Author Topic: Felt Presence  (Read 4049 times)

ProfessorDavey

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #50 on: June 08, 2023, 09:25:39 AM »
Never seen chameleons?!
Whose ability to alter their colouring is driven entirely by genomic mechanisms that are subject to classical evolutionary approaches. Why is it so difficult for you to understand that the ability to adapt in a short term manner to changes in local environment may provide a evolutionary advantage so should this arise due to alternations in the genome it is likely to be selected for.

Actually you shoot yourself in the foot with you chameleon example. It is pretty clear that being able to change your colour to blend in to backgrounds confers a survival advantage. This being the case, and using your suggestion that species can simply adapt themselves, why wouldn't all sorts of other species have developed this trait in a kind of Lamarkian manner. But they haven't - very few species have this ability yet countless species would benefit from it. If your notion of phenotypic plasticity (other than derived via standard evolutionary processes) was correct then surely the vast majority of species would have developed this plasticity - but they haven't.

Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #51 on: June 08, 2023, 10:18:53 AM »



I know that blending with the environment offers survival advantage. That is obvious. The point is that it does not arise due to random variations. It arises through all around communication between the environment, cells and DNA (refer Denis Noble).

It also clearly indicates that survival is an objective that is inherent in every organism towards which it tries to adapt and develop.   

ProfessorDavey

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #52 on: June 09, 2023, 08:42:04 AM »
I know that blending with the environment offers survival advantage. That is obvious. The point is that it does not arise due to random variations. It arises through all around communication between the environment, cells and DNA (refer Denis Noble).
Complete non-sense - if this were possible why on earth wouldn't many other species have used their ability for 'communication between the environment, cells and DNA' to develop the useful ability to change colour to blend into their background. But of course the vast majority of species don't do that, despite the obvious benefit. It is almost as if the ability to change colour has arisen in a random manner in some species but not others, not on the basis of its usefulness, but in a random manner. Of course if it does develop it will persevere as individuals with this trait will be more likely to survive and breed. This, of course, assumes, that the trait is hereditable, and for it to be hereditable over many generations it needs to be encoded in the genetic material.

It also clearly indicates that survival is an objective that is inherent in every organism towards which it tries to adapt and develop.
No, survival is an outcome, not an objective. Mutations in DNA occur all the time - some are neutral, some detrimental, some beneficial. There is no 'objective' to those mutations, however those that are beneficial are likely to survive. But you seem to be completely in thrall to survivor bias. You focus on the mutations that allow chameleons to change colour and therefore to blend, but there have also been mutations that change the colour of species in a manner that makes them less likely to survive - and those will disappear rapidly as they confer survival disadvantage.

But the mutations that drive both colour changes are the same - there is no 'objective' to either. What is the case is that those that are beneficial persevere over generations and those that are detrimental rapidly disappear.

Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #53 on: June 09, 2023, 12:48:16 PM »


Survival is an outcome of what? Some accidental creation of life on earth and then its evolution into complex forms...through random mutations and chance environmental factors?!  Organisms just happen to fight for survival and reproduce with no inner drive to do so?

This is where the problem arises. 

jeremyp

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #54 on: June 09, 2023, 01:47:54 PM »


I know that blending with the environment offers survival advantage. That is obvious. The point is that it does not arise due to random variations. It arises through all around communication between the environment, cells and DNA (refer Denis Noble).

It also clearly indicates that survival is an objective that is inherent in every organism towards which it tries to adapt and develop.

Nope.

Insofar as there is an objective, it is to reproduce. If survival was an objective for male praying mantises, the species would become extinct because they would never go near the females.
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ProfessorDavey

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #55 on: June 09, 2023, 02:00:43 PM »
Survival is an outcome of what? Some accidental creation of life on earth and then its evolution into complex forms...through random mutations and chance environmental factors?!
Yup - that's pretty well it - if an organism has traits that make it better able to survive and to reproduce and those traits can be inherited by the offspring that organism will, as per the above, err ... survive better. If requires no objective, no aim, no purpose - it just happens. For a perfect, but very simple, example see the shift in dominance of COVID strains over time - in some cases mutations made the virus better able to infect and replicate so those strains become dominant. 

Organisms just happen to fight for survival and reproduce with no inner drive to do so?

This is where the problem arises.
Err you do understand that a desire to survive and a drive to reproduce are themselves evolutionary traits - ones which will clearly confer an evolutionary advantage and if heritable will be retained within an evolutionary context.

These traits are the product of millions and millions of years of evolution as they are only seen in more complex species - are you somehow arguing that a simple virus or bacteria 'fights for survival' or has a 'drive to reproduce' - that is clearly nonsense - they have no such fight or drive - they simply possess the mechanisms to replicate and if they are more successful at survival/replication due to heritable traits than other viruses/bacteria etc they will become dominant as per standard evolutionary theory.

Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #56 on: June 09, 2023, 02:53:42 PM »
Nope.

