Ещё две пространные цитаты Upright Biped
Как и большинство комментариев UB, приведённый ниже комментарий очень важен, потому что содержит не только самую суть биосемиотического аргумента в пользу дизайна биосферы, но и историческую последовательность разработок в биофизике, которые послужили основой значительной части того, что называется сегодня Intelligent Design.
Вот этот комментарий, который я привожу полностью ниже. Весь контекст обсуждения находится здесь (это обмен комментариями между UB и JVL). JVL пытается защищать заранее проигрышную позицию и утверждает, что гипотеза дизайна в биологии не имеет доказательной базы. UB в который раз грамотно и детально излагает противоположную точку зрения.
JVL at #79:
You have not even acknowledged that I asked how someone could falsify your position.
Which position of mine are you referring to?
Is it the position I hold about there being no semantic qualities (a capacity to specify something among alternatives) listed among the physical properties of matter? I suppose someone could just get a Periodic Table and point them out.
Or, is it my position on Charles Sanders Pierce, who reasoned 160 years ago that anything serving as a medium to signify something among alternatives must necessarily be part of a larger triadic relationship (including a symbol vehicle, a referent, and an independent “interpretant” to establish what is being signified)? Well, I suppose they could just look it up and see if there was ever a scientist / philosopher / logician named C.S. Peirce, son of Benjamin Peirce (a founding father of the Department of Mathematics at Harvard) who began writing a general theory of signs back in the 1860s.
Or, is it my position that Alan Turing exemplified the physical and logical necessity of Peircean interpretants in his programmable computing machine; in that he included a “table of transitions” to systematically establish the rules that would be necessary to translate the symbols on the machine’s tape? I suppose they could look it up in Wikiworld and find out whether or not it says Turing’s machine “manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules”.
Or, is it my position that John Von Neumann used the structure of Alan Turing’s symbol processing machine to predict the fundamental physical and organizational requirements of an autonomous open-ended self-replicator? I suppose on this one they could look up the history of Von Neumann’s association with Turing and his work, or they could just cut to the chase and listen to Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner’s words on the subject (the man who was advised of Crick and Watson’s discovery in DNA and travelled to Cambridge to meet them even before the first announcement of their discovery was published; the same Sydney Brenner who along with Crick experimentally established the triplet coding structure of the gene code). Brenner was unambiguously in Von Neumann’s court until he passed last year, even using von Neumann’s successful prediction to formulate what he called “Schrödinger‘s Fundamental Error” in his classic paper “What is Life?”. He clearly recognized that Turing’s machine preceded Von Neumann’s logic about open-ended automata. So, I defer to Brenner on the matter and stand ready to have my account falsified.
Or is it my position that Francis Crick himself further exemplified and confirmed the reasoning of Peirce, Turing, and Von Neumann, i.e. his successful prediction of a separate set of adapter molecules to establish the gene code? A prediction which, by the way, was confirmed by Zamecnik and Hoagland in 1958, along with the fact that the association of anticodon-to-amino acid (establishing the genetic code) is indeed separate and dynamically independent of the codon-to-anticodon association. This organization, of course, allows the system to function as it does, enabling it with the physical freedom and capacity to specify itself, or any variation of itself, in a universe governed by unchanging and inexorable law. It is in fact Polanyi’s “harnessing of inanimate nature” and Von Neumann’s evolving “automata that are more complex and of higher potentialities” than the previous generation. Here again, I guess they could just go to the history and observations, and show that the systems in question don’t necessarily include one arrangement of matter to serve as a medium of specification and a second arrangement of matter to independently establish what is being specified. Frankly, on this count, I don’t really need to supply a method of falsification, I can assure you from personal experience that design critics have come up with their own attempts in the hundreds.
