>SJ>Johnson continues with a reductio ad absurdum of Crick's
>reductionism:
>>
>>"The conflict with common sense would become apparent if Crick had
>>presented his hypothesis in the first-person singular. Imagine the
>>reaction of his publisher if Crick had proposed to begin his book by
>>announcing that "I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and
>>even the thoughts expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than
>>the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated
>>molecules." Few browsers would be likely to read further. The
>>plausibility of materialistic determinism requires that an implicit
>>exception be made for the theorist."[...]
>>
>>The point is that if Dawkins is just dancing to the music of *his*
>>DNA, why should we take what he says seriously? What makes his
>>DNA better than mine? [...]
>
>TI>The assumption Johnson seems to hold is that networks of nerve
>>cells and etc. are incapable of doing "significant" work or
>>processing by themselves and need a "special spark" to produce
>>"meaningful" results.
>
>No. Neither Johnson nor I said anything about a "special spark". The
>point is that if it is *only* a "networks of nerve cells" that just
>sent your message then it is meaningless.
Meaning is context dependent. That context can be highly local
(such as between the triplet code of DNA/RNA and the translational
machinery) or distributed further (such as writing).
As I suggest elsewhere, science does not comment on ultimate
"meaning" or "purpose" -- This does not mean that science says
there is no meaning, but that it is undefined in science.
[...]
>That's interesting. I saw a videotaped debate between William Lane
>Craig (Christian philosophet) and Dr Frank Zindler (atheist
>neurophysiologist). Dr Zindler explicity said that the only meaning of
>"ought" to a materialist is "that which has survival value".
Not even that. "Ought" is probably undefined in science. However,
we can take a set of givens and a set of criteria for evaluating
outcome and generate a synthetic "ought" out of that. But that would
only be relative to the criteria established. "Ought" understood as
"the actions to be performed to permit survival" is an example of this.
>Johnson says of Hawkings:
[...]
>lf a theory of everything exists, however, the laws it describes
>determine even the thoughts and actions of the scientists who aim
>to discover the theory. How then, wonders Hawking, can the
>scientists trust their own powers of reasoning? How can they
>know that the laws of physics predict or permit the discovery
>of a true theory? [...]
Johnson should read Godel's theory (Incompleteness theorem?). The
discovery of a true theory of everything may be theoretically impossible.
In other words (and may Brian Harper hound me endlessly if I really
bugger up this description), given a closed and consistent system,
there may truths that are not provable on the basis of statements
accessible to that system -- ie. Some truths are not internally accessible
(This might also lead to the interesting paradox that not even God, if
He is complete, can know everything about himself).
[...]
>TI>Within limits and possibly not in all men...
>>As you may be aware from your reading of evolutionary theory, altruism
>>and natural selection are not always at odds.
>
>They must utimately be "always at odds", according to Darwinm:
>
>"Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in a
>species exclusively for the good of another species; [...]
That is true; complete altruism as described above is not expected
_as a rule_. However, behaviors that may superficially appear to be
altruistic are possible, as long as there is some connection between
the organisms that could lead to overall survival advantages. Some
of the conditions that allow this to happen have been examined by
game theory.
Of course, there is the possibility that truely altruistic
individuals will occassionally arise in the population. This
can be tolerated as long as the opportunities to be weeded out
remain low.
>TI>Is a universe without absolute moral accountability or absolute
>>value "unimaginably terrible"? I can't say; I don't see it as
>>such. At least for me, it seems better than no universe at all,
>>but YMMV. My question is whether "fear of the terrible" is a valid
>>reason to reject naturalistic explanations or to cease looking for
>>them.
>
>The point is that as a human being you cannot really exist in a
>"universe without absolute moral accountability or absolute value".
>You just used the word "better". Does not this imply that there is
>an ascending scale of betters up to best, and a descending scale of
>less than betters down to worst?
I think we shouldn't confuse "relative" with "absolute". Yardsticks
can be based on either.
Regards, Tim Ikeda (timi@mendel.berkeley.edu)