RedWanderer

Greetings, amiga! Sorry to disappoint, but no, I am not Herr Christopher from OL. I've only anonymously read some posts on that site since the owner, MSK, appears to be an alcoholic and a substance-abuser. Why should I waste my time posting there? However, your quote from this Christopher guy is very apt, and I agree with it. In this regard, I recommend an excellent 3-part article in the old "Objectivist" magazine by Robert Efron, M.D., a neurologist (and brother to the journalist Edith Efron, an early Rand acolyte). It's titled "Biology without Consciousness: Its Consequences", and does a very good job of describing and critiquing various reductionist theories of mind, such as the traditional "psycho-neural identity theories", which claim that every thought is identical to some surmised physical change in brain tissue. >>>how much do you need to reduce "thought" for it to become "meaningful"? But you see, that's just it: thought becomes less meaningful the more you try to reduce it to a material substrate (e.g., electrical discharges, hormonal changes, etc.) >>>I bet that even if that question could be answered, it still wouldn't satisfy your search for "meaning." That's right! In other words, even if some researcher found a very exact correlation between a thought, such as "I like HoneyCrisp apples!" and an electrical discharge of X-volts always at one specific spot in the brain, it still doesn't show that the the interior thought "I like HoneyCrisp apples" is identical with that discharge. It's simply a correlation, and a correlation always implies at least two things, and not an identity. I don't think meaning can be reduced to material entities (even if there are correlations between them), because then the interior experience of "meaning" disappears, or is defined away. I think we have to think about this analogically: "meaning" is to "mind" as "particles" are to "matter." "Meaning" is itself a fundamental particle (for lack of a better word) of thought within a non-material realm called Mind, which is separate from, but complementary to, matter. Rand used to say that consciousness is an irreducible primary. I agree. But I take it literally: it's irreducible metaphysically. It wasn't created by matter, or particles, in complex arrangements, and therefore, can never be reduced back to those particles by way of explanation. Karl Popper was very critical of linguists for a similar reason. In most technical linguistics, the fundamental "unit of sound-meaning" is called the "morpheme." In the view of linguistics, these morphemes appeared first among human beings, and then got combined and recombined to form words, and then sentences — complete thoughts in the form of an assertion. Popper claimed (rightly, I believe) that this was backward. The morphemes only have meaning that was imputed to them from previously existing complete sentences, or thoughts. The thought-meaning came first; the precipitating-out of smaller units, such as morphemes, came later — later, both in actual social and linguistic history of mankind, and logically, in terms of analysis. I believe the great question in philosophy today is the following: Science tells us, with quite convincing arguments and evidence, that the only things that actually have fully objective existence, and do not depend on any sort of interaction with consciousness (both perception and intellect) are "particles", i.e., what Peikoff called in a lecture "Puffs of Meta-Energy" but which scientists today might call "Higgs Bosons" or "Strings" or some other odd name. These things can only be described very abstractly by means of mathematics. So the question is this: Since these Puffs of Meta-Energy are themselves quality-less — they aren't white, they aren't red, they aren't heavy, they aren't light, they aren't smooth, they aren't rough, they aren't hot, they aren't cold, etc., by what means do they interact with the same sort of Puffs of Meta-Energy that ultimately compose human eyes, retinas, optic nerves, and visual cortices, to form the entire quality-filled world that we perceive with our eyes? For example, fluffy clouds, furry doggies, rough granite, smooth marble, cold ice-cream, hot coffee, etc.? How do quality-less Puffs of Meta-Energy become quality-endowed experiences that we recognize as the so-called "world we perceive"? No one knows. Obviously, the Puffs of Meta-Energy entering our eyes from a red beach ball do not impart the quality of "redness" to the Puffs of Meta-Energy composing our retinas; and those Puffs of Meta-Energy do not add "redness" to the Puffs of Meta-Energy composing our optic nerves or our visual cortices. It's simply a very complex chain of cause-and-effect involving nothing but different aggregates of Puffs of Meta-Energy. So clearly, the qualities of "redness" and "roundness" and "smoothness" don't appear until those Puffs enter the non-material area called "Mind", which is the ONLY part of the universe that has qualities, and in which it makes sense to speak of qualitative things like "redness, whiteness, lightness, darkness, hotness, coldness," etc. So the main question is: how does the abstract, quality-less physical world of ultimate Puffs of Meta-Energy become the concrete, quality-filled world we all experience as soon as we open our eyes in the morning?

>>>I don't care what sort of assertion it is; a bodyless mind would be a ghost So because you ideologically disapprove of the conclusion, (X cannot, according to my doctrine, exist) you decide, in advance of any studying of the issue, to dismiss the premises (Major Premise and Minor Premise, must not be conceded to exist). That's why Objectivism — at least as actually practiced among today's self-styled Objectivists — is more of a religious cult rather than a system of philosophical investigation of the universe: it already specifies in advance of any investigation what the "right" answers have to be. That's scarcely a way to expand one's knowledge, which often relies on paradigm-shifting insights. And, in fact, most Objectivists I've been in contact with since my own Objectivist days aren't interested in expanding their knowledge; they're interested in reifying and re-confirming their belief system. That's typical of cults and religions. I believe this was first stated openly in Rand's lifetime during Branden's hegemony by Dr. Albert Ellis. As far as bodyless minds are concerned, many have claimed to have experienced such phenomena personally, including people who were previously complete philosophical materialists, such as Dr. Eben Alexander, neurosurgeon, who just published "Proof of Heaven." Another who claimed there was theoretical justification for bodyless minds was Dr. John Eccles, a Nobel laureate in medicine who himself had made major discoveries in neuroscience. Read "The Mind and Its Brain", a series of dialogues between John Eccles and Karl Popper on the mind/body issue. And finally: I have no opinion one way or the other on "ghosts." But I certainly see no logical absurdity in the idea that they could exist, irrespective of whether or not I find the statements convincing by people who claim to have experience with them. It's highly weird of you to suggest that that those who only believe in matter and energy have lives that are full of nothing but good dreams and benevolence, while those who entertain the notion that the material and the non-material co-exist as complementarities , and as irreducible primaries in the universe, have lives that are "nightmares." Truly, you're one weird dude. I do see the great convenience, of course, in habitually turning to one book (Atlas Shrugged) for knowledge and guidance in all issues, rather than turning to many, many, many books, in many subjects by many authors, for doing so. It saves a lot of time and energy.

>>>As for deliberately altering it. . . If he wants to then he should change the name and sell the movie as his own idea. That might have had better results, both artistically and commercially. >>>You don't edit the thoughts of someone who's too dead to say otherwise; if not then, really, Thomas Jefferson was a Communist and Moses was an atheist. Nonsense. It's done all the time. Sometimes the result succeeds, sometimes it fails. The writer of the original work (e.g., a novelist) usually hates it, of course, but so what? Movie-making is essentially "the director's art", not the writer's (even though a movie, of course, absolutely requires a great "blueprint" or screenplay). That's why often writers SELL the film rights to their books: they can make lots of money up front; if the movie succeeds, it often leads to even more sales of the book; if the movie fails, it often has no affect on the sales of the book at all (for example, the failure of the film version of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities"). What prevented Parts I and II from being successful in every way were the fat egos of the production team members, combined with their shocking lack of filmmaking experience and ability. And when the free market comprising the ticket-buying public rejected the film, the producers (including the Objectivist Compliance Officer, David Kelley) stupidly asserted that it wasn't their fault the movie died; it was the public's fault, compounded by the critic's fault! Alas. Movie critics have very little influence on the ticket-buying public, just as literary critics have very little influence on the book-buying public. If critics actually had such influence, then the novel "Atlas Shrugged" would have been the same kind of commercial failure as the film. What caused the success of the novel was: word-of-mouth. What killed the film was: word-of-mouth.

