Physicalism

[J842P]

I worked with some outstanding engineers who were also creationists. I'd say one's philosophical paradigm does not necessarily have anything to do with how one practices science.

Like most skills science is a working skill learned part by wrote knowledge and part by experience.

Scientific enquiy is not driven by a philosophy or -isms..

This bears repeating. I've interacted with many academic scientists. The vast majority were not particularly inclined towards philosophy, at least not in the academic sense. Of course, there were a few exceptions, veritable "renaissance" men and woman who did have interests outside their usually narrow field, and who could discuss philosophy knowledgeably.

Regardless, a scientist does not need to be able to articulate metaphysical beliefs. It is enough that they are a good scientists.

 

[Togo]

This bears repeating. I've interacted with many academic scientists. The vast majority were not particularly inclined towards philosophy, at least not in the academic sense. Of course, there were a few exceptions, veritable "renaissance" men and woman who did have interests outside their usually narrow field, and who could discuss philosophy knowledgeably.

Regardless, a scientist does not need to be able to articulate metaphysical beliefs. It is enough that they are a good scientists.

And repeating again. Physicalism is a metaphysical position about the ultimate nature of the universe. Science is a methodology about testing predictive hypotheses. You don't need one for the other.

 

[Togo]

I can't believe you really believe this. You're putting the scientist on the same level as the witch doctor.

Not at all. Witch doctors don't systemically adjust their ideas according to the results of controlled observation. But you can test a witch doctor's ideas using scientific techniques. That's why I'm saying science doesn't have to start with observation. You can start with almost anything, even superstition, and then test it.

...The hypothesis may, indeed, be tested by controlled observations, but the scientist, even at the beginning of his ruminations, is certainly doing more that throwing shit at the wall and seeing how much of it sticks.

Probably, because most science is paid for by someone, and you want to show the time is being used for something important. But not necessarily. You can test wild-ass speculation, superstitions, pretty much anything that makes or implies a testable prediction.

A scientific theory, as opposed to just any old theory, is a collection of laws.

I don't agree. Laws are a product of the mathematical interactions more commonly found in physics and chemisty.

Of course, if the theory is falsified, there remains the possibility that the theory can be amended to account for the failure and the new theory may then not be falsified. That is what you are proposing with Darwinism, but the proponents of the theory have not done that.

Evolutionary scientists modify their ideas all the time. Dawkins made his name modifying Evolution by trying to clarify at what level it takes place - he was arguing for gene-based evolution. But you're talking about proponents of the theory, which in the strange little culture war you guys have going on, are generally not evolutionary scientists. But this equivalence aside, the only disagreement seems to be not whether modifications take place (they do), but rather whether, when a modification does take place, whether those involve should declare the original theory invalid. While I can see why this distinction makes a huge political difference to people who argue on internet boards, it's not really an important distinction for the science itself.

My quarrel isn't with the scientists in particular although some of them have been very nasty and punitive toward their critics, and some have probably abused their positions of authority to suppress dissent.

Sure. That happens whenever people get power.

But I realize that these scientists are aware of the defects in these theories, and they deal with these nuances in discussions with their colleagues. But in the media and in science education, these are presented to the public as known truths when, in fact, they are, at best, the best guess in the case. So you would think that the big bang or the greenhouse gas theory were as well-established as quantum mechanics or special relativity, and that simply isn't the case.

Sure it is. The issues discussed in these areas, such as punctuated equillibrium, are no different from the issues discussed in quantum physics, such as quantum tunneling. These theories are modified all the time, the fact that they are modified in no way suggests that they are somehow particularly contingent or temporary; that's just how science works. The only difference between the big bang and quantum physics is that you have a political beef with one, rather than the other.

These ideas are not put forward to the general public as "evolving" theories of how the universe works. They are put forward as pretty much well-established fact. That is what I object to.

They are well-established fact. And just like all our other well-established facts, they're subject to constant modification and investigation and may ultimately prove to be something different. Which was my point. Your opposition is not to science, or scientists, but is a political disagreement about this particular set of conclusions.

My political opposition to actions on climate change derives from my understanding of the science, not the other way around.

Good for you. No doubt your knowledge of the subject means you can simply dismiss anyone who tries to tell that the science you know is the product of misreporting, misunderstanding, or political special interests. So why try and make out the same about people who disagree with you? You should have first-hand knowledge of how ineffective it is.

 

[boneyard bill]

I think most practicing scientists have never really even thought about "physicalism." Most scientists are interested in some very specific part of their own field, whether it is the mating behavior of some obscure beetle or some family of chemical reactions, and don't really do much philosophizing about metaphysics.

Yes, as I said, they presuppose physicalism. That is the way most scientific processes are described, and that's how science education is conducted. When you get to theoretical physics, it's a little different because there they actually have to address what it is that underlies everything else, and so there you're more likely to hear the world described in terms of observer related phenomena or information or something like that.

 

[boneyard bill]

You're making a false distinction. Inflation explains the movement of galaxies, many details of the cosmic background microwave radiation, the WMAP images, and even the ratio of hydrogen to helium in those big gas clouds floating around the universe, and that's just a partial list. By contrast, the assumption of substance dualism doesn't lead to any predictions of any of those phenomena, nor does it produce any expectations about any evidence ever collected.

