I seem to recall some wag suggested that Dennett's book, "Consciousness Explained" should really have been entitled, "Consciousness Explained Away." I find it remarkable how philosophical presuppositions can hamper the understanding and interpretation of evidence. Recalling the expression "thinking outside the box", materialists live in a sub-universe that doesn't even use the whole box. Your post shows how some scientists are starting to break down old mental blocks that restricted understanding. Very informative and enjoyable reading.
Consciousness creates a particularly severe problem for materialists.
There is nothing about blind and mechanistic causes, no matter how complex they are, that entails the existence of conscious experience or of a conscious subject. Any purely blind and mechanistic set of causes would do what they do in the absence of a conscious self, rendering the conscious self purely epiphenomenal and disconnected from the physical world (which would mean we wouldn't be able to physically talk or type paragraphs about consciousness as I am doing now).
That means, for the purposes of Darwinian explanation, consciousness *must* cause behavior in creatures that possess it that goes above and beyond what physical mechanisms are capable of on their own. Otherwise, there's nothing there for "natural selection" to "select."
But the moment you grant that, you've granted that there is real, non-mechanistic, purposeful causation in the world that has observable physical effects. And once you've granted THAT, you've conceded the so-called "rule" that science must constrain itself to mechanistic, non-teleological causes and more importantly, you've fatally undercut the whole point of Darwinian natural selection, which was to do away with non-mechanistic causes and reduce apparent purpose in biology to blind mechanism.
And, in fact, once you've conceded that the conscious self is a real, non-mechanistic cause with causal powers above what beyond blind mechanistic causes can do, you are logically *forced* by the Principle of Sufficient Reason to conclude that it must itself have been caused by something (or rather someone) with the power of consciousness, because blind and mechanistic causes cannot by definition cause what is above and beyond them.
Ultimately, our contingent consciousness must be caused by a conscious Being who is necessary and the ground of reality, because every irreducible type of power that exists in contingent reality must exist in non-contingent reality at a higher order and be derived from it.
Finally, the same problem that exists for consciousness exists even more powerfully for human reason, and with the same inescapable solution (that the ultimate reality from whom our reason derives is conscious rational being, aka God).
It's little wonder that materialists like Dennett will explain consciousness away as an illusion, despite that position being completely insane and incoherent. If you admit it objectively exists and you pull that thread, all of materialism and atheism unravel.
There are only two examples of evolution as theorised and shown; 1) Bacteria metabolising nylon 1935 and 2) Bacteria metabolising citrate in 2020. Both involved only 2 BP of DNA after thousands of generations. Demonstrating Michael Behe's 'Edge of Evolution' and known limits imposed by 1) the Second Law by the entropy cost of order 2) its corollary violation of Shannon's Law upon which all communication relies and has never been shown to fail.
I seem to recall some wag suggested that Dennett's book, "Consciousness Explained" should really have been entitled, "Consciousness Explained Away." I find it remarkable how philosophical presuppositions can hamper the understanding and interpretation of evidence. Recalling the expression "thinking outside the box", materialists live in a sub-universe that doesn't even use the whole box. Your post shows how some scientists are starting to break down old mental blocks that restricted understanding. Very informative and enjoyable reading.
Consciousness creates a particularly severe problem for materialists.
There is nothing about blind and mechanistic causes, no matter how complex they are, that entails the existence of conscious experience or of a conscious subject. Any purely blind and mechanistic set of causes would do what they do in the absence of a conscious self, rendering the conscious self purely epiphenomenal and disconnected from the physical world (which would mean we wouldn't be able to physically talk or type paragraphs about consciousness as I am doing now).
That means, for the purposes of Darwinian explanation, consciousness *must* cause behavior in creatures that possess it that goes above and beyond what physical mechanisms are capable of on their own. Otherwise, there's nothing there for "natural selection" to "select."
But the moment you grant that, you've granted that there is real, non-mechanistic, purposeful causation in the world that has observable physical effects. And once you've granted THAT, you've conceded the so-called "rule" that science must constrain itself to mechanistic, non-teleological causes and more importantly, you've fatally undercut the whole point of Darwinian natural selection, which was to do away with non-mechanistic causes and reduce apparent purpose in biology to blind mechanism.
And, in fact, once you've conceded that the conscious self is a real, non-mechanistic cause with causal powers above what beyond blind mechanistic causes can do, you are logically *forced* by the Principle of Sufficient Reason to conclude that it must itself have been caused by something (or rather someone) with the power of consciousness, because blind and mechanistic causes cannot by definition cause what is above and beyond them.
Ultimately, our contingent consciousness must be caused by a conscious Being who is necessary and the ground of reality, because every irreducible type of power that exists in contingent reality must exist in non-contingent reality at a higher order and be derived from it.
Finally, the same problem that exists for consciousness exists even more powerfully for human reason, and with the same inescapable solution (that the ultimate reality from whom our reason derives is conscious rational being, aka God).
It's little wonder that materialists like Dennett will explain consciousness away as an illusion, despite that position being completely insane and incoherent. If you admit it objectively exists and you pull that thread, all of materialism and atheism unravel.
Simon Conway Morris I believe showed evience that biological evolution converges on common solutions, like the insect eye and our camera eyes;
Correct
Incorrect.
I love how you write, Sy! I almost understood it!!! i'll keep trying, my friend.
Thanks. Feel free to ask me any questions.
There are only two examples of evolution as theorised and shown; 1) Bacteria metabolising nylon 1935 and 2) Bacteria metabolising citrate in 2020. Both involved only 2 BP of DNA after thousands of generations. Demonstrating Michael Behe's 'Edge of Evolution' and known limits imposed by 1) the Second Law by the entropy cost of order 2) its corollary violation of Shannon's Law upon which all communication relies and has never been shown to fail.
https://medium.com/@mike.clare.bellamy/three-falsifications-of-evolution-5273a4e74ced?sharedUserId=mike.clare.bellamy