Humanaturalism

Humanaturalism is Back

2012-01-16T18:01:00.000-05:00

Well, that was a bust. So much for the term panaturalism, which did not catch on at all, and I probably lost what little readership I had here. So "Humanaturalism" is back to stay. Besides, I have been reading more humanist literature recently, notably Greg Epstein's "Good Without God" and it has persuaded me I am really more of a humanist than I ever thought previously. Epstein explains that "humanism" does not imply a total focus on humanity at the expense of life and the web of nature of which humans are a part. And he advocates a "big tent" openness to all "lifestances," both religious and secular.

More soon, I hope...

Galloping Gaian Gonads!

2011-01-27T13:52:00.007-05:00

Paraphrasing one of Greg Bear's characters in his novel "The Forge of God": "Humans are the gonads of Gaia (mother Earth)." That is, we are her reproductive strategy. This may not be a huge insight, but I am tickled by his mode of expressing it! It resonates and echoes the heroism of those species who have spread life to the corners of the Earth, including the tiniest island habitats, by dint of clever efforts to transport themselves across vast expanses of ocean and atmosphere. Still, when it comes to interplanetary or even interstellar travel, among all the species on Earth, only humans have displayed the potential to accomplish such a feat of transportation.

This being the 25th anniversary of the Challenger accident, it is thought provoking to think back on that in this context. I was working then at Marshall Space Flight Center, which was responsible for shuttle propulsion systems, including the boosters that failed disastrously. So our management was involved in the decision to push ahead on that icy morning in Florida. We scientists were practicing talks for a conference when the word came in. It completely broke up our meeting, and later our management team.

As aspiring Gaian gonads, we have on a few occasions seemed to be vying for Darwin awards, instead, perhaps calling to older minds Woody Allen's satire "Everything you always wanted to know about sex...". Space exploration is indeed deadly dangerous, but so is war. Yet the former is certainly a more productive application of testosterone and youthful drive. Given that that we strive instinctively to test our mettle against mortal dangers, the challenge of space travel promises a form of "glory" for our species and planet that is far beyond the sometimes petty national and religious rivalries that have plagued us. Wouldn't we prefer to live up to our role in Gaia's reproductive strategy, than to become passive or active agents of its destruction? That's a very real and compelling definition of good and evil. It seems defensible that all ethical and political issues should be decided on the basis of the sanctity, advancement, and propagation of life in the universe.

But, and it's a big BUT, there may still be a compelling need for war, even in pursuit of a cosmic destiny to protect and propagate life in the universe. Just as a prudent young couple defers child rearing until they are prepared to take on its responsibilities, so must nations defer the pursuit of space travel analogously. And one of those responsibilities is the creation of a stable home in which the serious business of nurturing can be pursued successfully. In addition to requiring the establishment of a viable economic activity, adequate to support the effort, this may at times also require defense of the household against attacks.

Attacks might come from any quarter, even including other competing life forms in the universe, as Greg Bear points out. The local attacks may be motivated by entirely different issues from this ultimate cosmic objective. But there is a distinct trade to be made in expending some life on Earth in defense of a stable and productive civilization capable of advancing life in the universe. Still, on balance, we may suspect that that trade has for too long favored local national issues rather than the long term future of life on our planet and beyond. And, in view of that suspicion it seems well worth considering that the zero sum allocation of human wealth expended upon space exploration could be greatly increased without substantially compromising the safety and stability of civilization.

Free Will

2011-01-22T13:08:00.004-05:00

Any discussion of science, religion, and politics eventually comes around to the issue of "free will." According to religious traditions, free will was given by God to humans, as a test of their commitment to good and rejection of evil. From a scientific viewpoint, all behavior is a matter of the neurophysics of the brain, and c0nsciousness, and no behavior is free of that. Naturalists disparage free will as a concept, and see all human behavior as determined by inevitable responses to the environment. Political life demands that individuals take responsibility for their actions, unless they are declared "insane," meaning unable to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong. Libertarians and rugged individualists or positivists often dismiss the naturalist doubts about free will and insist that everyone is fully responsible for their own condition in this world, in a free society. A recent discussion board debate in which I participated went on for hundreds of posts without much resolution, to the point where the following position questionnaire was suggested. I've entered my responses:

What do you understand by the expression "free will"?
Free will is the ability of a living agent to take actions that are not controlled by other agents who have studied that behavior and sought to influence it. Thus, will is free to the degree that it is subject only to the constraints imposed by Nature, which cannot in any case be escaped, and free of social constraints, that is, constraints imposed by other sentient agents.

Do humans have it or not?
To the degree that "others" are absent, or if present, refrain from taking controlling interest in our actions, humans exercise free will. Thus free will is a matter of degree, rather than an either-or proposition, and should perhaps be referred to as "freedom of will", a parameter that can range from unity (only natural influences exclusive of other sentient agents), to zero (behavior essentially prescribed by other sentient agents, for example in a prison). On such a scale, humans have progressed from near unity in pre-history, to very low values in feudal times, and more recently are making progress back toward unity.

What is your logic and your evidence for your position?
Behavioral science has shown that behavior can be predicted to the degree that it is influenced or controlled through the arrangement of "imposed" positive and negative reinforcement as consequences of behavior. When it is so controlled, it not fully free, and conversely when it is not so controlled. The most elemental form of Human Rights is the right to freedom of behavior, albeit within certain limits set by society, which can vary greatly, and of course the dictates of the natural world, which are immutable and apply to all.

What is the practical consequence of your position for welfare and social policy?
Democracy sets the goal that freedom of will is to be maximized through the minimal constraint by the state or government of the behavior of individuals. The list of discouraged or punished behaviors should then be minimized by restriction to those with important harmful effects on others, as judged by a majority of those whose behavior is to be affected.

On the other hand, government creation of positive incentives is widely accepted as an influence on behavior, so the method of influencing behavior seems important. Positive reinforcement is equivalent to a negative reinforcement of the inverse behavior, so that any form of behavior modification can be seen as reducing the freedom of will. Still, humans have come to a collective understanding, supported by behavior modification science, that reinforcement of desired behavior is far preferable to punishment of undesired behavior, as a foundation of civilization.

Controversy often stems from the reinforcement of undesired behaviors, for example welfare payments, or other benefits that are perceived as undeserved. The issue here is not freedom of will, but the wisdom of incentives that are divorced from desired behaviors.

Conclusions
A phenomenon or behavior may be fully deterministic, yet if sufficiently complex, there may be no way to fully control or direct it but to "run the universe" and let it unfold. To the degree that is true, only an entity which controls the entire universe can exercise total control of our behavior. Thus only God, or the universe itself (if different) can control our behavior in the absence of civilization and other humans. By the definition above, such behavior is free, or as free as it gets.

When we take individual or collective action to alter the structure of the universe, we exert controls on our own behavior, or that of others. So it seems that we share control of ourselves with the rest of the universe, and to some degree we thus enjoy a limited freedom of will. One could perhaps argue that the universe "makes" us take action to alter it, so when we think we are changing our behavior we are still doing what the universe directed us to do. That might be true of beavers, ants, bees, or other industrious social species that restructure their environments, but I think it is stretching things to claim that all of human behavior is programmed in advance by our genetic capabilities, interacting with the external environment.

On the other hand, it seems defensible to claim that our abilities to derive, store, manipulate, and reuse information, much more rapidly than genetic information is processed, constitute a new capability that is exclusively human. That "playground for creativity" is seemingly independent of nature's DNA playground, and pretty much under our control. So I think we humans get to take credit and blame for what we do with it, both as individuals and collectively, as appropriate.

We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself

2010-12-28T12:29:00.000-05:00

Carl Sagan put it so succinctly, it may seem like a tautology. Well of course we are part of the Cosmos and we are conscious. So what? Who cares? But when this meme first crossed my path it seemed like an epiphany. Someone once said "any most fundamental discoveries will soon seem obvious" or words to that effect. Where did this meme Sagan was spreading come from originally?

It first came to me in a pamphlet for a talk given by Alan Watts, circa 1968. At first glance, it appeared to be simply another of those many trendy themes that enjoyed currency in the 60s, something about Zen and meditation, and all that New Age stuff. But something about this particular item really grabbed at me. The lines that stuck in my head, and have stayed there through some transmutations for over 40 years, were:

"We are not egos in bags of skin, who come into the world. We come out of the world, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean 'waves', the universe 'peoples'... We are the universe, become conscious of itself."

The first three sentences come directly from Watts' book, just then appearing, entitled "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are." The last sentence was there in the pamphlet I mentioned, but I cannot find it in that form anywhere in print, though Watts did write things like "we are the eyes and ears of the universe." But it is the most important part for me, and it left me with the conclusion that science was somehow more fundamental than engineering. I then would become a voyeur, rather than a creator, in part because Nature's creation was so much more impressive than the relatively simple and predictable creations of engineers.

I had been seduced by Alan Watt's (possibly drug-influenced) world view, as described in Wikipedia:

"In several of his later publications, especially Beyond Theology and The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Watts put forward a worldview, drawing on Hinduism, Chinese philosophy, pantheism, and modern science, in which he maintains that the whole universe consists of a cosmic self playing hide-and-seek (Lila), hiding from itself (Maya) by becoming all the living and non-living things in the universe, forgetting what it really is; the upshot being that we are all IT in disguise. In this worldview, Watts asserts that our conception of ourselves as "egos in a bag of skin" is a myth; the entities we call the separate "things" are merely processes of the whole."

One of those processes is seeing and comprehending what is seen, so that life lessons can be learned and survival fitness can be improved, but also just for the sheer enjoyment of reality and the appreciation of the magnificance of the universe. And that is where we come in as at least one of the sources of sensations and information that the universe compiles about itself. That information has, up until we humans arrived on the scene, been compiled in the form of DNA codes. Now we are augmenting that with all of human culture and its documentation, some of which may conceivably be as durable as DNA is.

Wikipedia notes that Watts was influenced by pantheism, the universe as supreme being, as was Carl Sagan. In his 1980's TV series, Cosmos, Sagan distilled it all into the bumper sticker title of this post. When Carl talked about the universe, you knew clearly that he was talking about "all that is or was or ever will be." Now that is almost by definition (barring a supernatural parallel universe) the greatest possible deity, of which all others can only be a part. And we are Its senses and memory, along with Its knowledge processing and storage system.

Season's Greetings!

2010-12-24T08:30:00.001-05:00

Panaturalist Epiphany

2010-10-18T18:33:00.005-04:00

How about a new 'blog title? Pan-naturalism came about during a discussion on the "Naturalism" facebook page, during which Cliff Andrew of the Annapolis UU church group asked the question: "If naturalism is your worldview, what do you call yourself." After a few iterations, it came to me as: "pan-naturalists" or panaturalists, that is, all-one-nature-ists. As interpreted by Tom Clark, that comes down to "nature is everything. I like it"

Compared with pantheism, we get rid of the theistic baggage. Compared with humanism, we spread the wings to embrace all of nature, living and inanimate, sentient or just heliotropic. And compared with simple naturalism, we make a clear distinction from the traditional nudist use of the term.