We have been doing this science thing for a long time now, and not once has the answer to any question turned out to be magic, so why would you be so upset about people ignoring the possibility of magic as an explanation for anything?

The question isn't what inflation explains. The question is what explains inflation? That's the point I've been making all along. Yes, inflation explains the present world, and so does the big bang. Surely Guth would not have come up with the idea of inflation if it didn't explain anything.

But the big bang supposedly started everything from nothing, and among the things that it started were the laws of physics. And if you start with the big bang and assume the laws of physics from that point, you don't get inflation. So you have the "miracle" of the big bang and now you need another "miracle" of inflation to explain the universe as it is today.

So there's something wrong somewhere. At a minimum, we're missing something, at a maximum we're completely barking up the wrong tree.

Now, if you want to say that the big bang plus inflation is the best guess we have, I wouldn't necessarily argue that point. Maybe it is. I'm not a cosmologist. But it is one thing to say that inflation and the big bang is the best guess and quite another to say that it is true.

 

[Underseer]

The question isn't what inflation explains. The question is what explains inflation? [...]

This may be hard for you to accept, but the evidence is all that matters.

I know that under rightist ideology whichever idea feels good is automatically true, but under science evidence is the only arbiter of what is true and what is false. No wonder so many rightists are against biology, physics, climatology, geology, chemistry, astronomy, etc. All that science stuff must be terrifying to you.

PS -- despite what your preacher may have told you, your computer isn't actually powered by witchcraft.

 

[boneyard bill]

Togo writes:

Not at all. Witch doctors don't systemically adjust their ideas according to the results of controlled observation. But you can test a witch doctor's ideas using scientific techniques. That's why I'm saying science doesn't have to start with observation. You can start with almost anything, even superstition, and then test it.

So when does "science" begin? Sometimes a scientist can be inspired by an entirely chance observation. So did science begin with the observation, which may have been seen many times by many people, or did it begin when a scientist began to ruminate on the observation and produce a theory? I'm not prepared to spend a lot of time on this as it might be considered a chicken and egg problem. But, as Einstein said, "Theory determines fact." The theory does not leap out at you from the data. The data has to be organized into a fashion that gives it meaning then it becomes a meaningful fact.

Probably, because most science is paid for by someone, and you want to show the time is being used for something important. But not necessarily. You can test wild-ass speculation, superstitions, pretty much anything that makes or implies a testable prediction.

Before you can test it, you have to have a theory that makes a prediction that is to be tested.

I don't agree. Laws are a product of the mathematical interactions more commonly found in physics and chemisty.

I might amend the statement to say laws and well-established scientific observations since laws don't always get formulated or named even though the regularities have been established. But that's as far as I would go.

Evolutionary scientists modify their ideas all the time. Dawkins made his name modifying Evolution by trying to clarify at what level it takes place - he was arguing for gene-based evolution. But you're talking about proponents of the theory, which in the strange little culture war you guys have going on, are generally not evolutionary scientists. But this equivalence aside, the only disagreement seems to be not whether modifications take place (they do), but rather whether, when a modification does take place, whether those involve should declare the original theory invalid. While I can see why this distinction makes a huge political difference to people who argue on internet boards, it's not really an important distinction for the science itself.

The genetic basis for the neo-Darwinian theory goes back before Dawkins. He may have popularized it but he did not invent it. The modern synthesis was developed in the 1930's, and I think the primary credit goes to Dobzhansky although others were involved. That theory rests on two principles: natural selection and random mutations. Mutations are random and the vast majority are harmful, but natural selection is not random. It provides the direction of evolution. It punishes harmful mutations. But occasionally beneficial mutations come along and this leads to the evolution of new species. The theory can only get modified within these parameters. Gould sought to deal with the problem of punctuated equilibrium by suggesting that evolution took place within ecological niches so that new species got created by didn't necessarily multiply rapidly in the early stages. This theory allowed for some discontinuity that the standard theory didn't provide, but it wasn't really sufficient to explain punctuated equilibrium as even Gould admitted. But Gould did not depart from the natural selection/random mutation paradigm.

If acquired characteristics can be inherited, as epigenetic research suggests, you wouldn't have a Darwinian theory at all. You would have a Lamarkian theory. Lamark was the first evolutionist, and he suggested that evolution proceeded through the heritability of acquired characteristics. It fell into disrepute except in the USSR where Lysenko supported it, and he had close ties to Stalin so his opponents were suppressed.

There is a researcher in Chicago. It think his name is James Shapiro, who suggests that evolution proceeds through "natural genetic engineering." He thinks self-regulating systems offer a better model for evolutionary speciation than random mutations do. He is decidedly NOT a Darwinist, and his theory probably could not be grafted on to the neo-Darwinian model and any reasonable way. Darwinian evolutionary theory is not be "amended" very significantly although there are many alternatives being proposed.


