Yikes. These posts are startin' to get uber-long. Oh well, why stop now??
In regards to upnorthkyosa:
But this is the substance driving your arguments.
Lies, I'm afraid. Not once in my critique of reductionism and physicalism did I ever mention Spirit or anything of the sort. I only brought it up because you asked what I believed as an alternative view. But, as before, this thread is not about my beliefs in Spirit or whatnot --- it is about your belief in biological reductionism.
Come now, man, your arguments are starting to border on silly desperation. Instead of defending your position with logic and evidence, you're
beginning to attempt to debunk your critic, me, by attacking my beliefs. This is basic "attack the messenger" tactics. Slippery, slippery slope.
The actual
substance driving my arguments is the absolute lack of evidence or logic to support reductionism, and your attempt to reduce science to scientism. Contrary to what you may think, I believe very strongly in
good science (not scientism). That has very little to do with my belief in Spirit (set aside that my position is that good science supports that belief, as well).
Your belief in the spirit moves you to counter my arguments.
Maybe. Maybe not. Its certainly not the basis of my critiques of your position (meaning, I did not refer to Spirit once in my criticisms of reductionism), and you really have no way of knowing really
what I believe or
what actually motivates me. Again, this is bordering on silly desperation.
The difference is that your belief in the spirit has no trail. It has no arrows that point in that direction unless you count the vast pool of psuedoscience out there.
No trail, huh?? Psueoscience??
*chuckles* Absolute poppycock. I really don't care to get into a defense of my belief in Nondualism here (as its rather off-topic), but suffice to say I have a fair amount of both scientific and logical proofs for my position. Much moreso than your untestable reductionism does.
Reductionist view points, which make assumptions, are not bridging gaps that cannot ever be breached.
Actually. Yes, they are. I know you like to think otherwise, but that is your own philosophical beliefs at work again. Your scientism attempting to destroy science.
You cannot prove God does not exist. You cannot prove mind does not exist. You cannot prove Spirit does not exist. You cannot prove emotions or souls do not exist. These are all untestable, not because of their immaterial bases, but because they are negative claims --- negative claims (of these sort, anyway) cannot be proven. Thus, they are untestable.
Given that any of your claims are true, science can find out all the kinks and chinks of the system --- figure all the material stuff out, maybe something even lower than m-branes. But that doesn't prove anything about God or Spirit or mind. At best, it proves that there is a relationship of some sort between the two --- which is not in doubt.
You are once again commiting the most elementary or mistakes in science --- collapsing causation and correlation. You have yet to demonstrate
why or even
how your claims for biologic causation are not simply examples of correlation.
Instead of replacing the end of the chain with the spirit, I believe that ALL scientists look for new knowledge.
New?? Really??
You might be suprised how "new" a lot of the ideas Western science discovered actually are --- principles of evolution were discussed among Hellenistic philosophers for centuries before the Common Era, and many of the notions of quantum mechanics have interesting parallels in Mahayana Buddhist scriptures.
Question. What if scientists find that M-theory does a nice job in explaning the novelty of the universe? That is the proposition that is sitting out there right now.
The same things were said about atomism and quantum physics, too. Its a proposition with absolutely no basis whatsoever for belief --- outside of blind faith, that is.
Its basically similar to the arguments like "What if it turns out that THIS century sees the Second Coming?? Wouldn't that be utterly stupendous and novel?!". And, of course, it never happens.
God and the "spirit" have been removed from so many places in our lives by observation that this kind of like the last assault on the fortress.
No, you claim they have been removed. But this does not make it so. In fact, you're really just using a lot of rhetoric and polemic from positivism, which was just as "blind faith"-y in the 1800's, too.
Can you see the implications of something like this? Humans will have been able to explain the grandest novelty of them all...
Yup. The grandiose narcissism is always the dead giveaway.
You do realize that the entire basis of your arguments is that biology is the One True Discipline and all other arts and sciences are just jokes, right?? Do you have any idea how egotistically arrogant and inane all that is?? You're literally saying biologists know about the psyche than psychologists do, and know more about art than artists do --- its unbelievably conceited.
