I am at an 80th birthday celebration. I can get to this later
I would like it known that my religion considers thread consolidation a grave sin, and I would seriously consider going after you for a RFRA violation if you take Brad's advice.
It's a way to contain LBB, bruh.
A noble cause. But if people around these parts really want to get into religion and philosophy, I want multiple narrow threads. I want "The Theology Thread" and "The Historical Jesus Thread" and "The Second Temple Judaism Thread" and "The Do We Have A Soul? Thread." I have too much to say about this shit to mash it all into one generic blender of nonsense.
Ironic, given that it's all nonsense to begin with.
I am at an 80th birthday celebration. I can get to this later
I would like it known that my religion considers thread consolidation a grave sin, and I would seriously consider going after you for a RFRA violation if you take Brad's advice.
It's a way to contain LBB, bruh.
A noble cause. But if people around these parts really want to get into religion and philosophy, I want multiple narrow threads. I want "The Theology Thread" and "The Historical Jesus Thread" and "The Second Temple Judaism Thread" and "The Do We Have A Soul? Thread." I have too much to say about this shit to mash it all into one generic blender of nonsense.
Ironic, given that it's all nonsense to begin with.
Qualia.
We have first-person subjective experience of our own existence. We're not just mechanically aware of our surroundings, but we are epistemically aware of our own reality, and our own passage through it. There is logically and evolutionarily no necessary reason for this, as far as we know. A being that had our same neural networks, our same bodies, our same environment, as far as we could tell, would do just as well as we would. This hypothetical being is called a "philosophical zombie." The point is, the zombie would behave exactly as we would, and therefore succeed just as much in the evolutionary arms race. That leads to a very interesting conundrum:
1) Then what of subjective experience? If it is a natural phenomenon, it must have some biological cost, in terms of energy expenditure, and there would be no reason for it to survive through the generations, as it would be an added cost with no benefit.
2) Or, if you don't limit yourself to a reductionist, naturalist understanding of existence, our subjective selves may exist on a different level, perhaps straddling the line between the physical universe and something else, in a way that requires no energy expenditure, and thus no evolutionary cost.
3) If the former is true, pure Darwinism seems to break down. If the latter is true, pure materialism seems to break down.
Perhaps there is an answer to this conundrum, but I have not yet found it. I think the strongest evidence for there being something "more" is simply the fact that we are capable of experiencing the question.
I am at an 80th birthday celebration. I can get to this later
I would like it known that my religion considers thread consolidation a grave sin, and I would seriously consider going after you for a RFRA violation if you take Brad's advice.
It's a way to contain LBB, bruh.
A noble cause. But if people around these parts really want to get into religion and philosophy, I want multiple narrow threads. I want "The Theology Thread" and "The Historical Jesus Thread" and "The Second Temple Judaism Thread" and "The Do We Have A Soul? Thread." I have too much to say about this shit to mash it all into one generic blender of nonsense.
Ironic, given that it's all nonsense to begin with.
Qualia.
We have first-person subjective experience of our own existence. We're not just mechanically aware of our surroundings, but we are epistemically aware of our own reality, and our own passage through it. There is logically and evolutionarily no necessary reason for this, as far as we know. A being that had our same neural networks, our same bodies, our same environment, as far as we could tell, would do just as well as we would. This hypothetical being is called a "philosophical zombie." The point is, the zombie would behave exactly as we would, and therefore succeed just as much in the evolutionary arms race. That leads to a very interesting conundrum:
1) Then what of subjective experience? If it is a natural phenomenon, it must have some biological cost, in terms of energy expenditure, and there would be no reason for it to survive through the generations, as it would be an added cost with no benefit.
2) Or, if you don't limit yourself to a reductionist, naturalist understanding of existence, our subjective selves may exist on a different level, perhaps straddling the line between the physical universe and something else, in a way that requires no energy expenditure, and thus no evolutionary cost.
3) If the former is true, pure Darwinism seems to break down. If the latter is true, pure materialism seems to break down.
Perhaps there is an answer to this conundrum, but I have not yet found it. I think the strongest evidence for there being something "more" is simply the fact that we are capable of experiencing the question.
Everything is a natural phenomenon, even emergent properties. Yes, our brains have a cost. No, all things that cost something or all things that evolve into being aren't necessarily "for something."