Sure it is. The issues discussed in these areas, such as punctuated equillibrium, are no different from the issues discussed in quantum physics, such as quantum tunneling. These theories are modified all the time, the fact that they are modified in no way suggests that they are somehow particularly contingent or temporary; that's just how science works. The only difference between the big bang and quantum physics is that you have a political beef with one, rather than the other.

Actually, there are three theories of quantum mechanics: the Copenhagen Interpretation, the Many Worlds Theory, and the Ontological theory. There may even be some other off-beat theory or two besides that. Although most scientists more or less accept the Copenhagen Interpretation as the default position, but the others are also used, and we don't hear that the Copenhagen Interpretation is the "right" answer to the question.

That isn't the case with Darwinism. We hear almost nothing about alternative theories even though, as I've pointed out, Darwinism is contradicted by the fossil evidence.

They are well-established fact. And just like all our other well-established facts, they're subject to constant modification and investigation and may ultimately prove to be something different. Which was my point. Your opposition is not to science, or scientists, but is a political disagreement about this particular set of conclusions.

They aren't well-established fact. That was my original point. I was asked to name three theories that lacked evidence and those are the three that I named. I didn't just decide to grab theories out of a hat. I don't dispute the theory of continental drift, for example. These three theories have basically been falsified by the evidence. The big bang theory has been "saved" by the creation of unverified hypotheses like dark matter, dark energy, and inflation, but the others don't even have that much going for them.

Good for you. No doubt your knowledge of the subject means you can simply dismiss anyone who tries to tell that the science you know is the product of misreporting, misunderstanding, or political special interests. So why try and make out the same about people who disagree with you? You should have first-hand knowledge of how ineffective it is.

Again, I was asked to name three theories. I didn't start that discussion. I named three theories where I felt I knew enough about them to defend my position. I'm well aware of the fact that no one just says, "OK, you're right. I give up. I now realize how wrong I have been." That doesn't mean that the discussion doesn't change people's minds over time. The greenhouse gas theory is on its last legs. I have every confidence that the other theories will fall as well, but it may take a while longer. (That doesn't mean that there wasn't a big bang or that evolution didn't occur, but our theories of how they happened are almost certainly fatally flawed).

When I was in undergraduate school they still taught that Freud was a "scientist." In economics, they still taught the gold standard (after all, we were on one). They taught that the sun was a giant hydrogen bomb. The steady-state theory was still on a par with the big bang. That was 50 years ago. I'm sure that 50 years from now, students will be learning things that are drastically different from what we are learning now.

 

[boneyard bill]

This may be hard for you to accept, but the evidence is all that matters.

I know that under rightist ideology whichever idea feels good is automatically true, but under science evidence is the only arbiter of what is true and what is false. No wonder so many rightists are against biology, physics, climatology, geology, chemistry, astronomy, etc. All that science stuff must be terrifying to you.

PS -- despite what your preacher may have told you, your computer isn't actually powered by witchcraft.

If you tell a lie over and over again, no matter how absurd it may be, people will come to believe it. At least that was Goebbels' view of propaganda. Instead of simply accepting what you have heard, it is important to check it out. I have specified why the issues I mentioned here are not good science. The evidence is against these theories.

My views on these theories are based on the evidence and nothing else. I have known from the beginning that the evidence was against the greenhouse gas theory of global warming, but I once believed the big bang theory, and I once accepted Darwinian evolution. But after I looked into the evidence for them, I have come to reject them as well. Of course, these views come to affect my political views as well, but they are not central to my political philosophy. And I certainly don't get any of these ideas from any preacher. I am not a church-goer.

I have posted on this thread what is wrong with these theories. You are free to check out the evidence for yourself.

 

[Underseer]

If you tell a lie over and over again, no matter how absurd it may be, people will come to believe it. At least that was Goebbels' view of propaganda. Instead of simply accepting what you have heard, it is important to check it out. I have specified why the issues I mentioned here are not good science. The evidence is against these theories.

My views on these theories are based on the evidence and nothing else. I have known from the beginning that the evidence was against the greenhouse gas theory of global warming, but I once believed the big bang theory, and I once accepted Darwinian evolution. But after I looked into the evidence for them, I have come to reject them as well. Of course, these views come to affect my political views as well, but they are not central to my political philosophy. And I certainly don't get any of these ideas from any preacher. I am not a church-goer.

I have posted on this thread what is wrong with these theories. You are free to check out the evidence for yourself.

The simple fact that you use terms like "Darwinism" and call Lamarck an "evolutionist" pretty clearly tells us what we need to know about your views on this matter. You're just spouting the same nonsense Ray Comfort does.

 

[Togo]

So when does "science" begin?

I don't understand how this is a meaningful question. Science is a methodology. You can spend hours discussing what is and what isn't science, but it's not a terribly useful activity.

Before you can test it, you have to have a theory that makes a prediction that is to be tested.

I might amend the statement to say laws and well-established scientific observations since laws don't always get formulated or named even though the regularities have been established.

But that's still something you've made up. You're still making up a new criteria - that science must consist of well-established observations, and regularised laws - to try and cast doubt on the scientific nature of studies within which you disagree. This isn't how science works. It is not based, in any way, on maturity or elapsed time for reflection or regularisation of law. It's making predictions and testing them. That's all it is. The studies you dislike are every bit as much science as mainstream physics is.

