Death

[Sriram]

I would agree that it is possible for intelligence to create intelligence, and, yes, it is possible that life was created on this planet by some form of intelligence, and, yes, the process of evolution would not conflict with that scenario. However there are several problems with it.

First is that even if we accept that life was created by this so 'intelligence'(without any corroborating evidence at all), there is again no evidence at all that it had any further input, and, furthermore, no reason for this 'intelligence' to have any further input because  evolution by natural selection does not need any 'intelligence' in its explanations.

Second, if, after all this, we accepted that this 'intelligence' guided evolution in some way, then we would fairly quickly come to strong conclusions as to its ineptitude and incompetence.

Third, even if the idea of intelligence creating intelligence was accepted, you still have the question as to where this intelligence came from, and how did it develop its intelligence unless it be by the process of evolution.

If you wish to believe that some sort of intelligence is responsible for human intelligence then so be it. However, bearing in mind the points raised above, and unless some evidence arises to support your ideas, I do not see any reason to treat them as any more than conjectures on your part.

The argument was about whether Intelligence can create Intelligence (torridon said that it is not possible).

Now that you agree that it can...that is all there is to it. 

About all the other questions....there are no easy answers that anyone person can offer on a platter.   It is a conjecture much like many other conjectures like Parallel Universes, String, Dark Energy etc.   

Natural Selection (as you people define it) does not need any Intelligence because it is nothing more than a metaphor. Intelligence works through genetic variation and adaptations to specific environments.

[torridon]

The argument was about whether Intelligence can create Intelligence (torridon said that it is not possible).

Did he ?

I don't recall saying that.  What I meant was that the idea of intelligence being created by a prior intelligence would not make sense in the context of a first cause argument.

[torridon]

Natural Selection (as you people define it) does not need any Intelligence because it is nothing more than a metaphor. Intelligence works through genetic variation and adaptations to specific environments.

Eeerm, Natural Selection is not a metaphor, it is a reality.  The term "Natural Selection" may have been coined by Darwin to draw the parallel with artificial selection.  I think you are merely redefining Natural Selection as Intelligent Selection to suit your agenda that reality was created by an external intelligence, something we have no evidence for.

[Stranger]

About all the other questions....there are no easy answers that anyone person can offer on a platter.   It is a conjecture much like many other conjectures like Parallel Universes, String, Dark Energy etc.   

No it isn't. Apart from anything else, it's impossible to be like "Parallel Universes, String, Dark Energy" because they are in completely different categories.

You're ideas about intelligence appear to be based on nothing but wishful thinking.

Natural Selection (as you people define it) does not need any Intelligence because it is nothing more than a metaphor.

Drivel. You really do need to learn what natural selection means.

Intelligence works through genetic variation and adaptations to specific environments.

So you insist but never provide any reason to take the idea seriously.

[Udayana]

I think this was discussed previously and it's probably a waste of time repeating it but that's what certain India schools of thought subscribe to. Intelligence (Sattwa) is one of three innate qualities present in nature or 'prakriti' as it is called.  The others are rajas a force of change and tamas a force of stability.  Sattwa attempts to harmonise the other two.  Homeostasis and metabolism would be examples of Sattwa in action in the human body.

As regards your first point, the particular 'intelligence' in question is ever present in all life forms and is continuous as life forms change.  Possibly it is seen as the selector in natural selection.
As regards your second point, I don't think the process is seen as guided as if there is a master plan.  The Sanskrit word used is Lila which is a kind of creative play.
As regards your third point, intelligence (Sattwa) is seen as ever present, as mass and energy might be seen, and is simple in nature and doesn't develop complexity in itself but facilitates complexity in the formal world.
I doubt whether any scientific evidence can be produced but in the context of self awareness it is seen as an ideal to foster so that harmony is improved upon.

Interesting posts. I'm not sure that the interpretation of "sattwa" (or "sattva") as "intelligence" is really correct though. It could be read as "information", and so intimately related to evolution and the emergence of complexity/intelligence and on a par with matter/energy.
 

[ekim]

What does 'harmonising intelligence' mean?

