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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 01/31/2008 : 08:02:54 [Permalink]
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Marshall doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Language in the form of communacation is rife among non-sentient species.
The above chameleon communicates with it's colors, sending messages of defensive threat (with open jaws) and sexual readiness ("How you doin', baby?). Creatures such as cuttlefish also use colors.
Scorpions, notorious cannibles like many arachnids, have a complicated ritual communicating sexual readiness, ending in a sort of a dance where the male drops a sperm packet that is retrived by the female, and, after a cigarette and maybe another go at each other, they part friends.
A great many lizards use color and appendages along with body movements to put across their point. These might include a bright dewlap such as with the male anole above, head-bobbing (in many iguanids, this is quite complicated as anyone who has kept a giant green iguana can tell you) leg raising, and body posture.
And alligators bellow as well as use posture.
I won't bother to mention mammals because too many of us have dogs and/or cats, and communicate with them on a daily basis.
Of course, primates, all of them, are very loquacious.
Me, if I were to try and prove god(s) through language, I'd use these and many other natural 'miracles' as the examples, and not try & belabor the obvious like an idiot.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2008 : 08:18:44 [Permalink]
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| Well, the more I've thought and read the discussions, it's clear that his analogy fails on a very basic level. A language is a way for an idea, thought, or plan to be expressed from A in a way that B can understand said idea, thought, or plan. That's not a textbook definition, but it makes it broad enough to include lots of things beyond just human language (note: Marshall argues that one feature of a language is an "alphabet" which is bafflingly stupid, but whatever). So, does DNA fit this? Of course not-- even with this broad definition, Marshall cannot state who the receiver of the DNA language is!! There is none! |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2008 : 08:37:20 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Dave.....
You ask.....| What the heck is a "construct?" Why is your statement any purer or simpler than any assertion that "mind" is a gift from God? |
Webster's International Unabridged
Main Entry: 3construct Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation: känztrkt, känstr-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -s
1 : something that is constructed especially by a process of mental synthesis: as a : an object of thought constituted by the ordering or systematic uniting of experiential elements (as percepts and sense data) and of terms and relations b : an intellectual or logical construction : an operational concept; also : the result of such a construction or concept <the constructs of science> |
I couldn't have said it better myself, or I would have! |
Well, let's see...Main Entry: 1men·tal
Pronunciation: 'ment-&l
Function: adjective
1 a : of or relating to the mind... So you're saying:| A mind is something that is constructed especially by a process of synthesis related to the mind. |
Or, shorter:| A mind is a creation of a process of the mind. |
I think you should try to find a way to say it better yourself, because what you've got there is tautological. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2008 : 08:48:50 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ricky
Technically, the bird still has a mind. To truly show his argument is bunk, take it a few more orders of magnitude smaller. Many single celled organisms signal others of their species in a variety of ways. This is, by all meanings of the word, a language. |
Yes, technically, but to agree with that, Marshall would have to agree that a chicken's "mind" is somewhat similar to God's "mind." He'd be loathe to do so, I'm sure. He has to draw an arbitrary line between "mind" and "non-mind" somewhere, because otherwise he can't make the argument that "language" only comes from "mind." Proud as he is, I'd bet that he'd draw the line with people and God on one side, and the whole rest of biology on the other, so there's no need to go into technicalities. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2008 : 08:56:44 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
...(note: Marshall argues that one feature of a language is an "alphabet" which is bafflingly stupid, but whatever). |
No, no "whatever." That's a beautiful detail. Marshall would have us believe that humans didn't acquire language until about 5,000 years ago, so therefore all that talking going on in the early chapters of the Bible is a lie. Fantastic!| So, does DNA fit this? Of course not-- even with this broad definition, Marshall cannot state who the receiver of the DNA language is!! There is none! |
And as I noted, he can't say who the transmitter is, either, because the designer of a language is not necessarily the current user. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2008 : 10:48:08 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by Cuneiformist
...(note: Marshall argues that one feature of a language is an "alphabet" which is bafflingly stupid, but whatever). |
No, no "whatever." That's a beautiful detail. Marshall would have us believe that humans didn't acquire language until about 5,000 years ago, so therefore all that talking going on in the early chapters of the Bible is a lie. Fantastic! |
It's not just that-- assuming for a moment that he means that language requires a writing system and not an "alphabet" then much of the world wasn't speaking a "language" until... 2,000-3,000 years ago? And most people native to North America never spoke a language.
And then, if he really means "alphabet" then no one was speaking a language until, say, 1,000 BC, and in China they STILL aren't speaking a language... |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2008 : 11:22:41 [Permalink]
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Dave.....