Insofar as there is an objective, it is to reproduce. If survival was an objective for male praying mantises, the species would become extinct because they would never go near the females.


I accept that. Yes...reproduction is the objective. Survival is a necessary requirement for reproduction.

Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #57 on: June 09, 2023, 02:59:34 PM »
Yup - that's pretty well it - if an organism has traits that make it better able to survive and to reproduce and those traits can be inherited by the offspring that organism will, as per the above, err ... survive better. If requires no objective, no aim, no purpose - it just happens. For a perfect, but very simple, example see the shift in dominance of COVID strains over time - in some cases mutations made the virus better able to infect and replicate so those strains become dominant. 
Err you do understand that a desire to survive and a drive to reproduce are themselves evolutionary traits - ones which will clearly confer an evolutionary advantage and if heritable will be retained within an evolutionary context.

These traits are the product of millions and millions of years of evolution as they are only seen in more complex species - are you somehow arguing that a simple virus or bacteria 'fights for survival' or has a 'drive to reproduce' - that is clearly nonsense - they have no such fight or drive - they simply possess the mechanisms to replicate and if they are more successful at survival/replication due to heritable traits than other viruses/bacteria etc they will become dominant as per standard evolutionary theory.

Reproduction started with the replication of DNA/RNA.  Reproduction is only a complex form of replication.

Every living thing has reproduction and consequently, survival as its objective. It is an inner drive right from the most basic forms of life. 

ProfessorDavey

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #58 on: June 09, 2023, 03:45:56 PM »
Nope.

Insofar as there is an objective, it is to reproduce. If survival was an objective for male praying mantises, the species would become extinct because they would never go near the females.
True, although I don't think this is an objective per se, merely that if there is an advantage that allows reproduction (or replication) to be easier then those heritable traits (effectively genomic if this is to be multigenerational) will be maintained.

Now of course on of the genomic traits that would allow reproduction (or replication) to be easier is a desire to reproduce - but this would only be an 'objective' in a secondary manner, in effect as a consequence of classical evolutionary advantage. And of course a desire or drive to reproduce can only exist in the more complex and higher life forms which will only have evolved millions of years after life first appeared and first started evolving. So this cannot be a fundamental driver of evolution or we'd never have got the stage where is ... err ... evolved!

ProfessorDavey

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #59 on: June 12, 2023, 09:58:52 AM »
Reproduction started with the replication of DNA/RNA.  Reproduction is only a complex form of replication.

Every living thing has reproduction and consequently, survival as its objective. It is an inner drive right from the most basic forms of life.
But the replication of DNA/RNA is simply a chemical process - there is no 'inner drive' whatsoever, merely chemistry and energetics.

In far more complex organisms a drive to reproduce has evolved, but that is because it confers evolutionary advantage. So you have everything entirely the wrong way around Sriram.

And as JeremyP has pointed out survival is often not a goal, even for more complex organisms, as there are plenty of examples where individual members of the species will sacrifice themselves (i.e. not survive) in order to ensure that the gene pool (so to speak) is retained in future generations.

Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #60 on: June 12, 2023, 12:16:02 PM »


Everything is just a chemical process...even our intelligence , our mind-brain functioning, our love and our intent, our sex and reproduction. All our thoughts, emotions and activities are associated with some chemical process. That does not mean there are no objectives behind them.

DNA replication is an objective. Not that the DNA needs to be consciously aware of it. It is just a vehicle. Like a car moves without being aware of it ....but the driver behind it has an objective.

ProfessorDavey

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #61 on: June 12, 2023, 12:24:41 PM »
DNA replication is an objective.
No it isn't - it is merely a chemical process that occurs under certain conditions. There is no objective, no goal, no drive - it is just something that can happen. And if the conditions aren't correct that chemical process doesn't happen - does that mean that DNA now has an objective not to replicate?!?

Not that the DNA needs to be consciously aware of it. It is just a vehicle. Like a car moves without being aware of it ....but the driver behind it has an objective.
Terrible analogy - DNA has no 'driver' it is just a fairly complex molecule that can be subject to all sorts of chemical processes depending on the conditions.

Outrider

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #62 on: June 12, 2023, 01:21:00 PM »
DNA replication is an objective. Not that the DNA needs to be consciously aware of it.

Whose objective is it? How have you determined that?

O.
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Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #63 on: June 12, 2023, 01:48:26 PM »
Whose objective is it? How have you determined that?

O.


I have no idea whose objective....but that the organism has an objective to survive and reproduce is definite. It is only if we accept that reality can we go further as to how and why and by whom.

Outrider

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #64 on: June 12, 2023, 02:11:38 PM »
I have no idea whose objective....but that the organism has an objective to survive and reproduce is definite.

Organisms, though, have a drive to survive for themselves, not for their DNA - you could argue that the DNA manifests that drive, but I don't see a mechanism whereby that drive to survive informs the content of the DNA. It provides a survival advantage which increases the likelihood of replication, which is a 'natural selection' for those genetic expressions which lead to an instinct for survival...