What do you think? Anyone?

Pro-Informed Choice

2010-05-02T10:31:00.009-04:00

This post is motivated by Kathleen Parker's linked Op-Ed from the Washington Post. She's a self-declared conservative columnist, who recently received a Pulitzer prize for her thought-provoking work, which is characterized by great sensitivity to both sides of divisive issues. Abortion must be the most agonizingly vexing ethical question any woman or couple will ever face. In my view the responsibility for this choice should not fall solely on the woman or even the couple involved. It seems to me there should be an ethical support system, to assist in the decision, in a civilized society. There is a deep ethical issue involved, which does not fall solely within the realm of individual or couples rights but involves society and its values as well. The big issue concerns the fair treatment of all interests in the decision.

The current wisdom is that this decision is between the individual woman and her doctor. The reproductive partner is included in the decision at the woman's option. It seems to me that an ethics adviser should also be involved, as a representative of society at large and a voice for ethics. This is especially true if the abortion will be performed by publicly funded health care facilities and personnel.

I agree that any woman who determines that she wants an abortion should be qualified for one. By declaring as much, she has declared her disinterest in raising the child, which may be reason enough not to give birth to one. And yet, we don't always know what we want and may need help determining what that is, or understanding other options that may be available. Getting an ethics counselor involved would help everyone to decide what they really want before they go through with an irrevocable act. However, this approach is subject to the criticism that it often turns into coercion that influences the decision.

Now some states are taking up this matter and proposing or requiring in some cases that women be fully informed about their fetuses before making a decision. That is, they are in some cases being required to view an ultrasound diagnostic of their fetus's condition and state, and receive a physician's assessment on the specific matter of their fetus, before having an abortion. Kathleen Parker's linked Op-Ed covers the details well. The new approach of requiring that the simple facts of the situation be determined prior to an abortion seems like a promising way to reach the "common ground" that President Obama has suggested is possible. It is consistent with my sense of ethics on this issue, and seems like the right thing to do. It satisfies my sense that some reflection on the facts of the matter is essential when facing a huge decision point in three or more lives.

Ethereality

2010-04-05T19:35:00.002-04:00

Preparing for our recent Robert Frost Dinner (26 March was his birthday), I found the following Frost poem in my 1967 anthology, a gift from my mother. Though written back at about the time I was born, this poem is a whimsical meditation that is just as germane to our current infatuation with information technologies and consumption of ethereal media such as music and cinema. Frost clearly dreams of being free of his physical body, the better to compose abstract verse. But he likens that state of freedom from the flesh to "evolution's opposite extreme", the jellyfish.

I like his use of the word "ethereal." To me it signifies something that is distinct from material reality; something in the realm of ideas, concepts, explanations, models of reality; that is, information. There's nothing supernatural about this meaning of ethereal. But it's a part of reality that is unique to living things with DNA that takes notes, and humans with their own kinds of notes, including poetry.

Etherealizing

A theory if you hold it hard enough
And long enough gets rated as a creed:
Such as that flesh is something we can slough
So that the mind can be entirely freed.

Then when the arms and legs have atrophied,
And brain is all that's left of mortal stuff,
We can lie on the beach with the seaweed
And take our daily tide baths smooth and rough.

There once we lay as blobs of jellyfish
At evolution's opposite extreme.
But now as blobs of brain we'll lie and dream,
With only one vestigial creature wish:

Oh, may the tide be soon enough at high
To keep our abstract verse from being dry!

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions | Video on TED.com

2010-03-29T20:57:00.003-04:00

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions | Video on TED.com

We know and agree on the goals of human culture. We want collectively to survive and thrive and become all we can be; the same thing we want for our gardens and pastures. And just as horticulture is a scientific approach to gardening and animal husbandry, human culture could perfectly well be a scientific approach to getting what we want out of life. Neither specifies in detail how each plant or animal or human should behave. But it does specify how the gardener should behave in the face of threats to the health of the garden, and why, in each and every case. There is no reason to invoke the will of another in this; in the case of human culture, we do it for our own sakes and because we know how, and it’s time we admitted as much. This is what I believe Sam Harris is saying here.

The Poetry of Reality

2010-03-24T20:21:00.001-04:00

John Boswell's remix series continues with a new video that focuses on Science as a human activity and the most effective method for gaining knowledge known to humankind.

The Unbroken Thread

2010-03-13T13:17:00.001-05:00

So now there is a fourth "symphony of science" by John Boswell, this time with David Attenborough and Jane Goodall, with the poshumously peripatetic Carl Sagan. Here are some of the best lines:

"Those are some of the things that molecules do, given 4 billion years of evolution." [Sagan]
"Its a very wuzzy line and it's getting wuzzier all the time." [Goodall]
"Our planet is, as far as we know, unique in the universe; it contains life" [Attenborough]
"Its continued survival now rests in our hands." [Attenborough]

"There's an unbroken thread from those first cells to us." This is Sagan's line and it is taken as the theme of this symphony. That's what we've learned about the genetic code: that while it is ever changing, it is also eternal. It's as if a notebook was opened at the creation, and it has been gathering notes continuously ever since. The number of copies has expanded, seemingly without limit, though in practice there are of course limits, especially on each genomic variation. But overall, the notebook proliferates and each new note adds to the storehouse of information about what works and what does not work for life on this planet. And each individual has their own copy and makes contributions that are realized in new copies of the genome. Darwin may not have known about the molecular machinery, but he certainly grasped the essence of the situation when he wrote:

"There is grandeur in this view of life..as the Earth has gone on cycling... from so simple a beginning, endless forms most wonderful and beautiful have been, and are being evolved." -- Charles Darwin, 1872

A Universal Golden Rule?

2010-03-08T20:44:00.005-05:00

I came across the figure on a facebook UU page. It's from a poster that can be obtained in larger sizes, presumably large enough to be able to read the different translations of the golden rule in the various faiths and philosophies. Or you can get the texts here. But the idea is plain enough. To me it echoes the message of a bumper sticker I like and have on my car, showing several of these symbols in a row that spells out "Coexist". I used to have a bumper sticker that says "Slow for Tailgaters," but replaced it with this one when I found it.

The quality of the drivers in Maryland disappoints me greatly. This week at the first stop light I come to on my way to work, there were two cars in front of me. The first in line was timid about turning on red, because of oncoming traffic. The second in line beeped his horn at the first car several times. Finally, the driver of the first car opened his door and got out, stood up, and looked back at the second car driver reprovingly. Whereupon, the second car pulled to the left around the first car and then made the right turn on red that he so fervently wanted, getting some rubber as he sped off. The standing driver of the first car stood there and watched him drive off, perhaps making a gesture at him, though I'm a bit foggy about that detail. By this time I was getting antsy and considering whether some additional horn blowing was called for! But then we were off into the morning rush hour traffic with reconsidered priorities.

I guess I'm just offering this as an example of coarse behavior that could certainly benefit from a more universal adherence to the golden rule in everyday life. It is so easy for selfish behavior to turn into anger and retaliation, and worse. Clearly it is anything but instinctive for us to exercise golden rule consideration for others. We need to be taught and to learn the advantages of that approach. Most faiths teach it, but sadly few individuals can see the advantage to it when faced with bad behavior.

Conquering Pandora

2009-12-29T20:01:00.011-05:00

Avatar is a great, possibly a landmark movie, IMHO, and that of others and still others. It turns the tables completely on our history of science fiction about aliens, in which we express our fears of being exploited and conquered by an alien race, while demonizing them so we can deal with them as savages, should they appear. Think War of the Worlds, or Independence Day, The Matrix, or even Men in Black. In a stroke of genius, this movie asks "what would humans do" if they reached an alien world that was miraculously rich in "unobtainium" and populated only by simple aboriginal folk who do not even practice agriculture, to say nothing of high technology. Three guesses... Are we not the folks who corrupted the Golden Rule into: "do unto others before they can do it unto you!" It would be minutes before we began to mine the place; and to hell with the natives.

The movie is widely regarded as belonging to the genre of "Dances with Wolves," "Pocahontas," and other White Guilt stories in which an officer of the oppressing people "goes native' and joins the aboriginals in their struggle against his own people. The movie is also rich in references to American behavior on the world stage, especially in recent years, when questions arose along the lines of: "how did our oil get under their sand?" and when we concluded that the only acceptable response to a perceived risk was preemptive war.

Scientists play an interesting and typical role in Avatar, serving as enablers of war and exploitation even as they, themselves exploit the interests of others in support of their own fascinations. That's just as true on Avatar as it was in Peenemünde, Baikonur, Los Alamos, or Huntsville. One wonders if we can adapt to the apparent lack of others out there to exploit, or if we will go on girding to defend ourselves from perceived threats, as an excuse for exploitation, here on Earth and beyond it.

But the movie also made me think of that ultimate exercise in White European Guilt, the modern move to regard Columbus as a villain who upset the balance of nature in the New World by launching the extermination of Native Americans. And I know of no better expression of that view than a song by Tracy Chapman, called simply: America. Tracy never avoids or turns away from dark thoughts. She faces them and revels in them. Here are the lyrics and a link to the song. Tracy even manages to anticipate the theme of Avatar here, calling us down for our selfish motives as we begin to explore space.

AMERICA

You were lost and got lucky
Came upon the shore
Found you were conquering America
You spoke of peace
But waged a war
While you were conquering America

There was land to take
And people to kill
While you were conquering America
You served yourself
Did God's will
While you were conquering America

The ghost of Columbus haunts this world
'Cause you're still conquering America
The meek won't survive
Or inherit the earth
'Cause you're still conquering America

America
America
America

Your found bodies to serve
Submit and degrade
While you were conquering America
Made us soldiers and junkies
Prisoners and slaves
While you were conquering America

America
America
America

You hands are at my throat
My back's against the wall
Because you're still conquering America
We're sick and tired hungry and poor
'Cause you're still conquering America

You bomb the very ground
That feeds your own babies
You're still conquering America
Your sons and your daughters
May never sing your praises
While you're conquering America

America
America
America

I see you eyes seek a distant shore
While you're conquering America
Taking rockets to the moon
Trying to find a new world
And you're still conquering America

America
America
America

The ghost of Columbus haunts this world
'Cause you're still conquering America
You're still conquering America
You're still conquering America

© 2001 Tracy Chapman

The Pledge of Citizenship

2009-11-28T10:07:00.007-05:00

Some Americans have problems with the content of The Pledge of Allegiance, and I'm among them, though I won't admit to any lack of commitment to my country or its founding principles. The Pledge always made me feel conflicted, for reasons I could never articulate well. Now there are some interesting ideas circulating about this, one of which can be summarized by the question: "Shouldn't the government pledge allegiance to the people rather than the other way around?" The following is a clipping from an article by Michael Lind that ran on 16 Nov 2009 at http://www.salon.com

"While a pledge of allegiance by the subject to the government is incompatible with American republican principles, a voluntary pledge of mutual support among the people who collectively create and own the government might be useful, if only as a succinct catechism of the American Creed. [With selected wording from the US Declaration of Independence,] if we replace the topical phrase "this Declaration" with a reference to the enduring principles of republican liberty, we might get something like this:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. And for the support of these principles, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

"Call this purely voluntary pledge the Citizens' Pledge of Mutual Support for the Principles of the Declaration of Independence, or simply, The Citizens' Pledge. It would be addressed by Americans directly to one another, rather than to the flag or any other symbol of the state. Oh, and if you give a stiff-armed salute, you'll be sent to the principal's office.

