Jeepers A-G, the correspondents who greet us with such predictable disdain apparently did not get much benefit from the last time we did that. We have some really "stiff-necked" people hereabouts who simply refuse to take anything we say seriously. They have shut their ears, and shut their minds. It may be hopeless....
They say that they have answered my objection before -- that a human being must be more than the chemicals out of which he is composed. I'm sure they recognize that man is more than that; but their own doctrine prevents them from giving more than lip-service to the idea. For matter and the non-phenomenal aspects of human reality cannot be integrated in terms of their own model.
So I have not had my "objection" answered by them, ever. Since your "objection" is the same as mine, I tend to doubt you would have any satisfaction from "trying one more time." These folks just don't want to hear it. The spiritual closure is apparently virtually complete, and I gather they like it just fine that way. We'd need a crowbar to pry the spiritual reality that dwells in each man back open again.... FWIW
Sorry to be in such a gloomy mood this morning. But of a truth, there are none so blind as they who will not to see.... A depressing fact, but one that I can live with.... And apparently, sadly, will have to.
What we can do is pray for our correspondents, that by the grace of the Spirit of God they will be drawn into His light in His own time. Thanks so much for writing, Alamo-Girl!
AG argues complexity introduces new properties so that, "...new features emerge (such as intelligence in biological life) such that new language is necessary to describe the whole."
This could have been written by Ernst Mayr. It is almost identical to phrases I have been posting for months.
This morning at post 1085, Right Wing Professor says sarcastically: ” So you're saying that a human being is not merely a sum of his parts? Now why didn't anyone else think of that?” - and at post 1086, js1138 adds: ” I've been arguing emergent properties (a phrase I got from Ernst Mayr) for about six months, and it turns up here.”
But of course I was quite sure they knew all of this last night which made their reactions (1066, 1067, 1073-1075) to your post 1065 “bizarre” – at least to me. After all, if the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts what is a hurricane, a snowflake, a dog, a cat, a human being?
This reminds me of those TV episodes where the walls drop immediately to seal a biohazard in the laboratory when one is “sensed”. But what on earth could you have said at post 1065 to make such an auto-response occur?
If the whole were not greater than the sum of its parts, how can we explain language? Why does a word exist for tree, person, cat, snowflake. Indeed, why does DNA code exist?
And if the existent in physical reality is not characterized geometrically by its travel on a worldline which comprises its unique history, then why do we ask about autonomy at all? In that event, there would be no difference between Right Wing Professor and betty boop – no difference between this and that tree, this and that amoeba, this and that protein, etc.
The language, the autonomy, the geometry, the communication, the order itself is why we cannot and should not stop with the physical/chemical but instead reach to the mathematics, the philosophy, the theology.
Jeepers. For years, we’ve been talking about self-organizing complexity, cellular automata, autonomy, semiosis and various aspects thereof – including the math, the physics, the philosophy, the cosmology, the theology. We’ve discussed the movers and shakers in those fields. Not just Mayr but also Shannon, von Neumann, Chaitin, Kolmogorov, Rocha, Pattee, Kauffman, Einstein, Bohr, Tegmark, Steinhardt and more. And not just the scientists and mathematicians but the philosophers as well such as Voegelin, Plato, Aristotle. And not just philosophy but theology, ancient manuscripts, Scriptures and other Spiritual insight.
Perhaps it is because we have a record of speaking to spiritual matters, that the “sensors” go off and the walls come down? In which case, what can I say but Praise God! and join with you in prayer for all who do not yet sense that they belong beyond the geometry of their worldline.
BTW, for Lurkers interested in the sidebar to the sidebar on Mayr:
And as H.H. Pattee observes: ”Questioning the importance of theory sounds eccentric to physicists for whom general theories is what physics is all about. Consequently, physicists, like the skeptics I mentioned above, are concerned when they learn facts of life that their theories do not appear capable of addressing. On the other hand, biologists, when they have the facts, need not worry about physical theories that neither address nor alter their facts.