This is the point where you do your obfuscation routine where you get stuck in a cycle of missing the point and repeating yourself. Let me know when you're ready to actually address my posts rather than your signature barrage of strawman attacks and red herrings.
If you feel me posting different citations showing what you are saying is false is repeating myself then is because you keep being wrong.
You want to sit here and pretend that consciousness in humans is not something people have been philosophising about for thousands of years as something "new" to the world of cosmology so you can pretend it is "missing" from the world of science. I have been saying this since page one but you keep trying to act as if you are truly bringing something new and groundbreaking......
I talked about the universe as exhibiting consciousness as an emergent pattern on page one. Now you are going to sit here and pretend the idea of consciousness just came into the discussion with the introduction of quantum physics. Whether or not Darwin ascribed to those views is irrelevant to consciousness being a topic of intense debate within scientific, philosophical, esoteric, theological and religious circles for thousands of years. Aspects of quantum physics were already expressed long ago in many metaphysical doctrines. This is my point. Schisms between quantum physics schisms and Newtonian physics aren't the beginning of human theoretical models of metaphysical principles in science. Quantum science just proves there is a lot more about the physical universe we don't understand.
So in general I don't disagree that many modern conflicts in science exist between various ideological camps. Yes Darwin has some baggage within his thinking, but again, evolution is still generally accepted even if all of Darwin's other ideas are not. And many traditional Newtonian scientists believed in the universe expressing consciousness even without the understanding of quantum phenomena.
All of that said, consciousness is another one of those things that humans may never fully understand just like they never will understand everything there is to know about the universe and creation.....
quote: I’ve been writing a lot lately about consciousness, the ultimate enigma. I used to think why there is something rather than nothing is the ultimate enigma. But without mind, there might as well be nothing.
Some mind-ponderers, notably philosopher Colin McGinn, argue that consciousness is unsolvable. Philosopher Owen Flanagan calls these pessimists “mysterians,” after the 60’s-era rock group “Question Mark and the Mysterians.”
Recently, physicist Edward Witten came out as a mysterian. Witten is regarded with awe by his fellow physicists, some of whom have compared him to Einstein and Newton. He is largely responsible for the popularity of string theory over the past several decades. String theory holds that all of nature's forces stem from infinitesimal particles wriggling in a hyperspace consisting of many extra dimensions.
To me, like I said before many of these modern scientists are using math and theoretical science as a modern day system of cosmology and metaphysics to explain the "unknowns" of creation which may or may not ever be solved.
The difference is how these unknowns are expressed and whatever framework one camp or another believes to be the most promising in solving or providing clues to solving those mysteries. For some it is string theory, for others it is quantum, for others it is a combined model of some sort and so forth and so on.
At the end of the day we are still discussing the same mysteries using more complex formulas that were discussed thousands of years ago. And therefore these different camps are technically "splitting hairs" because nobody has the answer to many of the age old quesions around god, creation, consciousness, etc. It is just the arrogance of modern society that assumes were close to and will have these answers that causes the problem.
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Here are the points I've been arguing, for those who are wondering. Notice that they're not addressed in this thread, whether deliberately or due to absent-mindedness or ignorance
Darwinism is a product of the default scientific worldview, which is the Newtonian worldview. The Newtonian worldview is a European doctrine, that evolved out of the clockwork universe concept (see deism).
Cutting edge science has moved on from the Newtonian worldview, but mainstream science has not.
As a result, Darwinism and all other mainstream evolutionist thought has never been updated to reflect the fact that life forms are not Newtonian systems.
Refusing to update and rethink in light of cutting edge findings allows mainstream science to protect its cherished pet theories. Sometimes they do more than ignoring; sometimes they destroy careers of people who reject the Newtonian worldview
The taboo resting on the discussion of consciousness in some quarters, and the reduction of consciousness to a secondary and illusory side-effect of the brain in other quarters, is an important part of that defensive strategy.
The stakes are high. Should consciousness turn out to be fundamental in nature (and not an illusory, secondary by-product of electro-chemical activity), the whole house of cards mainstream science is resting on, would implode
The house of cards should have imploded already. In the 20th century all sorts of experiments have disproved the Newtonian worldview. The double slit experiment is just one of them. Even if you argue that consciousness has nothing to do with the double slit experiment, it still disproves the Newtonian worldview. No matter how you slice it. The Newtonian worldview has natural laws acting on their own, with humans being passive props who are governed by natural forces in every aspect of lives. Yes, that means even free will is an illusion in the Newtonian worldview (see determinism). But we now know, as a result of the aforementioned experiments, that this is bogus. The Newtonian worldview is a toxic and dangerous European doctrine that needs to be understood in the context of the philosophical climate it arose and developed. If you accept the Newtonian worldview you either made a choice to subscribe to it knowing what it entails (basically, that you're a zombie who is in the illusion of making decisions that are, in fact, made by the brain without your involvement) or you've been indoctrinated. No in-betweens. If you made the deliberate choice to accept the Newtonian worldview, you're a dupe. If you've been indoctrinated and don't start thinking for yourself after someone tells you what it entails, you're a dupe.
The statement that god is not needed in science comes from the Newtonian worldview. Whether or not the traditional god exists is irrelevant. The point is that claiming "we don't need [insert x] in science" is not a scientific statement. What is really happening here is people are secretly speaking from the Newtonian worldview, which they're not upfront about. They need to admit to speaking on behalf of materialist community, not on the behalf of the scientific community. Watch for the strawman attacks next as some will deflect from the fundamental point I'm making and accuse me of being religious.
The statement that god is not needed in science comes from the Newtonian worldview.
quote: Space is an affection of a being just as a being. No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way. God is every where, created minds are somewhere, and body is in the space that it occupies; and whatever is neither everywhere nor anywhere does not exist. And hence it follows that space is an emanative effect of the first existing being, for if any being whatsoever is posited, space is posited.
He endures always and is present everywhere, and by existing always and everywhere he constitutes duration and space. Since each and every particle of space is always, and each and every indivisible moment of duration is everywhere, certainly the maker and lord of all things will not be never or nowhere … God is one and the same God always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not only virtually but also substantially; for active power cannot subsist without substance.
-- Issac Newton
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
Whether or not the traditional god exists is irrelevant. The point is that claiming "we don't need [insert x] in science" is not a scientific statement.
yes saying "we don't need a deity in science" is not a scientific statement.
similarly saying "we need a deity in science" is also not a scientific statement.
Newton's view has been considered to be close to deism and several biographers and scholars labeled him as a deist who is strongly influenced by Christianity. However, he differed from strict adherents of deism in that he invoked God as a special physical cause to keep the planets in orbits. He warned against using the law of gravity to view the universe as a mere machine, like a great clock. He said:
This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. [...] This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called "Lord God" παντοκρατωρ [pantokratōr], or "Universal Ruler". [...] The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, [and] absolutely perfect.Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Again, Newtonian worldview is not about Newton's religious views or any one particular law of his. That's a fallacy that for something to bear his name, it must reflect everything about him. Doesn't matter how often you and Doug repeat it. It's a fallacy and just shows you and Doug are completely missing the point.
Chapter 22: The Development of the Newtonian Worldview- 1700-1900 The more mechanistic Newtonian worldview worked its way into chemistry, biology, and electromagnetic theory in different ways over 1700-1900. Chemistry became less qualitative and more quantitative view in line with atomic theory. Biology abandoned vitalism, and embraced the idea that life broken into its elements is not different from non-life. Electricity and magnetism were unified. The Michelson-Morley experiments, black body radiation and x-rays all provided some early challenges to the so far hugely successful Newtonian worldview. https://mountincompetence.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/worldviews-part-2-aristotelian-to-newtonian-worldview/
Note BTW how this quote describes the impact of Newtonianism on biology. People actually started to think that the only difference between a living being and dead matter is molecular organization. This is where we get abiogenesis and Darwinism, which claim that you can get living cells and tissues by putting chemicals together and zapping them with electricity. I'm still trying to figure out how it's possible to intellectually stoop so low. This is not science at all. It's just glorified science fiction.
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You said that many non European cultures had a position on theism's relationship to the universe that was possibly more correct than Darwinism. Were any of them African? If so which of those worldviews were African and what did they believe?
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Here are the points I've been arguing, for those who are wondering. Notice that they're not addressed in this thread, whether deliberately or due to absent-mindedness or ignorance
Darwinism is a product of the default scientific worldview, which is the Newtonian worldview. The Newtonian worldview is a European doctrine, that evolved out of the clockwork universe concept (see deism).
Newton was an alchemist. His views of the universe are grounded in ancient practices that did not originate in Europe. Newton as some "rationalist" and the epitome of "rationalist" European models of science is a fallacy. European science only became "rationalist" 200 years ago. Before that they were superstitious and believed in magic and spirits not "rational science" or "rational materialism".
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
Cutting edge science has moved on from the Newtonian worldview, but mainstream science has not.
"Cutting edge" science is still science and also comes from Europe. Science isn't monolithic and has never been. There have always been various views and opinions within the scientific community.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
As a result, Darwinism and all other mainstream evolutionist thought has never been updated to reflect the fact that life forms are not Newtonian systems.
Not true. Modern forms of evolution in science are dealing with aspects of biology that Darwin could not imagine, such as genetics. And the general concept of evolution existed before Darwin and there have been many variations of evolutionary thought within science. When Darwin is taught in schools they are not teaching "direction" in most cases.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
Refusing to update and rethink in light of cutting edge findings allows mainstream science to protect its cherished pet theories. Sometimes they do more than ignoring; sometimes they destroy careers of people who reject the Newtonian worldview
That is a contradiction. These 'cutting edge' ideas wouldn't exist if it wasn't for science constantly updating and rethinking things.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
The taboo resting on the discussion of consciousness in some quarters, and the reduction of consciousness to a secondary and illusory side-effect of the brain in other quarters, is an important part of that defensive strategy.
What quarters are these? Philosophers and physicists have many different views on this. And in this age of the internet it is easy to find them online. So what quarters are you speaking of?
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
The stakes are high. Should consciousness turn out to be fundamental in nature (and not an illusory, secondary by-product of electro-chemical activity), the whole house of cards mainstream science is resting on, would implode
That is a false dichotomy and a false summary of the issue. Humans have been debating this for thousands of years. This isn't new and no new discoveries in science are the cause for these questions. Science today is no closer to answering the question then they have ever been so you are just over exaggerating the power of science even at the same time you claim to be discrediting it.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
The house of cards should have imploded already. In the 20th century all sorts of experiments have disproved the Newtonian worldview. The double slit experiment is just one of them. Even if you argue that consciousness has nothing to do with the double slit experiment, it still disproves the Newtonian worldview. No matter how you slice it. The Newtonian worldview has natural laws acting on their own, with humans being passive props who are governed by natural forces in every aspect of lives. Yes, that means even free will is an illusion in the Newtonian worldview (see determinism). But we now know, as a result of the aforementioned experiments, that this is bogus. The Newtonian worldview is a toxic and dangerous European doctrine that needs to be understood in the context of the philosophical climate it arose and developed. If you accept the Newtonian worldview you either made a choice to subscribe to it knowing what it entails (basically, that you're a zombie who is in the illusion of making decisions that are, in fact, made by the brain without your involvement) or you've been indoctrinated. No in-betweens. If you made the deliberate choice to accept the Newtonian worldview, you're a dupe. If you've been indoctrinated and don't start thinking for yourself after someone tells you what it entails, you're a dupe.
As I mentioned Newton was an alchemist and alchemy started in the East and never rejected god in nature. Again you are pushing European propaganda even as you claim to rail against it. Read up on Newton's alchemical work and its ties to Jewish mysticism and mathematical symbolism(which is another form of propaganda as alchemy started in Egypt).
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
The statement that god is not needed in science comes from the Newtonian worldview. Whether or not the traditional god exists is irrelevant. The point is that claiming "we don't need [insert x] in science" is not a scientific statement. What is really happening here is people are secretly speaking from the Newtonian worldview, which they're not upfront about. They need to admit to speaking on behalf of materialist community, not on the behalf of the scientific community. Watch for the strawman attacks next as some will deflect from the fundamental point I'm making and accuse me of being religious.
Again, Alchemy was the primary science of Europe up until 200 years ago when "rationalists" took over. So science and god have been entertwined for many years, but even then most uses of science were practical and science itself was never considered as a tool to 'prove' gods existence. In fact many scientists and ancient mystics viewed the complexity and mysteries of nature as proof of gods existence. These are old concepts and not new and many modern thinkers still look at life this way.
I don't think there is any new "revolution" in science that is going to solve many of the "mysteries" thinkers have been pondering for thousands of years, including proving/disproving god or the ultimate origins of consciousness.
