RoR: Forum

[think the popping was my eardrum over the vacuum being implied.....];-)

Post 81

Monday, January 7, 2008 - 2:20pm

Ed. Thompson writes

Now the "kind" of H2O a man floats on is imperative; and that kind can change (as it did in my example of the floating iceberg). However, with life and over several generations, there is a way to get a different "capacity for change" out of something (effectively "making" a different "Natural Kind").

In fact, animal breeders are successful having have done exactly that.

Bob Kolker responds:

It was the success of animal and plant breeders that led Darwin to his notion of natural selection. After pondering the various kinds of finches in the Galapagos, Darwin concluded that something akin to the selectivity that breeders exercise was happening in nature.

Darwin was able to accumulate mountains of evidence showing how various species have changed over time (a long, long time, not the short time of the Biblical creationists). Darwin made an empirical argument, but it took until the 1940's to provide a physical biological mechanism to account for the variations that nature (in effect) selects for survival. Ernst Mayr was the biologist most responsible for the merger of Darwin's empirical theory with the more physically based science of genetics.

Bob Kolker

Post 82

Monday, January 7, 2008 - 3:41pm

ED:

     You're argument about 'degrees' and 'kinds' (re your categorical 'any') in the beginning of your post #62 implies that you don't see threshold-crossings as relevent.

     I think that it is precisely such that differentiates 'earlier' from 'later' in all evolving systems, living or non-, re identifying 'kinds' in any fundamentally substantial way. --- Indeed, I see such as what is relevent to the idea of 'emergent properties.'

     Any thoughts on this?

LLAP
J:D

(Edited by John Dailey on 1/07, 3:57pm)

Post 83

Monday, January 7, 2008 - 8:28pm

So you have absolutely NO idea with all we know in science, as to what Possibly could be the methodology?

Part of what we know in science is what could not have happened.

NONE whatsoever? If you had some alternative explanation or hypothesis I would like to hear it. This is inquiry and not a court room, so yes - do you have a better idea?

I don't think it's good philosophy or good science to accept and perpetuate a false theory simply because there's nothing else out there.

Did they pop out of thin air?

Panspermia?

Was it magic?

A good explanation with one serious shortcoming: you first have to believe in magic.

Spontaneous generation?

Already debunked by Pasteur, whose law of biogenesis says "Life only comes from life." However, abiogenesis is really just a sophisticated version of spontaneous generation, slowed down and spread out over many years.

God?

An excellent choice but with one serious shortcoming: you first have to believe in God.

Post 84

Monday, January 7, 2008 - 8:18pm

It was the success of animal and plant breeders that led Darwin to his notion of natural selection. After pondering the various kinds of finches in the Galapagos, Darwin concluded that something akin to the selectivity that breeders exercise was happening in nature.

Logically, it's called "unwarranted assumption." We might also throw in a dash of "concept stealing."

Breeders are intelligent, purposive agents, who exercise their faculty of free choice by purposely and purposively selecting a trait in their animals in order to reach a pre-selected goal. That's what breeders do. If nature were purposive, then it, too, could select traits in furtherance of a goal. Since nature is blind, then it cannot "select" except on the basis of chance. It cannot select something that is "fit" unless we know what "fit" means. Most Darwinists actually mean that a trait becomes "fit" by definition when it selected (implying that it couldn't have been fit before it was selected). If this is so, then it means that natural selection is not a force, not a mechanism, it's just a fancy name for "pure dumb luck."

As I've shown earlier in the thread, "pure dumb luck" = "blind search", and "blind search" cannot sort through all the possibilities in extremely large search spaces in only 10^17 seconds. Darwin was blindly following his geologist friend, Charles Lyell, when he implied that anything can happen in billions of years. Unfortunately for his theory, it can't. Twelve billion years are not enough time to sort through the possibilities.

Darwin was able to accumulate mountains of evidence showing how various species have changed over time (a long, long time, not the short time of the Biblical creationists).

I've read Darwin myself and I'm unaware of these "mountains of evidence." Darwin was fond of invoking imagination to leapfrog over the lack of evidence, such as his scenario of bears timidly going into the water for food, and then (presto, chango) turning into whales. Here's how a typical piece of evidence by a Darwinian always begins: "It would be quite easy to imagine that at some point in the past . . ."

