On 2/27/2010 10:33 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Brent Meeker<meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
Rex Allen wrote:
Note that I am not arguing that this particular belief is an
impossible belief. What I'm arguing is that evolution doesn't help
you one way or the other in deciding...because evolution is just a
mental tool, a way of thinking by analogy. Lacking any sort of causal
mechanism, it doesn't explain the way things are. It's just a story
that helps us think about the way things are. Right?
Why do you say evolution lacks a causal mechanism? Natural selection causes
somethings not to occur - like animals that eat their children.
What would the causal mechanism for natural selection be? A
"selection field"? "Selection particles"? Spooky "selection at a
distance"???
Even if you could find some way to frame it in terms of one of those,
would you then say that the "selection field" was something that
actually existed, or would you believe it more likely to just be a
calculational device?
Though, some animals do eat their children under some circumstances.
Why? Well, according to physicialism, because of the initial
conditions of the universe plus the causal laws that govern it's state
changes over time.
Evolution would seem to be more of a metaphorical framework for
thinking about possibilities, rather than an actual scientific
explanation for anything.
I think you have to narrow a concept of "explanation"; you seem to
confine it to "causal physical chain at the most fundamental level." If
someone asked you whether you expected a newly discovered animal species
to be one that ate it's offspring, would you try to find the initial
conditions of the quark fields at that the time of the Big Bang that led
to this creature - or would you make an inference from the theory of
evolution?
Brent
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