Dan Dennett (my favorite materialist whipping boy)... consider:Where does the 'Consciousness can do no work' claim come from?
As for the underlying mechanisms, we now have a general idea of how they might work because of another strange inversion of reasoning, due to Alan Turing, the creator of the computer, who saw how a mindless machine could do arithmetic perfectly without knowing what it was doing. This can be applied to all kinds of calculation and procedural control, in natural as well as in artificial systems, so that their competence does not depend on comprehension. Dennett’s claim is that when we put these two insights together, we see that
all the brilliance and comprehension in the world arises ultimately out of uncomprehending competences compounded over time into ever more competent—and hence comprehending—systems. This is indeed a strange inversion, overthrowing the pre-Darwinian mind-first vision of Creation with a mind-last vision of the eventual evolution of us, intelligent designers at long last.
And he adds:
Turing himself is one of the twigs on the Tree of Life, and his artifacts, concrete and abstract, are indirectly products of the blind Darwinian processes in the same way spider webs and beaver dams are….
- source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/09/is-consciousness-an-illusion-dennett-evolution/
Spot on! Just to elaborate slightly, Jonathan Wells pointed out that these iconic stories had been debunked years ago - by conventional science - and yet they appeared in biology textbooks as if they were fact! The response was that all JW had done was point out a few small factual errors in biology textbooks! However, years later, his second book on this subject points out that over about 15 years, nothing has changed - the latest biology textbooks still illustrate evolution with the same debunked examples!The empirical evidence simply doesn't support many "scientific" theories, but people cling on to what Jonathan Wells has termed "zombie science" (in reference to many icons of evolution such as Haeckel's embryos, peppered moths, and so on). I'd say that zombie science applies not only in biology, but also cosmology, medicine, psychology, anthropology, climatology...on and on. This is one way science is strangled, and makes it into a quasi-religious institution that marginalises every last spark of original thought, producing a monolithic and boring environment in which the greatest sin is to think outside the box.
interesting... but what about:Spot on! Just to elaborate slightly, Jonathan Wells pointed out that these iconic stories had been debunked years ago - by conventional science - and yet they appeared in biology textbooks as if they were fact! The response was that all JW had done was point out a few small factual errors in biology textbooks! However, years later, his second book on this subject points out that over about 15 years, nothing has changed - the latest biology textbooks still illustrate evolution with the same debunked examples!
But the thing is, there is nothing wrong with the peppered moths as an example of natural selection in action. In the late 1990s, biologist Michael E. N. Majerus re-examined Kettlewell’s work and confirmed all of his major findings. He’s not the only one. Since Kettlewell’s original experiments were published, they have been independently replicatedrepeatedly. Each time, color variation among moths is linked to differential fitness that affects the distribution of the color trait in the next generation—the very definition of natural selection at work. More recently, the genetic basis for the coloration variation has been uncovered, adding further validation.
Now, this is not to say that there wasn’t room for improvement in many of Kettlewell’s original experiments, but the subsequent studies to test his conclusions have addressed many of these issues.
from: https://ncse.com/blog/2014/08/what-s-problem-with-peppered-moths-0015841
Hmmm. I suspect he might say that "consciousness" is just a word we've assigned to a collection of biological/neurological processes. "Work" is done, but not by the word.Dan Dennett (my favorite materialist whipping boy)... consider:
hence, there is no ability to consciously make consciousness do anything... i.e. it can do no work.
He probably would, but would you really agree with that?Hmmm. I suspect he might say that "consciousness" is just a word we've assigned to a collection of biological/neurological processes. "Work" is done, but not by the word.