Here's a suggested short "Pledge of Citizenship" that might be "memorizable" for voluntary recital on appropriate occasions.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal, and endowed with unalienable Rights;
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness;
that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted;
that they derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
In support of these principles, we mutually pledge to each other,
our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

And Then There Were Three

2009-11-28T09:43:00.006-05:00

A third John Boswell composition on science has now appeared at symphony of science. It's a bit slower and moodier that the first two efforts I featured. All three are on the link you get clicking the title here. And it has also been announced that a collaboration with the great Jack White and friends at Third Man Records, in Nashville, TN led to release of a 7" vinyl single of the song "A Glorious Dawn," featuring a special etching of the Voyager Golden Record cover on the B-side. This makes for a great collector's item, and a novel way to experience the song as well. It was released 11/9, on Sagan's 75th birthday.

Ann Druyan and Jack White apparently collaborated on this so we can now breath a sigh of relief that there will not be legal problems concerning these remixes of Cosmos and other materials. You can go to the Third Man Records site to learn more about the release: http://www.thirdmanrecords.com/news.html

And to their store to order it: http://www.thirdmanrecords.com/store.html

The Symphony of Science

2009-10-27T20:30:00.004-04:00

Well, it's been a while, but I haven't gone away. These two pieces of remix work by John Boswell, who has a home page here, is something special. It echoes and greatly amplifies some materials I have linked from the opening of the Cosmos series (lower right column), but Boswell has added music in a very pleasing way, at least to me. And millions of others agree, as these short music videos are wildly popular on YouTube. In any case, it is really wonderful to see such creativity invested in Cosmos, and also the really great segments added in from Richard Feynman's interviews, from Bill Nye's material, and from Neil Tyson's work. I hope you enjoy these if you stumble in here, and let's hope that these materials create a big wake in the universe, of people who have been "turned on" to science and it's spiritual side.

Values Expressed by The Election of 2008

2009-02-28T12:07:00.003-05:00

It seems the election is sufficiently "over", and the new administration sufficiently "underway" for some reflection on what happened and how things are going. Most of our attention is being directed to the financial crisis, the stock market, and varying prescriptions for recovery. Suffice it to say here that I regard the crisis as a symptom of Republican values concerning the military pursuit of idealistic goals, privatization of government functions, the right of the wealthy to increase their wealth and decrease their numbers, and the Ayn Randian prescription that whatever works for personal ambition (and greed) is best for humanity. 'Nuff said. Now on to a couple of items that have cropped up this week.

First item: neocons have been resoundingly discredited by the election, but have they been replaced by dogmatic ideologue realists? That's one wag's view. He says that Obama has made a big mistake in appointing such a realist, Charles Freeman, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Realists, he says, are completely blind to any idealistic motivations that the electorate may harbor, and see US self-interest as the only guide for foreign policy. In his view the idealism of the American electorate is legitimately important in some decisions about foreign policy, but totally opaque to realists. This is expressed in his most memorable line: "Consider, perhaps, if eunuchs tried to explain the way teenage boys act around girls." Nice; I'm sure this will forever endear Jon Chait to realists everywhere.

IMHO, American idealism tends strongly to be either hypocritical (we think we can "impose" democracy on others), or proselytizing (we have sent Christian missionaries to Muslim nations since antebellum times!). With that record, American idealism is always suspect in my mind, so I'm firmly in the realist camp. And I'm not at all sure that Freeman's take on Tienanmen Square amounts to a "reductio ad absurdum." After all, what happens in the USA when a disruptive demonstration occurs? Can anyone remember the 1968 Democratic National Convention?

Second item: It seems that the Obama administration is raising hackles by making Federal aid to localities blind to local rules on health profession "conscientious objection". That is, Federal aid will no longer be withheld from localities that discipline health workers who refuse to do assigned duties on grounds of conscientious objection. The Bush admin. measure to withhold Federal aid was principally directed at abortion related duties, but was broadly written enough to limit family planning, blood transfusions, and end-of-life treatment issues, according to the linked article.

IMHO, conscientious objection should be expressed by refraining from the activity that requires the offending services. For example, where would we be if conscientious objection to military service was acceptably expressed by active military personnel? Conscientious objection is not only a rationale for deferrment from military duty, it is a disqualification from military service. Those who are squeamish about those actions involved in providing professional health care should similarly steer clear of careers in the health professions. Instead, under the Bush administration, they were indulged as a means of harrassing the medical profession. The new adminstration's initiative to eliminate this harrassment is arguably at odds with its expressed intent to "find common ground." On the other hand, we can hope that the common ground will be sought in a more direct way of addressing the simultaneous legality and undesirability of abortion.

Third item: the new administration has announced plans to proceed with removal of most US troops within 18 month (vs. 16 months suggested during the election), and entirely within 36 months. This timetable is sufficiently close to that suggested by the Bush administration, and advocated by the Iraqi government, that we should be able to accept a certain convergence of views on this. Yet some pundits are claiming that Obama, in admitting that Iraq is now "winnable," has also accepted responsibility for the successful completion of the military action in Iraq.

IMHO, the administration is making good on its promise to end the war, and to do it in the most constructive way possible, which involves a certain buy-in to the Bush administration goals for the war. This in no way is an endorsement of the war, or an acceptance of full responsibility for it and all its outcomes. If the war eventually reflects well on the Bush administration through the eyes of history, so be it. But it will be exceptionally difficult to separate the war and its conduct from the financial crisis that has engulfed the USA and the entire world. Vice president Cheney famously opined that "deficits don't matter." But it is difficult for me to escape the conclusion that the reckless pursuit of idealistic goals by military actions in foreign lands is likely to be more costly than we reckon when we begin them, and indeed more costly than we would willingly afford in the absence of an overwhelming national interest in the outcome.

The Hall of Mirrors

2008-03-16T10:33:00.006-04:00

It is said that true consciousness requires conscious of itself. Short of that, it is only sentience or awareness of what is outside. A flower or a tree is sentient. For example, consider phototropism of plants. But is a plant aware of its own phototropism? Not likely. In the animal kingdom, it is more obvious that sentience exists, but is it consciousness? Perhaps in some cases it is, but we have no proof of self-consciousness until language is used to describe the experience of the self to others. Of the animals, only apes and dolphins have learned some of our language; and we have not learned the language of any other species, as far as I know. We consider our language to be the very measure of intelligent consciousness. And self-consciousness brings the capability to question one's desires and choices, which is to say, to plan and influence one's own behavior. Without that degree of self-examination, how can we speak of free will? This is attention to what Keith Stanovich refers to as "second order desires," which he sees as distinguishing us from animals. We can seek to improve on our Autonomic Set of Systems, and try not to be such ASSes.

Most of us experience a certain fascination with the "hall of mirrors" effect, which appears when two mirrors near alignment so that they reflect into each other. We can peer around the edge of one mirror and see ourselves repeated many time over, like those industrious broom clones in Disney's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Human intrigues begin with trying to outguess another in a form of gamesmanship. We say "I could do A. But you probably know I will do A so you will do B to counter me. So I will do C instead, to keep you guessing. But then you might guess that I have guessed that you have guessed what I will do. So perhaps I should do something different?" It doesn't take much recursion to create a lot of confusion, and we have to decide how far to go. But this kind of thought process permeates the interactions among conscious (self-aware) individuals. It is perhaps most evident in games like Chess, where anticipating the moves of one's opponent is critically important to play an effective game. And in team sports or business, one must successfully anticipate the moves of one's teammates as well. So perhaps it is not just the consciousness of self that is key here, but the consciousness of being conscious of self, and of others and their consciousness. It was with this in mind that I took the self-portrait using my computer's web camera.

Another thing I had in the back of my mind was imagery from M C Escher's graphical work, which I have loved ever since I was presented with a book of it as a college graduation present. While Escher seems not to have ever drawn the "hall of mirrors" he was fascinated with reflections, especially from curved surfaces, and did a number of works that feature them. It always intrigued me that Escher chose to give a glimpse of himself and his world, embedded within his drawings. So in this world of blogs and social networking, where one puts out an image of oneself through the things one posts, I have posted a photograph here that I intend as an expression of my own consciousness. Think of it as taking the narcissism of the web a step further, an assertion of confidence. Rather late in a life of excessively self-conscious anxiety, I have found a lot of comfort in my own skin, and it feels great.

Some would call me a cheat, call me a liar
Say that I've been defeated by the basest desires
Yes I have strayed and succumbed to my vices
But I tried to live right

But I have no regrets, no guilt in my heart
I only feel sadness for any pain that I've caused
I guess I wouldn't bother to worry at all
If I'd lived right

Do you live by the book, do you play by the rules?
Do you care what is thought by others about you?
If this day is all that is promised to you
Do you live for the future, the present, the past?

If there is one thing I know, I know I will die
If anyone cares some stranger may critique my life
I may be revered or defamed and decried
But I tried to live right

There would be psalms sung by a choir
I would have a white robe, a halo newly acquired
I'd be at peace and I'd have no desire
If I'd lived right...

Unsung Psalm by Tracy Chapman

The Robot's Rebellion

2008-02-03T18:07:00.001-05:00

In a new book, Keith Stanovich of U. Toronto invokes a "Robot's Rebellion" as way of "finding meaning in the age of Darwin". I learned of the book through a Point of Inquiry podcast distributed by the Center for Inquiry, which can be accessed with the link attached to the title of this post.

I still haven't read this book, but have at least scanned the table of contents carefully and listened to the POI podcast a couple of times with attention to detail. It's a fascinating book and I am going to buy it if I can't find it otherwise, but my current feeling is that the thesis is fundamentally flawed. That's unfortunate, but perhaps the book leads us in the right direction in any case.

The basic idea is an extension of Richard Dawkins' concept of "the selfish gene" using the concept of memes, also credited to Dawkins, who set up an adversary relationship with our genetic code, by attributing "selfishness" to a macromolecule. Stanovich sets out to help us find meaning in world where evolution is held to be a fact of life. He suggests this can be achieved if humans will seize control of their lives from their genes and memes, and insist on guiding themselves instead. Much as I love Dawkins prose and his delightful explorations of evolutionary science, his supposed deep insight into sociobiology now seems misguided to me. As engaging as Stanovich's writing also may be, I'm suspicious than any meaning that is found in this way may well be misguided.

Not everyone is enamored with the idea of memes. A chapter subheading from "Robots' Rebellion" is "The ultimate meme trick: Why your memes want you to hate the idea of memes." So Stanovich would hold that many have fallen into this "trick" that memes play on us. They don't "want" us to understand that a host can be taken over by an idea that treats its carrier solely for the immediate advantage of the parasite. The joining of religious cults, and suicide bombings, are cases in point.