And its just the kind of thinking, and arguments, that clergyman used to rationalize religious fundamentalism for centuries, too. As well as rationalize their condemnation of every new scientific discovery we've come across, from heliocentrism to evolution to antibiotics to meteorology to the space program.
All this says is that we didn't have all of the variables. NOTHING else.
Apparently, we've never had all the variables for anything we've ever studied. What a rousing success we have here.
But what if it can? What if the whole is not greater then its parts?
And what if the moon is really made of cheese and we didn't figure it out until now??
'What ifs' are not the basis for a sound argument. They're the basis for desperation. You can argue for practically anything using 'what if'.
Is anything else in the universe greater then its parts?
Actually, everything in the universe is greater than its parts --- if we are referring to holons and not heaps/aggregates (if you'll pardon my use of Whiteheadian terminology).
I can take apart every single peice of my automobile and put it back together and it will still work.
Yet another poor analogy, since the automobile is an aggregate --- a collection of holons, and not an individual holon itself.
To put it another way, you can take apart all the molecules that make up the parts of your car and put them back altogether fine. But, you can't create those molecules from pre-existing atoms in the first place. Meaning, I couldn't try and create a car out of "just atoms" without recourse to creating molecules.
Is it too great of an assumption to say that, with the corrected technology, I could disassemble my body to its constituent parts and put it back together and get myself? It seems as if you have multiple classes for objects in the universe. One for objects that are the sum of there parts and one for objects that aren't. My question to you is this...where do you draw the line? How do you make this deliniation? What is the criteria for this classification?
I haven't drawn the line anywhere --- I am referring to objective and subjective levels of organization. Many of the "objects" you are referring to actually composed of MILLIONS of objects within a certain level of organization --- a rock, seen as a single "object", is basically just a collection of holons at a single level of organization (the molecular). A prokaryote, on the other hand, is but one holon at a higher level of organization --- and in no way can it be created with constituent molecules.
This is where your argument will fail. (unless I have totally turned what you said into hamburger...)
With a side order of onion rings, to boot.
don't expect you to know the details of this process because its impossible to know everything these days, but let me straighten out this example.
We can make ALL of the stuff you mentioned above. Molecules are made out of atoms and we can put atoms together to make molecules. As of yet, some have proven to complex, but we do not yet know all of the steps to put them together...
Balderdash. No scientist has, to date, artificially created a new molecule from constituent, pre-existing atoms in any type of laboratory setting. There's a lot of hypothetical framework tossed around, but no novel molecules have been created.
We HAVE created molecules from other molecules, and atoms from other atoms --- but molecules from pre-existing atoms?? Nope, sorry.
Atoms themselves, are made of sub-atomic particles. Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons. Electrons are particles unto themselves, while Protons and Neutrons are made up of other stuff - Quarks. With a particle accelerator we can disassemble these particles and watch them reassemble.
That's not the creation of novelty. That's like cutting a piece of flesh from a salamander, and watching the cells divide and re-assemble. Its an already-occuring natural process that we have very little to do with.
I'm talking about taking some subatomic particles and using them to CREATE an atom. I'm not talking about taking an atom apart and putting it back together in a different shape --- I'm talking about CREATING something new, something novel.
Strings take the place of supersymmetric particles. This abstraction fits the equations better. There is no creation taking place here because that is not the point. The point is the taking apart process [...]
In other words.... you can't actually create quarks from strings. As I thought.
Naw, this one works just fine for me. Nature = The Universe.
You just changed definitions. Before, you were going by nature = the biosphere. Very interesting.
What you object to is my claim that everything in the Universe obeys laws and that we can know these laws.
No. What I object to is your contention that the universe is solely made up of valueless matter --- which is, frankly, an untestable and completely unscientific claim (since it directly contradicts every observation any human being has ever made).
Sure. Quantum Tunnelling.
Be sure and copy a picture of a quantum tunnel, taken with whatever instrument you need, so that we can all see the material existence of the square root of -1.
This should be interesting.
