This yellowing paper back started something for me.
This series on TheThinknet Project is really part of my Melencolia I series. The paper for part 1 of TheThinknet Project can be downloaded here. I reproduce the first paragraph of this paper below.
***
In the last of my
Melencolia I series I reached a hiatus on the nature of quantum leaps,
a hiatus that left me wondering where to go next: For if quantum leaps really
do regularly clear the wave field in favour of the coherent objects of
intensive matter, at first sight this seems to hamstring the unrestricted quantum
searching needed to find (and ultimately select) stable organic structures. So
in this latest series I return to the work that started my quantum mechanical
investigations in the first place, work which eventually led to my very
speculative proposal about gravity. The Thinknet Project was a project that
influenced how I was to start thinking about several topics, not least the
relationship between language, thinking and even reality itself. The general
idea of embarking on this latest series is that by returning to this topic it
may give me some pointers showing which way to proceed with the Melencolia I
series.
Disclaimer:The right-wing
makers of this video have been accused of willful selective editing by the
left-wing
There has been a
flurry of outraged posts on the internet about the family planning doctor (see
above) who was filmed talking about her work, macabre work involving the
distribution of the body parts of the unborn children she aborts. I find the idea of abortion carried out for
marginal reasons of choice abhorrent and oppose it. Loving parents who want to
build a family form a bond of great love for their unborn child even at an
early stage of development. For these parents the loss of that developing child
would be a great tragedy for them: So, if
an unborn child can on the one hand stimulate intense parental feelings why
should love and protection be withheld from selected unborn children for quite
marginal reasons? Are those parental
feelings to be regarded as a fixation that signifies nothing?
Conscious
cognition is unlikely to suddenly switch on during a child’s development and this means there is no clear cut demarcation to justify parental protection and
love being withheld. Therefore except in dire circumstances I find abortion unjustifiable. There is no fundamental basis why an unborn child should receive less protection than a
new born child. However, given the philosophical and social pathologies of our
society that’s not to say abortion
should be made illegal any more than divorce or prostitution should be made
illegal. Moreover, I don’t automatically equate abortion with murder as do
some, although I do see it as killing. (See below)
So having set
that scene you might think I would have a basic agreement with many right-wing Christians
on this subject. Think again. Here is how one member of the Intelligent Design
community, Cornelius Hunter, puts it (“Darwin’s
God” 15th July)
As predicted, evolutionists are desperately attempting
to dismiss and delegitimize a several-hour long video of an evolutionist
discussing the routine practice of crushing live babies to murder them in cold
blood. Business Insider, for example, leads with an absurd headline labelling
the video as “false.” No the video is not false. What is false is the
evolutionist’s claims that humanity, and everything else for that matter, arose
from a series of random chance events—what their Epicurean forefathers referred
to as swerving atoms. And, as William Jennings Bryan foresaw, if the world is
nothing but a happenstance accident, then what does it matter if we kill? And
kill they do. In our country alone evolutionists have murdered more than 50
million babies. It is Bryan’s worst nightmare come true. Evolutionists have
brought us this nightmare, and they will insist that it continues. What we are
now seeing is how evolutionists conduct business—lies, more lies, and
blackballing and delegitimization of anyone who points it out.
“Evolutionists
have murdered…. Evolutionists have brought us this nightmare”. That’s a rather emphatic connection being
made there between evolution and abortion. In order to avoid incriminating the innocent
that really needs qualifying: Are all abortionists
evolutionists? (probably, yes). Are all evolutionists abortionists? (probably,
no) Where do the above accusations place
evolutionist Christians like Francis Collins and Ken Miller? And what about
Intelligent Design Guru William Dembski who is arguably a
crypto-evolutionist? Evolutionists this, evolutionists that…..;
IDists like Hunter (along with Christian
fundamentalists) trace back many of society’s woes to evolution, from
mass murders to the holocaust, from eugenics to abortion, from out of control
gun owners to Islamic State…. did I just
say Islamic State? I think I must
have got that wrong: Islamic State are very likely to be anti-evolutionist*1
(But see footnote)
But evolution is
not as well defined as Hunter’s sweeping accusations hints. In fact evolution is
so ill-defined that it could conceivably cover intelligent design! See here for
example:
So if evolution cannot in and of itself be implicated as determining one’s stance on
abortion what is the underlying
philosophy that leads one to have no problem with it? Hunter tries to express it by saying,
…..what their Epicurean forefathers referred to
as swerving atoms. And …… if the world is nothing
but a happenstance accident, then what does it matter if we kill?