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Note BTW how this quote describes the impact of Newtonianism on biology. People actually started to think that the only difference between a living being and dead matter is molecular organization. This is where we get abiogenesis and Darwinism, which claim that you can get living cells and tissues by putting chemicals together and zapping them with electricity. I'm still trying to figure out how it's possible to intellectually stoop so low. This is not science at all. It's just glorified science fiction.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
The statement that god is not needed in science comes from the Newtonian worldview. Whether or not the traditional god exists is irrelevant. The point is that claiming "we don't need [insert x] in science" is not a scientific statement.
SWENETIAN WORLDVIEW
An intelligent creator being of some kind is the only scientifically valid way to explain the creation of life, and quantum mechanics supports this
/close thread
Swenet please cosign so we can move on
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: SWENETIAN WORLDVIEW
An intelligent creator being of some kind is the only scientifically valid way to explain the creation of life, and quantum mechanics supports this
/close thread
Swenet please cosign so we can move on
No. You're talking about a creator, trying to conjure up a traditional god concept that makes humans out of clay and breaths 'spirit' into their nostrils. I'm talking about consciousness being a part of nature and somehow driving evolution along with known evolutionary mechanisms. The specifics of that is up to science to work out or falsify. But you're trying to make it seem like I'm somehow religiously invested in that being true. If it's not true then it's not. But it's demonstrably better than Darwinism and everything else mainstream evolutionists have to offer. And I'm basing it on more than quantum physics.
Also, this thread is not about religious views. You made it about that once I provided evidence for direction in the evolution of modern behaviour. Your fishing attempts failed, so you shifted the topic to get some new angles to quench your thirst. Saying 'close thread' after changing the topic to religion/metaphysics shows how much you've been fishing throughout this thread.
quote:Originally posted by the Oshun: You said that many non European cultures had a position on theism's relationship to the universe that was possibly more correct than Darwinism. Were any of them African? If so which of those worldviews were African and what did they believe?
I mean, in a broad sense (i.e. at the level of worldviews or paradigms), they're almost all more correct than the paradigm Darwinism sits in. Of course, at a more granular level, Darwinism will have more 'trivia' information since it's concerned with studying nature closely and has had more scientific knowledge from predecessors to build on. But in terms of broad overarching ideas about how nature works, I would not rank Darwinism high. One thing to keep in mind is that all good animal and plant breeders in ancient times understood microevolution. If not intellectually, then they at least understood it intuitively. As an animal breeder they would have known that fitter animals would survive and have more offspring that would do better. But they would also know that breeding 'progress' can be 'lost' once animals are released back into the wild. This means that good animal breeders in ancient times would be unlikely to use adaptation as a mechanism to explain all of life. It's not an accident that Darwinists are unique in the history of evolutionary thought in terms of using adaptation as the only or main evolutionary mechanism. IMO it's because familiarity with animals shows evidence against it. Today we can confirm that. Adaptation is messy and unpredictable on the scale of decades, centuries and millennia. It's not a mechanism that can lead to Darwin's gradualism.
So when I'm relating Darwinism to other cultures it's not a statement about other cultures being scientifically advanced. It's a statement Darwinism being scientifically bankrupt to the point where worldviews evolving out of 200.000 years of human thought will inevitably be closer to the truth. Again, I don't know about the traditional god concept, but if science talks about proto-consciousness being a part of the fabric of the universe, then it seems to me people were always closer to the truth, regardless of how they chose to conceptualize this proto-consciousness (e.g. the traditional god, a distant creator uninvolved with nature, mother nature herself, etc).
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: if science talks about proto-consciousness being a part of the fabric of the universe, then it seems to me people were always closer to the truth, regardless of how they choose to conceptualize this proto-consciousness (e.g. the traditional god, a distant creator uninvolved with nature, mother nature herself, etc).
The Newtonian worldview is that God created a plan and we are living in a particular moment,a stage on that plan
Darwinism on the other hand is the opposite, there is no plan, life unfolds due to random unpredictable events
I wonder why Swenet never mentions Eiosten's worldview. The Theory of Relativity is already over 100 years old
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: The Newtonian worldview is that God created a plan and we are living in a particular moment,a stage on that plan
Darwinism on the other hand is the opposite, there is no plan, life unfolds due to random unpredictable events
But you can repeat it as often as you want if that makes you feel better.
quote:I wonder why Swenet never mentions Eiosten's worldview. The Theory of Relativity is already over 100 years old
Because Swenet understands that Einstein was working within the Newtonian worldview. BTW, they teach this in school. You just make it seem like you never went to school the way you keep misrepresenting the history of science throughout this thread. How many explanations do you need that the Newtonian worldview is the default mainstream scientific/academic worldview?
Until the early 20th century, classical mechanics, as first formulated by Newton and further developed by Laplace and others, was seen as the foundation for science as a whole. It was expected that the observations made by other sciences would sooner or later be reduced to the laws of mechanics. Although that never happened, other disciplines, such as biology, psychology or economics, did adopt a general mechanistic or Newtonian methodology and world view. This influence was so great, that most people with a basic notion of science still implicitly equate "scientific thinking" with "Newtonian thinking" http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/NEWTONWV.htmlPosts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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Doug continuing to chase his own tail with fallacies, as usual. Again, the Newtonian worldview is mainstream science's paradigm (worldview) which is just named after Newton since he had the biggest impact in terms of developing it. It didn't originate with Newton, and does not include his religious or personal beliefs. So your comments about alchemy are as misguided as your previous comments. The rest of your misrepresentations are even more random and detached from the ongoing conversations. It's like you have a routine that kicks in where you get more dense and offtopic the longer people debate you.
It's obvious you're confused and like to debate the figments of your imagination. So I'm just going to let you do you from now on. Have fun, Doug. Knock yourself out with the conversational shadowboxing.
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: An intelligent creator being of some kind is the only scientifically valid way to explain the creation of life, and quantum mechanics supports this
No. You're talking about a creator, trying to conjure up a traditional god concept that makes humans out of clay and breaths 'spirit' into their nostrils. I'm talking about consciousness being a part of nature and somehow driving evolution along with known evolutionary mechanisms. The specifics of that is up to science to work out or falsify. But you're trying to make it seem like I'm somehow religiously invested in that being true. If it's not true then it's not. But it's demonstrably better than Darwinism and everything else mainstream evolutionists have to offer. And I'm basing it on more than quantum physics.
No I am not conjuring anything. You said
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
The statement that god is not needed in science comes from the Newtonian worldview. Whether or not the traditional god exists is irrelevant. The point is that claiming "we don't need [insert x] in science" is not a scientific statement.
You brought up god not me.
Now you are backing off that and saying you saying:
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: I'm talking about consciousness being a part of nature and somehow driving evolution along with known evolutionary mechanisms.
if we look at a definition of consciousness science would recognize one of those definitions as the state of awareness a person or animals has. But you don't mean that because you were talking about abiogenisis. How abiogenesis came about is not explained by a living being just sitting there in a state of awareness.
What you mean here as consciouness is "intelligence" and you had stated earlier you thought that life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds without some other non physical component bases life on a "dumb chemical" beginning and such an idea is wrong.
Therefore according to your update the Swenetian worldview is
SWENETIAN WORLDVIEW
evolution is a process directed by a conscious intelligence
we can be conscious of something but we need intelligence to build a house -or guide an evolutionary process in a direction. Just being aware, being conscious of something is not enough. It's passive When people talk about a "higher consciousness" that implies a conscious being or force of some sort that is not just conscious like a cat looking at a bird, it is an intelligence capable of effecting things in an intelligent manner. a "higher consciousness" just shows us there is a higher thing living, it is in a state of awareness but to take action and direct a process in a non-random way takes intelligence. Therefore "a conscious intelligence " best describes a Swenetian point of view rather than consciousness alone which is passive.
And this conscious intelligence you believe directs the evolutionary process instead of a trial an error situation.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
As an animal breeder you will know that fitter animals will survive and have more offspring that will do better. But they will also know that breeding 'progress' can be 'lost' once animals are released back into the wild. This means that good animal breeders will be unlikely to use adaptation as a mechanism to explain all of life.
An animal breeder directs which traits they want to enhance. They select the dogs which have more of this trait and then they breed those dogs. The breeders use their conscious intelligence to do this.
Compare that to a dog in the wild. Suppose they are living in a particular environment and the environment changes so some of their food sources are more limited. One of the food sources is in good supply a particular small animal that the dogs eat that lives in small holes . So then the smaller dogs start to have more of an advantage because they can get into those small holes better. A hundred miles away the dogs are not as limited in food source and the bigger dogs thrive more in their particular environment.
So is this natural selection where one dog population started getting small directed by a conscious intelligence directing it that way or is it just a byproduct of the less fitted dogs not reproducing more?
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: And this conscious intelligence you believe directs the evolutionary process instead of a trial an error situation.
Yes that is close to what I believe the evidence is saying. (It's not about what I believe, though, but what I believe the evidence is saying [let's not lose sight of the evidence posted]). Anything else on top of your decent summation above are your words, not mine. I am not conceptualizing, anthropomorphizing or personifying proto-consciousness based on personal whim.
quote:Now you are backing off that and saying you saying:
I never said a traditional god is needed in science. I said it's not scientific to say a traditional god is not needed in science. I could have used any disputed phenomenon instead of god. Unicorn, Zeus, E.T., Big Foot. The point is that it's not scientific to say something is not needed in science. As soon as you start saying something is not 'needed' in science, you are making appeals. We don't know what science will or will not incorporate in the future. Even if god were falsified, you wouldn't say "not needed". It is not about needing. It's about is it real or not.
My point is not an endorsement for having something in science. You and Doug have trouble distinguishing my point from an endorsement of god in science. That's not my problem that both of you are fishing.
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: And this conscious intelligence you believe directs the evolutionary process instead of a trial an error situation.
Yes that is close to what I believe the evidence is saying.
Ok so I gave you an example with wild dogs. We need examples to clarify these things Two groups of dogs. One is in an environment where it is advantageous for the dog to be small to get into the hole of a particular animal that is the staple of it's diet. This situation then results in an evolutionary process resulting in the average dog of that population gradually being smaller than it's ancestor. Is that directed by a conscious intelligence?
It seems to me like an intelligence does not have to be involved for that to happen. Do you agree?
It seems like if you hundreds of thousands or millions of years passed years an accumulation of many changes like this could transform one species into another. Do you agree?
Where is the conscious intelligence involved? At all times?
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I think that consciousness isn't involved in microevolution. But I might change my mind about that because I don't know that. No one does. Some researchers are saying that DNA and mutations employ quantum effects as part of their normal functioning. If this is true then this is more evidence that organisms are not the Newtonian systems Darwinists have in mind. And we don't know how that would affect our current understanding of microevolution.
quote:It seems like if you hundreds of thousands or millions of years passed years an accumulation of many changes like this could transform one species into another. Do you agree?
I think adaptation can cause speciation in the sense of reproductive isolation. I don't think adaptation can cause speciation in the sense of explaining the emergence of new species or subspecies in the fossil record. I don't think, for instance, that AMHs are erectus that underwent adaptation to the environment and gradually became AMH. I think AMHs are erectus that underwent evolutionary change that we don't understand.
Whatever that evolutionary change is, I don't know. BUT when I look at the BIG picture of human evolution in the last 6 million years, I see direction. That's the only way I can explain that the youngest lineages that show up in the archaeological record all over the world are the most cognitively modern lineages, while the older ones (archaic humans) are dead ends and conservative in the sense of always failing to use the most modern, advanced tools. Some did update their tools to more modern forms, but only after contact with AMHs.
quote:Grahame Clark's Lithic Modes Scholars have wrestled with identifying a progression of stone tool technology since the "Stone Age" was first proposed by C.J. Thomsen back in the early 19th century. Cambridge archaeologist Grahame Clark, [1907-1995] came up with a workable system in 1969, when he published a progressive "mode" of tool types, a classification system that is still in use today.
Mode 1: Pebble cores and flake tools, early Lower Paleolithic, Chellean, Tayacian, Clactonian, Oldowan
Mode 2: Large bifacial cutting tools made from flakes and cores such as Acheulean handaxes, cleavers, and picks, later Lower Paleolithic, Abbevillian, Acheulean. Developed in Africa, ~1.75 million years ago and spread into Eurasia with H. erectus about 900,000 years ago.
Mode 3: Flake tools struck from prepared cores, with an overlapping sequence of flake removal (sometimes referred to as façonnage) system - including the Levallois technology, Middle Paleolithic, Levallois, Mousterian, arose during the Late Acheulean at the onset of the Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic, about 300,000 years ago.