The castle is nothing but a code of synapses in my mind that was recreated with my appendages. This code is contained in my neo-cortex in a specific region on the left side. You see, we have been able to show the general vicinity of this thought. In the future, we will be able to pinpoint it. All we need is better technology.
More blind faith. I challenge you to
prove any of that.
Why? Or is this just a value judgement that you have placed?
You're joking, right?? You wouldn't actually consider something created as a result of biological instinctual drives to actually have 'meaning', would you??
That's like saying that when I murdered you last night because you were hitting on my 'mate' (as all significant others would be considered in your system), that it was a deeply meaningful and valued event.
A world of only matter is a world without meaning.
Absolute meaning does not exist. Meaning depends on my definition doesn't it? (I can feel the flames of your response...be nice )
An arrogant and hypocritical stance, as it claims to exclude itself from its own criticism of others.
Translation: Meaning depends on your definition and is relative to the person, except for the position that claims this is so --- for it is the ultimate presentment of meaning.
More ego. Beh.
Value judgement? Do you need god/spirit to make what you do meaningful?
Who said anything about God or Spirit?? Sounds like more desperation to me...
No, you don't need God or Spirit to confer meaning, but you need more than matter. Meaning, last time I checked, was an immaterial concept and couldn't be plopped in front of a microscope and dissected.
In your world of matter-only, you certainly don't have any tribalistic gods of spirit-kings. You also don't have any morals, values, meaning, purpose, or love, since these are all subjective phenomena.
Congratulations. You are proposing a world not worth living in.
1. Question - question is asked in the face of the unknown.
2. Observation - A pool of data is examined regarding that question.
3. Hypothesis - an educated guess is made regarding the question.
4. Verification - an attempt is made to verify the guess.
5. Theory - An explanation is formed after multiple verification attempts.
6. Adaptation - New evidence is fitted into the theory or it is thrown out.
The scientific method is not as cut and dry as you make it sound.
Actually, yeah. It is.
We can break down all that stuff you typed out in 3 simple steps, following the model of Thomas Kuhn:
1) Exemplar: Also called injunction, paradigm, or practice. Basically, it means --- if you want to know this, then do this (i.e., if you want to see if Galileo was right, look through the telescope and observe/record for yourself).
2) Datum: Also called information or illumination. This is the data gathered from the injunction. Pretty straightforward.
3) Falsifiability: Others that have also performed the prescribed injunction may validate or invalidate the datum you gathered.
Things like hypotheses and theories are useful, but not required, for good science. Only practice, data, and testability are ultimately required.
Of course, I could add that things like 'scientific method', 'theory', and 'hypthesis' are all immaterial concepts and, according to your reductionism, don't have any valid reality. Very interesting, neh?
Some phenomenon that we study are incredibly complex and it is impossible (as of yet) for us to recreate all the variables in the lab. Therefore the jump from verification to explanation is going to be an assumption. At bet scientists triangulate. Gathering information is part of this process, but you have missed the point entirely if you think that reductionistic assumption plays no role at all in the scientific method.
*laughs* Delightful. You've collapsed concepts and definitions. Again.
The "reductionism" employed in the laboratory is
not the reductionism you've been arguing for. The reductionism used in the laboratory is an experimental procedure, and does not necessarily carry any proclamations about things like gods, spirits, and minds, and their supposed non-existence. The reductionism you've been arguing for is a philosophy that makes untestable, counter-intuitive, and anti-scientic claims.
At no point does the scientist necessarily assume the prokaryotic cell is
just a collection of molecules --- he does, through his procedure, assume the cell is composed of molecules. Which, frankly, is a straighforward observation. But, never, not once, would a good scientist assume that they are
just that. Because, once again, he couldn't test such a claim.
First of all, you cannot prove anything with science. Secondly, I have shown how what we do understand obeys laws. My assumption is that what we don't understand also obeys laws. My assumption is that we can know these laws. If I did not have these assumptions, what would be the point of further research?
Ummmm..... that's nice and all, but it has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I was talking about how you were collapsing causation and correlation, not whether everything follows "laws" or not.