Yep. That's what I love about imagination, too. It's easy.

Anyway, if you could, perhaps, quote a little piece of this mountain of evidence that Darwin amassed, I would certainly appreciate it.

Darwin made an empirical argument,

He made an argument that could be tested empirically. The source of his theory, however, was philosophical. He sought a materialist alternative to creationism.

but it took until the 1940's to provide a physical biological mechanism to account for the variations that nature (in effect) selects for survival.

In the 1940s, there was a meeting of the American Geological Society. "Darwinism", as a theory, was not doing well. So the top people met to look at the "state of the art" and to try to patch together a new theory, still basically Darwinist, but with modifications and additions. The new theory was officially known as "The Synthetic Theory" (because it was a synthesis of several theories and disciplines), and is also known as "Neo-Darwinism" (the original Darwinist theory, straight from the pages of "Origin of Species" and writings of T.H. Huxley, is often referred to as "Classicial Darwinism"). One of the new disciplines spliced onto the new Darwinism was genetics, a field founded by an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel. I don't think Mendel and Darwin were aware of each other's work. Anyway, there were positions in classicial Darwinism that contradicted Mendel's discoveries that had to be resolved. For example, Darwin believed that traits would blend smoothly; Mendel showed that traits are segregated and discrete -- the first hint that it had something to do with "information".

The Synthetic Theory limped along until the 1950s, when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure and function of DNA. The two were complete rogues, having admitted to stealing important evidence from a locked desk of Rosalyn Franklin, and getting advance papers from Linus Pauling. They also incorporated into their researches the ideas of a physicists named George Gamow, who suggested that the bases might be a code. This was later proved to be so.

Unfortunately, the explanation of DNA's structure and function has not been that helpful to Darwinism. For one thing, it puts an end to abiogenesis.

Abiogenesis is the idea that life itself arose from non-living matter through a Darwinian process of blind search and selection. Unfortunately, for "natural selection" to select anything and do something with it, the molecule in question already has to be self-replicating. That notion is not doing well at the moment, though researchers like Stuart Kaufmann are always hopeful. Abiogenesis usually takes the position that proteins were the first things to form (somehow) and then through more Darwinian processes, they formed cells, etc.

Though it has many variants and quite a number of adherents, abiogenesis -- or "proteins first" scenarios -- are not possible when we take into account that living things also need DNA. The reason is strictly mathematical. There are only 20 amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) that are critical for living organisms. It's a 20 element alphabet. But the nucleotides that code for each of those amino acids do so in triplets (known as "codons"). Since there are 4 bases (A, C, T, G) that can occupy any one of the three "rungs" in a codon, there are 4x4x4 total possibilities for each codon: 64 possibilities. So codons have an alphabet of 64 elements, while critical amino acids have an alphabet of 20 elements. It's not possible to start with an alphabet of 20 and create enough permutations to code for an alphabet of 64 elements and all of its permutations. You can start with 64 and code for 20; you can't start with 20 and code for 64.

This is just a code-theory way of confirming what Crick first stated as the so-called "Central Dogma of molecular biology": the flow of information is always from DNA to proteins, and never the other way around. DNA must have come first; the proteins followed.

However, there are other problems, even with this scenario. Earlier in the thread, I mentioned the issue of "chirality" or "handedness". Some organic molecules are lefty, some are righty. A lefty and a righty might be otherwise chemically identical; they differ in their geometry. Aside from the problem of how this difference arose, there is a more pressing problem: the cell only uses lefty molecules; inside the genome, however, the bases along the spine of DNA, only use righty molecules. Therefore, to get a functioning cell, you need both lefty and righty molecules in exactly the right places: the cell and its genome could not have incrementally tried a bunch of different combination and waited around to "get selected." The increments are non-functional.

The above case suggests, therefore, that the cell plus the DNA-containing genome would've had to appear simultaneously and instantaneously. Slow gradualism is literally a non-starter here.

Post 85

Monday, January 7, 2008 - 8:36pm

John,

I didn't mean to imply that I don't see threshold-crossings as relevant. I do.