The genetic basis for the neo-Darwinian theory goes back before Dawkins...

I didn't claim otherwise. But you've not addressed the point I did make, which is that extensive modifications of existing theories are commonplace and regular occurances, and occur quite happily without needing to denounce the existing theory as failed or flawed. This means that:

a) Discussions of modifications of existing theories don't mean the existing theories are different from any other theory in science
b) There is no basis here for you to try and draw a distinction between the science that produces outcomes you like, and the science that produces outcomes you don't.

Mutations are random and the vast majority are harmful, but natural selection is not random. It provides the direction of evolution. It punishes harmful mutations. But occasionally beneficial mutations come along and this leads to the evolution of new species. The theory can only get modified within these parameters.

Why? Please state the reason for this unilateral declaration on your part. Again, this is a criterion you have made up.

But Gould did not depart from the natural selection/random mutation paradigm.

If acquired characteristics can be inherited, as epigenetic research suggests, you wouldn't have a Darwinian theory at all. You would have a Lamarkian theory.

Not really. Lamarck suggested that traits are inherited based on experiences in the animal's lifetime. What the research you're citing is suggesting is that the mutation rate may be increased or decreased according to environmental stress. The variation would still be random. Unless we're talking about two different things?

There is a researcher in Chicago. It think his name is James Shapiro, who suggests that evolution proceeds through "natural genetic engineering." He thinks self-regulating systems offer a better model for evolutionary speciation than random mutations do. He is decidedly NOT a Darwinist, and his theory probably could not be grafted on to the neo-Darwinian model and any reasonable way. Darwinian evolutionary theory is not be "amended" very significantly although there are many alternatives being proposed.

Again, why not? Why can't Shapiro's ideas be grafted on to what we already know about natural selection from mutation? You keep asserting that these theories are not subject to change, which doesn't match the practice of science.

Sure it is. The issues discussed in these areas, such as punctuated equilibrium, are no different from the issues discussed in quantum physics, such as quantum tunnelling. These theories are modified all the time, the fact that they are modified in no way suggests that they are somehow particularly contingent or temporary; that's just how science works. The only difference between the big bang and quantum physics is that you have a political beef with one, rather than the other.

Actually, there are three theories of quantum mechanics: the Copenhagen Interpretation, the Many Worlds Theory, and the Ontological theory. There may even be some other off-beat theory or two besides that. Although most scientists more or less accept the Copenhagen Interpretation as the default position, but the others are also used, and we don't hear that the Copenhagen Interpretation is the "right" answer to the question.

Which is a beef is with how people portray science on internet message boards, and nothing to do with the science itself. In both biology and in quantum physics, the theories are expanded and modified in response to new data.

That isn't the case with Darwinism. We hear almost nothing about alternative theories even though, as I've pointed out, Darwinism is contradicted by the fossil evidence.

Well, you've made that claim, but the evidence you presented on punctuated evolution, doesn't in fact contradict the theory. It contradicts a narrow, inflexible point of view that you are attempting to convince people is the theory, but that's quite different.

They aren't well-established fact. That was my original point. I was asked to name three theories that lacked evidence and those are the three that I named. I didn't just decide to grab theories out of a hat. I don't dispute the theory of continental drift, for example. These three theories have basically been falsified by the evidence.

No, they haven't. They have changed over time in response to evidence, just like every other theory in the history of science does.

Which is my original point, in contradiction to your position, that all scientific theories change over time, that what you're citing as 'falsification' is anything but, and that every time we discuss why there should be some clear blue water between the theories you don't like and the rest of science, you end up talking about politicised researchers and how non-scientists present the information, rather than the science itself.

When I was in undergraduate school they still taught that Freud was a "scientist." In economics, they still taught the gold standard (after all, we were on one). They taught that the sun was a giant hydrogen bomb. The steady-state theory was still on a par with the big bang. That was 50 years ago. I'm sure that 50 years from now, students will be learning things that are drastically different from what we are learning now.

Oh sure. I was told to focus on coursework for the first year of my degree and focus on learning the science in the remaining two, because otherwise what I learned in my first year would have changed by the time I took my final exam. The dinosaur skeleton in the foyer of the Natural History Museum Science changes used to fit nicely in the void in the middle of the building, with its neck high and it's tail coiled around its legs. Now its neck stretches forward from the shoulder, and as a result barely fits into the room.

But these changes are normal, swift, and happen in all the sciences. No one declared palaeontology to be dead because dinosaurs didn't look like giraffes any more, and no one is going to declare evolution dead because the fossil record isn't entirely smooth. You'll just have to get used to the idea that the weight of evidence doesn't point the way you want it to. If you have the sophisticated understanding of the science that you claim, then you know what observations and studies support your case. But let's not pretend that the theories you disagree with have some kind of special temporary or contingent status. They're as solid as any other scientific theory, which is to say that it will probably have changed quite a bit 50 years from now.

 

[DBT]

Of course, the thing that cannot be explained is the explainer. The observer. The five senses through which all of knowledge comes to us. Sentient experience cannot be explained through physicalism.

