Scientists Are Not, “Playing by the Rules”, When Exploring Intelligent Design (Po

[Topher Cooper]

A frequent error about evolution is that it one must be able to assign a function to every feature for evolution to be true. This is an error made by evolutionists as well anti-evolutions vainly looking for a function for something that is a side effect of other things. There is no evolutionary reason that some birds can speak human language -- that's a side effect of their having evolved a system of bird song that requires both a range of sounds and (unlike some species of birds) the ability to learn the local repertoire.

I don't know anyone who claims that our cognitive mathematical ability comes from the need to make calculations for rock-throwing. Many of the underlying abilities for math are pretty obvious and clearly adaptive. Abstract reasoning is a big part of it. Planning, simulation (what happens if I were to do this?), keeping track of social relationships add to it as well. And, speech -- both handling complex grammatical relationships (especially that all important grammatical tool of recursion) and the basic concept of attaching an abstract label to something, which may itself be an abstract category -- is clearly a big part of it to. Probably further development of number concepts beyond simple counting, adding and subtracting as found in various other animals had its contribution as well.

I find that evolution was able to produce mathematical abilities awesome but not unbelievable or problematic.

Even with the relatively limited understanding we have of evolutionary mechanisms and the relatively small amounts of time and computational resources we are able to bring to bear relative to the entire bio-system over billions of years, evolutionary algorithms are being used to design aircraft wings, electronic filters, complex optical systems, etc. much better than human intelligence can manage directly. This is being used routinely in some industries these days.

I see only three possibilities looking at the evidence:

1. Evolutionary theory is true.
2. "Intelligent Design" was done by a large committee some of whose members were brilliant and some were incredibly stupid or perverse (next time you get a backache because we're only mostly designed for an upright posture, blame the stupid ones).
3. Or, the Designer is a compulsive liar who deliberately designed all life to look like it was derived from a process of natural selection.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

A frequent error about evolution is that it one must be able to assign a function to every feature for evolution to be true.

This is true, but there comes a point when the degree of over-performance is so great that I think it is at least fair to ask the question.

Some of our abilities - maths is perhaps the best example - seem quite excessive for our needs while we were evolving. If someone found a mouse that could jump 20 feet in the air, there would be an immediate scramble for an evolutionary explanation - nobody would propose that it just happened to get that way for no particular reason!

The problem with the theory of natural selection - whether it is true or not - is that it is damn near impossible to falsify, even in principle.

Our entire discussion is about the possible existence of ψ, and all that that implies, and if ψ does exist, a lot of seemingly established scientific theories are likely to get revised.

David

[Topher Cooper]

If you assume that the "purpose" of mathematical ability has to be to allow the working abstract proofs in, say, algebraic topology, then I quite agree that there is a difficulty explaining mathematical ability. This should lead one to question the assumption. Mathematical ability is plausibly a side effect of the development of other, more elementary, cognitive abilities, whose benefit to the organism is clear cut.

There are certainly many unsolved problems in the application of evolutionary theory (though many fewer than there used to be). That just isn't one of them. For some of the component skills, the real problem is deciding among too many competing possibilities, not the lack of any explanation.

[David Bailey]

Topher,

Of course people can come up with natural selection(NS) explanations of why some of us can do advanced mathematics, but that is not the same as a proof that this is the explanation! It is entirely reasonable to doubt that NS is responsible for the whole of evolution.

David

[Topher Cooper]

Absolutely. We already know that the original Neo-Darwinian Synthesis was incomplete -- it couldn't even handle the difference between a mule and a hinny, much less the viral transfer of genes. Like any scientific theory (by which I do not mean hypothesis, evolutionary theory is under constant tweaking in the details.

"A lack of evidence is not an evidence of lack". There is lots of stuff we don't understand about evolution, but there isn't anything I know of that we understand how it works and which seems outside the capabilities of evolution to develop.

Its certainly true that psi changes the rules. It certainly might cause the theory of evolution to be tweaked a bit -- particularly in relation to recent human evolution. But we don't know, and won't know until we understand more about psi.

Personally, I think that the question of evolution's influence on psi is likely to be a more fruitful one at this stage of knowledge than vice versa. I was rather pleased a number of years (OK, decades) ago when I suddenly realized that a consequence of a theory of psi that I had developed (never published but delivered at a conference) was that it was quite plausible that ESP came with a built in evolutionary disadvantage that would prevent more than a trace of it from being selected for. Always nice when a theory delivers the solution to a problem it wasn't designed to cover. Unfortunately, it doesn't do the same for limiting PK, so I have no idea why we can't all build cities just by thinking about it.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

Its certainly true that psi changes the rules. It certainly might cause the theory of evolution to be tweaked a bit -- particularly in relation to recent human evolution. But we don't know, and won't know until we understand more about psi.

OK - we neither of us have a knock-down argument on this, but my hunch would be that if ψ is in any way real, it will not ultimately be a science of obscure anomalies like the presentiment effect, pets anticipating their owners, etc., any more than General Relativity is just the science of a tiny precession of the orbit of mercury. It will probably shake the whole of science - particularly the life sciences. This is why I feel it is reasonable to express some doubt about natural selection as the sole driving force of evolution.

David

[daresh]

This is an intresting article group selection vs selection based on self-intrest: Skeptic: eSkeptic: Wednesday, July 4th, 2007
It's interesting to see how these 2 views evolved...

Also if consciousness is more then the physical body then the debate is totally changed. Can consciousness influence the selection proces?

[LeoM]

There is also survival evidence such as out of body experiences, near death experiences, proxy-sttings, mental mediumship experiments, remote viewing, past-life regression, apparitions etc.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by daresh

Also if consciousness is more then the physical body then the debate is totally changed. Can consciousness influence the selection proces?

Important point... too often overlooked. Completely agree.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

A frequent error about evolution is that it one must be able to assign a function to every feature for evolution to be true.

To me, the question is not whether, "evolution is true", but whether Darwin's view of things was complete. I think new science is suggests it's not.

This quote from geobiologist Elisabet Sahtouris reveals some of the arguments that are being explored by other researchers as well:

"Darwin's theory was good for its time, but remember that its time was within a mechanical worldview framework. To me Darwin's theory is a very mechanical one in which you have "accidents" occur (remember, we talked earlier about explaining a natural world of machinery by accidental development - so that notion was around). Then the "accidental" variations in the genetic material is shaped by the environment, which Darwin saw as a kind of template. If the cogs of these accidents fit into the wheels of the environment, then it would survive and the machine would run on; and if it didn't then it would die out, it would be inappropriate.

It occurred to me that life seemed to be much too intelligent to proceed in its evolution by accident. I kind of stuck my neck out ten years ago by saying that. I thought that probably genetic errors were repaired. Arthur Koestler had some similar ideas, I believe, he was one of my sources for these ideas.

Now the geneticists are becoming aware of this at a microscopic level. We can look at what is happening with the relationship of proteins and genes and cell membranes and all that, and it looks very much as if life does not proceed by accident but by design. And, as I said in my book, the nucleus is really a giant library of genes accumulated throughout evolution which can be drawn on under stress. Creatures such as sharks or cockroaches are very well-adapted and don't need to change (I call them bicycles in a jet-age because they still function very well although other species have gone on with totally different paths of evolution). In other words, life changes itself only when it needs to. It knows how to conserve what works well and change what doesn't work well. That is why you get very uneven evolution, not as in Darwinian theory which would predict a very even rate of accident and even rate of evolution for all species. We certainly know that that is not true and no geneticist today would uphold the ideas of Darwin completely."

full article: From Mechanics to Organics: An Interview with Elisabet Sahtouris