When did we become fully human?

Conversation
41

I did:

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“Gradient” is evolution-speak for “We don’t know the steps of how it occurred.” The gradient is an ad hoc assertion to get past ignorance about specifics. What are the specific steps in evolution that lead to intelligence?

Ok, so this is basically making excuses and starting to talk in circles and redefine words and meanings of phrases so that we can cloud the issue at hand.

I now understand that evolutionists have no idea whatsoever about how intelligence arose in animals and higher intelligence later arose in humans.

I will accept your “We don’t know” answer. Thank you.

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The gradient is a measurable fact observable in all populations. If you reject this, you are wrong.

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44

Really? I think that we tend to see non-questions as “grand questions.” We tend to take poorly-defined things as being more abstract and consequently more profound than things which we understand the definitions of. And we forget, all too often, that the tools of reason work best on such things as clear propositions and their clear negations, and worst on things which are fuzzy.

“Grand questions” are a bit like the notion of “higher truths.” You’d think that “higher truths” would be the quality goods: the propositions which we have the very best reasons to accept. Instead, “higher truths” always turn out to be things that probably aren’t true at all, certainly are not demonstrably so, and have only the most dubious application to real world problems. I’d reverse the taxonomy here: what people call “higher truths” are actually lower truths, or, properly speaking, lower-grade propositions which, in some cases, might be true. The real “higher truths” are not philosophical abstractions and theological speculations, but things which we have sound and durable grounds for accepting.

In the same way, “when did we become fully human” is, I think, not a “grand question.” It’s drawing lines through a continuous phenomenon and breaking it into sections, which is always an inherently arbitrary process. It’s the job of having a truckload of potatoes and being asked to sort them into “small” and “large.” And it is one of those questions which can only be responded to with (a) the merest grunt or (b) ten thousand pages. Once someone has opted for the ten thousand pages, and once one has read those ten thousand pages, he invariably will wish that (a) had been chosen instead.

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45

I was not aware these were unique human attributes. Is it your contention that there is no heritable genetic component to human cognitive capacities?

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If you don’t know what the steps are, you can’t know whether they’re possible.

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What part of our intelligence? Quit being so vague. What kinda step-like explanation are you looking for? They are going to be a combination of selection, including sexual selection,by-products, etc. But unless you stop being so darn vague no one will be able to answer your questions.

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Of course I reject it, namely because your algorithms will always be intelligently designed for desired outcomes. But don’t take my word for it. Receive the rebuke of your fellow evolutionists who call on you to produce real evidence of what you say you know:

Attempts to relate complexity to self-organization are too numerous to cite [4, 21, 169-171]. Under careful scrutiny, however, these papers seem to universally incorporate investigator agency into their experimental designs. To stem the growing swell of Intelligent Design intrusions, it is imperative that we provide stand-alone natural process evidence of non trivial self-organization at the edge of chaos. We must demonstrate on sound scientific grounds the formal capabilities of naturally-occurring physicodynamic complexity. Evolutionary algorithms, for example, must be stripped of all artificial selection and the purposeful steering of iterations toward desired products. The latter intrusions into natural process clearly violate sound evolution theory [172, 173]. Evolution has no goal [174, 175]. Evolution provides no steering toward potential computational and cybernetic function [4, 6-11].

Look at this statement in particular: “To stem the growing swell of Intelligent Design intrusions, it is imperative that we provide stand-alone natural process evidence of non trivial self-organization at the edge of chaos.”

This backs up my article which says you have a lot of work to do in order to disqualify the Intelligent Design contender.

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What, pray, is the Intelligent Designer contender? I’ve observed the ID movement for many years and seen nothing that would indicate they are in contention in the world of ideas.

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Not at all.

There’s a long tradition of associating intelligence with the use of logic. And I happen to think that is badly mistaken. My alternative is to associate intelligence with pragmatism.

So you come up with a definition of pragmatism that tries to associate it with the use of logic. That’s the same mistake. And sure, pragmatism in philosophy often makes that mistake.

Pragmatism, as I defined it, is what makes possible trial and error learning. It does not depend on logic, and it is not restricted to use by humans. We see trial and error learning through the biosphere. Evolution is a system of trial and error learning.

I will take that as you declaring victory and leaving, instead of continuing with the discussion.

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51

Then you are wrong, and given the rest of your comment, you are wrong in a way that marks you as uninterested in understanding why you are wrong.

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53

An argument is not required. You have said that all humans are equally intelligent, which is so patently absurd as to be dismissed off-hand. If you don’t understand how it that you have said that, you should reconsider your word usage.

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That’s his home address! :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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He has quoted a single-author article from 2009 with 5 citations, of which 3 are the same author, 1 says the objection is silly, and the last solves the objection outright. This is not a serious problem for anything that matters.

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What I intended to indicate by my previous comment is that The Gene Emergence Project is based in David Abel’s home, maybe in the garage.

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That is consistent with the motivation of the project being a series of papers no one cared about.

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Yes, indeed. And I am hoping that the country becomes fully human in this election.

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Perhaps at your level, yes. But serious inquiry into this kind of stuff is important to real science. I see that this guy got 44 citations and was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

I have a great test to see if your theory is correct that his paper and this publication do not matter. Why don’t you try and get something published here and let us know the results. That should give us an indication of how important this journal is …or is not, as you seem to think.

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Please defend your assertion that all humans are of equal intelligence.

I see no cause to put my work and this on the table to measure them, as that isn’t how science works, but I’m on papers in journals with higher impact factor than IJMS generally and many times that number of citations than this article specifically.

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Excuse me? I never said that. I think it best at this point to end the discussion. Good evening.