LOL! I especially love the fact that Aglialoro wrote in his own blog interview that he would not bother making Part 3 if Obama was elected to a 2nd term because it would prove that the country was too far gone down the road of collectivism and that no change was possible. Then he makes a recent YouTube video called "Atlas Shrugged Part 3 Production Diary" in which he claims he's going ahead with production of Part 3 because "this time, the movie's for us" — "us" meaning, Objectivists. Sounds to me as if he's resigned himself to the idea that Part 3 — with the same production team as Part 2 — will fail with the general public and with the professional critics, just as Parts I and 2 did. Someone claimed on YouTube that Aglialoro changed his mind about producing Part 3 because he's still optimistic that the country can be changed away from collectivism. But if that were his reason, why would he also claim that the movie is for "us"? If the movie is for "us", i.e., the few hardcore Objectivists who will watch and like the movie under any circumstances, then obviously he expects very few people from the public to watch the movie. But if he expects very few people from the broader public to watch the movie, how will it be able to change the country? How can an unwatched movie change the country? And, just out of curiosity, I still want to know why the first director chosen for Part I, Stephen Polk, was summarily fired two weeks before shooting? At the time, Polk claimed that he would litigate, because he accused Aglialoro, Kelley, et al., of using ideas he had come up with for the shooting of the film without paying him or giving him credit. Perhaps the critical failure and box-office failure of Part I made Polk think twice about doing anything public (like suing) that would associate his name with a failed project.

>>>I was trying to be civil with you. By posting that I'm a pig and that you hope I rot in hell? You must be chairman of the Welcoming Committee in Galt's Gulch. >>>You still haven't explained what pattern in nature could exist without being the product of a mind. Lots of them. Blades of grass form patterns that are not intentional from a mind; smoke swirls from a lit cigar form patterns that are not intentional from a designing mind; clouds form patterns that are not intentional from a designing mind; sand on a beach forms patterns that are not intentional from a designing mind; boiling oil can form convection patterns in the geometrical shape of a hexagon that are not intentional from a designing mind; sugar crystals in the form of "rock candy" forms a pattern that is not the intentional result of mental purposefulness; water crystals in the form of ice form patterns that are not the intentional result of mental purposefulness; all crystals, in fact, are regular repeating patterns of something called the "unit cell", repeating over and over, and completely predictable from the nature of the atoms of the given substance and how they interact with the atoms of their environment; erosion from wind and weather forms patterns in mountains that are not the intentional result of mental purposefulness; many more. Not a single one of these examples has anything in common with the statement: "Let '—' mean the English letter 'T'." That's not a pattern; that's a code. The assignment of meaning between two arbitrarily chosen symbols in two different sets of symbols is the essence of a code, and it has nothing to do with patterns. Since you've been so civil, I may as well ask: anything else I can help you with?

>>>You form the concept "mental entity" only after you have formed the following concepts: the concept "man," the concept "consciousness," then you identify certain mental states or events in your own mind, such as thoughts, let's say, which you call "mental entities." Then you infer that other human beings also possess the ability to have mental entities in their minds. Therefore you have gone through a long conceptual chain, making differentiations as you went along. You didn't start by looking at reality from scratch so to speak, and as a first-level concept form the concept "mental entity" as distinguished from "physical entity." That would not be possible. They would be incommensurable. Any evidence for this?

Plaz's brain particles self-configures themselves into the following arrangement: >>>We arent getting anywhere. Correct. That's the inevitable upshot of your materialist position: extreme solipsism. "Your material particle arrangements" vs. "My material particle arrangements" vs. "Anyone else's material particle arrangements." Obviously, there's no way to get beyond material particle arrangements to say which one is THE TRUE material particle arrangement, because configurations of material particles can't be "true" or "false" or "good" or "evil", etc., they simply ARE. >>>Maybe I'm "dumb" Don't worry. By your own lights, "dumb" simply corresponds to some sort of material particle arrangement, and there's no way to claim that such an arrangement is worse than anyone else's material particle arrangement. >>>help me understand your position Sorry, but you'll have to translate that for us. Words like "help", "understand", and "position" derive from, and make reference to, the old, "mystical" belief in a non-material, purely mental, non-physical realm of existence. Please translate those terms into YOUR vocabulary derived from spatial arrangements of material entities. Do NOT duck this question: what is the spatial arrangement of material particles that specifies "help", or "understand", or "position"? >>> I have a theory of concept formation ... Sorry, but you'll have to translate that for us. Words like "theory", "concept", and "formation" derive from, and make reference to, the old, "mystical" belief in a non-material, purely mental, non-physical realm of existence. Please translate those terms into YOUR vocabulary derived from spatial arrangements of material entities. Do NOT duck this question: what is the spatial arrangement of material particles that specifies "theory", or "concept", or "formation"? >>> I have no Idea, based on what youve said, why you think the above is true. Sorry, but you'll have to translate that for us. Words like "idea", "based", and "true" derive from, and make reference to, the old, "mystical" belief in a non-material, purely mental, non-physical realm of existence. Please translate those terms into YOUR vocabulary derived from spatial arrangements of material entities. Do NOT duck this question: what is the spatial arrangement of material particles that specifies "idea", or "based", or "true"? >>>How do I form the concept non-material? You in fact are pressuposing the concept "non- material" before you justify it. Sorry, but you'll have to translate that for us. Words like "form", "non-material", and "presuppose" derive from, and make reference to, the old, "mystical" belief in a non-material, purely mental, non-physical realm of existence. Please translate those terms into YOUR vocabulary derived from spatial arrangements of material entities. Do NOT duck this question: what is the spatial arrangement of material particles that specifies "form", or "non-material", or "presuppose"? >>>And my position is that consciousness is a relationship amongst objects. Sorry, but you'll have to translate that for us. Words like "consciousness", "relationship", and "amongst" derive from, and make reference to, the old, "mystical" belief in a non-material, purely mental, non-physical realm of existence. Please translate those terms into YOUR vocabulary derived from spatial arrangements of material entities. Do NOT duck this question: what is the spatial arrangement of material particles that specifies "consciousness", or "relationship", or "amongst"? >>>It is neither in the object itself alone or in the hearer alone. Sorry, but you'll have to translate that for us. Words like "is", "neither", and "the" derive from, and make reference to, the old, "mystical" belief in a non-material, purely mental, non-physical realm of existence. Please translate those terms into YOUR vocabulary derived from spatial arrangements of material entities. Do NOT duck this question: what is the spatial arrangement of material particles that specifies "is", or "neither", or "the"? >>>How does one conclude that the mental is not a relationship amongst material objects? Sorry, but you'll have to translate that for us. Words like "How", "conclude", and "mental" derive from, and make reference to, the old, "mystical" belief in a non-material, purely mental, non-physical realm of existence. Please translate those terms into YOUR vocabulary derived from spatial arrangements of material entities. Do NOT duck this question: what is the spatial arrangement of material particles that specifies "How", or "conclude", or "mental"? Ultimately, the answer is that the category of the non-material/mental is axiomatic, ostensively defined by direct experience of introspection by each individual, and by obvious inference with respect to observing other people. We easily infer the existence of minds and intentionality in other people because we have direct introspective experience of "mind" and "intentionality" in ourselves. Later, of course, after having dumbed ourselves down with philosophy courses, we can loudly deny that the non-material exists, but in order to make ourselves understood to other people (as well as ourselves in our private musings) we must still use language as if it actually referred to, and derived from, the non-material realm. Groups of particles might move around and change position, but ultimately they simply "ARE". Groups of particles don't "conclude" or "theorize" or "hold epistemological theories". Groups of particles do not correspond to words at all: no material group of particles is representative of "the" or "and" or "to" or "notwithstanding". One final, very important question: How old are you?

