material contingency

That didn't clear anything up.

So you're saying it does not have the features that are criteria for personhood?

Can non-person come from person? It seems to me persons can at best rearrange what already is.

Look at computing, it can use genetic algorithms (algorithms which mimic evolution's methods) to increase complexity and "tuning".
Here is a nice example

(comes in four parts)

I wouldn't call the movement of particles within an atom complex, they are more like random, and they are not required to be in any particular way.

 

I outline the "criteria" for personhood above. "It" may or may not meet that criteria.
Non-person can come from person.
There is nothing spontaneous about computing. All of the computing that you refer to is the product of industry. Industry is combining material and ingenuity. The computations you refer to are the products of industry. At best, they describe pre-existing information.
The movement of particles affirms material contingency. Contingent being is a complex of actuality and potentiality. Contingent being actuality exists and it has the potential to change including the potential to be or not be.

 

Can you give an example of a non-person coming from person?

Oh, I don't mean that computing as a thing is evolutionary in itself, I'm saying using computers, we can build models which mimic evolution. Given that we know that things mutate and die, evolution can be shown to follow.

You're losing me a bit with the contingent stuff here. You say contingent being is a complex of actuality and potentiality, that makes it seem like what you mean by complex is combination, rather than complicatedness. I don't see in what way the movement of particles affirms material contingency.

 

Except that exactly what we see. Literally all the evidence we have is for an infinite regression of effects. Everything is both an effect and a cause.

 

****.

All such models are contrivances are by design. Apart from these, nothing gets more complex, most certainly not by intergenerational cellular copy errors.

No particle of matter can occupy the same position, relative to the balance of matter, in any two increments of time. All matter is subject to constant change.
Anything subject to change is subject; it is contingent in its being. Change is empirical evidence of contingency.

A complex is the product of a combination.

 

No. There cannot be an infinite regression of cause and effect because cause and effect is not infinitely regressing; it is progressing.

In the very simplest of terms:
Matter is that with mass.
Space is position relative to matter.
Time is the progressive sequential relative positions of matter.

Time is progressive, not regressive. If time were infinitely regressive, time could not progress.

 

I suspect physics would say that entropy will prevail overall as an average. But, it doesn't mean that there will be no instances of increased complexity.

So, the earth's core is cooling, the sun is moving toward its end, life on earth is getting more complex, etc.. I don't believe that breaks any rules.

 

I seen no sponateous increase in complexity. I see re-combinations of pre-existing information. I see unique re-combinations, but nothing new.

 

The illusion is working for what you have....no, you work for what is important to you. Some are given more than others, like Trump. Some are given less, like those in Syria.

 

Yes. I believe you haven't.

Significant visual difference takes more time than most people have for watching. Wolves to cute dogs in a woman's purse took far too long for one individual to watch, and that didn't even necessarily create a new species!

So, one has to use analytical means for detecting that kind of visible change.

On the other hand, life forms with very short life cycles allow enough generations for humans to watch change.

For example, there is an ongoing war between bacteria and man's attempts to kill them. Through evolution, bacteria develop ways to survive. Bacteria are very clearly winning.

I'd point out that your "recombinations" limit is different than your "no spontaneous increase in complexity" limit. For example, mosaics show how existing information can be used to create amazing new complexity.

 

Dogs from wolves is an example of extinction, not evolution. There is nothing new there, just less.

Bacteria do not mutate. They commandeer pre-existing genetic information from their hosts.

Mutations are intergenerational cellular copy errors. They never increase complexity.

 

Your dogs thing doesn't work, because these small dogs weren't around previously. Extinction doesn't explain how new forms came into existence.

Your idea that bacteria are perfect reproducers of genetic material defies reason. Life isn't perfect at anything. Plus, no, bacteria are not solving antibacterial medicine by taking genes from humans. And, if they did that would be a rather fabulous way of evolving.

Yes, mutations include cellular copy errors.

But, that certainly can include increase in complexity. These copy errors result in novel information.

 

They are no more contrived than the concepts that they model. The version I linked to selects complexity with natural selection, and that's what it's trying to model.

I don't see how the rest relates to my argument.

 

"Regressive" is a subjective way of viewing it. It is and was progressive, but we are viewing it backwards.

 

Dogs are wolves with missing genes. There's nothing new there.

Mutations ARE intergenerational cellular copy errors that never increase the complexity of the organism.

 

Computer modals, indeed, computers themselves, are contrivances. They are by design.

 

Fair enough, but it's one or the other. Either way, if there were an infinite sequence in the 'other direction', the present could not occur.

 

When information gets miscopied it becomes something different.

That's essentially the definition of a copy error.

In biological reproduction, the next step is to determine whether the result survives.

 

It is far less likely that intergenerational cellular copy errors could compile into an increase in complexity than it is that photo copy errors could increase the functional complexity of a written work. You can drop a ton of bricks off a cliff for a billion years and they will never land in a straight, square, plumb column, let alone a double helix. And those are just bricks. The theory that there is any mechanism by which matter spontaneously increases in complexity flies in the face of absolutely everything we can perceive, measure and test. The idea that it's happening so slowly that we just can't see it is really a stretch too far for me. I'm going to go with 'my own lying eyes'.

 

The problem with your brick example is that you had a preexisting idea of what the result "should" look like. Also, your scenario doesn't provide any method of judging the incremental progress and removing those that didn't meet some criterion.

Nature doesn't have an objective like that. Specifically, humans were NEVER an objective. And, humans continue to evolve (though many believe it's happening slowly right now). And, nature doesn't have an objective on the outcome of that continuing evolution. We are not now and never were the living end.

And, nature has methods of rejecting incremental changes.

Remember that in general evolution occurs by large numbers of tiny changes over time. So, it IS possible to see the tiny changes, as they can happen within the period of the working lifetime of a human - a scientist who is watching.

Your eyes aren't in a lab somewhere that you could actually watch these small steps of evolution happen. Nor are you spending time with those who are analysing life forms of today and the past to understand the progression.

You can't trust your eyes if your eyes aren't even looking at the answer.


Again, I would point out that there are copy errors, and copy errors increase complexity. From there, it's a matter of whether the new complexity is rejected - which is not a random process. In that sense, evolution is not random.

 

"Copy errors increase complexity." is the best summation of macro-evolution I have read yet. However, we have yet to observe it. In fact, absolutely everything we can observe, test and measure increases in entropy, sans input. That includes complexity, information and available energy. Of course, this is explained away by going so, so slowly. I'm calling bs.

 

At the risk of you totally understanding this, let me say that the division of evolution into macro evolution and micro evolution is artificial. Scientists make that division, because the study of change over long periods of time involves some different techniques than the study of reproduction at the cellular level.

And, biologists certainly have watched evolution at the cellular level. At the macro level, scientists can now decode and compare genomes, giving very strong evidence of the evolutionary progression.

The time requirement isn't some concoction - it's a direct result of the frequency of "copy errors" that are accepted as improvements and the fact that populations that live together can even reject these improvements simply through interbreeding.

 

Sure, but a computer model can model a non-contrived situation. For instance, a computer can model adding 1 and 1 and getting 2. That's not a contrived model, but my computer which is very contrived, can model it.

 

Why? The logic of your position does not follow.

 

Only in computer models can complexity increase 'spontaneously'. This says more to me about those models than it does about an actual spontaneous increase in complexity.