So what is the fundamental flaw? Well, let me quote Peter Fields: "Those who are not proud of their heritage will never amount to anything, because they are in contempt of themselves from the start." This may be a bit sentimental, but I think it is a profoundly huge mistake to adopt an adversarial relationship with our genetic heritage, regarding one's own genes as an alien replicator that has "taken over the body" for its own purposes. Shades of "Men in Black"! Here we must hold Richard Dawkins responsible as the source of the "selfish gene" meme, which is at the root of this mistake.

It's a natural enough error, until we recognize that a human body could never have been assembled in the first place without the presence of the genetic information. It's not as if a pre-existing and self-sufficient body has been invaded by an alien parasite. Rather the genes have guided the development of the material body with which they are able to preserve and propagate themselves. The body and the genes cannot be separated into distinct entities with different interests; they are the same. It could just as well (and erroneously) be argued that the dumb matter of the world has exploited the information contained in foundling scraps of DNA to assemble itself into living bodies.

Stanovich argues for a robot's rebellion, in which humans would extrapolate the evolution meme to take over from the genes who are exploiting us against our better interests. He imagines that this will release us from the constraints of "subpersonal" optimization, by which I think he means the interests of genes in expanding and developing the gene pool and the species. This will, in his view, free us to be more rational beings who figure out what we want for ourselves and pursue it. This concept has a lot of appeal as it echoes the spirit of the 60's counterculture within which many of us matured (or failed to do so). It rejects the wisdom of "anyone over 30" and challenges us to figure things out for ourselves and find new solutions.

But this looks all wrong to me from my present perspective. Genes and memes are distinguished by their temporal orientation and scale. Instead of being "selfish" invaders, genes are encyclopedias of the accumulated wisdom of the ages, distilled into individually unique, yet thematically consistent, forms that have dealt effectively with reality to sustain and propagate life. One of the resultant life forms has now developed its own facility for the creation and storage of information in encyclopedias, known as memes or memeplexes. Some of the memes provide models of reality that support successful prediction of the future, and how it depends on our current actions. And that allows us to practice rationality on a new time basis that is forward looking rather than backward looking, that is, experience based.

Bottom line: thinking of ourselves as robots planning a revolt is both demeaning and dumb. It's wiser by far to heed the message of the genes, while looking ahead to predictable changes that could revise genetic wisdom and allow "anticipatory adaptation". Perhaps it can be said that a truly intelligent species goes beyond trial and error.

Oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve

2008-01-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

My uncle-in-law forwarded me this provocative piece of nonsense:

"A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.
~~~
Well, there's a very simple answer.
~~~
Nobody bothered to check the oil.
~~~
We just didn't know we were getting low.
~~~
The reason for that is purely geographical.
~~~
Our OIL is located in Alaska, California, Coastal Florida, Coastal Louisiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas
~~~
But Our DIPSTICKS are located in Washington , DC !!!
Any Questions ???"

Well, that made me check into my conventional liberal wisdom, and I came up with my typically wonkish rebuttal:

It's easy for folks to blow the type up to 40 points and color it, but it doesn't make the conclusion a "no-brainer". It makes it an "urban legend". But as always, don't take my word for it:

Wikipedia on "Peak Oil"
Wikipedia on Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve Controversy
Petroleum News on World Reserves
American University on Alaskan Reserves

From the above:
* Most optimistic world supply: ~75 yrs = 2300 Billion barrels / 30 Bb/yr
* Most optimistic supply in ANWR: 0.5 yr = 15 Billion barrels / 30 Bb/yr
30 Bb/yr worldwide is the current production rate, which could increase a bit if we invest in more capacity. But the world supply estimates have been constant since the 60's, so don't delude yourself about unknown supplies saving us. The projections include future discoveries using models based on experience.

So the Alaskan National Wildlife/Oil Reserve is pretty much a drop in the bucket on a global, or even national scale, since we consume much of the world's supply, or did until recent increases in China and India. And now Indians are making a $2500 car that many more can afford. That's about the price of a dual sequential gearbox for a VW, Audi, BMW!?

The naturalist/liberal prescription for the ANWR is then: "let's save it for a far rainier day than today." Damn, we're beginning to sound like conservatives, while the conservatives are dancing around the bonfire chanting "burn it, Burn It, BURN IT!"

It's a topsy turvey world!

Tom
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Phillip K Dick

The Metaphysics of Quality Rears its Head Again

2008-01-07T21:45:00.001-05:00

Ok, I admit it: beyond college courses, my philosophical awakening was "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and I'm a sucker for Robert Pirsig. I bought Lila in '91 or '92, but I must admit it made less impression on me than ZAMM did. However, I recently came across someone touting the Metaphysics of Quality as a way of resolving the apparent gulf between science and religion, and I zeroed in on that, visited the MoQ.org site, pulled out my copy of Lila, and began to root around to see if it had anything to say with which I now identify.

I clearly recall the single biggest message I took from ZAMM. It comes from an episode that is fresh in my mind after 30 years plus (which, if Steve Grand is right, means that none of the atoms of my present body were part of my body back then!). The traveling companions of Phaedrus and his son develop loose handlebars on their BMW motorcycle. It seems that some shim stock is required so that the handlebar clamp can regain a grip on the bars. Now, the BMW Company likes to cultivate an aura of high quality surrounding its products, and likes to charge a premium for that aura. Part of this is a strident insistence that only approved parts and supplies should be used on BMWs, and that only approved BMW mechanics should work on them, to assure observance of BMW's ultra high quality standards. Well, Phaedrus proposed to cut a shim from an aluminum beer or pop can, but this approach was roundly rejected by the owner of the BMW, who insists on taking the bike to a certified BMW dealer where the repair is made, presumably using "official BMW shim stock" (made from aluminum can stock?). From this I took the message that Quality is a concept that can be manipulated and misunderstood. An yet, there is a clear recognition that quality is very important, difficult as it may be to define.

Now I've done a bit more reading on the MoQ site, especially the essay collection, including "Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality," by Anthony McWatt from the Philosophy post-grad Seminar, University of Liverpool, February 12th 1998. After a lot of general discussion and background, he gets down to a Socratic Q&A exchange with himself:

How do [Pirsig's] four static patterns of quality relate? (intellectual, social, biological and inorganic)

The MOQ recognizes that the four static patterns of quality are related through cosmological EVOLUTION. A graphical representation is offered for this:

If the Big Bang is taken as the starting point of the universe, it is seen that at this point of time there were only inorganic quality patterns. That is to say chemicals and quantum forces. Since then, at successive stages of history, plants and animals have evolved from inorganic patterns, societies have evolved from biological patterns, and intellect has evolved from societies. "...the universe is evolving from a condition of low quality (quantum forces only, no atoms, pre-big bang) toward a higher one (birds, trees, societies and thoughts) and in a static sense (world of everyday affairs) these two are not the same." (letter from Robert Pirsig to Anthony McWatt, March 23rd, 1997)

As the cosmologist, Edward Kolb notes: "In perhaps nature's most miraculous transformation, the universe evolved the capacity to ponder and understand itself." ("Astronomy", February 1998, p.37)

Well! that sounds a lot like Alan Watts and Carl Sagan, who both waxed eloquent about the role of humans as the conscience of the universe. I don't care much for Pirsig's nomenclature, and I would identify biological "static quality patterns" (SQP) as being equivalent to DNA information and its refinement through evolution. And, in my view, social SQP are equivalent to the social organization of living things into communities. Finally, intellectual SQP are equivalent on the written literature of humankind, which undergoes a refinement process much like that of the information in DNA, except that it is edited much more frequently and without life and death, except possibly for memes. Of these, you can see that I'm having the most trouble finding a form of information that is social in nature.

But the next question is:

Why is evolution an important consideration in the MOQ?

Evolution is an important consideration in the MOQ as a code of ethics can be generated from the four basic levels of quality patterns. Though each level of static patterns have emerged from the one below, each level follows its own different rules i.e. there are physical laws such as gravity (inorganic), the laws of the jungle (biology), co-operation between animals (society), and the ideas of freedom and rights (intellect). It is important to note that the different laws of the four static levels often clash e.g. adultery (biological good) v. family stability (social good). The MOQ combines the four levels of patterns to produce one overall moral framework based on an evolutionary hierarchy (as seen on the MOQ diagram). The entity that has more freedom on the evolutionary scale (i.e. the one that is more Dynamic) is the one that takes moral precedence. So, for instance, a human being is seen as having moral precedence over a dog because a human being is at a higher level of evolution...

The MOQ follows a form of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" where the fittest is equated with the best. As Pirsig points out: "...'survival of the fittest' is one of those catch-phrases... that sounds best when you don't ask precisely what it means. Fittest for what? Fittest for survival? That reduces to 'survival of the survivors', which doesn't say anything. 'Survival of the fittest' is only meaningful only when 'fittest' is equated with the 'best', which is to say 'Quality'." (Robert Pirsig, LILA, Black Swan, 1991, rep.1994, p.179)

On the other hand, Darwin defined "fitness" this way: "it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change".

In this context, the best generally refers to the choice which produces the most freedom for a given situation. It is an increase of freedom all the way. For instance, quantum forces can change their energy levels, earthworms can control their distance and direction, birds are able to fly in the sky while people manage to get to the moon.

"The MOQ says, as does Buddhism, that the best place on the wheel of karma is the hub and not the rim where one is thrown about by the gyrations of everyday life. But the MOQ sees the wheel of karma as attached to a cart that is going somewhere - from quantum forces through inorganic forces and biological patterns and social patterns to the intellectual patterns that perceive the quantum forces.

In the sixth century B.C. in India there was no evidence of this kind of evolutionary progress, and Buddhism, accordingly, does not pay attention to it. Today it's not possible to be so uninformed. The suffering which the Buddhists regard as only that which is to be escaped, is seen by the MOQ as merely the negative side of the progression toward Quality (or, just as accurately, the expansion of quality). Without the suffering to propel it, the cart would not move forward at all." (letter from Robert Pirsig to Anthony McWatt, March 23rd 1997)

I find these ideas a bit fuzzy, but it seems to me they can be made more rigorous by identifying "freedom" with "free will" and a propensity to freely respond to change, as Darwin posed it.

And finally:

So what's the value of such a moral framework?

By removing morals from social convention and placing them on a scientifically based theory of evolution the MOQ removes much of the cultural subjectivity that is inherent in many ethical beliefs.

Pirsig produces the following example:

"Is it immoral, as the Hindus and Buddhists claim, to eat the flesh of animals? Our current morality would say it's immoral only if you're a Hindu or a Buddhist. Otherwise its OK, since morality is nothing more than social convention."