Re the zombie, nothing in evolution says we must be perfect beings. Your theory makes no room for vestigial structures. For example, another being--Human Prime--could have our same neural networks, etc. and act the same and not have a tailbone or wisdom teeth--that doesn't mean those things have any use value now and they cost something. Does that mean tha Darwinism or natural selection "break[s] down?" No.
And of course, none of what you wrote leads to any kind of proof or argument for the Christian Bible, Quran, or Torah.
This post was modified 2 months ago by BradStevens
That's a good point. But one of the hallmarks of vestigial structures is that they had some function in the past. So to describe subjective experience as a vestigial structure, you must find at least some explanation for why it might have been a useful function at some point, which no one has yet been able to do.
That doesn't mean it can't be done. I'm just saying that I think if you want a solid argument for why pure physicalism and pure naturalism and pure materialism might be lacking, subjective experience is your go-to. I don't think anyone has yet adequately explained away the existence of qualia.
This is an issue that has been a burr in my brain for many years.
As beings we are aware of being aware. We create thoughts, ideas, conclusions, even images in our mind. These CAN be absent any and all qualia, proving our existence can exist without qualia.
But qualia aren’t relevant to my interests in examining my existence. With my eyes closed I can create an image of a box (or anything) in my mind/brain, then move it toward my right ear, then over to my left ear, then throw it away from my head, gone forever. I assume you can as well but I don’t know. Explain those physical/spatial movements in terms of brain matter.
That's a good point. But one of the hallmarks of vestigial structures is that they had some function in the past. So to describe subjective experience as a vestigial structure, you must find at least some explanation for why it might have been a useful function at some point, which no one has yet been able to do.
That doesn't mean it can't be done. I'm just saying that I think if you want a solid argument for why pure physicalism and pure naturalism and pure materialism might be lacking, subjective experience is your go-to. I don't think anyone has yet adequately explained away the existence of qualia.
This is an issue that has been a burr in my brain for many years.
i don’t think modern evolutionary theory theorizes that every structure, mutation, etc. needs to have a “purpose.” Past or present. Some things are just happenstance that they exist. But even if consciousness provides survival advantages worth the cost, again, that seems like a non supernatural phenomenon to me
I believe this is one of the things that led to the big dust up with Dennett and Gould.
That's a good point. But one of the hallmarks of vestigial structures is that they had some function in the past. So to describe subjective experience as a vestigial structure, you must find at least some explanation for why it might have been a useful function at some point, which no one has yet been able to do.
That doesn't mean it can't be done. I'm just saying that I think if you want a solid argument for why pure physicalism and pure naturalism and pure materialism might be lacking, subjective experience is your go-to. I don't think anyone has yet adequately explained away the existence of qualia.
This is an issue that has been a burr in my brain for many years.
i don’t think modern evolutionary theory theorizes that every structure, mutation, etc. needs to have a “purpose.” Past or present. Some things are just happenstance that they exist. But even if consciousness provides survival advantages worth the cost, again, that seems like a non supernatural phenomenon to me
I believe this is one of the things that led to the big dust up with Dennett and Gould.
True. There are such things as emergent phenomena. At least theoretically. I don't think there is an example of one that we can say definitely fits the bill, but I also think asking someone to do that is a bit like proving a negative, in that it's not really a fair task. I will say that so far, when we study vestigial structures, we are able to draw analogies to our apparent evolutionary past to explain why natural selection might have chosen them. The most obvious example would be something like ostrich wings. Why does an ostrich have wings? Because the ostrich's ancestors used to fly. QED.*
So I think it's reasonable to think that if subjective consciousness is a physical process, we should be able to posit some selective advantage that it does or did in the past convey to us. So far, attempts on that front have been unconvincing. Like our discussion about AI - an AI doesn't have to be aware like a human, it just has to be more efficient than we are to effectively replace us. Or the Chinese Room thought experiment. The room clearly doesn't have awareness, and yet perfectly mimics a Chinese speaker.
To be clear, I'm not saying all this is enough to definitively reject physicalism. I'm just saying it's a strong grounding to at least consider the possibility.
*NB: Like many apparently vestigial structures, wings on flightless birds aren't actually purely vestigial. They have been repurposed to the point that they still provide some value. But the point here is that they have wings designed for flight, and the obvious reason for that is that their ancestors flew.
I believe this is one of the things that led to the big dust up with Dennett and Gould.
I'm familiar with Gould, but not Dennett and this "dustup" you're referring to?
Got a Cliffs?
