At 03:32 PM 8/24/00 -0400, Bertvan wrote:
>At 03:00 PM 8/22/00 -0400, Bertvan wrote:
>
> >Hi Chris,
> >>I hate to see you sounding like a typical Darwinist, accusing anyone
> >>skeptical of "random variation and natural selection" of believing in a
> >>literal translation of Genesis. Especially when I gather your aren't
> even
>a
> >> real Darwinist, which you've sometimes characterized as passe. You
> >>apparently believe nature possesses a "natural order" and variations might
> >>not necessarily be without meaning or purpose. If the variations are
>already
> >>rational and meaningful, Natural Selection wouldn't have to do any
>designing,
> >>would it? On the other hand, if the variations were actually random,
> >>without meaning purpose, plan, or design, surely they would outnumber any
> >>occasional advantageous variation so as to completely drown it out.
>
>Brian:
> >As has been noted many times, random in this context does not mean
> >"without meaning purpose, plan, or design". Any "meaning purpose, plan, or
> >design" is not detectable with scientific instruments. For example, in
> >information
> >theory one measures the quantity of information in a message irrespective of
> >what it means. One would not conclude from this that messages have no
>meaning.
> >Also, consider the engineer that designs complicated mechanisms by mimicking
> >Darwinism, i.e. by random variations coupled with a selection criteria.
> >Would the
> >random variations be "without meaning purpose, plan, or design" in this
> case?
>
>Bertvan:
>Hi Brian,
>To you, "random" does not mean "without purpose, plan or design". I fear
>that is not what "random" means to the general public, and it is not what
>most people arguing for "Darwinism" mean by the term. Surely you don't think
>these people involved in these juvenile crusades against religion mean
>something which includes plan, purpose or design when they define Darwinism!
No, the point is that the purpose, plan or design is not something that science
can say anything about. If it cannot, then people should keep quiet about
it, unless
of course they are just giving their opinions. Everyone's entitled to an
opinion, even
Darwinists :).
A while back, Yockey used to put the following quote of Yogi Berra at the end
of his posts:
"If you don't know what you are talking about; shut up!" -- Yogi Berra
Almost everyone who read this mistook it for rudeness. But what he was saying
is essentially what I'm saying here. When it comes to purpose, meaning etc.
science doesn't know what it is talking about. So, when it comes to these
things
it needs to keep its mouth shut.
[apparently Richard has some disagreements with me on this point, I'll try to
address those as soon as possible.]
A long time ago I suggested that you should not pay too much attention to
popular
level books and articles. This is one reason. You will find all sorts of
Darwinian
evangelists that claim Darwinism proves there is no purpose etc. Remember the
subtitle to Dawkins' book? But you find the same message coming from all manner
of creationists, whether YE, OE or ID. Isn't it interesting that both sides
agree on this
point?
But you will not find this sort of talk, by and large, in the scientific
literature. Random mutation
means random with respect to the benefits of the organism. As we see though
with
my engineering example, this may well be the best sort of variation to
consider.
> I'm not familiar with information theory, but can information exist without
>meaning? Can meaning ever not be the result of intelligence?
Once again we have the problem of technical definitions being quite
different from
that which is generally understood. Information has a precise mathematical
definition
which has nothing to do with meaning. The reason for this is obvious, meaning
cannot be determined from the structure of the words themselves (gift means
poison in German).
Along these lines, Wesley recently posted a reference to paper showing the same
type of thing I was trying to illustrate with the engineer example. The
paper showed
that a random search combined with selection can increase genetic information.
>It does seems
>a stretch of the definition to say an engineer devising complicated
>mechanisms is involved in a "random" activity. If so, why would being an
>engineer be of any advantage?
Engineers make lots of money :). Seriously, it is not the activity that is
random
but rather the variation. In a similar vein, evolution is not random even
though
the mutations are (at least they appear to be, there have been some exceptions
noted recently). Even if they aren't random, selection still works. Darwinism
requires variation. I personally believe, however, that a random search is the
most efficient.
>I've read your posts about evolution and I think there was one point about
>which I disagreed with you.
Good, glad to hear of it.
>(I've forgotten what it was, now) Yet we do
>seem to be arguing on different sides of this controversy. You choose to
>call yourself a Darwinist, and I choose to support ID.
I don't think of myself as a Darwinist in any usual sense of the word.
>Obviously, I have
>little criticism of your brand of "Darwinism", but on the whole, I am more
>often impressed by the thinking of those arguing for ID. Free-will/mind
>have been detected by scientific instruments (biofeedback and the placebo
>effect), but science can neither measure nor predict them.
This seems to be a contradiction, unless you want to distinguish detecting
and measuring. I have argued many times in the past (i.e. I'm not going to
go into the details here :) that free will and chance go hand in hand. You seem
to be shooting yourself in the foot by speaking up for freedom on the one hand
and then being so opposed to chance on the other.
>Perhaps the same
>will turn out to be true of "design". Actually, for many people both free
>will and design in nature are obvious, and no scientific "proof" is
>necessary.
Yes, free will and design are obvious. I would submit that the presence
of chance is also obvious. Modern science has taught us, though, that
things can seem obvious and yet not be true. It was obvious to the
scientists in Galileo's day that the Earth stood still.
>However, IMHO, differences of opinion are a healthy and necessary
>condition for any intellectual progress. I do not consider those who
>disagree with me as necessarily either stupid or insincere.
We agree here.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Mechanical Engineering
The Ohio State University
"One never knows, do one?"
-- Fats Waller
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