Why then do we study the brain? What is the role of neurons, their connections and their electrochemical information processsing activity, if not to process information gathered by the senses and organize that raw information into a coherant but subjective representation of the external world?

 

[boneyard bill]

Of course, the thing that cannot be explained is the explainer. The observer. The five senses through which all of knowledge comes to us. Sentient experience cannot be explained through physicalism.

Why then do we study the brain? What is the role of neurons, their connections and their electrochemical information processsing activity, if not to process information gathered by the senses and organize that raw information into a coherant but subjective representation of the external world?

Any computer can process information, but any computer is not human or even close to it. In a computer all the information is just ones and zeros. The presence of an electrical impulse or the absence of one. But humans see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. A computer doesn't do any of those things. The five senses, our experience of the world, is the observer. All of our knowledge comes to us through these senses. None of the computer's "knowledge" comes to it that way.

Why do we experience the world? Physicalism hasn't got a clue.

- - - Updated - - -

If you tell a lie over and over again, no matter how absurd it may be, people will come to believe it. At least that was Goebbels' view of propaganda. Instead of simply accepting what you have heard, it is important to check it out. I have specified why the issues I mentioned here are not good science. The evidence is against these theories.

My views on these theories are based on the evidence and nothing else. I have known from the beginning that the evidence was against the greenhouse gas theory of global warming, but I once believed the big bang theory, and I once accepted Darwinian evolution. But after I looked into the evidence for them, I have come to reject them as well. Of course, these views come to affect my political views as well, but they are not central to my political philosophy. And I certainly don't get any of these ideas from any preacher. I am not a church-goer.

I have posted on this thread what is wrong with these theories. You are free to check out the evidence for yourself.

The simple fact that you use terms like "Darwinism" and call Lamarck an "evolutionist" pretty clearly tells us what we need to know about your views on this matter. You're just spouting the same nonsense Ray Comfort does.

I have never heard of Ray Comfort.

 

[Underseer]

[...]

Why do we experience the world? Physicalism hasn't got a clue.

Actually, we know more about that than you think. Read more about neuroscience.

However, even if we accept your bad assumption, you're still not making a good argument here. Just because we can't explain something is not a valid reason to insert magic as an answer. If you want to claim magic as the answer to why we experience the world, then design an experiment that can prove magic is why we experience the world, carry out the experiment, and publish your findings.

But that's not what you're doing is it? Instead you seem to think that because science didn't answer something, that you can make up whatever answer pleases you, and you are definitely right because you have an answer and the other guys don't.

This is just the same old argument from ignorance that turns up constantly in apologetics, especially in teleological arguments. "I don't know how consciousness came to be, therefore I know how consciousness came to be: a magic man magicked it into existence." There is fundamentally no difference between a teleological argument and some UFO nut declaring "I don't know what that thing in the sky is, therefore I know what that thing in the sky is: it's an alien space ship!"

[...]

I have never heard of Ray Comfort.

You're making very similar arguments, not because you are copying from Ray Comfort, but because every Christian and Muslim uses the same bad arguments. If you're just going to make up bad arguments without a shred of evidence to support them, couldn't you at least come up with something a bit more original? Maybe god created a magic were-walrus who farted the universe into existence, therefore carbon dioxide proves that the Bible is true.

I mean if you're just going to concoct a series of just-so stories and bad fallacies, you could at least make them more original and more entertaining.

 

[boneyard bill]

Togo writes:

Before you can test it, you have to have a theory that makes a prediction that is to be tested.

I might amend the statement to say laws and well-established scientific observations since laws don't always get formulated or named even though the regularities have been established.

But that's still something you've made up. You're still making up a new criteria - that science must consist of well-established observations, and regularised laws - to try and cast doubt on the scientific nature of studies within which you disagree. This isn't how science works. It is not based, in any way, on maturity or elapsed time for reflection or regularisation of law. It's making predictions and testing them. That's all it is. The studies you dislike are every bit as much science as mainstream physics is.

You've mis-stated my claim. I didn't say "science." I said a scientific theory. I have stated all along that science is a methodology. It tests theories. But the theory has to be formulated before it can be tested. You have ignored that criticism.

A scientific theory is a combination of laws or well-established scientific observations. The theory that black swans exist is not a scientific theory, and scientists don't go running off trying to find black swans in order to "test" the theory. They bring well-established principles together into a theory which hopefully, but not always, will be testable.

The genetic basis for the neo-Darwinian theory goes back before Dawkins...

I didn't claim otherwise. But you've not addressed the point I did make, which is that extensive modifications of existing theories are commonplace and regular occurances, and occur quite happily without needing to denounce the existing theory as failed or flawed. This means that:

If you didn't claim otherwise, I don't know what you were claiming.

Fine. Tell me what the "modifications" to Darwinian theory are that have moved beyond the principles of natural selection and random mutations? Those are the two defining principles of the neo-Darwinian model. It can, of course, be subject to some minor variations as Gould attempted. But if you start introducing new mechanisms, you are getting into a totally different theory.

a) Discussions of modifications of existing theories don't mean the existing theories are different from any other theory in science
b) There is no basis here for you to try and draw a distinction between the science that produces outcomes you like, and the science that produces outcomes you don't.

