Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 190

Can octopuses really feel pain?

The brainy cephalopods behaved about the same as lab rats under similar conditions, raising both neuroscience and ethical issues:

Highly intelligent invertebrates like these challenge our ideas of how life forms come to be intelligent. For one thing, unlike most intelligent life forms, octopuses are unsocial and short-lived. Some researchers think that octopuses were forced to become intelligent when, unlike their nautilus cousins, they lost their shells…

Well now, there’s an animal intelligence hypothesis we can test: Will we ever find a shelled creature that is as smart as the octopus?

Meanwhile, what to make of Ed Yong’s suggestion, “This gantlet of threats might have fueled the evolution” of octopus intelligence? Need alone does not by itself produce intelligence any more than fear of death by itself produces longer natural lifespans. A creature that needs intelligence but doesn’t have it might just as likely go extinct. There are some significant unknowns we need to fill in here.

News, “Octopuses get emotional about pain, research suggests” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: The smartest of invertebrates, the octopus, once again prompts us to rethink what we believe to be the origin of intelligence.

You may also wish to read:

Is the octopus a “second genesis” of intelligence? Can its strange powers provide insights for robotics or the human mind?

and

Scientists clash over why octopuses are smart New findings show, the brainy seafood breaks all the rules about why some life forms are smart.

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An interview with Bill Dembski at Upper Room

Bill Dembski reflects and summarizes his work in intelligent design (ID), science and culture, and education. Dembski engages with some of the opposing views from his own blind spots and those of others.

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Ten (or so) Pro-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

On the Design Disquisitions YouTube channel, I’ve posted a new video where I recommend several books of interest, specifically pro-ID literature. Most of the suggestions may be familiar to you, but hopefully there are a few that you’ve not read before. I also give a brief summary of the content of each book. I don’t claim that the books mentioned are necessarily the best, but I think anyone who wants to join the discussion needs to be familiar with some of these.

Let me know what you would add to the list!

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Why trust in “science” is becoming unwise

Long headlines are a sort of signature at The Daily Mail: “Editor of The Lancet refuses to reveal if he still supports notorious letter he published trashing Chinese lab Covid theory- and claims asking him about it invades his privacy”:

The letter was published in The Lancet last February and was signed by 27 eminent public health experts who described speculation about the origins of the virus from a Wuhan laboratory as ‘rumours’ and ‘misinformation.’…

The letter played a key role in suppressing early debate on the pandemic’s origins, but its credibility has since been questioned after details emerged of the involvement of Peter Daszak, a major financial backer of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIU).

He signed and organised the letter while his group has funnelled US taxpayer dollars to the organisation for carrying out controversial gain-of-function research.  

 and , “Editor of The Lancet refuses…” at Daily Mail

For more on “gain of function” research, see Heather Zeiger: What Is Gain-of-Function Research and Why Is It Risky? The Wuhan Institute of Virology and the NIH find themselves in a tough spot. To understand why some in the U.S. government and the NIH want to downplay funding of gain-of-function research, we need to understand what exactly it is.

And now, from the “really compromised” department:

Allegations swirl that it was not down to editorial misjudgement, but something more sinister: a desire to appease China for commercial reasons. The Financial Times revealed four years ago that debt-laden Springer Nature, the German group that publishes Nature, was blocking access in China to hundreds of academic articles mentioning subjects deemed sensitive by Beijing such as Hong Kong, Taiwan or Tibet. China is also spending lavishly around the world to win supremacy in science — which includes becoming the biggest national sponsor of open access journals published by both Springer Nature and Elsevier, owner of The Lancet.

One source estimated that 49 sponsorship agreements between Springer Nature and Chinese institutions were worth at least $10m last year. These deals cover the publishing fees authors would normally pay in such journals, so they smooth the path for Chinese authors while creating a dependency culture.

Ian Birrell, “Beijing’s useful idiots” at Unherd

So articles are free if China likes them but not even available if China doesn’t like them?

Anyone remember the March for Science? This stuff will not end well for “Trust the science.”

See also: What will the long-term effect be of science journals playing useful idiots around COVID-19? Some of us have been reflecting on the effect of the COVID-19 panic on the public estimation of science. Here’s an article on the “useful idiot” problem among science journals.