Hell, I just bought the International Unabridged, and now I've got to throw it out and go for the gold, the Oxford! And pay for it in fucking £ Pounds!
Dave, your ability to create chaos out of entropy is astounding! I'm sure the folks that took over from old Noah had someone like you in mind when they added definition exemplification as in - as a an object of thought constituted by the ordering or systematic uniting of experiential elements (as percepts and sense data) and of terms and relations b : an intellectual or logical construction : an operational concept; also : the result of such a construction or concept <the constructs of science>
Taut that to a tology!
And, as long as you are at it, if the construct mind is tautological, why don't you deconstruct Descartes - Cogito, ergo sum. The old frog will be revolving in his grave!
Or, how about:
1. "I" - 1 : someone possessing and aware of possessing a distinct and personal individuality : SELF, EGO
2. "am" - present first singular of BE
3. "be" - to equal in meaning : have the same connotation
4. "Dave" - someone possessing and aware of possessing a distinct and personal individuality, you.
5. "Tautology" - needless or meaningless repetition in close succession of an idea, statement, identity or word
So, for chrissake, stop introducing yourself, it makes you look like a fool! |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2008 : 12:04:10 [Permalink]
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Thanks, bngbuck, for pointing out that I've been using the word "tautology" incorrectly for many years.
"Mind is a construct" is circular. Given words in the definition of "construct" like "mental," "thought" and "intellectual," you're saying that the definition of "mind" depends upon the definition of "mind."
And if mind is a construct, then how did the first mind come into existence without anything around to create a construct?
Constructs are a product of minds operating on experience, terms and relations, so without a mind, there can be no constructs, and hence no minds. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2008 : 08:27:56 [Permalink]
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I signed up to get Marshall's special emails, which are leading up to the whole the-universe-requires-a-god argument. Today's is a ramble about the improbability of the current universe due to the fine tuning of "dark energy":The surprising thing is just how narrow the difference
is. To strike the perfect balance between too fast and
too slow, the force, something that physicists call
"the Dark Energy Term" had to be accurate to one part in
ten with 120 zeros.
If you wrote this as a decimal, the number would
look like this:
0.000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000001 |
Then he writes:In their paper "Disturbing Implications of
a Cosmological Constant" two atheist scientists
from Stanford University stated that the existence of
this dark energy term "Would have required a miracle...
An external agent, external to space and time, intervened
in cosmic history for reasons of its own." |
This set off bells immediately. Any time you find unnamed "atheist" scientists (how does he know-- did he ask them?) invoking a god (albeit in cloaked form), you wonder if this isn't quote mining.
And of course, it is. I found the paper in question. Marshall already runs into trouble because it's actually by three authors (though perhaps the third is not an atheist?). The article is complex, but let's read the whole passage in question:In all of these worlds statistically miraculous (but not impossible) events would be necessary to assemble and preserve the fragile nuclei that would ordinarily be destroyed by the higher temperatures. However, although each of the corresponding histories is extremely unlikely,
there are so many more of them than those that evolve without "miracles," that they would vastly dominate the livable universes that would be created by Poincare recurrences. We are forced to conclude that in a recurrent world like de Sitter space our universe would be
extraordinarily unlikely.
What then are the alternatives? We may reject the interpretation of de Sitter space based on complementarity. For example, an evolution of the causal patch based on standard Hamiltonian quantum mechanics may be wrong. What would replace it is a complete mystery.
Another possibility is an unknown agent intervened in the evolution, and for reasons of its own restarted the universe in the state of low entropy characterizing inflation. However, even this does not rid the theory of the pesky recurrences... |
The bolded part corresponds to the part of Marshall's quote after the ellipses-- though he changed "unknown" to "external" and added "external to space and time" (!!) and then changed "the evolution" to "cosmic history", and also dropped the "and" so as to change the meaning of the "for reasons of its own" part-- pretty dishonest, already! But worse-- first part, where Marshal has the authors writing "Would have required a miracle" is nowhere to be found in the article. Indeed, a search of the whole PDF shows that the sequence "would have required" doesn't even show up. Obviously he's trying to paraphrase something in the passage where the authors use "miracle" (though note that they use quotes to show a slight bit of irony), but he may as well have made it up altogether.
And all of this ignores the conclusions of the authors:It is also possible that we are missing some important feature that picks out, or weights disproportionally, the recurrences which go through a conventional evolution, beginning with an inflationary era. However, we have no idea what this feature would be.
