellness in a way the “absence of illusion of active medicine” would not.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

Given the results of the software I wrote – solutions that arise through a blind search filtered by a fitness function – this should suggest that emergent properties of a system like that can exhibit enormous amounts of complexity, and more importantly, “designedness” in a way my code allowed but didn’t foresee or predict.
That is, if God set up natural laws in an analogous way, life, man, and even mind may emerge from the cumulative results of the landscape search and fitness function that is the environment.

I’m afraid your hypothesis presupposes that everything and anything can emerge as the result of natural laws. Moreover the incredibly swift success of science demonstrates that intelligence is incomparably more powerful and creative than a blind search system.

Even so, it’s not magic, it’s just that humans have really bad intuitions as to the efficacy of brute force searches and lots of iterations/time.

Despite its limitations our intelligence has insight, foresight and flexibility which brute force searches and lots of iterations lack. …

A simulation is by its nature a directed design, but that does not mean the constraints and dynamics coded in are endowing any objects within the system with “intelligence” or any “cheats” – it’s just rules and iteration.

It doesn’t alter the fact that the framework of the system is designed. You can’t argue that non-design **within **the system necessarily entails non-design of **the **system…

You are mistaking the intelligence needed for “simulating” for some intelligence required to bring about natural law and physical processes.

I am comparing the likelihood of intelligence producing more intelligence with the likelihood of non-intelligent processes producing intelligence…

I’ve “stolen from nature”, which I agree is shrewd, but which doesn’t show nature is intelligent. Nature is shrewd, but shrewd the “non-intelligent way”, by the brute force mechanisms of deep time and massive numbers of interactions of resources, some of which are random.

Nature itself is non-intelligent but we are concerned with the origin of nature…

Brain patterns are compatible with purpose and reason, no problem as far as I can see. On free will, brain states are fine, too, with the caveat that the efficacy of our choices obtains from our inability to see or identify the underlying determining factors, which makes the “illusion” plenty effective for what we need out of free will.

If purposeful activity is a brain pattern how can it be directed towards a future state of affairs when physical events do not take into account future states of affairs?

It’s quite clear that your resistance to a naturalist view obtains from your objection to the implications, rather than the merits of the view on the relevant evidence itself.

My rejection of naturalism is based not on emotional grounds but on its inconsistency with the way in which human beings behave and also with rationality itself. How can we rely on reason if our thoughts are determined and we cannot choose what to think? Why should we value reason if all values are subjective? What makes one subjective thought superior to another? Or one subjective value superior to another? They must all be equally valueless and unreliable if there are no objective criteria!

I say it enhances it, because values are now grounded, sourced in the real world!

How are they sourced in the real world if they are merely concepts which do not describe or correspond to objective reality in any way?

Well, facts is facts, right, regardless of origin. And odd that you would say that about science, as it alone has prospects for “justifying itself”, for explaining why the scientific intuition, that reality is real and at least partially intelligible, should bear out.

How can the scientific intuition justify the belief that science is the only valid form of knowledge and that physical reality is the sole reality?

What we do know about why we’re here and how we came to be, and how matter and energy came to complex configurations we call “reasoning” and “consciousness” is certainly incomplete, but comes from science.

How can science explain why we are here when it is restricted to mechanistic explanation?
It amounts to believing that matter is not only the sole reality but that it can also explain itself! How can you possibly justify that assumption?

 

[Touchstone]

I’m afraid your hypothesis presupposes that everything and anything can emerge as the result of natural laws. Moreover the incredibly swift success of science demonstrates that intelligence is incomparably more powerful and creative than a blind search system.

It doesn’t presuppose that everything and anything can emerge. Rather, it just doesn’t find a basis for ruling things out before hand. That is NOT the same proposition. The former is a positive proposition about plausibility of the emergence of any property. The latter is just acknowledgment that we begin in a state of ignorance. What can or cannot emerge is not known to us, up front. That is why we look to investigation and discovery, to shed light on the answers to that question.

You’re right about intelligence, in tems of speed. It’s blindingly swift compared to an impersonal, brute force search. In terms of power, though, there’s no clear winner. Brute search leaves human intelligence in the dust right now, if you give it lots of tries, on many different questions. Humans win their fair share, but it’s an interest kind of duality – humans with their top-down heuristics and impersonal nature with its bottom-up search.

Despite its limitations our intelligence has insight, foresight and flexibility which brute force searches and lots of iterations lack. …

Yes, certainly. But humans are pathetic when it comes to patience, indifference and resources. Impersonal nature just kills human intelligence on those axes, and those are powerful resources toward solutions as well. As it looks now, nature takes the cake, as impersonal nature has generated the personal with its brute force kung fu.

