But Evolution is a Scientific Fact
After our recent reporting on new research out of John Mattick’s lab on how RNA structure conservation suggests that, even according to evolution, yet more of the mammalian genome is functional, lead author Martin Smith informed us that we had it all wrong:
Hello bloggers. I am the lead author from that paper. I would simply like to point out that the study looks at evolutionary data to make the findings. By promoting our research to support intelligent design, you are intrinsically admitting that evolution is a fact and that it is central to biology and the natural world.
We explicitly measured genetic mutations across 35 mammalian species. We made predictions against a null hypothesis that uses a phylogenetic tree calculated from these mutations. Phylogenetic trees are how Darwin illustrated his theory of evolution (which is a scientific fact). We show that at least 13.6% of all mammalian genomes have evidence of common RNA structural components, but these structural components vary between each individual species consistently with their common ancestry.
In summary, the work shows that at least 14% of our genome (likely over 30%) displays explicit evolutionary evidence of function through RNA secondary structure alone. Our work should find common ground between the ENCODE findings and its critiques, as it is focused on evolutionary evidences. It does not promote any spiritual ideologies and was performed in a scientifically objective manner.
Wow, that is quite a slam. Like Marshall McLuhan upbraiding the Columbia University professor (click above), Smith gets right to the point and informs us not only that his work reveals evolution but that evolution is a fact.
There’s only one problem: none of this makes any sense.
It is always good to hear from evolutionists for it provides yet more insight into the world of those who believe evolution is a fact. Smith claims that by promoting the research to support intelligent design, we are intrinsically admitting that evolution is a fact and that it is central to biology and the natural world.
But we made no reference whatsoever to intelligent design. Smith and co-workers used evolutionary theory and found evidence of functional DNA. In other words, if evolution is true, then we have yet more evidence of function for yet more of the genome. Those results do not comport well with Dan Graur’s view that most of the genome must be junk. None of this makes evolution a fact, much less “central to biology and the natural world.”
Next Smith confuses theory with data and states that they “explicitly measured genetic mutations across 35 mammalian species.” Actually they did no such thing, explicitly or otherwise. What they did do was to compare the genomes of 35 different species. Since they believe those species somehow all evolved from a common ancestor, they inferred that the differences were due to mutations.
That is an interpretation of the data according to a theory. It is not a measurement.
And just in case there was any doubt, Smith repeats again the metaphysical claim that evolution is a scientific fact. He then says they do not promote any “spiritual ideologies.” That is precisely what they are doing.
How does "evolutionary data" differ from plain data? Is it data conjoined with the a priori assumption that it was produced by an evolutionary process which then provides evidence of an evolutionary process? No, that couldn't be it. The work was done in a "scientifically objective manner", so they couldn't have applied such circular reasoning. I'm confused. But then, evolutionists' responses to criticism often leave me confused. Or chuckling.
ReplyDeleteCH: "Next Smith confuses theory with data and states that they “explicitly measured genetic mutations across 35 mammalian species.” Actually they did no such thing, explicitly or otherwise. What they did do was to compare the genomes of 35 different species. Since they believe those species somehow all evolved from a common ancestor, they inferred that the differences were due to mutations."
ReplyDeleteYou can level the same charge at any field of science. For example, no one has ever seen or touched an electron. We always deal with these particles indirectly. We can see light electrons produce when hit a detector or bubbles produced in a superheated liquid of a bubble chamber. We assume that the effects are due to a charged massive particle and we interpret the data according to this assumption.
Or take a static electric field. We cannot see or sense it. We posit its existence theoretically and postulate that it acts with a force on a charged particle, which themselves cannot be seen. But we can make predictions about what will be observed if you make such and such arrangement of batteries and wires, and lo and behold, those predictions work out.
Science works the same in biology. You can't directly observe mutations unless you watch a DNA replication process. Ordinarily you assume that mutations occur at a certain rate and you make predictions on the basis of that. That is what Mart and his colleagues did. Objecting that they did not measure mutations is as clever as objecting that we did not measure electric field in that undergraduate lab. Your mental contortions are rather embarrassing.
" Your mental contortions are rather embarrassing."
DeleteActually your conflations are embarrassing and illogical. You just equated assumptions with inability of directly detecting electrons.
one of the stupidest things I have ever seen on this blog.
One is the product of our limitations to observe and the other is based on imposing an assumption
two entirely different things.
Elijah2012: "You just equated assumptions with inability of directly detecting electrons."
DeleteElijah,
I did not equate assumptions of evolutionary theory with our inability to detect electrons directly. Repeat: I did not. Those two things would be apples and oranges.
The parallel was between (1a) not directly observing mutations (in the process of DNA replication) and (1b) not directly observing electrons. These are apples and apples. The parallel extended further to oranges and oranges: (2a) an assumption that changes in DNA are due to random mutations and (2b) electric current is due to electrons.
So, Elijah, stupid is as stupid does. I did not make a silly error. Perhaps you have not had enough coffee. Either way, conversations with you are not particularly interesting or enlightening, so do not be surprised if I do not pay much attention to your further ejaculations.
One is the product of our limitations to observe and the other is based on imposing an assumption
DeleteNot seeing evolution take place in real time could/ is also a limitation in our ability to observe.
After all,if the theory is correct that is exactly what it is.
Both theories are based on assumptions, both theories cannot directly observe due to limitations in our ability.
"I did not equate assumptions of evolutionary theory with our inability to detect electrons directly. Repeat: I did not."
Deletethen you are even more dense than thought. and yes stupid is as stupid does. You quoted this
"Actually they did no such thing, explicitly or otherwise. What they did do was to compare the genomes of 35 different species. Since THEY BELIEVE those species somehow all evolved from a common ancestor, they inferred that the differences were due to mutations."
Cornelius point included the assumption that they had evolved he made no point about "not directly observing mutations (in the process of DNA replication)"
In the interest of the future of humanity please make sure that your "ejaculations" result in no offsprings with similar inabilities to think rationally.
"Not seeing evolution take place in real time could/ is also a limitation in our ability to observe.
DeleteAfter all,if the theory is correct that is exactly what it is.
Both theories are based on assumptions, both theories cannot directly observe due to limitations in our ability."
Rubbish thinking. You can measure in real time and substantiate the existence of electrons (or if you will what we call electrons). though you cannot see them directly you can test indirectly their existence at any time you wish. The results of that test are not assumptions. The same cannot be said for evolution and historical mutations.
Such an obvious point and another example of why, as I noted elsewhere. the Darwinist representation on this blog is sub par even for Darwinists.
Elijah2012
DeleteRubbish thinking. You can measure in real time and substantiate the existence of electrons (or if you will what we call electrons). though you cannot see them directly you can test indirectly their existence at any time you wish. The results of that test are not assumptions. The same cannot be said for evolution and historical mutations.
Your ignorance is showing again Elijah2012. We can measure in real time and substantiate the existence of genetic mutations too. That's exactly what the Lenski LTEE did when it saved every generation, over 50,000 of them and counting, and compared them to determine the discrete genetic changes. The results of those tests are not assumptions.
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DeleteElijah,
DeleteRubbish thinking. You can measure in real time and substantiate the existence of electrons (or if you will what we call electrons)
The data is the detectors, that it an electron is an assumption based on the theory.
though you cannot see them directly you can test indirectly their existence at any time you wish.
Which of course is the assumption of the ToE
The results of that test are not assumptions. The same cannot be said for evolution and historical mutations.
That the genome is different,like the detectors, is the data, the results are, interpreted by means of the theory ,that the data is the result of mutations or electrons.If the assumptions are true the mutations in the genome are just as real as the electron.
Such an obvious point and another example of why, as I noted elsewhere. the Darwinist representation on this blog is sub par even for Darwinists
You owe to ID to spread your intellectual magnificence on more fertile fields, I am sure your brand of argument will be more effective on a higher level of opponent, here it just looks like your arguments consist mostly of what you claim to deplore and trying to get to host to ban opposing views.
"If the assumptions are true the mutations in the genome are just as real as the electron."
DeleteLOL you nit. Thats the whole point - its an assumption predicated on the "if" being true. ROFL...C makes it very clear that he is referring to the assumption of evolution and your hilarious answer is to claim the assumption is the same as measuring the effects of an electron in real time. No silly it is not. You could measure a change in genome from organism to organism but you cannot measure the assumption that it was caused by evolution. too silly. Sure we have never seen an electron but we can measure it and KNOW that it is caused by the same substance from lab to lab.
"I am sure your brand of argument will be more effective on a higher level of opponent"
ROFL....More hilarity. You are on an ID blog where over half the time the blog owner blows up your foolishness and the other you can't seem to grasp basic words like "assumption"
At any rate the idea that you are a higher level of opponent or ahem even "effective" running around in blog comments is a frolicking good way to start my week out with laughter.
Thanks VEl.
"Your ignorance is showing again Elijah2012. We can measure in real time and substantiate the existence of genetic mutations too. "
DeleteNit number 2.
THIS is the paper in question
http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/07/11/nar.gkt596
Elijah2012
DeleteTHIS is the paper in question
The paper has nothing to do with your ignorance based and 100% wrong claim that we can't observe genetic mutations or their effects.
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DeleteElijah
DeleteYou could measure a change in genome from organism to organism but you cannot measure the assumption that it was caused by evolution
The assumption interprets the data, though assumption's scientific validity is probably measurable. It interprets what the data signifies. Complexity = design, = is the assumption that complexity cannot happen without an intelligent agency,the same way the assumption of common descent measured the mutations ,with the exception that only one of them is science based.
Sure we have never seen an electron but we can measure it and KNOW that it is caused by the same substance from lab to lab.
Slow learner? Electric charge detected, interpreted by the assumption that an electric charge signifies an electron allowing the measurement of an electron. Oleg's point, I believe.
Thats the whole point - its an assumption predicated on the "if" being true
So you agree with me that DrHunter's statement is inaccurate
"That is an interpretation of the data according to a theory. It is not a measurement.,"
for it rejects the possibilty that it is an interpretation of the data, assumptions correct, it is a measurement. It also rejects that the evolutionist's assumption is incorrect and a designer is designing using mutations from a common model, and we are measuring his mutations
DrHunter does not know if it is a measurement or not. Just like he can't know what a sensible designer would do.
"Slow learner? Electric charge detected, interpreted by the assumption that an electric charge signifies an electron allowing the measurement of an electron. Oleg's point, I believe."
Delete"So you agree with me that DrHunter's statement is inaccurate"
No just don't have time for your density
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DeleteCornelius ran out of ammo for his little Creationist pop-gun years ago. As a result he's been digging deeper and deeper into the standard Creationist PRATT list. CH whines there are no transitional fossils, whines that all new papers assume evolution instead of repeating 150+ years of positive evidence, whines about "same evidence different interpretation" etc. Of course he still loves his usual equivocation between the observed fact of evolution and the theory which explains the observations.
ReplyDeleteTough way for CH to make a buck but he gets paid on the quantity of BS he produces, not the quality.
DrHunter
ReplyDeleteThat is an interpretation of the data according to a theory. It is not a measurement.
I assume you mean it it not a measurement of mutations. Unless you know their assumption is untrue, you cannot say it is not a measurement of mutations. Even if they are incorrect about common descent that statement would be a religious and spiritual stance, after all we cannot know what a sensible designer would do.
CH: That is an interpretation of the data according to a theory. It is not a measurement.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you start out by explaining how it's possible to extrapolate *any* observations without first putting them into an explanatory framework. Please be specific.
This is yet another example of a general purpose strategy to deny anything you find objectionable.
Thorton and others,
ReplyDeleteI think it would be wise to ignore Elijah2012. He seeks attention. Ignore him, and he goes away.
And just in case there was any doubt Smith repeats again the metaphysical claim that evolution is a scientific fact. He then says they do not promote any “spiritual ideologies.” That is precisely what they are doing.
ReplyDeleteNo, they aren't.
That claim is breathtaking in its Orwellian reversal of meaning.
The processes that contribute to evolution are observed so often that they are "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." In other words, they are scientific fact by Gould's definition. There's nothing metaphysical about it.
And later on in that essay he comments:
The entire creationist program includes little more than a rhetorical attempt to falsify evolution by presenting supposed contradictions among its supporters. Their brand of creationism, they claim, is "scientific" because it follows the Popperian model in trying to demolish evolution. Yet Popper's argument must apply in both directions. One does not become a scientist by the simple act of trying to falsify a rival and truly scientific system; one has to present an alternative system that also meets Popper's criterion — it too must be falsifiable in principle.
Is creationism falsifiable, is Intelligent Design falsifiable, not in the naive sense but in the realistic sense? If your God is all-powerful and all-knowing or if your designer is carefully unspecified, how can you possibly test for their existence. If you can't then it's EID/creationism that are the metaphysical programs not evolutionary biology.
Hunter:
Delete...Smith repeats again the metaphysical claim that evolution is a scientific fact.
Hunter claims that the scientific hypothesis: Evolution is a fact is somehow non-scientific because it is "metaphysical." Exactly how does that work? Are all hypotheses metaphysical or are some scientific and others metaphysical, and, if so, how does Hunter tell the difference?
Thornton said:
ReplyDelete" We can measure in real time and substantiate the existence of genetic mutations too. That's exactly what the Lenski LTEE did when it saved every generation, over 50,000 of them and counting, and compared them to determine the discrete genetic changes. The results of those tests are not assumptions."
Bpragmatic says:
What Lenski's experiments seem to show is that random mutations can't do enough in relation to what is required if nde is really responsible for it's claims.
Per Michael Behe in his book "The Edge of Evolution":
"But what does it yield? … By now over thirty thousand generations of E. coli, roughly the equivalent of a million years in the history of humans, have been born and died in Lenski’s lab. Over the whole course of the experiment, perhaps ten trillion, 1013, E coli have been produced. Although ten trillion seems like a lot (it’s probably more than the number of primates on the line from chimp to human), it’s virtually nothing compared to the number of malarial cells that have infested the earth. In the past fifty years there have been about a billion times as many of those as E. coli in the Michigan lab, which makes the study less valuable than our data on malaria.
Nonetheless, the data has pointed in the same general direction. The lab bacteria performed much like the wild pathogens: A host of incoherent changes have slightly altered pre-existing systems. Nothing fundamentally new has been produced. No new protein-protein interactions, no new molecular machines. As with thalassemia in humans, some large evolutionary advantages have been conferred by breaking things… The fact that malaria, with a billion fold more chances, gave a pattern very similar to the more modest studies on E. coli strongly suggests that that’s all Darwinism can do.” (pp 141-142)
Bpragmatic
DeleteWhat Lenski's experiments seem to show is that random mutations can't do enough in relation to what is required if nde is really responsible for it's claims.
Try reading for comprehension. My reference to the LTEE was only to show we can observe genetic mutations generation to generation, something Elijah2012 claimed wasn't possible.
I have zero interest in the unsupported assertions published in the popular press by a pompous little blowhard like Behe. Come back when he published some positive evidence for ID in the peer-reviewed professional scientific literature.
"Come back when he published some positive evidence for ID in the peer-reviewed professional scientific literature."
DeleteLike this?
EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION, LOSS-OF-FUNCTION MUTATIONS, AND “THE FIRST RULE OF ADAPTIVE EVOLUTION” - Michael J. Behe - December 2010
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/pdf/Behe/QRB_paper.pdf
“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010
Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.
http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/
or this:
Michael Behe and David W. Snoke, “Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues,” Protein Science, Vol. 13 (2004).
bornagain77 August 4, 2013 at 1:17 PM
Delete"Come back when he published some positive evidence for ID in the peer-reviewed professional scientific literature."
Like this?
Do you ever actually read the papers you cite?
Show us where either of them provides positive evidence for ID.
Despite having directly asked him several times, Cornelius still hasn't disclosed exactly which philosophy of science he's referring to when he says evolution isn't science.
ReplyDeleteAs such, his objections either empty, due to a lack of sufficient definition, or he is committing the Tu Quoque fallacy: If ID doesn't meet whatever criteria of "science" used by biologists to reject it, then neither is Darwinism. If ID is religious, because it doesn't meet whatever definition of science biologists used to reject it, then so is Darwinism, etc.
Tu Quoque is a very common fallacy in which one attempts to defend oneself or another from criticism by turning the critique back against the accuser. This is a classic Red Herring since whether the accuser is guilty of the same, or a similar, wrong is irrelevant to the truth of the original charge. However, as a diversionary tactic, Tu Quoque can be very effective, since the accuser is put on the defensive, and frequently feels compelled to defend against the accusation.
This is not to say that certain claims supposedly based on evolutionary theory are bad explanations. For example, if someone says that a percentage of our opinions are based on our genes, but tells us nothing about how genes effect opinions, they've explained nothing. These claims deserve criticism.
However, it would be quite disingenuous to assume the underlying explanation behind Darwinism hinges on these claims, or that Darwinism has not withstood an overwhelming amount of empirical criticism.