OK, so Copernicus "modified" the Ptolemaic theory to put the sun, rather than the earth, at the center of the solar system, but look at what he retained! His solar system still had planets and the sun and the moon. And these bodies traveled in perfect circles and he still had epicycles. So it wasn't a new theory at all. Just the modification of an old one.

No. If the central claim of the theory is superceded by the evidence, the theory is wrong.

Mutations are random and the vast majority are harmful, but natural selection is not random. It provides the direction of evolution. It punishes harmful mutations. But occasionally beneficial mutations come along and this leads to the evolution of new species. The theory can only get modified within these parameters.

Why? Please state the reason for this unilateral declaration on your part. Again, this is a criterion you have made up.

I haven't made up anything. If a theory fails to account for the data, then it is wrong. You claim that it isn't wrong if it can be modified to fit the data. You have not, however, shown how any of the theories that I have mentioned here have been or can be modified to conform to the observational evidence. Until you do that, your point is irrelevant.

However, I have asserted that these theories do not conform to the evidence, and it is my prerogative to point out what ways they fail to conform. Now if you want to come along and say that inheritability of acquired characteristics is merely a "modification" of the Darwinian theory, I have every right to reject your assertion. However, I would assert that virtually all neo-Darwinians would agree with me. (I should add, however, that this issue is still very much up in the air. The evidence is pretty clear for epigenetic effects, but the full implications are still to be flushed out). I rest my critique of the neo-Darwinian model on the fossil evidence, not on epigenetics.

But Gould did not depart from the natural selection/random mutation paradigm.

If acquired characteristics can be inherited, as epigenetic research suggests, you wouldn't have a Darwinian theory at all. You would have a Lamarkian theory.

Not really. Lamarck suggested that traits are inherited based on experiences in the animal's lifetime. What the research you're citing is suggesting is that the mutation rate may be increased or decreased according to environmental stress. The variation would still be random. Unless we're talking about two different things?

Are you trying to claim that the organism does not "experience" environmental stress? There has been evidence for inheritance for a long time. Babies are born with calluses on their feet, for example. But Lamarck didn't have a mechanism to explain it. Epigenetics could prove to be the mechanism.

Environmental stress would hardly be a "random" factor. Even Darwinists claim that it is the environment that provides the direction of evolution. It is the mutations that are random. But I don't think that epigenetics rests on environmental stress particularly. Eating habits, levels of exercise and other factors may also play a part in what genes get activated and which ones get de-activated during ones lifetime. The key point is that the epigenome that we have developed gets passed on to our children. But the details of this are still unclear. This science is just in its infancy.

There is a researcher in Chicago. It think his name is James Shapiro, who suggests that evolution proceeds through "natural genetic engineering." He thinks self-regulating systems offer a better model for evolutionary speciation than random mutations do. He is decidedly NOT a Darwinist, and his theory probably could not be grafted on to the neo-Darwinian model and any reasonable way. Darwinian evolutionary theory is not be "amended" very significantly although there are many alternatives being proposed.

Again, why not? Why can't Shapiro's ideas be grafted on to what we already know about natural selection from mutation? You keep asserting that these theories are not subject to change, which doesn't match the practice of science.

Why is this so difficult? Obviously, self-regulating systems constitute an entirely different mechanism than what the Darwinians are claiming. And natural genetic engineering is hardly the same thing as random mutations. I don't know much about the details of his proposal, but the role that the environment would have to play in such a model would be very different from natural selection. So what do you want to do, throw out natural selection and claim that it is still Darwinism?

What it has in common with Darwinism is that Shapiro still proposes that intelligent life can arise from unintelligent material processes. So it isn't a variant on intelligent design, but it doesn't use the same mechanisms that Darwinism does. It's a different theory.

Sure it is. The issues discussed in these areas, such as punctuated equilibrium, are no different from the issues discussed in quantum physics, such as quantum tunnelling. These theories are modified all the time, the fact that they are modified in no way suggests that they are somehow particularly contingent or temporary; that's just how science works. The only difference between the big bang and quantum physics is that you have a political beef with one, rather than the other.

Actually, there are three theories of quantum mechanics: the Copenhagen Interpretation, the Many Worlds Theory, and the Ontological theory. There may even be some other off-beat theory or two besides that. Although most scientists more or less accept the Copenhagen Interpretation as the default position, but the others are also used, and we don't hear that the Copenhagen Interpretation is the "right" answer to the question.

Which is a beef is with how people portray science on internet message boards, and nothing to do with the science itself. In both biology and in quantum physics, the theories are expanded and modified in response to new data.

Of course they're modified in response to new data. That is altogether different from a theory that is falsified on the basis of new data (or even old data in the case of Darwinism).

Again, I have claimed that the three theories that I mentioned have been falsified by the data, and I have stated what that data is, and you have not shown where these theories have been amended to account for the failed predictions.

That isn't the case with Darwinism. We hear almost nothing about alternative theories even though, as I've pointed out, Darwinism is contradicted by the fossil evidence.