"An evolutionary morality, on the other hand, would say it's scientifically immoral for everyone because animals are at a higher level of evolution, that is, more Dynamic than are grains and fruits and vegetables. But... it would add ... that this moral principle holds only where there is an abundance of grains and fruit and vegetables. It would be immoral for Hindus not to eat their cows in a time of famine, since they would then be killing human beings in favor of a lower organism." (Robert Pirsig, LILA, Black Swan, 1991, rep.1994, p.190/191)

Lila is billed as "An inquiry into Morals" and Pirsig is clearly trying to devise an objective source of morals by basing it on Quality of life and evolutionary science. So he postulates an evolutionary ordering of life forms, a pecking order of "who may eat whom for dinner." If nothing else, this is certainly an effective rationalization for human omnivorousness!

To wrap this up, note that I have mapped Pirsig's quality patterns into a hierarchy of information. For inorganic SQPs, there is no memory or medium in which to store information. When DNA came to be used as a genetic storage medium, nature began to take notes on its progress with replicating life forms, and to keep and preserve the notes from generation to generation, and to practice mutation with natural selection. The result is 3.5 billion years of evolution that has recently produced a species that keeps its own notes from generation to generation and is busily refining them using a process analogous to evolution, but using memes in place of genes. The editing is going on much more rapidly than once per generation, however, so the pace of change has speeded up greatly.

All of which is a very long preamble to the overall point I'd like to make, which I believe to be supported by the Metaphysics of Quality. And my point is that DNA plays the role that humans have previously ascribed to an "immortal soul". The genome is scrupulously specific to each individual, is preserved for millions and billions of years so that it can be refined through selection, and is a ghostly reality that can be copied from physical medium to physical medium, with no substance of its own. As argued by Richard Dawkins and artificial intelligence expert Steve Grand, matter is merely "used" by genes and memes to propagate and test themselves. While not entirely satisfying as an analogue of the immortal soul of religion, the genome clearly shares many characteristics of that hypothetical construct, and is the closest thing we are likely to find to a scientifically defensible "soul" of each living thing.

A Matter of Taste?

2007-12-31T17:16:00.000-05:00

I came upon a seminal bit of Phillip Johnson's stuff over at ScienceMusings.com (Blog) today in a piece called "Miracles" or in the comments on it. I've linked the object of the discusion in the title of this post. Here Johnson makes the case that science does not disprove religious dogma and the supernatural; it simply assumes it to be irrelevant, through its materialist focus. It seems a fair point to me. Is it possible that science is an overreaction to the realization that humans are biased to see intentionality in everything that happens? Is science immune to admitting any possibility of a supreme and supernatural being, by assumption? It certainly could be that's true.

If so, it is clearly by application of Occam's razor, which posits that the simpler story is always to be preferred, when faced with a choice of two different interpretations, in the absence of any clear differentiating evidence. Note the qualifiers on that statement. A good intelligent design advocate would say that complexity is of itself evidence of intention and design. Whereas, a good scientist would say that complexity can arise naturally and that self-organization is a property of matter in some circumstances. It's even a property of numbers and algorithms, clear of any matter.

So it seems that the biggest questions must be answered as matters of personal taste and the making of bets on the future, unless or until direct evidence can be found. We have our choice of attributing that which we cannot otherwise account to deliberate intentionality on the part of a supreme being, or we can regard it as a challenge to explain otherwise. That is, we can blame spooks, gremlins, or gods if we like, with no apparent guilt concerning the lack of evidence. Or we can blame the inherent complexity of nature and vow to keep seeking to understand what we do not now understand.

Your choice! But I hope you'll pardon me if I regard ID advocates as quitters and nay-sayers who would find the universe unsatisfying if its ultimate mysteries were removed. And yet, there is common ground here, if scientists and materialists would admit that part of what they find fascinating about the universe is that which we still do not understand.

Carl Sagan Blogathon, Year 2

2007-12-25T20:41:00.000-05:00

However it came about, I'm really happy and excited to see that Cosmos will be on cable during prime time this holiday season (Discovery Science channel). Perhaps last year's decadal observance helped to make it happen. But I think in the future, it might be well to observe Carl's date of birth (9 Nov) rather than that of his death. Isn't that what we do for great people we wish to remember?

In any case, please follow the title link to Joel Schlosberg's blog central for this event.

Planet Finder

2007-12-17T16:51:00.000-05:00

Geoff Marcy gives a great show as a lecturer on the discovery of planets outside our solar system (extrasolar planets). He presented it on 14 Dec 2007 at Goddard Space Flight Center's Science Colloquium. This was a special colloquium in celebration of the life of John Bahcall, one of the pioneering supporters of the Hubble Space Telescope. Marcy had a bona fide letter from Bahcall, encouraging his astronomical studies. Pretty neat!

Marcy presented many of the nitty gritty details that have been learned about over 200 extrasolar planets and nearly put me and a number of others to sleep, though a few were fascinated by every nuance. Then he got down to business, which he labeled as "speculations". That's fair, but he did attempt to make an inference from what is now a statistically meaningful collection of nearby stars that have planets. Even if one is as generous as can be, there is no way that any of the planets we have found could have life on them. And that sets a limit on how many worlds could be populated in our galaxy, or any other. Given the number of stars in our galaxy, the bottom line is that intelligent civilizations, if they exist anywhere in our galaxy, must be short lived phenomena, just a few million years at most. If that is the case, we have already reached what is apparently the typical lifetime of such civilizations. We have reached the point where they die out. And Marcy's take away lesson was that the supreme challenge faced by humanity is simply to survive for longer than the typical civilization does, assuming that they exist at all outside our solar system.

Or are we happy to have a short fling with the universe, on the way to our eventual demise? For myself, I prefer to aspire to Todd Brennan's challenge: "A truly intelligent species will outlive its home star." What about you?

Philosophy

2007-09-16T18:06:00.000-04:00

It appears that I am a winter blogger. This weekend is the first of the fall that is cool enough here in Maryland to motivate jeans and a long sleeve shirt. Yesterday, we did the Maryland Renaissance Festival with our visiting student from Extremadura, Spain. RenFest is always wonderful, from Johnny Fox, the King of Swords (swallows them), to Jousting, the Maryland state sport! We actually had a jouster knocked off a horse this year (he was fine).

However, here's what I want to write about soon, from Panhala:

Philosophy

~ Billy Collins ~

I used to sit in the cafe of existentialism,

lost in a blue cloud of cigarette smoke,

contemplating the suicide a tiny Frenchman

might commit by leaping from the rim of my brandyglass.

I used to hunger to be engaged

as I walked the long shaded boulevards,

eyeing women of all nationalities,

a difficult paperback riding in my raincoat pocket.

But these days I like my ontology in an armchair,

a rope hammock, or better still, a warm bath

in a cork-lined room--disengaged, soaking

in the calm, restful waters of speculation.

Afternoons, when I leave the house

for the woods, I think of Aquinas at his desk,

fingers interlocked upon his stomach,

as he deduces another proof for God's existence,

intricate as the branches of these bare November trees.

And as I kick through the leaves and snap

the wind-fallen twigs, I consider Leibniz on his couch

reaching the astonishing conclusion that monads,

those windowless units of matter, must have souls.

But when I finally reach the top of the hill

and sit down on the flat tonnage of this boulder,

I think of Spinoza, most rarefied of them all.

I look beyond the treetops and the distant ridges

and see him sitting in a beam of Dutch sunlight

slowly stirring his milky tea with a spoon.

Since dawn he has been at his bench grinding lenses,

but now he is leaving behind the saucer and table,

the smoky chimneys and tile roofs of Amsterdam,

even the earth itself, pale blue, aqueous,

cloud-enshrined, titled back on the stick of its axis.

He is rising into that high dome of thought

where loose pages of Shelley float on the air,

where all the formulas of calculus unravel,

tumbling in the radiance of a round Platonic sun--

that zone just below the one where angels accelerate

and the amphitheatrical rose of Dante unfolds.

And now I stand up on the ledge to salute you, Spinoza,

and when I whistle to the dog and start down the hill,

I can feel the thick glass of your eyes upon me

as I step from the rock to glacial rock, and on her

as she sniffs her way through the leaves,

her tail straight back, her body low to the ground.

(The Art of Drowning)

Yes...

2007-03-10T11:59:00.000-05:00

Chet Raymo has posted a meditation on William James that is sublime. Three short paragraphs say it all. What more can I say? I'll think of something later. For now, just go enjoy Chet!

The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean

2007-02-20T19:54:00.000-05:00

This is an annotated transcript of the video clip that can be found in the navigation column, down at the bottom, under the same title. It's Carl Sagan's materialist manifesto, overlying an unspoken declaration of the irrelevance of supernaturalism. It must surely rank among the most eloquent statements of scientific confidence and ambition ever made. A similar transcript is given in the first chapter of the printed version of Cosmos. But that version is missing some of the best touches of this one.

The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the Cosmos stir us. There's a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as of a distant memory, of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries.

This defines the intended scope of the Cosmos, but though it fails to rule out anything specific, one understands immediately that the supernatural and the paranormal will not be needed.

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth. For the first time we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger. But, our species is young and curious and brave and it shows much promise. In the last few millennia, we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos, in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

Adopting a god-like perspective, we are said to be lost in eternity, but yet the present is seen as a special time of awakening, as Carl returns to the collective "we".

We're about to begin a journey through the Cosmos. We'll encounter galaxies and suns, and planets, life and consciousness, coming into being, evolving and perishing; Worlds of ice and stars of diamond; atoms as massive suns, universes smaller than atoms. But it's also a story of our own planet, and the plants and animals that share it with us. And it's a story about us; how we achieved our present understanding of the Cosmos, how the Cosmos has shaped our evolution and our culture, what our fate may be.

A taste of things to come is offered, an enticement, and also a promise to glimpse the future.

We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths, of exquisite interrelationships, of the awesome machinery of nature.

A credo for study of the Cosmos is advanced, using a balance of imagination and skepticism as we explore. And again, we will be focused on the "machinery of nature."

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little way out into the sea, maybe ankle deep, and the water seems inviting. The ocean calls to us. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. And we can because the Cosmos is also within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.

This is a metaphor that has stayed with me ever since I heard it in 1980, and it became a core concept in a successful early research paper of mine, written about then. But it's our atmosphere that is the shore of the Cosmic ocean, not the surface of Earth. We don't leave the shoals until we venture well above the atmosphere. And Earth's magnetic field creates a harbor of sorts, fending off the solar wind.

This paragraph borrows a concept from Alan Watts that originated at least a decade before "Cosmos" appeared. Sagan says: "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." Watts says, somewhat more verbosely: "We are not egos in bags of skin, that come into the world. We come out of it; as trees leaf and cows calve, the universe "peoples". We are the universe, become conscious of itself." Some of the most important ideas are also among the simplest.

The journey for each of us begins here. We're going to explore the Cosmos in a ship of the imagination, unfettered by ordinary limits on speed and size, drawn by the music of cosmic harmonies, that can take us anywhere in space and time. Perfect as a snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed, it can carry us to worlds of dreams and worlds of fact. Come with me.

The Misuse of Intelligence

2007-02-19T16:55:00.000-05:00

This from Michael Barone today in National Review Online:

"The Bush critics' position is that we must believe without reservation or criticism any intelligence that can be used to argue against military action and that we should never believe any intelligence, however plausible, that can be used to argue for it. That's not very intelligent."