Or, is it my position that physicist/biologist Howard Hunt Pattee, inspired by the physical capacities of the gene system, spent five decades carefully identifying and documenting the “Physics of Symbol Systems”, noting such things as the linear, one dimensional, rate-independent nature of the medium, the requirement of non-integral constraints to establish what is being specified in the system, the measurement problem, the epistemic cut, the complementarity required in physical descriptions of such systems, the fundamental requirement of semantic closure in biology, and so on. This of course includes the observation that the gene system and human language/mathematics are the only two physical systems to ever be described by science that exemplify these observations, to the exclusion of all other physical systems. Here again, they can simply go to the history and observations and do the work of showing Pattee incorrect in his dozens upon dozens of papers on the subject - which by the way, have become bedrock research to a great number of people with inter-related interests in symbol systems, ultimately conferring a great deal of respect for both he and his life’s work. I only add this last part because of the propensity of some folks on your side to denigrate and marginalize anyone who gets in the way, and I am hoping to perhaps counter that tendency upfront with the facts of the matter.
Or, in fact!!! Is it my contention that when you touch something hot it is not heat that travels through your nerves to your brain, but is a biosemiotic representation of heat (a sensory signal), which upon reaching your brain, will then and there be interpreted as “hot”. I am probably way out over my skis on this, but I don’t know. Perhaps they could try sticking a temperature probe next to a nerve and see if it gets hot. If it gets hot I will immediately retract my position, but I really don’t think that will be necessary. A bunch of “descent and intellectually honest” people have pretty much confirmed that symbolic representations are a real, and indeed, context-dependent part of physical reality. It appears from the literature that they are required for life on earth to be specified among the many alternatives (as that Dawkins fella might say). Judging by what is clearly recorded in that literature, anyone wanting to falsify that conclusion will likely need to demonstrate semantic closure in an autonomous dissipative process; one that includes a set of objects serving as a specifying medium, and a second set of objects establishing what is being specified; as well as the capacity to read the medium, successfully produce its effects, and provide a copy of the description and a set of its interpretive constraints to the next generation. True falsification, of course, turns on semantic closure because it is the specific material condition that enables the system to persist over time, and is the only reason we are here to observe and measure it. That may sound like a steep hill for falsification, but you have to be realistic and view it in context, Firstly, forget semantic closure for a moment, no one on your side has even come close to establishing a rate-independent medium via a set of independent constraints, so no one is actually holding you to any high standards when it comes to producing physically-relevant evidence. The only reason to bring up semantic closure is in exchanges with folks like yourself who come here to argue against recorded science and history in order to prop up the respectability of their worldview, and would rather not be bothered with the science and history while doing so. For someone like yourself, you in particular, someone who glibly announces there is clearly and emphatically no evidence whatsoever of design in biology (while openly refusing to address that evidence), you’re likely to hear about semantic closure more than most.
А вот ещё один комментарий UB из другого обсуждения, но с тем же собеседником JVL, по поводу того, что именно утверждал и чего не утверждал биофизик Ховард Патти, более 50 лет занимающийся проблемами биосемиотики [по моему мнению, у Патти, как и любого другого исследователя, могут быть те или иные философские предпочтения, -- он, конечно же, натуралист, как и большинство современных учёных, -- однако он, в отличие от большинства стихийных натуралистов-самособойщиков, вообще не понимающих сути ID, опытный и добросовестный исследователь, научные высказывания которого нужно отличать от его философских взглядов -- mns2012].
Actually, I think I pointed out that the author of a source you sited came to a different conclusion than you did about the same data. Which made you very annoyed. And I still didn’t get you to say if your position was falsifiable.
Howard Pattee was immensely clear throughout his entire career that neither he nor anyone else had ever come close to solving the symbol/matter problem. THAT was his conclusion. (in other words, JVL, this frail point you keep trying to hide behind is scientifically meaningless, with a big crashing cymbal and a big booming drum). The design inference stands without any contrary observations whatsoever. Do you somehow not understand this fact? Of course you do, that is why you must ignore it.
I’m not sure our discussing the points any further would be productive do you?
