Natural Selection Seems Insufficient

[Jal]

Reductionistic atheism is too philosophically deficient to be plausible. If merely dead particles exist:
- How did consciouness arise? Inconceivable.
- What was the first mover that got the ball rolling? Inconceivable.
- What is the nature of all the so-called "forces" such as gravity - what causes them?  Inconceivable.
- How did natural selection occur?  Inconceivable

To steer it back. Your inability to conceive a notion does not make it inconceivable.

Tangent: Are you related to Vinzzini by any chance?

True, but I won't embrace apparent insanity, unless or until it begins to appear rational. 

Never heard of a person named Vinzzini.

[Nay_Sayer]

To steer it back. Your inability to conceive a notion does not make it inconceivable.

Tangent: Are you related to Vinzzini by any chance?

True, but I won't embrace apparent insanity, unless or until it begins to appear rational. 

Never heard of a person named Vinzzini.

What would that apparent insanity be?

ETA:

https://youtu.be/qhXjcZdk5QQ?is=StNFlIddtpLBEx8_

[The Grand Nudger]

    No, no no no.  Consciousness could be innate and also be an epiphenomenon.  

I think I am using the term differently than you. I clarified my usage to someone else a few posts back.

That’s a running theme in our convo. You use words like “atheist reductionism” and “epiphenomena” incorrectly - this leads to misunderstandings on your part and miscommunications between parties….like falling dominoes.

    Hunger -is- a feedback loop... in any explanation where hunger causes action...whether consciousness is innate or not, whether gods exist or not.  

Ok is this an attempt to resolve the allegations of the OP? In a domino context, hunger is not going to "cause" satiation. Consider a stream of flowing water, and let's pretend it hungers to move in a particular direction. So turns out that it's in luck, because nature happens to flow that way consistently. There is no such consistency in food consumption. By day and hour, food availability varies in location, abundance, barriers, competition. The problem is that blind causality is indisposed to accommodate these aberrations on the consumer's behalf.

It’s an attempt to correct your misunderstandings about natural selection that appear to be informing your view of its insufficiency. For example, here you cite precisely those conditions that make hunger a more fit homeostatic strategy than a simpler chemical trigger as though they were problems. Not only are these not problems in a world where conscious experience is “more” than electrochemical response…they are -particularly and exclusively effective- when it isn’t. When it’s just dominoes.

Still, you touch on something that’s equally real in the world. Whether hunger is some other x or electrochemical reactions….and regardless of whether it is effective to some extent in the world, there are still many occasions where hunger does not lead to satiation. So our agency….if we have agency…whatever its nature may be, is still limited. It remains true that the universe is seemingly indifferent to hunger. Which is to say that it’s not by our hungering that food manifests itself in the world. It only compels us to make the attempt.

Hunger as blind casualty is exactly why hunger works in a biological understanding of homeostatic response. You’re hungry even when you don’t need food, and this compels you to look for it before you need it, which is very useful when food out in the world can be spotty. Can you understand why…in a world with souls or without them (why pretend we’re talking about anything else, amiright?)….natural selection is a very good explanation for why we hunger? Or if you prefer, can you see how positing a world positively brimming with soul but without natural selection…there really isn’t any obvious reason for us to feel hunger?

Leading to another fun bit of exploration. Sometimes…because these processes are meaningfully blind regardless of what we believe about the nature of consciousness….they backfire. Do souls just want to be fat…or do we find ourselves adapted for resource scarce environments living in an obesegenic world? How come our souls…if that’s how we’re doing our thinking….have so much trouble with that? Why do souls find it so difficult to resist the compelling nature of this particular homeostatic strategy? Why can’t we will ourselves to be skinny, why can’t we will ourselves to not feel hunger….and why, if it’s a soul doing all of this…can chemical appetite suppressants do for us what souls cannot? What is glp1…doing to souls….and how?

[Angrboda]

@Jal :

You've said that in philosophy you learned the principle that the immaterial cannot affect the material. What fact or reason would prevent one from assuming the contrary? This just seems like an arbitrary principle that you've adopted for no particularly good reason. They say that oil and water don't mix. But they do influence each other. A liquid and a gas may minimally interact, but they aren't immutable towards each other. Philosophers discuss 'substance' which is a term of art which refers to the basic, atomic materials that make up our world. Thus what are described as different forms of matter all live under the umbrella of substance, with nothing preventing their interaction. So why can't substance subsume both the material and the immaterial? This just seems to be you deciding, here, but no further, for arbitrary, read: defenseless, reasons. What reasons do you have for adopting this principle and can a reasonable man differ on this principle?