>>>Im formulating my response to it and will post it in a bit. In other words, "blank out."

@ plasmatic: >>>Listen Red, if you think that reasserting that its "non-material, or consciousness and volition is an illusion" is an argument, its not. Listen, plaz, if you think that reasserting that consciousness and its products — thoughts, ideas, theories, systems, language, concepts, etc. — are very, very tiny material entities inside of a material brain is an argument, it's not...especially given the obvious fact that material particles don't "assert" or "reassert". They simply "act" under the influence of some other force. The very concept of "assert" or "reassert" or "justification" or "argument" only makes sense within the non-material mental realm. Bowling balls don't "assert" or "reassert" or "justify" or "conclude" or "argue", even if they are very, very, very small, and inside someone's physical brain.

>>>....justification... Sorry, what is the non-material concept "justification" in terms of physical entities? Do the material entities in your physical brain assume a certain shape or arrangement that specifies a certain state called "justification"? And since physical entities ALL obey the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, do you have any theory to explain how new states of mind-entities get ordered out of non-orderly states (such as when you're asleep, or unconscious, or simply staring out the window thinking about nothing)? Never thought about that, eh? Naive materialism leads to pure solipsism: your entity-arrangements, my entity-arrangements, Harrison's entity-arrangements, Peikoff's entity-arrangements, etc. Why should any one of these entity-arrangements be superior in terms of objectivity or truth status? By what standard? There can be no standard, because according to your lights, that standard must itself be an idea...and that idea, according to you, is simply yet another arrangement of entities. But if you're happy being a solipsist, I certainly don't want to ruin your fun.

>>>I have no idea where you get this nonsense from. I get it from having studied philosophy. In any case, you have nothing to complain about. Since you're a naive materialist who believes that consciousness is composed of entities, and that therefore, PRODUCTS of consciousness, such as ideas, premises, conclusions, arguments, theories, systems, etc., must also be composed of entities — and, in fact, these entities ARE the ideas — then it follows that my philosophical ideas are simply my arrangements of entities, just as your ideas are your arrangements of entities. Too bad for the poor naive materialist, but there's no way to judge which arrangements of entities are better, more true, less true, false, etc., without referring to an objective non-material notion of "judge." It has to be 1) objective, and 2) non-material. Because if it were material, the "judgment" would simply be another arrangement of physical entities in someone else's physical brain. And why should that arrangement have any more objectivity and higher truth-status than my arrangement of entities in my physical brain, or your physical arrangement of entities in your physical brain? Too bad. Without the idea of the "non-material", there is no such thing as "objective truth", i.e., true for me, you, and everyone else. >>>I cannot define away what I have not asserted to have abstracted from perception. I don't understand what the term "abstraction" can mean to a naive materialist, since an abstraction is itself an arrangement of particles, just as a percept is. And the process of performing the abstraction is itself just a stream of particles. For "abstraction" to mean anything would require, again, the notion of something that is NOT simply yet another arrangement of progressively smaller particles, but something truly "non-particle." You can call it an "entity" if you want, but it's a non-material entity. When a materialist says, "I am a philosophical materialist," that statement presumably corresponds to a thought that is simply an arrangement of physical entities in his physical brain. If someone else says, "I am a philosophical idealist", that statement, too, (according to the materialist) corresponds to a thought, which, in turn, also corresponds to an arrangement of physical entities in joe physical brain. Clearly, the materialist prefers his own entity-arrangements to someone else's, just as the someone else prefers his own entity-arrangements to those of the materialist. Additionally, the materialist could not turn to a 3rd-party philosopher (e.g., Ayn Rand) and ask her (assuming she were alive) what the "truth" of the matter was, because by the materialist's own assumptions, Ayn Rand has a material brain, and the thoughts in that brain area also simply arrangements of physical entities. Why should her arrangements of entities insider her head have more "objectivity" or higher truth status than anyone else's physical entities? That's the problem with materialism: instead of referring to a non-material objective condition called "truth", you're forced to compare "arrangements of entities", as if you were touring a fancy suburb and comparing people's lawns (who has the "objectively truthful" lawn? The one whose grass makes the most objectively truthful arrangement? I don't know. Pick whichever one you want. It's an absurd question, because materialism is an absurd philosophical position.) And in any case, what did you perceive FIRST that later allowed you to abstract the idea, "x^2 + y^2 = 1". For that matter, what did you perceive that later led to the idea, "1". (If you're going to say, "Well, Mr. Ugg, the caveman, perceived one stone and then abstracted the idea of "number...which must exist in some degree but may exist in any degree", then you'd be question-begging and concept-stealing, for in that case, Mr. Ugg, already possessed the idea of "1" and "number" and simply found a useful correspondence between his percept and his pre-existing idea. The question, however, was where did he get the idea of "1" from simply via perception?" It's utter gibberish-mysticism to suggest, as Rand appears to do, that the IDEA of "1", or "1-ness" is part of the percept itself, and that some abstracting power of the mind conveniently sifts it out for use. Dumb. Where would such "1-ness" be? Is it physically in the stone itself? No. Is "1-ness" in the light rays hitting the stone and reflecting off of it into Mr. Ugg's eyes? No. Is "1-ness" located physically in the retina? No. In the optic nerve? No. In the visual cortex? No. That's it for the material part of the process. After the visual cortex, the electro-chemical impulse gets dumped into the non-material part of the human called "the mind". How? No one knows. Does the non-material part of the mind "recognize" some non-material "1-ness" in the stone that accompanies it from light-rays, to retina, to optic nerve, to cortex? I doubt it. This is why Plato thought the idea of "1-ness" was already there, in the non-material mind, and the abstracting process in this case was really just matching what was already there to what was freshly perceived in an act of "recognition." I don't accept his theory, either, because I reject the notion of innate ideas, including mathematical ones. So the answer is, I don't know. Neither did Ayn Rand, Neither do you. Neither does anyone. >>>You see, the onus is on you. Lay out your theory of concept formation and show why Oism is wrong. I've already shown why Objectivist epistemology is nuts in another thread. You were too busy spitting out popcorn watching "Iron Man 3" to pay attention. And no, to criticize someone else's philosophy, one need not also proffer a replacement or an alternative. If you're a lawyer in a court of law defending your client (who is innocent, of course), you don't have to proffer an alternative crime scenario to the prosecution, the judge, or the jury. You merely have to point out why the prosecutor's argument is full of holes and unworthy of serious consideration. Same with philosophical argumentation. You don't have to specify what is right in order to point out why someone else's nonsense is wrong. Suffice it to say that no one really understands what concepts are, how they are formed, and how the mind grasps them. It's enough to say, however, that Rand's arbitrary assertion that just as "1 gram is one unit" and "one meter is one unit" that therefore "one stone is one unit" is gibberish. Read my previous post on the subject.