Well, you've made that claim, but the evidence you presented on punctuated evolution, doesn't in fact contradict the theory. It contradicts a narrow, inflexible point of view that you are attempting to convince people is the theory, but that's quite different.

Well then, please, enlighten us. What are the real theories? How have I mis-stated them?

They aren't well-established fact. That was my original point. I was asked to name three theories that lacked evidence and those are the three that I named. I didn't just decide to grab theories out of a hat. I don't dispute the theory of continental drift, for example. These three theories have basically been falsified by the evidence.

No, they haven't. They have changed over time in response to evidence, just like every other theory in the history of science does.

Since you have provided no evidence whatsoever to support this claim that you keep repeating, I will take the opportunity here to state that you are utterly wrong especially with regard to the three theories that I have mentioned.

Which is my original point, in contradiction to your position, that all scientific theories change over time, that what you're citing as 'falsification' is anything but, and that every time we discuss why there should be some clear blue water between the theories you don't like and the rest of science, you end up talking about politicised researchers and how non-scientists present the information, rather than the science itself.

"Science" does not present information. Scientists do. Are some of these politicized? Of course. Others have career interests in keeping the model going. But science education and the media also mis-represent the science. Again, some of this may represent a certain politicization of the process, but some of it is just a tendency to confuse the latest hypothesis with an actual, well-established theory. So there are a lot of factors involved.

The fact is that the three theories that I have cited simply don't work without their central tenets and those tenets have been falsified by observation.

When I was in undergraduate school they still taught that Freud was a "scientist." In economics, they still taught the gold standard (after all, we were on one). They taught that the sun was a giant hydrogen bomb. The steady-state theory was still on a par with the big bang. That was 50 years ago. I'm sure that 50 years from now, students will be learning things that are drastically different from what we are learning now.

Oh sure. I was told to focus on coursework for the first year of my degree and focus on learning the science in the remaining two, because otherwise what I learned in my first year would have changed by the time I took my final exam. The dinosaur skeleton in the foyer of the Natural History Museum Science changes used to fit nicely in the void in the middle of the building, with its neck high and it's tail coiled around its legs. Now its neck stretches forward from the shoulder, and as a result barely fits into the room.

But these changes are normal, swift, and happen in all the sciences. No one declared palaeontology to be dead because dinosaurs didn't look like giraffes any more, and no one is going to declare evolution dead because the fossil record isn't entirely smooth. You'll just have to get used to the idea that the weight of evidence doesn't point the way you want it to. If you have the sophisticated understanding of the science that you claim, then you know what observations and studies support your case. But let's not pretend that the theories you disagree with have some kind of special temporary or contingent status. They're as solid as any other scientific theory, which is to say that it will probably have changed quite a bit 50 years from now.

Well, I suppose we could have a scientific revolution that will throw out all of our current theories because we will look at the world entirely differently in much the same way that we overthrew Greek science in the Renaissance. But barring that, I don't think so. I don't think special relativity will be abandoned. I don't think quantum mechanics will be abandoned.

I don't expect that evolution will be abandoned, but I feel pretty confident that the Darwinian model will be. Of course, we will laugh at the global warming advocates the way we now laugh at those who were predicting another Ice Age. (And, of course, in some cases, they are the same people). And I don't think we will still hold the same big bang theory. I think we will see gravity playing a very different role or we will have a new theory of gravity altogether.

 

[DBT]

Of course, the thing that cannot be explained is the explainer. The observer. The five senses through which all of knowledge comes to us. Sentient experience cannot be explained through physicalism.

Why then do we study the brain? What is the role of neurons, their connections and their electrochemical information processsing activity, if not to process information gathered by the senses and organize that raw information into a coherant but subjective representation of the external world?

Any computer can process information, but any computer is not human or even close to it. In a computer all the information is just ones and zeros. The presence of an electrical impulse or the absence of one. But humans see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. A computer doesn't do any of those things. The five senses, our experience of the world, is the observer. All of our knowledge comes to us through these senses. None of the computer's "knowledge" comes to it that way.

I didn't say that a brain works in the same way as a computer, I didn't even suggest it. Nevertheless, a brain is a biological information processor that has evolved to respond to its environmental inputs via its senses.

So if the incredibly complex neuronal wiring of a brain is not there to perform the function of gathering, correlating and making sense of information...why does it exist? What is it there for? What does it do?

Why do we experience the world? Physicalism hasn't got a clue.

Why do you believe that? Given that we appear to have at least some degree of understanding about the natural world, physics, neuroscience, etc?

 

[Underseer]

Of course, the thing that cannot be explained is the explainer. The observer. The five senses through which all of knowledge comes to us. Sentient experience cannot be explained through physicalism.

Why then do we study the brain? What is the role of neurons, their connections and their electrochemical information processsing activity, if not to process information gathered by the senses and organize that raw information into a coherant but subjective representation of the external world?

Any computer can process information, but any computer is not human or even close to it. In a computer all the information is just ones and zeros. The presence of an electrical impulse or the absence of one. But humans see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. A computer doesn't do any of those things. The five senses, our experience of the world, is the observer. All of our knowledge comes to us through these senses. None of the computer's "knowledge" comes to it that way.

