Doesn't darwinian theory fall apart on ontological grounds?

The difference between science and logic is that in science everyone looks at the same thing. My interpretation of the data I've presented is hardly individual -- in fact it's not even controversial.

You are not employing science. You're not employing logic either -- I'm not even sure what you're arguing. You're making statements about logic that have nothing to do with logic. You're making statements about entropy that have nothing to do with entropy. You're accusing me of "syllogisms" even though my arguments do not contain the form of a syllogism and my are not based on the syntactical relationships that define syllogism.

So what are you actually saying??

once again you apply logical construct, ie syllogism

Everything is of mind, all quality is of mind, i.e individually experienced.

All proof's are tautological in essence

We can form a infinite number of empirical evidences to support any hypothesis.

If it is physical 'proof' you are looking for, I.E. a way to measure infinity, you are not applying a multitude of logic, and of course you are attempting to square the circle.

No, it is not a syllogism, which you apparently do not appreciate is NOT the only form of logical construct. If I say: look, plants die when you don't water them but they live when you water them, then that is science. Not a syllogism. I'm doing nothing different than relating science to you.

Then I guess you'd find it an entirely random coincidence that all humans would think of fire as hotter than ice, or elephants as larger than rabbits. There can never be collective agreement. Right...

I didn't give you a proof. I gave you evidence.

Interesting then that the unsupported hypotheses seem to just go away -- like that world is flat hypothesis, or that earth is the center of the universe hypothesis...

YOU are the one dwelling on proof. But you've got to get your terminology straight...

You assume such a machine is impossible, and you assume that that assumption points to a mystical answer as to why a biological machine capable of what you assume is impossible exists.

But such assumptions are just based on preferences for a mystical answer - not any readily apparent truth.

Charles Darwin began the last paragraph of The Origin of Species (1859) with a famous metaphor about life's diversity and ecological complexity:
[INDENT]It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
[/INDENT]He then begins the final sentence of the book with an equally famous statement: "There is grandeur in this view of life...."

Oh dear.

How exactly can you create a machine that subjectively experiences?

I don't even think you have really understood what subjective experience is. Exactly how would it be possible for anything purely mechanical to subjectively experience?

I always find it amusing how people who are antithetical to religion always assume religious people believe what they believe because 'they want it to be true'.

I'm tremendously widely read, I've lead a tremendously diverse and eventful life, and the sum of everything I've read and experienced leads me to this conclusion, not a 'preference'.

Thomas Nagel, "The Last Word: A Cosmic Authority Problem":

...fear of religion...has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper-namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world"

Before the Darwinian revolution many biologists considered organic forms to be determined by natural law like atoms or crystals and therefore necessary, intrinsic and immutable features of the world order, which will occur throughout the cosmos wherever there is life. The search for the natural determinants of organic form-the celebrated "Laws of Form"-was seen as one of the major tasks of biology. After Darwin, this Platonic conception of form was abandoned and natural selection, not natural law, was increasingly seen to be the main, if not the exclusive, determinant of organic form. However, in the case of one class of very important organic forms-the basic protein folds-advances in protein chemistry since the early 1970s have revealed that they represent a finite set of natural forms, determined by a number of generative constructional rules, like those which govern the formation of atoms or crystals, in which functional adaptations are clearly secondary modifications of primary "givens of physics." The folds are evidently determined by natural law, not natural selection, and are "lawful forms" in the Platonic and pre-Darwinian sense of the word, which are bound to occur everywhere in the universe where the same 20 amino acids are used for their construction. We argue that this is a major discovery which has many important implications regarding the origin of proteins, the origin of life and the fundamental nature of organic form. We speculate that it is unlikely that the folds will prove to be the only case in nature where a set of complex organic forms is determined by natural law, and suggest that natural law may have played a far greater role in the origin and evolution of life than is currently assumed.

Let's look again at the idea of 'random mutations resulting in change from natural selection'. If this is said to be the only principle involved in the development of life, it reduces the whole engine of existence to chance.

I don't know.

But I don't know how to build a plane either, and 500 years ago I might well have thought mechanically powered flight a total impossibility.

But it would have been hubris to state that that was a given thing.

As the Wright Brothers proved.

I don't know.


But until you can exhaustively prove it cannot be done - requiring:

• a definition of consciousness and subjectivity we can all agree on
  
• arguments to show that all the philosophical arguments that doubt such things even truely exist are comprehensively invalidated
  
• proof that a healthy human mind is truely capable of such a thing
  
• proof to show no mechanical mind could ever be capable of such a thing despite the exponential increase of complexity and sophistication of computer minds and AI as recently as the last decade.
  

... then to be emphatic about it just not being possible is hubris too. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

• It might be impossible.
  
• It might be possible but we never find out how.
  
• It might occur soon that there is no way to distinguish between the sensitivity, decision making power, learning power and all other aspects of what gets labelled 'conciousness' apparent in a biological system such as the human brain (with working sense organs and nervous system) and the software and hardware setup of a powerful computer.
  

Hence you ASSUME it can't be done.

I'm not saying that such an assumption isn't a safe bet - but an assumption it remains.

But there are people better read, and more experienced than you who think differently.

And they might be utterly wrong.

Have you read Turing?

There are some real misconceptions here that need to be cleared up.

Presumably (and logically) from a scientific standpoint, the origin of LIFE comes from certain chemical and energetic conditions in which nucleic-acid based cells assembled, and developed mechanisms of self-replication. That's a purely mechanical thing. It's not genetic, and it certainly has nothing to do with mutation except insofar as the mutations ultimately led to the preservation of the most fit and stable subsets.

...nothing mechanical is self-replicating.

Able to replicate without outside assistance. Any cell can do this, and no machine can.

But we can imagine a machine that can, and thus we can create it.

I think the philosopher, and the scientist, (and also the magician, but I won't bring that up here) assume that everything operates according to principles. It is a matter of discerning them and learning how, on the one had, to operate in accordance with them, and secondly, to use them to our advantage if we possibly can.

So in some ways, anything is possible, provided we understand the principles. And this is often a very difficult thing to do.