Oh, I don’t know. You are a smart ideologue who has been forced by the presentation of evidence and history to concede that the living cell uses a high-capacity symbol system in order to function., yet you clumsily reach into your bag of rhetoric to deny that this fact provides any evidence whatsoever of design in biology. To the average person - each of them prolific users of symbol systems in a rapidly expanding information age - that kind of obtuse cognitive gymnastics is rather revealing. I’m not so sure it doesn’t serve a purpose to catch you from time to time making statements like you did above, and calling you out on it.
You realise that I could say the same about your stance?
No, you can’t JVL, you just think you can. I will force you to stick with my words (the words I actually use when presenting the semiotic argument of design in biology) not the words you will surely attempt to put in my mouth. See the difference? Because the scientific evidence is squarely against territory you are unwilling to concede, you can’t help but to assume your conclusions during the examination of that evidence. I don’t have that problem, you do. You might want to remember; I have made the case several times on this site that the semiotic argument for design (via the physical evidence) can be entirely consistent with materialism. It is you and your comrades who still (even in those logical consequences) cannot allow an open acknowledgment of that physical evidence. With that said, I am prepared stand my ground, so good luck.
С точки зрения философии вопроса, интересно замечание UB из второй цитаты, что ID не противоречит материализму. Интересно, потому что ID действительно не является доказательством веры в Бога, да и, как и всякая научная гипотеза, не может являться таковым, поскольку доказательств теизма в научном смысле этого слова не существует. Почему это так -- это другой вопрос, но это верно. На мой взгляд, Творец и в этом отношении верен Самому Себе: Он оставляет за человеком свободу выбора верить или не верить. И даже наполнение слова "вера" в контексте христианского Священного Предания много больше простой убеждённости в истинности тех или иных рационально сформулированных положений. А ID всего лишь дружествен теизму. Однако и это одно-единственное обстоятельство выводит из себя записных сторонников заскорузлого эволюционного материализма. Из контекста обсуждений, где я и позаимствовал эти цитаты, это тоже хорошо видно. Что они только не делают, как не изворачиваются! И тем не менее, весь доступный сегодняшней науке массив наблюдений объективно свидетельствует в пользу гипотезы дизайна живых организмов как таковых.
Вот этот комментарий, который я привожу полностью ниже. Весь контекст обсуждения находится здесь (это обмен комментариями между UB и JVL). JVL пытается защищать заранее проигрышную позицию и утверждает, что гипотеза дизайна в биологии не имеет доказательной базы. UB в который раз грамотно и детально излагает противоположную точку зрения.
JVL at #79:
You have not even acknowledged that I asked how someone could falsify your position.
Which position of mine are you referring to?
Is it the position I hold about there being no semantic qualities (a capacity to specify something among alternatives) listed among the physical properties of matter? I suppose someone could just get a Periodic Table and point them out.
Or, is it my position on Charles Sanders Pierce, who reasoned 160 years ago that anything serving as a medium to signify something among alternatives must necessarily be part of a larger triadic relationship (including a symbol vehicle, a referent, and an independent “interpretant” to establish what is being signified)? Well, I suppose they could just look it up and see if there was ever a scientist / philosopher / logician named C.S. Peirce, son of Benjamin Peirce (a founding father of the Department of Mathematics at Harvard) who began writing a general theory of signs back in the 1860s.
Or, is it my position that Alan Turing exemplified the physical and logical necessity of Peircean interpretants in his programmable computing machine; in that he included a “table of transitions” to systematically establish the rules that would be necessary to translate the symbols on the machine’s tape? I suppose they could look it up in Wikiworld and find out whether or not it says Turing’s machine “manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules”.
