Posted on 05/16/2007 6:54:51 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Interesting empirical tidbit in this regard -- neurosurgen Frank Vertosik, in his memoirs When The Air Hits Your Brain, speaks of experiments in which most of the brains of housecats were removed, and then the cats returned to their owners. Most of the owners could not tell any difference in the cats' behaviour.
For the nonce, though, this treatment of the mind -- at least as you have described it -- doesn't explain hesitation, confusion, memory, or learning. Is there more to the story?
Cheers!
I just watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail tonight. I tend to doubt the outnumbered part.
Full Disclosure: ...very small rocks.
Cheers!
Much of the subject matter can be observed and documented; but not reproducibly, and not in a way which lends itself to experimentation...(e.g. it is "historical" and cannot be reproduced any more than we can experiment with the old battles--as the old Saturday Night Live skit, "What if Napoleon had had a B-52 at Waterloo?")
Given the difficulties, and the number of varying creeds out there, the easiest response is the null hypothesis.
Cheers!
“Since you are citicizing the ToE do you have an alternative explaination for life that does not derive from ToE?”
Your question seems to imply that I have no right to dump on the ToE without offering a specific alternative. That’s comparable to a prosecutor claiming that a defendent cannot be exonerated until another suspect is available. And it’s typical of people who don’t understand basic scientific principles. I’m not saying you are necessarily one of them, but you are skirting very close with questions like that.
Not at all. You can dump on anything you like as far as I am concerned. I was just curious if you do have an alternative to ToE. I do not have a problem if you don't. If you do, I would like to hear it if you wish to tell it.
Honestly, I don’t claim to know how life originated or evolved, but I am virtually 100% certain that it couldn’t have happened without intelligent design of some kind or other.
When a person dies, the police can sometimes determine that the death was the result of murder — even if they don’t have a clue who committed the murder.
The claim that ID is “unscientific” because we don’t know who the Designer is, or because we cannot “study” the Designer, is logically equivalent to saying that the police cannot conclude that a murder was committed until they know who the murderer is and what the murderer’s motives were. It’s just plain nonsense.
When scientists discovered that Newtonism did not work for large and small scale problems, they did not spend their time proving Newtonism wrong. The spent their time and effort proving that the theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were right. You did not see papers from Einstein or Heisenberg titled "Newtonism and me" as you do from Gilder with "Evolution and me."
The day someone presents experimental results that prove ID, I will be among the first to accept ID. Even in this event I will not reject Evolution just as no one rejects Newtonism. Newtonian mechanics work well within it's domain. Evolution does and will continue to work well within it's domain even if ID is proven true.
Yes. Actually nearly everything is as it was. The one major difference is that the free will decides to not do the motion rather than initiating the motion.
I think you have it backwards. The “burden of proof” is not on ID advocates to prove ID or to “disprove” evolution (which are essentially equivalent endeavors). The burden of proof is on evolutionists to “prove” evolution, not in a mathematical sense, but in the sense that it actually explains how life got to be what it is.
Evolutionists do nothing of the sort. What they do is *assume* that it explains things because it is the only alternative once ID is rejected a priori. That is why, whenever some new evidence comes along that challenges evolution, evolutionists just yawn and dismiss it. In doing this, they use two tricks:
1. They implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) challenge ID advocates to “prove” that the observed phenomenon could not have possibly come about through Darwinian mechanisms. That is, they get the “burden of proof” backwards.
2. They claim that ID advocates simply are too narrow minded to *imagine* how the observed phenomenon could have come about through Darwinian mechanisms. That is, they don’t even try to explain how the phenomenon is consistent with the ToE; rather, they simply invoke imagination as the answer.
A classic example is a post on FR several months ago that cited a scientific paper that claimed that the human brain is highly optimized as a network. My memory of the details is vague, but the point is that the evos on FR did precisely what I outlined above.
It would seem you are not allowed to criticize the ToE if you use any part of the observation of an advocate of the ToE in support of any portion of your argument. It’s apparently sufficient that one not be an approved member of the ToE brotherhood to excite their wrath (be not despairing, oh ye sisters of the order, you are included in the brotherhood with full privileges). We must believe, in fact, that no one is to be allowed to criticize the ToE under any circumstance, but such a blatant proscription is intellectually indefensible, so more subtle representations must be put forward. Hence the argument ‘out-of-context,’ which has the added virtue of being a frequently indulged transgression, thereby providing the cover of reasonableness for the accusation. This is a common phenomena. Dispute a prelate or a mullah: ‘blasphemy!’ Contradict a king or a caliph: ‘treason!’ So common, in fact, that I have long thought of it as not a religious trait, nor a political trait, nor a philosophical trait, but simply and utterly a human trait.
’Tis an ancient and oft told tale, replete with a lineup of the usual suspects: the scrambling of meanings and terms; changing the subject; ignoring the crucial question; shifting the burden; invoking the automatic disqualifier; positing a distinction possessing no difference; claiming inherited superiority; etc, etc, etc.
In the abscence of experimental proof science can accept nothing. Those who claim other wise just do not undersatand the scientific method.
“In the abscence of experimental proof science can accept nothing. Those who claim other wise just do not undersatand the scientific method.”
If only it were so. Alas, evolutionists declare anything and everything by default as evidence in favor of their theory. Any alternative is ruled out a priori by fiat because they don’t like the religious implications.
Why yes grey_whiskers: Niels Bohr insisted on it. For this reason, he said that all descriptions of quantum phenomena should be made in the "classical language" of Newtonian physics.