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

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At Mind Matters News: Do any dogs go to heaven? If so, why?

Neuroscientist Christof Koch was troubled as a child by the Catholic tradition that dogs like his beloved Purzel did not go to heaven:

In recent articles, we’ve discussed well-known neuroscientist Christof Koch’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness which, as he acknowledges, takes a panpsychist (everything is conscious to some degree) approach to the mind. He has explained his reasoning at MIT Press Reader: Materialists must see human consciousness as an illusion — but then whose illusion is it? Panpsychism allows humans to have actual consciousness but, he says, “experience may not even be restricted to biological entities but might extend to non-evolved physical systems previously assumed to be mindless — a pleasing and parsimonious conclusion about the makeup of the universe.” His perspective is gaining popularity in science…

One, perhaps unexpected, factor that he mentions as shaping his overall approach was youthful dissatisfaction with Catholic Church teachings about the immortality of animals…

A well-known Christian scholar and writer of the mid-twentieth century, C.S. Lewis (1898–1963), took a more complex view of the question. Lewis, in no way a pantheist, offers a tentative case for some animal immortality — based precisely on the human exceptionalism that Koch finds objectionable.

News, “Do any dogs go to heaven? If so, why?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Ironically, human exceptionalism, which Koch decries, holds out the possibility that some beloved animals may indeed share immortality with humans.

See also: Why would a neuroscientist choose panpsychism over materialism? It seems to have come down to a choice between “nothing is conscious” and “everything is conscious.” Materialism becomes incoherent when it requires us to believe that we only imagine we are conscious — that’s a basic error in logic.

and

The real reason why only human beings speak. Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly

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Does quantum physics really mean there is no solid reality?

Here’s A physicist’s defense of reality, despite quantum physics:

He explains why Eddington’s solid table really IS solid, even if, at the highest resolution, it is mostly empty space…

So the space isn’t “empty” after all; it is occupied by the probabilities of electrons operating according to the laws of quantum physics (often called quantum mechanics or QM). The particles are very much there, though not, perhaps, in the way we are accustomed to think.

There’s another aspect to this question as well. There is no reason to consider our perceptions to be illusions unless there is a more correct perception that we could have at the same level of resolution.

Consider, for example, a decoy duck, floating in the water. The decoy is not an illusion on account of the fact that its atomic composition is not perceived by our senses. It is an illusion because — at a distance — we believe it to be a live duck. That is, there really is such a thing as a live duck and the decoy looks like a live duck without being one.

News, “A PHYSICIST’S DEFENSE OF REALITY, DESPITE QUANTUM PHYSICS” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: There is no reason to consider our perceptions to be illusions unless there is a more correct perception that we could have at the same level of resolution.

You may also wish to read:

Can a materialist consciousness theory survive quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics requires that the observer be part of the measurement; thus quantum measurements must include consciousness. If quantum measurements must include consciousness, the dualists are correct, says philosopher Angus Menuge: Consciousness exists in its own right.

and

In quantum physics, “reality” really is what we choose to observe. Physicist Bruce Gordon argues that idealist philosophy is the best way to make sense of the puzzling world of quantum physics. The quantum eraser experiment shows that there is no reality independent of measurement at the microphysical level. It is created by the measurement itself.

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L&FP 44a: What is 2 + 2, Mr Smith? (1984 as demonstration of how first duties and first truths are inextricably intertwined)

1984 is a classic satirical novel on the nature of tyranny in the mass media driven, information age, totalitarian surveillance state. Accordingly, it is vital to appreciate the force of the Winston Smith on the Rack scene — yes, taken from the related movie — where the issue of the self-evident truth 2 + 2 = 4 comes up:

First truths, in short, are inextricably intertwined with first duties, and both are equally self-evident. As one clear manifestation, gross injustice is always rooted in false, unreasonable, unwarranted, dishonest thinking.

In case one is tempted to imagine that this is a dismissible satirical exaggeration, kindly ponder the sickening judicial torture-murder of Czech national hero and martyr, Milada Horakova and others on trumped up treason charges, only two years after 1984 was published:

When traitors are in power, patriots are deemed traitors and are judicially murdered. (See more details at Wikipedia.)