Dennett, Dawkins, and others (many others, in fact), promoted the idea that all human traits - including cognitive ones - could be explained as discrete genetic adaptations to selective pressure in our evolutionary past. Gould disliked this idea, because he felt the mind was so complex that it might give rise to traits (and behaviors) that are not dictated purely by genetics, but rather by a flexible, realtime response to social and environmental factors. So, for example, Dennett might argue that altruism only exists because it was a successful response to some selective pressure, and we are capable of it because the genes which make it possible were therefore favored evolutionarily, while Gould might argue that altruism could be a response to cultural and social realities, and the capability of showing altruistic behavior could be sort of a side effect of our complex brains, not something that was specifically adapted for.
It's a genuine disagreement, but I think the dust-up was more about style. Gould was the pre-eminent popular writer on evolutionary biology for a long time, and Dennett, et al., were concerned that the general public might think Gould's views were more mainstream than they really were.
Pangloss in a lab coat, always wearing that crown.
Every trait’s a masterpiece? That’s fairy-tale trash— I drop “spandrels of San Marco,” watch your whole dome crash. You see a giraffe neck? “Selection made it long!” I say historical contingency, baby, that’s the song. Drift, pleiotropy, developmental lock— Your just-so stories flop harder than a Tiktaalik on rock. Punctuated equilibrium, fool—evolution jumps, Not your slow grind adaptation pump. You’re a philosopher playing biologist, blind to the mess, I’m the Harvard don dropping science on your “Universal Darwinist” stress!
Dennett (adjusting glasses, calm killer flow, stepping forward): Stephen, you beautiful catastrophist, king of the Gouldian arc, Crying “constraints!” while the data does the Darwinian spark. Adaptationism ain’t blind faith, it’s the engine that works— Reverse-engineering minds, bodies, and quirks. Your spandrels? Cute architectural aside, But most features ain’t byproducts—selection’s the guide. You hate “just-so stories”? Then stop telling ‘em worse: “Everything’s contingent!”—that’s the ultimate curse. I’m riding Darwin’s dangerous idea straight through the night, You’re stuck in the Burgess Shale, scared of the light. Intentional stance on evolution—design without a designer, Your punctuated drama’s just narrative, lighter than vapor.
Gould (firing back, voice rising like a mass extinction event): Dangerous idea? Boy, you turned Darwin into a priest! Church of the Adaptationist, bowing to the Behe-ist beast. I gave you the panda’s thumb—jury-rigged, not sublime— Your “optimal design” talk is straight-up pantomime. Mass extinctions rewrite the book, contingency reigns, One asteroid and your precious adaptations go down the drain. You meme-ify selection like it’s god in a lab coat, I’m the heretic saying the tape of life don’t play the same note. Keep your crane of cranes and your skyhook dreams, I’ll take messy history over your reductionist schemes!
Dennett (closing strong, dropping the mic philosophy): Messy history needs a lens or you’re just stamp-collecting fossils, Adaptationism’s the flashlight—your darkness is colossal. Every spandrel you hype was built on prior adaptive ground, Selection’s the blind watchmaker; your “constraints” just slow it down. Gould, you romanticize the weird while ignoring the fit, I universalize the algorithm—Darwin’s gift. No skyhooks, just cranes stacking design on design, Your punctuated punk rock’s cute, but selection still rewinds. So bow to the power of “good enough” that actually works, Adaptationism wins—your contingency’s just quirks.
[Beat cuts with record scratch and fossilized applause]
The highly intellectual Gould v. Dennett debate over evolution theory is certainly more complicated than the "survival of the fittest" theory of Darwin.
Compared to Gould and Dennett, it would seem to me, that Darwin offers a theory which even todays eighth grader could understand. This contrasts with the theories of Gould and Dennett which would blow the minds of most eighth graders.
Will AI, just like Gould and Dennett, exceed the ability of so many people to grasp that AI will be seen as simply ivory tower propaganda?
Not understanding technology doesn’t turn it into propaganda.
Was the printing press ivory tower propaganda? The Industrial Revolution? Electricity? Air flight? Radio and TV? Space travel? The personal computer? Microprocessors? The internet? Satellites? Wireless communication? Cell phones? Streaming technology? Artificial intelligence?
How many eighth graders actually understand any of these technologies?
AI is already here. It’s real. Jobs are being lost. AI is just an acceleration of the societal changes caused by information technology.