Mode 4: Punch-struck prismatic blades retouched into various specialized forms such as endscrapers, burins, backed blades and points, Upper Paleolithic, Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean
Mode 5: Retouched microliths and other retouched components of composite tools, Later Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic, Magdalenian, Azilian, Maglemosian, Sauveterrian, Tardenoisan
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Doug continuing to chase his own tail with fallacies, as usual. Again, the Newtonian worldview is mainstream science's paradigm (worldview) which is just named after Newton since he had the biggest impact in terms of developing it. It didn't originate with Newton, and does not include his religious or personal beliefs. So your comments about alchemy are as misguided as your previous comments. The rest of your misrepresentations are even more random and detached from the ongoing conversations. It's like you have a routine that kicks in where you get more dense and offtopic the longer people debate you.
It's obvious you're confused and like to debate the figments of your imagination. So I'm just going to let you do you from now on. Have fun, Doug. Knock yourself out with the conversational shadowboxing.
Swenet you keep trying oversimplify everything and this is my disagreement. How come "Newtonian" doesn't mean adhering to all of Newtons ideas and philosophies but Darwin means adhering to all of Darwin's ideas and theories? Even better how come evolution only means a blind adherence to all of Darwin's views but Newtonian doesn't. Again, going back to page one you are just making vast oversimplifications in your arguments and making words mean what you want the to mean when it suits your argument.
The point is if Newton believed in God and Alchemy then you cannot claim that Newton was "rational" and/or a "materialist" as you keep claiming. This is a vast oversimplification and again part of the problem with the confusion sown in how Europeans teach the history of scientific thought.
"Rationalism" or "rational materialism" covers much of what you are talking about but many European thinkers were alchemists which were at odds with the rationalists. This is the Significance of Newton being an alchemist. The "rationalists" push the propaganda that NEwton was a materialist when he really wasnt.
This is all about propaganda as I have been saying since page one and misrepresenting the actual history of European thought.
quote: Rene Descartes, on the other hand, shared Bacon's contempt for the reliability of the science of the day:
I shall not say anything about Philosophy, but that, seeing that it has been cultivated for many centuries by the best minds that have ever lived, and that nevertheless no single thing is to be found in it which is not subject of dispute, and in consequence which is not dubious I had not enough presumption to hope to fare better there than other men had done. And also, considering how many conflicting opinions there may be regarding the self-same matter, all supported by learned people, while there can never be more than one which is true, I esteemed as well-nigh false all that only went as far as being probable.
Then as to the other sciences, inasmuch as they derive their principles from Philosophy, I judged that one could have built nothing solid on foundations so far from firm. And neither the honour nor the promised gain was sufficient to persuade me to cultivate them, for, thanks be to God, I did not find myself in a condition which obliged me to make a merchandise of science for the improvement of my fortune; and, although I did not pretend to scorn all glory like the Cynics, I yet had very small esteem for what I could not hope to acquire, excepting through fictitious titles. And, finally, as to false doctrines, I thought that I already knew well enough what they were worth to be subject to deception neither by the promises of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, the artifices or the empty boastings of any of those who make a profession of knowing that of which they are ignorant. [Discourse on Method, Rene Descartes, 1632]
Moreover, Descartes asserted that experience cannot provide valid knowledge without the aid of understanding which cannot in principle be attained through reliance on sense perception:
... even the philosophers in the Schools hold it as a maxim that there is nothing in the understanding which has not first of all been in the senses,.... while neither our imagination nor our senses can ever assure us of anything, if our understanding does not intervene.
To establish that foundation of certainty upon which knowledge could begin to be built, Descartes asked himself what he knew for certain. From this enquiry he was led to his famous maxim "I think, therefore I am". That is, I must absolutely doubt everything that is given to me by sense perception and every argument of Reason which calls upon prior principles, but as I think on this, I at least know that someone is thinking.
Descartes approach considered on the one side Mind, and on the other matter. Confronted with the mystery as to how the mind, which was utterly without extension or any corporeal form, could apprehend the objective world, which had extension and other physical properties, Descartes was led to conclude that there existed a special organ somewhere in the skull, which connected mind with matter!
Descartes' somewhat idiosyncratic solution to the problem of the correspondence of mind and matter, is typical of his speculations on Nature - filled with brilliant insights, but lacking the very solid basis which he sought through the rigorous application of Reason. Descartes himself contributed brilliantly to the future of natural science through his invention of Cartesian Geometry, in which spatial forms are identified with algebraic formulae - the single most important tool for theoretical representation of the material world in almost all branches of natural science ever since.
Descartes is thus described as a Dualist because he begins with a dichotomy between consciousness and matter, as two essentially different substances, whose correspondence must then be brought about "externally". Experience shows that consciousness corresponds to the objective world - and not just the consciousness of immediate sense perception, but Reason itself. But how is this possible?
Descartes is a Materialist because he does not doubt the independent existence of the material world outside of consciousness, and accepts that this material world is given in sense perception. However, as a Rationalist, Descartes holds that the world beyond senses is knowable only through the activity of Reason. While Descartes pays his respects to the accumulated knowledge of his Age, his method is very much one which appeals to the reasoning activity of the individual thinker.
Bacon, on the other hand, calls for a whole program of collective accumulation of knowledge. Clearly Bacon lays the emphasis upon Experience as the source of knowledge, and he does not question the capacity of Reason to arrive at truth through analysis of the data of experience, provided only that there is a patient, systematic and critical analysis of that material. For this reason he is known as an Empiricist.
Thus, this period of the beginning of materialism at the beginning of the seventeenth century, is characterised by the contradiction between Rationalism and Empiricism. Galileo, Bacon and Descartes have laid the basis in materialist philosophy for the revolution in natural science, industry and social development.
....
Berkeley and Newton
George Berkeley, the Irish Bishop, was an avowed conservative and enemy of Materialism, and his contribution to materialism is that he took empiricism to "it's logical conclusion", as we say. Descartes showed that the object itself cannot be equated to our image formed of it by sense perception. Berkeley points out that, if all we have is "ideas of sensation" and "ideas of reflection", then we have no knowledge of anything outside consciousness at all, only knowledge of our sensations!
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind; or lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination - either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. ...
But, besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them; and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call MIND, SPIRIT, SOUL, or MYSELF....
That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow --And to me it is no less evident that the various SENSATIONS, or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together ...
It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? [Of the Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley, 1710]
And this total impasse, British Empiricism has never overcome: "Matter" is an "abstract idea", of which we can have no knowledge, just like the psychologists who call themselves "Behavioural Scientists", because they can have no knowledge of someone else's consciousness, but more of this later....
Roughly contemporary with Berkeley was Sir Isaac Newton. Newton followed the advice of Galileo and Bacon and made good use of the Rational tools provided by Descartes, and by systematic analysis of the data of planned experiment and the judicious use of definitions, axioms and formal logical deduction, and, in the case of his discovery of the Calculus not bothering too much if the exigencies of formal logical proof got in the way of a useful line of analysis, erected a mechanical explanation of the Universe which is absolutely stunning in its scope and power. Those who came after must truly have felt that there was nothing more to do but work out the details!
Newton brought within a single law the motion of simple day-to-day objects on Earth and the motion of the Heavens, which were found to be simply "falling" around their epicentre, prevented from falling into the Sun only by the initial impetus which must have been imparted an indefinite time long ago in the past by God.
Indeed, Newton pushed God, not out of existence altogether, but back to the "boundary conditions" of the Universe, with the task simply of decreeing the Laws of Nature and setting the whole thing in motion, and we humans to watch in wonder and admiration ... and understand.
Berkeley the subjective idealist (he later gravitated to an objective idealist position, having the Universal Mind of God holding the world in existence) took the internal contradiction within empiricism to its absurd conclusion; Newton took its strength to its consummate completion in a rounded out mechanical view of the Universe, consigning God to the role of "pressing the Start button", and "the observer" is reduced to the role of a reference point in time-space; for Berkeley, the world exists only in the mind of the observer.
Here the contradiction is between subjectivism and objectivism.
I keep saying that the rationalists have created all the schisms you see and these far flung camps of different sects adhering to one branch or another of some cosmology. In that sense I agree with you, but I disagree with some of your other positions.
For example:
quote:George Berkeley (/ˈbɑːrkli/;[2][3] 12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753) — known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne) — was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideas in the minds of perceivers and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism.
This is an example of one of those branches of cosmology that arose because of the push for "rationalism" and "materialism". NOte that Descartes, Locke, Newton and Berkely all believed in god as well. So this schism has nothing to do with atheism.
Here is a good overview of some of these branches of cosmology that came out of European thought in the last few hundred years:
quote: I want to go on to introduce Emerson’s Idealism, but before I do I need to get a few things straight, namely the distinction between Idealism, Materialism, Rationalism, Empiricism, Realism, Nominalism, Dualism and Monism. In the study of philosophy these words come up often and it can be challenging at times to keep them all straight. That is partly because some of their meanings are separated by subtle distinctions and partly because some of them have both a technical philosophical meaning and a more common meaning that seem to conflict.
So for all of our sake lets walk through them slowly.
First of all they are all generally related to one of the most foundational philosophical dualisms there is – mind and matter. At least since the ancient Greeks the problem of mind and matter, thought and thing, the spiritual and the material, has existed. And as long as that dualism exists – and it has, for the record dramatically fallen out of favor – the fundamental question that needs to be tackled is, “Which is more real? Mind or matter?”
Idealism is the belief that the mind and ideas is the primary structure of reality and that physical or material reality is secondary.
Materialism is the opposite of Idealism and sees matter as the primary reality and all other things including thoughts as the product of interactions of matter.
Rationalism is the belief that the rational mind is the best way to know something. If you are a rationalist you believe that your mind is more trustworthy than your sense. A stick in the water might look bent, but you know rationally that it only looks that way because it is in the water.
Empiricism is the opposite of rationalism and it is the belief that the senses are the best way to know something. You might think something is true, but you only know it is true if your senses confirm it.
In consideration of the above it is good to keep in mind that you can’t be an Idealist and a Materialist and you can’t be a Rationalist and an Empiricist. On the other hand, you can be an Idealist and a Rationalist or an Idealist and an Empiricist. You can also be Materialist and a Rationalist or you can be a Materialist and an Empiricist.
That is because Idealism and Materialism are statements of ontology which means they are statements about what you believe is real. Rationalism and Empiricism are statements of epistemology which means statements about what is the best way to know what is real.
As if this were not confusing enough we also have Realism and Nominalism.
Realism is the belief that there are real existing entities behind universal or general ideas. For instance there is a “thing” called justice. Nominalism on the other hand is the opposite and it is a belief that there are no real existing entities behind universals. There is no “justice” per se, there are just individual instances of justice. Only the individual instances of justice are real.
Now for our last two terms we have Dualism and Monism. Dualism is the belief that mind and matter represent two different and distinct types of being. Monism is the belief that there is ultimately only one type of being. If you are a Monist you could also be an Idealist which means that you believe that everything is made up of mind or ideas, so even matter is ultimately made up of ideas. A monist could also be a Materialist believing that all ideas are ultimately products of matter.
Solving Biology's Mysteries Using Quantum Mechanics The new field of quantum biology applies the craziness of quantum physics to biology's most fundamental processes.
McFadden, like all good biologists, had learned that no such enhancement should occur. The central dogma since the 19th century, when Charles Darwin formulated the idea that mutations create the genetic variety needed for species to evolve, has been that all mutations should happen at random. No single type of mutation should occur more often than another, no matter what the environment. Certain mutations may prove useful, but the environmental conditions themselves should not play a role in the rate of any particular genetic mutation: Evolution is blind. McFadden’s team, however, seemed to have found a case that defied standard evolutionary theory, since the lack of oxygen in the experiment’s environment appeared to be triggering one type of mutation over others.
This was not the first time he had heard about such controversial findings. A decade earlier, in 1988, a group of molecular biologists led by John Cairns at the Harvard School of Public Health published startling results showing similar adaptive mutations. When they spread a strain of E. coli that could not digest lactose onto an agar plate whose only food source was lactose, they found that the bacteria developed the mutation required to digest the sugar at a far faster rate than expected if that mutation occurred at random. It looked like this adaptation had somehow resulted from the environment. “The study was absolutely heretical in the Darwinian sense,” says McFadden. Nonetheless, the experiments were respected enough to be published in the prestigious journal Nature.
In search of a possible mechanism that could explain just how the environment might do this, McFadden’s mind turned to popular accounts he had read about quantum computing that explained how superposition could significantly speed up otherwise slow processes. With that vague thought, McFadden asked his university’s physics department if quantum processes might explain the TB adaptations.