This reminded me of that quote from no less a warrior than Victor Davis Hanson: "It is as difficult to provoke the United States as it is to survive its eventual and tardy response."

This quote, offered by a friend and debate partner, has always epitomized for me the important American/Western ideal of temperance in the practice of war. Unfortunately, I don't believe the USA has demonstrated much temperance along these lines. In light of that ideal, I would not-so-subtly reword Barone's statement, putting in what seems like an appropriate bias to enforce a moderate response:

"... we must take very seriously any intelligence that argues against military action; and we must demand the highest possible standards of proof for any intelligence, however plausible or widely believed, that argues for it. This is the only intelligent and responsible approach to military action."

If you substitute "use of nuclear weapons" for "military action" it reads even better my way, I think.

Comments?

Evolution/Shermer v. Intelligent Design/Dembski

2007-02-18T18:01:00.000-05:00

Larry Moran pointed out a debate between Michael Shermer and William Dembski Thurs. evening at Bridgewater College in the Virginia Shenandoah valley. It was a bit too far for me to have attended even if I'd seen it coming, and I was caught up the NASA THEMIS launch that ended up being postpoined until Sat. evening.

According to Jason Rosenhouse, writing on PandasThumb.org, Bridgewater College is a small liberal arts school affiliated with the Church of the Brethren. According to Wikipedia, this is a pacifistic Christian church without evangelical tendencies. However, it was clear from accounts that the audience was well populated with evangelical Christians. Shermer experienced very aggressive questioning by them, and then Dembski was able to rebut each of his answers.

I've been thinking there is a need for such a debate, but I was expecting it to occur online. It amazes me that Shermer would agree to a debate in so rural an area with a population known for its conservatism. The audience numbered only about 150 according to Rosenhouse.

According to Sal Cordova writing on uncommonDescent.com, Dembski managed to get Shermer to state that he is now open to "ideas like self-organization, or other evolutionary scenarios", relaxing his earlier contention that "no one, and I mean no one, working in the field is debating whether natural selection is the driving force behind evolution".

This is the first time I can recall seeing in print the idea that self-organization might be an alternative to natural selection. If I get Cordova's point right, his idea is that the design of complex organisms could be built into them in a way that is non-interactive with the environment. That is to say, in evolving to a complex state, organisms are following the dictates of an internal design, rather than evolving it as a solution to the problem of their successful interaction with the environment. I really doubt that Shermer was saying that, but it sounds like that was the way his statement was taken. This bears more investigation...

Darwin Day

2007-02-13T12:46:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to note the occasion. Wish I had time to do more of an observance. Click the title to see what is going on for Darwin Day. Perhaps on President's Day or this weekend? Cheers!
Click to enlarge

Teach the Revolution!

2007-02-10T17:37:00.000-05:00

The state of dialog between evolutionists (Darwinists in the view of creationists) and creationists (IDiots in the view of evolutionists) is truly terrible, but perhaps that's the way it should be. Perhaps the entire ID schtick is as vapid as claimed, and they should be given no quarter whatsoever. They come on so reasonably with plausible sounding critiques of Darwinian natural selection, one is tempted to take them seriously, or at least I have been for about four years now. But my recent explorations have pretty much cleared up any doubts I may have had about whether ID critiques of natural selection need to be taken seriously. They don't. These are the quibbles of people with ulterior motives, and don't stand up to scrutiny at all. Even if they did, their source pretty much disqualifies them, since these folks have no serious interest in improving our understanding of life, only in tearing it down.

So it is fair to conclude that science and education simply cannot afford the indulgence of "teaching the controversy." But I would carry it a step farther than simply ejecting creationism and ID from our schools. In my view, we should be teaching the revolution in human thought that took us from creationism to natural selection. Our best physics curricula teach the revolution in astronomy that wrenched us from the geocentric Ptolemaic universe to the heliocentric Copernican revolution, forever changing our understanding of our own place in the universe. Similarly we should teach the revolution in biology that took us from creationism to the Darwinian revolution. The change has been even more transformative and religiously-disturbing in this case, and clearly we are still struggling with it, but the time has come to stop treading lightly and respectfully toward religion on this and to make a point of stating the case for science. So yes, by all means let us teach both creationism and natural selection in our schools, but let us put them in their proper perspective and say clearly and emphatically that creationism has been superseded in modern thought, with repercussions that religious believers must confront and reconcile with their dogmas.

There should no claim here that Darwinian evolution is the final story, but neither should there be a mistaken impression given that there is any possible return to the idea that a supernatural intelligence might help us explain our world and how we came to it. We can marvel at the incredible grandeur and exquisitely detailed complexity of the universe and life within it, and at the universal laws that so clearly regulate it throughout. But we will gain no useful wisdom for this world from the idea that we must eventually face a designer-creator in another.

So let's teach the revolution as the revolution that it truly is and not as a controversy. Still it is well to keep in mind Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit, which includes: "Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view." Click the title or graphic of this post and then click: "Ideas"

More Fun and Games with Evolution

2007-02-07T21:24:00.000-05:00

Finally I found a simulation of the ID/creationist model of random variation and selection. It's extremely simple, but if you're patient, you can select and revert your way to some positive changes in the "genome". The key in my view is to start with random character strings so you aren't distracted by the initial state. Basically, one selects (saves) any positive change, and then continues mutating. If nothing better comes along, you revert to your selected case, and then continue mutating again. The effect is to simulate a larger population with only the single individual character string. This is being discussed at Pharyngula.

Also being discussed there is a rebuttal simulation that is pretty interesting, and much more sophisticated. It actually shows how irreducible complexity can evolve. If you follow the discussion of it, you'll learn that most cases of irreducible complexity result from a decrease in the fitness of the individual. One commentator gives a useful analogy with an arch that becomes irreducibly complex only when the scafolding used to build it is removed. There is a net reduction in robustness at that point, and then the arch has many parts that can no longer be removed without its falling. Pretty cool!

It's a bit disappointing watching the evolutionists and creationists chewing on each other, usually on separate blogs. The level of discussion has sunken to a new low since the Dover decision, I suppose. Still, the evolvers are not the least bit gracious in victory, nor do the creators give any quarter. Perhaps I'm just being wishy washy, but I would really like to see them compare the above simulations and the standard weasel program and argue the points to a polite agreement to disagree, rather than engaging in endless hurling of sophomoric epithets and insults.

Human Weapons of Mass Destruction

2007-02-04T12:02:00.000-05:00

I have yet to come upon any popular discussion of nuclear proliferation that seems at once lucid, rational and realistic. Everyone seems to regard it is beyond question that acquisition of nuclear weapons by developing countries is an intolerable evil. Most especially, this is true of the NRA set, those staunch defenders the right of American citizens to possess lethal force for self defense, regardless of any demonstrated fitness to manage and responsibly use such weapons. The irony of that position is (in the words of Mike Dunford on Panda's Thumb) is "so dense that four mining firms have put in bids on it". But even if one thinks that warfare has served an evolutionary purpose in human history, enhancing our technological skills, nuclear weapons represent a new and significant opportunity for us all to collectively win a cosmic "Darwin Award." So, I hereby take it upon myself to supply said discussion of nuclear proliferation.

My beef with the NRA position on personal weapons lies in the unwillingness to treat this analogously to the licensing of automobile drivers. Cars are arguably as lethal as guns, and every bit as important to the rights of an individual. The right to autonomous transportation is something I personally find to be far more important than self-defense, because I've been fortunate enough to live in benign environments where there are essentially no threats to a healthy male. So, I would argue that it is every bit as important to train, test, and license the possession and use of guns as the uses of automobiles. This is self-evident truth to me. No one could credibly sloganize to the effect that "now that cars are outlawed, only outlaws own cars."

It also seems self-evident to me that the representative, democratic rule of law that we practice in the industrial world should also be practiced on the international level among nations. The principal problem there is the lack of a credible and legitimate International respresntative government, which seems to have eluded our efforts with the League of Nations and then the United Nations. All war among nations is civil war in my view, and occurs only through a deficit of will on the part of the nations to organize the adjudication of disputes through a representative legal process.

Nation states have a self-evident right to defend themselves when faced with aggression, just as individuals do in a democratic state. The argument that individuals should be empowered with the strongest forms of lethal force carry directly over to an argument that nations should also be empowered with the strongest forms of lethal force, for self defensive purposes. However, they should also be required to demonstrate the capability to manage and deploy that force in a responsible manner, just as we require individuals to do so when operating vehicles, and as we should do for individuals seeking to possess guns.

Currently, there exists a process for nation states to control the acquisition of nuclear weapons, known as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, proposed by Ireland and signed by 188 nations. According to Wikipedia, two confirmed nuclear powers (Pakistan and India) and one unconfirmed nuclear power (Israel) would not sign the treaty. And one nation that signed has withdrawn and become a nuclear power (North Korea). The treaty prohibits additional proliferation beyond the five current nuclear states (USA, France, Russia, UK, and China), promotes disarmament, and legitimizes the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. However, the treaty provides no legitimate way of acquiring nuclear weapons except for leaving the treaty agreement. It does provide for an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor nuclear materials in nonnuclear states and to alert the treaty parties to any violations of the treaty. The IAEA estimates that 40 states could develop nuclear weapons if they so chose and withdrew from the treaty.

When the NPT is reviewed every five years, it is routine for the US and other powers to assert NATO agreements to share nuclear weapons, while complaining about proliferation among other nations and opposing Iran's rights to develop a civilian nuclear power capability. The NATO powers also assert that the treaty will be voided if a state of "general war" should arise, effectively releasing them from the terms of the treaty in that case. More recently, the Bush administration has asserted the right to share civilian nuclear technology with India, in violation of treaty terms, while continuing to accuse Iran of developing weapons in violation of its treaty agreement.

Nations with adversarial postures relative to the western industrial nations, and especially those with alleged ties to terrorist organizations, are naturally regarded with suspicion as potential threats, especially if empowered with nuclear weapons. However, taking military action to interdict the acquisition of nuclear weapons would clearly violate the rule of law dictum mandating that violence be used in only in self defense. But rule of law can be practiced successfully only when an authority exists that can monitor and deal with perceived threats.

We clearly need a treaty that puts the UN or other international body in place as the adjudicator of nuclear disputes. Ideally, the treaty rules would allow for "licensing" the acquisition of civilian nuclear technologies by any nation seeking to do so, provided that specified criteria were met, as judged by an organization like the IAEA. Among those criteria might be the demonstration of freedom from terrorist links. In addition, licensing of nuclear weaponry should also be explicitly provided, with more stringent criteria to be met, such that it would be exceedingly difficult to meet them. Qualifications might include the demonstration of a credible nuclear threat from a non-participant nation.

With this sort of rule of law in place, the US could quite properly insist that nations like Iran must meet basic requirements for use of even civilian nuclear technologies. A representative agency could regulate the acquisition and use of nuclear arms by nations, including the USA, regardless of their agreement, by monopolizing the legitimate use of force to take military action against those nations that violate the law as set by the participating nations.