It doesn’t alter the fact that the framework of the system is designed. You can’t argue that non-design **within **the system necessarily entails non-design of **the **system…

I think “entails” in terms of metaphysics is a fool’s word. We don’t know and the argument that we do know, or somehow have cosmic powers associated with our intuitions about that is ludicrous. I’m a designer, so yeah, my evolutionary computing work is a thoroughgoing bit of design, but like I sad, I am just as much a designer when I write physics simulations that model gravity and inertia, and no one supposes I have to sneak in magic to get a ball to fall off the cliff to the ground below when it rolls of the edge. It’s just rules, just like the evo software. A remarkable fact about reality is that very simple rules and resources can and do combine to produce emergent properties that are nearly impossible (for us) to anticipate just by looking at the rules and resources in isolation, reductively.

I am comparing the likelihood of intelligence producing more intelligence with the likelihood of non-intelligent processes producing intelligence…

There’s no way to even begin to gauge such probabilities. Using “likelihood” here is totally pretentious, a euphemism for a hunch, and even that is a charitable term to use for it. We have no basis to assess any such likelihoods. None.

Nature itself is non-intelligent but we are concerned with the origin of nature…

We don’t even know if nature had an origin. A conspicuously missing “sixth way” from Aquinas might go like this:

1. Matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed (Newton’s First Law
2. Energy/matter exists
3. Ergo, energy/matter is eternal, backwards and forwards.

We have no way to know if that obtains, beyond our universe, but that’s the inference that proceeds from every single physical observation we’ve ever made.

But then again, our universe may be the whole of reality. Or maybe not. According to string theory, or Guth’s inflationary model, our universe is just a little quantum fluctuation from some parent universe. Or maybe some deity created this universe, or it’s a very elegant simulation written as part of someone else’s evolutionary algorithm…

We are are a nearly total loss for even a toehold on those questions, and to pretend otherwise is folly.

If purposeful activity is a brain pattern how can it be directed towards a future state of affairs when physical events do not take into account future states of affairs?

Partially, it’s deterministic. But a part of the equation is a random factor, maybe small, but a very little bit of randomness goes a long ways. And so long as we are unable to see the future, it’s no problem.

-TS

(con’t)

 

[Touchstone]

My rejection of naturalism is based not on emotional grounds but on its inconsistency with the way in which human beings behave and also with rationality itself. How can we rely on reason if our thoughts are determined and we cannot choose what to think? Why should we value reason if all values are subjective?

So long as you cannot see the future, the illusion is perfectly effective. It’s so compelling, it’s as good as real freedom in practical terms.

Determinism doesn’t diminish objectivity at all. Objectivity describes extramentality, independence from will and personality. No one is perfectly objective, but determinism doesn’t affect things one way or another. Even under hard determinism, objectivity is no problem.

What makes one subjective thought superior to another? Or one subjective value superior to another? They must all be equally valueless and unreliable if there are no objective criteria!

Scoring in terms of objectivity is just a matter of establishing independence from will. If you have a great multitude of independent observers, and large arrays of machinery in agreement, you have a stronger case for objectivity in that conclusion than the assertion of a single individual.

In terms of values, those proceed from the minds and psychology of those that emerge. Empathy, for example, appears to be an objective human value. Humans are born with the capacity for it, and inclination toward it, objectively. “Empathy” is then as objectively a property of human as “wetness” is a property of water. Lots of values redound to the individual in a subjective way, too, so it’s not a matter of all values being universal, objective properties of human.

How are they sourced in the real world if they are merely concepts which do not describe or correspond to objective reality in any way?

First, concepts are physically real phenomena, physical states of the brain. Second, a concept can correspond to a strong degree or to a weak degree, or anywhere in between to the actual state of affairs in the real world (for concepts that have the real world as the subject domain). So, the concept of “gravity” I have in my head has some level of correspondence to the actual dynamics of the extramental world around me. It’s surely flawed in some significant ways, but nevertheless that concept is informed by a strong base of careful observation over centuries and scientific analysis which includes an impressive battery of successful predictions and experimental results.

There’s nothing that makes a concept necessarily resonant with the actual state of affairs in the world, but via rigorous methodologies, we can establish a basis for saying one concept is more performative against reality than another.

How can the scientific intuition justify the belief that science is the only valid form of knowledge and that physical reality is the sole reality?