In the 2007 experiment, University of California, Berkeley, chemist Graham Fleming and colleagues ran experiments on green sulfur bacteria that appeared to suggest this quantum approach. Fleming’s work took place at minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit, but similar effects appeared three years later in experiments with marine algae carried out at room temperature by a team led by Gregory Scholes, a chemist at the University of Toronto in Ontario. “These were jaw-dropping experiments,” says McFadden. “Physicists had been battling for years to build a quantum computer — and now it seemed that all that time they may have been eating quantum computers for lunch, in the leaves in their salad!”
_____________________
“If we can show that quantum effects survive for a long time in biological molecules and work out how that happens, then we can use that information to design better quantum computers in the lab,” he says. McFadden agrees: “If we could understand how photosynthesis is so efficient at transforming sunlight into energy and re-create that artificially, then today’s poorly performing solar cells would be a thing of the past.”
“A benefit of studying quantum effects in biological systems is to learn if and how nature protects them, so that we may copy the architecture of the natural building blocks,” says Farrow. Quantum computers must operate at room temperature if they are ever to be used in mainstream applications. “Such blocks could then be used as the basic units in ‘biological’ quantum computers,” Farrow adds.
Al-Khalili and McFadden are also about to embark on the first set of tests of their mutation theory. Their proposed experiments compare the behavior of normal DNA molecules with specially modified DNA molecules whose hydrogen atoms have been replaced with deuterium atoms (also known as heavy hydrogen because the atoms have the same chemical properties as hydrogen, but double the mass). If they’re right that mutations are caused when a hydrogen atom tunnels quantum-mechanically to the wrong side of DNA’s ladder, then they predict that the rate of mutations will be significantly lower in the modified DNA molecules, since heavier deuterium is less likely to tunnel across the ladder.
But all of these tests will take a few years to design and carry out. Surveying the lasers and mirrors laid out on Farrow’s laboratory table in Oxford, he notes that the road to definitive experimental proof of quantum biology will be a long one — and there is a very real chance they will never prove quantum effects lurk within living beings.
“There is a huge risk that we may be heading in the wrong direction,” Farrow says ruefully. “But my hunch tells me this is worth it because if we succeed, the payoff will be massive: We will have pioneered a new discipline.”
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: [QB] I think that consciousness isn't involved in microevolution. But I might change my mind about that because I don't know that. No one does. Some researchers are saying that DNA and mutations employ quantum effects as part of their normal functioning. If this is true then this is more evidence that organisms are not the Newtonian systems Darwinists have in mind. And we don't know how that would affect our current understanding of microevolution.
I think adaptation can cause speciation in the sense of reproductive isolation. I don't think adaptation can cause speciation in the sense of explaining the emergence of new species or subspecies in the fossil record. I don't think, for instance, that AMHs are erectus that underwent adaptation to the environment and gradually became AMH. I think AMHs are erectus that underwent evolutionary change that we don't understand.
Whatever that evolutionary change is, I don't know. BUT when I look at the BIG picture of human evolution in the last 6 million years, I see direction. That's the only way I can explain that the youngest lineages that show up in the archaeological record all over the world are the most cognitively modern lineages, while the older ones (archaic humans) are dead ends and conservative in the sense of always failing to use the most modern, advanced tools. Some did update their tools to more modern forms, but only after contact with AMHs.
When reading the above article they are talking about quantum computers which I had posted on earlier and has advanced since 2014
quote:
“A benefit of studying quantum effects in biological systems is to learn if and how nature protects them, so that we may copy the architecture of the natural building blocks,” says Farrow. Quantum computers must operate at room temperature if they are ever to be used in mainstream applications. “Such blocks could then be used as the basic units in ‘biological’ quantum computers,” Farrow adds.
So they are talking about practical application of quantum mechanics. The sub-atom particles act is not understood yet their are already quantum computers in a primitive stage.
But when something is not understood that doesn't mean necessarily mean a conscious thinking form of intelligence is behind it, it just means they don't understand these sub-atomic particles yet. I may be that there is a conscious thinking form of intelligence is behind it but simply not knowing how electrons move yet does not mean there is
________________________________________
Swenet here's the pertinent question, Suppose there is a conscious form of intelligence directing everything we experience? Is that not determinism?
Or is the conscious form of intelligence directing everything except what humans do? that humans are in a special category
Suppose there is a conscious form of intelligence directing things to happen
-- If we knew that to be true what are we supposed to do with that information?? That is an important question
Scientist do experiments like the slit experiment, others work on making quantum computers. The use electrical devices and so on to do experiments Now someone comes around who knows the truth and they says a conscious form of intelligence is directing things to happen. So what happens then? Do the scientist continue working the same way to try to find out how the sub-atomic particles work
-or do they stop and say "I told you we are wasting our time, a conscious form of intelligence is directing things to happen and it could decide to make things happen a whole new way tomorrow if it wanted to. We are wasting our time thinking there are some kind of set rules we can figure out an manipulate. We need to be trying to communicate with this conscious form of intelligence instead of doing these slit experiments trying to play god"
Again, someone comes around who knows the truth and they says a conscious form of intelligence is directing things to happen. What are we supposed to do differently after finding that out?
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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posted
An atheist a Christian and a Hindu are in a bar.
Mr. Truth walks in and says "guess what human beings are not the highest form of life. There's actually a higher form that controls the whole universe"
Then Mr. Truth walks out and says " oh, I'm in the wrong bar, I thought this was Murphy's Pub."
Then atheist says "damn there really is something higher out there. I've got to give up this atheist thing now"
Then the Christian says "yeah and you better clean up you ways, God is watching"
Then the atheist (former)says "he didn't say anything about this higher form of consciousness for all we know it's some higher force and we are probably like ants to it, it doesn't care what we do"
Then the Hindu says " let's go ask Mr. Truth, Murphy's is around the corner I'll bet you a round that he's going to say Krishna"
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posted
Doug still doesn't understand that when people say 'Newtonian worldview', they are not talking about Newton's personal beliefs.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Swenet here's the pertinent question, Suppose there is a conscious form of intelligence directing everything we experience?
Are you asking about a possible scenario or asking me if that's what I think is happening. I don't think that is happening.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Doug I recommend you read this article Swenet linked because it explains an influence on what he's been saying
Solving Biology's Mysteries Using Quantum Mechanics
Oh, now she can finally acknowledge the evidence I'm posting. I'm glad you read at least a part of it. And it's not even about agreeing with me. It's about raising the level of the discussion so that now if you antagonize we know you've done some homework and (hopefully) put some thought in it before taking a position.
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: And this conscious intelligence you believe directs the evolutionary process instead of a trial an error situation.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
Yes that is close to what I believe the evidence is saying.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness, Swenet here's the pertinent question, Suppose there is a conscious form of intelligence directing everything we experience? Is that not determinism?
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Are you asking about a possible scenario or asking me if that's what I think is happening. I don't think that is happening.
My mistake I didn't mean the first sentence was a question, didn't mean to have a question mark there, just the second one But it's my fault I accidentally put a period there after experience, didn't mean to.
I meant the first sentence to be a lead in to the second sentence with no question mark like this:
quote:
1) Swenet here's the pertinent question, Suppose there is a conscious form of intelligence directing everything we experience. Is that not determinism?
Determinism is the most directional of all, where God according to Newton is directing everything. One can't say ignore Newtonian laws we are talking about "Newtonian worldview" and then try to exclude his religious views which are are fundamental to his worldview. His view is the more directional of all.
But are people allowed to do anything in this society and then say "it's not my fault, a conscious form of intelligence directed me to do it" ? Now they are subject to laws and have to take responsibility so determinism is not the order of the day.
And Darwin is the least directional, least deterministic. The opposite of Newton the direction of evolution is indeterminate and subject to "random" "accidental" events affecting the environment
What they have in common is reductionism, the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation. For instance mechanics in physics including quantum mechanics
So now we will go back to what you thought was my question due to my mistake putting a question mark there and we will deal with it that way I will re-phrase it as such 2)You agree there is a conscious form of intelligence involved in nature directing things Is it directing everything?[/b]
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
I don't think that is happening.
why not?
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
I think that consciousness isn't involved in microevolution. But I might change my mind
micro·evolution
evolutionary change within a species or small group of organisms, especially over a short period.
macro·evolution
major evolutionary change. The term applies mainly to the evolution of whole taxonomic groups over long periods of time.
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The difference is the time period, change accumulates
3) Is the consciousness of an animal directed by a higher macro consciousness or is it independent of it?
4) Is the high form of consciousness concerned with morality in human behavior?
5) Suppose there is a conscious form of intelligence directing things to happen -- If we knew that to be true what are we supposed to do with that information?? That is an important question
Scientist do experiments like the slit experiment, others work on making quantum computers. The use electrical devices and so on to do experiments
Suppose someone comes around who has proof a conscious form of intelligence is directing things to happen. So what happens then? Do the scientist continue working the same way to try to find out how the sub-atomic particles work
-or do they stop and try to communicate with this conscious form of intelligence?
How does this knowledge of a conscious form of intelligence change or not change what they do?
Let's say one day people will have a complete mathematical description of nature. Even such a complete description will have to contend with some variables that can't be specified in detail. Two examples of such variables are:
1) at the microscopic level things are fundamentally based on chance. Reality is 'waiting' for cues to 'make up its mind' as far as becoming concrete, because: 2) we are participants giving the cues in this process of chance. We are not outside of the processes of nature, as the Newtonian worldview insists. Hence, the results of the double slit experiment
You could still argue for determinism. But then you'd have to argue that the above is part of a super conspiracy in the sense that both anti-determinism variables (randomness and participation) are still somehow determined by the entity you're talking about. You would have to say that this entity is like a puppeteer controlling both chance and our participation.
But, like I said, the way I see it, even a complete description of nature would be like a standardized template business letter. The letter is already pre-typed, but it has empty slots where you can exercise choice and individuality by putting your name, the date, your signature, etc.
quote:2)You agree there is a conscious form of intelligence involved in nature directing things Is it directing everything?
No, not in my view, at least. See above for why I say that.
quote:3) Is the consciousness of an animal directed by a higher macro consciousness or is it independent of it?
This is my view only. I don't pontificate passing my view as reality, unless I think I can prove it. But, in my view the consciousness of animals is identical to humans, but proportional to how evolved they are in terms of their (self-)awareness. Animals vary in this, as experiments show. So, in my view, animals are also partaking in the participatory universe. They are not animated by some entity.
quote:Is the high form of consciousness concerned with morality in human behavior?
Without physics there would not be a hint of its presence in nature, that would be acceptable to skeptics. There is no billboard sign in nature leaving instructions on how to find it. It seems pretty uninvolved to me. Though I could be wrong.
Without evidence one can't assign personality or personality traits. The human track record of anthropomorphization of the metaphysical has led to some wild claims (e.g. people declaring themselves as the god 'chosen people'). So this is not something anyone should try to answer without evidence or experience. And even such experiences I would hesitate to accept. So, for me this will always be a standoff area where no consensus is possible. I would only accept my experiences, but a skeptical person wouldn't accept mine, and vice versa. Any talk of 'experience', of course, applies only if mysticism is real. I'm open to that being true as I said earlier in this thread.
quote:5) Suppose there is a conscious form of intelligence directing things to happen -- If we knew that to be true what are we supposed to do with that information?? That is an important question
If that's true, then you can't stop there. You have to stay in character and continue that train of thought. In other words, in that scenario any action you choose is also directed. Why would 'direction' stop precisely where you ask "what should we do"?
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Doug still doesn't understand that when people say 'Newtonian worldview', they are not talking about Newton's personal beliefs.
That is a contradiction in terms. If "Newtonian worldview" does not represent Newtons actual thoughts and ideas, then it is not Newtonian. I have been saying this since page one. Europeans keep throwing out terms and using them terms in an historically inaccurate way which makes the discussion useless unless you understand what actually happened when and how. You seem to keep missing this point.
quote: Isaac Newton (1642–1727) lived in a philosophically rich and tumultuous time, one that saw the end of the Aristotelian dominance of philosophy in Europe, the rise and fall of Cartesianism, the emergence of “experimental philosophy” (later called “empiricism” in the nineteenth century) in Great Britain, and the development of numerous experimental and mathematical methods for the study of nature. Newton's contributions to mathematics—including the co-discovery of the calculus with his (eventual) foe Leibniz—and to what is now called physics, including both its experimental and theoretical aspects, will forever dominate discussions of his lasting influence. But his impact on the development of early modern philosophy was also profound, so much so that it is difficult to grasp the history of philosophy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries without considering Newton's role. His engagement with Cartesian ideas and methods early in his life was just as significant to the transformation of philosophy in the seventeenth century as his debates with Leibniz were to the setting of the agenda of philosophy in the eighteenth. Obviously, Newton is not part of the traditional canon of the period, which would focus on the great sextet, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. (The distinction between the two pairs of three “rationalists” and “empiricists” owes much to the Kantian conception of the history of philosophy in the late eighteenth century.) But this conception of the canon has been challenged substantially by the past generation of scholarship. And ironically, with the possible exception of Spinoza, Newton engaged with or personally influenced the other five canonical philosophers of the early modern era (cf. Schliesser 2012). Thus Newton's contributions to, and influence on, early modern philosophy is a rich topic.