Furthermore, Popper's criterion includes the methodological rule that theories can be modified to avoid falsification as long as those modifications are not ad-hoc. What does that mean? Modifications should themselves be testable conjectures. Horizontal gene transfer was one such testable conjecture.
IOW, when theory diverges from observations, we often have good explanations for why those diversions occur. This includes the rest of our current, best explanations about how the world works, such as how fossils are formed, how we discover them, etc. And in those cases when explanations are absent, we do not practice naive falsification as the paper's author indicated. See Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Myth of the Framework, etc.
Scott: Furthermore, Popper's criterion includes the methodological rule that theories can be modified to avoid falsification as long as those modifications are not ad-hoc. What does that mean? Modifications should themselves be testable conjectures. Horizontal gene transfer was one such testable conjecture.
DeleteJ: This is an example of your confusion. We know nothing that implies specific "letters" in a DNA sequence are due to specific HGT events in the vast majority of cases. RATHER, it is merely ASSUMED that HGT events account for anomalies in the prior, over-simplistic models. Nothing has been explained. RATHER, naturalistic UCA has been demonstrated over and over to be UNFALSIFIABLE in any conceivable sense. Unfortunately, so is SA. You're really confused, Scott.
Scott: Modifications should themselves be testable conjectures. Horizontal gene transfer was one such testable conjecture.
DeleteJeff: We know nothing that implies specific "letters" in a DNA sequence are due to specific HGT events in the vast majority of cases. RATHER, it is merely ASSUMED that HGT events account for anomalies in the prior, over-simplistic models.
Nothing? A mere assumption?
Apparently, you're actually having problems remembering past experiences, rather than hypothetically.
We started out with a problem, guessed HTG as a possible solution, then criticized that guess, which included empirical experimental observations. IOW, it's a guess, which has withstood significant criticism. This includes previously predicting HGT occurred in bacteria it's discovery as the primary reason for antibiotic resistance in bacteria. This is scientists actually do, in practice.
So, yes, something has been explained. However, you're denying that we can and have already made progress.
That's the thing Jeff. The thing you can't deny is that we've made progress. Well, you can deny it, but in doing so you employ a general purpose strategy that could be used to deny anything.
What was your criteria for determining which beliefs are basic, such as memories? Oh, that's right. You still haven't provided one.
DeleteWhy do you think that might be, Jeff?
Me, me, teacher.
DeleteBecause Jeff is a bluffer?
Scott: We started out with a problem, guessed HTG as a possible solution, then criticized that guess, which included empirical experimental observations. IOW, it's a guess, which has withstood significant criticism.
DeleteJ: It's a guess, alright. But to criticize something, we need a criteria. What criteria was used in this supposed criticism?
Scott: This includes previously predicting HGT occurred in bacteria it's discovery as the primary reason for antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
J: Can you right that in complete sentences so I'll know what you're meaning.
Scott: This is scientists actually do, in practice.
J: You haven't defined the criteria or anything yet. So you're just pontificating at this point still.
Scott: So, yes, something has been explained.
J: No, you've explained nothing so far. To explain is to deduce. But what is it that you know which serves as premises for the deduction? And how did you come to know it?
Scott: However, you're denying that we can and have already made progress.
J: We've made progress in many things. Just not by the way you're trying to account for progress. By your approach we start and end with PURE, UNADULTERATED speculation. Thus, by your view, there is no way to distinguish knowledge FROM pure, unadulterated speculation.
Scott: What was your criteria for determining which beliefs are basic, such as memories? Oh, that's right. You still haven't provided one.
J: I have multiple times. Apparent memories, if there is such a thing, can only be such if they occur NATURALLY. Any idiot can see that if a "memory" is merely an INTENTIONALLY posited past event, there is nothing "apparent" about it. Those apparent memories that aren't rejected inductively serve as foundational propositions from which we synthesize explanations that we can use to predict FUTURE events.
By your view, we never actually experience apparent memories, because you deny that they occur naturally. You're only way out is to say that apparent memories occur A-causally. But I've already explained that once you deny the principle of causality, nothing is knowable in any explanatory sense. Thus, science is impossible by your view.
You don't even limit knowledge to conscious beliefs. You say DNA sequences is knowledge. I have no idea what you even mean by "knowledge." I only know that it's INDISTINGUISHABLE from pure, unadulterated speculation per your epistemology. And since you say DNA sequences are knowledge, it's probably the case that "knowledge" is literally undefinable in your epistemology.
Pedant: Me, me, teacher.
DeleteJ: Since you claim Scott as a teacher, Pedant, is it safe to infer that you too don't believe there is any positive evidence for naturalistic UCA?
... because you do realize, don't you Pedant, that Scott says there is NO positive evidence for ANY idea/hypothesis/theory/etc. Maybe you can explain how that's consistent with the KNOWN existence of KNOWN progress? It certainly hasn't done it.
DeleteScott: We started out with a problem, guessed HTG as a possible solution, then criticized that guess, which included empirical experimental observations. IOW, it's a guess, which has withstood significant criticism.
DeleteJ: It's a guess, alright. But to criticize something, we need a criteria. What criteria was used in this supposed criticism?
We take the theory seriously, as if it were true, in reality, alone with the rest of our current, best explanatory theories, and that all observations should conform to them.
Scott: This includes previously predicting HGT occurred in bacteria it's discovery as the primary reason for antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
J: Can you right that in complete sentences so I'll know what you're meaning.
That's the thing, Jeff. You know what I meant because you had to put that sentence in an explanatory context. The missing comma and ending , etc. isn't necessary. This is yet another example of denying that we can make progress.
Jeff: We've made progress in many things. Just not by the way you're trying to account for progress. By your approach we start and end with PURE, UNADULTERATED speculation. Thus, by your view, there is no way to distinguish knowledge FROM pure, unadulterated speculation.
My my view? Still having memory problems, I see. it's conjecture and criticism. You keep omitting the latter. It's under Foundationaism that we end up with speculation and I'm not a Foundationalist, remember?
Scott: What was your criteria for determining which beliefs are basic, such as memories? Oh, that's right. You still haven't provided one.
Jeff: I have multiple times.
No, you haven't. That's because you keep using the term "basic" and "natural" interchangeably. For example...
Jeff: Apparent memories, if there is such a thing, can only be such if they occur NATURALLY.
But you're merely exchanged the term "basic" for "natural". To rephrase, what was your criteria for determining which beliefs are "natural", such as memories? That they are basic?
Jeff: Any idiot can see that if a "memory" is merely an INTENTIONALLY posited past event, there is nothing "apparent" about it. Those apparent memories that aren't rejected inductively serve as foundational propositions from which we synthesize explanations that we can use to predict FUTURE events.
Again, what is problematic about the conjectured idea that some memories actually represent some aspect of past experiences? How can one vary the idea that actual memories exist, without significantly reducing its ability to explain the phenomena in question?
For example, why don't I end up shaving my face when I intended to brush my teeth or wash my car? But even that doesn't work because I'd have to have at least some actual memories to even end up solving some problem I didn't intend to solve. The idea that we actually have some memories is a very hard to vary assertion about how the world works.
Again, we take the theory seriously, as if it were true, in reality, alone with the rest of our current, best explanatory theories, and that all observations should conform to them. That we have actual memories is implicated in all of our current, best explanations. "X might be false" is a bad criticism because it's applicable to all ideas.
Furthermore, how can there be nothing "apparent" about specific memories if induction is only *believed* to be truth approximating? Does induction prove things are true or not?
Jeff: I have no idea what you even mean by "knowledge." I only know that it's INDISTINGUISHABLE from pure, unadulterated speculation per your epistemology.
Knowledge is information that tends to remain when embedded a storage medium. This includes books, brains and genomes.
Of course, I've already provided that definition, so this is yet another disingenuous objection.
There's the circularity problem again. Only in the minds of those practicing a circular science can one equate this:
ReplyDeleteA. Compared the genomes of 35 mammalian species in light of the presupposition of common ancestry.
With this:
B. Explicitly measured genetic mutations across 35 mammalian species.
I'm at the point where I can barely read evolutionary "science" without hearing echoes of theologians like Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, and other proponents of presuppositional apologetics.
Alethinon61
DeleteThere's the circularity problem again. Only in the minds of those practicing a circular science can one equate this:
A. Compared the genomes of 35 mammalian species in light of the presupposition of common ancestry.
With this:
B. Explicitly measured genetic mutations across 35 mammalian species.
I'm afraid you severely misunderstand the science involved.
This experiment wasn't done to establish common ancestry. The fact of common ancestry was established well before by a plethora of evidence from dozens of scientific disciplines over the last 150+ years. This experiment was merely measuring the amount of conserved genetic sequences across various lineages related through common descent.
So there's no circularity.
Thorton said:
ReplyDelete"The fact of common ancestry was established well before by a plethora of evidence from dozens of scientific disciplines over the last 150+ years."
Meaning:
The conjecture of "common ancestry" was promulgated by individuals whose philosphical preferences dictated their speculations regarding something they dont and wont know crap about from a legitimate scientific standpoint.
Dozens of philosophical groups of speculators over the last 150+ years have attempted AND HAVE SUCCEEDED IN convincing the pop culture that speculation passed off as "science" really means something, scientifically. Yet with no sufficient demonstrations of the conjecture.
The derived words from you and the pop culture media are BANAL. (interpretted so even you can understand: "talk is cheap")
NDE needs to be eliminated from ANY correlation with "science". Or "science" that is inclusive of NDE should RARELY be trusted in any kind of a "disciplinary" function, whatsoever.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Thorton and all you other Darwidiots!
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ReplyDeletePretty darn slow around here.
ReplyDeleteTime for CH to disprove the entire Theory of Evolution again, from his armchair, just by quote-mining the latest scientific paper. Give those Creationist Fundies more grist for their ignorance mill.
He's probably trying to figure out how to spin using evolutionary interpretations of genetic data to create a working protein.
DeleteThe BBC covered it here.
Gene sequences in a protein called thioredoxin, taken from a wide variety of modern organisms, were analysed and placed in an evolutionary context - locating them on a molecular-scale tree of life - to chart their progression from their primordial forms.
First, computer analysis was used to determine how modern genetic sequences developed from original codes, so the ancient DNA sequences in the protein from as far back as four billion years ago could be determined.
Ancestral code
They then used modern bacteria to convert the ancient gene sequences into a chemically active protein that could be measured to determine its molecular structure and the properties of the ancient protein.
The thioredoxin protein is an enzyme which can break sulphur bonds in other molecules and has a number of metabolic functions in cells. It is shared by almost all life on Earth, from the simplest bacteria to complex animals including humans, indicating that the ultimate single-celled ancestor of all life on Earth would also have had the gene.
Prof Eric Gaucher of Georgia Tech, US, helped with the ancestral gene sequence reconstruction and commented: "A gene can become deactivated by as few as one or two mutations.
"If our ancestral sequences were incorrectly inferred by having a single mistake, that could have led to a dead gene. Instead, our approach created biochemically active proteins that fold up into three dimensional structures that look like modern protein structures, thus validating our approach."
Scott: He's probably trying to figure out how to spin using evolutionary interpretations of genetic data to create a working protein.
DeleteAnd before anyone tries to misinterpret that, no I don't mean "create" from scratch. I mean "create" as in use an explanatory framework to extrapolate observations and end up with a working protein that did not currently exist in nature, as described in the quote.
Scott quoted yet another useless NDE study:
Delete"Gene sequences in a protein called thioredoxin, taken from a wide variety of modern organisms, were analysed and placed in an evolutionary context - locating them on a molecular-scale tree of life - to chart their progression from their primordial forms."
Bpragmatic says:
Please demonstrate how NDE was responsible for the development of precursor proteins up to thioredoxin. (Let alone how NDE was responsible for creating the machinery that produces protein precursors and alleged observable proteins.) If you can't show historical progressions or scientifically demonstrate that such progressions are capable of being produced by NDE mechanisms then everything described above is nothing more than a vast array of speculations supported by unquantifiable assumptions. You need to go back to kindergarten, to begin your quest in search of what real science is. You obviously have some sort of personal pholosophical agenda in mind when you proclaim "science" as some sort of support for your conjecture.
You know, I could go on and on going down the crap quotes you proclomate above. But the response is basically the same: Human intelligence ASSERTING something as demonstrative of NDE, but with NO REAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE. You pack of thieves and willful liars! You deserve a spanking for being the unruly children that you demonstrate yourselves to be. You murderous bastards!
ThortonAugust 9, 2013 at 9:15 AM
DeleteThorton said:
"Pretty darn slow around here.
Time for CH to disprove the entire Theory of Evolution again, from his armchair, just by quote-mining the latest scientific paper. Give those Creationist Fundies more grist for their ignorance mill."
Bpragmatic said:
"slow around here" only because you refuse to engage in any kind of scientific refutation of what Hunter is talking about. If you were really interested in that you would have been busting your ass coming up with point by point refutations of What he is proposing. After all, this is his venue. You just hang around here day after day stinking the place up with your useless rhetoric and banal personal attacks on anyone who disagrees with your vacuous proclomations. What a relentless bonehead.
Thorton said:
"Time for CH to disprove the entire Theory of Evolution again"
Bpragmatic said:
Why don't you demonstrate that NDE processes are capable of producing anything involved in observable living systems. But your lack of adequate responses to the issues has over and over again shown that you can't.
Bpragmatic: quoting ...
Delete"Gene sequences in a protein called thioredoxin, taken from a wide variety of modern organisms, were analysed and placed in an evolutionary context"
J: Bpragmatic, the morons we're arguing with don't know the meaning of "in an evolutionary context." Such words are admissions that there is NO evidence for naturalistic UCA. It is taken as a working hypothesis, with all the millions of mere assumptions about millions of posited mutational events it requires to even be coherent. And even then, no warrant for believing, after rendering naturalistic UCA coherent thus, in the the validity of many physical and chemical laws for the posited time-frame. Because posited lineages are not analogical extrapolations of known patterns or regularities.
These people are truly clueless about basic logic.
Jeff,
DeleteWhy don't you start out by explaining how it's possible to extrapolate observations without first putting them into an explanatory context. Please be specific.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteJeff: Such words are admissions that there is NO evidence for naturalistic UCA. It is taken as a working hypothesis, with all the millions of mere assumptions about millions of posited mutational events it requires to even be coherent.
DeleteAre you saying the emergence of biological complexity via variation and selection isn't coherent?
Jeff: These people are truly clueless about basic logic.
You are aware that arguments in the form of Modus Ponens beg the question, right?
P01. if P -> Q
P02. P
C01. Therefore Q
But this assumes [P01].
Furthermore, you're aware that any argument that supposedly warrants, justifies, etc., P -> Q suffers from the same problem, right?
However, we can transform any Modus Ponens argument into Modus Tolens.
P01. if P -> Q
P02. Not P
C01. Therefore not Q
While it's not in the direction you prefer, this is objective progress none the less. And it occurs without the need to beg the question or some foundation.
Fallibilism, correctly understood, implies the possibility, not the impossibility, of knowledge, because the very concept of error, if taken seriously, implies that truth exists and can be found. The inherent limitation on human reason, that it can never find solid foundations for ideas, does not constitute any sort of limit on the creation of objective knowledge nor, therefore, on progress. The absence of foundation, whether infallible or probable, is no loss to anyone except tyrants and charlatans, because what the rest of us want from ideas is their content, not their provenance: If your disease has been cured by medical science, and you then become aware that science never proves anything but only disproves theories (and then only tentatively), you do not respond “oh dear, I’ll just have to die, then.”
The theory of knowledge is a tightrope that is the only path from A to B, with a long, hard drop for anyone who steps off on one side into “knowledge is impossible, progress is an illusion” or on the other side into “I must be right, or at least probably right.” Indeed, infallibilism and nihilism are twins. Both fail to understand that mistakes are not only inevitable, they are correctable (fallibly). Which is why they both abhor institutions of substantive criticism and error correction, and denigrate rational thought as useless or fraudulent. They both justify the same tyrannies. They both justify each other.
You may not personably subscribe to this view. That's you're right, but your continued claim that evolution isn't science is parochial (narrow in scope) in the same sense that it presents the same false dilemma indicated above.
Scott: Why don't you start out by explaining how it's possible to extrapolate observations without first putting them into an explanatory context. Please be specific.
DeleteJeff: Analogical extrapolation IS an aspect of explanation, Scott. If we couldn't analogically extrapolate into the future synthesized explanations of our apparently-remembered events, explanations would have no predictive value. For such analogical extrapolation is a NECESSARY condition (not sufficient condition, mind you!) of the very existence of predictive value.
But you deny that we even HAVE apparent memories!!!!!! You can't even get off the ground in a motion towards progress.
bpragmatic: You need to go back to kindergarten, to begin your quest in search of what real science is. You obviously have some sort of personal pholosophical agenda in mind when you proclaim "science" as some sort of support for your conjecture.