Hunter is no
doubt right in tracing heartless abortionism back to a world view, but ironically
Hunter himself conspires to help along a debased
concept of evolution. For as has been shown in this series of posts conventional evolution
cannot work in an informational vacuum – it must itself tap into the givens of an
a priori mathematical structure in
configuration space. Therefore evolution is far from a happenstance process; in fact evolution is a thermodynamic analogue
of embryo development, where in both cases up front but background information guides and
biases the random shufflings of atoms. This is not to say that I believe evolution
actually works like this. However, the intricate nuances of the evolution debate
are pushed aside in the highly charged and polarized atmosphere in which Hunter
is contending
Evolution in its
distorted debased form is very readily infected with the virus of reductionist
nihilist nothing buttery. This in turn is likely to affect the value
people place on life: In such a context nihilism and extreme postmodernism find
fertile ground. The hopelessness and purposelessness engendered by nihilism and
demented fragmented postmodernist thinking*2 can even tempt suicide
– the ultimate expression of a belief in an empty world. The grand narrative of
atoms and the void has a hidden inner
contradiction that is liable lead to a disbelief even in truth itself (See here). If antifoundational nihilism has
the potential to depress to the extent that it increases suicide risk what
chance does an unborn child have?
And yet it is
true that from the third person perspective that a close look at matter only reveals swerving atoms. In fact if we look very
closely at a human being all we see is, apparently, swerving atoms, even though those atoms follow some very sophisticated
swerves. What is lacking here is the
first person perspective of conscious cognition. Any human being, born and
unborn, is more than the third person perspective – it is also a first person
perspective: If abortionists don’t perceive the unborn child as a unique and
sacred first person and instead just as atoms
and the void then within the parameters of that perception, however wrong
that perception is, abortion will been viewed as just killing and not murder. A
necessary (but not sufficient) condition of murder is knowing that killing ends
the life of another first person perspective. To those who only see the unborn child as atoms and the void it is unlikely they
would see that child as another conscious being; in fact there are some ultras
out there who even express doubt about the existence of consciousness. Therein
lies the problem: Abortionists can’t be accused of murder if they simply don’t perceive
it as anything to do with murder; to those with such an arid view of the fetus,
abortion is just the disposal of a molecular machine and so their
conscience is clear.
Appendix: On polarisation and my wariness of
evangelico-fundamentalists
It is probable
that someone like Hunter leans toward the political right-wing. Evidence for
this comes from the kind of supporting comments he gets. The text below was
extracted from comments on his post of July 14. Notice the way moderate commenter “William Spearshake” is thought of as
a liberal-leftist devil’s advocate and the rightists do their best to push him in that direction. That the liberal-leftist abortionists are “evil”
rather than simply working out a fallacious world view is axiomatic to these
rightists. Inevitably the gun-owning issue gets thrown into the inflammatory mix.
Hunter’s fulminations are very much part of this highly charged debate. This kind of behaviour is the main reason why I avoid contact with
fundamentalists and some evangelicals: They see the world almost exclusively
through moral spectacles: This means that those who disagree with them are likely to be viewed as willfully disobedient to moral principles and an affront to a
sense of morality. All too often, then, one finds evangelico-fundamentalists accusing
detractors of moral defect. I have experienced this myself and that’s one
reason why I avoid contact with them. We
can see some of the antecedents of this type of conduct below. We can also see
an almost organic join between evangelico-fundamentalists and the gun owning
small government rightists; this I believe traces back to the American Revolution.
(See here). And for good measure I
suppose I ought to mention the rightist susceptibility to conspiracy theorism (See here). The US needs to get back to its progressive Whiggish roots.