In defence of civilisation, we must never allow clever rhetoric or confused thinking to obfuscate lessons written in blood and tears regarding self-evident first truths and duties of reason, the first steps of honest, sound reason highlighted by Cicero and many others across the ages. Even to object (much less to misguidedly attempt to prove), one is forced to appeal to the legitimate, pervasive, first principle authority of duties

to truth, to right reason, to prudence [including, warrant], to sound conscience, to neighbour, so too to fairness and justice, etc.

The attempted denial becomes self-defeatingly absurd and the evasion (often, without realising it) becomes an enabling of injustice.

Those who neglect, ignore, dismiss or despise the hard bought lessons of sound history (paid for in blood and tears), doom themselves to pay the same coin over and over and over again. END

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Gaps everywhere in the history of life

As Günter Bechly puts it:

I have been introducing the subject of a mystery that bothered Charles Darwin himself (see here). The abrupt origin of flowering plants is by no means an exception to the rule. Instead, it is representative of a general pattern in the history of life and the fossil record. In all groups of organisms, in all regions of the Earth, and over all periods of Earth history, new groups and new body plans appear abruptly in the fossil record, mostly without any potential precursors in the older layers (Bechly & Meyer 2017).

Günter Bechly, “Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery” Is Not Alone: Gaps Everywhere!” at Evolution News and Science Today (June 12, 2021)

People who don’t like hearing about that so often resort to abuse because it’s like mentioning that the elephant in the room is not a stuffed toy.

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At Big Think: What happened before the Big Bang?

Well, nothing, really. That’s the point. But many are unhappy with the philosophical implications of that:

Let’s face it: to think that the universe has a history that started with a kind of birthday some 13.8 billion years ago is weird. It resonates with many religious narratives that posit that the cosmos was created by divine intervention, although science has nothing to say about that.

If everything that happens can be attributed to a cause, what caused the universe? To deal with the very tough question of the First Cause, religious creation myths use what cultural anthropologists sometimes call a “Positive Being,” a supernatural entity. Since time itself had a beginning at some point in the distant past, that First Cause had to be special: it had to be an uncaused cause, a cause that just happened, with nothing preceding it.

Marcelo Gleiser, “What happened before the Big Bang?” at BigThink (June 9, 2021)

Gleiser goes on at some length, clarifying that science has nothing to say about events before the Big Bang: “The mystery of the First Cause remains. You can choose religious faith as an answer, or you can choose to believe science will conquer it all.”

But, in the context, what does “science will conquer it all” mean? How does science “conquer” the question: How did the universe come to exist? Either God or no answer.

What happened before anything happened? It’s a meaningless question within itself unless one posits a First Cause or God.

Science, like an afghan, tends to fray at the edges.

See also: The Big Bang: Put simply, the facts are wrong.

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Bees thrive by cloning selves as exact duplicates

One individual has cloned herself many millions of times:

Asexual reproduction – parthenogenesis – isn’t uncommon in the insect world, but having offspring that are genetically identical to the parent is. That’s because, during the reproductive process, genetic material gets mixed up in a process called recombination. As a result, even if there is only one parent its offspring end up with a slightly different genetic makeup.

However, the female workers of the Cape honeybee (Apis mellifera capensis), native to southern South Africa, have developed the unusual ability to clone themselves while effectively avoiding recombination during reproduction, says Benjamin Oldroyd at the University of Sydney.

Christa Lesté-Lasserre, “A single honeybee has cloned itself hundreds of millions of times” at New Scientist

The clones, by invading and laying eggs instead of working, kill 10 per cent of colonies in South Africa each year. “It’s like a transmissible social cancer,” one researcher says.

But another researcher allows us to know: “For the Cape honeybees, the cloning is perfectly in keeping with evolutionary theory, says Laurent Keller at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. ‘Evolution is just selecting what’s doing well at a given time.’”

But wait. Did any evolution pundit claim that one bee cloning itself many millions of times (identical copies) would be an example of evolutionary fitness? If evolutionary fitness is whatever happens to “be doing well” at a given time, there is no theory. How does it differ from “whatever happens”?

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