I didn't say that a brain works in the same way as a computer, I didn't even suggest it. Nevertheless, a brain is a biological information processor that has evolved to respond to its environmental inputs via its senses.

So if the incredibly complex neuronal wiring of a brain is not there to perform the function of gathering, correlating and making sense of information...why does it exist? What is it there for? What does it do?
[...]

It's there to anchor the non-physical soul to the body. That's why animals also have brains.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

So if the incredibly complex neuronal wiring of a brain is not there to perform the function of gathering, correlating and making sense of information...why does it exist? What is it there for? What does it do?
[...]

It's there to anchor the non-physical soul to the body. That's why animals also have brains.

Fun fact of the day. The non-physical soul is actually anchored to the body through the feet, not the brain as most laymen suspect.

That's why Oscar Petorius murdered his girlfriend. It's because all amputees are soulless killers.

 

[boneyard bill]

Of course, the thing that cannot be explained is the explainer. The observer. The five senses through which all of knowledge comes to us. Sentient experience cannot be explained through physicalism.

Why then do we study the brain? What is the role of neurons, their connections and their electrochemical information processsing activity, if not to process information gathered by the senses and organize that raw information into a coherant but subjective representation of the external world?

Any computer can process information, but any computer is not human or even close to it. In a computer all the information is just ones and zeros. The presence of an electrical impulse or the absence of one. But humans see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. A computer doesn't do any of those things. The five senses, our experience of the world, is the observer. All of our knowledge comes to us through these senses. None of the computer's "knowledge" comes to it that way.

I didn't say that a brain works in the same way as a computer, I didn't even suggest it. Nevertheless, a brain is a biological information processor that has evolved to respond to its environmental inputs via its senses.

So if the incredibly complex neuronal wiring of a brain is not there to perform the function of gathering, correlating and making sense of information...why does it exist? What is it there for? What does it do?

Why do we experience the world? Physicalism hasn't got a clue.

Why do you believe that? Given that we appear to have at least some degree of understanding about the natural world, physics, neuroscience, etc?

The brain does process information. Or at least that would appear to be the case on the basis of our studies of the brain. It's the information that it processes that we don't understand. That information is the five senses. The senses cannot be reduced to physical processes. So where do the senses fit in? For a long time philosophy of mind assumed that they could solve the problem, but they haven't been able to do it theoretically, and people working in artificial intelligence haven't been able to do it either. So the trend is shifting back toward the idea of dualism. But the preferred dualism at the moment is property dualism. (Mind is contained in matter) rather than Cartesian dualism (Mind and matter are separate phenomena).

 

[DBT]

Of course, the thing that cannot be explained is the explainer. The observer. The five senses through which all of knowledge comes to us. Sentient experience cannot be explained through physicalism.

Why then do we study the brain? What is the role of neurons, their connections and their electrochemical information processsing activity, if not to process information gathered by the senses and organize that raw information into a coherant but subjective representation of the external world?

Any computer can process information, but any computer is not human or even close to it. In a computer all the information is just ones and zeros. The presence of an electrical impulse or the absence of one. But humans see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. A computer doesn't do any of those things. The five senses, our experience of the world, is the observer. All of our knowledge comes to us through these senses. None of the computer's "knowledge" comes to it that way.

I didn't say that a brain works in the same way as a computer, I didn't even suggest it. Nevertheless, a brain is a biological information processor that has evolved to respond to its environmental inputs via its senses.

So if the incredibly complex neuronal wiring of a brain is not there to perform the function of gathering, correlating and making sense of information...why does it exist? What is it there for? What does it do?

Why do we experience the world? Physicalism hasn't got a clue.

Why do you believe that? Given that we appear to have at least some degree of understanding about the natural world, physics, neuroscience, etc?

The brain does process information. Or at least that would appear to be the case on the basis of our studies of the brain. It's the information that it processes that we don't understand. That information is the five senses. The senses cannot be reduced to physical processes. So where do the senses fit in? For a long time philosophy of mind assumed that they could solve the problem, but they haven't been able to do it theoretically, and people working in artificial intelligence haven't been able to do it either. So the trend is shifting back toward the idea of dualism. But the preferred dualism at the moment is property dualism. (Mind is contained in matter) rather than Cartesian dualism (Mind and matter are separate phenomena).

Why do you say the senses cannot be reduced to physical processes?

The senses are physical stuctures. Physical stuctures that absorb light, pressure waves, airborne molucules, lenses, rods, cones, etc, and convert this information into nerve impulses that are conveyed to the related neural networks, correlated and processed.

All physical stuctures and processes.

Where is this trend to dualism occurring? Who exactly is supporting dualism?

 

[Juma]

That information is the five senses.

Nitpic: we a lot more than five senses.
We have sensors for temperature, CO2, limb locations etc.

Of course they can. That is in the definition of a sense: it is signals from sensors.

Why is this such a common mistake? Everything within our experince can be reduced to physical processes and simulated in computers. It is the experience IN ITSELF that currently escape our attempts. Thst you can distinguish one musician from another in seconds just from the sound is fascinating but is not a principally hard problem.

The hard problem is the awarness, not its content.