As an aside, I recall a recent story about the new finding of a "missing-link" amphibious creature which breached the land-water interface, evolutionarily. That animal and Archeopteryx are, in my view, some of the best evidence of evolution by natural selection (aside from intentional animal breeding).

Ed

Post 86

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 7:22am

As an aside, I recall a recent story about the new finding of a "missing-link" amphibious creature which breached the land-water interface, evolutionarily.

The stories one reads in magazines like "National Geographic", or sees on television shows produced by PBS, are mainly propaganda on behalf of the Darwinian official line.

Pakicetus was a full-fledged land-dwelling animal with ear bones similar to that of whales. Ambulocetus had strong, load-bearing legs, and a pelvis like a land animal. National Geographic called it a "walking whale" but it looks nothing like a whale.

More importantly, whales have a long "generational timeline", meaning that all those beneficial mutations both occurred and were selected in only a few million generations over a span of time that is given as less than 10 million years. Common sense requires us to be extremely skeptical of any claim that such putative evolution has been demonstrated. For an imagined "small land animal" to develop all of the highly specialized and complex adaptations for aquatic life through a slow process of Darwinian cumulative selection would require either much more time, or would require a process that can operate faster than Darwinian gradualism.

That animal and Archeopteryx are, in my view, some of the best evidence of evolution by natural selection

Archaeopteryx is not a transitional fossil between reptiles and birds, but a true bird.

Post 87

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 10:21am

Claude,

I admit of ignorance regarding the required rate of what you refer to as Darwinian Gradualism. Your points on that stand -- for now, at least -- unrefuted.

However, regarding Archaeopteryx, it's hard for me to believe that it's just a bird -- rather than an animal with features previously-associated with different time periods. For instance, are you able to integrate the information below with a theory that Archaeopteryx is just a bird? ...

Despite its small size, broad wings, and ability to fly, Archaeopteryx has more in common with small theropod dinosaurs than it does with modern birds. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx

If it's true that Archaeopteryx has more in common with dinosaurs than modern birds (e.g., jaws, claws, and a long, bony tail) -- then how's it just a bird (rather than an animal with features previously-associated with different time periods)?

Ed

Post 88

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 4:25pm

Ed: I greatly appreciate you comment that my post attracted your attention. All we humans are so vanity prone and I'm no exception.

Now to your further paragraphs.

The philosophical justification of biological evolution - should it be needed at all for reasons that are arcane, at least to me - has been provided by Ayn Rand herself. In "Philosophy: Who needs it", she stated that "Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence… In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees," adding that "philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible." Further on she deduced ("For the New Intellectual") that "Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy (my emphasis)… It is philosophy that defines and establishes the epistemological criteria to guide human knowledge in general and specific sciences in particular (again my emphasis)."

Now, evolution (nowadays more often called "synthetic theory of evolution" because it incorporates all additional knowledge provided by geology, paleontology, cosmology, chemistry, etc.) is one of the special sciences to which Rand refers. I consider that this suffices to firmly establish Darwin's scientific theory on the basis of philosophy as Rand defined.

Now, why is it a "scientific theory"? I'll go into this along the following paragraph.

On you request for "proof of truth" (truth value) for evolution. Ed, I fear that you are falling prey to the Creationists and further religionists conspiracy. If you look it up in the Internet, you will see that it's filled by these people's request for such "proof of truth". There are practically thousands of such claims for "truth", quite apart from their endless insistence that Darwin's theory of evolution is not even a theory but merely a hypothesis. They don't even read the term "theory" correctly. In German we prefer to speak of "Darwins Evolutionslehre" (Darwin's teachings on evolution) to oppose it to the Creationist's love to point out that it is just a "theory" (i.e. a hunch, a guess, in the common use of the term). But Darwin's theory of evolution - this too they purposefully love to forget - is a scientific theory which, as Nick Gisburne correctly informs, bears no relation at all with the common use of the term, since a scientific theory is, in the simplest way of using the term, an explanation of the facts. Hence, Einstein's theory of relativity, for example, explains Newton's laws. And this explanation of the facts constitutes in itself the "proof of truth" Creationists constantly request. Ah, but they can't accept it because they are unwilling to do so.