It doesn’t claim that, and even if it didn’t it could be bothered to try and justify it. Science is a research program, based on a naked metaphysical hypothesis – that reality is real and partially (at least) intelligible. You know the drill by now. There’s no justification to be done, it’s just provisional, and only as acceptable as its results.

How can science explain why we are here when it is restricted to mechanistic explanation?

It doesn’t explain such, and doesn’t try to. That’s how it produces real knowledge, by focusing on practical, operational epistemology, and leaving the intractable navel-gazing to long-beard philosophers and theologians. Scientists are as interested as anyone else in that question, intuitively, I guess, but are more sober about the epistemic poverty of metaphysics and abstract philosophy.

It amounts to believing that matter is not only the sole reality but that it can also explain itself! How can you possibly justify that assumption?

Well, by crawling over the data and evidence, and thinking long and hard about along with my cohorts over continents and centuries, of course. The key, I think, is imagination that isn’t caged by our more base intuitions, and the commitment to put that imagination to the test.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

I’m afraid your hypothesis presupposes that everything and anything can emerge as the result of natural laws.

Do you believe there are limits to what can emerge?

Despite its limitations our intelligence has insight, foresight and flexibility which brute force searches and lots of iterations lack.

Yes, certainly. But humans are pathetic when it comes to patience, indifference and resources. Impersonal nature just kills human intelligence on those axes, and those are powerful resources toward solutions as well.

Even so intelligence is vastly superior because it is aware of what it is doing and uses blind search systems to extend its capabilities.

As it looks now, nature takes the cake, as impersonal nature has generated the personal with its brute force kung fu.

Remember David and Goliath?!

You can’t argue that non-design within the system necessarily entails non-design of the system…

I think “entails” in terms of metaphysics is a fool’s word. We don’t know and the argument that we do know, or somehow have cosmic powers associated with our intuitions about that is ludicrous.

I specified “necessarily entails” because you stated that impersonal nature has generated the personal as if it is an established fact that it has done so…

A remarkable fact about reality is that very simple rules and resources can and do combine to produce emergent properties that are nearly impossible (for us) to anticipate just by looking at the rules and resources in isolation, reductively.

It is such a remarkable fact it calls for an explanation! To accept it as a brute fact is not only unscientific but also metaphysically unsatisfactory. There could conceivably be chaos but there is order implicit in those rules. There could conceivably be nothing but there is a source of creative energy. The simplest and most adequate explanation of a source of order and creative energy is obviously a Creator!

I am comparing the likelihood of intelligence producing more intelligence with the likelihood of non-intelligent processes producing intelligence.

…
We have no basis to assess any such likelihoods. None.

If that were true cosmologists would be unemployed… As far as we know there is only one universe yet that does not preclude probability assessments of rival theories. Uniqueness is not an unsurmountable obstacle in science nor in metaphysics; otherwise there would be no reason why solipsism is universally rejected.
As Hume remarked , “the cause ought only to be proportioned to the effect”. So the onus is on the naturalist to prove that impersonal forces produce persons.

Nature itself is non-intelligent but we are concerned with the origin of nature…

We don’t even know if nature had an origin.
We have no way to know if that obtains, beyond our universe, but that’s the inference that proceeds from every single physical observation we’ve ever made.

Why do you restrict observations to those which are physical when considering the origin of reality as a whole? There is no a priori reason to believe it is either physical or mental. You are omitting observations of our mental processes and also overlooking the possibility of spiritual energy - which is the simplest and most direct explanation of consciousness, creativity, rationality, free will and love. The power of the mind is not something that can be ignored or dismissed outright…

But then again, our universe may be the whole of reality. Or maybe not. According to string theory, or Guth’s inflationary model, our universe is just a little quantum fluctuation from some parent universe. Or maybe some deity created this universe, or it’s a very elegant simulation written as part of someone else’s evolutionary algorithm…
We are a nearly total loss for even a toehold on those questions, and to pretend otherwise is folly.

That is all the more reason for not regarding this universe as a closed system in which everything is explained by physical laws. It is a fact that the power of reason is one of the most outstanding features of our universe because we are the only beings who are aware that the universe exists. There may be other rational beings but that would not alter the significance of the power of reason in the slightest.

If purposeful activity is a brain pattern how can it be directed towards a future state of affairs when physical events do not take into account future states of affairs?

Partially, it’s deterministic. But a part of the equation is a random factor, maybe small, but a very little bit of randomness goes a long ways. And so long as we are unable to see the future, it’s no problem.