..snip.... If we attempt to understand Newton's work from an historical point of view, however, a different, and more complex, conception emerges. There are historical reasons for resisting the temptation to think of Newton as a scientist. For starters, no such category existed during Newton's day: the category of the scientist—along with that word in English—is a nineteenth century invention. Specifically, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in June of 1833, the Cambridge philosopher William Whewell coined the word “scientist”. At the meeting, Whewell said that just as the practitioners of art are called “artists”, the practitioners of science ought to be called “scientists”, indicating that they should no longer be called philosophers.[1] Indeed, before the early nineteenth century, people like Newton were called “philosophers”, or more specifically, “natural philosophers”. This might appear to be mere semantics, but it is not. During the seventeenth century, and well into the eighteenth (at least until 1750, if not later), figures like Newton worked within the century's-old tradition of natural philosophy.[2] The modern disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology and so on had not yet been formed. Philosophers who studied nature investigated such things as planetary motions and the possibility of a vacuum, but they also discussed many aspects of human beings, including the psyche, and how nature reflects its divine creator (Hatfield 1996). As the title of Newton's magnum opus, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), suggests, he intended his work to be in dialogue with Descartes's Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy, 1644), a complex text that includes discussions of everything from the laws of nature to the nature of God's causal influence on the world. Just as Descartes had sought to replace Aristotelian or “Scholastic” methods and doctrines in natural philosophy, Newton sought his work to replace Descartes's. It is therefore more historically accurate and more illuminating to interpret Newton within the historical stream of natural philosophy.[3]
..snip.. 2. Methodology I: the optics debates of the 1670s
Philosophers have long known about various aspects of Newton's work that are salient for understanding debates in the early modern period. For instance, no history of debates about the ontology of space and time would exclude a discussion of Newton's famous conception of “absolute” space (see below). Similarly, any discussion of the role of hypotheses in philosophical reasoning would mention Newton prominently. These aspects of Newton's work continue to be significant in contemporary scholarship, but the scope of discussions of Newton has greatly expanded, encompassing the whole of Newton's mature intellectual life. This is especially evident in discussions of Newton's earliest published work, which was in the field of optics. In at least three relevant respects, Newton's early work in optics, which was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society beginning in 1672, set the stage for the principal themes of his long career in natural philosophy (he remained active well into his seventies). Firstly, Newton's letter to the Society's secretary, Henry Oldenburg, often called the “New theory about light and colors”, generated an immediate, extensive, and protracted debate that eventually involved important philosophers such as Robert Hooke in Britain and Christiaan Huygens, G.W. Leibniz and Ignatius Pardies on the Continent (the beginning of the very long title of the paper is: “A letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Mathematick Professor in the University of Cambridge, containing his New Theory about Light and Colors”). Newton consistently regarded these figures not merely as disagreeing with his views, but as misinterpreting them. This experience helped to shape Newton's famous and lifelong aversion to intellectual controversy, a feature of his personality that he often mentioned in letters, and one that he would never outgrow. Secondly, because Newton regarded himself as misinterpreted by his critics, he had recourse to meta-level or methodological discussions of the practice of optics and of the kinds of knowledge that philosophers can obtain when engaging in experiments with light. The novelty and power of Newton's work in the Principia years later would eventually generate similar controversies that led him to analogous kinds of methodological discussions of his experimental practice within natural philosophy and of the kinds of knowledge that one can obtain in that field using either experimental or mathematical techniques. From our point of view, Newton's science was unusually philosophical for these reasons. Thirdly and finally, in his earliest optical work Newton began to formulate a distinction that would remain salient throughout his long intellectual career, contending that a philosopher must distinguish between a conclusion or claim about some feature of nature that is derived from experimental or observational evidence, and a conclusion or claim that is a mere “hypothesis”, a kind of speculation about nature that is not, or not yet anyway, so derived. Newton's much later proclamation in the second edition of the Principia (1713), “Hypotheses non fingo”, or “I feign no hypotheses”, would infuriate his critics just as much as it would prod his followers into making the pronouncement a central component of a newly emerging Newtonian method (see below for details).
So to say an "anti-nature" view comes from Newton is nonsensical. Which is because later philosophers and scientists introduced this view based off of some of Newtons advances but those were not the same as Newtons own world view. Like I said before, Europeans for most of their history were believers in magic and mystery as much as any population and were not "rationalists". This "rationalist" propaganda is part of the problem as it tries to gloss over and over simplify the truth and evolution of EUropean thought.
Suffice to say much of the "anti-nature" so-called opionions of Newton are actually views of other more influential thinkers like Locke, Descartes and others. And these have been lumped under "Newtonian" world views because they depend on mathematical models partly pioneered by Newton. But I already mentioned this at a meta level a few pages back.
Kant, Hume, Locke, Descartes and others are the ones who created many of the key framworks underlying the "non natural" view of human origins not necessarily Newton.
quote: NEWTONIAN PHYSICS
Newtonian Physics theory is based on the late 17th century notion that the Universe is made up of solid objects which are attracted towards each other by a force called 'Gravity'. This theory was extended in the 19th century to include atoms as being the fundamental building blocks of nature. Newton's Laws of Motion (Newtonian Mechanics) successfully described the motions of planets, mechanical machines and fluids and this success gave rise to the notion that the laws of Newtonian Physics were basic laws of nature and as such were immutable. (i.e. fixed) According to Newtonian Physics, the universe is a huge mechanical system of solid objects based on absolute (fixed) time and three (3) dimensional space (i.e. height, length and width) and as such is linear. (uniform)
Newtonian physics (although interestingly enough, not Newton himself) maintained that everything in existence could be described "objectively" because all phenomena were strictly a result of the physical interactions of all its physical parts. (this includes chemistry) In over words, the universe was considered strictly deterministic and causal in nature. Newtonian Physics was formulated prior to the discovery of Electricity and Field Theory 1 (i.e. the theory pertaining to Energy/Matter interactions) or Nuclear Physics as postulated by Einstein in 1905 associated with his Special Theory of Relativity. 2 As such, Newtonian Physics cannot describe either the phenomena of electricity or nuclear reactions or the recent concepts of Quantum Mechanics 3 that in essence the physical universe is just a myriad of "tendencies to exist" associated with a vast interconnected energy field.
The concept of an infinite, multi-dimensional, interconnected Universe in which experimenters affect the results of their experiments by their mere presence (i.e. the observer effect) 4 is simply beyond the paradigm of Newtonian Physics.
quote: The first edition of Principia features proposals about the movements of celestial bodies which Newton initially calls "hypotheses"—however, by the second edition, the word "hypothesis" was replaced by the word "rule", and Newton had added to the footnotes the following statement:
... I frame no hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.[5]
Newton's work and the philosophy that enshrines it are based on mathematical empiricism, which is the idea that mathematical and physical laws may be revealed in the real world via experimentation and observation.[2] It is important to note, however, that Newton's empiricism is balanced against an adherence to an exact mathematical system, and that in many cases the "observed phenomena" upon which Newton built his theories were actually based on mathematical models, which were representative but not identical to the natural phenomena they described.[2]
Newtonian doctrine can be contrasted with several alternative sets of principles and methods such as Cartesianism, Leibnizianism and Wolffianism. Newton's other beliefs
Despite his reputation for empiricism in historical and scientific circles, Newton was deeply religious and believed in the literal truth of Scripture, taking the story of Genesis to be Moses' eyewitness account of the creation of the solar system. Newton reconciled his beliefs by adopting the idea that the Christian God set in place at the beginning of time the "mechanical" laws of nature, but retained the power to enter and alter that mechanism at any time.[6]
Newton further believed that the preservation of nature was in itself an act of God, stating that "a continual miracle is needed to prevent the Sun and fixed stars from rushing together through Gravity".[6][7]
posted
You keep hammering on this, but it just shows you’re missing the point again and again. Concepts named after people are always selectively delineated. When people say Draconian, they are not talking about Draco’s religious or personal views. All the ism words attached to nouns (e.g. Darwinism, Islamism) are also selective constructs that apply to a narrow range of thought. So it makes no sense to keep coming back, talking about various things about Newton that are omitted from the Newtonian worldview. All the things you mention in your objections (e.g. Newton’s laws, Newton’s religious views, Newton being an alchemist, etc) are distracting and irrelevant to the phrase ‘Newtonian worldview’, which applies to Newton’s approach to studying and understanding nature.
If you have a beef with a widely used term that is not the topic of a thread or otherwise relevant to the thread, you should keep it to yourself. You can’t debate someone on a widely used word, just because they used it. All these personal beefs you have with widely used words (e.g. ‘Nubian’, ‘Newtonian’, ‘black’) need to be taken up with the dictionary. People are just using words as they’re widely used. They don’t have to answer for the way words are used just because of your personal gripes.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: . You can’t debate someone on a widely used word, just because they used it. All these personal beefs you have with widely used words (e.g. ‘Nubian’, ‘Newtonian’, ‘black’) need to be taken up with the dictionary. People are just using words as they’re widely used. They don’t have to answer for the way words are used just because of your personal gripes.
The Dougian worldview on the word "Nubian" is that it is widely used wrongly and shouldn't be used at all, the people in these regions were all Nile Valley Africans> The Europeans artificially broke it up into two parts, so called "Egypt" and so called "Nubia" but it was all the same people
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posted
^I know what Doug is saying. But that needs to be addressed in a designated thread. You can't take a forum member to task for using the word 'Nubian', which is what he does sometimes (not recently, but I've seen him do it). If a word is in the dictionary, it's in the dictionary. Distracting from an argument by randomly honing in on a widely used word someone is using is missing the point. And when it keeps happening in the context where someone's point gets lost in the process, I see it as trolling.
=======================
Notice how people keep distracting from the point of contention. It's very interesting to watch people react to their worldview being challenged. This thread consists of all sorts of distractions, but my main arguments are never addressed.
Let's reiterate my main argument again, just to see if people are going to troll again by blatantly distracting from what I'm saying:
Darwinism originated out of the Newtonian worldview
The Newtonian worldview is the default scientific and academic worldview
The Newtonian worldview has been abandoned by many scientists working at the forefront of science
The rest of science (i.e. mainstream science) still operates entirely or partly in the old Newtonian worldview
As a result of the old worldview being overturned, all scientific theories built on the old worldview need to be revisited, reexamined and updated with findings from the emerging scientific worldview. Darwinism is not exempt from revisions, but they're trying to protect it from new findings.
This emerging scientific world view hasn't fully formed yet, but one thing we can conclusively say is that Darwinism, which is inherently Newtonian, has no place or future in this emerging worldview. All other mainstream scientific evolutionist thought (e.g. Doug, who tries to distance himself from Darwinism) is going down with the sinking ship as well. If you think consciousness is an illusory byproduct of the brain, that evolved in the brain (which they're all saying), you're going down. Lol. Consciousness is fundamental in the laws of nature. Something that fundamental can't be an emergent brain phenomenon.
This emerging scientific worldview is unintentionally validating large swaths of the metaphysical literature and traditions dismissed as pseudoscience. Because this validation process is only happening begrudgingly, we know that mainstream science is not interested in promoting natural explanations and investigating natural phenomena. Example of mainstream 'scientist' showing politics and disinclination to natural phenomena he claims to be in the business of studying:
Though what you're saying is correct. presenting this material to nonscientists is the intellectual equivalent of letting children play with loaded guns Source
Mainstream science is only interested in nature as long as nature conforms to materialism. This is why you see Doug, Stephen Hawking, etc. say "god is not needed in science". The problem with this is that these people are trying to keep things out of science using appeals and declarations: "I said it's not so". Most of these people also say "consciousness is not needed in science". They are trying to regulate science with preconceived materialist beliefs, rather than adopting an agnostic stance and letting science run its course and accepting findings unconditionally.