[Mister Agenda]

I didn't read all 23 pages up to this point. Did Jal explain why natural selection is insufficient to explain the following when it seems to exactly explain them?

Thus, in a reductionism, natural selection will fail because, in a blind causality:
- Hunger won't precipitate food-gathering and satiation.
- Libido won't precipitate mating and reproduction.
- Fear of attack won't precipitate flight.
- Mammals won't seek the needed shelter, hibernation, and migration.
The dominos will simply fall blindly and randomly, resulting in starvation and extinction.

Allow me to rephrase the argument.  Let's suppose you are in a sailboat. Afar off you see an island known to have things that you hunger for such as wine and fine jewelry.

Unfortunately the wind is blowing your sailboat in the opposite direction, partly because it COULD NOT CARE LESS what you hunger for. That's the nature of domino-effect determinism. Where you end up, in such a metaphysics, HAS NOTHING TO DO with what you want. You will precisely NOT end up at the desired destination. Blind causality will simply take you wherever it HAPPENS to be heading. You will never  have opportunity to consume the food and drink that you hunger for. Hopefully you see the problem?

Reductionistic Natural Selection, then, does not provide a complete picture of reality. It is philosophically deficient/ defective. Something is missing here, in this deterministic domino cause-effect world view. In my OP I proposed self-moving free will as that missing link consistent with human experience and, as a bonus, also affords a First Mover solution. In other words by free will I can, at whim and will, lunge my body toward whatever I hunger for.  Such a self-moving conscious property is not likely an evolution - mostly likely it must be an innate property inherent to matter itself. This type of view is called panpsychism.

But at some point the wind will favor me, and if my boat has a mechanism to select movement that takes me towards my goal, I will eventually reach it. The earliest microbes didn't have to hunt, they absorbed molecules around them directly through their primitive membranes. Eventually, microbes that were better at absorbing molecules reproduced more successfully until they developed mechanisms that allowed them to seek out and engulf food/other microbes (phagocytosis). This was not an easy step, it took 2-2.5 billon years after the origin of life to develop...but everything that evolved from them after that which had to work to eat had the drive to do so.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Jal

My axiom is that an intangible substance cannot physically impact a tangible one. 

That axiom is incoherent. Would you like me to tell you why or would you prefer to work it out for yourself?

Boru

[Mister Agenda]

That's like saying a false dichotomy is a well known fallacy. Perfectly correct - once you've show a particular example to be a false dichotomy.  You have to do the work. In the same way, incredulity is a fallacy only when you've shown  a particular example to be a wholly unjustified incredulity. You have to do the work. Duh.

I dont have to prove you are incredulous. You have to back your incredulity with ev-i-dence. Yet all you did was saying "i CAN NOT CONCEIVE". You arguing "I CAN NOT CONCEIVE" is a TEXTBOOK argument from incredulity.

THATS how ignorant you are. Now stop parading your ignorance around and start your journey of LEARNING.

He keeps using that word....(all due respect to Inigo Montoya).

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Jal

Unfortunately the wind is blowing your sailboat in the opposite direction, partly because it COULD NOT CARE LESS what you hunger for.

It looks as if we can add ‘sailing’ to the list of things you know nothing about. 🤣

Boru

[Mister Agenda]

You need that reasoning explained? And you guys call me idiotic? Seriously? Ok I'll explain it. You and your 10-year old daughter are standing on opposite sides of a swimming pool.  both of you are outside the pool. Unexpectedly she finds herself in the water.  She then blames you for pulling her into the pool. Are Newton and I the only ones who see a problem with this accusation? Wouldn't you have to reach out and touch her, to pull her into the pool?  I can't believe I have to explain this. 

"The existence of invisible forces is beyond dispute."  You mean immaterial forces acting across a vacuum?  Baloney. That's a metaphysical assumption, it seems to be idiocy. Certainly it is at least disputable.

Ever hold a pendulum near a mountain? If so, what do you suppose it was that pulled the plumb slightly towards the mountain?

[Jal]

True, but I won't embrace apparent insanity, unless or until it begins to appear rational. 

Never heard of a person named Vinzzini.

What would that apparent insanity be?

ETA:

https://youtu.be/qhXjcZdk5QQ?is=StNFlIddtpLBEx8_

Nice video.

 For example it strikes me as an insane theory (inconceivable) that brute particles suddenly become self-aware via cerebral organization. 

Clearly I am not alone here. This concern is the whole reason for panpsychism.