@ Mormon Church: >>So any pattern found in nature, any pattern at all, must be the product of an intelligence? Not quite. Intelligence is obviously able to create patterns, but things that are products of intelligence can (and often do) go beyond mere pattern-making and into the non-material area called "meaning." Furthermore, things can have meaning even without any pattern. Concepts, as expressed by written words, are not mere patterns. Does the word "C H A I R" look like the material object it codes for? No. Could a tide, or a storm, or a tornado, have produced marks in the sand that look like "C" then "H" then "A" then "I" then "R"? Let's suppose it could. So what? By themselves, the marks mean nothing. But when an intelligent designer, such as a human, comes along and using his intelligence, mentally assigns those five scratches to the physical object he has experience with (even if only in his imagination as something he intends to invent), then he is inventing a code. The code is in the assignment of the scratches to a meaning that is not part of the scratches themselves. So even if a tide or a tornado accidentally created those scratches, it had nothing to do with causing the human to assign meaning to it. Tornadoes don't create codes. Only intelligent designers do. >>>An "effective probability of zero" would be identical to "basically zero" which is the same as "vanishingly improbable". Not impossible. No, "impossible" need not mean "numerically zero probability." "Impossible" means "below the threshold probability that defines the area of rejection." (LOL! I can just see you working security in a casino. Some guy walks in and wins repeatedly at roulette, blackjack, craps, and the slot machines, and beats the house for an entire month at odds of 1-in-10^50. When the owners demand to know why you didn't stop the guy from cheating, you reply, "Just because the odds were 10^50 to one that he beat the house for a month straight, that doesn't prove he cheated. After all, the probability "1/10^50", while very improbable, is not exactly zero! It's not actually impossible. The owners, of course, will sack you for being an insolent buffoon and incompetent. They're right to do so. >>>Try building a rocket, let alone launching one, with statistical descriptions. "Yes, we're 76% sure that it won't explode and 99.9% sure it actually exists." It's done all the time. The engineering is within certain statistical tolerances. Nothing is 100% exact, especially in rocket science (or in any other applied science). You've never studied physics or engineering, I see. Pity. (Hint: you won't learn any science, math, or engineering, by rereading Atlas Shrugged. It's not in there.) >>>And I am a naïve materialist. We've established this and agree, here. Actually, I would be proud to be categorized with the minds of the Renaissance. Except naive materialism had little to do with the Renaissance. It's associated with the Victorian era, from 1837 to 1901. Also, if you're a naive materialist, it means you believe your consciousness is ultimately composed of physical entities such as atoms, or perhaps even smaller, more fundamental particles. How can small material particles be "proud"? Is "pride" a certain energy-state of those particles, for example, or perhaps a certain spatial arrangement? Is "truth" a certain PATTERN or spatial arrangement of those material particles? >>>You tell me your thoughts, your ideas, your memories; you tell me about every moment of every day you've lived since your earliest memories, up to reading this very sentence, and I'll tell you far more than who you'll email tomorrow and what you'll say. You already have it. It's all there in my previous posts. There is nothing else. Everything I wrote previously constitutes my initial conditions. You already have the general law (I assume). Just put it all together and tell me the first letter of my first post this coming Monday. And while you're at it, my clever Mormon, calculate what the last letter of my last email was 10 years ago. Ten years isn't such a long time. It's nothing for an astrophysicist to calculate the position of a planet or comet ten years ago, so you should be able to do the same with a teleological entity such as a mind. Impress us with your intellectual prowess.

>>>I mean only the general form as was accomplished when light was identified with electromagnetic radiation. It was learned that light was electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency range. Yet light did not then cease to be light, or become some sort of prior delusion now dispelled. It's a common error committed often by Objectivists: confusing identity with correlation. Light is the name of a subjective experience (along with color). The experience is precisely that; an experience. The experience is not electromagnetic radiation (or quanta called photons). The experience we call "light" correlates with radiation in a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum, but that's about it. Other things also correlate with that spectrum in different parts of it: heat at one end, cosmic rays at the other. Neither one is an experience we call "light." "Light" (and color) as we know it exist only in the realm of subjective experience, i.e., the mind. Light correlates with electromagnetic radiation, and color correlates with wavelength, but there's no identity here. "Identity" and "correlation" are opposites. Two things cannot be identified with each other and still be "two things."

>>>Read a little more carefully. Boydstun said feature, not attribute, and I suppose there is a reason for that. Boydstun's reason must be very idiosyncratic, so perhaps he'll share it with us. According to Apple Dictionary, the primary definition of "feature" is "a distinctive ATTRIBUTE…"; viz., feature |ˈfēCHər| noun 1 a distinctive attribute or aspect of something . . . >>>All unification really means here is that mind and body is inseparable, But they're not inseparable. They are separable mentally (as distinct notions that need not rely on each other), and they are separable physically (non-living bodies appear not to have minds, as do certain kinds of bodies: plants, microbes, viruses). As to whether mind can exist physically apart from, I don't think anyone can answer that definitely — though Aristotle thought so, as do a number of researchers especially in the field of neuroscience. Sir John Eccles (Nobel Laureate in medicine) believed mind could exist apart from matter, to name just one. No, you'll have to do better than "inseparable" in defining "unification" of mind and body, and neither "feature" nor "attribute" will work. >>>but a bodyless mind and a mindless body makes no sense, Sure they do. First of all, you posted previously that plants are apparently teleological but have no consciousness, i.e., no MINDS. In your view, they are bodies without minds. Second, dead bodies are bodies without minds; third, since as an Objectivist you always mean "waking consciousness" when you use the word "mind," you'll have to explain what happens to the body and the mind when you're asleep or under general anesthesia or knocked unconscious in a boxing match. >>>nor have I ever had a reason to suppose there are bodyless minds. No doubt you've never experienced it and that's reason enough to discount it as the classic Objectivist accusation of "arbitrary assertion." >>>It seems to me all your arguments come from the idea that Objectivism would suppose "strong" views on materialism are correct. Well, no... they're quite wrong. I'm confident that Objectivism doesn't hold "strong" views on materialism, just as I'm confident that, nevertheless, many self-styled Objectivists do.

>>>For one, philosophically holding entities as causal primaries in metaphysics and using Oist epistemology consisitently one cannot accept the concept of "non-material" as a valid integration. A nice way of arbitrarily defining away half of the universe. Um, define for us, please, what you mean by the phrase "philosophically holding." If only "entities" (whatever they are!) exist, and if only entities therefore can cause effects, what sort of entities cause the effect you've just called "philosophically holding"? How can entities "philosophically hold" something? And isn't the "something" they hold itself composed of other entities? And why should your entities in your physical material arrangements be called "right" and "true" and "correct" while other people's entities in their material arrangements be defined as "wrong", "false", and "incorrect'? If you define away the idea of a non-material — i.e., existing independently of any possible kind of physical, material arrangement of entities — part of existence, then you simply do away with the idea of objective truth. By your lights, everyone has his own set of material, physical, entity-arrangements causing them to have certain ideas (the ideas are simply "effects" of those physical arrangements). Thus, there is no right, wrong, moral, immoral, true, untrue, etc. There is simply "my entity-arrangements", "his entity-arrangements", "your entity-arrangements", etc. And pretending to defend this sort of naive materialism by saying, "but I justify it according to principles of Objectivist epistemology, so it HAS to be right!" is absurd, as well as self-serving. What arrangements do material entities make when leading to the phrase "principles of Objectivist epistemology"? and why should those material arrangements of entities be "better" or "more true" than someone else's material arrangements of entities leading to the phrase "principles of Kant's analytic-synthetic dichotomy"? Sorry, but when looked at closely, ALL forms of materialism are simply absurd.

>>>Mind is a feature of living brain . . . Nice assertion. How do you know it isn't the other way around, i.e., that a living brain is the physical complement of mind? Sorry, but mind is not an "attribute" of a physical brain in the sense that "red" is an attribute of an apple, or "length" is an attribute of a pencil. Read Aristotle on the relation between "attributes" and "substance."

>>>the unavoidable and undeniable fact that there is consciousness (an axiom of Objectivism) is denied by Materialists. It depends on the particular kind of materialism one accepts. Many materialists accept the existence of consciousness as an epiphenomenon; i.e., it is caused by physical factors in the brain and its attributes and functions are fully reducible to and explainable by those physical factors; but it is, nevertheless, non-material. However, though it is itself caused by these factors, PRECISELY BECAUSE IT IS NON-MATERIAL, it does not, and cannot, cause anything further. It's like a "heat sink" in electronics, a place where heat can be vented for the sake of dissipating itself; to the epiphenomenalist, consciousness is simply a non-material "sink" where physical activity emanating from the brain ultimately winds up and dissipates itself. >>>Objectivism rejects the mind/body dichotomy as false, but it does not do so by denying the existence of mind or body. I don't think that makes much sense. Mind is the non-material; body is the material. Obviously, they are NOT the same thing, so there's a dichotomy by definition. Living things (especially man) somehow combine these two things in a complementary way, but they are not "integrated" in the sense of being mixed or dissolved into one another. There's a dichotomy because both are distinct and identifiable, at least, subjectively by each individual.

