Ah, existential angst. . . . My favorite topic! Science tells us that we live in a purposeless, valueless, absurd, if strangely beautiful universe. No warm, fuzzy feelings are to be had from a cold-eyed, objective look at our surroundings. No The Purpose Driven Universe to read! We, all of us, are like doomed, antarctic explorers. Our only consolation is the stoic pride we take knowing that we'd flip God the bird if only he existed!

As eventually, the ruins of our civilization and our dead bodies must tell the tale when our time finally runs out.

You might be right about physics, but physics is a weird science unlike any other with its inordinate mathematical emphasis. Chemistry, on the other hand, is much more like biology than physics. In chemistry, they deal with actual entities that are real and take up space, rather than with mere observations and mathematical formulations. Where's the teleology in '2 + 3 = 5'? Obviously nowhere. But a real molecule--now that's another story. (And there's no need for me to point out that only a single hydrogen atom--which are never actually found in nature--has been reduced to the equations of quantum mechanics for going on many decades now with little hope for future progress!)

Take, for example, Kroto and Smalley's discovery of the buckyball structure. If you read the history as to how they came up with the soccerball structure, they clearly engaged in teleological reasoning supposedly reserved for biology--and they won a Nobel for it!

Indeed, there are few things more delicious than eavesdropping on a physicist and a chemist debate metaphysics!

There is a camp that believes this, led by Dawkins and Weinberg and others, but I think they are not speaking for science when they take that view. Science has no more to say about the purpose of the universe, than it has to say about its purposelessness. Neither issue is answerable using science, and I wish those self-proclaimed oracles of science would more carefully review the process of science and the places where assumptions are inserted that make it impossible to address those questions. It is part of the limitations of science-- which is its greatest strength at the cost of its greatest weakness.
Ah, but "dead men tell no tales". The tale is only told by us, which is at once our prison and our escape. We are imprisoned by our own concept of time, but when we are no longer around to apply that concept, we are also no longer subject to it. To me, these are all parts of the core paradox of scientific thinking: it requires that we imagine a reality independent of us, but we are the ones doing that imagining. It requires a significant leap of faith to believe that anything we imagine about reality is at all close to what exists independently of our imaginings. Those oracles think we seek to understand a reality independent of our understanding of it, and I would point to the obvious impossibility of the task. If they cite as evidence that "science works, and how could it if our imaginings were not close to the reality", I simply respond, how could it not-- we choose the questions, and we choose when they have been satisfactorily answered. How could that not "work"? We never test anything but our understanding of reality, and so we never learn about anything but our understanding of reality. Anything more is pure philosophy, of the same untestable nature as modes of thought they criticize.

Warren. Atomic hydrogen is studied in Penning traps...perhaps you meant "nature" as outside the laboratory. see:http://books.google.com/books?id=ELV...SQ83vpBqLPPZAo

I'm a chemist.pete

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A first rate theory predicts.
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Right, I meant nature as opposed to the special conditions found in the laboratory. And I should probably further qualify my statement about atomic hydrogen by replacing "never" with "rarely, at least at Earth-like temparatures and pressures,".

Since you're a chemist, what is your prognosis for reducing, say, protein chemistry or even the H₂ molecule to quantum mechanics?

Thanks in advance.

Warren. Atomic hydrogen is studied in Penning traps...perhaps you meant "nature" as outside the laboratory. see:http://books.google.com/books?id=ELV...SQ83vpBqLPPZAo

I'm a chemist....shhh...pete

__________________
A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

Actually, it goes even deeper than this; we don't see with our eyes--what we really see is a model manufactured by our brain. Yet, the model mostly works. Does that prove that tables and chairs really are "out there" to be avoided or run into? No. But still, I believe in them. If that's philosophy, then so be it. Science isn't the only road to truth.