Joe G July 15, 2015 at 7:08 AM
How do you losers justify the killing of millions of
unborn children? Why do you scream bloody murder at gun violence when the
deaths caused are less than 1% of the deaths caused by abortions?
William Spearshake July 15, 2015 at 9:56 AM
And for the first century of its existence, the NRA
was in favour of more restrictive gun control laws. The motives and focus of
organizations change over time.
Joe G July 15, 2015 at 10:48 AM
The NRA responded to the liberal attacks. In order to
keep what they had they had to pull far to the right.
William Spearshake July 15, 2015 at 11:11 AM
I wasn't criticizing the NRA, although there is much
to be critical of. I was merely pointing out that you can't judge a long
standing organization based on the motives and philosophy of its founders.
These things often change considerably over time, as was the case with the NRA.
Joe G July 15, 2015 at 5:45 PM
The NRA had to change due to liberals.
Tokyojim July 15, 2015 at 7:15 PM
Wait William, you are trying to compare PP with the
NRA? PP was born out of this type of a
worldview! That was the whole purpose of the organization from the get go. That
is a whole different thing than saying some of it's policies have changed over
time. The founder was an evil person and
had evil motives in beginning the organization! This is not a fair
comparison at all. You only try and
justify it because you too are a leftist.
William Spearshake July 15, 2015 at 7:41 PM
Have I said anything justifying PP?
Addendum 22/07/15
The above is a video response by Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In spite of Hunter's accusation I suspect that Ms Richards is telling the truth in good conscience: She does not deny that her organisation carries out abortions and distributes "fetal tissue" for research purposes, but she does deny that the organisation is profiting from this distribution; rumor has it that the rightists edited their video to give this false impression. Ms. Richards reels off the work Planned Parenthood is involved in "Cancer screening, birth control, STD detection and treatment and abortions"; reading Hunter you'd think that abortions was all that PP do! There is no real murder here and my feeling is that Ms Richards is doing what she feels to be right in good conscience. That's not to say I agree with abortion. For Planned Parenthood killing fetuses is just a job of work among others, comparable perhaps to the professional executioners task. Although I would not want to say that all of Planned Parenthood's clients have unjustified abortions, that troubling question remains in my mind: How many of those unborn children are aborted for quite marginal reasons and treated as unwanted parasitic machines fit only for experimental scrutiny?
Addendum 29/07/15
In the above video uber-feminist Rebecca Watson weighs in on the debate and takes exception to the term "baby parts" when used of something as small as a bean; better she thinks is "tissue". In this debate connotationalism looms large.
Footnotes:
*1 It is
possible that extreme Islam is in part a reaction to the mind boggling open
ended freedoms and choices of Western secularism.
In a blog post here evangelical atheist Larry Moran criticizes
a web article by Intelligent Design guru Kirk Durston. I know that Larry Moran is apt to call people
like Durston “IDiots”, but looking at Moran’s post I’m not surprised. Below I
quote both Durston and Moran as they appear on Moran’s post. As is my usual
practice I add my own comments.
***
Durston: In the neo-Darwinian scenario for the origin
and diversity of life, the digital functional information for life would have
had to begin at zero, (Wrong!)
increase over time to eventually encode the first simple life form, and
continue to increase via natural processes to encode the digital information for
the full diversity of life. An essential, falsifiable prediction of Darwinian
theory, therefore, is that functional information must, on average, increase
over time.(Wrong again!)
My Comment: This statement tells me that Durston is unfamiliar with the kind of the issues I
raised in my series on Joe Felsenstein’s and Tom English’s post on Panda’s Thumb
(see links below). If evolution is to work as currently understood, it must
start out with a full complement of information. This burden of information is
found in the abstract “sponge” structure that occupies configuration space: It
is this structure that acts as the “rails” which guide the evolutionary/OOL diffusion
processes. The "sponge" is conjectured to be an implication of physics. As such evolution is not a process that creates
information as Durston claims: Rather evolution is a process which transforms information from an abstract structure in configuration space to reified
organisms. Of course, I must qualify all this by registering my reservations
about the existence of this spongey structure: How I see evolution/OOL is
another story which I tell in my Melencolia I series. (I’ve got no
illusions that my own attempt to handle the OOL/evolution question would be
laughed off by pure secularists, but at least I won’t get censorious insults
about courting divine displeasure from them!)