First of all, I should say that it has been a long time since I looked at different Hindu schools of thought so my memory might be suspect, but in that context I am using 'intelligence' in the sense of that word's Latin origin 'to choose between' which is similar to Sattwa which has a selecting and balancing or harmonising role.  An example of this intelligence functioning in the human body is the metabolic process.  If you ignore this underlying intelligence and constantly overdose on sugar then the body's harmony is disturbed.  On a planetary scale, if we overdose on technological consumerism the natural harmonies of many life forms become disturbed, natural habitats become destroyed, seas become polluted etc.  Many of the 'Eastern spiritual' practices are about fostering that harmonising intelligence within the individual and also between life forms.  I believe some claim that it is present within non life forms.

[Enki]

The argument was about whether Intelligence can create Intelligence (torridon said that it is not possible).

Now that you agree that it can...that is all there is to it. 

About all the other questions....there are no easy answers that anyone person can offer on a platter.   It is a conjecture much like many other conjectures like Parallel Universes, String, Dark Energy etc.   

Natural Selection (as you people define it) does not need any Intelligence because it is nothing more than a metaphor. Intelligence works through genetic variation and adaptations to specific environments.

I've always accepted that it is possible that an intelligence can create intelligence. No problem. However, as I have stated, I see no evidence at all that any intelligence has created us.

As far as the rest of your post goes, I agree completely with Stranger's rebuttal of your position in post 153.
 

[Sriram]

Eeerm, Natural Selection is not a metaphor, it is a reality.  The term "Natural Selection" may have been coined by Darwin to draw the parallel with artificial selection.  I think you are merely redefining Natural Selection as Intelligent Selection to suit your agenda that reality was created by an external intelligence, something we have no evidence for.

If Natural Selection is seen as similar to Artificial Selection (as Darwin did), then there is intelligence and purpose involved in it.  If NS is seen in terms of Neo Darwinism, it is just a metaphor. 

Once we accept that Nature could be Intelligent, the intelligence need not be 'external'......it could very well be internal. Intelligence could emanate from within the DNA leading to genetic variations. 

Genetic variations can be of two kinds...random or specific adaptations to suit the environment (as in Lamarckism). In both cases, this is what leads to variations, complexity, Emergence and so on.  This is where Intelligence comes in......   

[Stranger]

If Natural Selection is seen as similar to Artificial Selection (as Darwin did), then there is intelligence and purpose involved in it.

Yes it is similar but natural selection needs no intelligence because what does the 'selecting' is just the environment.

If NS is seen in terms of Neo Darwinism, it is just a metaphor. 

This is simply wrong. You've misunderstood. Read any decent book on the subject, go to any reputable website about it, and if you pay attention, you will see you are wrong. I'd post some links now but from previous experience you simply won't listen.

Once we accept that Nature could be Intelligent, the intelligence need not be 'external'......it could very well be internal. Intelligence could emanate from within the DNA leading to genetic variations. 

You have still not given any reason for anybody to accept this intelligence.

Genetic variations can be of two kinds...random or specific adaptations to suit the environment (as in Lamarckism).

Nonsense. Genetic changes (mutations) are all random. Some of them happen to suit the environment and then, exactly because they confer and advantage, in terms of survival and reproduction, those individuals who have them survive and reproduce more than those without, hence the mutation spreads through the population.

That's natural selection - a real process.

This is where Intelligence comes in......

Intelligence is not required. That is, it's not required for evolution to happen, it is required to see that natural selection is absolutely real, isn't a metaphor, and explains how evolution works without any intelligence.

[torridon]

If Natural Selection is seen as similar to Artificial Selection (as Darwin did), then there is intelligence and purpose involved in it.  If NS is seen in terms of Neo Darwinism, it is just a metaphor. 

That's wrong. Darwin used the term Natural Selection to differentiate it from artificial selection, the point being the latter is driven by conscious human intelligence, the former is not.

[torridon]

Genetic variations can be of two kinds...random or specific adaptations to suit the environment (as in Lamarckism). In both cases, this is what leads to variations, complexity, Emergence and so on.  This is where Intelligence comes in......

if by this you are referring to epigenetic effects, I don't see how that could be classed as 'intelligent' or 'purposeful' any more than mutations/selection.  It is just another mechanism of downwards intergenerational information transfer with subsequent generations featuring altered gene expression as opposed to altered genes.  It still falls within the wider remit of sources of variation that natural selection will act on.

[Sriram]

That's wrong. Darwin used the term Natural Selection to differentiate it from artificial selection, the point being the latter is driven by conscious human intelligence, the former is not.

Darwin was not an atheist. He probably didn't feel compelled to come up with convoluted explanations just to avoid some form of  Intelligence. He understood Natural Selection in the same way he understood Artificial Selection....as a process by which desired traits were chosen. 