This emerging scientific worldview is not new. It's just mainstream science that is catching up to what people have always seen as part of nature. Mainstream science spearheaded by Europeans tried to set its own course away from 'superstitions' from 'primitive savages' and is now desperately trying to ignore and push back against new findings because they know the whole house of cards will have to go. And the joke will be on them. History will shake its head at mainstream science and its dogmatic and sometimes arrogant icons, like Darwin, Dawkins and Dennet.
Here is another point I've been arguing, that's somewhat independent from the line of reasoning above, as far as how I've arrived at this conclusion:
Based on findings from archaeology and palaeontology, the evolution of modern behaviour takes place mainly or entirely in the human tree that leads to modern, living humans. Over the last 6my, archaeology sees the ancestors of modern humans evolve more advanced tools, while older human lineages are more conservative in the tools they're using. The exceptions so far involve archaics who admixed with, and learned from, OOA migrants. This process of evolution continues the entire 6my, so that every archaic that splits from us only has the increments towards modernity it inherited up until the point of splitting. At every point an archaic split from our ancestors, they had an identical set of genes for natural selection to act on. Yet despite splitting as identical sister populations, every time archaic humans split, nothing archaeologically detectable happened to them as far as evolving behavioural modernity. It's only the lineage that leads to modern humans, that continues to make archaeologically visible increments towards modernity. Some of these new increments then feed back to those archaics because of introgression of OOA migrants into archaic lineages.
You can't explain this as adaptation or adaptation-related. This can only be explained via an evolutionary mechanism that works towards an outcome.
quote:The most immediate impact of the Newtonian worldview was to break the late-medieval synthesis of the physical and the spiritual. While Copernicus had, unintentionally perhaps, initiated the destruction of this Church- sponsored relationship by denying Earth as the cosmic center, Newton completed the job by showing that the same physical laws held for both the earthly and the heavenly realms. Under this inspiration, geologists, assuming that the same laws also applied throughout time, showed Earth to be vastly older than the Bibles 6,000 years. This led directly to Darwins theory of evolution, the most socially disturbing idea of modern science.
quote:Though aspects of Newtons legacy will forever endure, the Newtonian mechanistic worldview, and what we today call "classical physics," is chal- lenged by modern physics. But the mechanistic worldview, our Newtonian heritage, still molds our commonsense view of the physical world and shapes our thinking in every intellectual sphere. We now focus on five "commonsense" Newtonian stances. Quantum mechanics challenges each of them.
In case you didn't catch it. What is the default worldview of mainstream science?
quote:But the mechanistic worldview, our Newtonian heritage, still molds our commonsense view of the physical world and shapes our thinking in every intellectual sphere.
How does Darwinism relate to this default Newtonian worldview?
quote:This led directly to Darwins theory of evolution, the most socially disturbing idea of modern science.
and what is happening to the worldview Darwinism is built on?
quote:Though aspects of Newtons legacy will forever endure, the Newtonian mechanistic worldview, and what we today call "classical physics," is chal- lenged by modern physics.
We now focus on five "commonsense" Newtonian stances. Quantum mechanics challenges each of them.
and if you control + F and search on "Newtonian worldview" there are 19 matches and more for just "Newtonian" or simply "Newton"
You will be able to engage Swenet better if you look at this although you are doing a good job already
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quote:Doug, Swenet is getting he ideas from the book Quantum Enigma he mentioned earlier
From the beginning of this thread, I've quoted at least four books, 2 lectures and some articles in this thread, all of which are mutually supportive. I've also posted my own ideas, which I developed on my own. You never address any of this. All you do is fish for imaginary weak points. Now you're trying to say I'm getting "my ideas" from one book?
The distractions continue, just as I predicted just now:
Let's reiterate my main argument again, just to see if people are going to troll again by blatantly distracting from what I'm saying --Swenet
Just another attempt by lioness to belittle evidence by talking about everything other than the evidence. Lioness keeps showing her colours as anti-learning and anti-knowledge.
I posted three articles talking about the Newtonian worldview, but lioness is still trolling, talking about "he gets it from this book" as if this is somehow a fringe idea that you can only find in one book. Here are the three articles she ignored, all of which say the same thing about the Newtonian worldview:
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
quote:Chapter 22: The Development of the Newtonian Worldview- 1700-1900 The more mechanistic Newtonian worldview worked its way into chemistry, biology, and electromagnetic theory in different ways over 1700-1900. Chemistry became less qualitative and more quantitative view in line with atomic theory. Biology abandoned vitalism, and embraced the idea that life broken into its elements is not different from non-life. Electricity and magnetism were unified. The Michelson-Morley experiments, black body radiation and x-rays all provided some early challenges to the so far hugely successful Newtonian worldview.
quote:The mechanistic worldview that was given the name the “Newtonian” worldview because it was produced by his achievements, was not one held by him.
quote:Until the early 20th century, classical mechanics, as first formulated by Newton and further developed by Laplace and others, was seen as the foundation for science as a whole. It was expected that the observations made by other sciences would sooner or later be reduced to the laws of mechanics. Although that never happened, other disciplines, such as biology, psychology or economics, did adopt a general mechanistic or Newtonian methodology and world view. This influence was so great, that most people with a basic notion of science still implicitly equate "scientific thinking" with "Newtonian thinking"
BTW, every good education deals with the history of science. It seems like you never went to school if you think what I just said is "my idea" and comes from "that book". As usual, lioness is behind on ongoing discussions and then she tries to troll and inconvenience other people. Don't waste other people's time with your bias and denial, simply because you're uneducated and like to take positions before studying something.
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posted
Swenet I'm looking at your quotes above and they are critiques of a Newtonian worldview but please show us a quote, a paragraph that really lays out well what the Newtonian worldview is
we need a go-to definition we can all agree on before getting into the critiques of it
Something that fairly represents it without critique, an unbiased description of the Newtonian Worldview.
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From this angle (though not necessarily from other angles), this so-called Neanderthal closely resembles AMH. In fact, this 400ky so-called Neanderthal closely resembles Oase I (who is a 40ky old Neanderthal-AMH hybrid):
So we have two AMH-Neanderthal hybrids looking very similar (from this angle). They don't look similar because one descends from the other, but because they're both hybrids. That is, they look similar from this angle in the sense that Obama might resemble multiracial people unrelated to him. This resemblance due to similar sources of ancestry is a reliable sign that the so-called Neanderthal above is a hybrid and has AMH ancestry.
Relevance? Evidence of behavioural modernity among Neanderthals can't be treated as Neanderthal in origin. Neanderthals are a hybrid population who emerge suddenly after this >400ky admixture took place. Without these admixture events Middle Pleistocene inhabitants of Europe would continue to look as archaic as pre-Neanderthals, like Arago 21 and Petralona, who show limited evidence for modern behaviour.
This is a complete contradiction of the current view that Neanderthals evolved out of Middle Pleistocene European archaics, and that the more modern behaviour of Neanderthals (compared to pre-Neanderthals in Europe) is due to Darwinian evolution. And with that, the little remaining evidence of modern behaviour among Eurasian archaics that is consistent with Darwinian evolution, falls away. And it has been falling away ever since the 80s, when multiregionalism proposed 1) that archaics from all global regions contributed to the evolution of modernity, 2) that living humans descend primarily from the archaics that precede them in their regions and 3) that the 'explosion' of modern tools in Eurasia 50-10kya were indigenous and not accompanied by new migrants (note the blatant teleology and 'direction' implied in this model).
Then ROA arrived on the scene in the late 80s and assigned all evidence of this explosion of modern tools in Eurasia 50-10ky to Africans involved in one major OOA migration. Then, in the 2000s ROA got more complex and the evidence of modernity in Eurasia seemed to have been brought there in multiple OOA waves, not just one. This meant that evidence of modern behaviour in Eurasia before 50kya (e.g. Aterian-like culture in Arabia and Pakistan) was also spread by African OOA migrants. Then, after 2010 (where we're now) the picture got even more inconsistent with Darwinian evolution. Not only is the evidence of modernity in Eurasia 120-10ky attributable to OOA migrants, but the evidence of significant innovation before 120kya also turns out to be attributable to OOA migrants. So, for instance, the Mousterian used by Neanderthals was also spread my OOA waves before 120kya.
Notice this share of evidence for modernity in Eurasia linked to OOA migrants kept increasing ever since the 80s, when multiregionalism said Africa has no special role in the evolution of modernity. Africa was supposed to be one region out of many, that contributed genes to the global archaic genepool. Then the tool innovations spread in Eurasia 50-10kya were assigned to Africans, then the tool innovations spread in Eurasia 120-50kya were assigned to Africans and now also the main new tools spread in Eurasia 400-120ky. This means that every major innovative tool shift in Eurasia in the last >400ky was introduced by OOA migrants.
At this point it's extremely difficult to maintain this all is driven by Darwinian evolution. Why are Eurasian archaics passive recipients in all of these major tool shifts, if they had the same genepool for natural selection to act on? Darwinism has no answer. And now their strategy is going to be to pretend there is no discrepancy in this picture of one human lineage being disproportionately involved in all major tool shifts in Eurasia. Those that won't ignore it (ignoring elephants in the room is a major tool in the bag of Darwinian church members) are going to come up with some contrived narrative that is purely based on making the least amount of concessions, as they always do. (If you want an example of this see, Guild's attempt to wish away the Cantabrian explosion by introducing 'punctuated equilibrium' as the new 'update patch' for broken Darwinism). Even though there is a whole track record from the 80s to today, showing that they had to revise their narrative again and again. First Africa was unimportant genetically and cognitively, then Africa was only important genetically and cognitively as ancestors for living humans, then Africa was also important genetically and cognitively as ancestors of pre-Toba AMHs and now Africa is also important genetically and cognitively in modern behaviour linked to Neanderthals.
If you have to revise your narrative again and again, it's a sign that your underlying theory (Darwinism, in this case) is failing you in making accurate predictions.
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posted
Doug beware of Swenet trying to change the subject to Neanderthals now
He simply can't present a concise description of a given point of view for instance the "Newtonian Worldview" or Darwinism and then say what's wrong with it. He goes straight into a critique in very biased manner
Now he goes of into Neanderthals something Darwin never even commented on
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Doug argues that
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: I don't see how that means your with Doug.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Doug was suggesting that
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Swenet I was looking at some of Doug's
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Doug used the word "mysticism"
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: ^^ So when Doug says
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Doug I recommend you read this article
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: The Dougian worldview on the word "Nubian" is
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Doug, Swenet is
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Doug beware of Swenet
Doug has been ignoring you for years, even when you talk to him from the sidelines as a cheerleader. Have some dignity. You look desperate trying to mention his name every other post. I'm close to ignoring you in intellectual conversations as well. Keep trolling.
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posted
Swenet what about all pm'ing that goes back and forth, "thanks for the tip" etc. ???
I've noticed there is a pattern with Swenet. Clyde will tell you his theories, premises, and what definitions he uses. Swenet on the other hand always tries to avoid this and it's one purpose so he can move the goal posts and have wiggle room at convenient moments. What he does instead of laying out clearly and quoting the author of philosophy he doesn't agree with and then after that critiquing it, he will jump right into the critique. He does this so he can critique things that imply the philosopher or scientist took at certain position when in fact that implication might be misrepresentation. It's straw man argumentation mixed with legitimate argument, i.e. half truth
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posted
Swenet, let's get to the nitty gritty. Your real problem is with atheism
Newton was the most directional of all, God determines everything, it's determinism
Opposite of this determinism is Darwin who suggested much randomness in nature
-random mutations and random circumstances in the environment determine how species develop. He didn't really deal with abiogenesis or the really fundamental questions.
For instance if we look at the wikipedia entry on atheism Drawin's name is not even mentioned nor is Newton. I think Doug (add to mention of Doug list) I think Doug was on the right track your real beef is with other philosophers:
Buddhism (7th c. B.C.) :
On several occasions the Buddha denied the existence of a permanent soul (atta). As to the denial of a creator-god, there are only a few references. The Buddha never admitted the existence of a creator whether in the form of a force or a being.
_____________________________
wiki (my titles added) a lot of this may be new to many people
quote:
Atheism
India
Atheistic schools are found in early Indian thought and have existed from the times of the historical Vedic religion.[147] Among the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, Samkhya, the oldest philosophical school of thought, does not accept God, and the early Mimamsa also rejected the notion of God.[148] The thoroughly materialistic and anti-theistic philosophical Cārvāka (or Lokāyata) school that originated in India around the 6th century BCE is probably the most explicitly atheistic school of philosophy in India, similar to the Greek Cyrenaic school.