Bellow I quote a
section of Moran’s post and add my comments
at the end (My emphases).
Moran: Contrast this [i.e. real evolutionary
theory] with the Intelligent Design
version of creationism. Apparently its
followers understand the mind of the "intelligent designer" because
they are prepared to make predictions about what he/she/it/them intended.
Here's how Kirk Durston describes it…..
Durston: Interestingly, a
prediction of intelligent design science is quite the opposite. Since
information always degrades over time for any storage media and replication
system, intelligent design science
postulates that the digital information of life wasinitially downloaded into the genomes of life. Itpredicts that, on average, genetic information is steadily
being corrupted by natural processes. The beauty of these two mutually
incompatible predictions in science is that the falsification of one entails
verification of the other. So which prediction does science falsify, and which
does science verify?
Moran:If I understand this correctly, the
Intelligent Design Creationists all
agree that all the information required to make complex organisms was written
into the genome at some time in the past (3.5 billion years ago according
to many ID proponents). Since that
time, the intelligent designer has allowed that information to steadily degrade
so that eventually all species will become extinct. (I don't know how Durston came to understand the mind of the gods.)
Durston:This is the first problem for neo-Darwinian
theory. Mutations produce random changes in the digital information of life. It
is generally agreed that the rate of deleterious mutations is much greater than
the rate of beneficial mutations. My own work with 35 protein families suggests
that the rate of destruction is, at minimum, 8 times the rate of neutral or
beneficial mutations.
Simply put, the digital information of life is being
destroyed much faster than it can be repaired or improved. New functions may
evolve, but the overall loss of functional information in other areas of the
genome will, on average, be significantly greater. The net result is that the
digital information of life is running down.
Moran: Isn't that interesting?
Intelligent Design Creationists believe that over the past 3.5 billion years
the genetic information in simple bacteria has been steadily degrading at a
rate 8 times the rate of beneficial mutations.
Aside from the fact that Durston's statement is
ridiculous, it says something very weird about the intelligent designer that
these creationists believe in. Those gods
intelligent designers don't resemble any human engineers or computer
programmers that I've ever met. Humans would have done a better job of
designing in the first place and they would make sure that crucial systems get
frequent updates and repairs to keep them working. (My emphasis)
My Comment: Moran is
right: Durston is making implicit assumptions about the way his purported
intelligent agent works. This has lead the de-facto ID community into an
inconsistency: On the one hand IDists will claim that the function of ID science is only detect
the presence of intelligence and make little or no assertion as to character of
that intelligence. And yet whenever the IDists attempt to make predictions we
find they are working from an implicit raft of assumptions about the way that
intelligence works (as does Durston above). In fact I would submit that even to make sense of the works of an intelligent agent requires a background knowledge of just what intelligence is and the kind things it does. I made a similar point to Moran’s “Apparently its followers understand the mind
of the "intelligent designer” in this post. Viz:
And yet the ID community claims to be able to make
predictions such as economy of design and absence of Junk DNA. I suggest that
they cannot make these predictions unless they are actually making implicit
assumptions about the nature of the intelligence they are dealing with; there
is therefore an inconsistency in Torley’s thought: He can’t make claim to
knowing so little about the nature of the intelligent agent and yet at the same
time try and pass on predictions that contain implicit assumptions about that
intelligence. After all, motive, that is emotions, are a huge part of any
practical intelligence and we need some inkling of those motives to make
predictions. But when we do hazard postulating something about the nature of
the intelligence involved the resultant science is far from exact, in fact it
is a science that is a lot softer than archaeology (see also: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/does-intelligent-design-make-testable.html).