[Sriram]

if by this you are referring to epigenetic effects, I don't see how that could be classed as 'intelligent' or 'purposeful' any more than mutations/selection.  It is just another mechanism of downwards intergenerational information transfer with subsequent generations featuring altered gene expression as opposed to altered genes.  It still falls within the wider remit of sources of variation that natural selection will act on.

Epigenetics is just a process, a mechanism. Mechanisms themselves need to be explained. Saying that a car runs because of its engine does not in any way exclude intelligence behind it.

[Stranger]

He probably didn't feel compelled to come up with convoluted explanations just to avoid some form of  Intelligence. He understood Natural Selection in the same way he understood Artificial Selection....as a process by which desired traits were chosen.

Utter nonsense - you really do need to get an education as far as evolution goes. Natural selection isn't a "convoluted explanation", it's beautifully simple and, by its very nature, needs no intelligence. There are no 'desired traits' in natural selection, just traits that happen to result in better chances of reproduction in the environment.

Darwin was criticised at the time, by MacKenzie, for a "strange inversion of reasoning" by suggesting that "Absolute Ignorance is the artificer". Even Darwin's critics seem to have grasped what you seem unable to.

Epigenetics is just a process, a mechanism. Mechanisms themselves need to be explained.

But intelligence, as if by magic, doesn't?

[Shaker]

Darwin was not an atheist.

It's not the clearest thing in the world since he was a temperamentally reticent and retiring man who loathed contention, but certainly by the time he wrote his autobiography he said that disbelief in a God was "complete".

No doubt you'll come up with your own slippery, evasive, self-serving take on that so that Darwin didn't actually mean what Darwin said but what Sriram meant he thought he should have said. You'll be far from the first.

He probably didn't feel compelled to come up with convoluted explanations just to avoid some form of  Intelligence. He understood Natural Selection in the same way he understood Artificial Selection....as a process by which desired traits were chosen.

Artificial selection by human beings desires traits. Natural selection doesn't desire anything. It can't.

[torridon]

Darwin was not an atheist. He probably didn't feel compelled to come up with convoluted explanations just to avoid some form of  Intelligence. He understood Natural Selection in the same way he understood Artificial Selection....as a process by which desired traits were chosen.

Natural Selection is a process by which traits are 'chosen' by entirely natural means, not artificial, not purposeful.  Maybe the words 'chosen' and 'selection' are vulnerable to being interpreted in a teleological way by people wishing to muddy the issue.  But Natural Selection implies no teleology and we have no reason to think Darwin saw it that way either.  Traits that are 'chosen' are those traits which happen to become beneficial in a changing wider environment, so it is the wider environment that fashions species over time.  The environment is not sentient, it does not have desires.

[Udayana]

A lot of the misunderstanding here is due to giving names to things that don't exist "Natural selection", and using anthropomorphic terms  inappropriately, "chosen", "fittest", probably first used to explain evolution whilst protecting the sensibilities of of the naive.  ( The "selfish gene", the "Blind Watchmaker" - really?)

Individuals either live or die. Those that live longer have longer in which to reproduce. The populations and the genetics we see now are a statistical outcome of billions of small events, reproduction and deaths, in the past. These populations are not "fitter", "better", or in any way an "advance" on what has gone before.

One day the current populations will have died and be of no further significance, as will their descendants in turn.

[Sriram]

Natural Selection is a process by which traits are 'chosen' by entirely natural means, not artificial, not purposeful.  Maybe the words 'chosen' and 'selection' are vulnerable to being interpreted in a teleological way by people wishing to muddy the issue.  But Natural Selection implies no teleology and we have no reason to think Darwin saw it that way either.  Traits that are 'chosen' are those traits which happen to become beneficial in a changing wider environment, so it is the wider environment that fashions species over time.  The environment is not sentient, it does not have desires.

Precisely!  The environment does not have desires. It is just chance occurrence. Environmental conditions change by chance. 

Natural Selection (as interpreted by you people) is also therefore just a chance occurrence at a specific point of time. Under today's environmental situation, a particular organism/species may survive. Under tomorrow's environmental situation the same may perish.  So, there is no law of Natural Selection or any predictability. It is just chance and not a real process at all.  NS is therefore just a metaphor. There is no real selection going on! Whatever manages to survive is deemed to be selected....which is a post facto conclusion.