This constant - and useless - insistence on "truth" (facts are truths in themselves, let's not forget this) comes from people who carefully avoid even to talk of the need to provide by themselves a proof for the existence of what they call "god" (whatever they may mean by it) because they know perfectly well that the existence of something that doesn't exist cannot be proved, as I clearly demonstrate in my book "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe". So what "proof of truth" is requested? Cosmological records? Geological records? Paleontological records? Biological records? All of them are true and make up Darwin's teachings on evolution, but Creationists and the rest of the bunch will never ever accept anything of the sort because to accept just any of it would shatter their beliefs to pieces, though not for non-believers (atheists know the truth since a very long time ago indeed) but for themselves, a fact they dread to face for it would mean that their world of fantasy (and all the money they get from it) has come to an end (it did so from the very beginning, though they resist having to recognize it) and what remains is naked, stark reality.

But then you jump from this universal "law of identity applied to actions" to the human capacity to think, and you just say that thinking's included in man's identity.

And, while I agree with the truth of that, in the context of the argument of evolution, it's considered -- philosophically -- only trivially true. In other words, the fact that man's nature includes thought, doesn't bear positively or negatively on whether or not evolution ought to be accepted as true.

My post is not a detailed account of all the connections existing. For this you may better refer to a good book on evolution and genetics. Now, while for other "philosophies" the human capacity to think may be a "trivial truth" you may well gather from Ayn Rand's writings that it is very main part of man's identity. And in what refers to the truth of evolution, I tackled this a few sentences back.

The absolute-relative brain weight relation is correct as stated in my post, since I also said there that all related conditions, external as well as internal, must correspond. I know, of course, that dolphins (and other big sea-mammals) show a relation similar to the human being's brain (which explains why we are at the threshold of being able to communicate with them) but I didn't consider it important to mention in relation with the rest of my post, precisely because of said external and internal conditions, for dolphins and other such creatures lack these, which are required to effectively reach the operative status: arms and hands, legs to move around and a mainly dry environment allowing the production of fire and the development of mechanics, etc. etc. There are other, additional conditions needed but the ones mentioned are the ones essential for effective operations.

Glad to keep on communicating with you.

Claude: I've rarely seen that many tongue-twisters in just one sentence to voice how much you hate what I wrote in post 70. You may just have kindly said that you despise my very existence. However, since you went to no lengths at all to be polite, may I ask you if you love to show around as a linguist gone berserk or merely like to be a prattler?

Further on: So "consciousness is not inherent in matter" (I take it that you mean in this case "human matter")!. Well, where is it then? In a non-existing ethereal dimension? Moreover, the fact that it exists in human matter and can even direct human matter (!!) contradicts most openly your statement that matter determines the behavior of "mind" (understanding this to be a synonym of consciousness - see Rand for more of this).

How can consciousness "expunge the notion of free will" when free will is precisely one of its main operating tools?

Is it an "actual property of atoms"? Did I say so? Not at all. But even atoms have the basis for properties which only come to light at the level of more complex combinations. Were this not so, they could never even be part of any complex combination. With your statement you seem to reject the fact that as "simple" an element as hydrogen can take part (and a major part at that) of any of the aminoacids. As a matter of fact, I'm right now racking my head to make out how can simple hydrogen be even part of so complex a thing as water is, with all its states of gas, solid and so forth…

You seem to be involved in more and more contradictions, Claude, but who cares, right?.

To your further question: Yes, I am a materialist, though not in the common sense as you seem to mean, but in the Objectivist sense: a materialist-spiritualist since Rand abolished the only apparently existing dualism between the two by deducing Objectivism from reality. Spirituality is not an incorporeal state as religious people would have it, but the very material thinking, motivating, feeling and willing part of the human being, i.e. our mind (consciousness, oh boy, oh boy) and the intelligence it sometimes musters (see my various posts in this forum or, else, my book "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe" as published by "Rebirth of Reason").

The way you use the terms "mind" and "consciousness" looks more to be in the religious fashion, i.e. as an ethereal "quality" as "given" by a non-existing entity. Here too I refer you to my writing. Else, may I ask you to answer the question as it was presented by wonderful Mark Twain: "When the body gets drunk, does the spirit remain sober?" It would do, you see, if it were a part separated from man's body but, of course, as Twain's words proved, it isn't.