A treaty, after all, is just an agreement to a common good that is shared by the signatories and infringes on the acknowledged rights of none. The problem is that a treaty cannot be imposed on non-signatories as well, even if they are a minority.

Modern Cathedrals

2007-01-29T20:32:00.000-05:00

Comments by Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, at the Quasar Award Dinner, Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership on 19 Jan 2007:

"To me, the irony is that when we do hard things for the right reasons – for the Real Reasons – we end up actually satisfying all the goals of the Acceptable Reasons. And we can see that, too, in the cathedrals, if we look for it.
...
"[The cathedral builders] gained societal advantages that were probably even more important than learning how to build walls and roofs. They learned to embrace deferred gratification, not just on an individual level where it is a crucial element of maturity, but on a societal level where it is equally vital. The people who started the cathedrals didn't live to finish them; such projects required decades. The society as a whole had to be dedicated to the completion of those projects. To be able to do that for cathedrals was to be able to do it in other areas as well. We owe Western civilization as we know it today to that kind of thinking – the ability to have a constancy of purpose across years and decades [and generations]."

It's worth a read of the entire text...

“A truly intelligent species will outlive its home star.” - Todd Brennan

Even Intelligent Design Evolves

2007-01-22T13:43:00.000-05:00

Here's a fanciful depiction of the situation in 2020 on Mars, that most difficult of planets on which to land a probe. This may not prove anything, but it certainly is a reminder that even intelligent design has a way of evolving.

Revisiting the Weasel Experiment

2007-01-13T17:22:00.000-05:00

Richard Dawkins' interesting computer simulation of natural selection with random variation demonstrates a startling ability that, "at first exposure, is every bit as counterintuitive as quantum mechanics." [Scott Maxwell]. It has been criticized by intelligent design folks on grounds that: 1. the answer is known ahead of time so of course it gets the right answer, and 2. unrealistic mutation probabilities are used in the demonstration, and 3. random variation will cause more damage than improvement, resulting in catastrophic results. Objection 1. is that of someone who simply will not trust the experimenter, but can be addressed by defining a "fitness function" that turns the goal into an objective optimization problem. Objection 2 can easily be adjusted. Objection 3. reflects some subtleties that are too often glossed over by evolutionists, including Dawkins. This post is to show that the Dawkins demo has been put online, and that updates have been made to the demo that allow it to be much more closely analogous to real natural selection. In addition I'll point to some other software that gets even more realistic, evolving 2D graphics in a method that observes a distinction between genotype (algorithmic data) and phenotype (translation to graphical products).

First, here is the original Dawkins weasel experiment, except that you can substitute whatever string of data you would like as the target and then watch the process converge on the answer, typically in less than 100 "generations." It's too bad one could not continuously update the target string and watch the selection process demonstrate adaptation, as it dynamically tracks the changing conditions. Ah well, that will come in time.

But here is a better version of the weasel program, especially in the sense that you can download the source code and play with it yourself, or just read it to see what is going on. This one reveals a subtle point that is the source of creationist misunderstandings of this program. The figure shows that quite a large population of "critters" is generated in the process of selecting for the target output string. This is essential because many "bad" mutations occur that are deselected. This isn't stated clearly in Dawkins' original description or the instance described above. It is something that the ID folks believe to make a solution impossible, but clearly it does not do that, though it does require more deselection than is obvious from reading Dawkins or the previous online program.

Next is the much more realistic case where we have a specified population of random strings that are being randomly altered at a specified rate. Moreover, pairs of the strings are sexually mated to produce offspring strings in each generation, as random mutation proceeds. Several selection options can be exercised, as well as several options for the sexual merger. The mutation rate and population rate can be varied as much as one likes, slowing the process to a crawl if desired. So much for objection 2. Again, it would be nice if the target string could be varied as the process proceeds, so we could watch adaptation to new guidance being reflected in the results.

Finally, we have a more complex but visually appealing piece of softw are that implements a more realistic simulation in which a genotype is set up consisting of parameters controlling diverse graphics primitives and techniques. Each genotype translates to a phenotype as a 2D graphic panel. The user can then exert intelligent selection by either asexually or sexually breeding new generations of graphics, manipulating the graphical products toward whatever s/he may choose. Warning: this gets considerably more involved, though this program insulates one from the details so that everything is accomplished by point and click selection and no actual graphical engineering is required.

So there we have it in gradually more complex forms; a compelling demonstration of the power of selection with random variation, as a way of exploring multi-parameter design spaces and searching for optimal solutions of whatever problem is chosen, whether it be the matching of a particular string of characters, or the creation of a desired graphical image. So much for objection 3.

Does anyone know of simulation programs like these designed to illustrate the criticisms of natural selection that have been made by the intelligent design community? I would like to see what kinds of demonstration can be made of the failure of natural selection to function as advertised. If so, please point to them in the comments and I will compare them with the above cases.

Further Reading:
More than you ever wanted to know can be found in the Creationism Asserted and Creationism Rebutted links in the sidebar. However for a really definitive look at the matters discussed here, TalkOrigins can't be beat.

Intent, Intelligence, and Purpose in Design?

2007-01-13T09:34:00.000-05:00

In response to an invitation to discuss that status of Intelligent Design in the UK, a Christian theist neuroscientist from Canada (Elizabeth Liddle) created a stir at uncommondescent.com (Bill Dembski's blog site, click title) by using Dembski's own arguments to show that natural selection is a form of intelligent design. Dembski had written that "by intelligence I mean the power and facility to choose between options--this coincides with the Latin etymology of “intelligence,” namely, “to choose between”. Liddle pointed out that, by that definition, natural selection must be credited as an intelligent process, and therefore, natural selection is a clear example of "intelligent design". Needless to say, this did not go over well and a lengthy debate ensued with the so-called "moderator" of uncommondescent, DaveScot, during which Liddle at one point pointed to a story she wrote her son. Liddle was polite, good natured about the sparring, and indefatigable. After some long rebuttals of his standard arguments, for which he did not appear to have an answer, DaveScot summarily banned her from the site. "[Febble] doesn’t understand how natural selection works to conserve (or not) genomic information yet insists on writing long winded anti-ID comments filled with errors due to lack of understanding of the basics [and ] is just not a constructive member.", after the following exchange:

DaveScot suggested that intelligence must also include planning for the future. Liddle conceded that natural selection does not plan for the future in the sense of running model scenarios and choosing the one that seems best, as in a chess game, for example. But she asserts that by remembering past mistakes and successes, natural selection is in some sense planning by using the strategies that worked best in the past. Her final statement before banning was:

"It may be described as “trial and error” learning, but that is a bit of a misnomer, as “trial-and-error” could just as easily describe random search. Trial-and-error learning involves, well, learning. It’s much more efficient than random search because you learn from your successes and your mistakes. Natural selection + replication with modification also learns from both its successes and its mistakes, which makes it moderately intelligent.

So the scale of intelligence begins with Dembski's simply "making choices", extends to "making informed choices" (based on a record of prior experience, kept in the DNA), and then culminates in "making choices based on models of future developments" which is where humans come in. This seems eminently reasonable, but does leave open the question of intent or purpose. I would have named things differently here. Choices reflect clear intent or purpose, in my opinion, but not much intelligence. So natural selection certainly expresses intent, as well as minimal intelligence per Dembski's definition. But natural selection with genotype replication brings note taking and documentation to bear, adding more intelligence to intent. And human theory and model making adds still more power to intent, allowing for the attribution of "purpose," and implying a longer view of things rather than just a preference for certain immediate results.

Comments on these definitions?

Carl Sagan on evolution

2007-01-08T17:29:00.001-05:00


From Cosmos - Carl Sagan on evolution

"Evolution is a fact, not a theory. It really did happen." We may not know fully how it happened yet, but there is no denying that it did. And we have participated in manipulating what happened as long as we've been around, with our inquiring minds wondering and exploring what we can accomplish, and emulating nature's trial and error.

Engineering and ID

2007-01-07T13:41:00.000-05:00

I've been mixing it up on the Uncommon Descent blog on ID. It's a bit frustrating because they are choosy about what they will pass through their moderation filter and the moderator tends to react rudely to dissenting views. Sometimes it seems that comments only get through for which they have a convenient rejoinder. But I have had some good interactions there. To their credit, they have moderated me though for an interesting exchange today.

The article and discussion are at the link attached to the title of this piece.

Brief synopsis:
The article says that engineers can appreciate ID because they engage in it every day and can see the design in nature more clearly than others.I claim that engineers do not design complex systems, but rather simple systems. When they get *truly* complex, the process becomes evolutionary.

DaveScot says this is the scotsmans fallacy (he should know!). So there.

I reply that *truly* complex is not subjective (as in the scotsmans fallacy) but defined as a system too complex to be practically predicted, citing Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science." When designs get complex, they have unintended consequences that cannot be predicted but can later be exploited by incorporation into an evolving design.

DaveScot says I still am committing a scotsmans fallacy and besides who the heck is Wolfram?

Some of the rest of the participants begin to engage on this, and I reply. One interesting line concerns intelligent selection, which is what happens with animal husbandry, or the guidance of complex system evolution by intelligent engineers.

DaveScot never actually engages on the points under discussion but rather makes a fuss about Wolfram being a crank, and accuses me of being a crank too. He gets pretty unfriendly and admonishes me to refrain from logical fallacies, or citing cranks, and says that he only allowed my posts because I work for NASA, "an organization for which he has the highest respect". Then, he commits what for me is an unpardonable offense: he edits the link I have provided in my personal profile to my web site, connecting it to my NASA site. I'm outta there...

Logic and Naturalism

2007-01-06T09:08:00.000-05:00

My Google alert for humanism and naturalism turned up a beautiful blog making a mathematical argument for the supernatural. Gødel's proof that mathematical logic requires some assertions to be made as axioms beyond proof, is claimed to prove the existence of the supernatural. But knowledge that something is incomplete does not tell us what would complete it. As Dawkins would say, "it has not been disproven that there is a teapot of fresh hot English Breakfast orbiting the Earth. But that is not a good basis for astronauts to plan a tea on orbit."

Corresponding to Godel's theorem, there is one important moral principle that is axiomatic and beyond proof, and that is the sanctity of life in the universe. Naturalists agree on this principle and share it with the adherents of most other moral codes. It requires no supernatural authority to recognize the importance of life in the universe. The problem is that many if not most religions qualify sanctified life with the adjective "human", and even more narrowly, human life of the right religious persuasion. Humans of other persuasions (or races, creeds, colors) are often defined to be subhuman, putting them outside the sphere of sanctity and making them eligible for execution when expedient.

The difference between supernaturalism and naturalism is that there IS abundant evidence, accessible to everyone, of the everything in the natural world. The natural world of reality is "that which doesn't go away when you stop believing in it" (Phillip Dick). This is an extremely powerful argument and there is nothing illogical or inconsistent about it.

