How do you detect "design"?

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Deist perspective would be God not involved at all beyond simple Creating and watching.

I hadn't seen the watching part before. That's implied in an interventionist god listening to and answering prayers, but the deist god isn't needed for anything but designing that which will expand to become the universe. It is free to go away and never look back.

I don't really detect design, I just believe that the natural world was designed, it is a matter of faith.

Yes, it is, and there are many who find no value believing by faith. What's the value to you to believe that the universe was intelligently designed by faith?

Do you say that nature is not designed through the same method, faith, or have you got another method of showing that the natural world was not designed? Is there any argument for no design in nature which is a scientific argument?

What the skeptic says is that absent evidence of intelligent design, he doesn't believe that the universe was intelligently designed, but for the reason implied in this thread, he also doesn't assert that there was no intelligent designer. He remains agnostic on the question.

So would I be right in saying that the necessary association (learning) is built into the system?

No, in protein synthesis, the association between a given codon and a specific amino acid is mechanical. They are physically linked in a molecule of tRNA. With human language, the association between the appearance or sound of the word CAT and the animal it refers to in English is arbitrary and must be learned by a conscious agent to be used and understood as a symbol for that animal.

philosophical materialism tends to want to deligitimize anything that is not physical as being not 'real'

It need do no such thing. The claim that there exists an aspect of reality that is not natural or physical is not legitimate and can be ignored absent supporting evidence. I know that that requirement frustrates you, but skepticism and empiricism are the linchpin of critical thought and what makes it so useful and what allows it to reject false and useless ideas.

Life happened because it could. Consciousness happened because it could.

That's how naturalism works. No gods needed. Ice melts whenever it can. Rain falls whenever it can. And life forms wherever conditions for it permit. Likewise with consciousness.

There is no evolutionary explanation for the exponential increase in imagination and reasoning within the human brain as compared to all other life forms on this planet.

Sure there is. It was possible and conditions that facilitated that evolution arose. The best ideas I've seen for that involve an animal with eyes and hands for stereoscopic vision and manual dexterity which came down from the trees when the trees began disappearing as jungle became savanna, forcing the arboreal herbivores to become hunters and carnivores to survive. When this creature stood up and freed its hands for purposes other than swinging from branch to branch, it developed the skills necessary for persistence hunting in packs. Carnivores are generally more intelligent than herbivores probably because hunting - especially in packs - benefits from this increase in a way that doesn't serve a grazing animal. That apparently didn't happen with other kinds of vertebrates.

You have a tendency to make incredulity fallacies. Where you just can't see how it happened naturalistically, for you, it didn't, and you turn to magic or woo for answers. That's fine, but you also object when others won't do the same and tell you why. You seem to take it personally. It causes you to have an emotional reaction wherein you begin using words like materialist and scientism in a derogatory manner.

We can build machines that take us to the moon. The degree of difference is astounding even though we come from the same relatively recent evolutionary tree branch and possess the same basic biological structure and habitat. So claiming that it's all just evolution really doesn't cut it, logically.

And there it is again - your incredulity. You need an answer even if it's wrong or a guess. Others don't. They're content to stop right there and say what can't be explained yet shouldn't be guessed at.

And it appears the same goes for life from non-life. Again, another astonishing and inexplicable leap in terms of existential possibilities that we cannot explain.

You're still astonished.

Guess what? So am I. It is indeed a great mystery that matter, life, and consciousness exist. A disciplined mind stops there and appreciates the mystery without trying to give it a name or a face. Try spirituality without spirits. Try gratitude (grateful for) without an invented object to be grateful to.

When everything is evidence we have to trust in our ability to apply reason to that evidence. The fact that you can't see the evidence means that you need to open your mind.

This is you petitioning others to lower their defenses against admitting useless ideas to "explain" mysteries, but you can't show any benefit to your other way of thinking or knowing. You use the word need but can't say why others need to follow you.

So this weird worship of the fantasy of "objective evidence = truth" is just egocentric nonsense thrown around by people who are obsessed with playing the kangaroo judge of everyone else's idea of reality and truth.

And here is your resentment in full force. Weird and worship appear almost immediately. You call empiricism egocentric as you go inventing gods to comfort your ego. You call disciplined thought obsession. You call critical analysis kangaroo judgment.

Something angers you about all of this. Ask yourself what and why. Others aren't angry at you for your soft thinking - your other way of "knowing." I think they're tired of your uncharitable judgment of them, but don't care if you believe in gods. Why are you so offended at being disagreerd with?