As I said elsewhere, trying to disvalue splendid Objectivism is just another of those boring attemps that can't affect it in any way whatsoever.

Post 89

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 4:31pm

Claude, Ed:

Unfortunately, it seems that re any disagreements on the views of evolution (generally, or 'Darwinism' specifically) will treat the opponents' sources as 'propaganda' and one's own as 'facts', though we're all discussing (usually o-t-h-e-r-s') interpretations of the 'facts', all said and done. Assertions of such do not enhance discussion anymore than "You're wrong; I'm right. So there, dummy" is not the best attitude to imply in these discussions.

LLAP
J:D

(Edited by John Dailey on 1/08, 4:33pm)

Post 90

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 4:37pm

Ed:

I've been aware of how Archeopteryx was regarded since I was a kid. New interpretations (as...hinted at...by Claude) indicate otherwise, yet new fossil discoveries (as you mention) re-indicate contrary. All 'knowledge' (pro or con) on this is still tentative interpretations (especially professional others'.) Who really has a prob with that last sentence?

I hope we do not get emotionally invested in a view as professionals, who have their career on the line, need to. I can accept any view because I view n-o-n-e as 'established;' some are probable, some not...so far.

LLAP
J:D

Post 91

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 4:38pm

Please delete this post.

LLAP
J:D

(Edited by John Dailey on 1/08, 7:24pm)

Post 92

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 4:27pm

Ed,

If you have time, read the first two chapters of this book online:

http://books.google.com/books?id=8QRKV7eSqmIC&printsec=frontcover&vq=Alan+Feduccia#PPP1,M1

It's by Alan Feduccia, a well known ornithologist (and Darwinist, by the way). He goes into a great deal of detail as to why Archaeopteryx is a bird, not a transition or "missing link" between dinosaurs and birds. There are also some illustrations that accompany some of his explanations.

Here are some quotes:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The field of avian evolution has undergone revolutionary changes in both discovery and theory during the past two decades, often pitting opposing sides in bitter controversy. Nowhere has the vitriol been greater than between those paleontologists who advocate a dinosaurian origin of birds, coupled with the counter-intuitive ground-up, or cursorial, origin of avian flight, and those ornithologists, such as myself, who favor the time-honored and intuitively facile arboreal, or tree-down, theory of the evolution of flight. Many vertebrate paleontologists have accepted a formal, rigid cladistic methodology as the sine qua non for reconstructing phylogenies and, using this scheme in an almost religious manner, have discarded geological time as a tool in deciphering evolution, with the result that superficial resemblance often dictates relatedness. To such workers it is inconsequential that birdlike dinosaurs occur some 75 million or more years after the origin of birds.

. . . [A] dinosaurian origin of birds is inextricably linked with the curorial, or ground-up origin, of avian flight, which is a biophysical impossibility. How could a large, deep-bodied, obligately bipedal reptile, with a long, heavy, balancing tail and greatly foreshortened forelimbs, fighting gravity all the way, give rise to avian flight? The answer, of course, is that it could not. Yet such prestigious institutions as the American Museum of Natural History in New York have recently revised their entire dinosaur hall to conform to this theory, and their accompanying book, "Discovering Dinosaurs" (Norell, Dingus, and Gaffney, 1995) proclaimed that "the smallest dinosaur is the bee hummingbird . . . found only on Cuba".

Paleontological cladists claim that opponents of the theropod origin must produce a more suitable ancestor, but alas, we simply don't have sufficient evidence. We can only say, as dictated by science and logic, that the ancestor was a surely a small, quadrupedal, arboreal archosaur, a pre-dinosaur in the overall scheme of the genealogy.

The idea of a theropod origin of birds originally became coupled with the idea, now largely disproven, of hot-bloodedness or endothermy, in dinosaurs, the idea being that hot-blooded dinosaurs became coated with feathers for insulation, sprouted wing feathers on their arms, and flew off into the sunset. Proclaimed one author of the first known bird, "Archaeopteryx supports two theories: warm-blooded dinosaurs and the dinosaurian ancestry of birds"! However, although the theory of hot-bloodedness has fallen from favor, the advocates of a theropod origin of birds still reconstruct earthbound dinosaurs with a feathered coat, defying logic, as the feathers of birds that lost the ability to fly invariably degenerate and become hairlike in appearance.