DeleteDo tell, B, what is real science?
Is it what scientists actually do, in practice? Or are you referring to a specific philosophy of science? If so, which one in particular?
IOW, if you have objections to evolution being a scientific theory, then you should have some specific definition of science in mind from which your objections are based, right?
If so, please be specific.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteScott: Do tell, B, what is real science?
DeleteIs it what scientists actually do, in practice?
J: Again, you demonstrate your absolute cluelessness. Do you not realize that without a definition of "science" we can't yet even DISTINGUISH between a "scientist" and a "non-scientist?" Are you REALLY that stupid, Scott? The definition of "science" is a NECESSARY CONDITION of a definition of "scientist."
Scott: Are you saying the emergence of biological complexity via variation and selection isn't coherent?
DeleteJ: I'm saying that the only way to render a specific naturalistic UCA history coherent is to ASSUME that MILLIONS of effect-properties that are not derived by analogical extrapolation from observations, actually occurred in the past nevertheless. But since there is no inductive (analogical) warrant for ANY of those millions of effect-properties, the probability of their truth is at best .5 raised to a power denoted by however many millions of assumptions you have to posit to render naturalistic UCA coherent. But once you allow for uncaused events, the probability is even lower. And even then, you have no warrant for supposing that that history is consistent with other event regularities posited by other sciences, like physics and chemistry. And if you insist that fossil succession somehow correlate with that history, the probability gets orders of magnitude LOWER.
Scott: You are aware that arguments in the form of Modus Ponens beg the question, right?
... However, we can transform any Modus Ponens argument into Modus Tolens.
P01. if P -> Q
P02. Not P
C01. Therefore not Q
While it's not in the direction you prefer, this is objective progress none the less. And it occurs without the need to beg the question or some foundation.
J: Well, Scott, you're dead wrong about that. For you STILL have to just KNOW that the law of non-contradiction is true. And since THAT law can't be PROVEN, you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING once you reject even THAT species of foundationalism. Dude, you're utterly clueless.
Never mind that your approach is NOT progressive. Infinity minus any finite number is still infinity. So you can NEVER demonstrate that ANY MEASURABLE progress has been made by your approach.
Scott: Fallibilism, correctly understood, implies the possibility, not the impossibility, of knowledge, because the very concept of error, if taken seriously, implies that truth exists and can be found.
J: Wrong again. If you don't know foundationally the relations that ground the law of non-contradiction, then you don't know that the law of non-contradiction is true. And then, fallibilism is not distinguishable from what humans naturally conceive of as its negation. And this is just another way of saying that not only is knowledge impossible, but that even truth and falsehood are indistinguishable because unintelligible.
Scott: The inherent limitation on human reason, that it can never find solid foundations for ideas, does not constitute any sort of limit on the creation of objective knowledge nor, therefore, on progress.
J: How do you know? You can't. You've already rejected EVEN the law of non-contradiction as knowable, thereby rendering even Modus Tolens of no knowable value.
Scott: If your disease has been cured by medical science, and you then become aware ...
J: WHOA!!! You can't become aware of anything, Scott. You insist that you don't have ACTUAL memories!!!!!
Scott: your continued claim that evolution isn't science
J: Some of evolutionary theory most certainly is science. Naturalistic UCA is not. It's unfalsifiable at this time EVEN by inductive relative plausibility criteria (we agree that naive falsificationism is impossible). Because all sane people know it's not worth our time to try to prove SA is less plausible by inductive criteria applied to the set of empirical data considered by naturalistic UCA'ists. It would take too long. And there is NO other criteria that isn't absolutely arbitrary in the first place.
Jeff.
DeleteDo you not realize that without a definition of "science" we can't yet even DISTINGUISH between a "scientist" and a "non-scientist?" Are you REALLY that stupid, Scott
Actually what Scott wrote" Do tell, B, what is real science?
Is it what scientists actually do, in practice? Or are you referring to a specific philosophy of science? If so, which one in particular?
IOW, if you have objections to evolution being a scientific theory, then you should have some specific definition of science in mind from which your objections are based, right?"
So tell us Jeff,what is the definition of science? Try to "right" whole sentences so it is comprehensible to the less gifted than you.
Jeff: I'm saying that the only way to render a specific naturalistic UCA history coherent is to ASSUME that MILLIONS of effect-properties that are not derived by analogical extrapolation from observations, actually occurred in the past nevertheless.
DeleteThis is only a problem if we wanted to exhaustively replicate a specific, already existing history. But what we really want is a working explanation that we can use to solve problems that we actually face today. Proposing specific histories is a means of finding errors in our explanations. No exhaustive history is possible, in practice.
IOW, we intentionally devise specific histories to find errors in at least one of the detailed explanations of evolutionary mechanisms and relations. That's how we make progress. We start out knowing they will be incorrect because they start out as conjectures. As such, when specifically devised histories do not match observations, this also represents progress. It's an error correcting process.
This is in contrast to the epistemological idea that we make progress when we derive theories from observations.
Scott: While it's not in the direction you prefer, this is objective progress none the less. And it occurs without the need to beg the question or some foundation.
Jeff: you STILL have to just KNOW that the law of non-contradiction is true. And since THAT law can't be PROVEN, you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING once you reject even THAT species of foundationalism.
Absolutely nothing? That's the false dilemma you keep presetting. The law of contradiction is a extremely hard to vary assertion about how the world works. So is the idea that 2+2=4, etc. We accept it because it's difficult to vary in the slightest without significantly effecting its ability to explain the phenomena in question.
Jeff: Never mind that your approach is NOT progressive. Infinity minus any finite number is still infinity. So you can NEVER demonstrate that ANY MEASURABLE progress has been made by your approach.
Justificationism assumes progress should be positive, Jeff. That's part of the idea itself. Apparently, you cannot conceive of anything else, despite having presented alternatives. Nor is this actually a problem, in practice, as I've pointed out.
Furthermore, If a child learns to count to 10, has he or she made no progress because numbers are infinite? If our knowledge isn't exhaustive, have we made no progress?
Again, we start out knowing our ideas contain errors because they start out as conjectures. So, we know they contain errors and are incomplete. The question is, what part and to what degree. For example, general relatively contains errors because it breaks down at the very small scale. Does our lack of a working theory of quantum gravity mean we know nothing?
As for the rest, you're argument is parochial, as it denies that we have make progress in the field of epistemology.
Scott: This is only a problem if we wanted to exhaustively replicate a specific, already existing history. But what we really want is a working explanation that we can use to solve problems that we actually face today.
DeleteWhat do I mean by this? What we want is an explanation of how the world works. This is because no individual theory can take into account all of the unrelated, yet parallel events that could effect the outcome of what we will experience.
As for a definition of science, you can find a summary of Popper's Conjectures and Refutations here.
QF: IOW, if you have objections to evolution being a scientific theory, then you should have some specific definition of science in mind from which your objections are based, right?"
DeleteJ: Science is reason (i.e., voluntary, inductive/deductive discursive thought) applied to naturally-caused beliefs.
Now, what's your definition of science? Maybe then I'll understand what y'all mean by "scientist." You see, by my definition, all humans do science just to figure out how to get along in the world. Others, who are paid to do science in certain disciplines/fields, can have access to telescopes, etc that the rest of us can't. So they are the ones that provide for the rest of us data we couldn't otherwise attain. They also typically have more time to try to account for the data in parsimonious explanations, etc. But NO ONE has explained naturalistic UCA.
Scott: This is only a problem if we wanted to exhaustively replicate a specific, already existing history. But what we really want is a working explanation that we can use to solve problems that we actually face today.
DeleteJ: Your confusion is bottomless. Not only do you not know if there are such things as "problems," "solutions," etc, once you deny the knowable occurrence of ACTUAL memories, but PLEASE explain to me how we've solved a problem by positing naturalistic UCA.
Jeff: Not only do you not know if there are such things as "problems," "solutions," etc, once you deny the knowable occurrence of ACTUAL memories...
DeleteWhich, again, is parochial...
Jeff: ..but PLEASE explain to me how we've solved a problem by positing naturalistic UCA.
IOW, we intentionally devise specific histories to find errors in at least one of the detailed explanations of evolutionary mechanisms and relations. That's how we make progress. We start out knowing they will be incorrect because they start out as conjectures. As such, when specifically devised histories do not match observations, this also represents progress. It's an error correcting process.
Is there something about the above that you do not understand?
We solve problems by applying multiple theories about how the world works. This includes evolutionary theory, etc.
Jeff: But you deny that we even HAVE apparent memories!!!!!! You can't even get off the ground in a motion towards progress.
DeleteDo I? Quote please.
Furthermore, what's problematic about the conjecture that some memories represent actual experiences? "X might be false" is a bad criticism because it's applicable to all ideas.
Jeff: Not only do you not know if there are such things as "problems," "solutions," etc, once you deny the knowable occurrence of ACTUAL memories...
DeleteScott: Which, again, is parochial...
Jeff:
pa·ro·chi·al
[puh-roh-kee-uhl] Show IPA
adjective
1. of or pertaining to a parish or parishes.
2. of or pertaining to parochial schools or the education they provide.
3. very limited or narrow in scope or outlook; provincial: parochial views; a parochial mentality.
Clearly, you're using 3. Now let me remind you of how stupid you are. You claim to know foundationalism is false. That means you can't KNOW a priori that parochial beliefs are false. But since all a posteriori beliefs require the use of true a priori beliefs as grounds to be knowably valid, you can't PROVE parochial beliefs are false, either! See how stupid you are? You're a BONA-FIDE known-nothing, by your own admission.
Scott: IOW, we intentionally devise specific histories to find errors in at least one of the detailed explanations of evolutionary mechanisms and relations. That's how we make progress. We start out knowing they will be incorrect because they start out as conjectures. As such, when specifically devised histories do not match observations, this also represents progress. It's an error correcting process.
Is there something about the above that you do not understand?
J: No, it's you that doesn't understand. Apart from actual KNOWLEDGE of the validity of the law of non-contradiction, everything you said there is unintelligible. You're UTTERLY confused.
Scott: Do I? Quote please.
J: You claim that your belief that there are apparent memories is voluntary. But if one has to CHOOSE to believe one remembers, there's clearly no "apparent memory" going on. You're utterly confused.
Scott: Furthermore, what's problematic about the conjecture that some memories represent actual experiences?
J: Nothing. It's your belief that ALL beliefs are conjectured VOLUNTARILY that is unintelligible and that rules out any way to distinguish knowledge from non-knowledge.
Scott: "X might be false" is a bad criticism because it's applicable to all ideas.
J: That's the point, Scott. It IS applicable to all ideas if ALL ideas are equally a-plausible.
Jeff: Clearly, you're using 3. Now let me remind you of how stupid you are. You claim to know foundationalism is false. That means you can't KNOW a priori that parochial beliefs are false.
DeleteApparently, you cannot even comprehend other forms of epistemology for even an entire sentence.
Elsewhere I wrote…
"For example, imagine I claimed you clearly must like *coconut flavored* ice-cream since, at some point in the past, you hypothetically said you "enjoyed enjoy eating ice-cream with your family on Sundays". This is a parochial argument in that it assumes there is only one flavor of ice-cream that you could have ate: coconut. My argument hinges on this assumption, yet one can go to any ice-cream shop and note that there is more than one flavor of ice-cream, including vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, etc. So, either I was presenting a disingenuous argument, in that I knew full well there was more than one flavor of ice-cream, but chose to make the argument anyway, or that in making that argument, I would have illustrated gross ignorance about the field of ice-cream as a whole. "
Note, this doesn't mean it must be false that you like coconut flavored ice cream. But the above argument that you did would be parochial because it hinges on there being no other options.
Jeff: But since all a posteriori beliefs require the use of true a priori beliefs as grounds to be knowably valid, you can't PROVE parochial beliefs are false, either! See how stupid you are?
And I'm the one who's stupid?
Jeff: ..but PLEASE explain to me how we've solved a problem by positing naturalistic UCA.
Scott: IOW, we intentionally devise specific histories to find errors in at least one of the detailed explanations of evolutionary mechanisms and relations. That's how we make progress. We start out knowing they will be incorrect because they start out as conjectures. As such, when specifically devised histories do not match observations, this also represents progress. It's an error correcting process.
Scott: Is there something about the above that you do not understand?
Jeff: No, it's you that doesn't understand. Apart from actual KNOWLEDGE of the validity of the law of non-contradiction, everything you said there is unintelligible. You're UTTERLY confused.
First, you're changing the subject. Second, epistemology is not only the theory of how KNOWLEDGE grows but what KNOWLEDGE *is*. Apparently, you cannot conceive of this.
Scott: Do I? Quote please.
Jeff: You claim that your belief that there are apparent memories is voluntary. But if one has to CHOOSE to believe one remembers, there's clearly no "apparent memory" going on. You're utterly confused.
You're still conflating what humans do naturally, conjecture explanations, with those resulting explanations having the status of being natural. Human beings are universal explainers. This doesn't mean we cannot rationally criticize those explanations we conjecture. And I'm utterly confused?
Scott: Furthermore, what's problematic about the conjecture that some memories represent actual experiences?
Jeff: Nothing.
Then you have no criticism of at least some memories being actual memories.
Scott: "X might be false" is a bad criticism because it's applicable to all ideas.
Jeff: That's the point, Scott. It IS applicable to all ideas if ALL ideas are equally a-plausible.
And we're back to the same vague definition of plausible.
"Do tell, B, what is real science? "
DeleteOH, heck, Scott, I dont know. Maybe at some "predetermined" point {put your dick back in your pants} come to the intellectual conclusion that your paradign
has insuffient grounds to make the claims being made? You tell me what you think the standards should be for real science.
{You purveyor of trite philosphical conjecture.}
BP OH, heck, Scott, I dont know. Maybe at some "predetermined" point come to the intellectual conclusion that your paradign
Deletehas insuffient grounds to make the claims being made? You tell me what you think the standards should be for real science.
That's the thing, BP. Whether "grounds", as you define it, is even possible, let alone used in practice, is the very thing the field of epistemology addresses. Apparently, you cannot recognize your conception of human knowledge as an idea that is subject to criticism, either.
I'm back and I'm really pissed off with atheists!
ReplyDeleteBetter to be pissed off than pissed on.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteGo out and watch the Perseides and you can pee wherever you want.
Delete...just kidding
DeleteVelik
We'll have nice weather this year for Perseides, I wish you the same.
Speaking of transitions/transitionals, what do you thumpers think of this?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2013/20130807-megaconus.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7461/full/nature12429.html
Start here for how it's just another example of a problem for current theory:
Deletehttp://crev.info/2013/08/jurassic-mammal-puzzle-or-prize-for-darwin/
And that just scratches the surface. LOTS of speculation is going on ALL the time, with evolutionary ASSUMPTIONS, when you're dealing with fragmentary evidence and no known possibility of naturalistic UCA in the first place.
Also, from (http://www.uncommondescent.com/tree-of-life/mammal-family-tree-in-disarray-too/)
Delete"But there’s another possibility, says Guillermo Rougier, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Megaconus and Arboroharamiya “have been assigned to the same group, but they’re very different creatures,” he says. Indeed, he adds, Arboroharamiya, the more advanced of the two species in terms of its jawbone and other features, may actually belong in a long-successful but now-extinct group of mammals called multituberculates — a realignment that would explain the disparity between family trees drawn up by these individual studies."
You people actually think that the mere fact that your priests BELIEVE in naturalistic UCA indicates it's true. Well, that pretty much makes you a quintessential fideist, then, doesn't it?
Jeff,
DeleteYou people actually think that the mere fact that your priests BELIEVE in naturalistic UCA indicates it's true.
Even worse, not True but merely the best scientific explanation for the data, a strange religion which has provisional beliefs and no supernatural deities.
Well, that pretty much makes you a quintessential fideist, then, doesn't it?
Hint, linking to a creationist site when accusing others of fideism is a not persuasive.
QF: Even worse, not True but merely the best scientific explanation for the data,
DeleteJ: No one has explained naturalistic UCA.
QF: Hint, linking to a creationist site when accusing others of fideism is a not persuasive.
J: Hint, the sites were quoting naturalistic UCA'ists. You're an idiot.
Jeff August 10, 2013 at 8:25 AM
DeleteStart here for how it's just another example of a problem for current theory:
http://crev.info/2013/08/jurassic-mammal-puzzle-or-prize-for-darwin/
Seriously, Jeff?
I'd trust a creationist website to give a fair and balanced summary of the papers about as far as I could throw BA77.
And that just scratches the surface. LOTS of speculation is going on ALL the time, with evolutionary ASSUMPTIONS, when you're dealing with fragmentary evidence and no known possibility of naturalistic UCA in the first place
1) There's nothing wrong with speculation in science as long as there's no pretense that it's anything more. It's a first stage towards building hypotheses.
