Consciousness & evolution

[Sriram]

How can a virus particle have objectives ?  Outside of a human cell, a particle of Sars-Cov2 is not even alive.  Do inanimate stretches of DNA go looking for a host with the objective of replicating themselves imperfectly ?

Clearly, 'survival' is its objective. There is no doubt about that. Why, I don't know.  Why life itself has evolved I don't know. If you have any idea...let me know....except random, of course. 

A virus does not know its objectives any more than a bird  or an ant....or even we humans for that matter.  Do we know why we exist...or why we want to survive and reproduce.......no.

I can't separate a virus from the totality. I can sense an objective for humans and I do believe that consciousness survives death (NDE). I do believe that there is order and a pattern in life. There is an intent and purpose. A virus cannot be outside the system. It also serves some purpose in the totality.

[Stranger]

Obviously survival is its objective....and it finds ways of surviving and increasing its numbers. Why should it be random...?

You're just desperately trying to see something that isn't there and isn't needed.

It doesn't need an objective. Viruses mutate all the time. Sometimes a mutation gives it a survival advantage, so those with the mutation survive better and become dominant. It really is that simple. It doesn't mutate because of some survival objective, it's just not perfect at making copies of itself - and that's all that is required.

Plenty of mutations will have happened that either don't give it an advantage or make it less able to survive. I wonder if you could guess why we never get to hear about those?

[Stranger]

Clearly, 'survival' is its objective. There is no doubt about that.

Unmitigated drivel.

Why, I don't know.  Why life itself has evolved I don't know. If you have any idea...let me know....except random, of course. 

Evolution. That theory you refuse to even try to understand in case it punctures your comfort zone of blind superstition.

Do we know why we exist...or why we want to survive and reproduce.......no.

There is no 'why we exist' as far as I can see but we know perfectly well why we want to survive and reproduce.

I can't separate a virus from the totality. I can sense an objective for humans and I do believe that consciousness survives death (NDE). I do believe that there is order and a pattern in life. There is an intent and purpose. A virus cannot be outside the system. It also serves some purpose in the totality.

Which is nothing more but a statement of your own blind faith.

[Gordon]

I've been away for a couple of days so am catching up on this.

Wouldn't it be truer to say that many species have the capacity to learn from experience. The essential difference between homo sapiens and other species is that its members have the ability to pass onto other members the information concerned with the experience and its consequences so that they, when faced with the experience, can deal with it appropriately?

True: but, in my defense, I was deliberately posting a brief response to Alan's post (his #220) which was specifically about Enki's 'stone steps' example.

[ProfessorDavey]

It doesn't need an objective. Viruses mutate all the time. Sometimes a mutation gives it a survival advantage, so those with the mutation survive better and become dominant. It really is that simple. It doesn't mutate because of some survival objective, it's just not perfect at making copies of itself - and that's all that is required.

Absolutely - there are (I think literally) countless numbers of mutations that have occurred in the SARS-coV-2 virus over the past 18 months or so.

I was just looking at a paper published in summer last year, so using data from only about the first 6 months of the pandemic. They detected over 300,000 mutations in the relatively small samples they looked at. So fast forward to now and there will be many millions of mutations that have happened. And the reason I say countless is because you will only be able to analyse samples where the mutation doesn't render the virus nonviable or transmissible. So there will be a bias in the analysis to mutations that aren't catastrophic in terms of virus viability - those ones we simply won't be aware of.

So of those millions of random mutations (most being single nucleotide) you can count on the fingers of one hand the ones that appear to render the virus more transmissible and are therefore variants of concern.

If survival was an objective, as Sriram claims, then why would the hit rate of perhaps one in a million, be so low. The reason is that mutations are simply random events - the majority have no effect in survival terms (or are detrimental). Very, very occasionally a mutation arises randomly that is beneficial in terms of virus replication/transmissibility. And guess what - we see that strain rapidly dominate as it replicates more rapidly.

A perfect example of classical Darwinian evolution by natural selection going on before our very eyes in a little over a year.

[Alan Burns]

A perfect example of classical Darwinian evolution by natural selection going on before our very eyes in a little over a year.

But how can this observation of a crude process of fine tuning lead to the presumption that such a process can be used to generate new species?

[ProfessorDavey]

But how can this observation of a crude process of fine tuning lead to the presumption that such a process can be used to generate new species?