I think you are right that there is a place for teleological reasoning in science, like asking "if only the most rigid and strong kinds of structures can survive in some environment, then I should expect the structures that do survive to be rigid and strong, and how can I imagine such strong structures could be made?" That might lead to buckeyballs, or DNA helixes, or what have you. But simply referring to function as an organizational device is not really teleology-- teleology is going beyond that to definining a sense of purpose, saying that the purpose of the DNA is to be strong, or the purpose of a gene is to survive. It's that whole "selfish gene" business, and it's scientific hooey, because it involved anthropomorphization. It's perfectly scientific to say that the structures that survive are the ones that will be selected for future continuance, but it is not science to attribute that to a "purpose". I can just as easily argue in a nihilistic universe where every structure 'wants' to be destroyed, and all living things 'want' to die. Then the survivors are the poor unlucky ones who have failed their purpose, who are enslaved by an unfortunate survival instinct by virtue of their genetic programming. Now, does that sound "teleological"? Yet it generates the precise same biology and chemistry.

In regard to anthropic thinking, which is what we're really talking about, this means that we can certainly say the universe had to be the way we observe it to be, but it doesn't say anything else, and that is kind of an obvious statement. There is no "purpose" associated with any of this, which doesn't mean there is no purpose to the universe, it just means any effort to apply the concept of purpose is nonscientific personal philosophy. A perfectly valid human endeavor, don't get me wrong, just one that should not be associated with science in any way. But the same can be said about purposelessness.

Getting back to Boltzman Brains, it occurred to me that a Boltzman Brain could provide a naturalistic explanation for the existence of God.

The first cause proof of God is that there has to be a first cause to our universe. Atheists, however, always retort: "Oh yeah, then what caused God?"

So, a theist can now say that God was a spontaneously-formed Boltzman Brain formed from the formless chaos of Nothingness.

This response also rescues God from the charge that if He exists, then He is Nothingness itself; God would really be a Something rather than a Nothing if He were a Boltzman Brain.

Since there is no existence more lonely than being a disembodied, utterly alone, Boltzman Brain, God created the world and us in order to have some company. . . .

I think most philosophers of biology would lump "function" along with goal-directed behavior into the more broad category of teleology. And teleology would be scientific hooey only if we suppose that real purpose has to be what philosophers would call a separate substance: not necessarily a material substance, but it would be a "5th element" distinct, but equally as real and powerful as Earth, Wind, Fire, and Rain.

However, if we take an "intentional stance" view of purpose--otherwise known as Mild Realism (cf. Dan Dennett's work), we posit a purpose of someone if it explains past behavior or will predict future behavior. If the explanations are satisfying and if the predictions turn out, we are warranted in asserting that the sentences that did the positing are true.

In which case, there is nothing to stop us from anthropomorphizing nature as long as it is pragmatically useful. In other words, the functions involved in a buckyball's structure are neither more nor less real than the function of a heart or an eyeball; i.e., they are as real as human love or money. But as Dennett would say "But how real is that?" It can be a shock to realize that human love does not have the same ontological status as a table or a chair, or even a hydrogen atom. Nevertheless, human love is still real--it accurately describes real behavior. That is, the word 'love' should be construed as a verb or an adjective, but not as a noun.

And although everybody dies, nobody says we are designed to die because no useful predictions come from that assumption: i.e., we don't possess "suicide organs" and cannot otherwise will ourselves to death.

The beauty of this way of thinking is that it eliminates the false dichotomy where only humans (and some higher animals) have value, and the rest of the universe "just happens" and is intrinsically valueless. Rather, the universe is now realized as being permeated with values.

And as Kroto and Smalley have shown, even physical scientists who adopt this way of thinking can reap great rewards.

Thus, there are still only four elements, but Love and Strife are still there. Hence teleology is enshrined in the very vocabulary of chemistry, as when we describe stuff as "hydrophilic" or "hydrophobic".

Aw, hell, how did I manage to start a 'religion' thread??

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I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Didn't mean to hijack your thread into a religious discussion! I just threw that thought out there for whatever little it is worth. . . .


Mods, please feel free to delete that post if you so desire.

I'm sorry to be blunt, but in what way is that viewpoint even remotely coherent or useful, let alone beautiful?