2) Evolutionary assumptions, speculations, inferences from what is already observed are all grist to the mill when it comes to constructing hyotheses to explain fragmentary evidence. What do you expect? If the evidence wasn't fragmentary we wouldn't need hypotheses to try and fill the gaps. If you have a better way of generating hypotheses then let's hear it.
3) The only two real questions about hypotheses are, can they be tested and have they been tested?
4) We have evidence pointing towards UCA. We have none for SA, which seems to be the only alternative, and in which each separate creation event would involve your dreaded ad hoc hypotheses.
Ian: 1) There's nothing wrong with speculation in science as long as there's no pretense that it's anything more. It's a first stage towards building hypotheses.
DeleteJ: Indeed. And as I've told you before, CH is not arguing with you, if you concede that.
Ian: The only two real questions about hypotheses are, can they be tested and have they been tested?
J: But we don't have such a theory yet.
Ian: We have evidence pointing towards UCA.
J: No, we don't. Because once you analyze the supposed evidences, it turns out that they are merely high-level claims that depend upon the truth of literally MILLIONS of subsidiary hypotheses which are neither intuitive nor derived from any analogical extrapolation of observational data. Using the data set that natural scientists limit themselves to, there is NO discernably plausible theory of biological origins.
Ian: You're an idiot.
DeleteWhat does that make you for calling him one?
J: Actually, I thought I was replying to Moronton. But your point is moot. Quote-mining isn't per se a bad thing. You have to demonstrate that, as does V, if he wants to be taken seriously. I owe no apology to cry babies that don't even attempt to carry on an intelligent conversation.
V's wearisome refrain is that I'm wrong because I'm not a professional scientist. Apparently, he has forgotten that almost all scientists have been wrong about most everything they ever hypothesized. The only thing they were right about is what all of us are probably right about--that solipsism is false and that we collectively infer or hallucinate a very similar extra-ego reality. Otherwise, we couldn't account for what we all believe to be the conversation we're having here.
Jeff,
DeleteJ: Hint, the sites were quoting naturalistic UCA'ists. You're an idiot.
Run out of your supply of gibberish and now using the "idiot" argument ? It is about as coherent as the former.
So SA fideism is acceptable?
Liar For Jesus Jeff
DeleteV's wearisome refrain is that I'm wrong because I'm not a professional scientist.
No, he didn't say that at all. You're wrong because you're virtually 100% ignorant of the actual scientific findings that support ToE and can only regurgitate stale old Creationist PRATTs as your "arguments".
It doesn't help your case that you're a poster boy for Dunning-Kruger syndrome either.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteV: Run out of your supply of gibberish and now using the "idiot" argument ? It is about as coherent as the former.
DeleteJ: Idiot is a word, not an argument. See how stupid you are?
"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes."
DeleteSo, Moronton, what is my mistake (and I have made my share, no doubt) in your opinion other than that I don't believe your priests when they pontificate without inductive evidence?
Jeff,
DeleteQuote-mining isn't per se a bad thing.
As long as you find lying about an opponents position an acceptable form of argument
You have to demonstrate that, as does V, if he wants to be taken seriously.
Perhaps I assumed you were capable of understanding of sentence, Using a website as a source which is based on exactly your objections to evolution is dumb.
owe no apology to cry babies that don't even attempt to carry on an intelligent conversation.
And that just scratches the surface. LOTS of speculation is going on ALL the time, with ASSUMPTIONS, when you're dealing with fragmentary evidence and no known possibility of that you are smart enough to recognize a intelligent conversation
J: Quote-mining isn't per se a bad thing.
DeleteV: As long as you find lying about an opponents position an acceptable form of argument
J: Quote-mining isn't lying, moron. For crying out loud, V, say something relevant if you want to be taken seriously.
V: Perhaps I assumed you were capable of understanding of sentence, Using a website as a source which is based on exactly your objections to evolution is dumb.
J: Again, naturalistic UCA'ists were quoted IN those articles. One admitted that the new find indicated (per current theory) "unlikely" relationships. Another admitted that the classification of the fossil could be wrong. It doesn't take an ID'ist to see the speculativeness of UCA'ist positing. Even UCA'ists see it.
Liar For Jesus Jeff
DeleteSo, Moronton, what is my mistake (and I have made my share, no doubt) in your opinion other than that I don't believe your priests when they pontificate without inductive evidence?
Being too stupid and self-absorbed to understand just how ignorant you actually are about the evolutionary sciences is a pretty glaring one. Being too egotistical to listen to people who know a hell of a lot more on the subject than you do is another.
Moronton, it's you that doesn't listen. That's why you hate quote-mining. Seeing ALL of what people say instead of only the parts you like is part of what constitutes LISTENING to people. As they say in courts, it's the WHOLE truth of what people say that gets you closer to THE truth, so long as what they are saying is true.
DeleteThere is no contradiction in the quotes mined by ID'ists and the quotes mined by you and your ilk. Because real scientists realize the ASSUMPTIONS they're making. And they realize that ASSUMPTIONS aren't claims that are KNOWN. And they realize that mere validity of deductive form doesn't render the conclusion true or even plausible. The assumptions either ARE or are NOT true. But nothing we know implies or indicates that they're true. And yet they MUST be true for the whole hypothetical edifice to have any correspondence to a real history.
Jeff
DeleteThere is...contradiction in the quotes mined by ID'ists.
I'm glad you finally agree with me.
Quote mining is a perfectly valid and honest thing to do, right?
Of course it is, unless one knows that one is taking the quoted person out of context. But that's never the case, to my knowledge. The theorists frankly admit to problems with the theory. How is it dishonest to quote them to that effect? That they still BELIEVE in naturalistic UCA doesn't contradict the fact that they have not yet been able to EXPLAIN it naturalistically.
DeleteHere's a good one for you by John Mattick:
Delete"In any case, that our understanding of the remarkably complex processes underlying the molecular evolution of life, including the likely evolution of evolvability (Mattick 2009c), is incomplete should not be surprising. With the emergence of transformative technologies, such as massively parallel sequencing, which provide tools to view the inner molecular workings of the genome that were inconceivable less than a decade ago, it is as important as ever that we scientists remain open to observations that challenge even the most fundamental paradigms that exist within biology today."
So by the quote-mining haters view, Mattick is ACTUALLY saying:
"it is important that we scientists realize that the evidence for our current hypotheses is SO overwhelming that we need not be troubled by any further observations, since there's no way they could challenge our most fundamental paradigms that exist within biology today."
Hey thumpers, has it ever occurred to you that fossils of transitional organisms are difficult to categorize BECAUSE of the fact that they were transitional?
DeleteThe same thing goes for many extant organisms, and that's the main reason that scientists sometimes disagree on the classification of organisms.
And it is especially difficult when there are few (and/or "fragmentary") fossils to work with and when the only things preserved are morphological characters (no DNA).
How would YOU classify Megaconus and Arboroharamiya?
Jeff August 10, 2013 at 8:52 AM
ReplyDelete[...]
You people actually think that the mere fact that your priests BELIEVE in naturalistic UCA indicates it's true. Well, that pretty much makes you a quintessential fideist, then, doesn't it?
It would if we did but we don't so we aren't
Absolute Truth (TM) is usually left to you philosophers and theologians - which may or may not be a good thing.
On a more practical level, if the overwhelming majority of evolutionary biologists tells you it walks a like a duck and quacks like a duck then there's a good chance it is a duck. Same is true for a working theory in biology.
What's odd is how you people don't seem to get the concept of a working hypothesis or provisional explanation. For you it's all black and white, Absolute Truth or lies, damned lies and (worst of all) statistics.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIan: On a more practical level, if the overwhelming majority of evolutionary biologists tells you it walks a like a duck and quacks like a duck then there's a good chance it is a duck. Same is true for a working theory in biology.
DeleteJ: The reason why that is not the case is that scientists INTENTIONALLY make ARBITRARY moves in their methodology. Once you make arbitrary moves (like just insisting that libertarian causality for events in earth history could not have preceded the existence of humans, etc), you're no longer applying rational thought to DATA. You're applying rational thought to DATA in a way CONSTRAINED by the metaphysics you've merely assumed.
Ian: What's odd is how you people don't seem to get the concept of a working hypothesis or provisional explanation.
J: Again, CH is arguing against people who claim they have arrived at TRUTH (Coyne, etc) by an UNBIASED (i.e., non-arbitrary) evaluation of the existing data. Coyne does NO such thing. His is a metaphysically constrained approach. And it is a metaphysics which is neither intuitive nor proveable by deduction/induction.
Jeff: J: The reason why that is not the case is that scientists INTENTIONALLY make ARBITRARY moves in their methodology.
DeleteWe've been over this before, Jeff. You're confusing logically arbitrary with methodologically arbitrary. After all, is there some logical argument that we must respect the truth? As Popper pointed out, there is an ethical aspect to science, as well as a methodological aspect.
Scott: As Popper pointed out, there is an ethical aspect to science, as well as a methodological aspect.
DeleteJ: Wrong again. There is no KNKOWABLE ethical aspect to anything if atheism is true. Teleology is a NECESSARY CONDITION of KNOWABLE ethical duty.
Scott: As Popper pointed out, there is an ethical aspect to science, as well as a methodological aspect.
DeleteJeff: Wrong again.
Popper didn't point that out or ????
Jeff: There is no KNKOWABLE ethical aspect to anything if atheism is true.
Let me fix that for you Jeff...
There is no KNKOWABLE ethical aspect to anything if knowledge in specific spheres comes from authoritative sources.
But this would be parochial (narrow in scope) as it fails to take into account progress we've made in the field of epistemology.
Oh, that's right, this is yet another area that you deny we've made progress.
Scott: But this would be parochial (narrow in scope) as it fails to take into account progress we've made in the field of epistemology.
DeleteJ: By your view, in the past there were humans that had a lot of utterly a-plausible beliefs. Then, later, they had other EQUALLY a-plausible beliefs. And THAT is progress to you. Well, it's not to sane people. Because it implies you are no more certain solipsism is false than you ever were.
J1: Because it implies you are no more certain solipsism is false than you ever were.
DeleteCorrection/J2: Because it implies you never had ANY certainty that solipsism was false before and you STILL don't now. I.e., your whole belief structure is literally INDISTINGUISHABLE from wild, blind speculation.
It's actually much worse. For since your view precludes the conceivability of ACTUAL apparent memories, you can't even remember if you've ever had a belief/idea/explanation/hypothesis/theory/problem/solution/etc.
DeleteScott: But this would be parochial (narrow in scope) as it fails to take into account progress we've made in the field of epistemology.
DeleteOh, that's right, this is yet another area that you deny we've made progress.
Jeff: By your view, in the past there were humans that had a lot of utterly a-plausible beliefs. Then, later, they had other EQUALLY a-plausible beliefs. And THAT is progress to you. Well, it's not to sane people.
Sane people keep presenting parochial arguments and false dilemmas?
In the distant past, people didn't know how to make progress. They thought that everything that was known was contained in myths which, with the exception of a few useful rules of thumb, bore little resemblance to the truth. Almost nothing new was learned, generation after generation.
Epistemology is the theory of what knowledge is, how we obtain it, etc. As such progress in this field includes progress in the very idea of what knowledge *is*. Apparently, this still aspect of epistemology still eludes you.
Jeff: Because it implies you are no more certain solipsism is false than you ever were.
More certain? As in something is more probable? But you've yet to explain how that works, exactly.
Scott: Jeff: Because it implies you are no more certain solipsism is false than you ever were.
DeleteMore certain? As in something is more probable? But you've yet to explain how that works, exactly.
J: That's your confusion. It doesn't matter whether I can explain how MY view works. You haven't explained how YOUR view works. My failure (which you haven't even proved, seeing's how you can't prove anything in your epistemology) is not the logical equivalent of your success. That's a false dichotomy.
None of your claims have any relevance to anything since you deny you know them a priori or by a posteriori derivation. Thus, to the extent that you criticize, your criticism is not known to be better or worse than any other criticism that results in contrary conclusions. You can't get anywhere with your approach.
Scott: Knowledge is information that tends to remain when embedded a storage medium. This includes books, brains and genomes.
J: What is information?
Apparently, a recap is in order...
DeleteYour claim: there is no evidence FOR evolution.
My response: this is a bad criticism because there is no positive evidence FOR any theory, let alone evolutionary theory. Furthermore evolutionary theory as withstood a significant amount of empirical criticism in the form of modus tollens.
Empiricism represented progress, as it promoted the importance of observations in adopting theories, but it got the role backwards.
Your response: If there is no positive evidence for anything, then *you* can't know anything, etc.
First, this is an example of the Tu quoque fallacy. Even if I lacked a coherent epistemology, which isn't the case, you're still left with the burden of showing how this is a criticism that isn't applicable to all scientific theories, not just evolution.
For example, a modus ponens argument can be valid, yet beg the question that Q -> P is actually true. In addition, any argument that supposedly warrants, justifies, etc., P -> Q suffers from the same problem.
Furthermore, It's still unclear how it is possible to extrapolate any observations without first putting them into an explanatory framework, let alone observations of fossils, genes, etc. And these observations are, themselves, theory laden as well.
So, your objection appears to be empty.
Second, it is a parochial argument as it denies or ignores progress we've made in the field of epistemology.
You haven't made a distinction between conjecture and criticism and Foundationalism since you have a criteria to determine which beliefs that are supposedly basic and accept beliefs that withstand that criticism. Nor have you indicated how the belief that there are at least some actual memories is problematic. IOW, you seem to be trying to defend inductivism by using the term to describe conjecture and criticism. This is a typical approach by inductivists which just tries to muddy the issue.
Before you could conclude any belief was actually beneficial to your long term satisfaction, you need some kind of explanatory theory about how that belief actually factors into any kind of long term benefit, why you would prefer it over something else, etc. Otherwise, it's just an observation, which tells you nothing about anything.
For example, one could conclude that a series of false memories would be preferable to a hellish reality. Or one could conclude that life is meaningless if it has no end since you could always put off doing anything indefinitely, etc.
Jeff: what is information.
You're the one with the burden, not me.
Scott: Jeff: what is information.
DeleteYou're the one with the burden, not me.
J: On the contrary, Scott. Communication requires definitions. If you won't define your terms, you're not even attempting to communicate. And that alone proves that YOU are the immoral party in this conversation.
Your claim: There is no evidence for evolution.
DeleteJeff: If you won't define your terms, you're not even attempting to communicate.
Your burden: present an argument with definitions. For example...
- Knowledge grows through theory of epistemology V
- in V, science is demarcated by philosophy of science W with methodology X
- In X the role of evidence is Y
- Evidence consists of information, which is defined as Z
Therefore, evolution isn't science.
So, if you're attempting to communicate, define your terms.
I'll do the same in response once you do.
First of all, Scott, I'm not arguing that "evolution isn't science." Evolution is OBSERVED. It's science at the 2-year-old level of science. What I'm saying isn't science is the hypothesis of naturalistic UCA. It doesn't explain anything, and it isn't EXPLAINED.
DeleteNow:
Knowledge, if it exists at all, is what most people conceive it to be -- TRUE, WARRANTED belief. Where "warranted" means best supported thus far in terms of the inductive relative plausibility criteria (plus the general categories that render them intelligible and applicable) given the AVAILABLE data set one has.
There doesn't HAVE to be knowledge, Scott. Especially if foundationalism is false. Foundationalism means that we can't NOT believe we know (at least the categories and really basic analogical inferences, like "there are other minds"). Because we have naturally-formed beliefs that we can't be motivated to rid ourselves of. We literally CAN'T be motivated to be consistent radical skeptics.
Thus, "information," being related to "inform" is CORRELATIVE with CONSCIOUSNESS, despite your skeptical ramblings to the contrary.
Updating from your above comment
Delete- - - - - - -
Your claim: The hypothesis of naturalistic UCA isn't science. It doesn't explain anything, and it isn't EXPLAINED.
Your burden: present an argument with definitions. For example...
- Knowledge grows through [an undetermined variant of Foundationalsm]
- in [an undetermined variant of Foundationalsm], science is demarcated by philosophy of science W with methodology X
- In X the role of evidence is Y
- Evidence consists of information, which is defined as informing conscious beings
Therefore, the hypothesis of naturalistic UCA isn't science. It doesn't explain anything, and it isn't EXPLAINED.
- - - - - - -
We're still left with a number of variables that have yet to be defined, Jeff.
Also, in regards to information, Popper, in his Book Objective Knowledge, argues for the objectivity of knowledge in the following thought experiment, summarized here.