[NOTE TO ILLUSTRATION OF ARCHAEOPTERYX]: Archaeopteryx displaying in a late Jurassic ginkgo. Although Archaeopteryx has been envisioned as a cursorial predator, most evidence indicates that it was primarly a primitive arboreal bird and a trunk climber and that it does not represent a terrestrial stage in the evolution of avian flight and feathers.

Post 93

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 7:30pm

Claude:

My point to Ed was that arguments that hinge on anything equivalent to '...most evidence indicates...' is that all such arguments, propagandizing they be or not, establish nothing beyond that an interpretation of the facts (or, evidence) is tentative...until new evidence shows up; new evidence that hopefully, one day, will be enough to actually establish unequivocally an interpretation rather than merely, so far up to now, merely indicates.

LLAP
J:D

Post 94

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:56pm

I don't know if anyone else realizes this or not but you are not going to get anywhere with Claude in the discussion about transitional fossils. Claude will never admit to a transitional fossil. Any transitional fossil proposed he will say belongs to either one species or the other. (In fact Claude, I challenge you to tell me what characteristics you would accept for a transitional fossil between dinosaurs and birds.) To phrase this in the Randian Objectivist type terminology: think of Claude as a realist in terms of Universals.

Two additional quick comments regarding post 84.

The first couple of paragraphs seem to be discussing nothing more than the change in allele frequency over time and, in somewhat broader terms, this can mean macro-evolution. I can't remember the last time I ran across a creationist who seriously challenged macro-evolution. The old chestnut about moths in England during the industrial evolution illustrates a selection pressure that was not the result of an attempt "to reach a pre-selected goal". See here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution. Claude, have I misunderstood your argument? Do you really mean that only a continuous effort towards a predetermined goal can bring about a change in the traits of animals in a breeding population (i.e. a change in allele frequency)? Are you saying it was "pure dumb luck" that caused the changes in the moths in the wiki example I provided?

Second, you said this in later paragraph regarding the shortcomings of "DARWINISM": "Anyway, there were positions in classical Darwinism that contradicted Mendel's discoveries that had to be resolved. For example, Darwin believed that traits would blend smoothly; Mendel showed that traits are segregated and discrete -- the first hint that it had something to do with "information"." Darwin’s idea was that there would be a smooth blending of the traits from both parents appearing in the offspring. Mendel showed that the process was more discrete but so what. In what way is that a significant "contradiction"? Mendel did not contradict the main thrust of Darwin's theory of dissent with modification or that the traits of the offspring are inherited from the parents. I can't see how Mendel’s ideas do anything but refine or make small corrections to Darwin's theory. Lamark's ideas might contradict Darwin's about heredity, but Mendel just applied a slight adjustment to the theory and, in fact, provided proof for Darwin's theory by demonstrating the mechanism by which the traits were, in fact, hereditary.

And finally, the last bit at the end of that sentence "...the first hint that it had something to do with "information"." In what way does "segregated and discrete" imply that all of this has something to do with information while "blend smoothly" does not? Isn't the change from "blend smoothly" to "segregated and discrete" simply a change from a continuous function to a discontinuous function? In what way is a continuous function any less able to convey information than a discontinuous function? In what way does "blend smoothly" not support the notion that "information" is passing between one generation and the next while the more discrete notions of modern genetic theory can support it?

If I'm misunderstanding something please clarify your argument.

Thanks

Josh

Post 95

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 10:01pm

Now, evolution (nowadays more often called "synthetic theory of evolution" because it incorporates all additional knowledge provided by geology, paleontology, cosmology, chemistry, etc.) is one of the special sciences to which Rand refers.

Would you, therefore, please provide a quote. I don't remember her mentioning Darwinian evolution as one of the "trees" to which she was referring.

Further on: So "consciousness is not inherent in matter" (I take it that you mean in this case "human matter")!.

I mean any matter whatsoever.

Well, where is it then? In a non-existing ethereal dimension?

Is time in a non-existing ethereal dimension? No. Yet time is non-material. Anyway, your very question is a perfect example of concept-stealing. To ask "where is it?" about something is already to assume that it is material. Mind isn't material, so locative concepts such as "where" don't apply to it. Might as well ask "where is time"?

