Re: Evolutionary question concerning God.


Ernest Major wrote:
In message <1157494977.834201.247270@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
someone2 <glenn.spigel2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Vend wrote:
someone3 wrote:

What exactly do you mean by 'make sense'? And what grounds do you have
for claiming that evolution wouldn't be directed to make qualia that
make sense? If evolution happens upon a solution to modelling the
environment which employs qualia it certainly wouldn't want ones that
didn't make sense. I don't follow how you could possibly construe this
as a 'coincidental deception'. Also, see my point below regarding the
relationship between qualia and the physical world.


For example you could have experienced nothing, or just the colour
green, or anything else,

You haven't answered the question. How do you define 'make sense'?
How do you know that our experiences make sense and experiencing
'colour green' doesn't?

it wouldn't effect the behaviour of the
organism if you had, provided the organism followed the laws of
physics. I presume you think that all the atoms in the organism follow
the laws of physics, and therefore so does the organism.

Wrong.
Atoms follow the laws of physics regarding atoms. Organisms are not
atoms.
Each atom which is part of an organism follows the laws of physics
regarding atoms. But the organism itself doesn't. (Example: a group of
persons is not a person)

As physics
doesn't take experience into account in the behaviour of an atom, it is
not taken account of in the organism. Can you follow that, or do we
need to go slower?

Wrong again:
Particle Physics doesn't take into account many things that
nevertheless exist and can give an organism an evolutionary advantage
(ex: legs, wings, eyes).
You're assuming that 'experience' is a special exception to that fact.
Since the assumption is unjustified, your argument is a non sequitur.

Your argument is a form of reductio ad absurdum with a division fallacy
( http://www.fallacyfiles.org/division.html ):

1) Human 'experience' the world
2) Humans are made of atoms
3) Therefore, atoms 'experience' the world
4) Laws of physics are true
5) Laws of physics say that atoms don't experience anything.

There are two problems in this reasoning:
Point 3 is a division fallacy, which is itself enough to break the
argument.

The second problem is that if point 3 wasn't a fallacy, the conclusion
would be that either humans don't experience anything or laws of
physics are false.
You're assuming, if I understood correctly, that laws of physics are
true, so your argument would imply that humans don't have experiences.
So there would be no need for a suorce of experiences.

Your point is? I gave the relevance to observable functional advantages
below.

Why would be a functional advantage given by consciousness
unobservable?

Cosciousness or 'experience', like electrons or atoms, could be
unobservable directly but could be observable through the effects it
has on directly observable objects.

A leg, after all, can be seen only because it has the property of
affecting the light. It's the light you're actually observing, not the
leg.

Here is where I believe you are rather mistaken. Our experience of our
model of the world provides some rather extreme evolutionary advantages.


So they won't be able to be explained by the laws of physics then, as
physics doesn't take experience, which you are saying is responsible
for "some rather extreme evolutionary advantages", into account.


Same fallacy as before.
Or pheraps its dual, the composition fallacy:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/composit.html

1) Atoms have the property of having a behavior which is not dependent
on experiences
2) Humans are made of atoms
3) Therefore, humans have the property of having a behavior which is
not dependent on experiences
4) If a property of a system doesn't affect its behavior, it cannot
give it evolutionary advantage
5) If a property doesn't give evolutionary advantage an organism can't
have it unless 'Goddidit'
6) Humans have 'Experience'
7) Therefore, 'Experience' doesn't give evolutionary advantage so
'Goddidit'


Point 3 is a composition fallacy.
Point 4 is litterary true but is tricky: if a property doesn't affect
the behavior of a system, for scientifical purpouses, it doesn't exist.
This would imply that point 6 is false, so point 7 doesn't follow.
Point 5 is also flawed: Theory of evolution doesn't forbid organism to
have features that don't give them advantage. Even if it did, the
conclusion would be that Theory of evolution is wrong. This doesn't
imply that a god created something.
This is called divine fallacy, a.k.a. 'God of the Gaps':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_Gaps

You asked what I meant by "make sense"
If I define "making sense" as the physical world is experienced in such
a way that situations can be assessed so that it would be possible to
make a reasonably informed conscious choice as to what the best course
of action to take was.

You said:
"Each atom which is part of an organism follows the laws of physics
regarding atoms. But the organism itself doesn't."

So you are saying that if investigated there will be behaviours in the
organism that don't follow the laws of physics?

You gave a little philosophical example with 5 steps, in which you
pointed out two problems with point 3.

1) Human 'experience' the world
2) Humans are made of atoms
3) Therefore, atoms 'experience' the world
4) Laws of physics are true
5) Laws of physics say that atoms don't experience anything.

Personally I would say you made a mistake in in (1) and (2) in not
distinguishing between consciousness and what is experienced as the
physical world.

The problem is that *you* haven't been clear as to the distinction. In
the above, 'experience' (with scare quotes) refers to whatever it is you
have been denoting by the word. There is a suspicion that you mean
consciousness, but to assume that would leave us with a need to explain
why you didn't write consciousness.

Also there is a problem with (5), in that the laws of physics don't
comment on whether atoms experience or not.

Your next seven point one was also full of false assumptions.

How about this one based on our current scientific understanding:
1) Laws of physics and chemistry describe the world in which we
experience without the need to refer to experience.
2) Organisms are within the world we experience, and therefore can be
described by the laws of physics and chemistry, without reference to
whether the organism experiences or not.
3) There can be no evolutionary advantage to experiencing, as all
behaviour can be explained without reference to it.

Do you follow that?

Do you also claim that there can be no evolutionary advantage to flight,
as all behaviour can be explained without reference to it?
--
alias Ernest Major

since we are already conversing under this post, is it ok if we just
keep the converstation in one place. Thanks.

.

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