Durston, as other
IDists, is very naturally interpreted as a dualist God-of-the-Gaps thinker. This is what comes over to Larry Moran and it certainly also comes over
to me. As Moran says Durston conjures up a picture of a God who, on occasion, downloads
a piece of his mind into molecular matter and then steps back and allows it to
degrade. This is a classical deist conception of God. No doubt the ID
community will try to deny this, but the fact is whenever they attempt to
explain ID to themselves they appear to fall into the dualist and desitical trap of god-of-the-gaps style thinking. Part of the problem seems to be down to their explanatory filter
epistemic (See here) but a lot of it may be down
to a default Western dualist philosophy of God.
***
As is the way
with communities who have become the target of general disdain, marginalisation and insult, the
de-facto IDists have reacted with an insular embattled mentality. We therefore find
Durston simply repeating the fallacies of his IDist peer group. As I’ve recently expressed in this blog post
the de-facto ID community have been a huge disappointment to me: They have
screwed up in several issues and don’t seem to have the self-critical back bone
to dig themselves out of the hole they are in. There is one advantage of the
secular community (and “secular” does not necessarily equate to “atheist”) that
some insular Christian sub-cultures are unlikely to benefit from: Viz: the secular
scientific community is less a community than it is a disorderly free for all.
Although the dangers of nihilism and postmodernism are ever present among pure
secularists, disagreement at the price of unity is not something they lose
sleep over. On the other hand closeted and sectarian Christian communities do
lose sleep over it and end up forming a tight-knit penguin cluster who are very
easy targets for the machine gun fire of criticism. That the ID community have
so badly failed in the area of apologetics is, for a Christian like myself, disquieting;
on the whole they are some of the most intelligent and reasonable evangelical believers
around*. But if the de-facto IDists are performing so badly on the apologetics
front that doesn't bode well for the anti-science Christian fundamentalists.
.
Safety in
numbers? Not when there are Maxims about!
Part 6 of my Melencolia series can be found here. I reproduce the introduction to this paper below:
***
1Introduction
In
this short paper I make a proposal as to the nature of quantum leaps. These
“leaps” are the apparentdiscontinuous
changes of the quantum mechanical Hilbert vector, a vector which otherwise
moves continuously according to a deterministic wave equation. I have come down
in favour of the view that these leaps are literal
rather than apparent. The following
paper is largely a qualitative discussion of a subject which could no doubt bear
a lot more rigorous quantitative formulation. However, in this Melencolia I
series my sights are really on the evolutionary and OOL questions and I hope I
have enough in this paper on quantum leaping to assess its impact on my general
objectives. But having said that I’m not quite sure just where this paper
leaves my ideas about a declarative model of evolutionary computation. For on
the face of it my proposal on quantum leaping seems to hamstring the searching
that would be needed to find the configurations of life: This is because the “leaps”
would, apparently, clear the quantum signalling field before it could make any
worthwhile discoveries. One little consolation, however, is that in conceiving
matter as a combination of a coherent object and a shadowy gravitational field
I find some scope for fixing the energy problem thrown up by proposing literal
quantum leaps.
The
general idea that guides the Melencolia I series is the view that intelligence
is a process, a process with a general declarative structure, of search, reject and select. Thus, the life
generating processes are, in this context, viewed as intelligence at work and therefore open to observational scrutiny.
This very much contrasts with the views of the de-facto ID community who
envisage intelligence as a kind of black box very distinct from natural processes. This black box gets
little or no analytical treatment from the de-facto IDists. In contrast one thing that encourages me to pursue
the endogenous ID proposal is the
fact that the our current understanding of the mind suggests conscious
cognition is very much bound up with the material organisation of the brain; That is, we do not see “mind” down at the low
neuronal level; these low level elements
are wholly impersonal. But at the high
level personality becomes apparent. Likewise we don’t see cosmic
intelligence/personality operating at the low particulate level, but we may
only see it in the big picture. This is not to say that current
molecular views of the mind are the full answer; for example, we may eventually
have to feed into to the mix the ideas of people like John Searle, Roger
Penrose or whoever.
As
I continue to use this series to explore the processes that generate life there
is, I feel, little chance I’m following anything like the right path. But as I
always say: Enjoy the journey while you can because the destination may not be
up to much! And below, the journey so far…..