To demonstrate the existence and significance of objective knowledge, Popper considers two thought experiments. Firstly, he asks us to imagine that "all our machines and tools are destroyed and all our subjective learning, including our subjective knowledge of machines and tools, and how to use them. But libraries and our capacity to learn from them survive. Clearly, after much suffering, our world may get going again." Secondly, he asks us to imagine the same situation, except that "this time, all our libraries are destroyed also, so that our capacity to learn from books becomes useless." It can be seen that the existence of information in books makes a crucial difference. This is a clever and beautifully simple argument on the distinction between subjective and objective knowledge, and the singular importance of the latter.
Jeff: Because we have naturally-formed beliefs that we can't be motivated to rid ourselves of. We literally CAN'T be motivated to be consistent radical skeptics.
DeleteSo, if someone conjectured a better explanation we could not relinquish a natural belief?
But what about something like, the two tables illusion?
Is that illusion not a natural belief since it returns when the remove the line? Have we not found a way to criticize that belief with the lines themselves?
Again, if you...
- Have a criteria for what a natural belief is
- Belief X withstands that criticism for it's natural status
- You therefore adopt belief X as having natural status
... then you've adopted the idea that has best withstood criticism.
For example, would you say the two tables illusion isn't a natural belief because it doesn't withstand criticism of the measuring lines?
You seem to be assuming that I'm just pulling this out of my *ss, which indicates you're, well, ignorant about Popper's key, yet to be refuted arguments.
IOW, the above is encapsulated in conjecture and criticism. That's why Popper wrote the his book, The Myth of the Framework.
Scott: So, if someone conjectured a better explanation we could not relinquish a natural belief?
DeleteJ: Scott, the word "better" has no conceivable meaning if ALL beliefs are a-plausible, and equally so. Please attempt the definition if you disagree.
What we consider plausible, in practice, are ideas that have withstood the most criticism.
DeleteThe funny thing is, what you keep describing is compatible conjecture and criticism. And C&C is more parsimonious as well, because it does not entail basic and non-basic beliefs.
Progress in a field is almost always unifying, Jeff. And that's what Popper did: develop a theory for the universal creation of knowledge.
From this article...
DeleteAn explanandum is an experience we seek to explain, such as the changing seasons. An explanans is a set of claims which explain the experience, such as that the earth orbits of the sun once every 365 days, that the earth is tilted by 23.5 degrees on its axis, that surfaces orthogonal to light sources absorb more heat, and so on.
An explanans must logically entail its explanandum, but not vice versa. The consequence class of the explanandum must be a proper subset of the explanans. In other words, an explanans is “bigger” than its explanandum. Claims about planetary orbits, axial tilts, heat absorption and so on, together entail our experience of the changing seasons. However, our experience doesn’t entail anything about planetary orbits, axial tilts, or heat absorption, because our experience is consistent with many explanations.
Attempting to derive an explanans from an explanandum is an ill-posed problem. Inverse optics and Gettier problems are examples of the same issue. It’s impossible to determine, from an explanandum alone, a unique solution except by prejudice or caprice. When we seek justification for our explanations, however, we must attempt to solve this ill-posed problem. That is, our experience (the explanandum) is supposed to justify claims about planetary orbits, axial tilts, and heat absorption (the explanans). But this is logically impossible.
....
Scientific realists should abandon justification. Unfortunately, most of them want to have their cake and eat it. They understand that realism is the best explanation of our experiences, because insofar as anti-realism may be construed as an alternative explanation, it’s a bad one. That is, anti-realism says that it’s just as though our best explanation of our experience of the seasons is true (or proximately true), but actually something else altogether is true. This is a quintessentially bad explanation. The problem is not that it conflicts with experience, but rather that it includes a fudge factor. The unspecified ‘something else’ has no function except to deny the truth of our explanation, and it can be adjusted ad hoc to fulfill that purpose. However, realists also tend to crave justification, and so they find themselves arguing from a compromised position.
Scott: Knowledge is information that tends to remain when embedded a storage medium. This includes books, brains and genomes.
ReplyDeleteJ: What is information? Never mind that you have no conceivable way to know you remember such that you could know that storage mediums exist.
Note the contrast here...
DeleteI'm not denying that we made progress. Rather, I'm suggesting he's confused about how we've make progress, which is itself represents progress in the field of epistemology. Correcting errors is how we make progress.
Jeff, on the other hand, is *denying* that any progress can and has been made. Apparently, he thinks If we could make progress in epistemology then progress is impossible.
On the contrary, Scott. I'm claiming progress has been made. But I define progress different than you do. You say progress is moving from one set of a-plausible beliefs to a DIFFERENT set of a-plausible beliefs. Thus, by your view, it's a-plausible that we even remember.
DeleteI say progress is the increase in satisfaction and/or the decrease in dissatisfaction by applying the inductive relative plausibility criteria to explanations and then acting consistently with our most plausible explanations. But of course this is only knowable if we actually REMEMBER!
Can and have we make progress in the field of epistemology: Yes or no?
DeleteIt depends on what you mean by progress. I say progress in epistemology is merely winnowing out naturally-caused beliefs that prevent greater explanatory breadth. You mean something completely different by it.
DeleteScott: Can and have we make progress in the field of epistemology: Yes or no?
DeleteJeff: It depends on what you mean by progress. I say progress in epistemology is merely winnowing out naturally-caused beliefs that prevent greater explanatory breadth. You mean something completely different by it.
From the Wikipeda entry on Epistemology....
Epistemology (i/ɨˌpɪstɨˈmɒlədʒi/ from Greek ἐπιστήμη - epistēmē, meaning "knowledge, understanding", and λόγος - logos, meaning "study of") is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge and is also referred to as "theory of knowledge". It questions what knowledge is and how it can be acquired, and the extent to which any given subject or entity can be known.
Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification.
That there is such a thing as basic beliefs is one theory of knowledge in epistemology. Not to mention that epistemology includes theories of what knowledge *is*.
So, given your response, it would seem that your answer is "No". Would that be an accurate assessment?
My answer is "yes" for the very reason I already gave. You haven't yet even defined knowledge. Because you say it's information, but you can't define information.
DeleteJeff: Because you say it's information, but you can't define information.
DeleteI can't or haven't?
Jeff: My answer is "yes" for the very reason I already gave.
DeleteWe can and have make progress on how knowledge grows and what knowledge *is* by merely winnowing out naturally-caused beliefs that prevent greater explanatory breadth?
I'm not following you. Can you elaborate?
J: We can and have make progress on how knowledge grows and what knowledge *is* by merely winnowing out naturally-caused beliefs that prevent greater explanatory breadth?
DeleteScott: I'm not following you. Can you elaborate?
J: First of all, there is no way epistemology can be the study of WHETHER we know unless knowledge has nothing to do with truth. As I understand it, that's precisely what you're saying is the case -- that epistemology has nothing to do with truth. So we can't say it is TRUE that Ian exists. We can't say it is TRUE that CH exists. Fine. So if I were to cease arguing with you on the grounds that your epistemology says it is likely as not that you don't even exist, I would be rational and ethical to do that, right? After all, how can I judge ethically without criteria that are just KNOWN to be valid QUA criteria? Because that means I don't have criteria to DISTINGUISH between the ethical and the non-ethical. Your approach literally denies the ability to KNOWABLY distinguish ANYTHING.
Jeff: J: First of all, there is no way epistemology can be the study of WHETHER we know unless knowledge has nothing to do with truth. As I understand it, that's precisely what you're saying is the case -- that epistemology has nothing to do with truth.
DeleteThen you don't understand it.
Hasn't <a href='http://nautil.us/issue/2/uncertainty/why-its-good-to-be-wrong">this article</a> cleared things up for you?
What criticism do you have of it other than it conflicts with Foundationalism.
<i>The theory of knowledge is a tightrope that is the only path from A to B, with a long, hard drop for anyone who steps off on one side into “knowledge is impossible, progress is an illusion” or on the other side into “I must be right, or at least probably right.” Indeed, infallibilism and nihilism are twins. Both fail to understand that mistakes are not only inevitable, they are correctable (fallibly). Which is why they both abhor institutions of substantive criticism and error correction, and denigrate rational thought as useless or fraudulent. They both justify the same tyrannies. They both justify each other.</i>
Scott said:
ReplyDeleteCan and have we make progress in the field of epistemology: Yes or no?
Bpragmatic says, To me, your question has no relevance in this discussion.
Your are climbing up another rootless tree with this question. Your question is not grounded, except metaphysically. {meaning the underpinnings are nothing more than metaphysical sorts of proclamations.)
Please remove yourself from this forum of scientific discussions from Hunter.
Or stay, if you can, then:
Demonstrate scientifically, how nde mechanisms are capable of producing the protein cycle. You philosophically predisposed anti science person. Move on to something you might be able to contribute to in a realistic fashion.
Why does it have to be "nde mechanisms"? And exactly what are "nde mechanisms"?
DeleteWhy do you thumpers always say Darwinism, or Darwinian, or neo-Darwinian, etc.? Why don't you say evolutionary theory, or the theory of evolution, or whichever part of evolutionary theory that is relevant to the debate?
Yeah, I know, some scientists/evolutionists also use the terms Darwinian, Darwinism, nde, etc., and that's just as irritating as you thumpers doing it.
Jeff< August 10, 2013 at 11:53 AM
ReplyDelete[...]
J: But we don't have such a theory yet.
It doesn't matter what you call it. We have a work-in-progress explanation of common ancestry which is a good fit to data from a number of fields.
Ian: We have evidence pointing towards UCA.
J: No, we don't.
Sure, we do. Theobald summarizes it in the "29+ evidences" paper on Talks Origins. It may not be the whole story but it's still way better than anything else.
We shouldn't have to keep saying this but science is almost always grappling with the incomplete and imperfect. But like we said before, the fact we don't know everything doesn't mean we don't know anything.
Because once you analyze the supposed evidences, it turns out that they are merely high-level claims that depend upon the truth of literally MILLIONS of subsidiary hypotheses which are neither intuitive nor derived from any analogical extrapolation of observational data. Using the data set that natural scientists limit themselves to, there is NO discernably plausible theory of biological origins.
Plausibility is a judgment not a measure. I find separate ancestry less plausible than common ancestry because there is no evidence for the intelligent agent required by the former.
As for this constant refrain about ad hoc hypotheses, of course they underlie evolution just like everything else They underlie all other theories in science as well so why pick on evolution?
I have never seen anyone fall to their death from a tall building, except in movies and on TV. Does that mean I'm going to jump off one in the expectation that, instead of falling, I will fly to the next building a la Matrix? No, it doesn't. Neither would you, I pretty sure although that confidence is based on a whole lot of ad hoc assumptions.
It doesn't matter either that there are millions of ad hoc hypotheses involved in science and everyday life as long as we recognize them for what they are, as long as we don't claim certainty where none is warranted. Sooner or later we'll get around to finding out which are well-founded and which aren't.
Ian: Plausibility is a judgment not a measure. I find separate ancestry less plausible than common ancestry because there is no evidence for the intelligent agent required by the former.
ReplyDeleteJ: This is where Scott and me are closer than you and me. I see teleology as a corollary of the validity of the inductive relative plausibility criteria. Thus, per my perspective, there is no evidence for the Designer. The Designer(s) is(are) a corollary of the validity of induction. But deduction alone gets us nowhere.
IOW, Scott is right, IMO, to think induction is worthless if there is no Designer of the "order" we mentally create by inductive criteria.
Ian: As for this constant refrain about ad hoc hypotheses, of course they underlie evolution just like everything else They underlie all other theories in science as well so why pick on evolution?
J: It is true that there are tons of a-plausible hypotheses required to render SA or UCA explanatory in a hypothetico-deductive sense. But at least with physics and chemistry, we can get mathematically predicting models just by correlating observations to the math. And there aren't tons of propositions entailed in that math. Thus, THOSE theories are very good in the sense that we can predict a great deal with relatively little work/effort as compared to naturalistic UCA whether or not we have hypothetico-deductive explanations of that predictability. What, indeed, does naturalistic UCA even predict?
... however, if I can only conceive of the validity of induction in terms of teleology, then it follows that the Designer(s) are fair to use as causal agents in cases where something can be explained or better explained only by their causal agency.
DeleteAn example of this would be a moral order. If there is no benevolent/competent Designer of the world order we infer, it is clear that there is no reason to believe that the greatest long-term good of each person is consistent with and conducive to the greatest long-term good of others. And that means that altruism is not rational in any sense. Only if there is some kind of post-mortem karma can altruism in "this" life be rational. But a post-mortem karma is conceived of as a corollary of the nature of that Designer or those Designers that accounts for the validity of induction in the first place. No post-mortem karma, no way to conceive of the validity of induction. And then I'm right back to where Scott is to where progress is nothing more than moving from one set of a-plausible beliefs to another, never having a clue as to whether I remember or whether Scott even exists.
... in short, it works like this, IMO:
DeleteSo long as I reject the hyper-skepticism of Scott, I'm bound to use the only remaining weapon in my explanatory epistemological arsenal - INDUCTION. Thus, so long as I refuse Scott's hyper-skepticism (and I do), I can't avoid the corollary of a Designer.
Scott sees half of the picture. He just misses the other half. Because he, too, can NOT live as a CONSCIOUS radical skeptic. But everything he says IMPLIES that "knowledge" is indistinguishable from "non-knowledge."
Jeff,
DeleteSo long as I reject the hyper-skepticism of Scott, I'm bound to use the only remaining weapon in my explanatory epistemological arsenal - INDUCTION. Thus, so long as I refuse Scott's hyper-skepticism (and I do), I can't avoid the corollary of a Designer.
Could you sketch out the line of inductive reasoning which indicates a designer is directly the cause of the diversity of life on earth ? Thanks
Jeff: IOW, Scott is right, IMO, to think induction is worthless if there is no Designer of the "order" we mentally create by inductive criteria.
DeleteInduction doesn't work because it doesn't actually provide guidance, in practice. Period.
In any sequence of observations, many things have continued unbroken, yet we do not assume all of them will continue unbroken because they have been observed to do so in the past.
See Hume's problem of induction.
From what I can gather, you're assuming only some observations will continue, not based on observations themselves, but because of the explanatory framework of a designer having designed specific unbroken series of observations to continue, but not others. "That's just what God must have wanted"
But, as I keep pointing out, that's not induction because "That's just what God must have wanted" isn't out there in singular observations us to observe. It was never input though our senses via experience.
This is why I asked where basic beliefs come from. If not through experience, and not as conjectures, then what is their origin?
We conjecture explanations about how the world works, then extrapolate observations using all of those explanatory frameworks. The explanation comes first, regardless of how shallow, parochial and poorly criticized they are.
However, as a Fallibilist, I'm open to explanations of how it's possible to extrapolate observations without first putting them into an explanatory framework. Please be specific.
V: Could you sketch out the line of inductive reasoning which indicates a designer is directly the cause of the diversity of life on earth ? Thanks
DeleteJ: I don't know anyone that believes that "a designer is directly the cause of the diversity of life on earth" except those that believe in creatio-continua. But they believe a designer is directly the cause of the ALL material motion. I don't think many people hold that view, but I could be wrong.
Scott: In any sequence of observations, many things have continued unbroken, yet we do not assume all of them will continue unbroken because they have been observed to do so in the past.
DeleteJ: Straw man. An inductive criteria is explanatory breadth. Analogies are not fool-proof. They're contradicted by experience in many cases. We continue to use those that "work" over some domain of space and time for solving problems. But Scott, you have to actually REMEMBER to know there's ever been a "problem," "solution," "failure," "past experience."
Hume ended up a virtual radical skeptic. So using Hume is of no avail. He finally saw the logical implications of the rejection of inductive relative plausibility criteria. In that sense, he was QUITE slow, and yet MUCH faster than you.
Scott: But, as I keep pointing out, that's not induction because "That's just what God must have wanted" isn't out there in singular observations us to observe. It was never input though our senses via experience.
J: Straw man. A corollary is NOT an observation.
Scott: This is why I asked where basic beliefs come from. If not through experience,
J: All human beliefs are OCCASIONED by experience, but they are not all observed. For example, we NEVER observe that events are caused. That's a category that is apparently naturally caused.
Scott: and not as conjectures, then what is their origin?
J: Origin? How can anyone explain their origin? We can only remember our experience and try to determine what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of other things.
Scott: We conjecture explanations about how the world works, then extrapolate observations using all of those explanatory frameworks. The explanation comes first, regardless of how shallow, parochial and poorly criticized they are.
J: You don't know that there ARE observations, Scott. For you INSIST that such "memories" are only a-plausibly believed.
Scott: However, as a Fallibilist,
J: You claim fallibilism is no more plausible than the alternative conceivable options. So who cares what you are? You have nothing to offer, by your own admission. You, like Hume, are just taking an absurdly long time to figure that out.
Jeff: So long as I reject the hyper-skepticism of Scott...
DeleteLet me remind you yet again, you're the one claiming we cannot make progress, not I.
Jeff: ... I'm bound to use the only remaining weapon in my explanatory epistemological arsenal - INDUCTION.