Moreover, the fact that it exists in human matter and can even direct human matter (!!) contradicts most openly your statement that matter determines the behavior of "mind" (understanding this to be a synonym of consciousness - see Rand for more of this).

Mind is not "in" human matter. There's no evidence for that and it's an absurd position as I've explained above and in my response to your first post. Secondly, the fact that mind can direct human matter means that it cannot simultaneously be a property of matter, as you claimed earlier. If it were a property of matter, it would ultimately be determined by laws that describe and govern properties of matter: quantum laws, thermodynamic laws, etc. Those laws govern ALL properties of matter. If mind is also a property of matter, then it too would be determined by those same laws. Since mind, however, has free will and is NOT determined by these laws, then it follows that your initial premise was incorrect: mind is NOT a property of matter, human or otherwise.

How can consciousness "expunge the notion of free will" when free will is precisely one of its main operating tools?

Never said that consciousness expunges the notion of free will. You failed to understand what I posted earlier. I said that IF your premise were correct, THEN free will would not exist. Since free will does exist, it follows that your premise is not correct.

Is it an "actual property of atoms"? Did I say so? Not at all. But even atoms have the basis for properties which only come to light at the level of more complex combinations.

Dialectical materialism. Everything atoms do in combination can be described and predicted from the nature of a single atom, quantum laws, thermodynamics, etc. Mind is not something atoms do or create. There is no qualitative change of atoms into mind when you lump enough of them together. That sort of hocus-pocus is exactly what dialectical materialism was all about.

Were this not so, they could never even be part of any complex combination. With your statement you seem to reject the fact that as "simple" an element as hydrogen can take part (and a major part at that) of any of the aminoacids. As a matter of fact, I'm right now racking my head to make out how can simple hydrogen be even part of so complex a thing as water is, with all its states of gas, solid and so forth…

Water, ice, steam, amino acids, are all deducible from the study of a single hydrogen atom and a single oxygen atom, and can be described by the usual deterministic or statistical laws.

To your further question: Yes, I am a materialist,

Thank you for admitting it. Rand was not a materialist.

though not in the common sense as you seem to mean

I see. So you're a materialist, but you have your own definition of "materialism".

but in the Objectivist sense:

Objectivism rejects materialism in any sense, common or uncommon.

a materialist-spiritualist since Rand abolished the only apparently existing dualism between the two by deducing Objectivism from reality.

I see. So your kind of materialism is one that permits spiritualism. Hyphen or no hyphen, it's called "dualism".

Spirituality is not an incorporeal state as religious people would have it,

One needn't be religious to accept the common sense view that mind and brain are two completely different things. In fact, there are many religious people who would accept your view.

but the very material thinking,

I have no idea what "material thinking" is. Matter doesn't think.

motivating, feeling and willing part of the human being, i.e. our mind (consciousness, oh boy, oh boy) and the intelligence it sometimes musters (see my various posts in this forum or, else, my book "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe" as published by "Rebirth of Reason").

This sounds more like a pep rally rather than a rational argument.

The way you use the terms "mind" and "consciousness" looks more to be in the religious fashion, i.e. as an ethereal "quality" as "given" by a non-existing entity.

Matter is an ultimate "given"; so is mind. Your use of the term "religion" is a straw-man; a complete atheist can grasp the difference between corporeal matter and incorporeal mind. None of this requires or presupposes belief in God or anything else.

Here too I refer you to my writing. Else, may I ask you to answer the question as it was presented by wonderful Mark Twain: "When the body gets drunk, does the spirit remain sober?"

Easy. The answer is yes. And when the body gets paralyzed (see Christopher Reeve, for example) the mind is not paralyzed. So much for Twain's quip. So much for your argument.

It would do, you see, if it were a part separated from man's body but, of course, as Twain's words proved, it isn't.

Twain's words don't "prove" things; neither do Ayn Rand's. Arguments prove things. The fact that mind and brain are different does not imply that they are separable. Lots of things are different and distinguishable, but not physically separable. One has nothing to do with the other.

As I said elsewhere, trying to disvalue splendid Objectivism is just another of those boring attemps that can't affect it in any way whatsoever.