It leads to new strains - there is a relatively fine line between a new strain and a new species. And don't forget what we are watching has taken place over just 18 months - typically we might consider evolutionary changes occurring over millions of years. If we can observe such clear and dramatic Darwinian evolution over 18 months think about what can occur over a million years.

[Stranger]

But how can this observation of a crude process of fine tuning lead to the presumption that such a process can be used to generate new species?

It's not a presumption, it's a scientific theory, one that is backed up by copious evidence, not just one observation. Jeez, what planet are you on?

[Sriram]

You're just desperately trying to see something that isn't there and isn't needed.

It doesn't need an objective. Viruses mutate all the time. Sometimes a mutation gives it a survival advantage, so those with the mutation survive better and become dominant. It really is that simple. It doesn't mutate because of some survival objective, it's just not perfect at making copies of itself - and that's all that is required.

Plenty of mutations will have happened that either don't give it an advantage or make it less able to survive. I wonder if you could guess why we never get to hear about those?

Why do viruses make copies of themselves?  Why don't they just live for some time and die?  That reason is the basis of the survival and reproductive instinct......which are the objectives of life and evolution.

I don't claim absolute knowledge. You do....by asserting that life and evolution are just random, chance events.

[ProfessorDavey]

Why do viruses make copies of themselves?

To use the word why shows your inherent bias as it implies intent.

The relevant question is how do viruses make copies of themselves? And the answer is purely one of fundamental chemistry and physics. And actually viruses don't make copies of themselves, they are unable to do that. However they do include genetic material as a component of the virus which if it gets into the cell of a host that includes the mechanisms for both replicating that genetic material and producing proteins from that material will cause the virus to be replicated.

[Bramble]

....Why life itself has evolved I don't know....

A virus does not know its objectives any more than a bird  or an ant....or even we humans for that matter.... 

I can sense an objective for humans and I do believe that consciousness survives death (NDE). I do believe that there is order and a pattern in life. There is an intent and purpose....

Just wondering why you think any of this matters. How is the belief that life is driven by an unknown purpose practically any different from the belief that there is no purpose involved? How could this alleged purpose have any significance for us if we know nothing about it?

[ProfessorDavey]

I don't claim absolute knowledge.

Thanks goodness for that - although you might want to actually spend a bit of time understanding the fundamental knowledge that is well accepted and based on evidence. Your problem Sriram is that you see everything in terms of opinion - I have one opinion, you have another opinion, each has equal validity. But that isn't how it works - in terms of the things we are talking about an opinion is value-less unless it is backed up by evidence. So one person's opinion does not have equal validity to another person's if one of those opinions is supported by evidence while the other is unevidenced.

You do....by asserting that life and evolution are just random, chance events.

I certainly don't claim to have absolute knowledge - no scientist ever would as they spend their waking hours trying to push forward the frontiers of knowledge, to know a little bit more than we did yesterday. But we don't claim we know everything as were we to think that we'd simply have to close down our labs as it would be 'job done'.

But the claims I an others are making about evolution are based on huge amounts of evidence, including the observations before our very eyes with the virus. Your view are, frankly, completely devoid of evidence and convey clear anthropocentric biases, which borderline on arrogance in consider that everything must be seen through the prism of human-centricity.

[Alan Burns]

It's not a presumption, it's a scientific theory, one that is backed up by copious evidence, not just one observation. Jeez, what planet are you on?

The "observable" evidence of the process of natural selection can only be seen as a fine tuning process on existing life forms.  To extrapolate this to presume it can generate new life forms without intelligent guidance is a presumption based upon the belief that intelligent guidance does not exist.

[ProfessorDavey]

The "observable" evidence of the process of natural selection can only be seen as a fine tuning process on existing life forms.  To extrapolate this to presume it can generate new life forms without intelligent guidance is a presumption based upon the belief that intelligent guidance does not exist.

Non-sense - that evidence in its earliest forms existed over 150 years ago from meticulous observation of species differences and has been built on by vast amounts of data that looks at speciation, genomics etc etc.

The evidence for the appearance of new species through genetic mutation and natural selection is overwhelming. The evidence for for the appearance of new species through intelligent guidance is non existent*.

*With the exception of humans using the basic theories of evolution by natural selection to create new strains of organisms.

[Stranger]

Why do viruses make copies of themselves?

Chemistry. The whole of life started because something started to reproduce for purely chemical reasons.