Grant Hutchison

Put the bong down, please

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

There is a way to keep this discussion entirely within the bounds of science. The "Boltzmann Brain" is a scientific concept, and if we afford "god" with a scientific definition (say the first Boltzmann Brain with the capacity to create a universe to various specifications), then it does seem like your conjecture sounds scientific. But this is just what I mean by the problems with anthropic thinking-- it is very good at coming up with all kinds of scientific sounding hypotheses, that are not actually science-- they are the natural philosophy that science (thankfully) parted company from 400years ago. None of these speculations are testable, they cannot be falsified with observation, and so they do fall into the same general category as ID, without the additional disastrous burden of having to reinterpret all existing science to conform to one pre-existing assumption. What you are actually describing is not science, it is a prescription for incorporating scientific-looking thinking into a personal philosophy in such a way as to generate a warm fuzzy feeling of self assurance rather than what might be described as genuine scientific understanding (the distinction there is so subtle as to be almost impossible to establish uniquely, but also so important). Ironically, your effort seems no worse to me than those of atheists who apply anthropic thinking at the other end of the "purpose" vs. "purposeless" spectrum. Neither looks much like science to me, but I do find it ironic that your effort would easily be branded as an effort to slip subjective beliefs into science, whereas theirs is not similarly stigmatized.

Sorry for repeating myself, but - in simpler terms, this entire thread can be replaced by a small blower motor and a flapper valve.

That tends to be the opinion of people who don't think it's important to understand what science actually is, and how to distinguish science, pseudoscience, and natural philosophy. From what I've seen on here, I'd say there is a clear need to understand those distinctions, and that starts with the recognition that the distinctions are not in fact obvious, but rather so subtle to the point of probably merging seamlessly into each other at various troublesome places. That's why threads that explore those troublesome places are so easily branded with words I've seen like "claptrap", "word salad", and now "flapper valve"-- rhetoric being the last refuge of the scoundrel, if you will.

No offense taken, sir.

The view here is a logical extension of Dan Dennett's intentional stance theory. I highly recommend his books, especially since there isn't much on the net, but here are a couple of links:

True Believers

Dennett's Intentional Stance

The coherence comes from the elimination of ontologically extravagant mental objects and strong, "original" intentionality, while retaining the recognition that teleological ascriptions do in fact pick out patterns in nature that are real (hence the name "mild realism").

The usefulness comes from the predictive leg up that a design or intentional stance toward some systems enables. E.g., by adopting a design stance toward the C₆₀ molecule, Kroto and Smalley were able to quickly zero in on the soccerball structure in a matter of hours without having to resort to forming crystals of the stuff and studying x-ray diffraction patterns. (And don't forget they got a Nobel as a result! )

The beauty part comes from the realization (once the egotistical ontology of human mental realism is rejected) the universe and the items contained within it are not meaningless, purposeless, nor valueless.

Granted, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; a vermicologist probably considers tape worms to be beautiful. As a student of Holmes Rolston, my training is in environmental ethics, with a chosen subspecialty in space environmental ethics; thus, my perception of the beauty part is further tinged with that eureka feeling that comes from solving an important philosophical problem. However, people who believe that environmental ethics is boring, irrelevant, or false, or who have publically invested many pages in the false notion that the universe is in fact purposeless probably won't consider the idea that the universe is in fact permeated with intrinsic values to be an addition to the beauty, if any, of the universe.

You forgot the best word of all for branding such threads: "unscientific"!

Ah, but here are two key differences: that word is (a) defined in a way conducive to discourse and (b) relevant to the interests of this forum.

Yes, I know Dennett's work. (As a side issue, his book Consciousness Explained might perhaps be of interest to Ken G, given his recent beleaguerment concerning consciousness on another thread.)
From memory, I think Dennett might agree with me that taking an intentional stance is something you do when a physical or functional stance isn't working: I can interpret the behaviour of my central heating thermostat as if it had intentions of its own, but it doesn't really add anything to my understanding that I couldn't get from knowing the behaviour of a bimetallic strip. In general, many components of the Universe seem to require only a physical stance to allow us to understand and predict their behaviour, so levering in intentionality is far from being a parsimonious approach. And, specifically, I don't buy the idea that teasing the structure out of C₆₀ required anything other than a physical stance, especially since the example of aromatic compounds was already out there.
As to coherence, it seems (from what you've said so far) that the only reason you want to imbue the Universe with intentionality is to resolve a "false dichotomy" about "value" that many might see as "not a dichotomy" or "not false".