Your arguments are not the equivalent of Objectivism; in fact, they contradict it in several places. To disprove your argument is simply to disprove your argument. It doesn't reflect on Objectivism at all, irrespective of your having published a book purporting to be on the subject.

Your position sounds like the "pep rallies" and "loyalty oaths" that "students of Objectivism" took in the 1960s during Branden's watch. Any attempt at arguing a point with someone in the "inner circle" was taken to be an attack on Rand and her philosophy. This was no different from the way all other cult groups functioned in the past: Freud and his "students of psychoanalysis"; Marx and the various communist parties around the world.

Both your attitude toward Objectivism and your arguments seemingly in support of it (though which actually contradict it) are a gust of stale air from the distant past.

Post 96

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 10:22pm

JD:

Science is never "established." Newton is not "established"; relativity is not "established"; QM is not "established." A stringent enough experiment simply hasn't come along to disprove any of these (with the exception, as we all know, of Newton; though relativistic concepts, as important as they are, didn't exactly knock Sir Isaac off his perch).

My problem with Darwinism as a theory of origin of life and speciation is that it isn't a theory at all, and the evidence -- such as fossils, the code aspect of DNA, etc. -- doesn't "indicate" it to be true. If you didn't already accept the idea of descent with modification, gradualism, cumulative mutation and selection, there's nothing in the fossil record that would make one think "Ah! I see transitional forms leading from one species to another; and if I don't see it, it's only because the fossil WAS there a while ago but got lost, shifted, buried, crushed, etc. today." No one looked at the fossil record like that prior to Darwin. They knew about fossils. They assumed that each was a separate species.

Darwinism superimposes an interpretation on the data. I suppose all theories do that; but the payoff is that the theory -- or model -- then lets you do things apart from the immediate evidence: you can make predictions, deduced from the model, and then compare the result to actual data. You can retrodict: you can tell what the state of the evidence must have been in the past. You can attach numbers to things and perform calculations.

You can't do any of this with Darwinism. It bears the same relation to the data as, e.g., literary criticism bears to literature. It's strictly interpretative. This is not so with other sciences.

The Darwinian paradigm might also be counterproductive. We now know that the so-called "junk" DNA in the genome is not junk at all. It may be non-coding, but it's not junk. Yet for decades, the Darwinians in genetics kept insisting that the non-coding DNA was simply left-over "fossils" of old trials that had failed. How much sooner we would have studied the non-coding DNA had it not been for Darwinism's insistence that it's not worth studying is anyone's guess.

Post 97

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 6:18am

Claude, are you or are you not a creationist?

If you have no other scientific theory to offer, there are others better qualified at defending evolutionary theory than any of us here.

I believe you ARE a creationist, and simply don't wish to defend your actual position. If you look at any actual scientists, such as Hoyle, who argue against certain theories (in this example the Big Bang - which he coined as criticism), they all did so and then offered their own ideas as an explanation. If you have nothing to offer, even through citing other people's ideas, as I have seen here regarding many issues such as physics and the like, then you are wasting our time.

Post 98

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 10:45am

If you look at any actual scientists, such as Hoyle, who argue against certain theories (in this example the Big Bang - which he coined as criticism), they all did so and then offered their own ideas as an explanation.

Hoyle also argued against Darwinism, including writing several books on the subject ("Why Neo-Darwinism Doesn't Work" and "The Mathematics of Evolution"). In its place he offered a revised version of "panspermia", in which life on earth arose after having been seeded by comets. The idea was that already-existing genetic material carried by comets could combine -- like Legos or TinkerToy -- into larger more complex units; but the building blocks were pre-existing. He gave no explanation for where those original building blocks came from. See "www.panspermia.com" for additional articles on Hoyle.

However, I am not a professional scientist (never claimed to be) and my responsibilities as a student of evolution stop at merely showing the weaknesses of Darwinian theory. I do this by taking the theory at its word and seeing where it would lead.

If you have nothing to offer, even through citing other people's ideas, as I have seen here regarding many issues such as physics and the like, then you are wasting our time.

No one forces you to read my posts or reply to them. That you do so indicates that you enjoy wasting your time.

Post 99

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 1:31pm