Or, is it my position that John Von Neumann used the structure of Alan Turing’s symbol processing machine to predict the fundamental physical and organizational requirements of an autonomous open-ended self-replicator? I suppose on this one they could look up the history of Von Neumann’s association with Turing and his work, or they could just cut to the chase and listen to Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner’s words on the subject (the man who was advised of Crick and Watson’s discovery in DNA and travelled to Cambridge to meet them even before the first announcement of their discovery was published; the same Sydney Brenner who along with Crick experimentally established the triplet coding structure of the gene code). Brenner was unambiguously in Von Neumann’s court until he passed last year, even using von Neumann’s successful prediction to formulate what he called “Schrödinger‘s Fundamental Error” in his classic paper “What is Life?”. He clearly recognized that Turing’s machine preceded Von Neumann’s logic about open-ended automata. So, I defer to Brenner on the matter and stand ready to have my account falsified.
Or is it my position that Francis Crick himself further exemplified and confirmed the reasoning of Peirce, Turing, and Von Neumann, i.e. his successful prediction of a separate set of adapter molecules to establish the gene code? A prediction which, by the way, was confirmed by Zamecnik and Hoagland in 1958, along with the fact that the association of anticodon-to-amino acid (establishing the genetic code) is indeed separate and dynamically independent of the codon-to-anticodon association. This organization, of course, allows the system to function as it does, enabling it with the physical freedom and capacity to specify itself, or any variation of itself, in a universe governed by unchanging and inexorable law. It is in fact Polanyi’s “harnessing of inanimate nature” and Von Neumann’s evolving “automata that are more complex and of higher potentialities” than the previous generation. Here again, I guess they could just go to the history and observations, and show that the systems in question don’t necessarily include one arrangement of matter to serve as a medium of specification and a second arrangement of matter to independently establish what is being specified. Frankly, on this count, I don’t really need to supply a method of falsification, I can assure you from personal experience that design critics have come up with their own attempts in the hundreds.
Or, is it my position that physicist/biologist Howard Hunt Pattee, inspired by the physical capacities of the gene system, spent five decades carefully identifying and documenting the “Physics of Symbol Systems”, noting such things as the linear, one dimensional, rate-independent nature of the medium, the requirement of non-integral constraints to establish what is being specified in the system, the measurement problem, the epistemic cut, the complementarity required in physical descriptions of such systems, the fundamental requirement of semantic closure in biology, and so on. This of course includes the observation that the gene system and human language/mathematics are the only two physical systems to ever be described by science that exemplify these observations, to the exclusion of all other physical systems. Here again, they can simply go to the history and observations and do the work of showing Pattee incorrect in his dozens upon dozens of papers on the subject - which by the way, have become bedrock research to a great number of people with inter-related interests in symbol systems, ultimately conferring a great deal of respect for both he and his life’s work. I only add this last part because of the propensity of some folks on your side to denigrate and marginalize anyone who gets in the way, and I am hoping to perhaps counter that tendency upfront with the facts of the matter.
Or, in fact!!! Is it my contention that when you touch something hot it is not heat that travels through your nerves to your brain, but is a biosemiotic representation of heat (a sensory signal), which upon reaching your brain, will then and there be interpreted as “hot”. I am probably way out over my skis on this, but I don’t know. Perhaps they could try sticking a temperature probe next to a nerve and see if it gets hot. If it gets hot I will immediately retract my position, but I really don’t think that will be necessary. A bunch of “descent and intellectually honest” people have pretty much confirmed that symbolic representations are a real, and indeed, context-dependent part of physical reality. It appears from the literature that they are required for life on earth to be specified among the many alternatives (as that Dawkins fella might say). Judging by what is clearly recorded in that literature, anyone wanting to falsify that conclusion will likely need to demonstrate semantic closure in an autonomous dissipative process; one that includes a set of objects serving as a specifying medium, and a second set of objects establishing what is being specified; as well as the capacity to read the medium, successfully produce its effects, and provide a copy of the description and a set of its interpretive constraints to the next generation. True falsification, of course, turns on semantic closure because it is the specific material condition that enables the system to persist over time, and is the only reason we are here to observe and measure it. That may sound like a steep hill for falsification, but you have to be realistic and view it in context, Firstly, forget semantic closure for a moment, no one on your side has even come close to establishing a rate-independent medium via a set of independent constraints, so no one is actually holding you to any high standards when it comes to producing physically-relevant evidence. The only reason to bring up semantic closure is in exchanges with folks like yourself who come here to argue against recorded science and history in order to prop up the respectability of their worldview, and would rather not be bothered with the science and history while doing so. For someone like yourself, you in particular, someone who glibly announces there is clearly and emphatically no evidence whatsoever of design in biology (while openly refusing to address that evidence), you’re likely to hear about semantic closure more than most.