And, everyone knows that the only epistemological weapons that exist are the ones that happen to be in your epistemological arsenal, right?
Jeff: Thus, so long as I refuse Scott's hyper-skepticism (and I do), I can't avoid the corollary of a Designer.
Which is again, parochial.
Scott sees half of the picture. He just misses the other half. Because he, too, can NOT live as a CONSCIOUS radical skeptic. But everything he says IMPLIES that "knowledge" is indistinguishable from "non-knowledge."
I'm only seeing have the picture? I'm missing the other half?
See the above paragraph about the "only" epistemological weapons in your arsenal.
Scott: Let me remind you yet again, you're the one claiming we cannot make progress, not I.
DeleteJ: Not only is that demonstrably false, but you're sure you even remember in the first place.
Scott: Which is again, parochial.
J: Yes, well logic is a constraining thing. Second, without foundationalism that rules out parochial truths, you're making charge that can't possibly have any known relevance. Remember (of course I know you don't, but ...), ALL beliefs are equally A-plausible per you--and that includes the belief that a parochial view point is false merely because it's parochial.
It just dawned on me, the reason why you can't remember that you've already said ALL beliefs are equally a-plausible -- including the belief that a parochial belief is false -- is because you don't ACTUALLY remember! DUH! What was I thinking????!!!!!!
DeleteScott: Induction doesn't work because it doesn't actually provide guidance, in practice. Period.
DeleteScott: In any sequence of observations, many things have continued unbroken, yet we do not assume all of them will continue unbroken because they have been observed to do so in the past.
Jeff: Straw man. An inductive criteria is explanatory breadth. Analogies are not fool-proof. They're contradicted by experience in many cases.
If, by the above, you mean theories are derived from observations, that's inductivism. Otherwise, it's unclear how this doesn't represent an attempt to defend inductivism by merely choosing to call conjectures controlled by criticism, "induction".
Jeff: Hume ended up a virtual radical skeptic. So using Hume is of no avail.
Using Hume?
I referenced Hume because he is credited with formally *stating* the problem. Furthermore, he suggested that even if induction were proved unreliable, we would still have to rely on it. That's not radical skepticism. However, I'm not saying we must be radical skeptics or that we cannot make progress. The latter is your claim, not mine. Rather, I'm suggesting that Popper *solved* the problem of induction. However, Popper's solution conflicts with your concept of knowledge, how it grows, etc.
It's these very same concepts are the subject of the field of epistemology, which you either deny or ignore.
Jeff: But Scott, you have to actually REMEMBER to know there's ever been a "problem," "solution," "failure," "past experience."
DeleteAnd I'm confused? Again, that we actually have memories is a hard to vary assertion about reality. You cannot vary it without significantly reducing it's ability to explain phenomena, such as our ability to solve problems. As such, it's a good explanation, which we adopt. This is in contrast to shallow, easily varied explanations, which are bad. Furthermore, that we actually have memories is implied in nearly all of our current, best explanatory theories. However, "X might be false" is a bad criticism because it's equally applicable to all theories.
For example, unless you've somehow managed to prove that we have memories, that conclusion might be false. Have you proven we actually have memories?
Scott: But, as I keep pointing out, that's not induction because "That's just what God must have wanted" isn't out there in singular observations us to observe. It was never input though our senses via experience.
Jeff: Straw man. A corollary is NOT an observation.
A corollary is not induction. That's my point.
Scott: This is why I asked where basic beliefs come from. If not through experience,
Jeff: All human beliefs are OCCASIONED by experience, but they are not all observed. For example, we NEVER observe that events are caused. That's a category that is apparently naturally caused.
You're making vague distinctions. If by "OCCASIONED" you mean caused, no one has formulated a principle of induction that actually works, in practice. New observations indicate problems, but do not cause the specific contents of theories of how to solve them.
Again, you're still conflating natural behavior for people, conjecturing explanations, with the resulting explanation being natural.
Furthermore, as you've pointed out, any piece of evidence is compatible with many explanatory theories. This includes an infinite number that have yet to be proposed. As such, evidence can't prove a theory or make it more probable, because it could be also be compatible with all those other theories. This potential compatablity is something we cannot take into account in when making probability calculations.
in addition, probabilities can only be assigned in light of an explanation which tells us where the numbers come from. However, those numbers can't be probabilities of that explanation itself. For example, Cornelius' claim that Neo-Dariwnism is scientifically unlikely given it's own calculations makes this same mistake.
Induction does not explain what we should observe or why we should observe it since, under inductiivsm, all you have to start out with is observations. Even then, observations are themselves conjectures about what happened in a specific area of space and time, so they can't be used to prove anything or make them more probable either.
Scott: and not as conjectures, then what is their origin?
J: Origin? How can anyone explain their origin? We can only remember our experience and try to determine what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of other things.
And I'm the skeptic?
Jeff: You don't know that there ARE observations, Scott. For you INSIST that such "memories" are only a-plausibly believed.
Refusing to accept your loaded definition of plausible does't mean I think we do not have actual memories.
Jeff: You claim fallibilism is no more plausible than the alternative conceivable options.
See above.
Jeff: It just dawned on me, the reason why you can't remember that you've already said ALL beliefs are equally a-plausible -- including the belief that a parochial belief is false -- is because you don't ACTUALLY remember! DUH! What was I thinking????!!!!!!
DeleteAgain, refusing to accept your loaded definition of plausible does't mean I think we do not have actual memories.
Your definition of plausible is parochial.
Jeff: IOW, Scott is right, IMO, to think induction is worthless if there is no Designer of the "order" we mentally create by inductive criteria.
DeleteHow does the this supposed designer know anything? What designer creates the "order" that your designer needs to assume he has memories, etc.?
IOW, this isn't a solution at all because it doesn't actually solve anything. Rather, it just pushes the problem into some inexplicable realm.
Oh, that's right, you think it solves the problem because you hold the epistemological view that knowledge in specific spheres comes from authoritative sources. But that's parochial, as it denies or ignores all other forms of epistemology.
Scott: How does the this supposed designer know anything?
DeleteJ: That's not a fair question unless you think you must prove that you know something to actually know something. But that's logically impossible because it's circular. Certain of our NATURALLY-FORMED beliefs (one of which is that we know, since to affirm any predicate of any subject is to IMPLY we know or believe with certitude, and we can't NOT affirm predicates of subjects) are never rejected by us. We don't prove them, because they ARE naturally-formed. And the axioms OF voluntary discursive thought are ALSO naturally-formed. So all we ever do, when we're being rational, is voluntarily directing discursive thought (i.e., deduction using inductive criteria) to conclusions, using SOME naturally-formed/caused beliefs as PREMISES.
Since you deny there are such things as naturally-formed/caused beliefs, like apparent memories, categories, etc, you can't even get off the ground. You can't know ANYTHING since you are correct that your approach renders ALL beliefs equally a-plausible, including the belief that a parochial belief is problematic. You can't even KNOW if there's a problem of ANY KIND if you don't ACTUALLY naturally REMEMBER!
You see, Scott, no one can prove an epistemology is true. But yours isn't even logically possible or intelligible. If you can't actually remember naturally, you couldn't even know you've ever explained, criticized, defined, observed, or anything like that. For those processes take TIME, which necessitates the existence of ACTUAL memory to know you've performed those processes.
My view could be wrong, but it's conceivable and it grounds the intelligibility of warranted belief and knowledge such that they are distinguishable from NON-warranted belief and NON-knowledge. Yours doesn't even do THAT! IOW, yours is CLEARLY worthless. Mine merely MIGHT be worthless if, in fact, we don't actually remember after all, etc.
IOW, mine is tentative. Yours is sheer non-sense. Apart from the memory problem, one can't intelligibly CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE to believe one has the capacity to choose, e.g. That's a logical impossibility. So to cling to that idiocy, you have to go even further into the abyss and deny the validity of the law of non-contradiction. When you've finished your exhaustive war against foundationalism, you can't even make a MOVE without being contradictory.
Keep trying to make sense of that non-sense if you want. But you'll NEVER get most scientists to publicly avow it until we're in a tyrannical regime where they are cohorts with the powers that be and, therefore, don't depend on the consent of the governed for funding.
Scott: If, by the above, you mean theories are derived from observations, that's inductivism.
DeleteJ: Define "observation." Do you mean by it that you are passively (non-voluntarily) receiving VALID information about other beings? That would be a species of foundationalism. So surely you don't mean that. But what kind of information is there other than VALID information? You're either being INFORMED, or NOT. But if you're being informed passively/naturally, then you're not CHOOSING that information. You just ARE experiencing "matter of fact" beliefs that are caused NATURALLY! If we use those beliefs as premises in our voluntary deductions, that's FOUNDATIONALISM!
I assure you that if Popper denied foundationalism, he didn't solve the problem of induction. He became a man for whom ALL belief is intuition/personal credulity, just like you. Reason, then, is just intuitions strung more tightly than normal in a shorter temporal sequence with the concurrent illusion of voluntary, discursive regulation.
Scott: Again, refusing to accept your loaded definition of plausible does't mean I think we do not have actual memories.
DeleteJ: Yes, if by "think" you mean "believe independent of plausibility." Define evidence such that it has nothing to do with the conventional meaning of plausibility. That will get us somewhere, maybe.
But if you're just going to crawfish like you did with the definition of "information," don't waste our time. I know what it means when you refuse to define a term. ;)
DeleteScott: Even then, observations are themselves conjectures about what happened in a specific area of space and time, so they can't be used to prove anything or make them more probable either.
DeleteJ:
con·jec·ture
noun
1. the formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof.
2. an opinion or theory so formed or expressed; guess; speculation.
Exactly. A conjecture is a speculation without sufficient evidence (of the kind normal people believe in) to convince anyone. So you're not convinced there are ACTUAL observations. So we can't ever even GET to knowledge THAT observations are being EXPLAINED. Or that observations constitute a problem. You can't even GET OFF THE GROUND!!
You're FOREVER stuck at IGNORANCE about everything you think about. Maybe we all are, Scott. But you CERTAINLY are. And if you're right at least about your profound ignorance, then all your pontifications about "parochial this" and "parochial that" are just OTHER ignoramous pontifications. That's all your indicative mood statements ARE -- mere ignoramous pontifications! Why in the world do you think CH would give a squat what you say given your self-avowed ignorance of everything but your own ignorance?
Cutting to the chase...
DeleteJeff: Since you deny there are such things as naturally-formed/caused beliefs, like apparent memories,
From the comment you apparently ignored above ...
Scott: So, if someone conjectured a better explanation or criticism we could not relinquish a natural belief?
But what about something like, the two tables illusion?
Is that illusion not a natural belief since it returns when the remove the line? Have we not found a way to criticize that belief with the lines themselves?
Again, if you...
- Have a criteria for what a natural belief is
- Belief X withstands that criticism for it's natural status
- You therefore adopt belief X as having natural status
... then you've adopted the idea that has best withstood criticism.
For example, would you say the two tables illusion isn't a natural belief because it doesn't withstand criticism of the measuring lines?
In the case of the illusion, when we conjecture and apply the criticism of the lines, it does not survive criticism. At which point, that belief is no longer accepted as basic.
I don't deny the contents of those beliefs. I'm saying that you're conflating the "basic" behavior of people to conjecture theories, with assigning the status of those beliefs as "basic". You're confused about why you adopt ideas.
Or, to use a cliche, you can't see the forrest for the trees, even when I repeatedly point out to you than you're deep in it.
Specifically, your conclusion that any belief is basic, in practice, hinges on you not having a criticism of that belief, right? Otherwise, how do you determine what is or is not a basic belief?
After all, as you indicated, you do not have any criticism of the idea that we actually have memories, beyond that they might be false. But, as I've pointed out, that's a bad criticism because it's applicable to al ideas, even those you deem natural/basic.
IOW, you still haven't differentiated what you call foundationalism from conjecture and criticism.
On one hand, you keep describing conjecture and criticism, in practice. Yet, at the same time, deny that's what you actually doing.
Jeff: IOW, Scott is right, IMO, to think induction is worthless if there is no Designer of the "order" we mentally create by inductive criteria.
DeleteScott: How does the this supposed designer know anything? What designer creates the "order" that your designer needs to assume he has memories, etc.?
J: That's not a fair question unless you think you must prove that you know something to actually know something.
You're putting words in my mouth.
To be specific, what naturally formed beliefs does your designer not reject that acts as his foundation? Surely, if knowledge isn't necessary, yet said designer can actually create order, it seems anything it supposedly knows cannot obtain without a foundation.
So I'm at a loss as to how you could possibly think a designer is the solution you're claiming it is.
Oh, that's right. You've adopted the idea that that knowledge in specific spheres comes from authoritative sources. That explains it.
Jeff: But if you're just going to crawfish like you did with the definition of "information," don't waste our time. I know what it means when you refuse to define a term. ;)
DeleteScott: See here.
Still waiting for you to fill in those definitions.
Jeff: Exactly. A conjecture is a speculation without sufficient evidence (of the kind normal people believe in) to convince anyone.
DeleteFor the umtheent time, it's conjecture *and* criticism, not just conjecture. Just like it's variation *and* selection. Funny how people here just so happen to keep omitting the latter, despite being corrected over and over again.
Why do you think that might be? Are you sure you actually have memories?
Scott: For the umtheent time, it's conjecture *and* criticism, not just conjecture. Just like it's variation *and* selection. Funny how people here just so happen to keep omitting the latter, despite being corrected over and over again.
DeleteJ: For the umteenth time, your CRITERIA itself is merely CONJECTURED, so NO, it's ONLY CONJECTURE!!!!!!!! It's conjecture all the way down, which is logically impossible for a finite human to do. Infinite regresses are impossible for finite humans. Thus, your epistemology is incoherent/unintelligible. It posits that which can not be conceived. Once you deny foundationalism EVEN for the criteria, you have NOTHING!
Scott: what naturally formed beliefs does your designer not reject that acts as his foundation?
DeleteJ: For induction to be valid AS a set of criteria, the designer can not have false beliefs. And one need not posit that the designer is free in thought at all, as we are. The designer's freedom need only be the freedom to create or not for those creations where creating is the foregoing of some other kind of satisfaction. A free choice requires, for its intelligibility, mutually exclusive desires from which to choose.
Scott: Surely, if knowledge isn't necessary, yet said designer can actually create order, it seems anything it supposedly knows cannot obtain without a foundation.
J: What do you mean "knowledge isn't necessary?" That knowledge isn't natural? Or isn't necessary for some event to occur? And if so, what/which event/events?
In general, an epistemological foundation is a necessary and sufficient condition of some specific knowledge. As such, off the top of my head, something like a mutual feedback system between 2 or more entities seems to be necessary to account for infinite causality into the past involving knowledge.
... and, Scott, when I say a benevolent/competent designer is the corollary of the VALIDITY of inductive relative plausibility criteria, I'm also saying a b/c designer is the corollary of the VALIDITY of ANY criteria used in ANY criticism. It's just that I know that criticisms used by scientists (when they aren't being metaphysically arbitrary and, therefore, UTTERLY a-plausible) ARE inductive criteria.
DeleteConsequently, there's at least one thing (maybe more) the designer must know (if inductive criteria are valid) that we can only recognize as a corollary. We can't EXPLAIN it. But no one can explain ad infinitum any way. There is ALWAYS finality to human explanation.
You can use criteria arbitrarily all day long. But by your so-called non-parochial approach, even YOU admit your criteria isn't knowably VALID. My approach isn't PROVEABLY valid, but if I know ANYTHING at all by CRITERIA, I know my criteria is VALID. There's no other logically intelligible possibility. And that implies foundationalism.
Jeff: J: For the umteenth time, your CRITERIA itself is merely CONJECTURED, so NO, it's ONLY CONJECTURE!!!!!!!!
DeleteWow. You just made the very same mistake. It would merely be conjecture if it wasn't criticized, Jeff.
Not even sure why I should bother anymore.
Jeff: Once you deny foundationalism EVEN for the criteria, you have NOTHING!
Yet, you keep ignoring the contents of this comment.
Again, you keep *describing*, in practice, is conjecture and criticism. Yet, at the same time, deny that's what your actually doing.
Jeff: For induction to be valid AS a set of criteria...
For the sake of argument, let's what you call foundationalism isn't actually conjecture and criticism, which you say is necessary for us to actually have memories, etc. But that's only half the problem. *At every step*, not just starting from basic beliefs, inductivism supposedly moves from the less specific to the more specific. Where does the more specific come from, if it's not "out there" for us to observe?
So, even if we ignore the problem of Foundationalism, inductivism still doesn't actually provide guidance, in practice.
Not to mention that having basic beliefs and non-basic beliefs is non-parsimonious. Conjecture and criticism describes both scenarios, in practice.
Jeff: You can use criteria arbitrarily all day long. But by your so-called non-parochial approach, even YOU admit your criteria isn't knowably VALID.
