Over on the article "What If We Dropped The Word?" pdelsignore asked,
I think in the realm of biology, the naturalist can never really say that something is getting 'better' but can say that something becomes more complex. By complex, that is an inherent way of saying that an organism is mutating to something that entails more functions than it's previous state. My argument against this, is regardless of the actual functional aspects of the organism, there is still underlying information required.
I'm curious, and sorry for digressing the discussion to Biology again, I know that wasn't your intent (no pund intended). As an engineer (code guy), what is your take on the underlying information as the thing that drives the organic structure? since life-organisms are essentially coded, wouldn't the claim for intelligence be stronger on that level?
For more clarification on the premise to my question, you can read my post here.:
http://www.sacredvapor.com/?p=76
Since this seems to go a little off topic from the intent of the article (I don't want it to become a biology discussion since it isn't) here is my response:
Why can't naturalists say something is getting better? If they define what better is than they can evaluate it against it. With people better seems to surround people having more knowledge.
Here's a question for you... can you point me to an example of an organism getting more complex? I think an example of this may help me better understand what you mean.
Your blog posts points out something very interesting about information and DNA. At this point I don't think I'd disagree with Perry Marshall. What he says about DNA seems to fit in with the Bible in an interesting way. DNA is something we really understand little about because it's taking us to long to wade through the complexity to even understand the information format. Just a few years ago they had a new discovery to find patterns in DNA in a way that they had not seen before.
When I look at a cell at work I see something that looks like an extremely complicated bio machine. There are loads of different components working together to make what it does happen. There is data storage, data retrieval, and execution of the commands in the data. It looks like a work of engineering art.
The information layer
Matt, you stated:
"Why can't naturalists say something is getting better? If they define what better is than they can evaluate it against it. With people better seems to surround people having more knowledge."
When I think of 'better,' I think 'improvement.' For a naturalist to say that an organism has improved, they must define those standards, so you are correct in that. However, my point is that in a random-processing world, without an agent responsible for the development, the term 'better' is just whatever the naturalist defines it to be. For example, a naturalist can say that 'consciousness' is an attribute that makes a lifeform better, but in a random-processing world, consciousness is just a mutation. does that make sense?
in terms of organisms being more complex, an observation may be that an eagle's eyesight has developed for stronger vision, therefore the eye structures are more complex. This is just a fictional example, but the idea is that an organic system has improved. My argument however, is that it is not the exterior protein that is changing, but the information responsible for that protein. Therefore, the underlying development is in the information layer. which is where I think things are really interesting.
Agreed
I agree that when a naturalist (especially a hard core one who doesn't mix in any supernatural beliefs) than they have to define what better or more improved is. This is something I, actually, look for when people say something is better. Sadly, I find a lacking in this being defined.
I'd, also, agree that the internal core information would need to change for something to become more complex. It would, also, need to change for something to become less complex. An example of the less complex organism is the bacteria in yogurt. They are finding that it is becoming less complex and have experimented with adding in different bacteria so we can get the same benefits. What they observed was bacteria loosing part of it's genetic code and some functions is was preforming within the yogurt.
Ya know, we are teetering on having ourselves a full blown evolution discussion, don't you?
that depends
that depends on what you mean by 'evolution.' (lol)
ok, I'll stop. I don't think I have the energy for a full blown evolution discussion, but I'm sure the fshbwl will continue to pool the tides of creation/evolution water in the future. Tsunami style maybe.
better or complex
This idea makes me think of an old episode of, "The Twilight Zone" (at least I think that was the show) where a guy was injected with these mini-robots that were designed to bring healing where the body identified weaknesses.
Well, the guy got healthy, recovered from cancer (or some disease), and began to be able to do all kinds of crazy things physically because he was so healthy.
I remember a few specific scenes that I think apply here. One came from taking an x-ray of his chest and discovering that his ribs were thicker and aligned both horizontally and vertically because the bots determined that the rib structure was a weakness.
Then, in another scene, they were trying to determine how long he could hold his breath and the bots determined that his inability to breath underwater was a weakness so he developed gills.
The third involved his inability to see what was behind him so he grew and extra set of eyeballs on the back of his head.
In each case, these changes made his body structure more complex and were adaptations that were deemed to be beneficial in his current environment, however, to say that he was better as a result is highly questionable.
the word "better"
Naturalists can’t use the word better because of the naturalistic fallacy. G. E. Moore stated that a naturalistic fallacy was committed whenever a philosopher attempts to prove a claim about ethics by appealing to a definition of the term "good" in terms of one or more natural properties (such as pleasant, more evolved, desired , etc).