Grant Hutchison

I agree, but Darwin's Dangerous Idea might be more accessible to physicists!

Actually, Dennett would say that the physical stance should be resorted to when the design or intentional stance doesn't work, especially when the item in question is broken or malfunctioning.

Not quite. Your knowledge of bimetallic behavior does not in itself explain why the bimetallic strip exists in the first place: it exists just because it serves the functions of measuring and controlling temperature.

The intentional stance is parsimonious because it eliminates intentionality and mental objects as a separate, metaphysical substance on a par with atoms and molecules. This goes back to Quine's views on translation: if two rival anthropologists cannot agree on how 'gavagai' should be translated, and there is no more conceivable empirical work that could be done to settle the matter, then, well, we just have to accept that there is no underlying fact of the matter. This is rather unlike the ordinary underdetermination of theory by the evidence that plagues other sciences. Physicists disagree whether quantum phenomena are deterministic or inherently probabalistic; yet there might be an underlying fact of the matter the would settle the question if only we could lift Heisenberg's veil. Since the intentional and design stances do not multiply ontological entities, there is no ontological harm done by applying them to the ordinary, physical components of the universe.

I don't blame you for that since that conclusion is based on original historical research that I am sitting on. Here's a brief excerpt:

Here, the Rice University team clearly engaged in the sort of reverse engineering that is supposedly reserved for biological entities. Granted, some Russians and a Japanese had independently proposed that soccerball-like carbon molecules might be found, but Smalley and Kroto weren't aware of their papers when they published.

If one believes that humans are the sole repositories of value, and that the rest of the universe does not, then that's a dichotomy. The question is whether such a dichotomy is false or not. Indeed, the assumption that the dichotomy is not false is such a commonplace among scientists, it has become a litmus test. Religion, on the other hand often take it for granted that the universe is granted. God created the universe and then saw that it was good, or so says the Bible. Now, while the Bible is an unreliable guide to the history of the universe, it is less clear that the Bible has nothing true to say about morals and values. So my project has been to see if whether a value-laden universe is indeed incompatible with scientific materialism--and my considered conclusion is that it is not.

You lurker you... (thanks for the tip).
That was my take as well. Physical thinking suggests we should look for a molecule shape that is an energy minimum, the same is done with proteins all the time. Is it the "purpose" of the molecule to have a low energy, or does it just take a lot of energy to break it? I haven't seen a case where "intent" adds anything to the thinking but a kind of subective satisfaction on the part of the thinker, which is just how I feel about anthropic thinking as well (it's not predictive-- recall our "Miller conjecture" discussion from way back!).Yes, the kind of thinking we are seeing seems to only solve problems that it itself creates-- a kind of resolution of cognitive dissonance that probably never had to be there in the first place.

If I may anticipate Grant's position on this, as I agree with it, I think he would say that understanding how a thermostat works does not require prior knowledge of why that design was selected-- you get both bangs for the same buck once you understand how bimetallic strips function, physically. It is not useful to reason, "well, I don't know quite what bimetallic strips do, but I do know they were selected for my thermostat, so I bet they do the following, as that would make them good for being in a thermostat". This is correct logic on the surface, but are you going to get the specs of bimetallic strips that way? No, you are going to measure their behavior directly, and use that to judge the precision of your thermostat-- otherwise you are just guessing about the wisdom of their creator. Like the creator of those modern plastic packages...
I don't see the connection, and it further seems silly to assert there is no underlying fact simply because we have no access to it. That's egocentrism, not useful science.Actually, that's not a very good example, because there is no serious dispute on the matter any more. The interpretation of why is disputable, but quantum mechanics is quite clearly not deterministic in the sense that physicists (not philosophers) use the word. Quantum mechanics is a projection of reality onto a particular scheme for understanding it, and that projection is inherently nondeterministic. We have no idea if reality is deterministic or not, but there's all kinds of things we never get to know about reality because all we can do is project it onto our analysis techniques. But you are right that many theories are underconstrained by observation, at least until new observations are added (a process that is happening all the time).
They only don't multiply ontological entities if you think there was already a place for such ontology. Physics has no need for it in the first place, but you have pointed out that you don't see physics in the same light as biology.But this is just the point-- you are claiming a certain approach is beneficial simply because it was used, even when other approaches also worked. The benefit is not established, only the preferences of individual philosophy. The Greeks believed planets were spheres on the grounds that spheres are "mathematically more perfect". They were basically right-- so have we established the value of expecting nature to conform to mathematical prejudice?"Value" is not a scientific concept. You can only use science to investigate how value is established by a certain group, but you cannot say that something has value or does not. Value is a human concept that cannot exist independently of the valuer, whereas objective science requires that (paradoxical) assumption. Science has nothing at all to say about the "realness" of value dichotomies, even though some (misguided) scientists attempt to use science to discredit the concept of value altogether. But they forget they have simply assumed there is no value in anything outside of science.The dichotomy is not false in a general sense, but it is lost under the projection that is science. What exists prior to that projection is not objective and cannot be ascertained scientifically. What you are talking about is a philosophical, not scientific, effort to ascertain that, expressly because philosophy does not require the same objective projection (onto measurable data) that science does (Grant and I have disagreed on that point in the past, but I still see a fundamental difference in the kinds of objects one can do philosophy on versus science).