Bacteria are the most fit organism for their niche which is not the whole planet. A niche is like a pocket of energy that an organism can exploit, there are many niches on the planet and they are constantly changing. Evolution happens in response to these changes. Adaptive changes allow us to efficiently take/use energy. Maladaptive changes destroy this ability.
Ummmm... that, again, is nice and all, but it has nothing to do with what I was talking about. The point still remains: bacterium, as any high school biology teacher will tell you, are the most well-adapted organism in existence. I didn't claim they could adapt to ANY environment, only they were the most well-adapted currently on earth. Thus making all subsequent organisms expressions of maladaptations. Thus also making your Neo-Darwinian model look pretty silly.
Nope, but other things do. Free Radicals, cosmic rays, radio-active decay, all of these and more cause mutations in a DNA strand. What determines the particular sequence these phenomenon effect? Now that is a question...
You've basically just agreed with my view that we don't know how novelty occurs, albeit in a roundabout fashion.
Uh Randomness - how about that for a vagury? I have no explanation for THAT. This is where my argument fails.
Ummmmm... ok.
If you limit yourself to this solar system. Which is one of 200,000,000,000 solar systems in a medium sized galaxy in a cluster with 400,000,000 galaxies of similar size...
Ok, and this has anything to do with my point (that compassion is "maladaptive" by Neo-Darwinian standards) how??
Social Darwinism is a theory that says that White people are the best adapted among human races.
*chuckles* Actually... no, its not. I suggest taking a few sociology classes.
Social Darwinism is the position that societies and cultures that are "less fit" will inevitably falter and collapse. It is a very natural and straightforward application of Darwinian biological theory, and is implicitly accepted in your model.
The assumption of other intelligent life is a part of this discussion because it shows that things like sentience/intelligence are not unique. They evolve just like anything else. They follow laws just like everthing else. They are made of peices just like everything else. And they are beholden to those peices just like everything else in the universe.
Did anyone here every say sentience is (or will be) unique to humanity?? Did anyone say sentience does not evolve (I, in fact, am actually aware of the particulars of this from developmental psychology)?? Did anyone say sentience does not follow laws (not necessarily the ones you're subscribing)?? Did anyone say they are not "built" upon earlier, more primitive foundations like matter does??
Sorry, bro, but I'm afraid you're projecting a lot to sustain these arguments.
Then you don't understand biology very well. If you mess up the environment and have more offspring then the carrying capacity of that environment, then you are reducing your ability to gather the energy you need for life. You have behaved maladaptively.
By that convoluted argument, any attempt to reproduce is a maladaptation --- since you are introducing new variables into the environment which will inevitably use up more resources and energy.
Not so. When you realize that you are an integral part of a system, then you work to keep that system healthy. If you are not a part of that system, then you have no responsibility for what happens to that system. This justification is replete in industrial religions because they needed a religious excuse for despoilation.
*shakes head* The point is you couldn't
observe that system in the first place unless you were somehow differentiated or detached from it, at least to some degree. This is basic, basic, basic psychology and shows up all the time in the developmental of children.
First off, the gather of energy into large pools for use by a few weakens a population because those individuals and their actions make such a huge impact on that population. Spreading the energy out deadens the impact of those actions.
And that has anything to do with children with genetic diseases being "maladaptive" to the species...
how??
Also, children who are born with genetic mutations are useful. They provide variation to the gene pool and there may be something else that has been changed that is useful, but beyond a cursory inspection.
They also provide genetic diseases that will inevitably kill future generations or inhibit the collective "fitness" of the species. By your warped Neo-Darwinian model, we should then collectively exterminate them, since their lives obviously don't have any meaning in and of themselves --- since meaning itself cannot be reduced to anything material.
What a delightful philosophy.
Yes. All religious practices reflect environmental observation and attempt to give us laws to live in said environment. They are the attempts of the human brain to explain the unknown phenomena in our lives. We now know more about the environment then we ever did before, yet we rely on systems of belief that are thousands of years old. This is the source of the conflict between science and religion.
Yup, just look at all those heated debates between scientists and Buddhists. *laughs*
Laterz.