Greece
Western atheism has its roots in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy,[154][155] but atheism in the modern sense was nonexistent or extremely rare in ancient Greece.[156][157][155] Pre-Socratic Atomists such as Democritus attempted to explain the world in a purely materialistic way and interpreted religion as a human reaction to natural phenomena,[152] but did not explicitly deny the gods' existence.[152] In the late fifth century BCE, the Greek lyric poet Diagoras of Melos was sentenced to death in Athens under the charge of being a "godless person" (ἄθεος) after he made fun of the Eleusinian Mysteries, but he fled the city to escape punishment.[156][157][152] Later writers have cited Diagoras as the "first atheist", but he was probably not an atheist in the modern sense of the word
Arabs and Persians
During the Early Middle Ages, the Islamic world experienced a Golden Age. Along with advances in science and philosophy, Arab and Persian lands produced outspoken rationalists and atheists, including Muhammad al Warraq (fl. 9th century), Ibn al-Rawandi (827–911), Al-Razi (854–925), and Al-Maʿarri (973–1058). Al-Ma'arri wrote and taught that religion itself was a "fable invented by the ancients"[174] and that humans were "of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains."[175] Despite their being relatively prolific writers, little of their work survives, mainly being preserved through quotations and excerpts in later works by Muslim apologists attempting to refute them
Europe, Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance
In Europe, the espousal of atheistic views was rare during the Early Middle Ages and Middle Ages (see Medieval Inquisition); metaphysics and theology were the dominant interests pertaining to religion.[177] There were, however, movements within this period that furthered heterodox conceptions of the Christian god, including differing views of the nature, transcendence, and knowability of God.
Early modern period
Historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that the Reformation had paved the way for atheists by attacking the authority of the Catholic Church, which in turn "quietly inspired other thinkers to attack the authority of the new Protestant churches".[178] Deism gained influence in France, Prussia, and England. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza was "probably the first well known 'semi-atheist' to announce himself in a Christian land in the modern era", according to Blainey. Spinoza believed that natural laws explained the workings of the universe. In 1661 he published his Short Treatise on God.[179]
Criticism of Christianity became increasingly frequent in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and England, where there appears to have been a religious malaise, according to contemporary sources. Some Protestant thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, espoused a materialist philosophy and skepticism toward supernatural occurrences, while Spinoza rejected divine providence in favor of a panentheistic naturalism. By the late 17th century, deism came to be openly espoused by intellectuals such as John Toland who coined the term "pantheist".[180]
The first known explicit atheist was the German critic of religion Matthias Knutzen in his three writings of 1674.[181] He was followed by two other explicit atheist writers, the Polish ex-Jesuit philosopher Kazimierz Łyszczyński and in the 1720s by the French priest Jean Meslier.[182] In the course of the 18th century, other openly atheistic thinkers followed, such as Baron d'Holbach, Jacques-André Naigeon, and other French materialists.[183] John Locke in contrast, though an advocate of tolerance, urged authorities not to tolerate atheism, believing that the denial of God's existence would undermine the social order and lead to chaos.[184]
The philosopher David Hume developed a skeptical epistemology grounded in empiricism, and Immanuel Kant's philosophy has strongly questioned the very possibility of a metaphysical knowledge. Both philosophers undermined the metaphysical basis of natural theology and criticized classical arguments for the existence of God.
No neither Newton or Darwin invented atheism nor were they atheists, let's deal with the real culprits
Swenet I have thee questions for you that I have not brought up so far. Should I ask you them or are you too mad right now?
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Notice how people keep distracting from the point of contention. It's very interesting to watch people react to their worldview being challenged. This thread consists of all sorts of distractions, but my main arguments are never addressed.
Let's reiterate my main argument again, just to see if people are going to troll again by blatantly distracting from what I'm saying
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Newton was the most directional of all, God determines everything, it's determinism
Opposite of this determinism is Darwin who suggested much randomness in nature
What are you talking about? You are completely off the rails. You keep using these words completely wrong.
Direction, as I used it, is used in evolution, not physics. People who are familiar with these conversations know what direction means. And no one who believes in gods subscribes to determinism. You're putting words together in a dumb, absurd way. You've been doing this all over the thread, with Newtonian worldview being the latest phrase that you keep botching with trash analysis about Newton's religious views.
For those who don't know, determinism means that every event in the universe exists on a chain of events, so that one event triggers the other event. In this concept perfectly understanding past links in the chain would allow a sufficiently advanced computer to predict every event in the universe. This is a non religious because religion always talks about gods intervening in nature and human affairs. which is opposite of determinism where everything is running a course that was set during the big bang. And Darwinism isn't opposite of determinism, either.
It bizarre how some people are confidently making fools of themselves every post they make. Not just tentatively, but brazenly and compulsively insisting on posting misinformation and distractions throughout a thread.
quote:Swenet I have thee questions for you that I have not brought up so far. Should I ask you them or are you too mad right now?
Keep them to yourself. Everything you've said in this thread is trash. So why should this be any different?
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Newton was the most directional of all, God determines everything, it's determinism
Opposite of this determinism is Darwin who suggested much randomness in nature
What are you talking about? You are completely off the rails. You keep using these words completely wrong.
Direction, as I used it, is used in evolution
No it isn't
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
Direction, as I used it, is used in evolution, not physics.
Issac Newton was a natural philosopher. There were no physicists in his time, stop the nonsense
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
no one who believes in gods subscribes to determinism.
FALSE, you don't know what you are talking about
Qadar is one of the aspects of aqidah. Muslims believe that the divine destiny is when God wrote down in the Preserved Tablet ("al-lawh al-mahfooz") (several other spellings are used for this in English) all that has happened and will happen, which will come to pass as written. According to this belief, a person's action is not caused by what is written in the preserved tablet, but rather the action is written in the tablet because God already knows all occurrences without the restrictions of time
Belief in al-Qadar is based on four things
– العلم Al-'Ilm – Knowledge: i.e., that Allah knows what had been, what will be, what has never been, and how it could be if it was. He also knows what his creation will do, by virtue of His eternal knowledge, including their choices that will take place.
– كتابة Kitabat – Writing: i.e., that Allah has written every thing that exists including the destiny of all creatures in al-Lauh al-Mahfuz prior to creation.
– مشيئة Mashii'at – Will: i.e., that what Allah wills happens and what He does not will does not happen. There is no movement in the heavens or on earth but happens by His will. This does not mean that He forces things to happen the way they happen in the area of human beings' voluntary actions. It means that He knew what they will choose, wrote it and now lets it happen.
– الخلق Al-Khalq – Creation and formation: i.e., that Allah is the Creator of all things, including the actions of His servants. They do their actions in a real sense, and Allah is the Creator of them and of their actions.
Predestination is a doctrine in Calvinism dealing with the question of the control that God exercises over the world. In the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith, God "freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass."
Theological determinism is a form of determinism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, or predestined to happen, by a monotheistic deity, or that they are destined to occur given its omniscience. Two forms of theological determinism exist, here referenced as strong and weak theological determinism. The first one, strong theological determinism, is based on the concept of a creator deity dictating all events in history: "everything that happens has been predestined to happen by an omniscient, omnipotent divinity". The second form, weak theological determinism, is based on the concept of divine foreknowledge—"because God's omniscience is perfect, what God knows about the future will inevitably happen, which means, consequently, that the future is already fixed".] There exist slight variations on the above categorization. Some claim that theological determinism requires predestination of all events and outcomes by the divinity (i.e. they do not classify the weaker version as 'theological determinism' unless libertarian free will is assumed to be denied as a consequence), or that the weaker version does not constitute 'theological determinism' at all.[22] With respect to free will, "theological determinism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge of all true propositions including propositions about our future actions", more minimal criteria designed to encapsulate all forms of theological determinism.[23] Theological determinism can also be seen as a form of causal determinism, in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God.
The Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides said of the deterministic implications of an omniscient god: "Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest 'He knows', then it necessarily follows that [that] man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God's knowledge would be imperfect.…"
Theological determinism is the view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world. While there is much debate about which prominent historical figures were theological determinists, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Gottfried Leibniz all seemed to espouse the view at least at certain points in their illustrious careers.
quote: And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen. — Sir Isaac Newton
.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
This is a completely non religious because religion always talks about gods intervening in nature and human affairs.
>>
quote:Originally posted by the lioness:
Is the high form of consciousness concerned with morality in human behavior?
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Without physics there would not be a hint of its presence in nature, that would be acceptable to skeptics. There is no billboard sign in nature leaving instructions on how to find it. It seems pretty uninvolved to me.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Swenet I have thee questions for you that I have not brought up so far. Should I ask you them or are you too mad right now?
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
Keep them to yourself. Everything you've said in this thread is trash. So why should this be any different?
can we come to an agreement that you're scared?
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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posted
Notice how lioness's habit of not responding to what I said continues in the post above. She's just taking quotes and putting her trash answer below it. Lioness thinks determinism and religious determinism are the same thing. Only lioness starts mumbling about religious determinism when people are debating determinism. Of course, she doesn't mention beforehand that she's secretly talking about religious determinism. Which is, like I said, typical of her compulsive habit of posting distractions.
And notice how lioness keeps bringing up religion, with her trash comments. Even after I said I'm not personifying or conceptualizing pre-biological consciousness, she's still talking about religion and religious determinism.
quote:Issac Newton was a natural philosopher. There were no physicists in his time, stop the nonsense
More distracting trash designed to derail the points of contention.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Direction, as I used it, is used in evolution
No it isn't
Another example of lioness lacking basic education. Lioness thinks Darwinism holds a patent on evolution and that, just because Darwinism rejects direction in evolution, it must mean that direction never comes up in the history of evolutionist thought or ongoing discussions.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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Directional selection was first described by Charles Darwin in the book On the Origin of Species as a form of natural selection
Directional selection is a mode of natural selection in which an extreme phenotype is favored over other phenotypes, causing the allele frequency to shift over time in the direction of that phenotype. Under directional selection, the advantageous allele increases as a consequence of differences in survival and reproduction among different phenotypes. The increases are independent of the dominance of the allele, and even if the allele is recessive, it will eventually become fixed.
posted
Lioness continues to grope in the dark, struggling for six thread pages to understand basic words that are taught in school and are used in ongoing conversations. She accuses me of getting everything from a fringe book, so we can only imagine how bad or lacking her education is. She thrives off quote-mining google and wikipedia, but can't even educate herself on the correct meaning and application of basic words like 'direction in evolution', 'newtonian worldview', 'determinism', etc. Not only an opinionated instant google expert, which is bad enough, but then she drops the ball when it comes to finding and comprehending non-entertainment information. Of course, this leaves her handicapped in debates, which is why she has to keep begging people to explain what these terms mean. And soon as you try to help her by answering the question or posting lectures/books, she comes back with some backstabbing attempt at antagonizing you with some sort of bizarre antagonizing distraction, which she baits people to address by saying they're running from her. And every time you address the distraction, she comes back with another distraction, never acknowledging the previous blunder, expecting people to jump through her hoops forever.
Now she's fumbling again, talking about directional selection. Completely unrelated to what direction in evolution means in the ongoing conversations. Talk about being off the rails.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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I think that consciousness isn't involved in microevolution. But I might change my mind
Swenet is confused and attempting to have it both ways. He thinks macro evolution is directed by an intelligent being but not micro evolution How does that make sense?
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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posted
Prove it. Prove that macro evolution is micro evolution on a large scale. Either prove it or stop talking to me.
quote:He thinks macro evolution is directed by an intelligent being but not micro evolution
That's a flagrant lie on multiple levels. You keep trying to invoke a creator god who is personally involved in 'making'/'directing' biological life. I never never said something is personally directing evolution. I spoke of evolutionary mechanisms. I said that pre-biological consciousness is somehow involved in evolution through evolutionary mechanisms that work alongside other evolutionary mechanisms, of which only some are known of which only some are 'Darwinian' (even though they are not really Darwinian since he mainly named, refined and conceptualized what people have known throughout history). I also never said that pre-biological consciousness is involved in ALL macroevolution. I said that Darwinsism is insufficient to explain macroevolution. That doesn't mean my position is automatically that all macroevolution is directed personally by some entity keeping tabs on life forms.
You seem to have trouble comprehending the basic truth that Darwin did not invent evolution, so when I mention direction as an example of a non-Darwininian evolutionary mechanism, you automatically assume that applies in all the areas where I see problems with Darwinism. Your lack of education is handicapping you across the board. Again, there is a whole history of evolutionist thought preceding and postdating Darwin, which you keep ignoring.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Prove it. Prove that micro evolution is macro evolution on a large scale.
there's nothing to prove, "micro" and "macro" are simply arbitrary markers on a graduating continuum likr "hot" and "cold"
"macro evolution" is the exact same thing as "micro evolution" over a longer period of time
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Prove it. Prove that micro evolution is macro evolution on a large scale. [/qb]
there's nothing to prove, "micro" and "macro" are simply arbitrary markers on a graduating continuum likr "hot" and "cold"
You are talking about what words micro and macro mean. I hope you're not arguing that micro and macro evolution processes mimic these words, simply because these words were attached to these processes. You can't help posting nonsensical arguments, can you?