 

[Pogo]

Evidence is just information. It can be obtained objectively or subjectively, and is meaningless by itself. We have to apply logic, and reason, and value to that information for it to become meaningful to us. And that is an act of faith ... faith in our ability to apply logic, reason, and value effectively and appropriately. And this us a "subjective" activity since we are the subjects engaged in it and only we can decide how well we're doing it.

So this weird worship of the fantasy of "objective evidence = truth" is just egocentric nonsense thrown around by people who are obsessed with playing the kangaroo judge of everyone else's idea of reality and truth.

OK, so it is all subjective and you use the logic and reason that you have faith in.
Can you write this down so that someone else can follow your logic without claims of "it's complicated and I don't know so there must be something" ?

 

[Pogo]

Can you explain how you think that not believing in something is an example of a faith-based belief?
Why do you think it takes faith to not believe in something for which you've not seen convincing evidence? Where does the faith come in?

Faith that you have all the answers and I don't know is not a possibility?

 

[Soandso]

Well, there are 2 models of empericism in play here.
All experinces can be reduced down to external one.
Not all experinces are external ones.

The problem is in part the word "no". In your model "no" comes from in the end the external experiences.
So please explain that in practice and not just claim it.

Here is how I understand it. E.g. not all words have external referents. I.e. "no" has no external referent, because it is a result of interal cognition.

But there can be no internal concepts without externally informed experiences. Take your internal concept of "no" for starters...

Let's say you have a person in isolation who is blind. There's nobody around to inform him that he is blind. Does he realize he has no vision? No; vision isn't a concept he is capable of knowing. Now let's remove all his senses one by one. No taste, no hearing, no smell, no touch; not even the ability to feel pain or any other sensation. Their whole life from birth until death this is their existence

Does something that just exists have the ability to understand the concept of "no?" No, because they have to understand the concept of a thing before they can understand the absence of a thing. Things cannot be considered internally without being informed of their existence - that requires first learning about them via our senses in regards to how they respond to the outside world

What about "no" as the counter to "yes?" Yes to what? No to what? There can't be a yes or no if your existence is an internal void that holds no knowledge and no understanding of concepts of anything

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

But there can be no internal concepts without externally informed experiences. Take your internal concept of "no" for starters...

Let's say you have a person in isolation who is blind. There's nobody around to inform him that he is blind. Does he realize he has no vision? No; vision isn't a concept he is capable of knowing. Now let's remove all his senses one by one. No taste, no hearing, no smell, no touch; not even the ability to feel pain or any other sensation. Their whole life from birth until death this is their existence

Does something that just exists have the ability to understand the concept of "no?" No, because they have to understand the concept of a thing before they can understand the absence of a thing. Things cannot be considered internally without being informed of their existence - that requires first learning about them via our senses in regards to how they respond to the outside world

What about "no" as the counter to "yes?" Yes to what? No to what? There can't be a yes or no if your existence is an internal void that holds no knowledge and no understanding of concepts of anything

Well, there are 2 versions at play - reductive versus not sufficient, but necessary.
So we are doing 2 different versiosn and accoriding to you understanding as concept is something you do using the 5 external senses. Please explain that only using expternal senses.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Yeah, we wouldn't want having to clarify the reasoning behind our position to muddy up the bias, now would we.

No. Everybody but you seems to understand the OP point just fine.
Either engage the actual topic or move on please.

 

[Pogo]

Well, there are 2 versions at play - reductive versus not sufficient, but necessary.
So we are doing 2 different versiosn and accoriding to you understanding as concept is something you do using the 5 external senses. Please explain that only using expternal senses.

How about we use bad instead of no and add discomfort to the senses. We are born without a concept of bad, but we learn it fairly quickly as a function of our brain as neural network in training in response to internal stimuli? If we can agree that the network (our brains) exists and that discomfort exists as evolved response to stimuli then ultimately concepts are the result of stimuli. That said, concepts can build on themselves and so the origin may be obscure.

 

[Soandso]

Well, there are 2 versions at play - reductive versus not sufficient, but necessary.
So we are doing 2 different versiosn and accoriding to you understanding as concept is something you do using the 5 external senses. Please explain that only using expternal senses.