>>>We've already been over this. But you didn't learn anything the first time around. Now I'll have to repeat myself. >>>A tornado in a junkyard could assemble a Dell computer; No, it could not. I'll whisper the reason: IT WOULD VIOLATE THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. UNDER NATURAL CONDITIONS, THINGS ALWAYS MOVE FROM ARRANGEMENTS OF LOWER PROBABILITY TO ARRANGEMENTS OF HIGHER PROBABILITY: FROM VERTICALLY STRAIGHT BRICK WALLS (A LOW PROBABILITY ARRANGEMENT FOR WATER AND CLAY MOLECULES TO ASSUME) TO ONE OF MANY DIFFERENT PILES OF RUBBLE (A HIGH PROBABILITY ARRANGEMENT FOR WATER AND CLAY MOLECULES TO ASSUME). SEE? SINCE THERE ARE MORE POSSIBLE ARRANGEMENTS OF PILES OF RUBBLE THAN THERE ARE VERTICALLY STRAIGHT BRICK WALLS, THE PILES OF RUBBLE WILL NEVER BECOME A VERTICALLY STRAIGHT BRICK WALL NATURALLY — AND THAT INCLUDES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF VIOLENT RANDOM FORCES LIKE TORNADOES. It would take a force that can easily overcome the 2nd law by being able to choose, i.e., discriminate, amongst different arrangements, and to intentionally avoid those arrangements that look like piles of rubble. Can you guess what that force is? It isn't a hurricane and it isn't a tornado. No, it isn't a flood, either. I'll tell you since you've been so tolerant and polite. It's INTELLIGENCE. In sum: You are wrong. It is not physically possible for a tornado to assemble a Dell computer by traveling through a junk yard. >>>it's vanishingly improbable but it's not impossible. Wrong on both counts. It is both physically impossible (because of a 2nd law entropy violation) and probabilistically impossible. The problem here is you don't know anything about probability and how people actually work with it — population geneticists, for example. You mistakenly believe that if an event has a mathematical probability of anything above "0", it is therefore, in some degree, "possible", even if highly improbable. That's completely incorrect. An event does NOT have to be at exactly "0" to have an effective probability of "0" to occur. The way a statistician, or population geneticist, works is by first defining a "threshold" value: any value above the threshold value, the statistician is willing to grant that chance might, in principle, be the causal agent; but any value below the threshold value — an area called "the area of rejection" — the statistician omits chance as a causal possibility BY DEFINITION, and will therefore seek some other explanation for the event in question. If he cannot find a plausible explanation, he rests content with "I DON'T KNOW" until such time as a plausible explanation can be found. But he never says, "Oh, well, it must be chance because the calculated probability was not exactly zero." As long as the calculated probability is below that threshold value and in the area of rejection, it is zero BY DEFINITION. >>>And chance isn't a form of causality; it's an error of knowledge. No, that's completely wrong. In arrangements of entities and systems, causes for certain events that only have statistical descriptions (i.e., because they are random) can never ultimately be replaced with deterministic non-statistical descriptions, even as our knowledge grows. Statistical laws are not "stand-ins" for "better, deterministic" laws when we have more knowledge. Statistical laws ARE actual, real laws, and they describe actual real causes. See Karl Popper's explanation of a thought-experiment by the quantum physicist Alfred Landé called "Landé Blade." Secondly, many empirical deterministic laws that are non-statistical in form are actually averages of lots of other data that could be more precisely expressed as a statistical laws. The main reasons for expressing a statistical law as a straightforward deterministic one are simplicity and convenience. The strict deterministic expression, therefore, is actually masking, or hiding, the fact that the law is merely an averaging, or "smoothing out", of lots of phenomena that cluster around the mean. Your 19th-century Victorian naive materialist idea that the universe is ultimately run by strict determinism that can be expressed mathematically in terms of non-statistical functions is wrong; wrong mathematically, wrong scientifically, and wrong philosophically. >>>Imagine a pair of dice; the embodiment of chance. If you know their weight, center of gravity (distribution of mass), initial positions and initial velocities then you already know where they'll land. Dice, per se, are not the "embodiment of chance." It's the ROLL of the dice that is the embodiment of chance. The roll requires a statistical description, which is why, ultimately, the result is passed along to the dice. Same applies to coin tosses: the coin is not the embodiment of chance — if you leave it alone, it'll sit on the table and do nothing forever, with a probability of "1". It is the TOSS (and spin) that is the embodiment of chance. Since that requires a statistical description, it gets passed on to the coin as it lands heads or tails. See why I accuse Objectivists of 19th century naive Victorian materialist metaphysics? They haven't progressed beyond about 1870 in their thinking. >>>And teleology is a form of determinism. Really? OK. Then based on initial conditions, and a general law, you can predict with close to 100% accuracy precisely what letter of the alphabet I'm going to begin an email tomorrow morning, right? Because that's what a true deterministic law entails. That's why a physicist can tell you where a projectile will be tomorrow morning if he knows the initial conditions pertaining to the projectile, and the general law governing projectiles. He can also "retrodict", i.e., he can tell you where the projectile was yesterday (or a million years ago) if he knows the initial conditions today, and the general law governing such projectiles. This is how modern astronomers know when solar eclipses occurred even many thousands of years ago. So go ahead. Make a prediction now about what I intend to do tomorrow morning in typing out a new email, since (by your lights) teleology is a form of determinism. [i think what you meant to say was that teleology is a form of CAUSALITY, which is certainly true; teleology causes effects. But it is not a form of determinism.]

>>>can't a non-intelligent process produce a code? Well, I tried to explain why the two pillars of Darwinian theory — chance and determinism — cannot produce a code, so at least that removes Darwinism from consideration. If determinism can't produce codes, and if chance cant' produce codes, what else is there? Additionally, every effect with which we have experience seems to be traceable back to one of those three kinds of causes: strict determinism, chance, and design. I can't think of another kind of cause that can lead to something we recognize as an "effect"? Can you? But in a purely formal sense, you're right. I certainly cannot prove (at this point) that chance, determinism, and intelligence are the only three kinds of causes; they are, however, the only three humans know about.