Coming back to the subject of Nature being intelligent....any intelligent intervention has to happen from within the organism.  Genetic variations have to be such that complexity arises and the organism also adapts to the environment. This is the only way such complexity could have arisen. Random variations simply will not work.

[torridon]

Precisely!  The environment does not have desires. It is just chance occurrence. Environmental conditions change by chance. 

Natural Selection (as interpreted by you people) is also therefore just a chance occurrence at a specific point of time. Under today's environmental situation, a particular organism/species may survive. Under tomorrow's environmental situation the same may perish.  So, there is no law of Natural Selection or any predictability. It is just chance and not a real process at all.  NS is therefore just a metaphor. There is no real selection going on! Whatever manages to survive is deemed to be selected....which is a post facto conclusion.

OK, I could agree that the phrase "Natural Selection" is metaphorical to a degree, and maybe that causes confusion sometimes,  The process of natural selection however is not a metaphor, it is a real phenomenon of nature, it is a real process whereby species diversify over time in tune with varying supply and demand of ecological niches and other varying environmental factors.  Because it is the application of probability to ecological systems does not mean it is not a process.

[torridon]

Coming back to the subject of Nature being intelligent....any intelligent intervention has to happen from within the organism.  Genetic variations have to be such that complexity arises and the organism also adapts to the environment. This is the only way such complexity could have arisen. Random variations simply will not work.

That is back to front thinking.  There is no known mechanism in nature to procure mutations to order.  That is not how it works,  Mutations happen largely because of occasional copying errors in germ line cells; they don't happen because plants and animals are somehow intelligently trying to make a spread of copying errors so that hopefully some will benefit their descendants downstream.  Complexity arises quite naturally within the bounds of possibility.

[torridon]

Epigenetics is just a process, a mechanism. Mechanisms themselves need to be explained. Saying that a car runs because of its engine does not in any way exclude intelligence behind it.

Stumbling around with simplistic analogies again. A natural process, such as epigenetics, or photosynthesis, does not require some purposeful intelligence behind it to make it work.  That is what the 'natural' in the phrase 'natural process' implies.

[Sriram]

OK, I could agree that the phrase "Natural Selection" is metaphorical to a degree, and maybe that causes confusion sometimes,  The process of natural selection however is not a metaphor, it is a real phenomenon of nature, it is a real process whereby species diversify over time in tune with varying supply and demand of ecological niches and other varying environmental factors.  Because it is the application of probability to ecological systems does not mean it is not a process.

I know that it is a real phenomenon. That environmental conditions determine what survives or dies, is a real phenomenon. I know that.

I am only disputing the idea that such chance occurrences due to which organisms and species survive or perish is claimed as some kind of a Natural Selection process. It isn't.  The idea that something is 'selected' is metaphoric.   It is purely environment dependent. At one end of a forest a particular bird or butterfly might perish and at the other end it might thrive.  It is chance.

If anything determines complexity and change in physical features, it is genetic variation. 

[Sriram]

Stumbling around with simplistic analogies again. A natural process, such as epigenetics, or photosynthesis, does not require some purposeful intelligence behind it to make it work.  That is what the 'natural' in the phrase 'natural process' implies.

You are not getting the point.  Explaining the mechanism by which something happens is not the complete picture. That is 'how' something happens. That does not in any way exclude an Intelligence of whatever kind.   The 'why' is still there.

[Gordon]

You are not getting the point.  Explaining the mechanism by which something happens is not the complete picture. That is 'how' something happens. That does not in any way exclude an Intelligence of whatever kind.   The 'why' is still there.

Have you considered, Sriram, that 'why' might well be an invalid question in these circumstances, since it presumes that an answer to it is available?

[Sriram]

That is back to front thinking.  There is no known mechanism in nature to procure mutations to order.  That is not how it works,  Mutations happen largely because of occasional copying errors in germ line cells; they don't happen because plants and animals are somehow intelligently trying to make a spread of copying errors so that hopefully some will benefit their descendants downstream.  Complexity arises quite naturally within the bounds of possibility.

That is just an assertion. You merely claim that mutations occur due to errors and random factors. You don't know that for a fact.  Because you assume that there cannot be any kind of natural intelligence at work...it has to be random.

If I think that Nature is Intelligent.....then the same mutations and 'copying differences'  can be attributed to that Intelligence because of which complexity arises. It is no different from human created products evolving and becoming more complex.