Anything can be wrong, Jeff. So, again, that's a bad criticism because it's applicable to anything. You can't make progress though criticism that is applicable to everything because everything fails that criticism.
Apparently, you not have much experience with solving problems, or you've decided to partition that experience when it comes to specific spheres of knowledge.
Jeff: My approach isn't PROVEABLY valid, but if I know ANYTHING at all by CRITERIA, I know my criteria is VALID.
At which point, you've watered down Justificationism to the point that it's comparable with conjecture and criticism.
Jeff: There's no other logically intelligible possibility. And that implies foundationalism.
The claim we cannot know anything with a foundation is foundationiasm, Jeff. You're not telling us anything new that makes your conclusion less parochial.
Jeff: My approach isn't PROVEABLY valid, but if I know ANYTHING at all by CRITERIA, I know my criteria is VALID.
DeleteScott: At which point, you've watered down Justificationism to the point that it's comparable with conjecture and criticism.
J: Except that you can't meaningfully say that any criticism IS known to be valid. All belief, per your approach, is a-plausible. That's why you're not understanding the purpose of this site. This site is arguing against people who say that naturalistic UCA is not only plausible, but VERY plausible.
Scott: The claim we cannot know anything with a foundation is foundationiasm, Jeff. You're not telling us anything new that makes your conclusion less parochial.
J: And your view has no knowably VALID criticism of parochial views. So why would I care about that worthless criticism? Amazingly enough, it's the supposedly non-parochial ones who want to suppress dissent. And this, per you, when all beliefs/hypotheses/ideas/etc are equally a-plausible in the first place. Unbelievable. Seeing's how they have no warrant for their beliefs/hypotheses/etc, are they just tyrannical haters for suppressing dissenting criticism or what?
Scott: At which point, you've watered down Justificationism to the point that it's comparable with conjecture and criticism.
DeleteJeff: Except that you can't meaningfully say that any criticism IS known to be valid. All belief, per your approach, is a-plausible.
First, that's the same stramwan you keep repeating, despite having pointed out your definition of plausible is parochial, then specifically filling in the gap with "having withstood significant criticism". Again, your "strategy" is to ignore the distinction I've made and merely keep using the same term as if I hadn't clarified anything.
Second, I've already referenced criticisms of the assumed definitions of plausible you keep using. Specifically, criticisms of the validity of induction, probability, etc. Yet, you keep saying the only way we can account for the validity (?) of induction is though an intelligent designer.
From this article….
That our senses often fail us is a truism; and our self-critical culture has long ago made us familiar with the fact that we can make mistakes of reasoning too. But the type of fallibility that I want to discuss here would be all-pervasive even if our senses were as sharp as the Hubble Telescope and our minds were as logical as a computer. It arises from the way in which our ideas about reality connect with reality itself—how, in other words, we can create knowledge, and how we can fail to.
IOW, the problem with induction is independent of any problems with Foundationalism.
Jeff: That's why you're not understanding the purpose of this site. This site is arguing against people who say that naturalistic UCA is not only plausible, but VERY plausible.
Again, this depends on why we find theories worthy of applause. Popper's work addresses this very issue, which includes what scientist do in practice, verses their subjective experience.
And, as I've pointed out, Modus Ponens arguments can be reformulated as Modus Tollans arguments At which point, Darwinism has withstood significant criticism via empirical observations. Furthermore, any UCA history is conjectured with the explicit goal of being found in error. That's how we make progress. We start out knowing any specific UCA history is a conjecture, so we know we will find errors in it when criticized by empirical observations. Again, finding errors is how we make progress.
The idea that we shouldn't find errors in our theories is unreasonable unless you assume we do not start out with conjectures, that there are infallible sources of knowledge or that we should be able to derive theories from observations without first putting them into an explanatory framework.
So, Cornelius' argument is parochial because it assumes a specific philosophy of science, theory of knowledge, etc. but doesn't explicitly disclose this. Rather, he depends on his target audience implicit sharing that position.
IOW, I'm suggesting the actual underlying conflict is epistemological in nature. Theism, in the majority of cases, is based on a specific epistemology.
Scott: At which point, Darwinism has withstood significant criticism via empirical observations.
DeleteJ: By your view, you don't know it has withstood criticism. Because you don't believe that you could know that you remember. For crying out loud, Scott, how many times do we have to cover this ground before you finally quit lying like a DOG!
Furthermore, it HAS withstood LOTS of criticism simply because:
1) Induction has been rejected as a criteria applicable to biological origins, leaving us with NO rational criteria by which to criticize it,
AND
2) No one has yet stated WHAT criteria would cause us TO reject it. It can't, therefore BUT withstand criticism. In that sense, not only is it NOT "worthy" of "applause," but it's the ULTIMATE metaphysical dogmatism propped up by the State(s). Only weak-minded fideists wo can't think for themselves VOLUNTARILY believe what is void of inductive evidence.
Jeff: By your view, you don't know it has withstood criticism. Because you don't believe that you could know that you remember.
Deletelet me correct that for you, Jeff:
Under Foundationalism, you don't know it has withstood criticism. Because, Under Foundationalism, I don't believe that you could know that you remember.
But, the funny thing is, you keep describing conjecture and criticism. On one hand, you keep describing a train moving down the tracks yet, on the other hand, deny that it's even left the station.
And I'm the one that's confused?
Jeff: For crying out loud, Scott, how many times do we have to cover this ground before you finally quit lying like a DOG!
Lying about what Jeff? Having adopted the idea that I have memories?
Jeff: Furthermore, it HAS withstood LOTS of criticism simply because:
1) Induction has been rejected as a criteria applicable to biological origins, leaving us with NO rational criteria by which to criticize it,
You mean, as a Foundationalist, you're left with no "rational" criticism?
Jeff: 2) No one has yet stated WHAT criteria would cause us TO reject it. It can't, therefore BUT withstand criticism. In that sense, not only is it NOT "worthy" of "applause," but it's the ULTIMATE metaphysical dogmatism propped up by the State(s).
So, you've read Popper's works and found no methodical criticism there? You've read references and paraphrasing from other Popperians, such as Bartlly, Deutsch, etc. and found no criticism there either?
For example, what about this article I've referenced before?
Jeff: Only weak-minded fideists wo can't think for themselves VOLUNTARILY believe what is void of inductive evidence.
I'm a fideists because you can't recognize your conception of human knowledge is an idea that is subject to criticism?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteV: Could you sketch out the line of inductive reasoning which indicates a designer is directly the cause of the diversity of life on earth ? Thanks
ReplyDeleteJ: I don't know anyone that believes that "a designer is directly the cause of the diversity of life on earth" except those that believe in creatio-continua. But they believe a designer is directly the cause of the ALL material motion. I don't think many people hold that view, but I could be wrong.
--------------
Huh? What? You weren't asked what other people believe.
What do you mean by "ALL material motion"?
And hey jeff, are you saying that you don't believe that 'yhwh' directly designed-created all of the living things, or at least all 'kinds', on Earth?
Since the other question scares you, try this one:
Could you sketch out your line of inductive reasoning that verifies or even indicates that the so-called god (yhwh-satan-jesus-holy-ghost-angels-etc.) that you've chosen to believe in, worship, and promote actually exists and was/is the direct or indirect cause-designer-creator of ANYTHING that pertains to this universe and this planet?
TWT: Could you sketch out your line of inductive reasoning that verifies or even indicates that the ...
ReplyDeleteJ: A competent/sympathetic designer (or designers) is a COROLLARY of the VALIDITY of induction. The designer is NOT a CONCLUSION of inductive inference. The only way induction can have validity is if events are caused and there is finality to explanation of THIS world/cosmos/order that we are part of. Only teleology fits that bill. A libertarianly-caused origin event of the cosmos/world/order is what frees us from having an infinite set of causes into infinity past. And the principle of causality requires THAT there is an infinite past of causes.
TWT: Could you sketch out your line of inductive reasoning that verifies or even indicates that the ...
DeleteJ: Blah, blah, blah...
Jeff, are you incapable of answering a question?
The question was: "Could you sketch out your line of inductive reasoning that verifies or even indicates that the so-called god (yhwh-satan-jesus-holy-ghost-angels-etc.) that you've chosen to believe in, worship, and promote actually exists and was/is the direct or indirect cause-designer-creator of ANYTHING that pertains to this universe and this planet?"
If you can't answer the question, would you have the courage to admit it?
Pedant, I answered the question. Inductive criteria like parsimony, explanatory breadth, etc have no meaning unless explanations are finite. On the other hand, if there are uncaused events, nothing is knowable in terms of explanations. Because if events can be uncaused, we could never know if an event IS caused to know there IS an explanation for any event.
DeleteBut once you combine causality with the finitude of explanation, teleology is the only explanation OF the ordered system we call "the world" that renders induction VALID. Scott is right that once you become so "non-parochial" that you allow for atheism, induction gets you nowhere.
On the other hand, nothing else does either. For at that point, there is no NATURALLY-knowable criteria by which to render any belief more or less plausible/probable than any other (just like Scott admits)--even for knowing whether we remember or whether the law of non-contradiction is valid. Scott claims that progress is substituting one set of utterly a-plausible beliefs for another, even though he can't claim to remember that's ever occurred with any plausibility. IOW, Scott's utterly epistemological bankrupt epistemology really IS all that's left once you deny teleology. Plantinga, C.S. Lewis, Noah Porter, and others have made the same argument. And no one has shown them wrong.
Teleology is not proveable, but it allows for a way to explain how we DISTINGUISH between what most people (if you grant the existence of other people, etc, for the sake of doing the relevant analysis) call warranted belief and unwarranted belief. Scott's view can't even do THAT! Scott INSISTS that believing there is another mind than his own is an unwarranted and UTTERLY a-plausible belief.
Pedant is right, jeff. You printed a lot of words that were not responsive to the question.
DeleteAmong other gibberish, you said:
"Teleology is not proveable, but it allows for a way..."
In other words, making shit up is so much easier than actually looking for and accepting evidence of reality, and believing in, worshiping, and pushing an imaginary so-called god and the associated, ridiculous, impossible fairy tales is really good for your 'I ain't no monkey!' inflated ego.
Do you ever really stop and think about how asinine religious fairy tales are? Do you ever get tired of trying to find ways to avoid reality? What on Earth is so messed up in your life that you so desperately need a religious crutch?
TWT: In other words, making shit up is so much easier than actually looking for and accepting evidence of reality,
DeleteJ: Scott is right that per atheism (you know, the non-parochial metaphysics?) there is no such thing as "positive" evidence. It's just the Scott doesn't realize that without "positive" evidence, phrases like "best explanations" have precisely zero intelligible meaning. "Best" how? And "best" for who? "Best" in what sense? Scott has no answer. He can't even remember anything. He has to literally "make up" that he remembers.
Pedant, I answered the question.
ReplyDeleteBaloney. You printed a lot words that were not responsive to the question.
Where did you provide the line of reasoning that leads to the conclusion that your god is the ultimate cause of ANYTHING?
I don't see the word "god" in any of your postings on this thread. So do you have a point?
Pedant: Where did you provide the line of reasoning that leads to the conclusion that your god is the ultimate cause of ANYTHING?
ReplyDeleteJ: God is not posited to be the ultimate cause of ANYTHING. All free-will agents act as ULTIMATE causes of the teleological causal chains they voluntarily set in motion. One could say that a created free-will agent could not have caused thus apart from being created, but that's a different question. God is posited to be the ultimate cause of the order of the system we inductively infer in the sense that the VALIDITY of induction is only conceivable if inductivism is teleological in nature. Otherwise, Scott is right that all belief is equally a-plausible. This is the very argument of Plantinga and others before him.
Apparently Popper couldn't see that his approach doesn't provide for a way to distinguish between belief that is "knowledge" and belief that is NOT "knowledge." But maybe he agreed with Scott's position, that knowledge isn't even a species of belief. Per Scott, knowledge doesn't even require consciousness. But then the question is this: how can there be a "problem" if there is no consciousness? I can't see how an unconscious entity can have a problem. But then Scott probably doesn't define problem the way normal people do, either.
Jeff: God is posited to be the ultimate cause of the order of the system we inductively infer in the sense that the VALIDITY of induction is only conceivable if inductivism is teleological in nature.
DeleteIs induction a basic belief? If so, by what criteria? Where do basic beliefs come from, if not observations?
Furthermore, wouldn't your acceptance of anything as a basic belief be the result of you having no criticisms of that belief? If you had a criticism of that belief, wouldn't you conclude it wasn't basic?
But that is compatible with conjecture and criticism.
Jeff: Otherwise, Scott is right that all belief is equally a-plausible. This is the very argument of Plantinga and others before him.
Except, for the umpteenth time, I'm not suggesting that a beliefs are equally a-plausible, Jeff.
All theories are equally a-probable because there are an infinite number of un-conceived explanations that are compatible with the same observations. As such, we can't account for those possibilities in some kind of calculus of probability.
All theories are equally potentially a-true because we cannot prove they are true or probably true.
All theories are equally a-justified, a-warranted, etc. since anything you my try to justify them with would also need to be justified, warranted, etc. But this results in an infinite regress.
All theories are equally a-inductive because induction doesn't provide any guidance. Such arguments move from less specific to more specific and we get more out than we put in.
However, some conjectured solutions to the same problem are more plausible (worthy of applause) because they have withstood more criticism than others.
Jeff: Apparently Popper couldn't see that his approach doesn't provide for a way to distinguish between belief that is "knowledge" and belief that is NOT "knowledge."
Apparently, you've Popper's book Objective Knowledge so you know he didn't provide such a way?
Jeff: But maybe he agreed with Scott's position, that knowledge isn't even a species of belief. Per Scott, knowledge doesn't even require consciousness. But then the question is this: how can there be a "problem" if there is no consciousness?
Your conscious intention to solve problem X doesn't necessarily result in you actually solving problem X. For example, if you thought you received the plans for a car, but received the plans for a truck instead, does that mean following those plans would result in a car? No, it doesn't. Furthermore, have you ever unintentionally solved one problem while trying to solve another?
It's in this sense that knowledge is objective, as it is independent of anyone's consciousness. See Popper's though experiment on knowledge summarized above.
Jeff: I can't see how an unconscious entity can have a problem. But then Scott probably doesn't define problem the way normal people do, either.
First, I'd again point out that you're implying that I'm merely pulling this out of my *ss. But I'm not. I'm agreeing with Popper's position based on his arguments, not as an authoritative source. IOW, I'm a Popperan. Furthermore, "Normal people" sounds like another appeal to basic beliefs.
Second, Darwinism is the theory that genetic variation, which is random *to any specific problem to solve*, along with natural selection results in the emergence of non-explanatory knowledge, which has a limited scope. On the other hand, only people can create explanatory knowledge by conjecturing hard to vary explanations in an attempt to solve specific problems. IOW, only explanatory knowledge requires the ability to conceive of specific problems.
jeff said:
Delete"God is not posited to be the ultimate cause of ANYTHING."
You're joking. You've got to be joking. Please tell me that you're joking.
Scott: However, some conjectured solutions to the same problem are more plausible (worthy of applause) because they have withstood more criticism than others.
DeleteJ: Worthy, huh? Define "worthy."
Scott: Apparently, you've Popper's book Objective Knowledge so you know he didn't provide such a way?
DeleteJ: If Popper thought it was equally probable as not that he couldn't remember, please define "information" in that epistemology.
Scott: It's in this sense that knowledge is objective, as it is independent of anyone's consciousness.
DeleteJ: Objectivity, per conventional language, IS independent of any PARTICULAR individual's consciousness. But it's NOT independent of consciousNESS. And that's your claim. But, Scott -- no consciousness, no sentience; no sentience, no problems. No-brainer stuff, Scott.
TWT: jeff said:
Delete"God is not posited to be the ultimate cause of ANYTHING."
You're joking. You've got to be joking. Please tell me that you're joking.
J: I was interpreting pedant to mean by anything, everything. God isn't the ultimate cause of every event. Other free-will beings are also ultimate causes of event sequences. By ultimate, I'm assuming he just means the initial cause in an event sequence with finality of explanation.
J: If Popper thought it was equally probable as not that he couldn't remember, please define "information" in that epistemology.
DeleteAgain, you're assuming the only criteria Popper could have had for adopting the idea that he had memories is probability.
Popper started out noticing problems with the way we though we adopted ideas, then conjectured ideas about what we actually do, in practice, then criticized those ideas.
Probability only works if you have a explanation from which the numbers actually come from. IOW, probability only works inside a theory that forbids things to happen, which gives you a known set of possible outcomes. Even then, there are other issues with probity, such as when you evaluate it, the order in which outcomes occur in a range of outcomes, etc.
"Everyone knows" we use probability isn't an argument.