>>>I'm saying DNA has a code that does not imply intelligent creators. Then you're admitting that "Atlas Shrugged" and "Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto" could, in principle, have appeared without the existence of Ayn or Sergei. Absurd. >>>You can't use morse code as an analogy to the *development* of a code when you know from the start that morse code has an intelligent creator. Not so. We already do that with natural languages, which are nothing but codes. No one knows who "invented" proto-Indo-European, or Sanskrit, or Greek, or Latin, or Anglo-Saxon. Yet they are all codes. >>>If anything, I can say DNA was created by non-intelligent creators, that is, primitive not-quite-cell entities without any intent except to the degree of complex chemical reactions. Well, no, you cannot say that, because the functioning of DNA as an information storage hard-drive for hereditary information and maintenance information in the form of a computer algorithm, such as "START: Find amino acid X, then Y, then B, then K, then Q, then R, then R, then A, then STOP. SNIP HERE:" None of this has anything whatsoever to do with "complex chemistry"; these are linguistic instructions — algorithmic STEPS — for the construction of certain molecules. I've already stressed several times that there is NO chemical interaction between the DNA and the amino acids. Once more: the logical relation between DNA and amino acids in protein synthesis is identical to the logical relation between inked letters on paper from a typewriter ribbon and the intelligible sentence "'Who is John Galt?" The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum's face." When these letters appear in black ink on a piece of paper, are you saying that the MEANING of the sentence, which derives from the SEQUENCE of the letters, is ultimately a function of the chemistry of ink? Or of ink's complex interaction with the chemistry of paper? No? Isn't it simply the case that the chemistry of ink and paper are important only as a way of transmitting the sequence of letters in a more-or-less permanent material form so that the sequence can be decoded — that is, read — by a receiver of the sequence? Yes, that's obviously the case. And so, too, is it the case with DNA and amino acids. The relationship requires "complex chemistry" only insofar as DNA first transcribes to RNA on a single strand, which then wiggles, snake-like, out of the nucleus and into the cytoplasm, and then wends its way to the ribosome, etc. But this has nothing to do with the SEQUENCE of nucleotides on the DNA helix (logically the same kind of thing as the SEQUENCE of letters on a page) and its eventual decoding by the ribosome as an instruction to find certain amino acids and construct proteins. (And as I posted earlier several times, DNA actually does a lot more than merely instruct the ribosome to build protein, and its beginning to appear that 100% of the DNA molecule has function, though researchers do not yet understand what all the functions are.) So I'm afraid that you don't really grasp what a code is. A code is not a material thing, thought it usually requires matter for storage and transmission. But the storage medium and the transmission medium are NOT the code. When you type "—", and a reader decodes that by typing "T", the inked "—" and "T" are not the code. The code is the non-material, mental assignment that the originator of the code first established, "Let '—' mean 'T'." Codes are mental mappings between two sets of symbols. They have nothing to do with physics or chemistry, even though they might require complex physics and chemistry to preserve themselves. Additionally, as I pointed out in an earlier post, even the complex chemistry part of DNA or RNA cannot be solved without making highly implausible assumptions. RNA requires cytosine as one of its nucleotides. Where does cytosine come from? I don't know. Know one does. It's not in the Earth. It's not in asteroids. It's not at the bottom of the ocean in heat vents. It's only in pre-existing RNA and DNA. Now, it turns out that cytosine can be synthesized, but only with large quantities of concentrated urea in very implausible, unlikely kinds of environments and reactions that conflict with the scenario established by the RNA World theorists. What about ribose, the sugar backbone of RNA and DNA? It can be synthesized with a great deal of human intelligent intervention by means of formaldehyde, but that would be highly implausible occurring in unguided natured because at every step of the synthesis there are many "degrees of freedom" that a reaction could take; there's no reason that it would take just the right steps to create formaldehyde in order to synthesize ribose. In an already existing cell, it's easy: DNA stores the sequence information to create a protein called an enzyme; and the enzyme has a special mechanical shape that fits precisely with just those molecules needed to construct the sugar ribose. No problem! No problem, because the process of ribose construction is PRE-PROGRAMMED as a set of instructions along DNA. See? That's what a real "code" can do, as opposed to futzing around with "complex chemistry", chance, and having constantly to fight an uphill battle against the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which dictates that left to their own, molecules always move over time from arrangements of lower probability to arrangement of higher probability, i.e., everything falls apart and decays over time, even collections of molecules. I don't doubt life can be created, but your reasoning that life on earth *originates* from some creator is all kinds of weak. Yes, life CAN be created. ...Okay? I have no doubt life can be created by means of coded instructions that tell the complex chemistry not only what to do, but equally important, what NOT to do. I also have no doubt that this sort of discrimination — "do this, but DON'T do that" — is NOT a feature that is inherent in matter or energy, but is a typical feature of intelligence: i.e., "discriminated awareness of multiple choice-paths." As I mentioned previously, codes cannot be produced by deterministic mechanical laws because then they couldn't perform their typical function of transmitting information (and I explained why, as well). So determinism as a source of a code is out. I also mentioned that chance cannot create codes because at best it would lead to code-ambiguity. So chance is out. If both determinism and chance are out, that leaves only one other option for the source of a code. Can you think of any others? >>>A failure of creativity isn't evidence. Of course it is. It isn't "proof-positive" — perhaps nothing is. But, yes, it is evidence. And it's not a "failure of creativity." Science deals with 2 kinds of causes: determinism and chance. Neither of them can explain where codes come from. Either throw out the idea that DNA is a code (and it's a bit too late for that), or expand science to include teleology and design. >>>Also, teleology doesn't have to mean intelligence. Teleology applies to plants. Plants aren't intelligent. All living things are teleological, not just plants. And products of intelligent design — like computer programs — are teleological, too. Plants are teleological only because they grow and change according to a pre-existing biological computer program that comprises their physical makeup. By that standard, animals (including man) are teleological, right? Isn't a human embryo teleological? It grows and changes, not according to a Darwinian process of trial and error and lucky selection, but according to a strict genetic set of instructions: divide here; divide again; produce this kind of protein; put it here; produce that protein; put it there; etc. And it obviously grows and changes TOWARD a specified, pre-programmed goal. So not only are plants teleological, but all living things are.

>>>I wonder what Red would say to an Oist who 1). Rejects the church of the Big Bang and instead holds that there has always been a multiplicity if bounded particulars interacting dynamically Based on what evidence? And how interesting that you arbitrarily grant the possibility that time might be infinite, but not space. Why one and not the other? Why not both? Why not neither? In any case, it won't help your argument for a purely materialist unguided appearance of life. Because even if there were "infinite" time, you STILL have the undeniable fact of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to contend with: things don't build UP and lower their own entropy over time; and guess what? The more time you have on hand, the more the 2nd Law would take hold, and the higher the entropy we would expect to see. If the universe has ALREADY been around "forever", why isn't it ALREADY in a state of entropic "heat death" as predicted by the 2nd Law as the "end state" of the universe? Additionally, I think a good case can be made that the existence of the 2nd Law itself — very often referred to as "Time's Arrow" — indicates that time, indeed, DOES have an "arrow", which means it BEGAN at some point t=0 and is moving toward some point t=n. Most scientists accept the Big Bang theory, not as the only explanation, but to date, the best explanation of cosmogenesis. >>>2).Has no problem with the idea that life has always been around and wonders why anyone not assuming a beginning of existence-motion would insist there must be a beginning to life in its most basic forms. Are you saying that life has always been around? Fine. I thought you were saying that non-living chemicals tried various combinations over a long period of time and finally, accidentally, hit upon the right one that led to something that had lower entropy than its constituents and spontaneously permitted both reproduction and some sort of coded storage of its own hereditary information. So you are DENYING that now? Fine. There are some Darwin-doubters — Fred Hoyle, to name one — who did, in fact, believe that; i.e., in Hoyle's view, you cannot trace life back to lifeless beginnings; Pasteur was right, life only comes from other life, therefore, life has been here forever just as matter and energy have been here forever. So that throws out abiogenesis as a non-problem by definition. You still have problems explaining how NEW information came into existence in the genome so as to endow the proto-biont with new body plans or some new ability or characteristic. >>>3). Has absolutly no problem with being a materialist of the kind that allows for the possibility of consciousness-life to have emerge from matter- non life??? I also have no problem if someone actually wants to believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. So if you want to express your feelings by believing that something non-material like mind can emerge from the material, go right ahead. Don't let the fact that it's inherently absurd stop you.