That reason is the basis of the survival and reproductive instinct......which are the objectives of life and evolution.

Drivel. Once you get replicators, inheritance, variation, and limited resources, that's all you need. Any instincts follow directly from the consequences of those things via natural selection.

I don't claim absolute knowledge. You do....by asserting that life and evolution are just random, chance events.

I'm doing no such thing. What we have, though, is a very well tested theory, backed up be copious amounts of evidence, that offers a simple explanation for how the complexity and variety of life evolved from simple replicators. The process can be directly observed and simulated on a computer.

You are desperately trying to inject some intelligence into it, without offering a shred of evidence or the slightest hint of rational argument. What's more, you repeatedly show that you haven't understood the basics of the theory that you're trying to deny (or even much awareness that you are actually denying it).

[torridon]

But how can this observation of a crude process of fine tuning lead to the presumption that such a process can be used to generate new species?

How could it possibly not lead to new species ?

There's nothing magical about 'species'.  It's just a fact that lots of little changes will accumulate into a larger net change over time.

[torridon]

Why do viruses make copies of themselves?  Why don't they just live for some time and die?  That reason is the basis of the survival and reproductive instinct......which are the objectives of life and evolution.

I don't claim absolute knowledge. You do....by asserting that life and evolution are just random, chance events.

Anything that replicates itself, such as DNA, is going to be around in numbers.  Simpler things, such as snowflakes, do not replicate, so they last for a while before succumbing to the entropy gradient and then they are gone.  This is just observation, some things are complex, others less so.  If life and evolution were some sort of universal objective, then why do snowflakes not replicate also ?

I think you are still looking down the wrong end of telescope, imagining some sort of a-priori universal intent, and then trying to map the natural world to that belief and that gives problems with the observation that mutations are random, which is not remotely consistent with a notion of intent.  Better, is it not, to follow the example of Aristotle, go out, observe the world, and try to make sense of it from first principles, freeing yourself from cultural and cognitive biases.

[torridon]

The "observable" evidence of the process of natural selection can only be seen as a fine tuning process on existing life forms.  To extrapolate this to presume it can generate new life forms without intelligent guidance is a presumption based upon the belief that intelligent guidance does not exist.

It's what the evidence clearly reveals.

Cretaceous, big dinos everywhere, scarcely any mammals at all.  Big rock falls out of the sky, no more dinos, but hey, 60 million years later we've got plenty of mammals that weren't there before - hippos, giraffes, dogs, zebras, need I go on ? What do you imagine happened ? God used his special powers to instantiate a breeding population of zebras on the African savannahs some time during the late Pleistocene when no one was looking, all fully kitted out with a horse-like anatomy and a genome backfilled to make it look exactly as if zebras had evolved quite naturally within an equine lineage ?

[Alan Burns]

The evidence for the appearance of new species through genetic mutation and natural selection is overwhelming. The evidence for for the appearance of new species through intelligent guidance is non existent*.

The overwhelming evidence for the existence of intelligent guidance towards a perceived goal lies in the unfathomable complexity of the human mind and its ability to consciously contemplate such possibilities, coupled with the extreme unlikelihood that such functionality could come into existence through the unintended consequences of purposeless unguided forces of nature alone.

The fact that we are unable to detect a perceivable source for such intelligent guidance is not evidence that such guidance cannot exist.

[Stranger]

The overwhelming evidence for the existence of intelligent guidance towards a perceived goal lies in the unfathomable complexity of the human mind and its ability to consciously contemplate such possibilities, coupled with the extreme unlikelihood that such functionality could come into existence through the unintended consequences of purposeless unguided forces of nature alone.

Your personal incredulity does not constitute evidence.   

The fact that we are unable to detect a perceivable source for such intelligent guidance is not evidence that such guidance cannot exist.

However, we have a perfectly good, evidence-based, well tested theory that requires no such guidance.

[ProfessorDavey]

The overwhelming evidence for the existence of intelligent guidance towards a perceived goal lies in the unfathomable complexity of the human mind and its ability to consciously contemplate such possibilities, coupled with the extreme unlikelihood that such functionality could come into existence through the unintended consequences of purposeless unguided forces of nature alone.

Anthropocentric argument from incredulity.

Come back when you have a decent argument involving some evidence rather than a naive and unevidenced argument that everything revolves around people and if people don't understand it it must be because their man-made god did-it.