Here is Well's response from his book:interesting... but what about:
In 1998, British biologist Michael Majerus published a book about industrial melanism that included a table showing the resting positions of peppered moths found in the wild between 1964 and 1996. Of the many thousands of peppered moths that biologists had studied during that 32-year period, only 47 had been found resting in the wild, and of these only 6 had been found on exposed tree trunks. Majerus concluded that “peppered moths do not naturally rest in exposed positions on tree trunks.”71 In a review of Majerus’s book for Nature, Jerry Coyne wrote, “From time to time, evolutionists re-examine a classic experimental study and find, to their horror, that it is flawed or downright wrong.” For Coyne, the mere fact that peppered moths don’t normally rest on tree trunks invalidated Kettlewell’s experiments. Coyne compared his reaction to “the dismay attending my discovery, at the age of six, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents on Christmas Eve.” He also acknowledged that he was “embarrassed” at having taught the classic textbook story for many years.72 As empirical science, the classic story seemed as dead as the moths in the staged photographs. In 2002, The New York Times featured some of the photographs in an article titled, “On scientific fakery and the systems to catch it.”73 Many biology textbooks dropped the classic story. But advocates of evolution defended it anyway. Coyne even reversed himself in 2002, writing in a review of another book that “despite arguments about the precise mechanism of selection, industrial melanism still represents a splendid example of evolution in action.”74 Meanwhile, Majerus set out to find better evidence for the story. Majerus’s New Evidence FROM 2001 TO 2006, Majerus studied peppered moths in a large, un-polluted rural garden about sixty miles north of London. He began by climbing a few trees, where he counted 135 moths resting on trunks, branches, and twigs. Of these most were on branches, but forty-eight (thirty-six percent) were on the trunks. Majerus conceded that his “results may be somewhat biased towards lower parts of the tree, due to sampling technique.”75 Brits are known for understating things, but this deserves a place in the Understatement Hall of Fame. Since Majerus’s goal was to find out where peppered moths normally rest, and biologists had already concluded that they probably rest in the higher branches of trees, Majerus should have found a way to survey those higher branches, not just the ones he could reach by climbing up a tree from the ground. He could have built some scaffolds, or he could have rented a hydraulic aerial work platform. As it is, his technique was a bit like counting fish in the ocean from the deck of a boat and concluding that most of them live within ten feet of the surface. Over the course of six years, Majerus artificially released almost five thousand light and dark moths onto the trees. He would release a few moths each night into netting sleeves he had placed around selected branches, then he would remove the sleeves before dawn and note the branches on which moths had come to rest. Four hours later he would count those still on the branches. In four of the six years, more dark moths disappeared than light ones.76 He concluded that those he couldn’t find had been eaten by birds. Majerus did observe some moths actually being eaten by birds, but he assumed all moths that disappeared had been eaten by birds and that none that disappeared had simply moved to a different location. Despite his obvious sampling bias—and his unsupported assumption that all disappearing moths had to have been eaten by birds—Majerus confidently interpreted his findings as evidence for the classic Darwinian story of evolution. Thus, when Majerus presented his results in 2007, he urged the teaching of the peppered moth story again because “It provides after all: The Proof of Evolution” (boldface by Majerus). It didn’t, of course, but Majerus clearly wanted it to. At one point in his presentation he revealed why, declaring out of the blue that humans invented God and that there will be “no second coming; no helping hand from on high.”77 Apparently, what really mattered to Majerus was the grand materialistic story. This is not empirical science, but zombie science.
interesting... but what about:
But the thing is, there is nothing wrong with the peppered moths as an example of natural selection in action. In the late 1990s, biologist Michael E. N. Majerus re-examined Kettlewell’s work and confirmed all of his major findings. He’s not the only one. Since Kettlewell’s original experiments were published, they have been independently replicatedrepeatedly. Each time, color variation among moths is linked to differential fitness that affects the distribution of the color trait in the next generation—the very definition of natural selection at work. More recently, the genetic basis for the coloration variation has been uncovered, adding further validation.
Now, this is not to say that there wasn’t room for improvement in many of Kettlewell’s original experiments, but the subsequent studies to test his conclusions have addressed many of these issues.
from: https://ncse.com/blog/2014/08/what-s-problem-with-peppered-moths-0015841
He probably would, but would you really agree with that?
I mean, if you were about to have an operation, wouldn't you get a bit serious about consciousness - would they extinguish it properly for the duration - and would they restore it properly afterwards.
Do you take waffle like that seriously?
David
Ah, but a mindless machine can't do anything if nobody knows what it is doing. Actually, mindless machines can only do anything at all if someone, namely the programmer, knows what to encode for it. No mindless machine anywhere does anything at all without a coder of some description who designs into it his own conscious intention.Dan Dennett (my favorite materialist whipping boy)... consider:
As for the underlying mechanisms, we now have a general idea of how they might work because of another strange inversion of reasoning, due to Alan Turing, the creator of the computer, who saw how a mindless machine could do arithmetic perfectly without knowing what it was doing.
Well you saidI've found using personal incredulity to dismiss a model of conscious awareness isn't really very helpful. Given what most proponents have to put up with, I'm surprised so many resort to it themselves.
Hmmm. I suspect he might say that "consciousness" is just a word we've assigned to a collection of biological/neurological processes. "Work" is done, but not by the word.
I don't think Alex was quoting Dennett with approval :)Ah, but a mindless machine can't do anything if nobody knows what it is doing
I do not want to sound know-it-all and offer the following as simple science. I am aware that it is so simple that it is hard to understand. Dennett's arguments are semantic and can be easily recast in the methodology of separating the environments of the physical and the informational.Dan Dennett (my favorite materialist whipping boy)... consider:
hence, there is no ability to consciously make consciousness do anything... i.e. it can do no work.
Yeah, don't worry, I know.I don't think Alex was quoting Dennett with approval :)David
These new objects of information are real in infospace
What makes Infospace real?