- #71
Johann
Canute said:I agree with Les entirely that our education system is one of indoctrination, in which conjectures and hypotheses are fed to kids as if they are true.
But if you don't indoctrinate, there's very little you can actually teach. If you allow skepticism to run rampant in the classroom, you won't end up with educated people, you will end up with a bunch of ignoramuses.
It's not our fault that we don't understand our world very well, but it would be our fault if we failed to teach the little we do understand, or think we do.
It seems to me then that it is fairly easy to argue that it is consciousness that drives evolution. After all, if human beings did not want to survive then the species would have disappeared. All animals, at least, seem to have this basic desire.
I think it's fairly easy to argue that consciousness drives survival, not evolution. But I think I get the gist of your argument; it's obvious that physiological changes must be accompanied by psychological changes. If a species develops wings but does not develop the desire to fly, then having wings won't be an evolutionary advantage. That is an interesting perspective.
What the principle of "design" seems to be saying, though, is that the desire to fly comes before the wings. That I find very difficult to understand.
Guru of complex systems Stuart Kaufmann has expressed uncertainty over what it is that drives systems to complexity, the nature of the motivating force behind the emergence of biological complexity. He suggests it must be simple and 'deep'. Why not consciousness?
Why not an omniscient God? Why not the need to restore thermal equilibrium? Why not the uncertainty principle? Why not...
Do we really get anywhere with postulates like those? What exactly do they add to our understanding of anything?
To link this back to the actual 'creation' of biological life, if our desire to survive as individuals ensures the survival of the species then it seems a small step to say that it is a desire to live that brings life into existence.
I could certainly agree with that from a non-scientific perspective, but I think it's essentially not different from the idea that God created the world because He thought it was a good thing to do. Maybe we can nitpick on this or that choice of word, but the basic idea seems the same to me.
If I consciously decide to be celibate then this will affect the evolution of the human gene pool. Thus consciousness affects DNA.
Still the role of consciousness is selecting which DNA forms should be kept and which ones should be discarded. It's a very interesting point, as I said, and I haven't thought about it before, but it still doesn't explain how DNA changes happen in the first place.
It may affect it more directly, and perhaps some part of the consciousness of a person is transmitted via DNA, but I wouldn't know about that.
I think it's more complex than that. Since consciousness is "invisible", any effects it may have on matter can be ascribed to purely physical processes. Either that, or you must believe in miracles.
(I see nothing wrong with miracles, by the way, only don't think they constitute a valid scientific hypothesis)
What makes you say that there is [no precedent for consciousness having effect on the physical world]
For the reason I gave above: any such effects can be accounted for by purely physical processes. Even if they aren't.
It may be that practioners can affect substances at a molecular level, and there is a growing body of evidence that they can
I don't dispute that. All I'm saying is that what those practitioners do can either be explained as physical processes or can't be explained at all. Most likely the latter is the case.
What is it that makes you think this? How did maize evolve, or bananas? Or, come to that, evolutionary biology? Are you saying that you would have written your last post had you not been conscious?
If you take it as a premise that consciousness (or intelligence) is needed for evolution, then you can show the fact of evolution as evidence for your hypothesis. When your premises already imply your conclusions, there shouldn't be any surprises at concluding what you already expected.
Notice the same thing goes for the mechanistic camp. They start out with the premise that mechanics can account for evolution, and show evolution as evidence that their premise may be correct. In both cases all we have is circular reasoning. But circular reasoning is not the problem; the facts are there, and the best we can do to convey them is to add as little extra metaphysics as we can. Metaphysics should be left up to the individual since it can't be communicated anyway.
(Les is apparently objecting to the notion that a denial of metaphysics is a form of metaphysics itself. I don't think so and I think he's battling a windmill)
If you are saying that consciousness can do things via the brain then you are saying that consciousness is causal. If it is causal then why shouldn't it play an evolutionary role?
It can play a role in evolution, but it cannot be the main role. As you cleverly pointed out, sexual behaviour determines whether genes get passed on or not, but the role is still secondary.
If you are saying that consciousness is not causal then it doesn't do anything and your objections are no more than mechanical interactions in your brain
My computer is not conscious yet it tells me a lot of things that are true. I suspect we are not really conscious when we are doing logic, since we don't really have any options and reason in a purely mechanical way.
We do not normally think that billiard balls arrange themselves on the table according to their logical deductions concerning scientific evidence, why should neurons (microtubules, NCC's, wave-states or whatever) be different?
Because as far as we can tell there are no forces choosing a particular arrangement of billiard balls over others. That is not the case with organisms; we can't rule out the possibility that genetic mutations happen all the time but most of them are discarded. In fact, we witness genetic aberrations being born everyday. Would you be willing to concede that birth defects are the result of conscious choice?
Even if you think consciousness is the main force behind evolution, we would have to take into account the fact that most conscious decisions are... stupid mistakes!
Now whether organisms evolved through mechanical random mutations or conscious trial-and-error, the selection process remains the same. Ultimately it's nature that decides which changes can be kept, which must be discarded. So nature, and ultimately physics, has the primary role in evolution.