[Alan Burns]

Your personal incredulity does not constitute evidence.   

To merely label the unlikelihood of the human mind coming into existence from unintended, random events as "personal incredulity" offers no meaningful argument.

However, we have a perfectly good, evidence-based, well tested theory that requires no such guidance.

For such a theory to be feasible, you need to show how the specific complexity needed for the working of a conscious human mind could have been generated by the random forces of nature alone.  Just quoting the observed mutations in the corona virus cannot be used to extrapolate the process of natural selection to achieve any conceivable degree of physical complexity.  And there is still the problem of being able to find a feasible explanation for how our conscious awareness can be generated by physical reactions alone - for without this there could be no possibility of any degree of natural selection being able to produce conscious awareness.  And there is still the question of how our freedom to guide our own thought processes comes into existence - a freedom which you constantly deny exists, but without which you would be unable to contemplate such denial.

[Enki]

The overwhelming evidence for the existence of intelligent guidance towards a perceived goal lies in the unfathomable complexity of the human mind and its ability to consciously contemplate such possibilities, coupled with the extreme unlikelihood that such functionality could come into existence through the unintended consequences of purposeless unguided forces of nature alone.

The fact that we are unable to detect a perceivable source for such intelligent guidance is not evidence that such guidance cannot exist.

And, of course, by simply following your own incredulous argument:

 The overwhelming evidence for the existence of intelligent guidance towards a perceived goal lies in the unfathomable complexity of God's mind and its ability to consciously contemplate such possibilities, coupled with the extreme unlikelihood that such functionality could come into existence through the unintended consequences of purposeless unguided forces of nature alone.

The fact that we are unable to detect a perceivable source for such intelligent guidance is not evidence that such guidance cannot exist.

An ultra God perhaps?

Mind you, a least we have evidence that humans exist, no evidence that any god exists, no evidence of this ultra God and its intelligent guidance which must be needed to fulfill your incredulous requirements, and emphatically no evidence of this ultra ultra God which would then be needed to fulfill your incredulous arguments, and .....

[torridon]

To merely label the unlikelihood of the human mind coming into existence from unintended, random events as "personal incredulity" offers no meaningful argument.For such a theory to be feasible, you need to show how the specific complexity needed for the working of a conscious human mind could have been generated by the random forces of nature alone.  Just quoting the observed mutations in the corona virus cannot be used to extrapolate the process of natural selection to achieve any conceivable degree of physical complexity.  And there is still the problem of being able to find a feasible explanation for how our conscious awareness can be generated by physical reactions alone - for without this there could be no possibility of any degree of natural selection being able to produce conscious awareness.  And there is still the question of how our freedom to guide our own thought processes comes into existence - a freedom which you constantly deny exists, but without which you would be unable to contemplate such denial.

That's just your usual mishmash of incredulity and misconceptualisation.  I can't figure this out, its all too complex, therefore, magic. 

[Stranger]

To merely label the unlikelihood of the human mind coming into existence from unintended, random events as "personal incredulity" offers no meaningful argument.

That's rich coming from a true master of baseless assertion. Anything that evolves is going to be unlikely, it's like shuffling a pack of cards and getting a sequence that has a probability of one in 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000. Your error is assuming that humans were some sort of goal.

For such a theory to be feasible, you need to show how the specific complexity needed for the working of a conscious human mind could have been generated by the random forces of nature alone.

This has been done. It's called the theory of evolution - you might have heard of it. It's been studied now for 150+ years and is backed up by copious evidence and tests.

And there is still the problem of being able to find a feasible explanation for how our conscious awareness can be generated by physical reactions alone - for without this there could be no possibility of any degree of natural selection being able to produce conscious awareness.

All the evidence is that consciousness is produced by brains and that brains evolved. The hypocrisy of demanding a complete explanation, when your only suggested alternative is "it must be magic", is truly breathtaking.

And there is still the question of how our freedom to guide our own thought processes comes into existence - a freedom which you constantly deny exists, but without which you would be unable to contemplate such denial.

Drivel.   

To the extent that "guiding our own thought processes" makes any sense at all, I do not deny it. You have yet to provide the first hint of any reason at all why the impossible, nonsensical, self-contradictory, unimaginable 'ability' to have done differently, in exactly the same circumstances, without randomness, would in any way at all help with anything humans do.