>>>Oh, and wanderer? http://online.wsj.co...0152341984.html The Craig Venter article is old news. But thanks for bringing up something that fully agrees with ID and not with unguided Darwinian evolution. Obviously, his cell was a product of intelligent design: his own, and his lab assistants' (as well as the contribution of those who designed his lab equipment specifically for his kind of work). Now all we have to do is find out who or what performed the same sort of intelligently guided processes billions of years ago before there was a Venter and before there were lab assistants, because a similar process obviously must have occurred. Your thinking goes like this: "If Craig Venter and his team could intelligently design a cell today, it follows that an unintelligently-designed cell COULD have come about billions of years ago, if conditions back then fortuitously mimicked conditions in Venter's laboratory." Obviously not. That's like saying "I can produce a Mercedes-Benz automobile by means of an intelligently guided process on my production line; therefore, it follows that a Mercedes-Benz automobile COULD have come about by random means billions of years ago IF conditions fortuitously arranged themselves to mimic conditions in a modern production line." Clearly that's absurd. Mercedes-Benz are far, far less complex than living organisms, so if they could have come about by means of Darwinian evolution, then we would find them buried in rock in archeological digs, just as we find more complex things like fossils of biological organisms. Conversely, if you grant that a fairly non-complex entity like a Mercedes could not evolve into existence by Darwinian means (i.e., that its appearance in reality REQUIRES intelligence, intent, rationality, forethought, by means of a production line), then it's equally absurd to assume that something far more complex — like a cell — could evolve by Darwinian means. Show me the million-year-old fossils of Mercedes-Benz cars, buried in deep rock strata, and I'll concede your point. Until then, the only thing I'll concede is that you seem not to really grasp any of these issues.

>>>Code doesn't necessarily imply a purposeful developer. Novels, mathematics, symphonic scores don't necessarily imply a purposeful developer? All codes imply intelligence. For the developer, for the sender, and for the receiver. As I mentioned previously, it is foundational in coding theory that prior to any coded messages being encoded, transmitted, received, and decoded, there must be agreement between sender and receiver as to what the symbols mean. In the case of Morse Code, everyone reads a book, or takes a course, in which the same two alphabets (dots-dashes mapped onto English) are taught. There are, no doubt, many books and many course, but they are all traceable ultimately to Samuel Morse. >>> If you're suggesting instead that there is more order to reality than many people say, then I see no problem with that. I agree and know that DNA isn't "like" a code; it is a code. I really have no reason to presume codes are evidence of design. There are two main reasons codes are evidence of design: 1) We already know that humans create codes, and humans are intelligent designers; therefore, codes CAN be produced by human intelligence (and, presumably, any other kind of hypothetical intelligence, such as "extra-terrestrial"); 2) No other process we know of causes codes: deterministic mechanical processes governed by Newtonian or Laplacian laws do not create codes; quantum processes governed by statistical laws do not create codes. Since neither deterministic nor stochastic processes has ever created a code — not in human experience — that leaves only one other kinds of cause: teleology (goal-seeking, purposefulness, intention, etc.). There are actually good reasons rooted in fundamental information theory that require codes NOT to be physically determined, nor to be products of chance. >>>All that tells me is that codes work great. Indeed they do! Language is a code. No communication among humans would be possible without it. >>>Information theory as a subfield of math with explanations of complex interactions between just anything, can say a lot about why and how a code could develop without something else interfering. There is nothing in information theory which implies or suggests that codes can "evolve" on their own without intelligent design. 1) Codes cannot "evolve" from strict mechanical laws (governed by classical physics) because then the decoded symbols would be 100% predictable prior to actually receiving them, just by knowing the general law that governs the code. And if the symbols are known with 100% certainty before even receiving and decoding them, then — by definition in information theory — they contain zero information. Strings of symbols only transmit information if the recipient is UNCERTAIN as to how the code string will manifest itself as he decodes it; and the MORE UNCERTAIN he is, the MORE INFORMATION he gets from the message (i.e., because "information" in information theory, is a measure of "surprise" or "uncertainty"; derived originally from a probability and expressed as a binary logarithm. The name of the final calculated number is called a "binary digit" or "bit". That's the unit information. Once more: a "bit" is simply a binary log number [log to the base-2] applied to the probability of something occurring. If something has a probability of 100%, i.e., "1", the binary log is "0", so that symbol string, by definition, is transmitting "0" bits of information.) In sum: Codes cannot be created by mechanically deterministic causes, because then their OUTCOMES would always, at least in principle, be 100% knowable; in which case, they would always transmit "0" bits of information. In other words, they wouldn't be codes at all. 2) Codes cannot "evolve" from stochastic laws (governed by quantum physics and describe statistically) because that would lead to AMBIGUITY, which is the death of the code. To take an example from Morse Code, ambiguity would mean that, unbeknownst to the receiver of a coded message, the sender will randomly use the symbol "—" on Monday to mean "T", but on Tuesday "—" will mean "A", and on Wednesday will mean "Z", according to some children's alphabet blocks that the sender randomly tosses and lets fall to the floor. And he wouldn't just do that with the symbol "—" but with all the other dot/dash symbols in Morse Code. So, from the code-receiver's point of view, the mapping of a symbol to the "correct" letter now becomes an unknown. That's "code-ambiguity", and that's what would happen if stochastic events were the ultimate cause of a code's coming into being: it would have stochastic characteristics. But codes do NOT have anything about the that is stochastic. Ah!!!! The MESSAGE it is sending might be stochastic, i.e., nonsense or gibberish. That's different. But the formal relations of the code itself — the mapping-relation between a symbol on the dot/dash side and a symbol on the English alphabet side — is strictly invariant. And lest there be some confusion: While "code-ambiguity" is disallowed in codes, "code-redundancy" is not only permitted but strongly urged! As a hypothetical, "redundancy" in Morse Code might be a situation in which, prior to sending any messages, the sender and receiver have lunch and have the following discussion: "I'm going to use one of three different symbols to represent the letter "T", OK? Whether you receive "—", "— . . —", or ". . — . —", each one of these shall be decoded by you as "T". There's nothing wrong with code-redundancy. In fact, it's usually designed into the code itself as a way of strengthening it. In the case of the genetic code, this sort of code-redundancy is often misleadingly referred to as "wobble". But code-theory looks at it as a formal aspect of reinforcing the "robustness" of the code (i.e., making it less error prone). And needless to say, the building in of redundancy into a code is ANOTHER tell-tale sign of forward-looking, goal-seeking intelligent design. Neither Newtonian laws, nor quantum stochastic effects, build redundancy into a code. That would be like saying, "Yes, this apartment building evolved here by chance when a tornado came through a junkyard. We're very lucky. The tornado not only installed elevators by chance, but also randomly happened to install several fire-safety stairwells." REDUNDANCY. It's a typical sign of intelligent forethought. >>> I guess you could say ancient aliens designed Earth's life, From a purely logical and scientific point of view, I have no problem with that. Neither did Richard Dawkins, by the way. He admitted in Ben Stein's movie "Expelled" that he was perfectly willing to consider the hypothesis that human life was designed by intelligent aliens. He understood, of course, that this merely pushes back the explanation one step for an ULTIMATE explanation of where life came from; but his point was that it's not unreasonable to view biological systems as intelligently designed systems because they certainly LOOK like intelligently designed systems. He admitted that. What he brooks is any notion of a supernatural source of the design. So, like Objectivists, he his not just pushing Darwinism; he is really pushing atheism, and sees Darwinism as the "best in the field" hypothesis GIVEN ATHEISM. And also, by the way, Sir Francis Crick, who co-discovered the code-structure of DNA with James Watson, claimed that the problem-solving distance between non-living chemicals and even the simplest self-replicating cell was far, far greater than the problem-solving distance between the simplest self-replicating cell and humans; so that, as far as he was concerned, life was engineered by intelligent aliens, for mysterious reasons of their own, after which they disappeared. People were divided as to whether he was joking or not, but he was especially aware of the problems in applying Darwinian-type thinking (random processes plus selection for survival advantage) to chemical evolution. You have to start accepting highly implausible mathematical miracles to makes things work out for you. And good scientists don't like mathematical miracles. >>but to me, it is considerably more *plausible* to think DNA as a code developed on its own based on how certain chemical interactions occur anyway. But the word "plausible" can be quantified by comparing probabilities of one scenario to another, or at least by showing the utter improbability of one scenario, leaving open the possibility that some other scenario might offer a better — i.e., more plausible — explanation. It's very easy to show, just using simply math, that there's not enough time in the universe since the Big Bang — let's say, about 14 billion years — to have plausibly created DNA or proteins or a complete cell, by means of random walks through a search space comprising nucleotides, ribose, and amino acids. The numbers you get are so fantastically small, that in order to make them more plausible, you would need much, much more time. Some Objectivists have understood this argument, so they in turn reject the Big Bang Theory. Big Bang might turn out to be wrong, but it IS the accepted theory right now, and it DOES have lots of compelling evidence in its favor, so it behooves Objectivists to at least start with that hypothesis, and to see how chemical evolution could have taken place within the given time-frame of 14 billion years. That works out, by the way, to about 10^17 seconds. That sounds like a lot, but it's not nearly enough to form DNA or even a simple protein by random trial-and-error attempts at different combinations, and then "selecting" only those combinations of sequences that work. Finally, there's the stubborn chicken-and-egg conundrums that bedevil all of this. Most biochemists have claimed that DNA absolutely requires the rest of the surrounding cell in order to function correctly; the rest of the cell, of course, requires DNA to function correctly. So which came first? DNA? or the cell? Researchers thought they found a way out of the dilemma by discovering "ribozymes", a kind of RNA that can also act as a kind of enzyme (i.e., a protein), so they imagined everything originating from a so-called "RNA World." Unfortunately, that world exists nowhere except in their imaginations: there's no geological or geochemical evidence for it; the nucleotide "cytosine" doesn't seems to exist anywhere in nature except in the pre-existing cell, in the genome, in DNA and RNA (therefore, where did it come from?). Ribose — the backbone of the RNA strand — is very, very difficult to synthesize even in intelligently-designed controlled laboratory conditions; to imagine purely natural events concatenating at just the right time, at just the right temperature, with NO destructive counter-reactions occurring — frankly stretches the imagination, even of many biochemists. I think the RNA world is a pipe-dream. And in any case, there's no actual physical evidence for it. As far as I'm concerned, the cell and DNA appeared together, at the same time. When? How? I don't know. No one does. By the way another problem that cannot be solved merely by mechanical or random means is the so-called "L/R Problem." "L/R" stands for "Left / Right", and it refers to the fact that all of the amino acids that are used by living organisms are "left-handed" (they spiral to the left when you look down their central axis), despite the fact "right-handed" variants of the same molecule appear in about equal number in nature, and despite the fact that natural processes which might produce amino acids, always produce them as mixtures of left and right; leading to the question: by what means did ONLY the left-hand forms of the amino acids get segregated from their right-hand forms, since chemically, they are identical. They only differ SPATIALLY, in terms of their clockwise or counterclockwise orientation. And as if this weren't enough: While the amino acids in living organisms are all left-handed, the molecules comprising the nucleotide "rungs" of DNA are all RIGHT-HANDED. So any naturalistic/materialistic theory of unguided non-intelligent evolution will have to provide a plausible mechanism or explanation of how blind nature can discriminate between left and right handed forms of molecules — since chemically they do the same things — and segregate only the left-handed forms of the amino acids for protein synthesis, and only the right-handed forms of the nucleotides in DNA for protein information storage in the form of a quaternary code expressed a three-rung codon. I can very easily see an intelligence doing that, because it would be no more difficult than what humans do when we, e.g., segregate all the red cards from the black ones in a deck. Easy. But if you riffle the deck in front of a powerful fan, how plausible is it to believe that if you riffle it enough times and let the fan blow the cards randomly about the room, that eventually, the fan will blow all the red cards onto one side of the room, and all the black cards onto another side, and each kind of card will fall neatly into a pile? You really find that plausible? I don't. Most people wouldn't. Most mathematicians wouldn't. Let's put it another way. Suppose you walked into a room that had a powerful fan. On the floor were two neatly stacked piles of cards from a deck: one pile was only red cards, the other, only black cards. There were no people for miles around, and the house had been uninhabited for many years. The doors were locked and the windows were boarded. Would you really think the cards got there by chance? Or would you think, "It's much more plausible that some rascal sneaked in somehow, segregated the cards into two neat piles, and disappeared." Wouldn't the assumption of a designing intelligence make more sense than the naturalistic one that it was a result of the random movements of air molecules driven by a rotating fan? I think so. And I think most people would think so, too. >>> If all you're saying is that life develops intelligently (i.e., changes itself as you said before), instead of just chaotically and randomly, but without an official "creator" (God, aliens, an ancient breed of hyperintelligent lizards, etc), then I agree with you. The main thing I'm curious about is what your point is, boiled down to one or two sentences, as best you can. WHAT??? One or two sentences??? C'mon!!! That's unfair! >>>I guess what I'm asking is, tell me who made the code, or what you theorize. I don't know who made the code. No one does. The point of ID is that we needn't know anything about the identity of a code-maker to make a general claim about codes, i.e., that they entail intelligence, purpose, intent, etc. >>>Otherwise, I'll just take it that you concede a specific creator with consciousness did not create the codes you are speaking of. Internal mechanisms of a self-contained system could plausibly develop a code without conscious intervention, external or internal. Unwarranted conclusion. You can't jump from "Tell me the identity of the code-maker" to "And if you don't, I'll conclude that you accept the idea that codes don't require a creator." Claiming that something requires a creator "in general", and knowing the identity of the creator "in detail" are obviously two different issues. And I don't concede that one necessitates the other. [PS: Did I stay within that one-or-two sentence constraint you mentioned above?]

