Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Consul]

And as for evolution, nobody has any idea what the scientific foundation for that is.

???

[Belindi]

Gary,
Evolution means gradual change over time.
Evolution by natural selection is based on:

struggle for existence + random mutations= change over time. In the case of biological change over time refers to long long duration often referred to as geological time.

[Sy Borg]

If you are using those examples, you are not understanding my point. Our mental filters make life possible.

I guess I am not understanding your point, unless you are a Kantian.

Am I?

A visual example. Without filters, you are blind. Why? Because you won't only see the usual solid things, you will see all the gases in the atmosphere, all the electomagnetic waves, the gravity waves. You would see every atom of every entity, every molecule etc - and you would be swamped. The effect would be akin to a snow white-out. There's so much stuff that you can't make anything out clearly.

So we have physical and mental filters that sift out all the things that didn't help people reproduce in the past. We are the offspring of those whose filters best kept them alive and healthy.

[GaryLouisSmith]

And as for evolution, nobody has any idea what the scientific foundation for that is.

???

Supposedly, if you knew the scientific foundation that governs biological change, i.e. the mathematical laws of system formation and demise, then you could see that the evolution of biological systems is perfectly natural and there is no need for outside, supernatural intervention. Right now we don’t have those laws of change in hand. Surely Boltzmann’s laws of entropy fit in there. And maybe even fractals. The exact formulation escapes us; nonetheless, we have great faith that we can mathematicize nature and make it all work smoothly by itself without a god manipulating the dials. No anthropic principle is necessary. But we aren’t there yet. Faith is all we have. Faith in mathematics and that the universe is rational.

[GaryLouisSmith]

I guess I am not understanding your point, unless you are a Kantian.

Am I?

A visual example. Without filters, you are blind. Why? Because you won't only see the usual solid things, you will see all the gases in the atmosphere, all the electomagnetic waves, the gravity waves. You would see every atom of every entity, every molecule etc - and you would be swamped. The effect would be akin to a snow white-out. There's so much stuff that you can't make anything out clearly.

So we have physical and mental filters that sift out all the things that didn't help people reproduce in the past. We are the offspring of those whose filters best kept them alive and healthy.

I can go along with you up until your last sentence. I hate those heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce. That makes homosexuals outliers that have to be explained. Surely, it is thought, they must also serve a role in reproduction. F*ck that! I am not a handmaiden in someone else's need to reproduce.

[Jklint]

Faith is all we have. Faith in mathematics and that the universe is rational.

Faith or not, it worked so far.

[GaryLouisSmith]

And as for evolution, nobody has any idea what the scientific foundation for that is.

???

Even if you do learn to completely mathematicize the cosmos and explain the evolution of all systems, you still might need a God to further explain everything.

It is of course perfectly possible that the universe and everything you know just popped into existence twenty minutes ago and that at your death it will all vanish so that in effect your death is really the death of the universe.

If a person believes that behind or under all the appearing phenomena that come at us there is a material substance that subsists through change, then order can be maintained and there will be no popping in and out of existence for no reason. So is there a material substrate holding everything nicely in place? I say no. There are only the phenomena we perceive and there is nothing behind all that. I think George Berkeley adequately disposed of the notion of matter. I am an anti-substantialist. OMG, Ayn Rand also believed along those same lines that she wouldn’t die but that it was the universe that would die.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Faith is all we have. Faith in mathematics and that the universe is rational.

Faith or not, it worked so far.

It hasn't worked for physics. The problem of the Cosmological Constant has really thrown a monkey wrench into the works. In fact the laws of physics as we currently know then say that this universe is impossible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Fxt_yCrcc

[Jklint]

Faith or not, it worked so far.

It hasn't worked for physics. The problem of the Cosmological Constant has really thrown a monkey wrench into the works. In fact the laws of physics as we currently know then say that this universe is impossible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Fxt_yCrcc

Physics has worked very well so far as has our understanding of Evolution. Dark Energy and it's assumed affiliation with the CC is a quandary which remains to be solved by physics.

The way you express it all our theories of the universe are likely to be wrong including quantum theory and Relativity including its consequence the Cosmological Constant which amounts to an oxymoron. If we know that the universe is impossible based on these theories there must be another theory providing that data.

The CC tenuously relates to the mystery of Dark Energy as a cause for the accelerating rate of expansion of the universe. It's up to physics to eventually discover what that Dark Energy is or comes from. It has absolutely nothing to do with faith on any level. Science is grunt work not anywhere near complete and not likely to ever be.

[Felix]

GaryLouisSmith: I can go along with you up until your last sentence. I hate those heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce.

I find it interesting, Gary, how you translated Greta's statement, "we have physical and mental filters that sift out all the things that didn't help people reproduce in the past," into: "heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce." Could it be your psychological filters at work there? I'm assuming you're not a product of cloning?

But I will say that the one tenet of evolutionary theory I find the most incoherent (there's more than one) is one that Belindi mentioned, i.e., the idea that a blob of protoplasm (going way back to the primeval rain puddle) should have a will to live and "struggle for existence." The obvious question is, why would a mindless protoblob have a will to live? This question is glossed over by calling it "instinct." Have you ever noticed that when scientists don't have a rational explanation for something, they'll come up with a sophisticated sounding term that seems to be meaningful but actually is not?