Jeff: Objectivity, per conventional language, IS independent of any PARTICULAR individual's consciousness. But it's NOT independent of consciousNESS. And that's your claim. But, Scott -- no consciousness, no sentience; no sentience, no problems. No-brainer stuff, Scott.
DeleteConscious individuals are necessary for someone to concisely conceive of information. But that's a truism. Explanatory knowledge requires people, because people have made the leap to universal explainers.
Unintended consequences results in knowledge can be applicable to problems that knowledge did not evolve to solve.
When we guess conjecture X solves problem Y, it could also be the case that conjecture X solves problem Z. IOW, the fact that X is a conjectured solution means we not only do *not* know it solves X but that do not know it will *not* solve Z as well.
Again, have you never solved a problem you didn't intend to solve?
Scott: However, some conjectured solutions to the same problem are more plausible (worthy of applause) because they have withstood more criticism than others.
DeleteJ: Worthy, huh? Define "worthy."
If a "basic" belief withstand criticism (what your criteria is), do you not assume it is worthy of being a "basic" belief?
Jeff,
DeleteBut once you combine causality with the finitude of explanation, teleology is the only explanation OF the ordered system we call "the world" that renders induction VALID
Or one might just assume methodological naturalism, as easily
If we ignore how God actually knows how to bring about order without a foundation, the origin of his knowledge, etc., bringing about order seems like something one might conclude a sensible God would do.
DeleteHowever, if the term "sensible" does not constrain God's actions in any meaningful way, it's unclear why creating order would be someone a sensible God would do.
Having supposedly created the laws of physics himself, God could change them at any time in any way. Nor does he supposedly need them for himself to exist, reason about anything, etc.
Not to mention that Yahweh is depicted as experiencing regret over his actions, appears contradict himself, etc. You'd think everything else would be child's play compared to the laws of physics.
jeff said:
Delete"I was interpreting pedant to mean by anything, everything."
If you read what I wrote and then what Pedant wrote there's no good reason to interpret the word "ANYTHING" as "everything".
But now that you mention it, MANY people not only "posit" but INSIST that their chosen, so-called god causes/designs/creates "everything".
Here's my original request:
"Could you sketch out your line of inductive reasoning that verifies or even indicates that the so-called god (yhwh-satan-jesus-holy-ghost-angels-etc.) that you've chosen to believe in, worship, and promote actually exists and was/is the direct or indirect cause-designer-creator of ANYTHING that pertains to this universe and this planet?"
V: Jeff,
DeleteBut once you combine causality with the finitude of explanation, teleology is the only explanation OF the ordered system we call "the world" that renders induction VALID
Or one might just assume methodological naturalism, as easily
J: Exactly. One can admit that their beliefs have no intrinsic plausibility. They're just blind assumptions. That's what Scott does. He ASSUMES he remembers. He ASSUMES there's been a problem. He ASSUMES there's been a solution. He assumes he's assumed in the past. Because without memory, he can't even know he's ever assumed.
There's nothing plausible about these assumptions, he reminds us, but so what, he says? I respond, then why in the world do you care what CH or anyone else (assuming anyone besides Scott exists!) thinks? Especially since Scott doesn't believe he can know that he ACTUALLY remembers what CH has ever said (ASSUMING, of course, that CH even exists!).
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DeleteScott: However, if the term "sensible" does not constrain God's actions in any meaningful way, it's unclear why creating order would be someone a sensible God would do.
DeleteJ: This is why no theistic paradigm has any known value if it posits deities that aren't a corollary of the validity of induction, which implies that we are in the deity's image in the relevant senses. Again, people can't prove that they know anything. Rather, they can't HELP but believe certain propositions. And they can't HELP but choose to voluntarily reason. What they CAN help is to what END they reason UNTO. That is, they can voluntarily reason inductively, or they can reason more or less arbitrarily by picking and choosing when they allow inductive criteria to constrain their conclusions.
Regardless, human satisfaction per se is ALWAYS part and parcel of any voluntary activity. And voluntary human activity is TELEOLOGICAL activity.
Scott: Not to mention that Yahweh is depicted as experiencing regret over his actions, appears contradict himself, etc.
J: Even that particular view of the deity shows God as feeling regret at the way things turned out because of free-will, not because of nature. And even then, the deity is said to have started the voluntary world over (rebooted it, if you will), without recreating entities, rendering it once again possible to attain a "worth-while" end from the creational project. Thus, that particular view is consistent with the benevolent/competence of the deity that is pertinent to the VALIDITY of induction. No theistic metaphysics that doesn't include benevolence (sympathy) and competence as attributes of the deity or deities can account for the validity of induction.
But we don't start out trying to account for the validity of inductive criteria before applying them. We apply them as if they were obviously true and then realize, upon reflection, that they require benevolent/competent theism as a corollary to BE valid. This doesn't prove they ARE valid. But it doesn't matter at all. Because we can't cease to use them and reason via them with one another as if the other should recognize them AS valid, and therefore obligatory for worthwhile debate.
Furthermore, not only does your blind approach, Scott, not render explicable why you care what CH believes, it renders inexplicable why you think he would care that you disagree with him? Arbitrariness is arbitrariness, Scott. There are no RULES to that. Once one claims that beliefs are never knowably more or less plausible than one another, there's nothing to debate ABOUT!
DeleteScott: However, if the term "sensible" does not constrain God's actions in any meaningful way, it's unclear why creating order would be someone a sensible God would do.
DeleteJeff: This is why no theistic paradigm has any known value if it posits deities that aren't a corollary of the validity of induction, which implies that we are in the deity's image in the relevant senses.
So, which is it, Jeff? Can we say what a sensible God would do or can we not?
Remember, Evolution is supposedly religious because "evolutionists" cannot take religious claims of others about what God might or might not do seriously for the purpose of criticism. This implies that any claim that God is sensible does not contain God's actions in any meaningful way. This includes the idea that God might have some good reason to change the laws of physics for some "good reason" we simply cannot comprehend.
Again, God supposedly can reason, create order, etc., yet somehow doesn't need a foundation of order, knowledge that he has memories, etc. IOW, he can supposedly function in the absence of the very things you claim we need to function at all. So, God could change the laws of physics at any time and still supposedly be rational, etc. Nothing is necessary for God, including order in any sense. So, apparently, God will keep order not because it's necessary but because, "That's just what God must have wanted".
Furthermore, if we are somehow free from determinism in the classical sense and can survive physical death, deterioration, etc., then it's unclear how we apparently need these things either, as we will supposedly be without them at some point in future.
Jeff: Again, people can't prove that they know anything. Rather, they can't HELP but believe certain propositions.
Again, you're describing conjecture and criticism. People adopt explanations that have withstood the most criticism. They can't help but adopt explanations because they are impossible to vary without significantly impacting their ability to explain the phenomena in question. However, should someone conjecture an even better explanation that explains more phenomena and is at least equally hard to vary, they will adopt that instead.
People are universal explainers. We naturally conjecture explanations and criticize them. It happens, to some degree, on a subconscious level.
Jeff: Regardless, human satisfaction per se is ALWAYS part and parcel of any voluntary activity. And voluntary human activity is TELEOLOGICAL activity.
DeleteLong term Human satisfaction is based on explanations about how the world works, regardless of how shallow, poorly criticized, etc. However, as always, feel free to explain how it's possible to extrapolate observations without first putting them into an explanatory framework.
Jeff: No theistic metaphysics that doesn't include benevolence (sympathy) and competence as attributes of the deity or deities can account for the validity of induction.
Theism accounts for something that only subjectively appears to be a source of guidance, and does not withstand rational criticism? If induction is a myth, as per Popper's arguments, you're inventing solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Jeff: But we don't start out trying to account for the validity of inductive criteria before applying them. We apply them as if they were obviously true and then realize, upon reflection, that they require benevolent/competent theism as a corollary to BE valid. This doesn't prove they ARE valid. But it doesn't matter at all. Because we can't cease to use them and reason via them with one another as if the other should recognize them AS valid, and therefore obligatory for worthwhile debate.
And how have I been describing rational criticism from the beginging?
We start by take conjectured theories seriously, as if they were true in reality, along with the rest of our best, current theories, and that all observations should conform to them. That a theory survives criticism doesn't prove it is true or even probable. But we cannot know anything is true due to the problem of induction, etc. What we really want is solutions to problems, not providence.
How to communicate with each other represents a problem to solve. How we make progress is a problem to solve, etc.
Again, you're describing conjectures controlled by criticism. You refuse to see the forrest for the trees.
Jeff: Furthermore, not only does your blind approach, Scott, not render explicable why you care what CH believes, it renders inexplicable why you think he would care that you disagree with him?
DeleteMy approach isn't blind. We just have different goals. From this article….
Fallibilism, correctly understood, implies the possibility, not the impossibility, of knowledge, because the very concept of error, if taken seriously, implies that truth exists and can be found. The inherent limitation on human reason, that it can never find solid foundations for ideas, does not constitute any sort of limit on the creation of objective knowledge nor, therefore, on progress. The absence of foundation, whether infallible or probable, is no loss to anyone except tyrants and charlatans, because what the rest of us want from ideas is their content, not their provenance: If your disease has been cured by medical science, and you then become aware that science never proves anything but only disproves theories (and then only tentatively), you do not respond “oh dear, I’ll just have to die, then.”
Cornelius doesn't care if I disagree with him because I'm not his target audience. The argument he makes assumes he already shares the same epistemological view that we cannot make progress in specific spheres of knowledge. But in doing so he appeals to general purpose means of denying anything, not just evolution. At which point, you could deny that we've made progress in any field.
But, that's the fatal flaw in creationism. It's a form of creation denial, because some designer, "just was", complete with the knowledge of how to build every organism that has or could exist in the biosphere. Nothing new is genuinely created. The knowledge has always existed and some supernatural being is it's source.
But, that's a specific epistemological view, which happens to intersect with the overwhelming majority of all variants of theism.
Scott: Cornelius doesn't care if I disagree with him because I'm not his target audience.
DeleteJ: CH doesn't care what you think, Scott, because you admit that all your beliefs are neither more or less plausible than his. You're one confused puppy, dude.
Scott: Nothing new is genuinely created.
J: No. Free-will creatures cause GENUINE novelty. Because God can't foreknow the result of a genuinely free choice. The future is "open" in that sense, so long as there are libertarian free beings (including God).
Scott: My approach isn't blind. We just have different goals. From this article….
DeleteFallibilism, correctly understood, implies the possibility, not the impossibility, of knowledge, because the very concept of error, if taken seriously
J: Scott, do you know what the phrase "if taken seriously" means in your epistemology? Nothing! Because you don't claim to know you remember!!!!!!! Thus, you have no idea whether or not you've EVER taken ANYTHING seriously. That requires ACTUAL MEMORY, which you deny you can know exists.
Scott: People adopt explanations that have withstood the most criticism.
DeleteJ: No. They adopt explanations that withstand the criticism that THEY THEMSELVES apply to the explanation, regardless of how many other criticisms by other people have been made. Fideists apply ONE criteria. If it passes that one, they're done (of course, no one is consistent with true fideism, which means fideists are not only profoundly stupid, but UTTERLY irrational). Sane people apply inductive criteria. If it passes those, they're done until changing data sets, etc change the indications of the re-applied inductive criteria.
Jeff: Scott, do you know what the phrase "if taken seriously" means in your epistemology? Nothing! Because you don't claim to know you remember!!!!!!! Thus, you have no idea whether or not you've EVER taken ANYTHING seriously. That requires ACTUAL MEMORY, which you deny you can know exists.
DeleteApparently, you do think you "know" where basic beliefs come from, because you somehow think they allow you to actually "know" you have actually memories, or you've adopted the idea that you actually have memories because they have withstood your criterial for a basic belief. However, given the above, this still comes across as a criteria for something you "know" because you seem to think the criteria for being basic implies it comes from some other source you deem "knowable".
Otherwise, you have yet to make a material distinction from conjecture and criticism.
Again, where do basic beliefs come from if not conjectures? If you do not "know" where they come from then how exactly are the relevant in your "knowing" you have memories?
Jeff: No. They adopt explanations that withstand the criticism that THEY THEMSELVES apply to the explanation, regardless of how many other criticisms by other people have been made. Fideists apply ONE criteria. If it passes that one, they're done (of course, no one is consistent with true fideism, which means fideists are not only profoundly stupid, but UTTERLY irrational).
DeleteExcept, you've just described your response to the rational criticism of induction.
Jeff: Sane people apply inductive criteria. If it passes those, they're done until changing data sets, etc change the indications of the re-applied inductive criteria.
Again, as Popper pointed out, induction is a myth. It doesn't actually provide guidance. So, sane people assume induction provides guidance despite criticism to the contrary? Again, see above.
Scott: Nothing new is genuinely created.
DeleteJ: No. Free-will creatures cause GENUINE novelty. Because God can't foreknow the result of a genuinely free choice. The future is "open" in that sense, so long as there are libertarian free beings (including God).
Creationism, in regards to the biosphere, Jeff, not absolutely everything.
However, if God, for some good reason we cannot comprehend, decided to create the world we observe 30 seconds ago, then I wouldn't have authored the comment above. Rather, God would have. And the same could be said for everything else before the, including discoveries by Darwin, Einstein, Newton, etc. And since God supposedly "Just was", complete with all of that knowledge, none of it before then would have actually have been genuinely created.
Any knowledge that comes from such an authoritative source isn't genuinely created. And induction makes the same mistake as it assume you can derive theories from observations. They both share the same fatal flaw.
This is also why the current crop of ID *is* creationism in disguise and why the term creationism is misleadingly named.
Scott: Any knowledge that comes from such an authoritative source isn't genuinely created.
DeleteJ: What makes knowledge genuine?
Scott: And induction makes the same mistake as it assume you can derive theories from observations. They both share the same fatal flaw.
J: Then knowledge in the conventional sense is impossible. But no one believes that. So you're wrong.
Scott: This is also why the current crop of ID *is* creationism in disguise and why the term creationism is misleadingly named.
J: All induction is teleological induction. There is no other kind that has any conceivable way of being valid in any sense. On the other hand, give me a list of scientists denouncing ID that deny that there is positive evidence for naturalistic UCA? And that's why this discussion is moot. CH is arguing people who don't hold your radical skepticism.
Scott: Again, where do basic beliefs come from if not conjectures?
DeleteJ: The reverse question is the relevant one. How can you conjecture without concepts and criteria already existing in your mind? And if those aren't believed, how do inferences derived from them become believable? Or if they aren't believable, then absolutely NOTHING you say is believable to yourself. Including:
1) I recognize a problem
2) I exist
3) Solutions exist
4) Problems exist
5) and so on.
And you wonder why CH doesn't argue with you. What would be the point?
Scott said:
ReplyDelete"Is induction a basic belief? If so, by what criteria? Where do basic beliefs come from, if not observations?"
Bpragmatic responds:
Maybe it is time to attempt to bring Scott back to some sort of condition of logic that apparently is derived from, atleast what we think is, an observable perspective from what we think we are {from what I think is my experience, and assuming others have similar experiential "capabilities"}
So, that means let us put the discussion back to the NDE terms of "materialism" explains everything.
So let me "lob you" a {an apparant) softball, Scott.
"if not observations?"
The above was your statement. Please show how NDE, {taking for granted every physical condition that is required} developed the required "mechanisms" necessary to arrive at the ability to "observe", and also contemplate and come to "conclusions" regarding the required phenomena.
You are really a "babe" in the woods of phenomena you speculate regarding. You might want to reconsider your ignorance.
Darwinism is a cult or theology. Cells must appear fully formed and functional - or else there is no cell. Chicken and egg problems plague the cult of Darwin at all levels of biochemistry.
ReplyDeleteI am not a creationist, but I find it disturbing that people believe in the cult of evolution without looking objectively at bio-chemistry, the geological record and common-sense. Do they really believe that they evolved from a rose bush or a sponge ?
Quite sad and pathologically ill if they do.
Ignore the ravings of Darwin's cult and keep exposing them for what they are - non-scientists with a theology.
Craig Read August 15, 2013 at 4:51 AM
ReplyDeleteDarwinism is a cult or theology.
Whatever you mean by "Darwinism" might be. Evolutionary biology is a science.
Cells must appear fully formed and functional - or else there is no cell.
Irreducible complexity? Really?
Chicken and egg problems plague the cult of Darwin at all levels of biochemistry.
There are unanswered questions in all fields of science, not just biology. Unknown is just that, unknown. It's not God.
I am not a creationist,
Really? Then why are you using creationist terminology and arguments?
You wouldn't be indulging in that other creationist pastime, playing fast and loose with the Ninth Commandment, would you?
Do they really believe that they evolved from a rose bush or a sponge ?
No they don't, so why bring it up?
Quite sad and pathologically ill if they do.
Ah, a concern troll.
Ignore the ravings of Darwin's cult and keep exposing them for what they are - non-scientists with a theology
Or maybe a sock?
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ReplyDelete