>>>If one attributes a ontological claim to a concept of method where there is no no mind-independent referent then it is reification. You love quoting Objectivist Scripture! Who said anything here was a "concept of method"? And I never said that the analytic-geometry definition of a circle — x^2 + y^2 = 1 — existed only in the mind. I simply denied that it corresponded to a material thing perceived by the senses, such as a pencil mark (which would not be a circle but some variant of a misshapen oval). It corresponds to a non-material thing grasped by the intellect. The nomenclature and symbols of mathematics are arbitrarily invented by man. Mathematical truths are not. They are discovered, just as continents are discovered. I got that from reading mathematicians themselves, not Objectivists asserting things about mathematics. >>>Having corners and round surfaces are real metaphysical attributes No they're not. Corners and round surfaces are simply objects of perception, and like all objects of perception, REQUIRE perception to be fully manifested. The touch / nerve-impulse / brain-interpretation /mind-experience is PART of the "thing" that is being interpreted as "corner" or "round surface." To a neutrino, there are no such things as "corners" or "round surfaces" because everything is simply an amorphous cloud that it easily passes through. So which experiences the "real" metaphysical reality: you? or the neutrino? Says who? Based on what standard? And why should we accept THAT standard rather than some other standard? As I said before: Objectivism is simply a mid-20th century restatement of 19th-century Victorian naive materialism. It has much in common with the naive materialist views of someone like H.G. Wells. By the way, I like H.G. Wells (as a science fiction writer), and I generally admire the bourgeois decencies of the Victorian era. Socially, we would do well today with a little more Victorianism and a little less hedonism. However, the Victorian era's philosophical worldview certainly stood in the way of new scientific ideas, such as relativity, quantum mechanics, and today, "design" as a real attribute of certain things in the universe: living organisms and universal constants, to name two.

>>>... it's totally different to just talk about how stupid you think Objectivism is. I never said naive materialism was stupid. It's wrong, but not stupid.