[GaryLouisSmith]

The way you express it all our theories of the universe are likely to be wrong

Yes, I agree with much of what you have to say. I of course don’t know if dark energy is the energy of the vacuum. I was only replying to your statement that our faith in mathematicizing nature has worked so far. I hasn’t. I don’t know what will happen next in physics.

One reason I think all our theories are ultimately wrong is the same reason I believe all our axiomatic systems of logic are ultimately wrong. Goedel proved that no logical system can be both complete and consistent. Following that I speculate that no theory of physics can be both complete and consistent. Ultimately the world we see has the form of logic. Just as the physical world can be “reduced” to mathematics, so mathematics can be “reduced” to logic. The physical world can be reduced to logic and logic ultimately wafts on the breezes of paradox. In other words the world is ultimately irrational.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith: I can go along with you up until your last sentence. I hate those heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce.

I find it interesting, Gary, how you translated Greta's statement, "we have physical and mental filters that sift out all the things that didn't help people reproduce in the past," into: "heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce." Could it be your psychological filters at work there? I'm assuming you're not a product of cloning?

But I will say that the one tenet of evolutionary theory I find the most incoherent (there's more than one) is one that Belindi mentioned, i.e., the idea that a blob of protoplasm (going way back to the primeval rain puddle) should have a will to live and "struggle for existence." The obvious question is, why would a mindless protoblob have a will to live? This question is glossed over by calling it "instinct." Have you ever noticed that when scientists don't have a rational explanation for something, they'll come up with a sophisticated sounding term that seems to be meaningful but actually is not?

Could it be that I see clearly what is really going on without the blinders of filters.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith: I can go along with you up until your last sentence. I hate those heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce.

I find it interesting, Gary, how you translated Greta's statement, "we have physical and mental filters that sift out all the things that didn't help people reproduce in the past," into: "heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce." Could it be your psychological filters at work there? I'm assuming you're not a product of cloning?

But I will say that the one tenet of evolutionary theory I find the most incoherent (there's more than one) is one that Belindi mentioned, i.e., the idea that a blob of protoplasm (going way back to the primeval rain puddle) should have a will to live and "struggle for existence." The obvious question is, why would a mindless protoblob have a will to live? This question is glossed over by calling it "instinct." Have you ever noticed that when scientists don't have a rational explanation for something, they'll come up with a sophisticated sounding term that seems to be meaningful but actually is not?

I think in the life sciences Romanticism and Naturphilosophie are still strong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism_in_science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturphilosophie

[Sy Borg]

Am I? :lol:

A visual example. Without filters, you are blind. Why? Because you won't only see the usual solid things, you will see all the gases in the atmosphere, all the electomagnetic waves, the gravity waves. You would see every atom of every entity, every molecule etc - and you would be swamped. The effect would be akin to a snow white-out. There's so much stuff that you can't make anything out clearly.

So we have physical and mental filters that sift out all the things that didn't help people reproduce in the past. We are the offspring of those whose filters best kept them alive and healthy.

I can go along with you up until your last sentence. I hate those heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce. That makes homosexuals outliers that have to be explained. Surely, it is thought, they must also serve a role in reproduction. F*ck that! I am not a handmaiden in someone else's need to reproduce.

Best suck your froth back in, Gaz, it's not a good look.

I'm just stating fact. That's what happened - some people's filters aided survival and their offspring inherited those filters. Not much good if your parent can see microwave radiation, for instance, because that would interfere with seeing things that are more important for survival. Any such lines of microwave-seeing people would have died out.

So we not only need filters but we need the right ones. Note that paradigms also act as filters, aside from just sensory processing. Your sensory filters determine your subjective reality. Your paradigms shape and rationalise that reality further.

And may I humbly offer an apology on behalf of organisms that reproduce via heterosexual relations. This is obviously unfair behaviour by Mother Earth! Yet again. Now she's sprouting darn humans all over the place. I am not convinced that she knows what she's doing but, to be fair, she may the playing the long game. For those who are religiously inclined, replace "Mother Earth" with "God".

[GaryLouisSmith]

I can go along with you up until your last sentence. I hate those heterosexualists who think the whole purpose of life is to reproduce. That makes homosexuals outliers that have to be explained. Surely, it is thought, they must also serve a role in reproduction. F*ck that! I am not a handmaiden in someone else's need to reproduce.

Best suck your froth back in, Gaz, it's not a good look.

I'm just stating fact. That's what happened - some people's filters aided survival and their offspring inherited those filters. Not much good if your parent can see microwave radiation, for instance, because that would interfere with seeing things that are more important for survival. Any such lines of microwave-seeing people would have died out.

So we not only need filters but we need the right ones. Note that paradigms also act as filters, aside from just sensory processing. Your sensory filters determine your subjective reality. Your paradigms shape and rationalise that reality further.

And may I humbly offer an apology on behalf of organisms that reproduce via heterosexual relations. This is obviously unfair behaviour by Mother Earth! Yet again. Now she's sprouting darn humans all over the place. I am not convinced that she knows what she's doing but, to be fair, she may the playing the long game. For those who are religiously inclined, replace "Mother Earth" with "God".

Do you have any idea why I got so worked up about what you said. Or is it the case that you just don't give a damn?