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: "macro evolution" is the exact same thing as "micro evolution" over a longer period of time
Based on what? Or are you just parroting what someone told you?
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: In case people think I'm making this up:
quote:The most immediate impact of the Newtonian worldview was to break the late-medieval synthesis of the physical and the spiritual. While Copernicus had, unintentionally perhaps, initiated the destruction of this Church- sponsored relationship by denying Earth as the cosmic center, Newton completed the job by showing that the same physical laws held for both the earthly and the heavenly realms. Under this inspiration, geologists, assuming that the same laws also applied throughout time, showed Earth to be vastly older than the Bibles 6,000 years. This led directly to Darwins theory of evolution, the most socially disturbing idea of modern science.
quote:Though aspects of Newtons legacy will forever endure, the Newtonian mechanistic worldview, and what we today call "classical physics," is chal- lenged by modern physics. But the mechanistic worldview, our Newtonian heritage, still molds our commonsense view of the physical world and shapes our thinking in every intellectual sphere. We now focus on five "commonsense" Newtonian stances. Quantum mechanics challenges each of them.
In case you didn't catch it. What is the default worldview of mainstream science?
quote:But the mechanistic worldview, our Newtonian heritage, still molds our commonsense view of the physical world and shapes our thinking in every intellectual sphere.
How does Darwinism relate to this default Newtonian worldview?
quote:This led directly to Darwins theory of evolution, the most socially disturbing idea of modern science.
and what is happening to the worldview Darwinism is built on?
quote:Though aspects of Newtons legacy will forever endure, the Newtonian mechanistic worldview, and what we today call "classical physics," is chal- lenged by modern physics.
We now focus on five "commonsense" Newtonian stances. Quantum mechanics challenges each of them.
Swenet I believe we are in violent disagreement.
First I said way back on page one than ancient phiolosophers did not see a break between "science" and "religion" or spirituality. Europeans believed this (albeit under the Christian church) right up until Newton, who was an alchemist, which itself goes back thousands of years and blends both physical phenomena and spiritual precepts.
The issue is that by saying "Newtonian" you aren't really talking about Newton as in breaking science from religion. Newton was an ardent Christian and spiritual and did not himself see the world as separated in such a way. So the whole idea of "Newtonian" did not come from Newton, it came from others AFTER Newton and again is partly the result of RATIONALISTS integrating themselves into Newtons concepts and promoting it as "Newtonian".
I keep saying this and you keep missing the point.
And when it comes to Newtonian versus Darwinian, note how Darwinian means including every aspect of Darwins DIRECT beliefs, including "direction", whereas Newtonian only generally is based on Newton's ideas even when it contradicts Newtons actual thoughts and writings.... This is why I don't accept these terms blindly without understanding who defined them, why and how they came about. Most people who accept "darwinism" are generally referring to evolution meaning speciation not necessarily "direction".
In fact, the word rationalism also suffers from the same problem of variation in meanings in philosophical circles. Hence, Rationalism in its purest form means "without superstition or belief in mythical beings or forces". It was reinforced in the 18th and 19th century as a way to distinguish European thought processes and the newly defined "scientific" processes, from those of so-called "primitive" cultures. However, like many other things in philosophy, there are many varied definitions of rationalism. But even with that, most of these philosophical concepts are linked to ancient Greece, which is seen as the birthplace of "western rationalism". Meaning, superior "western culture". The problem is the Greeks weren't purely rational and neither were Europeans or most of their history, hence Newton and alchemy.
Therefore, as a result of European propaganda trying to frame the newly emerging concept of "science" into a "rational" framework, many aspects of what was traditional philosophy and metaphysics which always dealt with theoretical concepts such as thought and belief in gods or alternate states of things, were broken off into a separate category of study. But those "mysterious" or cosmological views never went away and were always part of the process of studying nature going back to ancient times. It is just that Europeans segregated and categorized these things to make it seem as if they were separate when the reality is they were always part of the SAME process of cognitive thought evolution.
I have been saying this since page one.
Yes there are schisms, but you over emphasize them because you don't understand that there have always been various camps within European thought and everybody was not "Newtonian" in the strictest sense of the word. In fact, the discovery of quantum theory is a result of so-called "newtonian" research into optics. So I don't get all caught up into these contradictions of Europeans trying to categorize and over emphasize one set of ideas over another. Some of the time there is overlap between seeming distinct camps.
quote: An approach which is perhaps more promising, in terms of its ability to connect to explicit subjects of debate in the period is the definition of rationalism in terms of ratio, i.e., reason. The rationalist, on this telling, distinguishes between the faculty of sense/imagination and the faculty of pure reason/intellect. The empiricist collapses them. On this way of drawing the distinction, Cartesianism turns out to be a paradigmatic form of rationalism (good), and Malebrancheans get to be rationalists for the same reason other Cartesians do (also good). Further, Hobbes and Gassendi offer explicit arguments in favor of empiricism in this sense, and Berkeley and Hume appear to presuppose such an empiricism. Still, there are some odd consequences. The question whether Locke is an empiricist turns out, on this approach, to be a difficult interpretive question rather than a straightforward textual one, though Locke does strongly suggest empiricism (in this sense) by his intentional collapse of the distinction between ‘species’ and ‘notions’ (EHU §1.1.8). A stranger consequence (which perhaps suggests that this account should not be pushed back before the mid-17th century) is that the traditional Aristotelian/Thomistic picture turns out to be a form of rationalism, despite holding that “there is nothing in the intellect which is not first in the senses,” since it does affirm a distinction between sensory and intellectual representations.
One more curious feature of this approach (which is the reason I am thinking about it today) is that it turns out that Newton offers an explicit argument for this kind of rationalism in De Gravitatione:*
If anyone now objects that we cannot imagine extension to be infinite, I agree. But at the same time I contend that we can understand it. We can imagine a greater extension, and then a greater one, but we can understand that there exists an extension greater than we can imagine. And here, incidentally, the faculty of understanding is clearly distinguished from imagination (Janiak 38).
Now, in a way this is not surprising. In Descartes (and Plato), as in Newton here, there is considerable evidence that the affirmation of rationalism (in this sense) arises from reflection on the phenomenology of mathematics: many people who have a great deal of experience in mathematics report the experience of encountering an object not revealed by the senses, hence one supposes that there is a faculty of understanding that has objects of its own, distinct from the objects of the senses. Perhaps these objects may be somehow derived from the senses, in a manner consistent with the Aristotelian dictum (“nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses”) as the Aristotelians interpreted it, or perhaps not. Nevertheless, the idea/notion of extension contemplated by the intellect is unlike anything known by the senses, for the senses know only particular images of extension, all of which are finite.
Hobbes, Berkeley (at least on my reading), and Hume all hold, on the contrary, that this mathematical activity, which may be somehow and in some sense about infinite extension, nevertheless employs, as the mind’s immediate object, only finite determinate sense images. These images, which according to Descartes and his followers are the objects of the faculty of sense/imagination and are not even properly called ‘ideas’, are in fact all the ideas there are. It can be seen now why Locke’s empiricism is somewhat ambiguous: although he rejects the species/notion distinction, whether his abstract ideas are imagistic in this way is highly controversial. One can also see here that Newton’s rationalism (in this sense) is part of a broader tension in the development of physics, which to some degree continues to this day. Galileo, Leibniz, and Newton all insist that a proper approach to physics must be both mathematical and experimental, but math itself is, of course, precisely not experimental. For Newton (at least in De Gravitatione), just as much as for Descartes, many of the fundamental concepts of physics (most notably, in both cases, extension) are mathematical concepts attained by the pure intellect and differing radically from anything perceived by the senses. Yet (against Descartes, in agreement with Galileo and Leibniz) Newton holds that the laws of physics, employing those concepts, must be derived from sensory experience. And of course even Descartes holds that the laws ought to be applicable to what we experience by means of the senses. So there is no obvious contradiction between Newton’s rationalism and his empirical/experimental methodology, but there is an apparent tension, or at least a collection of difficult philosophical questions (which are, again, still very much alive) concerning the very concept of (what we now call) applied math. Though these sorts of questions are by no means absent from (e.g.) Plato, the mathematization of physics through the 17th century suddenly places them among the most important questions in natural philosophy, a role they had not previously occupied.
At the end of the day, what all of this is about is the rise of new models of cosmology based on theoretical mathematics. The issue is and the contradiction is you cannot directly experience or observe the phenomena in these theoretical mathematical models. So there is no guarantee that they are going to turn out to be true. Yet because the rationalists to some degree viewed mathematical symbolic models as "superior" to superstition and other forms of symbolic thought about cosmology, you get into these somewhat contradictory trains of thought.
quote: A new debate has recently emerged as to whether string theory admits even a single rigorous solution that includes a cosmological constant, as we find observationally in the real universe. The debate follows on a period of several decades during which the mathematical richness of the theory has been advanced considerably but with very limited connection to experimental testing. This experience inspired a new culture of doing theoretical physics without the need for experimental verification.
Given our academic reward system of grades, promotions and prizes, we sometimes forget that physics is a learning experience about nature rather than an arena for demonstrating our intellectual power. As students of experience, we should be allowed to make mistakes and correct our prejudices.
.... snip ....
Identifying the boundaries of our knowledge is more exciting than taking pride in past knowledge. And only our contact with reality itself through experimentation can direct our notions into new realms. No one, not even Einstein, would have imagined quantum mechanics without the experimental data that led us to this unexpected notion of reality.
As far as science vs religion goes it comes down to faith vs proof. Science as in how we currently define it, requires proof in observation or practice. Religion or spirituality is based on faith which does not require proof. The two don't mix. Most people today keep the two separate and so did folks like Einstein and Newton. This is why I said practicing science is not looking for proof of "god" in a direct tangible sense. That said, the cognitive ability to imagine and believe in abstract concepts like various "gods" is the same ability that allows you to imagine/develop and believe in theoretical concepts like "string theory" or even "rationalism" and "newtonian physics".
And on top of that the separation of philosophy, psychology and from "hard" sciences like math and physics are ultimately part of the result of the "scientific revolution" in Europe which came up with distinct categories of disciplines regarding thought about the nature of reality and the mind.
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quote:The issue is that by saying "Newtonian" you aren't really talking about Newton as in breaking science from religion. Newton was an ardent Christian and spiritual and did not himself see the world as separated in such a way. So the whole idea of "Newtonian" did not come from Newton, it came from others AFTER Newton and again is partly the result of RATIONALISTS integrating themselves into Newtons concepts and promoting it as "Newtonian".
Let's say Newton was as religious as the pope and that there was some kind of conspiracy to co-opt his name by 'rationalists'. How does Newton's name being co-opted by 'rationalists' affect the bottom line that the worldview I'm talking about is dead? It doesn't affect my argument at all. So guess what Doug, for present purposes it's irrelevant and off topic what Newton's religious views were. Repeating it 10 more times isn't going to affect the bottom line that I'm concerned with the fact that the worldview in question is dead. I'm not concerned with the name of that worldview.
Give it up. You know you're just trolling at this point. I could pick all sorts of beefs with words in your posts. I could say 'Egypt' is a Europeanized word and derail all your arguments, simply because you happen to use the word Egypt for convenience's sake. Only sad people resort to that type of manipulation. You and lioness are sad and manipulative people for trying to derail my argument based on nominal bs. It tells me that you both know you can't debate me and defend your own worldview, so you have to resort to picking beefs with widely used words. You think you sound smart but educated people see you're just trying obscure the bottom line with irrelevant non sense. Lol.
I've never seen someone try so hard to rationalize blatant trolling.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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Let's face it, Doug. The notion that chemistry is enough to explain life originates with a dated view of nature (i.e. the Newtonian view). But if the foundation (Newtonian physics) has crumbled, then the postulations that grew out of it (i.e. evolution being purely cellular and chemical) have to be revisited and updated.
That's all I have to say about it. I'm not interested in changing beliefs or forcing my view on people. But if you insist in this thread that cellular chemistry is the basis of all evolution....
Darwinists recognize this problem. To get around this problem they simply say that consciousness doesn't exist and that chemistry is sufficient to explain everything. By denying consciousness, they can continue cramming evolution in their Newtonian worldview without confusing themselves.....
That's false
they say living things which ARE conscious arise in a process from non-conscious things
not that consciousness doesn't exit, stop the straw-manning
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