Scientific "truth" is not that at all, but rather is our best guess, today, and will certainly be revised. Compare that with "revealed truth", i.e. dogma. But even dogma will be examined by science, and accepted when there is evidence for it. Science seeks only to "silence" claims for which there is no evidence, in favor of claims for which there is evidence, but then only until there is more evidence.

Regarding the blog comment on "non-theism": that's close to agnosticism, the assertion that there can be no knowledge of events to which we have no sensory access (like the period before the big bang). One is free to believe what one likes about things for which there is no evidence. They must be believed to be seen. Naturalism simply urges that we make life and death ethical decisions based upon what we know and agree upon (plus the axiom of the sanctity of life) rather than things some of us happen to believe but about which others may disagree without any possible (evidence-based) resolution.

More relevant here is "pantheism", which is the assertion that it is the universe itself to which we owe reverence and the attribution of divinity. Could there be a power more indifferent to mere humans; yet which is evidently responsible for the existence and the support of all life forms? Or a better basis for the sanctity of life? It's not the deity we want, too "red in tooth and claw" for our tastes in a personal God, but it's the deity we have, according to the available evidence.

"We are a way for the universe to know itself." -- Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan, gone for "ten trips around the Sun"

2006-12-21T16:51:00.000-05:00

Carl Sagan was one of the strongest and most enduring influences on my choice to pursue teaching and then science. His view of humans as "a way for the universe to know itself" echoed and extended themes I'd read in Alan Watts. Carl's many books and shorter articles guided and inspired me up through his untimely death. They shaped my interests and led me to specialize in the science of the solar system. Many were critical of what they saw as Carl's excessive participation in the cult of personality through the media. But from my perspective, Carl was the ultimate modern renaissance man, with interests that spanned the universe in a way that few others came close to expressing. He excelled not only in communicating the excitement of science to the general public, but also led a generation of scientists in seeing the broader relevance and impact of their work, helping us to get beyond the mentality of the cold war. David Morrison agrees. Carl is deeply missed.

There is a detectable web competition for the title of "Next Carl Sagan". It's a very tough act to follow on the world stage. But we do need others to tell us how wonderful is the world as revealed by science, how little we really need our illusions and superstitions, and how much more sound is a simple reverence for life and all the forces that have created it.

"We are made of star stuff." -- Carl Sagan

Star of DNA Sighted

2006-12-19T10:37:00.000-05:00

This picture of the day from Wikipedia (17 Dec) really struck me, so I used it to make a holiday greeting card this year. It's a molecule consisting of three long peptide chains arranged into a star shape with a circular inner ring. It evidently plays a clamp-like role as it travels along a DNA molecule during replication, sort of a zipper function, if I get it correctly. According to the article, the clamp speeds the rate at which the unzipping/zipping of DNA occurs by a large factor. So this star shaped molecule (one might say "snowflake-shaped") plays a key role in human reproduction. The coloration used by the molecular modeling software to generate this visualization struck me as festive as well, as did the loopy structure of the molecular strings.

Leibniz and Spinoza

2006-10-09T17:18:00.000-04:00

A recent book by Matthew Stewart: "The Courtier and the
Heretic", 2006, has proved most interesting. This paragraph from the introduction really struck me:

"..., the two greatest philosophers of the seventeenth century remain unsurpassed, and should perhaps be considered the twin founders of modern thought. We live in an age defined by its reaction to Spinoza and to all that he recorded in his philosophy. And there is no more compelling expression of this reaction than the philosophy Leibniz developed in the long years after his return from Holland (after visiting Spinoza). Contemporary debates concerning the separation of church and state, the clash of civilizations, and the theory of natural selection, to name just a few examples, are all continuations of the discussion that began in November 1676. Even today, the two men who met in the Hague stand for a choice that we all must make and have implicitly already made."

And a summary paragraph:

"... The two men who met in 1676 in fact represent a pair of radically different philosophical personality types who have always been part of the human experience. Spinoza speaks for those who believe that happiness and virtue are possible with nothing more than what we have in our hands. Leibniz stands for those convinced that happiness and virtue depend upon something that lies beyond. Spinoza counsels calm attention to our own deepest good. Leibniz expresses that irrepressible longing to see our good works reflected back to us in the praise of others. Spinoza affirms the totality of things such as it is. Leibniz is that part of us that ceaselessly strives to make us something more than what we are. Without doubt there is a little piece of each in everybody; equally certain is the fact that, at times, a choice must be made."

NB: Leibniz independently developed the calculus a bit later than Newton, and his notation won out eventually to become the one we use today. Spinoza the Jew who was excommunicated in his early 20s, has been credited with inspiring Thomas Jefferson and other Founders of the US Constitution in regard to the "establishment" clause and other key aspects of the constitution and bill of rights, as well as inspiring the perpetrators of the French Revolution, and the rest of the secular, liberal, democratic order of today.It's interesting to track these ideas back before 1776; which I don't recall my world history or philosophy classes ever having done. All this material from the book made The Pope's recent controversial statements about Islam reverberate loudly in my head. Nevertheless, caveat emptor is appropriate and one should perhaps have a look at some of the more negative reviews of this book as linked in the title of this entry. It may be that the scholarship is a bit lacking in this book, in the interests of spinning an entertaining tale.

HyperPage

2006-10-09T11:38:00.000-04:00

I've posted a musing at the link on an idea that's been bugging me for a long time. We like to think we are pioneering new things with the internet tying humanity into a huge new network of information. But I hold that information is only part of the story, and we haven't yet begun to tie ourselves together with a common approach to processing information. That may require a new standard for processing algorithms, and a way to browse them, which I call HyperPage. Please have a look and comment here if you like.

Spinoza, Credited

2006-09-02T13:16:00.000-04:00

A public radio show (Speaking of Faith) recently featured Rebecca Goldstein, author of a new book on Baruch Spinoza, "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity." It has reignited my interest in the original pantheist philosopher. I previously read his "Ethics", which I found pretty dense though intriguing.

It's amazing to me to see Spinoza credited as the inspiration for much of the enlightenment, inspiring the founders of the USA, and the separation of church and state, as a meme. To me, this is an incredible confluence of interests. The book has inspired quite a bit of commentary, including a review in the NYT. We recently passed the 350th anniversary of Spinoza's excommunication by the Jews of Amsterdam, around 28 July it seems. Spinoza was cited by Einstein as having defined a God with which he could identify. Spinoza's God is the God of Nature, or in Einstein's view, the God of natural law. It's easy to appreciate that this was taken to be blasphemous in the 17th century.

Though the book is not in our library so soon after its release, I did find another book that may be as good, and certainly is of great interest if one seeks to know and understand Spinoza: "The Heretic and the Courtier: Spinoza, Leibnitz, and the Fate of God in the Modern World", by Matthew Stewart. Not content to chronicle Spinoza alone, Stewart casts a spell by comparing two figures who could not be more different: Spinoza the optician and lens grinder by day and philospher by night; Leibnitz the polymath prodigy who defends religioin against the tide of Spinoza's thinking, all the while harboring strong sympathies for Spinoza. More when I finish it...

Alzheimers and Consciousness, Clarified

2006-07-13T20:53:00.000-04:00

George Will engaged in some philosophical thinking triggered by his Mom's passing after a long bout with Alzheimer's. The title links to his column in the Washington Post (which requires free registration). Since Gwen's Nana passed recently, this column was very close to home for us. The first paragraphs:

"NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- The long dying of Louise Will ended here recently. It was time. At 98, her body was exhausted by disease and strokes. Dementia, that stealthy thief of identity, had bleached her vibrant self almost to indistinctness, like a photograph long exposed to sunlight.

"It is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter. Dementia is an ever-deepening advance of wintry whiteness, a protracted paring away of personality. It inflicts on victims the terror of attenuated personhood, challenging philosophic and theological attempts to make death a clean, intelligible and bearable demarcation.

"Is death the soul taking flight after the body has failed? That sequence -- the physical extinguished, the spiritual not -- serves our notion of human dignity. However, mental disintegration mocks that comforting schema by taking the spirit first.

Therein lies a significant realization concerning death and mortality. Perhaps this is why Alzheimer's is so very incomfortable for the living. If there is an immortal soul, it cannot be lodged in the brain or any process dependent upon the brain. Or it can escape the body before death.

But surely we know and understand, after having a loved one develop Alzheimer's, that the whole is more than the sum of the parts, yet it depends on many of those parts, and especially the brain, for wholeness. George Will brings reality to our dealings with death by reflecting so eminently and eloquently on this, and I think one has to marvel at the ability of his mother to express her situation to us all, through her son.

The Disbeliever

2006-07-09T16:17:00.000-04:00

Interesting article/interview at Salon.com about an atheist, buddhist, neuroscientist author who defends paranormal phenomena against treatment as "intellectual pornography", and has an open mind about consciousness existing independently of the brain...

I too find his critique of religious moderates dangerous. We must depend on moderates to rein in the extremists, because only they have the numbers to do so. Also, I have no use for Harris' sympathies for paranormal phenomena, and I believe studies of them indeed to be "intellectual pornography". But he does seem to have some interesting things to say, and I plan to get a copy of his book "The End of Faith", because I do hold that "reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away" -- Phillip K. Dick

Humanism and Naturalism

2006-07-05T19:44:00.000-04:00

This is inspired by the linked page describing Humainism (with a bar over the a). That got me thinking about Humanism in relation to Naturalism, which had me all over the web looking for connections and disconnections. The bottom line is that I'd really like to see a fusion of the two, into something called Humanaturalism, which is going to be the topic of this blog.

There are the several secular humanist groups, which don't have the naturalist emphasis I like, and sound too human-oriented, whereas I prefer to see myself as part of the larger web of life. I hadn't really appreciated this dichotomy between humanism and naturalism, but it has been noted in a most unflattering way by the Moonies

A slogan that comes naturally once you get past the bastardization of language:
"Humanaturalism: makes you feel like a natural (human)..."
(apologies to Carole King)

From there, we could have a look at the lyrics of Carole's song, adapted to the present purpose:
Like a Natural Human
Looking out on the morning rain
I used to feel uninspired
And when I knew I'’d have to face another day
Well, it made me feel so tired
Before the day I met you, life was so unkind
But your love was the key to my peace of mind

Cause you make me feel, you make me feel,
You make me feel like a natural human

Now when my soul was in the lost-and-found
You came along to claim it
I didn't know just what was wrong with me
Till your voice helped me name it
Now I'm no longer doubtful of what I'm living for
Cause if I make you happy I don't need to do more

Oh, baby, what you've done to me
You make me feel so good inside
And I just want to be
Close to you, you make me feel so alive!

And from there, it's a small leap to a description of what Humanaturalism might entail:
1. Belief in the inherent grace of the universe
2. Belief in human imagination, myth, dreams, hope, humor, love
3. Immortality of the genetic and human literature of life
4. Service to the web of life with reverence and wonder
5. Wisdom through reason and open scientific inquiry
6. Legacy of healthy children in a healthy environment
7. Peace through compassion, tolerance and respect
8. Democracy and rule of law in human relations
9. Courage and serenity through wisdom
10. Balance of passion and conservation

So what do you think?