Perhaps not, but "scientific materialism" isn't science, it is personal philosophy that gives lip service to science. Science needs no "isms", it just sets out to achieve certain goals that are consistent with certain assumptions. Too many people "reason by assumption".

Yeah, but you might not be motivated to determine the specs of the bimetallic strip without the knowledge that it probably serves some useful function as part of a thermostat.

Then what about the the mutually contradictory English translations of the Bible? Which one is the "true" version?

So the most recent consensus is that David Bohm was out to lunch?

Arithmetic can be done with paper and pencil, but if you have a pocket calculator, why not use it? The soccerball structure was eventually confirmed by physical techniques such as magnetic resonance and direct electron microscopy, but this process took at least five years. Kroto and Smalley's bold, reverse-engineered hypothesis, on the other hand, represented a nearly instantaneous quantum leap in understanding, and opened the new and still active research program of fullerene chemistry.

Biologists have attempted to eliminate teleology from biology for well over a century now to no avail. Since teleology falls under the umbrella concept of value, and to the extent that teleological explanations are legitimate (uncontroversially in biology at least), then "value" is indeed a scientific concept.

Or even especially within science!


I would say that scientific materialism is a quite public, intersubjective philosophy of science.

You are certainly correct here; a person can be a scientific materialist, an instrumentalist, a strict empiricist logical positivist, or even a born-again Baptist fundamentalist, and still do good science!

Someone here might understand the arguments in this paper, which is evidently relevant to the Boltzmann Brain concept;
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0208/0208013v3.pdf
but I am not one of them.

It discusses the entropy involved and the authors seem quite convinced of the unlikely nature of an inflationary universe. I can't tell if these concepts are meant to be serious or if they are just speculation by bored cosmologists.

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Well, lots of philosophical traffic here, at the end of a very long and decidedly unphilosophical day for me. I'll come back in due course, once I've had the chance to "muster my dissent into a wisecrack", as Archie the Cockroach once said.
Meanwhile, I'll just attempt to excuse myself from Ken's understandable accusation:I was away for three days, and the whole "consciousness" debate had exploded and been shut down by the time I returned. I'd actually have enjoyed getting involved in that one. Although I post on a bizarre variety of topics on this forum, I have certified expertise in depressingly few - however, I do have a bit of paper from a Royal College which suggests that I once knew an adequate amount about consciousness, among other things.

Blessedly, though, they've yet to install a decent WiFi network on Bidean nam Bian, so I was unavoidably excluded from participation.