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It is only if we accept that reality can we go further as to how and why and by whom.

Nobody's denying that instinct of the organism, we're just questioning on what basis you've determined that this is has been instilled in that organism as a deliberate choice, and by whom?

O.
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Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #65 on: June 12, 2023, 02:19:13 PM »



I never said that organisms survive and reproduce through deliberate choice. It is an objective that the organism is driven towards from within.

I believe that it could be because of the collective consciousness that regulates the ecosystem.  Consciousness could be fundamental.

Outrider

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #66 on: June 12, 2023, 02:44:43 PM »
I never said that organisms survive and reproduce through deliberate choice. It is an objective that the organism is driven towards from within.

Perhaps I misunderstood, fair enough.

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I believe that it could be because of the collective consciousness that regulates the ecosystem.  Consciousness could be fundamental.

I accept the internal logic of that as a possible explanation; do you have anything to support the idea, because the evidence arrayed in support of the conventional wisdom that the survival instinct is just one more expression of natural selection working on random variation is very robust.

What's your evidence for this explanation?
What's the methodology by which you've arrived at that conclusion from that evidence?

O.
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ProfessorDavey

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #67 on: June 12, 2023, 02:44:54 PM »
It is an objective that the organism is driven towards from within.
That's a bit like saying that a rock has the objective of rolling down a slope or that sea levels have the objective of rising and lowering as tides.

It is complete non-sense - there is no objectives - all that is happening is that entities are being subject to physical processes.

Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #68 on: June 12, 2023, 03:53:35 PM »
Perhaps I misunderstood, fair enough.

I accept the internal logic of that as a possible explanation; do you have anything to support the idea, because the evidence arrayed in support of the conventional wisdom that the survival instinct is just one more expression of natural selection working on random variation is very robust.

What's your evidence for this explanation?
What's the methodology by which you've arrived at that conclusion from that evidence?

O.


No methodology. It is a philosophical idea. I just believe that consciousness is fundamental and that all evolutionary mechanisms are driven from within organisms.

IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution. There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment. 

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #69 on: June 12, 2023, 04:23:09 PM »
Sriram,

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It is a philosophical idea.

No it isn’t. Or at least it isn’t unless you also think “any notion that happens to appeal to me” is a “philosophical idea” too.

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IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution.

Yet again: why not?

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There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.

Yet again: why does there have to be any such thing?
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torridon

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #70 on: June 12, 2023, 07:20:39 PM »

IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution. There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.

Given a constant supply of variation and a competitive environment, there is no way for NS to not result in evolution.  It is inevitable.

ProfessorDavey

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #71 on: June 12, 2023, 08:11:47 PM »
IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution.
Why should anyone take any notice of your opinion unless you back it up with evidence.

There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.
Why does there have to be - the evidence suggests there doesn't have to be such a mechanism at all. Again you are getting locked into your narrow anthropocentric tunnel vision Sriram.

jeremyp

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #72 on: June 12, 2023, 08:28:35 PM »

I have no idea whose objective....but that the organism has an objective to survive and reproduce is definite. It is only if we accept that reality can we go further as to how and why and by whom.

The objective of organisms to survive and reproduce is programmed into them by evolution. This is simply due to the fact that organisms that don't have an objective to reproduce often don't and their genes that encode that behaviour do not get passed on to a new generation.
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Outrider

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #73 on: June 12, 2023, 11:25:37 PM »
No methodology. It is a philosophical idea. I just believe that consciousness is fundamental and that all evolutionary mechanisms are driven from within organisms.

And you're at liberty to believe that, but can you appreciate that your - by your own admission - unsupported belief is not a valid basis for the rest of us to presume that science has reached some sort of hard limit in the exploration of these phenomena?

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IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution.

And I don't mean this pejoratively, but you have to accept that this is pretty much the definition of the argument from personal incredulity. You don't even have some sort of probabilistic estimation to back that up, just a feeling that it's too improbable.

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There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.

Or, perhaps, you are just as liable to be poor at intuiting probability, extremely large timescales and the possibility of parallel iterative events as the rest of humanity has been demonstrated to be.

O.
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Sriram

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Re: Felt Presence
« Reply #74 on: June 13, 2023, 06:44:26 AM »



It is not an unsupported belief. It is not just plucked from nowhere.

I have the instances of QM where observation (consciousness) influences wave-particle duality. I have Wheeler's participatory anthropic principle. I have instances of documented NDE's. Instances of documented reincarnation cases. I have Chalmer's new ideas of panpsychism. I have ideas of Jung's collective consciousness. I have Eagleman's theories of the unconscious mind being larger and more powerful than the conscious mind.  I also have centuries of world philosophies where consciousness (Self) is considered as the real power behind the apparent events in the world.