We wish to emphasize that the above conclusions appear to be the inevitable consequence of the following assumptions:
• There is a fundamental cosmological constant.
• We can apply the ideas of holography and complementarity to de Sitter space.
• The time evolution operator is unitary, so that phase space area is conserved.
Perhaps the only reasonable conclusion is that we do not live in a world with a true cosmological constant. |
Oops. No invoking a designer! Oh well. Something tells me that if I pointed this out to Marshall, he'd not bother to change it in his mass email. |
| Edited by - Cuneiformist on 02/02/2008 08:43:19 |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2008 : 09:35:34 [Permalink]
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Dave.......
The construct, mind is a phenomenological abstraction created by neurological interconnection patterns in the human brain - as are all other "constructs" of that connotation, all thought for that matter. To ask how did "mind" come into existence is as to ask how did "blue" come into existence? All constructs, in the conceptual sense of existence, came into being as a consequence of a novel interconnection of neuron pathways, an "idea". Is man, essentially, not a machine, albeit an intensely complicated one?
Or do you believe there is a qualitative differential that separates "conciousness" from the patterned function of electrical circuitry, chemical transformative process, or any essentially mechanical sequential event series - computer programming, cell meiosis into metabolism, atomic pairing into molecule formation, molecular aggregation into physical mass, or any other objective, sequential, developmental process?
If so, what is the nature of that consciousness, as variant from the above event processes? Do you feel it is metaphysical? |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2008 : 17:17:36 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Dave.......
The construct, mind is a phenomenological abstraction created by neurological interconnection patterns in the human brain - as are all other "constructs" of that connotation, all thought for that matter. |
Oh, good grief. You should have just said, "mind is an emergent property of brains" and been done with it. A brain cannot create constructs - there are plenty in jars which are construct-free. Constructs require intellectual activity, reasoning and the like - all properties of minds, not brains.
This isn't dualism. All minds that we know of so far are properities of brains. But not all brains have minds. Minds provide reasoning, logic and systematic ordering - those things necessary to create constructs. Brains without minds do not.
Did you look at the Chinese Room? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2008 : 01:41:39 [Permalink]
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Dave.....
| Oh, good grief. You should have just said, "mind is an emergent property of brains" and been done with it. A brain cannot create constructs - there are plenty in jars which are construct-free. Constructs require intellectual activity, reasoning and the like - all properties of minds, not brains. |
Let's see, "good' is strongly relativistic, and only relevant in the context in which it is quoted; and "grief" is a emotive term, highly subjective and not at all appropiate to a general rebuttal because of the individualistic nature of the exclamation, and you failed completely to speak to the undoubted elongation of both the femur and tibia of one of your lower limbs due to the uncommon stress to which it (or possibly both of them) have been recently subjected!
| Did you look at the Chinese Room? |
Yes, I did a drive-by on a grand Turing of a number of properties including Mary's Room
(there is something about Mary!), the Chinese Gymnasium, the Philosophy Gym (complete with a Philosophical Zombie), Gleason's gym, and Alice's Restaurant; then I chased Schrödinger's Cat under the Ladder Paradox, was pursued by Maxwell's Demon onto the Ship of Theseus where I met Wigner's Friend (who, it turns out, was the Violinist), the ship leaked and we got into a Bucket Argument - driving me to commit Quantum Suicide, hear Gabriel's Horn and finally look out over God's Debris!
I think Daniel Dennett pretty well sums up many of these constucts with comments like "intuiton pump" and "woo-woo WestCoast emergence".
Dave, if you have need, I know a very good orthopaedic surgeon, and what is it that brains construct? This Mind reality really concerns me - height, weight, diameter etc. Can't find it anywhere! How about a "MIND" thread - we should be able to weave the whole cloth out of that?
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| Edited by - bngbuck on 02/04/2008 15:16:51 |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2008 : 15:11:41 [Permalink]
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Attention All Debaters.....
The Man Who Knows It All (Perry Marshall) has issued the following challenge;
Open Challenge:
The discussion thread is still open on IIDB, as discussion resumed in late February 2005. I welcome anyone who understands information theory, and has a rigorous argument, to come forward and present it. No doubt people will editorialize about this elsewhere, attempting to dismiss it as 'arguing by failed analogy' or whatever.
But to whoever says I'm wrong, I say: Log on to the Infidels forum, step into the ring with me and prove I'm wrong. Note: Before you do this, do your homework. (I've done mine.) Carefully read every single post and make absolutely sure you're not just repeating what somebody else has already said. |
Anybody here up to taking on The Greatest Seer of All Time? |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
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‘Information,’ ID, and evolution