Grant Hutchison

I see what you're saying now, and probably Quine too. I was too hard on him-- it seems the point is, when dealing with translation, there is automatically the possibility that something gets "lost in translation", so there may be no such thing as the "correct translation". I actually agree with that wholeheartedly, and indeed I have made the exact same argument about science-- for it seems pretty clear that science is itself a form of translation, or what I prefer to call a projection, from reality to what we can empirically test, and again from what we can empirically test to what we can conceptualize and understand logically and mathematically. Because of those projections, there is no longer a concept of "correct" science, there is only a concept of "useful" science. But you see how that directly factors into my objections to both anthropic and teleological thinking, when they are interpreted as explanations of why things are the way they are, instead of being expressed as arbitrary models that achieve some demonstrable function.
The scientific function is not allowed to be "it makes sense to me", for that is not objectively demonstrable.
The most recent consensus is that David Bohm's perspectives never helped us to do quantum mechanics, or science in general. He might be completely correct at a level that is outside of what science does, but inside science, his interpretations are superfluous. Personally, and this is pure unsupportable opinion, I believe that the universe is neither deterministic nor random-- those sets are only the complements of each other after we take the projection that is science.

But this is just the point-- it did not become genuine "understanding" until after those experiments. Before that point, it was nothing but a hypothesis. Science is not a prescription for forming hypotheses, it is a prescription for testing hypotheses. It's true that good scientists are also good at forming useful hypotheses, so I don't say there's no place for teleology at that stage, but it doesn't become science until one completes the cycle. That's precisely what does not happen with anthropic thinking, or ID. "Believing the hypothesis" is actually a fallacy of bad science.
No, it is not necessary to define a concept of value to have teleology. I already gave an example--if I claim that the goal of all living things is to die, and all structures "want" to fall apart, I can find ample "evidence" to support that, I'll just point to all the ones who succeeded, in spite of the unfortunate evolution by natural selection of a survival instinct, which may be seen as a parasitic disease in this perspective. But more to the point, I still get everything that happens in chemistry and biology, just the same. None of it requires a cogent sense of "value", in the common meaning of the term.

And I would disagree-- it is not a philosophy of science, as it is unfortunately often sold, rather it is a philosophy inspired by science that has nothing directly to do with science. No scientific theory requires that I adopt scientific materialism in order to apply that theory-- I only need to know how to apply the theory.
Right, I think that's the central point to bear in mind.

I see what you're saying, but by the way I don't view "lurker" as an accusation-- just because I can't resist registering my opinion, however incompletely informed, doesn't mean that no one else should either.

That's a shame, because the thread was primarily closed by virtue of going in circles-- it really needed some infusion of new perspectives, especially informed ones.

The two are not mutually contradictory, though I think I wasn't clear about what I meant by "working".
Some things can be clearly understood, and predictions made, on a purely physical stance. In biology, we often struggle to make useful predictions from physical arguments, but find reasoning from a design stance works well: we're pushed up a level by the complexity of the physical system, or by our poor understanding of it. This is what I meant when I said we adopt one stance when we find the one below "isn't working". Dennett talked about going down the chain, too, when we discover that the design stance fails to make good predictions, so we have to reason about the physicality underlying the "design". When my thermostat doesn't work, I am forced to abandon higher stances and drop down to the physical stance of wires and dials and bimetallic strips until I identify the defect and fix it. This rather points up the problem with the intentional and design stances applied to thermostats: such stances don't tell us more, and sometimes they tell us less.
Didn't Dennett refer to exactly my thermostat example as being just a "trivial case of a True Believer" (to use his term for subjects that lend themselves to, or require, an intentional stance)?

You seem to be suggesting that knowing how the bimetallic strip performs its function is in some way a poorer understanding than simply knowing the function it performs. Is that what you're saying?

It seems more that they indulged in a simple bit of visualization, informed by some basic principles of molecular bonds. It's a quite nice 3-D repetition of Kekulé's "vision" of the Worm Ouroboros, by analogy with which he deduced the structure of benzene.

It seems we now need to ask the cartoon philosophers' question: "What do we mean when we say 'value'?"
Ken and I seem to have rather similar ideas of what we mean, but I suspect you diverge in some way. "Value" is a property I can assign to anything in the Universe, defining a relationship it has with me (my consciousness); I can do this to objects, to propositional attitudes, to other humans, and self-referentially to my own consciousness (this is a biggy in philosophical medical ethics). I suppose, if I bent my mind to it, I could even consider the value of the value of my consciousness. Hence my doubts about the "dichotomy".

Grant Hutchison