Why would I do that when you didn't even address my post? I walked you through my thought process. How is my reasoning flawed?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

How about we use bad instead of no and add discomfort to the senses. We are born without a concept of bad, but we learn it fairly quickly as a function of our brain as neural network in training in response to internal stimuli? If we can agree that the network (our brains) exists and that discomfort exists as evolved response to stimuli then ultimately concepts are the result of stimuli. That said, concepts can build on themselves and so the origin may be obscure.

Yeah, which is internal and doesn't in your model account for neurodiversity.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Thank you @mikkel_the_dane and @PureX for your non-contribution and semi-successful attempts at derailing what was a somewhat fun topic till you guys showed up.

6 pages of the usual raving about objective vs subjective, kangaroo courts, semantic mumbo jumbo and off course some drops of "scientism" accusations.

I hope you both had your fix now and that the resulting endorfines have done their work.

Now, I would respectfully request the both of you to either actually engage with the topic, or go create your own threads where you can continue your pseudo-intellectual masturbation.

Sincerely,
Tagliatelli

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Why would I do that when you didn't even address my post? I walked you through my thought process. How is my reasoning flawed?

Because you can't show reasoning as only external. You can show it as connected to external, but not as external.
That is the 2 versions of empiricism.
By the way, the same is the case with I, you, adress, post, thought process and flawed.
You use a lot of words that have no external referent.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Thank you @mikkel_the_dane and @PureX for your non-contribution and semi-successful attempts at derailing what was a somewhat fun topic till you guys showed up.

6 pages of the usual raving about objective vs subjective, kangaroo courts, semantic mumbo jumbo and off course some drops of "scientism" accusations.

I hope you both had your fix now and that the resulting endorfines have done their work.

Now, I would respectfully request the both of you to either actually engage with the topic, or go create your own threads where you can continue your pseudo-intellectual masturbation.

Sincerely,
Tagliatelli

Well, how do you using science measure pseudo-intellectual masturbation? What instruments do you use and what measurement unit is used.
You do like your feelings about how science is good, but you won't admit that it is a feeling.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Well, how do you using science measure pseudo-intellectual masturbation? What instruments do you use and what measurement unit is used.
You do like your feelings about how science is good, but you won't admit that it is a feeling.

You know... I would repeat my request, but it seems to be an exercise in futility.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

You know... I would repeat my request, but it seems to be an exercise in futility.

Okay, for this thread I will do it. But if you or somebody else confuse in effect methodologic naturalism with philsophical naturalsim or start claim norms using sicence, then for any other thread I will answer if I spot it.
See you in the other threads.

 

[Soandso]

Because you can't show reasoning as only external. You can show it as connected to external, but not as external.

I never claimed reasoning was external. Maybe this is why you can't seem to understand where I'm coming from? Reasoning cannot happen without the information you get from the external world utilizing your senses - this has always been my point

By the way, the same is the case with I, you, adress, post, thought process and flawed.
You use a lot of words that have no external referent.

You've ignored my point in my post or it went right over your head. I explained to you how we require our senses to be able to conceptualize those and all other concepts. There can be no I, you, address, post, thought process, or flawed without learning what those things and what their counterparts are first from the outside world

 

[shunyadragon]

But there can be no internal concepts without externally informed experiences. Take your internal concept of "no" for starters...

Let's say you have a person in isolation who is blind. There's nobody around to inform him that he is blind. Does he realize he has no vision? No; vision isn't a concept he is capable of knowing. Now let's remove all his senses one by one. No taste, no hearing, no smell, no touch; not even the ability to feel pain or any other sensation. Their whole life from birth until death this is their existence

Does something that just exists have the ability to understand the concept of "no?" No, because they have to understand the concept of a thing before they can understand the absence of a thing. Things cannot be considered internally without being informed of their existence - that requires first learning about them via our senses in regards to how they respond to the outside world

What about "no" as the counter to "yes?" Yes to what? No to what? There can't be a yes or no if your existence is an internal void that holds no knowledge and no understanding of concepts of anything

I believe this explanation fails to be meaningful.

 

[Pogo]

Yeah, which is internal and doesn't in your model account for neurodiversity.

Neurodiversity

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Neurodiversity

Then what it mean to you.

 

[Soandso]

I believe this explanation fails to be meaningful.

Ok. What issue do you take with it, exactly?

 

[F1fan]

Yeah, you are ignorant of the actual history of science and the different versions of science, that even exist today.
Your safe spot is to make it about theists and ignore texts like this:

Are you 100% certain? Is your assessment a fact that can't be doubted by a mind? Did your comment here not suffer from your mind making a decision as mind? Is it possible you are wrong?