А вот ещё один комментарий UB из другого обсуждения, но с тем же собеседником JVL, по поводу того, что именно утверждал и чего не утверждал биофизик Ховард Патти, более 50 лет занимающийся проблемами биосемиотики [по моему мнению, у Патти, как и любого другого исследователя, могут быть те или иные философские предпочтения, -- он, конечно же, натуралист, как и большинство современных учёных, -- однако он, в отличие от большинства стихийных натуралистов-самособойщиков, вообще не понимающих сути ID, опытный и добросовестный исследователь, научные высказывания которого нужно отличать от его философских взглядов -- mns2012].
Actually, I think I pointed out that the author of a source you sited came to a different conclusion than you did about the same data. Which made you very annoyed. And I still didn’t get you to say if your position was falsifiable.
Howard Pattee was immensely clear throughout his entire career that neither he nor anyone else had ever come close to solving the symbol/matter problem. THAT was his conclusion. (in other words, JVL, this frail point you keep trying to hide behind is scientifically meaningless, with a big crashing cymbal and a big booming drum). The design inference stands without any contrary observations whatsoever. Do you somehow not understand this fact? Of course you do, that is why you must ignore it.
I’m not sure our discussing the points any further would be productive do you?
Oh, I don’t know. You are a smart ideologue who has been forced by the presentation of evidence and history to concede that the living cell uses a high-capacity symbol system in order to function., yet you clumsily reach into your bag of rhetoric to deny that this fact provides any evidence whatsoever of design in biology. To the average person - each of them prolific users of symbol systems in a rapidly expanding information age - that kind of obtuse cognitive gymnastics is rather revealing. I’m not so sure it doesn’t serve a purpose to catch you from time to time making statements like you did above, and calling you out on it.
You realise that I could say the same about your stance?
No, you can’t JVL, you just think you can. I will force you to stick with my words (the words I actually use when presenting the semiotic argument of design in biology) not the words you will surely attempt to put in my mouth. See the difference? Because the scientific evidence is squarely against territory you are unwilling to concede, you can’t help but to assume your conclusions during the examination of that evidence. I don’t have that problem, you do. You might want to remember; I have made the case several times on this site that the semiotic argument for design (via the physical evidence) can be entirely consistent with materialism. It is you and your comrades who still (even in those logical consequences) cannot allow an open acknowledgment of that physical evidence. With that said, I am prepared stand my ground, so good luck.
С точки зрения философии вопроса, интересно замечание UB из второй цитаты, что ID не противоречит материализму. Интересно, потому что ID действительно не является доказательством веры в Бога, да и, как и всякая научная гипотеза, не может являться таковым, поскольку доказательств теизма в научном смысле этого слова не существует. Почему это так -- это другой вопрос, но это верно. На мой взгляд, Творец и в этом отношении верен Самому Себе: Он оставляет за человеком свободу выбора верить или не верить. И даже наполнение слова "вера" в контексте христианского Священного Предания много больше простой убеждённости в истинности тех или иных рационально сформулированных положений. А ID всего лишь дружествен теизму. Однако и это одно-единственное обстоятельство выводит из себя записных сторонников заскорузлого эволюционного материализма. Из контекста обсуждений, где я и позаимствовал эти цитаты, это тоже хорошо видно. Что они только не делают, как не изворачиваются! И тем не менее, весь доступный сегодняшней науке массив наблюдений объективно свидетельствует в пользу гипотезы дизайна живых организмов как таковых.