Moreoever one imagines the principle additionally implies that, if there is uncertainty in quantum phenomena, then correspondingly there is uncertainty in the "classical" domain as well. So much for "exact" science....
Thank you, I will. {8^ ) But, where in our little series of exchanges do you find my criticism of the ToE? Or even dispute? You and I have surely been in dispute, but that is scarcely to be considered the same as criticizing the ToE. I don’t criticize or dispute the ToE very much. I don’t know enough. I rely on The Masters of The Universe to keep me briefed on the way things are. However, as I mentioned earlier, this does not mean I am entirely without resources. I have my own sort of Bravo Sierra detector to aid me when necessary.
”In the absence of experimental proof science can accept nothing.”
Does this include the self-evident truth that all men are created equal? Or the principles of government by the consent of the governed?
As do all of us.
Psi-ing heavily.
I am afraid you are misunderstanding on this point, err, "probability locus". ;-)
Correspondence says that the new theory should boil down to the results of the old theory under the conditions the old theory is known to hold (On cases where the new supplants the old, then of course the new takes precedence, otherwise, why bother?)
And of course probabilistic dynamics is one of the hallmarks of quantum mechanics.
Sorry for the late, terse reply. Just came back from hiking in Flagstaff and I'm all stiff and sore, with all the weekend's work yet to do.
No wonder I'm FReeping.
Cheers!
Of course grey_whiskers my earlier reply left out a whole lot of details regarding the correspondence principle. My general understanding of it is as you describe, above. The operative word there is should, and the qualification is "under the conditions the old theory is known to hold." The point is the conditions (and expectations) of the old theory, though eminently valuable and indispensable for accurate prediction of macro-level phenomena, apparently generally do not hold at quantum levels. Atoms are not solid bodies, or composites of solid bodies; they aren't structured like miniature solar systems; events occur within them that appear to be spontaneous (uncaused); the behavior we observe is disturbed by the very fact of our observing it; etc., etc. Where Newtonian mechanics is all about precise observations (measurements) leading to precise predictions -- where there is a direct one-to-one correspondance between a phenomenon and the physical laws that pertain to it, which seem to operate more or less autonomously -- there is none of this to be found at the quantum level.
There seems something almost completely arbitrary about the imposition of the correspondance requirement, "from the outside" as it were. If I am understanding Bohr correctly, the classical (Newtonian) language must be used to describe quantum events because that language has evolved over a very long period of time based on normal modes of human perception; i.e., based on the way that humans have been organizing their experience from time immemorial. Thus the classical language is based on visual perception. Quantum events are totally non-visualizeable. There is no suitable language in which to speak of them. So you use the language you have.
Bohr seems to have thought there might be some smooth interface between events occuring at quantum levels and the world of classical experience. But if so, he couldn't say exactly what or where that interface is; he proposed atoms with very large outer orbits as candidates. But I think it's fair to say that nobody knows this for a certain fact.
What is most striking to me is the utter break at quantum levels with classical physics on the matter of causation. Classical mechanics requires that in order for something to happen, something must have caused it. There is also the supposition that bodies are "real" and their interactions "certain" independently of the observer, and that their properties are given, completely intrinsic to them. All of this is undermined by what we know about quantum physics. It is difficult to see a smooth interface between these two realms. But if people want to look for it, I certainly wish them every success.
In any case, I can understand why science would seek to find such a smooth interface; for both realms obviously exist, and so on grounds of the complementarity principle, they together ought to express "unity" at some level....
Einstein evidently thought that quantum mechanics could not be "the last word" about the fundamental structure of reality, that there must be some deeper principle at work yet to be discovered that would supply the requisite unity.
Bohr evidently didn't share this view, thinking perhaps we shall never know whether there is a deeper principle at work. But that's okay, because according to him science is not about finding out how nature "is," but only about "what we can say" about nature: He's pointing to language here. Since the Newtonian language is really the only scientific language we have (and as already mentioned is visually based), it must serve in explications of the unvisualizeable realm of quantum events.
Einstein's desire -- it seems to me -- is metaphysical at its root. Bohr tried to keep philosophical thinking -- other than epistemology -- out of his science altogether. [I can't express how deeply I admire both these great men.]
I hope you enjoyed your hiking expedition, grey_whiskers -- though I'm sorry you're feeling a little sore today! Me, too. Yesterday I conducted a marching band down the street in two Memorial Day parades/observations. My "mace arm" is killing me.... But I'm sure I'll be fine tomorrow. :^)
Thanks so much for writing!
Truly, I suspect if there exists a way to bridge classical physics to quantum mechanics to relativity - it will be found in geometric physics.
Indeed, dear A-G, I believe that was Einstein's expectation, who longed to "transmute the base wood" of material reality into the "pure marble of geometry." [My own thinking just seems naturally to gravitate towards Einstein's direction here....]
To which his friend Bohr timely replied: Science is about observation and articulation of what has been observed, period; it is not about explanation.
[That must hit the scientific community squarely between the eyes. But then, nobody else that I can think of stands to gain anything immediately from seeing the world in this way.]
If that is not a permanently standing "complementariety," I don't know what could be.
The paradox is: Somehow or other, both of these men have to be "right." The problem consists in "squaring" the two accounts.
Which raises the issue of how competent science is (methodological naturalism) to give a full account of the total reality that we humans all experience together. And if there is "incompetence" in any way, what is to supply the deficit in reliable knowledge?
Or so the problem seems to me, at the present state of my humble researches into "the observer problem."
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