I think it’s a colossal problem! For one thing unlike any other living organism we are aware of the future. For another the success of science shows that our ability to predict future events is very advanced. Even the random element in the course of events can be assessed mathematically, e.g. by using the Poisson distribution. In addition if you believe the mind is (or is the result of) neural activity neuroscientists should be able to predict human behaviour accurately. If we are biological machines all our activities are predictable in principle. To cap all that social science also accounts for much human behaviour. So the future is not as obscure as you imply. Without belief in spiritual reality or free will it is inevitable that people will become progressively more fatalistic when they are confronted with mechanistic explanations of every aspect of their lives down to the very last detail… The “efficacious illusion” will no longer be confined to a small elite and it will cease to be efficacious!

 

[Touchstone]

Do you believe there are limits to what can emerge?

I don’t know the limits, but I have the intuition that there must be some, just because the processes are constrained by physical law.

Even so intelligence is vastly superior because it is aware of what it is doing and uses blind search systems to extend its capabilities.

Only in an ego-centric sense. If you look at the product, the output of both design processes, brute search wins hands down in some applications, loses in others. If by “superior” we mean “performs better”, you’ve got that wrong as a rule. “Superior” as you use it is an expression of vanity.

Remember David and Goliath?!

Sure!

I specified “necessarily entails” because you stated that impersonal nature has generated the personal as if it is an established fact that it has done so…

No, I’m relying on scientific investigations here, so even in the best case, it’s very strongly supported, but ever provisional. Given the evidence we have available, the impersonality of nature is the clear implication. We can’t see “beyond” the Big Bang, but what we can see of its aftermath looks perfectly impersonal, and we see the personal emerging out of that.

But this is an analysis of evidence, not an a priori position or judgment.

It is such a remarkable fact it calls for an explanation! To accept it as a brute fact is not only unscientific but also metaphysically unsatisfactory. There could conceivably be chaos but there is order implicit in those rules. There could conceivably be nothing but there is a source of creative energy. The simplest and most adequate explanation of a source of order and creative energy is obviously a Creator!

“Brute fact” was not my term, that’s what you called it. I don’t accept it as a brute fact, and think it is a rich field of opportunities for scientific investigation. This is why I like to use the water/wetness example for emergence - this is one where we can understand it’s “non-magicalness” to a significant degree. Emergent properties are difficult because they are latent, secondary, and manifest through aggregation, recombination and configuration. But that just means they are “expert mode” puzzles for science to work on.

“obviously a Creator!” on the other hand, is the apotheosis of superstitious repsonse. There cannot be a more anti-scientific reaction than that. It’s only as “adequate” as saying “Lightning is the expression of the wrath of the gods”. That explanation is exactly as simple and adequate as your “obviously a creator”. This is what the knowledge-hungry rational mind resists strongly.

If that were true cosmologists would be unemployed… As far as we know there is only one universe yet that does not preclude probability assessments of rival theories.

It does preclude that. If you doubt that, show me a probability assessment that factors out the possible explanations. I dare ya.

Seriously, one cannot inquire into such things with a serious mind and rely on the casual intuition of what is “more likely” or “less likely”. That is just seeing the world through the distortive lenses of one’s hunches.

Uniqueness is not an unsurmountable obstacle in science nor in metaphysics; otherwise there would be no reason why solipsism is universally rejected.
As Hume remarked , “the cause ought only to be proportioned to the effect”. So the onus is on the naturalist to prove that impersonal forces produce persons.

Agreed, and that is the nature of the ongoing enterprise, and it proceeds apace. Natural models for the emergence of life, persons and mind are far from complete, but are substantial and coherent, nonetheless. In contrast to competing hypotheses, nothing else even comes close in making an alternative case.

Why do you restrict observations to those which are physical when considering the origin of reality as a whole?

That’s the only way “observe” obtains meaning, so far as I’m aware. How might we go and collect “non-physical measurements” together, or write down the “supernatural observations” we have witnessed together?

There is no a priori reason to believe it is either physical or mental. You are omitting observations of our mental processes and also overlooking the possibility of spiritual energy - which is the simplest and most direct explanation of consciousness, creativity, rationality, free will and love. The power of the mind is not something that can be ignored or dismissed outright…

Again, this is a vacuous rendering of “simplest” as a matter of explanation. It’s not an explanation at all. Is “lightning is the manifest wrath of the gods” a simple explanation? No, because it is completely unanchored, relying on agents and entities that are unkown, unavailable and perfectly indistinguishable from “imaginary”. So, too with your superstitions about the mind. The “simple” part is artificial, unaccountable to the obligations real explanations have, to referring to referents and agents that are known or observed to be real, and to exist.

-TS

(con’t)